Bad Mondays

by Handyman

Rating: teen
Tags: Changelings, Original Character, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Comedy, Other, Adventure, Griffons, Dark, Human
Length: 867840

A particularly stubborn human is lost in Equestria and is trying his damnedest to find a way out, while surviving the surprisingly difficult rigours of life in a land filled with cute talking animals. Hilarity ensues.

TTS Reading of the entire fiction: Courtesy of the FanFiction Reader on Youtube.

Character List: Courtesy of TruthHut (A work in progress)

Handy is not a happy man at the best of times.

He was even less happy to find himself in an alien world that offended the very laws of physics and got injured for his own stubborn refusal to accept the obvious path fate had apparently laid out for him.

For his trouble he is now on a journey, with the long term goal of finding his way back home, only to find himself involved in plots and machinations so far above his head and cares that he quickly becomes a pawn in a game played by powers who care not for his well-being.

Quite like his life back on Earth if you think about it.

Needless to say, Handy does not care for any of it. He is much more preoccupied with the more immediate and pressing mundane concerns of day to day life a human needs to worry about while in Equestria.

Obtaining a new pair of shoes for example.

All this and one almighty hangover, what's the worst that could happen?

Rated teen for harsh language and minor violence

Proofread by JBL, Jude and Usurper

Published 2014-01-26 23:30:06 UTC
Last updated 2024-12-31 15:40:36 UTC

Chapter 1 - The meat of the issue

Handy didn’t normally dream.

Well, that was not entirely correct. He did dream, but he was the sort of person who immediately forgot everything he had dreamt about upon waking, making it seem, to him at least, that all he had been doing for the eight hours he was unconscious was staring into comfortable, warm blackness.

This time was different. One moment he closed his eyes and drifted off, the next he was wide awake. Dreamless sleep was a troll like that, making you feel as if you had just fucking time traveled in an instant, or where it was day when it had just been night-time. It was incredibly jarring. He had had them before—we'd all had them. However, he had never had a dreamless sleep where he, well, dreamed.

“Ugh… Turn off the sun.”

He had dreamed he discovered a village of colourful, small, talking horses, some of which could fly. There had also been a zebra witch, a monstrous living mouth that sought to eat him, a talking figment of Greek mythology, and a lot of pain and aches. Weird. He yawned.

“Welp… bluh… Time to go to work,” he said, pushing off his blanket, surprised to see he was wearing his shirt in bed. ‘Funny,’ he thought. ‘I never sleep with my shirt….’ Then he noticed his bed was a field, his shirt was torn, and his ‘blanket’ was his hoody. Trepidation crept along his skin. ‘Oh no…’

“You’re up early,” a distressingly familiar voice spoke up from behind him. He froze. He looked slowly over his right shoulder. Lying there, across from the smouldering remains of the fire from the night before, was the sprawled form of the griffon, Joachim. The feathery fallacy yawned widely before smacking his beak a few times, his eyes heavy with sleep. Handy’s mind whirred, processing it all one more time. Yep. He was still in the land of madness. It had all happened: the cockatrice, the ponies, the witch, the jaw, the briar, the river, the pain, the aches, and the hangover. He sighed in defeat.

“Bollocks,” he said.

“What?”

“Nothing, just an expression. I uh… Good morning… Jockam, wasn’t it?”

“Joachim.”

“Joachim, right, Joachim, sorry. Just… still recovering you know?”

“Mmm,” Joachim hummed, rubbing his eyes with a claw. “Satisfied you didn’t get clawed in the night?” he asked, giving Handy a withering look. Handy avoided his gaze.

“Look. I regret my words okay. It’s just.. yesterday was rough, aye? And I am not normally an open sort of man.”

“Whatever. In any case, come on. I’m hungry. We need to get some breakfast.”

“I normally skip breakfasts in the morning,” Handy said. Joachim raised an eyebrow, which Handy admittedly found impressive on what was essentially the face of a bird. He didn’t have an eyebrow the way a human would, but the muscle was there. The silver-black feathers which formed a pattern around his eyes accentuated his expression, allowing him for a surprising degree of facial communication.

“That’s hardly wise, and you say you travelled to your place of work? Surely you had time to take breakfast with you?” Joachim asked. Handy shook his head.

“Nah, only had a half hour to get to work most mornings, provided I got enough sleep, then I had to spend whatever time between arrival and my work’s start time preparing everything to work the way it’s supposed to.” Handy grimaced. Computers were such fickle things. Who needed a woman? Technology provided all the frustration to set a guy up for life. Joachim shrugged, missing the context.

“Still, that’s no excuse.”

“Probably isn’t, but this is pointless. It’s not as if we’re on a deadline. What did you have in mind for food?” Handy asked. Joachim stroked the bottom of his chin. Well, more like his beak. The strangeness of a gesture of a creature that had such a radically difficult facial structure amused Handy, but he figured it would be rude to point it out.

“Well, I was thinking of apples, although honestly? I could go for a daisy sandwich,” Joachim said. Handy blinked.

“Wait, what?” he asked.

“Daisy sandwich,” Joachim said with a contented smile. It looked odd to Handy, almost as if it was… forced. “Preferably with good, freshly-made wheaten bread and freshly picked flowers, although that isn't too important. Once you get used to it, squashing the sandwich down and keeping them fresh for the road, you can get used to the taste easily. However—"

“Hold up wait,” Handy said, holding up a hand to stop the griffon’s babbling. “Apples, perhaps, but daisies?”

“Uh…” Joachim said, blinking. “Yeah! I mean, hay fries are great and all, but you can’t really have something cooked in vegetable oil in the morning. It’s not healthy, you know?”

“Okay,” Handy said, smiling. “Wait, just… You ARE a Griffon right?” Handy asked. Joachim raised yet another eyebrow at him. His good wing ruffled in agitation.

“I believe I said as much last night, yes.”

“And you’re talking about eating… daisies?” Handy asked, a mirthful glint in his grey-blue eyes. Joachim took a breath. His expression darkened. “You sure you wouldn’t like something a little more… red? Juicy perhaps? I mean, you are basically a lion that is also an eagle, so—”

“Okay, hold up!” Joachim shouted, springing to his feet, his one wing flared. “I am not going to be putting up with any racism from you! Just because I am a griffon does not mean my mother rutt—“

“Easy, easy!” Handy said, raising his hands defensively. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to offend.”

“You say that a lot!”

“Look I just thought it was strange. You are clearly a carnivore, and you were talking about eating daisies.”

“I am not a carnivore!”

“Sure ya aren’t, and I'm the long lost heir to the Han Dynasty of China,” Handy said.

“Look, is this going to be a problem!?” Joachim said sharply. “I’ve been here for all of six months and had to eat this awful horse feed all of the time, just so I don’t get in trouble with the locals.”

“What?”

“I’m a carnivore! I admit it, okay! I need meat to live!” Joachim said, rearing up on his hind legs to emphasis the point. “I admit it; I’ve had to go skulking in the woods to get a hold of some unlucky rabbit or badger that crossed my path every now and again. This isn’t the eastern border with Griffonia. Most ponies are certainly not that understanding of someone sapient needing to kill and eat something else to live. Now that you know the truth of it, are you going to give me Tartarus for it as well?” Joachim said, now closer to Handy and jabbing a claw at his chest.

Handy only sat there and stared at the griffon in confusion. That was absurd. Like it or not, how could anyone expect, for all intents and purposes, a flying lion to survive by eating plant life? Looking at Joachim in the glare of the morning light, he noticed several ribs were poking unhealthily from his sides. Handy took a breath.

“Look here, fella,” Handy said. He pulled open his mouth and showed Joachim his teeth to the bird of prey, pointing a finger at his canines, then to his incisors and to his molars. “Do these look like the teeth of a herbivore?” Handy asked as he let his mouth go. “Humans are omnivores, but even so, we eat a heavy diet of meat, or we try to at least. Our bodies need it.” He raised his hand again in a placating gesture. “We recognise predators when we see them was all, which is why I was laughing before. Relax, you won’t be judged by me.”

Joachim looked surprised at this before letting out a rather explosive sigh.

“Oh thank the Maker,” he said before looking at Handy apologetically. “Sorry, it’s just… It’s safer to assume something that talks is a herbivore. Especially here in Equestria, double especially if you’re all alone with a broken wing.” He grimaced. Handy noticed he had teeth for the first time. More and more oddities. How do you even grimace with a beak anyway? His beak was surprisingly fluid compared to the hard appendages that most birds back home had. “Things that eat meat are usually wild animals, so meat eating has… connotations here.”

Handy shook his head in understanding that he was clearly faking because this was just layered insanity after layered insanity. Though he supposed, on an intellectual level, that if he walked into a nation ruled by vegans and shot a pig so that he could have bacon in the morning, he’d face at least a hefty fine.

Or, you know, be lynched. Depending on the crazy of course. Either way, he could sympathise with Joachim.

“I miss having actual beef sandwiches in the morning anyway.” Joachim looked up at Handy at that. “Beef, delicious chunks of meat. I personally like mine half cooked so that they are not entirely rigid when you bite down into them,” Handy explained. Joachim shook his head.

“Don’t think I’ve had that before. What do you hunt to get it?”

“Cows,” Handy replied. Joachim blanched visibly, even with his feathers.

“You’d kill somepony in order to eat them!?” he shouted, rather shocked.

Somepony? Featherbrain here needed a grammar lesson.

“No, not someone. Cows are animals where I come from. Don’t tell me they’re thinking, reasoning creatures here?” Handy asked.

“Yeah,” Joachim said. Handy blinked.

“Well shit, if that’s the case, then I guess eating beef very much sounds like cannibalism.”

“W-What else is an animal in your homeland?” Joachim asked, squinting at Handy suspiciously.

“Well horses for a start. Ponies too; same thing really.” They were not the same thing but close enough that Handy didn’t give a shit. He tapped his foot, his sock wet and heavy, and he noticed he couldn’t actually feel his foot. Not good; he’d need to do something about that. “Are sheep reasoning creatures here too?” Joachim nodded. “Damn, there goes lamb.”

“W-What… What don’t you eat back at your home?” Joachim asked. He was on his feet now, his good wing slightly raised and right claw slightly off the ground in a defensive posture. Handy noticed none of this and shrugged.

“Damn few things really,” Handy said before quickly adding an amendment with a wave of his hand. “Oh, there’s restrictions sure—religious, cultural, moral, and whatnot. The country where I come from, for example, considers eating horses to be tantamount to grievous sin, which is odd as we have no religious compunction against it. However, a short jaunt across the open sea, one of our neighbours considers horsemeat a delicacy.” He shrugged. “I know in some countries eating insects is popular, healthy even, but the rest of the world would find it disgusting. One eastern country considers eating beef sinful in accordance with their religion.” Handy frowned. “Now that I think about it, we humans have a lot of weird rules about eating.” As he mused, he turned his head back to Joachim. He rested it on his hand which, in turn, rested upon his raised knee.

Joachim’s eyes were wide, and his pupils became pinpricks. His good wing was fully flared, and his right claw was splayed and ready to lash out in a slashing motion. Considering the context of what he had been saying, Handy quickly resolved to calm him before he did something both of them would regret.

“Whoa, whoa there, Joachim! I am not a cannibal! I wouldn’t eat anything that thinks or talks! Look, back where I come from, humans are the only things that can talk or rationalize. We don’t need to worry about such things. Sorry if I scared you.”

“Y-You swear to that?” Joachim asked, now stepping back to put a bit of distance between him and the creature whose race he was now imagining as a voracious horde of insects, consuming everything in their path.

“Yeah! Jeez,” Handy said, standing up to his full height, causing Joachim to look up. That did not help matters as Handy cast his shadow over him, and his eyes seemed to grow even wider. Handy sat back down. “Didn’t mean to scare you like that. Look, I can say for the sake of your sanity that we don’t eat griffons,” he said with a gentle smile.

“How do I know that?”

“For one thing, there are no griffons where I am from. Oh, we know what you are, but no one’s ever seen one back home.”

“But if they were, how do I know you wouldn’t eat them?” Joachim asked, cocking his head and squinting his eyes in suspicion.

“For another thing, we don’t eat lions and eagles. We like eagles far too much, and lions put up far too much of a fight. Not worth the effort honestly.”

Joachim glared.

“Oh, I didn’t mean it like that. It’s just the nearest comparison I have for you!” Handy groaned. “Look, forget it; we’ll deal with it later, yeah?” Joachim growled lowly.

“… Right,” Joachim agreed, finally relaxing his wing and putting both forelegs on the ground.

“Now, what you were saying about breakfast? And no daisy sandwiches this time,” Handy said. Joachim looked back at Handy for a moment, as if studying his face.

“How do you feel about fish?”

--=--

It took the entirety of the day before the pair made it to the town Joachim had been talking about. Spurbay was its name, a quaint little harbour town – white-walled buildings with sloped blue-tiled roofs nestled at the apex of a round bay, with artificial walls forming an enclosure to protect boats from storm waves. It lay in the shadow of a mountain that was visible for miles. It was not often one got a mountain at the seaside all on its own without being part of a mountain chain. Handy paid no mind to the oddity, however, for it was just another point to the crazy list.

He had spent the day reassuring Joachim for his earlier mishap of sounding like a cannibal that would eat anyone he came across. He eventually gave up and started teasing him about ‘How he now knew how the ponies felt about griffons.’ That soon shut him up.

“Right, there it is,” Joachim said, cresting a hill as the daylight faded. Lights were popping up here and there in the town below them as the town came alive as the sun died. “Now you’re sur—”

“For God’s sakes, Joachim!” Handy groaned. “If you ever, EVER see me so much as willingly lick up a speck of pony blood, I’ll be your personal manservant for a month. On pain of death even! Swear to God, right here right now, hand over heart!” Handy said. His left hand was indeed over his heart as he raised his right hand up to the heavens. “Now will you please shut up? I won’t eat anyone, so let’s just… let’s just get down there,” Handy said as he marched on ahead. Joachim shrugged.

“Fine.”

--=--

“Absolutely not!”

‘One inn.’

“Sorry, we’re full.”

‘Two inn.'

“Ain’t got no room, sorry!”

‘Three tavern score!’

“You picked a bad time to look for rooms.”

‘Four inn.’

“Keep moving.”

‘Five inn.’

“Sorry!”

‘Six halfway house more!’

“This is ridiculous!” Joachim exclaimed, wing flared, forelegs grasping his head. “They can’t all be full up!” Handy looked around. He was uneasy. There were an awful lot of colourful ponies in this town, and more than a few of them were casting curious glances his way. To be sure, the two of them were strikingly different from everyone else here, but he had the uneasy gut feeling that it was him they were looking at more than the griffon. ‘They’ve at least heard of griffons before,’ he thought, feeling eyes boring on the back of his head.

Well, that and neither of them looked in a respectable condition, what with Joachim’s bandaged wing and the ruination that was Handy’s clothes. His jacket had been savagely recycled. He had cut off large strips to wrap around his foot, which was now, thankfully, much warmer as a result. The rest of his jacket had been MacGuyvered into a makeshift belt using the remnants of his actual belt to support it. Handy was not the best at improvising, but a country boy life had prepared him to make do with what he had at hand. Often, the results would be described, if one was charitable and had low standards, as charmingly ghetto. It did not help that the salamander salve hadn’t finished its business, and the majority of Handy’s skin which was showing, meaning his arms and face, were still covered in criss-crossed cuts which must look like scars rather than the healing minor lacerations that they actually were.

That was probably the main reason why the ponies were giving them a wide berth in the cobblestone street, and why a particularly gruff-looking stallion in barding was giving them the evil eye from down the street. ‘They must think we’re troublemakers.’

“I dunno, Joachim,” Handy said. “I heard one of them mention there was a market festival happening soon, and a lot of ships have been arriving in port recently. Probably why all the rooms are taken,” Handy offered to try to calm his companion down. Honestly, he didn’t believe a word he said. But he couldn’t really blame the pony landlords from coming up with an excuse not to put up with the pair of them given their appearance.

“Still, there’s bound to be somewhere with space!”

“Can I help you gentlecolts?” an elderly voice spoke up from behind them. Joachim and Handy both visibly jumped. The voice came from a short yet rather elderly-looking light grey unicorn. Handy was still getting used to all the definitions and tell-tale signs. Unicorn, pegasus, earth pony, stallion, mare, filly, colt, foal… He probably should have listened more to his horse breeding neighbour back home when she had gushed about her favourite topic in the history of forever. The pony was bald; he had no mane apart from the errant white hair here or there, though his tail had two tones: grey and fading black. The image on his flank, his cutie mark—more terminology Handy had to learn—depicted what appeared to be an opening door.

“Oh yes, hello there,” Joachim said, recovering first. “We’re trying to find a place to stay for the night, but nowhere appears to have room. Could you point us in the right direction? We’d rather not sleep under the stars again.”

“Oh, but of course!” the elderly pony said, chuckling, his light blue eyes twinkling with kindness. Handy noticed that and found it odd, but he couldn’t place why exactly. “Ah figured you young’uns were looking a little lost, and well, I’ll be if I didn’t see nopony try to help you or even ask if you needed a hoof. Why, it seemed as if they were trying to avoid you,” he said, loud enough that it could be overheard. Several ponies shied away at that and averted their gaze. Some held their heads down low a bit. The guard pony from before suddenly found something else to draw his attention. Handy looked back down at the old pony. ‘Impressive.’

“Now come with me, for ol’ Welcome Sight will see ya right. Can’t have ponies be talking about Spurbay not welcoming fine folks such as yourselves when they’re in need. Come along now,” he finished as he turned to trot off. Handy and Joachim shared a bemused glance before following after Welcome Sight. The pair followed their rescuer through the winding streets of the harbour town, listening to him as he chatted his mouth off about this bit of history, or how good such and such’s shop did its business, or how that house had looked so much better before its owner painted it a slightly duller shade of white. Handy had tuned it out long ago, but he was starting to notice the ponies of the town were no longer giving them as wide a berth as before. He was still getting odd looks, but it was no longer the suspicious, worried stares of busybodies. It was a warmer curiosity, and several of them no longer looked away or pretended to be doing something else when he turned his head their way.

They made their way to a bed and breakfast near the edge of the town named The Shady Bough. It was a small, humble affair and clearly had seen better days. Welcome, well, welcomed them in and set them down at a long table that served as a counter.

“Now then,” Welcome said as he walked behind the counter and smiled warmly at them. “Can I get you fellows anything?”

“Um, n-no. Thanks, I’m good,” Joachim said, trying not to seem ungrateful by asking for anything.

“Oh come now, look at you. Have you had the chance to take a shower recently?” Welcome asked. Joachim’s mouth gaped. “Oh no, no, you don’t smell, but your wing is injured. My wife was a pegasus you see. You need to keep it relaxed and clean if you want it to heal well. You’ve clearly been traveling for a long while.” Welcome smiled, heading off Joachim’s concern. “Feel free to use the restroom if ya need to. Go on now, up ya get. I’ll have some warm tea for you when you come back down. Go on.”

Joachim’s expression was somewhere between surprise and… gratitude? Handy looked at him as he got up “I uh… Thanks,” Joachim said as he made his way to the stairs. “Up here?”

“Yes, second on your left,” Welcome said. Joachim looked up the stairs for a few seconds before turning back to Welcome. “Yes, it’s fine. Go on now,” Welcome said to Joachim’s unasked question. After Joachim had reached the top of the stairs, Welcome turned his sights to Handy. “Well now, you seem to be a long way from home. What’s your name, stranger?”

“Handy,” Handy said.

“Well, I won’t hear a word about it, so as soon as your friend’s done, it’ll be you next. But can I get you anything? Tea? Coffee? Perhaps you’d like something stronger. I saw your hoof wrapped in a bandage—might ya need it for the pain?”

“Just water, uh, I mean, thanks,” Handy said. Given his first day in Equestria, such kindness was rather jarring. In truth, he was still in pain: his leg throbbed at times, the aches in his bones made him feel stiff, and more than once he heard his neck crack alarmingly as he turned it. He also had a cold coming on. He had been feeling worse and worse since that morning. As if on cue, he clasped his hands to his face as he sneezed rather explosively. He shuddered. He saw a handkerchief floating in the air above him. “Thanks,” he said, taking it and using it to clean up. It was then he noticed that the handkerchief was floating. The unicorn before him had used magic to levitate it over to him. Joachim had told him about unicorn magic, and he had seen little snippets of it since he arrived at Spurbay, but he still couldn’t really believe it actually happened.

Welcome seemed to notice Handy’s discomfort. “Something wrong, Handy?” he asked, concern showing in his eyes.

“No, no just… feeling under the weather,” he said as Welcome smiled and turned away. “Actually,” Handy began, stopping the unicorn before he left the room, “could you… make me a cup of tea? I’d uh… I’d appreciate it, but I don’t want to impose.”

“Not at all. I’ll get you some now.”

--=--

‘He’s taking his sweet time up there,’ Handy thought to himself.

“—Well that would explain your cuts. The Everfree is not a good place to find yourself after a rough night,” Welcome said, chuckling softly. “You should be more careful when you drink. You sure you don’t know how to get home?”

“Well, I didn’t know Equestria existed until I awoke yesterday, so I guess no, I don’t think I do,” Handy answered, having decided to go for the ‘My country is so far away from here that I don’t know where here even is!’ explanation, rather than the preposterous ‘I am an alien from another world! I also eat a lot of meat. You’re meat, but don’t worry, I won’t eat you!’ explanation for why he was now in Equestria. Once Joachim got down, he’d get a hold of him and set him straight with the ‘correct’ story, just in case he went talking to anyone else about Handy. He had seen the griffon’s reaction when Handy had told him only the slimmest information about his world, and he didn’t want the dominant species to start unleashing manhunts to rid themselves of him.

‘Joachim’s paranoia is infectious it seems.’

“Ah well, I’m sure you’ll find your way back. Is that why you’re here? To get a ship?”

“Well no, but now that you mention it, are there any ships that go across the ocean?”

“Not these days, no. In Spurbay’s heyday, there would be oceanic ships arriving in the harbour, but times change. ‘Sides, with the Saltwater festival coming up, I’d imagine all the ships arriving are likely to be staying until its end. Or a few days after once their crews sober up,” he said, laughing again. Handy smiled. This pony made a great bartender.

“Worth a shot to ask,” Handy admitted as he warmed his hands around the cup of tea. “Honestly, I’m here with Joachim because of the mine nearby.” Welcome’s ears flicked up.

“What do you want with the mine?” he asked, a slight tremor in his voice.

“Well, there’s the reward for evicting the diamond dogs. Me and Joachim need the money.”

“So you’re not here for the wishing stone?” Welcome asked. There was a strange twinge to his voice.

“Well no,” Handy admitted. “If there really was a wishing stone, wouldn’t the diamond dogs have used it by now?” Handy asked, not knowing what in the hell a diamond dog actually was. ‘Maybe it’s literally a dog made of diamond,’ Handy mused. ‘Wonder how much one would sell for?’ Welcome’s sight dropped at that.

“Yes… Yeah I guess they would’ve.”

“Why do you ask?”

“Well my son was working the mines. Always a dreamer that one… he heard the legends about the buried gem and had been working the mine for the past few years.” Welcome sighed. “He got bitter about it after I told him not to go chasing after it. His cutie mark is in working an inn. We haven’t spoken for a year now. I heard the miners evacuated and abandoned the place after the diamond dogs took over, moving on to another mine,” Welcome said. “He didn’t even say goodbye.”

‘Oh… ouch,’ Handy thought sympathetically.

“Well… Maybe he’d come back if the diamond dogs leave,” Welcome said. His voice picked up a bit with hope, but he still looked down, studying the contours of the table. Joachim came down the stairs then.

“Shower’s unoccupied now; thanks for letting me use it,” Joachim said as he sat back at the table.

“It was no trouble. Tea?” Welcome asked.

“Oh, yes! That would be great,” Joachim said. Welcome looked at the kettle.

“Hmm, seems to have run out. Hang on, I’ll be right back.” He turned away and made his way back into the kitchen. Handy turned to Joachim.

“By the way, Joachim...”

“Mm?”

“If he asks, I’m from a faraway country, not another world,” Handy said. Joachim scoffed.

“Of course, like I’m going to want to be the one to explain that when you still aren’t so sure yourself. Next I suppose I’ll tell him your dietary requirements.”

“Hey, piss off; I was just trying to be clear.”

“Oh calm, I was just teasing. You ask about staying yet?”

“No, not yet,” Handy said, chewing the inside of his mouth. “What am I even going to pay for it with? I got nothing.” Joachim rolled his eyes.

“I’ll put you up for the night,” he said, waving dismissively with his claw. “Now get cleaned up. You stink.”

“Cheers,” Handy said, letting the insult slide for now. He finished the dregs of his cup before getting up. Joachim watched him get up.

“I’m surprised you don’t hit more doorframes,” he said jokingly.

“I have excellent depth perception, thank you very much,” Handy said before going up the stairs as Welcome came back into the room.

--=--

They made ready to leave the next morning. Handy initially questioned how creatures with an apparently medieval level of technology had access to indoor plumbing, but considering they were creatures with hooves capable of smithing form-fitting metal barding, if the guard was any indication, it was not too much of a stretch to imagine a particularly determined pony inventor figuring out the rigours of getting hot water from point A to point B. The Romans did it after all. But then again, they were Romans and were ridiculously overpowered in a lot of ways, so it was an unfair comparison. He figured he was overthinking it and pushed it to the back of his mind.

Now the bed sizes were a different matter.

Handy didn’t care what species you were, you always wanted a bigger bed. The beds Welcome had, God bless his soul for trying to accommodate, were woefully undersized to fit Handy’s embarrassingly lanky frame. He literally had to curl up into a fetal position to ensure his legs didn’t fall over the edges. ‘Inexcusable,’ he had decided. If there was one thing he loved in life more than coming home with his wallet filled with that month’s paycheck, it was beds, provider of the only consistent comfort in life: a good night’s sleep. Well, so long as you ceased giving enough shits about life that you didn’t let stress get to you. ‘I’ll BUY him bigger beds if I have to.’

That would prove to be something of a problem even if they had the bits to rub together. As it was, Welcome refused any such payment Joachim offered for letting them stay the night. Joachim was flustered and kept on insisting, but Welcome was having none of it. The two of them were politely shown the door after they were ready to leave before Welcome caved to their insistence on paying for his services and kindness.

“How much does a sign cost, you reckon?” Joachim asked.

“What do you mean?” Handy asked, raising an eyebrow. They were on their way out of town now, following a rocky path to the mine by the mountainside.

“Well, Welcome’s sign seemed pretty rickety. Could do with replacing…” Handy laughed, understanding Joachim’s intention instantly.

“Charity has a way of shaming folks who have means to pay their way. Welcome is just the sort of guy who lends people a hand, whatever their position in life,” Handy said, an odd look darkening his brow for a brief moment. “Even if they really should just take the payment.”

“I know. But still… I feel bad.”

“I know how you feel, our fella.”

It took them nearly an hour to get to the mine. It was little more than a gaping hole at the foot of the mountain, with a wooden wall preventing wind and rain from falling into it, and a large door built into a frame. All over the place were crude signs that were, to Handy’s surprise, written in English.

‘DU NUT ENTHER!”

Bad English, but English nonetheless.

“So what’s the plan here?” Handy asked. He had managed to find a few flat pieces of metal to slip into his makeshift shoe for his left foot, protecting his sole from stepping on something sharp. He had a club that was little more than a rather large and sturdy table leg someone— oh, terribly sorry, somepony left in the trash. Joachim laughed comfortably.

“Watch and learn,” Joachim said, flashing his claws as he sharpened them on a whetstone.

‘Ah,’ Handy thought. ‘So that’s why it felt like shaking hands with a scythe.’

“I don’t need anything other than these beauties and my own wits to evict them. You’re just here to look pretty and work their machines as necessary, remember?” Joachim said, smirking. Handy rolled his eyes.

“Are you sure? Barging in there? Just like that?” Handy asked as he cast an incredulous glance at Joachim, who proceeded to puff out his chest.

“Oh, don’t worry yourself! Diamond dogs are nothing to me. I’ll keep you safe. We’ll be over and back at the Shady Bough by dinner time,” he said. Handy frowned in annoyance.

“In that case, age before beauty. Off ye go.”

“Hey, I am not that old.”

“Get!” Handy said, gesturing to the door with a huff.

“Oh get over yourself," Joachim said. "It’ll be good exercise. ‘Sides, you could use it.”

“Oh, just get on with it!”

“Puleease,” Joachim said as he grasped the handle of the door. “What’s the worst that could happen?”

--=--

So it turned out diamond dogs had body types ordinarily reserved for gorillas.

“Watch and learn he says— HRMFH!”

And rather easily trounced the two of them as they foolishly rushed into their canteen, flailing limbs.

“I don’t need a plan he says— Yeah, hold it right there a second while I get this.”

Clapped them in irons and shoved pick axes into their appendages.

“Get over yourself he say; it’ll be good exercise he says— Watch it!”

And now they had been working the mine for the past week, getting precious gems for their new canine overlords. Considering the fact that this mine specialized in extracting metal ores, it was, understandably, slow going.

“What’s the worst that could happen he says? Haha! He says that, he actually says that!” Handy exclaimed.

“I’m standing right here, you know!” Joachim shouted, bringing his pick down on the wall the two of them had been digging for the past day and a half.

“No talking! More digging!” the scratchy voice from the mouth of the new tunnel shouted.

“Yes, boss dog sir!” Handy shouted back down before grumbling under his breath. “Well, at least Welcome’s son didn’t skip town on him.” You see, it had been of no benefit to the diamond dogs to chase the miners out. After all, ponies were useful for pulling heavy carts around and good for using powerful earth pony bucks to get that last stubborn gem out of its nook. So naturally, they enslaved as many of the miners as they could. The ones who got away foolishly assumed their fellows got out as well.

That had been a week ago. There were a dozen diamond dogs in all, and most of them had armour on and everything. There was pitifully little Handy’s club could have done against that. Joachim’s cockiness had survived a bit longer than Handy’s, and it wasn’t until he had a meaty canine paw smash into his temple that he got a taste of humble pie. Since then, they had been using picks to dig up the tunnels in search of precious gems. They filled in the work rotas with the unicorns and the earth ponies capable of using picks, their specialised horseshoes having been confiscated. The tunnel they had been digging currently produced only slivers of gems but that was enough for Rex to put them on permanent mining duty for this sector. Apparently, he was desperate for any sign of a potential vein of gems which, to Handy’s bewilderment, came out of the walls freshly cut and polished. It made them easier to find for sure, but it was still ridiculous.

“Look, I made an… error in judgement,” he said, teeth gritted.

“Oh and then some!” Handy said. Grunting with effort, his stomach rumbled. They were barely fed as it was. “There better be a Goddamn mountain of bits ready for us if this scheme of yours works,” Handy said, referring to Joachim’s latest genius idea to escape. Apparently, he thought it up on their first day in bondage, but it had taken him all week to get Handy to the point where he would actually listen to him.

“Look, just follow it exactly and we’ll be fine. You know Happy Hour right?” Joachim asked, referring to the eternally depressed-looking pegasus pony who had no business being this far beneath the ground.

“What about her?” Handy asked.

“All I need you to do is start a fight with her at dinner,” Joachim said simply. Handy almost dropped his pick.

“Wait, what? I know the plan called for a distraction but why her?” Handy asked incredulously, picking up his axe and going back to work to avoid suspicion.

“Keep it down! And why not her?” Joachim asked. “She’s popular with the others, and everypony feels sorry for her. If they see you picking on her, they’ll jump right in, and we’ll have a riot to distract the dogs with.”

“Not that I am simply THRILLED at the prospect of willingly throwing myself in the way of miner-pony hooves thrown in anger, but I don’t hit women… mares… females! Whatever, I am not doing it.”

“I just don’t get what you have against it. I mean, it’s not right to attack anypony anyway, but I just don’t get why the gender mat—”

“It’s a human thing. Look, pick someone else.” Handy clicked his teeth as he worked, thinking hard. “How about Welcome’s son?” Handy asked, referring to the dark blue unicorn with the fireplace cutie mark. Warm Night had been doing the rounds of the prisoner pens, keeping everyone’s spirits up. He had a comforting demeanour and a strong voice that reassured many of the weaker-willed slaves. He had made his way over to the two of them once or twice. Turned out he greatly regretted not seeing his dad more often, especially after Handy had told him that Welcome thought he had just left town altogether.

He had given up on chasing after the magical gem. Turned out the miners hadn’t found it yet. Some smart pony in town hall decided to let it slip that they had to try to further entice adventurous types to evict the diamond dogs so they could get right back to making bits. And Joachim and Handy were the only two foolish enough to bother showing up. He had given up himself long ago and was merely working there because the bits were good.

He was a good guy, and all things considered, well liked.

“Yeah, he’ll do,” Joachim said. “But the others won’t react as fast if you pick a fight with him, and the dogs might break it up before you can get it going.” Handy’s brow furrowed.

“I’ll think of something," he said, swinging his pick at the wall.

--=--

A blow horn was sounded. Quitting time. The prisoners made their way to the large round chamber at the heart of the network of tunnels that made up the mine’s structure. Including Joachim and Handy, there were fifteen of them. Joachim made a show of giving a quick screech at Handy and moving off to another table with his tray of gruel held in his mouth.

Handy scowled at the griffon and moved to a table on the far side of the room. He looked down at the tray of gruel before him as his stomach growled. Not caring about the taste, he shovelled it into him. One way or another, he was going to need what little energy the horrible crap would give him. Looking around, only two other ponies sat at the table. He knew their names, but he was too tired to recall them right now. ‘Sides, no one here was going to waste energy on talking.

Well, almost no one.

“—It’ll be alright, you’ll see.”

Ah, target sighted.

“I haven’t seen my daughter in two weeks!” a slightly panicking voice said. It was the green mare with the yellow mane. Sunshine something or other. “Wh-What if she’s hurt or afraid? Surf Jumper isn’t due back in from the sea until the start of the festival; she’s all alone!”

“Hey hey hey, calm down. You’ll do her no good by worrying in here. You need to stay strong until we can get out of here. Alright?”

“I… Th-Thanks… thank you, Night.”

“Now, if you ever want to talk, you can always come to me, you hear? Now eat, keep your strength up.”

‘How terribly noble,’ Handy thought derisively. ‘Feh, if he was that considerate, he wouldn’t be here in the first place given how worried his father became over his obsession.’ Handy shoved the last bit of gruel into his mouth with his hand and looked around to the guards. He saw three of the dogs in armour growling among themselves and throwing dice in a cup over a pitiful pile of gems. One of them clearly did not enjoy losing and punched another in the face. Rex, tall bastard that he was, materialised behind them and immediately shoved the two apart. Usually when he saw fractious behaviour in the dogs, Rex would quickly squash it, and the dogs would whimper to avoid the wrath of the pack leader. But this time, a few growled and said something to Rex in an angry tone. Discontent in the ranks?

Handy’s mind went to work. He lifted his tray and took it over to the bin that would be washed as soon as the last pony finished eating, who was usually the one who got left with the duty. He glanced over at Joachim’s position. His wings had been tied by the dogs, much like Happy Hour’s had been, but he was subtly looking over his shoulders, keeping an eye on Handy and Warm Night, as well as the doors. Handy glanced back at Rex, who was busy shouting down a group of dogs. He couldn’t fight them, and while not the brightest, the dogs wouldn’t trust him long enough for a trick he could think up to work, so time to offer them something they might actually want.

“Excuse me, boss,” Handy said, approaching the group of dogs. The four of them turned around, and Rex growled.

“What do you want, baldy?” Rex asked, “You’re finished eating, so wait for the others and then go back to your pen.” He had an evil grin on his face. “Unless you want to do more work?”

Handy held his gaze with the dog, which was a pretty unwise thing to do with a dog if said dog happened to be looking down on you. It was true in his world, and it was a bad thing, therefore it must be true in this world. Rex growled and grabbed Handy by the collar. Yep, bad thing here too. Excellent.

“Speak up!” he growled, spittle splashing into his face.

“I want to make you a deal,” Handy said. Eyes around the canteen were glancing their way, but the ponies quickly turned away once Rex cast a baleful stare over their heads.

“This I have got to hear. What could you offer me?”

“Something I know you and the other dogs want. In return, I get what I want.”

“Oh, and what could you want that I would actually allow you to have?” Rex growled, his green eyes almost glowing in the torchlight.

“Release. You see that unicorn over there? Dark blue, has a fire on his arse?” Handy asked, not pointing. Rex looked over.

“I see him.”

“I want you to let me kick his flank into next week,” Handy said. Rex looked down at him, eyes wide before roaring with cruel laughter.

“And why should I let you do that?” he asked, putting Handy back on the ground. He inwardly sighed with relief once both of his feet touched the ground once more. Rex placed his paws on his hips, awaiting Handy’s answer, the three dogs behind him snickering.

“Because I’ve been seeing you and your dogs aren’t terribly happy. You’re aggressive and bored. Hell, weren’t you lot shouting at each other before I came over?”

“Yeah,” one of the dogs spoke up. “We ain’t found no diamonds yet.” Rex growled at that, and the dog shut up but didn’t look away from Rex’s stare.

“Also, that unicorn prick has been chirpier than a songbird since I got here, and it’s really beginning to get at my nerves. I am offering you what you don’t often get down here,” Handy said.

“And what’s that?” Rex asked.

“Entertainment,” Handy said simply with more confidence than he honestly felt. “I bet you I could kick that unicorn’s flank in under three minutes,” Handy said, jabbing the palm of his left hand with his right index finger for emphasis. The dogs murmured to themselves but Rex looked upwards, rubbing his chin. He glanced about the room, then down to the bits his dogs had been gambling over, and smiled a vicious smile.

--=--

“Hey,” Warm Night said, his warm baritone heralding his approach as he trotted over to the corner Happy Hour sat at. The yellow pegasus with the blue and white two-toned mane perked up immediately as she glanced around at him.

“Night! Hi!” she said happily, her eyes lighting up.

“Just checking up on you. How’ve you been?” Night asked, smiling warmly.

“Oh, uh, just… you know, still going,” she said, giving Night a very unbelievable confident smile. Night frowned at that.

“Hey, Happy, listen…” Night said, a serious look on his face as he glanced around.

“Y-Yeah?” Happy said, rubbing a shoulder with one hoof as she sat on her stool, not meeting his eyes.

“I know it’s been rough for you, but we’ll make it. We’ll get out of this,” he said. Happy smiled ruefully. She believed him, but she had heard this before.

“I-I know we will, but it’s just...” She let out a breath through her nostrils. It was a defeated gesture. “I want to believe you, but the only help that came is now stuck down here with us. What… What if we don’t make it out of here?” she asked, finally looking him in the eyes, her own watering. It was clear she was on the verge of despair.

Night looked in those eyes for one second and knew that he would need to offer her more than just the usual reassurances. He looked down for a moment before placing his hoof on hers. Happy Hour looked down, her eyes widening a bit. “Wh-Wha—”

“Happy, listen to me. Even if it’s the last thing I do, I will make sure you’ll see the sky again. I swear to you.” Happy just stared into his eyes, not sure what to say. She realised her mouth was hanging open and that ponies were staring. She blushed furiously.

“I-I… Night.”

“You can count on me,” Night said, smiling softly. The room was quiet.

A cold, low cackle cracked through the silence. Heads turned to the source of the sound. Handy sat at his table, wiping his hands on a dirty cloth.

“Count on you? Does any one of you believe this?” Handy asked. Slowly and deliberately, he rose from his seated position and sighed. He tossed the rag over his shoulder. “You know, Night, I’m getting really tired of your shit.” Warm Night turned to look at Handy as he walked to the centre of the aisle between the tables that seated the prisoners.

“Handy?” he said incredulously. “What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about your lies and empty promises,” Handy said. In a perfect world, the target would be in on the plan as well, but Joachim and he had both agreed it needed to look realistic, especially considering Handy’s latest improvisation of having the guards let him have his fight for their own entertainment. Glancing back, he saw Rex holding a bag open as the guards made bets. “Count on you? Really? You are the least reliable person here,” he challenged. Warm Night snorted in indignation as he trotted away from the table.

“Wait, Night,” Happy said, a worried look on her face.

“Just wait, I need to go talk to the new guy for a minute,” he said. He looked back at Handy. “Okay, Handy, I know it’s been rough down here on you. It’s been rough on all of us, but there’s no need—“

“Oh, there’s need alright,” Handy said, making a show of flexing his fingers into fists as he laughed darkly. “We are God only knows how far beneath ground, digging away for the dogs. We all have good reason to be here,” Handy said, waving to the other ponies. “Some of us are here because this is what they are best at, and it’s what they love. Others are here to support their families. Me? I’m a wandering vagabond looking for a quick bit; I make no secret of it. You, however, you are a liar and a scoundrel.”

“Scoundrel!?” Warm Night said incredulously.

“Yes, scoundrel. You know when you were walking about, checking up on everyone to try to cheer them up, did you happen to mention why you were here at all?” Handy said, breathing heavier and looking increasingly furious. “Any of you ponies care to take a guess?”

“That’s enough!” Warm Night said. “If you have a problem with me, we can sort it out in pri—”

“Ohohoho, no we can’t, good sir! We’re having this out now. Right. Now,” he said through gritted teeth, standing at his full height as he took a few more threatening steps to Warm Night. “Do you know what your obsession did to your father, Night? Hmm? Do you know what it cost him? Have you seen the state of his inn recently? What did you say to him I wonder, what did you say to him to make him think, that when diamond dogs take over the mine his son works at, the first thought is not that his son might be in trouble, but that you left him and skipped town for another job?” Handy smashed a fist down at a table, causing several ponies to jump and yelp.

It had the desired effect. Warm Night’s face was drawn, a devastated look haunting his eyes.

“Ah, only now you’re considering it, huh? All these years chasing a legend, and you forgot about those closest to you?” Handy threw his head back in dark laughter. Everypony was now focused on the exchange. Whispers were passing back and forth, and the dogs were focusing eagerly on the spectacle.

Joachim had disappeared.

“And you dare… You dare come around giving us reassurances and promises when all you care about is your own selfish ambitions. I call you coward and liar!”

“I DO NOT LIE!!”

Handy stopped. That was quite a shout. Warm Night was breathing quite heavily now, cold fury in his eyes as tears rolled down his face.

“I do not lie. I have never lied in my life. Not to anyone,” he swore, staring daggers at Handy and pawing at the ground in agitation. Perhaps he had pushed him too far? “I swore to my mother. I swore to her on her deathbed I’d get the stone. I’d wish her to be better… I’d make everything better for dad and her. I’d make sure they’d never need to worry about anything ever again,” he confessed. “That’s why I am here. That’s why I stayed here, all these years, after dad told me to give up the foal’s errand. I… I admit I may have lost sight of what really matters,” he said, looking down at the ground as he closed his eyes. “But that does not give you any right to come here and shatter our hopes when I am trying to keep everypony strong! I promised everypony we’d get out, that we’d see our loved ones again. I promised you all that everything will be okay, and I swear that I will see it through,” he said, glancing back at Happy Hour who was staring at him with hooves over her mouth. “No matter what.”

That should be enough build up. Time to open up the second act.

Handy grasped one pony’s tray, ignoring an indignant ‘Hey!’ as he swung it around, crashing into Warm Night’s head as he turned back to face Handy. The blow was hard enough to crack the tray in two and sent the pony reeling, stumbling over his legs. Audible gasps rose from the crowd not quite sure they saw what occurred.

“Like I said before,” Handy said, growling, “I am. Really. Sick. Of your shit.” He dropped the useless tray. The gruel that had been sitting upon it spread across the room in an arc, splattering across cold stone, wood, and pony alike. When his eyes stopped rolling in his head, Warm Night snorted, his eyes becoming pinpricks as fury overtook rational thought, and he charged at Handy, catching him in the chest and knocking him onto one of the tables, causing the ponies to scatter. The dogs howled in approval as chains rattled. Warm Night raised his hooves and decked the human repeatedly in the chest and head. Handy held up his arms to protect himself as best he could.

Warm Night’s horn lit up as he grasped another pony’s tray with his magic and raised it, preparing to drive its side home on Handy’s head. ‘That’s quite enough of that,’ Handy thought. He manoeuvred and got his legs underneath the pony and began kicking furiously, driving Warm Night off of him, but not before his magic swung the tray around and clocked the human on the head, driving him from his feet and knocking another pony over. Handy grabbed the legs of a stool and rose to his feet, giving a guttural roar as he held the stool overhead, preparing to strike down on the pony. That was when a brown blur crashed into his side as an earth pony intervened to prevent him from caving in Warm’s skull.

“Stop this, you mad bas—”

Now at this point, the earth pony had crashed into Handy just after Handy was in the process of swinging the stool, thus only having negligible damage inflicted upon said object’s momentum, only managing to change its direction instead. The stool flew over the ponies’ heads and crashed into the face of some poor unfortunate unicorn who hadn't the sense to duck in time. Said unicorn’s friend was furious and shouted at the earth pony, who was currently pummelling the human, and jumped up on the table to join the fray.

The dogs were loving the show. Even Rex was howling.

That was until he noticed more ponies were joining in. His little deal with the human had turned from quick diversion from the doldrums to a full scale riot. He smacked the back of the heads of his dogs and barked to get their attention, gesticulating wildly at the growing mass of violence and fur. The dogs hurriedly jumped into the mass of swinging and bucking hooves, rattling chains and swinging trays making an even larger chaotic mess as they struggled to regain control. Handy, meanwhile, was desperately dodging swinging hooves himself. An earth pony had clocked him in the face, and he knew he was going to be left with a black eye. He was pretty sure his leg, which at the start of the week had merely been sprained, was now properly broken. Wood splintered, ponies whinnied in fear and anger, and dogs barked. He ducked under a table to catch his breath as he observed the chaos emerging around him.

“Joachim, you fucking owe me…” he hissed. “I hope this works.”

--=--

“C’mon, c’mon!” Joachim said through gritted teeth. He had managed to sneak out of the canteen as Handy started his little performance. He had dodged a pair of dogs that rushed down the hallway as the sounds of fighting became quite hard to ignore.

He had managed to break into Rex’s room, which was the former mine forepony’s office. Within it, ignoring the bags of precious gems the dog had been hoarding for himself, he found a set of keys within a rather ragged and clawed-looking desk. He hurriedly tried each one on the chain holding his wings down.

‘Click’

“YES!” Joachim shouted in triumph before clasping a claw over his beak. He quickly poked his head out the door.

‘No one’s around. Good.’ He went back to work and looked at the mine layout Rex had on the desk. There was the canteen, there was the holding pen, that was this office, that was… a blue squiggly line… “The Tartarus?” Joachim said, squinting. “Oh wait, that’s the tunnel me and Handy were digging. Huh.” And there was the room controlling the dog’s iron door that blocked the exit. Joachim nodded with satisfaction. Rolling the map up and stuffing it under his wing, he made his exit and rushed towards the control room.

He skidded to a stop, hearing a strong, rumbling noise.

Backing up, he opened a large door that had been left ajar, entering one of the newer tunnels and gazing upon the haphazard monstrosity of moving parts and metal that was the diamond dogs’ drilling machine that they had, conveniently, left turned on.

Joachim smiled.

Chapter 2 - Machina Ex Deus

Chapter 2 - Machina Ex Deus

He always did like dogs.

Snarling fangs, black fur, an explosion of pain.

He got on well with them. Indeed, animals generally had always liked him. And he didn’t hate them.

Lights flashing in his eyes, crashing against something solid and cold, a foot upon his neck.

After all, most of them generally tasted good. He had, however, balked at the idea of raising his hand against his pup whenever it had done something wrong, and it had been suggested to him to enforce discipline.

Clatter of hoofs, cries of pain, comedic yells of surprise as rounded teeth bit down on tails.

He did it anyway, of course, but he had thought about it first.

Head throbbing, a dull roar of sensation as the nerves in his leg cried out for salvation, the leering grin of feral triumph looming over him amidst the wreckage of a wooden table.

Sometimes it was the only way to show a bad dog who his master really was after all.

The red mist descending across his vision, looking up at the upstart canine, his thoughts turning to darker places.

And Rex had been a very bad dog.

--=--

“Feh! Who needs hands?” Joachim said, sitting uncomfortably rigid in the driving seat of the contraption. It was a… slapdash affair. The carriage was an amalgamation of wood, stone, iron bars, and what looked like a dead shrub. The seat was piled high on what looked like moving, steaming pistons welded together that were emitting an alarming amount of steam and leaky boiling water.

Joachim looked over the tip of the seat, which itself seemed hurriedly patched together from leftover sofas, iron barding, and rusty bolts. The pedals, of which there were nine and a half, were placed upon ridiculously long and spidery extensions of metal. And yes, nine and a half—you read that right. One of the pedals didn’t even reach high enough to where even the diamond dog with the longest of legs could reach down and press upon it without slipping off the seat.

Joachim looked up. His aquiline face was met with a field of vision that was five percent cave wall directly ahead of him, twenty percent drilling paw, which was the best description Joachim could come up with to describe the actual digging mechanism the dogs had designed that was perched upon the front of the vehicle, and a seventy-five percent maddening array of levers, pulleys, switches, and wheels.

The entire set up, as infuriatingly incomprehensible as it was, what with the driver’s seat being a good five feet high from where the axle met the wheel and another foot to include the additional distance to the ground, was designed with a diamond dog’s physique in mind; one that would sit back and utilise the limited articulation in its rear limbs, without the interference of a long tail to work around, while simultaneously reaching up and utilising the levers and switches and wheels that required at least a modicum of flexibility with their digits that their paws allowed for.

Joachim, however, was a griffon. He looked down at his haunches and peered at his right claw. He turned back to the challenge before him.

“Hmmm…” he let out ponderously, flexing his good wing in agitation. “Yeah…” He gripped one of the levers, the monstrosity of the machine rumbling gently beneath him, his other claw on a pulley that would hopefully help in whatever it was he was meant to be doing to operate this thing. They had heard rumblings echo through the caverns at night when their shifts were over, but no one knew what the source was. “I can do this…” he said, as much to himself as that same nobody in particular everyone seemed to talk to when they spoke to the air. He took one last look over the edge of the seat, calculating the bodily logistics this was going to demand from him.

“I hope.”

--=--

Rex stumbled back, howling in rage and pain. He tripped over a fallen pony and fell upon another table, which groaned in protest of his weight and snapped, causing him to crash hard to the ground.

The dust cleared as the last remaining fighters struggled amongst each other, the remainder of the ponies having been subdued by and large by their diamond dog jailers. This left quite a large audience to stop and stare at the big dog who was now howling and snarling in rage and pain while clutching his poor, bleeding foot.

Handy, down on one knee with a murderous glint in his eyes, gripped the dirty piece of iron tighter in his right fist. He was a mess by now, the beating by Warm Night, the miscellaneous blows in the ensuing chaos of the canteen riot, and the thrashing he was only previously receiving taking its toll. Blood dripping from his mouth from where he bit his own tongue, he could no longer open his right eye, but he was too far beyond caring whether it was merely bruised shut or reduced to blindness. His mind was too far gone, adrift somewhere between rage and void. His left leg was now useless. Whatever reason he currently possessed evidently had enough sway to at least keep him off of the bad leg. The upside was that he no longer felt anything below the knee, so in a cold calculating move, he had decided he no longer needed to worry about his left foot stepping on something sharp.

Now he slipped out one of the metal slivers he had been using to protect the sole of his foot, now reduced to a rusting, grimy, and dirty piece of iron that he savagely jabbed into the leg of his attacker with the mad fury of a wild beast. Granted, it wasn’t exactly sharp, but enough determination could break the skin of anyone.

Rex struggled back to his feet, growling and barking something before he was immediately cut off by Handy.

“Sit.”

Rex stopped, giving a confused look at the human before him. He was on his knee, wounded, hurting from the claw mark on his shoulder and the bite on his side. And this creature, this slave, dared tell Rex what to do? It was laughable! And laugh Rex did.

“Ho—”

“Sit down or I will put you down, dog.”

The dog blinked. The ape sounded almost calm, but the look he was giving him from his one, beady eye… that fixing, absolute stare.

“Down, boy.”

Rex’s ear flicked. He was uncertain; his jaw clenched, his eyes looking at the human’s face as if searching for something. His dogs were looking up at him, ears perked up. The ponies struggled in their grips, most of them confused, not understanding what was going on.

To be fair, no one in that room understood what was going on, and pretty much none of them ever would, as unfortunate as that was, for it was in the quiet provided by the subdued riot and the standoff between Rex and the human that they suddenly noticed that the ground was shaking. There was a rather disturbing, steadily increasing noise of grinding stone, rock fall, and the strain of metal under intense pressure. Almost as if…

“GANGWAY!” a voice screeched, barely audible over the cacophony of nightmarish sounds. The wall of the canteen crumbled as a gargantuan, clawed paw of pig iron and steel crushed the rock beneath its irresistible might. The ferrous paw broken and dented in places, it destroyed the wall nonetheless. “I HAVE NO PLUCKING IDEA WHAT I AM DOING!” Joachim roared, which was, to say the least, an interesting sound to hear coming from avian vocal cords.

The destruction of the wall proved to be something of a straw and camel’s back situation. See, when the mine was originally built, its founders were rather new to their craft and weren’t exactly thinking too intensely about structural integrity when they built the dome-like structure of the room. Granted, such a design was generally a good idea, but it was poorly executed. Succeeding generations of miners had, however, improved its safety somewhat. The diamond dogs, however, thought those shiny metal supports and bolts could be put to better use elsewhere. Why go through tunnel CA to get to section Delta? Why not simply just dig a shortcut through that sidewall over there? Integrity? Pah! We’re diamond dogs, we know what we’re doing. Hmm, you know, this place would look good with a skylight. We’ll get to work on that after dinner.

One might think diamond dogs would know a thing or two about digging underground structures and that none of them would be too stupid to make such rookie mistakes. But please, dear reader, remember that Rex and his small pack of dogs thought it was a good idea to usurp a pony mine famous for its metal deposits to look for gemstones. So, you know…

‘Joachim?’ Handy blinked in confusion, the mist fading from his mind. He eyed the flailing griffon, its wing flaring and feathers moulting off and cascading amidst the billowing clouds of steam, smoke, and dust that were choking him and stinging his eyes. His eye widened as sanity took sudden, lamentable grip of his mind with the white knuckled fury of a drowning man to a lifeline as he gave witness to several tonnes of barely restrained metallic death bearing down upon him as his companion struggled desperately to enforce some force of reason upon the madness.

The ceiling groaned, and with a thunderous crash, a fault cracked into existence as dust spilled down. The spell was broken. The ponies and dogs alike stumbled over each other in a blind panic. One of the tunnels collapsed with a sudden crash, cutting off the straightest avenue of escape to the mine exit. The group panicked and ran to the three remaining tunnels leading as far away from the digging machine. Handy struggled to get up but collapsed, hitting the ground hard, mind reeling to try to understand what was wrong. He saw his useless leg, and his head snapped back around to the machine as sections of rock fell from the ceiling and smashed into the ground around him.

Joachim gave an avian cry of defiance and flailed at the controls desperately to try to avoid killing someone. His claws were a blur over the controls, pulling at the various sticks and gear shifts willy-nilly. The digger roared monstrously in protest, and the levers now moved on their own as Joachim’s mad attempts at control evidently broke the gearbox so far below him, causing them to shift in accordance with their own weight and momentum on the jostling machine. The vehicle veered dangerously to the left, and for a moment Handy wondered if it was going to tip over and crush him before it veered just soon enough to avoid reducing him to paste with its frontal claw. Joachim dived from the control seat as the vehicle continued on its path and crashed into the edges of the southernmost tunnel, cracking it wider open and crushing its supports aside as it continued on its relentless path of destruction.

“HANDY!” Joachim cried, hitting the ground roughly, briefly forgetting he didn’t have use of both of his wings.

“OVER HERE, YOU MAD FEATHERY BASTARD!” Handy screamed in terror, his mind focusing on anything to not think about the absurdly dangerous situation he was in: broken, bleeding, and in a collapsing mine. “WHAT THE BLUE BLITHERING SHITE WAS THAT, YE GIBBERING MOTHERFUCKI—”

“SWEARING LATER, FLEEING NOW!” Joachim reared, grabbed Handy’s midsection, and not with a little effort, threw him over his shoulder. His legs almost buckled. “Shit! You’re heavier than you lo—”

“NOT A WORD, PIGEON SHIT, YOU OWE ME!”

“FINE, HOLD ON THEN!”

And slower than either of them would’ve like, on all fours, Joachim ran out of the collapsing canteen as the roof finally gave way and collapsed behind them in a storm of stone and thunderous noise.

--=--

It was absolute chaos.

“HAPPY!” he cried, rushing through the tunnels. The walls were shaking, torches fell from their sconces and crashed to the floor, bathing the tunnels in half darkness, and the flicker of dying flames threw terrifying shadows all around the walls as hulking dogs and screams of ponies from the darkness reverberated through what threatened to become their stony tomb.

“SUNDANCE! SEA GREEN! ANYONE!?” Warm Night shouted himself hoarse. He turned a corner and ran into the leg of a diamond dog who scrambled over him, yelping and rushing down the darkened corridors before diving into a corner and digging into the ground with his paws, quickly disappearing beneath the churned earth. Warm’s eyes narrowed. ‘What did you even need us for?’

He got back on his hooves and struggled on. A tunnel somewhere off to the right of him collapsed, and the echoing monstrous noise of the drilling machine could be heard echoing through the walls, terrible and as inevitable as the promise that night followed day. Picking up the pace, he found another pony, Heart Fire, who waved him over. “Come on!” he shouted. “Happy Hour found the gate!” Warm Night didn't respond, merely running after his friend. He saw light up ahead, finding the entire herd of prisoner ponies crushed up against the iron bars the dogs had installed to prevent escape. The gates didn’t even have locks or hinges. Instead, it was closed by a mechanism that hid behind rock. The gates would rise into the ceiling to let passage through. Warm Night’s mind raced. The unicorns of the group were trying to force the gate to lift as the earth ponies bucked and thrashed against its unyielding steel. Pegasi pawed at the ceiling desperately, trying to break the rock to get at the mechanism that would free them.

Figured that the one thing the dogs got right would be what would kill them.

“Where’s Rex? The rest of the dogs!” Warm Night demanded.

“I don’t know! The dogs never came this way!” one of the ponies answered. Several of them had collapsed, hooves overhead, whimpering in terror. The tunnel was rumbling with more intensity now. Warm Night’s mind whirled frantically. His ear twitched and his head snapped around, hearing something. His eyes narrowed and his teeth grounded together.

“Night?” a gentle voice called out from behind him. His ear twitched and turned, but his face didn’t.

He knew if it did, he wouldn’t be able to keep his promise.

“I’m sorry,” he said before galloping back into the darkness of the tunnel.

A voice screamed behind him, voices shouting, and he heard sounds of a struggle, the others trying to hold a pony back from doing something stupid.

Other than Warm Night of course.

--=--

Joachim turned a corner and skidded. His left claw buckled and sent Handy sprawling.

“Ah claw it!” he swore, gathering himself back up. Handy grabbed onto the wall to help him get to his one good foot.

“What now, genius!? I thought your plan was to steal the keys and then escape when the dogs were mostly asleep!”

“It was!” Joachim protested. “But when I saw the machine, I knew that if I could get it working, we could simply rush our way through and force the dogs to leave the cave!” Joachim’s jaw locked, staring hard at the ground. “I was so confident I could get it to work…”

“Never mind,” Handy said, rubbing his eye. “Where are we now?” Joachim took out the map he had stolen and looked up at his surroundings. He clicked his beak.

“In a circle, that’s the foreman’s office to your left there. Unfortunately, we need to get to the control room that controls the gate…” Handy raised an eyebrow and looked at Joachim.

“Unfortunately?” He asked. Joachim patted his rear paw on the ground and looked away in embarrassment.

“Remember when I nearly killed you with the big metal paw thingy?”

“…Yes?”

“And remember I had to swerve to avoid you?”

“Yeeeesssss?”

“… And remember the machine veered off and collapsed a tunnel behind itself as it went?”

“Oh fuck off.”

“Hey! It was either turn or kill you!”

“Congratulations, you’ll manage to do both before the day is out. Look… just, whatever. Help me search the foreman’s office. There’s bound to be something we can use to get out,” Handy said in disgust, limping over to the foreman’s office and pushing the door open to be greeted with the sight of a dog’s behind staring them in the face.

Rex shot back up, several sapphires in his mouth, pockets of his grey shirt stuffed full of gems as he was halfway through shoving another pawful of precious minerals into a giant patchwork bag. Joachim stared at the dog in surprise, and the dog’s mind seemed to freeze as he turned to greet his trespassers.

Handy had no such compunction. He lunged forward and swung his fist into the dog’s jaw. Rex reeled and fell back over his bag of gems, spilling hundreds of thousands of bits worth of shiny rocks across the floor. Handy snarled and grabbed a bag of gems by the mouth and prepared to swing it like a club, leaning against the table to balance his bad leg

“W-Wait!” Rex cried, his eyes wide with alarm and fear. Joachim jumped up on the desk, wing flared, claws splayed and raised threateningly. Rex backpedalled, uncaring of his precious hoard. “D-Don’t hurt me!”

“Ohhoho, but I want to!” Handy said, staring into the dog’s eyes. Turned out that when push came to shove, the dog was a coward.

That didn’t explain why he had such a manic fear of Handy in his eyes. ‘What’s wrong with him?’

“The gate, Rex! How do we open the gate!?” Joachim demanded. Handy blinked. Right, the gate. Weren't they supposed to be trying to leave this place? He glanced down at the bag in his hands and shook it for emphasis. Rex swallowed.

“The gate!?” Rex said, blinking, “Right! Right, the gate, yes! Rex open, Rex open! Go control room now, open gate for ponies!” he whimpered.

“The control room is destroyed! The digging machine went down that tunnel!” Handy shouted above the noise of the mine collapsing around them and the deafening roar of the machine rumbling in the depths.

“Another way! Another switch!” Rex bargained desperately. “Here, in office.”

“YOU!” a voice shouted behind them, and they turned. Warm Night was standing in the doorway, horn glowing and a burning torch in the air. “YOU TRIED TO KILL US!”

“Me!?” Joachim shouted incredulously, pointing a claw at himself.

“Night, listen—” Handy began.

“AND YOU! I’LL DEAL WITH YOU LATER! YOU WERE USING THAT MACHINE!” he shouted at Joachim. “YOU KNOW HOW THE DOG’S MACHINES WORK! OPEN THE GATES!” Night accused. Joachim’s beak opened and closed in surprise.

“Did I LOOK like I knew what I was doing back there!?” Joachim shouted defensively.

“This is all beside the point—”

“I DIDN’T SEE ANYPONY ELSE PILOTING THAT THING!”

“Rex, where is the other lever?”

“I was barely keeping myself on top of that thing, let alone controlling it. I almost killed the human here!”

“Behind the cabinets,” the dog answered.

“Right, now you tw—”

The ground suddenly shook with violence. The group was so caught up in the heat of the moment that they didn’t notice the deafening roar of the digging machine coming closer until the wall of the tunnel outside burst forth, and they had enough time to turn around to see the metal claw block their only exit. Rex was already away, having dug into the comparatively thin ground into the tunnel that ran beneath the office, leaving the three to their fate.

“MOVE!” someone shouted, but it was too late. The monster was upon them, and the wall before them broke down, gems spilled, cabinets crumpled, the walls closed in, and dust filled the room. They were blinded, their only source of light serving only to silhouette the monstrous bulk in stark blackness against the grainy grey and brown of obliterated earth that obscured the world from all but what was terrible in it.

As the claw rose and punched into the wall above their heads, coming down with the inevitability of eternity upon their craniums, the ground gave way. With a sudden, calamitous tremor, the ground collapsed, sending the monstrosity falling into the tunnel below, claw dragging down the wall and turning as the beast fell, roaring its mechanical fury as the machine strained against the destruction it had wrought. The tunnel outside the room gave way, collapsing entirely as the beast thundered into the ground of the floor below, cracking it and falling through it in turn.

Handy was sent sprawling, clasping at the falling wall behind him as the floor gave way beneath his very feet. He couldn’t find anything in time and let out a final desperate cry of horror as he felt weightlessness as he began to fall.

It was a funny thing, shaking hands with a bird of prey. Who knew you could ever be so grateful to feel your hand clasped by scythes?

“I GOT YOU!” Joachim shouted. His claws clasped around Handy’s right forearm, digging into flesh in desperation. Handy yelped in pain. The griffon’s two wings were flapping with all their strength, his right one evidently struggling, and he could see the strain in Joachim’s face. But it was enough. Joachim was hovering there as the world collapsed around them. The wall fell, and Handy felt rocks pelting his shoulders and head as the wall crumbled away. He spun in the air as Joachim whirled in the tiny space afforded them to avoid being hit himself, but the manoeuvre cost them both dearly, and he lost control, veering to slam into the destroyed wall that had once made the back wall of the room and collapsing onto the ground of a cave that lay behind it.

Handy landed bodily on the lip of the cave and scrambled his arms to hold his balance to keep from falling. He grabbed at the ground and succeeding in digging his fingers around solid rock to keep him from falling. His lungs burned with effort. He glanced over; the unicorn had survived, his hooves struggling to pull himself up, his lower half threatening to pull him to his death. “WARM!” Handy shouted desperately. The unicorn turned, just pulling himself up. “THE LEVER! OVER THERE!” Handy shouted, nodding his head vigorously in the direction of the lever.

The room that had once been the office of the mine foreman was essentially no more. The tunnel that ran along the outside of it had collapsed, forming a wall of fallen rubble and trapping them. Its back wall had been punched clean through, revealing a cave that had lay just behind the room. But the floor, the floor was gone, taking most of the room with it apart from a few bags of gems and detritus sent flying into the cave by the calamity. The lever, however, happened to be built into the wall and remained untouched by the destruction. The unicorn looked over at it before turning back to Handy.

“IS THAT IT?” he shouted, the noise of the collapsing mine still deafening. Handy was keenly aware that there was little else but God’s grace holding up the trembling ceiling above their heads.

“YES, YES! YOUR MAGIC! USE YOUR MAGIC!” Handy shouted, his voice hoarse as he coughed on the dust. There was another terrible tremor, and something exploded far below them. The darkness beneath him lit up temporarily as orange and yellow flames rushed up part of the pit before retreating. The monster had breathed its last. At least they were safe from its fury.

Oh wait, never mind, they were now in an enclosed space filling up with smoke rising from below them. Swell.

Warm Night glanced over at the lever. It was a good distance away over empty space. Warm was exhausted and strained. His body was aching from the fight and the flight from the collapse, he had a throbbing headache, and carrying that torch earlier proved to have been challenging in spite of the comparative ease such magic would naturally be to a unicorn. He focused on the handle, and a blue glow enveloped the handle. It refused to budge. His vision doubling under the strain, it turned out that one kick to the head he had gotten in the riot knocked more out of him than he thought.

Warm stopped. This was Handy telling him to do this. He glared over at the human.

“How do I know I can trust you on this!? You and that bucking griffon almost got us all killed!” Handy roared in frustration.

“YOU STUPID BLOODY PONY!” Handy shouted. “It was a plan! I start a fight to distract the dogs, the griffon gets the keys, and we all get out of here in the night!” Handy retorted. “The digging machine was not part of the plan! Now open the bloody gate or none of us are getting out!” Handy groaned and struggled as he pulled himself back up onto the cave, the flickering life of the torch still blazing on the floor.

Warm Night turned back and focused his magic again on the rusted handle of the lever. The stubborn thing refused to budge, and he couldn’t tell if it was from the weakness of his own magic or the lever itself. He looked down at the darkness far below, the dark fire raging around the metal wreckage as the smoke obscured its rage. He looked between it and the lever as Handy pushed himself up on the cave. He turned to look at the unicorn. “What are you waiting for!? If you don’t pull the lever, we’re not getting out even if we don’t suffocate!” Handy said.

Warm ignored him and glared at the lever. His magic was not working. He could feel his head throb as his vision doubled. “I promised her she’d see the sky again,” Warm Night said, taking a few steps back.

“What are yo—?”

‘I promised them all they’d get out of here,’ he thought as he ran at a gallop.

“Hey!”

The pony leapt from the lip of the cave and reached forward with his forelegs to grasp at the handle.

With a creak of protesting metal, the lever dropped.

And Warm dropped with it.

--=--

The gate shuddered and rumbled. The ponies, tired, dirty, and despairing, looked up as the gate lifted, not daring to believe, not daring to hope. The cavernous darkness behind them rumbled with greater intensity as something shook violently within the depths of the mine, and the tunnel eventually gave in. The roof collapsed behind them as the ponies galloped madly up towards the wooden exit to the mine.

Wood posts and splinters exploded outwards as earth pony bucks knocked down the entrance like so much ply board as the herd stumbled hurriedly out into the mud and the rain. A voluminous burst of dust and loose stones exploded behind them, throwing the hindmost ponies clear of the collapsed mine entrance.

The sound of rock grinding against rock settled, and all that could be heard was the driving rain and the panting of exhausted equines. One pony looked around herself and found the object of her concern conspicuously absent.

“Night…?”

--=--

Handy sat there for a while, the prone form of Joachim lying on the floor of the cave a foot away from him. The griffon had been hit as he was holding both of them up, which ultimately caused them both to crash. Thankfully, Handy noticed his body rise and fall, so at least he was still breathing, even if it was only shallow.

He wasn’t entirely sure if Warm Night was, however.

He was a tired wreck. He had been since he had woken up in that thrice damned forest over a week ago. The most nourishing meal he had had been that one catch of salmon Tuesday morning, Welcome Sight’s delicious biscuits to go with warm tea notwithstanding of course. So factor in the bodily shock of a sudden, inexplicable change to diet in terms of both volume, regularity, and nature—Handy was not entirely convinced the gruel he had been eating all week was not, in fact, mostly dirt—as well as the various bruises, bangs, and back-breaking labour, and Handy found it very tempting to just lay where he was and wait for the world to literally swallow him up. And that was not even going into the recent violence he was forced to endure.

It never did. The rumbling eventually ceased, and a sepulchral silence fell upon the dark cave that would be his tomb. ‘Fitting.’ He looked over the lip of the cave into the blackness below. The fire from the digging machine had nearly tuckered itself out, and an irrational part of Handy’s mind reasoned that at least that meant Warm would probably not burn to death. He shook that thought from his mind as he realised just how far down that drop was. If Warm was alive, he’d have heard something by now.

A darker part of his mind mused that this was more like it. If this really was a catatonic dream state he was in, such crushing darkness and despair really would fit how trapped his mind really was. He waved the notion off, sickened, though he could not tell why. He looked down on the sputtering flames of the fallen torch, still clinging to life, defiant against the darkness, its light glinting off of the many small gems strewn across the floor. It was then that he noticed shadows playing against a wall further down the cave.

Grunting with effort, Handy got back to his feet, leaning against the wall for support and panting with the exertion. He weighed his options and slid back down the wall, using his good foot to roll the torch over to him, careful not to burn his leg. Grabbing it in one hand, he stumbled back up, letting out a small yelp of pain as his bad leg exploded in pain. He snarled and hissed as he shuffled over to the back wall, the torch dripping flaming sparks as he went. The back wall became more and more illuminated.

There was a long, jagged tear in the rock face from ceiling to floor, some ancient movement of the earth shearing the stone asunder. If he squeezed himself through, emphasis on squeeze, he could probably push through it while walking sideways. To be fair, he’d be grateful of the additional support — no way was he staying on his two legs right now. He took a deep breath. Looking back in the darkness, he could barely make out the white of Joachim’s head. He shuddered — there was a chill coming from the fissure.

‘Good,’ he reasoned. ‘Wind means a way out. I only need to follow it.’ He thought about the fact that this would be leaving Joachim dazed and alone in the blackness of the cave behind him, possibly with a concussion. Briefly, he considered the scenario.

Then he took one step in front of another as he squeezed into the fissure.

--=--

He must have been struggling for nearly an hour before the fissure finally opened up and gave him some breathing room. It had gotten uncomfortably tight in some places, but he had made it. Now all that was left was to follow the wind. Thanking whatever saint had granted him the enviable favour of the wind direction following the rock wall he was now leaning against as he limped, he struggled on. Whatever cave or tunnel he had entered into was… unnaturally straight. The floor was smooth, and more than once he had to navigate around some insultingly tall stalactite.

It took him a while to realise they were columns and placed at regular intervals.

He had wandered into a corridor of some sort that was carved into the earth. The walls and floor were smooth, though not without imperfections, and slowly his hope rose for a way out. It was quickly dashed as the wind led him to the end of the corridor and a wall of collapsed rock that prevented further progress. The wind was coming from somewhere behind the wall of rubble, but Handy could not see a source of light, which meant that whatever nooks and crannies the chill was coming from was too small for him to crawl through, and he certainly did not have the strength to start digging his way out. He screamed in frustration and beat his fist against the rock which was unyielding against his impotent fury. There was nought but chill, fire, darkness, and the sound of his own ragged breathing.

And the drop of water unto a cool pool.

The sound echoed down the corridor behind him. Turning reluctantly, Handy suddenly realised how dry his throat was and how great a drink of water would be. Even if it was dirty, dank, cave water, he wasn’t going to complain. Shambling back down the half-visible corridor like a drunk desperate to get to the off license before his abused body gave out on him in the cold of winter, Handy eventually reached a room and felt his right foot splash into freezing cold water. The unexpected chill shot up his leg and startled him, causing him to fall backwards.

He scrambled back to the edge of the water, his torch almost forgotten by the waterside, and splashed the cooling liquid onto his face. The sensation was almost a religious experience. Handy took a lot of things for granted in his life, clean water being among them, and at no time did he appreciate it more than now. He threw his head into the water and drank greedily. ‘If nothing else, I’ll guide Joachim back here,’ he thought. ’God knows he needs this as bad as I do. Griffons stink.’

He opened his eyes under the water, surprised that the water was clean enough that it did not sting him. It was right around then that he noticed the innumerable glinting lights beneath the water. Splashing, he suddenly raised his head from the pool, shaking, his hair sending droplets of water flying. He gazed into the pool. The lights were still there but were glinting as if reflecting light. Handy reached for his torch and held it aloft just over the water’s surface and saw more lights glint into existence. The pool of water rested upon a bedrock of uncountable precious stones.

Handy gawked at the sight for a moment, tentatively putting both his legs into the startlingly cold water and carefully wading out into the knee-high water. The story was the same wherever he cast the torch’s light. This room was large and its entire floor was practically made of diamonds and sapphires, the light of the torch dancing gloriously in their perfectly cut faces, the clarity of the water only magnifying the brilliance of the tiny stars beneath his feet. Handy let out a laugh. He had intended for it to be rueful sound, laughing at the irony that Rex’s prize lay right behind his very back this entire time from the foreman’s office. Surely there were enough gems here to sate any dog’s lust.

The flame on his torch was dying. Handy panicked as he noticed the light starting to fade from the burning brand in his hand, only to slowly turn and gaze in fascination as another source of light grew in brilliance across the room. Turning, he saw ethereal wisps of air whisk away from the flames of his torch, flying through the air towards a plinth in the centre of the room. The flame died as its essence was absorbed by a pulsating blue orb that shone like a beacon, cutting daggers into the surrounding darkness. He had been looking at the thing for mere seconds before he heard the whispers.

‘Brrrrreeeeaaaaakkkk iiiiiiitttt.’

Handy blinked – the voice was inside of his head. He clasped the side of his forehead as a dull pain throbbed.

‘Brrrrrrreeeeeaaaaakkkk thhhheeee stoooooonnnnneeeee.’

Handy winced as he fell into the water.

“W-Who…What…”

‘Yoooouuuu aaaaarrrreeee liiiiiivvvvviiiinnnngggg, weeeee deeesssssiiiirrrrreeeee… Brrreeeeaaaakkkk thhhheeee stoooooonnnnnneeeee.’

‘Iiiiiittt’ssss beeeeeeennnn sooooo loooonnnngggg siiiiinnnncceeee… feeelllt waaaarrrrmmmthhhh.’

‘Deeeeesssssiiiiirrrrreeee.’

‘Wwwaaaaaannnnnt.’

‘Giiiivvvvveeeeeee…. Brrrrrreeeeeaaaaaaaak.’

“G-Get… Get out of my… m-my…”

‘Giiiivvvvvveeee whhhhhaaaaatttt… Deeeessssiiiirrreeee.’

‘Giiivvvveeee yooouuuuu deeeesssiiiirrreee.’

‘Giiiiivveeeee… taaaaaaaakkkeeee…. Waaaaaannnnnt.’

‘Fooooorrrr yoooouuuu aaaaaarrreeeee liiiivvvvviiiiinnnggg.’

‘Yyyyoooouuuu aaaarrrreeee liiiivvviiiinnnnggggg, giiiiivvvveeee wwwwhhhaaaat Iiiiiiiii deeessssiiiirrreee… Iiiiii’lll giiivvveeee yyyyooouuuu yyooouuuurrrr deeessssirrre, Iiiiii haaaavvveee thhhaaaat poooweeerrrrrrr…’

‘Geeeennneeeerrrooouuussss… Giiiiivvvvveee tooooo usssssssss…’

“Y-You…. You can…” Handy was on his hands and knees in the cold water, his vision blurring as his eyes cast down upon the rippling water, distorting the dancing gem lights beneath him. He gripped his head, his hands over his eyes as his teeth gnashed. The pressure on his head was incredible – he could barely describe it, and images flowed through his mind: wealth, power, prestige. Everything he had always sought after and wanted. “You can… let me g-go home?”

‘Yyyyeeeeessssss…’

‘Iiiiii haaaavvveee thhhaaaat poooweeerrrrrrr…’

‘Hhhhooooommmmmeeeeee.’

‘Giiiivvvveee tooooo usssssss.’

‘Mmmeeeeeeeee…’

‘Geeeennnneeerrrooouuussss…’

‘Aaaaa trrrraaaaadeeee.’

‘Aaaaacccoooorrrrrd…’

‘Brreeeaaaak thhhheeee sssstoooonnneee!’

Handy gasped. His breath became shorter and he could barely think.

‘Peeeerrrrhhhhaaaapppsss Iiiiii caaaaan swwwweeeeteeeen thhhheeee deeeeaaaaalll.’

“AAAAAUGH!” Handy spasmed in pain as his left leg suddenly shot out, bones grinding and snapping back into place in terrible violence. Handy thrashed in the water as he rode out the unrelenting wave of pain. Handy’s thought cleared only for the briefest of moments, and he grinned. ‘Finally…’ he thought to himself in triumph, ‘finally a way out, away from this mad land of talking animals and mythical nonsense, away from the dirt and the filth and the…’ His thoughts trailed to his companion. The griffon had nearly killed him… But had saved his life twice: from exposure and then from falling to his death. He thought of the unicorn who, in foolish bravery, dived to his death to save others. He thought of the warmth of a kind old man with more trust than sense… “A-Anything I… desire?”

‘Yyyyeeeeesssssssss….’

‘Mmmiiiiinnnneeeeeee.’

“A-A pony…. In the caves… H-He… Is he alive?”

‘Hhheeeeee isssss aaaat thhhheeee doooorrrrr.’

‘Thhhheeeee rrrrreeeeaaapeeerrrr iiiiissss beeeeiiiinnng rooouuusssseeeed.’

“Can you… can… s-save him?” Handy asked, the effort causing his head to throb uncontrollably.

‘Iiiiiiitttttssss… Wwwwiiiiiithhhhiiiiinnnnn mmmyyyyyy poooowweeeerrrr.’

His face turned into a snarl, and he pulled himself forward, the pressure on his head lessening as he neared the stone.

’Yyyyyyyyeeeeeeeeeeeeeeessssssss!’

“I-I… want you…” Handy pulled himself up until he was level with the blue stone plinth, its surface covered in white veins reminiscent of marble. He grabbed the stone in one hand as he fell back into the water. “I… I want you to…” He forced himself back up, the pressure lessening further, his thoughts becoming his own once more.

He raised his arm back and swung it down upon the hard rock at the base of the corner of the plinth. “S-Save us damn you!” The stone cracked with an echoing sound as it hit the corner of the plinth. With a moment’s hesitation, Handy swung it back and forth once more, and again and again, the cracks became more prominent as vile turquoise light spilled forth from within the stone.

‘Wwwweeeeee hhhhhaaaaavvvveeeee aaaaccccoooooooorrrrrrrdd.’

The stone hit the plinth one final time, and Handy’s vision was blinded by a sudden flash of light.

--=--

His eyes opened to the dying rain falling upon his face, the sensation strange and alien after so long in the cave.

Pushing himself up to a sitting position, he surveyed his surroundings. He was outside again. He looked down over rolling hills, sparse forests, and far off farmsteads as small trees obscured his location: the mouth of a collapsed cave. He saw Joachim comically sprawled over a boulder as a certain blue pony lay several feet away down the trail to the road below, the marks on the ground indicating he had collapsed and his body simply rolled down.

But he was breathing.

Handy tried to get up before quickly deciding fuck that noise and sat right back down on his arse. His body simply refused to be commanded right now. He lay there for a while, deciding that Joachim and Night had the right idea. Sleeping right now would be a very welcome thing indeed, the rain be damned. Still, he struggled and maintained his consciousness. The rational part of his mind was ringing alarm bells for some reason, something about keeping the story straight. He wasn’t sure, for his eyelids were heavy.

He mumbled to himself, thinking about what had just occurred. Did any of that actually happen? His body ached. If it didn’t, then clearly that meant someone had stopped by on a whim before he and his buddies had kicked the shit out of him for a lark, and Handy just imagined a week’s worth of indentured servitude and a collapsing mine shaft to rationalize the brutalization of his body. He rubbed his eyes. Who in the hell was he kidding? That was real; it was all real, as real as anything else in this mad land he was in. He was in a land where he was head and shoulders above weirdly proportioned, colourful ponies when they were standing on their hind legs who spoke English, used magic, and fucking flew. Also griffons. He supposed if he did find a horribly evil artefact in a cave in a mountain overlooking a town by the sea, it would probably be the only thing here that made sense.

Handy shuddered. He was suddenly glad he had never had a dream since waking up in Equestria. At least it would spare him from any nightmares.

Joachim stirred, letting out a groan. He rolled over on the boulder so that he was lying on his back, wings splayed and his head upside down in a shrub behind the boulder. His body stiffened. Handy reasoned he had woken up to a face full of bush. He flailed and yelled and fell off the boulder heavily, his eyes wide and head snapping back and forth.

“What? Where? Who? How? Why?”

Handy chuckled. Well, if he got the story straight with Joachim, he’d let himself get some sleep. His mind raced to consider the implications of what he had actually done back there in the cave. His eyes glanced down at the unconscious unicorn and his thoughts churned. He looked over at the confused griffon.

‘Yeah, I think I can sell this...’

--=--

First off, town councils were evil bastards.

Payment for services rendered aside, not only did they not pay for what medical support Joachim and Handy needed after their glorious escapades beneath the earth resulted in doing exactly as the job description required, that of evicting the diamond dogs from the mine, they would’ve charged them for the gross economic loss of the mine itself. Or they would have if the angry families of the rescued miners didn’t threatened less than friendly action had they tried something like that. I mean, if you hired random adventurers to evict a dangerous gang of brigands from your mine, and you’re surprised that said mine became irrevocably destroyed, you only have yourself to blame really.

Honestly, some ponies.

Secondly, Joachim was a sneaky bastard.

Handy had explained to him in short what had happened from Handy’s perspective. Handy was on the verge of falling to his death after Joachim got knocked out as Warm Night pulled himself up. The two had an argument, and as far as Handy saw, as he had been busy pulling himself up from certain doom, Warm Night launched himself off the lip of the cave and hit the lever that opened the gate for the ponies. Which was true enough. The lies started when Handy said he had collapsed from exhaustion and shock, having seen the pony effectively kill himself. He had come to partially, to see a pony-like figure dragging the two of them behind it towards a white light that looked like the exit, and all he could recall was the world shaking around him before he slipped back unconscious.

Joachim was incredulous, but Handy’s dramatic coughing, vague words, and strained expressions convinced them that, while it might not be exactly as it appeared, that it was at least how Handy saw it. But what really sold it was Handy’s body finally caving in as he slumped over, asleep. Joachim had woken up Warm Night and recounted the story between explanations of his and Handy’s plan, the reason for the fight as a distraction, some ludicrous justification for Joachim’s use of the digging claw, and Handy’s account of what happened after the floor collapsed.

Somehow, Warm Night’s addled mind found these reasonable. Well, at least after a few hours of probing questions and Joachim’s last minute rationalizations, as it was noticeably darker by the time Handy woke up. The two had managed to convince themselves that Warm Night, somehow, had struggled back up and got the three of them out. It was fortunate that all of them were exhausted and battered, otherwise they would have thought about the sequence of events with entirely too much sobriety for Handy’s comfort. This was not the case, however, and by the time they had made it back to the edge of town, Joachim and Warm had already thoroughly convinced themselves of the version of events that left Handy with very little actual explaining to do. Joachim certainly was going to rock the boat, weaving his own fabrication to the tale. Warm was convinced the theft of the digging device was an integral part of the plan that had simply gone awry, and several panicked glances back at Handy whenever he questioned Joachim’s explanation told him that he should back up whatever the bird brain was saying. Handy found it very hard to maintain a poker face at times.

Thirdly, God damn was salamander salve some shit, but we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

The day they had arrived back, Warm was assaulted by his friends from the mine and assailed with questions. The ponies regarded the human and the griffon, shall we say, somewhat coolly. Well, that was before Warm Night vouched for the both of them by recounting their legitimate and not in any way fabricated version of events. After that, they were all hands… well, hooves.

“What is this?! Is this an attack? Are we under attack!?” Handy shouted desperately, trying to keep his balance as his upper body was assailed by colourful balls of fluff and d’aww flying through the air and latching on to him in gratitude for helping save this or that parent.

“This is just how ponies express themselves,” Joachim said, pushing a rather huggy mare away and cringing as a foal decided to pull on one of his primaries.

“I don’t like it.”

“Nopony likes it,” Joachim said, prying another grateful pony away. “Well, okay, ponies like it.”

Joachim and Handy had elected to slip away in the burgeoning crowd that was gathering around the rescued miners, whose fur and manes were noticeably duller and ill-kept, but that was to be expected after being stuck in a mine for two weeks. The last they saw of Warm Night before their delightful meeting with the town council and the mayor, Town Crier, or cry baby as Handy had taken to publically referring was when he had been hugging his father outside of the inn, tears in the old pony’s eyes. They were, however, entirely comfortable with the tears in the foppish, jumped-up mayoral pony, who scarpered when Handy snarled in anger, revealing his canines.

Neither of them wanted to be witness to such touching feels that early in the day when there was pay to be had. Unfortunately, there was no pay to be had, so they went to the local hospital instead, and Handy boggled at the bizarre contradiction of high and low technology. Ponies had not invented radio, yet they had heart monitors? Joachim made an offhand comment concerning crystals and unicorns, and Handy, begrudgingly, let it slide. That only opened up worse problems as the doctors had insisted on giving everypony from the mines a full physical. Handy, having issues with personal space and never liking hospital much anyway, objected to their attempts to take care of him, culminating in a showdown with him backed into a corner, waving a crutch to keep several nurses and the head doctor away.

“Sir, please calm down.”

“Back! Back I say!”

“We’re only trying to help!”

“You ponies have no idea how to help me! I even heard you say it!”

“Which is why we need to do a full physical. You look underfed, and I am pretty sure I saw you limping badly.”

“Just give me a splint and it’ll heal! I can take care of it! And painkillers! Lots of them!”

“Sir, we cannot give prescriptions without—”

“Like bollocks you can’t! You gave Joachim a whole lot of shit without one word!”

“Well, we’ve handled griffons before, and it was off the shelf medication…”

“How ya holding up in there, slugger?” Joachim’s mocking tone wafting in from the room across the hall. “Me? I’m doing grrrrreeeeeaaaat~”

“FUCK A DUCK, YOU GODDAMN BIRD!” Handy shouted.

Reluctantly, and not without the convincing of a couple of earth pony orderlies, Handy eventually relented. It was an uncomfortable experience and not one he would be fond of remembering. It was not often doctors got to study an entirely new physiology, but as soon as the bare minimum was achieved, Handy gathered up his belongings—ghetto belt, ghetto shoe, regular shoe, tattered shirt, hoodie and jeans, his wallet which he forgot existed, and his phone which he was amazed was still a shiny expensive brick that turned on—and made to get out of there, but not before they had drained a pint of his blood for future reference and testing. ‘Like they know what human baseline is anyway,’ Handy thought bitterly. It was not that he hated needles—he just made it a rule in life to never let sharp metal objects come near his person unless he was personally using them himself. Comprehension dawned on him. ’Fuck, as far as these ponies know, I am human baseline. I wonder what they’ll think of the high iron content.’

--=--

“There’s enough in here to knock out a manticore!”

“Oh hush, it’s not that much.”

“IT’S LIKE HE ABSORBED AN ANVIL INTO HIS BLOODSTREAM!”

--=--

Yep, even his human doctors figured he should’ve died years ago. He hoped the ponies had fun.

Now with a nice shiny splint, the doctors were exasperated and finally let him go. Science or no science, they weren’t being paid either by him or the local government for his care, so they really didn’t have to put up with his protests if they didn’t have to. Handy hobbled back to the Shady Bough with a rather relaxed-looking Joachim.

“You’re still riding high?”

“Nah, just pleasantly buzzed. Nothing hurts anymore. It’s great. You should try it.”

“Not allowed painkillers until they’re done with my blood.” Handy grimaced. The town was alive with chatter, news about the daring escape from the mine spreading as fast as you’d think exciting news spreads in a sleeping seaside harbour town like Spurbay. What was alarming were the embellishments. Pony grapevine was some wild shit. After they passed the third stall with a collection of fillies gushing over this or that mine worker, twice removed, cousin in law who stared down a golem, two diamond dogs, and a dragon as the mountain threatened to erupt into a volcano, Handy decided to pick up the pace. The townsfolk were now shouting over to the two of them to try to get them involved, and he was getting uncomfortable with the looks he was gaining and the adoration in the eyes of school foals.

“Your loss,” Joachim said, shrugging with his wings. “Want some salve when we get back?”

“That really knits bones?” Handy asked. Joachim nodded.

“Yeah, healed my wing right quickly when I broke it a few months ago. Most amazing thing I ever bought. If I ever find the ponies who sold me the bottles again, I am buying them in bulk.”

“Who did you buy it from?” Handy asked. Joachim smiled sheepishly.

“Bought it from a couple of lanky-looking ponies, cream-coloured guys. Flick and Flack I think? Wore these obnoxious striped shirts, had red manes and corny hats. I think one of them had a moustache. Traveling salesponies, never stay down in one place,” Joachim said, screwing his face up, trying to remember the odd pair.

“Well, if I ever come across them, I’ll certainly be perusing their services… but only if this works.”

“Relax, a week of rest and that salve and your bones should knit. The doctors said your leg’s damage was not that bad, you big cry baby. What was that horse dollop back in the mine about you not being able to walk on that leg and having me carry you for? Stallion up.”

Handy grimaced before nodding.

No need to tell Joachim about the ‘help’ he received regarding his leg from other, less than reputable sources.

--=--

Welcome Sight was a goddamn menace and he must be stopped.

Ever since his son had been returned to him and they had reconciled, he had been alive with new energy and simply insisted the entire fucking town came over to celebrate the rescue of the miners, the disappearance of the diamond dogs, and their long weeks of worry and suffering being over and now seemingly forgotten. It was preposterous. Welcome Sight was a good guy and all, but honestly, the inn he ran was a two bit affair. Literally, two bits a night. It was old, creaky, in disrepair, understaffed, understocked, and on the edge of town, so if you were going, you were going to need to leave the house early. Besides, the ponies had their families to attend to, having not seen them in such a long time and, you know, nearly dying in the process. It was simply an unreasonable thing to expect.

So of course the entire goddamned town arrived that night as Welcome Sight single-handedly—no, not even going there with the hoof jokes—kick-started the Saltwater festival two weeks early.

‘There will be beatings,’ Handy swore, turning over in the cot set up in the shed out back from the inn itself. ‘Savage, savage beatings.’ The ponies had taken the place by storm and there was hardly a goddamn blade of grass that didn’t have dancing hooves upon it. The cider and beer ran like water. Handy had initially wondered how in the hellWelcome was able to service them all—he had some bartending experience, not that he was going to let any of the ponies know about that in case he got roped in. That was until Joachim burst open the door to let him know the gospel of yeast. ‘Handy! Handy, you’re missing it! The other pony innkeepers are coming over with wagons of stuff! Bars, bars everywhere!’ Handy groaned, having thrown a trowel at Joachim to get him to leave.

He had applied salamander salve all over his broken left leg, and foot, and other leg, and arm, and shoulder, and head, and fingers, and pretty much everywhere. His body felt as if his skin was trying to hug him like a drunken teddy bear, and everything was tingly and ticklish and soothingly comfortable. He was really tired and had he slept then, dreams or not, it would have been the best damn sleep he’d ever had in his life.

Except, you know, for the raging götterdämmerung outside. Handy groaned yet again.

‘Such beatings. They will please the war gods, such will be my fury, oh yes my little ponies, such terrible, terrible beatings. Right after I get some red, ruddy sleep.’ There was a knock on the door. ‘Clearly someone wishes to die this night.’ The knocking continued. ‘Why else would thee tempt mine wroth. Doeseth not holy scripture say, waken not the Handy for mighty will be his anger if he doesn’t get his holy winks o’ forty?’ Knock knock. ‘Knock again. Knock again, motherfucker, see what happens. I dare you motherfucker, I double dare you! Knock again!’ Knock knock knock.

“What is it?!” Handy shouted, throwing open the shed door.

“Sup,” Warm Night said, a happy smile plastered on his face, his brown eyes partially glazed over while he wobbled.

“Well aren’t we quite drunk,” Handy said as he deadpanned before sighing. “What is it, Warm?” Handy asked, walking back into the shed and throwing himself atop the cot.

“Joachum shaid you’d be here.”

“In the shed?”

“Itsh what he shaid.”

“Right, but what do you want?”

“I uh…” Warm shook his head. “Just wanted to make amends,” he said, his voice noticeably more steady. Handy turned around in his cot, blanket firmly wrapped around him as if it was the most precious thing in the world.

“Amends for what?”

“You know, the thing in the— Uh, the cave mine… the fight.”

“You do realise I started it, right?”

“W-Well, uh…” Night burped. “I know but— Uh, you was, were, right, and I just wanted to say… thanks.” Warm looked at the ground. “I had forgotten thosh closest to meh an, and I… It uh took me being enslaved and beaten over the head by ah, ah, you uh… whatever you are, to fully realise it.” He looked down at the cup he had magicked over to the shed with him, thinking. “And some ovvah fings as well…” Handy sighed as he looked at the forlorn equine before him. He was in a better state than he was this morning, bandaged head aside, but this was clearly troubling him. Handy knew what to say.

“It’s okay, Warm.”

“N-No shsss not!”

“Yes, it is. I had no call to say what I did, even if it was necessary at the time. I should be apologising to you. I am sorry, Warm.”

“R-Really?” Warm looked up, a smile on his lips.

“Yes, I didn’t mean a word of what I said,” Handy said, a reassuring smile on his face. ‘I meant every word of what I said,’ he thought, greatly desiring the sad, drunken pony to leave his room. He turned around. “Go back and enjoy the party. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I want some sleep.

“Y-Yeah, I guess I will,” Warm said. He looked at his hooves by the door of the shed and levitated a foaming tankard into the shed. “’fought you shouldn’t be left out thou’, got ya a beer.”

“Thanks, man, just leave it there on the counter by the rake. I’ll get it in the morning,” Handy said. Warm obliged. He looked back down into his own half-finished cup for a moment, lingering on the threshold of the dark shed. He looked back out over the garden behind his father’s inn, looking at Happy Hour smiling radiantly while dancing with her friends around a small fire as minstrels played their songs. He chewed his bottom lip. “Hey ah… Handy?” He got a disinterested sigh in response.

“What is it now, Warm?” Handy muttered dejectedly.

“You evah… You evah try to do somefing… something you don’t know if it’ll… it’ll work out in the end, and if it doesn’t it’ll… it’ll crush you, but you know you can’t afford not to try?” he asked. Handy actually chuckled.

“Sounds my mind set leading up to University, but yeah, I think I get what you mean,” Handy said in response, still not turning around. He did not get what Warm meant.

“W-Well… Do ya think it’s worth it?” Warm asked, his hopeful eyes turned towards Handy. Handy took a minute to respond.

“You know, I don’t know. No one does. But there is a truth that is said back where I come from; maybe it’ll do you some good. A wise human once said that there is nothing gained if there is nothing ventured. You do need to take a risk to get what you want.” He shifted uncomfortably. “Or you’ll risk not getting anything at all.” Handy stuck out and arm and waved half-heartedly. “I’d say go for it, do the impossible, see the invisible, yours is the drill horn that will pierce the heavens, yadda yadda yadda.”

The smile that graced Warm’s face was wide enough that if he had seen it, Handy would’ve thought his face threatened to break.

“Thanks! I’ll-uh, I’ll go do that! You’re a pal, Handy.”

“Whatever.”

And with that, Warm closed the door to the shed, once more bathing Handy in soothing darkness. Warm Night looked back over to the mare in question, his hoof tapping the earth nervously. He downed the rest of his tankard before throwing it away, steeling himself. “Nothing ventured…” he said, repeating the ‘encouragement’ Handy gave him, and trotted over to Happy Hour.

‘You know...’ Handy thought to himself, snuggling up comfortably in the thick blanket. Welcome had insisted on one of the rooms in the inn, but as soon as Handy learned that the cot in the shed, by poor design no less, was big enough to fit him comfortably, he had jumped at the opportunity to sleep there instead. It spared him the wrath of the partying ponies who invaded every inch of the rest of the premises, so it was a wise idea by anyone’s count. ‘If I cover my ears like this, and curl up like so, I can reduce the noise to a dull roar. Yeah, I can deal with this. I can get to sleep now.’

“HEY EVERYPONY!” an absurdly obnoxious filly’s voice sounded from somewhere on the grounds. “GUESS WHAT I BROUGHT!?”

And so the rest of the evening was kept alive by the light of colourful explosions in the air as apparently some ship captain had brought home excess cargo of fireworks from some faraway trade deal. Handy shuddered in agitation.

‘Such… Terrible… Beatings…’

Chapter 3 - Hearts and Hooves day

So Handy got roped into being the Shady Bough’s bartender.

Well, for the time being at least—he needed the money. It all started the day after the night of the first party, first as in the first of several. Apparently, the ponies had had so much fun that they decided to give that shit sequels. He had woken up to find he had been locked in. It seemed several ponies had decided to use the shed as the ‘end goal’ of some kind of game that was halfway between rugby and handball. He was not sure since the description Joachim had given him was rather vague. By the end of it, it had resulted in a rather distressingly large pile of colourful stallions and mares passed out drunk with an equally mad assortment of balls of all shapes and sizes all stacked against his door.

It had taken him two hours to get out. He had been grateful his leg was at least well enough to gingerly stand on, if not well enough to walk unassisted.

After that, he had helped Welcome Sight to sweep up the mess and escort some very bleary-eyed equines off the property. Also had a hell of a time finding the innumerable sleeping foals that had managed to get stuck in every nook and cranny of the inn. Every goddamn one. He had smirked at that. He had known people overseas back home who would have balked at the idea of taking children to a party which involved the adults getting raucously drunk. Handy wasn’t from such a weak-kneed society, however, and knew the local pub was as much a focus of the community as the church. Well, ‘knew’ as much as anyone with a cultural bias could know anything. He was glad to see at least the ponies of Spurbay had that much in common with him. A more rational part of him poked at his mind to at least acknowledge it was a bit irresponsible, but it had been assuaged when he brought the matter up with Welcome who had assured him he had it well in hoof—even had some volunteers who helped keep an eye on things. Pony designated drivers: some things were just universally a good idea it seemed.

And by now you can see where this conversation had gone.

Before he could stop himself, he had admitted he had worked in a bar on and off since he was a child himself. Welcome quickly twisted his arm into helping out with the next night’s festivities… and the next… and the next… apparently ‘anything to get that lad out of the shed.’ Joachim had been anything but helpful about the affair, always making a cad excuse of having to be somewhere else when Handy had work to do. The Saltwater Festival having started weeks early meant ships had arrived in port to a town lit up with life and merriment. Even the passing trade had stopped to make time to join in the fun, meaning the town had been even more full of strange ponies with goods to sell, bellies to fill, and livers to kill, subsequently making Handy’s life hell.

Oh, he had been polite enough with the customers. One did not forget a lifetime of ‘on the side’ training in subtle graces, charm, and witticism from working an Irish pub. He had stumbled a bit at first, as if trying to remember half-forgotten lectures before he had gotten into full swing of being a bar hand. The difference of personality had downright frightened Joachim, who had actually straight up asked Handy if he was the same person he had met in a field over a week ago. Handy had waved him off. It was true; the shock of waking up in Equestria and everything he had experienced had… shook him a bit. He had been more honest and open in his feelings before, more so than normal, but even then he had kept most of his thoughts to himself. Now that he had something to focus on, something of consequence, meaning money, he could settle himself and start focusing on his projection and people handling. Or rather pony handling.

That was all well and good… Well no, it wasn’t. The first few nights had been hell and damnation, rushing to and fro, drinks here and there, cleaning up, stopping tipsy ponies from breaking anything, AND THRICE CURSED FOALS WHO WOULD NOT LEAVE HIM BE! He had half a mind to bar them from the inn despite his general ambivalence to their presence if Welcome hadn’t been there to keep the worst of them in check. However, one fine day the inn had been surprisingly empty. Handy had woken up at his usual time, somewhere in and around ten minutes to eight in the morning. Got up, ate his breakfast, which usually consisted of some kind of sandwich, lettuce, cheese, strawberry jam if he could get it, and put on the ‘robe’, which was essentially a disused sail for a small boat that some kind mare had cut holes and sown sections onto so Handy had something to wear to cover his ruined clothes. Ghetto belt remained however, although now it was now held together by sticky tape rather than strips of his hoody. He completely ignored the presence of ‘sticky tape’ if it meant he got his belt back.

The ponies found it odd he wore clothes all the time, and at the time, Handy really didn’t want to get into a discussion about why all humans wore clothes all the time with rare exception outside of bathing. Even then, some humans wore clothes, so he deftly avoided the whole topic. So he deftly avoided the whole topic. Having seen some well-off ponies in the town wearing clothing, and clothing also being seen as a sign of formality and professionalism, as he had seen business ponies and town officials wearing various articles, he made up some cock and bull story that he was from a human noble family that had fallen down on hard times for the past few generations and tradition was important to him. It got the more inquisitive ponies off his back about the clothes but opened up a whole new can of worms. However, that was a story for another time. Joachim, for one, didn’t believe him but didn’t contradict him either and settled for poking him about his ‘prudishness’.

But not this day.

Handy cleaned the bar, opened the windows to air out the rooms, and awaited the guests to wake up from their rooms and request breakfast. Which they didn’t. He checked the clock in the corner. It was nearly ten. He checked the rooms—climbing stairs with a crutch always being a fun adventure—only to find no one had rented them for the night. “Huh… Well I guess that makes my morning easier,” he said, climbing back down the stairs carefully. “Welcome? You in the kitchen? Don’t bother with the breakfast. No one stayed last night.” Handy made it to the counter. “Welcome?” He went into the back kitchen to find it empty and cleaned. “Must be out. Hey Warm, Joach, you guys up yet?” Handy was met with silence. “Guys?”

Now, this whole build up was just to let you know, dear reader, what Handy would be doing for the rest of the day, and that would be sitting on his lonesome in the Shady Bough and wondering where the hell everyone was that day. It was also to let you know why Handy did what he did at a later date to a certain feathery friend of his. Why? Well, because Handy was not the star of tonight’s tale.

That poor bastard would be Joachim.

--=--

His wings folded against his sides after landing gracefully just outside the warehouse door. “Package for a Mister Lucky Bite?” Joachim asked, his blue, courier visor shading his eyes from the sun, a small brown package in his claws. A tan pony came out of the warehouse.

“That’s me, thank you kindly!” Lucky said with enthusiasm, taking the package and paying Joachim five bits. Joachim placed it within a pouch at his side, held in place with a strap around his shoulder. He tipped his hat before his wings sprung up and immediately shot back down as he launched himself with his back legs, rocketing into the air. He soared at a steep angle for a full thirty seconds before he eased off and took to lazily gliding over the town. It felt so good to be able to fly again. His right wing still stung at times, but it was worth it to once more feel the air break before it. He looked down as he banked to his right.

The blue-tiled roofs of the town below him shone in the morning sun, the streamers, banners, and innumerable colourful tents erected for the festival giving it an erratic splash of colour in the streets of the town. The pegasi had scheduled a conspicuous lack of clouds today, allowing Joachim to see clearly for miles in all directions. It never ceased to take his breath away, especially here on the coast: the endless blue shining sea stretching off into eternity, the waves rolling lazily over one another in the breeze, broken only by the occasional passing ship, the seemingly endless forests interrupted with sudden rudeness by farm clearances and flood valleys around the natural bend in the long-winding Klenderfeather River.

He lost himself in thought for a few minutes, enjoying the wind buffeting his frame as he glided on air, only occasionally flapping his wingspan to remain aloft. His gaze fell upon the mountain—the Lonely Nail it was called—and his thoughts turned back to his home in the east. He frowned, the joint in his wing ached, and he shook the thought from his head. He looked back down on the town and grimaced. His pack was still full of letters he needed to deliver. For the past few days since Warm had suggested the job, his usual shtick was to hang around the delivery office or just be seen walking about town with his hat on, letting people know he’d courier their goods.

Nope, not today. This morning he had showed up for work nice and early, only to have a bag full of letters dumped on him. Apparently, a bunch of anonymous letters with no return addresses was to be dispatched to over twenty ponies before lunchtime. Joachim had been putting them off, largely because he was not getting paid for any of the letter deliveries, payment already having been given to the delivery office. So he had taken a few jobs before he got around to it. He sighed and dove lazily.

“WATCH OUT!”

Joachim turned, wide-eyed, before getting a face full of pony feathers. He spun about in the air, panicking as he tried to veer to correct himself from the tumble he’d been sent into. He eventually righted himself before turning and shaking a clenched claw at the midnight-black pegasus who clearly had not been watching the sky too clearly. Griffons were kind of hard to miss after all. The pegasus didn’t even have the courtesy to look back after he had corrected his own flight path. Joachim’s anger suddenly drained as he realised his bag had been knocked off of him, along with his hat, and were now tumbling to the ground, trailing his letters. Joachim squawked in surprise and immediately dived after the letters. He only managed to snatch five of the letters out of the air before being forced to come to a skidding halt in the marketplace, startling several ponies who were busy setting up decorations and knocking over a cart which sent several heart-shaped decorations flying through the air. It took him a few minutes of apologizing and helping the elderly mare pick them all back up before he could save face and get out of there.

He looked at the paltry prize in his claws. Five out of twenty was a poor show. Now it was time to either suck it up and go ahead and deliver what letters he had or spend the rest of the day trying to find the rest of them in the mud and cobbles of Spurbay. He sighed, picking up his fallen delivery pouch in his beak. He shook it, hearing a satisfying jingle. ‘At least the pocket didn’t come loose.’ He tucked it under his wing safely. “Horseapples.” He swore under his breath as he walked through the town, looking at the first letter and taking a left at Hoofington Avenue to make his first delivery.

--=--

Bleary-eyed, Peach Marigold yawned as she entered the kitchen. “Morning…” She made her way to the cabinet to get a bowl as she lifted a box of grass flakes and a bottle of milk from the fridge over to the table.

“Morning~” her mother replied with a giggle. Peach’s ear twitched. This was not going to be good.

“You’re in a good mood this morning. What’s up?” Peach said, her eyes closed, her horn aglow as she poured the milk into the bowl.

“Oh nothing. Oh! A letter came for you this morning!” her mother said, turning away from her cleaning. The pink-maned mare had a wide smile on her face. Peach suddenly felt apprehensive. Looking around, there was indeed a letter on the table with her name on it. Pink with a red heart on the front. Peach’s mind stopped. The cream and orange-maned mare tentatively floated the letter over to her, opening it cautiously as if it might explode in her face.

Peach Marigold.

I know we haven’t known each other long, but I don’t know how else to confess my feelings to you without frightening you. That night at the welcome home party behind the Shady Bough, seeing you there, shy, too scared to talk to anyone without being close to your friends, my heart went out to you.

But you came out of your shell to dance and sing with everyone, and I couldn’t help but watch you. It’s so rare to see you with a smile on your face. I was inspired.

The embers of the flame raising upwards, your mane shining in the night, your eyes alive with laughter and song, I fell in love with you.

Although I am not ready to see you right now, I want you to know that, this Hearts and Hooves Day, somepony is thinking of you.

Yours faithfully,

-J

The letter fell softly to the floor as a slack-jawed Peach focused on making herself very small on her seat. Uncontrollable giggling could be heard from the sink where her mother beamed at her. “Well?” the elder mare enquired. “What was the letter about?”

“I-It… Ah.” Peach’s voice was as small as she felt. “W-Who sent it?” Peach asked. Her mother screwed her face upwards, tapping her chin with a hoof.

“I believe it was that young, griffon fellow—the one who lives at Welcome Sight’s inn.” She grinned mischievously at her daughter. “He showed up at the door and handed the letter, stating it was for you. Why? Know him?” Peach’s face blushed furiously. She never got out much, always preferring her own company no matter how much her parents protested that she should go out and meet ponies. As a result, she had only a hooffull of friends. She had been practically dragged kicking and screaming to the party and, admittedly to her surprise, found she enjoyed herself.

And now because of it, this happened. Peach didn’t say anything. Her mother squealed and nuzzled her daughter. “Now see? What did I tell you?” Peach had never had a Hearts and Hooves card before, never had a coltfriend, and never had the courage to follow up on any of her crushes. It had only reinforced her solitary nature, leading to all sorts of self-loathing and doubting which her mother exasperated herself to try to build her up and get her to go about with her life, but it had never been enough.

“J-Joachim?” she asked, not entirely sure what to think. She had met the terribly drunk griffon at the party. He had been in the middle of a juggling act while standing on a barrel, his wings tied to his sides to prevent ‘cheating’. She had never once thought…

She let a small smile grace her lips as she looked downwards.

--=--

His beak tore into the apple. It had taken him a while to comfortably eat an apple without having to wolf the whole thing wholesale, but he got used to biting into them with the side of his beak. He was enjoying his lunchtime, leaning against an empty stall, watching it for some stallion or other. He didn’t care to remember the name—it was five bits for standing around and he had no other deliveries to do yet, so why not? Not as if he was going to go back to the inn. Handy might actually ask him to help out!

He felt the coins in his carry pack. Not the best paying job, but it would foot the bill for Welcome’s kindness. He knew Handy felt the same way. No matter how much he hated that bartending job, he was in agreement with Joachim in paying Welcome back somehow, whether he wanted them to or not. The question was: what next? Spurbay was nice and all, but it wasn’t exactly where he felt he belonged, the friendliness of the town’s ponies notwithstanding of course. He’d have to move on soon, hit the road, and find another job ponies weren’t tough enough to handle.

He grimaced again. That meant going further around the border provinces of Equestria where there were more wild things and troubles. He could fault the ponies for a lot, but their magic was something he couldn’t dismiss. It was what kept the inner provinces lush and vibrant and prosperous, and why no other country gave the ponies any serious trouble. All other races had to seriously work to control magic to any extent, some even being forced to do outright witchcraft to achieve anything at all. Ponies? The stuff came naturally to all of them. The pegasi naturally ruled the skies and had such an acute affinity for weathercraft that it made other races look like they were fumbling about with hatchling’s blocks when it came to their own weather control. The earth ponies, easily the least versatile of the pony races, were the strongest, the magic in their bodies giving them bucks that could crack stone and the plants of the earth theirs to command and control. The unicorns spoke for themselves, with enough raw magical finesse at young ages to make dragon elders green with envy, mastering in a few short years what took dragons decades at the earliest to summon forth.

And the alicorns, well, that was another matter. Joachim supposed that, by some definitions, they were indeed gods. Certainly not invincible, but everything in this world could be destroyed, so why should gods be any different? He had been in Griffonia when news had broken of the failed changeling invasion and Celestia’s embarrassing defeat in personal combat. The ponies hadn’t seemed to be aware of it much, or if they had been, they hadn’t paid it much mind. Joachim finished off his apple before dumping the core in an open barrel nearby. No, by toughness Joachim didn’t mean their innate abilities. With rare exceptions, ponies were naturally creatures that took to flight well before they took to fight, meaning that outside of the Equestrian heartlands, there was always going to be something he could help somepony out with. Griffons were made of sterner stuff than them. True, he had run into the mine with more bravado than brains, but he certainly didn’t see any ponies run into that cave to see if their fellows were alright. Just him and the human, with second thoughts only to how to approach the problem, not questioning whether they actually were going to approach it.

He snorted. It was contemptible, but he supposed he couldn’t fault them. A diamond dog may be naturally strong and burly, but it didn’t mean it knew how to use that strength properly. He supposed unicorns were the same way with their powers. They were just ordinary ponies living ordinary lives. They had no idea how to handle a pack of diamond dogs overrunning their mine. It was not that he didn’t like ponies. They were alright, but—

“Hi there~”

Joachim turned at the voice, looking around. Nopony was talking to him.

“Up here, tall stuff.” Joachim looked up. A pink pegasus with a luscious purple mane and a cutie mark in the shape of a heart with a gold star in it was hovering a foot above him. The pony giggled. “You know, you only had to talk to me to get my attention,” Heartstruck said with half-lidded eyes. Joachim arched an eyebrow.

“I’m… sorry?” Joachim asked, confused. The pony giggled as she leaned closer. Joachim leaned back, now quite concerned.

“You don’t need to pretend anymore. I was surprised but I… don’t mind. I’d gladly be your special somepony,” she said wistfully. Joachim’s eyes went as wide as dinner plates. ‘Oh claw,’ he thought to himself. Glancing side to side, with the festival going on, he didn’t notice the heart-shaped decorations that were now terribly noticeable. ‘Think fast, flyboy!’

“I uh… I’m flattered, really I am,” Joachim said, sidling over to the centre of the street, claws behind his back. “B-But, I uh—”

“But?” Heartstruck queried, the blissful look on her face turning to one of concern.

“I’m not, I mean to say that is you’re a lovely pony and all, but I’m not…” He really was not ready for a relationship right now, particularly one that was coming out of the blue like this. “OH, LOOK AT THE TIME! GOTTA GO!” Joachim went off at a run and launched himself into the air.

“Hey wait!” he heard the pegasus shout after him, the five bits promised him by the stallkeeper forgotten. He glanced back and saw the pegasus flying after him. ‘What the Tartarus was that? Why is this mare trying to jump my wings?’ He dived and folded his wings as he landed in the streets and turned down an alley to lose the crazy pink mare.

“H-Hey! Wait! I’m sorry if I came on too strong!” he heard the mare call out, stopping and pressing himself against a wall as she flew overhead. “I didn’t mean to frighten you. I just didn’t take you for the shy type!” Joachim stood stock still where he was as the crazy mare flew away, scanning the streets to find him. Passing ponies looked confusedly between him and Heartstruck.

‘Okay, what was that about?’ Joachim asked himself. Dredging his memory, the pony only vaguely registered. There were a lot of pink ponies in this town, he reasoned. He eventually detached from the wall and walked about town, keeping a careful eye on the sky. “Weird,” he said at last, dismissing the notion out of claw before carrying on, “I wonder if I can make it back to the stall in time bef— Oof!”

Joachim recoiled, having bumped into somepony. Looking down, he saw a cream-coloured, orange-maned mare with a flower cutie mark fall to the ground before him. Looking up at him, her eyes widened. “Oh, sh– Wow, I mean, sorry, I didn’t see you there. Here, let me help you up,” Joachim said, offering a claw to help the pony to her hooves. The pony just looked up at him, gawping. Joachim’s brow furrowed. “Are you ok, ma’am?” he asked.

“I-I’m… I mean, I got your… I mean, I– Uh.” Her timid voice almost cracked as her magenta eyes darted left and right. She slowly turned her gaze up to meet his as she helped herself up. She took a few trembling steps towards him. Joachim took a step back. “W-What I mean to say is, I-I know you said you weren’t ready. But what you said… about that night.” She kicked her hoof on the ground. Joachim’s eyes went wide.

‘Said!? Night?! Wait, was this about the parties? Did I do something?! What did I say!? Oh claw, I was so drunk the first night…’ He was thinking of something to say, his mouth trying to form something intelligent before he was suddenly hugged by the unicorn. Reason had left the building, ladies and gentlemen. Joachim was panicking.

“W-Wait!” he said, grabbing the mare by the shoulders and pushing her off of him. “I-I– I can’t– I you– I HAVE TO NOT BE HERE!”

“Wait!” Peach Marigold suddenly shouted, “Please don’t! You don’t frighten me. I jus–” Joachim had already bounded off down the street. “W-Wait! Come back! I didn’t mean to scare you!”

‘Claw, ponyfeathers, horseapples!’ Joachim swore in his head as he weaved around corner after corner. He could hear the mare galloping after him. Ponies were faster than most griffons on the ground. Sure, their back legs were powerful, but their front claws didn’t compliment them well enough when it came to long distance sprinting. He contemplated taking flight, and his wings, ever so slightly, parted from his side. That was before he saw a splash of pink in the blue sky above him, and they shut tight once more. ‘Not worth it.’

He skidded and crashed into several empty crates, failing to stop in time. He scrambled out of them, ignoring the complaints of some shopkeeper or other. He dived for another alleyway and emerged into a busy street in a tangle of streamers, ribbons and confetti, a consequence of his mishap with the crates. ‘I need to get back to the inn,’ he thought to himself. ‘I need to get somewhere safe.’

And with that, a pink blur crashed into his side and pinned him to the ground.

“Found you~”

--=--

And now for a delightful intermission. While all this was going on and everypony was busy with the matters of the heart, Handy found himself terminally bored. So much so that he had taken to playing a game on the counter to pass the time. He had gathered some shot glasses, so thick and sturdy they could drop to the floor without fear of breaking them, and stacked them on top of one another into three pyramids of ten glasses each. They were placed in a row, with their broad sides facing the farthest side of the counter. He had spaced them apart and slightly out of line to make it more interesting.

With the goals set, Handy sat himself at the far end of the counter from the shot glasses. Putting his face level with the edge of the counter, he eyed the goals. The object of the game was to knock the top shot glass off of the back pyramid without disturbing any of the other glasses. Hitting any of the other pyramids was a fail, and should he hit the target and it took a couple of other glasses with it, it was also a fail. Needlessly complicated but it passed the time. He even made sure there was a pillow on the floor to catch the glasses on the off chance they actually broke if they hit the floor.

With everything in place, he crumpled up the wet parchment and held it over a candle, drying it so that the pulp would retain its ball shape. He only used a little piece of parchment—too much made the ball too heavy, ensuring it wouldn’t travel far enough. He nodded, satisfied, and set to work. With an eye that pierced over the glassy peaks at his goal, he did the calculations in his head. Well, more like guesstimations. He placed the nail of his right index finger to the fingerprint of his thumb and positioned it behind the ball, which was sitting mounted atop another shot glass. For a full half hour he sat there, getting the shot just right. He had failed too many times before. Now, however, he was ready, now he had learned from his mistakes, now he would decapitate the vile glassy tyrant who sat upon his mountain peak mocking the mighty hero!

His finger let it fly, and the ball of pulp flew through the air, soaring majestically in defiance of the glass tyrant’s mountainy minions who could but sit still in terror and awe of the flying parchment wrecking ball of justice. With the inevitability of entropy, the ball hit the tip of the top glass of the back pile of utensils of inebriation. The ball bounced and went off to the side, falling beneath the counter as the top glass achingly leaned back, threatening to fall. Handy leaned closer, eyes narrowing. ‘Come on, you rotten bastard,’ he thought at it. ‘Make my day!’

The glass dropped, and the room became deathly quiet.

And then, thusly, did the Handy roar mightily in triumph. However, it was soon stifled as he noticed something else. The second row of the back shot glasses, just underneath the former seat of the fallen tyrant, were moving… ever… so... slightly.

“Ohhhhh no you don’t,” Handy warned, getting up slightly from his seated position, afraid to move too quickly.

Ever…

“Don’t.”

So…

“Don’t even think about it, yais sons a—!”

Slightly…

“MOTHERFUCKER, I WILL END YOU!”

And with a calamitous crash that caused Handy to wince, the entire back pyramid of shot glasses fell atop themselves. Cushion or no, the glasses broke, leaving Handy with some cleaning and eventual explaining to do. The human sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose.

“Bollocks.”

--=--

Meanwhile, Joachim burst into Justin Thyme’s store. Closing the door behind him, he pressed against it, panting, wild panicking eyes glancing about for a hiding place.

“Hello, can I help yo—” a red earth pony with a clock cutie mark began.

“You!” Joachim pointed at the store pony who was taken quite aback, glasses slightly askew as his green pupils shrunk a bit. Joachim rushed over and placed his claws on the counter. “I need your help!”

“M-My help?”

“Yes, hide me!”

“From wha—” The handle of the door could be heard turning. Joachim pushed Justin aside as he dived behind the counter. “What is the meaning… of… uh.” Justin’s voice caught in his throat. Peach Marigold entered the store, craning her neck as if looking for something. Justin couldn’t believe it. She couldn’t have figured it out, could she? He wasn’t ready for this.

“Excuse me.”

His heart fluttered. “Yes?” His voice cracked, and he coughed. “I mean, yes? H-How can I help you today?”

“Oh, I was just wondering if you saw a griffon come through here today.”

“A griffon?” Justin blinked, his eyes darting to the cowering aquiline behind his counter before immediately darting back up to meet Peach’s gaze.

“Oh yes, you see it uh… it’s quite embarrassing actually,” she said, biting her lower lip. “He uh… Well, you know what day it is, and he delivered me a letter… Hehe, poor thing wasn’t ready to talk to me in person yet, but he wanted to express himself in a letter, signed only with the first letter of his name. Well, I met him there in the streets, and I’m afraid I may have scared him off.”

Justin’s world ended.

“….Really?” he asked through gritted teeth. Peach didn’t seem to notice.

“Oh yes, I mean it’s all quite silly. I just wanted to apologize to him and to let him know its okay, we can take our time.”

“Really…,” Justin said, his eyes slowly drawn to the cowering griffon with his claws over his head. “No… I have not seen him this day,” he managed to strain out. Peach sighed.

“Oh well, thank you anyway, Justin.”

Justin’s ears perked up. She knew his name? Peach left the shop. As the door shut behind her, he grabbed Joachim. “Delivered a letter huh!?” he shouted. Joachim’s eyes rolled at the sudden elevation as the earth pony pinned him to a wall. “Signed it with the first letter of your name huh!? Not ready to say it to her face huh!?”

“W-What!?”

“There I was, pouring out my heart, and you go ahead and say it was you!”

“What are you talking about!?”

“There you are!” a green mare with an even darker hued mane shouted excitedly from the door to the shop.

“Gotta go!” Joachim said, pushing Justin away from him as he jumped over him and bounded into the back room and out the door he found there.

“Hey I’m not done wi-fffffffffffffft!” Justin began but was flattened by the stampede of five mares who clambered to get at the griffon.

--=--

Warm Night was having the best day of his life.

There he was with the mare of his dreams, having a romantic dinner together in the house he rented. Happy Hour had responded better than he could’ve hoped when he finally confessed his feeling for her. It was almost too good to be true, but it was, and he was left dizzy at the prospect.

He had excused himself as he went to the bathroom. The meal had long since finished, and they had been chatting together for some time on his couch. Finishing up, he made his way to walk down the hallway back to the living room, Warm humming a jaunty tune when he heard rustling in the bushes just outside the hall window. Curious, he opened the window further and poked his head out. He was looking down on what looked like a ball of white feathers sticking out of his bushes with a grey protrusion from its side. “What in the—”

Joachim looked up in surprise. “Warm!?”

“Joachim?!” he said, louder than he would’ve liked. “What are you DOING here?” he said in a lower voice. He could hear Happy singing softly to herself from down the hall.

“I need your help!” Joachim said, reaching up to grab the window sill and pushing Warm aside so he could climb in. Warm pushed back.

“Woah, hang on a minute! Stop!” he hissed.

“But I really need to hide!”

“Why!?” Warm said. “What did you DO!?”

“Warm, dear, is everything alright down there?” Happy asked.

“Uh, yeah! Just stubbed my hoof fixing a floorboard, that’s all,” he said before turning back to Joachim, struggling with the griffon to try to keep him from climbing in. “Joach, I’m kinda in the middle of something here,” he said through gritted teeth.

“Come on man, be a pal!”

“Warm?”

“Coming!” Warm said as he magicked Joachim out and shut the window. Joachim fell back to the bushes with an ‘oof’

“Nice buddy, real nice,” Joachim whined as he pulled himself out of the bush, leaves and sticks complimenting the wild assortment of streamers, ripped banners, torn paper hearts, and ribbons that covered the griffon. He looked about, trying to judge the distance to the Shady Bough. He had yet to make any appreciable distance before he got tackled to the ground by another crazy mare, barely making it out from underneath them before another one nearly caught him. He had five of the ponies after him now. What in the hell did he even do? Why now? Was there just something about this holiday that sent ponies mad? A few stallions had accosted him, babbling something about ‘stealing their mares’ or something along those lines.

He was terribly confused. He could see the Shady Bough from his elevated position. If he flew, he could probably make it there in time. Looking around, he saw two of the pegasi that had been following him searching the ground eagerly. He already knew he couldn’t outrun any of them on the ground. He turned back to the Bough, grinding his teeth as he weighed his options.

“Buck it,” he said finally, unfurling his wings.

--=--

Handy hummed dejectedly to himself, wiping the inside of a tankard clean with a rather overused cloth if he were to admit it. The broken glass had been cleaned from before. He sighed. He almost wished someone came in right now. It would really alleviate the bor—

And a very distressed, very colourful Joachim threw open the door with a kick as he threw himself down at Handy’s feet.

“HEEEEEELP!!” Joachim shouted.

“Wh—” Handy began.

“No!”

“Bu—”

“NOPE!”

“I—”

“Explanations later, help now!” Joachim shouted as he placed his delivery pouch on the counter. “Twenty bits! Right here, right now! Just hide me!” Handy looked at the bag and opened it. Indeed there were twenty bits in the inside pocket. He looked back up at the desperate eagle face before him. He clicked his tongue against his teeth in contemplation. He fumbled in the pocket of his robe and pulled out a small rusted key.

“My shed out back, you can hide there,” Handy said as he took the bag. Joachim gratefully snatched the key.

“Thanks! You’re a good friend, Handy.” Joachim beamed as he rushed into the kitchen and out the back door with the entirely useless key Handy had given him. His shed didn’t even have a lock—its door just opened and closed, for it was a shed.

“Any time,” Handy said, idly counting the bits from the bag as his next patrons arrived through the thoroughly abused front door.

“Excuse me!” a panting green pegasus said, apparently having ran a marathon. “Did you see a griffon go past?”

“A griffon?” Handy asked, arching an eyebrow. Now this was interesting.

“Yes!” another mare said, a yellow earth pony this time, pushing the green one to one side as she beamed at him. “Did you see my dear?” The green mare snarled at her.

“YOUR dear?”

“Oh don’t you start!”

“Ladies, please, I don’t know what your business is with him, but clearly the poor colt’s just shy. I think I may have given him the vapours,” the pink pegasus who had just landed said confidently as all three of them entered, bickering as they slowly inched towards the counter.

“Excuse me,” a voice meekly said. Handy looked down, surprised to see a cream unicorn sitting across the counter from him, distracted as he was by the pony fight occurring before him. “I’d really appreciate it if you could tell us where he went,” she said, worry in her eyes. “He did get hurt when I scared him off. I saw him fly this way.”

“Then why don’t you go away! Stop scaring him off!” one of the ponies shouted at the cream one, who turned and huffed, scrunching up her face.

'Joachim, Joachim, Joachim…’ Handy thought, trying very hard not to break his poker face and smile. ‘Just what have you gotten yourself into?’

“Hmm, white griffon, grey head, yea high, silvery back feathers around red eyes and over his wings, grey beak?” Handy said, teasing the ponies before him.

“Yes!” one said. “That’s the stallion!” another said. Handy let out a thoughtful ‘hmmm’ before answering.

“Can’t say I h—” Handy stopped himself. Here was a herd of mares chasing after Joachim for, well, he didn’t rightly know. The same griffon who had been, for days, teasing him about being a ‘prude’ regarding his desire to wear clothes constantly. Now Casanova here apparently couldn’t face the consequences of whatever he had done to get these five ponies practically begging to jump him, even fighting each other over him. He crossed his arms on the counter as he leaned down, idly glancing at the bits Joachim had given him. ‘Well… I could use a laugh at his expense.’ He stood back up and jerked a thumb pointing at the kitchen behind him. “Out back, you’ll find a shed. The door will be closed, but it hasn’t got a lock. He’s hiding there. Have fun, ladies.”

Handy just barely got out of the way as the ponies stampeded behind him. He turned back to his busywork, waiting… Just waiting…

“HAAAAAAANNNNNDYYYYYYYYY!”

And so did Handy laugh. Mighty and vigorous was the thunder that rumbled from his chest to the vital chords of his throat, and melodious was its darkened mirth. He was wiping his eyes when another pony shattered his sanctum. The red earth pony’s chest was heaving, his brown mane a mess, and his glasses looked like they had cracked a lens.

“Have… you seen… a cream… mare go through here?” the pony heaved, his voice strained, gaze narrow.

‘What in the he—’ Handy thought before putting two and two together. A distressed-looking Joachim, a herd of desperate fillies hot on his trail, an angry stallion not soon after, and probably more of them on the way. It seemed like Handy’s application of the title of Casanova to Joachim was apparently well deduced. Either that or he was wildly misinterpreting the situation, because it looked like his feathery friend was quite the womaniser, and it was all catching up with him at once. He scowled in disapproval.

He could tell the stallion where to find Joachim, but he had already sent enough punishment his way with the mares. He looked up at the clock, thinking. The guy who was supposed to deliver his fucks today hadn’t shown up, and his storehouse was running awfully low. Winter was coming. He looked back down at the stallion before him. Had he enough fucks to give in order to spare Joachim from a beating?

No, he decided, no he didn’t.

“Out back with yer woman, I’d imagine,” Handy said and deadpanned. The look on the pony’s face could’ve killed a Russian. The pony stormed off out the door and yelled as he circled the inn to get out back. A very surprised Welcome Sight trotted in just after he left. He looked back out the door and then back at Handy.

“What was that about? Welcome asked, confused. Handy shrugged.

“Don’t rightly know,” Handy lied, suppressing a smile under a mask of boredom. Inside he was crying, dying to laugh. “Where’ve you been all day, boss?” Handy asked.

“Dentist,” Welcome said, smiling.

--=--

It all got sorted out by the end of the day. You know, after Joachim got a few bruises and verbal chewing outs for his trouble. The mares were all quite embarrassed at their behaviour when they learned that Joachim was not their secret admirer but rather the mailman. It all culminated in an awkward moment where a very confused and embarrassed Peach Marigold had the story set straight to her by Justin Thyme about the letter. That was an awkward confession of love to witness, or so Handy was told. He had stayed right where he was while the ponies and the thoroughly defeated and exhausted griffon had sorted things out.

Joachim was none too pleased at Handy’s treachery, but it was all worth it in the end, even if Handy had to pay back the twenty bits Joachim had given him and help him pull the innumerable detritus out of his wings that he had gathered during the day’s shenanigans. Handy had it explained to him that it was Hearts and Hooves Day, which apparently explained the ponies’ erratic behaviour. When he was asked if humans had a similar holiday back where he came from, he was at a loss for what to say. What should he tell them? That they did and it was originally a religious feast day celebrating a Christian martyr who was imprisoned and executed for trying to convert the Roman Emperor of the week, but not before he fell in love with the daughter of the warden? Thus the day the Church moved it to as part of its ongoing process of converting an entire continent became associated with romance and celebrating lovers? That had since became a sickening Hallmark holiday of cynicism and disgusting consumerism? Like all of their other holidays?

Much like the issue with his clothes, he shrugged it off dismissively, saying humans didn’t have a day dedicated just to romance, but rather romantic notions were attached to all holidays, which was at least half true.

“So you’re leaving then?” Welcome Sight asked sadly from behind the counter, though he still wore that warm smile of his. Handy tapped the floor with his new boots. They were rubber, or at least something close to rubber, with metal shod soles. It felt so good to actually get something solid around his feet again.

“Yeah,” he answered, shrugging the bag over his shoulder as he gripped a long thick staff he had cut for him. The inn was alive with customers, not as busy as the first week of the festival but still busy enough. Apparently it had gotten a bit of a reputation around town since the rather enthusiastic celebrations Welcome had kicked off. Handy was confident Welcome wouldn’t worry about business for some time afterwards because of it. He and Joachim had stayed there for two more weeks before deciding it was time to move on, saving up money for supplies and to finally pay Welcome back for all his kindness. Welcome refused of course, so they paid him back anyway. Joachim had paid for decorators to give the place a brief once over, and Handy had bought beds.

Sure, they were discounted because they were the wrong delivery to the store, but they were big, and Handy had bought three of them for the guest rooms. Welcome had been away on a trip while they got the place fixed up for him. By the time they were finished and Welcome stopped gawping at his shiny newly refurbished establishment, they had barely a hundred bits betwixt them.

“It’s been fun, Welcome, and thank you for everything,” Handy said, smiling. ‘Although baldness on a pony is kind of creepy, you’re an alright guy,’ he thought as he raised his hand to shake Welcome’s hoof. The elder pony reached up to take his hand before suddenly pulling him forward in a hug. Handy, thoroughly surprised, could do naught but tap the pony on the back. “A-heh, I’ll miss you too, man…”

“Thank you for bringing back my boy,” Welcome whispered as he let the human go. Handy was unsure of what to say. Joachim piped up as he pushed his way through the crowd.

“Ready?” Joachim asked. Handy snapped out of it as he turned to the griffon.

“Remind me again why we’re traveling at night?” Handy asked quite seriously.

“First off, buck you. Secondly, the pegasi have scheduled heavy rain tomorrow. I want to get a head start before the storm front hits.” Handy snorted, still not believing that the ponies literally controlled the weather.

“Whatever you say, birdbrain. Yeah I’m ready.” He turned back to Welcome as he saw Warm night step out of the kitchen. “You holding up okay there?” Handy asked, smiling. Warm returned it.

“We’ll be okay. I’ve decided to work here with my dad. Happy’s coming too to help out. Neither of us like the idea of going to the mines again.”

“She move in yet?” Joachim teased. Warm blushed.

“I– uh, that is….”

“Yes,” a warm voice answered as Happy came out of the kitchen and nuzzled Warm.

Joachim sniggered. Handy missed the entire exchange, distracted as he was by a card game in the corner that looked like it was flaring tempers. Time to go. “It’s been great seeing yais, and thanks again for everything,” he said, tipping his head. Handy tapped Joachim on the shoulder and gestured to the door with his head. Joachim nodded, and they made their way through the tavern patrons.

“You come back sometime, you hear that?” Welcome shouted over the crowd. “You’re always welcome at our door for free, and I won’t take no for an answer! You hear?” Handy and Joachim smiled wryly at that as they left the tavern. The door closed behind them, and they heard something smash, voices raised, and a table being overturned. Joachim turned.

“Keeeeep walking,” Handy said, not turning.

“But—”

“Juuuust keep walking…”

--=--

Cresting the rise of the hill, they stopped to look back at Spurbay. It was peaceful but shone brilliantly in the night as festival fires and lanterns lit up the streets gloriously, its brilliance contrasting sharply with the sombre elegance of the moonlight.

“So where to?” Handy asked after a minute of contemplation. He resigned himself internally that this world was mad and impossible… but he was stuck here for the time being. Time to at least pretend to play along nicely.

“Well, I was thinking something easier this time,” Joachim said, pulling a map of the Eastern Equestrian coastline out from his packbag. He traced a claw. “I heard there’s a merchant caravan in a hamlet a few miles away looking to hire some extra hoofs for protection and general duties.

“Well I am the handyman,” Handy joked. Joachim looked up in confusion. Handy shook his head. “Never mind. What’s the pay?”

“Don’t rightly know. I guess we’ll find out when we get there. You good?”

“I’m good.” Handy nodded. “Lead the way,” Handy said before stopping. He was shaking.

"You okay there?" Joachim asked, concerned.

"Yeah... Yeah I'm good," Handy said, laughing softly. "I just thought of a joke is all."

"Yeah?" Joachim asked. "What is it?"

"Happy Hour at the Shady Bough is a Welcome Sight on a Warm Night," Handy said, chuckling. Joachim rolled his eyes.

--=--

She had only recently become aware of the exact location of the disturbance. It was a subtle thing, easily overlooked. Had she not been meditating that very night, she might have missed its essence altogether. For weeks she had scoured Equestria, trying to determine what it was she had sensed. Always quiet, not wanting to alert her sister if it could be avoided. It wasn’t the Nightmare—she could taste the difference—but that only raised more questions.

She was now walking through the dreams of the ponies of a small harbour town in the shadow of a mountain. The disturbance had originated here, so she decided to investigate. What she found was the usual affair: pleasant dreams, dreams with no meaning, dreams of things lost and ambitions sought, of fears, follies, and victories. However, there was nothing that would be considered wrong or out of place. Everything was in harmony in the town of Spurbay.

Her night form travelled into the mountain nearby, exploring the caves and the crevices and the crushed mine at its base. Eventually she found the hallway. Her horn glowed and illuminated the path before her. The path was cut with rough tools, unskilled, but applied with determination. The pillars that held the roof up were simple yet strong. The walls were unadorned, neither with decoration nor carving. It was the only structure of its ilk in the entirety of the mountain, and it was completely out of place.

Traveling to its end, its other having led to a caved in entrance and leading to no further illumination of the mystery of her quarry, she came upon the room of starlit gems. It was a simple domed room, its surface cut with the same determination and care of the walls in the hallway. The gems at her hooves, innumerable in their multitude and brilliant in their glory of the reflected light from her horn, shone beneath the ripples of the sharply cool water.

It didn’t take her long to notice the plinth that rose out of the centre of the room’s floor of gemstones. Blue marble with white veins, it was a simple affair with little adornment or oddities beyond its smoothness. She tapped it with her crystal-shod hoof. Nothing. She tapped her horn to it and focused her magic, trying to sense anything. Something of great power once sat here, something important for a very, very long time. She cast her sight all over the room, searching for anything that could have been the object that sat upon this plinth. She could sense magic in the room, but it was faint, residual, barely above the atmospheric levels that filled the very air around her

There was nothing, nothing but stone walls, water, and gem strewn on the floor.

And an extinguished torch which bumped against her leg.

Author's Note

Aaaaand we're done with the Spurbay arc.

I must say, I am pleased people seem to be reacting positively to this story thus far, however if any of you have any suggestions to improve upon it, please, let me know.

If anyone's upset that I am leaving Welcome, Warm and the others behind, well, I'm sorry about that. But this is an adventure story, with emphasis on the adventure part. Handy is meant to experience the consequences of his actions, that of choosing the path less travelled by HIE stories, which is that of fucking off and getting lost.

As such, there will be entire chapters dedicating to singular adventures not related to the overall plot, as well as vignettes and intervals for the sake of characterisation rather then overall progression. Handy appears in places and things happen, how could it be otherwise?

Now I have decided I can use this to justify spotlighting the less famous characters of the show, such as Flim and Flam who will appear later in this story, for better or for ill. This is not to say the main cast will not be rearing their pony heads, they just aren't important.

Well not yet anyway, depends on which direction this fic goes.

If any of you have anything in particular you want me to throw Handy's way, don't be afraid to shout, I'll see what I can do. He's a free domain character, and as such God help him when I start taking peoples' suggestions on how to torment him.

Chapter 4 - Home is where the heart is

Handy had been doing some serious thinking about his predicament. Namely, what if this was all real? Now mind, he’d been wrestling with this concept for weeks now since he had arrived in Equestria, but some part of him still refused to accept that it could be true. Alarmingly, however, Handy realised that it was not the rational part of his mind that refused to accept his new circumstances, not anymore. No, rather, it was fear.

If he accepted the world as it was presented to him—and he didn’t—it would mean so many things at once that it would be overwhelming. First off, it would mean one of two things. One: he was in a completely different universe and world, and there was nothing stopping him from slowly being poisoned by its atmosphere. Despite being here for quite some time, who was to say he wasn’t developing some kind of exotic cancer or disease from exposure to a literal alien environment?

The second thing it could mean was potentially worse. He was not in another universe, but rather in a different part of his own universe, one where sapient colourful ponies, griffons, gorilla dogs, and honest-to-God magic were not only possible, but quite real and considered mundane. Which, if Handy were a lesser man or a man who based his entire worldview soundly on currently understood physics, would reduce him to a gibbering wreck. Handy was neither, however, so he was merely reduced to a panicking, self-doubting wreck instead.

He had been wrestling with this ever since he and Joachim had left Spurbay, and he was not reacting well. Admittedly, he had been purposefully keeping such thoughts at bay during his stay at the town, which ultimately proved wise. Stopping on their journey to the village of Foalsdale, the two of them stopped under a rocky outcropping. The rain storm had caught up with them, and it was giving the ground a right, proper Scottish drubbing. Handy excused himself while Joachim settled down, citing he was going off to relieve himself. Walking off unsteadily away from the road into nearby trees, Handy collapsed to the ground, clasping the sides of his head.

‘Oh God, I’m alone here!’ he screamed internally, breathing heavily. ‘This can’t be real… But it must be….’ He rubbed his eyes furiously, the downpour soaking him to the bone, but he didn’t care. He placed his hands in the muddy ground before him, fingers curling inward, digging into the dirt as if he could strangle the earth itself. ‘I’m alone on an alien world, and there’s no way to get back!’ Handy clasped his face again, his muddy hands dirtying it as his hair hung down from his head in clumped up locks. He had no idea how he got here and no idea how to return, or if he could at all.

He coughed harshly. The radical change in diet, the exposure, and the sudden change of lifestyle had ravaged him. Whereas before he had hardly ever exerted himself and used his car to get to where he was going, now he had to walk miles upon miles, do heavy labour, and generally be a hundred times more active than he otherwise would have been. He had lost a lot of weight, but not in a good way. His body was reacting badly. Joachim had voiced some concern when he noticed the difference, but Handy had waved him off. The pony doctors wouldn’t have known what a healthy human his size should look like anyway. Besides, Handy was too proud to have them fuss over him. He’d adapt—it was not as if he was truly starving, and this would ultimately prove healthier in the long run, but he saw fever and being bedridden in his near future. Body shock was not a good thing.

He knelt there for some time, the only sound accompanying the human being the apathetic patter of the falling rain. He ground his teeth, riding out the anger and frustration that flooded his being as the thoughts rushed through his head as the final mental safeguards fell under the weight of the evidence. The implications flooded his mind. He had played video games, roleplaying games, anything and everything to do with high fantasy and magic, and now that he was basically in a world that contained such things, he found he could do nought but flee from it. Even if the only place he could run to was the denial within his own mind.

He smiled grimly at the thought, letting out a short chuckle that had no warmth in it. He was shaking, but it wasn’t from the cold. He balled up his fist and punched the tree to his immediate right, doing nothing to the unyielding wood. He saw nothing else to do, and he could no longer hide behind his own ignorance. Slowly he clasped his hands together.

‘Oh God… What do I do?’

--=--

“Took your time,” Joachim commented, lifting his head as he let out a yawn. He turned to his right as he saw the bipedal form of Handy walk back to the outcrop. Joachim frowned. “You get in a fight with the ground or something?” he asked.

“Mud is slippery, Joach,” Handy said, shaking, trying to get the worst of the water off of him. “Kinda what happens when it rains.” He took a cloth from his pack bag and rubbed his face. He looked at his now longer hair in annoyance and felt his chin. “Gonna need to cut this soon.”

“Why?” Joachim asked.

“Most human males keep their hair short. Well, shorter than the women do. I usually keep it shorter than most.”

“Doesn’t that get cold?” Joachim asked, raising an eyebrow. Handy nodded, smiling wryly.

“I guess, but it’s more comfortable. At least I think so,” Handy said. Joachim shook his head.

“I don’t get it. You humans don’t seem to have that much fur to begin with. Why cut what little you have off?” he asked. Handy shook his head, waving his hand.

“It’d take too long to explain. There’s a reason I fobbed off the ponies by pretending I was some disenfranchised nobleman.” Joachim mock-gasped.

“Really!? You mean you aren’t some exotic foreign noble? I’d have never have guessed!” Joachim said with a shit-eating grin. “No, but seriously, your entire species cuts the fur off their bodies? That’s kind of messed up.”

“We don’t.” Handy sighed, rubbing his forehead. “We’re all born naked with barely any hair. It’s one of the reasons we wear clothes all the time.”

“Huh.” Joachim rubbed his chin. Which he technically didn’t have because, you know, beaks. “Seems strange.”

“We used to have fur—well, our distant ancestors did—really, really long time ago.”

“Then is that why you humans started wearing clothes? Because you lost your fur?” Joachim asked contemplatively. “Or did you lose fur because you started wearing clothes all the time?”

“We…” Handy said, a shocked expression on his face. As far as he knew, that was actually one of the bigger questions about the evolution of homo sapiens. Why exactly did we lose almost all of our hair? “We… don’t know actually. It’s one of our mysteries.” Joachim did not look pleased at the answer, but he didn’t press it. Instead, he decided to enquire about other things.

“So, what’s the other reasons?” he asked, idly chewing on a rabbit leg he had been roasting over a small fire. Handy was amazed he could get one lit in this weather but was grateful all the same as he warmed himself.

“What?”

“You said your furlessness was one of the reasons your people wear clothes all the time. What are the others?” Handy didn’t respond immediately.

“Because we greatly value our privacy,” Handy said at last. It was truly only part of the reason he thought of, but it would suffice. “That includes includes our naked selves—we simply aren’t comfortable with it as you or the ponies would be. And yes, I know this makes my species sound like prudes, but it is very difficult to put it into words. You’d have to be one of us for a while to understand. We have a lot of weird rules about dress standards and norms, and it differs from human culture to culture, but that’s the common thread.” Joachim snorted.

“Useless. That doesn’t make any sense.” Handy shrugged.

“Take it or leave it. Like I said, I don’t think you’d understand,” he said, scratching his chin. He had a nice burr going on there, but it was getting itchy. He would need to find a razor soon. “’Sides, what are you griffons like?”

“What?”

“Griffons,” Handy repeated. “You don’t talk much about your people, and you’re the only one I’ve seen so far. What are you guys like? Are you all feather-brained assholes?” Handy asked jokingly. Joachim scowled.

“If you must know, we’re a proud people.” Joachim held his head high. “And no, we aren’t feather-brained assholes, naked ape. We come from Griffonia, a large kingdom to the east. Mountainous and harsh at times, we take great pride in our clans.” Handy chuckled. “What’s so funny?”

“Proud race, highlands, clans? Griffons are basically Scotsmen,” Handy said. Joachim cocked his head. “Oh relax, it’s a compliment, I was just comparing you to a human culture.” Joachim snorted. “So what brings you so far from home?” Handy asked, taking another piece of cooked rabbit, its meat crunchy. Probably been on the spit too long. Not good when there was so little meat to be had, but he wasn’t going to complain. Meat was meat.

Joachim visibly stiffened. Handy failed to notice this, his own faraway gaze lingering on a puddle being bombarded with heavy raindrops. “Wanderlust,” Joachim said. Handy looked at him.

“You’re just out exploring?” he asked. Joachim nodded.

“I’m not one to stay in one place for long.” He looked up to the sky. The sun was getting awfully low. “Anyway, looks like we aren’t getting any more distance done today.” He yawned. “Best get some rest,” Joachim said, curling up on the ground and covering his face with a wing. Handy considered the fact that the bird had finished the conversation pretty quickly. But he didn’t press matters. If he didn’t want to talk, he didn’t want to talk. He shifted to try to get comfortable and pulled out a rather thick travel blanket from his pack, shivering.

He fumbled in the pocket of his robe, pulling out the expensive brick that used to be his phone. He hit the power button and, faithfully, it turned on to its nice, shiny, cracked, white screen. Handy grimaced and replaced the phone in his pocket, unsure of why he even still kept it. ‘Because it's mine,’ he reasoned. He reasoned. He hated phones, but ever since he got his smartphone, his tune had changed. Not by much, but enough. In his enthusiasm, he had filled the entire phone with as much music as he could reasonably get away with, which was odd since he had rarely, if ever, listened to it. He had at least six hours of classical, some traditional, five minutes of dubstep—he still wasn’t sure why he had that—various other genres, as well as the odd song he liked that didn’t really fit with the rest. He shrugged. Now he’d never get to listen to it.

--=--

“Ohhhh you’ve got opportunity in this very community~”

“Oh, fuck off,” Handy said under his breath.

Handy had been expecting many things upon arrival at Foalsdale. At the very least, he had expected the cautious xenophobia of Spurbay when he had first arrived with Joachim, or even the sheer terror that he had inspired in the few traveling ponies they had met on the way there. Honestly, all he did was smile! That was it, no more smiling for anybody. You! You right there? Want a smile? Well you can’t handle a smile! Unless he actually wanted to scare ponies—the pansies couldn’t handle a simple pair of canines.

“He’s Flim, he’s Flam! We’re the world famous Flim Flam brothers~”

What he had not been expecting was the pony equivalent of snake oil salesmen. Well, that and a spontaneous musical number that seemed entirely unscripted and participated in by just about everyone in the town. That was just… spooky to witness. Hell, looking down, he saw Joachim moving side to side to it. He shook his head, his respect for the griffon decreasing by the second.

“Traveling salesponies nonpareil~”

Those ponies spoke French. Handy’s worldview was shattered. He was done here. He shifted his weight and rose from the bench he had been sitting on, tapped Joachim on the shoulder to get his attention, and jerked a thumb back behind the nearest house. Joachim looked confused for a moment before following.

“So I have decided we are not going to be working for them,” Handy said definitively.

“What!?” Joachim said, shocked. “Why not!?”

“Because it is fucking ridiculous.”

“What’s ridiculous about it?” Joachim said, looking back.

“They are literally assholes in striped shirts and corn hats singing to a crowd to work them into a frenzy into buying shit that is probably defective. I know charlatans when I see them.”

“Oh come on!” Joachim pleaded, claw outstretched for emphasis. “I can vouch for these guys. Hell, these are the ones I bought the salve from in the first place!” Handy perked up.

“Really?” he asked.

“Yeah, I mean, I had no idea these were the merchants I had heard about, but if we work for them, we might get more of the stuff on the side,” Joachim said. Handy considered it. Salamander salve was incredibly useful. Also, it felt amazing. Like, really amazing—Handy had found himself wanting to use some of it just for the sake of it.

“Alright, but seriously, they’d better not go off on another one of those musical numbers.”

“What?” the griffon asked.

“The singing. They started singing out of nowhere, and everyone joined in as if it was a practiced and rehearsed Gaiety Theatre play.” Joachim blinked.

“Uhm… That’s uh… that’s normal,” Joachim replied. Handy stared incredulously.

“Normal?”

“Yeah. Don’t they sing in the human lands?” he asked. Handy’s mouth opened and closed several times, trying to formulate a response. That this sudden unscripted pantomime could be pulled off naturally without so much as word one about practicing beforehand was not only considered normal but expected astounded him. He rubbed the bridge of his nose.

’Roll with it man, just… just roll with it.’ Handy looked back at Joachim. “Never mind, let’s just go offer our services.” The pair of them walked back into the centre of town as the song died down and excited ponies walked off with orange bottles in their muzzles. Several of them looked up at Handy and reacted with shock. Handy merely shook his head. Surely they weren’t so distracted they didn’t notice the six foot naked ape in their presence this whole time? But there we have it.

The two surprisingly tall unicorns were busy chatting idly to each other when the pair of them strolled up. “Oh, look what have we here, oh brother of mine! More customers!” said the unicorn with the, quite frankly, magnificent moustache. His brother turned and greeted us.

“Ah good, you’re here. We were about to close up for the day,” the other unicorn replied. Handy could tell already he was going to have a hard time telling the two apart. They were both cream-coated, had red and white manes, and their cutie marks were the same. Moustache pony had a full apple with a piece cut out of it, and the other one, who he assumed was younger because he lacked his brother’s magnificent facial hair, had an apple slice on his flank. “Mayhap we can tempt you fellows into purchasing our…” The younger brother looked at Joachim strangely, which Handy entirely approved of. About time he wasn’t what drew somepony’s suspicious curiosity. “…Uh, brother of mine, I dare say we have a repeat customer before us.”

“Mmm?” mustachio pony responded before looking at Joachim. His eyes slowly grew wider. “…Oh dear, I do believe you are correct. Hmm, oh look at the time, brother of mine. Isn’t it time we should be moving on?” the pony said, backing up slowly to the wagon behind him, magically pulling a tarp over the crates inside of it.

“What? Hang on a minute, wait!” Joachim pleaded. “We’re here about the job!” That caused the unicorns to stop. “You wanted a few ponies to help you out with your caravan, right? Protection and labour right?” Joachim asked. “I bought some of your salamander salve before—great stuff. Myself and my friend here are both fans. We’d be happy to work for you,” Joachim said. The two unicorns looked at each other for a moment. Handy immediately felt nervous. He crouched to Joachim’s level.

“Are you sure about this, Joach? These ponies are awfully jumpy.” Joachim shook his head and whispered back.

“Oh come on. I’m a griffon and you’re a whatever the hell you are. You should be used to ponies not reacting well to the pair of us.” Handy grimaced but did not press the matter.

“Oh, excellent! Yes, we had been looking for adventurous sorts such as yourselves!” moustache pony said, suddenly beside them both in an instant and gripped the griffon with a hoof over his right shoulder. “You see, my brother and I are branching out! We are sending this wagon on to other towns and villages to finish selling our goods. We need to go back to Canterlot to deal with our investors.” Handy looked at the wagon. It was fairly big with a number of crates. He looked at himself and down at Joachim and chewed the inside of his mouth. Neither of them were built for pulling something like that for any length of time. “You’ll be helping Charity Bell as she pulls the wagon,” the younger brother said. Oh, thank God.

“Charity Bell?” Handy asked.

“Oh yes, another recent employee. She came to us yesterday to sign up. Ohhh Charity!” Flim said, or was that Flam? Ah, who cared? A whitish-pink earth pony with a long, purple mane trotted over to the group.

“Yeah?” she said abruptly, evidently not in a chipper mood.

“I’d like you to meet your partners. They’ll be traveling with you,” the unicorn said, gesturing to the pair of them.

“Hi! I’m Joachim!” Charity just looked at Joachim with disinterest but did a double take, blinking furiously when she noticed Handy. He sighed heavily. You know, getting treated like you sprouted a second head got old after a while. Honestly, how in the hell had she not noticed him until now? He kind of stuck out.

“And I’m Handy,” he said, extending his hand and bending over a bit. The earth pony was hesitant for a moment before smiling lightly and shaking his hand with her hoof.

“A… pleasure,” she said. Handy sensed a bit of uncertainty in her voice and something odd in her eyes. Shifty ponies. Shifty ponies errywhere. “If that’s all, boss?” she asked, turning back to Flam… Flim… Whatever.

“Ah contraire, we actually need to be going now. The wagon is in your care. Now you know the rules,” the unicorn stated before brother McAwesomestach piped up. “These goods are in clearance and need to be sold before the end of the month. You’ll get to keep the profits after paying your fellows here their share of course, and when you return to us, you’ll get that position we talked about.” The mare looked between the brothers and Handy before nodding.

“I understand. So we’re setting off now then?” she asked

“Indubitably, my dear!” Mustache pony said before his brother spoke in his place.

“I’d advise you hurry your pace. I believe we’ve sold all we’re going to sell here in Foalsdale. We need to get a move on if we want to catch the train.”

“Indeed, brother of mine,” said the younger one, magically tying a knot in a coin purse he put inside his saddlebags. “You do us proud, kids,” he said as he trotted off, Mustache brother not far behind him, tipping his hat to them.

Charity Bell watched them leave. As soon as they were out of sight, she slunk to her haunches and let out a breath. Handy raised an eyebrow. “I take it you’re not fond of our bosses?” he asked, noticing as Joachim went over to the wagon and fixing the tarp into place. He had a sneaking suspicion he was trying to see if he could snag a loose bottle of salve out of the crates, for surely those were the bottles he saw.

“My bosses actually,” Charity said, eyes closed. She took another breath before getting back to her hooves and opening her eyes to look up at Handy. “Since I’m the one paying you with my profits, I’m your boss. And what exactly are you anyway? A mutant minotaur?”

‘Minotaurs too? Why not just throw dragons into this bucket too?’ Handy mentally sighed. This pony was going to be difficult to work with, and he could tell he didn’t like her already. Ah well, money was money. Time to work the old charm. Handy gave her a warm smile and closed his eyes briefly before opening them to look at her. “My apologies, I am a human. I come from a distant land.”

“Oh yeah? And where’s that?” she asked, looking at the bottom of her hoof as if mulling something over. Handy noticed she was wearing a horseshoe, which was odd. He had not noticed any of the ponies other than the miners wear any. Perhaps ponies only wore them when they were doing heavy labour? Must be uncomfortable nailing iron into your foot all the time. Handy considered her question. You know, this was a land of myth and legend, right? Fantasy and magic? They never heard of humans? Well, he HAD been only telling half-truths and not-quite-lies so far. Why not go all the way? Time to get mythological.

“Milesia,” he said. “One of many human nations. An island on the edge of a great sea that borders our continent.” The pony perked up at that.

“But I thought you said you were a human?”

“I am, but you must understand, there are many human nations. We can’t all call our country after our species, so instead we call them after our ancient tribal names for ourselves. I am a Milesian, a son of Milesius the Conqueror. My family were nobles but have fallen on hard times these past few generations. We still carry our traditions. I am currently here in Equestria, lost, so I make my way as an adventurer and a fortune seeker.”

Charity eyed Handy for a moment, as if considering what he said. “Then how did you get here?” she asked. A reasonable question, but Joachim stepped in to answer it.

“Oh you’ll love this,” he said, shit-eating grin activated and at the ready. Handy groaned audibly. “You not up to telling her? Okay then.”

“Wait, Joachim—”

“You see Handy here—”

“Joach—”

“Shush! Woke up in the middle of the Everfree right?”

“The Everfree?” Charity asked, her vision narrowing in incredulity.

“Yeah! He was a right mess when he came out.”

“I was in there a whole day! Give me a break!”

“And a whole night! Probably longer, and do you want to know why, Charity?” Joach asked. Handy facepalmed.

“Why?” she asked, now interested.

“Well see, Handy here apparently has a constitution to rival gods,” Joachim said.

“Joachim, this is not the ti—”

“So one night, coming home from a long day’s work, our good friend here decided he had enough of life’s droll and decided to ah… wet his beak shall we say…” He smiled up at the fuming human. Charity’s face blanched.

“Nooo…” She had begun to see where Joachim was going with this.

“Yeeeeep!” Joachim stated. “Handy here got so drunk, so, incredibly drunk he… went for a stroll.” Handy facepalmed. “And crossing oceans and who knows how many miles of land, ended up here in Equestria, and woke up in the middle of the Everfree.”

“That’s… ridiculous,” Charity said, but her face was cracking, trying to suppress a smile. “A-ha, you mean to tell me, in one night, he got so drunk he travelled across continents and oceans? That’s impossible.” Joachim raised an eyebrow and turned his head, which was now sixty five percent shit-eating bird grin, to face Handy. Handy, now flustered, looked at the ground.

“It… wasn’t just one night…”

“Excuse me?” Charity said, trying to suppress a chortle, for she could no longer suppress a smile.

“My hair wasn’t… this long before my stupor… and it was winter…”

“Didn’t quite catch that.” She leaned closer for him to speak up.

“WEEKS! ALRIGHT! I WENT ON A DRUNKEN BENDER THAT LASTED WEEKS! I AM MISSING NEARLY AN ENTIRE SEASON’S WORTH OF MEMORIES! I GOT SO DRUNK I HAD AN ADVENTURE THAT TOOK ME TO A LAND THAT IS LITERALLY ENTIRELY UNKNOWN TO ME ON THE FAR SIDE OF THE GOD DAMN WORLD!” Handy shouted, thoroughly embarrassed. “I always knew I could take a substantial amount of drink without losing my senses or even my memories. More so than my father could at any rate. But I never did, but one night I decided ‘fuck the world’ and got drunk beyond legendary proportions and now I am stuck here in Equestria with pigeon shit here making a mockery of me, and worst of all is that I don’t even know why I did it.” Charity just stared. Joachim roared with laughter at Handy’s reaction. The human growled and bared his teeth. That made Charity flinch just a bit, but she soon got over it, barely stifling a laugh herself.

“To be fair – ha – he hasn’t touched the stuff since. Even when he was serving as a bartender,” Joachim said.

“Would you!? How would you like it if the boot was on the other foot… paw… human thing…? Fuck you!” Joachim roared again with mirth. Charity was now laughing openly too. Handy stalked off.

--=--

The three of them made good progress for the rest of the day. Well, good progress after Joachim and Charity were done going back and forth at Handy and making the journey seem longer than it was. Their trail took them through a long trade, flanked on either side by tall pine woods, leaving the three of them largely to themselves. Joachim took to flying above the treetops to keep an eye out for any trouble, leaving Handy with the earth pony who was pulling the cart with an ease that surprised him.

“So, Handy.” Oh here we go. As much as he hated her right now, charm mode was easily best mode, so he stuck that gentle smile on his face and played his part. “What’s your home like?” Handy pondered that for a moment. Might as well continue with his mythological shtick.

“Lonely and melancholic mostly,” he said. “It is a land of rolling rolls, where the lakes are as deep as the mountains are tall, mist covers the land at twilight, where the moon is masked by eternal clouds and sunshine dimmed by rain. We Milesians are considered mad by most of our kin, for all our wars are merry and all our songs are sad.” Charity seemed to wilt, her ears drooping back.

“Oh… uh… sorry,” she said.

“My, whatever for?” he asked jovially.

“I uh, I don’t mean to be rude but your homeland sounds… terrible.”

“It really isn’t. It is close to our hearts, and we do love it so. Indeed, such is our love of it that it has spawned our reputation for saints and scholars, for when there is so little warmth in the land, we find warmth in the mind.”

“But… it sounds so sad.”

“We enjoy the sadness.”

“Why?” she asked, now concerned. “Do your people not know love and friendship?” Handy laughed.

“My little pony, of course we do! But how can we not love our sadness too? We are born into it, it is what we breathe, and it is infused in our blood which is red, as sure as the sun shines. Home is where the heart is after all.”

“But surely you can at least change your weather so that it is not always so dreary at the least…,” she pleaded. Handy shrugged. More of this weather control nonsense.

“We cannot control the weather where I am from. It does what it wilt, and we have learned to live with its tyranny,” he said. Charity looked to the ground as if digesting what he had told her. She looked back up at him and… Was that worry? Fear? Oh dear, he’d gone and frightened a pony again. Maybe he laid it on a bit thick.

“You said your people know of love right?” she asked. Handy nodded. “I don’t see how with a country like that, but if such is true, do you have a special somepony waiting for you at home?” she asked, looking concerned. Handy snorted.

“That’s a tad bit personal to ask, but if you must know, my dear, no, I do not have sweetheart awaiting for me back upon my home shores.” She looked disappointed. Now that just confused Handy. He was about to enquire further before Joachim landed before them.

“We got trouble,” he said, a concerned look on his face.

“What is it?” Charity asked. Handy readied his staff.

“Pegasi, six of them, in two pairs of three. They’re trailing green cloaks behind them.”

“Thieves?” Handy asked. He had learned a lot from the fight in the caverns, namely when fighting tiny horses, stay the FUCK away from their kicks and you’re golden. Now, FLYING horses on the other hand…

“I don’t know, but they seem to be converging on our location.” Handy smacked his forehead and groaned.

“Of course they did, Joachim, they’ve been following you! They noticed you were following the road through the forest and figured you were protecting something.” His mind raced.

“We need to get off the road before they find us!” Charity said, panic biting at the edge of her voice. Handy looked at the road before them, his face frowning.

“That may not be an option,” he said and gestured ahead with his stick. Three more ponies trotted down the road towards them, coming around a bend in the road. They wore green cloaks and hoods. The cloaks bore an image of a crescent moon with a silhouette of a pine tree imprinted upon it. Looking up, the pegasi were now hovering above them, still high above the treeline but with a clear access to the small party should they decide to dive in to attack them.

“Thornwood Patrol! Stay where you are!” one of them shouted. The party really had no choice to obey—they couldn’t get off-road, and Charity was still hooked to the wagon. Joachim looked about him nervously as the three ground patrol ponies closed up on them. The lead one, an earth pony, lowered his hood.

“I’m Sergeant Haypenny. Terribly sorry about this, but we’ve been on high alert searching for criminals trading in illegal goods. I’m afraid we’re going to need to search your wares.” Joachim, slowly extended his wings and moved slowly back to the wagon. Handy gripped his stick and stood in front of Charity.

“We’re only trying to get by here. How do we know you’re really officers of the law and not brigands with matching coats?” Handy asked, his eyes darting from pony to pony. ‘Okay, two earth ponies, strong. That one there’s a unicorn, weaker but the magic might be a bit of trouble.’ His eyes darted upwards. ‘Pegasi, fast and aerial. My best bet is getting into the woods—their flight will count for nought.’ Haypenny sighed.

“Private,” he ordered.

“Sir!” the female unicorn said. She pulled down her hood and magicked out a pendant with a seal of the sun and moon upon it in gold. Joachim clicked his beak.

“Ponyfeathers,” he swore. Handy didn’t like the sound of that—sounded like Joachim thought it was legit and authoritative. Looking back, he saw that Charity was cringing too. He sighed.

“Bollocks. Alright, search away,” he said, stepping aside.

“Thank you. Now if you could step away from the wagon, sirs, ma’am.” Charity unhooked herself from the wagon as the three of them stepped over into the ditch at the side of the road. The three ground ponies marched over to the wagon and started to get to work. Handy immediately felt apprehensive. He knew those snake oil hawkers were too shifty to be trusted. Hmm, snake oil… salamander salve. Handy chewed the inside of his lip for a moment before his mind finally clinched it. Salamander salve was powerful, probably even magical when he thought about it. It made sense, considering what it could do. In fact, ever since he used it, he had been hankering for it. He didn’t even need it, but he wanted it, badly at times, almost like… like an addiction.

‘Oh dear God,’ he realised at last, ‘we’re drug mules! This is a bust!’ He crouched and pulled the two others closer to him. “We need. To fucking bail. Right now.” he hissed.

“What!? And leav—” Charity said before he squeezed her shoulder tighter.

“Flim and Flam set us up to take the fall. These cops are here for us!” he hissed. “Salamander salve is an illegal drug!” Joachim’s eyes widened. “When I say go, we move.” Charity shook her head.

“No, I need this! I need the bi—”

“Sir! We found them! All the crates are full of contraband!” one of the earth ponies said. Handy saw the pegasi making ready to dive at them.

“MOVE!” he roared. He swung his arm around and scooped up the startled earth pony who only a moment before had been making to move closer to the wagon. She yelped in protest, but he didn’t give one rotten fuck as he sprinted into the darkness of the woods. Joachim did the same dodging between the thick pines as they heard the shouting of the ponies behind them.

Handy lost sight of Joachim, but he heard the noise of the ponies behind him as they crashed through the thickets. He cursed, evergreen forests and their lack of lush ground vegetation being not what he needed right now. Charity was slowing him down, and she was protesting anyway, so he gratefully dropped her on her flank and bellowed,“Run! Get away! They can’t catch all of us!” at the stunned-looking pony. He didn’t bother looking back as he ran on.

He never saw the pegasi coming until he had almost kicked him square on the jaw with a literal flying kick. He pulled up short and saw the pony break the bark of a nearby tree. He winced, for that could have been him. He immediately swung his staff around and clocked the guardspony on the side of the head, sending it sprawling to the ground. It quickly got to its feet but not before Handy rushed over, and with a swing of his boot, swiped up under the pony and caught him square in the gut. Winding it, he whirled the staff around and down, cracking it against the back of the pony’s head. The pony went down, and Handy breathed heavily, adrenaline pumping through him. He hurried on.

‘That’s twice now, Joach,’ Handy thought viciously. ‘That’s two jobs you’ve gotten us into that ended in disaster. If I ever see you again—’ His thoughts were interrupted as a rock caught him in the shoulder, the force and shock of the blow sending him to the ground. He groaned as he stumbled to his feet. He had fallen into a decline. Looking up, an imperious-looking unicorn glared down at him in scorn, another rock telekinetically held aloft.

“You’re under arrest for handling of illegal goods and assault of an officer of the law. Surrender now or I will forcibly place you into custody.” Handy utterly refused to take this mare seriously with that kind of high pitched voice. However, he struggled to figure out a way to escape this mare’s wrath without incapacitating her. He did not relish the idea of hitting a woman, alien or otherwise.

“Alright,” Handy said, getting up until he was on one knee and held his hands above his head, the staff still clasped in his right. “I’ll surrender.” The mare blinked in surprise and smiled.

“Really?” she asked hopefully, dropping the rock.

‘Excellent, she’s naïve.’ “Hahaha NOPE!” he said and flung the staff overhead at her. The stick spun end over end, and the mare let out a yelp of surprise as she brought up a shield. Handy had thought she’d do the smart thing and catch it in her magical grasp and fling it back, but this worked out even better. He sprung to his feet and dashed behind a tree. This was going to take some thinking.

“Where are you!?” she demanded as she stalked down from her perch, his staff gripped telekinetically as several stones circled over her head ready to be flung. He shifted, slunk down, and picked up a stone. He flung it to his right where it, thankfully, hit another rock creating a discernable noise. “Aha!” she cried, rushing over to investigate a thoroughly empty bush. Handy used the distraction to duck behind another tree slightly further away from the mare. “Grrrnh! That’s not funny! Get out here and face your fate like a stallion, coward!”

‘Believe me, if there was any honour for me in it, I would already be out there kicking your tiny arse,’ Handy thought angrily. He then saw an opportunity. The mare walked up close to his tree, her left side closest to it, and her head was turned away. He reached around the tree, and coming behind her, tapped her right shoulder. She turned her head suddenly to her right, her weapons raised. He then leaned around the tree’s other side. Bending over, he brought his mouth close to her ear. Looking away as she was, she didn’t notice him.

“Boo!” he said softly before jerking upright suddenly as the pony spun around with tremendous force… and promptly smacked her head into the hard bark, her magic discharging violently from her horn and shooting upwards as she collapsed in a daze. Handy snickered. That worked out better than expected.

Crack.

Handy froze.

Creeeeeeeeeee-ack.

He looked up. A rather distressingly large portion of the upper tree was hanging by a sliver of bark skin. Handy’s eyes widened. ‘Oh fuck me sideways,’ he thought.

CRACK! The branch fell at a terrifying speed, and Handy dove out of the way. He was not quick enough. With a yelp of pain, he felt the tree crash down on his legs, pinning him to the ground. “Fuck!” he swore. “Shitshitshitshit!”

“Private Dewglow! Report!” he heard a voice shout in the distance. “Has anyone seen that unicorn!?”

“Sir! Pony down!” a responding voice shouted. It seemed like they had found that pegasi he took out before. Handy struggled.

“What is it with this world and fucking my legs over!?” he hissed.

“Handy!” a voice uttered behind him. He looked and saw Joachim fall down from above. He looked terrible. Handy was pleased that he at least was not getting off easy.

“Joach! Damn it, man! Look at the trouble you got us into again!”

“I couldn’t have known!” he protested as he rushed over to help push the tree off of Handy’s legs. Luckily, they didn’t feel broken. “I mean, those ponies seem kind enough an-and it was supposed to be a simple job…”

“What, like the mine? I vaguely remember something about a week of slavery and almost dying fifty million times, ye eejit!”

“I’m sorry! Look let me…”

“Oh, just go!” Handy said.

“What?”

“I said go! Buzz off or they’ll catch you too!”

“I can’t just leave you here! I need to help you get out. You’d do the same for me!”

‘No, I really wouldn’t,’ Handy thought viciously, thoughts surfacing about abandoning an unconscious Joachim as he explored that cave, guilt and opportunism being the only reason Joachim was still alive. “Just go, we can’t lift it!”

“But—”

“MOVE IT, BIRD BRAIN!”

“Over here! I heard something!” one of the guards shouted. Joachim looked conflicted. Handy sighed.

“Look, I’ll get out of this—trust me on this. Now get out of here, we’ll meet up again sometime,” he said. ‘Because I know the universe isn’t done fucking with me yet. It never is.’ “Now go!” he said, shooing Joachim off. He took a few steps back, looking at the forest towards where the sounds of the guardsponies emanated. His wings opened up as he looked back at Handy.

“Sorry,” he said at last. Handy didn’t even look at him. He took off into the trees before closing his wings and jumped from tree to tree to get away.

Handy sat there, considering his options. How on earth was he going to worm his way out of this? He knew it was foolish to refuse the griffon’s help, but he was furious with the bird and too proud to be saved yet again by the damn chimera. It was then he saw the tree lit up as if ablaze with green balefire. Handy let out a yelp of shock, for the tree lifted up and off of his legs. He quickly pulled himself out from under it, patting down his ruined jeans and lower robe, confounded by how they were unaffected by the flames. He got on his feet as the tree was placed back on the ground and the flames dissipated. The tree was unharmed. He heard hoofsteps to his left and turned.

“Charity?” Handy asked as the earth pony emerged from the shadows, her eyes briefly flashing green.

“This way, follow me!” she said. Handy hesitated but then followed after her. He chased after the pony deeper into the woods, the sounds of the guardsponies behind him eventually growing quieter as he followed the pony, ducking and weaving between trees. Eventually, the pony stopped in front of a large hole beneath a rather old and gnarled tree. “This should do,” she said.

“Do for what?” Handy asked, panting, “And how did you lift that tree? I didn’t think earth po—”

“No time, quick!” She reached into her mane and pulled out an odd, circular object with a green pulsating gem in the middle. The cover looked chitinous. She pressed down on the gem and threw the disc into the hole. Handy was momentarily blinded by a flash of green light. When his vision normalized, he was looking at a rather ominous green vortex where the hole used to be. It was almost sickening to look at. “Quick, get in!” Charity demanded.

“Charity, what the hell is this? What’s going on?” Handy responded. She groaned and moved behind him.

“Get your flank in there!” she said as she bucked Handy, sending him collapsing into the vortex. For a brief moment, everything Handy knew was a whirling, dizzying spin cycle of burning sensation, and then, silence. It stopped as soon as it had started, and Handy slowly pushed himself off of the ground, which was suddenly cold and flat. It was smoothed stone. He looked up around him and saw arching walls leading up to a high ceiling. The architecture was strange and alien to him, like something you would see on the ship the colonial marines found in the first Aliens movie—black, but with a sheen and lots and lots of green light.

He was surrounded by creatures. They looked like ponies but… they were different. They were covered in a black, hard shell and had prominent fangs. Their legs had holes cut clean through, as if sliced through with a laser. They had large eyes, entirely covered in a light blue shell, giving an entirely insectoid appearance. Most of them had insect wings, and he heard a large degree of buzzing as they milled around them, spears pointing at him as he knelt there. Another noise sounded behind him. The nearest comparison he could make was a raging fire, suddenly swallowed down a sink, followed by hoofsteps.

“Thorax, report,” one of the creature before him demanded, looking over Handy’s shoulder. Handy followed his gaze to see Charity Bell behind him just as she was consumed in green flames and… turned into another one of these… things. “Your mission was to scout and ingratiate yourself in Canterlot. Why have you brought this thing here?”

“Captain, I am also responsible for bringing any threats to the throne to the kingdom’s attention,” the thing that used to be Charity Bell answered. She, if it even was a she, looked at Handy with those cold, armoured eyes. “This creature is heartless.” Well that was just rude! “I was unable to detect him until he was literally right in front of me. I probed him for information and to determine if he was a viable food source.” Okay, well that was just all kinds of terrifying. “This creature, this… human, is capable of mimicking all forms of expression. I have seen him express embarrassment, anger, and joviality to a convincing degree, but felt none of it. He is null, a space that does not exist.”

“What?” Handy asked. He was smacked on the back of his head by one of the creatures.

“Silence! Continue, Thorax,” the ‘captain’ said. It was hard to distinguish between them honestly.

“This creature cannot be detected nor read, nor fed on. We were beset upon by Equestrian forest patrol, and I determined it was best that the ponies do not discover his abilities, lest they use them against us, so I brought him here, using the emergency sidhe.”

“You have done well, Thorax. I will see to it that it does not go unrewarded,” the captain responded. ‘Thorax’ lowered her… its head.

“I live to serve, Captain.”

“That you do. Alert the queen! And put this one in a pod.”

“Pod?” Handy asked, now immensely concerned. He didn’t understand anything of what was being passed around. However, he didn’t have long to fret over these concerns, as something big and hard hit the back of his head, and the human hit the floor like a sack of potatoes, unconscious.

Author's Note

Shoddy chapter is shoddy. Not fond of this one but I really needed to get the plot chugging along. Criticism is appreciated.

Chapter 5 - Questionable motives

He hit the ground hard and scrambled back to his feet. Something warm and wet ran down his forehead, but he paid it no mind. He rushed off and turned around a stalactite. The ground was a chaotic mess—here an ancient stone slab, there on the ground the remains of an ancient rock fall. He could not tell how old these ruins actually were. Not even the changelings who were trapped down here could tell for certain.

And the colossal undead dragon.

Oh, did I forget to mention that? Yes, that was the monster of the hour that Handy was currently running from. We can get to it in a second once Handy had a moment to catch his breath. He heard the creature roar, and somewhere in the cavernous expanse that was the underground city, he saw the darkness light up as blue flame ran down some ancient street far to Handy’s right. He heard the buzzing screams of changelings as they fled the giant, skeletal death machine. It couldn’t fly, but that was small comfort considering the beast moved far faster than anything that size had any right to.

He skidded to a halt and kicked in the stone doorway of a small house. The slab door was ancient and thin and easily gave way as he dove inside. He crawled up against the wall and sat there for a moment, panting hard. He heard a long, low growl, like a howling wind that reverberated up his street as a heavy weight crushed the rock beneath it. He glanced down at the blue glowing pendant he had taken off of the queen. The thing glowed a light, pulsating blue. He hurriedly hid it under his robe and covered it up. The colossal footfalls continued. He heard the growling grow intense, and the wall he was sitting against vibrated. The dragon was right outside his hiding spot!

He clasped against his mouth, for he could not afford to be found now. The creature spoke—some horrible mockery of a language he couldn't possibly comprehend, too ancient and too warped by the balefire twisted skeletal skull from which it poured forth. Whatever it said, it then moved off, its ponderous weight crushing the ground beneath it as Handy let go of a breath he didn’t know he had been holding. How did it come to this?

--=--

So this all started with Handy waking up in a vat of green goo.

It was a strange. He wasn’t sure how to describe it. He felt… happy… sad… angry? He felt everything all at once, but it also felt… muted… as if he was groggy but without actually feeling as such. It was then his waking mind realized he was subsumed in liquid and he would probably need to breathe soon. He thrashed uselessly, his movements slow and cumbersome in the viscous substance. After a few moments of struggling, he realised it was without good cause. Breath or no breath, he didn't appear to be drowning.

“It’s awake!” a buzzing voice which echoed strangely in his ears announced. He reached out, and his hands felt something soft yet firm. He pushed off against it and turned himself around. He was upside down but now at least he was facing a kind of translucent cover. There was a pair of those creatures looking at him, the blue shields on their eyes gone. One had blue irises with feminine lashes; the other had purple and possessed a strong jaw. “It should still be asleep!”

“We need to make the Queen aware of this,” the other one, the more feminine one, said. Again with this ‘Queen’. What were these things?

“Make me aware of what?” another voice cut in, and Handy immediately saw the eyes of the two creatures before him were covered with the same blue shell from before, flicking from some unseen hiding place within their faces as they whipped around and bowed. Handy could barely see a foot in front of him as it was through the green gunk. He sure as hell couldn’t make out whatever was speaking from the darkness beyond his captors. Anyway, from his perspective, he could barely make out his two jailers, but they quickly became woefully insignificant before the tall, striding horse that came before him. Yes, horse—this creature was taller than the others, much taller, and so thin as to look almost sickly.

It had a long horn upon its head, which was twisted and vicious-looking, and had a green shell worn about its back just below its insectoid wings. Unlike most of the other creatures he had seen, it possessed a mane and a tail. The hair was slick, long, and turquoise. Although it was hard to tell from Handy’s position, oddly enough, its hair had holes in much the same way parts of its body did. ‘Are these creatures alright?’ Handy asked himself. ‘That can’t be healthy.’ Then he remembered these creatures had kidnapped him, knocked him out, stuck him in a tank of drugs that made him feel extremely uncomfortable and confused, and so decided he desired for them all the suffering in the world.

“Mistress!” one of the creatures spoke. “Milady Chrysalis! The creature has woken!” The creature referred to as Chrysalis raised an imperious eyebrow at the smaller creature before turning to look at Handy. Her eyes seem to widen as she saw a wide-awake Handy glaring at her from inside the pod. She, he corrected himself, was close enough for him to discern the feminine features that the equines of this world possessed, horrible, hole-ridden, leper beasts or otherwise.

“Interesting. It should be asleep, having lovely dreams, and expressing enough love to feed the pair of you. Is this the creature the scout spoke of?” the queen asked.

“Yes, my liege lady,” said one of the guards, both of whom had backed off and now stood behind her. The queen raised a black, hole-ridden hoof and tapped the screen. Handy felt a reverberation through his fleshy prison, and he grabbed his head. The chemicals in the goo had reacted and were having a larger effect on him, resulting in a major headache. The creature tapped the screen again, a frown on her face. More pain. Handy had had enough, and he lashed out at the screen, flaying at the fleshy substance uselessly. The Queen recoiled at the display of violence, shock evident in her face.

“Fascinating. It does not react the way it should. That should have calmed him… And Thorax said she could not feel anything from the creature, even when it seemed to display emotion?” Chrysalis asked, head turned to the guards but her eyes still lingering on the captive, angry human. He tried to speak, but words would not leave his mouth.

“Yes, my Queen!”

“Hmmm…” she mused as her horn began to glow. She placed the tip against the pod Handy was in, and immediately he felt a pressing pain around his head. His mouth opened in a soundless scream as the goo around him vibrated violently. He clutched his head and began pulling at his hair, lights flashing behind his eyes, the pain distracting him from the immense pressure building up in the back of his mind. “Nothing…” the queen whispered, almost disappointed. Handy did not hear it, his mind too relieved that the pain had stopped. “Feed the pod different mixtures. I want this creature broken and eating out of my hoof,” Chrysalis commanded, walking back into the shadows. She turned briefly to look at Handy once more. “And order Thorax to the throne room. I wish to reward her. If this creature had fallen into those accursed pony hooves, I shudder to think what they could do if they weaponized… whatever it is that prevents us feeding off of him.” She disappeared once more into the darkness beyond the pod's limited field of vision.

“Yes, my Queen,” one of the creatures answered before returning to face Handy. It smiled.

The next three days of Handy’s life were made an absolute hell, and what went through his mind was best left undescribed. Had you ever had a bad acid trip? No? Well neither had Handy. And that was the closest approximation to what he experienced as the creatures kept changing and upping the dosage and volatility of the mixture he was suspended in. During his lucid moments, he realised the nails of his hands had been filed down and that he had been stripped of most of his accoutrements with the exception of his ruined jeans, suffering indignity on top of injury. He resented the creatures so much.

His stomach rumbled, for he had not properly eaten during his stay in the pod, and it was becoming a bit of a problem. He needed something to eat. Badly. Whatever this goo was, ingesting it in no way satisfied his hunger. He eyed the walls of his prison viciously and punched it to no effect. His impotence seemed to amuse his jailers. Many of the creatures stopped by and chatted while observing the ‘strange creature they couldn’t feed off of.’ Handy honestly had no idea what they were talking about. He clearly saw some of the creatures consume pieces of bread normally, and last time he checked, he was made out of food. If these damn monsters wanted to eat him, why didn’t they just eat him! No, they would rather keep him here and play guinea pig!

On the second day, during a lapse in the torture, he noticed one of the creatures before him. Its eye shields retracted, revealing a pair of chartreuse irises that scrutinized him. He scowled down at the creature, having long since righted himself in the pod. “I don’t get it,” the creature said. “You are Heartless, so why did you bother saving me back on the road?” Handy glared down at the creature. It was Thorax, or was that Charity Bell? Oh, he didn’t know how to answer that question. Especially not now when he desired nothing more than to wring the tiny changeling’s neck until it died.

Yes, that was what they called themselves, for he had listened to their inane prattling when they talked before his prison. He smiled at the irony of it all. Changelings, creatures that traded places with loved ones in peoples’ lives and grew powerful from the love and attention of the clueless saps while the real individual was kidnapped and brought beneath the earth to the realm of the Good Folk. He had been kidnapped by what was tantamount to pony faeries and that, more than anything, enraged him further. It was insulting! He was a Milesian! Vanquisher of the fae folk! Conquerors of the veiled isle! God's own barbarians! Warrior poets and sainted scholars! That was Handy’s patrimony!

Or was it? He wasn’t entirely sure any more. His mind went to… such strange and foreign places… and it felt so long ago now….

He soon forgot about Thorax’s presence as the torture started up again, and time became meaningless before his suffering. After the third day, it had finally subsided, and Handy woke up from his dreamless sleep, wondering if he had even slept at all. It was silent. He turned about. None of the changelings were around. He felt the pod shift occasionally, but it was only light movements. The scenery before him didn’t change at all, so he wasn’t moving. Perhaps some of the changelings were working on construction nearby. There certainly did not seem to be any of the bastards here today.

His stomach rumbled with intolerable violence. He needed something to eat. Now. He had been stuck in here for over three days with nothing to eat, and his mind had conjured strange thoughts over that period that took all of his willpower to suppress. Strange, dark, forbidden thoughts. He observed his prison once more and reached out a hand to touch the fleshy wall of his pod. ‘Could…’ His stomach growled. ‘Could I eat… this?’ His mouth opened—it would be salivating at the thought as he stared at the wall deliriously. He tried grasping at it with his hands. His fingers dug into it in places, but he could not tear it off. He needed something sharp, something to cut into it and tear it off, something like—

Handy fell upon the wall and thrashed, his teeth tearing into the fleshy wall with the rabid strength of a starving man. He grabbed it with his canines and pulled back with all his might, tearing off a long section of the wall which he immediately feasted upon. It tasted meaty and was strange, lean, yet tender. Sweet almost. He enjoyed it immensely as he tore back into the section of the wall he had ripped open. It. Was. Heavenly. He had already taken large strips of the meat off the wall. It was thin, frustratingly so! He needed more!

He stopped his feasting as he came to a hard substance with strange grey meaty paste coating it, not unlike that found on a cooked salmon once you took off the skin. He ate that too as he pressed against the hard shell. Another shake of the ground rumbled the pod, and he was surprised he could actually hear it coming from the hard shell, his drug and pain addled mind not fully comprehending the implications of his actions. He heard a large door slam and righted himself in the pod to look out the translucent screen.

He saw the Queen, Chrysalis, in apparent distress. She was panting heavily and her horn was aglow, lifting heavy objects to place against the door behind her. She then began looking for something in among the pods upon the raised section of flooring Handy was imprisoned on. Handy’s mind sobered up. 'It’s her…’ He growled as vengeful thoughts filled his battered consciousness.

“Come on, come on, where is it?” he heard her mutter as she drew closer to his pod. Handy looked at the wall he’d been munching on. Food could wait. He had an idea. Chrysalis searched around yet another pod. A blue pendant hung about her neck.

“No!” she hissed, moving another empty pod up to look underneath it. “No! Scales! Where is it!?” she cried. She trotted back and forth, only coming to a stop when her hooves caused a splash. Looking down, she saw pod goo on the floor. “What in the…” She followed the goo to its source and saw it leaking out of the side of a pod. “That’s no—” she began but did not finish, for at that moment, the side of the pod exploded outward and covered the exhausted royal in the gunk as two grasping appendages reached out towards her widening eyes.

Handy had a few hard rules he stuck to in his life. Never do drugs, never smoke, drink only when it was appropriate and social—one rule he had clearly broken for God knew what reason. Most importantly, never, ever lay his hands on a woman. Mama Handy didn’t raise no barbarian after all. Pity she hadn’t taught him the other aspects of chivalry, but being a child of the twentieth century, he took what he could get. However, three days subjected to emotional and mental torment had a way of… loosening one’s inhibitions, as it were. Well, that and blinding, seething rage.

Handy’s fingers closed about the throat of the startled changeling like iron, as his right fist clasped tightly about her horn and twisted. He took advantage of the pony’s surprise. She had made the mistake of rearing up slightly when he had laid hold of her, so there was little physical effort necessary to swing her from her slick hooves, unable to keep their grip on the now soaked floor as the changeling slammed into the hard ground. All the while, the human screamed an inarticulate roar of hatred into the creature’s face. Handy slipped and his weight momentarily slammed against the queen, causing a squeal of pain. As he forced himself back up, he placed his knee pressed against the base of her neck.

Chrysalis struggled in terror and flailed her hooves, kicking the side of Handy’s legs, but the angle was bad and did nothing. Her horn glowed as she prepared to use magic. Handy roared again, his grip tightening about her throat and horn as he raised her head and slammed it back against the cold ground. Chrysalis was dazed and struggled to breathe. Her horn fired up again, and Handy slammed her back down again. She was more compliant after that. Her breath was low and ragged, and the one eye facing the human looked up at the creature fearfully as he held her there, entirely at his mercy.

He leaned in close and hissed his hatred at her, only one side of her face able to see him in her current position. Her pupil narrowed to a pinprick as her eye widened at the sight of his teeth. He was entirely covered in the goo from the pod. The orange and green ambient lighting of the room cast his face in shadows and clashing hues. His hair slick with the stuff further darkened his visage, giving him a truly nightmarish appearance before the vulnerable parasitoid.

“You have…” Handy’s words were slow and slurred, the numb muscles of his mouth and jaw struggling to obey him, “one chance… to live…” He must have sounded intimidating because the changeling’s one eye widened. “Tell me… what I want to know… and I won’t… snap… this!” Handy pulled at Chrysalis’ horn, causing her to squeal and mewl. He thought he saw her eyes watering, but at that moment, the red mist covered his vision and he cared not for a damn thing in the world. “And I’ll stab you in the heart! Am I understood, creature!?” he demanded. The queen hesitated, but when Handy growled again, she started nodding.

Handy lessened his death grip on the pony’s throat. It was armoured like the rest of her, but it was also soft and malleable, allowing him to get a nice tight grip. She coughed. “Wha-What… are you?” she asked weakly. Handy hissed as he pulled at her horn again.

“Did your precious spy not tell you!? I am human! A Milesian! I am Handy and you, your Majesty, have been subjecting me to unlawful imprisonment and torture!” he hissed. “I did not appreciate that…” He stopped pulling at the creature’s horn as she whimpered once more. “Where am I!?” he demanded. His hand gripping her throat snatched at a pulsating blue gem she was wearing about her neck almost as an afterthought before resuming its position.

“You’re in my kingdom! This is our ancestral home! The city of Lepidopolis! W-We just reclaimed it!” she cried. Handy sighed.

“And where is this... Lepidopolis?” he asked almost casually as something like calm, but not quite, returned to his voice. It was a dead tone of voice with no warmth in it.

“Western Badlands! We were driven from here centuries ago! I-I needed something to give my people hope after…” The queen trailed off as anger tinged her voice. “A-After I failed…” Handy growled back down at her, and she immediately came back to attention.

“How did I get here!?” he hissed.

“Teleported! We can’t use active spells in Equestria without being detected with their new defences, so we have portable rituals that allow my servants to evacuate their positions in emergency!”

“And that leads right back her to your capital?” Handy asked before chuckling darkly. “And suppose one of these emergency extractions were discovered by your enemy? They’d have a back door to march a battalion on your home streets!” he sneered. Chrysalis’ eye stared off into nothing, and he could see her mouth the word ‘no’ as the realization hit her. These ponies and their foolishness!

She looked back up at Handy. He felt her move her hooves a bit and pressed his knee down on her lower neck as a warning. She stayed still but was looking up at the human curiously. “H-How… How did you escape?”

“I was hungry,” Handy said simply.

“But you shouldn’t have been! The goo should have sustained any pony!”

“I am not a pony. I ate my way out,” he responded. Chrysalis’ look of curiosity changed to one of terror.

“B-But the pods are grown from changeseeds, a-a lesser species related to changelings. They’re basically living creatures! Like us!” she protested. Handy smiled viciously and leaned in good and close.

“Pity,” he said, “because now you’ve just admitted to me that you taste delicious!” He watched as he saw she almost broke down altogether as she began thrashing and screaming. “Hey! HEY!” He gripped her again and raised her head, threatening to slam it down again. “Be a good girl and nobody gets eaten today,” he warned and leaned in closer to her. “I promise you that. Clear?” She slowly nodded as she calmed down. Handy blinked. He saw the distress and fear in her eye, the tears streaming down her cheek, her terrified muttering, the small trickle of red on the floor from where he had hit her…

'Mother of God… Forgive me… What am I doing?’ He looked down in disgust. He loosened his grip but did not let go, bile rising in his stomach. “Listen to me, Queen, listen!” he said, bringing her attention back to him. “I will not kill you…” He thought about it. As much as what he had done sickened him, he was in too good of a position to lose. This was a queen, which meant she commanded armies. She could also use magic. And here he was bashing her brains in and threatening to fucking eat her. He had to keep up the act. “If you do what I say…” The ground shook. “And what is that shaking?” he asked. Chrysalis shuddered.

“That…” her buzzing voice answered, “was what drove us from our ancestral home all those centuries ago…” Chrysalis gave the human the short version. Basically what had happened was a dragon had arrived in the underground city of Lepiwhatsit and started shit. Burning people, knocking over buildings, and general hooliganism. Also, it was undead. Guess the undead were a thing in Equestria too. Also a dragon! More fantastical headaches to add to Handy’s growing collection!

Also, it had been long enough ago that Chrysalis and her changelings figured it had been long since moved on. She had needed something to reinvigorate her peoples’ spirits, so she had guided them to retake their home city, her invasion of Equestria having failed in epic fashion. Then there was something about a superweapon at the last minute foiling her invasion and ending the ‘great battle’ of Canterlot castle and sending her and her followers hurtling over the horizon. She really played up that it was a great and terrible struggle. Handy wasn’t sure she was feeding him the whole story, but he had wounded her pride enough. He wasn’t going to go further… but she didn’t need to know that. It turned out Chrysalis had been separated from her defenders as the dragon was now attacking the royal palace, which would explain those occasional tremors they experienced. She had come into the pod room to find an escape route that led into the lower city.

Handy grunted in approval and glared at her as he let go of her horn and throat, his fingers stiff from how tightly he had held onto it. He lessened the pressure of his knee on her neck. She stayed absolutely still until he was off of her and then she immediately shuffled over to the side of a pod and stared at Handy in fear. He was ashamed of himself and his actions, but he could not afford to show that to her. He needed that fear if he was going to use her to get out of here, otherwise she’d just blast him with magic. “I’ll help you find this exit, and you will lead me to the surface,” he said, pointing a finger at her. She flinched, and Handy hated himself for it. “But first… Where are my effects?” he asked coolly. Chrysalis glanced over to a corner of the room, at a small crate. Handy looked at Chrysalis, who cast her gaze downwards to avoid his gaze as he walked over to the crate.

Indeed, it had his clothes, and he put them back on, uncaring that he was still covered in slimy goo. He had remained in the stuff for three days—he could handle it dirtying his clothes. He placed his packbag over his back again and reached into it, pulling out the two slivers of metal from his adventure in the mine. He had sharpened them, for the usefulness of a knife went without saying. He placed them in his belt for convenient access before turning to the abused queen, who was shakily rising to her feet and glancing nervously over at Handy.

“Let’s go.”

--=--

It had taken them another hour to find the hidden button to the exit. The place had shook violently in that time. The tremors had increased in force and regularity, and once he had heard a distant roar. The tunnel door slid open, and it was then that Handy noticed the disparity in architecture. All the rooms he had seen so far, meaning the pod room and the great hall he had seen when he first arrived, had strange H.R. Gigor-esque formations lining everything, but this tunnel had artfully crafted columns sunk into the wall and affectations. The aesthetics seemed similar but… different. And old.

Chrysalis’ horn lit their way as Handy followed her. She occasionally glanced back fearfully, snapping her head forward immediately when she caught Handy’s eye. Thoughts raced in his mind as the two marched down the tunnel, dust shaking from the ceiling as the ground shook on occasion. His obvious discomfort with the actual facts of what he done aside, he knew he was in trouble. He had just assaulted a sovereign ruler of a nation. Sure, she had unlawfully imprisoned him and tortured him—people had killed for less—but that wouldn’t save him from the retribution that would surely follow. His thoughts were interrupted as the changeling said something. “What was that?” he asked. The Queen cringed but repeated herself.

“I… wanted to know why… why you…” she tried to ask. Handy’s heart sunk at that. “I can’t read you… I can’t taste what you’re feeling and that scares me… Scares us that we can’t feed from you.”

“Feed from me?” Handy asked. “I’ve seen you changelings eat. There’s nothing wrong with your stomachs, and if you wanted to feed from me, you could've just eaten me,” he said. The queen coughed and gasped.

“We’d never!” she protested, now stopping to look at him. “W-We… We feed on emotions… We need to. Love is the strongest; it’s the reason I invaded the ponies. I-I had to feed my people…” She trailed off as she glared hard at the ground. “We’re… starving…”

'I’ve had that feeling before. Not fun, but helluva motivator though,’ a rather vicious part of his mind thought. He quashed it. “That’s why you put me in that thing? Because you didn’t understand me?” he asked, unsure of how to feel about all of this. It sounded ludicrous, but so did everything else he ran into in this world. He was going to run with it until reality slapped him in the face with a wet fish and told him to stahp.

“We… were trying to make you dream, fall into a trance where you’d be with all those you’d love so we could feed off of you,” she admitted.

“Well that’s your first mistake,” he said, causing her to glance up. “I don’t dream, never have since I came to these lands. I was in that pod either awake or in a dreamless state. Time was meaningless to me. And your little… toxins were extremely painful.” Chrysalis' eyes widened.

“I… We didn’t mean to cause you—”

“Suffering unending? I bet you didn’t. But you did and I am angry… and very hungry,” he said coldly, glaring at the queen. He was still legitimately angry with her, even though he had cooled considerably because of the shamefulness of his actions. “'Sides, even if you could ‘feed’ from me, you’d probably not like the taste. There’s no love to be found in my heart, only anger,” he said half-truthfully. He gestured forward. “Now, go on then. There’s a good lass.” The expression on the changeling’s face was unreadable, but she complied and walked down the path. Handy saw her shudder.

--=--

The two came out of the tunnel, which opened up into a small room filled with broken stone furnishings and strange pictograms depicting horse-like creatures similar to ponies. Changelings, he reasoned, but it was hard to make out when everything was the same sterile grey. Chrysalis’ magic pushed opened a thin stone slab in one wall. A doorway, it fell over and cracked as it hit the ground. The changeling walked out, and Handy followed after her.

The sight before him literally took his breath away. It was a vast, cavernous expanse. Dark black rock dominated most of the formations, but that was just the landscape. Huddled amongst the towering stalagmites and built into vast slopes were the grey towers and parapets of a vast city whose stone shone amongst the dark rock. The vast ceiling of the cavern was covered in a subtly moving mass of luminescent plantlife and shone like multihued stars, bathing the city in soft lights. Gentle, pure streams of water flowed into cunningly crafted rivulets in the walls and natural crenelations of the rock face, delivering fresh water to all points in the city.

But the show stoppers were the huge white stalactites that hung so far above them, towering in grandeur and splendid to behold. Their entire surface was carved in loving detail. Crenulations formed to siphon water from some source in the rock above them all caused water to cascade down silvered drains along its surface, the architecture designed to make it seem as if the water hugged the structure, defying gravity as it fell along its surface, tapering to a point and falling from it in a single waterfall that sparkled gloriously as it fell into great reservoirs below. He stood there in appreciation of the dark glamour and sepulchral beauty of the changeling city.

“… Credit where credit is due,” Handy mouthed, still gazing around him. “Your city is beautiful. I can see why ye’d want it back.” He continued to catch more and more little details he had missed. He heard shuffling behind him before the queen responded.

“If you take the oaken stairs, it will lead to the surface,” he heard her say before hearing the buzz of wings. He turned but only saw a black and turquoise blur as the queen of the Changelings rose into the air and flew off, free from her captor.

“…Sorry,” he said after her, far too quiet to be actually heard. He heard a roar and some colossal crash from somewhere over the horizon of white buildings. The city rose and fell with the cavern, and there was no way he could see where the noise was coming from. But he decided he did not want to be anywhere near that terrible sound, so he had made his way from the house he and Chrysalis had emerged from.

It was then that he finally noticed it – the chittering wave of noise that had been his ears’ constant companion upon exiting the tunnel. He had dismissed it as more ambient background noise, much like the constant sound of gently flowing water, interrupted rudely by the thunderous sounds of the dragon. He soon realised it wasn’t. It was, in fact, the sound of an uncounted number of changelings screaming in panic.

He discovered this as he ran down the empty streets of the dead city, looking for any central point from which he could find the ‘oaken stairs’ to which Chrysalis had referred. He came upon his first gaggle of terrified changelings as he turned a corner into a small square with a still active fountain. The changelings saw him and momentarily seemed paralysed with indecision. However, a thunderous boom and the shaking of the buildings around them stirred them from their reverie as they quickly decided Handy was small fry in comparison to their own survival and buzzed, literally, off in various directions.

Handy was entirely in approval of their logic. He had very little trouble from then on from the changelings other than the nervous feeling he got of being watched at all times. The novelty that was his admiration of the old changeling city was quickly dying out in the face of the utter maze it turned out to be. Handy found himself turned round and round again. The only real consistent landmarks he could make out were the hanging towns so far above him. He got one solid indicator of where he was going once however. That was when he saw the bony ridge of the dragon’s back rise slightly higher than the hillside buildings that were looming before him, and Handy decided to run in the entirely opposite direction.

With the constant threat of the monstrosity ever present, its footfalls and the destruction of the town and the occasional explosion of blue, burning brilliance marking the silhouettes of the buildings around him, Handy quickly came to a realization. The changelings weren’t running away in one direction; they were running for their lives in every direction. His own captors had no idea how to get out of here! Where the hell were those Oaken Stairs Chrysalis told him about!?

More shaking, a sudden roar that was dangerously close which deafened the human as flames burst out of windows of surrounding buildings covering him in glass, the dragon was nearly on top of him, and he didn’t even know! This time, a building to Handy’s immediate left shuddered and, as if in slow motion, leaned over out onto the street. Handy managed to dive out of the way as the building collapsed and ancient masonry and brick spilt onto the street. He coughed, pushing himself up, entirely covered in grey dust. He turned a corner and came upon several changelings who immediately rounded on him. Something caused them to pause. He looked down on them, and still hacking, he spoke.

“Where… are the Oaken… Stairs!?” he demanded, almost snarled. The changelings merely stared at him. There was more shaking, a distant roar of grave death, another flash of blue fire illuminating some unfortunate street behind him he couldn’t see, but whose glow was felt as much as seen. The changelings ran. Handy stood there for a moment, dumbstruck, before he looked down at himself. Somehow, during his search of the city, he had neglected to make use of the plentiful water around him to clean the gunk off of him, so now he was covered head to toe in the ashes of a dead city, a pulsating gem hung about his neck, and rivulets of blood running down his face and arms from tiny cuts, creating a river network of red amidst the ashen grey stuck to his face. Smelling burning, he turned around to see parts of his robe had actually caught alight.

After a quick panic as he patted out the fire, he realised he must have appeared like some kind of dread spectre to the poor changelings, made all the more terrifying since apparently they could not ‘sense’ him. He leaned over a nearby fountain and looked at himself in the water. He had guessed correctly. He was a right vision of death. He spat to clear his mouth and was surprised to see some blood in his phlegm. Right, smiling scared ponies – he must remember not to do that, especially with bloodied teeth.

And then the world ended. The square he was now in was large, with many fancy looking stone buildings surrounding it and some kind of grand temple behind him. It promptly exploded in a hail of stone and dust as a bone white draconic skull, bathed in grave light, burst forth. The strength and force of the blast sent Handy flying. He landed hard and rolled, chunks of stonework and artistry crashing around him. He hurriedly pushed himself back up and staggered back as the huge skeletal lizard thundered into the square.

Now, it was very hard to describe the movements of a colossal death lizard without it seeming somehow lacking. It was well over one hundred and fifty feet in length. Its long, articulated neck possessed long, twisted, black, bony spines that jutted out at odd angles from the armoured disks that made up its neck. Four long, spiked horns, one of which was broken, protruded from the sides of its head, sloping up and back from its head, giving the skull a truly daemonic visage. Its chest was a raging furnace, its heart nothing more than a roaring, white hot fire of such magnificence and brilliance that it was almost blinding to look at. The immense rib cage that housed it cast shadows upon the dragon's surroundings from its light, casting all before it in bars of darkness from which nothing would escape alive. No heat came from the blaze, only chill as the balefire sucked all the warmth from the air. Its long, bony back was covered in chains and long rusted weapons and the crushed bones of much smaller creatures. Its great wings were thankfully shorn and missing, a great and terrible violence having been done to rid the beast of flight. Its long, prehensile, slashing tail ended in a bulbous mass of bone and marrow, riven with great protrusions. The beast swung its tail as a warrior might swing a maul. It did not walk, it conquered.

And this great creature, ageless, deathless, and adorned with the bones of defeated heroes, surveyed the dead city it dominated and ruled… and looked down at the human with all the hatred of the abyss in its empty sockets.

Yep. Handy was done here. Time to go.

The next thing his mind was conscious of was him sprinting out of the courtyard as the world was sundered behind him. The great beast let out a deafening roar of hatred that almost knocked Handy from his feet. Not from its force, you understand, but from the raw, primordial effect it had upon his mind. That was not a sound one ran from; that was a sound of inevitability, a sound that caused lesser beasts to kneel down and await their fate, commanding and evil and riven with finality. Handy, however, was not such a base creature, and so he hardened his heart and gripped his mind with all of his will and struggled on. The ground shook as the beast ripped up the earth behind the human to chase after him. Handy dared not look back.

He was sprinting, faster and farther than he ever had in his life. Suddenly, he was thankful for Joachim’s foolishness. His stupidity had led him to near starvation and slavery, but it had, in turn, directly caused Handy to lose weight, and by God and His Angels, was he ever grateful for that right now. Mayhap he had been too harsh with the avian. Had he swallowed his pride and let Joachim help, he would not be away with the faeries right now… and on the wrong side of Smaug the Undying.

He didn’t see them, but changelings overhead had stopped their flight to watch as the strange heartless creature fled his doom, most having long since abandoned the fruitless hope of hiding amidst the buildings and homes of their ancestors, taking to the air instead. At least there, floating amidst the darkness, the white city below, iridescent ceiling so far above, they could be where the dragon could not reach them. The Queen looked at the fleeing Heartless, now a vision of terror with ashen skin and hair, broken only by streaks of red. Her face was a stone mask, her thoughts unreadable. Her subjects felt the discomfort within her but knew not its true cause and knew better than to enquire about their sovereign’s discomfort. She gritted her teeth. In truth, part of her was overjoyed – the foul creature was facing his own just deserts, and she could not wait to see the despair on his face when he found the Oaken Stairs… and learned why it was her subjects hadn't already used it to flee. Another part, curious and small, wished it would survive so that she might understand the creature and how it could have no heart, for how could a creature survive so?

“My Queen!” Chrysalis turned. One of her subjects approached her, retracting its eye shielding. Her light blue eyes looked down as it tried to bow its head, a hard feat while afloat in the air, you understand, but she appreciated the gesture. “There are changelings trapped in the merchant quarter!” she said, panicked. Chrysalis scoffed.

“Then don’t just hover there; go help them get out!” she ordered.

“We can’t! The dragon set fire to the surrounding buildings. Our magic can’t put it out! The roof is about to collapse on them, my Queen. The childr—”

“Enough!” the Queen demanded. She casted one last look at the human’s futile escape of the dragon. That tale was coming to its end from the look of things. She resigned that neither part of her would get what it wanted from the spectacle and turned to her duties. She snapped orders to the changelings around her, to start fire crews and gather buckets to take water to the flames. She would try to get as many of her subjects out as possible before the roof collapsed.

Handy, however, had come to the city’s end. The buildings just suddenly stopped, and he found himself running across a vast flat surface. Before him was a true sight to behold. In a wide arc stretching a great distance from right to left, he saw the Oaken Stairs. The name did not do the structure justice. Imagine, if you would, steps one would take to walk up to the doors of some grand administrative building of some fanciful empire. One would imagine steps of white marble, perhaps, wide and unnecessarily long. Perhaps there would be railings of gold. Perhaps the steps would be rounded so as to flow out, as if spilling forth from the doorway. The Oaken Stairs were arranged similarly, rounded and flowing from a single point far at its apex and made of simple wood, whitish-brown in colour. Each step was lovingly crafted with impossible care and detail to images and patterns that adorned the inside of each step, telling a story two hundred feet long and two thousand years old, for the vastness of the great stairs dwarfed most buildings, its thousand steps towering in grandeur despite not even being the tallest construction. And there, at its top, the apex shone silver doors and the means of salvation.

Handy did not get to see this, for it was on fire. Great, fell, blue flames consumed the venerable and ancient steps, so much so that all Handy saw was a great wall of smokeless fire before him as the last glimmers of hope in his heart started to fate. He stumbled and fell, unable and unwilling to accept the sight he saw. The dragon stalked over to him, emerging from the streets and placing a bony claw over his body. Handy only had moments to register his danger before the beast had scooped him up. He struggled in vain to try to escape the death grip as he was raised to eye level with the grave beast, looking out over the abandoned city, resplendent in its sad glory. The dragon’s claws closed a fraction further, and Handy found it hard to breath. All thoughts of anger and resistance faded to be replaced by a terrible unease and chill that flooded into him. He felt a dull pressure on his mind. The dragon’s skull, which was now uncomfortably close, cocked to the side as he felt the pressure wax and wane. The creature spoke, its voice vibrating the air, and Handy felt the force of its speech and the chill of its breath, which the rational part of his mind pointed out should not be possible because it was undead, but that part of Handy’s mind had been wrong about a lot of things recently, so it could just sit in the corner and politely shut the fuck up.

Handy could not make out the words. He could barely understand the sounds it made. It was that same dead tongue the dragon spoke in when he had almost found Handy the first time. It mattered not, as Handy saw the dragon’s dead eyes slowly light up, balefire building up its arching neck and gathering within its closed jaws as it prepared to roast the human alive. Handy closed his eyes. As a result, he didn’t see the distant pinprick of green light, little more than a flicker. The dragon jerked its head as the flames died in its throat. It said something else, causing Handy to open his eyes. The dragon cast another dismissive look upon the human. It snorted, the air freezing about the human as he felt the blood on his face instantly dry and crackle as tiny ice crystals formed.

The next thing he knew, he was flying through the air. Weightlessness gripped his body as he hurtled forth at terrifying speed. The dragon had discarded him, literally, flinging him across the city to be dashed against some rock or another. Handy had never been so afraid in his life. He could not even scream, his mind too busy processing the chaos as his body flailed to grab onto something, anything, to slow his flight. He didn’t see what he hit. He only knew that one minute he was flying and the next he was wet and there was broken glass about him. He lay there for a moment, flicking between consciousness and the void, the nothingness he experienced when he slept. He pushed himself up, groaning. His body protested at his movements, but he had to know. How did he survive the fall? That should have killed him outright. He heard the rushing noise of water and the footfalls and roars of the dead dragon which sounded so distant now. Looking around him, he was somewhere dark. The walls and floor were smooth and clean, almost reflective. There were three windows of stained glass behind him and a black iron door before him. It was shaped and decorative, as were the walls, inlaid as they were with silver and gold threads depicting scenes and… changelings, he thought. It was dark, and the only light entering the room was the iridescent light of the ceiling fungi, which seemed really bright now, pouring into the room.

He turned to look out the windows. The stained glasses were simple affairs, coloured panels, each window representing something simple. The left one depicted two wings and looked like they belonged to a butterfly. The one on the far right depicted a curved horn, not unlike a unicorn’s, but it was smooth and did not have the distinctive spiralling ridges unicorns possessed. The central window held nothing, for it was smashed, and Handy lay in its ruination. Beyond the windows, Handy could not see much, for a waterfall blocked his vision. The changing light was distorted by the moving water and further distorted by the glass, creating an ever changing array of soft light that bathed the dark room. It was… oddly soothing.

Handy pulled himself up on a nearby marble bench and caught his breath. Wherever he was, he was away from that dragon, and that would have to do for now. He held his head in one hand. ‘What now?’ he thought. His one chance of escape, the Oaken Stairs, were gone. This wasn’t his city. He had no idea how to get out, and he had relied on the Queen’s words. He ground his teeth. ‘She knew,’ he thought viciously. ‘She knew and still she sent me to find those damned stairs instead of telling me of another way out.’ He shook with the thought but then chastised himself. Could he blame her? Seeing the way she looked at him, how she flinched when he spoke, the fear he instilled in her that he then exploited, how could anyone blame her for what she did?

He got up. It was time to explore this place. He could not sit there, or he would fester in his thoughts.

--=--

Chrysalis was very, very tired. She felt like she had ran several marathons, and in truth, perhaps she did. She was more powerful than her subjects, but she also did so much more than any one of them did this day. Not to mention that the abuse she suffered at the hooves of the Heartless certainly hadn’t helped matters. Also, she was hungry, but that was unimportant now. She had been using the last dregs of her energy to teleport into and out of the merchant quarter, which was a roofed maze of connected buildings where, in the city’s heyday, would have been a grand bazaar.

Quite a few changeling families had taken shelter there when the dragon had awoken from its slumber and burned the Oaken Stairs, hoping it would keep them hidden from its dreadful gaze. And in truth it had, for the dragon’s balefire had burned swathes of buildings around the market but left the great structure more or less untouched. It was a pity that it meant they were trapped in a ring of fire that was slowly closing in on them. The flames had grown too fierce for her subjects to brave them, and her fire lines were making slow progress to opening up a path to evacuate the trapped changelings, even with one of the great waterfalls and reservoirs literally right beside it.

So, she did her part, teleporting in and teleporting as many of her subjects out at a time as she could. It was a new spell for her, and she was unpractised. Still, it kept their hopes up, and she had to try to do something. She had returned for another batch when she finally collapsed, exhausted and drained. Her subjects immediately rushed to their side, their buzzing voices squealing in terror for their stricken monarch.

“I’m… I’m alright,” she said, trying to allay their fears. “Enough! Get off of me!” she commanded. She looked down one of the bazaar streets. The fire teams had made slow progress, but one of them had actually nearly breached the fire. “Everything’s going to be alright,” she said, turning to the changelings, saying it as a statement of fact rather than a reassurance. Changelings were, by and large, fickle creatures. Gentleness was seen as a sign of weakness because of its association with prey, even if one did truly care for another. As such, they favoured hard rulers, of which Chrysalis was, from time to time at least. “Look, we have cleared the fire. Go, flee.” Several of the remaining changelings fled, but a couple remained, uncertain.

“M-My Queen, you require assistance, let us—”

“GO!” she commanded, and her changelings obeyed. Once she was sure the last had left the bazaar, she wavered, sliding to her haunches in exhaustion. She needed a rest, a moment’s rest, just a moment.

Which she would never receive. The constant shaking of the earth grew louder as a terrible roar was heard. Chrysalis opened her eyes with a start. She looked at the entrance of the bazaar to see her changelings fleeing as a jet of blue flame exploded into it. She covered herself with a shield as the flames raced down the arteries of the roofed bazaar. She was straining to resist as the flames receded just in time for her shell to shatter. She panted heavily. She heard the noise of crumbling stone and protesting metal as a great bony claw tore into the roof of the bazaar. Chrysalis looked up to see her doom as she felt errant sprays of water fall upon her battered shell.

--=--

Meanwhile, Handy fumbled about in the dark. The corridors were circular and doubled back on themselves often. The floor, periodically, had these large circular holes that seemed to fall away to another floor below, and the ceiling had similar constructs. No visible ladders or handholds to speak of. What little light he had poured in from rooms along the outside of the building that his exploration had uncovered. He opened each of them to let more light come in. It was not doing too much good, but at least he could stop himself from falling into random manholes in the middle of a building. Why would anyone construct a building like this?

In his fruitless search for a door, he had found large, black, stone constructs lining the walls. Occasionally, he would find gems and gold coins on top of them so, seeing no reason not to, he pocketed them. There was rather a lot to gather and soon his spacious pack was beginning to feel rather full and heavy. Sighing in frustration, he saw no other way to go so, with the utmost care, he descended to the next level. Landing heavily, he got back to his feet. Like the floor above, this floor was the same story. Search for an exit, fail, open doors to let in light, try not to fall into random manholes, loot shit, go in circles, descend in frustration.

Each floor got smaller and smaller too, but at least this meant it got brighter and brighter as more and more light was easier to come by. Finally, on the last floor he could walk around comfortably on, he descended. The only hole in the floor this time was in the centre, and when he descended, he came upon a platform. That was when the nature of the building he was in became apparent. Looking around, he saw a rearing pony statue… No, that was not right… It was a changeling, but it was… different. Its wings were insectoid, true, but they were larger, and had no holes. Neither did its legs. Its carapace was… well… a carapace. There was not much to say about it other than it seemed more… elegant. Perhaps a statue of some forgotten ruler? It towered over Handy. In its forehooves, it held a large, silver warhammer. Handy boggled at how a creature such as changeling could wield such a weapon, particular one that seemed sized appropriately for the statue, not an average changeling. It was big enough for a human to wield comfortably however. Who was he to argue with stonemasons? You got paid to make a pony statue that held a war hammer, you do it.

Handy reached up curiously, touching the warhammer. He was surprised when he nudged it out of place and it fell to the floor with a heavy thud and clatter. He lifted it up. It was actually quite heavy, and now that he looked at it, not silver at all. This was steel. They had actually placed an actual weapon of war on a statue. Why on earth would the—?

And the penny dropped. Handy looked at the base of the statue. Sure enough, there was a plaque. He could not read the writing but he had seen enough war hero statues to get the idea. This statue was a memorial. Those black stone cuboids he passed weren’t some artistic addition to the floors of the building, they were sarcophagi. He had been looting a mausoleum. The guilt in his heart doubled at the thought. He went behind the statue, grabbed the railings, and looked down. What he saw shocked him.

He was over the city! When the dragon had flung him, he had landed in one of the stalactite towns he had seen from the ground. The waterfalls that had blocked his view from the windows on the floors above coalesced around this focal point, creating walls of sparkling diamond with a constant spray tickling his skin. The platform was held by six thin pillars with nothing else attaching it to the rest of the superstructure above. He knew this was ridiculously dangerous, as even though he could not see it from where he was, he knew this platform tapered off into a heavy, metal point of silver below him that the water fell from.

He looked down, curious to see what was below him, only to freeze and shudder in fear. Between the curtains of water, he could see the dragon immediately below him, breathing fire and uncaring of the water splashing on its back. It was tearing away at a building, and he saw a small flashes of green as something fought it. Squinting his eyes, he could just barely make out the form of a changeling fighting the beast. A changeling with teal hair.

His mind fought with itself for a moment. He wanted to do something, anything, to get back at this beast who he now associated with all the fickle forces of fate that trapped him here in Equestria, but he knew that nothing he could do could even flinch the beast. The bolts of changefire the Queen herself was flinging at the beast seemed to be doing nothing. He looked at the war hammer he now held in his right fist. He could throw it, but what good would that do? He was utterly powerless.

He seethed with anger. Everything about this day infuriated him, and here he was, safe, yet could do absolutely nothing to leave. What was he going to do? Fly? Even if he could, he’d only be able to leave the mausoleum. Then he’d be trapped in the city with the dragon. He had no magic, and the only weapon he possessed was laughably useless in this situation. No, he was stuck there and likely going to die cold, tired, and alone, far from home, deep beneath the earth, looking upon the source of his shame about to be consumed in the raging fires of an undying evil, and capable of doing nothing to atone for his sins.

You know, it was funny. They say there was always a thin line between madness and genius, right? Two sides of the same coin and all that? Handy was considering this as an idea came to him as he looked down at the ornate head of the war hammer. Bravery and stupidity, likewise, were also considered two sides of the same coin, much like genius and its twin, madness. The fickle hand of fate enjoyed flipping one coin to determine one’s plan, while flipping another to determine one’s character which brought it about. However, Handy, not one to take kindly to fate’s game, decided to force its hand and flip both coins at once.

“Saint Jude, Patron Saint of Lost Causes,” Handy intoned as he hefted the warhammer above his head and took aim at the nearest pillar. “I know it’s been a while, but if you have the time, I really need an intercession from you for this one.” He shifted his footing, trying to get the maximum amount of power out of the swing, the weight of the hammer becoming more apparent with each passing second. “It’s a bit of a doozy.”

--=--

Ever ride a roller coaster? That creeping panic building up in you, the apprehension, the fear, the dread of the coming drop, and the unrelenting excitement of the twist and twirls ahead as your body was thrown about by a force far more powerful than you as you hurtled at speeds nature had not intended for you to ever experience?

Yeah, turned out riding a dead war hero’s tomb, racing from the ceiling of a gigantic cavern trailing debris and God only knows how much water and crashing into the back of an undead dragon who reduced a great underground city to a ghost town, is like that... If roller coasters could give you an adrenaline rush to kill a mother-fucking Antarctosaurus.

The former tip of the tomb stalactite punctured the back of the dragon, crushing bone and splintering metal as the sheer weight and force involved utterly crushed its chest cavity as the rock fell apart and sundered under its own impact. The wave of water that rushed over the dragon did the rest. The structural integrity of the undead monster was shattered by the blow. Whatever magical nexus was maintained by the creature's form flickered and wavered as the water had a devastating effect on its internal fire, extinguishing the bale flame at its heart. The dragon’s head reared back, and its jaw opened wide in a soundless scream as the light died from its being. It slammed onto the ground, crushing a wall as bones cracked under the impact. All that was left was deathly silence and the flow of running water.

Chrysalis sat there in utter shock. One moment she was about to be eaten alive, crushed in the jaws of a looming monstrosity, and the next, an explosion of rock and bone protruded from the dragon’s back as a wave of water flowed over her exhausted frame. She stared long and hard at the corpse of the dread serpent, the creature that had driven her people from their ancestral city so many centuries ago. And there, protruding from its back, was the still intact statue of some ancient changeling warrior, slightly askew, triumphant over the defeated foe. She almost didn’t notice the bleeding human as he got back to his feet and grasped the statue’s legs for stability.

The human stumbled forth. There was no safe footing between broken rock, shattered dragon bones, and the floor nearly a dozen feet below him. He shambled forward, shocked that he had actually survived the mind-breaking, terror-inducing drop and shaking all the way. He eventually made his way near the skull of the beast, dragging the silver war hammer behind him, his heavy pack hanging from his shoulder. He leaned against the skull for support, looking about him, trying to see if perhaps he could use the natural slopes in the skull of the dragon to help him get down.

He saw the shocked visage of the changeling Queen below him, staring up at him in something between horror and admiration. He panted heavily. If he was a mess before, he was worse now. Between his previous injuries and the broken glass of the mausoleum and the dragon fall, which he would now forever call his ballsy move, he had more cuts and bruises than skin. Although he had been soaked, he still had a considerable amount of stone dust stuck to his skin and hair, thanks to the goo, which meant he was going to require a thorough scrubbing once he could get it. So, all in all, he still maintained that dread spectre look, only difference now was that he was soaking wet which apparently made him look worse.

He smiled despite himself and coughed. “Well…,” he said at last, struggling for words to justify his latest dance with insanity, and decided to comment on the circumstances Chrysalis had found herself in mere moments before. “I did say nobody would get eaten today, now didn’t I?” He chuckled. The Queen swallowed. Handy then got tackled by a swarm of chitin and buzzing wings. “Hey! Damnit! Get off of me!” Handy demanded.

He was being held down by quite a large number of changelings as one of them took away his war hammer. “My Queen!” was a common exclamation as Chrysalis’ loyal subjects surrounded her to make sure she was alright. Handy couldn’t see; he was too busy with his face in the ground.

“We have captured the Pale One, your Highness!”

“Yes yes, the Heartless!”

“Oh goody, I have nicknames now?” Handy asked derisively. He got a hoof to the face for that one. He heard the hoof-steps of Chrysalis before he saw them. There he was, captured and brought low before a sovereign and her people after having caused her grief, trauma, and destruction and entirely at her mercy. He would certainly say it was a new experience for him and one he hoped would never become a habit. Probably won’t by day’s end.

“Let him up, he’s not our enemy,” he heard the Queen say. Handy blinked.

“What?” he heard a voice say.

“What?” echoed another. It sounded familiar, probably Thorax. He should remember that she was pretty high on his shit-list and he should probably murder her face sometime. Unfortunately, something else occupied his mind at the moment.

“What?” Handy said. He was released and shakingly got to his feet. He was eye level with Chrysalis, and for the first time, he truly appreciated her size in comparison to her subjects. She was closer to being a proper horse, relatively speaking of course, whereas her subjects were much closer to pony sizes, large and in charge as it were. He was only slightly taller than her, but that hardly mattered when you were talking about horse-sized creatures. Her eyes narrowed, as if she was searching Handy’s face which, beneath the cake mix of goo, blood and ash, was a mask of confusion.

She closed her eyes and raised a hoof for silence. “I went to the pod chambers in the palace when we were attacked,” the Queen said. She opened her eyes and gazed out over her subjects imperiously. “I sought out the Heartless one, and I employed him to our service.” Handy’s eyes narrowed.

‘What game are you playing?’

“And help us he did, for my plan worked, and he distracted the dragon long enough to allow us to ensure the safety of our people from its wrath. And when we thought him slain, did he not come back and slay the dragon with the very city itself? I made you all a promise, did I not?” She turned to face the growing crowd of changelings that had gathered amidst the ruined bazaar and the dragon corpse. “That I would reclaim Lepidopolis at any cost? And lo, have I not been faithful, my people? When I made our plight known, the Heartless one agreed to help us.”

“B-But my Queen!” a voice squeaked. Chrysalis turned to face the speaker. Its eye shields retracted, revealing a pair of chartreuse eyes. Ah, Thorax, shit-list number three, right after the cockatrice and the world itself. “The Heartless one has no empathy! No love! We felt nothing from him, and I heard his story about his homeland. There is no good to be found there!” Huh, Handy never figured his mythic yarn would come back to bite him in the arse. By this time, he had a vague idea of what Chrysalis was doing, even if he didn’t know why she did it. Clever girl, this horse. She was playing the changelings that the events were well in her hooves, that Handy’s actions were under her orders and direction, which was a fine political move and all, but there was nothing stopping the Queen from having her cake and eating it too, from playing the sequence of events in her favour among her people and punishing Handy for his… less than noble actions. He was curious as to how she’d get out from under Thorax’s contradiction.

Chrysalis chuckled darkly. Well, he was sure it wasn’t meant to be menacing, but when your voice has its own resonance, it was kind of hard not to come off as such. “My dear Thorax, but of course you are correct. There is no goodness in his heart.” Well, gee, thanks lady. “Which is why he agreed to help us in return for payment. Do you not see my pendant around his neck?” She pointed a hoof at the human. Handy looked down. Well, wouldn’t you know it, that pendant he had swiped from the Queen earlier was indeed hanging about his neck. Hell, he didn’t even know why he took it, probably just out of spite – he had not been thinking clearly at the time after all. “I gave him it as an advance on his payment.” Thorax seemed to calm down a bit, seeing the pendant. “And he has come through for us, and now Lepidopolis is ours once again! Rejoice! Rejoice, my people!”

And indeed there was much rejoicing. Now that was something to behold. Ever heard a beehive when the insects were angry? Ever heard a large herd of horses whinnying and stomping and nickering all at once? Now imagine them both at the same time, only the bee sounds and the horse sounds were coming out the same vocal chords of over a hundred creatures at once. Got that? Yeah, turned out changeling celebrations were not like that. It was worse.

--=--

So there Handy was. Outside, fresh air, and open ground. Free.

He was utterly bewildered. He still did not know Chrysalis’ motivations for releasing him when, by all rights, she should’ve just celebrated the dragon’s death and had the changelings lynch Handy as an after-party favour. Nope. She had ladened the bastard down with gold and gems and let him keep the shiny trinket he had stolen without so much as a breath about his mistreatment of her. Hell, they had even let him keep the silvered war hammer he had basically stolen. So now Handy was making off like a fucking bandit and not entirely sure about how he should feel about that.

The Queen had offered Handy to join in the celebrations, but he could see in her eyes she desperately wished he wouldn’t. And he really hadn’t wanted to stay in that city for a second longer than he had to, so he had declined. He could almost feel the Queen’s relief. Her reactions had only confused him further. ‘There has to be something else,’ he thought as he walked away from the large red rock he had been teleported to. With the stairs still on fire, Chrysalis and several of her changelings had casted a spell to warp Handy out of the cavern. It was a strange, alien experience that he’d rather not dwell on. ’She can’t have just let me… go… like that…'

Handy’s thoughts trailed off as the realization hit him. His two packs filled with wealth slipped off him and plummeted onto the ground. Chrysalis had mentioned that the city was located in the western Badlands, and indeed the surrounding land looked quite bad: dry, cracked earth in all directions and far off mountains with not a town to see. In the horizon, the sun was setting. He was now in the middle of fucking nowhere with no idea where to go with all the money in the world and nowhere to spend it. Handy clicked his teeth and swore.

“Bollocks.”

Meanwhile, elsewhere, a Queen was laughing.

Chapter 6 - Unforseen Consequences

Celestia could go fuck a bucket as far as he was concerned.

“GHLGRHLRGRGLHLGRHGRL!”

Well, he still didn’t believe some random, pernickety, magical pony princess sitting prettily plump with her purloined privileges could raise the sun. That would be just… beyond nonsensical.

“Ohhhohohoho sweet God, but this is gooood…”

Even so, marching for five days in the desert and carrying two heavy packs of gold and gems, as well as a heavy weapon, does not make for a happy Handy.

“Perhaps I should get out and dry off………. Hahahahahahahaha who the fuck am I kidding? Fuck the world.”

He was, however, quite fortunate, all things considered. He had managed to come across not one but two oases. The first was basically a small trickle coming out of a source rock under the shade of a rather sickly tree. He had found it on his second day. Handy had lost track of how long he had knelt there, practically sucking the water from the rocks, but he didn’t regret a second of it. He had taken advantage of the situation to clear his throat and relieve himself without worry of losing too much fluid. The problem was he hadn’t had anything that could function as a waterskin. The only leather he possessed was his belt, and there was no way he could use that for such a purpose. So, once he was done, he had topped himself off with water and awaited nightfall before traveling.

It probably had not been the wisest move he could have made. Handy was a north-western European. Desert survival lore was a teensy bit outside his experience range. All he knew was that sun plus exertion equalled bad times. However, he also discovered that night time plus desert plus exertion equalled HOLY FUCK, IT’S COLD! He had found himself sprinting at times to try to warm himself up, not something he thought he’d ever have to do in Badlands such as these, but as previously stated, Handy had no idea how to survive out here, so he had played it by ear. For one, he had crawled under large rocks to keep out of the sunlight and wind. Food had been scarce, and Handy had found himself lucky to have come across a couple of rather unfortunate coyotes. He cooked and voraciously devoured the first one while saving most of the meat of the second for the rest of his journey, thankful for his knives. Briefly, he had considered the possibility that the two horribly murdered coyotes may have been sapient.

But only briefly.

The second oasis he found was on the fifth and final day, just as he was starting to seriously lose moisture. He almost couldn’t believe what he saw. It was a large rock formation with dark soil surrounding it, with abundant plant life and shady trees. There was a God-damn spring bursting from numerous rocks. One was even powerful enough to count as a waterfall in its own right. So of course he stripped down, and with joyful abandon, dived into the small lake. It was little more than a glorified pond, but it was the Mare Nostrum as far as Handy could give a rat’s arse.

He stayed there all day, showering under the water. Words failed to express his jubilation as he finally got to wash the filth from his flesh. He made use of the water to clean his clothes as well. It was a slapdash job but it was badly needed. The best part was that the water was quickly drained away almost as fast it came up! As soon as he dirtied the water, it was replaced with more glorious, clean liquid, and Handy indulged himself in its luxury. However, all good things must come to an end, and eventually Handy pulled himself from the water and dried himself off before putting his clothes on. He laid there on the sparse grass and warm, fertile soil, the shade of the trees protecting his eyes from the glare of the sun.

This day couldn’t get any better. Though, now that he thought about it, he wasn’t sure which day it was… Ah well, it didn’t matter. The only thing that could make this better would be—

“Well howdy there, travlah!”

Ah, yes, that would be the one thing that made his day better.

Handy sat up with a start and grabbed his war hammer. The pony stallion before him raised a hoof. “Woah, easy there, pilgrim, I don’t mean ya no harm none,” the light brown earth pony stated. He was of average size for a stallion, bulky though. He had a short black tail and cropped mane with a scraggly beard, his blue eyes framed by bushy eyebrows and mutton chops. Unlike most ponies, he was wearing a shirt and a green jacket with numerous pockets to match his saddlebags.

Handy did not let go of his war hammer, but also did not raise it up as he got to his feet. The pony looked up, the long reed he was chewing moving from one side of his mouth to the other. “Tall one ain’tcha? What’s yer name?” he asked. His eyes squinted, studying Handy. Handy stared right back.

“Handy of Milesia,” Handy said. “Before you ask, I’m a human. No, I’m not from around here. Yes, I am lost. I got lost because of questionable choices I made one night, and I have no idea where the nearest town is. I wear clothes because I am a noble, mercenary, and adventurer, in that order.”

The pony looked up at Handy for a few tense seconds before laughing out loud. Handy frowned. “Ho boy, get asked that a lot, I take it? Ha ha, well, ya must pardon folks, but ya’re a mite strange sight.”

“I had gathered as much, yes,” Handy said. “Forgive my brusqueness, but it’s been a long week wandering these Badlands. Prithee, can you tell me where the nearest town is? I’d like to return to civilization.”

“Mighty fancy tongue ya got there, fellah. Ya really are lost,” he said before laughing again. He extended a hoof for a shake, which Handy accepted with his free hand. The pony raised an eyebrow at his appendages. “Well, my name’s True Shot, and I know these Badlands like the back of my hoof. Hay, this here’s even my favourite water source out these parts. I just stopped by to fill my stocks before moseying on to Pawstown.”

“Pawstown?”

“Oh yeah, dog town. Well, mostly. It was actually a pony settlement originally, but the dog packs moved in to help with the mining. The town mostly feeds and services them. It’s the last stop before the trek to the frontier station to catch a train.” Handy beamed internally. Never before was he so happy to hear about the schizophrenic technology level of this land.

“Ah, excellent! Pray tell, True Shot.” No reason not to ham it up a bit. He had decided, Joachim and Chrysalis aside – one knowing him for his true cynical self and the other knowing his unpleasant side – that he would play up the mysterious foreigner aspect he had presented to Charity Bell. Why? Fuck you, that’s why. Handy deserved some fun. “I would be most grateful if you could help me.”

“Aha, well ya wouldn’t be the first straggler I picked up. If you come with me, I’ll take ya to town, get yerself looked after,” True Shot said. Handy’s stomach rumbled, and he looked down in shame. True Shot laughed. It only took a few minutes for True Shot to fill up his containers of water and for Handy to get his gear together. The two of them left the oasis and made their way over to a small wagon. There were a few odds and ends on the back of it, such as bags and packages. There appeared to be a unicorn in dark cloak sitting there and reading a book that it levitated before it, its cloak flapping madly in the wind. “Gawain, hop on.” Handy looked at the wagon and back at the earth pony.

“Are you sure? I would much rather not become a burden to you, fine sir,” Handy said. True Shot shook his head.

“Not at all, pilgrim, I can handle it. Gawain,” he insisted. Handy shrugged and climbed up onto the wagon. The unicorn paid him no mind other than to give a snort of disapproval and shuffling further away from the human, not so much as sparing him a glance. Handy was perfectly fine with this, however, so he ignored the red unicorn’s rudeness, idly playing with the blue pendant Chrysalis had ‘given’ him as the scenery passed them by.

--=--

They rolled into Pawstown an hour or so later. The red unicorn hopped down from the back of the wagon and trotted off somewhere without so much as a word. Handy huffed – she could have at least thanked True Shot for his kindness. Which reminded him. Handy got off himself and pulled his packs with him. He jogged around the wagon to walk beside True Shot as he pulled the wagon.

“My thanks, True Shot, for your kindness. Allow me to recompense you for your aid,” Handy said, reaching into his pockets and pulling out a number of bits. True Shot hummed a little ditty to himself as Handy counted out ten bits. He had way too many coins anyway, but there was no sense letting anyone know that was what caused his packs to bulge. He held his hand over to True Shot. “Shalt this cover thy efforts?” he asked. True Shot looked and his eyebrows rose.

“Aheh, a bit much for a simple favour friend… But if yer giving, I’m not goin’ ta say no.” True Shot then reached with his mouth and pulled open a pocket for Handy to dump the coins into. True, a bit or two would’ve been enough, but Handy liked this pony and could afford to be generous.

“Again my thanks, good sir,” Handy said, looking around. The town’s buildings were, by and large, a mixture of wood and mud-brick, with some stone thrown in for good measure, giving it a distinct appearance from the previous settlements he had had the privilege of seeing. Evidence of pony architecture was obvious: little decorative heart shapes cut out of everything, a few moons and suns here or there – that sort of thing. “Pray, where would the nearest halfway house be?” Handy asked. True Shot chuckled and pointed at a rather large building with the word ‘SALOON’ above the doorway. Oh yeah, that looked legit. Handy resisted the urge to sigh and simply nodded his thanks before walking off. He heard True Shot chuckle a bit before mouthing something about ‘city folk.’

Now, you would think that wouldn’t bother Handy, but it did. However, because True Shot was in his good books, he let it slide. Walking up to the saloon door, he noticed the denizens of Pawstown were taking time out of their various activities to give Handy the evil eye. Great, frontier town that doesn’t take kindly to strangers? Who’da guessed? He took special note of the various diamond dogs who walked the street, who sniffed the air before looking at Handy suspiciously. Handy did not care for that at all. How dare they!? Dogs should know better than that…

Handy blinked. What was he thinking about? Oh right, a room for the night. He pushed open the door to the saloon. Even at this time of day, it was still packed. Dirty-looking diamond dogs – more mutts who regarded Handy with instant suspicion – along with quite a number of ponies and the first griffons he had seen aside from Joachim. As interesting as the sight was, he ignored the chatting avians as the rest of the people caroused and relaxed over meals and fine conversation. He could not fault them. If True Shot’s words rang honest, then this was another mining town out here in the middle of the Badlands. It seemed earth ponies dominated if you discounted the dogs, which Handy was tempted to do. He guessed the earth ponies worked the land to get food, and the pegasi, pfft, worked the weather. Yeah, right, and Handy was a duke. That left the mining to the dogs. The griffons… He didn’t know. They looked like they didn’t belong. Cloaks, dirtied feathers – probably travellers like him.

He walked up to the counter. The bar mare was chatting to some lush or another when he put his hand on the counter. “Excuse me, fair landlady, perchance you have a room for the night?” Someone laughed behind him, and he resisted the urge to scowl. Savages.

“My my, aren’t we a sweet talker. Tall, dark and… whatever you are.”

“My name is Handy, milady, of Milesia. A human quite far from home, you understand,” Handy said, smiling softly, making sure to keep his canines covered. He would rather not unnerve the pony, but considering this was a dog town, perhaps the ponies here were made of sterner stuff? He would have to see about that sometime. The ruby-coloured and rotund earth pony smiled back, her yellow mane raised in a ridiculous-looking do.

“Well, I can’t rightly deny such politesse. It’ll be three bits for the night,” she said. Handy smiled again and reached into his pocket to pull out his money. It felt good to actually be able to pay his way now. He put the money on the counter. The barmare looked down as she counted. Her eyes narrowed, and she leaned in closer to look at the coins. Handy wasn’t sure what was wrong. Sure, they were blank with the exception of a big number one on each of them. Slowly, he realised it might be a bit of a currency issue. These were changeling coins after all, and from what he understood, changelings and ponyfolk were not on the best of terms. Slowly, the mare’s eyes widened, and she took one of the coins and bit down on it. She called out for another pony, a blue earth pony stallion with a short, neat, red moustache and shirt complete with waistcoat.

“Is something amiss?” Handy asked, concerned. The mare turned to look back at the human before looking back at the earth pony, and the two began whispering furiously. Handy’s eyes darted around and he felt himself beginning to sweat. The two griffons were giving him sidelong glances, and the dogs were openly looking at him, but they had been doing that anyway. The ponies began giving him furtive glances. Not good.

“A-ha! Yes, everything’s fine!” the mare said, quickly handing two of the coins back to Handy and only taking one of them. The earth pony took it and ran into the back rooms. He came back out with a small bag of bits, placing it on the counter. “We, ah, didn’t mean to be unclear, S-Sir Handy.”

’Sir?’ Handy thought, looking down at the small bag of bits in confusion. “Are you sure? I am perfectly willing to pay whatever amount you require f—”

“Oh nononono! We can’t possibly charge you more than what we charge anypony else! Please, you’ll find the rooms upstairs,” she said, turning around and grabbing a small ring with a key on it from a rack behind her, placing it on the counter. “Room one oh three, on your left, sir. We’re so happy you’ll be staying with us.” The earth pony came around the counter and approached the human.

“Do you need me to carry your bags sir?” he asked. Handy squinted at him.

“No, I do not require such assistance. I, uh, thank you for your professional courtesy, however…” he said, slowly moving to the stairs. Don’t get him wrong, it was a welcome change of pace to be treated with dignity and respect once in a while, but the suddenness of it was rather… off-setting. The stallion, however, was insistent.

“Ah, but at least allow me to show you to your room!” He grabbed the key off the counter and trotted over to the stairs. Handy had no choice but to follow him, lest he look rude. Also, you know, he kinda had the key to his room. He was getting uncomfortable with the whispers that were now emerging on the floor behind him as he ascended the steps. He knew this story; as soon as he was gone, some gossip was going to try to get the skinny from the barkeep, they would fail, the local smooth-talker would succeed, the lush would say something unflattering about the stranger, the smooth-talker would tell the gossip, and a game of Chinese whispers would take care of the rest. Handy was slightly concerned about what the barmare was going to say. He saw what happened when pony grapevine had its way with the truth.

“Here we are,” the stallion said, opening a door at the very end of the corridor. Handy stepped in. It was spacious, with wide windows, heavy curtains and a rather luxurious and inviting looking bed. The room screamed comfort. It even had a vanity with a mirror. Putting issues with masculinity aside for a moment, he’d actually been looking for a good mirror for a while now so he could take care of his unruly hair. “If you need anything at all, don’t hesitate to ask.” Handy looked around. He bounced the small bag of bits in his hand, still not entirely sure why they had taken one coin off of him and given him several times its weight in pony bits. What the hell was the difference? Gold was gold!

His stomach growled, and he threw the bag at the stallion who caught it with his mouth. He looked up at the human with a raised eyebrow. “Prithee, I am quite famished my good stallion. If it pleases you, I would like a meal prepared, whatever this will fetch. With wine, if you have any.” Hey, he was a nobleman, remember? “Vodka if not.” Okay, with some tastes, sure. “Failing that, I will settle for cider.” The pony smiled and nodded furiously before trotting off. Handy let his packs fall on the bed and resisted the urge to flop down on the rather sexy looking bed. Okay, it wasn’t sexy, but it was big enough where he could fit in it comfortably, and he hadn’t seen a bed in well over a week. So, you know, sexy.

If he so much as touched it, he knew he was going to fall face down and fucking expire right there and not get up for a day. He needed to take care of himself. Exploring the room for a bit, he found a closet. It had no clothes; obviously for patrons to store their clothes. That only raised more questions since, you know, most creatures tended to go about naked. He ignored it and continued his search. He encountered a desk drawer beneath the vanity. It contained a rather beaten-looking book that had clearly been read many times. He looked at the spine as the front had no title and possessed no blurb. Huh, Fifty Shades of Ha-NOPE. NOPE NOPE NOPE. He placed that book back in the drawer and closed it. Sure, there was a chance that it was merely coincidence the book’s title was similar to a rather infamous novel on his world, and it was entirely innocent and full of pleasant things. However, Handy knew that he was Handy and the universe was the universe. As such, there was no God damn way in hell that it wasn’t what he thought it was. Handy shuddered and moved on.

Oh fuck to the hell YES!

Handy found the bathroom, and it had a shower. Everything was right with the world. He spent most of the remaining day in the room, not particularly caring about mixing with the good townsfolk, especially not with the looks they had given him and the hubbub he had caused when all he had tried to do was pay for his room. He washed himself rather thoroughly and saw to his cuts and bruises. They still hurt a bit, but they weren’t serious and nothing looked infected, which was a miracle considering the filth that had covered him. He still longed for the salamander salve, however. The washbasin, thankfully, could be removed from the sink. He plugged it, filled it up with warm water, and took some foam from under the counter. It was old school, but it worked. He applied some of the foam which he hoped was applicable to shaving and carefully applied one of his knives as a razor. It was slow going but felt satisfying as he finally shaved the neck beard he had been cultivating, using the vanity mirror to see to himself.

Next was his hair, which was a more painful affair. Lacking scissors, he pretty much just pulled and hacked away until he looked presentable. He disposed with the water and hair in time for a very surprised bar mare to arrive with his meal. He smiled as he took the tray with the steaming lettuce, peas, apple slices, and what looked like fries but he honestly couldn't tell, they tasted strange but not unpleasantly so. Honestly, it looked beyond delicious, and to his immense joy, they had wine. He had no idea where they got all of this out here in the middle of fucking nowhere, but like hell if he was going to question it. He had given the barmare another coin as a tip. She protested but he insisted because of the excellent service. He requested not to be disturbed for the rest of the day and evening. She nodded and left him to his devices.

He devoured the meal before him with relish and drank the wine, clearing his plate and putting it over to the side. He then knelt down and said a quick prayer. Life… felt good, for the first time in what felt like years. He sat there and sank into the bed. Oh yeah, he couldn’t wait to lie down. He was going to sleep the fuck out of that bed. But he sat there, thinking. He really did feel good. Great even. He looked down at himself. He had finally lost that gut of his which had been haunting him since he was twelve. Sure, it came at the expense of intense labour, culture shock, terrifying experiences, and outright torture, but it was gone. He tensed his arms and felt the strength in them. It wasn’t much – he was a big guy with tremendous upper body strength anyway – but it felt good for the first time in his life.

And… he wasn’t worried… about anything. Back home he had worried about school, then university, then work. He worried about his health; he worried about his car repair bills, his home bills, his taxes. He worried about the state of his country, the state of the world. He worried about history and its legacy, he worried about the future and the horrors it hid. He pretended not to care, not to care about everything, to hide his fears and stress behind a mask of indifference, the same one everyone wore. It was necessary; it was how he survived beneath the crushing despair. At some point, he truly did stop caring. Now here he was, in the middle of nowhere, on another world, and he had no worries anymore. And that worried him.

He shook his head. He was overthinking this and needed some sleep. True, it wouldn’t be REM sleep – it never was anymore – so he wouldn’t get the full psychological benefit. Still, he’d take what he could get. He disrobed and crawled beneath the sheet, falling instantly asleep.

--=--

“Really, Sergeant, really?” Star Shimmer said. The two lunar guardsponies were making their way to the hospital in Spurbay. The Princess had sent them to investigate the incident with the mine. So far, they had spent about a week questioning the survivors about the usurpation by the diamond dogs. The stories differed wildly when they questioned anyone who was not actually there. All roads pointed in the direction of a small inn by the edge of town called the Shady Bough.

“You know our orders, Private,” Sergeant Onyx replied, trotting down the main street. The ponies generally parted to make way for the guardsponies. Clearly this was because they didn’t want to get in under the feet of royal business and had nothing to do with the two intimidating bat ponies with fangs, nope. A town guardpony saluted as the pair passed.

“Yes, but during the day?” Star Shimmer groaned. She was not fond of having to get up this early just because that was when most of the ponies in this town happened to be up and about. Really, so inconsiderate. Onyx smiled.

“You’ll get used to it. Just because we’re night guards doesn’t mean duty only begins with the rise of the moon,” he said. They had visited the inn and met with the friendly landlord and his son, the apparent saviour of the ponies in the mine. It was there they had finally gotten a good description of the two adventurers that had shown up to help liberate the mine, as the pair had stayed at the inn while they licked their wounds. Apparently, it was quite a tale, and the blue unicorn was apparently quite modest about his own part in the affair. His marefriend was having none of it, however, and practically gushed with praise.

It was a griffon and a… hoomun, was it? Yeah, that was it. It was those two who had organised the escape and the rebellion against the diamond dogs. They had gone to investigate the notice the town council had posted that attracted the pair in the first place. Apparently, they had had no idea that there were ponies trapped in the stolen mine, or more accurately, they didn’t care to check and figured hiring some mercenaries was the more economical decision than organising the town guard for a raid. Onyx had summarily used his authority to remove the mayor from his office and instate an interim executive for Spurbay until the towns ponies sorted their local government out, because this incompetence was going in his report, and it was in their best interest that the situation improved before he got word back to Canterlot.

Now with that out of the way, the two lunar ponies had discovered that the two adventurers had already left the town before they arrived. The last thing they needed to investigate before they could give their full report to her Highness was the time they had visited the hospital. Honestly, they didn’t know why Luna cared about this all that much. Sure, yeah, she was a princess, and the harmony of the land was her responsibility and everything. That was fine. But this was a rather small, local affair that sorted itself out. Why was she concerning herself with this? She had a country to run.

He sighed as they made their way into the hospital and began interviewing the medical staff. Apparently, the human was unlike anything they had ever seen before and they had only gotten the chance to do a minimal physical of the creature before he exited the hospital. As interesting as that was, Star Shimmer yawned, clearly bored. Onyx frowned at her unprofessional behaviour. Her tuft ears perked up as she sniffed the air.

“Hey, what’s that?” she asked, looking at a glass jar on a tray the head doctor had beside him.

“Oh, that’s a blood sample we took from the human. It’s the strangest thing. It has a ridiculously high iron content,” the doctor said. His eyes widened as he looked nervously at the two bat ponies. Star Shimmer was now looking curiously at the jar, her ears flicking from time to time. Onyx headed her off.

“Easy, we’ve had our fill for the week,” he said. They were ponies like any other, but their breed of pegasi had a peculiar curse about them that added to the already intimidating reputation they held. He looked over at the jar. He had to admit, it was tempting to have a sample himself. He wondered how it’d taste.

“Uh well…” the doctor said, clearly uncomfortable in the situation. “E-Even so, it’s the only sample we have, but we are more or less done with it.” His horn lit up as he gathered the copies of the report he had gathered on the human and the griffon’s medical status when they had arrived, lifting the jar as well. “This is everything we know about the pair.” He put the information in a small case and handed it to the night guard.

“Thank you for your co-operation. Private?”

“Sir!” Star Shimmer responded as the pair left the hospital, a clearly relieved doctor behind them.

--=--

“So uh—”

“No.”

“Oh come oooonnnn~” Star Shimmer whined. The pair of them were making good progress to Foalsdale, the next location the pair were seen headed. Honestly, he hoped the trail dried up there so he could just go home. “Just a taste, pleeeeaaaase?”

“No. Private, we’ve already had our weekly rations. Don’t be greedy. ‘Sides you heard the doctor. It’s full of iron – does that sound enticing to you?”

“Well, no, not really. But I could get past that. I’m just curious, come on. I know you are too…,” she said, shit-eating grin and all. Onyx looked at her hard before finally sighing.

“Fine, but not a word about this to anyone, do you understand?” He had to admit, his blood pace quickened at the thought. The pair made landfall as he reached into the bag to pull out the small jar. It was labelled ‘Handy’, along with a numerical tag and a species name: human. Huh, so that was how it was spelled. He withheld his urge to down the jar then and there as he uncapped the lid. Star Shimmer, however, did not.

“Yoink!” she said, taking the open jar from her superior.

“Hey!” Onyx complained.

“Oh relax, I’ll only take a bit,” she replied. “Besides…” She sniffed the blood and savoured the flavour. It was a bit stale, but the medical magic the hospital used to keep its samples fresh prevented it from decay and minimised congelation. She exhaled, excited despite herself. It had been so long since any of them had real blood to drink. “What’s the worst that could happen?” she asked, putting the jar to her lips as she drank.

--=--

Handy sneezed.

“Uggghhhh…” He groaned as he tossed in his bed covers. How long had he been asleep? It was day outside. What little light that poured in from behind the heavy curtains caught dust mites in the air as they danced. He really didn’t want to get up, but as he turned, he heard his shoulder pop. Bad sign – he’d been lying in that exact position all night… and day apparently. What time was it? He decided he didn’t care as he shifted his weight and stretched.

He gave a guttural sigh as he pushed himself up from the bed. It was warm, which was to be expected really, but for once he didn’t mind. He was out of the sun, and his pale skin could finally relax. He did his morning ablutions before putting his clothes on. His boots were ragged and torn in places but still mostly functional. His robe had seen better days, and his jeans were practically falling apart. Figured – he was going to need to visit a tailor to get himself properly sorted out.

Then a thought hit him. What was he doing? He looked around his room and saw the silvered war hammer lying on the vanity, the bags bulging with gold that was apparently much more valuable than the average pony bit, and chewed the inside of his mouth. He was an adventurer right? That was what he was now, right? He considered the fact that he had killed an undead, magical dragon. There was… no real way he could come back from that. The experience, the rush, the thrill. Pain and anguish too, sure, but damn, was the payoff worth it, and he wasn’t talking about the gold.

You couldn’t go back from that… You just… couldn’t. Or Handy couldn’t at least. Was that not what he wanted, in truth? Glory, honour, fame, riches, prestige, and power? Wasn’t that what adventurers sought? Wasn’t that why he had bought into all those power fantasies when he was younger? As much as he hated the land he was in, he had to admit that he was actually having the time of his life. Which was odd when one thought about it. One often read stories about someone wishing to go on a great adventure, meet hardship, regret their decision and desire to just go back home and start a farm or some nonsense like that at the end of it.

Nope, this was exactly what Handy wanted. It just was never an option back home, and he only realised it now, standing there, in a town filled with sapient dogs and magical ponies. He tugged at his robe. He was going to need something better than this. Something stronger. He smiled as he eyed the war hammer. Well, he had his character built up – time to commit. But first, he needed to know what he had to work with.

Handy picked up one of his packs and exited the room, locking it behind him.

“Oh!” a voice said, startled. Handy turned. It was the barmare from the other day. “My goodness, Ah was jus’ going to check up on you. You’ve been in there a mighty long time…,” she said. Handy raised an eyebrow before chuckling softly.

“My sincerest apologies for causing you concern, my good lady, but I was rather exhausted from my travels. Prithee, how long was I asleep?” he asked.

“Around twenty hours,” she said, looking Handy over, concerned. Handy blinked. Well shit, he really must have been tired.

“Ó diabhal,” Handy blurted before thinking. The mare started a bit at the sound he made. Handy shook his head. “I beg thy forgiveness,” he said softly. “I was merely taken by surprise. I did not realise I had been abed for such a long time. Here, take this. I believe I shall be staying for another night.” He reached into a pocket, slightly embarrassed that his gaeltacht years had punched their way through his consciousness. The mare shook her head.

“Ohnononono! You’ve paid quite enough to stay for another couple days, sir!” Handy reasoned she must be talking about the coin he had given her as a tip the other night. What was wrong with these ponies? Didn’t anyone here like money? Perhaps she didn’t want to seem to be taking advantage of a rich patron, which he supposed made sense. Still, never say no to free money, or so he thought.

“Very well,” Handy relented. “However, I am in need of a few errands that need fulfilling today. Does this town possess a… blacksmith, perchance?”

“Oh! Yes, you’ll want Heat Source’s metals. Her shop is down the road from here, past the market stalls.”

“My thanks, good lady. I shalt make my way there imminently.” He nodded his thanks as he walked past the mare and down the stairs. Yep, still plenty of people… ponies rather, down here. Dogs too. He had been meaning to ask about that. The first dogs he met had basically enslaved innocent ponies, yet here these dogs were, sitting, eating, drinking, and chatting away with ponies. Either he was just racist, or the ponies were really inconsistent with how they viewed their relationship with other races. The dogs seemed civilized enough; still brutish looking though. The conversation promptly died when Handy walked down the stairs as people turned to look at him.

'Oh great,' he thought, 'just what I need to get the day started'. The dogs were giving him curious looks. He shifted his weight, purposefully moving the war hammer held by his waist using his belt so that it would clink. Several eyes looked down at it, and the dogs took the hint. The ponies still held those curious looks in their eyes, studying him openly. He sighed. It was just like Spurbay after the mine incident. Just what had the pony grapevine been saying about him? Perhaps he was some god king visiting the land ready to whisk away some lucky lady into a life of happiness and luxury, perhaps a sky pirate who lost his ship and was using his ill-gotten gains to gain a crew and retake his airship, or better yet, he was a mysterious traveling wizard, searching for the chosen one to guide him on a grand adventure. Honestly, the things he heard in Spurbay were pretty out there. Nothing they thought of him could surprise him at this point.

“Excuse me.”

Handy looked down. There was a small colt at his feet looking up at him with wide, fearful eyes. He was an adorable little white ball of fluff and d’aww like they all were. Handy, however, had a heart of stone and was unaffected by such cuteness. However, that proved no protection to the next thing the foal said.

“Are you the one who killed the dragon and saved the changelings?”

Holy fuck. Handy’s eyes widened. There was a general murmur in the tavern. Everyone was listening attentively now. Shit. “Aha, and where did you hear that, young lad?” he asked, a faltering smile on his face. He really didn’t want this attention. How in the hell did they get that out of the stir he caused yesterday? He had never breathed a word about where he had come from when True Shot found him.

“There was a huge swarm of changeling’s flying through the sky last night!” the foal said, smiling and stretching his hooves in the air for emphasis. “Daddy and his friends caught a few saying how a great mercenary called the Heartless saved their city from a big scary dragon! All bones and fire the lizard was, and that they were returning home now that it was safe.” The foal pointed at the hammer at Handy’s waist. “They said that the Heartless saved them with a big, silver hammer just like that! So are you him, huh?” He leaned up, hope in his eyes.

Handy began to seriously reconsider his attitude to letting children inside bars. The chatter had died down as all eyes were on him. The griffons from the previous night were skulking about in a dark corner, eyeing him curiously, judging almost. The worst were the dogs, ears perked up and all of them staring daggers at the human. The barmare and her husband were behind the counter. She was whispering something to her partner. He ground his teeth – he didn’t want this attention, for it was only going to cause more trouble than it was worth. However, he could see no way out of it.

He let out a breath and looked down at the small child with a warm smile. “Yes,” he said at last, “I am the one who helped the changelings. I am Handy the Heartless, the Pale One, and I killed the undead dragon of Lepidopolis.” And with that, the room exploded. Between the shouts of fear and the shouts of joy, he could tell no difference. All he knew was that over a dozen arguments erupted at once as growling came from the dogs. A meaty paw slapped down on a table.

“I knew it!” a brown dog shouted. “I knew I smelt a changeling, you smell just like their Queen!” That elicited dark chuckles from the other dogs. Several ponies were snickering at the outburst. Handy was confused but assumed it was an accusation of some sort that he’d rather not have associated with him. He let out a long, low growl of anger. Who was this dog to judge him?

“What you smell is her fear,” Handy said, dropping his noble airs. That quickly got peoples’ attention. “And likely this.” He reached below his robe and pulled out the pendant he wore about his neck. He had forgotten that dogs had a really good sense of smell, but he was rather alarmed they could smell changeling on him despite having thoroughly washed. Perhaps there was pod gunk in his pores. “Tell me, dog, do you know why the Queen and her changelings refer to me as Handy the Heartless?” The inn had gone quiet. The foal at his feet was staring up at him, unsure of whether or not he should still be there. He looked down at the foal and gave him a reassuring smile. He walked down the centre of the bar floor towards the door. Ponies quickly got out of his way.

“It is because they cannot feed from me,” he said almost jovially as he reached the doorway. “Not even their Queen can suck so much as a morsel from my heart, and their magicks have no hold over me.” He fibbed the last bit, but hey, why not, right? He stopped before the door. “So I terrify them as a result. Knowing they could not take from me the help they sought, they paid me.” He placed the pendant back under his robe and took one last look around the saloon. “This pendant is the Queen’s own favour for my service.” Which he stole, but you know, details details. He looked back at the dog who had shouted at him. It didn’t look so cocky anymore. “That is why I smell like the Queen. Care to challenge me further, mutt? I put down an undying dragon. Do you think I would tolerate any nonsense from you?” His eyes narrowed.

“I… Pawson will shut up now…,” the dog said, sitting back down.

“See that he does.” His eyes flicked from dog to dog. They didn’t all cower, but they no longer had the challenging malice in their eyes they had a minute ago. That was gratifying. He looked over to the other denizens of the saloon. The ponies had gotten back to their whispering, and their reactions to his words were mixed. The barmare and her husband just stared at Handy. He was unsure of what they were feeling, but he sincerely hoped it didn’t result in him getting evicted from his room. The griffons had gone back to talking and got up to go out the back way. Well, he was sure nothing bad would come of that. He smiled warmly at the gathered patrons as he shifted the weight on his shoulders.

“Come now, friends,” he began, “I mean none of you any harm. There is no cause for your concern. However, if it please you so, I will leave your humble town in due time so that I do not cause you further distress.” That managed to make a few of the ponies look down sadly. Ah, shame, such a useful tool. These ponies were so affected by it if used properly. He needed to thank Welcome Sight for teaching him that one. “But first I have errands to run. I bid you all good day.”

--=--

So it turned out Handy entirely misjudged the effect his little spiel had on the town’s ponies.

“–And then maybe you’ll go on and save a kingdom from destruction and rescue the royal family!”

Almost as soon as he left to go about his business, ponies had pretty much bolted from their seats after him and pummelled him with questions.

“Where are you from?”

“Do you really not have a heart?”

“What was it like with the changelings? Weren’t you scared?”

“Why do you wear so much clothing?”

“Can I hold your hammer?”

“Is it true you’re Chrysalis’ bed warmer?”

“I heard you secretly have four arms but keep them hidden under your robes. Well, do you?”

“Handy, if that even is your real name, how do we know YOU aren’t a changeling. Huh? HUH!?”

“Hey, can you perform at my daughter’s birthday party?”

“How do you not fall over more often?”

Most of these he could fob off or give his standards answers to. The rest, well, fuck the pony grapevine. That shit was whack yo. Eventually, he lost most of the curious ponies. Well, bar one.

“Oh oh, what are you going to do for your next adventure!? Maybe go down to the southern islands and wrestle the sea serpents! Oh oh! I know…!”

It was the same kid from the saloon, and he was irritating the fuck out of the human. He had half a mind to punt the little bastard as he went from stall to stall, idly observing the various wares and doing his best to ignore the runt, hoping he’d go away. No such luck. The ponies he ran into had various reactions. Some were clearly putting on very fake smiles and hoping he’d move on, others were excited to see him, and still others pretty much made some excuse for why their stall wasn’t open when Handy just so happened to walk by. He didn’t mind – he was just killing time and hoping the kid would leave.

He came across a rather ramshackle-looking stall run by a small diamond dog. She looked downtrodden, and her wares were basically baskets full of some kind of dull, brittle looking gemstones. Really, they had cracks on them and everything. How did she even get them out of the ground without breaking them? “Good day,” he said. The dog looked up at him and seemed to shrink. Good, he wasn’t in the mood for uppity canines. “Pray tell, what have we here?”

“–And then and then *gasp* maybe you could go and fight a minotaur!”

He resisted the urge to shout at the little bastard, focusing instead on the dog and her bunch of useless gems.

“G-G-Grilina dig up gems herself, northern mine, abandoned pit. Good gems! Valuable! Promise!”

“Uh-huh,” Handy mused. The dog was clearly lying. These things didn’t look valuable at all. Pinkish red, chipped, cracked, dull, useless. He had a fair idea this was why that pit was abandoned if this desperate-looking dog was the only one digging there. They were fairly big. The kid was still yammering away when Handy got an idea. “How much for all of them?” he asked. The dog looked up.

“A-A-A-A, really? I, uh, I mean, I could maybe part with them for, uh, a h-hundr—”

“Yeah sure, whatever,” Handy said, dropping a small sack of fifty gold coins. If he was right about the worth of the coins in comparison to Equestrian bits, he might as well have bought her a car. The dog looked at the coins and had a reaction similar to the barmare. Handy swore she was about to hyperventilate. “I’ll be needing a large sack.” The dog quickly handed Handy a large sack before falling over, fainting. Handy shrugged and started dumping the baskets of jewels into the sack. He heard quite a few of them shatter and break. Oh well, it wasn’t the gems he wanted, it was the weight. “Hey, kid.”

“Yes, mister Handy?” The kid looked up, hero worship in his eyes. Handy almost felt bad about this.

Almost.

“I have a quest for you.” The foal gasped. “Yes, that’s right. What I have here is a bag of special gems.” He tied the top of the bag into a knot and handed it over to the excited colt, who took it reverently. “They’re magic, and I have chosen you, yes you, to look after them. When the time is right, I trust you will know what to do with them. It may mean the fate of Equestria one day.” The kid was practically shaking with giddiness and excitement. Handy found himself smiling despite his cruelty. “I have foreseen great potential in you… you uhhh…”

“Grave Danger!” the foal said happily. Handy blinked rapidly.

“Yes, Grave Danger!” ‘Grave Danger? Really? That’s like calling your kid ‘Unforeseen Consequences’ or ‘Mistake’. Great going, pony mom and dad!’ He snickered internally. “I do not know exactly what the future holds in store for you, but I entrust these to you. For I know you will be careful enough to not crack a single precious gem. Am I right?” he challenged, eyes narrowed.

“Oh yes! Oh yes! I won’t let you down! I-I’ll take good care of them, I promise!” The kid saluted as he took the bag in his mouth. Handy smiled.

“Good, that’s good.” Handy stood up and walked off. Grave Danger made to follow him but faceplanted as the bag was too heavy to be moved easily. He looked at the bag as one of the crystals audibly cracked, and he sheepishly looked at the back of Handy, who pretended not to hear. Handy tried very hard not to laugh.

--=--

A small bell rang in the shop of Heat Source’s forge. She put down the tongs she had been holding in her mouth and wiped the sweat from her brow, wiping her hooves on her heat-resistant apron. She was a unicorn but tried her best to minimise the use of her magic. The faded green pony with white hair emerged from the back, as Handy had his senses assaulted by the acrid smell and the intolerable heat of the forge.

The small pony looked up and smiled brightly. “Howdy! My yer a big ‘un. You wouldn’t happen to be the feller True Shot was talking about.”

“True Shot? You mean the kindly stallion who led me to this fair town?” Handy asked, readopting his airs. Heat Source nodded.

“Ah do indeed. Heh, he’s my brother. Came in here right quick, panting like a dog and babbling about suddenly making an awful lot of bits acause a ya.” Handy nodded. He remembered paying the pony quite a few coins, thinking they were ordinary bits. Hmm, that was something to be concerned about, being so generous with an awful lot of money. Just as well he played up his ‘dragon slayer’ reputation a tad, otherwise he’d probably be mugged by now. Handy slung the pack from his shoulder with a grunt.

“He’s a kindly soul. Prithee, I was told I could come here and make request of your metal smithing. Was I informed correctly?” Heat Source’s face lit up. “I would request what might seem to be a rather large commission.”

“Ah hay, I can put hammer to metal for any ol’ thing you’d like! A generous feller like yerself need only ask!” she replied. Handy was pleased.

“I require a suit of armour, finest steel you can place together,” he said. Heat Source scrunched up her muzzle and tapped her hoof to her chin, eyeing Handy speculatively. “Including a helmet and shield if you would please. I will pay extra for padding as well, if it is at all possible.”

“I dunno, yer a strange one to make for. I’ve made armour for dogs and guards before, so I have some experience for a breastplate.” Handy shook his head.

“I’ll be needing more than a breastplate, I am afraid. I’ll require a full cuirass, breastplate, and placcate. Pouldrons, vambraces too,” he said, slapping his shoulder, elbow and forearm, “as well as a pair of gauntlets, if you would be so kind.” He showed her his two hands. “Greaves would also be good, to cover my lower body. I would also require a gorget and mail hauberk. I get into a lot of scraps and would rather not have to suffer so many injuries.” The unicorn had magicked a scroll and quill and began scribbling furiously. She pulled a pair of glasses from somewhere, which amused him. Her muzzle was scrunched up still as she scanned her papers again. He spied her cutie mark, a pair of black tongs crossing over a black hammer over a roaring flame. That was a good omen.

“Ah dunno, sir, this is an awful lot of work. How long will you be in town fer?” she asked, concerned.

“As long as necessary, I currently don’t have anywhere to be,” She still looked unsure. “I can pay whatever price you require.” She looked dubious as she looked at the state of his clothes. Well, he supposed he could not fault her for that, so he pulled out one of his super coins and placed it on the counter. “I know that won’t cover it, even though it is a lot,” he said, cutting her off before she could give a surprised yelp when she studied the coin. He really needed to sit somepony down and get them to tell him exactly how rich he was so he could figure out exactly how much swag he was currently throwing around. He pulled up his pack bag and opened it, revealing the treasure inside that it was practically brimming with. Heat Source’s jaw dropped. “But there is a lot more where it came from.”

After that, she was all business. He spent the next few hours being measured and passing time with idle chat with the mare, who scribbled notes furiously as she drew up designs. She was good company, and he didn’t mind her accent. Not as if he had any right to complain if he didn't, even though he deliberately kept up his own accent-less English, further disguised by the airs he had put on. It was kind of hard to keep a good brogue down. She had particular trouble with his hands, spending two hours alone trying to get their intricacies down. She practically sighed with relief when he informed her simple armoured boots would be enough for his feet. They did not require the articulation of his hands.

She occasionally stopped and rushed off to ‘put some irons on the fire’, evidently getting excited over the project and putting her all into it. He chuckled – he didn’t understand cutie marks, but he knew enough that a pony’s cutie mark had something to do with their special talent, what they truly excel at. Blacksmithing was apparently Heat Source’s passion. He considered the implications of that, wondering what would happen if a pony grew up dreaming of becoming an astronaut to such an extent that it was all he or she thought of, only to get a cutie mark of a filing cabinet.

His thoughts were disturbed by a commotion outside. He heard yelling and the yelp of a few dogs. He ignored it, not being his concern. Heat Source trotted back in. “Ah think I got all I need. You mind if you pay now? I’d like to get to work without any worries.” He saw the shimmer in her eyes and noted it. It was like the shimmer he saw in Welcome’s eyes all those weeks ago. What was that?

“But of course, good lady Source,” he said, smiling genially.

“Ah shucks, none of tha’ fancy talk.” She said chuckling. She gave a rough estimate and Handy forked over nearly two hundred and fifty coins, thinking it'd be enough to cover the price she gave him in bits. He got seventy five back, being told by her that he had given more than enough to profit from. He staggered, because the price in bits she had quoted was substantial.

“IT’S TOO LATE! YOU HAD YOUR CHANCE!” a booming voice declared outside.

“I just need more time! It’s close, I swear!” a feminine voice responded, sounding desperate. Heat Source frowned at that.

“Now just what the hay is going on out there…,” she muttered. Handy shrugged.

“Probably someone forgot to pay back a loan or some nonsense like that,” he reasoned.

“Hey you!” he heard a small voice shout. It sounded familiar, and he quickly tried to get Heat’s attention to draw his own thoughts away from the matter.

“You were saying about how long it’d take?” he asked. Heat turned back to him.

“Oh! Yes, actually turns out it’ll take a lot less time than I initially—”

“AND WHERE IS THIS DRAGON SLAYER, LITTLE PONY!?”

Oh God no. Handy rubbed his forehead.

“He’s here! You just watch; I’ll go get him, you big bully!”

He swore to God that if it was that little— The door to the forge burst open, and an exasperated little foal trotted in. Yep, it was Grave Danger. “Mister Handy sir! Please come quick!” Handy sighed audibly.

“What is it, Grave?” Heat Source looked between the foal and Handy.

“Please you have to help! He’s hurting ponies!” Oh goody, as if he cared.

“Who’s hurting ponies?!” Heat Source asked angrily, snorting. “Just let me get my heated tongs and Ah’ll show him what for!”

“It’s Hectoir,” Grave said, worry in his eyes. Heat visibly deflated. That wasn’t good.

“Hectoir?” Handy asked. Grave shook his head vigorously.

“He’s been terrorizing this town for ages. Always comes into town and does what he want, and nopony will stand up to him.”

“I find that hard to believe,” Handy stated, considering the rather cold looks the townsfolk had given him when he first arrived here.

“But you can stop him!” Grave exclaimed, face full of hope as he pointed to Handy.

“Me?”

“Yeah! You saved the changelings from a dragon! You can help us!”

“Changelings!?” Heat said, looking at Handy incredulously. “Dragon!?” Fuck, okay, next town, he should try NOT to boast about being a dragon slayer. It bit him in the arse faster than he thought it would.

“Well… It was only a little one…,” Handy tried to protest.

“WELL!? I’M WAITING!” the voice of doom boomed. Handy rubbed his temples, tapping his foot on the ground. God, what had he gotten himself into now? Sighing, he stood up and slipped his war hammer out of the belt loop he had fashioned. Welp, he got himself into this mess, so it was up to him to get himself out. From the sound of it, it was probably an uppity diamond dog alpha. He knew how to handle dogs.

“Fine.” He turned to Heat Source. “Now, Lady Source, I feel you now have some idea as to why I made such a heavy request of you. If you would ever be so kind, please, can I entrust you to look after my pack?” He looked down into her eyes, and she nodded slowly. “Magnificent. Alright, little man, show me to this ruffian,” he said with finality, showing more confidence than he honestly felt as he followed the colt outside.

It was not a diamond dog.

It was a towering wall of muscle.

On two hooves.

With two horns.

And a goddamn man-killer battle axe in one meaty fist.

The armoured red minotaur shuddered with deep, rumbling laughter. Handy gulped. Okay, between the dog’s machine of doom and the dragon, this guy wasn’t as world-endingly massive and terrifying, but he was easily the first proper fight he had ever gone up against, not counting the ponies in the forest of course. He wasn’t sure how he was going to handle this.

“THIS IS THE DRAGON SLAYER? THIS, THIS… WHATEVER IT IS?” The metal bound brute laughed again. It only possessed a breastplate and helmet, but the accompanying horns rounded off the ‘I’m an obvious bad guy’ image he was going for. The chains about his wrists were entirely unnecessary. Actually, now that Handy thought about it, he was ridiculously, almost comically villainous. For God’s sakes, he had red eyes and everything. Handy snorted with withheld laughter.

The bull-man snorted angrily. “AND JUST WHAT IS SO FUNNY!?” it demanded. Handy looked up and realised his mistake. He was outside the forge. The minotaur was across the dusty street from him, the townsfolk having given the minotaur a wide berth and even now were backing away with embarrassing speed from the human. ‘Well fuck you guys too,’ he thought derisively. He tried very hard to not shake visibly. This was going to be bad.

Looking at the minotaur, he only just noticed the red unicorn clasped helplessly in its other hand, black cloak hanging from her. Wasn’t that the mare from the wagon? “My sincerest apologies,” his mouth ran off before his mind caught up with it, “I just fail to take someone such as yourself seriously.” Okay, he could admit he was still running on the power trip he felt from putting those dogs down in the saloon, and it was admittedly rather exciting to trash talk a living myth. The minotaur started.

“WHAT WAS THAT, SHRIMP!?”

“I said, I don’t take you seriously, cow.” He could see his red face getting redder in anger… if that was even possible beneath the fur.

“AND JUST WHY NOT!?” he demanded. The red mare in his hand whimpered, and Handy noticed the bull’s hand had closed about her tighter.

“Because… you are clearly a coward.”

“What!?”

“Oh yeah, I mean, look at yourself,” Handy said, gesturing with his free hand. Okay, it was official, he had no idea what he was doing. The rational part of his mind was ringing alarm bells. Sorry reason, Handy was not at home today. He was currently out partying with testosterone and machismo and would probably wind up dead. Please leave a message after the beep. “Huge ass axe, chains about your wrists, ohhhhh intimidating. I mean, your horns, you painted the tip of them red! What? Too much of a bitch to actually kill someone to stain them with real blood?” he challenged.

The bull was so incandescent with rage, he couldn’t even speak. Handy pushed on. Avoiding this fight was out of the question – the bull was angry, so he needed to think of something fast to keep up with the cheques his mouth was busy writing for him. “You stroll into an isolated town struggling to make its way in the world where you tower over everyone. From what I hear, you’re something of a big shot, am I right?” Handy asked, now idly strolling with arrogant swagger around the edge of the circle the townsfolk had left them. ‘God, I hope future me knows what I am doing because I sure as hell don’t know now.’

“YES, LITTLE PEST! IF YOU KNOW WHAT’S GOOD FOR YOU, YOU’D SHOW ME PROPER RESPECT!” the minotaur shouted, gesturing with his battle axe.

“And the shouting. Tut, you’ll run your vocal chords ragged like that. But no, all of this I could forgive and overlook. You’re your own man; you can dress up however you like now that mother’s disapproving gaze isn’t just over your shoulder.” He got a few snickers from that. The bull snorted as he gave the surrounding crowd a death glare, shutting them up good and proper. “But I call you coward because only a coward abuses and bullies a woman,” he said, knowing full well the irony of his statement. He stood by it nonetheless, for he honestly believed it. “Does it make you feel big? Strong? Powerful? Picking on a girl not even a quarter your size? Put her down and fight someone who’s at least stupid enough to stand up to you. Or are you going to confirm my words by running away from a fight?”

That tore it. The minotaur roared and flung the mare from his grip. Handy was concerned for her safety, but some kindly pegasi in the crowd caught her in the air. The minotaur roared, gripping his battle axe in two hands and charging at the human, axe raised overhead.

‘Hey, Past Handy? It’s me, your buddy, Future Handy. Not to be a raging dick or anything, but what the flying fuck did you get me into? Oh God.’ Handy had gripped his war hammer by the head, lining its heft up with his arm. He let his grip loosen on the head until it slipped down his fist, stopping its descent by clasping his fist around the lower part of the haft. The bull was upon him now, and the axe descended. ‘God be with me, this is insane.’

He swung with all his might. Not aiming at the bull, he strained with the weight of the hammer being swung one-handed. The hammer struck the blade of the axe and sent it off course, coming down to Handy’s left and lodging into the ground. Handy staggered from the blow, his arm shaking from the impact. The bull staggered forward, surprised at the sudden closeness between him and the human. Handy panicked and swung with his left fist, impacting on the cheek guard of the minotaur’s helm. Handy felt a finger break and y as he staggered back and struggled to pull his hammer in a two-handed grip.

The minotaur shook his head. Handy had done little more than cause his ears to ring. The bull shook with anger and stomped his hoof, creating small droves in the ground as he hefted his axe back into his grip, ripping it from the ground. He snorted and lowered his head, charging straight at Handy. The human panicked and stepped to the side, swinging his hammer around, desperately hoping to do something to the bull. The hammer caught the back of the rushing bull’s armoured head. The bull went down, his horns digging into the ground as he failed to stop his body before momentum broke one of his horns off. The bull screamed in pain. Handy stumbled back, falling on his arse. He struggled to get up. The bull reared up suddenly, swinging his great battle axe around in a wide arc, the flat of the blades catching Handy bodily. He was flung from his feet and sent sprawling into a nearby building, crashing through a window.

Handy landed hard on something wooden. It broke beneath his weight. He heard pony screams and felt dust settle on him. He was in a sundry store and in great pain. Something was broken, but he had no idea what. He just knew the pain.

“IS THAT IT, RUNT!? WHERE’S YOUR TOUGH TALK NOW!?” he heard the bull shout from outside. He opened his eyes. He saw the broken window before him and looked out, seeing the cloudless sky, felt the heat of the day, heard the cruel mockery of the tyrant in the street, and the red descended across his vision one more time.

A hand clasped about a door handle and tried to force it open. Then a boot crashed through the door handle, sending the door flying. Handy walked out the front of the sundry store, bloodied and bruised but not beaten. “AHAHA! I SEE YOU’RE STILL STANDING! WELL!? COME ON THEN, DRAGON SLAYER.”

“I will rip off your head and shit down your neck,” Handy said, his voice calm and quiet, but heard loud and clear all the same. The bull chuckled.

“OHHH, I GUESS I BETTER WATCH OUT. NOW I GONE AND GOT YOU ALL MAD.”

“I don’t think you understand how good your meat tastes when it is cooked medium to well,” Handy said. The bull looked at him confusedly.

“WHAT?”

“Did I stutter?” Handy said. “I said I am going to fucking eat you.” Handy took a step forward, snarling, blood running over his teeth from his nose. “I am going to cleave that head from your shoulders and mount your skull above my doorway. I will ground your bones to dust and drink it with my tea. Your meat which I don’t find satisfying shall be tenderised and made into mince to be sold as chicken feed. Your hooves shall be broken down and made into adhesive to repair the shoes I walk upon, and your skin will be made into my new belt.” He kept walking threateningly towards the bull, who just looked at the human stunned for a moment before he burst out laughing.

“BIG WORDS, LITTLE BOY. LET’S SEE YOU BACK THEM UP!” he said, running forward and swinging his axe in a horizontal arc. It was a conservative swing, not overreaching. Handy ducked backwards to avoid it and ducked again over to the side to avoid the backwards swing. The ponies and dogs of Pawstown were now panicking and giving a wider space to the battling mammals. The sundry store owners had fled the building, all of them looking on as the pair dived and weaved between each other’s blows. For his part, Handy managed to get a few swings in, his arms getting tired from the effort. Unfortunately, the blows were light and hit at bad angles. The bull had incredible stamina and didn’t tire from swinging his battle axe. More than once, Handy came to a hair’s breadth of death.

The axe swung and caught Handy. Its blade cut a long, bloody scar from his hip up to his chest. It wasn’t deep, but it hurt like a motherfucker, and Handy was now losing quite a bit of blood. Handy fell to the ground in pain, but his adrenaline-fuelled mind forced him back up to his feet, only getting to his knees before having to roll to avoid another blow from the axe, which crashed into the ground. He turned as the minotaur struggled to pull the axe from the ground. This was Handy’s chance.

With an inarticulate roar, he rose to his feet and swung the hammer around in a wide arc and brought it down on the haft of the battle axe, which was made from wood. The haft broke under his attack, and the minotaur staggered back. No longer anything to resist his pulling strength, the creature struggled for balance, but Handy did not give him the chance. From his position, he swung his hammer wide and low in a one handed arc, catching the cloven-hoofed creature at the knee, causing him to lose his footing.

The creature snarled in surprise as he crashed back down on the ground. He struggled to rise up on his elbows, but Handy, in a frenzy, was already upon him and swung his hammer around one more time. It connected with the beast’s helmet in a sickening crumpled sound. He deformed the metal armour as the bull fell back on the ground, groaning. He struggled again to get back up, but his movements were slowed. Handy roared, bringing his hammer back up and down on the creature’s armoured chest. He did it again, and again, and again, eventually hearing something crack beneath the abused metal of the breastplate.

The bull stopped moving, his ragged breath coming in short, shuddering bursts. He wasn’t getting up anytime soon. Handy raised his hammer for one last killing blow before it fell from his hands and he staggered back, falling on his backside in exhaustion. His breathing was ragged, and he felt incredibly warm, his face flush with blood from the effort. He put his hand to his chest, not fully feeling the pain as his mind calmed down and the red mist fell from his vision. He was still on an adrenaline rush, which meant as soon as he calmed down fully, he was going to start hurting like a sumbitch. He could only hear a dull ringing noise in his ears and he was only peripherally aware of the crowd that was slowly gathering around him, his eyes on the fallen minotaur, hardly believing that he actually won that.

Oh wait no, there was the pain, yep, he busted a rib, great. Something else too in his upper right leg. He wasn’t sure what, though. Oh God, he could feel the cut; oh God that was a lot of blood. Oh Go—

--=--

He woke up in his room at the saloon. His hammer lay on the vanity directly across from him. He was propped up against a rather unnecessary amount of pillows, but he wasn’t going to complain. Strange, he didn’t feel sore— Ahhhhh, there we go. Pain, old friend! There you are! It’s been so long, you never call, you never write. No wait, you’re here all the time, like a college friend turned bum currently couch surfing in the spare room and refusing to get the fuck out.

Handy gingerly pulled the blankets off of him. His upper body was exposed and covered in bandages. Okay, the cut was bad, but this was ridiculous. The cut… The bull. Oh! The fight! He remembered now. He threw his legs over the side of the bed and very carefully got out. He winced – his right leg was stiff, and he saw more bandages there. Ah well, looked like they were considerate enough to look after that for him. He did not much care for the fact they had removed his jeans, but he could hardly blame them. It was in his best interests after all. Speaking of, he could no longer find his jeans. He found his robe, socks and boots, however, as well as his shirt. It would have to do for now.

He unlocked his door and exited it. Walking down the corridor, he heard a lot of noise coming from downstairs. He crested the top of the stairs and saw the saloon floor was quite packed. Looking out the windows, he noted that it was night. He must’ve been out for a bit. A cheer rang up from the saloon floor as ponies and dogs started to notice him. Well… that was a welcome turn of events. You’d think after his little threat to murder and eat the minotaur, they might be a little more cautious around him.

He shrugged and descended the steps slowly. The people were evidently deep in their cups as the place was full of songs sung badly and music somewhere was being played. “Oh, sir, you’re up!” The barmare Handy never bothered to learn the name of spoke. He turned to see her trotting over, a tray in her mouth with foaming tankards. She nudged the tray closer to him, and he took a tankard gratefully. The ring on its side was unnecessarily big, but considering it was supposed to fit pony hooves, he guessed it made sense.

“Thank you. Is everyone alright?” Handy asked, taking a sip from the beer so as to not appear rude.

“Oh yes!” she said she beamed. “Nopony thought they’d ever see the day someone put old Hectoir in his place!” Handy took another drink. Mmmm, sweet. What was this?

“Where is the old bull? I hope I did not kill the brute.” ‘That’d be too merciful. I hope he suffers.’ The mare smiled up at him.

“Oh he’s in jail. The sheriff is going to contact the guard to get him transported to a bigger prison. He won’t be bothering nopony for a long time, especially since he has yet to heal.” Handy chuckled. He raised his tankard again as he let out a shuddering breath. That was close. What the hell was he thinking? He spotted a cloaked pony make its way through the crowd. The unicorn pulled her hood down, looking up at the human with a frown.

“Oh, hello there,” Handy said ‘You’re welcome for the save by the way. I hope you make it worth my while, but you won’t because apparently I made the fool mistake of accepting a job before getting paid.’ The pony studied the human before speaking.

“Thanks…,” she said. Her brow furrowed for a moment before the brown-maned mare looked down and walked off.

“Well… Pony of few words that one,” Handy remarked. He then suddenly remembered he hadleft a rather substantial amount of gold with Heat Source and he should probably look into that. However, he was stopped mid-rumination by a tap on the shoulder. He turned and looked into the face of a brown-feathered eagle head. One of the griffons from earlier.

“Excuse me, Sir Handy?” the griffon asked. Its fellow was near the front, watching the pair of them.

“Yes?” Handy said wearily. Please, just leave him be. He was tired and had to find his money before something hilarious happened to it.

“You are Handy the Heartless, correct? The human from Milesia?” the avian asked. Handy chuckled.

“Do you see any other humans around? Besides, you heard me earlier. I saw thee and your friend in the corner this afternoon,” Handy pointed out. The griffon coughed.

“Yes, quite,” the bird recovered. “I just had to make sure, but anyway, as to why I am approaching you now, I represent a wealthy benefactor in the Griffon kingdom, and I was hoping you’d be willing to accept a job offer,” the bird stated, puffing out his chest. Evidently this bird thought highly of himself. Handy considered it. After all he had said and done today, what was he going to do? Say no?

“I’m listening,” Handy said.

--=--

The hooded pony made her way to the edge of town, the darkness of night cloaking her. Sure, she stuck out like a sore thumb in the moonlight, but so long as nopony was looking, and she was sure they weren’t, it would be alright. She trotted up over a small hill and behind a few rocks. Making a few final checks that she was alone, she pulled out her book and flipped the pages. What she was attempting was old, strange magic as she carved out a complex circular pattern in the sand before her according to the designs she saw in the book.

She muttered something in a harsh sounding language, a strange thing to hear coming from pony lips. Without a sound, and without any flash of magical energy, the dust at her hooves converged at a central point and rose into the air in a spiralling horn of dirt before coalescing in a floating orb of dust and sand granules.

The ball of dust warped and took the form of a nondescript pony head, lacking a mane or any distinguishing features of any kind. It was a primitive form of communication, but it was secure and it worked.

“Mistress.” She bowed her head. The disembodied pony head moved as the sand granules displaced and relocated themselves, as if its mouth were moving. The interior granules vibrated in complex frequencies, mimicking the sounds of words. It was not true speech, but a convincing imitation.

“You are bold to contact me like this. Surely you must know I paid that brute of a minotaur to stop you in your foolish quest,” the head responded.

“I understand your intentions, Mistress,” the contrite pony acknowledged, looking at the ground hard. She kept her thoughts to herself, for she had an opportunity to get back into her good graces here. “But Hectoir was defeated.” The sand pony made a surprised sound.

“YOU defeated the minotaur?” the sand pony scoffed. “Hardly.”

“It is as you say, Mistress. I did not defeat the minotaur. Somepony else did,” she said.

“And you are telling me this… why? Surely you understand we hired the brute because we are displeased a resource such as yourself was wasting her time out here chasing a lost cause.”

“It was the lost cause that defeated Hectoir,” the pony said. The sand pony was silent for a time.

“What exactly are you trying to tell me Crimson?” the sand pony asked. The red unicorn sat back up and smiled.

“I found it,” she said. “The creature – I found what we pulled through the veil.”

Chapter 7 - Heavy Metal

Handy was having, quite simply put, a rather excellent week. Sure, it took a while to get used to the hero worship he was receiving from the townsfolk, but that didn’t outstay its welcome, as ponies, he had learned, were fickle beasts. One day they were waving and cheering him as he passed by in the streets; the next, it was as if he was just another regular face in the crowd. He was still treated warmly but how fast the attitudes of the ponies adjusted was still kind of jarring, even if it was nothing like the fifteen minutes of fame syndrome back home.

However, even with the more welcoming attitude, Handy tended to keep to himself and stay in his room if at all possible, only coming out to check up on various projects, or whenever a ‘little Timmy fell down the well’ moment popped up and ponies, usually mares, suddenly needed HANDY THE HAMMER to come bail them out of it. It was normally simple stuff: help, my cat’s gone missing; help, I need somepony to hold up the overhang so I can get this last nail put in place; help, could you stand at my stall for a few minutes? I need to go take care of something.

Weak sauce stuff like that. It was getting old. He was suddenly very glad he had accepted Ivorybeak’s job offer. It was a simple one: follow the griffons around as a bodyguard and look intimidating. Honestly, that job sounded excellent. He only needed to wait around long enough for the pair of them to ‘get word back’ or some such nonsense. He didn’t care – he was only being paid as muscle, not to think. Besides, it gave him enough time to hang around Pawstown while Heat Source worked on his armour and the tailors got his new clothes made. He had made sure to commission several pairs of sturdy trousers as well as a few shirts and underwear. In a moment of inspiration, he also commissioned a great cloak to certain specifications, one he could fit around his armour with a hood large enough to fit his helmet. He figured there might come an occasion where he’d have to don his armour in the rain, which would be uncomfortable to say the least.

It was not to say he didn’t have a bit of trouble about the town. Some of the ponies were REALLY nervous around him, not exactly fond of the idea of a meat eater who could beat up a minotaur was living in their town with them. It must have felt like learning your next door neighbour was, in fact, Lord Dracula. However, it only made the more curious ponies even more inquisitive. That was what he got for playing up the mysterious foreigner card and then going and locking himself in his room most of the time. He could deal with that, however. Not to mention his visit to the local sheriff’s office.

See, Handy wanted to know exactly what was it with ponies and not being able to get their collective shit together. First Spurbay, which he learned had an actual guard force, didn’t bother investigating the mines themselves despite knowing full well brigands were squatting there. Now Pawstown couldn’t get some of their rough and ready guardsponies, and dogs for that matter, to take care of a single minotaur? Handy called bullshit.

But lo and behold, there it was. He had entered the sheriff’s office to make his enquires, and the old stallion was a genial good old boy, which Handy approved of. What he did not approve of was the pony’s sheepishness when he started putting the screws to him about his guard force’s inability to deal with the minotaur, becoming incensed when he learned they had been paying the brute tribute. He gave the sheriff a right verbal what for. The fellow looked crestfallen, but Handy cared not. However, what really ticked Handy off was the imprisonment of the changelings. At first he thought it was a precautionary measure. Changelings flying near your town? Yeah, he could see the value in capturing a few and learning what the fuck was going on.

And while that was why they were initially captured, he was surprised to learn they remained in captivity… because they were changelings. In fact, the ponies and dogs seemed dumbfounded when Handy pointed out the injustice of such reasoning. Sure, changelings were dangerous, but this was racial profiling, which was just plain wrong. Not that Handy had a leg to stand on when it came to racism, what with his attitude to dogs and all, but he didn’t want them to be arrested just because. The sheriff had protested the idea of releasing them, stating they were going to be taken by the guards from the bigger towns to the east along with Hectoir. Nopony was going to pay their bail anyway.

So Handy did. The things looked starving anyway, not getting much love of any kind, and he couldn’t imagine cold indifference and barely concealed contempt tasted good. Needless to say, this didn’t make him a lot of friends with the guard, and the townsfolk were only further confused by the mysterious humans motivations, releasing the changelings who themselves were clearly frightened of him. So, the long and short of it, that was why Handy was now lying in bed this morning, half-asleep and lazing about.

He had to get up today anyway. Heat Source’s armour should be done, and he had been putting off visiting the tailors again. The creepy pair of mares that ran it finished each other’s sentences and generally put Handy ill at ease in their presence. Buuuut, it was overcast outside – looked like it might actually rain for once – and he was already pretty comfortable in his bed, so he was content to lie there.

And this was where you, dear reader, discover that the expensive brick was an asshole. And you should love him for it.

You see, the expensive brick had been rather unusually resistant to everything Equestria has put Handy, and by extension, it through. Sure, its screen was cracked and useless, but it still turned on. Sure, it hadn’t been charged in weeks, but the ambient magical energy in the atmosphere of Equestria proved more than enough to keep the little bastard topped up. Not that Handy knew that, or even cared, which was why the phone caught the poor man off-guard.

Remember how Handy considered it ironic that he had so much music stored in the device that he never got the chance to listen to and, or so he thought, never would again? Guess what the expensive brick suddenly decided it would be a perfect time to start playing? Some Vivaldi maybe? Maybe some songs from Les Miserables that Handy was so fond of? Mayhaps, just, mayhaps, some old traditional Irish tunes he had kept about for old time’s sakes?

Nope.

Swedish Metal.

“IN THE SKIES ABOVE THE ISLE!”

Handy almost literally jumped out of his skin, his head hitting the top of his four poster bed as he flailed.

“ACES IN EXILE PREEEEVVVVAAAAAIIIIILLLLL~!”

Handy landed bodily on the floor to the side of his bed as he scrambled, bleary-eyed, to find whatever was causing motherfucking Sabaton to break its way through reality. The phone blared Aces in Exile at an intolerable volume that shouldn’t have been possible for an S3 Mini, but there we have it. Handy felt the floorboards vibrate beneath his skin as he stumbled through his room, naked bar his underwear as he rummaged through the various detritus of his room, looking for the expensive brick that could be the only possible source of the music. He heard cries and shouts of alarm coming from the other rooms of the saloon. Shit!

He fumbled with a drawer by one of the windows and pulled it out. There the little bastard was – how did it get there? He quickly grasped it, and his fingers flailed uselessly at the lit screen, trying to figure out how to turn the music off. Eventually, he just settled for turning the phone off, which it refused to do. Handy glared incredulously at the rebellious device as he took the battery out… only for the phone to keep playing.

“MEN OF CZECHOSLOVAKIA, IN THE BATTLE OF BRITAIN

GUARDING THE SKIES OF THE ISLE~!”

“SHUT UP DAMNIT!” Handy said, smacking the phone on a hard surface. It eventually complied and ceased its shenanigans. Handy let out a breath but groaned as he heard a panicked-sounding knock at his door. He quickly put his robe on, sans belt, as he made to open the door. Yep, sure enough, it was the landlord and several dogs and ponies in bathrobes and nighties. Seriously, ponies, what the hell, guys? You of all creatures wore clothes to bed? Really?

“S-Sir Handy! We heard the most awful shrieking wails!” the moustachioed pony cried. “It sounded like demons were invading!” Handy rubbed his temple as he tapped his foot. Well, he could do without THIS headache. Still, at least he could count on absolutely nothing else going wrong today. Heat Source knew what she was doing, so at least when he got his armour, it would be in excellent form.

--=--

Heat Source took tremendous pride in her work, and her diligence was paying dividends. Sleeping only the bare minimum and eating only when strictly necessary, she spent almost every waking minute on her work, and it was paying off handsomely, getting the project completed in little over a week. She had some basic designs for the armour initially, but that was before she saw Handy put paid to the minotaur. Now she was fired up with inspiration and determined to make a suit of armour worthy of a dragon slayer. True Shot often gave out to her that she was in danger of getting ill when she got like this, but that stallion had no right to talk, traipsing about the Badlands like he did.

She had taken inspiration from Handy’s war hammer, which was solid steel but emblazoned with complex interlocking designs of silver across its surface. She took the extra care to use some metallurgy tricks of the trade to do the same to the surface of the armour. Of course, this meant reheating the finished pieces of armour just a bit to get it all to set in appropriately. For the extra finish, she did the same for the suit of chainmail. This was usually inadvisable… if you weren’t Heat Source, that was.

She had left the finished pieces to cool in a specially prepared area of her forge the night before Handy was due to pick it up. It was a delicate stage in the process, but it would leave the armour just as strong, if not stronger than it had been before, so long as absolutely nothing happened to disturb the settling metals.

…

So Grave Danger had defied his father and stayed up well past his bedtime. He was a stallion on a mission, the human’s words echoing in his head. The white and blue maned colt stalked through the streets of Pawstown. He tried his best not to make too much noise, struggling with pulling the bag of gems Handy had entrusted to him. The poor colt was utterly crestfallen to learn that over the course of the week, the crystals had all but completely broken and been ground down to fine powder.

However, he had learned something the day Handy fought the minotaur. He thought the world of the human, but he saw that even dragon slayers could die. He had been reduced to tears thinking Handy had died when he had fallen unconscious in the street from blood loss. Then a thought struck him. Maybe it was okay to fail once in a while? So long as you learn. Even heroes lose battles once in a while. He had failed to keep the gems intact, which was a shame, but Handy had told him that he’d know the right time to use them and that they were magical.

So, thinking it over long and hard, he reasoned, what if the magic in the crystals was still there, in the powder? Thinking it over further, he learned that Handy was having a suit of armour being made by Heat Source. That was when it clicked; that was when he knew, knew, that he had to use the crystals. Handy needed the armour, but he didn’t have any magic to help him. So now, with his mind made up, he dragged the sack of powder to Heat Source’s forge.

He had played near here many times over the years and knew the back way in. As quietly as he could, he worked the handle of the back door and snuck inside. The forge was still lit, but the candles in the front rooms were unlit. Heat Source had gone to bed. Perfect. He made his way past the balmy heat of the forge, careful not to snag his sack of fine powder on anything and search for his goal.

He had found the suit of armour lying carefully arrayed on a hard sheet of plywood over a silk sheet. It was in small dark room with a few pots of strange looking plants growing around large purple crystals which emitted a soft light. He could feel the heat coming from the metal as he approached it, giving the small room an ominous and foreboding air. He swallowed but bravely trotted on, dragging the bag in his mouth.

The metal was hot. He had learned from a few telling offs by Heat Source in the past that you should never touch metal when it was hot, as you could deform it. Oh, and also it hurt a bunch, but she added that as an afterthought. But that was okay, Grave Danger had no intention of touching the armour set at all. Well, not with his hooves anyway.

He pushed a small wooden crate over by the small dais the armour was spread out over and got on top of it. Looking over the armour, he hefted the bag up, his tiny limbs struggling for balance. “I hope this helps,” Grave said as he opened the bag and sprinkled the powder over the hot metal. When the bag was empty, Grave bundled it up and snuck his way out of the forge. As he left, the tiny crystal particles sizzled on the hot metal as they slowly sank into the mostly-solid form of the armour.

--=--

Handy gawked at the display before him, jaw wide open. Heat Source may have gotten… a tad carried away, one might say.

Let’s start with the helmet. It was a full-faced helm that covered his entire head with a long T-shaped slit that ran from his eyes down to his mouth, with only a thin strip of metal down its middle acting as a nose guard and the end widening out in a circle encompassing a small flame decal raised out of the metal. The helmet was winged, with two bladed wings sweeping upwards along the flanks of the helmet from the cheek guards and flared backwards, adding another two inches to his height. It also had a small ridge along the top of the helmet going down its back. Apparently, it was so Handy could attach a decorative ‘roman ridge’ if he felt like it. The best part was that as Heat was weaving the padding into the armour, she had placed a tight black cloth over the inside of the slit. It was enchanted to allow Handy to see out of it but meant people would only see darkness as they looked into it.

The cuirass was similarly fancy – strong and simple but awash with flowing interconnecting knots and designs made out in silver, not unlike those found on his hammer. Heat Source had gone ahead and added a number of very pony-esque designs: a few stars here or there, rearing pony silhouettes, all outlined by the same swirling patterns. However, the showstopper was the knotted heart on the breastplate superimposed over a dragon skull. That… took talent. The shield was a long kite shield, a simple piece of metal in comparison to the rest of the armour. It had an engraving of a double-sided hammer down its length ensnared in another swirling knot.

The pauldrons were large with wide shoulder guards designed to prevent blows to the neck. The greaves and vambraces had similar swirling patterns etched out in silver. In a word, it was stupidly fancy. Still, he was not complaining because he actually, to Heat’s horror, tested the metal with a swing of his hammer at the cuirass. There was a resounding clash, but the armour stood fast, and Handy grinned like a maniac. To top it all off, the chainmail hauberk was also silvered, but for all he knew or cared, it was probably painted because the iron rings held fast.

“A tad… excessive, Lady Source,” Handy said. Heat’s ears dropped with a sad look in her eyes. “I love it!” he exclaimed, and she immediately did a one eighty in her mood. Handy had thanked the blacksmith pony and given her another twenty coins for her trouble and immediately left the smithy before she could protest, taking the armour with him in a heavy sack, with the chain hauberk wrapped in a silk cloth under his arm.

The tailor ponies had his clothes ready and waiting for him, significantly reducing the time he had to spend with them, for which he was eternally grateful. They did, however, present him with an extremely large, jet black cloak with a red, velvet interior. The outer cloak had thin white lines running down its back length in a stark, simple pattern depicting a knot. Handy saw Heat wasn’t the only one inspired by the designs on his hammer. He thanked the ponies and quickly made his way back to the inn to sort himself out. In his excitement, he placed his clothes in the dresser and his packs securely under the bed. Both of them, for Heat Source was an honourable mare, and no shenanigans had occurred to his gold.

He was giddy with excitement and couldn’t wait to try on his new armour and see how badass he looked.

--=--

“BLARGH!” Handy blarghed.

Now, despite popular belief, heavy plate mail armour did not reduce a man to a snail’s pace. True, the armour did add roughly forty-four to fifty pounds worth of weight to Handy, but it was evenly spread throughout his body, so rather than carrying one large weight in concentration, he merely had to get used to the fact that his entire body just weighed more now.

“You are going to get up off of yer arse, Handy, you WILL NOT let this beat you!” he said to himself.

If you want a modern day comparison, the average weight of the gear a soldier had to carry into battle on modern battlefields, depending on specialization of course, weighed anything between fifteen to ninety pounds. As you can imagine, running, sprinting, and fighting with such weight with an appreciable speed, even with dexterity and grace, was well within the realm of possibility. So was carrying the rest of his gear with it, because there was no real room in his pack bags as he placed his new clothes in them. He was very likely going to have to wear his armour everywhere.

“Okay, one… two…. left… right….”

That said, Handy was not a soldier and most certainly never had to wear armour before. So he, rather wisely, took his armour and set out into the Badlands. When he was an appreciable distance from the town, with several hills in between him and the town, he got his first surprise of the day. You see, in the firelight of the forge when Handy saw his new armour, he saw it shine. Heat had polished the metal so it looked all shiny and new and awesome and cool and other words associated with good things.

However, when he took his armour out from under its wrappings and the sun came out from behind the clouds, the armour shone like a magnesium flare, blinding the human. Somehow, someway, whatever Heat did to his armour, he was now a walking talking solar flare. He had donned the armour anyway when the clouds had decided to relieve him of his suffering. Putting on his helmet, he was relieved and comforted by the darkness within it, for when the sun shone again, Handy lit up.

He could see the light making the already dry ground around him brighter and thanked God that whatever sorcery Heat Source had performed on his armour did not result him in being cooked alive. Indeed, he felt quite cool as he performed a number of initial exercises to establish balance to get him used to the armour. Swinging his hammer in wide arcs resulted in him losing his footing and crashing to the ground in a noisy heap. The darkness of the helmet prevented the light from blinding him thankfully, so long as he didn’t make the mistake of holding his gauntlet in front of his face while the sunlight hit it.

He was slightly concerned as this made him a hilariously obvious target in a fight. Then again, even without the gross incandescence, he was still a six foot knight in literal shining armour, so subtlety was not really an option. After a while, he decided to cancel his practice and put on his dark cloak. It wasn’t raining, but he now needed the cloak for an entirely different purpose: that of not blinding literally everyone he met. He cut a distinctive figure as he walked back into town and headed into the saloon. He avoided most questions, hoping not to draw attention to his hilarious predicament, but that was hard given he had to hold his shield outside of his cloak, leaving him with a glaring beacon of light on his arm. He apologised profusely to the dazzled ponies and dogs as he had hurried his way.

He didn’t bother taking off the armour, as he intended to go back out as soon as night fell so he could practice without any distractions. What he discovered next sickened him. While the armour had no real reaction to any kind of light, be it a lit candle or the soft glow of a unicorn’s horn when they were using magic, it certainly had a reaction with solar light… and lunar. So there he lay, silently fuming over his latest tumble, losing his balance when he swung his hammer while wielding his shield.

And he was fucking sparkling.

That was right – while during the day he lit up like a flare, at night, when moonlight hit him, he sparkled like he was dumped in a vat of fairy dust while covered in glue. So now he was Edward Cullen, the Milesian. He just lay there, fuming at the injustice of it all. It should be physically impossible to wear full plate armour this intricate and feel emasculated, but Handy found a way. So his choices in life if he wanted to use the armour at all were to either shine brighter than the sun or sparkle like a faggot.

"Bollocks," he swore. There was literally nothing that could—

Was that cloud moving?

Handy squinted and tilted his head forwards. Yeah, that cloud was moving alright, and so were several others. Funny, there was no wind tonight. What could—

Wings… hooves… tails…. Hey, he knew those pegasi! They were the ones from the town and they were… pushing the clouds. Actually physically pushing them. Hey, that one was actually walking on one. What in the hell? Then one of the pegasi bucked a cloud and a bolt of lightning shot out into a neighbour, setting off a chain reaction as a sudden downpour fell upon him. Handy blinked.

The pegasi just… just moved clouds and… caused them to storm. Handy lay there, processing the information for a moment. Joachim had not been not spouting nonsense… The ponies actually did control the weather! That meant all those storms, all those high winds, all those breezy days, and these Badlands lack of any cloud cover was… controlled and regulated… and nobody batted an eye at this. He lay there, absolutely still, trying very hard to maintain his calm.

And then the expensive brick started singing the song of its people.

Handy shook quite violently, and it had nothing to do with being cold.

--=--

“Now, I am not saying I’m disappointed…”

“I’m so so sorry! I have no idea how this could’ve happened! I checked and double checked and—”

“I am, however, somewhat surprised…”

“Sir, I SWEAR I did not do anything magical to cause this! The armour was never supposed to react like that—”

“I mean, I’m still going to wear it. It’s just a bit of an inconvenience is all…”

“*Sniff* Can you… Can you ever forgive me?”

Aaaaand that, by and large, was how the little chat with Heat Source went. He was left standing there, trying to calmly reassure a blubbering blacksmith that she was, in fact, not worst pony. In truth, he was still quite ticked off that he now had to wear the cloak by necessity whenever he wore his armour, still having no way else to store and carry it on his travels, buuuut Heat Source had put in such a good job, and she seemed genuinely distraught at how her work was now ‘ruined’. Handy sighed.

“Look, milady,” he said, getting down on one knee and placing a gauntleted hand on her shoulder. Heat Source briefly stopped her sobbing long enough to listen. “Truly, I am grateful for your craftsmanship. Tis a fine set of armour, no finer have I seen in all my days. I am not angry, nor am I disappointed, merely surprised.” She sniffed.

“You… You like it?” she asked, smiling sadly. Handy nodded. “You… You aren’t mad?” Handy shook his head. The pony sniffed before suddenly hugging Handy “Oh thank you thank you thank you!” the pony gushed, blabbering on about how she had worked so hard and was so concerned he would hate it and offered a full refund just in case. Handy calmly, but firmly, pried the pony off of his neck.

That was an awkward meeting, but he got no answers for his trouble. The mare clearly did not know how Handy’s armour got the way it was. Ah well, shit happened, he guessed. He merely sighed and tightened the clasps of his cloak about his chest, his hand lingering there for a moment. The scar still ached from time to time, and the exertion he’d been inflicting on himself was probably not helping that. He grumbled as the rain pelted his cloak and the wind plucked at it. His mail clinked as he trudged back to the saloon. It would take some getting used to. He had expected that, but now his limited vision was made worse by the hood worn over his helmet. Still, it would have to do.

He entered the saloon and was surprised to see it so empty. The barmare, who he STILL didn’t know the name of, was absent. There was the odd pony sitting at the tables. What drew his attention, however, were his employers speaking with a rather tired and wet-looking third griffon. The trio stopped their conversation to look at the armoured human as he shook the water from his cloak. He had a feeling this may have been the word Ivorybeak had been waiting on.

He walked over to the birds, lifting down the hood of his cloak. The newcomer griffon seemed to reach for something in bag he carried. Ivorybeak raised a claw to stop him. “Ah yes, this is the new… help I requisitioned. Handy, this is Herman Sunderclaw.” Handy nodded his recognition.

“Well met, good sir,” Handy said, not extending his hand. The griffon eyed him suspiciously. “It is as sera Ivorybeak says. I have been hired as additional security to aid in his endeavours.” The griffon continued to look at Handy warily before raising an eyebrow at Ivorybeak, who gave him a reassuring nod.

“Herman, surely you’d like to stay with us the night, at least until the storm passes?” he offered. Sunderclaw shook his head.

“Sorry, Lord, but I must relay word back home,” Herman replied as he eyed the human again.

‘Lord?’ Handy thought to himself. What was a Lord doing out here in the arse end of the world? Herman walked past the three of them towards the door, giving one last glance at the human. Handy decided he didn’t like that bird. He’d put him in the reserve shit list for potential shitlisters. You know, as a purely precautionary measure. Handy turned back to Ivorybeak. “Is there a problem, Sera?” he asked. Ivorybeak shook his head while his partner, Hirsild, idly cleaned the table they sat on returning emptied tankards to the counter.

“Good news, actually, we have word of our quarry.” Handy raised an eyebrow.

“Quarry, milord?” Interesting. Exactly who did this griffon intended on finding?

“Yes, you see my benefactor, Chief Gerhart of the Blackwing clan and King of Gethrenia, has tasked me with finding a… a missing person,” Ivory explained.

“The king of the griffons is your benefactor?” Handy asked, wide-eyed.

“Ohohoho, of course not. That would be High King Ironclaw, King Gerhart’s liegelord.” Handy nodded. He guessed it made sense. If what Joachim had told him of the clans and fierce pride of the griffons held true, and their country was as big as he claimed, it probably made sense they had a bunch of petty kings and archdukes or somesuch that the High King dealt with rather than directly ruled by an absolute monarch. Wait a tick…

“And this missing person?” Handy asked, having a sneaking suspicion but hoping he was wrong. “Did he have an injured wing?” Handy asked. Hirsild looked up, and Ivorybeak blinked.

“Well… yes! He injured it before he left. How did you…?”

“Bright white feathers, grey fur, silvery black feathers on his wings and around his eyes, red irises?”

“Yes yes yes! That’s him!” Ivorybeak’s wings flared as he stood on his haunches, claws clasped at Handy’s cloak. “Have you seen him before? Would you know where he is?!” Handy sighed internally. Joachim, Joachim, Joachim – what the hell did you do in the Griffon kingdom?

“I believe I have. The last I saw of him was on the road leading north from Foalsdale, on the west coast of Equestria,” Handy explained. He could practically hear the foppish griffon before him squee.

“Yes! I knew my instinct was right about you! Hirsild, we finally have a lead! We can finally find Prince Johan! This wonderful chap has come through for us!”

“Johan?” Handy asked, incredulity in his voice. The two griffons turned to him. “Last time we spoke, he called himself Joachim.”

--=--

They left town the next day. Handy packed his things and carried his two bags. He was now burdened by a substantial weight, but he had water canisters now, and somehow this armour worked great at keeping him barely below the lethal levels of heat. The three of them headed off towards the frontier station on foot, the griffons preferring not to fly for some inadequately explained reason. Something to do with being seen? Handy laughed at the idea. All they had to do to be seen was for Handy to take off his cloak and shine like the Vegas strip.

However, of course, it would not be that easy to just leave the town just like that. “Hey, wait!” a tiny and distressingly familiar voice called out. Why, if it wasn’t Handy’s number one fan! He was even less inclined to like the little bastard ever since that fight he picked with the bull on his behalf. But alas, there were ponies and dogs watching him as he left, and the two griffons turned to smile at the little tyke. Handy sighed – looked like he was going to have to put up a show.

“Yes, young man?” Handy turned respectfully, inclining his gentler voice when addressing the colt. He got down on one knee so he didn’t have to bend over quite so much to talk to him. That must’ve looked some sight. The giant in armour and the dark cloak bending the knee to speak with such a tiny creature as the armour that extended from his cloak burned with light. Grave Danger had to shield his eyes. Handy chuckled and pulled his cloak over so as to not to blind the little bastard, as satisfying as that would be.

“Are… Are you really leaving?” he asked sadly. Handy looked about. More of the townsfolk were listening in on the conversation, nosey bastards. He couldn’t just punt the little kid and be done with it. Handy smiled beneath his helmet, not that Grave could see it.

“Alas, but duty carries me elsewhere I am afraid. I am in the employ of these noble griffons who are in need of my assistance.” Handy inclined his head behind him. “But do not fear little one,” Handy said, “your town is safe and you have no need of me.” Grave looked down before turning to look up at Handy.

“When I grow up, I want to travel the world and help people, just like you!” That took Handy aback. Apparently the surprise was evident in his body language. He simply nodded and tussled the child’s mane.

“Hmhmhm.” He chuckled. “You’ll need to grow up big and strong.” Fucking hell, this conversation could not be over soon enough. Quick, think of clichéd shit to funnel into this kid’s mind. “And practice hard, but are you sure you couldn’t do better staying here? Helping out when you are older?” He didn’t want to be responsible for the kid wandering off and finding a poisonous cobra or some shit. “My life is not the safest, after all.”

“But I don’t care about my safety!” he protested. Well, not with a name like Grave Danger he doesn’t, Handy mused. “I hate being small and weak. I just want to help other ponies.” Well wasn’t that just fine and dandy. Handy sighed and put his hand under his chin, lifting his head.

“Chin up, little man. If it is what you wish, then I can only advise you to chase after your dreams. In time, perhaps, you’ll learn if it is the right sort of life for you. But not yet,” he said. “You have quite a bit of growing up to do.” The colt pouted.

“I’m not just some little kid!” he protested. Handy stood back up.

“I never said you were, did I? Have I not called you a man? That is my people’s word for stallion.” He took a sterner tone of voice. “I am treating you like a man and expect from you what I expect from an adult. You are young, and you have many a long year before you. If adventure is what you truly desire, then in due time, you will be ready for it. For now, grow, learn, live, for you will never again have days such as these.” Grave Danger looked up at him, unsure of how to respond. Good, then the storybook bullshit he was spewing was working. “Cherish them, then perhaps you will understand what it is you are defending when you come of age.” Handy turned to walk back to the griffons. “Goodbye, Grave, take care of Pawstown,” he commanded. He heard the sound of little hooves trotting away as he came back to the griffons.

Ivorybeak was smiling warmly at him. “Quite noble for a mercenary, aren’t you?” he asked with a knowing look. Handy turned to look at him as he fell in step beside him, shifting the pack bags on his shoulders.

“Well, I make no secret of my heritage,” Handy answered.

“I wasn’t talking about your airs,” Ivorybeak stated. “You know the name the changelings gave you is probably inaccurate, but maybe you do have a heart after all,” he joked, letting out a little laugh. Handy laughed with him, but under his helm, he scowled.

‘If only you knew, griffon, the darkness that lies in the hearts of men. My noble airs aren’t the only thing I am faking.’ They walked in silence for a bit before Handy realised something. Grave didn’t have that bag of gems with him. He turned to look back at Pawstown, the townsfolk milling about on their daily chores with no sign of the foal. He shrugged. ‘Kids. Heh, he probably dropped it somewhere and forgot about it.’ And with that, he turned, following his employers to the frontier station and to find his long lost feathery friend.

He smiled wryly as a thought returned to him. It was a funny thing, after all, shaking hands with a bird of prey.

Author's Note

Short chapter for today, hope you folks don't mind, this was actually only half of what I had originally planned but eh, you know how it is. Might get the rest done tomorrow.

Additionally, as of today, Bad Mondays has over 40 favourites and nearly 500 views. I thank you all for the attention you've given my little romp, as little as it is, it means alot to me, this was just a writing exercise to get me back into the writing spirit but its warm reception is a welcome change of pace. Again, my thanks to you all.

Chapter 8 - The Equestrian Express

Did you know that the Badlands were actually south of Equestria? Handy certainly didn’t. As such, Handy was treated to an extensive and boring train ride. Long because of the rather absurd distances they had to cover in what effectively mounted to a steam train, boring because all he did was just sit across from his employers and generally look like a sith lord for three days. Practically nopony with the exception of the steward pushing the tea cart dared even pass down the aisle between the griffons and the human.

In fact, the carriage they were in was effectively empty. What few brave, or foolish, ponies dared stay in the same carriage stuck close to the doors, with ponies quickly shuffling off the train as soon as their stop came. Briefly, he considered what stories they were going to tell about the bipedal metal-bound monster that rode in their train as they passed through southern Equestria. Handy had to get used to sleeping in his seat while the griffons went to the sleeping cabins. This was a practical decision since he would probably cause a small panic if he went to the beds. It was uncomfortable trying to sleep in armour, but those three days provided good practice as they made the changeover several times.

He woke up on the morning of the fourth day as they were nearing a train station in Western Equestria, a small village called Hoofshire. However, that wasn’t what caught Handy’s interest. What did was the fact that the curtains of the window he sat next to were drawn open. You see, he had taken to closing them to prevent blinding his employers, and somebody had had the incredible audacity to open them. That somebody was actually a pair of someponies. In armour. Sitting across from him at the table.

‘Well… This should be good for a lark.’ He shook his head ever so slightly to make them aware he had woken up. “May I help you, kind sir, ma’am?” The pair of guard ponies flicked their ears in surprise, but otherwise did not make any facial expression.

The two made an odd pair. One was white and the other one was dark grey with tuft ears. Their barding didn’t match either. The white pegasi had gold, honest to god gold armour, with a crested helm with blue plumage, light blue eyes, and a stern expression. His partner was… quite different. The mare was a pegasus as well, but her wings were… leathery, bat-like almost. Her armour was in stark contrast to the white one, dark blues and soft purples with a crested helm that imitated the style of her wings, all serving to accentuate her distinctive, golden, slitted eyes. Well, he had certainly never seen a pony like THAT before, but he got the distinct impression that it might not be in his best interests to enquire about it.

It was the white pegasus that replied first after spending nearly a full thirty seconds looking straight at Handy’s eyes. Which he couldn’t see – kinda hard to stare down a guy with a full helm, bro. “We hope you don’t mind, but we’ve been traveling a long time, and we merely wished to sit to rest our legs,” he answered, still stone-faced. Handy slowly turned his head to look around. There was literally nobody else in the carriage. Hell, he was still sure most ponies were still asleep. Ivorybeak certainly was, the layabout. He turned his head back to the ponies before him.

“Then you are welcome to sit with me as you please,” Handy said, shifting in his cloak. He got back into a quasi-comfortable position so he could get back to sleep, or at least pretend to. The clinking his armour caused the two ponies to tense, but Handy pretended to ignore it, lowering his head as if to doze off again, his hand gently resting on the head of his war hammer, ready to pull it out of its holding at a moment’s notice. He stayed like that for some time until the mare cleared her throat, getting wise to the fact that Handy was in no mood for playing their game by their rules.

“Forgive us, but we must ask. What is your name?” she asked, polite as you like. She even smiled. It was then he noticed she had fangs. Well, now that was interesting, but two could play at that game, darling, and Handy was not about to show his cards yet.

“I am Handy,” he responded, “of Milesia. Mercenary and Adventurer.” Hopefully that covered their inevitable question about his armour.

“Do you have a licence to seek work in Equestria?” the white one asked abruptly. Handy froze, not entirely sure on how to answer. It never occurred to him that the country might have laws regulating adventuring. In fact, the thought actually seemed absurd even though it made a kind of sense. After all, he, well Joachim really, was responsible for the destruction of a mine.

“I am not seeking work in Equestria,” he decided to answer, neither saying yes or no to the question.

“Then why are you on a train traveling the country if that is the case?” the bat pony asked. Handy was nervous now. This had gone from a polite conversation to an interrogation quite quickly. Now that he thought about it, when did these guards get on? He didn’t recall the train having to make a stop in the night. In fact, he was sure the train had no such stop scheduled at all, and he would’ve noticed these two at a previous train station with the way they stuck out.

“I am already in employment,” Handy admitted. “Escorting my charges to their destination. I am sorry, but who exactly are you two?” he decided to ask, challenge in his voice. He didn’t like this. He had a poor opinion of the guards he had seen of Equestria. These two, however, were… different. They seemed more confident, competent. He saw the mare casually place her hooves on the table between the three of them. She was wearing horseshoes that covered her up to her fetlocks. They had two sharp-looking blades on each hoof, barely poking out. He also tasted ionization on the air, as if some electrical force were running openly across exposed wires, but he had seen no evidence of such a thing during his entire stay on the train. And it felt like it was coming from the white, stony-faced pegasus.

“Aha, I’m afraid we’ll be asking the questions, big guy,” she said, smiling gently. Handy immediately decided he hated her, the arrogant nag.

“Just answer our questions. What are you?” Mighty Whitey asked.

“Excuse me?” Handy asked, still keeping his noble airs evident even if his patience was running dangerously low.

“I asked what you are, what species.”

“I am a human, good sir,” Handy answered.

“And what exactly is a human?” he asked quickly. Ohhhhh, white boy, you just made Handy’s shit list.

“Whatever he damn well pleases to be,” Handy said by way of answer.

“I’d advise you don’t get snippy with us,” the bat pony warned, still wearing her smile. He noticed the claws in her little boots extended ever so slightly. “It’s in your best interest to cooperate.”

“And what exactly am I co-operating in?” Handy challenged, his blood rising. He was not about to take shit from a pair of fucking ponies playing pretend soldier. “I recognize you are guards of this kingdom of some sort, but here I was, sleeping, bothering no pony, and you are here treating me as if I am a criminal?”

“It is our duty to determine threats to the ponies of Equestria,” the white one responded, “and eliminate them if necessary,” he threatened. Handy tensed, considering his options. The two ponies were smaller than him, faster. The armour would weigh them down, sure, but they obviously could fly, which might give them a bit of an advantage. However, the carriage was cramped compared to open air, and Handy was a big bastard by comparison. He could swing and hit them and easily take them out, although it was not ideal fighting ground, but this was, of course, assuming they didn’t use their speed and agility advantage to knock him off his feet. Then he’d be beyond fucked. And there was the movement of the train to consider. He could always throw off his cloak and use his armour to blind them, but then he would’ve assaulted law enforcers of Equestria, possibly even its military. He could hardly hide, for Handy stood out. A lot. He needed to diffuse this quickly.

“I am no threat to the ponies of Equestria,” Handy said. The white one’s eyes narrowed, and the grey pony’s smile widened.

“Then you’ll have no objection to coming with us,” the mare said. “Or wou—”

“Is there a problem here?” Ivorybeak walked up the table. The two ponies turned to him, but only enough to keep Handy well within sight. The noblegriffon had a concerned look on his face.

“Royal business,” Mighty Whitey responded. “Our apologies, citizen.” Ivorybeak looked at Handy. Handy thought quickly. Royal business? Holy shit, who did he piss off!?

“Merely a friendly conversation, my lord Ivorybeak,” Handy said. The two ponies blinked simultaneously. Ah, gotcha. “The two good officers here were merely asking me a few questions, as I am sure you understand, good lord.” Ivorybeak nodded.

“Ah yes, I suppose that is understandable,” he said, reasoning Handy’s imposing countenance was the cause for the guards ponies’ caution. It wasn’t, but he didn’t need to know that, and Handy couldn’t tell him even if he himself did.

“Lord?” the bat mare asked. Ivorybeak puffed his chest out.

“Yes, quite. I am Lord Heinrich Ivorybeak, Count of Munsiter, Chancellor of the court of King Gerhart Blackwing of Gethrenia,” he said. The bat mare’s hoof blades retracted ever so slowly, and he felt the ionization lessen. Handy smiled. “Handy the Heartless here is my bodyguard as I execute my duties. If you would like, I can show my papers regarding my travels through your kingdom, should you require it.” The white stallion looked at Handy hard for a few seconds before answering.

“Yes, if you would be so kind,” he said. Ivorybeak called for Hirsild, and the young griffon came up and handed Ivorybeak a roll of parchment which he handed to the gold clad pony. He opened it and spread it across the table with his hooves. Handy noticed he had similar hoof boots as his comrade, even if the aesthetic design was a tad fancier. And golden. Handy’s smile grew wider as he saw the stony-faced pony’s eyes widen. The bat mare looked curiously over his shoulder. “So… I see.” He looked back up to the griffons and handed the parchment back.

“Yes, quite. I do so apologise if Handy here caused any consternation,” Ivory said.

“My apologies,” Handy said, inclining his head, smiling all the way. “It was not my intention at all, to cause concern,” Handy lied. “Do you still require anything of me?” Handy asked. He saw the white stallion grind his teeth as the train slowed down, pulling into its stop.

“No,” the pony said at last. Diplomatic immunity, motherfucker! Handy stood to his full height, causing them all to look up. The bat mare’s smile shrank. Handy’s didn’t. He turned and bowed slightly to Ivory.

“Shall I carry your bags, my lord?” he asked.

“That won’t be necessary, Handy, that’s what Hirsild is here for.” Handy saw Hirsild roll her eyes behind Ivory’s back. “Come along now,” he said, walking to the exit as the train stopped.

“As you will, my lord,” Handy said, reaching up to take his packs from the storage above him. With his cloak spread, and the sunlight shining on his armour, he saw the two ponies flinch. Carrying the packs over his shoulders, he stopped to nod once more to the two ponies, digging it in as it were. “Sir, ma’am,” he said simply and strolled casually out of the carriage, not noticing the coin fall from his pack.

The two ponies remained where they sat, fuming. The white one hit the table with his hoof. “Buck it! We had him!” he swore. The train was going nowhere, cooling down as the mechanics worked on the engine. No one was on the tracks waiting to board.

“Calm down, he’s a mercenary remember? He can’t stay in the bird’s protection forever,” the mare consoled, placing a hoof on the stallion’s shoulder. “Still, it would have been good to have just a little taste…”

“Midnight!” the stallion cried.

“Hey hey! I just wanted to know what the fuss was about. I mean, you heard what it did to Onyx and Shimmer,” she protested.

“That’s exactly why the pair of them are suspended. You know the rules.”

“It’s not our fault we need blood!”

“I never said it was…,” he said, rubbing his neck. The mare blinked.

“Awwww, jealous?” She smirked.

“No. I just don’t want you to get into trouble. It’s different when you take from me. At least we can hide that.”

“You’re a sweetheart, really. But hey, no one said we had to tell anypony I took a bit if we got a hold of him.” The stallion just looked at her. “Sides, not like it matters now. He’s with that dang griffon.” She sighed and looked down, seeing a gold coin and smiling. “But hey, at least that means we got good luck,” she said, reaching down and picking up the coin.

“Hang on a sec,” the stallion said, reaching for the coin. “Let me have a look at that.”

“Hey!”

“I’ll give it back, just give me a second,” he said, looking the coin over. “Huh, this is all gold,” he said, impressed.

“I found it first!” the mare protested. “Gimmie!”

“Alright alright, just hang on a sec.” He looked closely at the side of the coin. There were a lot of tiny characters written there, but he didn’t understand the language. “What’s this now…”

The hooded figure was careful to walk across the platform, trying to stay out of sight of the distracted royal guards still aboard the train. She drew the hood tighter about her as she looked to the griffons and human walking off into the village. Crimson’s eyes narrowed. She had her orders, and soon her mistress would have her weapon and their answers, and then…

Well, time would tell.

--=--

So Joachim was a hard bastard to find.

The three of them scoured town after town. Hoofshire was a bust, having seen no griffons other than Hirsild and Ivorybeak. Handy was getting quite tired lugging his shit around, but he stuck through it. For some reason, the royal guard had a bone to pick with him, and the griffons were his only protection.

Eventually, they came upon a clue, two days after they had arrived in Hoofshire. It was at a farm several miles from Foalsdale. Apparently, the farmpony, an apple farmer apparently who had branched out and occasionally grew oranges, had spotted a griffon hauling a wagon with several crates down towards the town of Caulkins. That certainly had lifted their spirits. When questioned, the brown stallion stated that the griffon had looked worse for wear, his coat very dirty, and he had this haunted look about his face, right miserable-looking. His daughter had tried to offer him some help, but the griffon had rudely shrugged her off.

Aaaaand that had lowered their spirits again. If that was Joachim, he was obviously not having a good time. They had then made their way to the town of Caulkins. It was a cramped, dark-looking town by the river side, squashed between the river bank and a high cliff with overhanging trees and foliage. There was one main road that went downhill one end and uphill the other, depending on which direction one entered the town from, of course. The wooden buildings were characterised by high sloped roofs with dark, mahogany tiles. Handy wasn’t sure about the practicality of that, but hey, wasn’t his town.

The three of them entered the town and Handy was treated to the usual reaction. Honestly, it had gotten boring and he hardly noticed it anymore. Following Ivory’s lead, they reached the town centre. He informed them they should split up and search for Johan, or Joachim as Handy knew him. The griffons split off and began questioning the ponies of the town. Handy stood there for a minute, trying to pick a direction, when he spied a wooden cart with a tarp drawn over it just outside a tavern, a smashed bottle of orange substance on the ground beside it.

Handy had a fair idea of where he might find his griffon.

--=--

He stumbled at the counter, knocking over yet another cup. Thankfully, it was empty this time.

“I think you’ve had enough, pal,” the barkeep said, a rather large-looking teal stallion.

“Ssssshuddap,” the griffon said, head on the counter, feathers sticky from dried alcohol and butter beer, peanuts in the down of his wings which themselves looked dishevelled as he splayed them over the nearby stools, uncaring to even retract them. “Aaand get me anuddah…”

“Hey pal—”

“It’s alright,” a soft voice from behind him said, accompanied by heavy hoof falls. “I’ll pay his tab.” He heard the clink of a coin on the counter and the thud of a full tankard. Joachim didn’t bother to open his eyes, but his wing twitched nervously as whoever the fuck this pony was pushed his right wing aside to sit beside him with a heavy sigh.

“What yer selling mm’not buying…” The griffon huffed and turned his head away, thereby getting the other side of his feathery head stained with spilled beer. The stallion beside him shifted his weight. Sounded like he was carrying a lot of metal.

“Not selling anything. Just saw you here at the counter and thought you could use the company.”

“Wadda you care?” Joachim slurred.

“Oh, I don’t, but I did say I’d be back, now didn’t I?” Joachim cracked his eyes open slowly. What the hell? “Our fella.”

Joachim shot up and stared at the human sitting beside him, not believing his eyes. “H-Handy?” he asked, rubbing his eyes with his claws, immediately regretting it as he had yet to wash them and thus causing his eyes to sting and water. The human gave him an amused expression. Joachim gave the human a once over. He was wearing a very intricate suit of armour and a dark heavy cloak. He had a helmet sitting on his lap and was missing his beard. “Wh-What… I-I mean… I tried finding you and and… What happened?” Handy chuckled.

“Would you believe… nothing much?” Joachim gave him a deadpan glare. Handy laughed. “Okay okay, some shit happened. Maybe I’ll tell you about it, but really, it’s a boring story. I’m actually here to find you as it turns out”

“W-Why?” Joachim asked timidly, now looking down at the floor. “I left you in that forest. I thought you were arrested. I tried finding you, honest! I just, I couldn’t—”

“Oh calm man, you wouldn’t have found me if you tried,” Handy said truthfully. “Not when I didn’t want to be found.”

“Oh…” Joachim’s face was confused, not sure how he should respond. “Then why did you come to find me now?”

“I got paid to,” Handy said simply, shit-eating grin present and accounted for. “Your Highness.” Joachim’s face sunk.

“…H-How did you find out?”

“A little bird told me. Goes by the name of Count Ivorybeak,” Handy responded, drinking the untouched tankard. It was bitter but flavourful. “So… Wanderlust huh?” he teased, his smile fading a bit as he saw the distraught look on Joachim’s face. He sighed. “Look man, what’s wrong?”

“I’m just… I don’t know why they’re… Why is he looking for me?”

“I don’t rightly know,” Handy said. “But he’s the chancellor of King Gerhart’s court, so I imagine it’s something big. Say, you’re a prince right? What the hell are you doing out here anyway?” Handy asked seriously. “Isn’t that kind of irresponsible of you? Don’t tell me you ‘wanted something more’ and tried to skip out on inheriting your father’s throne.”

“N-No… It’s not like that. I’m not in the succession… not anymore,” Joachim responded, rubbing a shoulder. Handy’s brow furrowed.

“Bed the wrong woman?” he asked plainly, trying to think of reasons for why a prince would flee his kingdom when it hadn’t been conquered. The question caused Joachim to start and fluster.

“N-No! Never, I mean I never even… Look, no, that’s not the reason.”

“Then what? I mean yeah, if you’re not likely to get the throne, it’s tempting to go off and carve out a niche for yourself in the world and all. I get that, but you are kind of needed in case something happens after all. Isn’t that the reason behind the whole ‘heir and a spare’ business?”

“I lost a duel alright!?” Joachim near shrieked, his wings flaring. Handy was suddenly grateful the tavern was practically deserted. The barkeep made to look like he was busy and not eavesdropping, but Handy didn’t care. Joachim placed his head on the counter and put his claws over it. “My brother challenged me for the inheritance, convincing my father that I wouldn’t be fit for the position.” Joachim gritted his teeth and stared death at a bottle in front of him. “I was chosen by the nobles as the best choice, and not five weeks after I was announced as the crown prince, my brother had spread rumours about my incompetence.”

Handy thought for a moment. So the griffons of his kingdom chose the heir to the throne by voting among the favoured sons of the king. Sounded like a tanistry system to him, which was interesting for historical reasons, but he put that to one side. “So you fought him?” he asked, taking a sip of his beer.

“No…,” Joachim said, shame in his voice. Handy raised an eyebrow.

“You ran?” he asked, challenge in his voice.

“Do I look like a coward to you?” Joachim rounded on Handy and jabbed at his chest. Handy shook his head. Whatever else he could say about the griffon, he certainly was no coward. More stupid than brave, sure, but not a coward. He had learned that well enough in the mine. Joachim calmed again. “I fought his second. My brother is a sickly and weak griffon, but he has a silver tongue unlike anything you’ve ever heard. I couldn’t get a second if I tried and had to fight Knight Shortbeak myself.”

“You lost to a guy called Shortbeak?”

“Laugh it up, blighter broke my wing.”

“So the shame was too much? Is that why you left?” Handy probed. Joachim sighed.

“No, my brother gloated after I lost, and my father had no choice but to acknowledge him as the winner and new crown prince with the ascent of the nobility.” He sneered. “He was always the spiteful, spoiled sort. He threatened to make me the court fool and other ignominious fates. Life in the palace became intolerable. I was a laughingstock! I had to… I just had to leave, going anywhere, I didn’t care.”

“How is it that you can duel over the right to inherit a throne? That doesn’t sound too stable to me.”

“It’s an old custom, and it works. Its intent is to prevent other claimants from pressing their claims in civil war. Through the ascent of the title holder and his vassals, one claimant can challenge the favoured heir in a duel. By winning, he becomes the new heir. It may sound bad but it has worked for centuries and has a rich tradition. No one dares break it.”

Handy was silent for a moment, thinking. “And now your father wants you back. “You think your brother lost his claim?” Joachim shook his head.

“If anything like that happened, it’d be big news. I’d have heard about it by now.” he sulked. “I don’t know why dad wants me back. The look on his face…” Handy finished his drink.

“Well… Whatever he wants, I suppose it’s about time we got you to him.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re a miserable wreck. Look at you!” Handy said, gesturing at the state of Joachim. The griffon looked himself over. “You clearly aren’t happy out here.”

“Well, yeah, but what of it? I may have been a wreck this past week but that’s because I thought I got you in prison… or worse.”

“Yeah but what’s ludicrous danger between friends? Come on, let’s get you cleaned up before I take you to lord Ivory-arse.” Joachim snickered.

“Hey, he’s not a bad guy.”

“Since when has that stopped me?”

--=--

So by way of cleaning the bird up, Handy took him to a fountain, and using his heavy gauntleted hands, forced the water to spray at the startled griffon. Well, it wasn’t the best, but it would have to do for now, even if it made him look like a giant drowned rat. Handy was actually overjoyed to learn that the crates Joachim had taken with him were, in fact, salamander salve. As much as Flim and Flam were pretty high on his shit list, he had to admit, he fucking loved them for the creation they had made.

“My prince!” Ivorybeak exclaimed as the pair walked back to the centre of town at the agreed time. He walked over and bowed his head. “It is so good to finally find you! Your father… Forgive me, His Majesty has been sick with worry.” Joachim’s eyes were downcast. Handy looked down at both of them. Ivory turned to the human henchman. “My thanks, Sir Handy, for you have been most helpful. I release you of your service. Hirsild?” The griffon approached Handy and offered him a bag of gold. Handy took it, concerned.

“It has been a… pleasure, my lord.” ‘Shit shit shit, I didn’t think I’d be released this early!’ “However, art thou sure you no longer require my services? The woods are rarely safe.”

“I had considered it, good sir,” Ivorybeak said imperiously. Joachim showed Hirsild to the wagon. Hirsild sighed as she strapped herself in. “But considering our little run in with the royal guard, I think it is best we part ways.”

“Royal guard?” Joachim asked.

“Long story, your Highness,” he answered.

“Quite,” Ivory agreed. “Now come along, your Majesty, I am sure we can make do.” He made to move off as Hirsild pulled the wagon along. Joachim looked up at Handy, tapping his beak. Handy’s head was downcast.

‘The hell am I going to do now? Perhaps live in the woods? I don’t remember doing anything too terrible… Okay, I kicked the shit out of that one pony ranger before Charity Bell kidnapped me, but really! It was only a little grievous bodily harm…’

“Got anywhere to be?” Joachim asked. Handy looked down at Joachim, or should that be Johan? He frowned beneath his helmet.

“Not particularly…”

“And you did tell me you’d tell me the story of where you’d been…,” he said, smiling. “And I want to know this business between you and the guard.”

“…Yes?” he asked, not entirely sure where he was going with it. Ivorybeak turned around.

“Your Highness? Are you coming?”

“Then I have decided you’ll work for me,” Joachim said, his head raised and chest puffed out. Handy’s mind reeled; he hadn’t even considered the possibility.

“Your Highness! I know the mercenary is skilled but surely we can do without—”

“As you will, your Highness,” Handy said, smiling. ‘Perfect, if a count can protect me from the guard, a prince would do an even better job.’

“Wh-Wha-What!?” Ivory stuttered. Hirsild snickered at her lord’s blustering.

“I have known Handy since before you met him. He is a good and reliable sort. I’d have no other guard us,” Joachim said. Handy noted the incline in his voice and smirked at the irony. Whereas he was a common man pretending to be noble, Joachim was the exact opposite. Ivorybeak continued to protest, but Joachim just walked on past him, calling Handy along.

Ivorybeak grumbled along the way for the rest of the day as they reached a small station near the Brackenwoods. Apparently the area was known for its satyrs or something. Handy wasn’t paying attention. The small band waited here. When Handy asked why they simply didn’t go straight to the Hoofshire station, which was closer, rather than this one out in the middle of nowhere, he was simply told that this was a far more important route. Not that he was one to argue, being the hired help, but you normally don’t associate train stops in the middle of nowhere as being important, enquiring further proved illuminating.

Apparently this station was a usual stopping point for the Equestrian Express, the engineers stopping here to refill their water supplies for the engine. Handy didn’t like it. More than once he found his hand reaching for his hammer as he heard hurried hooffalls in the woods around him. He was told to pay no mind, that they were merely satyrs and the worst they would do was snatch the food from your mouth if you were stupid enough to eat out in the open. Still…

They had waited an hour for the train to arrive, Joachim and Ivory filling the time with idle chit chat and pleasantries that ultimately had no substance. Handy and Hirsild stood there, bored and exhausted, Hirsild more than Handy, given her own load. Honestly, it was almost a relief when the train rounded the bend and… Holy shit this thing was huge.

The huge black steam engine was easily twice the size of that of the rather fruity and girly-looking train he had just travelled on from Pawstown. The carriages looked like they were double decked, and a fair number of large carriages had no windows at all. He later learned this train was a dedicated trading vehicle, a joint project between Equestria and the Griffon Kingdom. Considering the large distances and rough terrain between griffon and pony centres of trade, it was considered more economical to construct a train to go back and forth and maintain the tracks rather than the cost of fleets of couriers carrying vast amounts of goods over the mountains every year.

Handy didn’t argue, merely glad this train’s passengers were mostly griffon tradesmen. Good, that meant he wouldn’t need to worry about spooking them when he tried to go to bed at night.

--=--

Yes he did.

Handy sighed. Sitting by the window, he leaned over the table, the blinds shuttered. It had been nearly a week but at least they were nearing the Equestrian/Griffon border. And all that time, he had to sit in the carriage and sleep there. The griffons were nearly as freaked out by the human than the ponies and practically panicked when his hood fell and the sun hit the side of his head. This was getting old.

He crossed his arms and lay his head down to rest.

“So just… Let me get this straight… You killed Chrysalis?”

“I didn’t kill her, I merely beat her.” Handy groaned. “Bashed her head a few times on the floor.

“Uh-huh, and what were those horse apples you were feeding me about not hitting women?”

“Look, I’m not proud of it, okay? It’s been bothering me, alright? At least she didn’t kill me when she had the chance, not that you could blame her. I was not… myself…”

“And she gave you this pendant?” Joachim asked, holding the blue jewel to his eye level, the soft light from it highlighting his features.

“Yeeep.”

“After you killed a dragon?” he asked, handing the pendant back to Handy.

“Well, more like fell on it.”

“How did you survive?”

“Asked for divine assistance.”

“No, really.”

“Really, that’s what I did. Whacked away at the supports and prayed I’d live to tell about it.”

“You’re... And you call me reckless!”

“I do, and you are, but moving on, that’s why I have the designs on my armour.”

“Did you really ask for it to be like that?”

“Ha, no. The blacksmith did this on her own volition.”

“Because you killed a minotaur.”

“Broke his rib cage, not killed.”

“Still!”

“Look, I didn’t have a choice alright? I kinda… lost my temper.”

“And the whole sparkling thing?” Joachim said, eyeing Handy’s vambraces. There was a sliver of moonlight sneaking through the curtains as the train rumbled along. Handy hurriedly closed the curtain tighter.

“No idea, the blacksmith didn’t know either. My guess? God thought it’d be funny.”

“You know, it kinda is.”

“Fuck you, your Majesty,” Handy said, drinking the coffee placed before him. “Anyway, what have you been doing since the run in with the rangers?” Joachim took a minute to answer

--=--

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!”

The griffon held on to the wagon for dear life as it rumbled its way down the hill. The windmill was on fire as the pegasi lost control of the clouds and a wild electrical storm raged over head. A cursing pony ranger was cursing and diving between crates of salve as they fell off the back of the wagon. Joachim thundered uncontrollably downwards to the bridge. A thin line of terrified pony guards stood there, uncertain about their chances versus a loaded wagon bearing down on them with ridiculous speed. The sombrero and poncho he was wearing was frayed and stained with apple juice.

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!”

--=--

Joachim’s ‘thumbs’ were twiddling around each other. “Nothing interesting really,” he said, looking aside. Handy was too tired to press him on it. Joachim shook his head. “Anyway, it’s late. I’m heading to bed.”

“You enjoy that,” Handy said. Joachim smiled at him apologetically before moving off. Handy sat there for a while longer. It was dark in the carriage and lonely too. He got up, deciding to stretch his legs for a bit.

As Handy busied himself, walking back to the small storage area on one of the passenger carriages to look over his packs and the other goods his group brought with them, he, and everyone else on the train for that matter, did not notice the crimson pony land on the caboose. Not that they would have, there being easily seven large container carriages between it and the passengers. The spectral wings dissipated as the unicorn’s horn lit up, witch fire pouring from her eyes. It was simple: get in, get the creature, get out. The power her mistress had given her had taken a long time to accrue, but it would be worth it.

Her ear twitched and she turned. The clouds parted just enough to see a large number of silhouettes against the moon heading towards the train. She frowned. Mistress had never said anything about sending help. Crimson assumed the worst. Her horn flared with energy as sibilant whispers fell from her lips. Her form trembled and spasmed but remained firmly grounded on the caboose of the speeding train. The mist gathered about her, flowing from her mouth ears and nostrils. The racing wind whipped and plucked at it, but it did not fall from the train. Wraithlike, semi-solid forms emerged from the smoky substance, their spectral hooves clawing at the caboose to pull themselves up as their muzzles opened in silent whinnies.

The dark forms of the strangers were gaining speed now, diving straight for the passenger carriages. Crimson snorted, her hood pulled back by the wind. They would not take her prize from her.

--=--

Handy studied the bottle of salve for some time. That broken finger of his was feeling much better, but still… It could use a little help, couldn’t it?

He shook his head. He knew this stuff was addictive. Was it really wise? He took his helmet off and placed it on the crate. He wondered if it would heal his chest scar. Well, he didn’t really want to get rid of it – it was kind of bitchin’ – but he had to consider the possibility. He could test it, right? Just a little wouldn’t hurt, right? It wasn’t as if he had an addictive personality or anything…

As he reached to turn the cap of the bottle, he heard a crash. He whipped around and drew his war hammer out, gripping his shield in his free arm, the bottle fallen and forgotten. He pushed open the door, only to get a hoof to the face for his trouble. Handy staggered back and swung his hammer around in an upwards swing. He didn’t see what he struck through the stars in his eyes, but he felt it connect and heard the crumple of metal under his blow. He regained his footing and brought his shield up immediately, only to see sparks fly across its edges and feel a force strike against the weight of the metal. He rushed forward suddenly, not seeing what he was fighting in the dark room.

The shield bash caught his opponent off guard, and he heard a weight hit the ground. He kicked with his boot and connected with something, eliciting a shout of pain. He roared and swung his hammer around one-handed overhead and struck the ground. He looked up. He was fighting a pony, another one of those bat-ponies like the one he saw at Hoofshire. There was another one in a heap spread across a seat, the armour on its chest deformed. Looks like he got a good hit in. There was glass on the floor, and he heard the rush of the wind through the breach. More crashes, screams of alarm over head, more intruders bursting into the carriages.

Handy snarled. Royal guard or not, he was hired to do a job. He bashed his hammer against the side of his shield in challenge to the guard. “Come have a go if you think you’re hard enough, pony!” he shouted over the noise of the wind. The stallion snorted, pawing at the ground in anger. Handy noticed the pony had blades on its front hooves. And they sparked. His eyes widened as he had mere moments to duck as the pegasus dived for the human. He rolled on the ground under the dice to get further away from the pony before rising to his feet and charging down at the guard.

The pony was faster, however. Handy got a boot to the head as the pony did a manoeuvre in the air that caught the human off guard. He stumbled backwards from the blow and had to raise his shield. The pony was a fluid ball of fury! He swung the shield out, causing the pony to back off for a fraction of a second, immediately thinking the human had made a mistake and left and opening–

–Just in time for the hammer to come swinging around at the exact same time. He caught the pegasus on the helmet, ripping it off. Handy’s eyes widened.

“Bollocks,” he mouthed.

The mare shook her head, short black mane shaking with it and snorted, pale green eyes staring daggers at Handy. Handy backed off and raised his shield. Of course it would be a mare. Why wouldn’t it be? Silly Handy, what was the fun in fighting without a psychological handicap! The pony slowly advanced on the human. He easily outweighed the pony so much that it was almost hilarious, but the little devil was fast and those blades looked nasty.

“Care to explain why thou art attacking a trading train? Thou realise, of course, that thou are assaulting a diplomatic envoy and his entourage,” Handy tried reasoning. He heard the fighting upstairs.

“Quiet!” the guard demanded, casting a glance back to her unconscious partner before locking a glare at the human. “You are under arrest by order of Princesses Celestia and Luna!” Handy snorted.

“On what grounds!?”

“Take your pick.” The mare smiled. “Assault of an officer, obstruction of justice, resisting arrest, possession and trafficking of illicit materials with intention of selling, treason.” Handy blinked. Well okay, those were kind of substantial now that he thought of it.

“I was never loyal to Equestria!” Handy protested.

“Perhaps, but there’s no other way to classify working as an agent of a hostile kingdom!”

“The griffons are hardly Equestria’s enemies.”

“But Chrysalis is,” the mare accused. Handy froze, and she smiled at the silent admission of guilt. How in the hell did they figure that out? He knew news travelled fast here, but hardly anyone left Pawstown other than True Shot. The only ones who could have told anyone north of the Badlands was himself, the griffons or… the changelings themselves.

“I worked for the changelings, true, but that was in the Badlands. I am not an agent for that nag!”

“We will determine that at your trial. You have changeling coinage on your person, old ones too. You’re in deep with them!” she accused. Handy reeled. Of course that gold would come back to haunt him. He could practically hear the Queen laughing at him even here and now!

“I refute your authority!” Handy snarled. He was going to mention the prince aboard, but he figured he had better keep that card to himself. Something told him that if the Equestrians got a hold of the prince when they were bold enough to say ‘Screw diplomacy!’ to catch one petty criminal such as him, they might just use him as political leverage on the griffon kingdom. Mayhap he didn’t care; he did, however, believe he was a professional, and a professional didn’t do his job by halves. He would need to protect Joachim, and that meant dealing with this mare one way or the other. Without hitting her. He could do that, sure.

He gritted his teeth as he felt the blood run down the side of his head. He really missed that helmet; unfortunately, the mare was now between him and it. He undid one of the clasps of his cloak, causing it to flutter wildly, the moonlight on his armour causing it to dazzle spectacularly. The mare was suitably distracted and shielded her eyes. Big mistake. He rushed towards her and shoved her out of the way with his shield. The blades on her hooves moved position and hooked into the underside of the shield as she pulled. The shield was taken off and Handy staggered back. He corrected himself and raised his hammer in two hands.

It was too late. The pegasi rose into the air with a single, strong beat of her wings, spinning in a twirl as she swung the shield around, causing it to smash into Handy’s head audibly. Handy staggered violently and went down, hard. His head spun, he didn’t know where his hammer was, the train wouldn’t stop spinning, he was seeing double and didn’t know which way was up.

He heard panting. Forcing himself to get up and failing miserably, Handy collapsed on his back from the sideways position he had initially fell. He brought his head around. The mare was breathing heavily and looking at Handy. Her slit eyes were dilated alarmingly and her ears were flicking erratically. He tried to push himself up, and the pony bared her fangs in a hiss and jumped, clamping both hooves on his chest, pushing him back to the ground and bringing her hoof blades close to his throat. Oh look at that, she was pissed. Good times are ahead, surely!

More crashing noises. “Private!” The mare didn’t look away at the other pony that was outside of Handy’s sight.

“I have the target, ma’am!” she responded. More crashes, shouts of alarm, renewed fighting, and more crashes. Handy’s head spun.

“We’ve got bigger concerns!” the superior officer shouted. More crashes – how many of these ponies are there? Handy suddenly felt cold, and his heart raced. Oh God, how hard did she hit him? He felt unconsciousness calling and he tried to fight it. At the least he was getting a concussion out of this. The rational part of his mind was pulling a God-damn coup and was running on overtime to get Handy to think logically and stay awake. He felt so cold, breath left his mouth, and he could see the ice crystals form in a mist as his warm breath met the cold air. The pony’s did too. Oh what irony. And it was such a humid night too…

…

Hang on a minute.

He heard shouts of alarm. There were flashes of green out the windows, more crashes – this time on his floor of the carriage – and sounds of fighting. “PRIVATE, WE NEED YOU HERE NOW!” the commander shouted. Handy tried rising but was pushed back down. He still couldn’t see straight. The mare looked back around and her ears stood on end. Her eyes flicked back to Handy… and what was behind her. ‘Hey, you know, you can just, like, totally fuck off and go help your boss. I won’t mind, really, that’d be just great…,’ Handy thought. ‘That way none of my griffons pals can see me on the wrong side of this little scuffle we had going on. Come on, do a lad a solid would ya, lassie?’ His head felt wet. Oh God, she cut something.

“I can’t just leave him unattended!” she protested.

“Then restrain him! That’s an order! Get over here no— ACK!”

The mare looked alarmed but didn’t take her eyes off of Handy. He noticed her nostrils were flaring, taking in deep breaths. She glanced back and forth between him and the fight behind her. What the hell was she waiting for? And why the hell was she panting so hard? She wasn’t the one that got a tremendous whack from a solid slab of metal upside the temple. And why was—

A sudden, stabbing pain erupted in Handy’s neck as his body began spasming. He could only see the flicking ear of the pony in his vision as a strange sensation clouded his mind. It dulled the pain, and he felt his heart rate slow… almost… lethargic… He felt sleepy… The pressure on his neck intensified… something was leaving him, something important, but he couldn’t… focus…. The pony pushed herself up; there was blood on her muzzle that she wiped away. He blinked rapidly, trying to force himself to stay awake.

“There, now he won’t be moving for a while.” Her eyes seemed to flash brightly and her wings fluttered rapidly. She seemed to…blur as she moved, but Handy was sure that was his own delirious vision playing tricks on him. She seemed to flicker and then was gone entirely, the weight lifted from his chest… The world was getting dark… He felt so tired….

The expensive brick, now lying in a pouch at his waist, decided to play what it considered an appropriate song.

--=--

And Joachim had been having such a lovely dream too.

“GET. OUT. OF MY. CABIN!” He flared his wings as he swung the pony through the door. It broke apart under the impact, the pony hitting the wall hard. Joachim rushed the equine, grabbed its helmet, and smashed its head into the ground. The pony stayed down. ‘What the hay!?’ Joachim thought to himself. The carriage was absolute chaos, guard ponies having broken through the windows and were trying to subdue the griffons who, to their credit and Joachim’s immense pride, weren’t making it easy for them.

He himself had been wrestling with this guard pony for a few minutes and was about to turn on another who was bearing down on him. Right before a ghost beat him to it. Joachim’s movement stuttered. Before him stood a pale, green, luminescent pony, made of mist and some strange slimy substance. It had just phased through the wall, leaving a thin coating of… something on the wall as it attacked the night guard. More of them emerged, from the roof, the floor, and the walls. The carriage was now a maddening three way fight between pony, griffon, and the goddamn army of slimers. Not that he made the referential connection, but it was necessary to convey just how disgusting the sight was. His breath formed in the air before him. It suddenly felt very cold.

To his great relief, the ghost apparently could be struck although it was no easy thing to put them down. Their movements were sluggish, but they appeared indefatigable and attacked in utter silence, which was the most unnerving aspect of their appearance. However, his relief was lessened somewhat as he saw what was tantamount to a purple, black, and grey blur that whizzed around the far end of the carriage like a living buzz saw. He grimaced as he turned and swiped at the nearest ghost pony, his hand becoming embroiled in the filth as the slashed face of the ghost tried to rematerialize. The ghost rounded on him. Joachim swallowed.

--=--

Stellar Eclipse felt absolutely amazing. Her senses had increased ten-fold and her reactions just as much. She was moving faster and with more precision than she had ever felt. Everything felt as if it moved in slow motion when she moved. She could see everything with perfect clarity and detail. She could tell apart each of the individual hairs on the head of the stallion that was currently being thrown at her. She moved a fraction to the right as her comrade, Bladegrass she thought his name was, flew past her, and she walked over to the griffon that had ponyhandled him. He was a big guy, with an engineer’s overalls. His eyes widened with comical slowness as she casually stepped around the hooffights going on around her. She jumped and bucked the griffon in the face, sending him flying back with enough force to crash through the wall of a sleeping cabin and into the middle of another brawl.

She smirked. She knew drinking real blood had an effect on her kind, but she had never had a kick like this before. Granted, it tasted awful, but by Luna was this good. A ghost had come upon her, and Eclipse avoided its sluggish assault and spectral hooves with insulting ease. Her hoof blades came out and she flowed around the creature, practically dancing, swinging her hooves in graceful arcs, slicing the ghost to ribbons. It had collapsed into a pile of formless goo not long after.

“Eclipse!” Her ear flicked and she looked over at the source of the voice. It was a rather ragged-looking sergeant. Glitter Oak looked at the mare with something between awe and concern. “Are you… feeling alright?” She actually laughed at that.

“Never better, sir,” she said, not bothering to hide her smile. He looked at her. Her movements were… strange. It was as if she had her own after-image as she constantly moved around, taking in all the details of the battle occurring on the carriage around them. Her eyes were literally glowing.

“Private,” he said sternly, “what happened to you?” He had a sinking feeling. He had heard the rumours too, what happened to Shimmer and Onyx. She didn’t… did she? “You drank it, didn’t you?” He saw her flinch as she turned back to him, a bashful expression on her face. He felt furious. “Do you know I can suspend you for that!? You know the law! We can’t take from living creatures!” She looked down bashfully, only looking up suddenly to take a swipe at a rather beaten and bruised-looking griffon who didn’t know well enough to sit down and play dead.

“I-I had him, downstairs, but the captain demanded I return to the fight. I had to restrain him somehow!” she protested.

“So you DRANK from him!?” he yelled incredulously. He toned down his voice; some of the others were becoming distracted from their fights when he raised his voice. He glared at Eclipse. His ear flicked. “What’s it like?” he asked, looking away. Eclipse smirked.

“It’s great! I’ve never felt like this before in my life,” she said before her smile grew wider at him. She turned briefly, looking out a smashed window. More of those ethereal nags were flying past the carriage, heading towards the further passenger cabins. She turned back to her sergeant. “You can court martial me after the operation. Right now, I can’t afford to waste this.” She studied his face for a moment before saying. “You know… I left plenty in him… You could always just go down and take a bite yourself…,” she added before rushing out the window in a blur. She was gone in a blink. The sergeant looked at the battle around him and glanced at the door leading to the stairs behind him. The beginnings of a smile tugged at his lips.

--=--

One hand. Then another.

The haggard, wrecked Handy forced himself forward, crawling on the floor back into the holding compartment. He had one chance, and he couldn’t afford to waste it. It took him a while to process that the bat pony had fucking drank his blood. The things were God-damn pony vampires! He needed to be helped, and fast! The griffons aside, he didn’t want to be at the mercy of a pack of those creatures. His vision was blurring dangerously, and his head was ruining his concentration. He needed sleep so very badly, but he was stubbornly forcing his way through the fog of consciousness.

He got to the wagon, his hands fumbling at the dropped bottle of salve he was perusing earlier. He struggled, his armoured hands feeling clumsy and overly large in his hands. He tingled all over in an unpleasant way. Pins and needles. He got the cap off and considered applying the stuff to the cuts on his head and bite mark. He could worry about the possibility of vampirism later – he needed help now! That meant he needed blood; applying it to his cuts would not fix that, and his clouded mind and faltering logic thought it would be a good idea to just chug the salve.

Remember Handy’s rules? The one about not willingly doing drugs? Yeah, check that off the list along with women beating and heavy drinking. Like those other slip-ups, he hoped to never repeat them, but the stain on his record was now there.

He immediately regretted it, for his oesophagus felt like it had been lit on fire. His vision cleared instantly but was warped. Everything was the wrong colour and wouldn’t stop changing. He fell from his knees and shook violently, retching and coughing. His pace quickened – he wasn’t sure if that was good or bad given his recent blood loss. What was worse was whatever lock he had placed on the wicked thoughts he had been entertaining when he was trapped in the changeling pod started flooding back into him.

‘They’ll never know.’

‘You should have eaten her.’

‘You enjoy pulling wings from flies don’t you?’

‘I hate mirrors.’

He shook his head, hitting it with his fist, trying to force the thoughts from his head.

‘Flesh is flesh.’

‘There’s nothing wrong with other peoples’ tears.’

‘Everything is cold.’

‘Why?’

He clasped his hands to his head, or was it his head to his hands? Did it matter? Yes it did. Or so he thought. Handy thought about a lot of things.

‘You were God’s worst mistake.’

Thankfully, his ruminations were interrupted by a weight pressing down on his back.

“There you are!” he heard the voice say, causing his teeth to grit harshly. “Now just lay still and—” Handy lashed out in rabid fury, kicking and grasping violently as he turned around quickly, kicking the stallion in its unprotected underside and driving it from its hooves. Handy grabbed the stallion, who struggled to bring his hooves to action. Handy laid into him, pounding its head repeatedly with his gauntleted fist, his voice cracking as he screeched desperately in fear and anger.

He deformed the side of the helmet, grabbing it with both hands and pulling it off of the stallion’s head. The staggered stallion could barely get the sense together. Handy could empathise – his vision was still swirling manically, but it was clear enough for him to make out the ponies wings. And its fangs.

‘He wanted my blood,’ Handy thought.

‘You need blood.’

‘Then I’ll take his!’ Handy thought furiously. He punched the stallion once more and forced the stallion down to the ground. “Hold still, you fucking vampire!” Handy sneered, not thinking clearly. The stallion glared up with him as he struggled.

“What are you doing!? Let me up!” he demanded. Handy shook his head and smiled, baring his own canines. The stallion looked up at the human in confusion.

“Time to get a taste of your own medicine!” His rational part groaned internally. What the hell was he doing? Just knock the stupid pony out and be done with it. What, drinking his blood? Handy, Handy, Handy, what the hell man? That wasn’t going to do you any good. Look, now you have fur in your mouth as you bite his neck. Classy, Handy, just classy. It was not as if—

--=--

Midnight regretted making that bet with Cloud. The simple smash and grab mission had turned into an utter mess. They had taken all three passenger carriages by storm, not taking the chance of missing the human. To think! He was an agent for the changelings who was not even a changeling himself, and she had him right there! It was infuriating, but noooo, they had to let him go because he was working for a foreign noblegriffon.

‘His eyes, they closed.’

She had resolved that she’d personally take the human in and show up Cloud. All she had to do was at least show up at Canterlot with the human in chains and her as one of the ponies guarding him. Nope, that couldn’t be simple – now they had bloody ghosts attacking them too! She cursed her luck as she pummelled another ghost into spectral mush.

‘And his last breath spoke.’

This was going to take ages to wash out of her fur, never mind her armour. Tsk, her staff sergeant was going to be giving her Tartarus for the next month.

‘He had seen all there was to be seen, a life once full, now an empty vase.’

And she had nothing to show for it! She had really been hoping to impress Cloud with this. Now she was hoping she could make it out of this without a shiner.

‘Like the blossoms on his early grave. Walk away, me boy, walk away me boy.’

Oh no, you just sit right the hay where you were, mister. She slashed at another griffon who had decided to announce his attack with a squawk. Foal.

‘And by morning we’ll be free. Wipe a golden tear, from your mother dear.’

This was just a bad night in general. She really hated Mondays.

‘And raise what’s left of the flag for me…’

“And just WHO is singing at a time like this!?” she shouted over the din of the battle.

She heard large clangs coming from the far end of the carriage and noticed the door leading to the stairs was bulging.

‘And the rosary beads, count them, one, two, three.’

The door burst from its hinges, and a voice boomed, “EVENING, FUCK NUGGETS!”

‘Fell apart as they hit the floor.’

The armoured form of the human strode arrogantly into the carriage, and several of the combatants stopped to look up at the intruder. “CONGRATS!”

‘In a garb of black, we must pay respect, to the colour, we’re born to mourn.’

“YOU ALL JUST MADE MY PERSONAL SHITLIST!” The human held a pony aloft in one hand, his cloak whipping behind him. The pony was breathing shallowly, with a nasty-looking injury to his neck. There was a splash of blood on the front of the human’s helmet. He tossed the defeated pony aside like an old wrapper, and in an instant, he was upon the next one. In a blur of glittering silver, the guard was sent flying across the cabin, crashing into a ghost and dematerialising it in a splash of ectoplasm.

The carriage erupted in pandemonium as the rampaging human started swinging his hammer with reckless abandon. Handy had never felt more alive. He could barely describe it, the way how everything felt so real. He got bucked in the side by a pony but recovered quickly and was at the pony’s flank before it could react. He grabbed its hind legs and flung it bodily around, smashing into a fellow guard. His shield, now properly affixed to his arm, swung around and crushed a ghost against the wall of the carriage.

The griffons were emboldened and redoubled their efforts. The guard ponies were now truly struggling to maintain battle order. Handy threw his opponents aside like they were nothing. He was running so high he didn’t even feel the blows they landed on him. Perhaps that was just his armour doing its job. It felt like it weighed nothing now; his hammer felt like a toy as he sent another pony flying out the window. One of his comrades jumped out to catch him before he hit the ground.

The ghosts were a bit trickier. Bastards could reform if you didn’t beat them silly enough. That was good, however, for Handy felt like fighting something that could take it, but the blows he landed felt soft as the ghosts easily gave way under his blows, giving no satisfying weight to his attacks. He then focused on the guards instead, leaving the ghosts to the griffons. The guards, for their part, recognised there was something different about the human, which was a feat since they shouldn’t have known what he was like normally. His movements were too quick, too fluid. For Celestia’s sake, he was sparkling! Nobody said he had magic!

He didn’t, of course. Those in the know about the real reason behind Onyx and Shimmer’s suspension knew the human’s blood had a peculiar effect on their kind. Perhaps this was always the case? It was his blood after all. No, something was different. Midnight blinked. Flying near the ceiling, she spied the unconscious Glitter Oak and his neck wound. Her eyes widened. “RETREAT!” she ordered. One of the sergeants looked up and demanded an explanation. “He drinks blood!” she exclaimed, pointing a hoof at the human, who even now had a pony gripped by the throat in his shield hand. “It’s like Onyx and Shimmer in reverse! He gets power from us!” she exclaimed. The human reached for his helmet slowly. Midnight didn’t think twice.

Handy had the little bastard where he wanted him. That last pony tasted… strange, but he felt incredible. He could use another hit, and there were so many of them around… His hammer was hooked by his side, most of the combatants trying to avoid him as the pony struggled fruitlessly. He had declawed the creature and knocked it about so it was nice and dazed. His freed hand went towards his helmet.

And he was knocked sideways. He staggered, dropping the pony that was going to be his meal and quickly rounded on his attacker. His eyes widened. It was the damn mare from the other train! She glared at him and was in a battle stance. In a blur of motion, he unhooked his hammer and gripped it in one hand, his mind no longer inhibited by petty things such as reason and morality. The mare didn’t move. He waited for her to blink. He got his chance as a cloud moved from its position blocking the moon, light hitting his armour. She squinted, and Handy struck.

He moved in an instant, but the mare had actually struck the second she squinted her eyes, wise to Handy’s game. He got all four blades raked across his breastplate, followed by her hind hoofs bucking him as she flipped. He staggered back. “Clever girl,” he commented, his armour none the worse for wear. He was about to advance again when more ghosts phased through the walls, and Handy found himself distracted. Midnight took the opportunity to get her stricken comrade back to safety. She lifted him and dragged him outside through one of the windows. Her comrades evacuated the carriage and flew into the next one to regroup.

“Handy!” Joachim screeched, his wings askew and injured. Handy looked up from the puddles of ectoplasm he had been making. “What was that!? What is this!?” Joachim exclaimed, gesturing around at the wrecked carriage around them. “What did you do to tick off the Princesses!? And what… happened to you?” He asked, noticing the blood on his helmet and his... noticeable entrance to the battle.

Handy shrugged.

“Sorry but we really don’t have time for this,” he said simply. The tired griffons around them groaned in various states of exhaustion. Ghosts still poured in but they were fewer now. He saw several outside heading towards the forward carriages. He turned to the front of the carriage. There was a doorway leading to the next passenger carriage, and he could see fighting going on through the window. His pulse raced and he smiled maniacally. Why couldn’t he feel like this all the time? It was amazing. “I got things to do,” Handy said, rushing past the exasperated Joachim and breaking down the doors between him and the next carriage as he engaged in the fight with wild enthusiasm.

--=--

Crimson snarled in anger. She was slowly making her way up the train, but she could feel her phantoms being destroyed with distressing speed. There was one, no, two ponies up ahead doing particular damage. She would deal with them in time. Her frown turned into a wicked smile as her horn and eyes flared with greater intensity. The clouds overhead roiled and became dark and angry-looking. A swirling vortex of energy slowly but surely coalesced into existence behind her. It would be ready in time. These snivelling guard sycophants would not cheat her of this.

That was roughly when the roof of one of the carriage up ahead exploded outwards. A humanoid form landed hard on the roof of the carriage and scrambled to grab hold of something before he slipped off. A guard pony followed after him and landed on the carriage. “Stay down, human!”

“Make me, pony!” Handy retorted, digging his hands into the metal of the roof itself and clawing his way back up, his hammer at the ready and his cloak whipping violently from his shoulders. He was gleaming brightly like a thousand stars, but Eclipse’s eyes could withstand it. Her comrades below were recovering from the Human’s assault and dealing with the remaining griffons. Her cocky smile faltered when she saw the griffons from the first car fly out the windows and dive into the sides of the second. She snorted. “Pay attention!”

She dived out of the way, just in time, as Handy’s war hammer plunged into the roof with tremendous force. They danced like that for some time, Handy swinging, blocking, rolling, and kicking. Eclipse took full advantage of her wings and dive-bombed the human at every available opportunity, hoof blades clawing at him as she kicked and tackled the armoured warrior with impossible speed and strength. Neither could land a solid blow, the pony lost in the excesses of the blood curse her kind bore, the human’s mind far too addled to make sound, reasoned judgements.

Green lightning struck Eclipse in the midsection and caused her to spasm uncontrollably mid-air. She hit the carriage roof hard and began to slide off. Handy’s boot clasped her tail to prevent her falling to her death. He turned to see what could possibly have interrupted their fight, only to see an impossible horror. There was a pony on the roof with them, a unicorn with a glowing horn and eyes of green fire.

He reached down to grab the bat pony by her armour, his mind trying to grasp where in the hell the unicorn had come from. It was then he noticed the semi-visible vortex of energy behind her growing in size and volatility. Green flashes of lightning struck from the vortex soundlessly as its gaping maw grew wider. He threw the pony casually behind him, back into the carriage to shouts of alarm. He ignored it – it would seem he had a bigger issue to worry about now.

The unicorn was bathed in green light. “Human!” she shouted. “You will come with me. Surrender and I will not harm you!” Who did this bitch think she was talking to? He was Handy on fucking vampire steroids. What was she going to do to him!? “Comply!” An arc of green lightning struck the carriage roof beside him, which promptly burned up and melted away. Ah, see, now there was a convincing argument.

“And just who the hell are you!?” Handy demanded.

“That is of no concern of yours, foal! Surrender!” she demanded. Handy’s eyes narrowed. He had had quite enough with uppity women today.

“I don’t think I will if it’s all the same to you!” he shouted over the roar of the wind. He took a few steps forward. The pony snorted.

“Have it your way! If you won’t be ours, you will not be theirs!” she shouted. The vortex behind her swirled violently, and he could feel the ionization in the air, his breath misting as he exhaled, the hoarfrost forming on the carriages. The lightning bolt struck from the vortex. If it were not for his heightened reflexes, it probably would have struck him in the neck joint and killed him dead. As it were, he raised his shield and closed his eyes. He saw what happened to the roof at his feet. This was going to hurt, his rational mind damning him for a fool for not surrendering.

The bolt of lightning struck his shield with tremendous force. Handy was knocked down to one knee to prevent himself from falling off the train altogether. Remarkably, it held. Handy blinked in surprise and lowered his shield. It shone like the sun for a few seconds before it calmed down and sparkled normally like the rest of his armour. He looked at the unicorn. She looked just as stunned as he was. It was then and there he decided Heat Source was, officially, best pony. Hot damn, he loved this armour!

He got back to his feet and advanced on the pony. She stomped her hooves. “NO!” she screamed, the vortex behind her warping violently and coalescing into a swirling tornado of green clouds and mist and lightning. It solidified and Handy looked up in abject horror. The vortex had become a roiling elemental creature with two huge arms and a lower body of a tornado. Its eyes glowed with energy and crackled with lightning. Handy threw his hands up in the air.

“OH COME THE FUCK ON!” he shouted. “REALLY!? REALLY!?” The pony pointed a hoof at the human, speaking some foul tongue, her horn and eyes glaring white with incandescence as the huge elemental thundered forward, its fists denting the carriage as it pulled itself forward. Handy sighed and nodded. “Okay, it’s at least solid in some respect. This shouldn’t be— Oop!” Handy ducked back. The elemental reached out to swat him. “Okay, no rest for the wicked. I’ll play ball.” Handy hefted his war hammer in both hands, his shield making it awkward, but his enhanced abilities compensating for any deficiencies it may have caused.

He ran over and jumped, swinging the hammer and catching the elemental on the arm, causing it to scream in pain. Handy landed before the elemental’s backswing caught him, sending him flying in the air. Its other fist came down with irresistible force and punched Handing into the roof, through it and the floor below. Handy crashed down onto the first floor of the second carriage. Now, if this was normal Handy, armour or no armour, that would break bones and send the human into a nice coma. As it was, Handy, shrugged off the immense pain and pulled himself up, incredibly pissed.

“Stop right there!” a soon-to-be unfortunate bat guard shouted, charging at Handy through the pools of ghosts and injured ponies and griffons. “You are under—” Handy punted him so fucking hard, he was pretty sure he sent him into a coma. There, universe, you happy? Your coma quota filled for the day? Good, because Handy has a new name to add to the shit list. Handy stormed up the stairs as the elemental began tearing the roof off of the carriage. Handy was on the top step as the roof came off his section, so he jumped and swung. He landed a solid blow into the elemental’s face. The creature reared back as Handy struggled to climb on what remained of the carriage roof.

The elemental shuddered, as if roaring, but no sound emerged from the abomination. “Well fuck your mother too!” Handy shouted in defiance. He then ran at the beast, ducking and rolling under its swipe and swung, to meet its inevitable back swing, catching the back of its hand at the dead centre and causing it to explode in wisps and smoke. The creature reared, clasping his wrist, bleeding ethereal mist and lightning. Handy roared in triumph. Slipping, he slammed his hammer into the carriage roof to keep from falling altogether.

The bat ponies were now evacuating the train, carrying their unconscious and injured comrades. Handy turned, seeing the griffons were actually giving the ponies a hammering through the holes in the roof. There was Joachim at the fore. Good old featherbrain. Handy smiled at the thought then turned his attention on the injured elemental. He had half expected it to regrow its hand, but it didn’t. The elemental recovered its composure and lightning shot from its eyes, striking the train randomly. Metal flared and melted with incredible heat. He could hear the trunks of trees exploding in the woods behind him as they sped past. Okay, Handy was so very done with all this.

Handy pulled himself up before lightning struck his back. He felt an immense flare of power wash over him and then dissipate. His cuirass shone brightly as he struggled back to his feet and charged at the elemental, which raised its remaining fist and slammed down on the human. Handy let it; he dodged as it crashed through the roof. Handy then leaped on its arm. The elemental reared and flailed its arm, trying to knock Handy off with its other stump. Handy batted it away with a backwards swing of his hammer as he pulled himself up onto the struggling creatures shoulder.

“YOU KNOW!” he said, swinging the hammer and bashing the side of the creature’s head. “I JUST WANTED TO GO TO SLEEP!” He swung again, this time catching the creature’s eye, causing it to explode outwards as the creature reared yet again in silent agony. “NOT FIGHT FUCKING VAMPIRES! OR GHOSTS!” He swung again, anger fuelling his every motion. He dug into the beast’s shoulder with the point of his kite shield and held tightly with his knees. “NOT GET MY BLOOD DRAINED!” He swung again, seeing wisps of green smoke and splashes of ectoplasm bursting at the seams of the creature’s being. “AND DEFINITELY NOT!” Smash. “FIGHT!” Smash. “A GIANT!” Smash. “MIGHT AND MAGIC REJECT!” Smash. “FUCK! YOUR! SHIIIIIIIT!” he roared, punctuating each word with a swing of his hammer. The creature was staggering, no longer trying to resist. With a final swing of his hammer, the creature’s head exploded in the same manner as its hand. The body fell on the roof of the carriage and shattered in the same manner.

Handy was breathing heavily. He could feel his high ebbing away, just in time too. He felt the beginnings of weakness and was about to crash and crash hard. Before that, however, he had one more thing to take care of. He turned to the unicorn once he got to his feet. The pony was looking at where the elemental had fallen. The light in her eyes had gone out and her horn was flickering. He towered over the pony before she tore her eyes away to look up at the human. She suddenly felt very small.

“You!” Crimson tried to say something, but Handy simply grabbed the pony by the scruff of her cloak and brought her up to his level. “Don’t I know you?” he asked, his mind struggling to retrieve memories from his abused mental architecture. He groaned, his hammer hand raised to his helmet in a fruitless gesture to alleviate the pain. Crimson took the opportunity. Her horn flared and her cloak tore. She dropped. Handy looked at the empty cloak in his hand. The unicorn jumped over the side of the train. "No! Wait!” he shouted. The unicorn materialised a pair of spectral rings and disappeared into the woods. Handy stared after the pony for a few seconds. Looking up, he saw the now distant silhouettes of the guard ponies holding formation in the moonlight. He frowned.

He staggered. Okay, he had best get below before he collapsed. He had made it just by the newest hole in the roof the elemental had kindly made before he did just that, falling into the train and losing consciousness.

--=--

“So,” Joachim began, swirling his tea. His wings had been bandaged and his other hand held an ice pack to his head. Handy sat across from him, groaning audibly and holding his stomach. “Good night for you too?”

“Oh fuck you… Ugh,” Handy said by way of response. Thankfully, no one had died. Turned out the train had crossed the griffon kingdom’s border by the time he had killed the elemental, which explained why the guards had backed off after he had dealt with it. However, two out of the three passenger carriages were ruined, and the griffons had to make due with sleeping in the downstairs.

Handy, meanwhile, had gotten a bed in the undamaged carriage. He was entirely in approval of the arrangement, but that wasn’t as good a deal as you’d think. Practically all the windows were smashed, and the wind chill was a constant companion. Not to mention they still had a full day and a half travel to go to their destination as the train entered the mountains, so it was going to get worse before it got better.

Ivorybeak fretted over the political ramifications of all this and cursed Handy seven ways from Sunday until being put in his place by Joachim pointing out they’d be in worse shape if the rogue sorceress’ elemental and ghosts had their way. Handy tossed in his seat, shivering. He was cold, sure, but it was like the worst cold sweat you’d ever have after a hangover.

“And no, I still have no idea what the royal guard want with me,” Handy lied. Joachim didn’t push, merely saying an ‘hmm’ as he supped at his tea, enjoying its warmth. Handy sighed. “So what’s the pay?” Handy said casually. Joachim raised an eyebrow.

“I’m sorry?” he asked, completely deadpan.

“The pay,” Handy said, waving his gauntleted hand for emphasis. “You know, for being a bodyguard or whatever.” Joachim supped at his tea with a satisfied breath.

“Hmmm,” he mused, bouncing the silver spoon off of the cup. “Nothing, I think,” he responded. Handy tilted his head curiously before laughing.

“Haha, very funny, don’t pull a mayor crybaby on me. Seriously, what’s the pay?”

“Nothing like I said.”

“I’m serious, Joachim.”

“So am I,” Joachim said, finishing off his tea. “You’re my personal manservant now, remember? For a month.” Handy looked at him quizzically. He couldn’t see the expression under his helm.

“And where did you get that idea from?” Handy asked.

“Oh, don’t you remember? You promised me you would.”

“Bullshit.”

“Oh yes, you were quite serious about it too. On pain of death, swearing to your god even,” Joachim replied. Handy slowly sat up.

“When… When did I ever…,” Handy asked, afraid of the answer. Joachim finally cracked that smile he had been holding down.

“Oh you know, when we first arrived at Spurbay…” He let it hang, comprehension dawning on Handy in all its horror. “And you said if I ever saw you willingly drink pony blood…” Handy felt sick, his stomach growling as he lay back down on his seat. Joachim and him were silent for a few tense moments before he turned over to face the back of his seat, letting out a sigh of defeat and another groan of agony.

“Bollocks…Uggghhhh,” he groaned. Joachim broke out in uproarious laughter.

Interlude - Diplomatic Affairs

She let out a satisfied sigh as she opened her eyes, unwilling to move from the luxurious comfort of her bed. Alas, duty called. Shifting, she fumbled with the covers, tsking as they got caught up in her wings which refused to stay nice and clamped to her sides when she slept. She groaned and got up at long last. Her bed was at floor level, but that did not say much as it was still on a raised dais in her room. The moonlight peeked in through the closed windows as she made her way to the en suite bathroom for her morning ablutions.

Once suitably cleaned and that damnable mane brushed, she made her way to the window. Pulling the curtains open, she raised a hoof to her muzzle and let out a stifled yawn. She was looking forward to today. Her horn lit brightly as the all too familiar warmth flooded her veins and the rush of power flowed from her. The sun crested the horizon and shone gloriously through the light morning drizzle. The scheduled rainbows had been deployed, creating a magnificent view of Equestria from her room. Her smile faltered however.

She had been worried about Luna for some time now. At first she feared her sister had slipped back into melancholy once more. Celestia had made the mistake of letting sleeping ponies lie before, and she swore to never do so again. When she had pressed her sister, she had learned the cause of her unease: a strange occurrence near a harbour town in the west. Luna was quite unnerved – she had only became aware of it because of a subtle wave of energy that had washed over her, and even then she had only noticed it because she had been in a magical trance, extending her senses.

Of course, Luna had taken it upon herself to investigate the town herself, discovering that the ponies there had recently had several citizens rescued from brigands who had taken over the local mine. She had discovered nothing in their dreams indicating any dark force, so she had investigated the mine itself, eventually finding a strange corridor leading to a semi-spherical room carved from the rock, with the floor filled with precious gems and water, mostly notably a plinth of blue marble where once sat an object of power. There had been nothing else there; no symbols, no other rooms, nothing besides a lonely, soaking wet torch. Celestia had approved of her sister’s diligence and had not interfered with it from that point on.

The guards she had sent to investigate the town uncovered that adventurers had been hired to deal with the brigands, a pack of dogs Celestia now recalled. What they uncovered was of interest. The adventurers were a griffon and a strange creature called a human, like a furless minotaur but whose legs and head were different, along with small ears, small eyes, and nose. The closest comparison to its legs were those of a young dragon’s, but they easily made up half of its height. The only fur it possessed was a patch on its head, like a mane, and facial hair. Honestly, it sounded quite ugly, she reasoned, but she had never voiced the opinion. The medical reports weren’t much help as they had been quite basic.

However, that was only the beginning of the trouble the human had caused the royal pair. Chronologically, the next thing the human had done was try to transport contraband medicine through Thornwood and assaulted several rangers performing a sting operation before he had disappeared. After that, the two lunar guards Luna had charged with the investigation had partaken of some of its blood the Spurbay physicians had taken and… had a unique reaction. Celestia frowned at the thought. She approved of the severity of her sister’s condemnation of her guards’ actions but had to stop her from throwing them in the dungeons. Whatever this creature was, this Handy, he had a potential to be a threat. Luna had scoured the dreamscape of Equestria to see if she could pinpoint the creature in his sleep but could find no trace of it. The implications of that were unsettling. Either this creature possessed tremendous magical ability… or never rested.

She suppressed a shiver as she finished donning her regalia and made her way to the dining room for breakfast. The change of the guard was still underway as she left her room. Luna’s night guard were leaving their positions, unicorns magically altering the banners and tapestries, transforming Luna’s achievements and adventures with her own. Her dawn guards saluted as she passed, and she smiled at the familiarity. Her thoughts were still worried and dark, however. After the incident with the night ponies, Luna had requested pairing off patrols with the day guard to cover more ground and to check on any potential threats and countermeasures the human had against the night guard, a wise precaution considering the ponies’ unique predilections and the human’s weapons grade blood.

While they had searched the areas around Thornwood for the human, griffon, and the one pony accomplice that had been with them when they disappeared, she had been quite surprised to learn that a similar-sounding bipedal creature had been apparently travelling the train from the Badlands and was terrifying innocent ponies! Luna had dispatched a pair of guards known for their synergy and efficiency in dealing with threats. What they had uncovered was… interesting to say the least. This Handy was an adventurer and mercenary by trade, spoke in a strange, deep, quick accent but had an upper class air to his words, and hailed from a ‘Milesia’. Celestia knew of no such country in the world but did not rule out the possibility that it was just another name he knew an existing country by.

However, the guards had been thwarted. The human had been in the employ of a griffon count, a chancellor of a king’s court no less, and couldn’t be touched. How he got from the Thornwoods to the Badlands and back in less than three weeks was something of a mystery, and she did not much care for it. It only got worse, however, as the human had foreign currency on his person. And it wasn’t griffon gold. No, it was changeling, ancient changeling judging by the markings, and it was pure gold of a high carat. Equestrian bits were only partially gold nowadays, so one such coin was worth much more than most ponies made in two weeks labour. For the human to just casually drop a coin such as that and not even stop to care meant he had more where that came from. Which could only mean the absolute worst…

Luna was hesitant when the guards had come back with the news after verifying the coin. Celestia, however, was not. She herself had given the go ahead to send guards to apprehend the human before he could commit whatever foul deeds that Queen had hired him to perform. She could handle the fallout from a stuck-up foreign count throwing a fit – Chrysalis had to be stopped from whatever she was up to. They had lost too much time already, and if the train the count had almost certainly boarded, given the last stop he made, made its way across the border, she couldn’t follow. It was, however, Luna’s quest, so she had allowed her sister’s guards to take the mission. A dozen squadrons had set out from Canterlot as Celestia recalled the day guard to fill the ranks. Anti-changeling protection had been reinforced, and nopony had gotten out from regular scanning. They were taking no chances.

That said, however, the reinforcements were made as unobtrusive as possible, for she did not want to create a panic in Canterlot after all. Still, it had been a couple of days now since they had set out. They should be arriving back today. She entered the dining room, and the maids bowed as she took her spot along the short table. The long table was immaculately prepared as always, but it was impractical and impersonal to eat there daily. It was more for formal functions. She laid into her breakfast as a unicorn butler magically refilled her coffee cup at the exact amount she preferred. “Thank you, Punctual,” she said.

“Of course, mum.” The butler shuffled his moustache as he took a step back. The doors opened, and Celestia smiled at her sister.

“Good morning, Luna.” She beamed. Luna gave her a light smile and stifled a yawn. She was quite exhausted and looked forward to a good day’s sleep.

“Morning, sister dearest.” She sat at her seat across from the solar diarch and ate a heartier meal. This was her supper time after all. She requested tea rather than coffee. “What is in store for day court, Tia?” she asked, idle chitchat to pass the time as she chewed. Celestia smiled as she wiped her mouth.

“Nothing, thankfully. The nobles are mostly at their country estates, the economy is good, no major laws to assent to. Indeed, I dare say I shall very much enjoy today, for there is nothing for us to worry about it seems.” Her smile shrunk slightly. “With one exception of course.” Luna nodded.

“I wonder what nefarious plot he’s up to…,” she mused. “We shall soon find out, for he can’t possib—”

“I need to deliver my report now!”

The two sisters turned to one of the side doors of the dining room. It opened and a small collection of Luna’s night guard trotted in, flanked by a pair of day guards. Luna’s gaze hardened. They looked worse for wear: several of them were bruised, their fur and armour was dirty, dinged, and dented. She recognised them.

“What is the meaning of this!?” Luna demanded, standing up from her seat, her anger a mask for her concern. These were the sergeants and captain she had sent out. They did not look happy to see her. The captain walked up and bowed low before her.

“Princess…,” she began, not daring to look up. Her subordinates performed likewise. With a wave of Celestia’s hoof, the day guard backed out of the room along with the servants. She had a feeling this was not going to be good. “We… failed in apprehending the human,” the pony said weakly. Luna narrowed her eyes.

“How?” she asked. “And what happened to thee? I see you have been put through quite the struggle.” The captain lowered her head further, her face now level with the floor. Luna’s heart softened, now worried more than angry.

“There are worse injuries.” Luna’s eyes widened.

“Quick, regale me, what is thy report?” she demanded. The captain recounted the tale in short. They had found the human on the train with the griffons. Her squadrons had assaulted the passenger cars of the train in order to maximise the possibility of finding and extracting the human with minimal consternation to the griffons. Indeed, one of her guards, Stellar Eclipse, had actually defeated the human in combat while the rest of the guards had been busy occupying the griffons in order to isolate him. Luna smiled until she heard about how the human had knocked out Eclipse’s partner.

Luna’s frowned deepened as she was informed it had actually gotten worse from there. Just as they had victory in their grasp, they were attacked by another force. Celestia’s eyebrows raised as she was informed of the attack of spectral ponies that had attacked both griffons and guards indiscriminately. The guards had had a serious threat to their safety and the viability of the mission. As such, Eclipse had had to restrain the human in order to follow orders and help her comrades. Luna gasped in shock when she was informed of Eclipse’s… indiscretion.

Her captain vouched on her behalf, seeking leniency for her actions as she had been under pressure to fulfil orders without endangering the mission by allowing the target the chance to escape. Luna held her tongue for now, trying to see the captain’s reasoning and failing. Eclipse had used the boost she got to assist her fellow ponies in battle, which was admirable but still immoral. What happened next alarmed her, however. The human had recovered from the blood drain with surprising speed and, worst of all, he had bitten into the neck of a guard sergeant and drained his blood, having a similar effect on the human that his blood had on them.

Luna’s wings flared in horror. Celestia spat up her coffee back into her cup and quickly dabbed her mouth, hoping fervently nopony saw that. The human had some strange magic. Whenever the moonlight hit his armour, he had sparkled like a thousand stars, blinding anypony who looked at him. Luna was incensed at this, scoffing. How dare he use her moon against her servants!? His enhanced speed and strength had decimated the ponies, and her subordinate, Midnight Blossom, had recommended a tactical retreat as she engaged the human before he drained another pony. Luna shook with anger but kept her peace. Celestia had now gotten up and walked over to stand beside her sister.

The human had been a blur of violence and had driven the ponies back to the second carriage and began driving them out of that one too before Eclipse engaged the human and fought him on the outside of the train. That was where the battle began to lose cohesion. The griffons had converged on the second car, and the ponies had begun to lose badly. Eclipse had been defeated and fell back into the car, her fur singed and barely breathing and had been forced to retreat. What they had seen on the roof of the train concerned both princesses greatly.

There had been a unicorn wielding tremendous magical power. No one in her company had recognised the mare, but she had summoned a huge elemental that the human had engaged in battle. The creature had summoned bolts of lightning. The captain speculated that was what had incapacitated the Private. The human’s armour had withstood the creature’s magic as he destroyed it before collapsing himself. He had captured the unicorn, but the pony had escaped his grasp as he collapsed back into the train.

The princesses were silent, digesting the implications of what they had been told. “Sister.” Luna broke the silence. Celestia looked at her. “What do we do?” she asked. The human was now over the border and out of their reach.

“That’s… That’s not all, your Highnesses.” The captain stood up and motioned to a subordinate, who brought a tattered black cloak with a golden clasp. It depicted a unicorn horn over a clover, the word Astucieux engraved on its surface. Celestia floated it over to her as she took a look at it. “It was worn by the unicorn who had summoned the elemental.” Celestia considered the captain’s words. Astucieux, a Prance word… What could it be referring to?

“Thank you for your brave service, my little ponies,” Celestia said, smiling warmly at the guards, who were still bowing. Luna echoed the sentiments, stating she would consider Eclipse’s fate in light of the circumstances as she dismissed the ponies with orders to have the wounded guards specially treated. She turned to her sister.

“That monster!” She stamped her hoof. The room shook. Celestia looked at her sister.

“Be calm, sister, we do our subjects no good by losing our tempers. We have underestimated this human, and we still don’t know anything about him. The rumours we have gathered are wild and varied and cannot be relied upon.” She summoned a scroll and ink from a drawer at the head of the long table, walking over to its edge as she put quill to paper.

“Then what!? We must do something sister; we can’t afford to let that… that human go loose! He assaulted our guards!” Celestia let Luna rant. She’d calm down in a bit and consider the situation in more detail. She was jealously protective of her night guard after all. “And what are you writing?”

“Sending a message to Twilight,” Celestia responded. “We can no longer afford to fight in ignorance. I am requesting she gather as much information on this human as she can.” She decided to play up the mysterious aspect of the creature, knowing Twilight’s curiosity would do the rest. It certainly had in the past. “And there’s still the inevitable backlash from the griffons over this…” She did not relish the thought. She could have handled it if the operation had been successful, but it was botched. Sighing, she floated her coffee over her as she took a sip.

There was a knock at the door. Punctual entered as Luna gave the permission. He was holding a plate with several letters aloft. “Urgent missive, mum,” he said, placing the tray on the table, bowing and retreating. ‘Well,’ Celestia thought, ‘that was fast. Aleksander is wasting no time in seeking answers, it seems.’ She resigned herself to her fate, sitting at the head of the long table. Luna stood at her side as she broke the seal of the first scroll and read it. Sure enough, High King Ironclaw, in his usual politesse and matter-of-fact quillponyship, requested an explanation of an Equestrian assault and endangerment of the trade train and a large number of griffon subjects, including a Count and a Prince.

Celestia blinked.

“Prince?” Luna asked, head tilted. “What prince?” Celestia took a nervous sip of her coffee. Nopony had said anything about a prince. She opened the second scroll.

“To their Highnesses, Princesses Celestia and Luna.

Kindly explain why you assaulted my son, Prince Johan, and my own Chancellor, Count Heinrich of Munister, with a company of your own royal guards? I expect a suitable explanation post haste, if you would ever be so kind.

Yours sincerely

King Gerhart”

Celestia’s cup shook as she levitated it to her lips, her mouth suddenly dry. “A-A prince!? We attacked a prince!? Sister, this is, this, we can’t… The griffons will never accept that we thought he was a changeling agent!” Luna said, hopping on the spot. Celestia’s mind raced. She could fix this, no problem. As long as no-pony else found out about these missives, she could contain this, explain things to the two kings, smooth it all over. It was all going to be alright.

She opened the third scroll.

“Dear Princesses Celestia and Luna,

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

I know I got rid of him so he’d be your problem, but this is just priceless. Really, it’s just too much

With love,

Queen Chrysalis.”

That nag managed to get a letter to Canterlot. Celestia shook with something between fear, fury, and confusion. She put a hoof to her head as she handed the letter to Luna who let out a rather large gasp of shock. The implications of Chrysalis’ letter clashed with everything she thought she knew about the human. She sighed long and hard and pulled out the drawer of her long table. The other drawer, with her special friend.

Celestia uncapped the bottle of whiskey and poured some into her coffee.

--=--

“Dooooo wwweeeeee hhhaaaaavvvvveeeee aaaaaan accooooorrrrrrd?”

“Aaaaaaa deeeeaaaaalllll?”

“Yyyyeeeeeessssss?”

He clicked his beak. It was so tempting, so very tempting. He looked back at the mirror.

“We do,” he said at last. “You are sure this will make me immortal?”

"Yyyyyeeeessssss… Dessssirrrreeee.”

“Wiiiithhhhiiiiinnnn mmmmyyyyyyy poooowwwweeerrrrr.”

“And that’s all I have to do?” he asked, tapping his beak.

“Giiiivvvvvvveeeee tooooo uuuuussssss.”

“IIIIIIIIIII giiiiivvvveeee tooooo yyyyyoooooouuuu.”

“Geeeeeneeeeerrrrroooouuuuuusssss.”

The griffon smiled in the dark of his room.

Chapter 9 - Uncomfortable Discoveries

Handy started his morning by throwing up.

So you can tell already how the rest of his day was going to be. It was the final leg of the journey to the city of Skymount, the King’s seat of Gethrenia, the day the King would pen the letter demanding an explanation of Celestia, and the train had taken one last stop. Honestly, the view was beautiful – soaring mountains, tall, dark, pine forests and deep, lush valleys so far below, punctuated by hamlets and farmland, all with that crisp mountain fresh air and that invigorating morning chill that woke up the senses. Handy could not enjoy it, however. He excused himself from the group as they washed in a stream that flowed under the train tracks up ahead of their stop. Quite frankly, he could do with a wash, for he hadn’t had the chance to shower in over a week now. His little shindig with the royal guard and a creature that looked like it belong on a Magic: The Gathering card had left him with quite the sweat. And that was before the cold sweats and illness he had felt ever since.

He had kept a brave face on and tried to hide his weakness as best he could in front of his feathery companions. He still crouched over and gripped his stomach from time to time, so they already suspected he was not the healthiest he could be. They just didn’t know how bad. He had been an appreciable distance from the griffons when his body started to shake uncontrollably, his will barely keeping him together. He felt the bile rising up and his head spun. Hurriedly, he reached up to tug his helmet off as coughs started wracking his body and he retched. He just got it off just soon enough for him to spill his guts on the pine needles and dirt of the forest floor.

It was a sickening colour, bright orange mixed with a filthy-looking brown slime. He retched again and once more spilled his guts. He coughed and fell on his side, breathing desperately. He rolled over onto his back and sidled up to a nearby rock, trying to at least sit up but only coming at his goal halfway. His head swirled, his stomach rebelled, and he considered the implications of what had happened. He knew what he did. He also knew that it was the salve he ingested that robbed him of his senses – he was clear sighted enough to blame his actions on that. It couldn’t be his fault, for he’d never willingly bite someone’s neck.

Could he?

His thoughts recalled those dark ruminations that had flooded his mind after he had ingested the salve. He wasn’t quite sure he would like the answer to that question if he dug into it deep enough. Still, he could not help but think of it. The taste, it had been smoky like whiskey, but it had also tasted… bright? It reminded him of the smell of freshly cut grass after the rain. It was strange, but the power, the invigorating thrill of it! He had bitten the pony in a fit of vindictive spite, but what he had gained from it had been… exhilarating. He had tasted blood before, his own too, being taught to suck on a cut to prevent infection long enough for it to be plastered. Another time was when his cousin had taken him on a hunting trip and he had partaken of the blood of a stag. Not the nicest thing in the world, but not horrible, and certainly not anything like the blood he had tasted that night.

A dark possibility came across him as he looked up. The sun poked through the tall pines and his armour shone, the parts not still covered in ectoplasm that was. He rotated his jaw. What if… What if that bite the pony had given him… had done something to him? He started to sweat again. What if it wasn’t the momentary lapse in judgement brought on by the salve that had caused him to bite that pony. What if…

He shook his head weakly. It didn’t bear thinking about, but he could not rid himself of the worrying possibility. No, he was here. The sun was shining upon him, so he was not a vampire. He couldn’t be. He still needed to eat, sleep, and could feel. Surely he was not now an abomination that haunted the shadows of the mind of mankind? He wasn’t an undead horror. He was here in the sun after all!

‘So was she…,’ Handy realised, recalling the bat mare on the train when he had been interrogated. She hadn’t seemed bothered by the sunlight. The nervousness returned. He didn’t… feel any compulsion. There was no need to feed, and he certainly didn’t look at his compatriots as a piece of meat. Although… what did he know? Those ponies were vampires and didn’t seem to obey the rules the folklore and popular fiction he knew about vampires seemed to indicate. How could he be sure?

He was perturbed. On an intellectual basis, he had always hated vampires. They did represent, symbolically, the Antichrist after all. Or at least that was Bram Stoker’s intention when he had put pen to Dracula, and pop culture had run with that undercurrent ever since. Now… he was one… or he might be. Another possibility hit him. What if what the vampony blood just had that effect on humans naturally when they ingested it? That would… be marginally better. He considered it. Perhaps World of Darkness logic applied here? It was as good a guide as any he had. Perhaps vampony blood just had inherent power? Hell if he knew – this world was bursting at the seams with magic. Anything was potentially possible.

He then considered the pony he had fought, the one that had basically robbed him of his blood. She had kept up with him easily and had been much more powerful than her fellows. Evidently blood gave the vamponies a power boost, which only raised more questions. Why didn’t all of them drink blood before engaging in the fight? ‘Maybe it was just your blood that did that…’ He didn’t like that thought. It meant he had something the vampires wanted that they couldn’t get elsewhere. Fortunately for him, and he licked his lips at the thought, the position was mutually held.

His eyes widened. What the hell was he thinking!? He gripped the side of his head. No, it couldn’t be true. He was overreacting. He would test this. Once he got to the city, he would… do something. Perhaps get some meat, bloody and raw and see… see if he was right. He shakily got to his feet as he trudged back through the forest towards the stream. He partook of the clean water, enjoying its purity as he washed his face. He looked at his armour as he scrubbed some of the goop off. There were scratches, but that was to be expected. There were also light dents here or there from the fight.

He frowned. He would have to get those buffed out when he had the time, for he certainly had the coin. He went back to meet with Joachim and the other griffons, smiling as he held the helmet under his arm. “Feeling better?” Joachim asked.

“No,” Handy admitted. “But honestly, that’s to be expected.” Joachim grimaced, looking over his shoulder to ensure the other birds were out of earshot.

“In all seriousness,” he turned to look at Handy, “I am disappointed in you.” He was frowning and giving Handy a hard glare. “I do not regret holding you to your oath. You promised me, Handy.” He stiffened, angry at Joachim, but he withheld it. He was right after all.

“They bit me,” he said.

“They did,” Joachim said, “and that was against their laws. The night ponies strictly punish their own from drinking from living creatures. It is almost unheard of for them to bite others, even enemies.” Handy scowled.

“If they’re still dangerous, why do the princesses employ them?”

“Because they’re dangerous,” Joachim responded. “Kind of why Ivorybeak hired you in the first place, remember?” Handy nodded, conceding the point. “They make good soldiers, as you found out.” Handy couldn’t really justify his actions. He confessed to drinking the salve then, desperate to recover his blood loss and get back into the fight. He recounted the experience to Joachim. “Then I certainly won’t be drinking it. Still doesn’t excuse you.”

“No… No, I suppose it does not,” Handy admitted. “Still, I don’t know why they’d risk accidentally turning other ponies into vampires…” Joachim raised his eyebrow at that. “Well… Ever since I was bitten, I was… worried. Back home, we have legends of vampires. Sometimes... Sometimes being bit by a vampire turns you into one, an undead monstrosity.” Joachim looked amused at that.

“The night ponies can’t do that.” Handy was relieved at that. “The only way to become like them is to be born as one of them. They are hardly undead.”

“So… Why did I get a boost of power from drinking their blood in turn?” Handy asked. Joachim didn’t have an answer for him. “Why did the one pony who did drink from me become so strong?”

“Well, it’s well known that they get power from blood. It’s a great temptation, hence the law against it. They’ve been taking potions for centuries, paid for by the Equestrian state.”

“As powerful as the one who drank from me?”

“I don’t know… I don’t think so.” Handy felt uneasy. Joachim then shook his head dismissively. “You’re overthinking this.” See? Even Joachim agreed with your denial, Handy. Listen to the wise princeling. “It’ll be fine. You feel the need to latch on to anypony’s – excuse me, anygriffon’s – neck and suck them dry?”

“No…”

“Then you’re fine. Come on now,” Joachim said, walking back to the train. Handy made to follow but stopped. He sniffed the air.

“Ow, dang it!” He turned to face the voice. It was Hirsild. She had cut her side on an errant piece of wood from the wall of the shelter by this mountain stop, a mere five feet away from him. She was gripping the cut and hissing. Handy stared. She looked up, and Handy snapped out of his trance and hurriedly put his helmet on, marching back to the train without a word.

--=--

He stayed in one of the most intact sleeping cabins for the rest of the journey, the griffons downstairs conversing and eating breakfast. Handy would rather not be down there right now, not after what happened with Hirsild. The wind rushed past the window and it was cold, but there was bugger all that could be done with it. He was thankful the cabin came with a door that actually closed. The cot was too small for him as always, but he was sitting up against the wall on it, thinking. He had taken off his breastplate, helmet, and pauldrons and wore his heavy cloak over him. It was practically all encompassing and warm.

He felt warmth against his chest and reached below his chainmail and pulled out the pendant. It was a teardrop-shaped jewel on a chain of tarnished gold, nearly black in colour. The gem pulsated softly. It felt warm at random moments but he never paid it any mind. It was magic – shit happened. “I wonder why you let me keep this…” The gem pulsed. Handy thought back to the changelings. He was still not fond of the bastards, but the night ponies occupied a higher tier on his shit list. And he did still feel bad for what he did to the Queen. He tried not thinking about how good the meat of the pod tasted. Or how her blood might taste.

“For what it’s worth, I do regret my actions.” The gem pulsed lowly then seemed to grow dim. Handy twirled it about before him absentmindedly. His brow furrowed. Drinking, drugs, what the hell was he doing? He was slowly, systematically, becoming a worse person the longer he stayed here. Granted, he was having the adventure of a lifetime but still… “The hell am I doing?” he said to himself. “Talking to a gem. What am I, a diamond dog?” The gem pulsed brightly. “It’s not as if you can hear me anyway.” The gem pulsed twice.

Handy froze.

He slowly sat up and stared hard at the pendant before him, looking at it hard. It didn’t pulse. “Hello?” The gem pulsed lowly, and the hairs on Handy’s neck slowly began to stand on end. The gem pulsed, brighter this time. Handy’s eyes slowly widened. “Can… you hear me?” The gem pulsed brightly. “Two pulses for yes, one for no.” The gem pulsed twice in rapid succession. Handy jumped the fuck out of his skin.

He stood up and was quiet for some time. He narrowed his eyes at the gem.

“Chrysalis?” The gem pulsed twice.

--=--

The queen laughed. It had taken him long enough.

She was reclining in her chambers, watching the crystal orb before her. Honestly, it had been the best entertainment she had had in years. Her curiosity with the strange creature had overran her hatred of it when she had it at her mercy. She had let it escape with the gem she had uncovered from the old throne room, knowing the gem could remotely view through the eyes of its wearer, allowing her to see what the wearer saw and speak into their minds and plant suggestions there. It was a shame it would not also let one read what was in there too. It didn’t work with the Pale One, however. Well, not entirely. She could still see through his eyes when he wore the pendant. Otherwise, she was left viewing from the gem’s perspective when he was not wearing it, making the times when the pendant was in the bag or merely held in somepony’s hands quite boring.

She wasn’t entirely sure what she had expected when she let the human go with it. She had wanted to learn more, sure, but she had also relished in the possibility of seeing him suffer in the desert. Alas, he had not, and a part of her had been disappointed, but that part soon ceased existing altogether. The human had survived the desert, and she had followed him on his various shenanigans. The situations this human ended up in! She dearly wished she could taste his emotions – impotent anger had such a pleasant tang to it. She had brought in favoured courtiers to observe the fight with the minotaur. That had been a good afternoon’s entertainment.

However, she had found herself intrigued as the human travelled with the griffons, not least of such caused by his strange act of mercy shown to the captive changelings. She wasn’t sure what motivated that action, and she could not tell, neither able to see the creature’s mind nor taste its emotions. That had caught her attention. It had come to a head when she learned he was wanted by the regal sisters and the incident at the border with the griffons… Well, that had been just delicious. It had been terrifying when he fell upon the guard pony, and Chrysalis had been uncomfortably reminded of how close she herself came to those teeth, yes, but delicious. She could not believe the sisters would do something like that!

She was busy penning a letter to send to them, the first she had sent in some time. The last she had sent was one Hearth’s Warming Eve when she had been spectacularly drunk and felt like venting. She had looked up as Handy started talking to the pendant, and a wide smile broke across her face. The look on his face! Occasionally the pendant would glow when she was looking through it, responding to her own reactions: shock, laughter, and the rest. She dearly wished he could hear her. The things she would say!

--=--

Handy glared hard at the gem. “How much can you see?”

--=--

Chrysalis rubbed a hoof on her chin, smiling all the while. Her horn glowed.

--=--

The gem pulsed three times. Handy’s face was stone. He shook violently.

He reached out the window, the gem hanging by his hand. The pendant pulsed rapidly. “It’s rude to stare, you know,” Handy said. “Have a good one, your Majesty.” Handy dropped the pendant. Handy reclined once more on the cot, trying very hard not to think about the fact that the fae queen had been spying on him this entire time. He closed his eyes to try to catch some rest. This was not turning out to be a good day at all.

Several minutes later, there was a knock at his cabin door. “It’s open,” Handy called. Joachim entered.

“Hey, Handy.” He raised his claw. Handy looked at what he held and deflated. “I was just airing my wing out the window downstairs when this hit it.” He held up the pendant. Handy glared at the griffon, wide-eyed. “I mean, it is a trophy with quite a story behind it. You should be more careful.” He lobbed the pendant at Handy, who caught it reluctantly.

Handy’s mouth opened and closed like a fish, trying to find words to shout his defiance of this absurdity. What was he going to do? ‘Hey Joachim, the royal guard wanted to arrest me because they thought I was a spy for the changeling Queen. Oh, by the way, turns out I actually was and had no idea until now. Crazy, huh?’ “Thanks Joachim,” Handy said, an incredibly fake smile gracing his features as he reaffixed the pendant about his neck. Joachim seemed to believe him and smiled back.

“Now don’t go about losing that. You’re gonna be asked a lot of questions at the feast.”

“Feast?”

“It’s Gethrenia – there’s always a feast.” Handy stared disbelievingly. “We’ll be arriving in an hour, so you should get ready,” Joachim said as he left the cabin. Handy waited until he was sure he was out of earshot. He looked down at the pendant.

“Not. A. Word,” he warned. There was a moment of silence as the pendant remained dull, then began rapidly pulsing. “OH FUCK OFF!” Handy said, stuffing the pendant under his mail as he sat back on his cot in a huff. Fucking changelings.

--=---

“MY SIDES!” The Queen fell over, laughing uproariously.

“My Queen!” A pair of guards entered her chambers. “We heard a loud… My Queen?” The pair of guards stared at their sovereign rolling about on the floor, laughing maniacally. Slowly, one hoof after the other, they backed out of the room and closed the door behind them.

--=--

Handy was impressed. The city lay three quarters across a valley between two soaring mountains. The two sides of the mountains facing each other had castles and structures build upon them all the way down to lowtown in the valley below where the city was bisected by a river. The tan buildings and rich brown roofing accented by dark stone work were stark against the light greys of the mountains and the greens and blues of the valley and sky. They had gotten a good look at it outside their carriage windows as the train rounded a bend and descended the mountain into the valley. The place was swarming with griffons.

It was then, however, that Ivorybeak took them aside as the rest of the passengers left the train talking eagerly with fondly missed family members and friends as the train began to be unloaded. Handy overheard the griffons talking about the attack by the ponies and something about a ‘Nightbane’. He didn’t care because Ivorybeak finally told them the real reason he had been sent to fetch Johan.

Gerhart was dying.

The news hit Joachim hard. Handy looked down at the griffon. His face was a mix of emotions, and he recognised the expression too well. He placed an armoured gauntlet on Joachim’s shoulder for solidarity. The king had taken ill not long after Joachim had left. He was an old griffon nearing seventy winters, a venerable age, and his dying wish was to see his prodigal son one last time before he died. Handy now understood why a stuck up fop like Ivorybeak had been willing to slum it in Pawstown while searching for Joachim.

They had made a striking ensemble as they walked through the streets, Hirsild taking their gear with her to store them, including Handy’s packs. A quartet of armoured griffons had descended on them at the train station, offering to escort his Highness to his father. They took exception to Handy, for obvious reasons, but held back after Johan raised a claw to calm their fears, indicating Handy was his servant and bodyguard, allowing him to keep his weapon. Handy was grateful but did not voice anything. Joachim was in a delicate state and he dared not say anything that could upset him.

It was a long lonely walk up to the castle on the far side of low town, the district on the far side of the river closest to the castle known for being lower than the rest of the city before the steep climb to the castle. The griffons were abuzz with news and rumours of the prince’s return and the manner of his arrival, and they crowded the streets and rooftops as they passed. Handy ignored this, keeping an eye instead on potential threats. He did have a job to do after all, and he’d rather not see his friend in such a state and thus kept his eyes off of Joachim as they marched. There was some cheering at Johan’s return, but it was muted. Handy noticed the black banners draped across official-looking buildings, black bows on the street lights, and the general subdued atmosphere of city. A people mourned, for their father was dying.

The trek to the upper city and into the castle was an equally sombre affair. The purple and gold banners of Gethrenia fluttered in the breeze alongside their black doppelgangers. The halls of the castle were spectacular in their own way. Serving griffons nobles and officials parted to make way for Johan. The servants were humble enough, but Handy did not care for the looks the nobility gave Johan. They eventually made their way to the king’s chambers. There were rather a lot of servants, formally dressed griffons, and guards of all sorts outside the king’s door. It felt like walking into a hospital ward and meeting the family of a dying man as you passed by his room.

Handy took his place by an empty spot by the wall as Johan made his way to the door. He knew he was getting looks but didn’t care. He was here on Joachim’s dime… after a fashion, so they could well and truly keep their beaks shut. Joachim opened the door and entered the dark chambers of his father. The door closed, and Handy was left in the uncomfortable silence of the antechamber.

--=--

“Johan?”

“I’m here.” He shuffled forward. The king shifted in his covers.

“Come over here.” Dying or not, his voice had never lost that hard edge Johan was so used to. He came over by the bedside and saw his father’s grasping claw. He reached up to hold onto it. “There… There… How have you been, Johan?”

“… Good. I’ve been… good.” A moment of silence passed between them, and he heard his father let out a shuddering breath, the darkness of the room near complete.

“You never should have left… Why did you go?” he asked. “I missed you.” Something caught in Joachim’s throat.

“I… Th… I’m sorry…” He felt his father smile.

“No… No, it’s fine… You’re here now… where you belong. You’re home… I was so worried. Your mother would have had me call the levies.” He heard his father chuckle mirthfully. “You have her eyes you know, did I ever tell you that?” Joachim could no longer hold back his tears, hoping his father would not see them in the dark.

“No… Tell me again what was she like?”

“Ah….” His claw tightened about Joachim’s. “She was a radiant beauty, strong and fast, but that’s not what caught my eye… That’s…” He trailed off. “I am sorry, Johan… I am so sorry… I should never have given permission… I should have seen…”

“Father?” Joachim looked up. The king did not respond immediately.

“How could I have not seen it…? He’s a tyrant… As soon as he was named crown prince… The things he does… The abuses… You must press your right, Johan… Please.”

“Father, I—” The claw gripped tighter.

“Listen! You will do this one thing! You will press the right of retrieval. It’s the kingdom’s only chance. I made a grave mistake… A grave…”

There was a sound of shouts and shuffling paws outside. The door opened.

“Ah, brother!”

Joachim’s face became as iron. “Geoffrey.” The arrogant runt of a griffon entered the room, the light pouring in from outside seeming harsh and cruel, intruding rudely on this private space. Two griffon guards entered the room and flanked either side of the doorway as Geoffrey went to the far side of the bed and casually opened a pair of curtains. The feathers on the back of Joachim’s neck rose as he shook with rage. How dare he!? This was the king’s own chambers! “What are y—?”

“Hmm?” Geoffrey responded, his black feathered face and grey shadows about his eyes striking at the sun hit his feathers. “Oh, you’re still here? I figured you’d run off at the sight of me yet again. You really should not disturb father. He does so ever need his rest these days.” Joachim ground his teeth. Speaking as if their father were not here before them! He looked at the door. A guard had filled the doorway, with Handy at his back.

“Sorry, Highness, Majesty, he just…” the guard tried to apologise. He took one look at the cruel gaze Geoffrey levelled at him and knew he’d regret speaking like he did. He withdrew. Handy, reluctantly, followed him. Joachim looked at his father. The king was covered in his robes, and his face obscured by a great shawl which rose and fell with his breath. His wings, once mighty and proud, were shrivelled and moulting. He had changed so much since he last saw him. Where was the giant? The seeming immortal he had looked up to all his life? Where was his strength? Was this what time did to him? What it does to them all…

“Yes, quite.” Geoffrey turned back to his brother and smiled. There was no warmth nor welcome in the expression. “I suppose you came to get some of your thing. You’re a tad late – I had your room cleaned out.” Joachim fumed but kept his peace. He felt his father tighten his grip… Was that fear?

“Geoffrey…” Joachim began again. “It’s… good to see you again,” he lied. Geoffrey looked at him in surprise before he laughed.

“Oh I understand, it is always good to see me of course, that’s probably why.” Geoffrey preened and idly inspected his right claw. “But really, I’m afraid I must insist you leave. I need to have words with father dearest.” Joachim did not want to let go of his father’s claw. Geoffrey waited for a moment before looking up, his smile disappearing. “Well?” The king loosened his grip and let Joachim’s hand go. He looked at his father, not wanting to move. Geoffrey snapped his fingers. The two guards moved forward and, in an action that elicited a gasp of surprise from the king and the onlookers outside the room, Joachim was lifted bodily and thrown from the room.

Handy reached for his friend to help him up. “I’m fine!” he protested, pulling himself away from his servant. “I’m fine. I just… come with me.” He indicated to Handy. He obeyed and followed Joachim out of the room, his black cloak trailing behind him as his hooded helmet turned to look back at where they came from. Joachim led them both through the castle for some time until they were quite possibly on the far side of it. Joachim opened a door and entered a richly decorated drawing room.

Joachim let loose his rage. Handy stood back in shock as Joachim began overthrowing tables and ripping apart cushions and generally wrecking the place, screeching curses. “How dare he!? HOW DARE HE!?” He lifted a sofa in a display of rage-fuelled strength and threw it at a wall. Handy had to rush out of the way. “You!” he said, pointing at Handy. Handy stood, not sure of what he should say. “I can trust you, right? I can rely on you, can’t I, Handy?” he asked. Handy took a second to answer.

“Ah… Of course. Wha—”

“You’re an outsider here. Geoffrey doesn’t have his claws in you. I can trust you, I can only trust you… and my poor father.”

“Joachim, are you alri—”

“No I am not alright!” Joachim’s shouted, wings flared. “I just saw the mightiest griffon I have ever known in my life reduced to a pathetic wretch who could barely speak. I saw my brother, a sneaky degenerate, treat him like a piece of meat, throwing me from the very room!” Joachim’s shouted. Handy really had nothing to say to this. What could he have? “I can’t believe I share his blood with that creature!” He panted.

Handy walked over to the door, opening it to look around outside. There was a concerned-looking maid who was heading towards the room. One look at Handy, and she made do with turning right back around and walking off. He closed the door and walked over to Joachim. “Joachim, you need to calm down.”

“Calm? What would you do if your father was treated like that?” Joachim shot back. Handy flinched.

“A lot of things,” Handy said, biting his tongue. “But if I was in a position where doing something about it could endanger others, I wouldn’t go off shouting my intent.” Joachim breathed hard but began to see reason. Joachim clasped his head, and Handy was surprised to see him crying. That was an awkward situation to be in, but he knew well enough to let Joachim be alone. He excused himself to spare his dignity and stood outside while Joachim let it out, his own thoughts playing in his head, piecing together what he had learned.

--=--

The servants did not eat before their lords.

Handy stood against the wall with the other guards and servants. As an insult, Geoffrey had given orders that no servant was to serve Johan. Johan was not told this. Handy just learned it second hand, being the only one there who owed allegiance directly to Joachim first and everyone else never. Handy had been Joachim’s waiter and took care of the duties of delivery, cleaning, and the refilling of goblets. The servants got used to the bipedal armoured human taking dishes and wine jars from them through the night. Under most circumstances, he would have resented the servile position he had taken, but the tense air of the castle that he’d picked up on since arriving and Joachim’s outburst made him rethink his priorities and had resolved to do everything he could to help Joachim in whatever mess this was.

Geoffrey had been giving him malignant looks throughout the night, and he often saw the guards of the room shift uncomfortably. Handy did not like this situation. It was literally only him and Joachim in the heart of a hostile castle ruled by a spiteful little brother. Apologies, that would be elder. Handy was surprised to learn Geoffrey was, in fact, older than Joachim by at least ten years.

“Enjoy?” Geoffrey asked from the head of the table. The gathered nobles and courtiers knew better than to answer, for that the question was directed at Johan, who ironically was not seated at the far end to the table. In fact, he was seated just to the left of it for the sake of awkwardness. The insult did not escape anybody.

“It was excellent,” Joachim said. “The chef has my compliments.” The smile shrank on Geoffrey’s visage.

‘Easy, Joach,’ Handy thought. ‘You don’t poke the lion in his own den.’

“He does his duty,” Geoffrey said, waving his hand. A servant came over and handed him a warm towel, which he snatched. The serving girl flinched and shrunk as she retreated. “As should we all, don’t you think, brother dearest?” Joachim’s grip tightened on his goblet.

“Of course,” he said. Geoffrey’s eye twitched at Joachim’s lack of honorific when replying to the crown prince.

‘Easy….,’ Handy thought, sensing the tension in the atmosphere. ‘Easy now…’

“Now that you are back, we can finally put you to good use,” Geoffrey said, clearing his throat. “We have need of a new fool at court." Several of the courtiers flinched, while some of them looked relieved. Joachim didn’t react. From what Handy had been told, he supposed he had expected something like this. “The last several did not last nearly enough. Stress of the job, after all.”

“Several?” Joachim asked, genuinely curious. Geoffrey raised an eyebrow at him. “…Highness,” Joachim added as if he had swallowed something sour. “What happened to Simon the Lame?”

“He lost the use of his other wing,” Geoffrey said casually. “The next had a tragic fall, the other a run in with the fireplace.” The courtiers squirmed, and Joachim’s grip tightened. Handy looked to where Ivorybeak sat in the centre of the table, his attention focused squarely on his drink. “It has been so dull. We had to find other means of entertainment…” The look on Ivorybeak’s face was pained. Geoffrey smiled lightly as he turned his face back to Joachim. “Do you like dogs, brother?”

“Pardon, Highness?” Joachim responded, unsure.

“I was just considering the company you keep to nowadays. Honestly, I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised.” Handy’s grip tightened on his left gauntlet, having been standing there with one hand clasped over the other. Joachim grit his teeth. “It is, after all, to be expected of one such as yourself.” Geoffrey sighed. “But it is getting late. I feel I shall retire. You are dismissed.” He waved a claw, and the courtiers all slowly stood up, awaiting the prince to leave the table. The prince stopped at the door and pointed at one of the servants. “That one,” he said, pointing a claw at Hirsild. The young griffon blinked in surprise.

“M-Me, your lordsh—” She was taken by two guards and brought along to follow behind the prince as the doors closed behind him. Handy blinked, wondering what the hell that was about. He was about to step out from the wall when a claw stopped him. He looked down at the guard beside him, who shook his head. He was about to protest when he saw the sad, knowing look in his eyes. Handy looked at Joachim pleadingly. Joachim had crushed the goblet in his claw, glaring at the doors his brother left through. The courtiers left the room silently.

--=--

He had learned then, as he sat in the kitchens and attempted to eat with the other servants. He remembered his test and was going to eat a rather bloody steak from some strange animal. The sight of the juices and blood of the steak did indeed cause an unusual pang in him that he could not identify, but he didn't get to taste. Whatever this could have meant was quickly crushed under the weight of what he learned.

Geoffrey was a God-damn monster. And there was not a damn thing anyone could do about it.

The griffon had the tongue of the devil himself… or at least he did back when his brother was crown prince, and had charmed his way into the graces of very powerful nobles who themselves were in the graces of his own father. He had used them to undermine his brother’s position and character. However, he had also used his position to find every deep shame and dark secret of practically everyone of note in the kingdom. What was worse, as soon as he was named crown prince, he had proved he was more than willing to use this knowledge against them, not to maintain order, but for his own amusement.

Handy had enquired why the nobles had not revolted, why the king had not stripped him of his title and disowned him. What he learned only made things worse. Geoffrey had allies, something powerful and certainly not a griffon. Or at least that seemed to be the case. As soon as someone entertained dissent, an ankle or wing was sprained. As soon as someone entertained doubt, a limb was broken. As soon as someone spoke out, a child suffered an accident. Nothing could be linked to Geoffrey himself. As for the king, he had been getting worse since he had been appointed crown prince. If anyone so much as moved a muscle against him, something happened. With the court cowed and the king reduced to an invalid, Geoffrey did what he want to practically anyone he wanted. Guard, serving girl, Ivorybeak’s youngest son…

Handy suddenly lost his appetite. That would explain why he was stopped after Geoffrey took Hirsild away half an hour ago. People feared something worse. Handy was lost in his thoughts. He excused himself from the kitchens and left. It left a rather sick feeling in his stomach. He couldn’t just do nothing. Perhaps he needed to— A claw pulled him into a room. He reached for his hammer before he caught sight of Joachim in the fading light. “We are killing my brother,” Joachim said. Handy stopped. Well, okay, that sped things up a little. Glad to see the griffon had some initiative after all. “But we need to do it legally.” Killjoy.

“How?” Handy demanded, almost growled. Joachim looked behind him. It was only then Handy noticed Ivorybeak was in the room with them, along with two guards. One of them had a feathered plume in his helmet.

“I am going to press my right of retrieval,” Joachim said. Handy looked at him. “If a claimant loses the duel for his title, he has one chance to reclaim it. But it needs to be done with the permission of the king and the nobility.”

“And the nobles?” Handy asked.

“They support the motion,” Ivorybeak spoke up. “I put out some feelers immediately when we arrived. Some were already planning on contacting the prince to support him.” Handy considered this. Those looks Joachim got when he arrived weren’t what he had thought they were. “We just need the king’s assent.”

“That’s where I come in.” The feathered helm nodded. Handy spoke up next.

“Then what am I here for?” he asked.

“You need to get me to Geoffrey,” Joachim explained. “We can’t have any of the guards walk with me. The word will spread and the other guards will converge on the prince’s location to prevent a coup.”

“But that’s exactly what we’re doing,” Handy said, his thoughts racing. Joachim smiled.

“Exactly. It has to just be the two of us. The guards won’t think we’d be brazen enough to push through to the prince’s quarters. I need to press my right verbally, otherwise it won’t hold weight of law. The prince will have to confirm it with the king.”

“Which will be confirmed by the time the prince gets to the king’s quarters,” the guard captain stated. Ivorybeak lifted a wing, indicating a scroll he had there.

“So you need me to get you to the prince’s quarters?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“Now.”

Handy smiled.

--=--

The pair of them walked up the inner courtyard and took the left turn into the westward castle, Handy slightly ahead of Joachim. His cloak was securely fastened so that he would not alert anyone with an errant ray of dying sunlight. They mounted the steps and marched down the long corridor to the prince’s chambers. They heard muffled screaming, and Handy let his cloak drop.

“Halt!” There were five guards. The closest one to Handy put a claw up to demand they stop, his other clutching a spear. Handy knocked the arm aside with the shield on his left hand and brought the hammer around and clocked the griffon on the side of the head. The rest wasted no time. Three took to the air in the high ceilinged corridor.

“MOVE!” Handy shouted and ran forward. The three flying griffons dived at him with their spears. Joachim took to the air at the exact time they dove and clawed at one as he passed over their heads. Handy dived into a roll under the inside of the reach of their spears. The three tried to stop their rapid descent, but the one Joachim clawed failed and hit the ground hard, face first. Handy got up on one knee and brought his shield up as a spear broke across it, the blow pushing him back. Joachim fell on the griffon before him, pulling him to the ground. Handy turned. The three unengaged griffons were upon him, and he brought his hammer around in an arc, breaking one spear as another nicked his side, cutting the chainmail just below his cuirass. Handy hissed in pain and staggered back. “I’ll hold them, go!” Handy ordered.

“Right!” Joachim leapt off of the guard he had been assaulting, but his tail was caught and he crashed to the ground. The guard got up and lunged at the prince. Joachim rolled out and kicked with his rear legs. The griffon was shoved to the side as Joachim scrambled to his feet.

Handy’s shield was taken off. He had taken down another of the guards but got cut under his shoulder. He snarled in pain. He shrugged off a punch to the jaw and came up with his knee, catching a guard in the stomach as he brought his hammer down instinctively to the guard’s left, hitting the other guard as he tried to get back to his feet. The guard he kneed doubled over, and he turned. The four guards behind him were either dazed or knocked out, and he himself was bleeding in several places. Joachim was almost at the prince’s door, and the guard he had been battling with was now back on his feet and bounding after him

‘No you don’t.’ Handy gripped the hammer in both hands and leaned back, his right foot raised. He swung, letting go of the hammer. The second he let go of the weapon, he was bowled over. The two griffon guards not knocked out pinned him to the ground and laid into him. But he had done his job, for the hammer soared through the air and slammed into the back of the last griffon’s helmet, knocking the bird out as it tumbled to the ground. Joachim opened the door.

Handy did not see what happened next, you know, because he too busy being pinned to the ground and getting pummelled. The armour took most of the blows but let’s be honest here. It was armoured warriors hitting each other – they knew where to hit to make it hurt. What he wouldn’t give for a boost right now. The pummelling only stopped when he heard a harsh voice.

“YOU DARE!”

“I dare, brother! I press the right of retrieval! You must honour the law!”

“I WILL NOT! I REFUSE!”

“The king himself and the nobility have assented!”

“They would not dare!”

“They would, and they did!”

“This is an outrage!”

Handy turned his head to the side. He saw the skittish paws and claws hurry past him and a ruined, bleeding wing. He recognised that brown fur. It was Hirsild. He couldn’t turn his head around in his helmet to see what was going on up the hall.

“Kill him!” he heard Geoffrey say. Handy looked up. The two guards looked down at him, considering the order. “NOT HIM! Kill him later, kill Johan now!” The guards looked at each other.

“Uh… My lord…?” one began. “Don’t you need to check with the king…? For…” Handy smiled beneath his helmet. He tasted iron in his mouth. Yeah, he bit something.

“YOU DARE QUESTION MY ORDERS!?” Geoffrey screamed. The guards suddenly got off of Handy. He turned to push himself up. Ow, ow, and ow.

N-No! Milord! B-But the law-!”

“Curse the damn law!” Geoffrey screeched. “I AM THE LAW! Fine, I will go to father. I will quash this foolishness and then, dear brother.” Handy got to one knee and looked at the princes. Geoffrey’s claw was at Joachim’s throat, pinning him against the wall. There was a faint white glow about his claw. Both griffons looked roughed up, and Geoffrey’s bathrobe was torn. Oh, sorcery, how nice. “Then I will deal with you.” He smiled viciously as he let Joachim drop. So much for the scrawny bastard being weak.

Handy shuffled out of the irate prince’s way as he walked past. He gave the human a death glare, which he returned with relish. Handy got to his feet and ran over to Joachim. He helped the griffon up. He sniffed the air and turned to the open door of Geoffrey’s room. He couldn’t see through the darkness within but he knew what he smelled. “You okay?” he asked without looking down at the griffon.

“Yeah… Thanks, come on. I want to see his face,” Joachim said. Handy hesitated for a moment before following, eyes lingering on the room as he picked up his hammer and cloak. He was bleeding himself but could deal with those wounds later. Right now they had to ensure the coup de grâce to their coup d'état.

They had entered the king’s chambers to the sound of outrage. Joachim entered and Handy stood in the doorway. The king had just finished signing the document Ivorybeak held for him. The guard captain stood in witness as well as a bearded and venerable-looking griffon Handy had not seen before.

“It is… done…,” Gerhart said, his face hidden behind the veil. Handy sniffed the air and resisted the urge to raise his hand to the face of his helmet.

“No! I refuse, father, you can’t!”

“It has been deemed… in the best interests of this kingdom. The duel will commence a day hence from tomorrow,” the king spoke. Ivorybeak rolled the document up. Geoffrey fumed.

“You are a fool, old fart.” Handy noticed several of the griffons visibly stiffen. “I will win this duel and then I will rule.” He stormed out of the room, shoving Handy aside. He was surprised at the strength in the puny griffon. He had to summon all of his will not to bring his hammer down on the bastard’s skull, consequences be damned. Handy looked in as the griffons began speaking to one another as Joachim moved closer to his father’s side.

“He’ll get Shortbeak to fight for him again. His hold over her is iron tight,” he heard the captain mention. “He’ll do his level best to get the other knights to fall into step. He has something over everyone.”

“Even you?” the venerable griffon asked.

“Even me,” the captain confirmed. “But I’ll fight anyway if his Highness will have me.”

“You have our gratitude.”

The other guards in the room left, and Handy took that as a sign he was no longer needed. He closed the door and stood guard in the antechamber with the others, fixing his cloak about his armour once more.

This was not what he had been expecting when he woke up this morning.

Chapter 10 - On a Wing and a Prayer

The captain was dead by morning.

The alarm had rung out but all that could be determined is his heart gave out in the night. Handy was suddenly very glad he had opted to stay awake that night. He had stood guard outside Joachim’s door as the griffon wasn’t sure he could trust anyone else and more than once he found himself glancing at shadows and starting at sounds in the night, he had passed it off as his imagination playing tricks, he was dead tired by daybreak afterall. Now however, he could not be sure.

He had voiced his concerns to Joachim, who shared them, but there was nothing to be done as there was absolutely no proof of foul play and they were already so close to the goal of ridding the throne of Geoffrey. They had the rest of the day to prepare, the duel was the following morning. That’s when they found trouble finding a champion. The royal knights all refused to take prince Johan’s side. Well, refused is a strong word, apparently all fifty of the castle’s garrisoned royal knights bar one or two had been deployed to ‘patrol’ the royal demesne that day. It seems Geoffrey couldn’t be too sure one of the knights would take the risk to themselves and their family and fight Johan’s cause. Which presented a problem, duels of all kinds, especially title claims, had to be fought by those of noble blood and martial training leaving Joachim with the possibility of facing the knight alone once again.

His wings twitched, Handy knew they were still injured from the fight on the Equestrian express, he couldn’t rely on them in the duel and he had lost before to Shortbeak, who just so happened to be one of the knights who remained behind. So of course, Ivorybeak, being the sneaky bastard he is, put Handy’s name forward in Joachim’s stead, only telling them after the fact as the human was helping the griffon pick out a weapon in the armoury. Apparently Geoffrey was incensed, disputing the human’s nobility. Which was perfectly legitimate since the human was faking it, to be fair, the country he was from, everyone was directly descended from a king, so he wasn’t entirely lying, but that was literally a thousand years ago and really wasn’t applicable. However, Ivorybeak had went ahead and ‘invested’ some of Handy’s own coinage around Skymount.

Which is how Handy came to be the landlord of two taverns, a mill, three inns, a brewery, blacksmith, bakery, a carpenter’s workshop, ten acres of farmland and the God damn alchemist’s guild. However, despite Handy’s completely understandable reaction to learning someone else spent his money, there was a method to the madness. Handy was already a ‘noble’, so long as nobody probed too deeply and he was Prince Johan’s personal servant, which made him a part of the royal household, and had the look of a knight, unorthodox though he was. Honestly the only thing he was missing was landholdings to cement himself as a part of Gethrenia’s social framework, thereby fulfilling all the requirements to get the human to stand for the prince.

“You know, you should never fuck with another man’s money.” He had growled. Ivory’s spending spree had only reduced but one of his packs down by half, griffon currency being even more devalued then Equestrian bits in the face of pure high carot gold, but it was the principle, you know? Ivorybeak shook his head.

“We’re out of options, we need a knight.”

“I was never knighted.”

“True but you now fulfil all the requirements, and you can fight. Perhaps we can take care of the formality after the fact.” He said, Handy rubbed his eyes, drinking his fourth cup of coffee that morning. He had rubbed salve on his wounds and was thoroughly enjoying the sensation and the fact he had the heavier portions of his armour off for once. “Come on, sir Handy.”

“I didn’t say no.” Handy protested, tapping his fingers on the arm of the chair he sat on. “This Shortbeak, what can I expect?”

“She’s probably one of the best warriors in the household guard.” He answered. She. Another woman. So she was a formidable warrior and he was going to have to go against his social programming to fight her back and he didn’t have the excuse of a drug addled mind this time. Joy. “Favours blades.”

“Am I the only one who fights with a war hammer?”

“Outside of the minotaurs and the dogs? Pretty much.”

“Swell.”

“She also favours heavier armour.”

“She has good taste, I can appreciate that.”

“She’s fast and hits hard.”

“Why not.”

“She’s also smaller then you.”

“Who isn’t?”

“This is serious, Handy!”

“I know, its just, I’ve literally gone from fight to fight, sometimes I wish I could just sit back and relax.”

“If you don’t win, that won’t be an option for any of us. Ever.”

“No pressure then.” Handy said, sighing, downing the rest of his long since cold coffee. “I will be honest with thee, my lord.” Handy said inclining his head to the count of Munister. “I will not relish the prospect of fighting her.” He said, his expression darkening

“Yes yes,” Ivorybeak nodded. “One should not take a duel with a royal knight lightly afterall, I’m glad you’re taking this seriously.” Ivorybeak said, nodding. Handy wanted nothing more than to walk out the castle door, board a carriage, and fuck off to some far off tavern. Possibly forever. Its not that he didn’t like Joachim, its that he didn’t like anyone, and Joachim was a friend he guessed. Sort of, kind of, look they regularly insulted eachother and didn’t come to blows, so that counts. However, he did swear by God he’d serve if he broke his promise, and he had been building up quite the reputation, it’d be churlish and cowardly to back out of it now. Whatever he used to be, he was Handy the Milesian now, and whatever that meant.

“I’ll figure something out…”

--=--

So Handy was collecting titles like pokemon. The Milesian being the only one he ever called himself, the Pale One, the Heartless, Dragon Slayer, Hectoir’s bane from his time in Equestria and now Nightbane and Storm Breaker since he arrived in Gethrenia because of his antics on the train with the night ponies and the elemental. He only learned of this overhearing the servants talking as he fetched Joachim’s breakfast from the kitchens. Apparently he was something of a terrifying spectre bound to the prince’s service, he supposed walking everywhere with the jet black cloak over his armoured form with the stark white knotted symbol on the back may leave a rather lasting impression.

Handy could tell you he did not enjoy the looks of superstitious awe he elicited from the staff of the castle and the fact that the average griffon in the street was speculating wildly about what he could be and the rumours of him being a blood drinker fuelling mad anticipation for the upcoming duel, news of which already broke out in the city below and above. He could tell you that, and he’d be a dirty, dirty liar because of it. His concern for the impending fight aside, he really enjoyed the rather sinister reputation he held. Well, not exactly sinister, he wasn’t going about sacrificing virgins to dark and terrible gods in the middle of the night afterall.

However that just led him to his next unwelcome conversation of the day. He was taking back a pitcher of water from the dining room. Johan was there with a few courtiers, Geoffrey was nowhere to be seen. He entered the kitchens and found them surprisingly empty as he placed the pitcher in the sink. He looked about, where the hell was everybody? They were just here a second ago.

“Do you have insecurity issues?” A voice asked. He turned. There was a young griffon standing at the entrance to the kitchens. She was lithe, thin for a griffon and possessed two large wings disproportionate for her size, but she folded them comfortably nonetheless. Her fur and feathers were black, the shadows around her eyes were a soft, deep purple, framing her piercing blue eyes. Her beak and claws were yellow and she had a short plumage of flowing feathers flowing down one side of her head. “Or are you as scarred and horrible looking as everygriffon thinks?” She asked, referencing the fact that the only people in Skymount who’ve seen him without his helmet were Joachim, Hirsild and Ivorybeak.

Handy got the feeling, he should be careful with this griffon. There was something about how casually she walked across the kitchen, reaching for an apple. Handy let out a breath and turned fully. He put down his hood and pulled off his helmet. “Why doth thou not tell me what you think, my lady?” He said. The griffon looked at his face curiously.

“I guess it’s the second reason.” She said smiling as she chewed. Handy frowned at her.

“I am afraid you have me at a disadvantage...” Handy began, although he had a fair idea of who this was. “Miss…”

“Dame, actually. Dame Shortbeak, so you’re the only one fool enough to fight in the prince’s corner?” She said, not looking at Handy. His eyes narrowed.

“Funny, I’d think it’d be an honour, wouldn’t you?” The bird didn’t flinch.

“I suppose.” She said. “I’ll be honest with you, human, I don’t much care for you or your reputation. You’re a flash in the pan, an unskilled sell-sword with expensive armour and no sense.” Handy felt his anger rising. “So I am just dropping by for some friendly advice, drop out.” She said looking at the human sideways. Handy didn’t blink.

“Think of me what you will, Dame Shortbeak.” Handy responding after a moment’s silence. “I do not tout my own horn and certainly make no boasts about my skill. But I will not back down.” The griffon let out a sigh, closing her eyes as she tossed the core of the apple behind her, leaning against the countertop.

“I won’t kill him you know.” She said, “If that’s what you’re worried about, this entire debacle is a shameful display and I’d rather it be over and done with quickly, let the prince fight his own battles and you can go off elsewhere. Not As if you really care.”

Now, you see, that pissed Handy off. First off, because he did not care one bit for the fact that she was actually right, at least as far as caring. Had he not just this morning considered this very option himself? And how did she know? Secondly, she had effectively just called him out, and with a pride like his now he CERTAINLY wasn’t going to back down. Handy figured it was time to do some digging of his own.

“Art thee really so afraid of me that you try to be rid of my presence before the duel?”

“Ha! I fear no griffon.”

“I am not a griffon.”

“Mores the pity, then you’d just might be a challenge.”

“Sounds to me, you want to fight his highness for assurance of an easy victory, art thy feathers so lacklustre you need to find another way to preen?” Handy said, Shortbeak looked like she had just been slapped. She looked hard at the human before responding.

“I am trying to do you a favour here. Walk away. This isn’t your concern.”

“So what does he have over you?” Handy asked.

“Excuse me?” Shortbeak responded, with a slight chuckle.

“Geoffrey has something over everybody here, or at least it seems that way. I do not deal in gossip, but I am sure you know to which I am referring. What’s your excuse? Why are you fighting his cause?” The griffon scoffed at that and looked away.

“I am a knight and he is my liege lord, there is little more to say.”

“Mayhaps” Handy conceded. “Or perchance, he sent you here to be rid of me since he has yet to have that shadow of his take care of me like he did the guard captain.” Shortbeak squinted. “Ah, so he does have an ally of sorts.”

“Watch your tongue, ape.” Shortbeak warned. “Or I will cut it from you.”

“Why should I? Unlike yours, Geoffrey doesn’t have his claw about it in a death grip.” Handy shot, Shortbeak ground the teeth in her beak. No matter how many times the human saw that, it was still weird. “I am not withdrawing, not now, I am still Godsworn to Johan’s service, tell your master that you failed in your cowardice.” The next thing Handy knew there was a ruffle of feathers, a clatter of platters and he was pushed against the wall,the griffon’s claw at his throat. Handy blinked, there was dull pain in the back of his head from where it struck the wall.

“I will enjoy crushing you.” Shortbeak said, Handy had to will himself not to lash out and punch the griffon in her exposed gut. It was not easy.

’No.’ He told himself, once more realising his tongue acted before his mind could restrain it. ’Don’t make the mistake again, Mother would not…’ The griffon’s wings were flared and he could see the rage in its eyes, she was certainly stronger then she looked, Handy came to realise that appeared to be the general rule rather than the exception when it came to the creatures of this world. “I suppose you would.” Handy said, he gripped her claw and attempted to pry it off. “I don’t think you’d find honour anywhere else in the prince’s service-urk!” The grip tightened as her other claw pried his hand away.

She glared death at the human for a long moment before looking away and letting him go. He took in a grateful gasp of air, rubbing his throat. The griffon stalked off without another word, he looked at the door she had left through as he stooped to pick up his fallen helmet. She has a temper and was quick to rise to it.

He’ll have to remember that.

--=--

He had not gotten any sleep again the night before the duel. Joachim’s paranoia was playing up something fierce and he wouldn’t allow any guards other than Handy himself watch over the room. Handy was more than a little pissed off with his nominal liege lord but seeing the way he acted all day, constantly watching over his shoulder, jumping at shadows, staying as far away from windows as he possibly could, Handy supposed he couldn’t blame him.

Worst of all, yesterday there was no meat, Handy and Joachim, and apparently everyone else, had to make do with gruel and vegetables. They were fed but there was a lot of sustenance missing, Handy, being omnivorous by design fared better than the griffons, who he had learned only came to eating vegetables at all barely two millennia ago, largely from the influence of the ponies, their bodies hadn’t adapted yet, he reasoned. Still, he could’ve sworn the kitchens were fully stocked when he had entered them on his first night at the castle…

So lack of sleep two nights in a row, coupled with the beating he got from Geoffrey’s guards, salve or no salve he still had a few aches, and rather unsatisfactory meals the previous day and needless to say Handy was incredibly irritable. Also hallucinating, because he swore he saw a shadow moving on its own down the hallway from where he stood at Joachim’s door. He had shook his head and it was still there, then when he looked away and looked back, it was gone, leaving only an afterimage in Handy’s vision.

So now, Handy was jumping at shadows the morning of the duel. He was running on a legendary coffee binge to keep himself on his feet. His poor shape was mistaken for nerves as Ivorybeak tried to calm him down and reassure him. Nerves? Handy supposed he was a tad nervous on top of everything else. He tried reasoning to himself.

Sure, he wasn’t actually trained at war, sure he only killed the dragon by luck and the grace of God, to which he attribute his survival after the dragon threw him in the first place rather than the kill itself. He supposed he did defeat the minotaur in single combat, but he had no idea what he was doing and just got lucky with his flailing. He supposed he did kick a lot of ass on the Equestrian Express, but honestly, that was more to do with the massive power boost he got from the night-pony blood than any skill of his own.

In all of his fights he got so lucky, it was almost hilarious. This was his first true fight, on even ground against a prepared opponent, a skilled veteran who had already proven she was quicker and, unlike him, had no psychological hangups with fighting the opposite gender. Indeed, to make matters worse, the sky was overcast, threatening rain, there was going to be little to no chance he could use his armour to blind her with the sunlight. His only hope was the fact she favoured heavy armour and thus would not have the use of flight, she used blades whereas his weapon, the war hammer, is literally designed for fighting armoured opponents.

He had applied some of the salve to his arms. Entirely for medicinal purposes you understand, not because he figured he could use the hit to calm his nerves, nope. He put on his helmet as he walked out the room with Joachim heading towards the great hall. Two guards on either side of the great portal pushed open the doors. Handy noticed the guards armour was polished and there were capes about their shoulders in Gethrenia’s colours.

The hall was a sight to be seen, the high vaulted ceiling soared above them, the walls adorned with gryphonic gargoyles and strewn with great banners and tapestries depicting the histories of Gethrenia and its dynasties past and present. The floor of the hall was arranged with seating filled with court nobility and at the far end of the hall, beneath great, tall windows of stained glass, raised up on a high dais where there should have been a throne, sat a litter upon which the sickly king Gerhart lay, seated against pillows and attended to by servants. The king wore a richly embroidered blanket about his shoulders and held a mace in his hand. It was a cruel, old looking weapon, likely an heirloom of some sort.

Handy was pretty sure the king should not go God damn anywhere other than his room when he was this close to death, but he was hardly going to voice objection. One look told him Joachim thought along the same lines and he was keeping his beak shut, Handy followed the example. Speaking of the bird, he seemed woefully underdressed for the occasion. Well, compared to Handy, that was the case with everybody most days, but this was very formal occasion and Handy noted everyone was dressed in finery. He spied Geoffrey on the king’s right side, taking note of the rather noticeable number of servants between the prince and the king. Someone clearly didn’t want their son too close to them at the moment.

Handy took his place at the chalk marked position directly in front of the now closing doors. He felt exposed, standing there for all the world to look upon him, judging. He looked about, he didn’t see-

“Honoured friends.” Gerhart spoke, his voice still strong despite his ravaged body, it carried easily across the long hall. “The right of retrieval has been pressed, with the assent of this most august body and the will of the crown, we hereby acknowledge Prince Johan’s right to fight for title of heir to the Chiefship of Clan Blackwing and the throne of Gethrenia.”

“In opposition, Prince Geoffrey, fights to keep the claim he has won by right of contest of arms.” The king continued, Joachim stood by Handy’s side, not being allowed to cross the floor until the duel had been completed. Where the hell was Shortbeak? “We, Gerhart II, the Blackwing of Gethrenia, by the grace of the All-Maker and his majesty, High King Aleksander I, the Ironclaw of Old Height and the Griffon Kingdom, hereby call the duel for the right of Johan’s retrieval of his title and claim to effect. Prince Johan, have you reconsidered your claim?”

“I have not.” Joachim replied, his voice only holding the tiniest tremble that Handy only picked up on because he happened to be standing beside him. The king seemed to nod, but it was hard to tell behind his shawl. He turned to face Geoffrey.

“Prince Geoffrey, do you surrender what’s yours willingly?”

“I do not, your majesty.” Geoffrey replied, not looking at the king and instead glaring maliciously at Joachim. The king nodded again.

“And do you, Prince Johan, seek to press arms yourself, or does another stand for you?” The king asked, turning again to the challenger. Joachim raised a claw indicating the human.

“Sir Handy of Milesia, my servant, has elected to fight my claim in my stead as my champion.”

“This servant is unknown to us. What is your standing, Handy of Milesia? Be you of fit blood?” The king asked, Handy blinked in surprise, not expecting to be addressed directly.

“I am, majesty.” Handy said, bowing his head slightly.

“And be you proven in battle?” The king asked, Handy reasoned this must be just a public confirmation of the requirements to stand as champion. Well, he’s already lied to the king once, might as well go all the way.

“I am, majesty.” Handy repeated. His mouth dry. The king nodded once more.

“We accept Prince Johan’s selection of champion. Does the claimant object?” The king asked. All eyes turned to Geoffrey who was silent for a time, Handy could almost swear he saw steam rising from his ears. Geoffrey spoke at last.

“I do not, your majesty.” He said. Handy briefly wondered how much of his pride he had to swallow in order to say those five words.

“And do you, Prince Geoffrey, seek to press arms yourself, or does another stand for you?”

“Dame Shortbeak the Widowmaker, of your own royal knights, has elected to fight my claim in my stead as my champion.” Geoffrey responded, a slight smile gracing his avian features. And Handy found out where Shortbeak has been hiding. There was the clatter of metal and people looked up. In the walls high above them hung balconies, a griffon in heavy armour strode forth and leapt from one. The armoured bird dived gracefully to the ground but landed hard. She strutted in a semi-circle before coming to a rest at the marked position directly in front of the king, flapping her wings.

“Oh, bollocks…” Handy breathed. Welp, there went his hope she’d not be able to use her wings. Shortbeak was a wall of bladed metal. Her helmet encompassed her entire head and ran in segmented plates down the back of her neck, her front covered with mail. A long, metal chest piece ran from her stomach up to the nape of her neck, as far as that meant a damn when talking about griffon anatomy. It was just broad enough to allow easy mobility of her arms, which were covered in segmented plates to allow for ease of movement and the shoulder joints had light, rounded armoured plates, symbols of Gethrenia engraved upon them. The edges of her armour shone wickedly, as if sharpened. Her wings were bladed, the primaries shining with long, curved blades running down their length, as the joints where the wings met with her back were covered with more segmented plates. Her claws were armoured and each talon was ensconced in more bladed metal, extending their reach and lethality, Handy was suddenly very glade his torso was so heavily protected, otherwise he might run into the possibility of struggling to keep his guts in. The griffon’s flanks had the most solid looking plates and everything not covered in solid metal was covered in chainmail. Her back paws had shoes upon them which ran into a single point. Her tail was similarly protected as the rest of her, its end covered in what looked like a small spiked ball.

Oh, she had swords too, because there’s no kill like overkill apparently. ’Show off.’ Handy thought, but really, he had no business speaking dressed he was. The gathered audience was suitably impressed by the knight’s entrance. The king nodded once more.

“Dame Shortbeak is known to us, noble knight, do you stand for Prince Geoffrey in this contest of arms?” The king.

“I do.” Shortbeak replied, her voice slightly muffled behind her helm, her expression unreadable. So much for Handy being able to tell if he got her pissed off enough for him to take advantage, that was the least of his concerns however. The king nodded.

“There are no objections, the will of this gathered body has concluded the contest of arms is to take place, let it be known that this will be the last the issue of succession will be brought into dispute.” The king concluded, Handy blinked away the exhaustion, “I deem that this duel-“ The king raised his mace. Handy readied his hammer and shield, shaking his head, Shortbeak raised a claw. “Begins.”

Shortbeak was upon him almost before he knew it. He shifted his weight, moved his foot and dove bodily out of the way. Dodging the downward swipe of the griffon’s claw by an inch. Only to be caught by a wing and was knocked aside as the blade cut across his armour with surprising force. He staggered trying to balance himself as he was clawed again, catching his helmet and cutting the noseguard off. Shortbeak whipped around and bashed her tail mace into Handy ‘s left shoulder before he could raise his shield and she kicked out with her rear paws, the pointed shoes punching through the plates on Handy’s upper arm, cutting through mail and piercing his flesh.

Handy hissed with the sudden pain as he hit the ground, the entire ordeal taking place in seconds. Handy’s mind woke up in an instant, adrenaline and fear kicking in and he rolled instinctively as a pair of claws raked the stone floor where he had lay a fraction of a second before. He raised his shield instinctively and almost had it torn from him with the force of the blow he had successfully blocked. ’Jesus Christ!’ He managed to push himself from his kneeling position with enough force that Shortbeak backed off lest she get a face full of metal.

Only for Handy to be tripped as she whipped around and her tail lashed out, catching Handy in the back of the knee and knocking him from his feet. He hit the ground bodily again and the Griffon was upon him slashing down at his armour. She was destroying him and he knew it. ’God damn it!’ He lashed out by swinging his shield around, Shortbeak flinched to avoid the attack, before laying into the fallen human once more. But the opportunity allowed Handy to get his leg free and he pushed against the underside of the Griffon, managing to shove her off. He rolled again and this time, he was ready for the griffon’s tactic. He raised his shield while shuffling back, resisting blow after blow as he got enough distance to at least get up on one knee. The griffon lifted from the ground in one mighty beat of her wings. Handy struggled to get back to his feet while trying to follow the flying griffon. She flew high up till she was near the ceiling and then dove.

Handy had just got to his feet, turning his head searching for his adversary. When he finally turned and faced the direction she was diving from, his eyes widened in horror. The griffon caught the human fully with the blow from her wing and claws. Handy’s armour got raked by the bladed claws, shoulder armour and primary blades of her wing. For your reference, for those august members of the audience who have had the privilege of wearing armour and the subsequent misfortunate of getting his or her arse handed to them on a joust, of the full force of a sword hitting them in the plackart, you would know just how much that hurts, or how much force was involved. So please consider poor Handy’s situation. He has just got hit by the force of ten swords at the speed of a charging horse in an unholy alliance with Gravity.

Handy was utterly destroyed by the blow. He was flung to the floor and sent skidding across the cold stone, body flailing with the force of the strike. His cuirass in ruination with deep rents across it and rings of silvered mail flying in the air behind him. Handy hit the wooden border of the fighting area to the gasps of various griffons. Handy was stunned, his mind trying to process what had just happened. He raised his head, Shortbeak was standing several feet away from him, and he struggled to get up. His hand was still clasped about the haft of his hammer in a deathgrip, his shield was gone. He hit the hammer’s head to the ground and used it to get up. It looked like Shortbeak was going to let him. A pain hit him in the torso, he reached his hand down and pulled it away. Blood.

Looking down he saw cuirass had great rents in the metal and cuts in his stomach. They didn’t seem to be deep, or at least, he hoped they weren’t, it was hard to actually tell with his armour in the way such as it was. A part of him rang alarm bells, he should be bent over retching in pain right now but he wasn’t. He blocked it out, he was in serious trouble now. ’What the fuck am I doing? What the actual fuck am I doing here?’ Handy asked himself, the possibility of death becoming all to real to him. ’I’m going to die, I’m going to fucking die here!’ He managed to get back, unsteadily to his feet and gripped his warhammer in both hands. He felt light headed and didn’t trust the weakness in his knees. He wasn’t gushing blood, but that was small mercy. ’She’s fucking killing me here!’

He chastised himself. The griffon before him flared out her wings slowly as she raised her claw again. She was about to strike. Handy dropped the hammer’s head to the ground and leaned on the haft, catching his breath, thinking fast. Suddenly his concern over fighting women seemed rather silly. Oh sure, its something he’s likely never going to able to get rid of, not entirely, but here? Now? On the verge of getting shorn in half by those damnedable wings? It seems merely SURVIVING this woman was more concerning then worrying about harming her at all. He was only peripherally aware of the noise around him, the crowd calling out and shouting as the fight unfolded before them, he looked up at his opponent through the slit of his helmet. ’I’m not getting out of this.’ He realised. He stood up straight and hefted his hammer back into his hands, nodding to the knight before him, who was gracious enough to allow him to catch his breath. ’Hope you can forgive me ma…’

She moved and time seemed to slow down. Handy breathed, and with a regretful determination he lunged forward, hammer in both hands, levelled horizontally. He pushed and the hammer head collided with the helm of the griffon dead on. Shortbeak’s swipe lashed down as her head was knocked sideways and scraped down Handy’s right arm, catching the clasps and shearing off the plate of his upper right arm, exposing the chain underneath. The griffon wasted no time and flung around with her wing. Handy ducked, the smallest primary blade, nicking the top of the right wing blade of his helmet. Utilising the momentum he swung up with his hammer and came down, Shortbeak dodged back a step as the human missed and immediately charged forth, Handy lunged with his shoulder and collided bodily with the griffon, negating her swing, her other claw reached below her waist and pulled out the short sword. Handy’s eyes widened as he gripped the wrist of her sword arm with his free hand in the melee and twisted.

She dropped the blade but he got a closed gauntlet punching him in the gut as he let go and the griffon whipped around once more and caught him full in the back with the punching knives of her back paws. It did not penetrate but it pushed him forward, he staggered but swung around with his hammer immediately, uncaring to actually aim. The hammer came down on her right wing as she was lunging and crushed the armour of her wing-arm. Shortbeak yelped in pain and clawed with her gauntlets as she crashed bodily into Handy. He punched upwards with his free fist as they landed, catching the griffon beneath the helmet and in the throat. The griffon clasped at her neck, coughing.

Handy shoved her off of him again and clasped his hammer higher up in the haft and used the head as he punched repeatedly into her side. Shortbeak was forced to get away from him. She jumped back and then rose into the air again. Handy struggled to his feet again. This time, she was fully in his sight as he gripped his hammer in a two handed grip once more. He was not going to allow himself to fall for that divebomb trick of hers again, he honestly could not afford to. He was breathing heavily now as the two circled eachother, her in the air and him on the ground. His foot kicked his shield, but he didn’t move his head, knowing full well she’d strike if he looked away for an instant. It’s what he’d do afterall.

He blinked. He could use that against her. There was a pregnant pause, then Handy moved. He made to look down at the shield at his foot, he heard the clink of metal and knew the griffon was in a dive. He bent over, and grabbed the shield with a hand and with a shout he spun and flung the shield at the griffon with all his might. She was diving too fast to correct her course and was struck in the helm with the shield. Handy dove out of the way as the Griffon crashed into the wooden partition behind him, causing the assembled noble griffons to scream in surprise and fear, scrambling to get away. Handy staggered back to his feet and turned. Shortbeak was already untangling herself from the broken wood. Her helmet was dented, the blades of one wing crooked and bent, preventing her from using it properly. Handy smiled, ’Not so fun when you were on the receiving end, huh?’

Shortbeak reared and let out a shriek, her wings flared as she reached with her left hand, drawing the remaining short sword. She lunged at Handy and swung. Handy leant back and swung with his hammer. She dodged and countered with her free claw, Handy caught the blow on his left pauldron as he spun, dodging a stab of her sword and swung around with his hammer. Shortbeak leapt back and then ran forward. Handy misstepped, was caught with a head-butt to the stomach and was staggered. Shortbeak raised her sword and brought it down, Handy hurriedly raised his warhammer, catching the blade on its haft, he twisted and the sword withdrew before he could tear it from her grip, he swung back upwards and missed her helmet by a fraction as she twisted bodily and Handy got caught full in the side by the spiked mace of her tail. He was forced to one knee.

Shortbeak turned back around and swung her sword at his neck. It got caught in the flared neck guard of his left pauldron, tearing a rent in it but catching the sword, saving Handy’s neck. He turned quickly, pulling shortbeak forward as she gripped the blade. He grabbed her arm and pulled and kicked out with his leg as he fell backwards, upsetting her balance and bringing her to the ground, He rounded on her and punched her in the chest with the head of his hammer, his hand on the upper portion of its haft. Her sword was trapped under the human’s weight and she lay awkwardly on her right wing. She flailed with her rear paws and her free hand.

Tired of taking the blows he stepped off of her and backed up a few steps, she staggered back to her paws but Handy already fell upon her again, his hammer coming down on the small of her back, deforming the armour there and forcing her down on her haunches, she twisted and lunged with her sword, piercing his upper cuirass and pain exploded in Handy’s left shoulder. He really hoped she didn’t severe the nerve cluster there, either way his left arm fell limp, weakly responding to his commands. He had to end this now. He swung with his right hand and tore the sword from her hand and kicked at her at the same time, expecting her counter attack. It was an awkward move and Handy nearly fell from his feet, but it gave him the precious few seconds he needed to correct the momentum of his hammer and bring it back around, catching Shortbeak in the side of the head.

The griffon staggered, but Handy did not relent and swung back around, catching her in the shoulder and forcing her to the ground. She crawled for a moment before rising to her foreclaws again. Handy kicked out and caught her in what would have been her beak and she was knocked back down. She scrambled as he marched over to her and brought his hammer down, clanging audibly on the top of her helm. The griffon went down. Handy caught his breath as he saw her left wing flick a few times and reacting automatically, fearing she’d get up again, he shakingly raised his hammer one handed, the weight almost causing him to drop it in his exhaustion.

“STOP!” A voice rung out and Handy dropped his hammer in surprise. He turned his head about for the source of the voice. The gathered nobility had various expressions on their faces, as far as he could tell anyway, as expressive as they were, it was surprisingly hard to read griffon faces at times. He eventually turned and faced the king. He had his mace raised. The look on Geoffrey’s face was one of barely contained fury anyone could recognise. The king spoke again. “We believe we have seen enough. Dame Shortbeak, are you fit to stand?” He asked. Handy turned, the griffon’s wing twitched but she said nothing, still lying unmoving on the floor. “Do you yield?”

“No!” Geoffrey interjected, his claws gripping the wooden partition tightly. “No she does not! Get up you worthless scum!” He near shrieked. Shortbeak did not answer, the king didn’t even turn to acknowledge his son’s outburst. He bowed his head for a moment before raising it again, only apparent in the subtle motions of the shawl on his head.

“It appears as if this contest of arms has reached its end.” He said.

“No!” Geoffrey shrieked, glaring hatred at Handy. Handy was too exhausted to care as the pain started flooding his body as the adrenaline relented.

“Prince Johan’s champion is victorious, to the victor goes the spoils.” The king announced. Geoffrey let out an avian call and took to the air, rising to the balconies above and disappearing. The king didn’t look as a slow murmur broke out among the otherwise silent crowd. A murmur that slowly but surely built up to a roar as the crowd celebrated the outcome of the duel. Several servants rushed out to attend to Shortbeak as Handy fell to one knee. The pain in his torso now nearly overwhelming, the dull roar of sensation in his shoulder protesting any and all movement of his upper body, including breathing. He looked about, only noticing the thin trails of blood spilt about the floor. It was only in small quantities but it was still too much if the swirling light headedness had anything to say about it.

He gripped his hammer for balance, its head to the floor to take his weight to prevent him falling. The king spoke again but Handy didn’t hear it, his head bowed, he probably looked deferential but in reality he was just trying not to collapse, his other hand pushing against the ground to keep him steady. He was not sure how long he was like that, but when he had caught his breath, he realised he was being pulled up. An armoured griffon guard helped him back to his feet. The king was gone as the last of the servants cleared the dais and the hall. The courtiers and nobles milled about, chatting excitedly. “Sir?” The griffon asked.

“Wh-what?” Handy asked, not entirely clear.

“Sir, we have your armour.” Handy blinked and looked to where the guard was pointing. A young griffon was holding his armour pieces, the ones that were broken off upon the inner side of his shield. Handy blinked rapidly again. And looked around him. He spied shortbeak, back on her feat being attended to by several servants who were busy trying to get her out of her armour, she was not looking at him. He turned again trying to find Joachim but could not see him. “Sir?” The griffon asked.

“Huh?” Handy said, “Oh… Oh right… Just… Take them to…” It dawned on Handy that he didn’t have a room, he had yet to sleep since he arrived, staying awake thanks to the glorious neurotic, socially acceptable drug known as caffeine, helped by an unhealthy dose of raw adrenaline and primal fear. “Take them to the armoury.” He said, “I’ll need to get this… This all fixed. Where’s the prince?” He asked, the guard was about to answer, then turned his eyes upwards, thinking.

“Oh, prince Johan? He’s with his majesty.” He said, Handy had a sudden bout of fear.

“Prince Geoffrey… He can’t be allowed-”

“The king is well guarded.” The guard said. “Geoffrey does not command them anymore, Johan is regent now.” He said. Handy looked down at the Guard, oh hello, there’s the encroaching darkness at the edge of his vision, ahhhh there’s the stars, he’s been wondering where they were, they’re late, he was due to collapse several minutes ago.

“I need to… I need to get to…”

“You need to get nowhere, ape.” Handy turned to the voice. Shortbeak was speaking, still not looking at him. “Take him to a guest room, he’s not fit to stand.” She said. Handy’s anger boiled. Who did she think she was talking about? Handy was fine. Which he had only just thought as his knees nearly buckled and the guard had to stumble forward to keep him steady. Shortbeak tsked.

Handy was about to say something, looking up when he was interrupted again. “You put in a good show, ape. You lack finesse but you got talent, I will grant.” She said, Handy scowled at her, how dare she still be standing!? A servant managed to take the bent blades off of her right wing and she de-laminated the wings to flex the primaries as she folded them into her sides. “You might want to get that looked at by the by.” She said, turning to face him at last and pointed a bladed claw at his midsection. He looked down. Yep, still bleeding. Handy tightened his jaw. “Anyway, thanks.” She said.

Handy was confused. “Thanks?” He rasped.

“You’ll see, just… Thanks.” She said, walking off, her servants following after. Handy was utterly confused by her parting words, but he had little time to ponder their meaning before he nearly collapsed again. The guard, decided he’d follow the knight’s suggestion and half lugged the human out of the hall, he struggled as the mail and cuirass was pulled from him when he reached a pair of medical griffons who proceeded to dress his wounds. He really, really did not appreciate the invasion in his personal space but was far too weak to protest. He had fallen unceremoniously onto another too-small bed as the guard left him in peace. The rain pattering away against the glass of the window as dull light flooded in. It was pretty dark for noon, but that was perfect for Handy, he hated sleeping while the lights were on. He closed his eyes and drifted off into oblivion once more.

Author's Note

Short chapter for today, and probably my weakest, the more I look at it the more I realise there was stuff I should have put in it, ah well, I'll re purpose it for later. My apologies.

Chapter 11 - Taking Stock

Handy awoke in a cold sweat. He tossed and jumped off the bed, grabbing a small statuette of a tower off of a bedside drawer as he got to his feet. He looked all about him, eyes wide and darting. But there was no one there. He lit a candle and lifted it in its holder as he explored the room he was in. It was a typical guest room, decent furnishing and appointments, soft bed, but not too grandiose and a small en suite with flowing water, bath but no shower.

He stalked about his room, aching something terrible, hissing with the pain but he pushed through it. Nothing was out of the ordinary, there were a few pieces of his armour laying about the floor, he remembered dropping it off vaguely before collapsing on the bed, not all of it was there though, considering his mail, cuirass, upper arm piece, helmet and pauldron had been taken to the armoury. He looked outside through the fixed pane window, the rain seemed to have increased in intensity and the sky was mostly cloudy, the moon shining through here or there bathing the land in near total darkness. He couldn’t see the city from the tower he was in, but the few, distant towns he saw were little glorious pinpricks of light in the all-consuming shadow of night.

He did another tour of his room and tried the handle of the door, it was unlocked but the handle turned noisily, he would’ve known if it had been an intruder waking him up coming through this way. He did himself the courtesy of looking out in the hallway. There was not a soul to be seen, neither hide nor feather, the lights were out however. He was uneasy. He walked outside, closing the door behind him as he lit the torch on the sconce across from his room. He did one more check of the corridor before returning to the room.

Perhaps he was just jumpy. He had been up two days simultaneously and had gone from one exhausting battle, mentally and physically, to another. He shook his head, he put the candle down after lighting a few more. It was then that he realised his two packs had been delivered to the room, some servant had probably taken them up, meaning that someone had to have entered his room at some point. He chuckled and just shook his head, his paranoia was just a delayed reaction to something he had heard hours ago in his sleep!

Handy tsked, it was late, the moon was far into its journey across the sky, he had been asleep for the entire day, and considering the duel happened around, what, half nine? Nine forty five? That was quite a spell. Handy looked over himself. Hilariously, he was still wearing his greaves and lower chain, his stomach was bandaged quite thoroughly as well as his left shoulder and upper left arm. He tested his left arm and winced in pain. Yeah he wasn’t moving that for a while yet without some salve. He checked his bags.

Yep, some bottles he had ‘borrowed’ from Joachim’s personal stash from the train were present and accounted for. One of his packs was noticeably more empty then the other, he figured that was the one Ivorybeak ransacked in order to buy Handy some useless property. He rubbed his head, he was going to need to investigate that himself wasn’t he? It was his now afterall, might as well see what white elephant had been gifted him. Interestingly, he still had the clothes he had tailored for him. He took them out and looked them over. Indeed, the Pawstown sisters restrained themselves and made him several pairs of simple trousers and shirts. One pair of trousers was even made of denim!

Handy blinked… So THAT’s where his ripped jeans had went back then… He wasn’t sure how he felt about that. He pushed the thought aside. They weren’t all plain, some of them had obvious flourishes, some of which he didn’t mind, others, such as a particularly girly looking shirt, he simply did not care for, he’d burn that or something when he had the time. Socks, socks, pants, socks, socks, a scarf, socks, pants, more pants, a pair of boxers, socks, socks, a whole shitload of socks, what the fuck was it with ponies and socks? Socks, pants, more pants and…

Well hot damn. He pulled out a wrapped package hidden in the folds of clothes, opening it he had the piece de la resistance. It was a double buttoned black, long sleeve, tail coat with silver epaulettes and designs on the cuffs and lapels clearly inspired by the knotted designs on his hammer. Looks like Heat Source wasn’t the only one who took on an inspirational flourish, either that or they traded notes over coffee. He approved, it came with a white formal shirt with a red cravat, supposedly worn underneath the coat for when it wasn’t buttoned up fully, the matching pair of trousers had red and silver lengths down the sides of each leg and came with a complimentary pair of shoes.

Suddenly he felt bad about how he treated the two mares, there was clearly a lot of thought put into this. Ah well, it was in the past now, in the present? Handy realised he stank. He filled the bath as he checked himself in the mirror. Yep, a shave was needed, hair wasn’t too bad, but he might as well take care of it again. He found his knives and rummaged below the sink for anything remotely resembling foam as he got to work. He made quick work of it and realised he had yet to brush his teeth in some time. That won’t do. He found, bizarrely enough, a basic, primitive toothbrush. He wanted to question its existence, he really did, but figured his sanity would be better off if he didn’t. He got to work…

Well he did before he cut his thumb. “Ah shit! What the hell?” He dropped the brush in the sink basin with a start and observed the nick on his thumb and the precious red essence pouring from it. He did not feel the odd pang or the reaction he did when he noticed Hirsild’s cut, or the long mourned for uneaten raw steak, or the smell coming from Geoffrey’s room. Come to think of it, he didn’t get it in the duel either when it was his blood on the floor. But this was beside the point, which was worrying, granted, but not as worrying as what he saw next. He wiped the condensation from the mirror and lifted his upper lip up.

Handy decided he’d leave his teeth alone after that. For at least… A little while. No more smiling again. For anyone. Ever.

He turned and prepared for the bath, trying to put the discovery out of his head, tearing the pendant from his neck and flinging it out of the en suite and onto the bed, no free show for you, fae queen. Focusing his mind instead on how he did not consider who had used that toothbrush before him and ugh, wasn’t that just disgusting? Yes he should totally fixate on that and nothing else. The bath was awkward, the tub was just big enough for him, but it served its purpose. Better yet it eased his aches and pains, which was badly needed around his midsection. It was lying there, trying to think of anything else other than his little ‘problem’ that his thoughts went back to the duel. Particularly Shortbeak ‘thanking’ him. What was that about?

He considered the possibility that she threw the fight, she was gracious enough, afterall, to let him catch his breath after having utterly destroyed him with that divebomb. But why? Chivalry? Grandstanding, hoping to make the fight more interesting? Or did she hope to give him a chance so she could throw the fight while keeping her pride in tact? Now that he thought about it, there were plenty of times she could have ended him, lethally and non-lethally in that fight, but she didn’t. Then his thoughts went back to their confrontation in the kitchens.

Perhaps… Perhaps his little jibe about her being under Geoffrey’s pseudo-thumb had hit too close to home. Perhaps she wanted to lose so that she could be out from under his influence. But that had its own problems, if that was the case why didn’t she just throw in the towel in the duel with Johan before he even left the kingdom? He considered that, then considered what he heard about Geoffrey before he assumed the regency, he did turn the entire court against Johan, perhaps she had fought for Geoffrey before thinking he was the more worthy prince?

Handy did not like those thoughts. He felt… cheated. Like he was pitied, she let him win. It wasn’t his strength of arms but her restraint that told the battle. That hurt his pride, he had already been beating himself up over his ‘flukes’ in earlier battles, but this was just insulting. He sat there, fuming for some time, he was hungry, but he didn’t care, too busy being angry to eat, if it wasn’t for that bastard Geoffrey…

…

Wait…

…

“OH SHIT JOACHIM!” Handy blurted as he tumbled out of the bath, faceplanting, grunting in pain as he hurriedly dried himself and throwing on some simple clothes before grabbing his hammer. He had hurried out of his room and down the halls, several guards started at the sound of his wet feet slapping the cold stone floor, they relaxed after recognising the hurrying human. He made it to the hallway where Joachim’s room was located. He had four guards outside. Well good to see the bird’s paranoia was still active, it had better be seeing as it was contagious enough for Handy to catch it.

Handy was allowed passage by the guards as he barged into the prince’s room. Only to find it was blaringly bright, fucking hell how many candles does one griffon need? “Joac-er, I mean, my lord!” Handy corrected as he skid to a halt, glancing back at the guards by the door. Joachim was wide awake with rings beneath his eyes, which is something to see on a bird, he was wearing a pair of half rimmed, horned spectacles as he sat at a desk covered in piles of scrolls and stained in ink. He blinked at Handy in surprise a few times before dismissing the guards.

“I see you’re awake…” He said chuckling. “Have a good rest?” He asked, putting down his quill. Handy relaxed as he looked around, nope Joachim sure wasn’t dead. He walked over and checked his bathroom, then under his bed, his closet and checked the window panes to make sure they weren’t moveable. Joachim raised an eyebrow quizzically at him. “Something… wrong?”

“How long have I been asleep?”

“A day.”

“A day!?”

“Oh yeah, the knights had a good laugh out of that.” Joachim said off handedly taking a drink from a cup. Handy frowned. “You may have beat Shortbeak, but she took so much out of you, you had to take the entire day off to recover from the thrashing.”

“You and I both know my exhaustion was from more than just the fight.”

“Like that excuse is going to fly, anyway, what’s wrong? You barged into my room and now you are tearing the place apart.”

“Oh sorry, just doing, you know, MY JOB!” Handy said. “Or did you forget you just kicked your brother’s egomaniacal arse off the throne? With my blood, sweat and tears I might add.”

“You were crying?”

“No! It’s just an expression, you know what I mean smartarse.” Handy chided, Joachim smiled. “Fuck you, anyway, sorry, Geoffrey, that guy, think you might have met him, bit of a temper and a cruel streak.”

“I am vaguely aware.” Joachim said, completely deadpan, before letting out a yawn.

“And you’re not worried about him trying to get back at you.”

“Handy… Why do you think I have so many candles lit?” The bird asked, the human looked around.

“I was wondering that myself," Handy admitted.

"Same reason I have been looking over my shoulder recently and jumping at the shadows. I think… I think Geoffrey has some kind of sorcery on his side.” Joachim said. Handy gave a slight nod. Trying not to think about what he saw the night before the duel, he’d rather not have more trouble getting back to sleep.

“Like when he had you pinned against a wall? I saw his hand seemed to shimmer and glow.” Handy said, Joachim nodded this time.

“Mmm, I wouldn’t put it past him to have some shadow come alive and take revenge on me in my sleep, defaulting the claim back to him once more.”

“And the guards?”

“Well you were unavailable.”

“Why four?”

“I figured that was worth one Handy.” Joachim said, Handy just looked at him incredulously. “Something wrong?”

“I think you’re overestimating my abilities. Just a tad.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, how many guards were you taking on two nights ago?” Handy shuffled. “Also the train?”

“I uh… Was not my-“

“Get over yourself Handy, you defeated a royal knight in personal combat.” Joachim said as he fumbled for something in his desk. Handy thought about sharing his suspicions that the fight was not entirely a fair one. “Sides, such modesty is unbefitting of a knight.” He tossed a scroll at Handy, who caught it in his good hand.

“Whats this?”

“Proof of notice, you are now Sir Handy of Skymount, Baron Haywatch.” Joachim explained. Handy’s mouth gaped.

“Whut.” He said flatly.

“Eh, can’t have a member of the royal household own parts of the capital without a title.”

“So I have an honorary title now?”

“Yes… and no, it’s technically a real one since it comes with an actual demesne.”

“One that’s here, there and everywhere?”

“You get used to it.” Joachim shrugged. Handy nodded, another thing he needs to consider, well, honestly, he was already considering what he was going to do with his new properties, if he gets a fancy title to go with it, he’s hardly going to go against it. Then he picked up on something Joachim said.

“Wait, what did you say before, about befitting a knight?” Handy asked, Joachim blinked in surprise.

“Did you not hear Dad?” He said. Handy shook his head. “He basically knighted you on the spot, you were kneeling and everything.”

“…Sure I was.” Handy said, trying to process all of this. “So uh-”

“No, you still aren’t getting paid until the end of the month.”

“Tightarse.” Handy scowled. Joachim laughed mirthfully before taking off his spectacles, his face downcast.

“In all seriousness Handy… Thanks.” He said, Handy waved a hand dismissively.

“Its not like you wouldn’t have found another way.” He said.

“No, I mean it. Think about it Handy.” Joachim insisted. “What would happen if I hadn’t found you out there, that night outside the Everfree?”

“I’d probably be having another bad morning that day.” ’Or dead.’ He admitted internally.

“No. What would have happened is I would have ended up in that mine, enslaved, I’d probably find my way out eventually, sure, but how long would that take if I didn’t have you there to help me? How long would it have taken Ivorybeak to find me to bring me back home if you weren’t in the badlands?”

“Coincidence.”

“Maybe. But even so if you hadn’t been there, pointing Ivorybeak in the right way as soon as you did, I’d still be there, in Equestria, as a vagabond adventurer, hell, I’d probably be in jail because of those salesponies.” Joachim swallowed. “Dad’d die, and Geoffrey would be king… And All-Maker knows what he’d do then…” The two were silent for a while, before Handy broke the silence with a cough.

“Well… Yeah… I guess… Happy to help? I am not entirely sure how to respond if I am totally honest with you Joach.” Handy admitted. Joachim just smiled.

“Well, in any case, I have work to do.” The bird indicated his stupendous workload, Handy glanced around at the multitude of candles.

“I’ve been meaning to ask, you do realise-”

“Fire hazard, yes, I know, I swear you’re worse than Hirsild.” Joachim said, before catching himself and another uncomfortable moment of silence fell upon them, as Handy sat down on a short clothes chest at the foot of the bed.

“How is she doing anyway?”

“Badly, but she’s coping. Shortbeak is checking on her. Still won’t speak about what Geoffrey was actually doing to her.”

“Did h-”

“I don’t think so… I hope not, but her wing is in a bad way.” Joachim said, looking as if he was chewing on something sour. “They’re not sure if she’ll be able to fly again because of him.”

“Speaking of the bastard, where is he?”

“In his room, under house arrest.”

“House arrest?” Handy asked, almost growling, Joachim sighed.

“Dad would rather not see any more of his family die before he passes… Don’t think for a second I will hesitate once he does though.” Joachim said, his face like stone. Handy nodded in approval.

“I suppose my concern was for nothing then.” Handy said. “What are you working on?”

“Un-bucking the kingdom.” Joachim replied. “I am not sure how one griffon can do this much damage in just a few months, if I sound impressed, it’s because I am. Wow.” Joachim looked at the comically stacked piles of scrolls on his desk. “And I don’t like our debt levels…”

“Well that sounds alarmingly familiar.”

“Hmm?”

“Nothing, just thinking about home is all. Anyway, I won’t take up any more of your time then, I guess I’ll just go back to my room. You get some sleep.”

“But I have so much left to do…”

“You’ve got the rest of your life to play statesman, literally, the country will still be no less fucked if its regent is on the verge of collapsing in the middle of court.” Handy chided. Then his stomach growled at an alarming volume. Joachim laughed.

“Take it you’re hungry?”

“Famished, is there anything in the kitchens yet?”

“Unless you feel like vegetable broth, no. The kitchen’s stockpiles are gone, from what I gathered Geoffrey ordered them dumped secretly.”

“Why?”

“My guess? He wanted to weaken whoever it was that was going to fight for me by underfeeding them.”

“That’s… both drastic and pointless.”

“Yeah, well, he’s hardly been thinking clearly since he was told the duel would go forward. Or maybe he just felt petty, I don’t know. We’re getting it restocked tomorrow.”

“Good, I could eat a horse…” Handy said. He caught himself and looked at the horrified look on Joachim’s face. “I uh, I mean, its just an expression where I come from!” Joachim’s look hardened. “I’d never actually- I mean I could never- I wouldn’t worry-“ ’Keep digging Handy, I can see China from here.’ “Forget I said anything, it was just that… One time.” Joachim’s eyebrow rose.

“Oh? Are you sure about that?” He said. Handy tapped his foot.

“Remember that conversation we had, when the train stopped? About… About some concerns I had?”

“Yes?” Joachim said. Handy smiled ruefully, exposing his teeth. “I don’t see… Oh.” Joachim said “Were they… Were they always that-”

“No… Now you see my concern.”

“But that shouldn’t be possible.”

“Neither is suddenly salivating at smelling spilt blood at twenty paces.” He responded despondedly. “I’m… Concerned, Joachim.” He confessed. Joachim didn’t respond immediately.

“So…” He began at length, “Is this going to be a problem?”

“No. I don’t think so. I’m going to try to withhold it, test it, its why I was looking specifically for meat when I asked about the kitchens. See if just eating my meat bloody and raw can… Can stop it before it becomes a problem.” Handy said clenching and unclenching his fist. “Sides I have the coin, mayhap I should see if I can import some of those potions Equestria gives to its night ponies if I am desperate.” Handy said hopefully, studying the floor. Joachim looked at him for a moment before coming to a decision.

“I owe you, and I trust you… I’ll leave you to deal with it.” He said, Handy looked up.

“What?”

“Think about it, you have just admitted to me you are a blood thirsty creature who can literally smell other Griffons’ blood. If you weren’t my friend I’d call for the guards right this instant.” Joachim admitted. Handy was stunned at his friend’s change of attitude, the hard look he gave him was not the one of the friendly griffon he had met in that field on a Monday night. “As it stands, Griffons only THINK you might be some dread spectre, how do you think they’ll react if it appears you actually are one? What do you think my duty would be as Crown Prince and Regent?” He shot. Handy considered the immensity of what Joachim was saying and reeled.

“I… I uh…” He tried to say something, Joachim’s gaze was unflinching. Handy sighed in defeat. “I see your point…” He admitted. Joachim’s eyes narrowed.

“I’ll ask it again then, now that you appreciate the severity of the issue. Is this going to be a problem?” He asked. Handy shook his head.

“No. I’ll deal with it. Trust me.” Handy said resolutely, standing up. Joachim’s expression softened and he smiled once more.

“That’s good, now, Handy, I’m sorry but… I kind of have responsibilities now.” Joachim said, Handy just shook his head.

“Its alright, really, I get it.” He said sadly. “Honestly… I’d probably do the same.”

“You’d have your friend killed if he turned into a blood sucker?”

“No.” ‘Yes.’ Handy’s thoughts stormed, Joachim picked up on the human’s foul mood.

“You sure you’re ok?”

“Yes.” ’No.’ “I can’t say I am happy with my circumstances, but there’s little I can do about it right now. I’ll just go sulk until I man up and get over it.” He said. Joachim nodded approvingly.

“Mmm, well, at least now we can definitely say you have some bite to back up the bark of your reputation.” He jibed, Handy shot him a mean look. “Kidding. Good night Handy.”

Handy harrumphed as he exited the room, ignoring the guards as he passed. He got rid of one concern, Joachim’s safety, only to replace it with another. His thoughts were troubled as he made it back to his room. He’d need to go to sleep to clear his head, he’ll deal with it all in the morning. He had been so lost in thought, he didn’t notice the torch set on the wall across from his room had been put out. He put his hand on the door handle and turned.

An explosion of sensation erupted in his midsection, his body stock still in shock as his hand slowly rose to grasp at the protruding blade from his stomach. His eyes came back into focus, a pair of large, brown eyes glaring back at him from the darkness of his room, full of hatred. He suddenly felt very weak as the dull roar of sensation refined itself into stabbing pain. His eyes adjusted and he made out the cruel features of the scrawny griffon before him.

“Teach you for interfering you bloody ape.” Geoffrey’s voice said, it’s calm at odds with the rage on his face. Geoffrey stood there as the Human fell to one knee, trying to process what had just happened to him.

’He stabbed me.’ He thought, blinking rapidly. ’Geoffrey just stabbed me, he’s killed me.’ Geoffrey just smiled viciously as he saw the Human weakening, he let go of the knife after hearing several shouts of alarm, Handy heard bells being rung, the castle coming alive with noise. Geoffrey looked up and mouthed some curse. ’I’m going to die here.’ Handy realised, thinking of all the shit he had went through since he woke up that warm Monday morning when his life went tits up and bottomed out into madness. All his struggles, the pain, the terrors and suffering and anger and now the prospect of acquiring some curse from a talking horse.

And for what? To be stabbed while trying to get to his bed? Maybe it was the effect of the knife in his gut, maybe it was poisoned, maybe it was just happenstance. But whatever it was, Handy suddenly felt the rise of another sensation as all thoughts turned to anger and the red descended across his vision once more. ’No.’ He thought suddenly. ’I’m not going to die here.’

“I thought I’d have mor-AUGH!” Geoffrey screeched as the blade he had stuck in Handy’s gut suddenly came down on his shoulder, and twisted, blood spurted liberally before he reacted and swiped at the resurgent human with a claw, knocking him to the side. The griffon, in shock, pushed past the human into the hallway, clutching his bleeding shoulder. He turned to his right and left, hearing moving metal, the flutter of feathers and knew his doom was upon him, he had to leave now. He scowled back down at the groaning human, who was bowed over on both knees. Geoffrey sneered as he flew off down the long hallway.

Handy crawled, gripping his stomach, trying to stem the bleeding. His nostrils flared, his mind enraged but weakened. A scent reached him, a delicious one. The pain in his stomach intensified as it clenched with an instinctive pang and he suddenly remembered how hungry he was. His eyes locked on the dark splatters on the floor of his room and upon the doorframe and his mouth opened.

“Hurry!” He heard a voice as he ceased his drinking. “Send help, the assassin has assaulted the human!” He heard the clink of metal and the patter of paws and claws on stone. He shook his head, his body shaking as the effects of his actions rocked his form, he growled out a response as he noted two griffons stopping beside him.

“Go you fools! I’ll live!” He had shouted. Slowly getting back to his feet, the guards had rushed off. He already knew they were going in the wrong direction, without even opening his eyes. He could smell it, even this far away, he could pinpoint it now. He had heard a wail and shout of despair from somewhere down the echoing hallways, sounded like Joachim, he wasn’t anywhere near Geoffrey, which meant there was only one reason he should be screeching like that. Which could only mean one thing. He got to his feet and ran into the room to grab his cloak.

--=--

He had promised, he fulfilled his side of the bargain, sure it was a rushed end but it was the result that mattered right? He had been enjoying it towards the end, the old fool made a worthy sacrifice, anything for the end goal. Immortality… Endless years with which to spend! All of it ruined when his brother turned up with that ridiculous creature!

Ohhhhh no, he had worked too hard to get to where he was, he had sacrificed so much to get what he wanted. Sure what he sacrificed wasn’t necessarily his to give, but he took it anyway, it’s what the voices in the mirror required, what they wanted in return for their promises. He had seen their power, he had seen the help it gave him when dealing with upstarts and dissenters, he believed it capable of fulfilling its end of the deal. But Johan put all that in jeopardy, he nearly despaired after Shortbeak lost. Shortbeak, yes, her, the fool, the scum, he would pay special attention to her when he was immortal, nononono, he wouldn’t kill her, that wouldn’t be enough fun, how dare she fail!? He’d take her wings apart, feather by feather, then slowly skin them to the meat and cook it while she bled there upon the rack! Yes! And then…

And then he’d get creative…

He rushed out onto the battlements of the upper castle. He saw shadows against the skyline, the guard was already looking for him, expecting him to be flying away. No, he had considered this, there was a secret way down the mountain, he just needed to get to the secret stairway, accessible from the top of the castle. He had used it before for his… Less than reputable activities, it’ll be his salvation tonight. The rain occluding the guards’ vision. Fools had abandoned the roof to search from the sky on a night when that was all but futile! He was a bit concerned he’d leave a blood trail to follow, but he could worry about that later, right now, freedom beckoned.

The griffon had grinned manically to himself as he rushed across the battlements, careful to stick close to the wall. He smiled all the way into the human’s waiting fist. Geoffrey started from the blow as the looming form of the human emerged from behind a turn in the battlements, what was he doing on his feet!? Geoffrey scrambled but the human fell upon him, pushing his head against the cold stone, rain made the ground slick and he couldn't get a grip, Geoffrey muttered curses and his left claw began to glow.

Right before the Human’s iron boot crushed it. Geoffrey let out a yelp of pain as the boot crushed down on his claw, he felt it breaking and he shed a few tears from the pain of it all. The human laid into the griffon with its fist, one arm noticeably slacker then the other as it gripped the griffon. The griffon struggled and summoned his sorcery with a few quick words and pushed against the human, confident it would be enough to overpower the creature. He swung out with its wings, only to feel a stabbing sensation in retaliation, the human jammed one of its knives in the joint where the wing met the griffon’s torso and Geoffrey shrieked in shock, having never suffered such trauma before in his life.

Geoffrey murmured under his breath. The human hefted the griffon up and slammed him against the battlements and pushed with his hand under Geoffrey’s chin, forcing the griffon to lean back and look out over the long fall down the mountainside below. Geoffrey had never been so afraid in his life, one hand now useless flailed helplessly as his other tried tearing the human’s arms away, one wing useless, the other in such an awkward position while he was jammed in the turret of the wall, he kicked out weakly with his rear paws, doing nothing to the human.

“You’re dead, boy.” He heard the human say, in a conversational voice. He leaned to try to look at the human, he was nothing but a black shape against the dark, rainy sky. His cloak fluttering in the high winds. ”Why?” He asked. “You were a prince, you were never going to have a hard life, why did you do it? Why did you do all this? Was it worth it? Was it worth what’s happening to you now?”

“S-stop talking in the past sense! I am a royal prince of Gethrenia!”

“Aye, you were once, I don’t know what you are now, but scum between my hands.” The human responded. “Why?” He demanded.

“What would you know, scum!? How dare you judge me!?”

“Why?” The human pressed. His grip on the Griffon’s throat tightening.

“Ack-Alright, he…It… Promised me immortality if I… If I gave it sacrifices in exchange!”

“What did?” Thunder rumbled overhead, the storm looked like it was deciding to take a turn for the worse.

“The voices… In the mirror… The shadow… It promised me immortality if I gave it-ugh-the suffering of a king!” He said. The human’s grip tightened harder.

“What did you do?” The griffon struggled, its breath coming in haggard gasps.

“AAauuugh I was killing him!” He admitted at last. “I was the one who was making him sick, making him waste away! I had learned some magic, I already knew alchemy, I concocted some potions which I fed him over time through his food, and then in the medicine the physicians gave him!” The grip seemed to loosen and Geoffrey took in a few grateful breaths.

”You killed your own father?” The human asked, his tone seemed curious. Then, slowly, like a vice tightening, Geoffrey found himself unable to breath once more. ”The king is dead?” He asked in that same, calm, casual voice, Geoffrey could no longer breath and was struggling harder against the human. “The king is dead.” The human said at length, Geoffrey’s eyes rolled back in his head, unable to think clearly.

The human suddenly pulled the griffon into an embrace and Geoffrey convulsed as he felt a tearing pain in his neck, he tried to scream in horror and confusion as he felt his blood leave him in the quick gulps of the human who fed greedily, but found he could not, his mind now elsewhere as the teeth punctured the skin beneath his feathers. The human neither knew nor cared what the griffon was experiencing in his last moments, hoping only he was suffering in the end. The griffon’s struggles eventually lessened at long last and his limbs went limp. Handy let him fall, staring hatefully down at the dead bird. He had fed for quite a bit, at least on the stallion on the train he had shown restraint. Geoffrey received no such mercy.

He considered what he had done and wondered if he regretted it. He then felt a familiar pain in his midsection and decided he did not, still, it would not do to be sloppy. Geoffrey was dead the second the king died, Handy merely carried out the execution, but the method was… Inconvenient for him. Even if it did slake the thirst and ease the pain he had caused. Physically at least. He pulled the knife out of the Griffon’s shoulder and went to work. He cut a long, gaping wound in the griffon’s neck and let the knife stay on the bird as he hefted him over the battlements, to fall to the ground so far below.

“Long live the king.”

--=--

The funeral was a long, sombre affair. The venerable griffon he saw in the king’s chambers turned out to be High-Feather Geralt Stormglare, the lord spiritual of the king’s court. He oversaw the funeral procession and the final blessings of the dead king. It was a sight to see, the royal knights led King’s carriage to and from the ceremony, which was open air outside the great temple, banners fluttered from every available protrusion in the city, uniformly either black or the colours of the kingdom.

The people had turned out in droves from the nearby counties for the spectacle to pay their respects to the dead king. Officially, he had passed away in his sleep, an unfortunate but long expected outcome.

No one mentioned anything about the slit throat.

Handy did not partake in the procession, it was deemed inappropriate for a variety of reasons, not least of which because he stood out so much from the other knights. Handy actually agreed with the decision and instead decided to simply shadow Joachim around. The prince’s face was unreadable, he didn’t even shift under the purple and ermine cloak he wore, but Handy could guess what he was feeling as the king was eventually laid to rest in the royal tomb at the base of the northern mountain of the city. He had gone through this himself not so long ago afterall.

It took some time to convince the prince to leave the tomb after the king was laid to rest. Eventually, Joachim relented and left the tomb after several of the knights began encouraging him to return to the castle, there was a lot to do to prepare for the transfer of power. The next two weeks were a blur if Handy was honest. He had never breathed a word about what happened that night above the castle, nor would he. Geoffrey’s body was recovered of course, Handy had a decent cover, having been seen to have been stabbed, Handy had explained to Joachim he had partaken in the search after he had used some salve to help heal himself. He didn’t mention the little bit about Geoffrey’s blood aiding in that affair, that was something he was surprised to discover and didn’t plan on sharing.

They never did find who had killed Geoffrey, officially he had committed suicide, unofficially everyone from the scullery maid to Joachim himself were potential suspects, Geoffrey had no shortage of griffons with grudges against him. For such an aggressive species, the series of deaths that night rocked the capital, including that of two noble guardsmen who had been guarding the prince’s room, Handy was surprised the deaths had shaken them all so much, but he chalked that up to the circumstances surrounding the entire debacle.

The weeks leading up to the coronation were surprising. It’s as if someone had flipped a switch and Handy had learned an awful truth he had not been anticipating. Do you know what Ponies and Griffons have in common? Go on, take a guess. If you guessed the fact that they are both walking, talking mythical creatures you’d have guessed right. However, what you missed was the fact that there was practically no damn difference. As soon as Geoffrey’s reign had ended and the sadness that was the mourning period of the king’s death had passed, the entire city of Skymount erupted into life, as if a great pall had been lifted.

And Handy was treated to bouts of the spontaneous insanity he had experienced in Equestria, including, but not limited to: Uninhibited joviality, bright colours, miscellaneous shenanigans and, of course, impromptu song and dance numbers. That last occurrence hit Handy like a sledgehammer with sheer incredulity. He remembered the last time he experienced such a unique event and how Joachim had remarked that it was entirely normal, for some reason he had imagined he would never need to worry about such nonsense here in the Griffon kingdom. But then again, his first impression of Griffons in large numbers was fighting ghosts and ponies on a speeding train and a city in mourning, so Handy quickly realised he, most likely, didn’t know his arse from his elbow about daily life in Gethrenia.

It wasn’t the only thing he learned that month. Firstly, his little midnight ‘snack’ on the night of the regicide sated his hunger quite effectively, for the next two weeks he didn’t find himself passing any remarks of blood he smelt or felt any compulsion to seek it out. Much to his joy. However, he also didn't feel the need to eat anything during that time and had to force himself to eat to keep up appearances. Soon enough he felt the pangs again and began taking notice of every available opportunity to slake his desire, never acting upon it of course, but it was beginning to seriously worry him. He had taken to eating his meat bloody and raw, it was enough to stave off him doing anything foolish, but it never quite got rid of the particular hunger that now appeared to be his constant companion. He needed larger quantities it seemed to at least have a week’s peace.

However, he hardly felt like going about feeding on random people, especially not with Joachim’s not so subtle warning about it, so he put up with the additional baggage. However, new bodily needs aside, he found it very hard at times not to kill complete strangers with his warhammer by caving in their skulls. Said strangers being the managers and overseers of his new businesses. First off, lets start with Handy’s Mill… What mill? It was a derelict building and a blighted eyesore in the poor part of town, one tavern appeared to at least be tolerable, which meant that it wasn’t on fire when he visited, unlike his other one. It still had customers despite the fire damage and the fact it was on verge of collapsing, the jovial barkeep was a likeable sort and looked suspiciously similar to the one who operated his other tavern.

Now, the inns came in three flavours. Small and ignominious, Medium and smelling like dead rats, Large and notorious. Those had caused Handy a few headaches, all of them were bleeding money, he summarily fired their managers while keeping most of the staff after a few interviews. It was easy to tell who cared enough about their job to keep it when their new boss, who was their lord and a royal knight, was breathing down their neck. And was also rumoured to be a vampire. He was going to need to invest more money to make any of these properties in any way profitable. The blacksmith was a failing business, which he found odd, as the quality of his products were excellent. He found out soon enough, the blacksmith only had the best materials in his work and used them well, but rarely found any buyers.

He had sat the bird down and discussed his business practices, eventually convincing him he’d need to focus on making more mundane metal craft, nails, tankards, wheel spokes, that sort of thing, in order to make any real money. The bird, understandably, protested initially, seeing his craft as an artform, Handy could appreciate that, but eventually got the bird to see sense. It also helped that Handy promised to commission him on occasion, having not been entirely pleased with the work of the blacksmiths in the castle. Sure they had fixed his armour enough, but it was an ugly patch job which ruined his armour’s aesthetic, and the steel used to repair his mail for some bizarre reason was brass in colour, he’d give this guy a shot once he got tired of putting up with his current armour.

The bakery did a fair trade and Handy was happy to leave well enough alone, the griffon family doing a fine job by his reckoning. The brewery was actually in a sad state, it wasn’t derelict but it had been struggling, its previous owner having gone deep into debt after having successive seasons of difficulty dealing with local farmers. Handy had at least a partial solution and planned on dedicating his farmland to growing hops and barley, as much as wheat would be good, Griffons ate bread and vegetables as an exception not a rule. He sorted out some concerns with the managers on site regarding structural integrity and other shit Handy really couldn't care less about. The carpenter’s workshop ended up being a large empty plot of land in the poor district. Handy elected to give Ivorybeak a right royal slap when he got back into the upper city.

And that, dear friends, is when Handy arrives at the last stop on his tour, the Alchemist’s Guild.

Holy shit what a mess. First off the door handle came off when he tried opening the front door, there were burn marks in the most awkward of places, noticeably the roof, haphazard and hilariously fragile lab equipment strewn everywhere, frantic looking scholarly griffons bickering over everything from the colour of the sky to advanced theories of alchemical whozamowhatsit. When he had enquired about the guild before arriving he was assured it was one of the finest seats of alchemical academia in the entirety of the Griffon Kingdom. If that was true Handy truly pitied the other cities playing host to these madbirds.

“Oh! Lord Handy!” A voice piped up. Handy looked around, not seeing the owner of the voice. “We were told you’d be dropping by sooner or later!” He looked up. There was a middle aged looking griffon head poking out of the ceiling. Its feathers were bright pink. Handy blinked.

“Yes… Yes thou were informed correctly. Mister…?”

“Featherbrain!” He replied, smiling brightly. Handy smelled something burning. He blinked again.

“…Of course it is. Why art thee in the roof?”

“Why WOULDN’T I be in the roof?” Featherbrain responded. Handy honestly had no answer to that. A griffon riding a unicycle, claws and wings outstretched with smoking vials tied to the ends of her primaries with strings and a volatile looking beaker balanced on her grey beak passed by.

“He failed his latest experiment.” She said, her expression almost bored looking.

“Did not!” Featherbrain responded indignantly, harrumphing. “Tis merely a setback.” Handy Blinked.

“…So… Is… Everything well here?” Handy asked, honestly scared to hear the answer.

“Oh yes, its actually been quite boring today if I am honest.” Featherbrain replied. You know, that really wasn’t what Handy wanted to hear.

“And… How doest this guild maintain its income?”

“Oh we make potions for the hospital and the average citizens and studying the arcane mysteries of the natural world!”

“And this is… Profitable?” Handy asked.

“Oh yes, quite!” Featherbrain smiled, then frowned. “Say, anyone else smell burning?” Handy waved his hand, honestly pleased that whatever madhouse this was, it was at least not a money pit.

“Good good.” Handy said relieved. He shifted under his cloak, having taking to wearing his formal suit under his cloak rather than his armour recently. It was good to be out of it once in a while, at least until he can un-fuck what the castle blacksmith did to the cuirass. “So what are the profits?” He asked. “I am entirely pleased to leave thee and thy fellows to thy studies, even assist so long as it does not prove to be a burden.” He added. Featherbrain nodded vigorously.

“Oh yes! Why, sales have picked up exponentially!” He said excitedly, well now, that was good to hear, maybe Handy can end the day on a happy note after all! “Why, ever since we started the policy of selling two for the price of one, we’ve seen sales skyrocket!” Ok, not bad, good tactic to draw in the punters. “Then we figured, lets sell even more potions for the price of one!” What. “So then we did!” Oh no. “Now we currently sell them a dozen for the price of one! Business has never been better!” Oh God no. Handy stammered.

“I… You… What?”

“Oh yes!” Featherbrain said, his head bopping about to a rhythm only he could hear.

“So… You’re telling me… You have been selling expensive potions... That take hours to brew up and prepare… At a twelfth of the price per bottle?” Handy said, anger slowly rising up within him.

“Yes! We’ve never had more customers buy stock from us! Business is booming.” The griffon responded. Handy had to lean against the wall for support.

“And… How long has this been the guild’s policy?” He asks, honestly terrified of the answer, now having a more full idea of what he was dealing with. Featherbrain screwed up his face, thinking.

“Oh, about the better part of two years now, strange, we seem to have been losing so much money we had to set the guildhall up for sale, you’d think it’d be the opposite with all the business we’re doing!”

Handy shook violently, an internal scream echoing through the cavernous halls of his soul.

--=--

Prince Johan was sitting in his study, going over the final matters of state, so that he could fix the damage Geoffrey had wrecked. The hardest parts were sorting out the grievances of the nobility, Duchess Stormcrown particularly, something to do about a dalliance with her daughter. However by Joachim’s reckoning it had occurred before Geoffrey had usurped his claim and little miss Stormcrown had a… Reputation. That took all of his tact to sort out. However, it was nearly over, with one final stroke of his quill, every ludicrous legislation, every wrong righted, every T crossed and I dotted, he had officially fixed his broken kingdom. His herculean task completed, he allowed himself an exasperated sigh as he slumped in his high back chair, enjoying the sound of the ticking clock.

That’s when Ivorybeak dumped more papers on his desk. “This month’s budget, Highness.” He said simply, with a happy smile. Johan cried inside. Resigning himself to his fate he took over the next scroll and looked at it, regretting it immediately. “Complete with the council’s suggestions as well as requests fro-”

“HHHHHEEEEEEEIIIINRRRRRIIIIIICHHHHH!” A voice thundered from some dark corner of the castle. Ivorybeak turned to the door.

“Oh dear, does someone require my assistance?” He said. Joachim smiled. Heavy footsteps could be heard storming to the study door. Two guards by the door stepped forward, preparing to open for the latest guest. Who proceeded to beat them to the punch, flinging the doors open violently, plastering the guards against the back walls comically.

“YOU AND ME NEED TO HAVE WORDS!” Handy shouted, hammer in hand. “TWO IN PARTICULAR: SMASHY SMASHY!” Joachim sighed and buried himself in his work, ignoring the two making a mess of his study. “COME HERE!”

“I SAY!”

“FACE YOUR FATE LIKE A BIRD OF PREY!”

“T-THIS IS MOST IMPROPER, H-HIGHNESS!”

“DON’T YOU PUSSY OUT OF THIS!”

“HE’S GOING TO KILL ME!”

“I’M GOING TO KILL HIM!”

“Handy, you can’t kill Ivorybeak.” Joachim said, almost bored.

“YES I CAN! I CAN KILL LOTS OF THINGS! WATCH!”

“AAAAAHHHHH!”

“ARRRRRRRGH!”

“WHAT DID I DO?!”

“SPEND MY MONEY WILL YOU?! BUY ME USELESS SHIT WILL YOU?!”

“BUT THOSE PRICES WERE A STEAL! IN THIS ECONOMY YOU USUALLY CAN’T AFFORD THINGS LIKE THAT SO CHEAPLY!”

“DID YOU EVER INVESTIGATE WHY!?”

“N-NO!”

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHH!”

“Handy.” Joachim said, licking the tip of his quill as he dipped it back in ink to continue his work. “Heinrich is our Chancellor and not our Steward for a reason.”

“H-HIGHNESS?” Ivorybeak sounded almost hurt.

“No offense, Ivory, you’re still an excellent minister and diplomat.” Joachim said. Ivory preened, before yelping as Handy shouted triumphantly. Joachim didn’t see, but he assumed the human got Ivory’s tail. He sighed and opened another scroll. Well, this was interesting. “Hey Handy, how’s your attitude towards ponies these days?”

“AAAAAARRRRRRRGGGGGHHHH!”

“Right right, glad to see you are listening.” Joachim said, chuckling. “So, looks like in a month we’ll be going to Canterlot, High King Aleksander has requested my presence there as King of Gethrenia, which I will be by then.” His voice barely audible over the sound of raw destruction going on before him.

“LET GO!”

“NEVER!”

“P-PLEASE?”

“Also asked I bring you specifically, funny I thought we sorted out the incident with the Equestrian express.” Joachim said, tapping his beak thoughtfully. A candlebra flying over his head and crashing on the balcony outside through the open doorway. He sighed. “Well father did before he passed, that’s the only reason I can think he’s dragging me along, Gethrenia IS the first stop from the border afterall.” He rolled up the scroll and looked up.

His study was a God-damn battlefield. Bookcases turned over, floor ripped up, tapestries torn, the door was on fire, guards cowering in fear behind a bust of one of his ancestors, trying to push the other one out so they could hog all the space. Ivorybeak was in the ceiling, on the chandelier, Handy was ankle deep in torn papers and detritus, glaring wrath upon his poor chancellor.

“COME DOWN!” Handy shouted.

“NO!” Ivorybeak responded.

“Get all that?” Joachim said, completely deadpan.

“HEINRICH, I AM LOSING RESPECT FOR YOU BY THE SECOND, GET DOWN HERE AND TAKE YOUR BEATINGS!”

“YOU NEVER RESPECTED ME! NOT REALLY!”

“BESIDE THE POINT!”

“Good to hear.” Joachim said, descending from his chair and walking off casually through the chaos. “I’ll be in my solar, you kids play nice.” Joachim said, smiling at a private joke as the two of them traded insults back and forth behind him.

Chapter 13 - An interview at Twilight

“May I sit, Highness?” He had asked, Twilight looked at him, confused for a moment, she had already taken a seat while Handy merely stood behind the chair across the table from her.

“Of course!” She said giggling. “You don’t need to ask me for permission for that.”

“Ah, but I do, for I am a guest here.” He retorted, adapting a rather peculiar alteration to his usual airs. He’d need to, in order to give the impression he wanted to. He pulled back the seat and sat carefully down. “I hope thou wilst not mind, Highness.” He continued pulling out a small wooden container with red markings on it. “I have been prescribed medication which I need to take periodically, whouldst thou mind much…”

“Go ahead, also you don’t have to be so formal around me.” She said, levitating several books and scrolls from a pack in the corner. The four solar guards in the room shifted uncomfortably.

’Oh, you assholes only THINK you’re uncomfortable now…’ Handy had thought, smiling. “I am afraid it is a most unfortunate force of habit, milady Twilight. Mother would be most disapproving if I treated you with anything less then the uptmost respect.”

“So you DO have a mother!” She said scribbling furiously on a levitated piece of scroll. “I guess we can put the theory you are the spawn of the shadow of a murdered phoenix’s ashes to bed.” Handy nearly stalled.

'Hot damn. Pony grapevine, don't ever change.' He undid the cap of his little relief capsule. He didn’t need it just yet, but what the hell? Handy was feeling theatrical. ”Do we not all have our origins?” Handy mused

“Hm? Oh yes yes, terribly sorry this is just so exciting, I forget myself,”

“It is quite alright, I know I have been a most… Unusual sight for most ponies.”

“You are, but its wrong for ponies to just assume without knowing anything about a pony, why I have a friend named Zecora who could tell you all about her experience with prejudice.”

“It is a rather unsightly instinct in most people.”

“Correct, now are you alright to begin?”

“Yes of course…” Handy turned his head to the open window. “Would milady mind terribly if thou had the guards close the curtains over, just a tad?”

“Does the light bother you?”

“No, but it has a most interesting effect.”

“Oh, can I see?”

“…If milady insists, I must warn thee to shield thine eyes however.” Handy reached out with his gauntlet until it hit a beam of light from the setting sun. It shone gloriously, filling the room with light. The solar guards had flinched and he saw Twilight shield her eyes with a wing. He withdrew his hand. “It is why I wear this great cloak. It is more out of courtesy, not custom, so that I do not blind my fellows in the course of my duties.” He added, the guards glared death at him, but Twilight lit up, like a kid opening a Christmas present only to notice there was another present within the toy she had always wanted. One of the guard ponies wordlessly pulled the curtain over, clearly he wanted to close it completely but had to consider his princess so he left it so that only Handy’s side of the table was covered in complete darkness.

“What magic is that?”

“A dedicated Mare’s touch.” He replied. “I know not how she made it so, but I respect the secrets of her trade.”

“A mare? A pony made your armour?”

“Indeed.”

“Who?”

“That’d be telling.” Handy said. “I respect her privacy.” He respected Heat Source immensely. She’d probably greatly appreciate him advertising her skill here before royalty, but he had to consider the fact he enjoyed the unusual qualities of his armour too much too share. Plus, if he was honest, he didn’t want the news of how it was made spread around, you know, just in case Heat Source gets killed because he has to go fight Thor or something. Twilight seemed disappointed. Handy took down his hood, moving slowly, the guards looked jumpy, and took off his helmet, placing it on the table, just off to the side.

“Ahah! So your eyes don’t glow like burning coals.”

’Never change, grapevine, never change.’ He smiled gently, keeping his little friends hidden behind his lips. “My eyes are the same grey-blue they’ve always been milady, I assure thee of that.” Twilight was scribbling away furiously at her notes, occasionally looking back up at Handy’s face before returning to her scribbling. Handy tried not to frown, but his smile decreased anyway. ’You know, I wasn’t serious about taking my picture so it would last longer, what are you doing? Taking a sketch?’

“Ok, now, first of all: Where do you come from?”

“Milesia, a High Kingdom bordering a great western sea.” He replied.

“I’ve never heard of it, where is it?”

“Far to the west… Mayhaps to the far east depending on where thee choose to start traveling from. I only know that it is so far that Equestria and its wonders are unheard of, and its inhabitants merely myth.” More furious scribbling.

“Huh, from what you’re telling me, it seems there may be entire countries we have never heard of.”

“Continents. Our farthest neighbours that we knew of, Mythic Cathy and the fractious Isles of Nippon, were entirely dominated by humans. I am a very long way from home, milady.”

“That… doesn’t seem possible, I thought the world had been circumnavigated…”

”So did we.” Handy said, his tone sad, eliciting Twilight’s interest. “We knew there were great unexplored continents across the sea of Atlantis and the Ring of Peace, but we thought there were but two, mayhap I have arrived there, or mayhap I have travelled further to lands yet unknown, for surely as I have been here, no one has heard of my kind.” He looked back up at Twilight’s curious eyes. “Pray, milady, if thou wouldst ever hear word of other humans, I would be most grateful for anything thou couldst inform me of them. It would bring me mighty joy speaking to someone who is kin.” He said, looking into her eyes. She was taken aback, surprised at the sudden plea.

“I uh… Of course.” She said. Handy smiled warmly.

‘Excellent.’ “My sincerest thanks. Please go ahead, I shall withhold nothing.” ’Except everything.’

“Well, there is so much to ask, I don’t know where to begin, ok first off…” Twilight rambled off a number of questions, generally pertaining to the human animal, the differences between males and females, why we are structured the way we are, how we can be predators despite not seeming to have strong jaws for crushing bones and other such things. Handy was as tactful as he could possibly be, particularly when dealing with the issue of meat consumption, he saw Twilight seem to visibly sicken when she asked the question.

“Well, we are by far not the strongest creatures, nor are we the most physically adapt at the usual… Rigours a predator pertakes in during predation. Our advantage is in the actual structure of our forms and how we use it, but that is merely machinery compared to our real strength.”

“Which… Is?”

“The human mind.” Handy answered, Twilight blinked before smiling nervously, as if trying not to laugh at a joke he was not party to.

“Uhh… If you’re referring to sapience, there’s lots of creatures who have that.”

“Oh, so I have come to discover, but I was not referring merely to sapience. Allow me to explain in the simplest terms I can.” Handy said, tapping his chin. “Ancient humans, primitive, barely begun to use tools, so many ages ago as to be uncounted.” He fudged the dates a bit for dramatic effect. “We learned how they hunted, our ancestors, from the study of ancient records and bones to the practices of still primitive and isolated humans, we had a most unusual method of predation, one that ensured our survival despite its oddity.”

“And… What method was that?”

“Walking.”

“…Walking?”

“Walking. Tell me, milady Twilight, how far can an average pony run at a gallop before she is exhausted and needs to take a rest? Perhaps stop to eat?”

“Uh, well, given a few exceptions, we can gallop for a good few miles before we need to stop, I think the average is five to six.” She responded. Handy nodded.

“A human can walk all day and night should he choose without needing to stop.”

“I don’t see how…”

“A human can walk perhaps a hundred miles a day if he goes at a leisurely pace, so long as he had good cause. Without stopping. Double that if he were in good shape, running and carried food with him, which our ancient ancestors often did as part of wise practice. We tired out our prey by chasing them, then following their trail, coming upon them while they were resting and forcing them to flee again, always fleeing us, never escaping. Our prey would eventually injure itself, or simply give out from exhaustion and then fall to us. It got so much easier when we discovered the usefulness of tools you understand.” He said. The room was silent and he could feel the tension and unease of the guards. “Perhaps, now, thou have an inkling of why I said our greatest strength was the human mind. When we seek to do something, it is done, come hell or high water, determination is the bedrock of our entire being. But let us turn away from unsightly discussions, mayhaps thee have other questions?”

“I uh… Yes. Right. Ahem, I had noticed something odd. About the way you speak?” She asked. Handy’s brow furrowed.

“I apologise for my mannerisms, I am aware it is considered old fashioned in these lands, much to my disappointment.”

“Its not that. Its just, why do you say one?”

“One?”

“Someone, instead of somepony, or anyone instead of anypony, I know the griffons say everygriffon as well, you’re a human, why do you say one? It seems so impersonal.” She asked. Well shit, ok that stumped him for a minute. Honestly, he thought it was odd how all these fantasy creatures referred to eachother as their species name instead of 'one', but never thought about why he found that odd. He looked down, studying the open container in his hand, swirling it slightly before taking a sip. Disappointing, alas, he had a lady to answer. He thought for another minute before finally turning back to her.

“Because you are an other.” He said at last.

“An other.”

“Yes.”

“You see me as… Something alien?”

“No.” Handy said.

“But then how can you say that I am an other.”

“You misinterpret, I meant an other as in another. A self, apart from mine own, a reflection of God in whose image is all reason.” He explained, Twilight raised a quizzical eyebrow. “The self is all that one can truly, utterly, intrinsically and indisputably know for absolutely sure because it is the self, it is all that one truly is and one cannot know perspective outside of the self and from that same perspective all things are alien. Singular, irreplaceable and eternal in the audacity of its existence in the face of a world of immutable decay and decline which is all we have ever come to know for certain as the only observable a priori truth of the physical realm. One, and only, inestimably precious and unrepeatable.”

“Self recognises another self, it is an unconscious, instinctual reaction in all mankind when he is confronted with another reasonable creature, he does not call it merely another human, he calls it one, alike himself which he knows at the core of his being to be true but he knows not the why of it. He sees in the spark of creation that lingers in the darkness of another’s eyes, that reflection of God, though he can never truly know the other consciously, he knows it is another, unique, precious, irreplaceable. It leads to a lot of reactions and interactions, depending on the enlightenment and ignorance of a given human, but perhaps this may explain why I refer to everyone as everyone instead of everypony.”

“And when we are amongst our own kind,” He continued. “It is certainly why we do not refer to ourselves as everyhuman, as just the physical animal we happen to be, although the definition of humanity plays a central role in our philosophies and theology, within physical temples we are sovereign souls in communion, not communal souls in isolation.” He took another sip. “Hence, milady Twilight, I do not refer to you as just anypony, but as a one. A self, unique and separate from me.”

The reaction on Twilight’s face was priceless. Honestly it was a two bit philosophy rehash he recycled from a half remembered, but rather excellent theology podcast he had listened to one evening while in University, but it seemed to answer her question as her brain slowly reset itself. Evidently she had not expected any kind of philosophical motivation behind the human’s actions, least of all such depth behind something as simple as basic grammar.

Aaaaand there she went, scribbling furiously on her pages, now levitating several pages and quills. Ok, that was some impressive multitasking. She took some time, so Handy’s gaze wandered around the room. It was oval shaped yet had four definable corners with Greek columns adorned with stylised roses and vine carvings spiralling around their surfaces. The floor was strewn with plush pillows of varying sizes and several book cases stood with glass frames. The soft, gold trimmed purple carpet complimented the sky blue walls well.

“Uhmm…” She began, Handy turned back to her. “I’ve been meaning to ask… About the Griffon kingdom…” Ah, here we go, he almost forgot this might be brought up.

“Go ahead, milady.” Handy assented.

“Right, well… About the king and… His father and all that…” She bit her lower lip and looked away, as if she wasn’t sure if she wanted to ask this question. Handy eyed her curiously before answering.

“If thou hast heard that I am the one responsible for King Johan’s ascension to the throne then you art correct.” He said simply, Twilight reeled.

“Wh-what!?” She cried, the guards stood to attention suddenly. Handy rolled his eyes.

“Ok, what forth rumours hast thou heard?” He asked plainly, catching her off guard.

“Y-you…” She began, “You killed the king… And the crown prince, insuring Johan became king…”

“Why on this earth would I do such foul deeds?” He asked, eyebrow cocked. Twilight shuffled nervously.

“Uhhhh…” She rubbed her shoulder. “There’s been a lot of speculation… Money… Power… A plot by the changelings…” Handy laughed, Twilight looked at him in surprise.

“Oh no… It is much simpler than that.” He said. “I am Godsworn to Johan’s service, or at least I was. Now I am merely his knight in reward for it.” He said, Twilight tilted her head.

“Godsworn?”

“I swore to God I would serve him willingly for a full month if I broke a promise. Which I did and thus fell into his servitude lest I blaspheme my God.”

“What was the promise?”

“Ah, perhaps I’ll tell thee that in a bit, tis a bit personal…”

“Oh… Well alright. Then… Did you… You know…”

“No I did not kill King Gerhart, nor Prince Geoffrey.” He said. “Tell me, what dost thou know of the rule of Gethrenia under Geoffrey’s regency?” He asked. She shook her head.

“Not much.” She admitted.

“Look into it some time. In either case, Gerhart was alive when we had arrived, but he was not well, having fallen ill several months ago, the honourable king was on his deathbed. He had urged Johan to press the right of retrieval, an archaic tradition in the griffon kingdom for a claimant who lost the Right of Arms to defend his claim from another claimant, the chance to regain it, with the approval of the king of course.” Handy said, Twilight began writing more notes.

“Geoffrey had enlisted the help of the great knight Shortbeak to fight for him in his stead, she had beaten Johan previously, as Johan’s Godsworn I stood in his place. And to make an uninteresting story short, I had won and Johan became heir to Gethrenia and clan Blackwing again.” He continued. “Not long after that, his majesty passed away from this world and Geoffrey, in grief or in some mad fit, threw himself from the battlements.”

“But…” Twilight began, the last few sentences obviously rocked her. “Griffons can fly…”

“Which makes it all the more telling he didn’t make use of his wings.” He had said sadly. Obviously the rumours would persist as they always would that Geoffrey was murdered, even if the official story was out the door long before anyone but the initial two guards who found the body could start leaking any details. Handy didn’t care, he had his ass covered well enough. Twilight returned to her notes after a pregnant pause, the sounds of quill scratching against paper filling the silent room.

Outside he saw the tell tale flash of gold against the dying light, clearly some pegasi were awaiting just outside the window, some diligent guard having spread the word where he was and who he was with. He wouldn’t do anything of course, well, that wasn’t entirely true, but he certainly wouldn’t hurt her. If he did there was nowhere he could flee to.

And that gave him an idea.

“It seems thy mother greatly cares about your safety…” He mused, Twilight looked up.

“What? My mother?” She asked, utterly confused, Handy looked at her.

“Oh,” He began, picking up on her incredulous tone, damage control Handy! “Perhaps I assume in err, I know Equestria is a diarchy so I was not surprised to see Sorcha and Ciara upon the dias, but I had heard nought about thee milady, despite your rank, so I assumed…” He trailed off, comprehension dawning on twilight’s face, she giggled with a hoof to her muzzle.

“Oh no, Celestia was my mentor and helped raise me, but she is not my mother!”

“Ah, my apologies, I am still learning about this land, as you can tell. I was merely remarking upon the close eye she is keeping over thee even here at the heart of her fortress and her power.”

“How do you mean?” She asked, Handy blinked at her several times.

“Why, I mean even in your private conversations you are surrounded by the guards of this realm, as if you were in immediate danger.” He said. “Here at the very heart of the castle, why I am willing to bet there is a quartet of guards outside this very room, ears pressed against the door easedropping.” As if on cue, hurried hoofsteps and a few barely audible muttered curses and accusations emerged from the closed door. Twilight looked at the door in surprise and her eyes narrowed. Handy fought very hard not to smile. ’Fucking called it.’

She looked around at the guards in the room who shifted uncomfortably in her gaze. She frowned. “Alright, you guys can leave us.”

“But-!” A guard started, staring hard at the human. “Princess, we can’t just leave you with him”

“It’ll be fine, I’m sure.” She smiled.

“But-”

“No buts, it is unfair to conduct an interview while the subject is under duress.” She said. Handy twitched, not liking being referred to as a subject. “Sides he’s been a perfect gentlepony, I am in no danger.”

’That’s it…’ Handy thought. ’Right into my hands…’

The guards looked between Handy and the princess before, reluctantly complying. They each in turn glared daggers at him as they left. “And no eavesdropping!” Twilight warned, closing the door with her magic, it glowed brightly for a moment with a spell to prevent sound escaping. Handy made a show of visibly relaxing.

“My sincerest thanks once again, milady, thou art quite kind as thou art insightful.” He said, smiling all the while. Twilight shifted in her seat.

“Ah, aha, right, you’re… welcome!” She said, unsure of how to react. He saw her tap her hoof on the edge of her seat. “But I don’t… Think I’m all that, great.”

“Thou dost not? A pity. For no one else has thought to take their time to ask me all that you have, to try to understand me, I am most impressed, Highness.” She seemed flustered at that and took to studying the contours of the table between them. After a moment, her face then screwed up before turning back to Handy. “Sorsha and Cayra?” She asked. “Do you mean Celestia and Luna?” She asked. Handy nodded.

“I do, much like I know my king Johan as Joachim, I refer to Celestia as Sorcha and Luna as Ciara. It is a habit of mine to give a name to people I come to meet.”

“Oookaaaay…” Twilight said, writing down another note, “But why did you call them by those names?”

“It seemed to fit.” He said, taking another sip of his medicine. “Celestia is bright, luminescent and serene, well so long as we ignore dinner of course.” He chuckled slightly, pleased to see she was chuckling as well. “So I call her Sorcha, meaning Radiant One, I found it fits. Luna is serious, yet composed, seemingly withdrawn but that may be another assumption in err, her hair appears as the night, so I refer to her as Ciara, the Little Dark One. It is not meant to be taken badly despite how it sounds, many are the lasses in Milesia called Ciara for their dark hair, I find it suits her severe personality.” She said, Twilight took down some more notes.

“So what does your name mean?” She asked, still writing.

“It means useful or convenient, its what I call myself.” He said honestly. She looked up.

“Its what you call yourself?” She asked, Handy nodded once more. She tapped the quill thoughtfully against her chin. “Then… What’s the name you were born with?” She asked. Handy tapped his nose and smiled.

“That would be telling, milady. I do rather keep some secrets to myself if you would ever be so kind as to resist prying.” He answered, she seemed disappointed and continued her notes. After a few seconds more of furious scribbling she stopped and looked hard at her page for a moment.

“So… Do you have a name for me?” She asked. Handy looked at her, deliberately being silent for a few seconds. He had been preparing for this ever since he came up with those names for the princesses on the spot.

“Aine.” He answered. She seemed to mouth the word, its pronunciation unfamiliar.

“What… What does it mean?”

“Brilliance.” He said simply. Twilight’s face seemed to flush as her ears flattened on her head. She coughed and quickly diverted the conversation back to another topic. Ah, socially awkward, naïve and innocent, no wonder assholes back home enjoyed this so much, he almost felt bad. Almost. Twilight had enquired about Milesia at last and Handy went on at length about a rather… romanticized version of Irish history, starting with tragic fate of High King Brian Boru and working backwards, to the arrival of the Christ God to their isle and the banishment of the fae and the old gods, back to the war with the Fomorians, the older gods, and the arrival of Milesius the conqueror and his armies, of which he was a descendant. An entirely fictional character based on a historic tribal chief of unknown identity who decided to invade Ireland from Spain with a rampaging tribe of celts for shits and giggles, but she didn’t need to know that. After he was done butchering history and myth about his homeland he talked about the surrounding lands.

Artorius Pendragon and his noble knights of the round table, Cymru and its secret dragon heart, the Old North and its conquest by Dal RIada, the Old Road and the Peninsula of the Exiles. The fallen empire of Carolus the Great, broken among his bickering heirs and the tragic legend of Don Quixote. Once he was done mutilating actual history with fiction and myth… He got creative. Twilight could barely keep up, but he could tell she wanted very desperately to ask something.

“Yes?” He probed. Twilight tapped her page several times. She was creating a steady pile of them and they had been here several hours by this point.

“You mentioned humans have no magic.”

“That is correct.” He said.

“But you mention in your histories numerous cases of magical artefacts, rituals and creatures…” She said. Here it was, the clincher, this was how he was hoping to sidle into his endgame. Now, you may have realised by now that Handy is something of a raging dick, if you haven’t then you weren’t paying enough attention, which is understandable, his suffering is amusing afterall.

“Ah yes. That.” He corrected himself. “Allow me to further illuminate you, milady.” He said, “The truth is, we used to have magic. Of a sorts.” He said, taking a sip of his medicine, he had been careful not to use it all, he still needed some of it for a part of his closing act. She paid rapt attention. “You see, humans can’t use magic naturally, not like ponies can. Indeed, in our land magic does not reside in the very air we breath like it does here.” He said, she went wide eyed.

“But that’s impossible! Magic is everywhere! It’s part of what makes the world work!”

“Then perhaps, our land really is truly accursed if it is as thou say, I am afraid thou wouldst know more about it then I, I am merely recounting what it is like.” He looked down sadly and Twilight looked like she was taking herself to task for a perceived faux pas. Good. “I’d worry not, as a wise human once wrote, there is more in Heaven and Earth then is dreamt of in your philosophy, who knows what is really possible or how the world ultimately works? We humans thought we knew how the world works on a number of occasions, only to be proved wrong again and again, it is a humbling yet inspiring thing. However, back to the matter at hand, in truth humans used magic by making… deals.” He said, she looked up.

“Deals?”

“Yes, with unsavoury things, spirits most times. Usually evil ones. Sometimes a human will get lucky and gain powerful arcane secrets and artefacts that grant him power. These witches and sorcerers were reviled, even as they used their powers to gain influence and the trust of kings, competing with priests wielding powers granted by the divine… Provided they were not acting profane and passing off their ill-gotten power as divine. Sometimes it worked, most times people could tell the difference, and that is not counting the numerous charlatans and tricksters of history who managed to fake it to fortune and fame.” He continued.

“For my peoples’ part, we turned to the Christ God and abandoned the old gods and their cruelties. We rejected their priests and threw out the mages and their wicked sorceries, we warred with the fae creatures who had magic and access to their realms of wonder that they guarded jealously when they were not enslaving human children. We drove them out of our fields, forests hills and rivers and into the underworld.”

“But… Magic isn’t… Evil…” She protested weakly, looking despondent. Handy rescued her.

“So I have learned.” He smiled warmly. “But consider it from our perspective, what we knew of as magic was either farcicality, blasphemy or tyranny at the behest of cruel, jealous creatures and manipulative spirits, how could we view it any different? It was rare and dangerous.” He took one more sip, eyed his wooden cup idly before continuing. “But this was all ages ago, so long ago it is all considered as myth and legend, indeed, fanciful and false. It was what I thought before coming here, I had considered it a Truth that magic was false, it took me a long time to get around that.”

“Why?”

“Tell me, milady, what is it ponies value most?” He asked seriously.

“Well, Harmony!” She answered, “Peace, friendship, love and tolerance.”

“Humans do not.” He said quickly. She gasped. “Oh no, do not get me wrong, we humans love these things too, but they are not the highest values in our hearts.” He said.

“Then… what is?”

“Truth.” He continued. “Truth is what we seek, ultimately all our questions come down to this: What is true?” He said as if it was the most natural thing in the world. “For Truth humans have built nations and sundered empires, for Truth we have committed foul and terrible acts to the greatest heroism, for our Truth we have warred against each other, such is our desire for it, such is our reverence for Truth. Indeed, it is for Truth that we willingly put aside the plow and pick up the sword in anger, for whatever we believe that Truth to be. It is no exaggeration that we often equate Truth with God or whatever a human might worship, for most of us the concepts are one and the same.”

“Hold on!” Twilight tried to argue. “Nopony can claim objectively what is true, how can you believe in truth when it is relative.”

“Because it isn’t.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Because first of all, that proposition is philosophical nonsense and self-defeating, if it is True that Truth is relative then it is not Truth. Therefore what are we left with? Even this Truth of relative Truth is a source of conflict for my people, hasn’t resulted in a war… Yet. It does not change the fact that it is what my people ultimately desire, when they care to rise out of the wallowing hopelessness that is our lives at least.”

“Hopelessness…?”

“Oh yes, there is nothing more wretched then a human without hope, he is slothful, uncaring and indolent. It is what the majority of humans are these days.”

“Why?”

“Because peace reigns.” He said, she just looked at him confusedly. “Our species… Got too ambitious. We reached too high.” He said at length. “We crafted a weapon… From a spark of the anvil of God we forged the Sword of Damocles. A weapon so powerful that it has only struck two human cities in our history… And blasted them from the face of the earth. A weapon so fierce and terrible that many of the great empires sought dominion over its use and for a century we held our breath in terror of children warring with the tools of giants.”

“Eventually, while we slept in fear, our world changed, our lands are ruled from the shadows now, our kings uncaring and callous and often changing without fear of consequence for their actions, our peoples divided and pitted against our own brothers within the same borders for the oligarchs to maintain their power ‘by the will of the people’, our livelihoods ruined and at the whims of faraway despots and robber barons who buy and sell our pride as if we were refuse to be bartered and nothing ever changes about it, dost thou know why?” He said, his expression severe. “Because we fear worse, our Truth now is that of the Sword of Damocles hangs over our heads and could fall at any moment, what war there is, is done by the powerful, manipulating lesser kingdoms into civil bloodshed for petty spoils and cynical gains. Where once valour and nobility ruled our hearts, our Truth now is that all is hopeless for we cannot change what looming doom has been brought upon us… Lest it fall and strike us all. So, at least in my kingdom and that of our neighbours, peace reigns and we no longer seek Truth. Not really.” He said.

There was an uncomfortable silence, Handy realised he had gone on a bit of a tangent and thought quickly about how to rescue it to tie in with his plan. “It’s why I have not done anything regrettable here…” He continued. Twilight looked up hopefully. “Because I have discovered a lot of Truths long thought impossible, some good, some strange, some evil and dark.” He said. “It’s also why I am so impressed by you, Highness.” He said, Twilight started.

“I-I’m sorry!?” She said, her face flushing once more.

“When I had arrived here, I thought this land and its people ignorant, indeed, many seemed to confirm that to me by their words and deeds. It took me a long time to see the good in ponies’ hearts, with thee it has been different.”

“W-why me?”

“Because thou seekest Truth.” He said, leaning forward slightly, Twilight’s blush deepened, her mouth tried to form words. ’Oh no you don’t, you walked into this trap.’ Handy thought, ’If I have to live like a vampire, I might as well act like one on occasion. I can’t do it right now, but still, I wonder what Alicorn blood tastes like…’ His lips parted ever so slightly as his smile widened, warmly of course. “There is much to be admired about that.”

“Y-you, I mean, I-I, uh-” Twilight looked everywhere for something else to divert the conversation, her eyes spied the mostly empty Wooden cup beside the human’s helmet on the table. “Wh-what’s the medicine for?!” She said, smiling desperately while pointing a hoof at it. Handy’s smile widened.

’Fucking, finally…’ ”How much dost thou know about the night ponies?” He asked, his eyes closed as he leant back. Twilight tried hard to recover her composure, but she was not entirely successful with that.

“Y-you mean Thestrals?” She asked shakingly. Handy nodded and opened his eyes once more, staring straight into hers.

“Yes, particularly their peculiar diet.” He pressed. Twilight rubbed the back of her neck.

“Uhm… Well, I know they have to drink a special kind of potion because of a blood detriment they are born with.” She said. Handy raised an eyebrow, is that the cover story Equestria ran with? Seems like a rather big secret to keep under wraps. If an entire ethnic group has to feed on the blood of their fellows in order to maintain their survival, you’d think people would notice. ”Sometimes, they can s-supplement it with… With pony blood. If they really need to that is. T-they have sharp fangs, which secret a particular stimulant…” She seemed to relax a bit, retreating into her comfort zone, lecturing once more, Handy would pull that rug out from under her in due time. Well at least they weren’t completely ignorant they were bloody vampires, but he found it amusing it seemed to be given knowledge that it was potions they took by preference and not by legal necessity. Ah well, maybe he was just cynical, he only had human perceptions of vampires to run on afterall.

“T-the bite is supposedly pleasurable.” She continued.

‘Wait what.’ Handy rose both eyebrows now. ‘Bullshit! When the fuck was that the case?!’ He felt incredibly angry, he didn’t recall anything enjoyable about the bite he received… Well ok, he was heavily concussed at the time, and the next thing he did was imbibe a heavily mind altering substance that was at least partially magical as it messed up his head. But that was not the cause of his anger, he had drained Geoffrey because he thought it would be the most horrifying way he could kill the bastard. The idea that it would possibly be in anyway a gentle way to kill him ticked him off to no end. He had wanted him to suffer.

He tried not to show his anger, but his foot began tapping away as his mind raced to try to turn this to his advantage somehow. “A-a-and the bite marks close rapidly after use. A coagulant secreted by-”

“And is their bite infectious?” He pressed, she was probably going to keep going on if he hadn't of interrupted.

“In-Infectious? No, well, so long as the Thestral doesn’t have a disease.” She said.

“So they cannot turn, say, another pony into a va-Thestral like themselves?” He asked, Twilight snorted in laughter, her nervousness slowly leaving her at the ridiculous notion.

“That’s just not possible.” She said. “The condition is inherited by blood, you can’t ‘catch’ Thestralism.” She started giggling.

“Even if one bit a member of a different species?” He asked, leaning closer once more, Twilight had yet to catch on as he reached over and took the cup into both hands. Twilight shook her head.

“It simply is not possible, why? Whats the sudden interest in Thestrals?” She asked, genuinely curious. Handy’s smile returned.

“Did thou hearest about the incident on the Equestrian Express?” He asked.

“Yes I heard there was some confusion over a wanted criminal… Why?” She asked.

“I was there… I was that criminal Sorcha and Ciara sought.” He brought the cup up slightly, tilting it ever so slowly forward. The room was poorly lit, Twilight having used her horn for a light source while she wrote her notes. Twilight’s eyes widened slightly.

“W-what…”

“And I was bitten, by one such Thestral…” He said, he finally beamed fully at her. “It seems, not every creature has the same reaction to such a bite…” He said. Twilight’s eyes widened as they lowered from his face to his teeth.

“Y-you… Your…” She whispered fearfully.

“Yes…” Handy said

“That’s… That’s not…” twilight was now looking down and into the human’s wooden cup.

“No…” He answered, leaning closer Twilight squirmed, wanting to move from the chair but finding herself unable too, her wings flapped gently a few times in her indecision. “I said I’d give thee the truth and I have, how much more art thou willing to learn, Aine?” She stammered and Handy had to fight every urge he had not to press his advantage further and just take what he wanted, he could practically hear the blood pumping in the pony’s arteries. ’Don’t be greedy now, Handy.’ He had chided himself, in a bout of paranoia he worried he might lose control of himself, which was why he had brought the vessel of blood originally before he got the idea to use it in his act. ’The guards are still watching, those curtains aren’t fully closed you know, sides, there’s no way you’d get away alive if you tried it now.’

Handy leaned back after a few tense moments and sighed as he drained the last dregs of his cup. “I think…” He had begun. “That we have spoken enough for one night.” He said, reaching down for his helmet, the princess was breathing heavily and seemed to sag in relief. He replaced his helm and put up his hood. “By your leave, milady Twilight.” He had said, slowly standing up. Twilight, slowly, nodded her head and Handy gave a low bow before turning to the doorway.

He opened it, two solar guards up well past the rise of the moon stood either side of the doorway in the hall and turned immediately to him. They looked back to see the princess who was very much not dead, but looked… off. They glared dangerously at the human who, for his part, spared them a glance before walking onwards.

--=--

It was an uneasy walk back to the griffon dorms. He had walked past a disconcertingly large number of night guards. All of whom looked at the human with a gaze at once similar yet quite different from that of the solar guards. He did not like that, he know that, for some reason, his blood gave them one hell of a boost, they all likely knew it too after the train. ’That damned train.’ He had thought. ’Why does it haunt everything?’ He had enough of the eyes boring into the back of his skull and decided, on a whim, to come to a sudden halt in front of a random night pony. He turned his hooded head slowly and stared down at the guard’s face for ten long, hard, seconds.

The guard for his part held up the stare for a few seconds before he got nervous and looked away. Good, at least that meant they were aware that their blood was as nectar to him as well. He could live with that. However it didn’t mean he could sleep knowing that. He didn’t want to take the chance. Upon arriving at the barracks Handy didn’t return to the bunk, instead checking the rota list, changing a few aspects of it and made his way to the poor sap who was currently on duty.

He walked up to the guard griffon, who looked fit to fall asleep at his post.

“Hey.”

“Zn-huh!?” The guard shot up and looked at Handy. “Oh, s-sir Handy, how can I help you?”

“Its your lucky night, I’ve been moved to this shift.” He said. The guard looked confused. “Check the rota if you want, or would you prefer to stand here all night?” He challenged, gesturing behind him with a thumb. The griffon quickly shook his head, muttered his thanks and rushed off to the barracks. Handy took position outside the doorway to the bedchambers the royals were sleeping in. He heard claws and paws to his left and turned. Out of the darkness strode a griffon knight in Gethrenian colours. He took up the position flanking the door’s other side.

It was hard to make out in the low light and the griffon’s armour. “Bat ponies?” The gruff, tired voice of Godfrey asked. Handy smiled, looks like he wasn’t the only one with paranoia, unlike Godfrey’s, his had a bit more of a reasonable justification behind it.

“Bat ponies.” He had confirmed, nodding his head as he took the night watch. He really, really, really needed to stop finding reasons to do this, but until he was safely out of Canterlot, that probably wasn’t going to be an option, he can sleep in the morning.

Author's Note

tl;dr BLEH BLEH!

Chapter 14 - A Quiet Moment.

Handy woke up in an incredibly foul mood. His head was pounding something awful and he turned irritably in his, yet again, too small cot to see the errant claw of some griffon or other in the bunk above him lying over the side near where he had been resting his head. He gave the bunk above him a tremendous kick, launching the bird from his slumber and onto the floor. He chewed out the unfortunate guard good and proper about the correct bunkroom etiquette of not kicking the guy sleeping beneath you in your sleep.

He stumbled over to his rota after reaffixing his helmet and putting his cloak and cuirass back on, having slept in his mail and wrapped a portion of his cloak about his neck. Hey, you can’t blame him for being too careful, did you SEE this castle at night? Its crawling with night ponies, Thestrals, vamphorses, whatever one felt like calling them. Fucking bats.

The day, or rather night for Handy, having woken up close to six in the evening in preparation for night shift duties. Apparently, his absence had been noted in passing by one of the princesses during a rare moment of tactful, polite and respectful conversation during breakfast, or so Joachim had told him during a recess when he arrived to take over the shift of one of the other knights. The deliberations had been going on all day, literally hours on end, thankfully there had been no passionate explosions of diplomatic folly such as the previous day’s dinner, Johan had looked worse for wear, utterly exhausted and glad to talk to someone who clearly did not give a flying fuck about the affairs in question.

Handy dropped his airs for the sake of talking to the bird normally, well, normal for talking to Joachim that is. The king appreciated the gesture and proceeded to engage in polite conversation about literally anything and everything else, if it meant Handy could take a break from talking like a royal page in Henry Tudor’s court for once he was all for indulging the bird in his exasperating venting.

“-You know, I’d call the ponies of Canterlot supercilious but I’ve been to Old Mount, so I’ll be kind and just describe them as having a particularly long Gerilck stick shoved up their backsides, I mean, how else could the keep their heads upturned all day like that? Look at them!”

Handy had snorted at that, then coughed to try to hide the laugh. For your reference, Gerlick is a stick using sport performed by pegasi and griffons on frozen clouds, basically sky hockey if hockey were played like hurly. Handy was entirely in approval of the violent sport and referenced the similarity between it and two sports humans played. It was then that Joachim had asked about the meeting with Princess Twilight.

“So spill, what exactly did you do to the little one?” He asked. Handy looked at him.

“Do? I didn’t do anything.”

“Luna was asking about your whereabouts at breakfast, there was a curious look on Celestia’s face when she enquired.”

“Ah, right, I see they’ve already had a look over Twilight’s notes.”

“Notes?”

“Joachim, I was in that room with her for hours. She took a lot of notes about what I said and I know she would’ve kept me there all night grilling me for more information had I let her. I certainly had more to say.”

“What did you tell her?”

“Oh you know, this and that.”

“And the little secret?”

“Hey, if it makes the ponies feel more awkward that their own batty pals couldn’t keep their fangs to themselves, I don’t see a reason to keep it a secret from them.” Handy said, Joachim had frowned at that.

“That could prove difficult, couldn’t you have kept that under wraps?”

“Our fella, what was there to keep under wraps? The princesses know I bit a pony already, now they know why, and it’s their fault. Sides, half of the people who’ve actually met me already suspect the truth, most of the rest consider it a possibility with some credence and the rest… Well, lets just say ponies gossip like they’ve got nothing better to do. I have so many Goddamn rumours floating around I might as well try to dispel some of the unsavoury ones.”

“And being a blood sucker is not unsavoury?”

“…Ok I’ll be honest… I just felt like fucking with her head. I spent so long in the interview dispelling some of the rumours about me, I felt like confirming one by way of compromise to throw her for a loop. Keep the ponies guessing. Also her reactions were priceless, I didn’t know ponies could blush that hard.”

“All-maker, what did you say to her?”

“A lot of things, it’s not my fault she doesn’t get out more.”

“You’re one to talk because neither do you, at least not when you can get away with it.”

“I like my privacy.”

“Privacy is one thing, getting people flustered is something else. I never seen you treating anygriffon like that before, why did you do it to her?”

“Oh come on, I just messing around. Aleksy dearest put me on the spot, so I figured I might as well have some fun with it.” ‘I was just curious how close I could get to her neck before anything bad happened, vampirish dickery you know, but I am certainly not telling you that.’

“Uh-huh,” Joachim said deadpanned, clearly not entirely sold, it always amused Handy how hard it was to convince Joachim of something, either he’s just extraordinarily perceptive or just more cynical than most. The bird looked up at the sky, the sun was getting awfully low towards the horizon, he sighed. “Well, back to the grindstone, Celestia mentioned a change to Equestria’s tariffs, Thunderstorm is running her through the ringers on the particulars, a bloody diplomatic dragnet and the rest of us are getting caught up in it, its going to be a late one.”

“Joy of joys, let me put on my happy face.” Handy sighed.

“You’re wearing a helmet.”

“Like I said, my happy face.”

--=--

Handy was not wearing his happy face.

The hall was sweltering, the diplomatic talks had gone into hardball territory. Thankfully it lacked the bellicosity of the previous day’s talks. A brief chat with a rather senior looking knight in the High King’s contingent proved illuminating in this regard. Apparently this was par for the course, the childish squabbling that started off the talks between Griffon and Pony rulers often calmed down, in tone if not in spirit as both sides often used hardball tactics to get the other to concede on some of the pettiest points of contention. Celestia’s tactic of causing the ambient temperature of the room to heighten while retaining the moisture caused an incredibly clammy and humid, not to mention uncomfortable experience. It was apparently old hat too, she was known for this.

The griffons were visibly uncomfortable but they coped through it with a bloody mindedness Handy approved of, still cursed them for their stupidity, but approved in the long run. High King’s Aleksy still had that damn smile of his. He was surprised to learn that this kind of immaturity only occurred between the dealings of these two kingdoms and was considered something of a geopolitical joke in the wider international community, like how Russians are as welcoming and loveable as drunken bears, or how America’s a free country. It had something to do with how the two countries had fierce wars earlier in their history and the ‘tradition’ of difficult negotiation over splitting hairs was the result of some kind of fantasy cold war that has long since thawed out into reasonably warm relations.

How long has it been like this? One thousand fucking years. So yeah, an old joke. The knight had mentioned off hand that Celestia was often like this during such meetings throughout that time and that Griffonian High Kings had an entire year’s worth of their education dedicated to just dealing with pony princesses without losing their royal shit and lashing out. Princess Luna was a new addition however, and considered something of a wild card, but Aleksy seemed to be coping. Handy had scoffed lightly. Really? The ponies had called their rulers Celestia for one thousand straight years? He had thought France was ridiculous with its Louis and the Church a bit too fond of the name Benedict but hot damn, ponies don’t fuck around with regal naming, probably got rid of the tradition of regal numerals altogether because they were getting too high as far as the human knew.

That knowledge, however, was no comfort. He had taken off his helmet and thrown back his hood, trying not to breath too heavy as the sweat poured down his face. The other knights and pony guards had taking to leaning against the walls or even sitting down on the floor, the dignitaries at the table and the attendant servants not making a fuss about the lack of professionalism in this instance, a silent, collective agreement of ‘fuck decorum’ having been put into effect. Handy had lasted longer than most of his fellows before running out of all the professional, weapons grade fucks he had to give.

He was wearing his cloak and armour and standing under several burning torches. Granted they were very fancy torches attached to the walls with delicate and equally fancy metal sconces but holy shit did they burn bright and furiously. You’d think the dampness of the air would lessen it right? Handy thought so. Handy was wrong. Several heads turned when he took off his helmet, evidently curious as to what he looked like without it on, he couldn’t give a shit by that point and let them look away.

It had went on like this for the next three days, they had sorted out the specifics of all of their current trading negotiations, came to reasonable consensus on change of local and national laws which affected each other’s revenue and even made arrangements for new treaties and deals which would increase the prosperity of both kingdoms and everything was sunshine and fucking rainbows. Literally, there had been rainbows all day, minus rain and Handy couldn’t for the life of him figure out why until he eventually shrugged saying, “Fuck it, probably pegasi or some shit.” So, you’d think he’d be happy right? He managed to avoid getting neck’d by the Thestrals in the castle or being nuked by the magical princesses and Twilight had not bothered him again. As he thought of it, the purple pony had been keeping her distance, while occasionally stealing glances from under Celestia’s wing so to speak, he must’ve frightened her more than he had intended. It didn’t help that he swore he was being followed at times by a green eyed Thestral, probably a spy the sisters sent.

However, no, Handy was not Happy, Handy was incredibly foul of mood and temperament, getting worse the longer he stayed in the castle. Long nights standing guard in humid drawing rooms and nervous checking of every shadow during his nightly rounds in the guest wing coupled with waking up every, God damn, morning with a thunderous headache which only seemed to be getting worse each day tends not to do any favours for one’s mood. It was all he could do, to not lash out at some poor bastard, so he avoided all conversation. It was the final night of negotiations, allowing for two days for the visiting delegation to relax and enjoy the city before returning home. Handy for one could not wait, having grown incredibly tired of the glares of the ponies and the odd looks from the princesses.

It was the final night of deliberations, clarifying final points as the representatives and the princesses finished their meals. Also it was still humid because if you’ve been childish this long, might as well finish what you started right? It was all good otherwise, however, ponies and griffons had calmed down. No more shouting, no more snide remarks and backhanded compliments, no more of the fuckery of diplomatic, feather encrusted horse dung that had haunted the talks and made Handy’s life that much more unbearable. Goldtooth, the king of Firthingart? Yeah, he’s now rightfully earned his place pretty fucking high on Handy’s shitlist because of his interminable ramblings and constant complaints.

“And… I believe that’s all we need to discuss. Anything else?” Celestia’s beatific smile showed no sign of the strain she no doubt had to be experiencing. There was a general murmur from the gathered kings before Alesky spoke up.

“I believe that is all we have to bring to the table, our thanks for your most gracious hospitality and understanding in these affairs.” He beamed.

’There is a God… Thank fuck this is all over…’ Handy thought, allowing himself an exasperated sigh. Luna was looking at him out of the corner of his eye. Again. He had gotten used to all the evil glances she had been sending his way but even so, it was still grating on his nerves. The royals got up from their places at the table and chatted amiably with eachother as if that week of hell had never happened, the humidity, finally, relenting and something resembling a sane temperature returned to the room. Handy stood back to attention, looking over to Joachim to see if he was ready to lea- Nope. Luna was engaging him in conversation as the High king and the king of the Hebridean isles traded some last minute pleasantries while Goldtooth and his contingent left the room. And he had been looking forward to getting out of there too.

His head turned back to its normal position as he sighed. It was then that Handy regretted the one universal problem of wearing a full face helm, a severely restricted peripheral vision. As he turned he noticed a strand of multihued hair, floating on a breeze all of its own just in front of him. The human started visibly, only just noticing the Alicorn standing beside him. How in the hell does something like her sneak up on anyone!? “Uh, uhm, can I help thee, Majesty?” He blurted as he took a step back in surprise.

The princess of the sun regarded the human curiously. She was definitely taller than Chrysalis, matching Handy’s own height if you discounted her horn length, perhaps a shave taller. She looked at him for an uncomfortable moment before finally speaking. “May I speak with you, Sir Handy?” She asked. Shit. Handy turned back to Joachim, still distracted talking to the other princess, damn it, he turned back to Celestia.

“I would of course grant thy request, majesty, but I must be ready to attend to my lord.” He said hopefully. She smiled. He frowned.

“I respect your diligence, but your king is plenty safe right now.” Oh no, he was prepared for that, sh- “Besides, I only wished to hear about your exploits from yourself, I do so enjoy stories.” Well, ok that’s harde- “And I wish to apologize to you personally for the trouble we put you through.” Uhm. “It will only take a minute, please, if you would be so kind to indulge a tired mare’s curiosity.” God damn woman, he can’t really back out of that without causing a scene. He felt eyes upon him, damnit.

“… Of course, Majesty.” He relented, gritting his teeth. He bowed his head slightly as she beamed at him. He followed the solar princess through a pair of double doors at one end of the hall, casting one look over his shoulder at a rather surprised looking Joachim. There were rather a lot of day guards down the corridor they took, they were up late he noted, but he preferred them to the Thestrals. He was ushered into a surprisingly plain looking room. It was well lit with a collection of large cushions in the centre and the curtains were drawn on the full wall length window. Handy had to surrender his weapon and shield, an understandable precaution given the princess had no guards in the room with her. Well, someone’s certainly confident. Handy knew better then to be cocky however, you could feel the magic coming from this pony, she was clearly not to be fucked with.

Celestia walked over to the window before turning to face the human. He felt awkward standing there as the door closed just behind him. There was nowhere to sit afterall and the Princess was just… studying him, he felt like coughing to try to push the conversation along but thought better of it. After what felt like an age the princess walked over to him, stopping a mere foot from him before her horn lit up an-

“Water?” She asked with a smile. Handy almost faltered. A cup of water levitated before him, where in the hell did she get that? He realised he was just standing there before he reacted.

“Uhm, Yes. My thanks, majesty.” Handy said reaching for the cup. He then realised in order to actually drink it, he’d need to take off his helm. He tapped his finger on the cup for a moment before deciding to do just that. ’Ok, I’m impressed princess, very clever.’ He thought, removing his helmet and hood, therefore removing whatever psychological advantage he had in robbing the princess of seeing the expressions on his face. He held the helmet in the crook of his arm and drank, it was actually incredibly delicious and refreshing, especially after those final few hours in that hotbox of a dining hall.

He drained the cup before looking back at the princess who was now reclining across the large pillows. “Please, have a seat.” She said politely. Handy looked to his right and left. There was nothing for him to sit on, he looked back and saw only the gentle smile gracing the features of the sun princess. He looked down at the floor and, with as much grace and dignity as he could in full armour, he lowered to the floor. He’d normally sit cross legged but that really wasn’t an option in those greaves, so he had to sit with his knees up to his chest, forcing him to put his helmet on the floor beside him and left Celestia looking down at him.

He fumed. The position made him feel awkward and lanky, which is a feeling he was often reminded of during daily life nowadays but he preferred not to experience it when he could help it. ’Ok Celestia out with it.’ He thought. ’The condemnations, the “How dare you bite one of my little ponies, oh my!”, the-‘

“I want you know that from the very depths of my heart, and that of my sister, we are sorry for what we have done to you.” She said solemnly. Handy blinked in surprise. He honestly had not expected an apology of any sort. “However.” She continued, more sternly this time. “We cannot overlook your previous transgressions, even with the pardon.” Ah, there we go.

“Forgive me, majesty.” Handy began. “Bu-”

“I am not referring to the petty indiscretion in the west or your assault of my guards.” She said. “Well, Luna’s guards to be precise.” She added. Handy tried not to frown at the interruption. “I am referring to your alliance with the Queen of the Changelings.”

“Alliance?”

“What would you call it?”

“Almost killing her.” Handy admitted. Celestia blinked rapidly. She recomposed herself and lowered her gaze for a moment before speaking again.

“It appears I do not fully understand your relationship with the changelings.”

’Gee, who’d a thunk?’ ”I believe that would be fair to say, majesty.” He said in response.

“Very well then,” Celestia said, levitating a letter from under a wing and reading it over once more before turning looking back at the human, her head not turning from the page. “I will be honest, I cannot let you leave this castle until I know, exactly, what happened in the badlands.”

"...And risk causing an incident with Gethreania? Majesty, I do not think even thee would care for that much trouble considering the week that has just gone by." Her gaze narrowed, Handy's smile widened, he then cleared his throat and elected to indulge the princess. “When I arrived in the badlands, I was captured by the changelings, not knowing what I was after I arrived in their city.”

“City?” She asked, an eyebrow raised.

“Yes, quite a lovely place too, they had abandoned it for a long time, I didn’t know that at the time however.”

“So they captured you?”

“Yes, a scout that had found me was concerned that she could not feed off of me, indeed, apparently could not even sense me until she tripped across my feet.” He said, he felt the pendant warm up considerably under his mail, looks like someone does not appreciate him talking about her so openly. He spent nearly a week wandering the castle giving the queen a good look, the least she could do is shut up long enough for Handy to get his own arse out of hot water.

“Where did they take you?”

“To a pod of sorts.” Handy said, Celestia nodded. “They tried to induce sleep in me and cause me to dream, allowing them to learn and feed off of me by dreaming of my loved ones. They failed, so they tried numerous chemical concoctions, causing a great deal of suffering and pain for myself.” Celestia looked… concerned?

“It did not work?”

“No, even if it did cause me to sleep, I could not dream.”

“Why not?”

“Because I simply do not. Never have,” He responded, this seemed to surprise Celestia immensely. She recovered and tapped her chin with a hoof, looking aside.

“…That would explain it…”

“Majesty?”

“Nothing, please, what did you do?”

“The room I was in, was in the queen’s palace. The building was under attack, the queen entered the room seeking a secret passage. She drew near my pod, which was when I made my escape and attacked her.”

“How did you escape?”

“I ate.”

“You…. Y-you ate your way out?”

“I was hungry, and not in my right mind I pray thee understand, also the pod was delicious.” He added, he enjoyed watching the princess try not to squirm. Herbivores, pfft. “My rage was great and my reason had left me, so I nearly killed the queen before I came to my senses.” Handy looked uneasily to the side, Celestia’s eyes narrowed.

“I suppose I can understand.” Celestia said, Handy did not believe her as much as he wanted to.

“I regret my actions…” He added uneasily.

“She tortured you.”

“There is no excuse…” Handy said, looking down, a quizzical expression graced her features, she looked as if she was about to speak further before Handy beat her to it. “In either case, I managed to compel her to help me escape, we made it out into the city. Where we met the dragon.”

“Dragon?” Her eye widened.

“Yes.” Handy said. “Thou didst not think those rumours of mine killing a dragon were false did thee?” He asked, the look on her face told him she had indeed. “Ponies will willingly believe I have eyes of burning coal and spawn from the shadow of a murdered phoenix sooner than believe a dragon can be slain? Thou put too much stock in the lords of flame.”

“How?”

“Pray?”

“How did you kill it?”

“A few well placed hammer blows and a death ride down an dark chasm, to put it in short.” Handy said simply. “I had just saved the queen’s life, she had paid me for my services.”

“Paid you? Were you not just in a position to kill her previously?”

“I was.”

“Then why would she do that?”

’To let me go and wander around ponyland as her literal, unwitting eyes and ears?’ ”Because she asked for mine aid.” He lied.

“And you gave it?”

“I was a mercenary and an adventurer, it was a dragon, she was a client, I got paid. There is little sense bringing personal matters into business.”

Celestia seemed to consider all of this as she put the letter away. She levitated another cup of water and took a sip. “She paid you a substantial amount for such a task.” She said at length.

“I saved their ancestral city from the threat that caused them to leave it in the first place.” Handy added. “Also I was not aware of the full value of the payment she did deliver unto me until later on when I entered Pawstown. I beg thy forgiveness, but I was ignorant of thine economy vis a vis the changeling currency.” He added. Celestia looked at him hard before finally asking another question.

“So why are you here?” She asked.

“I… I’m here as part of my lord’s entourage.”

“No. I meant here, you are quite far from home.” She asked. Handy froze. He raised a gauntleted hand and idly scratched the side of his head while looking aside. Celestia raised an eyebrow curiously.

“It was… Indiscretion that led to my being here.” Handy admitted.

“Indiscretion?” She asked.

“…Yes. It was… Is rather, embarrassing.” Now the princess was leaning her head over, eager to hear.

Handy took a deep breath, sighing, he told Celestia the story of his drunken rampage that apparently lasted months. The room was quiet for a good long while after that. Handy shuffled uncomfortably. The princess’ face almost broke as she raised a hoof to suppress a giggle. Handy’s blood boiled. ’Ok, enough of this.’ Handy got back to his feet and bowed slightly. “If that will be all, Majesty.” He said, Celestia looked up, surprised.

“Actually, I had a few more things to ask.” She insisted. “Please, sit.” Handy almost didn’t. “I have a… request of you.” She asked Handy looked the horse dead in the eye for a few seconds before complying. “I must request that, in the course of your duties, you bring no harm upon my little ponies.” She said simply.

Is she fucking serious?

“I am sorry majesty.” Handy said, causing her to look up. “That is simply a request I cannot abide by.” Her gaze hardened.

“And why is that?”

“Because thy little ponies, so far, have been more of a threat to my livelihood then I ever have been to theirs. Particularly after thy recent folly.” Handy challenged, his blood was up and his reason tried desperately to try to restrain his pride from getting him into more trouble. There was a coolness in the air about them. Handy did not care.

“Thou hast apologised for thy assault of mine self and my lord, which I do graciously accept. But I shall not fulfil any such request until you apologise for the curse thou hast unwittingly damned me with.” He said heatedly. Celestia blinked.

“Damned?”

“Didst thou not read thy student’s writings? I am vampyr now, because of the curse carried within the fangs of thy Thestrals.” He said. “Already I have noted differences between myself and thy Thestrals in my… needs. Thou hast awoken in me a blood curse my people thought mere myth, I am now the shadow that haunts the minds of mankind, I pray for my sake and for all that it does not deteriorate further than it already has.” He added.

“I… I’m sorry.” She said, her anger from before fading. “But, it should not be any more crippling then what the Thestrals have to deal with. Perhaps, if you would allow us, we can assist you. Equestria can provide you with potions to subdue your thirst, perhaps even find a cure.”

’Unless your Thestrals can heal their wounds with the blood they drink then I think it’s fair to say I’ve already changed more radically then could be expected.’ “I am sorry, majesty, but I am afraid I cannot accept such aid.” Handy retorted, Celestia looked back into his eyes. “I will not be thrall to those who have left me so accursed.”

“But, we would never do that to you!”

“Oh? Even if thou wouldst not willingly, would that not be the case nonetheless? I would be reliant on thee for the supply of potions would I not?” He asked, she was silent. It was as he thought, he closed his eyes and took in a breath. ‘Easy Handy. Calm down.’ ”Thou hast been a most gracious host, majesty. And thy offer is most generous, but I simply cannot accept, much like I cannot accept your hope of a cure. Had thee been able to find one, surely thy Thestrals would be free of their taint by now.” He reasoned. Celestia slowly got back to her hooves, prompting Handy to do the same. She looked at him hard, even if her eye did glisten with a bit of sadness.

“Yes… I suppose I should have expected as much.” She said. “But the issue still remains, you will not bring harm upon any of my ponies, Handy of Milesia.” She said, almost possessively. Handy was about to respond before a goat’s head popped out of the floor.

Handy’s reality broke as he looked down at it.

“Ah there you are, Tia my dear!” The goat’s head spoke. It had two horns, one looked like a banjaxed antler and the other resembled an elongated unicorn horn that had gone through a cement mixer. Handy’s mind continued to sunder as the head rose up as the mere tip of a long snake like torso which bore the appendages of animals that had no business being on the same body. “I’ve been just DYING to speak to you about the DREADFULLY dull ambience in that restaurant you recommended.” It spoke, Celestia’s face was a confusion of emotions between anger, frustration, alarm and surprise.

“Discord…” She said through gritted teeth. “I told you not to come to the castle this week.”

“Oh I know, but I have been just so terribly BORED! Fluttershy is away on a trip, something about seaponies or some other thing-I don’t really care truthfully, I just-oh hello!”

’Oh God no.’ Handy took a step back instinctively, severely missing his hammer, the strange, floating, THING had twisted in the air to regard him.

“My aren’t you a strange one, hmm, nope, don’t care, too boring, ta-ta.” The draconequus snapped its leonine paw as it closed its eyes and Handy felt everything suddenly get very warm and bright. There was a flash of light, Discord turned back to Celestia. “Now, Princess, we’ve some things to discuss, now I know you said I could turn the forest on Mount Greathoof upside down on Tuesdays but I was thinking… What are you gawking at?” He said referring to Celestia’s open mouthed expression. Discord turned with a bored expression that suddenly widened in surprise.

The human’s armour shone with incandescence before eventually fading, the repaired parts of his armour glowing red with ambient magical energy longer than the rest of the metal before fading. Handy stood there blinking the blindness out of his eyes as he fumbled with his helmet. “I thought I said ta-ta? You know, goodbye, perhaps you’d like to be sent a bit further away, I hear the crystal empire is lovely this time of year.”

“What.” Handy said flatly.

“What.” Celestia echoed, but for an entirely different reason.

A snap of fingers, a flash of light, a still stupefied human looking up at an ancient spirit of chaos growing incredibly frustrated with his existence. “Hmmm…” Discord mused, rubbing the lower part of his chin.

“What.” Handy said again, trying to process what manner of fuckery this was. Discord leant uncomfortable close, an eye closed, his mismatched larger one bulged alarmingly as an optician’s glass popped up in front of it. And another, and another and several more until Handy found himself backing up against the wall as the horizontal stack of magnification lenses threatened to pierce the fabric of his helmet and poke him in the eye.

“Well isn’t this neat?” Discord mused with a click of his teeth.

“What.” Handy said again, blinking rapidly. Discord snapped again, Handy’s cloak turned pink. “WHAT!?” Discord smiled, his prominent snaggletooth displayed for all to see.

“Discord.” Celestia said warningly. “This is Sir Handy. A human.” Discord’s face changed slowly, frowning.

“Really now?” He asked. “Never saw one before.” He said. The door kicked in as a solar guard rushed in.

“Princess I-” Snap. The Guard’s armour and weapon was now water, which splashed over the bamboozled pony, soaking him and causing him to slip on the floor with an audible oof. The other guards behind him thought twice about following after him

“It's rude to interrupt you know.”

“Discord, please, I am in the middle of something.” Celestia said again. “I’ll speak with you later.”

“Ohhh fine.” He said pouting. “Have fun with your new ‘toy’, but I still hold you to that promise about the cheesecakes!” He said, crossing his arms and turning his head to the side. Celestia rolled her eyes.

“Yes, of course.” She said. “Now, if you’d be so kind.”

“I suppose…” He sighed and exploded in a cloud of goat headed moths, flapping their way happily out of the room. Handy turned to follow them as they left, looked down at the recovering guard pony, looked at his cloak, looked back at Celestia.

“What.” Was all that he could say, Celestia smiled apologetically at him. She dismissed the guard and her horn lit up as she closed the door and dried the floor. Handy still hadn’t removed himself from the wall, trying to process what in the blithering blue fuck that was about.

“I… Apologise, he can be difficult to deal with sometimes.” Handy did not respond. Celestia cleared her throat. “Sir Handy, might I enquire something?” Handy nodded his head slowly, his mind elsewhere, trying to think about anything else other than whatever the hell that was. Thoughts like ‘How the fuck am I going to explain this cloak away now?’ Celestia had a thoughtful look on her face.

“How is it…” She continued. “You were able to resist his magic?” She asked.

“H-huh?” Handy said intelligently. “O-oh… I guess… My armour. The way it was forged, something about it.” Celestia narrowed her eyes as a smile returned to her face. “Helped when fighting the elemental…” Celestia cocked an eyebrow.

“An elemental?”

“On the train, there was a pony, unicorn, summoned an elemental with her witch-fire, tried to kill me with lightening.” He said, Celestia’s face was unreadable. Her horn lit up, a previously invisible door in the wall opened, in it she withdrew a black cloak stained with mud and tears. It was rather unremarkable bar the small golden clasp depicting a clover and unicorn horn. “Was the pony wearing this?” She asked. Handy took the cloak and had a look over it.

’See, you’re not helping Sorcha, can’t you see I am mourning for my beloved cloak? And here you are handing me a pony cloak, a black one, classy.’ “She was.” Handy confirmed looking the cloak over. Celestia gestured to the clasp, taking advantage of the human’s bewilderment.

“Does that word mean anything to you?” She asked. Handy looked at the clasp. Astucieux, a French word by the way it rolled off the tongue, he had no idea what it meant.

“No.” Handy said truthfully. “What is it?” He asked, his mind on overdrive to catch up with the situation. It figured it might be in Handy’s best interests to play ignorant to the similarities between the languages he has run into during his time here and those of his home. Celestia frowned.

“Perhaps it is nothing.” She said, magically taking the cloak away again, Handy looked up. The princess was smiling serenely again when she turned back to the human. “You said you are a mercenary correct? An adventurer?” She asked, Handy sensed the danger.

“Was.” He said. ’Oh no, I’m not falling for that.’ ”I am currently engaged in long term employment, Majesty.” He finished.

“A shame.” She said at last. She looked over her shoulder, as if she could see the sky past the curtains. “It seems I am needed. It has been a pleasure sir Handy.”

“It has been a honour.” ’It has not.’ Celestia then opened the door and gestured that Handy could leave. Handy took a step forward.

“Oh and one more thing.” Celestia said, causing Handy to pause and turn, her eyes were sparkling and she looked like she could not contain a laugh. “Perhaps you are not as heartless as the changelings believe, you do, afterall, wear yours quite openly.” She said. Handy looked at her confusedly.

“I… Thank you? Majesty?” He said.

“Oh no, thank you Sir Handy.” Ok now it was obvious she was trying to hold down a laugh. Handy scowled. “I’ll be sure to have Twilight alter her notes to represent this fact.”

“I am sure Aine has better things to do.” Handy said with as much calm as he could muster, his left fist shook beneath his cloak as he stood in the doorway, he could hear one of the day guards snickering behind him. ’Ok whoever you are, as soon as I turn around I am memorizing your face and immortalizing it on my shitlist for eternity.’

“Aine?” Celestia asked. Handy turned back to her. He smiled. It appears Twilight has not been entirely honest with her mentor.

“Yes, Aine, ask her highness about it.” He said. “It should prove most enlightening.” He turned and closed the door behind him with more force then was necessary. The two guards on either side of the doorway were looking away, curious expressions on their face. He turned and scanned the dozen or so guards lining this section of the hallway, all of them with odd expressions.. ’Eenie, meanie, minie…’ One guard by one of the many windows in particular was shaking, he raised a hoof to his muzzle as he let out a short, sharp breath, his eyes were watering. ’Mo. Welcome to the shitlist mister short-muzzle-with-a-distinctive-mark-under-his-left-eye, you can check out any time you like but you can never leave.’

Handy walked down the hallway, his footsteps echoing very loudly as he went. He could hear an echoing chortle from down the way he came. He fumed impotently. He stopped by a window and steadied himself against the Greek pillar beside it, looking out into the night sky, trying to work out the sheer rage he felt. ’Easy Handy, this day can’t get that much worse.’

Now, remember how Handy only came to accept ponies could control the weather when he finally bothered to look up and see it demonstrated for him first hand? Yeah, Handy has never actually personally witnessed a sunrise or moon rise in Equestria, so he is still operating under the assumption that the world turns at a reasonable, consistent pace and that the pretty pony princesses cannot, in fact, move the heavenly bodies of the sun and the moon.

You can see where this is going.

He looks out across the lit city below, and sees a small form floating in the air above the castle, in the dying light he can just make it out as Luna, the second of the Royal Diarchy. Her horn lit up gloriously as her wings spread wide, her form levitated there and her eyes shone with incandescent light. The moon rose way faster than it had any business doing before it slowed to a normal pace. Handy’s mind Goddamn stopped.

--=--

When he came to, he was still standing there, the moon was slightly higher in the sky, his mouth was agape, had he not been wearing his helmet he probably would have caught some rather unfortunate flies, as it was, he was just standing there, in the middle of a hallway, in a hot pink cloak, gazing over the city below. For over an hour.

Handy shook with impotent rage at the universe. He moved on suddenly, storming down the corridor, his mood murderous. He passed by a number of night guards, their normally hungry and angry looks softened and turned to looks of curiosity, bewilderment and barely restrained laughter. He stopped at a corner before the turn to the guest wing and turned and glared at one such pony who was on the verge of tears.

“Do it.” He warned. “I dare you.” Glaring at the pony, who for his part had stifled some of his laughter, but his eyes still glistened, trying to look anywhere else. “I double dare you motherfu-”

“Hey there you are Handy.” Handy turned at the voice. It was Sir Tanismore. “The guys were wondering where you were, what…” The griffon stopped as he saw Handy’s cloak in the moonlight and the batpony behind him trying very hard not to laugh uproariously, staring at the back of the human’s cloak wide eyed. “You uh… You uh get a change of clothes there buddy?” Handy glowered at the bird.

“One word…” Handy warned. “One Goddamn word, Tanis, and I swear, right here, right now, in the corridor, I will end you.”

“Of course, snrk.” The griffon held a claw up. “I’m just saying, you know…” He continued, Handy turned back to stare down at the bat pony who immediately stood to attention but was visibly shaking. And it wasn’t from fear.

’Thestral, teal eyes, strong jaw, reddish mane, possibly brown, distinctive mark on nose, oh yes, I’ll remember you little one…’

“The colour is quite fetching on you, Handy the Hearty.” Tanismore snickered. Handy gave out a cry of frustration and drew his hammer.

“I WARNED YOU! I FUCKING WARNED YOU! COME’RE!” Handy charged at the griffon who took flight and flew down the corridor.

“JUST SAYING! YOU KNOW! IT'S QUITE A CHANGE FROM YOUR USUAL DRESS SENSE!”

“YOU LIKE CHANGE? HERE, LET ME CHANGE YOUR SKULL, I HEAR CONCAVE IS QUITE A FETCHING DIMENSION TO HAVE THESE DAYS!” The Thestral promptly lost his shit as the two charged off, but Handy already had one target, shit lister number ninety three can await his turn, right before Featherbrain and after this afternoon’s breakfast.

The two had went in a circle, awaking the nearby castle dwellers to their shenanigans as Handy tried his damnedest to catch the feathery asshole. One particular room Luna was having a chat with Twilight about the constellations when Celestia walked in.

“-Oh, that would be so beautiful, do you think the ursa constellation would benefit though? It seems it would take away from it.” Twilight asked, looking over Luna’s sketches. Luna shook her head.

“It wouldst do no such thing, Magic, placing those stars over there would help accent the nebulae I had planned for that area of the sky.”

“Am I interrupting?” Celestia asked as she interrupted. Twilight looked up happily and Luna greeted her sister with a warm smile.

“Not at all, Celestia! Luna and I were just discussing her designs for next cycle of the moon.” Twilight said happily.

“Magic has been most insightful and helpful.” Luna said, Celestia smiled warmly at them both, she opened her mouth to speak before being rudely interrupted herself.

“TAKE IT EASY HANDY!”

“I WARNED YOU TANISMORE, I BLOODY WARNED YOU!”

“IT WAS JUST A JOKE, LOOK WE’VE ALL HAD A LONG DAY-”

“LONG DAY!? HAHA! DON’T THINK I DIDN’T NOTICE YOU SKIMPING THE ROTA YOU LAYABOUT, GET BACK HERE!”

“AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!”

“AAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRGGGGGHHHHH!”

The pleasant conversation increased and decreased in volume as the pair thundered passed the open door of the observatory’s study, leaving a fair number of dumbfounded and laughing guard ponies in their wake. The princesses just looked out the door in surprise from where they stood. Twilight’s ear flicked.

“Was that… Handy?” She asked. Celestia looked down at her curiously.

“Yes I believe it was, I had an… Interesting conversation with him before Discord interrupted. Twilight…” She asked. Twilight looked up. “Who’s Aine?” Celestia asked smiling. Twilight flattened her ears and looked away.

“Uhhh…” She began, tapping her hoof awkwardly on the floor.

--=--

Handy dragged Tanismore unceremoniously back to the barracks by his tail. He was unconscious and Handy’s hammer had made a good show for itself this night. His cloak was bundled under his other arm with his helmet. He made it into the barracks and caught one of the guards who was about to go to sleep, it was the one he had relieved on the first night. He stopped him.

“Hey.” He said. “Change of shift, you’re back on night duty.” He said tiredly.

“What?” The guard griffon replied. “No I’m not.” He protested. Handy raised an imperious eyebrow, without looking he reached over to the chalkboard rota beside the doorway, wiped out his own and the guard’s pretentious name, Gryphonicus Adondis Shadowsunder, replacing it with Handy’s own and putting the guard’s name, Gryphonicus Adondis Shadowsunder, in his former place. Handy gave him a look, daring him to object. The griffon’s beak was agape, but then he closed it and sighed in defeat before walking off. Handy dumped Tanismore beside his cot as he sat down on his own. Fuming silently for a while.

’Two more days, Handy, just, two. You have the day off tomorrow, go into town, see the sights, scare the bejeesus out of some ponies, you’ll feel right as rain in no time.’ He said, rubbing his eyes, dreading waking up in the morning with another Godawful unexplained headache. He could no longer blame the guy sleeping above him, as he had long since learned his lesson and now there was that goat… Dragon… Unicorn… Dualicorn? THING that just fucked up his favourite cloak. He liked that cloak, it was best cloak, he sighed looking down at the pink bundle. You see, now he would have to burn it… Nah, He could just dye it again, sure it might ruin it but it was an awesome cloak and it had served him well. It deserved a second chance, he unfolded it to look at the design on its back one last ti-

A large red heart and flower designs graced the back of the cloak where his sigil once lay, outlined in white frilly cloth.

There were no words to express the internal scream of fury that rocked his entire being that night.

--=--

“Really?”

“Really.”

“But I-“

“Look it’ll be fine.”

“Are you sure?”

“You’ve been in that armour for a week straight and you stink.”

“Oh I’m sorry, was I the only one in the makeshift sauna that was the negotiations? We all stink Joachim.”

“Still, this will be fine, I’ll be with Thunderstorm all day and we’ll have plenty of protection, the rest of the knights have the day off, go have some fun.”

“Define fun? This is Equestria and I am Handy.” He pointed out, Joachim raised a claw and opened his mouth to speak, then looked up and closed his beak.

“Point. Look, just relax, you have been in an evil mood lately, and you gave Tanismore a concussion.”

“Don’t act like he didn’t have it coming.”

“He did, claw he did, but still, for a lot of reasons. We could’ve done without that little incident waking half the castle.”

“It certainly made me feel better about my night and I’ll have you know it was only a quarter.”

“Just go out and relax.” Johan said, exasperated. “For all our sakes, I’d rather not have you glowering over my shoulder on the flight home.”

“But I’ll be wearing my happy face then.”

“Your happy face is a terrifying mask of steel.” Joachim pointed out, Handy beamed at him, the bird rolled his eyes. He left the room as Handy fixed his double buttoned jacket over his dress shirt. He affixed his hammer to his belt and swung his shield over his back, hooked into a clip that allowed an easy detachment on the black leather belt he wore across his torso. He harrumphed, disliking being this far from ‘safe territory’ in anything but his heavy armour, he had, despite Joachim’s insistence, worn his mail under his outfit, it was an uncomfortable fit but he pulled it off without making it too obvious.

Bewilderingly, his cloak was saved from its date with the bonfire of hatred, having faded back to its normal black and white over time. Although the colours were now reversed, Handy wasn’t sure how he felt about that, as if he didn’t stick out enough already. He silently cursed magic users and their shenanigans as he affixed it about him. He had to tighten the clasps and heft the hem of the cloak into tiny clips in its underside, now that he was out of his armour the cloak dragged terribly on the ground and it’d be ruined had he done nought about it. He’d commission another one, might as well have more than one, he could certainly afford it.

He patted the pack bag carried at his side, with its precious cargo of vital fluid. He did have rather a lot of money, so he had purchased several paper bonds recognised by the Royal Treasury of Gethrenia, as regulated by the Central Toll of Greycoast, whatever that was. He couldn’t very well go throwing about changeling coinage in Canterlot, and if he had brought griffon coinage, he’d probably be ripped off at the exchange rate and he sure as hell wasn’t getting it exchanged for local currency. So, after having made some enquires with Ivorybeak before he left he had bought the bonds, about three hundred bits worth which he could easily afford. The bonds were recognised in Equestria whose local and national treasuries also dealt with the central Toll of Greycoast so at least he could rely on a semi-formal exchange rate for his bonds when he actually bought something. Who knows, maybe Canterlot has some interesting bric-a-brac shops in its dingier streets, like Dublin does.

Sighing he made his way out of the castle, several of the guards looked expectantly as they heard him approach, he saw looks of disappointment on their faces. ’Fuckers can get their own pink cloaks, dicks.’ When they weren’t making disappointed expressions they were looking curiously, having never seen the human without his helm. He had his hood up so it was still heavily shadowed, if any of the ponies were going to get a good look at him, they’d have to be really obvious about it and none of them felt like getting a chewing out from their superiors for such lack of professionalism, that was just fine with the human.

He stopped as he passed by a certain guard pony doing his rounds on the grounds, he carried a spear in the crook of his forehoof, Handy recognised that stern expression, hello again White Boy. Handy gave a sly smirk, raised two fingers of his left hand to his forehead and gave the Pegasus a quick, dismissive salute, the pony glared at him as he passed. Handy felt naked being out in public without his full armour on, his cloak and mail being small comfort, once he passed out of the castle and into Canterlot proper that sensation became all the more apparent as he elicited more stares from the gentlefolk of the city and its urbane yet less well-off classes.

He shifted uncomfortably, walking slowly through the busy streets, avoiding the carriages and wagons passing to and fro on their respective businesses. The ponies generally parted to give him way and then whispering furiously to one another when he had passed. You know, he had thought they were all stuck up nobles, but no, most of the ponies were indeed relatively wealthy to some degree but the stuck up nature applied to everyone as he had learned walking into a bakery and purchasing a hot bagel, not caring for the dismissive attitude the baker gave him. He had grunted and was rewarded when the baker broke character for a moment and flinched.

Honestly he was at a loss for what to do with himself. Get out of the castle? Check. Get away from the griffons? Check, although he wasn’t sure about leaving Johan alone, but he was with the other king so he could forget about his duties for once. Aaaaand scared the bejeesus out of some ponies? Handy turned to look across the street, a pair of ponies, filly and colt, teens if he could gauge pony ages by looking, were standing at a corner staring at him. He smiled and they suddenly found somewhere else they’d rather be with priceless expressions. Check and check. Now he was bored.

Idly he stopped by a book store, the Wilted Quill judging by the sign and decided to enter. The bookmare nearly had a heart attack when the human entered, he calmed her with his best reassuring tone and dignified airs. He was, afterall, only browsing to pass the time. He had a look through the shelves, there did not seem to be any organization by genre. Rather, books were stuffed into shelves haphazardly with piles on the floor, the place smelled musty as any proper book store should. Handy smiled, it reminded him of some of the hole in the wall book stores he had drudged through manys a night back home during his own studies, filled with second hand well worn copies of old edition text books he purchased because he was too cheap to buy the newer, barely improved editions at full price. Those were surprisingly good nights and he had made good finds.

Idly he wiled away an hour among the shelves, the mare relaxing slightly over time to return to her own book and cup of tea. Pony literature was a hodgepodge affair, a lot of texts and treatises on everything from advanced astronomy to the proper way to pat down grass seeds according to various earth pony traditions. Most of those did not catch his eyes apart from a small book on Equestrian criminal law and jurisprudence, he only half realised he picked it up by some old training kicking in from his university days when he caught himself. He chuckled lightly at his own foolishness and thought about replacing the book. Nah, he missed having something to read, even if it was something as dry as pony law.

He decided to try to find any fiction, he was disappointed to learn that pony fantasy stories were generally… surprisingly mundane. That’s probably what happened when you already live in a world that was a fantasy buffet anyway, a fair number of the ones he found had a consistent theme, magic creature X, usually a pony goes to world Y which has no magic, shenanigans Z ensue. He bought one of them on sheer ironic principle given his situation. He came across one series of books around a central character, Daring Do. There were rather a lot of books about this character’s adventures and he was reminded an awful lot about those penny dreadful, happy go lucky adventure stories he had read in primary school. Reading the blurb of one he discovered it was actually more akin to pony Harry Potter, if Harry Potter was Indiana Jones, despite the titular character being a pegasus and not a unicorn.

…

Hang on a tic that actually sounded pretty fucking awesome. He read the first few pages, it wasn’t too exciting but there was plenty of blood and thunder undercurrents he usually enjoyed in his love affair with bad schlock fiction. It was no Warhammer but clearly it had plenty of cheese. It’d do for now until he found something better, he made a mental note to check book stores in Skymount when he got back. He turned and approached the counter, the elderly looking mare visibly shrank under him but he tried to give her a reassuring smile, remembering to cover his teeth. When that didn’t work he let go and simply placed the books on the counter and requested a price before handing over one bond-note for an exchange of quite a bit of bits. The books were placed in a bag and he thanked the mare for her assistance. He turned to look at the door as a little bell rang, signalling another customer.

An extremely haggard looking mare stood there, muddy hooves, ruined mane, wide, wild looking eyes and a ragged coat, she looked at Handy disbelievingly. Handy swore he remembered her from somewhere but he couldn’t quite place where. Her mane was brown and her coat was red.

Crimson, one might say.

Chapter 15 - The Colour of Silence

“Y-” The pony coughed and took in several deep breaths. “You!” She said at last, venom dripping from the word. Handy stood there looking at the mare for some time.

’Red… Red… Red… Where do I know a red pony from?’ His mind tried to pin the mare down, she seemed awfully familiar but he couldn’t quite place where he knew her from. Either way she seemed to know him. Which wasn’t surprising honestly. He shook his head and peered closer. The mare’s eyes where bloodshot to complement her extremely worn appearance, gears turned in his head. “Hmmm…” He said. “Nope.” He decided. “Too generic, don’t think I recall thee miss…?”

The pony’s eyes bulged at that, one eye blinking before the other. Twitching. “Y-you… Don’t… Not even after…” The pony slowly walked forward, almost stumbling and pawed weakly at the hem of Handy’s cloak, as if trying to grab it, she looked like she could barely stand. “C-Crimson… S-Shade… You… RUINED IT…!” She said, voice breaking on the last two words as she struggled to stay on her hooves. Handy looked down quizzically at her.

“Erm… Ruined what? I am sorry madam but I do not recall ever meeting thee…” He said, the mare tried to speak, only succeeding in opening and closing her mouth like a stupefied fish and shaking with what could only be frustration. Handy rubbed his forehead, nope, not today, he didn’t feel like dealing with a crazy equine this close to going home to Skymount. He turned to the bamboozled storemare who was clearly trying to understand what this was about. “My apologies noble madam, I shalt remove myself from thy store, I know not what this unsightly disruption is but it appears I am the cause, excuse me.” He said with a quick nod of the head as he walked out of the store.

“H-hey!” Crimson said as she twisted to turn after the human, misplacing a hoof and faceplanting herself, groaning as she got back up. “I’m not… Done with you!”

“But I am more than done with thee, milady Crimson.” Handy said over his shoulder as he turned down the street, something was niggling at the back of his head about the pony, but honestly? Fuck it, he just wanted to go somewhere else to find something else to do. It wasn’t even noon yet so there’s no chance at whiling away the day at the tavern, letting him rest, take a drink and read one of the books he bought.

“I will NOT be denied!” He heard the trot of hooves behind him. “I did not just run to Gethrenia and back just… Just so you can IGNORE me!” She protested. Handy turned his head to regard her over his shoulder, an eyebrow raised.

“What in the nine hells where thee doing going to Gethrenia and back for? Is that why thou art such a mess?” Handy asked, still walking. They were causing ponies to regard them as they passed, which to be fair is something Handy was more than a little used to.

“You!”

“Me?”

“Yes!” She said, groaning with the effort, he heard the mare stumble before regaining her stride, he turned back to face front again, great, so a pony ran to Gethrenia after him… For some reason. “I’ve been following you!”

“Follow-Have thee been stalking me!?” Handy said, turning around.

“It is not stalking!”

“Thou hast followed me across a country and back! One does not do that without cause!” ’Honestly, who stalks a vampire? Hey, see that guy over there, who could turn on us at any minute and drain us of our life blood? Let’s follow him around! Sounds like a good idea, right?’

“I have cause!”

“What possible cause could thee have to follow me around?”

“Because I am bringing you back home with me if it’s the last thing I do!” She shouted, stomping a hoof to the ground for emphasis. Handy just stared, the most stupid look on his face. Several of the ponies in the street paused to regard the situation, Handy sighed, the mare stared at him angrily, as if she did not hear what she just said.

“My apologies, milady Crimson, I am simply not interested right now. Please desist with thy persistence, it shalt not end as you wish it.” He said simply as he turned to walk on.

“What? No! Stop!” She shouted. Handy rubbed his forehead as he went along, turning this way and that hoping the pony would just collapse and leave him in peace. Honestly, what the hell. He heard the flutter of wings and looked up. He saw nothing but he had the sneaking suspicion he knew what it was, the pegasi rarely flew in the skies above the capital city, meaning it was probably a guard. Which meant that he was being tailed. He rolled his eyes, not as if he could call them out on it but damn, couldn’t you ponies be a bit more subtle? The pony was still shouting at him as he walked along, more than once she tried tugging on his cloak to stop him but failing miserably, he sincerely considered just turning around and booting the pony in the face. Except, you know, her being a woman and all. She had grasped the hem of his cloak in her muzzle and planted all four hooves on the ground. He just pulled her along, the pony clearly too weak to prove more than a mere nuisance to him. Physically at least.

“Sh’op! I mhfn ihhf!”

“Juuuust keep walking.”

“Shh’ooop!”

“She’ll let go eventually.” He said under his breath, he heard the tell tale sparks of magic, he looked over his shoulder, the pony was trying to summon magic to aid in overcoming him but clearly could not manage anything. Honestly it was pathetic to look at.

“Is there a problem here?” Handy stopped as he regarded the owner of the voice, he stood before a pair of gold cloaks, royal milita of canterlot. The pair of ponies lacked the helmets of the royal guards of the palace, wearing a gorget of gold and some light mail hauberks over their torsos and necks, their signature gold coloured cloaks covering their backs. Both of them carried short spears with bill hooks. Well, short for humans that was. The stark white, red maned mare with the teal-green eyes had what looked like a wax seal on her gorget with a long inscripted piece of paper fluttering from it on the breeze, Handy interpreted that as meaning she was the more senior of the two.

“Ah yes, officer.” Handy began, the two militia ponies glared up at him. Ohhhh, intimidating, Handy was clearly shaking in his boots! Handy gripped his cloak and pulled, Crimson gasped as it was ripped from her mouth. “I pray your assistance, this mare has been harassing me all morning.” He said, if he couldn’t take care of the little nag himself, he might as well get her in trouble. The young looking stallion looked between the two before turning to the human.

“What did you do to her?” He accused. Racist.

“I didst nothing!”

“Stop lying!” Crimson shouted. Handy turned and glared at her.

“Madam, I have never seen thee before in my life.” He lied, a niggling memory playing at the back of his head.

“Yes you did! How could you forget that night!”

“Night?” The militia mare enquired.

“I have seen a lot of nights, milady, could thee be a tad more specific?”

“Ohohoho you know what I am talking about!” Crimson pointed accusingly at the human, seemingly oblivious to the pair of law enforcers standing right beside them at the street corner.

“Ma’am, I really do not have the time to be dealing with a stalker.”

“Stalker?” The young stallion said, sharing a confused glance with his superior.

“I am not stalking!”

“Then what would thee call it!?”

“Getting back what’s mine!”

“I have nothing of thine!”

“YOU are mine!”

“Wh-what?” The guardpony stuttered, her subordinate snickering.

“Thou hast crossed a country twice in folly! I am not thine! Desist!”

“No! Not when I am this close!”

Handy turned to the goldcloaks. “Pray, please detain this madmare, I refuse to suffer this indignity further.” Handy said, eyeing the rooftops as inconspicuously as he could.

“I… Don’t think this is a matter for the guard…” The guard mare said, the most confused look on her face. Handy glared down at her.

“I knew the guards of Equestria were incompetent but to just ignore harassment? Inconceivable, thou shouldst be ashamed!” He said truthfully before storming off, the guardmare scowled after him.

“H-hey! Get back here!” The red pony shouted as she trotted after him.

The guards looked as they went on before the sergeant let out a breath. “They don’t pay us enough for this.” Her subordinate laughed.

--=--

Red. A fluttering cloak, a kind stallion, the desert’s merciless heat.

’Left’ He thought. Ignoring the pony flinging profanity at him. The crowds grew thin and the streets dirtier and more nondescript.

Red. A hot sun, the gleam of a minotaur’s axe, a bloody mist.

’Right’ He thought again, checking the rooftops, good. It seems he has lost them. He was confident he had lost his tail quite a while ago, but it didn’t hurt to be safe.

Red. A bloody mouth, the gleam of silver, the green of a living thunderstorm.

’This’ll do.’ He said, opening the door to a dingy looking tavern, there was nobody here, the tender was asleep at the counter, dead to the world and not even the shrieking of the pony flailing at his back woke him. He reached behind the counter and lifted a key.

Red. A princess’ study, a tattered cloak in his hands, a golden clasp.

’Now.’ He thought, gritting his teeth in anger. He had walked up the stairs to the rooms above, having dumped a number of bits on the counter next to the head of the sleeping barstallion. He reached the door, number three as it was written on the key. The tavern was deserted, and none of the other keys were taken, he couldn’t ask for a more perfect location.

“Are you even-eep!” He had opened the door and rounded on the exhausted Mare as she crested the last few steps. He grabbed her by the forelegs and hefted her into the room, closing the door with his foot. He clamped his hand over her muzzle and pressed her against the wall.

“You are a God damn idiot.” He hissed, the terrified mare struggled weakly, mewling something, eyes wide with shock and fear. “Look at you! In that state did you think you were in any position to take me on? After what I did on the train? Really?!” He glared into the eyes of the red mare. It had honestly taken him a few minutes to recall where he had seen the mare before and when he did his blood boiled inside of him, this was the witch from the train, the pony from Pawstown.

And here she was, in Canterlot, chasing after him. He supposed it was fortuitous she made the unforgivably stupid mistake of trying to accost him while she was as exhausted as she was. But he couldn’t do anything about it, not there, not on the streets, he had so much he wanted to ask her, especially after the little ‘gift’ Geoffrey had ever so kindly left him in his will by way of him stumbling across it. First things first however, he had to make sure she didn’t scream, so he elected to put the fear of God into the pony.

“You have only a few options that don’t result in you dying horribly.” He warned, baring his teeth, the pony struggled more, her horn flickering with light as she tried to summon the last reserves of her magic. It was clearly not enough. He pressed his left arm harder on her chest, she grunted in pain. He was disgusted with himself, but his anger refused to let go of him. This mare saw fit to attack him with a fucking elemental and an army of ghosts, he wanted to know why, he had to know. The princesses he understood as mistaken as they were, that however? That warranted some investigation. ’Either way, I’m getting fed today.’

The pony whimpered, but he did not soften his expression. “I could just kill you here, and now, for the trouble you caused me after I saved your life in the Badlands, you ungrateful whelp. Or I can throw you to the guards, I am sure Celestia is just dying to find out what Astucieux refers to…” He said, the look in the pony’s eyes told him he had her right where he wanted her. “…Or you can just tell me everything and I’ll let you live. I can even guarantee your safety if you’d like, but first…” He squeezed tighter still, loosening his hand ever so slightly off of her mouth. “Why are you following me?” He hissed.

Crimson took a few sharp breathes, he could tell she was contemplating screaming. He narrowed his eyes in warning and she thought better of it. “I-I… I came to capture you… F-for my m-mistress.” She began, her breathing ragged, exhausted as she was and terrified by the human who had her pinned against the wall, legs dangling in the air beneath her.

“What mistress?” Handy said, glancing about the room. No windows? Good. This tavern looked cheap, good to see it lived up to its first impression. The pony continued to struggle weakly, but the fight was out of her.

“I-I… Can’t say… I don’t know her real name…”

“Then what name do you know her by?”

“J-just… Mistress… It’s all I ever knew her by…”

“Not good enough, you’re disappointing me here.”

“W-wait she l-leads the council!”

“The council? What council?”

“The council of eight…”

“And what does this council do?”

“R-research… Research into lost arts… lost knowledge…”

“And what does this have to do with me?” He said, she squirmed and looked away. “I am talking to you, Crimson, it’s in your best interests to answer me.”

“I-I… I was in charge of a –a project… An experiment, it would have i-increased my mistress’ power… Let her… Let her do what she pleased… Extort the kingdoms…”

“What project?” He demanded.

“W-we’ve been able to pierce the veil… See things… Like looking through heavy fog.” She turned her head over to look at another corner, anywhere but the human’s eyes. “We saw things… Humans like you… Discussing a weapon… they appeared terrified, some were crying.”

“A weapon…” Handy mused. “You saw other humans? Where? How!?” He demanded

“Through scrying! I-its old magic… Ancient, doesn’t always work.”

“And this weapon… What was it?”

“We couldn’t make out everything they said… They just said it was capable of wiping out cities.” She said. Handy blinked. She couldn’t be referring to… “I was the best… At scrying s-she charged me with getting the weapon, to reach through the veil.” Handy felt his blood rising in anger once more, he did not like where this was going. The pony looked down. “I only knew it was a weapon, large, metal and moved at great speed.”

“So I… researched. I prepared a circle. It was costly…” Her eyes seemed to harden for a moment, as if recalling a bitter memory. “But it was ready and I performed the ritual… I pierced the veil, reached with my magic and… I don’t know.”

“You don’t know what?”

“I-I don’t know! It was a confusing, whirlwind of energy! I c-couldn’t see, couldn’t focus, only grasp blindly. There was just too much… Too much, I nearly collapsed from the strain. That’s when I found it.” She said, looking back at Handy. “A metal shape, traveling at great speed, there was a lot of energy in it.” No. “I reached and… Tried to extend my magic…” No way. “I grabbed it… I could feel my magic flooding into it.” The sudden storm on the drive home… “And pulled.” She looked fearfully into his eyes and he merely glared back.

Honestly, Handy did not know what he felt. Angry? Confused? Indignant? Amused? The pony tried to steal a nuke, she apparently concocted a great ritual and went through tremendous effort only to pull him through instead. It’s hard to know what to feel about being mistaken for a nuke, Complimented? Insulted? He honestly did not know. What he did know was that he now had the pony ultimately responsible for everything, his arrival here, his exposure to pain, suffering, madness and vampirism. Every ache, every bruise, every burning moment of impotent fury at the universe, every sting of fear, every curse, every fault and failing since he got here, everything. And here she was, right at his hands, in an empty tavern, in a nameless street, all alone and not a damn thing she could do about it. He should probably just snap her neck on sheer principle alone, he was now certainly angry enough to do it.

Slowly, he gripped the pony’s neck with one hand, moving the other into place at the side of her head. The mare struggled fruitlessly as she saw the hatred burning in his eyes. But he stopped, just as she was losing her breath. He gripped her forelegs and lowered her to the ground. ”You. Have caused me. Quite a lot of trouble.” His voice eerily calm as he admonished Crimson. He squatted down to look the pony at her eye level, she was now breathing quite heavily, her pupils pinpricks. “Why?” He asked, the hair on Crimson’s withers rose as a chill went down her spine.

“W-what? I-I told you! B-because Mistress-”

”Yes, her. Why?” He asked, he could tell the pony was not following him, so he asked again. ”Why did you seek to please her? To summon me to this land by accident.” He placed his hand on her head, forcing her to look him in the eye. She shook.

“… I have… Always served her.” She said, her eyes turned away even though her head could not. “Ever since I was a child, it’s… It’s what I’ve always did…”

”Why?” He pressed. She had gone through rather a lot of trouble to find him again after the train, one would think she’d just go and report back to her mistress about her failure. She did not, perhaps he could use that…

“It’s all I’ve ever known, I research, I help her, I serve her and the council…” Her eyes were darting and he could see her brow furrowing. Evidently this is one question she had not asked herself too often before. “I failed her and could not go back to her empty hoofed…”

”Why?”

“S-she… She would have been disappointed…” She seemed to flinch, her ear flicked. Interesting.

“Disappointed?” Handy allowed his voice to change to one of curiosity, sensing he now had the pony in a position more malleable to his intent. She noticed.

“She… Doesn’t like being disappointed.” She coughed. “I… Tried finding you, although I did not know where you were. What you were at the time… Mistress grew displeased, wasting resources she had said, deciding to move on and not bother looking for you anymore… It’s why she paid the minotaur…”

“Resources?” He asked, she looked down again, studying the floor.

“…Me.” She said after a moment. Suddenly it clicked, always served her, never knowing her name, all she’s ever known in life, feared displeasing her more than dying due to exposure? Little miss sunshine here was a slave. Granted one with a ludicrous amount of power, what do you have to do to someone like that to command such unending fear and respect? Surely she could just as easily bugger off and do her own thing? He’d have to ask her about that… Later. Right now he was going to exploit this.

“And you sought to chase me across a country and back, so that you wouldn’t disappoint her?”

“I… Used a lot of the power she gave me in order to capture you… I wasted it, I wasted so much. She would have been so angry…” She looked to be on the verge of tears. Well, here we go then.

“I have good news for thee then, my dear.” Handy said, the pony looked up slowly. “I will not kill you.” He said, ruffling her mane. She looked confused, then concerned.

“But… I can’t go to the guards…”

“No.” Handy admitted, “You probably don’t want to be at the princesses’ tender mercies” he said. “Seeing as it took four griffon kings to protect me from them, I’d rather doubt you’d fare nearly as well.” She flinched as if she was struck. Ah, the effects little lies can have. “But I can let you go, back to your mistress. Would you like that?” He said the pony shuffled. She moved as if to nod but stopped mid motion, uncertainty in her eyes. “I can offer you a choice, you know.” He added.

Crimson looked up. “It’ll cost you, of course. But not too much, and I swear I’ll never lay a hand on you so long as I live, so help me God, unlike her...” She studied his face, as if trying to find some hint of a trap. His expression was stony and unmoving. “You’ll be safe, and far away from your mistress, far away from Celestia.”

“I… I don’t know…” She said, eyes darting.

“You can always say no. And I’ll walk out this door, right now, and leave you in peace. So you can return to your mistress…” Why not twist the knife some more? He knew he had her. She clenched her teeth, thinking hard.

“W-whats the price?” She asked.

’Excellent.’ He smiled. “A pint is all I ask for, and I’ll forgive you for all the wrongs you have done me and take you under my protection. Is that fair?” He asked, she looked at him quizzically.

“You… You want me to give you a drink?” She said, the expression on her face was priceless.

“Yes.” He said with sincerity. “It’s all I ask, and I’ll give you safe asylum. If that’s too much…”

“N-no!” She said, then caught herself. “I-I mean… If that’s all you… You’re not lying are you?”

“No.”

“You can keep me safe?”

“Yes.”

“…Ok.” She said at length. “I don’t have the bits right now, but I’ll get you a pint, just give me an hour, I might-”

“I’m sorry Crimson, but I was not referring to alcohol.” He said, she looked up.

“But then… What were you…?” She asked. His smile revealed his teeth.

“Something a tad more vital.” She looked at him in utter terror. “I did say it would cost you. This is all I ask in return for everything I offer you. You can always leave.” She just stared at his fangs for a long moment, glancing at the door a number of times. He had long since removed his hand from her head. He did actually mean it, he would let her leave if she chose to. But he had offered her the next best thing to freedom and her choices were… what? A dungeon? Her mistress’ loving care? The streets? She had no life out there. So confident was he that she’d accept that he had not felt the slightest temptation to go back on his word.

“Will it… Hurt?”

“At first.” Handy said. “You’ll probably feel very tired after it.” She looked at the door for a long time. He could afford to be patient, he wasn’t needed anywhere right now. She turned back and looked at him slowly.

“Okay…” she said, shivering. He smiled and steadied her by placing his hands on her shoulders. Slowly, he moved to her neck. Scraping his fangs across her flesh beneath her fur to find the arteries, he froze as the razor sharp tips of his fangs felt the pulse of blood course in the artery beneath them. Crimson eyed him in terror, her heart rate quickening. She eventually locked her eyes on the wall across from her and tried to brace herself as best she could. She placed a hoof against his shoulder to steady herself, her other curling against her chest defensively. The suspense was agonizing, and she briefly wondered if she had made a wise decision.

He hesitated for a few seconds more before he bit down. Crimson jolted in shock and gasped at the sudden, piercing pain, feeling her blood leaving her in short, quick movements as she shuddered. The pain gave way to a… strange feeling, leaving her dizzy, light-headed, and with a pleasant buzz that drowned out the world around her. Everything felt quiet, calm… No, that was not right. She couldn’t find the correct words, but she was no longer aware of the physical world around her. She was drifting away now, slowly consumed in the unfamiliar warmth of the feeling and every care and fear she ever had vanished within it. It wasn’t long until the lack of blood and light-headedness conspired with her exhaustion, however, and she was unconscious before the end of it.

--=--

He felt alive.

He had to force himself not to tear down the steps at blazing speed, the entire world felt like it was made of cardboard and he was a walking ball of fire. He reached the bottom of the steps and could immediately make out the detail of every aspect of the tavern. The unique dents upon the tankard half a room away, the exact number of silken strands making up the spider webs of the rafter above his head, the detail of each hair upon the sleeping bartender’s head.

Blithering incompetent. He had decided to come downstairs and sneak past the resting stallion, it’s not as if he had any trouble with it, the way he was now, he hardly made a sound unless he consciously chose to. His worries and stresses of the past week forgotten in a fog of euphoria and energy while the rest of world stood out so clearly, so intensely. He could hear everything too. He heard the breaths of the resting Crimson in the rooms above, he heard the beating of the stallion’s heart, he heard the movements of the pests and insects that infested the underside of the building, the birds resting upon its roof, the shouting couple next door, the clatter of hooves on nearby streets… It was exhilarating.

It did however, feel different. When he had taken from the Thestral he felt stronger, faster, like he did now, only more so. Now… Now everything just seemed to make sense, like he intrinsically understood the purpose of everything. Sound wasn’t a consequence, it was a choice, to be perceptive is to merely breathe and to know is the natural state of affairs. It was like he could see something and see beyond it, the strands of existence hanging upon the air, the ethereal strings of Heaven which permeated everything. Such strange sights…

He had went to fetch a platter, filled several bowls full of water and taken a number of rolls of bread along with some butter. He figured Crimson was going to need a lot of fluids when she awoke, and she was beyond exhausted even before he got a hold of her, hence the food. So he had decided to leave her with a gift. He returned from the abysmally small kitchen and walked past the stallion. He paused, looking at the grey earth pony. ’He’s already asleep…’ He thought. ’I could always… No. Don’t be greedy, the less the better.’

He continued up to the room and left the platter of water and food on the small wooden table across from the bed. Crimson snored and he scowled at her. He considered the possibility she might go back on the deal he had made with her, he did have the mail gloves he wore under his gauntlets with him, and they were in his pack. The mail would stop her magic if he tied it around her horn. He considered it… Then decided against it. He left the key to the room by the water along with a short note, informing her that he’d drop by later that night to check on her, informing her she’d be better off taking the food and water here and getting some more rest.

He left the tavern noiselessly. Before he came to Canterlot he had come across a mysterious book he could not read and questions he could not answer. Now he had answers and someone who could read the book. It was a most fortunate day, even the little hiccup he had with the Goldcloaks would prove serendipitous. Sure, he had been caught off guard and feared his plan to interrogate Crimson in private would be derailed, thereby deciding to see if he could get her arrested to at least save his own hide. No, instead it resulted in an embarrassing misunderstanding… But one that would throw off all suspicion. While the Equestrian authorities would titter away, he’d steal from them the third party to the Equestrian Express incident right from under their noses.

All in all, a productive Tuesday. Wouldn’t one say?

--=--

Sparks had lost the human.

How in the hell did he lose the human?

He had been careful to tail the human since he left the castle grounds, ordered to stay out of sight so that he wouldn’t suspect anything. So he did, keeping to the rooftops and always observing the human from behind. There were a few close calls when he feared the human may have heard him, but he was sure that the knight had not. He hadn’t worn his armour, fearing the human would hear him if he moved in the metal but kept his cloak affixed tightly about his neck, so that he wouldn’t be stopped and questioned by his comrades.

It had been an interesting series of events to be sure, the human seemed to have just been travelling through the city exploring, stopping at one shop or another until he disappeared within the book store for over an hour. He had taken flight then, just to make sure the human didn’t slip his notice by exiting the store through the back. Thankfully he needn't have bothered, a rather unfortunate looking red pony had entered the store, moments before the human left it with that same pony chasing after him.

It was amusing, the human seemed quite annoyed at the mystery pony and tried to lose her, eventually culminating in being stopped by a pair of Goldcloaks who eventually let them be on their way. The Pegasus had descended to interrogate the young sergeant about what the human and the red pony had been discussing. What he heard was… not much use but he could see why the Goldcloaks didn’t interfere. It was after that he found great difficulty in locating the human again, once or twice he thought he spotted him again but that ended up being a pair of white headed griffons. He cursed himself and scoured the sector of the city he knew the human had to be in.

It had been over half an hour since he last saw the bastard, Luna had charged the goldcloaks specifically to keep an eye on him and the buck rested with him to do just that, he did not want to go back to the captain and tell him ‘Sorry sir, you know that big biped with the stark white cloak you told me to follow? Kiiiiinda lost him.’ He stomped his hoof and snorted in frustration.

“Horseapples!” He swore.

“Language.”

Sparks froze. Turning he came face to face with the Human’s belt at eye level and looked up. The smug bastard had just exited the tobacconist behind them and was currently filling a wooden pipe. “Pray, got a light?” He asked, looking down at the furious Pegasus. How in the hell did he do that? There was no pony in that shop when he landed here five minutes ago, and here he was, walking out of it and he didn’t hear anything. Nothing that big and awkward had any business sneaking up on any pony. Sparks jumped back a step.

“Watch it, human!” He warned, although it was merely tough talk, he left his weapons at the barracks, doesn’t mean he wasn’t confident he could take the human if it came down to it however.

“Oh yes, indeed I have. Good show old boy, I almost didn’t notice thee following me around earlier.” He responded, sucking on the end of the pipe. “Hmm… Probably should go back in and ask if they have any lucifers.” Sparks was indignant.

“You… Arrogant…”

“Yes, quite.” Handy sighed as he emptied the pipe back into his small tobacconist packet, he figured what the hell? He’s broken every other rule he had since he got here, might as well go for broke. “Look, their highnesses trust me about as far as they can throw me, I get that. Just a word of advice, if thou wishes to follow me, don’t use a Pegasus when most in Canterlot don’t fly unless they’re outside the city limits, makes it really obvious you were a guard.” Sparks just stamped his hoof again, thoroughly humiliated by this human.

“The red mare…” Sparks began, “Where is she? What did you do with her?”

“The nuisance who wouldn’t leave me in peace? Lost her.” Handy lied. “Crowds are wonderfully useful for that.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“I lost THEE didst I not?” He said, Sparks wanted to say something to that but he couldn’t find the words. The human reached up and tugged the top of his hood by way of a salute.

“Top of the morning to thee,” He said turning around and walking off. “Do me a kindness, if thee see that red mare again, do not point her in my direction, I do so ever desire a peaceful remainder of my day.” Sparks glared at the human as he walked up the street and had to remind himself his mission was to follow and observe, not kick the flank of the smug bastard. Oh how he wished it was however. He took to the air once more and alighted on the rooftops.

--=--

Handy was overjoyed to find his buzz from that little bite was lasting quite a while. He figured he probably burned through his last vampiric high so fast because of the sheer amount of violence he suffered during the fight on the train. Either that or that particular Thestral really doesn’t take enough care to himself, hell if he knew, this was still all new to him.

He took another draft of the coffee as he turned a page. It was sweet, like everything else in Equestria, he didn’t mind, he normally took sugar with his coffee anyway. The caselaw he was currently reading the judgement of was particularly amusing, the judge’s statement emphasised the farcical nature of the crime in question and argued fiercely against his peers that it was a felony and not indeed a misdemeanour. Handy had no idea what a poison joke was but it sounded hilarious if this was the result. Well, hilarious to a certain degree, court humour is not to everyone’s tastes as you normally have to shift through a mountain of dry dribble before you get the golden nuggets of nonsense. Pony law proved no different except in the case of it occurring much more frequently.

He was sitting at a table outside of a busy coffee shop and the ponies were kind enough to give him a wide berth, leaving a noticeable ring of empty tables in the courtyard at the front of the store. And he heard everything. It took him nearly a full hour just to learn how to tune out the ambient noise of the busy street but he still heard a lot. It’s not as if everything was loud per se, it was hard to describe, he could hear a pony whispering thirty feet away as well as he could hear the same pony as if it were sitting beside him talking normally. It added up however and he spent some time just sitting holding his head, willing the noise to quieten down before he killed someone. It was… better now, but he had to keep focusing in order to prevent it overwhelming him.

There a filly bugging her mom to buy her that new bow for her hair, there an old cobbler giving out to his apprentice, there the waitress whispering fearfully to her friend, wagons, carts, carriages, birds, mice, rats, insects, the clash of dishes, running water, the flutter of feathers and the clatter of hooves, so many hooves… He put his cup down and turned the page. Reading helped him focus, in future he was going to be careful when taking from unicorns, this was… Difficult to adjust to.

That’s roughly when he heard it, the confident trot of hooves increasing in volume, drawing closer to him, an arrogant huff, smelled like blue bells, who in the hell washes themselves so they smell like bluebells? “You there.” God. Damnit. Handy kept looking down at his book, the pony couldn’t possibly be referring to him. He noticed more people were walking slower, as if curious. That was never a good thing. “I say, you there, ruffian.” Nope, he can’t possibly be referring to him. “Human!” Sigh.

Handy looked up from his coffee and book. He was now looking at a surprisingly big unicorn. White fur, golden blonde mane immaculately trimmed and styled, one of those stupid faux jacket collars ponies wore around their necks instead of, you know, actual jackets. “Can I be of service, good sir?” Handy asked, polite as he was able. The pony somehow managed to look down at him even though, seated as Handy was, they were eye level.

“Yes, excellent, an appropriate attitude to adopt.” The stallion began. “I just wanted to see for myself the barbarians who so uncouthly caused my enforced absence from the sides of my beloved aunties, I was hoping to find the griffon kings but I suppose a peasant such as yourself would do.”

’Aaaaaand move over Featherbrain, motherfucker here just jacked your spot on the shitlist in five seconds. God damn that has to be a record.’ Handy gave a light smile as he leaned back on the chair. “Is that so?” Handy asked.

Sparks, meanwhile was watching the scene unfold from the rooftop across from the coffee shop, his jaw agape. Prince Blueblood was approaching the human, worse, he was talking to him, the prince’s life was in danger! He had no sense to leave well enough alone and his lack of tact, empathy or general likability was well known throughout Canterlot. And there he was, undoubtedly antagonizing the human, he was going to get himself killed! He had to warn somepony!

…

Well… He did, but he didn’t want to. It would be good to see the prince get what’s coming to him. He waited ten seconds before eventually sighing and taking flight.

--=--

Meanwhile, tea time was delicious. Luna was greatly enjoying the caramel flavour of her cup as she and her sister reclined in the gazebo of the eastern garden. Celestia was absorbed in the book she had recommended her sister as they both took a much needed break from matters of state. Their guards were present of course but generally kept their distance and remained unobtrusive, several of Luna’s Thestrals were on duty. Normally this would be an honour, but guarding the night princess on the increasingly rare occasion she was up during the day time was usually regarded as a punishment, something the princess exploited ruthlessly when guards had failed in some spectacular manner.

As such, Stellar Eclipse and Sergeant Glitter Oak had been on this duty for over a month now. As had Star Shimmer and Sergeant Onyx, Shimmer muttered something about ‘turning diurnal’ if this kept up before quickly getting a hoof to the back of the head by her sergeant. Eclipse preferred to look on the bright side, pun not intended, at least this meant they had the night off. They four of them had taken to playing poker at the ‘Trough after days such as this and Eclipse was eager to fleece her comrades. She had a lot to make up for since that last disastrous hand that resulted in Glitter Oak taking the pot.

It was normally quiet, the Princess didn’t have much to do during day court, even if this week was abnormally busy, for some reason they were not allowed to be in the negotiation rooms with her when the griffons were present. Of course it was obvious as to why, the human was staying in the castle and more than once she found herself following after the creature. It was dangerous and stupid, she knew, but the temptation was… Quite persuasive. She had managed to avoid getting caught, but the human had noticed her on more than one occasion and she had to back off. So now here she was, listening to Glitter Oak blather on about armour itch, a common problem many guards ponies had to deal with but noooo, his was just so much more intolerable and he had to express it. Honestly she wished they were closer to the princess so she could overhear him and give him a reprimand. For her peace if nothing else.

She stood there, tuning out his droning, shifting the weight of the spear in her foreleg, when the goldcloak landed in the garden. “Out of my way, I need to speak to the princesses!” The young Pegasus said. Well that got everpony’s attention. Two of the dawn guards were holding the goldcloak back before Luna’s voice cut across the garden.

“All is well!” The princess said, getting up from her reclining position. Celestia looked up as she left the gazebo. “Let the young militia-stallion through.” She ordered, the day guards backed off and the Goldcloak trotted over and bowed before the princess. Eclipse and the other night guards drew closer to their princess as she approached the Pegasus. Celestia walked up behind her sister. “What doth thee have to report?” Luna beckoned.

“Sister?” Celestia asked, Luna gave her a light smile before turning back to the goldcloak.

“Forgive me, princess, I followed the human as I was ordered.” Sparks said, Celestia raised an eyebrow at her sister, Luna ignored her, she’d explain later. “He has not done anything so far, but I fear he might well do so!” He said.

“And thee didst not think to remain watching him in order to prevent such violence?” Luna demanded, looking sternly down at the stallion.

“F-forgive me, highness! B-but it is who the human may do violence to that required your urgent notification, I informed some nearby guards to watch the situation…”

“Who?” Celestia asked. “Who is the human going to attack?”

“It does not matter! We must act at once, each one of our citizens is precious and we will not allow the filthy human’s foul appendages harm a hair upon their manes!”The last words were emphasised by an increasing use of the royal Canterlot voice as Luna cracked a flagstone with a stomping hoof, the guards winced, particularly the Thestrals with their sensitive hearing.

“Its… Prince Blueblood…” Sparks said, fearing the princess.

There was a pregnant pause as silence fell on the garden, broken only by the chirp of a bluebird flittering between the tree tops. Luna turned to her sister. “Perchance we could… Overlook this one? Just this once?” Celestia looked at her sister.

“Tempting though it is to leave him to his fate, he is our nephew, so we can’t just leave him to the human’s mercy.” She said with a sigh.

“…Why not?” Luna asked. Celestia began to speak, but closed her mouth, thinking hard for a minute.

“Just… Luna, please.” Celstia put a hoof to her forehead. “Soldier, why would the prince be in danger from the human?” She asked.

“Because he’s talking to him.” Sparks answered.

’Yeah, that’d do it.’ Eclipse thought to herself. Celestia seemed to groan internally.

“Alright… And I was so enjoying this little break.” She said at last with a breath.

“Worry not sister, I will take care of this.” Luna said, Celestia looked at her. That was a tempting offer. She really did not want to be anywhere near Blueblood today, forget about the human.

“Are you sure?” Celestia said. Luna nodded firmly and Celestia relaxed. “Thank you, but I want you to take some of my day guards with you however.” Celestia added, Eclipse and the others winced, knowing full well that was directed at them. Luna eyed her guards for a second before assenting to her sister’s suggestion.

“Come!” She shouted. “We hath a villain to stop!”

“The human or Blueblood?” Glitter Oak murmured the question to Onyx, who shrugged. The princess took flight and her night guards with her, along with the four day guards and the goldcloak, leaving Celestia alone in the garden. She looked around, seeing she was alone and smiled, cantering back to the gazebo, she levitated a small hole in the floor open and lifted out a bottle of the icy, secret compartment. She poured the wine for herself and went back to reading the book Luna had given her. Or rather, the terribly trashy, romance, penny dreadful she was actually reading behind the book.

A part of her felt guilty, just a tad, it really should be her taking care of the issue. However, she then reminded herself that Luna had complained about not being able to do much when she had to get up during the day and realised this was a blueblood problem and promptly decided she didn’t give two ponyfeathers as she sipped at her drink.

--=--

’Sixty eight…. Sixty two…’

“-And I could not BELIEVE the hassle I got when the guards refused me access to the palace gardens, really now, ME! Because beasts like you and those dreadfully filthy griffons were there giving my dearest aunties so much unwarranted grief and denying them the privilege of basking their favourite nephew in their attention.”

’Fifty nine… Fifty eight… Gotta hand it to you, you’re ascending the list pretty fast.’ Handy had been sitting there, being talked at by the pony he had since learned was Prince Blueblood, apparently a nephew of the princesses which was currently the only thing preventing him from being reduced to a red smear on the ground. That and the wicked looking spears of the Goldcloaks watching them from across the street. He felt his eye twitch. It’s not that he had not dealt with pretentious nobles before, they were all over the place in Skymount. But even the worst of them, the foppiest of fops, generally had some use to them or some other redeeming qualities even if they did not have a function at court. Even those who had nothing to them other than the fact they were related to some backwater noble could be redeemed, Klipwing for example. This prince however… Handy was having a hard time thinking what the princesses used him for.

’He is a prince, perhaps he’s served in the military? An officer perhaps?’ Handy mused, he looked the prince over. ’No those hooves are far too well maintained, he’s never had to do any face work in his life, nothing about his stance suggests any discipline. Perhaps he’s just a jumped up functionary with delusions of grandeur?’ He thought to himself as the ponce before him droned on about the various terrors and hardships of his life caused by the griffons and, because he happened to be closer at the time, Handy.

“-You cannot comprehend the distress it causes me to be so far removed from my beloved petunias for so long!”

’Forty seven… And the fuck is a petunia?’ Handy was not the best at botany. He twitched, he heard a lot of flapping wings in the distance. ’Pleeeaaassse let that be griffons…’ He begged as he listened on, only one pair of wings was big enough to be taken as a griffon, the rest were noticeably smaller, he sighed. ’Great… Ponies…’ He listened to more of the prince’s complaints, barely ever getting a word in edgewise, not that he’d have anything civil to say to the good prince. ’Perhaps he’s only being kept around until the Princesses can marry him off for a political gain, would explain why they bother to keep him around if he’s always like this. Can’t imagine any prospective heiress would ever be tempted to-‘

He took a sip of his coffee and stopped. It had gone cold and tasted foul, he was going to just keep Blueblood on number forty seven of his list, but his horseshit had cost him a rather enjoyable coffee. ’Congrats, fuckwit, you are now ten places higher on the list.’ His hand shook as he placed the cup back on the table, his rage was now barely contained.

“-I can only imagine what you were like as a child, whatever whore’s son-”

The chair flew back so hard it shattered as it collided with the iron guardrail as the table cracked under the force of the hammer blow. Handy had stood up and drew his hammer so fast the stallion before him barely had time to get another word out before he was shocked into silence. The human was shaking with undisguised rage and his face was an ugly mask of hatred and malice boring into the prince’s soul.

“STOP!” A voice thundered above them, it was Handy’s first experience of the royal Canterlot voice at full volume. The ground shook with the force of the voice as ponies prostrated themselves before their princess and Prince Blueblood fell to his flanks in confusion at the sudden change of circumstances, so lost he was in his self-absorbed rant. Handy didn’t even flinch, glaring murder into Blueblood’s eyes.

There was a thud as the princess landed, magical force exaggerating the impact. Handy was aware of over nine pegasi in the air above him, likely with weapons trained on him, not counting the two goldcloaks on the ground and the five more he could hear galloping down a nearby street. He sniffed, some of those guards were familiar to him, he was certain but he did not look up, so intent was he on murdering this son of a bitch. He had taken a step forward and he saw the now terrified Blueblood squirm backwards.

“A-auntie!”

”Don’t you dare.” Handy warned. ”Don’t you dare try to get out of this. Take responsibility for your words.” His voice was as ice. ”If you cannot speak as a man should then at least die like one.”

“HUMAN, YOU WILL DESIST!” The princess warned, still shouting as she came nearer. The force of the voice was enough to make Handy give pause and consider his footing should he actually bring his hammer down on this wretch’s skull. He did not care for the guards above and around him, he could deal with them, but this one, this one had to die.

“I will do no such thing.” Handy responded, not even looking at the princess in that same calm tone. ”I demand his life in recompense.” He heard more wings, larger ones, approaching in the distance. Several of the guards turned to address the new threat. The goldcloak reinforcements arrived, several of them had long crossbows with large trigger guards, and others had large spear hafts with an odd long bell shape at their tips, with sharp iron protrusions attached to their underside. Almost like bayon-

“W-wait!” The prince backed up, managing to get back to his feet but bumping against the guard rail, trapping him. The princess used her magic to try to restrain Handy, his cloak snapped wildly as blinding light flashed from beneath his jacket. Luna blinked in surprise, Handy glared at her for a moment before turning back to the Stallion.

“Whats going on here!?” A griffon demanded, in the red black and gold of the high king’s colours, Sir Gleamingedge if he recalled correctly. The griffons remained in the air with their swords and halberds drawn, there was now a rather disconcerting number of armed spectators to the drama unfolding on the ground.

“THIS IS NO CONCERN OF THINE!” Luna said. Pointing an accusing hoof at the griffons, the goldcloaks with the ranged weaponry changed the direction of their aim from Handy to the airborne targets. More of the griffons arrived. Including the kings Goldtooth and Thunderstorm alongside their guards. Something was niggling at the back of Handy’s mind, begging him to stop this madness before he does something everyone will regret. He was already too far gone, however.

“Handy!” Oh look, a wild Joachim appeared. Handy didn’t even bother to look up. The prince was whimpering like a foal who scuffed his knee as the human loomed over him, doubtless, as he took another step closer, the guards would already be upon him had they not the griffon’s intervention to worry about. “Handy, whatever he did, it’s not worth it!” The bird tried to reason, he didn’t speak, the arm holding his hammer shook with his sincere desire to brain the pony before him. It raised slightly as he slowly overcame whatever part of him was inhibiting his anger.

A crack of thunder shattered the tension and suddenly a silence befell the courtyard louder than any tempest.

Chapter 16 - Canterlot's Close

The ball of metal spun violently in the air mere inches from his chest, green alchemical smog warring with the magical, navy blue aura suspending the ball as it fought to be freed from the magic. The goldcloaks stood stock still, the small ranged squadron slowly turned their heads to look at the nervous looking new recruit with the smoking shootstick who was now shaking like a leaf.

The Equestrian shootstick was a common enough ranged weapon among the militia guards of the kingdom. It was generally used by scouts and pegasi whose speed and flight advantage put the weapon to its greatest use. It was however, an unreliable weapon in the long run, whose accuracy could not always be counted on, occasionally even exploding, so it was almost always used in order to ward off pursuers if it did not kill them before being utilised as a spear. Its alchemical charge was good for one shot and reloading the shot after discharge was always something of a hassle, explaining why the guard still primarily relied on crossbows for its ranged warfare. It was, however, moderately effective at piercing armour and thus still saw employment.

The alchemical discharge gave the shots a fiercer kick then black-powder normally would, so despite not having as great a range as other contemporary firearms, it proved more effective in terms of stopping power. Which is currently why Handy is incredibly fortunate to have worn his shield upon his back that day had he not turned around and had Luna not intervened. Despite the shield’s magical resistance, the magic was not in the shot itself but rather what propelled it, the metal ball would have pierced his shield and dug through the mail of his back, lodging in his flesh. Now, the mare in question was no more than twelve feet away when her stick discharged, at that range such a shot was likely to kill most opponents, and Handy had, at the moment of firing whirled around, presenting his front to the shot. Had he been faster he would have been able to avoid the shot entirely, as it was, he was not.

He stared directly at the trembling young mare with the smoking shootstick. Blueblood had wasted no time and scarpered, the Human whirled as he heard the movement of hooves and saw the prince run over to Luna and hid behind her. Disgraceful. The look on Luna’s face was… pensive, which Handy would have found odd had he not been staring absolute murder at the cowering lordling behind her. The entire scene had shocked all of them, an Equestrian shootstick had not been fired in anger in centuries. Well, not against visiting dignitaries anyway. Had it not been for the princess’ quick actions in pausing the deadly shot in midair, it would currently be lodged in Handy’s heart and a knight of Gethrenia would have been slain in the middle of Canterlot right before his king. Which would have led to interesting times. Granted, had Handy got his way and smeared princely pony brains across the flagstones of the street the result would have been the same, just a different kingdom that fired the first shot as it were. Once he was back in Gethrenia, Handy was going to be having words with his king about exactly why his knights and guards did not automatically react to a shot being fired, it was not going to be a fun conversation as the human was incredulous about the display in hindsight, expecting much better from the griffon military.

Of course, such high political and tactical concerns were not foremost in the mind of a one, Private Small Wind. The young earth pony mare currently holding said trembling shootstick. She had, like her comrades, recently passed muster and earned the right to don the gold. Being of a minor noble house she could not join the ranks of the royal guard by birth and being inexperienced she could not join it on merit. So to the goldcloaks she was sheparded, it was not a bad position, indeed, she was quite proud to have made the cut and earned the right to protect the capital and to supplement the garrisons and forts throughout the kingdom. She had been so excited, scoring so highly on her marksmareship she was assigned as shooter, having an innate feel for wind direction, trajectory and weight while utilising the weapon.

All the training however, did not prepare for an actual situation where she might be called upon to use the weapon. Certainly not on her first day. She had been patrolling with her partner when they heard the royal Canterlot voice and made to find the source of the commotion, anything requiring the princesses to shout without it being an official occasion was probably not good. So came they did and they stumbled across the princess of the night yelling at the human. They had all heard the stories of course, how it fought entire squadrons of Night Guard, how it killed dragons, how it was used as a puppet of a disgruntled prince to usurp a kingdom. Here it was however, in the middle of Canterlot, about to kill a pony and caring not a damn for it being surrounded by royal guards and being commanded by a princess to stop, indeed, even talking back to her!

There are only so many ways you can react to that sight, so they had levelled their weapons and took aim. It was only then did the reality of duty sink in for her. She might actually have to kill somepony! Sure, it was to save a life, and the person was not actually a pony but it still made the bile rise in her stomach and doubt crossed her mind, she did not know what she’d do if it really came down to it. When the griffons showed up and drew their weapons, her comrades changed targets, the griffon’s presented a greater threat to the Princess after all, the human was grounded and focused elsewhere.

Small Wind, however, had not shifted her aim, her training warring with her doubt and fear and she froze there, shootstick still levelled at the human. Her aim was wavering as she struggled to keep from shaking, it was when the human looked to be raising his hammer once more after briefly flashing as the princess tried to use magic on him that she squeezed. She did not mean to, but it was an unconscious reaction, she squeezed the activation rune as she had been trained and the small iron hammer rushed forth, colliding with the trigger and igniting the alchemical charge, the small infernal explosion jettisoned her shot in a furious eruption of green tinged smoke.

She would later be given a verbal reprimand and would be forced to explain her actions retroactively as being taken in order to protect the prince. Now, however, she stood there, shaking, as her comrades regarded her with something between shock and awe, for it had been her in the end, who’d reacted first while everyone else choked. She had almost killed the human and whenever she got over the shock of that, it was going to earn her a lot of drinks. Not that that would do anything to make her forget the sheer loathing in the human’s eyes when he had stared at her.

“-Princess, we demand an explanation for this outrage!”

She blinked. She was so lost in her thoughts she almost didn’t notice when people started talking once more. The princess looked unsure of herself as she lowered the shot she had stopped midair to the ground, the human looked somewhat less enraged, having blinked in surprise when he realised how close the bullet had been to killing him.

“WE… WE CAME TO PREVENT THE HUMAN FROM DOING ANYTHING HARMFUL TO OUR SUBJECTS.” Her royal Canterlot voice had toned down considerably

“I would never attack your subjects.” The human retorted. “Thy nephew on the other hand came spoiling for a fight.”

“I was not! Auntie, you can’t let this barbarian near me!”

“Stop hiding behind a skirt and take responsibility for thy actions!” Handy was still enraged, but the surprise of nearly dying from a bullet of all things, only to be spared by the night princess, shook him out of the blood mist.

“Handy, what is this about?” King Johan had asked, walking several steps closer to his knight.

“This excuse for high blood had insulted thee and thy peers and went on to extol slander upon mine own mother.”

“AS BAD AS THAT MAY BE IT CANNOT POSSIBLY BE JUSTIFICATION FOR SUCH VIOLENCE!”

“So in Equestria it’s considered honourable to insult one’s mother? I suppose dead women make for easy targets…” Handy snapped at the princess, who visibly winced. “I demand satisfaction, this… Thing, hath tarnished my honour and that of my kin.” Handy began, he then thought, reason having returned to him and, for once, in agreement with his fury. He considered the griffon kings to his left and Joachim in particular, who would all very much want to defuse this situation without the resolution he desired. “He hast uttered vile slander against mine lord and his peers and offended the honour and integrity of the Kingdom of Griffonia entire!”

The High King himself had landed mere moments before and caught the human’s rant, he elected to merely sit and oversee the proceedings without speaking, his face an unreadable mask. Goldtooth and Thunderstorm glanced nervously back at the high king. “There can be no other resolution, I challenge Prince Blueblood of Equestria to a duel of honour!” Handy shouted, pointing his hammer head at the cowering equine. He then turned and glared a challenge at Johan, knowing full well the young king would try to reason a way out of this. “You will not deny me this, Joachim.”

“Johan! Control your vassal!” Goldtooth hissed at his peer. Joachim, for his part, didn’t. A curious expression crossing the aquiline’s face, he tapped the side of his beak contemplatively, a small smile tugging at his face.

“Your highness, what say you for these accusations?” Joachim said at length, catching the princess by surprise.

“WH-What?” She stuttered.

“I asked what you had to say, as the good prince’s liegelady surely it is your ultimate responsibility to account for his actions should he fail to do so himself.” He said, the other two kings looked at Joachim as if he were mad. Aleksy raised an imperious eyebrow.

“I… I will not allow him to come to harm!” She had said. Looking back at Blueblood with a stern expression. She had gritted her teeth but did not show it, if anything said prince was in a prime position to be bucked into next week but that simply would not do to occur. Not right now at the least.

“So Equestria stands by the harsh words that have fallen from his muzzle? Whats more, you have nearly killed a royal knight of Gethrenia in cold blood for merely defending his honour, do you honestly expect us to just overlook this?” Joachim challenged, a stony expression having been adopted by his features. Handy found himself looking at his king in surprise, he was taking his side in this?

’I… Honestly did not expect that… What game are you playing Joachim?’ He thought to himself. Joachim pressed on as the princess seemed to struggle to come up with the words.

“Disappointing.” Joachim said, shaking his head. “I expected better of you, Princess.”

“Wait! We do not condone the actions of our… Nephew.” She almost didn’t spit out that last word. Almost.

“Then what is to be done? A knight’s honour and that of our kingdoms has been tarnished, a challenge has been issued and the prince is too much of a coward to accept!”

“We do not know if the human’s words are true!” The princess grasped desperately at straws.

“T-that’s right! He’s lying!” Blueblood shot, hopefully. There was a mumbling from behind the two.

“Actually he kinda did…” Said the red maned goldcloak behind the princess, one of the ones that had been charged by Sparks to watch the human. The avians’ hearing picked it out loud and clear despite the distance however.

“Ah, see, even your own soldiers bore witness to the scandal!” Joachim said, raising a claw for emphasis. The princess glared, not at the goldcloak who had spoken out of turn, but at Blueblood. “Its is only right and just that Sir Handy press his right to defend his honour, I’m afraid there’s simply no other way princess…” Joachim seemed to look sad, the other kings were clenching their jaws to bite back curses at their brother king. Aleksy still had not intervened and his looming presence only served to increase the tension further. Joachim, however, was oblivious to the large bird’s presence, unlike his fellow kings and pressed on.

“Wait…” Luna interjected. Obviously frustrated. She turned to regard the human, whose furious expression was at once alien and unsettlingly familiar. “We… Request only that you do not kill him.” Luna said, looking the human in the eye.

“What!?” Blueblood shot back to his feet. “Auntie you can’t possibly-” His expression was cut short by the withering glare she gave her nephew.

“Do not… Thou can’t be serious!” Handy started. Luna had recomposed herself and spoke firmly and with conviction.

“We will allow this duel of honour, but it will not be one to the death.” She said, turning to the Griffon king. “Will that suffice?”

“It’s a start.” Joachim said, smiling once more. “How will you make up the slack however? Surely you can’t expect us to merely restrain ourselves with no incentive other then you deeply care for this princeling.” He said. It was not a secret to anyone that the princesses despised the young prince, except to the good prince himself of course so Luna, predictably, reacted rather badly and one could see the fury in her face. She bit back her tongue however, it clearly was not easy, the situation had turned on her rather dramatically.

“We will pay a tribute in reparation for offense laid.” Luna said in a controlled voice. “But we will not let the duel commence just yet… The prince needs some time to… prepare.” She said at last. The prince looked up at his aunt in disbelief. Joachim smiled then turned to Goldtooth.

“Henry old boy…” Johan the king began. “Are you not hosting an open tournament two months hence?” He asked, King Goldtooth blinked at Joachim.

“I am yes, the fall festival always has a tournament.”

“I believe I shall attend, Handy here shall be with me. Princess, will that be enough time for your nephew to prepare? The tournament would be an excellent place to settle the matter of honour in the duelling rings.” He said. Handy glared disbelievingly at Joachim. The princess regarded him cooly before responding.

“This will suffice…” She said at length.

“Baron Handy…” Joachim began. The human turned to his king and prepared to say something rather regrettable before Joachim cut him off, knowing full well the proud knight would object to the circumstances. “-As Royal Swordbearer, I fully expect you to win this duel, you understand.”

’Swordbearer?’ Handy blinked. ’When the hell-’

“Will the circumstances suffice?” He asked, it took Handy a few seconds to respond. Joachim had, in the space of a few words, guaranteed Handy the fight he wanted, denied him the chance for blood, extorted a kingdom, prevented a war and bribed him with a new title and whatever that may entail. That… Took talent. Handy shook as he tried to bite back his rage, seeing the logic behind Joachim’s actions but not particularly caring for it, he really, really wanted that pony’s blood on his hands.

“…For now.” He said at length, reason finally triumphing in the end, however regrettably. Joachim beamed and clapped his claws together.

“Well! Then I suppose we can now put this rather ugly spectacle behind us all, can’t we highness?” He said, looking back at the princess who was glaring openly at Blueblood.

“… We suppose.” She said through gritted teeth.

“Excellent.” Joachim said turning around and, for the first time, noticed High King Aleksander standing there behind him, a wide smile on his face. Joachim suddenly realised just how much of a risk he had taken and wondered just how far the high king planned on letting him go. “Uhhh…” He said softly before turning back and collecting his human. “Come along Sir Handy.” He said as the human stooped to pick up his fallen book, the human regarded the griffon coldly.

“You know you owe me more then just a fancy new title, right?” He said softly, the bird nodded.

“I know, but what was I to do? Let you kill a prince here in the heart of Equestria? Come now Handy.”

“Whatever.” He said as the griffon contingent began to leave the square. Handy paused and looked up at the armed night guards, suddenly remembering why they seemed so familiar, one in particular. He glared a challenge up at them before departing. Luna waited for them to disappear down the street before dismissing the guards and the goldcloaks to their duties. She rounded, slowly on prince Blueblood. Her eyes began to glow with brilliant white energy and her voice, while barely above a whisper, thundered with ethereal force that shook the air and caused the cobblestone street to vibrate.

“Castle. Now.” She said with barely contained fury.

--=--

“A most impressive gambit, young Blackwing.” Aleksy had said over dinner with the king. “For a moment there I feared I would have to intervene, but you proved yourself quite capable of handling the situation, and at a profit too!” He said.

“Thank you, your majesty.” Joachim said, not entirely sure how to feel about being praised. Goldtooth and Thunderstorm had mixed opinions on the affair but did not voice dissent to their liege lord’s pleasure at the outcome.

“Anything to ruffle the feathers of those princesses is generally a good thing, I wouldn’t want to be in that stripling’s hooves and not just because he has to fight that shadow of yours!” Goldtooth added. “The princesses are bound to be tearing into him right now.”

“I still say it was rather foolish, you should have restrained your vassal and end it then and there instead of taking the risk.” Thunderstorm said, the king of the Hebridean Isles downed his goblet. “And on that matter.” He said seriously. “Is it true what they say about him?”

“What?” Joachim asked.

“What they say about him, it wasn’t appropriate to ask before.”

“Please be more specific.” Joachim said, although he had an inkling of what he might be asking about.

“You know exactly what I am referring to.” Thunderstorm said. “Is it true that he is actually female?” He asked. Joachim’s mind stopped.

“W…What?” He said before bursting into laughter. “Is that what they’re saying now?” The joviality was infectious. “Wh-where did that even come from?”

“Well…” Goldtooth piped up. “He was seen wearing pink the other night and a giant heart on his back, we know it’s a common enough among ponies to not be unusual but we had figured the human was more akin to us in temperament and attitude so…”

“And he is almost never seen without that cloak of his.” Aleksy added. Joachim just roared with laughter.

“Come off it, you’ve seen his beard, he shaves often enough for some unfathomable reason, true, but female he is not.” Joachim said, silently thankful they had not enquired as to his vampirism. The laughing griffons eventually calmed down and moved on to other topics. He had grimaced at the thought. Handy was a friend and he owed him, quite literally everything and trusted him near implicitly, but he had almost caused a war. The first true, proper war between kingdoms in All-Maker knows how long, he had never seen quite that look before on the human’s features. It was not quite mindless rage, no, it was something colder, deeper, intelligent and cruel. He dreaded ever being given that look himself and suppressed a shiver at the thought. He did not, however, know whether it was because he was a human or a vampire and was not sure if he would like the answer.

The last thing he wanted to do was to think of his friend as a monster.

--=--

Prior to the meeting with Crimson Shade later, the day had passed by largely without further incident. He spent it with his fellow Gethrenian knights, a precaution insisted by the other kings, fearing Handy would cause more trouble. Honestly, Handy felt he could do with the company although more than once he found himself having to consciously increase the amount of noise he was making, the griffons kept thinking they had lost him, having not heard any noise from him and occasionally losing sight when all he had done was stop to browse at a window.

’Have to remember that.’ He thought, the blood high kept going throughout most of the day but he could feel it ebbing and its effects lessening. He wasn’t sure if it was because of the amount he took or blood highs in general just didn’t last long, his only frame of reference being the fight on the train and when he had drained Geoffrey. The fight he had the high beaten out of him, the one he had gotten from Geoffrey had been more muted in its effects, it increased his strength tremendously but he had few opportunities to test the rest of the effects griffon blood gave him. He did notice the absence of enhanced speed, although the enhanced perception and euphoria remained.

It also made him tremendously aggressive for the rest of the two weeks the high lasted, the strength lasting a mere day or two after the drain. It was one of the reasons he largely kept to his room and socialised as little as possible. He did that normally but during that time he was especially reclusive, taking his meals in his room. Now with unicorn blood he had the opposite problem, he was having trouble being noticed at all and had to consciously make noise and otherwise not appear to be a literal spectre.

He had ate with his comrades and generally whiled away the day in Canterlot, Handy admired the airships that had passed overhead, some of which were clearly military, most of the rest appeared commercial in nature, guild house sigils evident on their sides. Godfrey remarked disparagingly that he didn’t understand why trade was not simply done with airships instead of trains, until someone pointed out the sheer tonnage alone would cause the skies to be choked with the dirigibles in order to get the same volume of trade to pass between the kingdoms, Concordia being the only kingdom that specialised in that kind of trading, which is understandable giving the sheer upkeep involved in maintaining trains and tracks in the vast, undulating dunes of the desert kingdom. The only other being Henosis far to the north beyond the Crystal Empire and even then usually only to transport trade goods too precious to risk robbery on the ground.

All of this was quite fascinating of course, didn’t stop Handy from getting bored and wandering off after some time however. He kept getting caught up with again, which he supposed only made sense considering what happened earlier. It was after dinner, which consisted of expensive salad which, while certainly delicious, was hardly what the knights were used to or even desired, that Handy got approached with an interesting offer. He had made use of the public bathroom, being disappointed to find that ponies had yet to invent urinals, which only made sense given their awkward physiology and made his way back to the front door to meet up with his fellows before being stopped by a rather proper looking white unicorn.

He had noticed the unicorn, in the company of a grand looking mare with pink hair, eyeing his table throughout the dinner but had paid no mind. Everyone else in the restaurant had done much the same. “Excuse me, good sir.” He said. Handy’s eye twitched and his hand reached for his hammer under his cloak, if this was going to be yet another pompous unicorn taking liberties… “Perchance, would you be going to the griffon kingdom any time soon?” The magnificently moustachioed pony asked, fixing the monocle he wore.

“Aye.” Handy said cautiously. ’Do you see any OTHER humans traveling with a group of griffon knights?’ He knew the unicorn was merely being polite, but seriously, ask a stupid question…

“Ah excellent, allow me to introduce myself, I am Fancy Pants.”

’Oh God are you serious with that name?’ Handy fought VERY hard not to break out in a smile. “A pleasure to make thy acquaintance.” Handy said as he smiled, ’There, covered.’

“Oh I assure you the pleasure is all mine, Sir…”

“Handy.” He completed, enjoying a pleasant conversation for once.

“Sir Handy, of course. My apologies for stopping you but I didn’t feel it appropriate to interrupt your meal, but if you would ever be so kind, I have a proposition I would ask of you.” He said, Handy decided he liked the pony but was wary of what the proposition would be. He clearly seemed to be either nobility or very well connected by his bearing. His cutie mark was a trio of crowns, a common enough symbol back on Earth with old kingdoms, he didn’t understand the marks fully but he figured it meant he had something to do with the Royalty and as such was on his guard.

“I am not entirely sure I can guarantee I will be able to fulfil it, but I shalt indulge thee. What would thou request of me?” He said, Fancy smiled.

“I couldn’t help but overhear the commotion earlier. Nasty business, of course. Scandalous even, why I don’t think any sensible pony of good standing would have reacted any differently then you did, if only our dear princess was not put on the spot so, but alas, what can one do? Family and all you understand.”

’Someone’s clearly trying to get in my good books.’ Handy thought, suspicion growing. “A ghastly affair.” Handy agreed.

“But it was not that I wished to speak to you about, rather, it was the mention that you will be going to King Goldtooth’s tournament in the fall, am I correct?”

“Thou Art.”

“Ah, well, then I can explain my situation if you would be kind to hear me out. You see, I was fulfilling a commission for the son of an old friend, a personal matter you understand. However matters closer to home have compelled me to stay where I am, I would not be able to deliver the item to my friend.” He turned and smiled at the pink maned mare. “It needs to arrive before winter and I am afraid I won’t be able to be there in person to deliver it, and… It can’t really be left in the hooves of just anypony…”

Handy raised an eyebrow. Well now, what’s this then? “Thou had my attention but now thou hath my interest. What exactly art thou proposing good sir Fancy Pants?”

“I propose you take the item with you when you travel to the Kingdom of Firthingart. It needs to be delivered into the hooves of a Sir Whirl Wind, you’ll know him when you get there, he wouldn’t miss the tournament for the world. In return I will pay you handsomely for your… discretion.”

“What makes thee think thou can trust my discretion?” Handy asked, shady or not, there had to be other options then the incredibly obvious human to transport what was sounding very much like a very confidential transfer. Handy carefully checked over his shoulder, the guys were chatting at the door, there was a rather rough looking stallion in one corner, reading a pamphlet while smoking a pipe, the cook worked away, well within listening range. Whatever Fancy Pants was, he clearly owned this place. “Not that I do not appreciate it, but I hardly blend in.”

“Exactly.” Fancy Pants said. “A person of your… Stature, has to keep himself reserved, its expected. One would not think twice if they saw you being… evasive.” He said,

’Oh… Now see that just makes me wonder what’s actually in this package I’ll be delivering.’ “I believe I understand what thou art proposing, but it only makes me question the nature of the object thou wish for me to carry.”

“As expected.” Fancy said, his horn lit up and a small silver jewellery box was lifted out of the carrier bag the pink maned unicorn wore. The lid opened to reveal… A bejewled mess of light, thin silver chains that honestly looked like a bundle of metal. Pretty, probably, but he couldn’t imagine anyone wearing it, it just looked like a really nice gift one would buy their wife for their thirty year anniversary or something. Handy raised an eyebrow yet again. “It does not look like much, I understand. However its value is more than its material worth, I assure, I went through great difficulty in making this presentable. I can trust you, honourable knight, to do this?” He asked, his smile faltered and a sad look crossed his features. “Or am I mistaken?”

Handy was not sure what to think, on the one hand, it was a convenient request to fulfil, he was going to Firthingart anyway and this Whirl Wind character was supposed to be there. On the other hand, this pony’s insistence on him of all people to transport it only made him more suspicious, the complete innocuousness of the ‘package’ only made it seem moreso. This was a land of myth and magic, he knew rightly that the necklace… thing could be anything. Did he really want to take that risk? He rubbed his chin before looking back at the stallion.

“And what exactly doth thou propose to pay me for this? I suspect thou wish to avoid scrutiny, so I imagine my payment won’t be forthcoming immediately before my departure in the morrow.” Handy said.

“Perceptive, yes I won’t pay you right now. But you will receive the payment long before the fall. I will have the payment delivered to you in Skymount a week’s hence, I believe it might be to your liking.”

“I have a lot of properties in Skymount, I have a preference for which the payment is to be delivered to.” Handy checked around once more, the guys were occasionally looking in, wandering what was keeping him, the rest of the restaurant was empty besides the pony’s obvious employees. Once he was satisfied there were no government spies about to jump out at him he turned back to the stallion and narrowed his eyes. “I have farmland, Haywatch estates, there’s a certain barn that would make a good delivery.”

Fancy Pants seemed to smile and roll his eyes, at some unknown joke. “If you insist, I shall make the arrangements. I take it you will accept the proposition.”

“I see no harm in it.” He lied, he fully intended to have the jewellery checked out when he got back to Skymount, another thing his new pet mage could do for him. He accepted the jewellery box from Fancy Pants, putting it in his own pack on his side.

“A pleasure doing business with you, Sir Handy.” Fancy Pants extended a hoof, Handy had to bend slightly to shake it.

“Likewise, I am sure.”

--=--

There was a knock at the door, she shifted and pulled herself out from under the covers with a groan, she felt very weak. She opened the door to reveal the human standing there.

“Feeling better?” He asked. She looked up at him, unsure how to feel. She shrank back into the room, backing up against the bedframe, her horn lit up defensively. The human raised an eyebrow. “Really? You know I did say I’d never harm you.” He said, he looked over at the untouched water and bread. “Have you not eaten yet?”

She shook her head slowly, not entirely sure what to feel, the human terrified her before and truth be told she was still afraid of him, even though he promised to keep her safe from her mistress. It was an alien thought to her, to disobey and run away from her mistress’ service, but what choice did she have? She knew what would happen if she returned…

“You really, really should drink the water at the least.” He admonished. “You need the fluid, I didn’t take much but it’s better to be safe.”

“W-what do you want?” She asked, he looked at her quizzically.

“I did say I’d be back to check up on you, did you not read the note?” He said, she looked at the dresser, seeing the note lying there, embarrassed she shook her head again.

“I didn’t just wake you did I?” She nodded, he sighed. “Well, my bad I guess. Look, just eat the food and drink as much as you can, then get back to sleep. We’ll be leaving Equestria in the morning.”

“Where are we going?”

“Gethrenia, we’ll be traveling on the king’s chariot.”

“The king? W-won’t he ask-”

“The king owes me a favour, he won’t object.”

“What will I do when I get there?”

“Work, obviously. I did promise to keep you safe, but don’t expect to not earn your keep.” She seemed to relax slightly, as if he had just confirmed she would not meet some other horrible fate she was expecting.

“What work?”

“Research, largely, you’re good at that right? I have something someone of your talents would be useful for. Also I need a new overseer at one of my businesses.” He added.

“Business?”

“An investment actually, and because of the nature of the work, I need to ask you something.”

“I… Go ahead.”

“How do you feel about alchemy?”

--=--

“Stellar, come on!” Shimmer whined. The Shady Trough was dead that night, they were literally the only ponies there at the too big table. It had been a long day and they were all tired. Stellar Eclipse had just won another hoof and admonished Shimmer for giving out about it. Its her own fault for getting tipsy this early in the night anyway, well, late considering they’ve been up all day.

“So I take it we’re just going to forget about what happened to Bluey?” Onyx piped up, Glitter Oak chuckled.

“And I thought we got it bad, the look on Celestia’s face…” The sergeant said before taking another drink and frowning at his hoof of cards

“I was honestly surprised he didn’t catch fire.” Eclipse said. “I Call.”

“Kinda wished he actually did brain the ponce…” Shimmer mumbled, head on the table, staring absently into the distance. The others nodded. “Would give me an excuse to… Nibble.”

“Ah-ah!” Eclipse said, flicking Shimmer’s ear with her hoof. “Enough of that, it’s what got us into this mess in the first place, you want to be discharged!?”

“Oh come on! You’re all thinking it! He was in the castle all week!” Shimmer protested, rubbing her sore ear. “Sides you already got a good bite out of it.”

“Oh like you can talk.” Glitter Oak said. “You all at least got the kick, I got bit. Call.”

“Well how were we supposed to know we’d turn him?” Eclipse said.

“You mean you turned him.” Onyx said, having been silent most of the game. “You could’ve at least knocked him out or something but noooo.”

“Oh buck off, you know how that blood smelt.”

“I don’t think we should be discussing this so openly…” Shimmer said, suddenly looking around nervously. The barkeep could be trusted to keep his tongue to himself, but that was about the height of it. “You’ve heard ponies talking right? That we’re… out of control?”

“Hush, none of that.” Glitter said. “We get enough flak already.”

“But we turned the human! It’s supposed to be impossible!” She suddenly looked down. “And I’ve been getting looks…” Shimmer sniffled. “Fleet Hoof is starting to avoid me…” Eclipse put a hoof around her shoulder, trying to console her.

“There, there, come on it’ll be alright…” She looked pleadingly at the two stallions for support. Onyx cleared his throat.

“If you want I can have a word with him.”

“No don’t!” Shimmer pleaded. “He… Doesn’t know.”

“You sure?” Glitter asked. “You’re kind of obvious.” Shimmer blinked.

“I am?”

“I dunno.” Eclipse said. “He IS kind of oblivious a lot of the time.” She said as she smiled at her flustered friend.

“Its probably about time you actually talked to the bloody colt already.” Onyx admonished, “Before he gets the wrong idea. It’d probably mean more if you explained away the misconceptions yourself, probably would make a good way to sidle into the actual reason you wanted to talk to him.”

“B-but…” Shimmer stuttered. The group laughed good-naturedly.

“Hey don’t you have leave coming up?” Glitter asked, tapping his chin with a hoof. “I heard Fleet Hoof is going to be in Bridle Bay then, would be good for you two to get in the sun.”

“Oh ha ha.” Shimmer said, her expression turning sour. Eclipse turned back to her cards, contemplating. She had a week’s leave starting the very next day and had original planned to just lounge about home. However, she had a question on her mind, one that she didn’t have the opportunity to have answered. She grimaced, she should’ve died but he had thrown her back into the car rather than let her fall to the tracks, she wanted to know why.

She placed her hoof down at game’s end, to her misfortune Shimmer gleefully won the pot. She had decided then as the conversation turned to happier topics that she’d find out the answer, one way or another.

Author's Note

For thy reference on shootsticks

Interlude - Unprepared

Magic does not work the same everywhere.

Elder Wildwood learned that the hard way. They all did. The Greenwood tribes have had to deal with a lot during their time occupying these vast deciduous forests, taking care of it. The magic here was unsuitable to ponies, who could not intuitively control the growth of the plantlife nor sooth the hearts of the wildlife that made its dwelling here. It would not be commanded, but nor was it like the wild land of the blighted Everfree to the west where magic roamed as it wilt. Rather the magic of the Hartwoods was mischievous, recalcitrant, playful at times.

If Wildwood did not know any better he’d swear the forest was aware. It wasn’t of course, they all could have avoided so much heartache in the past if that were true. Still, there are times when he is up late at night, watching the fireflies float lazily over the waters, flitting between reeds and alighting upon eternally blossoming lilies. Resting and merely feeling the aetheric winds caress the lake, creating tiny disturbances across its sapphire blue surface, as if tiny invisible dancers were cavorting, he couldn’t help but wonder…

He shook his aged head, his antlers rattling with the various jewels and precious metals signifying age and various dignities he has been awarded through his life. He smiled, lying down upon the soft folds of his rug and reading a scroll upon the floor. He strained his vision and harrumphed, the great elk tapped his hoof softly on the floor three times. “If you’d be so kind…” He whispered. There was no response, he smiled. “Please.” A small sound, like that of rubber stretching before slowly changing and turning silent. Slowly a growth emerged from the floor, between the creases and folds in the wood and the scroll was held aloft on vibrant, green plant life that had grown upon the request. Elder Wild Wood muttered a thanks to nobody in particular, now leaning forward only slightly to read comfortably.

It was a letter from his dearest grandson, the young buck was always so restless. Reckless even, to this day he still disagreed with his fellow elders for choosing him as the Lord in Winter. Alas, it was deemed in the forest’s best interests, the last lord had disappeared in the spring and the hearthfire had gone out, which meant the worst. Without one, the ever fractious tribes would have no unifying voice and the forest’s magic would slowly loosen its bonds with his people, rejecting them. And then winter would come.

He looked up from the letter, it regaled a tale of some foolishness regarding his grandson’s latest escapades in the south, where the borders of their Hartwoods and Equestria met with the Black Isles’ enclave. That sounded like a debacle that he really could not care for, generally Hartwoods’ neighbours left them alone, the ponies generally did not interact with forests they didn’t have control over and the Griffons generally considered the forest to be a border of sorts and lumbered from their own woodlands. Most of the time anyway. There were occasions where they would trespass or poach and that led to all sorts of shenanigans, not that his own people weren’t guilty of border incidents themselves, which hopefully he could prevent this from becoming one if he acted quick enough. Had only the lad been any other stag…

He chuckled softly to himself, chiding his uncharitable demeanour. Had he not been much the same in his younger years? Such serious attitudes did not suit them, for what were they but the impertinent and invincible folly of youth personified? He’d have words with him later when he returned home, right now he had other concerns. He had word back from his friend in the west, the roads were too dangerous and he had too many eyes upon him, they could not afford to lose the crown when they had only just recently retrieved it. Instead a courier would be sent in his place. One who, hopefully, the eyes of their enemies had not alighted upon.

Wild Wood grunted as he got up, the growth receding back into the wooden floor as he made his way to the door. The wide portal opened as he approached it, granting him passage to the bridge outside. He stopped halfway across the oaken construction and gazed over the city around him. The tall and mighty arch trees stood firm and eternal, shifting almost imperceptibly to even his hart sight as the wood coursed with the lifeblood of the forest. Lights shone among the dark spires amidst the blue mists of the night, sparks of life and hope in the quiet of the dark, streaks of moonlight piercing the thick canopy, like silvered tears streaking through the veil of evening. He suppressed a shiver, it was a bit cold out, but he didn’t mind too much as he took to following the arcs of the bridges that linked trees to one another and the great spiralling stair cases to the lower levels where the markets, warehouses and stores were kept. Suspended as they were across great boardwalks that covered the ground below in total darkness, utilised by the deer to farm specific flora that could not grow under any other conditions.

A frown crossed his wizened features. Already the harvests were looking poor and the animals uncaring of their presence, it did not take long, he thought, for things to turn on them so radically. He hoped his grandson was up to the tasks ahead of him, he rubbed his forehead, the weight of his brow getting heavier as passed through the years. He turned to face west and his ears flicked. ‘I just hope he doesn’t do anything foolish.’

--=--

“I CANNOT BELIEVE THIS!”

The stallion shrank as the force of the voice shook the throne room violently. The guards tried their best to retain their composure, but there is only so much you can do when gale force winds batter your frame at such close proximity. Celestia used her voice much more rarely then her royal sister, but when she did…

“DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA WHAT YOU’VE DONE!? WHAT YOU COULD HAVE STARTED!?”

“B-b-b-b-But a-auntie Celestia!” He whined, he was on his belly in full supplication before the enraged diarch. “The brute c-could’ve killed me!”

“ANYPONY COULD KILL YOU, YOU DOLT!”

The Sun princess raged. She had never before directly insulted her nephew and it showed on the hurt and shock that graced his expression, but now was not the time for her majesty’s subtle graces and calm expression. Nopony had seen her this enraged so openly in centuries, it was not because she was never angry, she just preferred expressing her displeasure in other ways. Had Blueblood been any other family member, anypony else who had done this as their first great faux pas she’d merely adopt a cold expression and glare into the pony’s very soul, for all the world still calm as could be, but clearly displeased.

However, it was Blueblood. Somepony who had been getting under her skin since the moment the prince discovered he could order servants around. And now he had gone and done it, went off to find the griffon dignitaries in order to lambast them for her kicking him out of the castle for a week. A week! It’s not as if he didn’t have an estate, or a holiday home, or friends he could’ve visited… Well ok, maybe he didn’t have friends, but it’s not for lack of trying on her part to introduce him to ponies. She could’ve asked her protégé for help in that regard, but as fun as it is to foist things upon Twilight, she’d never forgive herself for making the elements put up with him.

In the end she supposed it was fortunate he had happened upon the human rather than one of the kings. At least the griffons could clearly keep their pet monster on something resembling a leash. Had Aleksander been the one to have been insulted so…

“And now…” She said, her voice calming to more reasonable levels, to everypony’s relief. She sighed. “And now we need to send reparations as a symbol of our kingdoms’ friendship and goodwill, as an apology for the offenses you laid.” She said rather pointedly. “A kiloshoe of silver.” For the reference of the audience, a kiloshoe is the equivalent of one tonne. Which seems rather a lot by human terms and truthfully it is, but Equestria is swimming in the stuff while Griffonia happened to be having a shortage at present. Even so, it is a noticeable hit to the royal budget for the year and not one Celestia enjoyed having to use on something that could so easily have been avoided.

Blueblood had never been so terrified in his life. First auntie Luna had laid into him with truly shocking vehemence and now Celestia, his favourite auntie was giving him a dressing down. “Prince Blueblood.” She began after some silence. “In your time here you have been harsh, apathetic and cruel to your fellow ponies.” Her serene, motherly tone had returned, but even as it did, it had no warmth for her nephew. “You have been selfish, indolent, vain, self-centred, deceitful, contemptuous, dull-”

“D-dull?”

“-Ignorant, shiftless, arrogant, clueless, unimaginative, miserly yet somehow still manage to squander your monthly stipend on pointless nonsense-”

“B-but my petunias…”

“Nopony cares! They don’t even cost that much! How you blew so much on… Blueblood. You have embarrassed Equestria in its entirety and myself and my sister personally…” She said after stopping herself. She still had a lot of pent up frustration and anger to unleash but had to remember he was family and it simply wouldn’t do to break his legs in four places. Each. At least… She couldn’t do it personally. “As such, I find it a suitable punishment that you will go to the Fall tourney in Firthingart. Amongst other things.” She said, knowing full well the prince had never had a hoof lifted in anger against him in his life.

“B-but-” He began. He had already protested the idea many times over to no avail, but there was always a slim glimmer of hope. Celestia held up a hoof for silence and with it, blotted out that thin ray of hope. His face fell.

“As such, I agree with Luna when she suggests you should be adequately prepared.” Celestia said, narrowing her eyes slightly. “We can’t have you losing afterall.”

“P-prepared? Y-you mean you’ll help?” Blueblood said, looking up. Daring to hope he might still come out of this with some of his dignity intact. Celestia smiled lightly.

“Of course I will. Bright Lance?” She said, turning. A grizzled, old looking, earth pony stallion emerged from the side of the throne room. His fur a dirty gold and his short cropped mane brown, fading to grey. A scar across his muzzle and clear blue eyes that studied Blueblood as he trotted over to bow before the princess.

“What would you have of me, Princess?” He asked. He had been out of retirement for several years now, only in the castle on business with the royal blacksmith when he was summoned to the throne room. He had arrived midway through Celestia’s wrath and knew he was probably not going to enjoy what came next.

“I have a favour to request of you old friend.” She asked serenely. He frowned up at her, an unconscionable faux pas for pretty much anypony else to have done. However the guards didn’t react, for reasons Blueblood would soon, to his misery, discover. “It would mean so much if you would indulge me.” He stood back to his hooves and bowed his head once more, sighing internally.

“You merely have to ask.” He said in response, wondering how much he would actually be compensated for this little ‘favour’. He eyed the simpering excuse for a stallion beside him and had a fair idea how much he’d demand of her if she were anypony else.

“Prince Blueblood here will be representing Equestria in a foreign tournament. He is in need of assistance to prepare for the upcoming events. Would you kindly lend your skills and experience to his betterment?” She asked. One of the guards beside the throne was visibly shaking, his face scrunched up, trying to hold back laughter. Bright Lance regarded her with a neutral expression before turning to regard the prince, who was looking up at him.

“I suppose I could try to give him some gentle motivation.” He said, his ear flicked. The other guard let out a short snrk, but otherwise was succeeding in keeping a stoic expression, much more so then his comrade. Prince Blueblood’s eyes were darting about. What was everypony talking about? Who was this pony? Why is that guard’s eyes watering?

“My sincerest thanks, Bright Lance. I will not forget this.” Celestia beamed at him, he bowed once more before turning to face Blueblood and glared down at him with a stony expression. Blueblood blinked.

“Wh-” He managed to voice before suddenly finding himself on the floor outside of the throneroom, thrown wide of the doors after having opened them with his own flying body. It took him several seconds to register through the pain and shock that he had just been thrown out of the throne room by his mane. He had landed hard and flailed to get back to his hooves. He turned to see Bright Lance walking calmly up to him from the throne, his face still that mask of stony indifference. “W-wait! Hang on, there’s got to be-”

“Barracks!” Bright Lance ordered as he reached the prince and decked him across the face. “Now! Move it!” Blueblood was sent back to the floor under the force of the blow and suddenly panicked as he got back to his hooves and tried galloping away. “Wrong way!” Bright Lance shouted as he cut the prince off from the corner he was about to turn, Blueblood got another decking for trying to get away.

“W-why are you hitting me!?” He whined.

“Because you’re letting me!”

“Stop!”

“Then stop me! Move!” Bright lance hounded, giving the downed prince a kick in the flank to get him moving again. Celestia listened at the terrified whines of her nephew and the harsh barks of her former marshal. For a moment, a part of her felt the tiniest twang of guilt for putting the poor colt through this. It was only for a moment however, in truth this was probably the best thing to happen to the prince and it was a long time in coming. So she assuaged herself knowing that at least if nothing else, the prince will learn some humility. Goodness knows he needs it desperately.

Luna emerged from the doorway behind the throne leading off to the royal study, a book levitated before her. “So how did it feel?” She asked, smiling lightly. Celestia let out a breath.

“Good.” She admitted. “But I had to hold myself back.”

“Why? We certainly did not.”

“I know, Luna. The whole castle knows.”

“Good. So why did you pick Bright Lance?”

“He’s good.”

“So is Iron Shield, we still think we should have chosen her.”

“She would’ve killed him, Luna.” Celestia admonished, looking at her sister as she sat beside her. Luna had a light smile on her face. “Lunaaa…” She said, narrowing her eyes.

“Oh come, he’s just going to get trounced one way or another, why not have him be trained by somepony who would show him no more mercy then that creature will?” Luna asked. Celestia shook her head.

“Maybe I am being too soft…”

“We should think so, dear sister.” Luna said, her eyes closed as she did so before she returned to her book. The two sat in silence for a few moments, simply enjoying one another’s company, the shouts of the prince and the old marshal distant now. The silence was interrupted by a small golden flash as a scroll appeared before Celestia, her horn lit up to catch it before it hit the ground. A familiar seal upon parchment. Celestia smiled as she opened it to read.

“Who is it from?” Luna asked.

“Rose.” Celestia answered, “You know how she likes to keep in touch. She’s also asking how you’ve been.”

“It is kind of her to spare a thought, but really, must she ask every time she sends a letter? I am over it…” Luna said looking down at the floor sadly. Celestia spread her wing to embrace her sister. She always slipped out of her airs when she was morose or overly thoughtful, Celestia always felt the need to remind her just how much she was loved. That she’d never let her be alone ever again.

“Lulu…” Celestia said softly.

“I know…” Luna replied. “Tell her I’m fine.” She said, Celestia smiled warmly down at her sister. Luna thought for a bit, biting her lower lip. “Mayhap thou shouldst not tell her anything about the day’s events.”

“I wouldn’t breath a word to that old gossip.” Celestia chuckled. “She’ll find out about it in time, she doesn’t need me to hurry the news along.” Luna rolled her eyes,

“Like that makes us feel so much better.”

--=--

“What are you still doing here, tough guy?” Midnight asked cockily as she strolled up to the day guard. She had come to the barracks to find her misplaced helmet but spied the blonde maned stallion still in the training room through the open partition.

“Mmph.” Cloud responded, flicking his ear. He was out of his armour and about to head back to his bunk. “Just enjoying the show.” He said, Midnight frowned, from what she could hear it was just some instructor running a new recruit through the ringer. She walked around the partition to get a better look.

“Wow, haha, is that who I think it is?” She asked, gesturing with a hoof.

“Mmm” Cloud affirmed, his face as unmoving as it ever was. Honestly, if she hadn’t known him for as long as she did, she’d swear his face was stuck like that, carved out of unyielding stone. “About time, I’d say.” He said. She had a few minutes to spare before she went to her rounds for the next eight hours so she sat there with him. Prince Blueblood, wearing padded neophyte armour and a rickety helmet was trying, and failing, to defend himself with a padded staff. The grizzled yellow pony was showing him no mercy.

“Duck!”

“Wha-“ Prince blueblood said before he got a blow to the head that sent him reeling, his tongue sticking out stupidly as he tried to regain his senses.

“Watch your footing!”

“H-” And with that he was taken off his hooves by a low swing of the old marshal’s staff. The pony used the momentum to stick one end of the staff to the wooden flooring, leaning against it at an angle with his front hoofs. This was basic spear training most guards had to go through, not even allowed to train with any other weapon until they got this most basic form of combat right. The prince was a unicorn, which gave him a lot of advantages, even if he was not a mage, but nopony got any slack with him for any reason. Prince or not, Blueblood was going to be trained properly.

“Wh-he-he-hyyyy…” He whined, eye blackened from the abuse. He felt something move in his mouth, he rotated his tongue and spat. A tooth bounced along the hard panel floor, Blueblood gasped and stared at it in mortification. Bright Lance just shook his head before rearing, spinning the staff around before sticking it into the ground again and leaning his weight onto it. The minute muscles in their hooves allowed ponies an extraordinarily versatile grip, allowing them to feel yet at the same time, unable to feel pain through them, otherwise horse shoes for hard face work and long distance traveling by hoof would be wildly impractical. This is especially true with Earth ponies whose entire magic was almost entirely focused through their hooves. If Blueblood felt he was punishing him, he had no idea how rough he could get.

“Get back up! We aren’t done yet!”

“Noooooo….” Blueblood said weakly before getting smacked on the back, forcing him to move.

“Hahaha!” Midnight laughed, she knew it was rude to laugh at another’s misfortune, but this was too good to pass up, “I see why you stayed, but I must admit I am a bit disappointed…” She said, pouting.

“Hmm?” Cloud said, not turning to look but inclining his head.

“And here I thought you were just here to wish me goodnight…”

“Hmph.” He responded, she smirked before turning back to the show before them.

“You know, I think those ponies are taking bets.” She said, pointing a hoof to their right, several other day guards were chatting with their night guard relief, one of them, a day guard by the name of Gemstone was gathering slips of paper in her helmet.

“Don’t even think about it.” Cloud admonished, she frowned at him. “Gambling while on duty is unprofessional.”

“Hey Skippy, want in?” Gemstone said, levitating her helmet over. His eye twitched at the nickname. He raised his right wing and a primary feather dropped a neatly folded slip of paper into the helmet. Midnight glared at him incredulously as Gemstone trotted off.

“Unprofessional huh?” She said indignantly, narrowing her eyes at him, he didn’t turn to meet her gaze. “And just what was that then?”

“I’m not on duty.” He smiled.

Chapter 18 - Regrettable Decisions

Something has gone wrong. We don't seem to have an archived copy of that chapter.

Chapter 19 - A Rock and a Hard Place

“So… Here’s the situation right?” Tanismore said between beakfulls. The two of them had found a relatively nice restaurant in the market quarter of Ifrendare. The pub had turned out to be a terrible idea, Handy discovered. It was one thing to be offered drinks by random griffons off the street, it’s another thing when the barkeep offered to virtually throw the entire barrel of ale at you while everyone else swarmed you. Drunk griffons were an inherently funny concept, but the reality was rather a lot to contend with personally. Handy only wanted a meal and a quiet drink. “Me and Godfrey go to this shindig in Densdun, some big party organised by a pony, right?” he continued.

“I believe thou hast told me this before, but go on,” Handy responded. They were both seated on a second floor miranda overlooking the market. Handy’s senses were assaulted with the smells and sounds of a city virtually shivering with life as the griffons haggled and bargained below them while others made use of the various shops and eateries around the great square fountain that acted as the centrepiece. He looked over the railings, taking note of the unusual number of ponies in the crowd. He knew there were large crossover populations between the two kingdoms in border provinces. Ifrendare, he learned, was an anomaly in this respect.

The only thing linking the Duchy of Farlkirk to Equestria was a tiny dirt trail squeezed between a mountain and a large ravine, the trail only ending in some nameless pony village that nobody really cared about. Ifrendare was firmly on the Griffonia side of the duchy and as far away from the connection as it was possible to be without being in another duchy altogether. He took a drink from the glass he had. Sure, it was wine and sure, it was kinda early and sure, he was technically on duty, but Handy was quickly running out of fucks that day.

“Right, so, it was a big event. Can't remember the host's name for the life of me... a lot of cheese though... Doesn't matter, the two of us run into this absolute genius of a dog, right?”

“Uh huh.”

“He proceeds to ask us for our tickets.”

“Right.”

“Even though we had already shown our tickets at the door, so of course we explain this to him, but he wasn’t taking no for an answer. So Godfrey calls over this griffon wearing a similar shirt, thinking he was his superior, so…”

Handy tuned him out, using automatic responses at appropriate intervals. The two of them had their helmets off as they ate. Handy ordered his meat bloody raw, barely heated, much to his distaste, being a medium-to-well man himself. However, it was the least suspicious way of saying ‘Give me blood, damnit’. The consumption of the fluid the night before and whatever he had left in his system had been used entirely to heal his hand, leaving him uncomfortably aware of just how close many griffons’ arteries were for his easy access since he entered the town. It wasn’t bad, far from it, but he wasn’t daring to make the mistake of leaving it alone. The meat helped, partially, but he’d need to get something substantive soon.

His gaze turned back to the street as he people watched. His eyes narrowed as he saw something genuinely odd. He hadn’t paid any mind to the numerous instances of clip-clop noises emerging from the crowd, given the ponies present. But he certainly took notice when it came from one that had a distinctly avian head. Looking closely, he noticed a small griffon, young in appearance as it walked back from a stall. Its foreclaws were present and upper body leonine, but its head was aquiline... and its lower body was distinctly equine.

Handy cocked an eyebrow as his eyes widened. That was something he had not expected to see today. The strange hybrid griffon, an oxymoron if ever there was one, made its way over to a larger griffon and handed him a bag that he had apparently purchased from the stall keeper. The larger griffon ruffled the feathers on its head as he beckoned it to follow him up the street.

Handy simply stared after them, gears turning in his head at the implications. Tanismore, thankfully, was lost in his ramblings and had not noticed the human’s distracted look. He opened his mouth, preparing to ask Tanismore about what he just saw but remembered the lesson he had learned regarding certain princesses and certain celestial bodies. After some time, he shook his head and turned back to his meal. Sometimes, it was certainly better to keep one's mouth shut and be thought wise rather than open it and be confirmed a fool. Ponies came in multiple varieties, he reasoned, maybe griffons did too?

Hell, there was that one griffon he saw that had the lower body of a panther, or so he thought. It was hard for him to tell; big cats weren’t one of his favourite animals after all. Horses, however? That was unexpected. “…Of course, Sergeant Killjoy had to arrive just when it was getting good. The pony had just broken out an accordion while balancing on a large ball and was preparing for the showstopper.” Tanismore huffed, his armour clinking as he crossed his forelegs.

“Killjoy?” Handy asked, plopping the last cut of meat into his mouth and washing it down.

“Shortbeak.”

“Ah. Right,” Handy said. "What was she doing there?" he asked. Shortbeak was no recluse like him as far as he knew, but the party Tanis had described didn't seem her kind of thing.

"Tartarus if I know, but there she was. Anyway—"

"Uh, I uh..." The two of them turned. An adolescent griffon, complete with moulting feathers and nervous expression, had made his way over to their table. His wings were short for his size, and he had an odd beak. Now that Handy looked at it, he didn't quite have an eagle's head, but he couldn't tell what other type of bird it might have been. He rolled his eyes and spoke to the bird.

"Can we be of service, sir...?" Handy said, Tanismore frowned at the interruption. This was probably the fourth or fifth bird who had approached him, completely star struck over the hour or so they’ve been here.

"Shorttail!" he said sharply. "Timothy Shorttail, I mean, uhm, sir!" The grey feathered griffon sat rigidly to the spot. Handy took a glance, noting his tail was actually abnormally long. "I don't mean to interrupt, b-but are you Handy the human?" he asked hopefully. Handy raised an eyebrow at him before sighing. He leaned back in his chair, which, like everything else, was too short for him and had improper lumbar support, forcing him to either spread his legs out or cross them in on himself beneath the chair. He made a show of looking around slowly, a curious expression on his face. Tanismore smirked.

"Hmm..." He began. "I am unsure..." He turned back to Shorttail. "I don't see any humans around. Methinks, perchance, he's not here. Perhaps thou art mistaken?" he asked innocently. Tanismore coughed down a chuckle. Shorttail looked embarrassed. Handy allowed himself a smile before continuing. "I jest. I am he. How can I help thee, sir Shorttail?" Timothy rubbed the back of his head before responding.

"W-well, I just want to say it’s an honour to meet you."

"It... is?" Handy asked.

"It is?" Tanismore echoed with an amused grin.

"It is!" Shorttail confirmed. "My cousin was on the Equestrian Express!" he said excitedly, "He was there when you gave Tartarus to the guardsponies who attacked everygriffon! And then you went on and overthrew Geoffrey!"

"I uh..." Handy said, realising griffons were now turning in their seats, listening in. "I merely fought on his majesty's behalf, twas really—"

"Oh! And is it true you fought a minotaur with one arm tied behind your back?" Shorttail asked.

"I heard it was two minotaurs!" a griffon from another table piped up.

"Don't be ridiculous. Everygriffon knows it was a basilisk," yet another griffon spoke, clearly grateful somegriffon had finally got the human talking so openly. The last couple had walked up to him and skulked away almost without talking to the human.

"No, you're thinking of the dragon."

"Didn't he conquer the changelings at the same time?"

"I forget, wasn't that the thing in Canterlot where he shouted down a princess?"

"No no, he fought the Elements! That’s why the prince is dueling him!"

"Hey, Handy, tell us about the time you fought a tornado!"

"Don't be stupid, it was an elemental!"

"Then why is he called the Stormbreaker if he was just fighting more ponies?"

"Not those! An actual living storm elemental"

"I heard it was a small one."

"Well, it was only a model…"

Handy let out a beleaguered breath. It had been so nice and quiet before, the griffons keeping their hushed whispers to themselves, and Timothy O'Chucklefuck here had to go ahead and start the ball rolling. It was a radical change from the treatment he received in Skymount. At first he didn't like it, but he supposed it was good to not be the subject of nightmares for once. He let the surrounding griffons continue the lathering as he spoke to Timothy, "It seems our luncheon is at an end," he announced. Tanismore gawked at him.

"Awwww, come on!" the griffon protested, spreading claw wide.

"Thou hast finished thine meal an hour ago and have been getting steadily drunk on refills."

"You had second helpings!"

"And now mine helpings have been thoroughly seconded." Handy gestured at his empty plate. "Also thou art paying."

"What? Why me?"

"Because I neglected to bring money with me," he lied. "Now get." Tanismore grumbled as he slid off his chair, fumbling at a pouch by the waist of his armour. Handy downed the last of his glass, letting out a satisfied breath and minding both of their helmets until the bird got back. There was no way he was getting up to pay and running the risk of getting encircled. At least where he was, if push came to shove, he could vault over the side and take his chances with the near ten foot drop to the ground. Risky, in armour, but he's done more idiotic shit in his time and came out smelling like... Well, he came out alive anyway.

The clicking of claws drew him back to reality, and he turned from once more looking over the town around him. The young griffon was still there, looking expectantly at Handy, tapping the approximate index talons griffon claws possessed together. He resisted the urge to frown and remembered the griffon's question. Well, why not blow up his reputation a bit more? "Yes, with one arm, you assume correctly, young Timothy," he said. The bird beamed and took Tanismore's seat. 'That... wasn't an invitation,' he thought. 'Opportunistic little git, aren't you?' "Can I be of further assistance?" he asked, letting a slight edge of irritation enter his voice. Timothy didn't seem to take the hint.

"Oh I was just wondering..." he said, "I was trying to figure out why you came all the way down here. I mean, you caused a scene when you were confronted by the Duke's knights.” Handy nodded. Brightblade, the knight's name had been. He mentally reordered his shitlist to pencil in that name in the place of noname mcfuckface who had not been as gracious in defeat as he could have been. His screeching and bluster was for naught. Handy had not moved, and in the end, the griffon dared not raise his glaive against him. More than a few griffons took notice of the situation. "So what brings you all the way down to Ifrendare?"

'How about none of your damn business you nosey little shit?' Handy thought, thoroughly annoyed at the griffon. "Important business with his Grace and the lord Count," the human replied, not willing to give the bird the satisfaction of the truth. There was also the matter that his real reason for being here was now rendered rather pointless. There was no sense spreading it around. "A procedural concern on behalf of his Majesty." The elated look on Shorttail's face fell slightly.

"Oh," he said, sounding disappointed. "I thought you were going to do something..."

"Why wouldst thou think that?" he asked. The griffon looked sheepishly at the human.

"Well, there is some talk about weird things happening at a village several miles away, Featherdawn," he said. Handy felt the need to rub his forehead.

"Oh really?" 'Oh. Really.'

"Yeah, it’s the strangest thing..." the griffon began, screwing his face upwards, tapping the side of his beak. “I mean, there’s always been rumours that a farm there had been haunted, but recently, griffons have been talking…”

“About what?” Handy said, feigning interest, wondering what the hell was taking Tanismore so long. He needed a patsy to help push through the inevitable throng.

“About the strange lights and sounds at all hours of the day and night. Something strange and magical is happening there, and nogriffon dares venturing there to find out.”

’All day as well as night?’ Handy thought. ’That’s different. So its not some prowler fucking about in the night. Either the griffon is ballsy or its something else entirely.’ ”Interesting.” He decided to say, “But it really is the duke’s concern, and that of the count.”

“But, isn’t that what you do?” Timothy said, his claws were on the table as he leaned forward.

“Do?”

“You go and sort out weird problems, just like this!”

“Er…”

“Hey yeah!” another griffon said. One after another, more griffons piled nearer to the table, each one pestering Handy about his past ‘achievements’ and enquiring curiously about the situation Shorttail had illuminated. Some of them sounded genuinely curious, having not heard about the events in question. Apparently, for all the count’s bluster, he kept it at the court level, not spreading it among the people and causing a panic. Handy mused that maybe the old bird wasn’t entirely incompetent but quickly dismissed such charity, for he was now trapped.

“So, will you go?” Timothy pressed. Handy placed his helmet back on, his expression furious. The griffons surrounding him made it difficult for him to get up off his chair for his planned emergency escape.

“I do not believe it to be… appropriate...” he said, trying to worm his way out of this without coming off and sundering his reputation. He glanced to his right and down to the street. Several griffons and ponies had stopped their business and were looking up at the commotion. Crap. “I do not know where the village in question is…” he offered. ’For fuck’s sake, this is so not my problem.’

“Oh! I know where it is!” Timothy said, planting his claws on the table and pushing himself up. “I could show you!”

“…Could you now?” Handy said, teeth gritted.

“Yes! If you’d let me go with you, I’ll show you the way there! Then you can do something cool!”

‘Are you fucking kidding me!’ Handy thought. ’It’s fucking Grave Danger all over again, isn’t it?’ ”That would be… most helpful,” Handy said, now cursing Tanismore’s tardiness profusely. It most certainly was not Handy’s own fault for walking right into this situation and giving in to the temptation of tooting his own horn, nope. Tanis’ fault. Definitely. “I believe I shall go,” the griffons erupted in a cheer, half of them wandering off, chatting excitedly about whatever the human could end up facing out in the mysterious village.

If Handy were a superstitious man, and when he was younger he most certainly was, he’d equate ‘mysterious village in the middle of the sticks with tall tales told of its terrible hauntings’ with witchery and general bad luck. Now he was a sensible and reasonable adult and in a world that consisted of witchery and bad luck, so he just marked it down as terribly pedestrian when all things were considered.

Tanismore finally materialized as the crowd thinned and Handy got up from his seat. “Sorry I took so long. They took forever getting the change, and there were a lot of griffons in the way.” He looked up at Handy as he prepared to leave, walking passed the griffon. “Hey, where you going?” he said as he rushed to get his helmet, taking note of the young griffon who had just vacated his seat. “And what—”

“Tanis, I need thee to stay here in the town,” Handy said as he descended the steps into the ground floor of the busy restaurant.

“Wait, you’re going back to Skymount without me?” Tanismore said, surprised.

“Of course not. I’m going out to investigate the town of Featherdawn,” he said. Tanismore looked at the back of Handy’s head quizzically as he followed him down the stairs.

“I thought you said it was a w—”

“Wonderful opportunity, yes,” Handy interjected, noticing Shorttail pick up on Tanis’ words. “I need you to stay here to stop the duke from leaving.”

“But how can I do that?” Tanis asked, Handy shrugged.

“Say I deputised you or something. Just make sure the duke doesn’t leave till I get back.” ’I’ll be having words with him, on the off chance daddy dearest’s old farm actually has more to it than some unicorns throwing regular keggers,’ he mused. The thought seemed plausible, given that no actual harm seemed to come from the magical shenanigans.

“H-hang on, you can’t just- I mean, can you?” Tanismore asked as the pair made it out onto the street. Handy put his hood back up before he blinded someone. He looked back at the griffon.

“Yes,” he lied. Honestly, he was not sure if he could authorize that, but hell, what’s having power if you’re not going to use it creatively? “Just don’t cause any trouble, alright?”

“Me? Trouble? Pfffft,” Tanismore said, waving a claw. Handy just glared at him from behind his metal helm. “Oh fine.”

“And stay sober; you’re on my dime now.”

“Oh like you’re one to talk.”

“I mean it Tanis,” Handy warned. He turned to Shorttail beside him. “Right, lead on.” Timothy beamed widely, and Handy groaned internally. He led Handy through the winding streets of the town until they reached the westernmost Gate. Tanismore had followed Handy uncertainly for a time, not entirely sure where he was supposed to be going until he decided to turn back to the keep. Handy hoped Tanismore would take himself seriously. Although in truth, he had sincere doubts about that.

--=--

Thankfully, Handy thought, a few miles genuinely seemed to only mean a few miles as the pair of them moved out from the city, passing large grass fields and hills as far as the eye could see. Cresting the border of the valley and leaving the town behind them, walking down the far side of the hill. It took them an hour or two of solid walking, to Handy’s displeasure, but he could make out the outline of a small village ahead of them, nestled between several hills and beside some woods, something he was grateful to see. The skies, however, had been darkening with increasingly angry looking clouds, looking like a storm was brewing. He could smell rain on the wind.

Timothy, of course, was prattling on about his home and family, which Handy paid zero attention to, instead contemplating nearby ditches and entertaining the likelihood of anyone finding his body and tracing it back to him. He smiled; he’d never do it of course, he wasn’t quite pissed off enough at the bird to seriously consider cold blooded murder. Still, it simply wouldn’t do to not have such considerations tucked away for future reference. You never know, after all.

They entered the village, and Handy was greeted with the same superstition and suspicion that he thought he had missed, complete with similar reactions. Oh sure, ghostly lights and noises emerge from a nearby farm and these guys try their best to continue life as normal, but when the nigh-mythical human strolls into town, they head for the hills? Racists.

One elderly griffon, clutching a broom, stayed out in the open, sweeping the front of his store. Handy looked at Timothy who seemed to be oblivious to the reactions of the griffons who had gone and went inside, making a ghost town of the village. He was lost in his own ramblings and continued strolling on to the end of the town. Handy separated from him and approached the old griffon.

He was a white feathered bird with an abnormally long yellow beak, grey feathers growing down his cheeks and half rimmed spectacles balanced across the beak’s bridge. His brown wings and fur were patchy in places, and he wore green overalls across his front, an odd sight on a griffon. The bird turned to regard the human as he approached with an almost bored expression. “Help ya, strangah?” he asked. Handy smiled.

“My apologies for the disruption I have caused thine neighbours,” Handy said, turning his head around, indicating the vacated village. The old bird continued to regard the human impassively.

“Oh mind them none, bunch of scaredy ponies, the lot of them,” the old man said as he continued to sweep. “I take it yer here about the fuss n’a the farm?” he asked. Handy nodded.

’Straight to the point, I like this guy.’ “That I am. How didst thou guess?”

“Why else would th’ human come here?” he said.

“I see. You are correct. I am here as a favour to the count and the duke.”

“Doncha work for th’ king?” he asked, raising an eyebrow. Handy raised his own eyebrow in response.

’Sharp one, aren’t you? But I suppose it’s no secret.’ “Yes, but I was here on business when the count asked this of me,” he said. “Terribly sorry to trouble you, kind sir, but I am afraid I must ask a few questions of thee.” The bird seemed to chew, rotating his lower beak before spitting onto the ground beyond the boards of his shop front.

“Alrigh’,” he assented.

“Have you heard strange things coming from the farm,” Handy resigned himself to going through the list of questions based on what he knew. At least when Joachim got his laugh, he could say he was thorough at least.

“Sure ‘ave.”

“Like what?”

“Weird high pitched noises, then occasionally large thump o’ earth as if someone dropped a bouldah from th’ sky. Happens all times o’ day,” he said, rubbing the base of his beak in contemplation. “Bright lights too, from time to time. Most of the time just noise.”

“Any of the fine folk here ever investigate the farm?” he asked. Shorttail was still calmly walking to the edge of the village, fully believing Handy was there behind him.

“These ponies? Pfffnaw, none ‘em ever dared gawn up there.”

“Where is the farm?” Handy asked.

“Over there, beyond yonder trees there…” The old griffon pointed roughly to where Timothy was heading. Handy heard distant thunder, droplets of rain dropping on the ground. “Sure you want to investigate in that, strangah?” the old griffon asked, looking up into the sky, trying to discern what weather teams were up there. Handy had long since not bothered to look up when the weather acted up, preferring not to be reminded of the nonsense of a weather system that necessitated sapient intervention in order to function.

“Sooner I get this over with, the sooner we can all rest easy at night,” Handy said. The griffon nodded, clearly misinterpreting the human’s statement when all he meant was returning to his comfy bed. “Ever see anyone… suspicious?”

“About these parts? None much, nope,” the griffon responded. “Featherdawn’s a right sleepy little town,” he continued.

“So no new griffons to the village in the past few weeks? Ponies, Unicorns perhaps?”

“None by my reckonin’”

“Ever been up to the farm itself?”

“Nope.”

“Why?

“’Aunted,” the old griffon said simply, closing his eyes as he nodded firmly. Handy blinked.

“But you just called your neighbours scaredy ponies for not going up there.”

“S’right I did,” the griffon responded, puffing out his chest. “Silly to be scared o’ few lights and weird noises, s’obviously magic.”

“But you say it’s haunted…”

“That it is, always was, ‘m none much for ghosts, y’see,” the griffon said as if that was supposed to make sense. Handy wanted to rub his temples, but there was metal in the way.

“Okay, what do you know about its previous owners?”

“Went on to become th’ dukes,” he said simply.

“… Okay, but was it haunted before or after they left?”

“Way I heard it, twas the reason they left. Certainly the reason the Kinblades left it after they bought it. Only staid in town a while before getting th’ willies and seeing sense enough to leave,” he explained. Handy sighed softly. Shorttail turned and extended his right paw and wing in a flourish, smiling brightly at the edge of the village. He opened his eyes, saw the human wasn’t there, and his head snapped back and forth, searching for him.

“So, just to confirm, there’s magic up in the farm?”

“Correct.”

“And you say you saw nobody suspicious in recent weeks, no one else heard about a suspicious character?

“Nope.”

“Also it’s haunted.”

“S’truth.”

“And the current duke’s family used to own it?”

“S’right.”

“Right,” Handy said, still no further than he was before. “My thanks for thine help, good sir. You have been most helpful,” Handy said, inclining his head.

“Not a problem. Good luck up there, stranger,” the griffon said, sweeping his store front one final time before placing a claw on his hip and surveying his work. The rain was falling a bit more insistently now as he turned away from the store and met Shorttail halfway to the village edge.

“Sir Handy,” he greeted, “I was wondering where you got off to.”

“Just asking a local about the farm is all. Come on,” Handy said, now thoroughly grateful for his cloak keeping the water mostly off his armour. He closed all three of the clasps of his cloak to close it tighter over his body as the wind seemed to pick up. The pair of them followed the trail leading out of the village and into the woods. Well, in truth, it was more akin to an orchard, but one that had long since fallen to neglect.

They eventually heard a river ahead and came upon a small, ancient, decrepit looking wooden bridge. ’Oh yeah,’Handy said, stopping just before the structure, judging it and looking down at himself. He looked down at the river below. It cut deep into the earth and was flowing relatively fast. He looked up as water fell upon the face of his helm. The wind was picking up strength, and the rain was falling harder and faster. ’This looks legit.’

“Shorttail,” he commanded, the bird looking up at him. “Don’t use the bridge until I cross,” Handy warned, not trusting the bridge to support both their weight at once. He fumbled under his cloak and detached his hammer and his travel pack. He swung them across the bridge to the other side, one at a time, lessening the amount of weight he could easily part with. He struggled to take the shield off from where it was strapped to his back, a difficult thing to do with his cloak on, but he managed it, tossing it along with his helmet across. He came to the bridge and put the majority of his weight on the right side, which looked much more structurally sound.

The wood groaned under him as he shimmied across, gripping on to the wooden handrails as he moved across. Thankfully, he made it across without needing to worry about falling into yet another rapidly flowing river. He bent over to pick up his gear and replace it about his person. It was then he heard a loud crack and he looked up, turning around to see a startled looking Shorttail, who was halfway across the bridge when his claw pushed down on a particularly weak plank of wood and pushed straight through.

He looked up at Handy, wide eyed as the bridge groaned dangerously. There was another crack, and the bridge seemed to lean dangerously to the side. Handy rushed over, Shorttail trying to lunge the last stretch of the bridge. It would’ve been enough had he only been slightly larger in reach. The bridge literally fell away beneath him, literally, just as he jumped.

Handy was two feet from the edge and ran over and reached out to the griffon, grasping his claw as he fell, slamming hard into the rock face of the ravine, the wood falling and washing away. “HELP!” he squawked. “OH ALL MAKER, I DON’T WANT TO DIE!”

“Timothy,” Handy said, anger rising in his voice.

“PULL ME UP, PULL ME UP, PULLMEUPPULLMEUPPULLMEUP!”

“Timothy!”

“OH CLAW I LOOKED DOWN, WHY DID I LOOK DOWN!?”

“WILL YOU SHUT UP YOU DAMN BIRD! YOU HAVE WINGS, USE THEM!” Handy bellowed. His arm hung over the edge of the ravine, the deadweight of the griffon falling, and Handy’s own, less than ideal position when he gripped the bird’s foreleg forcing him to a prone position as the bird panicked. Timothy looked up at the human, blinking rapidly before looking to his sides and flapping his wings experimentally.

“Oh,” he said as he lifted himself into the air, struggling slightly in the wind before alighting on the ground next to the human. “Right… Ah… You won’t mention this to anygriffon, will you?”

“No.” Handy said, genuinely meaning it, considering the fact he would rather forget about the griffon altogether and telling people about this situation would only perpetuate the bird’s longevity in the vaults of his memories. “Look, let’s just… get to the farm.” Handy thought for a minute. “Actually, now that I consider it, thou hast done as I asked, thou should probably just go back to the town,” Handy said, Shorttail looked genuinely hurt.

”I’m sorry!” He said, “I’m sorry! I can be useful! You don’t need to worry about me!”

“I’m pretty sure I do.”

“No! Really! Look! I swear!” The bird put a claw over his heart “I’ll not get in your way; just let me come with you! Please!?” he begged. Handy looked at him, unamused, then glanced back at the now non-existent bridge.

“Fine,” he conceded. “I might need thine help finding another way around on the way back.” He shifted his weight and reaffixed the clasps of his cloak, putting his helmet back on and hood up. “Come.” He turned back down the path and continued to the farm. Shorttail let out a sigh of relief as he followed after the human. Handy grumbled under his breath, his mood thoroughly in the gutter now. The pair came upon the old farmstead as the tree thinned. Young saplings encroached past the decaying fenceposts, long neglected over the years.

The farmhouse was extensive and was surrounded with numerous outbuildings. Its windows were knocked in, a portion of the roof collapsed and the ivy making good headway on its glacially paced vertical conquest of its walls. Handy could see why the locals might consider the place spooky, for there was a forlorn air of mystery about the place. Handy was well familiar with such melancholic sites; it wasn’t haunted, he could tell that much just by looking. What most people called haunted, people around his hometown called culture.

However, the farm buildings weren’t what caught his attention. No, that would be the hundred or so griffon sized holes in the grounds. Practically every inch of the farm ground had these freshly dug shallow graves strewn haphazardly about the place. He could see why someone would put magic lights, strange sounds and these holes together and draw the worst conclusion as the good count had. The two of them parted as Handy went to work, inspecting the holes and the farm buildings, Timothy, thankfully, left the human in peace after he suggested that the bird go explore the outbuildings for him.

He knelt next to one of the holes and kneaded it in the centre with his fist. He found the soil gave way quite easily, allowing him to bury his arm nearly up to the elbow before forcing him to stop. He withdrew his fist and took note of the blackened clumps of soil that he drew out of the ground. He lifted one up to his face. It was strangely shaped and glassy in texture. Handy failed his chemistry and did poorly in geology, but he is pretty sure something like that shouldn’t be this close to the surface on a farm.

From what he knew, it took extreme heat to force silicon into glass. Whatever magic was being used here evidently was designed to create this substance, or it was a consequence of the action. He probably should’ve dragged Crimson with him. She’d probably have helped him with this. He tried a few more holes and discovered similar examples of the substance in each of them. Always in small clumps.

Thankfully no bones, or any other evidence of these holes being graves. Several outbuildings appeared to be collapsed, a little investigating revealed more holes beneath rotten and rusted tools and destroyed planks. He had thought someone came here and decided to use the ground as target practice for some reason, but the spread of the destruction from the ruined sheds indicated that the magical blast didn’t come from outside.

It’s as if… it shot up from the ground. A ground that wasn’t covered in holes or debris had large, dirty rocks strewn about, strange greenish quartz embedded in them. Odd. “The hell am I doing here?” he asked himself. “I don’t know the first thing about magic.” He turned and tried to search for Shorttail, walking up to the farmhouse.

The house itself was nothing special, creaking and groaning under its own weight as the growing storm punished the building. The rooms were empty, unfortunately, but he checked it out anyway. There were more holes here, but they were smaller, having to push through rock and solid foundations rather than soil. But it did prove interesting, for the holes went straight down to the very rock the house was founded on and went considerably deeper than the holes outside. Looking down the hole had collapsed in on itself, he was soon drawing the conclusion whatever was causing the holes actually did originate underground.

He crouched beneath one such hole near the back of the house, now becoming interested despite himself. ‘If what’s causing these holes is coming from below… Then wha-‘ His thoughts were interrupted by a crack of lightning in the distance. He looked up at the flash and saw the backyard of the farmstead.

There was a large, sturdy looking well, the rocks forming its circular framed interspersed with large, dull, green stones. A fairly solid looking, wooden wellhead hung above it, He saw Shorttail leaning over and looking down the well, his claw reaching out to grab onto the bucket for balance as he looked over. Handy gawped at the stupidity of the action. “Timothy!” he shouted out as he got to his feet, the bird looking over. “What are you doing?” he demanded.

“Just looking down the well, I want to know why there are no holes around it.” Now that it was pointed out to him, Handy noticed there were indeed no holes within a ten foot radius of the well. He shook his head.

“Right, but get back down from there.” He walked over to the well himself. “You’re holding onto the bucket, if it gives way-”

“Its alright!” Timothy said in response, leaning further. “I’ll be careful.” He reached over with his free claw, gripping the wooden pole the rope of the bucket was wrapped around. “Tartarus that’s far down…” he muttered. “Hey, Handy, what do you think all these-” He didn’t get to finish the sentence. The bucket gave way under his weight, the rusted gear, long since seized up, surrendered under the pressure building up upon it, and Timothy Shorttail plummeted down the well with a yelp. Handy’s eyes widened as he ran towards it.

“SHORTTAIL!” he shouted, griping the edge of the well and looked over. He heard the struggling voice of the griffon descend down into the darkness and the sound of rushing water, a splash echoing up the length of the well. “SHORTTAIL! CAN YOU HEAR ME!?” he bellowed down the well. There was nothing but the sound of the wind and the rain, distant rumbles in the sky and the rush of distant water far beneath him. At first.

“I’m… I’m alright…” a weak voice responded, barely audible. Handy’s heart rate slowed and the concern he felt for the griffon was slowly consumed by mounting anger that the griffon had, once more, gone and gotten himself into trouble because he was being inattentive!

“I TOLD YOU TO BACK AWAY!” he shouted down. Fuming. As angry as he was, he struggled to remind himself that there’d be time for that later. Right now, Shorttail was stuck at the bottom of the well. “LOOK, CAN YOU FLY UP?” he shouted down. There was another pause before a response came up.

“I don’t… I don’t think so…” Shorttail responded. Handy thought he could detect his voice crack. “I think I hurt my wing… My arm h-hurts as well…” he said. Handy clenched his fist and hit the wall impotently. He looked up at the wellhead. The rope the bucket had been attached to, had run its course entirely. Shorttail’s weight and momentum snapped it off of where it was tied to the pole. There goes guiding him up the rope. But that plan was shot as well. If his arm was busted, he wouldn’t be able to climb. He ground his teeth in frustration, the day already quickly deteriorating.

“ALRIGHT HOLD ON!” he shouted down. ’Fucking idiot,’ he cursed internally as he whirled around, looking about the farm ruins. He didn’t know how to get across the ravine to get help now that the bridge was out. It might take him a long time, and he’d be leaving Timothy down there. He turned and glared at the wellhead, gears turning in his head, chewing the inside of his mouth. He gripped the wooden frame and shook it. It barely moved, but he was not going to try anything unless he was absolutely sure.

He took a few steps back and ran up and kicked it. Not easy to do in greaves. Nothing, the frame was solid. Good. He gripped the pole that had been the host of the rope and bucket. It bent alarmingly under his strength. He grimaced. Rushing off, he searched the outbuildings of the farm. There had to be something there he could use, anything. He let out a victorious shout when he found one of the things he was looking for in one of the larger, more intact sheds: a solid metal pole.

The storm increased in intensity outside, the wind causing the shed door to slam shut again and again. He gathered the pole under his arm as he rummaged through the boxes of tools and long forgotten resources for the maintenance of a farm. There had to- aha! Handy rolled up a bundle of rope over and around his elbow and fist, so he could carry it easily. There were several coils in this one box alone, but they were a tangled mess. He placed the one bundled coil he had sorted on the floor as he thought hard. He lifted up one end of the rope and looked outside at the well.

It had been years since he tied a proper knot. He hoped it’d hold.

--=--

Shorttail clung weakly onto a rock as he pulled himself out of the water, whimpering. His wing hurt and he shivered, soaked to the bone, and in pain, he cried. He managed to drag himself out of the water at the base of the well. It had been deep, which softened his fall somewhat, but not enough. He fumbled in the darkness, his eyes bleary from when he hit his head. Handy had shouted down to him, but he hadn’t heard from the human in a while. Hopefully, he went off to get help.

He breathed heavily, listening to the sound of rushing water as his eyes adjusted to the darkness. The only source of light shone down from the well high above him. There was nothing but darkness and rock and water all around him. He saw the pool he had landed in and the flow of water emerging from high up on one of the walls, a torrent pouring into the room.

The sound was near deafening. He blinked. What little light there was seemed to darken, and he shivered with the cold. “All-Maker…” he murmured desperately, scrunching his eyes shut. His injured right wing twitching as muscles spasmed, and he groaned in pain at the movement.

He heard something splash lightly in the water behind him and turned his head towards the noise. “Hey!” His eyes sprung open at the sound of the voice. “Where are you?” The human was now at the bottom of the well, standing in the roiling water. The human was untangling himself from some strange raiment of ropes. He splashed in the water as he nearly lost his footing under the waters.

“I… I’m over here,” Shorttail said weakly. He shifted, the small, wet stones shifted underneath him as he gripped a large rock to pull himself forward.

“Hang on!” Handy said. The human seemed to fumble with something, and the next thing Shorttail knew, there was a bright white light piercing the darkness. He raised his injured arm to shield his eyes. “There you are…” the human said, his voice audible over the sound of the water. “Hang on.”

“Wh-what… What are you doing?” he asked.

“Getting you out,” Handy said, dropping his airs. Shorttail didn’t notice, but he picked up on the irritation in the human’s voice.

“I-I’m sorry… I didn’t… I should’ve listened.”

“Yes you damn well should have,” Handy admonished. The human waded through the knee high water, struggling against the flow to reach the small dry patch the griffon hung to. The contraption the human had lowered himself with hung limply inches above the water. Another free rope hanging parallel to it. In Handy’s rush to figure out a way to help the poor griffon before he died of exposure or his injuries, he had came up with, upon reflection, potentially the dumbest possible way he could have gone about it.

Relying on half remembered lessons learned during warm summers at a local youth club, Handy started utilising the rope he found in creating a cradle. Or perhaps it was better called a basket. In either case, the rope construction wrapped around the human’s waist, upper legs and midsection, thus providing support. He then tied it to the length of rope.

The idea was that he would wear it, and using the strong wellhead, throw the rope around a new, stronger pole and lower himself down the well. Seeing as there was no one else on the surface, the makeshift pulley relied entirely on Handy’s own strength to prevent himself from free-falling.

He sat in the cradle as he gripped the rope and, ever so slowly, one fist placed below the other, he let the rope rise and himself lower. It was an agonizingly slow, and exhausting process. He was forced to leave his shield and travel pack on the surface to minimise the weight he carried, his arms feeling like lead, and he swore he was going to give out towards the end.

It’d dawn on Handy later that it all would have been so much easier had he taken off his cuirass and upper body armour entirely, but hindsight was twenty-twenty. Stupidity aside, at any moment, had any one of the many knots he had tied come loose, he’d have free falling down that well and be in just as sad a state of affairs as the bird. As it was, such thoughts were far from his mind. “Come on,” he said upon reaching the griffon. “I need to get you out of there.”

“How…” Shorttail said.

“Shut up!” he barked. He bent over and pulled the griffon up. He gave out a cry of pain as Handy accidentally pulled on a wounded limb before correcting his grip. He shouldered the griffon’s weight and struggled to pull him over. He was breathing heavily himself, more from exhaustion and strain than anything else. The water’s flow increased and there was a distant noise of falling rocks that echoed into the chamber.

Handy struggled to figure out how to seat the griffon into the carriage he had jerry-rigged. He eventually settled for untying a few unnecessary rope lengths and placing the griffon across it, spreading out the ropes to support the griffon’s midsection and tied the ropes across his back to secure it. It was going to be an uncomfortable, dangerous ride, and Shorttail was struggling already.

“Stop, fidgeting!” Handy ordered. “Stay still! And keep your good arm loose; you’re going to be hitting your head a lot if you’re not careful.”

“W-What are you going to do?” Shorttail asked. There were several cracks of thunder echoing from the storm on the surface. Water flowed into the room with increasing force, there was a crack, and Handy shone his expensive brick in its direction. Spurts of water were bursting from a nearby wall.

“You’ve got to be shitting me…” he breathed, placing the brick back into the pocket he had affixed to his armour.

“What!”

“Nevermind! Get ready!” Handy yanked on the free rope, jolting Shorttail as he was raised several inches. With grunts of effort, Handy pulled as hard and as fast as he could, pulling the griffon up and up through the well. “When you get to the top!” he shouted up, “Grab the side of the well, pull yourself out and get out and untangle yourself! tie the rope around the wellhead as best as you can. I can pull myself up!” ’I hope.’

Shorttail did not reply, but Handy saw he was using his good arm to push himself off from the walls as he moved up. So at least he was still conscious. Handy felt something shift beneath him. He looked down but didn’t stop his pulling. The water was changing direction. It still flowed the same way but there was a pronounced shift in where the water drained away. A yelp of fright drew his attention upwards, and he saw a loose strand of rope hang from the dark form of the griffon as he blocked out the light. “What!?” Handy yelled. “What is it!?”

“I think… I think the rope is coming loose!” Shorttail responded.

“Goddamnit!” he swore and pulled harder. The sooner he got the griffon to the top, the sooner he could pull himself up. His arms protested under the stress and his lungs burned with the effort. The griffon was lighter then he was and the action was substantially easier from his current position, but it was still draining.

“I did it!” the griffon eventually shouted down. Handy scowled.

’Oh you did it?’ he thought. “Hurry up, tie the rope!” Handy bellowed up, the rope in question slowly rising from Handy’s position as Shorttail pulled it up to do as he commanded.

“R-Right!” Handy stumbled as the room shook. There was another crack, louder this time, the sound of the storm high above him resounded down into the well he was in. The room shook again, and Handy gripped onto the rope.

“Oh Bollocks…” he said fearfully. The water’s torrential flow soon increased rapidly; somewhere beneath him there was a tremendous crash and something gave way. There was a cacophonous sound as the water beneath Handy suddenly fell away, the floor along with it. Handy’s grip faltered but he held on, his weight dragging the rope down alarmingly.

“What’s wrong?! What happened?!”

“ITS CAVING IN! HURRY UP GOD DAMMIT!” Handy near roared in order to be heard over the water that was even now, buffeting against him as it flushed into the yawning abyss beneath him. This was all too familiar…

“Hang on!” Shorttail shouted down. Hanging being the only thing Handy was capable of doing, suspending his entire weight on the rope. His legs kicked in the air beneath him.

And then he felt the sudden shift as his body dropped another few inches. His head snapped upwards, through the slit of his helmet he saw it. You see the ropes were long indeed, easily long enough to reach from the base of the well to the top. But for what Handy needed to do, they weren’t long enough as he needed enough slack to be able to gently lower himself to the bottom of the well. With enough rope left over for him to easily grasp and pull in order to get the griffon to the surface. As a result, he had to tie to rope lengths together before securing it to the carriage he had fashioned.

And it was the knot he had tied uniting the lengths that he was now looking at. Gazing in utter horror as it slowly came undone. He looked down, seeing nothing but darkness beneath him. His eyes widened in alarm at the very real prospect of death. “PULL ME UP! PULL ME UP RIGHT THE FUCK NOW!” he bellowed, panicking. He felt the rope tug as the griffon tried to comply with his demands, right before it slipped a few more precious centimetres. He looked up one last time, just as the ropes undid their connection, and Handy fell away, watching the light of the well grow distant as he was lost beneath crash of water and the suffocating darkness.

--=--

He felt his fingers twitch first as he struggled back to consciousness, his ears ringing as they sent messages to his brain. The patter of cold water hitting his helmet unremittingly, the sound of the liquid hitting metal resounded. He shivered as he opened his eyes, closing them again immediately as water entered them. He shook his head, he couldn’t feel it through the numb cold. He moved slowly, achingly as he crawled out from under the small waterfall. His breathing was laboured and he grunted with the effort.

Eventually, after what felt like an hour but was in actuality mere minutes he pulled himself completely from the shallow pool he had been laying in and forced himself to roll over. The aching pain in his chest making it difficult to breath. He lay there for some time, trying to think. Eventually he moved his right arm, grasping at his side for the pocket he hoped was still there. He gripped it when he found it, his fingers, clumsy and unresponsive, fumbled at the clasp as he pulled out the brick. Holding it tightly in his hand he pressed the power button. The expensive brick shone brilliantly and he immediately closed his eyes.

He shone around him, he was in a cave with no visible ceiling, just darkness. The pool he had pulled himself from was at the base of an incredibly steep slope with rocky protrusions. He heard the sound of fast flowing water echo somewhere distant and he groaned as he recollected his memory of recent events.

Eventually, he pulled himself up as the numbness receded slowly and warm blood once more flowed freely in the capillaries at his extremities. Once more, for an uncounted time, he thanked God for Heat Source and her craftsmanship, for his head swam and he felt a sharp stabbing sensation in his chest. Something, somewhere in there, was broken. He evidently had taken quite a battering during his fall, had it not been for his armour, he’d have been dead. “I guess…” He rasped, coughing out water and shivering with the chill. “I guess not all ponies are bad…”

He rose from his seated position, stumbling to his feet, the reassuring and familiar weight of his warhammer hung at his side. Everything hurt, absolutely everything and every step was an effort. Looking around him once more, he took a few more shuddering breaths, his head swam. He wanted to be angry, but was just too wrecked to summon the effort to care. There was nothing to do about it other than to try to find a way out of the cave.

Using the brick as a light source, thankful, for once, for its stubborn refusal to turn off, he started walking. He followed the cave, once or twice coming to branches, trying his best to head in an upwards direction. It was slow going and Handy was unsure exactly how long he spent traveling, but as he went, his thoughts became clearer and he considered the circumstances that led him here.

Hope. What was the bloody point? Look where that got him, on a foolish venture and at the bottom of the arse end of nowhere after trying to save an idiot from his own well deserved fate. His mood became increasingly foul as he dwelt on the thought. What was he even fighting for, really? Money? Fame? Certainly wasn’t ideals, Handy abandoned that foolishness years ago. What then? To get home?

He smiled wryly at the thought, quickly banishing it under a groan of pain, stopping to catch his breath as he leaned against a wall, droplets of waters bouncing off his shoulder. Hope he could find something for his pet mage to use to get him home got him here in the first place. Why did he even want that anyway? Not as if his life was any roll in the daises back there. ’Wasn’t worse, either.’ He reasoned. ’I guess I just have to… I have to try at least.’ He told himself, unsure if he really believed it. He chewed at the thought for a few moments before pressing on.

Hope. Fuck it. What a waste of time.

He crest a rise in the winding cave tunnel and came upon a truly vast chamber. So vast that the light from his brick did not even cast the remotest light upon the far wall. However, it need not do so. The wide, flat floor of the chamber was home to things, the first being a winding, lazily flowing river, lit with some luminescent plants growing around its bends, casting a soft, light that only illuminated a short area around them.

The second thing that caught his attention was not the plants, but rather a larger source of light. That of a fire. He couldn’t believe his eyes. There, in the centre of the chamber, sat a hut. Made out of rock and ancient decaying wood, it sat there. He saw the warm, orange glow of a fire shine out through the imperfections of its structure. Someone was living down here!

Handy couldn’t believe his eyes, he removed his helmet with his free hand as he rubbed his eyes. He searched and found a slope down to the base of the chamber. Carefully he descended, using his brick to shine upon the ground. It was surprisingly flat and even, covered in ancient stone dust and tiny rocks, he thought he could make out strange patterns drawn in the dust. But it was hard to tell through the sharp shadows cast as he shone his light.

He slowly made his way closer to the hut, shining his light back and forth in the path in front of him, wary of any pitfalls that might be lurking in the near all-encompassing darkness. He smiled, subconsciously before it faltered. He stopped some distance from the hut as a thought struck him, the orange light from within flickering, casting odd shadows on the ground as it shone through the imperfections in the walls.

Here, in the depths of the earth, God saw fit to show Handy hope. A hope of civilization that only confirmed its isolation by its very presence here. Who’d choose to live down here? Why? Unless they had no choice in the matter. He snarled. Was this a joke? A hallucination? Out of all the twists and turns he took in the cave up until now, he finds this, the most unlikely of discoveries by sheer chance?

He took an unconscious step back. Fearful that it was some trick of the mind or worse, he thought long and hard about simply turning away and walking off in some other direction. He considered the endless blackness all around him and looked back at the hut. Struggling with indecision. This was too good to be true, too… Convenient. He grit his teeth.

--=--

Handy gently pushed open the door to the shack, the flimsy wood was held together by lengths of rusted iron wire and ancient, worn tweed. It was a humble affair, to say the least. The walls were lined with lengths of wood and small placards of smoothed, flat stones. Upon these plaques were hung the skeletons of several species of fish and certain subterranean plants, mostly different varieties of mushrooms. The sight reminded Handy a little of those glass framed butterflies collectors would put together, except writ large and slightly more morbid.

There was a small cot with what looked like furs draped over it, the base of the walls were cluttered with all manner of grey, clay pots and statuettes. In the centre of the room was a fire pit with a roaring flame, burning coals at its heart, a blackened pot hung over it. There was some kind of broth cooking slowly over the flame, the smell wasn’t all that enticing, but certainly not off-putting. Handy stood there in the doorframe, shivering, reluctant to go near the fire, as much as he sought its warmth to dry him off. He continued surveying the small dwelling, there was a large rock over which a wooden plank had been placed. Upon it were several small linens and utensils that looked like they had been carved out of small bones, they appeared as old and worn as everything else here.

Briefly he wondered where one would get this much wood all the way down here. His musings, however were interrupted and Handy nearly jumped out of his skin, jumping sideways into the room as he felt something poke his side.

“Oh… Terribly sorry didn’t see you there.” An aged voice cracked. Handy’s left hand reached over and rested on the head of his hammer as his other clutched his helmet. Standing where he had just been was a hawk headed griffon, feathers a soft brown fading to white. Her entire body was covered by a tattered, black shawl. Her red, blood shot eyes studied Handy as he stood there. He looked down at her raised claw, which clutched a small bag. The griffon smiled at the human, her grey beak was cracked in places. “You’re just in time for dinner.” She said as she walked towards the pot in the centre of the room.

Handy took a step back, his head readied on his hammer. He didn’t know what he had been expecting, but it certainly hadn’t been an old woman. “I…” He began, trying to find the words. ’Where the hell did she come from?’ “I was just… I’m lost.” He managed.

“Oh don’t worry about that now.” She said warmly as she settled on a ragged mat near the fire, rummaging in the bag she brought in. “Sit, you look tired.” She said looking back up at him.

“I am but…” Handy said, gesturing at the door absent minded before shaking his head. “Sorry but… who are you?” He asked.

“Oh I’m just Nanny Frie,” she said, dumping the contents of her bag into the broth. “This is my home.” She said, gesturing around. Handy looked from one wall to another.

“Its… lovely.” He said, she smiled knowingly at him before reaching behind her and pulling a crooked length of metal from an oil skin sleeve and used it to stir the pot.

“Close the door there, would you? So the heat won’t be let out.” She asked. Handy blinked and thought about pointing out the room’s walls were full of holes before thinking better of it. He closed the door, his gaze never leaving the old griffon. “That’s a good lad, thank you kindly.” She says, rummaging about in her shawl. “Ah there we are.” She pulls a small brown pouch and opened it. Holding it over the pot she taps it a few times and orange powder trickles into the bubbling concoction. Handy noted that it now smelled considerably more appetizing. “For flavour.” She explained.

Handy studied the old bird, blinking away through the pain in his head and his swimming vision. He must have hit his head tremendously hard on the way down. She seemed… frail. She took in shuddering breaths and moved slowly and deliberately. Her claws shaking with rheumatism, “I’m… Terribly sorry but… You said this was your home?” He asked, she nodded. “How long have you been here?” She sighed.

“Oh… I don’t quite remember, but it’s been a very long time. I’ve had to keep myself busy.” She gestured to the walls around her. Handy’s observation that the plaques on the wall were similar to those of hobbyists appeared to be right on the money. “Making pottery gets old after a while…” She hummed some little song to herself as she stirred the pot. “Go ahead and sit boy!” She said, pointing at a spot across the fire from her. Handy looked at the fire, thinking, before eventually sitting some distance from it next to a wall. Pulling his knees to his chest, his greaves making sitting awkward.

It was a bewildering situation and Handy was not entirely sure he wasn’t just imagining everything. He chewed the inside of his cheek as he thought, how likely is it that he’d ever find someone down here? Never mind one who has apparently lived here for quite some time. “I’m sorry to intrude on you.” He said, trying to process everything.

“Oh it’s no trouble at all, I don’t get the chance to entertain guests much.” She said, lifting her stirring stick from the broth. “Would you like some?” She asked.

“I… No thanks…” Handy said.

“Oh go on!” She said, chuckling before giving in to a cough. “Look at you, you’re shivering. Here, come on now, it’ll warm you up.” She said, Handy breathed hard, the pain in his chest slowly becoming more pronounced as the fire warmed him and banished the chill and numbness. Handy looked at the broth and considered her offer.

“I suppose…” He relented. She leaned over and pulled a bag from under the cot and withdrew two chipped, earthen bowls from it. His brow furrowed at that. “If you don’t have guests… Why do you have more than one bowl?” She looked at him in surprise before chuckling again.

“In case the one I use gets broken!” She replied.

“Oh…” Handy said, shaking his head. She dipped the two bowls into the broth and withdrew them, she placed her own beside her, walking around the fire to hand the other to the human. He hesitated before eventually reaching out and taking the proffered bowl. “Thank you,” he said. She returned back to her position and took the bowl into her claws, drinking deeply from it. Handy tapped his fingers along the bowl as he looked down at it, contemplatively.

A thought struck him. “Excuse me… Nanny Frie?” He asked, she looked up with a raised eyebrow. “I’m… Not exactly from around here.” He pointed out, noting the complete lack of any of the reactions he had become accustomed to. “You… You’re ok with that?” He asked. She smiled and chuckled once more. He frowned.

“Oh, I noticed. But you looked like you needed help, now go on, drink up, there’s plenty more where that came from.” She insisted, Handy looked down once more at his bowl. Slowly, he brought it to his lips. It tasted… well, it tasted bland actually, despite the nice smell, but it was wonderfully warm. He finished it off as they both ate in silence. The bird took another helping for herself and offered Handy another bowl full. He agreed to the offer and took another bowl.

He felt considerably better, warm. He was still aching but it bothered him less and he breathed easier. “Now.” She asked. “What brings you all this way?” She asked, Handy looked at her.

“I was…” He began, stopping as he struggled to keep his thoughts straight. He explained to her who he was, thankfully she didn’t question beyond the fact that he was a human and he came from Milesia, or that he was working for the king of Gethrenia. He explained that he was investigating strange goings on at a farm with another griffon when the bird fell down the well. He had entered the well himself to try to save him when the cave he was in collapsed.

“Oh dear.” She commented. “So you’re stuck here.”

“It seems that way.” He said, taking a breath. Odd, it didn’t hurt as much as before. “Story of my life…” He muttered, she just continued gumming her little song. Handy just sat there, his back leaning against the surprisingly sturdy wall. “I’ve been trying to find a way out.”

“Have you now? Good, good.” She said, nodding. “Not a very nice neighbourhood here.” She chuckled. Handy smiled wryly. “I’ve been wondering around here a long, long time, trying to find a way out myself.” She said.

“How did you end up down here?” Handy asked. She shrugged, Handy spied her left wing as it poked partially through her shawl, it was lacking quit a number of primaries and had several sores.

“I woke up down here, year ago.” She said.

“Years?” Handy asked incredulously.

“Oh yes, years, its been a lonely time. I was so angry in the beginning.” She shook her head, chuckling. “But that proved to be a waste of time.”

“How have you survived?”

“By making do.” She said gesturing around her. “It’s been hard but I’ve made it my home.” Handy looked at the bird as she drank deeply from her bowl. How could anyone live like that? And be content with it?

“I… See.” Handy said, looking at his empty bowl. Was this what he was stuck with now? Surely if there was a way out, someone as resourceful as this bird to have survived down here for years would have found it by now. That meant he was truly stuck here. The bird noticed the despondent look on the human’s face.

“Something wrong?” She asked, concern etched on her features. He shook himself from his reverie.

“Just thinking, have you stopped trying to find a way out?” He asked, she looked at him as if he suddenly sprouted a second head before throwing her head back and cackling.

“Of course not!” She said. “But after a while, I figured it wise to build a place for me to sleep when I get tired. Wouldn’t you agree?” She asked, Handy chastised himself for his apparent foolishness.

“I… Of course! I just thought… Well you’ve been here so long.”

“Well why would I give up trying to get out?” She asked, amused. “I’ve never given up hope of trying to find a way out, nope.” She continued. Now Handy felt impressed. This bird had been struggling down here in the darkness, eking out a life, if it could be called that. Never giving up hope of finding her way out to freedom. And she had done this for years.

“But you haven’t found a way out…” He said. “Doesn’t that get tiring?” He asked, thoroughly impressed by the griffon’s fortitude.

“Oh I wouldn’t say that.” She said, filling her bowl again, taking Handy’s and filling it as well. “The exit’s actually over that way.” She said gesturing with her stirring rod. Handy spat the mouthful of soup back into the bowl in shock.

“Wait what?” He asked, looking at the bird dumbstruck. “But you just said you’ve been wondering the caves for years to find a way out!”

“I have!” She said, chuckling once more. “Trying to find another way out that is, I can’t get out through the one exit I know of.”

“Why?” He asked. She sighed.

“Oh, I’m an old bird and won’t be able to manage to get out that way… Too strenuous.” She clicked her beak as she looked Handy over. “Say, you’re a young lad, a knight of the king?” Handy nodded. “Would you kindly lend an old griffon a claw?”

“Thou means help thee to get out?” He said, remembering his air as he took more of the soup. The chill was banished with its warmth and he felt… surprisingly refreshed. The pain in his head ebbed away, slowly. She nodded. Handy made a show of thinking about it, but really, if this bird knew of a way out, there was no way in hell he wasn’t seizing on the opportunity. “Of course!” He said, now reflecting on his thoughts earlier, wondering where in the hell they came from.

“Oh, happy days!” She said, clapping her claws together. “I thought it’d be a good day today!” She said happily, chuckling again. Handy couldn’t help but smile, the old woman’s good cheer was hard to resist. Then a thought struck him.

“Will you show me the way?” He asked, “I am not familiar with the caves…” She waved a claw.

“Oh no, I am quite tired from my chores today, I wouldn’t be able to walk the whole way… Ah!” She said, rising a single talon as something dawned on her. She got up and walked over to the to large stone with the wooden plank, reaching behind it, she heard her rummage. Something brittle broke and she let out a disappointed sigh. Eventually she pulled forward a length of wood with a small, iron cage on one end. Inside was a strange stone. She placed the cage in the fire and it caught light. “Here!” She offered.

Handy, for his part, just looked at the burning brand. Unwilling to take it from her claw. She cocked her head curiously. “Is there something wrong?” She asked.

“Its just… Well I’m not really-”

“Oh wait!” She snapped her other claw and reached within her shawl again, pulling a purple pouch, she tugged on one end of the string which bound it and tapped it over the torch. Blue powder fell from it and the flame’s colour change, she brought it close to her beak and whispered something Handy could not make out. The flame suddenly bent, as if blowing in a breeze and pointed towards the wall to Handy’s left. He blinked.

“What did you…” He before, before it clicked and he put two and two together. That was magic, she was stuck underground, and there were strange patterns on the dirt outside the hut. Holes on the surface around the farm, looking as if they were blasted from underneath. “Wait… Are you the cause of the magic in the farm above?” He asked seriously. She just smiled in return.

“Well, I did say I’ve been trying to find another way out.” She shrugged, “I got frustrated and started just trying to brute force my way out, I didn’t mean to cause any harm…” She smiled apologetically. Handy looked hard at her.

“If you could do that, why don’t you use your power to get through the exit?”

“I’ve tried,” She admitted. “My magic is ill suited to the task, and my body is not as spry as it used to be so I cannot just force my way through.” She said, Handy’s eyes narrowed at her. She smiled apologetically at him. “Truly I did not mean to cause any trouble, had I known my actions would result in somegriffon else becoming trapped down here, I would have not done so.”

In truth Handy was not angry at her, it was, afterall, not her fault he was down here. No that fault belonged to another griffon entirely. He was, however, cautious. He noted, oddly enough, that the flame turned blue and no longer emitted heat. “What did you do to the torch?” He asked.

“Oh a little trick I came up with.” She said. “It’ll show you where you want to go, the fire will never go out unless you put it out.” He blinked.

“Then why don’t you use the stone to keep yourself warm?” He said, gesturing at the fire beside them. If she had effectively endless fire, it made no sense not to use it. She smiled and ran a claw through the flame, the tongues of fire lapped around her claw harmlessly.

“No good for that sort of thing I’m afraid, believe me I’ve tried changing it to do just that, still haven’t perfected it.” She smiled, Handy reluctantly, reached out and took the flame from her.

“This’ll show me the way?” He asked. She nodded, he eventually got to his feet. He didn’t notice that his bones didn’t seem to ache anymore. He put his helmet back over his face and eyed the witch-bird warily. “I’ll come back once I clear the way,” he said. She beamed at him and he noticed her teeth were discoloured and more than a few were missing.

“Oh I knew I had a good feeling about you, thank you young lad. All-maker bless ya…” She said. He nodded at her before turning to the door, giving her one last, cautious glance before closing it and backing away from the hut. He patted the pocket where his brick was kept, ensuring it was still there. He held the torch aloft in his left hand, briefly the flames licked at the exposed neck where his helmet met his cuirass as he past the torch from one hand to another.

He flinched reflexively, but found his fear was misplaced. Thankfully, his skin did not spontaneously catch light, it seems the witch’s brand wasn’t real fire afterall. He let out a grateful breath as he pulled his hammer out with his right hand. He turned and followed the direction the flame led him. Glancing once more over his shoulder at the hut. ’This had better pan out…’ He thought.

--=--

Handy had acted almost as soon as the monster had finished its initial ‘roar’, his body moving before his mind could catch up. He charged at the creature as it reared its ‘forelegs’ and landed them where handy had been standing only moments before. The human had found himself beneath the golem when his mind caught up, he stopped as he suddenly realised he was in a compromising position.

The moment’s hesitation cost him precious seconds and the golem punished him for it. It spun suddenly, one of its legs reaching inwards and catching Handy with a kick, sending him sprawling across the floor and crashing bodily into the wall. The explosion of pain that wracked his body almost caused him to black out as he lost his grip on his hammer. His head spun and he just barely managed to duck and roll away as another dark grey foreleg punched out and crashed into the wall where his head had been not a second before.

He spent the first few minutes of the fight in much the same way, struggling to dodge the creature’s powerful attacks, its round body turning and following the human’s movements as it kicked out and lashed with its limbs. It was slow and ponderous when turning, but terrifyingly fast when it charged and attacked. Limestone stalactites fell loose from the ceiling and crashed against the floor as the chamber shook with the living stone’s violence.

In a moment of clarity Handy realised he wasn’t going to survive this fight if he didn’t get some breathing space. He couldn’t retreat and the only exit was blocked, he couldn’t force his way through.

But the golem probably could.

He grimaced as he decided what he’d do. He purposely ran around the golem, snatching up his dropped hammer, until he was back on the side of the room from whence he emerged. The golem swung low with a leg, forcing Handy to drop prone to the ground to dodge it, he felt the wave of air rush past him as the leg missed him by inches. As the golem quickly brought the leg back down upon the ground just where he lay, he put his hurried plan into action. The crash of rock upon the ground resounding around the room, shaking the earth as he rolled out of the way just in time. Struggling to get back to his feet once more before the living stone moved to crush him.

He had pushed himself to his feet and ran under the golem, the creature rose up, turned its body downwards and dropped. Handy had managed to run out from under the golem just as it crashed with the ground, running over to the gate. Handy thoughts raced as he considered his options. He skid to a halt before the stone gate, the ground beneath him shaking with the rapid footfalls of the golem. His idea was a reckless one and it would likely end in his death. But he just didn’t have the room to move, the enclosed space favoured the stone giant. ’Come on, come on…’ He thought desperately.

The golem turned. It lacked a face yet still turned as if it had one and charged at the human. The impossible, double jointed limbs, granting it tremendous speed as it bounded the short distance to the human. Handy gripped his hammer in both hands and spread his feet, bending his knees, preparing to spring into action. Timing was quite literally everything here.

The golem bounded across the distance with two short leaps before it was upon him, with one final lunge, the creature had finally committed to crushing the human. Time seemed to slow down as Handy lunged forward, towards the golem. He hit his head on the right foreleg of the golem, breaking off the left blade of his helmet. The blow jerked his head violently, as he crashed to the ground. But he had done it, he had leaped in under the attack of the golem, who had tried to correct its mistake mid-bound but failed. Its momentum carried it crashing into the wall with the stone gate.

There was a tremendous crash and the golem had punched straight through the rock and glorious golden sunlight shone into the room. Handy rubbed his neck as he pushed himself up to his knees and turned. The golem had exploded out onto a hillside, sending large chunks of rock flying into nearby trees as it skidded in the soft dirt, trying to regain its balance. Handy smiled viciously. “Fucking score!” He shouted as he pushed himself back up.

With the sound of grinding rock the creature moaned in apparent frustration, it turned its body towards the human, who now stood at the newly created gaping cave mouth. Handy blinked. “Ok… One problem down…” He said, noting the destroyed wall and the delicious breath of fresh air filling his lungs, his armour shone wondrously where it was not dented and torn. He only noticed the terrible state of his suit now that he was out in the open. Between the fall and the fight, it had taken quite a bit of punishment. “Now what to do about you…” He said, looking over at the golem, his neck ached.

The golem roared again, a sound of an avalanche as it charged up to him. “Oh no you don’t asshole…” He said to himself as he ran to the nearby trees. The Golem changed its course halfway up the hill to chase after the human. Crashing through the pines trees as the human ran, weaving between the trees. It slowed the golem down but did not deter it, and it wasn’t dissipating into its component parts as they created distance between them and the cave. Handy cursed, it was a longshot but it was worth a try.

The Golem leaped, achieving a surprisingly height now that it wasn’t restricted by the cave. It soared over Handy and landed hard in front of the human, forcing him to skid to a halt. It lashed out with a leg, Handy dived under it as it crashed into a nearby tree. His lungs burned with the effort. Honestly, he was not sure why he hadn’t collapsed by now, he had been exhausted by the time he had reached the hut. However, right now, he wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth.

He rolled back to his feet, he heard an ominous groan and looked up. The tree the golem had hit was an ancient looking pine. It withdrew its foreleg, focused entirely on the human who was distracted by the tree which was now leaning dangerously in his direction. He turned to look at the Golem which shuddered as it let out another bellow. Handy’s mind raced as a thought came to him. He stood up and spread his arms wide, yelling in mock challenge at the golem. The tree cracked and started to fall. The golem moved, Handy jumped back.

The tree crashed down on top of the golem just as it started to charge once more at the human. The creature was pinned to the ground under the tremendous weight. Handy had, meanwhile, fallen on his backside ingloriously. “Believe it or not…” Handy said, breathing heavily as he got back up. The Golem struggled to raise back to its own ‘feet’ letting out pathetic, earthy growls, struggling under the weight of the tree. “I know exactly how that feels.” He smiled wryly, thinking back the little kerfuffle he had in a forest out in the west of Equestria.

His smile faltered however as he saw the golem was slowly overcoming its new burden and would soon be out from under the felled pine tree. He looked around him desperately. If he fled, the golem would just chase after him again, he looked at the struggling creature as he thought furiously. It was then he noticed the green rocks glinting duly in the sunlight.

He saw those same rocks on the surface of the farm, built into the well structure. There were no holes within ten feet of that well. When he had ran into the golem for the first time, the magical flame of his burning brand had been sucked into them. That’s why the witch couldn’t escape, that’s why she had been sending magical blasts to the surface, she has been trying to get out of what was essentially, a prison was designed to absorb magic. With the golem as a warden.

The stones did not look as sturdy as the granite that made up most of the body of the golem and a thought occurred to him. It was worth a shot and he’d never get a better shot. He raised his hammer and charged at the golem, bringing his hammer down in an arc on the joint of its left foreleg. Colliding with the green stone that acted as its elbow. The stone cracked satisfactorily under his assault, the golem screamed and tried to lash out with its leg, but moving it caused the tree to press down on it.

Handy swung upwards at the join and the stone smashed under the assault, a small eruption of magical energy pushed him away and caused the entire appendage to shatter and fall to the ground inert. The golem collapsed under the sudden absence of the leg, bellowing. Handy shouted in triumph as he regained his footing and moved over to the other leg, the golem trapped under the tree. The green rock of this limb was not located conveniently at the bottom joint of the leg, but gather at the upper portion of the leg, the golem didn’t move it, pushing down on the ground. Struggling to free itself.

Handy grimaced. When the golem was standing normally, it reached eight feet in height. But that was not its full extension. A single leg of the golem consisted of three parts, the foreleg was the widest and longest, eight feet in length were it would narrow to a join, the second part of the leg was shorter, an additional three feet before it came to the second join and the third portion consisted of an additional two feet where it connected with the body. Giving the golem a spiderlike construction and incredible reach.

So Handy was faced with the prospect of trying to disable this golem permanently by taking out two of its legs on one side, but in order to do that, he’d need to climb eight feet of rock leg to reach its weak point. There was nothing for it, if he tried to duck around to the golem’s other side to get a leg with a more conveniently located weakness, it’d waste precious seconds. The golem was already recovering and pushing the tree off of it. He ran to the leg.

He swung his hammer and hooked it into a protruding handhold in the leg as he pulled himself up. Climbing haphazardly. The golem, aware of the human’s actions struggled more, trying to shake the limb. Handy almost lost his grip as one of the rocky protrusions he had been standing on gave way as the golem roared once more. He persisted and climbed up onto the leg, reaching its apex.

The golem thrashed suddenly, turning manic as the human neared the knee. It roared and with a tremendous effort it shot upwards, the felled tree rolling off of it. It lifted its leg and brought it down hard on the ground. The force almost shook Handy from his grip, he cursed as he held on desperately for dear life. The golem roared again, stepping around, Handy almost lost his grip, cursing. Finally the golem reared on its ‘hind’ legs and raising its leg into the air, Handy was now upside down and lost his grip. A terrifying sense of weightlessness gripped him as he fell.

He collided hard with the body of the golem itself, knocking the wind from him. The golem, thrashed, roaring again. Handy struggled, gripping the body of the golem to prevent himself from falling. “STOP. FUCKING. MOVING!” He managed to shout, his mind gripped by raw adrenaline as he pulled himself back on top of the moving stone. The golem shook violently.

“FUCK.” He said through gritted teeth, gripping his hammer’s haft half way. One of the green stones was right before his face, he raised his hammer and brought it down on the stone. It cracked and the golem roared. “YOU.” He said. Bringing the hammer down again, the angle was not great but the stone cracked further. The golem stumbled. “YOU FUCKING.” He managed to raise his hammer higher as the golem shook less. “GIT!” The stone exploded and Handy’s helmet was pelted with fragments of rock as it craters the top of the golem’s body. The golem groaned in pain as it trembled violently.

The force of the explosion pushed Handy away and he hung dangerously off the side of the golem’s body with one hand. He panicked and flail his hammer arm around, catching it on the edge of the newly formed crater. He shouted with effort as he pulled himself back on top of the stumbling, stunned Golem. He got back on top of the moving creature, gripping with his knees as he saw an-other, larger green stone at where the creature’s ‘forehead’ would have been based on where its wounded leg was.

Handy wanted to say something, but he was quickly running out of breath, his arms ached. So instead, he let his hammer do the talking. He raised it above his head, two handed and brought it down on the large stone. It cracked, the creature stumbled once more and Handy was almost thrown from the body. He gripped it with his left hand for balance as he raised his hammer with his right arm and brought it down again, cracking it further. ’One more.’ He thought. ’Come on, God damnit!’

The golem emitted a pitiful sound as Handy brought the third blow. The stone cracked apart and glowed brightly. Handy’s eyes widened as the stone exploded. The entire central body of the golem shattered in a wave of green energy and Handy was thrown clear. He landed hard on the ground.

He lay there for a while, focusing on breathing. “Uggghughhuhhhh….” He managed after some time, the wind shaking the pines above him as the sun pierced through the clouds. He didn’t hear anything other than the rustling of pine needles and the wind. He took that as a good sign as he decided to indulge his exhaustion, the adrenaline fading and pain taking its place.

After a while of watching the clouds pass overhead, he heard footsteps. Red eyes peered down at him as an avian head looked over him, smiling down at him. It was the witch. He tried to move in order to sit up, but his muscles protested sternly at such an action so he lay there. Forced to turn his head, his neck aching.

“Thank you.” The old bird said, chuckling softly. “For a time there I didn’t think I’d ever see the sunlight again.” She held a bag over his head. “For your trouble.” She said, placing it beside his head. He turned and noticed the burning brand, now unlit had been placed on the grass next to where the griffon dropped the bag.

“What is it?” He asked, in truth he wanted to ask the witch quite a lot of thing. Namely who in the bloody hell was she actually, and who had imprisoned her there? But he was hardly in a position to make her talk.

“Something to help ease the pain, and a little favour.” She said, “Thank you Handy of Milesia, I shall not forget your kindness.” She said as she removed herself from his limited field of vision. The human managed to roll over to his side to bring his arm around, grunting with the effort. The witch had disappeared. The human looked around, she had been there merely seconds before, where the hell did she get off to? How did she get out here so fast in the first place?

He pulled the bag over to him and opened it, inside was a clay flask. He opened the stopper and a familiar scent reached him, it was more of the broth from before and suddenly it hit him that the witch’s brew had helped him recover from the fall. He sat there for a moment, the implications of everything he had just undergone running through his mind. Eventually, after thinking hard, he drank the warm broth from the flask.

--=--

“What do you mean he’s dead!?” Tanismore roared, gripping the injured adolescent by the shoulders and pinning him against the wall. The storm from earlier had soaked the town and Shorttail’s paws splashed against the large puddle beneath him. The bird tried his best to explain to the knight how Handy had sacrificed himself when trying to save him. Tears streamed down his face at the memory of it, Tanismore was furious.

“Hey!” Tanis turned, and saw Brightblade marching up to him threateningly. He reared and brought his glaive to bear. “Let him go.”

“Not until I’ve heard the full story…” Tanismore growled with warning, glaring daggers at the smaller bird at his claws.

“He is a page of the duke’s court, you will leave him alone, now.” Brightblade warned. Tanismore’s head snapped to face the knight, two more of his fellows rounded the corner at the sound of raised voices, seeing their leader ready to come to blows they made to do the same.

“You work for the duke!?” He shouted at the terrified Shorttail.

“I-I-”

“You led Handy to that farm! Why!?”

“I was ordered to!” He confessed.

“Hush, damn you!” Brightblade hissed. Tanismore let out an avian screech of rage as he dropped the younger griffon onto the puddle. The human’s possessions he had brought with him lay forgotten in the middle of the street.

“Your duke, lured the human to his death!” He pointed accusingly at Brightblade. He drew his sword and Brightblade’s wings spread wide in response, blades glistening along his primaries.

“It was an accident!” Brightblade shouted back, having overheard Shorttail’s confession as he intervened. “Nogriffon could have foreseen that!” Tanismore was having none of it and rose into the air.

“The king’s swordbearer is dead after following the duke’s servant under his own orders!” Tanismore shouted, pointing at the knight with his sword, Shorttail cowered on the ground, clutching his injured arm. “There is plenty wrong with that as it is!” Brightblade flapped his wings dangerously, but didn’t take to the air. The two other knights came up from behind him.

“You don’t want to do this,” the bluecloak warned. “Stand down, we can work this out.”

“I am a knight of the royal court of Gethrenia and the Swordbearer’s deputy, I will not take commands from you!” He said, putting down the beak guard of his helm. Reaching to his side and pulling his shield from its strap.

The townsgriffons muttered to themselves, huddling around the corner as they watched the tense situation unfold. The human was dead, hushed whispers permeated the street as the news spread from mouth to mouth. So engrossed were they in the drama unfolding that they almost did not notice the tremendously bright light encroach upon them, until they saw their shadows grow increasingly stark. They turned one by one, covering their eyes. Fortunately, a cloud chose to cover the sun at that moment, lessening the blinding effect as the human walked up the street, heading towards the commotion in front of the keep.

The griffons parted as the human stormed past them. He saw the five of them, Tanismore was in the air above them, staring down at the bluecloaks, he didn’t notice Handy at first. The human took note of the three bluecloaks shouting at the royal knight, one in particular had a distinctive helm he remembered all too well.

Brightblade, number sixty seven on the shitlist. Punishment due; rapid application of terrible violence for offences laid against him. Handy reached down to the hoop that his hammer hung from on his belt. Grabbing it and twisting it around as he walked, he turned the hammer upside down. As it slid out from its hold, he gripped its haft, coming up behind Brightblade at a brisk pace.

“The human is dead, there is no sense blaming his loss on the duke. It was-” The knight noticed footsteps behind him and turned, only for Handy’s upswing to catch him on underside of his helmet. The knight stumbled back as Handy brought his hammer’s momentum to a halt and swung it back down on the knight’s head, sending him crashing to the ground unconscious.

Punishment delivered, Brightblade’s position on the shitlist now moved back down ten places to seventy seven. The two bluecloaks jumped back in shock. Handy ignored them as Tanismore gawked at him.

“H-Handy!” He said.

“Tanis.” Handy said by way of greeting, much more calmly then his recent display of aggression would indicate. He turned his head to look at the two bluecloaks on either side of him. They didn’t make any movements, so he reached down and picked up Brightblade’s glaive. “I’ll be taking this. Now.” He said, turning towards Shorttail who just looked at Handy in total astonishment. He walked over to the griffon, picking up his cloak from where it lay on the ground and placing it about his shoulders once more.

“I-I… I thought you were dead.” Shorttail said.

He looked hard at the griffon for a moment, his expression unreadable beneath his helmet before turning away and walking towards the keep. He threw his shield and pack to Tanismore as he alighted back on the ground. “I need to speak with the duke.” He said.

--=--

Karl sat by the window, drinking water as he flipped idly through some dreary text he had found in his room when he heard a knock at the door. He gave the door a withering look at the interruption. He coughed to clear his throat. “Come in.” He said.

The door opened to reveal the human’s soaked cloak and dented armour, Karl’s eyes widened as the human stalked into the room. A servant followed after him before the human rounded on him. The servant backed away out of the room and closed the door. “You.” Handy said simply. His voice like ice. Karl made to get up, "Sit. Down." He commanded. The duke reluctantly obeyed as he sat back in his chair. Handy sat across from him at the small table between them, he laid his hammer on the table and crossed his hands upon it, leaning forward. "Now, you and I are going to be having a little chat." He said, looking into the young duke's eyes. "About what I found at your family's old farm. And more importantly." Handy said, his mounting fury tempered as an interesting idea crossed his mind. "Exactly what you're going to have to do to keep me quiet about it."

Uncanoned - April Fool's Day: Souls of Darkness

Author's Note

This is the 2014, April Fool's day chapter. As such, you are required, nay, ordered to take this as seriously as an adult takes a pinky promise from his lying, thieving, scumbag, kid neighbour, who kicked your puppy and stole your satelite dish. The kind of promise involving your little fingers, not the kind where Pinkie Pie will cut a bitch for breaking it. Or it could be that, whatever floats your boat man, I don't really care, I'm just saying this is canonically flexible and ignorable and the first half of this chapter is demonstrable bullshit, just enjoy Lyra being Lyra, k? K.

And before anyone asks, the sword was based on this. Although the singing part was pretty much artistic license. May or may not delete this later, just felt the story could use a bit of silliness for once.

Uncanoned - April Fool's Day: Souls of Darkness

“Muhahahahahahahaha” The evil human laughed evilly, sat upon his throne of bones and ichor, a white carpet stained crimson with the blood of countless slain led down the steps cast from the melted down crowns of fallen kingdoms to the prisoners below. “I have fooled you all!”

The captive princesses were powerless, trapped in arcane cages and enchanted circles. Guarded by undead griffons and animated suits of pony armour. The throne room of the castle of the two sisters, the human’s fortress of darkness, differed greatly from what it once was.

Once it was the crumbling, remains of a bygone age lost to the darkness of the everfree, now it is transformed in the towering, crumbling remains of the present age of darkness of the human. Ushered in by the darkness inside the human’s dark heart of darkest darkness. He cackled darkly, lightning striking, illuminating the window behind his throne, creating a stark dark shadow which briefly cast his prisoners in darkness.

“You’ll never get away with this!” Celestia shouts. Her coat dirty and her mane torn.

“The elements of harmony will stop you!” Her sister, Luna shouts in her turn. The biped descended down the steps, dark smoke emerging from his grim, black iron plate armour, the slits of his helmets burned with orange fire. Resting his great maul across his shoulder, he gestured to the western wall with his free hand, black lightning arcing across his sharp, pointed ‘fingers’. The daggered digits of his ‘hands’, his secret weapons!

“Oh?” His dark, rumbling voice, echoed around the room. “You mean these elements?” A diamond dog pulled a gilded rope and the deep purple curtain was withdrawn, to reveal Princess Twilight Sparkle and the five other elements bound in chains and magical circles.

“I’m so sorry, princess!” Twilight said dejectedly, her friends groaning in exhaustion and pain.

“No!” Celestia cried. Luna gasped

“Muhahahahaha, I have thought of everything!” The human crooned. “There is no escape, make your time! Soon I shall have what I want: the princess souls! I will slay you and consume your essence, increasing my own power.”

“Monster!”

“Fiend!”

“You may call me whatever you wish, for you cannot harm me!” He growled, pointing a bladed finger at Celestia and Luna. He let his maul rest against the steps as he lifted a glass of blood. “You have no hope. My reach, is global, my tower, secure, my cause, is noble, my power, is pure, there is nothing to stop me, Equestria is mine!”

“Alas! He is right!”

“Who will save us now!?” Luna sighed into her hooves.

“I will!”

There were gasps all around the room as everypony turned to the towering, double doors as the opened. “Who dares!?” Handy the Dark shouted incredulously. A pony emerged through the fog wall of the archway, she was decked out in the sweetest gear. Golden chainmail armour given to her by the oracles of the sunken swamps which protected her from the magical statues which attacked her at every step of her journey. Her hood of vision claimed from the treasure vaults of this very castle, which guided her through the illusions and traps. Her hooves were covered in blue flames, the shoes of Cloudicus Maximus, the legendary smith of cloudsdale gave her the power of windwalking and saw her escape from the demon pits of the lower castle.

She raised her head, a confident smirk graced her features, two determined, glowing, golden eyes shone from under the hood. “Its her!” Twilight gasped.

“We didst not dare hope!” Luna said in disbelief.

“There may be a chance afterall…” Celestia whispered.

“What is this nonsense!? Who is this pony!?” The human demanded, gesturing at the newcomer with his glass.

“It is I! ~~Lyr~~Lyrica the Bard!” Lyrica boasted, raising a hoof in the air. “I have come to put a stop to your heinous villainy!”

“Such, foolishness…” The human muttered in disbelief.

“Surrender monster! You don’t belong in this world!”

“It is not by my hand that I am brought here in the flesh. I was called here by ponies, who wish to pay me tribute…” The human said, swirling his glass, taking a sip, the blood pouring into his helm as he turned. His red cloak blowing in the breeze let in by the broken down walls.

“Tribute!?” Lyrica scoffed, taking a few hoof steps forward. The undead guards readied their halberds, their skeletal wings spreading in preparation for a fight. “You steal ponies’ souls and make them your slaves!”

“Perhaps the same could be said of all religions…” Handy replied softly.

“Your words are as empty as your soul!” Lyrica accused, her horn lit up and she drew a claymore she carried across her back, sweat crossed her brow at the effort. It had been a long journey and she had already came close to death many times, brought back each time to the sacred fires she had lit on her way so that she could always press on. “Ponykind ill needs such a saviour as you!”

“And what is a pony!?” The human whirled around. “A miserable little pile of friendship! But enough talk!” He threw his glass into the air, blood spilling out as it shattered at Lyrica’s hooves. The slivers of glass bouncing softly off of the ward shield cast by her protective amulet. “Have at you!” The human cried out, grabbing his maul. The suits of armour and the undead griffons lunged at her.

She dove straight into the fight, her claymore swinging, a lilting song emanated as the blade glowed with brilliance upon each parry and successful strike. The song increasing in beauty and volume as she fought, filling the hearts of the captive ponies with hope. The human snarled, standing at the base of the steps to his throne, watching as one by one, his soldiers of evil were felled beneath the unicorn’s shining blade.

“Enough of this!” He shouted as Lyrica’s blade decapitated a skeletal griffon, causing its body, already mid-flight, to crash and shatter into a pile of rent armour. “YOU!” The human’s free hand shot up into the air, the electrical storm in the sky above increased in its intensity and she could feel the pressure upon her skin as dark magic concentrated in the room. The tower was struck multiple times with arcs of lightning, the building shook and masonry crumbled around them.

Lyrica grimaced and galloped across the throne room. ”SHALL NOT!” He raised his great maul in the air, clasping it in both hands. Bolts of lightning shot down and collided at the apex of the weapon. Dust and debris swirled about the human as he charged up his most deadly attack. Lyrica bounded, her breath ragged, she leaped, soaring over the heads of the captive princesses, her singing sword swinging around in a wide arc.

“PAAASSSSS!” The human’s weapon shone with brilliance, bathed in elemental fury and all the dark powers of the Everfree. He swung it down to meet Lyrica’s blade.

And then there was nothing but white light. For a brief moment, it’s as if everypony had ceased to exist before slowly, like waking up beside the ocean, a mountain roar of noise could be heard as magic energy exploded forth from where the two weapons met. The throne and the walls where ripped away in the fury of the magical tempest, the remains of the human’s unholy soldiers were blown away like leaves in the wind as that entire floor of the tower was blown apart. Leaving only the tiled floor upon which they stood, the captive ponies in their magical circles and chains, and the two combatants, locked in place, unable to move as the magic of the legendary sword Gladius Sol battled with the foul human sorceries of Handy’s great maul; Dark Hammer.

There was another flash of light and Lyrica hit the ground, the cages around the princesses withered away to ash as the light emanating from the magical circles faded. “Huzzah!” The princess of the night exclaimed as Lyrica got back to her hooves.

“You did it!” Celestia said. Walking over to Lyrica. “We and all of Equestria owe you a great debt, Lyrica the Bard.” Lyrica bowed her head humbly at the princess’ words.

“It was merely the right thing to do,” she said, before turning as they heard laboured breathing. The battered form of the human crawled away from the ponies, towards what remained of the steps leading to his throne. “However, we are not done yet.” She said, lifting her sword as the elements of Harmony, now released from their bonds joined the group.

Handy the Dark, butcher of Stalliongrad, despoiler of Griffonia, usurper of the Golden Throne lay broken and defeated. The magical explosion had ruined his protective armour, dispelling the unholy magicks that held it together. It rotted and fell apart as he moved. He heard hoof steps advance on him and turned, groaning in pain as he turned to lay on his back, proped up on the broken steps, facing his better.

“If you strike me down now!” He warned, his breath coming in gasps as he pointed a gauntleted hand at the Bard and her singing sword. “I shall become more powerful then you can ever imagine!”

“I know.” Lyrica said, her eyes studied the human’s face, what little of it she could see past the crumbling armour. She sighed, closing her eyes, her horn stopped glowing and the sword fell to the ground. The human looked confused, his mouth opening and closing, trying to form words. “But I know your true weakness, the true antithesis of all you represent. The one reason you declared your war of conquest, seeking to eliminate the one thing that could threaten you, which nopony would willingly offer you.”

“Silence, pony!” The human spat. “There is nothing but blackness within my heart. There is no room for weakness! No room for mercy or forgiveness! Save your words!” He threatened, his good hand gripped into a fist.

“Exactly. You have caused so much pain and suffering.” Lyrica said softly, opening her eyes to look at the human. “Violence is all you have ever given us.”

“Yes! It is what you deserve!”

“And yet… I can only feel pity for you…”

“You dare to pity me!? Foal of a pony!” He shouted, resting on his elbows, the ponies behind her scowled down at the human as he traded words with the Bard. She took in a breath and dispelled the fire from her hoof and extended it to the human, confusing him.

“Yet, after all that. I am willing to forgive you, for I know this is not your true self. You spoke with the oracles yourself, search your feelings you know it to be true.” She said, the ponies gasped collectively.

“Surely you jest!” Luna said.

“No…” The human retorted, the ponies behind Lyrica gave her confused glances, the excited pink one merely hopped in place, seemingly oblivious to the proceedings. “No… That’s not true…. That’s impossible!”

“Handy the human.” Lyrica said, smiling. “Will you accept my friendship?” There was a stillness in the air before the human let out a shriek of horror.

“CUUUUURRRRRRRRSSSSSEEEEE YYYYYOOOOOOOOUUUUUU LLLLYYYYYRRRRRRIIIIICAAAAAAAAA!” The human wailed as he began glowing white and his entire form shrank and coalesced into a small, round ball of metal. The ball fell to the ground, metallic tinks resounding in the silence as the black and silver ball rolled to Lyrica’s hooves.

She lifted it up with her magic, smiling as she placed it in her saddlebags. The elements started cheering her.

“Way to go, Lyrica! That was awesome!” Rainbow Dash said jubilantly as she took to the air. “I mean, I could’ve gotten out of that bind and taken care of him myself, heh, but, you know, you did alright and all…”

“Well ah’ll be, what did you do to him?” The farmpony asked, brushing the dust off her tattered Stetson.

“Yes,” Celestia asked, “What has happened? What did you do to him?”

“I have made a sacred pact” Lyrica turned to the princess, sheathing her sword. “It will take some time for him to become the true being of good he truly is. So I have taken him in my charge, he’ll stay in that ball healing his soul until I call him out.”

“Is that wise?” Twilight asked. “He was such an awful villain.”

“Yeah! He was a meany head!” Pinkie Pie, popped up from a pile of rubble amidst all of them, a decidedly serious looking pout on her face as she looked up at Lyrica.

“We say we should take the ball and cast it into the depths. Where it will never be opened again.” Luna offered, gesturing at Lyrica’s saddlepack.

“And leave another soul to its own curse? Princess, you above all other ponies should know how awful that truly is.” Luna cast her head down.

“Yes, we see. If you believe you can contain this human, we shall entrust you to ward this human.”

“Yes” Celestia agreed. “He is too dangerous to be left unattended. Are you sure you are up to this task?” Lyrica bowed her head.

“I am your highness.” Lyrica responded. The princess smiled, and lowered her head, tapping both Lyrica’s shoulders with her alicorn.

“Then may the light never leave you.” She said.

“And may the night ever guard you.” Her sister intoned.

“Lets party!” The pink pony popped up from the pile of rubble in a cloud of streamers and confetti, startling everypony. “I can’t wait to throw a You-Saved-Equestria-From-the-Mean-Human party! I’m so excited! Are you excited!? Oh! I should get Mr and Mrs Cake to prepare a large order, oh and the invitations! We’re going to need to invite EVERYPONY! And-”

The pink pony’s rambling was interrupted by a surreptitiously placed rock. The marble white hoof of Rarity held it up as Pinkie walked straight into it, looking down confused, wondering where in the hay the stone had come from. “Darling, you must stop by, you can’t be seen in those rags” Lyrica smiled at them all, as the yellow Pegasus alighted beside Pinkie Pie as the earth pony waved its hooves in compelx motions trying to communicate, the rock still in her mouth. Fluttershy tilted her head in confusion.

“I’m sorry I can’t, there is still so much for me to do.” Lyrica said, and with that, she departed. And so ends the tale of Lyrica the Bard and the Milesian Menace, she would continue onwards on her adventurers, making many friends and facing mighty foes. The human ever at her side, fighting for her and learning the value of friendship and harmony under her tutelage. Ever onwards to the horizon they march for each new dawn brought a new chapter to their story.

--=--

“What the… I don’t… What?” Bon Bon stared at the pieces of parchment before her. Her housemate, being the slob she was, relegated all the cleaning to her. So, like she does every other week, she enters Lyra’s room and starts fixing the place up. Today however, she discovered something she had not expected.

She had opened one of Lyra’s drawers to brush some of her things into it, to at least make the room a tad more presentable when she found the pages. Thinking they were musical notes she leafed through them curiously, only instead of finding musical notes she found an epic tale of adventure, quilled by Lyra’s own hoof. “What the bucking hay did I just read?”

Morbid curiosity spurred her own to read through it and as she went she… Honestly, she didn’t know what to think about it. Lyra had included a lot of townsponies from Ponyville as characters of the story, herself included, all helping prolong the protagonist who was such a thinly veiled stand in for Lyra it was a struggle not to roll her eyes at some points.

Ever since the first rumours of the human started spreading, Lyra had taken an interest. Now however it seemed to have grown into more than a mere hobby or casual interest. She snorted, reading over the story again, it was actually kind of funny in a way, cute even. “Oh Lyra…” She said. “What am I gonna do with you?”

“Hey Bon Bon, have you seen my…”

The blue and pink maned pony turned to see Lyra in the doorway. Welp, she was caught red hoofed. Lyra just stared at her housemate before her eyes slowly turned to look at the pages in her friend’s hooves. “What… Are you doing?”

“I was just cleaning and…Pfft!” She couldn’t help it, Lyra blushed, her horn lit up as she snatched the pages from her friends hooves.

“It was a first draft! I wasn’t finished with it!” Lyra huffed as she stormed off

“Wait come back!” Bon Bon said, smiling, following her friend into the central room of the house. “It was pretty good! Really!”

“You were laughing!”

“Was not!”

“You were about to!” Lyra turned, eyes narrowed at the earth pony. She looked away, hoof covering her mouth. Bon Bon swallowed, coughed to clear her throat, trying to dispel her mirth.

“Look, it wasn’t bad for a first draft, it was pretty good actually.” Bon Bon tried to reassure her friend. She knew she wasn’t angry that she was in the unicorn’s room, she cleaned it often enough to get away with it. Lyra looked at her friend suspiciously.

“You think so?” She asked sceptically. Bon Bon nodded. But scrunched her muzzle up for a moment.

“Well, I think you got the human wrong though…” She said, rubbing the base of her muzzle. It was Lyra’s turn to scrunch her muzzle.

“I think I got him alright! I do spend a lot more time then you do researching him.” She said defensively. Bon Bon rolled her eyes before responding, completely deadpan.

“Lyra, you spend more time then anypony researching the human.”

“Exactly!” Lyra exclaimed. “Sides, what could I have gotten wrong about him?” She said, turning away in a huff, defensive of her own little piece of ‘art’.

“For one thing, he doesn't have magic.” Bon Bon said. Lyra turned.

“What?”

“Yeah, said so himself.” Bon Bon replied.

“How do you know?” Lyra said almost accusingly.

“I was talking to Twilight yesterday and the subject came up. She told me so.” Lyra huffed at that.

“Oh sure, just because Twilight says so, it must be true. It’s not as if she met the guy.”

“Actually she did…” Bon Bon said as she started off to the kitchen. She stopped, eyes widened. She slowly turned to look at the shocked looking Lyra. ’Ohhh I probably shouldn’t have said that.’ She thought as she saw a beaming smile slowly grow to encompass most of her friend’s face. “Uhhh…”

It was too late, her doom was upon her, Lyra practically tackled her friend, firing questions at a million miles a minute. “She met him? What was he like? Does he have burning eyes? Are his hands as big as they say they are? What did Twilight ask him? Where’s he from really? Are there more of him?”

“Lyra, Lyra!” Bon Bon shouted, pushing her friend away and shaking her head, trying to dispel the dizziness from the unicorn shaking her. “Ugh… Look I don’t know, she didn’t tell me everything. Just that she had met the human in Canterlot and had an interview with him.”

“Ohmygoshohmygoshohmygosh!” Lyra squeed. “I can find out so much! I wonder if there’s enough for me to make a homebrew!” She gasped. “Oh I’m definitely playing one at my next game!”

“A what?” Bon Bon asked, blinking in confusion.

“No time!” Lyra said, bounded to the door. Bon Bon’s eyes widened. What hath she unleashed upon the poor pony princess?

“Lyra Wait!” She said futilely, hoof outstretched as the unicorn hastily opened the door and galloped into the street, startling passing ponies. Bon Bon wilted. “Oh horseapples…” She swore. She sighed and continued her cleaning of the house, after closing the door of course.

Myabe she’d stop by Sugarcube corner later and buy a cake for Twilight by way of apology. She stopped, screwing her face up in thought. ’Make that two cakes.’ Bon Bon thought to herself. ’Lyra will likely not be willing to leave the library until Twilight has given her everything, she’s going to be hungry.'

Chapter 20 - Services Rendered

"Klipwing?"

"Yes, milord?" the nasally voice of the young griffon responded. He lightly wrapped his talons across the wooden clipboard he clutched in his claws.

"What exactly am I looking at here?" Handy asked. Both of them were in a barn on Haywatch farms. He had been impressed to see the fields ready for the harvest, and farm griffons already were tending to the work. It was the first time he ever personally met any of his farmworkers and was pleased to learn they were a hardworking bunch. Surprisingly friendly too. However, none of them could adequately explain what Handy now saw before him, nor how it came to be where it now lay.

He looked behind them at the barnyard door where a pair of farmer griffons were having an argument over the proper placement of tools when they were not being used. There were distinct marks along the ground where the large object had apparently been dragged into the barn, which only raised more questions. Klipwing cleared his throat. "I-it appears to be a-uh, a hull," he said. Handy turned to look at the young griffon. He had brown, almost red feathers with a darker brown shadow framing his blue eyes, a typical yellowish brown pelt and wings to match his eye shadow.

The object before them could be best described as a ship of sorts. It had a typically shaped hull if not for the fact that there was no 'deck' to speak of. Instead, the sloping wooden frame merely stopped and levelled off, leaving a massive hullspace. The barn they were currently in was a particularly sizeable one used to store vast amounts of crops and supplies during harsh weather and was ordinarily filled to the brim with vats, tanks, crates, ploughs, and other necessary goods a farm needed. All of that had been put outside, however, to make room for this ship which took up virtually all of the space within, and if the farmers were to be believed, it had all happened overnight. Not a single one of them had seen the delivery take place. Handy didn't believe that for a minute. However, he'd leave plans for the Haywatch Inquisition aside as soon as he decided how he felt about a ship being dumped on his property.

Handy walked over to its side and pulled on a loop of strong rope. It held fast. There was an awful lot of rope hanging down its sides, but there was no mast to speak of. Looking to the side of the barn, there were several piles of shaped iron fastenings and several sacks filled with bolts. "What the hell am I going to do with a ship?" he asked, still half awake. Klipwing had stumbled into the room he owned in the castle early that morning.

"Well its not really uh-a ship, milord," Klipwing said, flapping his wings and alighting on the prow of the shape. He lifted up what appeared to be a rather large sheet of thick, dark, purple cloth. However, it had the wrong texture to be cloth.

"What is that?" Handy asked.

"It’s the balloon," Klipwing replied.

"Balloon?" Handy asked, brow furrowing as the gears turned in his head. Eventually it clicked, and his eyes widened. "You've got to be kidding me..." It had been considerably longer than a week since he arrived back from Canterlot, and Fancy Pant's promised payment had not materialized. Handy had scoffed and put the silver chains he had been tasked with aside. Now, however, Klipwing landed in front of him and handed him a sheet of paper. 'Sincerest apologies, but it was ever so much trouble trying to find a way to deliver this without raising eyebrows. I do hope you enjoy it. F.P.'

"Found it on top," Klipwing explained. "Do you know what it means?" he asked. Handy decided to just nod and roll the sheet up. Well, he had been complaining about having to walk everywhere before. Now it looked like he wouldn't need to. However, a thought interrupted him, and his happy grin faltered for a moment. Exactly what in the hell was he carrying that was worth a goddamn airship?

Crimson Shade couldn't tell what kind of enchantment was placed upon the chains but confirmed Handy's suspicion that they were obviously magical in nature. It had not been the only reason he had visited her, having decided it wise to regularly check on the pony he had bitten in order to see if his bite had any adverse effects. He discovered it did not, thankfully, for she grew no fangs and had no new taste for the sanguine. Though if she hadn't been turned, Handy failed to come up with a reason why the alchemists suddenly treated the pony with the fear and respect ordinarily reserved for drill sergeants. Although he did hear it had something to do with buckets...

A thought struck him. "Klipwing, how much does it cost to run an airship?"

"Oh well, first there's the fuel, then there's the registration fee, insurance, landing fees..." Klipwing rattled off the various first time expenses and likely payments Handy would have to make in the course of running the ship.

Handy frowned.

--=--

She stalked down the corridors of the castle, only the sound of the rain pelting the windows and the clink of her mail accompanying her as she went. It had been over a month since she had been set free but even so... It still felt unreal. She shuddered, sometimes she could still imagine seeing that hateful sneer and his clammy talons. But then she'd wake up, and she'd be in her bed again and he'd still be dead. She was safe, she reminded herself. He could no longer get to her anymore. No longer would he use what she held dearest against her. She stopped and gazed out a window, the nightlights of the city shining so far below like a patch of Luna's stars that had fallen from the heavens and alighted upon the ground.

Perhaps she should take the night off and go to the healer she left her with. Hirsild stayed with her most days, but it sometimes pained her to be away. She was doing well, or so she had been told. Thankfully, Geoffrey hadn't harmed her further. He didn’t need to - the threat had been enough. She shuffled her wings; the very thought summoned forth a rage in her so fierce that it threatened to overtake her completely. She was brought back to reality by the sharp sound of metal scraping against stone. Looking down, she saw three claw marks in the floor and raised her armoured claw to her face. She had unconsciously clenched her claw in her anger, cutting into the floor. She shook her head and continued walking. The few guards she passed stiffened to attention.

Eventually, the sound of clashing metal drew her attention, and she took a left turn, following the echoing noise. She came to the indoor training room. Smaller than the courtyards the knights and the guards normally used but still fully equipped. It was there she saw the human, flailing wildly at a training dummy with a glaive. He was clumsy, swinging the polearm haphazardly and inefficiently, his face contorted with the effort. She stood there, a light smile crossing her avian features as she watched the human struggle. Credit where credit was due, he was trying his best, but the glaive, she thought, just wasn't his weapon. Neither was the hammer, she considered. Admittedly, he wielded it with some skill, but his flailing left himself open way too often than would be survivable in a real fight against somegriffon like her.

Her smile shrank a bit as she recalled her last conversation with him. He knew she threw the fight and was insulted. She had to do it for the good of the kingdom and for her own concerns. To redeem herself for siding, wrongly, with Geoffrey in the first place... and to save her from his clutches. She supposed he was right. She did owe him. She cocked her head, thinking as she watched him, his chainmail glittering in what streams of moonlight pierced the rain clouds to shine through the windows.

"You know, that glaive is a bit too short for you," she said, smiling lightly. The human stumbled mid swing, turning and looking up at her in surprise. His look of confusion settled more into the passive, perpetually near-frowning face he always wore when he wasn’t hiding behind that helmet of his.

"Shortbeak," he said by way of greeting. She took a few steps forward, a thought forming in her mind as she spied a small, sharp sliver of metal at the human's belt. It looked familiar, and she slowly drew the connections in her mind.

"A bit late to be practicing, don't you think?" she commented as she continued approaching the human and the griffon-shaped dummy.

The human rested the glaive against the dummy. "Couldn't sleep. And I need the practice if I'm going to be keeping this," he said. The glaive really was a bit too short for him. It was designed to be used by a griffon the haft of which, when at ease and sitting on their haunches, reached their forehead from the ground. From there, the blade extended nearly another foot in height. It was designed for mid-air combat rather than fighting on the ground. Handy, however, stood at six foot, give or take a few centimetres. The glaive was only five feet when you counted the blade. It was a very different beast from what a human glaive would be, but Handy was not going to argue with the new reach the weapon afforded him. "How may I help thee?" he asked impassively. Funny how defensive he got sometimes.

"Nervous?" she asked. He looked confused. "About the tournament," she said, rolling her eyes. He snorted.

"Of course not."

“Oh? Then why can’t you sleep?” she asked, circling around the dummy.

“Just… a bad night,” Handy said, picking up his glaive again. In truth, Handy had been having difficulty sleeping for a while now ever since the duel. Sure, not having dreams is wont to make a man cranky over time, but if he wasn’t dreaming, then why did he find himself waking up in cold sweats every other night? Shortbeak looked at him sceptically before inspecting the dummy further.

“You know you’re going to need to step up your game a little,” she said casually. “You’ll be the only participating knight from Gethrenia there.” Handy raised an eyebrow at that.

“No one else?” he asked. She nodded. “Shame, but I am really only in it to seek someone out in particular .”

“Heh,” Shortbeak said. The dummy had received a few prominent nicks from the human’s blows, but nothing serious. “I meant what I said before. You may have talent, but you’re rough around the edges. You’ll have to participate in the whole tournament, not just fight that ponce of a prince.”

“I can handle myself.”

“Oh I’m sure,” she teased, smiling at the irritated look on the human’s face.

“I am not one to boast,” Handy said sternly, “but I did not make it this far by being weak.”

“I never implied you were,” Shortbeak said, raising a claw to placate him, “only that you need to be better.”

“What doth thou care?” he snapped at her. “Not as if thou were honest with me before, why the concern now?”

She looked hard at him for a moment before responding. “You’ll be representing Gethrenia. You may not boast, but your reputation precedes you. There are going to be a lot of eyes on that tournament.”

“I carest not.”

“I care about you making a poor show in front of the king,” she said quickly. “There’s going to be a lot of participants eager to face down the ‘dragon slayer’,” she warned. Handy kept silent and looked to the side. She glanced down at the sharp dagger by his belt once more. It was a crude thing, clearly home-made, sharpened out of spare metal. Quite like another she had seen.

She smiled. “And more to the point, I do owe you an apology after all,” she said. That got his attention, and he looked at her warily.

“Prepared to finally admit, then?” he pressed. “If thou were concerned I’d spread the word, thou wouldst need not worry. I have no intention of undermining Johan’s authority by implying the fight was thrown.” She shook her head simply, and her smile was replaced with the cold indifferent look he was greeted to when he first met her.

“Only if you admit to your own misdeeds first,” she said. He cocked an eyebrow.

“And what misdeeds are those? I have committed no crime.”

“Perhaps…” she mused, thinking of all the others she had looked into surrounding the death. All of them checked out, all of them had alibis including the human, who had the convincing story of having been stabbed at the time. Still… “Perhaps not.” She walked over to the far wall and picked out a spear from the wall. “Still, I’ll not stand for you acting like an amateur out on the field.”

“I am far from an-” His eyes widened, and he hurriedly raised his glaive above his head to block an overhead strike by the griffon. He had forgotten how fast she was. She whipped the spear up, drew it back, and stabbed it forward. The human had to dodge to the side, leaving his midsection open. She tapped his chest lightly, and he stood there, gawking down at the spear tip hovering a centimetre from his mail.

“Anygriffon can kill a monster,” she said. “You’ll be fighting against trained warriors.”

“I’ve done that before.”

“Without any magic,” she said, the human frowning at her in return.

“I have none,” he protested, swinging his glaive down, one handed to swat her spear away.

“No, but you’re like those night ponies aren’t you? Not as if you bother to hide it much,” she pointed out, silence her only answer. “You won’t get that opportunity there, not with Johan watching you, I should think,” she warned. His gaze narrowed, and he took a defence posture, gripping his glaive in both hands.

She waited for him to move next, which eventually he did when it became obvious she wasn’t budging. The dummy, long forgotten about as the target of the exercise, soon became an obstacle as the pair lunged and parried with their polearms. He was slowly becoming more and more infuriated. As lightly encumbered as she was in a half suit of mail and a light cuirass, she was much, much faster than she was last time. Her large wings, far from being a hindrance, allowed her to almost glide an inch above the floor when she moved. With a twitch, she moved a metre to the side, and he was forced to completely reset his footing to keep up with her.

After the third or fourth time, she managed to score a point. By then, Handy eventually decided to stop playing by the rules. After another unsuccessful lunge, she glided to his right, behind the dummy. He knew what she was going to do now. She was going to wait for him to swing around and come around the far side of the dummy wherein she would either just leap over the dummy or come around his flank and score yet another point.

So he gave the dummy a tremendous kick, sending it flying backwards and catching the griffon completely off guard. She stumbled, wings flapping to regain her balance. It was too late. He was already upon her and swung his glaive down, stopping it just at her neck. “Like I said…” Handy breathed, “I can handle myself.” He scowled at her as he withdrew the glaive. She merely flapped her wings once in response before setting them at her side, leaning on her spear.

“Well, at least you have sense enough to use your surroundings, but I believe I’ve proven my point. You need proper preparation,” she commented, “Nice dagger,” she said, looking pointedly at the knife at Handy’s waist. His hand absently crossed over it.

“It’s… more for utility than anything else,” he said.

“I’ll bet,” she said, “I saw one just like it not too long ago.” She smiled wryly before turning and walking to the door.

“What? That’s it?” Handy said, not catching the bird’s implications “Thou just walk in here, spout some nonsense, attack me, and then walk off?”

“You’re tired and not at your best,” she said without turning back. “Get some sleep. You’ll need the energy.”

“For what?” he asked. She turned back to him, her own eyebrow raised.

“For training of course,” she said. “You don’t think I’m letting you off this easy, do you? We’ll begin properly tomorrow.” Handy boggled at her.

“Wait,” he said sternly. She stopped at the door to look back at him. “If I accept thine training, wilt thou then be honest with me?” There was silence for a few moments as she stood there, studying his face. The human had to be, by far, the single most stubborn and isolated person she knew. And angry, which seemed more and more to be his default mood setting. He had hidden depths, however. She had been impressed by his actions in Ifrendare, worthy of any knight of the king. He always seemed resolutely determined to do whatever he was required to do, never backing down from anything even if it seemed unlikely he would prevail. A trait she noticed about him back in the kitchens. ’If he were only a griffon…’

“In time,” she said, looking away. She had been very, very careful to limit anygriffon’s knowledge of her. She knew she was being paranoid, but she couldn’t help it. Handy, if she was right, was responsible for ensuring that beast would never lay a talon on her ever again. She could trust him, right? “But not yet. Goodnight, Handy,” she said as she left the human in the training room.

--=--

Blueblood gasped for breath as his head broke the water level. He was being dragged down by his armour, and it was a struggle to avoid sinking let alone resisting the torrent of water threatening to drag him and the other recruits away.

“MOVE MOVE MOVE! I DON’T THINK ANY OF YOU WANT TO GRADUATE!”

“I-I d-don-”

“AIR IS FOR BREATHING, NOT TALKING! MOVE IT!” The abuse, his near constant companion these past two months, spurred him on, fearing the wrath of Bright Lance and the instructors he subcontracted into training him.

Let us briefly recount the sufferings of the good prince for a short while, shall we? The first thing Blueblood had to learn, and by far the hardest, was humility. Well, at least as far as taking orders rather than giving them for once. Ever since Bright Lance had been placed in charge of training the colt, he had suffered numerous lacerations, bruises, and the occasional broken bone. Elder guardsmen were only too eager to help train him in the finer points of defensive weapon practice and armour use much to the prince’s own personal torment.

When he wasn’t having sense beaten into him the hard way, Blueblood had been forced to wake up at least three hours earlier then he was accustomed and hurtled into a world of rigorous exercise and training. Hours long hikes, drills, and the drudgery of ‘make work’ with the intention of instilling in ponies an iron bound sense of discipline became his new routine. Now, normally such training was reserved for ponies who already had some soldiery experience under their saddlebags. Veterans of militia service or the princesses’ own gold-cloak standing levies who, through promotion or volunteerism, were brought here to ‘the camp’ to be forged into the royal guards.

Blueblood was no such pony.

His lungs burned as he went off at a gallop. Now finally out of the water, there was now the six mile trek to the waystation through the long and winding stallion-bane incline. Endurance training such as this was intended to equalize and extend pony stamina. Pegasi and earth ponies had an advantage in this regard, both naturally more athletic than their unicorn cousins, but even pegasi had to have their wings tied and forced to march through the dangerous terrain. Unicorns had a harder time, of course, and for once, Blueblood cursed the large frame he had been blessed with since Bright Lance saw fit to weigh him down with heavier armour complete with saddlebags filled with sand.

Had it been merely just a six mile run, it’d be more bearable. He let out a girlish shriek and jumped to the side as a long pole swung out from under nearby bushes, triggered by an unknown mechanism and intended to trip recruits. He had fallen for that trap many times before and was not keen on doing so again. When he finally made the six mile run, he was all but ready to collapse on the spot. Most ponies would to be, but there was to be no rest for the wicked.

“ON YOUR FEET!”

He flinched at the sound of the voice and struggled back to his hooves, looking up at the unforgiving visage of Bright Lance. “DUELING RING! CLAW PRACTICE! NOW!” Bright Lance shouted. Blueblood hesitated, matted down with dirt and freezing from the early morning soak in the river. How did Bright Lance even get here so fast? A hoof cupped him over the ear with more force than the prince had been expecting, and he complied with the order, his face a fearful mask as he ran across the muddy expanse to the barracks.

He hurriedly entered and put on the combat boots, clenching his hoof in the way he had been thought to bring the blades down. He heard more shouting. “Please…” he muttered to himself, his eye twitching, “Please let this all be a nightmare… Luna will walk in any second now, yeah, and then-”

“DID YOU GET LOST YOU SACK OF FERTILIZER? GET OUT HERE!”

“Uwahaaa!” he yelped, as he stumbled out from the barracks, a loud crash behind him as he knocked over something. Bright Lance grimaced, watching the unicorn kick up mud as he galloped over to the ring for his bout of hoof to hoof combat, passing by the pony recruits firing crossbows at targets. He was doing surprisingly well, all things considered, for his walk through Tartarus. He had, however, been reduced to a snivelling mess early in the training, but Bright Lance had dealt with ponies who broke easily before and managed to keep the prince moving in spite of it.

“I don’t know why you’re going so easy on him.” His ear flicked at the voice, and he turned to regard the stark white mare, with the severely cut grey mane and the silver shield cutie mark. Her azure eyes did nothing to soften the expression she wore upon her aged face.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, his own expression not changing from his dispassionate countenance.

“He’ll never reach his potential if you continue mollycoddling him,” she said as the stallion in question was thrown to the ground by the veteran Thestral guard he was duelling with, light lacerations across his flank. They heard him whinnying pathetically in pain.

“After a month and a half of steady training, I’ve now had him up for five days now with barely more than four hours sleep, and I’ve been running him ragged,” Bright Lance said, harrumphing. “Considering the wretch he was beforehand, I think I’ve done right by him.”

“Like I said, mollycoddling,” Iron Shield replied. Another flurry of slashes and Blueblood was on the ground again, a shoulder guard ripped from his armour and cast aside. The Thestral wasn’t even of the winged variety this time yet he was still struggling to keep up. “He’ll never learn what he needs to here; everything’s too controlled.”

“What would you suggest? His training is nearly over. He’ll pass with marginal marks as it stands.”

A small smile cracked the stony face of the elder mare.

--=--

He groaned and turned over, his body aching. He had a nice long sleep after the rigors of the previous day, peaceful even. He was grateful for the rest; the previous week had been absolutely awful. So when he got the chance to finally lay his head down, his body went straight to sleep, eager to catch as much rest as equinely possible. He slept soundly, not even dreaming, only vaguely aware of the familiar chill as the wind brushed his fur.

He frowned in his sleep. That was strange. Ah well, perhaps a board fell out of place and was letting a draft in. He didn’t really care. He just lay there as his mind slowly woke up in the half-asleep state where one is only vaguely aware of their body and the world around him. The rustling of the trees was peaceful and lulled him back to sleep. He guess his trial must be over, seeing as he got more than a half hour’s rest that night. Indeed, strange as it was, he was sleeping a lot longer than he normally would have even before his walk through Tartarus. Perhaps Bright Lance was finally giving him a break?

He snorted in his rest. That was a fat chance; he probably got distracted by something. Blueblood intended to capitalise on that as he lay there, enjoying the relaxing sound of the tree rustling over his head and warm kiss of sunlight upon his-

Wait a minute.

His eyes shot open and he looked about. He was outside, lying on a gravel path. He didn’t recognise these trees. He got to his hooves and noted he was no longer wearing his padded armour. He looked around in a panic. He was on some kind of trail overlooking a dried up ravine, mountains soaring upwards all around him. “Whe- What…” He breathed heavily as he struggled to rationalize where he was, trying to prevent himself from panicking. He backed up away from the ravine edge which he had been lying dangerously close to, squealing like a filly when his rear bumped into a particularly sharp branch of a small tree. He bucked instinctively with all his might, causing a satisfying cracking sound.

He turned on the poor tree he had struck and discovered a small, tan bag at its base. He opened it and discovered a pair of bladed combat boots, a small canister that appeared to be filled with water, and a note. He hurriedly unfolded it.

Private Blueblood.

As of reading this letter, you have now begun your graduation examination. Your orders are to use all of your training to survive in this wilderness and find your way back to civilization. The nearest settlement is within thirty miles of your current location due north west. You are to make it there before nightfall on the third day or else you face remedial training. You have been supplied with all you require.

Good luck.

Blueblood stared at the page for a long moment, reading it again and again as if the words would change from the constant scrutiny. “What?” he asked nopony in particular. “You can’t be…” Just then, carried on the wind was a distant, earthy growl and the sound of stomping. The forceful hooffalls causing the gravel of the path to jump with each movement. Prince Blueblood blanched, his jaw hanging open as realization hit him of just exactly what kind of excrement he had been landed with.

More stomping, another tremendous growl closer now, and Blueblood scrambled. He gripped the bag between his teeth as he rushed off down the path in the opposite direction of the noise, whimpering and cursing himself for thinking that the nightmare would be over so soon.

He rounded the path and came across a rockslide that blocked his way. He thought quickly as the stomping from before grew louder, and he eyed the gravel path behind him fearfully. He dropped the bag and hurriedly pulled the claw boots from them. Magic would take too long to clear the path. He’d have to climb. The blades of most royal guard boots tended to be much more utilitarian than most would suspect, useful for cutting and slashing in combat, yes, but useful in situations outside battle too.

The blades on his boots weren’t quite suited to aid him in climbing but were serviceable as he threw himself on the rocks and clambered over the pile, hooking the blades and pulling himself up. He got to the top and promptly stumbled, losing his footing and sliding down the otherside. He let out a terrified whinny when he stopped just short of falling straight into the ravine. His eyes widened at that. ’I could actually die out here!’ ”Oh sweet Celestia, I could actually die out here!” he shouted, echoing his thoughts. The growl from before became a roar and the stomping became louder and quicker.

He yelped and leapt back to his hooves, scrambling down the path.

--=--

He placed the quill down and rubbed the bridge of his beak, leaning back in his chair, sighing. The white-headed griffon groaned as he moved the scrolls away from him. He thought he had sorted out most of Geoffrey’s damage soon after becoming king, and in truth, Joachim had. Then came the debt problems. The Republic of the Greycoast was charging additional interest, concerned with the recent change of leadership in Gethrenia. What that really meant was that now Joachim had fixed the country enough to finally have gold coming into the treasury at a steady pace once again, Greycoast was concerned it’d lose one of its debtors since Joachim began paying it back and sought to keep Gethrenia within their clammy grasp.

The Ironclaws of Northern Griffonia, a different sect than the Ironclaws of Old Height, ruled over a poor and isolated breakaway kingdom of griffons and were one of the few kingdoms free from the yoke of the Central Toll, the other being the Black Isles and their secluded Princess. Oh yes, they suffered from a lack of affluence that practically all of its neighbours indulged in, but at the same time, they didn’t have to have their internal policies bent to suit the needs of the drunkards in Havenscroft.

It was a funny thing. Greycoast was a notoriously anarchic state. Bandits and wild beasts roamed its highways, revolts were commonplace, and most merchants with any sense steered their ships away from the state. Yet its burgher elite somehow always came out on top of whatever disaster beset that blighted northern nation, and its banks still remained stable. Technically, the Tolls of Greycoast were separate institutions from its government, but considering the same families that bickered in the shambles of the national Ting that formed its parliament also ran its banks, the division was laughable.

All-Maker alone knew how they managed to dominate international finance while the country was practically on fire all the time.

At the meeting in Canterlot, in private of course, King Goldtooth had brought up the matter of simply invading the republic to get rid of the debt that had gripped them for the past three and a half centuries. There had been a murmur of assent, but no commitment. It was a popular idea, and the griffons were not the only ones to entertain it. Every time a kingdom seemed to undergo a boom in prosperity, all of a sudden something would happen that would require an extension of a loan. Or a new one altogether, an increase in interest, or even a ban on future loans so that when the inevitable occurred, that kingdom would suffer and would even find banks not centred in Greycoast unwilling to deal with them until they came crawling back on their bellies.

However, the last time such an occurrence had taken place was when King Gryphus III’s ancestor, Cyphus II in Northern Griffonia, then known as the Kingdom of Borinthia, invaded the Republic on the justifiable grounds of the Toll of Ferth extorting his daughter’s claw in marriage with some minor burgher house in order to pay back his Kingdom’s debts. The war went well for the griffons before the Central Toll started using the crisis to devalue key currencies, destabilising the economies of Equestria and Henosis and the nearby confederation of minotaurs that have since become a part of the republic. The princesses, reluctantly, declared war on the northern griffons to force Cyphus out of the Republic, which in turn brought the rest of the High Kingdom into the war to prevent pony encroachment.

The then High King, Jorith, negotiated a peaceful settlement to bring the fruitless war to a conclusion before they all had become committed too far. The ponies retreated and surrendered what territory they had managed to win, Griffonia surrendered control of the vital crossroads town of Densborough, the terms increased the debt of Borinthia, and Cyphus lost his daughter in the end anyway. That in turn caused the aggrieved king to break his oath to the High King and secede from the High Kingdom, weakening the griffons’ international image.

Not only had they lost a kingdom, but the ruling Ironclaw Clan had been torn asunder by the event. Borinthia claimed the title of Griffonia to spite their southern brothers. Greycoast forbade any and all loans or aid to the new kingdom, making the kingdom’s neighbours reluctant to trade with them, leaving the kingdom to its own, isolated destitution. The entire debacle only served to cost everygriffon dearly with nothing to show for it. The rest of the continent quickly got the message.

So now Joachim was struggling to find ways of making additional income to compensate for the new demands of Greycoast without having to raise taxes and rustling the feathers of the nobility and the people. It was not an easy task. The silver gifted by Equestria was distributed by the High King to his vassals, and it would help for a time, but it would only stave off the pain for so long.

He pushed away from his writing desk and stretched before walking to the door. The guards stood to attention as he left his quarters. Briefly, Handy’s words about his soldiers’ fitness came to his mind. If war came again, would they be ready for it? He foresaw no such conflict in the near future, but as king, it was his duty to make this a concern of his. He chewed on the thought as he made his way to the library.

As he opened the door he was surprised to meet Geralt Stormglare as the venerable griffon was making his way out. “Ah, good evening, your Majesty,” The Lord Spiritual said, bowing his aged head. The old bird wore a simple blue robe, the trim embroidered with holy scripture in grey thread. Joachim smiled up at the priest.

“Good evening, High-Feather,” Joachim said respectfully. He stepped into the library, the older griffon holding the door open for him. A short servant griffon hurried over to the king. Joachim raised a claw to dismiss him, and he bowed as he walked off back among the book shelves. “How are you this evening?”

“Oh, doing well, my king,” Stormglare said as he closed the door. He frowned as he saw the look on the young king’s face. “Are you well, Majesty?”

“Hmm?” Joachim replied, breaking out into a yawn and rubbing his eyes with a claw. “Just tired. No need to concern yourself, High-Feather.”

“The welfare of all the All-Maker’s children are my concern, Majesty,” the Lord Spiritual said, smiling. “Is all well?”

“Yes, yes,” Joachim said, waving his wing lightly as he approached a shelf, drifting his claw across the various spines of the tomes. ’Mercantilism… Merchant Machinations… Marine Enterprises… I really need to extend this collection.’ He eventually settled on a book focusing on the use of toll roads and the pros and cons thereof. “Just… been very busy lately,” he said.

The old griffon nodded. “I understand. Your diligence has done this kingdom well, Majesty,” he said, Joachim smiled wryly. Flattery was something one just had to grow accustomed to as king. He tuned most of it out. It got nogriffon anywhere with him, but it didn’t hurt to acknowledge it once in a while.

“Thanks, Geralt,” he said. The old griffon chuckled as he followed the king to a table.

“I do not mean that as a mindless platitude, my lord Johan.” He sat across from Joachim, who looked up at him. “Your reforms have done a lot to ease the burden on the griffons of Gethrenia.”

“I was just repealing some of Geoffrey’s foolish laws and ridding the world of that tiresome bureaucracy he set up. I had never seen such a mess in my life.” Joachim sighed. “It had its talons in everything. Nothing ever got done.” Stormglare nodded.

“Indeed. It took all of my clout to prevent it from interfering in the temple’s affairs,” he said “So what appears to be the problem now? One would think you’d have earned a rest.”

“Greycoast,” Joachim breathed. Ordinarily, Joachim wouldn’t allow himself to appear stressed in front of his councillors and ministers, but helping the king deal with his troubles was, quite literally, in the Lord Spiritual’s job description. Joachim snorted. “Don’t suppose you could ask the All-Maker for a miracle, could you?” he said jokingly. The Lord Spiritual frowned slightly at his casual blasphemy but his smile quickly returned, deciding to deal with that matter at his next penitence.

“I can certainly try, of course, Majesty,” Stormglare said. “Although sometimes the answer is no.”

“You know I meant well, Geralt,” Joachim said reassuringly. “I can pay back the debt eventually of course, in say, ten years. But then some nonsense crisis or other is going to require me to come back, cap in hand, begging ‘Please sir, can I have some more?’” Joachim clasped his claws together and made a gesture reminiscent of an urchin begging for more soup. Stormglare chuckled.

“Perhaps you are being pessimistic, my lord.”

“I like to pay attention to history,” Joachim responded. The priest merely nodded.

“In any case, you will not solve the matter here tonight. Perhaps you should get some rest, my lord,” Stormglare suggested. “And you have the tournament to look forward to. I trust that will at least cheer you up?” Joachim opened his mouth to respond before closing it again. Come to think about it, he had this ominous feeling regarding the festival in Firthengart. Logically, he knew he was just being paranoid. There really wasn’t any reason for him to worry about with the tournament.

The worst that could happen, the absolute worst? Handy ended up forgetting that he wasn’t supposed to kill the prince. Or somegriffon else ended up taking care of that before he got around to it. In which case, as regrettable as it may be, it was a tournament. After all, injuries and death, while uncommon, did happen. It would be better if it happened there rather than in the middle of Canterlot, however. There had been a few precedents for that sort of thing.

“I suppose you are right,” he relented, closing over the book and yawning once more as his stomach growled. “I’ll table this for later. Care to join me for some late night supper?”

“Oh no.” Stormglare held up a white claw. “I had my fill earlier, but I thank you for the offer, my lord,” he said as he got up from the table. He chuckled as he left the room, “You know, my lord. That human has a way of settling affairs. You could throw him at Greycoast to see what happens.”

“I don’t have the heart if I am honest,” Joachim said in response, grimacing.

“Well I suppose it would be cruel to the knight…” the priest responded before continuing on his way out.

‘It’d be cruel to somegriffon alright, but it wouldn’t be Handy…’ Joachim thought as he got up and headed to the kitchens, sure a servant would bring the food to his room, but he always preferred fetching it for himself. That and at least the ritual of preparing a sandwich would help clear his mind, at least for a few minutes.

--=--

Crimson stirred, flicking her ears in agitation. Her hooves kicked out at her covers unconsciously. She gasped for breath as her eyes shot open, her horn lit up, illuminating the room she was in.

Wide, terrified eyes scanned the room, jumping at the shadows cast by the light of her magic. Stark black on grey stone, tattered tapestries upon the wall, deep, wooden brown where the window would have once been. Her heart rate increased as comprehension dawned on her. She felt pressure on her barrel as she looked at the heavy wooden door and the rags she laid in. She was back in her old room, but… how was that possible?

“No…” she breathed. Mistress would be along soon; she would be so mad with her. She placed her hooves over her head and closed her eyes. “It can’t… I can’t… I’m sorry,” she whispered. She heard soft hooffalls coming down the corridor, the tell-tale creak of wood as weight pressed down upon it. She forced herself to calm down, to regulate her breathing. Mistress hated weakness, and she would punish her more for it if she saw it. Taking slow, steady breaths she got back to her hooves, her closed eyes twitched as she summoned the courage to open them once more.

And just like that, she was still in Skymount, still in the office of the guildhall. Still safe. Her breathing quickened once again as she tried to come to terms with what she was seeing. Blinking rapidly, she saw that the window was merely covered with curtains, not overgrown tree bark. The shadows on the walls were softer, and the walls a sandstone colour. The door, far from the heavy oak she had known, was simpler, squared, and possessed no bars to which to view through. The rags she lay in were actually blankets, thrown upon a small cot she had put together in the corner of the room.

She could’ve requisitioned one of the bedrooms in the guildhall, but she didn’t feel comfortable there. The beds were too soft, she simply couldn’t get to sleep, and she habitually slept where she worked. So it only seemed natural to stay in the guildmaster’s office. She rubbed the side of her neck idly as she blinked the sleep out of her eyes. It’d take her at least an hour to get back to sleep after that nightmare. At least she had the consolation that the princess of the night wouldn’t be able to trace it to her thanks to the old magic. Master didn’t like the princesses from what she could gather. She’d hate to be a liability.

She shook her head and got up from the covers and walked over to her desk, pulling out the book he had given her. It was… strange. He had been hoping there was magic in here she could use, rightly concluding that it was similar to what she practiced. He was right, but it consisted of simple spells, interspersed with the occasional high level conjurations and was nothing new to her. What was new however, was the book itself. All the texts she had seen concerning the old magic were ancient, dusty, oftentimes falling apart or penned anew by Mistress.

She had gone to great lengths to impress upon Crimson that all knowledge of the old magic was concentrated in her hooves, and those she entrusted it too. Crimson had no reason to doubt her, yet her she had an entirely new tome at her hooves. She glanced at the cover. The strange spiral pattern at its front was not unfamiliar to her, but as far as she knew had no real meaning, and certainly didn’t appear again in any of the spells.

The ink that formed the incantations and descriptions was new, fresh, applied well within the current century if not that very same year. The parchment crisp and strong, the leather binding sturdy, the illustrations bright and vibrant. Master was not terribly specific about where he found it, and she didn’t press the matter. She closed the book over and sighed, replacing it in the drawer beneath her. She really needed to find a new way to occupy her time.

She had already cleaned and re-cleaned the office and the alchemists now behaved themselves much better thanks to her efforts although there was still the occasional accident that couldn’t be avoided. Or at least that was what they told her at any rate. Perhaps she should take a walk? None of the griffons were currently staying at the guild this week. Perhaps walking the corridors would help clear her head. If nothing else, it might help tire her out a bit mo-

Her ear swivelled as she picked up on a noise. The creaking of wooden floorboards from down the corridor outside the office. She froze. She had thought that was only in her dream. She waited to see if it came again. It did, this time with several notable hoofsteps, and she tensed. The magic of her horn flared an orange-red as she hopped down from her seat and approached the door carefully. Whoever dared trespass on the guild was in for a rude surprise. She forcefully opened the door. “Alright!” she shouted down the corridor, letting off a blast of harmless magic up and down the corridor to illuminate them. “Whoever you are, come out now!” she continued. “It’ll be worse for you if you don’t!” She heard her voice echo back at her from somewhere down to her right, and she scowled.

She carefully advanced down the corridor, sending blasts of magic to her left down the stairs. Nopony was there either. “Who-” she began but quickly stopped as she turned into one of the rooms. She was caught off guard as she looked into a mirror, and two images of herself stared back at her, both with the same expression. While her reflection was standing at the doorway she had just came through, the other was to the reflection’s right, beside the wall.

“Uncanny, isn’t it?” one of the reflections said in her voice. However, the source of the voice came from beside her. She turned to see that she was standing right next to herself, the doppelganger smiling slyly at her. “Sorry, but we need to borrow him for a bit. We’ll give him back. Promise.” Her horn lit up as the realization hit her, but it was too late. Something large and heavy hit her over the back of the head and she collapsed to the floor, unconscious.

The window opened and two more dark forms climbed through it and walked over to the unconscious pony. “To the outpost?” one of them asked. ‘Crimson’ shook her head.

“Better not. Take her somewhere to keep for a few days, I don’t care where. Just long enough until the Heartless leaves the city. Make sure none of the griffons see you on your way out.”

“This is not our first job,” the second changeling snapped. She glared at her for a moment.

“Just get it done,” she ordered.

“Shall we inform the queen?” the other one replied as he lifted the unicorn up and helped his partner carry her out the window as she was hovering outside, ready to hold up Crimson’s weight long enough for him to get out and help lower her down quietly.

“It’d take too long. The human has a way to communicate with her. I just need to get close to it,” she said as she closed the window after them. She stopped for a moment. “Be sure to keep her sedated. We don’t have any spare pods.”

“For the last time, we know what we’re doing,” the female changeling shot back, hissing so as to not raise her voice.

“I’m sure,” Crimson shot back, closing the window and walking down the corridor. She wasn’t quite sure what the queen wanted, but she wasn’t prepared to disobey her orders. She’d know once she got a hold of the amulet. If the queen was right, he still had it. It would’ve been so much easier to just impersonate a serving griffon and infiltrate the castle directly, but the griffon kings, wisely, followed Equestria’s example and had changeling detection systems installed in their homes.

It wasn’t completely foolproof. Chrysalis had been quite pleased to learn that when the human didn’t set off half the alarms of Canterlot. Still, it wouldn’t do to lack caution and so they chose to impersonate the only pony the human had regular contact with. They could’ve chosen the griffon that oversaw his businesses, but pony forms were easier for them to maintain. Getting him to hand over the amulet might be a bit of a problem.

She’d cross that bridge when she came to it however.

Chapter 21 - Fun with Feudalism

Author's Note

First of the timeskip chapters, next and final one will be out next Monday. Read here for more details.

Chapter 21 - Fun with Feudalism

"Ow, ow, and ow."

"Oh come on, it's not that bad," Tanismore said, slapping Handy on the shoulder. It was the same one that ached and had been broken just an hour before, healed only by the delightful balm that salamander salve proved to be. Tanismore didn't realise his mistake until Handy, resting his head in his arms, looked up and gave him a glare that could cut glass. Tanismore winced as he withdrew his claw and became very interested in the tankard of foaming beer in front of him.

So it was that Shortbeak had made good on her threat to train Handy to ensure that he didn't make a fool of himself at the tournament. A threat it was, not an offer. Handy had relished the opportunity to finally, finally face Shortbeak in single combat again, even if it was only just 'training'.

That had been a mistake on Handy's part, for apparently Shortbeak also relished the training, and Handy learned first-hand why it was he never saw her in the courtyards when the other knights practiced. No one dared stand against her, so she had taken to training on her own.

Her first sessions were much like that one night, going at each other with sticks, much to Handy's detriment. Oh sure, he learned how to properly wield a spear, but not before he had had his legs taken from under him dozens of times and was thrown to the floor, hard, half as many times. Never mind all the bruises, sores, and limping he was left with.

Of course, he didn't do himself any favours by showing up bright and early the next day after a healthy dose of vitamin salamander when anybody else, griffon or human, would be in their bed recuperating. God forbid Handy forego his indomitable reputation and not immediately bounce back from getting the seven hells beaten out of him like, you know, a sensible person would. Of course she was going to take that as a sign that he could handle more and just ramp it up.

After learning to use the spear, she began openly challenging him with it. It was then that Handy realised he hated flyers. All flyers. Everywhere. Forever. People with wings were assholes and should be shot down. Of course, he was only saying that by learning the hard way what single combat with a flying opponent was like. The answer? Hell.

Eventually, Handy would write down a useful guide for fighting anything and everything one was likely to encounter in this world, just in case. He'd dedicate an entire chapter to fighting winged creatures, and aside from the obvious things to include, such as useful tips like 'go for the wings' and an introductory paragraph detailing in explicit minutiae exactly why flyers were the devil, his primary advice would be this: never fight a flying opponent on their own terms.

You'd think that would go without saying. It did not. You needed to write that shit down, burn it into your memory, and never forget. It was not as if she had been trying to injure him, but Handy, in his blind, stubborn refusal to back down, often forced the matter. That he seemed to be able to simply sleep it off as far, as anyone was concerned, certainly didn't give her any incentive to go easy.

In the duel, she had been weighed down by armour. Her mobility had been restricted, and although she still hadn't admitted it to him, she had been holding back, so her flight advantage had not been as great as it otherwise would have. Now? She had no armour, was unrestricted, and she wasn't holding back. Handy's existence had become pain. It had paid off, however, as eventually it got to the point where Handy was able to anticipate and account for her movements, despite how much faster she was than him. He could now wield a spear properly, and soon enough they had moved to using bladed weapons.

Handy now went to bed each night with more cuts than he cared to count. At least it was a good excuse to use the salve.

On the one hand, he should probably thank her for training him largely in private, for he'd have been humiliated otherwise. On the other hand, God damn. He started using his glaive in conjunction with his shield. An offensive fighter with a polearm he was not. He'd leave that for when he had his hammer on hand.

So it was, as the two months rolled on, that he had actually taken to spending his infrequent nights off down at a tavern within the city, specifically one of the ones he now owned. When he wasn't doing his duty to the king, that was, or getting slowly beaten into a knight-shaped smear on the ground.

It didn't take long until his fellow royal knights began following him, especially the ever-gregarious Tanismore.

"So okay, maybe it is that bad, but hey, you're holding up!" Tanismore said brightly, taking a swig. Handy grumbled darkly to himself. Ordinarily he wouldn't be caught dead moping like this in public, but the griffons that frequented his taverns were somewhat used to them, and at least half of them worked his fields out on the Haywatch estate. Therefore, he felt a bit more content to relax a little in front of them, even though the real reason he went down here was so he could get a free bed far away from anyone who knew him for one night. That way, he had an excuse to not be anywhere near the castle where anyone could find him come six o'clock the following morning. He was normally an early riser, but sometimes… sometimes you needed an excuse to lie in, you know?

A small cup filled with a clear liquid was placed in front of him. He glanced up from his arms and raised an eyebrow at the tavern keeper, and the big griffon smiled awkwardly.

"You look like you could use it, boss," he said before turning away and serving some yahoos at the far counter who were apparently singing a sea shanty, despite being God knows how far from the nearest sea. Handy sighed and swallowed the liquor. It burned the whole way down his throat and its taste was unfamiliar, but it settled pleasantly in his stomach so he made no complaints. It even made Tanismore's presence more tolerable.

"Hey!" Tanismore shouted, welcoming two more of their cohorts to the tavern. Handy briefly looked up, noncommittedly waved a hand, and went back to what he was doing, not even bothering to discern which of their fellow knights it was. "Cheer up, I thought you've been looking forward to training with her for a while now."

"I have," Handy finally said, "and it’s great, really." He rolled an arm, and his shoulder popped alarmingly. "Juuuussst great."

"Well, she's not going to be around for a week or so, so you'll have a bit of a break." That made Handy pause.

"Wait, really? Why?"

"Eh, Grimmy Grimface over there says she's being sent away for a week, to some healer out east. King's orders," he said, referring to the ever joyless Godfrey. Joachim had never mentioned anything about that.

"I wasn't aware the King was… ill."

"Neither was I. In fact, I kinda wanted to ask you about it. You know, you being the Sword and all."

"No, Joachim seemed perfectly fine to me, never heard a word."

"Maybe the healer is for somegriffon else?"

"Probably. It isn't our concern in any case; best not talk about it out loud." Handy then looked over to see the barkeep awkwardly standing nearby, clearly having heard everything. Handy narrowed his eyes dangerously at him. The barkeep waved his claws, shook his head, and zipped his beak before walking off, whistling to himself. There was a shout of approval from some corner behind the staircase, and Handy could briefly hear the plucking of strings. "Oh God."

"Oh hey, is that Longtooth?" Tanismore asked excitedly. "I love his ballads!"

'Everyone loves his ballads, the tasteless fucks,' Handy thought to himself as, sure enough, Longtooth started off on a ditty, a rhyming limerick with more verses than strictly necessary. His voice was warbly and constantly cracking, yet for some reason he couldn't fathom, everybody liked his singing. Handy groaned and waved the barkeep down.

"Another of whatever that was," he said, snapping his fingers. The barkeep half-filled the cup before pulling the bottle away. "I didn't say stop."

The bartender filled the cup to the neck and left the bottle while Handy just sort of… glared at the liquor accusingly. The griffon looked up at the would-be minstrel plucking away at whatever makeshift stringed instrument he had wandered into the tavern with today.

"You know, I could make him stop if it’s bothering you that much, boss," he offered. Handy looked up to the griffon and raised his head an inch to say something, but stopped. He looked around and saw most of the bar was happily talking and listening to the terrible sonnets as they nursed their drinks and shared good times with their friends. He closed his mouth and shook his head, leaving them to their fun.

No sense in spoiling the night for everyone.

--=--

The average week of Handy the Milesian, Royal Knight of Gethrenia, Sword of the King, Baron Haywatch, consisted of an uncountable amount of bullshit. While his position as Sword saved him from some of the more onerous duties of being a royal knight, largely doing the work of ordinary guards but in fancier, heavier armour, it didn't come without its own responsibilities.

His appointment had been a largely unceremonious affair. The office of the Sword was technically not one of the Privy Council, albeit one with direct access to the ear of the King himself. He had shown up in Johan's solar one day and sworn a short oath, literally consisting of a question and answer along the lines of 'Do you swear to serve your King?' and 'I do'. It was witnessed by Ivorybeak, who had him sign a sheet of parchment, and Bob's your uncle, Handy had the authority of a king.

Well not quite, it seemed. The Sword's powers in some respects were quite sweeping, vague in other respects, and restricted in everything. Sure, in a matter of life and death, he could make a rather hard decision and let the king sort things out after everything had calmed down. In some cases, he could pronounce judgement in the king's name over a matter of justice. However, he couldn't do this when the matter involved a noble without the king explicitly giving him leave to do so, unless it involved murder. However, he could judge on any matter when it involved commoners… except when it involved murder. One would honestly think that would be exactly the sort of scenario he would be able to make a decision on.

The position came with all sorts of asterisks and exceptions to the rules that had built up over centuries. This was the result of it being an ad hoc office that was not technically bound by law. The title was awarded and rescinded at the King's whim, and accumulated traditional roles and assumptions like moss on a stone.

In fact, it got so vague and confusing at times that Handy had actually taken to reading books in the castle library just to figure out what he could or could not do without actually breaking the law or, you know, causing a war or something. He knew he could use the vagueness of his powers to his advantage if he really wanted, most people being unaware of the Sword's limits, and the ones who knew its limits didn't know all of them. Handy liked being absolutely sure and noted a few loopholes he could get away with in a tight spot if necessary. Law made for dry reading most days, but after powering through the book on Equestrian criminal law, the confusing jumble of traditions, customs and local laws concerning the Sword made for a challenging and somewhat fun distraction.

…For a given value of fun, that was.

The long and short of it was, however, he didn't get to use his person as the Sword anywhere without Joachim giving him leave to do so, which usually came with specifications on what powers he was and was not authorized to use in that instance. The only exceptions were situations where the fate of the kingdom was put at stake and the king was unavailable to make the decision. Very odd wording on that one, come to think of it.

In practical terms, it largely meant he ended up taking care of the innumerable petty feudal obligations that Johan, in his person as king, couldn't realistically be expected to dedicate himself to all the time. This included but was not limited to: travelling to some far off pig sty to determine the right of inheritance amongst village folk; recognising and assenting to minor laws passed by minor nobles in their relative areas of Johan's direct domain—some of which, Handy was alarmed to discover, directly affected him due to being a baron—and presiding over the Court of Appeals for commoners and nobles alike.

Johan was not an idiot—he had magistrates, but the law allowed appeals to a higher authority if the matter could not be settled by the lower courts. Funnily enough, that was one of those times when asterisks were involved, such as the aforementioned issues regarding murder.

Thankfully he didn't have to sentence anyone to death, but he locked up a hilarious number of people in the stockades. He really regretted telling Joachim what he used to do before coming to this world, which just made him all the more eager to use Handy for situations like these, freeing up affairs for him back in Skymount. A drunk Handy was a needlessly talkative and revealing Handy. Stupid past Handy. Handy hated that guy. Still, the look of sheer fear on people’s faces when the Shadow of Johan was sent to settle disputes and proclaim judgements was worth it every single time. Hello, yes, this is the Mouth of Sauron. Tell me of your legal troubles; I'm here to help.

This, of course, did not count the occasions when Joachim used him specifically for dealing with issues in his stead, where he had considerably more leeway in authority. Sort of.

"This is outrageous! I demand to see the King at once!" the… generously weighted countess blustered, ruffling the feathers of her wings and puffing her chest out. She was not at all intimidated by the six feet of cloaked, armoured fuck off standing before her. Her liveried servants behind her shuffled nervously, eyes never leaving Handy.

"My apologies, my lady. However, His Majesty is currently indisposed. If thou wouldst prefer, as his Sword I can—"

"Nope, that won't do at all," she harrumphed, turning up her beak to the air with eyes closed. Handy continued to look down at her. "I demand to see the King right this instance. It’s too important for the uhm… help." She looked over her eye glasses at Handy, her eyes lidded and condescending.

"And what matter would this be in regards to?" Handy asked, as polite as you'd like, even though this jumped-up noble was starting to get under his skin. Most tended to know who he was, and he usually let the wild tales do the rest for their respective images of him without word or comment. Either this woman was uncommonly brave and flippant, or an idiot. Besides, even without Handy, to think she had the right to demand to see the king then and there was beyond presumptuous, especially at this late hour after Handy had politely turned away much more important and worthy supplicants for the day.

"A matter of sensitive urgency you couldn't possibly comprehend. Now off with you. Fetch him for me."

"As I have stated, ma'am, His Majesty is currently indisposed."

"Well, what is he doing that’s so important!?"

--=--

"ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ…" Joachim snored before breathing out, his breath coming in short gusts and blowing the stack of parchments, scrolls, and loose pages of open books. The study was dark and littered with plates of half-eaten food, worn out candles, piles of books, dispatches, missives, commands, tools for making wax seals, maps, tools for reading and measuring distances on maps, and the occasional empty wine bottle.

It was all evidence of a long haul effort by the young king to clean up his kingdom and the occasional nasty surprises his dear late brother had left in store that needed to be corrected, so much so that he had been neglecting an awful lot of sleep. Handy may or may not have deliberately misinterpreted his last, slurred words before he went out like a light, slouched over his desk, as permission to dissuade further interruptions, no matter who came.

"ZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzz…"

--=--

"Tending to delicate matters long overdue for his attention, for the good of the kingdom of course," he replied, not quite lying. The Countess spluttered with indignation.

"That’s absolutely preposterous! I demand justice and will not settle for anything less!"

"My lady, I am the King's Sword and his Law. I am capable of granting thee satisfaction in anything thou might require," he said. The two liveried servants glanced nervously at each other.

"Hmph, very well, then maybe I can get an answer from you as to why the King has disgraced me so." Handy paused. He didn't hear anything about this.

"Could thee perhaps elucidate as to what alleged disgrace to which thou art referring?" Handy fully intended to frustrate this uppity Countess' temerity with long-winded, overly formal politesse. Sometimes old-timey speak had useful, if petty, applications in life.

What immediately followed was the Countess not going into exactly why she was there demanding a personal audience with the King, all the while Handy being loquacious in denying her again and again each time. It wasn't as if she couldn't wait a day and bring her case to the King's plea court when he was good and ready to receive her like everyone else. Noooooo, she demanded special attention. Handy began to wonder whether or not it was wise of him to put himself forward in Joachim's place.

'You know, I could just fob this off on Ivorybeak. He's not doing anything right now,' Handy thought to himself as the pair sat at a table, a castle servant delivering steaming hot tea in a decorative iron kettle. All the while, the 'conversation' had delved into the Countess' 'impressive' family lineage. It wasn't that much to be raving about. Handy had been in court long enough to know if a noble’s name actually mattered before actually speaking to them. He didn't rely on his or her lineage all that much because their value went without saying. If their lineage actually was impressive, they didn't need to boast about it—people would talk about it without their having breathed a word anyway.

A general rule of thumb among nobility was that it was better to be talked about than to talk about yourself, which was exactly why Handy enjoyed standing at the side in court and simply watching. He knew he wouldn't be approached, and he knew he didn't have to talk to anyone to make himself known. Having said that, it now spoke volumes as to who the hell this yahoo thought she was, given how she acted, and how she still hadn't told him why she demanded an audience. She didn't respect his office, she apparently didn't know who he was, and she was wasting the King's time. Perhaps she needed to be reminded of her place in the world.

"Lady Summerjoy, was it?" Handy began politely, putting his cup down.

"I should certainly hope you'd know my name by now, hmph!"

"So exactly when doth thou intend on dropping thy pretence and getting right to the point of it? Th'art wasting the Crown's time, and as the King's Sword, I have better things to be attending to."

"I beg your pardon?"

"I said out with it, or I will have thee unceremoniously ejected from the guest rooms." Handy’s voice was flat. The incensed noble's servants started bearing outright frantic expressions.

"Well I never! What gives you the right to—"

"I am the Sword of the King and the Shadow of Gethrenia, little bird," Handy interrupted icily. "You have come making demands of the King, claiming he has disgraced you without a shred of backing to thy claim. Nay, thou dost not even explain what thy claim is."

"I refuse to speak of such things to some common servant."

"I am no common servant. I stand here with the King's authority, or do you not know what the office of King's Sword entails? Perhaps an hour or so in the stocks would see you right, hmm?"

"You… You wouldn't dare!" Her composure slipped ever so slightly.

"You are right, of course, that would be most impolite. No need to sully your dignity like that in public. Perhaps a night in a cell would be more to your liking? Certainly more private and less embarrassing that way. Or do you have a suggestion of how I ought to deal with some noble with airs far above her station who’s falsely accusing the King of a wrong he did not commit?" he asked almost casually. That got her to shut up for a minute. "Now, wouldst thou be so kind as to tell me the real reason you wanted a private audience with the King. Or should I assume thou were not trying to merely ruse thy way into his presence and were, in fact, trying to implicate the King in something untoward?"

What immediately followed was a considerably more polite and respectful, not to mention brief conversation concerning the Countess' intentions for redress on petty matters that had occurred in court over a week ago. Given that Johan was present and hadn't noticed the incident, she technically wasn't lying about being 'disgraced'. Still, it was making a mountain out of a molehill. It had been an eyesore of a dress anyway.

He let her off with little more than a slap on the wrist and a very firm impression, casually mentioning that she should have a chat with her servants as she left. They seemed to appreciate the gravity of the meeting—perhaps they could let her know what kind of bullet she had just dodged.

They wouldn't be entirely wrong either. He had found himself more than once unnecessarily eyeing her neck.

--=--

"Okay, so… just go over this one more time please." Whenever he could get a hold of her, Handy would occasionally visit Crimson. He had several reasons of course, the first being to see if she was doing a good job with the alchemist guild. Considering it wasn't a smoking crater in the ground and the finances were at least partially in the black, he'd say she was doing well enough. The alchemists seemed less crazy at least. And again, just to be sure, he would check to ensure she was not growing fangs. Contrary to what he'd initially thought, ponies did in fact have canines, but thankfully the blood-red pony didn't seem to give any indication of going through whatever had made him… well, him.

So, if thestralism wasn't contagious to other creatures of this world, yet it was to humans, why couldn't whatever fucking variant of vampirism he currently had also be transferable? Not that he was complaining, but he'd really like an explanation. Maybe Crimson was a one-off? Was he missing something?

"Alright, well, you see, magic can be tapped by simply reaching out through cryhnphr, the process of focusing the magic through your body." She was also giving him baby's first magic lessons. Well, that was not quite accurate—more like she was teaching a kid how to understand complicated theoretical mathematics in the simplest way she could.

Also, said kid was foreign, spoke a different language, was blind, deaf, and had never heard of the concept of representing abstract thoughts through simple symbols. And he was four.

"Okay, so now what is this ‘cranfer’?" Needless to say, it was not going well. Not impossible, mind you, just so far out of his depth as to be like relearning the world all over again as if he were that hypothetical four year old. Or maybe Crimson just sucked at teaching.

Probably the latter. It went on like this each time, and each time Handy was left with far more questions than answers. However, at least she seemed to stop acting so timid around him in private, which was a definite plus. It certainly made conversations easier. Plus she had stopped referring to him as ‘Master’ as well. Up until now, he had just decided to let her keep the verbal tic rather than challenge it, no matter how much it had creeped him out, but he was glad she finally dropped it nonetheless. In truth, he was just looking for a way to make sense of the world around him. Magic was real and, frankly, that was a huge deal. He was now a vampire and magic was a part of him, for better or worse. He wanted to know how that exactly worked or, failing a scientific knowledge of how it worked, he'd settle for understanding some basic principles.

He had tried asking her specifically about old magic before getting an odd look from her. She had then insisted that it would be better to start off with the very basics before getting into it, and Handy had conceded the point. Despite that, he still wasn't getting anywhere. Every time he came, he asked his questions, and that led to referring to more topics and concepts that formed the basis of answers which themselves needed to be asked about and explained. If Handy didn't know any better, he'd swear Crimson didn't want him to learn anything.

The building shook, and a very faint 'I'm okay!' could be heard from somewhere below them. Crimson sighed.

"I'm sorry, sir, but these alchemists need to be constantly cared for."

"Evidently," Handy muttered, trying to reconcile simply willing magic through his body and what precisely that actually meant. He was capable of amazing things while on a blood high, but he still didn't know how, and was still unsure whether or not that actually counted as having and 'using' magic, or if he was a conduit for something that was already magical, namely blood, that he just burned away like diesel in an engine. Now he was back at square one. "I suppose I will leave you to it."

"I…uhm, I'm sorry I couldn't have helped more."

"No no, you've helped plenty, Crimson. Oh yes, that book I gave you. Have you learned anything new from it?"

"Nothing of any real significance. Why? Was there something you needed?" she asked easily, not meeting his eyes and keeping a bored expression as she accompanied him down the stairs.

"Just wondering," Handy replied, hiding the disappointment in his voice.

He left the guild house and walked down the hill back into Skymount, leaving her to deal with his pet mad birds. He knew the city like the back of his hand now, and he had some time to kill. He wasn't needed at court for the rest of the day. Joachim hadn't found some other errand to send him on; Shortbeak had fucked off to God knew where; nothing needed its skull caved in; Crimson was being Crimson and keeping one of his investments from blowing up… Oh right, he should probably find Klipwing and find out what new and exciting ways he was bleeding money.

To that extent, given that it was mid-afternoon, he expected the bird to be in the office Handy had purchased for him in the upper rooms above the bakery he owned. That was assuming he wasn't downstairs partaking in the goods for his lunch, as that griffon had a sweet tooth.

Sure enough, he found Klipwing outside said bakery for a change, happily chatting away with some other bird Handy didn't recognize. He swallowed the baked good he had been chewing on in a hurry when he spotted the human, and the other griffon quickly made her excuses and left. Klipwing smiled nervously, to which Handy could only raise an eyebrow. What was he worried about?

"M-Milord! I... uh, wasn't expecting you today."

"Morning, Klipwing." Handy looked over into the bakery, happy to see it relatively busy. He elected to walk away before his presence unduly drove away potential business for it. "Come with me."

Klipwing hurriedly scarfed down the remainder of his treat before following after Handy as the pair walked through the marketplace and, as usual, Klipwing brought him up to speed about what exactly was going on with his various businesses and properties. Not the most glamorous life for the fourth son of some backwater noble, working in the shadow of a shadow at court and effectively managing accounts, but he still applied himself with all due diligence. Handy found him agreeable in that sense and willingly overlooked the incredibly annoying nasally voice that persisted every time he talked. Puberty hit griffons hard in a lot of ways it seemed. Voice breaking was one of them and tended to drag on for years. Poor bastard.

Handy lifted a pear off a stall he passed, flipping a few coins to the vendor with hardly a glance and bit into it as Klipwing gave him the rundown. The craftsgriffons had finished their building and were making a steady profit. Unfortunately, he couldn't dig into said profits as much as he would've liked given the agreement for rent. Being tenants and not subjects, they didn't pay him any tax due to him not being, strictly, their baron. Handy snorted—something was better than nothing after all. It was one more source of revenue to add to the black at the bottom line, so he had Klipwing move on.

The blacksmith Handy kept forgetting the name of was actually doing amazingly well, having taken on no less than three apprentices and was expanding his business. A pleasant surprise by all accounts, and the grizzled old griffon was able to get back to his finer metal working now that he was turning a steady business. With his apprentices taking care of all the small, mundane demands for everyday items that kept the steady revenue, Handy had no objection to the man focusing more on the fancier, artistic side of his craft. Another good addition to the black.

Handy already knew about how well his two taverns were doing and let the brothers continue their business unabated. Klipwing moved on.

Next up was the brewery, and Handy steeled himself for what was to come. Not that it was doing badly of course, although it still was a drain on the purse strings until his farmlands got their crop rotation sorted and he could start supplying his brewery with the hops necessary to finally get something started. No, what Handy feared was what his brewmaster and his workers were up to.

It started with the nurses. Now, it was obvious what one could conclude: beer-swilling griffons and pretty nurses from the local hospital—we all knew how this story went.

No.

No you didn't.

You really, really didn't.

First there was the fire, from which Handy swiftly moved the topic along. There was a spate of guard chases through the streets, something involving a fish cart, several paddocks of livestock, and a bridge. Then Handy heard about the stolen, single sail riverboat… and how it ended up on top of a windmill. Then there was something about a wizard—he didn't know. The point was that a lot of people were angry. Handy had simply gawked at Klipwing as he recounted the tale and made a mental note to fire everybody at the brewery for their shenanigans.

That was until he heard how said shenanigans had uncovered a secret cult or something and foiled ten simultaneous kidnappings which resulted in very happy people and negating the cost of various damages, leaving the entire city by and large at square one by the time he got back from his trip out of town. And nobody had made mention of any of it to him until now.

Handy would honestly have preferred it if it was just a simple story of a bunch of drunken griffons fooling around with some comely nurses and that would be the end of it. It would have been less ridiculous and headache-inducing.

The mill was still a money sink, no surprises there. His additional lands he had ordered Klipwing to purchase would be used for cash crops in order to make the mill useful, but he still didn't have potential buyers for any end product lined up. So, even if the next harvest came in and it was made into something productive, he still didn't have any end consumers to justify it.

Speaking of said lands, that brought up another matter Klipwing was reluctant to speak about.

"Out with it, what’s wrong?" Handy demanded as the pair of them stopped over a bridge. The large Opal Tear River which bisected the city flowed underneath, small riverboats passing under the bridge's shadow as a pair of griffons carrying heavy planks walked past them.

"Uh, well it’s wage day, milord," Klipwing said, reaffixing his spectacles. Handy frowned.

"So? Pay the men their wages. I have the money, don't I?"

"Uh, n-not that milord. The farms, you need to be there."

"Well alright," Handy sighed, not particularly looking forward to the trek out to the Haywatch farmlands, but he had nothing else planned for the day and fuck walking the steps back up the mountainside to the castle. There was a reason he often spent days up there without ever coming down, and the reason was that he didn't have wings like the rest of these lucky bastards, so getting up and down the mountainside was a bit of an issue. "I don't see why I can't just send you with a bag of money to pay the farmhands."

"Uh, I mean, you have certain baronial duties to attend to."

"…Oh."

--=--

Handy, much to his alarm, had serfs.

At least, it was serfdom of a kind anyway. Most countries had some form of it, or so he was led to believe, but it was often called different things and the laws were different than what you might expect. In Griffonian law, serfs were known as the clansworn: the descendants of lesser families, hangers-ons, and dependents who swore allegiance and fealty to greater clans in what was once a despotic relationship. It was an evolution from a more savage time in early griffon tribal history that had changed radically since those days.

The modern understanding, that of griffons tied to the land in personal relationship with their liege lord, emerged in and around two thousand years ago when griffons ceased being exclusively herders and hunters and started being more agrarian like their neighbouring races. This had the added benefits of bringing griffon settlements off the mountain tops, the expansion of mining, and other civilizational development. Although he'd have to ask someone about it, the All-Maker cult began rising to prominence not long after the civilizational shift.

What this meant for Handy in real terms was the fact that he had somewhere in the region of a dozen families, supposedly 'clans' in their own right, sworn to him as their baron. The previous feudal lord who ruled this land had passed away without issue, and in a legal loophole, the land didn't default to the king but fell into the hands of a merchant who was only too keen to sell it on. The clansworn, lacking a lord, went with the land and ended up swearing to Handy. However, you did not have over a thousand years of serfdom without traditions, rules, and laws building up over time.

While Handy owned their land and they were beholden to pay taxes to him, he in return was obligated to guard their rights under force of law. And they had a lot of rights, not least of which was a very hard form of noblesse oblige, wherein poor harvests negated the need to pay taxes which were usually paid in tithes of the harvest itself. The tithe was levied to a certain level, with the remainder staying with the clansworn themselves to feed and to profit themselves come bumper harvests, which was good news for everybody. Come the bleak times however, he was responsible for housing and feeding them if they could not support themselves with what they had. Normally this would go without saying in a feudal relationship in the event of a disaster, but this meant that they had the right to impose upon their liege every time life got even a little bit tough.

A lord could try to refuse, but their serfs had the right to appeal to his overlord if he did so without good cause, and there were very rarely situations where you had good cause to not help feed a family who had very little food over the winter, barring a costly war. The feudal contract was taken very seriously under Griffonian law. You had clansworn, they worked your land and fought for you in war and paid your taxes, but whatever extra they made was theirs to keep and do with as they will.

Robber barons who felt like taking what they pleased soon found themselves and their families stripped of their titles by their betters. No one really felt like giving their liege lords a justifiable excuse to take their lands from their clans, so it provided a decent incentive to not be a tyrannical bastard, assuming you were of that persuasion to begin with. Although sometimes the system, as good as it was for higher lords and as much as it tried to mitigate the shittiness for the commoners, was rarely a pleasurable experience for petty lords. Like, say, barons for example.

So it was that Handy learned the hard way why a lot of land on this side of Skymount was being sold off so cheaply: the soil was practically worthless. His lands were getting the same weather as everyone else's, but it seemed to make no difference. No wonder Klipwing was so nervous to see him today. Only the newly purchased land was somewhat tillable, and worst of all, from what he was hearing, whatever blight was affecting the land was spreading. That meant quite a few of his serf families imposed on him for their sustenance when they couldn't farm enough to keep for themselves for the foreseeable next few months, and he had no choice but to comply.

Higher lords had different serf duties and relationships on the dubious account that they had more of them to deal with, but Handy was specifically low enough on the ladder that this affected him directly. It was little wonder the previous petty lords were so eager to sell off what became Handy's new property and let these serfs be someone else's problem.

He had other duties besides his expensive troubles and looking after his people when they needed it. Marriages for example. As baron, he was required to give acknowledgement and approval whenever major inter-clan affairs took place, which meant giving a nod of approval when this daughter married that son or other, and bearing witness to 'statements of intent'. Under law, he was meant to attend each wedding but that was hilariously unrealistic, so tradition and custom filled in where the law failed to meet reality. He just had either the prospective beaus themselves or their representatives give him their statements of intents in person, basically swearing an oath which he would then acknowledge as legitimate. He also had the job of acknowledging parentage and clan membership of this or that newborn child.

Typically as baron, his role was as an intermediary in clan affairs to prevent blood feuds, which was why he was so tied up in such familial matters and why his presence and approval was necessary to give legitimacy to them as a point of reference and authority. It only got awkward whenever clans decided to marry into other clans in servitude to another lord.

That was all the time, just so you know. It got difficult only insofar as they tried to decide exactly which clan allegiance took precedence in the marriage so that the newlyweds and their soon-to-be young family would be loyal to this or that lord and where they could plot down a house. As a result, Handy got to know a few of his neighbouring barons on first name terms. One of them was named Skyler, who liked to sing. Handy did not care for the man.

Despite all this, the clans were beholden to him in times of war and could not move off the land without his permission, but they otherwise had complete freedom of movement to travel the kingdom as they pleased. Handy, if he could, would have happily changed the relationship, but it turned out you could not force serfs to be free griffons. They could refuse and historically often did when lords tried. A lot of history and pride was tied up in their positions in society, with a man's father's, father's, father's father serving this or that lord since time immemorial. Basically, being a serf meant a guaranteed minimum income, protection, and shelter for their family, as well as a sense of history, identity, and pride in return for bearing arms in times of war while also getting tax exemptions that not even nobles could get away with.

Handy had heard one of the other barons joke once about a duke who had some noisome clansworn, so he had ennobled the lot of them just to justify getting them off of his land and replacing them with a better breed of person. Handy hadn't quite laughed, but he did let out an amused snort.

Now in addition to this, Handy also had tenants. These were families who weren't bound to Handy in serfdom, but instead were tenants on his land, doing the exact same thing serfs did. Handy had six families of tenants. They were utterly dependent on Handy not deciding to just kick them off his land and renting it out to other tenants if he so chose. He owed them no baronial duties or protections beyond basic protection from threats to life and property, held no filial relationship to them, and in return they paid him higher dues in harvests and taxes than a serf would. Other than that, they were basically freemen. Freemen who constantly sought to become serfs.

Why would anyone not want to be a freeman? Well, largely because being a freeman was not all it was cracked up to be. You had no guarantees in life at all, let alone job security. You more than likely could not afford the dirt you walked upon, so good luck buying enough land to build a large shack, let alone a house, for your family. Sure, you could go anywhere you liked, but so could a clansworn serf, so it was not like that was a special privilege. Plus the clansworn always had a home to go back to and knew it. Sure, you could find a trade and ply it to earn enough to set yourself up. Good luck doing that when you had to rent out the property you use to do your work in the first place while having to worry about the guilds and their dues breathing down your neck.

Your only realistic choice was to live in a city, which meant more often than not that you had to become a tenant of a landholder and pay whatever rent they charged on top of your taxes. And most landholders in cities? They tended to be the few freemen who did well for themselves, usually through becoming ruthless merchants and gathering enough capital to buy the land, or some of the more notorious fellows who exploited their fellow griffons to get to the positions of power they achieved.

This class of titleless landholders would be comparable to the burghers of medieval Europe and were held in just as much disdain by commoner and noble alike. They, individually, tended to be richer than most minor lords and yet chafed from not possessing the privileges and rights nobles enjoyed, frustrated that their raw monetary power didn't translate automatically into real power and influence. More than once and in more than one kingdom, these plutocrats had tried to simply buy their way into nobility and thus into the realms of hard power, often using it to the benefit of their cronies. It never really ended well for those realms that let them get away with this, hence the constant suspicion and fractious relationship between the aristocratic and the oligarchic powers in society.

To this end, they were often associated with underhandedness and untrustworthiness, and a lot of it was usually justified. It was to such an extent that even the merchant classes and guilds distanced themselves from them, as well as the academia. A lot of people had worked very hard to be as successful as they were through legitimate means, and the last thing they wanted was to be associated with these would-be robber barons. If you were a freeman, you were more than likely under the thumb of one of these guys depending on what city you decided to settle down in. But hey, at least you don't have to be automatically conscripted when war came! That was something right? That was provided you weren't in debt to anyone who decided it'd be swell to make a bit of money coercing you into a mercenary band, and then renting you out to some hapless lord who had no reason to suspect you were anything but another sell sword. You did, after all, have a family to think about.

Most of the time, thankfully, the plutocrats only kept themselves to where the money was: either major port cities or the capital of most countries. Everywhere and everyone else could go to hell. However, Skymount was almost entirely owned by the king and his direct personal vassals like Handy and several of the other royal guards who held land here. If you were a freeman, your landlord was likely a noble of some description, which meant you had more options if you got sick of high rates and taxes. It was not as if you couldn't go wherever you wanted and try your fortunes elsewhere—you could do whatever you wanted. The thing was that a lot of people, who climbed the ladder as far as it allowed them them go, had a nasty tendency to kick the ladder away to prevent others from joining them.

So it was that Handy was left with a dilemma: he had serfs he'd rather make tenants and tenants who wanted to become serfs, with the power to grant one but not the power to grant the other. He couldn't ease his burdens and make the serfs freemen against their will, but he had little incentive to vassalize his tenants no matter how much they wanted him to. Awkwardness aside, what was in it for him? More soldiers but less money? It was not as if Gethrenia was gearing up for war anytime soon.

Welcome to feudalism: it was always this complicated for everyone, everywhere, all the time, always, forever. That was what you got in a society that developed organically over millennia.

So, when he was done paying off the hired hands who aided his farmers in their work and maintained his lands and properties, he then paid the few guards he had patrolling his lands at night. Then he dealt with the concerns and received payments from his tenants. They were hilariously intimidated, this being the first time they met their resident dark lord. They were suffering the same ill effects of the land that his serfs were having, and their appeals for becoming serfs instead were surprisingly earnest. Handy almost accepted but put the matter off. He was a foreigner who owned land in a country not his own, and had a hilarious amount of leeway in deciding the fates of entire families who resided on his land, with the power to kick them off without recompense for any improvements they might have added. As an Irishman, the irony was not lost on him, and he was deeply uncomfortable with the situation, but such was his current position. He'd have to think about it some more, but he did agree to foot the bill to help keep their families fed and warm over the winter. This seemed to mollify them and eased a few worried faces.

Then he dealt with clan affairs, having adopted the name of Haywatch for his own 'clan' just for the sake of legal simplicity. Baron Handy Haywatch—he liked the way it sounded. He heard statements of intents, gave his blessing for marriages that had already taken place, and recognized at least four newborn griffons. They… They were so very small. Jesus, baby griffons were cute. Oversized heads, fluffy feathers, and curled up in a ball in their mothers' forelegs as they were, for a moment Handy legitimately forgot his hatred of children.

He actually had to send Klipwing back to the city to call up a priest when it became clear the local cleric had taken ill and they needed an officiary of the temple for the future happy events, but other than that, and a brief fight that hilariously enough broke out right in front of him between two aggrieved brothers, nothing of note happened. He noticed, now that he actually got to meet them, the majority of the families who resided on his land consisted of griffons with noticeable ears. He didn't see that often, but it was noticeable enough that he couldn't just pass it off as a rare occurrence. How strange.

When all was said and done, and the sun was on the wrong side of six o'clock, that still left Handy with a conundrum: he had acres of land under his name that were proving to be increasingly worthless. So, when he was done doing his duties and could finally get up from the table in the middle of a field he had been sitting on for the better part of the daylight hours, he took to walking.

It was a relaxing walk past the fields in the evening sunlight. Rolling hills, quartered off and sectioned, led away to the tall pine forests that lined the foothills of the mountains to the north. He enjoyed watching the shadows of the clouds pass over the now empty fields while animals grazed on the grass. That was another thing that always startled him, the strange animals of this world. Sure, you had rabbits and chickens, ravens and eagles. But you also had fenwyrs and three-legged grumts, leathery-winged fen jumpers and single-eyed buzzicks. It was bizarre to pass by a pen of pigs, thankfully non-sapient, and then also walk right by another pen filled with grey-blue-skinned, wrinkly, furless badger-like things he couldn't put a name to. All the while, nobody else batted an eye, nothing seemed incongruous, and all was as it should be as far as society was concerned.

He was pondering over this when he was brought back to his senses by a grumpt having walked up to the fence separating its field from the gravel path, and using its trunk to grab Handy's cloak. It chewed happily away at the material until Handy waved it off and reclaimed his cloak from a fate worse than death. He walked on.

He passed by a field where a large number of younger griffons were playing some sort of game involving multiple balls. There were four goal posts and their wardens had their wings bound as they eyed the players jumping and diving, fighting over the balls. Handy couldn't distinguish what teams, if any, there were. He passed them with no remarks and went back to looking over the fields as he pondered what he could do about the land.

'Perhaps have Crimson look into it? No, that might not do anything. Even if there was a sorcerous cause, there's no reason to suspect she's any good at Agrimancy,' he thought to himself, ignoring the hushed whispers from the children behind him as he passed them by, their game slowing to a halt at his presence. He continued to pay them no mind as they picked their game back up when he passed. He drew nearer to a small collection of houses. 'What if it’s not magical at all? Maybe there's some pollution or toxin affecting it? The rivers are clean though. Maybe the soil is just acidic and I'm shit out of luck? I have a few dilapidated manor houses here or there. Maybe I could set up some of my alchemists to test the soil or something over the course of a few weeks.'

Handy stopped as he heard something odd. Looking around, he found himself on the edge of a couple of dark wood and stone houses with thatched roofs. The children from before were playing energetically back in the field and were shouting loudly. Again he heard it, sounding like sniffling and muffled speech. He carefully followed the noise until it led him to some bushes at the back of a shed. He could make it out clearly now, and when he looked around, he saw who was causing the noise.

Then his mind broke.

There, lying against the bushes with its rear, leonine paws pushed up against the fence sat a griffon… sort of. It had the body, tail, forelegs, claws, and wings of a griffon… but its head... Its head was that of a pony. The brown pelt of its leonine body did not match the light yellow fur of its head, which came down over where its neck met its body like unshorn fetlocks. Its hair was bright orange and its eyes were blue.

Handy… He did not know how to even. He had seen a hippogriff back in Infrendare, but he had wisely dismissed that as some rare breed of griffon he was previously unaware of, because the alternative had been laughably impossible. This time, however, he was having a distinctly difficult time rationalizing what he saw before him. Therefore, he didn't. His brain came up with the most convenient excuse, as in to ignore it and move on. It was then he noticed the kid was crying into its arms.

'Oh, a crying child,' he thought to himself, blinking once. 'Welp, everything appears to be in order over here then. Moving on.'

And just as he was about to quietly take a step backwards, turn right around, and walk right the fuck away while ignoring what he had just seen, the kid looked up. Handy mentally cursed himself for not walking off anyway when the kid locked eyes with him. Those big, blue, rubbed raw eyes looked up at him with surprise and alarm, the stare only interrupted as a gloved claw reached up to rub away another tear before looking away so as to not be seen.

"D-Don't look…" he muttered rather pathetically. Handy, in the awkward position of being a dark overlord stumbling across a crying child, decided to do exactly as he was asked and proceeded to fuck off without another word. He took a few steps away and turned to look back at the bushes and then back over to the field of playing children. His pause made him aware of continuing sniffles.

'Just walk away; it’s childer being childer. Leave him to his stupidity,' he told himself as he turned around for the third time. He heard another sniffle, a cough, and a shuddering sigh from the bushes. He paused to rub the bridge of his nose. 'Oh fuck me.'

"Hey," he called out, walking back over to the bushes. The kid looked up with concern, his wings spread wide as if to take flight. Lying as he was, Handy knew he wasn't going anywhere. "What’s wrong?"

"N-Nothing, go away!" he said in a huff, crossing his forelegs and looking away. Handy levelled his eyes at him for a moment longer. He'd certainly never seen anything like him before. He was probably not one of his griffons… or whatever he was.

"Where are your parents?" he asked conversationally. He wasn't wearing his armour, but he was probably doing no favours for the kid's nerves by walking about with his hood up. But fuck him, it was autumn and the wind was cold.

"…In town," the kid eventually said, before mumbling something.

"What was that?"

"M'here with my uncle."

"And where is he?"

"Inside. Sleeping." Well, this shouldn't be too hard. Hmm, this hamlet was the closest to his second barn of the northern fields and a good mile away from the city itself. That meant at least one of these houses belonged to the Stone-eyes. He had met them earlier today, seeing that they were tenants of his. That meant the other two were the Tallgrass and the Longfellows respectively. Kid must be related to one of them.

"You want me to go and get him? Tell him what’s wro—?"

"No!" the boy suddenly shouted at him. Handy cocked an eyebrow before the boy shrank back just a hair, but he still held Handy's gaze. "I-I don't need his help."

"Well you certainly seemed to be handling it yourself," Handy commented. A shout of celebration erupted from the field on the other side of the hamlet. Someone had apparently scored a goal. The boy shifted uncomfortably. "What’s your name, son?"

"…Wren." Handy paused as he registered that. "Yes, like the bird, haha, I get it all the time," Wren said, kicking a stone away in a huff before sniffling.

"Well look, Wren. I'm going to be honest with you, if you're being bullied—"

"I'm not being bullied!" Wren shot up onto his hind legs and pointed an accusatory claw at Handy, his wings splayed to help give balance. His teeth were gritted, and Handy could make out a suspicious number of sharp teeth amongst them. "I'm just… tired of always getting beaten up."

"I'm pretty sure that’s one of the definitions of being bullied." Another cheer went up from the game yard beyond them.

"Hear that?" Wren said, gesturing with a claw before falling on his backside again and wrapping his wings around him. “I can't play with them. I always get hurt."

Handy noted he was rubbing a wing as he said that. Now that he thought about it, he did seem rather small for the boys who were across the way playing. The game looked pretty rough too. Maybe this kid was just a bit too big for his britches?

"Well if that’s what's wrong, maybe you should play with children your own age then?"

"They are my age." Oh. Hmm.

"Well then, I guess you should just lay off. Play different games—not everyone is suited to play rugby after all."

"I don't care. I want to play with them. I hate being small and weak."

"Getting yourself needlessly hurt is not going to fix that," Handy retorted, getting annoyed at this child's snappiness.

"But I want to beat them, to be stronger than them!" Oh good, he was a kid with a complex. This was going to be fun.

"Wren, look, you can't be stronger than them just because you will yourself to be. That's being thick-headed. You need to give yourself time, otherwise you'll just keep hurting yourself."

"But it’s not fair! I want to win something for once! I hate always getting picked last! I want to win!"

"So you're just going to ignorantly toss yourself into trouble just to prove a point?"

"I'll do what I have to," he said resolutely, lowering himself in his wing fortress and eyeing the tufts of grass across from him evilly. He sniffled.

"I'm trying to help you."

"Yeah, well, what do you know? Weirdo." Handy resisted the urge to kick a child. Here he was, clearly under some sort of delirium because he tried to help a kid out. What did he get in return? This horseshit. You know what? If this kid wanted to get himself hurt, Handy was only too happy to oblige. He smiled knowingly.

"You know, back in my homeland of Milesia, the wren is considered the king of all birds," he began. The pony-griffon thing didn't respond, sitting there in its huff. Handy waited a moment until he was sure he had the child's attention before continuing. "Even though it was amongst the smallest and weakest of birds, it proved itself worthy of being king."

"M'not a bird…" the boy huffed. Handy bit back the obligatory 'yes you are' in response and patiently continued.

"No? Are you not curious, little Wren, how the little wren bested even the mightiest of eagles?" The boy looked up at him now. He saw the surety in his eyes that Handy was mocking him. He was, but by the time Handy was done, he'd think he wasn't. "Shall I take that as a yes?"

"Just… go away. Leave me alone."

"Can't, it's my land." The boy's ears flicked up in surprise. "You might want to mind your tone, lad, for your uncle's sake if not for your own."

Wren didn't say anything in reply, but Handy swore he heard a muffled apology as he lay there snuggled up in his wing fortress, although his ears were still tilted towards Handy.

"There is a story that goes with it, a bit far-fetched, but let's see if you can't learn something from it…"

Long ago, the birds lacked a king, so the word was sent out through all the glens, hills, forests, and gulleys. All the birds in the land gathered in the valley of the birds, called Glen-na-hEan. There, the owl, wisest of the birds, asked the others how to go about choosing their king. All kinds of birds were there: doves as white as snow and crows as black as night, tiny robins who were red of breast, and wood pigeons who were proud and haughty. Rich magpies, poor swallows, seagulls of the coasts, and mighty eagles of the heights. And yes, even the little wren too.

Day and night they argued but could not reach an end. Then the wise owl consulted with a beautiful swan who was as wise as himself, and also with her shrewd brother. Amongst them, they decided that he who flew highest should be king, for on nothing else could everyone agree.

It was then the golden eagle, with feathers the colour of honey and whose handsome brow was heavy with pride, spread its mighty wings and proclaimed, "I will win! I will win! I am the strongest, swiftest, and most glorious of us all!"

But the rich magpie, ever careful and cautious, pointed out that strength alone did not a good king make, for he must be wise and caring of those beneath him. He must know what life was like for even the least of his lessers. At this, the proud golden eagle scoffed and strutted its majesty. How could any other hope to compare? Or so it reasoned…

So it was that the time came and the flock of birds gathered. The wise owl and the two swans set themselves aside so that they might judge and crown the victor. The call was let out and up they flew. The small birds were lost as the bigger ones flew higher, but even these were outpaced. The mighty golden eagle, proud and magnificent, rose higher and higher still until it flew higher than any other bird, for the others had tired themselves.

"I have won, I have won! I will be king!" the eagle cried.

But as the eagle celebrated, a tiny voice spoke into its ear.

"Thank you," it said, and then did the tiny wren leap off the eagle's back and, rested and ready, flew higher than the eagle. Shouting and outraged, the eagle demanded the wren to come back, but try as it might, it was tired and already so high. The wren was fresh and was now higher still. The eagle could not climb high enough to meet the wren and had to come down. Soon the wren came gliding down after him.

And so it was that the wren had won the crown and became king of all birds, despite the best efforts of even the golden eagle.

By the end of the little story, the boy was avidly paying attention. Handy gave him another smile.

"So, you want to win, little Wren?" he asked in a teasing voice. "Oh I don't know, you're not very big or strong. I don't think you have it in you."

"Wait!" Wren called out as Handy turned around. "The, uh, the bird in the story, h-how did he get on the eagle's back like that? How was he not noticed?"

"How do you think he did it?" Handy asked after a moment's pause, contemplating how he was going to shape this boy's interpretation without directly telling him how he wanted him to think.

"Did… Did he have some kind of magic? Was the big eagle deaf?"

"No, wee Wren, neither."

"Then how did he get on his back and stay there without being seen? Why did none of the other birds call him out on it?"

"How indeed?" Handy teased, waiting to see where the boy would go with this. Wren was sitting on his haunches, thinking now, his tears dried up and his muzzle scrunched as he concentrated.

"Maybe… Maybe the how does not matter..." Oh, this should be good.

"Yes?"

"Maybe instead of just trying to beat them head on…" Wait for it. "I should make them do the work for me! Force them to do what I want, like a king!"

There we go; there was the stupidity Handy was looking for. Handy's smile revealed no more information than it did before, however, as he let the child bask in his own misguided revelation.

"If that's what you take away from it, I hope it helps. Feeling better?"

"Yeah… Yeah, I guess so." The boy sat up a little straighter now, no longer hiding behind his wings.

"Good, then go play. And give your uncle my regards." Handy turned and left the boy thoughtful and alone. Now, one might consider Handy's little story a kindness, teaching a young boy the error of his ways and how he was looking at things wrong.

Handy saw it another way.

The boy was as bull-headed as they came and had far more in common with the golden eagle than the wren in the story, in attitude if nothing else. Handy had surmised that he was going to take the entirely wrong message from the story and go off and probably get the shit kicked out of him. He was sure of it; he knew guys like that back when he was a child. Insecure and all bluster, they got what was coming to them. To that end, he cut off the ending of the story where the wise owl explained to the eagle why the wren was a more worthy king; for being clever and wise and planning ahead, even when he was not strong. No sense making the moral too easy for the little shit.

Besides, he didn't mention the little ritual they had back in Ireland on St. Stephen's day regarding wrens, and celebrating hunting the treacherous little bastards and giving out their feathers for luck. Or they did back when they actually hunted them.

If nothing else, maybe the kid might learn some humility and a measure of his own limits. Either way, it was no skin off Handy's nose.

Wren watched him go before crawling out from behind the bushes. He heard the other children laughing and shouting as they played in the evening light. He lashed his tail against the ground once in thought, unsure of himself, thinking back over the human's words. 'If that's what you take away from it,' he had said. Suddenly he wasn't so confident in his assertion.

He took one last look at the departing human, who was slowly disappearing over a small hill rise, before making his decision and running back over to the ball game.

--=--

The week had come to an end. That was another oddity of this world he had simply come to accept. The days roughly had a twenty four hour cycle. All the clocks he had seen were on a twelve hour standard at least. There were seven days in the week and, in places that used Equestrian English, they were named Monday to Sunday, just as they were on Earth. For all that, the similarities of time keeping ended there. The seasons were longer for one. By and large, there were on average five weeks to a month and more than twelve months to a year. The months bore no similarity to the Gregorian calendar either, being named Myndas, Fyrn, Geliope, Sindas, Kiendas, and so on. The names and their references were alien to Handy, so he didn't bother to pay them much mind.

Honestly, he was glad for the difference, because at least the calendar looking different when you visit another world made sense. Given how rare such a thing was, he took what he could get. He didn't know the details on how it was all measured, nor why. This was a world where the sun and the moon orbited the planet and could be controlled with powerful magic. There was just far too much he didn't understand.

Still, he had to prioritise more pressing matters first.

Such as the griffon claws ready to tear out his throat.

Now fortunately, griffon claws by themselves weren't that sharp. Handy saw that first hand long ago when Joachim tried to go toe to toe with several diamond dogs and failed. Sure, they could take an eye out and dig into your flesh with some concerted effort, but it wasn't like they were razors or anything.

Most griffons, warriors at least, tended to wear bladed gauntlets on their foreclaws which accentuated their lethality, designed more for swiping and slashing than grappling. It was much like Shortbeak had done before. That said, you did not want them at your throat—they did not have to be all that lethal in their own right to end your life when they were that close to something suitably vulnerable and soft.

Shortbeak eventually smiled down at him as he looked down at the claw to his throat in surprise and impotent rage. He had had her, he had finally had her! After being on the wrong side of the training sessions from the get go, and then spending a full ten minutes dodging and swiping, keeping her at a distance just long enough to feint an opening, she had finally fallen for it. Handy had sidestepped, spun, anticipating where she was going to turn next and struck. The haft of the weighted training spear had come down hard on the arm of her wing, hard enough to hear the wood crack and for Shortbeak to hit the ground hard. Suddenly knocked off balance and the muscles of her left wing deadened, her careening wing had torn the practice spear from Handy’s hands.

He had wasted no time and was upon her in an instant, placing his knee to her back and putting his weight down on it, keeping a firm grip of her remaining good wing while her hurt one was still insensate and then—

Well, and then he was on the ground. It had happened so fast that he barely had the time to blink and register it. There had been a blur of black feathers, a throbbing pain in the side of his head, the wing he had in his grip had suddenly disappeared, and the world had been turned upside down. Now he was on the ground, her claw at his throat, and she was glaring down at him, wide-eyed and alarmed. Her good wing was spread wide and the other one rose at her side, slightly limp and twitching. Handy glared angrily in return before sighing deeply as he realised he had lost yet another round. It was that change of tension that eventually caused the worried look to fall away from Shortbeak's face.

"Better," she said, somewhat shakily, letting go of Handy's neck and stepping off. Handy got back up, trying not to let the frustration and disappointment get the better of him. So close, so damn close to getting a 'kill', and she pulled whatever the hell that was on him. She kept her back away from him as she went to pick up her fallen spear, her sore wing still outstretched and twitching a bit. Perhaps he hit it a little too hard? She didn't seem as if it were bothering her too much though.

"Should we go again?" he asked, hoping to follow up and go after her again. He was surprised when she paused, seemingly studying her practice spear for a moment.

"Actually, I think that should do for the day." She held the spear horizontally and tapped her claw along its length for a moment. She then turned and gave him her usual neutral expression with the hint of that confident smile she occasionally wore. "Although I am glad to see you finally know how to use that thing."

Handy looked down at the weighted practice spear. It was purposefully off balance, given that he was going to be using a proper polearm in reality to give him a sense of weight. The actual spear point was covered to prevent accidental stabbings. Handy knew from experience, when they first started practicing with naked weapons, that it was a serious possibility. He hummed an acknowledgement.

"So, where forth hath thou been all week?" he asked.

"Hmm?"

"Thou hast been gone all week. Something about an errand for the King?" he probed. It actually felt beneath him to reduce himself to court intrigue and fishing for information. He was the Sword after all, but Johan had been evasive on the issue.

"Just a minor concern," she replied, just as evasively.

"I'm sure it was," Handy said disbelievingly. He frowned when he glanced at the training spear he had been using as he put it away. The head was missing, leaving only a jagged end to the haft. He looked back over his shoulder at the training circle and saw the still covered spearhead and the small remnant of the wooden shaft it had been attached to. He then looked at Shortbeak. The wing he hit was still held out from her body and twitching slightly. Perhaps he overdid it? It was not like they were wearing armour at the moment.

'Nah, she's fine. She can take worse than that. ‘Sides, she seemed like it wasn't bothering her. Still, it wasn't like her to end practice early...'

"Will you be alright?" Handy asked casually. Shortbeak looked up and raised a brow.

"I'll be fine," she replied even as her wing twitched. Handy's nose tickled in time as a scent reached it.

"Are you certain?" he queried, turning around, brow furrowed. Sure enough, he noticed the tiny splotches of red on the floor. "Shortbeak, you're bleeding."

"It is merely a cut, and hardly the first." She waved her claw and finished putting away her spear. Now that Handy knew was a falsehood. If Handy had ever managed to give Shortbeak anything more than some light bruising before, he would have certainly been able to tell. Much like right now. She still hadn't closed her wing to her side and it twitched awkwardly.

Handy considered the wing for a moment longer after she had turned away, then eyed the exit. The interior courtyard was the same one they had practiced in on the first night she said she'd train him for the tournament. It was small, relatively secluded, and private. It was a short distance from there through the narrow corridors of the castle to the stairs that would take Handy to his private dorm as a knight. It was, all in in all, very considerate, as if she knew he'd appreciate the privacy to return to his quarters after getting all manner of hell beaten out of him. Although that last thought did nothing to quell the bitter grudge he still felt, he knew now that he could never take her in a straight fight. It did raise another thought.

"How dost thee plan to get down?"

"Excuse me?"

"You live down the mountain, right?" he asked, waving his hand to one of the high vaulted windows. It was late evening and the fiery orange of the sunlight barely illuminated the room. "I assume thou art going to walk down there? Can't imagine thou wilst be flying with that wing."

Shortbeak looked moderately offended. "I have flown with worse, I'll have you know."

"Then why art thou still here, waiting for me to leave first?" Handy noted. She had been taking her time in leaving, and unlike Handy, she was carrying nothing with her that she needed to gather up. She didn't answer, looking to the door contemplatively as her wing twitched again, and Handy smelled more blood.

For griffons, quickly preening or fixing their wings in public was about as casual as brushing down one's hair or coat, as it was the effort put into fixing one's appearance. Handy had even helped Joachim pull detritus out of his wings way back in Spur Bay. Shortbeak, however, was one griffon he had never seen fidget with her wings. He supposed, given how much larger they were than most, it would be incredibly awkward and embarrassing trying to set them straight in public, even if she were to do so quickly.

And here she was with a sore and hurt wing that… wait. Handy put two and two together and thought back to his splintered training spear. Was that why she reacted with such alarmed ferocity when he had her pinned to the ground? Had he hurt her more than he thought?

"Shortbeak, you're bleeding," Handy repeated. She was finally drawn to look at her wing seriously.

"It’s just a flesh wound."

"One keeping thee from closing your wing. Art thou ending practice early and waiting for me to leave to save yourself the embarrassment of having to fuss over thy wings?" Handy asked bluntly. "My spear splintered after I hit you. I think thou art in more pain than you let on."

"And what of it?" Shortbeak asked sharply. Handy raised a placating hand but kept an annoyed expression.

"I'm just saying I can help," he said, and continued at her questioning look. "Look, either thou art going to limp all the way down the mountain with a bad wing because you're too stubborn to pull that bit of wood out now, or thou wilst risk infection flying on it while it’s trailing blood. I'd imagine thou wouldst want to save thyself the embarrassment. I just wish to repay the favour."

"What favour?"

"You know what favour. My usefulness to the King as a spectre at his call would ill-survive being shown up so regularly where everyone could see, even if it was by his finest knight. It'd be rude to just leave thee to blunder down the castle steps with thy wing like that. Now come, show me where it hurts. I have a secret to share with you."

He was vaguely aware of some spluttered objections as he turned to search his pack on the floor. He discreetly pulled out the now familiar bottle of orange liquid, dosing two small towels with the substance before replacing it in the pack. When he turned back, Shortbeak was glaring at him.

"What? Look, if it's all the same, I do not like people in my personal space either. Hate it in fact. But if thou wish to reach up and pull that out thyself," he gestured to the crook of the arm of her wing, "and risk getting some of it stuck in there and have it fester, then by all means go right ahead. Or just tell me thou wilst drop by the apothecary before leaving and I'll happily leave thee to thy business. But thou art no good to me or to Gethrenia if thou art willing to lose a limb for fear of embarrassment."

"It’s not that big a deal."

"Close thy wing then." To her immense credit, her face never showed it. But when she did, out of stubborn pride if nothing else, the wing noticeably shook and sprang back out, clearly in pain. "I take it I hit a muscle then?"

"…Yeah," Shortbeak admitted, looking off to the side.

"You were not seriously going to wander off without getting that looked at?"

"Would you?"

"I have an excuse."

"No you don't."

"Yes I do, in fact. Could you extend it further?" he asked, rather stupidly. On average, for griffons at least, their wingspan at full extension from tip to tip was usually three times their body length, each individual wing being their body length plus a head or so on average. Ponies were roughly similar in terms of proportion. Given that a pony standing on their hind legs would be five feet and change to Handy, with a griffon slightly taller than that when upright made the average wingspan in and around fifteen or sixteen feet. Those wings didn't look that huge when folded up, but the reality was they were quite the beasts. And Shortbeak's wingspan was… larger than average. The bizarre nature of this world allowed flying creatures, griffons and pegasi et al, to fly with their wings in… unusual positions. He had seen griffons glide with their wings at half extension, flapping them only on occasion and remaining airborne. He had seen pegasi do something similar, their wings still folded but raised at their sides, 'cupping' the air with each wingbeat and still maintaining flight. He couldn't for the life of him figure out how it all worked.

He had seen Shortbeak herself during the duel pull her heavily-armoured weight into the air with ease and hover there for a time, her wings hardly moving. He didn't understand how magic interacted with their flight, and truth be told, that was the last thing on his mind when Shortbeak extended a wing longer than he was tall.

Sure enough, there was a rather large and nasty bit of wood stuck in the arm of her wing. He was unfamiliar with griffon anatomy to know the precise names and locations, but he was pretty sure it was the winged equivalent to getting stabbed in the bicep. He drew in breath through his teeth in sympathy for the pain.

"Okay yes, I see. Even if I couldn't help, there was no way I was letting thee leave with that still stuck in thy wing." No wonder she had reacted the way she did during the fight.

"Look, if you're going to do what— Aaaah!" And just like that, the stoic mask was dropped. She had her eyes closed and had huffed as she spoke. She hadn’t seen Handy as he casually strolled up, grabbed her wing, and pulled the broken wood out of her flesh, quickly stifling the blood flow with towels as he put pressure on the area of her wing, while at the same time trying to prevent her from snapping it shut, a not inconsiderable task. One did not go about life with nearly nine feet of wing strapped to your body without it becoming very strong.

"You—! You little—!" she spluttered, claws balled into gryphonic fists, her eyes wide with the shock and pain. She was going to shout invective and probably grab the human before… she felt something strange, a tingling sensation that hugged the flesh beneath her feathers. It was not altogether unpleasant, she found. The bleeding stopped, and eventually the white of the towels the human was holding over her injured wing ceased turning red. She felt the tension and ache of her wing lessen.

"Try closing your wing now; keep the pressure on that towel," he instructed calmly before stepping back. She did so tentatively, her wing pressing the towel against her side, keeping that warm, wonderful feeling where once there was pain. "Give it a few minutes. The cut has already healed but thy muscles might need a bit of time to feel like normal again."

"What… What did you do?" she asked, looking back at her wing cautiously. He shook his head dismissively.

"Don’t worry about it." He wiped the blood off of his hands on another hand towel, eyed it for a moment, before casually tossing it towards a wall. He picked up his pack and hammer and made his way to the door, idly kicking away the bloody piece of wood as he went. "Now ordinarily, thou wouldst have every right to break my arm for that. But then, ordinarily, most people would have the sense to have someone who knew what they were doing look after their wing. See you tomorrow, provided Johan doesn't send me off to the back end of nowhere."

"…Right. Tomorrow then," she murmured, gently prodding the problem area of her wing under the towel, wincing slightly at the few jolts of pain she got, each less than the last. She eyed the bloody piece of wood that had pierced her wing, and her wing twitched unconsciously at the thought of it having been lodged in her flesh. She considered it for some time after he had left before lifting her wing and removing the towel.

Sure enough, it stopped bleeding, and the wound had closed over. She extended the wing and turned it over to inspect the other side. The action did not so much as even cause a twinge of pain. The bloody towel in her claws was soaked through with red. What had he done to it that could heal a wound like that? Was that how he kept recovering so quickly? What else could it heal?

The thoughts ran in circles around her head for a few moments longer before she bundled the towel in her claws and flapped her wings at her sides experimentally. He had been right—it felt good as new. Wonderful even. Briefly she thought back to the healer she had been sent to seek out. She found her and had brought her back, but even she could not hope to have healed a wound like this so quickly, to bring it back to health and normality so fast. Perhaps she could…

No. She did not know him enough, and did not dare trust him far enough to broach the matter.

But still… the proof was in her claws. She clutched the towel in a claw and then made her way out, putting the thoughts to the back of her mind.

Chapter 22 - A Happy Occasion

Something has gone wrong. We don't seem to have an archived copy of that chapter.

Chapter 23 - First Impressions

His morning started much as it always did these days: dreamless sleep followed by disorientation. He stirred in the - thankfully - appropriately sized bed in his cabin. The dark wooden walls creaked under pressure, and the heat radiated from the exposed copper pipe running down one corner of his room. He really needed to get that covered before somebody burned themselves on it. He yawned, stretched, and pulled himself from beneath the covers.

He blinked. Where the hell was he again? He stumbled forth out of the bed and observed his surroundings. It was a small room, rectangular with two walls longer than the others. The far wall, the one with the porthole window, bent outwards slightly. He walked over to it, cursing as he stepped on something hard on the floor with his bare foot. He opened the porthole window and squinted through the glare of the sun to be greeted with nothing but blue sky.

And white clouds nearly level with his window.

“Oh. Right,” Handy said, blinking. His voice was hoarse. “A couple thousand feet off the ground... huh.” They had been traveling in his newly acquired airship, which he had yet to christen, for the past three days on the journey down to Firthengart. Overall, it was the faster option. Travel by chariot would have covered more ground quicker, true, but they’d need to stop for the night, and the train to Firthengart would have wound its way through the countryside. It’d take its sweet time. Airship travel meant they could cut through the bullshit, and it also meant Handy did not have to put up with fellow passengers freaking out over the human daring to enter the sleeping cabins to, you know, sleep.

There was a knock at his cabin door. “Yes?” he answered.

“We’ve crossed the border, Sir Handy. We’ll be starting our descent shortly.” The cracked, rough voice of Silvertalon spoke from the other side of the door.

“My thanks Silvertalon. I'll leave it to thee to take us down,” Handy said, stifling a yawn as the he heard the griffon stalk off.

He looked around as the limited light of the porthole brightened his room. It was spartan, little more than the bed and a dresser, his travel packs, and armour. The two packs he had carried his gold in that he simply refused to let anyone near, one of which was now thoroughly emptied after the successful bids for new farmlands and the costs of getting the damn ship off the ground. There was his smaller travel pack that he carried necessities in was off in one corner. His armour lay strewn haphazardly about the room. He swore he had stacked that neatly; it must’ve been knocked loose in some turbulence during the night and rolled across the floor. Certainly would explain the gauntlet he had trodden underfoot.

The airship, he had learned, was a small one by most standards. Although the size of the envelope generally made anything look small by comparison, it came with six cabins, a bridge with a generous view deck of the world below them as well as a lower deck that was currently unused with the engines in the back. It was steam powered, which made sense considering the technology was readily available, though it made water gathering an issue and certainly wasn't the fastest form of propulsion Handy could think of. Silvertalon, a griffon he had hired to pilot his airship while Handy himself finished learning how to take care of it himself, told him he could increase the ship’s speed by feeding certain crushed, magically charged crystals into the ship’s water supply.

Crystals, it was always crystals. What the hell was it with this world and crystals?

He shook his head and began the arduous task of fitting his armour on, wearing a tunic under his mail to prevent chaffing before stopping himself. He reached for the dresser instead of his cuirass, and he put on his formal suit. His armour had been repaired once again by his blacksmith, but he had yet to polish and clean it. He didn't want to make his first appearance in Firthengart as a scrub after all. He exited the cabin and was greeted with the sounds of griffons talking in one of the rooms down to his left. Joachim exited the room across from him. “Sleep well?” the king asked.

“As well as could be hoped,” Handy said, rolling his shoulders as he affixed his cloak about him. “Who’s on point?” he asked casually.

“Shortbeak, Godfrey, Tanismore, and Frederick,” Joachim responded. “Jeremy, Celebra, Grimtooth, and Shadowsunder are the ones you can hear enjoying their breakfast,” he said, gesturing with his head behind him as the two walked down the corridor towards the bridge. Shortbeak and the others were currently taking the morning shift in guarding the airship’s exterior. “You needn’t worry, Handy. Your shiny new ship is well looked after,” he said, smiling. Handy frowned. He had disagreed with the knighting of Shadowsunder initially after a training session with Shortbeak and the others, but was reassured that the bird had the skills to be worthy of the position.

“It’s you I’m worried about,” Handy said, snorting.

“Why Handy, I never knew you cared.”

“Fuck you, Joach. It’s my job to care. Literally, you pay me to give a shit.”

“And here I thought you were a friend,” Joachim said, feigning offence.

“For a given definition of friend, I suppose,” the human shot back.

“Mercenary,” Joachim said, smiling, to which the human responded in kind.

“Fop. And thanks for helping with the costs. I didn’t know these things could be so expensive just to get off the ground.” He could’ve put it off, but damn it, it was his airship and he was going to fly it. Besides, he used the extra money to help repaint the envelope to be an off-black colour with his own sigil in white painted along the sides: the knot and hammer. It was too big and obvious a form of transport to not go the extra mile, afterall.

“No problem. Had to come out of my own coin-purse, but I felt I could help out. However, I hope you can now appreciate why Gethrenia doesn’t have a fleet of them now. Also, so long as you let me borrow her once in a while,” the king said, opening the door to the bridge. The room consisted of a wooden platform that was dominated by the helm wheel which directed the ship and was surrounded by six heavy brass levers controlling the fins: three on either side, with several valve readers to observe water pressure and temperature as well as air pressure to gauge hull and envelope integrity. The platform overlooked a half dome of glass set within thick wooden frames that extended from the wooden ‘roof’ that formed the upper deck and the gas filled envelope immediately above it. The frames arched down and inwards. Once they descended below the cloud layer, it’d give them a staggering view of Firthengart.

“We’ll see,” Handy lied. Silvertalon, whose talons were actually black as it turned out, was busy overseeing the ship’s descent. His focus was absolutely centred on the task at hand. The pair of them stood behind the middle aged griffon, his brown feathers dirty and moulting, a terrible thing to see in any griffon. Reminded Handy of the balding gene a lot of his uncles back home possessed and wondered if the same happened to griffons. Although he had yet to see anything of the like personally.

“Excuse me, sir.” Handy nearly jumped as he turned to regard Crimson. The pony was sitting on her haunches to his right, apparently observing Silvertalon working the bridge. She had expressed her desire to come with him on the journey to the tournament earlier in that week. He thought it odd but probably figured she was bored, having cleaned up the alchemy guild rather nicely, certainly enough for Klipwing to have an easy time taking over for her in his absence. She had also seemed different recently, constantly looking over her shoulder too. He had questioned her about it once they had taken off. She said she had grown increasingly worried she was being followed when she left the guildhall during the days.

Also she had stopped calling him master and seemed more relaxed in his presence. If you could call her cold, indifferent visage relaxed. He didn’t complain; it certainly made him feel less like a creep. In any case, he did promise he’d protect her, and if she was feeling uncomfortable in Skymount, he might as well take her with him. She hadn’t been terribly specific about why she felt she was being followed, but he figured she was just getting jumpy in her idleness. He’d address the issue when they got back. “What is it, Crimson?” he asked. Joachim rolled his eyes at the pony and walked over to talk to Silvertalon.

“What do you want me to do when we arrive?” she asked dispassionately. He frowned.

“What?”

“I just want to make myself useful, sir,” she said. “I don’t want to be a burden.” Well that at least made sense. He smiled.

“It’s a festival, Crimson. There’s nothing for you to do here. Just… relax, I guess,” he said as he turned away. He paused and turned back. “You… do know how to relax, right? To go have fun?” It was a serious question. Given what he knew about her past and her demeanour in Skymount, Crimson had to be the least outgoing pony he had ever run into that wasn’t in the Equestrian military. She blinked at him.

“Of course, sir. I just want to help in any way I can.”

“I took you along, quite literally, so you could feel at ease. You don’t need to do anything for me Crimson, just enjoy the festival.” Her ear flicked

“…Alright, sir.” She looked out the windows before them. He frowned at her.

“Crimson, are you sure you’re feeling alri-?”

“Breaching cloud layer,” Silvertalon croaked. Handy turned to see the wispy clouds part before the ship’s windows. He was greeted with a vista of rocky hill-lands and winding, shallow rivers framed by mountains to the west and great pine forests darkening the horizon far to the east. Sparse deciduous forests, whose autumn colours stood out like burning fires against the greens, browns and greys of the land and tiny villages dotted the landscape along with large, hedge farms as the griffons tried to eke out subsistence from the sparse soil, usually by grazing herds of the strange, grey three legged animals that griffons used as cattle.

There, old stone roads crossed rivers with ancient bridges. Occasionally, there were large towns and the random castle, the shadows of clouds creating a patchwork of light and dark across the landscape that was still so far below them. “Tsk, told you it wasn’t much to look at.” Joachim chuckled. “When we get further south, it’ll get prettier.” The king turned to look at the human, who seemed to be in a bit of a daze, an unusual cast to his expression. “Handy?”

Handy didn’t immediately respond. Looking down at the landscape below, his thoughts were brought back to some musings he entertained when he first exited that accursed forest months ago. He had scoffed at his old acquaintance’s fondness of a certain part of the old country that he considered blighted and barren. McConnaughy, wasn’t it? Yeah that sounds about right. Yet here and now, a world away and looking at Firthengart, he was reminded of Galway, and he suddenly could appreciate where his friend had been coming from. There was a certain rugged beauty to it.

“Handy?” A claw waved in front of his face, two talons snapped together in quick succession. Handy blinked rapidly.

“Hm? What?” He turned to Joachim.

“You alright? You had this odd look about you.”

“Sorry was just… lost in my own little world for a minute,” Handy said as he turned to Silvertalon. “How much longer till we reach Ironcrest?”

“A few hours yet, sir,” the griffon replied. Handy sighed. Well, he was up now. There went his chance to lie in; might as well go do something useful.

"I'll go back to my room and get prepared then," Handy said, making a mental checklist of all the things he needed. Blood capsules, check. Of course, this still being Griffonia, having one's meals bloody was always an option, but Handy wanted to eat steak properly once again, so blood capsules it was. Salve, check. Three bottles in fact. Truth was he ran through his supplies long ago. For uh, entirely medical concerns of course, not because that shit was amazing or anything. Torch of witchcraft, check. Expensive Brick, check, although that was only along with him because he wasn't entirely sure that if he lit the torch again that it'd still be the harmless blue flame it had been when he lit it. He also brought it along so that when it inevitably set off playing his playlist at random intervals, he was around to put a stop to it.

"Probably shave that ridiculous display from your face," Joachim said, looking to the side. Handy frowned down at him.

"Well forgive me for trying a new look," Handy said, referring to the small, pointed goatee and moustache he had been cultivating for the past month. "Sides, weren't you the one who thought it was ridiculous when I said human males shaved often?"

"I am and it is," Joachim replied, smirking at Handy. "But that was before I saw how silly human facial styles could be." Handy narrowed his eyes at his liege.

"I have not finished it yet," he said defensively. "Sides, not as if most people will see it anyway. I can wear my face however I wish."

"So long as you hide it behind your helmet, yeah." Joachim snorted.

"I think it looks well on you, sir," Crimson said impassively.

"See? Crimson likes it."

"Crimson works for you." Joachim deadpanned. "It’s in her best interest to suck up to her boss."

"I work for you, and I don't hold back my criticism. What’s your point?"

"My point is that you're my friend, and you can get away with that. Everygriffon thinks it's ridiculous, Handy."

"Silver, what do you think?" Handy asked. Up until now, the middle aged griffon had been shifting, ever so slowly, away from his boss and his king, hoping to not get in under anyone's paws. Too late for that now. He sighed, weighing his options. King or boss?

"For one thing, Sir Handy, I will never withhold any criticisms of you," Silvertalon said, looking straight ahead at his instruments.

"See?" Handy said to Joachim. "My employees never have to fear speaking their minds.”

"That said, I agree with his Majesty," Silvertalon said. Handy glowered at the back of his head. Joachim puffed his chest out.

"Fine," Handy said, "I'll take care of it later, then."

"Thank Heavens," Joachim preened.

"...When you sort out your ridiculous feather mane," Handy said, Joachim protectively ran a claw along the swept back feathers of his head.

"Hey I like it like this."

"Do you see any other griffons wearing theirs like that? Normally the court follows styles that the king adopts, right? Why do you think none of your courtiers haven't done so?"

"Well I uh, maybe they're just independently minded!"

"Are we talking about the same court? Doesn't sound like it," Handy replied, smiling.

"I think it makes you look dignified, your highness," Crimson said, not even looking at the pair.

"Aha! Even your pony thinks so!" Joachim said, pointing.

"She is a pony," Handy said. "Ponies wouldn't know good sense even if it hit them in the face with a wet fish." He didn't see the light smile on Crimson's otherwise neutral face.

"Silvertalon, what do you think?" Silvertalon groaned internally. Why couldn't they just leave him to pilot the ship without fearing for his job?

"Majesty, it'd be churlish for anygriffon to so blatantly comment on how you desire to present yourself," he began. Joachim looked pleased. "However, I agree with Sir Handy," he said, covering his bases.

"Ha!" the human exclaimed, Joachim looked sideways at the pilot griffon for a moment with narrowed eyes.

“Well, whatever,” the king eventually conceded. “I’ll need to stop off at Castle Greyvault to meet with King Goldtooth before I can enjoy the festival proper.” Handy nodded at that.

“I’ll have Silvertalon park the ship somewhere convenient.

“Yeah, just play nice by the time I get back, alright?”

“Play nice?”

“I mean try not to get into trouble,” Joachim said, rolling his eyes. “You’re a good guy, Handy, but All-Maker, do you end up in trouble a lot.”

“I can’t help but recall that almost all of that was never, in fact, my fault.” Handy smiled.

“Handy…”

“Fine, fine, Joach. I promise I won’t start anything.”

--=--

He was tossed bodily from the tent mouth with great force. He landed, cursing, in the wet mud just outside of the large tent, sliding on the ground, startling nearby ponies and griffons, causing one young one to drop the bundle of javelins he was hauling. Loud footsteps could be heard behind him as the one responsible for the violent ejection of the human stepped forth. Deep, rumbling laughter could be heard, and his fingers curled inwards into shaking fists, creating gouges in the pliant mud.

To think, the day had started off so wonderfully.

It did not take long for the king to set off for the nearby Castle Greyvault in the city of Ironcrest after they had arrived. It was a tiered, walled city set atop of low sloping mountain, giving it a commanding view of the surrounding countryside. Its tan walls were stark against the landscape, and its inner districts were protected by more curtain walls. Castle Greyvault was a soaring, gothic construction with spires and buttressed towers that caught the eye immediately. Handy made it one of his objectives to visit the place at least once before leaving, but he quickly found his attention rather disconcertingly seized by the vastly more interesting sight laid out to the south of the city.

Between three griffon townships lay an expanse of the king’s own demesne which consisted of several hectares of fields, a lake, and a small forest. Traditionally used by Goldtooth’s clan as something of a private garden, albeit one not marked by statues or walls or cultivation of any kind, it had been designated as the grounds for this year’s fall festival. Handy would discover later that this had been done for cost reasons, at least initially. The festival had been flagging in popularity in recent years, and Goldtooth had seen no reason to go to the extravagant lengths such an event usually called for. Apparently, he had not expected many to show up other than the occasional young, enthusiastic, noblegriffon looking to earn his wingblades and the local peasantry looking for distraction.

However, Handy’s little foray into international diplomacy back in Canterlot had set off something of a buzz. Ponies began speculating about Prince Blueblood’s participation in the tournament on behalf of Equestria, and Handy’s own, shall we say, exaggerated social profile served to spread anticipation for the festival far beyond Firthengart’s own borders. This in turn attracted not only the idle nobility in Firthengart itself, excited for the possibility of seeing an Equestrian prince put in his place, but also attracted more and more griffons of means and commoners from surrounding counties and provinces.

This, in turn, attracted more entertainers, merchants, caterers, and mendicants, each eager to capitalise on the growing collection of wealth and opportunity just outside the Firthengart capital. This, of course, was only counting the revellers and the opportunists. The heightened profile of the growing festival was only exacerbated by the influx of hopeful warriors, each eager to prove themselves in the king’s tournament. And counting the numbers coming from Equestria and beyond for the entertainment offered meant Goldtooth was faced with what many might consider a good problem to have. Depending on one’s perspective, of course.

On the one hand, he now had the prospect of hosting a festival and tournament to rival that of the High Kings, and all of the prestige that offered him. On the other hand, he now had to shell out more money in order to reorganize and prepare the grounds to better suit the needs of the growing tent city that had been slowly growing out from the centre of the demesne. Which, in literally any other context, would cause a lot of other kings to lose sleep as the tent city was quickly approaching a size that made the siege of Vienna look like a camping trip with friends. Simply ensuring everyone had shelter was a massive undertaking, which thankfully, the surrounding townships helped alleviate such matters. Policing the event however, had cost a fortune in additional guards brought in from the king’s other private holdings.

So one can forgive Handy for getting completely and absolutely lost when he finally descended from his own ship which Silvertalon had been forced to park some distance from the festival proper. Given, you know, he was apparently not the only one who saw fit to arrive in his own dirigible. Crimson had some difficulty with the rope ladder, Handy pointed out she could just materialize herself some wings like she did back on the train, she hesitated and pointed out that it would probably not be the best to use that kind of magic so openly. He conceded the point, and so Handy had to descend the rope ladder with a pony on his back, clinging to his shoulders.

He was treated to a rather mixed reaction upon entering the grounds, ponies and griffons trying to get out of his way, while others tried to deliberately get his attention, hawking their various wares to tempt the human. Have you ever been to a music festival? If so, you may have a fair idea of the sheer batshit lunacy involved in trying to simply find one’s way through what was effectively a Pan’s Labyrinth of living bodies, cloth, wires, and random detritus. The sounds and smells were at once overpowering and inviting: cooking meat, lilting music from minstrels and bands, the cheers of crowds entertained by traveling fools and tricksters. More than once, Handy found himself walking down one lane between colourful tents, found a dead end, turned back and found a new tent set up right in the middle of the path he had just walked down, forcing him into completely changing his course.

To be fair, this was not particularly aggravating. He did, after all, have nowhere he needed to be and was merely taking in the sights of the festival so he could find his way later. His goal was to find landmarks, such as the lake he saw from the sky, the forest, the duelling rings, and melee stadium, tall wooden constructions he could vaguely make out past the tent tops. Once he found roughly where they were in relation to each other, he was confident he could make a rough mental map from wherever he managed to pitch a tent. He lost Crimson somewhere along the way. She said she wanted to go off and see if she could find a plot for Handy’s own tent after he mentioned what he was doing.

He had approved, and she had wandered off as he stopped to purchase some cooked meat from a small blue and white tent. The hippogriff wouldn’t take his eyes off of Handy’s hooded face as the transaction took place. Not as if he could see it properly; the hood was designed to fit up and around Handy’s helmet, blades and all. As such, it was particularly voluminous and ensconced Handy’s uncovered head entirely in darkness. As he walked off, biting down into the savoury meat, he realised it was probably going to be particularly difficult finding Crimson again but shook it off. He’d worry about that later.

As he found the tournament grounds, he ran into more and more ponies and griffons in various suits of armour and weaponry. And more species besides: there a dog, there a minotaur, there… Was that a deer? Well that was another source of meat Handy was not allowed to consume ever again. Now these stares he didn’t particularly care for. If you’ve ever walked into the wrong bar before, you’d understand exactly what it felt like to be sized up for a potential brawl. He committed a few of the warriors he saw to memory. There was one particularly vicious looking griffon in full plate sitting outside a black and gold tent he didn’t like the look of. He clicked his talon blades on the haft of his halberd as Handy passed. There was also a grey pony wearing a purple, hooded cloak, barely hiding its black cuirass that turned to look at him as he passed. There was something about the way it carried itself that was distressingly familiar, so he made a note of being wary if he saw it again.

Now, it should be noted that Handy was not always quick on the uptake. He had assumed that, this being a tournament, it should be the expected norm to see a variety of warriors from across the land. He really should have paid more attention to Shortbeak’s warnings as more than half of them were there for the possibility of fighting him personally. To be the one to defeat Handy the Milesian, this upstart human, publically and to gain money and fame for doing so. Handy didn’t see that, however. With the odd exception, he considered most of the potential combatants with contempt.

So it was with an arrogant swagger that he made his way to a particularly large white tent on the outskirts of the tournament, the sounds of laughter and conversation coming from within. Curious despite himself, he entered past the tent flap and was greeted immediately with silence. The room was filled with ponies, griffons, dogs, and other creatures sitting on top of crates, eating and drinking on top of empty barrels. Almost all of them wore some kind of armour and carried weapons: spears, staves, axes, swords as well as species specific weapons such as wing blades and hoof claws.

Handy, having unintentionally caused a scene because of his curiosity, could not afford to simply walk out the way he came. So he took another step in and walked down past a number of barrels towards the back to find himself an empty seat. Once seated, a young griffon with her feathers tied back with a blue ribbon approached with a board in her claws, clearly nervous and glancing around her. He ordered a cup of water so as to not appear rude. It was surprisingly warm out there in the festival and his heavy cloak did not help matters.

The majority of the tent’s occupants observed him openly. Slowly, however, the tension eased, and conversations began anew once the human got his drink and made no sign of ill intent. Once he was not under constant scrutiny, Handy eyed the occupants in turn. There were a few… oddities. For one thing he saw what looked like a small griffon, except with a pony head. He thought perhaps it was some griffon hybrid like the hippogriffs he had run into, but the proportions were off and the distinct lack of foreclaws instead being replaced with proper leonine paws. The chest piece it wore was banded steel in segments meeting together in the front, tinted brown and framed by sloped shoulder guards that curved around the back of its neck, down its withers and up and outwards into points. What looked to be long stemmed fleur de lis on either guard was indented into the metal.

The pony… lion…. thing was talking to an ordinary orange pegasus in similar armour who had her foreleg around a spear with a banner attached. He could vaguely make out a device of a silver shield with a grey lion pony rampant on a dark grey field. He was also made uncomfortably aware of a tall yellow, two toned-green maned pegasus three tables away to his right with emerald eyes. Literally, her irises looked like there were actual emeralds. The mare wore pale blue, intricate, light armour and what looked to be some cloth shaffron disguising most of her face. She seemed to be studying the human and only looked away when Handy made it a point to turn his hooded head in her direction.

There was a zebra in the far corner, bigger than the witch he had seen in the forest so long ago who had a dirty brown cloak and a bandolier with bulbous glasses filled colourful and sometimes luminescent liquids. Now, Handy was not one for being racist, but he was starting to suspect all zebras of being witches. He knew it was wrong to judge a species based on such a small selection of the population, but, fuck it, he’d been doing that since he got here, so why stop now?

It was then that his peaceful drink was so rudely interrupted by a loud bellowing voice outside the tent demanding to know where the human had went. Silence fell on the tent again and several tables turned to look at the door. Handy groaned audibly and rubbed his forehead. Who was it this time? Didn’t sound like a minotaur - the voice was too harsh and rough. Wasn’t a dog either - far too big to be a pony or a griffon judging by the sound of the footfalls. It was armoured and angry and-

Very, very tall.

Handy’s eyes had widened at the sight of an eight foot tall, red-brown fucking dragon that had just entered the tent. Its sloping forehead ended in four, short black horns that shot out backwards from its head. Its lower jaw possessed an impressive underbite, and its beady, yellow eyes scanned the room, sparks erupted from its nostrils as it snorted derisively. It spied Handy sitting at the back, smiled viciously, its scaly, leathery wings shifting over the back of its black breastplate.

“There you are! Supposed ‘dragon slayer’!” the red beast taunted, striding forward, forcing people to get up and move out of his way as he knocked barrels out of the way. Now, Handy was somewhat accomplished when it comes to fighting things that were A) bigger than him, or B) more experienced than him. However, he did not know as much about dragons as someone with the title of dragon slayer probably should have. As such, he didn’t consider that young dragons, such as the one bearing down on him, might be interested in the opportunity to prove their mettle against someone famed for killing dragons.

After all, when one thinks of dragons, they think of great, majestic beasts of fire and fury, perhaps lurking in gigantic caves upon beds made of the ransoms of fallen empires. Or like the sepulchral dragon he himself had nearly been fried by in Lepidopolis. What does not come to mind are hot blooded teenagers roving about the countryside in blackened armour swinging great axes, but, you know, given the world he lived in, common sense kind of had to take a back seat.

The dragon loomed over him and slammed its meaty, scaled palms onto the barrel, causing his tin cup to bounce in place with the force. “Have to say… You don’t look all that tough. Where’s your claws of iron, your horns, and your piercing red eyes of death?”

“I left them with my other cloak,” Handy decided to say, his mind racing to say anything as he scrambled to think of a way out of this situation. He had been frozen rigid at the sight of the dragon. Though outwardly appearing calm, the thought of the large, fire breathing lizard out for his blood brought up uncomfortable memories. As well as, you know, the fact it was literally a living engine of the one thing on earth capable of turning him into an instant bonfire without the need of any accelerant.

’Don’tbreathfiredon’tbreathfiredon’tbreathfire-’

It snorted again, orange bursts of flames coming from his nostrils. The dragon smiled, probably noticing the look of surprise on the human’s face as it was briefly illuminated. “What is this? Is this a joke?” he said, leaning closer.

“I am afraid thou hast me at a disadvantage…” Handy said. “To what do I owe the pleasure sir…?” The dragon stood back up to his full height.

“Ferix…” the dragon said proudly. “The destroyer.” Handy blinked.

“I’m… sorry?” he asked, his brain stopping, trying to comprehend what he had just heard.

“You haven’t heard of me?” the dragon said sharply, knocking Handy’s water aside. “I am the most feared bounty hunter in the land!”

“And thou callest thyself ‘the destroyer’?” Handy said, blinking. He snorted. The dragon’s eye twitched.

“What’s so funny?”

“Forgive me,” Handy said. “I meant no harm by it. Please, how can I help thee?” The dragon growled.

“You can help me by explaining to me what’s so funny before I tear that ridiculous patch of fur from your face.” Handy felt the familiar boil of anger rising up inside him, but it was severely tempered by his own innate and completely understandable desire to avoid any errant flames that’d cause him to light up like a Guy Fawkes display. Unfortunately, it did nothing to stop him running his mouth.

“It’s just… Well, tis bad form to call yourself by thine own titles,” Handy said. “Tis presumptuous.” The dragon snarled.

“Oh and what do you call yourself, dragon slayer?”

“Handy of Milesia,” he said. “What others call me is their concern. I am a bit too old to hide behind names.”

“Ha!” The dragon laughed, “Know what I think? I think what you mean to say is that now that you have a real dragon in front of you, you’ve suddenly lost the nerve to be cock of the walk.”

“Thou art not a real dragon,” Handy’s mouth shot off before his mind could catch up with it. Really Handy, that’s an awful bad habit you have. The dragon’s eyes widened at that, and he jabbed a finger at Handy’s chest, the claw ripping a tear in the expensive fabric. The human frowned at that.

“What does that mean?”

“Thou art far too small for a start,” Handy said, his blood rising and slowly overtaking his fear. “Which means thou art still a child. Tell me, art thou sure thine is of the age to be running about with sharp objects? Surely thine parents raised thee with more sense than that?” There was the sound of crates moving as several tables started moving away from the pair. The dragon’s flared to its full, impressive wingspan.

“You’ve got a mouth, monkey boy…” it said, leaning close. He could smell its noxious, acrid breath.

“And I would say thou hath a pair of balls to be talking to me like this,” Handy said. “But clearly that is not the case. Thou art just a fool. Come back when thou hast reached thine majority and thy manhood has properly dropped.” Handy blinked and his reason caught up with him. ’Wait… What did I just-’ The next thing Handy knew was a powerful bellow as the dragon reared back and roared, shaking the tent. His claws grabbed Handy by his jacket, ripping into it as he was flung bodily through the air, hitting a barrel and knocking a griffon and a pony aside as he bounced on the ground and slid out the tent flap.

’Okay, Handy…’ he thought to himself, pushing up off of the ground till he was on his knees. There was a surprised looking pony in full plate to his right, his armour tilted a pale teal with a proud purple crest raised from his helm. He paid it no mind as he looked down. His tail coat was ruined with wide tears across it, he was missing practically all of the buttons, and his white dress shirt had been torn. His cravat was there, but it was now a dirty, muddy mess like the rest of him. Thankfully, he had the good sense to wear his mail that day, otherwise he’d have a few more marks to add to the growing collection on his flesh. ’You promised Joach you wouldn’t start anything. Calm down, there might still be a way out of this without coming off like a pu-’

“Not so tough now, huh?” the dragon boasted from the tent behind him. Handy grit his teeth and noticed a drop of blood fall into the mud beneath him. Raising his gloved hands to his face, he discovered his nose was bleeding. ‘Must’ve hit that barrel harder than I thought.’ “I guess you’re only good for hot air and standing up to weakling ponies!”

Handy smiled as he got back to his feet. “Okay…” Handy said, making a mental note to point out to Joachim that he did not, in fact, start this. He had witnesses. Violent, witnesses but witnesses nonetheless. “Let’s try this again…” he said, loosening the clasp of his hammer.He gripped it in his right forefinger and thumb, and twisted. The hammer, whose head now faced downwards, slid out of the hook as he grabbed the bottom of the haft. There was a particular reason Handy drew it like this. First off, it meant that the dragon behind him wouldn't be warned by Handy telegraphing his movements in drawing the hammer despite the pony beside him took a few noticeable steps back, looking down at his hammer. Secondly, he needed all the leverage he could on the haft for his next move.

The dragon opened his mouth to continue berating the human as it took another step further. Handy whirled on the spot, his hand letting go of the hammer as he swung around, the intricately detailed, silvered weapon crashed into the dragon's forehead with tremendous force. The dragon staggered back into the tent, completely bewildered and disorientated from the surprise blow. Ferix shook his head, only to see the human doing what only madmen would do: he was charging at him.

Ferix's eyes widened, and he raised his arms to swing at the human. Handy ducked under the blows and put his weight into his shoulder as he barrelled into the dragon's midsection, sending it sprawling across a table, shattering it to splinters and sending the food and drink upon it flying. Handy breathed through his nostrils, looking down at the fallen dragon as it struggled to pull its wing loose of an iron band from the destroyed barrel. He reached down and picked up his hammer. "Thing is... Anyone else taking a blow to the head like that? Without a helmet? They'd be out like a snuffed candle, or worse. But thou can take it, can't thee, big man?" Handy said, idly inspecting his hammer for the odd scale that came off the dragon's head and became lodged in the grooves between the knotted designs. So, his dragon scales were not so invincible after all. Good to know.

The dragon roared and got to his feet, kicking a crate away and sending a griffon back. Several of the other patrons were now jeering at the pair, thoroughly enjoying the impromptu morning's entertainment. Those with more sense either quietly made their way out the exit behind the human or kept their thoughts to themselves and their various appendages close to their own weapons. Ferix reached to his side and withdrew a large iron axe and swung at Handy in a wide arc. The movement was terribly obvious. The dragon had taken a step forward and overextended himself. Shortbeak had punished Handy when he made a similar mistake during training a few times. Handy ducked under the swing, shifted his centre of mass, grabbed the axe wielding wrist with his free hand, and moved his left foot between the dragon's legs, kicking his foremost foot off balance.

He pulled on the arm, using the dragon's own momentum to force him forward onto Handy's own shoulder as the human pushed up and rolled his body to force the dragon off of its legs and over the human to land head first on the ground. Hard. Handy rolled his shoulders, wincing. The dragon was a heavy bastard even if he wasn't shouldering all of its weight at once. This elicited a cheer from the seated crowd, and Handy smiled. Ferix looked dazed, blinking away confusion before he snarled again. His claw shot upwards and decked Handy, sending him stumbling backwards.

He rubbed his jaw as he got back unsteadily to his feet. That hurt like a bitch. He withdrew his gloved hand. More blood; looked like Ferix's scales were sharp. He turned around just in time to have the dragon grapple Handy around the torso and lifting him off the ground, charging towards the back of the tent. A couple dogs and griffons were forced to dive out of the way of the angry dragon as Handy was thrown down on a crate. Unfortunately for him, he was not wearing his shield on his back that day. Handy coughed and groaned, pain piercing his back.

He blinked away at the pain when he heard Ferix grunted and looked up to see the dragon rearing back, his axe in both claws. Panic shot through Handy, and he brought his hammer up, both hands clasped tightly around its haft as the axe came down. His arms nearly buckled under the blow as haft clashed against haft, and the axe blade hovered nearly an inch away from his face. He gritted his teeth in pain and effort as Ferix snarled at him. He could hear movement as more people got off their seats to give the pair a wide berth. Handy looked up and saw the dragon's jaw was open, making out an orange light growing at the back of his throat, smoke emerging from its nostrils.

A primal, instinctive fear shot through the human's body. "Nope!" he shouted and kicked the dragon in his nether regions. The damage was minimal, but the shock got the job done as Ferix raised his head and opened his mouth to shout in pain, shooting off a burst of fire over Handy's head and burning a hole through the tent wall as a group of griffons dived out of its way.

--=--

"Oh, this is just ghastly!"

Stellar Eclipse rolled her eyes at the prince's exclamation and shifted in her black armour. Officially, she was here as the prince's bodyguard, although she was out of her regulation armour. Unofficially... well, she had to pull a few strings to be selected for this mission. Luna wanted somepony with experience facing the human to travel with Blueblood, which left her a limited pool to work with, and it was through some convincing that Stellar got the job.

The prince was despondent as he trotted through the muck and mire of the festival. Cloud had went on ahead to make arrangements for the tent. Lucky stallion she got stuck babysitting. You'd think two months of royal guard training, the system of which was currently under review as nopony like Blueblood should have been able to survive let alone pass the trials, would have conditioned the good prince to the harsh realities of getting one's hooves dirty. Nope.

"Really, are you seeing this? I cannot believe I have to stay here with all these commoners and brutes!" he said, waving a hoof for emphasis at the passing tournament participants and revellers going about their business. "I can't see why I cannot stay at the Palatinate in Ironcrest. Griffons are savages, but if I must stay in their wretched country, I should at least suffer their best imitation of hospitality rather than this plebian mess." A brown feathered griffon eyed the prince evilly while sharpening a sword on a whetstone as the ponies past. Stellar made a note of his face. Just in case.

"Participants have to camp on festival grounds, highness," she said in the well practiced neutral tone of royal guards. Her eyes darted about under her hood, scanning their surroundings. She had spotted the human earlier while Blueblood had been busy inside a tent having an argument with a blacksmith. For a second, she had afraid he recognised her, but he had just moved on.

"Hmph! As if I were some common riff raff," the prince said, eyes closed, chin high in the air, and his armored hoof raise to his chest in injured dignity. Stellar rolled her eyes behind his back. His attitude hadn't changed one iota. Her ears swiveled to listen to a sound behind her, and she dived at the prince.

And crashed down in the mud. She blinked rapidly, then shouted up at the prince. "Down!" she hissed, cursing. Despite the lack of change in the prince's attitude, the prince's training kicked into immediate effect as soon as he saw Stellar move.

"How dare you try to push me down into the mud!?" he said indignantly, his blonde mane resplendent in the morning sun. "I have half a mind to-" The prince was cut off by a burst of fire flying just over his head, the sudden sound of fire rushing past his ears, feeling the rush of warmth as it passed overhead and blasted apart a weapon stand. A beleaguered looking squire came out of his tent carrying a large crate and the griffon's shoulders slunk as he looked at the scorch mark on the ground where his goods once stood. The prince let out a high pitched scream in surprise.

"Goodness..." Blueblood said once he had calmed down and turned to look at where the fire blast came from. There was a large white tent a dozen feet or so from where he stood with a large circular burn mark in its side, slightly smouldering. Blueblood snorted. "Mindless hooligans!" He looked at Stellar, who seemed to be staring up at him. "Don't just stand there! Go do something! I have been assaulted.!"

"Uhh... Highness?"

"What is it?" he asked, raising an eyebrow imperiously.

"Your mane is on fire." He blinked, then his eyes widened as he grabbed a shield some dog was polishing.

"Hey!" the dog shouted. Blueblood ignored him, seeing his reflection and that his glorious croupe, which had taken just forever to style and groom so that it could be held in place under a helmet and not be messed up when he took it off, was currently sporting a happily crackling little fire. He screamed, tossing the shield back at the dog, and taking off at a gallop. "Water! I need water!" Stellar stumbled over her own hooves.

"Wait!" she shouted, galloping after the prince, cursing her luck. Briefly, she wished that the fireball could have arched a few inches lower but noooo, it'd just be too convenient, wouldn't it?

--=--

Handy ducked as a claw smashed a support pole in half. A portion of the tent fell upon a few tables’ worth of cheering onlookers. He twirled the hammer around, holding it in a backwards grip with both hands on the haft and dug the top of the hammer head into the dragon's exposed midriff. Honestly, if you're going to go to the bother of wearing a plackart, why not wear the rest of the cuirass? The dragon doubled over and took a step back before swinging up with its left fist, catching Handy on the lower jaw and sending him reeling backwards, dropping his hammer.

"Mon ami, keep it up!" a voice said as Handy lost his balance and fell backwards, only to be stopped as a pair of hooves pressed up against his back. He turned his head, his hood long since fallen back. He turned to look to see what stopped his fall, and a brown unicorn stallion with a wide brimmed, black hat and grey beard smiled up at him. "This is the most fun I've had all week! Show that dragon who' boss!" he said, pushing the human up. The stag sitting across from him with the large antlers laughed.

"I'll say! Twenty bits on the dragon!" the deer said.

"Hmm, agreed," hat pony said, smiling.

Handy didn't bother responding. The dragon was recovering and getting to his feet, and he couldn't find his hammer. He needed something big and heavy and he needed it now. He turned, tipped over the barrel the deer and pony had been using so he could grab the bottom of it, knocking their drinks and food onto the floor. Thankfully, the barrel was empty, though it didn't do anything to alleviate the aches in his lower back from when he had been used as an impromptu crowbar, however. He winced as he raised the barrel over his head, took a step forward, and brought it down on the dragon's head as he got back to his feet.

The barrel became stuck comically on the dragon's head as it broke through the wooden planks. Ferix flailed his limbs and cursed as he stumbled around, blind and disorientated. His limbs flailed out, smacking a dog off its seat, his flapping wings knocking a hovering griffon out of the air. Handy took a breath and turned to face the astonished deer, spreading his arms wide. "Thanks for the vote of confidence, lads." He turned back around to search for his hammer. "Wankers..." he muttered under his breath.

There was a tap on his arm, and he turned. The serving griffon from earlier was holding his hammer. He took it from her and muttered a hurried thanks as the sound of breaking wood followed by a deafening roar brought Handy back to the matter at hand. Ferix was now several feet away from him. The tent space was a veritable ruin of broken poles, torn fabric, and destroyed crates and barrels. Most of it was Ferix's doing. The dragon was furious, and unfortunately for Handy, he didn't look too much the worse for wear for the fight.

"I AM GOING TO DESTROY YOU, HUMAN!" Ferix roared, fire spurting from his nostrils as he spoke, his eyes staring death at Handy. Handy hesitated, the sight of the flames giving him pause. He took in a breath through his nose to calm himself and took a step forward, bringing his hammer up when something yellow stood in his way.

"Thats enough!" A yellow pegasus with emerald eyes stood before Handy. Wings flared, she turned her head back to look at the dragon. "Both of you!" Her intervention was met with boo's and jeering from the gathered warriors in the tent, unfazed by having their meals interrupted by the fighting.

A half-eaten fish was thrown at the pony, who ducked her head under it and glared at the hippogriff responsible. “Ah, get out of the way, crystal flank, you’re spoiling the fun!” the offending avian shouted. His sentiments were chorused by a few others. Handy took the opportunity to catch his breath, Ferix, meanwhile, merely fumed.

“Out of my way, equine,” he said threateningly. The yellow pegasus narrowed her eyes. Handy barely noticed her twitch her feathers as she whirled around with incredible speed to face the dragon.

“Save it for the tournament,” she said sternly. “Look at this place! You’re going to be bringing the guards down on us all!”

“Hah! I don’t care. I am having this upstart ape’s head now, not later,” Ferix retorted.

“Perhaps thou should listen to the good lady,” Handy said, spreading his arms wide. “At least in the tournament I’d be able to embarrass thee in front of a wider audience.” He glanced to the far right corner of the tent near the exit. The zebra from before seemed to be mixing a few of his glasses of noxious liquids.

“Stop. Antagonizing. The dragon,” the crystal eyed mare hissed, turning her head back towards the human.

“Mademoiselle, perhaps it is best not to get in the middle of fire and steel, qui?” hat pony said, smiling. He and the deer moved away from where they had been standing behind Handy, their table now currently in a thousand pieces halfway across the room. The crystal pony didn’t bother looking back at the stallion.

“Thats a laugh, human; you can barely hold your own and you expect to beat me in the tournament?”

“I expect to beat thee, period, Ferix,” Handy challenged, taking a step further. The pegasus rounded on him, and he looked down at her. “Oh what now, thee as well?”

“If that stops this sooner.”

“I have no quarrel with thee, pony, move aside.”

“No,” she said firmly. Handy sighed at her.

“Hiding behind a pony, human? You’re weaker than I thought,” Ferix’s deep rumbling voice resounded with laughter.

“I am not the one standing over there with their back to the nearest exit,” Handy challenged. The dragon looked behind him, noting he was, in fact, a few feet from the exit. By now there was a sizeable crowd gathered around the tent peering in to see what was going on. “Perhaps thou wishes to take a respite and leave before getting your skull caved in.” The crystal pony facehoofed.

“I will tear your head off human!” the dragon snarled. “Like your foppish uniform, I’ll reduce you to strips of meat.” He pointed at Handy’s ruined coat.

“What this old thing?” Handy asked, smiling as the blood ran from his nose and cheek, pinching his collar. “I dunno, it certainly served me well."

"At what? Getting you the attentions of some effeminate stallions?" the dragon guffawed, and Handy's eyes narrowed.

"Thy mother certainly liked it when it adorned the floor of her bedchambers.” That comment elicited uproarious laughter. The dragon bellowed it’s fury and rose to its full height, taking in a deep breath as its clenched teeth barely held back the building flame.

The yellow pegasus took flight, whisking herself out of the line of fire. Handy ducked behind a collection of barrels and crates. He looked up to see the serving griffon standing stock still where she had been, staring at the dragon like a deer in headlights. Ironic considering the actual deer had long since legged it to cover.

“GET DOWN YOU SILLY BIRD!” Handy reached up and grabbed the griffon by her left wing and pulled her to the ground as a furious fire blast washed over the top of their cover. Handy virtually cowered beneath his cloak, desperately keeping all of his body parts under its voluminous cover for fear of being caught in the fireblast. Illogical, given his cloak was hardly fireproof, but he wasn’t thinking about that as he silently cursed his earlier, foolhardy action and wondering exactly which of his family members he could curse for giving him his temper.

The fire breath abated, and Handy opened his eyes which had been screwed shut. He saw the worn, red velvet interior of his hood and the grass and clay of the ground beneath him. He didn’t feel like he was on fire, but it was certainly a lot warmer and he smelled of smoke. He lifted his hood up and realized his hand was pressing down on something. He lifted himself up and pulled his cloak away to reveal the terrified face of the young griffon he had just pulled out of the way of an inferno looking up at him. He had been pressing her head to the ground to keep her out of the line of fire.

“Get up,” he said, coming to his knees and pulling her up. He could hear the clash of metal and shouts around him. The tent was in chaos: the entire section he was in was a ruined mess, and the tent wall behind him had completely burned away. People were running to and fro outside of it as he saw the fire had touched several other tents. “Go, go on, get!” he said, pushing the griffon outside the tent as he turned to see Ferix.

The pony lion he had spied from before was currently flying about the dragon’s head whacking at it with a mace. The dragon was alternating between trying to bat it away with its wings and claws and fighting off the orange pegasus with the spear. Meanwhile, the zebra from before, reared up, a bottle of a foaming green liquid raised in its hoof. It swung its hoof, sending the concoction flying towards the dragon. For a moment, it’d look like it was going to hit it dead in the chest before it ducked to avoid a low swing of the lion pony’s mace. The bottle landed in a crowd of warriors who began choking, some falling to the ground unconscious.

This got the others attention, who began hurling insults and threats at the zebra, some trying to make their way through the burning chaos to get at the creature. The yellow pegasus, who had been on the zebra’s side of the dragon, found herself on the wrong side of the crowd's ire and was busy defending herself against angry griffons and ponies. The sound of broken glass and splintering wood was ever present, and Handy knew the wise thing to do was to just slip away.

Especially because of the, you know, fire in his part of the tent. He grit his teeth. This dragon had officially ruined his day, and if he didn't take care of it now, he'd only be a problem later. He eyed the burning tent and wood around him warily as he navigated around them quickly, suddenly very grateful for his cloak as he took a step forward. A dog fell to the ground before him after getting bucked to the ground by the deer. It shook its head, saw Handy above him, and snarled. Handy booted it in the face and it fell right back down again.

Ferix had his back to him, distracted by the lion pony, having knocked the orange pegasus aside, dazing the mare. He jumped up and hooked his hammer around the dragon's neck, dragging Ferix backwards with his weight. The dragon roared in fury and thrashed before tripping over the vengeful orange pony's spear and falling to the ground, front first. Handy managed to hang on as the dragon fell and pulled himself up and was now busy planting his feet on the prone dragon's left wing joint and the base of his neck, pulling back on his hammer and trying to choke the dragon into submission. Not an easy thing to do in any scenario given how long his neck was.

There was a shrill whistling noise. The tent flap burst open, and armoured griffon guards in Firthengarian green and grey coloured tabards spilled forth onto the scene and surrounding the tent. Handy looked up as a particularly heavily armoured griffon walked in, scowling directly at the human. Handy recognised him as Sir Lightning, one of Goldtooth's knights he met in Canterlot.

The griffon's eyes briefly surveyed the scene. Parts of the giant tent had collapsed, other parts were on fire, there were unconscious tournament participants everywhere, and the remainder were being pulled apart and held down by the griffon guards trying to contain the chaos. Lightning's yellow eyes turned back, judgingly, to Handy and Ferix, who had stopped struggling when half a dozen halberds were leveled at them.

"Okay..." the human said, slowly taking his hammer away from the dragon's throat with one hand, his other raised in a placating gesture. He wobbled as the dragon he was currently standing on shifted. "Not gonna lie... This is exactly what it looks like."

--=--

"TWO HOURS, HANDY! WE LEFT YOU FOR TWO HOURS!" Joachim screeched.

"Truth be told, that’s impressive. Normally, it takes Tanismore three hours to start a major bar fight," Shortbeak quipped, eating an apple.

"Technically, it was not a bar. More of a... refreshment tent I guess?" Handy said.

"THAT DOESN'T MAKE IT BETTER!"

"Hey! I didn't start it. The dragon threw me across the room. What, was I to just sit there and take it?"

"Yes! No! I don't— Gah!" Joachim said. "Goldtooth is going to dig into me for this," he groaned

"My most sincere apologies for thy injured dignity, my lord." Handy deadpanned, seated as he was on an upturned crate. Crimson trotted over, carrying a bag of ice in her muzzle. "Thanks." He took the ice and held it to his jaw.

"So didja win?" Tanismore was leaning against one of the sturdy poles holding up Handy's dark blue and black tent.

"He was on the ground by the time we were arrested. I was not, so..." Handy shrugged. "Hits like an avalanche, though.

"Hmph," the perpetually surly Godfrey vocalized, face hidden beneath his full helm. "Probably should have talked your way out of that one."

"Yes, negotiating with a dragon, sounds like a valuable waste of time," Handy said, the deliberate contradiction in his sentence eliciting a chuckle from Tanismore. Joachim was still frowning.

"Look, are you going to be alright?" Joachim said, pointing at Handy. The human took off his now unserviceable coat and shirt, leaving him with his chainmail. "The festival starts officially tomorrow."

"Tomorrow? This tent city has been up for weeks now," Tanismore pointed out.

"The festival proper starts when the king blows the ivory horn," Joachim explained, waving his claw for emphasis. "It’s this whole ceremonial thing. It opens with a round of games and the first round of duels for the tournament."

“Oh. Good,” Handy said, wincing, placing a hand against his lower back. “I was hoping for an early start.”

“You sure you’re going to be alright?” Shortbeak asked, concerned.

’Nothing illegal drugs can’t fix.’ “I’ll sleep it off,” Handy said. He shared a look with Joachim, who understood perfectly well Handy had been taking a few bottles of salve from his own supply. “Has anyone seen that pony prince about?” Handy asked, his brow furrowing.

“Blueblood? I heard he was seen running for the lake earlier,” Tanismore said.

“At least he showed up,” Handy said, snorting derisively. In truth, the raw anger he had felt towards the pony faded somewhat, at least to the point where he no longer wished to kill him. Hospitalizing him, however, held a certain vicarious appeal.

“Look, Handy, we’re going to be leaving now. Perhaps I should leave Tanismore or somegriffon behind to make sure…” He trailed off after seeing the rather poisonous look Handy gave him. “Right. Sure, fine. Just don’t get into any more fighting, alright? Save some of that for tomorrow.” Handy smiled slightly at that.

“I’ll still have plenty to make a good show for Gethrenia, Majesty,” Handy said, resisting the urge to roll his eyes. With a final sigh and parting farewells, the griffons left the human in his tent. He sat there with the ice pack to his sore jaw for a while, Crimson sitting off to the side, shuffling her hooves.

“Hey, Crimson?”

“Yes sir?” the red pony said.

“If you’re going to sit there being awkward, at least make yourself useful. See that pack over there? The full one,” Handy said, gesturing towards his pack of changeling coinage. “There’s a bottle in there, orange liquid. Fetch it for me.” The pony nodded and trotted over, opening the bag with her mouth. Handy raised an eyebrow at that.

She seemed to take her time, gazing into the bag. “Hey.” He drew her attention away. “Eyes off the gold; just get me the bottle,” he said warily. She nodded and reached into the bag with a hoof, drawing out the bottle. Handy accepted it from her. “Crimson, are you sure you’re alright?” he asked.

“Of course,” she said. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“You’ve been acting odd, and you haven’t used your magic at all.” He shook the bottle he just received for emphasis. She blinked at him before sighing.

“In truth, I’ve been having headaches recently,” she said sadly. “It gets worse when you use magic. I just didn’t want to admit it. It’s embarrassing for a unicorn.” She looked away. Handy raised an eyebrow at that. In truth, he guessed that made sense. Unicorns focused magic through their horns, but it didn’t explain everything about her odd behaviour. He was, however, not in the best of moods and couldn’t honestly give a fuck.

“Alright then. Go out and have a look around the festival then, I’ll be staying here for the rest of the day.” ‘For what little of the day is left anyway.’ Being detained by Firthengarian guards was not a fun way to spend five hours. Hat pony and the deer had somehow managed to slip away, leaving the rest of them to their fate, followed shortly after by the witch zebra. It left Handy, the yellow pegasus, lion pony, the other pegasus, twenty other unfortunate saps, and the dragon with an iron clamp around his jaw to be lambasted by a rather irritable griffon knight for their reprehensible behaviour.

For five. Hours. Straight.

Lightning had a hell of a pair of lungs. Also issues, lots of issues. Crimson hesitated, looking back at the bag for a moment. Handy didn’t notice, distracted as he was by trying to unstopper the bottle of glorious, glorious pain relief. “Okay,” she said at last, trotting over to the door. Handy looked up at her for a moment as she left, then turned his attention back to the task at hand. His ministrations on trying to loosen the damnable lid of the bottle slowed as a thought dawned on him.

So, he arrived in Firthengart, and the first thing he did was get into a fight with a dragon. He stopped, considering the implications of that. This time last year, he was sitting in an office, scanning memorandums and worrying about what sauce he was going to put on his microwaved potatoes later that evening to make them taste less like burnt ass. Now he was a medieval knight worried about such petty little things as fighting dragons, becoming a blood sucking abomination, getting on the wrong side of colourful pony princesses who told the bodies cosmic to shut up and sit down and he was sought after by some extremely powerful sorceress who, according to Crimson, considered him as her personal property.

He looked at the bottle of salamander salve for a few long, hard moments. "God," He said at length. “How the fuck is this my life again?”

Chapter 24 - The Lion, the Witch and the Warning

The first time Handy got it through his thick skull that he might be a tiny bit in over his head was during his second duel of the tournament, when the earth pony in front of him got a lucky shot in with its rear hoof and knocked him down to one knee. He was fortunate that the blow was off, otherwise Handy likely would have lost all function in that leg for the foreseeable future.

'Griffon perhaps?' he thought to himself as he planted the butt of his glaive into the ground to push himself up to his feet. Credit to the earth pony. Despite starting the duel shaking like a leaf, he had had enough sense to go for Handy's legs from the get-go. The griffon in his first duel of the day had gotten cocky, and Handy had knocked him out with a blow to the head from his hammer, ruining both the bird’s helmet and the crowd’s fun. 'No, with the press of bodies here, I'll likely go berserk. The aggression would be too much.'

When King Goldtooth had arrived on a raised palanquin that morning and sounded the beginning of the festival, Handy had been shown the layout for the games as well as the times for his duels. There were contests of strength and skill to wow the masses, with competitors and athletes from across the kingdom. The human had been intrigued and impressed by some of the performances, particularly the aerial feats. He hated to admit it, but the pegasi entrants in those competitions stole the show. Then again, it was kind of hard to beat someone who can create multiple burning loops in the sky at literally break-neck speeds. He had actually stood there and thought, for quite some time, about how in the hell something as unaerodynamic as a flying horse could possibly go at such speeds, let alone cast a burning trail without catching on fire themselves, but considering he knew jack about how magic actually worked, the effort had been futile. However, that was not what concerned him.

'Unicorn? No.' He spun the glaive around and swiped low, forcing the green earth pony to jump back, his blade grazing the iron guards on the pony's forelegs. The young equine, too small for his armour, went wide-eyed at the speed with which the human recovered and took a few steps back, evaluating its next approach. 'As useful as that was, it would be distracting, and I won't win by sneaking around.'

What concerned the human was the fact that not only did the tournament take place over a number of days, with a series of duels to weed out the majority of the competition before the grand melee to determine the remaining semi-finalists, but also the possibility he might also not get the chance to do the one thing that made him agree to that bloody arrangement in Canterlot in the first place. You see, he had learned a lot in that fight with Ferix, namely that the dragon was not the only person there who personally wanted the chance to grind Handy into the dirt. For bragging rights if nothing else. Additionally, the sight of the human bloodied and dirty went a long way to boost the confidence of said participants to do just that. He also learned that Ferix could shrug off most of what Handy could do, and Handy was pretty sure that if it came to a straight fight, the dragon would be the victor. Also, you know, his fire breath was something he was particularly concerned about.

'Thestral would definitely be good,' he mused, his armour glinting lightly, the heavy cloud cover blocking the majority of the sunlight. 'But really obvious. Joachim and the others are right there.' He grimaced beneath his helm as he glared at the earth pony. The pony had originally come at him with a spear before Handy had managed to knock it out of its hooves, something which surprised the human immensely.

He had seen the Royal Guards of Canterlot wield spears along with those gun pole things. Shoot sticks they were called now that he thought about it. He had reasoned, however, that they were mostly for ceremonial purposes. The hoof blades used by the thestrals he had fought made much more sense as equine weapons. Silly Handy, thinking that just because ponies have hooves, they can't use pole-arms effectively. What did logic get you? That's right, a good thwack in the side of the head. 'Pegasi are winged ponies as well. Would they be any different?' he thought. There were certainly more pegasi available at the tournament. He thought he had caught sight of a leathery wing earlier, but the rush of the crowd had prevented him from getting a good look.

He carefully chose his footing, the ground covered in sawdust and wood chippings. The baying crowd seated around the rectangular ring were cheering. Handy was a little annoyed that more than a few were cheering for the young pony in front of him, but he swallowed his pride. Hubris had gotten him into enough messes as it was, and he wouldn't begrudge the pony his limelight. ‘Sides, this tournament was as much a show as it was a competition. The one pony he actually wanted to face, however, was nowhere near him on the tournament tables, and Handy did not care for the distinct possibility that the prince might get knocked out of the running before Handy had a chance to teach him some goddamn manners.

This, coupled with the somewhat frightening ease some of the other competitors had won their duels this day, made Handy seriously consider taking a bite out of someone. Sure, it may not be the most honourable thing, cheating in a tournament, but Handy was fine with not winning the competition overall, so he was hardly doing it for that. He just wanted to ensure he lasted long enough to hopefully meet the prince in the melee if nothing else.

Somewhere, at the back of Handy’s mind, his conscience nagged at him for seriously considering active predation. Especially right under Joachim’s beak, considering he had promised to avoid this exact thing. However, between his killing of Geoffrey and twisting Crimson’s hoof for a bite in exchange for protection and, by extension, servitude as Handy’s personal mage, he had already crossed too far over the line as it was. Actively preying on people, especially considering he may need the edge, was the next logical step down the stairs of vampirism. There was no real way to come back from that, after all. He’d worry about his nagging conscience when he wasn’t busy, the question now was who, how, and when?

The earth pony glanced sideways at his fallen spear. He was wearing a full face helmet, an interesting sloping design for a bascinet with a singular slit that was wider than necessary, but then again, ponies did have such large eyes. Handy lowered his glaive towards the pony threateningly. The pony charged anyway, body tilted to the side slightly. Handy had seen it do this before. It was preparing for a sudden stop and round on Handy with an iron shod buck to knock away his weapon or disable his arm. Alternatively, he could be attempting to duck under his swing and try to get a body blow to the human. That was a dangerous thing coming from an earth pony and their damnable legs; if it managed to get Handy off of his feet completely, the fight would be more or less over as Handy would have to pull himself out from under the pony's kicking hooves.

So Handy rushed forward himself before the stallion could get the chance. He brought his glaive up, the blade now too high in the air to be effectively used against the now wide-eyed earth pony. He swung forward with the lower half of the pole-arm and caught him on the throat, jerking its head sideways at an awkward angle with the blow. The pony, choking, tried to correct its now confused footing before his momentum overcame him, but Handy kicked out and caught the pony's flank seconds after the first blow had connected, throwing the pony bodily to the ground. The pony tried to get back to his hooves, but by then Handy brought the glaive back down, the blade hanging over the back of the pony's neck where the helmet met the base of his chain mail coif. The stallion froze, then let out a frustrated noise as it stamped a hoof uselessly on the ground.

The crowd cheered as a griffon in a green and orange slashed tunic waved a small green flag at Handy before turning around and placing it in a wooden block with five holes. Two of the holes were filled with orange flags; the other three were now filled with green ones as Handy had won the best of five rounds for the duel. Handy stood back up and raised his glaive in the air as the crowd celebrated. In truth, he only did it for the show of it. No sense not entertaining the crowd, but he'd be lying if he said he didn't enjoy the praise. Looking up, he could see several spectator towers where the wealthier festival goers could look down on multiple fighting rings simultaneously for their pleasure. Of course, those with wings could just hover mid-air and watch, but that was generally frowned upon. The towers were colourful things, large and square shaped and covered with cloth along their sides depicting symbols of Firthengart and the High kingdom of Griffonia alongside images of forests and glens in the autumn. Pennants and banners hung on poles, jutting out of their tops and fluttering in the breeze. Colourful bunting hung on wires that ran from the towers down to pegs in the ground.

He brought his glaive down and looked at the pony before him as he limped over to his spear. Holding the glaive in the crook of his arm, he offered his hand to his opponent. "Well fought," he said, seeing no reason not to be polite. The pony snorted in response and walked off. Handy scowled after him. Ah well, he couldn’t say he'd be in a better mood himself in the pony's position, but that was still rude.

The crowd began dispersing from the stands when Handy heard another cheer coming from his right. Looked like someone in a nearby pit had just won another round. An itching sensation brought his attention back down, and he looked at his left wrist. His eye twitched. He’d need another hit of the salve soon but was reluctant to use it. Just in case he actually got injured during the festival and needed a quick heal. It was... always tempting, however. It helped him sleep at night as well, which was a welcome comfort these days.

He shook his head, rubbing his wrist unconsciously as he looked around. The stands were emptying for the day as the revellers went elsewhere. He supposed it might do him some good to go out and enjoy the festival as well. In truth, he just wanted to go back and sit in his tent, perhaps read a book, but that was just inviting disaster as Tanismore would inevitably start looking for him once he was off duty. The others would likely either be guarding the king or going about the festival, Joachim would be with Goldtooth for most of the day, and Crimson was off enjoying herself. He presumed as much anyway; not as if she was the best company either as of late. The arbalist competition was to be hosted later that day, so he could always go to that. Apparently, the smart money was on a crossbow griffon from up north, and he wanted to see if he could make some money on placing a few bets.

Handy wasn't a gambling man. Normally, placing a few bob on the Cheltenham race was the most he ever got up to. Then again, he wasn't normally normal anymore, so why the hell not have a little fun?

Gathering up his cloak, he exited the duelling ring, taking the wooden steps out of the pit.

--=--

A brightly dressed figure sat at the corner of the viewing box. The seats of the tower box ran on all four sides around a central square pillar that held up the roof, its only support given that there were no walls to allow the guests to view the surrounding duels. The white-blue stallion in question was brightly dressed, sporting a yellow fedora with a lime green ribbon, a bright pink tunic, a teal cravat, and a hideous patchwork cloak of a variety of clashing colours. In short, he was a garish mess with more money than sense, and it hurt to look at him. So most people chose not to.

This was perfectly fine with Thunder.

He smiled lightly as he looked over the fights going on below, his soft brown eyes were deceptive, and for all the world, he looked like just another passive spectator enjoying the festival's delights. In truth, he was scanning each of the participants, analysing threats, and watching one warrior in particular.

Whirlwind practically danced around his gryphonic opponent, a large dirty gold griffon in dull, grey armour, checkerboard patterned with portions painted in red. Its claymore was covered in cloth swung low, and the stag deftly hopped over the blade, laughing, landing on its forehooves and swinging on the spot. It bucked or at least appeared to. In actuality, the deer pushed forward on its forelegs, pushing itself out of the way of the griffon's back swing. He anticipated his opponent's move and landed behind the confused griffon who was trying to locate the deer. Whirlwind lowered his head and charged, his antlers digging into the rump of the griffon, who howled in shock and pain.

The deer backed off, laughing, hopping around the perimeter of the duelling ring as his opponent took to the air once again. The deer wore practically no armour, a mere chainmail coif that covered his barrel and withers, his hooded cloak torn and tattered from his travels absent. The brown furred deer was slightly larger than an earth pony stallion but considerably leaner in build, with thin legs and small, cloven hooves. His bright, green eyes seemed to shimmer and dance with unbridled exuberance and mirth. Two proud antlers grew from his head, strong and sharp. He had not worn his blades for this fight. Even so, the tips of his antlers were covered. Traditionally, and in good sense, most edged or pointed weapons were covered in tournament bouts unless the participants agreed otherwise.

The earth pony smiled down at him as he searched the crowd that was observing the bout. There he was, the unicorn with the rapier, seated languidly towards the back of the crowd and at a corner, high up on a back seat that gave him a good view of everypony in the audience as well as a vantage over the griffons and ponies walking in between the duelling rings. It seemed that Whirlwind had picked up a bodyguard on his way here. Either that or those blasted elks saw fit to assign one to him anyway. An unknown entity, but one that he was confident he could deal with if necessary. Besides, if all went as planned, he wouldn't need to confront anypony. He just needed to make out the courier and get the crown, and then he could leave the little lordling to his business as Thunder went on his merry way.

A cheer went up from somewhere down below him and to his left. The human had won his bout and had his hammer raised above his head. Thunder briefly considered capitalizing on the opportunity that presented. The human had brought the acolyte with him. Ordinarily, if he completed his objective and brought in the errant neophyte mage, it'd be quite a coup for him with the mistress. However, there was no sense bringing in Crimson without bringing in the human as well, and Thunder did ever so much hate complications. Trying to incapacitate the human would be... noticeable since he drew too much attention. Oh, he'd probably put up a fight and then Thunder would have to get excessive, and there'd be ever so much noise and bother about it all. Ponies and griffons would take exception to such an interruption to their festivities that he'd have to whistle for Chopper, and then the dogs would have to be sicced on the good folk of the festival, and there would d be rather a lot of blood.

Such hassle. Better to leave that to the others skulking around Skymount for when the biped returned there. They were making arrangements to steal away both of them when they were comfortable and at home, where their guards would be lowered. Or so Thunder had heard; wasn't his head on the line for that plan, so he couldn't care for their schemes. His ear flicked at the sound of laughter and groaning behind him, the clink of metal as coins changed claws. Where there were two ponies in a field kicking a ball, there was always somepony placing a bet on it. This festival was no exception, and it had its fair share of shady characters about. He had sent out feelers and paid a few bribes, some well-placed, soft spoken words, but nopony had heard anything about something like the crown being moved. So he couldn't go too far out of his way to intercept it before it got to Whirlwind, meaning he had to follow the enthusiastic deer around and, well, enjoy the festival in the meantime until the mark made himself present. He yawned lazily.

Sitting on his plot for the time being was perfectly fine with Thunder.

--=--

It was nice, he supposed.

To say the festival was colourful would be the understatement of the century. The ponies alone were a kaleidoscope of colour, mixed in with the more vibrant colours of the tents, flags, banners. They were tempered by the more muted colours of the much more numerous griffons who prevented it from being too garish and made the entire experience a feast for the eyes. While walking through this sea of colour, Handy had learned that the trees of this world, by and large, couldn’t drop their leaves by themselves, a concept that was literally alien to the human, but given that the weather did not work unless people were herding the clouds as one would cattle, he decided not to argue the matter. It was, however, an excuse for excessive festivities come autumn in most places. By the end of the festival, there would be ‘the great hunt’, which consisted of a rather large game of tag that was as much a dance as it was a game involving hundreds of participants in the forest nearby. Apparently, the messing around caused the leaves to fall. Most places these days used magic to cause the leaves to fall, but bollocks to that, for this was a party, and they were going to do it the traditional way.

The absurdity brought a light smile to his face as he made his way through the peddlers selling useless junk and the smooth talkers trying to get the punters to step right up to their stalls and try to win ‘magnificent prizes’ if they could only knock the milk bottles down. He did, however, stop once or twice at the odd merchant trying to hawk their wares when the fancy took him. One wizened-looking griffon claimed to have once been the court wizard of some count or another. Handy didn’t believe that for a minute given the state of staff he carried, broken and worn as it was. However, he humoured the old bird as he was friendly and amicable, and so Handy parted with a crown or two’s worth of bric-a-brac in the form of a small booklet containing some nonsense chicken scratch he didn’t understand and a bracelet that looked like it was made of gilded copper. If you went to a festival and didn’t have at least one purchase you regretted, you were clearly doing it wrong, or so his uncle had said when they went to a flea market a decade ago. That never did get that lawnmower they bought to work properly...

Night had fallen, and the festival only increased in liveliness as the sun set and the moon rose over the horizon. The competitions and trinket stalls of the day gave way to the night time distractions and performances of troubadours and showmen. Lively music could be heard from all corners of the tent city as the night was lit up with fires and burning torches. The shrill cry of people entranced in song and dance pierced the night air. Laughter and poetry caressed his ears as he passed by small clusters of revellers, nobles and commoners alike, seated outside of tents and sharing stories and jokes over food and drink. Judging by the sounds he heard, several of the dances he saw earlier were still raging as well. He found it odd that the ponies never gave any fuss for the sheer amount of meat being consumed, but then again, if one makes one's mind up to visit a griffon festival, one should steel themselves for certain things.

He eventually found his way to the lakeside, standing on top of a large wooden decking raised slightly above and out over the water level. It had evidently been used earlier for some formal dinner and speech he had missed. Most of the tables and chairs had been cleared off and stacked on the grass to the side to make way for a large crowd that had gathered around a wagon. The only tables and chairs that remained were by the wooden fence preventing people from falling off into the water. The wagon had opened up and extended to great fanfare, revealing a stage with sumptuous purple and azure drapes. There was a flash of dazzling magic and smoke as a unicorn in an overly large and comically stereotypical, purple wizard hat materialized, complete with a sparkling wizard cloak adorned with stars and crescent moons.

The mare reared up and introduced herself proudly to the delighted cries of the young children in the audience who really should have been put to bed by now. He wasn’t particularly paying attention. The sounds of the magic show being put on for the entertainment of the gathered audience slowly tuned out, along with everything else, as his mind wandered. He turned to look out over the lake, leaning on the wooden fence some distance from the show. The stars and the moon shone clearly that night and reflected gloriously in the gently shifting waters of the lake, causing the lights of the bodies cosmic to dance and sway with the lights of the torches and lanterns along the lakeside. Fiery reflections, both young and old, mingled and cavorted on the black surface of the lake, bowing out of the way of passing small boats which broke the water, sending tiny reverberations along the surface to continue the dance of light anew in their wake.

He lifted the painted leaf he had been holding in his hand for most of the day up to his helmeted face. It was a gift from a rather brave little griffon girl who had approached him earlier, certainly braver than her older sister. He had been quite surprised, having gotten used to people simply moving out of his way when he approached. 'For you, mistah human!' she had said. At first he had simply looked down at the little girl for a minute, trying to comprehend what it was she wanted, before taking the proffered leaf. The girl had squealed in delight at his thanks before being scooped up into the forelegs of a familiar looking, young, brown griffon with her feathers tied back. She had quickly apologized to the human for any bother before taking to the air and flying off to another part of the festival, leaving the bewildered human with a dried, red-brown oak leaf covered in small, swirling patterns of golden paint.

It was a tradition in Firthengart to take the first fallen leaves of a fall festival and paint them your favourite colour. It didn't matter what you painted on the leaf, but each brushstroke represented your hopes and good will, or alternatively, your pains and sadness. You'd burn the leaf afterwards in such a case and disperse the ashes, symbolically ridding oneself of the pain and wish for something dear to your heart. Otherwise, if it was a leaf of good will, you normally gave it to others as a gesture of friendship or in thanks. The little girl, for one reason or another, had wanted to give one such leaf to the human as soon as he emerged from the duelling ring, apparently having watched the spectacle with her sister. Handy, however, had no idea about any of this, and so what would normally have been a cute gesture just confused the human, who contemplated throwing the leaf away.

He was pulled from his thoughts by sharp laughter to his left. Looking further down the decking, a group of griffons stood apart from the crowd and were playing some form of marco polo, the blindfolded griffon in the centre reaching out to try to tag the others who answered his calls. One cheated and flew up, alighting on the edge of the fence. He got his comeuppance when he got knocked over and into the water by his friend's flailing, the group of griffons laughing at his expense. Out on the lake, he saw a stallion show his foals how to make a floating lantern, helping them set their little floating flames out on the water, shadows dancing on the colourful lantern covers, contrasting with the pinpricks of light reflected in the dark waters. The crowd behind him cheered in adoration of the showmare who, by the sound of it and the harsh shadows that suddenly appeared on the ground beside him before disappearing, had pulled off a rather impressive pyrotechnics trick. As he stood there, near a covered torch and surrounded on all sides by such mirth and merriment, he couldn't help but note with some degree of bitterness that he felt somewhat envious.

It was all very nice, he supposed. For some at least.

"Ah, c'est magnifique!" He turned to his right to regard the new voice that came complete with clapping hooves. A brown stallion with a wide brimmed, black hat was on his rear hooves, leaning against the fence beside Handy, slowly bringing his forehooves together. How in the hell did he get that close without him noticing? Handy looked down at him. He couldn't see his face through the black hat from this position, but between it and the accent, he figured this was the same pony from the fight with Ferix. "Wouldn't you say, mon ami?" he asked, inclining his head towards Handy but still not looking up. Handy raised his eyebrow at him, trying to determine if his stance was intended to mock the biped.

"I have not been paying much attention," he said truthfully. There was metallic sound as the pony shifted to all fours once more, and Handy's eyes were drawn lower to see the long, thin blade held in a scabbard by the pony's 'waist'. A thin belt supported the rapier's weight. He frowned at it for a moment. The crossguard was... strange. The blade came to a point where it was supported by two intersecting lengths of metal attached to a circular band of iron, which itself had an open strip as it did not close fully. The metal was intricately detailed with flora in base relief, and Handy struggled to figure out how the hell that sword was supposed to be used since he did not see a handle. "And I do not believe I have known thee long enough for us to be friends."

"You understand what I said?! Tres bien! C'est tellement bon de rencontrer enfin quelqu'un qui comprend fantaisie!" the pony exclaimed with his forelegs outstretched, still facing the direction of the magic show. Handy, not wanting to get into what would no doubt be lovely comparisons of the languages of this world to that of his own and the whacky coincidences thereof, decided to do the one thing that had always succeeded in getting him out of awkward situations: he lied.

"Forgive me, I pray thee, but my familiarity with thy tongue is only passing," he said, turning his head to face the magic show, but in reality, it was turned just enough to allow him to continue watching the pony warily out of the slit of his helmet. "It took me some time to learn the language of Equestria and longer still until I learned to use it properly."

"Qui? So it is not your mother tongue?" hat pony asked, his head tilted to the side. Handy still couldn't see his face.

"No."

"Now I am curious! What is then?"

"... As Gaeilge," Handy lied. It was, in fact, his second tongue. However, as soon as Handy said it, he regretted it and started to hope there wasn't some bizarre version of Irish in this world that could jeopardize his fabricated backstory. Not because he wasn't confident he could talk his way out of it; he just didn't want to have to do so. The hat pony hummed thoughtfully.

"I do not believe I have heard such a language before. You must regale me sometime," he said, gesturing with his hoof.

"Pray, I beg your pardon, but who art thou?" he asked. The pony didn’t answer immediately, instead turning his head back to the show. The showmare was now calling up volunteers from the audience. With a flash of magic, two tall colourful boxes, one red and the other mostly blue, appeared in the centre of the stage with what appeared to be two doors on the front of each box. The volunteers, a dog and a griffon, were placed inside the boxes. The dog appeared quite nervous about the arrangement, understandable given the insides were lined with black velvet and must've eerily resembled coffins from it's perspective. The show mare levitated two dividers and placed them about the necks of the two volunteers and closed the doors, first the ones on their bodies then the ones on their faces.

"Now watch and be amazed! As the Great and Powerful Trixie—" the showmare reared up and shuffled her forehooves theatrically in the air. Light trails blurred in the air as her hooves moved and her horn lit up. Another flash of magic, and a pair of wide, long rectangular blades appeared in a poof of smoke and colourful sparks. The crowd inhaled collectively "—swaps the heads of her brave volunteers!" Her horn flared as the blades slowly, ever so slowly, were inserted into invisible slots just below where the griffon and dog’s heads were. Handy winced reflexively as he saw the blades delve into the boxes... noiselessly. The two upper parts of the boxes, where he and the crowd knew the volunteers' heads should be, were actually carried away, lifted on the levitating blades, up into the air and away from the lower portions of the boxes. They were deposited as the blades were lowered back onto the boxes, the red head box on top of the blue and vice versa.

'Trixie' opened the head boxes to reveal the griffon and dog were thankfully still very much alive, if somewhat dazed and confused. She then opened the lower boxes to the shock and amazement of the crowd. The dog and griffon were now residing atop the wrong bodies. Between the dividers and the blades, however, their necks never actually touched the other’s body, which honestly raised more questions in the human's mind. The volunteers were... silent at first, trying to comprehend their heads' newfound distance from their respective bodies.

It was the dog who tried to move its arm first and ended up poking the griffon in the eye with a canine paw. The griffon cursed and poked the dog in the cheek with its talon. The dog bit the offending claw, and the griffon cried out in pain. With a roll of her eyes, the movement exaggerated by the size of her overly large hat, the unicorn closed the doors with her magic and levitated the head boxes once more before sliding the blades out of the nonexistent slots once the appropriately coloured boxes were reunited, giving the boxes one full spin as she settled them into place. The blades disappeared, and the pony opened up the boxes, removing the dividers as the two volunteers stumbled out of their boxes, reflexively rubbing their necks as if surprised they still, in fact, possessed them.

The crowd cheered and applauded as the showmare took a bow. Handy clapped his gauntlets together. It was, admittedly, an impressive spin on the old trick human magicians pulled off back home, if somewhat creepy. Made more impressive because actual magic was involved, he wondered the extent of what magic could do and how exactly the unicorn pulled that little stunt off. Now that he thought about it, eliciting such reactions was the entire point of the performance.

“Merveilleux!” hat pony said, clapping his forehooves together excitedly. Handy eyed him warily. “Wouldn’t you say?” he asked, inclining again.

“It was an impressive performance, I shall admit,” he said. The pony chuckled, a deep, baritone noise.

“Je ne parlais pas de sa performance...”

“Pray?” Handy asked.

“I meant the mare herself; quite the specimen, no?” he asked. Handy sighed. Tanismore was bad enough, and now he had a strange pony talking to him about women.

“Tis rude to stare, good sir, and thou hast still yet to give me a name.”

“Oh come now, we’re both stallions of the world. Surely you can’t object to admiration?”

“I am not a stallion,” Handy pointed out.

“Forgive me.” the pony chuckled. “For you certainly don’t sound like a mare.” Handy started. “I jest, plumes de poney, I jest,” he said chuckling.

“Look, is there a point to all of this?” Handy said sharply, his patience with this joker running out.

“Must I need a reason to have a friendly chat?” the stallion asked, smirking. Handy’s eyes narrowed.

“In my experience, that is often the case, yes. What doth thou want with me?” the human asked. The pony waved a hoof.

“Oh nothing. I just thought it strange the stallion of the hour was all by his lonesome, watching a magic show so far away from the crowd,” the stallion said. The showmare had a foal on the stage now. She shook her head and her hat fell to her hooves. She repositioned herself so that she was facing the crowd with the young foal off to her left. She sat on her haunches, deftly moving the hat upside down and then right side up again before bringing her hooves together quickly. The hat was crushed between them, suddenly disappearing in the blink of an eye. The foal pawed at her hooves, trying to see where the hat went.

She made a show of holding her hooves out with a confused expression before her ears perked up. She smiled widely, reaching behind the confused foal’s head and pulling out the hat from its mane. The hat seemed to stretch and warp as if it had been fitted into a small box as she pulled it out with a hoof, her horn glowing faintly. She dropped the hat on the excited foal’s head, who was almost completely covered. He poked his tiny head out from under it, laughing to the delight of the crowd.

“I like my privacy,” Handy replied. “If that will be all…” he said, turning to walk off. The stallion idly inspected a hoof, a light smile gracing his muzzle.

“There is, of course, the matter of a certain prince you might like to hear about.” Handy stopped and turned his helmeted head back towards the pony. The stallion’s smile widened. “Did you not find it odd that the tournament was arranged in such a way that the spectacle that brought everypony here in the first place was made unlikely to occur?” he asked. Handy thought about it for a moment. It did seem odd that Blueblood was placed so far away on the tournament table. The human’s desire for vengeance on the stallion was no secret after all. Why would Goldtooth spoil the show by all but ensuring it wouldn’t occur? Unless… he didn't.

“Go on,” Handy said slowly, now turning to face the pony fully. The unicorn stallion smiled lazily, casually glancing to his left before turning around and looking out over the lake.

“Word has it that a lot of silver changed from hoof to claw,” he said simply. “A princely sum one might say.” Handy walked back over to the stallion and looked down at him. The stallion tsk’d. Handy looked around and then made a show of leaning on the fence and looking out over the lake.

“And why should this silver concern me?” he asked. His cloak whipped around him, and the pony had to hold onto his hat as a sudden, strong gust of wind blew across the lake. Some griffons or other must be fucking up weather control.

“Oh it shouldn’t concern anypony!” The stallion chuckled as the wind died down as suddenly as it came. “The entire point was to distance certain competitors from one another.” Handy quickly got the implication.

“So, the princesses are trying to protect the little shit of a princeling, I imagine?" Handy hissed.

“Oh no, they wouldn’t stand for such chicanery!” he said.

“Rulers very rarely do. In public at least.”

“Hahaha, I like you human, but no,” the pony continued. His horn was encompassed in a soft, yellow glow, and a small pebble was lifted from the floorboards next to him and flung across the water, skipping several times along the surface. “The princesses had nothing to do with this little transaction. Equestria is embarrassed enough by this spectacle as it is.” Handy turned to look at the stallion who was now on his hind legs, forehooves rested on the fence.

“And how would thou knowst this?” Handy asked.

“Loose lips, a packet of playing cards, and a warm personality,” the pony said smugly.

“So why art thou telling me?”

“I just want to know how badly you would like the odds tipped, shall we say, in your favour?” Handy’s eyes narrowed further.

“Cheating?”

“Une telle pourriture! No, I mean changing the roster once again so that a certain princeling doesn’t get to sneak out of a certain date with a certain blunt instrument.” Handy rotated his jaw for a minute as he thought. The stallion was offering to do the human a favour if he was judging this conversation correctly. Why and how were the first questions that came to mind, in that order too. However, he elected to go with the how first before asking the inevitable why. After all, if the how was unlikely, the why would be irrelevant.

“Isn’t it a bit late to change the tables? We have already undergone the first day of the festival,” he pointed out, watching the boats sail on the water before them. There were sixty four competitors originally, the first two rounds of the tournament taking place in the morning and early afternoon of the first day, reducing the number of participants drastically down to sixteen by the day's end. The lineup for the next day's bouts weren't up yet, but he knew it consisted of one more round of dueling before the remaining eight competitors competed in the grand melee. However, given his position on the board, he figured his next opponent would be someone named Masquerade. He didn't get to see the other duels, so he had no idea what to expect.

“Au contraire, it happens all the time. How would you put it... a mix up? To keep the audience interested.”

“I’m afraid it’ll be terribly obvious that I’d have something to do with it if Blueblood suddenly ended up in a bout with me tomorrow.”

“Not if the original corruption were exposed, but there’d be no need for that. I am not a careless pony…”

“And how exactly doth thou plan on doing that?” Handy asked. If the pony was able to do what he was insinuating, Handy may not need to bite anyone at all in order to get what he wanted. While… disappointing on a certain level, it would save a lot of hassle.

“By changing some gold from hoof to claw of course. The right word in the right ear can move mountains, qui?” The stallion smiled, turning back to the magic show. Handy rolled his eyes, having a fair idea where this was going.

“How much?”

“You are rather well known for having changeling coins, old ones. Rare. The beasts seldom trade and their coins are… well. I am sure you have found out by now.”

“I gathered. Is that it? Just gold?”

“Why?” The pony laughed. “Have you something else to trade me for my services?”

“Not anything I care to part with.”

“Then gold will do just fine, non?” The pony laughed and tipped his hat back and looked up at the human, raising his hoof. “My name is Jacques.” He said. Handy frowned behind his helmet.

“Unusual name for a pony.”

“I am an unusual pony,” he said, smiling broadly. Handy reached out to shake his hoof.

“Handy,” he said. “Baron Haywatch.” He fully expected the pony to know exactly who he was, but pleasantries were pleasantries.

“A pleasure, monsieur. Now, how much do you have to hoof?” Jacques asked plainly.

“Enough,” Handy said cautiously, turning back to look at the show, casually glancing to his right to ensure no one was within listening distance. Jacques laughed.

“Good answer! Good answer! I shall say… a hundred of your changeling coins shall be enough,” Jacques said, rubbing the bottom of his muzzle while eyeing the showmare, who herself was busy entertaining the crowd with some fairly impressive illusions. Handy didn’t catch most of what she was saying but gathered she was telling some epic story involving a large bear that appeared to be made of stars. He could just barely make out the images of some illusionary ponies below it, one blue and another purple.

Handy’s eyes widened, looking down at the stallion beside him. A hundred changeling coins? That was serious money. “...And I am to trust thee, how exactly?”

“Oh my word is my bond, mon ami.”

“As is mine, but that does not exactly mean many trust me on first glance either,” Handy said.

“Ah, but we are friends, non? Am I not trying to help you? I help all of my friends.”

“Yeah, I am sure, like who? That deer acquaintance of thine?” the human pointed out.

"Ah yes, Whirlwind. A good friend. I've known him for all of six weeks!" Jacques laughed. Handy started, the name suddenly ringing a bell.

“Whirlwind?” he asked. He looked out over the crowd, now having a reason to pay attention to the particular details of the gathering before the magic show. Sure enough, after he tilted his head, he saw a pair of antlers sticking above the collection of feathered heads, lanky dogs, and pony manes. Of course, it could be just another deer; he had seen a few about the festival as he went on his business. “Prithee, is it at all possible that you could introduce me to this friend of yours? I would like to speak with him.” That elicited a sharp look from the stallion. His smile and friendly tone remained, but there was now a subtle hardness to his eyes and an edge to his tone.

“Pourquoi?” he asked. Handy considered his next words carefully. The object Fancy Pants had entrusted to him back in Canterlot was apparently worth dumping an airship in Handy’s lap. It was a magical sliver of silver that the stallion couldn’t afford to be seen traveling with, which meant it was either highly illegal or dangerous. Hell, for all Handy knew, the stallion probably had upped and nicked it from Celestia's knicker drawer, and the human was just as keen to be rid of it before anyone knew it was in his possession. Honestly, he could’ve just thrown it out the port side door at any time on his journey to the festival. Fancy Pants had effectively paid him in advance, so he could have just gotten rid of it and forgotten about it.

Alas, Handy liked to consider himself consistent enough to at least keep his promises. Now that he was here, he might as well follow through on it. Still, he hardly knew this ‘Jacques’, and the fuss surrounding the object in question did not make him all that compliant in simply handing it over then and there. Based on what he saw, especially given his reaction to Handy's request, the pony was likely looking out for the deer, which would explain how the pair disappeared from arrest the previous day. "A mutual friend suggested we should speak," Handy decided to say. "Preferably tomorrow. If thou wilt be so kind." It'd give him enough time to retrieve the package from where he had hid it aboard the airship at least. The hat pony looked up at the human for a time before his grin widened.

"I don't know..." Jacques responded, rubbing his chin. "I may forget to mention it. You see, I will be so focused on the task at hoof that it may take up all my time."

"If thou art going to be difficult, I'll stroll on over myself and speak with him," Handy said. He looked up from the pony and over to the crowd, trying to locate the antlers and took a step forward.

A metal clink sounded as his greaves hit against something, bringing the human to a stop and pulling his attention back down. There was a thin blade blocking his path. Jacques smiled as he sat on his haunches. His left forehoof was held in the steel band of the rapier's strange hilt. Handy suddenly understood the purpose of the odd sword. It was specifically designed for a pony to use without the aid of magic, the clasp holding firm around the hoof, allowing the pony to slash and thrust with the weapon with minimal effort. Sure, it wouldn’t work for a heavier sword, but a rapier? He hadn't even heard or seen the unicorn draw the blade. Handy, slowly, reached for his hammer beneath his cloak. "Non, non, non, non, mon frère. I am quite protective of my friends you see," he said, looking down. He then cocked his head to the side. "Now, if I had a bit of, shall we say, collateral persuasion, I might be more relaxed, qui? In case one friend ends up not being entirely friendly towards another," he said, smiling. Handy briefly recalled Joachim, jokingly, calling him mercenary the other day. He wondered what the good king would call him had he been as flagrantly extortionate as this particular pony.

"Thou sayeth thou art protective of thy friends, but then request more coinage in exchange for exposing said friend to potential danger." Handy's eyes narrowed. "Tell me, do you often sell your virtue?" The pony chuckled at that.

"Like I said, we are friends non?" Jacques replied. "Were we not, I would not even consider it. But a stallion's got to eat, and this stallion has something you wish. Why not trade?" He withdrew his blade and in one swift motion, resheathed it. A surprisingly graceful and fluid movement. The pony was affable enough, but Handy wasn't born yesterday.

"No," he said. "I should think not."

"Que?"

"I hardly know thee, Jacques. For all I know, thou art a competitor keen on sabotaging me."

"I am not competing."

"But this Whirlwind is, I take it? Both of you were in the competitor’s refreshment tent," Handy said. "Thou couldst be making his lot in this tournament easier by having me disgraced. I wilt not bring dishonour upon myself nor my kingdom," he said firmly, keenly aware that he had been contemplating cheating earlier himself. Although considering unicorns got away with using their 'natural' abilities, he could make an argument for himself. Although he doubted Joachim would be too amused. "No, if thou wish for my gold, prove thyself first. Do as thou suggest and arrange Blueblood's duel with me first without any of my gold to be traced back to me. If thine word is as good as thou sayeth, I will happily pay thee double thine asking price," Handy said, "Then we can discuss what it is worth paying so that I may speak with Whirlwind unimpeded. But nothing before, Jacques."

Jacques looked at the human curiously for a moment, his face expressionless. Slowly, a sly grin came across his muzzle. "A bargain? Oh I was hoping this would be simple, but I think I'll take what I can get," he said at length. "A shame; the gold would have made it easier to do, but I respect a pony with business sense. Very well, you'll have your fight. I will see you on the morn." Jacques got up from his seated position and walked towards the crowd that, Handy just now realised, had become a startling collection of strange beasts. Several of them appeared chimeric, a confusing mash of other creatures. One appeared to be an excessively large goat and yet another some kind of purple cow. He blinked several times, trying to figure out when the hell those creatures got there.

The unicorn reared up, and a tremendous burst of power erupted from her horn, dazzling everyone present. He felt a soft, warm rush of power wash over him, and his armour shone lightly in reaction, its own light adding to the blinding flare of brilliance. When next he opened his eyes, there was a shower of glittering sparks descending slowly over the crowd. The various creatures had disappeared leaving laughing griffons and ponies behind. An illusion, a convincing one on a large scale dismissed in an instant. "Ahurissant..." Jacques said, lifting his hat up from where it shielded his eyes.

"Where art thou off to now?" Handy enquired as the showmare took her final bows. Another flash of magic and shrill shrieks erupted from behind her stage, fireworks launching into the night air to explode in colourful flowers of fire. Jacques turned to look back.

"Why, off to show my appreciation, of course!" he said, inclining his head to the magician who was currently enjoying the sound of coins being dropped into a collection dish built into the side of the stage. “And to get her name of course.”

“She hast said it no less than twenty times in the past twenty minutes…” the human said.

“Oh well, I wasn’t exactly listening to her, now was I?” Jacques laughed. “My attention was elsewhere.”

Handy was about to say something back but stopped himself. Looking over the pony’s head and off to the right side of the stage, he spotted something disconcertingly familiar beyond the cheering crowd. A hawk-headed griffon, whose feathers were a soft brown that were fading to white and keen eyes no longer bloodshot, was surveying the crowd impassively from beneath a much healthier-looking shawl of black cloth. Her eyes met the human’s own, and he thought he could detect a slight smile on her beak which was no longer cracked. She turned off and walked away, the crowd filling the space she left in her wake.

Jacques said something as he walked off, but the human didn’t hear it. The witch was at the festival, and Handy suddenly felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end, but he could not tell as to why. He walked off, uncaring of the surprised griffons who hurriedly got out of his way, his armour clinking noisily as he trod past the stage and the tents behind it. At the back of his mind, he knew that at a festival this large, it was not unreasonable that a woman trapped beneath the earth for decades would think to enjoy the festivities for herself.

He did, however, recall what he learned about griffons in relation to magic, that culturally they only permitted ceremonial magic or alchemy, which required a great deal of effort and materials in order to work. Magic that could be summoned intuitively or with a word was a sorcery that was alien to griffons and did not come naturally to them as it did to other races such as ponies. Therefore, it was foreign and acceptable for foreigners to practice, but not griffons, a pony performing a magic show was entertaining; a griffon summoning fire from her claws is alarming. Yet there was this witch who could do just that and had done so for years. And she was here, at the festival, where there were not one but two kings present.

Therefore, one might understand Handy’s sudden apprehension even if he didn’t fully comprehend why he was gripped with a certain superstitious dread after meeting her eyes. He pushed on through the crowd, coming to several intersections in the tent city as he stopped to try to determine where she had gone. Passing by one minstrel who was busy putting away his instrument for the night, he spotted her to his left, five tents down, walking away from him and about to turn another corner. He followed after her for some time before coming to a stop.

He had no idea where he was. He was now at the center of a circle of tents, none of which had their entrances facing him and the revelry sounded far off. No one was around. He gripped his hammer and slowly drew it out, turning cautiously around, wondering where his quarry had gotten off to. Fireworks alighted somewhere in the skies behind him, their sound and lights distant now. He saw the way he came, a tight space between two particularly large tents and elected to slowly make his way over to it to back trace his steps.

A cough stopped him in his tracks. He turned his hooded head to regard the form of the aged griffon he met over a month ago in Ifrendare. She was smiling up at him from under her shawl, her eyes gentle yet knowing, without a hint of malice to be found within them. So why did the human feel so unnerved in her presence? He didn’t relax his grip on the hammer as took one final look around him before speaking.

“What art thou doing here?” he asked. Her smile faltered a bit before sighing.

“Would you believe me if I said I was lost?” she asked, looking over to the side. Handy felt the temperature drop slightly and he noticed an odd look in the griffon’s eye as she looked away. It was that same strange glimmer he noticed from time to time. The first time he had seen it was in Spurbay when Welcome Sight had shamed an entire street’s worth of ponies for alienating him and Joachim. Well, not the same; something was different about it each time he noticed it in the eyes of ponies and griffons.

“No,” the human said honestly. The griffon smiled warmly at that.

“I have my own goals, Heartless,” she said. “You’ll find a lot of griffons do. What I do now, I do to further my own ends, but that does not mean I do not wish to help you,” she said. Handy studied her for a moment, trying to tease what meaning she had behind her words. He was not used to such blatant honesty.

“And what exactly art thou doing?” he said cautiously. His cloak covered him entirely, but it still shifted noticeably as he brought his hammer into a two handed grip. The griffon’s eyes flicked down, and he saw her wave a talon, her claw an inch from the ground. The hammer was suddenly ripped from his hands, landing at her claws. Handy started and made to rush over but felt himself tugged back by his cloak. He whirled around and lashed out with an armored fist at whoever had grabbed him, only to flail at the air.

“Ah-ah,” Nanny Frie said, lifting up the hammer in her foreclaws and inspecting it. She ran a talon across the intricate, knotted designs in the head of the weapon. “Tsk, you should really take better care of your weapons. And not draw it in front of friends.” She laughed softly. The human turned around cautiously. He took a step back. “Oh come, I mean you no harm,” Nanny Frie reassured.

“Give me it back,” the human demanded, his tone harsh and teeth gritted. He wasn’t sure what it was; his armour would protect him from whatever spell she’d throw, but for some reason, he was put off. Something was wrong here but he couldn’t tell what. The sense of dread was present, but now it came from the surrounding tents. It was magic, surely it had to be, but why wasn’t his armour blocking it? He considered the possibility that his armour only shrugged off direct magic. He did recall that when he wore the changeling pendant, it continued to radiate heat and pulse while under his chainmail. The implications of that were… uncomforting.

He held his breath in case whatever magic present suffused the air, but that did nothing to ease his unsettled nerves. The witch paid no mind, humming to herself as she turned the hammer over in her claws. “Haven’t seen the likes of this in some time,” she mused. “Where did you get it?”

“I procured it. In the badlands,” he said cautiously. His hand slowly reached for the sharp blade he carried by his waist. The same one that so long ago had been but a straight piece of metal he had used to protect his uncovered foot in the mine by Spurbay.

“I am sure you did,” she said, smiling. “The changelings haven’t made anything like this in ages. Well, they’ve made weapons but never the need for anything this ornate.” Handy merely looked at the bird in silence. “Oh come, I am actually surprised no one pointed it out before. Your armour.” She pointed a claw at it. “It’s done in the same fashion, obviously with a few pony touches. I have seen artefacts like this before.” She seemed to sigh. “Such a shame; they must have had a beautiful culture once upon a time. I wonder what changed.”

“Look. Nanny…” Handy said, taking a step forward. “Just give me my hammer back.”

“Hush, I’m just having a look,” she said, lifting a talon to silence him, turning over the hammer once more, her arm no longer shaking of arthritis. The tip of her talon traced along the indents between the swirling knotted patterns in the hammer head, a bright white-blue spark lighting up from where the tip touched the silvered metal. Handy could hear whispers and a light wash of power cross the distance from the witch to where he stood. A light blue mist emerging from the hammer head along the path she traced. “That should do for now... interesting…”

“What did you do to my hammer!?” the human asked, dropping his airs, slowly pulling his dagger out of his belt, careful not to telegraph his movements beneath his cloak.

“Oh you’ll find out.” The bird threw the hammer, Handy had to take a step back before it landed on his foot. “I have my reasons. You get into quite a bit of trouble. I figure you need the help.”

“What trouble?” Handy asked, the witch merely raised an eyebrow, then smiled once more.

“Trouble of the historic kind. Do you know, little human, what you have gotten yourself involved in?” Frie asked as the human knelt to withdraw his hammer, never taking his eyes off of the griffon.

“I am sure thou art going to tell me.”

“You assume wrong.” The griffon laughed. “What I know, I do not care to share. What I care to share, I do not know for sure. Have you been having unusual queasiness as of late? Odd rashes, a lot trouble sleeping sleeping perhaps?” Handy stared at her at the last suggestion. She smiled “Magic poisoning can manifest in many ways.”

“What did you do to me?” Handy said through gritted teeth, taking another step forward, gripping his hammer. “What was in that broth?”

“Nothing that would not benefit you. Plenty that would react with magic already in your system. I was wondering why I couldn’t influence you directly under the earth...”

“What is with you goddamn magic types!?” Handy snarled. She looked at him levelly.

“A large, armoured warrior shows up at my doorstep after years of isolation. I am supposed to merely sit there and not try to determine if you meant me ill-will when I had the means to do so? Come now, Heartless.”

“My name is Handy.”

“Your name is many things from what I hear. The point is, you are ensorcelled. I could feel it. Still feel it, in fact, even through that iron skin you insist on always wearing.”

“There is a lot of magic in this land,” Handy replied. He wasn’t sure what she was getting at, but he felt it was best to not say anything in particular. “And thou art hardly free of blame in that regard.” Her remarks, however, brought up uncomfortable implications.

“True enough, but should you not be a bit concerned?” She said, tapping the side of her beak thoughtfully before shrugging, her wings extending a little at the motion. He noticed they appeared a lot healthier than the last time he saw them. “Perhaps you should ask that pony friend of yours back in Skymount. The one that is red of fur and broken of spirit.”

“Crimson?” Handy asked. “She is here with me,” he said. She merely hummed in response. “How dost thou know of her?”

“I make it my business to know many things, human. Perhaps in time I’ll share some of them with you when the fancy strikes me. I do feel ever so grateful for your help afterall. Here.” She reached behind her with a claw and pulled out what looked like a small crystal. It was transparent and contained a small golden cylinder at its center. She placed it on the ground in front of her.

“What is that?” Handy asked, gesturing with his hammer. He noticed that the feeling of dread had receded markedly.

“A little farewell gift to see one through the mist,” she said. “Perhaps I’ll see you again. Perhaps not; the future is so rarely set in stone.”

“-I thought I saw him earlier. He was by the lake I think.” Handy turned at the voice. It sounded familiar.

“What do you me-” He turned back. A rush of wind blew across the small clearing, and the witch was gone. Handy snapped his head back and forth, looking left and right and then looking up into the night sky. The clouds were empty and the flare of fireworks would illuminate a flying form had it been up there. Handy did not see her.

“Well, let’s try to find him. It’s getting pretty late,” a more feminine voice said behind him, closer now. Sounded like Shortbeak. He looked down at the ground to the crystal the witch had left behind. After a moment’s hesitation, during which he studied his hammer, trying to see if the bird had left anything permanent on its metal but found nothing, he picked up the crystal. It seemed unremarkable. Pretty, but dull, as if it was made out of cheap glass.

He pocketed it in his travel pack, listening as the pair of griffons passed by the tents he was behind. He stepped out from between them and into the main thoroughfare. “Hey,” he called out. The griffons turned. Sure enough, there was Shortbeak in her full helm for some reason, and Godfrey. ‘Not Tanismore? Surprising, he must have duty tonight.’

“Handy? Where have you been?” Shortbeak asked.

“Around. I heard thee conversing and decided to take a shortcut between tents. Something amiss?”

“No,” Godfrey said. “Johan just sent us to fetch you. Nogriffon had seen you since this morning.”

“Well thou hast found me.”

“What were you doing?” Shortbeak asked, curious.

“Taking a walk, enjoying the festival.”

“Really?” Godfrey asked, surprised. There was a moment of silence.

“Okay, it was either go and get lost or get stuck with Tanismore for the day. He’s good in small doses only,” Handy said, eliciting a chuckle from Shortbeak. The normally dour Godfrey smiled lightly.

“Come on then, I’m hungry,” Shortbeak said taking to the air. “I’ll go on ahead and let the others know we got a hold of you. Know the way back, Godfrey?” she asked. He nodded at her. She returned the gesture before flying off. Handy followed after his fellow knight for some time, his thoughts drawn back to what the witch had said. He was ensorcelled? What could that mean? The vampirism? A thought struck him. Crimson knew a lot of magic, forbidden magic too from what he gathered. Perhaps she might know something that could help with that. Why did the witch ask if he had been having trouble sleeping? That was no business of hers. How could she know anyway?

He scratched idly at his wrist as he thought before realising he still wore his gauntlets and mail, therefore he was unable to sate the itch. He frowned. That was becoming more of a problem now that he thought about it. He needed to put some more salve on it when he got back. Probably more than usual. Yes, that sounded good. A good dose would help him sleep, probably some on the back of his left leg, below the knee where he had been struck this morning. It wasn’t painful, but it couldn’t hurt to be safe, right? Right.

Maybe he should get more bottles now that he considered it. Joachim probably had a few with him that he could mooch. He’d leave bothering Crimson till later, after dinner at least. Probably till the morning, rather. The prospect of sleeping on a full stomach was appealing, and he had enough on his mind already without spending the rest of the night brainstorming with the mage about what-ifs and determining the meaning of the witch’s words, particularly her odd warning of him being involved in some kind of trouble. Well, that last part did not concern him so much. When was he not in trouble?

It all just didn’t bear thinking about at times. All he wanted was to just beat Blueblood’s brains in. Afterwards, he’d probably fuck off to find that one tent he saw with the earth pony who was selling ice cream. Was that so much to ask for?

--=--

Masquerade was old.

Everypony was old in the Crystal Empire. It couldn't be helped. It had only been a few, blessed years since their beloved kingdom was liberated from the sorcery that had ensnared it. Its long empty throne, wrongfully usurped by the evil pretender unicorn that was known as Sombra, now claimed by the beautiful and beloved princess Cadence. They never had an Alicorn of their own before. Once, the capital had played host to all of them, but never did one rule it alone.

At least, not within their histories, and this was despite the empire being at the center of the expanding pony dominions for the better part of five centuries before... before the princesses became the princesses and ruled the colonies as their own fiefs. Before the empty throne was stolen and the Empire buried under unnatural snow and ice. The windigos of ancient myth haunting the skies above it and the countless towns. Villages and cities that formed the heartlands were lost to the scarce mercy of eternal winter. Before they lost the Valley and everypony within it that had not been enslaved by Sombra.

Masquerade was twenty six, physically. In actuality, she had turned twenty one over a thousand years ago. It had not been a happy birthday. She had finally joined the ranks of the Imperial guard after years of training. She had been so young and idealistic back then, intent that she could do something to reverse the fortunes of the declining capital of the Empire. Instead, she stood vigil over its death throes. Three hundred years after the princesses left to govern the colonies, the capital had grown increasingly irrelevant, its ruling council feuding under the influences of powerful regional lords vying for control and their own internal politics. Its authority thusly fractured, lordling ponies and vassals began paying more respect to the authority of this or that alicorn, and the Empire slowly decentralized.

She had been there when the first revolts started, when Marquis Fleetwood rose in rebellion, eager to take advantage of the weaknesses of her rivals and the apathy of the princesses to expand her power. That had been a bloody week for the guard, but it only got worse and worse as the heartland fractured and neighbouring lords had invaded to steal a piece of glory for themselves. The then virtually unknown unicorn Sombra, however, rose to the fore in the chaos. He had defeated all comers through his slave armies and his mastery of black magic, a corruption on the ancient and venerable art of crystal magic. Eventually, the imperial demesne capitulated to his iron hooved rule, willingly or not.

Masquerade had not been willing. Sombra didn't give her or her comrades a choice in the matter however, and not long after the unicorn had seized control did the princesses finally act. The capital and its secrets could not be allowed to fall into the hooves of an upstart dark sorcerer. The armies of slaves, most of whom were not even proper levies with even the most rudimentary of training but field ponies with no more combat experience than the occasional tavern disagreement, were no match for professional soldiers. They had fallen quickly under the iron hooves of the veteran regiments of the princesses, used to the conquest and subjugation of fiercer foes. It had soon resulted in Masquerade herself and the Imperial guards, ensorcelled into obeying the false king, defending against a siege on all sides of the capital itself.

It was a nightmare, with nought but the few remaining crystal pillars Sombra had yet to corrupt to keep out the winter chill that was even then falling upon the land. The thousands of enemy soldiers camped just outside the city walls had formed up, shining rows of armoured ponies, gleaming spear tips shining in the light, pennants and banners flicking back and forth furiously in the stormy chill of the winter. The imperial banner had been nowhere to be found among the gathered ranks however. There was little hope to be found that she'd survive that battle. Or anypony else for that matter; the ponies of the city had been forced into arms by Sombra as well. The final assault had been called, trumpets had sounded, hails of bolts had been loosed, ballistae and catapult had been put to work as columns of wall-breaker earth ponies advanced under cover of unicorn battlemages and pegasi skirmishers.

And then... nothing.

The next Masquerade knew, she was waking up, bleary eyed and fatigued and forgetful in her bunk. No armies, no sounds of death and battle, no fire and destructive magic. Just a gloriously sunny day and the ponies of the empire wandering the streets, utterly lost and confused, surrounded on all sides by the never ending winter kept at bay by the crystal growths that surrounded the city. Sombra had returned too, unfortunately, weaker than he was but still had his power over the ponies.

Had it not been for Cadence, her consort, and his mage sister, the now ascended princess Twilight, he would rule them once again, and heaven alone knew what would have become of them had he regained the crystal heart. That had not occurred; they were spared slavery and death and once more given freedom over their own lives. Their capital, now little more than a lone city state in a frozen wasteland that was only now slowly giving way to pony magic, shone once more with vibrance and life. Their beloved princess sat atop her throne, and the Crystal Heart beat from the very center of the Empire where it rightfully should.

Of course, that didn't really sit right with Masquerade. She loved her new sovereign, she really did, but she was a product of a different time and still relatively innocent regarding court intrigues. It was clear to anypony who bothered to look that the Crystal Empire was all but a weak, yet prestigious vassal to Equestria. Sure, one day it might grow to be a powerful kingdom in its own right, but now? Its ruler was a relative of Celestia, although the relationship was vague, married to a former Equestrian royal guard captain who was in turn the brother of the latest addition to the ranks of immortal alicorns. Said alicorn herself was famously devoted and loyal to the sun princess. The empire, its secrets, and its weapons were firmly under Equestrian influence. It was a wonder Cadence was even allowed to make her own laws at all.

The world had changed drastically while she and the crystal ponies had been asleep under the spell Sombra cast, lost in whatever timeless aether that displaced them from reality. The land she now stood in, ruled by a vast and powerful nation of griffons, used to belong to pony lords ruling over the lesser races, the griffon clans reduced to petty kingdoms on the empire’s border that paid tribute. The dragons, while certainly not invading, no longer feared the pony dominions, and dogs, packs of them, walked free and uncontested by and large. Apparently some unwritten law let dogs be, so long as they stuck to the wilds and obeyed pony law when they entered settlements, very different from the way it was a thousand years ago.

The colonies, powerful even a thousand years ago, had only grown in prosperity and magnificence in the meantime. Galaxy, and the Mystical Black Isles in the west, ruled the seas with the mightiest fleets in the known world. Most of the seaponies had apparently sworn fealty to her in the time the empire had been gone. Nothing trod the waves without her implicit permission, which only raised questions regarding piracy issues in the eastern seas and the apparent impunity the merchant princes of the rats cut off entire seas from trade with the continent.

Concordia, once the poorest of the colonies, flourished in the desert, lofty and untouchable in its impossible towers. Its vast mines flooded the land with wealth as its mastery of underground deposits of water helped ensure their populace never starved in the harsh climes of that land. Henosis... was as cold and frigid as it always was. No surprises there, but still vast in its landholdings. Its scarce population wanted for nothing except for, perhaps, the occasional warm day. And Equestria seemed to go from strength to strength despite the apparent corruption and banishment of Princess Luna, who now returned and ruled once more as if nothing had changed. Discord, the very spirit of chaos, who was resurrected from his prison of stone and was now an ally, or pet, of the Equestrians. The elements of Harmony were active along with their bearers, and not one, but two new alicorns raised under Celestia's care.

Masquerade saw that and immediately knew the other princesses had to be getting nervous. Oh, they were polite enough to each other from what she heard. The relationships between the pony kingdoms mostly cordial, but she was no foal. Ponies didn't lose land for no reason, there had to be friction and dissent between the realms, deep seated intrigues that only millennia old ladies such as themselves could engage in. Otherwise, something like Griffonia would never have grown to be the powerful state it was, in spite of its internal divisions no less! The deer wouldn't have been able to annex the entirety of the great forests with impunity, and the rat folk of the dagger coasts wouldn’t have been able to dominate ocean trade in the south west and cut off the continent’s access to the southern isles and Apodia. Kingdoms, pony or otherwise, would never be in thrall to moneylenders ruling over slums in the north east, and the changelings simply wouldn't be a threat ever again.

Everything was different. She had been raised on tales that the Empire spread to every continent of the world. Now, the alicorns had led the united pony races to victory and domination, and now she had to face a reality where the empire was literally forgotten by all, considered nothing more than a neat relic ruled over by a young neophyte alicorn. Which... only raised more questions, now that she was up and about. If the pony races were ruled by a council of alicorns ever since the unification of the tribes, why was there ever a singular crystal throne in the first place?

That was something nopony thought to ask when she was younger, Masquerade only considering the question herself after her liegelady wondered it aloud one evening. The oldest books in the great library of the Crystal Empire often had blank pages when it concerned the earliest histories of the empire. Paragraphs would fade to blank halfway through the page before the book returned to normal several pages later. No amount of magic could discern a reason as to why. It was as if somepony had simply went back and prevented the words from ever being put from quill to parchment.

It was as if entire sections of history ceased to exist. One record recalled the birth of the pony race in the near mythical Valley of Dreams but did not recall what caused the races to leave it and become disunited. Another record recalled the union of the three tribes but was blank for dozens of pages before recording the birth of the Empire and the alicorns. Indeed, despite claims of having ruled over the known world, the most complete maps of the empire at its fullest extent never showed anything further west than the Black Isles, nor anything further east than the distant coasts of the Arybans and the continent the Zebra call home. There was just too much Masquerade knew for a fact that neither her empire, nor the kingdoms of the present, did not know.

So when word had spread of a mysterious creature who claimed to have came from across the vast oceans from lands unknown, completely without any hullabaloo from the Black Isles, who had put fear in whatever the changelings possessed in the place of hearts, overturned kingdoms and, if the rumours from sources in Canterlot were to be believed, resistant to the magic of even Discord, a lot of ponies took interest. Not least because said creature was not under the Celestial sisters' control, but rather that of the griffons. That was exploitable, a potential weapon that was not under the Equestrians' control, something that could potentially be wrested from the griffons if the right leverage were applied.

It wouldn't be easy. The human was immensely distrustful of ponies, but whatever secrets he could hopefully supply might just give the crystal empire an edge, something to help give Cadence that much more independence from Canterlot. Or else she'd find a way to eliminate him if he was too much of a threat. Nopony forgot the fact the human threw around changeling coinage like Hearth's Warming confetti and, feared by them or not, the shadow of Chrysalis was not something she'd be keen on letting anywhere near her princess. She had to be certain before she tried anything. Whether she wanted it or not, Masquerade was participating in this mission for her sovereign's best interests.

Pity she wasn't the only one with that idea.

Right now, hidden behind a few shrubs near the lake edge some distance away from the nearest tents, she was looking sideways at the distant wooden decking where the human was standing, her face shaffron torn. She wanted to turn to follow the human as he left the decking but couldn't afford to. You see, she was busy dealing with the fact that the sphinx on the ground in front of her had a punching blade to her throat. For her part, she had two wing blades leveled at the sphinx's mid section, pinning one of his forelegs to the ground.

The two of them had stumbled onto one another in a simultaneous occasion of skullduggery, and their current predicament was a result of that unfortunate encounter. Masquerade, being a terribly obvious, yellow, crystal pegasus, one whose very eyes betrayed her rank, opted to tail the human at a distance in order to find an opportunity to isolate him and avoid unnecessary unpleasantness should that damned dragon rear his horned head again. She had tried snooping around his tent to possibly find something she might be able to use, only to find a rather sharp eyed, red unicorn haunting the place.

So there she was, hiding in the branches of a particularly voluminous sycamore tree by the lake whose leaves had yet to be shaken loose. She had been observing the human and contemplating approaching him there on the decking before somepony else beat her to it. She had seen that same pony in the tent the other day and wondered what his game was when she saw him again.

She didn’t have long to contemplate that. She was suddenly shook from the tree, a powerful gust of wind knocking her from her perch. Distracted as she was, she was unable to keep herself steady and fell into the bushes, right on top of the Sphinx who she had not been aware was in the bushes below her.

What immediately followed was a furious flurry of hooves, paws and wings as the pair struggled to untangle themselves from an unknown assailant, eventually resolving into the stalemate they were now trapped in. The young sphinx pony below her, more lion then pony, but whose frame was smaller than that of a griffon, glared up at her. His helmet had fallen off after she had cut loose the bindings that held it around his muzzle.

She stared impassively down at the younger pony. Her eyes, enchanted as they were to appear as emeralds, betrayed nothing. Her hooves pinned his wings to the ground as her own curled down from her body. The blades along her fore primary feathers leveled by his ribcage, ready to punch through the flesh if he did anything stupid.

For his part, he had her mane in the grip of one paw, dragging her head down and the punching dagger attached to his other forepaw grazing her neck. “Well…” he began at length. His voice had a distinct drawl to it, different from the ones she had heard from the more southern Equestrians, a slight purring sound rolled from his throat as he said the L’s, but there was nothing pleasant about the noise. “It seems we are at a bit of an impasse.”

“So it would seem,” she said quietly, her voice strained. Modern Equestrian was awkward to get used to, but she had a lot of practice over the past few years. The human was long gone by now. “Desias, I presume?”

“Sir Desias,” he corrected. She frowned down at him. He couldn’t be more than nineteen and already a knight? What standards did the Concordians use when knighting?

“Sir Desias then.” She allowed her eyes to drift to her left. Nopony was approaching the shrubs they were hidden behind, and her target was gone. There was no sense pursuing this any longer tonight. Slowly, she withdrew her wings. In return, Desias lowered his punching dagger and released his grip on her mane.

“Care to explain why you felt fit to attack me?” he said before breaking out into a smile, the small cut on his muzzle bleeding slightly. “Or is that merely how they say hello up north?”

“I would think it more pertinent to ask why a pony used to sands and saharas would be hiding out among bushes spying on ponies.” Masquerade replied, not caring to actually answer his question, especially considering it had been entirely accidental and foalish.

“No more so than a pegasus in a tree doing the same I’d wager,” Desias said as he shuffled out from under the mare’s hooves, flapping his wings experimentally before drawing them to his sides once more. “Wha’ts the matter? Couldn’t wait till tomorrow to get your hooves on me?” Masquerade blinked slowly at him. He shrugged his wings in response.

“What were you doing, skulking about here?”

“Minding my own business,” Desias said, no longer smiling. “As were you, were you not?” his tone made it clear that he knew rightly why she was there.

“Of course,” she said cautiously. Desias’ smile returned.

“And seeing as we were both minding our own business, perhaps we can continue to do so? Or perhaps find something else to occupy our time?” Desias said. Masquerade snorted.

“Do not assume familiar airs with me, sphinx,” she said with more venom than she had intended. Desias’ ear flicked, but his expression did not change. Masquerade’s wings flared as she took a few steps back. She shot up into the air and lingered for a moment. Desias raised an eyebrow. That was a quick launch - he barely had time to blink. Masquerade looked to her right for a moment before shooting off into the night sky.

Desias stayed where he sat on his haunches for a few minutes longer, contemplating. After a while, he heard somepony alight near his position. He frowned, sighing as he got up and emerged from the shrubs. His shield bearer stood there, quietly scanning her surroundings. An incongruous title for a pegasus, he thought, but a traditional one for the squire of a Concordian knight. Ironic considering she was two years his elder.

“I saw the human leave,” Steel Sands said crisply. Always so formal. “But I didn’t see you anywhere. What happened?”

“I was waylaid by a pleasant surprise,” Desias said, smiling lazily. Sands frowned at him. “It was that crystal pony. You know the one. I have a feeling her reasons for being her are not entirely honest.” ‘Neither are mine.’

“Do you think she’ll cause trouble for us?” the orange pegasus asked. Desias didn’t respond immediately as he walked off into the tent city. Steel following shortly behind.

“Probably,” he said, chuckling lightly. ‘But not as much as I’ll cause her if she gets in the way.’

Author's Note

I am so, so, so, terribly sorry with how long it took to get this out in the open. I don't have much of an excuse for it either, something like this should have been done in a day or two. Three tops, yet here we are nearly two weeks since the last update. Have some world-building to make up for it. The next chapter is going to get busy, here's hoping I can get that out there soonish rather then keeping you all waiting again.

Chapter 25 - The Colour You Bleed

Handy did not like being touched.

He just didn’t know how to deal with it, for it left him feeling awkward and uncomfortable. Someone trying to hit him? Yeah, he could deal with that. It made sense to him. Leaning in to bite someone's neck? Food's food and you’ve got to do what you got to do. Anything else? No. He hadn’t known how to deal with it when Welcome Sight hugged him back in Spurbay, and Handy had ended up just patting him awkwardly on the back. He hadn’t known how to handle it when a blubbering blacksmith by the name of Heat Source had hugged him in Pawstown when he had tried reassuring her that she was not worst pony. He sure as shit didn’t know how to handle it when Shortbeak the Widowmaker, of all people, was hugging him now.

That she was inebriated was entirely incidental to the fact of the matter.

--=--

He and Godfrey had made it back to Handy’s tent to find the ever-enthusiastic Tanismore outside of it, along with Shortbeak who landed behind him a few seconds after they had arrived. Crimson, he noticed, was absent from the scene. “There you are Handy!” Tanismore waved them inside the tent. “I got us some food.”

“So I see,” Handy acknowledged, noticing the two large chickens roasting on a spit over a small fire pit he had set up. Handy was grateful the bird had the sense of mind to move the more flammable objects in the tent and to open up the buttoned-over skylights in the tent canvas above them so that the smoke wouldn’t smother them. His stomach growled, and the worries he had that night were seemingly forgotten in favour of imagining the taste of proper food. “Where hast thou been all day? Where are the others?”

“With the king,” Godfrey responded. The dark, blue-feathered griffon let out a small yawn. “He’s been busy being the guest of Goldtooth in Ironcrest.” Tanismore snickered at that.

“Yeah, remember what the guy was like in Canterlot?”

“I am vaguely reminded of a yellow beak entirely too fond of rambling about inconsequential particularities, yes,” Handy replied, recalling the interminable ramblings of the middle-aged king that caused debates to last hours longer than they otherwise would have back when they were in Canterlot. He felt a pang of sympathy for Joachim, who now had to endure that onslaught night and day while he and the others got to enjoy the festival. If he had the choice of being here, beating people senseless, and risking life and limb for the entertainment of the masses, and spending time in Ironcrest sharing in his liege’s agony, he’d pick the horribly dangerous option every time.

“Joachim rotated us out,” Shortbeak explained, taking off her helmet. “Really, we’re just there for show anyway. Ironcrest is perfectly safe. I still feel bad about not being at his side, though…”

“It’s him who feels bad for us,” Godfrey said. “He’s letting us off in turn because he doesn’t want to impose Goldtooth’s steam-powered beak on the rest of us. Which is what would’ve happened since Goldtooth never leaves the griffon alone.”

"Why?" Handy asked.

"It’s actually kind of funny," Tanismore said. "Goldtooth sees the king as inexperienced, so he insists on teaching him a thing or two."

"It’s probably just an excuse to rant to a hostage audience," Godfrey chipped in. "Certainly seemed that way to me anyway."

"Apparently he hates the festival, which is why you haven't seen the king today; hasn't had the chance to visit since Goldtooth opened the festivities," Shortbeak added.

"He must be miserable," Handy mused.

“Which is why…” Tanismore turned and pulled up a burlap sack behind him that seemed to be filled with glass bottles. “I figure a drink is in order, so we can do as our king wishes and relax!”

“I… don’t think that’s a good idea,” Shortbeak said, sitting down by the fire and pulling a wing from a chicken.

“Oh come on!” Tanismore said. “You skip out on us at every feast. Sit down and have some fun for once! Tartarus, you even volunteered to patrol the outer provinces at the night of the coronation!”

“I don’t like wasting time,” Shortbeak said simply, contemplating the chicken she was biting into. Godfrey shrugged.

“Well, we have nothing but time to waste as it is. Pass me a bottle,” he said. Handy looked down at the griffon as he took a seat by the fire, accepting the proffered bottle from Tanismore. The normally dour griffon was not one to agree with the gregarious Tanismore, much less actively partake in any of his suggestions. In fact, thinking about it, Handy had to agree with Shortbeak. It probably wasn’t a good idea to start drinking. He had an early start the next morning himself, and he was pretty sure they would need to return to their duties not long after. He moved to voice his objection.

But then he stopped himself. Looking at the griffons, he realized that these were the closest things he had to actual friends, not counting Joachim. That didn’t say much, as he tried his best to keep his distance from pretty much everyone when it could be helped. Tanismore’s ever-presence notwithstanding, the three others were more acquaintances than anything. He then recalled how he felt back on the lakeside, watching everyone else having fun with those close to them, and decided, for once, he’d willingly give in. “So be it then,” he said, sitting down to the left of Godfrey and taking a piece of chicken for himself. Tanismore looked up in surprise.

“Hah! And I thought I’d have to work to convince you! That’s the spirit, Handy,” Tanismore said, fetching a bottle for the human. He looked down and studied the label and found himself surprised when it wasn’t written in English despite Firthengart being a border kingdom with the Equestrians. Rather, it was written in the quasi-runic script he sometimes saw on old signposts or carved in the walls of the temples in Skymount. He uncapped it and took a few sips.

“Should you… really be indulging in that?” Shortbeak asked. Handy shrugged.

“Tis a festival,” he said by way of explanation, putting his helmet down beside him and tossing his carry pack behind him. Normally, he’d be anxious being this close to a fire, but he was sure enough that he was quite safe behind his armour to pay it no mind. Sitting would have been an awkward proposition had he not found a suitably sized rock that was currently holding down the wall of someone else’s tent. “Pray, what is this?” he asked, enjoying the delightfully fizzy aftertaste of the beer that actually accentuated the smooth texture of the liquid as it made its way down his gullet. It was strange.

“Firebrand,” Tanismore said. “A local beer; has a hell of a kick.”

“I don’t fe— Oh… there we go.” He was cut short as he felt himself briefly go light-headed, his body becoming flooded with wondrous warmth. Godfrey grunted in agreement as he continued drinking his own bottle. Shortbeak turned to look at each of them in turn before sighing.

“Feeling outnumbered?” Tanismore asked with a smile. She shot him an unamused look.

“Perhaps Tanismore is right for once,” Handy said, smiling down at his own bottle. He really did feel good. What was in this stuff? “I can attest that a few of these won’t do too much harm.” Shortbeak looked at the human before turning back to the proffered liquor. She seemed uncertain as she took it in her claw.

“Alright, but just one!” she said as she uncapped it. “Where did you even get these anyway? And how did you pay for them?” Tanismore rolled his eyes.

“Don’t worry about it; I know a guy,” he said. And so time passed as they ate, drank, and talked the night away, trading stories about their experiences so far in Firthengart. Handy had enough sense of mind to skip over certain questionable aspects of his night, especially about the witch he had unwittingly set free following him here. Or he assumed that was what she had done; could’ve just been an unhappy coincidence. Tanismore and the others spoke about Ironcrest, the Silver Arch Temple, and the waterfall gardens of the Iron Keep. The city was ancient and had a storied history, spoiled of course by Goldtooth’s constant complaints of the endless amount of things he didn’t like when he took Joachim on the grand tour.

The night wore on, and Handy learned a thing or two about his compatriots. Did you know that Godfrey was a pretty funny bird once you got him started? Handy didn’t, and apparently it was a surprise to the others as well. His dry observational humour lent itself well to his surprisingly adept skills at impersonation which helped get a few laughs. Tanismore felt fit to reveal he was actually an adept sculptor in his time off. The idea of the bird having the patience to sit down and chip away at a piece of stone for potentially days on end in order to create a work of art was a hard one to envision, but he swore by it. He said he would show them his work shed when they got back. Apparently he was currently working on a scale model of Skymount’s castle. Shortbeak’s demeanour finally cracked after her first bottle when Handy made a rather rude joke involving unicorns and horn sizes. She looked thoroughly embarrassed as any pretence of reserved professionalism was shattered by a surprisingly girlish giggle. Turned out she liked terrible jokes.

It was after the third song that Godfrey drifted off, for they were pretty blitzed by that point. Whatever was in this firebrand stuff hit hard and it hit fast. Not that Handy minded since it helped pass a few otherwise boring hours and let him genuinely forget his troubles. Crimson showed up somewhere around the intervening time, looking dishevelled and wearing something around her neck, but he didn’t pay any mind; he was too busy pretending he knew any of the words to the songs the griffons were singing. Apart from stopping to stare at them for a few seconds, Crimson soon disappeared under her own sheets as she went off to sleep. The song was ended abruptly by the sound of snoring as Tanismore fell backwards to Handy’s right. He and Shortbeak had basically sat on either side of the human as they sang. Tanismore’s paw fell away from around his shoulder as he passed out, and Handy made to get up, sensing the night’s frivolities had come to an end.

He did, however, fail in this task, as Shortbeak was decidedly inconsiderate in keeping her paw around him as she pulled him back down to his seat. “Come ooon, sing with me one more song!” she said happily. Handy blinked at her in annoyance at first. She seemed to be wobbling slightly as she looked at him with the half-lidded eyes of someone clearly trying to stave off sleep by any means necessary. He laughed.

“It’s getting late, Shortbeak,” Handy said, looking up at the sky through the tent canvas as the black-feathered griffon continued humming happily to herself. “Perhaps we’ve had enough.”

“Awww, wh— Hic— Had too much already? Heh,” she teased, leaning closer.

“No, but I think you may have,” Handy said. In truth, he was feeling pretty out of it himself, but he was getting a tad concerned for Shortbeak. Whereas he and the others had six of the bottles in them, Shortbeak was only on her fifth and was already close to passing out. Firebrand, it turned out, was not something you downed ten of if you planned on waking up sometime before six pm the following day.

“I’m fffffiiine, I just… I just… don’t get to do this often,” she said with a hint of sadness, her eyes downcast. He could easily believe that if this was how she got after a few beers. The fact that she joined him, Godfrey, and Tanis for their godawful quartet was one surprise amongst many from the griffon that night. “I’m not good with… you know, other griffons.”

“You? Shortbeak? Noooo, you think?” Handy said. She shot him an unamused look before smiling.

“What happened to all the ‘thees’ and ‘thous’?”

“I got drunk and stopped caring about decorum,” he replied. She chuckled at that, eliciting a confused look from the human who had not intentionally been joking. “But seriously, I'm not sure what you're talking about. You were plenty sociable tonight.”

“I don’t—” She yawned. “I don’t… trust griffons easily, so I don't do... you know… this." She gestured at the fire circle with her free claw. "I tend to not make many friends, and griffons keep their distance.”

“Can’t imagine wh— Ow!” That had earned Handy a smack on the back of the head with her wing. “Easy, I was kidding. But you can’t honestly be surprised. You aren’t the most approachable of people.”

“While that’s true, I just—” She yawned again. “This was nice, you know?”

“Yeah, it was,” Handy said, noticing her foreleg was still around his shoulder. “You should probably hang out with the rest of us more if that’s the case.” She frowned slightly at that.

“Okay, going to be honest? Most griffons I meet, I don’t particularly care for. Hell, most of the guys back at the palace barracks are little better than diamond dogs.” A snore interrupted Shortbeak, and she narrowed her eyes at Tanismore. “Or they’re just big children.”

“I suppose I can see that,” Handy said absentmindedly, trying to figure out a way to remove the claw of the very dangerous griffon from about his neck without appearing rude.

“You’re alright though.”

“What?”

“You’re an alright guy. I mean, sure, you’re a brooding, cynical, vindictive recluse-” she said, waving her free claw.

“Hey!” Handy said indignantly. Sure she was right, but still…

“-most of the time, but by and large? You’re okay,” she finished.

“Yeah well, thanks,” Handy said, “You’re alright too, I guess.” Truth be told, Shortbeak was a competent and capable warrior in his opinion, and while he didn’t get to see much of it before tonight, she was a decent person. Sure, he still held it against her that she had allowed him win all those months ago. It was a petty thing, and he knew it, but Handy was not a man to let go of grudges so easily. ’I could just yank her claw away and let her collapse. That’d be one way out of this,’ he thought as she put her wing around him. Handy suddenly felt apprehensive. ’Oh God dammit.’

“Heh, you know, sorry about the whole... treating you like dirt when we first met.” She yawned again. “Wow, I must be more tired than I thought.”

“Uhm, yeah. Yeah I guess we’re cool now,” Handy said, shifting uncomfortably as she laid her head on his left pauldron. “Shortbeak… are you alright?”

“Hm? Yeah, just resting my head.”

“…That’s solid steel you’re lying on.”

“I’ve had worse. Well, friends?” she asked.

“What?” Handy asked. He was a tad distracted. You see, on the one hand, drunken hugs; on the other, he had first-hand experience with how skilled the claws now around his neck were at destruction. Nothing about this situation was geared towards making the human feel comfortable. “Oh, right. Friends. Sure.”

“So what do you say, then?” she asked, smiling, “One more song? Come on!”

“You’re drunk.” She laughed and nudged him with her wing.

“Well yeah,” she said. “So don’t spoil it. Come on, s-sing…” She yawned once more. Handy was quite concerned now. This was not the Shortbeak he was familiar with. If she changed this drastically when drunk, he could well believe that not being a people person was only one of her reasons for not cutting loose. He looked up, searching for some excuse to get out of the awkward spot he found himself in. He found it in the lightness gracing the sky above him, signalling dawn’s approach.

“Actually Shor—” He stopped himself when he noticed the bird had actually given up the fight against exhaustion herself and was now fast asleep on his shoulder. “…Ah.” He extricated himself from the griffon’s embrace as gently as he could. That involved sacrificing his cloak to her, unbuckling the clasps and slipping out from under it. She could keep it for the night. He didn’t exactly have any spare blankets, for the one he did have was currently balled up in a cocoon and covering the pony who had claimed it for herself. Speaking of Crimson, where the hell had she been all night? He quickly decided he didn’t care as the distant drubbing at the back of his head foreshadowed the dreaded aftermath that was the fate of all revellers. He was going to pay for this in the morning, but that was future Handy’s problem.

Right now, he shambled over to his own makeshift bed, which was little more than a bundle of sheets on the ground, and contemplated trying to take off his cuirass at least before sleeping. Sleeping in your armour was uncomfortable as hell. He was used to it, but that didn’t mean he enjoyed it. Eventually, after the third time trying to fumble with the catches of his armour, he decided to just lie down and be damned with it all. He hit the covers like a brick and proceeded to sleep like one.

--=--

Speaking of bricks.

"CARRY ON, MY WAYWARD SON!"

A lot of things happened at once as the blaring music suddenly flooded the tent and rudely awakened its occupants. For starters, the first thing Handy was aware of, aside from the thunderous headache that was, aided by the too-loud music, splitting his head apart like the hand of God shattering the firmament, was an errant wing smacking him in the face and knocking him back on his arse seconds after he had untangled himself from his covers and got to his knees. The others did not fare much better. He saw a small bundle of blankets in one corner that seemed to be having an apoplectic fit and was cursing up a storm. Crimson, he realised. The pony had become entangled and was busy trying to escape her blankety prison. Meanwhile, Shortbeak had bolted upright and her, frankly, monstrous wingspan shot out wide in instinctive fear-response, knocking Handy over and pinning a confused Tanismore to the tent wall.

"THERE’LL BE PEACE WHEN YOU ARE DONE!"

"SHUT UP, SHUT UP, SHUT UP, JESUS CHRIST!" Handy screamed. Why the hell did he even have that song? He didn’t bother to take the expensive brick out of its pouch and resolved to simply and repeatedly hit it with the flat of his gauntleted fist. The infuriating device had proved shockingly resilient to physical damage ever since he had arrived in this world, so no matter how much he may have liked to some times, he never seemed able to truly destroy it. Perhaps he would take his hammer to it someday once his patience finally wore out and he felt like playing a little smartphone crochet.

"WHAT HAPPENED!? WHAT’S GOING ON!?" a wide-eyed Shortbeak demanded, sword drawn, her head snapping back and forth. Handy winced at her shouting as the brick finally decided to shut up. He looked up at her, his vision clearing momentarily, and his eyes widened.

"My cloak!" he exclaimed.

"Your cloak?" Shortbeak said, a look of confusion about her face as she looked down at the tattered remnants of the heavy white cloak she had ripped apart in her rush to get up and draw her sword. Strips of the expensive material littered the ground beneath her, and parts of it were still draped over one wing. Her confusion turned to a mixture of shock and embarrassment. "Your cloak!?" she exclaimed.

"Will you all shut up over there!?" a voice from a neighbouring tent shouted. Handy groaned and held his head, trying to still the familiar cathedral bells that were currently ringing out the New Year early in the cloistered halls of his mind.

"Mmphffmmphff!" Shortbeak retracted one wing and allowed the disorientated Tanismore to breathe without a face full of feathers. "What the Tartarus was that!?" he shouted. Godfrey groaned somewhere in the dark of the tent, but continued snoring. Lucky for some, it seemed.

"Don't worry about it," he groused at last, relegating concerns over a tattered piece of clothing as secondary to concerns over a tattered mind. There was a brief, green flash of magic, and they turned to see a very annoyed Crimson had escaped her binds of woven cloth. Handy frowned at her. Did she really need to use old magic to get out of some tangled sheets? Pulling himself up and trying to ignore the armour cramp that was the consequence of anyone stupid enough to sleep in full plate, he gathered the rest of his gear. The sun was out, and he doubted he was going to have enough time to lie in before his next duel started.

"Sorry, I didn't -ow- mean to... Why... was I sleeping in your cloak?" Shortbeak asked. If Handy had been paying attention and not trying to stop his vision from doubling and the world from spinning about, he would probably have picked up on her anxious tone. As it was, he had very little fucks to give as he regretted the previous night's indulgence profoundly. He heard his shoulders pop as he moved. The destruction of his much beloved cloak wasn't helping matters, but it was, at least, not a physical pain. The worst part? The lack of any kind of perception of time passing when he was asleep not only resulted in the lack of any benefit dream sleep would have given him, but also resulted in him going from happy and buzzed to highly hungover and suffering in a mere instant from his perspective He was a happy Handy no longer.

"Don't worry about it," he repeated as he stumbled past the griffons.

"Wait, sir, you forgot your helmet." Crimson trotted up to him, his helmet in the crook of her foreleg. How ponies were able to walk effectively with only three legs was beyond Handy, but he gratefully accepted his forgotten helmet from the pony. "And don't worry; I'll clean up the mess here."

Crimson was a bro.

"Perhaps it was for the best that dame Shortbeak ruined your cloak." The griffon shot the pony an evil glare. "I always thought you looked terrible with it on."

Crimson was a dick.

He grunted in response as he put on his helmet and made his way through the tent city. Blinking his vision into focus as he tried to remember where he was going in the living maze of the festival, his head felt as if it was stuffed full of cotton. He tried to remember whether to take a right or a left at the tent with the image of a clown embroidered onto a wall so he could get to the duelling rings.

Why yes, of course he got lost a few times. Why do you ask?

--=--

He eventually found the duelling rings, or rather, the arena that replaced them. Getting there, once he decided to cut the bullshit and just follow whatever path led him closer to the spectator towers, proved surprisingly easy. Turned out that the crowds parted all too willingly to put distance between their eyes and the magnificence that was the shining, radiant faggotry of Handy's armour as the sunlight bore down on it unbidden and unimpeded. Yes, Handy thought. 'Share my pain, know thee the anguish I feel from my own foolishness; bask in—OhGodpleasestopspinning'. He'd normally feel a tad bit guilty for their abused corneas, but that was past Handy. Present Handy couldn't give a rotten Piccadilly fuck how they felt as he made a mental note to never let Tanismore pick the drinks ever again. Firebrand may bring you wondrous warmth and happy feelings, but it left you with nothing but pain and remorse, more so than most other drinks. His mouth tasted like ash and vinegar, and he was pretty sure his oesophagus had been scrubbed raw with steel wool. He shuddered as he felt cold sweat on his brow. "Never again," he swore.

The various duelling rings that he had fought in the previous day’s round of entertainment consisted of four sets of wooden stands that the spectators sat upon. Although it took a great deal of effort and most of the previous day to do it, the various craftsgriffons and labourers managed to disassemble the rings and combine them into one large makeshift stadium, doubling in height of a regular duelling ring by using metal girders and sturdy wooden scaffolding to place more seats higher off the ground. The entire construction was rigorously stress tested once completed the previous night under the king's instruction to ensure safety. Which, from what Handy found out by listening in on the talkative griffons he passed, involved a lot of swearing, flailing of gryphonic limbs, large hammers, exactly six thousand and twenty one individual nails, one of those godawful mysterious songs the people of this world were wont to perform at the drop of a hat, and a live trout. Some questions were just better left unasked.

"Name?" someone asked as he made his way to the approximate participant entrance.

"Mrghlbluh..." Handy replied intelligently.

"I'm... sorry?" the presumably griffon guard asked.

"Urgh... just... let me through, you silly bastard," he said, eyes closed as he stood before the participant's entrance. Just because he was fine with fucking up everyone else's eyesight didn't mean he wanted to make his headache worse by allowing the same sunlight that lit him up to poke his sensitive eyes. With the arena the way it was now, it truly towered over them, the support structures holding up the upper levels disguised behind large, thin plywood. This made the interior of the arena, the space underneath the stands, a makeshift room for the participants to ready themselves before going out to their respective fights. When he entered, he was met with blessed darkness and the sounds of quietly chatting fellow tournament contestants, which fell to a low murmur when he entered. He was also greeted with the smell of hundreds upon hundreds of people, but if you attended a festival, you got used to such things.

He ignored the other participants as he was waved over to the entrance to the arena's interior, barely opening his eyes to see the way, the dull roar of the crowd in the stands above him doing nothing to improve his mood. The guard said something about blades and covers. Handy grunted. He gripped his glaive and stepped passed the guard as he opened the door to let him out and into the open. He winced and screwed his eyes shut further as the sound of the crowd's cheer washed over him as some asshole announcer with a too-loud voice said something regarding 'the human' and 'Gethrenia'. He wasn't really listening. Thankfully for everyone involved, some astute weather griffons had ensured there was enough cloud cover in the intervening time to prevent Handy the human torch from blinding everyone present.

He opened his eyes fully at last. That was a terrible idea. Did you know the middle ages were actually extremely colourful? And the renaissance more so? The Festivals were nothing if not an explosion of pomp and splendour. The result was a colourful people, especially the fucking ponies in the audience, dressed in bright colourful clothing, seated in stands awash with colourful pennants and banners and paint on a particularly bright day. One pony near the front row had the most god awful cloak that completed the torture. Had he been sober, it would have been a pleasant, if somewhat garish sight. As it was, it was far too much stimulation for his poor eyes. 'I'll just rest them some more for a moment,' he thought, planting the butt of his glaive in the ground and leaning onto it. 'The world stopped spinning at least... just... a minute...'

"Snrk-huh?"

Handy woke up on the tail-end of whatever the loud-beaked announcer had been saying. It was the roar of the crowd that had wakened him. He felt embarrassed. Had he actually dozed off for a minute while standing upright? God, what the hell did those drinks do to him? Fuck, this was not the best condition to be going into a fight. Whatever random bastard he was up against was probably going to have a field day with him. He breathed deeply through his nostrils as he pried open his eyes to look ahead of him. There was a pony standing there on the arena floor, ten feet away from him and absolutely covered from head to hoof in gleaming, white armour. A stallion by the look of the build - big bastard too. Was that a horn poking out of the crested helm? Or was that just a decorative armour feature? He saw a few earth ponies running about with something similar. Made sense for equines to have something on their helmets to gore enemies in battle. He leaned forward on his polearm and willed his vision to focus further so that he could pick out the details.

The armour, he noticed, was smooth. Steel was overlaid with mother-of-pearl and inlaid with gold decor. The plate was extensive to the point where he wasn't sure if he was wearing mail under it or not. Perhaps it was coloured white as well? His flanks had several long steel blades attached, making it look like the pony was hauling two sheets of metal on either side of him. Looking down, his forehooves had distinct, curved blades, shining a bright silvery-grey of steel against the white of the armour. He wore an open-face helm in the Equestrian fashion of their royal guards rather than the full-face bassinets of their gold cloaks, complete with the crest of a golden plume and segmented plates running down his neck. It was not entirely unlike what he saw of what the sphinx had worn. Briefly, Handy wondered how he wore it properly without a bridle of some sort. The pony's blue eyes were wide, and his pupils were pinpricks as the human's gaze met its own. Handy could see it was white-furred with a strong jawline and... Wait a minute...

"Blueblood?" the human asked, disbelieving. The coarseness of his voice made the word come out less like a question and more like a statement of intent, his wrecked state lending his voice a helping hand and making it deeper, more rumbling and allowing his accent to slip through. It wasn't meant to be intimidating, but by the look of shock on the pony's face, he had not only heard it over the roar of the crowd, but had taken it the wrong way.

"There must be some mistake," he heard the stallion say. "This isn't supposed to happen."

'What?' Handy asked himself, his brain trying to catch up with itself. 'What does he mean...' Then the memory came to him, about Jacques and what he had told him about Blueblood's duplicity. "Son of a bitch..." Handy whispered. "That Francophone tosser actually came through." A small smile graced his lips despite the jackhammer boring into the interior of his head. The stallion had turned back to the door he had come from, only to see it close, dooming him.

"No. I wasn't supposed to... This is not what was agreed!"

"Trouble?" Handy asked, taking a few steps forward. The stallion rounded on him, and he paused. There was something about the way he looked at the human. There was fear in those eyes, but also something else. No matter. "Not enough pieces of silver perhaps?" he teased.

"You..." The pony almost spat the word. “What did you do?"

"Me, highness?" Handy said in mock deference, bringing his free arm up to his chest in wounded innocence. His free arm was attached to his shield. He was in no mood for offensive combat that morning with the way that he was and figured a defensive posture with the glaive might keep him alive long enough for him to get out of there and dunk his head in water. "Why, I did nothing..." Handy loved this. Thoughts came to him unbidden of vengeance at hand, and the original anger that started this whole mess bubbled up from the pit of his heart. Those could wait to be entertained however. Watching the princeling squirm was doing wonders in terms of making his morning bearable. "I was merely remarking that silver is sublime, but gold is greater still."

Blueblood snorted, and his head turned as if searching the gathered crowd for something. "Fighters, at the ready!" That was the cue. Handy spread his legs apart and shifted his centre of weight. His head continued to pound something awful, but he suddenly found himself not giving one rotten damn. Here before him stood the uptight little shit who hid behind dear old Ciara's skirts after going out of his way to piss Handy off and shit on the memory of his mother. Everything else simply did not matter right now, and the world could just go and promptly fuck off while he got his murder on. The stallion look agitated, his eyes wide as he continued to glare at Handy, uncertainty written across his face. "Begin!"

'Well. This should be short.' He grimaced. The prince may be wearing expensive armour, but it looked like it was all show and no substance unlike his own, which was both. Handy took a step to the side as he began closing the distance, raising his shield and lowering his glaive. The glaive was intended to be wielded by the user mid-flight and was balanced accordingly, making it an excellent short spear for someone of Handy's stature. The one major advantage of the short polearm was that it was quite easy for him to use one-handed so long as he didn't overstretch himself. Blueblood nearly tripped over himself in his hurry to keep Handy at a distance, and the pair were soon circling around one another. He tried blocking out the noise of the crowd so he could focus more, but there was only so much he could do. For a moment, he almost missed the prince speaking to him.

"Pardon?" Handy asked.

""Foul rogue!" Blueblood shouted. From his perspective, this morning had been going absolutely delightful right up until he came out the door and saw the blasted human standing there like some terrible sentinel of his own personal doom. "You! You're the cause of all my troubles! You're the reason Aunty Celestia threw me out! You're the reason I had to endure living like... like some kind of peasant! Or... or some lower house scion looking to advance in life through soldiery!"

"What?"

"Quiet, knave!" Blueblood sneered, his eyes still wide. That rotten chancellor he paid off had gone back on him! Blasted bird; what did the human promise him!? He was up there, somewhere, probably in the tower hosting the royal viewing box with the king. He had been so nervous yesterday when he went into his first boorish fight. A young griffon squire had been his opponent, and he remembers screaming stallionfully and not like a little filly at all when the fiend's halberd fell apart mid swing. His sword made short work of the poor bird, embarrassing the weaponless griffon three rounds in a row. Blueblood grew more confident and bold with each win. By the time he reached his second duel, this time against some waif of a dog, he quickly made short work of the nervous creature. It had been harder, but he could handle himself. He was a prince of Equestria and the equal to any of its elite royal guards! He had only to realise it! Oh, how he thought his aunties were furious with him!

It all made sense now; they had been preparing him, making him into the pony he was supposed to be! Why, in that case, it only made sense why the thestral guard Luna had assigned to him was participating in the tournament. She was there to protect him from the sullied riff-raff. Yes, that was it. It was only logic that she would help him separate the wheat from the chaff so that when it came to the melee, they would work together to emerge victorious in this farce of a spectacle. In the end, all would see Equestria prevail!

--=--

"So you're only here to increase the odds of Blueblood facing the human in combat?" Cloud asked. The white pegasus would have been resplendent in his golden armour had the pair of them not been under the shadow of the stands, watching the duel through a hole in the wooden wall before them.

"Precisely that," Stellar Eclipse replied, not entirely truthfully. "Fight opponents, do all I can to fight the heavier hitters, and if I end up fighting Blueblood before the human gets to him, I was to throw the fight and let Blueblood advance. It’s either that or outright bribing the griffons to have the matchups fixed. The princesses wouldn't think of stooping that low." The thestral eyed the pair out in the arena with interest. Blueblood had been so cocky that morning, but now she could tell he was all but quaking in his schynbalds.

"Hmm," the perpetually glowering pegasus grunted. "Why go through the bother, though?"

"Politics, apparently. Help shore up relations with Gethrenia and Griffonia in general and forget about the entire debacle once and for all. If that means giving the human what he wants, then so be it."

"So Blueblood's a sacrificial lamb," Cloud mused. "Well at least that's useful."

"Seeing as you're in a talkative mood for once. Why're you here at Bluey's side? Lose a bet?"

"Won one actually." Cloud grimaced, remembering the dig he gave Midnight when he placed that thousand to one bet and regretted how smug he had been when she couldn’t place one of her own. Now here he was, ‘volunteered’ to suffer Blueblood's tantrums and complaints while she was back home on leave, 'minding' his winnings. All the while, he could just imagine her laughing and laughing and laughing.... "Turns out betting against your superior officer is a bad idea, even if you win."

--=--

His horn lit up as he drew one of the swords from his sides. It was a long, single bladed weapon that had a pointed tip designed for punching through armour. The blue magical aura shortened, now only covering the handle of the blade. Blueblood made a show of swinging it, the nervousness on his face lessening somewhat. "I'll show you what for!"

"What for?"

"Yes what for!"

"For what?" Handy said. Slowly, ever so slowly, the old familiar rage was building within him, but he was keeping it at bay. The fear, confusion, and frustration in the prince before him was too delicious to spoil just yet.

"For what? For what!?" the prince nearly screeched in indignation. "You know damn well what for!"

"Wh—"

"Be quiet!" Blueblood drew a second sword. Both of them levitated in the air and levelled at Handy as the prince lowered his head in the manner of ponies about to charge. "I am... going to give you such a thrashing!"

"Oh, that was just radiating with confidence. Really, I'm shaking in my boots," Handy teased, wincing slightly under the torment of his own hangover. 'When I get out of this... I need to show Tanismore what for...' Blueblood stamped a hoof, and one of the blades shot out. Handy raised his shield and stepped to his right. The sword impacted the shield with surprising force, and the crowd roared as the fight finally got underway. The shield surprisingly did not react as it would have done with magic, the pony's grip only holding it by the hilt. The sword was spun out of Blueblood's grasp and became lodged in the ground, the human knocked back a step.

Blueblood stood there, as if stunned by what he had just done. Handy turned to look at him as he resettled himself. “Well then,” he said, letting his anger boil at last. ”If you’re that eager…” The human hefted the shield and advanced purposefully towards the pony. Blueblood started and drew another sword with his magic and waved it warningly. Handy was undeterred and closed the distance rapidly. The prince swung the sword down in a wide arc, and Handy deflected it with a flick of his wrist, sending the glaive's blade to intercept it and knock it away. Blueblood struggled to bring the sword back around but let out a yelp, his magic losing control of the weapon, and he jumped out of the way as Handy thrust forward.

The prince tripped over his legs as he landed badly on his forehooves, his armour clattering. Handy withdrew, turned on his heels, and brought his glaive down level with his opponent, resting against the side of his shield. He wobbled for a bit but quickly moved his foot before anything could become of it. Trying to wreck someone’s shit while hungover was an interesting experience. He looked at the fallen blade out of the corner of his helmet slit. It was long and absurdly thin, bladed only on one side. It was hiltless, with only a narrow hooking mechanism which he assumed was how Blueblood connected it to his armour. Its entire mass was otherwise dedicated to a slashing piece of metal. It looked fragile, but as the force of the first sword taught him, it was anything but.

Blueblood let out a strangled noise as he drew two more blades. “Y-You… b-brute!”

“I’ve been called worse,” Handy said, advancing again. The prince came to his senses and backed off.

“Y-You come strolling into Canterlot, r-ruin my life!”

“That tends to happen when you bring someone’s mother into things.”

“A-Aunty Celestia had me evicted from the castle! I-I had to endure two months of torment because of you!”

“Glad to see Sorcha had the sense to put thee to some use!” Handy closed the distance with a charge. He raised his shield above his head as Blueblood brought a sword down on it, swinging his glaive out and catching the second blade, then swiping at the confounded pony with the backswing. Blueblood let out another yelp as he ducked, the blade shaving the top of his helmet’s crest. Handy kneed Blueblood on the jaw and sent him to the ground. Handy brought his glaive up and prepared to bring it down, ending the first bout. The temptation was there, in that half second at the back of his mind, to put more power in the swing than necessary, accidentally ending the rest of the duel and the good prince’s life. He swung.

--=--

Blueblood opened his eyes. Was he dead? He could still hear the roar of the crowd surrounding him and the weight of the armour on his body. He looked down, his jaw level with the dusty wood chipped strewn floor. No, he wasn’t dead. It was worse than that. The realization hit him as soon as he felt the sweat on his skin and spotted splotches of matted fur around the fetlocks between his hoof-boots and leg armour. “I’m filthy!” he whined, his voice barely above a whisper.

“Round to Handy the Milesian!”

That snapped him back to reality. He turned his head to see the silver figure of the human looming above him. The black T-shaped slit that served as the face of the helmet looked down at the pony, the creature’s expression invisible behind the impenetrable blackness. He turned away and hefted the glaive in his right hand as he walked away. “Wh- What?” Blueblood blinked in confusion. He hadn’t killed him. Why… Blueblood got shakily to his feet. The swords he carried at his flanks clinked noisily as he moved. The crowd were cheering, cheering for the human.

He looked up to the announcer, a griffon in a ridiculous festival costume, placing a green flag into a box held over the side of the wall of the arena. The crowd were cheering that he lost.

He stood there in shock, hardly believing he lost. He had felt so invincible before, scared yes, but invincible. He felt so alive basking in the cheers of the crowd when he won his victories the other day, and now this… this human stole that from him. That was why he let him live; that was why he didn’t engage in his bloodlust – the human wanted to humiliate him. He ground his teeth. How dare he? Howdare he!?

He felt the familiar warmth in his forehead as power coursed across his flesh to gather in the bony protrusion. He felt his fur underneath his helmet stand on end as static electricity ran between it and the metal of his armour. His horn surged with power, grabbing his three fallen blades and drawing them back to his sides at speed.

The human turned, taking a bad step as if not entirely in control of his own feet. Blueblood launched the swords at the human, taking a step after each blow. The human raised his shield and deflected one, knocking it out of Blueblood’s admittedly weak grasp, while another one continued to swing away, bounding off the human’s shield again and again. The third launched like a rocket, but the human swung his glaive and knocked it out of the air. Blueblood wasted no time and charged at the human. Handy looked down as he swung his glaive around, but the remaining blade in the air managed to get through his shield’s defence and cut across his cuirass. The blow knocked him off balance, and his swing went wide.

Blueblood barrelled into him, leaping and ducking his head, colliding bodily with the human and sending both of them to the ground. The glaive was knocked out of his hand as Blueblood scrambled up and began pounding at the human’s head and chest with his hooves to little actual effect. The human punched Blueblood, but the helmet took the brunt of the blow. Blueblood didn’t seem to notice, so the human swung his shield around, knocking the sense out of the pony. Handy kicked the pony off of him as he rolled over and hurried back to his feet. To say that Handy was surprised would be a bit of an understatement.

He stooped over, picking up his glaive again before turning just in time to brace his shield as the unicorn bucked him. He was knocked back a few steps but thrust out his glaive, clashing against the swords still clasped to the pony’s right flank. Blueblood snorted as he hurriedly put distance between them. “Brute!” He drew the remainder of his swords, and Handy soon found himself facing a unicorn with six disembodied blades. This meant several things; for one, despite being a unicorn, the pony was not using any offensive spells. Perhaps he couldn’t? Not that it’d do him any good. Perhaps he could use that… “I-I’ll show you what it means to insult Equestria!” the prince cried.

“Insult?” Handy asked, his voice deadly calm, his resounding headache forgotten. “Insults are what got you here, boy.” He gripped his shield and readied his glaive. The six blades hovered on either side of Blueblood, splayed out in mock imitation of flared wings.

“Y-You strike at a prince of Equestria…”

“I strike at a mere pony unworthy of his airs.”

“You assume familiarity with Auntie…” Blueblood continued, not paying attention to the human’s words. “C-Calling her by that foul name.” It was at that point that Handy noticed something off about the prince’s demeanour. There was a… wildness there. He saw the fear and the anxiety from before, true, but the look he was getting from the stallion now…

“Struck a nerve, have I?” Handy continued, taking a few steps forward. Another blade shot out, this time clashing heavily against his shield in a short, quick arc before retreating to the prince’s side once more. “And I believe I shall call the princess whatever I damn well please.”

“You-!” he began before taking a few steps forward and lashing out at Handy with two blades repeatedly.

’That’s it,’ Handy thought. ‘Keep at it.’

“You will show Princess Celestia respect!” Blueblood nearly shouted, taking a few tentative steps forward. The human backed off slowly, the sound of metal resounding as the swords continued clashing against his shield. They were coming quicker and harder now.

”Why should I?” Handy replied. ”Your princess effectively ruined my life, or perhaps thou hast not quite heard about that, didst thee?”

“Celestia would never ruin anypony’s life!”

“Oh? Did I not hearest thee complain about how she kicked thee out of the palace?” he probed. There was a brief lull in the assault on his shield. He didn't get to see the expression that question left on Blue's face before he lunged forward, thrusting his glaive. Blueblood yelped in surprise and jumped to the side, the blade of the glaive grazing the side of his armour. He recovered quickly enough and lashed out with one of his blades, managing to catch Handy in his exposed right side. The armour took most of the blow, but it set the human off-balance as he struggled to regain his footing. He turned to face Blueblood and, more importantly, the remaining hovering blades.

"She..." Blueblood seemed uncertain for a moment before huffing, eyes closed momentarily, as if remembering something painful. "She had her reasons! Auntie Celestia and Luna..."

"Are embarrassed of you..." Handy completed. Blueblood's eyes opened up in shock. 'Come on, get mad.' "Or did I assume incorrectly when dearest Ciara had to actually stop and consider whether or not to save thy life back there on the streets?"

"She just— You be quiet!"

"I am right, aren't I?"

"No!" The shout was accompanied by a furious wave of attacks from the six blades. Handy actually felt his shield arm go slightly numb as he was forced back step by step under the assault of the six swords. "Stop talking about them like that!" Handy didn't respond, for the blows were coming faster and faster now. Briefly, he wondered if his little plan might just backfire on him. He got his answer when Blueblood finally realised the advantage he had. The six blades retreated from the human, and he looked over his shield.

And found the six blades now surrounded him. 'Shit.' Now, it was a rookie mistake that, when surrounded, you sat still and waited for some idiot to make the first move. It was what they did in the movies right? For one thing, such action assumed you were surrounded by assholes who would attack you one at a time, and who you can strike down, not disembodied swords. Secondly, it was fucking stupid. What you really do when you are surrounded is get un-surrounded as quickly as bloody possible before you got cut to ribbons. Handy ran forward, shield first. Two of the blades closed ranks and dived at Handy. He bashed them away with his shield before immediately turning and swinging his glaive in a wide arc. He caught one sword that was slashing down and deflected it. However, another sword came at him horizontally, and he got struck across his midsection for his troubles.

He grunted but held his ground, now facing the six blades. However, he did not do the same for the pony, who let out a strangled yell and ran to the human, turning on the spot and bucking him in the back. Handy stumbled forward, his defence lost as three of the blades rushed forward and bore down on him. He held up his glaive awkwardly to try to ward them off. The swords crashed against the haft, causing it to splinter and break, but halted their assault. Handy reversed his grip on his now broken polearm, whirled around, and swung. Blueblood had remained where he was, hoping to capitalize further on the human's bad footing and had had several feet of wood broken across the side of his head for his trouble. The horn flickered and died, and the prince hit the ground hard, his vision spinning. The swords dropped to the ground with a clatter that was barely audible over the crowd.

Handy took a breath as he looked around, spotting the foot of metal that used to be the blade of his glaive. He picked it up by the small length of wood still attached to it, holding it like a makeshift sword he strolled back over to the dazed pony and rested its point at the tip of his muzzle. The crowd roared, the umpire called out another victory, and another green flag fell neatly into its slot. Handy had been expecting the prince to use his advantage to attack Handy from multiple directions from the start. When he didn't, Handy had figured it best to egg the prince on to continue attacking him directly where he could control the fight, a plan which had been working well towards the end Handy wanted. If he could not kill the prince, then public humiliation would have to do. He placed the glaive blade on his belt and stooped up to pick up a weapon whose weight was a little more familiar to him. One more victory should do it. Now the question was: should he break legs or ribs?

He stopped and wobbled. His head spun, and he felt a sudden weakness in his knees. The aftereffects of the firebrand were still affecting him, in waves no less. He gritted his teeth and pushed through it, getting into a good position while waiting for the pony to come to his senses.

Blueblood's eyes rolled, and he felt something build up in his throat. He hacked and coughed, spitting up a mixture of phlegm and blood. The pony lay there for a few seconds, breathing heavily, staring pointedly at the bloody concoction he had spewed forth.

"How dare you."

Handy looked at the pony who struggled to get back to his hooves. "How dare you treat the princesses with such disrespect?"

"What do you care? They threw you out."

"Because of you!"

"Because of you. I imagine they weren't all too pleased at having to pay compensation for your careless words. Normally I'd judge people harshly for throwing their relatives to the lions, but in your case? Yeah, I ca—"

"Stop talking about them as if you know them, you bucking barbarian!" Blueblood stamped his hoof. "Auntie Celestia is just kind a-and patient! Noble and wise!" Blueblood's eyes seemed to dart around, looking at the ground. "A-And Luna, she... she's brave! And honest and selfless and..." There was a conflicted look on the prince's face as he mumbled something to himself that the human couldn't quite hear. Thoughts of their rebukes of his character filled his mind, conflicting with how he used to think of them… how he thought they thought of him, all of it shattered by the reality of being thrown into a nightmarish training regimen.

There had been times when he had alternated between silently cursing them and trying not to call out to them for mercy, as if they could have heard him. He took what little pride he could in his new circumstances, trying to salvage his dignity by performing well in this tournament for Equestria's sake and, well, for his own, to be honest. His head had swum with thoughts about what he'd do once he came back to court, victorious. How he'd ingratiate himself back into high society after his less than dignified ejection from the court. How he'd relate to the princesses after what they did to him, unsure whether he wanted to distance himself from them or just hug Celestia like they used to when he was but a small colt.

Hearing this human talk about them with such... contempt in his voice sent him over the edge. Something inside of him stung, because despite his anger at the human’s words, he could not refute them. At least, he could not when they were talking about him. When he had looked into those pitiless, piercing eyes months ago, he feared they had looked right through him and into his soul. Perhaps they did; perhaps the human was right. "They're everything I'm not..." he whispered to himself in sudden realization. A realization that almost cost him his head again as he suddenly noticed the human was now less than a foot away from him. He screamed and ducked, the silvered warhammer swinging over his head. He saw the human's armoured boot rush forward, aiming to kick him in the face, and he rolled instinctively, avoiding the blow.

A desperate primal instinct welled up within him, and he threw all of his strength into summoning up magical energy. His horn shone with light as he strained himself, reaching out, grabbing the hilts of his swords with tendrils of aetheric energy. The human had righted his footing and turned around, shield held before him and hammer swung upwards, preparing to bring it down on the prone pony.

Silver blur met silver blur as a sword hurriedly intercepted the falling hammer, knocking the human's arm aside and the sword out of Blueblood's grasp from the impact. Another hit his shield, and another became lodged in the flare of his left shoulder guard, piercing the metal, leaving the human with a blade that was an inch from the back of his neck. The startled human reeled backwards. Putting his hammer into his shield hand, the human reached up in order to pull the thin blade away before the pony thought to use it against him. As he was not on the ground, the presence of a 'killing blow' did not count as a defeat, and Handy desired very much to keep it that way.

Blueblood, incensed and wide-eyed, tried to grab the blade, but the human's gauntlet shone brilliantly when his magic tried to grasp the hilt. The human successfully pulled away the blade, and Blueblood nickered. His horn flared with power once again, and the remaining three blades sped towards the human. Handy turned in time to see it and swung his shield around, knocking two from the air but catching the third full in the chest. There was a horrifying second where the human didn't move and Blueblood wondered, seeing only the human's back, if he had managed to pierce his armour. He was disappointed when the sound of a blade hitting the ground met his ears. The human snarled in anger and whirled around. The captured blade still in his right-handed grip, he flung the sword at the prince with all of his might.

Blueblood blinked, finding himself shaking but not knowing why. The human just stood there, passing his hammer to his right hand. Where had the sword gone? He felt something wet and warm run down his right fetlock and looked down. There was his blade piercing his own leg. The sword cracked the mother of pearl overlay and pierced the steel plate and chain beneath. Slowly, his brain caught up with the pain he was feeling, and he screamed, collapsing to his left knee. The wound was deep.

A shocked hush came over the crowd as the prince lay there, screaming in agony. The human paid no heed and walked over to the prince. Blueblood’s eyes widened in fear and panic, his horn flickering with power as he held his swords aloft once more. The human stopped as the swords drew away from him, but remained aimed in his direction. With a yell and a surge of power, the swords flew forward. Handy was forced to drop to the ground as the blades clashed in the air above him. Blueblood snorted and held the blades above Handy, refusing to loosen his grip as he flung the blades downwards. Handy rolled but his left arm got caught. A blade cut through his vambrace, piercing the metal and pinning it to the ground. Handy yelled as he felt the blade cut his flesh and struggled to pull his arm from the ground.

Then he noticed the blade hovering several inches from his noseguard, and he froze.

“Round to Prince Blueblood of Equestria!”

“What!?” Handy snarled.

“Wh… What?” Blueblood asked, his breathing ragged. The pain in his leg was terrible. An orange flag was placed in the slot next to two green ones, and the crowd erupted in cheer at the unexpected turn about. Handy struggled to remove the blade from his vambrace but found he could not. The leather straps of his shield were twisted about it awkwardly from where it had pierced them. He unbuckled it and left it and his gauntlet on the ground. As he got back to his feet, the stunned, wounded prince was still on his knees. The cheering only increased in volume and enthusiasm as the human hefted his warhammer in both hands.

The announcer griffon gave another call to signal the next round, and the human immediately went into action, forgetting his shield for the time being. Blueblood struggled to get back to his feet. “I-I won! I can beat you!”

“No,” the human responded, his voice like ice. The blood from a rather nasty gash on his left forearm seemed to pour out. Blueblood’s horn lit up once more to grab his swords before it flickered and died at long last. His pupils shrunk to pinpricks in disbelief. “Way I figure it,” the human said as he closed the distance and swung up with his hammer. Blueblood tried to dodge, but with his bad leg, he stumbled and got struck full on the barrel. His armour dented but held. “Despite being a unicorn, your magic isn’t all that strong.” Another swing, this time to the side. Blueblood took it on the withers and fell to the ground. He clenched his left hoof, and the hoofblades swung down. He swiped at the human’s feet, forcing him back. “Otherwise you would have been casting spells from the start, for all the good it’d do you. It was only a matter of pushing you far enough until you ran out of power and your swords became useless.” Handy waited for the prince to shuffle far enough away from him to be safe from the hoofblades. “Or I got an opening. Whichever came first.”

Blueblood was pressed against the sides of the arena as the human bore down on him. He held up his good hoof, trying to ward him off. “Please…” he pleaded. “I… I’m sorry.”

“I’ll bet you are.” The human’s pitiless voice chilled the pony to his core. “Good night, sweet prince,” the human said as he swung again, hitting Blueblood’s helmet, tearing it off and knocking the prince to the ground. The pony was no longer moving, and the crowd’s applause rung out as another green flag joined its cousins on the wooden block.

--=--

"Hey you! Yeah you!"

Handy was assaulted by unremitting jubilance in the form of antlers that nearly reached his face, sharp antlers with metal blades attached along their lengths. He very carefully-minded looked down upon the gleaming smile of the stag before him. The deer was... not what he was expecting of Whirlwind. He was practically hopping in place in excitement, dancing a hoofy dance. He seemed young, quite young. In fact, had it not been for his rather impressive set of antlers and body size, Handy would have assumed he was barely older than a fawn based on how he sounded and acted.

The stag was chestnut brown with a lighter shade of fur running down the front of its neck and barrel and to his short tail. His face, like ponies, had a short muzzle and possessed large, pinkish eyes. Discounting the antlers, the deer averaged off at four and a half feet, perhaps a shade higher, for he seemed taller than most pony stallions, though lithe and lighter in build with thin legs. A well-worn, short, green cloak with ragged hood graced his neck and covered the thoroughly damaged chainmail coif he wore over his withers. His antlers, ten points per horn, seemed to be a dark yellowish colour and possessed groves that curled up and back on themselves. No two grooves seemed to connect at any point. 'Decorative, perhaps?'

"Yes?" Handy asked.

"Oh, I've been hoping to bump into you! Yes, when I heard you wanted to talk to me, I was so excited. Pleasure to meet ya! I'm Whirlwind as you know. Can you stay for a chat? I bet you have a lot of stories you could tell! I do so love a good adventure. I go on lots myself. Oh right! Can you tell me about that time you rescued the changeling princess from the roving band of pirates!?"

"Wh—"

"I've heard three different versions of that story myself, but now I can get it straight from the horses' mouth, hehe, so to speak!"

"I di—"

"Or the tale about the troll bridge! Oh! Wait! I got it! We'll trade! You tell me one, I'll tell you one! No wait! You won your duels, didn't you!? Oh, we could fight with each other in the melee now! Or against each other! Oh what fun!"

"He is excitable, non?" a familiar voice piped up as the deer kept talking excitedly. Jacques was leaning against a nearby iron pole in the underside of the stands. The three of them were off to the side, away from the other competitors, so they could talk in private. Tipping his slightly burnt hat, revealing... His beard was now green, and he was sporting two black eyes. What the hell had happened to him?

"Quite, er, sir Whirlwind?"

"—and don't get me started on his daughter! That was a fiasco, how— Eh? Oh, right, sorry. I get carried away sometimes."

"That’s quite alright. Thou hast heard correctly I wished to speak with thee about..." the human turned to look pointedly at Jacques "... a somewhat private matter."

"What about?" Whirlwind asked happily. Jacques had a lazy smile on his face and had turned to regard the other competitors over his shoulder. Ears pricked up, he could easily overhear them.

"Perhaps we could discuss it in private?" Handy suggested. Whirlwind chuckled.

"Silly, we are in private here!" he replied. Handy didn't exactly trust the pony in their midst, and the topic at hand was... suspect. It paid to be cautious.

"...If thou art sure about the company thou keepst." He turned back to face the stag. "I have something for thee, from a... mutual friend in Canterlot."

"We share a friend!? Oh boy! Who!? I know lots of ponies from Canterlot!"

"A rather fine fellow by the name of Fancypants," Handy said simply.

"Wooooww!" Whirlwind replied, a happy smile on his face. There was a second of silence. "Who?" he asked, the same expression on his face. There was another few seconds as Handy recalled that Fancypants was actually a friend of Whirlwind's uncle, not the quadruped himself. He withheld a sigh.

"... Ask thine uncle when thou seest him."

"Which one?"

"All of them," Handy decided to say. This was falling apart fast. "Anyway, I have a package. I was asked to give it to you specifically."

"A package? What is it?" Whirlwind asked excitedly. Handy described the silver jewellery and the box it came in to the deer. The deer took a moment to respond, raising a hoof to his muzzle. "Huh, sounds pretty nifty. Wonder why this Fancyprance guy wanted me to have it?" Handy let out a small sigh. You know what? Fuck it. It didn't matter if the deer didn't know who Fancypants was, nor knew what in the hell Handy was carrying. At the end of the day, this was the Fall Festival in Firthengart, this was a deer named Whirlwind, and Handy got paid in advance. Time to dump this thing and make it someone else's problem.

"I knoweth not. But if thou wishes, I can give it to thee after the melee. I have to fetch it."

"Oh! Of course, I do so ever love gifts."

"Whirl," Jacques interrupted. "Your name is up, time for you to go out."

"Magnificent! Haha! I hear I am up against a rather fierce fellow. This should be great fun!" The deer had the biggest smile, as if news of fighting someone known to be skilled and take pleasure in breaking legs were akin to receiving birthday cake. "I shall speak to you again, Handy the human. Perhaps even in the arena! See you then!" Whirlwind said before prancing off, leaving the human with Jacques, who looked quite pleased with himself. Handy coughed.

"Well?" he asked. Jacques looked up.

"It wasn't easy, but you got what you wanted, qui? I kept my promise, non?"

"Blueblood certainly seemed to have been surprised. Is that the reason why thou sports such wounds?"

"Que? These little gifts, ah, affections of a mare who spurned my admirations, I'm afraid."

"And the beard? The hat?"

"Really spurned. Let’s just say some mares take compliments about their flanks better than others," Jacques said. He still had that cocky smile on his face. Handy couldn't help but feel a small tug of satisfaction that the smug bastard got a walloping. He took it with grace at least.

"I suppose now thee wilt be wanting thine pay."

"Suppose that I might."

"Very well."

The pair of them exited the arena. Handy winced as the sun hit his eyes, and he angled his helmet. Everyone else winced as the glare of the sunlight hitting his armour burned their eyes in turn. It wouldn’t last, for there was to be a short shower of rain scheduled for the afternoon, and clouds were already being rolled in. The pair made their way back to Handy's tent, and as the human approached the tent flap, holding his head as the last remnants of the hangover made their final, desperate bid to prolong his misery, he heard whispering coming from within. "Crimson?" he asked as he entered the dark tent.

"Oh, sir!" the red pony turned quickly and put something on the ground. He spotted her in the corner on her haunches, shuffling her hooves nervously, her tail swishing. The griffons had already left evidently.

"Were you talking to someone?"

"Myself sir; just thinking about magical theory and some things I learned in the alchemist's guild. I was not expecting you back so soon."

"I had to get something." Handy noticed her looking out the tent flap. "It’s alright, he's a... an acquaintance." Jacques had remained outside. Crimson did not let up her stern gaze at the pony who was busy humming to himself. Handy got a small bag and began counting out the agreed sum from his bags. One bag of changeling coinage and gems emptied, and the other one was significantly lightened by now as he withdrew the cash from the traveling bank of Handy. Crimson eyed his actions curiously as he returned outside. "Here," he said, holding the bag. The unicorn's horn lit up a purple hue as he lifted the bag of gold from the human.

"A pleasure, monsieur, perhaps we could do business again?"

"I am sure that thou would love to," Handy said cynically.

"And who possesses such a lovely voice?" Jacques said, turning his head to the tent. The flap was closed now, hiding Crimson.

"That would be none of thy business," Handy said pointedly. Jacques held up a hoof.

"Oh say no more, mon frere, say no more. I was merely curious. All the same, I wish you luck, mon ami. You'll certainly need it."

"What makes you say that?"

"Besides the drake?" Jacques chuckled. "I suspect you will have your hands full at the melee. Put on a good show, eh?" Jacques said as he trotted away. Handy watched him leave before returning to the tent.

"Crimson."

"Yes?"

"I need you to do something," he said as he took off his helmet and loosened the straps on his shoulder armour. "Do you know where Silvertalon is?"

"I... He should be near the ship still."

"Good, get him to go to my quarters. There's a loose floorboard in the portside corner. Underneath it is the piece of silver I got from Canterlot. The magical jewelry, remember it?"

"...Yes."

"Get him to take it down to you and bring it to me." She looked at him questioningly. "Just do it," he said with a bit of irritation in his voice. "And wake me once you get back."

"Of course... sir," she said before exiting the tent. Handy waited till he could no longer hear her hoofsteps and turned to look at where she had been sitting. She seemed nervous when he came in, but a quick search about the tent revealed nothing out of the ordinary apart from the blackened patch of grass where the firepit was. Crimson had been acting strange ever since she asked to come with him. He was going to have to sit her down and investigate it, but right now, what he really needed was a quick nap before the melee that evening.

After pretty much downing an entire water skin to stave off the dehydration that had nearly knocked him out on the arena floor and taking off the majority of his heavy armour bar his chain, that was exactly what he set about doing. Idly, he inspected the remainder of his glaive, now little more than a foot of viciously sharp metal with a wooden handle. He smiled. The thought to use it as a sword came to mind, but the balance was off, and it was far too light for his liking. Perhaps he could use it as a tool. There was after all, no end to the uses of having a large, sharp piece of metal. He placed it beside his makeshift bed before lying down, draping one of the covers over it. It simply would not do to cut himself on it after all, but he still wanted it nearby. Just in case.

A familiar itch drew his attention to his right wrist. He had meant to put some salve on it the other day but had gotten distracted. Now that he thought about it, he had several aches and pains he could do without before the next fight. He rolled up his chainmail and looked down at his wrist as he reached for another bottle of the salve. Odd, when did he get a rash? Briefly, a thought occurred to him that the rash did not appear by ordinary means, and he wondered if it was entirely wise to indulge in this particular vice any further. He quashed the idea as nonsense. The urge to feel the soothing substance on his flesh compelled him to ignore it. Hell, if anything it should be able to get rid of the rash for him. After all, healing was what it did, wasn’t it?

Chapter 26 - Blood and Thunder

There was a price to pay for complacency.

Not that he was complacent, but it sure seemed as if the thestral across the arena from him was. At first he had thought it odd that a thestral would be here, but he was grateful that he had not been seeing things the entire time when he thought he spotted leathery wings. Then he smelled it. Having not partaken of his blood vials in nearly six days, he had been quite hungry. Nowhere close to where the urges would become a serious problem, but enough that his body started looking for food even if he had been putting the thoughts at the back of his mind. He could hear the blood pumping in the veins of his erstwhile comrades on his team for the melee clearly now, their different rates betraying the individuals’ state of unease at their circumstances. He could smell the differing aromas from the innumerable minor cuts and congealed scabs from those around him and those further away. It was then he began picking out familiar scents, at once questioning the logic of being able to distinguish blood scents and, at the same time, not caring when he picked out the familiar scent of the thestral.

He knew her. This was the thestral from the train and from that day in Canterlot. She was the one who had bitten him, the one who had turned him.

He was not angry. In fact, he was ecstatic - ask and ye shall receive and all that. He never thought God would throw him a bone and send not one but two major names on his own shit list, but here they were. First there was Blueblood and now this thestral. A part of him, an old part, worried away at the back of his mind like a dog chewing on an old piece of rope, concerned at Handy's worrying change of perspective. She had cursed him, true, but was he really looking forward to violently assaulting a woman? Gleeful, even, at the prospect? He quashed the thought, but not without some trouble. This was a tournament after all, a fight. He had already overcome this hang-up when it had been necessary before, and he would do it again if he had to. Considering the crime this thestral had done to him, he would certainly do it now.

"—against the deer. Are you listening, Milesian?"

"Pardon?" Handy turned to his teammates, focusing on the literally emerald-eyed yellow pegasus who was busy drawing out a battle plan on the ground with her hoof.

"I asked if you were listening. You are to attack the deer first, understood?" she stated, her face an emotionless mask. It was strange seeing her without the shaffron to cover her face. He wasn't sure if that made her face more unnerving or less so. Those damned eyes...

"Understood. Right," Handy acknowledged with a wave of his hand, eliciting a tsk from the pony.

"I do not see why we are relying on the human for anything. In fact, I don't even need the rest of you; just let me handle all of them." Handy looked up at the owner of the voice. The same arrogant, furious eyes of the dragon glared daggers down at the human. He smiled uncertainly at the creature from beneath his helmet. He had lucked out big time when the lots had put the beast on his team. The idea of pitched battle with that thing on the opposing team and gunning for him when his back was turned was... unappealing. Still, he might just need to watch his back anyway given the evil looks the lizard was sending his way.

"Forgive me, but were you not having difficulties of your own in your last bout? You did, after all, suffer a potentially dangerous injury," came the surprisingly erudite tones of the armoured diamond dog on their team. He was around the average size for a dog, built like a brick shit house, and was about five foot five in height. All in all, nothing like the beast of a canine Rex had been all the way back at the mine. Handy couldn’t make out his face behind the primitive bucket helm.

"A lucky shot," Ferix said as he unconsciously rubbed the side of his neck where there appeared to be a light gash, something that would be horrifically worrying for anyone who, you know, wasn't a dragon.

'I wonder what dragon would taste like...' Handy idly wondered before blinking and turning away, looking across the arena floor to the far gate and the opposing team. There was Whirlwind alongside that thestral, laughing jubilantly at something. There was a griffon there with black, painted armour and a full-face helm. Handy couldn't see his face, but he recognised him as that mean-looking griffon he had spotted on the first day. There was also that weird sphinx pony thing from before. He ignored the back and forth of his teammates, and the stare of the dragon, in favour of studying his opponents, the thestral in particular.

He realised then that he didn't exactly know her name. It was no matter, really. He looked up at the spectator towers looming over them as the lightest of drizzles fell from the sky, the remnants of the earlier rain. He had performed well enough, he supposed, and he had gotten this far in the tournament, win or lose. He had gotten what he wanted by coming here, and Gethrenia could hold its head high since its representative hadn’t been a complete scrub who had gotten wiped out earlier in the tournament. All that meant was that he didn’t have to worry about winning this little show so long as he got close enough to the bat pony. Joachim was probably up there with the local king.

He realized, upon noting one of the towers was particularly gaudy and had an abundance of armed guards flying above it, that they were probably here to watch the last bout of the tournament. He decided he was going to go meet his king immediately after to catch up and to also give the poor bastard an excuse to get away from Goldtooth.

--=--

“—and the look on Thunderstorm’s face was priceless! He couldn’t believe the princess would blithely refuse his offer. I mean, it benefits me that she does not agree, of course, but you could tell he had spent hours, if not days, mulling over that proposal, and in seconds, his hopes were torn to tatters! Oh, I got a few laughs out of that after the negotiations. We all did, isn’t that right, dear boy?”

“Hm? Oh yes, quite. Very politics, much negotiation.”

“Exactly! Now where was I? Oh yes! Now, I don’t know if it can be done or not, but I am investigating into the possibility of changing the colour of the rain. I am having the Firthengarian weather company look into research, and I was thinking….”

Joachim tuned him out. He was a tad distracted, and quite frankly, he was glad King Goldtooth had somegriffon else to talk to. Glancing briefly, he noticed it was a pair of knights who were now suffering the king’s hot air: his own in the form of Tanismore, who was slightly slumped up against his halberd, and the king’s own knight named Lightning, or so he believed. No matter. “Don’t mind him.” He turned to the voice. “He’s in a good mood for once despite hating festivals, and I’d like him to stay that way.”

“I had no intention of doing anything that might upset him, I assure you,” Johan replied. Princess Karlina Goldtooth smiled at him and turned her attention back to the tournament below.

“I’ve never been to one of these before. This is exciting!” the silver-feathered griffon said. She was just a shave taller than the young king, with a dark brown coat like the bark of an oak and a white plume at the tip of her tail. Fierce blue feathers framed surprisingly gentle golden eyes that sparkled with curiosity. Johan frowned at her words.

“Surely you’ve been to festivals before?”

“A few times when I was younger, but never a tournament. Mother doesn’t really approve; she’d rather I spend most of my days studying.”

“Well that’s a shame,” Joachim responded, remembering the fierce, strict griffon who had elected to remain in Ironcrest while her husband took half the court to the tournament finale, “especially considering I have you to thank for being able to get out of that castle in the first place.”

“Oh, think nothing of it. It does him good to get out once in a while. He’s just a tad stubborn as I am sure you found out,” she said openly with a chuckle. Joachim gave a sideways glance at the griffon in question, who was still busy talking the heads off the beleaguered warriors. Joachim, though he’d never admit it, was not the quickest on the uptake as Handy was keen to remind him in private. That said, Goldtooth was being blatantly obvious about his intentions here. He only ever left the young king alone when his daughter was in the room and talking to him. He also spoke fondly of her qualities in her absence, oftentimes at that. The subtle implications, the occasional probing question into Joachim’s private life - strictly king to king and griffon to griffon of course, nothing too prying – was all too apparent.

He supposed he should have seen this coming. Ivorybeak had been trying to talk about it. A young, unmarried king of Gethrenia? Opportunity! Traditionally, the kingdom of Gethrenia was not the most militarily powerful, nor was it the richest in natural resources in the High Kingdom. What it lacked in terms of hard power, it made up for with soft, clever manoeuvring of one of Joachim’s ancestors, who had landed the border kingdom as the first stop between Equestria and Griffonia for the Equestrian Express trade line. The kingdom exploited this advantage ruthlessly, thus explaining the degree of influence it held in the court of the High King it otherwise would not have. This was further enhanced by the Gethrenian kings’ tradition of siding with the High King on most matters of dispute amongst the kingdoms, making them literal kingmakers. In some cases, when their opinions could eventually be swayed, it usually went to the High King’s side. It was the primary reason why Joachim was taken along for the talks in Canterlot despite the other two kingdoms present being major powerhouses of the High Kingdom.

Needless to say, the throne of Gethrenia was one a good many clans would pay dearly in order to have influence over. Therefore, it came as no surprise to Joachim when he finally figured out Goldtooth’s game in introducing him to Karlina. He didn’t entirely mind; Karlina was pleasant company to have around and a welcome distraction from Goldtooth’s ramblings. Bright lass that she was, she had likely figured it all out herself as well, if she hadn’t been told beforeclaw that is. Joachim smiled at the thought. He wasn’t going to commit to anything yet. Marrying the only daughter of a powerful king had its advantages of course, but it would be imprudent not to double check the political landscape before committing to anything. Particularly trying to suss out exactly what gains Goldtooth himself would make out of such an arrangement might be wise. Besides, he didn't feel he was entirely up for the marriage game just yet.

"Is that him down there?"

"Yes, that’s him," Joachim confirmed. "Biped in the silver armour."

"Fascinating! Who's that? And the others?" Karlina asked excitedly.

"I believe that's... Ferix the dragon. Don't know who the dog is. The yellow pegasus is Masquerade of the Crystal Empire. The stag is Whirldwind of the Greenwoods. Not sure who the thestral is… Stellar something."

"Thestral?"

"Grey pony with the bat wings."

"Oh!"

"The strange pony with the lion body I think is… Dethis or something; a Concordian anyway. You're in for quite the show, Princess." Joachim couldn't resist the urge to boast. "Handy down there is one of my finest knights! With him on their team, the orange will carry the day."

"Oh? You sound confident, your Majesty," Karlina said, a sly grin on her face.

"I have good reason to be. I'd trust that human with my life. Have done so, in fact."

"Then care to place a wager?" she asked, eyeing the king levelly, her smile still present. Joachim cocked an eyebrow. As much as a griffon could anyway.

"Gambling, Princess? What would your dearest Queen mother say?"

"Mother isn't here, is she?" Karlina asked rhetorically, glancing over Johan's shoulder at her father. "Or would you rather eat your own words in front of me?" Joachim opened his beak to protest but realised he had let himself be trapped. He put on a smile.

"I stand by what I said. I'll put my claw in for this wager of yours."

"Glad to see you’re a griffon of your word."

"So what are the stakes?"

"We'll get around to that after we see if your knight's team wins; let’s not spoil the fun."

"You may come to regret that, Princess."

"Karlina please," she insisted, smiling.

"...Karlina then," Joachim said, turning his eyes back to the arena below. He was smiling despite himself. Sure, he had just entered a blind bet with unknown stakes with a griffon who might, in fact, be entirely too clever for his own good, but he wasn't concerned, confident as he was that his friend down below could pull it off with dignity and aplomb.

--=--

The look on the thestral’s face as two hundred and ten pounds of heavily armoured Irishman descended upon her was absolutely priceless.

Honestly, she had no excuse really. Sure, she was busy fighting a surprisingly agile diamond dog who could jump his own height and then some like a goddamned, man-sized grasshopper. Sure, the rest of the arena had turned into a confusing mess of flailing limbs and clashing weapons, and sure, there was a dragon between her little duel and where the human had been. But still!

The line-up prior to the umpire giving the signal for the combat to commence was surprisingly complimentary. Whoever did the opposing team’s game plan matched the pegasus’ planning point for point which was awfully convenient. Handy thought it made sense, pairing the griffon against the dragon, flyer against flyer. Ferix had apparently performed poorly against gryphonic opponents in the tournament thus far. Handy had snickered at the subtle implication that the dragon was not all that hot shit in the air. Despite that, he did win, so he could be expected to keep the griffon busy at least.

Handy himself was paired off with Whirlwind. He could see the logic from both ends. If his training with Shortbeak had taught him anything, it was that he had difficulty with those who were faster and more manoeuvrable than him, which Whirlwind almost certainly was. However, everything about the human’s fighting style leant itself towards maximum damage at minimum effort. The deer could probably wear out the human over time, but all Handy really needed was one good hit and the practically unarmoured stag would go down. Meanwhile, the pegasus herself fought the sphinx, who wielded a spear while she had wing blades as her weapon of choice.

This was all well and good, properly thought out and all that. It would guarantee victory over time as the two teams would eventually wear each other down trying to capitalize on everyone’s weaknesses while, at the same time, trying to minimise the other team’s advantages. Handy didn’t have time for that shit though. As he shifted his weight, hefted his shield in his left arm, and held it close to him, his right hand relaxed by his side, telegraphing to Whirlwind that he had every intention of charging the stag which, of course, he did.

The umpire gave his call, and the battle commenced to the cheers of the crowd and distant echo of a storm that had long since passed over them. Handy charged, his vision restricted to only what he could see through his helmet, a tiny sliver of the world containing nothing but the light drizzle of rain, the sawdust, the wood chips strewn on the ground of the arena, and the ungodly assortment of blades bearing down on him as the deer across from him joyfully met his charge. The roar of Ferix to his left and the wing beats of the pegasus to his right echoed amongst the cacophony of noise that assaulted his ears trapped within the metal shell around his head.

Whirlwind and the human met, and the deer suddenly, and with impossible grace, leapt sideways and spun. Handy heard the ringing laughter from the deer as he dodged out of the human’s full-tilt charge. That was perfectly fine with Handy, who kept on running and changed his direction, leaving Whirlwind alone as he landed on the ground, wondering where the hell his quarry was running off to. “Hey! Get back!” Whirlwind shouted over the din of battle as metal clashed against metal and the roar of the dragon drowned out the tumultuous noise with momentary fury.

Handy could just barely make out the hint of amusement in the deer’s voice. He didn’t care because his visor’s field of vision was suddenly taken up by the now fully armoured beast of a dragon and the griffon who was busy hacking away at him from the air with a halberd. The dragon ducked below a two-handed swipe with the axe of the weapon before whipping around and lashing the griffon out of the air with his tail, catching him in the wing and bringing the bird to the ground hard. The griffon recovered quickly and was about to jab at the dragon’s exposed underside with the spike of the weapon, a normally fatal wound for anyone but only an incapacitating one for a dragon. Ferix, the overconfident idiot, took the opportunity to lift his axes into the air to bring down on the griffon, giving the bird all the opportunity he needed to take the human’s team’s heavy hitter out of the running.

Or that would have been the case. The griffon turned at the last moment, spotting the charging human and took a step back to reassess the new threat. Ferix over-swung, stumbling forward and missing his target. The human kept running. The dragon filled his vision, and he had to run to his right and leap over its tail as it struggled to keep balance. The griffon was waiting on the other side of the lizard and swung out with his halberd, hitting the human on the shield and nearly forcing him from his feet, but the human kept his momentum and kept on running. The griffon turned, shouting something and was about to chase after him before a roar from behind him indicated that the griffon had a bigger problem to worry about. Ferix did too because a sudden target-free Whirlwind now flanked the dragon in the side. Handy ignored them, for the thestral was now in front of him. She had the dog pinned to the ground, its mace just out of its reach as it struggled with its other paw to try to push the thestral away. She looked up just in time to see the charging human swing his hammer in an upwards arc.

She pushed off of the dog, wings flapping hurriedly. The black, armoured bat pony ascended in one swift motion, the full force of the hammer missing her midsection and catching her left foreleg instead. She winced and hissed as the impact connected and landed hard, taking a few steps away from the new threat. The dog scrambled and said something Handy didn’t quite catch. He could hear a familiar, feminine shout from behind her. It seemed like somebody was pissed the human went against her game plan. He spared a glance behind him and saw the dog was now moving to engage the griffon in order to relieve Ferix from fighting two foes at once, for the dragon had to deal with the stag who was now literally dancing circles around him, jabbing with his bladed antlers. He spotted the little yellow ball of anger floating somewhere in the background and turned away. Really, Masquerade should be thanking him for upsetting the balance of the teams and making the fight that more interesting. If the shouts of delight from the crowd were any indication, they were enjoying the turnabout immensely.

Now there was just the thestral in front of him. She was lightly armoured despite the heavy barding on her barrel and withers. With light lamellar plating covering her back and flanks, and light, lacquered, black schynbalds covering her legs, it was not nearly a heavy armour as the prince had entertained. She also fought without a helmet which Handy personally found absolutely retarded, considering not having a helmet was exactly how Handy got knocked flat on his ass the first time they had a disagreement.

"Pony," the human said by way of a greeting, with as much contempt as he could muster in his voice. He twirled the warhammer in his hand, its familiar weight now more a comfort than a hindrance.

"Human," the thestral said in response. Her voice was more even and levelled. Her green eyes darted from one part of the human to the other, her wings shuffling in preparation for her next move. The human took a few steps forward, matched by the pony who moved to the side. She moved first, and Handy barely had time to register the fact that the blades on her hoof-boots were descending before he brought his shield up. Sparks flew as the blades were raked across it. The pony landed in front of the human and lunged forward, tackling him in his legs before he could lower his shield and locate her. Handy was knocked to one knee as a leg was taken out from under him. The pony turned, and Handy reacted on instinct, allowing his body to fall to the ground as he kicked out blindly with his other leg. He didn't connect, but the thestral backed off, and Handy rolled once before clambering back to his feet. The pony was on him again, but he swung his hammer around in a short, defensive arc. He caught her in the withers, and she was knocked away. He brought the hammer around again, but she had already moved, her wings flaring and thrusting, pushing her out of the human's reach and lifting up a cloud of dust.

Handy coughed, grateful for the cloth covering of his helmet that kept the dust out of his eyes as he continued following the thestral who was now hovering several feet away from him. He had dented her armour slightly - whatever she was wearing was heavier than it looked. "The prince I had been expecting. Thou, however, thou art just a treat," he said gleefully. She didn't respond to his goading, content to simply hover there. "Tell me, my little pony, why didst thou come? Why art thou not in thy guard armour?" The pair of them was close to the edge of the arena, and the crowd nearest to them started paying them rapt attention as the remainder of the melee battled on.

Stellar landed, her wings still fully extended, both as an instinctive attempt to make herself appear larger and as preparation to take to the air again. "I am not here as a representative of Equestria," she said at length, her eyes still studying him. He found that odd, expecting at least some measure of hardness to come across but couldn't find it. "I came to find you." Handy laughed at that. He held his arms wide open, chuckling.

"Well thou hast certainly found me!" he shouted. The pony, unfortunately, didn't rise to the bait and attempted to attack him while his guard was apparently down. 'Clever girl, saw the trap for what it was… damn.' "But I can't help but ask thee why thou hast sought me out, thou of all people and here of all places?" The pony lunged. Handy ran into the attack, shield first, and swung his hammer upwards, forcing the pony to take to the air before immediately diving at the human again. They exchanged blows for a brief, furious moment, he successfully blocking her hoof blades and bucks with his shield and she dodging out of his relatively slower, more cumbersome hammer strikes. Handy backed off after a particularly furious flurry of blade strikes from the pony lest he have his shield ripped from him. He forgot how nimble the pony was, something she had used to great effect back on the train despite the rather tight economy of space they had had to work with.

"I... have my reasons," she said.

"I am sure. Care to elaborate?"

"One thing first... back on the train?" Her eyes narrowed. "When we were outside on the roof?"

"I find it distinctly hard to forget that moment. What of it?" Handy asked. She took to the air once more, hovering over the human. He held his shield at the ready.

"I was struck and rendered unable to fight."

"A timely intervention, I am sure."

"Why didn't you let me fall off the train?" she asked simply. Handy blinked.

"...What?"

"You heard me," the pony said. She dove at the human again. He raised his shield and prepared to swing his hammer again. She rolled in the air and landed to the side of the human. Handy swung too late, only realizing his mistake when his shield no longer blocked his vision and he spotted her to his left. She barrelled into his legs again, knocking him to the ground fully this time. He was on his back, and so he reached up and tried to bring his hammer to bear. However, it was a poor attempt with no leverage behind it, and a quick swipe of her right hoof blades smacked the arm away. The pony's weight was on his shield, pinning his left arm in place. He was suddenly, keenly aware of the fact his ruined left vambrace was back at his tent, leaving very exposed skin strapped to the shield and the vampire pony who now stood over it. He was suddenly very thankful it wasn't bleeding anymore.

The pony placed her forehooves on his chest to pin him to the ground and leered down at him, and he suddenly felt incredibly anger at the familiar circumstances. She was snarling at him. 'No,' Handy thought, 'you don't get the right to be angry with me.' He let go of his weapon, and his freed right fist crashed against the side of the thestral's head. A sudden pang of guilt shot right through Handy's being at what he had just done, but he crushed the feeling. The thestral was dazed and unsteady on her feet. Handy easily pushed her off of him, and she stumbled to the ground, their fortunes now reversed. He brought his shield up and pressed it down on the pony, pinning her completely to the ground as he put his weight behind it, his hammer now back in his grip. The pony looked up at him, bleary-eyed, and pushed against the shield, causing the human to press down harder, not keen on giving her any chance at bringing her forehooves to bear.

"You little shit!" Handy snarled down at her, dropping his pretentious airs. "You dare, you dare try that again, and I'll—!"

"Then why didn't you back then?" she interrupted, still struggling and, to Handy's surprise, succeeding in pushing against him. Her voice was slurred and her vision unfocused. He had hit her pretty hard, and the steel gauntlet probably made the blow worse than it otherwise would have been. Handy was caught off-guard by the question.

"What are you talking about?"

"You... hate me for what I did to you, right?"

"How could I not!" Handy nearly shouted. He was using his right arm to help keep the pony pinned but prepared to bring the hammer down on her. "You took a part of my humanity away! Do you even comprehend the enormity of what you've done to me? What being a vampire means to a human!?"

"No. No I don't," she admitted, letting up on her attempts to push the human off. She took a few breaths and opened her eyes to look directly at Handy, almost imploringly. "But I know you know what it means. So why didn't you let me die when you had the chance? Why didn't you just throw me off yourself rather than back into the train?"

Handy didn't really have an answer for that and remained silent for several moments. He knew he hadn’t been in his right mind back then, having only just turned and the ingested salamander salve and the blood high he had ran on doing only God knows what to his thought processes. Still, he hadn’t killed her when he had the opportunity then, and he wasn't exactly sure why. The thestral took the opportunity of the human's internal struggle, and in a sudden motion, she managed to lift the shield off of her, Handy's weight and all, long enough for her to roll out from under it. He hit the ground but quickly recovered and came back to his feet. She shook her head, trying to clear it once more before locking eyes with the human.

"So? Why didn't you?" she asked, challenge in her voice now.

"I had my reasons," Handy lied.

--=--

"Yes, I know," 'Crimson' said. The small pendant around her neck pulsed lowly in long, slow bursts of light. She was pacing back and forth, eyeing her saddle packs. This entire operation had been risky. If the human found out, her life was basically forfeit. She knew that risk, but the human was close to something, something that could help the entire changeling race if it could be recovered. She didn't know why the human was close - she doubted even her queen knew - but that was unimportant. The same ponies who were after the human, the same ponies who the very mare she was now impersonating feared so much, the same ponies after the strange deer artefact that now rested in the packs by her flanks were the same ponies in possession of the key they sought, and that was all that mattered.

Or so a little bird had told them. There were so many factors they just did not know, or at least so many that Thorax simply did not know. She had to be content and trust her queen who was watching over her even right now. Quite literally in fact. She sat on her haunches in the dark beneath the stands of the arena, listening to the tumultuous roar of the crowd and the muffled sounds of combat. She was antsy. Being in the festival had been a strange experience. It was a kaleidoscope of emotions. Like walking out of a desert into a thunderous downpour, her senses had been nearly overwhelmed just trying to comprehend the feast that had been practically thrown at her from all directions. She had never felt so full in ages. Sure, it wasn't love, but there was more than enough good feelings directed at her to easily satiate her vampiric needs.

She winced as her queen chastised her for losing focus on her mission and doubled down, searching for any signs of the ponies she needed to find. If they could just identify even one of them, they could work from there to find the rest. She had no luck, only discovering that somepony had been asking questions about a certain 'crown' but failed to isolate the pony in question. Now it was a matter of waiting, keeping up the act, and hoping the human led her where she needed to go. However, he was already getting suspicious, and if she didn't turn up a lead soon—

"Well, well, well." Crimson froze at the voice. She slowly got up and turned around. A garishly dressed earth pony stood in the darkness, framed by light spilling in from cracks in the wood behind him. "I had planned to leave well enough alone, but here you are, with the crown no less."

"What are you doing here?" she asked defensively, taking a few steps back and glancing side to side for an escape route. The underside of the arena stands was a maze of iron supports, wooden dividers, and detritus eager to trip the hooves of anypony who decided to run. It was how she was able to shake off the curious hangers-on of the other fighters in the tournament who wondered where the 'human's little red pony' was wandering off to. Looking back on it, perhaps it wasn't such a good idea to find such a hard-to-reach area to hide out in.

"Come now, Crimson, do you not remember my voice? Tsk, Mistress will be so displeased with your poor memory... amongst other things, you understand," the stallion said, his voice a smooth, lazy tenor.

"I remember," 'Crimson' lied. Backing up, she turned and scowled as she found herself pressed up against a wooden wall. "Stay back," she warned, lowering her head and levelling her horn at the interloper.

"Let’s have none of that. Both of us know more magic than most unicorns can throw. It would be ever so much bother for me to have to shut you down if it came to a shouting match. And you know I would, don't you?" he asked, taking a few steps closer. A bead of sweat broke on Crimson's forehead. She recalled the footage captured by the pendant; what the human had to deal with when the mare she impersonated called upon strange, foul magic. If this stallion could do the same... No, how could he? He was an earth pony after all. Sure, years of practice and even they could do magic, the same way griffons could, but he possessed no horn, and she could see nothing that indicated prepared or ritual magic.

"You're bluffing."

"Oh for goodness sake, don't be such a bother. Come with me now, and you can make this easier on both of us. Mistress would like a word or two with you over your treachery."

"I don't belong to the Mistress anymore..."

"Hmhm, yes, I suppose you think you belong to the human now, do you? Ah, such a shame. Naiveté, how I missed it, but we all must grow up and face reality some time. The human belongs to the Mistress, and in time, you'll see him again once he's hers. Or you won't; it’s no matter to me what Mistress does with you."

"Why would I willingly go with you? We both know she'll just..." Crimson carefully positioned herself, ready to gallop at a moment's notice. She had one shot at this.

"Because you have no choice in the matter. What are you going to do? Run? We'll just hunt you down, especially now when I have you at my hooves. Fetch the human? Hmhm, I've already stacked the odds to make sure he'll be in no condition to help you."

"W-What do you mean?"

"Let's just say Mistress won't be pleased with the few expenses I had to charge regarding some missing gems. But when I bring you in, it'll all be worth it." He took another few steps closer. It was now or never. He was whispering something harsh and sibilant under his breath, and Crimson could suddenly see her breath as the temperature dropped. There was a bright green flash, and the stallion screwed his eyes shut, grunting in pain. He rubbed them with a fetlock and glared at the pony before him.

"Really!?" he hissed at her. The mare just stood there, her expression neutral. He spat some non-language, dripping with hate and malice as his eyes glowed a bright green, and the air around him rushed forward. Two cutting bursts of air ran through the vision of Crimson in front of him, dispelling the illusion and cracking the wood behind it. He could hear several shouts of alarm from the festival goers seated above them as the wood groaned audibly from the attack. Thunder nickered in anger and looked about, seeing the brown tail of his quarry disappear around a wooden divider. Now he would have to chase the blasted mare down before she went and called the guards or some nonsense like that. Shame. He clicked his teeth.

"Such bother."

--=--

"Stellar Eclipse," she said, grunting as the hammer finally made a decent connection, striking her full on the barrel.

"Thank you," Handy said, mentally putting her near the top of his shit list, just a few steps below whoever was Crimson's ex-mistress since she was the one who had brought him to this world in the first place. He gripped the hammer in both hands. His shield, still being strapped to his left arm, made it awkward, forcing him to let go with his left hand mid-swing, else risking messing up the attack altogether. However, the advantages of using both hands to help initiate a heavier attack more than made up for it.

The pony landed on the ground again, her chest piece dented but not abnormally so. Evidently, she had prepared for this fight. But not enough. A solid blow had disabled one of her boots, rendering it warped and useless. She took it off, leaving her with only one bladed boot to use. Handy's helmet had been ripped from his head from one of the thestral's aerial tackles where she had latched on to his back. Handy spotted something shiny and purple on the underside of her hoof as she moved. She caught him looking and frowned. "You'll never get close enough," he taunted, figuring it was some holdout weapon for just such an occasion when her hoof blades were disabled.

She smiled and began stalking, circling around him and keeping low to the ground like a big cat ready to pounce. 'Really?' Handy thought. 'Do you seriously think that's going to work? You have wings, woman, use them. Because if you don't...' He didn't bother moving, instead staying still with his shield raised, waiting for her to come to him. The rest of the melee seemed to continue unabated, but he saw sluggishness in Ferix's actions as he turned. The dragon was getting tired since the idiot didn't know when to conserve his energy. Luckily for him, the dog suddenly attacked the deer and that left the griffon alone with the dragon, who turned to deal with the slower opponent. He sniffed the air. A few cuts here and there - the others were clearly wearing down too. He'd best finish this thestral off before any of the others finished their duels and made to help him and steal him of his vengeance.

"So, what are your other reasons?" Handy asked as the mare continued circling him.

"Hm?" she said, just loud enough for him to hear.

"You said you had other reasons for wanting to find me. What were they?"

"I don't particularly care to share," she said. She lunged, and Handy jerked forward shield-first, swiping around and upwards with his hammer, wise to the mare's game. She leapt to the side to avoid the hammer. Handy kicked out, forcing her back. He advanced and swung his shield out as if to strike her, leaving a false opening. She leapt for the bait.

'Bad move.' Handy waited until the pony was practically on him before swinging his hammer around, now held by the head, and punched her in the wing joint. She collided bodily with him but let out a roar of pain as she rolled off of him on the ground. Now he had disabled her ability to fly for now if the jerky, unnatural way her left wing was flapping was any indication. She hissed with the pain as she tested her wing, folding it gently to her side. He frowned at that. She could still use it which meant he hadn't hit it nearly as hard as he intended. However, she wasn't flying on that wing any time soon which was just fine with the human.

He rolled his shoulders. A triumphant roar behind him drew his attention, and he turned briefly, seeing the dragon holding the unconscious body of the griffon aloft. He turned back. It had only been half a second, but Stellar was gone. He whirled around with his hammer to his right, instinctively fearing another flanking manoeuvre. Apprehension crept along his skin as she wasn't there. He had misjudged! He turned on the spot, shield first. Hoof blades curled down and latched onto the rim of the shield as he felt a weight land there. He was now eye to eye with the mare as she landed on him. His eyes widened in surprise as her free hoof pressed against the underside of his jaw. There was a sharp burning sensation, and he yelled in pain and threw his arm wide, sending the pony pirouetting off of his shield. He rubbed underneath his chin and glared at the pony who now stood before him and stared, her expression neutral and focused.

"What was that?" he hissed accusingly at her. He felt the skin with his uncovered hand of his shield arm. He couldn't feel anything there, but it felt as if she had burned him somehow. Fear seized him before his rational mind took control. 'Relax,' he told himself. 'It wasn't fire; you'd already be dead if it was. Be cool.' "What did you just do!?"

"You said I wouldn't get close enough," she said, her smile returning. "I took it as a challenge." That was it, no more playing defensive. Handy readied his hammer and advanced on the pony. She couldn't fly, and he wasn't going to let her out of his sight. He lunged forward, malice clear in his eyes. She tried to dodge, but her injured wing shot out on reflex, and she yelped in sudden pain. Handy capitalised on the distraction and brought his hammer around, catching her in the side of the chest. The armour deformed, and he heard her shout in further pain before she lashed out with her bladed hoof to force the human to back off.

She put some distance between them. The armour was dented and had taken most of the force, but she was visibly winded. 'You're mine now,' he thought. Another roar, and he could make out the heavy wing beats of the dragon. It seemed like Ferix was heading this way. He didn't turn around. If ever he had extra incentive to finish off this thestral, he had it now. That overgrown gecko wouldn't be taking this from him. The thestral looked over his shoulder, and he could practically see the colour drain from her face despite the grey fur. She looked back at him and seemed to sag, resigning herself to her fate.

"For what it’s worth, and I know it probably doesn't mean much now, I am sorry for what I did to you."

"I'm getting a lot of apologies today," Handy said, thinking of Blueblood earlier that day. Last he heard, the prince was already on a chariot back to Equestria, spurning the griffon king's offer of overseeing his healing. "You're going to have to do better than that."

"Yeah... I guess I do..." she said as she backed up almost against the edge of the arena. If the human didn't get her, the dragon would. Might as well face her fate like a mare. She closed her eyes. Handy raised his hammer high-

--=--

Stellar opened her eyes at the sound of the hammer hitting the ground. She looked up as the human fell to his knees before her, his face was a mask of confusion, shock, and pain. He tried to reach up behind his back, trying to grasp at something, but his armour denied him the mobility. Her nostrils flared at a familiar blood scent. The human fell face first, and she saw a terrible rent in the back of his armour going diagonally from his left shoulder to his waist, fresh blood trickling from the gash in his flesh and mixing with the sundered mail and torn padding of his armour. She looked up to see the looming dragon and his blood-stained axe, and her mind boggled to try to make sense of what she was seeing.

"So much for the dragon slayer!" Ferix said triumphantly. There were shouts of foul play from the crowd around him, and he growled at them.

"What are you doing!?" Stellar shouted, confused more than anything. "He was on your team!" The dragon leered down at the tiny pony, staring death at her.

"What of it?" he said, levelling his axe at her. She flared her wings instinctively but immediately regretted it, wincing as she furled her injured one back to her side. "What do you care anyway? It’s me you should be worried about," he said, grinning widely as he went to swing his axe at her. She dove out of the way, the axe missing the top of her head by an inch and shaving a lock from her mane. The dragon turned and its tail smashed into her, crashing into the wooden panelling of the arena wall. Everything hurt, and she coughed up some blood as she slumped to the ground.

She struggled to push herself up as the dragon turned around. The human was at his feet, and she could just about make out that he was moving his arms. So, he was alive; that was nice she guessed. Being alive was nice. She coughed again, and then re-evaluated the value of being alive as she felt something pressing against her lung. She really hoped that wasn't a broken rib. The dragon walked over to her as she struggled to her feet, wheezing as she did so. She wasn't going to get away in time, and she knew it. Ferix snorted as he prepared to kick the mare to send her flying.

A blur of motion ran into the dragon's side, and it roared in fury, swinging its axe down. Stellar blinked. The stag's bladed horns were bloodied, and he saw tears in the young dragon's scales along its side. The deer was standing a few feet away from the reptile, its feet spread wide and head lowered in preparation for another strike. The normally jubilant stag was stone-faced and wore a severe expression, and he didn't so much as flinch when the dragon roared at him. Stellar watched on, almost on the verge of collapsing under her own weight. The other fighters had more or less stopped their fight to see what the confusion was. The dog Whirlwind had been fighting was on the ground, pushing himself up. The remaining sphinx and pegasus hovered into the air, trying to understand what had happened as the deer began engaging the dragon.

Slowly, she pushed her way over to the human as the deer and dragon continued their fight, trying to see if her mission was no longer relevant. If the human ended up dying then and there, well... well shit, she guessed. 'Come on,' she thought, wincing with each step. The dragon had been led away, trying to strike down the deer who was busy jumping and swiping at the fire-breathing beast with his incredibly dangerous antlers. Reaching the human, she saw he was no longer moving. "Hey," she said, coughing, nudging his head with her hoof. There was a noncommittal noise in response, followed by a long, drawn out gurgle of pain as his fingers clenched, grasping at the ground. Alive then, definitely alive. At least her efforts hadn't been for naught.

Looking up, the sphinx and pegasus resumed their fighting, and the umpire seemed to be having an argument with official-looking griffons waving pieces of paper around while a pair of white-tunic griffons ascended from somewhere beyond the arena, carrying a litter and flying towards the human. The dog, meanwhile, seemed to simply be standing there as if contemplating something, not particularly paying attention to either of the remaining fights but instead just looking at both her and the fallen human.

All of that was suddenly rendered irrelevant as the world exploded around her.

Stellar pressed herself against the ground and covered her head as a wave of heat washed over her, followed by raining debris. Her ears rang as she shook her head, pushing herself back to her hooves. Her vision was dazed, and her fur stood on end. The air was suddenly charged with electricity, reminding her of a thunderstorm. The arena was in chaos, both ponies and griffons hurriedly stampeding and taking flight in a panic, some falling from the stands into the arena itself. The combatants broke off their fights and turned, facing Stellar's direction. There was a red pony on the ground a few feet away from her, sprawled and whimpering as her hearing slowly came back.

"Why couldn't you have simply come along quietly?" She slowly turned around. The wall of the arena behind her was blown wide open, revealing the interior beneath the stands. Several of the seats above had been blown apart, and she could see griffons and ponies trying to move the injured away. At the centre of the mess stood a stallion garishly dressed with an almost bored expression on his face. His green eyes, literally glowing green, were slightly furrowed in annoyance. He stepped into the arena, his eyes locked on the red unicorn before he stopped and turned to look at the human. He frowned. "I paid your way here to keep him busy, not kill him," he said, directing his ire at the dragon. Ferix snorted.

"He isn't dead... yet," he said with a chortle.

"What is the meaning of this!?" Masquerade demanded, landing behind the dragon. He spared her half a glance over his wing. She was the worse for wear with her fight with the sphinx as he landed next to her. There were a lot of griffons in the air now, armoured and armed, mostly congregated around one of the towers. Stellar figured they were getting the king out of here before anything further happened.

"None of your concern, madam. Now, if you would be ever so kind as to back off?" he asked as he approached the red mare. Stellar made to stand up and face him. The stallion glanced out of the corner of his eye at her and muttered something. A glowing green pattern wormed down his right foreleg to the ground and shot across the earth towards her. She barely had time to react before the earth came alive, and two rocky growths erupted from the ground, curled around her, and pulled her to the ground, holding her in place. She yelped as pain shot through her chest once more. Yeah, there was definitely a broken rib in there somewhere.

Crimson got up, groaning and hurrying away from the stallion. The dragon planted its foot on the ground and growled at her, causing her to pause.

"I believe we've had enough of you!" Whirlwind said, stomping his hooves and aiming his blades at the dragon, "Not only have you turned on your teammate but now an innocent bystander!" Ferix gave him an unamused glare before parting his jaw slowly as fire built up within. Whirlwind's face dropped before he used that deer-like agility and speed that had served him so well before and quickly got out of the way of the torrent of flame that erupted from the dragon's maw. Ferix, it seemed, was quite done playing fair.

"Don't just spew fire everywhere like an uncivilized— Oh bother, suit yourself then," the garish stallion said as he walked closer to the red mare. The griffons in the air began circling the stadium, some flying in to attack the dragon, assisted by the fighters on the ground. Ferix didn't even bother trying to fight conventionally and just fended them off with gouts of flame. Crimson turned to look at the approaching stallion, eyes wide with fear, her path blocked by a wall of fire. She desperately searched for a way out. Her eyes widened further when she spotted the prone human crawling towards the arena wall.

"Sir! Handy!" she shouted, trying to rouse the human to somehow help the changeling from the immediate danger. The human didn't respond, and she gritted her teeth and swallowed her pride, "Master!" she cried. "Help!" The human turned to look at her, propping himself up against the arena wall. His face bore a confused expression as if trying to comprehend the scene that was unfolding before him. The stallion paused to look back and clicked his teeth before returning his attention to Crimson.

"That’s enough of that now. Come along you." He muttered something that hurt Crimson's ears to hear. They flattened against her head as she flinched involuntarily. Her vision swam and her legs were unresponsive, black circles closing in on the edges of her vision before she fell to the ground in a crumpled heap. There was the clink of metal and a rush of feathery wings as half a dozen griffon soldiers descended into the arena, surrounding Thunder.

"Stay right there!" one of the armoured griffons shouted, levelling a crossbow at the pony.

"Oh, of course!" Thunder replied, the hat he wore concealing his eyes as he lowered his head. "Look, I'll even raise my hooves in the air to show I am not a threat." He smiled lazily as he reared up, his forehooves in the air.

"No! Stop, don't move!" a griffon shouted as a gust of wind picked up, increasing in severity and force around the pony.

"Vasicum os fekir!" He slammed his hooves on the ground, and bolts of lightning shot out from where his hooves connected with the ground and struck all six griffons in the centre of their bodies. The birds spasmed and collapsed to the ground. Thunder sighed and trotted over to Crimson's unmoving body. Strange, slimy tendrils of magic emerged from the hoarfrost that quickly covered the ground beneath her body and wrapped her into a cocoon of magical energy. He looked up at the rampaging dragon, now lost in a battle rage, and shook his head in disappointment. "Ah well, if nothing else, it'll provide good cover for me. Time to go."

--=--

"I'm fine!" Joachim said, pushing his knights away from him once they had landed outside the limits of the tent city. He turned and looked at the quickly growing plume of smoke arising from the tournament arena at its heart and gritted his teeth. "Go back."

"What?" Godfrey asked.

"Get Handy out of there," he ordered. The knights nodded before taking to the air with their comrades and flying back to the arena.

"Why are you sending your retinue away?" Goldtooth asked, keeping his daughter close to him under his wing. Joachim spared him a glance. "It’s just one knight, and he's not even a griffon."

"That one knight saved my life and my kingdom." Joachim turned, levelling a claw at the king. He was about to open his beak in response before a warning glare from the younger king cut him off. "I am not just going to leave him to die. Now, mobilize the guard of Ironcrest."

"You dare presume—"

"Look at that!" Joachim shouted, pointing at the festival, the panicking crowds, and collapsing tents as confused and scared ponies and griffons stampeded. "Griffons are going to die if you don't get that under control!" Goldtooth rotated his jaw. Johan could tell he wanted to argue but saw reason beginning to prevail in his eyes.

"Fine," Goldtooth agreed before barking orders to several of his own knights, some flying off to Ironcrest and others to the festival. Goldtooth took off to Ironcrest as well. "Come along, Karlina," he said, taking flight. The princess made to follow but hesitated for a moment, looking out of the corner of her eye at Johan before taking flight herself.

Joachim was then left alone with only two Firthengarian guards to keep him safe as his knights went back to save his friend. He wanted to go himself, but the thoughts of Handy berating him for the Canterlot fiasco still ran through his mind. He was the king and the last of his line. Handy would not thank him for getting himself killed.

Still...

"Come on!" he ordered the guards before taking flight. The soldiers, confused at their charge's sudden movement, could only follow suit as he flew towards the tent city.

--=--

Stellar cringed from her position on the arena floor. She remembered what that had felt like. She had been supercharged on the human's blood at the time when she had gotten hit by one such bolt, and it had knocked her right out. She did not envy the poor griffons. The sound of movement and heavy breathing behind her drew her attention, and her ears flicked to listen closely.

"Hey!" she said, unable to turn around to get a better look. "Is that you, human? You alive?"

"Fuck... off."

"I would love to," she growled at him. "Kind of tied up at the moment. Listen, we're in trouble here."

"I noticed..."

"So if you could, I don't know, maybe do something?" she hissed in desperation. The dragon was still spouting gouts of fire, preventing crossbow griffons from getting a good line of sight before another stream of fire was sent their way. A good portion of the stands were now ablaze along with several towers. The human groaned in pain.

"I can barely feel my legs… grrugh... fuck this hurts. What the fuck do you think I can do!? And who the hell is that?" Handy growled out in response. Stellar looked over at the white-blue coated stallion.

"No idea," she said

"He's using old magic..."

"What?"

"Nothing— NNnuurrg!"

"What? What’s wrong?"

"Woman, I almost had my spine chopped in half, and I am bleeding like a gutted pig. What do you think is wrong with me!?" He breathed heavily and looked up at the sky, which was quickly becoming blocked by black smoke. There were griffons everywhere. He didn't spot Gethrenian colours, which meant his comrades had enough sense to get Joachim out of the field of fire this time. That was nice.

The rampaging inferno that was quickly growing about the place, however, was not. A horned form was sent flying through the air, over the flames, and landed on the ground about five feet from where Handy lay. Whirlwind struggled back to his hooves, barely managing to stand. After a fall like that, Handy was surprised the fragile-looking deer was still alive. His vision started to fade, his breath came in ragged bursts, and he soon became a lot more concerned with the fact that he wasn't going to be alive much longer. "Bluh... blood...."

Stellar's ears flicked at his words, her eyes not leaving the fire that was quickly spreading towards them. If they didn't burn alive, they were going to die from the smoke and heat. "What?" she shouted. The sounds of battle could still be heard, but the wall of fire blocked the dragon from her sight. The stallion had also disappeared.

"I need... blood..." he repeated. Stellar ground her teeth together and tried to push upwards. The rock held her firmly in place, and her chest exploded in pain at her movements. An idea came to her, one that might save their flanks... if it didn't kill her first that was.

"Bite me," she said. The human didn't respond immediately but just turned to look at her. After a few seconds, she sighed explosively. "Look, just do it, or we'll both die here!"

"Really? Because I count three of us!" the jovial voice of the stag coughed.

"Who's there?" Stellar shouted, frustrated that her stony prison prevented her from seeing behind her.

"I'm here!" Whirlwind said in response, grinning through a dirtied and bloodied snout, singed fur, and what looked to be a broken point on his left antler.

"How can... you still be smiling?" Handy asked.

"Well, frowning certainly never gets anything done!" he said happily before doing just that, frowning when he saw Handy and the distressing amount of blood pooling beneath him. "Oh..."

"Yeah... oh..."

"Are you—?"

"Nnnope..."

"... are you gonna—?"

"Yyyyep..."

A crashing noise resounded as the stands collapsed in on themselves, filling up the hole the mysterious, gaudy stallion had blown wide open with wood and metal, blocking their one way out of the ring of fire via the underside of the arena.

"Oh, that’s just bucking great!" Stellar shouted. Handy coughed. "Well!?"

"Well what!?" Handy growled back.

"Are you going to take my offer or just die there like a useless bucking animal!? Or maybe your deer friend there could lift all three of us out of here?"

"Just so you know.... I kinda can't lift both of you," Whirlwind added helpfully, blissfully unaware of the gravity of what the pony and the human were bickering about. Handy gave him the unamused look only a dying man could give. He could feel his strength leave him but still struggled against giving in. Mind you, it was not that he didn't want to drain the mare of her life's blood. In fact, that had a lot of appeal to him, doubly so since it had nearly been a full week since he had fed, and having the blood of a sapient being once again... well, that should have made the decision a no-brainer. What was holding him back was a niggling doubt at the back of his mind that he couldn't quite pin down. Eventually, reason and ravenous hunger prevailed against caution, and he raised his hand, gesturing to Whirlwind.

"Help me up. I need to get over to her," he said. Stellar flinched.

"Why?" the stag asked, tilting his head and allowing Handy to place his arm around his neck before grabbing onto his antler with his other arm. He felt himself being lifted as the stag practically dragged the human over to the pony.

"She has... something I need." Handy practically collapsed on the ground next to Stellar. The pony looked at him with her bright, green eyes as he pushed himself to his elbows. Whirlwind looked up and turned. He seemed to be trying to spot something. "Just so you know," Handy began, his voice just low enough so the thestral could hear, "this changes nothing." Stellar looked away.

"Just do it. We'll worry about that when we aren't about to die by dragon fire," she said resolutely. Handy glared at her for a long moment before he placed his hand on her withers as he pulled himself closer. She flinched under his touch, then steeled herself. The position and angle was awkward, but they made do. He lowered himself onto the back of her neck, pushing her medium length black mane out of the way as he searched for her artery with his fangs, gently scraping the flesh and causing her to give an involuntary shiver, pausing only when he was sure he found his mark. He plunged down, piercing her flesh and drinking greedily. She gasped sharply at the pain as her body seized up involuntarily before... slowly relaxing, her eyes drooping ever so slightly as a strange sensation overcame her and clouded her mind.

The pain and aches of her body were forgotten as he fed on her warm, rich blood, the taste of rosemary and thyme mixing in with the familiar taste of thestral blood, that smoky, whiskey-like flavour, the bright sensation that filled his mind, and also the scent of... lilacs? That was different. Perhaps everyone had their own unique flavour to go along with the species the blood tasted of? He didn't know, for this wasn't the time to be thinking about it. He just stayed there, feeling indescribable strength and vitality flood his body. A strange sensation tingled across his back over the wound the dragon had given him, and he could feel his legs once more.

He was caught up in his feeding, absentmindedly suckling at the neck wound before a voice snapped his attention back to reality. "Mhuwhat?" he mouthed, withdrawing from the barely conscious pony's neck. He looked up and saw the shocked face of Whirlwind staring back at him. His fur was just that bit paler as colour drained from his face in the impossible fashion of the creatures of this world. Handy got to his knees, and Whirlwind took a step back. "Oh, get over it, Whirlwind," Handy said, feeling strength in his extremities and an incredible urge to use it. The deer looked at the thestral.

"What did you do?"

"What she wanted me to do," he said simply. The pony whimpered at his feet.

"And that was...?"

"Guess," Handy said, not in a mood to explain to the stag that yes, the human was in fact a blood sucking vampire just like the rumours said. He walked past the troubled stag, revelling in the use of his legs. He picked up his fallen hammer and helmet, placing it over his head.

"Hey!" Whirlwind said, drawing his attention. "Help me here; you can't just leave her trapped like this." Handy considered the prone thestral for a moment and the stag's assertion that he couldn’t do what he certainly very well could do. What he may have wanted to do, even. He traipsed over to the pony and kicked the stone bars holding her down with his leg, the vampiric strength causing the stone to give way easily. Stellar groaned.

"You said you can't carry both of us right?" Handy asked. "You can carry her though, right?"

"Yeah, I could," Whirlwind said, eyeing the human cautiously now. The human picked up the limp body of the pony and placed her across the stag's back before turning away and searching along the walls, finding a section of the stands that wasn’t burning down or collapsed yet, and proceeded to break down the wall with impossible speed and strength, his hammer breaking through the weakened wood relentlessly. After breaking through, he stepped through the now brightly lit underside of the arena. Dark orange flames danced at the edges of his vision, and he felt an incredible, almost animalistic fear threaten to overcome him before he crushed it, focusing on the objective at hand. The underside was filled with smoke blocking all possible clear vision, so he had to carefully pick his way over the debris below, kicking it out of the way. He felt the smog fill his lungs but found himself not bothered by it. He broke through the other side of the arena and shouted back.

"Alright, come on through here. I've cleared the way!" he shouted. A few moments later, the deer came galloping through the smoke and out the far side of the arena, coughing and spluttering. But safe. "Come find me once this is over," Handy said. "We need to find that pony with the weird magic," he said as he turned back into the arena.

"Where are you going?" Whirlwind coughed. Handy turned away, a grim smile playing beneath his silver helm as the light drizzle of rain continued to fall over the ruins of the arena.

"Earning one of my names," Handy said simply before disappearing into the smoke. "I'm going to kill a dragon."

Chapter 27 - Fire and Water

Ferix opened his jaw and let loose another torrent of flame, the yellow pegasus galloping out of the way as the surge followed after her. He was laughing, mostly at how all this was almost too easy. The sphinx had already fled, helped out of the arena by an orange mare who had lifted the injured creature out. The deer he had already thrown to the flames. Now all that was left was this yellow pegasus with her singed wing with no help from the griffons above. The sky was choked with smoke. A few crossbow bolts pierced the roiling darkness, impacting the ground around the dragon. One even glanced off of his breastplate, but otherwise none hit their mark, and none of the spear griffons dared to dive in to attack, his occasional random blasts of fire keeping them at bay. Little miss Masquerade down there was on her lonesome, and he was just about done backing her into a corner.

Masquerade stopped when she came to a wall of fire that met the arena wall, her speed doing her little good as the dragon closed in on her. She turned and stomped at the ground in defiance, snorting. Ferix was amused as he stomped towards her, towering over the pony. His head wreathed in smoke and flame, he looked nothing short of demonic. She spread her one good wing wide, the other singed and injured stayed by her side, its wingblade missing.

The dragon was wounded in several places. Between the efforts of herself, Desias, and Whirlwind the stag, they had managed to achieve an appreciable level of bloody tears through the young dragon’s scaly hide. However, it was nowhere near enough to slow the beast down even as the blood trickled down his sides and across his face and neck. She looked for a way to get out of this, to dodge between his legs perhaps. She was much much faster than him; even without her wings, surely she could…

“Do it,” the gravelly voice of the dragon taunted. She looked up to see the amusement in his eyes as he followed where she was looking. “Make it interesting and try it. I want to see how far you get before I pluck those gems from your eyes for a snack.” She took a step back at that. The imagery that summoned in her mind was not pretty.

She spread her hooves wide, thinking. What else could she do now? She couldn’t get the height or momentum to attack him anywhere where it might do some good. The dragon just stood there and watched her before he decided to move. In a flurry of movement, he swung his axe around, and she had the decision made for her. She galloped and extended her wings, wincing at the pain but pushing through it and gliding across the ground at an impossible speed, the air tearing at the fur of her eyelids as she dashed through the air. She felt the flesh-searing heat of the fire the dragon spewed on her, anticipating her movements. She barely passed through his feet before being cooked and crashed on the ground, rolling across the dirt before correcting her momentum and skidding to her hooves. Her tail was ruined and scorched, but she was alive.

The dragon roared in laughter and turned around to face her, his monstrous wings spreading wide, unaffected by the fire that roared around them both. Her breathing was laboured — it was getting hard, and she was feeling drowsy from the smoke and fumes and was clearly not going to be lasting much longer. The dragon stalked forward and opened its jaws wide before—

Ferix suddenly lurched to the side and stumbled, roaring in fury as he flapped his wings to stabilize himself before he tripped over himself. A line of blood splattered across the ground in front of the pony, and she looked up in confusion as a silver warhammer fell to the ground. The dragon turned and roared.

“Where I come from,” a voice spoke, loud and confident. Although... As Masquerade flicked her ears, she could just detect something behind that bravado: a hint of nervousness, “it is traditional in stories for the dragons to be killed with a sword, or perhaps a lance.” Ferix turned to the source of the voice, holding his jaw were several of his fangs were knocked loose and a trickle of blood flowed from his mouth. There was a figure seated on the stands, fidgeting in the darkness of the smoke.

Handy sat there, his shield arm crossing his lap as he worked on something behind it that neither the pony nor the dragon could see. You see, there was a lot for him to be nervous about the situation. Normally he could control himself, but when one tries to suppress a supernaturally motivated yet very rational and instinctive fear of burning to death at the slightest spark, it tended to be a mite bit harder. Therefore, he mitigated it by cannibalising the flags and banners of the arena that had not yet succumbed to the flames, wrapping them around his arm and stuffing them in between the straps of his shield to cover the exposed flesh of his left forearm, as well as trying to cover the gap in his back armour so kindly gifted to him by Ferix.

“Normally I cons—" He didn't get the chance to finish that sentence before being forced to move. It was odd, the effects of thestral blood. It certainly couldn't compare to the level of detail and information he could process under the influence of unicorn blood, but it did allow him to perceive the world in tremendous detail down to the individual scales of the dragon twenty feet away from him. So when Ferix decided to rudely interrupt him by unleashing his full draconic fury upon him, Handy had front row tickets to witnessing the eruption of draconic fire as if the world was moving in slow motion. It possessed a certain infernal beauty, a slowly expanding flower of death racing towards him amidst the dancing flames of the arena which watched on like revellers as the individual streams of smoke billowed and bent above, embers drifting to earth all around them like gentle yet deadly snowfall. Had the circumstances been different, he would have liked nothing more than to take a minute to appreciate the terrible, destructive beauty of it all. As it was, an irresistible feeling welled up inside of him, threatening to seize his heart as his body refused to let him remain where he was.

He was now standing at an entirely different part of the arena, breathing heavily. He blinked rapidly a few times, trying to understand what had just happened. Ferix was facing away from him towards a section of the stand he had just reduced to a bonfire. The pony behind him was crouching, covering her ears. What just happened? What had he done? He didn't remember getting up and running.

"Did you hear him squeal?" Ferix bellowed in triumph, turning back to the pony. "I didn't think anything could scream that loudly!"

Scream? Had he screamed? He was shivering, the same strange feeling gripping his heart, a terrible animalistic fear threatening to consume him. 'That's what happened,' he thought to himself. 'Like that night with the match… that strangled cry I gave when I got burned.' That rationalization helped, if only a bit, as he got a hold of himself. Ferix was still boasting but stopped in his rambling, looking sideways towards Handy's new direction. Handy's mind reeled as the dragon slowly turned to face him once more, clearly unamused. "As I was saying," his mouth ran before his mind caught up with it as so often had happened before. He slowly, cautiously descended the tiered seats of the stand, quickly stepping to the side as one panel gave way under his weight. “Normally I consider myself a traditionalist, but what the hell? I like being creative when it comes to dragon slaying." He jumped into the arena and began walking towards his fallen hammer, all too keenly aware of the nearby flames Ferix had kindly spat everywhere like a diarrhoea-stricken flamethrower.

"How did you get over there so fast?" he accused.

"Fuck you, that's how," the human replied. Ferix immediately replied by striding forward and turning, lashing his long tail out, seeking to strike the human in the torso. Handy saw it coming and simply bent over at the waist as the tail flew over him and returned to his full height in one fluid motion, an action that would have been greatly difficult without his high given his heavy armour, never mind the speed at which he did it. Ferix completed his turn and gawped, surprised that the human was still standing right where he had been. There was a silvery blur and a sickening crunch and Ferix was on his knees, gripping his neck, hacking and wheezing, trying to breathe. With the high he was running on right now, the punch Handy threw at his throat may as well have been a hammer blow. He kicked the dragon's axe away, sending it spinning across the arena floor and into a pile of burning debris.

There was an alarming sound of groaning wood and loud cracks coming from somewhere beyond the cloud of smoke above them. He could also feel the acrid smog invading his lungs. A small rational part of his mind was concerned about him ingesting tiny embers that way which did nothing to ease the animalistic fear that threatened to consume him utterly. He had to calm himself by rationalizing that the embers would be caught in the fabric of his helm visor, a logical defence that was thinner than the enchanted fabric itself but seemed to do the trick in keeping his fear of fire under control. He didn't notice that he was having no trouble breathing at all otherwise.

The same could not be said for Masquerade, who was barely maintaining consciousness through exhaustion and the fumes. She glared at the human with her emerald eyes as he stopped to pick up his hammer. For his part, he spared her a second glance, surprised she was, in fact, still here. "Thou shouldst probably leave. I'll handle Sparky over here."

"Wh-What?" she coughed out.

"Leave, thou art injured."

"Says the human who was dying on the ground not ten minutes ago!"

"I got better."

"How!? And since when could you move that fast!?"

"That would be telling, Masquerade. I have my ways," Handy said, looking around, the light of the fire casting his silver armour in contrasting orange and dark grey hues. He spotted one of the arena entries for participants that had, miraculously, not been set ablaze. "There, thou willst be able to leave that way. I shall cover thee here."

"I'm not going to be running from a fight!" she protested, stamping her hooves down, her good wing fluttering in agitation. Handy looked at the recovering dragon as it got back to its feet as he considered the incredibly unfair advantage he held over the beast.

"This is not a fight," Handy assured her. "It's an execution." There was a tremendous crack, and they both looked up to see the dark clouds of smoke above them boil and warp as something tremendous fell from above. Dark orange flames could be spotted, illuminating the dark smog as whatever it was came closer at an alarming speed.

"Move!" he heard the mare cry. He didn't need to be told twice, disappearing from the impending impact sight in a blur of silvery metal as the burning wreckage of a spectator tower collapsed onto the arena. The construction practically exploded into shreds of wood and cloth as it fell across the stands and hit the center of the arena, the smouldering ruins bursting into an inferno as it hit the ground and provided new fuel to the flames below. Masquerade was now in a seriously bad state, the exertion costing her severely. Handy rolled his eyes at her before gesturing once more to the gate with his hammer.

"Leave! Thou canst barely stand!"

"I can... still figh—" she began, getting back to her hooves once more. Handy just shook his head.

"Impossible bloody pony! Fine, stay here and die then. Not as if—" He was cut off as Ferix roared and a jet of flame rushed out to meet him, consuming the very air of the spot he had stood in not a moment before he dodged the flame, barrelling into the wreckage of the tower behind him. The words he was going to say was utterly lost as his very brain felt electrified in his hurry to get out of the way of the flames. He was now cut off from the pony by another wall of flames. There were all too many of those now for the vampire's comfort, with only a few paths remaining between him and the dragon on the arena floor that were not taken up by the deadly fire. "Alright. I've had just about enough of you," he said, as much to himself as to Ferix. The dragon just glared at Handy in indignant rage, its claws clenching and unclenching as he brought himself to his full height, towering over the human by a good two feet, his wings fully extended, giving the dragon a truly immense appearance.

He had fought larger things before, true. He had shared a room with much more powerful beings, keenly aware of the raw magical power that practically radiated from the pony princess all those months ago. However, there was something truly primal about standing before someone that much bigger and taller than you. He knew that if the dragon in Lepidopolis was anything to go by, Ferix would one day be the size of a football pitch. Now, as the young drake stood on its hind legs in mockery of bipeds and looked down at the human, Handy couldn't help but feel a slight sense of trepidation that was divorced from the more reasonable, potent, and vital fear he had regarding the fact he was fighting a living flame thrower when his skin was practically dried papyrus.

Funny how your mind prioritizes things, isn't it?

"You'll pay for that, human," Ferix growled, stalking closer to him. His approach was more cautious now as he reached to his side and pulled his other axe from an iron hoop in his belt. Handy didn't move, flexing his fingers around the haft of his hammer.

'That’s it. Come closer. No more fire breath. There's a good gecko...' Handy thought to himself. This fight should have been over by now, but with how the fire was everywhere, how his skin crawled, how his nerves practically screamed at him in unreasoning fear, a need to get away from the fire, he felt compelled to be more careful than usual. 'What the hell is wrong with me? I was never like this around fire until I got burned that night. Psychology shouldn't feel this... physical.'

"Where's your big words now?" Ferix taunted. "You were talking up a storm a few days ago." Handy remained silent, his armoured form still and unflinching as the dragon snorted. "I was paid a handsome price to cause you trouble, more if you were still alive by the end of it all, but obviously cutting your spine wasn't an obvious enough sign you should stay down!" The dragon took another clawed step further. The human flinched and he smiled a toothy grin. "Having second thoughts, human? Afraid? You should be; I am going to cook you in that armour, then have myself a nice dinner with your flesh while I take your head as a trophy!"

Handy wasn't paying attention. His thoughts had been derailed as the paranoid fear of fire slowly began overtaking his conscious mind. Colours swirled at the edges of his vision in an unhealthy sign of stress as he battled against himself, trying to impose his will on his unreasoning mind. Unpleasant images were brought to mind: a sheet of paper veritably eaten away microscopic bite by bite by tiny, fiery bugs, millions of them, the paper eaten away in an instant. The paper became flesh, the bugs became ravenous and demonic in appearance, and his skin was torn apart, cracking like wood before being devoured, his muscles and blood vessels coming next with his vital essence drifting away on the air, not entirely unlike the wax inside of a lava lamp before the tiny droplets exploded with a sound like shattering glass. More insects came out of the blood which continued devouring him alive, and he could do nought but silently scream as he watched himself immolate and turn to a pillar of white ash.

He shook himself back to reality with a start and realized he was now sweating coldly and shaking rather violently. Ferix was almost upon him now, laughing at the state the human was in. His wings beat and he took to the air, hovering over the human. "Burn," he said simply and opened his jaw wide.

Fear could be a funny thing. It could handicap you and freeze you in place, endangering you rather than motivating you to get to safety. Alternatively, and equally counterintuitively, it could conspire with adrenaline and push one towards the source of the danger to confront it before it overcame them. Ordinarily, that wouldn't be possible for Handy, but with a blood-high, the human could jump his own height and then some. Therefore, one moment Ferix was looking down at the silver human below him, and in the next, that human was hurtling towards him. He had just enough time to widen his eyes in surprise before his head was sent spinning, seeing nothing but stars in his eyes as the burning ruin of the arena spun in his vision as he fell bodily to the ground, landing in flaming wreckage.

Handy landed on the ground hard, breathing heavily, the head of his hammer stained with blood. He stumbled back to his feet, regaining his balance and turning to face the dragon. Ferix roared in frustration as he clambered out of the fire, kicking and lashing with his tail, sending flaming wood flying in various directions. He glared at the human as he got up, his face a bloody ruin and his lower jaw slack from where Handy had broken it. The dragon let out a strangled noise, halfway between a roar and a yelp of pain as he charged at the human with its axe. Handy blocked his blow with his shield, the axe glancing off of it and the human easily resisting its force. He swung again, and Handy parried it with a lazy, downward swing of his hammer, sending the large axe off course as he jabbed with his shield in his other arm, his vampiric strength lending the blow tremendous force, denting the dragon's cuirass and forcing it back a step.

'Focus. Focus on the fighting. Ignore the fire. Pretend it’s not there. Pretend it’s something else. Acid. Fountains of acid. That's not nearly as bad. Bad. But it’s not fire and that’s really all that matters. Yes, acid is nice. I like acid; I can deal with acid. Acid is not fire.' And so Handy's thoughts went as he continued entertaining this dragon's delusions of participating in a fight it could win just long enough until he could force it to an area of the arena floor that wasn't fifty percent fir— 'Acid! Acid fountains!' Fifty percent acid fountains so Handy's addled mind could better quash his hyperactive phobia and focus at the task at hand. Speaking of...

"ARRRGH!" Ferix screamed as Handy ducked under an axe swing and hooked his hammer around the knee of Ferix and tugged, sending the dragon off balance. He managed to keep from falling by beating his wings and lifting part way off the ground. Handy did not relent. Once both his feet were on the ground again, he swung. There was a horrific, wet-sounding crack, and Ferix's right knee was now pointing in the wrong direction. He fell and Handy brought his hammer down on his axe claw, crushing his claws and breaking the haft of his weapon. The smell of the dragon's blood finally reached his nose now as black droplets of rain pierced the smog above them, streaking down the human's silver armour in dark streaks. The griffons above were evidently moving storm clouds in to put out the fire. Ferix was openly yelling in pain now, gripping his ruined claw as he rolled on the ground. It was a rather pathetic sight, a dragon nearly in tears.

Handy felt no pity, however, as anger slowly reclaimed its rightful place as his fear finally died down. "Where's your big words now?" he asked in mocking repetition of the dragon's own question. A thought came to him, eyeing the splattering of draconic blood on the dirt beneath them and the dragon's own wounds. 'No one can see me here, he's helpless, and he's a dead man anyway after all this.' He licked his lips, the fear forgotten and anger down to a low simmer as an instinct bellowed within him, urging him to indulge it. 'Maybe... just a pint...' He reached up to his helmet. Just as his palm covered the slit of his helm, Ferix acted, turning and spewing a jet of flame that forced Handy's vampiric instincts into action as he fled the flames, covering a dozen feet of distance in an instant as a wailing screech pierced the air. He blinked, breathing heavily as the jet of flame missed him. He knew he was making that noise, but he wasn't doing it consciously. There was something within him that came out and took over, and this was the second time it had happened within the past half hour. The implications of what he truly was left him feeling uneasy, and he wondered what the true nature of the beast he had within him was... and what would happen if he didn't keep it under lock and key like he had been doing.

He didn't have too long to ponder that line of thought, for Ferix was moving. The dragon turned and held himself off of the ground with his good arm and good leg. His wings flared and then thrust downwards, sending the dragon into the air as he flew away on powerful wingbeats, his injured jaw opening and fire bursts flaming outward through the canopy of black smoke as he disappeared behind it. "Oh no you don't," Handy said under his breath. Now recovered and more than a little pissed, he ran. He lunged upwards and landed in the stands, the wood cracking and splintering beneath him as he continued sprinting up the stands, leaping and bounding up the tiered seats until he reached the top, vaguely in the direction where Ferix was flying. Then he leaped.

--=--

Thomin Yellowstone was not having a good day.

Having spent most of it running around the festival, breaking up some drunken brawls, and chasing down one shady shyster hawking illegal goods after another, now he had to contend with an emergency at the arena because a dragon had gone berserk and started spouting fire everywhere.

Also, there was something about a pony shooting lightning, but he didn't know what that was about. He was a bit too concerned with the raging inferno below him and the gigantic pillar of smoke emerging from what was left of the arena and the burning tents and spectating towers around it. What was worse was that there were still griffons down there somewhere, mostly guards who got the stuffing knocked out of them and couldn't be rescued before the dragon started spouting more fire. He fumbled with his crossbow as the rain beat down, the weather teams pulling muscles trying to get more and more storm clouds into place to help fight the blaze. The dragon was still down there. They had stopped firing bolts down a while ago, so it was impossible to tell where exactly he was down there. Therefore, they had elected to wait until he moved as more and more griffons converged. Word was that the Ironcrest guard was being mobilized to help get the panicking crowds under control. They'd need the extra wingpower.

The Gethrenians had arrived not long ago. One of them was arguing with the captain about why there hadn't been an assault yet. Thomin was glad he wasn't involved in that argument. He was a crossbow griffon - his place was standing back and taking pot shots, allowing the spear griffons to go to the ground and fight the dragon. He was content to stay right where he was, where he was safe.

Of course it was right around the time he saw several fireballs erupted from the smoke cover, and he soon found himself hurriedly flying out of the way as the formation he was a part of completely scattered in the wake of the fiery assault. Thomin's eyes went wide, and he almost dropped his crossbow as he dived. The dragon shot out from the cloud of smoke like an arrow loosed from a bow and blew past them. He hurriedly reached to the quiver of bolts by his side when the next big surprise emerged from the smoke.

Thomin tried to comprehend what he was seeing as what appeared to be a suit of armour was flying towards him. Five fingers gripped the belt he wore across his torso as a pair of feet planted on his chest, and all of a sudden the creature placed its full weight on him. Time seemed to slow down, his wings failing to keep balance in the air at the sudden shift in weight. "Sorry, our fella," the human said as he pulled himself closer, knees bent as it sprung from the griffon, kicking away and launching itself upwards after the dragon. Thomin was sent flying downwards after the human effectively used him as a gryphonic springboard.

He regained control of his wings just in time to dramatically slow his descent, but it was not enough before he crashed through a tent ceiling and landed in a large wash basin. He spluttered and flailed as he gripped the wooden side and pulled himself up and stared, cross-eyed, at what appeared to be a large sock suited for a griffon's paw across his beak. Looking around, the tent was criss-crossed with lines with various articles of clothing hung to dry on them. The washbasin he was currently residing in was filled with more clothes, and he groaned at what the dirty water was going to do to his crossbow.

Looking around, he saw a haggard old griffon with a patch over one eye blink at him in surprise, "Well now..." the old lady smiled gently. What looked to be a ragged blanket that she clearly had been intending to wash when he had unceremoniously dropped in for a visit and a bath was in her claws. "And here I was, wondering to the All-Maker what happened to my life and wishing that some young, strapping griffon would come and whisk me away from this dreariness, and lo and behold..." She chuckled good-naturedly, completely oblivious to the sounds of shouting soldier griffons above and the audible inferno going on nearby. "My prayers have been answered!"

Moving swiftly along, Thomin chose to ignore that and asked the obvious question as he pulled himself from the wooden tub. Well, apart from what the claw had kicked him out of the air in the first place. "Ma'am, what are you still doing here?"

"Cleaning," she huffed.

"You do realise there's an emergency, right?"

"When you are my age, dearie, there is always an emergency. It’s nothing to moult over."

"Ma'am, there is a mad dragon on the loose and a huge fire going on nearby. Why haven't you left yet?" He groaned audibly. Of course there would be a few civilians still left near the commotion. Why wouldn't there be? It would simply be too convenient otherwise.

"Because I am not finished!" she said simply, as if it was the most ordinary thing in the world.

"Your life isn't worth some clothes. I am afraid I am going to have to— argh!" Thomin untangled his wings from a bundle of clotheslines, eliciting a tut from the old griffon. "Look, you have to leave. It’s not safe here!"

"Young griffon, I'll have you know that I never stopped work for the blizzard of seventy-eight, and I am not going to stop for some overzealous drake having a temper tantrum because somegriffon took his lollypop," she persisted. Thomin rolled his eyes. He didn't have time for this. He walked out of the tent and looked up, noting that he probably should get back to…

The sight of the dragon practically spasming wildly in the air, spewing jets of flame every-which way, and the cloud of griffons gathering around them to hold them at bay.

'Or you know... I could just escort this civilian out and leave the dragon to everygriffon else. They got this covered… probably.' "Come with me, ma'am," he said, turning to the elderly griffon and lifting her out by her foreleg. "I can't leave you here."

"But what about—!"

"I am sure griffons will weep for their missing socks, ma'am."

"Well, so long as I get to be in the company of a handsome lad such as yourself, I suppose I can forgive you~" she cooed at him, and he suppressed a groan. Later, it would transpire that the griffon's employer would indeed complain about the missing clothes, which it turned out belonged to a minor noble family. The city guard was subsequently charged for their loss, having been deliberately abandoned by a guard who had interrupted a servant's duties, thereby being directly responsible for their loss. What was worse, he was personally saddled with the cost as well as a grilling as to exactly what he had been doing on the ground when he was supposed to be in the air fighting the dragon.

Thomin Yellowstone had a bad day.

--=--

Ferix, meanwhile, had someone who wouldn't get off his back.

"GET OFF OF ME!" he roared, his voice slightly slurred as his tongue lolled over his broken jaw. He really shouldn't be shouting with that injury. Handy didn't reply, simply clinging for dear life onto the bountiful spines of the dragon's back which conveniently poked out through the back of its cuirass, having made a desperate lunge for the dragon after, regrettably, using some random griffon as a stepping stone to reach. There was nothing quite like the exhilarating rush one got when one slowly realized what he was doing was balls out insane and that he could end up killing himself because he misjudged a jump. However, it turned out that thestral blood made Handy take stupid risks. It worked, but that didn’t mean he should encourage himself.

Ferix twisted and turned, spewing fire, lashing his tail, and flapping his wings, trying to dislodge the human, whose vampiric strength only ensured he gripped all the tighter. It did mean he couldn't bring his hammer to bear. "You're not getting away from me!" Handy roared over the rush of the wind and the dragon's shouting. He just needed to get a little leverage and... "You're going to fucking pay for what you did!" He grabbed his wing and yanked on it, causing the dragon to flail as he tried desperately to stay in the air, failing and began falling to the earth. "There's nothing you can do!" he shouted, not relenting his grip on the wing. "You're going down and I'm going to—"

With a snarl, Ferix's free wing snapped shut, and he grabbed his captive wing with his free claw, pulling it closed over him, robbing them of all their flight as he turned, his back facing the ground as the pair began plummeting to the earth. Handy turned his head, just spotting out the side of his helmet slit the ground rushing up to embrace them both with its cold, unfeeling, hateful, and unyielding surface. With him as first in line for huggles from Mother Earth. "…Oh."

There was little that compared to the feeling of crashing into solid ground from a tremendous height at hurtling speeds and living long enough to regret the experience. The hardest knock Handy had yet suffered had been when the elemental had punched him through a train's roof and upper floor. Somehow, that wasn't anywhere near as bad as this. He was pretty sure large sections of his armour had deformed under the force, and he felt the need to lie there to recover as the dragon rolled off from on top of him. The dragon was coughing and spitting up blood — the fall had taken a lot out of him too. Handy was merely winded. Score a point for vampiric resilience. He pushed himself up from the mud and broken stone of the ground they had landed on, which looked to be some kind of patio of a more permanent wooden structure than all the tents surrounding them.

He grunted as he got to his feet. "Fuck it," he breathed, seeing his hammer lying some distance away and drawing the blade from his broken glaive. "Guess I'll do it the traditional way," he said, walking over to the crawling dragon. He kicked him in the side and pushed him onto his back. Ferix glared up at him and opened his snout as if to breathe fire again, but all that came up was a spurt of phlegm and blood. He tried slashing with his claw, but a casual swipe of the glaive blade knocked his arm away and elicited a cry of pain as he opened up a gash on the dragon's palm.

"You damn bastard," Ferix swore.

"Ohhh, language, what would your mother say?" Handy asked, feeling his anger boil and the red mist descend across his vision. The dragon lashed his tail, and Handy stood on it, clamping it to the ground and causing another shout of pain. "How much were you paid, by the way?"

"I'd have killed you for free!"

"How much were you paid?" Handy squeezed the tail harder. The dragon gritted its fangs and refused to let out another yelp of pain. "And by who? Who was that clown of a pony with the magic lightning?"

"What does it matter?"

"It matters to me," Handy said. Ferix tried to flex his wing, but Handy slashed down, cutting a gash through the thick, leathery membrane of the wing. Ferix certainly roared at that. "Who is he? Where is he going? Speak, damn it!" The dragon ceased his pained cries in favour of screwing its eyes shut for a time before opening them again and giving a hate-filled stare at Handy.

"No."

"A lot of loyalty for hired muscle..."

"I do not care. I just won't give you the satisfaction of knowing!"

"So you really have nothing more to say then, dragon?" Handy asked calmly, the blade at his side as the rain beat down all the harder, the crack of thunder in the distance as several bolts of lightning struck. Strange; they were green in colour. The dragon spat, the filth washing down the human's armour in the rain.

"Go to hell," Ferix growled.

"You first." Handy plunged the blade deep into Ferix's chest. The armour split open as the glaive bit deep, piercing the young dragon's scales. The force behind it was unnecessary, and the human felt the blade snap, leaving a piece stuck within Ferix's chest. He pulled it out suddenly as flames burst into life around the edges of the wound. He blinked in surprise at the tiny tongues of flame poking between the dragon's claws as Ferix grabbed at his chest, draconic blood flowing out of the wound. He was about to say something else but stopped and stared as his eyes met Ferix's and saw how the fierce pride and arrogance gave way to genuine fear and desperation. Eventually he stopped struggling, and his body lay still and unmoving in the downpour, the small flames in his chest dying under the onslaught of the heavens.

He wasn't sure how long he stood there, looking down at him. Thinking.

"Handy!" He didn't turn at the name, still looking at Ferix.

"What are you doing here, Joachim?" he asked as the griffon alighted, the clink of armour suggested guards in tow.

"Helping get griffons out. What's going on? Is that..."

"The dragon, yes. He won't be any trouble anymore," he said, turning and wiping the glaive clean in the ruin of a tent's cloth. He regarded the young king. "You should leave; there's still danger about."

"I couldn't just leave. I had to make sure you were okay. Did the others find you?" Joachim asked. He seemed relieved to see the human up and about, but he paused in mid-stride, seemingly perturbed by something.

"No," Handy replied, replacing his now broken glaive at his waist and picking up his hammer again, hooking it by his waist as he inspected his now thoroughly dented armour. He was not looking at the griffon.

"Are you... alright?" Joachim asked, noticing the strange posturing and fidgeting the human was doing with his gauntlets and shield. The human always had an odd body language, at once too fluid and yet too stiff, seemingly strange and otherworldly to creatures such as he who were used to more exaggerated expressions in all but the most reserved and disciplined of creatures, which Handy certainly was not. As a result, one would have to know him for a while to notice it, but there was something distinctly off about the way the human was acting. You know, the fact that he was moving with an afterimage aside.

"Yes, why?" Handy responded all too quickly. He looked up at the sky to find that none of the griffons from before were overhead. Where had they gone?

"It’s just that you seem off. How did you recover from the axe wound?" he asked. Handy merely looked at the griffon in silence, and Joachim's heart sank.

"Handy, you didn't..."

"I was dying, Joachim. And she offered," he protested. Joachim didn't say anything more on that. He was torn between his revulsion at what Handy had done and how grateful he felt that his friend hadn’t died. He shook his head and put it to the back of his mind. There would be a time and a place to discuss this, but it wasn't here.

"Fine, never mind then. Just—" He was interrupted by a tremendous echoing boom as the sky above the tent tops flashed green. The silhouettes of griffons briefly flashed on the clouds above. Well, that answered Handy's question of where the other griffons had gone. "What in blazes?"

"You should go, Joachim. Now."

"What?" the griffon asked, turning back, but all he saw was a blur of silver and a tunnel of disturbed rainfall in the human's wake as he ran off. The guards he had borrowed from Goldtooth gave startled cries after witnessing the human's sudden departure. He spared a glance at the corpse of the dragon on the ground for a moment, not really listening to the insistence of his accompanying guards that they should leave. It had been a dead drake walking anyway, for there was no way it was going to get out of the kingdom alive after what it had done here. If he knew the human, him killing the dragon had been a foregone conclusion. So why did Handy seem so weirded out when Joachim found him?

'No,' Joachim resolved to himself, taking flight. 'The last time I left Handy on his own when he was in trouble, he almost died and was kidnapped by changelings. I'm not going to fail him again.'

--=--

"Where ARE they?" the easy-sounding baritone of Thunder gave way to a frustrated groan. Another accursed mutter of something foul and spectral claws emerged into existence from the very air itself and attacked more of the griffons above him. A twang of a drawn crossbow being released was sounded, and another bolt or two hit his shield and disintegrated, turning to dust that washed over him and ruined his dapper clothing. "Chopper should be here by now. Where are his dogs?"

His eyes glowed whitish-green, and a strange mist of the same colour flowed from his tear ducts as he indulged in the old power. The storm clouds above reacted and began churning, eventually turning and spinning. Nearby griffons saw the movement and began putting distance between themselves and the emerging tempest. It was too late for some, who were zapped by one of over a dozen bolts of lightning that struck out, knocking the birds from the air. It wasn't enough to kill them, sadly. Thunder was holding back. If his erstwhile ally did not show up to allow him an easily covered escape, he'd need the majority of his power for a quicker but much dirtier getaway.

He grimaced as the rain continued to beat down on him. Such bother. Turning to face his captive, Crimson was still wrapped up nice and tightly in the ethereal cocoon, only her head and part of her mane visible as she lay unconscious, suspended in the air. Mistress would punish him for this mess, punish him more if he wasted so much old magic in such a blatant display of wyrmhole transportation, but if he made it there with her acolyte and the crown in tow, he'd live at least. Where the Tartarus was Chopper? He was supposed to provide the distraction.

Another griffon swooped down at him, this one heavily armoured and bearing purple insignias. Thunder tsked and shouted another abomination. Crawling designs beneath the fur of his face burned green, and he opened his muzzle wide, multiple blasts of aetheric light shooting out at impossible speeds. The griffon knight was knocked out of the sky, having caught several of the blasts directly, and crashed hard on the ground, skidding and coming to a halt when it crashed into a tent. This was beginning to be troublesome. Thunder raised his right hoof, and the appendage glowed with sorcerous light along spiralling patterns as he muttered an incantation. The hoof glided over the ground beneath him, barely touching the mud with its hoof and leaving ghostly afterimages with its movements as it carved an intricate ward in the ground no larger than the circumference of a barrel and littered it with strange runes. The wind immediately picked up and focused around him and the symbol, creating a vortex and bringing the storm clouds themselves down on his location, funnelling towards the ground with raw magical power and forcing the griffons to speed away lest they be drawn into the vortex as well.

The clouds flowed and crashed against Thunder's body, washing over him and spreading throughout the festival grounds. All the while, the rain did not stop. Droplets of errant water sprayed him and the grounds, soaking tents and slowly flooding the place as Thunder literally brought the sky down on everypony's heads. The thick cumulous would provide him the cover he needed to get away. His sorcerous sight pierced the thick clouds as he made his way, distancing himself from the sounds of the griffons searching for him. It was a tad excessive, but it would hide him from the reinforcements that were doubtlessly heading his way. Killing them all would just waste more power.

He stalked among the tents, his hooves splashing down in the puddles as the damp clouds around continued spilling their contents. Occasionally, he came across some random griffon or pony that was utterly lost and confused. Once or twice he came upon a soldier searching fruitlessly for him, some using their wings to try to disperse the clouds, a process that would take hours after what he did to them. A few more brief words,t he air crystallising as he exhaled and ghostly apparitions of Thunder’s form materialised within the clouds, galloping and creating non-sounds and false lights that attracted the attention of the guards as they took off after the false Thunders. He continued his journey, trotting along at a steady pace through ruined tents, overturned stalls, and the innumerable detritus of a festival gone to ruin. This situation was salvageable at least. Chopper or no Chopper, he'd make it back with the crown and the acolyte to assuage the mistress' wrath and maybe get a little extra on the side if she was feeling generous.

"Halt, ne'er do well!"

Of course it couldn't be that easy.

He raised the wards of his shield. What was invisible in the open air shone in the damp clouds. A thin, translucent, colourless shell that was nonetheless visible surrounded the stallion. He turned, searching for the source of the voice. How did—?

He just barely got out of the way as over a dozen sharp, bladed horns pierced his shield to his right, the magical aegis shattering under their assault. The stag stood proudly before the stallion, who was sent to his haunches, looking up at Whirlwind, the patterns of his antlers glowing brightly in the mist. Thunder's eyes went wide. Deer were not supposed to be able to do magic outside of their forests. The stag opened his mouth to say something. Thunder immediately let out a yell, and the earth itself shifted beneath them. The mud and water shifted and shot upwards like a jet, sending Whirlwind flying backwards ten feet. 'Accursed deer!' Thunder was growing increasingly impatient. He would not be denied his prize by an upstart fawn.

"I don't know how you found me, but I'm going to be rid of you," he swore, his voice trembling as he struggled to retain his composure. Whirlwind struggled to get to his hooves in the slippery mud. "Now die!" Thunder reared, magic coalescing in his forehooves which he swung in Whirlwind's direction, sending fiery balls of raw energy at the stag. Whirlwind braced himself, but the attack was halted. The magic dissipated a foot away from the stag as two thin arcane bolts or red magic intercepted them, causing the magic to explode into shards of fire that dissipated in the damp clouds around them.

"Monsieur, I am afraid I cannot let you do that." The frown on Thunder’s face parted as he bared his teeth slightly. Of course that bodyguard of his would be nearby. He could see the gentle glow of his horn as his shadowy form materialised from somewhere amidst the ground level clouds. “I am su—” Thunder cut him off with a gesture, kicking up his hoof from the ground and flinging mud at the stallion which turned black and acidic, burning through the condensation as it flew towards its target. Jacques dodged deftly to the right-

-and straight into the bolt of arcane might the sorcerer fired at him. In a motion almost too quick to see, Jacques reached for his belt, hooked his hoof into the grip of his rapier, and drew it forth. It was an upwards swipe, Jacques rearing on his rear hooves with the motion. The blade caught the arrow of magic dead on, which should’ve cut through the metal and into its target. The sword sparked with furious intensity, and the arrow was guided up along its length, being flung upwards into the air and safely away. Thunder narrowed his eyes at the sparking sword, noting tiny, almost imperceptible runic markings along not the flat of the blade, but the edge itself. Now how on earth could a simple sell sword have the coin necessary for that level of enchantment?

‘Fool, now he is easier to knock off balance,’ Thunder thought, noting that the stallion remained on his hind hooves, with that sword latched to his right forehoof. The earth pony stamped the earth and snorted. The unicorn would seek to deflect anything he sent his way. Fine then. The stallion closed his eyes, muttering something foul, and the cloud around his muzzle parted and retreated in face of the foul noises that emerged from its spoken tongue. Thunder's ear twitched as he heard hoofsteps, the deer evidently taking advantage of this to try to take him down. How adorable. His eyelids snapped open as a piercing wail split the air, and his eyes blazed with an incandescent light that pierced the clouds around them, eradicating the water vapour and blinding both the stag and the unicorn, who collapsed to the ground as they scratched at their eyes and ears and yelped in pain and disorientation. That would attract attention, unfortunately, so it was time to go. He willed his captive red unicorn into the air beside him as he trotted through the temporary clearing, passing the fumbling body of the blinded and deafened stag towards the nearest cloud cover.

Until he sensed something.

His ear twitched and he turned, the witch sight granted to him by the old magic allowing him to pierce the veil of the clouds to see a shape approaching at high speed. A rather tall shape. Interesting. He raised his right forehoof just a bit as he waited for the creature to reach him.

He promptly brought it down, creating a splash in the flooded ground. A spire of rock shot out of the earth directly in front of the pony. Not a fraction of a second later, he heard the sound of rock cracking and a silver war hammer lodged in the rock. He resisted the urge to blink in surprise when he realised the thing wielding the hammer was the armoured human. Handy withdrew his hammer from the small spire of rock, causing parts of it to crack and break off, and stepped into the rapidly shrinking clearing. The sorcerer took a few steps back from the human, frowning up at him as if mildly annoyed by his presence. However, the exact expression was lost as his eyes continued to glow an unearthly sickly green, hiding his irises and strange mist of the same colour that seemed to flow from his tear ducts.

Handy just stood there briefly, taking in the scene. There was Whirlwind and the pony, Jacques, writhing on the ground amidst the mud and water. There was that utter clown of an earth pony, still wearing that ridiculous fedora and god-awful cloak, and there was... well, he wasn't exactly sure who it was the sorcerer had wrapped up in a magical cocoon, but it wasn't his pet mage. She smelled wrong. That caused him to pause as he considered the implications: the sudden difference in attitude, the evasiveness, and the sudden desire to leave Skymount with him. Probably the biggest sign was her assertiveness in his presence. He had been so willing to believe she got over her slavishness at last that he didn't question the rest. Now here he was with this doppelganger that was suspended in the air by what was undoubtedly one of the Mistress' lackeys. So many goddamn questions...

"I must admit," Thunder began, sitting on his haunches and idly playing with his cravat with one hoof, fixing its position, "I am pleased you survived your little kerfuffle with Ferix, bothersome brute though he is. Surprised, but happily so. Last I saw, you were dying, were you not?"

"I have my ways," Handy decided to answer. "Ferix paid for his mistake."

"And so fast," Thunder noted, raising an eyebrow and cocking his head to glance at the broken spire of rock he had summoned out of the ground. "Why couldn't you have used that strength in the fights? I've been watching you, you know, hm? Something holding you back?" Handy didn't reply, turning his hammer over in his right hand. Thunder smiled lightly. "Unless you couldn't. Unless this is temporary. Is this how you thwarted us so long ago? Tell me, what's your secret?"

"Just give me Crimson," Handy said, gesturing to the captive pony with his hammer, "and I'll let you leave here alive." In truth, he knew he should probably just brain this smarmy bastard there and then and just take her back. However... his heart, one could say, was not exactly in the right place for it at the moment. Thunder's ear flicked, his smile remaining and his sights still set on the human, his mouth moving as if he was singing a little ditty to himself, but the human couldn't hear it even with his enhanced hearing.

"I am afraid I can't really let you have this... thing. Property of the mistress you see, as I am sure you are well aware by now."

"Look... just give her here. Be reasonable. You aren't getting out of this place in one piece otherwise, least of all if you provoke me now. I am seriously giving you a chance here."

"It’s adorable really..." Thunder continued, tapping the base of his muzzle with his forehoof. "To think you can intimidate me more than the mistress. Know your place, human. You're as much her property as this thing is," he said, shaking 'Crimson' lightly, eliciting a slight whimper from her unconscious form. The human in question gritted his teeth. Needless to say, Handy did not much care for being told that he was 'owned'.

"Listen—"

"No," he said, chuckling. Handy immediately decided he was dealing with a very stupid pony. Hi, you're standing across from a guy who killed dragons and who shattered a spire of solid rock just getting to you. He offered you a chance to get out of Dodge so long as you handed him the equivalent of your ill-gotten lunch money. What was that? Why of course you laugh in his face! That was just entirely reasonable! Arrogant warlock.

"You blithering clown!" Handy shouted, getting angrier with this pony than he wanted. "Just—" He made to move, intending to reach the pony before he could blink, only to find he couldn't move his feet. He tripped over awkwardly, his ankles unable to move, and he sort of leaned sideways as he fell, his armour propping up his legs as his body twisted. He scrambled to catch himself before he hit the ground face first. Had he been unarmoured, it would have been uncomfortable but possible to twist his body so as to at least not injure himself. Alas, he was in plate, and the agony that shot through him as the plates dug into his sides as he twisted was exactly as painful as it sounded.

He managed to stabilize himself to look at his legs. His feet and lower legs were completely encased in what appeared to be rock. The pony had been keeping him talking long enough to root him in place, using the mud and his magic to trap the human. "Hm," the pony mused. Handy turned to look at him. "No, still a bit too close for my liking." A shimmering wave of force hit Handy with the force of a small truck. His armour shone brilliantly in reaction to the magic, but the force was enough. Handy was flung backwards like a ragdoll and landed hard on his back, his feet still trapped in the stone. He got to his elbows and began pushing himself up. "No," Thunder said, a bit more forcefully. A lance of magical energy struck Handy in the helmet. He was dazed and blinked away the blindness, but his helmet protected him from the magic's effects, even if his head was jerked violently backwards. Thunder raised an eyebrow at that.

He really should have been paying attention.

He yelped in pain as his shield shattered like glass, Jacques’ rapier sparking furiously as it broke through the magical barrier and cut a gash in Thunder’s flank. The earth pony jumped to the side and rounded on Jacques, snorting furiously. “Y-you, dare!?”

"Ah, but I am only beginning with y—" Once again, he was not allowed to finish his retort. Jacques fell backwards as thin, black, razor-sharp spikes erupted from the ground in front of him, evidently aiming to pierce his exposed underside. He rolled back to his hooves, ripping his sword off of his hoof with his teeth and holding it in his mouth as he tried to outrun the series of spikes emerging from the earth in his wake. Handy swung his hammer at the ground, breaking up the rock in seconds. He shook the loose stone from his feet as he winced at how his legs now ached from the abuse. Thunder looked at him, snorting in agitation. Handy didn't speak and just acted.

In a blur of motion, he charged at the sorcerer and swung his hammer, only for it to rebound harmlessly off of a shimmering magical shield, a loud clanging noise resounding through the camp as the clouds began covering the ground again. Handy blinked, then swung again. And again and again and again with increasing speed and ferocity to no effect. The pony spoke, and concentrated gusts of air slashed across the human's torso, a thin strip of his armour lighting up as the magic hit him and forced him back a step from the force. "Hmmm," Thunder hummed. "Your armour is resilient."

"Perceptive, aren't we?" Handy mocked, now gauging his options. It was amazing how many of his plans resorted to 'hit it with ye hammer' with no real discernable fall back options should that ever be woefully insufficient. 'Okay, Handy, think. Shield is impervious to physical attack, but the pony's sword clearly managed to cut him. Enchanted perhaps? The witch... She did something to the hammer...' He quickly looked at the head of his hammer, at the intricate designs on the silvered steel. The many grooves appeared as they always had — nothing special about them. The witch clearly did something to it, but he had no idea what and was just wasting time gawking at it. 'Okay, new plan—'

"URK!" Handy choked, grabbing his throat. An incredible pressure was squeezing his neck at all angles, like a noose continuously tightening around it. Thunder's eyes narrowed at him.

"But your armour doesn't cover everything," he said. It was one thing to see Darth Vader choke a bitch on screen. One could even say it was cool. How many of you wished you could do that? If the answer was anything less than 'all of you', then you were a goddamn liar and you should feel bad. See a motherfucker whose lack of faith disturbed you? Crush his larynx! Awesome. Let Handy tell you, however, it was not fun to be on the receiving end of that chokehold. He was forced to his knees, struggling to breath, his vision failing as he saw darkness cloud at the edges.

"You're lucky, you know? She wants you alive. With just a flick of my fetlock, I could break your neck." Handy could well believe him. Currently, the only thing keeping him conscious, or at least he assumed, was the vampiric power trip he was on. If it could filter smoke and allow him to break rocks, it sure as shit could help him survive strangulation for longer than normal. Turned out vampires needed to breathe, and they objected quite strongly to being denied their favourite combustible fuel source for the purposes of respiration. Who knew?

With an almost shocking quickness, the pressure on his throat disappeared, and Handy pitched forward on his hands and knees, coughing and gasping for air. Thunder was distracted as his shield was penetrated once more, and he turned just in time to see the glowing antlers of the stag rip his shield asunder, barely visible shards falling to the earth and disintegrating. Whirlwind wasted no time as he landed on his forehooves, turning, he curled up his hind hooves, and bucked the earth pony stallion in the flank. It wasn't enough however; after all a stag, even a large one, couldn’t really compete with earth pony strength, but it was enough to knock the stallion off balance and gave Whirlwind time to bundle up the captive red unicorn in his antlers, the magical cocoon dissipating in reaction to the magic of his own horns, leaving the pony sprawled over the individual points of the antlers. Like resting on a wall of spikes, or so Handy thought when he glanced up at it. Whirlwind, however, was an expert in using his antlers and ensured no harm came to the pony as he bounded off.

Handy didn't look a gift horse in the mouth and moved. He swung his hammer as he got to his feet, catching the distracted sorcerer on the side of the head. There was a brief flash of green light, and spiralling patterns appeared on the side of the pony's head as he was sent flying across the distance and into a tent. He emerged, absolutely furious, his eyes wide and incandescent with white-green light as he tore the ruined fabric of the tent apart to crawl out. His lime and yellow fedora was gone, and the white-blue fur around his muzzle was matted with blood which dripped down onto his teal cravat. For all that though, he was standing up remarkably well from a hammer blow from Handy on steroids.

Whatever he was about to do next was interrupted as bolts of red magic crashed into his side, forcing him back to the ground. Yet again Handy spied flashes of green energy and spiral patterns light up on the stallion's fur. He had some kind of magical protection beyond his shield. Jacques, it seemed, had outlasted the spikes Thunder had sent after him, though if the cuts along his sides and belly were any indication, it was an all too close race. His rapier was now levitated at his side, and he had a vicious cut to his expression as he glared daggers at the earth pony. Thunder was now breathing heavily through clenched teeth. He turned, looking in the direction the stag had made off to, to see Whirlwind had placed Crimson atop a long crate, to keep her off of the water and mud. The clouds had now fully encompassed them all once again, but they were close enough to be able to see each other.

Thunder stomped the ground, nickering, digging deep grooves in the pliable, soaking, wet mud. His ears flicking erratically as his wide, furious eyes flitted from one to the next. Handy, learning from his mistakes, kept a close eye on where he moved his feet. He wasn't going to be caught out again. His ear flicked and his eyes darted to the left, spotting Whirlwind through a brief parting of the clouds, setting the unconscious form of Crimson atop a large crate to keep her off the mud and water.

Thunder immediately leapt towards them, kicking up mud as he sped off towards them. Handy was in his path within an instant, swinging his hammer, connecting with his head and forcing it to the side violently as he hit the ground, sliding in the mud.

Thunder shook it off, his face barely visible beneath the all-encompassing lines and patterns of glowing green magic shining beneath his fur. Handy grit his teeth. He had thrown everything into that swing and he just shrugged it off. He hadn’t long to consider that before a blast of magical energy ripped up the ground beneath him, sending the human backwards as bolts of light struck him full in the armour. Thunder was upon him in an instant, about to bring down his forehooves to crush his chest, magical energy gathering down along his fetlocks. Jacques intervened, a swipe of his sword forcing Thunder to stagger back on his rear hooves and a blast of magic knocking him from his feet as the swordspony advanced on him. Thunder reacted instantly, on his feet in moments, the air around him shimmering as the clouds parted suddenly. He opened his mouth and a blinding white light struck out. Shockwaves tore surrounding tents to ribbons, wood cracked and splintered, metal crumpled and buckled. But no sound was heard, and the world seemed to grow dimmer as if the sorcerer sucked all light from their surroundings and focused it into a pure beam of magic at Jacques.

Handy pulled himself up from the ground. The pony was in front of him, his cloak whipping furiously in the ethereal winds his distinctive hat had since been blown away. Jacques was struggling, his face a mask of fear and desperation as his horn was practically exploding with magical force. His sword held before him sparked furiously, and Handy could not see past the bright wall of light he was trying to defend them both against. The world around them was dull and darkened, and he tried to speak but couldn’t hear his own words.

And just as suddenly, the world snapped back to normality, the magical attack ceased, and the world brightened. Jacques stumbled forward on his knees, dropping his sword, panting in exhaustion. Thunder had been hit in the side by the antlers of Whirlwind who was now proceeding to dance, for Handy did not know what else to call it, around the earth pony with speed and grace, lashing out with his antlers and hooves at the stallion who responded in kind with kicks of his own. Handy didn't waste the opportunity and waded in, almost getting another blow in before his hammer rebounded off of air as it hit another shield Thunder had summoned just in time, in turn shattered by the magic of Whirlwind. Thunder rebuked both of them with blasts of magic the blew the stag away but only served to make Handy flash like a strobe light as he laid into the pony with his shield and hammer. It frustratingly did little in the way of damage because that damn spell he was protecting himself with. The only thing preventing him from getting to Handy's weak points in his armour like before was because he was too distracted to focus on it.

Eventually the téte-a-téte ground away in the earth pony's favour, reacting to the human's speed and strength with counters and shields, and blasting the stag to keep it at bay, switching up his game with spells and explosive magical blasts that tore up the very ground they fought upon. It looked like he was going to get the upper hand upon both of them after an exceptionally powerful buck from the sorcerer caused Handy's shield to buckle, forcing him to tear it off of his arm. Jacques got his second wind, however, and rejoined the fray, alternating between firing arrows of magic and swiping with his rapier clasped across his forehoof. Thunder roared in frustration and stomped on the ground, ripping up the earth in shockwaves, sending the three of them rolling across the ground. The surrounding tents were an absolute mess as the devastation of the spellcasting tore swathes through them, leaving blackened trawls and gouged, muddy ground and small burning fires struggling against the damp of the ever-present ground levels clouds.

Handy hurried back to his feet, rattled but determined to not let this bastard defeat him, and ran back to the sorcerer. For all his speed, Thunder was ready for it, expecting it. He had used the precious few seconds his last attack bought him time to prepare a glyph, a quick and dirty trick. He could feel the power coursing through his veins and into his limbs and smiled as the world seemed to slow down for him. He could see the human charging at him and would be more than able to react in time.

Whirlwind shook his head, pushing the groaning body of Jacques off of him. He called to him, only to be met with no response. There was a gash on his forehead, just below the horn, and Whirlwind winced sympathetically. Jacques was in no condition to even walk straight if he had hit his horn that badly. He staggered back to his hooves and nearly tripped over something. The red mare that the earth pony had tried to steal had been knocked off of her crate and was now floating in mud, her saddle bag torn open and its contents spilled forth.

Whirlwind froze when he saw a clear crystal with a small golden cylinder at its centre. "...That's not possible. How did she get that...?” He scrambled in the mud, hooves desperately trying to fish it out of the mud before it sank, managing to snag it in a cloven hoof. He brought it up to his face. A concerned expression graced his features as his eyes darted across its surface, not sure if he believed what he was seeing. What would the human's servant be doing with this in its packs? Then a thought struck him. "The human..." he whispered before jerking in shock, feeling a burst of static wash through the air, causing his fur to stand on end.

He leaped out of the way, turning just in time to see the bright, flashing form of the human tumble through the air and land hard on the ground, sliding in the mud and crashing into a crate as his armour dulled and ceased shining. He wasn’t moving. The air around Thunder hummed with barely controlled power, arcs of magical energy dancing about his body.

Whirlwind’s ears splayed against his head. Jacques was down, the human was down, and now the earth pony with ghostly fire in his eyes was advancing on him. He looked down at the crystal, a priceless relic that had no business being outside of the forest ruins which he would’ve been literally tackled in the streets for if he had it back home. And now he was contemplating breaking it.

He looked up. The stallion was taking his time approaching, a toothy smile plastered on his muzzle. Had his eyes not been possessed of blinding lights, he could very well imagine a manic grin. He looked between him and the crystal and then to the surrounding unconscious forms around him. The clouds were growing thick, and no help was coming. His eyes were wide as he stared back at the crystal.

His hoof disappeared in a rapidly expanding ball of golden light that enveloped him after he shattered the crystal with a stomp. Thunder saw his quarries disappear in an expanding flash of energy and rapidly backpedalled, galloping away from the unknown force. The air was filled with the sound of metal rasping over hot coals, magnified to deafening levels. He managed to get out of its expanding range just in time to see the strange wall of light slow its advance and transform into a golden tinged mist as the noise died away, the mist itself slowing fading and mixing with the surrounding clouds, diluting its colour. Almost everything in a ten foot radius of where the light originated from was missing, leaving a shallow, circular indentation in the mud as parts of tents and equipment seemed to have been severed from existence.

They were gone.

Thunder stood looking at the pot where his opponent had been for a long time, his mind churning, trying to rationalize what had just happened. ‘The deer couldn’t possibly have done that… could he?’ he thought to himself. Sitting there, genuinely curious at the implications of the magic he just witnessed, trying to unravel its mystery. That was until, very slowly, the realization came upon him that the one saving grace he had at avoiding the Mistress’ fury had not only slipped out of his hooves, but may have been vaporized in a magical explosion.

Thunder’s magic slowly ebbed away, as did every feeling in his body, with the exception of cold, deep-rooted dread. He quickly made himself scarce, his heart pounding in his barrel as he started mouthing incantations for his escape. There were shouts of alarm as a tremendous flash of green light, accompanied by the sound of lightning striking the waves of the ocean, filled the air. Thunder was no more. The festival ground was little more than sodden, burnt, desolation in the wake of the crisis. Nothing remained of the confrontation between the sorcerer and the human, bar a hat with a golden clasp on its interior band depicting a unicorn horn over a clover.

And a cracked, sundered, silver shield bearing the image of a hammer, intertwined in knotted designs, half-buried in the mud and water.

Author's Note

Ahah! About time I got my tenth dislike! It only took you guys, what? *counts* Five months? Seriously? Am I not pretty enough for you guys or something? *sniff*

I kid, thanks for the near three hundred likes, all your comments and views and sticking with me even though I REALLY let myself go with the updating schedule. Remember I used to nearly post north of 8k words a day for two weeks? Those were some good times... They were also horrible times full of typos as I settled into my writing groove but what can you do? I suppose I'll do something once I get three hundred likes, a map was suggested which I suppose I could do, since there is alot of places in this fic and its pretty hard to visualize.

Anyway, this arc was a Goddamn nightmare to write from start to finish, but not for the reasons you'd think. The whole thing with the witch took up nearly four fucking chapters when it was only supposed to last for one and I was forced to timeskip (I am fucking disgusted with myself for that) two months just to make up the shortfall from then to the tournament without it seeming like an eternity ago that Handy was in Canterlot and demanding a duel with Blueblood. Now I will be forced to have him reminesce about those two lost months where apprantly nothing interesting happened in order to account for them. I swore to myself I'd never do this as one of the points of this story is to show the almost day to day life of the human in question adventuring through this world, allowing me the time to go into the detail I need for the story which I want to write, (in case you didn't notice, I like words) thats why I gave myself the time limit in the prologue in the first place. Augh. My fault for telegraphing something happening two months in advance and causing the mess. Ah well, live and learn.

The tournament itself was longer than intended, but at least it was meant to be a multi-chapter affair so its not so bad, my big mistakes? Subplots, subplots everywhere. A gordian knot of subplots. Well at least I have a ton of established characters now, with their own agendas, the tournament was meant to be a sortof convergence point to remind people that there is alot going on in the background of BM that I can't really show you because of the focus on Handy himself, so it wasn't all bad. Could've used more worldbuilding about Firthengart and Griffonia in general, that's a missed oppurtunity I'll need to pick up on later.

This was also the arc where all of the bad things happened to me, Handyman, the author. Quit a job, just in time to find out I and three hundred people were going to be sacked anyway, got a new job that is somehow less busy but more soul destroying than the first. An epic tier writer's block, numerous, pointless, little, niggling fears and doubts, (JBL had a fun time getting some sense into me, poor guy), got over writer's block and slammed face first into procrastination. Things eventually got so bad I just hammered out a 12k, completely unrelated story over the course of two days and then promptly deleted it just to prove I was still in control of myself and that this nonsense was all in my head. The result was ehhhh.

That said, I am actually happy with this arc, for once. Sortof. Kindof. Maybe... get back to me on that in two weeks, I'll probably make up my mind by then.

In any case, see you guys in another month or so, however long it takes me to churn out the relatively short intermissions these days.

Interlude - Fairy Tales

She was accompanied only by the echoing sounds of her hoofsteps as she made her way down the colonnade. Luna’s beautiful moonlight pierced the darkness of the hallway at regular intervals, catching motes of dust that drifted lazily through the air.

"Old magic?"

"Yes, your Highness, it’s what he said."

She had dismissed her guards for this little debriefing of hers, the fourth one she had given to this particular guard since the incident. Celestia didn't have to strain too hard to sense the spells and wards Luna had put in place to prevent eavesdropping of any kind. Nothing that would even hinder Celestia though, which meant Luna fully expected her to drop on by. A little knot of worry wormed its way around her stomach.

"And thou art sure he had nothing to do with it?"

"I saw the prince leave myself. Private Cloud Skipper was with him, and I didn't see anything suspicious at the time. To my knowledge, they arrived in Canterlot a day before news of the incident itself did."

"We just wish to be certain."

"Yes, your Highness."

Luna had been taking an increasing interest in the human as the weeks passed by. Something about him greatly unsettled her sister, and Celestia dearly wished she knew what it was. Luna had been unable or unwilling to articulate. Celestia had long since learned her lesson and hadn’t pried any further since Luna had been unwilling to share. That was until the letters from Concordia had gotten just that much more insistent and probing for information about the creature. Attempts to contact the Black Isles about possible foreigners from beyond their controlled waters reaching Equestria had also been met with silence. Now that the human was supposedly dead, Celestia had hoped that, while tragic, it would at least cause everypony to stop concerning themselves with him and calm down.

Unfortunately, that was not to be.

"Thou art dismissed. And soldier?"

"Your Highness?"

Celestia waited outside the doors to her sister's private study. Waiting to hear what she said to the royal guard.

"...Y-Yes, your Highness," came the guard’s voice shakily. Celestia resisted the urge to frown. Either Luna had whispered very quietly, or her glare was enough to communicate a point she was not privy to. Her heart went out to the little pony who had to suffer it. Luna had garnered a reputation for bringing ponies low who earned her ire without having to raise her considerable voice. Or even speak at all.

The door opened, and the guard did a double take, her bright, green eyes blinking rapidly, mouth opening and closing in a stammer. Celestia smiled warmly at her to reassure her, and the guard immediately came to her senses, bowing low. "Good evening, your Highness!" she said crisply, pausing momentarily, "Please, excuse me," she added demurely.

"Of course, my little pony," she said warmly as the guard trotted past, trying her best not to seem as if she was hurrying. "Sister, may I come in?" she asked, turning back to her sister's room.

"Of course, Tia," Luna said from within, causing her sister to smile. She could hear the weariness in Luna's voice, which she had been hiding from her guard, and her use of her pet name meant she was glad to see her. It was a small thing, to be sure, but one she treasured infinitely. Celestia willed the doors open wider with her magic, allowing her entrance. Luna's study was magnificent. The circular room was lined from floor to ceiling with shelves of tomes meticulously organized to Luna's preference.

All that meant was to say they were an utter mess, and only Luna knew what lay where. More than half of them were recent acquisitions, a distressingly large amount of them consisted of poetry, stories both fictional and folkloric, and recent histories. The wood that lined the walls was a rich, dark mahogany, and the polished marble floor was black with white star bursts in the pattern of the saddle constellation, an old favourite of Luna's creations. The immensely tall windows filled the room with moonlight. The room had numerous pieces of furniture relevant to Luna's studies: drawing desks, telescopes, a globe stand containing a large black orb filled with stars, a small table for when she dined while at work, and numerous writing desks filled with books and scrolls, each an individual area of study or project for the night princess. All that disregarded the entire piles of missives and work orders for the various duties she now held.

Celestia smiled at that. It had taken some... adjustment, but she had eventually ceded more and more power to her dear sister, overcoming one thousand years of habitually managing everything in the kingdom. Luna had thrived in the responsibility afforded her, and Celestia, gratefully, had more time to relax.

Luna sat upon her haunches on a purple seating pillow, her wondrous mane of night sky and starlight tied back into a tail as she scribbled furiously on several pieces of parchment, the desk strewn with dusty tomes and scrolls. Maps, bestiaries, and miniature globes of the world surrounded her. Celestia frowned at the last items, noting how pretty much everything about the globes, apart from their home continent and the land of the zebras, was wildly inconsistent. "Luna?" Celestia said, "It has been three weeks, Luna."

The Princess of the Night sighed and put down the peacock-feathered quill and parchment. "I know, Tia, it’s just..." Luna didn't look up at her sister right away, nervousness worrying away at her to the point where she let her airs slip. "We just can't let it go. It does not make any sense. None of what mine guard reports makes sense."

"We knew the human didn't tell us the whole truth. Of course he wouldn't. Why is it such a surprise he had more secrets to reveal between when we had him as our guest and the festival?" Celestia asked. Luna had been rightfully suspicious of the human. Claiming to wake up in the Everfree of all places with no idea how he got there? Claiming to have come from far across the waves and somehow landing in Equestria without running into the Black Fleet? The site of ancient magic by Spurbay that was disturbed, just at the same time the human had been in the mountain, with nopony else recalling anything to do with it? And now another badge had surfaced: a golden clasp with a unicorn's horn superimposed over a clover. And once again, it had been found at a site where the human had clashed with a pony wielding strange magic, just before he disappeared. There was clearly something else going on they did not know about.

"We know." Luna sighed. "And now the griffons are arming themselves again." Celestia frowned.

"I am doing my best to smooth things over with the High King."

"Sister, a pony wrought destruction with powerful magic in the midst of thousands of griffons. Such powerful unicorns are the demesne of Equestrian battlemages."

"Or the other pony kingdoms...," Celestia reflected darkly. She, of course, would rather not suspect her fellow Princesses of such underhoofedness, but the lesser pony states?

"Regardless, Gethrenia and Firthengart are increasing their defences and guarding their borders strictly. I have been dealing with anxious duchies on the borders concerned with the military build-up. You've seen the Countess Heartfire's speech."

"I have. I do not much care for such warmongering. Besides, Firthengart and Gethrenia had a falling out over the incident. Their kings have been... engaging in rather undiplomatic discourse and are making neighbouring griffon states who border them within the High Kingdom nervous. If anything, the griffons may face an internal war because of their stubbornness."

"Perhaps it is best that they do," Luna reflected. Her gaze could cut diamonds as she glared at the pages before her. "Better than facing a full war with the High Kingdom because of their paranoia and rampant accusations of pony treachery by their petty nobles. Perhaps we could actively encourage that to avoid—"

"No," Celestia said sternly, placing her hoof on Luna's desk with a resounding thump. Luna jumped, blinking up at her sister. "Luna, it is not as it was a thousand years ago. We have been friends with the griffons for many centuries. We cannot think in such ways anymore," Celestia said before her gaze softened. "I don't... want to see another war if I don't have to. Especially not over a misunderstanding. Not after last time..." Celestia graceful features bore a pained expression that passed quickly. Luna remained quiet as she studied her elder's face. "If we did as you suggested and tried to encourage instability amongst the griffons to avoid them uniting in fear against us for something we did not do, and we were caught, we would only embroil ourselves in a more disastrous war."

"Tia, I didn't... I was trying to think of Equestria's interests. We have two belligerent states on our borders, and our ponies are clamouring for reciprocation in raising our military presence."

"Those are major trade borders, Luna. We can't afford to lock them down with regiments, cannons, and forts for a prolonged period. It would only raise tensions and the griffons' paranoia further," Celestia said, taking her hoof off of the table. She looked to the side, noticing her reflection in the polished marble floor. Her aurora mane made it seem as if there was a nebula dancing among the unmoving stars of Luna's floor. "I will try to ease tensions. Do not concern yourself over this any longer, dear sister. Get some rest. Read a book perhaps," Celestia said. Luna looked down for a minute before slowly nodding. Her horn lit up as she undid the tail her mane was in, shaking her head and letting it flow freely once more. Celestia smiled lightly at her younger sister before turning. "Goodnight, Lulu."

"What if that's what he's after..."

"I'm sorry?"

"What if this was the human's goal? To drive a wedge between nations to sow seeds of distrust and... and..."

"Disharmony?" Celestia asked, raising an eyebrow. Luna shook her head.

"No, this is nothing like Discord. What if this human is... is an agent? He told us there were many kingdoms across the sea, a lot of humans. What if he was sent ahead, to sow destabilisation across the continent between two of the biggest kingdoms in the land?"

"...That is a rather unlikely scenario," Celestia pointed out.

"Tia, we saw him with our own eyes. He released something ancient and dark in the west. He was first spotted leaving the Everfree of all places," Luna said, looking up at Celestia pleadingly. "You know as well as I do what secrets that forest holds."

"We've had the castle under guard for years now, Luna. Nopony has reported anything."

"But still, is it not the least bit suspicious that it is there he was discovered, according to the testimony of his own king, the young Johan, when I spoke to him that evening you whisked the human away to interrogate him?"

"It was a friendly chat," Celestia said, raising a hoof. Luna smiled knowingly.

"This human has went and latched on to a diplomat of the griffons to avoid prosecution after admittedly working with the changelings, the relationship between them we still don't know the full truth of."

"He did tell us about their relationship."

"Dost thou believe him?" Luna said. Celestia's silence answered the question for her. "He then proceeds to overthrow a kingdom and place a candidate of his own backing on the throne, then terrorizes ponies and griffons alike!"

"He never actively goes out harming ponies," Celestia pointed out.

"As far as we know, but nor does he dissuade ponies of his disrepute and infamy," Luna continued. "He then accompanies the griffons to Canterlot, challenges the prince to a duel demanding blood, instead arranging for the debt to be settled on an arena floor rather than a cobblestone street." She held a hoof up to stymie her sister's interjection. "Then when the time comes for the festival, this event occurs, and the human is nowhere to be found. Not even a body, only his cracked shield, and now we are left with a major incident, with griffons and ponies losing lives and paranoia and distrust amongst nations," Luna said, letting the implication hang. "I cannot dismiss the possibility that he was sent to destabilise the continent in preparation for a human invasion."

There was silence between the two sisters for some time. "This is an unsteady theory, Luna," Celestia admitted, though clearly shaken by her sister's implications.

"Perhaps, but thou must admit, it is awfully convenient how all this trouble seems to follow one errant warrior," Luna said. "We saw what he was reading before he turned on Blueblood. How many adventurers dost thou knowst to spend their free time studying the laws of a foreign country?" Luna continued. "And... And I saw something in his eyes. Something I have not seen in... I don't know. It was familiar. Yet alien. Surely you saw it too, sister?"

"I am not sure what you're referring to Luna," Celestia said honestly "His eyes are strange, granted, but—"

"Not the eyes themselves! The look! That look! I've seen it before, long ago. I just... I can't remember when. We were sure thou wouldst know it too, though," Luna protested. Celestia shook her head. "...Perhaps we were seeing things."

"It probably doesn't matter," Celestia said reassuringly. "I will handle the griffons. We can work this out – I'll even have Twilight work on it as part of her diplomatic training. For now, it is best to assume the human is gone." Celestia came around the table to her sister's side. "After all, you can't find him on your globe, can you?" she asked with a smile. Luna snapped up and looked at Celestia with wide eyes.

"Thou swore thou wouldst not interfere wit—!"

"I know I did," Celestia said. "I kept my word and didn't interfere. It’s just that I too would place a tracer spell if I were in your hooves," Celestia admitted with a smile. Luna grumbled. "Let us not worry over imponderables and what ifs. Instead, let us deal with the problems that are before us now." Celestia placed a wing over her sister. Luna let out a breath through her nostrils. Her eyes closed, and her brow furrowed.

"I suppose thou art right, sister mine... for now," Luna said.

Celestia gave her a squeeze with her wing and kissed her on the top of the head, which Luna shook off, causing Celestia to titter. "Just relax; you have a long series of engagements for the next month. Don't spend one of your few nights off fretting over this."

"I'll try."

"It's all I ask," Celestia said as she left the room. She paused before passing through the door. "Have you... found Blueblood yet?" she asked hopefully. Luna just looked at her without expression. "Not even a single dream?" Luna shook her head slowly. Celestia frowned ever so slightly before nodding and leaving the room.

Luna listened to her hoofsteps die away until the sound spell cancelled them out altogether as her sister crossed the threshold. Luna sat there for some time afterwards, nothing making a sound in her sanctuary other than the sound of grains of sand ticking away the time in an hourglass somewhere high above her. She looked at the notes she had been making, useless scribbles going over and over the first-hoof account her guard had given her. Old magic – exactly what was that supposed to refer to? Dark magic? That was old, but she had never heard it being referred to in that manner. And the pony had targeted the human's unicorn servant, if she recalled, the one reported to have been harassing him in the streets while he was in Canterlot, whatever that had been over.

"What's the connection?" she asked herself, staring at the page as if it could give her the answers she sought. "What is after this human... and what did it have to do with the botched assault on the train?" She glanced over at the globe of stars. Each one was one of her 'special cases', ponies she paid particular attention to for one reason or another. Most were... troubled in some manner. Others were just plain dangerous. The human was supposed to be added to their number. And for a time, he was. She had noticed a new star appear around the time Stellar reported she had placed the tracer on him and retrieved a... sample in the process. Then, with an abrupt suddenness, it had disappeared.

That had unnerved her. Even if he had died, it should have still been active for some time afterwards. But there was nothing, and the implications of the magic at work in order to completely nullify the spell she had designed herself just raised more and more questions. In the end, she supposed it didn't matter. At least not anymore. Dead or not, her sister was right. They had bigger concerns right now.

She sighed, trying to put the questions out of her mind, levitating a book down from the shelves. It was an old book, full of tales even she was familiar with when she had been still a filly. They had changed over time, but she still enjoyed the old fairytales ponies told, such as the Wheel in the Orchard, or the saga of Ironheart, or the Enchantress in Glass. The latter was a strange, vague tale that recounted a strange magician from another world. She enjoyed that one but couldn't for the life of her understand why. It was short, little more than a lengthy poem, and she certainly hadn't read it when she was younger, but it felt familiar somehow. Like an old friend or a worn book by your bedside you read and reread again for the simple pleasure of it.

She indulged in the time honoured fantasies so as to put her worried mind at rest once more, if only for one night. There would be time enough for worry later.

--=--

The changeling whimpered as it was slammed hard against the cold unforgiving rock of the cave. Its wings flittered in anxious spasms as it struggled to breathe. The spectral claw that gripped him grew in intensity, pulsing with greenish-white light as ethereal fog came off of it in waves, falling to the ground, covering it in a steadily thickening bed of otherworldly essence. The red unicorn glared at him, her eyes incandescent with fiery light, her horn sparking intensely with the same greenish, unnatural magic, her expression furious.

Behind the red pony, the other changeling shifted, trying to crawl away as quietly as possible. Crimson turned her head. Her pupils were not visible, but he froze all the same as he felt her gaze upon him. A flash of magic and the sound of tearing flesh filled the small cave as a disembodied spectral maw manifested in the air, hovering over the cowering changeling who stared up at the giant, carnivorous teeth with open mouthed horror, the space between the teeth occupied by a blackness brighter than any light that hurt to look at.

The meaning was clear, and so the changeling did not move.

"I will ask this again," Crimson stated, her tone level but clearly irritated. "Why?"

"Orders!" the cowering changeling on the ground barked. His voice had an odd buzzing sound to it, a strange kind of echo that accompanied it. "We were ordered to release you!" Crimson narrowed her eyes at the creature. The maw lowered itself toward him, and he shuffled closer to the floor as if trying to hug the ground itself as tightly as he could.

"Why?"

"It was the agreement!" The other changeling piped up to save her comrade from the unicorn's threats. Crimson turned back to face her captive. When they had captured the pony originally, they had not expected anything much more than dealing with a relatively powerful mage. So when they released her from sedation, they were expecting her to exhibit the same magical weariness all unicorns did upon waking, rendering them unable to properly coordinate between hoof and eye, let alone cast magic.

Not this pony, however. She had started chanting rapidly upon waking, and the two changelings had been caught off guard, leading to their current predicament. "He... agreed to the Queen's demands in return for your safe release!"

"What demands!?" she snarled, squeezing the changeling that much tighter. It squealed in pain.

"Service!" the other said, not moving his gaze away from the horrifying maw hovering mere inches above him, its jaws partially clenched shut, the roiling blackness within those teeth spilling between the gaps. He no longer covered his eyes with their covers, staring up at the magical death trap with open fear. Crimson let up the pressure on the changeling she had pinned to the wall, flicking her ear in the other’s direction. "He agreed to serve in order to free you!"

"What," she said flatly. Her emotions, however, were plain for both of them to see, and it was painfully obvious her ire was quickly approaching a point that wouldn't exactly be healthy for either of them to witness.

"It’s all we know! It’s all we were told! Please!" the female pinned to the wall cried. Crimson glared at them in turn for a long painful moment. Then, just as suddenly as it had occurred, the claw holding the changeling in place disappeared, and she slumped to the ground, whimpering in pain. The maw held its place painfully close to the cowering changeling on the ground before it too faded from existence. The fire in her eyes died down as the cascading magic of her horn ebbed and dissipated, the ethereal mist gathering on the cave floor melting away into nothing.

She grit her teeth as she tried to keep her emotions under control and hide the weakness in her knees as she struggled to stay upright and mobile. She was really in no condition to be walking anywhere. Having summoned that much old magic, she was exhausted. She stopped, screwing her eyes shut. When he had said he would protect her, she had never imagined he would do it by putting himself into slavery for her sake. To changelings no less. That... She honestly did not know what to make of that, but it was something she wasn't going to let stand.

Speaking of letting things stand... She paused at the cave mouth, turning back and looking at the two mewling changelings she left injured and traumatised. Where there was one changeling, there were probably more nearby. She certainly knew what Mistress would demand of her in this situation and briefly calculated how much power it would take to cause a cave-in to bury these creatures alive.

Then she thought about what Master would do. What Master did do in her case.

"Do you want to live?" she asked. The two changelings were beside each other now. The one who had been cowering on the ground was being helped to his hooves by the other. Both froze at the unicorn's words. Piercing blue eyes partially hidden by an unkempt brown mane narrowed when they didn't respond immediately. "Do not make me repeat myself," she warned. The changelings looked at each other.

"Y-Yes... we want to live," the male replied, the other nodding in agreement.

"Then you are going to help me for however long it takes me to find my Master. Am I understood?"

"...Yes," one of them stated. Crimson's eyes narrowed further.

"You are going to swear to me," she demanded. The changelings seemed confused, or at least the one who didn't cover his eyes did. She dug her right forehoof into the ground for emphasis. "Or would you rather this be your tomb?"

They looked at each other again. It took a while, but eventually they nodded. "We swear."

"Not good enough!" Crimson shouted, her eyes glowing furiously as she advanced on the changelings by a few steps. "Do you think me some foal born yesterday!? Swear to me like you would swear before your queen!" The changelings scrambled back from her fearfully, tripping over one another. "Well!?"

"We swear! We swear!" they cried, both of them falling to their knees, lowering their heads to the ground facing her. Their heads turned to the side, exposing their necks to the open air. Both their eyes were now uncovered. Crimson paused momentarily at the odd method of fealty. She shook herself and returned to her stern expression. She let them stay like that for a full minute before finally speaking.

"Good," she said, her eyes returning to normal and her horn dying down as she turned on the spot. "Come with me," she commanded. They hesitated until she shot them an irritated glance.

"Where are we going?" one asked, following her out of the cave mouth and into the forested mountainside. The immensely tall pine trees towered above them as sunlight struggled to reach the ground. Crimson thought on that for a moment; she had considered merely returning to the capital and contacting Master's friends and servants, but she had to consider the possibility that if Master was gone from there, Mistress would likely have moved someone into the city to look for her. Plus she didn't know the full circumstances of Master's deal with Chrysalis. There were simply too many things she did not know.

"First tell me everything you know," Crimson demanded. "Everything since you abducted me."

Author's Note

I'd like to express my appreciation for the warm reception this story ahs gotten recently, over fifty likes since I posted the latest chapter its... kind of humbling honestly. I thank you all for your continued readership and support of this story, and particularly I'd like to thank my editors for putting up with my bullshit this long, particularly JBL, who now goes out of his way to edit the earlier chapters which are badly in need of a critical eye.

Chapter 28 - A Dark Reflection

Something crunched under him as he stirred. The world begrudgingly came back into focus around him, with every movement felt heavy and sluggish. He was, unfortunately, all too familiar to waking up to pain these days. He knew he shouldn't dick around however – he was in a fight with a servant of the Mistress no less. Thanks to his little issue with sleeping, he had no idea how long he had been out. Time was of the essence. He wanted to push himself up to get back in the fight, but found himself struggling to just roll over on the dry ground…

Hang on a minute.

He grunted, pushing himself to his feet. He looked down. All he could see was the mist, but as it cleared, little by little, he could make out his feet and the dried leaves, twigs and broken acorn shells littering the ground underneath him. Speaking of the ground, he felt off balance, like he was on the side of a hill. "Whirlwind, where are we?" he called out hopefully. No answer. He turned about. He couldn't hear anything apart from the rustling of leaves and saw nothing but the same white mist. A dark shape nearby and a groan enlightened him to the fact that he, at least, was not entirely alone. He carefully picked his way through the mist towards where the sound came from and found the bundle of pony that was the false Crimson curled up amongst the leaves against a rotten log, shivering, her torn saddlebag nearby. This only raised more questions. Where the hell were they? Where were the others? Why was everything so quiet?

He waited, perhaps for half an hour, for the mist to clear. Eventually, the looming darkness of trees appeared around him. He craned his neck to look up at them but found he could not back away far enough to see their peak. They were impossibly tall. He was briefly reminded of the redwoods of California he had heard about and seen in pictures, such was their immensity. However, their trunks were nowhere near as thick, and they bent and contorted in the manner of smaller, wilder trees. Despite the all-encompassing canopy far above, the forest floor was not all that dark and brimmed with life. At least there was plenty of floral life – he still didn't hear anything. No bird song, no rustling pitter-patter of small animals, nothing. Just the movement of leaves.

‘Crimson’ stirred, and Handy snapped back to attention. Carefully, and ignoring the aches he felt, he crouched down, pulling his dagger from the accoutrements at his belt. Mister Thunder did a number on him apparently, vampirism or no. He sat down next to a tree and placed her up against it, a hand pinning her gently to the tree, the other ready with the sharp implement. Time to get some answers. The pony stirred, blinking her eyes awake. The pendant was flashing frantically at her chest. Handy suppressed a smile. 'Looks like a certain someone is freaking out.'

The pony awoke with a whimper as she looked about with tired, bloodshot eyes, which widened when they saw Handy staring pitilessly back at them with his blank face of a helmet. She struggled, and he shoved, pressing against her and holding her against the tree as he brought his dagger up to her throat. "Where is Crimson!?" he demanded. The pony blinked before pulling a faltering smile.

"W-What do you mean sir? I'm ri—" She cut off quickly as the dagger pressed ever so slightly against her throat. "...She's safe," the imposter said. The pendant flashed a few times. "... You should be thanking me." Handy just snarled at her in response. The pony's ears flicked, but otherwise she didn't flinch. "What gave me away?" she asked at last, and it was Handy's turn to smile.

"Your blood smells wrong," he said. That certainly made her flinch. The pony was consumed by green fire, and Handy let his hand go of her with a yelp. Even though the flames licked his unarmoured left hand, it didn't burn. Curious. The changeling sat on its haunches before him, its eyes obscured by the same blue covers he had seen all those months ago on the faces of the Queen's soldiers. The changeling seemed amused by the human's reaction, and the pendant flashed rapidly in a manner Handy associated with the Queen herself laughing. It flexed its insectoid wings, and Handy quickly shoved the creature back against the tree bark, the dagger once again at its neck. It didn't really resist. "What do you want with her, changeling?" he asked. It didn't respond, and Handy just grew angrier. "Speak up, or I'll be eating changeling tonight." 'Well I won't, really, but your blood on the other hand...'

"We had to get close to you," the changeling said, almost too quickly, its ear flicking. "Without alerting the griffons," it continued after the pendant flashed. It only seemed to speak after it flashed as if... as if the Queen herself was telling it what to say. Not only that, although it was hard to tell with the buzzing echo behind the creature's voice, the changeling sounded infuriatingly familiar.

"Why?"

A flash. "Because it was necessary."

"Stop playing games with me, you fucking excuse for a faerie!" Handy snarled. For all their resemblances to bug ponies, his first impression of the changelings was unlikely to change. "Tell me the truth. And... where do I know you from?" he asked. Its ear flicked twice this time, its expression still stoic and unchanging. There were a few flashes from the pendant, and the changeling let out a short sigh. With a shifting noise, the eye covers retracted into barely perceptible slips in its skin, revealing its eyes.

Its chartreuse eyes.

Handy froze.

No way. There was no way Chrysalis would send the one changeling he'd be only too happy to tear a new, structurally superfluous asshole to tail him. And she'd been there this whole time? Handy shook with fury, but the changeling held his gaze. "Thorax," he almost spat out. "Scratch that, I will have changeling tonight." Thorax’s gaze faltered but then held firm.

"You wouldn't do that...," she said, the pendant now flashing slowly. "You wouldn't risk it."

"And how would you be able to know that?"

"I don't," Thorax said, now looking distinctly uncomfortable, her eyes looking downward as the pendant flashed more rapidly. "But my Queen does. She wants to speak to you."

"I don't exactly see her around..."

"No... she wants..." Thorax shifted uncomfortably, groaning and clenching her teeth. Her eyes screwed shut as she shuddered. "To speak to you...to speak..." Her eyes opened with a flash, and there was a dull, bluish glow from the whites of her eyes. Her irises were no longer chartreuse; they were instead a deep, dark green surrounded by a ring of lighter, yellowish green with thin black slits for pupils. "Now..." rumbled out the distinct, two-toned voice of the changeling Queen from Thorax's mouth. The changeling grinned, looking back at the human with a determined expression. "It really has been too long, Heartless."

The hairs on the back of Handy's neck stood on end as his skin crawled. How in the hell did she do that? Was it the pendant? Could she have done that to him at any time? "Chrysalis...," Handy said lowly. The queen herself was right here at his fingertips once more. In a manner of speaking.

"Oh? None of your excessive formalities? Really now, I'm wounded."

"What are you talking about? What do you want?"

"A lot of things, little human...," she said, a teasing tone in her voice which only served to annoy Handy further. Oddly enough, he found himself looking away from her eyes more often than not, thankful for the anonimity afforded by his helmet as uncomfortable memories surfaced of what he had almost done to her. But that was then, this was now, and he forced himself to meet her gaze. "And I was ever so hopeful I could've done all I wanted to do without you being any the wiser until I returned your precious little mage to you."

Handy almost rose to that bait. He could have demanded to know where she had placed Crimson, but showing weakness in front of the Queen of the changelings struck him as a terrible idea. "Alas...," Chrysalis continued, frowning slightly as she studied him. "Things did not turn out as desired, and here we are." She looked around. "Wherever we are. What was it you're, ah, little deer friend called it? The Greenwoods? Hmm, I guess as much judging by these trees, never managed to get any changelings into this place. I wonder if the legends are true..."

"I am growing tired of this," Handy said truthfully with an exasperated noise. He pushed down harder on Thorax's body and pressed his dagger just a bit more against her throat. Chrysalis turned her head around to face him once more. "Yo—"

"I have her. You know, the unicorn," Chrysalis said, almost bored, her eyes half lidded, her raised eyebrows, and slanted frown indicating she really couldn't care less for the human's anger right now. She simply wasn't intimidated. "The one you swore to protect," she smiled, "after that simply delightful touch of manipulation you pulled in that inn. Really, I had chills watching that."

"I don't particularly care."

"Oh I think you do, Heartless," she crooned, leaning forward, forcing Handy to withdraw his dagger bit by bit so as to not cut her inadvertently. "I've watched you for a long time, remember? Seen things through your eyes, heard what you heard, and enjoyed every moment of it. And oh, how you made Celestia's brat squirm, using your fascinating story of your homeland to lull her into a false sense of security. Simply delicious. Every lie, every half-truth, the way you looked at the corpse of prince, oh what’s his name? Ah right, Geoffrey. The bird you murdered." Handy flinched. "You weren't wearing the pendant that night, but it was easy to put two and two together. I still heard everything while the pendant sat in your room. It really didn't take me long."

"What of it?" Handy said, not liking where she was going with this.

"I just found it amusing how you insist on King Johan trusting you, even though you didn't have the heart to tell him who really killed his brother that night."

"He probably already worked it out," Handy said defensively. "He's smart enough to. Geoffrey's days were numbered anyway."

"Then surely you must share everything with him, hmm? Like how you knew I could see everything through this pendant."

"What are you getting at!?" Handy said, pushing her back against the tree with both hands. Chrysalis winced with the impact. That was interesting. She could feel what Thorax felt while she was in control of her?

"Temper, temper, human." Chrysalis was still smiling, grinning even. "What I am saying is that we have a lot more in common than you'd like to think."

"I have nothing in common with you, fae."

"Really now? I was there when you transformed. I was there when you fed. I saw the way you looked at ponies ever since, as much as you may want to deny it and stick to your little casks of animal blood. You need to take from others to survive, just like us. You lie, you cheat, you steal, you use others, perhaps not as much as changelings must do, but enough that we can see a kindred spirit." She paused. "But not entirely. You see, I did notice something else about you."

"And what, pray tell, would that be?" Handy asked, angry yet unnerved by the changeling's analysis of him. He placed the blade against her throat once more.

"You keep your promises," she said smugly, "even when they are inherently disadvantageous to you. Even when it would be easier to slip away and ignore it, or did I imagine your whole consenting to be King Johan's indentured servant because of a broken promise?"

"That was something entirely different. I had other reasons to go through with that."

"Ah yes, you swore to your God. How very religious of you. Then tell me, Heartless." She leaned up again, and again Handy was forced to avoid cutting her throat prematurely. "Would you then willingly go back on your promise to wittle Crimson," she asked, placing a holed hoof on the human's fist which held the blade, "by killing my little soldier and thus forcing me to harm her?"

There was a long pause and a conflicted expression on the human's face. Eventually, however, he pulled his knife away, Thorax's hoof following his hand until it was out of reach. She smiled triumphantly. "Good boy~" she cooed.

"You could not have known I'd do that," Handy tried to say in his defence.

"Oh, but I did. I did ever since you had that delightful discussion with Crimson about how to send you home. Simply fascinating, I must admit. You found out she had the means to send you to your little, rainy, island home, alllll the way on the far side of the world through this veil nonsense, but you didn't let her because it would harm her. How sweet of you, Heartless~"

Handy's mind raced, recalling everything he had discussed about how he got here with Crimson. He knew he was from another world. Crimson definitely knew, but he didn't recall either of them explicitly stating that while wearing the pendant. 'She doesn't know yet. She still thinks I'm from this world... or she's pretending to for some reason.' That could be useful to him, even though he didn't know how to use that right now. "What do you want with her?"

"Her?" she asked, eyes wide in mock innocence, "Why, nothing~" Handy rephrased his question.

"What do you want with me?"

"There you go..." she said before looking to the side, idly studying their surroundings. "A little bird told us something we need was in the possession of... certain ponies, ponies who were also very interested in a certain human and that they might rear their heads at the festival. We needed a way in, if only to just identify who these ponies were and then track them down ourselves, and a way to stick close to you," she placed a hoof on his chest which he batted it away in irritation. She merely chuckled, "to ensure we found them. Imagine our surprise that it was this same 'Mistress' your little Crimson friend feared, and it was her they sought and that crown you took off of Fancy Pants they were after. All very interesting. I believe I'll have a few lings pay mister Fancy Pants a visit sometime soon. You really know how to end up right at the centre of a web, don't you Heartless? And I intend to exploit it."

"So that’s why you took Crimson?"

"Yes. As interesting as it would be to hold onto her and learn her magicks, I fully intended to leave her back in your care when I was done," she said. Handy just looked at her with an unamused expression, and she blinked. "Honest. I had no intention of ever having to meet you in person again, but circumstances being what they are, I think I'll hold onto her for a while. Collateral, you understand."

"You know I'll just come find her."

"Oh yes, which is why I'm going to make a deal with you."

"No deal. You release her now, or I kill this little changeling in front of me that you happen to be puppeteering."

"Oh, but then I'll have to respond in kind," Chrysalis said with a pout. "Wouldn't that just be terrible."

"You'd sacrifice your soldier this willingly?"

"Heartless, she volunteered. She knew the risks," she said. "Now, here's what I offer you: I will release your pony, unharmed, if you agree to find me what I seek from those you were going to hunt down anyway. Hmhmhm, I'll even pay you. I know how much you like our gold, and we do ever have so much of it which we aren't using."

"Why would I ever agree to that?" Handy asked. "I can't trust you to hold up your end of the bargain."

"Not even on my word as Queen?" she asked, looking at him sideways. Handy's helmet betrayed nothing. She smiled, rolling her eyes and letting out an exaggerated sigh. "Oh, what to do, what to do. It would seem we cannot come to trust one another as we have no means of assuring the other will keep their word." Here it comes, the typical 'what choice do you have' shtick where the party who thought they had the advantage tried to strong-arm the other into doing what they wanted. Handy had a retort for that, and he was ready and willing to— "I suppose I have no choice but to place myself under a geas now, don't I?" she asked.

That took Handy off-guard. "A... A what?"

"A geas," Chrysalis said smilingly, "A kind of magi—"

"I know what a geas is," Handy said, wanting to pinch the bridge of his nose. The fae comparison was becoming more and more apt the more and more he learned about these changelings. In Ireland, it was just a part of the numerous tales and mythos of the 'Good People'. Here in this world? It almost certainly was a very real thing. "Why would I agree to verbal slavery?"

"Why, Handy, that’s only if you break your promise," Chrysalis said. "And it applies to me as much as to you. Would you not say that’s a good way to make me keep my word? I'm being awful generous to you here..."

"...Why would you risk it?" Handy asked. She smiled.

"I just have good reason to be confident. I fully intend to keep my word. This is just my way of proving it to you... and ensuring you keep yours."

"I thought you trusted me to keep my promises."

"There's nothing wrong with a little extra insurance, is there?"

"But your magic doesn't affect me."

"Just because I cannot feed from your heart nor affect your mind does not mean I cannot tie you to your own words. A geas works differently from other changeling magic." Her smile disappeared, and she looked at him with a serious expression. "You're already going after these ponies. This is just my way of ensuring I get what I want out of it and your way of keeping your promise to the unicorn."

"At the expense of my freedom."

"Only if you break it~" she sing-songed, "Otherwise you're as free as you ever were."

Handy thought for a good, long while. He was livid, and it must've shown as she began smiling more broadly. Chrysalis had him. He couldn't just walk away from this, not when she had Crimson. He needed the mare, she was his only definite ticket home if he ever got callous enough to exploit her submissiveness to spend more of her lifespan getting him home. More than that, if he didn't, she was his only reliable knowledgeable source on old magic, which apparently, he was woefully underprepared to face in a fight. Chrysalis was also lying, she had to be. What else was she getting out of this? She led him right into this trap with the geas, knowing full well he wouldn't trust her at her word. Why risk binding herself as well? Why would she want to do this? It couldn't be as simple as she said. What was he not seeing here? "How does this geas work?" he asked at last.

"You need to just look deep into my eyes," she said, her tone turning velvety, clearly enjoying this altercation. "Come on. Just do it and we can get a move on…." Handy look off to the side for some time, the changeling in front of him humming complacently. Sighing, he took off his helmet, eventually complying and looked the changeling in the eyes.

That was when the rest of the world disappeared.

All he could see were Chrysalis’ eyes and darkness around them. The eyes flashed periodically, and the darkness pulsed and distorted in tandem. He could hear her voice, but oddly enough, it was not the two tones he was used to hearing. It was... normal, almost. She insisted on speaking in that same, seductive tone, and he found he couldn't look away. "Do you wish to make a deal with me, Handy the Milesian?" she asked as the eyes pulsed, her voice like honey, worming into his ears, gently nudging, urging with an almost physical force. Handy felt compelled to reply but forced himself to take his time, to pick his words carefully. In legends, geases always worked out badly for the human because they fucked it up, didn't foresee pitfalls in the fae's wordplay, or let their mouths write cheques they couldn’t cash. Handy was all too aware how fond his mouth was of doing that last mistake and was determined to prevent that from happening.

"I wish to make such a deal with you, Queen Chrysalis of the changelings," he said. Chrysalis laughed at that, the sound ringing like crystal glass, glittering and beautiful. He grit his teeth, trying to concentrate his thoughts but finding it difficult.

"What do you wish to trade?"

"I do not wish to trade. I wish to make a promise for a promise," he replied. Chrysalis was silent for a moment. Her eyes and the blackness pulsed as they slowly drew nearer. The distortion of the surrounding darkness adopted a texture not unlike static, and his eyes hurt when he focused on his peripheral vision. Any attempt to focus away from her eyes was frustrated.

"What do you promise?"

"If Queen Chrysalis promises to release the unicorn mare, Crimson Shade, unharmed from her possession and does so immediately..." he heard a harrumph coming from the Queen and felt himself move, almost as if he fell back a short distance, but could not be sure "...I promise to retrieve for her that which she seeks from the one known as the Mistress and her servants." The last part was painfully vague, and Handy cursed himself for not having Chrysalis specify what it was she sought. His first mistake, he now realised, was initiating the deal himself. While successfully deflecting Chrysalis’ attempts to steer the conversation, he had only ended up being forced to specify what he was willing to do for her first. The eyes continued to pulse and seemed to be getting steadily closer as they spoke. Handy felt beads of sweat break out on his forehead, a strange heat flushing his head. Was this the magic at work?

"I will agree to this promise for a promise," Chrysalis said, her eyes barely inches away from his own, her voice ringing clear and increasing in intensity. Every word felt layered, heavy, authoritative, but still retaining that frustratingly seductive quality, "if Handy the Milesian agrees never to lay harm to me again." Ah, so that was it. The catch. She was still hung up on the shock treatment he had given her all that while ago. He could agree to that. "And to return what I seek to me, personally." Well, damn.

"I will agree to this if Chrysalis, in turn, promises not to harm me, or mine," he said as the eyes were almost entirely upon him, filling his vision. The heat on his face increased, and he realised he could smell something akin to freshly cut grass and honeysuckle. He felt a weight press down on his chest and her laughter was like gentle dewfall. God damn, he felt the familiar throbbing in his head whenever something ever tried affecting his mind, knowing that whatever effect this magic was having on him, it was mitigated and lessened because of whatever God blessed stroke of luck prevented him from being putty in her hooves. He had already struggled to keep his thoughts straight. He'd hate to see what it would be like if he didn't have any defence against their magic at all.

"Done," Chrysalis said at length. He felt breath hit his face as his vision was entirely consumed by the sea of green from her own eyes. Green which turned to a blue-tinged white surrounding her irises as the world returned, the sudden return of light almost a shock. He found himself resting back on the ground on his elbows, nose to nose with the changeling who pressed down on his chest. "Was that so terrible~?" she asked, a devious smile on her possessed muzzle. Handy's eyes widened in alarm.

"Get off," Handy said threateningly, more than a little uncomfortable by her proximity.

"Is that any way to speak to your Queen?" she asked, raising a hoof to Thorax's barrel. Handy shifted his weight, forcing the changeling off of him as he got to his knees and then to his feet. She stumbled a bit before righting herself on her hooves.

"You are not my Queen," he said, earning him a laugh.

"Oh, but would it be so terrible if I were? I understand how you feel."

"Do not assume—"

"Save us both the bother. You are just like us, Heartless. You feed on others, you take from them what you need and grow stronger because of it."

"I am nothing like you."

"Is that what you think? And what, pray tell, do you have in common with ponies more than us? Hm? Or griffons? They will not accept what you are, or what you need to do to survive. You helped us get our city back; you saved several of my changelings from captivity. You can make a good case for yourself here, with us."

"Enough."

"Come now, don't be like that~" she cooed. "I hardly ever tried to kill you after what you did to me, not even a little bit after you survived the Badlands. You impressed me, so surely you can—"

"Enough," Handy said. Had it ended there, had Chrysalis stopped her goading, he may have come to terms with what she was saying and dismissed it for the clear attempt at manipulation that it was. He would have calmed down. She did not, however, and slowly he began tuning out what she said, but the buzzing two toned sound of her voice grated on his ever fraying nerves as he paced before the changeling. She was enjoying antagonizing the human, switching to insults when goading him about his nature didn't prove enough to get him to react, pausing only once to wince as she nicked Thorax's fetlock on a nearby bramble. And after everything that happened that day, as much as he would've given anything to have just been left in peace to sort out his thoughts, he found himself struggling to keep down his anger but... found he couldn't bring himself to think of harming the Queen.

No, there was something different this time. This wasn't his usual guilt. He literally could not think about it, the thoughts melting away and his anger fizzling to nothing. He stopped mid pace and looked confused. Chrysalis smiled. "Something the matter, Heartless?" Handy shot her a glare, and her toothy grin widened. "Certain thoughts coming to mind? Or rather not, I'd imagine?"

"What did you do?"

"What did you do?" she parroted, breaking out into a laugh. "That's how the geas works, human. No matter who initiates the spell, it’s a two way street. I bind myself to my words and you bind yourself to yours. I just wanted to make a little demonstration to show you how it works."

"By pissing me off?"

"A crude way to put it, but yes," she said before her grin fell to a mere smirk. Handy just stopped and stared at the changeling for some time as she continued blathering on, preening, gloating about how much she was 'enjoying the shoe being on the other hoof'. He wasn't paying too much attention.

Now, dear reader, put yourself in Handy's boots for the time being. For the most part, on the sheer balance of things, he'd been having, for lack of a better word, a rather excellent week. Plenty of chances to blow off steam in a violent manner? Check. Time off duty? Check. Petty vengeance on a smarmy princely bastard? Check and check. Then, in the course of a single day, he lost his favourite cloak, which was literally the best cloak, he got axed in the back, and got a close and personal experience of what it was like to be dying slowly and painfully. He also got a better appreciation of how easy it could be for his vampiric nature to outright usurp control of his body... or drive him mad with fear. Which meant he was long overdue for a good hard look in the mirror in his near future about exactly what he was, which he was not looking forward to. He had the shit thoroughly kicked out of him, by a wizard no less, magic resistant armour be damned. And now he was in the middle of God only knows where, hopefully only miles away from festival grounds where, you know, all of his money and goods were. And his friends and his king had no fucking idea where he was. He had his freedom of thought and action subjourned by agreeing to a fae spell he had tied himself to in order to safeguard Crimson's release so that his one and only sure link to the Mistress and her magicks, which he needed now more than ever, wasn't lost to him. And now... Now, the person responsible for that last addition to the shitheap that thoroughly ruined Handy's mood was tittering at him like a schoolgirl.

And you know what? Fuck that. 'If she wants to fight wits with wits, then two can play at that game,' Handy thought viciously. She had been acting creepy this entire time, obviously enjoying putting the human on the back foot. Turnabout was fair play. 'Earlier she cut her fetlock... She felt Thorax's pain… She feels whatever she feels. You know, had she sent some nameless changeling that I didn't know, I might feel guilty about this next part,' he thought, grimly remembering how Thorax had kidnapped him and the pleasant stay he had had in the changelings' care as a result. 'But seeing as it’s this particular one...' He started laughing.

Chrysalis' ear flicked. "What’s so funny?"

"You know," Handy said, crouching down till he was eye level with the changeling Chrysalis had possessed. "You should really think your deals through more clearly," he said. She narrowed her eyes at him.

"That’s generally what one does when you make a geas, human." Chrysalis deadpanned. "I didn't put in any obligations I did not want."

"I know, I'm just saying...," he said as he placed his hands on her withers.

"W-What are you doing?" she asked, eyes darting to the hands as she raised a hoof to her barrel.

"Proving a point," Handy said, smiling lightly. "Particularly yours."

"What?"

"You say I'm like you, right? More than I'd like? Deceptive, sneaky?"

"What are you getting at?" she asked, turning her head to the side, looking at the human suspiciously. He was quiet for a moment, not directly answering the question. Casually eyeing a certain piece of her anatomy, almost admiringly.

"You know, you have such a lovely neck," he said, eyeing the body part in question. She cocked an eyebrow at him.

"It's not my...," she said before her eyes widened in comprehension. Handy's smile widened. Revealing his two little friends.

"That's what’s so funny."

--=--

She gasped as she shot up in bed, eyes wide and darting.

"My Queen?"

"AH!"

"Ahhh!" the nursemaid yelped, sending a silver tray with some kind of soup sitting atop of it clattering to the floor. She bowed low to the ground, covers sliding into place over her eyes, staring up at the Queen's eyes when she yelled at you being an immense faux pas in Changeling society. Also, that only applied when she yelled at you specifically. At anyone else, or at the room in general, you were solid. So that was why when her sovereign Queen shot upright in bed, screaming, the nurse maid barely blinked. Someone else's pain really wasn't their concern unless food was involved. However, if she was yelling at you? On your knees, motherbucker.

Changelings.

Chrysalis ignored her, instead wondering when the hell she had gotten into bed and why was the side of her face warm. She lifted a hoof to wipe the drool from her muzzle. God, she was glad noling else was around to see that. The nurse was bad enough. "What happened?" she demanded, glancing around her bedchambers. Everything seemed to be in place, but that wasn't the reason she was looking around imperiously as she got up from the bed.

"M-My Queen, you should probably res—"

"What happened?" the queen repeated more forcefully, trying to hide the nervousness in her voice. 'Okay... Okay, I'm back, this is my body, this is the palace, this is Lepidopolis. I'm fine,' she reassured herself, idly checking a few things, moving odds and ends around with her hooves, just to prove she could. She had tried possession several times before using similar pendants and her most trusted changeling guards. There was always a sense of disorientation when she got back into her body, but she had never felt anything this... intense. It was all she could do to keep her composure and not freak out.

"Y-You were found on the floor by your viewing crystal," the nursemaid said, pointing a hoof to the crystal orb in one corner. Chrysalis looked. It was still glowing blue. Squinting, she noticed a few tell-tale floating patterns within the crystal made up of magical light. It took practice to read, but it meant that Thorax was still alive... at least for now.

'That. Bucking. Human.' She ground her teeth as she idly rubbed the side of her neck, the phantom feeling of two puncture wounds fresh in her memory but, thankfully, absent from her dermis. "Y-Your lingservant discovered you this morning. You had been asleep for some time. My lady, are you alrigh—?" The nurse shut her mouth quickly and slid her covers back over her eyes once more as the Queen looked at her. The nurse's mane had been curled up in a bun ontop of her head. Not being a soldier, she, like most changeling civilians, didn't have to shave their manes and tails off.

"I am fine," the Queen insisted with finality. The nurse made to enquire further but ceased as Chrysalis maintained her glare.

"Y-Yes, my Queen. My apologies. I-I'll clean up and g-go."

"See that you do," she replied as the servant bowed before cleaning up the fallen soup and hurrying out of the chambers. As she left, Chrysalis closed the doors with her magic. Turning, she closed the doors leading to a balcony and drew the drapes. One more spell, and the room was silenced. No one would hear her for the next hour. She couldn't afford anyling finding out about what she was going to do next. She took a deep breath to calm herself at last as she gathered her thoughts.

And then Chrysalis squealed like a filly covered in worms, hopping from one hoof to the next.

"Stupid, blithering ape! How dare he!?" she fumed, shivering, rubbing the sides of her neck with her forehooves. Of course, of course there would be something she had to overlook. It was too good an opportunity to miss that she didn't think, didn't even consider that he'd figure some way to get back at her. She had felt everything, absolutely everything Thorax did when he sank his fangs...

She shivered. It... It was surprisingly pleasant... which just made it so much weirder. Changeling fangs did not do that to a lng afterall. She had largely come to terms with her feelings of fear towards the human, having watched him and learned that he did, in fact, have some semblance of guilt over what he had done to her. He had a weakness, something she could exploit, and that had given her confidence. Confidence enough that when her plans went awry, she had taken the opportunity to face the human, look him in the eye, and bend him to her will. Well, that and to prevent him from killing one of her changelings, but no ling needed to know about that little motivation. All that, only to have him turn on her, a bolt of terror shooting down her spine when she realized what he was doing. A veritable nightmare coming to fruition.

It wasn't nearly as bad as she thought it'd be, to be honest.

She shook her head to dispel the thought and snarled. He thought he was so clever? Fine, maybe she would give the order to have that precious unicorn of his shaved, and that was just for starters, then... then she could... She felt the thoughts melt away and the anger fuelling them evaporate. She blinked dumbly in confusion before letting out a strangled noise in raw frustration and flipping over a vanity table with her magic. "Grrragh! Of course the geas would still be intact! That little—!" she shook with fury, rearing up and shaking her forehooves impotently, her breathing deep and hurried before calming down.

She sat on her haunches, idly rubbing the side of her neck as she looked at the fallen mirror on the ground that thankfully hadn't shattered. She bore a thoughtful expression as she brought her hoof away from her neck and looked at it, contemplating. A small smile crept across her muzzle.

'Its fine,' she said to herself, thoughts swarming in her head. 'Everything is just... fine.' The geas was quite clear where it mattered. Whether he wanted to or not, the human would bring her that which she sought from the Mistress. In person. Then she would be able to secure her position as rightful Queen now that all those pretenders from rival colonies were landing in Lepidopolis. The human would regret that stunt of his in due time – she would make certain of that. For now, however, he was useful.

"Yes..." she said quietly, idly rubbing her neck again as she looked out the balcony window, the narrow slit afforded by her closed curtains giving her a limited vision of the lit up, very much alive city below. "It'll be just, fine."

--=--

Well, he could rule out the possibility that he was anywhere near Ironcrest anymore.

He had seen the countryside from the airship when they had arrived. There were no forests anywhere nearby that had trees this huge. Or could have possibly been this quiet. There was no way this forest wouldn't be crawling with griffons after that debacle if it was anywhere nearby, and the forest on the festival grounds was far too small to compare to this place.

He looked up to the expanse of the canopy above him. Somehow, the moonlight still shone through that impenetrable expanse of black, casting the undergrowth in subtle hues of blue and gentle greys and causing the crystal clear water of the pond next to him to sparkle and dance as the remnants of the mist that earlier pervaded everything clung to the ground, ghostly fingers tickling the surface of the earth and swimming between the roots and stones. Not that he could appreciate it at that moment.

He had left her there, setting her down near the pond, having used the rags he had covered his arm and back with to tie her hooves. She wasn't going anywhere. He had waited for the fog to lift enough that he wouldn't lose her location as he crested the hill to get his bearings. Yep, he sure was lost. Nothing but endless forest wherever he looked. He called out, to see if anyone could hear him, but got nothing in response. Not even the sound of disturbed animals. That was eerie. No birds, no rustling of the underbrush, no buzz of insects, nothing but the swaying of leaves.

He felt uncomfortably aware of how devoid of life this part of the forest was. He could... tell where Thorax lay, even though the hill now stood between the two. He could feel where she was, a strange, burning sensation that pulled him... No, that wasn't the right phrase. It was more akin to a pinch that only let up when he turned in her direction. Was this an effect of changeling blood? It probably was – he couldn't make out anything distinct other than her location and her condition, which was slightly agitated sleep.

He huffed and turned away, walking. He was done with today, in so many ways. He was tired, yet thanks to his little 'snack', sleep wouldn't be coming for some time yet.

It had tasted like liquorice, if you must know, with a tangy, sizzling aftertaste and gave him a burning sensation in his head. He was reminded of the pungent smell of fecund earth after rainfall and the smell of strawberries. This was honestly one of the strangest things about his condition, he decided, the tastes, the 'smells' which only came to him when he was drinking, the feeling he got in his mind's eye. He figured he was only making these connections as the closest reference his mind had to what he was experiencing. Or at least he hoped that to be the case. It didn't make sense otherwise, but it was still strange as all hell.

What was interesting was that despite being able to feel Thorax's presence, he didn't particularly feel all that much stronger. He certainly didn't move nearly as fast as he would with other blood or perceive as much. Certainly, all these abilities were heightened more than he was naturally capable of, but the effect was woefully under par by comparison. He could feel the difference based on the residual thestral blood still in his system. Although… he felt possessed of a strange confidence that he couldn't quite place, a surety of purpose and direction, which was ironic since he was pretty damn lost.

Whatever, it had tasted good, he felt refreshed and full of life, and he got one over on Chrysalis. He could deal with not having any impressive powers this time around.

And with those thoughts, his mood darkened and his pace quickened. The creeping fog grew thicker and rose ever so slightly as he walked. The Queen's words weighed down on him as he went, and as good as it felt to knock her down a peg or two, that little stunt of his just... well, it just proved her right, now didn't it? He was sickened with himself. The Queen had hit closer to home than he ever cared to admit, and it had only been a day or so since he had actually contemplated engaging in, for lack of a better term, 'hunting'. The temptation of drinking living blood was just... It was intoxicating. He would often find himself grimacing and thinking about it each time he partook of an animal's blood to satiate the lust, recollecting the immense satisfaction and pleasure it gave him when he took from another living person. The intensity of the moment as he scraped his fangs along skin, searching for what he knew to be there, relishing in the anticipation, enjoying the apprehension and shuddering fear of those underneath him as he prepared to feed… It was exhilarating.

Their thrilling gasp of pain and shock as his fangs puncture skin and artery, the jolt of their bodies underneath him as they froze stiffly before relaxing, melting away into his embrace as he drank deeply, greedily, hungrily, each ounce of vital essence a shot of ecstasy through his own body. Every intake of breath through his nostrils filled him with the scent of their spilled blood, sending him wild. The smells, the feeling, the sheer psychic rush that flooded his intellect, the primal euphoria as something wild within him was sated by the barbarism. The raw pleasure he felt as he took from them...

How easy it would be, how often he longed for it, how often he pushed those thoughts, those desires to the back of his mind, out of sight where he could not think of it. How he could not bear to dwell on how good it felt, on his shame at how much he enjoyed it all.

How easy it would have been, he wondered, to have bitten Shortbeak?

She had been right there, curled up against him, inebriated, sleeping peacefully as he had listened to the steady, rhythmic pumping of the blood through her veins. How easily he could've just bent down, opened his jaws, and just taken from her. Wondering how she would taste, how she would've felt? How he had to suppress that very thought on the night beneath an avalanche of raw guilt and self-hatred.

How much had he wanted it anyway?

How tempting, how easy it would have been, to take from that young alicorn when he had her right where he wanted her? After having spent hours getting her alone and compromising how she felt so that she wouldn't have been in a position to resist had he actually went for it? He had a goal that day, he achieved it by scaring her, but the temptation to have gone further was... almost overpowering.

It was there, always, at the back of his mind, lurking, waiting, contemplating, wondering, surfacing only from time to time. Forcefully when he was hungry, willingly when he had fed recently such as right now. Always thinking, always wondering.

When he was in the book store in Canterlot. The mare behind the counter.

On the train to Ifrendare. The distracted stewardess. The young griffon lass by the window seat.

In the witch's hut in the cavern beneath the farm.

The irritable Countess he had dealt in the course of his duties as sword of the king.

The butcher, the baker, the alchemist...

The young servant griffon he had held under his cloak as the dragon fire had burned down the refreshment tent around them.

The injured mare in the burning arena with the emerald eyes...

It was there. It was always there. It had never gone away, no matter how successfully he had ignored it. It was a part of him. It was him. And Chrysalis saw that, she used that to get under his skin, and he hated her for dredging it to the forefront of his mind.

But now that it was here, he was having a harder time dismissing the thoughts. He wasn't even sure if he wanted to, not after what he had done. To think Joachim had warned him against taking from any more living people, for both his sake and theirs. What did he know!? He had no right to demand that of him! So what if he was his king!? He could do as he wished and damn the consequences! He had needs and he shouldn't be restricted from the nectar of life and subsist on living off of the dredges of butcher shops because of the fear of a bunch of walking wineskins!

That's what they really were in the end, weren't they? His friends, his servants, and the people he knew – they were food to him, and no amount of pleasantries and civilization was going to change that. They were food, they were power, it was his pleasure, and his right to take from them what he needed, what he wanted, to lose himself in the act and reap the spoils it gave him! In fact, why didn’t he do just that?

Thorax was still back there. She still had plenty of blood left – he had made sure of that. He contemplated doing it, relishing in the feeling of the changeling when he fed on her, the unique, elastic texture of the strange psuedo skin they had. The feeling of shock and fear giving way weakly to acceptance, the immense rush as he feasted on her blood, the memory of it still fresh in his mind's eye, the sheer thrill of it. How he didn't want to stop, the dark temptation to drain her dry, sucking every precious milliliter of her life’s blood until he felt her heart give out!

--=--

It took him a while to register the pain in his unarmoured left fist. It was caked in his own blood despite that his wounds had healed over near instantly. He had spent the better part of half an hour punching an indention in the ancient, unyielding wood of the tree. He hadn't even realised he had been doing it until the pain it caused finally broke through. He blinked, and the darkness that had shrouded his thoughts lifted, registering the pain he was inflicting on himself to clear his head.

He withdrew his hand from the tree, splinters lodging in his skin as he painfully uncurled his fingers, stiff from the constant force of impact they were under. His hand was shaking. No, he was shaking as he steadied his wrist with his other hand, noticing it was just as bad. Water dropped on his stained hands, smearing the dried in blood and dirt. He looked up. It wasn't raining. He felt something cold and wet on the side of his face. He rubbed it away, only to discover his own tears.

He was so lost in his... thoughts would be one word for them, that he did not know where he was going. He didn't even register he had been punching the tree, nor why. His body, or something in him, had taken over, trying to inflict pain to drive away the dark thoughts, to establish some kind of control over himself. To put a stop to his own worst impulses.

Only now after the fact did he realise that he so very desperately never wanted to think about such things again.

Ever.

He fell to his knees, continuing to shake, finally admitting to himself that he was, in fact, a monster. Not an opinion, but an actual, tangible fact. He had to forcibly control himself, to watch himself always or else... or else that would be him. That would be what he became, that would be what he would do to everyone around him. He'd become something less than human, less human than the world full of foreign races and species he now lived in. He'd become a debased creature who would tear open the throats of those who trusted him and watch them die in his embrace, revelling in it so long as he got what he wanted out of it.

And that scared him more than anything else he could imagine.

"God...," he said weakly through shuddering breaths, his mouth suddenly dry as his voice croaked. "God, I'm sorry... I am so sorry..." he said, fumbling at his breastplate, reaching up and into it through his gorget, pulling out the small chain and the cross upon it. The left arm of the cross had broken off at some point. He hadn't even noticed until now.

"Please, help me. I'm... I'm sorry, I don't... I don't really want this, these things. Please!" he pleaded, the gentle rolling fog covering him up to his waist as he knelt there amidst the undergrowth. "It’s not my fault!" he said more forcefully, a shaking hand taking off the helmet and letting it fall to the ground. "It’s not my fault; you can't blame me!" he shouted, his voice carrying for some distance in the unearthly silence of the dark forest.

"I... I can't... It’s the temptation. I can't be faulted for the temptation! It was put upon me. That was not my fault! That was not what I choose!" he protested weakly. "I don't... I don't act on it, not always... I put it out of my mind like… like I'm supposed to with every other sin!" He gripped the cross in his unarmoured hand more forcefully, imprinting it into his skin. His words sounded hollow to his own ears, in the face of what he saw within himself. What vileness he was capable of, what a part of him wanted, what he wanted.

"No!" he said quietly, his voice soft, desperate. "I'm sorry... I just... I just want help. God, please... Why...?" Nothing stirred but the idle plant life in the gentle, almost non-existent breeze that flowed around him, the mist that sat with him rolling by peacefully, ignorant and uncaring of the storm of fear and despair raging in the heart and soul in their midst.

"Please," he begged, thoughts coming unbidden of those who he assaulted, and those he had killed. Justifications and rationalizations turned to ash in the face of the reality of the evil he had committed. The wind blew, the trees stirred, silence reigned in the wake of his voice.

"I'm so sorry."

Author's Note

ITT: Vampires are bad people

Chapter 29 - Lost and Found

She lay there for some time after waking up. The world was still mostly dark even as somewhere far above the forest, the sun slowly rose in the sky.

The warm early morning sunlight pierced the canopy far above her, tiny tears in the unending blackness like a smattering of stars on an artificial night sky. The sunlight, like celestial spears, pierced the air, diagonal columns of golden warmth stark against the twisting shapes on the unyielding trees that stood like the sentinels of ancient myth, eternal, undeniable, and immutable as living stone.

She was warm as a particularly large shaft of sunlight spilled over her like a blanket as she shifted on the fine dust of the gentle decline she rested on. The soft dirt gave way as she moved her hooves experimentally, her movements sluggish and her mind foggy. Her throat was dry and her body felt lethargic and exhausted. Yet in spite of that, she was perfectly content to lie there, comfortable even. She didn't dwell on it; her thoughts were practically non-existent and her worries and concerns melted away with them. It was just her and this moment in time, watching the dust motes floating in the air, caught in the beams of light that descended from on high and looking out over the inviting, clean pond water in front of her further down the decline. She smacked her lips.

'Water,' the first coherent thought echoed in her mind. She tried getting up, a considerable feat considering her condition and just how warm and comfortable she was lying there... only to trip and fall over, hitting the ground with her chin hard. She groaned and tugged at her hooves, to find them restrained. Befuddled, she retracted the membrane that protected her eyes and scrunched her face in confusion. Yep, those sure were bloody, colourful cloths wrapping her legs together.

She looked at them for easily five minutes, her weary brain slowly churning, trying to figure out why in the hell she was tied up in the middle of the forest and why she couldn't seem to recall anything for the last forever. Now, a normal person would be all kinds of freaked out at the implications of that last sentence, but Thorax was a changeling.

Changelings looked at things differently.

Instead of being concerned for her health, safety, or sobriety, as a changeling, her first concern was 'Damnit, I thought I got away with stealing that extra ration.' You see, stealing extra rations from the feeding chamber was a serious crime for a changeling, albeit one that did not result in banishment. Banishment was a terrible idea for a punishment in changeling colonies and clusters. It increased the risk of discovery, encouraged defection to other races or rival colonies out of desperation, and removed one more useful changeling for the colony.

Instead, changelings were exiled, usually by being bound and dumped in a hostile environment and expected to return home with enough food to make amends for their trespass. It was not permanent exile; rather, it was a challenge and a means of redemption. Firstly, they need to prove they could survive to prove they weren’t a burden on the hive. Secondly, they had to bring back more emotion to contribute to the communal feeding chamber to make up for what they stole.

However, given enough time, even the most important and punitive of traditions could fall victim to contempt, and in times of plenty, the punishment often fell by the wayside, or outcasts were placed in less dangerous scenarios than tradition otherwise demanded. Also, changelings tended to steal rations, pin it on someone else, and then volunteer with a couple of buddies to knock out the patsy and dump them in the middle of nowhere for shits and giggles.

Changelings.

However, having one's hooves tied was literally child's play to a changeling. They wouldn't have survived as long as they had as a species if they could be detained by this most rudimentary of means. She shifted her forelegs, back and forth, up and down, shimmying her binds until they fell into one of the gaps of her legs. The sudden slack allowed her to pull out her right foreleg completely and let the rags slip off before doing the same to her hind legs. She trotted over to the pond with more vigour than she honestly felt, feeling pleased with herself for disposing of her bindings with contemptuous ease. A moment she soon regretted as the sudden movements quickly made her lose balance as her head swam and the biting chill of the wind nipped at her withers.

All this was forgotten, however, as she dunked her head into the clear water, quickly drawing it back with a gasp, letting the cool water run down her face to help wake her up before she returned her muzzle to the surface and drank deeply. 'Okay... what did I do... how did I get here?' she asked herself, trying to dredge up memories as her mind slowly woke up, aided by the gloriously fresh water. 'The last thing I remember was....' She stopped as she slowly opened her eyes again to look at her slightly distorted reflection in the water. The first thing she noticed were her own chartreuse eyes looking back at her, which was the first sign something was deeply amiss.

Changelings never slept without their eye covers. Or at least soldiers, scouts, and infiltrators didn't. It was a defensive measure – the lenses of their ocular covers reacted to the light, which prevented changelings from being dazed or blinded, not to mention keeping their eyes clean and free of foreign material. In short, they were invaluable in their line of work. So if she woke up without them on, she had to have been knocked out in the first instance. Second, there was a very familiar, yet very worrying talisman about her neck, a pendant that sent a shiver down her spine at the vague recollection of the feeling of having your body move but not move to your own will. Thirdly, there was this curious stain on the side of her neck. And, all at once, the memories of the previous night and day flooded her mind.

She took it about as well as you might think.

She had to quickly extract herself from the pool of water she had promptly fallen into, with all the grace and precision years of military training and scouting could muster mind you. She totally wasn't flailing, shaking water off herself, spluttering, and coughing, nope. She took a moment to recollect her thoughts and gritted her teeth. See, biting someling's neck meant a number of things in changeling culture, which was understandable. Their own fangs were highly versatile creations capable of producing a number of toxins and venom ranging anywhere from paralyzing a victim and enervation to straight up knocking a pony out or causing various effects, including feelings of intense paranoia and minor audio-visual hallucinations. When used on prey, read, anything that wasn't a changeling, it was a tool. Use in changeling society on other changelings was strictly taboo, except in very specific circumstances. So the human biting her was the cultural equivalent of walking into a Catholic church and throwing up in the Baptismal font. Faux pas didn't even begin to cut it.

The stub of a tail twitched in agitation, a bad habit. An almost silent, organic sound of a knife slicing through meat sounded as her covers slid in place back over her eyes once more. First things first, she still had a mission, and her queen did her work in getting him under her hoof. She was going to ensure he saw that through. Then, THEN, she would get back at him. She shook her head and got back to her hooves, looking around her to see for signs of the human's departure. Spotting his distinctive footprints, which would be hard for him not to leave in such heavy armour, she smiled to herself as she followed after them. She left behind the rags that had been used in a vain attempt to detain her and the torn saddlebags that were never hers to begin with.

--=--

"Whirlwind?" Jacques asked groggily, his eyes barely parted and woozy as his vision swam. Wait a minute. Nope. His vision was mostly okay; it was his body that was moving back and forth. His head was killing him, and his horn felt like it was vibrating at a frequency of fuck-off-and-die. Or maybe that was just the nerves at the base throbbing like a hive of angry bees, or all the blood rushing to his head. Or all of the above with a side order eat-shit. His body was not very fond of him at the moment as you might be able to tell.

"Yeah?" the far too familiar and far too joyful voice of the stag replied. Jacques couldn't see him, largely because Jacques couldn't take his sight off of the ground waaaaaay below him. Jacques managed to maintain a neutral expression despite the slowly rising panic welling up within him. He hated heights.

"Why are we in a tree, non, how... are we in a tree?" he asked, teeth gritted, pupils shrinking, eyes widening slowly as they opened up.

Jacques really hated heights.

"Haha, well you see, funny story really—"

"Whirlwind?" Jacques said with a little bit of alarm as he began struggling, his legs caught up in a delicate patchwork of interlocking branches from two impossibly tall trees that began shaking alarmingly as he moved. He froze, waiting for the trembling to stop.

"…and we were losing, ra-haha-ther badly, I might add. You were down, the human was down. Really, you're lucky I was around!"

"Whirlwind!?" Jacques said more urgently, his hoof placement awkward. His sword slipped out of its resting place in the crook of his leg and fell to the ground far below, spinning and whirling in the early morning haze as sunlight pierced the canopy that was still a good distance above them. "No!" he shouted, attempting to move forward but forcing himself rigidly back into place as the branches moved. "Monsieur Stabby!" he whined mournfully as his beloved sword disappeared into the underbrush. He turned behind him to see his charge lying on his back, suspended God only knew how high off of the cold, hard, unforgiving earth by little more than a bundle of ivy vines as he gestured with his forehooves explaining with copious enthusiasm the simply riveting tale of how they got up here.

And how he had fought the mage to a standstill singlehoofedly.

"–and he was all like 'This is not even my final form!' and then he charged at me, but I held him off! It got pretty close, I am not gonna lie, well okay maybe a little, but then I saw this... magic thing. Yeah, let’s call it that. It fell out of the unicorn's saddle bags. Not you, the pretty one, red fur, brown mane? Anyway, I accidentally broke it, and as you would say, voila!" he said, clapping his forehooves together for emphasis as he swung idly on the vines. Now, it wasn't exactly professional of him to do so, particularly since he actually liked Whirlwind as a client, but it was at times like these when he sincerely wished the stag suffered a severe case of rash from the ivy that he hoped was maybe just a little bit terribly poisonous.

Just, like, a little bit.

"WHIRLWIND!?"

"Yeah?" Whirlwind replied happily, swinging his hind leg lazily in the air beneath him, entirely comfortable in his predicament. Jacques looked up at him from his leafy precipice.

"Can you. Get us. Down?" Jacques asked carefully, sounding angry. In truth, he was more terrified and trying his damnedest not to panic about the potential forty foot drop. Or was that sixty? A hundred? He wasn't sure – the ground would not stop moving and warping and oh Celestia why did he keep looking down!?

"Oh sure!" Whirlwind said. "I forgot we had to do that."

"F-Forgot?" Jacques sputtered disbelievingly. Whirlwind nodded resolutely.

"And I was having such a nice time up here. Been a while since I took a swing in the trees; forgot what it was like. Oh! Can't you just levitate yourself down?" Whirlwind asked curiously, tapping the bottom of his muzzle with a hoof. Jacques stared at him incredulously before gesturing to his throbbing horn with the dried in blood around its base. "Oh! Right, right, out of commission for a while, gotcha. Anyway, would you be so kind as to let us down?" Whirlwind asked, turning his head away and flashing a winning smile at... the vines.

"Whirlwind," Jacques began after several seconds of silence, "it’s a plant, it can't hear yo—" He was silenced by a raised cloven hoof.

"Ap-bup-bup!" he said, nuzzling the bundle of vines. "Come on. Come on, wake up," he said gently. The vines seemed to shift and move, although Jacques was pretty sure that was just Whirlwind's movements causing that. Whirlwind frowned. "Don't be like that," he said, poking it with his nose. Something somewhere groaned audibly, creaking wood and something organic stretching. Whirlwind was lowered, physically lowered, by the vines which extended, growing and gently delivering the stag to the surface at a slow begrudging pace.

Jacques stared, slack-jawed, as the stag hummed happily to himself as he was lowered. Then the leaves shook under him. "Woah, hey! Hey!" Jacques shouted as the leaves bent and lowered. He fell to his belly and gripped the branches with his forelegs, desperately clinging to the branch which was now shaking him to get him off. "Whirlwind!? WHIRLWIND!? WHAT DID YOU DO!?"

"Relax!" Whirlwind shouted up from below. "They're just trying to help!"

"The tree is trying to shrug me off!"

"Yeah you'd do that too if you had a pony on your shoulder." He could hear the deer chuckle. Jacques let out a very unstallionly scream as he lost his grip on the branch—

And promptly fell on top of several others with an "oof!" The rest of his journey to the ground was punctuated by the occasional high pitched scream and constant terrified whimpers. All the while, the stag hummed a little ditty cheerfully to himself.

"Thanks!" he said the vines, which retracted to their original position after he rolled to his hooves as he got out of the basket of vines that he had landed in after being transported. The relic's presence in the human's possession, and how he was going to justify and explain to the elders his own wilful destruction of it, raised a lot of uncomfortable thoughts he'd really rather not dwell on at the moment. So he didn't! Instead, he thought of happier things! Butterflies! Honeymead! That earth pony lass who robbed him blind after he had one too many drinks!

You know, most people, being sane and reasonable and not Whirlwind, would consider that last point to be a bad memory. But as far as Whirlwind was concerned, it was his own damn fault for not suspecting something was up when a stunningly beautiful mare miles out of his league sauntered up to him and started buying him drinks and seemed really interested in his life story. He didn't normally go for ponies but, well, she was quite a sight to behold.

It was not as if he didn't get his own back, managing to track her and her thief buddies down outside of town. It was just he appreciated the effort and grace with which she robbed him and had to tell her so in person. Oh, and he had also wanted his stuff back, and she had best comply if she didn't want to take an antler to her pretty face.

Needless to say she didn't, and Whirlwind was in quite a bit of trouble when her pegasus buddies had started ganging up on him. In fact, it was around about then that Jacques had showed up. Boy, was Whirlwind lucky he arrived when he did. Those thieves had scarpered and he had gotten his stuff back. Jacques was a great guy and dependable. He had offered to keep him company on his way to Firthengart, saying something about Whirlwind's grandfather being worried about him and hiring him via letter. Whatever, Whirlwind hadn’t cared much about being babied by his elder like some fragile fawn, but at least his supposed bodyguard was an amiable fellow.

Speaking of Jacques...

"Hey, Jacques?" Whirlwind asked, looking up, trying to see where his friend had gone. "You down yet buddy?" And right on cue, there was an 'oof!', a groan of pain, and a lump of pony lying sprawled amidst the undergrowth as the lower branches of the trees dropped him unceremoniously as close to the ground as they could reach. Basically, he fell nearly ten feet into a collection of bushes and shrubs that weren't nearly as comfortable to land in as one might think. "Aha! You made it!" he said, hopping in place. "Hey, guess what? I know where we are!"

"Pooouurrrquuue..." Jacques moaned.

"Uh, no, I don't know where Poor Cwaw is," Whirlwind said, chuckling, knowing full well what his friend meant but deciding to laugh it off anyway. Hopefully, he could get through this without Jacques asking too many questions about where exactly they were. "But I know where here is! And that means we can get out of here! Preferably as soon as possible!"

"W-We?"

"Yes! You me, the human over..." It was then Whirlwind realized said human was nowhere nearby. His antlered head snapped from side to side, eyes slowly widening, the gentle smile on his dirtied and bloodied muzzle becoming ever so strained. "Okay! New plan! We're going to find that human and the mare and then we're all going to get out of here and get ice cream! Sound fun? Sounds fun!"

"Quoi?"

"Exactly, good stuff!" Whirlwind said, helping his friend to his hooves. "Now come along, we have a lot of ground to cover, haha! And we don't even know which direction we should start looking! This is going to be fun, huh!?"

"Where are we? Ugh..." Jacques held a hoof to his barrel, nausea threatening to spill what contents of his stomach remained. Also, he noticed that his cuts had healed up, or at least scabbed over. That was nice.

"In the woods!"

"What woo—"

"Hey, is that your sword?"

"My sw— Oh! Merde!" Jacques swore, suddenly twisting and turning around, looking for his fallen blade before diving into the underbrush to search for it. Whirlwind breathed a sigh of relief, the smile disappearing from his face as he rubbed his forehead with a hoof.

How exactly was he going to find the others and get them all out of here without them asking too many uncomfortable questions about where they were or how he knew where to go? Or before other deer came across them? Or before the forest got to them? There was a reason deer were the only ones who could navigate the Greenwoods safely, and even that was not as much of a guarantee these days as it used to be. He looked up at the canopy, frowning. He shouldn't have had to kindly ask the vines to let him down; he should have been able to simply wish for it, almost without thinking. It was getting bad. He didn't want to see this place when winter came and they had no means of soothing the forest. Nodeer did.

"So yeah, anyway, I'm thinkiiiinnnng…," Whirlwind said, hoof to the base of his muzzle, scanning the surroundings, trying to see the forest for all the trees. Literally. "They're that way!" he said, pointing somewhere that may have been westwards had they been actually able to see the sun. It was anydeer’s guess as to how any daylight reached the bottom of the forest floor. Whatever the reason, the ever-present haze that prevented seeing too far ahead of oneself was plenty bright due to the refraction of the sunlight. Whirlwind's nose shifted, his ear flicking and his head turning, eyes training on a collection of rags at the base of a decline to a crystal clear pond. Subtle and distinctly not deer-like, the hoofprints in the soft dirt led off in quite literally the opposite direction he was pointing. He sniffed again, turning once more and discovering torn saddlebags near the base of another tree. Whirlwind wasn't sure whether to laugh at or slap himself for not waking up earlier and avoiding having to track the human and the mare down. As it was, he lowered his right foreleg and then raised his left, all while Jacques was preoccupied with savaging the underbrush for his sword.

"Thwy're whaf whay?" Jacques asked, mouthful of sword present as his head popped up from a rather large bush. Whirlwind reflected on how silly he looked without his hat and the receding green colouration of his facial hair he had received from a rather reserved mare who didn't take too kindly to his advances. Okay, he had to be honest, Jacques looked silly anyway, but he could at least pull off that whole dashing swordspony schtick rather well.

"Yes."

"What?"

"Come on! We need to catch up. Look!" he said, pointing to the hoof prints. Jacques looked at them sceptically.

"Alright, but you need to explain how you got us here," Jacques said. "And leave out the bits with the sorcerer por favour. What was this magic thing you used?" Whirlwind's ears flicked, but his pleasant expression didn't change.

"I have no idea!" he said. "The human's ponyservant had it in her packs! We should probably find him and ask." Whirlwind walked over to the packs in question and threw them over his back. A few things fell out; nothing worth taking note of apart from a bottle filled with a strange, viscous, yellow substance. Probably nothing important. Jacques scrutinized him for a moment before exhaling through his nose and wandering over to the pond, analysing the evidence.

"I suppose we should find them. Galaxy knows I could do with some answers. You said you know where we are?"

"Yep!"

"And you can get us out of here?"

"Sure can!"

"Well alright then. I'll go ahead and make sure the sorcerer didn't come along for the ride," Jacques said, sheathing his sword, wincing and rubbing his forehead just below the base of the horn.

"Really, Jacques, I'm sure everything will be just fine." Whirlwind still had that smile plastered on his dirtied muzzle as his eyes looked around him at the forest bereft of life. At the body of water that stood as still and clear as a mirror without so much as a ripple. At the rustling of the plant life that moved in the breeze that by all rights should not be blowing this hard in this section of the forest. There was a hard edge to his shrunken pupils and a strain on his ever-present smile as he tried to suppress his deep seated concern.

"Just fine..."

--=--

Honestly, she did not know what she had been expecting.

Perhaps to find him doing something nefarious, or feasting on some small animal. Perhaps taking out a map or fiddling with that strange, thin, magic stone he kept on his person that lit up and played strange songs.

She had not expected to find him on his knees.

She had lost his trail once or twice since she began looking for him, growing increasingly frustrated. She had the sense to turn back to her pony disguise, just on the off chance someling else was hiding off in the trees that might spot her. Better to be caught as a pony than as a changeling after all. She was just about to take to the air and begin looking from above when she spotted something incredibly bright in the distance, an intense light that cut through the haze. Curiosity had rewarded her with her quarry. A thin beam of light piercing the canopy hit him across the back of his armour, causing it to shine intolerably bright. She kept her distance, a good fifteen yards or so, and circled around, keeping him in sight without giving away her position.

He was mumbling something she couldn't make out. The helmet he wore now rested on the ground just in front of his knees. He clasped it with both his hands as he hunched over, pressing down on it as if trying to support himself with it. His face was dirty, and soot smudges covered his face, sprinkled with dried in mud. Thin streaks ran down his cheeks, disrupting the mask of filth, and he had dark, red rings around his eyes. His hair stood out in random tufts from where he had pulled at it. It had been an awfully long time since she had seen a look quite so haunted on someling's face, which unnerved the changeling for reasons besides the obvious.

Question: you were a being who fed on emotion as a food source, referring to the actual feeling itself as it existed as a strange, mystical force, rather than simply feasting on the chemicals that rampaged through someone's neurochemistry when they felt happy. You, in fact, know that emotion was real in a sense that transcended the mundane, integral to everything living, to ponies, to dragons, to diamond dogs to plants, even to rocks in certain circumstances. You saw the world as others saw it, but with an additional layer, one upon which everyone was surrounded by a raging cataclysm of impossible colours that altered and changed according to how they felt, to their state in life.

It was a vibrancy and energy that, to you, represented life itself. Now you come across a creature that completely lacked that. It had no such aura of emotion. Indeed, he seemed very much to not even be alive in your eyes because of this. Yet he walked, he talked, he joked and laughed. So you convince yourself that, somehow, he is mimicking these feelings, like an intricately well-crafted magical golem. An automaton of some sort, natural or otherwise, a mockery of intelligent life. Either that or he was hiding it somehow, which only changelings knew how to do, and even then it was imperfect. The creature was, in a very real sense, wrong.

Now you see this very same creature display, very evidently, signs of despair and loss, to such a degree it shouldn't have been able to concentrate on maintaining any guise that could hide its feelings. It clearly expressed emotion on its own without concern for anyling watching, but with a complete lack of any accompanying aura. What do you do?

Thorax was trying to answer that question to herself when she realized the human had turned and was looking straight at her. There was nothing more unsettling to a changeling than being spotted, despite her hiding place between two trees and underneath a large leafy bush. The human moved first, stumbling to its feet and hurriedly putting its helmet back on. Thorax cursed under her breath. She had been absolutely certain that she had remained quiet and unmoving, yet somehow the human had figured out her spot.

"H-How long have you been there?" he asked. His voice was cracked and shaky, yet it made her ears perk up. There was something in his voice that wasn't there any other time she had heard him speak that drew her attention. She waited for a moment thinking, calculating. Automaton or no, the human appeared vulnerable right now. this would be a good opportunity to make up for the previous night's failings. She retained a neutral expression and strode confidently out of the underbrush, green fire washing over her body as she returned to her original form.

"Long enough," she said, noticing the human reach for his chest suddenly, grasping something and stuffing it under his armour. Another pendant of sorts, perhaps? "Care to explain?" she probed, hoping that putting the human on the back foot would fish out some information. She had been watching from the inside of her own head as her queen manipulated the human. One thing she learned was to press her advantage with him for as long as she possessed it. And if he turned violent again, she could always take to the air and stay out of his reach. The human remained silent, to her chagrin, and just glared at her from behind the helmet. Another thing which annoyed her, which hadn't existed before, was that she felt something when he looked at her, an odd compulsion to look him in the eye which was absurd, given his eyes were currently covered up. She had thought she was imagining it until he looked away briefly and the feeling disappeared, only to come upon her again when he turned back. 'That’s not something I remember him being able to do,' she thought. 'What the Tartarus happened?'

"I... have nothing to explain," Handy said. "Not to you."

"Oh I think you do, Heartless," Thorax said sharply, doing an admirable job of remaining stoic. It was somewhat difficult considering the strange, unnerving, new authority the human possessed behind his words, the lethargy from blood loss she was still recovering from, and the general urge to run away or to just jump this ape in the dark and return the favour along with giving him a buck to the side of the head for his sheer audacity. She appeared quite calm and collected all the while. The key word being appeared.

"None of your business."

"You know, there's little point in trying to hide. I know there's something wrong." 'Come on. Get upset,' she thought to herself, deciding to take a step forward. The human took a step back, his hand clasped around the head of his hammer tightly. 'Good.'

"I am warning you," he hissed. Alarm bells rang in Thorax's head, but she pressed on.

"If you are worried about the Queen, she is not with us right now," Thorax said. This was a risky play, and she knew it, but if she was right and the Heartless really was no such thing, then that meant he was as vulnerable now as he appeared. Which meant if she played her cards right... "It’s just you and me here," she said, pointing a hoof to the pendant around her own neck. It was dead and lifeless, as the Queen had deactivated her connection for the time being. "I won't tell a soul."

"You are a changeling," the human pointed out, "Even if I were to believe you when you said that, Chrysalis can take over your body-"

"But not my mind," Thorax said, still with a neutral expression. "I retreat into myself. She can tell me what to say, but not read my thoughts."

"Bullshit."

"Believe what you like," Thorax said, shrugging, lifting her hooves to her neck.

"What are you doing?"

"Taking the first step," she said as she lifted the pendant over her neck, holding it out to the human with a hoof. "Now, if you just throw it away, I will go after it. I do need it in order to co-ordinate with the Queen so we can help ensure you fulfil your part of the geas, but..." She cocked her head to the side slightly. "I'm willing to let you control when I get to speak with her Highness." The human stood there for a moment as if deep in thought.

In actual fact, from Handy's perspective, he was utterly dumbfounded. There he was, barely a coherent thought in his head, eyes long since dried up and mumbling utter nonsense. His prayers and desperate rationalizations had given away to wordless noise voicing thoughts that had no business being called such. Then, when he finally paid attention to that nagging pinch in his mind and found the changeling staring at him from the underbrush, he had a minor freak out which he managed to smoothly pass off as a mild stumble of surprise, hurriedly putting his helmet back on so she couldn't see the horrified expression on his face.

Now here she was, seated before him on her haunches, the woman who the night before he had seriously considered murdering for the sheer pleasure it would have given him. To say he was perturbed that not only was she on her feet almost as if nothing had happened between them, but that she had actively sought him out and was actually calm and business-like in doing so, would be a bit of an understatement. There was no right way to react to that. He did not want to see her at all, for so many reasons. He wanted her gone. And now here she was, trying to bullshit her way into gaining some of his trust... He could only ask himself why?

"...No thanks," he said shakily. Her ear twitched but otherwise she didn't move. "I think I'm better off not being anywhere near you, or that God forsaken pendant," he said, pointing at the offending object. "Should've broken it when I had the chance..."

"You know I'm going to be following you anyway, right?" she deadpanned.

"If you know what’s good for you, you'll do the exact opposite of that," he said, turning away, thereby unknowingly lifting the influence his gaze had on the changeling. He heard the buzz of her wings as she took to the air, landing on the large branch of a nearby tree.

"I am trying to work with you here," she coaxed.

"You are trying to manipulate me."

"By what? Giving you my one means of contacting my Queen? Trying to build up some trust so I can fulfil my mission and ensure you fulfil yours?" she asked, taking flight once more and alighting on another tree. The human ignored her as he tromped off through the forest in a random direction, his pace quick and angry. "Clearly I'm being underhanded here."

"Piss. Off," he spat through his teeth. She alighted at another tree. This branch was lower, only several feet above his head.

"Clearly I'm not going out of my way or risking anything." The human turned away, and she took flight and alighted upon a large, mouldy, hollowed out, fallen tree beside him. "By all rights, I should jump you in the night and get you back for what you did to me," she hissed. The human recoiled, almost as if physically struck. Thorax blinked behind her eye covers, grinning inwardly. 'Well... that's an interesting reaction.' She kept up the angry visage. The human had stopped now, but he was still looking away, which helped rid herself of the impact of whatever the hell that glare of his was doing before. She pressed the matter.

"What?" she asked harshly. "Why'd you stop now?" She took a few steps forward till she was on edge of the fallen tree, less than a metre away from him. He didn't respond. "I'm not going to go away. You will tell me what’s wrong if it’s going to affect the mission."

"Stop..."

"You ju—"

"DO YOU REALISE HOW LUCKY YOU ARE TO BE ALIVE!?" Handy exploded. Thorax took several steps back, a hoof raised defensively and her wings splayed, ready to take flight. "How easy it would have been for me to have ended you, then and there?"

"You wouldn't have..."

"Oh, believe me, little changeling, I would've."

"The queen's geas—"

"Never mentioned you," Handy interrupted. Thorax bared her own fangs in irritation, her wings twitching, creating an occasional, brief, buzzing noise. The human was glaring at her and she was feeling the full weight of the power behind his gaze and words. If it wasn't for her own hostility towards him, she wasn't sure if she wouldn't have done just as he said and fled. She had never seen the human have this effect before. What changed? Realization hit her, and she felt a chill run down her spine. The queen had briefed her on the human’s abilities as far as she was aware, which basically boiled down to him getting power from blood. Putting two and two together was an uncomfortable revelation.

'I'll be keeping that to myself,' she thought, resolving not to reveal exactly what changeling blood afforded the human. The last thing she wanted him to learn was how useful her blood was. If he could turn that power on an unsuspecting sap... "So that’s why you bit me?" she probed. The human flinched. "What’s wrong? I thought you said you would've killed me?" He looked away and she relaxed a bit as the gaze was taken away from her once more.

"I wanted to..."

"Why didn't you?"

"What are you getting at?"

"Why. Didn't. You?" she pressed. The human was visibly shaking, probably from anger, probably from something else.

"I had every right," he hissed, "I save you from the pony rangers and then you kidnap me. Have me tortured."

"We were just trying to put you under!"

"Good fucking job you made out of it."

"Alright fine then," Thorax said through her teeth, allowing her own anger to flare. Being a changeling meant she was a master class at controlling her own emotions. She wasn't in any danger of losing control, but a show was a show. She jumped down from the tree and marched right up to Handy. He took several steps back, and drew out the war hammer from the loop in his belt.

"Stay back." he said, his voice resounding with that authoritative subtext. She gritted her teeth all the harder and made herself press on.

"Kill me then."

"I said stay back."

"Do it," she said, not slowing down her advance. Handy nearly tumbled over an exposed root as he backtracked. "Either do it or tell me why you didn't if you want me dead so badly."

"You kidnapped me!"

"And you sucked my bucking blood!" she shouted. "And all I am asking in return," she said, retracting the covers and looking up at the human with her natural eyes for the effect, "is to know what’s wrong." Her voice adopted a calmer tone. 'That’s it,' she thought. The human seemed unsure of himself, his hammer raising and lower at his side by mere inches as he seemingly debated with himself. "No. I don't really care," she said, honestly enough. "Not about you. Not really. I care about my mission, which you are now a part of." She stood at her full height which came to an oh so intimidating three and a half to four feet. Taller, nearing five or above if she reared on her hind legs, sure, but she didn't want to push it.

She closed her eyes and sighed. "And if this is going to be a problem," she gestured with a hoof between the two of them, "I want it resolved. Now."

"I... I can't. It’s not that simple."

"No," she said, nearly snarled. "It isn't. But we're starting somewhere." The human rounded on her, and it was all she could do to not take a step back.

"Don't you dictate to me, Thorax," he hissed. He seemed... darker somehow. His armour was dull, a much darker shade all of a sudden. The slit of his helmet seemed to have this subtle, red glow from somewhere beneath the helmet, illuminating the dark fabric that obscured his face. Thorax felt her dermis prick up and down back, a shiver threatening to undo her. She blinked rapidly, shook her head, and looked back up at the human.

Nothing. He was still standing there, leaning towards her threateningly, but the illusion was dispelled. 'Was that... how did he...' "I am trying to help you," she managed, regaining her nerve once she rid herself of the illusion. 'Another thing he does not need to know. I don't think that was intentional.'

"You are helping yourself!"

"Yes! I am! And in order to do that, I have to make sure you don't break down in the middle of a bucking forest over nothing!" she shouted back. The human seemed to slump after a moment's silence. She calculated the effect and let the silence hang a bit longer than necessary. Let him stew on it for a bit.

"...It’s not nothing," he protested. She had to resist the urge to smile.

"Then what is it?" she asked simply, her expression annoyed and her eyes uncovered. Funny how he was now avoiding looking at her. He didn't reply, not that she expected him to, not right away. After all, this was just about building up trust. Handy started when something hit him in the chest with a metallic clang. The pendant fell to the ground at his feet. "Take it."

"I don't want this thing anywhere near me," he said, staring down at it. She allowed herself the indulgence of rolling her eyes.

"I don't want you to wear it, idiot. I want you to just hold onto it for me."

"Why?"

"So we can build up some bucking trust," Thorax said. "I need to communicate with the Queen so we can co-ordinate with the outside in case other changelings find information relevant to our hunt. It’s our one constant relay without trying to find a local cluster or, heaven forbid, a rival colony."

"There's more than one group of you?"

"What, you didn't think Chrysalis ruled all changelings, did you?" she asked, not bothering to wait for the human to reply. "And I know that wouldn't be acceptable to you if I did try to lead us to more changelings. So, you want to find the Mistress for your own revenge? Fulfil your end of the geas and be free from it?" she asked pointedly, indicating the pendant with her hoof. "There lies our one solid source to a continent wide intelligence network. The Queen couldn't communicate with you when you wore it, but she can with me, which means I need it more than you do," Thorax said, replacing her hoof on the ground. "And I am willing to let you control when I have access to it."

"Pick it up, throw it away," she continued, "or bring your hammer down on it and destroy it. You'll only be getting rid of an advantage, and I'll still be right here, following you around, because then I'd be the only way to ensure you get your job done right," she said. The human was clearly thinking about this situation. Time to place some sweetener on the deal. "I won't tell her, you know." The human’s head snapped up.

"Of course you will," he practically spat.

"No," she said resolutely, "I will not. In fact, that you control my access to the pendant, you can ensure I won't. When I wear it, I need to speak for my Queen to hear what I say, she can speak into my mind, but not read it. You'll know what I say because you'll hear it."

"How can I trust you?"

"How can I trust you?" Thorax turned the question around. "You've openly admitted thinking about killing me, you fed on me," she said, enjoying the subtle flinches the human gave to those little reminders, "and left me tied up in the wilderness. And here I am, willing to put some trust in you, for the sake of the mission. I think I deserve a little in return, Heartless."

"... Handy," he said at length. "And... I swear." He turned to the changeling again. There was that image again, the illusion lurking just beneath the surface. She was ready for it now, knew he could conjure it up somehow. Somehow knowing about it lessened its effectiveness and cohesion, like being aware you were in a dream and watching it melt away around you. "Tell Chrysalis any of what you've seen—"

"I won't," she said, "that I promise." Understandably, the human did not want her highness to know him to have any vulnerabilities, none more than she already did of course. Thorax had every intention of keeping that knowledge from her, however. The less she knew, the less she could interfere with Thorax building up the human's trust. The less she interfered due to her ignorance, the more the human would trust her, therefore the more progress they could make on the mission. She had no doubt Chrysalis would like to speak to the human directly again, but she would do so unknowing of what had transpired between the two of them this morning. She glanced down at the pendant, still lifeless and dead. It had been a hell of a gamble – had Chrysalis popped in at any point while they were talking, this entire exercise might have been for nought.

Eventually, finally, Handy bent down, his eyes on Thorax, as he lifted up the pendant again. Opening up a pouch at his waist, he dropped it into the pack he carried at his side, right beside the forgotten painted leaf the griffon child had given him. "Now," Thorax began, "what happened back there? Why did I find you on your knees?"

"I... I was... Nothing."

"That was not nothing."

"Just never mind..."

"No, I won't. I put my trust in you. Will you not give me at least a little good faith in return?" she asked, looking up at him harshly. He looked at her, again that unnerving feeling hitting her. Okay, you know how changelings can visibly see and taste emotions? It was not uncommon for a stare filled with emotion to have a pronounced effect on them. As previously mentioned, Handy was a dead zone in that regard, so his glare having an effect in spite of this was like walking into a pitch black room yet being able to see everything clearly as if the darkness was brighter than any light. It was just... wrong.

However, she couldn't dwell on that now, couldn't allow herself to react. She needed this human to trust her, and that meant not revealing what power he currently held that affected her. Not right now anyway. She had been working him over for a good hour now, doing her damnedest to get this creature to open up to her enough to edge her way in. To get him talking. If she could only just get him to trust her enough that they could work together and not have him out her as a changeling at the first opportunity he got, then she could go further. A plan formed in her mind, of possibilities, of lies that she might have to say, but if she was right, she could get this human as an asset for the kingdom’s use for far longer than just this mission. It’d just take some investment.

But all of that was speculative and hinged upon the here and now. All she needed was a hoof in the door…

Handy looked at the ground, searching. It was some time before he said anything. “Shame…,” he said at last. She perked up, but didn’t speak, letting the word hang and forcing the human to follow up on it. “It… I was overcome by shame. Alright?” he said. She smiled a reassuring smile that she wore in place of victorious grin she honestly felt like showing. Still, she had an inclination that he was not telling her everything but it was a start.

“Shame over what?” she asked. The human just glared at her for a long, painful moment.

“This does not leave this forest. Am I understood,” he said between deep breaths. It wasn’t a question. She paused for effect before nodding. He let out a breath. “Your Queen… Chrysalis. She was right… about me, I mean.”

“What? That you’re like us?” she asked. The human looked at her, causing her ear to flick in agitation. “I may not be able to speak to her when she controls me, but I can see and hear just fine, Handy.”

“No… not quite.” He looked away. She couldn’t make out all of what he said next, for he said it more through mumble than speech. “…worse…”

“I’m sorry?”

"Look just, I'll tell you about it some other time," the human said, shifting uncomfortably. "It... It won't happen again."

"Are you sure?" Thorax asked sternly. Handy nodded once. "It had better not," she said, relenting on pressing the matter. She'd get him to open up eventually. Pushing too hard would likely force him to clam up, and she had done this enough times before to know when to push her advantage and when to back off. "So," she said, continuing, sitting down on her haunches and looking about disinterestedly, “where are we going?"

"I... I thought about just wandering until I find a river. Rivers usually lead to civilization." He still hadn't put his hammer away, but at least it wasn't held ready to strike anymore.

'Progress,' Thorax noted. "I don't hear any running water." The human nodded.

"I don't hear much of anything. Except the wind," he said. "Chrysalis mentioned these might be the Greenwoods. What do you know about them?" Thorax shrugged.

"Not much more than any other ling. It’s ruled by the deer and big enough to be its own country. Probably is one too. Ponies and griffons generally avoid it."

"Why?"

"Because the deer make them," she said. "We've never had much luck infiltrating it. Changelings who manage to latch on to deer who venture outside of the forest and get in that way are never heard from again. Or at least if they are, the other colonies aren't sharing what they found."

"So... what? If you get out of here, that makes you the first changeling to do so?"

"Yes, now you can see why I am so eager to get you out of your state," Thorax said, giving the human an unamused expression, "The ratio of changelings going into this forest alone and coming out is not exactly stellar. I'd like to stack the odds in my favour." It was a half-truth but hey, it was just selfish enough that the human might buy it.

"I'm not exactly a deer either," Handy said. "I'm not likely guaranteed to get out either."

"Better than nothing." She spread her wings and took to the air, alighting on a high branch to look around. "I can't see too far!" she shouted down to him. "The haze gets too thick about forty hooves out!" When the human didn't respond, she looked down, to find him staring up at her. She sighed. "Oh for God's sake, I'm just trying to help!"

"It’s not that…”

"Then what is it!?" she asked irritably. There was silence for a moment before he responded.

"How far is forty hooves?" Thorax blinked before running a hoof down her face. The next ten minutes consisted of Thorax teaching the human the exact measurements of a 'hoof', which amounted to three quarters of a foot in human terms, roughly equating forty hooves with thirty feet. Handy explained his confusion, much to Thorax's relief, confirming he wasn't an uneducated idiot, merely raised to teach of the world in radically different measurements.

And so finally, after all of that, she felt like they were actually getting somewhere.

--=--

They were getting absolutely nowhere.

Handy was understandably frustrated, even more so because he couldn't really blame either himself or the damn changeling.

Let us take a step back for a moment. As it stood, Handy had a few more hours remaining on his high, meaning he could tell where Thorax was in relation to him and her state of being. Neat, right? Know what was not neat? Knowing she was behind him, turning a bend in the forest and then bumping into her from behind as if she had been ahead of him, with his supernatural sense doing a complete one eighty about where she was in relation to him only when he had bumped into her. It was like getting whiplash for your hippocampus. And nothing else.

Needless to say, they got a good scare out of the first time that occurred. By the third, it was getting old. Thorax took to the trees to avoid the issue, but this only served to make the problem worse. Handy continued on the ground and got subjected to occasional bouts of dizziness when suddenly Thorax would disappear from one direction above him, materializing elsewhere without a second passing in between. He cursed, eventually electing to just stand still and let Thorax wander on ahead.

Sure enough, after a while, her signal disappeared and rematerialized behind him. He groaned in frustration and turned around to see a very alarmed and confused Thorax hovering in place a foot away from him, looking behind her and back again, trying to figure out how in the hell the human had gotten ahead of her so quickly. He didn't.

It was when they had passed the same tree stump for the fourth time that they started arguing.

"My fault!?"

"Yes! I've been following you!" Thorax shouted.

"I've been leading only after you pointed out the way from the trees!

"Well how do you explain the fact we've been going in circles!?" she accused, pointing a holed hoof at the fallen tree.

"I don't know, you've been leading the way for the past hour!"

"Only because you keep sneaking up on me!"

"You are a changeling! You are literally the sneakiest thing!"

"Well maybe it’s because I can't sense you, remember? Hmm?"

"That’s no excuse for you to be zipping all over the place while up above and giving me a migraine trying to follow you!" Handy shouted, gesturing at her with his hand.

"I've been doing no such thing!"

"Yes you have! You even doubled back on yourself! I caught you flying up behind me!"

"I didn't! I mean, I wasn't! I was flying straight ahead! You– You teleported or something!"

"Now you're being ridiculous!"

"Grarrrgh!" Thorax said, vocalizing her frustration as she trotted off before sitting down on her haunches, facing away from Handy. The human threw his hands up and sat back against the tree stump. They sat in silence for a while, Handy taking off his helmet to rub his face. His head was foggy, as if it was filled with cotton, and it was an effort to think clearly. He idly scratched his wrist. Frowning, he looked it over again. Sure enough, he had a rash, a bad one by the looks of it. His vampiric healing was doing nothing for it either. He needed the salve, wanted it. That would calm him down, help him think more clearly, help him sleep tonight. It would stop the itch and heal the rash. It would feel good. Why didn't he have it out already?

He fumbled at the pack by his side. Sure enough, he felt a bit of warmth. The pendant was active. Well, Thorax didn't need to know that, did she now? He kept quiet about that as he rooted around but failed to find the bottle he was after. Maybe it was in Crimson's saddleba—"Thorax."

"What," she said harshly.

"Where'd you leave your saddlebags?"

"Oh gee," Thorax said, "I must've forgotten to take them with me, what with being tied up this morning and all. How absentminded of me; not as if I had other things to worry about or anything."

"This is important!" Handy said, suddenly standing up, patting down his sides, the small pouches hanging off of his belt, checking over his side pack again.

"What's the problem?" she asked. "You looking for your little... medicine capsule?" she said with a touch of venom. Handy stopped to glare at her for a moment.

"No. Salve."

"Why, you hurt?"

"No. Yes. Sort of. Don't question me! Have you seen it!?"

"I packed it the other day," Thorax said, eyeing the human curiously. "But I haven't seen it since."

"The packs travelled with us, they were by the... the tree..."

"Oh, well, good luck finding that place again, Thorax said, rolling her eyes.

"I need to find it," he said, hurrying off.

"Hey... Hey wait!" Thorax shouted after him, her wings buzzing as she followed in his wake. "Stop, you're just going to get lost!"

"I'm already lost."

"My point exactly!" Thorax said, flying in front of him to stop him. "You're hardly going to be finding it again. You can get more when we get out of here," she reasoned. Handy scratched the back of his neck, fidgeting.

"... I uh, actually can't."

"Why?"

"It's not exactly... legal," he confessed. Thorax glared at him levelly.

"I thought it was some kind of magical healing potion?"

"It is!" Handy protested.

"Then why would it be illegal?"

'Good question,' Handy thought, idly scratching his wrist again. "It's a tad addictive," he explained. Thorax eyed his wrist.

"I see," she said. She was thinking to herself when the human suddenly turned, stiffened, and looked off into the distance. "Listen, human, you shoul—"

"Shh!"

"Don't shush me!"

"Shhhh!" he hissed, putting his hand up. "Listen, do you hear that?" Thorax paused, perking her ears up. She was so caught up in the moment that she hadn't been paying attention to anything else. They listened for a moment, trying to hear anything past the constant rush of wind and shaking foliage. Then they heard it clearly: the sound of rushing water crashing upon rocks.

"A river!" she exclaimed.

"Get in the trees, see if you can spot it.” She wasted no time as she went to do just that, buzzing away to the higher branches as Handy tried following the noise on the ground. Five minutes into the search and Thorax did her routine again, appearing one place above him, then another. He gritted his teeth and bared with the agitation. He only had a few more hours of the high left; he could last that long. For now, he focused on following the noise.

It got louder and louder as he pushed through thickening trees and bushes, climbing over immense, exposed roots as he made his way towards it. Thorax was somewhere behind him now, but he didn't care, she could catch up. Pushing forward out past one last copse of trees, these ones noticeably thinner and smaller than the giants that dominated the forest, he was rewarded with his prize.

It was a relatively large river, easily ten to fifteen feet across that flowed gently, the water level with the ground he stood on. It was the sheer immensity of the water being moved that caused the noise. He smiled widely. Finally, some fucking progress. "Thorax!" he called, turning to face into the forest. She called back; he felt her presence close by. "Found the river!" he shouted as the wind picked up behind him. He kept facing the forest and calling out to the changeling, helping her follow his voice. She eventually emerged from the forest, seemingly haggard.

"Where've you been!?" she exclaimed. Handy frowned.

"I just followed the noise of the river."

"Yeah, I know, so have I! I lost you for an hour!" she said. Her eyes were covered over.

"...I've only been separated from you for about fifteen minutes." Thorax tried to laugh but decided it would be better to try breathing regularly again.

"Look, just... whatever. Where's the river?" she asked, looking about. Handy gave her a curious look from behind his helm before turning and gesturing with his hand.

"What? Are you blind? It’s right.... here..." He turned to see what had once been a river was now a very deep ravine. He stood at the edge of it, looking down into the darkness below. The sound of moving water was still present but much more distant now. Handy's eyes widened, and a slight chill ran down his spine. "What in the fuh..."

Thorax sighed. "Well, I was looking forward to a drink...," she said, lying on the ground and kicking a stone with her forehoof. The pebble fell off the edge and disappeared into the abyss below. "I suppose we can still follow it. Can you tell what direction its flowing?"

"Impossible," the human breathed shakily.

"Or you know, completely blow off my reasonable question. That's cool too," she said, placing her head on her hooves. The wind was blowing fiercely now, following the path of the ravine. With no trees to break it, the wind was funnelled and magnified in strength. Handy fumed, refusing to accept he had just imagined a massive river and completely missed the gigantic fault in the earth that lay before him now. Thorax was saying something but he was not listening. He took a step back from the edge of the ravine.

"Not possible," he said.

"I dunno, a break might actually be a good thing. You sure you're feeling alright?" she asked.

"Wait here," he said, stepping back from the changeling and the ravine. Thorax groaned in frustration but was reluctant to get up.

"Handy, wait, we're gonna get split up again,” she said, lazily getting to her hooves. He didn't respond and turned around.

And almost stumbled off the edge of a ravine. He caught himself with a start, his boot crunching the edge of the ravine, clay and stones tumbling away into nothingness as his arms spread wide for balance. His mind struggled to rationalize what had just happened. He stepped back slowly, turning to look behind him. The forest stood silent and immutable behind him, right where the ravine should've been. He turned back, disbelievingly to look at the ravine, then back again. Then he looked up to the other side of the ravine after hearing his name being called.

Thorax was over there, back to the ravine and shouting after him into the forest. "T-Thorax?" he called. She didn't respond. "Thorax!" She turned, and her jaw fell open.

"What? How did you—"

"Thorax, stay there!" he yelled, holding his hand up "Just stay there!" His mind raced, possibilities building on possibilities. None of this was possible; none of it could be possible. Not without magic. But if it was magic, why wasn't his armour reacting? Unless... 'I'm going mad.' The thought came unbidden. Perhaps he had been leading them in circles, perhaps he was gone an hour when he had thought he spent fifteen minutes, perhaps he did just imagine the river in place of the ravine. The alternative didn't bear thinking about. Now thoroughly spooked, he backed away again, this time keeping Thorax and the ravine in his sights.

"Hang on!" she shouted, spreading her wings and taking flight, only to be blown back to the ground by the wind, digging her hooves in to prevent being blown away completely and off into the ravine.

"S-Stay there!" Handy shouted. "I'll come to you!" 'If I don't completely lose myself first...' Thorax protested something, but he didn't hear her over the wind. He'd find her, he was sure of it, so long as he did so within the next few hours. He felt two new tugs on his mind, two new sensations, and he felt a rising, inexplicable panic. Looking up at her, Thorax's ears perked up as she turned around, looking into the forest. At the last moment, he saw green flame consume her as she adopted her Crimson disguise once more. She shouted into the forest before turning back to Handy, shouting at him again.

But it was too late.

He had already fled into the forest's embrace.

--=--

His head swam, the trees blurring one after another as he passed them. He didn't meet the ravine again, nor Thorax. He didn't care if he passed by the same thing twice or thrice – he could no longer tell. His breathing was deep and heavy, his palms sweating, and a creeping, oppressive, paranoid fear grabbed him, refusing to let go, growing more and more intense the longer he ran.

There was nothing ahead of him but the endless forest, masked as it was by the haze that had not let up during the entire day. The identical trees, the anonymous flora of the forest floor, the treachery of exposed roots and the omnipresent darkness of the canopy above, the howling, unceasing wind, and the false stars that permitted the sunlight to invade this forbidden realm of lifelessness and growing madness.

He tried to get a hold of himself, he really did. Reminding himself he was not in the best of mental states to begin with, that he was overreacting. There had to be a cause, a reason for the events. Sorcery, some kind of trickery perhaps, something. The changeling blood, maybe it was a hallucinogenic? Was that a thing? Yeah that was it, it had to be it. That would explain everything! 'Then how did it get you from one side of the ravine to the other?' he asked himself.

He chose to ignore the question, preferring the illusion of having an actual reason instead of questioning it.

He did not know how long he was lost. The feeling of sensing Thorax grew progressively weaker, to the point where he could no longer sense her again. His stomach growled, the vampiric suppression of his metabolism wearing off, his tired body demanding food. Actual, physical food. He was thankful for that, for he wouldn't need to worry about his other hunger bothering him for a week now. That brief reassurance was quashed as the realization of it crushed the mental crutch that was his excuse of blaming the changeling blood for hallucinating things.

He was still lost, his head still feeling as if it was full of wool. There was a growing ringing in his ears, and the very world seemed to shake as he stumbled. He clutched his head as he fell to one knee, his heart beating a mile a minute, desperately willing the world to stop moving as he reached and groped for anything that made sense, screwing his eyes shut. "Stop...," he whispered, the spinning sensation only increasing. He swayed, putting a hand on the ground to steady himself as the ringing in his ears increased in pitch and volume. "Just stop."

And just like that, it did. The ringing ceased, dying off and disappearing, as if retreating away into the distance. The world became more stable, spinning less and less and... then he heard it.

It was brief, close yet distant. As if he were in one room and the child to whom the laughter belonged stood in another next to him. He started, and his fist clenched, grabbing a handful of gravel on the ground beneath him where once there had been dirt. He opened his eyes slowly. The world still seemed to sway and shift but that mattered very little in comparison to what he saw now. The forest had given way to a road. It was a long, wide, winding path paved with gravel and small stones, bordered with uneven rocks demarcating it from the steep inclines on either side, leading up to the impenetrable forests either side of him. Mist seeped among the trees, strange shapes and forms winking in and out of existence but never spilling over down into the road below. The trees soared high above him like buildings, still and peaceful. The wind, for once, was missing. The trees reached towards one another and came together in an arc above him, the canopy's false starlight peppering the ground with tiny orange sunspots in the dying light of the evening.

But the road. The road was clear, stretching off into the distance and disappearing briefly as it dipped before climbing a distant hill. On and on it stretched, never obscured by haze or mist, no tree blocking its path.

"W-What?" Handy breathed, turning around. Behind him, the road stretched on much as it did before him, onwards, leading into eternity. "I-I don't... I don't..."

A flurry of whispers caught his attention, and he spun back around, fist clasped firmly by his waist around the head of his hammer. Nothing. No one was there. There was nothing but the road. Everything else was mist and trees and lies. He stood stock still, his head still feeling full and uncomfortable. The world swayed this way and that, as if he were on a boat at sea. The whispering became more prominent, though still he could not pin its source.

Perhaps he should... follow the road.

"I... I don't..."

It was the only way. Everything else would only get him lost.

"I shouldn't..." He shook his head, looking up the banks on either side. Distant chuckles and snippets of conversations he could not hear fluttered on the periphery of his hearing.

Follow the road, Handy.

"But..."

One step in front of the other. Roads lead to home. Don't you want to go home, Handy?

"No... No, I do!" he said to no one, for no one was there. The whispering increased but became more unintelligible. He tore off his helmet, rubbing a gauntleted hand through his hair then over his face. "I just... W-What...?"

Don't block the road, Handy. It’s rude. Others need to use it. You should move on.

He shook his head. There was a shout from somewhere behind him, sudden and forceful. Just as it came, it left, leaving an echo and the sound of chuckling children that died away. He glared into the distance behind him, seeing nothing but more of the road.

Go one way, or go another.

"What was that?" he called fearfully. "Who was that!?"

Don't block the road, Handy.

"What's...? What is...?" he tried to say, turning around and taking one step forward. The whispering eased, becoming quieter, gentler. He still could not make out what they were saying, as if he were in a hushed room where everyone spoke through the collars of their jackets.

Follow the road, Handy.

He took another step. There was another chuckle of a child, and the whispers quietened. The world still swayed. The road appeared to move and stretch. "W-What...?"

There is nothing but the road.

"That's not—"

It'll take you home. You're safe here.

"That's..."

Stay on the road.

His eyes grew distant. It became harder to think. His arms lay limply at his sides, his helmet held onto by only two fingers of his left hand. He took another step.

"Handy?"

The voice cut through his fatigue like a hot knife. He blinked rapidly and spun on his heels, almost tripping over himself to face the source. Up in the trees of the bank to his right, there was a golden glow obscured by the thick fog. A silhouette stood beneath it, moving closer, bringing the light with it. He recognised the voice from... somewhere, but for the life of him, he could not place it.

Follow the road, Handy.

"W-Who... what?" he called intelligently, blinking. "I'm... I'ma... I need to..."

Follow the road.

"Follow the road...," he said. The form by the trees seemed to stop in its tracks, no longer making its way towards Handy.

"Handy. Come here. You need to come over here, right now."

Don't leave the road, Handy.

"I can't... I need to stay... on the road."

"Get off the road, Handy," the voice said sternly. It wasn't shouting; rather, it was a calm, measured voice. The kind one would use to reassure a grieving relative.

Follow the road Handy.

He took another step. The whispers increased; he heard individual voices now. "Handy!" the voice of the light bearer shouted. Handy stopped. The whispers increased and he gritted his teeth in pain.

Don't block the road Handy.

"O-Others... need to use the road... too..."

"Get off the road!" the voice shouted.

Follow the road, Handy.

There was a sound of horses whinnying. Handy boggled. Ponies? What were ponies doing out here? He turned. The failing light made it difficult to see but there was definitely... something coming up the road behind him. He heard the jostling wood of a wheeled carriage at speed and the distant, heavy, clop of hooves crunching gravel under them. A black carriage barrelled down the road towards him. The large, earth sized equines at its fore bore no resemblance to the ponies of this world. The lack of flesh kind of ruined any comparison for starters.

"What... What the hell?"

Stay on the road, Handy.

"Handy! You need to get off the road, right now!"

Do not listen to the liar. He is from beyond the road.

"Listen to me!"

The road is all there is.

"You need to listen to me!"

Everything else is lies.

"Handy!"

Stay on the road.

The carriage drew closer, black smog following in its wake, obscuring all light as it drew closer. Both it and the horses drawing it towered over Handy even though it was still a great distance away. Something was driving it – he could not make it out – but the sight of it shot fear through his heart. He took a step to the side of the road.

No.

"Yes! Come closer!" the voice shouted, sounding overjoyed.

"Wh-What is that thing!?" the human shouted. He drew his hammer on instinct but the action felt futile. He was hearing shouts now, the whispers louder than a storm, threatening to overcome him.

Stay on the road, Handy.

"Never mind that now, come along! You're almost there!" the voice shouted, barely heard above the roar of the unintelligible noise and the shrieks of the oncoming carriage. It was closer now, too close, traveling at a speed that no carriage had any business moving at. His feet felt as if they were connected to the ground, his body almost refused to obey him.

Stay on the road, Handy.

He fell over onto the ground, his helmet bouncing away from him, rolling to the edge of the road. He scrambled, the shock of the fall seemingly wakening his body to the very real danger.

Stay on the road.

"NO!" he roared, getting to his feet just long enough to leap over the edge of the road. The carriage thundered past him. He dared not look back at it as he felt it disturb the air as it passed as well as the sensation of something swinging out and missing his leg by a mere inch. He heard an awful, unnatural, piercing scream that would likely haunt his memories for some time.

But right now, he was busy landing. Thankfully, there was something large and fuzzy to break his fall. That went by the name of Whirlwind.

The human barrelled into the stag, and the two went sprawling, tumbling into the underbrush one over the other until the crashed, bodily, into a tree.

"Well!" Whirlwind chirped, lying back first against the crumpled form of the terribly distressed and discombobulated human, his antlers glowing faintly along their carved contours. "That was fun, buuuut for your sake, let’s not do that again, alright? Alright! Glad we had this talk."

"What..." Handy pushed himself, and by extension, the deer, up until he was on his knees. "What the fuck was that?" he said, his voice shaky, as his head cleared and the full reality of what he just experienced dawned on him. "What the actual fuck was that!?"

"Hm? What was what?" Whirlwind asked amiably, getting to his own hooves and dusting off his chest fur. Handy grabbed him by the antlers and made him face him. He blinked in surprise as he stared into the manic eyes of the human.

"Do not fuck around with me on this!" Handy yelled, putting the question of where the hell the deer had come from behind much more pressing concerns. Like confirming whether or not he was going mad. "What was that!? All of that? T-The forest getting us lost, separating me and Thorax for an hour when it only felt like fifteen minutes, the rav-river, the ravine! I just... I just turned around and then I was on the other side! As if… As if I... I just appeared there or something! That is not possible. I cannot do that, not while wearing this," he said, banging a fist on his chest plate. "And…" he took in a breath, almost painfully "…the road, what... what was that!? What is the road!?"

The stag opened his mouth to interrupt a few times before closing it again, seeing the desperation in the human's eyes and considering his words. "I don't know," he said. Handy shook his antlers violently in frustration, eliciting a yelp from the deer.

"What do you mean you don't know!?"

"Handy that's enough!" Whirlwind shouted, shaking his head and dislodging the human's grip. Handy grunted as he was forced against the tree behind him by the stag's foreleg. "Listen to me! You need to calm down."

"Calm? Calm!?" Handy laughed, more than a tinge of hysteria present in his voice. "What is there to be calm about!?" he shouted, clutching his hair with his free, unarmoured hand.

"Look!" Whirlwind pointed to the forest around them. "And listen. Just listen!"

"To what!? There's nothing to listen... to listen... to..." Handy petered off as he heard it. An animal call. Bird song. Movement of bushes and all the ambience that had been missing since he arrived in this forest. It wasn't just the signs of life that drew his attention. Everything seemed different. The towering trees no longer seemed as menacing, and the foliage and the bushes of the forest floor seemed more vibrant somehow, more full of life, even in the dying light of the evening. There was no longer an ever-present haze that obscured the distance, allowing him to see much farther and far clearer than before. Handy's breathing slowed as his mind slowed down to try to process this. It was an almost alien experience to what the forest was before, and he could not be certain he wasn't transported somewhere else altogether. "What?" he managed, backing up against the tree, as if he could hide from the world behind its bark. "W-What is this?"

"The Greenwoods. The real Greenwoods. Relax, you're safe," Whirlwind said, eyeing the human cautiously and taking a step back. Handy snapped his attention back to him.

"Safe? Safe?" Handy hissed. Whirlwind held up his forehooves defensively.

"Hey! Hey now! Easy!" he said. "Easy! Look." He jerked his head to gesture behind him. Handy tore his attention away from his face long enough to look over his shoulder, at the copse of trees and the small clearing behind it, nothing more remarkable than a lonely dead bush to be seen. Certainly not a road.

"W-Where... where did the road go?" Handy asked softly, staring at the area. The stag looked at him for a while, considering his words.

"There is no road." Handy turned to him and was about to reach out to grab him before Whirlwind took another step back. "Listen! Look! I was being honest. I don't know what that was. What that really was. Nodeer does. I just know I can't protect you and the others from it so long as it’s still in your mind."

Handy had so many questions to ask about that. His mouth opened and closed several times trying to give word to his thoughts, but in the end he just... didn't. He was exhausted and just... he needed to rest. "Is... is it all in my head?" he asked as he was seated against the tree, with his knees drawn up, cradling his head in his hands. Normally he would never dream of allowing himself to be caught in such a position by anyone, but he had long since run out of fucks to give in that regard. "Was that real? Was any of that real?"

"...It was and it wasn't."

"What kind of answer is that!?" Handy snapped.

"The only one I have!" Whirlwind protested. "If... you want. And I mean really want to, I can bring you to my grandfather. He's an elder; he could explain it better to you. It’s just... we're not supposed to let outsiders remain in the forest. Much less bring them to our homes." Handy didn't reply. "But for now I need you to say there is no road."

"What good would that do? It’s real. Wishing it away won't make it unreal."

"But it'll keep it away from you. I need to hear this from you, human." Only now did the human really take note of how his antlers were glowing, emitting faint golden light from the swirling carvings all along its lengths and many spikes.

"I... It’s... not real?"

"There is no road," Whirlwind repeated. Handy looked at him for a long moment.

"There... There is no road."

"Is there?" Whirlwind asked, looking sideways at the human.

"...No. No there is not," Handy said. And just like that, the warm, jovial smile returned to Whirlwind's face.

"Alright then!" he said, hopping back to his hooves. "Well, all that unpleasantness aside, we're alive!" he exclaimed, standing on his rear hooves, forelegs spread wide as he let himself fall back on bed of flowers on the undergrowth. Handy blinked. Flowers. He hadn't seen a single flower since he arrived here. Now that he looked properly, the ground was practically covered in them, which just didn't make sense for another reason altogether. Wasn't it autumn, with winter was on its way? "I mean, for a second there, I was worried that pony would completely crush us. You know, having sent you and Jacky to la-la land there several hours early."

For the second time, Handy blinked. Whirlwind suddenly transplanted himself from the ground to leaning back against the tree at Handy's side, waving a foreleg around as he blathered on. That one could go from a life-or-death situation involving some pretty fucking sketchy horseshit to joyful and talkative at the flip of a switch was jarring to witness, to say the least. Handy shot up to his feet instantly. "Where ya going?"

"Nowhere just... just don't do that. Not right now," Handy said, thoroughly shaken. He really didn't need more surprises right now. "Just... Where did you come from? H-How did you find me? How did we get here?" Handy asked, and just like that, the questions came like a torrent of water from a burst dam, his mind eager to find something else, anything else to focus on. Whirlwind, for his part, happily indulged the human's little inquisition, unfazed by the occasional threatening tone he took on as he paced back and forth. It was as if he knew Handy was just working off his anxiety. To be fair, that wasn't hard to guess as he constantly wringed his hands, scratched his left wrist, and generally gave off signs of progressive and excessive agitation. Apparently, the answer to how he found him was 'because he was a deer', as if that was supposed to actually answer the question. Same thing to why the forest seemed so alive now when it hadn't before.

So that was also how Handy got the low down of how they got here, namely magical transportation via a crystal that the deer had smashed underfoot. Which just raised more questions. Did the sorcerer do something to his armour? How the hell was he transported at all while he was wearing it? Had the damage it sustained ruined whatever effect counteracted magic? Idly, he found a sunny spot on the ground as the deer blathered on and placed his foot on the ground. Sure enough, when the light hit the metal of his armoured boot, it lit up like a magnesium flare, and he had to shield his eyes and turn away, removing his foot from the spot.

"–So we were like, 'Oh hey, that sure is a big ravine. How did he get all the way over there?' Oh, which reminds me, where did you get that crystal again?"

"What?" Handy asked, distracted. Mission accomplished in that respect at least. He was going to need quite a bit of time alone to just sit and... process the sheer fuckery that was this day. But in the meantime? Making sure he didn't lose it was the bigger concern. That meant taking the deer at his word about quite a bit. At least for now.

"The little crystal," Whirlwind said, holding up his hooves to indicate the size of said crystal. "Clear, had this yellow cylinder in the centre." Although he still had that gentle smile, there was a curious, hard glint to his eyes at odds with his relaxed posture. Handy considered making up a story about how he had come into possession of some kind of super magic crystal capable of warping them to the middle of the forest of 'fuck-you-and-the-horse-you-rode-in-on' in order to hide his connection to the witch.

But as previously stated, he honestly couldn't give a fuck right then.

"A witch gave it to me at the festival," Handy said. "Griffon, said something about mists. I gave it to Tho– Crimson, to hold onto. I don't know who the witch was or why she gave it to me, nor where it came from. I assume thou wouldst know?" Handy’s voice was still shaky but recovered enough to at least put on his airs. 'Keep the mask. Keep it on. Something to focus on. Keep focused...'

Whirlwind seemed to study the human for a bit, his expression unchanging. Then he let out a sigh and rolled to his hooves. "Nope!" he exclaimed. "Just wondering. Now come on, the others are waiting just a ways over there," Whirlwind said, practically bounding off into the forest. Handy waited for a moment before following, taking in the forest all around him. He turned back to look at the clearing where, logically he had to have been standing when that... when that thing almost ran him down. When he was on the road that... was no longer there. If it was ever there to begin with. Thinking about it only raised a clammy, paranoid fear that slowly gripped his chest, forcing him to shake his head and turn away.

"There is no road...," he repeated, walking off into the forest after the stag. "There is no road."

--=--

"Crimson, catch."

"Wha– AH!" 'Crimson' flinched, screwing her eyes shut and raising a hoof to her chest defensively. Her horn lit up a green colour, trying to catch the object currently flying her way. There was a tremendously bright flash, signalling her failure and spelling her doom as the silvered steel helmet clonked her on the head, sending her sprawling in a daze. She got back to her hooves, cursing and glaring at the human as he strolled casually over to pick up the fallen helmet. "What the Tartarus was that for!?" she demanded.

"Just testing something," Handy said. His face bore a thoughtful expression as he lifted the helmet, looking into its 'face'. His attention was drawn to his left as the familiar voice of Jacques could be heard humming something unforgivably French-sounding as he returned to the little camp. "If it makes you feel any better... Jacques, think fast."

"Que?" he said as he emerged from behind a large tree, eyes widened, horn alight to catch the offending helmet, only to be blinded for his trouble and then received a welt on the side of his head as he dazedly tried to keep on his hooves after it connected. The helmet bounced and rolled back to the human's feet as Crimson broke out into a laugh as Jacques let loose a flurry of incredibly sophisticated sounding expletives that meant nothing to the human who had only a vague passing understanding of French.

"Yes yes, sorry," Handy said absent-mindedly, dusting off the helmet, thinking deeply as he ignored the unicorn's protests. Thorax said something to him and soon the two were engaged in conversation. Whirlwind was busy stoking the fire with a branch when Handy decided to go for one last throw. "Whirlwind, head's up."

Whirlwind turned around, eyes wide and curious, branch still held in his muzzle. He turned his head and caught the helmet on an antler. It proceeded to glow faintly as it settled on his horns. "Hey– Hey! Did I win?" he asked brightly, dropping the branch. Handy looked at him thoughtfully for a moment before smiling lightly.

"Yes, thou hast. Well done," he said as the stag threw the helmet back to him with a cheer before turning back to the fire. Handy was more than happy to leave fire duties to anybody else and walked off, slinking down and sitting upon a log with his back to the fire, studying the helmet in his hands. The four of them had been reunited for at least an hour now and had been filled in by Whirlwind's series of events, which Jacques swore was more exaggerated than the first time he heard. Now they shared the common goal of getting out as soon as possible, Jacques because he would prefer not having to spend the rest of his life in this godforsaken forest, paid to follow Whirlwind around or not, Handy for the same reasons. Also, he had a mite bit of terrible vengeance he wished to unleash upon a certain Mistress. 'Crimson', because, of course, she was the knight's servant and would follow him and had no ulterior motives whatsoever. Whirlwind? Well he was just an honest-to-God adventurer and didn't like being stuck in one place for too long.

"So what was that about?" Thorax asked. He turned to look at her. Despite being framed in shadow as she was, the fire highlighting her and sharpening the shadow, she dropped her disguise enough for her chartreuse eyes to show through instead of Crimson's green ones. Jacques was busy sharpening his sword with a whetstone while talking to the ever cheerful Whirlwind as he cooked... something over the flames.

"Trying to determine if my armour was broken," Handy said, knocking on his helmet with his fist, "Turns out it’s not." She looked at him, eyeing the rent in his back and other damaged parts of his armour.

"It has seen better days," she said, glancing behind her at the other two. "You said it wouldn't be a problem."

"What?"

"You broke down. Again," she said, turning back to him. "You said it wouldn't be a problem." He looked at her hard for a moment before responding.

"I take it you've talked to Whirlwind about how he found me?"

"He said you were in hysterics."

"...I nearly was."

"If we don't solve this right now, I'm—"

"He didn't tell you what left me in hysterics, did he?" Handy interrupted. Thorax bit her tongue. "There's something... wrong about this forest. You saw me at the ravine. There was no way I could've gotten across it in an instant. You remember being lost? Going around in circles?"

"...The Greenwoods is hardly the only magical forest, Heartless."

"It’s the first thing I came across that can get past my armour without it so much as making it sparkle. And I... saw something that almost..." He trailed off.

"Almost what?" Thorax pressed.

"...Nothing. I'll tell you later. When we're not in the forest anymore." She sighed.

"Must you be impossible?"

"Must you be impatient? Relax, we have someone who can guide us out now. We'll be fine." Sure enough, as he said that, there was a clatter and a crash and Whirlwind started running around in circles with his flank on fire. Jacques had a resigned expression on his face and gave the two a small, apologetic smile as he removed his cloak, tackled the deer, and began smothering the fire out with practiced ease. "... Mostly." She gave him a wry look.

"...And food?" she asked after a bit.

"I'm sure we can find something to eat tomorrow."

"You know what I mean, Handy," she said, watching the shenanigans with an amused mask. Handy gave her a stony look before turning back around.

"Whirlwind knows what I am. He saw me feed. Safe to assume Jacques knows now too." He paused. "I won't be... I won't be doing that again anytime soon." Her ear perked and rotated towards him.

"Won't that weaken you if you don't?"

"I don't care. I'm... not going to do it again. I'm not going to be feeding from my traveling companions. Is that clear?" he said quietly. Thorax kept her eyes on the stag and stallion across the fire from her as the pair began bickering, particularly lingering on the unicorn. Her eyes briefly flashed a bright green as they returned to Crimson's eyes.

"Crystal."

Author's Note

A month overdue and a full eight thousand words more than should have been necessary.

JBL's tears were delicious.

Chapter 31 - Hart in hand

It was breath-taking.

Trees as wide as buildings soared into the skies, so high up that the canopy could not even be seen. Vast bridges stretched from one tree to the next, each one unique in design with nothing to support them between the superstructures of the immense oakenhearts, which he learned they were called. Up and down their lengths could be seen constructions, buildings, and courtyards extending out, hanging from the sides of the trees as if grown from them, entire towns in their own right clinging to the great trees for life. Great light-giving flowers grew all over the place, covering the bark of the great trees with multi-hued brilliance when they flowered, complimenting and contrasting with the yellow torch and candlelight that peeked out from within the homes of the deer that called these woods their home. During the day, the sun shone down all the way down to the ground as if the canopy did not exist to block its light. It shone all the way to the vast wooden plain that formed the base of the oakenhearts, which itself was over a dozen feet off the ground. It illuminated the activities of the deer as they went about their daily lives amidst the gardens, farms, markets, and houses built upon their artificial ground.

And during the night, the trees lit up like pillars of starlight.

To say that Handy was impressed would be an understatement. He wasn't even aware they were approaching anything like this place as the deer escorted them deeper and deeper into the woods, with the trees growing closer and closer. They eventually stopped as the deer instructed them to stand on what was honestly, for lack of a better term, a gigantic leaf. A leaf that appeared to grow out of a gigantic wooden wall. Looking up, all that could be seen was darkness as the leaf was entirely enclosed by trees. His confusion was replaced by trepidation as the leaf seemed to close over on them, and briefly Handy panicked, thinking they had been led directly into some exotic cousin of the venus fly trap.

The leaf moved and expanded with a wet, organic noise that sounded vaguely like tortured, stretching rubber, lifting them upwards. Their panic subsided as the darkness above them opened up to reveal daylight and the city of the deer. Their escorts chuckled as their dismay turned to awe. To be fair, it was hard not to be impressed by an entirely self-contained, almost entirely organic, fucking arcology in the middle of what was apparently a forest the size of several countries. He didn't even want to think about how much water this placed needed. However much it was, there was evidently enough to go around for all the other trees with change to spare.

Crowds of deer of all sorts – Handy was not up to date on his deer breeds but he was pretty sure he recognised at least one or two – parted as they passed, the busy noise of a city alive suddenly hushed at the presence of interlopers. That was never a good sign. He noticed that the deer did, in fact, possess manes as a rule, meaning the doe contingent of his captors had shaved theirs. The stags did too, meaning the same for the stags in his presence as well. This... made no sense to him. With the occasional exception, he was pretty sure deer back on earth didn't have manes. Wide eyes stared at them, and whispers passed from mouth to tactile ear while their guards chatted amicably amongst themselves and even waved at several deer they recognised in the crowd as if nothing was wrong with the world. Stealing a glance at Whirlwind, he noticed the stag was looking upwards, humming, pointedly not making eye contact with anyone.

Handy took the opportunity to walk closer to Whirlwind, hissing out of the corner of his mouth. “For my sake, I hope thou knowst what thou art doing.”

“Heh, just trust me, I got this,” Whirlwind said, flashing the human a smile and a conspiratorial wink. Handy grimaced but walked on nonetheless.

Their march was interrupted as the crowd parted to make way for a group of deer approaching Handy's contingent from another direction. There were three of them, two rather large stags decked out in proper steel armour that glimmered in the sunlight, iridescent, almost as if the metal were coated in a thin layer of oil. He'd later learn that it was the effect of some kind of enchantment but never found out what exactly. The stags were faceless, their helmets completely encompassing their heads, and their antlers glittered with deadly steel blades. Every scrap of metal had markings of the same flowing script his captors possessed, only written in black instead of blue. The third member, the one at the forefront, was a doe. She possessed similar armour minus the helmet. Most of it, however, was obscured beneath flowing robes that covered her back and flanks that seemed to flow from her gorget and connect to the armour pieces of her lower forelegs. The robes were pure white with a golden trim with the same black writing.

So basically she was either a captain or some kind of battle mage. Handy's money was on both. The doe spoke to Brittlebark in a bright, quick-sounding language. It was lighty, musical, jumpy in parts, like a hare on the run far too quick for Handy to even pretend to follow. It was after they exchanged some amount of words that the doe closed her eyes, as if contemplating, before opening them again with a smile and speaking in Equestrian. English, as it was to Handy.

"Atjay Brittlebark," the doe greeted with a warm, matronly voice. Her tired eyes were ringed and had crow's feet pinching at their edges. Handy wasn't one to judge, but he assumed that if a deer were to age gracefully, she had managed to achieve it. "What have you brought to us this time?" This only served to confuse the human. Surely they had already greeted one another. Why do so again in English for the benefit of the foreigners present?

"Seer Riverblossom," Brittlebark said, inclining his head upwards, a gesture which confused Handy. "I bring good news!"

"Outsiders in the heart of the Whisperwood tribe's home is good news?" Riverblossom asked, cocking her head and putting on an exaggerated, confused expression, eliciting several chuckles from the other guards around Handy's group. The seer's two stalwart guards at her sides were silent and unmoving, however. Brittlebark rubbed the back of his neck and looked abashed.

"Uh, well," he said, gesturing to Whirlwind. "This one vouchsafes them."

"Does he now?" the seer said with a gentle smile, cocking an eyebrow, bright golden eyes scanning the errant stag over before walking over to him. Whirlwind looked noticeably nervous and looked anywhere else other than the doe. "And what brings a prodigal one such as you home, Whirls?"

"...Hello Miss Riverblossom," Whirlwind said. The doe chuckled.

"You are hardly a fawn anymore, Whirlwind. Now come, is it true that you vouchsafe these foreigners?" she asked, glancing casually over at the three of them. 'Crimson' seemed to flinch under her gaze, even though it didn't linger on any of them more than the others.

"I-It is."

"Hm, and why would that be?" she asked, returning her gaze to Whirlwind, who still refused to look her in the eye. She clucked her tongue, smiled, and placed a hoof on the stag's cheek and forced him to look at her.

"...It’s my fault they came to the Greenwoods in the first place," he admitted.

"And why did you bring them here?"

"To... save their lives."

"...And your first thought to keep them safe was these woods of all places?" she asked, disbelief evident in her voice and another confused expression on her face. Nearby deer tried stifling their laughter, to which she gave them a warm smile. Whirlwind looked embarrassed.

"It... was the only option at the time... I used a vortex shard," he said softly. The smile slowly dropped from the doe's face as she let go of the stag. She studied his face for but a moment and then sighed.

"Well, it looks like I won't be needing these anymore," she said, smiling wryly and looking back at her two heavily armoured guards, who again raised their heads up at her before turning and heading off back into the city. Need? What did she need those two for?

"Pardon me," Handy piped up. The doe looked up at him in surprise. "But are you the chieftain?" he asked. She looked at him, stunned, for a moment before breaking out into laughter.

"Oh no, outsider! Perish the thought! She's in the war hall with the others," Riverblossom said.

"Others?" Whirlwind asked.

"There are a few... negotiations taking place. A few tribes are represented there. Nothing too concerning. Just winter, you understand."

"Oh, right, right, winter," Whirlwind said, nodding in understanding. Handy glanced at Jacques, who simply shrugged. "Anyway! I suppose we can see her later and just go straight to gramps!" he said, flashing her a winning smile. Her kind expression did not change, and she slowly shook her head. Whirlwind's ears drooped. "Oh... alright, let’s go see Brightmoss."

"Oh Brightmoss stepped down, wanted to spend more time with his grandchildren," the doe explained. "He's a dear, really, but it is good to have him home more often."

"Then who's the chieftain?" he asked.

Riverblossom's smile widened.

--=--

Bambi.

The chieftain was Bambi.

No. Really. It was basically Bambi. Swear to God. Well, okay, that's not entirely accurate. It was Bambi if Bambi was a doe and didn't lose her spots as she grew into adulthood. But still, Bambi.

"Oh buck me," Whirlwind whispered, wincing visibly as the four of them were escorted into what was presumably the war hall, an immense wooden construction at the heart of a wide, sweeping circular courtyard enclosed by hanging gardens. The building was truly immense, a cathedral built out of wood and some substance that was presumably stone but... clearly wasn't. It was almost as ostentatious as one in its own way. Intricate carvings and designs depicting deer and other creatures covered its entirety, with crossbeams and supports decorated in repeating patterns to break up what would otherwise be an unending image depicting the tribe's history. Oh, they were still in chains by the way. Just in case you thought Whirlwind's vouchsafe let them have unrestricted enjoyment of their limbs.

Jacques, for his part, had spent the better part of the ten minutes it took to walk through the city to get to the war hall sweet-talking the pair of doe guards to try to get his shackles off. Sure it didn't work, given their polite refusals but hey, at least he made two new friends. That was at least two more deer who wouldn't kill them for being outsiders. Thank God for small mercies. Now, you were no doubt wondering as to why Whirlwind exclaimed an exceptionally excellent expletive of exceeding extravagance without extra exhortation.

No? Well you are now.

You see, the war hall was in a mess. Little Miss Bambi was seated on her haunches on a cushion that was, to Handy's disbelief, not made out plantlife. What? He just used a leaf as an elevator – he wasn't ruling out the possibility that everything was a plant. Her back was to the door, her forehoof placed on a wooden table that came to just below her barrel that was shaped rather oddly with tiny protrusions carved out of the wood, several of which looked like clumps of trees, an odd mountain or two, and other strange distinguishing features Handy couldn't make out from his position. It was a long table, and seated around it were at least five other deer, each distinct from each other in their manner of dress and armour, some even with war paint similar to Brittlbark's but in more ornate patterns and more colours.

Also, they were all covered in cake. Spilled milk, breadcrumbs, salads, fruits, vegetables, something that vaguely resembled a bundle of sausages, butter, and more besides were amongst the various detritus of war that littered the war hall and its occupants. All of whom, to a deer, wore serious, dignified, grim faced expressions. One heroic stag was admirably keeping his composure... as a mug hung off of his antler as he, very evidently, remained calm as the steaming contents of said mug were doubtlessly scalding him as it rolled down his fur. The only evidence of any discomfort was that his eye was twitching. Bambi, and the table, were spotless... except for the lampshade on her head.

Handy could not even.

"Are we done for today?" she asked. The other deer conversed with each other for a few moments, murmuring acknowledgements before slowly walking off to various exits out of the utter mess of a room. If that seemed like an unnecessarily rushed exit to you, it seemed that way to Handy as well. Bambi, for Handy had yet to learn her name, stood up, cleared her throat, and turned around. She looked upon the gathered collective with a practised disdain that Handy was all too familiar with seeing in the royal court... or giving himself to certain people who drew too near to his shit list for their good health. Her eyes were a stark bright red, the colour of a ripe apple found in a children's colouring book. It was an intimidating shade that looked immensely out of place on the graceful, gentle features of the doe... an effect that was undermined by the lampshade she wore that she promptly knocked off her head as an afterthought. "You are dismissed," she said simply, her voice the gentle swaying of leaves on a summer's day wind.

The guards, including the ranger who really should have gone back to his duties long before now, promptly tilted their heads skyward in salute before turning and exiting. All except for the seer, who was smiling serenely. Bambi waited for a moment before clearing her throat. "Seer, please escort these others to another room. I will deal with them shortly. I wish to speak to the outcast alone," she said. Riverblossom's smile only grew.

"Oh, I'm not missing this for the world, my little fire," she said sweetly, now fully grinning. The chieftain seemed to wince and spoke through her teeth.

"Grandma, please," she implored, trying to retain her dignity in the face of the three outsiders and the stag who looked like he would rather be anywhere else but here.

"Go on. Have your little chat. I'll be riiiiight over there," Riverblossom said, striding to the far end of the table at the centre of the hall. Bambi turned and spoke hurriedly in the deer tongue. Riverblossom laughed heartily in reply, a warm, kind laughter before responding. Bambi frowned, then sighed and looked back at Whirlwind, who briefly glanced at her out of the corner of his eye before refocusing his gaze on a really interesting corner of the room that contained absolutely nothing whatsoever. The chieftain walked right up to the stag and lifted her head, looking right up at his face, to the point where he had no choice but to face her scowl. Slowly but surely, that scowl turned into a gentle smile, and her gaze softened.

"Whirlwind?" she asked. The stag swallowed.

"Y-Yeah, Forestfire?" he asked, smiling brightly, hopefully. As if there was a chance, even by the slimmest of margins, that this was leading anywhere other than what you all probably surmised it was going. Forestfire's smile showed her teeth.

Right before her cloven hoof rose and smacked Whirlwind upside the jaw, hard enough to knock the stag to the ground. "TWO YEARS!?" she shouted, the pleasant voice replaced by a feminine roar that chilled the bones. "TWO YEARS AND NOT A SINGLE WORD!? PART OF BEING AN OUTCAST IS YOU OCCASIONALLY ALLOW YOURSELF TO GET REELED BACK IN, OR DID YOU FORGET THAT!?"

"I-uh-b-but, y'see, I uh, I sent letters!" Whirlwind pleaded, holding up his hooves placatingly, "Lots!"

"Aye! To your grandfather! What about the rest of us!?" she shouted at the downed stag, advancing on him. Jacques had almost leaped at the deer the second she struck him had his tail not been firmly held in place by a white magical aura. He looked up to see Riverblossom, balancing her head on her hoof while leaning on the table, shaking her head slowly, smiling genially all the while. "Did you not care!?"

"O-Of course! Of course I cared!" Whirlwind protested

"Oh really?" Forestfire asked, smiling, though her eyes were still furious. "Well, it’s a good thing you kept your promise and visited every once in a while. You know, for important little things like High Summer!?"

"Uh..."

"Or that you'd be there in time for my final rites in the warrior caste."

"Y'see…" Whirlwind rubbed his left forehoof absentmindedly.

"But oh no. You didn't, did you?" She cornered him against a pillar whose carvings depicted a stag and a doe rampant. "You were off gallivanting off by the Black Isles enclave in the east, riiiight by the forest's borders with them and the Equestrians, causing all sorts of havoc."

"That was only a few months ago!" Whirlwind pointed out. Forestfire ploughed on regardless.

"Oh, but you don't think to tell your chieftain about it, no! I had to find out through Elder Wildwood,"

"To be fair!" Whirlwind said, a fragile smile gracing his muzzle. "I didn't know you became chieftain—"

"Exactly my point!" Forestfire's shout practically shook the room.

"What the hell is going on here?" Handy asked. Jacques wasn't paying attention, muzzle scrunched up as he looked up at the ceiling in thought, as if trying to recall something. He turned to Thorax, hoping to make sense of this nonsense. "What is this?"

"Delicious," Thorax responded, eyes-lidded and smiling contentedly, obviously enjoying feasting on the free-flowing emotions running rampant nearby. Handy shook his head. Enough of this bullshit; someone had to be professional about this.

"Pardon me, if I may interrupt—"

"One more word, outsider, and you'll be flat on your backside with a spear where the sun don't shine!" Forestfire spat, pointing at the human with a hoof while not looking away from the terrified stag she was now nose to nose with, staring death into his eyes. Handy put his hand down, unsure of just how to take that threat. On the one hand, he was threatened by a military leader of an entire tribe of deer while in chains. On the other hand, he just got threatened by Bambi. The mental disconnect that caused in trying to reconcile those two facts proved a greater concern than the threat itself.

"L'Île Noire... Oh! Qui, wasn't that when I met you after you were hanging around that mare—"

"Mare?" Forestfire snapped, jerking her head to stare hard at the swordspony.

"Haha! Oh yeah!" Whirlwind materialised by Jacques' side, slipping out from under Forestfire and draping a foreleg across his withers in an instant. Handy blinked. Bastard was fast when he wanted to be. "Oh yeah! The mare who had robbed me!" He leaned oh so slightly nearer to Jacques and whispered out of the corner of his mouth, just loud enough for the other two in their little bandit bundle of four to hear, "and nothing else." Thorax snorted. Forestfire's eyes narrowed dangerously, her mouth slightly open as if she wanted to say something more as she slowly advanced upon Whirlwind again.

"Uh, of course! Mais bien sûr. Hmhm, I remember first meeting you there at the crossroads when she and her bandits jumped you when you so humbly requested your stolen goods back."

"Stolen?" Bambi, destroyer of worlds, asked incredulously.

"Well, I wouldn't say stolen. I mean, I got it all back!"

"True true, I will admit that was a rather impressive display of mag—OW!" Jacques clutched his foreleg in pain. Whirlwind just sat where he was as if he hadn't visibly stomped on his friend's fetlock. His smile thinly stretched and his eyes were wide in fear. Handy could just about make out a surprisingly visible bead of sweat on his forehead. Riverblossom raised an elegant eyebrow at the display.

Handy, for his part, was in between reactions at the moment. On the one hand, this entire situation was ridiculous. These deer were ridiculous. He was tired, hungry, irritable, in chains, his wrist itched something fierce, and no amount of rubbing it against the chaffing metal of his shackles did anything to lessen it. On the other hand, he was enjoying watching someone else go through the wringer for once with immense satisfaction. Although this was hardly what he had been expecting when they were brought to meet Bambi, devourer of souls, chieftain of the Whisperwood tribe. Handy was perfectly willing to stop referring to her as Bambi and mentally giving her overly dramatic titles when her existence stopped being ludicrous.

Forestfire's ground her teeth for a moment before sighing, lowering her head. "We'll talk more about this later..." she said, looking back up at Whirlwind with gentler eyes. “It’s good to have you back, Whirlwind." The stag visibly relaxed, having weathered the storm. He smiled and was about to respond but got bopped in the nose with the dainty yet surprisingly forceful hoof of Forestfire. "But don't think you're getting off that easy! More than a few of us were ticked off you never sent us word! Friends don't leave friends in the dark. What if something happened to you?"

"Hey, I'm careful! There was no chance of serious harm coming to me."

"Well..." Handy said, smirking. "There was that part when the dragon threw you through the air in a burning stadium."

"...What?" Forestfire's voice was like ice.

"Not heeeeelping~" Whirlwind singsonged through gritted teeth.

"I mean, that was how you broke one of the spikes on your antler," Handy said, pointing. Forestfire's eyes widened and she looked up. Sure enough, she spied the damaged antler in question.

"Owowowowow!"

"Hold still!" she called as she grabbed the offending bony protrusion and dragged it, and subsequently Whirlwind's head, down so she could get a better look. "Have you not been taken care of these!?"

"Hey! HEY! Leggo!" Whirlwind protested.

"And what were you doing fighting a dragon!?" she asked.

"Look, it's a long story, alright?" he replied.

"And I am sure we would love to hear it," a new voice added. Right behind Handy. The human jumped. Jacques had a similar reaction. The only one of the three who didn't seem surprised was the changeling who could probably tell the elk was there without turning around. Handy didn't even hear the door open. He was grand, aged-looking elk, with dark grey fur with silvery-white streaks and a long stretch of white fur going from his chin all the way down his neck and across his chest and barrel. His wide, broad antlers were similarly designed to all the other stags and bucks he had seen, with similar intricate, curving indentations all over their surface. Looking closely, it almost seemed as if they formed shapes which changed each time you looked at them, like trying to pick out shapes in passing clouds. Precious metals and jewels hung from them and rattled as he moved. He really should not have been able to sneak up on them at all considering how much noise they made. "But we have more pressing matters to discuss, don't you agree, my chief?" the elk asked, looking pointedly at the human. His piercing blue-white eyes seemed to pierce the cover of Handy's helm and stared right into his soul. The human tried to resist the urge to shiver.

"Elder," Forestfire said, suddenly all business again. Letting go of Whirlwind, the stag suddenly found he didn't have any counter pressure working against him pulling away and promptly jerked his head up and stumbled backwards.

"Grandda!" he said happily, tapping his hooves together nervously. "...Hi!"

"Whirlwind," the elk greeted with a small, tired smile, looking him over. "I see you've been through quite a bit."

"Aheh... heh..." the stag replied, "Yeah. A lot."

"Mmmm, enough that warrants a full debrief, I imagine," Seer Riverblossom said from her spot on the table, idly playing with a small wooden ball between her hooves. "One I'd rather finish as soon as possible. My husband gets irritable when I am out longer than duty recalls."

"You can always just go," Wildwood said. "We can always fill you in later."

"And miss out on two years’ worth of an outer caste's tales? Not on your life, you old goat."

"You wound me, River, but really, let’s not offend the goats with the comparison," the elk replied, sharing a laugh with the battlemage. The elk turned to regard the three non-deer in the room. "And you," he said. "Friends of my grandson, I imagine?"

'I wouldn't go so far as to say that.' "Acquaintances," Handy said, thinking. "We... owe thy grandson our lives." He found that harder to say than he thought it would, if only to play into the narrative Whirlwind spun earlier when they first met the seer.

"And is that all?" the elk enquired, now focusing solely on the human. Handy fidgeted, thinking about the logic of taking out his trump card too early, but if it got him out of these chains sooner, then why not go for it.

"...Well, that is not strictly true. You are the elder of this tribe, correct?" the human asked. The elk raised an eyebrow and smiled.

"That I am, boy," he responded. The chieftain frowned and muttered something about outsiders.

"I was commissioned by one Mister Fancy Pants..." Handy said, testing the waters. He was rewarded by a look of surprise on the elk's face. 'So far so good.' "I was supposed to deliver a certain package to your grandson Whirlwind," he said, pointing at the stag.

"Oh!" Whirlwind said, hitting himself on the head. "I had entirely forgotten! Haha! You were going to give it to me after the tournament!"

"Tournament?" Forestfire asked.

"Correct," Handy powered on. As much as he enjoyed watching the deer dig himself into a hole, he did not care to be dragged down with him and so took control of the situation. "But there were complications." The elk's expression darkened considerably, and Handy briefly wondered if he had chosen wisely.

"Complications?" the old elk asked.

"Nothing that could not be handled, you understand!" Handy said placatingly, holding his hands up. In truth, he was frustrated with this entire scenario, and acting polite was at the bottom of his list of desirable activities. But given his circumstances, acting brash would have been incredibly unwise. "I still have it, here on my very person," he said, gesturing to the pack at his side. The elder looked at it, his expression unreadable.

"Really now?" the elder asked. The seer was by his side now.

"Here. I believe this was important," he said, slowly reaching for his pack. He noticed the stubs on the heads of both the seer and Forestfire glow slightly, evidently preparing an offensive spell. Just in case. "Fancy Pants mentioned he was a friend of Whirlwind's father."

"I thought you said it was from my uncle...?" the stag interrupted, scratching his head. Handy flinched. He had said something to that effect when they first met under the arena.

"A simple mistake of language," Handy covered, thinking quickly. "Equestrian is not my mother tongue, after all." Lies, glorious, salvific lies. Jacques nodded.

"It is true," the swordspony said. "I remember, wasn't your first language as whalegah or something similar?"

"...Yes," Handy said, trying not to cringe at the horrible pronunciation. "It is no matter since I have the object in question here," he said, reaching into his pack, thankful the deer guards were not circumspect enough to remove his or his companions’ packs as they did their weapons. He withdrew the same small, inoffensive, silver jewellery box and presented it to the elder. He just looked at it expectantly for a moment before looking up at the human again. Handy blinked. "Ah, yes, I suppose..." he said, realizing that he was expected to open it. Given that this was a world of magic and he was a foreigner, it was probably just common sense. Beware Greeks bearing gifts as the saying goes.

He opened the small box and pulled the bundle of light silver chains. The chains were interspersed with tiny clear gems that sparkled in the torchlight. "I was—" Handy did not get to finish his sentence, for the faces of all the deer, bar Whirlwind, visibly blanched. Fur be damned, the colour drained from their faces nonetheless. Forestfire jumped to her hooves and barked something in the deer tongue as two jets of flame erupted from her horn stubs. The doors slammed open, and black-plated deer guards rushed in. Handy had just enough time to register something was off before he and the others were tackled to the ground.

This is what you get for having ideas, Handy.

--=--

“Well that went better than expected!” a cheerful Whirlwind chirped. Handy’s mailed fist barrelled into his jaw and, for the second time in as many hours, the stag was sent sprawling to the ground. “Owwww….” he whined.

"Que se passe-t-il!?"

"Oh that's just great."

"You'll handle it, huh!? Trust me, huh!?" Handy shouted, trying yet failing to get up from his seated position from the bed, Jacque's forelegs wrapped up underneath his arms and was surprisingly managing to hold the human back. Whirlwind slowly stumbled to his feet, shaking his head and blinking one eye and then another to get the stars out from his vision. The human was shouting vitriol which was matched by the unicorn's Prench nonsense.

'Crimson' was meanwhile seated on a stool by a vanity, legs hanging over the edge, her tail hanging limply to the floor as she laid her head on the vanity's surface, staring sideways into her reflection, studying a face that wasn't her own and occasionally glancing at the chaos happening behind her head in the mirror. "Five year veteran..." she muttered under her breath. “Top of my class, best infiltrator in my sidhe, made it all the way to Queen's right hoof maiden. Everything mother could've hoped for me." She blew a lock of her mane out of her face and gently massaged a black eye that was unfortunately all too real from when they were forcibly removed from the hall. She idly looked up, seeing the three of her companions bellowing and bickering and blaming. All the while they were the prisoners of the famously reclusive deer, in the middle of a forest from which no changeling had ever returned on a mission, and with no clear means of carrying out, except that their quarry was after the biped she was now foalsitting. "Stallions... How is this my life? "

"How was I supposed to know you were trying to deliver me the crown of winter?" Whirlwind asked

"I described it to you! In detail!"

"Well to be fair, I never actually saw it before so—"

"It’s your people’s most important cultural relic!" Handy exclaimed.

"Mes amis, calm!"

"Fuck you, you flipping French fop!"

It continued like that for a while until they had all tired themselves out shouting and getting on each other's bad sides and sat at various points of the room. It was a cramped but immaculately appointed room, and like most everything, it was all wood and richly decorated with carvings over almost all surfaces. There was hardly an uninteresting part of the room to look at. Apparently, when placed under house arrest, they were done so literally, locked up in a house, specifically this one windowless room. Their hosts even felt fit to remove the by-now dried leaves that had been wrapped around the party's horns and antlers, granting use of their magic back. That meant they were confident such restraints were no longer needed.

The door opened and they all looked up. Flanked on two sides by black-plated guards, Bambi Doombringer stood there with a piercing gaze that would have been intimidating had she not been... well... Bambi. "After some deliberation, we have determined that you are to be set free," she said, looking at each of them in turn. Her angry gaze and nonplussed expression lingered on Whirlwind for a long, hard moment. "But no leaving the building without an escort."

"Then we are hardly free," Handy pointed out. She shot him an unamused glare.

"Let me make this clear," she said carefully. "As chieftain, the safety of this tribe is paramount. You are outsiders."

"We are hardly dangerous, cher," Jacques chipped in.

"Yes, you are. And even if you were not," she said, turning back to Whirlwind, "the tribesdeer can easily fall into a panic with having outsiders, here, at the heart of their very homes, especially now with winter approaching and the crown having gone missing." She pointed an accusatory hoof at Whirlwind. "This one should have known better." The stag grimaced.

"Hold on," Handy said. Forestfire looked back at him. "Will someone explain to me what’s so earth-shatteringly important about that bundle of chains? At least explain why I had to be tackled to the ground when all I was doing was trying to hand it over?" The doe was tight-lipped and just looked at the human a moment before responding.

"Nothing that concerns you. Just know you have my tribe's gratitude for returning it," she said. Handy scoffed.

"Gratitude!?"

"What Sir Handy means to ask..." Crimson piped up, wearing her more usual dispassionate expression and tone of voice from before Handy had discovered her true identity. Handy looked at her. She spared him a sideways glance before continuing, "is how can we be expected to see being held as prisoners, abused, and then treated as if we were criminals as gratitude?" The doe flicked an ear in annoyance.

"I... apologise for any harsh treatment, but we could not afford any half-measures. Not now," she said. "And... the Elder did insist on allowing you free access to the city, but I can't just allow that. Deer are too scared right now. I have to show that you are seen to be under my watch." Well, at least someone was at least partways competent in all this, even if Handy's first impression of her involved a lampshade on her head. However, while her desire to keep the peace was quite understandable, it didn't mean Handy particularly cared.

"Not good enough."

"I'm... sorry?"

"I said that is not good enough. Dost thou think we are here of our own will?" he said, looking to Whirlwind. "We are here of this deer's volition. We wish only to leave, and to do so, we are brought here to your home." He turned back to Forestfire. "I hath given to thee this crown of winter, whose function I knowst not, and been attacked for my trouble. I demand recompense." The chieftain blinked.

"Recompense? How do you—"

"Help us get out of your forest. With the greatest expediency," Handy said, now standing up. The deer's eyes widened slightly, and several of the others shuffled nervously. "It is the least we are owed, and I believe I have seen rather enough deer for one lifetime. Thou art a foolish, stupid people, inhabiting a cursed forest, and I, for one, am sick of the sight of thee. I wish to leave and never to return."

"Now listen here, human—"

"He-Hey! That’s great!" Whirlwind said. For some reason, he now stood between the human and the angry chieftain. "Glad we could all get that out in the open! Great? Greeeaaat. Listen, Forest," Whirlwind said, putting a hoof on her whither. She turned her harsh glare to him. "We've had a reeeeally long week. Two weeks! Lotta stress. Handy here is just a little short on patience and not feeling all that polite."

'That WAS me being polite, you little—!'

"And we would really appreciate it if you could just accommodate us a bit, you know? Not have guards hovering over our door at all times?" Forestfire glanced behind her at her guards, thoughtful.

"Or actually letting us out the door?" Jacques said disinterestedly, leaning against the foot of the bed. Forestfire shot him a look and opened her mouth to respond. Whirlwind to the rescue!

"Yes! Because, you know, I hope you weren't expecting us all to sleep in this one room tonight!" Forestfire looked between him and Jacques, before looking up at the ceiling, thinking. "Come on, Forest," Whirlwind pleaded, his voice low and friendly, easing off of that chipper edge he perpetually had. "What have we really done, huh? I told you I'd be back, and I am. I brought some outsiders, sure, but they're friends. They brought us the crown. You can trust us. Hell, even Grand... I mean Elder Wildwood thinks so. Why else would he say we could go out and about unguarded? Come oooon."

Forestfire opened her mouth to respond before closing it with a hmph and looking down. She gave Handy an evil glance that he did not care for before looking back at Whirlwind. She dismissed her guards. "Alright," she said, turning back. "But whatever happens is on your head, Whirlwind."

"I accept that responsibility wholeheartedly!" Whirlwind said, placing a hoof over his heart. Briefly, but only briefly, the flicker of a smile graced her muzzle.

"Excellent." She looked at the rest of them. "For now, much as I have stated, you will all be our guests. You'll be housed and shown courtesy and, and I must stress this, you are not to do anything to arouse suspicion that your intentions are anything other than honest. Myself and the elder have agreed to disseminate the fact that the 'foreigners' in our midst were operatives recruited to hunt down the lost crown." Her face seemed stony when speaking that last sentence. "It is imperative that deer believe that your presence was known about and accounted for. Understand?"

"Why?" Handy asked.

"It’s... just a dangerous time to be in the forest. Deer need to be reassured." She was dodging the issue, and Handy was beginning to get quite annoyed. On the one hand, he wanted to know what the hell the fuss was about, but on the other, anything that got him out of here faster was better. And the difference meant shutting his mouth, gritting his teeth, and putting up with the bullshit.

"Fine... I agree to your terms. Crimson?" Crimson blinked and looked at him in surprise.

"Me?"

"Yes, thee. Thou wilt abide by the good chieftain's rules?"

"I uh...” Crimson stuttered, a bit taken aback by the human's suddenly turning of the conversation. "Yes. Yes of course! Sir. Ahem."

"Good, now if that will be all, may I have my possessions returned to me?" Handy asked, wearing an imperious expression. Forestfire narrowed her eyes at him. Whirlwind raised an eyebrow.

"Why?" she asked, very carefully.

"Because they’re mine?" Handy asked, lightly cocking his head and raising an eyebrow in an intentionally irritating gesture. It seemed to get through.

"...Very well," she said, clearly nonplussed. Jacques seemed to perk up as he caught on to what the human was doing.

"Ah! Qui, yes, perhaps I might have my sword back? It’s rather important to me," he said, flashing a winning smile. The doe flicked an ear in annoyance before nodding slowly.

"Merci, mademoiselle. Heureux de voir que mon ami tourbillon a un bon goût chez les juments ... même si vous êtes une chienne coincé."

"What... What did he say?" she asked. Whirlwind shrugged.

"Only an expression of my gratitude, madame." Jacques smiled. Handy walked to the door, passing the doe and walked out into the hallway.

"Hey, wait, where do you think you're going?" Forestfire called

"Out of that room. We're free, right?"

"WH—Well yes, but you aren't to leave the building without an escort!"

"Then escort us!" Handy called back, walking on, relishing in imagining the fuming look on the doe's face. Try to imagine a furious Bambi. Go on, do it.

...

Couldn’t keep a straight face, could you?

Neither could Handy.

--=--

The deer talked to the forest.

It was not aware, but that did not stop it from listening. It responded when they willed it, growing, extending, moving, and shaping according to their whims. Their magic was such that they rarely had to vocalize their will for the forest to bend to it, such was their power, such was their intimacy. Theirs was the Hartsight. Theirs was the power of life, of creation, of the spring of youth and the defiance of death. Theirs was the treasures of joy and song. Their gift was the forest and so too they to the forest, for without the forest, they would have no home to call their own, and without them, the forest would become something it should never be.

Yet not all magic was the same.

Not all magic came from the aetheric winds. The deer’s power came from the raw power of the forest, from the Fraying upon which it grew for a thousand, thousand years. Their magic was borrowed; it did not function beyond the forest's borders. From a pact of blood and ice was winter's fury calmed and the deer given mastery of the forest and protection of those that dwelt within. Their Hartsight was a gift that allowed them to see beyond sight, the living energy of the forest and the shadows of what lurked within, of what did not belong, of what ought to be expelled, and what ought to be avoided. Even so, with their control and their power, there were yet things that they did not know nor understand. The forest yet held mysteries that were beyond even their joyful stewards.

Not all magic was the same and not all secrets were the deer's to share. One would think, with the sheer weight of this reality upon their shoulders, the fate of a super-large forest and all its inhabitants in their hooves, constantly surrounded by unknown terrors of the woods and fractiousness between the numerous deer tribes, that these would be the most dour, grim-faced people one could ever have the misfortune of meeting.

Nope.

They were instead infuriatingly joyful and excitable all the time, all day, every day, which Handy experienced first-hand and had no escape from. See, the chieftain, Bambi, she of petty revenge, had placed them in one of the Oakenhearts, specifically the Hishym of Greenmoss. Hishym was the local name given to those odd town districts that seemed to simply hang from the sides of the immense trees. Now, Handy was no stranger to impressive architecture. Backwards and schizophrenic everyone in this world seemed to be when it came to technology, these assholes took architecture fucking seriously, be it the changeling city, Skymount's mountain castle, or Canterlot's oneupmanship in the form of its own mountain city. That was architecture he could understand, impressive beyond belief, yes, but he could well believe they were constructed. Some people thought those who lived before the twentieth century, with rare exceptions, were ignoramuses incapable of anything comparable to modern marvels. These people were philistines, and it was a fool who was dismissive of a people who, with sufficient motivation, could build mountains.

Even so, the fact that the deer were capable of creating several stories buildings placed upon a horizontal platform growing out of the bark of a stupidly huge tree with no supports made Handy just a touch bit nervous. Well, okay, as nervous as one could be when, in order to even reach said Hishym, they had stepped into an oval-shaped room that had simply appeared when a deer knocked on the Oakenheart's wall at its base three times. The wall had simply... opened with a sound of wood under strain, not unlike the sounds his airship made from time to time when he had flown on it. A seam in the wood appeared and expanded into a rounded entrance, allowing their entrance. The room, for he did not know what else to call it, was filled with knee high blue plants, with excessively large and wide leaves, the walls and ceiling covered in moss and creeping vines like capillaries. Tiny lights floated lazily in the air, tiny spherical lights that, when observed closely, had six spindly limbs more akin to wire with infinitesimally thin, almost transparent, wings.

The entryway had shrunk shut behind them and their escorts. For a time, they had just stood there, awkwardly, waiting for something to happen until the entrance had opened again. And there they were. A hundred feet in the air. They had traversed that distance, quietly, quickly, and without the slightest hint of inertia in the fastest, creepiest elevator Handy had ever experienced. The rest of them found it all charming, enchanting almost. Handy was more unnerved than anything else and was in no hurry to repeat the procedure of being swallowed by a tree anytime soon. Sadly, in his quest to think about anything but said experience, he struck up conversation with one of the guards.

He had regretted it since.

"For the last time," Handy said with an exasperated sigh as the four of them plus two guards walked up a steep incline between several tall buildings. Local townsdeer watched them pass, curious about the strangers in their midst, "I do not know how my armour works. I had it made for me. I do not know the magic."

"But Shadowfire said you'd teach her!" the overly high-pitched doe guard with the woad tattoo on her face whined. The tatoo two straight lines going from her cheeks, over her eyes, and coming to a point on her forehead. A horizontal line connected the lines underneath the point, creating a small triangle with three spheres contained within. One was just a circle, another a circle half-filled in, and the last a complete, white spot. It was probably some arcane symbol Handy couldn't begin to give a shit about that brought out her bright green eyes. For a brief moment, he was reminded of the striking eyes of the thestral from the tournament, and he had to shake the thought from his head.

"I was intentionally being sarcastic. I had no intention to teach the spell because I genuinely don't know the spell."

"Awww, but I was hoping to learn the magic of the fah-gut-tree."

"Fa— Okay, look," Handy said, stopping to turn to the deer. "That was a joke. There's no such… I mean it isn't... There is no such spell." The doe just pointed at him.

"But I saw you earlier! There's definitely a spell!

"Doesn't mean I know it."

"That’s stupid. Who wears enchanted armour without knowing what magic is in it?"

'Well apparently I do,' Handy thought, ignoring the pouting doe as they continued making their way to one particular building. It was wooden. Of course it was made of wood. Everything was made of fucking wood. Much like everything else, however, the building had a rounded, sloping roof going down one side. Corners were made up of stout dark wooden columns, with lighter wood forming the walls. Ivy and plant life grew along the walls, and the building was seamless, seemingly having grown out of the ground. A closer inspection revealed it to be merely exceptional craftsmanship. The interior was spacious, with wide doorways and high ceilings. The does' magic lit up, and covered lanterns set high up on the walls came to life. They were informed that these were to be their quarters for their stay here. They would be left in peace but were not to leave the township without an escort, so no sneaking off on the great bridges that connected the oakenherts and the towns that lived on them. Or the ones inside of them as Handy learned later.

Well, not as if they could object since the only other options they had to get out of here was opening up the organic express elevator, which none of them bar perhaps Whirlwind could do. Or you know, jump. And only Thorax had wings. The house was sparse but had a surprising amount of amenities including, of all things, a fireplace. In a wooden house. Hanging from a tree. In a forest. Either the deer had the best fucking fire service in existence or they were just insanely lucky to have not burned everything down by now. In fairness, the fireplace was constructed from stone and brick. Having gotten so used to seeing nothing but forest and wood, Handy had expected deer homes to be something akin out of fantasy novel, like some race of elven hippies who slept on grass and whose homes were covered in all the wonderful filth of nature. Nope. Turned out the deer liked their creature comforts as much anyone else, thank you very much.

Not particularly keen on spending any more time with the others, Handy promptly fucked off. Taking a few steps up a flight of stairs, he paused, looking out a small, round window at the bend in the stairs. His view was partially covered by ivy, but he noticed a number of deer passing by looking up at the house. A few had even stopped and were openly staring and talking. A member of one group noticed the human looking out and nudged the others, and they quickly made themselves scarce. Bambi's words came back to him then. These deer were, well, skittish, more so than what he was used to. Outside the forest, people tended to avoid him or get out of his way because of his reputation. Here? They did it simply because he was different. Because they were all different. He didn't know what was going on, both why the crown was important or why it was so important he did nothing to contradict whatever fabricated story the chieftain was feeding the tribesdeers about him and the others being outside agents recovering the crown. And in truth, a large part of him simply didn't care anymore. He was just too tired of everything. But that little moment of clarity, watching the deer hurriedly move on like that...

He shook his head. No. It didn't matter. Fuck 'em. Their problems were theirs to deal with, and he wanted out of here probably more than they wanted him gone. He would leave them be and hoped the same in return. He trudged up the stairs to be met with another corridor that had six doors. Choosing one at random, he opened it to reveal a simple room. It was small, just big enough for a side table with an unlit candle, a window with blue drapes that was currently closed, and the piece de la resistance, another too-small bed. Looking around and satisfied that there was nothing else and no chance of any nasty surprises, he closed the door behind him and closed the latch. He allowed his shoulders to slump.

His feet ached and he was hungry, but his exhaustion took precedence and he needed to get the fucking weight of his armour off of him. It had been a long week no matter how you looked at it, and for now, he was just glad to be on his own again. He managed to struggle out of his cuirass and pauldrons and began to work on his greaves, which required him to sit down. As soon as he sat on the bed, the battle was lost. When he said that he was sold on the 'soft beds' argument Whirlwind proposed, he hadn't thought he was serious because Jesus, he practically sank into it. It had just the right amount of give and bouncy firmness. His chainmail clinked like a thousand coins as he let himself fall back, flumping on the bed, his task forgotten as the world was consumed by the soft, blankety comfort that was the bed. Handy liked beds, once upon a time associating them with the one consistent and reliable comfort of sleep. Something he had a lot of trouble achieving night after night recently.

Now, however, he already felt his eyes growing heavy, the soft light drifting in from underneath the closed drapes of the window doing nothing to keep him awake as he began drifting away. The noise of his companions in the rooms below him faded into nothing and was drowned out as his senses slowly dulled. The regrets, the hateful thoughts, the existential fear he experienced when he contemplated the oblivion he went to every time he closed his eyes, which kept him up at night, all of it disappearing, ceasing to matter as once more he slipped into the black.

--=--

Knock, knock, knock.

'Oh, hello there Mister Over Exhausted Headache, how are you doing today?'

Knock, knock.

'Oh I'm just fine. Well, until you came along that is.'

Knock knock knock.

'So how have you been since that one time at the student's union? How's the wife Miss Migraine?'

Knock.

'Why yes, I have been getting to know your daughter, Hangover, a lot more recently. What? Sir, I swear I never laid a hand on her!'

Knock knock knock.

'...Much.'

Kno—

"WHAT!?" Handy shouted, opening the door to an alarmed yet smiling, Whirlwind.

"Handy!" He shut the door. "Hey! Come on!" Handy didn't listen as he just sat back on the bed with a grunt. He felt stiff and his shoulder popped when he moved his arm. Chainmail may be miles more flexible than plate but sleeping in it was still a stupid idea.

"Piss off, Whirlwind," Handy said.

"Look, the others and I were a little bit worried about you," Whirlwind's muffled voice came through the door.

"Uh huh," Handy muttered, rubbing an eye with a palm before rubbing his left wrist absent-mindedly, yawning.

“I mean, sure we had our rough spots lately...”

“I decked you in the face.”

“Yeah, that! And I tooootally get why you’d want to do that!” the stag said. Handy could vaguely hear him mutter something else, but it didn’t translate well through three inches of wood. “But you’ve kinda been up here a while…” Handy blearily looked at the window. Nope, still closed, still that half-light of early evening sneaking in under the cover of the drapes. He must’ve only gotten a wink of sleep. Not that he could tell really.

“It’s still late, leave me be. I’ve hardly been up here an hour,” Handy replied.

“...You’ve been up here a whole day and a half.”

There was a moment of silence, then the sound of the door being unlocked. The human poked his face out to look at the deer, an owlish expression on his features “What?” The stag looked up at him, smiling as always. If Handy didn’t know any better, he would’ve sworn that broken spike on his antler had grown a bit.

“Yeah, you’ve been in there all day… and all last night… and probably most of this evening if I hadn’t knocked.”

“I...really?” Handy asked, rubbing his eyes with a hand. Had he really slept so long?

"Yep! Kinda scary actually. You sick?"

"I... no. Why do-dost thou care?" Handy stammered, his brain only firing on half its cylinders.

"Oh, you know, we're buddies!" he said, fore legs spread wide. Handy stared at him with a deadpan expression. "...Or not. Yet. Look." Whirlwind's smile fell away and he gave the human a more genuine, gentle smile as his joyful tone dropped to a more conversational one. "I know it hasn't been the greatest, house arrest and all, but I really, really need you guys to trust me. This is my home town. I know these deer best, and honestly, you popping out with the crown? Best thing that could've happened to us, heh. Ol' Forestfire's version of events has got around, so we shouldn't have any more trouble here… though she seemed oddly sad when she came around today." Handy wasn't paying that much attention, instead rubbing his ear to scratch an annoying itch.

"And exactly how long are we staying here? How are we getting out if we're so deep in the woods?"

"I....don't.... really know?" he said, smiling hopefully as his ears dropped. Handy just glared at him. "But I can find out!" he said, hooves up defensively, "Forestfire can talk to the seer caste. Her grandmother's well respected, so I'm sure we can find some magic solution!" Handy grounded his teeth. Whirlwind cast a quick glance around. "So uh... not gonna be a problem, is it?"

"What?"

"Uh.. remember back in the uh... the arena, the whole thing with the pony and the..." Whirlwind clacked his teeth together twice to emphasise his point. Subtle. Even so, it took Handy a moment to get it. He did a quick calculation in his head. Nope, still had a few days of feeling like an ordinary human. No urges, his body not going out of its way to make him painfully aware of how much... food was available. Once that was over, he had another whole week before the thirst got loud enough that it was in everybody’s' interest that he sorted it out.

"Not going to be a problem," he lied. Whirlwind brightened considerably.

"Great!"

"...Jacques?" Handy asked very carefully.

"What about Jacques?" the stag asked, taking him a minute to understand Handy's unspoken intent. "Oh! Yeah, he has no idea; thought it might be something you'd resent me talking to people about willy-nilly."

"Mm." Handy grunted before asking, "And about me hitting thee, thou art not mad?"

"Oh, I'm livid!" Whirlwind said with a bright smile. "But I'm putting that behind me. Heat of the moment, you know? I'm a big enough deer to overlook all that."

"How noble of thee."

"I know, right?" he said without a hint of irony, "Anyway, me and Jacques are having a game on the balcony."

"We have a balcony?"

"The deer who own this building have a balcony!" Whirlwind said happily. "But yeah, we're having a game. Want in?"

"Why?"

"Well, what else are you going to do tonight?" Handy turned and looked at his dark room, then back at the stag.

"Probably just stay here... probably get some food."

"Well, we have one of those two things!" the stag said. "Come on!"

"Where's Th—Crimson?" He rubbed his eyes. "My ponyservant."

"Her room. She's not feeling well apparently." The deer gestured behind him towards another of the doors. Handy's eyes narrowed.

"I see. I'll... I'll take you up on your offer. I'll be along presently." He made a motion to close the door. Whirlwind smiled again before heading off. Handy waited until he heard his hoofsteps fade away before exiting his room. He knocked on the door Whirlwind had indicated. "Crimson? Open up."

There was no immediate response. He raised his fist to knock again before a rather haggard-looking pony poked her head out. "What?" Her tone was distinctly the opposite of cheerful. Her mane was a frazzled mess, she had bags under her eyes, the blackened one noticeably so, and she was sniffing. Handy blinked.

"Uh, I heard you were ill?"

"What’s it look like?"

"...Fair point. I just thought—"

"You thought what?"

"...Nothing. Get some... get some rest I guess."

"Heh, and sleep a day away like you?" she jibed. Handy frowned at her. "I'll be fine, Heartless, just leave me be." She began to close the door before opening it wide again. "And no more causing trouble! I don't feel keen on getting another hoof to the eye," she said before closing the door. Handy was left inarticulate as he tried to form a rebuke to that. He had thought it was the changeling who was up to something that might get them in trouble, using sickness as a ruse, only to find a very sick-looking pony indeed giving him shit for causing trouble before and politely telling him to bugger off via door slam. He was about to knock again before pulling away reluctantly. No, fuck it. Better leave her be. Who knew, he might accidentally catch whatever she had.

An irritating itch drew his attention to his wrist again and he rubbed it, idly noticing his gauntlet was still on his right hand. Briefly, he thought to redon his armour before deciding to forego it. He removed his gauntlet and vambraces, his arms feeling much freer without their restraining presence, and dumped them on his bed. He double-checked to make sure his everything was present in his side pack, including a rapidly flashing changeling pendant. Looked like Queenie dearest was getting a mite agitated. He afforded it a smile before packing it away at the bottom of the bag. She could damn well wait.

He left the room and proceeded to go find the stag and the unicorn. If nothing else, it would be a way to pass the time.

--=--

Handy learned several things that day.

Hooves, in no way, proved a deterrent to holding a hand of cards. Another thing he learned was that this world, despite all logic and reason screaming that it should not be so, had poker. Albeit, it was a version of the game that had its own quirks and rules and different cards, but it was basically poker with a fancy hat to anyone who cared to look. He also learned he was fucking terrible at it. Behold, Handy the Heartless, consummate liar and deceiver of nations, he who could stand in front of vaunted pony princesses and maintain a facade, who faced down dragons and knights and overturned a kingdom... couldn't keep a poker face to save his life.

It was a different story when one sat at a table and cards were at stake. Really, it was. That was Handy's excuse and he was rolling with it. See, one would think that as wide-eyed and full of expressions as ponies, deer, and everything else was in comparison to, say, a human, one would think being able to pick up a 'tell' would be easy. To an extent, that assumption would be right. Humans communicated a profound amount of information through the subtlest of body movements, their eyes more so, and it was all incredibly minute. Ponies, just as much, but it was often more exaggerated, more energetic, indeed, more obvious. If anything, the only reason a human would have difficulty 'reading' a pony would be more to do with information overload and properly getting used to them to be able to associate meaning to body language. Facial expressions were the easiest to read. Griffons were more alien and a tad harder to read, what with their avian features, but much that was applied to ponies could be applied to them. Deer? Same thing. The main problem was getting the energetic bastards to sit still. For them to read a human, it was a much harder ball game. Their movements were at once stiff yet fluid, possessing, to their perspective, a stillness and ease of movement that was frankly otherworldly. The fact that it was otherworldly helped in that regard. It essentially meant that Handy, even had he done nothing and possessed no reputation, even if people got over their initial xenophobia of him, would still unnerve people at least in part by his presence. It couldn't really be helped.

So it spoke volumes that he was completely failing to read Jacques and Whirlwind and they were doing a bang up job of picking up on his tells. Jacques, for his part, was making deliberate motions, never really sitting still, completely ruining Handy's ability to interpret what was a tell and what was the gregarious pony just faffing about. He also got his hooves on a new hat. It was a black cap with the brim folded up, coming to a point at the front. A red feather pierced it, giving it a splash of colour. He fiddled with it from time to time. Whirlwind? That fucker just didn't keep still at all. It seemed, when it came to poker at least, those that knew what they were doing were well aware of their exaggerated expressions and capitalised on it, increasing their motions rather than minimising them. Handy had kept as still as he could. More often than not when he was unsure, he'd fall into a routine: rubbing his stubble, stroking the goatee, scratching his wrist, muttering under his breath. It didn't take the other two long to pick out his odd behaviour for what it was.

After the third dealing of cards and the third time Handy lost an immeasurable amount of non-existent coinage, he just let his head slam into the table as he groaned. Jacques laughed. "Oh cheer up, my friend! You are not doing so bad for a beginner."

"Mmmflrghl..."

"Welllll, if this had been a real game, I would have cleaned you out long ago, it is true. Aurait probablement gagné ce marteau éclatant hors de vous trop..."

"Fhios agat, má tá tú ag dul a choinneáil ag caint i Fraincis,” Handy began, tapping the table with a finger. “Tá mé ag dul chun tús a chur ag labhairt i dteanga aon duine eile anseo labhraíonn freisin, ach a ainneoin agat."

"Quoi?"

"I was saying what's the deal between Whirlwind and Bambi?" Handy said, raising a finger to gesture to the stag who held a bundle of salad in a hoof, somehow, partway to his open and waiting mouth. His eyes opened and he looked, ironically, like a deer in headlights when the conversation shifted to him.

"Huh?"

"Ah, I did notice some odd tension between you and the... Bambi?"

"Forestfire," Handy corrected

"Qui, the beautiful doe," Jacques said.

"Forestfire?" Whirlwind said. Jacques nodded. Handy, he whose face was one with the wooden table and three playing cards depicting a three of blades, a two of emeralds, and a princess of hearts, merely muttered some incomprehensible affirmation. "Oh right, hehe, yeah, that was a bit of a surprise," he said, eating his bundle of salad and pushing the bowl across the table. "Haven't seen her in years; knew her since fawnhood. Great friend."

"She seemed rather pissed at thee," Handy pointed out. Whirlwind chuckled.

"Well okay, I did kinda sorta promised her and the guys I'd drop back in once in a while and maybe visit around High Summer. Big holiday around here.... Kinda uh... forgot."

"Forgot?" Jacques asked, a knowing smirk on his face. Whirlwind shrugged.

"I was having a blast, can you blame me? Besides, I'm here now; not sure what’s she's so angry about," he said dismissively. Handy grunted in agreement before a question came to him.

"Outcast."

"Hm?"

"She called you an outcast. If that’s true, how could she expect you to come back at all? Weren't you banished?" he asked, turning his head ever so slightly to look up at the stag with one eye. Whirlwind blinked at him before tapping the base of his antler with a hoof in comprehension.

"Oh! You think— Oh no, nononono. I'm not an outcast; I'm an outer caste."

"What?"

"Means I am part of the caste that goes outside the forest," Whirlwind said. "We explore the world and keep the tribes up to date with what’s going on beyond the forest. We're often the first to learn of threats to it. Tribal lines blur outside the forest so that we can warn anydeer of a threat without worrying about old grudges surfacing."

"Deer have castes?" Jacques said. Whirlwind nodded vigorously.

"Oh yeah, old tradition. I was originally scribe caste. Mother was magus caste, but I was born a stag, so off to learn how to use the quill I went."

"Why?"

"Tradition mostly. Magic is a doe's dominion."

"I thought all deer could use magic?" Handy asked.

"Oh we can, but there's a difference between using Hartsight to talk to the forest and levitating things and casting fireballs and enchanting."

"What difference?"

"Ovaries usually," Whirlwind said with a roll of his eyes.

"So is it taboo? For somepony like you to cast spells I mean? Is that why you kicked me when I mentioned it in the war hall?" Jacques asked, rubbing a foreleg. Whirlwind held up a forehoof and wobbled it back and forth in an 'ehhh' gesture.

"There's exceptions to every rule, but I wasn't one. Deer don't have Hartsight beyond the forest, so that I could use magic outside of it... kinda not a question I want to answer, get me?"

"Not really. The hell is Hartsight?" Handy asked.

"Tell you later, long story."

"I was under the impression that castes weren't something one could change as one changes their hats..." Jacques said.

"Oh it wasn't." Whirlwind said shaking his head, "Buuuut there's ways, and means and I won't lie, I gilded a few hooves to ease my way. Forestfire is a good friend, she and few others in the warrior caste pulled a few strings, a couple good words here and there and I managed to make myself one of the exceptions."

"Mmmlrghul"

"Sure, whatever you said! Heh, okay, I keep forgetting you aren't deer." Handy couldn't possibly imagine why, "Okay look, it seems weird to you, but we deer are reeeeaaaallly big on tradition."

"That's not too weird..." Handy commented.

"But we also really love seeing how far we can bend the rules! All of us!" Whirlwind said.

"If you find your own traditions that constraining, why do you keep them?"

"Because there's no fun in breaking the rules if there are no rules! That's just stupid." Handy turned and just glared at the stag, trying to determine if he was serious. So basically the deer were traditionalist as balls, yet at the same time, equally as flippant and likely to break their own rules, encouraged to, expected almost. Apparently the worst you could do was get caught. Then, if logically the system continued for the next generation to have a crack at it, deer then reinforced their traditions as they get older because why not? Handy just rolled back over on top of his face.

"Mmmlrghlrm..."

"So basically I spent years training with the other rangers and warriors. Eventually, grandfather was pressured by some deer to do something about me, so he talked with the chieftain. It’s how I got outcast, where all the really obvious troublemakers get sent."

"Why?"

"Because then we're the rest of the world's problem!" he said, extending his forelegs wide. Handy found that entirely believable, honestly.

"And Forestfire?" Jacques brought the question back.

"Yeah, she was always protective of me. Like the big sister I never had, which is odd since she's younger than me about a year or two," Whirlwind said, holding his hoof out. "She's just ticked I was away for so long. Oh and going about and worrying her like that, Handy," Whirlwind admonished. "Thanks, she really didn't need to know about that tussle with the dragon."

"You're welcome," Handy said through the table.

"You seemed awfully insistent on not mentioning a certain mare."

"I said she's protective." Whirlwind shrugged, shuffling his cards for another round. Handy did not want to think about how he did that with hooves, he just did, and no matter how he glared, they refused to bend to his interpretation of reality. "She was always like that, kept me clear of 'loose does' or some such. Really got on my nerves sometimes, but I couldn't really stay mad at her."

"Uh huh." Jacques took a drink from his third cup of whatever excuse for alcohol these deer produced. It was a tasteless, clear thing so close to water that initially Handy actually thought that was what they were drinking. "And nothing else?"

"Hm? No, why?" Whirlwind asked, tossing out the cards for another game. Handy's cards bounced off the top of his head, their furious, fickle, laminated folly futile against the ferocious defence of his fearsome follicles. Handy just turned up and looked at Whirlwind.

"Really? Not just a little bit weirded out she is so insistent on you?" Jacques said, narrowing his eyes at the stag, his smile just that bit wider.

"Well, like I said, it’s annoying," Whirlwind said, waving a hoof dismissively. "How's a guy supposed to find a good doe when his friend actively blocks all of them. I mean, why!? I just don't get it. You'd think as a friend she'd want to see me be happy. I mean yeah, I'm not the most tied down stag around and it’s probably best I don't go breaking any hearts until I get a tad more settled, but come on. You think that's it? I mean aside from mothering over me because of a busted spike on my antler."

'This can't be for real,' Handy thought, slowly turning around and looking at Jacques in turn. 'He can't be serious. He has to be facetious...' Jacques glanced at Handy's expression and his amused smirk nearly broke into a laugh.

"Anyway, I'm gonna get some more salad," Whirlwind said, tipping the empty bowl over, looking into its empty depths forlornly. "You guys want anything?"

"I'm good." His traitorous stomach disagreed. "...Okay, I'm not good. I'll have some salad too... I guess," he said, not looking forward to the unidentifiable vegetation that made up deer cuisine, but he was fucking hungry

"More of this fine wine, s'il vous plaît," Jacques said

"Right!" Whirlwind said, pushing from the table and trotting off. Deer trot, right? It was what Handy was calling it anyway. His hoofsteps disappeared into the building, leaving the two of them there in the relative silence of the evening. The balcony was lit up by bright lanterns, attracting midges and other small insects. The hishym was silent as most deer made their way either to their homes or to whatever taverns the deer had. They were high up, and the oakenhearts were far enough away for the forest to appear simply black. The distant lights of the flowers and hishyms of the other oakenhearts and the lights of the city on the 'ground' below contrasted with the blackness of the canopy above that blocked out the real sky, giving an impression of hanging upside down, as if one were falling into the stars of the night sky while looking 'up' at the shadowed ground of the earth 'below'. It was beautiful but very surreal to experience.

"Love is beautiful, non?" Jacques said at last.

"If you say so," Handy said. No one could ever accuse Handy of being sharpest tool in the social shed, but that was painfully obvious. Also, being in the same room of a really contented-looking changeling observing the fracas was enough to clue anyone in. "Kinda sad," he said half-heartedly. That was what Jacques wanted to hear, right? Right. Sooner he could float through this conversation, the sooner Whirlwind got back with food. If he wanted to talk about a girl who was so deep in the friendzone that even her would-be paramour of years was blatantly unaware of her affections, well, who was Handy to stop him?

Handy. That was who he was. He had every right to stop him. He just didn't really have the energy right now.

"Oh don't be such a bore!" Jacques said. "Liven up! It’s all in good fun. I for one am glad my friend has someone so keen on him. A bit dense, but eh, what can one do?"

"Mmm," Handy mmm'd.

"Ah, but if only I could find someone like that..." Jacques said. "Never could find a mare." That actually made Handy pause. He turned back up to Jacques.

"Thou courts everything on four legs," Handy pointed out,

"Well, not everything." Jacques laughed. "Just beautiful mares."

"And yet thou complainst about not being able to find anyone? A bit shallow, are we not?"

"Pardon?"

"Thou hast just admitted thou fancies all the women that float your way, yet thou waxes about not finding one who is after thee like Forestfire is for Whirlwind. But thou limits thyself on physical attraction alone?" Handy asked, actually leaning up off the table with a card stuck to his cheek which promptly fell off and floated to the floor, lonely and forgotten, and he took a drink. "Is it not a tad shallow?"

"Oho! You misunderstand me, mon ami. All mares are beautiful!" Jacques said, leaning back in his chair, because fuck posture Handy guessed. "I am more than happy to treat any mare well." Handy gave him a dark look for a moment, snorted, and took another drink.

"Right, so thou art just a 'player.'"

"A what?"

"Thou just seduces and use women then movest on. Thou does not sound too dissimilar t—"

"Vous osez m'accuser de tels usure! Je n'aurais jamais traiter une jument avec un tel manque de respect! Même de suggérer je voudrais juste tromper une jument juste d'avoir mon chemin avec elle!"

"Sea, Coinnigh ag caint Fraincis, buachaill lile. Níl mé ag dul chun tuiscint agat ar bith níos fearr."

"Speak Equestrian!"

"Fine. If you do so too," Handy said. Jacques gave him a furious look before clearing his throat.

"I never use mares like that. Ever," he said pointedly.

"Oh? Then why else would thou go around from woman to woman like that?"

"Why not?" Jacques said, pointing a hoof at the human. He then smiled gently as his gaze drifted away. "Ah, it is quite a lot of fun. Good company too! I won't deny that I enjoy it immensely. But I never go that far, make them think it could go further when it so often cannot." Handy cocked an eyebrow, and he sighed, taking off his hat. "I know how it sounds, but it’s just the way I look out on life, qui?"

"So thou art saying thou dost not look upon them merely as meat?"

"There are a lot of lonely mares out there. Am I so wrong to find them beautiful? Can I not let them know? To take them for a walk and get to know them a little? To let them know they're beautiful, that they're desirable for however long life deems fit to let us know one another?" Jacques swirled the cup in his hooves. "Ah, but I am a stallion of the world. I cannot really stay where they need me. That is why I do not go further. It is not fair, nor is it right."

Handy couldn't say he was entirely in agreement with the pony's outlook on life, but it was marginally better than what he thought it was. Still… "And?"

"Mm?"

"That is all very well and... good, I suppose, but if you live like that, how canst thou complain that none see anything in you? How can you honestly be jealous of Whirlwind?"

"Hmhmhm, Handy, my friend, do you not think I tried?"

"Tried what?"

He didn’t answer. Instead, he just wore a light smile and put his hat back on his head. "Some ponies... just don't seem to be lucky like that. I'll leave it at that," Jacques said, leaning back in his chair again. Handy gave a light grunt in acknowledgement, letting his gaze drift over the cards he had been dealt. He spied the fallen card on the ground, the princess of hearts. Well well well, looked like Whirlwind didn't gather that one up when he cut the deck again. Handy checked to make sure Jacques wasn't paying too close attention. Fortunately, the romantic idiot was gazing wistfully out at the hishym below them. Handy slyly moved his hands, knocking the few wooden chips Whirlwind had managed to scrounge up for them unto the floor. He bent over in his seat to gather them up, quickly shifting the princess of hearts up the sleeve of a chainmail. Now, think what you will of Handy for planning on cheating at cards, but when you're a couple grand worth of imaginary bits in the shitter then you can judge Handy's actions.

"What about you?"

"What?" Handy asked, taken aback by the question. He jumped slightly and hit his head on the underside of the table, causing most of the things sitting on it to bounce. He straightened himself out, rubbing the back of his head.

"Well, we have discussed Whirl's troubles. Moi, tell me, is there a little amor in your life, or are you as Heartless as your name implies?" he asked with a smirk. Handy raised an eyebrow. Was he serious?

"I'd say I'm more than a little preoccupied to worry about such things, Jacques," Handy said, gathering his cards and tapping the table with them, holding them in one hand.

"Nonsense! Surely there must be somepony? Non?"

"There really isn't. I have much more important things on my mind." 'More than you could know...'

"Well maybe not, but you must have seen some beauties in your travels, qui? I hear you're from across the sea. Is that true?"

"Yes."

"Then you are a long way from home. You've been to Canterlot, have you not? I hear the mares there are the most elegant in all the world."

"I really haven't looked at anyone in that way. Couldn't really tell thee," Handy said, getting a tad annoyed.

"Why not?" Jacques asked.

"Perhaps because it is rather weird in my culture to look at non-humans as attractive?" Handy said sharply.

"So provincial." Jacques chuckled. "I know most ponies prefer their own kind. It’s only natural, and the nobles usually forbid marriage between families of a different race for political reasons. But you have been about long enough to know that isn't always true. Why would you think it is weird?"

'Because you are a tiny horse discussing love and women with me and that is the weirdest God-damn thing ever?' Handy wanted to say. "Because it is? I really do not see how I need to explain why that it is unusual."

"Unusual, yes, but not unheard of. Come, I am sure even one such as you has at least stopped to admire somepony, even if it was only fleeting."

"Can't say that I have... And I will thank thee for not pressing me on it. Can we not say I am merely uninterested at this time and move on?" Handy asked impatiently.

"But why? Are you embarrassed?"

"What? No."

"...Well what’s wrong then? Are you simply uninterested in mares?"

"No, I find women quite attractive, thank you."

"Then what is the matter? Are you..." Jacques face fell for a minute, growing serious. "Oh, is everything not working to, ahem, standard?"

"...What?" Handy asked.

"Downstairs," Jacques said. Handy just looked at him with a confused expression. "Are your… foundations intact?"

"The hell are..." Handy trailed off, his eyes widening slightly, and he grew inarticulate in his speech as comprehension dawned. He spluttered with indignation at the implication. "How could you— That's not even— Why would you—!"

"Easy easy!" Jacques said, gesturing with a hoof. "It’s just you were acting really weird about this. I thought it might be because something, you know, was wrong and you were just being defensive, not really wanting to talk about it. I didn't mean—"

"Okay, Jacques, let me be clear," Handy said, his voice stern and his eyes narrowed. "I am a perfectly healthy, red-blooded male of my species. That is not the issue."

"Alright alright, I am sorry. Okay, how about you tell me what is the problem then?"

'What’s the gentlest way I could put this...?' he thought before turning back to the pony. "Alright, my kingdom, Milesia, alright?"

"Qui."

"It, and literally every other kingdom I know of before I came to this continent, is full of humans."

"Go on."

"And only humans." Jacques cocked his head at him curiously.

"Truth?"

"Aye," Handy said. "Tell me, Jacques, what dost thou think of animals?"

"Well, they're animals. What is there to think of?"

"What wouldst thou think of someone who had romantic intentions towards one?" Handy asked. Jacques gave him a curious expression, smirking before it fell.

"You're serious?" Handy nodded, and Jacques shuddered. "Not exactly a pleasant thought... Wait, is that why you find it weird? You think of people not of your kind as merely animals!?" he said, indignant. Handy put a hand up.

"No, no, of course not." 'Kinda, sorta, actually' "It is just to emphasise my point, for in our lands, if thou art not a human, then thou art an animal, because there is nought else." 'Also I am not getting into the hornet's nest of explaining our horses to you. Because that was not going to be fun poker conversation.' "When I arrived in Equestria, I was shocked, literally shocked to find other creatures that could talk, let alone, well, run a kingdom. It was strange and alien. Imagine how more shocked I was to learn there were many other races. Ponies, griffons, diamond dogs, dragons, minotaurs, deer... Dost thou think it unreasonable I should be reluctant to consider persons of another species in such light? Even if I see if some of them have little problem with such?"

Jacques stroked his beard for a moment in thought. "Yes," he said. Handy cocked an eyebrow. Jacques shrugged. "I sympathise, for I was once like you in that respect. Heh, I did not even know there were things other than ponies once upon a time. But you are alone in this land, are you not?"

"What?"

"I mean to say you are the only human? At least for a great distance?"

"...Thou couldst say that, yes."

"Well, there you have it then. Unless you want to be alone, that is something you're simply going to have to get over."

'...Well thanks for reminding me I'm all alone in this world, ass,' "I am pretty sure that if I really get desperate, I'll merely return home," Handy said, denying the pony's reasoning.

"It is an awful long way away, and you have commitments here, non?"

"That is neither here nor there."

"Well, it’s not as if you can just hop on the back of a pegasus and just whisk yourself back home at a moment's notice, now is it?"

'Not a pegasus. A unicorn perhaps,' he thought to himself, thinking of Crimson's offer to send him home, contemplating whether it was worth it to just take the offer and damn the consequences. He didn't answer the unicorn's question, and Jacques rolled his eyes.

"Well," Jacques said, draining the last dregs of his cup, "if you're going to be that way, what are human girls like? Perhaps there's some sweetheart of yours back home in Milesia?"

"No, not really," Handy admitted. Briefly, he wondered why he was even entertaining the pony with this, before glancing at his cup. What was this, his third? Weak as it is, it was probably to blame for his loose lips.

“Not even one? Surely they cannot be that bad,” Jacques said. Handy just gave him an unamused look.

“I could describe them to thee, but without an image, I doubt it would even make sense to you.”

“Try me.”

“Imagine someone like me, only curvier.”

“...Uhhh.”

“If thou art having trouble imagining that, then I doubt we’re going to be making any progress with descriptions alone,” Handy said. Honestly, he was not sure what the unicorn had been expecting. Sure, the creatures of this world had human-like features in a lot of ways, expressions especially so. But to find them attractive? Handy really had not given that any thought. They could be cute, he supposed, in an odd way, once you got passed the initial weirdness. Still alien though. He had realized the creatures of this world may at least be open to interspecies shenanigans early on. Back in Spurbay, for just an example, had he not witnessed Joachim trying to beat off mares with a stick over a misunderstanding? He had used that fact to great effect in Canterlot when he was screwing with that purple alicorn. What was her name again? Twirl sputzle something or other? He knew her name began with a T and there was a W in there somewhere. However, there was a difference between playing a part and genuine attraction. That had been purely for the sake of fucking with her.

It wasn't really that he saw them as animals, despite the really obvious reasons why that would be perfectly reasonable. He had known too many of them for too long and had far too often mentally associated Stallion with Man and Mare with Woman to not automatically humanize most people he met. Funny how a petty insistence on his own human terminology reinforced that. Not that he was not racist; Handy was racist as all get out when it came to other species and rather unapologetic for it. He just knew better than to make an issue about it. That said, the idea that he'd find them attractive... nah, that didn't make any sense. Why would he? He'd been on his own a long time now, long before he came to Equestria. He'd have to be here an awful long time before he got that lonely. One did not deprogram one's inhibitions overnight after all. Besides, not as if he'd be here that long if he could help it. He had already gotten one method home secured. He was just unwilling to use it. It would only be a matter of finding another one, and pretty soon this issue, like so many others, would simply become irrelevant.

...

Still. Now that the thought was in his head, he was having trouble evicting it. The more he thought about it, the more things came to mind. Eyes for example, now that he thought about it, there were a few that had caught his notice. And not just because of their oddity. That bothered him. "Why the sudden interest?" he decided to ask, keeping the conversation going while he churned through this little quandary.

"Well, I figured it was worth fishing around. Seeing you two emerging from the bushes the other day, I was curious."

"Us two?"

"You and the little rouge mare."

"Crimson?" Handy asked. Jacques nodded. Handy was silent for a moment before breaking out into a smile. "Aheh, no. No, there's nothing there, God no. Not my type. Not anyone's type."

"Really? Such a shame. I will admit, she always seemed so angry and unfriendly that I had thought to cheer her up. I just didn't want to step on any hooves, à comprendre?"

"Believe me when I say I think you're better off not trying." 'Please just take my word for it. I'm doing you a favour.'

"Perhaps..."

'Thank God.'

"...Perhaps I like trouble, no?"

"...To each their own, I suppose." 'Buddy you have no idea what you’re in for... Actually, come to think of it, if what Thorax implied was true, then how you haven't been tapped by a changeling or two already was beyond me. Still, I am not going to risk exposure because Jacques was going to present Thorax with a tempting feedbag.' "But I do not care for random strangers fraternizing with my servants," Handy said warningly. Jacques waved him off.

"Oh very well. Be a bore," he said.

"Hey guys!"

"Jesus!" Handy jumped in his seat at Whirlwind's sudden, antlered appearance at the table. Jacques blinked rapidly, also taken aback. No one who went about their lives on hooves had any business walking across hard wooden floors that silently.

"What’s up?"

"...Just talking about the lovely view," Jacques said, gesturing at the vista afforded them from the balcony. The stag deposited a couple of bowls of produce in front of the two of them. Handy looked down into the bundle of leafy degeneracy that the deer had the temerity to call food. There was something purple in there and he didn't recognise it, and Handy knew an awful lot of purple things. He was pretty that other thing was a mushroom. Probably. His stomach growled, apparently not keen on arguing the matter. Whirlwind had also very kindly refilled their cups.

"Okay!" the stag chirped. "Ready to begin?" And like that, the unhappy conversation behind him, Handy went to work trying to regain his dignity. By cheating at cards. Because fuck you, that’s why. He was over a thousand imaginary bits in the shitter right now – he wasn't going to let that stand. The game drew on and Handy, for once, felt he got his tells under control since the other two didn't see fit to call him on it. He even managed to sneak the princess of hearts into his hand. The time came to show their hands. Handy, quite pleased to see Whirlwind's losing hand, displayed his quite proudly.

Then Jacques showed his hand which, among other good cards, held all three other princesses.

He smiled.

Handy frowned.

--=--

Sneaking back in was almost harder than sneaking out. She was out of breath, the sheets she had stolen for her makeshift robe dirty and tattered, and the sound of her hoofsteps upon the ground were loud. All too damn loud. It had been easy to remember the patrols of the sentries sent to watch them, to ensure the foreigners in their midst did not try anything, to duck out of her window during a lapse in their watch. Now, having run herself ragged, hugging the shadows of the buildings as she bounded between them and up across the great bridges and walkways of the Whisperwood, through the hishyms that hugged the great oakenhearts and the townships that clung to the bridges, suspended a terrifying distance from the ground with not but the expertly crafted superstructure to support them, she finally made it back.

Checking once, then twice, then again, when she was sure none of the deer could spot her, the changeling allowed her form to sprout a pair of wings, given her the appearance of a mythical peryton as the doe she was disguised as leapt to the air and shot straight into one of the opened windows of the lower building. She did not know which of her companions she could thank for the lack of foresight that left a window wide open, but never look a gift pony in the mouth and all that. She tumbled, knocking over a chair. Something wobbled, fell over, and smashed on the ground. She froze for just a moment, listening. Nothing. She pressed herself against the wall, to the side of the window. The stubs on the doe's head lit up, a green aura encompassing them and the curtains that shut the window and closed the blinds. A wave of emerald flame washed over her form, and Crimson stood where Cloven the doe had before. The dark room was briefly illuminated as walls of green with long shadows of stark black flashed before her eyes before all was in darkness once more.

'That was too close,' Thorax thought to herself. 'Far, far too close.' She stayed where she was for a time, just a bit longer, occasionally peeking out the window. Watching. Waiting. The organ full of holes that might charitably be called a heart pumped in her chest, anxiety and trepidation threatening to overcome her. It wouldn't. She was far too well trained to let it. But still...

She sighed and her horn lit up, illuminating the fallen crystal decanter that had smashed against the floor. She gathered it up before looking around, depositing the shards behind a cupboard. It was someling else's problem now. That had been exhausting. You see, a changeling scout's job didn't cease because she simply had additional responsibilities and a fancier job title. Oh no. She had a duty to fulfil. And circumstances being what they were, she was likely the first and only changeling to have not only made it this far into the Greenwood forest, but infiltrated a deer city and still be alive to enjoy the fact.

And that meant reconnaissance was necessary. She owed it to her Queen and to her sidhe to discover as much as she could about the deer and their society, an objective that cost her a dangerous amount of magic. First thing to do was figure out how the deer language worked. Changeling magic allowed them to imitate a lot. Certain things couldn't be altered, however, the first being their interior biology was always pretty much the same. The second was language. Spells to automatically translate spoken language, both by the spell weaver and those speaking to them, required constant concentration and a great deal of magic and did not grant learned ability by the end of it. It had required a great deal of effort on her part, but it had been worth it.

While fully learning the ins and outs of deer social mores for the benefits of the kingdom would take weeks of interaction and deception, what she learned of in a single night's work was more than enough to give her at least a partial understanding of why it had been so hard for them to infiltrate the deer to begin with. Aside from the dangers of the Greenwoods themselves, deer by and large were a warlike race. At least the tribes that dwelt within the Greenwoods were. Intertribal conflict was common, with the most common cause of conflict usually being over resources. Mines, for example, were highly prized, and territory within the Greenwoods offered scant opportunities to prospect for new ones. Most tribal wars involved simply trying to find the enemy's hidden resources and claiming them. Outside of these arcologies, these cities made from great trees. Deer settlements were scattered throughout the Greatwoods, often claiming allegiance to one tribe or another with a number of minor tribes holding out on the fringes. That meant in the conduct of their wars, deer conflicts mirrored conventional wars beyond their borders to a surprising degree, as capturing intended war goals often meant fighting and securing key locations and settlements for strategic advantages. It was an excessively deadly game of hide and seek played on a national scale.

This leant the perpetually joyful deer a natural, deep seated suspicion and caution bordering on paranoia. Trust was like gold dust, and spies were dealt with harshly. Thorax never did find out what happened to any changelings they uncovered but she could easily imagine some choice consequences. Foreigners, in general, were forbidden from entering the forest, apparently to protect the forest and fellow deer from foreign interference and conquest. That was reasonable, but to also protect the outside world from the forest... made little sense to Thorax. In any case, the Whisperwood tribe was close to the centre of the forest, bordered by a large number of other tribes, not all of whom were friendly.

So, one can imagine the alarm Brittlebark and his deer felt when three outsiders, two of which were armed, stumbled across their patrol. In the middle of the forest. Close to their city. Apparently having not been previously intercepted by any other deer warband of any of the other tribes between the forest's border and Whisperwood. Literally the only reason they were probably still alive was because Whirlwind was with them. Whirlwind's odd behaviour and his seemingly desperate attempts to control the conversation and not raise the ire of the chieftain was the only thing preventing the deers' natural xenophobic paranoia from reducing them to bloody remnants for the carrion. Well, that and the new chieftain holding a candle for their idiot of a stag, providing Thorax with just enough energy to qualify for dinner and a show. Didn't change the fact that the only reason any of them was still breathing was because of dumb luck. They were walking a razor's edge this entire time. If any of them did anything to compromise that, the good will they built would instantly evaporate. That made it all the worse when she realized that that was almost exactly what she had done.

She had to make her way all the way down to the war hall to discover all of this. A difficult process when one could not use wings without instantly becoming suspicious and probably become a pincushion for your trouble when sentries fired arrows at you. She also had the misfortune of not being a real deer nor had their magic, this 'Hartsight' she heard from time to time, so she could not summon the ficus express in the side of the Oakenheart. That had led to a delightful waste of time traversing the great walkways in a vaguely downwards direction and an even more wonderful time panicking as she made her way back and hoping to God she got the right Hishym. You see, while she had successfully infiltrated the war hall, disguised a doe mage with their distinctive white robes and making it to a library of similar deer, the imperfections of changeling disguises had another flaw which showed through: injuries.

It was a rather embarrassing situation when you were cornered by the chieftain herself in a hallway and pressed to explain exactly how you got that bruised eye. It was even more awkward when the truth of the matter was that the very same person asking was the one who gave it to you in the first place. You just happened to be wearing a different face at the time. She had smiled nervously and passed off some excuse about falling over. Forestfire hadn't bought it and continued pressing. She had then made a show of cracking under pressure and made up a story of how she was relatively new and had gotten into a disagreement with some more senior deer. Furious, the chieftain had stormed off, barking orders as she headed off into the librarium. Thorax had bolted as soon as she was out of Forestfire's sight.

She took a breath to calm herself. She had made it out. That was enough scouting for one night. She would have to pressure the human into giving her access to the pendant so she could inform the Queen. Maybe it would make up for the deal she had to cut and leaving the Queen in the dark so lo— "Hi!"

"WHHHAHAHAAAAA!" 'Crimson' yelped, pressing herself hard against the wall, foreleg raised to her chest, eyes wide, and pupils shrunk to pinpricks. She had just exited what had been a seating room of the house and the first thing she ran into was the bucking stag. His horns were glowing lightly, levitating a candle holder in a soft golden grip, a gentle smile on his muzzle.

"You're up late. Feeling better?" he asked brightly. Crimson took a few deep breaths in rapid succession as she registered the question.

"Y-Yeah!" she said breathlessly "Just... Just was wandering around, thought I might go uh... get something to... drink! Hehe!" The stag looked over her shoulder briefly.

"Well, you won't find it in there. That’s not the kitchen." Her ear flicked.

"Got lost," she said. "Couldn't find a light. I uh.... knocked something over."

"Oh, so that’s why I heard something smash..." Whirlwind said, nodding. "Anyway, kitchen's back there."

"Thanks," she said before growing suspicious and narrowing her eyes. "What are you doing down here?"

"Can't sleep!" he said happily. "Also, I heard a noise."

"Ah..."

"Oh, and Crimson was it?"

"Uh, yes?"

"You should put some ice on that." He gestured to her eye with a hoof, smiling. Crimson gave him an incredibly unamused expression.

"Thanks," she said through gritted teeth.

"You're welcome!" he said before trotting off up towards the rooms, leaving the annoyed changeling in the dark. She watched him go, holding her disdainful expression, only letting it drop as she nearly fell from her hooves, a wave of fatigue washing over her. She breathed heavily. Raising a fetlock to her forehead, she wiped off sweat. She grimaced. The ambient emotional energy she could siphon off from merely being in a settlement would be enough to just about sustain her, but it wasn't much. It was barely anything, and it was worse at night when most were asleep. The tournament was better, but something like that couldn't last forever. She had used a lot of energy tonight since changing from one form to another cost a lot more than simply maintaining one guise for an extended period. Her translation spell had cut away at her stores even more. She idly rubbed her foreleg, tempted to turn it back to her true form, just to see how bad the holes had gotten in the past few hours. She was hungry, so very hungry, but she couldn't feed here in the midst of all these deer. There were too many prying eyes. They were too wary.

Quietly making her way to her room, she considered her options. She would need to feed.

And soon.

Author's Note

In which Handyman takes the idea of Twilight's treehouse to its logical conclusion when dealing with an entirely forest dwelling, advanced, sapient species. (Advanced meaning not primitive in comparison to their renaisence era neighbours.). Also if there was a reverse Bachdel test, this chapter fails it so hard. Not that that is a bad thing since I'd say north of 90% of established media would fail a reverse one just as much as the current one.

Also you'd think since I studied French for three years and Spanish for five at Grammar School (our college was pretty fucking heavy on the languages for the junior year students), I'd have no problem writing a character like Jacques. Nope. Hell I've actually forgotten most of the Spanish I've learned. You'd also think as both an Irishman and someone who learned Irish for three years (same curriculum) I'd be able to write Handy's little snippets in a more efficient manner so as to not break immersion by seeming clunky and cumbersome. Nope.

Also because JBL is a little bitch and asked, nay, demanded I include this little nugget of backstage storywriting shenanigans in my author's notes, I offer you this conversation. With apologies.

Handyman: *stares blankly at page*
Handyman: *sighs*
Handyman: my old foe, we meet again
JBL: solution: fuck it in the ass
Handyman: JBL I will not have sexual intercourse with my own story
Handyman: its simply not possible
JBL: have you ever TRIED?!
Handyman: How
Handyman: why
Handyman: that doesn't
Handyman: HOW COULD YOU THINK THAT IS A THING I WOULD BE WILLING TO TRY?
JBL: hehehehe
JBL: http://i.imgur.com/dbahM9q.jpg
Handyman: no
Handyman: no I did not
Handyman: I am not going to fuck my story
Handyman: I am not even attracted to stories in anyway
Handyman: also did you seriously just create that macro for this conversation?
JBL: If you fuck your story.... you can get it pregnant.... and chapters will be born from your union.... and then you won't have to write anymore!
Handyman: ...
Handyman: How does that...
Handyman: No
Handyman: No JBL
Handyman: I deny you
Handyman: and your sorcerous logic
JBL: pshhh, you're just looking down on the story, aren't you? Racist.
Handyman: Yes
Handyman: Yes I am
JBL: check your privilege
JBL: You and the patriarchy needs to die!
JBL: white cis scum
Handyman: But JBL, YOU'RE THE PATRIARCHY
JBL: Noooooooooo!
JBL: JBL used tumblrisms
JBL: They had no effect

Chapter 32 - Never split the party

There were many things Handy would have never assumed possible.

He would have never assumed that this forest could be anything more than a lingering nightmare waiting to swallow him up the second he wandered too far from someone with Hartsight. That it could be beautiful in its own right, by its simple existence, had never crossed his mind.

He would never have thought he’d be here now, following the stag to God only knew where on some fool of a mission ripped straight out of a fairy tale. Yet there he was.

He would also have never assumed he would take a threat from what was essentially a real life Bambi seriously, but life was funny like that.

“Come on!” He was snapped back to the present. The three of them had already crossed the ruined ballroom, haunted as it was by eldritch light from the shattered floor tiles. The ancient tables and chairs, all of the decrepit finery and glass works floating upon the air, added to the unease he felt. The spinning and cavorting of ghostly shapes of things long passed and beyond recognition flittering in and out of existence only reinforced the sense of foreboding. The spinning forms of the.... things danced in time to the lullabies and childhood songs his peers sang so as to safely cross, so as to not rouse the ire of the shapeless things that lurked in the shadows above them all.

He wracked his brain as he let out a breath, misting the air in front of his face. He had to sing a song from his youth, a truly happy one so as to not attract the attention of the dark creatures above. It was some strange, mystical rule that controlled this place that demanded it to be so. The dance had to continue, and to continue, it had to have more songs, fresh and meaningful, to keep the dark at bay.

Handy really wished that this was a problem he could just solve with his hammer.

--=--

"See, guys, what did I tell you? Everything's going to be juuuuus-aaaaiit what was that last bit?" Whirlwind asked. The four of them stood in the centre of the room, a grand affair with marble floor depicting a black circle and intricate knot work in white stone and quartz depicting a tree whose branches reached out and twisted into a circle that encapsulated the tree, reaching down to become one with its own roots. Above them sat Chieftain Forestfire behind a low table that stood upon a raised dais that surrounded them in a semi-circle. Large red banners depicting indecipherable script hung from the walls. The back of the room was dominated by a large plain glass window coming to a point at its apex, the glass frame shaped to look like the natural formations of branches and trees. It created odd formations of light that spilled into the room, giving an amazing view of the towering oakenhearts and the city outside.

Handy's armour proved more than a little distracting in the light, but it was too amusing watching deer try to act all serious while he was continuously blinding them. What? Handy could be petty sometimes. His fun was spoiled, however, when a guard dear levitated a disused banner, tattered and worn with age, over him. Sighing, he draped it over himself.

"It is the decision of the elders of the tribes of the Greenwoods that you, Whirlwind ap Whisperwood, in their wisdom, must become the Lord in Winter," Forestfire said solemnly. To her right and left were a number of deer, most of them with greying manes. Riverblossom was there, representing the mages. Another deer, a stag in a richly embroidered emerald scarf, was to the chieftain’s right. A doe wearing a blindfold with golden script written across it, a stag in armour, and others represented the various castes of deer society. Behind Forestfire were some of the same deer they had seen in the war hall the other day, the representatives of other tribes. Elder Wildwood was nowhere to be seen.

"H-Hang on..." Whirlwind said, holding up a shaking hoof "There must be a... a mistake! Aheh! I don't... I mean I'm hardly—"

"There is no mistake," the deep voice of one of the other tribesdeer behind Forestfire rumbled. "My tribe's elder reports much the same," he said, looking down at the stag judgingly.

"Mine as well," spoke up a doe of another tribe. Several others raised similar affirmations.

"W-Wait, wait just wait a minute!" Whirlwind said, taking a few steps forward. He sounded rather desperate. "There has to be somedeer better than me. I-I, well I've been out of the forest for the past few years. I hardly know anydeer from the other tribes. I'd be a terrible lord! Winter isn't even my favourite season!"

"It’s nodeer's favourite season, Whirlwind," the kindly voice of Riverblossom spoke.

"Exactly!" Whirlwind said, laughing nervously "I-I mean, sure! The crown was to be delivered to me, I get that, but I thought that was only so I could bring it back home!" he said, turning and pointing an accusatory hoof at Handy. He just shrugged.

"I was merely paid to deliver a package on behalf of a pony who could not make the journey himself. It was unprofessional to enquire as to its contents," Handy said, even though that was exactly what he had done as soon as he got Crimson alone with it. They had been there only a short while now. Handy was quite pleased to learn they did indeed have a solution to 'expedite' their journey out of the forest. Unfortunately, this method was apparently the same one they entered by and involved the finding and destruction of a rare and, to the deer, priceless artefact.

You could see where this was going. Handy certainly could. Why was the 'easy way out' anything but?

"This is a mistake..." the suddenly terrified-looking stag said, his voice trembling. "The elder, I wish to speak with the elder!"

"Elder Wildwood is currently in communion; he cannot be disturbed. It has been decided. Whirlwind ap Whisperwood, you are to undertake the pilgrimage with the crown, with nodeer to accompany you, to the Hearthfire," Forestfire said before concluding with a brief phrase in the deer language that was, in turn, intoned by the surrounding council. Whirlwind looked as if he had just been condemned to death.

Briefly, Handy felt a twinge of concern for the stag, but it was mollified by the assurance that he would be soon out of this damnedable forest. 'And away from that road...' This was a deer matter and the deer were sorting it out. It was kind of them to speak in Eques— English. It was English, Handy, don't be silly now. It was kind of them to do so that they had an idea of what was going on, but it simply did not concern them. Jacques, however, looked at Whirlwind, his face a stoic mask. His tail twitched.

"I will discuss with the outsiders, the Milesian and the Equestrians, their means of acquiring a vortex shard," Forestfire said. "This council is brought to a close." The noise of wood on wood resounded as a red-robed aide at the chieftain's side stomped his wood-encompassed hoof upon a small black block carved to resemble a stylised deer head. The hall was filled with voices as the gathered deer filed out to the doors to the side. Forestfire didn't move, however, waiting patiently as the others left. Soon it was merely her, a few guards, Riverblossom, her aide, Handy, Crimson, Jacques, and the dejected Whirlwind. "Seer Riverblossom," Forestfire said, not looking away from the four of them below her, "please take Whirlwind to the temple. My own aide will assist you in preparing him for his pilgrimage."

"Now dear, I do not—" Riverblossom found herself interrupted by a rather sharp burst from Forestfire's mouth. She looked quite taken aback by what Handy could only assume was a harsh rebuke in the deer language. Her next words seemed more measured, gentler. Riverblossom stared hard at her granddaughter for a few moments before raising her head. She then turned to Whirlwind. "Come along, young Whirls. There is a lot for you to consider," she said, getting up from her spot and walking down to guide the young stag away. The red robed doe quickly made to follow after the seer as they left the room with the guards Forestfire dismissed, leaving the four of them there.

"You may leave. You will be given supplies to accommodate your travels. And while it was not easy to convince the council of your need, we will provide you with the location of one vortex shard so that you may leave our realms as quickly as you entered," she said, breaking the awkward silence that had hung heavy on the air. "Please wait in the war hall to be guided out of the city. You may go," she said before turning her attention to a scroll on the table before her. They looked at each other for a moment before doing as she said. "Not you, Milesian."

Handy paused at the threshold of the doorway, the two great stone doors, so at odds with the wood building hung open, flanked on their far side by two rather large stags completely encased in vicious-looking armour, bearing large, vertically attached scythe blades upon poles. The blades positively glowed with whatever magic was in them. Jacques and Thorax looked at him uncertainly for a moment. He turned to look at the red eyes of the doe boring into his head from across the room. He glanced at the other two for a moment before turning around. The doors closed behind him with a solid final thud, leaving him alone with the chieftain.

Handy shifted the generously gifted banner he was using as a makeshift cloak just enough so that he didn't raise any hackles when he discreetly moved his hand closer to the loop holding his hammer in place. He stood there by the door for a while. She, meanwhile, just looked at him, then to the scroll before her, then off to the side. She was very visibly rotating her jaw. Handy sighed. "Yes?" The question seemed to jolt her back to reality. She cleared her throat and pushed herself away from the table. She trotted down until she was just before the human.

"I have... a favour to ask of you," she said. Handy just looked down at her.

"No."

"What?"

"I said no."

"I have not even asked anything yet!"

"Thou dost assume I care?" Handy asked, his implacable steel helm betraying nothing. The doe bared her teeth for a minute, visible shaking, the horn stubs on her head sparking with magic. She shakily raised a forehoof, and Handy took a step back, the gauntlet of his right hand clinking as it clasped the head of his war hammer.

Then she put her hoof down. She seemed to slump as she hung her head. The small, particles of dust that had been levitated by the force of the magic, gathering about the doe, fell to the floor "Please," she said, sounding tired, "just... listen to what I have to say." Despite himself, Handy's curiosity was piqued. The powerful, forceful, if somewhat disarmingly adorable doe appeared so small right at that moment, as if borne down by the weight of the world. She looked up slightly from the floor after a moment, red eyes scanning the lines between black and white marble stones. "There... are some traditions deer cannot break. Rituals too important to be profaned by cloven hoof. Whirl..." she paused. "He can't have anydeer accompany him on the pilgrimage."

"So?" Handy asked. "If I understand correctly, this... Lord of Winter title is one all thine tribes respect?"

"Yes," Forestfire said carefully.

"And that there is a lord of Winter, one agreed upon by the elders of all the tribes, he would be safe from attack by all tribes on this pilgrimage? And you deer seem to command this forest, so he should not be attacked by animals?"

"That is... accurate."

"Then what is the problem?"

"The Hearthfire has gone out," Forestfire explained. Handy just tilted his head. Rolling her eyes, she continued, "It’s... difficult to explain. Just understand that it is important. It hasn't gone out in centuries. I fear... something has snuffed the flame."

"You have my sympathies." She did not. "But I fail to see what thou hopes for me, an ignorant outsider," he put a harsh emphasis on the last two words. Forestfire for her part did not wince, but her ears pressed closer to her head, "to do about it."

"Jacques is hired to defend him. And the unicorn mare, she is your servant yes? She'll go where you go?"

"Generally speaking," Handy said before the penny dropped. "... Thou art not asking of me what I am thinking thou art asking, art thee?" She merely stared up at him in silence, a hard expression on her face. He held up a hand. "Let me just explain everything that is wrong with that," he began.

"Alright."

"One, I don't care. Two, thou hath just said there are things too sacred to be broken. That Whirlwind must journey alone is one of them. Would not going with him break this sacred trust? And three, I fail to see how I can assist him on this and then go about my business of finding my way out of this accursed forest." Then, oh so slowly, a small smile graced the chieftain's muzzle. Handy was confused for a moment before his eyes widened slightly. He ground his teeth together for a moment and greatly desired to rub the palm of his hand up against his face, in a vain hope that all the fuckery in the world might disappear if he simply tried to erase his face like a bad doodle on a homework essay. "The place whereupon Whirlwind will make pilgrimage..." Handy began, "…and the place where I might find a shard... they are one and the same, are they not?"

"I got the Council's agreement to let you destroy one for your own needs so long as it was not one of the Whisperwood's," Forestfire explained, looking away. "I placated the other tribes by specifying that none of theirs would be threatened..."

"So what is stopping thee from just giving us one of thine on the sly?"

"Oh, because we don't have any," she said, smiling a tad sheepishly. "Had Whirlwind not broken the one that brought you here, it would have been our first. Council doesn't need to know that though. And the Hearthfire is at the centre of one of the few known ruins that is definitely untouched by deer, except for those who are to become new lords. If there are any to be found easily, it'd be there."

"What exactly are these things anyway?" Handy asked. "And why are they so valuable?"

"They are relics filled with a strange magic unknown to our kind. The ancients who made them and the ruins they used to inhabit are older than this entire forest," she explained. That... That was pretty fucking old, judging by the apparent size of this forest and size of these trees. Handy was no archaeologist, but he was pretty sure any civilization's ruins should have long since crumbled to dust over such a long time span, especially with plants growing over them. "Their study and possession is highly prized by deer."

"Can you use them?" Handy asked, suddenly intrigued. If these things could operate outside most magic, it might be worth investigating them as a possible way of getting home. What? Ancient ruins, enchanted forest, magical McGuffins, it was perfectly reasonable for Handy to think he might get lucky and stumble across some ancient doorway of almighty bullshit or other. A guy could hope, right?

"Oh, we have no idea how they work," Forestfire explained. Handy just glared at her.

"Then why prize them so much?" he demanded. She shrugged, her armour clinking with her motions.

"Because they're cool?" she said, smiling brightly. At that moment, Handy's natural inclination against striking women had briefly, oh so briefly, been readily in favour of punting the doe in the face. Fucking deer. Handy's clenched fist shook violently under his cloak, but reason prevailed and he didn't do something he was going to regret.

"Okay..." Handy said, taking a few steps to the left. "Just... Why can't thee send a detachment of guards to defend Whirlwind if thou art so concerned?" he asked.

"Because sending soldiers of any tribe to the lake would cause a war," Forestfire said. "And that'd be bad. Oh, also, any other deer entering the valley will be turned to ash. Several previous lords found that out the hard way." That made Handy stop. He turned on the spot.

"Hold on," Handy said, "that sounds like something thou really should have mentioned first! If we go with Whirlwind, what prevents us from being turned to ash!?"

"Well you aren't a deer!" Forestfire said happily. There it was, the typical deer inappropriate joviality breaking through her stern cheiftainly demeanour. Handy was livid!

"I am not going to walk to my death just to watch the back of the stag you don't have the fortitude to admit you desire with the intensity of a God damn kiln!" Handy barked. Forestfire reeled.

"That's not- I-I mean, it’s just I don't want anything to happen to him, I mean the crown! Its- uh..."

"I am not even the same species as thee and it is so very terribly obvious," Handy said. The doe seemed to be caught between indignation and embarrassment. Either way, she was flustered.

“You have it wrong. I don’t, that is… uhhh..”

“Thou hast known each other how long?”

“W-What? Why would I even—”

“And thou hast,what? Pulled how many strings and favours in order to get his attention?”

“How dare you insinuate—!”

“Whirlwind is very talkative over a game of cards.” Handy deadpanned. The doe was visibly squirming now, her ears splayed back against her head, rubbing one foreleg against the other and looking like she really regretted starting this conversation. Not that Handy cared. If anything, he was enjoying watching her brought low. “So, if thou art so concerned for his sake out of unrequited love, why don’t you go tell him? Better yet, why not go with him. Make a day trip out of it. Eve—”

“THAT IS NOT THE REASON I AM ASKING THIS FAVOUR AT ALL!” she shouted, face flush with either indignation or rage. Probably both.

"Then why on earth would thee think it reasonable to ask me to go on this suicide mission?" Forestfire's face went through a variety of emotions as she tried to give word to her answer, eventually letting out an explosive sigh.

"Look... Here's the simple truth. This forest... it’s wild. The border between this world and the beyond wears thin. We deer manage and rule it, care for it only because we made a pact."

"A pact with what?"

"A great spirit, one who gave us the power of Hartsight. It allows us to see the forest for what it is, to banish its illusions and keeps us safe from the wildness of it. It gives us our magic for as long as we are within the Greenwoods. We care for the forest, its inhabitants and the seasons... except for winter," she explained. "Winter is... It’s a force of its own in the Greenwoods, uncompromising and destructive. It tears and it rips and overstays its due time. The Lord in Winter... The first lord was our last king, who made the pact for the whole of our race, that we may have a home to call our own. In return, he gave up his right to rule and bore the crown of winter, his crown lost to time so that none may claim dominion over all deer. So that the icy winds would obey him, so that he could stay winter's fury, so that any of us might survive to see another spring." She paused.

"And this Hearthfire?" Handy probed.

"It is the kindling, the promise remembered before gods and deer. A sign of fidelity that it has gone out... It... It could mean the spirit has left."

"If no one can visit this place but the supposed Lord, how do you know it has gone out?" Handy asked. She chuckled.

"Oh human, if it were lit, trust me when I say you'd notice."

"Seems like a rather bad deal to me," Handy said. "You made a deal with a spirit that tied your people to this... enchanting forest, took away your unity, and left you as bickering tribes cut off from the world." She simply smiled wryly at that.

"Desperate times. It is a fool who judges their ancestors harshly while knowing they can see more than they could at the time."

"I suppose this is all supposed to make me feel oh so sorry for dear Whirlwind?" Handy asked. "I still hear no guarantee that neither me nor my companions will be turned to ash." She snapped back to look at him.

"As I said, you are not deer. If anything, the valley will not reject you anymore than it should reject a finch... provided you don't offend the spirits that dwell there. The rituals and vows are specific, know the right loopholes..." she trailed off. Handy actually took off his helmet and rubbed his eyes before exhaling.

"If I never see another deer again... Fine. I'll protect thy little sweetheart if it gets me out of here all the sooner." Forestfire actually beamed at him. He looked at her dispassionately, "In fact, I'll go one step further, and indeed, I shall become the most reliable of friends of his." She raised an eyebrow at him, tilting her head to the side. "And as good friend, I shalt tell him a little bird told me a certain someone holds a candle for him and simply cannot wait to see him again." Forestfire's face dropped and she looked sufficiently mortified.

"No!" she shouted. "Uh, I mean, just uh..."

"Glad we had this chat." Handy placed his helmet back on and walked towards the doorway. It was a small thing and ultimately harmless, but if it made her squirm, he was more than happy to take petty pleasure in her discomfort. She bounded after him, literally bounded, and got in front of him.

"You can't! He doesn't know!"

'No shit he doesn't know. The guy is as thick as custard.' "That is quite the point actually. I simply can't keep this from him. Why, it would be quite the betrayal. I mean, I am supposed to be trusted to watch his back, so how can I in good conscience not tell him something so wonderful!" He was laying it on thick and he didn't care.

"You can't!" she hissed, now walking backwards in front of him as he neared the door.

"Pretty sure I can."

"You won't!

"I will."

"No you won't!" she almost shouted as she hit the door "I forbid it!" That was cute.

"So? I do not answer to thee. What exactly art thou going to do?" She narrowed her eyes.

"Got kids?" Handy frowned.

"No."

"Plan on having them?"

--=--

Don't judge him.

Look, when it was your 'inheritance' on the line, you could call bullshit on a deer who had the command of two remarkably heavily armed and armoured stags with bladed antlers and magical scythes in the room next door. Sure, he was pretty confident she was bluffing. In fact, he was almost certain of it. Buuuut given what he knew of deer, and the rather lethal look she had in her eyes at that point in time... Well, better to lean on the safe side of things. Taking a joke that far wasn't worth it.

It was not as if he was actually not going to tell him anyway. Just... not within earshot of other deer. The others had gathered and had been given supplies for their little trek. Handy was leery of letting any of the others carry his goods, opting instead to keep his pack and satchels right where they were on his person and carrying the deer goods, canteen supplies rations of the god awful tasting fare the deer called food, and other goods, including rope and sheets for a makeshift shelter.

"How far away is this valley anyway?" he asked, following the dejected Whirlwind, looking back down the trail at Jacques and Thorax who were happily chatting away. Crimson laughed at something the stallion had said. Odd.

"A few days..." Whirlwind said. Handy spread his arms wide before letting them fall back to his sides. In a few days, his last enjoyable moments of feeling like an ordinary human would be over and he'd be back to the constant reminders of his new nature. He'd rather be out of this forest before then.

"Right. Sure. Why not." He swatted away flies flitting about his helmet that tried to find their way in to get at the sweat upon his face. It was sweltering despite the fact it should be August. Why weren't there any leaves falling? Was it because the deer not shaking the trees hard enough? "What’s the matter?"

"Hm?"

"Thou art not thyself. Ever since the council, thou hast been just this sad sack. So you are becoming a Lord in Winter. What is the problem?" Whirlwind laughed at that, a joyless sound.

"Oh I don't know, maybe the fact I have to abandon my tribal affiliations, I have to feel cold all the time, I have to hibernate three seasons out of every four and every winter I have to battle the elemental force of ice and death. Otherwise everydeer I know starves and freezes to death. Yeah, I should be just perky about that." Whirlwind gave him a tired smile before continuing walking down a decline and pushing his way through several bushes. Handy didn't respond to that. No wonder Forestfire didn't want him to know...

"Surely it cannot be all that bad," Handy tried to reason. "I mean, sure thou needst to control the elements all winter, but that doesn't mean you can't visit thine home at that time, right?"

"Heh, I like you Handy. But I'm afraid even that is denied me. ‘Neither walls nor roof shall hide you; ne'er the earth shall shelter you. The heights of the sky shall not give thee respite. You must be as the wind and ne'er know stillness for as long as ye shalt wear thy crown.'"

"What is that?"

"Just a little thing I learned as a fawn at my mother's hooves," Whirlwind answered. "It means a Lord in Winter can never know peace except when he sleeps. As much as I would like to, I can never set hoof in a city during winter again. I will be needed across the forest." The simple deadpan tone to his voice seemed so strange coming from the stag. For once, Handy felt a twinge of sympathy for the deer but remained silent. There really wasn't much more he could say that would actually help. He thought about telling him about Forestfire, but realised if he knew that, at best he'd shrug it off, at worst it would always be on his mind for the rest of his days. And he could do nothing about it either way.

Handy didn't hate him enough to do that to him.

--=--

The second day's traveling was largely uneventful, having spent the previous night by a stream, and Handy had, rather generously, volunteered to go get firewood. So long as someone else went to the task of actually lighting the damn thing.

However, something was bothering him. Thorax was smiling.

Now generally speaking, a changeling smiling was always cause for concern to anyone with half a brain, a sense of self preservation and enough dignity to find the idea of having been fed on as being mildly offensive. He snuck glances at her as they went. She was always lagging behind, talking with Jacques. It did not take him too long to put two and two together. "What do you think you're doing?" he asked rather coldly as they stopped for moment. He had cornered her by a tree, using the excuse of requesting that she 'check the integrity of the enchantment on his torch', even producing the arcane device he had received from the witch. All the while, Jacques helped Whirlwind set up the camp cover to keep the light drizzle of the rain off. The downpour had been going on for an hour now, but it simply could not penetrate the canopy to reach the ground in force, leaving a gentle, scattered rainfall as the water worked its way through the canopy.

"What?" she asked, blinking up at him. He looked around the tree for a moment before looking back, hissing.

"Really? You're trying to feed off of Jacques?"

"Oh come off of it, I'm starving!" she protested, batting away the unlit torch. Handy's foot clamped down on it as it rolled across the ground.

"Can you not wait?" Handy said

"Heartless, I am a changeling," she said lowly, eyeing the direction of the camp. The voices of Jacques and the stag as the former tried cheering up the latter to no avail were plain to hear. "If I don't do something, I can't maintain my disguise indefinitely!"

"We're already so close to getting out of here. Are you seriously going to jeopardize that!?"

"I know what I am doing."

"Clearly not!" He looked about, levelling a finger at her when he turned back. "No feeding off of party members."

"Oh, that's a rule now? How convenient for those of us who already broke it." She deadpanned. Handy scowled at her as she batted his hand away. "You can starve yourself all you want. Me? I need a pick me up. Badly. And I figured Jacques would be easy. However..." She trailed off momentarily. "He's been oddly hard to lure."

"Yeah, that's probably because I warned him off of you." Her eyes went wide at that.

"You tol—"

"Don't be stupid. Jacques was asking about you and I didn't want to have you tempted by an easy feedbag and blow our fucking cover. I thought you'd be too professional to risk it but noooo, I guess that was too much to hope for!" She growled at him.

"So that's why it's been so difficult. Thanks." She began to stomp off.

"Wait."

"I don't think so." Thorax paused to look back at him. "If I don't get something from him, or Tartarus, Whirl, I'm going to lose this disguise and our cover will be blown anyway. Would you prefer that?" Handy was silent. "Hmph." Her eyes briefly flashed bright green, revealing her true chartreuse irises before feeding back to Crimson's blue. She said no more as she trotted off, calling out to the other two, offering to help with camp. Handy stooped to pick up the witch-torch, stuffing it back into his pack.

It wasn't that he cared about Jacques' wellbeing. All the same, he was antsy about things going wrong this close to getting out of this hell of a forest, and soooo much could go wrong if Jacques, or even Whirlwind, discovered her true nature. Perhaps he was merely being too paranoid for his own good. She was a changeling after all – this was her element and if she had survived this long, she must know what she was doing.

Still, it did not pay to be complacent. He had to be sure. Hopefully, the knowledge that he was keeping a watchful eye would force her to either stick it out until they were free of the forest or, at the very least, be much more discrete with feeding. A slight tremor of disgust shot through him as the thought struck him at his own hypocrisy, willingly standing by and allowing someone to fall victim to feeding by someone else. It wasn't the same thing, sure, but it was close enough. Kicking up too much of a fuss would raise suspicions, and if she was as bad off as she said, then preventing her from feeding would just reveal her anyway.

He gritted his teeth and turned his head to look up at the rain. 'Catch twenty two...' he thought to himself, looked back down, and went back to the camp. 'For your sake, I hope you know what you're doing...'

--=--

The rain had not let up and in more than a few places where the canopy gave way, so there was an occasional patch of the forest that appeared to have been encompassed in a torrential waterfall of rainwater in comparison to the light drizzle everywhere else. Whirlwind had been surprised that the three of them were sticking with him all the way there until Handy explained that it was the only place Forestfire knew of that could have untouched shards. Whirlwind pointed out the little tidbit about trespassers not supposed to be there being turned to ash. Handy mentioned that Bambi assured him that only applied to trespassing deer, and did so with exactly as much confidence about that as he felt. Whirlwind had tapped his chin and then beamed, convinced of the logic. Jacques and Thorax looked decidedly nervous about the prospect.

After, they pushed their way through a particularly difficult to traverse part of the forest, in between fissures in the ground that rose up to bisect a large, rocky outcropping in half. Passing through it, they emerged into a valley. It was startling at first. The entire area was surrounded on all sides by those titanic trees they had been used to. However, the valley itself was covered in much smaller birch trees, their branches pregnant and heavy with fiery red leaves. Leaving as the most immediate visible feature the sky above them, that seemed shockingly vast after so long trapped in the Greenwoods. The clouds were grey, the light of the sun blocked out leaving a grey and heavy atmosphere that dulled the otherwise vibrant appearance of the birch woodland in the valley below.

It was then Handy noticed the clouds were churning, roiling, moving far too quickly. They also didn't seem to be obeying the wind direction. He thought about asking Whirlwind about that, but he held his peace, figuring the deer must've had an influence over the weather if they managed this entire forest. It was a bad sign, he thought to himself, when you looked at the weather being unusual and found it entirely reasonable that you could blame someone for that. They wandered around, following Whirlwind, until they came across a broken path laid with ancient flagstones winding through the valley, guiding them through the rolling hills and meadows bursting with flower beds. Handy thought that they almost certainly had to be going in circles after they took far too many right turns and really should have doubled over on themselves, yet somehow they did not. Jacques noticed this too and enquired about it. Whirlwind merely smiled in response but didn't answer.

So when they came upon it, it was almost a shock.

The path rather suddenly came to an end after another right turn, ending in a wide, circular clearing dominated by huge dolman-standing stones. Each one was unique, made from a bright white stone that was at odds with the yellowish, constructed flagstones that were littered across the clearing and which had made up the path. Each one had very simple but sprawling designs chiselled into them, and each possessed a large circular hole that bore through the entire stone near their top. What really dominated the clearing was the large, lopsided archway that towered over them, easily fifteen feet in height. Two heavy, verdigris-covered metal doors were flanked on either side by black iron stylized lizard figures coiling around pillars that held up the arch. The entire structure was partially sunken into the ground on one side and covered with creeping ivy. It seemed woefully out of place somehow. It did not match the dolmans, nor did it match the ruined path.

Whirlwind stepped within the clearing and seemed to pause. Thorax, who was studying the huge doorway in awe, had followed him absentmindedly.

"Oh, that’s good!" Whirlwind suddenly beamed, ears perking. Thorax raised an eyebrow at him. Whirlwind pointed at the circle of dolmans. "You're not ash! So I guess Forestfire was right!" Thorax eyes bugged out and her head snapped back and forth. Her ears splayed against her head and her foreleg rose to her chest fearfully. Handy, being in no mood to approach the horrifically ominous doorway in the ominous clearing surrounded by ominous standing stones at the heart of an ominous valley in the centre of an ominous forest, had wisely stayed back. Jacques, it seemed, was of similar mind. Well, it was not as if he pushed the changeling ahead of him into the obvious magical death trap to see if it was, in fact, a deathtrap. But if the little unseelie fae wanted to go ahead of him into terribly dangerous scenarios... well, far be it for him to stop her.

It was as Handy was smiling at this little fortuitous turnabout that it happened. He and Jacques, being the last to cross the clearing's threshold, were a little taken aback when a rather worrying humming sound emanated from the dolmans. Eldritch blue light emerged from the standing stones, running up and down their lengths, illuminating the carvings in their surface. A ball of fire burst into existence within the holes of the stones, one after another, with a rush of air and the hiss of evaporating water as raindrops touched the tongues of flame. Handy, being not as keen on fire these days as he used to be, was understandably concerned.

"Art thou entirely sure we weren't supposed to be turned to ash?" Handy asked, trying to hold onto his nerve, clutching the hammer at his side reflexively. A very large, very persuasive part of him told him to turn and fucking leg it. And he was already turning before a hoof landed on his shoulder, pulling him around.

Whirlwind had reared up. "If you were going to be turned to ash, you would be already." His tone was meant to sound reassuring, but it is hard to find comfort in a smile when it was in the midst of a rainstorm and odd shadows were cast upon its owner's face by eldritch fire. "Relax!"

"...There is nothing remotely relaxing about this situation," Handy pointed out. As if to further cement his point, each ball of flame stretched and contorted, flowing and reaching out to one another in ghostly, sluggish movements. They floated upon the air, not at all bothered by the heavy rainfall, eventually leaving the entire clearing surrounded by a ring of fire. The flames travelled down the dolmans in lines and burned their way through the grass, following unknown, predetermined paths in concentric patterns around them, slowly drawing near each of them. "Whirl..." Panic was slowly rising in Handy’s voice. "Whirl what's going on!?" he shouted as the fire snaked its way towards him.

"I have to agree with our tall friend." Jacques backed up towards the centre of the group. "I, too, am not entirely comfortable with this." Whirlwind, meanwhile, stood where he was, utterly unconcerned.

"Oh come on, guys, you're overreacting!" he chirped.

"There is magical fire coming closer and closer to us!" Thorax shouted, turning this way and that, desperately looking for a means of escape. "There is no such thing as 'overreacting' to that!"

"Sure there is!" he objected. Thorax just let out a frustrated noise. Handy was meanwhile trying to work up the nerve to try to leap over the, frankly, small flames and just hope to God his armour and soaked cloak kept the fire from his flesh. Each time he took off at a run to make the attempt, something deep, intrinsic to him, pulled him back. It was an almost physical force, pulling at his skin to draw him away from the fire. The three of them continued to panic as the fire slowly encroached. Handy was almost certain he was going to lose it until...

The fire stopped. As soon as each snaking line of fire reached one of them, it broke off, going around them and surrounding them in their own personal rings of flame. The others had managed to settle down somewhat when it became obvious the fire wasn't going to enclose further on them. Handy? Handy was waging an internal war, the same animalistic terror he felt in the presence of fire almost forcing him to take flight and running for it. While the more sane part of him, also afraid of fire, clamped down on that mad impulse which was only going to end up having him flailing over the flames between him and sweet, blissful, non-fiery freedom. This, meanwhile, left him a heavily breathing wreck turning about at the fire surrounding him, utterly dead to the world.

"Handy?" Thorax had called out. No response. She turned to Jacques and then to the quietly humming Whirlwind.

"Mon ami." Jacques had picked up the alarmed look in the mare's eyes and turned to the stag. "What... What is going on?"

"No idea!" Whirlwind said cheerfully. Jacques just... looked at his friend for a long moment before reaching up and tilting the hat over his face and screaming into it.

"So what now?" Thorax said, desperation evident in her voice, "We—"

ZHOKUR SEV-REM, J'LUK COMREUN PENFER CRUME

The echoing noise was seismic and was less a voice and more the sound of an avalanche of rock and sand that mimicked something resembling speech. It seemed to come from everywhere at once, and Thorax felt the pseudo fur on her guise stand on end all over her body as the force behind the foreign words chilled her to her core. Jacques' head snapped back and forth, looking for a foe as he drew his sword in a blur of metal, the blade clasped to his hoof. Handy was knocked out of his mad reverie by the force of the noise. There was nothing familiar about those words. They were unlike the deer tongue, which was alive and full of energy, jumping from one word to the next. This was heavy, ponderous, each utterance a great weight full of consequence.

So Whirlwind casually looking around, then gesturing to himself and saying, "Wait... Oh! Oh you were referring to me? Oh right! Hah! Sorry," was slightly concerning.

"You can understand it!?" Jacques shouted.

"Oh yeah, he's just speaking the language of stone!"

"What in Tartarus is the language of stone!?" Thorax asked, desperately turning about to try to locate a definitive source of the voice and failing.

"Its the language stones speak!" Whirlwind chirped happily. "Took two years of it as a scribe, quite dull, much like rocks, isn't that right Mr.Rumbles?" he shouted in the general direction of the door.

There was a shaking of the earth and Handy, to his mortal terror, almost fell over. He gave out a shout of alarm. "Whirlwind!" he hissed. "Stop fucking with the horrible voice of doom!"

FERINTH YRUIL COMERTI J'LUK FERENGUR

"What in Tartarus is it saying?" Jacques asked.

"Oh, it’s saying we can't enter unless we prove ourselves worthy," Whirlwind replied.

DERINTH THUR

"Or it'll burn us to ashes," the stag continued. Handy was very much in favour becoming all sorts of worthy right at that moment.

"Right. Fine! Whatever!" 'Fucking magic, fucking fire, fucking deer, fucking forest, fucking God-damn fantasy land of bullshit!' "We'll go on its stupid quest or, or, gather the magic beans or whatever the fuck a voice in a druidic clearing wants! Fine!" Thorax eyed him curiously, not having seen the human out of sorts so vividly, taking note of his preoccupation with the fire surrounding him and trying to keep the banner he still had draped over him out of the flames reach.

GHRENTH YM FHIJUL

"What is it saying!?" Jacques asked.

"Oh, it wants us to solve its riddle! Isn't that cool!?" There was a long silence, the only sound the now low hum from the standing stones, the crackle of fire and the sound of pouring rain.

"Are you serious?" Handy asked, breathing heavily. "That’s all? Really?" Whirlwind nodded vigorously. And they were left in silence for a few moments longer. Thorax spat some of her mane from her face. The rain had made it sopping wet and it was getting in the way of important things. Like seeing or occasionally breathing.

"Well!?" she yelled.

"Well what?" the stag asked, cocking his head to the side. Jacques rolled his eyes.

"Well what's the riddle?" Handy could only voice an affirmation to that.

"Oh, I don't know, uhm..." Whirlwind turned in the direction of the huge doorway standing on its lonesome. He then began shouting something in the deer tongue. The voice, for lack of a better descriptor, responded with a long, monotonous droning grind of more nonsense noises in the guise of words whose meaning was lost to the rest of them. His mind slowly wandered from the ridiculousness of the task at hand to the reality of the fiery circle of death surrounding him.

'You know,' he thought, 'standing stones, ancient carvings, shenanigans, an ancient rumbling ominous voice of doom that can shake the earth... If we die here, does this count as a sacrificial circle? Is my soul going to be consigned to some dark spirit's stomach for eternity or some such nonsense? Bambi mentioned a great spirit or something. Is that a thing? Is that a thing which can happen?' He pondered, a little too light-heartedly considering their circumstances. But hey, when your only other things to focus on was a giant ancient doorway of a bygone civilization playing Golum sez with a magical talking stag or the imminence of your own death by immolation, your thoughts would go weird places too.

"Well that’s just weird..." Handy snapped back to attention.

"What is?" he asked.

"The riddle erm... I am not sure how to answer—"

"SHHhhhhHHHHhhhhh!" Jacques shushed, holding his hoof to his lips in a silencing gesture. "Don't admit you don't kn—" Jacques scrunched up his muzzle in silence and glanced fearfully at the huge portal. "Ce que je veux dire est, if we get this wrong, in any way, we may be deemed uh, how you say, unworthy?" That was met with a cold response, no one really willing to risk getting it wrong.

"So, what’s the riddle?" Handy asked quietly. Whirlwind churned it over in his head, as if trying to think up the words in Eques— English. They speak English. Bad narration.

"What always goes up, never comes down, is taller than trees and as old as the ground?" Whirlwind asked.

"What?" Thorax’s confusion was evident.

"I am not sure..." Jacques said, sitting on his haunches, his tail swishing and coming dangerously close to hitting the ring of flames.

"The hell kind of question is that?" Handy asked. "Nothing goes up and doesn't come down." Which he knew wasn't true. Fundamentally, if you broke orbit and spiralled off into space, 'technically' you'd never come down. But then you'd never go up either since direction is near meaningless in space. Still, he got the distinct impression that whatever it was going to accept as an answer wasn't going to be something beyond the planet. It was taller than trees too, but why would that be relevant if it always went up yet never came down?

"A cloud?" Thorax offered. "They're always up and never come down. Clouds have been around forever."

"Non..." Jacques said, brow furrowed in thought. "Pegasi bring clouds down all the time, usually to fix defective ones before they hurt somepony. Besides, they are made from water brought up from the ground and then return to the ground as rain." He waved a hoof around to indicate the downpour around them "Like this." Thorax looked a bit put off, probably embarrassed. As a creature who presumably only felt relaxed in some hidey hole in the middle of the Badlands where she was likely raised, that wouldn't have been common knowledge to her.

"A glacier?" Handy offered. "They're ancient.” He eyed the fire around him carefully. "Taller than trees... sometimes."

"Glaciers melt, Handy... sir," Thorax said, adding the honorific as an afterthought. Handy scowled at her from behind his helmet.

"The sun?" Jacques asked, looking up, blinking into the rain above.

"The sun tends to rise and go down beyond the horizon," Handy said, grimacing. That little fact that the sun apparently went around the world and not the other way around was... still something that just annoyed him more than anything. He just couldn't understand it, but he had gotten a rude awakening to the fact in Canterlot months ago. Given that the fires didn't seem to be dissipating, they could guess Jacques' answer was as wrong as the rest of theirs. "Let’s hope the 'king of the mountain' over here has an answer," he said, exasperated, gesturing to the stag.

"... Mountain..." Whirlwind muttered before his eyes went wide and he stamped a hoof into the ground "Aha! A mountain the answer is a mountain!" he said, gesturing triumphantly at the door.

"What?" Thorax asked.

"Think about it, a mountain is taller than trees."

"But trees grow on mountains," Jacques objected.

"But they're still taller! And they are as old as the ground because they are the ground! They're a part of the earth!"

"Hold on," Handy said. "Mountains fall apart, they go down. Avalanches, caves within it falling in, the wind bites away at it bit by bit over time..."

"Yes but it’s not in their nature to go down!" Whirlwind said excitedly. "Just as it’s not in the ground’s nature to go up!"

"A glacier moves and comes to an end, the sun moves and goes along its cycle, clouds form and reform all the time. But a mountain? That always goes up, it has to, otherwise it just becomes the ground, which it always was to begin with. The trick to the answer was hidden in the riddle. A mountain is just the ground elevated!" Handy wasn't entirely convinced, but it was a more solid guess than the other three.

"And if you're wrong?" Thorax asked. "You uh... kinda shouted it as if it was the answer."

"Well if I'm wrong..." Whirlwind said, pointing at the changeling before pausing, his happy expression falling, "Oh... oh dear." The lot of them were quiet after that, turning expectantly towards the door. There was no sound to be heard, no rumbling of the earth, no terrible voice to condemn them. The fire stayed where it was, bright and crackling and dancing. Someone inhaled as if to say something, but at that very moment the verdigris-covered doors opened. It was a strained, laboured opening, the sound of a long suffering hinges holding up a great weight as the doors swung away from the group.

Despite the doorway standing on its own, unsupported by any structure bar the remnants of some brick wall clinging to parts of the archway, the doors revealed an interior room. It was dark and was hard to see from this distance. Without an additional sound, the flames sputtered and died, and Handy found himself letting go of a breath he had not known he was holding. Looking around, the fires receded into the dolmans as they died and the great standing stones were stilled, their humming ceased. As he turned to face the door once again, he noticed the changeling eyeing him curiously out of the corner of the slit of his helmet.

"What?" he asked, somewhat too quickly. The changeling did not flinch and held her gaze, her tail flicking.

"Nothing," she said before, like the other two, getting up and walking to the doorway.

"I was right..." Whirlwind’s voice was disbelieving. "Hahaha! I was right!"

"I've never been happier to hear one of your silly leaps of logic, mon ami." Jacques’ characteristic lazy smile once more was upon his face as he curiously walked to the far side of the archway, ignoring the open portal. Once around the bend, the archway's interior was filled up with a solid brick wall, with no sign of the open doors. Jacques paused as he tried to process that but let out a yelp of surprise as an exuberant Whirlwind bounded over to him and wrapped him into a one-armed hug.

"Yes! Happy! I am so glad you guys could be here when I did this! I would've been here for hours otherwise!"

"I am sure you would've –hrmph– got it eventually." Jacques tried to get out of the stag's surprisingly strong grip. Handy and Thorax left them to their foolishness, both of them approaching the open doorway before them as the downpour continued to beat down on them. The room beyond was dark.

"Thorax?" The mare looked up. "Can you light something for me?" he asked, fumbling in his pack for the witch-torch and holding it for her. She raised an eyebrow at it before her horn lit up. Handy flinched as a tiny burst of flame erupted from it in a matchstick spell, catching the torch alight. She blinked in surprise at seeing the small quartz stone at the torch's tip light on fire. The flame was a darker deeper blue than the fire of the standing stone circle around them. "Thanks." He held the torch above him, the rain hissing as it beat down on it but failing to put it out. The light revealed a stone room. The blocks that made up the floor and walls were ancient and unadorned, worn with time. Damp moss clung to places, and water seemed to drip from the rounded ceiling to a puddle of standing water in one corner. It went deeper than the light of his torch could reach from the threshold, however. He sighed. "Another magical portal."

"Well..." Thorax began. "If you want to get technical, this isn't a portal." She looked as though she was thinking heavily. "Been a while since my training. I'm no mage, but this is more like a magical translocation." Handy raised an eyebrow.

"What’s the difference?"

"A portal is like a door made of magic." Thorax pointed out, making a circular motion with a hoof. "Translocation is like magic made like a door."

"...In Equestrian, if you could be so kind."

"Okay, you know..." She glanced around. The other two were busy either trying to wrestle or dance – she didn't have time to double check, "...When I brought you, ahem, home."

"Kind of hard to forget."

"That's a portal. It’s a door that opened in one place and allows one to step through to another. This," She gestured at the archway in front of them, "is not so much that as much as it is bring that other place here to let us step through to it. Which is why we can see into it from this side." Handy blinked. If he understood that correctly and if he knew his science, which he didn’t, that sounded like bending time and space.

"So what... It’s like someone imagined reality as one large sheet of paper and bent it so that two points come together so as to make a doorway?"

"What? No that’s stupid. That’s not how it works at all."

"Forgive me if my magic is a little rusty. I have all of zero understanding of it. I was just going off based on your description."

"Okay, maybe my description wasn't the best, but I'm paraphrasing," she said as the two continued looking into the room. "Maybe your real Crimson can explain it better."

"She probably could," Handy said, then looked up and around at the archway. "Still a portal."

"What?"

"The doorway. It’s still a portal."

"I just told you it isn't." Handy reached across the threshold with an armoured gauntlet, quite surprise to see no magical effect on the metal. Seemed Thorax wasn't entirely wrong. If it had of been like that hex portal she'd used to transport them to Lepidopolis, he was sure it would have repelled him or some nonsense like that. Handy didn't want to find out what happened if he walked head-first into a portal while wearing magically resistant armour. He knew the vortex shard somehow affected his armour without problem the first time around, but he couldn't bet that it would always be the case.

"And I am not disputing that. I am just pointing out that this is a door, by definition, is a portal."

"Yes, but grammar and definitions aside," she said, rolling her eyes, "it isn't a portal portal."

"Are you two seriously arguing over doors?" Both of them turned to see Whirlwind looking at them with a bemused expression. They looked at each other.

"Well uh, I guess?" Handy said.

"Huh.... can I join!?" Whirlwind beamed. The two of them blinked.

"I think..." Jacques strolled past the three of them. "We have lingered a touch too long in the rain, qui?" He stopped just at the threshold and looked back at the three of them, his hat utterly soaked with water gathering at the tip and spilling from it to the ground. He crossed the threshold. "Now come, before we catch our death of the cold."

"Right you are!" Whirlwind cheered as he leapt, leapt Handy's height, bounding over the suddenly alarmed mare and into the stone room. With one last shared looked between two masks, one metal and the other a stolen face, the two followed the stallion and stag. As all four of them entered, the metal doors creaked as they began their slow journey to swing shut once more. The doors shut with a resounding 'thoom' that knocked rock dust from the ceiling. Slowly, light filtered in from rectangular slits in the walls at the point near where the rounded ceiling met the walls. Warm fires came to life of their own accord, and Handy was quite glad they did so on the far side of stone walls from him. The rain, which had seemed so loud before, could no longer be heard, the only noise the sound of fire and the echoing drops of water falling from ceiling to the ground.

The light revealed four corridors at the far side of the room, each one curving off to obscure the possible destinations of each corridor. "Huh," Whirlwind said, "River never said anything about four ways to go. Convenient that there is four of us, huh?"

"Qui. But how do we know which one is the correct one?"

"Maybe we should split up!" Whirlwind suggested.

"What?" Handy swivelled around to stare at him.

"And then return the way we came." Thorax rested her chin on a fetlock. "If we find the correct way through, or we come to a dead end, we can return here and wait on the others."

"Wait a minute—"

"En fait, otherwise we'd be here arguing over which way to go."

"HOLD ON!" Handy shouted. The three looked at him. "Art thee three dense? How many of thee have been in ancient, presumably underground ruins before?" he asked pointedly. 'Crimson' put her hoof up. "Thou dost not count, Crimson." She put her hoof down and rolled her eyes. "Speaking as someone who has, despite his better judgement, gone into underground dungeons more often than he cares to recall, I can safely say the idea of 'splitting up' is a profoundly stupid move." He recalled being chased through the abandoned streets of an underground city by a particularly bony dragon and recalling how wonderful it would have been to have been in a group that he could have ditched and let them deal with the problem. I mean, sure that sounded bad but come on, it was an undead, fire breathing dragon.

"Why?" Jacques asked.

"Doth thee ponies possess the phrase ‘divide and conquer?’" Handy asked. At the blank looks, he either got the impression they did not or that these ones at least had not heard of it. "An ancient ruin. Full of magic. Guarded by an ancient doorway we had to answer a riddle to in order to get pass. There are bound to be horrible traps lying in wait for us and I, for one, am of the opinion we are safer staying together and simply choosing which way we should go."

"But how will we know?" Whirlwind asked. Handy waved his torch.

"This little thing, got it from the same witch that gave me the... vortex shard was it?" Whirlwind frowned. "It shows you the direction you ought to head towards that which thee desire. Such as a way out. We can use this to find uh..." He looked at Whirlwind. "Well thou can find where we need to go."

"Can it help us find a specific thing?" Jacques asked. "Like another shard?"

"Hopefully. I have not tried it for hunting for a specific object yet."

"Well!" Whirlwind spoke up. "That saves a lot of time! Let’s go then!"

"Right, now stay together," Handy said, taking a few steps forward.

There was the metallic noise of metal on metal as a block Handy's weighted boot fell upon sank beneath him. The ominous sound of ancient gears turning resounded from the floor beneath them. He turned slowly to look at the group. In an instant, a line of blocks in the floor, leading from the verdigris doors to the center between the four corridors at the far end of the room, shot up. A wall bisecting the room rose between them, separating Handy and Whirlwind on one side and Thorax and Jacques on another. Shaped walls slid out of the floor, blocking off both corridors on the pony side of the wall while only one was cordoned off on the human's side.

"What the—!?" Thorax was cut off by her own squeal of surprise as the floor fell from under her, the ground slanting away into the ground to reveal only blackness as both she and a cursing Jacques fell into the unknown before the floor rose back into its proper place as their shouts disappeared into the distance.

Whirlwind stared wide-eyed at the new wall that had appeared not more than a few inches from his antlers before slowly turning and looking at Handy. Both of them were frozen in place from sheer shock. The sounds of stone settling into place and the sound of the gears turning ceased, and both of them were untouched. No ground falling away beneath them, no roof falling on their heads, just the deafening silence in the wake of the fact that one false step had completely undone everything Handy had tried to achieve in preventing idiocy splitting them up.

"Well..." Handy chewed the inside of his cheek in thought before finally coming to utter the only words that could properly express his frustration, alarm, and overall exasperation at the situation.

"Bollocks."

Author's Note

Because I know this is going to confuse some people, Handy referred to Whirlwind as 'the King of the mountain', (not to be confused with the legend of the king 'in' the mountain), because that is what the stag is usually referred to in Irish tradition, at least in some parts of the island. Handy was using it derisively in Whirlwind's case.

Chapter 33 - A Vision in White

Getting through the wall was a futile endeavour. They had tried, but neither Whirlwind's deer magic nor Handy trying to find a loose block to knock in with his hammer worked. The wall was unyielding, they would have to find another way to reach their friends. The human gave the witch-torch to the deer to hold, who levitated it in a magical grip as Handy stayed severals steps behind him. The human was sullen, but tried not to let it show, his carelessness had resulted in endangering the others and he cursed himself for a fool. He followed the stag and the flickering blue flame as it led them through the ancient twisted corridors of the ruin. His failure stirred less pleasant thoughts as he chided himself, threatening to disturb and resurface some concerns he had been suppressing with renewed, unreasoning fervour ever since the changeling had found him. Neither spoke, even though Whirlwind had tried to strike up conversation so that the atmosphere would feel less oppressive; between the human's foulness and the stag's unease about what awaited him at the end of this particular journey, neither's heart was in the attempt.

As they walked he noticed odd crystalline protrusions breaking through the stone walls in places, glowing faintly with light, breaking up the horrible monotony of their journey and he was reminded of what he, personally was here for. "Whirlwind."

"Yeah?"

"These vortex shards, how will I know one when I find it?"

"Heh, it'll look like the one I broke, the one you had. Small, clear, little golden cylinder at its center. Can't miss it."

"Hm," Handy mouthed, keeping his eyes open. He discarded the soaking wet banner he had draped about him and left it behind. Whirlwind, apart from his saddle bags which presumably contained the crown as well as other supplies, wore a green scarf around his neck, similar to the ragged remnants of a cloak he wore about his partial chainmail when Handy first met him.

"Hey Handy?"

"Yes?" Handy said, turning his attention back to Whirlwind after stopping to investigate a hole in the wall that he had hoped led to some room behind it, only to be disappointed with being rewarded with the bony remnants of some rodent that had made its home there.

"Can I ask you something?" Whirlwind asked, stopping to look back.

"...Of course."

"You uh... You remember when I said we could trade stories sometime after the tournament?" he asked. Handy was confused at the question and his brow furrowed.

"I vaguely remember that."

"Do you mind if we do a bit of that? I mean after we find the others, of course." He had a strange expression on his face, it was a nervous half smile with a odd look in his eyes. Nothing that'd put Handy on edge but it was... still strange, as if he was afraid of something.

"...I suppose we can," Handy replied, trying to decipher the intent behind the stag's words. "Why?"

"Just... I'd just like to hear some new stories is all. Before you leave," he said, chuckling. It sounded forced. "You can never have too many stories."

Handy was unsure of how to respond to that, this wasn't like the deer at all and in spite of himself he was actually somewhat concerned. "Whirlwind... are you all right?"

"Actually, I'm half left!" he said, with that characteristic grin on his face as he voiced the terrible joke. It rang hollow in light of how he had been acting immediately before. As if sensing that it hadn't went down well in the short, awkward silence that followed, he suddenly turned forward. "Now uh, lets go, we should be getting close."

He followed the direction of the torch's flame as it led them to the first fork in their path of many. The stag paused briefly looking down the left path before following the right as the torch indicated. Handy followed after a moment's hesitation, the deer's clearly nervous behaviour sitting ill at ease with him. It was just such a stark contrast to how he was at all other times. In the midst of fighting a dragon in a burning stadium; in battle with an absurdly powerful sorcerer; lost in the woods whose supernatural elements had so thoroughly robbed Handy of his own good senses; he had always been so joyful, so full of life, so irritatingly self assured and enthusiastic.

And here he was, barely able to hide his own trepidation and fear, turning to the human of all people for potential succour because he was the only one at hand. Or hoof in his case. It was disconcerting and Handy found his previous misgivings about the deer suddenly muted as he considered the gravity of the stag's situation.

"Does... I mean, is there no other way?" Handy asked. The stag inclined his ears but didn't turn around as he kept walking.

"Do you have to wear the crown? Can't the tribes work together to control the weather in the forest like the ponies do?" he continued, dropping his formal tone and mannerisms. The deer was quiet for a moment before letting out a breath followed by a light chuckle.

"No, not without the Hartsight we can't." he said "And the magic the ponies use doesn't work as well as you'd think it would. Otherwise the ponies would have conquered these forests long before my people showed up."

"But do you have to go through with it? Why do you have to throw your life away?"

"You make it sound like I am walking to my death." Whirlwind smiled, turning his head to look back at the human.

"You're certainly acting like you are," Handy replied. Whirlwind turned back around.

"It’s the way it is, Handy." he said. "If it’s the choice between my freedom and my peoples' survival, I can't really choose otherwise, can I? Wouldn't you do the same?"

Handy didn't answer that question as they continued walking in silence.

--=--

The wind whipped at her black cloak, threatening to tear the hood back off her head and expose her mane to the elements. It was a little thing, too small for her that she had taken from a clothesline of some griffon family in a village they had passed through. She did not care, as she stood on the rocky outcropping overlooking patchy woodland leading downhill and into the busy valley where farmsteads and hamlets lay nestled against the city of Skymount, like a crowd of chicks around a mother hen. The placid vision the valley exuded was marred by the occasional screech of trains leaving and entering the city along the train tracks running alongside the main cobblestone road, itself following the path of the Opal Tear river.

She sat there for a while on the rocky outcropping, simply thinking, wondering. Her gaze drifting up along the mountainside, up from Skymount to the castle above it, hanging like a limpet to the side of the rocky edifice. She closed her eyes for a moment and summoned forth her senses. Yes, there they were, she saw the two of them. Both of them were scurrying about the city in short, quick jumps. Hiding, watching, searching. She trusted the changelings about as far as she could throw them of course, even if they had supposedly swore to her. Although granted in her case, that was a pretty bad example. However if they were going to betray her, they would've tried something in the night, and fallen for her trap wards while she slept. They had not, which meant they were probably sincere.

Or merely cleverly biding their time.

She rubbed her forehead and let out a small breath, the only concession she'd give to her fatigue. Her stomach let out a strained noise to protest her hunger but she ignored it. She had to remain vigilant. From what she had learned about the tournament, the Mistress was seeking her out, which meant there had to be ponies in skymount looking for her, especially if Master had escaped her grasp with her doppelgänger in toe. She couldn't afford to be seen there, not when she had an advantage allowing her to remain beyond the mistress' reach.

But she needed her books. Her little light show with the changelings had taken its toll. It was not much but she knew it had cost her... something she could no longer recall. She felt it was important, but it was faint. She had to regain those spells, she had to have them to hoof in case she ever needed to use the old magic again, to commit them to memory before their use drives them from her mind.

And took a bit of herself along with it.

"My lady?" She turned to regard the voice, her horn lighting up as it poked just out from under her hood. There stood a griffon, smaller than most, but a bird all the same. She had been surprised to learn the changelings were able to mimic the birds so accurately, but pleased nonetheless. She felt the other one close the distance between the city and their location. Flying low amid the pine trees to throw off any pursuers who could be tailing him. Soon the other ling stood before her, in the guise of the more uncommon griffling variant of halfbreed, carrying a satchel around one foreleg.

"Any complications?" she asked icily. Glimmer shook her head, green fire washing over her form to reveal the changeling's true form. She took to keeping her eyes covered even now. Her compatriot, Façade transformed and allowed his purple irises to show.

"There was one griffon eyeing the alchemists suspiciously during the day, he looked like a guard. Other than him we saw nopony acting odd," Glimmer said. Façade coughed and she rolled her eyes before looking at him. "The alchemists themselves don't count."

"They wanted to experiment on me!"

"They offered you a drink."

"It was glowing! And smelled like gunpowder!"

"Well next time, pick a less conspicuous disguise. Can't blame alchemists for wanting to see what would happen."

"I picked a griffling specifically because noling would blink twice if they saw I was acting odd. I am not used to griffons, it was the best I could come up with!"

"I didn't have any trouble..." Glimmer preened, rubbing a hoof against her chest and then inspecting it with a small smile.

Façade snorted. "You were drawing everylings attention in the marketplace."

"Like I said, no trouble..." she said, now grinning. Façade was about to retort.

"Enough. Did you get my things?" Crimson said wearily. The two changelings nodded and Façade handed over the satchel. She had very few actual possessions, nothing much she really wanted to salvage from her little ‘hole in the wall’ office at the guildhall, but the books were critical. She took out her old, weather beaten tome. It was small in comparison to the great works she had seen her mistress peruse from time to time, but it was hers. She briefly flicked through it, giving a noise of approval when she came across a spell she did not recognise. The small calligraphy with intricate, weaving strokes inside the black, curving lines unfamiliar. She gazed at it long and hard, committing it to memory once more where it fit snugly, warmly, like an old coat fitting about one's withers after being apart from them for far too long.

She grimaced and put the book away, trying not to think about how others' memories of her would be affected by that little stunt that had cost her the magic in the first place, not to mention the magic she used to place those tracing spells on her new lackeys. She replaced the tome in the satchel and inspected the other book; a fresher, much newer booklet, considerably thinner than her own. The one master had found in the dead prince's room. Its existence alone raised so many questions, none of which she could really answer without consulting the mistress again.

And to Tartarus with that.

She considered her options. She could contact the mistress, or one of the eight, but that would undo the warding spell she placed over herself so that they could not simply contact her and locate her by those means. That option was certainly out, although it meant she could not locate them in turn and find master that way. She could just wait outside Skymount for his return, but then she would be willingly leaving him in bondage to that damned queen. She definitely wasn't going to do that to the stallion who released her from slavery to the mistress and then put himself into service just to ensure her safety. That meant her only option to find master was to consult this queen herself. An idea formed in her mind and a smile threatened to tug at the edge of her lips.

"Glimmer," she said simply, the changeling looked up from the conversation she was having with Façade. "The deal ma-the human made with your queen. It involved her being unable to harm me, correct?"

The changeling, confused, nodded slowly as she continued, "That includes not being able to order her underlings to attack me too, correct?"

"I uh... I honestly don't know, my lady." she said, the odd buzzing echo accentuating her words. "I don't know the particulars of the geas too well."

"Yes, I suppose that was too much to hope for. But say it did," she said, raising an imperious eyebrow at the other mare. "Would I not be able to walk right up to her, bold as brass and not suffer anything for my insolence?"

"Well, logically, as long as the geas holds up, that would be true." Façade chipped in. Only then did Crimson let herself smile. The wind continued whipping at her cloak, the chill biting as the scent of pine filled the air even this late at night and the moon shined down upon them, leaving the mare in shadow as she turned her back on it to regard the changelings fully so that they couldn't wholly make out her expression as she doused the light of her horn. It was risky, but if she could pull it off, and could remain undetected on the way there...

"Then I believe it’s time I paid her majesty a visit." she said calmly, both changelings looked at her with expressions of alarm. "Take me to her."

""B-but my lady, we-we, uh, that is..." Glimmer's eye covers slid back into her head and she turned to Façade with a pleading expression. He cleared his throat.

"We can't just, just take you there,"

"And why not?" Crimson asked, turning to regard Façade, who swallowed.

"B-because its so far! And there's no uh, guarantee, that is-"

"We can't just lead ponies to our colony!" Glimmer exclaimed. There was silence for a time, broken only by the sound of rushing wind before Crimson calmly closed the distance between her and the changeling mare. Glimmer backed up a step, clearly nervous.

"Did I stutter?" Crimson asked calmly.

"Wh-what?" Glimmer said. Crimson was now face to face with her, her eyes boring a hole in her head.

"Did. I. Stutter?" Crimson asked, punctuating each word with another step forward until the nose of her muzzle was almost pressed against hers. The mare struggled with words as she looked into the deep blue eyes of Crimson and found nothing yielding within, her emotions were as cold as a block of ice. She chose to merely close her mouth and slide the covers over her eyes once more.

"That's what I thought." she said, turning dismissively. She lent an air of finality to her next words. "Take me to her. She and I have some things to discuss."

--=--

He first saw it as they were walking through the library.

The long winding ruined corridors eventually lead them to a rather cavernous room completely subsumed in darkness. Row upon row of rotten wooden bookshelves towered above them in concentric circles radiating out from some central point. The shelves towered into the darkness above where the light of the torch could not reach, but Handy saw enough to know that they were almost all empty. Nothing remained but cobwebs, mounds of dust and partially survived leather bindings with their pages long since wasted away. Several times they had to detour around and backtrack because some of the shelves had collapsed, leaving a small mountain of rotten wood blocking their path.

They had first heard it then, the half noises. The odd sounds of footsteps running, coming closer until they were almost upon them and then fading as they passed them, with no owner to claim them, nor dust disturbed by their passing. The voices of hushed whispers and half remembered conversations, the turning of dry pages and the hum of a woman lulling a child to sleep. The two of them hardly dared to breathe, knowing they were too far into the dark room to turn back now and not wanting to draw the attention of whatever was causing the ghastly sounds.

Handy had drawn his hammer, its familiar weight more for comfort than any genuine belief he could fight off the sounds of ghosts with a lump of steel. His grip tightened as they continued along. The noises did not increase, but neither did they go away. There was neither rhyme nor reason to them, they came and went as they pleased, for this was their home to haunt, and the human and stag were merely disturbed guests. For Handy at least, the voices stopped when he spied something out of the corner of his helmet slit. He turned. There, not more than twenty feet from them in the darkness, stood a deer. A stag. It was stark white and bright, as if radiating light, but the darkness around it did not retreat, nor did it illuminate its surroundings. It merely stood there, placid, looking at them. It seemed… off, different somehow. Handy called out to Whirlwind who turned around, when Handy looked back the white stag had disappeared. He blinked.

"I don't see anything there, Handy," Whirlwind said, narrowing his eyes as his antlers glowed.

"...You sure?" Handy asked, Whirlwind shook his head, "Look again."

"I don't-"

"Use that bloody Hartsight thing of yours!"

"I am." The stag looked up at the human, concern showing on his face. "Look, the whispering is getting to me too, its alright. Just... don't be too worried about it. Lets just get through here." Handy looked back at the spot of blackness where he had spotted the apparition.

"The whispers are getting to thee?" he asked calmly, not looking at the stag as he nodded.

"Yeah, its creepy!" he laughed nervously, "Kinda makes me want to get out of here as soon as I can, so uh, can we keep moving? Please?"

"...Yeah. Yeah lets keep moving," he agreed, not telling the stag that he was no longer hearing the ghostly noises himself.

Which only unnerved him further.

--=--

They walked in darkness for a while longer before the long corridor started brightening up, revealing a less decayed interior. The half walls possessed small columns that reached up to the arched ceiling, revealing bricked walls beyond them on either side. Slivers of daylight snaked in through the space between, though there was not enough space to allow them to see the sky above. How long had they been down here? Had they reached the surface? Handy was certain they were traveling downwards, the flame had to be leading them to Thorax and Jacques after all. The soft light was not to last, suddenly changing to a harsh glare unexpectedly as it led around a corner and both of them had to shield their eyes. He heard a burst of static and a small vibration at his side coming from his pouch as he blinked away his daze and truly took in the sight around him while the brick played a song of its own accord.

The corridor slowly changed to become a long colonnade, small snaking vines clung to the ceiling in a criss-crossing network of life, their harsher emerald colour complimenting the gentler teal-green of the exposed bronze of the arched ceiling. The walls giving way entirely to make one long colonnade. The elegantly shaped, stark grey pillars were stylised to resemble towering rose bushes. The rock from which they were hewn possessed a metallic sheen to it at odds with its rough texture. Large white blue bell shaped flowers hung from the creeping plant-life around them, hot breath frosting upon the air as it was exhaled. The piercing sunlight was what first greeted his eyes after they had adjusted from being blinded as the pair exited from the darkness of the corridor.

The colonnade was on a bridge it seemed, traversing a great height across what appeared to be a canyon, or perhaps a crater. It was a long and oddly shaped natural formation. The bridge itself was partially collapsed, the far side utterly overrun with plant-life, with black doors at their end which were partially covered in moss. Water fell from a source in the canyon wall above it and flowed through a hole in the colonnades’ roof, directed by the bridge's shape and flowing over its ruined edges into a waterfall. The water moved slowly, not making a sound. The air had chilled and it was snowing, gentle flakes of stark white frollicking in the still air as they danced their way to the beds of snow below. The curious sight of out of season snow drew their eyes from the towering trees that lined the cliff tops of the stark walls of the canyon, like guards protecting a treasure, to stranger sights below them and to the path that lead down stairways from the bridge's side to the canyon below. It twisted back upon itself as the stairs clung to the bridge's side all the way down to the ground and the ruined buildings that lay beneath.

Most of the buildings were destroyed, although by age or by will it was impossible to tell. The walls were so stark white it was difficult to tell the construction apart from the building snowdrifts that partially covered them. Their roofs had collapsed long ago and the few interiors he saw through ruined windows were equally covered in snow, hiding what forgotten memories that may have remained beneath their icy embrace. The yellow flagstones they walked upon reminded him immediately of the broken path that lead them to the verdigris gate, the snow did not land upon it, instead, seemingly the flakes drifted away at the last moment, rather than land upon the path, leaving a river of gold to guide them through a blank canvas of virgin snow. Whirlwind was about to question Handy about the source of the music coming from him as they walked, until something much more worrying caught his attention.

They were hard to look at. The eye would not be drawn to them, not for long, before a sense of shame and loss forced one to look away. They were less than shadows, incorporeal things without true form or substance that flitted about, dancing to and fro amidst the falling snow between the collapsed and ruined buildings that at first glance, seemed little more than jagged rocks conveniently laid out in nice patterns; which was weighleighed by the road leading through them. Handy and Whirlwind advanced cautiously, wary of the strange things that did not seem to notice their presence at all. The air felt strangely heavy and melancholic. A knot began forming in his stomach, not from fear but from a sense of loss that he could not understand. Their own movements felt slow and ponderous, like moving underwater.

They followed the flame. The beings seemed to be moving in brief fluid motions before fading from existence, the eye could only catch where they had once been so they had been forced to look on, following their afterimages and piecing together their actions from what they saw. There, beneath a great weeping willow whose leaves were red yet covered in white from being heavy with snow, a shadow appeared that had bent down and reached out with two limbs to embrace a smaller one that rushed towards it. Both then vanished, the snow beneath their feet yet undisturbed. By a small pillar with a hole in the ground beside it leading into darkness below and surrounded by a ring of broken masonry ancient beyond reckoning, another shadow sat, as if a wall had been there. A limb extended from the shadow, translucent to the point where one could see the ground behind it, darkly, like looking through a window dirtied by age and smog, warped to the point where colour was distorted and darkened beyond their natural hues. It moved back and forth in the air towards the center of the ring of broken rock, as if playing in the water of what had once, apparently, been a fountain.

Another three crouched beneath the broken awning of oxidized bronze beside a solid wall. They seemed to be gesturing at the ground and moving their limbs in energetic bursts, as if playing some ancient game. On and on the shadows went, in absolute silence, in movements too slow to have any place outside of a dream and the sense of sadness grew overpowering. The ghosts of the past never once crossed the path they tread as the slowly dwindling magical flame led them through the maze that was the dead city of snow and shadows.

"What... what were they?" Handy asked as they came to an intersection, one of many the torch had led them past as the flame changed its direction. He looked around, not exactly certain of his own feelings as he saw more and more of the shadows fade from existence. Their true shapes eluded him; he could not bear to look too long, could not dare to perceive. It was rude, unconscionable, a trespass more sorrowful than any wake he had ever been to. "What happened to them?"

"I don't know..." Whirlwind said, choosing to study one of the long, white bell plants that drooped down to face the ground from where it grew on a wall. He rubbed his eyes clear with a fetlock and sniffed, "...I am not sure I really want to."

"Whirlwind?"

"I'm alright just... let’s keep going, yeah? It’s cold and snowing when it shouldn't be, we're close to the spirit. We need to find the others," the stag looked back up to the torch he had been carrying and frowned. The torch had gone out. He tsked and lit a spell to light it again. And then again. And yet again, his eyes slowly widening with each failed attempt. "Handy?"

"Mm?" Handy replied, clutching the hammer in his grip once more. It wasn't as unnerving as the library but still... to see something like this, here in broad daylight, was unnerving in its own way. Especially with this weighted feeling on the air, forlorn and expectant, like the feeling you get walking into a hospital wing to see your extended family gathered in the hallway outside of your grandparents’ room. Waiting, knowing the inevitable was coming. It didn't make sense, whoever or whatever these people were, they were long gone. They had to be, they couldn't die twice. But damned if that wasn't the feeling that was impressed upon him when he saw the last one, which seemed to be walking with a hunch leaning on some aperture to hold it up, fade from sight.

"Don't uh... don't suppose you got a light? Heh." Handy turned at the nervous laugh the stag gave him. He shook the torch. "Its not lighting."

Those three words caused Handy's skin to crawl. "...Try it again."

"But-"

"On something else." Handy said, really not keen on the idea that the witch-torch crapped out on them stranding them in the middle of a literal ghost town. "Burn something else."

Looking around, the stag pulled what appeared to be a dead bush from under a snow mound; Its tiny branches and twigs dry, if somewhat covered in frost. Whirlwind lowered his antlers to the bush and whispered something. His antlers glowed a soft golden light but produced no aura, sparks of fire erupted from a point between them and reached out to the bush and… Nothing. The sparks died, and the bush did not catch fire. They barely seemed singed. Whirlwind tried a few more times, surprised at his own inability to set the bush on fire and growing increasingly frustrated. Unnerved, Handy looked around. They were abnormally close to the cliff face here, although which side of the canyon they were on, he could not say. He looked around, trying to find the bridge they had descended from but unable to see it anywhere above them. Alarm slowly mounted within him, "Whirlwind. Cast a spell, any spell."

"Hang on," Whirlwind said, his antlers completely encased in a bright glow. Small white flames flickered to life and then died just as quickly as they appeared at each individual point of his antlers. The stag glanced up, his face screwed up in effort and he gave a snort of frustration as he continued to fail to produce anything of worth. The snow came down heavier now and it felt colder. Handy noticed that for the first time, the flakes seemed to be landing on the path. Soon they wouldn’t be able to find their way, not that it would have been easy even if they could see the path. The city had been a sprawling mess, like every medieval town that had grown organically over the centuries was. Had it not been for the torch they would have been hopelessly lost just getting across.

"Eh, not to worry!" he said in that characteristic cheerful tone, smiling wide and holding a hoof aloft. "Any minute now, aheh! I'll uh, I'll get something!"

His tone wasn't all that convincing as he scampered off into one of the broken buildings, digging away at the snow before bounding out of it and looking elsewhere and charging his antlers with magic, trying to do anything.

'Okay, don't panic... its just a magical malfunction. Yeah, that's it!' Handy told himself, trying to not show his rising unease. The heavy pressure of the air seemed to disappear, replaced instead by an increasing chill, their senses overwhelmed by the howl of a rising wind and the lowering of visibility as the snowfall grew heavier and heavier. He could barely see the trees along the canyon's edges anymore. How long had they been down here? Where was the bridge? Why is the deer's magic not working? What the hell were those shadows and where did they go?

"Whirlwind?" he said, feeling his teeth beginning to chatter, God damn it was getting cold.

"Aaaaaany minute now!" he heard coming from somewhere behind him. Visibility was now getting awfully scarce, he could only see buildings two blocks down now. The snow was getting heavier.

"Whirlwind!" he called back, stooping down and picking up the witch-torch.

"Whir..." he trailed off as he stood back up and saw it. It stood there looking at him from down the street, unnaturally still. Its white coat and antlers gleamed, stark against the snow which seemed dull and grey in comparison. Handy closed his eyes and opened them again, it still stood there, watching him. Now that he had a decent look at it, it was bigger than the deer he had seen. Much bigger. Its proportions were... off. Or rather, they were 'correct'. It was closer to a stag one would expect to see from his own world. Its features were soft yet noticeably different from the deer of this world. Its eyes were smaller, but larger for their sockets and seemingly black as they studied the human with a placid grace that... was reassuring. He turned to look at Whirlwind, this time he was pulling out what appeared to be a large fallen branch from under some rubble and snow. He hadn't noticed the apparition.

Looking back the white stag was backing up from him and turning, facing a street heading off to the human's left from his perspective, behind several buildings. Visibility was limited to barely ten feet in front of him, but the stag... he could see the stag clearly. It radiated with an interior light that defied the haze of snow that conspired to blind the human and confine him to being trapped in this grave city beneath a blanket of snow. The white stag lowered its mighty head, crowned with huge antlers with multitudinously long and sharp points, to the ground. It pawed at the snow with a hoof and raised its head to look down the path before turning to look pointedly at the human. Then, noiselessly, it walked off down the way, disappearing behind several buildings.

"Gof ith!" Whirlwind shouted from his side and the human nearly jumped, shocked out of his stupor. Whirlwind held a comically large branch in his mouth, dragging it along the ground, "We cam lifh thif!"

"...I am pretty s-sure lighting that won't w-work, Whirlwind. Whatever is c-cancelling out your m-magic probaby would prevent us f-from l-lighting it normally," Handy said, stuttering through the chill. He turned back, keeping an eye on the exact section of space where he saw the white stag disappear. He weighed his options.

"Aw," Whirlwind said dropping the branch and letting himself have a good shiver. "Wh-what are we going to do then?"

He looked around. The buildings would provide precious little shelter, destroyed and decayed as they were. Handy quickly considered the pros and cons of staying here, lost in a dead city with an unnatural snowstorm threatening to encase them in its icy grasp vis a vis following some weird vision of a stag to God only knows where. The last thing he saw in this forest that wanted him to follow it... No, he didn't really want to think about that. Not right now. Still, that odd feeling he got when he looked into its eyes. It was reassuring, almost familiar, but he knew he had never seen anything like it before. He wasn't sure how he could describe it but...

"Come on." he said, pocketing the witch-torch.

"What?"

"Just, come on," Handy insisted, stalking off down a snow covered path between the buildings.

Whirlwind bounded after him, "Wait! W-where are you going?"

"Anywhere th-that's not here!" Handy shouted back. His pace quickened as he drew near where he saw the stag disappear. He turned the corner sharply, almost walking into the edge of the building, batting away a bundle of overgrowth that hung across the building's corner from the ruined roof as he stumbled into the new road. He spotted the stag ahead, walking calmly away. It was easily half a football pitch's distance from him. "D-do you see that?"

"S-see what?" Whirlwind said, managing to catch up to the human. Handy glanced at him and back at the white stag, which turned to look back at them before taking a right turn.

"..Nothing, just... j-just, come on," he said, taking off at a brisk pace. He turned into a jog halfway down the street while the deer followed close behind. The path they took twisted and turned amid the skeletal ruins, the cold refusing to let up and the snow falling heavier and heavier, the wind blowing hard and exacerbating the chill. They could barely see ahead of them now, the buildings they passed only coming into sight roughly a foot away from them. More than once, Handy stumbled and nearly fell as the path turned treacherous and uneven as more and more rubble got in his way. At times it even felt as it he was going uphill, but there was no noticeable rise in the ground.

Again and again he saw the stag, always far ahead of him, waiting for him just long enough for him to turn a corner before it disappeared around another bend. He eventually broke out into a run, determined to catch up to this stranger, but never managed to reach it even though it walked with a leisurely pace. Whirlwind was utterly confused but had long since resigned himself to following after the seemingly mad human, he had very little choice if he didn't want to get separated again.

Turn after turn he followed after it until finally he appeared to be gaining on it on a straight run. It didn't speed up nor did it turn around and Handy felt excited. Whatever this was, he wasn't going to let it get away from him. He somehow forgot about his predicament entirely as what had begun as him merely following the White Stag, to which he referred to it in his mind as if it were a proper name rather than a description, became a desperate chase. He didn't even notice the sudden, shocking chill of a torrent of water falling from somewhere above him splashing down onto his shoulder and seeping deep into his armour. He almost had the White Stag within his grasp, water be damned.

As the thoughts formed in his mind the White Stag rapidly dimmed, becoming one with the grey mass of the snow flurry that nearly blinded him.

"No!" Handy shouted and sprinted, his lungs burning with the freezing cold air. He skid to a halt, his armour clattering as he flailed in an attempt to stop himself before he collided head first with two tall iron doors.

"Wh-" he didn't get to finish his question as the rapidly moving form of Whirlwind barreled into him, having failed to stop in time, and both collided hard with the black iron doors; the metal resounding with the clash. Handy was dazed, his ears ringing.

Whirlwind groaned, shaking his head and looking up at the doors they had run into. The human had fallen backwards over him and was currently busy rolling off to the side and clutching his head. "Huh, hey! Handy you found something!"

"Wh-what?" Handy chattered, the cold suddenly hitting him full force now that he had the strange obsession with the White Stag forcibly knocked out of him. His right arm was unbearably cold and he was shaking quite badly. "G-God, its c-cold... f-fuck..."

"Seriously, look!" Whirlwind said, getting up and shaking the human, Handy turned and looked up. He saw the large doors, both with raised portions depicting peacocks in flight, the left one was partially covered in deep, emerald moss. The cogs turned in his mind as Whirlwind babbled on. "How did you know where to go? I think this might be our ticket out of the cold, haha!"

Handy was already stumbling to his feet. He took a few steps away from the door as the stag tested his magic and, to his delight, summoned forth a small ball of fire that floated at a point just above his muzzle. Handy walked over to the small waterfall falling through a hole in the oxidized bronze roof which was arched and covered in criss-crossing vines, like emerald veins upon teal skin. He followed the flow of the water, clutching his right arm in a futile attempt to warm it up, wisely electing to place his hammer in the loop by his side in case his right arm suddenly lost control from shock.

He was led to a ruined edge where the floor simply fell away. The water flowed off the edge, disappearing into the snow fog below. He looked up and in a brief lull in the flurry of snow he saw the far side of the divide clearly, spying the remainder of the bridge they had originated from and the stairway they had used to descend into the city below. He looked around slowly, carefully, only to find this portion of the broken bridge significantly shorter than the other side and possessing no such stairway to the city below. He stood stock still as a chill shot down his spine that had nothing to do with the cold. How in the hell did they get up here?

He thought he saw something out of the corner of his eye as his gaze drifted over the impenetrable haze below him as the snowstorm intensified. He looked up but nothing was there, the bridge on the far side of the divide was empty. But he still got that strange feeling of a reassuring calm that conflicted with the rising surge of panic as memories of how he came upon the road flickered through his mind's eye. 'But Whirlwind could see the road.'

'but he couldn't see the stag... why couldn't he see it?' the thoughts plagued him as he slowly made his way back to the doors. Whirlwind was still talking to himself as he scratched away the moss upon the door and tried to read an inscription molded into the metal beneath it. Handy wasn't paying attention as he came to a stop behind the stag. His faraway gaze underlined the intensity of the thoughts within him as he tried to work out exactly what had occurred and why he wasn't panicking as much as he really, really felt he should.

"-Know it would lead us here?" Handy snapped back to reality at being asked that question.

"Sorry?"

"How did you know following the holly would lead us here?"

"...Holly?" Handy asked dumbly. Whirlwind inclined his head towards the wall to his left. Bundles of holly grew over the side, bright blood red berries and rich, emerald, spiked leaves sat upon the wall.

"Yeah, I noticed them at every corner you turned. Led all the way here," Whirlwind chirped. Handy looked down at his left hand and vaguely remembered a stinging sensation when he had batted some plant-life out of his way as he stumbled around the first corner after the Stag. Had there been holly all the way here? He hadn't even noticed. Why was it growing on walls like vines? He had thought Holly grew on trees...

"R-really?" Handy said. Whirlwind nodded, but then frowned, noticing how the human was shivering.

"Uhh, maybe we should get inside first, we can discuss this later," Whirlwind said as he began pushing against the Iron doors which refused to budge. "Uhm, little help?"

Handy added his weight to the door after a moment's hesitation, his gaze lingering on the holly. The doors screeched and protested but eventually gave way, the wind rushing past them into the darkness beyond in a flurry of snow. The pair of them managed to get inside before closing the doors again and sagging to the ground, breathing heavily and shivering. Whirlwind's horns glowed and a small fire was summoned forth. Handy suddenly regretted leaving the discarded banner behind, they could've used that to burn and give them both some heat.

With that thought in mind, Whirlwind noticed several tables and chairs nearby, revealed by the light of the small fire. The ancient wood practically crumbled from his touch as he hurriedly pulled a few of them together. The wood easily fell apart fully as he worked to break it with his antlers and hooves. Handy would've helped but he was out of breath and not too inclined to move. Whirlwind lit the collection of wood on fire with another small fire spell and let out a cry of victory as it finally caught light. Handy eyed the fire cautiously, it had been a long time since he thought of the sight of fire as being in any way comforting. As he was now however, practically freezing to death in his armour, the fire burning on the floor of what appeared to be a dining hall was the most inviting looking thing he had ever seen in his life and he slowly brought himself closer to its warmth.

But not too close.

"Hehe, well that was... that was... well... whew! Pretty cold huh?" the breathless Whirlwind said, trying to strike up conversation as he chased the chill from his bones. The air was still cold but the iron doors did a remarkable job of keeping the storm on the outside, despite the howling wind. Handy didn't respond, his teeth chattering, he had a million questions he wanted to ask right then, but simply couldn't. Besides, if he didn't see the White Stag, how much help would Whirlwind actually be?

On a whim he pulled the witch torch from his satchel and, ever so slightly, nudged it towards the flames with a broken table leg. When the torch lit he rolled it away from the fire before throwing the leg into the middle of it. He grabbed and held the magical flame aloft in his left hand, so immensely grateful that whatever the torch actually was, it did not light him up like so much tissue paper dipped in gasoline. He willed it to point them in the direction of the others.

The fire flickered before bending and pointing off into the darkness behind him. Whirlwind perked up, "Huh, thats lucky. Seems we're still heading in the right direction."

"Yeah," Handy managed. The thought struck him that the White Stag, whatever it was, had deliberately led them up here. Somehow. Whatever was cancelling out magic down below was not present here and they could now continue on their way to finding the others. The White Stag, assuming it was not the cause of the magical cancelling or even the sudden snowstorm itself, had deliberately led them back on track to finding Jacques and Thorax.

Despite how glad he knew he should be about all of that and to be out of that storm however, he couldn't help but ask himself why.

--=--

"Not that I am complaining..."

"Mmnn… Wha?" Thorax groaned as her eyes fluttered open. Everything was aching, and it hurt to move.

"...But would you ever be so kind as to get off of me, mon chere?" Thorax's eyes shot wide open and she looked down. Jacques, in all his smug glory, was stuck in a rather awkward position, resting his neck and withers on the ground while trapped in a collection of jutting rocks and crystal formations. Thorax's, or rather Crimson's body, had him pinned in place in an ungodly tangle of pony limbs, loose rocks, and pain. The resulting struggle for freedom from the pony prison rewarded her by her falling face first onto the hard ground and a yelp of pain from Jacques.

Getting up and rubbing her sore muzzle, she took stock of their surroundings. It appeared to be a cave at first glance, but that was deceptive. The walls and pillars were covered in large outcroppings of crystals, hexagonal formations expanding in bunches out of the walls and ground, giving the impression they had landed in some long forgotten mine. It was what one would think if it were not for the staggered, arched ceiling and the baroque facades of the pillars where they held up the roof. The all too regular and rectangular shape to the room revealed it as merely some lower cellar. Looking around, there were no visible signs of where they might have fallen from: no hole in the roof, no slide built into the wall. Clearly a similar mechanism that caused the floor to fall from under them was built into the walls. She was tempted to use her magic to try to weasel out where the mechanism was but vetoed that idea. She was feeling strained as it was and didn't want to risk wasting the rest of her magic on something so frivolous.

"Quite the back hoof you got there." ‘Crimson’ turned to look at Jacques as he dusted off his hat and placed it on his head, drawing her attention to the noticeable hoof prints he bore on his muzzle, despite his smile. Her ears splayed in embarrassment.

"Oh, right. Aheh, sorry but—" She coughed to clear her throat and re-adopted the typical disinterested expression of Crimson. 'That’s it, make it seem as if he's getting through my mask,' she thought, playing the part of the poor little mare so terribly embarrassed for 'accidentally' hitting him that she tried to put on a stoic facade to save face. "I mean, I didn't intend to do that. I'm sorry."

"Ah well," Jacques said with a lazy roll of his head as he walked past her. "We all do silly things when we are flustered, no?"

She gave him a sideways glare as she watched him walk past, exploring the room. She allowed herself a flick of her tail in genuine irritation. It was one thing for her prey to flirt back with her, but the fact that she was getting nowhere with him took all the joy out of it for her.

"What happened?" she asked as she got up and did her part in shifting the various detritus of the ruins. There was broken masonry, ancient broken planks of wood grey with age that cracked under her hooves, and tattered colourless cloth tapestries hung from the walls that evoked a sense of lost grandeur and spoiled majesty within the mind’s eye. The images that they might have once borne had faded and were lost to time.

"I do not know," Jacques replied, lifting up a particularly large fallen chunk of rock from the ceiling, raising a hoof in disgust as a rather large centipede the colour of vomit skittered away from behind it and disappeared into a tiny hole in the wall. "I only know that a wall came out of the ground, the floor disappeared, and voila! We now have a romantic walk through crystal-lit caverns all to ourselves. Not so bad, eh?"

"Perhaps," she said, allowing herself a small smirk, making a show of pretending to hide it, just enough for him to notice. The pair of them continued exploring the room. It was quite large, more akin to a cellar or the spacious corridors of a particularly ancient castle. However, try as they might, they could find neither doors nor exits, just more and more crystal formations emitting a soft white light, casting light, overlapping shadows.

Jacques suddenly drew his sword in a flash of metal that caused Thorax to yelp in surprise and jump back a step. "What in Tartarus is wrong with you!?" she cried.

"Shhh."

"Wha—"

"Shhh!" he said, holding the blade to his muzzle as he made a silencing motion. He looked pointedly at one crystal formation against a wall. She followed his gaze. It didn't seem all that different from any other they had passed.

"It’s a bunch of crystal," she whispered, narrowing her eyes at it. "So what?"

"I thought I heard..." Jacques whispered. His narrowed eyes scanned the area around the crystal. He approached it and ran a hoof along it. "Hmmm... doit être mon imagination. Anyway, as you were saying?" he said, sheathing his rapier.

"I was not saying anything."

"I know," he said with a wicked smile. "Such a shame. I do so ever love hearing the sound of your voice."

She blinked at that, allowing a flush of colour to come to her face. He smiled wider. Perfect.

'Screw it, I finally have him on his own. Time to just go all out.' There were worse fates for a changeling to suffer than being revealed and at the mercy of an armed pony, but given the preference to prey upon them more than any other species, it was easily the most commonly shared fear and the most common scenario prepared for by most changelings. This was true whether they were civilians, soldiers, long term infiltrators who gathered emotional energy, preferably love while in the guise of ponies, or in Thorax's case, scouts. They were the ones whose mission it was to travel foreign lands to probe and inspect defences, keep an eye on military movements and their relation to changeling colonies and sidhes, and, of course, spy on changelings of those rival colonies. It was not unheard of for one changeling to out another changeling loyal to a different sovereign in order to better secure their position in a given society.

The outed changeling would have to flee or defect to another colony for survival. Ever since Canterlot, which was an embarrassing failure her queen had been working very hard to salvage her reputation from, ponies in general had been rather ruthless in routing out changeling infiltrations. Violently if necessary. Discovery was not an option, but she had to feed to restore her reserves and to maintain her glamour. If she had to choose between draining the swordspony and reducing his effectiveness in getting both of them through this ruin or letting her glamour fall and risk being gutted where she stood, she'd choose the former. If the illusion were to fall, there could be no other outcome for a changeling.

She eyed him as they walked side by side and a confident smile briefly flashed across her face before it gave way to a pained expression. She let out a moan and appeared to trip over her own legs and fall against him. Jacques stumbled but found his balance, catching her and holding her back up "Hey! You okay?"

"Yeah, just... a bit tired. I think a little bit of that flu from before is still with me," she said with a tired expression, her breathing slightly laboured. The fact that she was really feeling under the weather due to her magical drain helped it seem authentic. "I-I'm fine... thanks."

"Hey," he said with a serious tone. She turned to look at him. "If you need to take a break, we can stop."

"I'm fine, really," she said with a light cough, deliberately letting herself lean against him for support. She reached out with a tiny tendril of magic upon physical contact. It wasn't much and it wouldn't warp his mind into loving her, however temporarily, but it was enough to get him focused on her. "... Just... fine."

Jacques eyes locked with her own as she turned to look directly at his face. Her eyes were half-lidded and she allowed a smile to creep along her muzzle. It was a warm, faltering thing, as if she were uncertain about what she was really doing. With as much she played the part, if anything, she knew what she was doing all too well.

"Well..." Jacques said with another confident smile, but with a somewhat searching look in his eyes. "You certainly are."

"...Maybe a break wouldn't be so bad. Would you mind just... staying with me for a while?" she asked, looking down, her tail flicking back and forth as she sat and returning her gaze to the stallion hopefully. His gaze left her momentarily, and he blinked. Just like that, she saw the small, intent look in his eyes fade. This would not do.

"I had better keep looking for a way out. The others will be looking for us, so we'd—" He was interrupted as 'Crimson's' hoof reached out to gently grasp his foreleg as he raised it to walk on.

"There's... no real rush is there?" she asked, Jacques studying her face as she moved closer. "I mean, I... About your face; I didn't really mean to kick you back there…."

"Oh that, tout ce qui sera, sera Crimson. We'll not fall out with each other over a simple accident," he said with a light chuckle. He tried to pull away but she pulled back on his leg and pressed up against his side.

"I insist!" she said, letting him see just how big and blue her eyes were. This was a sloppy way to go about it, but she felt his attraction to her disguise, and he had been bloody well teasing her with a good meal and pulling it out of her reach for nearly a week now. She was hungry. They were alone. This was going to happen one way or another. She lightly brushed her hoof over the mark she had 'accidentally' left on his face and let herself hesitate. His mouth opened to say something but she let her hoof glide down along his jawline, which promptly shut him up as his eyes widened in surprise. She breathed deeply. "Oh... my."

"Well! How very forward, mademoiselle," Jacques said, backing up slightly.

"Yes... and you'd know all about that," she said, placing a hoof on his chest and pushing gently as she followed him. She allowed herself a light giggle as her tone turned velvety. "And now that nopony is around, I want you to know I've been very appreciative of all these compliments you've thrown my way..."

He seemed to respond to this well, for she could taste the emotions coming off of him. There was a twinge of apprehension and excitement underlying a greater sense of desire, the perfect recipe for a brief, sudden surge of passion that would sate her hunger and give her enough power to see her out of this forest. If she was careful at least. It would be nothing serious, but it'd be enough. A sad look came across his face suddenly and he looked away. "I'm afraid... as much as I would simply love to indulge you, cher, I have a distinct feeling your employer will not be appreciative—"

"I know. And I don't really care." She smiled, lifting a hoof to his forehead and pushing his hat right off his head. The soaked article of clothing hit the floor as her other hoof traced his foreleg up to his withers. She positioned herself in front of him, his back now to a wall, with beds of crystal flanking them.

"...I'm not sure—"

"But I am." She chuckled, a sultry tone heavy with intent layered her words, and she felt his desire flare. The burning aftertaste was delicious. There was nothing quite like having feelings directed at yourself, even if it was only for the disguise you were wearing. She pressed up against him now, her head tilted up to his as she inched closer. She could feel his hesitation waning, crumbling. He was all too willing to give in to the moment and she pressed her advantage. She felt his hooves go to her withers and she yielded to his grip as he pulled her to himself ever so slowly, an electric tingle of excitement dancing up her form, one reciprocated in the stallion before her. The hairs of his goatee tickled her face, even through the fur of her guise as they shared breath. And it was there, pressed up against his chest, her eyes focused on his own with a deadly intensity, their lips a hair's breadth from one another, that she let her eyes shut and prepared to simply enjoy the act of feeding. She did not see Jacques' own eyes suddenly widen in alarm.

"Bougez-vous!"

"W—" Thorax was thrown to the ground bodily, hitting the hard floor with a grunt and rolling. A loud crashing noise sounded from behind her and she felt dust and tiny fragments of stone bounce against her back. She coughed, a cloud of dust lifting off of the floor. She turned to look behind her to see what appeared to be a bunch of crystal embedded in the floor where she had been only moments before. Jacques had pressed up against the wall, standing on his rear legs which were splayed to avoid the crystal flail that had almost crushed both of them, his face cringing at the near miss. The ball of crystal was connecting to a long, winding chain of small crystal links leading back to a central crystalline cluster. Large, easily the size of a pony, the thing hovered in the air silently, crystals changing shape and size at random. The movements were jerky and unnatural. The crystal maul seemed to lose mass as the crystals making it up fractured and formed back into tiny clumps of crystal as the chain connecting it retracted, becoming one with the floating star. It convulsed once and Jacques leapt. A flurry of spikes embedded themselves in the wall behind him.

"Run!" he yelled at Thorax, reaching her as he landed with a tumble. He grabbed her by the foreleg and dragged her to her feet. "My sword is not going to work on solid crystal!"

The pair of them fled, galloping between the growths of crystal and pillars of stone, down seemingly endless lengths of corridor, forced to turn this way and that as more spikes pierced the ground around them in tiny explosions of rock fragments and crystal shards. A pillar exploded and crumbled away behind them as the crystal star launched another maul, missing Thorax by inches. The changeling cursed every star in the sky for her luck, but that did not make up for the lost meal or for the fact that her life was now on the wrong end of a particularly violent bunch of overgrown geodes.

"Here!"

"What?"

"Up here!" Jacques called. Thorax skid to a halt as she turned to face him. He was already running up an incline she had almost missed, the ground rising up to lead to another level. A way out! She wasted no time and galloped after him, the silent star of destruction weaving its way down between the pillars of stone and crystal, following them unerringly despite the momentary obstruction of its line of sight. The pair of them reached the top of the incline and found themselves levelling off, facing large iron doors. The room they were in had significantly smaller crystal formations, which had to be a good sign. Jacques’ horn lit up as he ran towards the doors, attempting to force them open. Their ancient handles protested violently at the abuse as he turned them, but the door remained unmoved. As he reached them, he planted his forehooves, swung his body around, and bucked the doors. A resounding metallic echo sounded from the impact, but still the doors did not yield. "Merde!" he cursed.

"Move!" Thorax shoved him out of the way, her horn glowing as she opened her saddlebags and drew two small, iron pins and a thin knife from within their pockets, bringing them level with the door handle. Thankfully, it had an old fashioned lock. She could work with that.

"Where did you—?"

"Shh!" She worked frantically, at the same time gently manipulating the pins as she slid her knife into the lock. Her ears were perked and facing the door, listening intently for any sign she was getting close. Jacques turned and drew his sword. He used his magic this time, for he was not fighting an opponent, but rather some magical construct. That called for responding in kind. He muttered an incantation and the etchings upon the edge of the blade shimmered with power. It was going to do blasted little against the physical force of crystal traveling at speed, but he had to do something.

The star had barely risen above the incline when a sharp, thin wave of magical energy cut through the air. It broke across its surface, and the sound of breaking glass and cracking ice could be heard. Tiny fragments of crystal fell to the ground as a dark, black scar marred the white surface of the star. The few spurs of crystal it cut across ceased moving as the rest of the star continued to warp and shift. A reverberating sound, as if the star was affronted by the scarring across its surface, echoed throughout the immediate area. A series of crystalline clumps, one after another, emerged from within the construct, forming into another maul which it was preparing to launch. Jacques backed up, his sword sparking with energy. "Crimson!?"

"I know!"

"We're out of time, Crimson!"

"I! Know!" she shouted back. She heard a click and her ears flicked. "Yes!"

She put her hooves against the door and braced to push it open. The star struck. A massive boulder of crystal flew through the air and swung around on a length of crystal chain as the star spun before it detached. Jacques dived out of the way and yelled a warning, but it was too late. Thorax turned just as the boulder was a metre from her and could not dive out of the way fast enough before it collided with the iron doors. The metal buckled under the sudden force and the doors were thrown violently open, with the hinges of one of them, ancient beyond reckoning, breaking as the door fell away while the other merely swung around, slamming into the wall on the far side. The twisted door hung by a single, weak hinge as it squeaked mournfully as it swung slowly back around.

The force of the boulder flying over her was enough to rip Crimson from her hooves as it crashed into the doors. She was flung bodily along in its wake and tumbled across the threshold, only to find there was no solid floor and flailed her limbs as she fell. The door opened up to a collapsed room whose floor had given way to a lower cellar. This one still had remnants of old crates, barrels, and truly ancient furniture, all badly damaged and rotten and broken. She landed badly on the hard ground and screamed as an explosion of pain tore through her hind leg, the centuries old stagnant water splashing around her as she desperately tried to crawl away. Her eyes closed as she whimpered in pain.

The boulder had smashed into a stalagmite somewhere nearby, but she didn't open her eyes to see. Someling shouted her name as she heard something land in the water behind her. The pools were shallow and scattered around the ground, sinking into depressions worn into the stone floor by millennia of wear. She cracked open an eye to try to look around, tears threatening to break through. Changeling repression or not, she was in too much pain to deny them.

Jacques was fighting for his life. The star hovered high above them both near the ruined doorway. It warped and changed, and more and more shards erupted from its form and crashed into the ground. The stallion galloped between ancient crates and barrels that splintered and exploded as crystal bolts smashed through them, spilling the dark grey dust that had once been their contents upon the ground. Jacques stomped on his forehooves and turned, his horn shining furiously as he swung his head around, discharging a spell of force that lifted much of the detritus of the room in a single wave and sending it flying towards the star in a wave of solid objects. The star was unfazed as it continued its descent, and another crystal maul burst through the wall of wood in a wave of dust, shards and splintering planks and crashed into the ground next to him, forcing him to jump aside. It was an awkward leap and he stumbled. The star hummed ominously and spun in place, dragging the maul around at speed and colliding bodily with Jacques, knocking him to the ground and sending his sword skittering away to rest in a pool of water in some dank corner.

It was hard to see, the only real light in the room coming from the moving crystal star itself, shining harsh white light and casting stark shadows on everything. Thorax lay where she landed in the darkness, gritting through the pain as she watched Jacques try to bring himself to his hooves, stumbling and failing and crawling over to a turned over stone table near the wall below the point from which they fell. The star hovered over him, retracting the crystal maul back into itself, its various spikes gesticulating wildly as it convulsed, deep rumblings emanating from within it as it got closer and closer to him, completely ignoring her for now.

She let out a shuddering breath but didn't try to speak, the pain burning through her leg threatening to overwhelm her as she watched on helplessly. Jacques’ horn lit up and she saw him cast a shield around himself. It was thin, not something the pony was used to casting. She doubted it would hold out for long. As she watched in grim assurance that once the star was done with him, it'd come for her, all she could hear was the lone mournful cry of the tortured, ancient hinge from which the remaining door hung, so far above her. 'Wait...'

She looked up. The rectangular sliver of light that was the room from which she had fallen drew her attention upwards. The entrance was at least a floor or two above her; she could not tell exactly how far. She spied the iron door as it swung sadly on its abused hinges, its movements altering the amount of light pouring from the room. It was above the crystal star and Jacques, hanging dangerously from the rusting piece of metal holding it in place. There was the sound of shattering glass and her attention was drawn back to the crystal, which was now testing Jacques' shield. It fired one shard and then another, each rebounding off of the magical shield. It could smash Jacques' shield in an instant if it wanted. It was almost as if it was enjoying watching the pony squirm underneath his shield. Her breathing was laboured as she cried out, pain shooting through her form as she shifted her weight to get a better look at the door above them. She needed a better angle if she was going to pull this off.

Her horn flickered and flared as she tried to grip the door. The tendrils of her magic strained as she reached out to it, unable to grab the entirety of its form. She grimaced under the effort. It was going to be difficult to direct it the way she wanted to. She was going to have to pull and pray it worked out.

Jacques, meanwhile, was throwing absolutely everything he had into the spell, power coursing through him, the familiar static thrill running along the skin beneath his fur as it coalesced at the base of his horn. A shot of pain pierced his head from the sore nerves from when he had hit his horn in the fight with that earth pony mage at the tournament, but he bore through it as the magic spiralled along the grooves of his horn and poured into the shield. Every impact threatened to penetrate the magical barrier, every reverberation strained his concentration and caused him to nearly drop it entirely. His side hurt, but it was nothing serious. He'd be able to get up so long as he survived the onslaught but he was going to be walking with a limp. The crystal star hovered in place, continuing its siege, and it was all he could do to hold out.

He looked on with grim fatalism as he saw the star began to extrude a long line of smaller crystal clusters to the ground, gathering and reforming on themselves into the maul it had used so many times before. It looked like the construct had lost its patience and wanted to be done with him. It flashed and made more of those ominous, rumbling noises, reminiscent of the sound of ice settling itself under a surprisingly warm winter's day, as it began slowly turning. It dragged the maul along the ground in circles around itself as it built up the momentum to strike. Faster and faster, he watched as the maul lifted off the ground and circled around the star. He calmly closed his eyes and waited for it to hit, taking a breath and prepared for when it would shatter his shield like so much sugar glass and crash into him.

A tremendous crash echoed throughout the room, accompanied by the sound of shattered crystal. The door stood on its side where it had landed. The metal slab groaned as its weight brought it over, leaning slowly to the side before crashing into the floor with another thunderous noise. Jacques was surprised to feel a wave of dust, wood, stone, crystal fragments, and stagnant water splash over him, but mostly he was surprised he was alive enough to hear and feel all of that. In the silence that followed, he dared to crack open an eye.

He saw that his shield was gone, but he also saw the crystal star from before was equally shattered. An iron door, twisted and warped from blunt trauma applied to it, lay on the ground no more than half a foot away from him, crystal shards of various sizes surrounding it. The biggest portions convulsed, gesticulating wildly before slowly growing still, the ungodly noises the star had made now silent as the light slowly died from within the crystal, leaving the pony in darkness.

"Ha..." he breathed, more out of shock than anything. “Heh... Hehe... Hahahaha!" He continued nervously laughing at his incredibly good fortune, more than a little happy to still be alive. He quickly got over it when he realized he was still missing somepony. "Crimson!?" he called. His horn lit up, bathing everything in a soft, golden light. "Where are you?"

"O-Over... here..." Thorax managed between grunts of pain. Now everything hurt: her head, her body, and her stomach which pointedly reminded her that she was quite famished on top of everything else. Pulling that door off of its hinge had taken almost everything. With what little magic she had left, that was a dangerous expense of her power. Her head pounded and she could barely feel her own horn through the magical fatigue and the pressure building up in her forehead. She didn't notice the change in her voice when she spoke.

"Was that you? Sainte merde, jument you have impeccable aiming," Jacques said, locating his sword as he made his way over to her.

"Heh... nrgh, thanks. Wasn't sure if I had pulled it far enough..." she managed. Jacques' ear flicked as he moved objects out of his way in order to get to her.

"You alright, chère? You sound... off."

"I think I hurt my leg. It hurts to move..." she said, the light from his horn reaching her as he moved the last of the furniture out of the way.

"Don't worry about that," he said, moving a barrel to the side before turning back to her and reaching out with a hoof. "I know a bit of field dressing. All I need is some relatively clean... cloth..." He trailed off, his happy expression falling as his eyes widened slowly at her.

"Hey, what's wrong?" she asked, the smile falling from her face as she studied the shocked expression the stallion wore. "Hey! Come on! Are you going to help me up or wha—?”

Her words caught in her throat as she reached out with a foreleg, touching his offered hoof which had frozen in place as he continued to stare at her. She saw the shiny black dermis of her leg, slick with water, and saw the holes that perforated it and allowed her to spy through her own limb. She slowly tore her gaze up from her leg to look into the swordspony's eyes and knew then that he was looking at her in her true form. Her magic had failed, her glamour had fallen away, and with it all pretence of being the pony named Crimson as something deep within her rumbled in hunger. She felt the need to feed and knew she was both too weak to do anything about it and too weak to escape the sight of this pony who had discovered her.

Chartreuse eyes met blue and the covers slid out of the slits in the dermis on either side of her face as she covered them in an instinctive defensive reflex. He didn't say anything as she withdrew her hoof, her panicked mind desperately searching for a way out. Between the hunger, the exhaustion she felt, and her hurt leg, she knew there was no way out, and he stood between her and the doorway that only led deeper and deeper into what could very well be her grave.

There could be no other outcome for a changeling.

Author's Note

Special thanks to Jude for helping with the editing.

And JBL too but nobody cares about him.

Chapter 34 - A Song and Dance

She had just laid there for a while, not quite believing he would let her live. Sure, he did just trot off and leave her on her own in the bottom of a dank cave underneath incredibly ancient ruins and at the mercy of whatever floating crystalline abomination next floated in from the room above them. But that was still better than what she had expected. He was out of sight now – she couldn’t hear the clop of his hooves on the broken floor tiles nor could she see the light of his horn. Even with her superior dark vision, he was now too far away for that to matter. He had been so… well, no. Angry wasn’t the proper word for it. He had been such a confusing whirl of emotions: shock, horror, anger, outrage, betrayal, and a thousand and one other distinct feelings and variations all coalescing in a little storm around him. Then it became something else, something she wasn’t sure she had a name for. It was unfamiliar but… cold all the same. He crushed all other feelings in preference for it and she had been sure it would have resulted in her death. It didn’t.

She tested her wings and winced. Between all the other pain racking her body, that little detail had escaped her notice, but one wing was definitely sprained. It looked like she couldn’t just fly her way out of here either. Great. She turned slowly, carefully, until she was lying flat on her belly and then began crawling away from the pillar she had been propped up against. Trying her damnedest to make sure she didn’t injure herself any further, she gingerly dragged her battered and bruised hind legs onwards. It was an agonizingly slow pace as she tried to at least get herself out of the damp and onto a dryer portion of the floor. Then her vision flashed white for a moment and her mouth opened in a silent scream as unbelievable pain shot through her. It hadn’t been much but she had moved her broken leg just so as she tried dragging it across some broken stones and wooden fragments.

The pain was incredible, and she had to clench her jaw shut in order not to let out any noise. She failed, letting out a pitiful whimper that was far louder than she cared to admit. She waited patiently for the pain to subside, her eyes clenched shut. When it did, she pulled herself further onto the dryer ground and curled up onto her side, resting on her much less injured hind leg. Moving had been an incredibly stupid idea and all she could focus on now was the pain, her wings shifting irritably in impotent frustration at her own lack of ability to do anything about her situation. She muttered to herself, senses dead to the world as she silently cursed herself, keeping her eyes shut as she waited until the pain in her broken leg lessened to a dull throb.

She was so distracted that she didn’t notice the rough scrape of wood upon stone and the rhythmic cadence of hooves on the ground until Jacques was practically beside her. The surprise made her start and she yelped in pain once more as the sudden movement hurt her leg further.

“Easy,” Jacques said evenly. His face was an impassive mask and his emotions were still bound up in that cold steely ball that she could not put her hoof on in order to identify. “Don’t move.”

His horn lit up to an even brighter golden hue. The light spell that he was casting, which she really should have noticed long before she heard him coming, shone even brighter as she saw his magical aura grasp something from within a large broken crate he seemed to be dragging. Thorax thrashed.

“Stay away!” she hissed dangerously, baring her fangs at him as he watched on, pausing in his actions. She took the opportunity his pause gave her and tried valiantly to shuffle away. Of course, there was only so far one could shuffle away from danger with one broken leg and a banjaxed wing. Not to mention the broken masonry, shattered storage containers, mounds of dust, wood particles, broken crystal, and the detritus of uncounted centuries going on millennia conspiring to slow her advance. But now was not the time for such practical concerns – there was shuffling ahoof! Jacques merely let out a short breath that may have been a sigh had she felt any emotion to indicate it as such. She was going nowhere and looked back to gaze upon the horrible apparatus he was going to use to murder he— Was that a roll of cloth? “Wh-What are you doing with that?”

“If you would hold still, ‘Crimson’, you’d find out,” he said calmly, the ghost of a smile on his muzzle. It was so like his usual, confident, cock-sure smile that it only unnerved her that he wore it while still possessing the steely sphere in his heart.

“Get away from me, pony!” she spat. All the while, he calmly levitated the rather ancient, yet surprisingly clean-looking cloth along with several lengths of wood down towards her. “I said get away!”

“Oh hush, mon cher,” he admonished, raising a hoof to stop her struggling and gesturing his head to his sheathed sword. “If I was going to harm you, I would hardly attack you with a bolt of cloth, no?” Thorax eyed the covered blade for a moment, uncertain. When he moved again, she instinctively activated her horn to do… something, anything to prevent the pony from coming near her in her undisguised state. All she got was a splitting pain at the base of her horn and a shudder running through her body as her magical fatigue momentarily robbed her of vitality. She closed her eyes as he came closer, bracing herself for the inevitable.

…Only to feel the surprisingly gentle tingle of magic grasping her broken leg and lifting it slowly, gingerly. She let out a gasp at the motion, feeling even the slightest movement or jolt would break the bone further. She cracked open an eye as she felt the rough texture of the wooden boards placed along the length of her hind leg and saw the bolt of cloth circle around her leg, the woven material held in place by magic as it wrapped her leg to hold the splints in place.

“You know, dame mystère, I did always wonder how changeling bones work,” Jacques said. She looked up at him in confusion but couldn’t see anything more than that same light smile on his muzzle framed by a short grey beard. The rest of his face was hidden beneath the peak of his cap as he looked down to keep an eye on his work. “What with all those holes you have. Although, I suppose it’d be rude to ask now, eh?”

She didn’t answer him, just looked down at her raised leg as he finished the splint. He put the bolt of cloth to the side and levitated a small bundle out of a pouch attached to his sword belt. It looked like some kind of crumbling shortbread wrapped in a dried green leaf.

“Here, this’ll ease the pain,” he said, levitating the small thing over to her. She eyed it suspiciously before looking back at him. He was still smiling, his hat tilted to cover his eyes, and his emotions still wrapped up in that cold iron ball at his core. After hesitating for a moment and sitting up against a crate as the magic let go of her leg, she took the shortbread in her hooves and took a tentative bite. It was crunchy and went down easily. Her stomach growled at her and she quickly devoured the painkilling treat. Something about it was delicious beyond whatever medicinal effect it had as she felt some small amount of relief wash over her. “Better?”

She nodded and the two just stayed where they were for a while. Neither spoke for a full minute before Thorax broke the silence. “Why?”

“Hm?”

“Why?” she asked with much more emphasis. He casually stroked his beard for a moment before answering.

“Well, you were hurt. Had to go find something to help with it. Common sense, oui?”

“You know what I mean, pony.”

“Oh, do I? What exactly do I know, bonne dame?” he asked, looking up with amusement in his eyes. Thorax hissed.

“I was going to feed on you!”

“Were you?” Jacques paused. “I’m flattered. Frankly, mon chere, you should probably have tried it much sooner, then maybe we wouldn’t have been so rudely interrupted.”

Thorax spluttered at that. “Do you think this is a joke?”

“I take it with as much seriousness as the matter deserves,” he said happily.

“Do not mock me!” Thorax let out a yelp, having been so agitated that she tried sitting up to try to threaten the stallion more directly, only to have the pain in her leg force her back down onto the ground again. Jacques eyed her leg with a slight look of concern, but his feelings made a lie of such sympathy.

“You should rest – that’s not going to get better by moving around. Now, let me have a look at that wing,” Jacques said. Thorax felt her dermis crawl at the idea of letting someling else who wasn’t even a changeling have a look at her wings. Her good wing fluttered in agitation at the thought and she saw the pony chuckle. “Suit yourself. Now, you aren’t going to be walking anyway so… get on.”

Jacques turned around and hefted a plank of wood with his magic over his head. It was tied to two lengths of ancient, frayed rope that looked like they would snap under any amount of strain. He lifted it up and over himself so that the ropes rested on his withers and the plank across his chest. Thorax just looked at him oddly, the expression of confusion obvious even with her eyes covered as they were. It took Jacques a minute to realise he looked a tad ridiculous. He chuckled lightly. “Unless you plan on lying there in a pile for the rest of your life, you aren’t going to be able to get anywhere like this. So get on, and I’ll pull you the rest of the way.”

Thorax, of course, didn’t move. Hell, would you? See that guy you tried making a meal out of? He wants to help you! She considered his proposal with all the credulity it deserved, and then suddenly she was floating in the air.

“H-Hey! What’s— let me down!”

“Comme vous voulez,” Jacques replied, gently depositing the bundle of powerless changeling into the makeshift sled. She was surprised at the presence of soft fabrics haphazardly torn from wherever the pony had found them and placed at the bottom of the broken box. It wasn’t comfortable per se, but it was better than sitting on hard wood with a broken leg. The box was big enough to allow her to lie down, but not so big she could give her legs the room they needed. It was awkward. “Now just sit there and don’t move around too much. Wouldn’t want to hurt yourself further, oui?”

Her attempts at struggling reminded her of her less than stellar skeletal integrity, and she found herself fuming in quiet impotence as she continued running the gamut between confusion, alarm, anger, and indignity at her circumstances. Jacques, for his part, allowed his surly passenger to sink below the edge of the pony sized crate before slowly drawing his blade. The rasp of metal on leather caused her to jerk up and Jacques to chuckle. He didn’t bother explaining as he held the sword before him in his magic and slowly walked forward, dragging Thorax behind him. The sudden motion threw the changeling to the floor of the crate with a nervous squeak as the conveyance jerked forward, scraping against the floor as it was dragged behind the pony. The occasional metal clack of the blade tip tapping stone echoed throughout the dark, cavernous halls as they travelled, the only sound beyond the scrape of the box that broke the tense silence that otherwise existed between the stallion and the injured changeling.

--=--

“Why?”

“You say something, chere?” Jacques said amicably. She didn’t bother responding as he fell into humming another jaunty tune. He was not answering her questions. He always deflected them and refused to say why he was helping her now, leaving her frustrated in her impotence. Slowly, she went through the likely reasons. Kill her? No, he would have done that then and there. With her hind legs out of commission, her magic drained, and her wing sprained, she wouldn’t have been able to stop him. Torture? She looked at him over the edge of the crate, the stallion humming away as he continued down the seemingly endless corridors. No, he didn’t strike her as the sort, but she could not be sure. His emotions were still in that steely ball she couldn’t penetrate. Capture then? Possible, but he needed to get out of this ruin and then out of this forest, and for that he needed Handy and Whirlwind. She hoped the human would not allow her to be captured by him, if only to help ensure his own ends. Then she remembered the human warning her against the explicit course of action that had resulted in her current predicament. That wasn’t her fault, however. She was careful and could not have foreseen floating hostile geological formations taking exception to her presence! Not as if the human had any experience with fighting giant rocks so he could just go get bucked.

There was the occasional lapse in the humming, the scraping and the tapping of metal on stone. During these moments, the crate stopped moving and there was an occasional pronounced mechanical clicking followed by the noise of moving stone. The pitter-patter of tiny metallic objects striking stone at speed often accompanied such moments as well as the noise of steel on stone and the laugh of delighted surprise by Jacques. She rolled her eyes. He had been using his sword to activate traps in advance with his magic. The sword pressed down upon suspicious-looking blocks that activated the contraptions before they walked blithely across them. More than once, this resulted in them having to change their course. She had long since stopped bothering to look over the edge of the crate to follow what transpired during these moments, choosing instead to focus on remaining in as still a position as possible to rest her legs.

“Where are we going?” she asked idly, sliding her eye covers back into her head, playing with a loose bolt of cloth to distract herself from the pain and the hunger, both the one in her stomach and in what she had in place of a heart.

“No idea,” Jacques said happily. She cocked an eyebrow at him from within the wooden crate.

“Then how do you know where we are going? We’ve been at this for two hours now.”

“Well, my dear, I figured we fell down quite some ways, no? Would it not strike you as logical that heading upwards would be the most likely way of finding our way out?” She could almost feel the cocky grin he directed behind himself. She didn’t give him the satisfaction of seeing her grimace. She laid her head down on her fore hooves again and kept quiet for a while. “So Handy knows you are a changeling, hm?”

Now that gave her pause. She hesitated just a moment too long before replying. “No. He doesn’t know I replaced his servant.”

“Hmhmhm, I’m sure he doesn’t. Why, I am sure when he warned me off of you, it had nothing to do with you feeding off of me, oui?” he asked. She gritted her teeth. “I cannot blame you though. I am rather delicious, but I find myself wondering why you took so much risk. Why, would it not make much more sense for you to wait until after we were outside the forest to do it?”

Silence.

“Or perhaps the Whisperwood city. There were a lot of deer there. Why, I am sure you could have isolated some young buck who had a little too much to drink… unless there was a problem with that?” She didn’t answer, and he had to look back to ensure she was still within the crate. Part of the reason why he had drawn his sword was to ensure she didn’t grab it from behind with her magic while he was distracted. He was confident that she wouldn’t be able to, but it did not pay to be stupid. “Hm, then there is Handy himself. Why not use him? No? That was problematic as well?”

“Be quiet…” she muttered.

“You couldn’t do either for some reason, yet you needed to feed. You must have been starving, so that left me. The only safe, reliable option left to you. Isn’t that right, ‘Crimson’?” The crate rocked as the changeling ignored the pain in her legs, leapt up, and placed her forehooves on the edge of the crate, snarling at the stallion who turned around, his smile fading.

“Do not pretend to know me, pony. You were being so evasive before. Why are you so chatty now!?” she demanded. He looked at her, chewing the inside of his mouth for a moment before sitting down to consider her.

“Because I have been thinking.” When she didn’t interrupt him, he smiled and continued, “You see, it’s not every day you owe your life to a changeling, so I find myself in a rather odd situation. How does a pony deal with owing their life to somepony who only minutes before attempted to use them for food? Then I think, no, she couldn’t possibly be trying to kill me. She needs me to help her get out and to meet the others, but that doesn’t really make it better, does it?”

She glared at him before turning her head to look away, her teeth bared as she rotated her lower jaw.

“And then, injured and starving, this little changeling decides to save my life and then, in her silliness, she wonders why I am trying to help her.” He laughed and she looked at him in shock. She was trying to formulate a response, most likely in the form of a question, when both of them heard the altogether too familiar laugh of a stag and signature, lilting accent of the human echoing from farther down the hall. The stallion’s smile broke out into a wide grin. “See? Did I not say heading up would be the best way out?”

“Let me out, I need to—” She flinched as she felt his hoof press against her chest and push her gently back into the crate.

“Shhh, you’re hurt, remember? Just rest there; I still need to find out how to repay you.”

“What?” He just smiled at her question and looked off to the side before back at her.

“You do not suppose Whirlwind might have a lot of questions about what a changeling is doing traveling with his newfound human friend? A lot of awkwardness and hurt could be avoided if you could just readopt your disguise, no?”

“But I can’t… You yourself managed to figure out why…”

“Mmm, yes. You need to feed, not just to survive but for your power,” he said, “and I know exactly how I am going to repay you for your little favour.”

She raised both her brows in surprise as he came closer, placing his own hooves on the edge of the crate as he brought his face level with her own. Her eyes scanned him in confusion as she felt that cold iron ball at his core slowly warm and unravel, like the petals of a rose opening up to embrace the sunlight. And just like the scent of that beautiful flower, his emotions slowly began flowing out towards her, alarming her. She jolted back, her eyes jumping from one part of his face to the other. Excitement, pity, sadness, joy, sincerity… it was too much to process all at once. She froze as he came closer, her hoof raised to her chest as he brushed the side of her cheek gently with his own hoof. She shivered under the touch, unsure of what was actually happening.

“W-Wait, you can’t seriously… I’ll, I’ll be draining you.”

“I like the little danger in that. Makes you so much more exciting.”

“But… I’m a changeling.”

“Oh I know, mon chere,” he said, leaning in closer, her breath mixing with his. She lost herself in his eyes, not quite believing somepony would willingly, joyfully give her affection the likes of which she had never experienced outside of a disguise. The sharp, burning taste washed over her like a furious wave breaking upon a rock. For all its small size, it felt more real, much more vital than any other feeding, and she knew then she would never forget the feeling as it froze her in place in utter shock. “And I don’t really care.”

His horn ceased glowing and the sword fell to the ground with a clatter in the darkness.

--=--

“Sooooo, ya done?”

“No, Whirlwind, I am not done. This is the fifth cache we’ve come across. I need to—” Handy sneezed explosively and shuddered miserably “...make sure if it has the crystal I want or not.”

The pair of them had wandered into what appeared to be store rooms of some sort, causing Handy to wonder aloud as to the exact nature of the ruins they had found themselves in. Were they in a city? A fortress? A castle? Something in between? Was it something else entirely? The blizzard-covered ghost town they had passed through was the only real evidence of large scale habitation they had seen, but the layout made no sense. Why build at the bottom of a canyon whose only entrance or exit was through tunnels high up the cliff face?

After they had taken shelter from the blizzard, they had passed through what appeared to be a large dining hall, a barracks, and an armory or a blacksmith. Or so he thought, judging by the long cooled furnace and ancient, black iron anvil that looked like it was shorn in half. Handy made a mental note to never find out what horrendous force had done that to a solid block of metal. Continuing on, the witch torch led them in the direction of what appeared to be the storehouses of the ruins they were now rummaging through. They ranged from small cupboards, to glorified closets, to storerooms, to one store room that looked like a proper warehouse, in sheer size if nothing else. It was dimly lit by crystalline growths in the ceiling. Most of whatever these rooms had held had decayed to dust, and what had not been destroyed by time was of little interest, except for the occasional cache of crystals.

“Anyway,” he began quickly, focusing his thoughts on anything else at all. “It’s not as if they’re going anywhere.”

“You sure about that?” Whirlwind responded after a moment’s silence. The human meanwhile continued rummaging through crate after crate of inert, completely ordinary, and utterly transparent glass-like crystals, none of which held anything inside of them, golden or otherwise.

“Yes I am sure. Why do you ask?” Handy had given up on treating Whirlwind with the usual airs. He was cold, miserable, and sneezing. Politesse could go get fucked.

“Because the torch is sort of moving on its own.” Handy cursed as his head shot up and hit the underside of a shelf. The ancient wood, weakened with age, practically shattered under the force of the contact, showering his head with splinters.

“What?” he asked, seeing the Torch’s flame was indeed moving. The flame was bent over, as if blown by a gust of wind pointing in a direction to the left of the doorway they had used to enter this particular store. It moved, pointing at the wall and moving closer and closer to the doorway. They eventually heard the scraping of wood on stone and the bright golden glow of magic as something approached. The brown unicorn, complete with grey goatee, bright blue eyes, and black hunting cap turned the corner, and he, the human, and the deer blinked at each other in surprise.

“Jacques!” Whirlwind cried happily, bounding across the storeroom and barrelling into his friend. “You’re alive and not frozen to death! This is great news!”

“Q-Que!?”

“Nevermind, not important! How are you? Where’ve you been? Was the weather nice? It’s been dreadful here. Did you get your mane cut? Did you get a souvenir? You look tired. Are those new horseshoes?”

“…Que?” Handy ignored the pair as the deer harangued his newly recovered friend. He was far more interested in the crate the stallion had been dragging along, particularly the red-coated, brown-maned unicorn mare who lay within it. He looked in and she looked back out at him, clearly bored. He looked down at her bandaged leg, the crate, the ropes that until recently had tied it to Jacques, and drew the obvious conclusion.

“So what happened?” he asked with a sigh of resignation.

“Just some trouble, nothing we could not manage.”

“What kind of trouble?”

“…A monster made out of crystal came alive and attacked us.”

“…So, nothing out of the ordinary then,” Handy said with a wry smile as he looked off into space. She cocked an eyebrow at him but didn’t question him further.

“Okay, right, happy to see you too, mes amis, but I must ask, do you two know the way out?” Handy and Whirlwind just looked at each other.

“Outside isn’t… really an option right now,” Handy said.

“Aha, yyyyeeeaaaaahhh. She might know we’re coming,” Whirlwind said, rubbing a foreleg.

“She?” Jacques asked.

“The spirit? You know, the one I’m on my way to so she can crown me Lord of Winter and we can get this merry little solstice on the road?” Whirlwind explained, gesturing with a hoof. Handy flinched as he finished the sentence, though no one seemed to notice. “Outside is now a raging blizzard that’ll freeze you to death!”

Jacques did not return the stag’s beaming smile. His tired expression slowly turned to an apologetic grin as he turned to Thorax. “Mes excuses, cher cœur. It seems I may not be getting you out of here that soon after all.”

Thorax gave him a level look but did not reply. Jacques only smiled wider in return, then yawned deeply.

“Tired?” Handy asked, prompting a slow nod from the brown unicorn. “Well, too bad. We still need to get a move on. I don’t want to spend a second longer down here than we have to.”

With that, he turned on the spot, going over to the witch torch and lifting it deftly from the ground. Thorax narrowed her eyes at the action.

“Charming mood he seems to be in,” Jacques commented, drawing her attention away.

“It’s… been something of a long trip for us, aheh. So!” Whirlwind clapped his forehooves together happily. “We’re all together then! The rest of the way should be a piece of cake.”

“Except for all the traps,” Thorax chimed in, resting her cheek on a forehoof.

“Traps?”

“Oh yeah, we hit at least twenty on our way here. How many did you two run across?” Jacques replied, tapping the ground lightly with his rapier for emphasis.

“Wwwwweeellll…”

“None,” Handy finished, helmet now correctly equipped. “Now come on, let’s get a move on.”

“What’s that?”

“Our compass. Now, less questions and more mush,” Handy ordered, grabbing the makeshift harness in order to pull Thorax along before turning and walking down a corridor, the sputtering torch directing him to his prize. Then a spectacular sneeze caused him to immediately stop again. He froze in place for a second before he started shuddering.

“Uh, Handy? You okay?” Whirlwind asked

“… Just… fine. I’m fine.”

“You cold? You’re shaking awfully bad there.”

“Nice and warm, I assure you,” Handy said, still shaking rather violently. Hs voice seemed strained and controlled. “Just… A bit uncomfortable.”

“Uncomfortable?” Jacques asked, a smile creeping across his face as he slowly realized what had just happened. “Perhaps you’d like a tissue for that cold?”

Handy just slowly turned to glare at the pony from behind his helmet before slowly turning right back and walking stiffly off into the darkness. “I am quite alright. Thank you for your offer nonetheless.”

Jacques chuckled brightly before putting on the harness and trotting off after him.

“So, what was that about?” Whirlwind asked. Jacques looked at him, mirth in his eyes.

“Tell me, Whirl. If you had a cold, would you be particularly happy if you sneezed all over the inside of your helmet?”

--=--

Handy was not a happy human.

This should come as a surprise to absolutely no one, but it bore repeating. With everything that had transpired; every nonsensical strip of bullshit he had to put up with; every cut, bruise, broken bone, sore and spilt ounce of blood, one would rightly ask where he drew the line. Handy learned the hard way long ago to stop drawing the line, for that way led disappointment and madness. That way led disbelieving pretty pony princesses could move the bodies cosmic every night and day and then seeing for yourself that they, in fact, did. That way led believing the stars did not change for uncounted billions of years, accounting for the fact they were lights of oftentimes long dead stars an unfathomable distance away… and then seeing the star constellations change from week to week. Magic, faeries, ghosts, haunted forests, dragons… curses… all of this just reaffirmed the human of that humble truth: that all that he truly knew was that he knew nothing.

Perhaps it all made sense, perhaps there was a deeper internal consistency to it all that he was unable to fathom. Everything, despite what one would think, appeared to still have limits of some sort. Somehow he was still inside a rational universe, even if it was a rational universe that had gone completely bonkers. The point was that Handy now drew the line much, much farther away than an average human would. After all, nothing could possibly cross the line if you placed it far enough away from you that you could see the problem coming from miles off and adjust accordingly.

That was what Handy thought right before they found the ballroom.

“I’m sorry, I mustn’t have heard you right. Could you repeat that?” Handy said, scratching his bare left wrist irritably while looking around the room. They were at the top of a set of steps looking down at a vast expansive rectangular hall. Once upon a time, it might have been grand. Vast, colourful mosaics adorned the floor, perhaps once depicting detailed vistas as classical columns soared from their places along the walls at regular intervals, interspersed with immense mirrors that reflected the ballroom into endless copies of itself. The flight of stairs flowed down to the ground, shaped in such a way as to make it appear to be a flowing waterfall, flanked by two immense statues depicting… something.

The forms were too decayed and warped by age. The stone that made the colossal statues had eroded and wore down much more than anything else around them, almost as if something took special care to ruin them more than anything else. The colours of the mosaics were faded to a stark white, or they would have been if there was not an eerie blue-white glow emanating from each and every one of them, casting the entire ballroom into stark relief. Each and every crack and faultline in the ancient masonry and stonework of the walls was cast into deep shadow, contrasting sharply with the pale light reflecting off the undamaged portions of their surfaces. The shattered shards of the floor-to-ceiling mirrors were made conspicuous by their absence, the holes they left behind in the mirror frames marring otherwise near perfect reflections of the ballroom.The shattered chandeliers and the old decrepit finery of woven silk cloth upon the floating tables were all brought into cruel focus, dark shadows outlining their ruined glory.

Oh yes, you read that right. Floating tables, complete with floating chairs that looked as if they would be particularly uncomfortable for even Handy to sit in, all decked out in the finest silk table cloths. Candlesticks, thankfully unlit, floated just off the top of their surfaces alongside shattered remnants of plates and rusted cutlery. All of this surrounded the oddest sight of all, but one that was altogether too familiar to Whirlwind and the human. More ghostly forms flitted to and fro, in circular movements, at once there and not in a clockwork dance set to the rhythm of an orchestral band long since silenced to the deaf ear of time. Yet still they danced.

They were different from the black shapes in the ruined city. For one thing, they were white, and it did not hurt to look at them directly, yet even with that their forms were still impossible to define. Their silent waltz only added to the great unease Handy felt, but it was one he was familiar with. Jacques and Thorax were having a harder time dealing with it judging by their haunted expressions. Whirlwind just took it straight on the chin, or he was just using that surprisingly solid poker face of his again. “Well, you see, we need to get across this ballroom in order to get to the lake, aaaand in order to do that, we need to perform a ritual.”

“Yes, I got that much,” Handy resisted the urge to rub his forehead. “But… singing?”

“No no no, of course not just singing,” Whirlwind said with a beaming smile. “But children’s songs!”

“I’m out,” Handy said flatly, turning and walking off.

“Hey! Handy, hold on!”

“I draw the line at, at… singing nursery rhymes in order to, to get past a couple of waltzing ghosts! That’s just, it’s just—! That’s as ridiculous as defeating a monster with the power of friendship or, or, or repelling changelings with the power of love!” Thorax coughed awkwardly while Jacques seemed to smile.

“I know, it’s great right? Anyway, nah, we don’t need to sing to get past the ghosts,” Whirl reassured.

“Then why do we need to sing children’s songs!?”

“Oh, right, it’s so that those things don’t come down and eat us!” he said happily, gesturing upwards with a hoof. Handy looked up. He immediately wished he hadn’t. The ceiling was utter blackness, such that even the plentiful light coming from the floor was swallowed up as that roiling, solid mass refused to be illuminated. He felt lightheaded looking up at it. Nausea churned within him and bile threatened to rise up his gullet at the sight. He forced himself to look away, breathing heavily.

“Wh-What, the fuck is that!?” he called out as Jacques and Thorax had similar reactions. Whirlwind tapped his hoof a few times.

“Okay, Handy, I know I have not been entirely up front on a lot of things, and I do not even have all the answer you need for the rest, but I want you to seriously consider what you are asking me here. Do you really want to know what that is up there?” Whirlwind asked simply.

Handy decided discretion was the better part of valour and shut his mouth. If anything, he really would rather be off elsewhere after a little revelation like that. That was of course if his torch had not led him here. The others thought he was using it to lead them to the lake and this spirit that would be condemning the otherwise perpetually happy deer to a lifetime of freezing cold isolation one season and oblivion for the remaining three. In reality, he was willing the torch to lead him to the nearest vortex crystal that just so happened to be in the same direction because of course it was.

Handy groaned in resignation. “Okay fine, and you know about this ritual how?”

“Oh, that’s why I was brought to the temple back at Whisperwood, given the rites and knowledge of how to pass each test and trial to get to the lake. Fortunately, I didn’t really have to use any of them!”

“Why?”

“Because your torch leading us to you guys brought us down a much safer path!” Whirlwind said, gesturing to the other pair.

“…Whirlwind, we almost froze to death.”

“Yeah, I still want to know who caused the sudden shift in the weather,” Jacques interjected.

“I know! We didn’t even have to go through the inside-out room!” Whirlwind powered on.

“What’s the inside out room?”

“Don’t worry about it now!” Whirlwind zoomed to the top of the steps. “Here’s what we have to do. You can’t touch the floor without starting a song. When you sing, it needs to come from the heart, and that is very important. It’s silly, I know, but in order to cross the ball room you need to add to the dance, and that means either dancing all the way across…”

He looked pointedly at ‘Crimson’s’ leg. Now with proper support for her other, considerably less broken hind leg, she could walk in that awkward three-legged fashion Handy had seen people use from time to time. “…Or adding to the songs that keep the dance going and, er, the spectators placated.”

“Wait… Are you saying these ghosts have to dance forever to keep these… these things from eating them?” Handy asked. Whirlwind just smiled sadly in response.

“Probably, we just know what happens when somedeer else tries crossing without adding to the dance. But it needs to be a song from your childhood, something innocent and good. Anything else and you risk agitating them.” He only got awkward looks at those words from all three of them. “And we need to do it one at a time.”

“One at a time!?” Thorax asked incredulously. “What happens if I fall down while crossing without anypony to help me?”

“Well, I hope you keep singing then!” Whirlwind said with a chuckle, but his heart was not in it. The four of them just studied the room for a while before he decided to go first. “Alright, wish me luck!”

“Wait, hold on!” Jacques tried to stop him, but it was too late. He had bounded off the top of the steps in the leaping fashion of deers and landed deftly upon the mosaics, the tiny fragments glowing all the brighter from the contact. The very moment his hoof touched the floor, he began singing in the same language he used when he was talking to the door that let them into this ruined hole in the ground in the first place. The sweet sounding, quick paced tongue of the deer suited the happy rhythmic song he had chosen, the words darting from one to the other much like a chase between two sibling pups trying to catch one another.

Frankly, what happened as a result of his singing was more amazing than the fact he was making it across unscathed. The dancers… changed. The slow, mechanical waltz became a much more lively dance as individual spectres switched partners, their movements more fluid but no less synchronized. Only this time it was not to the cadence of some long dead choir but instead to the jaunty rhymes of the stag proudly prancing past them. Handy could not understand the words, but they appeared to rhyme. A nursery rhyme perhaps? It was ludicrous but sure enough the stag had made it across and up the stairs at the far end of the ballroom completely unharmed. He made it to the top of the steps and promptly leapt in the air in triumph.

“Woo! Okay, your turn!” he said, pointing in the general direction of the three of them over the heads of the dancers of the incredibly haunted ballroom.

“Well…” Jacques began while rubbing his neck as if trying to get a crick out of it. “Si ce est ce la manière dont elle va être.”

He strode more languidly down the steps and slowly trotted across the floor. His song was a much more jaunty tune, more consonant heavy and structured than whatever flighty nursery rhyme Whirl had sung. It was also terribly, horrendously French. Oddly enough, Handy noticed Thorax was watching the unfolding scene pensively. He couldn’t blame her. He didn’t much like the thought of doing this with one banjaxed leg if he were in her place.

“This is ridiculous,” Handy muttered, taking off his helmet and turning from the scene. Thorax glanced at him before quickly turning her attention back around at the sound of a glass shattering. Jacques apparently had bumped into a table on his way across, momentarily lapsing in the song. The roiling blackness above gurgled dangerously. No one looked up. Jacques immediately picked his song back up and continued across with a slightly more hurried pace. While everyone was distracted, Handy cleaned the inside of his helmet as well as his face. That had not been pleasant to tolerate. When he turned back, helmet reaffixed, Jacques had made it soundly across, the dancers now doing a very odd dance indeed. It was hard to tell what the circular movements were supposed to be given their smoky, not-quite-there appearance, but it certainly looked like they were having fun.

Thorax let out a sigh. “Well, I guess I’ll go across next.”

“You?” Handy said incredulously.

She gave him a level look. “Yes, me. If I fall down out there, I want somepony behind me capable of running down and helping me up.”

‘Assuming I’d actually do that for you,’ Handy thought to himself before looking at her bad leg. Well, okay, her bad leg that she was actually capable of standing on. It was a ridiculously ghetto job forming splints on the leg to the point where there was more wood surrounding it to take the pressure off of it, but it meant she could at least walk. Her other leg was now tied up in a proper brace that wrapped around her haunches, to keep the broken leg still. Even so, Handy did not envy her prospective journey across the floor but found it quite hard to feel sympathetic to her right then.

“Suit yourself. I admit I am curious as to what song you’re going to sing…”

She looked apprehensive at that. “What do you mean?”

“Oh, I don’t know, changelings…” he said, knowing the other two were too far away to overhear them. “And taking something and sharing it from deep within their holey hearts.”

She scowled at the human but made no reply, instead facing forward and slowly, carefully descending the steps and hesitating just before the final one, looking across at her end goal, looking up before immediately looking down with a shudder and stomping her fore hoof with determination. She took a step forward and…

Handy was actually stunned. Like the others, Thorax decided to sing in her own native tongue. He had expected some kind of odd language he didn’t understand, a kind of changeling dialect or yet another Earth language that had no business being in this world. Instead, however, she sang in perfect, if a little accented, Equestrian.

“Somewhere, over the mountains blue,

Far, far away~”

The dance slowed to a crawl as the changeling in pony’s clothing limped her way across the floor, the dance becoming slow, considerate, with the dancers separating and swaying slowly in time with her singing.

“Beneath the clouds so high and forest deep,

Lies a place for me and you,

And there, waiting in silence, waiting true,

Stands a home of homes for you to keep.”

Her singing was slow and deliberate, possibly because she was trying to get the song to last as long as she could to cover her painfully slow advance across the ballroom floor. It worked. The… things above certainly weren’t reacting negatively in any case. It sounded almost like a lullaby.

“Nestled within, mountain’s embrace,

Lost amidst time and place its name floats on the wind,

fluttering through the rain, floating on, floating on

Lost amidst time and place~”

Well, she made it, managing to make the note last long enough to get her bad leg over the first step and off the floor, the mosaics beneath her ceased glowing bright white and returned to their eldritch blue glow. Handy’s thoughts had drifted. The ludicrousness of the situation had somewhat dulled and lessened, and he found himself reflecting upon the circumstances leading him here. Specifically the circumstances that had lead him here to these ruins in the middle of God only knew where, dealing with ghosts and dances and rituals and horrible abominations looming above him. Sure, he was doing it all to get the crystal and find a way out, but he swore to God that if he couldn’t twist the arm of those deer to give him some kind of recompense for all of this, he would—

“Come on!” He was snapped back to the present. The three of them had already crossed the ruined ballroom, haunted as it was by eldritch light from the shattered floor tiles. The ancient tables and chairs and all of the decrepit finery and glass works floating upon the air added to the unease he felt. The spinning and cavorting of ghostly shapes of things long passed and beyond recognition flittering in and out of existence only reinforced the sense of foreboding. The spinning forms of the.... things danced in time to the lullabies and childhood songs his peers sang so as to safely cross so that they themselves would not rouse the ire of the shapeless things that lurked in the shadows above them all.

He wracked his brain as he let out a breath, misting the air in front of his face. He had to sing a song from his youth, a truly happy one so as to not attract the attention of the dark creatures above. It was some strange, mystical rule that controlled this place that demanded it to be so. The dance had to continue, and to continue, it had to have more songs, fresh and meaningful, to keep the dark at bay.

Handy really wished that this was a problem he could just solve with his hammer.

“Alright… Alright, give me a moment to think!” he shouted across.

‘Fuck me, a song. A song… What the hell did we used to sing on the playground? London’s bridge? No, too short. Headless Jack? Nah, no thanks, I’d rather not see what happens when you sing a halloween song in this place. Jack may have made a deal with the devil; that doesn’t mean I…’ Handy had to mentally facepalm as he made the comparison between himself and a figure of folklore and the rather unflattering similarities that were to be made.

He walked carefully down the steps, grimacing. He managed to remember a song from his childhood and picked it as he placed a foot upon the floor tiles which lit up upon his step. The iron of his armoured boot burst into a brilliant display of light as it reacted to the metal. “O-ro the rattlin’ bog, the bog down in the valley-o, o-ro th—”

There was a horrible screech, the sound of crumpling paper, and the wet tear of ripping meat. Handy felt cold fear grip the back of his neck like a vice and had a sudden feeling of knowing those things up above were coming down for him. He let out a yelp and fell back on the steps, clambering to his feet to get off of the floor.

The feeling on the back of his neck eased and the horrifying sounds above him slowly quieted as he let out a breath he hadn’t realised he was holding. “No no no! Meaningful! Mean-ing-ful!” he heard Whirlwind shout from afar. “From the heart!”

“Fuck you, I almost got eaten by God-damn overgrown mildew!”

“That just means you have to reach even deeper!” Whirlwind chimed helpfully. Jacques said something he couldn’t hear and he could see the pair of them laughing, with even Thorax flashing a smile.

Handy swore as he got back to his feet again. He risked looking up again, this time straining himself to consider the black… things up above before being forced to look away coughing, trying to suppress his rising bile and dizziness. A song, a song, he had to think of a song. One that was close to him when he was a child, but what? He didn’t remember any lullabies that were sung to him, and the lullabies he did generally know of had no particular meaning to him, probably because he didn’t remember being sang to... No, that was not quite right either, surely he was sung to as a child, but for the life of him he couldn't remember. Christmas songs? Those were always cool, but those were more associated with the holiday than himself. Any song he felt particularly attached to other than those were less childhood and heart-warming and more mature, both in tone, meaning and content. Well… there was one song he remembered from his days on the playground, but it wasn’t one he wanted to be known for singing, even if the others here lacked any context for it.

“You guys go on!” he shouted, drawing his hammer and laying it across his knees as he sat on the steps, clearly thinking. “I’ll catch up. This… might take me a while.”

They didn’t move, not at first anyway. Mostly, they spent the next ten minutes shouting at him trying to encourage him to try it again, and each time he’d just shout back for them to carry on. It wasn’t as if he didn’t plan on finding a way past. He had already exhausted other avenues when he tried the witch torch in finding any other crystals nearby. Nope, none, the only one lay on the far side of the ballroom. Right across the creepy ass ghosts dancing an eternal waltz to placate unspeakable horrors he couldn’t even look at without feeling the need to throw up.

Life was funny like that.

‘I swear, if I get out of here, no more fucking ruins. No more caves, no more underground cities. Fuck it, if I so much as have to step into a particularly large hole in the ground, it’ll be too fucking soon.’ He watched as the others, eventually, turned away and walked off. Thorax paused to give him a look as she followed after them. He couldn’t quite make out the expression, but he imagined it was somewhere along the lines of ‘Don’t fuck up, human.’ Real charmer, that changeling, truly. Then he was alone, nothing but him, the haunted ballroom, and his thoughts. He waited a good twenty minutes until he was sure the rest of the party had moved far enough along. ‘Well, it’s now or never. I hope none of them actually hears this.’

He took another step down and looked straight ahead, taking another breath before descending to the floor. The mosaic came to life with his step and burst with magical light as the metal repulsed the mystical emanations, reflecting and magnifying its light in an incandescent display as if a new star was birthed with every footfall, The horrors above shuffled, disturbed at the burst of bright light, but did not descend. Well, that was one comfort at least. Even if this forest was full of magic that could bypass his only protection against the arcane, at least some of it adhered to the same rules as most magic did. He felt an odd sensation grip his chest, warm and encouraging. Thoughts came back to him about what Whirlwind had said about the ritual and he wondered what effects it was going to have on him. He heard the sound of shuffling paper again and decided that right now was not so much a time for thought as much as it was for action, and then he sang.

“Ohhhhhhhhhh…” he intoned. The spectres stayed their swaying from the melody of Thorax’s lullaby, floating in place, waiting for the new song to set them adrift once more. There was the sound of shuffling paper from somewhere above as the sudden lingering stillness brought the ire of those things above, and Handy realized he was now committed. Nothing for it then. Now, dear readers, you were probably anticipating something particularly deep as to the nature of the song Handy chose in order to cross the room. After all, it was meant to be something deep and meaningful to his childhood. It has to be, right? You would be mistaken. For in the depths of one's most cherished memories, the most memorable thing one can recall of childhood is a nameless happiness. An indescribable joy found in drawing images of people and animals playing under a rainbow strewn sky upon the walls of the guest room and promptly being chided for it. Exhilaration found in wearing a cardboard box on your head and pretending you were a spaceman, or playing with legos and making an incomprehensible block of mismatched parts and insisting that it was clearly a police car, making car noises as you have one legoman chase another because he was a bad guy. Sometimes the most meaningful memories of childhood are those with little to no reason at all behind their cause beyond the simple, almost private joy for joy's sake. So to was it with songs one learned on the playground.

“I’ll tell me ma when I go home, the boys won’t leave the girls alone.” The dancers spun, jumping from one dance partner to another, weaving under spectral limbs as the human felt some odd warmth grow from within him, urging the song forth. “They pull my hair, they stole my comb, but that’s alright till I go home!”

“She is handsome, she is pretty, she is the belle of Belfast city, she is a-courting one-two-three, pray won’t ye tell me who is she?” To Handy’s surprise, he found himself actually enjoying the song as he slowly made his way across the ballroom floor. He hadn’t noticed it until now, but none of the others had actually ran across the floor as quick as they could when they had every motivation to cross with every ounce of speed they could muster. To his not inconsiderable alarm, he found himself not particularly wanting to run across himself either. Despite having every impetus to do otherwise, he took his time. The same feeling that urged him to continue the song was also urging him to slow his pace, and all the while he felt the warm glow, the creeping enjoyment of the song and every sensible voice in his head telling him to break out into a sprint. The ritual, however, wouldn't let him.

“Albert Mooney says he loves her, all the boys are fighting for her.” The spectres increased their pace, the dance becoming… Well, not erratic but certainly much more lively. He heard the sound of tearing paper coming from above and a creeping apprehension along the back of his neck. The song was working, it had to be. The horrors above weren't currently speeding down to enact whatever horrendous fate would befall him if they were roused, after all. So then why were they becoming so agitated? “They knock at the door, and they ring the bell saying, ‘Oh my true love are you well?’”

“Out she comes as white as snow, with rings on her fingers and bells on her toes. Ol’ Jenny Murray says she’ll die, if she doesn’t catch the fella with the roving eye!” That seemed to tear it. The spectres’ dance only seemed to increase in vigor and power as the song rolled on. Handy found himself compelled to sing louder and louder, the things above him growing more restless while the dance became faster and faster. Each footstep he made was punctuated not only by bursts of magical light but also the shuffling sound of paper rolling along paper, like a flurry of manuscripts caught in a strong draft. But as the song increased in volume and the dance became more energetic, it became evident that far from being placated, the things above were becoming aggravated. The pale blue light interrupted by starbursts of incandescent white, like magnesium flares in a dimly lit room spoiled their rest, the dancing of their entertainment too energetic, too… happy, and the singing was too loud, it simply would not do. With another sound of tearing meat, a screech and the feeling of a clammy claw seizing the back of his neck, Handy knew he was doomed.

But he couldn’t stop singing.

“I’ll tell me ma when I go home, the boys won’t leave the girls alone.” The blackness moved. A single cloudy tendril of the unmentionable mass above him scurried and flowed across the wall and down a column, reaching the floor and blackening out the light of the mosaics on the ground as it sped towards the human’s legs. He could hear the screeching only increase in pitch and severity as soon as the mass touched the floor. Handy didn’t increase his pace. He couldn’t. Whatever mystical effect the ritual enforced upon him wouldn’t allow it. He could only walk and sing and watch helplessly as the black mass advanced. “They pull my hair, they stole my comb, but that’s alright till I go home.”

The black mass was almost upon him, and Handy knew his hammer would do no good against it, the same way he knew that when it touched him he was gone. It was a clasping feeling, one that gripped him and physically imprinted upon him the fear of prey which looked upon a predator as it fell upon them. Time seemed to slow in his mind as he turned to regard the mass of blackness approaching him, a knot forming in his throat as he fought the urge to retch. His very being was offended by its presence. Its proximity and the very sight of it almost forced him from his feet. He gripped his hammer and raised it. He knew it was futile, but it was all he could do. He couldn’t run, neither back the way he came nor forwards towards his goal. It was all he could do as he simply watched the thing advance upon him.

He wanted to scream, to shout some profanity at the disgusting wretched thing that sought his doom, but all he could do was sing as he died and throw his toy away like an impudent child. He swung his arm down, throwing the hammer to the ground in sheer frustration.

And then the ground exploded.

Handy was dazed by the explosion of light, temporarily blinding him as he stumbled despite his trance-like state, temporarily stopping his song and the dance. The things screeched as one like a wounded animal and split into tiny independent tendrils of dark sludge that flew through the air and landed around the ballroom. They writhed and shriveled as they became separated from the mass that birthed them and they began to waste away, unable to survive on their own amidst even the weak light of the mosaic floor. The greater mass of the black tendril was what kept the light of the floor from damaging them due to its sheer size, but individually the many tiny creatures that made up the horrifying, physically contiguous mass could not survive on their own and died where they landed.

The hammer lay on the floor near a cluster of shattered mosaic tiles. Lifeless, pale white and inert, the impact had broken them and released the magic within with explosive force that obliterated the tendril, the remnants of which retreated back up the wall as the remainder of the mass echoed with sounds of wet meat, tearing paper and inhuman screeching. The light had hurt it. That was why it stayed on the ceiling; the magic of the floor was keeping it trapped here. The ghosts' dancing was to keep them placated, the ritual was to ensure safe passage without disturbing them from their magical prison. If the light hurt them, then it was no wonder Handy's footsteps aggravated them. The light that came from where he placed his feet must be intolerable to them. The room began shaking as the revolting mass above him shivered in fury. He heard the sound of crumbling rock and a sharp crack as another faultline appeared across one of the mighty columns holding up the ceiling.

‘You’re kidding me. You have got to be kidding me,’ Handy thought disbelievingly as the realization hit him. Of course it couldn't be as simple as the others. Of course something would go wrong. With another horrible cacophony of noise from above, Handy moved as quickly as he could.

Or rather he moved as quickly as he could into a steady stroll as the ritual still had him in his grasp.

“Oh, come on!” The ghosts took it as another part of the song and resumed their lively dance, as Handy, oh so casually despite himself, walked over to his hammer as the room continued to shake. Somewhere, one of the giant mirrors collapsed to the ground in a shower of shattered glass and the things above soon began descending to the floor along the walls, like jets of ink shooting through water. Handy wanted to curse, but unfortunately the song came out instead.

“She is handsome, she is pretty, she is the belle of Belfast city!” The ghosts danced, the black horrors covered the walls and blocked out the light of the floor as they advanced and surrounded the slowly moving human.

“She is a-courting, one-two-three-” the light of the floor was reduced to nothing more than a small circle around him as the ballroom was reduced to near total darkness as the mass fell upon him. The mirrors along the walls reflected the lone human as the darkness enclosed him in multifaceted clarity. He closed his eyes, swung up and then brought the hammer’s head down onto the floor with every ounce of force he could muster. “Please won’t ye tell me who is she!?”

An explosion of magic and light drowned out the sound of metal smashing tiles. An unutterably alien screech of pain and horror as the creatures recoiled and shattered into several massive masses of blackness reeling up like waves crashing against a physical force. The tiny shards that had been blown clear shriveling and dying separated from their host mass, the magical blast having stunned and hurt the creatures who acted as one massive beast. Their convulsions shook the room violently. The mirrors, the only surfaces of the walls they did not cover, cracked and shattered further. At least one of the columns of the walls broke in two and fell to the floor, the impact shattering the mosaic on the ground and causing more explosions of magic. The creatures screeched with horrific noise as more of them died, the rest panicking as the beast broke into several masses, each vying and scrambling and fighting each-other to return to the ceiling where it was safe and the room shook all the more for their volatile movements. Handy opened his eyes once he was sure he was not going to be blinded and continued walking, eyeing the horrors around him. His head span and his stomach revolted, but the sight was now unavoidable. He wasted no time and continued swinging for the floor as he advanced.

“Let the wind and the rain and the breeze blow high, and the snow come falling from the sky!” Another swing with eyes closed shut; an explosion of magic; more screeching; more dancing; more shaking; more things falling as the room continued to come apart; all the while he sang and strolled his way to salvation. “She’s as sweet as apple pie an’ she’ll get her own lad by and by! And when she gets a lad of her own, she won’t tell her ma when she gets home!”

The paradoxical feelings of wild fear and revulsion mixed oddly with the profound sense of joy he was feeling, enjoying himself despite being keenly aware he should be scared out of his mind. It was… strangely liberating. The sight of these horrific things he couldn’t even begin to comprehend being destroyed and beaten back by something as simple as vandalizing their home was strangely vindicating and he felt a profound sense of utter satisfaction in their ruination.

The warm feeling inside of him increased as if the world itself approved of what he was doing. The spirits, trapped in their eternal waltz of the dead and the damned, danced with more erratic liveliness. Their forms becoming more tangible and solid yet still incomprehensibly vague to look upon. Their movements became more independent, even as more and more of them seemed to disappear altogether in little flashes of light. The fear subsided, the revulsion remained and the joy increased as, hammer blow after hammer blow, the things were repulsed, scattered and killed by bursts of magical starlight, their furious convulsions causing more columns to fall and causing more explosions and more deaths as the room began to lose all structural integrity. Handy found himself genuinely smiling in spite of it all. “Let them all say as they will, for it's Albert Mooney she loves still!”

“I’ll tell me ma when I go home, the boys won’t leave the girls alone, they pull my hair, they stole my comb, but that’s alright till I go home!

She is handsome, she is pretty, she is the belle of Belfast city, she is a-courting one-two-three, pray won’t ye tell me, who is she?”

And with the last of the song, he made it to the other stairway. The last of the dancers winked out of existence as finally, through uncounted ages of neglect and deterioration, a wall collapsed onto the floor bringing the roof down with a resounding crash. The last of the horrors screeched in terror as their existence was sundered, being caught between falling rock, masonry stone and the magical explosion as the power of that floor was released all at once. Handy wasted precisely no time once the ritual’s grip was released and hurried up the steps, through the doorway and a dozen or so paces down the hallway until he was sure the collapsing room wasn’t going to spread its destruction further than the ballroom.

He coughed as the dust covered him entirely and looked back where he came. It was completely dark and his witch-torch was doused. He fiddled with the pack at his side and drew the expensive brick from one of the pockets within and shone its light, waiting for the dust to settle. Sure enough, the way back was utterly blocked by tonnes of broken stonework and rock. He let himself fall back against a wall of the corridor and slide down to the ground, breathing heavily.

"Well, that happened. Fuck me." He sat there for a few minutes just catching his breath, reflecting upon how he almost died there for something as silly as a song and a dance. "Heh... hehehe."

His laugh trailed off but the smile stayed. He wasn't sure why but that left him quite happy with himself. It was strange, especially when he considered the ghosts. So far, he only met the ones he found in that library he and Whirlwind passed through. Invisible and melancholic, their whispers had almost unmanned him so thoroughly that he had almost fled from the room. Had the White Stag not appeared and the voices not ceased... No, this wasn't the time to be thinking about that thing. Even if it led him from the frozen city where those black shapes, shadows of memories of an age and a people long since past, wandered forever in their last moments. And now these ghosts, white as clean smoke trapped in an endless dance to ensure unspeakable horrors remained imprisoned. What were those things, really, and who were those ghosts once upon a time to sing and dance to stave off the darkness? Where did they go when they disappeared one by one, as more of the magic of the room was disrupted and more of the things they held in place died and winked out of existence? He had seen them disappear; he had seen them move freely of the endless cycle they had been ensnared to.

It was an unpleasant thought and one that almost spoiled the strange warm feeling he felt. He struggled before choosing to cling to the nice feeling for now. It was pleasant, calming, and one that helped him forget about his worries for the time being. The pangs of sanguine hunger that was now rearing its ugly head was lessened and once again it was put in its proper place at the back of his mind along with all its attendant horrors he had all too readily realized. There would be a reckoning with that side of himself in the future now that he was forced to acknowledge it, but right now it could wait. Handy was too busy enjoying an all too human feeling he couldn't quite name to have it spoiled.

Except all good things come to an end, and his reverie was indeed spoiled. Thankfully, however, it was spoiled by a much more mundane if somewhat pertinent concern: how in the hell were they supposed to get out? Handy looked back sharply at the ruined ballroom entrance. There was no way they could dig their way through that. Like the protesting engine of an old truck revving up, a mighty groan escaped him as he buried his head in his hands. Handy was now somewhere below ground, in a situation where he was neither in control of nor even knew all the details of, and he just had his only known method of exit collapse behind him. Again.

This was exactly the sort of thing he was hoping to avoid this time around, yet life felt it would be good to force upon him a repeat of previous mistakes whether he liked it or not, and he had the creeping feeling that as much as he would like otherwise, this was probably not going to be the last time it would happen either. With a sigh of resignation, he got back to his feet and brushed himself down as best he could. Shining the brick, he found, to his relief, the corridor only extended directly forward with no visible splits in the path. Finding the others should not prove all that difficult thankfully. He thought about how he was going to explain the fact that he had, completely inadvertently of course, collapsed their only known way back.

He figured what they didn't know couldn't hurt them until they came to that particularly burned and broken bridge.

Author's Note

My apologies for the delay.

Chapter 35 - The Lady of the Lake

It had all been going so well too. That didn’t matter now. Nothing mattered – they were all dead men standing.

Thorax was the first to go, transformed into an immaculate glass replica of herself from hooves to horn. The transformation occurred just slowly enough for her to realize what was happening, for the horror etched in her face to be immortalized as she was turned into a solid glass statue. She had been balanced on three feet and was in danger of falling, shattering irrevocably into a hundred million pieces of glass had Jacques not caught her in his forelegs. His scream of outrage was silenced forever as he was transformed instantaneously into glass, the two sculptures that used to be their friends balanced against one another, leaving the two of them alone in their futility in facing down what amounted to a god.

It had been so simple at first that it was funny. Handy had met up with three of them, descending a spiral staircase to a small room where they had been trying to open a heavy, black, iron door with details of swans flying over a river imprinted upon the metal. There had been a lever they had failed to move. They had exchanged pleasantries and banter, Handy feigning ignorance of knowing anything about that sound of a collapsing cavern they had all heard as he leant a hand to the task, only to have the lever frustrate their efforts by refusing to budge no matter how much might and magic and swearing was applied to it. And then Thorax embarrassed them all by simply pushing the already opened door open.

There had been laughter and sighing and they had all exited the room and entered into a vast domed room. The room had been the remnants of an ancient round tower that had connected to the domed roof that had collapsed in on itself, a much greater distance from ceiling to the ground they now stood on than was likely to have been traversed when they had descended the staircase. That was, of course, impossible – a quick walk back inside and looking up the spiral staircase proved it was in fact still intact and quite definitely underground. More to the point, outside it seemed they were on or near the surface yet again – more of the strange magic of these ruins at play it seemed. The domed roof was cracked and collapsed in places, and streams of glittering moonlight poured into the room. They hadn’t been below ground that long, had they? Garlands of flowering vines hung from the edges of these holes, reaching almost all the way down to the surface of the vast lake that filled the room and beyond it.

The ground they stood upon was clearly artificial judging by the flagstones, but it was so ancient that most of had been covered in tufts of grass as earth had gathered over its surface. The once flat surface had convulsed in ages past, leaving little islands of stone work and grass throughout the room as the shallow lake covered the rest. At the far end of the room, highlighted by moonlight, sat a ruined throne. It was a construction of onyx and gnarled oak wood that looked like it had been broken down the middle, as if some giant had grabbed either side of it and tore it apart and it had split almost neatly in two. A small willow tree had grown behind it, trapped between it and the wall. Its branches reached up and around it, swaying wistfully on an almost imperceptible wind, hiding the shattered throne behind a veil of leaves.

They hadn’t noticed her at first, the Lady of the Lake. She had glided silently across the water, her movements barely so much as disturbing the shimmering liquid. She was a tall being, easily ten, twelve feet in height, her lithe body wrapped in a shining dress that shone with an intense yet gentle light. Four long, spindly arms hung from her torso all the way to the hem of her dress. Each ‘hand’ bore two digits that trailed the surface of the water and caused ripples that disturbed the floating lilies and sent the small, blue, incandescent insects that had made their beds among them into the air. Her skin was the same shimmering blue as her dress and easily as bright. Her elongated head came to a pointed chin and bore no other facial features beyond nine oval-shaped eyes. The white depths of those eyes were all the more noticeable for their stark contrast with the rest of her, four down each side of her face with one in the centre. Two long, pointed ears trailed off to what could only be described as antennae that came off the points and hung from her head, golden orbs glowing at their very ends. Her hair shone like the rest of her body, but flowed and weaved through the air in long, lazy undulations as if she were underwater.

She had approached them from behind, gliding around the ruined tower they had emerged from that lay near the centre of the great hall. Whirlwind had stumbled to a stop when he noticed her, hurriedly falling to the ground in supplication while the rest of them simply stood and stared at her in awe. The lady came to a stop before them and regarded them all silently for a long moment before speaking as she inclined her head to Whirlwind.

“Faithless, why have you trespassed upon my home?”

Her voice was beautiful, a sound of dewfall on stained glass during a bright summer’s morning. Whirlwind stumbled back to his hooves, tripping over his own words to answer her.

“I-I, that is, I’m here to aheh, to become the next Lord in Winter, your ladyship,” he managed, though it was evident even through his smile that the deer was scared out of his mind of this being.

Handy was slightly unnerved. Her presence was peaceful, calming even. He knew intellectually of course that she was dangerous – he’d yet to come across anything in this forest that wasn’t – but she was not attacking them. And he sincerely doubted any of them were stupid enough to insult her or otherwise give her cause to do so. Yet even still, he could tell she regarded the deer coolly even though her expressionless, alien face gave no indication as such.

“No. I shall not crown you as such, and there shall nevermore be a Lord in Winter. Take your trinket and leave me before I find offence in your presence.”

Her voice bore no malice and her inflection didn’t change from that pleasant gentleness from before, but the finality of her words weighed heavily upon them all the same. Whirlwind sputtered.

“My lady, please! Y-You can’t do that, my people—”

“Are faithless oath breakers.” She levelled one of her fingers at the deer, and he stepped back. “Your predecessor broke faith; he awoke in spring and fled the forest with the crown and its magicks. So I took it from him when he needed its power most. I have extinguished the Hearthfire, and all the boons I have gifted your race I have taken back. Your tribes will lose their Hartsight; your mages will stumble in their incantations; the forest will turn against you, and you will know plague and famine the likes of which you have never seen. This is the fate you have earned, and I shall not lift my hand to so much as ease your passing. Even this short visit has left me weary of you and your fetid kind. Leave me and take these pets of yours with you.”

And with that, the Lady turned, slowly gliding across the water, her gentle voice casually damning an entire race to starvation and death as easily as one might brush down one’s coat of dust. Whirlwind looked utterly distraught. Whereas before he had been depressed at the thought of giving up his life and his freedom, now he was faced with the terrifying prospect of not even being able to do that and watch as his people die because of his failure. He fell back on his haunches, mouth opening and closing as he struggled to find the words to beg the spirit to change her mind.

“Pets?” Thorax asked, her voice low. Whirlwind turned to her, eyes widening in alarm. “We aren’t his pe—” She stopped as she looked down at her hooves in confusion, suddenly unable to feel them anymore. Where once had been the red furred fetlocks of Crimson, there now stood glass hooves. The glass expanded, creeping up along her body, turning more and more of her to glass. Bit by bit, Thorax felt terrifying nothingness where her flesh and blood had once been. Her breath caught in her throat as the horrifying reality came across her. She tried to scream, but the magic had already reached her throat before encompassing her head, completely her transformation into a glass sculpture, utterly transparent and horrifically lifelike. Handy stood there in shock as he watched the changeling die before his eyes for doing nothing more than speaking out of turn.

Jacques let out a shout of alarm and leapt forward, catching Thorax’s statue before it fell over and shattered on the ground. He turned to shout a hateful curse at the Lady before he too was petrified into glass. Handy just… stood there, unsure of what to do. In one instant, their little party had been halved. The Lady merely stood there on the water, her four ‘hands’ clasped in front of her in a contemplative gesture as she looked sideways at the little group of mortals. Handy felt his skin crawl when he realized her eyes laid on him expectantly.

“Wh-What did you—?” He stopped as he felt something… strange. His feet were cold, or more accurately he simply couldn’t feel them as a strange sensation washed over the rest of his body and a blinding light shone from where he stood. He looked down in horror, glimpsing through the glaring light the grass of the ground which he could clearly see through his own foot.

“No!” Whirlwind shouted, rounding and throwing himself to the ground before the Lady, who only let out an annoyed sound as she continued staring at the human. “Please don’t! You don’t have to; they don’t know any better! Please! Please turn them back!”

“Whirlwind, wh-what’s going on. I-I can’t… I can’t feel anything below my shins.”

“Shut up, just shut up, Handy, please don’t talk!” Whirlwind pleaded.

“This is taking longer than anticipated,” the lady mused, eyeing the flashing light as whatever magic she was using turned both Handy and his armour into glass. Its properties had proven wildly inconsistent before, but this was a whole other level. With Discord and old magic, it was capable of stopping it dead in its tracks. With the forest and enchantments, it proved to be no defence whatsoever, and with the Lady, it appeared to only slow her magic down to a crawl but not much more. This would doubtlessly be a fascinating case study of the effects and comparison of different kinds of magic upon the same magically resistant material to anyone with the knowledge of inclination to care about such things. To Handy, however, it was yet another reason why he was of the opinion that whatever he paid Heat Source, it clearly wasn’t enough. He struggled to move but only succeeded in falling over and landing on his backside with a clatter, more and more of his legs transforming into glass as he watched on in morbid fascination.

“Please, Lady Ashaia, I beg of you. I throw myself at your mercy. Please release my friends, please at least do that.”

“Are you still here?” she asked as she turned languidly to the deer, floating over closer to their little island, the pale darkness of the room tinted blue in the reflected moonlight. “Perhaps I was not clear, or perhaps you are merely as ignorant as all your kind. It matters not anymore.”

Her central eye blinked once and Whirlwind gasped. Slowly, perhaps purposefully so, his hooves in their turn turned to glass before his eyes, and he scrambled back to his feet before crumpling into a ball and whimpering as the torturously slow reality of petrification crept up his legs. Imagine the blood in your veins pumping around your body. It was such a natural intrinsic feeling to your existence that you did not really notice it unless you were specifically paying attention. But this reality of your bodily functions along with many others were brought into terrifying clarity when you felt your blood pump down your leg, the feeling of it leaving your body as it reached the point where blood vessels met solid glass and disappeared into nothingness, only to feel the shocking sensation of blood shooting up one’s vessels on its return trip, as if entering the body anew coming out of the point where the glass met flesh. It was an utterly alien sensation and even stranger to watch which, fortunately, Handy was unable to at his current seated angle. He merely had to live with the sensations and try his best to rationalize it. He failed.

“The forest will return to what it once was before your kind ever blighted it, and I shall be left to my peace, nevermore to be bothered by your pathetic mewling.” Handy looked up to her, his breathing now harried as he tried scooting backwards. His legs were entirely transformed now, leaving him only his arms to carry him. He bumped into something and looked back to see the frozen visages of Thorax and Jacques facing the Lady. “You and your pets shall make better decorations than you ever made as living beings, beautifying my lake and providing a welcome perch for the birds when they roost here in the spring.”

Whirlwind was silent, his expression pained as he lay there, watching his body slowly turn into all too fragile glass. It was cruel, Handy thought, that she was doing that. In his case, he had some insurance that was preventing him from immediately being glassed. In Whirl’s, she was deliberately taking her time.

“Perhaps a few millennia as a sculpture will teach you the proper understanding of things and a greater appreciation of this forest and its ways, provided I do not let the forest have its way and simply reduce you to dust.” Handy clenched his fists as he listened to the spirit drone on. “Only then will you mortals appreciate your place in life.”

“Fuck you, fuck this forest, and you can take your shit and shove it back up your own arse where it belongs you pretentious, ethereal, elven WHORE!” Handy snapped. The spirit turned to him silently. Whirlwind’s head snapped up and his face blanched. Even the magic which was transforming him paused where it held about his waist. Everything was very, very, very still, with only the rustling of the willow leaves daring to break the deathly silence. Handy took the opportunity to throw off his helmet in order to look upon the Lady of the Lake in disclosed contempt.

“What did you say to me, little thing?” she asked calmly, her voice still the same gentle tone as before but with a clear strain behind the words.

“Handy, what are you doing!?” Whirlwind whispered.

“Shut up.”

“You’re going t—”

“Whirlwind, for once in your life, shut the fuck up!” Handy snarled. “And you!”

Ashaia glided across the water but did not cross its edge to step onto the land. “Yes?”

“You are a coward,” Handy spat. All nine of her eyes blinked simultaneously but otherwise she didn’t so much as flinch. He supposed that was as close as he was going to get when it came from eliciting a surprised reaction from her.

“Pray tell, how exactly am I a coward, hmm?” she asked, leaning down. She towered over the human, even if he hadn’t been seated as he was, paralyzed on the ground. Now with her there, he felt a rising, primal fear, like that of primitive men fearing the sound of thunder as lightning split the sky. It was an instinctual reaction and one that told you it was best to placate and soothe rather than anger something much greater than you. Perhaps it had been because he had been cowering in fear too long, hiding in the shadow of the deer for protection from the forest and he felt the need to rebel, to lash out at the darkness around him. Perhaps it was simply pride talking, after having suffered indignity upon indignity, a veritable conga line of humiliation ever since the tournament when that damned earth pony had knocked him clear across fifteen feet and he had gone out like a light. Perhaps it really was fear, causing him to think and act irrationally. He was certainly more than acquainted with it recently, more than he ever cared to and never planned on being again.

Again, perhaps it was his recent victory over those horrors in the ballroom where the waltzing ghosts had kept them imprisoned and where every sense told him that he was doomed, thus emboldening him. It mattered not. The time for reason had long since passed; the time for fear had long since passed. Two of his companions were effectively dead, soon he and Whirlwind would join , and this spirit, this Lady of the Lake was crooning to them, chastising them for doing something as audacious as asking a question. And that made Handy mad, mad enough to throw all sense to the wind and challenge a petty godling in their own home.

“Because for all your talk and for all your power, you waste time locked away in this shallow lake in these ruins, hiding from the entire world, and yet you condemn brave people like Whirlwind here to a slow torture for risking his life trying to save his people and his friends? You’re worse than a monster – you are a waste of time.” Whirlwind simply groaned and laid his head down on his glass hooves, screwing his eyes shut.

“I have no need to leave my home, creature,” Ashaia said, low and dangerous, the white ovals of her eyes bearing down on the human with an almost oppressive force, the magic once again slowly chewing its way up his torso. Pretty soon, Handy realised, he was going to have to worry about the feeling of breathing while being unable to move his lungs.

“Oh forgive me, I didn’t realize I was speaking to a fellow recluse. Tell me, am I wrong in thinking you’re a coward or are you so utterly inept that the only lake you’re capable of ruling over like a goddess is one that barely comes up to my ankles? I didn’t know spirits could get embarrassed. What must all your friends say behind your back? You do have friends, right?”

“Oh gods above…” Whirlwind muttered. Two incredibly long arms reached out and clasped either side of Handy’s head, the long fingers interlocking over his head. Her hands felt like ice, and his skin burned from where they made contact. Handy couldn’t move, the rest of his non-petrified body frozen in paralysis. She leaned down to where her face lay less than half a metre from his own, which was all the more impressive given she had to lean more than five feet from the water’s edge to get that close.

“Perhaps you’d rather I end you now and leave your corpse to feed the earth. Perhaps you are not a very bright creature and I’d be doing the world a favour,” she said softly, almost contemplatively.

“Perhaps…” Handy began, feeling the pressure on his head build imperceptibly. Whatever foolish curse was going to say died on his lips however, when he saw what was walking upon the water by Ashaia’s side. It was there again, the White Stag. Its hooves broke the water, silent ripples washing across the shore of their island as it walked out from the edge of his vision. Its radiance had dimmed somewhat, looking for all the world like any other albino stag from his world with the exception being its black eyes. It stopped and turned to look at Handy as the human returned its gaze. If Ashaia was aware of the stag’s presence, she made no sign of it as it stayed perfectly still by her side. That same familiar yet strange reassurance radiated from it, and for the briefest of moments, Handy’s mind cleared.

“Rituals and vows are specific. Know the right loopholes..." the voice of Forestfire ran through his head as the seeds of an idea were sown in his mind. He thought back about everything he had learned. The deer had no kings because their pact broke that tradition. However, they had lords who were crowned and were recognised by all the tribes but wielded no authority, real or imagined. “You must be as the wind and ne'er know stillness for as long as ye shalt wear thy crown.” He yelped in pain as the pressure increased on his head, yet even that pain did not slow down the thought process.

“Perhaps you should probably be hoisting yourself for breaking your own pact,” he said. The pressure stopped as the spirit paused.

“What?”

“You call the deer faithless, correct? Because Whirlwind’s predecessor left the forest and woke up in spring, right?”

“This is accurate.”

“Then why did you let him?”

“Excuse me?”

“Why did you let him wake up? Your magic runs the crown – you said as much yourself – and you said he woke up. That meant he fulfilled his duty and went to sleep when winter ended.”

“Yes and then he awoke.”

“How?”

“Do not test me, creature! You waste my time with these questions.”

“I— Urk, don’t think I am.” Yeah, that piercing pain Handy felt? That was his diaphragm turning to glass. “Lords sleep for most of the year – they have to. That means it’s magically induced. Are you saying that a lone deer’s magic, Hartsight or no Hartsight, is capable of overcoming your power?”

“Of course it isn’t!”

“Then pray tell, madam, exactly how did this lone buck break through your magic, wake up, and thus break your pact with the deer?” Handy asked pointedly. The spirit was very, very quiet for a moment, and he took in a celebratory breath of air as the glass ceased in its advance across his flesh. This close to his face, and now that his eyesight was used to the pale glow of her skin, he could see her eyes moving. He couldn’t make out enough detail in the white orbs to tell what she was looking at or determine emotion, but he liked to think he was beginning to sow the seeds on uncertainty. He allowed himself a small smile. ‘Alright, Chrysalis, you say I’m like changelings? Let’s hope you’re right and I can pull this off.’

“He didn’t, did he? Something else did, something else woke him up; something else broke his pact, didn’t it?” Handy led on. Whirlwind was now looking up, ears perked as his eyes passed between Handy and Ashaia. Handy was arguing on behalf of the deer using only the most rudimentary of logic based on partial information of a vast and ancient ritualistic covenant he knew jack shit about. So far, however, he had gotten Ashaia’s attention and seemed to be onto something by sussing that it wasn’t the deer who broke the deal. The only other logical conclusion was that it was the spirit herself who broke it, but accusing her of such was beyond stupid, so he offered an alternative, a way for her to save face. This was a dangerous game he was playing and he knew it, but when the stakes were the possibility of death or an eternity as a glass sculpture, you took the dangerous risk. “Because if it wasn’t you that broke your pact, it had to be something else didn’t it? Therefore, it was nobody’s fault.”

He let out another yelp as the pressure returned to the sides of his head. “I will not be tricked by you, human. The pact is broken either way. The fate of the deer is sealed.”

“So, hrgh, it is your fault then?”

“I do not go back on my word, whelp!” her voice like shattering glass.

“Then why are you punishing the deer when they did not go back on theirs!?” he shouted, screwing his eyes shut and gritting his teeth with the pain. Thankfully, she seemed too preoccupied with her anger that she didn’t resume her petrification.

“He’s right…” Ashaia snapped her head around to face Whirlwind, who flinched but kept his gaze level with hers even as he swallowed. “We-We haven’t broken the pact. The last Lord only woke because something woke him up. He only left the forest to put an end to a threat to it, to stop something that could overcome your magic!” Whirlwind said excitedly. However, his exuberance wilted under the cold gaze of Ashaia. At least she wasn’t pressing harder on Handy’s head. Now, if only he could talk her into easing up.

“And?” she asked. “The pact is broken. I will not crown another lord, and you pests still trespass on my home. Nothing has changed.”

“Everything has changed!” Whirlwind shouted, raising his neck as high as he could. Most of his lower body and chest had been transformed to glass, and only his upper back, neck, and head had escaped for now. “You failed!”

“What!?” Handy was momentarily blinded as Ashaia’s eyes exploded with light. He felt the pressure leave the sides of his head and the artificial paralysis imposed on his non-petrified body left him. Good man Whirlwind. Distract that ancient forest spirit while Handy caught his breath, there’s a good lad. “I do not fail!”

“You allowed the pact to be broken. You failed us! You failed us, then you damn us and turn my friends to glass just to cover up for your insipid pride!” Ashaia hissed dangerously, two arms reaching out and grabbing his antlers, the remaining two grabbing the sides of his head in the same fashion she had Handy. It seemed as if she planned on slowly pulling the antlers apart while simultaneously crushing his head like a grape. “Handy’s ri-right, you are a coward!”

It had felt like an eternity but eventually she relented. Had she actually intended to destroy their heads, Handy felt she could have done so effortlessly. He certainly felt the power she was holding back when she had his head in her claws. Her arms returned to her sides as she returned to her full height without speaking a word.

‘Okay, step one achieved: I’m still breathing. Now to work on steps two through seven.’

Handy looked up at the spirit, who was looking off into the distance. He looked down at where the stag had been and found it had actually moved away, walking towards the broken throne before turning around and watching him. Ashaia still had not reacted to its presence, and Handy got the distinct impression he should not draw attention to it. It had helped him before even though he was not sure why. Was it helping now?

“You owe them,” he blurted out. Ashaia turned to look down at him, and he blinked as his brain caught up with what he said. “I mean, you did not break the pact, but you did fail to upkeep it. It’s not the same level of crime. Perhaps…” He looked over to Whirlwind hopefully. “Perhaps you could renew it? Make a new agreement, one that is perhaps more fair?”

“Why would I want to? It is no gain for me. Even if it is as you say, mortal, this is an embarrassment I can live with as his people die.” Whirlwind winced at that. Handy‘s mind raced as he sensed he was losing the momentum they had gained. They had managed to talk her down from murdering them, and she had at least paused in turning them to glass, but that only bought them time.

“D-Don’t you care?” Whirlwind asked.

“No.”

“Then why did you agree to it in the first place?” Handy asked. “If winter does not bother you, the deer have no power over you, and you don’t even particularly like them. Why did you make the pact in the first place?” She did not answer for a full minute.

“A flight of whimsy overcame me. It was little effort on my part, and they provided distraction at the time. But they had also found me in a foul mood, which was why I put the ban on their kingship and provided the rules that bound their lords.”

“Yet they wear a crown.”

“So?”

“You crown the lords in winter. You have authority over the deer.”

“Yes, this goes almost without saying.”

“So you’re their queen. The Lords are your viceroys.” She honestly blinked at that. “The deer don’t have a king because you don’t have one. You are the queen of all the deer.”

“Preposterous!”

“And your own rules are what got us into this mess in the first place. Because your lords were bound to sleep all year and because you barred them from leaving the forest, they could not act in your best interests and that of their people and uncover what could possibly breech your magic. Because something powerful enough to break through the ancient ritual magic of a spirit such as you in the heart of the Greenwoods is certainly something worth investigating, isn’t it?” Handy powered on. He felt he was close to nailing this and he had the spirit’s full attention. “So you are wrong, we do in fact have something to offer you. Whirlwind here is to be the next lord, chosen by the tribes of the deer. Crown him, and once his winter duties are through, he can find what disturbed your magic. Right, Whirlwind?”

“What?” Whirlwind snapped his attention back to Handy, who was trying admirably to breathe now that part of his lungs was effectively glass. Now, the spirit’s curse might not kill them outright, otherwise their hearts would probably explode from all the blood that should be running into glass panes, but that did not make his organic lungs any more comfortable trying to expand and contract with limited freedom of movement. “Oh. Oh yes! Yes, I would gladly do that!”

“Silence! I don’t need you; I can find out the cause myself!”

“So why haven’t you?” Handy asked, only to be met with silence and the stern gaze of the great spirit. “You can’t, can you? These rituals, these entire ruins, the ghosts, whatever weird magic transports us from one place to the next from merely walking through an open doorway… you’re trapped here, aren’t you?”

“You are treading a fine line, creature. I do not care for your tone.”

“But that’s okay!” Handy quickly held up a placating hand while suppressing the desire to smile. He had her; he could feel he had the upper hand here for once “Whirlwind will do the work for you… You just have to make a new arrangement: make him the Lord in Winter and allow him to remain awake during the year… and leave the forest.”

Whirlwind’s eyes widened as the enormity of what Handy was suggesting dawned upon him, and he looked back at the spirit. That was appropriate, Handy thought, since he probably actually knew all the consequences of what he was proposing, unlike himself. Ashaia was silent for a good long moment, all of which was exceedingly uncomfortable for the two mortals present, particularly Handy, who had to deal with his armour burning brightly and nearly blinding him if he didn’t keep his eyes constantly squinted. At last he heard her sigh, the sound of wind blowing across a meadow, and he gasped. The magical grip released him, and he felt warmth and feeling return to the parts of his body that had been petrified returned to flesh. He let himself remain seated on the ground for a moment as pins and needles erupted across his lower abdomen and legs. Whirlwind, on the other hand, wasted no time stumbling back to his hooves.

“It is not that simple,” she said evenly, gliding across the water. He actually sat up in alarm and scrambled to his feet when he saw her draw nearer to the spot in the water where the White Stag stood before the throne, almost knocking over the still petrified ponies. Ashaia simply seemed to pass through it as if it wasn’t even there, not so much as acknowledging it or even noticing the disturbed water where it stood. Handy simply blinked in confusion at the sight. “There is power in kingship. Even if a king has no real authority, they are a symbol, a physical representation of the past, present, and the future of a people. A pact like this cannot be made without one.”

Handy looked at Whirlwind for confirmation, but he merely shrugged. “Then why make it so the deer couldn’t have any future kings?”

“I never expected this to become a problem,” she said simply. “Also, I felt like it at the time.”

‘Of course you did,’ Handy thought bitterly. All that work only to be turned away because the deer didn’t have a king. He supposed they could just return to the city and tell Forestfire what happened. Then the deer could convene and elect themselves a king… and probably fight amongst themselves over which tribe the king should come from. That was going to take a lot longer than winter to resolve, and by then it would be too late.

“Will any king do?” he asked suddenly. He glanced at the White Stag who still stood between them expectantly. Ashaia looked back at him in surprise. Her hands were clasped in front of her once again.

“It need only be a king.”

“And what does he need to do?”

“Bear witness.”

“…That’s it? He just needs to watch?”

“Erm… Handy, ‘to bear witness’ means the king needs to speak and acknowledge the ritual,” Whirlwind clarified. Handy rubbed his jaw in thought.

“And despite being their effective queen, you can’t do it?”

“No,” Ashaia answered. “I perform the ritual.”

“…Well okay then, hop to it. I guess we can get this show on the road.” And for the third time in the space of an hour, Handy caused a spirit that was immeasurably older than him to blink in surprise.

“…Are you saying that you are a king, creature?”

“My name is Handy, I’m a human, and no. No, I am not,” Handy said, scratching his chin before clearing his throat and speaking in the official manner he had been taught by Ivorybeak. Once upon a time, Handy wondered how far he could abuse the power vested in him by his friend without betraying his trust. This might be one such abuse, but time would tell, “I am however, the Sword of the King. I speak with the authority of King Johan the Blackwing of the Kingdom of Gethrenia, first of his name, the warden of the North-western passage and vassal of High King Aleksander, the Ironclaw of Griffonia.”

“Where I tread, I bring his sword and his law. In this person, my word is his word and when I speak, it will be as from the beak of the king himself,” Handy finished. Whirlwind just gawped before turning to Ashaia.

“Can… Can he do that?” the deer asked.

“…It will suffice,” Ashaia conceded, regarding the two of them thoughtfully. “If what you claim is true, human, and you are truly this king’s ‘sword’, then the ritual can be performed. I need only for you to acknowledge the first crowning. All others will be performed in that understanding. But be so warned, Handy of Gethrenia, if Whirlwind ap Whisperwood fails in his duties as lord, then not only his people will suffer my wrath, your kingdom will as well.”

Handy paused. What had once seemed like a brilliant idea now seemed altogether too reckless. He looked hard at Whirlwind, thinking. If he went through with this, he would effectively be entrusting his entire kingdom and everyone within it to this… utter clown of a stag to track down whatever the previous lord in winter had been hunting. Sure, if he fucked up, his people would suffer as well, so he had every incentive to succeed. But if he didn’t, then the new pact could not be made, there would be no Lord in Winter, the deer would be decimated by the season, the Hearthfire would remain unlit so their magic would fade, and the forest would turn against those who remained. “Excuse me for a moment.”

He walked over and knelt down so he was face to face with the stag. “Listen, Whirlwind.”

“Yeah?” The deer smiled, altogether too happy with how this was turning out. His smile shrank when he saw the hard glint in Handy’s eyes.

“Swear to me, right here and now. Swear to me you will find whatever broke the covenant or die trying.”

“Handy wh—”

“Do not. Fuck around with me. On this,” he managed through gritted teeth. “I promised Forestfire I would look out for you and keep you safe. I have risked life and limb accompanying you here, and now in order to help you fulfil your fucking ordained role and for us all to get out of here alive, I am putting my entire kingdom at risk. Swear to me right now that you will do this, not just try, but succeed. Do it or I walk.”

“…I-I swear.”

“Do better than that.”

“I swear! I swear by the gods!”

“Fuck your gods! Swear by mine!” Handy nearly hissed.

“I swear! For the sake of the ancestors, Handy!” Whirlwind wilted, looking hurt. Handy’s hard gaze did not let up until he was satisfied by what he saw in the deer’s eyes.

“Alright then. I’ll take that.” He gently laid a hand on Whirlwind’s shoulder and gave it a few light taps before he stood up and face Ashaia, who had watched the display impassively. The White Stag had moved, now behind Ashaia, to the right hand side of the broken throne near a broken portion of the wall behind the willow tree that he hadn’t noticed before. It still went unnoticed by the others. Whirlwind not noticing he could get over, but the fact Ashaia didn’t even seem aware of its presence was just unsettling. “Let’s begin. Just let me know what I need to do.”

“You only need to speak with the authority of your king, recognising Whirlwind’s ascension,” Ashaia said. “Step into the water, deer born.”

Whirlwind complied with the command and strode into the water. The shallow lake shimmered in reflected moonlight as Handy looked on. It was a surprisingly brief affair but magnificent nonetheless. Water lifted into the air around him in a circle as concentric tendrils of liquid rose up and spiralled slowly around him. The water lit up with a greenish-blue incandescence as his antlers’ carvings shone, an aura of golden magic expanding from it like an expanding cloud of gas. When it met with the water surrounding him, the room shook. A beam of light erupted from where he met the water and shot through the roof, portions of it breaking off and falling into the water as the building groaned. Well, that certainly answered where all the holes in the ceiling came from at least.

Ashaia had her arms outstretched, her face impossible to see as it was absorbed in a blinding light emanating from it. Handy had to cover his eyes for most of the ritual, but he could hear the two converse in low, ominous tones in a language he couldn’t understand. He suspected for his part that he didn’t need to understand, only bare witness. The magic in the air was electrifying, and he felt his heart pump faster, his armour maintaining a dim luminescence as the ambient magic became far too omnipresent and oppressive for it to ignore. He struggled to keep his eyes on the magical display, but it hurt to look at.

Finally, with the smell of burning air and a loud snapping sound, the magic dissipated. He saw the form of the stag drop from the air and splash into the water of the lake, limp and lifeless. Handy almost took a step forward before a sharp look from Ashaia stopped him in his tracks. Whirlwind eventually shifted, struggling back to his hooves on shaky limbs. He seemed… different somehow, bigger perhaps. More whole. He saw the saddlebags on Whirlwind’s side open as the crown was lifted from it. The burlap cloth covering it was unravelled and discarded. The bundle of silvery chains and the precious gems encrusted along their lengths shimmered in the moonlight as it hovered in the air above the stag. Only then did Handy notice that the spirit’s magic had no apparent aura when it used it unlike almost everyone else he had seen use magic. Curious.

Ashaia spoke in low tones and was answered by Whirlwind. The ‘crown’ was lowered, and the silver chains spread out and wrapped themselves around the stag’s antlers, the chains conforming to the grooves along the bony structures. They flashed a bright white then a soft golden colour as power washed over him. Before their eyes, his nut-brown coat changed and bore soft shades of autumnal red and brown. You could still see the original colour of his fur at the roots, but towards the end of each follicle, the colour changed to those associated with autumn. Ashaia then looked up at Handy expectantly, and the human was almost caught off guard. He coughed and drew up his hammer and held it in the air in a salute, unsure of the exact words he should say. He opted to keep his speech short.

“In the name of King Johan Blackwing of Gethrenia, the Lord of Winter has ascended.” He immediately felt a lurching feeling, as if something left him, and he had to fight to remain steady on his feet. Ashaia nodded and Handy felt relieved that the words sufficed. He could not shake the feeling of nervousness of what he had just committed Johan’s kingdom to. He hoped he would never have to find out. If Whirlwind succeeded, he would never have to. He’d just have to trust the stag for now despite his misgivings.

Whirlwind rose to his full height, facing the spirit. Ashaia remained for a moment longer before sighing at the unspoken request. She waved her hands, and Handy turned when he heard yelping from behind him. Thorax had collapsed into the surprised grasp of Jacques as both of them returned to normal. She hurriedly extricated herself from his grip but promptly fell on the ground after losing her balance.

“And the Hearthfire?” the surprisingly authoritative voice of Whirlwind enquired. Without a word, Ashaia nodded. A small white-blue flame erupted behind her, hovering in place beneath the swaying branches of the willow upon the seat of the broken throne. It was subtle at first, but the effects were otherwise immediate. A wave of sparkling energy spread out from the fire, spreading across all the surfaces of the room. Everything came into sharper focus, more colourful. The pool of water seemed to become clearer, the lilies in the water blooming in the moonlight, the very grass they stood upon becoming greener. Forestfire was right. When the Hearthfire was lit, you would notice it. Hell, you could feel it.

“We are concluded here,” Ashaia said with finality. She crossed all four of her arms across her chest. “I await your success, your lordship. Do not fail me.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it!” Whirlwind said, his cheerful tone slowly creeping back into his voice. Ashaia merely nodded once more and… promptly descended into the lake? She just sank into the water, disappearing into nothingness without so much as causing a single ripple. Handy had little time to reflect on it before he was tackled from behind.

“Mon ami! You’re alright!” Jacques shouted, grabbing Handy around the midsection. Surprised, Handy stumbled.

“Get off!”

“No no, hugs! It is time to celebrate no longer being glass! I saw everything!”

“Will you just let— Everything? You were still aware while turned to glass?”

“Yes,” Thorax said from her spot on the ground. Trembling, she had yet to get over the same pins and needles they had all felt after de-petrifying. “We saw you talk her down… Thanks.”

“Y—” He was interrupted and bowled over completely to the ground by the ball of exuberance known as Whirlwind, who had tried to keep a calm dignified manner after having been crowned. But that lasted all of five seconds before he bounded completely over to his friends and turned what had been an unwelcome friendly hug into a proper dog pile.

It took Handy a few minutes to untangle himself from the two of them as they promptly began happily chatting with one another. He brushed himself down as Whirlwind burst into a detailed explanation of everything that had happened during the ritual. Handy did not bother listening, instead looking around to try to find the White Stag again. He saw it where it last stood beside the throne as it turned away and walked through the gap in the wall. Taking one last look at his companions and a tentative step into the water to ensure Ashaia wouldn’t pop out and glass his ass again, he left the three of them to their discussion and followed it.

--=--

The gap in the wall led outside. He followed the stag at an even pace through more ankle deep water, then up a hill and down again, until he was led to a grove. It perhaps was once a garden, judging by the broken stone benches covered in plant life, but that hardly mattered now. The White Stag had stopped in the middle of it and pawed at the ground with a hoof and a snort, disturbing the earth and seemingly moving something hidden beneath the moss of the ground. It then took several steps back.

Taking the hint and approaching cautiously, Handy stepped forward. He kicked away the heavier portions of dirt and moss where the stag had indicated, feeling something heavy and solid beneath. He crouched down and dug it up, revealing a long, seven-sided crystal the length of his hand coming to two points on either end. It was immaculately preserved and transparent, a rod of golden liquid contained within. He had found a vortex shard.

He looked up at the White Stag in surprise; the black eyes of the creature looked back impassively. He swallowed, his throat suddenly dry. He looked behind him and then back again. “What are you?”

The stag only looked back, its animal face unreadable and seemingly alien now that he had become so used to the faces of deer, griffons, and ponies. Its ears twitched once but otherwise it made no motion. The same creeping sense of reassurance and familiarity was present, yet Handy was certain he had never seen this creature before in his life. He did not know it, but it knew him and had known him all his life and before he even came to be. It had known him long after he was gone too. “…Who are you?”

“Handy!” He looked back at the call. He hesitated for a moment. The stag still stood there looking at him. He rose back to his feet and backed out of the grove. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to leave but somehow he knew that he had to. He turned and left to join the others. He didn’t see the White Stag fade away.

Nor did he see the joyful glint in its eye.

--=--

“There you are! Where were you?” Thorax asked, dragging herself out of the water to meet Handy as he descended the decline. He held the crystal up.

“Getting our ride out of here… Thorax, did you see anything odd out on that lake?” She just stared at him, unimpressed.

“Oh no, I saw something completely pedestrian and normal, just another day on the town. You know me!” she said with a sweet smile and a voice utterly dripping with sarcasm. Handy snorted.

“Right, fine, stupid question. Where are th—”

“So of course I said I didn’t like the colour pink— Oh hi!” Whirlwind practically stumbled out of the bushes and into the water. Jacques emerged not far behind. Why on earth had they exited the throne room only to wander into the bushes nearby was beyond Handy.

“Never mind. So,” he said seriously, turning to Whirlwind, “we have an understanding then?”

“Yeah! We sure do!” he said happily before chuckling and practically dancing on the spot, happy beyond belief despite how he had been previously dreading becoming the lord. When Handy did not reply and kept glaring at him, he stopped, cleared his throat, and repeated more soberly. “Yes. We have an uh, understanding.”

“Good. Right, how are we going to find our way back?”

“Simple, we’ll just go back the way we came, no? With that torch of yours, we should find the entrance in no time. A hop and a skip past the ballroom and out we go.” Handy was unusually quiet when the group passed around their affirmations. He sighed and rubbed his face.

“Yeah, about that…”

--=--

She sighed and pulled the lantern closer with a hoof, her magic drawing the shawl about her tighter. The wind howled outside but she found herself smiling all the while, even though there was little joy to be found this night. More than a week had passed since she last saw him. A few days had passed since she knew the Hearthfire had been lit, a few days since she knew with irrefutable proof he had fulfilled his mission and was lost to her forever. The strength of the Hartsight returning to her with its full strength would be a constant reminder of that.

She kept herself busy, throwing herself at her duties to prepare Whisperwood for the winter as her tribe happily celebrated the kindling of the Hearthfire. Riverblossom had tried talking to her, but she was in no mood for her grandmother’s reassurances. She put one scroll away and unfurled another, allowing her eyes to drift across the flowing, exaggerated script, taking comfort in the familiar stories they told. They were her only comfort on these cold nights of the twilight of the seasons while she sat there all alon—

A pair of hooves landed gently on her withers, and she felt a muzzle brush her right ear.

“Boo.”

“OH GODS!” The lantern swung around in her magical grip and clashed heavily into the stag’s face. He fell back to the ground with a shout of pain. “Stand and deliver, you cowardly, wretched, home-invading… Whirlwind?”

“Good to see you still have a good swing, Fire,” Whirlwind managed, cradling his very much broken nose.

“Wh-What are you doing here? What happened to you? Why are you… the crown!? What are you doing here!? You can’t step hoof in a city! You’re supposed to be asleep! It’s not yet winter!”

“How are you? Oh I’m fine, thanks for asking,” Whirlwind said with a chuckle, getting up and holding his muzzle with a hoof. Forestfire took a step back, her antler stumps aglow with a white magical aura, threatening to burst into flame.

“Y-You need to leave. Right now, before the Lady of the Lake finds out. You need to go! You can’t be here!”

“Mmmm, actually yes I can. There’s been a change of circumstances. Kinda why I went ahead and snuck in to talk to you about it first before they come into the city and the deer start a riot.”

“Whirlwind, we are half a mile up a Heartwood tree. How in the Greenwoods did you sneak up here?”

“Lord in Winter, remember?”

“It’s not winter. Your magic shouldn’t work.”

“YYYYYeaaah, see that’s why I needed to come talk to you first. You see…”

And so Whirlwind spent the next two hours explaining, in excruciating detail, everything that had happened so that his friends could safely enter the city. And then he explained it again. Then he went over the parts she went him to repeat, and then he answered questions. Then Forestfire slapped herself to ensure she was still grounded in reality, then he repeated it again, then she hyperventilated at the implications. He splashed her in the face with a cup of water, she thanked him, then slapped him, asked a few more questions. Finally she calmed and sat on her haunches, pondering over everything that transpired as she slowly processed all he had told her.

Eventually half the Heartwood was woken up from their slumber by the sound of their chieftain yelling at a volume rivalling a certain equine princess when she was at her most annoyed.

“YOU DID WHAT!?”

--=--

Arguing with Forestfire was interesting to say the least. Handy was done being dressed down by a pacing, sputtering, apoplectic Bambi for their transgressions and fundamental alteration of the deer way of life, going into a tirade about how a lord who was awake all year fundamentally changed the power balance and interrelations of the deer tribes and around twenty other things Handy couldn’t give a fuck about.

Handy retorted that she should pay him for the service anyway. She literally caught fire, or at least her antler stubs did, and her eyes glowed dangerously. The situation was defused rather handily by Whirlwind pointing out that Handy only fulfilled deer tradition… by breaking deer tradition and then getting away with it. He needn’t have done so. Had Forestfire honestly intended to punish any of them for the outcome of their little foray into the deep dark woods, she would have already done so. She was just blowing hot air for the benefit of influential members of the tribal council for the Whisperwood.

Still didn’t stop Handy from goading her for shits and giggles. Although he was serious in getting recompense for their troubles, foremost of which was Forestfire doing more to convince the other tribes of the Greenwoods to not murder the shit out of the friendly neighbourhood human should he, against his better judgement, enter the Hartwoods again. He never intended to, but he was covering his bases. The second thing? Directions to the city’s best blacksmith and the chieftain covering the cost to repair his gear. He had been tempted to just extort her for all she was worth but didn’t want a repeat of the situation he found himself in after he first met the changelings, especially considering he was going to use an ancient artefact of incredible power and unknown properties which no one knew how to use properly to hurtle himself several countries distance in any random direction. He’d rather not do that and have to worry about bags of loot too, as tempting as it may be.

He’d also like a drink. He could really use a drink. He was already several days into a new week, he hadn’t had a drop, and his hunger was getting quite noticeable. However, he swore to himself he wouldn’t, no matter what, so he buried that right where it belonged.

Right under the mind boggling apoplexy he experienced as he listened to young buck explain to him the totally rational reason why he should solder wood to cover the patches of his armour. “Okay, start again, this time a little slowly please.”

“Okay!”

“This is iron bark.”

“Yep!”

“It grows on trees.”

“Absolutely!”

“Therefore it is wood.”

“Mmhm!”

“Wood is flammable.”

“Of course!”

“And you suggest welding it to my armour…”

“Yeah, iron bark is really malleable too. Really great for repair jobs like this, especially since I can’t actually tell what metal this is.”

“It’s steel.”

“Really? It’s so shiny.”

“It’s silvered steel. It’s not all silver; the silver can come off over time,” Handy explained patiently, something he learned the hard way.

“No no, I got that much. I mean, I never saw metal with these properties before. Where did you get your steel?”

“The Equestrian Badlands.”

“YYYYeaaaah, I have no idea where that is!” the near yellow-furred buck replied. The young stag was supposedly a mere apprentice in the diverse crafts deer caste, but he still ran his own shop, which spoke volumes for his ability and skills apparently. For all that, he was still a forest born bumpkin who knew nothing outside of the Greenwoods. Handy groaned.

“The armour was forged there. I think the metal came from nearby mines to the blacksmith who made it. That’s all I know.”

“Well that’s a darn shame. I don’t know how to work the metal. I could just repair it with other materials. I see you already have some patchwork done to it, but that’s just going to stress the metal over time. More if I just slap some more on there. Ironbark is useful. I can grow it into shape and it’s sympathetic. Enchantments, special properties, it can adapt to them over time and strengthen itself. Really useful stuff.”

“It’s wood.”

“But it’s hard as iron!”

“Wood burns, I cannot emphasise this enough, but no means no. Use proper metal instead,” Handy said, tapping the interior of one palm with two fingers of his other hand. The young buck sighed.

“Oh fine, I was just trying to do you a favour.”

“I’ll bet.” Handy grumbled, leaving the deer to his work. He didn’t particularly care for walking around in the middle of deer central without any protection, even if the population had significantly warmed to the foreigners’ presence. A fair number of them were still outraged that their chieftain sent outsiders to the sacred valley. They were even more irked that it resulted in such a fundamental shift in the insular lifestyle they had lived in for centuries. Sure, it wouldn’t suddenly result in an exodus of deer into the outside world. Literally no one on either side of the Greenwood’s borders wanted that, but it was a major change nonetheless and would have far reaching consequences.

He wished the deer luck. It would be their problem to deal with, and he would be long gone by the time said consequences rolled around. With his armour taken care of, he returned to the Hishym where they had been allotted accommodations. He still had to put up with being shadowed everywhere he went by guards but they at least kept a comfortable distance. People still whispered – somehow the fact that pretty much all of them were whispering in the deer language made it worse – but he put up with it all the way back up to the Hishym and into the house afforded them. He was getting his armour repaired and pretty soon he would get a free ride out of this hellhole of a forest and either on his way home or on track to breaking that earth pony sorcerer’s skull. Whichever came first and was convenient while he was fulfilling this damned geas of Chrysalis’. Unfortunately, as much as he preferred the former, the latter was far more likely to be his next goal.

Jacques nodded a greeting to the human as he entered the building from his seat by a low table in the front room. Handy grimaced and gave an imperceptible nod before striding upstairs, leaving the stallion alone. Jacques turned back to the house of cards he was building as he levitated another one into place, bringing it in line with the other one held in place by his magic to complete the house and form its roof. He heard muffled voices coming from above him and an ear swivelled around to follow the noise. He recognised Crimson’s voice, the one Thorax used in disguise. Funny, he didn’t know she was up there. She must be talking to Handy about something. He was curious as to what but he really wanted to finish this house first.

“YOU DID WHAT!?”

Something heavy fell to the ground in the room above him, shaking the room just enough to knock his house of cards to the ground.

Jacques sighed.

--=--

“You’re funny looking,” said the magical talking fawn to the vampire. Handy scowled at the confused little deer, but the little shit refused to budge from her spot. It had been two days since they had returned back to Whisperwood. It was a Friday, and Handy was in an even less charitable mood than he normally was. The end of the week was getting pretty close, his armour still wasn’t done, and he’d rather not find out what happened when he reached the moment that Thestrals started becoming ill for not fulfilling their needs in the middle of the forest.

But that wasn’t the real reason he was getting antsy. Sure, he was being bothered by a child, it was raining, and he had a cold and lacked any adequate covering. That’d piss anyone off. His real problem was that he was incurably lost, and he’d be damned if he was going to ask a child for directions. “Aren’t you a little young to be speaking fluent Equestrian?”

“Momma says it’s important to broaden your horizons!” the little kid said, chest puffed out proudly as the rain beat down. Handy was standing underneath the balcony of some building on the ‘ground floor’ of the city. The child had wandered over from some nearby house or other. He could see the lights in the window and the silhouette of what may have been a parent or an older sibling keeping an eye on the scene. Well, good to see the kid wasn’t allowed to wander the city in the middle of a downpour completely on his own.

“What, is your mother an outcaste then?”

“Yeppers!”

“Huh. Well alright then.” The two stood there in silence as Handy waited for the rain to stop. The child continued studying him curiously.

“You a pony?”

“What?” Handy snorted.

“Momma says ponies are weird. You’re weird and I heard ponies helped Mistah Whirly become the Winsh-ir.”

“The what?”

“So you a pony, mistah?”

“No, I am not a pony. Ponies have hooves like you do and walk on all fours.”

“What are ya then? A dog?”

“…No, I am not a dog.”

“How do ya know you’re not a dog?”

“Do I look like I have floppy ears, little girl?” Handy asked irritably. The fawn’s cheeks puffed out and its muzzle scrunched up.

“I’m a boy!” Whoops. Well forgive Handy for making a mistake. Believe it or not, it actually was pretty difficult to tell the difference between genders when looking at a species one was unfamiliar with, especially their younger versions. Not everyone’s sexual dimorphism was as radical as the deer when they were adults, and it took some adjustment to get used to the subtle differences at first when one lived among the ponies and griffons. Even though looking back on it, those differences seem laughably obvious now. Also? The fawn’s voice was squeaky as all hell.

“…Little boy then. No, I am not a diamond dog.”

“Why not?” What kind of question was that?

“Because clearly I haven’t suddenly transformed into one.”

“Can you?”

“Oh I’m sure I could. I just need someone to kick me hard enough in the face. That oughta do it,” Handy said dryly. The boy looked like he was going to respond to that but caught the look on Handy’s face and realised he was being sarcastic. Kids aren’t the brightest people around after all.

“Listen, I’m not a diamond dog. I’m not a pony, not a griffon, not anything else.” Handy then raised his hands and wiggled his fingers. “Clearly, I am a minotaur.”

The boy’s face lit up at that, and his smile widened to encompass almost the entirety of his face. “Really!?”

“Really, really.” The fawn hopped on the spot in excitement. Apparently he had heard of minotaurs but had never been given a detailed description of one. Something his mother would doubtlessly correct him on whenever the hell she got back from her duties as an outcaste.

“That’s quite enough now, young Oaksfury. Run along now,” the Elder spoke. Handy looked at the approaching elk. His antlers and their illusionary carvings that seemed to shift shape if you weren’t looking at them directly were aglow. A light, barely perceptible corona of energy kept the rain off of him as he slowly made his way up to the pair of them. It was funny. Only now that he knew he was there did Handy notice the terrible racket the various medallions attached to his antlers were making.

“Awww, but I was just talking to the minotaur.”

“Were you now?” The rough, homespun tone of voice was warm with mirth as he raised an eyebrow at Handy before turning back to the fawn. “Indeed. But I think its past your bed time. You wouldn’t want me to tell Summerglory what you were up to while she was away, do you?”

The fawn by the name of Oaksfury gasped and shook his head vigorously, bounding off back to the house with the light coming from its window, the door opening and him disappearing inside. Handy sneezed before shivering, and he eyed the elder suspiciously. How had he found him? He was so lost that he had even lost the guards who were tailing him.

“So. It seems my old friend has a fine nose for good couriers,” Wildwood said with a smile. The magic extended in a dome that shielded them from the rain and the wind. Handy was still soaked, however, his clothes little more than tattered remnants of the undergarments he only wore under his armour to prevent chaffing. A simple tunic and trousers of light fabric were ill suited to keep him warm.

“I take it yo—thou meanst the pony known as Fancy Pants?” Handy asked, and the elk nodded. Handy snorted derisively.

“You know, I am genuinely sorry for the trouble this put you through. You were never meant to end up here and get mixed up in all of this. However… I cannot say I am not grateful that you did.”

“Yes, I am sure thou art,” Handy said, irritable and tired. “I suppose thine little grandson told informed thee of all that has transpired?”

“He did.”

“Then thou knowst what I hath put at risk to save both of our lives and ensure thy people live through the winter?”

“I do indeed.”

“Then see to it thy grandson does not fail,” Handy said dangerously. The elk’s friendly expression did not waver as he studied the human. Something on his back was lit up in the grasp of his magic and hovered between the two of them.

“Whirlwind is quite capable, I assure you. You have nothing to fear for your kingdom.”

“I had better not,” Handy said looking away. His eyes were shifting from place to place, looking anywhere other than at the elk. Wildwood noticed he was preoccupied with fidgeting. His guards had picked up on this in their reports, and it had been getting more noticeable over the past few days. He didn’t mind it, putting it down to a mixture of exposure to the cold and an understanding of how this forest affected outsiders. After all, he remembered how Fancy Pants had been during his time here. It was perfectly reasonable to expect odd behaviour.

“Here,” Wildwood said, levitating the small package over to the human.

“What is this?”

“A gift, token of appreciation. Also, you look cold.” Handy eyed the package suspiciously before tearing it open partially. It revealed a thick cloak beneath, the material tough and heavy yet soft to the touch. It appeared black at first but was actually a deep, almost sable navy when he saw the sheen of light reflect off of it. “Also I understand, from what my grandson has told me, you have certain questions for me?”

“Questions?” Handy parroted, looking up at the elk’s face for the first time.

“Yes. About a certain thing that… doesn’t exist? Of which there is no such thing?”

Handy understood his meaning immediately. He took his time trying to formulate a response as he looked down. He rubbed his finger and thumbs on the soft fabric of the cloak he had been gifted. He… didn’t want to think about it. In fact, he had been flat out told it was best if he never thought about it, pretend it didn’t exist so as to not draw its attention. The tone in the elk’s voice made him think that the elder was not entirely fond of the idea of discussing it either.

So he didn’t ask. He decided he didn’t want to know, only forget. Instead, he chose to ask about something altogether more interesting, more benign. Or so he hoped.

“I’d rather ask… What is the White Stag?” Wildwood just blinked.

“The what?”

“It was this thing I saw in the ruins… It looked like a normal stag but different. Bigger, black eyes… Do you know what it is? Is it a spirit like Ashaia or… or what?” Wildwood considered his words for a minute, screwing up his face in thought.

“Unless you’re thinking about an albino deer, I am not sure I know what you’re talking about.”

“This was not an ordinary deer. I don’t even think it was a deer at all.”

"Please, describe it for me." Wildwood asked gently, he still wore his friendly smile but beyond that his expression was unreadable. Handy did the best he could to describe the White Stag as it appeared by earth standards without giving the game away as it were.

“Well I’m sorry, but I am not sure I have seen such a thing before, and it is my business to know about these things.”

“Oh…” Handy continued looking down at the cloak, thoughtful. Wildwood looked around as the rain seemed to be getting heavier.

"If it bothers you so, ser Handy I could make a few enquiries, I am certain elders of a few other tribes I know might know something more. If what you say is true and not even Lady Ashaia perceived it, then it is either a facet of your imagination or something greater we are not yet familiar with."

"No. No thats okay, thank you. I think it may have just been my mind playing tricks on me. Not used to this forest, its ways..." Handy trailed off.

“Your Hishym is by that Oakenheart over there, the one with the golden veins crawling up its bark,” Wildwood said, pointing at the great tree in question. “Second one up, can’t miss it.”

“How didst thee know I was lost?”

“Because you look lost,” Wildwood said happily. “And listen, I am sorry I couldn’t tell you what you wanted to know. If there is anything at all I can do to help, please, just tell me.” Handy put the cloak on over him. It lacked a hood and only came down to his knees, but it was incredibly warm. Instantly, he found himself shielded from the cold air as he began tying it off at its front. He paused as realization hit him.

He recalled something Chrysalis had said to him when he first spoke to her upon waking in the Greenwoods. The amulet was in his packs back in the house they were staying in, so there was no way she could overhear of find out in advance. A smile crawled across his face. “Actually, there is something you can still do for me. Two things in fact.”

“Name it.”

“Well, for the first thing, thou hast means to contact Fancy Pants from within the forest somehow, correct?”

“Yes?” Wildwood asked. Handy’s smile grew broader.

“I would request thee to tell him that he shall have some guests coming to visit him soon,” he began, brushing down the outside of his cloak, “and that he should extend to them every courtesy they deserve…”

--=--

“Are you sure?”

“No.”

“Of course you aren’t…” Handy groaned. They were gathered at a clearing north of the Whisperwood city. Apparently it was close to some minor deer village belonging to a tributary tribe that served the Whisperwood, little more than a clan though Handy hadn’t seen it. He likely wasn’t supposed to. Apparently they only needed a clearing to ensure as little of the surrounding area got transported with them, otherwise they risked teleporting the entire base of one or more of these absurdly tall trees. That would have left them with the possibility of arriving wherever the crystal took them with a gigantic lump of wood landing on their backs, while the deer would be left with the possibility of playing redwood dominoes and desperately praying none of the trees landed on their houses. Ain’t nobody got time for that shit.

Funnily enough, Handy’s armour was ready and the provisions and supplies promised by Forestfire arrived at the house exactly one hour after he had met with the tribe’s elder, allowing them to leave the very next day. Fancy that. Jacques and Thorax shadowed him as he walked down into the clearing, and he tried not to glower too much at the pair of them. Thorax for her part was keeping her distance, not really trusting the stallion. Damn right she shouldn’t. He couldn’t believe what she had told him.

To think Jacques knew all this time and had used magic to reveal her! Somehow the stallion had sussed out Thorax’s true nature beforehand and, for reasons unknown, had kept the knowledge to himself. Handy narrowed his eyes dangerously in Jacques’ general direction as the swordspony lay against a log and ran a whetstone across his sword, humming happily. He was going to be trouble – no one kept their mouth shut about known changelings without good reason. Not to say Handy’s reasons for doing so were good, but they were incriminating which was almost as good a justification.

“So just place it on the ground like this. With this end pointing towards where we want to go?”

“Probably,” Whirlwind replied, shrugging. “I only know that if you break one outside the forest, it takes you somewhere inside the forest. Hence, you know, everything that happened, heh.”

“Swell…” Handy grimaced, placing the crystal on the ground, pointing it north. The Greenwoods expanded in all directions and was the size of several countries, but it was narrow. With Griffonia to the north and Equestria to its south, it acted as a barrier between the nations almost as implacable and impassable as the mountain ranges to Griffonia’s west. So pointing the crystal north or south was the fastest means of getting out of the forest. God knows how it worked, because the deer sure as shit didn’t.

“Well Whirlwind it has been fun, après une mode. Take care of yourself, oui?” Jacques said, tipping yet another newly acquired hat, having lost his last one sometime during the adventure in the ruins.

“I’ll be fine, Jack. Hey! Maybe we’ll bump into each other again after winter! You can help me when I go on my adventure!” Jacques tapped his chin for a bit then stroked his goatee as he smiled.

“Perhaps. How much you paying?”

“…Really, Jacks?”

“A pony has to eat,” Jacques said simply. Whirlwind rolled his eyes and turned to Handy.

“And you can count on me, Handy. I won’t let you down!”

‘For your sake, you had better hope you’re dead if you fail,’ Handy thought bitterly. His anger wasn’t directed at the deer specifically, more at the circumstances that led to him having to place his faith in him. He held his hoof out to him, and Handy looked at it for a moment, confused. Hesitantly, he gripped his hoof in his gloved hand and shook it, which felt weird. He beamed at the human before turning and bounding off up a long incline overlooking the clearing.

“Well, I suppose this is it then. You two ready?” Looking back, Jacques stood ready while Thorax sat on her haunches. Her leg was doing much better after a few days being looked after by the deer apothecaries, but it would be obviously out of commission for the next few weeks at least, and for that it was tied in a proper cast. Well, proper in that it held the leg steady in a crouched position up to her haunches. The cast itself appeared made out of various kinds of long, green leaves and yellow vines. He wasn’t going to pretend to understand how it worked. All he knew was that it was slower than salamander salve for healing a broken leg.

God, he could use a bottle of that stuff. He really could.

Looking around, just to make sure they weren’t going to fell any trees when this thing exploded, which was not a reassuring detail Whirlwind had filled him in on. The clearing was surprisingly dark. Everywhere else was brightly lit except for here. Looking up, sure enough there was enough sunlight piercing the impossibly high canopy that this place should be as bright as any other. As it was, he could just about make out details in the half light. Whatever, it was not his concern anymore. Looking back up at Whirlwind, he paused. Maybe he should say something? Tell him about Bambi and exactly why she had arranged things in such a way that he and Thorax accompanied Jacques and Whirlwind. It would certainly be doing him a favour.

…Nah, fuck ‘em.

He raised his foot and brought it down just as Whirlwind said something. “Wait, maybe it was the other side you need to point…” Handy’s foot crashed down, shattering the crystal, splitting the golden rod that exploded into a rapidly expanding gas. He had just enough time to shout one last thing.

“WHAT!?”

And with that, the gas expanded out in a circle, encompassing all three of them before it solidified and flashed into a perfect sphere of light that almost blinded the deer. When it was over, he lowered his hoof and winced. “Oh dear… I hope they ended up where they wanted.”

He watched the rapidly diminishing mist that was left in the wake of the crystal’s explosion and the circle of bare earth that was transported with them. Eventually, he sighed and turned away, walking back to the Whisperwood city.

Far above the scene, silent dusty wings fluttered by the sides of the being who watched on. Four hooves nestled close to its barrel on the branch as the pale purple coated creature blinked its eyes back into focus. That light had been so beautiful, but it had hurt. It rubbed its eyes with a furry fetlock as it ruffled the fluff around its neck and chest. Its long antennae twitched in agitation as it picked up scents its nose on its muzzle could not detect.

It had seen the skin changer. The legends were true; they did exist. News known only to it, none would believe it when it told them the tale. Its wings fluttered once and its tail flicked, ears perked and listening intently to the forest and its many threats. It had lingered long enough. It was too near the deer; it must flee for now before it is discovered and hunted. It rose to its hooves and leapt from its perch, wings fluttering as it weaved its way through trees and branches and the innumerable dangerous to flight in the forest.

And as it left, the darkness that shrouded the clearing lifted, and sunlight once more touched the earth unhindered.

--=--

Good news: the crystal did indeed take them outside the forest, as the first thing he saw was the open sky. So terribly vast he initially felt a sense of vertigo as he stared into its immensity.

Bad news: he was looking up at the sky because he was transported horizontally, standing perpendicular to the ground.

…five feet up in the air.

He let out a yelp and flailed, turning as he fell and landed hard on the ground. He let out a heavy groan as he pushed himself up before immediately hitting the ground again as a weight landed on his back with a pained cry. Another weight landed on top of whatever the hell landed on him with a more feminine cry.

Handy found himself at the bottom of a pony pile.

‘Thanks God,’ Handy thought as he just lay there as his companions slowly crawled off of him, ‘However, I don’t think that was quite right. Feels like its missing something, a certain… I don’t know what.’ Chunks of earth landed upon all three of them as particles of dirt washed over them, the remains of the ground they stood upon when Handy broke the crystal.

“See, now that’s more like it! What are you going to do for an encore?” he said aloud. He was greeted with groans in response from the other two. There was a crack of thunder and immense cloud banks rolled over the horizon and darkened the sky as rain began pouring down on them. Whatever weather teams far away were responsible for pushing this mess on top of them from afar could not have timed their work more perfectly. He clucked his teeth. “Bollocks.”

Author's Note

And so ends the Crown of Winter arc.

Join us next time when Handyman learns how to write concisely and doesn't trap the audience in a horrible doom forest for three months.

Chapter 36 - A Short Story

They came in the dark of the night and with the wind on their backs.

She didn’t see their faces, only the harsh shadows and silhouettes as the fires burned brightly in spite of the rain, burning down the hovel that had always been her house and home, her safe place. It was hers, her sister’s and her mother’s – she rarely got to see her father as he usually worked the fields far from home. Now it was no more, its meagre treasures stolen, its roof collapsed and burning, letting in the elements to ruin what little was left amongst the ashes. She didn’t get to see her mother’s eyes one last time. All she had managed to glean, upon waking up that dreadful night through bleary eyes, was the strange shapes made by shadows of panicking village griffons upon the walls of her room. Shadows cast by orange light from somewhere beyond her window.

The door to their room had burst open, and she was bundled up into her blankets with her toddler sister. She could barely make out the words her mother was saying through the panicked babbling and her sister’s wailing sobs. She only clearly perceived the sound of the window being thrown open and the weightlessness as she was dropped from her mother’s claws.

She had landed hard in a puddle on the far side of the window, spluttering and struggling. She threw the blankets from her, looking up only to see the window close shut behind them, hearing the screams of her mother and the horror as they was swiftly silenced and watched as the fire engulfed what had once been her home.

She had shouted then, but she could no longer remember what her words might have been. She knew she had cried. It was all she could do to dive into the bushes near where her house had been to avoid the roving bandits that had torn her hamlet down to ashes, her wailing sister bundled in her claws as she prayed desperately for her to calm down and be quiet before they were found.

Whenever the brigands passed their hiding spot, she covered herself with her wings, cradling her infant sister in her forelegs and quietly sobbing through the remainder of the night as the flames turned to embers, until the baron’s troops finally came to pick up the survivors. They had been elsewhere, dispatched to village after village to put down the shattered remnants of the force of brigands who crossed over from the kingdom of Jerminok. They had been led by a petty would-be warlord ousted from his roost in that benighted land who had sought easy spoils in the next kingdom over. He had been promptly stomped into the ground by a small army of an attentive duke who wanted none of that nonsense. Not that it comforted her much.

But there were consequences even for the greatest of victories, and while the countryside had been spared the ravages of a thousand-strong force of rampaging griffons, the tiny bands that had bled away after the army was routed and destroyed fell upon the unprotected villages. Many of their griffons of spear-wielding age had been away to the fight, including her father who had gone with the baron’s soldiers. He was not among them when they returned.

Every night since then, she had thanked the All-Maker that her younger sister hadn’t been old enough to remember their mother, at least enough to miss her. Her harsh raspy voice from lungs hardened by the wracking cough that swept through the region a decade earlier, the soft edge to her wizened features that only a mother could achieve despite a life of hard toil, the distinct tinkling sound of her laughter and how she had called them both her little miracles. She had been a beautiful griffon, so very beautiful even in spite of her age, well past child bearing age when she had them both. It was too much to bear, too much to see the light of those beautiful magenta eyes snuffed out forever. It was a pain that bit too deep to bear whenever she recalled her beauty. How she chided herself for a fool to have gone back to see only the charred ruin that remained of her.

The image had stuck with her, as did the hatred, burning hotter than the sun within her. She had sworn then and there by the All-Maker, the old gods, and whomever else had been listening, that never again would she be left so helpless, be found so unready and be so unable to stop harm coming to those whom she loved.

On the very break of day after her life had ended, with her baby sister clutched in her forelegs, the griffon who would only ever bear the name of Shortbeak was a changed creature.

--=--

“Come back here, thief!”

Shortbeak ran, the paltry few edibles bouncing precariously in the worn cloth she clutched in her beak. Her breath frosted upon the cold winter air as she sped across the cobblestone streets, splashing puddles of icy water as she ducked and weaved beneath the legs of the townsfolk milling about the market place. She didn’t fly – that was a rookie’s mistake, for she would be too easy to spot from below. The guards would have had no problem catching her, even if her larger wings gave her more wing strength and speed than most griffons her age.

Instead, she capitalized on her thin frame, ducking left and right, through legs and beneath stalls and over crates, swimming through the sea of bodies like a fish through water, leaving the angry produce merchant far behind where he could not follow. She slowed down when she got to the back alleys, on the bad side of town, far from the noisy chatter of the streets, and where the sky was obscured beneath full clotheslines and boardwalks that connected the roofs of buildings. She was safe here now. She took a minute to catch her breath and listened carefully for the sounds of anygriffon following her.

After a while, when it became evident nogriffin was after her, she relaxed, letting the makeshift bag fall to her claws as she slunk further into the shadows, taking shelter behind the broken remains of half a cart around one particularly dank corner, flanked on the far side by a rather torrential downpour of water that had gathered in the corner of one of the roofs far above her, and was overflowing and falling to the muddy ground below.

She uncovered the bread. Several large slices that had been whisked away from the stall of the merchant still radiated with the warmth of the stone ovens they were cooked in. The smell was rich and heady, and she felt her beak water as her mind began to ponder the taste. She closed her beak and shook her head. No, if she took a bite for herself, she wasn’t sure if she’d stop to ensure there was enough left for both of them, hungry though she was.

Satisfied with her haul and confident she had avoided the authorities, all that remained was to get out of these alleys and back to their little hovel. If they were wise, they could make this last for at least two days between them before she’d have to go out again. Tying the cloth up and holding it beneath one wing, she emerged from the alcove and took a left turn.

And ran straight into a wall made out of muscles, fur, and feathers.

She fell back on her hind quarters with a startled shout and looked up about to cuss out the fool who had clearly not been watching where they were going. The words died in her throat. “Well what d’we have here then eh?”

The question was followed up by a bark of harsh laughter from the griffon’s crony. She knew who he was – everygriffon on the streets knew Sharpclaw. He was tall for a griffon, dark brown feathers with yellowish eye shadows, with the exception for a bloody streak going down across one milky eye. He took a step forward, and Shortbeak hurriedly found her footing again. She knew she should apologise – hopefully he’d not take offence and go and ruin somegriffon else’s day instead – but Shortbeak wouldn’t. She would never allow herself to, and her defiance had bought her an unwelcome reputation on the streets of Downsfallow. One the griffon before her wouldn’t appreciate coming from anyone, especially not from a child.

“Nothin’ t’say fer yourself then?” he said before lashing out with a closed talon, punching her straight in the chest and sending her to the ground with a pained yelp. She dropped her package, the baked goods spilling onto the broken cobblestone ground. “Oh lookee here, Jerm, chicken neck here has an awful lot of food on her claws. Perhaps we should do t’right thing and help her carry some of it, eh?”

The other griffon just chuckled before letting out a rattling cough and went to pick up the bread. “No wait, that’s mine!” Shortbeak shouted, getting back up and spreading her wings wide, only to crumple into a ball on the ground when Sharpclaw lashed out again, catching her full in the stomach.

“Stay down, kid. I’ve heard about you, causing all sorts of trouble for my griffons on the streets. Yer lucky I got somewhere to be, so I’ll just be takin’ your food in restitution for getting’ in my way.”

“Sit on my claw and spin, you piss-cub!” Shortbeak yelled. Sharpclaw’s brows rose at the venom in her voice, amused by all accounts as he watched the hurt young griffon struggle back to her paws. He grinned and gestured for Jerm to come over, reaching into the small bundle of cloth and taking out a half loaf of bread.

“Ya got a mouth on ya, girly. You want yer bread back that bad, huh?” he asked, waving the bread in question just out of her reach, snatching it back as she swung her claws to desperately grab for it, letting her fall face first onto the ground. He then casually tossed it behind him “Fetch it then.”

Shortbeak saw the half loaf bounce on the ground before landing in a puddle next to a gutter. She shouted in outrage and leapt into the air, seeking to scratch out the one good eye of a griffon that was much bigger than her.

Pity he was stronger and faster too.

It was over before she knew it, and the next thing she knew, she was dazed on the ground from a tremendous series of blows to the head, followed by a surprise collision with the ground. Her left foreleg throbbed in pain while her right was pinned behind her back, pulling straight as a damp paw stomped down on the small of her back between her wings, keeping her pinned.

“Not too smart, are ya?” She screamed in pain as he began pulling on her foreleg, threatening to break it. She wanted to cry, but she would be damned if she would give him the satisfaction of seeing her tears. “Shout all ya want, but I own these alleys. Nogriffon’s coming. Now all ya gotta do is say sorry and I’ll let you go. Is that too much to ask?”

“Not… g-gonna…” was all she managed before letting out another cry, her free foreleg scrabbling at the ground uselessly.

“Boss, we still got eight more doors t’knock,” she heard the other griffon say casually through a mouthful of bread. Sharpclaw sighed and let go of Shortbeak, but not before swinging around with his rear leg and kicking her once more in the stomach for good measure.

“Next time, kid, I’ll break those freakish wings o’yers, you get me? Now be grateful, you little gutter pigeon.” He swiped the ground with a claw, casting dirt and stone fragments in her face as she lay on her side, clutching her midsection and groaning. She lay there for a while, occasionally letting out a shuddering breath as she covered her head with a wing, accompanied only by the sound of the wind and the spattering noise the water made as it fell onto the ground.

Slowly, she recovered enough to pull herself to her feet and shuffled over to the discarded piece of bread. Half of it lay within the puddle. She looked at it with an unreadable expression, her eyes hard and her beak tightly clenched. She picked it up from the ground nonetheless, studying it in her claws for a moment before carefully tearing the soaked portion of the bread apart. It was fine – she could let it dry for a while, and her sister could have the good bit. She wasn’t too picky herself.

Her stomach growled, and the thought wouldn’t leave her of the wrong she had just suffered that was completely humiliating! They had had enough to last them a few days. Now all she was left with was one good piece that might keep one of them well fed for a night, and a soggy, dirty half she’d probably get sick from eating. The thought burned. She had sworn she’d never be so defenceless again, and just then and there, she had the stuffing knocked out of her by some gutter snipe low life who thought he was cock of the walk.

The soggy bread was crushed in her talon as her wings rose and splayed as anger rocked through her, her fist shaking. The smart thing ,of course, would be to forget about this altercation, go home, share their meagre food for the night, lick her wounds, and try to be more careful when she went out tomorrow for another food run.

Of course, she’d be having none of that. She wasn’t going to let him get away with that. She would never let anygriffon get away with doing that kind of thing ever again, and if she didn’t start now, she’d only be creating excuses for herself later in life for being too weak to make a stand. She cradled the remaining good portion of bread in her wing, turned on the spot, and ran down the alley, seeking to follow after Sharpclaw and his crony and reclaim her lost property.

She’d show him and everygriffon else she was not to be messed with.

--=--

It was only really when she had actually caught up with Sharpclaw that common sense kicked in.

He had a lot more griffons with him now. She had emerged from an alley onto a short street containing a few rundown houses and a number of stores, mainly an iron monger, a grocer, a rather grubby-looking tavern, and what looked to be some kind of florist.

Why anygriffon would spend hard earned crowns on flowers of all things was beyond her, but apparently the proprietor made enough trade to keep afloat… and attract Sharpclaw’s attention. He was on the outside of his shop facing Sharpclaw and his gang of louts, six of them in all, including Jerm who was casually eating what little remained of the bread they had taken off of her. The rest seemed to just mill about or lean up against walls, giving anygriffon who so much as looked in their direction a mean look. She stayed behind a relatively large crate full of iron bars as she watched the proceeding events. She wanted to stop them, to help the florist and get Sharpclaw back for beating her… but there were a lot of them.

“I’m s-sorry, business just hasn’t been good this month. Give me another week.”

“I’m tired of your excuses, pony. Give me my money or else.”

“I will! Just give me some more time! I-It isn’t even due yet.”

“Yeah, well, there’s t’rub, you see? Me and the boys had to change the rules around to, uh, what was the word, Fingle?”

“Adjust to shifting economic conditions.”

“Yeah, see, totally reasonable,” Sharpclaw said, idly picking his teeth with a talon as he eyed the intersection the florist’s shop bordered. Shortbeak looked around as the pony florist continued to blubber and beg. The street had a good number of griffons about it, but most were distinctly not looking their way, the other shopkeepers keeping their head down and trying not to be heard so as to not draw the gang’s ire. Only one griffon seemed to be eyeing the altercation, a middle-aged fellow speaking with the iron monger, but otherwise everygriffon kept their distance.

She turned back when she heard glass breaking. The pony let out a terrified yell as Sharpclaw loomed over him. Griffons on the whole were larger than ponies, though not by much, but Sharpclaw’s height helped add to the intimidation factor nonetheless, just in case the horrendous scarred eye wasn’t enough.

“I’m sorry, was that your window?”

“Please…” the brown stallion backed up to the door of his property, stopping only when he ran into the club of a yellow griffon who had placed it in his way and was just shaking his head at him.

“It’d be such a shame if anything were to happen to your shop because we couldn’t be around to keep it safe, now wouldn’t it? Why, All-Maker forbid, something might happen to you.” By now the pony was utterly blubbering, looking left and right, wondering where the guards were. He needn’t have bothered. Sharpclaw knew the streets too well, knew exactly which guards who’d give enough of a damn to come looking if someone called and which ones to avoid. More importantly, he always knew where and when they were hovering about. There would be no help coming, and even if it did, it would be too late. Everygriffon there knew it.

“Please… just… please, give me more time.”

“Excuse me, could you please move?” Nogriffon reacted initially, rightfully thinking no single person would be audacious enough to see this particular scene and think to themselves that it was a good idea to walk up to the gang and ask them to politely move out of the way. Sure enough, however, that was exactly what happened, and the six griffons, and terrified pony florist who stuck out like a blooming rosebush in winter, turned to look at the interloper.

Shortbeak had barely noticed the middle-aged griffon as he passed until he spoke, so focused was she on the unfolding scene. He was short, with white feathers on his head and his wings, his coat a pale yellow that matched the shadows of his brown eyes. You couldn’t see most of his pelt though, covered as it was by piecemeal leather armour and tightly bound belts and bandoliers filled with All-Maker knew what, with nothing more than a small, cracked mace at his side for protection that looked like it was made out of wood. She had seen this guy floating about before, usually around taverns. He was there talking to the iron monger not too long ago in fact. What did he think he was doing?

“If you’d be so kind that is. I need to buy some flowers,” the griffon said, smiling genially. At that, Sharpclaw broke the spell that had lingered over the street that had reduced everygriffon to silence and let out a laugh.

“Take a sight o’this one, ey fellas? Flutter off, you useless old bird. This doesn’t concern you.”

“Didn’t say it did, young griffon. I only want a few flowers,” the older bird answered, still smiling happily while the gang began growling and casting dangerous looks his way. Sharpclaw put the pony down and turned towards him. The pony scarpered back into his shop.

“Listen, old bird, you must be new here, so I’m—”

“I’m not old.”

“What?”

“I’m not old. It’s rude to assume a griffon’s age if you don’t know them. Did your parents not teach you that?” the upstart replied, tilting his head slightly as he regarded the group’s leader, who promptly spluttered in outrage.

“My pa taught me plenty! And I think it’s about time I passed on some o’his lessons! Boys, teach this miserable cub fondler a lesson!” he said, jabbing a finger at the interloper. Shortbeak almost wanted to turn away; she didn’t want to see yet another griffon get beaten to a broken wreck in the middle of the street. Indeed, she had even raised a wing to cover herself so she wouldn’t have to. But curiosity made sure she spread her primary feathers just enough to sneak a peek.

What she saw would later change her life.

The first of the griffons lunged at the mace-griffon with nothing more than his claws. He was a big, burly, brute anygriffon would recognise as Bricker. If his size didn’t give him away, his distinctive ululating yell whenever he went to town on some poor bastard would, such as right now. Wings splayed, he closed the small distance in a heartbeat.

And in another, the mace griffon had reared up on his hind legs and lashed out with a closed claw. The blow collided with Bricker’s throat with a sickening crunch. As the large griffon fell to the ground, the older griffon grabbed him by the head and bashed it once against the ground, leaving Bricker dazed and gasping horribly for breath, his voice gurgling as he pawed at his collapsed throat. The older griffon just stood there on his hind legs for a minute more, his wings outstretched from his sides but resting downwards, just enough to help him keep his balance. His smile had fallen away to be replaced by a simple, expressionless beak, and his eyes had gained a dull, faraway look to them.

The remaining five, one would imagine, would have been momentarily stunned at the ease of which the interloper had dispatched the largest of their number, outraged at the defeat of their comrade, slightly afraid that the same might be done to them, and unsure of which of them would be next if they made the mistake of attacking him, thereby being easily defeated one at a time.

If you had assumed as much, you had entirely too much faith in the comradery of back alley scumbags.

Without so much as an erstwhile glance at the choking wretch that had been made of Bricker, the rest swarmed him, with three taking to the air, jumping over their fellows in order to catch him if he should retreat, while denying him the chance to attack them from above.

He did neither and ran head on, ducking low to the ground with his wings outstretched as he fell to all fours. Shortbeak looked on disbelievingly. She wasn’t sure when he drew that cracked and broken wooden mace, but it was out all the same as the closest two, the ones who remained on the ground, lunged for him. He twisted, his wings enclosing in him, and he dived between the two of them. His centre of mass changed in an instant, and the two fell on the ground, misjudging their leap in the quarter second it took for him to remove himself from their sight.

He stopped to a skid on the ground and whirled, rearing up with a swing of his wooden mace in a vertical arc and bringing it down on the skull of the first fool to turn his head around. In two more rapid swings, his friend was down on the ground, bleeding. The three in the air quickly corrected their course and descended upon him. He was swarmed as the three griffons clawed, kicked, punched, and pulled at his wings.

An upward swing of the mace, still clutched in his claw in a death grip, cracked another one’s beak. Another was winded by a powerful kick to the gut, and Sharpclaw himself reeled, screaming, his one good eye now sporting three claw marks across it. The dagger fell from his claw as he cradled his bleeding face.

In another instant, it was all over. The griffon was up and breaking bones with every swing of his mace until they were all down on the ground. He stood in the midst of the ruin of bodies, none the worse for wear for the brief beating he had received apart from breathing slightly heavier than he had been. It had all been over in less than a minute, leaving the street in stunned silence, punctuated by the pitiful noises of the gang griffons who had the misfortune of still being conscious.

He turned quite simply on his paws and walked casually to the florist’s shop and disappeared past the doors. Shortbeak blinked, giving a quick glance to the litter of bodies that carpeted the ground before her and the murmuring crowd down one end of the street, and swallowed. She emerged from her cover, flapping her wings to carry herself over the bodies. She landed on the far side, scurrying along the wall until she was beneath the window of the store.

“G-Go away.”

“Please, I just want to purchase something.”

She looked up, glancing through the ruined glass panel Sharpclaw had smashed. She could barely see the top of the mane of the pony florist from where he cowered behind the counter. Also, the bowls and pots of stupendously colourful flowers might have something to do with it. She actually had to blink her eyes several times, so jarring was the sheer variety of colour on display within this one little store in comparison to the near uniform grey and ashen brown of the town within which it resided.

The griffon was standing calmly on the other side of the counter, trying to coax the shopkeeper out of hiding.

“Sorry if I was interrupting anything,” he said with a small smile. “I just want to know if you have any white carnations available?”

“Wha— White… carn…” The florist put his hooves on the counter and rose up just enough to eye the griffon across the counter. “I… I don’t think I have any carnations in st-stock, right now… Is… Is that all you want?”

The griffon let out an almost imperceptible sigh as he closed his eyes for a moment. He looked back up at the pony with that same friendly face before asking, “Will you have some in soon in that case?”

“I… I s-suppose so,” the pony said, slowly recovering and speaking properly to his rescuer. “I can get a hold of some is… Are… those fellows going to be alright?” he asked, gesturing to the window. Shortbeak ducked down as the two of them looked her way. She heard groaning coming from the ground next to her. One of the gang members stirred and was waking up. She quickly kicked him in the face, and back into unconsciousness he went.

“I wouldn’t worry,” she heard the griffon say. “They won’t be bothering anygriffon for quite some time at the least. I can guarantee that.”

“A-Are you sure?”

“Positive. Now, about those carnations?” Shortbeak spied the remnants of the bread that had been stolen from her earlier, lying on a ground on the cloth that cradled the bread. She hurried over to them and scooped them up. She took one last look at the devastation the old griffon had left in his wake. Her wing twitched, and she felt a surge of satisfaction that they had gotten what was coming to them.

Pity she couldn’t teach them the error of their ways herself. The thought stung, and she grimaced. She ran back down the alley she had emerged from, finding her way back home before any guards decided to actually do their jobs and investigate the disturbance that little street fight had caused.

--=--

“Amelia?” she called out as she lifted the wooden sheet that blocked the door to their little hideaway. It hung on a single wooden peg, meaning you had to push it up to the side to get it to lift up. She ducked under the entrance and stalked inside. It was small and cramped – such was life living under the foundations of a mill. It was loud and far too warm in the summer, but it was dry and kept the chill out in the winter, and frankly, that was enough.

She looked into the alcove where Amelia slept. The tattered thick mat that served as a mattress was empty, yet the hooded candle still burned, and she spotted a pile of her scavenged parchments lying nearby. She called out again, putting the bread on a relatively clean spot of the ground where it wouldn’t be covered in dust shaken from the rafters by the work happening above them. “Where in Tartarus did she get off to?”

No sooner were the words out of her mouth then she felt claws go over her eyes, obscuring all light, and a voice whisper in her ear, “Boo.”

To say the following events were dignified would cause an objective observer to seriously call into question your method by which you measured propriety. Needless to say, however, the mill worker above the floor, currently carrying several kilos of finished product over his back, raised a brow at the sudden jump the floorboards made at his feet before shaking his head and dismissing it as vermin.

Amelia rolled on the floor, laughing as her sister cradled her head in her claws, groaning. “Oh All-Maker, your face! You should have looked above you. How many times am I going to get you with that trick?”

“I can’t keep an eye on all the rafters,” Shortbeak grumbled, rubbing a sore head as she gave her sister the stink eye. Amelia was smaller than her, little more than a cub, dark brown feathers, with a dirty golden ring of feathers around her neck where the head met the bronze fur pelt. Yellow claws were clasped over her beak and her chest as she sought to stifle her laughter. Topaz eyes encircled by a yellow shadow of feathers sparkled with mischief and intelligence as she wiped away the tears.

“Yeah, right, whatever helps you keep your pride intact, Feely.”

“I told you to stop calling me that.”

“Ohhh, is the big scary griffon going to stop me?” Amelia teased, wiggling her talons at her sister, but her teasing petered out as she saw the darkened look crossing her sister’s face. “W-Why are you looking at me like that?”

“You are entirely too clever for your own good, Amelia,” Shortbeak said as she stalked slowly closer to her sister.

“Aheh, Felicia, wha-what are you…”

“And you know what happens to griffons too clever for their own good, don’t you?”

“Wait… Wait, let’s be reasonable here! You don’t have to—”

“They get the claws!” Shortbeak leapt at her sister, who promptly shrieked and scurried away, futilely trying to flee her sister’s wrath as they chased each other in and around the wooden supports. Her pleas for clemency were callously ignored by her relentless pursuer and thus, with a yelp and a tumble of feathers and fur, she was captured and her sister proceeded to tickle her remorselessly. Each tortured squeal and fit of laughter was a sign of defeat and loss in the face of the unremitting tickle claws of the devious Shortbeak and a harsh lesson learned for embarrassing her sister.

She tried everything in her might to maintain what remained of her dignity and pride, but alas, in that respect, there were no survivors.

--=--

“Bread again?” Amelia asked. Shortbeak nodded.

“Uh huh, it’s what I get paid in, remember?” she said, settling in with a blanket thrown over her as she lay across from her sister who, somehow, had gotten her claws on a rather ratty-looking book of some sort. To anygriffon with any coin in their purses, the book was probably worthless, but she felt a pit develop in her stomach when she imagined how much Amelia had to pay to get her claws on something like that. “So… new book?”

“Yep! Mister Hren was just throwing it away anyway so he let me have it.”

‘Oh thank the All-Maker.’ “So what’s it about? More alchemy?”

“Feely! I keep telling you it’s not alchemy!” Amelia whined. “It’s so much more than that!”

“Right right, I keep forgetting,” Shortbeak said, rolling her eyes while resting her head on a claw as they both lay under the warmest part of the mill. “So then why don’t you tell me what it’s for?”

“It’s about the theory of Everfall the Wanderer. She had this idea that magic was so much more than what we thought, using zebra potion traditions as an example of rituals and methods that fall outside our expected norms!”

“So… alchemy?” she teased.

“Nooo! The opposite! Sometimes you can make potions without using magic at all!”

“So, brewing?”

“Feeeeely!”

“I am just yanking your tail, go on.” Shortbeak chuckled.

“It isn’t like that at all either; that’s just chemistry. It’s something else entirely!”

“Mm-hm,” Shortbeak intoned, whiling away the night listening to her sister go on and on about her endless fascination as they ate their bread, letting her sister’s boundless enthusiasm distract her thoughts from wondering where she was going to have to get tomorrow's dinner. Eventually she moved from whatever nonsense she was trying to explain to the more usual affair of talking about technical wizardry like steam engines and how they worked and the new machine created in the neighbouring kingdom of Altas that could apparently create fabric at many times the speed of griffons by claw – her usual favourite topics.

These were topics Shortbeak was more familiar with, if only because Amelia talked about them all the time. A small part of her realised she should probably encourage her to focus on this side of her interests more than the esoteric theories of somegriffon whose book was apparently worth throwing away rather than selling. No good could come from it, but she didn’t have the heart to spoil her fun. At least one of them should be happy after all.

It was some time later, when the moon was at its zenith in the sky, that she found herself lying awake. Her sister was curled up at her back, breathing softly as she slept. Shortbeak wished she could join her but couldn’t rest easy no matter how hard she tried. She had failed. Her sister had not been in danger, but she still failed, and for that they almost went hungry for another day

The thought ate away at her. Yes, she was still young, still small; she couldn’t have hoped to have stood a chance. That didn’t matter to someone who was too bitter to think rationally. Her thoughts drifted to the street and the lump she felt in her throat when she almost blundered out into the middle of it, in between Sharpclaw and his goon squad. That was when her courage failed her.

But it had not deterred that old griffon.

She saw him just… dive right in, unafraid or just unconcerned about what they’d do to him, and he still won. ‘Because he knew how to fight and overcome them, even despite the odds.’ She shuffled and brought up the remains of the damp bread that, thankfully, neither of them had to eat. Sure enough, it was looking decidedly unappetising now. If she never wanted to worry for her or Amelia ever again, she was going to need to do what he did: learn how to overcome all challenges.

And that meant doing probably the most demeaning thing she could think of.

--=--

The stone bounced harmlessly off of his back. He looked behind him and raised a scarred brow at the sight of the young griffon. She was on her hind legs, evidently trying to get the most out of swinging the stone. Her almost comically oversized wings were partially outstretched, struggling to keep her balance. It’d be funny if she didn’t have the look of somegriffon with murder on her mind.

“Can I help you?” he asked, bemused.

“I… I need your… Your hheeeel—” She shook her head. “I need your heee, your heeeel.” Nope, try as she might, she couldn’t bring herself to say the words until, finally, groaning in frustration: “I need you to teach me to fight.”

Now, in fairness, the griffon didn’t immediately laugh. He did, however, adopt an amused smirk. “I’m sorry, but what did you say?”

“I need you to teach me to fight. Like you did yesterday in the street,” she said bluntly, still, for some reason, standing defiantly. The griffon continued looking at her, not entirely sure what to make of the situation. He looked about, and the few spectators who had stopped to watch the altercation pretended to continue about their business, trying to spare him the awkward embarrassment.

“Aheh, kid, look. I’ll overlook the thrown stone but just go home. You shouldn’t come up to strangers and challenge them to a fight like that.”

“I don’t want to fight you. I want you to teach me how to fight!”

“Look, kid.”

“Stop calling me kid.”

“Right, just stop, alright? I’m not going to teach a kid how to fight. How old are you anyway?”

“Old enough.”

“I’m sure you are. Go home, little one, before your parents find out what you’re doing.” And with that, he turned and left, disappearing into the mass of griffons, unaware of the effect his final words had on the young girl who he had so quickly dismissed. One would normally think that that would be the end of it all and that the older griffon, rightfully, assumed the child was properly told off and that he needn’t worry overly so about her for the rest of his days.

How very silly of him.

The next three weeks his life was nothing but near constant hounding. Between times when he simply tried to relax at a bar, to going to the market for food, to simply retiring to his own little abode at the end of long days. How he regretted not being careful enough to evade her, for now she knew where he lived. Once he even caught her following him in one of his excursions outside the city, determined to find out what he actually did on those sojourns. He wouldn't admit it if you asked him, but more than once he sincerely wanted to just kick the kid away and be done with it, or just report her to the guards. If he had the heart that was – he knew how the guards of this town treated troublemaking kids. So it was that his patience was tried and tested until finally, one sunny afternoon upon his return from a particularly arduous errand beyond the city walls, one involving far too many sharpened pieces of metal and fresh lacerations to add to his collection for his liking, that he finally caved.

“ALRIGHT!” he roared, forcing Shortbeak to back up a bit and more than a few townsfolk to do a double take at the violent outburst. “If it means that much to you and you’ll get off my back about it, I’ll teach you. Happy? Can I go home without having you henpeck me all the way there? Can I have one day without being pestered? Just one?”

Shortbeak simply beamed in response. He growled as he ran a claw down his face. “Just… let me go get paid and we’ll talk.”

She followed obligingly, her stern demeanour cracking and giving way to a victorious grin. They weaved their way through town until her soon-to-be mentor told her to wait as he went inside a particularly ramshackle building, coming out with a fresh pack of coins that jingled noisily as he tied it to a belt before gesturing for her to follow him. He took her to a rather well-known inn she had seen him enter from time to time in her quest to get his attention, one she had been chased out of on more than one occasion, it must be noted.

“Afternoon, Joryl.”

“Fallow,” the innkeeper replied as he cleaned the tables in preparation for that night’s latest round of punters looking to blow off steam in return for mind-piercing pain the following morning. He paused as he spotted Shortbeak following him in, and his expression turned sour.

“I’ve told you before, beat it, kid, and stop bothering my business. Now go before I—”

“It’s alright, Joryl.”

“What?”

“She won’t be a nuisance anymore. Can you get me my usual?” Fallow asked as Joryl eyed the younger griffon with suspicion, and like always, Shortbeak returned his caustic gaze with a defiant glare of her own.

“Your midday usual or your ninth candle usual?”

“Whichever you feel like. I got nothing more going on today.”

“Quitting early?”

“Got paid early. I intend to lick my wounds just a bit before going out again.” And with a smile and a shake of the head, Joryl left them in peace and Fallow led her to a table. It took her a second to hop onto the stool and get settled to the point where Fallow didn’t loom over her too much. He winced as he shifted his weight to sit down before drumming his talons on the table and looking the young griffon in the eye. Shortbeak wore a severe, determined expression, prepared to handle anything Fallow could throw at her. “Why?”

Except that apparently. She blinked in confusion at the unexpected question. “Because I… well I want to be able to defend myself.”

“A fine cause,” he said before resting his head on a claw and idly playing with a silver coin on the table, flicking it between two talons of his free claw to get it to spin on the table. “But why?”

“What? Well, uh, because I don’t want to be weak.”

“Mmhm. Why?”

“What?”

“Why are you worried about being weak?”

“What kind of question is that?”

“A very telling one, depending on the answer,” Fallow replied, his expression neutral as he studied Shortbeak.

“That doesn’t make sense,” she stated, head tilted. Fallow sighed and sat up straight.

“You said you wanted to learn how to fight.”

“Yes.”

“But that doesn’t mean learning how to defend yourself. What you’re asking is for me to teach you how to beat griffons. To learn how to pick a fight. And you went through an awful lot of effort to get my attention when there were other options available. Which means you’re planning on trouble in the future, and for some reason you want me, particularly, to teach you. If I am going to spend my time on you, girl, you are going to tell me what I want to know,” he said, flicking the coin and sending it spinning again. “Why?”

Shortbeak didn’t answer immediately, her tail swishing back and forth behind the chair in agitation as she fought with herself, looking anywhere but in Fallow’s direction. She eventually let out a groan and admitted it. “That day you beat down Sharpclaw’s gang, outside the florist, remember?”

“Is that what his name was?”

“You mean you didn’t know?”

“Small time guys like him aren’t really worth committing to memory. If I hadn’t put him in his place, somegriffon else would have eventually. Probably an even meaner street thug. His gang would dissolve and be replaced by another, rinse and repeat a few years down the line.”

“Err, right. Well, I was following him after he… Well, after he stole my dinner.”

“...Your dinner,” Fallow stated more than asked. Shortbeak rubbed the back of her head.

“A few loaves of bread I got for me and my sister. It was supposed to last us several days.” Fallow raised a brow at that.

“Alright. And you chased after an apparently well-known street thug to get your bread back… on your own?” he asked. Shortbeak looked down and nodded. “After, I am assuming, he gave you a thrashing?” Another nod. “And you thought you could take him on after that?”

“I wanted to! I couldn’t just let myself be treated like that and have nothing to show for it.”

“Bread isn’t worth dying for, lass.”

“I still had to try!”

“Why didn’t you just go back and get some more bread?”

“I—!” Shortbeak cut off, mouth gawping, trying to find the words. She realised she had been getting angry and had placed both her claws on the table and pushed herself up. A moment of self-awareness later and she was sitting more comfortably and slightly more abashed as Joryl came over and put a wooden cup of something or other in front of Fallow. “I, uh, couldn’t.”

“Why?”

“I just… couldn’t.”

“...You didn’t get that bread the proper way, did you?” Fallow asked. She looked at him indignantly.

“I couldn’t afford it. I have a sister to feed.”

“So you stole it?”

“Yes.”

“Then how can you complain that you, in turn, had it stolen from you?”

“Because it was wrong!”

“But stealing it in the first place, wasn’t it?”

“Yes!”

“Why?”

“Wh-Why, what, we were hungry! I couldn’t pay for it any other way.”

“And that makes it right?” he asked one more time before taking a draught of his drink before sputtering, glaring at it suspiciously before casting a glance at Joryl, who was currently on the far side of the empty tavern floor, whistling innocently as he continued cleaning. Turning back to Shortbeak, he found she was still struggling to come up with an excuse. He let out a breath. “Well, seems the first thing I need to teach you is proper ethics and reasoning.”

“What? Why?”

“Because if you just go around knowing how to fight without the skills necessary for knowing when to do so and when you should do otherwise, you will know neither restraint nor peace, taking refuge in only violence and your own emptiness.”

“...What?”

“Basically you’ll just become exactly like Sharpclaw, a brute with neither direction nor purpose.”

“Look I don’t want to go throwing my weight around. I just never want to be a victim again.”

“And can you guarantee me you won't ever use what I’ll teach you for your own gain? To intimidate others into doing what you want? Not even once?”

“Well… I could, I could try,” she said uncertainly. Fallow just gave her a blank stare. “Probably.”

“Well,” he said, getting up and taking off his packs.

“What are you doing?”

“Starting your education.” He threw the packs at her. She flailed to catch them and fell unceremoniously off the back of her seat with an ‘oof’

“Hey wait, what are you… What do you expect me to do with this?” she cried from under the heavy packs as Fallow strolled towards the door, whistling. She shoved the bags off of her. “Where do you think you’re going!?”

“Pick it up,” he called back, pausing at the door.

“You can’t be serious! This is yours.”

“You’re right. Pick it up and carry it for me.”

“Why on earth would I ever—!?”

“Because if I see you leave this building without it, the deal is off, and you can find somegriffon else to teach you. Your call,” he said as he strode out the door. The innkeeper looking on, bemused by all accounts. Shortbeak almost stormed out after him, screaming profanities, but paused as she drew nearer to the door, eyeing the packs left behind her, spying them through the intervening tables and stools between her and their position. She was so close now. Could she really risk it all because she refused to swallow her pride?

She almost didn’t go back, grinding her teeth, fuming with incredulity at Fallow’s arrogance. To think he could just foist that upon her! Like… Like she was a pack animal or something! He sat there out in the street, waiting patiently, head turned and eyeing the door expectantly. She clicked her beak and decided at last, running back over to their table and slipping the packs over her. She had to double them over just so they didn’t drag along the ground, but even then she found herself wobbling while trying to find her balance. What the Tartarus did this guy pack into his bag? Rocks?

She nearly stumbled out the door and had just barely managed to stop her momentum before running headfirst into Fallow’s back. He looked down at her and smiled. She scowled.

“Happy?”

“Quite. Your first lesson is discipline. I dare say you’re off to a fine start.”

“Why, because I picked up your saddle bags like a good little girl, you tired old goat?” she snapped. He snorted in amusement.

“Because you swallowed your pride,” he said simply, walking down the street at a brisk pace. “Come on, we’re a long way away from teaching you common sense, so might as well work with humility first.”

“Hey, I’m not stupid!”

“You bothered me for weeks. Do you know what most griffons would have done in my place? Kicked you in the face and be done with it. So yeah, not all that bright, are you?”

“I’ll show you bright,” Shortbeak muttered under her breath.

“I’m sure you will,” he said. She blinked up at him in surprise, and he casually pointed at his flicking ears with the arch of his wing as he continued on. He was one of the rare breed of griffons with large ears. “They’re not just for show, you know. Who knows, maybe in time you can probably put that short temper and sharp tongue to good use.”

--=--

“Language!”

“Oh come on, that wasn’t even fair!”

“Battle is often unfair. You want to learn how to fight? Then be prepared to fight griffons who won’t—” Fallow was cut off when, in a burst of speed and anger, Shortbeak rushed forward and swung her stick at him. He batted it away easily, using her momentum against her as he stood out of her way. She stumbled to regain her balance and was helped on her way to the ground by a short, sharp smack to the back of her rear legs. She fell with another curse. “Language.”

Shortbeak muttered nonsensically as she pushed herself up from the dry dirt of the ground, casting a dirty look back at her sister who was quietly chuckling to herself whilst seated on a rock, scribbling away at her book with a quill. Made from one of Shortbeak’s own feathers, mind you, as Amelia had literally plucked at one that was on the verge of falling out anyway while she had been sleeping. That had not been a pleasant wake up call. At least Amelia had found it amusing at the time.

“You really do curse too much, Feely.”

“Yeah, well…” Shortbeak caught herself before she let slip another tirade, biting her tongue and sighing. Fallow cocked a brow, smiling approvingly. She pointed to him with her stick while talking to her sister. “It’s not fair. He’s so much bigger and stronger than me.”

“By the time we’re through, the size and strength of your opponent won’t matter,” Fallow said.

“Well fine, but why does Ami have to be here?”

“I like to watch!”

“She likes to watch.”

“‘Sides, you lied to me,” Amelia said, frowning at her sister. Shortbeak suddenly found the ground very interesting to look at.

“Well… no one hires orphans. What else could I do?”

“You could’ve found something. Mister Hren pays me two fifthlings for every book I help rebind, and Mister Fallow pays me a silver for every carcass I help skin when he comes back from hunting,” Amelia said proudly.

“Who taught you how to skin?” Shortbeak asked curiously. Amelia cringed in embarrassment.

“Uhh, trial and error mostly.”

“I’ll admit, I lost quite a few pelts while she was learning,” Fallow said simply as he picked a few twigs and plant life that had somehow managed to lodge itself in a crack in the wooden shaft he used for training.

“I said I was sorry!”

“I know, and it’s okay,” Fallow said, ruffling Amelia’s head. Shortbeak sighed. It had been a week or so since he had agreed to her demand, and it didn’t take long for him to drill every bit of information out of her that he could, including the situation with her and her sister. She kept avoiding the topic of where her parents were, at least long enough for him to finally get the point and drop the issue. She didn’t particularly care for the fact that he put both of them to work even when he was not teaching her, but Amelia seemed happy to have things to do and, well, at least they had some money now. That was good, for Shortbeak absolutely refused Fallow’s charity in buying food for them. “Again.”

“Huh?” was all she managed before getting smacked in the face by Fallow’s stick and falling back on the ground, to more of Amelia’s snickering. She groaned as she got back to her feet, shaking her head. Her eyes widened and she raised her stick just in time to block a downwards swing, lowering it again as Fallow followed that up by swinging the stick around to hit from below her vision with the stick’s reverse end. She ducked as he swung the stick in a horizontal swipe, forcing her to back up as he kept it up with each breath.

It continued on for another hour before, at long last, she thought she had a chance and seized upon an opening. Exhausted wings flapped and she jumped and lunged, swinging—

And managing to only hit air, Fallow having ducked below her and spun so fast that she barely saw him. That was when his rear paw slammed into her back and she hit the dirt hard, skidding to a halt, her stick knocked out of her grasp as she moaned like the adorable bundle of feathers and pain she was. Amelia rocked with mirth as she hopped down from her perch to help her sister up.

“You’re fast, I’ll give you that, but you telegraphed your movements.”

“I… what?”

“I’ll explain in a bit. Basically, you just made it altogether too obvious what you were about to do,” Fallow said. Amelia snickered, and Shortbeak gave her an exasperated look.

“What?”

“Got some dirt on your nose,” she said, Shortbeak went cross-eyed. Sure enough, there was a tuft of dirt sitting right on the crest of her nose. She brushed it off as Amelia continued to snicker. Shortbeak flicked her on the tip of her beak, causing her to squawk and cradle her face.

“Not fhuny, Fhelee, that tickles and itches now,” she whined. Shortbeak snickered before she got flicked on her beak too, causing her to squawk in turn.

“Knock it off, you two. That’s enough for today.”

“Yeah, you sure did look like you took enough of a beating. Maybe you should get some rest. Want me to kiss your boo-boos and make them better?” Amelia teased, picking up her book and quill.

“You know, how about you try it for a bit, see how you do, Ami.”

“Oh no, you volunteered for this. I’m happy doing the odd jobs.”

“Come on, it's getting late. We’ll pick this up in the morning before I leave.”

“Hey, can I come with you this time?” Shortbeak asked.

“No.”

“I can help!”

“I’m sure you can, but not until I’m sure you’re ready. Now go on, I’ll see you two tomorrow.”

And with that, he left them, taking to the air and heading back into the town. The pair of them remained on the hill, idly watching the sunset below the mountains in the horizon that marked the border with the Kingdom of Skryke, the High King’s seat. She watched the landscape and the dancing long grass of the surrounding hills turn a queer shade as the orange light spilled over the land. A bell from within the city sounded out the eighth candle as they sat and ate the sandwiches Amelia had brought with them. It was good to just be able to sit like this, listening to her sister’s latest spiel over her interest of the day and not have to worry about what they were going to do tomorrow. Sure, it was not an easy life, but it was better than what they had before. The money made from the odd jobs Fallow had them do for him and for the shopkeepers he had recommended to them was more than enough to keep them fed.

“Feely?”

“Yeah?” she asked, her smile shrinking somewhat as she saw the odd expression on Amelia’s face.

“Why’d you get Mister Fallow to teach you to fight anyway?” Shortbeak paused at that, thoughts flashing in her mind of a dark night and a fire that burned away all the happiness in the world, and a cold, dark feeling deep within her that ached to be let loose, that felt like it was scratching at the walls to get out. She gave a small, faltering smile before swiping her sister closer to her under her wing.

“So I can be big and strong and look after my little sister of course,” she said happily.

“Lemme go.”

“No, you’re mine now, little one.”

“I’m not little!”

“Littler than me,” Shortbeak said, wrapping her foreleg around her neck and digging into her scalp with her closed talon. Amelia squealed in frustration and flailed to get her off.

“Stop it!” she pleaded to no avail. There was no escaping Shortbeak’s grasp, so she let out a growl and lunged at her sister, knocking her over. The two sisters wrestled on the edge of the hill before tumbling end over end towards the bottom, leaving Shortbeak dizzy and discombobulated for a moment as Amelia jumped off and scarpered for the town gates.

“Hey!” Shortbeak called, spitting out some grass. “Where are you going?”

“Home! Race ya!” she shouted back. Shortbeak almost went to go after her before she stopped and realized that they had both left their things behind them on the hill. She shouted after Amelia, who promptly didn’t reply and kept on running, making the most of her head start. Shortbeak fumed and went to gather their belongings before taking to the air, determined to make up for the lost time as the pair ran across sunlit fields towards home.

It wasn’t the best life it could’ve been, she decided, but it was a good one nonetheless.

--=--

The anfer carefully stalked through the thin trees, delicate limbs picking their way across the underbrush and negotiating the treacherous ground as it made its way to a particularly tempting bush. It was blue in hue, with a white fur undercarriage that ran down the inside of its four, long delicate legs to its hooves which had a conspicuous golden colour. Its thin wings rested by its side as the long-snouted head twisted this way and back as its disproportionately long neck let it peer around corners before exposing its body.

Its tail swished back and forth in the air, split in two towards the tip. It functioned almost like an additional set of ears to help the anfer navigate the forest and avoid predators. Its ‘normal’ ears rotated and flicked, swivelling in the direction of far off sounds. Dark eyes darted to and fro, analysing its surroundings before venturing further. It crept further, its head extending down close to the ground, sniffing as it came closer, its face dotted with white spots that broke up the field of blue fur between its eyes.

It tentatively licked the leaves of the plant before chomping down on it and began chewing, enjoying the pleasure of simply eating as it raised its head to observe its surroundings, passively listening to the quiet sounds of the forest. Then, in the last moments of its life, its left ear rotated towards the direction of a short thwip noise, a fraction of a second before the broad-headed arrow shaft neatly cut through the flesh of its neck, severing an artery as it pierced deeper into its oesophagus and cut into the flesh on the interior due to the neck’s movements as the anfer fell, spasming and thrashing.

Shortbeak lowered the bow as a form descended from its perch high up in the trees and landed by the fallen animal. There was a short snapping noise, and the pathetic painful mewlings of the creature were silenced. Shortbeak looked up then.

“Nice shot,” Fallow said as she stalked through the brush. “I see you’ve been paying attention.”

“The wings are more of a nuisance than a help. They get skittish if they hear wingbeats that large,” she said simply as she slung the bow over her shoulder. “What I really want you to teach me is how to stay in the treetops without scaring off the birds. That’s a dead giveaway all the other times I tried.”

“Oh that? Simple enough. Here, help me carry this first,” Fallow said as the two took their prize and moved out of the woodlands towards their camp. It had been a few years now since they had met, and in that time, Shortbeak had proven herself an apt student. It did come with the downside of her becoming much more reserved than she had been, but the trade off being discipline, iron will, and a determination to succeed. Whereas before she had jumped into every trap and feint he pulled, now she carried herself with a knowledge and experience borne of many days being thrown to the dirt for her failures and now didn’t do anything without thinking of at least three different strategies.

It had long since gotten to the point where she quickly equalled him in sparring matches, and he found he was impressed with her speed and finesse, her dedication to her training driving her to practice long into the nights on her own on some occasions. She had joked that the student was beginning to surpass the master. He had retorted, with all the injured dignity that was befitting him, that she was just consistently lucky.

Even though they both knew it was because he was getting old.

“So when are you actually going to take me out on those little jobs of yours?” she asked, breaking the silence that had fallen as they were skinning and preparing the anfer, carefully separating the pelt from the flesh before beginning to work with the meat itself. It needed to be cleaned and salted before it could be safely packed and brought back home. There wasn’t much meat on an anfer between three griffons, but what it lacked in quantity, it made up for in taste and nutrition. They could easily get quite a few sovereigns for just a pound of this stuff, never mind the pelt and the bones. The nobles encouraged their population growth like nogriffon’s business. Sadly, that also meant most of them were found on private hunting grounds, so if you didn’t want to be caught for poaching, your best bet was getting somegriffon’s permission for hunting on their land. Either that or be really really quiet.

“I told you, they’re just errands,” Fallow said, humming away as he finished constructing the fire before preparing some of the fish they caught for consumption. Shortbeak gave him a flat look.

“Errands. Where you come back with new cuts and bruises. Every time.”

“Sometimes the road can be a bit dangerous, what can I say?”

“And where you have to occasionally get your armour replaced.”

“It’s not my fault Tanner can’t get his head together for a decent suit of brigantine.”

“He’s the finest armourer in town.”

“He also owes me twenty sovereigns but whatever.”

“Fallow!”

“Look you’re just… I don’t know. I suppose you know I go out and take care of things for griffons in town, yes?”

“I got that impression yes,” Shortbeak said, a deliberate understatement.

“Right. It’s very specific work I do for the guilds in town, merchant guild mostly since they have the most money and face most of their troubles on the roads to and from town. Sometimes it’s delivering things, sometimes it’s checking up on the farmsteads that do business with the caravans and the halfway houses along the major roads. If they have problems, I take care of them.”

“Like… violently?”

“Sometimes. Most of the time it doesn’t come down to that, thankfully.”

“And when it does?” Shortbeak asked tentatively. Fallow didn’t answer immediately as he began working on some of the pelt Shortbeak had already skinned.

“It can be pretty bad,” he admitted at last. “Although do it long enough and the patrols become mighty friendly towards you for helping out. Helped save my hide more than once. Although anygriffon willing to risk the wrath of the guard patrols in the first place either knows what they’re doing or they’re desperate enough for anything, so when they see me on my lonesome, and don’t know who I am, it can get hairy.”

“Maybe if I tagged along it wouldn’t be much of a concern?” Shortbeak ventured with a smirk. Fallow frowned.

“You’re still too young for that sort of thing.”

“I am not a little girl anymore,” Shortbeak snapped, giving Fallow a hard stare.

“Neither is Amelia, but you still put the fear of the All-Maker into any of the young lads who try to talk to her.”

“I just… I’m just looking out for her.”

“And is it so wrong I look out for you too?”

“I don’t need anygriffon to look out for me,” she said quickly, focusing on her work. He left her to her devices for another minute before speaking again.

“You know, when you first came to me, you tried to say something but could not get it out. Do you remember?” he asked. She didn’t answer so he continued on. “Shortbeak, it’s alright to ask for help sometimes.”

“Then why won’t you?” she asked pointedly. Fallow flinched before sighing. He looked up, studying the swaying branches in the dying light.

“Fine.”

“What?”

“You can come with me on the job. I’ll introduce you to the guilds first. Just… Just be careful, alright? When I’m on my own, I can handle whatever is thrown at me, but only because I don’t have to worry about anything else. Just—”

“I can handle myself, Fallow.” Shortbeak snorted indignantly. He watched her as she finished with the carcass of the anfer before turning to maintain her bow and recheck her quiver and her equipment belt. The meticulousness of her care betrayed not only accumulated skill and eye for detail, but an underlying enjoyment she found in what she was doing.

“Yes, I suppose you can.”

--=--

Her head hit the desk and she groaned audibly, grumbling in discontent. She had envisioned many things when she had first set out with Fallow on his odd jobs for the guilds, even considering most of it probably would be nothing more than boring courier jobs that would be better suited to be given to some young griffon that had nothing better to do to earn his squander money. What she had not accounted for was the inevitable boring tedium that came with the fact they were working for merchants.

“Five sovereigns per ounce.”

“Robbery. Three.”

“Four.”

“Scandal. Three and a half.”

“Three and a half plus three fifthlings.”

“Three and a half plus one fifthling.”

Oh, did that sound like they were close to a deal? How very naive of you. This was only the third item out of an itinerary of twenty they were set to bicker over. See, that was the thing about merchants. They were all in competition with one another, even if they were supposed to be tacitly co-operating under the banner of a guild. Thankfully, they didn’t handle what issues one silk merchant had with the new upstart who just waltzed into town. What they did handle was negotiations about prices between other merchant guilds from the other towns. Hey, Fallow was on his route outside of town anyway, and he bumped into representatives of other guilds regularly, why not throw this on top of everything else he did for them? It was not as if he was helping keep the roads safe or anything.

“Three and a half plus two fifthlings, with a discount on the alfalfa.”

“Deal… what’s alfalfa?”

“No idea, but the ponies love the stuff. You got a lot of them in that town?”

“Very few, but we got griffons who deal with them regularly anyway.”

“Hrm.” The wizened old merchant tapped his yellow beak, his oaken brown feathers emphasizing the tan shadows around his eyes. Red and contrasting sable robes were wrapped around his form to keep out the chill as he contemplated the situation, eyeing the table between them, strewn as it was with weights and a measure, a map detailing the local towns and the roads between them, several coins and, for some unfathomable reason, a stuffed teddy bear. Shortbeak eyed the doll evilly, as if blaming it for the interminable migraine these meetings tended to be. “No sense giving you a discount on something you’re not likely to sell. Hang on, I need to go check something.”

And with that, he pushed away from the long table, the dried, sun bleached wood creaking under the movements as he negotiated his way past the small crowd that huddled near the roaring fire pit in the centre of the long hall. Why the Broken Wheelbarrow was built to be reminiscent of some ancient tribal long house was anygriffon’s guess.

“You know, it’s really bad form to slouch over like that,” Fallow said with a small smile.

“I can’t take this,” Shortbeak admitted. Fallow gasped and clasped his cheeks.

“You!? No, the great and the brave Shortbeak can’t handle a minor negotiation?”

“This is soul crushing, Fallow.”

“You don’t have to pretend to like it. I certainly don’t, just pretend not to hate it.”

“What’s the difference?”

“You’re paid to do the latter,” he said. She grumbled before slipping off of their bench and meandering to the door.

“I’m going for a walk,” she announced.

“Alright, but you can’t put this off forever,” Fallow called back, humming a tune as he idly turned a dagger over and over again as its point bit into the top of the table.

She stepped outside and immediately flinched and shivered as a gust of wind blew into her face, bringing with it a flurry of snow. She shook her head and brought her scarf tighter about her face and neck, her head covered in a light leather skull cap before soldiering on. She passed through the large number of carts and beasts of burden hitched outside the inn, lumbering fenwyrs, their bare grey skin barely discomforted by the bitter cold as their great horned heads shook in irritation at their fetters from time to time. She spotted two guardsgriffons at the walled entrance to the inn, huddling around a burning brazier and chatting idly. One nodded in greeting as she passed.

The landscape was a complete whitewash. The snowstorm wasn’t particularly heavy, but it was persistent and long-lasting. She was tempted to take wing and fly into the air, get above the cloud layer and just spend a few minutes in the sunlight. Although she knew from experience that was a bad idea, as that wouldn’t protect her from the wind chill, and there was a very good reason why weather griffons got out of a storm’s way once they had it corralled and settled in place. Storm clouds could be wildly unpredictable sometimes.

She meandered around the perimeter of the inn. As cold as it was, it would at least wile away some of the time otherwise spent arguing pointlessly over prices for goods they personally were never going to sell nor see the money for. She supposed she should be grateful, however, for it was good money, and she had proven herself more than invaluable to both Fallow and the guilds in the year since he had taken her with him, which she was distinctly proud of. Amelia was happy too, managing to afford her own equipment for… whatever the Tartarus it was she was doing. She kept insisting it wasn’t alchemy despite the copious amounts of glass beakers and tiny fires and weird coloured liquids in jars. Wasn’t potion brewing either, nor was it chemistry. To her credit, she had tried explaining it to her, but Shortbeak couldn’t for the life of her understand what she was on about. What the hell was the point of distilling a different kind of water, one that could be used to change what it was absorbed by without the use of chemicals or magic? And for what purpose? She knew she should have discouraged her studying that esoteric nonsense. What kind of proper mage or alchemist would consider her for an apprentice if she kept going the way she was? Okay, the alchemists maybe – those guys were nuts – but the point remained.

Amelia was happy nonetheless and, she supposed, that was what really counted now, didn’t it? She was still unhappy with Fallow convincing them to move under his roof, even if it was much more convenient for everygriffon involved. They could hardly keep living under the mill forever, and while the money was good, inn hopping wasn't the most stable way to live. They had butted heads as Fallow was adamant he wasn’t going to leave his pupil and her sister mendicant while he could help it, but eventually he had conceded to at least extracting a rent from the two of them so Shortbeak could keep her pride.

She stopped for a minute between a pile of cut wooden logs and the shade of an old oak tree to take a momentary shelter from the biting gale. She sat for a moment and hugged her arms, shivering as she tried to warm up a bit more. Maybe putting up with the interminable debate over the ever so important price of scraps of chicken bones wasn’t so bad considering she’d be inside near the fire pit. Still, she was already halfway around the inn by now, and she’d be damned if she gave up half— Wait a minute, who was that?

From her position behind the log pile and tree, he hadn’t noticed her yet. She raised a claw to shield her eyes from the flurry as she tried to get a better look while sidling closer to the cover. Yeah, that was definitely a griffon, even if he was hard to distinguish from the snow drifts with his white coverings. He was close to the ground and seemed to be eyeing the inn intently. Shortbeak got a creeping sensation along the back of her neck. This didn’t bode well.

She backed up, trying to keep close to the ground. In a burst of inspiration, she extended her wings and lowered them to the ground, rubbing them quickly along the piles of snow and trying to ignore the biting cold as she covered her feathers with snow to mask the stark black colour. She retreated just far enough until she was sure the griffon hadn’t noticed her, even though he was little more than an indistinguishable blob on the hillside in the midst of a snowstorm. Confident, she hurried up and over the hill ringing the back of the inn and made her way back to roughly where she knew the griffon was. Quietly, she made sure to make as little noise as possible as she trudged up through the snow behind him. He didn’t react, not until she had already jumped him and had a drawn dagger to his throat.

“Easy,” she hissed. The griffon struggled to escape her grasp. She only constricted her grip more and pressed the blade closer to his flesh. “For your sake, you had better have a good reason why you’re scoping the place.”

He didn’t reply, and Shortbeak felt a cold feeling settle in the pit of her stomach. Fallow had talked to her before about… about reasonable use of force when dealing with bandits. Not all of them were evil murderers. Most were just desperate griffons who had fallen on hard times. She had pretended to listen; she had pretended to take his advice on board; she had pretended it changed anything about how she had felt back when she was barely more than a cub. Just like she was pretending, really hard, that the griffon currently at her mercy wasn’t what she knew he was.

There was the sound of wingbeats and a heavy thump as a body landed in the snow behind her. “Yeah, I checked the roads, both ways, nothing a dozen or so—” The voice paused as Shortbeak whirled around, dragging her captive bodily around with her and saw a stunned-looking yellow griffon with heavy weather gear and far too many daggers for her liking at his side. It clicked and the illusion she had forced upon herself to keep her from doing what she wanted fell away. The inn was full of wayfarers, a fair number of traveling merchants, and relatively unsecured goods lying in the courtyard with the wagons and the fenwyrs needed to carry them. Not to mention the wealth in the inn itself, and however much they could scrabble together by holding merchants for ransom from their rich friends and family. Between them, they had only a handful of guards, two trained soldiers, herself, Fallow, and about four or five caravan guards. If they had enough griffons…

The moment shattered when she felt an elbow digging into her ribs, winding her. The captive griffon shoved her off and shouted at his friend. “Go! We need to go now! Tell them to move it before any get away!” The yellow griffon booked it, launching into the air and struggling against the buffeting winds. The grey griffon she had been holding onto tripped over her rear paws as he tried to get away, but she was already upon him in a confusion of flaying limbs and wings. A short shout, cut off before it could finish, and Shortbeak found herself on the ground beneath an unmoving body, dazed. She had to get back, she had to warn them, and to Tartarus with this arse holding her down. She launched into the air and flew back to the inn, her claws catching on the tiles of the roof as she nearly fumbled her flight path in her hurry. She landed hard in the courtyard, shouting at the guards by the burning brazier, who looked confused by her sudden landing. She didn’t stay long as she burst into the hall.

“Shortbeak, wha—”

“They’re coming. Hurry up, we’re getting raided!”

“What are you blithering about, girl?” the merchant asked as the various travellers by the fire turned to see what the commotion was about.

“Outside, I caught somegriffon watching the place. They sent a scout away to get the rest of them. We’re going to be attacked!” Shortbeak pleaded desperately as she began shaking the snow from her back and wings. The proclamation brought with it a noisy murmur from the rest of the crowd before Fallow placed a hand on Shortbeak’s shoulder.

“Is that yours?” he asked, his face a stony mask.

“What?” he pointed down at the blood staining the front of her raimant, and then she looked down further at the bloody dagger still in her claw. “...No. No, it’s not.”

There was the sound of breaking glass and general chaos above them. Fallow’s eyes widened as he turned back to Shortbeak. The next thing she knew, he had grabbed her by the shoulders and thrown her bodily across a table, just moments before the door was blown open and dark forms spilled into the inn. The next few minutes was a flurry of horror as more than twenty of the brigands descended, spilling from the entrances and from the upstairs, cutting off all avenues of escape. The two soldiers outside were easily overwhelmed, leaving the unarmed majority to the dubious protection of their hopelessly outnumbered guards.

Shortbeak slowly recovered, having hit her head badly when she landed, the leather skull cap doing hardly anything to lessen the impact of stone upon her skull. Her vision blurred for a moment as she fought off what would almost certainly be a concussion, her claw gripping the edge of the table as she pulled herself up to see the room in chaos. Somegriffon was screaming, looked to be one of the guards. A hippogriff who had been pushed into the fire pit was screaming and rolling away, some of the others trying to put him out. One of the brigands, easy to distinguish with their white cloaks covered in snow, was down, bleeding. The remaining three caravan guards were each facing multiple opponents and fell in rapid succession. Fallow was holding his own just barely. The old fool still insisted on wielding that old, worn wooden mace that never seemed to break apart no matter what abuse it was put through.

He couldn’t be everywhere at once, and one of the brigands pierced his left wing with a short sword and tore it back out, ruining the wing and causing him to let out a terrible, pained cry as well as an instinctual cringe in anygriffon who witnessed it and imagined the pain in their own appendages. She didn’t have long to process everything she saw, for a dark form loomed over her from one end of the table, and she just barely managed to bring up her dagger, parrying the axe that was coming down on her just before her assailant collided with her and sent her straight back to the ground. A desperate struggle followed as she tried to bring her dagger to bear as the throbbing in her head and swimming vision made it hard to think. She didn’t remember much about what she looked like. In fact, she didn’t remember much about what she did that day in the following few minutes. She saw Fallow go down from her position beneath the table legs, bleeding and not moving. She saw another griffon getting up from where he lay by some broken chairs, and she stalked over to him with murderous intent in his eyes.

She let out a horrible scream of rage, and her assailant was launched off of her, powerful back legs getting under her and pushing her off. Shortbeak used the momentum to launch herself up in turn, wings extending to their full length as she vaulted the table and launched herself into the air, dagger grasped firmly in one talon and her other claw fully extended, ready to gouge and rend.

The first to fall to her, before any of the others could adequately respond to the sudden threat she posed, was the griffon who was getting prepared to put a final end to Fallow, who was barely stirring now. His eyes bore a confused look an instant before Shortbeak closed them forever with a single swipe of her dagger. The griffon fell on his back, and the room descended into chaos once more, but Shortbeak would not be overcome. In the proceeding flurry of bodies and blades, Shortbeak’s terrifying visage, now stained with blood, dominated the room, her outstretched wings casting terrifying shadows that stretched to the high ceiling and darkened entire portions of the main room.

Between the sudden shock of her violent entry back into the fray and the speed with which she dispatched target after target, turning her years of training and education by Fallow into a brutal, bloody-minded efficiency, that was truly a sight to behold. Another five were down before any of them managed to leave a mark on her, a pressure on her side and the sound of torn leather the only thing given her any indication she had been hit before she whirled around, her wings knocking another assailant away as she rounded on her latest victim. He was young, ice-blue eyes wide with fear as he realised his mistake before her dagger slid in between his ribs. Another, the girl who had previously pinned her to the ground before she went on her rampage, foolishly tried to jump her from behind. She ended up on the ground, her skull cracked.

Shortbeak lost her dagger when a heavy club smashed into her wrist. She responded by pivoting on the spot, turning her entire body around in a blur of motion, bringing her rear legs to bear and kicking another opponent hard enough to send him sprawling as she focused on another newcomer with her free claw, slashing through his leather armour and raking the chainmail underneath and then cutting up across his face with a backswing. She used her wings to maintain a near constant hover, which was as much a constant slow fall from the occasional leap and jump as it was actually maintained by wing power alone. She manoeuvred on the spot before one of their numbers managed to get a clear shot and pierced her wing with an arrow. She shrieked in pain and floundered. They didn’t wait; another three were upon her as soon as they saw a moment of weakness.

She was a blur of motion, grasping at the nearest discarded weapons, two short blades from the brigands themselves. A moment later and the three new attackers had fallen. Over half of the brigands were now lying dead or dying on the floor of the inn. They broke and fled after that, fleeing through windows and doors, no longer seeing their goal as attainable, and even if it was, the cost would have been too much.

The remnants of the griffons staying at the inn stirred in the wake of the attack, groans and muttered curses mingled with relieved gasps and shouts of joy at surviving the assault. Mostly. At least two of the guards were dead; the two soldiers were little more than mounds of snow by the gates to the inn courtyard; and Fallow was badly wounded. He stirred and was helped to his feet by another griffon who was saying something in his ear but he wasn’t listening. One eye blinded by the blood flowing into it from a gash on his scalp, he scanned the room to find somegriffon in particular. He saw what she did and found himself desperately praying she had got a hold of herself before she went off and did something he knew would only make her a worse person. He didn’t find her.

“Where’s Shortbeak?”

--=--

She didn’t let any of them get away when it was all said and done. She came to after landing on one brigand who had been desperately begging for his life, as she snapped his bow underfoot and put an end to his pleas. She wasn’t sure how to feel after it was all said and done. Numbness was all she could recall, numbness and emptiness. And bad dreams. She kept telling herself she’d treat other griffons better, even if they were enemies, but she could never be sure, not after what she had done. She could barely face Fallow when he had found her.

It had been a long time before they talked about it. While he was recovering from his wounds, he had limped awfully and favoured his right wing and almost never used his left wing for anything. She never had to express her concern – he always saw the look in her face and assured her everything would be alright.

It wasn’t, of course. He took to fever not long after and was barely conscious most days. No physician in town could have helped. the best that could be done was have some potion concocted and Fallow would recover on his own. He never did. On the last day he was lucid, he had called out to her, and told her exactly why it was he lived here in a remote backwater town, and why it was he never got rid of his wooden mace for anything better. It was his weapon. More to the point, it was his family’s weapon, and he’d be damned if a Cloud Knight turned his back on his heritage, even if he retired from his work.

That was a bit of a surprise to her. A Cloud Knight, a noble griffon without land, without lord, and without purpose, roaming the land and sleeping on passing clouds at night. Figures of romantic legends and sordid tavern tales. She had never known he was one himself. She supposed the hints were there that he wasn’t an ordinary hired blade. The guilds only ever dealt with him instead of any number of toughs that could be hired from a bar. The professional conduct, the rules and discipline he had instilled in her. She supposed something had been off about him in that respect but had never thought to question it. He revealed he had grown tired of the life, and even though he still wanted to work, he wanted to finally settle down, live comfortably instead of wandering aimlessly, hanging his life on some romantic notion that some king would finally make use of his services and he could finally restore his family’s honour and dignity. To that effect, he had never thought to marry and sire a child, nor take on a squire.

Until Shortbeak had forced his claw in that respect.

She was still stunned when he placed a claw on her head and mouthed the words that symbolically transferred his title to her before drifting off to a fitful sleep, one from which he would never awaken. Amelia had taken the entire ordeal very hard. Shortbeak did her best to console her, but she refused to be comforted. In time, this turned into a melancholic depression from which she never seemed to emerge. Gone were the days of her playful, scatterbrained shenanigans and her interminable lectures that seemed to hop from one thing Shortbeak didn’t know nor care about to another. She missed those days.

It had begun no less than three months after Fallow had passed on. Shortbeak had continued her work, just to keep her mind off of things. She almost didn’t notice how Amelia confined herself to her room for all hours of the day, the sound of bubbling liquid and the whistle of steam from her contraptions audible from everywhere in the house. She ignored it at first, thinking it was just her way of coping, like how she turned to her work, growing more distant, cold, and brusque in her dealings.

Then Amelia started acting strangely. Shortbeak occasionally found odd scribbled notes, uncaringly littering the house, nonsensical rambles and strange patterns, repeating numbers and a single phrase repeated over and over: ‘to see and to see beyond’. Amelia herself hardly ever emerged from her room to eat, becoming more ashen in appearance and thin. Shortbeak began to seriously worry. She found a strange book one day when returning from a trip, half of its pages torn out and written in frantic claw writing that was evident of a terrified person desperately trying to commit what he was discovering to paper. She was trying to make sense of the confused, inane script, the odd word choice, the poor sentence structure, and a subject matter that didn’t even make sense. How the Tartarus could somegriffon grasp without grasping and see while blind where another could see and yet not follow?

She couldn’t enquire further as Amelia had materialised behind her and snatched the book from her grasp, her wide bloodshot eyes staring into her own accusingly with an intensity that, frankly, scared her. She refused to explain, refused to discuss the matter, and had even refused to leave her room any further, except only when Shortbeak was not there. Something had to be done. And it was her delay in doing so that would haunt Shortbeak for the remainder of her days.

She had come home, determined to confront her sister and get to the bottom of it. Grieving was all fine and good, but whatever Amelia had been doing was simply wrong and unhealthy. However, as soon as she opened the door, she knew something was off. Everything was far too still, as if the very air itself was afraid to be moved by so much as an errant gust of wind. A palpable malevolence hung on the air that pressed down upon her, not unlike the oppressive humidity found in summer after a thunderstorm but without the physical source to justify it.

It was a sepulchral quiet that pervaded the house. A near tangible sense of trespass and wrongness struck her with every step she took. It was if she shouldn’t be here, as if no one should ever be here, as if a great wrong had been committed, so vile that the very world itself revolted in indignity of suffering such a wound upon its surface. She was honestly reluctant to call out.

“Amelia?” she managed. Her voice sounded so small yet seemed to echo and ghost from the walls around her as she stalked down the corridor. The wooden planks at her claws, which had always creaked and groaned in protest of the weight that pressed down upon them daily, did not so much as squeak, as if fearing causing further offence. The corridor itself seemed much longer then she remembered it. A lightheadedness came upon her as she reached for Amelia’s door and found it unlocked. She pushed it open with all her strength. It felt like it was made of lead, and her movements were slow and sluggish. It reluctantly gave way and swung open.

Amelia was sitting on her haunches, back facing the door. Nothing was out of place. The room was as Shortbeak remembered it, as untidy and chaotically organized in such a way that only Amelia could possibly know where everything was. The stillness and wrongness was heaviest here. Amelia’s claws were outstretched to a corner of the room that had been cleared of everything, a strange words were clawed into the ground at her feet, incomplete symbols and nonsensical, mad writing criss-crossing sentences and pictograms covered the floor. There was no sound. She could not even hear Amelia breath. Nothing. “Amelia?”

“Go away,” her voice replied, but she didn’t move. The voice sounded distant, as if calling into the house from the outside. “You cannot be here, not for this.”

“What?” was all Shortbeak managed, a strange fatigue overtaking her, and she struggled to remain standing.

“You cannot be here. It will not work.”

“What are you doing?”

“I am fixing it,” she said, a dull monotone, almost bored, with an odd distinct click that just sounded off. “I am going to fix him, and then I can fix anything I want. Forever.”

“Fix who?”

“You know who, Feely,” she said, now sounding even more distant. “I will retrieve him. He will come back to us.”

Shortbeak felt horror grow within her at those words, “Necro… Amelia, you can’t. You never properly studied magic, let alone a dark ar—”

“It is not magic!” her voice screamed, a horrible, cracking sound that seemed to come from one place and then another as if she were jumping from area of the room to another. She pushed through the fatigue and took another step, causing her let out a winded breath over an exertion of effort that was far in advance of what she had actually done. “It is something so much more.”

“Amelia, this is wrong. You can’t do this. He’s gone.”

“He is not beyond my reach,” Amelia intoned, and then she saw it. She saw the world seemingly shift, and the entire section of the room Amelia was facing seemed to vibrate, up and down, shaking violently, but nothing moved, nothing was put out of place despite the violence of the motion. The sense of wrongness intensified, as if an awful crime was being committed that ought not to be, that shouldn’t be. It grew and grew to the point where it seemed as if multiple instances of the corner and everything near it existed in the same place at the same time, just out of synch with each other. Yet still nothing was out of place, no magical arcs of energy sparked nor flew. The markings at Amelia’s feet remained nothing more than some scratches in the wood.

And yet the world was being violated before her eyes.

“Amelia stop! Please!” Shortbeak begged, another step forward after an exhaustible exertion.

“I will not,” Amelia replied simply.

“Ami…. please…” she begged, barely more than a whisper. Amelia did not respond. What was happening was happening, and she could not stop her sister. Then it stopped. The world returned to normal, the corner ceased moving in violation of the world around it, and she could hear Amelia’s voice return from that distant place where it had been towards her body as she spoke, confusion evident in her voice. Confusion and fear.

“What… But I don’t understand. I had… I had everything right. I understood, I saw! What did I… Why couldn’t I—” She screamed. The oppression of the air vanished, and what had been weighing the world down suddenly lifted. Shortbeak took in a desperately needed breath and watched in horror as her sister bolted straight upright, as if locked in the vice of a gigantic fist and spasmed violently, black plumes of mist rolling off of her face as she heard the sound of something boiling and the smell of burning flesh.

She cried out her name and ran to embrace her sister, who was still locked in a violent paralysis. She fell back into her sister’s grip and struggling in pain as feathers moulted and the flesh of her face gave way to an ashen, cracked substance not unlike the texture of a log once burned away to nought but ash. And Shortbeak could do nothing but look on helplessly and running her voice hoarse in desperation, calling for help.

--=--

It wasn’t contagious, but you try telling that to everygriffon you met.

It had stopped when it had covered her entire scalp and her eyes, spreading down the left side of her neck and infecting her front fore leg and over the small of her back to her right wing. And it was spreading bit by bit, hour by hour, day by day, and there was nothing Shortbeak could do to stop it. Amelia couldn’t walk, she couldn’t see, she could barely hear, and Shortbeak knew, someday, she wouldn’t even be able to open her mouth. The ashen plague, the doom of Kernistad, Henorivale, and worse names besides, had been infectious and had killed thousands hundreds of years ago. Everything that had been done to treat Amelia indicated it was the exact same illness, yet nogriffon ever got infected.

Didn’t stop the kindly insistence that they should leave town. It seemed the goodwill they had built up over the years was good for only a minor indulgence of patience before fear got the better of reason and they simply had to go. And so it was Shortbeak found herself, quite disbelieving one might note, forced to wander by necessity, from town to town, with her sick sister, taking what work she could find and spending whatever coin she could gather to help Amelia. Sometimes griffons would find out and they had to move on. Other times they would be living somewhere that was just not safe nor healthy to remain in, and other times there simply was no work for one such as her, no matter how menial. As Amelia’s condition grew harder to hide, she soon took to carrying her everywhere in a carriage, on a litter made from bed clothes and linen.

Those had been dark days for them both, and Shortbeak was utterly torn with grief. Oftentimes, when she knew Amelia was safe, she would go off to be alone, somewhere dark and secluded, and just think. It had taken a while before Amelia spoke to her again, and when she did, Shortbeak felt her own heart break with the sorrow and regret in her voice. How she had sobbed into her shoulder when they embraced, and Shortbeak assuring her that it would be okay and that she would look after them both, like she always had. Amelia believed her.

Shortbeak, however, did not believe her own words. She had failed her, failed them both, failed herself, and nothing she could say or do would ever undo it, and she refused to believe in the folly that she somehow could. So she found herself, a Cloud Knight, wandering the countryside, without land, without lord, and without purpose save for finding a cure for her sister. She knew Amelia was in pain throughout the entire ordeal, but she never breathed a word of it to Shortbeak, ashamed at what she had done, at what she had tried to do, and the burden she became to her sister. She never explained what she had done. Shortbeak had decided she didn’t want to know if it meant whatever darkness it was would never touch their family again.

She had tried to find succour at the various courts of the land but found herself turned away. Nogriffon sought the services of a Cloud Knight these days, however skilled. Not King Fredrik of Houndsdoom, not Queen Stratabreak of Allsreach, neither the Free Marches, the Grand City of Qurent with its ivory fortress, the kingdom of the Hebrides, the Everlast Republic nor the petty lords of the realm. She spent no less than five years crossing the high kingdom of Griffonia, plying her trade honestly, be it the sword or her use as a courier or anything else she could do honourably. Every penny that wasn’t spent on her sister went into keeping them both fed and not much more. It seemed she was doomed as Fallow was, to wander until her heart grew weary and she gave up, to wait while her sister slowly turned to living ash inside and out and die long before her time. To fail.

It was in the north west of the high kingdom, in the pine forests of Gethrenia, when at last it all changed.

Amelia was in a nearby village. A kindly old farmer had agreed to house the two of them and, thankfully, had asked no questions about the small carriage Shortbeak brought everywhere as she set about to work the best way she knew how as they made their way between major towns: by going to the local land owner and requesting permission to hunt on the land. It turned out that Gethrenia was one of the few places that allowed near universal rights to hunting. Being so heavily agrarian and focused on herding animals, hunting was done more for sport than in most kingdoms. Permission was granted by some functionary at the door at the local earl’s estate without so much as a second glance, with the only stipulation being that the results of the hunt would be sold within earldom. She readily agreed. All she needed was the spare leather and the coin she could get from the rest, she didn’t care who bought it or why. She set out in earnest.

She had her longbow prepared, her armour largely left behind, for it would only constrict her out here. Besides, it was mostly in tatters and rusted anyway. It could create more noise than was necessary. She took to the trees at once and proceeded to get herself lost as she headed into the center, occasionally climbing to the very top to keep an eye on the position of the sun in relation to where she had come from before descending again. Once she was settled, near the heart of the forest, she lay down on a particularly strong branch and waited, occasionally making small movements and being sure to watch the ground. It had been a trick Fallow had taught her, done in order to relax the birds in a given area. Remain too still and too silent, and they would see you as the predator you are, even if what you are focusing on is something far below. The lack of birdsong in an area was more unnerving for the local wildlife than the occasional rustle in the branches far above them. Very few of the bigger game ever looked up anyway, after all.

That said, it had been slim pickings, Several large forest fowl fell to her arrows, strange cousins of the owl of some description that had two long legs and two stubby clawed arms and atrophied wings, along with long serrated beaks despite their mostly herbivorous nature. A hare or two, and she shot a wolf whose pelt might be worth a coin or two, but the creature managed to tough through its wound and disappeared into the brush. She moved on; soon enough she would have to walk with her kills rather than fly with them strapped to her back and sides.

And that was where she came across them. She had been drinking from a stream when she heard an incredibly loud swear echo through the trees and perked up. Another hunter perhaps? She stayed and listened for a moment longer, and sure enough, she could hear voices, two of them, bickering fiercely. Curious despite herself, she crossed the river on a gentle glide before stalking close to the ground, not keen on revealing herself. She crested the rise and, for the life of her, couldn’t understand what she was looking at. Not at first.

“I simply cannot believe this. Of course you’d be so awkward as to tie an acadian knot wrong in such a way, that I can’t even move my feathering talons!”

“Oh, I’m the awkward one, dear brother? Tell me, who is it that intends to build a pitfall and somehow causes an entire tree to fall on somegriffon!?”

“That was your own damn fault and you know it.”

“Tis not.”

“Tis.”

“Tis not.”

“Tis.”

“Tisn’t and that’s final!”

“So its my fault that you walked right across a trap you know I had placed there and things went so horribly awry that a tree fell on you.”

“Correct and right.”

“And yet it is not your fault that I am now hanging upside down, nearly ten heads off the ground, and with my arms wrapped in ropes because somegriffon thought it’d be fun to play daredevil!?”

“Right and correct.”

“You’re impossible!”

“No, father is impossible. I don’t know why he insists on sending us out into the middle of nowhere like this. We go on plenty of hunting trips.”

“He just wants us to put what he taught us to good use.”

“Well I for one know that I wasn’t taught to be some wild-winged survivalist out in the wilderness, and I am offended he thinks so little of us.”

“Don’t say that. Father knows best.”

“Hmph.”

When the pair finally ceased their bickering and decided to wander off into a kind of tense silence, Shortbeak saw that their discourse proved no more illuminating about what lay before than it otherwise might have. One of the griffons, grey-headed but with black wings and a stark white coat, hung with resignation on his features. His forelegs tied across his chest with rope, and with a rear leg ensnared in a hang trap, he looked rather ridiculous, as what would have been fierce red eyes regarded their surroundings as he slowly turned with the wind. His compatriot, black-feathered and noticeably smaller than him, lay partially buried in a pitfall, with the husk of tree indeed pinning him there as it covered almost the entirety of the pit mouth, pinning his upper body against its edge.

“You know, you could just cut yourself down,” the pit griffon stated, sounding bored, his head resting on a claw as he picked at a stone in the dirt.

“Oh, I would if I could, you know, use my bleeding claws!” the hanging griffon replied.

“Language.”

“Well you could just dig yourself some extra room, wiggle out, and free us both.”

“And get my claws filthy!? How dare you!”

“Uhh…” Both of them snapped their heads around at the voice of the new arrival, pinning Shortbeak in place with disbelieving stares with a mixture of hope and embarrassment in their eyes. “I’m not sure what happened here but… do you need some help?”

“Oh yes! Please!” hanging griffon pleaded.

“If you would be so kind, ma’am,” the other agreed. So she readily enough did, first flying up and cutting the hanging griffon loose with a dagger before turning to the griffon trapped in the ground, pushing the tree out of the way with the help of the recently freed hanging griffon.

“Thank you for your help. We are ever so grateful,” the larger of the two said happily, extending his claw to shake. Shortbeak was slow to accept it.

“Yes, quite,” the other said, an aloof expression as he dusted himself down. “Please, if you would be so kind, keep this story between us?” he asked, giving her a sideways glance.

“Uhm… of course, I suppose.” It was all very odd. Their accents weren’t local. They spoke Equestrian much the same as all Gethrenians seemed to, this close to the Equestrian border, but their tone and manners were distinctly higher than most. Probably related to the Earl? It would make the most sense, and it would also explain why’d they’d rather not have this get back to him.

“Very good!” the smaller of the two said, brushing his companion aside, much to the larger griffon’s annoyance, and reaching out to shake Shortbeak’s claw in his turn. “Geoffrey, a pleasure to meet you. Might I say, you have a fine collection of game there.”

“Oh, well yes, I was out hunting when I came across you,” she explained, glancing back to her catches.

“Skilled as well as a sight for sore eyes. The All-Maker certainly smiles upon us today, doesn’t He, brother?” he said amicably. Shortbeak wasn’t sure how to react to that.

“Yes, we are most fortunate you came when you did. I am Johan.”

“...Shortbeak,” she hesitantly said in reply. “Might I ask, what are you two doing out here?”

“An excellent question! One I’d like a proper answer myself.”

“We were supposed to be hunting,” Johan explained, rolling his eyes at his brother.

“Although I will admit we got a tad lost,” Geoffrey said simply.

“I am never lost!” Johan said adamantly. “North is right over there.”

Shortbeak resisted the urge to tell him he was pointing South West.

“Well fortunately, wherever we are, we are glad to have a professional hunter with us now. Perhaps you may assist us?” Geoffrey asked.

“Oh, I’m not a professional hunter.”

“You aren’t?”

“I am a… well, I am a Cloud Knight, as much as that mea—”

“Like in the stories!?” they both practically shouted, startling Shortbeak.

“Really? Traveling all over the land, fighting evil and whatnot?” Johan asked, curiosity evident in his face.

“Well… I have been all over the High Kingdom but I wouldn’t say—”

“Can you fight well? I know some griffons who boast and boast but are not all that they’re built up to be,” Geoffrey asked in his turn.

“Well yes, I was a squire for many years before my knight passed the mantle to me. I’ve fought a lot—”

“Oh you must tell us!” Geoffrey said excitedly. “Please, regale us of your exploits.”

Shortbeak really wasn’t sure what exactly was happening here, but it happened nonetheless. She continued her hunting trip, but this time doing so on her way back to where she started, pointing out the two griffons’ mistakes in their trap-laying as well as pointers on hunting. Oh yes, and telling of her ‘adventures’ as a Cloud Knight. Seemed the two of them had a rather energetic childhood when it concerned storytelling, the heroes of such tales prominently being Cloud Knights. Geoffrey had insisted they were so much more interesting than ‘regular’ knights, though Johan seemed a tad more reticent about dismissing knights in general.

To her credit, she tried to emphasis that the reality was nothing like the stories, but that really did not stop the two of them from listening intently to everything she had to say. Soon enough, the hunt was forgotten as they found the journey back out of the forest proceeded apace, time flying as they conversed. She found Geoffrey to be an amical griffon, quite fastidious and annoyingly aloof at times, but to an extent the same could be applied to his brother. He was however polite and attentive and took a keen interest in what she had to say about hunting. He had this odd glint in his eyes when she told him about the thrill of the kill, and the cleaning and preparation of the carcasses afterwards, but she had passed it off as nothing more than the keen interest it appeared to be at the time. Johan, on the other hand, was decidedly more brash and clumsy; quite bookish and educated by all accounts, but not nearly as erudite as his brother. He seemed far more interested in the more obscure lore about hunting and forestry than Geoffrey did and was the most enthusiastic about her tales as a Cloud Knight, such as they were.

Soon enough, they had emerged from the woods proper, slightly off course from where Shortbeak had entered. She had clucked her beak in annoyance. Clearly she had become distracted from her course as they had went. The two brothers seemed quite relieved to be out of the woods and thanked her profusely for her help, and then Geoffrey asked her a question that would change her life. “Say, Miss Shortbeak I believe it was? You are not currently employed, are you?”

“No, I’m still searching for work mostly.”

“Care to come to Skymount?”

“Oh yes!” Johan readily agreed. “I am sure we can convince father to give you some steady employment. If even half of what you say is true, you’d be an excellent addition to security!”

“I… am flattered really, but Skymount is the capital, is it not? I can’t imagine you have much need for security.”

“Oh we have the biggest!” Johan emphasised. “In fact, I am pretty sure father may indeed lynch us when he finds we have ditched our guards… again.”

“What my brother is trying to say is that we are always on the lookout for exceptional talent, particularly in the skills you display,” Geoffrey said easily, which sent warning bells off in Shortbeak’s mind.

“I thank you, but I am not a simple sell sword, no matter how many griffons like to make the comparison.”

“Perish the thought!” Geoffrey said laughing. “No, it is explicitly because you aren’t a mercenary that we wish to bring you to father’s attention.”

“I am not so sure about this. It is a rather sudden proposal.”

“Well, should you ever wish to change your mind and consider it, please, come to Skymount and ask for an audience with Count Heinrich of Munister. He resides in Skymount and can usually be found in the central registry building at the foot of Mount Hern, across the river from Castle Blackwing,” Johan explained before sighing. “Come, brother, we had best make it back before sunset.” Geoffrey made to follow before pausing and snapping his talons, he spun around and pointed to Shortbeak’s catch.

“How much for two of them? We cannot very well come back with nothing,” he asked with a winning smile. Shortbeak cocked a brow at him, and he shrugged. “It’s either that or tell the truth, and what would be the point of asking you to keep our little embarrassment to yourself in that case?”

Shortbeak relented at that. Technically it was still selling within the boundaries of the earldom, so why not? She gave him two of the forest fowls she caught along with a hare for a decent sum of money. “And please think about what we said. We really are grateful for your help and we would be glad to have you with us,” he added at last, clasping his other claw on top of hers as they shook to conclude the deal, looking her dead in the eyes with a warm smile. She was actually taken a little aback by the gesture, but before she could compose herself to respond, he had already turned and took to the air to catch up to his brother.

She had continued on with her business deep in thought, taking care of her spoils from the hunt and bringing dinner to Amelia. It was then she had broached the topic with her after telling her about the day. She had found it amusing, and it warmed Shortbeak’s heart to see her smile as much as she was able. Amelia felt it would be good to take up their offer. She could finally get steady employment, and they could stop traveling everywhere. She said the last part more for Shortbeak’s benefit than her own. She knew she had adored all the wonders and sights they had seen as they traveled but knew she could never fully enjoy them, not confined as she was to the carriage for fear of the public. And especially not now when the ash had spread to make her wings immobile and her forelegs near useless.

She thought about it long and hard that night. They had said to go see a count, so it couldn’t be too suspect. Still, she had to admit she was worried. Even if it all went well and she could find steady employment, better still, the ability to find some physician or apothecary who could in some way lessen her sister’s suffering, there was still a chance it’d all come crashing down about her wings. If Amelia was discovered, afflicted as she was by the Ashen Plague, how soon would it take for the griffons of Skymount to turn on them? For those two brothers to turn on them out of fear? No amount of gratitude could cover the risk they’d be taking by allowing her to stay.

But if she didn’t take it then, she’d just be leaving to wander aimlessly again, moving from place to place, from kingdom to kingdom until the inevitable occurred.

When put like that, there was hardly a choice at all really.

--=--

To say that Shortbeak was shocked would be something of an understatement.

Things had advanced to such a point in such a short period of time, it wasn’t until she found herself in the royal armory, being shouted at by a disdainful quartermaster and having used and near broken equipment foisted on her before being shoved out the door to get beaten to bloody pulp by her newfound comrades, that the reality of how much her life had changed finally materialized in her mind.

Not the typical way a prince changed a girl’s life but hey, it was a thing that happened.

That was the point, wasn’t it? Her life had changed. What had once been a crushing exodus from one kingdom to another, desperately providing for her and Amelia, had finally come full circle and achieved by chance in a few years what her mentor could not throughout the entirety of his life. Coming to Skymount had seen to that. The two princes had been as good as their word, better even, when she was brought before the king himself. Of course, the gratitude of royalty was one thing; the respect of knights was another, and more than a few aspirant knights of the kingdom were incensed that a lowly Cloud Knight had ascended so high as to become a royal knight and a part of the king’s personal guard.

It was an interesting if rocky transition. She had to earn her place amongst the royal knights, and that was not an easy prospect. Fallow had taught her well, and she had taken to her lessons like a natural. However, that did not mean she did not have more to learn. She was young, she was new, and more importantly to the other knights, she was unproven. They were not gentle. It had taken her a little over three years to earn their begrudging respect, and in that time, she had given as good as she had gotten. She had grown to become the grim, determined griffon she would later be known. As her prowess increased, the more she was pushed. It was, nonetheless, the happiest she or Amelia had been in years. The position of royal knight came with ennoblement, and ennoblement came with something she knew she could put to good use: land.

She was quick to act, having Amelia moved and cared for, with only the absolutely most trustworthy of servants allowed to work on her estate. It was outside of Skymount, a short ways north of a little hamlet simply called Gnoll that was hers. Amelia was safe, cared for and, most importantly, unknown to all but her and a very select group of servants. With that, she could turn to her duties and make contacts. Knowing now the circles she was traveling in could be put to use, perhaps even help her find somegriffon who could help Amelia. It was not easy, especially not when the jovial and friendly court that Skymount had seemed at first seemed darkening as every year past.

Shortbeak was no wide eyed, naive idealist. She knew first impressions could be deceptive and frankly had been waiting until the initial veneer of novelty and culture shock had subsided, as Gethrenian highborns were decidedly more raucous than ones in her home kingdom, before seeing exactly the sort of nest she had made for herself. She had been rather alarmed when first impressions were a fairly accurate portrayal. There was the expected jockeying and political hemming and hawing, but it was nowhere near the vindictive viciousness she had been expecting in her cynicism.

Gethrenia was known as the ‘kingmaker’ when it came to higher tier politics in the High Kingdom, sometimes literally when it came down to crises of inheritance. It was always known for patient kings who stayed out of a political Gerlick game until it reached a point where its intervention could be definitive, be it nothing more than the High King trying to enact kingdom wide legislation, capitalizing on the opportunity to be the primary entry into Griffonia from Equestria for that huge train she had seen pass through Skymount from time to time, or indeed, backing the High King in whatever endeavour that had gotten up everygriffon’s gizzard that week. She had expected a viper’s nest of intrigue. Instead, Gerhart’s court reflected the griffon himself: forthright, boisterous, and larger than life. That was not to say the griffons there were unintelligent brutes -- just less cynical than most.

So it was when one courtier began acting furtively around another that the subtle changes began to creep up. Dinners, feasts, and court functions became increasingly colder and colder, more formal and formulaic, to the point that they became shorter and shorter until only the bare necessities of decorum and form were adhered to. The knights changed too. these brave, professional griffons, one by one, changed. They became less outspoken and less close. No longer did they linger in their free time in one another’s company. No more were their playful barbs and jests bandied about as the inconsequential posturing it once was. They became suspicious and reclusive from one another, and then one by one they seemed to leave to be replaced with younger knights, less experienced. The servants became fearful, courteous to the point of sophistry before they too seemed to be replaced. Nobles began attending court only when strictly necessary, and for the life of her, Shortbeak could not understand what was going on.

Whatever change had befallen Skymount, it had seemed to affect the king the most, who had grown despondent. She had overheard him one night confiding in his chaplain, the High Feather, that he had no idea what was going on or what had become of his court or why his own vassals and friends seemed afraid to come near him, or how recalcitrant they became when he left Skymount on business to their own domains. If even the king himself did not know the cause of what was happening right before his eyes, then something has really gone afoul. Even his sons had grown distant from one another. It was as if some dark pall had fallen over the entire castle.

She dedicated herself to her duties from then on. For three years she tried not thinking about it, only training in the arts of combat and war, patrols, and the occasional bandit hunt. Those were particularly bloody exercises as it turned out, to the point where she had gained a reputation for brutal efficiency and a bloody-mindedness that frankly scared some griffons. It was not surprising to some, who attributed it to the seeming corruption that seemed to be infecting the heart of the kingdom. She could think of a few other reasons why she persecuted her duties more vigorously than strictly necessary but felt fine in not correcting their assumptions. By the time things came to a head, she was the most senior knight in the king’s guard, but that was mostly due to the fact that the old guard had seemingly vanished off the face of the world. She heard one of them had died in a tavern brawl, which seemed very unlike him to be honest. She should have been more suspicious.

It had been the day that a servant had been found, beaten and bleeding on the kitchens floor, that the tension and anxiety Shortbeak had been repressing would finally find an outlet. Other than hapless highwaygriffons who didn’t have enough sense to quit while ahead that was. It had been a bit of a scandal, and Gerhart had handled the matter aptly, but Shortbeak found herself fuming. She had known the griffon – he was one of the number of nameless servants that seemed to come and go – but his death had resonated with her. Something was rotten in the state of Gethrenia, it was getting to the point of senseless violence, and the cause was as invisible as the air itself. It frustrated her to no end that there was no one she could bring to account for it all.

Not until Geoffrey had provided her with one.

She was walking along a rampart set just outside the main dining hall. The tall windows revealed only the dark, partially moonlit interior while the landscape below was bathed in pale blues and greys as the valley slept. There she had come upon Geoffrey, who seemed to be muttering furtively around a corner and in the shadow of a tower.

“My prince?” Geoffrey jumped at her voice and turned to her, wings flared in surprise and his face full of fright. He let out a relieved breath as he clutched his chest.

“Oh, Dame Shortbeak, it’s only you.”

“What are you doing out here at this hour?”

“Just… clearing my head,” he said, wringing his claws together. She eyed him for a moment, everything about his body language screamed fear.

“My lord, is something amiss?”

“No, no,” he said, giving her a faltering smile. “You can continue. I was just going to return to my chambers anyway.”

She stopped him before he could pass her.

“My lord,” she said sternly, glancing at the nearby window of the dining hall before shepherding the prince somewhere where they wouldn’t be seen. “What is wrong? Is this about the page? Is somegriffon targeting you?”

He was silent far longer than she was comfortable with. He licked the edge of his beak nervously as he glanced around them one more time before answering. “Its Johan… my brother, he… I can’t believe it.”

Shortbeak felt her skin crawl at the thought. Johan? He was behind the page’s death? But why?

“It’s not just today. It’s everything. All these years, ever since father named him heir. He’s gone mad with control.”

“My lord, what exactly are you saying?” Shortbeak asked carefully.

“He’s been scaring everygriffon!” Geoffrey said desperately, his voice low and spoken through clenched teeth, eyes wide with desperation. “The knights being replaced, servants coming and going, the dukes afraid of the king and walking on eggshells, absolutely terrified of stepping out of place, all of it! Johan is behind all of it! He is tying up this kingdom with fear and threats! Nogriffon knows it's him, but everygriffon knows somegriffon is threatening them, blackmailing them. I fear the page was disposed of for getting too near the truth.”

Shortbeak reeled. The enormity of Geoffrey was suggesting was insane. He had to be exaggerating, at the very least. “How do you know this?” she asked seriously, her expression hardening, Johan? Orchestrating all the fear and distrust in the kingdom? To what end? “Why would he even do this?”

“I don’t know, I just don’t. Maybe he fears being opposed when he comes to power, I c-can’t…” He paused to run his claws through the feathers of his head. “The page… he was one of mine. He brought me the information I needed to connect the dots. And he paid for it. I am afraid… I am afraid Johan knows of my involvement.”

“No,” Shortbeak said, partially in disbelief in what she was hearing and partially in denial of Geoffrey’s belief any harm would come to him. He blinked in surprise. “I don’t… I am not sure I can see this, my lord, but I assure you, whatever the truth of the matter, no harm will come to you. I have sworn to protect your family. It will not come to pass.”

“Yes,” Geoffrey said, smiling warmly, relief washing over his features. “I had no doubt of that, Shortbeak. You seem to be the only one who hasn’t succumb to this… this madness, the paranoia.” He paused for a moment. “Dame Shortbeak if you would, I think I can arrange things to remove Johan from his position, and end this, all of this.”

“...My lord?” Shortbeak asked cautiously, not liking the images coming to mind.

“I intend to challenge him. For the title, I mean, remove him from his position in the eyes of the whole kingdom.” Shortbeak felt herself relax. That was considerably better than what she had thought he was implying. “If I convince some of the nobility to petition father, I can get it done but… I’m not much of a fighter. This is where I must ask you a favour, Shortbeak, please.”

“What—” She was stopped when he reached out and grasped her claw.

“Please! This may be our one shot. You’re the only knight who I can trust, the only one who seems detached from all of this. Please, if I can get this set up, if I can get enough nobles on board to convince father, will you be my second? The fate of the kingdom is on the line here!” She was momentarily silenced, unsure of herself. Not a few hours ago, she had been silently fuming over being utterly unable to do anything to affect the corruption that had turned her adopted home to a poisonous den of paranoia. Now her she was being offered a way to not only do something, but to do so decisively. Perhaps it had been that desperation to do something, perhaps it had been her own cynicism had been worn away by her memories of how Skymount had been during her early years there and she simply wanted to believe this all could be fixed with a single bout in the ring of honour. Perhaps it was the memory of the prince when she first met him in the forest and how he had been so enraptured with her for her status as a Cloud Knight. Whatever it may have been, she had given her assent that night upon the ramparts, and she never forgot how happy she had made Geoffrey when she did.

No matter how much she would come to want to.

--=--

It had been a month after she had reduced Johan to a mewling heap on the ground with a broken and bloodied wing when it happened. She was returning to her estate, entering her manor to the customary welcome of her clawmaid, when she noticed something was off.

“Welcome home, milady.” the maid said, inclining her head in acknowledgement. Shortbeak noticed the torn scarf she wore immediately. The maid avoided her lady’s searching gaze.

“Amelia?” she asked lowly, barely more than a whisper as fear gripped her. The maid only glanced towards the stairs. That was all the answer Shortbeak needed before she tore up the flight of stairs with a blinded speed, moving with such violence that the door to her sister’s dorm had been nearly broken as she entered it. The bed was empty, and Amelia was nowhere to be found. Shortbeak’s world fell apart around her. The light of the midsummer sun itself seemed to dim, and the colours seemed muted. A sense of unreality descended upon her, slowly, as if a heavy garment was being placed about her shoulders. She felt her head swim as she moved. Everything felt like a dream as she turned. She noticed a door ajar at the very opposite end of the corridor at the top of the stairs. Hers, she never left it unlocked.

She moved to it, slowly opening it to find the curtains drawn blocking out the sunlight. The fireplace was lit. It must have been lit just as she arrived at the manor. She certainly didn’t see any smoke while flying in. But it was who sat before the fire that drew her attention. Geoffrey reclined upon a seat that must’ve been taken from one of the other rooms, reading a book taken from her drawers. Two large griffons she recognised from the castle guard stood in corners of the room, flanking the fire. She knew them. They weren’t knights, but they were the best archers the king had. Both had compact bows drawn with arrows ready, watching her intently. As fast as she was, she knew one of them would land a potentially lethal hit before she could do anything.

“You know, you really were a tough nut to crack. That night on the rampart? That was really my last idea. I didn’t expect it to work,” Geoffrey said without looking up. The floor creaked as she took another step. The two guards didn’t even move but both their eyes flicked sharply, judging all possible avenues of attack she could make. They needn’t have bothered. She was too stunned, too lost to try anything right then.

“Am… melia,” she managed, her voice small and her gaze distant.

“Yes, Amelia. Oh so very interesting little secret you had there. I do suppose she isn’t contagious, hm? Not really at least,” Geoffrey said, closing the book and rubbing the bottom of his beak, contemplating the fire next to him. “Otherwise, quite a few griffons would have already shown signs long ago. Of course, that wouldn’t stop griffons from panicking, now would it? I do believe I have found the real reason you were traveling all over the high kingdom. You must’ve really exhausted yourself finding such loyal and upstanding servants. Really quite exceptional. No vices black enough that I could use to twist them, and no price with which they could be bought. Remarkable, you must tell me where you found them. But where there are no prices and no sins, there may nonetheless be… limits which cannot be endured.”

Shortbeak was shaking. Everything felt cold, and there was a dampness on her scalp, a cold sweat appearing as her breathing became increasingly laboured. Amelia was gone. He had taken her. No. No she couldn’t be. She couldn’t be gone, alone and unprotected, at the mercy of anygriffon who saw her and panicked. She had failed her, she had failed to protect her again. She looked up at the prince, cold fury burning through the increasing fugue of despair. She did not know why, she did not know how. She didn’t care. Her sister was gone and this… thing took her.

She didn’t say anything, just calmly walking across the room. The guards drew back on their bows, and Geoffrey smiled. “And what would harming me achieve, really?”

“Give me... back... Amelia,” Shortbeak managed, her entire form shaking with barely contained fury. His smile widened.

“No.” She just acted and grab him, claws tightening about his throat, her wings flaring and her face a snarling mask of rage. It took her a moment to realise she wasn’t perforated by arrows and that Geoffrey didn’t seem to be resisting. She loosened as she heard him choke, thinking and realising her mistake with widened eyes. He took in a grateful few breaths before chuckling through wheezing coughs. “I was wondering if you’d follow through, knowing full well what would happen to your dear, sweet Ami should anything untoward happen to me. Really, would have been a waste of a lot of time and effort on my part if you had followed through, but I would have the last laugh in the end, even if you managed to survive my guards.”

“W...Why?” Shortbeak said through gritted teeth, still shaking, her claws retracting from his neck.

“Oh for the fun of it of course.” He beamed. She looked at him blankly at that. He frowned and let out a sigh. “Oh fine, take the all the joy out of it why don’t you? At least we can pretend to be civil about the rest of this conversation, yes?”

“Please just… give her back.”

“Oh why would I do that? She is such a very sick girl. I would be remiss to release her back to her family before she is well. And such a wonderful conversationalist. You know, she was so proud of you that you finally deigned to seek help for once. She’s been awfully worried about how much you do for her and how its affecting you. Such a sweet girl.” Shortbeak didn’t want to hear it. She turned her eyes screwed shut as she tossed her head. “And I had nothing but glowing praise for you, especially about how you singlehandedly saved the kingdom. Oh she was positively beaming with pride over you. I’ll be sure to take very good care of her.”

“What do you want!?” she screamed at him, her beak trembling. “Just tell me what you want! How could you do this!? I thought… I thought…”

“Mmm, yes, you thought. Clearly what you thought didn’t matter very much, did it?” he asked, raising a claw, making the guards slacken their bows and remove their arrows. He got up from the chair and paced over to her. She look down and off to the side, still shaking. “As for what I want…” He leaned close to her and whispered into her ear. “Absolute. Total. Obedience. When I call, you answer. When I tell you to do, you will do, and your sister will continue being a pleasant conversationalist. Am I understood? I meant it when I said we would have a use for a griffon like you at Skymount.”

He spent another moment looking her up and down before smiling again. She didn’t meet his gaze. She felt something stroke her cheek, but her mind was dead to the world around her. He said something further, but she didn’t care to listen. She didn’t dare so much as move. If she did, she might shatter and never recover. She wasn’t sure when they left, leaving her sitting there on the floor of her manor, cold, numb, a thousand and one thoughts trying to formulate but nothing coherent coming to the fore. Her clawmaiden might have entered at some point, she didn’t know, she wasn’t paying attention as she saw her world crack apart, threatening to fall to pieces.

She had failed. Here, at the height of her success, she had failed again, and now it had costed her freedom, Ami’s freedom, and her honour. She had been duped. The sun set, the fire burned out, and the only break in the darkness came from the candlelight in the hall outside that shone through the crack of the door. Then, after hours of holding it back, preventing herself from completely collapsing, she let go, burying her face in her claw, letting out a shuddering breath as she sobbed quietly in the night.

--=--

She was not the only one to be taken aback by Johan homecoming to Skymount.

It had been months, and in that time, things had been getting worse and worse as Geoffrey became drunk with power, brandishing his utter disdain for everygriffon around him nakedly. Her skin crawled every time he was near, and she hated herself for every moment she remained under his service. She was not alone in this sentiment. Many were those who were bound to the Blackwing clan by oath and honour. Now they were also bound to Geoffrey’s whims by fear. This was to be their fate for backing the wrong prince, it seemed, and it only became worse and worse when the rumours started of things happening to griffons who so much as murmured discontent. Strange things. Accidents and shadows.

So when Johan came waltzing back into Castle Blackwing, trailing a shadow of his own, she, along with everygriffon else, was a tad interested. It was a tall, armoured thing he had found in Equestria, perpetually cloaked in black as it followed the prince dutifully. She had heard the stories of the attack on the prince’s train as it came across the border to Gethrenia. She didn’t believe them, but evidently the prince trusted the abilities of this creature.

She didn’t particularly care. So what if the prince had come back? It was far too late, for the king’s health was failing, and nogriffon in their right mind would even think to look at him twice for fear of Geoffrey. She passed no remarks when she saw it about the castle those first few days. That was until something rather interesting had happened. The right of retrieval was pressed. The castle was rocked with the news, and Geoffrey was apoplectic. She didn’t have all the details, but she didn’t care, because in his fury, the prince had slipped up.

He was going around the knights, ordering them to leave the castle immediately to patrol the demesne. He didn’t specify where and had grabbed Shortbeak by the shoulder, practically hissing into her ear that she was to do as she was bidden and fight in the bout in his stead. She readily agreed to it, and he had sneered, muttering that it was good she knew her place and how it would be a shame if the inhabitants of the Vestibule were to come to light.

The penny dropped.

Shortbeak had followed the implicit command not to search for her sister, knowing she was being watched, and if she had even so much as sniffed around, something would have happened to her. So she never knew where exactly Geoffrey had kept her. It was a pity there was only one place in the entire city that was referred to as the Vestibule. A word any casual passerby would assume meant entrance hall, in Skymount it referred to a particular building in the eastern district that had once been a hospice run by an order of nuns, a place known for its welcoming atmosphere and care.

She had a place and her comrades were being sent away. An opportunity unlike any other was presented to her, and a plan began formulating in her mind. She had grabbed hold of Godfrey, the dour-faced knight before he could leave, pressing a bundle of notes into his claw and closing it over with her own talons, glaring desperately into his eyes before turning and walking away before anygriffon could see them. They were instructions, parts of her plan, and Godfrey was the most levelheaded knight in their entire cadre. The rest was in the hands of the All-Maker, and she prayed fervently Godfrey would pull through and gather the knights while they were away from the scrutiny of Geoffrey and the entirety of Skymount. She would explain things to them later, if they pulled through, if she pulled through, if none of them gave into their fear of Geoffrey and sold her out.

There was only one more piece of the puzzle remaining. And she found him in the kitchens, tending to cleaning his prince’s table. He had left and entered the wall, and she ordered the servants out, then she sat in an exterior corridor, waiting for him to return.

It was a simple part of the plan but the most fragile. She had to be sure this creature would actually fight her. It had to be believable. If it turned out he was just some sniveling sellsword Johan had picked up, then what would happen during the fight would become altogether too obvious. She had to be sure he would actually fight and try to win. To this effect, she had cornered him and started attacking his pride, goading him, daring him to run. He didn’t and she found herself on the receiving end of some pointed barbs herself, enough that he had genuinely riled her up after getting under her feathers, but she had challenged him and looked into his eyes when she had him pinned to the wall by his neck. He wouldn’t run now; he wanted this fight; he wanted to win, if not for his duty to Johan, then just to spite her, if nothing else.

Perfect.

She had left him then, stalking her way to the armory to prepare and found herself smiling at the tantalising possibility of a brighter future emerging from this particularly troubled chapter of Gethrenian history. Perhaps it was a blessing in disguise, after all, that the prince came back with his own shadow. He was already proving to be useful.

--=--

And then she woke up with a start. Birds chirped upon the wall outside of her window, and pale sunlight spilled into the room. She took a second to catch her breath, not moving from her comfortable position, her one open eye darting about the room before she curled up into her quilted bed covers, nuzzling her head down into the soft folds with a groan. It was another nightmare, a bad one, but not one about Geoffrey, oh no. It had been weeks now, weeks since it happened. Weeks since the rain and the fire, the burning tents and the strange magic that had forced the clouds themselves to fall to the earth. Weeks since she had chosen to help save trapped griffons and ponies while others sought to help put a stop to the rampaging dragon. Weeks since they had found the sundered shield, half buried in mud and water, on the edge of a shallow crater when it was all said and done.

She pushed herself up from her bed with a sight, lamenting the dampness of the side of her head from the cold sweats. She grumbled and turned the pillow over out of habit. She knew a servant was going to come in and change the covers for fresh ones anyway, but she’d be damned if she was going to change her norms now. The door opened, and she turned to give a tired look to the maid who walked in.

“Oh! Lady Shortbeak, you’re up early.”

“Early?” she groused, turning to the window, blinking. Damn nightmares. She let out a breath as she rubbed her eyes. “Yes, I suppose.”

“Should… Should I come back later?”

“Probably for the best,” she agreed as the servant retreated. If it was one thing she hated about staying in the castle, it was that the servants went by the king's schedule, not whenever happened to be sane and reasonable. And if the servants thought she was up early, it was a bad sign. It must be the very crack of dawn. She eventually extricated herself from the bed and went through her ablutions, coming to the mirror of the dresser, her claw falling upon the hat that denoted her new office.

She had declined any such promotions or advancements before, but now… now she saw the necessity of somegriffon doing what needed to be done. She donned the hat, a simple purple and black affair that had come with a ridiculous, red feathered plume that she had shortened and left her apartments.

“Lady Marshal,” she was greeted, the guards standing sharply to attention as she emerged. She nodded in acknowledgement and continued on, trying not to think about her sleepless night. She failed miserably in that regard, and it occupied her thoughts to such a degree that she almost didn’t recognise the king as he stood in the library, a pensive expression on his face, one foreleg crossed to support the other as he tapped his beak deep in thought, considering the vista outside the window. He looked troubled, understandable given the current absurd predicament Gethrenia found itself in regarding its neighbours, but this was different. He was muttering thoughtfully to himself, an odd look in his eyes as if he couldn’t quite make sense of something, not the same as his usual long-suffering grimace at a known problem.

“You’re up early, your Majesty.”

“Mmmyes, what?” he asked, turning around, pausing for a few seconds as he began working to try to recognise the person speaking to him. “Oh, Lady Shortbeak. Yes, good morning. Sorry, I haven’t slept.”

“Something amiss?”

“Everything’s wonderful!” he said with exasperation, stretching his forelegs skyward. “Fix one problem, another twenty spring up. Save the kingdom one day and then plunge it into crisis the next because I couldn’t keep my beak shut.” She cocked a brow at that, and he sighed. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to snap.”

“We’re all under pressure, my lord.”

“We’re in private here. You can use my name if you want.”

“Alright,” she said, looking around, trying to find something to distract herself or otherwise detract from the awkward lull in the conversation. She knew what was bothering him. He hadn’t talked about it since leaving Firthengart, but it was the real reason why he had blown up in King Goldtooth’s face. He had lost a friend there. They all had. She eventually turned to a shelf and picked out a book at random, pretending to flick through it.

“You know, it’s alright to grieve, Johan.” He didn’t answer, and she took it as a sign to continue. “He was your friend after all.”

“Not the first time I’ve thought he was dead.”

“What?”

“Nothing, just…” He hesitated, a thoughtful expression on his face as he studied the rich, carpeted ground. She considered him for a minute and noted with some confusion that he looked as if he was seriously debating saying something. He then just shook his head and smiled at her. “Nothing. You’re right of course, but I still have a crisis to put out. Thank you, Shortbeak.”

“Of course,” she said, curiosity piqued as he walked away. She turned back to the book. It was a discourse on sailing ships throughout the ages. She snapped it closed and put it back in its place on the shelf, any potential interest thoroughly ruined by the book’s topic. She had been on a boat once. Never again. Still, as she sat there in the midst of row upon row of books illuminated by the autumnal morning light, she considered her own words.

‘It’s alright to grieve.’

She had meant it too, but hadn’t really considered applying the advice to herself. She had not really known him all that well, not as well as the others did at least, but still. She liked to have considered him a friend, someone she could’ve related to at the very least. Perhaps in time the thought would have been reciprocated. She had certainly enjoyed what little time they had spent together before…

No. It wouldn’t do. She’d pay her respects to his memory and move on. He had been a knight in service to the kingdom. These things happened, no matter how unjust. She kept telling herself that, kept telling herself that it was normal and to accept it and move on, and for the large part, that was what she did. But she still found herself pausing every now and again, thinking, wondering.

She inhaled and rubbed her eyes. Whatever the case, she had a job to do. She turned and walked from the library, pausing to look one last time, thinking about Johan’s curious last words before closing the door to the room.

Uncanoned - April Fool's Day: Pool's closed

“Alright, so I’m here. What didst thou want to show me?” Handy asked, trying not to show his exertion. It was a long, circuitous route they had taken to go up this particular mountain, which was in actuality little more than a glorified hill, but it was supposedly necessary for some godforsaken reason that had never been adequately explained to him.

Not that getting into Equestria was particularly hard. Oh no, that was the easy part. The bullshit started when he actually reached Ponyville and had to take a meandering route through the town, in the dead of night while everyone was asleep. He had hopped from alley to alley, following a pink daemon as she led the way to the princess, trying not to think too hard at the frankly terrifying ways in which she had distorted her body and seemed to pop out of places too small for her, or occasionally jumping in front of his reflection in a window pane without actually being physically in front of him, and the entire ordeal left him smelling like sugar. He did not know why that was so and it scared him.

Oh, and of course the princess wouldn’t be in, you know, the fucking castle. That would actually make sense. Apparently this Twilight Sparkle was a hands on ruler, and by hands, on he meant that she fucked off to study something strange and weird the second it so much as gleamed from the sun hitting the dew upon its surface.

Which was why they had to leave the town, by the same circuitous bullshit route of course, and promptly walked to the mountain, halfway up its height to reach a cave mouth. The journey had taken them hours, and Handy was not best pleased when he looked back down the mountainside and discovered a dirt path leading to the town, one that should’ve taken them minutes to traverse to get here.

There was much internal screaming.

“Oh, I’m not here to show you anything, silly!” the pink thing said before chuckling happily and pronking on the spot. Pronking and pronking, up and down, up and down with an annoying springing noise that was seriously beginning to grate on his nerves. It was what the pink thing did, it was what it always did, He did not like the pink thing, but he was polite to the pink thing so that the pink thing would leave him in peace. It was not that he was afraid of the pink thing, or had an intrinsic fear of that which should not be. Not at all. That was silly. You’re silly... never say such things again lest the pink thing should hear. You do not mock the happy fun pink thing. “It’s Twilight who wants to show you the pool!”

“Pool?”

“Yeppers.”

“I was summoned all the way from Griffonia for a pool?”

“Indeederoony! Well I had to take you this way because the other way involved going through a deep dark forest and falling down this hole and Twilight told me you didn’t like going undergroundsoIbroughtyouheretogothroughthisholeinthemountainthat’lltakeyoutothisotherwayinthatinvolveslessholesthoughIguessstallions likemoreholesandrollingandfallingonyourfaceandsotwilightcouldeasilybringdownallherbigshinymagicthingiestobetterstudythemagicalmysterymirrorpool!”

The pink thing gasped, and Handy just stared for a minute while the thing caught its breath, processing its diatribe. He rotated his jaw irritably when he thought of the sheer price it cost him to travel this far, to visit the Princess of Friendship as a sign of goodwill and solidarity between Equestria and Griffonia, and totally not because the alternative involved bad things with a banana and a sea serpent, only to end up investigating a fucking pool.

“Well, I did promise her Highness… Very well, let’s get this over with thank yo—” She was wearing a party hat, the biggest smile he had ever seen, and had a steaming hot pie in her hooves with sparklers in it. An actual pie, cooked and everything, not a miniature Pinkie, although he wouldn’t rule that being outside the realm of possibility with her. “...Thanks but I—”

“Come oooonnn~” Pinkie said as she leaned closer, somehow stretching her neck to more easily reach him.

“No, really Miss Pie, I’m quite fi—”

“It’ll put a smile on your face!”

“I am most grateful, truly I am but, uh…” He looked into the dark cave mouth, to the fields surrounding the base of the mountain side, and looked behind him before being forced to face the pink thing with a nervous smile. “I believe I am required to attend to her Highness in my best condition. I’m afraid a lifetime of habit has made me a most messy eater. Really, dreadful table manners, I’m afraid I simply must decline. Besides, I had a large breakfast.”

“Awwwww,” the pink thing said sadly, looking downcast before suddenly springing back to life and getting far too close to Handy’s face for his comfort, he actually took a step back. “But you’ll have some later, wontcha, huh huh HUH!?”

“...Perhaps?” he asked, not entirely sure of himself. She smiled widely, not showing any teeth, and her eyes narrowed. She raised a hoof and gently placed it on his nose, saying quietly:

“I’ll hold ya to it. BYE!” she said brightly before bouncing away down the path some distance and hopping down the muzzle of a comically-shaped, sky blue cannon that Handy was certain wasn’t there a second ago, before his vision was entirely subsumed by the pink thing. The cannon dropped to a position where it was aimed roughly in the directly of the town and promptly exploded. Literally exploded, with parts flying everywhere and with the pink thing sent flying over the distance. Now Handy had had more than enough experience with cannons, more than he’d like, and enough common sense to know that everything that just happened was wrong.

But he didn’t want to tell the pink thing that. She might correct him.

“Master?”

“Whaugh!” Handy jumped, turning on the spot to find a very concerned-looking Crimson standing right behind him. She eyed the smoking mark on the ground where the pink thing’s cannon had once been before looking up at Handy again. “Where the hell were you!?”

She winced before answering. “...Hiding.”

“How?”

“Ways and means,” she said evasively, waving a hoof.

“...Can you teach me?” he asked. Her horn glowed for a second, a contemplative look on her face, as her eyes crossed, looking up at her horn.

“Probably not,” she said. Handy sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose.

“Well let’s get on with this. What can you tell me?” he asked, turning to face the cave mouth and the infinite blackness within its gaping maw. Nothing good ever came of entering caves for him. Crimson walked up to the mouth and stopped, eyeing the edges before placing a hoof forward.

“Hmmm, some minor protective wards, nothing too maj— Whoops.” She tried to withdraw her hoof, only to find it was stuck in mid air. “Mm, looks like if we enter, we’ll be stuck until sompeony can deactivate whatever containment wards are being used here. This is pretty strong magic too.”

“Can you do it if it was necessary?” Handy asked calmly, not intending to be stuck.

“Yes, Master,” she answered calmly before entering the cave fully. Handy tried not to twitch at her use of master. He had long since given up on trying to get her over it, but at least she stopped calling him it in front of other people. Though there was that one night in that inn... In any case, she was happier too – they all were. Everything was smoothed over and explained and hunky dory with the world. All his adventures had been wrapped up in a satisfying and reasonable manner that was in no way completely and utterly contrived in order to justifiably make sense of why Handy would readily waltz right into Equestria at a pony princess’ request and enter a warded cave he knew he’d be magically trapped within for an indeterminate length of time for an unknown purpose. It all made perfect sense.

No, I will not explain myself. Shut up.

The cave opened up. What had once appeared to be darkness was anything but. The cave was perfectly visible and well lit, expansive and rounded, just the way Handy liked it. Not the largest cave he’d seen but an appreciable size, with the pool at its center which seemed to illuminate the cave with ambient light. A staircase carved out of the rock descended to the floor while a smoother incline could be seen snaking up the far wall to some massive, dark hole. It was honestly quite enchanting and peaceful. Or it would be if the cave wasn’t plastered wall to wall with MAD SCIENCE!

No, seriously.

Princess Twilight Sparkle had set up innumerable arcane-looking machines that frankly looked like something out of a nineties super villain's hideout. Immense machines with oscillating projections, various superfluous bulbs in random places that lit up at odd times, some kind of graphing machine that was measuring something while its pen went crazy and drew erratic lines on piles of paper that were spilling forth and the place had a frightening number of unshielded tesla coils from which lightning cracked and spasmed. The air was electrified, and Handy felt goosebumps as every hair on his body stood increasingly on end as the power in the room suffused them. Some of the machines were shaking with volatility, and steam gushed from somewhere, giving the atmosphere a humidity at odds with the dryness caused by the constant burnt ozone and the, you know, fucking lightning being thrown about the place. Crystal based magitek – this must have cost several kings’ ransoms. He had never ever seen this much of it in one place at the same time. Twiley dearest must have been fucking loaded.

Or she was, not anymore after this, holy shitballs. There were more traditional arcane paraphernalia Handy recognised. Diagrams, runes, some kind of magical formulae carved into strange rocks that didn’t look native to this cave, talismans, several magical-looking artefacts of some description. Some looked like ordinary things such as wooden spoons that had strange markings that seemed to exude a fine golden mist, while others seemed like unidentifiable fetishes. Whatever was going on here, Miss Sparkle was trying a lot of different kinds of magic.

“Master?”

“Mm?”

“What are we doing here?” Crimson asked warily, horn aglow as she looked at the machines suspiciously. Old magic shenanigans aside, she came from a rather different school of thought when it came to the arcane after all and had little time for the highly formalized methodology and theory most socially acceptable mages favoured. That was fine with Handy, considering he had experienced enough to find most people’s dogma on magic to be suspect at best.

“Politics,” Handy answered before speaking more loudly, “Your highness? Are yo—”

“Oh, there you are!” The princess appeared, popping out from behind a table set up with the most obtuse alchemy equipment Handy had ever seen, parchments and papers flying everywhere. She was looking distinctly less than regal, her mane out of shape and frayed, bags under her eyes, a nervous twitch, a disjointed smile, and a pair of glasses that were sitting lopsided on her muzzle which she quickly corrected. Her wings were in similar disarray, and she actually seemed to be wearing a coat of some sort that was stained with what Handy presumed was coffee. Good thing it wasn’t white or he’d start wondering. “I’m so glad you could come, you see I was really hoping you could help me with something.”

“I would be happy to. I brought my own expert on magic to see if—”

“Oh really!?” Suddenly, Crimson got a face full of alicorn and had to take a step back. “Great! Could you help me analyze the readings? I’d love to have a second opinion!”

“I… I’m not that well versed in such mechanical—”

“Great!” Twilight exclaimed happily before grabbing an alarmed-looking Crimson and dragging her over to the stenograph. That was what you call those things, right? It made graph and had a stencil? “Just keep an eye on this, this and this, and let me know if you see any anomalies. I’ll be over there checking the thematic actuator for any convulsion in the merlinford polarity. I need you to let me know if—”

And Handy tuned her out. It was all very fascinating, he was sure, but not having learned anything about magic, listening to someone discussing high level intensive magical theory was like listening to a mathematician explain his proof to you when you had never even heard of the concepts of maths. And never ever seen basic numbers before. And you were deaf. You just didn’t have even the most basic concepts grasped let alone anything on that tier, you noob.

He meandered over to the edge of the pool and looked down. It was mirror-smooth and reflected him near perfectly, albeit with a slight blue tinge to everything. It was magic, he could tell that much, but considering the very smart pony’s magical implements were just hanging an inch above the water’s surface without actually touching it, Handy figured it’d be best if he didn’t reach down for a drink. Even if the idea of a spot of water sounded really good right now. He looked up to see a rather bewildered-looking Crimson casting a worried glance in his direction before turning her attention back to the, frankly, concerning number of unstable implements.

“My Lady Sparkle?”

“Mm?” He turned around to find her on the far side of the room, a spell book open on a stand, with around ten different parchments, both ancient and new, floating around her as she cross-referenced them.

“While it is indeed a…” he waved his hand, eyeing their surroundings, “...unique experience to see thee again, may I ask what is so important about this pool that thou hast specifically required me to be in attendance for?”

“Oh right, I should probably explain myself. You remember that argument we had regarding magic?” Twilight asked, referring to an incident that totally happened and that the narrative was not conjuring out of thin air for ease of flow to help this farce maintain causal integrity. “Well, I wanted to see if I could use your experience with… unorthodox magic to help me understand how this pool works,” she said, indicating the pool with a hoof. Handy looked at it and then back at the princess.

“So what does it do?” Handy asked, looking over its edge. Then he felt something shoving him from behind, and he fell into it with a splash. Thankfully, it wasn’t too deep, and he emerged gasping for air before shooting the princess a venomous look.

“Sorry,” she said sheepishly, “but I need you for the control and for that you had to be wet.”

“...What.”

“You’ll see, just need to test something Pinkie told me.”

“Thou… needst me to jump into the pool?”

“Yes.”

“...Did you think to ask?” Handy deadpanned. Twilight shifted a bit as he pulled himself out. Well, at least it wasn’t his armour and not any of his good suits, but still it was going to be a bitch to dry this shit off. Twilight looked behind him at the pool as he got out, seemingly expecting something and let off a contemplative ‘hmm’ before checking one of her books. It seemed to be a journal of some kind. Handy cleared his throat, and she looked up in surprise before grinning nervously and hiding the book behind her.

“Right. Asking. Yes, that probably would have been more appropriate.” She laughed nervously. Crimson gave her a less than pleasant look over her shoulder before turning to the machines. “But it’s okay though! We’ve already proven one of my theories right and now we have a control!”

“And what did we prove?” Handy said, trying to remain calm. Reasoning just as he had fucked with her in the past, perhaps in more ways than one, she could be forgiven fucking with him just once without reprisal. Maybe. He would think about it.

“That you aren’t cloned just because you stepped into the pool!”

“...What.”

“Yes, you see?” she said excitedly, trotting over to the edge and pointing to the waterline and the ground surrounding the pool. It was dry; not a single drop of water had left the pool. Her implements that hovered over it were not so much as squirted by the water. “The water is contiguous, and the only way to take any from it is to literally take some in a container, soak something in it, or drink it. Just landing in it won’t cause a splash explosive enough to—”

There was another splash, and a pretty purple pony princess spluttered and flailed in the pool. Now, I’m not saying that the tall human had anything to do with it, and definitely not by carefully stepping back a tad and moving one leg in a position right behind her to shove her forward juuuust as she was leaning a bit too far over the edge. But at the same time, I was not saying he didn’t. She managed to steady herself and narrowed her eyes at the human, who smiled genially. Crimson kept a sly smile to herself.

“Right. Well, I guess I deserved that.” Handy simply nodded as she emerged from the pool and… proceeded to shake the water off of herself with Handy as front row witness. He frowned. “As I was saying, the magic in this pool can clone ponies, I have been studying it for a while now and I just cannot seem to crack it. It falls outside all known models of magic I can devise.”

Crimson was listening now. Her ears flicked up and rotated to hear the princess better as she continued, “It uses an incantation to activate its properties but doesn’t exhibit any—”

“The point, if thou wouldst be so kind, my lady.”

“Well. I’ve been… reluctant to test live ponies on it, but you seem to have experience with this kind of esoteric phenomena before.”

“Thats one way of putting it. So you wish to… test cloning on myself?”

“Well… yes you see…” She looked pained as if recalling some thought that had been bothering her for some time now. She shook her head. “Nothing, just... you don’t need to worry about anything. I can get rid of the clone peacefully. That’s why I needed you wet.”

“Keep saying that, it’s never going to sound right.”

“...Right, anyway. When clones emerge from the pool, although I only have Pinkie’s word for it, they’re completely dry. I’m hoping that’ll be the case so we can easily tell you apart from the clone.”

“So what if, because I am already soaked, the clone emerges soaked as well anyway?” Handy postulated. Twilight’s ear twitched and she stomped the ground, muttering something along the lines of knowing she was forgetting something. Handy looked around at the impressive array of bullshit around the pool. “How long hath thou been down here anyway?”

“Oh you know,” she said, looking off to the side, eye twitching. “A while.”

“And thou did not think having multiple… well me’s around would be a tad problematic?”

“Well, yes, I had considered it, but I figured you could handle it,” she said brightly. Handy shared a look with Crimson. “I mean, I know its a lot to think about. Not everypony is comfortable with being clo—”

“Okay.”

“...ned and— wait what?”

“What do I need to do?” Handy said, strolling over to the pool,. Twilight looked at him in confusion. Crimson’s mouth was open. “Thou mentioned an incantation, correct? Does one require inherent magical ability to use it?”

“I… well yes, sort of. Pinkie Pie doesn’t know any magic… I think,” Twilight said, suddenly unsure of herself. “You should be able to cast it. The magic is in the pool itself, not in the pony casting the incantation. Theoretically.”

“Then what are the words?” Handy asked casually. Twilight, a bit taken aback by how readily the human agreed to this, took a few seconds to stammer out an answer.

“Okay, well, ahem, repeat after me: into her own reflection she stared—”

“She?”

“...He stared, yearning for one whose reflection he shared. And solemnly sweared not to be scared at the prospect of being doubly there.” The pool seemed to glow brighter for a moment or two. Everyone watched it carefully as it slowly dimmed back down to normal. “Happens whenever anypony repeats the rhyme. My guess is if nopony is directly over it, and isn’t the one saying the words, nothing happens.”

“Convenient.”

“Quite.” Crimson snorted. Handy merely turned back to the pool and took a breath before repeating the words.

It was like he was drawn into his own reflection. He couldn’t feel himself move but felt as if he was being drawn by the millimetre and then faster and faster towards the surface of the water with each syllable. The water glowed brighter and brighter until finally, he saw himself. He was emerging from the pool of water deftly, as he looked upon himself looking back, slackjawed and surprised, at the two ponies in the room and the unknowable apparatus that surrounded them all.

Then he blinked and he was standing right where he had been next to Twilight as he watched his doppelganger pull himself to his feet. Dry as a bone, it stood up uneasily and looked upon his surroundings with a sour expression before eventually locking eyes with Handy himself. Both of them stared at one another for a long, long time. Twilight was excitedly hopping from hoof to hoof before checking her instruments and magical bric a brac, babbling to herself. Handy wasn’t listening, too busy gazing in wonder at for all the world was an exact replica of himself. He moved a hand to his own cheek, and saw his double do the same. He let out a breath, catching himself before he laughed outright.

“Master?” Crimson looked between the two of them. The clone looked at her with an odd expression.

“It’s alright, Crimson,” Handy said, taking a step closer to his clone. “It’s more than alright.”

“This doesn’t make any sense,” Twilight said, looking over her machines, paying attention to one in particular which seemed to display a number of colourful crystals floating within a transparent container. “Nothing happened, no spike, no readings… Did you get anything over there?” she said back to Crimson without turning. She didn’t get an answer and just let out an exasperated groan before rubbing her face with her hooves. “Ugh, I must have missed something. This is going take weeks to figure out. I’m sorry, Handy, seems I’ve dragged you here for nothing. Look, I’ll just… I guess I have to dispel your clone now, not really knowing—”

When she had turned around, it was just in time to see Handy, soaking wet Handy that is, with his hand on his double’s shoulder. She saw him smile, and saw his double smile back at him, a little hesitantly.

And then she saw Handy brutally murder his own face with his hammer.

The clone dropped to his knees before hitting the ground with his ruined face. “God damn, that was cathartic!” Handy exclaimed, hands in the air, bloody hammer and all. “Oh hey, I have two now,” he said, grabbing the hammer of the fallen clone. “Anyone want a hammer? No? Just me? Cool.”

Crimson looked on, wide-eyed and open-mouthed. Twilight was still in shock as they watched the human gleefully loot his own dead body. Because, you know, that would be something you’d just do after killing yourself. “Wh-What did you just…”

“What?” Handy asked simply as if it were just any other daily activity, currently looting the clone’s coin purse. “Oh man, I can certainly see a use for this pool.”

“Wait how can you—! Thats just—! You just killed somepony!”

“No, I probably almost certainly did in fact mostly not.” Crimson squinted her eyes and cocked her head at him. “Here I’ll show you.”

“What,” Twilight said flatly as she watched Handy walk over to the pool and repeated the incantation before she could stop him. “Wait!”

“Nope,” he said as he helped his second doppelganger come out of the pool. Handy v3 looked at v2 in some manner of confusion, before looking up at Handy Prime, eyes wide with understanding.

“Oh,” the clone said.

“Yeah, oh. Want to have a go?” Handy said before immediately putting a hand on the clone’s arm as he reached for his own weapon. “Not at me. I’m the prime, remember?”

“Ah.” It looked back at the pool. “Clone?” it asked simply.

“You clones aren’t really all there, are you?” Handy asked. It shook its head. “Well, repeat after me.” And it did so, and two more Handy clones appeared. Twilight was visibly freaking out before shouting.

“Okay! Hold up! What do you think you’re doing!?” she demanded.

“Silly pony, I’m doing science!” She gawked at him. Crimson was looking from human to human in something approaching alarm, or maybe it was something else, but didn’t interfere. Her swishing tail was the only sign that she was discomforted at all. Her horn glowed as she tried grabbing all of them so they couldn’t go near the pool.

“This isn’t— You just— You can’t!”

“Look, thou requested of me to help thee with thy research. Am I not doing that?”

“No!”

“Oh,” Handy said, his grin dropping. Twilight sighed and let them all go, a shaking hoof raised to her forehead.

“I just… I didn’t think I’d ever see somepony die right in front of me.”

“It’s alright, Highness, clones aren’t people.”

“Thats what I thought back when…” her voice hitched in her throat, “back when Pinkie… But the thought always lingered. What if they weren’t, what if—” She looked up. Where there were four Handies, there was now sixteen. “What.”

“Now repeat after me,” Handy Prime said to his clones, his hand on the shoulder of Handy 3.0, his hammer hanging loose in his free hand which he swung back around and then forth in and upwards arc. His silver hammer crashed into the face of the second clone, crushing his jaw and knocking the clone off of his feet and back on the ground, mewling in pain as he clutched what remained of his ruined face. “Now that? That was a poor shot. It was an awkward angle, so make sure you go for clean kills, ‘kay? ‘Kay.” He grabbed his hammer in both hands and swung it overhead, bringing it down on the blighted clone’s head to end his suffering. A line of blood splattered across Twilight’s face as she watched Handy’s head cave in like an overripe melon. Her eye twitched and she whimpered.

After that it was pretty much chaos and carnage as the clones went to town on each other while the princess watched on in abject terror. Her expensive, rare, and nigh irreplaceable magical equipment was broken and being destroyed right before her eyes as her makeshift lab became a battleground, with clones occasionally taking breaks to bring out more clones to continue the cycle of violence, occasionally taking sides, turning a mindless melee into a grinding war of attrition which then turned into a confusing slaughter again. Twilight, the poor dear, was sitting there completely horrified when Crimson trotted over to her and sat on her haunches beside her.

“You okay?” she asked. The pretty purple petrified purple pony princess didn’t answer. “Yeah, I’m not okay either,” she said with a bored expression, a hot cup of coffee floating beside her. Twilight would’ve thought to ask how long it took her to find her coffee maker but then Twilight wasn’t sure how long she had been sitting there getting absolutely traumatised. “I mean, here I am watching the pony who saved me from a life of slavery, by rather unorthodox methods it must be stated, killing himself right before my eyes. I mean, you know?” No answer. “I’ve seen worse things and I’ve seen stranger things, but sometimes…”She sighed. “Somethings just hit you hard anyway.” She took a sip before casually asking, “You want a cup?” Twilight just slowly shook her head. Crimson could’ve sworn she heard her neck creaking like a rusty iron door that hadn’t seen oil in a thousand years. “Yeah, I wouldn’t either,” Crimson said, taking a sip. “You have terrible taste in coffee.”

“Hope you don’t mind, Majesty, but I was making use of thy kettle,” Handy said, strolling up behind the ponies and leaning back against a wooden table, stirring his coffee. “I mean, I would’ve taken some milk as well, but thou hast likely acquired your milk from cows, and I have yet to reconciled myself to partaking of milk from a thinking creature that wasn’t my mother when I was but a babe. It does mean I’ve had to partake of goat’s milk instead, not the most pleasant thing, but you would be surprised at what tastes you can acquire.”

“You!” And suddenly, Twilight latched onto Handy and forced him back onto the table, spilling his coffee all over the table’s various contents and likely priceless arcane manuscripts and uncounted pony hours of diligent work destroyed in moments. He blinked up at her in surprise. “Why!?”

“Why?”

“Why!”

“Why not?”

“Why not!? Why not!?” she practically screamed into his face, grabbing him by the shoulders and slamming him back onto the table. Normally that’d be enough to push him over the edge and react violently, even to a princess, but he was in too good a mood after breaking his own face in. Twice. “Because you are killing ponies!”

“Correction, I am killing myself. A lot.”

“But they’re ponies!” she shouted, gesturing back at them with a wing as they milled about, brutalising one another in the background. Crimson was idly spectating as she nursed her coffee, occasionally eyeing the princess with disdain just to make sure she didn’t actually harm Handy.

“Really now,” Handy said thoughtfully, seeing just how distressed Twilight was. This clearly wasn’t just from being exposed to death and destruction. Granted, that might be part of the reason, but if it was the only one, she’d probably still be fretting over that tiny sliver of blood streaking across her cheek. “Then how is this any worse than ‘peacefully dispelling of my clones’ once they were done?”

The question bit deep, and he saw uncertainty in her eyes. He placed both of his hands on her withers and gently pushed her off of him so he could get up, “So, my lady Sparkle, tell me why is it you really wanted to test this pool?”

“I just… I wasn’t… I needed to be sure. I needed to be sure I didn’t… didn’t kill ponies… that I didn’t really kill Pinkie Pie over and over again.” Well shit. Handy considered it for a moment before drawing out his hammer, marching over to the melee and swinging, catching a poor, bloody-faced clone straight in the throat and sending him to the floor. “What!? Why did you do that?”

“Why do you think I so gleefully engaged in wanton violence against myself after I got cloned like this?”

“I don’t know, maybe because you’re bucking crazy!?”

“Probably, but consider this.” He swung. Another clone died. “The way I see things.” Death. “These clones don’t have souls.” Murder. “Like, not even material souls.”

“What the Tartarus are you talking about.”

“It’s complicated, but basically they’re less than plants or animals. Probably.” Horrific violence. “Therefore, it’s not even a sin to kill them. Maybe.” Facial deconstruction. “And I always hated myself just enough to always kinda sorta want to do this anyway.” Nonconsensual manslaughter. “Not kill myself, thou must understand, but kill a facsimile of me.” Something that would require a gore tag to adequately elucidate. “But if they do have souls, that would mean they are blank slates, then I am promptly sending them all to a nicer afterlife than anything they could experience in any world thou carest to name. Possibly. Also, that would mean this pool is God, so uh, congrats on finding pool God I guess.” Murderous death violence. “And if they are an exact replica of me, soul, history and all, then I really am doing the world a favour. I kinda had this coming honestly. Potentially.” He swung and scored. “Sure, in those last two cases, it probably is murder I guess, but I’ll only find out when I die anyway. Maybe. But the odds still are that these are literally just what the were before they popped out of the pool. Reflections, nothing more.”

“That’s… that’s insane!”

“Then tell me, highness, thine dispelling trick for the clones.” He picked up a spare warhammer and swung it, throwing it end over end before it collided with the head of one of the Handy’s on the other side of the pool before another Handy took him out. You know, for being exact clones of Handy, these guys were pretty shit in a fight by comparison. “How is it any different from what I am doing now?”

“I didn’t enjoy doing it!”

“A good point, but does it make it more or less wrong of an act in and of itself than what I am doing right now?” Handy asked. She didn’t have much of an answer. “Oh well, I guess I can just go on playing with myself then.” Crimson snorted, coughing up her coffee.

“But… b-but- I…” Twilight looked crestfallen. Crimson rolled her eyes and patted her lightly on the wither.

“Princess, does thy spell work on non-clones?” Handy asked, taking a break from the murder and looking down at himself. “Hm, yeah I’m going to need to wash all of this.”

“I… I haven’t tried it on anypony since. I had come up with it on the spot and didn’t think too hard when I used it. I don’t know if… if when I use it on somepony ‘real’ they’ll—” She swallowed the lump in her throat. “They’ll disappear or not.”

“Care to try then?” Handy asked simply, eyebrow raised. Twilight looked up shocked. Crimson’s eyes widened in alarm at Handy before narrowing at Twilight.

“No. She doesn’t,” she said warningly.

“Oh give her a chance, Crimson. She’s obviously holding back a lot of guilt. Imagine, thou didst nothing more than cut some wheat with a scythe but could never be sure thou didst not decapitate some innocent children in the harvest.” Twilight looked torn and slightly horrified at Handy’s choice of comparison. “‘Sides, if she does kill me, thou can just slay her.”

Crimson’s eyes narrowed. “I’m not sure about this.” Twilight eyed Crimson fearfully for a moment before looking back at Handy.

“Look, it’s either she finds out now, and worst case scenario she kills me and discovers she may or may not have killed her real friend and that there’s a clone mimicking the pink thing and then, in her turn, dies. Sad times all around. Best case scenario? Nothing happens to me, and the charnel house behind me disappears. We go home. I got to kill myself a lot, and her Highness is reassured that she is not, in fact, a horrible murderer. Everybody wins.”

“What about me?” Crimson asked.

“You get all my stuff.”

“That’s… not what I meant,” she said, looking downcast for a moment, frowning. Her bored expression returned for a moment before looking at the princess. Her horn briefly flashed red before turning a distinct green. “If you’re so certain about this…” she said, looking at Handy sideways.

“Oh, I’m not, but I remember how I felt when I first killed someone, and if I can reassure her Highness as a favour for Equestria on behalf of Griffonia, then so be it. The worst that can happen, after all, is death and there’s worse things than that.”

“Why... What… Why would you even think of doing this?” Twilight asked, unshed tears in her eyes as the situation turned so radically against her. The battle quietened down behind them with most of the magical paraphernalia broken and strewn about the place. There was only one clone left milling about, but he was too busy looting corpses to pay attention to the three of them.

“Thou asked for my help specifically because of my experience on the receiving end of strange and esoteric magic,” Handy said darkly. “I am here at thy request, and this is what has become of it. There are worse things than death, dearest Aine. Please own up to the consequences. This is what you have wrought, after all. You were so prepared to use your dispelling upon one clone.” He gestured behind him. “What is a dozen or so more? And if you really think you have killed living people, what is a few more? Have I not done you a favour by destroying my clones for you? You would only be killing one of me at worst.” There was a sound of something breaking behind them. “Well two, but you already know my feelings on these things. And then you’d know. One way or another, you’d know.”

“But what if… Pinkie…” She seemed to shrink. Handy remained quiet while Crimson retained a stern visage, occasionally looking over at Handy, betraying her own uncertainty.

“At best, you’ll learn it’s the real one as only the clones would have possibly been dispelled. At worst, well, thou still wouldst not know for sure, but thou would be too dead to care.” Handy narrowed his eyes at the pony. “Well, your Highness, doth thou truly wish to know whether or not th’art a murderer?” She looked down. He couldn’t see her eyes or hear her sobbing but saw the dark spots on the floor as the tears fell upon the dusty stone as her shoulders shook. Just as he thought, she didn’t look like a killer, didn’t have it in her eyes. She’d never follow through on what he challenged her to. His initial estimation of her seemed to be on the money. He sighed before nodding to Crimson, who deactivated her horn as he turned around and—

Twilight let out a scream and a wave of magic burst from her horn, lifting Handy and Crimson bodily into the air and sending them flying across the room. The cave was a mess as everything lifted in the magical storm she let loose and then dropped upon the ground. The bodies of the clones were lifted into the air before floating in slow motion and slowly dissolving into white particles that themselves disappeared before leaving existence with a short popping noise. The one remaining living clone seemed to collapse in on himself in a burst of magic, meaning there was an apparent difference between a living clone and a dead one that would doubtlessly be fascinating to Twilight if she hadn’t had her eyes closed, bawling tears when she cast her spell.

Twilight looked down at the ground, sobbing hard. “I’m sorry,” she whispered to no one in particular. The silence in the aftermath of her explosive burst of magic hung heavy on the air like a funeral shroud. “I’m so sorry… I had to know. I had to.” She looked up and her crying stopped.

A very bewildered-looking Crimson was lying in between two machines of undefinable purpose, on her back while trying to extricate herself from innumerable wires and cords and bundles of rope which had been used for God only knows what. Handy himself, soaking wet and now free of every drop of clone blood, mind you, was sitting propped up against an upturned table and beside a pile of broken glass, sitting in a puddle of colourful fluids as papers and manuscripts floated down to earth from where they had been blown into the air. He genuinely looked completely and utterly shocked, rendered speechless.

He was, however, completely whole and alive, so Twilight had that going for her. “Y-You’re alive!”

“Yes…” Handy managed after a few seconds of trying to get his brain to work, patting himself down. “It appears so. Crimson?”

“Master?” she answered, echoed questioningly by Twilight.

“It looks like you don’t have to kill the Princess.”

“That’s good, Master, I’ll be sure to enjoy that fact when the world stops spinning,” she said, flailing uselessly at her entanglements. Twilight wiped her tears away with her fetlock.

“Th-That means… Pinkie, she’s… Oh I’m so happy!” she said, sniffling, still crying but now for an entirely different reason. Handy managed to get up and check to make sure everything was in place, frowning that her dispelling spell had rid him of the clone money he had looted. A pity, but he’d rather concentrate on that rather than the fact he almost bloody died. He had not expected the princess to go through with it, he really didn’t, so much so he literally bet his life on it. He had been so sure he could push her limits just to fuck with her. Looked like a certain purple pony had hidden, terrifying depths of strength. He tried not to let how terribly shaken he was show as he busied himself making his way over to his ponyservant and pull her from the wreckage. Twilight was happily crying away as she levitated a journal from her lab robe and wrote into it without looking.

“Well, if that… is all. I believe we are done here, Highness?” Handy asked hopefully, deciding to be extra polite to the purple powerhouse now that he knew for sure that when it came down to it, she could and probably would kill him if pushed far enough. He’d be a bit more circumspect in fucking with little Aine from now on. Holy shit.

“Yeah…” She sniffled. “Thank you, Sir Handy. This has been such a relief, you don’t even know.”

“Think nothing of it, my Lady Sparkle, and my apologies again for the destruction of your equipment. And the magical fire one of my clones over there.” She nodded her head, a smile still on her muzzle and her eyes closed as the pair of them seemed to hurry past her. Then a hair plinked out of place on her mane, making it infinitesimally more of a mess than it already was anyway. Her eyes opened wide, her pupils pinpricks, her smile slightly strained.

“What,” she stated. For the first time taking in the raw destruction around her and mentally calculating every single bit it cost. All her artefacts, priceless books, weeks, months of research! All ruined. Soon she wanted to cry again but for yet another entirely different reason. She sat there frozen in place as the crackle of a magical fire somewhere in the cacophonous wasteland that the cave had become. She heard voices from the stairs behind her before Handy came up to her again.

“Excuse me, Highness, could you please remove the ward on the door so we can leave?”

“Oh. Sure. In a minute,” she said in a monotone. She blinked. “Wait. So the dispelling only works on clones, so I didn’t accidentally murder my friend?”

“I believe we established this, yes.”

“So does that mean the clones I killed weren’t ponies?”

“They probably had souls, I guess. So thou art probably still a horrible murderer.”

“Oh,” she said. It was very quiet for a minute or so afterwards before Handy shifted awkwardly.

“Uh, Princess? My Lady Twilight? The ward?” No answer. Crimson trotted up behind them and booped Twilight on the tip of her horn. It blipped twice like car keys, complete with sound effects and even flashed interiorly for a moment. And without questioning that little bit of nonsense, the pair of them promptly retreated leaving Twilight to her despair.

Some time later, there was a yawn and a young drake wandered into the main cave from whatever hole in the wall he had been sleeping in, dragging a pillow behind him. “Hey Twilight… Man, what happened in here?” he asked. There was the sound of a spring snapping and Twilight spoke.

“Spike! Take a letter!” she said happily. Spike looked at her with some concern before shrugging and grabbing a blank sheet of paper. It wasn’t blank and actually had an incredibly complex magical proof on its written side that would have eventually lead to the cure of every disease everywhere ever and also infinite kittens for everyone that Twilight had stumbled upon in the midst of a coffee high one evening when she took a break from the frustration of working with the pool. Now it would be ignored and lost forever as Spike prepared the letter to be sent. It would be read, the magical proof would likely seem incomplete or nonsensical to anypony else who read it and promptly disposed of and forgotten about. “I need to explain to a few dukes why I need to raise taxes for the next season…” she said with a nervous laugh.

--=--

“So you didn’t expect her to actually go through with it.”

“No, I honestly did not,” Handy said. “Did you honestly think I’d go through with that if I did?”

“After that display, I’m not so sure, Master.”

“Stop it,” Handy said as they traveled down the path to the town of Ponyville. For some reason, that town always struck him as familiar but for the life of him he could not put his finger on it. However, he stopped in his tracks when he saw the pink thing pronk down the path towards them. “Oh no.”

“What? Oh,” Crimson said, seeing the problem. Her horn lit up.

“Crimson—” He looked down. She was already gone. “...Bollocks.”

“Ohhhh HHHHaaaaannnndyyyyy~” the pink thing singsonged. The cheerful tune of doom drew closer, promising a creamy pie-filled demise. Handy didn’t even like pie. Despite everything, Handy had meant what he said. There were worse things than death, the pink thing was one of them.

--=--

Crimson admittedly felt guilty, hiding as she was in her shroud. It wasn’t quite invisibility and it wasn’t quite hiding in the veil, more akin to hiding close to the shore of the lake, hiding just below shallow waters. The world around her appeared grey and ashen as wind howled and black shapeless clouds the size of her head whipped past at blinding speeds, incorporeal and as unreal as the things a child feared in the darkness beneath their bed. She could see the world as it was, as if through a window pane darkened.

It was a high level spell, one she always kept with her in a slip of paper beneath her hoof, just in case she needed to use it and would forget it. No sense losing a part of herself because she needed to hide from danger but didn’t have enough sense to have a means on her person of remembering the spell. She watched on in sympathetic horror as her master fell prey to the pink thing and its threats of horrible horrible pies. It was hard to discern, and she could not hear what was said, nothing more than shadows in the howling storm of the veil.

“I’m so sorry, Master.”

“Well don’t be!”

“WAAAAUUUGH!?” Crimson screamed in surprise, jumping as Pinkie Pie popped out from a shadowy hedge behind her, as bright and colourful as she was. “How did you— mmph!?”

Pinkie stuck a hoof to Crimson’s muzzle, a steaming blueberry pie held in her other hoof as she leaned in closer, eyes sparkling and her smile wider than her face. Crimson whimpered in fear as she looked upon her doom. “Hush now,” Pinkie whispered. “Only pies.”

Author's Note

You know that part about me not writing an April Fool's chapter? SURPRISE BITCHES.

BM Canon Status - Non canon as balls. Also standards have been really lowered on this and the fun nazi let loose of his inhibitions, I barely contained him. I would've warned you but.... eh, fuck it. <3

Interlude - Sands, Shores and Simple Things.

King Johan the Blackwing, first of his name, slammed the goblet on the desk, the honeyed mead sloshing and spilling over the edge and staining the pages of the terribly worded missive he was preparing to send. He sighed and rubbed his forehead, pinching the edges of the sheet in his claw and lifting it. The ink ran in black rivulets in the soaked parchment, obscuring the words.

He grimaced. It was probably for the best anyway. The letter had been a… strongly worded response to Archduchess Gertrude Widewing, one of King Goldtooth’s more important vassals. One with an uncomfortably large number of professional troops on the border of some of Johan’s more vulnerable lands and vassals, and one that had been rightly getting under his gizzard as of late.

He sighed, swallowed his pride, and begun again, this time writing a much more politely worded reply, complete with gentle complements and subtle suggestions, all the while giving very real methods of addressing her concerns and issues surrounding her borders with his demesne.

Frankly, the old hard-bitten whore could go to Tartarus to work as the glorified guard dog’s shit-shoveller for all he cared for her and her insinuations regarding his parentage, but the game of politics wasn’t won by losing your patience. He had learned that the hard way. He had acted… rather rashly to King Goldtooth in the wake of Handy’s death and the debacle of the Fall Festival weeks ago, having said quite a lot of things he shouldn’t have. Ever since then, he had regretted his actions. Trade was closed down on orders of King Goldtooth, extra taxes on his subjects traveling or working in Firthengart lands, retaliatory actions by his own nobles, followed by retaliation by Firthengart’s nobles. It was quickly running the risk of getting out of his claws as escalation built upon escalation and Goldtooth refused to respond to his missives.

Troops moved from garrison to garrison on both sides, a lot more border patrols along forests and old roads by groups of knights, ostensibly to keep subjects safe from monstrous wildlife. Certainly they were not scouting out the best supply routes or path finding for potential army advances. Why, that would be preposterous. It was nothing too overt, just plenty of scabbard rattling. Then the ponies started taking notice, letters from the princesses that he simply had to ignore or risk making it appear as if he had no control over his nobility.

And because of the unpleasantness between the two kingdoms, nearby griffon kingdoms and freeholds were getting distinctly nervous, particularly Queen Firetalon of Herinfal, who was stuck between Gethrenia and Firthengart on two sides and the Skyhater mountains at her back. Doubtless she was sending alarmed missives to anygriffon who would listen to try to help calm things down and raising troops of her own just in case things got uncomfortably exciting.

Then there was Countess Heartfire's speech.

The old harpy of a pegasus had whipped up a lot of patriotic fervour among her lessers and her greaters on the Equestrian border, south of Firthengart. Citing the troubling military movements within the kingdom that had nothing to do with Equestria, she claimed the griffons were acting in an aggressive manner and that loyal Equestrians must not show weakness. In their turn, Equestrian dukes and barons along the Griffonian borders from the Skyhater mountain range to the Greenwood forest had started building up there, prompting King Goldtooth to do likewise on his side of the border. Likewise cutting off trade on that border, the Equestrian Express freight train has been locked down in the free city of Emeraldshire for days now. If it remained there much longer, things were only going to get worse. More griffons and ponies would be missing out on trade that had been keeping them going; taxes were going to be missed; more nobles great and small along the border would be forced to accede to the demands of their people and powerful guilds to clamour for their sovereigns to do something about it. He could not fathom why the countess deliberately exacerbated this mess. It was only hurting her own economy; she had to have known that. What could she possibly gain from bending the ears of dukes and lesser princes to a fruitless confrontation?

And because of all of that nonsense, the Equestrian nobles in the north, just south of the Crystal Empire and on Gethrenia’s relatively small border with Equestria, were following their more southern kin’s example and rattling their own sabres, forcing Johan to move troops to that border to appease his own powerful nobles. Worse than that, High King Aleksander was sending rather politely worded enquires that could basically be boiled down to, ‘What the fuck is going on? You two are being idiots. Stop it!’ And he had been trying, oh All-Maker how he had been trying to rein things in.

It was all very, very, very stupid and very much all his fault. So with all these concerns, his nobles and Goldtooth’s nobles rattling sabres, Goldtooth being a passive aggressive old coot with far too much pride and far too little sense, his griffon neighbours getting shifty, the Equestrians being silly, and the High King himself breathing down his neck, one could tell why he had practically no patience for Archduchess Widewing’s petty attempts to get under his feathers.

He finished the new letter, formed the seal with candle wax, pressed down with his signet ring, and put it off to the side. He wiped his ring. It was getting a lot of use this month. He leaned back and rubbed his tired eyes. “Damn it all… I should’ve kept my beak shut. I shouldn’t have…”

He sighed and brought the candle closer and another blank parchment. He needed to reconcile with Goldtooth and quickly. If only the old bastard would answer him, they could avoid a needless, baseless catastrophe emerging over some heated words! Gethrenia likely couldn’t stand in a straight war with Firthengart. It wasn’t the most populous kingdom, but they had more griffonpower than he had, and an inter-griffon war between two kingdoms on borders with Equestria would just invite some opportunistic nobles to ‘secure their interests’ and All-Maker knows where that would end up.

“Just give me a sign… anything. This is a nightmare…”

“Your Majesty—”

“HOLY SHIT!” Johan shouted in alarm, falling back off of his chair and rising up, wings outstretched and claws held forward, eyes wide and alert, darting around the room for the source of the voice. The door to his study burst open and his guards came storming in, spears levelled as they immediately surrounded their king and began searching the room without so much as a word.

It was good to see Shortbeak was taking her new position as Lady Marshal seriously. Pity no amount of armoured, grim-faced griffons could keep the voice away.

“Your Majesty, don’t be alarmed. I mean you no harm.” Joachim lowered back down onto the floor, still looking about nervously, the guards didn’t seem to react to the voice. “In fact, I bring news.”

“Majesty?” the guard nearest to him asked.

“I’m… I’m fine thank you. Just… jumping at shadows.” The guard nodded and ordered his brethren out, offering to stay with the king. Joachim simply shook his head and ushered him out. “Who are you?”

“A long story, but for now, I am Wildwood.”

“Uh-huh…” Joachim said, talking to air, hopefully not loud enough to be overheard beyond his door. He didn’t need griffons making assumptions now. He carefully checked the wards around his room that the court wizard had created. They were working fine. This wasn’t changeling magic at least. “And where are you?”

“The Greenwoods,” it replied simply. Joachim stopped and raised an eyebrow.

“That’s… quite far away. How are you talking to me now?”

“Magic of course!” it said with a chuckle, clear and warm as if he were standing not a foot away from him.

“Obviously, but how?”

“That would be telling, your Majesty.” Joachim snorted. “Is there something the matter?”

“No no, that just… reminded me of something. And what do you want with me, oh mysterious voice of the forest?”

“Several things, but none of which matter right now and this is exhausting. I have come to deliver a message for now, nothing more.”

“Well, out with it. I have a lot to do,” Joachim said, making plans to have himself checked by his wizard for magical influence, his chaplain for possession, his apothecary for any delirium he might have ingested, and a nice chat with that pony academic who had that funny theory that you can solve problems with a griffon’s psyche by talking to them, perhaps finding a cure for madness. And not necessarily in that order. It was probably a bad idea to entertain one’s own madness, but he felt it best to ride this episode out first. It was kind of sad – he always thought he’d be harder to crack than this.

“And no, you are not mad.”

“Aha!” Joachim said triumphantly. “If you weren’t in my head, how could you know I was thinking that?”

“Because everydeer thinks that when I talk to them like this, and it is very tiring to go through the same song and dance each time. If you’d like, your Highness, write to a pony by the name Fancy Pants of the noble house of Blue Iron. He can confirm that you are not mad. Now, the message if you please?” The voice was polite and kind, but he could hear the strain behind it. He paused for a few more seconds before relenting. He nodded and vocalized his approval to hear the message.

He sat there and listened to it. It was quite short and to the point, and he wasn’t sure what to make of it. He asked for it to be repeated, took some notes, rubbed the bridge of his beak, refilled his iron goblet, drained it, and refilled it again. He splashed his face using the water basin, asked the voice if it was sure, did some pacing, and sat down with a sigh as the gears in his head turned and turned and turned and then finally jammed.

“WHAT DO YOU MEAN HE’S ALIVE!?”

--=--

“That… was awful.”

“It was only a short trip, milord.”

“It was still awful,” Desias insisted, and with long suffering patience, Steel Sands resisted the urge to roll her eyes. The orange pegasus shifted her wings. The desert wind was gentle today, but getting the sand out of her feathers was going to require a thorough washing and preening. Returning to Concordia in short order after the debacle of the tournament was a relatively painless affair. A quick jaunt by train and then by merchant airship, and a little over a week and a half, they were back in Bardinburgh. Although one look at the map and the sheer distance they travelled, one would think they were using some kind of magic to speed their journey. Nopony should’ve crossed that distance in anything less than a month, regardless of whether they were using an airship or a train.

In truth, they sort of had. The merchant had been using illicit crystals to increase the output of his steam engines to dangerous levels. Desias was willing to overlook the matter if it meant getting home faster, and the less time they spent flying over sandy dunes under the merciless sun, the better.

Such a shame the princesses gave him such a drilling over everything that had occurred in the tournament and their part in it. He had to divulge what he had been attempting to achieve, which had somehow placated Princess Rosetta, much to the confusion of her daughter. That alone probably saved him from suffering a much worse fate than being the foalsitter for the ambassador. Nopony liked having to deal with the rats of the Seven Republics in the dagger coast, let alone the self-important twerp they sent to replace the last hoary, old bastard who negotiated on their behalf.

She shifted in her barding uncomfortably and grimaced. It had been awful. The ambassador had sent them flying, this way and that, after his incredibly expensive hat after it had gotten caught in an upwind near an airship port tower. It was a purposefully hideous gift by the princess herself that he nonetheless adored. Rats had incredibly garish tastes by and large, and his enjoyment of it led to a favourable terms in a trade deal because of it. So yes, the noble knight of the kingdom of Concordia and his steadfast shield bearer had traversed dune after dune and even a refuse pile, getting stuck in sand and mud and filth and getting exhausted in heavy armour under the merciless sun.

All for the sake of a hat to keep an ambassador happy so as to not screw up a trade deal.

Steel Sands could begin to appreciate Desias’ dislike for the trade guilds and their influence on the court. She shook herself out of her reverie when she realised her lord had been talking to her. “I beg your pardon, milord?”

“I said what do you want to drink?” the sphinx asked, gesturing to a water house with thumb of one paw while untying his galea and bridle with another. She briefly noted with jealousy the ease with which he did that.

“Are we not still on duty?”

“Not with his pretentiousness on his way back to the republics we’re not. Come, it has been a long day and this is as good a spot as any. We could do with the shade.”

“I do not feel at ease not reporting back to the High Militant, milord. Perhaps we should—”

“Ah ah ah, you’re always so serious, Sands. You’ll die too young if you keep going like that. You want to make knighthood before your twenty-second after all, don’t you?”

“Of course but—”

“Then you’re going to need to relax. You’re a fine warrior, Sands, you’ve certainly proved your worth, low birth or no. But there’s more to being a knight of the realm than simply being very good at murdering an opponent. You need to understand ponies.”

“I don’t see what can be achieved by fraternization. Is it not all about duty?” she asked. Desias frowned at her before sighing.

“If you do not know what you are fighting to protect, how can you put your all into it? What is the meaning of honour if it has never been tested in the face of the temptations of everyday life, let alone the horrors of the battlefield? For Rosetta’s sake, I have not even seen you so much as talk to any friends. What do you do with your time off?”

“I am a shield bearer, I do not have time that is not–”

“Yes yes yes, I know your oath. I was there when you swore it to me. But you know I give you plenty of time to yourself. What do you do?”

“I… spend time honing my skills and… other things.” Desias raised an eyebrow and Steel Sands looked around the marketplace for ideas. Salvation could not be found as citizens of Bardingburgh went to and fro, hooves and paws clattering along the sun-brick floor. The delicious smells of cooked meat came from stalls, the shouts of merchants and touts advertising wares and the endless chatter of shoppers browsing the markets filling the bazaar with senseless noise, all in the shadow of the tarpaulins keeping the sun off of them all and hiding the mile high spires for which the city was famed. “Cooking! And cleaning and repairing storm damage… and… other chores that… need to be done.”

“I’m sorry, I thought I was training a future knight, not a scullery maid.” Desias rubbed his face, smudging the dirt that marred it. “Your dedication to your duty is admirable, and you will make a fine knight someday. I could even see you becoming landed. Perhaps even by a count or better, but for heaven’s sake, girl, you’ll wear yourself out at this rate.”

“I agree.” Both of them jumped at the voice of the High Militant. You’d think you would notice the most senior military commander in the kingdom sneaking up on you, but that would be quite silly of you. That would be assuming said person went around with at least a small honour guard. She didn’t.

She emerged from the crowd, having lingered by a stall around the corner of a short intersection near the pair of them and had evidently been listening in. She threw the hood off of her, revealing her bright pink fur and dark purple mane. Kept shorter than most mares but definitely longer than females in the guard, unlike them, she was accustomed to not wearing a helmet in battle. Bright purple irises regarded the pair of them calmly as she walked over to them. She was big for a pony, and the armour she perpetually wore distorted her figure even more. Something that was exacerbated by the simple tan cloak she wore that covered her back and flanks, hiding her wings.

Desias immediately bowed his head. Steel followed suit, not daring to speak until spoken to again. She regarded them, eyeing the grim and sand and filth from their little adventure she doubtlessly knew about already. There was very little that goes on in Bardingburgh that she didn’t. She then looked at Steel Sands. “Have I heard correctly? Have you been neglecting your training?”

Steel froze, the fur on her withers standing on end. She opened her mouth to respond then closed it, scrunching up her muzzle as she thought furiously, sweat breaking out on her forehead that had nothing to do with the heat. She glanced at Desias whose eyes were pleading with her to give the High Martial the answer she wants to hear. She swallowed.

“I… yes, your ladyship,” she answered, fervently hoping that was what she wanted to hear.

“Then I should charge you with amending your practices, young squire. As of this moment, I expect you to attend to your sire’s suggestions and concerns regarding your use of the time afforded to you. All your time spent as a shield bearer is spent in service and duty, and you have been failing your sire. This will be rectified, am I clear?”

“Yes ma’am!” Steel Sands shrank even further into her barding, a hard thing to do when you were still wearing armour that was fitted for you seven years ago. She was a big mare in her own right, but not so much so as the High Martial, making her attempt to make herself seem small quite amusing to lookers on. The High Martial still looked at her impassively.

“I believe your sire asked you what drink you wanted. Are you not going to oblige his generosity?”

“Oh! Yes, of course!” And like that, Steel Sands bolted for the water house. Desias fluttered his wings and made to follow after her.

“Not so fast, Sir Desias.” And it was the sphinx’s turn to freeze in place. He turned solemnly and bowed his head, placing his helmet on the ground before him. “Your charge was correct, you understand. I would’ve appreciated a prompt report on your return from serving the ambassador.”

“O-Of course, High Martial. I was just of the opinion that we could do with…” His eyes darted quickly as he searched for a reason. “Freshening up first! It would not do to present ourselves in such a state, after all,” he said smoothly. She snorted.

“A fine excuse. I can see why Duke Sand Storm tolerates you.” Her eyes narrowed as she took a few steps further. Desias tried his best not to let his nervousness show. She spoke lowly, “Be grateful I found you looking after your charge’s well-being. I do not care for you, Desias, and you should consider yourself fortunate the princess was forgiving of your… initiative. I certainly would not have been at the time.”

“I was only looking after our kingdom’s best interests, my lady,” Desias said a little too quickly, making sure not to look her in the eye. It wouldn’t do to appear defiant when all he was trying to do was keep her ire off of him. “A weapon that can resist Discord’s magic would have been useful. It was all I had attempted. What happened at the tournament was beyond my control and ken.”

“Fortunately, I now believe you. And what we have discovered seems to back your version of events, at least as far as it concerns you.” She raised her head and looked around the two of them. The crowd was giving them both an appreciatively wide berth, and her practiced eye picked out familiar faces and keen eyes watching her back. No honour guard indeed. She looked down and placed an iron shod hoof to the sphinx’s chest and he looked up. “You are still young yourself. You don’t know what’s going on, do you?”

“… My lady?” he asked, more confused than anything. She studied his face as if searching for something.

“Young stallion, young house, ambitious yet untouched… Yes, you’ll do fine. You and your shield bearer will suffice.”

“I’m… not sure I understand what you mean.”

“The trouble in the north is not to our advantage – that is all you need to know for now.” She raised a hoof to lift the hood back over her head. “Come to the hall at sundown and bring your squire and enough coin for a long journey. Be prepared to leave Bardingburgh at a moment’s notice.”

He tried to open his mouth for another question, but she simply turned and walked off, the crowd parting in her wake leaving the young knight standing there, dumbfounded. He swallowed and turned to find Steel Sands in the water house and break to her the news. It did not do to say no to the High Martial, even when she refused to explain her actions or her plans. To do so was to play with fire.

And there are few fires that burned as hot as the Concord Flame.

--=--

The waves crashed against the docks and the cry of the gulls pierced the air. Bells sounded as the gates of the harbour walls opened to allow the last of the Black Fleet ships to leave. The harbourmaster watched with impatience and eyed with a touch of dread the great looming shadowy form on the horizon, the leviathan of a ship masked by the low lying storm clouds that always seemed to follow it. He shivered. Such a colossus had no business floating, let alone ruling the high seas. The sooner both it and the Black Fleet left the enclave, the sooner he wouldn’t have to listen to boisterous captains telling him this new decree or that or the new laws from all the way in the black isles on the far side of the bloody continent.

Princess Galaxy could go hang for all he cared. So could her black marshal who constantly bothered him and Mr. Smiles, that criminal bastard in Fillydelphia. The dirty foreigner had no right digging his hooves into his merchant guilds. Ohhh and the merchants, they would be his, his to command, his to protect and all their gold would go to him… or else. And the Grey Coast in the far north, those usurers, he would worm his way into that sweet little pie and grab a slice for him, the wealth of nations flowing through his hooves, the fortunes of Houses, cities and kingdoms hanging by his whims! It was almost too good to believe.

He turned from the window and trotted over to his desk, the waves crashing against the side of the harbour cabin. Soon enough, he would become more, so much more than a mere harbourmaster. He opened the desk drawer and pulled out the thin tome he had been gifted. The smell of paper filled the room and the rich, luxurious leather covered thrilled him as he ran his hoof down along its spine. The sheer audacity of owning such an item disgusted the Equestrian within him, but he quashed it. The Equestrians were a weak-kneed pony race and he had gone to the Black Isles enclave to be rid of their ilk. He had found the Black Islanders no better. Indeed, the enclavers were little more than Equestrians under a different banner for all the difference they had and he was disgusted with them all.

But that was okay. He had been invited to partake in a much greater game, one more worthy of him and his ambitions, and he had found a benefactor much more deserving of his loyalty and service than any noble, official, or princess. He was quite generous.

“Yes…” he said to himself, his voice hoarse and hard as he admired the dark green of the leather book, accented by black corners and the spiral design of white ivory at its center. “So very generous.”

--=--

He had to stop and rest for a while.

He really should have listened to the nurse. Now his leg would probably never set right, not after all the strain he put it through trudging through country roads and hinterlands. At least the pain seemed to ebb the smallest fraction.

He pulled the hood tighter about his head and neck to keep out the biting chill of the wind that shook the fiery shades of the autumnal woodlands surrounding this path. He wasn’t sure what this road was called or the village he passed through on his way here. It didn’t matter, he supposed. He wouldn’t be staying around long enough to make use of their names. Certainly not long enough for the simple folk of this land to learn his. He lowered his head to drink from an abandoned trough of water by a broken down fence that belonged to the shell of a homestead along the road. The cold water was biting but refreshing as it flowed down his weary throat, dry tongue and dryer senses renewed and reinvigorated by the life-giving fluid, and not for the first time, he was reminded of his dreams about the open sea that he had since his youngest days that he had always dismissed.

When he raised his muzzle from the water again, he looked down to bear on his reflection. His tired eyes were red and ruddy, bloodshot and accented by dark sorrowful rings. Scraggly blonde hair sprouted along his jawline in unkempt tufts, threatening to conquer his face as they had often did back when he was in the habit of keeping it under control. He lingered on his reflection wordlessly for but a moment longer before he paid it no further heed, instead lifting his hoof, and after steeling himself, washing down his injured leg with the cool water. Welts and sores were soothed by the cool liquid as he prepared to reaffix his bandage and splint for the fifth time that week.

His ears perked under his hood as he heard laughter and raised voices. A pair of earth ponies crested the rise of the hill, both carrying baskets on either flank filled with fruits and vegetables and other goods, likely bought at the marketplace and being taken back home to their families.

“Ho there, stranger!” the green stallion said as he paused his conversation with his blue companion to address him. “The water good? Not brackish, is it?”

“No— Ahem, it’s good. Clean,” he said roughly, hiding his own accent and doing his best to keep his face hooded. Couldn’t hide the horn though – he had made a hole in the hood for it and was using it to keep it in place over his head. The green stallion sighed in relief.

“Good, ya have to tip this over every now and again and let the rain fill it anew to keep it from getting bad. Long trek down this road you see, and no rivers or wells for a while. It’s nice to get a drink along the way,” he said as he made his way over to the trough. The hooded stallion took a few steps back and shuffled his cloak, trying to make sure the bag he carried pinned it over his flanks.

“Have nae seen a unicorn this far from Bridlebrogh,” the blue earth pony said, waiting until his friend was done drinking his fill.

“Bridlebrogh?” the unicorn asked

“Oh yeah, big town seven miles to the west there. Most folk here are earth with the odd exception. Never seen you around so you’re not one of those exceptions. You from there by any chance?”

“...No, was just passing through.”

“Traveller eh?” the green stallion piped up again as his friend took his turn with the water. “Where ya headin’?”

“I… don’t know,” the unicorn admitted, trying to not look too confused by his own admission. “I’m just… walking I guess. See where my hooves take me.”

“Oh, wanderlust take ahold a ya then?”

“You could say that.”

“Must’ve good stories then. Travellers always got good stories,” Blue said.

“Yeah, but they’re usually lies. And usually not even their own lies,” Green rebutted.

“So? It’s good for a laugh by the fire, ain’t it?”

“Well, stranger, got any stories to share and lies to tell?” Green asked.

“What?”

“We got enough food for another mouth. You could come back to our village in River’s Pass, get yourself washed up. You’re in a right state you are.” He looked down. Sure enough, his once pristine and immaculate white coat was filthy from the dirt of the road and the life that came with it. He looked back up at the pair of earth ponies, confused by their sudden generosity and eyed the baskets full of goods they had on them. His stomach rumbled audibly.

“No… thank you. But I must keep going on,” he said at last, a prickling fear of being recognised overcoming the voices demanding he accept their offer. “And I have no real stories to give you in return.”

“Oh come on, a guy like you in the middle of nowhere like this? You must have a story,” Blue said. The unicorn shook his head.

“Nothing I’d really want to share. I’m sorry, but thank you,” he said at last, turning back and taking a drink of the trough of water. Green sighed.

“Ah well, suit yourself, stranger. If you change your mind, our village is just on the left path at the fork in the road up ahead. You’re more than welcome to come and rest your bones for a spell. The unicorn gave a nod of acknowledgement and a grunt that was partially obscured by the water his muzzled was currently bathed in. The pair of earth ponies trotted on, chatting with each other and leaving the unicorn in peace.

He waited until they had travelled a good way before looking up from the trough and eyeing the direction they went. He down turned and looked down the road he came, back down south towards what he once called home and the one he had looked up to as something of a mother.

It was tempting, so very tempting to take their generosity and rest, just rest for a short while in the company of ponies who were only too happy to have him around without even knowing who he was. Without sneering down on him for that knowledge, casting him out and disdaining him for his failure and his disgrace. To be only too glad to chastise him for everything he had done in the hopes of gaining approval.

He rubbed his eye with a fetlock and tried to banish the thoughts from his head and returned once more to walking, the awkward limp in his left foreleg helping to keep his mind clear from anything other than practical necessity. He came to the fork the earth ponies had told him about and looked down the left path, towards a gentle welcome, good food, and probably a roof over his head for the night, if he only asked.

He went down the right path.

Chapter 37 - Ghosts and Ghouls

Apart from his little message to Joachim informing him that he was still alive and kicking, courtesy of the Antler Head Express, Handy had decided it would be best to maintain the illusion that he was dead and gone.

Think about it for a minute.

Aside from keeping the Mistress off of the real Crimson's trail and away from his friends in Gethrenia, it also served a more practical purpose – that of getting through Equestrian territory without undue delays. After all, Handy knew two things about what happened since the whole furore over the tournament: Jack and his brother Shit. Also, if he was going to hunt down that bastard Thunder, he was going to need time to get the lay of the land as he took advantage of his cadaverous status to search for the Mistress' servant. He was not on the best terms with Equestrians in general, and he'd rather not have ponies running for the guards when the mythical human, who was supposed to have died at a very public event a few weeks back, suddenly returned from the dead. In the middle of Equestria no less.

And yes, they were in Equestria it seemed, somewhere close to the much smaller eastern coast. The accents and dialects of Equestrian spoken here were noticeably thicker and harder for Handy to get used to than the language in the heartlands. There were quite a lot of words and manners of speech he flat out did not recognize at all, and sometimes he swore they were speaking another language entirely. This was the reality of living in such a vast and disparate kingdom. Even though there was a common tongue, it was not a unified and centralized language the way modern English was. He considered himself lucky it wasn't like medieval France, where you could legitimately walk into the next county over and the people spoke a dialect of French that was more alien than German. The more he thought about it, the more odd it seemed that most griffons in Gethrenia and Firthengart wrote and spoke in fluent court Equestrian, but it made a horrifying economic practicality given their raw importance in trade with the Equestrians. It was no wonder even the common folk followed their nobility and merchant classes in adopting it. Such thoughts brought his mind back to the runic script he saw on old road signs, temples to the All-Maker, and even the labels of that firebrand stuff Tanismore had gotten them all drunk on in the tournament, and he realized how very little he actually knew about his adopted kingdom and its people. He opted to remedy that one of these days when he was not busy trying to figure out how to traverse Equestria and complete his mission without anyone actually spotting him.

If you don't think this was a bad situation, please take a recap. Remember that vampiric human who had a frightening reputation, fought off royal guards, and challenged an Equestrian prince to a duel of honour? Who supposedly died and disappeared during the fiasco of a fall festival in Firthengart and now two griffon kingdoms on Equestria's borders were building up their military preparedness for unknown reasons? And now he just so happened to surface in the middle of Equestria itself after being missing for how long? Yeah, he'd cause rather a lot more than minor consternation if he were to be discovered.

Also, there was this whole geas thing. That pretty much meant he had to go searching for the Mistress and her minions in order to actually free himself and be rid of Chrysalis' influence, however indirect. So it was not without a lot of chagrin that he found himself conflicted. He had heard about the militarization in Firthengart, and Joachim for some damned reason was doing likewise in Gethrenia, and it was getting the Equestrians mighty spooked. Briefly, he wondered what was going through the bird's mind since his 'death', and his thoughts wandered over the time he had chewed out the young king for the lack of readiness in his soldiers. He shook those doubts from his mind. No, that couldn't have had anything to do with it; there had to be something he was not seeing. He learned from eavesdropping on a merchant caravan about the troubles going on back in Griffonia, with Thorax and Jacques interacting with the merchants for supplies while Handy made himself inconspicuous. It was all because of that bastard Thunder mucking up the tournament. He had no idea of the specifics, but if it meant that people as incompetent as the bloody ponies were taking precautions and had their hooves on their spears in readiness over instability in Griffonia, it had to be pretty serious.

After all, he was pretty sure Joachim had a firm control over things. He wouldn't be moving troops about willy-nilly for any reason, right?

He was glad now that he had opted to send the message to Joachim to let him know he was alive, even if he did specify that Wildwood not tell him about the little... deal he had made using his authority as Sword of the King. He emphasized he was working undercover, investigating the cause behind the disturbance at the festival and to quash it as a threat to the kingdom which, to be fair, was true enough, and as a result, Joachim should maintain the official line that he was dead. He suspected he wouldn't, but one lived in hope. He hadn't informed the others of this, instead wondering aloud about the idea of sending word back. Thorax had strongly advised against that, citing the only secure way to get a message back would have been with a changeling and there was practically no way Chryssi dearest was going to risk one of her agents. That told Handy two things: one, that there were changeling agents operating in Gethrenia, probably Skymount itself, and two, a realization that indebting himself further to Chrysalis, especially over a favour, probably was not the brightest of ideas.

All this and traipsing across the Equestrian countryside in the mud and the rain did not make for a happy Handy. The vast plains and rolling hills gave the region a very Mediterranean look, but the maps Handy had seen showed nothing to the north but temperate foothills and the Greenwoods and Griffonia further north and nothing to the south but rocky, sparse mountains and more temperate plains going to arid lands to the south of Equestria into the Minotaur realms, independent pony kingdoms, and those lands beyond it down the coast. To the west was more Equestria and to the East were the Black Isles Enclave and the great cities of the east coast of Equestria: Manehatten, Fillydelphia, and other cities with painful names. The map had no scale of reference Handy was familiar with, but Jacques roughly translated it all as to meaning 'a lot of land' though they weren't sure exactly where on it they were. It wasn’t as though they could just board a train bold as brass either.

So, with resignation, he contented himself with planning the hunt for Thunder. That and getting proper shelter and warm food and possibly some money would be nice. Money was always nice. Handy missed having money. They had been gifted with a generous amount of odd rods of silver from the deer, but he failed to understand their individual value. They were segmented, and in order to pay, you used a tool to break off the necessary amount to pay. They literally had an economy via lump sum of silver instead of coinage. Handy intended to flog the stuff en masse as soon as he could.

"So, what are our parameters?" Thorax asked.

"Que?" Jacques responded. "Parameters?"

"What do we know about Thunder?" Thorax clarified. Both ponies turned to look at Handy, who was busy seated on a rather large flat rock under the bower of a tree to take shelter from the drizzling rain as he tried, futilely, to get the mud out of his nice, new cloak. It was very fine, very expensive deer-crafted material, and a gift. And now it was probably ruined. Handy was displeased.

"What?" Handy shot as he noticed the two staring at him.

"This Thunder, what do you know about him?" Jacques pressed.

"What makes thee think I know anything about him?" Jacques gave him a flat stare.

"Between hiding a changeling in your company for Galaxia knows how long and the fact that Thunder seemed to know you quite well when I heard you two banter during the fight makes me a touch disinclined to believe you when you plea ignorance."

"Fine," Handy said, trying to think. He didn't want to reveal too much about the Mistress and his relation to her, and a quick glance at Thorax revealed nothing. He was reasonably sure she didn't share what the changelings knew. He'd feed Jacques just enough truth to get him to believe some bullshit down the road. "...He is an old magic user. And before you ask, no I have no idea what kind of magic that is, but it was what he used when he beat us all silly. He is after Crimson because she used to be thrall to his cabal. The real Crimson," he added as Jacques gave a sideways glance at Thorax, an eyebrow cocked. "I had taken her under my protection. Thunder sought her back. I found this objectionable."

"And where is the real Crimson?" Jacques asked, looking at Thorax.

"Safe." Thorax's ear flicked, or rather Charity Bell's did. The changeling had adopted the old guise at Handy's request. The white-pink coat, long purple-maned earth pony with bright yellow eyes had replaced the brown-maned and deep-red coat of Crimson Shade.

"Do I look like the sort of person who can just lie low and not draw attention?" Handy asked incredulously. "I am a baron, a royal knight, and Sword of the King. I have duties I must perform, responsibilities I must fulfil," Handy said, playing the indignant card for all it was worth to hide the real reasons he was after Thunder. "And sooner or later, this Thunder will strike at me and Crimson again. I must uncover him and his cabal as soon as possible."

"And revenge?" the stallion asked, eyes slightly narrowing.

"...And revenge," Handy admitted as he met Jacques' challenging eye. The pony simply stood there impassively. His cheerful demeanour had disappeared for the conversation as he followed this line of inquiry. Handy was not sure why. It was not as if he had any reason to care. He looked between the human and Thorax for a few moments, his tail swishing once behind him, brushing the tips of the grass. Then, very slowly, the same cocky, lazy smile breached the stone visage he wore and spread across his muzzle.

"Eh bien, je crois que ce sera beaucoup de plaisir alors. Then I shall help you," Jacques offered, raising a hoof and gesturing, hoof uppermost.

"Why?" Handy asked, slightly suspicious.

"Payback for the loss of my hat," Jacques explained before stroking his goatee. "Also, you are a rich stallion, and friends help friends, no?" Oh right, money. Handy guessed that much at least made sense.

"How can you help?" Thorax asked.

"Why chère, I know an awful lot of ponies who know an awful lot of ponies. Believe me, with the right description, I can find anypony." He paused as he looked at her, screwed his face up, tapping his hoof, thinking. "Provided we can get to Blackport that is."

"Why Blackport? We don't even know where we are!" Handy said, raising his hands wide and gesturing at the landscape. Jacques looked down from the hill they were upon and at the rows and rows of olive trees in neat ordered lines, like regimented battalions. They had landed near several farms of such trees and had... borrowed the fruit of some for additions to their rations. Jacques’ smile broadened.

"Oh, I have a fair idea where we are, mon ami." He trotted off towards an outbuilding hidden amidst some of the closer trees. "But to be sure, we can always head into the nearest town, no?" Handy scoffed.

"Yeah right, and how do you propose we get inside without me giving ponies a reason to call for the nearest guard garrison?" Jacques sauntered over to a disused wagon, pulling at the harnesses with his magic before rearing onto his hind hoofs and inspecting its contents.

He turned around and smiled at the two of them from the bottom of the hill.

--=--

"I can't believe this."

"Shh!"

"For God's sake, at least get off the top of it. I need some air!"

"Quiet!" Thorax hissed, hitting the top of the rather long wooden crate with a hind hoof. She was still in the guise of Charity Bell but had managed to produce a rather frumpy-looking shawl and cardigan from somewhere. Seated as she was atop of the crate, she got a rather magnificent view of the town they were approaching.

It was a humble affair, all wooden support beams and grey stone, steeple roofs of sunset-red slate, and streets of well-worn cobblestone with deep grooves from centuries of wagon traffic. It was an enclosed settlement of relatively low walls about four times the height of a pony that were in a state of disrepair incongruous with the fine state of the dwellings they protected. Ivy and creep covered the walls in places with several of the tower roofs, leaving their innards exposed where they had collapsed inwards. Whatever cause this town had to require such defences, it was a long time since it had reared its ugly head. It didn't prevent a rather conspicuous militia presence, however, which made sense given that it lay at the juncture of an important regional crossroads and was close to several other such centres. Maybe the town itself wasn't in any real danger, but that many loose bits and goods coming and going rather required ponies with pointy sticks to maintain law and order from time to time from opportunistic bandits.

"Lo there, friend! What’s your business this late in the day?" one particularly cheerful sounding earth pony guard mare called. Handy groaned as it took him a second to process the sentence and mentally auto-translate it to proper English. She was decked out in half-a-sallet helm and a piecemeal gorget of scalemail. She wore a thick brown tunic with two dark patches around her withers, with three vertical strips cut out, revealing the same lighter brown of the rest of her tunic beneath. A small iron shoulder pad clung to her right wither with the painting of an open book on display upon it, and a light blue cloak to shield her from the rain. It was a rather ostentatious yet practical display for a local town guardsmare. A quick glance confirmed this was par for the course with the rest of the town guards. Not that Handy could see, currently boxed and packaged as he was.

"Ah! Ma bonne jument, l'instant nous ne simples voyageurs qui cherchent à rester pour la nuit! Perchance nous pouvons quand même entrer dans la ville?"

"I-I'm sorry, sir, but I don't speak troubadour—" The mare gasped and put a hoof to her mouth. "Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry, I meant, I don't speak—"

"It’s quite alright," Thorax interrupted, putting on her best Prench accent and smiling gently as she looked down at the still smiling Jacques, who had reacted in no way to the guard's apparent faux pas. "My brother Swift Swipe here doesn't speak Equestrian all that much."

"Si vous ne étiez pas une si jolie jeune fille, je vous appelle un diamant chien ignorant, mais puisque vous êtes, je ne le ferai pas." Jacques took off his hat with a hoof, crossing it over his chest as he bowed his head at the embarrassed mare. He rose again to smile genially at her. Thorax felt a snort of laughter threatening to rise up and break her facade but held her ground.

"We're, uh, how you say, just trying to find a place to stay for the night, then we'll move on in just a few days. Is that alright?"

"I uh..." The mare blinked, still looking at Jacques before shaking her head and facing Thorax. "Right! Of course, you can come in." She fiddled with the spear in the crook of her foreleg and cleared her throat. "Just, uh, be careful. It’s the week leading up to Nightmare Night and the local foals can get pretty rowdy."

"We'll be fine, thank you." Jacques pulled the cart along but stopped as he drew up to the guard mare.

"Vous ne avez absolument aucune idée de ce que je dis," he said, reaching down to lift her free hoof up and kissing it. The befuddled guardmare's face completely flushed at the action, her nut-brown fur doing nothing to hide it. "Mais ça va sonner merveilleusement exotique et romantique à vous, et vous sont des jupes totalement vais oublier votre devoir pour inspecter notre caddie avant que nous sommes trop loin dans ville car vous allez trop penser à moi." He flashed her a winning smile, and she stammered in response like a filly with stage fright while he trotted on past her and into the town proper. He left the flustered guard having to explain to her captain later why she had completely forgotten to inspect the goods the strange ponies had carted into town.

--=--

"What the hell is Nightmare Night?" Handy asked casually, receiving nothing but a kick to the top of the crate in response. He rolled his eyes. Great, that meant some nosey buggers were coming over to say howdy to the new arrivals, and he just had to put up with being confined to the tight fitting box all the longer... And his nose was beginning to itch. He wasn't sure what in God's name olive farmers needed a six foot by one crate for, but there was straw present in the box along with the strong scent of varnish. And he was beginning to feel woozy as a result. Maybe this wasn't such a good idea...

He felt the cart stop and shift, dropping forward. Jacques must have unhooked himself. Thorax seemed to move and clamber down off of the cart itself.

"I suppose we'll go talk to these nice folks about putting us up for a while, right, Swift Swipe?" Thorax prompted, just loud enough for Handy to hear.

"Oui," Jacques replied oh so helpfully, thus leaving Handy well informed that he should do absolutely nothing to raise suspicions while his companions were gone securing lodgings and that he should be a good little moving crate and remain inanimate. And his nose was itchy. He also let out a small yelp as he felt his wrist seemingly convulse with sudden, stabbing pain. His other hand shot around and grabbed a hold of it as he tried to not make any noise as his left arm shook uncontrollably before eventually settling. He breathed heavily as he waited for the pins and needles running up and down his arm to settle, his left wrist and a bit of his upper arm feeling taut and high strung, much like how one's leg felt after a bad muscle cramp.

'What the hell was that?' He thought about raising his wrist to his face to look at it but was stopped short when he heard a splash of water and the clippity-clop of tiny hooves drawing nearer. He froze, turning his head around at an awkward angle to try to look out through the only hole in his crate that let him see the outside world, a tiny beam of dying sunlight spilling into the crate as he saw what was approaching him.

It was a tiny tan unicorn filly, golden-haired with a small turquoise bow in her mane, bright azure eyes sparkling with innocence and curiosity and small, muddy hooves from walking in the mud approaching the cart from across the street. Her head was tilted, and she was looking up at the crate Handy just happened to be residing in. For a brief, horrifying moment, he thought she could see him through the small hole, his head facing towards the open end of the cart and out to the street. He cursed inwardly. He must have shaken the crate or partially opened the top of it when he suddenly moved to grab his wrist. She was at the cart now and her tiny hooves raised and placed on its edge, curious sea blue eyes poking over the edge and under a bank of golden mane to study the crate.

'Go away, you hellion!' Handy thought furiously at her. 'Fuck off, this isn't your property! Go away! Go on, get!' She did no such thing of course, instead trying to peer deeper into the face of the crate, as if willing for it to tell her its deepest darkest secrets, her tiny innocent head wondering what kind of hidden treasures or wonders the moving box might hold. Perhaps gypsy gold! It did seem to belong to a pair of traveling ponies she saw come into town. Oh, maybe it had some magic or some weird pet they kept! It was Nightmare Night coming up – maybe there was some kind of monster in there! And only she would know! She had to investimagate, for the good of the entire town!

"Reveal to me your secrets, gypsy box!" the little filly stage whispered.

'Oh dear God, what?' He didn't get the opportunity to ponder what line of reasoning led to the filly spouting such nonsense, the pony grunting with effort as she managed to swing one of her hind hooves up, the other kicking in air as she struggled to clamber onto the cart. Four proud, muddy hooves dirtied the wood as the filly wore a triumphant smile and a determined expression at her victory over height and gravity, silently mouthing 'yes' to herself and looking behind her to the ground below. She turned her gaze upon the crate and tip-hoofed her way closer and closer to Handy's position. 'Oh for fuck's sake, I am not getting exposed over something so stupid!'

"Hey!"

'Oh thank God.' The little filly turned her head and, though Handy could not see from his vantage, her happy little face of determination slowly fell into one of dread.

"Watcha doing over there, Barley Top?" a slightly larger, red earth pony colt called out, flanked by a trio of other foals that clippity-clopped all the way over to the edge of the cart.

"N-Nothing!" the apparently named Barley Top answered. "And my name is Golden Eye!" Not for the first time, Handy was struck by the oddity of pony naming conventions. Why the hell give a pony a name like that when the characteristics that defined it were at odds with it?

'That's like naming a baby boy Finbar when his hair is blacker than sin. Fucking ponies,' Handy thought derisively, then felt the cart shift and more weight placed upon it and the hurried cloppity-clip of multiple hooves around the wood of his crate. 'FFFFFuck...'

"Yeah well, whatever, Barley Top. Wha’s all this then?" the colt asked, kicking one of the boxes as Golden Eye pouted at him. Handy was equally distressed at the foals fooling around with the other crates, considering they held pieces of his armour.

"Nothing, just boxes."

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah!"

"Then why are you up here if there's nothin' funny about them?" the red colt asked. Handy couldn't see either of them now as they were busy walking across the various crates. The little hole he had revealed the other three foals talking quietly amongst themselves and trying to pull themselves up onto the cart. Handy's eyes widened.

'Where the fuck are those guys!?'

--=--

"Why we'd be happy to put up such a lovely young couple," the elderly mare said happily.

"Siblings," Thorax corrected and the old woman waved a hoof.

"Bah! I thought I had it guessed right! I normally have an eye for these things."

"Whose at the door, Gleam?" a gruff voice shouted from somewhere within the old wooden two storey house.

"Just a few young'uns looking fer a place to stay!" the mare called back into the house.

"Tell them no solicitors!"

"They're not selling anything, they want a place to stay, you deaf fool!"

"Oh... tell them not t'open the door to solicitors!" the stallion replied. The old eggshell-white mare turned and smiled at the pair of ponies.

"Oh, don't mind him right none. Never liked cold callers none since them weird folk by Lake Sandlorn came knocking. Swears they stole his hearing right outta his ears!"

"Lake Sandlorn?" Jacques asked. "I haven't been to Caulkinsborough in a few years, but I don't believe I ever heard of such a place."

"Oh, me neither. Fact, I ain't never heard o' nopony from yonder place. The darn fool went off there about this time last year, following some light blue pony type there."

"Light blue?" Thorax asked, her ear flicking.

"Oh yeah, magey type sort too, real haughty and full of themselves. Brick here swore theys had all sorts of weird magic."

"Weird magic?" Jacques looked at Thorax, who shared it for a moment before turning back to Gleam.

"Can we perhaps talk to your husband about this place?"

--=--

"Hey, leggo!"

"I don't see your name on it, short stuff!"

"It’s not yours!"

'Fuckin' children...' Handy had been putting up with the petulant back and forth between the foals for some time now. If he listened closely, he would have been able to tell the dynamics in this little exchange weighed heavily against the little Golden Eye and that Hide Bound, the red colt tormenting her, had been doing this little song and dance for a long while before this current incident. His cronies helped. Handy didn't give one shit but at least they stopped poking his stuff.

"What’s in these boxes anyway?"

That little fucker.

"I don't know, just… just go away!" Golden Eye said, her voice nearly cracking.

"Or you'll what? Cry at me?"

"Hey, give that back!" In his defence, Handy was at least a little curious about what the colt was doing to the filly, if only because he was just a touch grateful for her enduring suffering a bit longer so he could go on being undiscovered. Truly a worthy cause in his mind. What’s that? Handy didn’t seem to like children very much? Noooo, whatever gave you that idea?

"Nuh uh! You'll get it back when I say you'll get it back!" the haughty little shit announced. There was quiet for a moment before he heard girlish giggling, presumably from Golden Eye. "Wha's so funny?"

"Nothing, just didn't think you were into bows is all, being a colt." There was a trio of snickers coming from all around Handy from the other foals that was suddenly shushed after a few clippity-clops of tiny hooves, indicating wee little Hide Bound had turned around and shushed up their mirth at his expense right quick. Handy was getting quite annoyed at all these rambunctious youths hanging around his cart and threatening to expose him to the world at any minute. Yet there he lay, stiff as a board, trying not to cause a single sound that would draw the foals’ attention back to the box that contained a horrible monster.

And a vampire, but that was beside the point.

"Have your stupid bow!" Hide said. "Wouldn't want to keep anything that belonged to a scaredy-filly like yourself anyway!"

"I am not a scaredy-filly!" Golden whined.

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah!"

"Prove it!"

"P-Prove it?"

"Yeah!" Hide pronounced, echoed by his trio of cronies who were otherwise happily chatting about candy and something about a moon of nightmares. Was that some kind of special lunar event, like a blood moon or something? Handy didn't think that would be a case in a world where pony princesses threw around the celestial bodies like tennis balls, but then again, he didn't really pay much attention to what was going on in the sky most days, largely because once he actually saw a particularly rich-looking griffon land on a cloud.

And open a door on a cloud.

And walk into the cloud.

That was shaped like a house.

That was pretty much the straw that broke the camel's back for Handy's patience regarding the God-damn sky. Between that, the fact that people had to control the weather to get it to work, the fact that the sun revolved around the planet, and the fact that he was pretty sure that the stars were changing semi-regularly, made Handy firmly believe he had no business looking up at the damn thing.

"H-How?" the filly asked.

"This Nightmare Night..." there we go again. "The old Neighson house, we're going to do the human summoning!"

What?

"B-B-But you can't!" No seriously, what?

"Oh I can!" Hide Bound said, his voice low and challenging. "I heard if you draw a circle in chalk and chant his name three times during Nightmare Night while standing within it, he'll appear!"

'Okay, I'll bite. What the fuck is this?' Handy thought, suddenly listening very intently.

"That's not how magic works! S-Summoning isn't, well, that isn't how it works!"

"You would think so, nerd!"

"I'm not a nerd! And that's not what human lore says!" He heard the stomp of a tiny hoof.

'I have lore now? When the hell did I go from Dracula to Bloody Mary to a DnD monster?' Handy thought incredulously.

"Oh yeah? I think yer jus' scared!" Hide Bound teased.

"A-Am not!"

"Then be there!" Handy heard an oof and a tiny body falling over on the cart. "You'll be the one doing the summoning since ya know so much abou' magic!"

"B-But—"

"Wonder what’s in this big box?" Handy's head snapped back to pay attention to the other foals, and his eyes widened.

"Must be important. I wanna see!" another foal said.

'Crapcrapcrapcrap, fuck off, you little shits!' He felt hooves move and shift places on top of the crate above him. And he saw brief slivers of light as tiny hooves attempted to lift up the crate lid.

"Umfh! It’s heavy!"

"Here, lemme help!"

'For the love of Christ, where are you guys!?' Handy thought furiously, preparing to leap from the crate and make a run for it before too many ponies saw him. 'Exposed by nosey little shits of children, are you fucking kidding me!?'

"Hey, what are you doing there?"

'Oh thank holy fuck, Thorax!'

"Uh-oh! Scramble!" Hide Bound shouted, and a flurry of clippity-cloppy hell thundered over his crate and the cart and onto the earth below as they got out of dodge. He heard one set of hooves pause beside the end of the crate where his head lay and a small sigh sounded.

"I wish I got to see what was in there," Golden Eye said before she joined the other foals in scampering.

'Fuck me, I could kiss that changeling... right after I strangle her for leaving me completely alone and unguarded!' There was the sound of more hooves, heavier than the foals, clambering onto the cart, and the top of the crate opened, revealing the evening sunlight, a tree whose branches were mostly emptied of their fiery-coloured leaves, and the apologetic smile of Charity Bell, Thorax's chosen guise.

Handy's eyes narrowed at her.

--=--

"Welcome back to the land of the living!" Jacques called out as he locked the door and closed over the blinds on the sole window. The imagery of Handy emerging from what may as well be a human-sized coffin was not lost on him, and he scowled unappreciatively at Jacques' comment even though he probably didn’t know what he had done.

"And exactly whose idea was it to leave the cart alone where just anyone could saunter over and poke about?" Handy challenged as he brushed off the straw from his pants. Neither answered. Both it and his tunic were severely worn and in near tatters. The past month, as it was, had not been kind to Handy's attire. He wasn't sure where in the hell his socks had gone. He swore he had been wearing them before, but when he was taking off his armour for operation human-in-a-box, he was surprised to find them missing. The thought occurred to him that they and they alone were possibly whisked away by the vortex shard, but that would be ridiculous.

--=--

"Eat your soup dear," a mother told her foal.

"I don' wanna!" the little colt whined. "It tastes icky."

"I will have none of that." The thestral waved her spoon at her colt, and the little unicorn shifted uncomfortably, his horn lacking the ridges of most unicorns, being smooth and slightly curved. That and the tufted ears, chest fur, fangs, as well as the slit eyes betrayed the foal's heritage. "It’s good for a growing foal. Now eat up!"

"But it tastes like socks..." His mother gasped in shock.

"Arcane Crabapple Mist!" The boy winced at the use of his full name. "You will take that back right this instant, young stallion!" the mare said with a haughty raising of her muzzle to the heavens and a rustling of her leathery wings. Her cooking could never be so bad. Her husband was just always late home from work because of overtime, and he totally wasn't eating his dinners literally anywhere else. That would be ridiculous! "And where did you learn about those... things!?" The boy played with the spoon in his magic and looked anywhere other than at his mother.

"... Well I read them on the cover of those funny books dad hides in the closet," the colt mumbled as he consigned his father to the couch for the foreseeable future. The mare was absolutely livid.

"Eat. Your soup. Honey," she said through a strained smile. "I'll have a... talk with your father when he gets back."

"But it tas—"

"It does not taste like socks!" the mare near shouted. The two of them winced and screeched as they covered their eyes, a blinding flash appearing in the air over the table. There was a wet, soppy splash and the mare felt something hot wash against her coat as her bowl spilled over. When she blinked her eyes open, what she saw rendered her speechless. Both she and her son looked at the bowls of soup before them for a long, quiet moment before her son started snickering.

"...Well it does now!"

--=--

"And what, pray tell, took you two so long?" Handy asked, walking over to what appeared to be a disused workbench while the other two finished lifting the crates in from the cart outside.

"Just talking with our landlords," Thorax said happily, practicing that chipper voice for Charity Bell. Seemed she was keeping that French accent for now.

"Landlords?" Handy asked, not turning around as he rolled up the sleeve of his tunic, inspecting his left wrist. His gaze lingered on it for an uncomfortably long time before he rolled his voluminous sleeve back over it. One more thing to put to the back of his mind as he resolved to never, ever, ever give in to the temptation to scratch it again and making it... worse.

"You didn't think we'd be lodging for free, did you?" Jacques smiled, placing the box with Handy's helmet on top of his 'coffin'.

"What? All three of us? Here?" Handy looked around the rather spacious work shed. It was nearly entirely taken up by useless bullshit, metal poles, half-worked wood, numerous junk, and detritus, as well as work tools and some disused farming implements both too big and specialized to be any use to the tending of the small pumpkin patch he spied through the window. As well as shelves filled with God only knew what. He had grabbed a ball of twine, taking one end and preparing to wrap it about his wrist to tie down the sleeve of his tunic.

"Well, really more just you," Thorax said with a smile. God, he hated French Charity Bell. What happened to not-French moody Charity Bell he loathed? At least she had character.

"Just me?"

"They offered us rooms for the night, and that we could store our belongings here." There was a pause. "What? You didn't think we would have been able to agree to get them to give asylum to a four hoof walking nightmare, now did you?"

"... I will admit I had not given consideration to that little hiccup," Handy admitted, not commenting on the pony unit of measurement. Trying to figure out how six feet equated to four hooves was a problem for future Handy. "So how long are we staying here? Hast thou figured out where we are yet?" He looked at Jacques, who smiled and took his hat off with a flourish.

"Ah vous avez si peu de foi en moi, yes. This is Bridlesborough, a quaint little hameau not far from the Black Coast enclave."

"The what?"

"It’s this little patch of Equestrian land on the east coast that was ceded to the Black Isles," Thorax explained, opening the crates and taking out the armour as well as her own packs and goods from the grateful deer. She paused when she pulled out Handy's side pack. A quick glance up at Handy, and she quickly put it down beside the crate in full sight of him.

"Why? I thought the Black Isles was far off Equestria's West Coast?"

"It is, but it was given to them to house their eastern navy. Supposedly to help curb piracy." Jacques snorted. Handy didn't know the history nor the politics involved, but he did keenly recall the issue of piracy in the eastern ocean off the Equestrian and Griffonian coasts was a major issue during the talks in Canterlot. If Jacques' reaction was anything to go by, the Black Isles weren't holding up their end of whatever deal was made.

"It is also home sweet home to yours truly," Jacques said. "I have many friends there. We'll be able to find your Thunder quite easily, I assure you." Handy's eyes narrowed.

"Thou soundth like thou hast experience using thine contacts to track people down before," Handy said warily. Jacques smiled and looked towards the window, studying the blinds, the half-light filling the room hiding any subtleties to his expression.

"I am a mercenary mon frere. You were once too, no? We take work wherever we find it, oui?"

"Anyway..." Thorax butted in. "We'll actually be taking off for the next day or two." Handy started.

"What? Why?"

"Because we may not need to go as far as the enclave. It appears our dear landlord Brick has experience... with a certain light blue pony with strange magic in a nearby town." Handy rose to his feet.

"Then what the hell are we doing here then? Let’s go!"

"Easy ami, let’s not rush into anything."

"It’s probably best you stay here," Thorax added.

"Excuse me?" Handy's voice was incredulous.

"It is only a short distance away," Jacques began, "but I'd rather not be weighed down by uh... hauling the wagon just so you aren't spotted."

"And he's probably not even there," Thorax explained, "but we'd draw far less attention without you, and I... We can get information a lot easier without anything to worry about." Jacques raised an eyebrow at her, and Handy gave her an unimpressed look. "...Fine, I'm hungry alright? I don't want you getting weird about it."

"Didn't you say you can feed just by standing in a city?"

"Can't you eat by subsuming on breadcrumbs from the floor?" Thorax riposted with an unamused face. She then turned to Jacques as her tail flicked. "This... isn't going to be a problem, is it?" Jacques tipped his hat up and returned her look, the smile still on his face but otherwise betraying nothing.

"You aren't going to hurt anypony, right?" he asked.

"...No."

"Then I suppose it won't be that much of a problem. I don't see why it would."

"But..." Thorax began before closing her mouth and turning back to Handy, who was busy watching the exchange with curiosity. "In any case, if he's there, we can get you. If not, then at least we'll be able to move on from here relatively quickly. It shouldn't take too long."

Handy did not care for this at all, but he could see their logic. "Fine. How long am I staying here then?" There was a small cracking noise, and suddenly smoke filled the room. They coughed and spluttered until someone had the sense to open the door, Jacques waving his hat to encourage the dark substance to filter out into the air.

"Sorry, désolé, mon mauvais! I was looking at these shelves when I dropped one of these odd metal balls." Jacques indicated the offending box of metal spheres. "Pourquoi ce vieux étalon ne ont quelque chose comme ça?" His voice sounded annoyed.

"S-Should only be a few days," Thorax said, coughing, the air now substantially more clear. Thankfully, the smoke wasn't toxic, but it was still agitating. "We'll leave tomorrow."

"Oh, and exactly what am I going to do when the old pony comes waltzing right in here while you two are away?"

"He won't. He almost never comes out here, according to his wife." Handy narrowed his eyes at Thorax. "...Okay, right, that almost certainly means he will, but we at least have the key so we can lock it."

"Give it to me."

"What? Why?"

"Because if thou art going be gone for three days, I at least want control over where I go to the privy."

"Oh...right, yeah." Thorax blinked, floating the key over to the waiting human's hand. "Anyway, we should go back inside. The old folks invited us for dinner, and we need to make excuses for why we'll be leaving tomorrow but leaving our 'stuff' here. We'll bring you out something."

"My thanks." Thorax looked back at Jacques who was outside, moving the cart farther from the door.

"And don't think I've forgotten about that talk we're going to have, Heartless. Jacques may not have noticed, but I did." She pointed to the human's wrist and the length of twine that tied the sleeve to his wrist. He moved it behind his back and scowled at her. "The mission is still paramount, human, and I will get the pendant back to make my report when I return. I will not be taking no for an answer." They looked at each other hard for a long moment, neither breaking their gaze before Thorax suddenly turned and left the work shed. "Be sure to keep it locked at night." Handy watched her go as she closed the door with her magic.

Idly, he rubbed his wrist, taking care not to rub the fabric of his tunic too hard against the skin as he thought about how much of... it she had seen, if anything. Maybe she had just seen how oddly preoccupied he was with it. Then again, maybe not – he couldn't be sure. He just knew it was itching something fierce and he really really really needed some more salve. The memory of the pain shooting through his arm, suddenly and without any apparent cause, helped him put that urge in its place, however.

Just one more thing, one of many, he would rather not think about at that moment.

--=--

"You have got to be fucking kidding me," Handy mouthed as he spied upon the world outside, taking the opportunity to stave off boredom and take his mind off of... everything by watching the ponies of the town. Jacques and Thorax had taken off that morning and weren't due back until at least the morning after Nightmare Night. Speaking of which...

You see, it was one thing that the ponies had an analogous holiday for Valentine's Day, even if it was in the summer time rather than upon the cusp of spring as the holiday he was familiar with took place. What he had not anticipated was, for lack of a better term, Pony Halloween. Don't get him wrong: winter solstices, autumnal harvests, national holidays, religious customs, all of that made sense to him. All of them were perfectly valid reasons for having any number of festivals during the fall. That was fine.

What was inexplicable was ponies running around in costumes while houses and buildings were dressed up in spider webs and bat decorations and little wooden statuettes and bric-a-brac strewn everywhere in a near carbon-copy replica of modern Halloween customs from back home. Now, being Irish, Handy had shall we say, a somewhat personal association with All Hollow's Eve, both as the ancient pagan festival that had survived well into the modern era with quaint little traditions with rather macabre origins, as well as the religious feast day for all of the saints. Also, it was one of his favourite holidays next to Christmas and Easter, and the day brought fond memories of violent exchanges between his neighbours across the road as a child in friendly firework wars where you scored a point for every 'screamer' that hit the other house's wall. Of the community coming together around the village bonfire, drinking openly while playing music and instruments as the children played hide and seek in the surrounding trees of the park forest in their costumes and scraping knees and getting bloody noses from inevitably tripping, falling and chasing each other with sticks to banish the bad monsters of the group. Of mummery, where great honour was had in perpetrating the greatest fuckery of another person's property without legitimately destroying it. He remembered one of the old man's tales of how he and his friends lured their boss away from his house, deconstructed one of those old fashioned, rather massive haulage wagons of days gone by and reassembled it within his kitchen, literally filling the room to the brim and taking their boss days to get it back out. And then hitting mass before or after the shenanigans began, whichever usually came first.

Sure, it was dangerous as hell, but then again, these memories came from back before everyone was a faggot who hated fun. Handy couldn't remember the last time he saw a bonfire in his home town. Health and safety concerns or some such nonsense. But that just brought him back to his present predicament. You see, all of those silly little traditions of modern Halloween? As stupid as they were, they all made sense. They all had origins and reasons as to why it turned into what it now was. Handy, for the life of him, could not understand why the ponies at this time of the year just up and decided to have a spooky holiday that was aesthetically indistinguishable from an American TV show's depiction of the holiday. The only thing missing was the pumpkins!

...Wait a minute, why didn't they have any pumpkins? Handy looked at the pumpkin patch that the elderly couple were growing in the back yard of their house. They appeared to be reasonably affluent despite the run down appearance of their home, especially in comparison to the other homes he saw from his limited vista of the town, most of which were clustered together along the cobblestone roads and almost none of them had plots of land to grow anything themselves. However, whatever their affluence was, it didn't come from their small gourd farm that was noticeably overgrown, with a fair number of large ripe pumpkin any sane family from back home would already be haggling the price of in order to get ready for the holiday.

Looking about, none of the houses had pumpkins or anything like them upon their porches, or hanging from the door, or resting within the window. Logically, it followed that the ponies probably didn't have a tradition of carving faces into a gourd to make it reminiscent of a severed head used to fool and scare off evil spirits. That took a special brand of insanity his ancestors had in abundance, but given everything else the ponies had...

His thoughts were interrupted by the sight of a green claw clambering over the top of the low wall separating the pumpkin patch and Handy's hiding place from the road. He pulled back from the window quickly, closing the blinds before he was spotted. He drew closer to it once more and pulled it juuust enough to the side to let him spy outside when he started hearing familiar voices.

"Oh come on! Help me with this!"

"I dunno, Hidey!"

"Don't be such a baby, Felt! And don't call me Hidey!"

"But mom—"

"Shut up! Help me steal these!"

"But stealing's wrong, Hide!"

“We’ll give it back!” Yeah there was no mistaking it; that was the voice of the kid from when he was in his coffin. What the hell were they up to? “Sides, don’tcha wanna see the look on little Barley Top’s face when we scare her?”

“Not really,” replied the colt who was apparently named Felt. Hide Bound appeared to be wearing some kind of weird lizard pony costume, head of a pony with two horns but with a serpentine body and clawed paws and feet. Felt appeared to be a soldier of some sort, with armour made out of bits of wood and tack. “Ow!”

“Come on, I need your help. Here, help me get a big one.”

“All the way to the house on a hill?”

“Yeah! We’re gonna get Barley to do that stupid human summoning ritual thing you hear about, then we’ll spook her!”

“How we gonna do that with a pumpkin, Hidey?”

“...Uhhh, I’ll figure it out. Now come on.” Handy stepped away from the window, thinking. That’s right, he did hear those kids mention something about a human summoning ritual. That had to be referring to him. What the hell had the pony grapevine been doing to his rep down here? Turn him into Freddy fucking Krueger?

Then Handy got an evil idea, a truly insidiously malicious thought that, now that it was in his mind, refused to leave. You know, he was trying to hide his presence from the Equestrians and for good reason too. But it was Halloween after all, a day of trickery, deceit, and scares, and he did owe those kids back from getting their filthy fucking hooves all over his boxes. He eyed the pumpkin patch once more as he saw the two kids heft a rather large pumpkin over the stone wall, then looked about the various tools of the shed he was staying in, and a plan slowly formed in his mind. He had around three days to fuck around. that should be plenty of time to prepare. He just needed to wait until nightfall to find the house they were talking about. Neighson house. It was stupid, very very stupid, but he had just spent two weeks in a hell forest and was relegated to a shed for a few days and had to travel in a coffin. He needed something to relieve the stress. And besides, a little filly really did want to see what was inside the gypsy box.

She should really be careful about what she wished for.

--=--

That night, he got to work. He had to wait at least sometime after midnight before he felt safe leaving the shed. The streetlamps were doused, and the town had gone to bed, nobody on the streets but the occasional pair of cloaked guardponies doing their graveyard shift, small lanterns hung upon billhooks as they did their rounds.

Avoiding them was easy enough. What was hard was navigating pitch black alleys and streets without any light himself. It was cloudy that night, so the moon wasn’t any help, and being a vampire unfortunately did fuck all to help his night vision on its own. He remembered thestral blood rendering that negligible, the night appearing as bright and as clear as any day and—

No, none of that now, Handy, you were only going to make yourself hungrier. It had been over a week – don’t make the pangs any worse. He had taken one of the pumpkins himself, not too big of a one, and wrapped it in some old dusty sheets. He kept his distance from any windows as he stalked through the streets. The town wasn’t that big, at most a thousand souls in all with the winding, zigzag random street pattern of an old settlement that had grown up over the centuries rather than being planned. It was easy to get lost in it if you didn’t stick to the main streets. He used the landmarks such as a steepled bell tower and a particularly large watchtower at the western wall to get his bearings while keeping a wary eye on the windows of the quiet homes. That said, it had taken him over an hour to find the house he was looking for. At first he wasn’t sure he had the right place, but sure enough it was the right building. How could he be sure? Because there was an honest to God post box near the rusted front gate proclaiming it as the Neighson residence.

‘You have got to be fucking kidding me,’ he thought to himself as he looked up at it. It was on the northern edge of town, nothing for forty metres in any direction but briars, dead grass, and an honest to God spooky swamp the size of a small garden at the back where the property met the wall, separating it from a rather run down part of town that seemed to have a collection of abandoned houses. The house itself was entirely wooden, rotten, and black with age, its stained wood groaning under its own weight with yawning, irregular window frames with mismatched shutters that flapped and clashed against the wind. A crooked, gnarled, dead tree, blacker than sin, grew out from the side of the hill, its empty branches reaching skyward like vengeful claws and a lone, forlorn swing hung from its branches on one solitary rope, the other having rotted away. All it needed was some lightning to flash in the background and a wolf howling in the distance and it’d be the archetypical, cartoonish home for the local neighbourhood vampire.

…

This place was fucking perfect.

--=--

Meanwhile, Thorax and Jacques were having a pleasant time being entertained by the friendly ponies of Lake Sandlorn.

Thorax hated the place immediately.

“Oh relax, would you?” Jacques said, putting up his hat for the night. He reached with his magic to take off his sword belt, hesitating just a moment in thought to spare Thorax a glance before deciding to follow through, putting his weapon up as well. “So our quarry is not here. A waste of time, yes, but can we not just enjoy the friendly hospitality nonetheless?”

“I don’t like it,” Thorax said, walking with a limp, ensuring she didn’t put too much weight on her injured leg. Her tail twitched, her ears flicked, and her nose itched like crazy. What the hell was it about this town that was setting her off? “Everything… tastes weird.”

“Ohhh? I didn’t know you were hungry, mon chère,” Jacques chided playfully. She pushed him off as she continued pacing the small room.

“No, this is serious,” she said, still in her guise as Charity Bell. “I got a… taste of the town when we arrived. Everypony was smiling, happy, doing their business, but it felt… hollow, faded.” Jacques shrugged.

“Wouldn’t be the first town where everypony was not as happy as they appeared.”

“Yeah, but apparently this town is new? The buildings all look clean and recently built. Even the lake supposedly wasn’t here before. And if it’s a new community, why would there be such underlying resentment as to make everypony’s feelings seem so… well, unreal?”

“I will admit, last time I was out by this part of the countryside, I do recall this place being little more than wilderness. The wonders of earth pony land reclamation on display, no?” Thorax considered it for a minute. The streets were freshly laid cobblestone, yet each and every one showed such wear and tear that it as if every single piece was lifted from previously laid roads elsewhere. The lake was fresh and clean and had plenty of fish but seemed to have no source of water contributing to it at all. None of the main roads connected to the town directly, nor did any signposts lead to it. They had had to ask directions from a rather… odd looking merchant pony who tasted cold and stale. The ponies were happy and lively and behaved exactly as one would expect them to anywhere else. Almost too exactly, almost as if it were practiced. The buildings were new but their designs seemed archaic and there was that pervasive sense of everything being just a bit ‘off’ that wouldn’t go away. She couldn’t put her hoof on it. She jumped when she received a peck on the cheek from Jacques, realizing she must’ve spaced out. “Get some sleep; it’s been a long trip.”

“I’m fine,” she protested, shifting uncomfortably from the brief burst of warmth as she fed on the tiny sample of passion he had given her. This was going to be a problem. She had no idea how to actually deal with this, but it could wait. Then she noted that there was only one bed. Huh. “Don’t get any ideas. I don’t know what you think of my people but we—”

“Were you saying something?” Jacques asked, turning around, currently raiding the linen closet to lay out some makeshift bedding. Thorax closed her mouth. Well, that simplified matters. She smiled, closing her eyes and raising her hoof to her chest.

“I’m flattered you’d be so chivalrous as to give me the bed for the night. Thank you.”

“Oh, I’m not,” Jacques said as he walked over to the bed, hopping up onto it. “The linens on the floor are for you.”

Thorax blinked rapidly. “Wait, what?”

“Goodnight, chère,” Jacques said, blowing out the candle and casting the room into darkness with nothing but the moonlight for guidance. It took Thorax all of five seconds to decide that no, in fact, she would not be the one to be sleeping on the floor that night and proceeded to tackle her would-be paramour off of the bed. The ensuing wrestling bout to decide who would be sleeping where caused quite a ruckus, with lots of shouting and things falling over, a situation that doubtlessly would have been hilarious to the ponies down below if such creatures had been capable of such simple things as true laughter.

Instead, it went unnoticed and unremarked as the clouds drew over the face of the moon and blocked out the stars. A mist crept up from the lake before expanding and bathing the hamlet in a fog so thick one could not see from one end of the street to another.

And upon the break of morn, when the sun had risen yet not penetrated the expanse that blanketed the town, a keening whine could be heard in the distance.

--=--

The first night had been educational.

First of all, Nieghson house was a fucking death trap in some parts. Handy wanted to scare the balls off of the kids, not fucking murder them. One room, he discovered, the floor was rotting away under his feet and threatened to give way to fall into a small sinkhole that descended a good five metres, just to give an example of the danger involved here. He couldn’t stop the kids from coming here without revealing himself, so he did the next best thing and tried to create a controlled environment. He closed over the windows and locked the shutters from the inside of the more dangerous rooms, to dissuade children trying to enter the house through them, before closing over the doors themselves and moving some of the heavier cabinets and wardrobes in front of doors to disguise their existence.

There was a trick to this. Children were naturally inquisitive, and if this Nightmare Night was anything like Halloween from back home, the kids were going to troll each other by ‘daring’ the scared kids into entering the spookier rooms. Yeah, not on Handy’s fucking watch they weren’t. They weren’t even going to know they existed by the time he was done. However, you didn’t get anywhere by just denying children everything – you had to give them something. To that effect, he went to the front foyer, little more than a glorified cloak room, and did some shenanigans. He locked the door using the simple push lock but left the window next to it wide open, the window blowing the moth eaten curtains about. That should make the more adventurous of the little bastards enter this way.

He also discovered the foyer’s walls were rotten down. One fell down into the room next to it when Handy just so much as touched it. It revealed a crawl space in between two walls that would let him climb easily up to the first floor into another room whose own thin wall had rotted away, giving him a truly evil idea. He placed the fallen wall back in place, ready to be removed when necessary.

It went about like this for some time, cutting off certain sections of the house he didn’t want anyone going into and directing the flow towards others. In one room, he emptied the heavy furniture to block off some doorways and deliberately placed a rocking chair facing a closed window, a hole from the room above allowing him to lower some thin twine to connect to the chair. In another, he found an old toy ball, red but worn with age and decided to keep a hold of it, just in case some kids had enough balls to try the stairs.

Speaking of the stairs, they were at the back of the house, right beside the door that led out into the swampy backyard. Handy wanted that door off fucking limits, so he piled some shit in front of it while making the stairs look as foreboding as possible by draping black and grey sheets over the railings. There were some faded pictures of ponies around the house. He gathered them up and put as many of them on the wall beside the stairs, facing the doors to the rest of the house so when ponies thought to use the back door, they’d see the really ominously blocked backdoor and the creepy ass stairs leading up. He gathered more of the ruined sheets he found about the house and wrapped them around the wooden handle of a rotten brush. He had an idea to use them in conjunction with those metal spheres in the shed Jacques had found.

Finally, there were two other concerns. First, the front of the house was full of briars. If he was scaring these colts and fillies out of their fucking wits, he didn’t want them storming out the front door and getting caught in all the briars. It’d be funny, sure, but crying children could be a real fucking damper on some good mummery you got going on. To that effect, he made the third exit of the house an easy sell. It was also locked to prevent them entering it, but the side entrance should be easily accessible to Handy now that he knew a few of this house’s nooks and crannies. It led to a relatively clear path down the hillside into the town towards the market district where they should run into plenty of wary adults. He hid the door leading to the side exit with a tall full body mirror with another sheet drawn across it like a funerary shroud, just obviously enough of a blockaded door for even children to recognise. If everything went as planned that was.

The entire process took hours, and he still didn’t get around to his secondary concern before someone took notice of all the odd sounds coming from the old abandoned house on the hill at all hours of the night. Handy stopped what he was doing when he heard voices at the front door. Quietly, he tiptoed his way across the first floor to where he knew the entrance to the crawlspace was. Two guards entered the front door, the unicorn having unlocked it by poking his head through the window.

“I’m telling you, Far, there were some weird noises coming from here. And some of the guys swore they saw blue lights in the windows.” Handy quickly doused his witch torch. It had taken him a full hour to work up the courage to strike a match to light it, even with his hands covered. He cursed inwardly. He should have been more careful when working near the windows with it.

“If it’ll shut you up, we’ll have a look around, okay? I’m here, aren’t I?” The two stallions tramped about the ground floor. Handy couldn’t see them from the room he was in. He kept creeping to the crawlspace until his foot caused a particularly old floorboard to creak loudly.

“What was that!?” the more jittery guard shouted. Handy screwed his eyes shut and winced, cursing internally.

“It’s just the wood settling. Get a hold of yourself, Iron.”

“It came from upstairs! I’m gonna have a look.” There was the tell-tale flap of feathery wings and four iron show hooves landed on the mezzanine overlooking the main room. Handy had barely gotten the cover of the crawlspace back up before a furry, armoured head poked into the room he had been in a moment before. Never before had he been so grateful to not be burdened down by his armour. “I… could’ve sworn I heard breathing,” the pegasus said as he searched the other rooms.

“Hey, what’s this?” he managed to hear. Seemed like the unicorn had joined his comrade upstairs. “A pumpkin?”

“What’s a pumpkin doing here?” Handy resisted the urge to groan. He knew he was forgetting something. He had put the pumpkin down while he was doing his work.

“My guess? Some kids.”

“Well, whatever. Wanna take it?”

“What are you going to do with a pumpkin?”

“Well, I thought we could use the juice!”

“We’re on duty, Iron. Come on, there’s nothing else here,” the unicorn said, presumably the guy named Far something or other. The two eventually finished looking around the house. Thankfully, they didn’t think to question why they could only find two out of three doors to the house, nor why the backdoor was blocked so deliberately. But then again, it was an abandoned house. You probably wouldn’t question it either.

When they left Handy decided it was probably best to call it a night. The sun was rising, so he didn’t have a hope in hell of getting back to the shed in time without being seen. He was dog tired, even though it felt good to be working on something constructive to take his mind off of things. Taking great care, he used the crawlspace to relock the front door before returning to the first floor, heading to the loft and retracted the decrepit ladder that he couldn’t be entirely sure would hold his weight and closed over the entrance to the loft. There was one round window that he blocked with some more sheets. It was rough, but by this point in his life, he was used to sleeping rough.

He found some ancient linens that had an approximate fuckerton of moths inside them when he disturbed the bundle. He used it to sleep in, taking care to hide behind the detritus of the attic just in case someone investigated the house during the day while he slept. At least this way when the old fart who owned the shed he was technically ‘renting’ while his companions went off and sherlocked Thunder’s location for him entered it to nosey about, all he’d find is locked crates sans one conspicuous human.

He guessed that worked. At least this attic was a lot more spacious than his fucking coffin. Briefly, he wondered how the other two were doing, before eventually deciding to dismiss it.

They would be alright without him for a few days.

--=--

Thorax’s lungs burned as she galloped through the streets, ignoring the pain and aches in her still healing leg. She skidded around a corner as she went down yet another street. Horrifying near-pony things shifted and convulsed at the edge of her vision, some even crawling out from under carriages and carts, their limbs bent unnaturally and their movements jerky and surreal.

She couldn’t find a way out. The hill leading up to the main road simply wasn’t there anymore, replaced by a yawning chasm with an endless abyss at the bottom, and she lost Jacques. He hadn’t been there when she woke up that morning. The linens she slept in had turned to rotten cloth; the wood of the inn they stayed in was rotten and diseased; flies covered virtually everything, and there was the persistent scent of decay and rot everywhere.

Her horn glowed and tore a wooden sign from a shop off its hinges from where it hung over the doorway and swung it, braining one of the… things. It let off a horrible, scratching noise that hurt her ears, and she swung again and ran on blindly. She eventually came to an intersection and had to stop, breathing heavily. She looked around desperately. Nothing, none of those things were around. She walked over to a wall and leaned against it, catching her breath, the sign she used as an impromptu weapon fallen on the ground beside her. The wall was wet with condensation. When she had recovered, she pushed off and looked around her again. Turning back to the wall, her heart stopped.

‘There was a hole here. It’s gone now,’ the words read, and for some reason Thorax felt incredibly shaken. Shivering, she backed away. She could hear her own heartbeat in her ears as she stared at the strange message, unsure about why it had such an effect on her.

Scccrrrrraaaaape. Clop clop.

She stopped.

Scccrrrrraaaaape. Clop clop.

It was coming from behind her.

Scccrrrrraaaaape. Clop clop.

Getting closer. She slowly turned to look behind her, eyes full of horror.

Scccrrrrraaaaape. Clop clop.

It shambled towards her awkwardly, its figure obscured and shadowy in the heavy fog. It was more pony shaped than most of the things she’d seen, one of its hooves dragging something long and heavy behind it while its head was obscured beneath some kind of solid head covering that came to a point high above where a pony’s head normally would reach.

It was moaning slightly as it continued heading towards her with a deliberate purpose. Thorax felt her legs seize up while every ounce of her changeling instinct told her to flee.

Scccrrrrraaaaape. Clop clop.

--=--

“Nightmare Night, what a fright, give us something good to bite!”

’Are these guys for real?’ Handy thought, overhearing some kids pulling shenanigans in the neighbouring streets as he woke up close to midnight. He had to wait a few hours before he could continue his work and decided to wile away his time carving the pumpkin using his improvised dagger, idly thinking he should probably invest in better daggers now that he could. And perhaps a razor of some kind for some proper fucking grooming. And a pair of scissors – grabbing your hair in clumps and cutting it off with a rusting piece of metal got fucking old.

“Nightmare Night...” he murmured to himself while cleaning out the gourd and dumping its contents in a corner of the loft to rot. He hummed the playful tune to himself, smiling wickedly as he figured out how to turn even that innocent little jingle to his malicious ends. He finished up his carving of the pumpkin as he gathered up some goods from around the loft. The linens would be very useful to soften his footfalls on the mezzanine below, placing them on the floor. He found, of all things, a long thin chain, and in a fit of inspiration, connected it to the bottom of his witch torch. He also found a box of candles. Not believing his luck, he took them and decided to make use of the candle stands he had found about the house.

See, the big problem with children was keeping their attention. They wanted to perform a big spooky ritual in the big spooky house in order to scare the hell out of some little filly? Fine. But they were going to be doing it on Handy’s terms. Witch torch in hand after yet another hour steeling himself in order to strike a fucking match, he set to work, descending from the loft. He placed the candle stands, all eight of which in an auspicious pattern in the central room, the one that was overlooked from above by the mezzanine of the first floor. They were in a circle where, if you were to draw a line from each to its opposite number, you could paint an eight pointed star on the floor. He encouraged this by taking his dagger and gouging out faint lines in the wood. Hopefully the ponies would take the bait, but he had no idea what the hell this ‘human lore’ they had invented up actually said about him, but one way or another, he sure as fuck was going to add to it.

Taking a few extra minutes to double check everything, Handy doused the witch torch, threw an old blanket over himself, and left the house. It was absolutely pissing rain, which only helped him conceal himself in the dead of night, even though it added about another hour to his journey trying to get back to the shed. He almost stumbled right into a patrol of guardsponies taking shelter from the rain in one alley, chatting miserably to each other as they futilely tried to shake the chill as the water soaked down their armours. He eventually made it and, sure enough, he found the shed unlocked. The old pony, or his wife admittedly, had noseyed into the shed while he was gone. The coffin had moved, so that was further evidence they had been mucking about curiously. Handy was just glad he didn’t actually get past the locks on his armour boxes, which also held most of their gear, which would have led to some rather uncomfortable questions to say the least once Thorax and Jacques got back.

He decided to get what he needed. Those interesting little spheres that Jacques had happened across first came to mind. He also had the sense of mind to open up his coffin, and God he hated how he mentally thought of it as such now, and retrieved his deer cloak, bundling it under his arm. He paused in thought before rummaging through the shed as carefully as he could. He didn’t want a repeat of someone wondering what was causing all that racket again before gathering some supplies. Nothing much, he didn’t want to be weighed down on the way back after all, but enough to get his own ‘costume’ ready.

Hey, if the guy didn’t want his shed raided, he shouldn’t have fucked with his tenants’ shit while they were away. Asshole.

He took extra precaution on the way back. The stones of the street were now slick with rain, and there were still guards about after all. Still, most of his work was done now, so he could afford to be patient. Tomorrow night was show time and all he had to do was little touch-ups and be sure nothing went too far. There was always a degree of unpredictability that couldn’t be accounted for, but one had to make do. Once safely back in the Neighson house, he double checked the front foyer, just in case. Yes, he could see it now. The foals would shuffle in; he would pop out of the crawlspace, as quiet as you like, his sable cloak helping him blend into the darkness as he relocked the front door and window before closing over the door to the main room, locking the ponies inside, thus, forcing them out the side door when it came to it.

With all of that taken care of, he placed the candles in the candle stands before returning to the loft. He had an entire night to while away and he was pretty hungry, in more ways tha— No. Just hungry. For food. He thought about going back out before deciding ‘fuck it’. He took the shortbread the couple who had housed him and the guys served them for dinner the other day. There was plenty of it left, which was no surprise. It was so thick and sickeningly sweet that even the fucking ponies found it hard to swallow, and hence fobbed it off to Handy, who could only bring himself to nibble on it now and again.

Now? He ate that shit. He felt sick but at least he wasn’t hungry anymore. That done, he decided on what he was going to wear. He took the supplies he had from the shed and, using a shattered piece of mirrored glass, set to work.

He vaguely recalled being called the pale one by the changelings all those months ago. If it was good enough an appearance to spook the dark fae, it’d be good enough for the ponies.

--=--

“You didn’t have to throw me through a window!” Jacques shouted, bruised and cut as he was. Thorax didn’t answer at first, trying to remove the wooden sign-board from his head, the kind that shopkeepers prop up outside their shops with chalkboards to advertise prices and wares. How the stallion had managed to get his head stuck so thoroughly in one was beyond her, and how he had his forehoof jammed through the top of an iron bound wooden crate of rotten produce was similarly a mystery to her. Jacques wouldn’t be drawn into explaining himself, muttering something about mirrors and bathrooms being the source of all evil in Prench.

“I swear, if you leave me alone in a haunted town again, I am going to do more than throw you through a pane of glass!” she swore as she managed to pull the signboard off of his head, falling back.

“The town’s on fire, alright!? Jument fous, we’re out and safe now, happy?” he grumbled. She sat on her haunches beside him as they overlooked the burning town below them. The fog was dissipating and that keening sound in the distance was slowly becoming quieter and quieter as the fog seemed to disappear. “Who knew you could solve so much by just burning everything?”

“Have to admit, didn’t figure a haunted town that messed with your head would be so easily beaten by just setting a few fires,” she said, tail swishing as she looked down the hill they sat on, the same hill that appeared to be a chasm the other day. God, they never should have come here. That was a harrowing few days. “It’s Nightmare Night tonight, right? That holiday you ponies have?”

“Feh, silly Equestrian holiday. Don’t know why the foals love it so much.” Jacques grumbled before sighing. “Well… at least we’ll have a story for our human friend when we get back. Won’t we?” He leaned into the warm form to his right.

“...Jacques?”

“Mm?”

“I’m over here.” Jacques smiled lazily as he looked over to a rather alarmed looking Thorax to his left. He frowned in confusion before turning and looking to his right, staring right into the deformed oblong head with the vertical mouth and far too many needle like teeth than anything ever needed. It hissed in that scratchy noise that hurt their ears as its body jerked and convulsed.

The screams could be heard for miles.

--=--

“What are you supposed to be?” Hide Bound challenged, his trio of cronies behind him bickering over bags of candy, a ghost, a mummy, and a timberwolf all led by the dragon.

“I’m uh, I’m uh, an inquisipony! Yep!” Golden Eye said, chest puffed out as her oversized, crushed velvet cavalier hat fell over her horn and covered her eyes. The little tan filly flailed to push it back up on her purple-maned head, her fancy slashed tunic and coat with totally real and not at all painted on golden embroidery nearly ruined in the mud.

“What the butt is an inquisywhatnow?” Hide asked.

“I hunt monsters!” Golden Eye said happily to a round of sniggering. “What, it’s true! It’s what they do in the stories!”

“Ohhh, is the big bad inquisipony going to put down all the scawy monsters?” Hide Bound teased, admirably staying on his hind legs in his dragon costume as he waved his forehooves menacingly in unison with the laughter and jeers of his cronies. Golden Eye scrunched up her muzzle in frustration at their teasing.

Fortunately for her, however, she did not have to endure the earth pony’s teasing for too long before a number of other colts and fillies wandered up, gathering outside the old Neighson house’s front gate. Their attention thusly distracted her tormentors turned to mingle with the other children while Golden Eye had the unenviable task of deflecting questions.

“Are you really gonna do the summoning, Goldie?”

“Is that allowed? Mom said summumumoning was bad pony magic...”

“I forgot the chalk! Who has the chalk!?”

“I do!”

“This is stupid.”

“I can’t wait! You gonna do the dance, Goldie? Huh!?”

“Give me a break, there’s no dance.”

“Yes there is! There totally is! My uncle told me so!”

Golden Eye decided to just let her hat fall over her horn and cover her face until the lot of costumed ponies ceased their blathering. Soon enough, Hide Bound, who for some reason had been agitated and muttering to himself while looking about as if searching for something, finally called the group together to head into the house when his little brother came scampering up behind them, face flushed and out of breath. Golden Eye sighed as she was egged on by the group, her friend Seashells carrying the booklet on her back she’d need for the ‘ritual’. She grumbled under her breath.

“This is so stupid,” she whispered. “This isn’t real magic; you can’t just summon something like this. Dad would be so mad if he knew about this...”

--=--

Handy was proud man, and as a proud man, he would never once admit to having the shit scared out of him by a foal.

But lo and behold, that was exactly what had happened. He had been sitting on the stairs and twiddling his thumbs, when he heard the window besides the back door opening and a little pegasus, the one he saw with Hide Bound by the pumpkin patch, judging by the costume, drifted in, carrying a bucket in his mouth and tip-hooving across the back room and into the main room. Not once did he look sideways and spot the cloaked human staring at him, rigidly stuck in place.

Handy let out a breath he didn’t know he had been holding and quietly snuck back upstairs. He had to admit, the back window was a touch of an oversight. He was going to have to rectify that when the foal left. He didn’t know what was up with the bucket and, frankly, it was not his concern unless it was a bucket of pitch and they were planning on burning one of the kids… or the house for that matter. Otherwise, he couldn’t give a shit.

Soon enough, the little pegasus squirreled away the bucket somewhere on the ground floor before shuffling back outside the way he came. Handy carefully made his way to the window and made sure it was firmly locked. That had been a close one. Briefly checking the ground floor entrances and exits, from above of course, just in case the little tykes came early again and got the jump on him, he couldn’t find the bucket but none of the doors he had secured or hidden had been disturbed, so he was reasonably certain no one was going to get hurt. Probably.

He did one more check. Yeah, all the doors were shut, and the floor of the mezzanine was cleared and covered in cloth to mask the noise of his footfalls. Everything was in darkness, and the only light came from the single window with the rocking chair and whatever lights the children brought in. He heard voices and retreated back to the crawlspace, placing up the cover behind him and carefully, quietly, descending to the ground floor again. His iron-shod boots had to be left behind in the shed and, once again, he was wearing God-damn foot wraps. Whatever, it was only for one night.

He heard some very childlike cursing as someone went through the window in order to unlock the front door. He spied them enter through a crack in the wood partitioning the crawlspace from the foyer. One, two… five… ten, quite a few children. But manageable enough – if it had of been too many, he’d probably call the whole thing off and just let the children do as they wanted.

Their lively chatter quietened noticeably, hushed murmuring and whispers dominating as the foals advanced into the spooky house, a few unicorns lighting up their horns, casting some minor light on the scene as they advanced. None of them had torches, for which Handy was immeasurably grateful. They had jumped and shouted with squeals of fright as a sudden wind forced the front door shut. It had made Handy jump a tad too, but thankfully no one heard the noise. There were a few whimpers and squeaks of not being sure about this anymore, but they were quickly rallied by the Hide Bound kid, and shuffling off into the main room they did.

Oh yeah, by the by, ponies were really fucking good at homemade costumes apparently. Hooves, or horns possibly, were really good for sewing, knitting, and darning it seemed. Handy had abandoned his incredulity that their hooves should make such things impossible. Clearly there was something he was missing about them that his preconceptions were getting in the way of. Perhaps the bottom of their hooves was shaped in such a way to make manipulation easier? He didn’t know. It was weird, but at the end of the day, those costumes were evidently homemade, with patches and sew lines, and ranged from everything from monster suits to some kid in a ridiculously poofy renaissance get up. Although considering what era this world was currently in, it was probably contemporary dress of someone important or other. Ponies didn’t wear clothes, but if they did, they would probably wear some pretty damn good ones.

In any case, he managed to slip out once the children had shuffled into the main room. Carefully, oh so very carefully, he watched them from the crack in the door. Taking the risk, he waited until no one was directly looking back at the front door in order to close the foyer door. He locked it and, because he was feeling especially dickish, he had placed a rather large plank he had found in the attic and hidden away in his crawlspace on the floor between the foyer door and the front door. It took a bit of doing in order to shift it into place and do so quietly so that it was placed up tight against both doors. Even if the children managed to break the lock and force the door, they weren’t getting out that way. That job done, he made his way to the crawlspace.

It was time to go to work.

--=--

“Woah, creepy.” Golden Eye could only silently agree with the pony next to her. The entire place was pitch black, her own horn’s azure glow barely reaching a hoof in front of her. But that was enough.

There, in the centre of the room, loomed eight tall candle stands made of cold, black-coloured iron and set in a circle. She couldn’t help but feel a sense of dread as she drew closer to the candles but stopped when she realized everypony else was decidedly behind her. She looked back, wide-eyed and concerned, as her eyes darted from one of her friends to another uncertainly.

“Ehha, you go on Goldie, we’re, uh, right behind you,” one of them said. She couldn’t make out who it was exactly behind the papier-mâché griffon head with the lopsided eyes.

“Yeah! Go on, Barley Top. You know so much about magic; you do the ritual,” Hide Bound chided. Golden didn’t answer, currently looking over their heads at the way they came in.

“Who… Who closed the door?” As one, nine other tiny pony heads turned, eyes wide and ears splayed at the sight of the suddenly closed, not one of them recalling ever seeing any of the others close it.

Golden Eye very soon found herself practically under a pile of cowering ponies as, far from trying to open the closed the door, every single one of them hurried over to hide behind her with high pitched squeals.

“Like I said, aheh,” Hide Bound said, trying to recover his dignity as he swallowed. “We’re right behind you!”

“That’s what I said!” Griffon Head said indignantly.

“Shut up,” Hide hissed. As Golden looked between the group behind her and the closed door, she noticed another door open off to the side with a sliver of moonlight spilling out from it. She was about to go towards it before being yanked on her collar and she found herself stumbling in the centre of the candle circle. “Come on, Barley, get to it.”

“Alright already!” she said, mumbling to herself as she replaced her hat.

“Anyone got a light?” someone asked as the ponies spread out around the circle, but not so spread out that they weren’t within grasping range of each other.

“I do!” a colt in an adorably oversized guard helmet his father had evidently let him borrow for the night. “I been practicing my pyromancy! I wanna breathe fire one day like a dragon!”

“Ponies can’t breathe fire, stupid.”

“Yes they can! The princesses could!”

“Those are just stories.”

“Whatever!” Hide interrupted. “Just light the candles already.” And so it was, with all the might in his little heart, with puffed cheeks and straining effort, his little orange magic caused tiny spurts of fire to erupt from his horn, spiralling to each of the eight candles in turn before the guard colt collapsed on the floor, panting with effort.

“S-See, I told ya I could… I could do it. Heh.” Unfortunately, nopony was paying attention to him as gasps went around the room at what the pitiful, fitful light of the old candles revealed.

The floor had a star carved into it, light but plain to see even in the dim light provided by the candles.

“What does it mean?”

“Who set this all up?”

“I think… I think I wanna go home now.”

“She isn’t really going to summon it, is she?” Hide Bound looked around before growling at his little brother for some reason, who seemed to shrink and smile sheepishly up at his elder.

“Heh, so tell us, Golden, what is it then?” he said at last, barely hiding the tremble in his own voice. Golden didn’t pick up on it, staring down at the complex star she stood upon with a face of utter confusion.

“This isn’t… What is this doing here?”

“Hey, get a move on! We don’t have all night,” someone said, and the chalk piece was tossed at her. She looked around, seeing scared and excited faces, the sneer of Hide Bound and his gang, and the jittery giddiness of Seashells who evidently couldn’t wait to see what happened, the earth pony barely keeping a grip on the little arcane booklet in her mouth.

She never should have bought it from that traveling salespony. She knew it was full of nonsense, but it worked great with her inquisipony costume. A book about monsters and forbidden magic? How could she pass that up. Although her dad didn’t approve; he was very serious about magic. She sighed and got to work. Might as well get this over with.

Gripping the chalk in her magic, she carefully decided she’d follow the lines cut into the floor. The booklet said that the summoner only had to stand within a simple chalk circle, but honestly, what was the difference?

“Hey, what about the circle?” Seashells asked. Golden rolled her eyes and drew a circle, connecting each of the candlestands to each other and completely encompassing the star.

She levitated over the book from her earth pony friend and flipped a few of the pages, eventually getting to the page with the crudely drawn human sneering at her from the page with demonic eyes, long pointed ears, and a snake tongue. Its skin was ashen grey, and it had a long pointed tail with some kind of claw on the end. She honestly didn’t know much about the human, but from what she heard about when the human actually died, in public, it didn’t have much in the way of a tail. At least she thought it didn’t.

“Alright, I’m uh… I’ll guess I’ll get started then.” She read over the incantation next to the image and description. She winced at some of the horrible rhyming before sighing and putting on a stern, inquisitorial face. She read the words over once, then twice, before taking in a deep breath.

“If ye wonder upon a nightmare’s moon,

Seeking darkest aid and midnight’s boon,

Draw round ye a ring of chalk,

and call upon he whom terror stalks.”

The wood of the house creaked alarmingly, eliciting many gasps from the gathered ponies who had fallen into a deathly silence, watching Golden Eye recite her chant. She had paused, eyes wide as she listened to the house settle. “It’s just the wind. Nothing to be afraid of…” she whispered to herself, clearing her throat to continue.

“I come this night of my own free will,

On hallowed ground upon forsaken hill,

I call upon the creature of shadow and flame,

Come to me, creature who is bound by his name!”

Something fell over onto the ground with a clatter, causing several of the foals to squeal in fright and scatter. It was just an old broken table leg, but that was small comfort to the scared children in the room. “M-Maybe that’s enough, you know, just in case,” Seashells said.

“What are you, a scaredy-cat? Finish it, Barley!” Hide Bound called.

“My name’s not Barley…” Golden muttered, grateful however for the fact that the others were just as unnerved about what was going on. It was foolish, she knew, but despite that, it was pretty spooky. ‘It was just the house,’ she reminded herself. ‘There’s nothing to it. Just finish the stupid chant and get on with your Nightmare Night.’

“I demand you come before me, if you dare!

and I command you by this threefold swear!

Athume, athume and athume again,

I summon you, Handy the Milesian!”

She had shouted the last part, getting into the role, her audience hanging on her every word to the point where she was nearly shouting the words off the sheet. Everypony looked around fearfully, trying to discern anything appearing out of the darkness. Golden Eye closed her eyes shut, squinting one open to look up, just in case she had actually summoned something.

That was when the bucket of water and pumpkin juice was dumped over her head. She spluttered and gasped, shocked as the mixed liquid washed over the chalk, ruining the octagram she had been standing in the centre of. She looked up to see Hide Bound’s little brother with a bucket flying just head height over her. Hide Bound and his little gang of cronies bowled over, laughing.

“Your face! That was priceless!” he managed in between laughs.

“That’s not funny, Hidey!” Seashells said with a huff, stomping a hoof. Most of the others were too surprised to comment, although some were trying to hide their own laughter. Golden just looked down, lip quivering. “That was really mean to put her through that.”

“Oh you’re all such foals! I mean, really, a human summoning? If that was all we were going to do, we’d only be standing here like idiots while Goldie Locks here stood there chanting rubbish while nothing happens. Look, I know I’m an earth pony and all, but even I know summoning is a load of nonsense.”

“Well yeah but—”

“It’s okay, Seashells,” Golden managed with a sniffle. “I knew better but I went along with it. I was just afraid of looking like… like a scaredy filly.” She looked down, soaking wet as Hide’s brother let the bucket drop to the ground beside her, what was left of the pumpkin juice sloshing about inside it as the kids behind her broke out into an argument.

That’s when she heard it. Her ears perked up and she looked up, rubbing her eyes with a fetlock. “Do… do you guys hear that?” she asked. It started out slow, barely perceptible, before gaining in volume. A strange, deeply uncomfortable sound could be heard all around them. One that only seemed to increase in intensity as it grew louder. Yelps and shouts came from her right as a bunch of foals leapt from where they had been sitting, a plume of grey smoke erupting from the ground where they had been standing.

Coughing and spluttering, more and more plumes of smoke erupted from the ground, surrounding the circle of candles. The foals, frightened, jumped into the circle out of fear as they were quickly surrounded by the smog of darkness. The few foals still stuck outside the circle quickly dashed in, squealing in fright. Then, one by one, something swept down from the smoke above them, snuffing out the candles one by one. The foals huddled together, squeaking and shouting in fright and confusion. The sound had not let up as they were quickly ensconced in darkness, some coughing lightly, the only light coming from the crack in the door Golden had seen earlier. She lit up her horn, the other unicorn foals doing likewise. The multi-coloured hue of their magic caused the roiling smoky darkness to cast illusionary shadows that only added to their terrified whimpering.

Something moved in the darkness, the foals shouting in fright and all of them turning. “I saw it, I saw it! It was right over there!”

“What was!?”

“I-I dunno, it was like, woosh! A black shape going past the circle.”

“What’s that!? Up there!?” a pegasus shouted. They looked up. There was the sound of chains and a faint blue light could be seen through the smoke gathering above them. The blue light suddenly shot down and swung low, causing them all to scatter and hug the floor in fright. The small blue flame disappeared again into the darkness above them before swinging back down and up again, always to the sound of chains. Golden Eye looked up before seeing a black spectral shape rush past her, barely ten inches from her own face on the far side of the circle of candles. She screamed and backpedalled back to the group once more. The chains could still be heard as well as that horrible, horrible noise. The blue light disappeared, however, and the strange black form swept through the smoke around them again, always in a sweeping motion as if coming down from above, flying past and then up again.

“What did you do!?” somepony shouted from behind her. She was too busy pressing her back against the group of terrified foals.

“I-I don’t know! It never should have done anything! There was no actual magic in this ritual!”

“Well obviously there bucking was!” Hide Bound shouted. Somepony gasped.

“I’m telling mom you said a bad word!” Somepony laughed, deep and rumbling. It seemed to come from above them and promptly shut up any bickering between them.

“Eagla oíche~” a voice singsonged. It seemed to come from one end of the room before circling around them, but none of them could see any pony in the smoke. “Cad e geit~”

Golden Eye looked around desperately, spying the door she had seen earlier, the one that was slightly ajar with the moonlight. The smoke was dissipating slightly, and she could see clear enough.

“There! Come on, everypony, let’s get out of here!” she said as she bounded from the group, running from the door, the pitter-patter of many tiny hooves behind her letting her know the others were following her. She hurried to the door, piercing the smoky wall around the ritual circle. She barrelled into the door and stumbled, falling to the ground, causing a tiny avalanche of adorable foals to pile around her just across the threshold of the door. Golden Eye managed to squeeze out from under the pile, blowing the feather of her hat out of her face. “The window! We can get out through the—”

She cut off as she saw the rocking chair facing the window. It moved of its own accord, slowly rocking back in forth in a way that was only possible if somepony had been sitting on it. But there was nopony there. Clouds had covered the moon, covering most of the rocking chair in shadow. “Mooommmy~”

The voice, it was different now, tinny, and small, as if it was whispered right into their ears. All ears perked up and stared at the moving rocking chair. “I want my leg back. I’m at the front gate~”

They were all whimpering now, eyes focused on the rocking chair as they slowly tried to pull back from the room. “Moooommmy, I want my leg back. I’m at the front porch~”

Desperate silence as the pony pile slowly shuffled back. The clouds were pulling back from the moon now and the light spilled into the room. “Moooommmmy~” The rocking chair came to a halt, sitting completely stationary, and there was a groaning creak of wood. “I want my leg back~” The moonlight flooded the room, revealing the barely perceptible imprint of a smiling pony’s face on the window pane, not unlike the frost left on glass when you breathed on it, with the face drawn with a hoof. “I’m at the front room~”

“Nope!” Golden Eye vocalized the unanimous decision of everypony in the room to get the buck out of there. They stampeded out of there, screaming back into the main room, tripping over one another in their haste.

“The back window! The back window!” she heard someone shout. It sounded like Hide’s brother.

“How do you know?”

“It’s how I got in to hide the bucket earlier!”

“You!” Golden Eye stopped, pointing an accusing hoof at Hide.

“Wh-What?” the colt stuttered.

“You did this! You set this up! This is all part of your Nightmare Night prank, isn’t it!? Well, you can stop any time!”

“What? This isn’t me!”

“Guys?” the voice came from the next room. The smoke was still dispersing throughout the room, but they could see far enough into the back room to see the young pegasus at the window. “It’s stuck uh, I can’t.. I can’t get it open!”

“What? Did you lock it or something when you left?” Hide Bound asked as the group tumbled into the back room, galloping right through the circle.

“No! I left it wide open, I’m sure of it!”

“Who put all this stuff in front of the back door? I can hardly move it!” another filly said as she and several others tried to move the blockage from the door.

“The stairs!” Hide said, pointing to the stairs nearby. “Maybe we can find a way out up there?”

No sooner were the words out of his mouth than a strange, ethereal blue light shone down from the top of the stairs, casting sharp contrasting shadows upon the walls and the floor from the bannisters. The long thin shadows reached out to them, like grasping claws. A resounding bouncing noise echoed as a hard rubber ball bounced on the first step. There was a horrible tension as they awaiting the next bounce, watching the bright red ball hit step after step. Another horrible, mocking high-pitched laugh of somepony imitating a child’s voice sounded. “Come and play~”

“The main room! Back in the circle!” Golden Eye’s voice cracked as she shouted the order, eyes wide with fear and hairs standing on end. The entire lot of them scrambled away back into the circle once more, shouting and squealing.

“What did we do!?”

“Oh Celestia…”

“Mom’s gonna kill us.”

“It’s all okay; it’s only a bad dream; it’s all gonna be okay.”

It wasn’t okay.

Like the awful spectre of darkness the book described him as, he materialized from the smoke that had been gathering up towards the ceiling of the room. He landed outside the circle, trailing smoke and ragged clothes. They all screamed in unison as they watched the tall creature stand up to its full height, its body covered in a cloak of darkness that seemed to shimmer in the pitiful light of their horns as it moved, its body covered in tattered cloth that trailed the ground beneath its shadowy shroud, its head covered in a shawl like a funerary shroud. Its long foreleg clasped a torch of blue flame in its claw, grey with red streaks along its flesh and strange rocky protrusions along its individual digits. It looked up at them, and all they could see was an ineffable darkness for a face. “Tabhair dom rud éigin a dea greim…” it intoned, its voice heavy with malice.

The cowering foals squeezed the centre of the chalk star as it slowly circled around them, its torch held aloft as the smoke above them finally dissipated. “Which of you dares to summon me from my eternal rest?” he demanded. All ten of them remained quiet for a full minute as it completely a circuit. It snarled. “Who dares summon me back from the clutches of death itself!?” They all shouted in fright, and somepony pushed Golden Eye out front. She looked back in alarm before looking up at the human in terror. “Is it thou? Dost thou think thyself my master?” it said, leveling a clawed finger at her, its voice full of contempt. “What is thine name, pony?”

“G-Golden… Golden Eye,” she managed, her voice trembling and her mind reeling. This wasn’t possible! This shouldn’t have been possible. But it was. Here the human was right before her very eyes. It chuckled.

“What have you called me here for, Golden Eye?” it demanded, circling around them once more, just beyond the circle’s edge. She swallowed.

“N-Nothing.”

“Nothing!?” he shouted. “You dare pervert life and death for nothing!? And what of these ones? Are these my sacrifices!?”

“S-Sacrifices!?” Seashells squeaked.

“W-Wait, the book never said anything about sacrifices.”

“You know nothing, pony! I demand souls! Souls of the innocent, to be gathered in my torch to light my way in the world between worlds,” he said, gesturing with his torch at the cowering children, “Theirs will do just nicely.”

“I don’t want my soul gobbled up!” one of them squealed.

“W-Wait, they’re not– you can’t have them!” Golden Eye stated. He snarled, walking around the circle again and stopping.

“And how do you intend on stopping me claiming what’s mine, Golden Eye? I believe I’ll start with this one here,” he said, levelling a finger at Hide Bound, who made a strangulated noise.

“Y-You can’t cross the circle! He can’t cross the circle, r-right?” Hide bound asked desperately. Handy chuckled.

“What circle?” Handy asked, placing a foot on the line of the circle, its chalk cover destroyed in the flurry of hooves that had crisscrossed it that night, a lot of it washed away when Hide Bound’s brother pulled the pumpkin juice prank. There were more than a few places where the circle was broken completely. The ponies squirmed. “Oh I am going to feast well tonight. Eenie, meenie, minee…” His finger danced from pony to pony before finally landing on Seashells. “Mo.”

“No!” Golden Eye shouted, standing in front of her friend. She grabbed the bucket from before in her muzzle, tossing her head and letting go. The bucket flew towards Handy and splashed on his chest, dousing his torch with a hiss. Handy seemed to stand in confusion for a second before reacting.

“Noooo! The fruit of the fields and pure spring water, my one weakness!” he yelled, squirming and recoiling from the circle. He paused for a second as if in thought. “...And nothing else. Curse you ponies!” he hissed at them as he stumbled back, reaching behind him as if to grasp for something. His claw fell across a cloth covered object next to an aged and broken looking wardrobe. it was shiny and reflective, and the human screamed. “Not my true image! I cannot bear it!” he shouted as he grabbed the tall mirror and threw it to the ground next to him, landing on a conveniently placed bundle of woven cloth that Golden Eye was sure hadn’t been there before she had come back in from the back room. But that didn’t matter as it revealed a door behind the mirror, one that was slightly open and lead to a side door.

“Over there!” she shouted, pointing at the door. “Another way out! Quickly, everypony!”

“We can’t! He’s still in the way!” one of them pointed out. Golden Eye looked to the bucket. There wasn’t anything left. Then she looked up at the human, still recoiling from the mirror, arms covering its ‘face’

“I got an idea!” she said as she leapt out of the circle.

“Golden, wait!” Surprisingly, it was Hide Bound who shouted it. She didn’t stop until she got to the tall mirror. She strained as she lifted it up unto her back with magic, leaning it against her so that it showed more of the human who hissed and walked back, cursing under his breath in a language she couldn’t understand.

“Go, go!” she urged, waving a hoof. “Get to the door, quickly!” They needed no urging. Seeing how the human backed away from the tall mirror, the small stampede of terrified fillies and colts barreled out of the room and into the side room, bursting open the doorway and exiting the house in a screaming stream of ponies, down the hill and heading into the busy market place that was just winding down from their Nightmare Night festivities.

Golden Eye looked up shakily at the human. It had a weakness and she was terrified that the moment she let go of it, it would get her. “I’ll remember you, Golden Eye,” it cursed as it retreated, heading towards the front foyer. “I’ll not forget your name!” And then it was gone, disappearing beyond the revealing light of her horn. Her legs were shaking and the mirror was heavy, biting into the side of her back. She shrugged it off and scarpered out of the house after her friends, shouting for help.

--=--

Handy had to admit, he was nearly scared pissless himself when the Expensive Brick had decided to chime in with its two pence on his charade. It took him a moment to realize the strange sounds were coming from his pouch and not from something the pony had actually summoned. Still, he wasn’t complaining, for the effect was priceless, but all good things must come to an end. The second he saw the filly leave the room, he sprinted. Any guard worth their salt would check out the house on the hill if over ten foals suddenly screamed bloody murder about it. He tossed the gathered pile of shit blocking the back entrance out of the way and bolted through the door, cursing as he navigated the quagmire behind the house at the bottom of the hill in order to cross the road into the abandoned houses beyond the road.

He had spent several hours the other night taking a break from his Halloween shenanigans to navigate the place, finding a likely hiding spot to spend the remainder of the night and the following day if need be. It was there he was heading, a small cellar between a pantry cupboard and a corner wall in one of the houses. It would do nicely for a quiet getaway.

He had to admit, he had not anticipated the bucket being used against him – good improvisation on that Golden Eye filly’s part. But really, all that effort only to soak your victim in pumpkin juice? That was weak. Just as well that Handy had decided to show the local kids some proper fucking Halloween mummery. He was particularly proud of it. The room above the ground floor front room with the rocking chair had been a bathroom of some description, hence the holes in the floor and the rusted pipes he had used to alter his voice and let it travel down into the room below. The words were from a horror story a friend had regaled him with one Halloween involving a tapdancing child with a false leg and her greedy mother. It was a long story but had the desired effect.

However, getting the candles doused had been a bit of an issue, and he had to use two sticks wrapped in leftover cloth from the attic, one dry to create the illusions of something traveling in the smoke around the circle as Handy had swiped it from above in the mezzanine and the other to reach out and douse the candles. There were far too many flammable things, Handy including, to not be too careful with that shit.

But it had been worth it. Good Christ, it had been worth it. Sure, he probably scarred those children for life, but hey, a little childhood trauma bred character. Maybe some of them might grow some proper balls when they got older. Never let it be said Handy never did ponies any favours. Even if he didn’t.

Now, good readers, some of you might be thinking just what the bollocks was Handy thinking. Surely he had compromised his entire plan to remain hidden, all for the sake of a few laughs no less. What could possibly save him from being discovered and having a literal manhunt called on him? Why, it can only be said that Handy was reasonably sure that nothing would come of it. Why, you may ask?

Think about it for a minute. It’ll come to you. Handy can wait.

--=--

“But it’s true!” the filly protested.

“Uh huh.” Far Sight looked down at the kid with tired eyes. It had been a long night. His partner, Iron Side, was inspecting the house top to bottom with several other guards, removing blockages to different rooms. There were some odd things: a string connecting a rocking chair to an empty bathroom upstairs; the mezzanine was covered in cloth and blankets; every door and window upstairs was open; the floor was littered with some old Nightmare Night smoke pellets that Far Sight hadn’t seen in years, and here was this filly and her friends swearing up and down they had actually summoned the Bogey Pony, This had all the hallmarks of a very elaborate Nightmare Night prank. Minus the magic of course, Far Sight couldn’t sense any serious spell usage occurring here recently, which meant it was all done by hoof. “Look kid, this place is condemned. You lot should never have been here.”

“Found another room!” one of the guards shouted back.

“Blocked?”

“Yeah, floor looks really unsafe. Somepony didn’t want anyone getting in here.” Far rolled his eyes.

“You kids are in trouble. You should never have been up here. I’m gonna have to tell your folks.”

“But I swear, the human was here and everything! He scared the dickins out of ponies!” Golden said, hopping on the ground, her hat falling over her horn and eyes again, forcing her to push it back up. “I know what I saw!”

“What you saw was a very elaborate Nightmare Night prank. Go home, kid. I’ll see you and your dad tomorrow,” the guard said as he left the main room to talk to his peers. Golden sighed as she walked forlornly to the front door, dragging the book of monsters behind her in her magic. The front door had been blocked by a piece of wood preventing anypony from opening the foyer door. The guards had removed it to allow access. As she was heading to the front door, she stopped and looked back.

There, in a wall just to the side in the foyer, she swore she saw a flickering light. She creeped closer, her head tilted in curiosity. She hoofed the wall and it gave a little. Surprised, she moved it with her magic and nearly the entire wall came away. It was longer than it was broad, and she let out a yelp of surprise at what she saw. An image of a smiling face with sharp teeth and sharp eyes was imposed on the wall of the revealed crawlspace. She caught her breath and looked down at the pumpkin the light came from. It was cut out and emptied with a candle placed inside, the carving on the pumpkin’s far side showing the face on the wall. That didn’t concern her nearly as much as what was carved into the pumpkin facing her. Six simple words, carved out crudely at sharp angles in plain Equestrian.

BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR.

--=--

“You two took thy sweet time,” Handy commented as he furiously wiped his hands down with a cloth. It was the night following Nightmare Night, and Handy had had to wait that entire time in the cellar and then some, just in order to sneak back without disturbing anyone in the night as the town slept. He was actually surprised when a rather bedraggled-looking Charity Bell and Jacques flopped through the shed door unceremoniously. Apparently they were so tired they couldn’t be bothered to walk all the way to the house and rouse its occupants. “Where hast thou been? Have any luck?”

The two looked up at Handy from where they lay on the floor, looking at each other before closing their eyes and groaning. “I’ll take that as a no then,” he said as he hummed.

“You’re in a good mood, mon ami.”

“Just taking the opportunity to relax, my friend. You two should do the same.” He had been doing the exact opposite of course. Having such a large scale project over the past few days did wonders for taking his mind off of… a growing hunger problem. Now that it was completed, he took to meticulously distracting himself with whatever little things he could do. It was working, barely. “Have fun at least?”

“If you include being scared to your wits end fun…” Thorax sighed as she rubbed her temples with the tips of her hooves. Handy didn’t, but he did count it as fun when he took his mental problems and passed them on to others as a form of derangement displacement. Now, obviously that sounded bad, but you have to consider Handy’s position: he loved Halloween but hated children. It was a win-win.

Besides, what was the worst that would become of it? The kids got nightmares for a few weeks? That was a rite of passage back home. They should be thanking him really. Not as if anything bad would come of it.

--=--

A cloaked form shifted in the darkness, the candle holder levitated before her as she hopped into the chair and rolled open a scroll.

She had learned a lot from her mistakes, from making assumptions. Never again. She would investigate every mystery she came across; she would undertake any mission to rid the world of the evil that lurked in the shadows of both magic and the mundane. She looked up over her gathered resources, legends and myths, fact and fiction. She couldn’t afford to dismiss anything out of hoof now, her face simultaneously shadowed by her most august hat and illuminated by the dim light of the nearly extinguished candle.

She’d find him again, and other monsters besides, and she would put a stop to them. All that cowed and lurked in the dark places of the world would learn to fear her. Those that preyed upon ponykind would always be looking over their shoulders in fear of her tireless vigilance, and none will be prepared for her wrath. Not when she was ready.

“No one will expect the Inquisipony,” Golden Eye said as she blew out the light.

Author's Note

IN MY DEFENCE: It's shorter than the last chapter by nearly ten thousand words.

I'M GETTING BETTER, I SWEAR, I DON'T HAVE A PROBLEM, YOU HAVE A PROBLEM.

Also, the mirror pool bonus chapter is also done, but its mothballed until I hit another dry spell. See you guys in a week.

Chapter 38 - Friends in Low Places

It took quite some time for her to turn away from her work, so enraptured was she in the expanse of starlight so far above her. It took quite a lot of magic and work, but after numerous designs and revisions, she felt fit to finally cast this year’s night sky and set it to last. It was an old craft, obscure and arcane in its study and nigh impossible in its mastery. She was not the only one to practice the art of starcrafting, or at least she used to have peers, but she truly was the first to ever master it and call it her own. The Mistress of Starlight was an old title, hard-earned and long forgotten by nearly all save perhaps her sister and the dragons, but it was one she bore with pride nonetheless.

Celestia, bless her heart, simply did not have the skill for it, or the eye. She could not see the necessity and intricacy in the placement of the stars and the power of it all, the balance that was required. So many arts, magical or otherwise that relied on the stars and their movements, had fallen by the wayside in her absence over the past millennium. Stagnant, near unchanging and irrational in their placements, put where they were with nary a thought for their meaning. If it were not for the immovable, those stars who not even she could penetrate nor understand in their entirety, who knew what effects her absence could have had on the world?

She needed to revive the art, she decided, for many were the mysteries of the stars that even only she was beginning to comprehend, those fae flickers of lights upon the expanse of the sky so far above them all, their secrets so unutterable in their intricacies and beauty, so inviting in their mystery. It would be a hard sell – mystical arts had been unpopular even back during that great age of fire and sword, when the formalization of magic had been what allowed them to impose order and healing on a world that had been broken and shattered. Even more for the modern mage, the idea of having to abandon the entirely reasonable desire to understand the power they wielded on a near empirical level would be a hard sell.

More than once, she had thought to invite the young bearer of Magic to study under her, to promulgate the art. She was young, receptive, enthusiastic, and open-minded in many encouraging ways, but she was also the primordial emblem of exactly why it was so hard for Luna to encourage its growth. She seemed utterly incapable of accepting that there were arts one could use, could learn, yet never fully comprehend in their use. She was young yet; she would have time, so perhaps one day that might change. It was ever so lonely being the only one who could truly appreciate the sheer miracle that hung over their heads at night.

It was also, unfortunately, why she was the last of the dream walkers.

She smiled at the thoughts of her ponies, who imagined her appearance in their dreams was the result of some kind of hidden fear of her, or that she had the power to literally get into their heads. While the former may be true in some ponies’ cases, the latter most certainly was not. Weaving through the plane of dreams had its own dangers and pitfalls. It was more negotiation and exploration than it was dominance. None could truly master such a realm, caught as it was between that place where the mind waltzed with what lay beyond reality, so alien yet so natural, that bed of wonder upon which the world lay, comforted of its endless troubles.

You couldn’t just barge into ponies’ dreams – you’d wake them up. There were ways of getting in through force, true, but they would need to be very close and very familiar, making such means a terrible form of trespass. No, to enter dreams, you had to mould them, shape them from the outside, get the pony to invite you in, and even then it was hard to control the dream, hard to prevent the pony sensing you and becoming lucid and waking. It was even harder to learn anything about the pony. You couldn’t steal their secrets in dreams, but you could have them reveal them to you, trick them into telling you, showing you without knowing. It was a subtle craft, so very delicate.

It was why she loved foals, loved them so much. So young and innocent, their dreamscapes vibrant, expansive, open, and wonderfully creative. They were inviting and loving, their dreams bastions of innocence not yet hardened by the realities of the world and growing up, so easy for her to enter, and they were so trusting of her. One by one, bit by bit, the younger generations of Equestria would know Luna as they knew Celestia, a wonderful caring mother figure, there to shoo away the darkness of nightmares and to impart wisdom, to heal hurts and to share secrets. Her way was not Celestia’s way, and she had come to accept that. In time, Equestria in its turn would accept her. Celestia was there to guard the day, a shining beacon. Luna was there to own the shadow and the dark, to make them safe and to make them known. Already there were foals exploding with fascination of the night, fruits of her labour. If only she had known, so long ago, that this was all the adoration she really needed.

But the foals she loved so dear were also always the most vulnerable, so it was why she took it upon herself to guard their precious souls and minds from the horrors, real or unreal, which haunted them at night. She would teach them to face their fears and become stronger under her tutelage of the night.

That, of course, meant Nightmare Night was the busiest night of the year for her when it came to things like this. One night rolled by and, for the next few weeks, hundreds of foals suddenly had nightmares she had to contend with. She had to prioritise, sense the ones who had the strength to face their own daemons over time and leave them to their business while attending to those foals who could not. She had come to love the holiday ever since Magic had taught her how to enjoy it but, honestly, it got exhausting.

Particularly this Nightmare Night. She turned away from her windows and levitated the cold glass to her as she stalked from her chambers, exiting her tower by private concourse and allowing herself to drift into the night air down to the cloistered path leading to her study, her dusky wings resplendent in the light of her moon. She alighted softly on the manicured grass of the garden that surrounded her study, secluded as it was from the rest of the palace gardens.

She partook of the iced tea she carried alongside her, a rather recent indulgence of hers as she entered, tsking at the usual mess she was greeted with. She’d be loath to admit it to her face, but Celestia was right. She needed to take better care of her private places, especially since none of the palace staff was permitted to enter.

She sighed as she picked up numerous scrolls with her magic, contemplated sorting them out for all of half a second, before putting them in a pile next to her desk. She’d deal with that later. Right now she had a headache. A week after Nightmare Night and she was still dealing with particularly bad dreams. Granted, they all seemed to concentrate on a hoofful of foals to the east, around the same small town or so she believed, and all of them concerned the human.

It wasn’t the first time she had to deal with foals having bad dreams about him. Parents seemed to jump at the opportunity to use a new bogey pony to scare their fillies and colts into behaving. However, it somehow seemed in bad taste now that he was dead. It must have been somepony’s idea of a joke to scare the dickens out of a few young ones for a Nightmare Night prank, and judging by the results, it must have been an effective one.

She sighed, closing a ledger detailing costs of refurbishment lower Canterlot. That was another headache she didn’t need right now. She snorted in wry amusement at some of the dreams she had witnessed. They were not nearly as wildly exaggerated as some she had dealt with but certainly much more vivid. It was a huge, hulking monstrosity with long, grasping, skeletal claws and a hooded head covering a burning fire that consumed souls. It was strangely consistent along those lines from dream to dream, with only one filly actually seeming to fight it on her own. Chasing it with mirrors, it was adorable.

She smiled to herself as she went over to her star globe. A sphere of clear glass enchanted to act as a means of following her special cases sat as it was in a wooden frame. It was incredibly unintuitive for the uninitiated, and only told one the most rudimentary information about those whom one traced, essentially telling her exactly where they were at a given time but nothing else. Her eyes glazed over as she focused upon it, allowing it to draw her in. One by one, her little blips of light in the inky darkness flashed by her as she summoned a name. There was the troubled stallion who sat in the cell of the prison in a town by the border with the minotaurs. Caught stealing again; such a shame. There was the guardsmare doing her patrol in the northern mountains, a problem case in the local garrisons. And there was Countess Heathfire as she sat at her own study desk in her palatial estate. Luna frowned. Celestia would definitely take issue with putting a tracer on the nobility, but Luna did not trust the Countess. Something seemed off about her. She seemed only too eager to push ponies to war and didn’t seemed that perturbed about the damage to trade that had to be hurting her own treasury more than anypony’s. It didn’t make sense.

She frowned. No, there was something else that was bothering her. She drew away from the blip of light that let her follow the Countess and scanned the inky blackness and the blanket of white stars that was scattered amongst the darkness. What was it? What was putting her off? Did something happen? Did one of her charges die? No, that wasn’t it. She couldn’t put her hoof on it, but it seemed as if something was… added.

No that wasn’t quite right either. It was as if… as if something missing was put back. Alarmed, Luna began scurrying, desperately searching the integrity of her globe. She pulled out of the darkness as her horn grew in intensity, its glow now lighting the room fully as she investigated her scrying device. It didn’t seem tampered with. Yes, she was certain. She had been the only one to have accessed it in any way. Calmed, she gently placed the globe back into its wooden cradle. It had not been tampered with, but if that was the case, then what was that she sensed? She opted to instead stay outside of it, gently moving the crystal around on its axis, analyzing it and the lights it held carefully, slowly taking sips from her tea as she went.

Then she saw it, a light that shouldn’t be there. A light that shouldn’t be there, because barely a month ago, it had been snuffed out of existence. A light tracing a certain individual, who was currently traveling in the east, on board a train heading towards the coast.

She spat the tea out in shock.

--=--

Blink. He awoke in a field at night, a strange creature and a fire near him, saving him from the cold. Blink. A kind old man, a bed for the night, a cave and slavery to dogs. Blink. A cave in, the surety of death and whispers in the darkness, an accord made and a deal struck. Blink. Celebrations and jubilation, reunion and forgiveness and a horrifying realization. Blink. A cart of ill-intent, arrest and flight as he was taken away with the faeries. Blink. Nights of horror, pain, and starvation, a beaten queen and a dragon of undeath. Blink. A desert, friendly folk and a minotaur, his first sight of red. Blink. Trains, the attention of the guards and a prince lost and found. Blink. A night assault, a second sight of red, an army of ghosts and a hunger that damned him. Blink. Human. Blink. Inhuman.

Blink. A dying king, a war of brothers. Shortbeak. Blink. A dagger in the night, patricide and his first kill. Blink. Sorting affairs, a trip to Canterlot, a friendly chat. Blink. His third sight of red, a promise made and bloodshed. Blink. A prince besmirched, a deal struck, and payment rendered. Blink. A duke investigated, a witch found and a ship gained. Blink. A dance attended, secrets learned and secrets kept, a heavy weight not easily forgotten. Blink. A tournament, a festival, thunder, fire, and blood. Blink. Day. Blink. Night.

Blink. Horror personified, a forest of nightmares, and a captive set free for a captive gained. Blink. A deer and his people, the promise of winter, a war of words and a kingdom for a promise. Blink. A vision in white that stared at him with black eyes. Blink.

He started awake, breathing heavily, his movement restricted in the near complete darkness. He took a moment to get his bearings. He had been asleep. He was sure of it, wasn’t he? Yes, that was right; he had gone to sleep and had just now woken up. When he opened the lid of this coffin, it would be daylight. Time would have past, he was sure. Not having dreams, he could live with – he had rarely had them back on Earth, and when he had, he had barely remembered them like most people. Here though? Whatever fuckery was keeping him from dreaming fucked with his perception. His body slept, his brain obviously did its thing to get the rest it needed, but his mind? He closed his eyes, and when next he opened them, it was as if nothing had transpired, as if he merely blinked. But in that blink, entire hours passed by, he experienced day to day life as one unending, conscious stream, and it was really beginning to fuck him off. It fucked with his circadian rhythm too, making it difficult to make sense of night and day and when was the proper time to sleep. Some mornings he found himself waking up and just kicking things out of sheer frustration. When he got any sleep that was – it came harder and harder the longer he went without his little pick-me-up. His hunger wasn’t helping in that regard, and he swore he was sleeping less and less because of it.

He kept breathing until he felt his heart slow down. His arm completely ached and it hurt to move. He must have had another muscle spasm in the night, a bad one. He listened intently as he felt the crate being rocked, the sound of the train moving along the tracks beneath it and the faint sound of the wind outside whistling past. He wiped his face with his good hand. As constrained as it was within the box, he just about managed it. More cold sweat, his skin felt cold, clammy, and his head felt full of sawdust and cotton. He groaned. It wasn’t that cold within the storage car. Did he catch something? That was all he needed right now.

He briefly cracked open the lid of the crate. Sure enough, the car was deserted, filled as it was with God knew how much transported goods. There were crates, barrels, and pallets piled high with innumerable shit, all secured to the walls and each other. His own coffin was secured in between two other crates, meaning he didn’t need to worry about being locked in by a strap. Jacques had managed to talk him and Thorax into taking a train. Okay, Thorax didn’t need much convincing. Handy, however, was not partial to the idea of spending God only knew how long lodged in a crate. Apparently, it was only three and a half days’ journey to Blackport by train, and it came with the bonus of getting out of Equestria as fast as possible. Oh sure, only a few days he said, lodged in a coffin in a cramped and uncomfortable car being jostled about like loose luggage. Handy had put up with some rough living conditions, but this was just undignified.

He had eventually come around to it though. In truth, it was the fastest way to get to Blackport which, apparently, was the fastest way to get to the nearest information source wherein he could track down Thunder. It was shaky logic, but if what Jacques said was true, he had contacts and resources there whereas he and Thorax had nothing going for them down here. If nothing else, they could get a temporary base of operations. Considering the geas he was under didn’t seem to be pulling him away from going along with it, he guessed that meant that on some level that he trusted Jacques at his word. Either that or it was his only real option thus far. Or Chryssi dearest simply didn’t have any belief or information that contradicted that line of thought. He didn’t know – depends on how deeply this geas worked.

Another reason he agreed to the train rather than simply walk it, albeit an unhappy one, was he couldn’t hear anyone’s heartbeats from where he was. It was getting bad, very bad. The hunger was actually biting hard now and hardly an hour went by without thoughts drifting to the thirst. He didn’t want anyone nearby. That would just make it worse, especially not when traveling, when all too often the sheer boredom of the trek would cause one’s mind to wander. He would’ve needed to constantly focus on something to keep his mind off of it, like he had done in Caulkinsborough if they had decided to go trekking instead of taking the risk with the train.

He sighed one more time before opening the coffin lid. It creaked noisily and he flinched before sitting up, rubbing his left arm back into life. Christ that hurt. He was tempted to lift up the tunic sleeve again, undoing the twine, but decided against it. As much as he could use the distraction, he could do without focusing on that particular problem right now. He’d take care of it. All he had to do was get this thing for the changelings, give Thunder a drubbing, and get back home to Gethrenia. There was bound to be more of the salve there.

He put those thoughts at the back of his mind as he navigated his way out of the coffin and over the crates that hemmed it in on the top of this particular pile, dropping to the floor. Thankfully, the guys had been circumspect enough to make their way to the storage car soon after the train set off to help rearrange the luggage so that Handy wasn’t trapped for the entire journey. And thankfully, apart from one train attendant making his way through and ticking off something on his checklist, he didn’t have to spend all of that time relegated to his box.

It was dark, but not too dark, thin strips of yellow light slipping between the cracks in the wooden walls. It was daytime, meaning his guess had been accurate. Okay, that helped put one of his worries at ease. He whirled around, hand on the hammer at his side as he heard the door to the car as it began to open. He reached over and closed his coffin, before slipping back in a space between two piles of crates, hoping to God this wasn’t a unicorn who wouldd shine a light to help them see.

Clop, clop, clop, clop the pony walked, slowing as it drew nearer and nearer to where he knew his coffin lay. Handy tensed, hand gripping his hammer and slowly drawing it out of its loop that was beginning to rust, trying to do so without scraping the metal. The hoofsteps stopped and all was quiet.

“Handy?” Thorax whispered in Charity Bell’s voice. Handy relaxed, letting go of his weapon.

He stepped out, letting his boots fall unnecessarily heavily on the ground, causing Thorax to jump. She dropped back to all four hooves, having been reaching up to the coffin previously. “What is it?” Handy asked calmly, looming around the corner in the darkness. Thorax took a breath to calm herself before responding.

“We left station in Ivoryshire this morning. We’ll be arriving at Blackport within an hour or so.”

“The train station is inside the city?”

“No walls.”

“Ah,” Handy acknowledged, his thoughts drifting for a moment before he noticed Thorax looking at him expectantly. “Was there something else?”

“We aren’t likely to get a better time for this. The pendant, Heartless,” she asked, hoof outstretched. Handy looked at her for a moment longer before sighing. He picked the pendant from his pack, secured as it was in the small crate that housed his helmet, and tossed it to the waiting changeling. It was glowing bright blue, flashing rapidly once it was lifted out of the crate. Chrysalis was waiting, it seemed.

Thorax put it on.

“Your Majesty, I—” Thorax stopped, mouth agape and eyes widened as the pendant appeared to have an apoplectic fit and flashing with such rapidity to give a raver’s disco lights envy. “No, Highness, I swear it was—” Her excuses were silenced under further furious tongue lashing from her matriarch. “But if you just give me a chance to ex—” Thorax seemed to bristle and Handy thought he detected a touch of unguarded fear as her wrongful rebuttal was righteously rebuked and regrettable things had been said to her by her furious overlord. After that, she seemed to slump, eyes lazily studying the ground around her as she resigned herself to putting up with the dressing down she was on the receiving end of.

This went on for fifteen minutes.

’Holy fuck,’ Handy thought to himself. ‘I knew she’d be pissed at being kept in the dark all this time, but God damn.’ Eventually, Thorax sighed and the rapid flashing of the pendant calmed down to a dull throb.

“Understood, your Highness. I abase myself in my failure. However, I am obliged to inform you of the exact circumstances of what has transpired.” She looked up at Handy meaningfully, who had taken to leaning against some crates as he watched on in apparent amusement. She frowned. “I have important information regarding the Greenwoods and the status of changelings who enter into it. I shall save this information until I have returned for security purposes.”

Handy cocked an eyebrow at that but said nothing.

“Furthermore, I have come to an arrangement with the Heartless,” she began. “He will retain control over the pendant and pass it to me in order to report to your Highness and receive further instruction, as well as intelligence available on our objective. In return, the Heartless has agreed to fulfil any additional requests in the course of his duty as is possible… and to apologize to your Majesty.”

Handy’s own mouth opened wide as he tried to formulate a rebuke. Seeing the coy smile on Thorax’s face, he closed it. He couldn’t object to what she had said without giving Chrysalis a reason to enquire as to their real deal. Frankly, he wasn’t sure which was worse. He narrowed his eyes dangerously at her before her own smile disappeared.

“Yes, my queen.” She looked up at Handy seriously. “Prepare to receive her Majesty.”

“Wait—” It was too late. Thorax screwed her eyes shut, grunting and shivering, shaking her head once, the pendant glowing resplendently all the while. Exhaling a breath, Thorax, wearing Charity’s form, looked back up at Handy with Chrysalis’ eyes and a cocky smile.

“Heartless.~” Chrysalis practically sighed in that same confident, two-toned voice he was becoming regrettably familiar with. “Come to seek your queen’s forgiveness?”

“Do not play cute with me, Chrysalis,” Handy said warningly.

“Oh, such hostility. I’m more than willing to let bygones be bygones if you are,” she said silkily, getting up off of Thorax’s haunches and taking a few steps closer. Handy pushed off of the crates to look down at her properly. “Well?” she asked expectantly with a sly grin. Handy ground his teeth together, uncomfortable memories springing to mind. He regretted it, of course he did, but not for the reasons either she or Thorax surmised. But it was galling to be tricked into apologizing to this… person.

He looked down at her, debating internally whether it was worth it before opening his mouth.

“Ah-ah!” Chrysalis said, raising a hoof, grinning slightly. “To my face, if you would be so kind.~”

That, of course, would require kneeling. That was not happening. She was not his queen. When he wasn’t going to budge on the matter she rolled her eyes.

“Oh must you be so difficult?” She reared up suddenly and placed her forehooves on Handy’s shoulders. Taken aback, Handy felt himself fall back against the crates in surprise. His hand reached up to grab one leg to throw it off, finding it came away easily. She was not trying to harm him, not yet at least.

“Get. Off,” he warned, his other hand on his weapon.

“Not until you apologize,” she said, looking straight up into his face. He had been right before – the changeling before him was about five feet and change when standing on her hind legs, not that that little fact would’ve comforted him a bit if it had even came to mind. “It’s really two simple words, Heartless.~”

He grabbed her other leg and held it off of him, snarling at her. She didn’t so much as flinch, still looking up at him confidently with that smug grin and those damned eyes. He could give her a nasty shock and pull her in for another bite, and hungry as he was, it took a not-inconsiderable portion of his will to shout down the voices in his head urging him to do just that, the pangs, pinches and lurches he felt deep within him at being denied sustenance, the memory of the sweet liquorice taste of Thorax’s blood as it—

“I’m. Sorry,” he managed through clenched teeth, forcing the words out in order to end her proximity to him before something regrettable happened. She beamed at him with Charity’s pony muzzle.

“That wasn’t so hard now, was it, Heartless?”

“Now get off of me unless you want a repeat of that night in the forest,” he hissed, the words leaving his mouth before he realized he had said them. She rather quickly returned to all fours and took a step back, still retaining her confident expression. Handy felt his own heart slow down as he managed to regain control over himself. Christ, that was bad.

“I suppose that is all I’ll get out of you for now,” she said, looking off to the side. Seemed she had learned her lesson about preening and strutting in front of Handy, not pushing farther than she thought she could get away with. Clearly she didn’t realise just how close she had come to a repeat performance. He scowled at her before drawing his attention to his right hand, studying the intricate designs of the hammer that had imprinted on his skin from having grabbed the hammer head too hard. He looked back up to find Chrysalis looking around curiously.

“Anything else, Highness?” Handy asked icily. She snapped back to him and smiled gently.

“Just a little curious. This train, where is it going?”

“The Black Isles Enclave.”

“My my, don’t we move fast? How did you escape the forest so quickly?” she probed. It was at that that Handy began giving more and more credence to Thorax’s claim that the queen couldn’t read her mind while wearing the pendant.

“You can ask Thorax when she returns to you. I do not care to share it.”

“Hmph, fine. I suppose it’ll please you to know the majority of the changelings on Equestria’s east coast are actually leaving the region.”

“That’s quite unusual I take it?”

“Quite.” Chrysalis inspected a hoof. A brief flash of green fire and it turned into Thorax’s hoof. He heard her mutter something before returning attention to Handy. “Not my changelings of course. My territory does not extend that far east.”

“I don’t imagine your territory extends that far from the city you now own.” She gave him a quick glare before smiling again.

“Careful, Heartless, wouldn’t want to get on my bad side.” He had a sharp retort for that but held his tongue. “But you shouldn’t worry about too much trouble from rival colonies.”

“Why would I?” Handy asked. Chrysalis kept smiling until it clicked. “You… spread word I work for you, haven’t you?”

“To be honest? I did not. That was already assumed after word got around Lepidopolis was mine and how it came into my hooves, what with you having accepted such gracious payment, bearing an artefact of Lepidopolis as your most prized weapon, the armour you flaunt bearing designs of ancient changeling origin,” she said simply, gesturing to the crates that held his armour. “Poor replicas, of course, but the inspiration was plain to tell. Other changelings already assumed as much. Who am I to deny them… especially when it’s currently the truth?”

Handy scowled down at her. “You are not making this easy for me, you know.”

“On the contrary, the fact that I have such a famous agent currently on my payroll, why, the other sovereigns would think twice about directly challenging me. In fact, many of them are coming here to treat with me, being the holder of the Old City. If anything, it has made things easier for you by emptying the coast of many changelings who could potentially get in your way.”

“I do not care for your scheming or your politics. Will this get in the way of the mission or not?”

“No, Heartless, I believe it should make it easier.”

“And do you currently have any information about the whereabouts of the pony, Thunder?”

“Unfortunately not.” Chrysalis scowled, looking down at the floor in distaste. “We picked him up on the Equestrian border, no more than a day after he attacked the tournament in Firthengart. I have no idea how he crossed the distance so fast, but he soon escaped our sight again. We picked him up two more times: once at Galleria, south of the border on Equestria’s side, and again heading east towards the coast at Flankfurt.”

“So we are roughly heading in the right direction?”

“As far as we can tell for now. I have never heard of magic being able to allow a pony to move so fast.”

“Mm.” He made a show of considering his options. He knew without looking that Chrysalis was looking at him expectantly, as if hoping he’d take the obvious bait and inform her what he knew about Old Magic. He didn’t say a word. She let out a disgusted noise.

“Fine, be difficult, Heartless. I am only trying to help.”

“I am sure that you are. Farewell, your Majesty,” Handy said, looking at her sideways. She snorted before closing her eyes. The pendant flashed and went dull, and Thorax fell to the floor, groaning. “You alright?”

“Takes a lot out of you,” she said, breathing heavily and taking the pendant off. Handy held out his hand. She lifted it with her magic and dropped it in his palm. He closed his fist over it and glared at her for a moment before replacing the pendant in the box with his pack. “Sorry, but it had to be done.”

“Humiliate me like that again and you’ll regret it,” Handy said warningly, levelling a finger at the changeling.

“She had to believe it, Heartless. It had to look like it was something you would be loathed to do. I could hardly tell her the truth, now could I? Now… I have fulfilled everything on my end of the bargain, so it’s time for you to fill yours.” Handy narrowed his eyes at her as she struggled to remain standing, shaking her head clear of the disorientation. She stamped a hoof. “What happened to you in that forest? What brought you to your knees and will it threaten the mission?”

“It will not,” Handy said resolutely, meeting her gaze. ‘That’s right, see through my bluster, come on.’

“I am not so sure. I need you to trust me with this. The queen will not know. You have my word on that. Or does my lying to her prove nothing to you?” Handy didn’t answer. “Work with me on this, Heartless. You know I cannot feed on you. What is it you’re afraid of?”

Now that got Handy to react as he looked back her defiantly. He grimaced, looking away, his right hand gripping his hammer head in a nervous reflex she had picked up on. Reading his body language was a challenge but all the more necessary because she could not sense him. He was silent for a few moments longer before speaking.

“Home,” he almost whispered.

“What?”

“I realized just how far I was from home, how unlikely it was I would ever see it again, how close I keep coming to death and… and other things besides. That forest did things to my head. It’s… It’s difficult to explain,” he said, feigning just enough vulnerability and reluctance to be enticing. ‘Take the bait. Come on.’

She didn’t. She simply closed her eyes and took in a breath.

“When you’re ready to take this seriously, I’m still willing to listen and help you sort it out for the sake of the mission.” The look of surprise on Handy’s face was all the confirmation she needed that she had called his bluff. She withheld a smile and instead turned around and walked off. “We’ll be arriving soon. You should prepare. I’ll go back to check on Jacques.”

Handy watched her leave, fuming. He had made a rookie’s mistake, but that was what he got for trying to one-up a changeling at the emotional manipulation game. He grumbled and groused when the door closed and wracked his head on how to get around this one now that his attempt was dashed. He sighed and checked his rags he called clothes. Yeah, no, shit was cold. He was going to need to do something about that, maybe pick up sewing or something and repair clothes as he went. Also, his boots were practically falling apart, and he checked his hammer which, out of all his gear, was standing up the best to the daily abuse he put it all through. The witch was right; he should be taking better care of it.

That said, he opened his coffin and checked its interior, judging it. He supposed if he didn’t put on the pauldrons, he could remove the limit on his arms and lie in it in his armour, even fix his new cloak about him without looking ridiculous, although his breastplate and the remainder of his cuirass could probably stay in their own boxes. When he got out of the coffin, he wanted to be ready for anything. He felt naked without it, less… in control of himself. He shook it off. The last thing he needed was another psychological dependency.

--=--

He was already awake by the time she got back to the cabin, sliding the door shut. He sat on his side, legs hanging over the edge with his forelegs crossed behind his head, the hat covering his face.

“How was our delightfully friendly compatriot this morning?” he asked cheerfully. Thorax simply let out a small disgusted sigh. “Oh, he’s especially friendly today. How unusual.”

“Funny.” She hopped up on to the seat opposite and lay down across it. She hated trains, never could get to sleep on them. “So, Blackport. You say you have informants there?”

“I have friends there,” Jacques corrected, humming away. She narrowed her eyes at him.

“What kind of friends?”

“The best kind.” She could see the hint of the smile under the grey of his beard. “Come, Thorax, did you think I would make things easy for you?”

“Is this because I’m… well you know,” she said, remembering she was on a train.

“It’s because you are curious and it is ever so much fun watching you try to figure something out.” She grumbled at that. It had been bugging her nonstop, ever since she had first felt him hide his emotions in that little ball of iron at his heart. He shouldn’t be able to do that, no pony should. It wasn’t like the Heartless, who was this walking empty nothing. She knew Jacques had feelings. She could see them; she just couldn’t get them. And to make it worse, he knew what that was doing to her, the smug arse.

She turned away and placed her face upon her forehooves, resting. She’d pry it from him one way or another and find out what game he was really playing. Right now she needed to consider her options in this new city. “So this Blackport, are you from here?”

“As much as I am from anywhere, chére,” he said, avoiding the question. “You’ll be quite safe, I assure you.” She opened an eye to look over at him.

“And what makes you so sure we’d be safer here in this city, especially having to lug him around in a box?” He chuckled.

“Because, my dear Thorax, Blackport is my city.”

--=--

There were many ways to bring a crowded tavern to a dead silence. Magically lifting up a coffin and forcing the human inside to spring forth from it was certainly one of them.

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves just a touch.

Handy had a lovely experience being carted off of the train in a coffin. Ever took a ride in a box as it was manhandled off of a train car and occasionally dropped? Not fun. And it took all of his will to not let out grunts of pain or discomfort or outright cursing up a storm as a result. By the end of it, everything ached, but it was quickly forgotten when the sheer noise hit him.

Ponies shouting and talking, the impenetrable clatter of thousands of hooves milling upon stone, wood, and gravel. Bells and the subtle sound of large, looming floating leviathans and groaning wood betrayed the proximity of a harbour and the ships therein. Gulls and numerous other birds squawked overhead, the smells of fresh vegetables, stews, the stink of the sewers below rising to the streets and the smell of disembowelled fish and the tell-tale stench of a pony settlement made it obvious he was in Blackport, even if he hadn’t of been informed by Thorax.

That was another thing about becoming hungrier – his smell increased in sensitivity as his body strained for sustenance. Unfortunately, in its zeal, it didn’t come with an auto-filter. Handy smelled everything in greater detail. Everything. It was bad in Caulkinsborough, but this… this was unbearable. If there was some hapless bastard out there with a nick or a cut, he couldn’t tell, his olfactory faculties would go a tad berserk to such a terrible degree that he was severely tempted to punch his own face. It was like having a little tiny spastic kitten made of itchiness freaking out on a bad acid trip and bundled in wall insulation jammed at the back of your nose where you couldn’t scratch it.

It was maddening.

He eventually managed to force some manner of control over himself through thinking very very very deeply on the smell of decaying seaweed and fish while simultaneously thinking about how much his left arm hurt. First thing he was going to do was find the most pungent and fragrant flowers he could and jamming his face in them until he artificially induced hay fever and cause his nose to block.

He wasn’t sure how long he was in the coffin after they had left the train, for just getting through the city on the wagon proved difficult. He could hardly make out what the guys were talking to each other about over the sheer noise, but if the slow progress the wagon was making was any indication, they were probably shouting or negotiating their way through the busy streets. He couldn’t see out – the little hole above his head was blocked by the crate housing an armour piece. His only source of light was the daylight spilling into the coffin from cracks in the wood, occasionally darkening in the shadow of a building they passed. ‘At least it’s not raining,’ he told himself.

Eventually, they came to a stop as he heard the two of them negotiating the way into some kind of store for their wagon as darkness subsumed him.

“Well, let’s get inside.”

“What about him?”

“I am right here, you know,” Handy chipped in, figuring if they two of them could talk openly about him like that, no one else had to be around.

“We’ll take him with us,” Jacques said.

“What, really?”

“Really?” Handy concurred.

“Yeah, help me levitate his box. I’ll get this end.” The next thing Handy felt was the box shift as he was levitated. He could see the magical aura on the outside of the crate through the cracks but nothing on the inside, the shifting colours as Thorax’s green mixed with Jacques’ gold. His armour wasn’t reacting however.

‘Okay, that’s enlightening,’ Handy thought to himself as he logged that nugget of information in his head. He heard the pair grunting with effort under the weight of the box in their magic, the swing of a large door, the sound of a busy street, the clippity-clop of hooves on stone, the swing of a sign upon rusted chains above him and another door. Then it hit him, the murmured voices, the dull roar of revelry and laughter and shouting, the musky smell of dozens of unwashed bodies packed tightly into an area, the smell of soot and smoke of a peat fire and the more fragrant smell of tobacco pipes, and the final betraying scent of spilled beer.

If all that didn’t make it obvious they were in the tavern, the eruption of cheers that greeted them when Jacques hoofed open the door did. Handy knew that sound. A favoured son had come home and he was well remembered. “Friends! It’s good to see you all!”

“Jacques, you son of a whore! Where have you been?”

“Away to hide his shame I bet. Hey, Jacky-boy, get anything good on your latest walkabout?”

“Ah shut up, Hare, you just still sore he beat you in the shooting competition last year.”

“Yeah well, he still never brings anything good home. Where ya been working this time, Jacques?”

“Oh, here and there,” Jacques replied. Handy felt the coffin being placed on a table. “Picked up a few things.”

“I’ll say. And what might your name be, pretty lady?”

“Charity Bell,~” Thorax replied silkily, doubtlessly sizing up a few of them for a quick snack based on her tone if Handy was any judge. Fucking changelings.

“Be nice, mon chére.”

“What’s in the box, Jacky boy?”

“Yeah, what have you brought us this time? Had better be good. It’d be hard to top Sand Stone’s trophy.”

“I’ll say. Remember his story about the pirates that attacked his ship? Helluva good time.”

“I was there, you ass.”

“I know, I was just saying.”

“And youwere one of the pirates!”

“It was still a good story!”

‘What kind of bar is this!?’ Handy thought to himself.

“Gentleponies, please, if you would all be so kind as to give me a chance to speak?” Jacques said, trying to get the chattering down to a dull roar. “Now, I know we’ve had all our disagreements before, like a certain mare I see over there in the corner who still hasn’t forgiven me regarding the incident with burnt eyebrows.” He got a round of laughter out of that. “Hmhm, my apologies once more, chére, you know it was an accident.”

“I had that mark in the bag and you stole him out from under me!” he heard a feminine voice shout.

“Like I said, it was a terrible accident that you happened to be on the same job I was.” More laughter. “But yes, I have been gone quite a while, hired as a bodyguard if you must know, to a deer fellow from the Greenwoods up north.” The crowd hushed. “Ah, got your attention, have I? Good. See, this deer fellow was a rather lively, trusting sort. But he was free-spirited and not one keen to being tied down. Why, not even by a hired sword whose job it was to look out for him. Such a pity. I could only get him to take me along by gaining his trust.”

“Well, as you might imagine, a lonesome stag, still unused to the worldly ways of us wayward ponies beyond his little woodlands, would be a bit hesitant to trust the word of a wholesome wayfarer such as myself. So it was that I had to rescue him from the foul clutches of a femme fatale-- Thank you for the help with that, Jewel.”

“More than welcome,” the smoky voice of a mare responded before Jacques continued.

“-- and her friends who had fooled him out of his worldly possessions...”

“Something tells me, Jacques, that you weren’t the specified sell sword who was supposed to get hired for that job, were you?” a voice enquired.

“Not as such, no, but well, sometimes a letter just floats through your window and you must, how you say, seize the moment? It is not explicitly my fault it did not make its way to the intended recipient, c’est la vie.”

‘Oh you sneaky bastard,’ Handy thought. But that only raised the question of why Jacques went through the trouble of being this particular stag’s bodyguard if he wasn’t intended to be such. He didn’t remember Elder Wildwood being upset at the sight of him, which meant that it could have been just a case of him wanting to hire a mercenary from a particular company rather than an individual. In which case, Jacques had probably scored an easy gig by stealing it from his competition. Sneaky fuck.

“But oh, I could not imagine where such a new found friendship would lead me.” Handy heard the scattering of gold coins hitting wood, tin cups sloshing with beer and hitting ponies as Jacques apparently just made it rain, and the scrabbling of ponies as they tried grabbing the suddenly free money. “As you can see, it has left me with more than enough to share.”

“Where did you get this? I haven’t seen coins like this before.”

‘Coins like what before?’ Handy wondered, before a sneaking suspicion built up in his gut. ‘Wait...’

“Hey… Hey wait, I seen this before, this weird writing on the side…” another voice piped up. Thorax had gone suspiciously quiet.

‘Waaaaaaiiiiit a minute...’

“This is changeling money.”

“What!?” a question that was chorused by many voices.

“Yeah, yeah, there’s some of this floating around. The princesses in Canterlot are trying to gather them up by trading their value in bits to those who hold them. This merchant pony I know, can’t remember his name, showed me one before. Where’d you get these, Jacques?”

“Ahhh… Now there is a story,” Jacques said, audibly settling into his tale, taking a seat by the head of Handy’s coffin. He could see him glance sideways at Handy through the hole. “Why, a very generous stallion I happened to run into paid me them of course. For a little job of his own.”

“Jacques, what the hell are you doing?” Handy hissed. He simply put the edge of his hoof to his pursed lips, shushing him.

“You remember that festival up north-west, in Griffonia? Oh, I was there, I saw it all, and oh, what a story I have to share. What sights I saw!” he said, spreading his forelegs wide. “But to answer your first question about what's in the box.” Handy’s eyes widened in alarm as he heard the catch on the coffin open. “I bring us a new friend I’d like you all to meet.” And with a sudden surge of magic, Jacques hefted the box upwards, causing it to fall to the ground on the far side of the table. The lid opened, and Handy stumbled out.

He managed to catch himself on a table, spilling drinks and startling the ponies seated there and pushed himself upright and, for the first time, took in the crowd that was currently looking at him, slack-jawed. The first thing he noticed, oddly enough, was almost all of them were fully or partially clothed, there a tunic, there a scarf, coats, hats and what have you. They were an eclectic bunch, all of them ponies: pegasi, unicorns, and earth ponies. Most of them had some form of small weapon visibly within reach, knives, polearms a couple of ponies with swords, some even with hoof-hilts like Jacques. One of them even had what looked like a modified gryphonic arquebus, its trigger guard and trigger changed to better fit a hoof. Other firearm bearers had variations of the shoot sticks he had seen in Canterlot, though shorter.

The tavern itself was large but crowded nonetheless, with half of the open space above the bottom floor dedicated to an overhang from which more ponies could be seen, hanging over the bannisters to see what was going on. There was an iron chandelier hanging from the ceiling overburdened by long used candles whose wax was melting over the sides like a frozen waterfall. It was held by a chain that led to the tavern counter from which a surly looking pony surveyed the goings-on. There were an awful lot of eyes on him at that moment.

“My friends, I would like to introduce you to Handy the Milesian, the Dragonslayer, Shadow of Gethrenia, Spirit Whisperer Dweller of boxes, and twenty other things I don’t care to list off. Say hi!”

“Jacques!” Handy whirled around on his erstwhile friend, fear and fury mixed in his unkempt face. “What the hell!?”

“What?” Jacques asked innocently. Thorax was behind him, wide-eyed and small-pupilled but otherwise maintaining a remarkably calm expression complete with winning smile that was slowly breaking into sheer nervousness.

“I—! You—! What even is this!?” Handy swept his arm over the gathered crowd.

“This? These are my friends.”

“I can see that, but why in God’s name did you just reveal me!? I can’t be seen by Equestrians!”

“These are not Equestrians.”

"Its just as bad."

"No, no, be fair, Equestrians aren't nearly as ugly."

“Oh that is it!” Handy swore, drawing his hammer and throwing the coffin to the ground, which it hit with a clatter. Thorax jumped around Jacques and pushed against Handy’s chest with her forehooves, laughing nervously as she tried to prevent immediate and terrible violence.

“He has a bit of a temper, just so you know,” Jacques said easily, hopping off of his seat and keeping his distance, swiping a tin tankard from a slack-jawed pony with an eyepatch. “Merci. Now,” he took a drink, “any questions?”

The room practically exploded.

--=--

So as it turned out, Jacques wasn’t as much of an asshole as Handy had thought. Between the tidal wave of questions and laughter and kudos that descended upon Jacques, the generous gifts of beer in exchange for stories, and the surprisingly welcoming attitude of the ponies, it seemed there was a method to Jacques’ particular madness. Handy… Handy wasn’t sure what he was expecting from Enclave ponies, but it certainly wasn’t this. Or maybe it was because every single one of them was a dyed-in-the-wool mercenary bastard, and he just happened to be a friend of a friend. He wasn’t sure.

It seemed, at least according to Jacques, that he simply had to let them know what he was bringing into the city due to how the mercenary guild worked. If he didn’t, they’d find out one way or another once they suspected he was hiding something, which they always did, because mercenaries were always hiding something. He already found a bunch of young foals scurrying over their wagon, investigating it at the behest of the guild master, who was apparently the tavern keeper. He sent them scurrying right quick, nosey little fucks.

The current record keeper for longest avoidance of the guild master’s bloodhounds was some infamous professional smuggler by the name of Jack Knife, who had managed to smuggle in no less than three thousand pounds of processed sugar within the city limits ready to be traded off for a period of forty seven days, six hours, and twenty seven minutes. He had gotten a slap on the hoof, a fine for breaking the guild’s trust, and a free round of beer on the guild keeper’s tab for being such a magnificent bastard.

That explained why Jacques had to reveal him to them all, but that didn’t answer everything.

“Right,” Handy said, rubbing his face as they sat. They were seated at a round wooden table with more than a few nicks and chunks cut out of it from too many years holding the drinks of questionable people with more knives than sense. It was at the corner of the tavern, underneath the overhang currently holding aloft more ponies. The occasional cloud of dust was shaken loose from the rafters as some asshole started playing music on some kind of stringed instrument and a couple of ponies decided to do a little jig. Right above their fucking heads. Still, Handy had insisted on sitting here if they simply had to stay here until nightfall because it gave them a commanding view of the entire bar floor, plus an eye on the corner entrance.

Also, it was relatively far away from the nearest sconce that would house a naked torch when it got dark, so you know, that was a consideration he had to take into account.

“If bringing me here was going to be such a bastard of an issue,” he said, resisting the urge to grind his teeth as he eyed the bar patrons who seemed to be getting steadily drunk since at least midday. God damn. “Then why couldn’t we have stayed outside the city whilst thou went on in? Didst thee ever think of that? Hmm?”

“Handy, mon ami, did you ever think of the practicality of your situation?” Jacques replied, openly polishing his rapier on the table as he flashed the barmaid a smile as she levitated over their drinks and a small plate of some strange dried seaweed and some fruit Handy didn’t recognise. It smelled good. She gave him a knowing look and smile before turning off. He could’ve sworn he saw Thorax shoot her an ugly glance before returning to her neutral expression. Must’ve sensed something. Changelings.

“The practicality of my situation is exactly what I am talking about,” Handy said lowly, leaning closer to Jacques across the table. “Thanks to thine little show, my presence is going to be city wide news come sun down. This is a port city, merchants are going to be carrying word to other cities, and pretty soon word that I’m alive and well is going to spread, and God alone knows what that will do to the situation on the border with Griffonia.”

“Tell me, who will be more concerned about your appearance here in the Enclave, Celestia or Galaxia?”

“I don’t even know who that is and I couldn’t care less. I have a responsibi—”

“And you would have, what? Spent who knows how long hopping around the continent in a coffin the whole way?” Jacques asked with a chuckle. “That was only ever going to be a short term solution. You would have been found out eventually. You have no support, no preparation, and you are actively seeking to find somepony which would inevitably require you to come into some kind of populated area, and likely things would get violent, in which case what you were hoping to avoid would come to pass eventually.” He levitated some food to his mouth and chewing happily. “Only probably much worse because the first sign Equestria has of you appearing is you popping up in the middle of some city square somewhere and murdering some poor bastard. Assuming everything went as planned and you weren’t rumbled beforehand.”

“Okay,” Handy said, marginally keeping his temper under control and letting Jacques reason get to him. It was an undesirable feeling, but he held on to it to keep his mind off of the, frankly, alarming number of warm bodies in close proximity to him and the nearly deafening sound of heartbeats full of— “Assuming Thunder is still even in Equestria anymore, and even if I admitted that thou hath a measure of the matter, how does that stop the Enclavers from freaking out? In the short turn, I’d have just traded alarmed Equestrians for alarmed Enclavers. What makes me safer here than in Equestria?”

“Hmhmhm, as I was telling chére, Blackport is my city. These are my ponies. Nopony will touch you unless you do something stupid.”

“I am sure the Lord Mayor shares thine sentiments, as does the Princess.”

“She might as well be on the far side of the world from us. By the time she finds out, you should be already on your way to other places… hopefully,” Jacques said, rolling his eyes and offering his drink to Thorax, who declined it with a hoof, staring at him levelly.

“While I’m loathed to admit it, Handy does have a point,” Thorax said, eyeing the crowd casually. Jacques seemed to jump with a grunt, a leg hitting the table and shaking it, knocking his hat loose. Thorax looked at him genially, and he smiled nervously. “How are we supposed to trust you when you so readily revealed one of our secrets?”

Handy inconspicuously looked over his shoulder. No one was close enough to make out what Thorax was saying, but more than a few were keeping an eye on their boy Jacques and his new ‘friends’. “Easy, Charity,” Handy whispered, keeping his hand away from his hammer and firmly placed around his cup.

“Come now, mon amour, I have no intention of saying anything,” he said, letting his sword lie on the table and raising his hooves. He gently placed a foreleg around her shoulder. “What makes you think I’d want to share, hm?”

Handy cocked an eyebrow at the behaviour. Jacques pulled away after Thorax, looking slightly flustered gave a brief cough. “Anyway, it is merely the practicality of the matter, Handy. Think about it, did you really want to spend this whole time locked away from society in a box, just over an unconfirmed fear of what might happen?”

“I had been seriously considering it,” Handy muttered under his cup as he drank, his thoughts on darker things. He immediately spat it back out, coughing. It tasted incredibly foul. There was an eruption of laughter behind him, and he turned around to face his jeering audience.

“He drank it! I can’t believe it!”

“You’d think the smell alone would have tipped him off!”

“Pay up, he spat it out,” he saw a local lush demand of the barmaid who had served them. She sighed and levitated a small bag of coins to the grinning stallion.

“Could’ve sworn I had got that batch right,” the maid muttered before going about her business, grumbling to herself. Handy looked down at his drink before looking back to Jacques.

“What. The hell did I just drink?” he asked, keeping his voice level and gesturing accusingly at his cup.

“Silver Platter is a mare of many talents. She is determined to make brewing one of them.” Jacques took a sip of his doubtlessly much more pleasant drink. “So far she has been wildly unsuccessful at making new brews. It’s a running tradition that new faces have to take a swig of her latest mix, no exceptions, to see what sticks.” Thorax suddenly looked to her own tin tankard accusingly. “Yes, chére, that means you too. Drink up.”

“I’d rather not,” she said, looking at Handy who was busy wiping down his tongue and shaking his head from the lingering, burning taste. “Doesn’t look like it’d be a lot of fun.

“Oh don’t be like that. What’s wrong with a little fun?”

“The fact that it apparently tastes like rat urine?”

Handy tuned the pair of them out as he focused on taking some of Jacques’ food to help get rid of the taste. It was oddly sour-tasting, but in a pleasant way, and it certainly helped with the lingering aftertaste of whatever godawful slop had been placed in front of him. He found himself calming slightly. His head rested on a hand and eyes closed as he considered his options and everything Jacques had told him.

He supposed… He supposed if Jacques’ assessment was right, then Handy re-emerging in another country aside from Equestria, at the very least, limited the Equestrians’ ability to act against him if nothing else. At best, this would throw off any suspicion that he was acting against Equestria at all at the behest of the griffons, so it wouldn’t make the situation any worse over there. Or so he hoped.

Hunger grasped him, and he found himself quite eager to get out of this bar and the press of bodies that surrounded him, but he knew going out into the city during the daytime would just exacerbate that problem. However, if he didn’t do something now, it’d only get progressively worse. He was already focusing intently on the music of the minstrel above them, silently willing him or her to play longer and louder just for something to drown out the noise that was already overpowering the sounds of the patrons. He needed somewhere private.

“Jacques,” he said suddenly, finally turning his attention to the two of them and blinking in surprise. Jacques was currently gagging as Thorax was shoving her tankard down his muzzle and the godawful concoction that she was meant to drink herself. He managed to push her off, spluttering and gasping as his comrades around them laughed their asses off.

“Oui, Handy?” he asked, coughing before casting an unamused glare at the smiling Thorax. Handy waved a hand, dismissing the nonsense before continuing.

“First off, where are we staying?” he asked, placing a hand on the helmet that lay on the table beside him. “This guild tavern doesn’t look very roomy.”

“It isn’t, unless you’re piss drunk and have nowhere to stay, then you can sleep in the common room out back. If you can stand the smell that is.”

“I assume we have other options?” Handy asked levelly.

“Of course! I know the perfect place for a man of discretion such as yourself. And you, mon chére,” Jacques replied. Thorax cocked a brow at him. “Although we should probably go now, if we wait until tonight, the rooms will be closed off.”

“Why?” Handy asked.

“Business reasons – don’t worry about it. So, assuming we are all fed and watered, shall we?” Jacques slipped the sword around his hoof and resheathed it, fixing the scabbard by his waist.

“How do you do that?”

“What?”

“I mean, why don’t you just use magic to wield it? It’s just a rapier – it’d be no problem for you to levitate it.” Jacques just smiled knowingly as he affixed his hat.

“Oh I do if it’s life or death, mon frere, but it is rarely needed for such. Better to be sporting, non? Besides...” he said, inclining his head so Handy did not notice the sly look he gave Thorax. “I like the challenge.” Thorax very quickly found another corner of the tavern to affix her attention. Handy snorted.

“Right,” Handy said, placing his hands on the table as he pushed out of his chair, apologizing to the stallion sitting behind him as he tried to make his way through. Advantages of being bipedal: bar room navigation was so much easier for you than it was for everyone else. “Well, if we simply have to go out now, then let’s hop to it.”

“Sure, ties in nicely with contacting a few of my sources.”

“Thine sources reside at our destination?”

“In a manner of speaking,” Jacques said, waving a hoof in a circle.

--=--

Walking through the town of Blackport had been an invigorating experience. Despite the dreary overcast sky and grey-coloured slate tiles of the roofing and the austere, dark wood that made the majority of the buildings, the city was bursting at the seams with a liveliness and vigour that belied the dour colours. The entire city was constructed along a mile and a half of coast, artificially altered and straightened, with the entirety of the city raised just above sea level. The entire eastern face of the city is given over to ports and harbours for merchant vessels and fishing ships. Handy struggled to find an economic reason why herbivorous ponies were fishing in such great quantities, especially since Enclavers seemed to share their Equestrian cousins’ distaste for eating meat, but he held his tongue on the matter.

What really interested him were the five great canals cutting into the city from where the harbour began. Called colloquially ‘hairs’, these tremendous indentations of the sea intruded upon the land, like the spaces between the teeth of a comb, each of them with small harbours and piers of their own to house the military vessels of the Black Fleet to repair, reload, and rearm the vessels. Wooden pulley cranes, ropes, and warehouses dominated the areas around the Hairs, barrels of gunpowder and crates of food rations, thick coils of rope, and the occasional cannon or two could be seen littering the ground or hoisted in the air. Handy had seen a few cannons in Skymount and again in Ifrendare, and they seemed much bigger than these ones. He grimaced at the implications. Very few vessels were actually in the hairs for servicing now, and the ones that were seemed to be little more than small two mast ships. Jacques had explained that the portions of the Black Fleet that patrolled these waters were on its way back to the home ports, and these were stragglers. The frenzy of ships at the exterior harbours was due to the merchant houses doing their damnedest to do last minute trading before docking their fleets for the winter. The eastern seas simply weren’t safe during the winter and spring.

Great bridges descended across the unoccupied hairs, allowing even greater accessibility as they cut through one of Blackport’s many markets. God, what a sight. Ponies of all sorts were present, along with griffons, dogs, minotaurs, a few of those sphinx things he had seen at the tournament, even an odd deer or two, and several creatures Handy didn’t get too close of a look at to identify. The food on display was astounding, with all sorts of preserved fruit and vegetables. A lot of it he recognised, most he simply did not, for some simply appeared too alien for him to readily identify. No potatoes though. Why the hell could he never find any potatoes? Was this entire world populated by potato-less heathens? Savages, the lot of them. He would have easily lost himself investigated the many, many wares on display, particularly one jeweller who boldly displayed mounds of diamonds and other gems on his stands, just begging to be robbed. Oddly enough, one pile of diamonds seemed to be cheaper than dirt at one diamond per Black Isle clam, with another charging a veritable king’s ransom for each one. Handy couldn’t make sense of the difference. A diamond was a diamond, was it not? It was not like this world had a de Beers family to monopolize the rocks.

However, he kept his distance. His reception by the Enclavers was much as it had been pretty much everywhere outside of Skymount, only this time with an extra sense of wonder and fear. Not every day you see a nightmare come back from the dead. He doubted that many here had heard the news of the tournament in Firthengart barely a day or more before Handy the motherfucking Shadow appeared right on their doorstep. Must have been quite a shock. The black and blue clad guards sure as shit were keeping an eye on him as he went about. Best to not raise hackles any more than his presence already did.

Handy found himself oddly reminiscent of days gone by, of a declining port city on the western coast of Equestria and his own initial reception there. The coincidence was eerie, but this time he didn’t have the excuse of being an unknown entity to give the people pause. Eventually, they came to a rather grand-looking building at the end of the fifth hair, where the ports and harbours ended and the more residential side of the city began. Here, the streets were laid with flagstones and black iron streetlamps held aloft lanterns, waiting to be lit during the night. The building itself stood out, made out of fine wood and painted a dark, ruddy red that shone like varnish. Elegantly carved design ran the length of crossbeams on the face of the building, abruptly cutting off where it met its neighbours, accented in silver paint to stand out. All the windows were curtained off in the same blue velvet, and the front of the building had a porch, cordoned off from the street with bannisters with a wooden awning bearing a sign. ‘Madam Marseille’s’

“Really?” Thorax asked flatly, glaring at Jacques. “Really Jacques?”

“Problem, Charity Bell?” Jacques asked with a smile.

“We’re staying here… Really… This is your better option?”

“The beds are soft, the rooms warm, what's not to like, no?”

“I cannot— You can’t—” She looked up at Handy as if expecting some support from that quarter. The confused human simply shrugged, the armour pieces he wasn’t currently wearing clattering, connected as they were by thick strings and carried over his shoulder. She let out a disgusted sound. “Whatever, I’m going to get lost. Don’t wait up; I think I know where to find you,” she said as she trotted off into the city.

“What’s the matter with her?” he asked. Jacques shrugged.

“Mares, you know how they can be. Now come, come,” Jacques said, waving Handy along as he walked on into the building. Handy looked around him one more time. They weren’t that far from the hair. A few hardy-looking sailing ponies, an oxymoron if ever there was one, were eyeing the two of them with confused expressions. Most of the passersby seemed to be waiting for Handy to move on before actually passing by. He grimaced and followed Jacques into the building.

He was surprised to find it relatively darkly lit on the interior. The walls was covered over in richly detailed red wallpaper, the walls hung with lanterns with coloured glass, and the gold-coloured upholstery of the booth seats, further accentuating the sumptuous décor, was the strange odour carried on the air. Heavy and pungent, smelling of wildflowers. Handy recognised perfume when he smelled it. Cheap ones too, judging by the smell, God damn, that blocked out fucking everything.

There was a bar not far from the door, a grand-looking stone fireplace set in one wall, thankfully unlit and very few patrons, and the ones who were there seemed to be occupied in the few booths being attended by one of the mares. Oh right, the mares. There were a lot of them. All of them were dressed in the frilliest clothes Handy had ever seen, saddles made of cloth and silk, socks, tiny bows in their manes and garters. It was bewildering. Sure enough, since he had been brought out of the coffin back in Fishermare’s Hook, he learned Blackporters at least seemed a lot more partial to clothing than most ponies he knew of, but for the life of him he couldn’t figure out why they were all dressed that way. Must be a uniform policy or something.

“Well, well, if it isn’t my very own lover boy,~” a sultry voice greeted them from the left. Handy turned to see an earth pony mare, blonde-maned with tresses framing her face and a small mole on her left cheek. Her bright blue eyes were accented by the deep pink mascara on her that which complimented her magenta coat.

‘Makeup on fur. Some things I’ll never understand,’ Handy thought to himself.

“Ah Sea Crest, ma mignonne petite chose, a vision as always.”

“And you’re a sight for sore eyes,” Sea Crest replied with a slight chuckle. “So is it business or pleasure.”

“Business my dear,” he replied. She pouted.

“Aww, you’re never here for pleasure.”

“Not true, mon chére,” Jacques said, raising her hoof to kiss it. “It is always a pleasure to speak with a mare as lovely as you.” She swiped at him playfully. She then looked up at Handy and let out a short whistle.

“Oh my, and who do I have the pleasure of meeting here?”

“This is my friend Handy,” Jacques said before Handy could speak. “He’s here for business too.”

“Tsk, you never bring anyone fun,” she chided him. “But I’d rather hear it from him if you wouldn’t mind. So, Handy is it?”

“It is. It is a pleasure to make thine acquaintance, Miss Sea Crest.” She laughed softly at that.

“My, so formal, wherever did he find you? Nonetheless, how may I be of service to you today, fine sir?” she said sweetly, tilting her head to the side and looking up at him with half-lidded eyes. Handy glanced at Jacques before replying.

“I’m… afraid I’m here for business,” he said uncertainly, not entirely sure what was going on here. Was this some complicated initiation or something? Exactly who were these contacts of Jacques and why all this needless foreplay? She pouted and then sighed.

“Oh very well, be boring. The usual room I take it?” she asked.

“Quite, s'il vous plaît.”

“The usual fee then. You know the rules.”

“Ahem, there was one more thing.”

“Oh?”

“I’ll be needing three rooms, if you can spare them.” At that, her eyes lit up, smiling wildly.

“Oh my, bringing more friends are we?”

“Three of your other rooms, if you could. Usual arrangement,” Jacques clarified. Sea Crest visibly deflated.

“Very well, I’ll have it arranged. You can go ahead, but you had better not be a stranger, my little Jacques,” she said, poking him in the chest.

“Ah, but then what will I do without entrancing and alluring mystique?”

“Oh I can think of several things…”

“I’m sure you could. Expect another mare to follow on our hooves, name of Charity Bell,” Jacques said, giving Sea Crest a description before leading Handy off deeper into the building. Handy felt more awkward than usual here, but for the life of him he couldn’t put his finger on what was bothering him as Jacques led him down a hallway to a room underneath a staircase.

It was relatively cramped, a small table, a glass oil lantern that Handy was really uncomfortable with being this close to, and two chairs on either side of it. Handy sat in the one that gave him the most headspace, being under the stairs, but even then he had the hunch over. He was grateful for not wearing his cuirass. This would have been intolerable otherwise. Jacques closed the door.

“So—”

“Shh!” Jacques hushed, knocking on a wooden panel on the wall next to him five times. Several seconds later, Handy saw it open, and Jacques said something incomprehensible to someone on the opposite side of the wall in French. The deep, cracking voice in the darkness beyond asked a flurry of questions, responded at relative length by Jacques, to such a point that Handy very much felt like a third wheel to this conversation. After some time, the panel closed. “And so it begins. I sent the word out, describing the kind of pony we’re looking for and the kind of magic we want to track.” Handy blinked.

“That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

“Just like that?”

“Oui.”

“Now we just wait?”

“For the time being, yes,” Jacques replied. They sat awkwardly for a full minute before Jacques cleared his throat.

“All of that, for a few minutes conversation with a hole in the wall?”

“A lot of cloak and dagger, I’ll grant but it’s necessary.”

“How on earth could such runabout nonsense be necessary? A secret room, unnecessary banter with the apparent proprietor, secret knocks, and a private language. Are all information brokers this needlessly secretive?”

“I thought you’d be pleased.”

“I am, it’s just, well, very odd way to go about it. Couldn’t thee have merely written this all down and handed the letter across to the fellow on the other side of the wall rather than risk being overheard?”

“Interesting, I’ll have to remember that for next time. But to answer your question, Handy, it is simply how these ponies do their business, and they are very good at it. Besides, nopony ever questions why two stallions enter a place like this, so it is the perfect cover, though I must say that the fact that you are taking this better than Thorax came as a bit of a surprise, given your own prudishness.”

“My what? What does that have to do with anything?” Handy asked. Jacques held up his hooves placatingly.

“I am not complaining. I knew you wouldn’t be interested in their services but still was concerned at how you might have reacted. All the same, it works out, oui?”

“What services are you talking… about… of….” Handy’s brow furrowed. The flirtatious swagger of Sea Crest, her suggestive tones, the fact that all the mares were dressed in impractical, lacy outfits, the entire layout of the building daubed in faux finery and awash with red lighting, the blocked out windows, the eye-catching decor of the building’s front well in view of the sailors coming into port at the end of long journeys bottled up in the hold of a ship, the fact that Jacques told him no one would question what two men would enter this place for. Handy’s eyes widened rapidly and he stood up, hitting his head painfully off of the stairs above him, causing an unwitting pony above to yelp in surprise. “This is a whor—!”

“Respectable and legitimate place of business!” Jacques suddenly audibly said, jumping to lean across the table and block Handy’s mouth with a hoof. “Shhh! Are you trying to get us kicked out!?”

“You brought us to hide in a bordello!?” Handy hissed, rubbing the back of his head as he sat back down, “What’s wrong with you!?”

“You mean you didn— How could you not know!? It’s obvious!”

“I am not exactly familiar with these ‘respectable and legitimate places of business’, and from the spiel thou hast given me back in Whisperwood, I wouldn’t think thee would have been either!”

“Hey, I do not fool around in places like this! Sea Crest is an old friend, and this is the best places for people like us to lay low for a while.”

“Yeah, I’ll bet she’s real friendly.”

“It’s not like that, vous rustre bruyante, if you’d just listen to me!” Jacques replied angrily in their hushed argument. “I specifically requested Sea Crest’s service as landlady. This building continues right across the block to the other side, to a housing building on the opposite street. You can get there through secret passages here. Sea Crest rents the rooms out to those who need to disappear for a bit, or otherwise need to stay somewhere other than where they currently live, do you understand?”

“Yeah, I’m sure she gives a lot of guilty husbands somewhere to crash for a few nights.”

“Oh buck you, Handy, be reasonable! This place provides valuable services, and I am doing you a big favour by bringing you here. The only reason you haven’t been jumped for sitting right where you are in a place you shouldn’t by rights know anything about,” Jacques said, indicating the panel he had spoken into previously, “is because these ponies trust me. The least I can ask of you is for some of your customary decorum and at least a little respect!”

“Fine, fine!” Handy said, waving his hands and sitting back down with a sigh. “I guess I may have… overreacted. Just… really, Jacques?”

“Aheh, really. It’s just more convenient this way. If you want, you can exit the apartments from the other street. You don't have to keep going back and forth through here.”

“Thank God for small miracles,” Handy groused.

“Oh cheer up, Handy. No harm done, oui? Although I thought it would have been obvious to you what this place was for when you saw how all the mares were dressed.

“Yeah, I suppose.” He really didn’t suppose. How the hell was he supposed to know the minutiae of the meaning of the clothes ponies chose to wear? He had seen a few formal-looking mare dresses before. Once, on an emissary to a noble wedding, he had represented the king when he could not attend, another all the way back in Spurbay on a rather wealthy-looking family out to a formal occasion of some sort. Saddles were just a part of their clothing as far as he could tell. How was he supposed to know that the ones those mares wore had erotic implications?

‘Come to think of it, a few of them were even wearing a kind of underwear too,’ Handy considered to himself. ‘That was weird. I have never seen anyone wear any kind of underwear here. Why would they? It’s not as if… as if… as… oh God. I haven’t seen one. On anyone. Not even once. Not even by accident.’

Dear reader, please be considerate and understanding, in order to comprehend what was going through Handy’s head right at this moment in time. Put yourself in the following situation: imagine living your daily life, whatever that might be and whatever that might entail. Imagine talking and interacting with your loved ones, your friends and family, your work partners each going about their days just like you were.

And then someone sneezed and then it struck you. Everyone, except for you, was missing a nose. A simple flat piece of their face where their nose should be, everyone is missing their nose… except for you. And nobody remarked upon this. In fact, everyone acted through life as if their noses were actually there, despite the fact you could not see them. They sneezed; they sniffed; you were pretty sure you see them scratch it. But you could not see it, and for some reason or another, you never noticed until now.

“Handy?” Jacques waved a hoof in front of Handy’s face a few times. He clapped his forehooves together, the iron horseshoes clacking as he did so. Handy’s glazed over eyes stared off into eternity just over Jacques’ head. “You uh… You okay there, mon ami?”

Handy.exe had stopped functioning.

--=--

It really didn’t take her long.

Her queen had been subtle, but she knew what she meant. The only reason the changelings of Autarch Thrinafax would be leaving the east coast in such numbers would be because he, along with many other changelings, would be converging on Lepidopolis to claim it for themselves, right under her Majesty’s muzzle.

And that was her cue to do whatever she could to advance her colony’s interests, even if it was only in one pony city. To that end, she took advantage of her separation from the group to lose herself in the streets of Blackport, going through one alleyway and shifting into an earth pony, and another, and becoming a pegasus to throw off any potential pursuers or ‘friends’ of Jacques that might be keeping an eye on them. She took flight and, to take stock of her surroundings, gave a quick fly over. It really was a large city, with rolling hills and farmlands surrounding it, its harbours pregnant with merchant shipping with more vessels sailing upon the ocean beyond the embrace of the harbour walls. Trains went to and fro from the busy station, heading north and south.

She closed her eyes and reached out, searching. A city this big, there were bound to be a couple of sidhes nearby, maybe even within the city if the rumours of the Autarch’s boldness were accurate. And if there were, and most of the changelings were gone, that meant their sidhes would be guarded by younglings, inexperienced, new.

There. They were easier to spot for an experienced scout, projecting their emotions just a little too much, a little too insincere to be genuine and a little too forced to be a proper mimic of an ordinary pony who seemed to be ‘trying’ to hide their emotions. She spent an hour flyover the city, mentally checking off the locations and local landmarks of potential suspects, remembering their unique flavour yet maintaining her distance so they would not suspect her when she got close enough for a whiff.

Yes, that was a start. She’d find these sidhes and begin work to weed out anything that could be of use to the colony. She smiled. Maybe she could capitalise on that, using Handy as a means to an end in that regard. Yes, the queen could request his help with flushing out a few sidhe, make things difficult for the Autarch while he was away. Delicious.

But all good things must come to an end. She scowled as she thought of Jacques and that… place. She had thought better of him than that, even though she wasn’t sure why she was particularly peeved in this instance… No. It wouldn’t do any good. She would confront him later about all of this. Right now, they had a mission to focus on and Jacques, for all his faults, was meant to help with it. She decided to turn back to check on them and to see about Jacques’ promise of putting them up for the night.

Even if she did have to swallow her pride in order to do it.

--=--

Jacques was smiling nervously at the brawny sailor pony that had more scars than he had face as he passed him by, giving him and the door the swordspony was leaning against an odd look as he continued on.

“HHHHHandy~” Jacques singsonged. “You can calm down any time now. You’re worrying ponies.” He was replied by the sound of unintelligible shouting. The soundproofing on these rooms really was incredible, but Jacques could still hear him through the wall.

“What’s going on?”

“Ahh!” Jacques whirled around to face the bored-looking face of Charity Bell. “W-When did you get back?”

“Just now. Clever set up this… friend of yours has,” she said icily. Jacques rubbed his foreleg in agitation.

“Yeah, yeah. Look, can you help me with this?”

“With what?”

“It’s Handy, he… I dunno. He didn’t know that Sea Crest’s place was… what it was, until he was already inside.”

“Seriously?”

“I know!”

“Barbie Dolls! I am in a world full of living Barbie Dolls!”

“But he calmed down, we talked normally, and then he… he got this look in his eyes, dead to the world. Had to guide him up the stairs and through the passages to the apartments. As soon as the wall closed behind us, he just… blew up!”

“Babies! How do babies!? How do you even babies here!?” They winced at the shouting coming from the solid oak door.

“How long has he been like this?”

“...Half an hour.”

“Pollination! Spores! That’s right, like Orkz! Just as the Old Ones intended!”

“Everything went fine. We got to my broker, did the deal and now we were just waiting for the information to trickle back to us.”

“Wait, you’ve already done the hoofwork?”

“Yeah, the network will take care of itself. Though depending on how hard the information is to acquire, it can get pretty pricey.” Jacques waved Thorax down. “I don’t care, Handy’s paying me, remember? I can charge my own sum.”

“Swell.”

“What is even the point of having separate bathrooms at restaurants!? What is the point of bathrooms!? Is this a joke!? Is someone up there having a laugh!?”

Jacques suddenly felt himself pinned against the wall with Thorax’s angry visage up close to his face. “Seeing as all we have to do now is sit around and wait.” Her eyes narrowed. “You and I are going to be having a little chat.” Jacques smiled nervously, swallowing before gesturing to the door containing Handy’s angry voice.

“W-What about him?” he asked.

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!”

“He’ll be fine.”

Author's Note

or, Poking the hungry vampire: the chapter

Below you'll find a map, Handy's current location is noted by the silver hammer. A useful key to understand what you're looking at as well as other maps can be found here.

Chapter 39 - Chains of Blood

The door slammed shut behind them as Jacques stumbled back to his hooves, raising a foreleg pleadingly.

“N-Now just give me a moment to explain, Thorax.”

“Explain what?” Thorax asked, venom in her voice as she walked purposefully towards the retreating stallion. Funny how it was the one who was actually armed who was on the back hoof. The room was sparse: a bed, a mirror, plenty of space to just simply dump whatever you were carrying, and a glorified closet that housed an aging metal toilet. Used at one’s own risk.

“It isn’t what you think!”

“What isn’t what I think?” She narrowed her eyes dangerously. Her horn glowed, causing the curtains to shut tightly and the lock of the door to be heard clicking. Green fire washed over her body as she returned to her true form. Tufts of her azure mane had regrown after weeks of neglecting to maintain her military shave.

“Sea Crest, she is… just a friend! We’ve known each other for a long time!”

“Uh huh.”

“Business! It’s just a business relationship.”

“Sure.” He felt himself fall to his haunches against a wall. She pressed her face right up to his, their muzzles scrunching. “Anything else I should know?”

“You… You’re very pretty when you are angry?” Two hooves slammed into the wall on either side of his head.

“No more games!” she growled. “How are you doing that?”

Jacques bore an absolutely stupid expression as her question registered.

“...Que?”

“Your emotions.” She jabbed him in the chest. “You know what I am talking about.”

“Ohhhh…” Jacques took a few seconds to process what she said. “Well, I figured you’d be used to that sort of thing. What is it you call Handy? Heartless?”

“I can still feel you. The human is different; he doesn’t have anything I can feed off of.”

“That’s a little harsh. I know he isn’t the cuddliest but… wait, you’re serious?” Thorax simply held his gaze. “...Huh. Weird.”

“There are changelings in this city.”

“Is that really something you should be telling me, chére?” Jacques asked, managing a small smirk despite the direness of his situation. She bared her fangs and pressed her muzzle against his even harder.

“You know damn well there is more of my kind here. Somehow, someway, you learned how to guard your emotions like that, coiling them up into a little ball of iron that I can’t get at. How?”

“Surely you don’t expect me to simply tell you?”

“Yes. I do.” He raised a hoof to caress her face before she slammed it against the wall. “No more games.”

“But it is ever so much fun.”

“Answers. Now,” she demanded. He grimaced before sighing.

“Is it so wrong I take care of myself? As you say, there are changelings in this city.” He tried to sidle out of her grasp. Unfortunately, she wasn’t going to be moved, so he resigned himself and fixed his hat with a free hoof. “It isn’t public knowledge. I doubt the mayor knows, and it’s little more than a rumour in the underground. But I’ve had more than my fair share of run ins, hmhm, but none as enjoyable as you, ch—”

“Call me dear one more time and you’ll regret it!” Thorax snarled. Jacques frowned.

“Why are you so mad? It never seemed to bother you much before. Annoying, yes, part of the charm really.”

“It’s annoying me now.” Thorax spat. “Go on, how did you do it?”

“A little experimenting here and there. Me and the local changelings here have… an understanding,” he said with a light smile. Thorax’s frown grew into a scowl. “Careful, you’ll develop wrinkles if you keep letting your feelings get the better of you like that.”

“I— Wh-What?” Thorax stammered, blinking, Jacques immediately removed his forehoof from her grasp and managed to slip out from under her in her brief confusion. Thorax fell to her forehooves before getting up and scowling at Jacques. She took herself to task, unaware she had been so amateur as to let anger get the better of her. She must be tired. “An understanding.”

“Oh yes. I don’t go after their little hideaways, and they’ll only try to kill me every now and again.”

“What.”

“It’s a bit of a game, though their hearts have gone out of it. You can only try to kill somepony so much before it gets old.”

“This is a terrible arrangement.”

“I know!”

“You aren’t telling me everything.”

“I thought we already got over that bit?” He walked to the other side of the room and moved the full length mirror around. He spotted her perpetual scowl in the reflection and smiled gently. “Oh, be sporting about this, Thorax. I don’t know why you are so upset.”

“This whole time, you’ve been having me on. Telling me that sparring me back there in the forest was just repaying the favour.”

“And was I lying, chére?”

“I don’t know, are you!?” she snarled, “I can’t read all of your intentions, I cannot be sure you didn’t just lead both me and the human here to sell us both out. How do I know you haven’t sold me out to the changelings in this city already?”

“Because they haven’t given me my customary murder-welcome yet.” Jacques turned around to face her, catching the blank look she was giving him. “What? I’m serious! Every time I come home after a long sojourn, I always have the most delightfully inventive death traps I need to avoid. One time, they even decided to just stop being subtle about it and just lit a keg of gunpowder under my bed. Have to give them credit though, that one almost got me. But… you can be sure I had absolutely no intention of turning you over to the local soul-suckers.”

“Oh, and how so?” she asked, sarcasm dripping from every word as he walked towards her, leaning in close to her ear.

“Because until now…” he whispered softly, “I didn’t know all changelings weren’t on the same side. You’re slipping, chére.” Thorax recoiled at the words, scrambling back from him. He chuckled lightly. “Oh, I had my suspicions, sure: the way you acted, your complete ambivalence to certain references to ‘the fishery’, which always gets a rise out of the local ‘lings without fail, even the accent of your true voice. But now I have some confirmation. No wonder I have no idea why you’re tagging along with Handy. My entire reference pool is unreliable when it comes to you. All the more fascinating, of course.”

“So that’s what all that was about! You’re just letting me in to get closer, to get a hoof over the Autarch!”

“Never met the stallion, but I hear he has said the most unflattering things about me. Kind of a point of pride really.”

“Stop avoiding the issue!”

“Why, does it remind you too much of yourself?” She yelled and leapt at him. He sidestepped out of the way. “Now now, calm do—”

“Raarrrgh!” She flailed at him. If there was one thing Thorax had as an advantage over Jacques, it was speed. Pity he was far more experienced in handling an opponent in a direct fight than she was. In a short number of moves, Jacques had managed to dodge one thrown hoof, rolled with two kicks he received, before manoeuvring behind Thorax and getting her into a lock. He locked his forehooves up under her own and across her chest before pulling tightly, holding them in place. He pulled up, forcing her to her rear hooves before allowing himself to fall back onto the ground, kicking out her rear hooves from under her. “Let go of me!”

“Calm. Down,” Jacques commanded, Thorax struggling against him, kicking her rear legs fruitlessly and pulling against his grip. “Just calm down. Tartarus, you’re worse off than I thought. What is wrong with you!?”

“What the buck do you think is wrong with me!?”

“How about you tell me rather than just attacking me? I am not your enemy here, chére.”

“Do not call me that,” she hissed. She contemplated morphing her forehooves into griffon claws to give her a way to grip his legs more effectively. “Feeding me, earning my trust just enough to lull me into a trap – I should’ve have known no pony could possibly—”

“I meant every word.”

“Wh-What?”

“Every word. I meant every one,” Jacques said softly, his words causing her to slow her struggling. He didn’t let up his grip however. “Back there in the ruins, I meant everything. You saved me, even when you were hurt and too hungry to use your magic. I did what I thought was right so that you wouldn’t be discovered in order to pay you back. Is that so wrong?”

“I… I don’t believe you.” Thorax sat still and looked back at him. He just looked past her and into the mirror facing them to better see her face. He was quiet for a time.

“Truly? Did you think I was insincere?”

“I think you had other reasons.”

“...I was curious,” he admitted. She felt him lean against her neck.

“About what?”

“About you. Too many questions went through my head when I found out about you. It was too much to just brush away and ignore. I… thought about it.”

“What?”

“About what it would be like to be with a changeling. Openly, not as unwitting food. I never contemplated the possibility before. It was… strange. And exciting.” His eyes closed, and she felt the heat of his breath on her dermis. She looked up to see the pair of them reflected in the mirror across the room. She saw her own chartreuse eyes staring back at her, the thin locks of mane beginning to grow back, the stallion behind her resting on her withers as they were seated there, his arms wrapped around her. She closed the covers over her eyes.

“Don’t,” she heard him whisper. She looked at him in the mirror, his eyes barely open as he looked right back into her own. “Don’t hide them. Please don’t.”

“...Why?”

“Because I love to look into them, to see the real you. They’re beautiful.” She didn’t remove the covers, and he exhaled heavily in disappointment. And then she felt it. The tiny ball of iron in his heart opened up once again, unravelling like a blooming flower and the trickle of glowing warmth pouring forth from it, as gentle as a stream running over smooth rock. Her breath caught in her throat at the sudden, welcome proximity of emotion, willingly given. It was tempting, for the taste was the familiar coppery tinge she had gotten used to from him. The accent of his emotions, confusion, a hint of joy, comfort, fear, it didn’t stop. He revealed more and more of himself until he was as open to her as any other pony would have been. Regret, hesitation, passion, an inkling of lust… admiration? She didn’t dare feed, fearing a trap. Whatever he said to her now, she would be able to tell if he was lying or telling the truth.

And for some reason, that scared her.

“Wait,” she said suddenly. “J-Just wait.”

“I will not reveal you. To anypony,” he said softly, and she immediately knew the truth of it. “I hide my feelings for my own safety, and because I thought you’d like the challenge.”

Again the temptation rose as she felt surrounded by his warmth. Her wings, trapped as they were against his chest, buzzed in agitation and ruffled the fur of his chest and barrel. She felt his grip loosen, and she watched in fearful anticipation as he reached to her right hoof with his own and brought it out holding it before them, contemplating her black leg as it lay atop his own forehoof.

“You fascinate me, mon secrète joie. The feel of your skin, the look in your eyes, hmhm, even the sound of your voice. Un secret, et seule mine de savoir.” His muzzle raised to the back of her ear where he kissed it, making her flinch with a slight gasp.

“I-I… I can’t,” she managed. “I can’t be what you want.”

He was quiet for a few more minutes after that, studying her face in the mirror, letting her hoof go and bringing his free leg back across her chest in an embrace.

“I know.”

“No, you don’t understand,” she continued, trying not to let the pain show in her voice. “Changelings, we can’t… I can pretend but… It’ll be easier in a disguise.”

“No.”

“But—”

“No. Thorax, please. Let me see your eyes,” he pleaded. Slowly, she relented, and the sky-blue covers so emblematic of changelings slid back into the flesh of her head, revealing the fearful look she was giving him.

“There.” He smiled, planting a light kiss on the back of her neck. He squeezed her just so. “There you are. Don’t look so afraid.”

“... I can’t,” she repeated. For the life of her, she couldn’t understand why she was finding it so difficult to control herself, her voice shuddering. “I just… I can’t.”

“I know.” Jacques sighed, resting his head against her once more. “But fate has put us together for but a short time. It cannot last – we both know that. But it does not have to. We can just sit here, the two of us, and enjoy one another’s company for however long life lets us, hmm? What do you say?”

She didn’t answer him. She didn’t have to. The sun was slowly setting outside, the dying light turning a dusky amber through the thick curtains. She looked at herself in the mirror, her eyes then falling upon Jacques’ own, revelling in their intensity, shivering at the sincerity of his words, dreading the reality of what they meant. She couldn’t love him in return, no matter how much she wanted to. It would be too painful to explain why no changeling truly could. But the idea that he somehow knew this, or otherwise expected the brevity of their time together… She didn’t know how to feel about that. She didn’t know, could not know, how to deal with this, to know how to deal with somepony who she could not look upon as food no matter how hard she tried. Here he was, as open to her as any book, and still he confounded her, wrapped up in his loving embrace and giving his very heart to her, for however long she needed it.

She sat there with him for a long time.

--=--

He could not be seen. He could not afford to be. He could not remember why.

His vision swam, the world blurring together as he turned, objects swirling and becoming one with each other. The endless flagstone streets, slick with sea spray and rainwater, slipped by underneath him. He did not know where he was or where he was going. He did not care, for he was too hungry to care. All that mattered was sight, smell, hearing, and taste. The taste, the scents, too much. It was too much! He had to push through it, to find it, to feed off of it, but he could not be seen. He simply could not.

It was dark. Yes, the dark was his friend. The wretched light was a curse, the curse that would make him seen, make him burn. It hid in the curse. It hid in the light. The food hid where he did not wish to go.

A train at night, the thestral underneath him, his neck savaged in vengeance by the spawn of the night daemon.

He could hear it, all around them, the voices, the noises, the shouting; walls with mouths that spoke with the voices of those that hid behind them. Dark windows, blind to the light, ever watchful of the occupants who slept within. Easy, easy, but too risky, too noisy. He would be heard; he would be found, then he could not feed. Too many candles, too many lanterns, too much cursed fire-light.

Ba-thump, ba-thump, ba-thump, a thousand heartbeats a minute. All around him, every home, every house, every soul that slept in the darkness of the night. Taunting him, daring him, tempting him. Maddening.

A usurper, a murderer, a degenerate, a meal upon the battlements.

There, two of them, in the darkness, stumbling, laughing, drunk with their own joy, hiding from the world. Lovers that turned away from the light on the streets, a moment in the darkness between a bakery and a shipwright, the crash of the tide against the harbour walls masking his footsteps. A fool’s words and sweet nothings said in earnest, a laugh and a purring response, warm and low, unaware, unknowing and unseeing.

A wall of fire, a ring of death, the reaper’s shadow darkening his vision, a sacrifice willingly given.

His breath caught in his throat. So close, he dared not be heard even now. Darting eyes took in every facet of his surroundings. He could not be seen; he was sure of it. The accursed moon belonging to that wretched mare would not shine upon him. Drunken, their senses dulled, their hearing muffled, their focus upon one another and not upon the threat closing upon them in the night. Their heartbeats were deafening to his ears, drowning out everything, for nothing else mattered. His teeth bared.

Mist amidst the trees, mockery and condemnation, a queen humbled, her hubris her weakness.

“Stop it.” She chuckled into his ear, playfully batting him on the withers. The stallion just laughed and kissed her, the pair uncaring of the damp and the cold, the alcohol in their blood warming them against the bite of the night.

They were food.

“I’m sorry, heh, I thought this was your idea,” he said, fumbling drunkenly in the darkness and faceplanting on the wall behind her, much to her delight and amusement.

“Go home, Storm, you’re drunk,” the mare replied, before hiccupping adorably.

He took one cautious step after another, not daring to allow the lightest of noises to betray him now.

They were power.

“S-So are you, S-S-Sunshine,” he accused with what might have been a look of feigned drunken indignation. She just booped him on the nose in response.

“I didn’t say I wasn’t,” she said, pulling the drunken sop in to another embrace with a giggle. “And I didn’t say I wasn’t coming with you~”

His hands outstretched, ready to grasp, unknowing of which was closer to him in the utter darkness, and not caring. Not when he was so close. Ba-thump, Ba-thump, Ba-thump.

They were his to take.

“Aheh, fine, l-let’s go home,” he conceded.

Mouth wide, salivating, the temptation to simply lunge increasing.

“Thata boy. Come on now, I think we embarrassed ourselves enough tonight without the pair of us waking up in some alley tomorrow.”

He was upon them, a tall slice of black against the dark, bearing down upon the pair, a second away from draining them of their life’s blood.

“Y-Yeah, sorry about that.

‘I'm so sorry.’

He stopped, a jolt shooting through his mind. His heart missed a beat, his muscles paralyzed, like a sleeper awakening from a dream-state with a shock. The sole thought thundered through his intellect with the speed of lightning and the force of raging storm, shattering the fugue that had taken control of him. It was a terrifying clarity that was slowly dimming, slowly giving way once more as the terrible hunger would not be silenced. His senses would not obey him fully, demanding to be seen to, to be assuaged.

But it was enough, enough to hear himself screaming at the back of his mind.

He stood there, still as a rock. They never did notice him as he looked off into space, his face a mask of revulsion and terror as the happy couple stumbled their way happily on home in the night, the hooves echoing in the empty streets, unaware of what they had almost fallen prey to. Unaware of how incapable Handy would have been to stop himself before their very lives were snuffed out from this Earth.

He stood there, vaguely aware that he had started shivering from the cold as the sea wind picked up and the waves crashed against the harbour with greater force. The clouds that cloaked the moon were pulled away, letting the celestial body shine its paltry light this night, but not enough to illuminate the darkness of where he stood.

He didn’t know where in the city he was. He didn’t know how he got there. He could barely remember. He was in his room before, there for most of the evening as the sun descended. He had been thinking, thinking about something, something he could not recall right now, and then… and then… he didn’t know.

He had no idea.

--=--

She awoke with a snort, then roused her magic, her horn glowing brightly as she jumped to her hooves on her bed in alarm. She calmed when she recognised her surroundings as the dingy room Jacques had secured for her, having returned there after… after having that talk. However, all was not well. Something had awakened her. She checked the mirror, ensuring her disguise was still in place before checking on her room. Everything seemed fine; nothing was tampered with. Door locked and bolted, window tightly secured, every available nook and cranny double-checked. The one false wall she discovered definitely led nowhere.

Her ear twitched, and she could just about make out the distinctive noise of footsteps below. The human… What was he doing up this late? She quietly made her way out of her room and into the corridor, her hooves silent and hardly making a noise. She changed her form just enough to replace the hardened hooves of a pony with the softer, gentler ones of a changeling, testing each floor board before committing her weight to lessen the chance of causing too much noise. There were plenty of questionable characters staying here for one reason or another, and she did not want to be the one to cause a paranoid sneak thief to reach for a dagger in the night because they heard somepony creeping outside their door in the dead of night.

She went downstairs to the second floor. He wasn’t there; just more dark rooms housing equally shady characters. She moved on, straining her ears. He stopped moving, but there was just enough noise to make out somepony was downstairs. She reached the ground floor. The door leading outside was triple bolted. The way it had been explained to her was that nopony left the apartments without somepony else locking the door behind them, and they had to be let back in. She looked down, allowing her eyes to shift back to their true form to allow her to see better in the dark. There were small puddles on the ground by the door and tell-tale prints left by Handy in his wake.

So that was what awoke her. It was the door being bolted back into place. ‘Now where have you been off to, I wonder?’ she thought to herself as she followed the wet prints. She found him in the cluttered common room. A dozen crates, barrels, tools, and god knew what else took up the majority of the room, little enough space for a few low tables and the mismatched stools. He sat on one of them, one leg crossed beneath the other which was spread out beneath the table that was much too low for him normally. His hood was up and his head rested on a fist. His other hand had a sharp-looking sliver of metal in it, twisting it into the table as he studied its reflection in the moonlight through the curtains of the lone window. She paused for a second to consider the oddity of this particularly ominous sight. He hadn’t seemed to notice her there.

“Handy?” He didn’t answer, still looking at the crude blade before him. She allowed her horn to glow, the green light illuminating the room, causing Handy to blink as the light was reflected into his eyes.

“What?” He turned, surprise evident on his face. That was not the only thing that she noticed, however.

“Where… Where have you been?”

“...Nothing. I mean nowhere,” he said quickly, shaking his head briefly, placing the crude dagger down on the table. “Did you need something?”

“No.” Thorax studied Handy with a quizzical expression. “...Have you been feeling alright?”

“What? I’m fine.”

“You don’t look fine.” She noted the unhealthy pallor of his face. It hadn’t been too obvious before back in the darkness of the train car, only taking note of the increasing greyness of his flesh back in the tavern. He was also sweating rather badly. “Handy, are you sick?”

“I’m fine,” he repeated. “Go back to bed.”

“Where did you go? Just now, I heard you come back in. Why did you leave in the dead of night? We’re not supposed—”

“I was getting some air,” Handy interrupted her. “It’s just a bit too warm.”

“...Right,” Thorax said disbelievingly. “Sure you did, and I’m Princess Celestia. If you’re so insistent on getting yourself killed, who am I to stop you? Good night.”

She turned to leave. Handy just watched her go for a moment longer, glancing back at the dagger on the table. He bounced his heel on the ground rapidly as he thought. It needed to be done. One way or another, it was going to happen. Whether or not he was willing to do it was irrelevant. His new nature only proved it was all too capable of supplanting his reason and forcing the matter.

He would not be a slave to some blind force. If he was going to have to put up with it, he would do so on his own terms.

“Fine…” he muttered under his breath. Teeth clenched, he took a shuddering breath and wiped down his face.

“Wait. Thorax.” Thorax stopped in her ascent of the stairs, ear cocked towards the common room. “I need… a favour.”

“...A favour?” he heard her say. Her arrested ascent soon turned into a descent as a smiling Thorax walked back down into the room. “I’m listening.”

“I need your help with something. Just this once, and then I can… I can handle it from there.”

“Oh, certainly.” She felt little need to hide the smug grin she was wearing. Here it was, her hoof in the door, even after that clever little attempt at deflection he had tried back on the train, and a way to get Handy to agree to help out with a little work involving causing trouble for the local changelings loyal to the Autarch. He had to know what asking a favour meant, so it’d only be more insulting if she didn’t act a little too happy with the situation. “How ever can I help?”

Handy looked away for a minute, his knee bouncing as he thought before he turned back to her.

“Can you turn into a thestral?”

--=--

It had taken four hours.

Not to find somepony, you understand, for there were plenty of wastrels in a city like this that you could find down any street in the dead of night with dawn well on its way to breaking. No no, it had to be somepony who would come along willingly. Handy had been quite specific, but for the life of her, she couldn’t understand why. It was not like he fed like a changeling.

She had found the mare happily humming her way down a rather auspicious looking street, if you defined auspicious as meaning seedier than the underbelly of Mos Eisley. She carried herself with a dangerous swagger and a confidence born of believing one owned the very ground they walked upon. For all Thorax knew, she probably did. This was a gang run area of town if ever she saw one, and the earth pony mare, cream-coated with a voluminous, exaggerated, dark brown mane, certainly didn’t look like somepony of ill-repute.

That was, of course, until you took in the belt around her haunches and the many questionable implements that hung from it, along with the pouches heavy with gold that hadn’t been there a few hours before. Then there were the subtle lines along the fur on her flanks where it was discoloured slightly, hiding certain scars.

It had not been easy to convince her to go along with Thorax in her disguise, especially not when she seemed distinctly displeased to find a pony she had never seen before loitering around her turf. Fortunately, the mare had a thing for taller stallions, which Thorax was currently in the guise of. Unfortunately, she insisted that they go back to one of her places. It had taken nearly everything Thorax had to undo some of the mare’s precautions and unlock the door behind them when they had entered without being noticed. She had a sharp eye, this one.

It was difficult stalling her long enough until Thorax was certain Handy had managed to sneak in. Not being able to sense him and still being able to sense a great many other ponies in the nearby vicinity did wonders for her nerves, as you could imagine. It was like taking a youngling on their first outing to learn how to feed on their own, only you had no idea where the kid went, the kid hated you, and the target was particularly dangerous. Oh, and to make things better, the kid may or may not accidentally kill the target and you had to hang around to ensure that didn’t happen.

Dragging that little titbit out of Handy had been an unwelcome surprise.

When she had seen Handy skulking about in the corridor, she decided to stop fooling around. With a surge of magic, she dazed the mare in mid-conversation, her eyes’ sclera turning green from the glamour Thorax had just shoved into her receptive mind. She felt light-headed and dizzy, and would be feeling headaches for weeks, but it got the job done. She was entranced, a brute force tactic if ever there was one and one that would need to be constantly maintained so the prey wouldn’t suspect anything once it wore off. Still, it would serve their purposes for now. The thestral she posed as smiled gently, before covering the mare’s eyes with a makeshift blindfold. She trotted out into the corridor, leaving the entranced pony in the room, smiling stupidly.

“You weren’t followed?” Thorax asked. Handy shook his head, standing in the darkened corridor, the only light coming from a small candle by the bedside drawer.

“No. No one saw me.”

“You’re sure?” He just stared down at her, and she rolled her eyes.

“She’ll be like that for a few minutes tops. That’s not an easy spell and even harder to maintain. Do what you need to do so we can get out of here.” The human leaned to look through the door.

“She won’t remember? I mean, I wanted you to be a thestral just in case.”

“She will, but it’ll be fuzzy. Don’t talk, don’t let her see you, and just get it done as quickly as possible. I’ll wait outside.”

“Wait, you can’t.”

“Heartless, I’ve been on the receiving end of one of your bites. I have no intention of watching another one.”

“I need you to stop me if I go too far.”

“Why!?” Thorax hissed.

“Because tonight, when you found me downstairs, I almost killed someone because of my hunger,” Handy snapped, his voice suddenly venomous. Thorax recoiled.

“I had… been trying to ignore the hunger, thinking I’d only get hungrier and hungrier, maybe get a little malnourished or something at worst until I could find, I dunno, a pig or something and drain it. But no, of course it wouldn’t be simply that easy. No animals in this town, none that I found, not even a mangey fucking alleycat nobody would miss.” He gritted his teeth and narrowed his eyes at her.

“Happy now?” he continued, taking a step forward. “You want to know what was wrong with me back in the forest, what has been such a major issue to the mission? I’m not natural, Thorax. Humans aren’t like me, and your queen is wrong. I’m not like your kind either. If you get hungry, you what, wither away, die in a corner maybe? If you feed on someone excessively, they’ll feel depressed and emotional dead for a couple months at worst? If I get hungry, someone else might fucking die... and the worst thing is that deep down, there is some part of me that enjoys that fact. Like how I very much enjoyed the thought of going back and killing you for the rest of your blood that night.”

Thorax’s eyes were wide, and though her new face was unfamiliar to him, it was easy enough to tell that her mind was racing a mile a minute at the information he was giving her, likely calculating how best to use it to her advantage. Handy didn’t care, he was done dancing around the issue, she wanted to know so he let her.

“It has not been easy to adjust to being a monster. So I need you to stay here and be ready kick me in the face in case I lose control of myself and accidently kill her. Do you understand what you need to do?” She didn’t reply, pausing only for a few seconds to look down, before back up and nodding once. “Good, now wait here. If it takes me longer than a minute, stop me.”

“How?”

“Just hit me as hard as you can or something. Figure it out. After this, I’ll be able to take it,” Handy said, entering the room.

She was standing there, a dumb smile on her muzzle, wobbling slightly on her hooves, still entranced by whatever changeling magic Thorax had put on her. There was nothing right about this scenario, no real way he could justify it in his head that he felt comfortable with. There was only a grim acknowledgement things would be a lot worse if he didn’t take the bull by the horns now and his vampiric nature took affairs into its own hands.

He thought back to that night in the forest, that crushingly empty despair he felt, that realization of what had been going through his mind, knowing what he was now truly capable of. There really was no going back from this. All he could do was limit the damage, to himself and to others. He wanted to apologize, as if somehow that would make amends for what he was about to do, but he held his tongue.

He knelt down on one knee facing her. She was mumbling something, tittering lightly at some joke in her own, bewitched mind. He heard it, her heartbeat. He could practically feel it as close as he was. He felt the overwhelming urge to savage her neck, to tear into it like a wild animal well up within him. The desperate need warred with his self control, the feel of Thorax’s eyes on his back a firm reminder to help him focus, to keep him from just devouring her.

And despite all that, he still found himself latched onto her neck in a blink of an eye, no careful meandering to ensure he found her arteries. It was just his fangs forcefully punching through her skin, a desperate gasp of shock and a muffled cry of pain. His arms around the mare, pulling her close as he buried his face into the side of her neck. He drank deeply, greedily, more forcefully than he had before, a man dying of thirst throwing himself to water.

There was no smell this time, no unique sense pouring across his intellect, no time for his mind to process the flavour, the taste, to contemplate what he was taking in. Just a blindness, a whiteness that obscured the mind’s eye with its brilliance, to such a point that it hurt. No taste, just the texture of the blood flowing over his tongue. Later he would learn that when he was hungry for too long, the more beneficial aspects of the vampiric act itself became more muted, subdued. If he abstained, gone would be the enjoyment he would take from the act as one would enjoy a fine meal. It would be as simple and as mundane as the starving beggar taking the stale piece of bread and being grateful for it, regardless of who or what he fed from.

And that it was also worse for the victim.

He was only aware something was wrong when he found himself on the floor, blinking, his head surrounded by pieces of a broken stool. He shook his head, hearing strange sounds coming from behind him. A welling anger within him, incensed at being denied… something, was slowly dissipating as he came to his senses. He looked up to see Thorax standing over him in her true form, wide-eyed and breathing heavily, a small clothes chest hanging overhead, grasped in her magic.

He blinked.

“What?”

“Are you... you?” she asked.

“What are y—”

“Handy, Handy the Milesian, is that really you!?” she demanded, taking a step closer. Handy raised a hand.

“Thorax. Just calm—”

“Answer the damn question!”

“Yes! Yes, Thorax, it’s me! Put down the crate, for God’s… sakes…” Handy looked around. The room was a mess. The bed was broken, the door ripped off its frame. There were a lot of broken objects lying around him. He was covered in pieces of wood from head to toe.

"Where is she?" he started, hurrying to his knees. Thorax darted back, her already wide eyes growing just a bit more, the chest in her magical grasp almost brought down on him. He paused as he noted the fear in her eyes. "Is she alive?"

"Are you really you?" Thorax asked quietly. "I have to be sure, Heartless."

"I keep telling you yes. Now what happened? Why is the room destroyed? What… oh God… what did I do?"

"Stay!" she ordered as Handy shifted to get back to his knees again, managing to get one leg under him. "Stay right there!"

"Okay!" Handy raised his hands placatingly, his voice shaky. "Okay, just… just what happened?"

He felt strange, very strange, numb almost. Just as he thought that, he felt a creeping sensation of pins and needles roll over his skin like a wave, starting from his chest and cascading across his body. The numbness vanished and he felt heavier somehow. He felt… He felt like the world was made out of cardboard, becoming intensely aware of the fragility of everything around him. The weak points in the wall, which floorboards were loose and brittle just by looking, the right point to knock on a window pane to make the glass shatter… although, oddly enough, he couldn't tell the weak points of a living body the same way as he turned to look at Thorax. The thought was shaken from his head as soon as it entered. He did not want to know where that came from.

"You lost control. It… It was bad."

"Thorax, listen to me. Is she alive?"

"Yes... I think so. I don't know."

"What do you mean you don't know!?"

"She's breathing but I don't… I can barely feel her, Handy," Thorax admitted, stepping back a bit more, never once blinking or taking her eyes off of him, the chest still held in her magical grasp. "What you did… It was different."

"What?"

"When you bit her, it was… it was very very different than when you bit me."

"What are you talking about?"

"She was screaming the whole time." Handy was stunned by the quiet admission. "It was pure agony for her, way more than any neck wound should have been. I felt every bit of it. She was wide awake and conscious every second. You didn't put her to sleep; your bite didn't gently dull her senses like it did mine. It didn't feel remotely good in any way."

He quietly fell back onto the floor, his eyes distant. He had opted to do this, thinking it would be the right thing, thinking he would be less of a danger to others if he controlled his hunger, even if it meant feeding on people. Was this what happened as a result? He became bestial and, even in his best efforts to control the problem, ended up not only nearly killing someone, but practically torturing them while he was at it?

"I didn't even wait," she confessed, lowering the chest. "I had to stop you before her screams brought somepony. I kicked you, but you didn't even budge... latched on to her like a limpet. Then… Then I started throwing things at you." Handy eyed the destroyed furniture, looking over to the bed that was perched up sideways against the far wall. The entire side of its frame was collapsed. "Tried lifting you to throw you against the wall; forgot you were wearing your mail. Threw the bed at you instead."

"You what?"

"You were crazy! Snarling and… and I don't know. The look on your face, it was nightmarish. After the bed, I had you knocked out just long enough to grab this." She shook the chest. "I was running out of options."

"You said you can barely feel her. Are you sure she isn't…"

"I had to treat her neck when it wouldn't stop. I know how to treat wounds and have had more experience than I care to remember. She's lucky it was mostly clean, although I don't know how that was the case with a mouth sucking on it." She paused and glanced back out the hallway. "She'll live. I… I think. I don’t know how much you took in the few seconds, but she didn't lose much otherwise. She's in another room. We need to get out of here."

"No, I have to. I mean—"

"We are leaving, Handy," Thorax hissed, taking a few steps forward. "Now. And when I call in your favour, I don't want a god-damned word of objection, not a single bucking question, do you hear me?"

Handy didn't answer. She snarled, raising the chest in her magic again.

"I said, do you hear me, human?" Handy would normally have been offended by her temerity, incensed she'd dare speak to him in that demanding tone of voice. But for once, all he could do was nod weakly, still processing the magnitude of his failure. "And do not ever let yourself get that way again, not while I have to travel with you. Now let's go. Move!"

--=--

The next few days were spent in isolation. He utterly refused to leave his room, trapping himself inside with his thoughts. The pittance of blood he had taken from the mare was enough to take the bite of his bloodlust and to allow his body to ignore the need for physical food for a short time. However, it was not enough to truly sate it. He felt an inkling of the hunger returning on the third day, whatever relief it had given him deeply overshadowed by the shock and horror of that night that haunted him still. And the power it gave him, correspondingly, waned over the days, having found no expenditure immediately after the act.

Oh yes, it did give him power. It gave him a level of strength and endurance far and beyond what he enjoyed from thestral blood. He accidentally crushed a hardened metal cup that was probably older than he was with a twitch of his thumb and forefinger. He became keenly aware of everything around him, afraid of stepping on the ground too hard and punching right through the floor with his boots. He also saw green flashes whenever he touched a wall or the floor with his bare skin, shrouds of cloudy, bright, green light that he could see beyond the walls and floors of the building.

It took him a while to realize he was seeing people through solid objects.

Had this been nearly any other circumstance, he would have been fascinated and would draw comparisons between it and the other advances in perception he had experienced from other blood types. The strange things he saw from unicorns, as well as super heightened sense of sight, hearing, and smell to an insane degree. The night vision and processing ability thestrals gave him, allowing him to think and react much faster, as well as make sense of the tremendous amounts of information he took in. The changelings had given him the ability to sense people's locations and even their state of ease and distress from a distance, without even looking. On some level, he was pretty sure it wasn’t the same as their ability to sense emotions, but he wouldn’t be able to know for sure with just one bite. With the ability earth pony blood gave him, it would have made a fascinating combination of abilities.

As one might imagine, he could not possibly have cared less at that moment in time.

"Go ndéantar do thoil ar an talamh…" he breathed, his throat dry as he repeated the well-threaded words for what must easily have been his hundredth time. Sleep never came. His mind was wracked, and he had no answers. He thought he had been doing the right thing but only ended up causing more harm. "…mar a dhéantar ar neamh."

He sat on the cot, head in hands, going over his situation again and again. What overcame him, why it was so different than normal, how it was his fault that it was made worse for his reluctance to feed. Another damnation to pile upon his mountain of worries and concerns and troubles, weighing down his mind as he struggled to come to terms with himself and the world around him. When one new and strange thing sundered his world, another quickly replaced it just as he was getting used to it. All the while, the shadows and malevolence of his adversaries and targets darkened his thoughts.

The Voice, the Mistress, Chrysalis, the ponies, the deer, the griffons, the spirits, magic, sorcery, witchcraft, curses.

"I just want to go home."

Fire, death, fear, hunger, rage, hatred, grief, murder.

"Please… make it stop..."

Murderer.

"Anything, just—" He was startled by a knock on the door, looking up in shock. He sat stock still, staring at it and breathing hard, not daring to move. The knock came again. "... Yes?"

"Mon ami, are you coming out of there at all, or do I have to spend all this money myself?" Handy blinked.

"What?"

"Oh, that’s fine then. Was just thinking you'd be interesting in this giant pile of money I happened to stumble across. Oh, and a lead on this Thunder character you're after, but if you'd rather not, then that’s fine too. I'm sure half the Fisher Mare would be all too happy to drink my money away. Adieu pour l'instant!" He trotted away from the door. It was such a bizarre and brief interruption of his thoughts that Handy had to mentally play it over his head in fast-forward several times before he processed what he heard.

Then he realised what he had said regarding finding Thunder, and when he did, he found himself hesitating, if only for a moment. Then he jumped at the opportunity to once more put all of this to the back of his mind where it could damn well stay until he was stable and calm enough to reflect on it properly. He ran across the room and threw open the door.

"Wait, hold on—!" He stopped mid-sentence. There before him, grinning like the sly bastard he was, stood Jacques, who hadn't moved an inch, thick black cloak worn about his withers and over his flanks with light grey trim, and a new wide-brimmed hat that perched on his head. Man loved his hats, sans any fancy feathered plume for a change. Beside him hovered a rather heavy-looking bag that clinked as he shook it.

"Morning," he said happily. "Sleep well?"

Handy's unamused eyes levelled at him.

"Hello, Jacques. What… was that bit about getting a lead?" he replied, pausing a bit to shake his head and take in a breath.

"My friends in the underground got back to me about that thing we got them to look into, and so fast too! Come on, walk with me."

"Why?"

"So we can go get something done. And to get you out of that room. Maybe go get something to eat and or get drunk. Oh, and to make a few apologies. Not necessarily in that order. Come along!"

"What are you even talking about?" Handy asked, about to follow before pausing and running back in to put his boots on and throw the cloak over his shoulders. He had no time for any of the armour, so his rags would have to do.

"Vous verrez!" he called back in French as he began to descend the stairs.

The walk back to the Fisher Mare was shorter than he remembered. All the hairs were closed for the fast approaching winter. Whatever ships had been in for refitting and restocking had left with the last of the Black Fleet, so all the bridges were down. The only harbours now open were the commercial ones at the port. Thankfully, they didn't have to exit their apartments via the brothel, but that was small comfort to Handy in the biting chill of the morning wind. He still drew a lot of looks, even without his intimidating armour on, although now they were more of curiosity than caution. It was like seeing a particularly odd out-of-towner walking down your street rather than some dangerous foreigner or some mythological monster who decided to come back from the dead. Despite any sane person finding this change of attitude to be desirable, Handy found it unnerving, especially considering he didn't actually take any action to change their minds. His suspicion began to stir. Sure, maybe it was because people here were just reasonable folk, or they were just jaded and cynical and got used to the idea of him hanging around their little stretch of coastline a lot faster than most would. There were certainly enough shady characters here to make the latter possibility more likely. Still…

They managed to make it to the Fishermare’s Hook, the sign hanging out front depicting a stylised pony fishing. Deep furrows in the stone road from uncounted years of wagon traffic caused him to trip up every now and again. His thoughts were still jumbled and his mind distracted, making concentrating on his surroundings a bit difficult. Fortunately, or not depending on how you look at it, he was brought sharply back down to earth when Jacques opened the door to the tavern, and the very woman he had attacked days before stood on the other side, evidently trying to leave just as they arrived.

He let out a strangulated noise as his breath caught in his throat.

"Shocks! Ma belle ami, ho—"

"One more word out of your mouth, Jacques, and I swear by every god in heaven and earth that I will break your face."

"…Éloquent que jamais je vois. I see your eyebrows have recovered." She simply fumed at him, not even noticing Handy. He was trying very hard not to stare at her. She was alive. Holy shit, she was alive! The cream-coated mare stood there, no worse for wear, although her dark brown hair was messy and flat, the colour of the fur of her face more... subdued, ashen somehow. Her grey eyes had heavy bags under them, and she wore a conspicuous green scarf around her neck, reminding Handy that the bite he had given her hadn't healed the way it should have. "How are you feeling?"

"Like hammered cow droppings. Move, I need to go do my rounds."

"Shouldn't you be resting?" Handy asked, trying to not sound too concerned. She looked up at him, giving him the same baleful glare she gave Jacques. “I mean, you’re uh… looking a bit peckish.”

"Shouldn't you be minding your own damned business, stalk legs? Now move it, you two." She passed them and trotted off down the street. They watched her leave, several of the early morning traders, their backs heavy with goods and tarps for their market stalls, stumbling out of her way. Handy wasn't sure how to feel about the fact that she didn't seem to recognise him.

"Pleasant mare when you get to know her, wouldn't you agree?" Jacques asked with a light chuckle.

"I wouldn't know." Jacques hummed at that, leading the human into the bar. He saluted the tavern keeper who responded with a grunt, not even bothering to look up as he wrote into some ledger behind the counter, the quill gripped curiously in his mouth. The bar was surprisingly empty apart from one or two of its apparently mercenary clientele, who appeared to be wearing dirty traveling gear. One was slumped over a table idly counting change, the other leant against the back of his chair comically, snoring his head off. He led him to the upstairs portion, to a table near its centre.

"Silver, chére, two cups of pitch if you'd please," Jacques shouted down.

Silver eventually came clip-clopping down below them and shouted back up. "Isn't it a bit early for you?"

"Oh, it's never too early to have an excuse to see you again," he teased. Soon enough, she came back, a tray balanced near perfectly on her back with two pint cups of, sure enough, pitch black… stuff. Handy wasn't able to place the make of the alcohol even after drinking it. It was thick, biting, heavy, and clung to the oesophagus on the way down, but not in an unpleasant way.

"Now," Jacques began, placing his hat on the table, his forehooves crossed before him as the mare took her leave, though not before caressing under his stomach. "Let’s have a chat, you and I. Regarding your little dalliance with Shocks and why it left her in such a state for the past day or so."

Handy went wide eyed and Jacques' smile shrank just a little.

"Oh, you should know I hear things, Handy. And I keep an eye on my friends, even the ones that don't particularly like me. Shocks is a friend, and from little birdies telling me little things about little thestrals and big shadows and strange sights and sounds… well. It didn't take long before I stuck my muzzle where it doesn't belong. Tell me, Handy, tell me what you did that scared a changeling so. And why you simply insisted on bringing Thorax along with you when you did it."

Jacques’ face became a stony mask, and Handy found himself unable to meet his eyes. So much for being distracted. Seemed he had to jump this hurdle before Jacques indulged him with the information he was hoping to get. He thought about it for a while, mulling it over the drink which warmed him. "How did you know about Thorax?"

"I pressed her about it until she told me." Handy raised an eyebrow. "I am not saying it was easy. Talk, Handy."

And he did.

He did not go into any unnecessary detail; he did not allow himself to get side-tracked or digress. He didn't even want to talk about it all that much. He wanted to not think about it, and to that end, he resigned himself to confessing one part of the story after another, trying to speed his way through it. He opted to skip over the moments of weakness and doubt, for the sake of his own pride if nothing else. Jacques was silent for some time after Handy had finished. His silence made Handy's quiet voice sound deafening by comparison in the dead empty bar, the only other patrons having left earlier. He wore one of those light, easy-going smiles as he looked off to the side in that manner he did that made people not take him seriously.

"And all that time in the forest too. I wonder what Whirls would think."

"He knew."

"…What?"

"Yeah, he knew ever since the tournament."

"…Why does nopony tell me things!? Why do I always have to drag it out of ponies?"

"Well, in Thorax's case—"

"Yes, yes, but still!" Jacques threw his hooves up into the air. Seemed that little revelation broke whatever cool façade he had been putting up. "Really, why didn't he tell me!?"

"Why didn't you tell him Thorax was what she is when you found out?"

"That's completely beside the point!" he hurriedly deflected and looked at Handy for a long moment, thinking. "Right, let me get this straight. You're like a thestral."

"No, not exactly."

"I know it’s not exactly the same! I have friends who are thestrals. I know what they're like when they stupidly go without food for too long. It certainly isn't how Thorax described you." He grumbled and muttered in French and rubbed down his face. "Do you know how lucky you are she thinks it was a thestral? Shocks is big in this city. A lot of friends, a lot of influence. More specifically, she's one of my friends. You couldn't have known, but that still— I mean it doesn't— Stars damn it, Handy! Right, next time you get hungry in my city, tell me, and I'll point you in the direction of ponies you're not supposed to cross. Now I have to send missives to every thestral friend I have to stay away from the city for the next, oh I don't know, forever, because of the stunt you pulled."

"I… Right." Handy wanted to be angry, but just couldn't muster it. "I… may need to do it again soon."

"What?"

"I didn't actually get that much from her."

"Merde."

"I can hold out for a while. It’s just—"

"Hey." Both of them jumped. Jacques, who had been holding his face in his forehooves, and Handy far too engrossed in trying to justify himself out of this misery pit he was in, didn't notice Thorax coming up the stairs in her guise as Charity Bell. "How are you both doing?"

"Uhm, fine, chére. Just telling Handy I have a lead."

"Fascinating. I need to borrow him."

"What? Why?" Jacques asked. She looked at Handy out of the corner of her eye.

"Calling in that favour he owes me." Handy met her gaze for a moment before looking back down at his drink. "Come on, you'll need your armour."

"Hold on, what favour is this?" Thorax didn't answer him, gesturing for Handy to follow. Reluctantly, he pushed back his seat and got up, looking between her and Jacques. He was too defeated to summon up any emotion about the situation beyond passing guilt and an inkling of indignation. "Wait damn it, I was going to be take him to the merchant's quarter harbour master! We finally have that lead we were looking for."

Thorax simply looked back and smiled brightly at him.

"Oh what a coincidence." She said, "That's right about where we're headed."

--=--

Logistics was a bitch.

Know what else was a bitch?

Being the subject of said logistics. You see, Thorax wanted to use Handy first for her thing in the merchant quarter, but this thing would apparently draw a lot of attention because, you know, large and terribly obvious human doing said thing, and it might interrupt or otherwise upset the thing Jacques wanted him to do. The thing Jacques wanted him to do, because for some bizarre reason he couldn't tell Handy what he would be doing before they got there either, required him to expose himself in such a way that whatever sneaky shenanigans Thorax was up to would be irrevocably ruined for the time being.

Thus the two of them bickered like a married couple all the way to the merchant quarter about how to arrange things in such a way that neither interrupted the others' plans while at the same time not actually sharing any details of either's plans in order to reach some kind of reconciliation. More often than not, they ended up talking past one another, leaving Handy feeling like the child in the back seat of the car as his parents started bickering over shit related to him that he was pretty sure he neither understood nor cared about. All the while, he drew curious looks and whispers from the city folk they passed, and Handy tried his best not to feel too awkward about it all.

Nothing like a massive dose of surrealism to go with his heaping helping of grimdark. All part of a balanced sanity breakfast.

"Look, how long will yours take?" Thorax asked.

"About twenty minutes."

"Is that where you're going?"

"Huh? Oh, oh right, yeah, we're heading to the harbour master's cabin," Jacques said, pointing to the rather massive wooden building that stood in the middle of the boardwalk, slightly below the level of the stone street.

"Right, fine, twenty minutes. Good. I’ll have things arranged by then. Handy.” Thorax turned on the spot, and Handy almost ran over her before catching himself. “See that warehouse ovvvverrrr, there!” She pointed with her hoof to a particular building she chose at random. “Be there when you’re done. Find somewhere to hide and just wait inside. You’ll know what to do when the time comes.”

“I will?” She didn’t answer and practically galloped off down a street before darting down an alleyway, presumably to do changeling things. He looked around. The harbour of the merchant’s quarter was surprisingly empty this early in the morning, a few ships lying docked, with ponies, griffons, an odd minotaur or two ambling about their decks making ready to leave. Most of the ships he had spied on his first day in the city had already left, with none coming in since. Looked like nobody wanted to be trading here when the Black Fleet pulled out.

“Last minute scramble,” Jacques said, drawing his attention away from the ships. The stallion leant against an unlit metal lamp post as he surveyed the various roads and streets of the merchant’s quarter. The chill in the air was brisk, and there was the faintest hint of fog on the horizon out seawards. Seagulls called far above them. “Most of those houses are empty. The merchants that don’t already live here with their families use them as quarters for themselves and their crew. Most that are lollygagging are hoping to score a few last minute deals with their more desperate competitors who don’t want to leave this far north empty-handed.”

“This far north? Last I checked, Griffonia was on the other side of the Greenwoods. Why is being this far north so prohibitive to trade?”

“Because Griffonia is on the other side of the Greenwoods. Their navies have no business this far south when their merchants don’t. And Equestria’s excuse for a navy doesn’t have any reason to patrol these seas, so merchants either skedaddle or get stuck here when winter comes.”

“Why?”

“Because that’s when the pirates come. And usually when the deer do their raids on Pier’s End.”

“The deer? I thought the deer don’t bother going beyond the borders of the forest.”

“The coastal deer tribes do. Their ships slink out from amidst their trees and try their best to grab whatever loot they can get away with. Good regular training for the enclave militias when you think about it.”

“Why doesn’t the fleet just burn their ports and raid right back, teach them a lesson?”

“Can’t find their ports, nor their coastal towns.” Jacques tipped his hat up and squinted, looking for something in one of the streets facing them. The boats gently rocked on the waves in the harbour just below them. “That and it would count as trespassing the Greenwoods, provoking a greater reaction from the interior tribes.”

“Surely it can’t be that hard. Just sail the coast, pick your targets, and bombard them with cannons. Send a couple of shore parties and burn a few houses, put the fear of God into them. Thou doth not need to conquer them.” Jacques snorted.

“Didn’t realise you were that bloodthirsty.” Handy glowered at him, and Jacques waved a hoof. “Kidding. No, I know what you mean. By that point, negotiation is a bit beyond reason. The coastal tribes are… different from the Whisperwoods and the more reasonable tribes who have outer castes. And I think you underestimate the Greenwoods. Those trees extend out beyond the coast. We can’t raid their ports and harbours because our ships can’t get through the damn trees.”

“Those trees can survive in seawater?”

“Now you see the problem, and to get past those, we’d need to start destroying those massive trees, and well, then we’d be provoking a major war. So we put up with the raids and give the deer a good drubbing when they’re stupid enough to leave the forest where their magic doesn’t work.”

“Whirlwind’s worked just fine.”

“Whirlwind wasn’t using Hartsight. Surely you picked up that it’s kind of taboo for deer to use any other kind of magic. Or any magic if you’re a stag.”

“I got that impression yes,” Handy admitted, looking around. “What are we waiting for, Jacques? I thought we were going to see the harbour master.”

“In time, mon frére,” Jacques began, smiling as he saw two figures approaching from around one corner, their voices carrying over the distance. “I just need to catch up with a pair of old friends.”

“You have a lot of questionable friends, Jacques.” The pony turned to give him a sardonic smile.

“Like you for example?” He chuckled and turned back at the pair of stallions approaching. Both were grey, one a pegasi, the other an earth pony. Their manes were neatly trimmed and short, with tiny braids along their terminus tied with gold bands, one black, the other white. One wore a small black hat with an ostentatious white-feathered plume. The other simply wore a hood that ran from his half cloaks, black in colour, running from a metal ring worn around the upper left foreleg, near the withers, up over the small of their backs and down their right foreleg to a corresponding wing at the ‘wrist’ of the right leg. The odd clothing depicted a shield, dark purple in hue. Only reason he didn’t think it was black in colour was due to the darker shade of the cloak itself. Upon the shield was a bright blue stylised spear, solid in colour without detail. Six more spears, three either side of the central aperture, extended out and upwards, curving to face the same direction of the central spear. It was eerily reminiscent of squid legs once the thought came to him. One cutie mark was a simple white quill, drawing a squiggly line in acidic green colour. The other showed wind blowing a cloud. Harmless enough.

“Jacques,” the first of them began, the hat-wearing earth pony it seemed. His voice was oddly accented, a strange lilt causing him to pronounce his words in a curious manner. “We were unaware you would be accompanied.”

“Oh, do not mind him.” Jacques waved a hoof back to Handy. the human noticed that the stallion’s sheathed sword clicked against the flagstones as he moved. That had to be deliberate. Never since he knew the pony had he known to be careless with his blade. “We have other business together. Uhm, what was that delightful title your king gave you, good baron?”

“...I am his Sword,” Handy answered carefully, not sure what game was being played here. These ponies looked official, and this conversation was too stilted, too politicked.

“Yes, now I remember. I am just showing this ambassador from the griffons a good time here in Black Port. I do hope you understand, Ghost,” Jacques said, speaking to the earth pony. The pegasi remained hooded and did not speak, his eyes never leaving Jacques. The earth pony, Ghost, apparently eyed Handy with cold blue eyes for a moment.

“So I see. Do you have the mail from Treeview?” Jacques smiled and his horn glowed. The cloak lifted up, revealing a thin travel pack strapped to his flank. The flap unfurled, and a number of packages, covered in yellow stained oilskin, thin and long, lifted out.

“Oui, of course. Quite a substantial review it seems. Your brother had a lot to say apparently.”

“I should hope so. He has certainly been gone long enough,” Ghost responded. The pegasi held out a wing as Jacques levitated the packages over. The wing enclosed around them, feathers delaminating and then tightening around them, like gripping sheets of paper between your fingers, before the wing enclosed them to the side of his body. Jacques said nothing, and the four of them stood silently for a minute longer before the strange pair of ponies turned and left without another word.

“So what was that about?” Handy asked. Jacques just gently shook his head as the two stallions disappeared around the corner they had come from.

“Maybe I’ll tell you that story another day. Now come, the harbour master has the news we need about Thunder.” And with that, Jacques turned from the road and descended the stone steps onto the boardwalk, navigating the maze of crates, ropes, and the occasional anchor that was bigger than Handy was. Distant bells sounded from the harbour walls, signalling the tide and a change of the guard at the harbour gates. He followed after the stallion at a more sedate pace, taking in the harbour through the familiar T slit of his helm. The nose guard still protruded down its center, and the annoying cross stitching of ordinary cloth across the enchanted weave that obscured his face from the world were all that restricted his vision further. He was well used to them by now and compensated almost without a thought, but he couldn't help but wonder if a more practical, visored helmet wouldn't be easier to work with.

Then he remembered such an item would lack the qualities that made him put up with the dregs of armour he wore in the first place and dismissed the thought, coming back to the curious meeting they just had with those ponies.

'Government types, clerks or some other kind of flunky,' he reasoned. 'Should have known Jacques would have some kind of dealings with the local government. He seems to have connections with everyone else. But why bring me there, specifically? He didn't use my reputation, mentioned nothing about the tournament, the Greenwoods, nothing of our history together, not any of my rumours. Instead, he used my political position. But to no end, just to… show me off. What game are you playing, Frenchman?' Jacques rapped the harbour master's door as they came to a stop. Someone shouted something from within, which was muffled and difficult to hear. The window, little more than a wooden board on a hinge really, blew open and a voice shouted from within.

"It's open, you useless clarts! And shut the door after you. It’s cold out!" Jacques entered, pausing to hold a hoof up, stopping Handy's advance.

"Wait in the anteroom. Wait till I call you in."

"Why?"

"Old Foamy doesn't get out much, and I want to do a thing."

"A thing?"

"Yes."

"What kind of thing?"

"You'll see, and you'll like it. I promise! Now just do as I say." He trotted happily into the harbour master's cabin. It was a tall wooden construction that creaked and groaned much like a ship would, but blessedly didn't have to put up with the rocking motions vessels do. The sound of the waves shifting amidst the wooden pillars holding up the floor beneath him were muted through the ruddy carpet. The ceiling was tall, easily twice Handy's height before you got to the upper floor. The square building dissected into sections, with thin wooden boards designating 'rooms', but without any visible doors. The walls just extended and then stopped before reaching the far wall, leaving an open gap from ceiling to floor, reminiscent of a maze almost. The walls were strewn with various paraphernalia: fishing nets, plaques with trophy catches, and the jaws of a sea beast that was ossified and opened wide hung from the ceiling, threatening to fall and gobble up all that was foolish enough to stand beneath it. There were desks, stools, chests that seemed to be filled with clam shells, along with wine and other stains on the carpet he couldn't readily identify.

All of that, however, paled in comparison to what immediately caught his attention. There, on the wall separating the antechamber from the room Jacques had just entered to speak with the harbourmaster, hung a frame. Made of simple wood, worn and tattered, its paint flaking, the glass protecting what it contained cracked, showed Handy what was, for all the world, a photograph. Sepia-toned and faded with age, it showed a surly-looking bastard of a pony, mutton chops and a frazzled mane, jaded, cynical eyes staring out at him, a crooked smoking pipe jutting out one side of his mouth, held up a net in one hoof. A small ship could be seen in the background, clouds, and birds in the air. All in all, pretty unremarkable.

Except Handy had never actually seen a photograph since he had arrived in this world. For some reason, the thought had never crossed his mind, but now that it did, he could not help but feel oddly taken with the concept. It seemed bizarre, wrong somehow. Here was a world that was still trudging through the shot and pike era of warfare, and these assholes were trotting around with the technology capable of capturing photographic evidence of history as it passed. Logically, he knew by now that this shouldn’t faze him, but somehow it did. Between steam-powered trains, zeppelins, and heart monitors that operated on some kind of expensive magic crystal system, cameras should be blasé.

He didn't know much about photography, or the technology behind it, but he couldn't help but feel a hint of jealousy of it all. These guys had no idea how fortunate they were to have something like this centuries in advance before their own modern age as Handy was familiar with it. He imagined what it'd be like if they could have had archived images of the Diet of Worms, any of the Synods of the Church, the coronation of this or that ruler. A definitive answer as to whether or not that famous portrait of Oliver Cromwell was really, truly an accurate reflection of him, 'warts and all'. What was the daily life of people throughout the ages? What did it look like? How did they dress? How did it change as time marched on? What was it like to sit behind the walls at the siege of Vienna during the Ottoman Wars, to look out on the vast expanse of a gathered enemy? What did the Polish Hussars look like on the march en masse? Images that proved that they were living, breathing people, who laughed and sung, fought and died and not some unfeeling, mindless words in a history book, to be disparaged or heralded for this or that reason, as if they were things to be bartered and sold, ideas more than people. How long have they had this technology? Could they preserve early photographs over the centuries? Surely they had to have some means. Magic could very well help with that, couldn't it? Did they have archives of their own, taking advantage of the priceless opportunity this represented?

'Did they even think of it?' he ruminated, oddly taken with the concept. It was a welcome distraction from everything else that had been going on, and it was wildly, if strangely effective, at enrapturing his thoughts. Too effective, it seemed.

"…I said, I have your solution right here. Isn't that right, Handy?" Handy blinked, realizing he’d been called, and stepped away from the image, turning to walk around the wall, his boots heavy on the ground.

“This is patently ridiculous. That bounty had nothing to do wi—” The harsh voice of the sea-green pony seated behind the desk before him cut off abruptly, his wrinkled face going slack as his eyes widened and his mouth gawped, head tilted up as Handy calmly walked in right up to the desk before him. The pony was identical to the one in the photograph, if only a little older. His mane was brilliantly white, and the smoking pipe lay upon a holder on the wooden desk, a flat cap perched between his ears.

“Sir Handy here has come an awfully long way, looking for a certain pony wielding certain magic,” Jacques continued, walking over and climbing up upon a chair, sitting on his haunches upon it for a change. “Isn’t that right, mon ami?”

‘So this is the thing he was talking about? This guy looks scared out of his wits.’

“It is,” Handy said, his voice sounding oddly loud in the small room. The pitter-patter of rain began assaulting the sides of the building, their staccato rhythm adding to the atmosphere nicely.

“W-What is he doing here?”

“Why, I brought him here!” Jacques said simply. “He’s been in town for a few days now.”

“W-What? The guards— You should be— Somepony should get the guards!” The harbour master backpedalled, and the chair he was perched upon wobbled dangerously before the earth pony caught himself. Handy raised an eyebrow. Had he really not heard he was in town? If nothing else he could say about himself, he knew he got talked about.

‘So when Jacques said he didn’t get out much, he wasn’t kidding.’

“It’s quite alright. I assure you, Handy means you no harm.” Jacques turned to look at Handy meaningfully. “Right, Handy?” He met Jacques’ gaze for a moment before simply nodding.

“You’re not real. W-What do you want?” the pony asked. Jacques simply hummed away. Apparently this was Handy’s show now. He leaned forward, resting his knuckled on the hardwood desk, looming over the harbour pony.

“You’ve seen signs of a pony with strange magic going about?”

“S-Strange magic? Hehe, how… how do you mean?” Old Foamy stuttered.

“Green, usually. You can hear strange whispers when it’s being used. Feels wrong to be around. Can be used by earth ponies as if they were unicorns, casting spells like it was nothing. No staff, no focus, no training.”

“E-Earth ponies you say?” Foamy swallowed.

“Blue fur; specifically a stallion. Have you seen anyone around like that? Any kind of magic like what I have described?”

“D-Don’t know much about m-magic, sir! Jus’ a humble pony of the ocean I am, yessir!”

“Harbour Master,” Handy said, the words heavy and meaningful, causing the quivering pony to freeze as he was addressed directly. “It is absolutely imperative I find this pony. I am only here because I am led to believe that you have information that will lead me to him. Now, I will ask you very simply. Have you seen any such magic being used recently? Any pony fitting the description I gave you?”

Foamy glanced over to Jacques, who seemed to be waving his hoof in the air to the tune of whatever he was humming, his hat covering his eyes. He’d get no rescue from there. He turned back up to the implacable face of the human bearing down on him.

“I… I have seen something along those lines… yes,” he admitted, closing his eyes shut.

“Where? When?” Handy demanded.

“T-There was a book—”

“Leather bound, strange letters, looked like squiggly lines within squiggly lines, has a simple spiral design on the cover?”

“I-I dunno, yes!? I saw the cover?”

“Where!?”

“I think that’s enough, Handy.” He rounded on Jacques, who imposed himself into the conversation. The unicorn turned to Foamy. “As you can see, my friend is quite zealous in his pursuit of this individual. Enough to come back from the dead if you’d believe everything ponies tell you.” Jacques chuckled. “And word has it that you know of some such pony doing strange magic in the harbour area and the merchant’s quarter. Handy is very interested.”

"I… I don't know, m-maybe I didn't see anything!" Foamy jumped as Handy slammed his fist into the table.

"Easy, mon frère, easy," he cautioned. "Now, Foamy, be reasonable here. You wouldn't lie to our friendly human, would you? This is a dangerous individual he is after."

"I… no, no, I w-wouldn't dream of it."

"Good, because I get the distinct impression Sir Handy will be hanging around this part of Blackport for some time in light of this. Now how about you start at the beginning, oui?"

--=--

It was over in less than twenty minutes, but it felt like an hour.

He had no idea who this Mistress was, but the human's first-hand experience with old magic was startling. He knew what it looked like, what it felt like, what it smelled like. He even knew what it looked like when a pony was using it up close and in detail. He told him enough, just enough so as to not arouse suspicion. He thought over the times he had personally used it and when, then thinking about what that would look like had he witnessed such things from his home on the boardwalk or at other parts of the harbour. He tried to conserve as much detail as he could so that he'd not make it seem like he had too much familiarity with the magic.

The human, what was he even doing here? Did his deal with the Voice in the mirror bring this down upon his head? Was this the price of his ambitions? He was little more than a story! A blown up minstrel's tale to scare foals! Tall and dark, ate dragons, and shat lightning if the more exaggerated tavern stories were to be believed. Last he had heard, he was supposed to have died in some fuss or other in Griffonia. He didn't know, and he didn't care to mingle with the blighters who infested this town more than he had to. But still, it was not every day a storybook monster walked into your home and made demands of you.

He had been tempted, so very tempted to just panic and blast the creature, a good vortex to crumple him up into little more than a bloody ball of metal and flesh the size of his hoof. That'd set things right. Easy to dispose of as well, if he could get the mess out of the carpet.

Still, if he had faced the ilk of such magic before, he likely knew how to deal with that. No, he would have to be careful dealing with this Handy. He sat there at his desk, one forehoof rubbing the other's fetlock nervously, his pipe lit and smoking. The rain, heavier now, battered against the outside of his home. He opened up the desk drawer, moving sheets of parchment out of the way to see his book, spiral design and leather cover. He felt a desire well up within him, the power, the temptation.

But he had to be careful.

Somepony had talked. Somepony had seen him as he made his way in the night to one house of merchants after another, using his newfound power to make contacts, to twist their legs into working for him now, to trade as he wanted to his advantages, to make native merchants take leave of Black Port for the winter, leaving their families in his capable hooves to ensure… compliance. They were to establish his little network in other ports before he moved on to bigger and better things. Perhaps have his hoof in the northern Griffon ports, or the merchant city states of the Dagger Coast in the far south. Perhaps even muscle his way into the Apodian honey trade.

He'd need to sort those ponies out, and silence them, but before he could even do that, he needed this human gone.

But how?

A curse and the sound of a crate filled with something heavy breaking drew his attention to the window behind his desk. He unfastened the catch and pushed the wooden flap open, looking down at the boardwalk. A young stallion, an earth pony, was flinching under the abuse of an older dock worker, chastising him for his negligence that resulted in a crate full of nail bags crashing down from its place and spilling the contents on the boardwalk. He was left to pick it all up alone in the rain.

Foamy puffed on his pipe a few times in contemplation.

He closed the window.

--=--

"Catch." And Handy did thusly catch the thrown bag of bits.

"And this is for…?"

"Oh, something completely unrelated. Got paid to do a thing. It’s now your share of the job to find this magical earth pony."

“...Share.”

“Yep.”

“I’m getting paid for this.”

“We’re getting paid for this. You for doing, me for finding out about it.”

"And Foamy is paying?"

"Somepony was paying. My guess is that it’s a spooked merchant. Don't know, he kept his identity quiet."

"Prithee, where exactly did you hear about this?" Jacques gave him a flat look. "Never mind then. So what was that little song and dance about? Foamy seemed particularly scared of me."

"The old crotchety wretch of a pony hardly ever leaves that sty of his and, to be perfectly honest, I thought it would be funny." Handy hummed at that. He couldn't deny it was amusing.

"Speaking of things, Jacques, what was the real pur—"

"So this is where you have to wait for Charity Bell?" Jacques asked, smirk present and accounted for, amused at having to call her that while in public. The pair of them had trudged up from the harbour back into the merchant district, heading towards the particular warehouse. It was a functional wooden construction, with what appeared to be a corrugated metal roof slanted to one side. The rain sloughed off of it and into a gutter that ran down into a drain to take the water into the sea. It loomed over them, dark and foreboding, more so in the sickeningly dreary weather that had suddenly came upon them. At least there was no wind to make it worse. "Hmhm, I am free for the rest of the day. Perhaps I could—"

"No." Handy didn’t look down at him, instead carefully checking around the surrounding streets. He was grateful for the clouds. Last thing he wanted was to shine like a beacon right now. "'Charity' wanted me here alone. There's probably a good reason for it."

“Oh? So you trust her now?”

“Do you?” Jacques didn’t reply for a long time before simply sighing and walking off.

“Good luck then,” he called back before stopping. “And do try to not to harm any more of my friends, Handy." He turned to look at Jacques but couldn't make out his expression through the heavy rain, the water running off the brim of his hat. He watched as he disappeared into the gloom. If there was anybody still outside at this hour, or even on the few remaining ships in the harbour, they couldn't see more than a foot or so in front of him. Handy certainly couldn't. A faint tremor of pain, familiar to him now, arced up his arm, and he winced, reminding him of yet another little problem he was pretending didn't exist. On a whim, he reached out with his left hand, placing it against the wall of the warehouse, slick as it was with rainwater. Nothing, no little clouds of light signifying life inside that he could see. No subtle indentations or stress lines or other almost imperceptible weaknesses he could see and exploit. The power was gone, the pitiful amount of blood he had consumed used up, despite having never actually used its power. He'd hold out for maybe another day before the hunger bit again, and he scowled at the thought.

He walked down the side of the warehouse, trying to keep out of the waterfall that ran the length of the building that fell from the sloped roof. He searched for a side entrance in the dark, just to be doubly sure nobody saw him enter this particular building. Of course, trying to be subtle while weighed down in heavy armour was like trying to sing opera with lung cancer, but Handy was long practiced with the familiar weight. He took off his helmet, and his head was immediately drenched. He placed a hand over his forehead and looked around. The alley was empty. He went for the side door and found it locked.

"Bollocks." He slowly pressed himself against the door, listening intently. It should be empty, for the merchants were practically abandoning the port for winter. Still, it was early in the day, and there was always the chance some dockworker would be hanging about, or some other hapless bastard whose job it was to haul shit all day to make another man very rich for very little pay. It was padlocked, and he contemplated just breaking the damn thing with his hammer, seeing as he didn't know the first thing about picking locks. Funny what you picked up. He knew how to make explosives out of fertilizer, but he never once tried breaking into a locked room when he was younger. Guess that was what he got for growing up in the country.

He scrutinized it and found the catch was rusty. If nothing else, that might give. He took the haft of his hammer and tried to place it through the loop of the padlock and pressed down on the hammer. Eventually, and not without a little effort, the catch gave, popping off noisily as the heavy padlock splashed in the puddle below. The lock was utterly ruined now, but at least he could open the bolt on the door. He entered the building. The din of the torrential downpour hitting the metal roof above was nearly deafening inside. The acoustics was surprisingly excellent for what was essentially a wooden shell of a building. Thorax wasn't here as far as he could tell, and it was dark. What the hell was he supposed to do? There was nothing here but endless barrels of… blackberry wine. Huh.

Well, if nothing else, he knew where he could get a decent buzz on the cheap. Although he never knew you could store wine in casks that large. Whiskey, sure, but wasn't there something about the size of a barrel that affected fermentation or something? He really hoped he didn't pop one of the corks and end up drinking a mouthful of vinegar. The smell was certainly strong in any case.

His mind drifted as he waited, Thorax taking much longer than twenty minutes to show up, now closer to a full hour. Thunder was here, somewhere in this very city! Unbelievable! And what was worse, there was no way in hell he didn't know Handy was here now too. He even had a few days to prepare and leave, either by cart or by boat before the human caught up with him. He couldn't believe his luck, only to have it undermined by the possibility that he got away. But the latest use of ild magic, according to the harbour master at least, was only the other night, and none of the ships had left. He had to still be here. He was just… hiding or something.

It was a good thing to focus on, putting a great many worries to the back of his mind as he now had a problem he could solve. A problem whose solution might go on to help solve other problems, not least of which was his geas. The only problem was how. There he was, hopped up on a blood high, fresh from slaying an honest to God dragon, and Thunder slapped his shit. How in the hell was he going to subdue the bastard long enough to get what he wanted out of him for the changelings? Never mind getting more information on old magic and the Mistress. Going blindly at him with violence had proved to be of no help before. Jacques wouldn't be much help either, considering he was as defeated as Handy was before Whirlwind whisked them away to that delightful forest of his. He'd need to be clever about this.

'And I'll need more blood.' The thought lingered, and despite his revulsion, he held on to it deliberately. Fighting his vampirism was getting him nowhere, finding alternatives to the blood of the living was increasingly harder the farther away from Griffonia he was, and starving himself only made him more unstable and dangerous to everyone around him anyway. That all made his attempt to go cold turkey wildly irresponsible. Of course, giving into it was dangerous too. He did not want to turn into the person he had been in the dark of the forest, but he was left with a choice between willingly and unwillingly becoming a monster, and there was only so long you could ignore a problem before you no longer had a choice in the matter. He remembered the look on Jacques’ face when he warned him not to hurt any more friends, and for all that he did not care for the swordsman's threats, he could not deny the guilt that came with the cause behind them. A decision was made. 'Then I will get more. But I will not let this rule me.'

The main doors to the warehouse were flung open, light poured in, and the sound of the rain increased. Handy immediately stepped back into the dark of the surrounding casks of wine. Five quads of hooves thundered into the warehouse before the door was shut with a slam. There was a green glow of magic, and he heard a bar slide into place, locking the door. Hushed, harsh whispering ensued.

He pressed himself up against the wall, placing a pyramid stack of barrels between him and the central space of the warehouse. The hoofsteps got closer.

"What do you mean you were spotted!?"

"I am saying we have an infiltrator!" a second voice replied.

"Whose!?" A third.

"I don't know. We didn't stop to ask!" The fourth.

"How many?" The fifth. Five voices, five sets of hooves.

"I don't know. We only saw the one, bold as brass. She transformed right in front of us!"

"Out in the open!?"

"No, right on top of us! Barged right into the house, transformed, and attacked us!"

"Does she know!?" the first voice demanded. It was met with silence, a snarl, angry hoofsteps, and a quieter, but sterner tone. "Does. She. Know!?"

"I don't know! We came to you first! We didn't reveal anything!"

"God damn it! Darkness take the lot of you for fools!" the first exclaimed. Handy could hear him pacing. There was a flash of green fire, and he briefly glimpsed the form of a changeling through the gaps in the barrels. None of them had their horns lit otherwise. Changelings must have good low light vision or some such nonsense. Wouldn't be surprising. "We cannot allow this sidhe to be compromised. The Archon will have our hides!"

Five changelings.

"Well I didn't bring her here! I have no idea where she came from!"

No mention of Chrysalis. Likely not her subjects.

"Well, maybe if you were doing your rounds like you were supposed to instead of wasting your time with that fish flipper, we wouldn't be caught so unawares!"

A warehouse that wasn't currently in use.

"Big talk coming from a jumped up youngling who couldn't even pass higher than 10th rate!"

And it was the first place these changelings went to after she herded them here.

"That's enough, all of you!" the first voice demanded. "Fan out, keep yourselves suppressed, and be cautious. I want this place secure before we go below."

Thorax said he'd know what to do.

It was when one of them, still in the guise of a brown pegasus, drew near to the side door with which he had used to enter the warehouse that he first acted. He was the closest to him, as the others had spread out around the building. It was fortunate Handy had stuck close to the general area since he entered. Unfortunately for the changeling, however, the human had just made a very important decision before it entered.

The changeling struggled in the iron grip as he was lifted bodily off of the ground. An iron clad hand clamped over its muzzle, unable to call out its discovery of the open side door, or its distress and alarm as something it couldn't even sense was currently lifting it up off the ground. An explosion of pain blossomed in its neck before it slowly went slack, mind increasingly foggy and senses dulled. The last thing it remembered before darkness took him was a voice in his ear.

"Queen Chrysalis sends her regards."

Author's Note

Warning - All hands were on deck during last minute editing. May contain traces of the following dangerous substances: Warhammer references, A Song of Ice and Fire references, dangerous levels of 80s and whatever innuendo JBL manage to sneak in that I was too tired to catch.

My editors are fuckers.

While we're at it, if you need more vampirish dickery while waiting on me to not be incredibly dead, have a look over at Bloodsong for an interesting take on the vamptavia dynamic.

Chapter 40 - Odds, Ends and Errands

Somewhere, a rooster crowed.

In the middle of a God damn port city.

It was immediately followed by approximately all of the gulls, who either began cawing and calling en masse in his wake, or it was just Handy's imagination as he groggily drew himself from the murky depths of oblivion. His head pounded for a reason he could not quite understand, for he had made damn sure to remain rigorously sober for the past few weeks since the incident with the changelings. And so it was that he greeted the morning daylight with the disdain ordinarily reserved for sneering receptionists and telemarketers.

But oh no, dear reader. That was far from the worst thing to befall him that morning.

You see, somewhere out there, someone was singing.

He knew this because he was getting that odd tugging sensation. He did not know whether it was from being in this world for as long as he had been or something else entirely, but whenever he had encountered or been close to an instance of the spontaneous singing phenomena people of this world sometimes fell victim to, he increasingly felt compelled to… to join in. It was the damnedest thing, really. He had first noticed it in Skymount, when he had been walking down a particularly sunlit street one day. Some down-on-his-luck Joe Bloggs had been celebrating a major achievement of some life goal or another – Handy hadn’t been paying attention – and an entire quarter of the city had erupted into life in one of the grander and more alarming instances of the phenomenon Handy had ever witnessed. He passed no remarks, thinking nothing more of it until he noticed he had been humming along to the tune, keeping rhythm and pace with those other bystanders on the radius of the song's field of effect.

As you could imagine, Handy had not taken the moment with any degree of good grace.

Ever since then, he had been trying his hardest to avoid any potential spontaneous songs, both for the sensible reason that any sane man would find such things incredibly unnerving and creepy, and also because the idea of one such moment sweeping him along against his will was nothing short of mortifying. Besides, if he wanted a wildly inappropriate and random song to play at the drop of a hat at the most wildly inconvenient moments, he had an app for that… that he could not shut off no matter how hard he beat his phone. Stupid brick.

He had been hoping a town like Blackport would be exempt from such things based on his own observances. It was a hard-bitten town, shady bastards left and right, greedy merchants, dour architecture, the national colour appeared to be black – all that good stuff. Hahaha, nope. Motherfucker, you were surrounded by fucking ponies. You were going to get your songs and you were going to like them.

It had been pulling stronger lately. One night he had been lying awake and heard some lonesome bastard outside singing some song of self-pity. At first he thought it was an ordinary drunkard singing some tune he heard on his way home. To be fair, the pony both looked and sounded black-out drunk. At first. Then he felt an odd creeping tingle along his shoulders and down his back, then there was an accompaniment chorus of low, deep humming that seemed to echo through the street as other unfortunate, sleepless bastards got pulled in and… some low bass instruments sounded from nowhere. Then the drunkard started singing louder, clearer, and all round better than before. The magic, or whatever it was, seemed to be selective at that point. Handy felt compelled to not join in on this solo song, and it ticked him off to no end to not understand how and why it made him feel that way.

This morning, however, the song of the day was loud and bombastic. It had a full brass band accompaniment, with drums and marchers and more and more people joining it. Popping out of their windows and doors to add their voices to the musical cacophony, either to add their own non sequitur or to join the chorus. What was worse, the fuckers were coming down his street.

He tossed about in his too-small bed. The thin wooden frame creaked noisily but not noisily enough to drown out the noise. The compulsion was growing stronger and more obnoxious. Apparently the song really wanted him in it for some God-forsaken reason. He stuffed one pillow over his head. These were the worst, the absolute worst kind of songs. But why was that, one may ask?

Because they were the ones that involved the entire community. Absolutely everyone remotely involved in the main singer's circle, even tangentially, got sucked in. Be they lifelong friends, the local tailor or baker or even a passing stranger minding their own business. All hands on deck, fuckers, it’s show time!

And all for what? For the celebration of and glorification of a single, lousy, entirely selfish occasion that was of no relevance or concern to anyone else, but everyone was forced by the will of some invisible force to join in no matter what they were doing.

All because some bastard went and fell in fucking love.

Honestly, some people have no consideration for others whatsoever. The nerve.

'I swear to God,' Handy fumed, chewing on his pillow to prevent himself from inadvertently singing or humming or otherwise contributing to this… this affront to sanity! 'If this keeps up for much longer, I am going to kick a puppy. And if this city doesn't have any puppies, then one day I shall buy a puppy, come back here, and kick it for the sake of making good on my promise!'

Eventually the music stopped, although it seemed to continue on for a minute or so longer than appropriate. Correspondingly, that was when the compulsion felt the strongest. Handy sat up when it had passed and everything quietened down, shouting triumphantly. He had defied the music! Take that, world! Now…

If only he could stop feeling everyone around him.

Perhaps that needed a little elucidation. He had… subdued the changelings Thorax had sent his way back then, much to her alarm, mind you. Apparently she hadn’t thought he would use a tried and true method of making people unconscious without giving them grievous brain trauma. Given recent experiences, more fool her. If he only harmed and traumatised people when he bit them while starving, he seemed to put them into a kind of restful state or sleep when he wasn’t starving. Very useful. Or so he told himself at least, he really didn’t want to enquire any further into the matter.

Afterwards however, he had discovered a few things. Of primary importance was the useful ability to feel someone that he had first discovered in the forest. By that, he literally felt them, through the unique pinching sensation he felt in his mind which had become, shall we say, something of a headache.

That was a charitable way of saying Handy had been left writhing on the ground, cradling his head as the searing intensity of thousands of lives in his vicinity threatened to pull his own mind apart. Each and every single one had been a unique pull and pain, every single one informing them of their individual state of being and relative location to him in perfect clarity, overloading his mind with information and sensation. His only comparison had been when he had partaken of unicorn blood and had his audio-visual senses cranked up to eleven and had to concentrate to control and focus so as to not be constantly deafened by a million whispers half a mile off.

He had barely contained it down to a dull roar and gotten back to his feet by the time Thorax had finally bothered to show up. The entire world surrounding him had been a wall of pain that only broke off when he had faced the general direction of the ocean, where the least amount of lives were. That had meant the least amount of pinches and tugs on his mind, allowing him some degree of reference and respite from the sensory overload while he had gotten his shit together. Funny, he had never thought there were so many people all along the harbour when he had been out there. It was still raining pretty heavily at the time too. Where had they all come from?

That wasn't too alarming in itself. Once he had… well, not controlled, but at least found a way to ignore the general white noise in his mind's eye, he went about on the fullest tank of blood he ever had. Sure, there had been that one time he had drained Geoffrey fully and could go his longest period without worrying about anything, namely two full weeks before he was reminded of his hunger.

It had since been three and the hunger had returned. However, the power he had gained from the changelings wasn't going away. It was still there, muted perhaps, tolerable but definitely there. He couldn’t sense people up to nearly the same distance as he would have been able to on a blood high, or in perfect clarity, but he could still feel them. Somehow, after taking enough changeling blood, the abilities he gained had become more permanent. Intellectually, he wasn't sure how he should feel about that, but it was just one more positive aspect of taking from living people in preference over animals and frankly he was getting sick of how attractive that was becoming. Pity he didn't have anything more useful than a psychic radar, its not been the easiest month.

Although having said that, people he talked to seemed a lot more amenable to him when he was in the marketplace. No matter their demeanour, he always seemed to be able to argue down prices better without even resorting to intimidation, and apparently a pony mistook him for another pony at one point. Fool must have been blind.

He eventually got up from his bed – no sense lying in. He ignored the constant stream of sensation that helpfully let him know how everyone in his general vicinity was feeling, trying to reduce it to little more than white noise on his periphery. It was the only thing he could do since he couldn't, you know, shut it off, reducing everyone within… what was it, thirty, fifty foot radius? It was probably larger, though not as far as he could sense with fresh blood. It reduced them to little foggy blips on his awareness, not unlike being physically aware of everyone around you in a crowded hall, even if they were entirely silent. Handy very much would have liked to remain in bed, having stayed up until the wee hours of the morning when he was absolutely sure everyone in his city block was more or less asleep, even if he had ended up doing absolutely nothing during that time.

Think about it. He was able to feel everyone's relative locations around him and their relative states of being. He slept in a townhouse that was grafted onto the back of a brothel. Do the math. Handy had enough trouble getting to sleep most nights as it was, thank you very much.

He made his way to the glorified closet that housed the wrought iron toilet that he never had had the courage to use. The last thing he wanted was to contract a new and exciting variation of tetanus. Who even used metal toilets in this world anyway? It was not as though it was made from stainless steel. Wouldn't it be stupidly expensive? Unless iron was dirt cheap and easy to come by here in the Enclave. He ignored it and tried the sink which sometimes worked and sometimes did not. He couldn't complain, having learned the hard way to be grateful should a settlement have any facsimile of a working plumbing system whatsoever a long time ago. Even if it did lack warm water, beggars could not be choosers.

He lifted the small roll of leather from under the sink and unfurled it on the nearby counter. Fun fact: ponies had barbers. Plus, with how fastidious some of those bastards can be, barbers and other cosmetic businesses always seemed to do a good trade. It took some doing, but he managed to buy a barber's work tools for a modest price, even if it did take the last of the silver the deer had given him. Handy just wanted a few working pairs of scissors, which came in several varieties. A lot of ponies who worked with hair were unicorns, though not always, and scissors usually did not have looped handles. Instead, most had two straight grips for magic to grasp and control with fine motions, or they were larger variants with longer handles for use by earth pony hooves and more closely resembled garden shears. Handy had observed one barber at work with something that looked more in place in a Halloween movie, with Jason Voorhees wielding it. Rather than a pony dexterously going about a stallion's head and chopping with artistic precision. Handy wouldn't be caught dead in a similar position. Jesus Christ.

However, one barber he found happened to be a pegasus, and he did in fact have scissors that had looped handles. It had something to do with feathers – he didn't know nor care. So he had purchased a couple, along with a few straight razors, a sharpening belt, a comb, shaving soap, and a brush to mix it into a lather. He had to improvise on the aftershave being slightly more alcoholic than necessary, as pony beards were never shaved lower than the base fur of their face and thus never had much need of it. Beards on top of fur – that was so weird, and it was always their mane colour too, so it meant it was actually hair and not fur. He didn't know how the hell they managed to shave without cutting all the fur off their faces too.

One may wonder why Handy would care about such things. Why not simply let his hair and facial stubble grow wild and free? No one would judge him. And that, dear reader, was because Handy was not a faggot and considered himself civilized. And to that end, he had shaven cleanly and cut his hair properly and not hacked at it with a rusty sliver of metal that he wasn't sure why he still had. Besides, the more he thought about it, the goatee and moustache thing did look stupid. Joachim had been right all along.

Presently though, he considered himself in the broken mirror and then placed his hand under the cold water flowing into the sink basin. Nah, fuck it, he’d let the stubble grow for now. He was not in the mood for a cold shave. Instead, he began cutting his nails with scissors. What? Never had to cut your nails with scissors before? Well, not everyone had access to fancy nail clippers. Some people had to make do with what was available growing up. He took care to wash himself, which largely consisted of stripping, using several cloths, soaking them in soapy water, and getting to work due to a lack of even a wooden tub to fill with water to wash himself. It was cold, miserable work, but at the end of it, he felt clean, which was the important thing.

Nothing like the little things in life to make you feel more human.

He dried up, placed a towel around himself, and walked back into the room to begin the day. The only problem was that he found a very amused-looking Sea Crest standing in the middle of the room waiting for him, sans uniform, her eyes sparkling with mischief and holding a rolled-up scroll in her muzzle. He let out a yelp and fell back into the wash closet, slamming the door shut.

"The hells are you doing in my room!?" he demanded.

"My room. I think you'll find I own this whole block. Your door was also unlocked, so I let myself in," Sea Crest said softly, walking over and placing the little scroll upon the bed. "Letter for you."

"What?" Handy managed, hand firmly on the door handle, holding it shut. "Who sent it?"

"Oh my, I couldn't begin to imagine." She chuckled. There was silence for a time.

"…Yes?" Handy tentatively began.

"Hmm?"

"Was there anything else?"

"Oh no, I just find it adorable that you are hiding from me in there like a shy little foal, and I am making the most of it." There really wasn't any way for Handy to come back from that without somehow making things worse for himself.

"Yes. Well. I thank thee for the… delivery." He cleared his throat.

"Not a problem."

"I appreciate it."

"I am glad to hear it!"

"I'm sure thou art a very busy mare with much to be about doing."

"NNNNope! Day off."

"…Really?"

"Yep."

"Huh," Handy said as he quickly ran out of suitably polite alternatives for 'get the fuck out of my room'. He elected to simply stand there while the friendly Madame waited for him to leave the room. While he waited for her to leave the room. He quickly found himself tapping his foot in agitation. "Is there anything I might be of assistance to thee with?"

"You know, I've never actually seen a human before…"

'Oh God.' "Most people haven't, ma'am."

"And I was wondering if the rumours were true."

"…Rumours."

"Oh my, yes~." Alarm bells went off in Handy's mind.

"…Thou shouldst not believe everything you hear," he said very carefully. 'Any other day of the week, talking to anybody else, I could've had a ball with the rumour mill, but oh God I do not care for the tone of her voice.'

"Awww, that’s a shame…" Handy could practically hear her smiling, her dulcet voice goading in its softness. "And here I was hoping I'd get to know Jacques' mysterious friend a little better."

"I am flattered. Truly. But I must insist I have… business to attend to."

"Right now?"

"Yes. Immediately. If not sooner. Thank you for the letter."

"Oh very well, another time perhaps." He heard her walk to the door and didn't dare move until he heard it close. He slowly peeked through the door, just to make sure she wasn't faking him out.

That... had been rather uncomfortable. He wouldn't normally feel comfortable anyway with someone, whatever their species, walking in on him while just coming out of the bathroom from a wash. Especially not when he made the cardinal sin of leaving what passed for his undergarments on the wrong side of the door. But he was especially self-conscious about it since, you know, he seemed to be the only person in the world with everything on show. Kinda makes a guy self-conscious, ya know?

He got dressed in his ragged clothing and sighed. He missed Skymount. All his stuff was there, including cleaner clothes… or rather clothes that weren't rags. He was just checking the remnant of the money he had left and was about to move on to the mysterious letter Sea Crest had so 'thoughtfully' delivered when a knock came to the door. He opened it up to see a very happy and slightly breathless Jacques. His hat was askew and his cloak slightly damp from the morning drizzle that was falling from the sky.

"Morning!" he greeted with obnoxious cheerfulness.

"Morning," Handy grumbled. "What's got you so happy?"

"What? Oh, uh, nothing, just a good day is all. Really good day." Handy glanced out at the slip of daylight visible from his curtains. It looked like the drizzle was not letting up and was going to be annoyingly present for the rest of the day, neither disappearing nor becoming heavier. At the same time, it promised to neither blot out the sunlight to give people an excuse to stay inside, but at the same time promising to soak you to the bone by the end of the day. He turned to look back at Jacques, an eyebrow raised. He shuffled his left foreleg in discomfort. "…Relatively speaking."

"Hmph," Handy harrumphed, sitting down on his bed and unfurling the letter that was apparently addressed to him. "What is it now?"

"Oh, aheh, what makes you so sure I…" Handy briefly gave him a level look over the top of the letter. "Okay fine, I need a tiny favour. Got some things I need dropped off at the Lord Mayor's office in the Halls."

"Can't you do it yourself?"

"No."

"Nobody else?"

"Nobody I'd… particularly trust." Handy looked up at him. "Okay fine, I want you to do it because I know you can't read what's written in there."

"Your faith in me is touching, truly," Handy commented dryly. "And what makes you so sure I can't read French?" Jacques gave him a confused look, and he waved a hand. "Your language, what do you call it again?"

"Prench."

"…Of course you do. Why is it called that?"

"Because it is the language of Prance." At that moment, Handy wanted to punch everything, he really did. But he made himself ask the inevitable question.

"And where, pray tell, is Prance?"

"Oh, it's right over here!" Jacques said, hopping and landing a foot away. Handy just stared.

"What."

"And all the way over here!" He hopped a foot to the right.

"I don't… What are you getting at? Is this it? Is the Enclave Prance?"

"Oh no no no, mon ami, don't be silly," he said and hopped again. "It’s right over here, see?"

"All I see is you prancing about like a—" Handy caught himself, and Jacques wore the biggest shit-eating grin he had seen in a while. Handy was at a lost, caught somewhere between sighing in resignation or bristling with indignation. "I take it. That you mean. Prance is not a place," he said very slowly, through gritted teeth.

"Correct!" Jacques conceded happily.

"What is it then?"

"It’s a people. Mine, truth be told, hmhm. We move from place to place. Prench is the tongue of those who Prance."

"You know… I don't know what I was expecting, but it wasn't that."

"So, can you do it, oui?" Handy waved him off.

"Yes yes, just leave it by the door. I'll be sure to drop it off. I suppose I can spare the time." He sighed, turning to read his letter. "Not as if I am in any hurry with my search."

"Which reminds me, how is that going? You've become a permanent fixture around the merchant's quarter."

"About as well as you might expect, endless days and nights marching up and down the streets, not a damn hide nor hair of Thunder. And just when I am about to quit, bam, another report of suspicious magic. Another scared merchant family swearing up and down they saw something suspicious in the night."

'Another God damn guard patrol breathing down my neck and watching me like a hawk. You know, if they didn't want me to stalk the streets at night, they could at least help. A few unicorns might come in handy.' Handy had to pause, crumpling the missive in his hands as he rubbed his face in it and cringed at his own thoughts. 'Oh, I can already tell this is going to be a bad day.'

"Problems?" Jacques asked.

"No nothing. Quite the opposite in fact. Your friends have gotten back to me."

"Oh?" he asked. Handy stood up and rolled the scroll up as he stooped to put on his armour.

"Mmm, turns out there are reports of the kind of magic I am looking for in Manehatten." He actually managed to spit out the name without cringing. Seriously, what was it with these ponies and place names? "And a certain white-blue, earth pony stallion using it. Pretty detailed actually. I think we found Thunder."

"Then who is it causing trouble here then?"

"Don't know. I'll give it one more pass today, though, before I make arrangements to move on. No sense chasing what very well may be an appetiser when I can get to the main course. Also, thanks for warning me that Sea Crest can just wander into my room at any time, by the by. Not like that was a nasty surprise or anything."

"Well, she is the landlady. I thought it went without saying. Did she bring you the note?"

"She did, and I'd still have appreciated the forewarning. I don't take kindly to trespass," Handy said, trying not to give any sign of his genuine discomfort and project a façade of grim annoyance. "And do you know what that was earlier?"

"What was what?"

"The singing."

"…Non, I have no idea what you are talking about," Jacques said, leaning against the doorframe. Handy grunted. Typical. Ask anyone what was going on during one of those impromptu song and dance shows, and they all feigned ignorance. It was as if it was some gigantic faux pas Handy was unaware of to even think of questioning the phenomena. That was his going theory, actually. He simply refused to believe they all were unaware of what was happening during one of those things. Jacques had to be out in it when it was going on. He was soaked, clearly dragged into the parade as an impromptu improv singer. He thought he had heard a familiar voice outside towards the end. Yeah he must've gotten dragged in, poor guy.

"I'm sure you don't," Handy said, debating whether or not to put his pauldrons on. The flared sword breakers were great for protection, but he simply would not be able to cover most of his body in his new, shorter cloak. That meant he'd be running around blinding people in the sunlight. Then he decided, what the hell? He'd been having an awkward morning so far, might as well give everyone else a bad start to their Monday as well. He started to affix them. "And why are you not going to the mayor yourself? Got something else planned?"

"You could say that. Quite hush hush. You know me."

"Right. And how did you know I couldn't read your language?"

"Hm?" Jacques slid off a small pack bulging with documents. "Oh, I knew because you didn't break my face in when I showed you that newsletter the other week."

"…Why would I have wanted to?" Handy asked slowly, holding his helmet in both hands.

"Well you know…" Jacques said, lazily leaning against the doorframe, inspecting a hoof. "Considering the entire body of the letter went into rather explicit detail regarding your wonderful personality and many exceptional qualities and… other features." Handy stopped.

"Jacques. What exactly did it say?"

"Oh you know, nothing too personal," he said, shit-eating grin growing wider, faster as he talked. "Just this pretty young thing for the Porter's Digest, its Prench edition at least, stopped me in the streets and begged for anything I could tell her about the human from Griffonia. And, well, how could I not take the opportunity to talk up my good friend in the most wildly extravagant manner possible? I mean, for instance, I did reveal the real reason you always cover your hands was because they were always so fragile, smooth and delicate and were considered immensely intimate and private in your culture. Quite unlike minotaurs. You had a magical soft spot in the small of your back, you smell like lawn clippings and daisies in the rain, and a host of other things I made up as I got progressively more drunk. You know, small things like that."

There was a pause in the air as Handy digested all of this.

"So when Sea Crest came in here, wondering if the rumours were true…" Jacques eyes lit up in amusement.

"Ohhhhh, well, yes I supposed she would be interested in finding out if those particular things I told the reporter were true. I mean, you are, after all, a perfectly healthy, red blooded m—" Jacques didn't finish, too busy ducking under the thrown metal helmet that sped towards him and lodged itself in the far wall, the bladed wing tips digging into the wood, much to the alarm of a passing patron of the townhouse. Jacques rubbernecked his head through the doorway once more. "You'll still be a good sport about the delivery, right?"

"I WILL BURN YOUR SHIT!" Handy roared, flinging a boot at his head. Jacques ducked, but the boot managed to collide with his stupid hat, knocking it from his head. He hurriedly yanked it with his magic, much to the bemusement of the very confused-looking pegasi bystander in the hallway.

"Payment is in the third front pocket! Thanks for doing me this favour!"

"Jacques, you poncy French fuck, get back in here!" Handy shouted as he reached the door. Jacques was already thundering towards the stairs, laughing.

"Be sure to get right on that first thing? Right? Drinks are on me tonight!"

"Yeah," Handy growled. He turned to look at the pegasus standing in the hallway. It smiled nervously. He snorted, picked up his thrown stuff, and went back into the room. He eyed the package Jacques had left by the door evilly, seriously considering destroying its contents out of spite. "I'll get right on that, first thing."

--=--

So of course he put it off.

Frankly, he was far more interested in the news he had received than in doing the paid favour for Jacques.

Thunder. They had actually found the bastard. The sooner he got a hold of him, the sooner he could pay the bastard back for what happened at the tournament. The sooner he beat him silly, the sooner he could put the screws on him to find… whatever it is Chrysalis wanted him to recover for her. The sooner he got that, the sooner he could make his way to the Badlands to give it to her and wipe his hands off the changelings and the geas. And the sooner he was done with all that, he could return to Griffonia and maybe try to stop a potential war or whatever the fuck was going on up there.

All of this because of a bloody promise he made to Fancy Pants in Canterlot, made possible because he got wrapped up in a promised duel with Prince Blueblood that got him involved in the tournament that facilitated everything. And it all could have been avoided that morning after Johan's coronation when he offered him a way out of being dragged to Canterlot in the first place.

Hindsight was a bitch, and she took the kids in the divorce.

Of course, that leant itself to several problems. For one, he would be in Equestria, a major port city if he deduced Manehatten's location correctly. He'd deal with the Equestrians' undoubtedly lovely reception of him in due time. First he needed to figure out a way to get there. He needed money, and he had pitifully few bits, deer silver, and whatever Jacques had given him in payment for playing courier. Then he needed to take that money and pay a ship's captain passage to take him there. Problem: the last merchants had already left two weeks ago. Winter had set in at long last, and there were no ships available that weren't mothballed for Winter. Or so he thought – he had to be sure.

So, first order of business? The Harbour. He was now intimately familiar with every inch of this section of the city, the Merchant Quarter too. After all, he had spent nearly every waking moment investigating the lengths and breadths of it for any signs of old magic, stalking the streets in the dark of night and occasionally breaking into the odd warehouse on behalf of Thorax, who was doing changeling things. He no longer felt he owed her any favours, but while he was at it already, why not? Besides, turned out she much preferred him biting any changelings they ran into rather than, you know, give them extensive brain damage. Made them easier to cart away and store them wherever the hell she was keeping them. Handy didn't care – inter-changeling subterfuge was remarkably low on his list of worries. He pretty much just let her do her thing. Just a pity they never found more than the five ‘lings he had encountered the first night.

That said, he was a common sight here, most people not even deigning to notice the giant figure striding amidst them anymore. Several of the merchant kids playing in the street barely bothered to get out of his way either. Disrespectful fucks. The harbour workers treated him with the practiced apathy of workmen with better things to worry about, a few even giving a nod of acknowledgement, an assumed familiarity given his now common appearance here.

He made his way along to the Harbour Master's hut. Old Foamy didn't seem to be in and Handy grimaced. He needed someone who could point him in the right direction. He wasn't picky, so long as he got something that could take him to Manehatten. Eventually, his trek brought him to one of the city's fisheries, something he had always wondered about. There did not seem to be the raw economic demand for fish as foodstuff. There was, however, a host of tiny economic niches fishing helped fulfil. Of which soap making was a not insignificant part.

He found the door open and entered. The building was a particularly large warehouse, low to the ground at sea level around high tide. The wooden floor panelling had three large, rectangular omissions through which seawater could be seen beneath. Baskets and nets, woodworking tools, and other detritus of business lay about along the walls. Cages for catching crustaceans, buckets of clams, barrels of fresh fish – it was rather extensive although he knew it was nowhere near as busy as it otherwise would be in good weather. The smell of gutted fish was rancid and permeated the air, and despite himself, Handy struggled to resist the urge to retch for a bit until he steadied himself.

"Hello? Anyone here?" he called. The room was dark, the only light either coming from the door behind him, the few boarded windows that were propped open, or refracted sunlight from the water below, dark as it was. "Maybe no one's in for work yet."

As he turned to leave, he heard a splash of water and a gasp of breath. He looked back and saw a pink pony with golden-orange hair floating in the water, about waist deep. She was absolutely drenched and for some ungodly reason didn't appear to be shivering from what had to be freezing cold water.

"A bit early for a swim, isn't it?" he asked. Amused, the pony smiled, keeping her balance remarkably well in the water. Of course ponies could swim and keep upright with their back legs in the water. Why wouldn't they be able to? Logic? Pfft, how dare you even consider that?

"Sorry, was just busy with something. How can I help?" Handy didn't bother asking what business could possibly be so urgent that one would need to dive head long into icy cold waters in the early morning.

"I am looking for passage to Equestria. I have not been able to get a hold of the Harbour Master for several days now. Pray tell, you wouldn't happen to know of any captains willing to brave the early winter? I've missed most of the ships."

"Hmmm." She placed a hoof on her chin and screwed her face up in thought. Huh, apparently she was a unicorn. He almost missed the horn in her mane as it was so short. It was oddly curved. And there was something odd about her eyes now that he thought about it, but it was so dark in the fishery that he wasn't sure what exactly was bugging him. "Oh! You'd want to find Ship Wright! He's actually in town on a short layover, was delayed coming from the Hebrides up north. He'll be on his way south today if I'm right."

"Excellent. Where can I find him?" Handy asked, pleased he was getting somewhere. She waved a hoof.

"Ehhh, he'll be around. Just hang around the harbour. His ship's the Ironmonger. Has a big, bull head figurehead, white flag with three golden pony shoes. I think it's weighed anchor at the far end of the harbour. You can't miss it!"

"I'll be sure to catch him then. Thank you for thy help, Miss…"

"Jyrla," she replied happily. Handy frowned slightly at the odd name.

"Miss Jyrla. My apologies for keeping thee from thy business."

"Oh it's no bother really, glad I could help!" Handy nodded and turned to leave, making a mental note of the good captain's location and tried to piece together how he was going to scrounge together enough coin to convince him to take Handy with him.

He'd need to square things with Jacques and inform Thorax that they needed to hop town regardless of whatever changeling shenanigans she was currently up to. Handy wanted this geas good and gone, and he'd put that necessity ahead of whatever she was currently up to. He briefly considered whether this desire to fulfil the geas was part of the geas itself he was duped into putting upon himself, a kind of subconscious impulse, or whether it was genuine desire to just be rid of it on his part. Or you know, the entire thing could have just been Chrysalis fucking with him, although that was doubtful. He remembered the demonstration of the geas causing all thoughts of wilfully harming the queen melt away in his head. He didn't want to test the magic in case he actually broke it and ended up in a less than desirable position.

And lost in his thoughts as he was, he failed to notice the splash of water as Jyrla dived back under its surface.

Nor did he see the fish-like tail briefly wave in the air behind her, before it too was swallowed up by the water.

--=--

Jacques was up to the oh so arduous task of lying back on his bed, forehooves resting up above the back of his head, one hind leg over the other and happily humming away. Truthfully, he was just going to spend the day with Thorax whenever she bothered to show up, and he only had a single chore to take care of, but he figured he'd dump it in Handy's capable… hands.

Quietly, he did math in his head, for Jacques oh so did love to get paid, almost as much as he loved his friends. And how he loved the confusion of navigating the mires involved where one conflicted with the other. He always loved the challenge. How does one get paid to do a job that might compromise one's friends? Why, by doing everything in your power to ensure your friends remained safe of course!

Oh, and if you could get your friends to pay you to help along with that, all the better. There was nothing quite like getting paid twice.

He had a real nose for this sort of thing, and it had never led him wrong yet. Every hunch, every gut feeling, every seeming leap of logic he made in his mind all seemed to add up in the end. He had long since learned to trust his instincts. He didn't believe in no-win scenarios and had resolved that should one emerge, then and only then would he turn down a job.

Working for the spooks from the Viceroyalty was as close as he came to such an occasion. Every job they had sent his way, every suspect thing he had to do for them because he just so happened to wind up in a bad place a few years back, all of them were no-win scenarios.

Jacques accepted the challenges offered and regularly made off like a bandit in spite of them.

But it was the real reason why he had revealed Handy when he did. The excuse he had given him, that he'd only hurt himself rather than help if he opted to stay in that damnable box throughout his entire search, was certainly true enough. But in all honesty, it was in his best interest that the Viceroyalty did not suspect he was undermining the Black Isles. And the best way to do that was make him visible. And, of course, putting himself forward as the agent 'minding' him while he was in the country wouldn't hurt either.

That and he wanted the Viceroyalty to know that he now had options, just in case they ever did give him a 'no win' scenario.

It was to that effect that Jacques did not mind racking up a hefty bill owed to Sea Crest for the use of her lay-low house, for three rooms no less. He didn't mind all the odds and ends that were owed to him on the 'Handy' account, particularly the rather painful sum he had to hoof over to his buddies in the seedier underbelly of the world to help out with Handy's little quest. He didn't mind if Handy didn't ultimately end up paying. He'd just keep a note of that little debt and, should the time come that Jacques needed to suddenly find a safe haven very far away, there'd be a certain baron in Griffonia who could certainly afford to put him up for a while on the sly.

True, he'd miss his long-time home here in Black Port which, now that he thought about it, he hadn't set foot in once since coming back into the city, but one had to make little sacrifices.

He listened to the soft, soothing sound of the drizzling rain, enjoying the cold light of the winter's sun. Despite the winter morning chill, his window was open and he was enjoying the light while he waited. He frowned as he noticed something blocking the light and looked up, tipping his hat back with an ear.

Just in time to see a very harried-looking Charity Bell scramble through the window and land on top of him. He let out an ‘oof’ as she collided bodily with him on the bed and scrambled as she hurried to push herself between him and the wall.

"Thorax, wh—?"

"Shhhhhhh, damn it! Close the window! Close it close it!" she whispered frantically. Jacques did so. And as he lied back, he noticed a couple of pegasi flying by, stopping in mid-air over the street to scan their surroundings. One barked an order at the other and both sped off. Jacques turned and cocked an eyebrow at the mare huddling beside him, seemingly trying to hug the wall.

"Get yourself into some trouble then, chére?"

"Ugh, don't start." She rubbed her face with her hooves. Although he knew it wasn't real, her fur was a mess. Jacques' horn lit up as he closed the curtains. "Where's Handy?"

"He's off doing a favour, should be by town hall. Why?"

"We… kinda got on the wrong side of the local changelings," Thorax confessed. Jacques gave her a sideways look. "We took out a few of them. I have them… indisposed at the moment, and I was basically raiding their lairs."

"Care to share why?" She gave him a blank look, harmless green fire washing over her body as she returned to her true form. "Can't blame me for trying."

"You already got enough out of me as it is."

"Aw, don't be like that chére." He leaned against her, and she looked away. "Think of it as a good opportunity for practice."

"Whatever," she mumbled. "We need to get Handy. He sticks out, and they'll be coming for him."

"Going out there now will only draw them to you. They know what your… heart self is? Is that the right term?"

"No, but yes, they know how to pinpoint me now, disguise or no disguise."

"And Handy can more than take care of himself. The town guard is practically watching him like hawks, and he'll likely stop back here when he receives the invoice from the mayor. He doesn't want to end up paying that, so he'll likely take it straight back here to me. He should be back shortly."

"I don't know…"

"Relax, Thorax" Jacques said, to which he received a disgusted look for the horrible wordplay. "It is literally a straight run. What's the worst that could happen?"

--=--

Two dozen pairs of eyes belonging to the solar and lunar royal Equestrian guards respectively trained on him as soon as he opened the door. The room was wall to wall ponies in armour and spears, with an additional four onyx-armoured ponies of the Enclave Viceroyalty's Black Guard regiment for good measure. There was also the Captain of the city guard, mail hauberk, grey cloak, and armoured half helmet. There were also the two familiar ponies he recognised as the spooks Jacques had brought him to meet weeks ago, the hooded pegasus and the dark-eyed earth pony. And in between them all was the flustered-looking lord mayor. Voluminous sable robes devoured him as he wrung his hooves together, a too-large, puffed hat on his cranium with a comically-undersized, singular white feather at the top. A chain of office, a mixture of blue-gold and silver, rested about his withers. His various bureaucratic attendants were cowering in the corners, against the walls and behind their desks, trying their best to not make a damn sound.

And there Handy was, hand on the door handle, pouch of French documents in his other hand, and a gawking face behind his steel helmet as he slowly took in the sight before him.

The room was very, very quiet.

--=--

"Another!" she shouted as she slammed the glass on the counter. The Fishermare was a smoky, smelly mess of groaning bodies. The smell of stale beer, burnt tobacco, peat smoke from the fireplace, and particularly greasy food as somepony managed to fix up something resembling a hangover cure filled the air. The curtains were drawn, with only the faintest light spilling in from the morning outside. They had all come here for a birthday bash the previous night, only to end up having to be locked in when it became clear nopony was going home when it came to fifth candle.

"I think you've had enough, Shocks," the barkeep told the agitated mare.

"I'll tell you when I've had enough." She narrowed her eyes at her hoof and waved it in front of her face. "Ha! See, I only have two hooves in front of me! I'm still good to go!"

The barkeep eyed her singular, lonesome hoof, and noted her other was on the counter by her empty glass. She was wobbling pretty badly. He sighed. She was literally the only pony left standing.

"Shocks, you're a great customer and all, but I really, really need to go to bed. And I stopped serving hours ago."

"Don't care. 'Nother." She looked around as the barkeeper resigned himself and fixed her up another drink. She snorted and started mumbling to herself. "Dirty, flea-bitten, leather-winged, rasenfrasen…"

"What was that?"

"Bat ponies!" She slammed her hoof on the counter suddenly. The sleeping stallion beside her started awake. His head had been resting on a hoof and hit the counter hard, before he slid and fell to the ground, groaning in pain. "Ever see the like again and I'll… and I'll!"

"Chase them out of town with beatings like you did to every single one you've found in the past month?" the barkeep asked, clearly bored. She slapped the counter.

"Exactly!" She downed the new drink in a single swallow, and placed the glass on the counter with a satisfied sigh. "Another." The barkeep sighed. "An' you know what else? Me an' my crew. That's who, we'll do it, every single one until I find that rat bastard frangle frumble…" She trailed off, shifting her green scarf.

"Mmhm."

"An' I don't care who they are, or… or how much money they got!"

"Yeah."

"An' I don't care what ponies think. I ain't racist." She downed another drink. "Just all thestrals are bastards. Another." The barkeep weighed his options. He could tell her to rightly buck off, that she'd had enough. On the other hand, she was Shocks.

His shoulders slumped and he filled her another.

--=--

"Lord Mayor?"

"Y-Yes?"

When in doubt, be audacious. He who dared, won. Fortune favoured the bold.

Alternatively, there was a fine line between brave and stupid, and Handy decided to gamble on which side of that line he now stood on. He had marched up, calmly and quietly between the ranks of Equestrians, not sparing them a single glance as he passed. He walked straight up to the lord mayor of Black Port, flanked as he was by the pair of spooks and their escort of Black Guards to his right and… Holy shit, was that White Boy? Handy indeed turned his head to acknowledge the golden clad pegasus to the mayor's left. Grim-faced, piercing blue eyes, lose-him-in-the-snow whiter than white pelt, pale blonde mane poking beneath his helmet. Yep, it was him alright. His face betrayed no emotion. He turned back to the mayor.

"I was requested to make delivery of this package to your office. I would have left it with thine staff but… I see they are kept quite busy," he said, taking the package out of his own side pack and leaving it, gently, on the mayor's desk. In full sight of everyone. Nice and slow, with no sudden movements.

"Oh… Oh alright. Heh. That's… Thanks?" the mayor said unsurely, eyeing the black-cloaked spooks who were giving him a curious look. Handy gently nodded his head.

"Welcome." He turned his head once to his left and then to his right. Yep. That sure was every pair of eyes in the hall trained on him. Handy did not dare to raise his new awareness to try to get an inkling of what they were feeling beyond the low rumblings of animosity and confusion coming from every living soul. Fear from the mayor and his staff, amusement from someone for some God forsaken reason. Ah right, the golden eyed thestral behind White Boy was apparently on the verge of laughter. The hell was she smiling at? And of course, the blank voids that were the pair of black-cloaked ponies and their own guards. That was fucking unnerving. He could tell they were there without looking, but he could not read them. They were like little pockets of grey in a sea of bright lights. He didn't linger on the issue and turned right around and strode from the room "I shall leave thee to it then. Good day to you all."

The heavy oak doors closed behind him, his boots echoing on the marble floor as he walked out of the sepulchral quiet of city hall, occasionally glancing over his shoulder to ensure the doors stayed closed. He sped his pace. By the time he exited the building, the rain had stopped and the sun shone through the clouds, causing his armour to glint and strobe periodically as he passed beneath the shadows of buildings and awnings. He was about ten paces from the buildings when he broke into a jog, raising a few eyebrows from the passing city folk going about their day. He was flat out running by the time he got to a knick-knack shop, his armour clanking noisily. He looked behind him – still no one. He broke out into a sprint, uncaring for how uncomfortable it was to do so in heavy armour, making a beeline for the townhouse. He suddenly needed to very much get on that boat very soon, and he unfortunately left whatever money was in the delivery package back at city hall. He needed a little help.

"Jacques!" he began shouting, as if the pony could hear him from this far off as his sprint began picking up momentum as he crested a rise and thundered downhill towards the northernmost Hair, tearing through the nearly empty marketplace. It'd take him either to the brothel or the townhouse, depending on which side of the next junction he ended up going down. He kept checking over his shoulder, to see glints of gold and the shine of polished onyx in the distance. He was little more than a thundering ball of light and metal blazing past the shop fronts, shouting at the top of his lungs.

"JAAAAAAAACCCCCQUUUUEEEESSSS!!"

Author's Note

Was 22k, has been split in half because sanity.

You'll get the other half next week when my editors have had time to rest.

Chapter 41 - A Farewell to Carrickmore

He hit the floor, his eyes glazed over, white film covering their subtle green hue, never again to shine with life. His body breathed, chest rising and lowering, though there was no vitality to his movements. He lived, but he wasn't home anymore. Instead, he was lost and adrift in a sea of darkness far away from the comfort of his own mind.

Sound was the first thing to go. All sounds of life from the city surrounding him went quiet, his own breathing not to be heard by his ears. Not even tinnitus filled with the absence of sound, and it was beginning to hurt. His body did not move – he could not move it even if he wanted to.

Creeping, green fingers of earth, soil mixed in with the sediment, and broken stone from beneath the flagstone that covered the ground reached up, displacing the stonework and reaching towards his prone body. The tendrils wrapped around his limbs, fusing with his fur as green magic flashed up and down the lengths of soils coiling across his form, fitting to his pelt in obscure and arcane patterns that shifted and flowed. His mouth opened reflexively, and the light of the world around him seemed to dim. Had he been able to control his breath, it would have been stolen away by the sights he could see. The half-light was no such thing; it was dimming because his sight was taken from him to look into the veil and its roiling darkness of flitting forms and endless shifting greyness.

Coiling, thick, green-tinged mist spilled from his mouth and nostrils, flowing from his ears and the tear ducts of his eyes, and over his body to hug the ground. The tendrils of earth reached up along his face, curling along his muzzle until they reached past his lips and entered his mouth, their power reacting to the fell magicks of the mist spilling forth from his body, as it tried to retch but was found itself unable to.

And somewhere, amidst the dark infinity, a lost soul screamed.

--=--

"Move!" The solar guardspony grunted as he was busied out of the way by the viceroyalty agents and their pack of dogs-in-pony's-clothing. He grumbled to himself as the lot of them had spilled forth from the city hall not long after the human had left. "You have no jurisdiction here. Your presence here, armed and armoured, is on the flimsiest of pretexts. The Black Isles has no extradition agreement with Equestria, and even if we did, the human has committed no crime. Get out," the lead pony demanded. His voice was level yet with clearly restrained agitation, utterly at odds with his completely calm demeanour. He rounded on the lead guard ponies, or so he thought. None of them had declared rank as far as he was aware.

"You are mistaken. We do not seek to take him anywhere," said one thestral guard, her helmet removed to reveal her light, dusky purple mane. "Merely following up on some concerns we have that are related to him. We just want a chat, that's all." Ghost Writer glanced around the gathered warriors and gave the thestral mare a blank look.

"With two dozen armed guards."

"A very safe chat."

"With spears."

"For our protection."

"Yours?"

"He has been known to be most disagreeable in the past." She flashed him a dazzling, toothy smile. Ghost Writer was unmoved.

"I am not going to let your thinly veiled machinations go unchecked. You have no business in our lands traipsing about with full armour for 'chats'."

"Wouldn't be the first time you've let us do exactly that," dryly commented the white pegasus just beside her. "Wouldn't be the first time we've let you do the same either. Funny how understandings like that go out the window as soon as a conflicting interest turns up."

"Wouldn't happen to be stonewalling us because you'd like to arrange things nicely for yourself, now would you?" the thestral mare continued. Ghost Writer didn't dignify them with a proper answer.

"On behalf of Viceroy Mystic Spears, I am going to have to ask you to vacate t—"

"Uh Sergeant?" They all looked up. One of the royal guard pegasi was flying in the air. "He's getting away. Like, he's kinda sprinting full belt for the sea."

"Well…" The thestral looked back at Ghost. “It seems we won't be getting that little chat at all. Sure would be a shame if he got away, but I suppose we could always find him another day after he leaves the Enclave." Ghost was silent as he turned to look behind him at the hooded pegasus, who shared a look with him. Midnight smiled before turning to Cloud. "Although I suppose while we're here we could see the sights before going home, hmm?"

Before Cloud could respond, Ghost, his partner, and their compliment of Black Guards bolted, dashing off without a word. Cloud sighed.

"And here I was hoping this would be easy for once." He took to the air and flew after them, the winged contingent of the royal guards taking flight with him as the rest thundered forth.

--=--

So of course he went down the wrong street.

Frankly, this was embarrassing. It was a straight shot down to the hairs from City Hall, but did Handy make it? Nooooo. To be fair, he really wasn't expecting the marketplace to be this busy this early in the morning. With most of the merchants having vacated the city, leaving only local traders and whatever mendicants that trudged their way from other settlements, one would expect it to be practically empty.

So of course it wasn't. In his blind sprint, he stumbled into no less than three bakers, a soap maker, five carpenters, a glass blower, a very confused priestess, a diamond dog carrying a bag of coal, a blacksmith, three chicken farmers, a fisherman, and a little old pony in a rocking chair with her pet cat. Once he got through that mess and got back to his feet, paying no attention to the angry shouting or where exactly he was going, he found himself going down an unfamiliar street.

He came to a stop, panting, lungs burning for air. He got a lot farther than he had any business running while in armour, and he was now paying for it. He doubled over, hands on his knees, panting, taking off his helmet just long enough to get his bearings.

He had no idea where he was.

He was at small square between six dilapidated town houses and only two streets leading out of it, one of which led back to the market and the guards who were doubtlessly following. The other led to… hell if he knew. He had stayed out of the inner city by and large. It seemed oddly deserted, nothing stirring but a sad little fountain in the middle and a rather dead-looking tree. He looked back. The street winded to the left and to the right again, and he wasn't clearly visible from the market. He considered his options.

Going back was out. Fighting was… not really an option, as there were way too many of them there and he was not running on a blood high. He was a better fighter now compared to months ago, sure, but numbers would overwhelm anything. He could try talking his way out of it. After all, he hadn't done anything wrong while in the Enclave… Okay, apart from assaulting a woman and taking her blood in the dead of night… and brutally assaulting a couple of changelings, but he was pretty sure nobody would care about that. Breaking and entering, stalking the merchant district with the intent to assault and possibly kill a rogue wizard, association with whatever the hell Jacques was in relation to the law… Okay, there were a few questionable things he'd done since coming here.

He reached into the fountain, cupping his hands and drinking the water, splashing his face while he was at it. The rain had stopped.

"Alright… but that doesn't explain why the Equestrians are here," he murmured to himself. "Royal guards too, straight from Canterlot. That’s at least a week or two's journey by train, probably more. My presence here was only revealed a month ago. How in the hell did the Princesses find out and respond so quickly? Why are they even here? My crimes were pardoned. Equestria had nothing to do with the tournament. I am pretty sure Blueblood is alive and well after our bout. The hell do they want?"

As he was pondering this, he let his newfound abilities to reach out once more, bringing the surrounding lives he could feel into sharper focus on the periphery of his awareness. Perhaps had he not had it turned down when he approached City Hall, he might have gotten an inkling of forewarning of the hornet's nest he was about to stumble into.

"They can't touch me. I'm a nobleman now. A baron, sure, nothing special, but a foreign noble nonetheless. A foreign noble in a foreign country they shouldn't even be in in the first place. I've got nothing to hide."

'Except a changeling, a deal with a certain queen, the entirety of the shenanigans in the forest, just in case the Equestrians decide to somehow exploit that deal I made regarding Gethrenia for the sake of the deer, practically everything to do with Old Magic and how I got to this world in the first place… Okay yeah, fuck talking.' And it was then that he sensed the six figures sneaking up from behind him. Dark and grey in the periphery of his senses, he only noticed them at all due to how the surrounding buildings seemed to utterly lack any life within.

He spun around, just in time to see the brown pegasus diving at him from an open window above. He lashed out with his helmet and sidestepped him, clocking the pony on the head and sending him hurtling to the hard stonework of the ground. He didn't react fast enough to get out of the way of the earth pony though, who dived for his legs, knocking them from underneath him and sending Handy to the ground face first.

He was slightly dazed and couldn't react fast enough before the rest were upon him, pinning each of his limbs to the ground. His face was pushed to the ground hard, as he felt a hoof on the back of his head. "Where are they, human!?"

"Oh for God's sake, who the fuck are you!?" He struggled, his limbs pinned tighter. Each seemed to have the full weight of a pony pinning them down. He heard the groan of the pegasus from behind him as he got back to his feet. He felt the hoof press down on his head.

"I am going to ask you once more, human, where have you taken them!?" We know it was you there that day…"

"What are you bloody talking… ohhhh, so you are the rest of the changelings. I was wondering where the hell you guys were. Listen, now is a really bad time. Can we ju—" The hoof pressed down harder, and Handy let out a cry of pain. "Ohhhhh you fuckers, this is the wrong fucking day to be pissing me off."

"Again, human. Where. Are. They?" Handy gritted his teeth to bite back the pain as the iron-shod hoof pressed down harder. It let up almost imperceptibly as the changeling above him turned his attention to the thunderous noise of a dozen hooves heading in their direction. Handy took full advantage of the momentary distraction.

"Have you checked up your own arse?" The changeling on his gauntleted arm was not holding as tight as it could and was shocked when he pulled it out from under it and reared it back, closed fist, straight into its face. The changelings hissed, and the lead one lifted his hoof to stomp back down. That was all Handy needed it to do as he braced his right arm and rolled his torso, pulling his left arm with all his strength and dragging the light changeling along with it. It yelped as it lost its footing, lifted towards Handy, who dropped onto his side and grabbed it with both arms. The lead changeling snarled at him as the other recovered. One still clung to its legs and the other, the brown pegasus, was facing the direction of the approaching hooves. The poor changeling in his arms flailed its free limbs, trying to pummel away at his armour to no effect. "Wrong day, lads, wrong bloody day."

He bit down.

--=--

"He went down this way! Come on!" Stellar called as she was followed by six of her comrades. Most of the rest of them were stuck navigating the utter chaos that was the markets or checking other streets. She had managed to spot him disappearing down this particular side street. The shadows of the closely aligned buildings ruined the ability to spot him from the light of his enchanted armour, forcing them to ground to scour for him while others remained in the air.

"We've got company," a day guard called. She glanced behind her. Sure enough, one of the Black Guards of the viceroyalty was thundering down the alley after them, followed closely by some bewildered-looking city guardsponies who were apparently roped into the chase. She grimaced and continued on.

“Ignore them, keep going! We have to get to him bef—” Stellar Eclipse skidded to a halt just as she entered into the courtyard, her wings extending to help slow her. The guards following her hurriedly dived to the side, one even launching into the air and jumping over her to avoid crashing into her back. The human stood on the far side of the courtyard, an undisguised changeling held up in his grip by the neck. Five ordinary-looking ponies filled the courtyard, wide-eyed and alternating between looking at the human and the sudden onrush of guards.

“Morning,” Handy said simply. “Had to get my second wind. Hope you don’t mind. Oh, by the way, got a present for ya.”

He tossed the changeling to the ground, causing the other ponies to back up a step, one of them snarling.

“All of these guys? These guys right here?” Handy said, gesturing to each of them with his hammer. “Changelings. Changelings everywhere. Never say I didn’t do you any favours. Have fun, lads.”

The human ran, leaving the guards and the apparent changelings alone in the courtyard. No one moved. The wounded changeling was breathing shallowly at the hooves of the ponies. Somepony coughed.

“So… heh,” the brown pegasus began. “He’s uh… lying?”

The guards charged, and the courtyard descended into a melee of flailing hooves, fur, glittering armour, and flashing spears. The changelings abandoned their disguises, conserving their energy as their horns glowed and spells were cast, offensive blasts of magic that singed fur and winded those they hit, when they weren’t deflected outright by armour. Several took to the air to escape, only to be caught by a number of pegasi and brought back to the ground. Hard. Stellar ducked under the swinging hooves of a changeling before jumping back up, her helmet cracking against the jaw of the changeling before a few precision blows bringing it down.

The Black Guard thundered past the battle, heedless of the commotion and clipping Stellar on the withers as he passed, the half a dozen city guardsponies following in his wake. Stellar glowered after him, looking around the courtyard, seeing the changelings had been subdued, but they’d need to be guarded, tying her unit down, and no pony else was aware they had found Handy.

“Tie them down, You, go get the sergeant!”

“Which one?”

“Either!” she shouted back, taking to the air without another word, following the line of the street from above. It was long and winding, thankfully having no divergences.

She flew to cut him off before it exited into another street.

--=--

If there was one thing ponies had an advantage over humans, it was speed.

Handy found himself throwing passing crates, barrels, and whatever else he could to the ground as he sprinted, desperately trying to slow down his pursuers. What was that? He could always stand and fight? Hahaha, no.

Even taking numbers into account and the fact that Handy was in an enclosed space which he could work to his advantage, several things made that inadvisable. For one, he’d be fighting uphill. While gentle, this narrow street was on a decline. Combine that with heavily armoured miniature horses on full gallop meant bad times for Handy. Sure, he could stop and swing at one, but the guy behind him would just leap over and bowl Handy over with sheer force of momentum, and then it’d be game over.

No, he needed more advantageous ground, and he needed to outrun these bastards long enough to even think about standing and fighting. So, in order to achieve this, rampant destruction of private property was required. The changeling blood helped revitalise him, and he was now good to run all day if he had to. Pity its gifts were useless in terms of an actual fight or, you know, helping him run all the faster. Still, it brought his senses into extreme focus, and he could now feel the black-armoured guard that was heading up the pack behind him.

Very odd, he still felt grey and dark, but he was clearly there, different from the changelings from before too. The hapless clouts following after him were as bright and as vibrant as anyone else though, so no changes there. It didn’t matter. He saw a wooden overhang approaching, held up by thin wooden beams, ramshackle and lashed together. It was holding up an impressive weight of pottery. Handy drew back his hammer and swung at the first beam as he passed. It buckled but still held. He swung at the middle one, and his hammer bounced off of it. He skid to a halt by the end, gripped the hammer in both hands, and swung at the third one. The silvered steel crashed through the wood, which splintered and buckled. It collapsed, the other beams similarly damaged falling as well, bringing the entire weight down upon the head of the Black Guard, who was mere inches from Handy before he disappeared under a hail of broken pottery, soil, plants, seeds, water, and wood.

The alley was cut off, with at least one of the guardsponies caught under the collapsing debris with the Black Guard, whose head just barely poked out as he groaned in pain. He heard the guards yelling to back up and find another way around. Handy briefly thanked God none of them were pegasi. He wasted no time and turned to run.

He got another dozen or so feet, finally making it out of the endless, claustrophobic rows of town houses along the narrow street and onto a broad thoroughfare. City folk dispersed as the human emerged from the street, breathing heavily. His armour shone brilliantly, blinding nearby ponies before he stepped into the shadow of a building, looking around him.

“Where the hell am I?” It seemed oddly familiar but for some reason he couldn’t pin it down as he trudged through the deep rutted streets, the puddles splashing beneath him. He gestured at a hapless pony with his gloved left hand, who squeaked in surprise. “You. What street is this!? Which way to the harbour!?”

“T-That way!” The pony pointed down the street. Handy couldn’t see the harbour for all the damnable townhouses in the way. He was about to make his way in that direction before he was nearly knocked from his feet, something hitting him bodily from behind and sending him stumbling. He just barely caught his balance before falling and whirled, hammer raised.

He felt a cold pit develop in his stomach and bile threatening to rise to his throat.

“You,” he spat, the hatred evident in his voice. The thestral hovered in the air for a few moments before landing deftly on the ground. Her lunar armour was resplendent in the sunlight, the soft purples of the segmented plate that protected her back and flanks accented by the heavier, darker purple gorget around her long neck. Distinctive, moveable pauldrons stylised to resemble small wings guarded her withers, and a light chain hauberk was visible in between the spaces of her plate. Her legs were relatively unprotected by comparison, with the exception of light schynbalds just above her armoured boots. Four long, sharp blades could be seen on her forehooves, currently raised up and at rest. Stellar looked up at him from under her crested helm, careful to tilt her head in such a way to prevent being blinded should he stand in the light. “You dare.”

“Listen. Just listen,” she said slowly, one hoof raised. “It isn’t what you think."

Handy almost let forth an entire stream of profanity and curses at her, biting back only with the thought that he couldn't afford to waste time fighting her here in the streets. He pointed at her, almost accusingly.

"I do not have time for you today, wretch. Stay out of my way." He looked about, trying to find an easy means of escape. She'd catch him on a dead run. It was then he spotted the hanging sign above the smoky glass panes of the building next to him. Curtains were drawn to obscure those that lay within. The creak of the sign on its unoiled hinges, it bore the image of a mare lazily fishing in a stream. He now knew exactly where he was.

"Look, Handy. I know it seems extreme, but we had to get to you in force before the Black Isles realized it and spirited you away."

"I have done nothing to warrant them doing such," Handy said carefully, slowly but surely moving closer to the door of the tavern. Stellar's eyes shifted from him to the tavern, realising what he was about to do.

"Believe me, they don't need a reason. Look, there's trouble in Griffonia. You were at the centre of its cause. We need you to come with us."

"I am not going with you anywhere." His calm answer was both uncharacteristic and aggravating. Stellar gritted her teeth.

"I don't know how you survived. I saw the blast zone myself. The mages scoured it; there was no way what happened could have been survivable."

"Really now?" Handy asked lazily. "Well, here I am. What does that tell you, thestral?"

"You know my name."

"Pity, I don't really care to use it." His hand reached for the door handle but paused when Stellar's wings shot out and her stance lowered, ready to lunge at him should he touch the door. "As to how I survived, it wouldn't be the first time I died. Ask my liege Johan. I've made something of a bad habit of being dead."

"There'll be war," Stellar said, her ear flicking. The human looked up, seeing forms in the distance over the rooftops as Stellar's comrades closed in. "Whatever's happening in Griffonia, between Firthengart and Getherenia, is causing instability along the border. You could stop this, convince your king to see reason before something happens. Do something! You have to come with us."

For the briefest of moments, he hesitated. He didn't want to listen to her, but the more he thought about it, the more he realized she might be on to something. Whatever was happening in Griffonia began with the tournament, as both Johan and Goldtooth were there. He didn't know what was going on, but it was spooking the Equestrians something fierce. He should go back; he did have a duty to do so. But the second he thought of abandoning his course and returning home, he felt a pressure on his thoughts. The thought of going back melted away in favour of focusing on his task of finding old magic users in order to fulfil his geas. To break it was to risk slavery.

"I… can't," he said at last. Stellar stomped her hoof, the metal boot clacking on the cobblestone.

"Explain!"

"I can't." His hand clasped about the door handle. "I would if I could, but I cannot."

She lunged at him, and he dived into the tavern door, putting his weight into his shoulder and forcing the locked door open. She crashed into him, and the pair tumbled into the darkness of the tavern.

--=--

"You sure she said she'd be here?" Cloud Skipper demanded, landing on the street. The few ordinary city ponies had long since vacated. The Black Guard weren't anywhere in sight, but if the alarm bells currently ringing across town were anything to go by, the city guard was being mobilized. "And changelings?"

"Yes sir," the pegasus responded, alighting along with twelve other guards, the majority of them thestrals. "The human incapacitated one and used the others as a distraction. Private Stellar went on ahead to cut him off."

"Well where in Tartarus is she then!?" he demanded.

As if on cue, the body of Stellar Eclipse crashed through the window of the nearby tavern, dragging broken glass, curtains, rails, and splintered wood of the window frame onto the street.

"Well well well, look at this!" a powerful, feminine voice bellowed out into the street, echoed by the sound of strange, blaring music from somewhere deep within the tavern. A cream-coated mare stood proudly on the broken window ledge, her purple eyes dancing with energy. A ragtag, groggy assortment of ponies in various states of hungover and bleary-eyed near-wakefulness emerged behind her, some armed, some armoured, most of the rest just furious at the rude awakening they had received making a morning of punishing headaches that much worse. Shock's smiled wickedly, eyeing the guards before her, her fierce eyes zeroing in on the thestrals in particular, some of whom felt a tad unnerved with the sheer loathing they saw. "Looks like the flying rat bastards showed up dressed for a dance! A hundred bits per cracked skull to the lot of yas!"

The proclamation was met with a cheer of approval from the assortment of drunken mercenaries and part-time pirates, many of whom shook themselves awake at the prospect of making up their lost money spent punishing themselves the night before. The royal guards took one look of the assortment of improvised weaponry being brought to hoof and closed ranks.

"Now hold on! This is official—" Cloud didn't finish as the tavern emptied and his guards were overwhelmed with superior numbers. The entire street descended into a disorganized brawl as the Equestrian royal guards were engaged by the fine, upstanding citizens of Black Port. Flailing limbs, hooves, wings, thrown bottles, broken spears, and missing teeth were all that could be discerned in the shifting mass of fighting ponies. Broken bones, concussions, stale beer, and the occasional blood spill were the participants only reward for joining in on the fun. The guards had a distinct advantage in training, discipline, and better armour, and were slowly getting the upper hoof on their more experienced but simultaneously more bedraggled opponents.

Now if it wasn't for that foul mouthed mare that was currently beating seven hells out of the thestrals like a living storm, they could get over this little hiccup and get the objective.

--=--

Handy kicked open the door to the back kitchen, causing the mare within to snort and wake with a start. He then proceeded to run down the short flight of steps, gunning for the back door.

"Nononono wait—!" She winced as her warning came too late. Handy's boot hit the floor…

…And immediately went up into the air, taking Handy along with it. He let out a yelp of surprise as he fell hard onto his back, his head thwacking the ground and causing his vision to blur. He groaned as he rolled over.

"…The floor's wet. With… a new brew."

"Silver?" Handy groaned, turning back over on the ground, his deer-woven cloak now utterly ruined with beer. Silver Platter smiled nervously from behind her literally bubbling cauldron. A book lay propped up on a stand behind her. There seemed to be several strange circles drawn onto various surfaces using differently coloured chalk, dried herbs, and vegetables hung from various places. A disturbing array of slap-dash, glass instruments filled with many different coloured fluids lined the walls and counters. Handy blinked. "Are you… an alchemist?"

"What? Haha, noooo, no, of course not. Why would you think— Me? Pssshhh, noooo…" she said, with the worst poker face Handy had ever seen. A nervous sweat broke on her brow, and she glanced around once before sighing. "But I uh… kinda always wanted to be. Got stuck here, and the boss lets me practice so long as I help improve his brews."

Handy suddenly felt like never drinking at the Fishermare's Hook ever again. Not only was the head of the kitchen an alchemist, but she was a bad alchemist. Alchemists were dangerously bonkers individuals on their best days. Handy pushed himself up, trying to ignore the blaring music coming from the brick. Why now of all times? He knocked the barrel the beer seemed to be seeping out of.

"What the hell is this anyway?"

"My new batch! I call it Soapy suds!"

"Why?"

"… Because I made it with soap." Handy just stared at her for a moment, then thought about the floor he had just slipped on. He tested it by lightly tapping the front of his boot on it. Yep, that sure was slippery as hell.

"You know what? Good luck with that. Meanwhile, I'm going to do the world a favour." He bent over and, with a grunt of effort, lifted the small barrel up, turning it so the leak was facing upwards and not pouring over him.

"Hey!" Silver Platter shouted as he kicked open the back door and exited. "Hey, you have to pay for that!"

--=--

"There!" the stallion guard shouted. "Stop in the name of th—woahoooaaaaAAAHHH!"

Right before he and the three other city guard ponies slid and tumbled downhill after slipping over the beer slick cobblestones out the back of the Fishermare's Hook, the broken barrel rolling forlornly off to the side.

Handy wasted no time and sprinted as fast as he could to the hairs. Now he knew where he was and it was faaaaar away from where he wanted to be. He had dodged the guards in the marketplace. The changelings had been a bit of a shock, but they proved to be a useful speed bump. Surprisingly large, black-armoured, doom pony bearing down on him in a narrow alleyway? Handy had dropped a roof on him. Pesky thestral responsible for siring him? He had let the good drunken scoundrels in the tavern take care of that little problem for him. And if the sounds he heard from out the front of the building when he was in the kitchen were any indication, they took care of a good number of his other problems too.

So far so good, but his luck was not going to hold up forever. He needed to get to Jacques and Thorax. He needed to get on that boat, and he needed to be gone yesterday.

'How did they even find me so quickly?' he thought to himself, spooking a pony that was pulling a cartload of rubbish as he rounded a corner, right before blinding him in the light of his armour. 'I get it’s been nearly a month, but the princesses should only have gotten word recently and then sent some of their soldiers. They shouldn't be here already if they were going to send anyone at all. Did they have standing orders or something?'

His thoughts were interrupted as he ran across the bridges that had been lowered over the hairs, bridging the gaps between the specialized military harbours that were in disuse over the winter. He skidded to a halt halfway across the second of the five bridges, the brothel barely within sight in the distance. In front of him, emerging from behind a red-painted warehouse was a contingent of halberd-wielding city guard, flanked by the one remaining Black Guard, who glowered at Handy. Or he imagined he did, as the pony wore a full face helm. Above, three pegasi hovered, cumbersome crossbows held in their hoofy grasp, large trigger guards accommodating their hooves. At the head of the contingent stood Twiddle Dee and Twiddle Dumb.

"That's far enough, human! Stand down and you will not be harmed!" Ghost Writer shouted.

"Harmed for what!?" Handy shouted, arms outstretched. "I have done nothing to warrant being chased across the entire city!"

"We are only trying to bring you into protective custody," Ghost continued unabated. "Dangerous foreign elements are currently targeting you. In interests of good faith and good will to our griffon neighbours, we have taken steps to try to protect you."

"Sir, I am a dangerous foreign element."

"Duly noted. Now please kindly drop your weapon." There was the sound of several hooves hitting the wood behind him, and Handy turned to see the remnant of the Equestrian guards. Most of them were solar guards, headed up by the same smirking, golden-eyed thestral mare from city hall. Only she wasn't smirking now.

"Oh for fuck's sake…" Handy breathed. He considered his options. Ponies in front of him, ponies behind him, and water to his right and left. An ordinary person would say fuck it and jump, swimming away to safety. However, Handy was wearing heavy armour, and drowning was something he really didn't care for. His mind raced. The Equestrians and the Enclavers were shouting at each other over something, but he ignored them as he tried to figure out a way through them. He looked up to the town. Nothing seemed to be coming over the buildings, which meant the guards he managed to tie down were staying that way. Thank God for small miracles.

He was keenly aware of the ponies around him. The city guards were confused, nervous, and wary. The ones wielding the crossbows felt twitchy, and that was always a bad thing to have behind a trigger. The royal guards behind him were a roiling mass of restrained violence and aggression, some tired, most frustrated from the chase and confusion. The two agents ahead were unreadable grey blots on his senses. His eyes were drawn up to the crossbow pegasi. More than anything, he had to make sure none of them shot off by accident, considering they were aiming at him. He needed to give them a reason to relax.

He hooked his hammer to his loop.

'This is so stupid.'

He stood facing the open sea, the long arcing walls of the harbour reaching out like arms to welcome the sun on its journey across the sky.

'This'll never work. I can't believe I'm even trying.'

He placed his hands on the top of his head.

'God curse me for a fool. Here goes.'

"I surrender!" The shout cut across the argument from either end of the bridge.

"What?" Ghost Writer asked dumbly, blinking.

"I surrender. I'll come quietly." There was silence for a moment, nothing but the sound of gulls above and the gentle crash of sea water below. Handy could practically feel the thestral mare to his right smirk. No, scratch that, he could actually feel the smarmy confidence from this distance.

"Very good~" she said. "I'm glad you finally saw sense."

"Now come along quietly," Ghost Writer followed up.

"And I'll get right on that." Handy said, feeling a smile tug on his lips. No one moved, and Handy could sense the uncertainty in the ponies around him.

"Just… to clarify. Who are you surrendering to?" Midnight Blossom asked. Handy shrugged his shoulders. Not an easy thing to do in plate, so it just looked as if he was shifting his weight.

"Whoever gets to me first," he goaded. There, he felt it. The uncertainty in the crossbow ponies was shifted. He glanced to his left. Yep, they weren't aiming at him anymore. At least two were aiming at the Equestrians, and the other had his bow aimed skywards for safety, unsure of herself.

It was the Equestrians who took the first step. Handy did not move. It was followed by one of the grey blotches on his senses, either the two agents or the Black Guard. Still, Handy did not move. One by one, step by step, warnings and shouts from one side to the other, each wary of the other's movements, each increasingly focusing on each other than on the still unmoving human in their midst.

'Come on, come on, someone do it. I only need one of you to slip up,' he thought. The halberds of the city guards lifted to avoid risking prematurely perforating the royal guards. The ones that didn't were deftly navigated by the Equestrians, their heads parting to let them pass as they inched closer, which the city guards responded in kind when they came in reach of the Equestrians' shorter spears.

"Back off, Equestrian. You have no right to be here," he heard the Viceroyal agent growl.

"What’s a little asset acquisition between friends?~" Midnight responded, her eyes narrowed at Ghost. "We are friends, right?"

Handy looked down. Nothing beneath him but a foot of wooden bridge, empty air, and sea water below. Theoretically, if you know, he were in an action movie, he'd drop off the edge, catch himself off the side, and swing his way to the other side using the underside of the bridge. And the sad thing was, if he had the right blood in him, that sort of nonsensical bullshit was in the realm of possibility for him. He didn't have the right blood. He sighed as the passive aggression built up behind him seemed to come to a boil. The ponies were literally inches away from each other, and there he was, standing on the edge, waiting for them t—

-THWACK- -THUD-

One of the crossbows loosed, and an iron-headed bolt dug into the wood of the bridge next to a Royal Guard. The bridge exploded. Handy very nearly was knocked from the edge, instead falling to his hands and knees to maintain stability. The two sides clashed, their weapons more or less neutralised as it broke into a full melee. He briefly saw the Enclave Black Guard storm into a trio of Royal Guards, tearing them apart and sending them flying. One city guardsman, a unicorn by the looks of her, was knocked flying over his head and into the water below.

Time to leave.

He spotted an opening and took it, clambering to his feet and running along the edge of the bridge. There were shouts of alarm as ponies realized their folly, but they were all too busy trying to prevent the ponies of the opposing side from getting up after him.

"Wind Chill!" Ghost Writer called out. His hooded companion turned in the air after delivering a kick to a gold-clad pegasus. "Take Bull Horn and go after him. We'll hold them off. Go!"

The pegasus nodded and swooped down low, before taking to the air to chase his quarry. The Black Guard stomped on the helm of a groaning Equestrian before he took off, the ranks of the city guard closing behind him as he passed.

--=--

Blood or no blood, this was getting exhausting.

He had managed to get across the third bridge fully before he felt the distinct grey blotches on his senses separate from the teeming mass on the bridge he left. One was above and another on the ground, both gaining on him. The one above seemed to be… circling him? Fucking pegasi. Maybe he should have bitten one of the thestrals; then all of this would not even be a God damn problem. The sun split through the clouds again and his armour lit up. He felt the pair of grey blotches back off and felt a momentary surge of relief. The hairs themselves were thankfully deserted of people, but he could see ponies on the street ahead of him. He also spied more contingents of city guards galloping down the street ahead to try to cut him off where the hairs ended and the city began again. They all seemed quite alarmed and confused about what was going on, more so when a blinding ball of light flew past them and practically jumped through the doors of the brothel.

A very surprised-looking Sea Crest stood with a broom. Her wide-eyed head snapped around to see who exactly broke the lock on the front door this early in the day.

"Handy? Wha—"

"HI SEA CREST, GOOD TO SEE YOU, BROUGHT SOME FRIENDS, GOT TO GO, BYE!" Handy blurted out and immediately ducked to the right, nearly tripping as the carpet bunched up under him as he hurried up the stairs. Several of the mares, who were themselves still bleary-eyed and yawning, walked up to her.

"What was tha' all about then?" Sea Crest shrugged.

"I don't know, but he owes me a new door. Best find out what's gotten into him before he wakes up the whole house."

She didn't have to wait long.

Bull Horn broke down what was left of the door. The black-armoured stallion was massive and filled the room with a dominant presence. He was followed by Wind Chill, who deftly swooped in under the door frame behind him, snapped his wings shut, and landed lightly on the ground, hooded face looking about. A small gaggle of guardponies slowly filed in behind them.

"What is the meaning of this!?" Sea Crest shrieked, outraged at the intrusion. "Get out! You have no right to barge into my property like this!"

"Ma'am, a fugitive is seeking refuge in your place of business. It is in your best interests to comply and aid us," the baritone voice of Bull Horn boomed, reverberating throughout the room. Sea Crest shook her head vigorously.

"I don't care why you're here. You have no right to barge into anypony's property like this. Unless you have a writ of entry from the Lord Mayor himself, you can just trot along. We've done nothing wrong here."

"Ma'am," the soft voice of Wind Chill spoke. It was quiet, barely above a whisper, but held a weight of authority to it that belied its. "I speak with the authority of the Viceroy. We have permission to enter and search if it is in the national interest. Please, get out of our way." Sea Crest harrumphed.

"Don't think you can have your way with me just because you have a pretty face and a smooth voice, darling. I am well aware of the law. And unless it’s a time of war…" She smiled and allowed her eyes to become half-lidded, leaning into his face. "You need to present a writ of entry from the Viceroy too if you want to try that route, smart arse~"

Wind Chill scowled at the madam. His eyes darted around the room at the apparently wary looking comfort mares. His practiced sight picked out details his more violent companion would have missed. Bull Horn made to move forward, but Wind Chill's wing shot out, preventing him from doing so. He looked down at the pegasi.

"Go outside. Surround the building. He can't escape," Wind Chill ordered softly. The Black Guard stood for a moment and looked like he was about to answer before obeying the command and leading the city guard out. Wind followed after them.

"Good boy~" Sea Crest cooed. Wind Chill paused to shoot her a nasty glance over his shoulder before finally following the soldiers out. The door was levitated in magic and leaned up against the door frame. The discretely hidden weapons and blades the gathered mares had been preparing were, with relief, placed back into their hiding places. "Now, I do believe I am owed an explanation… as well as a rather lot of money, I should imagine."

--=--

Finding the hidden door and opening it was harder than Handy remembered, but then again he had been a bit out of it when he first used it to enter the secret passage between the brothel and the townhouse. He emerged from the wall of the corridor like a vengeful spirit, causing a young pony who was apparently balancing a bucket of ice and water on his back to jump and spill the bucket on the floor. Handy ignored him, lost in his rambling curses.

"Of course, of course! Why not! The day I figure out I can leave and find the real target, I get this shit landed on me!" he muttered spitefully as he knocked open the door to his room, gathering up whatever he had foolishly taken out of his pack to carry with him. Several things were going to be left behind. Food, the occasional knickknack he had managed to pick up in the market for a pittance, the Daring Doo book he had managed to purchase on the sly. Shame, he was just getting to the good part, as far as good could be applied to such schlock. I mean, Daring getting up and singlehandedly fighting off five goons with two broken front legs and a wing that was currently suffering some kind of petrification curse? Handy called bullshit. The author was off her rocker if she expected people to swallow that. Still, Handy always did have a weakness for terrible fiction.

"Changelings, Equestrians… Oh sure, chase me across a Goddamn city, I could use the exercise. Everyone can go fuck themselves! Oh, but it makes more sense to reveal yourself now. What’s the worst that could happen? Equestria has no reason to go after you, not here! Honhonhon, I am French!"

None of that mattered now, unfortunately. The hapless young lad Handy had spooked was busy trying to get his bucket, staring forlornly at the spilled contents on the floor. He jumped with a yelp and started off down the hallway after Handy kicked open the door to Thorax's room. Nope, no changelings there. He sighed in frustration and rounded, heading back into the corridor. Hopefully, Jacques was still here. Thankfully, it was unlocked and Handy opened it, stepping on the ice water that was seeping over the wooden floor.

"Jacques, you son of a bitch. You had be—" And for the second time that day, Handy slipped and fell, this time face forward. What he saw left him speechless and was enough to throw him off balance. He pushed himself off the ground, staring up in disbelief. He tore off his helmet, rubbed his hand on the water on the floor, and splashed it across his eyes. Yep, he sure did see what he thought he saw.

There, staring right back at him with surprised looks on their faces was Jacques, lying on his back. And Thorax curled over his stomach. In her changeling form. He shared a look with her, then the covers closed over her eyes, a subtle indication that he was on his own in explaining this.

"I— You— You are— Why— What— ALL THIS TIME!?" Handy struggled, words failing to come to him. Jacques cleared his throat, laughing nervously.

"Listen, Handy, mon ami, it… it uh… it isn't…" He took another look at Thorax, still draped over him, then to the bed and the covers that were half covering them, then back to the apoplectic human on the ground. He sighed. "Oh le Tartare avec lui toute, ce sera plus drôle de cette façon. This is exactly what it looks like."

And Handy descended into spouting unintelligible, angry-sounding gibberish, picking himself off of the ground and, presumably, swearing to himself. At several points one may perceive he might have been speaking some form of coherent language, but it wasn't English, before slipping right back into gibberish. Thorax took the opportunity to crawl off the bed, slipping into her disguise quickly, and closing the door to the hallway before anyone else looked in. Jacques was about to get up too, right before Handy's fists clasped about his neck, lifting him off the bed and slamming him against the wall.

"You sold me out!" Handy shouted.

"What?"

"The City Hall, dozens of them, Equestrians, and those spooks you had me meet a month ago, them too with soldiers of their own. How much was it worth to send me right into the wolves' den!?"

"I have no idea what you are talking about! Let go of me!"

"Let go of him!" Thorax demanded, interposing between the two and pushing Handy off of him. Jacques slid down the wall back onto the bed below, rubbing his neck.

"I never sold you out, sanglant enfer. What are you on about?"

"You sent me to deliver a packet to the Lord Mayor, and what should I find when I walk in there? Dozens of Equestria's finest, the two shady characters who brought me along to see a month ago, and what happens? As soon as I am out of there, I am running for my life."

"But that doesn't make any sense…" Jacques said, eyes darting about as his mind worked. "Why would… oh merde."

"What?" Thorax spoke up, "What’s wrong?"

"I thought I could keep them happy so long as they thought I was the one keeping an eye on you. And the Equestrians… dozens you say?"

"Oh, and half a dozen changelings. I thought you took care of all that!?" Handy growled at Thorax.

"I did! I don't know where they came from. I was just lying low here to avoid them."

"Oh yeah I'll bet, just… Gah, my mind is— I can't take this. Look, Jacques, I don't have a lot of time. I lost most of them by throwing an army of thieves and whores at them."

"…You what."

"I improvised! It doesn't matter. I lost them in the brothel on the way here. I need to find my way to the harbour. And money. I need a secret way out. You know secret things. Make it happen," Handy demanded.

"Just calm down for goodness sake, Handy. I did not sell you out!"

"Well it sure looks that way from where I'm standing!"

"Why would I do that!? The entire point of that meeting was to set things up so that the Viceroyalty wouldn't do anything to you, because I'd be wherever you were!"

"And why should they care about that at all!?"

"Because I am a spy, alright!?" Jacques threw his arms up, frustrated. "Troubadours, ponies like me? The Black Isles regularly uses ponies from traveling communities as their eyes and ears on the continent. Most ponies do. We're everywhere; we fit in easier than non-ponies; we're not as distinctive as Enclavers or Black Islanders, and we know where all the… shadier dens are. It’s good money. They got their hooves on me after I… Well, let's just say there's a reason I live in a city now. I was trying to protect you, protect you both while you were here. I wasn't expecting Equestria to drop a detachment here in Blackport out of the blue!"

"Well then, where did they come from, hmm? And the Black Guards?"

"The kingdoms have a long running understanding, but never something this… drastic. There must be an Equestrian ship in port. There's no way they could have crossed the border and the viceroyalty is only acting now… and if Ghost Writer brought Black Guards to get to you first, that means they were always planning on preventing you from leaving. They never told me… We need to move you. Now!"

"While this is all very interesting," a sweet, gentle voice cooed from the doorway. They turned to find Sea Crest entering the room. "But you wouldn't be planning on running out on a bill, would you, sweetheart?"

"Oh, heh, Sea Crest. Look now’s not a good time, Jacques said, tapping his forehooves together nervously.

"Oh yes, I can see that, what with soldiers tearing down my front door. You do keep such interesting company." She cast a knowing look to Handy before looking back at Jacques. "That'll be, oh, I don't know, a month's rent for three ponies, the cost of replacing a door, and hmm, it seems two of the doors up here have broken locks, busted open even. I wonder who could've done that."

Jacques gave Handy an exhausted look. Handy for his part, coughed and put his helmet back on. Jacques just sighed and reached into the drawer by the bedside, grumbling. He hoofed out a key and levitated it to Sea Crest.

"Junction four, lockbox nine, let the teller know how much you want and you'll find enough in there."

"And if I don't?" Her voice was sweet and subtle, her eyes lidded and her smile genuine, but Handy swore he saw Jacques shiver.

"I'll… make up the difference." Thorax raised a questioning brow at him. He waved her off with a hoof.

"Very nice. Now, with that unpleasantness out of the way," she said, hoofing the key away into her saddle. "I don't know what sort of trouble you're in, boys, but it’s a doozy. I take it you need the express exit before the oh so valiant boys in black march up to my humble front door with their writ of entry?"

"That would be appreciated. Have they locked down?" Jacques asked. Handy looked to Thorax to hopefully get a clue as to what was being talked about. She shook her head.

"Mostly. The tunnel is open for the next, ohhh, five minutes? You might want to hurry." Jacques went wide-eyed. His horn grew incandescent and his sword, belt, cloak, and hat whizzed to him from about the room as he leapt off the bed.

"Vite il faut nous dépêcher maintenantmaintenantmaintenantmaintenant!" he shouted faster and faster as he hurried past the Madame, leaving a blinking Thorax and Handy in his wake. Sea Crest smiled at them.

"You might want to hurry after him now. It’s never a good sign to see him panicking, after all."

That was all the motivation the two of them needed to hurry after the stallion.

--=--

Secret tunnels for ponies were wider than the ones human built would be. Unfortunately, they were just as short, forcing Handy to his hands and knees, trapped behind the pair of ponies, in utter darkness, trusting the swishing tail of whichever of them was in front of him that they knew where they were going. You see, he made the mistake of not taking off his helmet, limiting his head movement and overall vision.

However, on the up side, he gained the ability to give adequate incentive to whoever was in front of him to hurry up in the form of the bladed wings on his helm.

Perspective was everything, really.

"How far does this go?" Handy demanded. He was shushed.

"As long as they need to," Jacques whispered back. "And keep it down. You don't know who's just above you down here."

That was about as noisy as they got, although Handy could've sworn that once they were into the tunnel, he heard grinding stone somewhere behind him.

And so it was they travelled in silence, an hour, maybe two. They went from the hidden door in the surprisingly well-stocked cellar of the brothel all the way to… the fishery.

"You have got to be kidding me," Handy said, nose wrinkling at the stench. Despite appearances, given the wooden flooring, the wall of the fishery met the stone wall of the harbour where it met the streets of the city above them. So it was they pulled back a wooden panel and emerged into the dark interior of the very fishery he was in earlier that morning. It was still deserted.

"Come on, quickly!" Jacques hissed. "We need to find you a way out of the city."

"I have a way out," Handy said. "There's a ship in port. Captain is only here for a few more hours before he sets off. I need a way of bribing him to take me on as a passenger."

"With what!?" Jacques quietly screamed. "I don't have anything to lend you. You're going to have to stowaway."

"Oh yeah, real inconspicuous. How the hell am I going to clamber aboard without anyone raising a fuss?" Handy countered. Thorax sat by the water side, thinking, her tail swishing as she considered something.

"What, you expect me to know!? I got us out of the hideout and to the harbour. I can't work miracles, Handy!"

"Well, what the hell am I going to do!? It’s not as if I can just pass myself off as a pony, now can I?"

"Actually…" Thorax tried to begin but was interrupted.

"I never said you should! Vous ingrat, constamment en colère, déraisonnable, lourdaud insoutenable!"

"Okay okay, look," Handy said. "You know what? Fine, thanks. Thanks for everything I'm just… It’s been a bad day, alright?"

"You actually can—"

"It’s fine. Its’ fine, really, just… I am out a lot of money because of this. You're a friend, Handy, but consider it from my point of view. I'm on the Viceroy's list of pet spies. I just stuck my neck out for you. Can you appreciate where I am coming from?"

"Yeah. Yeah I guess," Handy admitted, pacing back and forth, rubbing his gloved left forearm. "Still doesn't solve getting me from here to the ship without being spotted."

"Oh well, let’s just solve world hunger while we're at it."

"Oh, don't give me that, and how long has this been going on anyway?"

"Has what been going on?"

"This!" He gesticulated wildly, indicating both Jacques and Thorax.

"Oh, that?"

"Yeah!"

"…A while."

"Well, if you two are done interrupting me," Thorax said, her voice deadpan. "I might have a solution to the problem."

--=--

"And when were you going to tell me this?" Handy demanded, now seated on a crate, gently rubbing his arm. He had brushed against a rusty fishing hook that tore along his left arm. The cut had healed up instantly thanks to his blood high, but it left a splash of red slowly drying on his arm.

"Oh yes!" Thorax said brightly. "How about I tell the blood sucker, who I am alone in the forest with, that he gains the ability to shift how ponies perceive him when he is hopped up on changeling blood. That sounds like it'd be great for my health." Her face dropped as she gave him a wry expression. Handy bounced his foot on the floor, thinking. If he could pull that off without meaning to, could he do it on purpose?

"So… you can change your form? Like a changeling?" Jacques asked.

"I don't… think so. When I saw him do it and I realised the illusion for what it was, I could see through it after shaking it off," Thorax added

"Look, as fascinating as this is, we do not have the time right now. We need to get out of here and to the Ironmonger."

"The what?"

"It’s the ship currently in port," Handy said, waving his hand. "The only one here actually." That gave Jacques pause.

"But if it’s the only ship, then—"

Just at that moment, there was a tremendous crashing noise coming from outside, the sound of a wooden warehouse collapsing in on itself. It was followed by the ground shaking. They stumbled, shouting in the fishery as its fixings were dislodged and knocked to the ground. Soon, even the shouting was silenced. A whooshing noise filled the air, as something pulled the air into a central point somewhere outside. Briefly, all noise was muted. It was hard to breath, and the air felt pressurized.

And all at once, it was let out.

A tremendous green flash of energy and the sound of an explosion rocked the entire harbour. The wooden boardwalk outside, and the fishery along with it, shuddered and rolled, lifting up and crashing back down. The fell light overpowered the daylight, reducing everything in darkness that was not touched by the sickening green glow that spilled in-between the wooden panels of the walls. The entire building groaned as the wood settled and cracked. Handy picked himself off of the ground, his vision blurred and dizzying, his head pounding as if something were hammering at it to get in. The air felt heavy as his ears rang. The other two were in worst states, the two of them clutching their ears and writhing on the ground. Handy stumbled over to the door of the fishery, eyeing the ceiling warily as the wood continued to groan and threaten to give way. The water below them seemed to be receding.

He pushed on, opening the door.

Black Port was a city in chaos. The sky was darkened, the clouds circling around a veritable hole in the sky itself, pulled in from the sky around the city as if drawn into a vortex. The harbour was wrecked, several sections having collapsed into the water completely, with little else other than the harbour master's house still standing. The merchant district was devastated, the fine townhouses of the wealthy trading class desiccated and ravaged from the blast that had levelled an entire warehouse utterly.

He could barely see, low down as he was, what was going on above. There were pegasi in the air, a lot of them. The tell-tale glints of armour made it easy to distinguish the Equestrians from the Black Port guards. A strange, blueish glow emanated from the epicentre.

"You can't be seriously…" Handy breathed, looking back at the other two, then up at the fishery around them. It would be safe just to leave them there. Jacques being closer, he lugged him out the door. He was still insensible from whatever had happened, and Handy couldn't get him to react. Next he dragged out Thorax, still in her disguise thankfully, and he propped both of them by the harbour wall. If nothing else, they wouldn't die if the building collapsed. He looked back up. Old magic, it had to be, but it felt wrong. But why now? A month of searching and nothing, but why now? Now, for some reason, the warlock made his move? Could it be Thunder was here after all, and the note he got regarding Manehatten was mistaken? He had to find out.

It felt like his armour was filled with treacle, his movements feeling heavy and slow as he ascended the steps back up into the city. Vaguely, he could hear panicked screaming in the distance as ponies ran from the centre of the catastrophe. He saw a few bodies in the streets, mostly guards. All were alive but clutching their heads, writhing like his friends had been. A few soldiers were standing, their bodies tense and trying to struggle on, their head bowed and faces twisted in concerted effort. The few who noticed Handy did little more than bat the air with their hooves in his general direction. Their feelings were erratic, in pain and scared, panicking yet not thrashing about. What the hell was wrong with them all? The worst Handy was getting was a very bad headache.

He moved on, the pounding on his head increasing with each step that took him closer and closer to the source, moving along the street overlooking the harbour. On and on until…

He saw it.

It was a pony, or at least it looked like one. It floated in the air, a metre off of the ground. The pulverised stonework and earth beneath it radiated out from it, the centre of the dent it had made in the earth. The broken beams and shattered wood of the warehouse around it stood like the skeletal bones of a desiccated carcass, blackened as if burned. The creature was covered in a hard, rough surface, like stone and soil that had been hardened by a furnace. Its eyes were large, glowing a bright yellow like the most intense fire. Its cavernous mouth opened impossibly wide, deep blackness within which spilled forth in a foul-smelling smog that dissipated as it dripped and fell, turning to smoke and disappearing in the air. It was wreathed in fell energies, the air shimmering and warping around it, pulsing as the blueish green glow intensified. Several Royal Guards and at least one of the Black Guards lay nearby, a testament to the foolishness that had wakened the beast.

The creature turned to regard the human. Its mouthed opened, and a bestial scream erupted from its throat, too loud to have been possible in a creature so small. The very air was repulsed in the wake of its voice, warping and distorting as the sound travelled to his ears. The sound reeked of malevolent intent, and Handy felt weakness in his legs. His armour began glowing in tandem with the pulse of energy in the magical aura around the creature, shimmering in its own right lowly, glowing incandescent at intervals when the magic washed over him, whipping his cloak back. The creature bore down on him with hatred in what passed for its eyes, in which nothing could be perceived but a mindless hatred for all that surrounded it.

So why did it feel so scared?

He heard heavy landings behind him and turned. Several of the Equestrians had landed, having seen him from above and braving proximity to this… thing when they saw him approach it. He would have felt sickened when he recognised the thestral at their head had he not already been trying to contend with the almost physical sense of dread and revulsion he felt from the old magic in use less than ten feet away from him.

"Wait!" Stellar called out, flanked as she was by two solar pegasi. One was cradling her head with a wing. "Stop, don't go near it!"

"Oh just bugger off!" Handy shouted back, trying to be heard over the roaring winds and the sound of the creature's own roars. He looked back at Stellar, noting the cuts and bruises she bore from the delightful little distraction Shocks so thoughtfully provided for him. She looked to be in as much pain as everyone else. "I have to find out for myself."

"Find out what? Handy, what do you know about this!?" Stellar shouted, trying to take another step forward, each one a difficulty in itself. The other pegasi and thestrals, Enclaver and Equestrian alike, were hanging back, unwilling to get closer than they already were. They tried to keep their distance from the thing that seemed to be incapacitating anyone who drew near. He could see a lot of them slowly descend back into the city, one by one, evidently fearing giving out in mid-air and falling to their deaths. Handy sighed once.

"This!" Handy said, unhooking his hammer and steadying himself as another roar from the creature seemed to shake all of them. "This is the same thing that knocked you out on the train. This is what caused the calamity at the festival at Firthengart. This is why I've been haunting this city for a full month trying to find. This!" He gestured at the creature. "This is why I cannot go back to Griffonia until I am sure its threat has been eliminated. Go tell your princesses that if it will ease their concerns. Everything was going fine until you bastards showed up and ruined it all!"

"But what… what is it!?" Stellar managed. "What are those voices?" Voices? Handy didn't hear anything. Handy looked at the creature that still hung in the air before them. Every ounce of its physical presence oozed dread and malevolence. Yet it still hung there, not attacking anyone. And yet Handy could perceive that the pony at the heart of it was scared out of its mind, manically so. Something was wrong here.

"If I do my job right, you'll never have to find out," Handy said simply, though he doubted he could be heard over the roaring wind. He trudged on down into the shallow crater the creature had created. Each step was more difficult as he drew nearer, the pounding on his head more forceful and painful, the franticness of the creature's emotions more pronounced and crazed.

The world began to make less and less sense. The blue light was incandescent and he could barely perceive anything other than the creature before him, screaming at him. His knees buckled and he fell to the ground, catching himself before completely collapsing. The pain was almost unbearable, and his limbs didn't seem to want to respond. Someone was shouting behind him, but he couldn't hear. He couldn't even think. He crawled on the ground before pushing himself to his feet. The creature was inches away, bellowing into his face. It smelled foul and rotten, its countenance twisting the more Handy looked at it.

It took a phenomenal effort, but Handy managed to raise his hammer over his head and brought it down. The metal struck the crown of the creature's skull. Splintered rock and dried earth broke off of it as it shrugged off the blow, once more bellowing in Handy's face. But not once did it strike back. Handy struck again. Each time the pressure in the air lessened, the pounding on the inside of his skull slackened, and it became easier to breathe and to think. The light in the creature's eyes grew dimmer and dimmer, the foulness dripping from its maw lessening as its jaw began slipping back into normal proportions. More and more of its 'shell' flaked off as he struck. But as he did so, the magical aura around the creature grew wilder still, unstable. Someone was approaching him from behind – he could feel them. Each hammer blow he delivered lessened the creature's area of effect.

At last, the glow in its eyes diminished, and in its place were the eyes of a pony, rolled back into its skull. The irises slid back down to look out at the world, a milky grey film that covered them melting away, revealing the colours of its eyes. Handy brought the hammer back up and, with a shout, brought it back down on the pony's skull, finally breaking through its shell of stone utterly with a tremendous crack.

And then all was white.

Handy came to his senses a dozen feet away, his armour glowing and a lancing pain through his head. It was almost debilitating. He took a moment to roll over to his side, groaning as everything seemed to ache and hurt all at once. The sky was brightening up, the clouds drifting apart, and the air felt normal. Gone was the heaviness that had felt like it was weighing him down. He pushed off the planks of wood that lay on top of him. His helmet was gone, lying in a puddle a short distance away. His hammer lay not much farther beyond that. The Equestrians were gone. He vaguely made out a tail jutting out over the top of a pile of wreckage. Whatever just happened had knocked them silly as well.

He got up, hearing shallow breathing nearby. There, in the centre of the whole mess, lay a thin, blue earth pony stallion. It lay huddled, forelegs curled up under him, shivering and in obvious pain, his eyes screwed shut. Handy could feel that he was in pain, terrified. He certainly looked the part.

Light blue coat, earth pony, stallion, weird magic. But it wasn't Thunder. Handy had no idea who this pony was. He looked vaguely familiar, however. Like he had seen this pony about the harbour every now and again, but he had never seen anything to draw his suspicion before.

And it was easy. Far, far too easy. He recalled the fight with Thunder. The pony had more or less floored him, and that was even with him hopped up on thestral blood. His first fight with Crimson had not been easy either, yet this guy just… stood there. He stood there and took it, not once lashing out or defending himself. Just screaming and reducing people to gibbering wrecks on the ground. There had to be something he was missing.

"Who the hell are you?" he asked quietly, holding his side. The pony didn't answer, curling up on the ground in pain. Although for all that, it didn’t seem to be from Handy’s hammer blows. Hell, there wasn’t a mark on his head. Strange. He looked up. The skies were clear, the pegasi either been knocked out of the sky or had descended beforehand. The guards who had found him were littering the ground around the ruined warehouse, out cold. He was tired, aching, and his head felt like it had a hot, burning brand skewering it. He looked down at the pony one more time, contemplating his options before leaving the poor bastard to the dubious care of the ponies of Black Port. It wasn't Thunder. Thunder was in Manehatten, and Handy had a boat to catch. Given his geas wasn't giving him trouble over it, he guessed it was a decision in keeping with its rules.

He stumbled over to his helmet and hammer. Sure enough, his helmet seemed to have a rent down the side, from behind the bladed wing right down to the bottom. No wonder it came off so easily. His attention was drawn to his right by a groan. He looked down to see Stellar Eclipse sprawled out on the ground, the unconscious body of another pony on her back. He paused. He ran his forefinger along the head of the hammer in his hand as he thought about it.

She was right there, helpless. It could be passed off as the effect of the magical blast. He could take his revenge now and be done with it. Just tear off that helmet and a few good strikes and it'd be over. He'd have some measure of closure. He looked around. The harbour and surrounding merchant district was deserted. Whoever was still here wasn't conscious. He could do it and then just slip away. He looked back down at her. The cold empty feeling that had taken the place of the rage that welled up within him at her trespass against him struggled to force his hand.

No.

It wouldn't do, not here. No, when he got his revenge, he wanted her to actually be able to stand, just so he could have the pleasure of making her fall. He rotated his jaw at the thought.

"One day, vampire," he said quietly as he turned to walk away. "One day."

--=--

Considering the time he had left to work with, Handy was of the opinion that he did well.

The old magic, whatever effect it had on the ponies, had knocked them out cold for a good twenty or so minutes. He wasn't sure what the area of effect was, but everyone in or around the harbour was out for the count, the skies were clear, and that was good enough for Handy.

Pity he couldn't find Thorax and Jacques. They weren't where he had left them, and the fishery still stood strong. He couldn't afford to waste the time looking for them. The harbour bell sounded from out on the harbour walls, signalling the tide and the opening of the gates. If the ship, the Ironmonger was going to leave anytime today, it was going to be now.

Handy ran to the far end of the harbour, using the street above it as entire sections had collapsed into the water. He did indeed find a ship, squirreled away at a pier on its lonesome between a rope maker's building and something that vaguely resembled some kind of ironmonger's store, with the comically oversized, painted, wooden anchor on the roof of the building.

He'd comment on the joke of a ship named the Ironmonger weighing anchor next to an ironmongers with an anchor, but he was in a bit of a hurry. The ship was a simple, dark oaken wood construction with a rusted iron bullhead for a figurehead. There was a surprising lack of ponies on board or around it, but the ones that were on board were out cold, and that was fine with Handy. He hurried across the gangplank, pack safely secured around his waist, and made it aboard. He felt awkward and unsure of foot on the shifting boat but made do. Now, where would be the best place to stowaway on a ship?

Clearly Handy had not thought this through as he figured the best place to hide would be one that, it turned out was checked literally every day by crewmen. And that was the storage room near the bottom of the vessel.

It was confusing, navigating the near darkness below deck, the cramped conditions only more so for someone of Handy's stature. He almost outright stepped on a pony's foreleg by mistake, the sailor sprawled out between what looked to be a cask of porter and a rack filled with onions. Eventually, he found his way to the store and, sure enough, it was packed. He already started hearing people move on the deck above him, so he hurried up, closing the door and fumbling in the darkness to try to remove the bulky and cumbersome armour, managing only his remaining gauntlet and pauldrons before saying fuck it and putting a huge stack of bags filled with grain between him and the door. He found an open box on the ground and stared at it.

And stared at it.

All this time, everything he went through, and he'd be leaving Black Port the way he came.

Locked.

In a box.

It wasn't even that it was too small. It could fit him fine if he brought his legs up to his chest, a difficult prospect giving what he was wearing. He heard cursing coming from above and resigned himself to his fate. Handy was going to have to be the box vampire once more.

Resigning himself, he hurriedly worked away at his armour. Practiced or not, trying to take off armour by yourself, in the dark, on a rocking ship in a cramped space was enough to reduce anyone to a frenzy of frustration.

He managed it, bundled up the majority of his armour in a sheet complete with his packs and stuffed it as quietly as he could between the wooden box and the wall. That was to say that it was distressingly loud, at least from Handy's perspective. But no one came close; the voices he heard seemed to be distant, coming from above him or from outside. He wasted no more time and clambered inside.

As he did so, the disturbance caused a couple of the bags of seeds to fall off of their pile and land on top of the crate, slamming the lid shut much to Handy's surprise. But he didn't complain. He waited.

And waited.

And waited some more, waiting for the ship to set sail to leave the port. It didn't go anywhere. Not for another hour. Or the one after that. Or the one after that. Finally, at long last, he began to hear commotion, hoofsteps everywhere above him, shouts and orders and the groan of wood under strain. There was the distant rattle of metal on wood coming from somewhere to the front of the ship, and the vessel dipped alarmingly to the side as Handy felt the ship finally set off from the harbour.

And just as he was about to relax, someone kicked the door to the storeroom in.

"Un-bucking believable!"

"Calm down, it could've been worse."

"Oh, I'm sorry, you're right, Skippy. I sure am glad nopony died. Only a casualty list as long as my tail, a catastrophe that more than likely the Viceroy will pin on Equestria so Princess Galaxy doesn't get her bridle in a twist. Oh, and he got the buck away and the only one who knows where he went is in the hooves of those, those—!"

"Calm, down," the stallion said. There was a pause as the mare evidently didn't calm down, muttering to herself. "We are lucky they are letting us go like this at all and the matter is being argued above our heads. Not our fault we followed orders."

"If you think the commander—!"

"The commander doesn't know which guards went. Princess' orders – we'll be alright. Look, go for a walk up on deck, calm your nerves. If nothing else, we'll be back in Equestria before you know it.

'Wait a minute… I know those voices…'

"Heh, don't you mean, Griffonia?" The mare chuckled. The stallion cleared his throat.

"Now in fairness, this ship was in fact coming from Griffonia. Not the captain's fault he ran into an 'extraordinary patrol vessel' of the Royal Equestrian Navy and received a handsome sum for acquiescing to quartering."

'…No,' Handy thought. 'No, no, nononononono,'

"Hmph, well, I don't want my first stint as sergeant to be such a disaster. I'm just… We were so close!"

"I know. Look, go take that walk, and we can discuss this later. I only dragged you in here before you exploded in front of the soldiers."

"Yeah," she said, sniffing. "Although I wonder what this captain is carrying. Smells good whatever it is."

I absolutely refuse to believe this. This is not happening. It isn't. No, go fuck yourself, universe, you aren't doing this to me, not today'

"I'm sure plenty of things he'd rather we not find out about. No go on."

"Fine…" she said as she closed the door behind her. The stallion stayed where he was, and Handy heard him sigh, as well as the sound of hard metal hitting wood and that of a body flopping against several bags worth of granular material. It was quiet for a time.

When I open this lid to peek out, it will be just a random sailor pony. No one else and certainly not what I think it is.' Gently, so very gently, he pushed up on the lid with his head, a not inconsiderable task given the extra weight not lying on top of it. He managed to lift it barely more than a crack to let only one eye spy out, but that was enough.

And there he saw the white pegasus with light blonde mane lying back against the pile of grain bags, the porthole window open and sunlight pouring in illuminating his resplendent golden armour.

Handy was most certainly on the very same boat as every single one of the royal guards he had been seeking to escape.

'Oh,' he thought, his brain working to process the sheer fuckery he had landed in. 'Bollocks.'

Author's Note

As always, please alert me to any JBL fuckery I may have missed.

Or I shall sing the song of blood.

Chapter 42 - Cat's Paw

He didn't try it, if you must know. The disguising ability, he didn't want to risk it, not on this ship. He didn't know how to make it work on purpose or even if Thorax was right about it at all. He remembered his own time in that forest, how it had messed with even his own mind. It was the same mind that, if his suspicions were correct, seemed resistant to any attempts to alter it magically. Thorax might have merely been suffering under the same delusions, for delusions they were and certainly not real.

There is no road.

So it was that he slouched back in his uncomfortable box, gathering an impressive collection of interesting aches and pains, hour after hour, awaiting the time when the ship fell asleep. He felt the brightness of his senses dim. The tugging feeling he had begun to adapt to diminished in severity and clarity as the changeling blood ran its course and its power waned, leaving him with only the bare powers and not their fullest extent. Still, it left his thirst sated and his mind at ease. He liked it when he remembered his humanity and was not reminded of his needs.

So it was that he waited. The thestral mare came back, the smirking one, to see the white pegasus. Cloud Skipper and Midnight Blossom were their names. He would not bother to remember them. They stayed there a while still, in the storeroom, with their quarry nary five feet away and none the wiser for it. He could not see them, for he dared not peek beyond the box. He could barely hear them, so hushed were their whispers and inaudible was their speech as they sat in the quiet of the store. He felt them, however, a strangeness to their beings he could not identify, a calmness to their roiling emotions. He did not mind, for it left him well enough alone. So it was that they left in their turn, leaving him to his thoughts and his churning stomach, for Handy was not a man with sea legs born to him.

His arm ached and he ignored it, thankful for the darkness hiding the sight of the blemish that became his left arm day after day. It spasmed and he bore it with gritted teeth. He wished to vomit but rebuked his urges. And then night fell, and he felt the ship grow at ease, the soft noise that was the beings of everyone aboard falling asleep, lessening the strain on his mind's eye. Mercifully, the tugging grew lighter.

So he emerged.

He quietly made his way out of the store, knowing intrinsically where everyone was in relation to him. Even if he could not tell one tugging sensation from another, it still aided him. He effortlessly avoided them, unburdened by his armour, navigating the near pitch blackness of the ship's interior, from store, to hold, to galley, guided by the faint glow of lanterns and candles in the few cabins he passed. The majority of the soldiers were asleep in the hold, the cabins largely given over to the crew. Everything else appeared to be taken up by supplies or goods to be traded. His only issue was occasionally tripping over something, in one case a discarded, armoured pony boot. Otherwise, he made no noise, or as little as humanly possible, his uncovered feet chaffing against the rough wooden flooring.

It was foolish, he knew, but he needed to know more. Perhaps find a better hiding place, find something edible for when he got hungry in a few hours. His sated bloodlust would only hold off his natural, physical hunger for so long. And so it was that when he had made it to the galley, staffed only by food and a stone oven for the cooking, he was nearly discovered.

The door slammed open and Handy, in a state of distraction as he looked among the perishables for a recognizable vegetable or root tubers, fell to the floor. He pushed up and under the wooden counter, between bags of turnips and a barrel filled with something sweet and scented. Thus hidden, he willed his heart to slow and struggled to not make a sound.

He needn't have bothered. The pair that entered made plenty of sound for the sake of it.

"Get back here!" the first mare hissed. Wasn’t that Midnight? Golden-eyed, light purple hair, smirked a lot? Seemed she was her consulting with someone. White Boy perhaps?

"Just leave me be, Sergeant."

Nope.

His jaw set in place and his fist clenched as he heard that accursed voice again. When he had said he would deal with her another day, he hadn't meant it to be so soon.

"I'm not your sergeant right now," Midnight said, closing the door behind her. "You mind telling me what’s wrong?"

"You know what’s wrong." Stellar settled down somewhere to Handy's right. Briefly, Handy was thankful he had chosen a hiding spot that had something that smelled so strongly within it. He heard chainmail shift as the other mare drew nearer.

"Look, what happened in Blackport wasn't your fault. So he got away – big deal. Th–"

"That's not what I am talking about," Stellar interrupted angrily. Their voices were hushed, but their feelings were all too clear, or as clear as they could be. Midnight was calm, but Stellar…

Well, Handy wasn't quite sure. It was stormy and felt blackened and hard. He could not read it, but it was loud and erratic.

"Back at the bar, where I lost him first, when we were attacked by that drunk."

"I wasn't there, but I got the report."

"The hate…" Stellar breathed. "I saw the hate in her eyes…"

"Well yeah, Equestrians aren't all that popular in the Enclave, but I wouldn't say we—"

"No you don’t understand. Us! She hated us! She didn't just fight us, she went after us, the thestrals in particular. The things she said…"

"Look, Stellar, listen to me. It's not as bad as you think. Most ponies aren't really sure what to think about the whole thing, and they know better than to judge us all by the pelt. You know this. Stop beating yourself up over it. You already paid the price."

"A short suspension and being stuck in the princess' bad books for the next stars know how long is hardly enough to make up for it! You know what we've went through. Ponies always avoided us on the streets even before the human showed up. Before I, somehow, defied the impossible and turned him into something like us and passed the curse and made things so much worse!"

"Oh yeah. Ponies step out of the way when they see armoured royal guards walking past them. Clearly they are hiding deep-seated fears and not, you know, stepping out of the way of intimidating professional soldiers or anything. Wait ‘til I tell Sergeant Cloud. He will be so shocked considering not a single day guard he knows has ever felt the same way." Midnight sighed sarcastically.

"You know damn well what I mean. My friends have suffered enough because of it. And it’s all my fault."

"Stop that."

"But it is! I've brought back the ignorance and the fear an-and all because I couldn't help myself. All b-because I lost control and sucked somepony's blood, like a, like a—!" The slap was loud enough that Handy could hear it from where he was. It certainly shut Stellar up.

"Get a hold of yourself. Listen to me. Are you listening? Good." Midnight breathed heavily. "If you think you're the only thestral to have broken the law when it comes to taking blood from other ponies, you are so badly in denial it would be hilarious if it wasn't so sad. And you know others have done it from time to time, and you know some have willing donors. Most others have their own ways of doing things: the occasional chicken, getting 'delayed' on patrols in wooded areas, taking leave to go back home to the Hollows, Blackwoods, and Fetsworth. And you know why they do."

"But the potion—"

"Works, yeah, I know it does. We all do. But it tastes like ash and vomit."

"…How do you know wha—?"

"Not the point! But would you expect a griffon to eat fake meat that gives them what they need but tastes like stale bread if the bread were made from wood chippings? Don't give me that look, I know a guy. You had been putting it off for a while, weren't you? When it came to that night, how long had you been going cold on the rations?"

"…A while."

"And you had no backup plan. That was stupid."

"But I bit somepony…"

"Yeah you did, and you didn't even have the courtesy to buy dinner first." She laughed lightly, but it slowly died off. Judging by what he was sensing, Stellar was not particularly amused. She sighed. "Yes, okay, you messed up. What you did was wrong, but nopony could have foreseen you'd… you know, change him. That's never happened before."

"I still shouldn't have done it. There's no excuse. I failed everypony. I-I disgraced the princess."

"Luna is still sore from the Celestial Wars. She's just scared that what happened would cause the same scare as it would back then. She is just trying to protect us. She doesn't understand ponies are different now. They're… well, okay, still freaked out, but it’s not like it was back then. I don't see thestrals driven out of their hometowns, do you?"

"But the wars are ancient history."

"And until six years ago, so was the princess." That gave Handy reason to raise an eyebrow. "That’s why she was so furious with us, with you in particular. In fact, that’s why you were on this mission, because of your relationship to the human."

"But he hates me! Why would she want me here because of that? That's more likely to make the mission fail than anything else."

"Because there is no way he couldn't respond to you because of that," her senior replied. "Maybe he would've seen reason, maybe he would've attacked, but it would have kept him busy long enough to corner him, maybe get him away before the Enclave could stop us. What we didn't account for was you going off on your own."

"Yeah, well, we didn't account for changelings either," Stellar replied, suddenly uncertain of herself. He heard chewing and the next time Midnight spoke, her words had to pass through a mouthful of, apparently, bread.

"So…" Midnight said, chewing noisily. "How did he take it?"

"What?"

"The news. I imagine you tried talking to him before, you know, getting into a bar fight. Now, I'm not a stickler for regulations and rules most days of the week, but it was a lllliiittle early for that, don't you think?"

"That's not funny."

"Matter of perspective. So?"

"He… He said he can't. He said the reason he was even here is because he was chasing something."

"The pony with the freaky power?"

"Yeah, he'd been chasing it for weeks before we showed up. He said that’s why he can't go back to Griffonia, because what we saw there was what… what killed him."

The chewing stopped.

"Need to clean my ears out. Come again?"

"The pony at the port, the… things that attacked the train when we first… when I… back then… Those things that we fought, and the giant monster on the roof that knocked me out of the air – they were the same thing. They had the same magical source of whatever it was. It was the same thing that caused that mess at the festival that supposedly killed him. He couldn't go back until he was sure it wasn't a threat anymore."

"And do you believe that?"

"I don't know. He may even be behind it. But he stopped the thing on the train; he stopped the pony back in Blackport and… Well, after he disappeared, the festival stopped having weird magic affecting everything."

"And Blueblood?"

"Nothing. If he knows or did anything, he didn't give anything away."

Blueblood? What did he have to do with anything?

"And you say he is hunting this… whatever it is? This magic?"

"It seems like it. We found one pin from the time on the train. Another was found at the festival, and here we have confirmation. He's linked to it somehow."

"Now see, do you think anypony else would have gotten that out of him?"

"Probably."

"Don't sell yourself short, kid."

"…You're younger than me. By a year."

"Ah ah, I outrank you. That’s enough. And now we know that whatever those events were, it’s important enough to cause the human to not go back to Griffonia, even if his kingdom is potentially in danger. Heh, and you said you would hurt more than help."

"But that's not much."

"It’s more than nothing, which is what we otherwise would have had. Now we just need to find out where he is going next. Either he's a threat, or what he's chasing is, and we still have our orders."

"And the changelings?"

"Well, he did throw them under the wagon to get away from us, so your guess is as good as mine, but hey, don't worry about it."

"Yeah… Yeah, I guess."

"…Hey, you alright?"

"Fine. Just need to think, I guess."

"Right, but don't beat yourself up any further."

"Ow!"

"You're already beat up enough as it is. Have you washed those cuts yet?"

"Yeah." So that’s what he smelt. He could just about make out something strange yet familiar through the pungent aroma of whatever the hell was stored in this barrel.

"Well get them covered, get some sleep, and get your head cleared. We're going to have a Tartarus of a field report to make. Those are orders."

"I thought you weren't here as my sergeant?"

"And now I am. Good night."

"Yeah. Good night."

And those were the last spoken words he heard that night. For the next hour, he would be sitting stock still underneath the counter of the ship's galley, the waves rocking the boat gently underneath, and a moping bat pony sitting just above him. The moping bat pony, who sat there in silence, chewing away on a piece of bread. Whatever internal conflict that was raging within her hadn't let up just because Sergeant Smirks-a-Lot left the room. And as uncomfortable as that unwitting company was, it left Handy alone in the quiet, with only his thoughts for company.

He didn't feel any guilt, or sadness, or sympathy for the plight of the thestrals. None whatsoever. Their fellow ponies distrusted and distanced themselves from each and every one of them? Handy was perfectly fine with that. The one who ruined his life had deep doubts and self-loathing over what she had done— No, correction, the consequences of what she'd done for her people? Frankly, he was surprised nothing worse had befallen her. Maybe he'd correct that at some point. That the entire damned race of vampires being treated with increasing suspicion and hostility, even because of his lies and myth-making was something he was fine with. Even if the regrettable harm he had dealt Shocks was his doing, he was content that it should be to their detriment. That he was not saddened in anyway came as no surprise to him.

What he found strange was that these revelations weren't making him happier.

And he was left with that conundrum when the mare finally left the galley, unaware of his presence and leaving only the light of the moon that shone through the window for company.

--=--

He didn't go back to his hiding place to sleep.

He opted not to at first. Seasickness aside, he had managed to eat something of substance in the galley, then proceeded to continue surveying the ship from the shadows. He avoided the inner hold entirely, given the soldiers that slept there, and tried to find an alternate way above deck when the time came to it.

It had proven elucidating. He had learned that the captain had accepted payment for quartering the troops. He also learned something had happened up north in the Kingdom of the Hebrides in Griffonia that had delayed the ship in the first place. Such was gleaned while he listened in on a trio of crewmen playing a strange board game with pegs, just visible through the slightly ajar doorway to their cabin. Nothing more substantial than that was heard, unfortunately. The conversation soon turned to matters of payment, women, and what they planned to do when the ship arrived at port for the winter. Handy moved on.

With the exception of what an observer might call a humorous moment when a sleeping guardspony on the ground grabbed his leg while in the fit of a dream, Handy had no problem extracting himself from the bowels of the ship to the deck. Getting from the entrance to literally anywhere he could hide was another matter. The moon was shining strong and the ship was bathed in bluish-white light and sharp shadows despite the gathering fog. Indeed, it was so luminous that Handy felt he risked exposure.

He didn't notice that every single lantern was dosed, and the ship was enshrouded in mist. Hushed whispers came from the ship's castle above him, near the wheel, barely audible. There were two of them up there, one on the wheel and the other talking to him. What were they talking about and why the fear of being overheard? And where was everyone else? There should have been more than just two people above deck even at night, and the captain wasn't in his cabin as far as he could sense. Was that him up there?

And then he saw it. A looming darkness rose out of the mist off the ship's port side. It was strange and jagged in shape, uneven with jutting protrusions, like a dagger made from diseased bone. It glided on the water, its momentum barely slowed by the friction and causing no more noise than that of the water folding over on itself as it passed by. The whispering hushed from the castle above him, the steering stopped, the wood of the ships settling under the strain.

He heard it.

It was the sound of something clattering against stone. He just made out scuttling shapes over the form of the strange vessel off their bow, separated from them by a thin veil of water vapour, not making a sound other than what their movements would allow. He couldn't make them out, their hulking, distorted forms dark and mysterious on the other side of the mist, crawling over the terrible mass of the vessel that bore them passing them by. Handy felt his skin crawl. The sheer menace the presence of the passing ship inspired was enough to dredge up the horrors of the Greenwoods, of being surrounded by wood and mist and the things they hid.

There is no road.

The ship eventually passed, leaving them unhindered and unmolested. Its dark form disappeared into the grey, and peace returned to the world in its wake. He heard a sigh as one of the people above him exhaled in relief, the taut and tenseness of their beings relaxed as Handy felt them let go of their anxiety. He retreated back below deck, mindful of the positions of those who were still awake and moving in the dark, making his way to the store and his hiding spot.

He had thought to make work of the night, to explore and to investigate, taking advantage of the fact that the most dangerous ponies, the ones accustomed to the night, would be just as tired and as asleep as their diurnal brethren after the debacle back at Port.

Now he thought otherwise. Some nights were for the sleeping and leaving the terrors outside where they belonged.

--=--

It was noisy when he woke.

He withheld a groan as he felt his unsettled stomach grumble and protest. It was dark, and he was still in his hiding place though the boat had ceased moving. He heard the busy noise of a port, like the one in Blackport but bustling with activity. It was rather startling once he dragged himself from nocturnal oblivion.

Once he had plucked up the daring, he peered from the small window of the store. Sure enough, they were in port, but his vision was marred by the hulking form of a much larger ship saddled to the pier next to the Ironmonger.

He shook the grogginess from his eyes, suppressed a yawn, and reached out with his senses to—

Ow, ow and ow. Wow, okay, that was a mistake. Hot damn, there were a lot of people in this city. He crawled his way over packed crates and barrels, going deeper into the store as if to physically get away from the city. Every morning it was the same: wake up from oblivion and then, slowly but surely, the tugging sensation began as his brain caught up with his consciousness. It was like rolling down a hill that became increasingly covered in nettles the further you went, only to land in thorn bushes at its end.

One can imagine why Handy had avoided ever getting a hangover since he attained the ability. He was not indulging the demon’s drink with this experience every morning. Not until he learned to turn the damn thing off at least.

When at last it settled, he decided to try and concentrate on the blips closest to him on the radar. The ship, it seemed, had emptied, with only a few of the crew on board. The soldiers were gone, and a good thing too. Wait, no, he felt a substantial number of people just off the ship to the starboard side. You called it the starboard side, right? Handy did not know how to ship.

Cautiously approaching the window, small though it was, he positioned himself so that he could look out and up. Sure enough, there were the royal guards up and about, standing in lines on the pier, the evening sun resplendent on their armour. The golden ones at least. Evening already? How long did he sleep? His thoughts were interrupted when he noticed one of the guards turn their heads back towards the boat, and he ducked beneath the window. Thankfully, no one seemed alarmed, so he doubted he was spotted. There was a shout, and he both heard and felt the guards marching off to God only knew where.

Well, he was in Equestria now, on his own and without even the dubious support of the changelings to rely on. Plus he was hunting down a warlock with magical prowess an earth pony should not have as a default, one who had already handed his ass to him. Yippee.

Handy was ignorant when it came to magic, but he knew that most races had some kind of magical connection to the world around them, something innate. That was why you had griffons capable of studying wizardry and becoming staff-wielding mages and the like. But Thunder… there was something disproportionate to old magic that didn't seem right. And that was obvious even to him, a man to whom the entire world seemed wrong. He had to be clever about this if he wanted to beat the stallion and get what he came for.

First thing was that he had to wait. Ah yes, more waiting. It was either for the majority of the crew to leave, to fall asleep, or to slip out under the cover of night. Story of his life. And then…

Shit. And then what? It was not as if he could just ask for directions. The letter had not been specific about where he needed to go once in Manehatten, only that Thunder had definitely been seen and verified. It would take months to find him, all alone and in a large city he was unfamiliar with. It was not as if he didn't stick out. If anything, it'd be good practice for that illusory ability Thorax said he had, but that was scant comfort. It was not as if he had a built in GPS tracker that could… find… what he was after.

Handy sat down on a crate and cradled his face in his hands.

"I am an absolute, irredeemable, fucking idiot."

A quick jaunt out of the store and a careful, so very careful, handling of a closed lantern later, he got to work. He dug through the bundle of stuff, bags, and armour pieces, all bundled up in his cloak which in turn was covered in some cloth he had found in the storeroom itself. He found it and pulled out the witch torch. Placing the lantern on a crate and surreptitiously opening it from a distance by means of a small iron fire-stoker, he lit the torch. The small, caged stone burst into heatless, smokeless blue flame, and he held it before him.

"Can't believe I didn't think of this sooner." Sure, doing it literally anywhere else would have meant pointing him in a cardinal direction, and it would have been time-consuming on his lonesome to narrow his search down. Now that he did have his search narrowed down, it was more reasonable and expedient to do so. Still didn’t excuse the weeks he went without using it back in Blackport, however. Complete brain fart on his part.

He focused on a name and an image, desiring to find his target.

As if fluttering about in an invisible wind, the blue flame bent and flickered, pointing in the direction of his quarry.

Handy smiled.

--=--

Manehatten, in a word, was astonishing.

Handy was not what one may call well-travelled, at least not back on Earth, but he had been to London, seen Barcelona, Rome, Berlin, and was intimately familiar with the cities of his own homeland. In his time in this world, he had seen the gleaming spires of Canterlot, the rugged homes of the griffons of Firthengart, and the deceptive simplicity of the mountain-clinging structures of High Town in Skymount that so emulated King Johan's castle. He had seen the dour streets of Black Port, the dire and sepulchral opulence of Lepidopolis, the canyon city ruled by winter in the Greenwoods, and the unspeakable majesty of the Whisperwood. He had seen bigger cities, grander cities, older cities, more elegant, more storied. He had seen taller buildings, grander streets with more people, and more pleasant smells.

But he had never seen anything like Manehatten.

There was a frenetic energy to the very air that did not sleep even though the world seemed to grind to a stop after nightfall. The streets were still alive as candle bearers went from street to street, igniting the flames upon each light pole's glass house. Each and every building stood, proud and dauntless, made of mortar and brick and stone, drab colours turned majestic and noble in defiance of convention. Whether it was by a trick of the light or a trick of the mind from the atmosphere, Handy could not say.

Dark clouds arose from the ground in the distance beyond the city, across the strait to the houses of industry, from where the factories, mills, smelters, refineries, coal yards, ironworks, and the famous Manehatten train yards called home. It was where the wrought iron leviathans and the great wyrms of steel and fire were constructed and brought in the lifeblood of the city, the ore and raw materials harvested from the fields and the bowels of the earth in the mining and farming townships that so defined eastern Equestria.

There stood a great bridge that connected the island to the mainland, a marvel of the age, a suspension creation that Handy had yet to meet the like of in this world. It was constructed of cold iron, great blocks of stone and granite, sweat and tears, transporting the workers of the city from their places of toil to their places of rest and play on the island that housed the city. The fools probably did not understand what a wonder they had created. That ponies were capable of such things was amazing in itself. The same train that so utilised the bridge cut through the city itself, all the way to the port and harbour where its goods were loaded and unloaded for the bustling port. It was so much larger than that of the city he left, and much busier too, winter be damned.

And yet, so unlike its namesake on Earth, Manehatten defied convention, with a circular street pattern rather than a grid based one. For a reason Handy could not fathom, this city of industry and labour, at some point in its founding, had been constructed around a central point on its coast. The streets radiated outwards in straight lines, and these were connected by concentric semi-circles that began at the coast, went around through each street, and all the way until it hit the coast again. These radiating streets were known locally as ‘high roads.’ This was due to the proclivity of some of them to rise up off of the ground, suspended on great pillars or brick walls in places as they went over the low roads, including the central 'Golden Mile' that bore the train. These high roads led to bustling streets and a secondary level to the city, bearing up bright gardens and parks that dotted the city scape with hanging vines, flowers, and garlands that reached all the way down to the streets below.

Though the day had come to an end, the city was vibrating with life. Late night shops, districts given over for commerce and revelry, bars and dancing halls, buskers playing music, theatres and plays gave cause for the very stones of the street to sing with life and to dance with energy. Restaurants, eateries and cafes, where the workers and their work masters mingled and conversed over lagers and teas. Tiny satellite townships on the same island replicated the city’s layout as they spread out across the island. Droplets rippled upon the water, echoes of their larger cousin.

And for all of that, the unique pony touches were to be seen everywhere: in the small heart and horseshoe decors wrought into the black iron fence work upon the sidewalk bordering the quays, as well as the frosted glass windowpanes of shops and restaurants and homes. Even the poorer districts where the workers of the city dwelled possessed a work-worn dignity that demanded respect. The streets were lined with greenery and well-maintained trees, cherry blossoms if Handy had to guess. They were small, easily maintained, and pretty in the spring time. Their presence, even now as bare skeletons of their former glory, broke the grey monotony of the flagstone paths and brick stone streets. The foul stench of the factory and industry that defined the far side of the bay barely reached the city, the smog and pollution gathered by teams of pegasi taken God only knew where else. A thankless job, but one whose benefits went without saying. A small sympathetic part of his heart hoped those poor bastards had some kind of protection for their poor lungs.

Handy had to take this all in, for you see, the streets of Manehatten were very much a living thing at night, and it was not easy diving from building to building to stay out of the light in order not to be seen. He had secreted his goods away, taking only his chainmail for minimal protection and his boots for running, his cloak for cover and warmth from the biting chill as the first signs of frost and freezing began to show. He got to experience first-hand what it was like to walk head first into a wall where there should have been a street as he turned a corner, as well as figure out when the best times were to hurry through the thoroughfare and going underneath a high road with the minimal possibility of someone seeing him. Diving out from a secluded alleyway, risking several seconds of exposure to lamp light, diving through the obstruction in order to get to the other side and into another hiding place before he was spotted was far more adrenalin-inducing than it should be. The psychic radar he picked up was helpful but imperfect. He could tell where someone was, but not what direction they were looking. He got to see the townhouses of the well-to-do in their gated communities as well as the more roughshod homes of the city-dwelling work pony. He enjoyed the fact that he got lost due to the city's confusing street structure in spite of having a magically-guiding fire in his hands.

Well okay, he did not enjoy it. Not at all. Neither did he enjoy having to about face and run in the opposite direction when he nearly ran out of an alley, headlong into an unlit street where there appeared to be a substantive crowd gathered outside a tavern. They seemed to be entertained by a drunken brawl or another. Handy didn't know; he could just about make out the sound of a violin being abused by someone who clearly had no business playing such an instrument.

But it all paid off in the end.

The flame led him along a street facing the water and the industrial bay area on the far side. It was a quiet, secluded area of the city. Townhouses of the well-to-do-but-not-quite-rich lined the way, an anomaly given that this street lay at the very edge of a rather squalid part of the city, far from the city centre and far from their similarly moneyed fellows.

That likely meant this was a street of the rich who wanted to be left alone and had the money to stay secure even in a location like this.

The candle-bearers with their long sticks had yet to light the wicks of the street lights here. While it was a blessing in allowing Handy to go about without being easily discernible, it did make the fact that he held a creepy blue firelight aloft all the more noticeable. He made do, for he was led to a rather palatial-looking estate. The building towered four or five floors off the ground, not counting the ground floor. It possessed tall windows, a white coat of paint upon its façade, and a subtle opulence too grand for Manehatten and too subdued for a greater city like Canterlot.

He crept closer, leaning against the wall of a townhouse that bordered the half-fence, half-wall enclosure, just enough to spy around the corner and through the bars. The flame was pointing towards the building, slightly upwards. One of the higher floors was where his quarry lay, but he had to be absolutely sure. He pulled back after only a few seconds of exposure. None of the windows appeared to be open, their blinds drawn, but a few rooms had lights on. He could not be seen.

Nor too could he even begin to think of sneaking in there. God only knew what magical traps and tricks an old magic warlock could put in place. No, he had to try something else instead.

Perhaps one may wonder why it was Handy was in such a hurry to find his quarry after arriving at port? Surely it would be more prudent to have waited even longer, perhaps until it was the dead of the night and the streets were more clear and unlit? Surely he had enough experience by now, skulking about in the dark, to know that such a course of action would be more favourable?

Ah, but he had to hurry. The night was still young, and he had much to do. His mind had raced and travelled far in its haste since that time in the galley, listening to the woes of the accursed. He had to act fast before those who had already gone so far to seek him out left the city for greener pastures. To that end, he needed enough time to find out where they had gone while in the city. He had already ruled out traveling outside via train. A plan gestated in his mind as he circled around, skirting the spaces between houses and streets, confirming his prey was in the building he suspected. His breath frosted on the air as he struggled to think. He needed a means of egress, of running away from the scene when all was said and done. In particular, he needed a certain something he was sure he managed to snag from his room back in Blackport, something he was planning on Thorax being able to use, but he'd have to make do. His mind worked, and he smiled.

After all, there was a thestral who wanted to atone for her failings.

Handy had a good idea where she could start.

--=--

It was good to not bear the brunt of a dressing down.

Sure, standing amidst the ranks of the solar and lunar guards, lined up as they were against the yard wall of the Manehatten militia barracks meant they were in the 'splash zone' of the regional commandant's verbose rebuke. Thankfully, it was their newly-minted sergeants who had to deal with it, front and centre. Stoic Skippy stood straight and tall and took the onslaught like a champ. Midnight, on the other hoof, had her ears pressed firmly against the side of her head, her more sensitive thestral ears making the ordeal much worse for her. Stellar could sympathise.

Ordinarily, this sort of occurrence wouldn't be happening. It was a rare absurdity, having a jumped-up marquis' son, the commander of the local militia for Manehatten and its surrounding land, in a position of power over royal guards. Alongside the chief of the city watch, the city’s local police force, he was commanding the city guard, which was a distinct and more militarized patrol force dedicated to the Manehatten Island itself, separate from the marquis’ military forces. Both were leading a contingent of Goldcloaks, the princesses' quasi-professional soldiers whose actual garrison was over a dozen miles away in a castle granted to them by a nearby duke. They stood before a cadre of the princesses' own royal guards and proceeded to treat them all like misbehaving foals. Involving all of these various forces had made sense on paper for the smooth transition of the human from point A to B with minimal fuss, maximum security, and zero exposure to the public. A small royal guard contingent raised fewer eyebrows after all.

Yeah, that all had gone to Tartarus, and right now they were suffering the consequence of giving their after action report.

The young lording in question, arrogant and vainglorious though he was, was actually a capable diplomat when it actually mattered. That was precisely why he was placed in charge of receiving the target and organizing the means of translocation once safely on Equestrian soil, because he was to then make his way right back to Blackport and smooth things over with the Enclave with all the niceties and politicking he was born and bred for.

So one might be able to understand that once he got the news, he was a tad upset at the mess he was being left to clean up, since he was now needed more than ever.

And that was the reason why they had spent the better part of an hour being yelled at by somepony who, ordinarily, had no real right to be speaking to a royal guard much less spewing this level of vitriol. She didn't care too much, not even bothering to commit his name to memory. She just wanted this night to be over and done with.

Eventually they were dismissed as their commander walked off, fretting over the diplomatic nightmare he was now at the centre of. They were each given their dismissal. Some went to whatever spare bunks they could commandeer. Most of the rest tried to forget about everything, hanging around, talking quietly amongst themselves. Stellar took to the air, flying over the barracks wall and alighting on the street on the other side.

The barracks was located close to the outskirts of the city, and this far from the lights and life of the city centre, it was quiet, relaxing. She went for a walk, having left most of her armour behind at the barracks. No sense weighing herself down anymore, and only an idiot would attack a soldier with hoof claws. Especially a thestral at night.

She wandered the streets, the tall buildings and high roads of Manehatten to her right. The much smaller, sparser houses and dwellings were to her left, and beyond them were the sweeping grass fields of the island, bathed a silvery blue in the light of Luna's moon. Her head was a mess – it had been for a long while now. She shook it and then rubbed down the front of her mane. She'd been meaning to have it cut so she'd have less of a case of helmet mane to worry about, but she'd been neglecting it for a while now. Just like a lot of other things that had slipped her mind.

So it was her mind wandered. Had it not been for her training, she might have missed it altogether.

A bright blue light shone from behind a closed-up storefront to her right. Curious, she squinted her eyes to try and discern what it was. It flickered and danced, and she could just barely make out a shadow tha—

And it was gone. Stellar's wings shot out in surprise as she looked left to right before approaching the store carefully and as quietly as she could, lifting herself off the ground slightly and gliding across the empty street, conscious of the noise her armoured boots made. She spied around the corner of the shop. There it was, flickering and flitting. The light emerged from a space between the shop and the next building on the block. Then it disappeared again, retreating farther into the back alley. Alarm bells rang in her head, and she took to the air, hovering above the roofs of the buildings below, scanning the maze of small side streets and narrow thoroughfares from above.

It was gone. She couldn't see it anym— Wait.

"What the…" There it was again, farther away now, blinking into existence in another alley, between a rundown series of houses and an abandoned mill house. Now she was genuinely interested. She flew over and above where the light was as it disappeared beneath wooden crossings that linked the roofs of buildings together and obscured the narrow lanes beneath them, hiding the pony who was leading her on. She was forced to land and entered into the lane, clenching her hooves inward to lower her claws just a bit in anticipation.

"Private Stellar Eclipse, Equestria Royal Guard!" she called out. "Come out now and explain yourself!"

Nopony responded. Her pupils dilated, and her keen night vision picked out the details of her surroundings as sure as if they were lit by the sun. Odd, the ground seemed to be littered with wooden planks wherever solid ground gave way to mud and muck. But despite that, nothing seemed out of place, and she couldn't see the blue light anywhere. She cautiously trudged on. The light winked into existence in a lane to her right, long and winding and far away.

"Ah ha!" she shouted, launching herself down the lane towards it as it danced away. On and on it went. Each time she got close, it disappeared, only to reappear a short time later in another direction. It was almost as if the pony with the light knew where she was every step of the way. It was obvious she was being led closer to the city and farther away from her comrades, but why? She could not say. She had long since lowered her hoof claws fully in anticipation of trouble.

It was deeper into the city, but not too deep. The light led her to the underside of one of the high roads, the first one on the edge of the city that rose above the ground in fact. Instead of a wall, it was supported by stone columns. It was dark under here, surprisingly vacant. She kept aloft in the air, hovering in place. She saw the light in front of her, hidden amidst the garlands of the hanging garden that spilled over from a park above her. Nothing seemed out of place here. There didn't seem to be anypony around. It was the perfect spot for an ambush, but she wasn’t picking out any of the tell-tale signs that there was anypony waiting.

She backed off, flew up and over the park, spooking a few late night ponies on a walk on the high road before coming down on the far side of the road and under it, approaching the hanging garden from the opposite side. Same story here – no signs of anypony. All other avenues of access were blocked off by buildings to her right and left. Yet she could still just about make out the blue light hiding within the garden, waiting.

She didn't like this. She knew she should go back and get reinforcements, for there was something wrong about it all. Nonetheless, she landed, her wings outstretched and her sparkling green eyes darting, covering all the angles as she approached the hanging garden. The greenery was slowing dying off as the winter chill grasped them, but still bountiful enough to obscure what lay within.

The light disappeared again as she entered, the garlands splitting as her head broke the barrier, her boots clacking on the marble tiles of the lower garden. During the day, these walls of garlands would get their sunlight from above. The floor of the park of the high road above was littered with a checkerboard of thick glass squares in a latticework, held together by iron. Each glass was both clear and coloured, interspersing unadulterated sunlight with a rainbow of colour. A small stone fountain and reading benches littered the under-park. The garlands surrounded the space like a curtain. Some lattice work held up additional flowering vines and plant life, complicating the limited space, creating little enclosures of privacy in the already enclosed space. In the spring, the garlands would bloom and flower, making these some of the most treasured public spaces in the entire city for their quiet beauty and majesty.

Now, with the chill of winter biting at her nape, the fountain was silent. What water remained was freezing upon its stone rim. The greenery was losing its life and slowly dying, and the moonlight that shone through casted a mixture of darkened lights upon the ground. It made for an unnerving atmosphere, made all the worse for the near deathly silence.

"Okay," she said slowly, looking around. Her tail flicked once in agitation. "I am here, so what do you want? Show yourself already!"

Still there was silence. She turned on the spot, wings shooting out and dust kicking up in the haste of her movements. All that, just to turn on a spooked street cat that hissed at her from under a reading bench before scurrying off. She let out a breath she didn't know she had been holding, chastising herself for jumping at the slightest noise.

"I'll admit," she rounded on the voice, her weapons clacking against the ground as the blades descended on her hooves with force in her shock as she adopted a battle ready stance. There, from behind a small archway, strode a tall, dark figure, carrying something under a heavy leather cover. "I would have thought I had my work cut out for me trying to get one of you on your own. Maybe even had to scrap the idea altogether and go for something else if all of you held up in that barracks till morning. I do not suppose you ponies have heard that saying about the cat and curiosity, have you?"

"… You," Stellar stated, eyes wide and disbelieving. Handy spread his arms wide.

"Me." Stellar froze, for once genuinely unsure of what to do. He shouldn't be here. How in Tartarus did he get here so fast? Why was he here!? Her wings shot up as she prepared to take to the air again when Handy spoke. "Run now and Manehatten will burn to the ground."

That stopped her in her tracks.

"What are you talking about…? How— Why are you here?" To which the human smiled lightly.

"That'd be telling, but suffice it to say, our interests are mutual for once."

"What interests? You made it quite clear you wouldn't come with us."

"Of course I wouldn't. Would you?"

"I would if it was to help protect my kingdom!"

"And would you have been so eager to do so if it were someone like me to have asked you to? Hmm? What say you, Stellar? Come with me and save all of Equestria from the horrible threat of old magic? That sounds reasonable and trustworthy, right?" She didn't answer, and Handy's smile grew more sincere. "I had been hoping to get White Boy, your shiny new sergeant. Sooo grim-faced and serious. He would have been fun to have led on like this. In truth, any one of you would have done for the message I want to give. Ah, but you…"

He crouched over, hand on knees so he could look her in the eye. From a distance of over five feet of course. "It just had to be you, didn’t it? Ha, to think it'd be you out of all people to have fallen for my ruse."

"I am in no mood for games, Handy," Stellar stated, a hoof raised to her chest in preparation, her wings splayed and ready for a launch. "What do you want? And what gives? You’re talking differently."

"I think you and I are a little past the point of my pleasant formalities," Handy said, his smile slightly more strained and his tone a little colder than the air around them. "But fine, if you so wish to get straight to business, there is some information I want to pass on. Think of it as a little favour from Gethrenia to Equestria."

"Why would you want to give us anything?"

"Oh I don't, especially not you, dear Stellar. Oh my, no. But you see, you and your princesses are very much in the way and in the dark. One state of affairs I am in favour of. The other I am not, and so it is to my advantage that I get you out of my way. And what better way to do that than to alert you to a threat in your very midst?" He paused. "I mean besides me."

"You admit you're a threat?"

"Would it matter if I did? I am treated like one all the same, therefore you have made me one. What choice do I have? You ponies are all stuttering fools, flailing about in your own ignorance and jumping at the lightest of shadows. It is no wonder the Mistress has gone unnoticed as long as she has."

"…Mistress?"

"Ah, have your attention, do I?" he continued, striding calmly around Stellar. She moved, keeping him well within sight but at a distance. She kept the blades on her hooves lowered and ready. "The elemental on the train, those ghosts that proved such a delightful distraction when we first… met. The festival. Blackport. Everything has to do with old magic, and now it is here in the fine, old city of Manehatten."

"Stop dancing around the issue. What are you talking about!?"

"There is a pony I have been hunting since that day in Firthengart. He was behind most of it all, I am sure. He goes by the name of Thunder, and he is right here in this city." Handy paused, stopping mid-stride as he turned to look down at Stellar. "And he plans on destroying it. It'll look like a freak weather accident – storms and waves and all that good stuff. I do not pretend to care for you ponies, least of all Equestrians, but I do intend on stopping him."

"You're lying. There has to be more to it than that. What are you really here for!?"

"Vengeance," Handy said honestly. Stellar stammered. "Oh no, not against you. Not yet at any rate. I'm rather busy I'm afraid, so mayhap some other time. I just really wish to see Thunder shown where he ought to belong, splattered beneath my boot heel."

"I don't believe you." Handy leant back, extending his arms upwards and letting them fall to his side, shaking his head.

"Try to do someone a favour and they throw it back in your face. Such a shame." Handy turned around and took another step before stopping. "One would think you'd want to redeem yourself in the eyes of dear old Ciara."

"What?"

"Oh dear, I meant Luna. My apologies. Names you know, such funny things."

"Wait, what are you saying?!" Stellar demanded, advancing on Handy, only stopping when he swept his cloak back and gently tapped the head of his hammer.

"Another step, little pony, and I swear to God you'll regret it," he said with venom in his voice, his scowl lessening after a moment as he eased back into a calmer tone. "But yes, I know about your little falling out of favour with the princess, how much it hurts you. I can see it; the shame of what you've done and the suspicion and difficulty it has brought down upon your ilk."

"H-How do you… Where did you hear about that?"

"Oh, I have my ways, Eclipse, many ways most mortals should not even be aware of. The dead know many things and told me much during my time among them."

"That’s nonsense. Nopony can come back from the dead. Y-You're just making that up."

"Am I? Was I not annihilated so that not even a trace remained? Did I not appear as if from the ether like a spectre from the mist?" Stellar studied his face for any hint of a lie. He was smiling, enjoying this. He was strutting about without his armour on in full confidence of his security before her. That, more than anything else, gave her pause. There had to be something she was missing. "If your heart beats, do I not hear the blood flowing through your veins from a great distance? While you skulk about, do I not know when you are coming, even in the blackest of nights? Can I not see into your heart and bear witness to the turmoil there? Oh yes, Stellar, I see. I see far more than you could know." He advanced on her slowly. She stumbled back through a lattice fence, knocking the light construction over.

"I know your secret little shame. Oh-so-devout and loyal but cannot stand to keep up with her rations. Cannot bear to obey her oath like so many other thestrals, for the sake of nothing so venial and petty than the fact that you cannot stand the foul taste of your medicine."

"It's not like that!" Stellar shouted back, wide-eyed and alarmed. "I n-never meant to. It was an accident; I slipped up!"

"And created me," Handy finished. "A nightmare of your own fashioning. A mistake born of your own heedlessness. Oh yes, Stellar Eclipse, I am well acquainted with your faults and failings. It is only with every ounce of civility and patience that I do not exact my vengeance upon you right now. We are not done, you and I, and there will be a reckoning between us."

He stopped and backed up a few steps.

"But not now and not here. Your princess wants me to go north to Griffonia? Fine. She has my word I will leave Equestria post haste once I am done here. Then I shall do my very best, as soon as I am able, to ease the tensions and threat to my kingdom. Do you suppose that would be enough to ease Ciara’s and Sorcha’s concerns, or shall I have to dance for their amusement as well?" He threw something at her, and she lifted a hoof to avoid being struck as a heavy leather glove hit the ground. "Tell your superiors the truth. What happened in Blackport will happen here in Manehatten and that I have come to stop it. That it will be worse, for the warlock is much more powerful, and he is great and terrible. Tell them I am here. Tell them where they can find me."

"Why?" Stellar asked. Handy raised an eyebrow. "Why now? If you're not here to come along quietly, why tell us about this… this warlock's presence at all? You weren't too happy when we interfered in Blackport."

"That’s because Blackport was not in Equestria. You shouldn't have been there, and your presence upset a delicate balance. Here? Here you have more of a right to know and… it is advantageous that you know I am not entirely full of spite." She wasn't sure if he was telling her the full truth. In fact, she was certain he was not. Still, she had seen that thing back in Blackport, felt it, and heard the voices screaming in her head. She couldn't afford to dismiss anything out of hoof.

"…And where will we find you?" she asked cautiously. Once more the smile returned to his face.

"At the waterfront to the west, on Seminal Street. There you will find an enclosed estate with a silver lily on the wrought iron gates. The one known as Thunder is an earth pony, has light blue fur, almost white, soft-spoken, prefers garish clothing. He will be on one of the upper floors. Do remember to ask him about the Mistress. Please, it is rather important."

"And who is this Mistress you keep talking about?"

"Why, she is the very reason I am here in these lands in the first place, and who I have sworn to kill. That will have to do for now. Enjoy your proof, Stellar." He gestured to the leather glove before turning around and disappearing behind more latticework.

"Wait! Wait, stop!" she cried, bounding after him and turning a corner and—

The next she saw was the human standing there waiting. His hand gripped the leather cover over his right hand, revealing the bright blue flame he carried as he shoved it into her face. Stellar's night-sight focused eyes were ill-prepared for such a sudden burst of light at such proximity, and she shrieked and fell to the ground, rubbing her burning eyes with her fetlocks.

She was breathing heavily when sight finally returned to her, blinking away dark blotches on her vision as she struggled to see again. She was amazed her face wasn't burnt, not so much as singed. She wasted no time. As soon as so much as one eye was good at seeing half-decently, she launched to the air and flew the entire underside of the high road, from low road to low road. She couldn't find him. Handy was gone, the blue light gone with him, and all she had left to show for it was the story he had given her.

And the glove left lying on the ground.

Author's Note

When you're done, I highly recommend checking out Truekey's Inquisition, a rather enjoyable read in the same adventurous vein as his other works.

Below you'll find a map, Handy's current location is noted by the silver hammer. A useful key to understand what you're looking at as well as other maps can be found here.

Chapter 43 - Rolling Thunder

She had barged into the barracks like a mad mare, mane askew, wild-eyed and clutching the remains of a dead animal in her mouth.

Sure, it was just a leather glove but, you know, ponies.

"Stellar?" a bleary-eyed Shimmer murmured, rising up from her bunk, half her head covered in bandages and a splint on her wing.

"Mm sfg hmm rfmmm!"

"…What?" a nearby unicorn asked. Stellar spat out the glove on the ground and gasped for breath.

"I need the sergeants right now! Where are they!?"

"In the back talking with the other officers. What’s this about, Stellar?” a pegasus asked. Stellar ran a hoof down her face, shaking her head. She was still seeing spots.

"Look, it’s mission critical. There’s a serious threat to the safety of this city, and I need to get to the sergeants and the commandant now!"

"Mission critica— Wha? Stellar, we failed our mission." Shimmer groaned, the injured thestral lying back down on her stomach.

"No we didn't—the human is here. He's right here in the city. I've seen him!"

"Uh, Stellar, I think you may have gotten a little knock on the head there," another guard chimed in. "There's no way he could be here this soon without anypony noticing him."

Stellar glared at the offending pony in question, swiped a wing down, and hooked the abandoned glove in the claw of her wing, holding it aloft with an unamused face and a cocked eyebrow.

"Yes, clearly I am imagining things." The dryness in her voice did not lack venom or bite.

"Could be a minotaur's glove…"

"Minotaurs only gots four of dem, dem there… thingies."

"Fingers?"

"Yeah, dem."

"…Maybe it’s a five fingered—"

"OH JUST LET ME THROUGH, YOU IDIOTS! WE'RE WASTING TIME!"

--=--

He waited.

He waited and he waited and he waited and he waited.

She still had not contacted him. Still she had not given him an order, a command, a purpose. He had forgotten so much, but he did not forget her, could not forget her. He should be dead, for he had failed at… something. He could no longer recall. He ran, from place to place, from bolthole to hideout. He hunted, searching for… something.

Spells. Magic. Words. He needed to read the words. He needed to read the arcane script that had given him his power before he forgot the spells he had just so recently used. He knew because he had found his journals, his books, his little keepsakes to help him remember in case he forgot. Oceans of ink detailed each one of his memories he could recall as precise as he could, everything about him that mattered. He had kept copies upon copies, along with a map of where they were hidden so that even if he forgot them, he would know where to find them again.

And to his horror, he found nothing more than a pile of blank books. They were timeworn, yellowed and faded manuscripts with nothing written upon them, with no sign of ink ever having touched the pages. No, that was not true. Here and there were the blots of ink that fell from a quill, the stains of years accrued from aging. Every sign and aspect of having suffered the rigours of time littered their surfaces and interiors.

Just not the words. Just not the memories. Just not the physical proof of their existence. Forgotten by his mind, so too were they forgotten by the world itself, as if they had never happened in the first place. It seemed to follow a pattern, however. The earliest memories disappeared first, evidenced by a few non sequiturs here and there. He, in a fit of whimsy, had recounted how one event of his early past echoed another, later point. To his horror, he saw the page completely blank but for his later additions. The written paragraphs spread across the pages, and the ink the words had been written on seemed to fade, as if written ages ago at the beginning, and slowly faded to nothing as it reached its end. An island of information in a sea of oblivion.

So much, he had lost so much. He had used up so much magic and could not find his scripture in time to recall the spells used before they were forgotten from his mind and took their pound of flesh with them. The Mistress should have killed him.

She had not. That frightened him more than anything. What was worse was that he had forgotten so much that he was not even sure what potential reason she could have for being merciful. Chopper… yes, the dog. Chopper, he sat on the council too. He had not been specific regarding the Mistress' mercy. He did not dare contact her, or anypony else in the council, not even any of their underlings.

Underlings. He had nopony to call such. He had always found the idea such a bother. Now he was paying for it right when he needed help the most.

So he waited. Waited until the day she contacted him. Until he could redeem himself. He did not dare be where she couldn't find him should she need him.

Maybe…

Maybe there was a way. Some spell or… or incantation. A means by which he could have restored to him what had been lost.

She never contacted him, not once. He had not left his apartment in weeks, subsisting off food brought to him by the worried and subdued waiting staff of the estate, cowed by his fury. He remembered the harlot who had led him to falsely believe she was a maid, she who robbed him. He had exacted a terror upon the remaining servants. He would brook no further treachery. So great was his fury that even other private residents elected to stay away from the estate, or at least as far from his apartments as possible.

So it was that with some degree of surprise, he heard a loud and vigorous knocking coming from his doorway.

"Manehatten city guard, open up!"

Thunder Strike blinked. His room was dimly lit by a lonely, shallow light flickering with half-life from a lantern on a corner table. The pathetic illumination was insufficient for most ponies of good sense, but he had long since been accustomed to it. The knock came again and the warning was repeated. He huffed in dry amusement, a smile threatening to tug at the side of his mouth. Bizarre, so bizarre. Whatever could the guard want with him?

He pulled himself from the blankets bundled on the floor where he lay, practically dead to the world. The floor was covered in a thin layer of dust, and the floorboards, long denied polish and care, creaked under his hooves. The bright, garish clothing he so adored was revealed to be moth-eaten and dulled in the light as he opened the door.

Before him, in the corridor, stood two Manehatten guards. Flanked behind them were the grey-cloaked City Watch, and behind them… the gold and onyx of the Equestrian Royal Guard. A lump developed in Thunder's throat.

"Mister Thunder Strike?" the first guard asked, a mare with green fur.

"That is…correct? What can I do you for, ma'am? Is there something amiss?" His voice was soft, adopting his lazy smile that felt so familiar resting upon his face. His relaxed demeanour was obvious to anypony and would work very well to give ponies a reason to respond in kind… if it were not for the ragged and worn state of his clothes, his matted fur, unkempt mane, and the dry musty smell. The guard’s partner held aloft a piece of paper, containing the seal of the city of Manehatten and the Marquis' signature in bright red near the bottom. Her partner walked past him and into the room. It took him a moment to realise everypony in the hallway beyond his door were unicorns. "What is going on?"

"We have orders to search this building in case of a suspected threat to the city. Mister Thunder Strike, we would like to ask you a few questions if you could please step outside with us?"

"N-Now, just hold on a minute, aheh. What threat? W-Why do you need to search my home?" Thunder’s mind raced, recalling the precise locations and hiding places of otherwise compromising documents. More unicorns calmly filed in, their horns aglow, looking for something. His breath hitched in his throat as he saw one wave his horn over a drawer, relaxing only when he had passed. The obfuscation ward had held.

"Sir, you have been accused of possessing hostile intent towards the Kingdom of Equestria, the Municipality of Manehatten in particular. However, as there is currently no proof, you are not under arrest, but we need to take you into protective custody."

"Why on earth would you do that!?" Thunder blustered, his room increasingly filled with the guards, Goldcloaks, the City Watch, and the occasional Royal Guard. All unicorns.

"Because we believe you have been targeted by a potentially hostile provocateur. We need to establish the truth of the matter. Please, come with us." Thunder jerked his head back and forth. The unicorns were all over his apartments, searching under everything. The wards were good – he was sure of that – but with this many ponies scrutinizing this closely, it was only a matter of time before they discovered something was off. He had made more copies since his return and secured them elsewhere in the city, but he still couldn't afford them finding even one sliver of parchment here. He saw a pegasi and a thestral emerge from around a corner in the hallway, trailed by two more.

"Captain, the surrounding buildings have been secured," the white pegasi in front intoned. The City Watch mare in front of him turned her head and nodded before looking back at Thunder.

"Sir?"

"I will not leave my home! Out, everypony out! You have no business snooping around my private affairs!"

"Sir, we have a writ—"

"I don't give one whit about your writ! Brutes, the lot of you! Out!" Thunder demanded, stomping a hoof. His heart was racing and he was breathing heavily. Panicking. Panicking was bad, he remembered that much. The surrounding unicorns slowly drew to a halt, eyeing Thunder carefully.

"Sir, please." The mare’s tone was more authoritative and demanding, yet still possessed that calm professional air. "Do not make a scene. We are just trying to make sure nothing is wrong."

"Wrong? Haha, why would anything be wrong?! Other than waking a stallion up at this unseemly hour and then rummaging through his home like a roving band of vagabonds!"

"Sir, if you prefer, we could ask you some questions here," the armoured white pegasi offered.

"Oh yeah, because you aren’t doing yourself any favours by staying in the same building as Handy the Milesian." The golden-eyed thestral by his side rolled her eyes.

"W-Who?" Thunder stuttered. He remembered that name. Yes, the festival, the… the mistake that cost him nearly everything. "Fine. Fine! Ask your questions, then leave me be!"

"Alright," Cloud said, raising a wing and gesturing in a placating manner to try to calm him down. "Just relax. I know this seems like overkill, but the threat is very, very real. We just want to know what, if any, relationship you have to the one known as Handy."

"Never heard of him!"

"So you have not been outside of Equestria in the last six months?" Midnight asked.

"Haven't so much as left the city in a dog's age." A trickle of confidence leaked back into his voice.

"So you have no reason to fear why this human would be targeting you in particular?"

"My word, never! I would never bother anypony. In fact, I hardly ever leave my rooms." Looking around, one could very well believe that last statement.

"So you don't know what Handy's relationship to the Mistress is?" Dead silence. Thunder's eyes went wide, looking past the head of the Royal Guard sergeant, straight into the green eyes of the mare who had spoken up. Stellar held his gaze for a long, tense moment, his deafening silence causing unease in the gathered soldiery. Cloud ruffled the feathers of his wings, glancing back at Stellar for speaking up and then staring straight ahead. Thunder was as still as a statue. His silence was his condemnation. They knew. That was why they were here. Somehow they knew. They all knew about the Mistress. They were not supposed to know. They had come to get him, to interrogate him, to find out what he knew, to force him to fail the Mistress once more by stealing what he knew of her.

To steal what memories he had left.

And that was just unacceptable. He had to flee. And to that end, he let out a sigh as he thought of the inevitable exertion this was going to exact.

"Such bother…" He breathed, his eyes closed and head bowed. The guards looked at each other.

"Sir," Captain Honey Comb began, "I think it'd be best if you co—"

It was a whisper as loud as a tempest.

Guttural words and cracking noises in a mockery of language, intermingling vulgarly with sibilant hisses and slurs spewed forth from his gullet. Time seemed to slow to a standstill. The very motes of dust in the air, disturbed and borne aloft by the sudden intrusion upon their sacred slumber by numerous clumsily trotting hooves, froze in the air as if frightened stiff by a terror without name.

The pseudo speech erupted from his throat at a speed faster than his tongue and lips could form them. Shining wards, sigils, and designs traced along the skin under his pale fur, like the ritual tattoos of a warrior from some savage tribe in a far off and alien land. The floor rattled and shook, fell lights spilling into the room from beneath the boards, perforating the darkness of the room with long, thin shafts of light casting terrible shadows.

He opened his eyes.

--=--

Stellar came to first, her ears ringing, her body aching, her wings throbbing awfully. She let out a yelp when she tried to stand. At least she thought she did, for she couldn't hear properly yet. Her foreleg felt like it was broken. The night sky was visible from underneath the partial wall that was lying on top of her. She called out, hoping anypony could hear her, struggling as she wormed her way out from under the wall. She had been thrown back through the door of the room at the far end of the hall.

It was partially destroyed, the hallway gone except for the floor. The ceiling and whatever had been above it was eradicated, leaving the top floor and its remains after Thunder Strike's room was obliterated.

"—Pony!" she heard her voice break through the piercing ringing as she crawled to her three working legs. "Can anypony hear me!?" she shouted.

She wasn't answered. Small, stuttering green fires burned in parts of the ruined building's floor. Several rooms were gutted and exposed to open air. She found the city guard captain on the floor below, spying her through a hole blown through the floor. Her eyelids fluttered, and Stellar could smell spilled blood. She was wounded.

Alarmed, she looked around for the others. There were nine of them: the sergeants, her partner, the other city guard, and five royal guard unicorns. She found three of the unicorns scattered around. She had no idea where the other city guard had gone. She found one of the sergeants limping away with a bad wing on the ground below, yelling orders. Her partner was delirious and stuck halfway through a thin drywall, the pegasus utterly insensate. She couldn't find the other sergeant or the remaining unicorns.

The street outside was a warzone. The entire waterfront was cordoned off and the surrounding buildings quietly evacuated by the city watch as the Manehatten Guard took up positions at either end and around the block, supplemented by Goldcloaks. Their respective winged contingents joined the Royal Guards in the air above the building. There was no telling whether the human was truthful or not, but if he was, and it turned out he had been, the consequences could have been devastating.

The remaining unicorns cast spells, lighting up the night with multi-hued magical fury as they battled with the whirling destructive force of the earth pony warlock. Those ponies that charged and attacked with spears and halberds and hoof blades had their weapons torn asunder after glancing harmlessly off of Thunder's hide. That was right before they were thrown about like ragdolls in the earth pony's fury. Cracks of thunder split the air and eruptions of alchemical fire and smoke formed from the lines of ponies at either end of the waterfront. The shootsticks thunderous report and deadly cargo pattered harmlessly against Thunder Strike's flesh.

He reared up and struck the earth with his forehooves, magic running down his legs and into the ground, cascading out in tendrils of energy that ripped up the ground in undulating arcs of arcane destruction, crashing into the gaggles of soldiers, sending ponies flying. Some landed in the water, giving cause for their flying companions to break ranks and rescue them from the sea before their armour dragged them down. Thunder ran, the clouds moving as if pulled by sheer force of will. They followed after him and coalesced, forming a funnel reaching down to the earth, lightning flashing and cascading down its length as the delicate weather magic they held were disturbed.

Stellar descended the stairs to the bottom floor as fast as her damaged body would let her. Her lungs burned, and there was a pain in her chest that spoke of broken bones. One wing was utterly unresponsive and the other paralyzed her with pain whenever she tried to move it. This was not good. It was all falling apart and he was getting away, heading further into the city. He had to be stopped. Fortunately the more fit guards, those who weren't unconscious or wounded in the fighting that was, were already on the move, with the pegasi taking to the skies to disrupt the gathering twister and rob Thunder of the skies.

Stellar limped on, exiting through the back of the building and onto a back lane. She couldn't catch up in this condition, so she tried to cut her way through. If the city watch was half as competent as she hoped, they'd already be cutting off his exit routes and trying to herd him towards an open space. She couldn't see the fight clearly, but she could see the flashes of light above the buildings. Thunder was throwing some serious magic around, and their unicorns were already incapacitated. They had not brought any heavy battle mages, and the local garrisons had nothing on par with that level of power and finesse.

Where in Tartarus was the human?

She tripped over a pile of refuse and stumbled onto the street, screaming in pain as she erroneously placed weight on her broken leg. She fell and rolled, her armoured weight damaging her wings further before she managed to stop herself and put her hooves under her again.

"Stellar!" Her ears flicked up, her eyes still screwed shut and her jaw set to hold in the pain. She recognised the sound of Shimmer's voice.

"What are you doing here? You sh-should be at your bunk." Stellar opened her eyes to see soldiers running past her.

"I only have a sprained wing. Look at you!" Shimmer fussed, the mare helping Stellar back to her hooves. A golden-clad unicorn ran up to them from further down the road, panting.

"It’s coming this way. Everypony get in position!" he shouted. The city watch, guard and goldcloaks milled about, weapons bared as they formed a blockade to head off Thunder's rampage. Stellar could see the street junction up ahead being torn apart as an unfortunate guard contingent ran afoul of his magic. A shockwave washed down the street, causing window panes to shatter and a rain of glass to fall down upon them, pattering off their cloaks and mail. Thunder ran towards them, his face obscured by a flaming skull visage, burning white hot and incandescent with witch-fire, its grotesque visage disproportionate to his body.

"Okay, nope, you can't be here." Shimmer dragged Stellar's unwilling form over to the side towards a building.

"Wait, we can't—"

"You're hurt. You won't last a second here."

"You don't understand! We need help!"

"I'll say. I can't believe he's already torn through so many of us."

"Shimmer!" Stellar shouted to try to make her point. With the gunfire and the wash of noise rolling off of the approaching artifice of magic that was steadily approaching them, her voice was drowned out. The skin crawled and the stomach rebelled. Something about the magic was intrinsically foul, and it insulted their very being. Some of the weaker-willed city watch ponies broke down, running off out of the way of the seemingly unstoppable mass of magic. They, in their cowardice, proved to be the wiser, for when the spectral skull crashed into the line, it exploded. Pulsating waves of magical force threw ponies against walls, into the air, and tossed them across the stonework ground, leaving them in armoured heaps of pain in front of Thunder as he ran on, seeking an escape.

Stellar and Shimmer were among the more fortunate. Shimmer's insistence of dragging her friend out of the oncoming freight train of magical pain led to Stellar only receiving a minor bout of excruciating pain as she was lifted off of the ground and tossed further into a side lane, landing in a puddle beside a beaten up carriage. Shimmer, at the last moment, had made to shield Stellar from the worst of the blast and had been thrown straight into said carriage, breaking through the wooden façade and landing in the darkness inside.

Time to take stock of things. She and nearly a dozen other ponies were all but wiped out in the opening stages. Check. Many injuries, much pain. Check. Their target was now rampaging along the streets of the waterfront, barely contained by the city watch's cordon and throwing enough magic around that it should, by rights, wipe the entire waterfront flat. Check. Now her pain-addled mind was making her hear things, as she could swear that the carriage beside her was swearing. Ch—

She blinked.

'Wait a minute.' She pushed herself to her good foreleg, wincing with the pain and shifting uncomfortably in her dented armour. Sure enough, the carriage was rocking back and forth, and she could just about make out swearing coming from inside.

Only it wasn't Shimmer's voice. The door burst open, knocking her on her helmet and jerking her head back painfully as a tall, armoured form stumbled forth.

"Hey!" Shimmer shouted, hoof outstretched from inside the carriage. Handy slammed the door on her face. "Owww…."

"What." Handy turned and looked down at Stellar for a few seconds, as if lost for words.

"Shit." Well, when you were lost for words, the ones you found weren’t always guaranteed to be winners.

"WHAT!?"

"I don't have time for this." Handy about-faced and walked off down the lane, passing Stellar.

"Wait!" Stellar lowered the blades on her boot and reached out with her good hoof. The blades tore through the cloak the human wore, catching on their folds and arresting him in his motion. "That's where you've been!? This whole time!?"

"Of course not." Handy turned to glare at the injured mare. "I've been circling your pretty little cordon. This just seemed like a convenient place to step into for a moment when I saw a lot of you gather in one place. Now if you'll be so kind, this was a rather rare cloak before you ruined it." Stellar was absolutely livid with Handy's flippant tone.

"You heartless little… Why weren't you where you said you'd be!?"

"Because I am not a fool."

"Absolutely— grragh! Look, help us! You said you were here for vengeance against Thunder, so help us!"

"Help you? I am."

"How!?"

"By critiquing your performance. I must say, very disappointing. I had hoped you'd be more of a challenge to wear him out for me, but I guess he gives even less of a damn for subtlety now than he did back at the festival. Ah well, I'll find some other means of wearing him down."

"You… arrogant, self-righteous, hateful, backbiting, lying, manipulative, conceited bastard!"

"Excuse me?"

"Good ponies are going to die out there because of you! And you don't care!?"

"I would hardly call—"

"Shut up— ahh!" Stellar cried as she rose back to her full height, gingerly lifting her broken limb to her chest. "You would sacrifice dozens of ponies in your place because you fear, what? Getting your hands dirty with the fighting?"

"You have no right to talk to me like that." Handy glared at her, the casual tone in his voice quickly disappearing.

"I have every right, you blasted shit! I wronged you, fine. You hate me and my kind for it, fine. But fuck you to Tartarus and back if you think that gives you the right to gamble with all of our lives because you're too much of a coward to show your face when you said you would."

"Go sit on a pike and spin, you whore!" Handy bellowed. "Thunder's power is raw and primal. Had I attacked him head on, I would have died as simple and as easily as anyone else. He had to be worn down and, frankly, there are more of you than there are of me."

"So you're just a coward then." Stellar’s tone had turned nasty, and Handy squared his shoulders, his visage turning dangerous.

"How. Fucking. Dare you."

"You are the only one here who knows anything about the magic he is using," she began slowly, speaking through clenched teeth. "You're the only one here with armour that can repel any kind of magic, even Discord's. You are the only one here who fought Thunder before. You are the only one who could have directed us when dealing with him and prevented dozens of injuries. You're the only one right at this moment who can help turn this around and stop him before he kills somepony." Stellar stared Handy dead in the eye. She felt a strange pressure weighing down upon her as she did so, even though his head was masked behind that damned silver helm. She ignored it, refused it. She would not look away. "How dare you stand by and still call yourself a knight?"

He didn't respond, just standing there and staring down at her defiant glare. The sounds of magical blasts and gunshots in the near distance were evidence of the emergency still at hand. Unknowingly they were being watched from the broken carriage, Shimmer's eye peeking through the door to spy on the exchange.

It was Handy who broke line of sight first, looking up and out at the abandoned streets of the waterfront. It was a tiny sliver of the city overall, with the industrial district on the far side of the bay and bordered on two sides by canals. Its streets were torn up, homes and store fronts vandalised and ruined by the wild and fell magic of Thunder as he passed. Glass shards littered the ground wherever one looked up and down streets that merely an hour before had been the peaceful homes of sleeping families. She couldn’t read what was going through his head, but she had evidently hit something to give him pause.

"Even if I fed, it would not be enough. I found that out the hard way. Attacking him straight on from where he can see you is fruitless."

"Then what?" Stellar asked. He looked down at her contemplatively for a moment before taking off his helmet, his face bearing a grim expression. His eyes looked very tired.

"…I want you to know one thing before we go on," Handy said sternly, his jaw set. "I do not want to hate you. I do not want to hate anyone or any race, but I do. I loathe you for what you have made me become. I loathe your entire kind because of it. What I do now is to the furthering of my objective and to end the threat Thunder poses. It does not mute or change that."

"What are you talking about?" Stellar’s head turned to the side as Handy knelt down, shifting up the chainmail on his left arm and revealing the grievous state of his forearm. "What… What’s wrong with it?"

"Don't worry about it." He shifted his cloak, tying its hem about his elbow. "And if you really want to save lives, do not question what I tell you to do."

--=--

Cloud Skipper was having a bad day.

"Fall back!"

A very bad day.

"Form a line! You, goldcloak! Get that shootstick over here, now!"

And it was not going to get any better. So far they had managed to contain Thunder to the waterfront, placing troops on the roads of junctions they did not want him to go down while leaving another road open. There was just one problem.

He was running out of able-bodied ponies.

He had no idea where Midnight went. He had sent a few ponies to take care of the dazed and confused ponies in the building they had found Thunder in. A couple of civilians had somehow been missed by the advanced evacuation and had to be escorted while others kept Thunder's attention away from them. Their numbers were dwindling, their weapons were having no effect, and everypony was hurting. To make things worse, Thunder had just exited a junction. The ghoulish pony seemed to be radiating an intense aura, as if he were in the clutch of somepony else's magic. The aura was wrong – it twisted, shifted, and warped, like water flowing upward and inward upon itself, allowing Thunder to be seen clearly but whatever was behind him to be blotted out. It looked at them, lifeless eyes a ghastly greenish white, a foul substance secreting from his nose, mouth, and ears. It was as if he was little more than a container and housed a wretched candle that exuded a pungent smog as it burned.

It turned and walked towards them with purpose, not left like they had expected it to, in the direction of the nearest street that would allow it to escape. It didn't want to escape anymore.

It wanted them now.

An almost imperceptible grey blur shot down from the sky and struck Thunder into the ground before disappearing off into the distance.

It took Cloud a moment to register that Thunder's face was currently eating cobblestone, with his rear end pointing comically skywards. He snorted in surprise. Thunder shook himself off and let out a shout of anger, his head turning and searching. His magic flared as he summoned forth five shining points of light above him ready to—

The grey blur zoomed towards him, veered up, and stopped momentarily above him, revealing the moonlit form of a lunar guardsmare for the briefest second. And then she was gone again, moving too fast to make out exactly what she was doing. Thunder was struck, sent back into the wall of the building behind him. He was struck again, and this time the night pony was stopped by a magical shield. She paused and then shot off into the air again as Thunder retaliated with a blast of magical blades that cut through the air. She hovered in the air, before flying off down the road, leading away from Cloud and his troops, just slow enough to be seen, the furious Thunder making to follow after her, leaving them alone.

"What… What was that?" a goldcloak asked. He was a young pony, not even out of his teenage years. Cloud Skipper knew better than to admit he didn't know and took himself to task for looking surprised in front of the soldiers.

"You." The voice was heavy, laden and tired. Several gasps were elicited as they turned to find the human leaning against a doorway behind them, breathing heavily. He raised his hammer and pointed it at Cloud. "We need to… to… Come here."

"Wait." Cloud stuck his good wing out, easing some of his more jittery soldiers. "Human."

"White Boy."

"I have a name."

"Your name is Fuck You. Now get over here and listen to what I have to say if you expect to live through the night," Handy demanded, pushing himself off the doorframe. He seemed to wobble slightly before he found his footing. Several of the troops levelled their weapons at him. He waved them off. "Oh, tell your toy soldiers to piss right off. We don't have time for this."

"Why should we trust you? You led us here to this… this thing!"

"That’s right, I did. So what? Would you prefer I didn't and you'd have this lit powder keg ready to go off when you least suspected it?" Cloud didn't answer, looking over his shoulder, thinking about the mare who was moving far faster than any pony ordinarily should.

"What did you do?"

"Bought us some time." Handy ignored the levelled spears and polearms as he walked over to Cloud. The Pegasus noticed he was covering his left arm protectively in his cloak. He got down on one knee to look the pony dead in the eye. "Now you're going to do me a favour for my generosity and sit down, shut up, and do exactly what I say."

Cloud eyed his men. They were all looking at him with uncertainty. He turned back to Handy.

"Alright. I'm listening."

--=--

Thunder was done with trying to escape. Now he was mad. These foolish ponies had no idea the sheer power he had to hoof, and this mare was trying to humiliate him, leading him on a merry chase for nearly twenty whole minutes! Each time he would turn away or decide to go somewhere else, there she was, taunting him, striking at him and daring him to strike back. He would not stand for that. He would not stand for any of it! He stopped in his gallop and turned his gaze skyward. The pegasi were destroying the clouds, denying the advantage his power gave him over the weather.

"If you will not come down…" The cobblestones shook and dislodged, wispy tendrils of magic pushing their way to the surface. "Then I will strike you from the sk—!"

"Now!" Thunder turned to his right to see three unicorns, their horns aglow with the magic that was concentrated to a point on the very tips of their horns. Everything moved as if in slow motion as the ponies emerged from a ruined shopfront to his right. He turned his head; another one was coming from his left. He raised his shield instinctively…

—Only to have it shatter like sugar glass. The unicorns clashed bodily with him but did not harm him, and he prepared to lash out...

—Only to find his assailants were already running. He blinked in confusion before snorting, refocusing his magic to strike them where they stood. Before he could do so, a bolt of lightning struck the earth to his left, and he turned skyward to see a team of pegasi shepherding a lone cloud away from his line of sight. The knaves had been hoarding them together, not destroying them! Now that he knew, he would steal them from the curs and then—

—He ate sidewalk. The sigils on his hide burned brightly as he was struck with an unrelenting force, knocked to the ground and grinding against it. He was carried and knocked against the hard ground and repeatedly stomped on the face with a steel shod hoof. He briefly made out a flash of green before it was gone again. Thunder, dazed and confused, rolled back to his feet. His shield rose instinctively as he struggled to comprehend what had just happened. When he heard a piercing whistle, his ears perked up.

Handy strode out into the middle of a courtyard not far from where Thunder stood. The creature strode across the yard and the broken masonry and stone craft, his armour glittering in the moonlight. "Been a while. How have you been? I've been juuuusssst fiiiine."

"You…" Thunder breathed, the memory coming clear to him now. Yes, he remembered the name Handy. He remembered the human, the festival, his mission. He remembered what happened, why he had failed the mistress. "You're supposed to be dead."

"Details." Handy waved his hand as Thunder walked towards him from across the yard with vengeful purpose. "Unlike me however, I'm pretty sure you still need to worry about such an inconvenience. Here's a thought, Thunder: give up now and you get to die far, far away and a long, long time in the future. Normally I'd say you'd get to live, but ehhhh. A dungeon is not really living now, is it?"

Thunder lashed out, a lightning bolt of magical energy striking Handy full in the chest with enough force to knock him down. The cur pushed himself back up and… was he laughing?

"Oh man, whew. You know, if I wasn't so tired, I could've just Gandalf'd that." His torso was incandescent with energy, the light fading and the silver of his armour glowing a bright white. It was bright red in the places where his armour's integrity was diluted with other metals by repairs.

Thunder had forgotten about the armour. He adjusted for his mistake. He focused on the joints of the human's armour, on his cloak with which to focus and pull, upon the ground beneath the human to turn the very earth against him. His eyes glowed with furious, crackling energy.

And then he was thrown to the ground again, pounded again and again. He lashed out, but his assailant was gone. He raised his shield, turning around and around, again and again, searching for his attacker, for any ambushers. He finally turned to see the human was nearly on top of him. Thunder lashed out with a number of manifested bolts of magical energy, pummelling Handy and forcing him back step by step as he turned to his side, minimising the exposure of his bare forearm as his armour lit up from each impact.

Thunder was attacked again by unicorns that emerged from around corners and narrow lanes. Again his shield was broken, again their retreat was covered, and again did that damned grey blur beat him into the ground and fly off before he could react. And to add insult to injury, the hammer blow from Handy caught him completely off guard.

The sigils on his jaw sputtered, turning black and then disappearing, melting away from his fur like wet ink and dissipating into wispy smoke as it met the air. Thunder rolled his jaw and spat out a bloody tooth.

"Ah well, see? Progress!" Handy cackled.

And then he was gripped by the throat and lifted into the air, the edges of his chainmail and armour burning incandescently as the magic brushed against it to squeeze down on his neck. He was thrown hard against the ground and left there, barely moving. Thunder roared and the ground underneath him exploded outwards, erupting into spikes of hardened earth that burst from the ground, radiating outwards from the sorcerer. The unicorns that had been hiding were forced back. The pegasi abandoned their positions and clouds as bolts of magic perforated the air, making it impossible to approach. Handy was lifted up and thrown bodily by the convulsing earth, landing painfully and rolling along the ground, only stopping against the wall of a building.

All in all, it was a good plan for the minute or so it worked. Keep the ground pounders away, unicorns on ambush duty and focusing their magic on the points of their horns like he had seen Whirlwind do. Pegasi would cover their retreat, Stellar was in for hit and run, and Handy was the big, bright, magic-proof distraction. Rinse, repeat.

His vision came to him in fits and spurts, slipping in and out of oblivion. He was hurting pretty badly. The whitewash sound created by Thunder's magical fit drowned out nearly everything else as eldritch light lit up the entire courtyard. He had to be running low, he simply had to. Everything Handy had seen about magic implied it cost effort and exertion. Old magic didn't seem to follow the same rules from what he could tell, but Thunder had to be wearing himself out. Handy had even managed to strike a physical blow after all this time. It was probably the only one he was going to get. He had given up a bit of blood and was feeling the consequences. He nearly had his windpipe collapsed on him, and every breath felt like a small, brisk miracle. And he had just been flung around like a doll while in such a state. This he could not just shrug off, and every movement felt like a titanic effort of will. Arcs of magical lightning struck the walls and ground around him. An unfortunate pegasus was struck in the wing and collided with the ground ten feet in front of him.

The plan was the same – he still needed an out even though everything had gone pear-shaped on him. He pulled himself up, using the nearby wall for leverage and surveyed his options. Thunder was running low; that was good. In order for that to occur, he had to supercharge a thestral; that was bad. She was going to be an extreme liability to the plan. Several of the exits out of this very courtyard were blocked off; that was bad. On the flipside, many of the weekend warrior ponies were incapacitated in some manner, or backing off as he had told Cloud Skipper to do; that was good. He was trapped on the waterfront, which was bad. He still didn't know where and what kind of artefact he was even trying to recover for the changelings, which was bad. If things kept going as they were going, either Thunder would escape, several somebodies died, possibly even Handy himself, or he would be incapacitated and captured by the Equestrians, which was bad. And on top of all that, Handy was beaten and would really really like to lie down and go the fuck to sleep. That was very bad.

He'd had worse odds.

He spied a cowering Goldcloak through the broken doorframe of a nearby ruined house, quivering beneath a window sill between a rickety-looking sofa and a cabinet full of broken crockery. A discharged shootstick was cradled in her forelegs as she rocked back and forth, the green-tinged alchemical smoke wafting from its muzzle.

It was a dickish thing to do, it really was, but he had no other option that gave him as much flexibility. He had a mission to fulfil and a geas to cancel out. Also, he liked the idea of not being in Equestrian captivity, answering God knew how many questions he'd rather not and then be sent to Griffonia on the ponies' terms. That was even if they would do so at all after this debacle.

But still he hesitated. Was he really going to go from necessary feeding to simply biting a conveniently placed meat bag, an erstwhile ally of circumstance though they may be, for simple battlefield practicality?

He was jolted from his moral musings when several bolts of magical energy struck the wall above him. Thunder was still running wild and lashing out at everything around him. That made the decision for him. He crawled to his knees. Every ache and joint of his body protested, and his heart beat faster to make up for the lost blood. He felt light-headed with the exertion as he first crawled to his fallen hammer. Then a bolt of eldritch fury struck it, and an explosion of brightness nearly blinded him. He lowered his arm, fearful that his weapon had been destroyed.

It had not. It lay there, same as it had been just before it was struck. It did not glow like his armour, for it was not of the same construction, nor did it burn or melt from the fury of the magical blast. Indeed, nothing more than a faint blue arc of electricity danced across its surface before it faded from sight.

Though he did not know it, a witch smiled.

Handy did not dwell on it, deciding not to question the good fortune and grabbing it. He ran, stumbling, towards the ruined home.

"Ahh!" The mare jumped up, only to fall back on her rear, levelling the spiked shootstick at the tall human as he stumbled through the doorway into her hiding spot beneath a destroyed window. "Wh-What do you want!? Go away!"

"Calm! Calm down! I'm just trying to get some cover!" As if to emphasize his point, the air outside the window cracked as another bolt of energy struck the wall. Handy crouched down. "Look, what's your name?"

"What? Who cares!? Ju-Just get out there and fight that thing. It’s what the sergeant said you were here for, right!?"

"Just tell me your name," Handy calmly demanded, staring her dead in the eyes.

"M-Maple… Maple Leaf."

"Okay, Maple. Why'd you take the gold?"

"What?" He gestured to her cloak.

"Why did you become a soldier?"

"I… I wanted to do my duty. To protect Equestria."

"Including the citizens of Manehatten?" Handy asked, noting her horn as he slowly got closer under the smashed window. Maple seemed to calm down, so long as he kept staring straight into her eyes. 'A unicorn? Damn it, of all the useless… Wait. Wait, no, this could be useful actually.'

"Of course!"

"So you'd be willing to bleed for the safety of everyone you know?"

"I… Yes, that’s… What are you—" He placed his hand on her withers and smiled sadly.

"I'm sorry to hear that."

--=--

It was beautiful, in a way. It felt wrong, made the skin crawl, caused bile to rise to the throat for an indefinable reason. Flying as she was, though, everything seemed to be moving so slowly in comparison, the lights and the shadows they cast possessing a terrible, destructive allure.

She was done playing around. She had warned her superiors to move everypony back, telling the pegasi still in the air to spread the word. Enough good ponies had suffered tonight.

She dived, ducking under an arc of energy, and slashed her claws across his side with enough force to break the blades off of her hooves and to cause the sigils protecting his flesh to finally give out under abuse. The force of the blow was followed up by a powerful buck as she arched her back in the air with a speed and grace that would ordinarily have been impossible. Thunder was thrown into the air, his attacks interrupted and silenced.

She wasted no time, lest he come to his senses before he hit the ground. Another powerful flap of her wings, which until only recently had been broken and aching, and she was upon him. She threw him to the ground and wailed into him, feeling the magical shielding burst into life and repel her blows as if she were hitting rubber. Just as equally, she felt the bare fur and broken bones as she attacked where the sigils had given way at long last.

His eyes flashed, his mouth opening, and Stellar got a face full of concentrated magic. She jumped off, shrieking and blinded. For a brief eternity her entire existence was subsumed by maddening pain. She leapt off his form, something falling from her head as she did so. She landed hard on the ground, thrashing and screaming. Slowly she calmed down, the pain subsiding and a faint coolness creeping along the contours of her cheeks and over her eyes. She felt wetness first, then cold, then the bite of the air as it brushed against her flesh. The pain was replaced by a curious trickling feeling, like a thousand tiny droplets of water slowly closing over her face. At long last, she felt her eyes strain as her vision returned to her.

Shaking her head and rubbing her eyes as she blinked away the stinging pain, she searched for the warlock’s whereabouts, and upon seeing her blood and clots of burning flesh on the ground where she had stumbled, she halted. Fear shot through her, and she reached for the nearest broken window, patting down her face with a hoof. She was fine, not a scratch on her. She didn't have long to contemplate the fact before a furious Thunder rose to his hooves, bleeding and coughing. He didn't talk, he didn't shout – he just attacked.

And so it went. She would exhaust herself running and fleeing from the devastating assaults of the warlock, and in turn he would try in futility to drop his attacks and raise his shield in time to prevent her flanking rejoinders.

He'd unleash his magic; she'd fly off. She'd break another one of his sigils; he'd lash out and cut her flesh, only for it to heal with infuriating quickness. He'd destroy a building just to bring her down, and she'd waste his time by not politely sitting still and being crushed. She'd break his jaw; he'd break her wing just to see it snap back into place. She was exhausted, slowing down. He rarely managed to strike her, but when he did, it was devastating. No matter how many times she rolled with the hits, she was running out of steam. She couldn't keep this pace up.

Fortunately, neither could he.

It felt like the underside of his skin had been rubbed raw with iron wool and had vinegar poured over it. With a sucking noise and a snapping sound that echoed in the vast empty space the waterfront had become, Thunder collapsed on the ground, crawling his way down a flight of steps on the side of a building to a lower street level. His body writhed in pain and his mouth contorted in formless words of agony he could not give voice to. Stellar alighted on the ground and coolly followed, sensing the fight was over.

"Stay away!" Thunder demanded, collapsing and falling down the last several steps and landing in the cold and mossy brickwork of the lower street. He hurriedly scrambled away. His eyes were wild and he had to hold his jaw to speak properly. "Keep away from me!"

"It's over," Stellar said between breaths. It had taken nearly everything the human's blood had given her but he was finally down. She felt dead on her feet. "Just give up."

"No, you y-y-you wretch! You'll never take my memories from me! They're mine! Mine, you hear!?"

"I have no idea what you are talking about, and I don't care." She passed beneath an overpassing street, her eyes still clearly visible in the shadow. Thunder gasped and hurriedly tried to write a rune into the ground, only to blink stupidly as the symbol he had carved out of the muck and packed in dirt was unintelligible. He scratched it out and tried again. That one didn't even look finished.

"Oh no…" He inhaled sharply as realization crept up on him. Stellar hooked the broken blades of one of her hooves up under the lapel of Thunder Strike's jacket, bringing him to her eye level.

"You have a lot of explaining to do. And you’re coming with me.”

"Yeahhh, about that…" Stellar's ears flicked towards the source of the sound, and she turned to gawp in surprise as Handy emerged from the shadows of an alcove. He snuck up on her? How!? She didn't even hear him move! She couldn't—

There was a thunderous crack that resonated through the night and a brief burst of light as Handy's hammer collided with her helmet. The force threw her against the wall, and Handy stumbled backwards in shock. He looked down at his crackling hammer with something approaching shock and wonderment.

"I don't know what you did," he said, turning his baleful gaze toward Thunder as he silently moved towards him. His heavy boot splashed down on a puddle of water, but not an octave of sound could be heard. " I'll thank you later."

"W-Wait, please wait!" Handy threw a punch that knocked the pony insensate, but conscious. He bent over, threw him up over his shoulder, and walked off into the darkness. That was the last thing Stellar saw before passing out as the eldritch lightning ran through her body, paralyzing her.

Handy shifted the groaning weight of the pony over his shoulder, his moans the only noise that could be heard in his passing as he disappeared into the darkness beneath the streets. He was heavy on his shoulder, but he put up with it to get away from Stellar. He lifted his hammer and studied it, contemplating the faint shimmer upon its scarred and pitted silver surface that once shone so brightly and brilliantly. A thousand thoughts and questions went through his mind, fruitlessly searching for answers he did not have.

Like so many other things, if nowhere near as odious, he put such thoughts at the back of his mind. He had business to take care of first.

--=--

It laughed.

It laughed long, low, and quietly. It was a sibilant sound, yet harsh, like a snake that had contracted black lung. It echoed and carried along the halls and the crypts beneath the castles of long dead kings. It was the sound that haunted the ghosts of empires.

It was the voice of a dealer to the desperate, the greedy, and the foolish. It was a loan shark who was generous in its terms and exacting in its debts, uncaring of who sought its succour nor why. None could truly pay back what was owed, so they would take more to stave off the inevitable, only succeeding in delving themselves more completely into its control when it exacted what was owed.

And upon this night, a debtor had finally come to term and would pay what was owed, a price no sane person would ever consider if they knew what it truly was. And why should they care about the real price, the hidden costs of the power with which they have been given? The laughing voice had found many who didn’t and revelled in giving them what they sought, for it was generous and giving. Oh, many had thought it a fool for that, but it was old, sooo very old, so very wise and twisted and clever. It could wait, for they were none of those things. They would fall, as all mortals do, their greed consuming them as they died.Their arrogance would overcome them; they would waste their might until naught was left. Then it would exact his price.

Their fear and anger would blind them into not questioning the sudden largesse of their betters, not even when the very object that was the centre of their master’s ire made itself known. In their blindness, they would lay waste to themselves. Then, and only then, it would exact its price.

It could wait. It could give them as long as they needed to find some way out of their bargain, their pact, their accord. For their was none save death. It had been here before them; it would be here long after them. It could wait as long as they needed. It could grant them as many favourable terms as they desired. It was patient. It was generous. It would have its due in time.

“Sssssssoooo vvvveeerrrrryyyyy geeeennneeeerrrroooouuuussssss…”

Author's Note

It took me over a hundred Thousand words to draw that little plot thread with the witch to a close, but I fucking did it. Handy's hammer is now +1

Chapter 44 - Ticket to Ride

He kicked the door open and dragged Thunder in. The pony landed on the ground, sobbing and in pain.

"Is it here? Are you sure?" Handy hissed. The moonlight spilled into the dank cellar from behind him, causing his helmet to gleam and sparkle, almost giving it a halo. The effect was spoiled as its front was cast into shadow, serving only to emphasize the sharper angles of the helmet all the more. He cast the expensive brick about at full luminosity. He didn’t have time to fiddle around lighting his witch torch and deal with his pyrophobia.

"Yes… I… I think…" Thunder managed between sobs.

"What do you mean you think!?" Handy demanded, dragging him up, the pitiful creature clutching his broken jaw in his forehooves.

"I don't kn-ho-hooow… Please, I… I can't re—"

"Do not pull that amnesia shit with me again." Handy dropped him as he stomped forth, throwing over a table along with the tools and accoutrements on it to see the boxes underneath. The unnatural silence, which prevented him from making any sound he didn't consciously choose to, was spoiled only when the table hit the ground. He rummaged through one box, put it aside, opened the top of another, and rummaged through that one. There were plenty of parchments with that strange, wavy script that was characteristic of old magic, but it was not what he was looking for. He saw Thunder slowly crawling his way over to some discarded sheets. He snarled at him, stomped over, and kicked his hooves away, causing him to shrink on himself and cower. The pony’s breath hitched as he sobbed to himself, his previous arrogance and pretentiousness all but dissipated in the face of his tormentor.

'He really is nothing without that magic,' Handy thought, sneering down at the pathetic sight. He fumed and reached under his breast plate, drawing out the pendant. Even if Chrysalis could talk to Thorax through it, she couldn't talk to him, and that genuinely seemed like an inconvenience for once.

"Are you there?" he asked it. Nothing. "Don't play games with me, Queen. Wake up! Are you listening?" He shook it impotently.

A single pulse. He held the pendant in one hand and his brick in another, illuminating the crypt and its secrets for the pendant to see.

"Do you see it? Is it here?" he asked, trying to hide the desperation in his voice. The unicorn blood made him utterly silent unless he wanted to be heard; unnoticeable unless he was being foolish or wanted to be noticed. It allowed him to see beyond sight at the thin, infinitesimal, ethereal threads and waves that connected the world, like the harp strings of some heavenly instrument. It had taken him a while to realise that what he had seen was magic itself, and he had no idea what to feel about that. For all the good that did him, he was still trapped on the waterfront and the ponies would be closing in soon. He would have to sacrifice Thunder and all the questions the pony could answer if he wanted to slip by unmolested. He should be able to distract the ponies long enough for him to figure something out.

But not before he got what he came for.

There were scrolls, manuscripts, blank books with hastily written notes in English and other languages he didn’t recognise, along with scribblings and simpler renditions of old magic symbols. There were other things as well: documents, strange objects, and statuettes. Some were old, some worn, and several he was pretty sure were the kinds of things you found being hawked to gormless out-of-towners by the local market shysters. Or he would be if they weren’t radiating particularly intimidating-looking magical auras.

The pendant began flashing rapidly when he held it over a bench in a dark corner. He held it closer to the bench, waiting for it to pulse faster the closer he got to what she wanted. Handy reached in and grabbed a sheet of paper. It was little more than a sliver of a sheet, barely a quarter of a full sized parchment. It was ancient, yet pliant and moist despite being kept in such a dry area. It didn’t… feel like paper either. Strange. He studied it closer in the insufficient light the room contained. The ink drawing depicted… something. Was it a map? A design? Part of a blueprint? Could someone place it up against a rock wall and rub charcoal against it for the surface shape? He couldn't make it out.

"Is this what you want?" He held the paper to the pendant. It pulsed. "One for no, two for yes."

It pulsed twice. Handy paused and his expression darkened.

"Tell me truthfully, Queen. Is this, though it appears to be torn from something else, the object you desire, the object you wish for me to retrieve, the object for which you have placed a geas upon my shoulders to bring to you?" The pendant was dark for a moment before it flashed three times. "One for no, two for yes, Chrysalis. If no, I will just leave it here. Which is it? Do not play games with me now."

The pendant flashed twice. Handy smiled.

He pocketed the map, wrapping it around the pendant and stuffing both in the small pack by his side. He turned to walk back over to the pathetic remnants of the pony that had once been a living terror. He stopped and eyed all the documents around him. The artefacts would be too big, but the parchments… Crimson could use those. All that power.

He hurriedly searched, finding a burlap sack and tossing in every scrap of paper he could find. As he did so, he felt something strange, a tingling in the back of his mind about… something he couldn't quite place. He heard a sob and saw a pony lying on the floor near the door. Strange, what was he— Oh right!

He dropped the bag and walked back over to the crying stallion.

"What’s wrong now? Is this it? Is this everything?"

"I-Is… Is what everything?"

"You know what I mean." He heard footsteps, lots of them, drawing near, wing beats from two dozen metres off. It was the living bodies of the guards closing in from afar. He turned back to the pony in his hands and looked down at him in confusion. The tingling in his brain increased in intensity for a brief moment. He knew this pony… somehow. Yes, had he not just been... Yes, that’s right. He was the one behind the old magic, the one who just tore up half a city block, but why was he down here? "What are you doing down here, pony?"

"What?" he asked, desperation in his voice, mewling in pain from his broken jaw. "Wh-Where am I?" He looked around, confused and scared. "Wh-Who are you?"

"Who am I!?" Handy exclaimed, utterly incredulous. The prickling sensation dancing over his scalp intensified enormously. "Who are you!?"

"I… I don't…" The stallion looked down searchingly, confusion and fear in his eyes. The life seemed to drain out of him, his fur turning a more grey shade in the moonlight, the light of his eyes dimming. "I… I don't recall…"

Wings swished through the air while armoured hooves stomped the ground, Handy was running out of time. The tingling finally stopped, whatever it was. He dropped the pony on the ground, picked up his sack of gatherings, and looked back over the small cellar once more. The pages of old magic scrawls remained, but the sheets were blank where they ought to have words. Strange – he could have sworn they were full of written notes just... It would have to do. Had he been braver, he'd make the effort to burn it all.

Instead he simply left, sneering at the wretch he hated on the ground, though he wasn't sure why he hated him. And when the ponies of the city watch finally reached the open cellar, having found the dead end of the street with the stairs leading down to it, they found the pony who they had only ever known as the terrible warlock who tore apart a section of their city.

Even though they knew not his name.

--=--

Midnight Blossom scowled. She hated scowling but scowling was what she continued to do, for it was a situation worthy of a scowl. Her face, thusly bandaged, only allowed her to see with one eye. An entire wing was dressed and splinted. She was pretty sure each of the individual hairs on her tail hurt as much as the rest of her body, and she was still finding spines and needles in places all over her body. Some ponies had gotten blasted through a wall or something ridiculous like that. Her? Oh no, not her – she got an easy landing after being thrown through a window and falling several stories.

Right onto the briariest of briar patches that ever patched their briars.

She didn’t know who the gardener was, but they probably should have been fired and made to work in a sewer for the rest of their life. They clearly didn’t know their arse from their cannon and could evidently use an abject lesson. Who in Tartarus planted briars in their gardens?

Cloud, having gotten battered, bruised, and merely having a sprained wing, was in a much better state of affairs than his partner. That was not what bothered him. What bothered him was that he had never seen Midnight this upset. He had never seen her scowl. That was his thing. She was always the one who smirked, gave the cocky jibes, and constantly gave him little slices of hell for his own embarrassments.

So his internal conflict right now was whether or not to, for once in his life, respond in kind.

It didn’t really take him long at all to decide. He cleared his throat, lowered his head slightly, and muttered: “You’re looking well today.” For his troubles, Midnight’s one good wing shot out and hit Cloud’s bad wing with enough force to elicit a short, pained grunt.

“If you two are done fooling around,” Marquis Short Swipe de la Mané admonished, casting a glower over the two royal guard sergeants, “we have an inquiry to finish.”

“I still protest,” Midnight said from her seat at the table. “This is a royal matter, and we must take it up with Princesses Luna and Celestia post-haste as a matter of course.”

“With all due respect to their Highnesses,” the elderly pony began through a set jaw. His mane was silvered from age and had long since lost its black luster, completing his stately appearance. “I was well informed that a dangerous individual would be trafficked through my city and lands. That I was to trust my guard, the city watch, and to allow the goldcloak garrison access and mutual co-operation. I readily agreed, trusting my princesses in good faith. And now I have that very same individual at large in the finest city in the entirety of Earth Splitter Bay. Scores of ponies are now left homeless and their businesses eviscerated, and my waterfront is little more than a blasted battleground.”

"Which is precisely why we shouldn't be wasting further time on this matter. Every moment we spend here risks further panic," Midnight countered.

“I have hundreds of thousands of ponies, right here on this island, panicking and afraid as we speak. The city is locked down as if under siege. There are soldiers everywhere on the streets while the harbours and ports are emptying by the hour. My son is on his way to the Black Isles Enclave to fix whatever mess you’ve already made over there and to placate the Viceroy on the princesses’ behalf, putting his reputation and that of my family’s name on the line. And to top it all off, the only good to come of it is that we have the very culprit responsible, one of them anyway. He is little more than a blithering idiot unable to recall his own blasted name, never mind his own bladder, and unbelievably, nopony else can recall anything about him other than he was the cause of the destruction. So yes, Sergeant, I will have my answers and perform my inquiry before the princess has her answers. Somepony has to look after the interests of my ponies after all.” His voice was calm, measured, and cultured, but Midnight did not care for the subtle tone his words carried. He was angry, furious, and had every right to be. Still...

“Alright,” she conceded, turning back to look upon the pony standing before the hastily assembled inquiry. She studied her face. Her eyes were forward facing, her face expressionless, her scars healed, and her armour… in an absolutely unacceptable state of affairs. Given the circumstances, that could be overlooked. "Private, you were the one who was contacted, correct?"

"Yes ma'am," Stellar replied dutifully, her voice kept to a dull, respectful monotone.

"And I am led to believe that you took the word of this… human, on face value?" the Marquis asked, lifting a sheet of parchment and adjusting the spectacles on his face.

"Not at first, Your Grace."

"Then why take it at all?"

"Because the potential threat was too great to ignore. And as it would appear, the threat was real."

"Evidently," Short Swipe said, though his tone indicated he was unconvinced of something. "And you are certain he was not the initial cause of the threat?"

"No."

"Then why did you not immediately attempt to subdue the human or seek reinforcements?"

"I sought to get reinforcements immediately but was prevented."

"How?"

"Handy said that if I left, Manehatten would burn," Stellar said frankly. The Marquis' expression did not change. "I take it, in hindsight, that meant he would have simply fled without informing us of the threat."

"And you do not presume he was working with this… threat, seeing as for some stars blasted reason nopony knows his name?"

"We're simply referring to him as the prisoner for now," Cloud interjected.

"Yes, well, answer the question, Private." Short Swipe turned back to the mare.

"No, I do not."

"And why do you presume that?"

"Because, Your Grace, the human used us in order to weaken him."

"Explain." And on it went for an hour. And then another. The marquis utterly exhausted every inquiry he could, routing out any possible negligence on the part of the royal guard, anything at all he could salvage and use to calm his citizens. Unfortunately, he found nought more than what he had to begin with: that the human had turned up, his waterfront had blown up, dozens of ponies had been left injured and dozens more homeless, and the same human had made off with the culprit, who was now little more than a drooling imbecile afraid of his own shadow.

"And these reports I hear of one of your soldiers using some kind of 'battle magic?' I did not know your contingent brought battle mages."

"A state secret," Midnight spoke up. Cloud glanced at her while Short Swipe raised an eyebrow.

"Is that so?"

"It is. It was a potential countermeasure for use on Handy had he proven aggressive. Turned out it had to be activated in defence of Manehatten." Short Swipe clucked his tongue on the top of his mouth, clearly not buying it. He hummed contemplatively.

"Very well. Be that as it may, I formally request you stay within the island's boundaries until this… Handy was his name? Until this Handy is found and brought to account," he said unnecessarily. Good portions of the injured were royal guards who couldn't go anywhere in any case.

"You can rest assured we'll find him," Cloud declared confidently.

"It’s been two days so far," the deep voice of the earth pony in their midst rumbled. The Manehatten sheriff was a mountain of a pony, dark-furred with an eye patch and wearing an azure cloak. He had been quiet throughout the inquiry, but no less attentive for his silence. One did not rise through the ranks of the city watch by skimping on the small details. "We have found nothing as my ponies combed the city. How can you be so sure of where he is?"

"Because I know exactly where he is." Stellar looked down at the floor, her burned and charred helmet partially melted away from the magical blast that should have rent the flesh from her skull like warm butter. Her dreams had not been her own since that night. Her Princess had taken special notice of her, having known the human's whereabouts. That was, once she had gotten over her… moderate shock that the ship the human was on sailing to Manehatten had been the very same one her guards were on.

It was imperfect. Luna had no way of knowing the human wasn't in their captivity until she actually asked somepony in their dreams. She had felt no need to do that until she woke up that night and noticed the human running wild and free around the city. So it was that Stellar became her personal contact while the debacle continued. She had been none too pleased to learn about what had occurred, and Stellar dared not refuse her anything. Stellar looked back up at the ponies gathered before her.

"We have a magical tracer applied under his skin. With time and patience, we can deduce his exact location."

"And how do you know this?" the Marquis demanded, casting a glare at the surprised-looking sergeants. Stellar resisted the urge to grimace. It had been a royal secret she was privy too, and it probably would have done well to forewarn her immediate superiors. However, such was the problem of receiving orders in your dreams and having to face the third degree at first light.

"Because I was the one who placed it on him."

--=--

His breath frosted on air as he worked the latch, shaking it and kicking the door once in desperate frustration. He needed to get inside; he needed to get out of the cold; he needed to rest. Good God, he needed to just rest.

The door gave way, and he all but fell inside. The howling wind and driving snow billowed in after him, winter’s icy claws reluctant to let him go. He slammed the door shut and fell against it, sliding to the ground and coughing.

The sections of Manehatten, the little blocks of buildings from ten storeys tall to the humble and small that sat in between the spider web of roads that made up the city, were like little towns themselves. Streets, alleys, parks, gardens, and sheds, each were a little maze, a paradoxical warren that was nonetheless neatly kept.

He thought he could lose them in there, lose them long enough to figure out a way off of this damn island.

He figured wrong.

He had spent too long in the waterfront chasing that slip of paper Chrysalis wanted, far, far too long. Between fighting… whatever his name was, going from door to door, raiding each of the little bolt holes filled with weird magical paraphernalia and scripts, and then trying to find his way out of the waterfront undetected, hours had passed. Even with the unicorn blood making him unnaturally silent in all his movements, and his changeling sense allowing him to feel where people were long before he fell into their line of sight, he couldn't cross.

The Marquis had spent hours shutting the city down, restoring order to the streets, and calming the panicked civilians. Manehatten Bridge was shut down, pegasi above and below it, guards on the train. The harbour and the shipyard were locked up tight, and any ship coming or going didn't so much as shed a splinter without being combed by guards first. Every fisherman's wharf had someone watching over it, just in case.

Manehatten even had an airship dockyard, a spiralling tower with platforms. There was no way he was getting up there unmolested. Trying to get to the other small towns on the island would involve traveling over open ground and looking very much like a human doing so, and that would be asking to get caught. Manehatten was on a manhunt; they had him cornered and knew it.

It still didn't explain the almost preternatural accuracy some of the guards had when they were searching for him.

He coughed once more, breathing heavily. His face was flushed; his head was fuzzy. He was pretty sure he was coming down with some sort of fever. Winter had finally struck, and it struck hard. It was almost as if there were a switch, and someone had turned it on full throttle. His clothes were ruined, he couldn't find any steady shelter, and food was becoming an issue. It was now several days since the waterfront incident, and Handy was not doing so well.

He pushed up, his chainmail clacking and clinking. His plates had been removed and stored, for it was easier to keep running without them. He had hidden them away, along with his packs, in a clever place on the corner of Fleet and Horn Street in the Temple District where he could find and retrieve them.

Just as soon as he figured a way out of this damn city.

He pulled his deer cloak close, huddling in it, revelling in its warmth and ability to insulate from the cold, the parts that weren't ripped and torn at least. Pushing himself to his feet, he soldiered on. He was in a dark and cold tunnel, the street above him partially visible through grates that let in flakes of snow and frost. The cold light of the evening coloured the tunnel a cold and deathly pale blue where it was not covered in shadow.

"Spread out – she said he'd be here."

Ah good, he could hear his pursuers now. How nice. He drew to a complete stop, stepping out of the light spilling from a grate above and into the shadows. He watched as the dark image of a pony crossed the ground before him, its iron shod hooves resounding on the grates. It stopped for a moment before continuing on. As he and his comrades went on their way above, Handy moved another way below.

These kinds of tunnels were old, from back when Manehatten was still a walled city, and there weren't many of them left. There might not even have another exit that remained unblocked, but Handy was desperate. Navigating was a bitch but he managed it, trying to avoid going down as much as could be helped. He saw one stairway descend into solid ice. If it turned out there was a lower level, it was likely going to be even more inhospitable than the surface.

He found his way into a cloistered chamber, riddled with alcoves, half walls, pillars, and side tunnels. Some were collapsed, though most were bricked over. That was when he sensed them coming: three ponies from another tunnel on the far side. He was about to turn around when he sensed two more on the periphery of his senses.

Shit. Well, at least he had gotten ample warning. He picked the darkest alcove he possibly could and put as much distance between him and the main room as possible. These old siege stores thankfully still had innumerable crap in them even after all this time.

"He's down here," a masculine voice ordered. He saw the flickering orange glow of firelight, and a tingle or trepidation crept up his spine as a surge of panic rose in his breast. Torches, they had torches.

'It’s okay. Calm down, they don't know. They don't know. They won't use them like that. It’s fine, it’s fine. Think of them like the witch torch. They won't burn, they won't burn. It’s fine, it’s fine, it’s fine.'

"Where?"

"Somewhere, he can't have gone far." He pressed closer into his hiding place, squeezing into the shadows as he saw the firelight draw closer to the wall beside him. He clamped his teeth shut and clapped his hand over his mouth, trying desperately to silence his breathing. His lungs burned; it was hard to breathe; his head felt light; he needed to cough; phlegm was catching in his throat. He needed to get away from the fire.

"Well, let’s get started. Night Sight?"

"Yeah?"

"Check over here for a minute. Can you see anything through this hole?" The fire got closer, the clippity-clop of hooves louder. The crates that made up his cramped hiding place began to shake as a pony started moving them to see what was behind.

He needed to get away from the fire.

He saw the peak of a black hat above him as the pony tried to climb above, having given up on moving all of the crates out of the way and opting to see what was behind him.

And he was bringing his fire with him.

"What in Tartarus is that?" one of the other ponies from the far side of the room muttered.

He needed to get away from the fire.

The pony misplaced a hoof and almost fell back, letting out a yelp, nearly dropping his fire and causing Handy to scream in feral panic. He could see the torch now, the tips of its flickering flame as the pony climbed his way back up.

He needed to get away, he needed to get away, he needed to get away, heneededtogetawayheneededtogetaway, away, Away, Away, AWAY, AWAY, AWAY!

"Hey, I think we found something!" Handy blinked. The torch-wielding pony hovered where he was, just over the cusp of his hiding place before climbing back down. He heard a number of hooves carry off into the distance, most of the light fading barring one small flame still flickering by its lonesome as silence returned to the room. He breathed, his chest convulsing as it threatened to give way to a wracking cough from being suppressed so long. He pushed it down a bit more as he struggled to lift himself from the ground. He had pressed against the cold stone, his hands clasped over his cloak and his hammer in a death grip.

The ponies had left, and there was only one left guarding the partially bricked tunnel entrance the others had apparently gone down. He held a torch aloft in the crook of his hoof where it met the rest of his foreleg in the curious manner ponies held things. Most importantly, he was facing away from Handy.

Getting out was going to be harder than getting in.

The pony wore a dark grey cloak. Handy couldn't see a weapon, so he wasn't a guard. City watch perhaps? Pegasus too. It could handle this cold better than Handy could. Handy was no sheltered daisy and Ireland was hardly mild in the winters, but when it got down to it, guy with the fur coat was going to handle the weather better than the naked ape in rags. Handy's chain rattled against the wood.

The pony's ear twitched and it glanced over in Handy's general direction, its eyes looking back and forth along the wall before he turned his attention back to the tunnel. Handy nearly had a heart attack as he was part way climbing over the crates. The stallion had been looking straight at him and didn't seem to see anything. His forehead had hurt as the pony had looked over. Handy's eyes had locked with his in the manner of a thief caught red-handed, and the pony just looked about and went back to his business as if he had seen nothing. What even in the hell, it wasn't that dark in this alcove, was it?

Well, terrible puns aside, never look a gift horse in the mouth. If God felt fit to have him stuck here with a near-sighted pony, Handy was all too ready to take the lucky break for what it was. He pulled himself over. Quietly, so very quietly, he hugged the dark shadows of the walls, watchful of the dancing light cast by the pony's torch on the other side of the room. His boots had cloth wrapped around them to help soften his footfalls and limit the amount of snow that would be caught on his soles. It certainly helped him now, as it mitigated the noise that would have been made, crunching centuries old brick, dust, and dirt underfoot.

'Just need to get out; just a little farther. Don't draw any attention to yourself.' Inch by inch, he came closer to the exit tunnel, the very same one the three ponies had come down. His heart pounded in his chest as he warily watched the pony guarding the partially bricked over tunnel, every twitch of its ear a potential sign that he was discovered, that some noise he had made was heard. Once he was around the corner and out of sight, he hurried his pace while looking back carefully, his unease never lessening even in spite of putting further distance between himself and the ponies with their damned torches. How did they keep finding him? They kept getting so unnaturally close. With the city on lockdown, soldiers in the streets, and most people staying inside when they could thanks to the weather, one would think Handy could manage to find some place to lay low, if only for a day.

He couldn't. Any time he lingered somewhere too long, they were upon him. He had taken to resting for an hour, maybe two. No real sleep at all before he was forced on the move again. They had to be tracking him somehow, but he had no idea how. Was it Stellar? He hadn't seen her since that night. Could she somehow pick him out in a city now? Was that a thing thestrals could do if they had enough of someone's blood? He didn't know. In a fit of paranoia, he wrapped Chrysalis' pendant in cloth and hid it away in another location, just in case they were somehow using that to track him. They weren't – he knew that much now.

He stopped as he began coughing explosively, grabbing the wall for support as his lungs felt like they were trying to jump up through his throat.

"Hey, I hear somepony down this way!"

"Shit!" he cursed and ran again. He heard the hooves thundering up the ancient stonework behind him and felt the presence of the guards hot on his trail, the life energies of the ones on the surface moving to and fro. He felt his chest convulse as another series of coughs wracked him. He pushed on an ancient wooden door that wouldn't budge.

'God damn it, come on!' he swore internally before taking his boot to the handle and splintering the ancient, rotted wood underfoot. The rusted, worthless metal of the catch split under the force, and Handy pushed on into the darkness beyond. The noise had alerted his pursuers and there was more shouting. He felt more of the guards above start mobilising, leaving the surface and heading for entrances underground. Apprehension danced across his skin as the adrenaline started to give further impetus to his flight.

He ran and he ran, and he ran. He did not know how much further he could go on now. He turned one corner in the darkness, floor illuminated by irregular shafts of light from above, then turned up another flight of stairs. Then he went into a room, forced to dodge the sources of life he sensed coming his way, letting them pass before continuing onwards, moving in the opposite direction of the guards, trying to feel out where others were in relation to him as he backtracked. He coughed, his head burning. His legs ached; he couldn't feel his left arm. He was tired, so very tired.

So tired, in fact, that when he stumbled through a door and burst his way back onto the surface, it took him a minute to stop his momentum before running headlong into the wall of a high road. Dazed, he stumbled back, struggling to get his bearings, coughing and blinking blearily as he looked one way and then another.

'Where am I?' he asked himself, blinking. Turning around, he tried to see anything that could be used as a landmark. 'Where the hell am I now?'

He caught himself on the wall as he lurched over, coughing up his lungs again as the snow continued to fall. He needed to get out of the light, he needed shelter from the cold, but most importantly he needed to not be seen. He didn't want to be seen; he couldn't afford to be. He desperately needed not to be seen. He had to get out; he had to get away. It would be only a matter of time before someone came upon him! He turned to leave the short, empty street he was on…

And froze when he saw a pony turn the corner of a street towards him.

--=--

Tinker Tailor whistled while he worked, he whistled while he walked, and he whistled as he whiled away the whole day, stopping only as he talked.

He was whistling to himself, content with a fine day's trade and a good trade's work, as he walked the whole way home. He drew his scarf closer about his neck, the wooden crates that held his tools rattling from their perch on a working saddle. Despite everything, he was rather carefree. He didn't mind all the soldiers on the streets as much as other ponies did; never bothered him none. Streets sure were quieter though. He turned a corner at Fifth and Mayhew, down a street between the wall of a high road and the dilapidated facades of lower apartments that had seen the winter come and go over ten times since they last housed a living pony. The upper apartments were still lively though, as they were accessed from the high roads.

Tinker liked to take this route home, as it was shorter that way, and it was not as if anypony would mind. But on this day, much to his surprise, he met a pony. His eyebrows lifted in surprise as he nodded a greeting.

"Afternoon, friend!" The stallion just stared at him, dead-set eyes wide with intensity, and his face expressionless. Tinker Tailor slowed down as he drew nearer to him. He was brown in colour with small patches of white in places, his mane a slightly darker shade of brown, dull blue eyes and, most curiously of all, a white square for a cutie mark. "You uh… You okay there?"

"…Fine." The pony’s voice sounded strange, strained, as if the word was unfamiliar coming from his lips. His accent was odd, an out-of-towner definitely, but he couldn't quite place it. He continued staring unblinkingly into Tinker's eyes. Feeling apprehensive, Tinker looked behind him and then back again as the snow started to ease off.

"Anything I could help you with? Are you lost?"

"No…" the pony said quickly, sounding pained. "I'm… I'm uh, fine thank you."

Tinker felt there was something very off about this pony, but he couldn’t put his hoof on it. Something about the eyes, and the way they looked at him. He felt the fur along his withers raise, a subconscious feeling that something wasn't right here. He wanted to avoid the eyes, for something about the way he looked at him felt… he didn't know. He just didn't like it. He tapped his hoof in slight agitation.

"Well uh, take care of yourself then," Tinker said, tipping his hat before walking around the strange pony and moving on, whistling nervously. He looked back. The pony was turned around, staring right at him as he left. He turned to look where he was going, whistling louder and clearer, trying not to hurry his pace too noticeably. He turned to look back, and once more the pony remained where he was. Once Tinker rounded the corner, he took in a deep gasp of breath before resolving to never take that street home ever again.

--=--

Handy collapsed against the wall when the pony had gone.

What was that!? What the hell was that!? He had looked straight at him, spoke to him. The pony had barely even so much as blinked, walked right up to him bold as brass. Sure, he had been speaking to Handy's waistline as if that was where his face had been, but what in the hell? His forehead ached terribly—must be the fever getting worse.

He couldn't hang around and wonder any more on the matter. For all he knew, that pony was now on his way to get the guards.

With a groan of exhaustion, he looked around him once more, feeling along the wall and searching for an alcove that would let him into a hollow interior.

And from there, maybe he could find somewhere to sit down. At least for a while.

--=--

Night fell. Life had returned to the city. Even though the curfew was still in effect, ponies had to go back to work, the train still needed to run, and the mills still had to produce goods. They couldn't keep ponies off the streets forever. And they still hadn't found him.

Stellar glided on the air currents above Manehatten, the cold winds brushing against her outstretched wings as she glided, flapping only on occasion to maintain her lift. The city was beautiful in the snow, very much like a snowflake when seen from above. The lights along the roads made it shimmer like a web of starlight amidst the white expanse.

She had spent the first two days relaying commands from the princess, something that took quite a bit of explaining to her superiors before her Highness herself paid them little visits of their own. Now the ponies worked on rotation, somepony always on call and ready to receive the latest update on the human's location. The Marquis was still making demands to meet the 'battle mage' they had invented out of thin air to justify how they were magically tracking the human, but he could wait until the human was actually caught and out of his city.

Somewhere down there he was hiding, and they were going to find him. The latest update had him hiding somewhere in the north of the city, in the Temple District. She didn't bother following her comrades as they rushed there, knowing full well they were going to receive another update soon about how he had moved on. Then she'd be there and catch him personally.

Her ears twitched and rotated around, and she turned to see Shimmer fly up to meet her, somewhat clumsily.

"You shouldn't be flying with that wing," Stellar commented dryly, her concern for her friend masked under a façade of professionalism.

"Hehe yeah, you know, you're right," Shimmer replied. Her characteristic bright, smiling face, wide pink eyes, and muted sea-green mane was almost always a welcome sight for anypony who was feeling down. That was what made it so worrying when she flew up to Stellar, frowning heavily. To her surprise, Shimmer flew up to Stellar, grabbed her by the shoulder guard, and spun her around to face her, putting a hoof on both withers and shaking her friend. "Are you bucking out of your flipping mind!?"

"Shimmer, what—?"

"I saw the whole thing!" Shimmer hissed. "I was playing timberwolf when you fed. Are you crazy?! Again?! After last time?! Do you want to throw away your commission!?"

"Shimmer, let go!"

"No!" She did, however, stop shaking her. "Stellar, you are incredibly lucky only I saw what you did. You are lucky the sergeants put the bridle on the others so that they don't go blabbing after we saw you zip about like that. We're lucky the pegasi under Cloud aren't entirely sure what happened. We are all incredibly lucky the locals are buying that whole battle mage story that leaked out."

"What was I supposed to do?!”

"Say no?! That's a crazy idea, isn't it?! You were injured and in no condition to do anything. Why would you even trust him?"

"It all worked out, I just…"

"Didn't expect him to turn on us and run off?" Stellar was incredibly taken aback. This was not like Shimmer at all; she was never this serious about anything. "I just… Stellar, the guys have been talking. They think you're going to be tried."

"What?!”

"I mean… after the princess reacted the last time, we just…" Shimmer suddenly withdrew into herself, letting go of Stellar. She hovered, rubbing one foreleg guiltily, her helmet hanging by her side tied to her barding. "Look, how long have we known each other?"

"Five years."

"Yeah, you're my best friend, Stell. I just… I don't want to see you throw everything away like this. I mean, the others are going to pressure Midnight to report to the P—"

"Yeah, she already knows." Shimmer blinked in shock. "I… told her myself, gave her a field report. Remember when I disappeared from the barracks after the waterfront? I was there communing with Luna and giving the sergeants directions to find the target."

Shimmer just hovered there, staring blankly at Stellar. Stellar looked away in shame before speaking with a huff.

"You know I'm sorry, right? I mean, all the trouble I caused just because I went off my potions for a while. It’s my fault, I just… No, I don't really have an excuse." She looked back. Shimmer seemed to be shaking, and Stellar grimaced. She never wanted to have Shimmer be angry with her. "I mean, Luna, she… Well, I need to work under her directly for a while, so… Are you laughing?"

"I'm sorry but…" Shimmer tried to keep her muzzle tightly shut and the smile away from her face, and failed utterly. "But did you just tell me you've been, literally, sleeping on the job?"

Stellar's mouth opened and closed like a fish as she struggled for words.

"Of all the— That’s the part you're hanging up on now!?" Stellar exclaimed. Shimmer just guffawed. "It’s not that funny!"

"I'm sorry, it's just… I don't know, it was really funny to me," she said, calming down. There she was, good old Shimmer, laughing at the stupidest and most inane things. Just like that, the smile faded and the worry returned. "So… what’s going to happen?"

"I don't know, but you can tell the guys they'll be alright. I am pretty sure the news of… whatever happened on the waterfront will overshadow anything I'm doing. I'll be okay." 'I hope.' Shimmer smiled encouragingly, but Stellar could tell her heart was not in it. She turned and the pair flew along above the clouds, spotting other winged guards above the city. "So uh, for a change of topic, did you… sort out things with Fleethoof?"

Shimmer didn't answer, and Stellar saw the pain in her eyes. 'Way to go, Stell.'

"He's… afraid of me,” she said at last. They flew in silence for a bit after that. Stellar turned to say something, anything to console her friend, when apparently all Tartarus broke loose down below. Ponies were scrambling, flying down towards a park on a high road. "What’s going on?"

"I dunno, let’s find out!" she shouted, diving towards the heart of the commotion, grateful for the distraction. As it turned out, it was a pegasi shopkeeper and his family. Two foals were crying in their mother's embrace as a disorientated elder sibling and a confused earth pony still wearing his workshop apron stumbled around. "What’s going on!?"

"Just got here," a solar stallion replied, "I'm as in the dark as you are." More guards were arriving: city watch, goldcloaks, militia. Doubtless a few were hanging tight, waiting for word to get back to them.

"It was horrible!" the erratic mare screeched, shushed by her balding, bespectacled husband.

"We were sitting down for dinner, r-right?" the husband began. "We live just over my shop, when all of a sudden, out of nowhere…"

--=--

The window was smashed, and the family screamed. The father left the table, horn glowing and grabbing a large broom. They were in the kitchen at the back of the house, while the sound had come from the front room. He pushed open the door slightly with his magic and peeked into the hallway beyond before advancing forth. From there, he made his way to the front room, listening carefully. He heard something on the other side of the door. Bracing himself, he threw open the door and with a shout, closed his eyes and swung the broom as hard as he could... only for it to stop suddenly.

He opened his eyes and found himself staring into intricate silver metal work, marred and pockmarked, worn from travel and use. His gaze slowly drew upwards until he was gazing into a pitiless black T that glared down at him. The broom was caught in the giant's left hand before it had a chance to come down on its shoulder.

"I really recommend that you don't try that again."

--=--

"Wait, you saw him!? He was in your house!?" Stellar pushed her way through the throng of guards. "Where is it? Tell us!"

"He's not there!" the eldest son spoke up, an earth pony going through the worst that puberty had to offer him. "He's already gone!"

"Well where did he go?" Cloud Skipper demanded as the sergeants finally landed. The father fixed the spectacles resting on his muzzle with a nervously shaking hoof, before swallowing and answering.

--=--

Handy put the spoon down into the bowl.

It was stew made from turnip, onion, cauliflower, and at least five other vegetables Handy didn't recognise, and at least two he was sure didn't exist on Earth. He did not give a tinker's damn though. It was warm, it was filling, and it tasted heavenly. Hunger was a great seasoning, as well as desperation. Also, this was easily the warmest place he'd managed to stay in all week.

"You're an excellent cook, Mrs…"

"…S-Sunflower," said the light pinkish mare with the honey bees on her flank. Handy did not know much about cutie marks, but it didn't take a genius to make the connection between pony names and their respective symbols. Little Miss Horsey here was quick on her hooves and supplied a false name to the dangerous individual holding her family hostage and eating their food. He could respect that. He nodded.

"Right, just what I needed after a rather… harrowing tour of your fine Temple District, I must admit. Now, I'm terribly sorry about all this, but I'm going to need to split you up."

"W-What!? Why!?" the brown stallion demanded, drawing his little colt close. His older son just glowered at Handy dangerously with all the righteous, impotent fury of a teenager.

"Largely because I can, and also because I am going to rob you."

"J-Just take what you want and leave us alone!"

"Sorry, no can do," Handy said, standing up. "Needs, must and all that, and I am in great need. Oh, don't worry, I'll pay you back… one of these days. I am frightfully sorry it has come to this, but you see, some nasty business has come about and, well, here we all are."

"Wait, please just…"

"I really do apologize. You, Smiles n’ Rainbows," Handy said, pointing at the glowering teen who blinked awake upon being addressed. "Over there in the pantry."

"You can't tell me what to d—" Handy lifted his hammer and let it drop on the table in warning. "…I'll… just go stand in the pantry then."

"Good lad." Handy coughed. "Alright, Sunflower, you're next. Back kitchen with you."

"I will not leave my children here alone."

"Of course not; take them with you." Handy gestured to the foals. She and her husband shared a worried look. Handy was pretty sure he began to see tears in Sunflower's eyes. He kept his peace however. The two shared a quick word and the father pushed the little colt and filly to their mother, much to their protests. Sunflower shepherded them both to the back kitchen, though not before the blue colt stopped and gave Handy a rather mean look.

"You're a bad pony, Mister."

"Duly noted. Now off with you." The door to the back kitchen closed. Handy placed chairs against both door handles and turned to face the father. "And now for you, Broomstick."

--=--

"And then what?"

"We're wasting time. Where did he go!?" Stellar interrupted.

"He said he was going to the train," the older colt added.

"He said something about the harbour, about getting on a ship," the young colt spoke up, his mother nodding, the young filly saying nothing.

"He was asking about fishing boats and the nearest wharf," the father added.

"Wait, what? Hold on," Midnight interjected. "He spoke to each of you?"

"Well yeah," the teen replied.

--=--

The pantry door opened up suddenly, and Bright Spark jumped.

"You, lad, know anything about steam engines?"

"Wh-What? Why would you think that?"

"Your arse tattoo is of a steaming engine block and a wrench. I take it that’s what you're into," Handy said dryly. Bright Spark glanced down and slumped.

"Y-Yeah, I suppose so. W-Why?"

"I need you to explain to me in brief how and what kind of crystals are used to make the water in the steam process magical and speed up the engine without breaking it, and what kind of pressures I'd need to worry about in the air. In simple Equestrian please. And while you're at it, at what time does the train next leave?"

--=--

The father was tossed into the bathroom.

"Stay here until I'm no longer a problem. Oh, and one more thing," Handy said, before closing the door. 'Broomstick' picked his glasses up off of the ground. "Have you ever gone fishing?"

"Y-Y-Yeah, I suppose, once or twice j-just for the sport of it. I don't like fish."

"Shame, you're missing out. Anyway, say you started now and rowed full tilt. How long would it take you to cross the bay?"

"Why do you want to know?"

"No reason. Oh, and know anything about ballasts?"

--=--

"Evening, Missus Sunflower."

"Just leave us be," she hissed at him, cuddling her children to her barrel.

"Just want to ask some questions."

"We aren't telling you anything, Mister," the colt stated defiantly.

"My name is Handy."

"Your name is stupid."

"You're stupid."

"I'm not as stupid as you!"

"You, sir, are a child. You are stupid by default."

"Yeah, and you're the one stupid enough to argue with a child," the colt riposted. Handy paused for a moment and bent over, hands on knees.

"Oh I like you, boy. You're going places. Word to the wise: in the future, don't give lip to something way more than twice your size. It doesn't end well for you."

"Just what do you want already!?" Sunflower demanded, drawing her colt back to her. The filly was still silent, peeking out at him from under her mother's foreleg.

"Your husband runs a machinist shop. Do you ever help out?" Handy asked.

"Wh-What? Yes, of course. Why would you want to know that?"

"Just curious, did you ever do work for merchants?"

"Of course, airships and the like."

"Interesting, but what I really want to know about is the harbour. Any of those merchants in town with a sea vessel at the moment? Come on, you have to have your ear to the ground as to what the guilds are up to. Who's leaving tonight?"

--=--

"He's heading to the harbour," one of the guards said, hopping into the air, wings outstretched. "You heard the lady, move it! He's heading for the ships; this was a distraction!"

"Hold it, soldier!" Midnight rebutted. "Weren't you listening? He's heading to the train: it’s the closest. It makes the most sense."

"No, he'd slip out on a fishing boat while we're all running around the city. He'll slip by almost undetected. The wharves are the least patrolled out of all the exits!" Cloud Skipper objected. What followed were the senior officers all arguing over where to start placing the troops en masse, ready to catch Handy. Some inevitably advocated splitting all their forces and concentrating in those three areas. Stellar was… confused. Something wasn't right about what she had heard.

"Why would he ask about ballasts if he was going on a boat or on the train? And air pressure? It doesn't make any… any se—" She was muttering to herself, thinking back over the other seemingly odd and out of place questions. Those same thoughts were eventually vocalized by somepony else.

"Wait wait, this is a trick! What about the airships?" one pony pointed out.

"Yeah, he was asking all those weird questions but never anything about the aerodrome tower! Why is that?"

"You, how did you escape?" Cloud Skipper suddenly asked the shopkeeper, who blinked several times before answering.

"I-I got out. He had forgotten to lock me in the bathroom. I let my family go and we came straight to find the guards."

"He didn't bother locking you in?" Midnight asked incredulously, before groaning and putting her hoof to her face and rubbing it down. "He wanted you to escape and come and get us!"

"It’s all a distraction…" Cloud Skipper said, eyes studying the ground as he started piecing it together. "He wasn't asking about trains or boats; he was trying to get information on how to run an airship engine while making ponies think he was heading somewhere else!"

"Wait—" Stellar began before being shouted over.

"Did you see which way he went?" Midnight asked the traumatised family.

"N-No, he was already gone when we got out," the stallion said.

"We've wasted enough time. Everypony to the aerodrome!"

"Wait, stop, something's not right!" Stellar's pleas fell on deaf ears as her companions all made fast to the aerodrome, taking to the air, with the goldcloaks following them on the ground while the city watch ponies tended to the family. The rest generally scattered to spread the word. Stellar stomped a hoof. "It can't be right…"

"What's wrong?" Shimmer asked, hovering, having been ready to shoot off with the others but held back with her friend. Stellar's ear flicked, and she pawed at the ground with a hoof in thought.

"…Nothing, just… just a hunch. Who's on duty back at the barracks for the Princess?"

"What? Uhm, Lance I think."

"Then come on!" Stellar shot up into the air.

"Hey, what about the others!?"

"If I'm wrong, they won't need me there: they’ve got him outnumbered. But if I'm right, then we need to find out where he really is, now."

--=--

The bellicose roar of the train engine echoed through the night.

On alert or no, industry couldn't be shut down forever, and once several days had passed without incident, they had to allow the workers to return to their jobs at the workhouses and mills. Ponies vomited forth from the doors of the many carriages of the train. It was a simple utilitarian affair, still shiny with a coat of black paint over its hull, yet for all its rugged practicality, the pony touch was ever present, such as the windows frosted with designs cut out of them in clear glass. The fearsome façade of the wrought, unfeeling iron of the great metal beast at its head was softened with hearts, stars, suns, and moons indented across its surface. The interior was comfortable if pragmatic, and its warmth kept the winter's chill at bay. The streetlights carved a river of light along the darkness just east of the Manehatten Bridge, going down the golden mile where the city came to a stop and nightlife began.

The train station at Bridge's End would normally be surrounded by late night hawkers trying to sell wares to hungry and tired workponies. Most of the time they ran stalls selling food for them to take home. The more permanent buildings became small taverns that meant, if nothing else, wives would know exactly where their husbands would be when they were home late. It would be the first stop on the way home after leaving the train.

But that first stop was over an hour ago. The train had continued on to the harbour at the far side of the city's greatest extent, where it came to the far end of the island. There it gave off its load of whatever goods were required before returning on the way back, stopping at the bridge one more time before returning to the train yards for the night. A few late-nighters and ponies who needed to cross the bridge but were held back for one reason or another always showed up, so it was worth hanging around for a minute or two to top up the water one last time before continuing on to its nightly rest at the train yard.

Now, there was something to be said about the relationship between bravery and foolishness, and that of madness and genius, or rather stupidity and genius. It was easy to confuse either for madness depending on where you happened to be standing at the time. As Handy waited in a dead end street facing the Golden Mile Station, hiding underneath a board of composite wood, he couldn’t be sure which of these his little gambit would turn out to be. He lay still, catching his breath and trying not to cough his lungs out as the snow picked back up. He cursed the weather; he needed to at least partially see the sky to tell if his ruse had worked.

See, if the ponies could track him wherever he hid, then hiding was no longer an option, but running blind would just play into their ha— hooves. So, the only realistic option he had left was to force their hooves and hopefully force them in the wrong direction. He wasn't proud of scaring the hell out of an innocent family like that, or stealing their food. However, it was necessary—he needed patsies and fine patsies they were. It wasn't as if he was actually going to harm them. He just needed them to think he would. Hell, far from robbing them, he had dumped the very last dregs of his deer silver onto the hallway table on his way out. It was a good meal they had made after all. Then he had started to run hell for leather away from the shop, before Broomstick realised Handy hadn't locked him in the bathroom and he found he could walk out and free his family.

The timing left something to be desired, as he had barely made it to his hiding spot before the train came thundering up the rails back from the harbour before he got settled in. He was pretty sure someone might have seen him, but he didn't hear them shout. He counted on the snow screen helping him in that matter as the weather grew worse. Frankly, he was no longer in a mood to care. His head felt like it was on fire, and his body was becoming more sluggish and unresponsive. He needed to do something and do it now, or he just wouldn't be able to run anymore. The wooden board he was now holding above him was steadily gathering a layer of snow on it, so if someone had seen him and sent someone looking for him, they wouldn't immediately suspect the pile of snow in a corner.

"Come on... come on…" he begged the nothingness, his breath frosting on the air. He felt another cough building up but tried to suppress it. There, he saw it! Guards were leaving the train carriages, galloping away from the train, and he saw one pegasi swoop down out of the air. It was only visible because the billowing steam being blown from engine block in the station evaporated the snow before it could blind his sight. In truth, it was trading one obstruction for another, but it let him see what he needed. The ponies were leaving the train!

It might not have worked. It could have backfired spectacularly, but he had no other realistic options that didn't involve confrontation. He took the possibility the ponies would see through his supposed ruse and think he'd go to get an airship when Handy wanted anything but. When he was sure the last of them had left, he had bolted. His hands were on his packs, his hammer looped at his side. The snow was driving, the steam billowing off of the train in great white clouds. He really was only going to get one shot. He managed to make the distance from the dead end street, up across the road towards the tracks. The station still had too many ponies in it, so Handy bolted for the caboose, now emptied of the soldiers who had commandeered it. He climbed up the steps, hurriedly fumbled at the rear door, and tossed his belongings inside.

He did it. He was on. Now he just had to make sure he—

Fell flat on his face. The train shunted forth as the engine came to life, causing Handy to hit the floor. He really needed to stop that from happening, for it was getting on his nerves. He groaned and scrambled back, closing the door of the caboose before anything else happened. He stopped and caught his breath, his head woozy as he stared at the metal door from his oh so glorious vantage point of… half a foot off the floor? Yeah that sounds about right.

He just wanted to lie there, lie there and just… rest. Just for a moment. He had made it. He had gotten out. The train was moving and he was getting out. He had won. He deserved that much at least, right? No rest for the wicked, however, as he knew his troubles had only started. He was in the caboose, which housed train workers and their tools during long journeys. After they crossed the bridge, he had no idea how long it would be before they reached the train yard. The potential for one stray train worker, or God forbid, a guard he hadn't accounted for, coming to the caboose and finding him there was unacceptable.

However, to move from the caboose into the cars further ahead was to invite disaster, so he had to wait until he was sure the train had crossed the bridge, out of sight of whatever pegasi guards were on duty over it. Then he could find a place to hide for however long was necessary. Sighing, he pushed himself off from the ground with shaky arms and got back to his feet. Careful to avoid the window at the back of the caboose, he went forward to the door that would take him to the next car in the train.

--=--

Eventually he had settled on hiding in the staff compartment near the caboose. He had moved beyond it of course, once he had mastered the subtle art of crossing the short distance of open space from the caboose to the next car and not falling off from blustering winds. Good news: there were no pegasi on patrol that he could see outside. Either his ruse had worked better than he had thought or he had lucked out on the snow storm. The staff compartment was small, consisting mostly of bunk beds that were bolted to the walls, a cupboard with some food, a barrel of water, and a closet full of green uniforms.

Everything beyond it was passenger cars, with what looked to be a storage car beyond it. He didn't feel like being exposed by sitting in a passenger car and letting any old bastard wander in or fly by and see him through a window. He also was not in the mood for breaking into the storage car and living amongst even more crates like so much perishable goods. If he found one that he could fit inside, he did not know whether he would feel relieved or want to scream. He simply closed both doors to the staff car, using his hammer and an iron rod from the caboose to lock the doors in place. He'd stay right the fuck where he was until the train stopped. No windows, it was nice and warm and not full of fucking ponies to ruin his day. He liked that just fine.

He had sat down for a time, enjoying the moment's rest and shelter from the snow and the cold. The staff compartment on the train had some food and a barrel of fresh water. He drank his fill greedily, uncaring of the cold. His skin was already on fire as it was; his fever worsening and he needed to lie down, badly. Despite that, he made himself stay awake and upright, no matter how inviting the small, hard beds looked, until the train had eventually rumbled to a stop.

He heard shouts coming from outside and sat where he was for another while. He waited until he could hear nothing else and was sure the workers had left the train alone in the yard. The longer he sat, the more his thoughts wandered. His fever was getting worse—he could feel it as he started to sweat despite the cold. He rubbed his forehead; the pain was different from what it had been back when he had ran into that pony out in the open. What the hell had that even been? Did that guy seriously just walk right up to him, nonchalant as you'd like, and ask him a how do you do? Handy couldn't wrap his head around it.

He was jolted from his thoughts when he heard a train whistle howl in the distance. It didn't sound like it came from somewhere within the train yard itself. There were no windows, so he had to leave the car to see where it might come from. Outside, to the south, were the great mill house, workshops, and refineries of Manehatten. Of course, that was just what he could see over the various cars, engines great and small, outhouses and work sheds of the train yard. He could make out the lights of Manehatten, barely back east, but only just barely through the falling snow.

He heard the train whistle again and had to clamber back into the car and out the door on the far side. He could make out lights nearby, just beyond the stone wall of the trainyard. That must have been the station proper. If there was a train there at this time of night and it wasn't in the train yard, that meant it was going to be leaving, and soon. He didn't know where, and he didn't care, but he needed to be on it.

He went back, his armour clinking with each step as he went for the closet. He reached up into the upper shelves and pulled out towels, cloth, uniforms, and several other things before he got to his packs. He got his travel pack and looped it over his shoulders before affixing it to the belts at his waist so that it lay on his side. Next was the considerably lighter burlap sack containing his prize: the pendant and the old magic script he had looted. That he was going to hold onto personally. Last was another sack that contained the parts of his armour he wasn't wearing. It was an additional weight, but he needed mobility more than protection right now.

Paranoia struck him as soon as he was outside the train and into the cold. It was dark, the workers having left, but he was still worried he had missed something, that someone would swoop down on him from above at any moment. His hand never once left his hammer as he made his way to the gate.

Attempting to get through the great metal train gates was a fool's errand for a fool's time, and climbing the wall in his condition and in armour was just asking for trouble. Handy had a simple, more eloquent solution and just found the nearest worker's entrance and a nearby metal pole. He jammed it into the locking bar of the door and rigorously applied his hammer until something broke. One of these days, he was going to learn how to handle locked doors with subtlety and care. Today was not going to be that day. He had worked up a worse cough by the time he was done.

He was out. The short distance over flat land to the station was deserted. It was, to his surprise, little more than a small wooden shack and a long platform, but for once he was not in the mood to judge. He snuck up to the water tower to get a good look of the train. It was pretty big. Nice cars too—large and spacious, looked like a model with compartments rather than the traditional aisle and sets of seats that was common to trains. The windows seemed operable as well.

The train whistled again. Someone shouted and he saw a blue uniformed pegasus run across the platform, heading for the engine. He tried to spy a window with no one in it. He found one, its curtains open unlike most of the others. It had a light within, but nobody was there and the window was a fraction open already. There was no one else on the platform. The shack was dark from within, and the engine began to howl. He was not going to get another shot at this.

It took a second to force the window open. They weren't really designed to be opened from the outside. He threw the sack in and was about to get to work on his travel pack when the train started moving.

"Nope! Not happening, get back here!" Handy grabbed onto the window as the train slowly began to move. Have you ever tried to grab onto a moving vehicle, even if it was going slow? Handy did not recommend it, for you will fuck up and it would hurt. Fortunately for him however, he didn't end up as grease for the wheels, as he still had plenty of platform to work with. He struggled to climb in through the window, cursing himself for putting his breastplate back on as he felt his feet leave the platform below despite not being fully inside. He was going either all in or out now, too late to go back.

For a brief terrifying moment, he felt himself slide back as the train picked up speed. Visions sprang to mind of falling back onto the ground from a moving train, his prize speeding on to destinations unknown, his legs broken and useless under him, easy prey for the Equestrians.

Frankly, it was the sheer insult of such an ignominious fate that proved enough to push Handy to avoid it. He snarled, planting his palms on the wall under the window and pushing himself in while angling down, kicking his legs up and forcing his armoured torso through the window. There was a horrible noise of scraping metal, but Handy did it and fell to the floor of the compartment. Head first of course, adding a seriously painful neck to his list of woes.

And yet he was alive. Sure, he was curled up on the floor, coughing, delirious, exhausted, and in pain, but he was alive, alive and free. His body begged him for rest, the warmth of the cabin embracing him and making his urge for sleep intensify. His fever was not getting any better from constant activity, but he knew he had to take care of one more thing.

He closed the window, banishing the cold to the outside. He then turned to the door, locking it and trying to find some way to jam his hammer in to keep it closed. Sadly, he found none. The compartment doors had no windows to the hallway of the train, for which he was grateful. He looked around. He tried to make out what the light above him was. It appeared to be built into the ceiling. His gut clenched at the possibility of a gas light that he couldn't turn off. If it was behind glass and not exposed to him, he could deal with it. A little.

He was as safe as he was going to be. He was out of Manehatten, he had his prize, and he was away from the ponies. The exhaustion hit him as another wave of coughing bowled him over. He sneezed explosively, letting out a pitiful whine of misery as he did so. He felt like he was burning up, now more than before as he sat there, resting. The energy was released from him, and he slumped in the seat, lying on his side. He fumbled with his helmet, taking it off and letting it fall to the ground from his clumsy, unresponsive fingers.

His eyes were drawn to his left arm. So numb after the cold, it was still as unhealthy-looking as it had been before he had let Stellar bite it. For all he knew, it was a quick, effective way of knowing what he was seeing was affecting the rest of his body, if it affected his blood in any way. Judging by the colour of his veins in his arm… He had to be sure, and he wasn't going to a pony doctor to find out. On the up and up, nothing too serious was wrong. On the other hand, if it was something terrible, hopefully it would fuck up Stellar as well. There was a bright side to everything after all. The train rumbled along, rocking him gently, the breastplate chafing against him. He probably should have taken that off. He coughed once more and then decided the effort wouldn't be worth it. His eyes grew heavy. He'd get right on that in a minute.

He just needed to lie down for a bit first.

--=--

“Keep looking!”

“He’s not here!”

“He has to be somewhere! He’s not that fast!” Stellar shouted back over the howl of the wind and the blinding snow. It had taken over an hour to get word out of Lance. The princess had been away, and when they had woken him, it took a few minutes to get back to sleep, even with medication. And when they had gotten word back, sure enough, the train had already left the city.

Stellar was not a happy pony.

She had sent somepony off to call back the guards as she and Shimmer stalked along the rail lines, flying low to the ground and diving out of the way of passing structures. They avoided the worst of the snow blindness but sacrificed aerial visibility in doing so.

They came upon the train yard, too late to catch the workers before they had left. They scoured the perimeter and the interior, train car to train car, outbuilding, warehouse, and storeroom. Her search became increasingly frantic the more and more evident it became he was no longer there.

Eventually she came to the door with the broken lock, the worker’s exit out of the train yard. She shoved the door open and stepped through the wall into the blustering winds and snow drifts, their fury no longer broken by the high walls. There were no footprints, no indication of where he might have gone, nothing nearby but a snow covered road, wooden shacks and…

A train station.

She beat her wings and flew over to the building. The lights were out and nopony stayed to watch the building amidst the snowstorm. Nonetheless she entered it, breathless and shivering from the cold under her armour. The station was lifeless, empty, and dark, and the human was nowhere to be found. She shouted something when she heard Shimmer land near, telling her to check the other exits. They needed to inform the other guards to spread out, to search the workhouses and mill houses, to send word back to the barracks, to find out from the princess where else he had slipped off to in the night.

Tired from the night’s events and those of the battle at the waterfront, and the failures in Blackport before that, she found herself simply walking to the edge of the platform, looking down at the now hidden tracks, the snow hiding the trail of iron and wood from sight. She looked one way and then another, breathing heavily as her body tried to adjust to the harsh cold and the exertion. She could not see further than a few hooves in any direction.

He was gone.

Author's Note

And that's the end of the arc.

I learned alot.

Namely don't extend one arc's goal, getting the macguffin for Chryssi, over three arcs or you risk having to contract them and skip over alot of shit you wanted to write instead of having those arcs be on their own and have some room to breathe.

I'll learn one of these days.

Interlude is next, and then I will post the two timeskip chapters before moving the story along.

Interlude - Royal Pains

The snow had eased up for the day. Teams of pegasi took to the sky to rearrange weather patterns that had been months in the making, just so that the reconstruction could go unabated. Old Foamy watched impassively from the street above as work ponies and dock workers went about repairing the piers and boardwalks ruined in the aftermath of the explosion.

Ponies were scared. They had every right to be since they had all felt it. The terrible explosion that had obliterated a warehouse and reduced the fine houses of the traveling merchant class to bare skeletons. The shockwaves that had rolled out and shook the city. The terrible, awful whispering that had been louder than the roars of cannons, clawing away at the inside their ears with a cold iciness that made the skin crawl to recall.

Foamy didn't, for Foamy had been prepared. He chewed the pipe held in his lips as he thought about it. It had been necessary, and it had worked. That human had been nothing but trouble and now he was out of his mane. Plus he had taken the Equestrian dandies with him while the Viceroy's pet hounds had spirited away the poor colt at the centre of Foamy's little ruse.

He turned away and smiled. He had to be getting back. A lot of families were dispossessed and old Foamy had stepped up to provide shelter for a select few, including a few particular loudmouths who didn't know well enough to keep their muzzles shut.

All the while, little plans and machinations whirled in his old, weary brain. Come spring, he would be the richest pony in Blackport, and if he had his way, the most important pony in the eastern seas.

--=--

The unicorn fell to the ground, coughing violently. He spat up a small bit of blood that stained the cold, unforgiving stone floor, chuckling despite the pain.

"Oh come on, friends, is this any way to tr—" A kick to the barrel quickly shut him up. Ghost Writer looked down at the pitiful sight while Wind Chill stood at the back of the cell with the two black guards, watching impassively, his face impossible to make out under his hood in the already poor light. Chains rattled as Jacques shuffled to the wall to help him sit up.

"So…" Jacques managed through breaths, "I take it this isn't another social call?"

"You chose poorly, Jacques." Ghost Writer began pacing. "We knew something was up with that little stunt of yours, introducing the human to us like that. Did you honestly think we'd forgive you for working against the Viceroy?"

"I have nothing against the pony… although he does owe me quite a bit of back pay, come to thi—" Another kick and another yell of pain. "Ohhh, that’s not fun."

"This is your last chance. What do you know of the events that transpired in Blackport?" Ghost Writer's voice was still level and passive, at odds with the ease at which he came to violence.

"Not a damn thing." Ghost Writer moved to kick him again. "But! Handy does—that was all his thing, I didn't much care to question it."

"Why were you helping him?"

"Personal reasons." He put his hoof up to stop Ghost Writer. "Wait, wait! I could find out for you."

"The days of your usefulness are over, traitor."

"Aw now, don't be so harsh. It isn't all bad," Jacques said with a smile, his eyes dancing despite the bruising, the matted dirty fur, and the trickling blood. "Handy trusts me, after all. Who else do you know who can get close enough to him to find out?"

"You can't bring him to us."

"Handy wouldn't come back here for all the gold in the world now that he knows the princess wants him. He was avoiding Equestria for the exact same reason." Jacques relaxed against the wall, resisting the urge to wince in pain. "He doesn't know nor care as to why, but… I can get him to tell me everything he could possibly know about the magic being used. More so than, eh, what was that poor colt's name again? Pauvre bougre est probablement en pire état que je suis…"

Ghost Writer looked back to Wind Chill before turning back to Jacques.

"After all, did I not get you what you wanted from the deer, that and more? You know I am worth my weight in gold."

"I wouldn't say that."

"If you didn't believe it, you wouldn't be here. We wouldn't be having this lovely conversation, and I'd never see the light of day again," Jacques said with easy confidence.

"I need to report this in." Ghost spoke carefully, his voice still level but now carrying the subtle threat of small knives and what they could do to a pony under every word. "Mind you, Jacques, you will be going nowhere without somepony of my choosing tailing you."

"I'm sorry, but I work best on my own," Jacques replied with a frown, then roared in pain as Ghost put pressure down on one of his legs.

"There is no negotiation here, there is no reward, and you will do as we say. You are in no position to bargain, make demands, or to make any decisions. You cannot win here." He pressed down harder. Jacques grunted in pain, biting down to keep it in, his breath coming in hisses through clenched teeth. "Is that clear?"

Jacques looked up at Ghost with hate-filled eyes. Looking behind him to the other ponies on the far side of the cell, he saw the black guard over Wind Chill's withers. He saw the small flash of green over its eyes beneath its helmet. He looked back over at Ghost, maintaining his angry expression before, with difficulty, returning to his normally calm expression. And with a wavering voice, so convincingly like that of a stallion who knew he had been beaten but wished to save face, spoke.

"C-Crystal."

--=--

The dust of the hard earth whipped past them as they rode on the open top train car. The lumber lashed to the flat bed behind them rattled with the train's motions as she sat there, watching the hard, dry landscape of the Badlands fly by.

It was cold, but she knew that was mostly wind chill. Winter didn't hit the Badlands like it did everywhere else, for the weather here was wild and untamed. Some would say even untameable, which was why it had never been fully colonized despite being claimed by neighbouring kingdoms for centuries. Now, with rumours that changelings lived here in some secret city, many prospective settlers were reluctant to travel to the interior.

That didn't mean ponies didn't still brave the inhospitable climes. There were still settlements out here, and with settlements came trade, and with trade, fortunately, came trains.

It made a nice change of pace from traipsing across endless countryside with her erstwhile companions. They had been careful, so it had been thankfully boring by and large, although getting across the Griffonian border had been… a bit of an ordeal. Still, she had kept her cool and had not faltered. Nothing had broken her guard nor shook her from her quest, and nothing would.

However, her changeling servants might actually come close to doing just that.

"Alright, your turn," Façade said, giving Glimmer the half deck of cards they had managed to acquire. Without a full deck, they couldn't play many traditional traveling games, so they had opted to modify the rules to play a changeling game she was unfamiliar with.

The pair were in their pony disguises: brown-furred unicorns with slate grey armour, silver trim, black cloaks, and red-crested helms. They were fake, of course—stab them with a dagger and it would punch through flesh, but it was effective enough to be believable at first glance. It made her more obvious, but travelling through towns or cities was easier if you appeared to be rich and important and could afford the protection that was required. It garnered less questions than one would think.

"I fold."

"What? You can't fold! That’s not a winning hoof!"

"Ah, but you can see I have a trap card," Glimmer said, tapping an image of a Three of Hooves.

"That on its own is not enough. You don't have enough points!"

"Ah!" Glimmer crowed triumphantly, slapping down a Princess of Hearts. "But I have this. King me!"

"Yeah yeah," Façade sighed. "I guess I have no choice but to do exactly that… if I didn't have this!"

"What!?" she exclaimed, looking down at the jester. Glimmer threw her hooves up, her cards scattering across the wooden floor. Façade grabbed them in his magic before the wind whipped them away. "Where did you get a lancer!?"

"You should always pay attention to the number of cards your opponent has in their hooves. Remember the rules?"

"Reading the rules is cheating!"

"It's Riddler's Gambit. Cheating is the whole point." Crimson eyed her less than trustworthy servants from under her hood. She never understood their little foibles – none more so than regular ponies at any rate – but she had never expected changelings to be so… well, like that. She turned back and looked down at her book, muttering away as she memorized the spells there again and again. The book Master had gotten for her from before had nothing particularly new to her bar one spell, but she was reluctant to try it. Why would she ever need to make an earthquake? It seemed needlessly destructive, even if it was only small.

Then again, she might need it. After all, she was going to be walking into the den of Queen Chrysalis, and who knew how many changelings she had under her command. All Crimson had was her knowledge of old magic and two changelings she was certain were going to betray her at first opportunity, even though they now said they were of her 'she', or 'shi', or whatever that was. All she knew now was that they asked how high when she said jump and, quite frankly, that was what mattered. For now at least.

She looked back up at the desolate landscape and the whitewashed scenery to their north as the train turned around a bend. One way or another, she'd find this Chrysalis and have her release Master. Where she'd go from there…

Well, she'd just have to play it by ear, wouldn’t she? Maybe this earthquake would come in useful after all.

--=--

It had been a long, long time since she had seen Luna like this. It was surreal seeing the grown alicorn seated on her haunches, her midnight tail wrapped around her legs protectively, ears splayed back, and her face cast downwards abashedly.

Celestia had been considerate. She had waited until close of the day court, had Luna dismiss the night court, and they had met in a tower far away from prying ears or eyes. It was a special tower, not one used often, for Celestia was a wise pony who knew it did nopony any good to wonder why their princess kept going to this secluded tower so often.

But when she did, it shook.

It was constructed with a reinforced frame, designed to hold the weight of a dragon sitting atop it without collapsing, to withstand cannon blasts and hurricanes. It was the most overconstructed edifice in the entirety of Canterlot Castle, purchased out of Celestia's own pocket over the course of a century. Nopony could hear what happened within it, for the walls bore no sound to trespass beyond them. Nopony could see within, for the tower held no windows through which eyes may peer.

All except Luna, who bore witness to the full fury of Celestia venting her absolute outrage. The solar princess had been under rather a lot of stress as of late. Being the Diarch of the Day meant an inordinate amount of worries and concerns were her burden, and recent events, particularly on the border of Griffonia, had been taxing her as of late.

No matter how she poked and prodded, the nobles would not be calmed in the south. In the north, they were still alarmed at the actions of young King Johan, the usurper in her eyes. Said king simply would not respond to her missives, and his liege, the High King, could only offer vague assurances he was taking care of the situation. She was rarely powerless in a diplomatic situation like this, and it had grated on her, noticeably so. It had reached a point where it was not unheard of for her to mention simply paying a few personal visits to a choice few dukes to put her hoof on the matter, though she feared her presence along the borders might exacerbate the griffons.

And now this.

"—And the worst of it all is that you didn't think to tell me before going through with it, Luna," she said, having calmed down somewhat. The room had a bed, some simple adornments, a dresser, a mirror, and a banner of the sun. It looked quite nice if a bit sparse on a good day. It was not a good day, as it currently looked like somepony lit off several powder kegs. The room was littered with broken furniture pieces and slowly burning cloth, and the walls still resounded with the remnants of Celestia's fully raised voice.

One could imagine why Luna had adopted the position she did.

"I'm sorry, Sister, but I felt I needed to act as soon as I could. I kept your conditions!" she protested, a placating hoof held up. She was worried and had dropped her formalities. This was neither the time nor the place. "None of my guards go out without one of yours. I… protest the idea still, but I can understand the reasoning. A-And I only wanted to ensure he could solve the tensions with the griffons. I did not mean—"

"Luna," Celestia said, rubbing the base of her horn with a hoof, eyes closed. "I know you meant well, I know. I even thought it was a well thought out idea had it worked. But I still have an angry foreign Viceroy, and I need to smooth this over before word gets back to Galaxia and she uses this somehow. You know what she's like."

"Hmph." Luna lashed her tail on the ground. "I cannot understand how she became so… like that."

"A lot can change in a thousand years," Celestia said with a sigh. "And now there's Manehatten. There's this… Mistress that Handy mentioned?"

"Yes, though I do not know to whom it refers. Still, it… appears to centre on that strange magic our guards seem to encounter when the human is involved. We have found several artefacts and writings that belonged to the pony in Manehatten."

"Manehatten…" Celestia groaned. "De la Mane. I'd rather not be reminded. Go on."

"That's all I have. They're being brought to Canterlot under guard. We won't know more until we have a chance to see them." Celestia looked thoughtful at that. "And there's something else…"

"What is it?" Celestia asked, broaching the silence that lingered after Luna's words.

"They're bringing a pony. He seemed to be at the centre of it all. The human… did something to him. We don't know what."

"What do you mean?"

"He has no memories, Tia. His mind is gone." Luna’s voice was sombre. "While he was in custody in Manehatten, I entered his dreams. I saw nothing but emptiness and fear. I could not coax anything from him, to have him reveal anything. Tia, I don’t think there was anything there to reveal."

That had left them both quiet for a time, Celestia's regal mask was back on and unreadable, but Luna knew her well enough that for her to wear it while in private like this was a sign she was really disquieted over something.

"Are you sure they were not just… repressed?" she asked finally. Luna shook her head slowly.

"There'd still be something, yet in his case there was nothing. Even though he still has his cutie mark and can still speak, he does not know who he is, has no name, and none of the guard knew who he is bar one."

"Then how do we know he is involved at all?"

"Because of where he was found since the human left him there, injured and helpless amidst the arcanum we have confiscated. And while the extent of the human's involvement is as yet unknown, he wasn't the one destroying a part of Manehatten. This pony was."

"Yet nopony can even remember his name or anything about him other than anecdotal evidence and where they found him?"

"That is… correct." Luna’s voice wavered under the implications Celestia's tone raised.

"You can still track his movements. Sir Handy that is. Do you know where he is heading?"

"Yes, of course. I have the guards set to fetch after him at once. I do not know how he got out of Manehatten, but I will not let him roam across Equestria unchecked." Luna slammed her hoof down.

"Hmmm, call them off."

"W-What?" Luna was incredulous, her wings raised slightly from her sides in surprise. Celestia simply smiled.

"Hold them back, but have them follow him. Just to make sure he doesn't do anything else."

"But Sister, you cannot be serious. We cannot leave that… that hooligan to run amok."

"As I recall, Luna, doing things your way resulted in explosions and accusations of incursions by the Enclave’s Viceroy," Celestia said with a deadpan. Luna's ears flattened back against her head. "The only thing we know for sure is that we have no idea what exactly is involved, what the stakes are. We do not know what Galaxia's interest is, if the report of how the Viceroy's agents acted in Blackport is anything to go by. Honestly, between her and Rosetta… We do not know Handy's intentions or role in all of this. We do not know what this old magic is, nor do we know who this ‘Mistress’ is, and our only clue is a pony who cannot recall his own name and scraps of paper the Marquis’ mages couldn't decipher."

"What are you getting at, Sister?"

"I am suggesting we try a different approach. You have tried approaching him to talk, yes?"

"Well, yes. We could not be sure of his reaction so—"

"With the very pony he blames for his new condition?" Celestia arched a brow.

Luna looked off to the side. "She is the only one we have who knows him the best."

"None of our ponies know him well?”

"Know him at all."

"And we know where he is."

"Yes, roughly."

"Good. Then we can have our guards tail him at a distance. Let him hide, let him think he has lost our interest for the time being." Celestia saw the faint frown that briefly crossed her sister’s visage.

"Why?"

"So that he'd be more likely to head to the one place he knows he is safe, with the people he knows the best and who distrust him the least. He is only going to keep running if he is chased, and it would be preferable if, instead of forcing his hoof in this matter, we have him lead us instead."

"I don't understand. Why would letting him go back to the griffons help us in that regard?" Luna asked, arching an eyebrow.

"Because he'll only reveal anything under one of two conditions: under our hoof or on his own terms. And trying the former option has been… less than advantageous. It is time to kill two birds with one stone, if I have the old expression correct…" Luna just looked at her sister with a confused expression. Celestia merely smiled back at her sister lovingly. "This night guard under your command, the one you have taken personal stewardship over. What is her name?"

"Stellar Eclipse. She is one of my Nihensha."

"Hmm, I forgot the heptarchy had given you your old title and prerogatives back. Good to hear. May I speak with her?" Luna's ears perked up, for she did not like the sudden change into Celestia’s calm, court voice. That meant that it would be impolitic to refuse her, to say the least. Luna knew what that meant if it was some dignitary or a noble, or even a commoner who would have refused her. Celestia had never used it on her before, and she didn't know what it would mean. That, frankly, worried her more.

"I… hesitate to ask, Tia, but why?"

"Oh, merely to fulfil a small sense of curiosity I have. You will keep me informed of where he'll be moving, right?"

"I… Of course?" Luna said questioningly, still not following her sister's logic. Celestia’s mask dropped, her voice returned to normal, and her smile became more genuine.

"Thank you, Lulu. I know how much this has been bothering you. Please, just let me try it my way for now."

"But ponies will be—"

"Reassured," Celestia interrupted, calmly walking to the door, "I'll be visiting the Marquis myself and inspecting Manehatten's recovery. Everything will soon be under control, and there will be nothing to worry about. I will then smooth things over with the Viceroy."

"You're not going to—"

"Oh, I will. It will be good to get out of the castle for a while, hmmm…" She hummed to herself, stopping to rub her chin in thought. "Although… that will leave the duties of day-to-day affairs in your capable hooves." Luna's face blanched.

"But… all of it? F-For how long?"

"Long enough to keep you out of trouble," Celestia said with mischief in her eyes, quite a sharp contrast to the raging inferno and the invective spewing ball of aggravation she had been merely moments before. "Now, I don't want to see so much as a button out of place on the throne pillows, do you hear me, Lulu?"

Luna spluttered. Between Celestia's sudden playfulness and the reality of what she was suggesting, she was left reeling. There were many things Celestia could've done to Luna for the absolute mess this had all become, but it took a certain level of class to kick somepony upstairs as a means of punishment. You don’t see being left in charge of everything with the subtle threat that all had better be squeaky clean by the time your sister got back as a punishment? Well then, how about you go and get an entire country dumped on your shoulders all of a sudden and see how well you cope.

"It shouldn't take me long, and… do hold off on replying to anything Galaxia sends, would you? Unless it’s really urgent."

"Sister, you can't— I was only— This is—!"

"To keep your mind off of things." Celestia gently placed a hoof on her sister's shoulder. "You have been focusing an inordinate amount of time and energy on this problem. I am beginning to worry."

"But if he can really come back from the dead… My tracer can’t be obfuscated like that otherwise. He… I just—"

"Shh, see? That’s what I am worried about. No, Luna, I do not believe he is this agent provocateur from some foreign invader, nor do I believe the innumerable, contradictory stories we hear, not even if they come from his own mouth. I have met with him and have seen his reaction to somepony like Discord. You are fretting needlessly. All I see is a creature of strange abilities involved in things of interest to several powers, dangerous things we are dangerously unaware of. Force and coercion are not what is called for here. Tact, subtlety and, most importantly, diplomacy is. Mayhap I will drop by this Countess Heartfire for a spell after all."

"But he is still a danger that is loose in Equestria!"

"Yes, and for now he needs to be contained until he is out of Equestria. So far, nothing good has come of doing otherwise." Celestia's smile faltered just a little. "And I'd rather not be the cause of further harm to my ponies."

That made Luna wince, and her ears pressed flat against her head. Celestia draped a wing around her.

"Clear your head. I will take care of it for now. If it doesn't work… well, we'll cross that bridge when we come to it." She let her sister go and proceeded to leave the room. "Oh, and clean up in here, if you'd be so kind."

"Wh-What!?"

"Well, you still never clean out your room, and I figured I might as well take this opportunity to force you to clean mine."

"Thou hast made this mess thyself, Tia!" Luna squawked. There it was, just like that, a little harmless sisterly teasing and Luna was herself again. Celestia smiled.

"And whose fault was that again?"

--=--

“Here, send it off,” Princess Katherine Goldtooth of Firthengart commanded. The royal courier and his escort looked at each other, uncertain of whether they should actually follow their princess’ commands. Then, with a smile, she leaned forward. “One day I will be queen, and you two will still be where you are. You wouldn’t want me to have a good reason to remember you for denying me on such an important matter, now would you?”

With shaking heads and muttered apologies, the two griffons took flight and left the courtyard, leaving bewildered-looking guards upon the ramparts. Katherine smiled to herself and turned to walk inside, prepared to face the oncoming—

"KATHERINE!" There we go, right on time. For a griffon his age, her father was rather spry. She had entered from the interior courtyard into the hall as her father bounded around the corner, his eyes furious as they locked onto her. Her small smile didn't waver. A cowering page huddled around the corner from whence the king had come, the same one she had used to get her the documents she needed in the first place. "Just what on earth do you think you are doing!?"

"Why father, I have no idea what you mean."

"Do not get cute with me, Kari!" he half-whispered. Her father was not known for being the friendliest of griffons. He was quick to anger and did not suffer fools gladly, and his cantankerous nature was nearly mythic. Yet for all of that, things got done when he wanted them to, and what he wanted done right now was Katherine to be demure and contrite for her transgressions. She continued to smile. "I will have none of it, do you hear!? Go after them!"

Two guards immediately obeyed their king, running outside and taking to the air, flying after the courier she had just sent. She made to frown as her father seemingly spoiled her plans. Such a shame he didn't act quick enough to catch the missive she had sent hours before. However, he didn't need to know about that right now.

"I cannot believe you would go over my head like this! What were you thinking?"

"I was thinking somegriffon needed to swallow their pride and put a stop to this," Katherine said simply, looking off to the side.

"Look at me when I'm talking to you." She did. "I am not talking with that disgrace of a boy ever again, not after he humiliated me in front of everygriffon. I will not stand for it."

"You don't have to," Katherine rebutted, keeping her composure. "You just need to put a stop to all this strutting and spear shaking that’s been riled up before somegriffon does something stupid."

"Bah, let them northerners back down first. Why should my vassals not be outraged? He was a guest of honour and disgraced my entire kingdom!"

"Granted," she replied diplomatically and without further comment, however biting she would've liked them to be, "but he at least is sending missives and trying to make amends for his shortcomings."

"How did you find out about those?"

"I occasionally like to pretend I am a chambermaid and go rummaging through other griffon's personal effects," she replied sardonically. Her father levelled an unamused gaze at her. "What? You were never going to read them, nor any of the others. What harm did I do?"

"You—!" He gestured with a claw towards her face, shaking it, at a loss for words and reluctant to yell his daughter's ears off. She didn't like to rile up her father like this, but he was being idiotic. If her mother wasn't going to do anything about it – indeed, she seemed to encourage it – it was time she took matters into her own claws, for the good of the kingdom if nothing else.

"You will retire to your chambers," he said at last, his jaws set in place and his glare withering. She did not bear her smile any longer. "I will drag back those griffons you tricked into sending off, I will read what you wrote, and we will have words." All very much things she could withstand.

"Your mother will hear of this." Now that was a threat Katherine actually balked at. Still, she steeled herself nonetheless. It was going to be an inevitable consequence of her actions and would be nothing compared to their fury when they realized her true deceit. "You're just lucky that young page remembered his place and came straight to me after finding out." Katherine leaned to the side to look down the hall. The young boy quickly hid around the corner again. She then looked back to her father.

"Hmm," she said noncommittally. The king simply pointed and, resigning herself, she marched off down the hallway as her father's indignant apoplexy fuelled what would become the first of many rants and interminable muttering complaints about every little thing. He'd do those anyway, but when he was in a better mood, at least he wouldn't be so angry about it.

She turned the corner and paused by the frightened-looking page looking up at her with wide eyes. She smiled and rustled the feathers on his head before continuing on. The boy had been instrumental in getting her access to her father's letters in the first place. The least she could do was order him to inform on her so he wouldn't be punished. Growing up alone and isolated in the castle did not make much time for friends, so she made do with the children of the castle servants, many of whom had long since adopted the roles of their parents. She had long since learned the value of keeping friends amongst the ones responsible for cleaning up after you.

She grimaced at the thought of her mother returning and giving her Tartarus for what she'd done, let alone what she'd do once Gethrenia showed up on their doorstep with the emissary she had invited hours earlier. However, Katherine would rule one day when, All-Maker forbid, her father passed on. She'd take a little tongue lashing if it meant avoiding a fruitless and utterly needless war… and if it meant finally seeing dad swallow his damn pride for once.

Sure, being royalty often meant she lived in a gilded cage, but that was hardly an excuse for shirking her duties and not taking action when she could. It was not as if she were in chains after all.

--=--

The cavernous room was rocked with shouted arguments and furious debate. Metal clashed on wood and wings buzzed in discordant frenzy as sound filled the room. The darkness was only alleviated by the ambient glow of subtle blue and vile green light pouring from the spaces where the thick, organic surfaces covered the walls and ground. Once it had been a grand hall made out of ancient stone, worked in a fashion of subtle masonry and exquisite detail. Now it was a home to shadow and nightmare shapes cast in relief in the alien light. For most, it would be the font of fear and dark imagination, a source of sights better left unseen.

For changelings, this was home.

"Silence!" a bellowing voice cut across the tide of noise. The Archon rose up, bringing his forehooves down hard on the podium before him. The creature was black obsidian with a mane of charcoal and eyes of deepest scarlet. A crown of wrought iron clung to his face, around his head and under his muzzle.

"Oh be silent yourself, you incompetent wretch!" a hacking, coughing voice called out from the darkest corner above, unseen behind the covers of its palanquin and its implacable guards. "You have no right to be calling proceedings."

"I have more right than any of you, spectral!" the Archon bellowed back, pointing an accusatory hoof.

"Ha! That’s a laugh! This coming from a pet of the ponies beyond the seas. We might as well bow to the whelp Chrysalis," a nameless queen spoke up from across the forum. He had yet to learn her name and didn't care to. Still, it was amusing to see someling so young have the audacity to call an established queen, no matter how disgraced, a 'whelp.' However, that had done it, and whatever attention the Archon had managed to draw gave way to a tsunami of new arguments from every petty ruler of the changelings that had gathered there.

"I have the most changelings under my command. Lepidopolis is mine by right. Bow to me!"

"Underfed, overworked locusts the lot of them, not fit to stand let alone rule. A single one of my changelings is worth twenty of yours!"

"I can buy and sell any of your colonies out from under you. None of my changelings want for anything!"

"You are all tyrants and fools, squabbling over the right to rule or to command! You should all be cast down to a ling and the sidhes rise up to take their place in a great and free republic where everyling will be fed!"

"All under your leadership, I imagine?" scoffed another. "We all know how that game is played, small thing. Just because your lings are the only ones foolish enough to believe your deceits doesn't mean ours will. We are at least honest in our dominion."

"Honesty! Coming from a harlot who rules over whores!?"

"Says the beast who rules over mongrels!"

The Archon fumed. This was getting nowhere. If he was to get what he came for, he'd need to draw their attention. He'd need a common point upon which they could all agree and all stand. The hall was awash with dozens of powerful changelings and dozen more heads of minor colonies and free sidhes. All of them were jockeying for position and prestige above the other, all of them coming just short of blows. Never in his life, or any of theirs he imagined, would they have thought something like this could've taken place. But then Chrysalis had to reclaim Lepidopolis and assert her claim. That could not go unchallenged or unanswered.

And so it was, he decided, that it wouldn't.

"Bring her out," he ordered. A silver-helmed changeling by his side flew off to give the orders. The great doors of the hall swung open, briefly silencing the room as they revealed the sorry figure of the fallen queen being led into their midst. Her wings were bound and her chains dragged across the ground with each movement. The unnecessarily large and heavy iron collar about her neck chafed and tore at her dermis. With each step she took, the clamour built and built until it reached a crescendo of invective and vicious hatred.

The Archon smiled to himself in satisfaction as at long last he focused their attention on something long enough to get some work done. The coughing crone behind her sheets of satin far up on the forum sat silent in her palanquin, and the young queen across the forum was silent, glancing vindictively at him before returning her attention to the sight before her.

It was all Chrysalis could do to stand there and withstand their scorn.

And look up at them with all the hatred of the Void.

Chapter 45 - A Load of Bull

The train was especially rocky the first time he regained consciousness from being shook from side to side. The room was dark with the barest hint of moonlight sneaking in through the closed window blinds. He scarcely noticed that he faced the ceiling before the bleariness at the edge of his vision, the cold sweat that clung to his skin like a film of ice, and the burning in his head compelled him once more to delve into oblivion. He just barely registered that there was something wet and heavy on his forehead before all went dark.

The second time he came around, he was on his side, his vision completely blurred, his hearing warped. Everything sounded as if he were underwater. Faint light filtered into the room, so he figured it was daytime. The train was not moving, everything still and quiet except for his raspy breathing. He knew he said something, or made some kind of noise at least. Perhaps it was a cough. He didn't have time to linger on the thought, for he drifted off again.

He came to twice more, again when the train was moving. It was twilight, the uncovered window allowing him a glimpse outside, and he could see the first flakes of snow that evening. He had drifted back to sleep after that. The second time it was night, but the light in the cabin was on again. His mouth felt parched, his head still burned, but not as bad. His temporary escape from the dreamless void was rescinded, and the darkness claimed him prisoner once again.

When he finally regained full consciousness, he could think clearly again. The train was lying still and unmoving, though he could hear shouting from outside. The window blinds were closed, but sunlight could still be seen creeping into the cabin. They must have stopped at a station. He lay there for a while, trying to get his senses back, entertaining the dancing phantasms in the periphery of his sight that simply had to be the result of the fever fucking with the information his eyes were sending his brain. You know, the sort of delirious nonsense you saw when you were just too sick to get out of bed.

He noticed several things in order. Firstly, his auspex (Handy having finally decided to call the power something for the sake of convenience) was taking longer than usual to start up. One, then two… five… fifteen people in the near vicinity, most of them outside the train car. It didn't spread as far as it usually did and hurt slightly more as each new tug on his mind came into focus. He blamed it on the fever.

The next thing he noticed was that he was lying on his back, and that he was covered in a blanket. Funnily enough, the terrifying implication of that fact was not the next thing he noticed. Instead, that honour belonged to the fact that his throat was very, very dry. He would have loved nothing more than to find a lake and promptly drown himself in it long enough to quench his thirst.

Speaking of thirst, he must have been out for several more days, because that little annoyance of his was back again. It could go fuck itself until Handy was good and ready to get on his feet and take care of it. He still had another week before it got really bad.

Then Handy noticed he was wearing a blanket. Comprehension dawned, and his panic began to rise. Then and only then did Handy try to say something intelligent, and spring into action to do something about the fact that somebody had entered the cabin while he was asleep.

"Ablubleh!"

And he promptly flopped off the seat and onto the floor. Turned out trying to spring into action after being floored by a bad fever for a few days was pretty fucking stupid. The aches and pains from his little adventure in Manehatten still remained, though they were replaced in urgency by the awful cramps from lying in one position for too long. His shoulder blades, the joints in his arms, wrists, ankles, knees — everything seemed to pop and crack with each movement as he pushed himself up. He felt so stiff, but by God did he need that rest. Fever or no, he did feel marginally better. At least he was warm. He stifled a small cough.

Good news: he was still in his armour. Bad news: the bits of his armour he had managed to take off were nowhere to be seen. Furthermore, his packs were placed on the other seat in the cabin where they had been opened. He lurched across and grabbed the packs, rummaging through them. His sack of old magic pages was there, as were the amulet, the strange drawing Chrysalis wanted that had gotten him into this mess, and… a chisel?

When the hell did he get a chisel?

It didn't matter. There was also the strange crunched remains of a dried leaf he didn't remember stuffing into his pack. Must have been from that time in the forest or something. He also found his little grooming kit, a book, along with the few bits and bobs he had purchased at the festival from that old shyster posing as a retired court mage. Nothing seemed to be missing that he didn't already lose in the Greenwoods, and nothing seemed to be added… except that chisel. He tossed that away, just in case it was cursed or something.

Don't look at Handy like that. By this point, you would have done the same.

He tossed his packs back onto his seat and looked around for where his helmet had gone, finding it stored in a shelf above the seat where he had lain. The shelf above this other seat, however, was filled with a stranger's possessions. He looked at the door, noting that the catch was unlocked. Fear shot through him. Had he been captured? Had the guards found him out? Had they chased the train and now kept him locked in here for safe keeping? Was he trapped? He knew he was being tracked somehow, but he thought he could have bought himself enough time on the train to— The fever. He had been out for days. Oh fuck, they had had plenty of time to catch up to him. The hell was he going to do, the—

The door to the cabin slid open, and a slightly delirious Handy turned to stare into the face of a slate grey pony. The mare looked up at him with a bored, half-lidded expression before blinking, a slow and deliberate action.

A light purple, neatly trimmed mane framed her face, a straight line from one ear to the other demarcating where her fringe ended and her face began. Her eyelashes had so much mascara that it was as though her eyelids were defined by one long, elegant pen stroke each, while the eyelids themselves had a soft purple eyeshadow that matched her mane. Her eyes, however, were dull as a rock, which was odd for a pony. No bright colours, just a very light sea green, the colour of the ocean tide as it clung to the shoreline as the water receded. Also odd for a pony, she was fully clothed in a blue frock from neck to haunch, with a hole for her tail. Handy just sort of blinked at her.

Nothing, nada, not a blip. He could sense her, she was there, but her emotions were… Well, it was frankly weird to feel. Everything was steady, even, ordered, not so much as a tremor or flicker. If she had been surprised to see him walking about, there was literally no way of knowing.

"Oh. You're awake," she monotoned. No inflection, nothing. Handy contemplated slowly reaching for his hammer. "Are you better now?"

"…What?" Handy croaked. She blinked slowly.

"I asked if you are you better now?"

"I… yeah. A little," he said, not quite sure what to make of the pony.

"Good, the train will be leaving in another hour." Blink. "Can you let me in?"

"Why?" Handy asked, noticing he was, in fact, standing in her way.

"Because it is my cabin," she replied evenly as she hoofed into an opening in her frock and pulled out what looked to be a ticket. The number 29B matched that on the door. He wasn't sure whether it was his fever-addled mind, or the blasé way in which the pony reacted to him, but Handy did step aside. The mare walked in, closed the door behind her, flipped the latch, and climbed up onto her seat. She pulled a small book out of the space between the seat and the cabin wall, and placed it on the seat next to her as she sat on her haunches, idly reading it.

Handy just stood there, waiting for the other shoe to drop. However, the mare continued to quietly read her book, flicking a page over and not minding Handy one bit. There had to be something he was missing. He looked around. The door was locked, the blinds drawn. He wasn't restrained, still had his weapon and armour, and most importantly, nothing was missing from his bags. What the hell was this? Who was this pony?

He reached out with his auspex, the effort straining him in his condition and forcing him to sit down. No, nobody was in the air above them. If there were pegasi, none of them happened to be flying. The train car was mostly empty. Was every single one of those signatures a guard? He couldn't tell from here; he had to see. He shimmied over to the window, causing the mare across from him to glance up once at the movement before turning back to her book. He gently lifted the blinds by a sliver to spy on some of the ponies outside. No, none of them looked like soldiers. One or two had conductor uniforms, and at least one was covered in soot and dirt, likely a guy who worked on the engine. The rest were just normal-looking ponies. There was even what appeared to be a family with several kids. He released the blinds, caught up in this bizarre reality. There was no way he had gotten away scot free after being conked out for three days. What happened?

"I—" he croaked before he coughed into his fist to clear his throat. "What did you…? I mean, when did… How did you get in?"

"I unlocked the door." She didn’t bother to look up from her book. Well, ask a stupid question...

"H-How I… from the inside?"

"Train cabins are assigned keys," she said, producing a key from somewhere, holding it in her upturned hoof. It was small and made of iron. "You are given a key when you produce your ticket for the assigned seats, so nopony can enter your cabin and access your belongings when you are out of the cabin whenever the train stops. The security is solid, like a rock."

Handy could not say he cared much for the monotone, but at least it didn't sound grating or condescending. Hell, if anything, it was a plus. He wasn't sure how he'd handle people shouting or screaming or panicking. Really, this was actually a refreshing change of pace.

"Are… Are you a guard?" A very slow blink.

"No. Are you a criminal?" It took him a moment to decide how he wanted to answer that.

"No. But I'm… I mean… You know who I am, right?"

"No." A long, awkward pause. "Why would I?"

"Why would you— Where have you been the past year? Living under a rock?"

"Yes."

"Oh… I… Why?" Handy asked before going into a small coughing fit.

"Because it's my job," she explained, holding aloft her book about mineralogy. "I inspect mines. I prospect veins. I advise on quarry safety." She paused after explaining what she did with her life. It was a long pause. Another long, slow blink. "It's very exciting."

"I… can imagine," Handy conceded, squinting at the mare, unsure of what to make of her as she turned back to her book. They sat there in awkward silence for some time. Awkward for Handy at any rate. She wasn't a guard, didn't know who or what he was, and didn't as much as blink when she first saw him. Even more bizarre was she didn't seem to care either. It was at least a few minutes before they heard the squeal of the engine as the train shuddered to life once more and chugged along the rail lines.

Handy had so many questions, but right now he was still processing everything. As he was in no condition for sudden movements or antagonising anyone, he decided to focus on the facts. He wasn't currently arrested, the mare before him wasn't making his life difficult by shouting his presence hither and yon, and he was still making good distance away from Manehatten. So, y'know, progress.

"Crynthium," she said suddenly, rocking Handy from his thoughts.

"W-What?" His voice sounded marginally better, but by God could he use some more water. He coughed lightly.

"The pendant in your bag." She gestured with a hoof. That’s right, she had been looking through his stuff. A rising sense of indignation crept up from within but was subdued beneath the suffering of his fever. God, he was probably not going to be feeling one hundred percent for weeks now. "It fell out. The gem is worked crynthium. Crynthium is a metastable allotrope of carbon, like diamonds. Very rare. I’ve never seen one outside of the Rockology museum of Whinnypeg." She blinked. "It’s a very nice rock."

"I… thank… you?"

"It is also enchanted. Very hard to do."

"H-How can you tell?" Handy asked, suddenly VERY alarmed. He hoped to God Chrysalis hadn’t tried yapping at the strange mare handling the pendant while he was out cold. Oh God, please don't let her be that stupid.

"The corruption in the lattice work. It’s very subtle, but crynthium should be red in hue. This one is clear, with a hint of blue. It has been enchanted." Oh. Well then.

"That’s… right," Handy admitted, trying and failing to think up a way out of this particular line of conversation. "But you shouldn't go rummaging through people’s… things like that."

"I'm very sorry," she said in that same, dull voice. There was a pause, and then she went right back to her book, leaving the human sitting there wondering what that was all about. The train rocketed along the track and the train car rocked gently as it went. Eventually Handy had to ask.

"Why… What did you…?" he managed, pointing to the discarded blanket and the folded-up, slightly damp towel lying on the ground. The mare looked up.

"You were sick.” For some reason, her even tone kept Handy feeling like he was being spoken to as though he was a young child. "My sister was sick once. I had to take care of her. Mineral salts."

"…What?"

"Mineral salts. Dissolved in water." She pointed to the folded cloth on the ground. "Good for fevers, seeps into the skin over time. Cools inflammations, helps clear sinuses, eases headaches, and helps cool the body temperature."

"A… fever is a bit more than a head cold."

"I know. Baths are better, but it helps quicken the recovery."

"What kind of… minerals are these?" Handy asked suspiciously. Yes, the vampire addicted to a healing substance that was applied to the skin, and who drank blood to recover from wounds, questioned the rock pony's home remedy to treat fevers. Have patience with Handy — he was slightly delirious right now after all, and thought it was reasonable to instantly question these kinds of things as if they were inherently ridiculous. He'd get better.

"The best kind," the mare said simply, looking at Handy evenly. She didn't say anything further which, if anything, just raised Handy's suspicions even further. His eyes were drawn to her baggage on the rack above her head, and he briefly wondered what secrets this mare was hiding. That brought up another question.

"You… didn't tell anyone I was here?"

"No."

"Why?"

"You mean you're not supposed to be here?" Handy's mouth opened and then snapped shut. Fuck. They sat in silence yet again. She blinked one of her slow blinks and turned back to the book again, the matter apparently dropped.

More confused than worried, and with the train ride continuing unabated, Handy decided he was in no condition to contest his circumstances. He wasn't in danger, she wasn't giving him trouble, and had ceased bothering him about his condition and circumstances when he ceased prying about hers. Frankly, all things considered, he was perfectly fine with that. Briefly he ruminated on something she had said before finally relenting and asking for some water. She produced a rather large canteen from her sacks above her head. The water was like liquid comfort pouring down his ravaged throat, and he had to keep himself from coughing it up.

His head still swam and he coughed periodically, but otherwise the time passed. Slowly at first, then when it became apparent nothing was going to happen after a while, the mare put the book down. She slowly took out a sheaf of rolled parchment and a quill that she somehow held in her mouth, feather be damned, before taking out what looked like an ink bottle wrapped in thick linens. Handy watched curiously as she held the rolled sheaf of parchment across the seat and scribbled some incomprehensible notes and drew vague shapes of what looked like squiggly balls, which he assumed were rocks, upon its surface. The most he could make out were some numbers. Measurements perhaps? Curiosity got the better of him.

"You… know a lot about rocks? Diamonds and gems as well, I take it?" he asked. She looked up at him, quill in mouth, face expressionless. God, this woman would be deadly at poker. She nodded once, very slowly. "I have been wondering something. See, I'm not from around… here." He gestured vaguely. She didn't respond.

"Well back home, when we dig up… gems and the like, they are not normally pre-cut and shining straight out of the rock. I uh… worked for a while in a mine once when I first arrived here. Every one we dug up was already cleaned and shaped as if they were buried into solid rock. How is that?"

"They were grown." At Handy's blank stare, she continued. "Basic thaumageology. Some gems act like crystals and expand under pressure over time. Rubies, for example, are particularly common crop at rock farms."

"Rubies. Crop." Handy tried to marry those two concepts together in his brain. He failed. "H-How does that work?"

"That is what my family specialised in back home on the farm."

"…The rock… farm?"

"Yes. Do you not have rock farms back where you come from?"

"Humour me."

And she did. Well, she did to an extent. Surprisingly, he got a lot of what she was saying, specifically when she detailed how geodes, diamonds, gems, and ores all seemed to form, which, if you had even a rudimentary grasp of geography and geology, you would be able to understand. Heat plus pressure plus time equalled shiny things far beneath your feet. Volcanoes also helped for when the planet was feeling particularly impatient that eon. She didn't use those exact terms, but he got the gist of it. The fuckery began when she compared these naturally forming geodes, crystal, and gems as Handy knew them to the ones that were 'grown.'

As was typical any time he asked about anything remotely related to magic, he got terms and words thrown his way he didn't understand, and had to politely ask the mare to explain things to him in 'lay terms'. One of these days, he was just going to grab Crimson, sit her down in a room with him, point at a magic book, and yell 'EDUCATE ME!'. Long story short, whatever effect magic had in this world didn't stop where the ground began. What was possible through immense geological formation over phenomenal scales of time was also possible through magical incubation in certain rock types.

What was bizarre and an acknowledged mystery of 'modern' geology was how these 'grown' gems were identical to their naturally occurring brethren. The same also apparently applied to crystals, which resonated strongly with magic. That was a misuse of the term ‘natural’, considering the world he was in, but Handy wasn't sure of calling one kind igneous and the other agrarian as the mare did. He was no geologist, but that sounded like those would be incorrect terms, but he'd leave the intellectual slap fighting to the people with the rock boners and not challenge the matter.

"So, effectively, what's the difference between the two?" Handy asked at last.

"Resonance," the mare explained, now muzzle-deep in another book. This one was titled Rock Watching – The Professionals Guide. Handy could only assume it was a work of immense academic significance in some regard.

"Agrarian gems do not resonate nor store magic as well as igneous. They will run out and often shatter after use. While physically in attributes there is no true discernible difference between the two, their interaction with magic changes their individual values immensely."

Blink. She licked a hoof, turned a page, then continued.

"Agrarian gems are collected and usually used as a cheap source of decoration, or ponies trade them as a kind of hard currency, particularly by merchants traveling across borders. Diamond dogs horde them, as do dragons, who also eat them as food."

"Wait, dragons eat gems?" Finally, a reaction. Her right eyebrow rose questioningly. Sure, it was only by, like, five millimetres, but it was still a reaction. Handy opened his mouth to continue the question but decided to close it before he made himself look even more foolish. Weird, he remembered Felix, or Ferix, or whatever his name was — the dragon from the tournament. He had seen him eat meat. Sure, why not? Giant fire- breathing lizard – went with the territory – but gems too? He didn't see anything like that. Also, the dragon back in changeling town didn't count. It was too dead to eat anything, though not for a lack of trying.

"Igneous gems are invaluable by comparison. They hold their enchantments, even after the initial magic used to forge them has run out. This disparity of versatility has inflated the disparity of value of two otherwise identical gems considerably." Pause, hoof lick, page turn. "And considering igneous are naturally rarer and harder to find and to process, the value is inflated even more."

Handy's mind was brought back to one merchant he saw in Blackport and the two baskets of gems he had on his stall. One piled high and cheap, the other almost empty, and each individual gem worth more than the entire basket sat next to it. He had to ask...

"So if I had one… ruby. Let’s say…" He paused for a cough. His head still ached but this was genuinely interesting to him now. "…the size of my fist that was agrarian in nature. I could maybe buy myself a room and meal for a few nights? With a bit of change on the side?"

She nodded.

"Yet if I had a tiny sliver of a ruby, say, half the length of one finger." He pointed an index finger to the roof to give her an idea of scale. "But since it was igneous, I could probably just buy a house."

"More or less," she confirmed. Huh. Well hot damn. He patted his pack.

"So my pendant, what did you say it was?"

"Crynthium. Igneous. Very good."

"How much would it be worth? Even when it’s already been enchanted?" There was a long, telling pause where she didn't break eye contact once.

"Lots," she said at long last, turning back to her book. "I advise you don't wear it in public."

Haha, boy, she had no idea. Still, he double-checked to make sure the pendant was still in his pack one more time before putting the thing aside.

"You said they grew like crystals."

"Similar to crystals," she corrected without emphasis. "They seem to act like crystals in that manner, but they are not crystals."

"Right right, but how does it all work? I mean… with magic and all? And what is it with magic and crystals? Why do they operate in the same way? Some forming naturally and others just… grown?"

"I could not say. It is not my field," the mare responded. "You would need to consult a student of the arcane who specialises in such things. I am more concerned with their physical properties."

Handy left the topic at that, more surprised at himself than anything. He should be more alarmed at this scenario than he was but… Well, nothing had gone wrong yet. Without the conversation pertaining to geology, rocks, and other such rot, the mare quietly kept to herself and left Handy to his own affairs for the most part. Their only other interaction for the rest of their journey together culminated in a request for water on his part, which she granted.

After that, it was quiet. No interruptions, no questions, nothing. Handy's fever still made him miserable, but the water had done absolute wonders for making the few coughs he had bearable. The night came as the evening went, and as the train still moved, a question came to mind.

"Wh-Where is this train heading for?" he asked.

"Bridleburgh," she answered, as if Handy was supposed to know where that was. But hey, it wasn't Canterlot, and it wasn't anywhere where he and any unfortunate magical explosions had been recently, so it was immediately the better option. The question answered, he allowed himself to relax, the fever still kicking his ass even if it was receding. He suppressed his auspex, the pain and effort that caused preferable to the pain suffered by letting it run loose while his body was being ravaged. The carriage remained comfortably quiet after that, and at some point he drifted off without meaning to.

She was there in the morning, having woken up before him, wordlessly preparing her gear to leave. She said a brief farewell before hefting the bag of, apparently, rocks onto her back and leaving the cabin. He locked the door behind her, but not before double-checking on his pendant. She was no thief, did not give one damn about him or his reputation, or where he had come from, which was a refreshing change of pace, and had kept mostly silent and to herself, keeping things short and to the point otherwise.

That frankly made her the best conversation partner he had encountered in years. He probably should have asked her name, but then he'd only have to give his in return.

And that'd be no end of trouble.

--=--

It was an unicorn this time, if you must know. That was besides the matter; don't worry about it. He left her where she'd wake up, safe and sound, and only took what blood he needed. Although the surprising taste of peppermint was… No, no, don't worry about it. It was fine. As soon as he could get away with it, he'd go right back to animal blood again. She was already asleep and shouldn't remember a thing, a nightmare at most. It’d be fine. He swore that the next time he found a farm that reared pigs, he'd try his luck with one. Honest.

He had left the train behind not long after that mare had left him alone in that cabin. Bridleburgh was not his destination, the Badlands were, and the train wasn't going anywhere near there. He had taken his opportunity by removing his armour. All of it. He had packed it up, opened the window at the first stop with plentiful cover, and had made a run for it. He had pushed his auspex to its furthest extent, fever be damned, so he could make the short distance to the treeline without tripping across some random pony.

From there on, he had slogged it on foot in a rough westerly direction, or at least he had planned to until he found convenient transport. Somehow the Equestrians still hadn't found him, and as much as he didn't want to let his guard down, he simply had to allow himself the occasional rest every now and again. He had followed the roads, but only when there was tree cover nearby, diving out of sight as soon as he got a whiff of someone drawing near, on land or overhead. He got especially wary on days with prominent cloud cover. Those were times he definitely walked off the road, just in case some pegasus had been hiding behind the damn things.

He had found the whistle stop close to the end of the second day and had figured that was as good a time as any to sate his bloodlust before it got troublesome. He had only noticed the cloaked mare entering the inn beside what seemed to be an ill-maintained crossroads by chance. He had been raiding the clothesline of one of the locals that night, taking what appeared to be good material, to salvage it of course. Bed linens, table cloth, whichever, planning on using it to patch his tattered mess of clothes and fix his cloak so he wouldn't be running around like a wardrobe malfunction waiting to happen. Didn't know a damn thing about darning or sewing but he'd learn, damn it.

God he hated winter.

He had hesitated. She was an unknown, and as far as he knew, she was innocent. Did she really 'deserve' to be bitten? Still, she had been too good to pass up, and he knew no one had entered that inn apart from the owners that day. An unattached blow-in from afar, tired from a long journey, and staying at an inn in the middle of nowhere? Handy had had to be crazy to pass up that opportunity.

Waiting in the cold for all the lights to go out had been agonizing enough, but climbing his way up the shoddily constructed building to the first floor had been a pain in the arse. The window had been easy to open, and the mare snored like the eponymous Pokémon. Apparently she slept in her traveling gear. Weird. He had snuck in and had been especially careful about walking on the floor making sure to kick the over sized hat out of his way, keeping close to the wall. He had gotten what he came for, and had gotten out. No fucking around.

Two things had been learned that day: if his bite woke people up, it put them right the fuck back under again too. The second thing? Blood highs, for all their healing properties, did fuck all for his fever. Like zilch, nothing. Fuck you, Handy, you were stuck with your illness for its duration. It was getting better, yeah, but damn it all, getting rid of it would have been nice. He had exited the inn and sprinted away into the night, keen to put some distance between him and the small hamlet.

A full week since then and he was still traveling. His little experiments darning his clothes had nearly ended in disaster for his tunic, which was now more tablecloth than it was the original fabric. But live and learn. At least his clothes were now patched up, even if a hobo wouldn't be caught dead in them.

Carrying his armour was a pain. Hell, wearing it all the time was a pain, but it was easier over the long haul. He needed to be quick more than he needed to be safe, so it remained off for now. He avoided major settlements and got disturbingly good at stealing food, more so from peoples' store sheds in passing sharecroppers than actually breaking in somewhere and raiding the pantry. That was not to say he didn't break into places. They were usually storehouses and tool sheds and other kinds of outbuildings, mostly just to find a place to get a few hours’ sleep away from the chill and elements outside. That led to more than a few occasions where he had to skedaddle from ill-gotten bed rests in the wee hours of the morning before somebody caught him. He left more than a few country ponies thinking their homes weren't safe from winter bound critters looking for a free meal.

He needed to find a train, or hell, be able to just use the main road without having to ditch dive every other hour since he had a lot of ground to cover. Sure, he was still making some manner of headway between a week on foot and nearly four days’ worth of train travel west. Nevertheless, he was still avoiding any settlement larger than five houses and had to outright spend hours just hiding when the road got too busy. Not to mention the detours he had to take going through some wild brush. He'd be making far better progress if he didn't have to worry about any of this nonsense.

Oh and there was that one time he blundered into a frosted-over marsh with half-frozen water and nearly ran head first into a horrible thing that resembled a bulldog made out of scales, with a maw as wide as Handy was tall. It had a body the size of a large pony with six legs and had far too many teeth. That had not been a fun afternoon. Thankfully, whatever the fuck it was got grabbed by something bigger and tentacled and was dragged deeper into the marsh, squealing and yelping.

Handy… Handy stayed close to the road for the rest of that day.

To make things worse, Chrysalis was being silent. No attempt at communication was met with a response, not so much as a blip from the amulet. He would have thought that mare on the train had switched out his pendant with a fake one were it not for an obvious identifying mark just under the left side of the pendant's jewel, where it was inset.

If it was his pendant, and Chrysalis wasn't talking, how in the hell was he supposed to actually find her again even if he got to the Badlands? Thorax was back in the Enclave last he saw! Fuck fuck fuck.

And it was cold now. He had a system worked out most nights. First, he dug a pit. Like a literal pit, half a foot deep at least, then filled it with leaves, twigs, flammable material, and work up the nerve to light something on fire on top of his hammer, carefully lift it over and dump it into the pit, let it to catch light, take a few steps away, and wait for his heart to stop pounding. Then he’d pile on the heavier stuff for fire fuel once it had time to breathe. Handy used a stolen bedsheet for a makeshift shelter above him to keep the heat from escaping straight up, making sure it always had to pass by a shivering and unhappy Handy before it escaped into the night air.

Of course, this meant there were a number of families left howling about stolen linens they had cleaned and a suspicious number of strange pits set at the base of trees surrounded by a circle of stones all along the way, but fuck it, safety first. Handy needed fire to prevent hypothermia, so he made do as best he could given his conditions, even if it meant he had to constantly keep it maintained some nights. One night, he lit his torch and willed it to point him in the direction of Lepidopolis, just to double check he was still in the right direction. Ohhhh, west, not as if he hadn't been going that direction anyway.

It flickered, stuttered, and then suddenly pointed north. Handy's brow furrowed, and he willed it to show him the way to Lepidopolis.

It kept pointing north of his position.

He looked around the tree he was staying behind. It was on a hill behind a copse, separating it from the road by about a dozen metres. What in the hell? North wasn't anywhere near where he wanted to go. He looked back at the torch curiously and willed it to take him to the Badlands. The flickering blue flame turned west, ignoring any influence from the light breeze rolling around his makeshift camp. He then willed it to take him to Chrysalis. It pointed north. He willed it to take him to the Badlands, near where Lepidopolis was. It bent west. He willed it to take it to Lepidopolis. It bent north. He willed it to take him where he would be physically nearest to Chrysalis. It bent west again.

What the fucking fuck.

Okay, what the hell? Something was drawing its attention north whenever he actually wanted to get to Lepidopolis. It had never acted like this any other night. Was he near something that could change the torch's decision? Curious in spite of himself, he kicked some dirt into his fire pit. He had slept plenty last night and hadn't made much progress today, having had to hide from the busy road. He wasn't comfortable anyway, so he decided to do another slog before turning in for the night.

Gathering up his gear, still slightly winded and not fully recovered, he carried his stuff and forged ahead. His blue flame led the way into the night. He followed the road until it came to an intersection, a spur leading off to the northwest. He followed its bends until he came to a small valley with little tree coverage. That made him wary.

Surprisingly, the flame was bent towards the east of the valley now, towards a small town. The place had three large windmills sitting prominently on three hills surrounding the town itself. A good number of houses clustered around the main townhouse were in turn surrounded by farm fields, the harvest long since collected and the fallow fields covered in white snow. If the witch torch was telling the truth, then this place was directly north of where he had been planning on camping that night. How in the hell was this place supposed to get him to Lepidopolis?

He looked over the valley again. It was bordered on three sides by woodlands and he could make out the main road snaking its way along the valley, disappearing as it approached the north-western lip and dissolving into the woods again. Beyond the town, he could make out rolling hills and the barely distinct black blobs indicating far-off settlements. Only by the grace of the moonlight could he distinguish them from the winter night's sky at all.

It all looked normal, yet the torch was pointing towards the town. Somehow, there was something there that it knew would take him to Lepidopolis.

So much for getting any sleep tonight.

--=--

He hummed to himself as he rolled the map open across the table, quill grasped in muzzle as he placed weights at the corners. The hiss of running water could be heard from the water closet behind him, and steam teased out from the space beneath the door.

"Having fun in there?" he called out teasingly, letting a false hint of agitation enter his voice, as if indignant she'd be spending so long under the running water. He got no response of course. In truth, they had been on the road for over two weeks now, practically combing the land from Manehatten to the Badlands looking for their quarry, and this was the first rented accommodation they came across in a while that had hot and cold running water.

So of course they ruthlessly abused this luxury.

He eyed his sword on the table beside him, grateful at its recovery but sorrowful at the harsh reality it represented.

No more going back home for him, even if he had found him and brought him back. His life was basically over now that he was seen as more of a liability than an asset. He had left the Enclave with an escort or two, and now he had none and nopony would be going back to inform. Just him, his sword, and some very pleasant company. He had no choice but to find refuge in the North. Or with the changelings. That, put simply, was as good as suicidal.

He slipped up and had let that pang of guilt and fear leak out. He promptly heard the squeal of the shower handle turn off and the rushing water stop, so he simply sat there studying the map as he waited for her to dry off.

Sure enough, he didn't have to wait long before he heard the clip clop of hooves drawing nearer from behind. He felt smooth dermis and slightly damp mane hair brush up against him as she laid her chin on his shoulder, a hoof wrapped around his side and the light weight of her body weighing down upon his back.

"What’s wrong?" she mumbled tiredly, looking at him sideways, strands of her growing mane drifting across the front of her face. He smiled at her.

"Nothing, just thinking."

"Ohhh, dangerous."

"Hmhm, you'd know all about that, wouldn't you, chere?"

"Maybe I do," she replied, nuzzling deeper into the crook of his neck, sighing contently.

"Comfy?" She just mumbled in response. He snorted in amusement and turned back to the map before him, illuminated by the flickering light of the oil lantern. A thought had been eating away at him for a while now, and he wanted to raise it with her. Nevertheless, he didn't want to spoil the moment, so he sat there in silence for a few moments longer, allowing them both to enjoy each other's warmth.

"We're going to have to double back," she said at last, eyes closed and evidently tired. He looked at her in surprise, giving voice to his thoughts. He smiled wryly.

"We have been turning up nothing recently, haven't we?"

"Mmm," she agreed, shifting to maintain comfort. "We must have passed him by now. There is no other way."

"None of your 'friends' hear anything?" he probed. Her ear twitched and her brow furrowed momentarily in annoyance. He smiled at that. It was as good as an answer. "It's adorable you think I don't notice you trying to distract me with something so you can sneak off to cavort with local ne’er-do-wells."

"I said nothing," she said with the merest hint of a harrumph, swatting his side with her tail.

"So I take it they haven't seen nor heard anything either?" he asked.

"No. Yours?"

"I know which towns and cities have branches, but I run short on contacts the further from the coast I get."

"You should work on that."

"Perhaps." He sighed, rolling the map over and shifting his weight, eliciting a grunt of disappointment from his companion in the process. His horn lit up and he turned the oil lantern off. "But perhaps we should worry about all of that in the morning, hmm?"

"Yeah," she relented, with a tired yawn, "no sense fretting now. It’s not as if he's just going to—"

There were few things that can truly, honestly, scare the shit out of a changeling, but being blindsided, truly and utterly blindsided, was one of them. Even in the darkest of caves, with the direst of assassins on their tails, a changeling would always have some forewarning, even if it was only a second prior to being stabbed. They were never truly and utterly taken by surprise.

Thorax had absolutely no forewarning that there was anything on the other side of their shack door before it got kicked in and a great big, shambling, malformed thing stumbled through the doorway, shouting muffled nonsense.

Thorax reacted immediately, lighting up her horn and firing bolt after bolt of magic at the thing’s centre of mass. Silver moonlight streaming through the doorway silhouetted the thing, and the flickering from the strange blue light it swung only served to exaggerate its hulking form. Bright flashes of green magic impacted its chest and blew off chunks of whatever it had for fur, casting nightmarish shapes and shadows about the dark room. When she paused, a waft of acrid smoke drifting off her horn, Jacques struck, leaping at the thing with the lantern clasped in his magic. His sword had fallen off the table in the confusion, leaving him with no time to fumble about looking for it.

He collided bodily with the thing, and both forms fell back into the corridor beyond. The thing dropped its light as Jacques went at it with hooves and blows of the iron cast lantern. A tremendous blow to his side from something made of steel winded him, but he pressed on as the flailing thing beneath him continued to struggle.

While that was going on, Thorax couldn't get a clear shot, so failing the ability to blast the thing insensate with magic, she sought to do the next best thing:

Murder!

Her horn lit up, and she went for the drawers beside the bed, opening one and withdrawing the stiletto she kept there and turning, ready to—

Wait.

She blinked as she spied the blue light on the floor. It was a torch, one that wasn't burning the carpet it was touching. She… She had seen that before. She looked over at the dark fighting forms again, hesitating for just a moment longer.

No. No it couldn't be. The world did not work that way. Not after all this time spent in the mud and the dirt in the backside of Equestria did something like this bucking happen.

She lifted the torch in her magic and tentatively approached the fighting pair, her blade held behind her head.

"Handy?" she asked as she approached. "Jacques! Jacques, stop!"

"What!?" he shouted back, before getting clipped over the head and dropping the lantern.

"Stop, I think that’s Handy!" Sure enough, Jacques stopped his struggling, as did the thing beneath him. The torch was passed over, and the blue light revealed the prone form of the human, swaddled as he was in a monstrous mishmash of fabrics tied and held together for warmth, smoking and slightly charred from Thorax's earlier blasts. His form had been distorted underneath them, giving him a hulking, monstrous shape. His face was almost entirely covered, and a pair of very familiar eyes, one of which was now bruised, glared up at Jacques.

"Oh," Jacques squawked in surprise, his face adopting a stupid expression before smiling awkwardly. “Handy, hi!"

And so it was that Handy's fist crashed into the unicorn's jaw with all the force of a furious Irishman.

--=--

"The entire time!?" Handy had moved on from the violent greetings and straight to the angry Q&A portion of his unexpected visit. That was what friends did, right? Right.

Thorax had to put on a show when the concerned landlord who had rented out the shack to the lovely pair of ponies earlier that very evening came out to investigate the disturbances he heard. He had been reassured it had only been a case of some rabid wombats that had made a nest in the shack. She even showed him the claw marks they made on her flank!

With a hasty out-of-sight assembly of sticks and junk to vaguely resemble something that might have once been a nest, Thorax had managed to convince the landlord. What immediately followed were several hurried apologies and an offer of free room and board.

"Calm down," Jacques said wearily, lying diagonally on the shack's only bed. The good thing about winter? Plenty of ice. He held a cloth pack to his face to ease the pain and swelling.

"How could you just… just pass by Manehatten like that!?"

"Oh I'm sorry, what exactly is it about your behaviour up ‘til now that would lead us to believe you'd stick around in a city bursting at the seams with Equestria's finest?" Thorax pitched in from across the room, studying the amulet. He had tossed it at her cryptically, stating, “find out why it’s not talking”, before sitting down and getting inquisitorial on Jacques.

"I barely got away in Blackport. Speaking of, where in the hell did you two go?"

"Oh, I got picked up by my lovely friends with the viceroyalty," Jacques said, waving a hoof lazily in the air. "Fun times, but you wouldn't want to hear abou—"

"He got threatened to go find you and bring you back to the Enclave so they could ship you off to the Black Isles," Thorax filled in, almost bored, flipping the amulet over in her hooves. "Pretty serious about it too; sent him off with a pair of blackguards."

Handy gave Jacques a look that could sink ships.

"Well obviously I didn't go through with it!" Jacques protested. Handy wanted to say something but just gritted his teeth and shook a fist impotently before relaxing with an exasperated sigh.

"So, where are they now?" he asked, leaning back in his too-close-to-the-ground chair and rubbing his face. Thoughts of yet more angry ponies on his tail drifted across his mind. "The two blackguards, I mean."

"You're talking to one," Thorax replied, still not turning to look at the pair. Handy rolled his eyes.

"Okay, so that’s where you went, slipping away. What happened to the other one?" he asked. There was an almost imperceptible pause before he was answered.

"Oh, we kindly helped him home," Jacques responded.

"You sent him back to the Black Isles?" Handy asked. Jacques' visible eye glanced at the drawer next to the bed briefly.

"Sure."

"Right, fine, so you guys got dropped off in Manehatten incognito. Then what?"

"Well, like we said, ami, we left. Figured there was no way in Tartarus you'd stay there with all that commotion so—"

"We spent the last two weeks digging through every hole and ditch between Manehatten and the Badlands," Thorax interrupted. "Then oh would you look at that, the very pony we're looking for happily kicks in our door and starts a fight!"

"In my defence, I wasn't expecting you guys to be there."

"Why? Weren't you looking for us?"

"…Sure," Handy lied. In truth, he had felt foggy and his auspex had been giving him weird information. Sure, there could have been two suspiciously grey and dull blink-and-you'll-miss-it ponies in there, or it might have been sacks of flour. His fever had let up enough that he was functional but the trade-off left him still in something of a mess. "Okay hang on, does that mean that… this entire time, you've both technically been ahead of me?"

Thorax and Jacques looked at each other for a moment before Handy let out a groan of realization and Jacques started to laugh. He calmed down enough to wipe away some of the meltwater from his ice pack to return to the conversation.

"So, Handy, I take it by the mess you left in Manehatten that you found what you were looking for?"

"Huh? Oh, oh yeah right, I found the thing I was looking for," he said. "Bloody nightmare it was too. There was all this old magic being thrown about by someone, tore up the place. Had to hide as the Equestrians shut the island down."

"Well, you still need to tell me what all this old magic business is about," Jacques pressed.

"Don't bother, he doesn't tell anypony," Thorax added, throwing the amulet aside for the moment.

"Focus. I got what Chrysalis wanted and that’s what matters." Both Jacques and Thorax looked at Handy dumbfounded for a moment. Handy looked between them, confused. "What?"

"Aha!" Jacques shouted triumphantly, pointing an accusatory hoof at Thorax, who proceeded to groan in that curious bi-tonal voice changelings seemed to have, rubbing her face with her hooves.

"You mean you didn't tell him?" Handy asked incredulously. "Oh, go on and tell the foreign gypsy spy you're secretly an emotion sucking fae-horse, get cosy while you're at it, no big deal! Help him get away from a pissed off colonial authority, that’s nothing. But shock and horror, dare to tell him you're in the service of one particular changeling overlord or another? Oh no, that's beyond the pale."

"That’s not the point, Handy…" Thorax growled. Jacques was laughing in the meanwhile.

"Well, what is the point then?" Thorax looked away.

"I'll tell you later, bon comarade. Let's just say you won a bet for me," Jacques said in between laughs.

"Sounds like a stupid bet. If you're tagging along with us, you were going to find out anyway." Handy paused. "I am assuming that’s what’s going on here, right? I mean, you don't seem to be planning on going back to Blackport."

"Hmm, I should think not," Jacques said with an easy smile, though there was a hint of pain in his voice. "I shall work something out in the long run."

"I just… I can't believe this." Handy lifted up his now extinguished torch and glared at it accusingly. "Of all the things… Well, you know what? Not even going to complain. I'm going to crash in that other room tonight. Any questions? No? Okay."

"What, have you been planning on sleeping outside?" Thorax snarked.

"Yes," Handy shot back, tugging on the abomination that he had the gall to call winter gear, torn and scorched as it was from Thorax's delightful welcome, bits of it coming off as he did so. "I've had to improvise in order to stay out of sight this whole time. Because, you know, this is Equestria, and I lack the appropriate papers. Oh, and I may have been involved in an explosion in a major Equestrian city. Little worries like that."

"You can't keep that up," Thorax protested.

"Well, what do you suggest I do? I can't very well just walk about Equestria right now and not expect to cause a bit of a panic."

"I believe I have a novel solution!" Jacques said, his hoof rising to the air.

--=--

"Get in the box."

"What?"

"Get in the box, Handy."

"No."

"We don't have time for this, Handy. Get in the box."

"I am not getting in the box."

"Why not?"

"It’s humiliating."

"It’s a very nice box."

"I don't care. I am not going through the indignity of being ferried about like packaged goods again. Besides, it looks like it’s too small for me."

"Yes, right, that's very nice and all, mon ami, but get in the box."

And that was what Thorax awoke to the following morning. It had been a very nice morning until she wandered outside to find out what the noise was all about. Indeed, it had been a very nice evening: a nice warm bed, a nice warm body beside her, and it turned out her mission was very nearly complete. Things were looking up!

Then she found Handy, now stripped of his abominable winter clothes and adorned with garish mishmash tunic, pants, and a patched cloak for decency, arguing with Jacques. The latter held upright a box that looked like it was barely big enough to fit the unicorn.

She did what any sensible person would’ve done: turned right the fuck back around, went back inside, made a sandwich out of stale bread and lettuce, boiled some tea, relaxed with a cup, and THEN and ONLY THEN did she decide to go and see what madness she had to deal with for the day.

“I must object.”

“Mmhm.”

“Really, this accomplishes nothing.”

“I’m sure.”

“I mean, I was only trying to help.”

“That you were.”

“OH LET ME OUT ALREADY, YOU DÉCHETS CALOMNIEUX MOCHE DE CHAIR!”

So of course when she came out again, steaming cup of tea in her magical grip, Jacques was buried up to his neck in snow. His horn had Handy’s chainmail glove wrapped around it, held with twine and occasionally flashing whenever the unicorn tried to do something. Handy, meanwhile, was currently stacking disassembled boards of the previously seen box on top of a tree stump.

Thorax went back to lie down in bed for a while. She was there for all of half an hour before she decided it had gotten a touch too quiet for her liking and decided to go see what was up.

Jacques and Handy were crouched around the tree stump, playing cards.

“So in this game, having a three of hearts is a winning hand?” the human asked.

“Non, non, non, in the Saddleshire Shuffle, a four of hearts is a winning hoof.”

“Making progress I see,” Thorax remarked, looking around. The boys were out the back of the shack, facing the forest, and they were far enough away from town that no one was likely to notice them this early. She herself was in her Charity Bell disguise. If it worked, it worked.

“Not really,” Handy grumbled while Jacques smirked. “Decided to blow off steam learning card games.”

“Didn’t you say the guards could track you last night?” Thorax asked, coming over to observe their game.

“They certainly seemed to in Manehatten… Ever since then, I’ve been wondering. Haven’t seen any sign of them whatsoever. I think I may have actually lost them.”

“Still, it doesn’t pay to be careless.”

“Thanks, mom.” Handy snorted, shuffling the cards again and drawing out a hand, frowning at what he received. He looked at Jacques’ cards and threw his hands up in the air. ‘How in the hell does he keep doing that time after time? He doesn’t even have any sleeves!’

“So, what are we going to do about you?” she asked.

“Well, he didn’t like getting back in a box,” Jacques teased, scratching his head, missing his hat.

“I am not getting into another box like that unless it’s my actual coffin, with nice red lining and plush interior with one of those little head pillow things.”

“Oh whine whine whine, je ne comprenais pas l'appel d'enterrer vos morts dans une boîte en bois de fantaisie de toute façon, pourquoi ne pas vous brûler eux juste comme tout le monde?”

Handy promptly ignored the pony as soon as he went into French mode and turned to the changeling.

“I don’t suppose you have a better suggestion?”

“Have you tried that thing we discussed before everything went to Tartarus in Blackport?”

“No,” Handy lied, not particularly caring to get into that little imponderable headache just right then.

“Then we’ll need to improvise.” Thorax seemed to squint her eyes and study Handy intently.

“What? What is it?” he asked.

“How fond are you of your helmet?”

“Very, why?”

“Well, if you’d rather not ruin it, how do you feel about wearing something heavy on your head?”

“What are you getting at, Thorax?”

“Maybe nothing, maybe…” She looked around. There were several logs piled up against the back of the shack for fire fuel. There was an axe nearby, and if she could just find some wood working tools… “Wait here.”

“Where are you going?” Jacques asked.

“Here and there, don’t worry about it,” Thorax said as she trotted off. Jacques and Handy just looked at each other.

--=--

Whittling away at wood can be fun… for some. Doing so for hours and hours, over and over again, failing and breaking the thing you had been working on again and again could be a right pain in the arse. So it was that Handy, with a little help from Jacques, worked away at Handy’s little disguise. It was ingenious, simple, and utterly, completely and absolutely insulting to the human that he didn’t think of it sooner. Meanwhile, Thorax, who actually knew half a damn about how to sew, worked the more workable portions of Handy’s improvised winter coat as an addition to his patchwork deer-cloak.

By that evening they had done it. Two relatively short horns, carved from wooden logs, sat in a pile of sawdust and wood chippings, as did two strange boots that looked like they attached to the legs just north of the shins. Said wooden constructions were rubbed raw with a cloth that had been impregnated with ground stone and oil to sand away at the horns to smooth them out. Then their lengths were scoured by blades to make the wooden patterns less obvious, and to make it look like they had naturally grown into their shapes before they were painted black.

“I feel ridiculous,” Handy confessed, standing in the middle of the room with his new disguise. Gone was Handy the Human. Before them, cloaked from head to hoof, head obscured by a hood that allowed for his horns and face to lay hidden behind a veil, stood a minotaur. “This is never going to work.”

“Well, why not? Nopony can see your legs, and we already accounted for your hoofprints with those boots—”

“I feel ridiculously Dutch wearing these clogs…”

“And we even fixed your face!” Handy just glared at him. “Well fine, go about waving your image in ponies’ faces. See where that gets you.”

“Smart arse,” Handy admonished. He lifted a leg up, pulling back his closed cloak. It looked ridiculous. Anyone who got a good look at his legs beneath the cloak would see these boots for the fakes they were. They were basically just a cover designed to hug Handy’s real shoes. He’d place it over his shoe like a wooden slipper, slanted from the toes up to his shin. The back portion would then be slipped on, and he’d tie them together with thick string through several small holes dug out of both just to keep them on.

The bottoms of each boot were carved to make a vaguely hoof-shaped indention on the ground whenever he walked. A bit extravagant but necessary in winter given how distinctive a human’s footprint was. He had wasted a silly amount of time previously covering his tracks in the snow up until now. It wasn’t detailed, and it wasn’t pretty, but it worked. Still, by God that bottom-heavy feeling on his legs was going to take some getting used to. The horns were held to his head by a strap around his crown and another over his scalp to keep them from falling down.

It was ridiculous, but it was cover. He was, after all, a sick minotaur in a foreign land in winter. Of course he’d wrap up well! He still had his doubts about the plan, but if it worked well… then it worked. It’d certainly solve a lot of problems. He flexed his gloved hands. It also meant he could use these out in the open without a single issue arriving from it. Why the hell didn’t he think of this before?

“Alright, I’m going to… test this out,” Handy said, a little unsure of himself. Jacques gave him a reassuring smile while Thorax just rolled her eyes.

Handy flexed his hands and eyed his bundled armour in a sack stored the next room over through the doorway. He could really use that sense of security right now, but people would get suspicious if the sickly minotaur blundered around with armour under his voluminous robes… made out of bedsheet linens.

God Handy needed new clothes. Or hell, his regular clothes he had all the way back in Gethrenia with all of his other nice things. But waste not want not, even if these sheets had been wanted before Handy decided to waste them. He left the shack.

First things first: make sure the landlord wouldn’t get suspicious of his two current occupants having a stranger over to visit. That would take some further improvisation. Sure, he sorta looked like a minotaur from a distance, but the only minotaur he ever saw was a big bastard. Handy’s legs were also shaped wrong. Sure, they were hidden from sight, and he could fool people by disguising his footprints, but he couldn’t fake a tauric walking gait. He’d need to think of something.

He left the shack, took a left turn down the hill until he came upon a road, only notable as such thanks to a fence demarcating where it met a farmer’s field and the wet slush that had furrowed into the snow from the passing of a wagon earlier that morning. He went to the landlord’s house the next hill over. On a whim, he picked up a rather long and gnarled-looking tree branch off of the ground, tore away the twigs and smaller branches attached, and made it into a walking staff.

He paused before the door and checked himself, patting down his ‘robes’ made from linens, his cloak, his hood, his veil, and his gloves. His horns were still in place. He was forgetting something… Oh right, the gait. He stooped over and leaned on his staff and forced a few coughs out, forcing his voice to go hoarse. He’d probably not pass for a minotaur in the prime of his life, but an old taur? Maybe he could get away with that. He knocked on the door.

The landlord was a chestnut brown earth pony who seemed surprised at Handy’s presence. He stood there, looking up at Handy with wide eyes and a slack jaw. Handy immediately felt like he had made a terrible, horrible, awful mistake.

“Well bless my stars, been a long time since I seen a ‘taur about this country! What can I do you for, sir?”

Handy blinked. Well that’s… one way to greet a complete stranger.

“I… ahem… I have just come about, looking for a pair of friends of mine,” Handy blathered, slightly taken aback by the pony’s joviality. Time to roll with it. “They told me in their letter they’d be staying in this town for a few days. Could you do a sickly old minotaur a favour and let me know if you’ve seen anyo—pony like them?” he asked, his tone gravely, his accent hidden beneath a hoarse voice. He added a cough for emphasis.

“Aw well, I’d be happy to help! What did they look like?” What immediately followed was a brief description by Handy along with a couple of names, a surprised reaction from the landlord, and the ‘darnedest thing’ about him renting a shack to folks fitting that description just the other day! “You look cold, mister. Why don’t you come on in for a spell?”

“Uh, n-no. Thank you, you’re too kind.”

“Nonsense! You must be tired from the road. Look at you, you’re clinging to your walking stick for dear life! Honey? Put on the kettle!”

“Really, thank you! I’d just like to go visit my friends, if you’d allow me.”

“Oh, of course, of course! Sorry, it’s just been so long since we had a minotaur visit our little corner of Equestria. You look cold; are you sure you wouldn’t mind warming yourself inside? There’s a fire going.”

“...I’m sure,” Handy said. He noticed the pony looking a bit closer at his face, and he suddenly realised he had no way of mimicking a minotaur’s muzzle. He coughed pointedly, clenching a fist before his veil. The pony looked sympathetic.

“Well, if you change your mind, we’d love to have ya over for a bit. My kids never got to see a minotaur before ,and they love stories.

“Thank you, I’ll… I’ll consider it.” He bade his farewell and made his way down the hill, waiting for the landlord to close the door. When he did, he looked back. That… That had worked out far better than he had expected.

He thought about returning to the others when a thought struck him. He looked back at the town that was still rousing in the morning light, and walked towards it.

--=--

The ponies of Brightshowers were an energetic bunch, wildly curious, and fond of exploring the woods around them. Why shouldn’t they? These were the safest woodlands in Eastern Equestria, comparatively speaking of course. It was an agrarian town known for its woodsmanship, carpentry, and archery.

Handy had to do a double take when he discovered that last one.

While yes, it was true archery was pretty ubiquitous —the griffons absolutely adored the bow from what he could tell— the crossbow always made more sense for a pony ranged weapon. At least it was one that you could adjust for hooves, provided you worked the trigger guard and handle right. Ponies used the bow as well, though it seemed mostly pegasi and unicorns did so. Unicorn children did frighteningly well at the little ranges he saw in the town. One would think they’d use their magic to just chuck things, but it turned out that was a ridiculous waste of energy for magic users.

Or at least that was what was explained to him when he stopped to ask the earth pony instructor at the local school as he passed by on the street. His thoughts were drawn back to his fight with Blueblood in the tournament and how he had used those six light blades in the duel. How he grasped the handles rather than the whole blade, conserving his magic and concentrating it where it was needed. And he was a weak magic user from what Handy surmised.

A unicorn would just hold the bow aloft, focusing the magical energy to grasp one point, lift the arrow into place, draw the bowstring back, and release. The pony only had to maintain control of the bow and let physics do the rest of the work for them.

The implications were frightening when even a weak magic user could be a deadly, skilled archer this way. It required much more mental acuity and stress than raw muscle power, but still. Pegasi could do the same but usually from the air, with different bows that their hooves could clasp and bowstrings that allowed an easy grasp for the interior hoof through that infuriatingly mysterious way ponies could grab things. A lot of the bows came with this odd strap that helped the hoof hold it into place. Handy guessed whatever way they could grab things still wasn’t as good as a hand full of fingers for preventing the bow flying out of your grasp after you released the string.

It did mean they could worry less about the size of the bow, however, but they could never have the same draw strength of a unicorn due to the sheer physical limitations. That didn’t seem to stop the pegasi colts and fillies he saw having an utter blast perforating their targets with disturbing accuracy.

Earth pony children fared much poorer and had a far less range of abilities, having to learn to balance on two hooves, spread wide like he had seen Jacques do before. It was so weird to see ponies standing like that, but apart from a bit of wobbling shenanigans now and then, they seemed to manage surprisingly well. The older ones could balance themselves completely to the point of moving about on two hooves temporarily to reposition themselves.

Their bows were usually short and compact, and they got a surprising amount of draw power out of them. The youngest failed adorably with their tiny bows, the power behind them often knocking them off their hooves with each shot. The older, more experienced boys were… kind of terrifying. A thought struck him.

Ponies did not hunt. These woods had little to no monsters apart from that one swamp he had wandered into. That meant he was likely looking at the latest crop of ponies eager to sign up to the local militias as archers come wartime when they were not at home farming.

He quickly moved on from that thought.

It was a surreal experience, very strange. He felt wary and foolish, tramping about in his tauric disguise, but for all the worry and concern he felt, it seemed to be working. It was now past midday, and the town was alive with activity. Much to Handy’s bewilderment, the ponies did not react to him in any way he had been prepared for. The typical reaction was for a pony to turn, their eyes to gaze up, see his horns, smile, and go about their day.

It seemed the strange and the unusual didn’t trigger the same xenophobic reactions he was accustomed to. So long as a pony could correlate it with something it was familiar with, that was. Either that or Brightshowers was an unusually accepting and open-minded community.

Handy’s money was on benevolent racism, because that at least made sense.

The dirt roads that made up much of the town’s streets were slick with melted snow and frost from the townsfolk’s activities, leaving most of it muddy. More than once Handy had to carefully pull his ‘foot’ out of the ground after it sunk particularly deeply. He was suddenly very grateful for the foresight in making the boots, even if it did feel like he had dead weights tied to his lower legs.

He did, however, appreciate the courtesy he received. Turned out the ‘old man haunch’ was universal, and several of the ponies immediately assumed he was some elderly ‘taur. Several even offered him their seats on the few benches and public chairs he passed. He’d have to remember that. Still, it was only when he had come to a brief stop at an eatery that the bizarreness of it all came to the fore. He met a bright-faced and annoyingly cheerful waitress with a ridiculously dirty apron at odds with her otherwise neat appearance. After guiding him to a seat and delivering him the cup of tea he ordered, it really struck him.

‘This is like Spurbay all over again,’ he noted. He got looks, but it was different. There was no hostility there; there wasn’t even any fear. It was curiosity. He was the unusual sight that made an otherwise boring and samey morning for the inhabitants different. There was no whispering, or at least none of the kind pertaining to him. There was no cautious, fearful silence at his presence, no one had crossed to the other side of the street to get out of his way as he passed. It was mundane, it was normal, and it was utterly incongruous with how he was used to people to acting around him. He didn’t know how to feel about it.

He didn’t linger long after that, and had done his level best to avoid any and all conversation with the ponies whenever possible, which proved difficult precisely because his disguise fooled them into thinking he was some itinerant, old minotaur. Turned out the townsfolk found that concept fascinating. Something about some other traveling minotaur really livening things up a few years ago, whatever that was about.

It was roughly when he was halfway up the small incline to the shack that he first started to notice the shouting.

"Alors qu'est-ce? Je ne suis pas assez bien pour toi? Est qu'il !?"

"Cela ne veut pas du tout et vous le savez!"

Lots and lots of French shouting.

"Qu'est-ce que c'est alors!?"

"Cela ne peut pas durer, vous savez cela, et je ne veux pas de jeter avec vous, à cause de cela. Il ne serait pas juste, ni à droite."

“Voilà exactement pourquoi je veux faire ça! Je ne veux pas aller—” Handy opened the door, and the bickering ponies stopped. He just barely caught a flash of green out of the corner of his eye as Thorax had turned back to her disguise in an instant. The room was a mess. The sawdust which had been tidied up in the corner now lay strewn about, and several things looked like they had been thrown across the room. Thorax was at one end, the farthest from the door, with Jacques by the bed. Handy looked from one to the other.

“... Am I interrupting something here?”

“...No, no, we, ah, just had a little disagreement,” Jacques clarified, dusting off some sawdust from his withers. Handy noted that even despite her disguise, Thorax’s hair looked frazzled. She was focusing a little too intently on the amulet, the sort of concentration one only got when one really needed to ignore how angry they were.

“...Alright then.” He closed the door and set about awkwardly trying to take down his hood. He couldn’t, so he just sighed, reached up under the hood, undid the strap, and let the hood, veil, and horns fall away and hang loosely from his neck. “Good news, Thorax’s mad little plan worked.”

“Hmph,” Thorax managed. This genuinely made Handy raise an eyebrow before looking at Jacques questioningly. He only rolled his eyes and looked away.

“...Right, anyway. The disguise works, for now. I guess that means that’s sorted so, uh… is this going to be a problem?” Handy asked, gesturing between the two. They were both quiet for half a second too long before both answering simultaneously.

“No.” Handy blinked.

“Good to know,” he said, placing the new walking stick against the wall. Jacques seemed about to question it, though not before Handy began nudging him towards the door.

“He-Hey! Ce que l'enfer!?”

“You need to go get lost for a bit while I discuss some things with Thorax.”

“Why do I need to leave for that!?”

“Because reasons. Now fuck off. There’s this nice place in town which serves good tea. It has pretty waitresses, so you’ll be right at home there. See you in an hour or so.”

“Now wait just a min—!” And the door was closed on his face. Handy turned to a bemused Thorax, whose face looked like a mixture of irritation and confusion.

“You. I need to test something,” he said after a moment, hearing Jacques’ hooves crunch away in the snow.

“What?” she managed. He looked at her levelly.

“Go into the next room,” he said, calmly and evenly.

“Why?” she asked, looking through the door into the next room.

“I want you to go into the next room,” he said in that same measured tone, never once breaking his stare. She was about to respond, but her voice caught in her throat along with her objection. Her brow furrowed and her eyes tried to search his face, but she found she couldn’t look away from his eyes.

“What… What are you…?”

“Go into the next room, Thorax,” he repeated. She didn’t move, nor look away. Handy’s gaze seemed more intent now, more focused. “I want you to go into the next room. Now.”

She slowly got up from her seated position and was about to take her first step towards the room, but hesitated, looking down at her hooves in confusion, ears lowered. They sprang back up, and she looked up when Handy continued speaking.

“Go on. Go into the next room. Now.”

Her hoof was about to touch the floorboards when her eyes widened, and she scrambled back against the corner with a yelp, shaking her head from side to side. She stared up at Handy with wide, alarmed eyes.

“What was that!?” she demanded, “What did you just do!?”

Handy just looked at her impassively and with a hint of disappointment, although she could not tell exactly what he was feeling nor why. He looked at the amulet on the table and sighed.

“Something happened in Manehatten,” he began, walking over to the bed and sitting down. He took over his new walking stick and laid it across his knees, picking away at it. “Remember what you told me in Blackport? About how my image, or how the perception of my image can change? Like it did for you in the Greenwoods?”

Thorax didn’t answer. She stayed right where she was and let the human speak.

“I think you didn’t tell me everything about the powers changeling blood gave me. I didn’t know, for instance, that I also had the ability to compel people to do what I wanted. That poor girl... I wanted to know, to be absolutely sure, that someone could break it. That it was suggestion and not… something else instead,” he said, looking up at her pointedly. “A bit of forewarning would have been appreciated on that front.”

“...What happened in Manehatten?” she asked, curiosity getting the better of her, though caution still ruled her. She was looking anywhere on his face other than at his eyes.

“A pony mistaking me for another pony for one thing. Let’s start there. Then you’re going to need to leave.”

“What?” she shot up. “Leave? Why!?”

“Because I am going to take a shower.”

“...Oh.”

“It’s been so long since I had the chance to have a proper one, and I am not putting up with yours nor Jacques’ bul—” He caught himself, considering he was now effectively cosplaying as a bull man, “lovers’ spats while I’m enjoying one of the only genuinely good things to be had around here. Go into town, grab a bite to eat, sort your shit out far away from me for all I care. But for right now, we need to talk.”

“Fine,” Thorax said tersely, looking at the amulet. “We still need to fix that.”

“Agreed. Now, I’m going to need you to be very clear,” he said, laying the stick aside. “From start to finish, leaving nothing out, tell me what you saw in the forest, and how it’s different from when you shapeshift, from your own perspective.”

--=--

“But he’s right there!”

“Calm down, private,” the sergeant said. The day guard had his helmet removed and was looking over reports at a low table in the command tent. The encampment was small, largely because they needed to be on the move at any moment. The earth pony and unicorn complements were held back. Mobility would be key in case of an emergency.

And everypony in the camp knew exactly what such an emergency could entail.

“Sir, he is in a town right now. Innocent civilians are in the way. If anything were to happen—”

“I know, private,” Cloud Skipper said tersely, looking up at the young thestral, his eyes like flint. “We have every contingency in place should anything happen. Right now, you have the same orders from the Princesses that everypony else does.”

“Sir, with all due respect, this is stupid!”

“Congratulations, you just volunteered for latrine duty,” Cloud said impassively as he turned back to his reports. “That will be all, private.”

Stellar stood to attention and saluted before leaving the tent, trying her best not to grind her teeth to dust. She flinched in the glare of the sunlight, and her breath frosted on the cold air as she melted back into the organized chaos of the small royal guard camp.

They had him. She had been too late to catch him before he left Manehatten, but her quick thinking had helped the guard mobilize much faster than it otherwise would have done. Then they had found out about the train and had given chase.

And then they had received their new orders from Celestia, no more than a few miles out from a scheduled rest stop for the train where they knew he was hiding out. She had been aghast when she found out. There he was, right in their hooves, and they were told to stand down? To back off and remain vigilant? To not provoke another incident!? The human had been in the middle of the biggest disaster Manehatten had suffered since the Kraken migration fifteen years ago! He was involved in something that, if his word could even be remotely trusted, threatened several kingdoms! He was at the heart of the furore between the griffons and the reason why border tensions were so high! And now they were just expected to sit pretty and do nothing?

Stellar would be lying if she said she had not been tempted, so very tempted, to pretend to have ‘not received the new orders in time’. Why, it’d be a shame if the orders were no longer relevant if she already captured him, wouldn’t it?

But no, she bit her tongue and held position, unhappily let the train get away again. Ever since then, she and the guards had been moving camps to follow the human’s progress. Thankfully, he had since left the train, so these little moves didn’t have to be so tediously common, allowing some ponies the chance for an honest day’s sleep that was welcome.

Of the entire trip from Manehatten, there were four teams of fifteen ponies, each no more than five miles away from the human in four directions at any one time. There was only three now: Sergeant Midnight’s detail had been redirected to relieve a southern mining town that was under siege by an unusually large band of brigands, mostly ponies with dog mercenaries. Shouldn’t take them too long.

Honestly, she didn’t know what the princesses were trying to achieve with this approach. What, were they just supposed to escort him by proxy out of the country until he was somepony else’s problem? And then just sit on their plots and pretend nothing happened? Was that it? She didn’t know, she didn’t particularly care, but orders were orders, and she had drawn more than enough attention to herself as it was. She played her part like a good little soldier.

She awaited for her private orders from Luna, whenever they came. As the first nihensha of the Queen of Starlight in a thousand years, and the first to become so out of necessity and not out of merit, she could ill-afford to make her people look bad by being ill-disciplined. At least no worse than she already had.

“Private Eclipse?”

“Huh?” She was ripped from her thoughts by the address. She was looking at a dull, grey-coated pony with a metal helm. The pins on his coat indicated him as a member of the commissionate corps.

“Mail,” the pony said simply and promptly hoofed over a small, flat package before taking to the air without another word. Stellar blinked at the retreating pony and then looked down at the package she had instinctively grabbed with her mouth. She had to try very hard to resist the urge to sweat bullets.

Commissionate corps were in charge of special communications, especially between commanders in the field during wartime, as well as the delivery of privileged and confidential communiques in other matters. They were not used for mail call. That one had shown up, strutted past the camp’s security, found her out specifically, gave her a small package, and left without another word, without even having met with the officer in charge, was cause for no small amount of trepidation and concern. She looked around. The few of her comrades who had been eyeing her quickly averted their eyes and went back to their previous activities.

She tentatively grabbed it with a hoof and gently, so very gently, tore open the envelope. Inside was a sheet of parchment, a letter no less. It was a summons.

It also had a very familiar solar mark on the seal near the bottom.

“...Well, I guess this means I’m off of latrine duty.”

Author's Note

Bit of a twofer for you guys today. Here's the link to a little tidbit about the Witchtorch that Novgo managed to tease out of me. As well as some news.

Now, as for you people who dont feel like reading a blog about that, here's a question I've been asking my editors: If you, as you are now in life, where to be warped to any location so far in the world of Bad Mondays, where would it be? Assume for the sake of argument you know nothing about it before hand and don't know about Handy, basically where would be your start location?

Those who answer get a reply from me detailing the most likely way for them to die and how quick and/or slow it would be. Here's two from my editors.

Usurper - Chooses to start in the Ocean because of some foreknowledge his editor priviliges grants him. Most likely to immediately die drowning because he's basically starting off in the ocean completely unprepared. There IS a chance for him to not immediately die but I had to roll a die to decide it. That fucker be mad drowned yo.

JBL - The Crystal Empire, not out of foreknowledge like Usurper, he's just gambling on Cadence and Shining Armour to be a bit tad more down to Earth and reasonable in terms of powerful ponies, maximising his survival and acclimation. Most likely to die of hypothermia, but assuming he gets out of the cold and helped by ponies fast enough he could survive the initial dangers.

The only restrictions are you are not allowed to pick Ponyville nor Canterlot. Because then you'll die in a fire because I say so.

Chapter 46 - Away with the Faeries

It was colder than he remembered, though still hotter than hell in comparison to the wintry landscape of Equestria. Handy was not prepared to find out that the ponies’ weather control extended to straight up climate control. Exiting a cold snap in Equestria into the dusty, sun-kissed, dry, cracked ground of the Badlands was an awful shock to the body, especially on a train.

He stepped off the train onto the bleached wooden platform, much to the surprise of some of the frontier ponies. It was small comfort he was not wearing his armour, because between his patchwork robes and his hood, he was still sweating his bodyweight due to the heat.

“How you holding up there, mon ami?” Jacques asked smarmily, now sporting a beige hat he had won off of some foolish old donkey at cards on the way to this little slice of nowhere. Oh, and talking donkeys were a thing now. Handy felt just peachy knowing that even more of his reality kept getting fucked over. If he found talking cats, he swore that he’d just kill them. It was bad enough he had had to slake his thirst on some poor bastard’s unfortunate pet cat before they left Brightshowers. The scratches on his face healed, true, but it was still amongst the foulest blood he had ever tasted, and there wasn’t near enough for his weekly needs, but at least it had taken the edge off.

“As well as can be hoped,” Handy muttered. “I’m done with the old man routine; too hot for the extra bother.”

“It’s not that warm. It’s winter, remember?” Jacques remarked as the pair walked down the steps, avoiding the main terminal building of the train station. The ponies they passed only gave the slightest of passing stares to the strange minotaur and his cavalier pony companion before going about their business.

“It’s warm for me,” Handy retorted. “You still could’ve warned me about the train transition.”

“You never asked. I thought you’d know.”

“Last time I was here it was summer. Everywhere was warm. I never went from freezing cold to open air oven so suddenly before. I thought I was catching ill.”

“Oh stallion up, it’s a learning experience.”

“So is my boot up your arse.”

“Tsk, you are testy this morning.”

“I have every reason to be.” Handy’s mood didn’t improve as they made their way over to a sundry goods store. It was a little trade depot at the very end of the Equestrian rail track, five miles from the officially recognised borders of Equestria and over the edge into the Badlands.

Most kingdoms had claims on the Badlands—the ones that bordered them at least—Concordia and Equestria being the biggest stakeholders. As a result, almost all of these realms had settlers and settlements loyal to them just beyond their borders, but not much farther than that, as well as various freeholds. There was nothing in the Badlands worth fighting over: no arable land worth a damn, hardly any large bodies of water, no rivers, nothing mineable beyond the few measly deposits found close to borders. What was extracted from the earth was usually brought from settlements to little depots like this to get goods and luxuries from the more prosperous and happy lands beyond the borders.

Hence why Handy and Jacques were there now.

“Bonjour!” Jacques chirped happily, accompanied by a little bell that rang as they entered the store.

“No solicitors!” a gruff voice answered from behind the counter. Handy could vaguely make out a bald—well, bald for a pony—brown head behind the broadsheet newspaper the storekeeper was browsing.

“Oh no, mon ami, I am not selling anything.” Jacques took off his hat and placed it on the counter before he wiped his brow. Handy turned and looked around the shop, leaning on his staff more than he’d like. It was exhausting in the heat at the best of times, but swaddled as he was and having to maintain ridiculous balance on false hooves, his energy wavered constantly. “Rather, I want to buy.”

The storekeeper lowered the paper, squinted at Jacques’ beaming expression, and snorted, shuffling the newspaper and disappearing behind it again. “I don’t speak fancy, no troubadours.”

“Oh no, are you sure you’d want to turn away our custom? We have come a long way. Surely you can accept even a troubadour's gold?” Handy turned and cocked his head. Jacques’ demeanour hadn’t changed and he was still plying the charm, but he had felt a wild spike in the swordspony’s emotions. The little roiling sphere of emotion kept bubbling away under his skin.

“Yep, I’m sure. Scram!” Jacques’ smile strained slightly as he gently placed his hoof on the counter.

“We are only looking for some water canisters and other travel goods. Perh—”

“Get out before I call for the guards! Out with you!” he shouted. Jacques’ jaw set hard, and he opened his mouth to speak—

“Perhaps you’ll be more willing to deal with me?” Handy asked, stepping to Jacques’ side, planting his staff lightly into the ground next to the swordspony, who seemed like he was about to react very badly to the storekeeper’s rudeness. The storekeeper looked up at the cloaked minotaur, and his mouth twisted.

“I don’t sell to freaks, not two hooves or two hooved freaks. Get out.” Handy had to admit, this shopkeeper had balls as big as Scotland to say that to a minotaur. Either that or he was as ignorant as a Swede in a salt desert. Not being a minotaur, he didn’t take offence, but he did not care for this guy’s attitude. He clasped the top of his staff in two hands and leaned on it.

“We’ll only take a few minutes of your time.” Handy tapped his staff and mulled things over. Jacques looked at him sceptically, wondering what he was up to.

“Are you deaf, horn head? I said get out!”

“At least look me in the eyes when you insult me and my friend,” Handy replied calmly, but forcibly. The pony put down the newspaper, the high back stool he was sitting on creaking beneath him. He looked up sternly into the minotaur’s hidden face, his eyes barely more than a glint in the shadow.

“Fine, I’ll say it to your face! Get. The Tartarus. Ou—!”

“Five canteens of water, a barrel, two bags of flour, some rope, dried goods,” Handy interrupted. “Promptly please.”

“I beg your pardon!?”

“Three canteens first if you would.”

“Why on Earth would I serve you!?”

“Because we are paying. Can you get us a couple of canteens please?”

“Oh fine, if it’ll get you out of here!” The pony reached below the counter and produced two metal canteens on the counter. “There!”

“How much?”

“Fifteen bits. Each.”

“Que!?” Jacques exclaimed. “That’s ridiculous!”

“Take it or leave it.”

“Ten bits,” Handy said. The shopkeeper glared at him. “I’m sure we can come to an agreement.”

“Thirteen bits,” the pony said after a moment’s hesitation. “No lower.”

“Eleven.”

“Twelve and no lower!” he exclaimed, slamming a hoof down.

“Alright, alright, no need to get angry. Oh, and could you give us just a couple more? Please?” he asked, never breaking eye contact, his voice curiously level. Jacques looked between them again.

“Oh, fine! There, that’s four canteens!”

“How much did you say they were again? Ten bits?” Handy asked, keeping the storekeeper’s gaze as much as possible, ensuring he looked back up at him each time he turned away to fetch things.

“Yes that’s right, ten and no lower!”

“Ridiculous. I’ll pay seven bits per canteen.”

“Nine!”

“Eight. We’ll pay eight per canteen.”

“Fine fine, just give me the money a-and get out!” the storekeeper shouted, shaking his head, brow furrowed. He looked down at his counter as if confused.

“A pleasure, glad we could come to an arrangement. Oh, hmm, we might need just one more. How much did you say they were? Five bits?”

--=--

Jacques was a cautious pony, and a cautious pony did not take potential threats lightly.

Handy was now a threat in his eyes. Well, more so than usual.

He had watched the exchange between the human and the shopkeeper intently, disbelieving of what he was seeing. Handy did… something to that stallion. He wouldn't stop staring at him, did everything he could to maintain eye contact with him, and then proceeded to fleece him blind, somehow convincing the guy to part with his goods at ridiculously low prices. Well, low in comparison to the absurd prices he was trying to charge.

They had witnesses too, regular patrons who had come into the store expecting to fight for every bit in trade. Thankfully, from what he could tell, none of them suspected anything more than the possibility that the shopkeeper had gone mad. The poor stallion had seemed so confused when they were done.

They walked together in silence after that, their bounty trundling along behind them on a bleached wooden cart whose wheels were fashioned from barrel lids. The dried, cracked ground was covered in a layer of billowing dust that kicked up by a sudden gust of wind, the sun beating down on them relentlessly.

"So," Jacques began, breaking the silence between the two, his voice conversational but level, "what exactly happened back there?"

"I haggled," Handy replied simply after a moment's pause.

"No, seriously, what happened?" Jacques pressed. His tone brooked no argument on the matter. Handy looked down at him. Jacques, for his part, had his hat lowered just enough to hide his eyes from Handy's own, focusing on the human's veiled lower face.

"…Ask Thorax next chance you get," Handy replied, looking back to face where he was going. "She can explain it to you better than I could."

"Are you saying she… taught you that?"

"...After a fashion."

They walked on in silence, heading to the local watering hole for some shade. Handy in particular did not seem to be handling the heat well. The saloon was a humble, run-down affair with a hole in at least one of the thin wooden walls, but it was shelter from the sun, and the water they served was clean and wonderfully cool.

"I'll never understand how you furballs can stand that heat…"

"Hmhm, the weather not to your sensibilities?" Jacques asked, horn lit and pouring himself another glass of water from the decanter, still not looking the human directly in the eyes and not forgetting the change of topic for what it was.

"Milesia is not known for its pleasant weather," Handy remarked quietly. Strange, he didn't seem to check to see if anypony was in earshot before saying that. Jacques did a quick look around. Sure enough, nopony was nearby, but it was unlike him to be so careless.

They sat in silence, enjoying the coolness and their water as the few patrons came and went, with only the saloon owner behind the counter to concern them. Jacques spent the time considering his options and wondering if it really was wise of him to gamble on the human's good graces to keep him out of the Viceroy's hooves. Changelings were one thing; he had experience fighting off changeling hypnosis. It was why he was never afraid of Thorax pulling that on him. Even if she did, he could fight it off. The human however… there was no warning, no sign, none of the tell-tale indicators anything was happening. Tartarus, even the victim seemed normal, as if he were doing everything under his own impulse, but there was clearly something very wrong. Jacques was in no mood to risk the same fate befalling him.

"Something bothering you?"

"Hm?"

"You're never this quiet, at least not while staring at the table."

"My apologies, mon frère, I am just thinking," Jacques replied. After a moment, Handy sighed.

"If it bothers you that much, I don't like doing it," he said, shifting his weight on the too-small chair and leaning his staff against the table. "It's hot, I'm tired, my legs are cramping because of these damned 'boots', and we needed supplies. I was in no mood to tolerate his shit."

"Still…"

"You make kissy face with a changeling, Jacques. You are in no position to lecture me on bad decisions." Again it was said in a whisper, but Jacques' ears pricked and swivelled, looking about just in case somepony overheard.

"Can you keep that down?" he hissed. "Somepony could overhear!"

"No one's close enough to hear, trust me. But this gives me a good opportunity to talk to you about… something important." Handy joined his hands and leaned against the table. Shrouded in patchwork robes, face veiled, and black horns poking from the sides of his hood, Jacques realised he looked very much like one of those crooked old mystery stallions one would hear about in creepy old traveling stories, making diabolical, supernatural deals that always backfired horribly on the foolish mortal who entered into them. He kept that to himself. No doubt Handy would be tickled pink by the idea, and Jacques did not care to put up with such a façade that he'd no doubt adopt.

"And what would that be?" Jacques asked, lifting his hat a tad to let his face be seen, still not looking Handy in the eyes.

"We're about to go somewhere very, very dangerous."

"Is it Monday already?"

"Funny, now shut up and listen. I need you to answer me truthfully and maybe, just maybe, we'll all get out of this alive." Handy waited until he was sure Jacques was not going to make any more wisecracks. At the small, confident smile that spread across his face, Handy continued. "I don't think you know the full circumstances of what and why myself and Thorax are on our way to her little hole in the ground."

"I've been told some bits, but I've been fishing for the rest."

"Well, now you'll have my side of the story then. I've been here before. I am on the home stretch now, and I need to make sure nothing else goes wrong. If everything goes as I hope, then maybe, just maybe, we'll all get out of this alive, and then we can start talking about that debt I supposedly owe you."

"Which you do owe me."

"Details. But I need to ask you a very important question."

"Go on."

"How fond are you of Thorax's continued existence?"

--=--

Speaking of a certain changeling, she was busy forcibly pinning a pony to a mud brick wall, cracking the dried plaster that covered it.

"What’s going on!?" she demanded in a harsh whisper, teeth clenched. The poor stallion she had at her hooftips was clearly undernourished and could barely withstand her. Either he'd been paying a heavy 'tax', or he was such a failure that he had been unable to siphon off even enough residual emotion from the town around him to feed himself. "From here to Manehatten I can get nothing about what’s going on. What’s happening back in Lepidopolis!? Why doesn't anyling know!?"

"I don't—hrk—know! I don't know, alright!? Let me go!" the brown stallion pleaded. The pair stood in a dusty side street behind an alcohol and tobacconist's shop. The short wooden building provided just enough shade to cover the disguised Thorax, while allowing just enough sunlight to blind her poor pinned captive.

"Beetle shit you don't! I looked the other way when you wanted to go solo. Now you’re going to return the favour!”

“W-What makes you think—” He yelped when Thorax used her magic to press him harder against the wall. “Okay, okay! I’ll talk!”

“Good ling,” Thorax said levelly. She let up the pressure, allowing him get a few breaths of air before slightly increasing the pressure and urging him to speak.

“Right, right, okay, you know how lots of changelings have been going to Lepidopolis now that it's been found?”

“I am vaguely aware of The Great Return, yes,” Thorax deadpanned. There were few events in recent memory that were directly relevant to every single living changeling, but this was one of them.

“Yeah…” He took moment to gather his breath. “Anyway, other… other changelings have been coming for the past month. Not Chrysalis’—I didn’t recognise their shell colours or their true voices. I don’t know how they found out about me, but they’ve been extracting Fen’s price.”

“Fen’s price?” Thorax parroted questioningly.

“I can barely feed myself,” the stallion said bitterly, looking off to the side. “Nearly everything I get has to be given up. At first it was weekly, now it’s day by day. At first I thought you were another one of them.”

Thorax got a bad feeling almost immediately and let the changeling go. He fell to the dusty ground with an ‘oof!’ She studied her surroundings intensely, reaching out and trying to sense anything. No, no hidden signals of inexperienced field agents. Most of what she could sense was more than a dozen metres away in any direction, so the changeling she did need to worry about couldn’t be nearby. They still had some time before whoever these changelings were showed up to shake down little Quartz over here. She rounded on the recovering changeling who was busy picking himself off the ground and rubbing his chest.

“This is bad,” she muttered.

“Oh no, I thought my day would start off much worse than getting beaten by an old sidhe member.” Quartz spat onto the ground, and Thorax rolled her eyes.

“Oh, you’ll get over it; this is important. Look do you still have your hex?”

“What hex?”

“The hex. For emergency situations?” The stallion looked up at her confusedly.

“Y-Yes, but I don’t even know why I keep it. Not as if I am exactly welcomed back there.”

“Well times change, I need you to get it for me.”

“What? Why don’t you just fly back there yourself!? You aren‘t rogue from the colony!”

“Because the same lings that have been bleeding you dry are likely the same ones guarding the way into Lepidopolis. We need your hex now.”

“I can’t just give it to you, you know! It’s tuned to me!”

“That’s fine, we’ll just steal you too.”

“Wh-What?” Quartz stuttered. Thorax glanced around some more.

“My my, I do sense some arrogant ponies who just arrived in town. You don’t suppose they’re your usual ‘friends’ would you?” she asked casually. Quartz froze, wide-eyed, his head snapping in the general direction of the town’s western entrance.

“We might have, what, a couple minutes at most before they close in on you and take what pitiful energy you managed to get today?” she asked, poking him in his exposed ribs. “Tick tock, Mister Skin and Bones. You can either come back with us or try to make it through the night with an empty heart.”

Quartz gritted his teeth, his brow furrowed in heavy thought. He looked up at Thorax with something resembling betrayal and fear, though he kept his emotions level. Pity, he had been such a great infiltrator back in the day, but even the most skilled changelings struggled to survive outside a sidhe or a colony. The thought elicited concern over an idea she had been jealousy hiding away at the back of her thoughts. She crushed it and focused on the task at hand.

“Alright,” Quartz relented, “but we need to use it now.”

“Not yet, I need to bring the others along with us.”

“What? What others?” Quartz demanded. Thorax smiled.

“Just a couple of friends.”

--=--

“What the buck happened here!?” Thorax demanded. It had taken her a few hours to extract herself and Quartz from the Town of Dustfalls, having then following the train tracks at the distance and flying close to the ground from shade to shade. They finally reached the trade depot close to evening. Handy personally found it very weird to see Charity Bell as a pegasus rather than a unicorn.

“Nothing,” Handy murmured as he sat on an upturned half of a barrel. He had a canteen of fresh water pressed against his veiled face to ease the pain of his black eye. Jacques was similarly scuffed up, but lacking a black eye himself, he was in considerably better shape. He sat sullenly at the other half of the barrel, flipping cards over and over again in some solo game with an annoyed expression on his face. Thorax cocked an eyebrow, looking between him and Handy. “Just a minor disagreement.”

“Oui,” Jacques added at last, “just a disagreement.”

The pair was seated in the shade of a building at the edge of town when Thorax found them. The four of them stayed there in silence as Thorax tried to puzzle out what had occurred while she was gone.

“So who’s this guy?” Handy asked, with only a modicum of his usual irritability. “Another changeling?”

His question was asked so casually that Quartz was caught off guard. He froze up for all of a second and was about to bolt then and there before Thorax’s hoof on his shoulder brought him back to reality.

“Yes, actually, and he’s our way in.”

“What— Thorax, what is this?” Quartz asked desperately. He was trying not to stare at the minotaur but was finding it distinctly hard to ignore the void in reality where a living being should be. Thorax put on her best obliviously happy pony smile as she turned to Quartz.

“Don’t worry about it!” The face immediately dropped as she turned back to the humanotuar. “But seriously, he’s our way in.”

“Chere, why do we need him? Don’t you know the way to the city?” Jacques asked.

“Yeah, we’ve already got the supplies ready for the trip,” Handy added dryly, shaking the canteen of water. “No trains into the Badlands interior I’m afraid. We’ve got a long ass trek ahead of us and more people just means more we have to ration supplies. I’d actually like to plan ahead for once so unless—”

“Oh forget all that, we’re not walking,” Thorax interrupted. Her wing lifted from her side, revealing a strange circular construction held within her feathers. It looked chitinous, not unlike the material Handy had encountered covering parts of Lepidopolis when he was last there. It had a green pulsating gem in its centre, with barely perceptible, scratchy runes along its edges that pulsed lightly in tandem with the gem. Handy had a vague sense of recognition, but he couldn’t quite place it.

“We’re not?” Jacques and Handy asked simultaneously.

“Nope, we got another way in, courtesy of Quartz over here.” Thorax gestured to her companion with her head. Quartz, for his part, looked slightly outraged at the use of his true name in front of these strangers. “Relax, Quartz. Like I said, these are friends.”

Quartz looked between the three of them. The swordspony eyed him levelly, and the Void, who could only ever be one person under that hood, stared at him blankly. He felt distinctly uneasy.

“I’m not so sure about this,” Quartz admitted.

“Do you want to starve?” He didn’t answer. “Anyway, Handy, you should be familiar with what this is.”

“Humour me,” Handy replied.

“It’s what I used to get you to Lepidopolis in the first place,” she clarified. No one said anything for a few moments, then Handy dropped his canteen. His empty hand held steady in the air for a moment before it started to shake and closed into a fist.

“You mean to tell me… this… entire time…”

“Uhm, am I missing something?” Jacques asked, looking to Thorax. She tossed the hex at him and he caught it clumsily in his hooves before holding it up to his face with magic.

“Portable evacuation ritual. Relatively powerful changeling magic. Chrysalis had her agents carry one at all times for the past few years for emergency transportation to a safe area. Until very recently, they were all tuned to take us to Lepidopolis. Toss them into any solid frame and it will create a… You know what? You’ll know when you step through it.”

“Why didn’t you have one on you this entire time?” Handy managed from where he held his head in his hands. Thorax put on her best clueless pony expression, complete with wide eyes and smile.

“Gee, I wonder. Maybe it’s because somepony told my queen that they were a really stupid idea, and she systematically began recalling and destroying all of them from her agents?” Her voice oozed sweetness and innocence. Handy looked up. Her pony face was unrelenting in its accusatory joyfulness, and he immediately realised the stupidity of it all. His head fell heavily back into his hands.

“You have got to be fu—”

“Anyway, Quartz here had managed to go solo before they were all recalled. This is his little hold out.” Immediately the three of them looked at Quartz pointedly.

“L-Look, I don’t want any trouble.”

“Too late,” Handy muttered. “Okay, fine, stupidity aside—”

“So wait, who told the queen these were a bad idea again?” Jacques asked before Handy snatched the hex out of his magical grip.

“Stupidity aside, I’m not going to complain about an easy way in, although I am going to have to demand to know what you plan on doing, Thorax.”

“What do you mean?” Handy glared at her, the memory of his first changeling encounter not bringing any happy nostalgia.

“Last time you dragged me through one of these things, I was surrounded by the friendliest of faces and got knocked clean out. So how are we going to counteract that?” In response, she gave Quartz a knowing look. The stallion fidgeted under her gaze.

“Wh-What?”

“Quartz, where exactly in Lepidopolis did you tune your Hex to?”

“W-Why do you ask?” He shifted nervously, wilting under the glare she gave him. “Okay okay, I uh… I have it set to this little storeroom me and a few others set up for a rainy day. Most of us went our separate ways after the crap that went down with that dragon…” His eyes lingered on Handy just a moment too long.

“Well?” Handy shifted, causing Quartz to flinch. “Get on with it. Is this location secure?”

“Yes, it is. Only me and three others know about it.”

“And who are these others?” Handy demanded.

“Ease up, mon ami.”

“Quiet, I’m not leaving it to chance. I want to know as much as possible about what’s going on before we get there.”

“Well in that case I got bad news for you,” Thorax grimaced. “From the sound of things, the queen doesn’t sound like she’s in charge anymore.”

“What?”

“Quartz here has been on the receiving end of some other changelings, and they don’t sound like our kind. The queen hasn’t been contacting us through the amulet for a while now, and I can’t seem to get any new information out of any of our contacts.”

“You mean all those times you were off doing changeling things?” Handy asked dryly.

“Precisely,” Thorax replied, gesturing with her upraised hoof. Handy tossed her the hex. “So it turns out things might be a little more… difficult than it was when you were last there.”

“Are you fucking kidding me!” Handy slammed his hand down. “All this time and trouble and she just— Is she even alive!?”

“We, uh, we’re not sure,” Thorax said, taken aback by Handy’s outburst.

“Oh well then, maybe I can take that as leave to just fuck off and… and… and... shit…” Handy petered off.

“What?” Jacques chimed in.

“Yeah, I think she’s still alive.” Handy sighed, looking off to the side and out into the vast expanse of the Badlands beyond.

“How can you tell?” Quartz asked.

“Geas, if you must know. She’s either alive or the geas still holds true if she’s dead, I don’t know. It means I still need to get to the city either way. God damn it.”

“I’m… confused,” Quartz admitted. Jacques gave him a reassuring pat on the back.

“Don’t worry, once the screaming starts, everypony will be confused!” He laughed. Quartz was not reassured.

“Okay, so what do we know about Lepidopolis? I want to actually plan ahead for once.”

“Well, assuming we get there relatively safely,” Thorax began, giving Quartz a sideways glance, “the city is swarming. There were still more and more independent sidhes and colonies arriving when I finally left on my mission. We likely won’t be able to move without tripping over changelings.”

“Oh goody, more of you.” Handy sighed. “What else?”

“If Chrysalis is no longer in control and can’t even contact us, then the situation might be volatile, but I have seen no signs of an exodus. Whatever has happened, happened without too much of a fight.”

“Meaning?”

“Tensions are likely high,” Thorax concluded. Handy grumbled.

“So, Chrysalis may or may not be dead, and the city we’re sneaking into is sounding more and more like wandering into a hornet’s nest currently being fought over by different groups of hornets. Great, just great. Any more good news!?”

“We have no means of defence beyond my magic, my sword, your hammer, and Thorax’s pretty face?” Jacques smirked as Handy glared at him.

“We’re looking at this wrong. We still have options.”

“How?” Handy asked. She tapped her hoof on the ground in thought.

“Your glamour. You can use it now, right?”

“Barely. I could just about manage it on demand for all of a minute back in Brightshowers. I’m still not sure how it works.”

“Glamour?” Jacques asked. Handy waved his question away.

“Anyway, you can’t be serious. Changelings can’t feed off of me. Even assuming I could get it to work, they’d pick me out of the crowd easily.”

“No, they really wouldn’t,” Thorax simply said, sitting down, hoof on chin in thought. “If you could hold it up for just five minutes at a time, long enough to get from one spot to another, noling would pick you out of a crowded street full of changelings.”

“Oh, this is rich,” Handy sneered. “Okay, Thorax, by what magical means would changelings not notice the one changeling out of hundreds on a street who doesn’t have delicious emotions to feed off of?”

“Look, it’d take too long to explain. Just trust me on this one.” Thorax held up a hoof as Handy raised an eyebrow.

“While this is all very nice, I believe you still have a problem to sort out before we go anywhere.” Jacques gestured to one of the bags. Handy looked over his shoulder at the pile of goods they had spent that morning gathering for a long trek across the Badlands that now seemed entirely superfluous.

“What problem? I imagine we could just sell it back or something—” Handy stopped at the look Jacques was giving him. “Or… just leave it here. You know, whatever.”

“Not what I mean. Mon ami, Quartz was it? This, how you say, hex of yours? It is magic, no?”

“Well, of course it is. Why wouldn’t it be?”

“And, hypothetically, should something go through said portal that was, say resistant to all kinds of magic… how would that affect the portal?”

“Well I uh,” Quartz quickly glanced to Thorax a few times before continuing, “I’m no mage, so I couldn’t really guess the specific mechanics of it, but uh, I’d think it might destabilise the portal.”

“And what would happen to us while going through it if that happened?”

“...Bad things,” Quartz confirmed. Jacques turned back to Handy with a grimace. Handy just sat there disbelievingly for a moment as he digested that bit of news. He looked back at the various gear they had, back at Quartz, down at the Hex, back at the bags.

“Are… Are you sure simply walking there is out of the question?” Handy asked softly, his brain slowly coming to terms with an idea that he simply did not want to entertain.

“Positive. Why?” Thorax asked, tilting her head questioningly.

“I just... I can’t… I mean I need…” He looked back at the bag containing his armour and the very real prospect he would have to leave it behind. “FFFFFFuuuuuck….”

“Ohhhh, right, hmm. Yes, that is problematic,” Thorax said, rubbing her chin in thought. “Would’ve been useful too. Can’t we just bury it or something?”

“And what are the chances somepony won’t come along and dig it up before Handy gets back to it?” Jacques questioned.

“What other options does he have? Pay somepony here to hold onto the very obvious armour of the very obvious human who is known for wearing said armour?” Thorax retorted. “The guards would be called within a day and he’d never get it back.”

In fairness to them, the pair was trying to think up a solution to this sudden conundrum, but Handy had tuned them out. The very idea of having to willingly part with his armour was… strangely frightening for him. Sure, it chafed and pinched and cut away here or there—it was never fitted properly to begin with—but that damn thing had saved his life on more than one occasion, vampirism be damned.

It was more than the physical comfort it gave him; it allowed him a sense of invulnerability against magic, a great and admittedly terrifying unknown. One unknown amongst many. It seemed childish in retrospect, but looking back, he had effectively been using it as a security blanket. The world was strange and confusing, but it was okay, for he was surrounded by a metal shell. He was strange and confusing, but that was okay, for he was contained within a metal shell. He had come to associate an unhealthy sense of comfort and security in that suit of armour that went above and beyond battlefield paranoia, and now that the very idea that he had to part with it…

“…Handy?”

“Huh?” He blinked and turned back to face Jacques.

“You alright? You weren’t answering me there for a bit,” he asked with a look of mild concern.

“Fine, fine, just… considering my options,” he said irritably, his knee bouncing in irritation. “You?”

“Me?” Thorax blinked.

“Are you one hundred percent certain about the fate of Chrysalis?” he asked curtly.

“Well no, of course not, I was just speculating—”

“Not good enough. I don’t want to be in that filthy hole in the ground for any longer than I have to.”

“Hey!”

“Shut up. I was done with this nonsense months ago. If I have to leave my armour behind, fine, so be it. Let’s get this over with.” He rose unsteadily to his feet. “And help me out of these blasted leg clamps! This disguise isn’t going to be doing me any good down there whatsoever anyway.”

Jacques rolled his eyes as his horn lit up to help Handy out of his current predicament. As he did so, Handy kept telling himself if worse came to worse, so long as he made it out, he could always find his armour again with the witch torch. Or hell, just commission new armour. Heat Source lived close to the north of the Badlands, right? He’d be heading that way on the way back to Griffonia anyway. You know, assuming Chrissy dearest let him get out of there alive. Maybe he could get her to make something that didn’t rip and tear so easily to boot. He could get anyone to take their time to make him some new armour true, but hey, why settle for anything else when you have the slim possibility the first blacksmith you ran into is able to successfully replicate the whole magical resistance angle?

Still, even if he did have other options, the temptation to just stick the armour on and lug it overland in the vague direction of Lepidopolis was still strong. Sure, getting across that blasted hellscape was hard, but how hard could it be really if he had proper guidance and he prepared beforehand?

--=--

Very. Hard.

Crimson found herself panting heavily by the time they reached a crest in the dry cracked earth. The dust of the desert billowed in the wind, forming tiny dust devils along the plains as the sun beat down upon them. Her cloak was scant comfort amidst the dry desert heat. Winter though it was, and much cooler than last she was here, the mercilessness of the Badlands made itself well known. She levitated a canteen to her muzzle and drank greedily of its remnants. Her thoughts were jumbled and frazzled from the heat of the day and weariness from the trek.

Her two companions were not doing too much better. Still retaining their pony disguises, Glimmer and Façade had come to rely very heavily on Crimson for their protection from the elements during the nights and days when the occasional dust storm or flash flood caught them unawares. At one moment, they had had to dig the ground out from underneath a rock outcropping to use both as a wind shield and to ward away the ferocious denizens of the desert. More than once she had forgotten to take precautions and set her wards up before sleeping, but her companions still hadn’t acted against her. How fortunate for them.

A few times, when she had expended a spell to detect a pocket of fresh water beneath them, she had called upon the raw force of her old magic to draw it up. They had prepared well, but nopony complained about more fresh water. It was only when the illusions began that they started to have trouble. Illusions of a road or town in the distance, the sound of trickling water from just over the next rise, shouts for help inexplicably heard coming from behind dangerous looking rocks. That was when her 'friends' proved to be useful. More than once she had been warned off from paying attention to the false visions, guided this way or that when they encountered a specific illusion. Sometimes she had been stopped in her tracks, forcibly by the pair of changelings, and when she snapped at them, they had revealed how she had almost walked head first into a dark chasm to fall her death.

She had not even noticed the illusion before it was dispelled. That was some serious magic, and she could not even detect the slightest aetheric whiff of the spell that created it. Once she had even seen a tall, monolithic structure in the distance, appearing massive and made out of some strange kind of rock she had not seen thus far in the Badlands. She asked her companions if it was another illusion, to which she was informed it was not. It was in fact a ruin, one she was told she shouldn’t speak of as close as they were, and that they should continue on before the ruin noticed them in the distance. She still wasn't sure what they meant by that but had followed their advice as they hurried along, keen to put the vision out of sight.

But for all their aid, the trek was still arduous. They had crossed the border from Equestria three weeks ago, and all of that time had been spent just simply getting to here. Wherever here was. She looked up, and sure enough, there was nothing before her but more empty expanse of blasted landscape and dry, cracked ground with the occasional scrub brush here or there. Her ear flicked under her hood, picking up just over the sound of her panting breath. She glanced down to see a small scorpion meander its way across the ground towards her hoof. She lifted her forehoof and crushed it without a second thought.

"Where are we now?" she asked testily. She had not exactly warmed to her former captors, but she had somewhat begun to tolerate them more. They had been become considerably less annoying since they started their journey into the interior of the Badlands. Probably because, much like herself, an arduous trek through dry blasted wilderness did little for one's tolerance for frivolity.

"I don't understand…" Façade began, looking to and fro, fluffing his pegasus wings in agitation. "We should be here."

"Did we double back again? I swear, if we ran into another new illusion…" Glimmer cursed.

"Who even set up these new traps? We already lost several days’ travel because of that last turn you suggested."

"Hey! I'm not the one who nearly ran us headlong into a nest of rock crabs!"

"Oh, but you were the one who nearly dropped our canteens down an illusionary well!"

"The well fooled all of us and you know it!"

"Enough!" Crimson shouted. "Will the two of you stop it. You can kill each other when we're done for all I care." She turned back around so she could continue glaring at nothing. Glimmer and Façade looked at each other for a moment, their mutual annoyance getting to them both. Add to that fact that both changelings were very hungry, and they were more than a little testy in their own right. They had prepared for the trip beforehoof. Sure, Crimson had little problem with letting them go off to gorge for the long trip. Ordinarily they'd fly most of the way, but given that they had to guide a pony who couldn't fly, they remained grounded.

Three weeks was a long time to go without feeding on emotion, even if you started with a full tank, and physical food by its lonesome was not enough to keep a healthy changeling alive.

But that wasn't Crimson's problem now, was it?

No, her problem was finding her master, and the nag who had dared to falsely imprison her just to get at him. That left her with the empty expanse she was looking at.

No.

It wasn't empty, was it? Her horn glowed, at first the healthy red of her own, personal magic. The power rippled along her skin, coursing through her nerves until it reached the cluster at the base of her horn, gathering and concentrating there in a millisecond before encompassing the bony protrusion itself. She pierced the open expanse before her, probing it with her magic, trying to uncover—

Something large and black appeared in the air before her, a mere second before it collided with her jaw, jerking her head violently and sending her flying backwards with the force of impact. She landed on the ground painfully, skidding to a halt between Glimmer and Façade. The two changelings reacted with alarm, Façade taking to the air and Glimmer's horn lighting up. More black forms emerged from the very air itself around them, some sneering, others grinning. Most bore expressionless masks.

"So, some of Chrysalis' lost little ones come back home to roost, and what’s this? A little gift for your fallen queen?" one of the bigger changelings piped up. He bore armour on his forelegs, with little else to distinguish him other than an orange shell worn on his back, under his wings. His eye covers were of a similar colour, denoting him as originating from one of the western colonies by ethnicity. "You can drop the disguises. We know what you are."

The pair slowly dropped their disguises, the gentle wing flaps of Façade turning into the noisy buzz of his changeling wings.

Glimmer's horn remained aglow with a spell. "What is the meaning of this?" she demanded. "Let us through! We have as much right to the city as anyling!"

"Oh I don't think you do, sweet stuff," the changeling said as he strode confidently up to the still prone form of Crimson on the ground. "I don't know how long you've been away, but times have changed since your pitiful wretch of a leader claimed the crown for herself… again."

"Watch your tongue, vermin," Façade hissed through clenched teeth, fangs bared. The changeling sneered.

"I'd take your own advice if I were you, small thing. In case you didn't notice, you're outnumbered, and your kind is hardly welcome in Lepidopolis anymore. As for this," he kicked the unresponsive Crimson once, "we'll be taking this. My sidhe could use a restock." He received a hiss from another few of the orange-shelled changelings, and he snarled at them, his ears flicking to and fro. "Fine, I'll share."

"No!" Glimmer said, taking a few steps forward before she was dragged back and pulled to the ground with magic by a few of the other changelings. "You can't!"

"I can do whatever I want, low breed scum!"

"You don't understand! She's not food!" Façade tried to explain before being grappled by two other changelings.

"Oh, and what else could she be? This pony's not good for much else…" he said, a wicked smile creeping along his face as he leaned down to roughly where Crimson's ear would be beneath the hood. "Or are you? I know you're awake down there; I didn't hit you that hard. I can hear your praying under your breath."

"She's not praying…" Glimmer murmured fearfully. Façade looked alarmed and tried backing away, stopped only by the changelings weighing him down.

"What?" the lead changeling asked, before leaning down, listening intently. He could just barely make out the sounds coming from the mare's mouth.

"…vasicum os fekir, helum iud ilukuime!"

Crimson's eyes shot open, their surfaces blank apart from the sickly white-green glow as mist flowed from her sockets. Her mouth opened wide in a soundless chant as her body levitated inches off the ground. The cracks in the dried ground beneath her lit up, expanding from where she lay as eldritch tendrils of energy struck out beneath the earth until they came to rest underneath each of the changelings. The ground exploded outwards, claws of hardened earth erupted around each of the screaming changelings before closing in around them, trapping them in their deathly grip, closing, crushing in on them, and pulling them back into the crater of earth from which they emerged.

The changelings that had gripped Glimmer and Façade were torn away from their victims by the remorseless claws of earth; the ones who were quick and took to the air were snatched from the sky as ropes made from earth leapt up with preternatural speed and wrested them from the safety of the skies. Each and every one of them was pulled slowly, deliberately into the ground until they were submerged, their last sights and sounds being that of their comrades being pulled to their deaths in the same manner as themselves. The changeling at the forefront was the last to be consumed, pulled until only his face remained above the ground. He could barely get the air out of his lungs to scream. He looked up to see the floating form of Crimson Shade before him. Her form was enshrouded in a black cloak that rippled from the energies flowing around her body, her head haloed by the sun which should have casted her face in shade, but oh, oh no, for there was a much more hideous a sight to see instead of a black, anonymous silhouette.

Her face was aglow, her eyes alight with eldritch flame as if burning from within, her open mouth moving in accordance with unspoken obscenities, and from each orifice on her face, more of the ghastly, smoky substance dripped forth, heavier than air, falling to the ground before dissipating and disappearing from sight. She leaned down to him, and with a soft voice that did not come from her still moving mouth, but rather from everywhere at once, she spoke.

"No, I'm not good for much. My old mistress would agree with you." She paused for a moment, delaying the changeling's death by mere seconds so he could hear her. "Except this."

She allowed him to be swallowed by the earth, just like the dozen or so other dark splotches of disturbed earth surrounding them, where trapped and terrified changelings lay buried alive. She allowed herself to drift slowly to the earth until her hooves touched the ground, and then she raised her right forehoof slightly before stomping it to the ground and twisting her hoof into the earth in one short, powerful movement.

There was a resounding sound of over a dozen sickening, muffled crunches and sudden movements in each of the disturbed earth patches. All went silent in the Badlands. Only the soft wind rolling over the desert refused to hold the silence. Glitter and Façade were left lying where they were, stunned and terrified, eyes forward, staring at the back of the black-clad unicorn as the breeze tugged at her cloak. They both jumped when she suddenly looked back at them with a neutral expression.

"Well, it looks like Façade was right after all. We're here," she said evenly, turning back and walking towards the vast expanse as if nothing had happened. "Come on, I still need your help if I'm to find your queen. Sounds like she's not in the best of positions. How unfortunate."

She didn't stop to see if they followed her or not—the charms would let her know their distance. Crimson was more concerned about simply descending into the darkness below her. As she advanced, the illusory landscape before her rippled and warped, like a still body of water vibrating rapidly as the ground beneath it shook before finally letting her pass, the magic washing over her form like a sheet of rain as she passed through and saw the rock formation revealed before her. It was an arch of red rock three times the height of a pony, its opening like the maw of some great desert beast half buried in the ground. She paused there to take in the sight before inhaling deeply. Her knees nearly buckled from under her, and she grunted as she stopped herself from keeling over then and there. Her horn lit up as she lifted out her spell book from her saddle pack, flipped it to the page she knew the spell was on, and recited it to memory once more.

That had been a hard one on her, especially in her current condition, but it was safe. She was prepared, and nothing would be lost. Briefly in thought, after she was reassured she had relearned the magic used, she flipped the book to another page and lifted out the loose sheet of notes she had made from studying the slim book her master had retrieved from the dead prince's room so long ago now. That spell could come in useful down there. She only hoped she was right in her musings. The Mistress had forbidden any independent study and research in the magic that was not overseen and directed by her for her own benefit.

Well, the Mistress wasn't here now, was she?

She studied the sheet some more before putting it away and marching forward into the darkness. A short while later, two other living things followed after her.

And Crimson smiled.

--=--

Lepidopolis was teeming with life. The sheer noise alone was palpable, but above all, the first thing Handy noticed as he exited the portal was the most shocking.

He could feel them.

Hundreds of them, thousands of them overwhelming his auspex all at once and causing him to stumble and fall to his knees, hands clutching his head as he tried to deal with the pain of the sudden rush and demand on his mind. He forced himself to discount more and more, to withdraw the range of his senses until he could only feel the people in his immediate vicinity.

That had been unexpected, both because Handy had not accounted for the sudden sensation of feeling an entire city full of living beings instead of the few dozen that had occupied the trading post where they had just been and, as he later realised, he did not expect that thousands of changelings, left to their own devices amidst other changelings, would wear their emotions on their sleeves.

He knew that much about his auspex. It meant that he felt others, not saw them, but lacking the proper vocabulary, he was hardly in a position to speculate about the implications of a literal sixth sense, and God knew what else his vampirism meant he was capable of down the road, never mind explaining to Jacques his sudden stumble.

"Nothing… it’s nothing, just… I really, really hate teleportation. Of any kind," Handy explained as he tried to shake off the nauseous feeling the changeling portal had left him with. He had experienced at least five different kinds of instant teleportation now, if you include that space warping nonsense that went on in the Greenwoods and Lady Ashiah's ruins. Changeling emergency hex teleports which involved jumping through a portal of what appeared to be green fire, which did wonders for Handy's newfound pyrophobia as you might imagine, were his least favourites. Both because of bad memories, the fact that it looked like a vortex of green fucking fire, and because it left you with a dizzying, whirling sensation accompanied by a lovely feeling of burning.

He'd skip the memories of the forest fucking with his perception and, you know, fucking teleporting him, armour and all, across a damn chasm.

Last but not least, was following Whirlwind into those creepy ass ruins in search of the Greater Spirit of what-the-fuck. You know, it was not that the instant translocation from one place to another as soon as he crossed a threshold that got to him—it was the implication that at any point he'd cross over and had not realised he'd been transported. Imagine if you walked out your room one day and suddenly you were in Siberia. You'd be a little perturbed too. Oh, and while we're at it, let’s all imagine the many strange and exciting ways such translocations could have gone wrong. God only knew what other wonderful ways one could instantly go from one place to another.

"I swear to God I am done with teleportation, ugh." He pushed himself back to his feet as the last of them, Thorax, stumbled through the portal and got to her feet.

"Hmhmhm, mon ami, then how else would you prefer to get from place to place then?" Jacques teased as he poked about the various pots and boxes in the rather cramped and dark room they were in. Quartz hurried from place to place, horn aglow and disguise dropped as he checked various things, making sure everything was where he left it.

"I have an airship, I’ll have you know. I'll be using that from now on instead of being a slave to trains and magical knickknacks that knock me around the world like a cosmic ping pong," Handy muttered to himself as he found a place to slide down and Jacques found himself busy with Thorax. "No more of this carry on, furthering about on the ground, no more bullshit, just a straight shot, pew, from A to B and Hell take the hindmost, rasenfrasen…" Jacques raised a questioning eyebrow at Handy before turning back to Thorax.

"How are you holding up?"

"Just give me a second…" Thorax said, shaking her head as she took in a few breaths. "It’s been… a while since I used one of these." She steadied her breathing and allowed her eye covers to recede. "Well, if one good thing has come of all this," she said, blowing hair out of her face, "it’s unlikely most lings will even recognise me as military, what with all this mane hair."

"A comfort, I am sure," Jacques said, eyeing the other changeling in the room, his voice lowered, "and him?"

"Hmm," Thorax acknowledged thoughtfully, eyeing Quartz. The stallion was emaciated, even by changeling standards. She waved Jacques closer so they could talk a little out of the stallion's earshot. "Perhaps it’s best if you stay here with him."

"Me?"

"I can slip out there. Handy has… ways of getting by unnoticed. All you have is your ability to hide your emotions. It’s surprisingly like a changeling's," she said simply. Jacques didn't rise to the bait. "Quartz needs reassurance we're not going to abandon him here, and we need to ensure he doesn't rat us out for his own gain. You need to keep a watch on him so we can maintain a safe home base. Can you do that for me?"

Jacques' face was impassive for a moment before smiling gently.

"Stay here in the heart of a city full of delightful ponies all too ready to capture me and bleed my heart dry while keeping an eye on an untrustworthy rogue changeling we only just met, who's stuck down here with us and nothing but my wits and charm to keep me safe?" he asked in mock thoughtfulness. "Why, anything for you, mon chére."

"Flattering," Thorax said dryly, though she didn't stop him theatrically lifting her hoof to kiss it, "but I mean it. I can't hide you that easily, and it’s either this or hide another body."

"Well…"

"Jacques."

"Fine, alright, I'll keep him out of trouble," Jacques said as he gestured for her to follow just a bit further back into the storeroom. Handy glanced over to them for a moment before being distracted when Quartz let out a yelp and had a crate fall over him. "And if you cannot hide me, chére, how do you expect me to get out?"

"Well, I… I'll work on that," she said uneasily, looking away for a moment. Jacques’ smile dropped slightly. "Truth is, I was planning on having you stay behind, for practicality's sake. But things changed. If… If Chrysalis is out of power, I need someone down here I can… I can trust," she admitted, her eyes narrowing pointedly in the direction of Handy and Quartz. Jacques didn't follow her gaze, instead focusing very intently on not letting certain conflicting feelings any air to breathe. It wouldn't do.

"You can trust me to do the best I can," he said, nudging her. "Alright, I'll stay here and keep our new friend out of trouble, for his own sake of course. Are you sure you can keep Handy out of trouble?" he asked just loud enough to garner Handy's attention as they navigated their way through the storeroom back to them. The human had been busy trying to pull a crate off of the weakened Quartz who, as one might imagine, was simply delighted by the proximity of the Pale One, helping him or not.

"What's this now?" he asked, finally levering the heavy crate off of the hapless ling. "And what the hell have you stored away in these things?" Quartz didn't reply, just trying to scurry away to put some physical distance between him and Handy. He ran face-first into Jacques' chest, and the unicorn lifted the smaller stallion up by the scruff with his magic.

"Now now, mon ami, it’s rude to enquire as to another pony's possessions," Jacques said, sitting Quartz up and dusting down his wither, making the poor, harried changeling even more confused. "It has been decided that I will be staying here, holding down the fort if you will," Jacques gave Quartz a hard look, "and taking care that our friend here is not discovered by anyone unsavoury, of course."

"Wh-What?" Quartz mumbled.

"Well… I can't argue with the logic there," Handy admitted, quickly coming to the obvious conclusions that brought Jacques and Thorax to this decision themselves. He shifted in his makeshift robes that had been mightily uncomfortable in the heat of the Badlands above, but surprisingly comfortable in the caverns beneath it.

"Right," Thorax said definitively, looking around the room. It was the same dusty, smoothed rock walls from before the changelings had reclaimed Lepidopolis; unchanged, no sign of the chitinous covering she was used to from changeling settlements. Good. "Quartz, you said you and a few others used this storeroom as a private stash. I assume all this," she waved a hoof at the collection of crates and boxes filling up most of the space, "is yours? How likely are we to have one of them drop in on us right now?"

"I, uh, not very likely I should think. Most of them settled away from the Badlands. They shouldn't run into any trouble bad enough to force them to… take the emergency route home."

"And what quarter of the city is this in?"

"Western, near the slopes to the pit."

"Good. Handy?"

"Yes?" He turned towards her.

"Get ready, we're going out there."

"What? Now?" he jerked in faint surprise.

"Yes."

"Shouldn't we wait? You're the least likely to rouse any suspicion. Shouldn't you go out and get a feel for the city before we do anything like, say, drag me out there? What if you're wrong?" he argued

"Your glamour either works on multiple targets or it doesn't, and the longer I spend out in public, the greater the risk of recognition, so scouting is out of the question. It’s better to limit exposure altogether, and either you can hide yourself from everyone at once or none at all. So get to it."

"What?"

"Try it out."

"Here? Now?" the scepticism in his voice was palpable.

"If you can fool all of us at once, you can fool a street. The number of onlookers shouldn't matter by that point."

Handy looked around him: a curious Jacques who, thus far, still had no idea what they were talking about, and a random changeling. As much as she may have had a point that this was as good a control group as possible—one person who knew full well what he could do, a non-changeling who knew he could do weird shit but not the specifics, and a clueless bystander who was an expert in deceiving others visually—it all did nothing to ease his sudden sense of stage fright.

"I'm… not sure about this. I could barely get it to work on command before."

"I'm sorry, do you want to remain under a geas or not?"

"…Fine," Handy said, standing up with a sigh and looking down at his audience, his hammer clinking against his belt and side pack. Three points of light lit the room, two green and one golden, from the points of their horns. He grimaced as he focused on each pair of eyes, in turn closing his own to steady his nerves. This, if experience had taught him anything, was going to hurt like a bitch. He had an image in his mind, a rough one but it would have to do. He had a desire; he had to make himself want it. He could figure out the hows and whys of how his vampiric magic worked later. It wasn't just the intent, wasn't just the desire to be seen as what he wanted, but specifically that he didn't want to be seen. Something else had to take his place when others looked at him. Perhaps not wearing his armour would be a boon in hindsight, but there was only one way to tell. He opened his eyes.

"Okay, I want you all to close your eyes. That means you too, Quartz. Open your eyelids so I can see you closing your eyes." Quartz seemed to swallow a moment before retracting his eye covers, revealing bright blue eyes. He then closed them. "Right, when I say open them, don't laugh. I swear to God if you do…"

--=--

Two forms entered the darkness of the western quarter of Lepidopolis. It was a rundown area, even in the city’s heyday, when it was alive and bustling with life and its stonework was fresh and new. Low, squat structures in ordered rows and streets situated on a depression led down from the city into a hollow in the earth, the black expanse beneath them that was still as yet unexplored by any of the city’s new denizens. The streets were even more broken up than the rest of the city, broken flagstones giving way to gravel and churned rock.

Yet even here in the depths of the earth, in the heart of the blasted, sun-cursed landscape above their heads, life bloomed. Changelings took to the streets, sounds of industry and commerce ringing through the air. Smoke and smells wafted into the air, carried up by hidden currents and eddies of air that took the smog and pollution into ancient, hidden canals buried through the rock, away from the civilization below.

Changelings filled the streets going about their business like any other city would. Indeed, if one did not know any better, one would not think there was anything amiss.

Oh, but there was.

Thorax was the first to exit the back streets from their hidden location, emerging into the crowded street before her and looking up and down impassively. Changelings of every shell colour imaginable could be seen, obscured and confused by the various mane and tail colours of the civilians. Guards denoted by helmets of moulded onyx and iron stood out from their lessers by their brutish distinction, their wicked spears held ready as they eyed the bustling mob suspiciously.

This was not good. The colonies should not have mixed this readily. This many mixed sidhes should not be this comfortable together unless… Thorax shook her head and pushed on, spotting a good position ten metres down the way. This was the Commune's portion of the city, which meant they had some leeway in terms of being noticed. This many different changelings in this tightly packed an area was good initial cover, but it wouldn't do to risk standing out. She felt eyes upon her immediately when she left her side street. That was familiar, almost reassuring in changeling society. She just hoped her little tagalong coped.

Not long after she left her spot, another changeling emerged. It was lanky and wore a grey cloak apparently hewn from rags. Blue eye covers hid its pupils. It wore bandages over one foreleg but otherwise seemed nondescript. The ling took in a breath before walking out into the crowded street once it saw an opportunity to enter the flow.

Handy did not like his current position. Not one bit. Every nerve was on edge, every muscle tensed and ready to lash out. Still, he held firm; he held his nerve. He didn't dare reach out with his auspex to see how many eyes were upon him, to know exactly how many fucking changelings were surrounding him right this second. He could not afford the additional mental strain, no how much paranoia urged him to do it.

One changeling almost brushed into him, and he had to swerve his feet to avoid him. It was working. It was then he realised how stiff his movements were. Not good—someone might find that suspicious, as if he were a changeling in the wrong neck of the woods.

'Why isn't anyone stopping me?' he thought to himself as he passed by more and more changelings. More than a few eyed him as he passed: some dispassionate observers, others with the look of habitual suspicion in their uncovered eyes. Still, others covered their eyes and hissed at him as he passed, usually the changelings attending stalls that were selling… something. He didn't linger; they made it clear they didn't want any business from him. 'Can they not feel the lack of anything when they see me pass? What’s going on?'

His musings resulted in one changeling bumping into him. For one, terrifying moment, Handy's heart stopped.

"Watch where you're going, beggar!" the changeling hissed at him in its two-toned voice, swatting at the cloak he wore. Handy briefly thanked God for the foresight to include the cloak in his disguise. The changeling felt nothing untoward when it bumped into him. His disguise had held. "What!?"

Handy blinked and hurried on, realising he had been staring at the changeling in partial shock and not wanting to linger any further. Later he would realise the odd benefits of being disguised. You know how when you walked down the street, you automatically judged the appropriate amount of space you had to leave people in front of you so that you did not crowd them or bump into them? Well, when everyone saw you as a changeling, they did the same, leaving Handy with an inordinate amount of space in front and behind him, but very little for his sides. He'd think about that later because right now he was suffering under the mother of all migraines.

It had started off small, like a sudden piercing pain in the head, just above his left eye. But it had grown, each progression lancing into another part of his brain as he spent longer and longer projecting his glamour. His greatest trial was when he passed by a pair of changeling guards, one of whom was eating something that looked uncomfortably like a cooked rat in some kind of flat bread. The pair had been eyeing him since he had run into that other changeling, and continued to do so as he passed.

The pain in his head grew, and he could barely focus on the street in front of him. He saw where Thorax had exited the street from. He was almost there; he could not afford to pause now. He could not afford to risk what others might see if, say, he lifted his hand to rub his forehead. Would others see him merely lift a forehoof to do the same motion, or would the illusion do something altogether unexpected? Or would it break entirely? He did not know; he could not know. He had to go before anything happened. He saw one of the guards turn to murmur something to his companion, and Handy hurried his pace. His eyes were almost forced shut with the pain by the time he turned the corner and into the dark little corner of the world Thorax had led him.

Then he had the pleasure of being grabbed from somewhere and dragged into darkness.

"Did anything happen!?" he heard Thorax's familiar voice hiss. Handy whirled around to see the changeling stare up at his true face in the darkness, barely perceptible from the street lights and from the cave ceiling above. His disguise dropped from the shock of being grabbed. "Were you noticed!?"

"I… I ran into someone."

"You what!?" she quietly screeched.

"It’s… It’s okay, he didn't see me. He still saw what I wanted him to see… Thorax, how is it that none of them noticed that I'm, well, me?"

"…What?"

"Heartless… How come they couldn't tell I was Heartless? I should have been a blank spot in a wall of colour to them."

"Oh… did you not sense them?"

"No, I was a bit busy focusing on other things," Handy groused, gently rubbing his head. Since he had released the glamour his pain was receding, slowly.

"Well, take a moment and see for yourself," she said, gesturing to the street. Handy waited a moment, giving her a sceptical look before reaching out with his auspex and… okay, whoa.

"Why…” He paused as he grunted, the pain in his head spiking. “Why are they all hidden? Why is every single one of them holding back? Are changelings afraid of each other stealing their emotions?"

"I wish…" Thorax murmured as she rolled her eyes. "This is just common practice when two hostile sidhes have to live in close proximity with one another. It’s even worse when it’s rival colonies."

"Explain things as if I wasn't actually a changeling, if you please," Handy deadpanned.

"Okay, look, a sidhe is… Think of it as an extended family you can join or be made to join. Smallest they get is twenty changelings. Mothers, daughters, siblings, fathers, you get the idea."

"Be made to join?"

"Abup bup, short version, remember? A colony is a catch-all term for any collection of sidhes that governs itself and can take on a variety of forms. Chrysalis is my Queen for example."

"Okay…"

"Some colonies are more… radical than others. The Commune is one such, and we're both lucky and unlucky to have ended up in the section of the city claimed by them."

"How so?" Handy asked, withdrawing his auspex before it extended too far. There were easily a thousand or so changelings just in their vicinity. He felt like talking even quieter after that. He had also sensed, apart from nearly a thousand dimmed signatures from changelings hiding their emotions, thousands of absolutely tiny signatures that winked in and out of existence all over the place, and he would really rather not dwell on the implications of that.

"The Commune break sidhes up, treats itself as one large sidhe. No hierarchy, everyling is responsible for everyling else."

"And that explains the distrust how?"

"Because that means everyling is responsible for reporting on every other ling's discontent," Thorax said simply. "Makes you a little jumpy when there are no lings within your colony you can genuinely, for better or for worse, call your own. So everyling hides." She walked around him to peer around the corner, looking down the side street.

"That was the new normal for a while now. With all the colonies moving to settle in the reclaimed city, changelings from sidhes of one colony distrust another. I was banking on it being the case that most if not all lings would be hiding, at least until they got home behind their own walls. Here in the Commune, it’s the norm all the time, whether there are rival colonies nearby or not.”

“So when they saw me and didn’t sense anything?”

“You were a blank spot on a wall painted slate grey. Much less noticeable than you’d think. Now, if you were in the middle of the street on your own, it’d be a different story entirely.”

"Goody," Handy murmured, leaning up against the wall and resting his head against it. It was pretty dark where they were, a small back street, but it wouldn't hide them for long, especially not if Handy didn't adopt his glamour soon. He needed just a moment's rest. "Where are we going?"

"I'll let you know, I just need to… orientate myself," Thorax said, looking up, her mouth moving as if counting. "Okay, come on, I know a place we can find some answers."

"Give me a second."

"We need to move now!"

"Just a second!" Handy hissed as he waited for the splitting pain in his head to ease, just enough for him to concentrate again. The auspex did not help, so he focused his will to suppress that even harder. She looked back at him in agitation, her wings flicking once or twice as he took in a few more shallow breaths before pushing off from the wall. He looked down at her. "Anyone looking?"

She turned to look back down the alley to the main street, up into the sliver of open cavern above the street, and then back down the backstreet she planned on heading down. Noling was nearby.

"Everything's cl—" She blinked. It was still strange seeing a changeling where there had once been a human. It looked back at her impassively, its pale blue eye covers disguising whatever he had chosen for his disguises' eyes to look like. To see that obscured visage in the darkness of a backstreet would be unnerving in any situation, but to know the being behind that face was something much worse than a changeling, something that tasted of the void, was disturbing.

“What?” he asked, snapping her back to attention. She shook her head and looked down the backstreet.

"Come on, we have a bit of a way to go."

--=--

Jacques sat back with a sigh and affixed his hat. Quartz looked between him and the door the others had left through, and shifted uneasily.

"Oh, would you relax? We're going to be here for a while. There's no need to fret," Jacques gestured with a hoof. Quartz’s lip curled and he turned away, looking amidst his collection of boxes and supplies for something in particular. Jacques wasn't unduly concerned. A changeling in Quartz’s condition couldn't do much that Jacques couldn't handle and overcome even if he found a weapon.

The unicorn had been in far too many situations like that to not be confident of his abilities. Still, he kept the rapier on his belt angled and loose for an easy withdrawal. You never know.

"Would you like to play some cards to help pass the time?" he asked, idly scratching his grey beard, contemplating trimming it. Quartz ignored him, horn aglow until he let out a short gasp of victory, pulling a black urn from somewhere. The changeling hurriedly uncorked it and… seemed to breathe in the air trapped inside?

Jacques raised an eyebrow at this. The urn itself was nothing spectacular, although now that he scrutinized it, it seemed to have tiny cracks in a latticework all across its surface. A barely perceptible green glow, of the hue indicative of so much of changeling magic, pulsed through the cracks as Quartz breathed the air within. Each breath seemed to make him more relaxed, less… well, he should rather say more strong, more sure of himself. How very strange.

Quartz at last plugged the urn and put it back on the ground and slowly, with much more confidence and surety than before turned and walked over to where Jacques sat. Quartz’ unshorn blue mane cascaded wildly across his face.

The changeling looked at Jacques with its implacable, shielded eyes.

The unicorn calmly shuffled a deck of cards on top of an upturned box he placed between them, a friendly smile on his face, the hilt of his sword just resting inwardly across his left knee.

"I'm leaving," it said simply. "Thorax isn't here to protect you."

"That she isn't," Jacques said, his horn aglow as he rested his hooves on the box, the cards being dealt to both sides. The changeling did not notice the small sliver of magical aura gracing the underside of the round hoof-hilt of the pony's rapier, just out of sight from his angle.

"Then you know you couldn't stop me, even if you wanted to."

"Oh I wouldn't say that, mon ami," Jacques said, finishing dealing the two hooves of cards. He picked up the remaining deck in both hooves, knocked them against the box to set them straight, and placed them to the side. "Sit, play a game. Let us talk while we wait."

"Do not make this difficult on yourself," Quartz nearly snarled. "I am not staying in this city any longer than I have to. I only came along because the alternative was being made to starve."

"And you're not starving now?" Jacques asked. His face was one of mild curiosity, his hoof of cards held before him in his magic. Quartz smiled.

"I had a little pick-me-up. I'm more than capable of forcing my way out, pony. Let me go and maybe I won't let other changelings know you're hiding here." Jacques only smiled and looked down at his cards. It was a good hoof, all things considered.

"Well, we can't have that now, can we?" he said, his voice a low rumble. Quartz opened his mouth to say something before catching his words in his throat.

There was a flash of silver and the cold press of sharpened steel along the side of his neck, pressing down on his dermis, hard. A sudden movement, and it would tear his neck open. He froze and looked down in surprise. In the second it took for Quartz to decide to respond, Jacques’ hoof had reached to his sword, clipped into the hilt and withdrew the blade in a flash. His magic had opened thin clasps in the blade's sheath, which loosened the cover until its natural, seamless split was open, allowing the blade to be swung literally from the hip in an arc directly resting at Quartz' neck, without having to deal with the hassle of withdrawing the blade by hoof and then thrusting it forth. No need to give Quartz an extra second of reaction time, after all.

"Now, forgive me for being sloppy. I am a much better swordspony with my blade gripped in my magic," Jacques said, looking up at Quartz' shocked face, "but I felt like showing off. One must be proud of their abilities, no? I always did enjoy fighting with my hooves. Much more invigorating, wouldn't you agree?"

"I—" Quartz began but was silenced when Jacques pressed the sword harder, forcing him to move his hooves a bit.

"You are not going anywhere. You will be telling nopony we are here. You are going to sit down here with me, or else I'll be playing cards by myself with a decaying corpse in the room," Jacques said evenly, his smile dropping. "And that would be terrible."

And so it was that the changeling known as Quartz reluctantly sat down on his haunches across from Jacques and looked down at his cards.

"S-So, what… What are we playing?" he asked, and only then did Jacques smile and lift his sword away, resting the blade across his lap, his horn still lit, helping illuminate the dark room. It was all the better to suddenly grab the sword and put it to work if Quartz ever regained his bravery to attempt something. He briefly explained the rules before they set to playing a game, and another, and another after that, rarely talking. An altercation like that can sour the mood somewhat, you understand.

It was some time in the fourth hour that they heard a knock on the door.

--=--

Handy discovered why the changelings had no use for their own currency.

Months ago, he had found it odd that Chrysalis had let him get away with so much gold with nary a hiccup of complaint. One might brush it off as generosity or gratitude. However, even the most generous and thankful of monarchs wouldn't just allow someone who, not an hour beforehand, had threatened their life before saving it to make off like a bandit. Chrysalis was most certainly not characterised by either trait.

When he had been moving from street to street while disguised, slowly, so very agonizingly slowly, he had not noticed it. What he did notice was a very candid look at changeling society from the inside. They bought and traded, mostly tools, physical food, and furnishings, strange changeling creations he couldn't name that were made from that same strange material that now coated everything. Gone was the sepulchral beauty of the stark grey buildings built into the sides of mighty and impossibly ancient stalagmites, their squat, hard, and cunningly carved forms replaced by hard black formations. They were the same ones he remembered from his time in Chrysalis' palace when he had escaped his pod, and how starkly they had contrasted with the fine, ancient carved passageway that the secret switch had opened. It was like he was in some strange doppelganger of the city he had once seen emptied and stalked by an undead terror.

It had been a maze before, back when it was easy to tell the difference between rock and built stone at a distance. Now it was even worse. There were constant low light conditions, made worse by the darkened environs. The false starlight provided by the ephemeral beauty of the luminescent moss and plant life that covered the cavern ceilings was not enough anymore. What little light provided by the strange chitinous substance itself at times didn't help matters. The dominant colours of light was green, but some buildings emitted orange or blue and other soft colours from parts of the strange substance that covered everything. That only helped to cast everything that was partially illuminated by them into soft shadows. The only 'normal' lights could be seen from within buildings through windows that had been left open by whatever changelings were foolish enough to risk it.

The only things that were untouched, it seemed, were the literal hanging sepulchres hanging above them. The tremendous stark white artificial stalactites where, he now assumed, ancient changelings had entombed their dead still hung proudly above, and water still ran down their sides, made to cling to the buildings' sides before reaching a central point and flowing like a waterfall to pools down below.

Handy saw one stalactite sepulchre that missed the point at its base. Ah, memories.

It was while trying to take everything in while again following Thorax from point to point that he risked the strain on his already pained mind by reaching his auspex that he saw it. The prime reason was that he was curious about two changelings who were speaking in a language that definitely wasn't Equestrian. He picked out the two changelings, as both of them had shorn their emotional suppression, ensuring he could sense them clearly.

He also sensed the tiny, almost imperceptible ball of emotional energy floating between them. It grew bigger or smaller as the pair argued until finally it reached a certain size and went to the changeling managing the stall. In return, the buyer took what appeared to be a set of parchments and hard leather bindings in its magic and flew off.

The changelings didn't just siphon off emotion from people for food—their entire economic system was built around it. It was an invisible, intangible currency that could only really be manipulated, stored, and divided by changeling magic. A currency that was consumable, in constant demand, and constant need to be replaced, as necessary for getting up in the morning as it was to paying your taxes. He was only even aware of it because of his auspex. No wonder they didn't care about their own gold coinage.

Handy had been standing there running the ramifications of this revelation through his head before a commotion brought him back to reality. A squad of armed changelings were making their way down the street, and people were getting out of their way. Thorax was all but gesticulating wildly on the far side of the street, so Handy wisely decided to move along before anything untoward occurred.

Rests were short and fitful, and he was glad for every stop they made where he could hide behind something suitably tall in a dark place and give his glamour a rest. If he ever got out of here alive and without a geas, he was going to go straight back to the minotaur disguise, because Jesus was this a pain in the ass. Maybe one day, like his auspex, he'd grow used to it and have exercised the ability enough that the pain would be negligible. Today was not that day.

Thorax had brought them to a series of wide-open, deserted streets. Handy had found it odd, given the general sense of overcrowding he got nearly everywhere else. Getting across a street without worrying about a press of bodies was actually a pretty hair-raising experience at some points. He looked up. The streets seemed to have a ceiling in some parts, but it had been knocked down in others. The streets were lined with empty blocks on either side, open to the streets themselves. There was nothing in them: no squatting changelings, no possessions, nothing. He was about to question Thorax about it until she led him past one intersection that was partially flooded with water. He looked to his right and saw one possible reason changelings might not want to settle here.

For all the pressure and eroding power of the water crashing down on top of it from the broken sepulchre far above them, the bones had remained as strong and as imposing as ever. The leering, draconic skull twice the height of a man and more than that in its length faced him, its mouth snapped closed, its empty eye sockets staring into eternity as rivulets of water washed over and around the skull. The chunk of rock that had doomed the fell unlife of the dragon still jutted from the back of its ribcage, pinning it to the ground from whence it had broken the spells of protection guarding the infernal furnace that housed its soul, allowing the life-giving waters to douse the foul phylactery and end the dragon. There were still ancient blades and weapons sticking out of the sides of its back and ribcage, the remains of others who had tried to slay the beast that could not be felled by swords or spears. Those had not been removed, but the statue upon which he had ridden down to end its life was taken away to parts unknown.

He stood there for a time, gazing in wonder and terror, the memory flooding back to him, trying to think of what mad gambling thoughts had ran through his head to take his hammer to the support pillars and allow the plinth to drop with him on it. What madness had possessed him, compelled him, to take such a stupid risk, one that should have ended his life if there was any justice in the world. Everyone should have died that day. The way out had been set aflame, Chrysalis was about to have her life snuffed out, Handy apparently forgot about that little thing called self-preservation for some God forsaken reason, and the dragon had hundreds of little trespassers in its territory. They didn't die, the dragon did.

He was still standing there, contemplating the immensity of the act that had saved his life and won him his hammer and, in a way, ensured he would be here right now. Had he let Chrysalis die then and found another way out, this wouldn't even be something he had to deal with. He could not comprehend his past self's actions.

"So, you plan on being seen or what?" someone sighed beside him. For the third time in two hours, Handy had to be snapped back to reality. Man, he’d been scatter-brained lately.

"Sorry, I was just… distracted," he admitted.

"And you're naked."

"What!?" Handy looked down at his still very much clothed self, patchwork robes and all. "I'm… not? Oh, oh right!" Handy said, quickly reverting to his glamour. He was still human when Thorax looked, but was a changeling when she blinked. She still didn't understand how that worked, and she was the legitimate shape-changer of the two. She looked down to be eye level with the 'changeling' before her, then glanced over to what Handy had been staring at and saw the remains of the dragon.

"Did they not try to get rid of it?" Handy asked. She shook her head.

"Noling wants to touch it."

"Why?"

"Necromancy is bad luck," she just said. Handy gave her a confused look. "What?"

"Nothing… It's just last time I heard anything about necromancy, it turned out… You know what, never mind. So, is that why this part of the city is so deserted?"

"Yes." She looked around her, her wings buzzing in agitation, "It's why it's useful for a shortcut. Come on, I know a shopkeeper nearby who can help us."

Handy hesitated for a moment as she walked off, turning to look back at the leering, gigantic skull one final time and pondering the dark depths of its eye sockets. It bothered him, though he did not know why. He could not understand why he had done what he did.

He followed after Thorax, his splashing feet in the water at odds with the vision of the changeling walking through it. That an observant onlooker would be perturbed by this would not be an unfair assumption.

--=--

The heavy stone door, still held up by the ancient hinges, nonetheless scraped across the floor with the added weight the chitinous plates the changelings insisted on covering their architecture with. Thankfully, the dark interior had none of that nonsense.

"Go away, we're closed," a scratchy, two-toned voice coughed from the backroom. The pair of changelings entered the building regardless. Handy looked around. It seemed to be a store dedicated to selling pottery. Stacks and stacks of strange pots of varying sizes and shapes stood stacked in neat little pyramids or held in racks along the walls, all uniformly black and all also possessing the tiniest, infinitesimal latticework of random cracks only visible thanks to whatever magic was within them. Dull, pulsating reds and blues and greens and yellows hummed from within. Not enough to illuminate the darkness, but enough to reduce it merely to a ghostly, multi-hued gloom.

"We know you are." Thorax closed the door with her magic and whispered to Handy, "Touch. Nothing."

'I had no intention of breaking open the clearly magical jars, thanks,' Handy thought sarcastically, eyeing his surroundings warily. Thorax walked up to the counter and knocked on the stone surface. Handy noticed that the interior had none of the changeling augmentations the exterior of the building had. It was clean, tidy even, and well cared for. Hell, the stool behind the counter was made of wood and had a leather cover for sitting on. 'Strange, why do they change the outsides like that but keep the interior cosy?'

"I said get lost!" an elderly-seeming changeling hissed as it emerged from the back room with unsteady movements, grey beard with flecks of white, white swept back mane that seemed to be receding, and a cropped tail. His eyes were covered though. Handy had now long associated that with guardedness with lings. It was strange to see an old changeling. Hell, it was still strange to imagine they had eyes under those plate covers and that they could grow hair. Guess that was what happened when your earliest encounters were with military changelings.

"We won't take up much of your time I promise." Thorax remained calm despite his hostility.

"I am not open; get out before I call the guards." His voice was low, his wings buzzing dangerously. Thorax stared him down for a minute before responding.

"I am Thorax, trueborn of the sidhe of Swornfather Ithilid. I am on a mission from her Highness herself and have just returned from the wilds. I need your help." The old ling was quiet for a moment, his wings buzzing once or twice, before sighing. His covers slid back to reveal a pair of tired, lime green eyes.

"Hard times it is if I find common cause with an Ithilid of all changelings," he muttered. "Still, reality is what it is, and I'll put family rivalries aside for now. Follow me, not him."

"What?" Thorax looked as the old man pointed at Handy.

"Don't know who he is, and he smells weird. What sidhe are you?"

When Handy didn't answer, the old changeling looked to Thorax who was also silent for a time.

"He's an ally."

"Hmph, well then he's an ally who can stand out here then." He stomped his hoof firmly, his leg seeming to possess many more holes than younger changelings. His horn lit up and the door to the building was grasped in its aura. Handy heard heavy stone latches slide into place. "You stay put, stranger, and don't try anything."

Thorax just looked at Handy, and he in turn simply nodded back. The pair then disappeared into a back room. The door closed, lit up with magic, and was locked, and only then did Handy let go of the breath he was holding. His glamour dropped immediately, and he gripped the stone counter, leaning against it in a pained crouch as he cradled his head. The pain beat away at every side of his mind like jackhammers, and his vision was beginning to swim. But he kept his mouth shut, not vocalising the pain and grateful for the soothing darkness of the room. A bright light would only make a bad situation worse he intuited.

The pair took their time in the back room, talking about God only knew what as Handy assessed his situation.

'Okay, fuck the glamour. Jesus, is that rough. I need a lot more practice before I use that willy-nilly,' he told himself before realising he was beneath ground. In a locked room. Surrounded by danger. And no idea how to immediately rectify that situation. Again. 'If I keep this up, even dwarves would call bullshit.'

He took out his hammer and took hold of it, just in case. Without his armour, this was his most prized possession and his biggest comfort. Sadly, it had lost whatever magical charge it had gained in Manehatten—he had tested it on a tree a few days back. No satisfying Thorian hammer blow unfortunately. Whatever the witch did to it, he guessed it only retained magic it absorbed, and it absorbed magic that directly struck it. That was at least what he was guessing; he'd have to test it.

Preferably in a controlled environment and not in a fight. That could end badly. Either way, he could break plenty of peoples' faces with—

He dropped the hammer when his left arm spasmed, ignoring the pain in his foot where the hammer struck it as he grabbed his left arm and rode out the pain, trying desperately not to shout out in pain. That was a bad one this time. He held up his left arm gingerly, flexing his fingers experimentally. One more little thing he could do without right now. Looking around, he saw the changelings hadn't come out to investigate the noise. He reached out tentatively with his auspex. Yep, that was the pair of them in the back. No one else seemed to be in the building, and the nearest ling was some guy hiding his emotions in the next house over with another ling whose aura was pulsating wildly. Anger? Probably. Eh, whatever it was, that changeling probably had it coming.

Wait, hold up; there were two coming up the side of the building, one larger and the other smaller, neither hidden. He could hear them now. Was one of them… crying? Curiosity piqued, Handy readopted his glamour and navigated his way to the other side of the room, to a window covered by a thin slab of chiselled rock. It was hinged upwards, so he lifted it up to look out through the partially warped glass.

It was a changeling hovering just off the ground, its wings abuzz with the effort. It had red hair and similarly shaded eyes and was carrying a baby in its forelegs. She seemed to be speaking to it in hushed tones, trying to mollify it. It was surreal to watch. Out of curiosity, he risked the extra pain to sense what they were feeling. Sure enough, the mother changeling was trying to feed the little child, wrapped up in some kind of black weave substance, by giving it little chunks of emotional essence. The little changeling flailed and pushed them away each time and was still bawling, as if starving, yet it was refusing to be fed, and the mother was getting more and more distressed. Handy couldn't make any sense of it.

The mother looked up suddenly and saw him standing at the window looking down at her. She hissed at him and he stood back, dropping the stone cover over the window. He took a few steps back, dropping his glamour, thinking about what he saw.

It was another while before he saw the magical aura on the door to the back room. He quickly readopted his disguise as the pair walked out. The old changeling gave Handy a suspicious look before retreating again into the dark of his storeroom. Thorax entered out from behind the counter looking very concerned.

"Okay, well, I now know what's going on. The queen is captured."

"By who?"

"I'm not sure which of them ordered it, but the other colonial rulers have her imprisoned within."

"Fantastic. What now? Where are her soldiers?" Handy asked. "You can't expect me to believe they'd just let this happen to her."

"They didn't," Thorax said tersely, teeth gritted she looked to the side, inspecting one of the pots. "The ones who weren't captured or suppressed are under constant watch, like Itiold's sidhe. That’s why, when we're leaving here, we have to be in possession of one of these."

She lifted up one of the smaller pots in her magic.

"To make it seem as if we came in here to buy something?"

"Less suspicious that way."

"So what now?" Thorax stared hard at the pot.

"Someling has to stand by while the other goes in to talk to the queen. She has to have some contingency plan for this. She has to." She turned to Handy. "And that means you."

"What!? Why me?"

"Because the alternative is leaving you unattended and right in the open. And frankly, I'm the only one out of the two of us who is actually a changeling, so worst comes to worst, I can handle myself out here. You can't."

"Great, fine, all the better," Handy conceded, his voice anything but amicable. "Then do you know where she is being held?"

"Yes."

"And how am I going to get to her?"

"Don't worry about that," she said, taking the trinket and heading to the door. "I can get you in."

--=--

It must've been the fifth one that day who had come to croon over her. It was getting old.

The heavy chains clinked as she shifted, taking a more dignified stance. If she must be forced into a cell too small for her, she would at least sit up straight to face her hecklers. Granted, not the easiest thing to achieve with her horn scraping along the ceiling. The cell was dry at least, but that was small comfort to the captive queen as the yoke around her neck crackled with energy along its runes. It chaffed worse than before, now that she had slept in it, but she would not let her discomfort show.

The door at the top of the steps squealed open and light shone down. Chrysalis squinted her eyes at the brightness, but refused to cover her eyes.

A queen would not show fear before her lesser, and that was what each and every one of them were: lesser. Scum. Treacherous wretches who had abandoned her six years ago and betrayed her. Treacherous wretches that would again usurp her rightful claim who even now bickered amongst themselves under a veneer of civility above her head. Which of them would come to her now, she wondered? Which of them thought themselves so haughty they could bring her to tears, to get her to beg, to have her swear herself and her changelings to them and their goals in exchange for the potential for freedom?

She bowed to noling.

The approaching changeling was quiet as she descended the wide steps to the base where the lone cell was kept. The ancient verisite steel bars, still as sturdy and strong as they were when they had been forged in ages past, separated the pair. The younger queen stood outside and looked in at the disgraced changeling with a triumphant smirk that Chrysalis was getting bored with seeing.

"I—"

"No." Chrysalis shot her down without a moment’s notice. The queen stammered in response, red hair shaking loose and piercing steely white irises staring at her.

"What do you mean no!?"

"You came down here like half of the other rulers did before you, and you seek the same thing. My answer is no," Chrysalis responded in a monotone, deliberately obfuscating her true voice as an insult. That got the younger queen's hackles up. She could see it in her eyes, though her face did not betray it. Impotent fury was always her favourite emotion to feed on, and she'd be damned if she didn't spend her last days feeding on what little she could elicit out of her would be tormentors. Pity she had no luck so far. No changeling worth their salt let their emotions reach in a position where another could feed off of them.

"You insolent, lowly creature, I was going to offer you—"

"Freedom in return for service." Chrysalis sighed before scowling, her expression hardening. "You and the twenty or so others before you. It is not happening. You will not have my changelings."

"Then what’s left of your changelings will die with you!" the younger queen hissed. Her expression softened and relaxed back into a smile. "Not many died, you know. You ordered the surrender just in time. It'd be a… shame to put such magnanimous foresight to waste, do you not think?"

Chrysalis did not respond, daring not to answer that question directly lest she give anything away. The young queen snorted, evidently unpleased.

"What’s your name?" Chrysalis asked suddenly. "I am familiar with the great colonies, but you're a new face, and you're too big to be a lowly new-blood. Which means you're old-blooded."

"Good eye…" the other queen preened. Chrysalis shrugged, her chains clinking with the movements as she lifted a hoof to her face, inspecting it.

"Or you're a glutton. What’s that nice term the ponies use these days? Big boned?" Her interlocutor spluttered with indignation, and Chrysalis smiled. The other changeling scowled, and her horn lit up, a dark white colour. Chrysalis' yoke was yanked, and she hit the ground chin first.

"I would be more careful with my words if I were you, Queen Chrysalis," she spat, looking down at her. "The wards do not prevent magic being used on you." She released the yoke, and Chrysalis pushed herself back up with the slightest of pained groans. "To answer your question, I am Amethyst."

"A pony's name, I see."

"My name, you insufferable pig!" Amethyst shouted at her, Chrysalis plied her ears to her head and winced at the shrill noise.

“Not so loud, I’m right in front of you,” she calmly admonished, her apparent serenity angering this Amethyst even more. The younger queen fumed for a moment, horn lighting up. Chrysalis prepared herself to be assaulted yet again. It never came. Amethyst looked thoughtful for a moment before snorting and letting her magic dissipate.

"You know what? Have it your way, Chrysalis. I was going to save you, you know."

"I am sure."

"I mean it." Her face lit up with a parody of compassion. "The Archon has the sway of the congress, you know. He made a concession to the Commune. Their support and loyalty if he gives you and your changelings to its leader."

That got Chrysalis' attention. Amethyst's face fell into a more serious façade.

"There are not many old bloods these days, you know, and your sisters haven't been seen in decades, and the other old bloods are too threatened to not side with the Archon. It's in our best interests to work together before our entire race falls apart." Amethyst turned and ascended the stairs. "That is what it's all about after all, isn't it? Lepidopolis? The 'Old Keep'? Or does it irk you so much having to serve somling as young as myself that you'd see all that go to waste? Ruminate upon your selfishness, Chrysalis, and consider if it’s worth it."

Chrysalis said nothing as she waited for Amethyst to close the door behind her, leaving her in darkness once more.

"Naïve, idealistic young fool…" Chrysalis muttered as she laid down and gingerly rubbed her chin where it had collided with the floor, hissing as it stung. It felt like her dermis had been torn with the friction, but thankfully she didn't seem to be bleeding.

"You know, I am just loving this," a masculine voice spoke. Chrysalis perked up, eyes wide, looking about for the source of the voice. "Really, that was... kind of cathartic to witness."

"…It can't be," she muttered to herself, the voice sounding eerily familiar. Her ears swivelled, trying to pin the sound. Then she noticed a blue light edging in from beneath her. She sidled over to the far wall of her cell, as much as her bindings would allow as she stared suspiciously at where the light was coming from. The floor of the cell had no corners where the walls met the floor. Instead, there was a flat, diagonally-aligned surface running along the corners of the room, and in several of these there were grates, too small and thin for anyling to be able to fit through. Noling imprisoned in this particular cell was going to be able to shapeshift in any way to make use of the opening even if they could remove the grating.

"Handy?"

"The one and the same," the voice replied, the blue light almost blinding in the darkness of the cell. "Now, are you going to come over here, or am I going to have to just leave and forget I even saw you?"

"No wait!" Chrysalis nearly shouted, scrambling across the cell, her chains kicking up a racket as she threw herself at the grate, staring wide-eyed and disbelieving at what she saw before her.

Because what she saw before her was a changeling.

"Uhhh…"

"Oh, right. Huh, that’s an interesting effect. Thought I stopped it. Do me a favour and turn around,” the changeling said in Handy's voice. "Just look away for one second. Trust me, I can do nothing worse to you than what you're going through right now." Chrysalis was quite sure she might or might not be hallucinating a torch-wielding changeling that spoke in Handy's voice from the area beneath the grate. She wasn't that far gone that she'd hallucinate her changelings coming to rescue her, was she? She reluctantly closed her eyes and shook her head.

"Ack!" And then she proceeded to leap back in shock at what she saw when she did, promptly hitting her head on the ceiling. That particular reaction made Handy smile. "H-How is that you—? How did you get here!?"

"Ways and means, Chrysalis." Handy’s smile dropped as he peered at the queen through the small grate. Chrysalis had a million and one thoughts cross her mind all at once, but before she could act on any of them, something small was held up to the grate.

"What is that?" Handy held the torch closer, and the blue flame illuminated it. Chrysalis had a sharp intake of breath. "Give it to me!" She pawed away at the grate with her hooves. Handy withdrew the strange, perpetually moist parchment with the strange drawing on it.

"Not until I've gotten some assurances, Chrysalis," Handy said coldly. Chrysalis stared at him spitefully. "I have come too far and endured too much to give much of a damn about anything right now other than getting rid of your damn geas over me."

"Give it to me, Handy. Now." Chrysalis' teeth were clenched. Handy remained unimpressed. He held the parchment in between the index and thumbs of both hands. He began to ever so slowly pull in opposing directions, threatening to tear it. "No!"

"Do I, Handy the Milesian, have the word of Queen Chrysalis that our geas is fulfilled?" he began slowly and deliberately, staring right at her eyes. She met his gaze hatefully. “Just as I had her word, as far as she was able to communicate it in the simplest terms, that the object in my possession was the very same and only one which she wished me to retrieve? Or does she renege on her confirmation to me now, given that it was the only qualification of her demand of the geas, and thus breaks her compact?"

"…These words were not in the beginning of the geas, Handy," Chrysalis said icily.

"But they are at the end of it," Handy replied, not wavering once. "What say you?"

"I… Queen Chrysalis, give my word that our geas is fulfilled, having been satisfied I have been brought what I have sought." She was clearly bitter, evidently having planned for some work-around had this circumstance come about during happier times for the scheming monarch. "Now give me the key!"

Handy folded the piece of parchment up and slipped it through the bars of the grate and stood there while Chrysalis excitedly withdrew the piece of parchment from the grate with her muzzle, laying it out flat on a relatively clean part of the cell floor. She turned around and held it up, so she could see it in what little of the torchlight reached it from the grate now behind her. If Handy didn't know any better, he could've sworn he saw a childlike glee on her face as she looked over the clearly incomplete creation.

As he thought, he wondered. He had brought what he had been told to bring, so he had been released from the geas. It had been a long while now, so he thought about actively abandoning the changeling city and returning, at long last, to home. He was delighted beyond expression when he felt no restriction on his thoughts. The geas was lifted. Even if the caveat of never being able to harm Chrysalis remained, it hardly mattered anymore. He turned and left.

Chrysalis noticed the light receding and turned desperately, her chains skittering along the floor and her heavy yoke clanging against the metal of the grate. "Heartless, wait!"

"What do you want, Chrysalis?" Handy grouched, his robe trailing in the ankle deep water and slime of the tunnel. He didn't turn around nor stop, however.

"Please, come back here!" Chrysalis shouted, briefly looking up to make sure noling had heard her. "Come back, you must help me!"

"Help you?" Handy chuckled, stopping and looking back, eyeing the dark slit in the wall down the tunnel from him, barely illuminated by his torch. "Why on earth would I want to help you, of all people?" Chrysalis was silent for a time. It caused her to choke when it came out, the words unfamiliar in their vile context being uttered by her vocal cords, but Handy presented an opportunity she could not pass up. Not if she played it right. But to even have such a chance as that, she had to say the words, to hold his attention if nothing else.

"I… need your help," she managed, the pleading sickening her. There was no response for a long, agonizing time. At last the blue light approached, and Handy, trudging up through Tartarus only knew what lay in that ancient sluice tunnel he used to access her, stopped outside her grate. He was in a patchwork robe and hood, a cloak about his shoulders that at one point might have been fine, but was now torn, tattered, and covered in dirt and filth. His perennially attached armour she was so used to seeing on him was nowhere in sight. He looked at her from under the hood for a long time before speaking.

"What's in it for me?" he asked. Chrysalis blinked.

“What?”

"I said, what's in it for me?" Handy repeated. "Come on, I indulged you this far. The least you could do is show me what you're offering."

"If you helped me," Chrysalis began incredulously, "I could give you whatever you wanted!"

"Yeah, you probably could, if you were free," Handy said. "You're not free. I am. I intend to remain free. It’s pretty great. You should try it some time."

"Do not do this to me! You must help me!"

"And why must I do such a thing, Chrysalis? You have nothing over me and, frankly, the more you try to push that I somehow owe you my help, the more likely I am to walk right on out of here and leave you to rot. So hit me, Chrysalis, what do you have to offer?"

"Help me out of here and you can have all the gold you could care for," she said quickly. "All of it, I don't care! Have as much as you want! Gems! Information! Anything!"

"Those are all pretty nice things that I would like to get a hold of," Handy admitted. "That’s it?"

"Get me out of these chains," Chrysalis said, trying not to let her desperation and anger get the better of her, "and I swear you can have all of that, and more."

"Hmm," Handy mused. "And all I'd have to do is get you out of there?"

"Yes!"

"And how, pray tell, am I to do that if your own army could not save you? I have your little scout outside right now, who I think is the only member of your military your captors haven't accounted for."

"These chains, do you have anything that can break these chains!?" Chrysalis asked desperately, grabbing a bundle and shaking them to make a point. Handy considered them for a moment. At the right angle and some room to work with, he could use his hammer to break them, but he'd need some leverage between the links. The grate was barely the width and length of his arm, so he couldn’t get through it to do it. He could give her his hammer but without her magic and with her restricted body movement, she could never use it effectively. Besides, that was assuming he'd be able to remove the grate in the first place. Judging by the tiny, scratchy, glowing changeling writing along its edges, he surmised trying to tamper with it would be a bad idea.

"No," he said truthfully, "and you have no alternate plans in case something like this had happened?"

"I had. If any of them were still viable, do you think I'd be in here?"

"No, I suppose not." Handy looked around the grate in front of him once more, thinking. "Well, good luck."

"What? Where are you going!? Handy!" she called after him. He didn't answer. "Come back! Help me, damn you!"

"It’s such a shame," Handy said as he disappeared further into the tunnel, "that you wouldn't do the same for me if our positions were reversed. What makes you think I'd do it for you?" His challenge was not met with an answer as he continued walking down the sluice tunnel, his mission having been completed, his geas fulfilled, his freedom assured, and the queen's denied. All in all, not a bad way to end a day's work.

Chrysalis sat in the darkness as the Heartless departed. The precious artefact she had in her hooves seemed so worthless now, but it was all she had. She shook. Why? She did not know. Her thoughts turned to the precious thing she had hid in some far away pony town on the edge of the Badlands, the future of her colony and kingdom under the very noses of her enemies that not even her changelings knew was there. Perhaps she should have told him so that he could inform them, give them some hope if nothing else, some reason to escape should she fail them again. Chrysalis, however, could not be sure he would not bring harm to her precious secrets himself, so she held her tongue.

And so she sat in the dark cell awaiting her fate, and cursing herself for once again trusting the words of those conniving fellow rulers in the senate above. Such was the folly of trusting oath breakers.

And the fate that should be portioned out to such creatures now awaited her instead.

Author's Note

*Last Wednesday - Chapter around 4-6k words after so much time in a funk*

Me: "Okay, I should get this finally done for Monday"

*Friday - 12k and counting*

Me: "Neeeaaarrrrllllyyy done"

*This Morning - 17k*

Me: "If this hits 18k I'm going to be pissed.

*As it is now*

Me: "Fucking... Damn it."

===============================

My editors really deserve medals.

Chapter 47 - The Hollow Queen

Handy hurried through the sluice tunnels, guided by the glowing blue flame. The twisting turns, sharp inclines, and the overall maze-like structure led him to believe that this had to be more than some odiously complex sewer, despite whatever ungodly substances he had rather not imagine he’d stepped in. Whatever it was intended to be, no one else was down here, and he could walk reasonably comfortably. That was good enough for him.

The sounds of his boots, now stripped of their armour, hitting stone echoed as he drew nearer to the perceptible brightness ahead. As bright as it got in the perpetual gloom of the changeling city, in any case. He doused the torch by suffocating the flame and strode on, exiting the sluice gate by landing on a large, man-sized grate that probably led to a storm drain of some sort. Looking up, he could make out the cavern ceiling above with its luminescence and the sepulchre spires beyond the shadowy structures of the buildings clustered up against the base of the palace walls. He pulled himself up over the lip of the pit and waited in the darkness.

Thorax should have been out here waiting on him. If she was not, that meant she was busy dealing with a potential problem. He took note of the nearby changelings; all two hundred of them in the nearby buildings alone, never mind the ones in the ziggurat-shaped palace building and the ungodly huge wall behind him. He retreated further into the dark corner, put on his disguise, and waited. Each passing second, his migraine grew worse and worse.

Finally he heard the buzzing of wings and looked up. A lone changeling cast her gaze hither and yon as she drew cautiously closer to this forgotten drain. Chartreuse eyes, purple mane and tail, and unfortunately, her now familiar changeling face. She alighted quietly on the ground and checked her surroundings almost obsessively. Handy wondered how it was she hadn’t spotted him yet but didn’t think to question it. He let her become comfortable with her surroundings first and waited until she turned her back and focused on the drain entrance again, apparently waiting on him. He stepped out of the shadows and walked up behind her. Her ears pricked and she turned around in surprise.

"We need to go," was all he said.

"When did you get out!?"

"A minute or two ago. Where were you?"

"I had to make myself scarce—a patrol was coming through. I had to make a ruckus to pull them elsewhere. Did you find her?" she asked hurriedly, wings twitching. Handy paused before responding.

"Yes. I couldn't get her out." That was at least true.

"So she's alive!? Is she alright?"

"She didn't seem to be in pain as far as I could tell," his voice was level and without inflection, "but I can't imagine she's all too well. I could make out a lot of heavy chains, and some runes."

Thorax groaned at that, rubbing a hoof into the side of her head in frustration. She stomped and looked around the ground beneath her.

"This… This is not how I imagined it'd be like when I got back."

"…So how did you imagine it then, Thorax?"

"I…" She looked up, eyeing Handy cautiously before forcibly drawing her eyes upwards, staring into the air where she knew his true eyes roughly were, and forced herself to see through his glamour, succeeding after a moment or two of effort. He was getting better at it already. "It was supposed to be simple. I get the artefact back no matter the cost."

"Even if I had died?"

"Of course!" she admitted fully. If Handy was surprised by anything, it was her forthrightness about it. "I had no orders to kill you if that’s what you were worried about."

"Why is that now?" The frostiness in his voice was evident. Thorax glared up at him.

"Because, if you must know, you're more useful as an asset than not," she responded through gritted teeth.

"Mmm." Handy looked up and around him, saying nothing for another moment. It was quiet in this street for however much that was worth. "She said that if she had a backup plan that worked, she wouldn't be in captivity right now."

"Wh-What does that mean?" Handy looked down, unused to hearing uncertainty from her. "She always has a plan. Even if she fails, she always has a plan. She'd plan for this eventuality!"

"I'll take your word for it, but if she did, she didn't tell me what it was." Handy saw no reason to lie to the now-panicking changeling. "You can go find her and ask yourself."

"Where are you going!?" Thorax demanded incredulously, still keeping her voice lowered. Handy had started walking off.

"Home. I'm done here.” He got another few steps before he heard buzzing wings, and Thorax had landed in front of him.

"Wait, you can't go!"

"Watch me."

"Wait, just stop. I might need your help!"

"For what?"

"Getting my queen out of there!"

"Certainly sounds like something that isn't my problem. Good luck with that." Handy's path was undeterred and he walked on, his illusory appearance showing the changeling grasping the torch sideways in his mouth.

"You have to help me with this!"

"I don't have to do anything, Thorax," he riposted. "I owe you nothing."

"Nothing? Nothing!? After sticking with you and putting up with all of your drek this entire time!?"

"Putting up with me? Thorax, I've been putting up with you." Handy turned around and advanced on the changeling. Her wings buzzed as she kept herself airborne. "I will not be threatened or strong-armed into helping the changelings again, no matter what you say."

"You want help?" he continued. "Maybe you can convince your pet bag of trail rations back at the storeroom to help you, although I wouldn't count on that. I am certain he's as eager to be out of here as I am now that our job is done, no matter how tightly you have him wound around your hoof."

"You can't just leave us like this. My entire colony is in danger without her!" Thorax shouted.

"And that’s a crying shame. Maybe next time you won't be so eager to kidnap and impersonate my charge and then use her to bind me to a contract. Maybe in such a fantasy scenario where you seek my help, this little black void where my heart is supposed to be may have a phantom twinge of sympathy." He held her gaze for a moment, daring her to push at him, take a swing, or whatever. That would be a good excuse, a fine excuse. He'd love it if she did. He could then have his cake and eat it, smash her into the ground, wipe his hands of changelings for good, and head back home. "As it is? Have fun getting Chrysalis out and then surviving."

She didn't do it, but he could see it in her eyes just before the plates closed over that she had been considering it. He turned and walked away.

--=--

It was a strange feeling, walking amidst aliens so openly like this, hidden in plain sight. Each and every one of them knew what he was—if not by experience from when he was last here, then definitely from word of mouth. Every one of them was potential food to him, and none of them knew it. It was especially strange that it was changelings of all creatures he was walking amongst. They kept their distance, but only because he was the very image of some beggar changeling with a ragged cloak, a bandaged leg, a broken fang, and his latest prize clutched in his mouth. He wondered if this was how changelings felt all the time walking amidst ponies.

He got a few hisses, a few warning stares from what he assumed were shopkeepers, even abuse from the guards. Changeling society was very big on the heavy-handed approach, it seemed, and he had to admit that stone did hurt when it hit his leg. He glared at the guards in their burnished armour as he turned to find an alternate route.

He'd remember that. It would be a long trek in the Badlands—he knew from experience. He was already thirsting badly, and he'd need to take a bite before leaving. Some unlucky bastard was going to hurl abuse at him or challenge him at the wrong time, and suddenly find the apparent changeling he was harassing was anything but.

He had picked up that Thorax was following at a distance some time ago after he had stopped in a dark corner to give his head a break, noticing her in a mirror perched in a nearby stall. He had also seen his own reflection in the mirror while disguised. If his reflection appeared odd to anyone, nobody showed it, but what he saw was a flowing shifting mess of a mix between the changeling he wanted others to perceive and the human he knew himself to be. Limbs and body parts shifted, melded, and morphed in a non-stop nightmare vision that almost made him physically ill to look at.

Once again, Handy was glad he couldn't have nightmares.

She didn't rat him out as he went. He figured she wouldn't risk it, not even as a threat. It'd probably be pleasing for her to get her revenge on him by doing so, but that would only result in, what? Handy getting imprisoned, or worse? Only for her to draw undue attention onto herself and possibly endanger her only other friendly asset in Jacques. It didn't pay to do so, and Handy knew it.

The torch took him by the route Thorax had taken initially, and once more he found himself in the abandoned, ancient, stone bazaar. Once more he heard the increasing sound of splashing water from above and the cold embrace of it pooling just beneath his feet. Once more he passed by the junction where he knew the skull lay, yet this time he did not look.

He did not want to be reminded of the unfathomable deep, dark void where its eyes once were. There was no goodness in them, and every time he thought about them, he was reminded of those very same empty expanses of blackness staring down at him, ready to snuff out his own life, the blackness ready to swallow him whole.

'As if it hasn't already,' he mused darkly as he slowly made his way past the skull. Just as he thought that, reflecting on his own state in life, for the briefest of moments, he remembered another pair of black eyes on an expanse of white. Ones so deep and full to bursting of something unfathomable and unknown, yet familiar. Eyes of warmth rather than coldness.

He pushed the thought aside, and continued on through to the end of the empty passageway.

He had no time to waste on droll memories of a hallucination.

--=--

Crimson, for all intents and purposes, was a changeling now as far as either of the pair of them could tell. Façade and Glimmer had the misfortune of being very obviously returning Chrysalis-loyal changelings when they had descended the rebuilt staircase into the city below. Their dark blue backs denoted their ancestry rather clearly. Most of their particular ethnicity were loyal to her colony, and the ones that were not… never really left the city.

It had only been good fortune that whatever spell the unicorn had cast on herself, for it sure as hell was not changeling magic, made her appear to be anything but what they were. A deep, dark red, an almost black back, green eye plates, a cascading brown mane, and how they had stuck close to her and obeyed her every command made it very clear to observers she was their superior but not one of them.

That was probably what saved them most of the hassle when they descended the stairs and ran into several more guards, not that either of them fully understood the dire situation their colony was in given their separation. The grand, winding staircase once made out of ancient oak and decoration detailing ancient histories now lost to their kind had been replaced with crude stone and planks in places where the damage was too great. It descended in sweeping twists and turns before it opened up onto the city of Lepidopolis in the expansive cavern before them.

It was a sight to behold, but if Crimson had been impressed, she didn't show it. She had a level of control over her emotions that was, frankly, frightening to the pair of them. The guards had given them no hassle. There was enough of a distance between the surface and the next station of guards along a chokepoint in the descent into the city that they had not heard most of the commotion.

"Is this it?" Crimson asked impassively. Façade hurried forward.

"Yes, we're… we're here." She tried to keep her voice from wavering. Crimson turned to her. "We… Please don't… you know."

"What?" Crimson demanded calmly.

"Don't use your magic to bring the cavern down." Façade came up the other side of her and she turned to him. "We… We heard you muttering to yourself a few times. Please don't destroy the city."

"You think I can do that?" The pair looked at each other and then back to her, worry in their eyes. Her expression remained neutral. "Very well, I won't break your precious city."

The pair breathed a sigh of relief as Crimson pushed past the two, traveling across the expanse between the staircase and the city that was even now being populated with new structures to house the overabundance of changelings. "Come along then. I will have… words with your queen instead."

--=--

Handy returned to the back street where the store was hidden just in time to see a wounded and winded Jacques crash through the thin stone slab that served as the door. The pony stumbled to the ground as the thin rock fell to the ground like broken slate. He stumbled back to his feet, sword around his right forehoof and his horn aglow, his face awash with fury as he turned to face his assailants in the storeroom. He moved like lightning and spun around on his hooves, thrusting forth with the sword, briefly balancing on one hind hoof before withdrawing, rebalancing and taking a swing as he hopped from one hind hoof to another. His horn lit up, lifting the remains of the door to cover his face just in time to block three black darts that impacted the stone surface.

Two changelings jumped out of the store, one bleeding from a gash on its cheek and the other wielding some crude cudgel in its magical grip. Handy did not ask any questions and immediately acted. The changelings saw him coming and called out to him, thinking him an ally in this backstreet fight. They changed their tune when they saw the changeling drop the torch it held in its mouth and swing a hammer up, catching one of the attacking changelings on the chin with the blow. The glamour dropped immediately, and the remaining changeling looked up in horror, seeing Handy looming over them. Jacques wasted no time and pushed the cudgel wielding changeling off of him and brought his makeshift shield up and then down on the changeling's skull. The thin sliver of rock broke apart on impact with a loud crack, and the changeling hit the ground, unmoving next to its companion.

"Glad to see you’re back, Handy. How was your walk?" Jacques quipped as he slipped the sword off of his forehoof with magic.

"Jacques, what the hell is—Woah!" Handy was rudely interrupted when a bolt flew from the doorway and cracked the wall beside his head.

"Don't move," a two-toned voice droned from within. Handy stood beside the swordspony, looking into the storeroom. He heard faint buzzing of wings nearby and hoped to God that was Thorax drawing near and not more changelings. The interior was destroyed, and there were at least two more bodies inside, lying unmoving amidst the wreckage. He made out Quartz being held down by another changeling while yet another hovered in the middle of the room focused on the two of them. It hovered with its rear hooves just an inch off the floor and what looked like a pony-made crossbow in its forehooves. It was already reloaded. "N-Not another step, whatever you are!"

"Jacques," Handy whispered out of the side of his mouth while looking down the backstreet and up above. The storeroom was at a dead end, but that didn't mean there couldn't be the chance of more changelings investigating the commotion. "What the hell is going on here?"

"Oh, you know, just six lovely guests dropping in uninvited," Jacques replied, wielding his sword in a high guard over his head, leaving his hooves on the ground. "Decided we shouldn't be where we were and tried to forcibly eject us and put me in a pod. I took exception to this." Handy glanced at the two unmoving bodies further back in the room. At least one of them wasn't breathing anymore, while the other had some fleeting feeling left in its body, judging by his auspex.

"You can have it, you can have it all!" Quartz shouted, still being pinned by the only other assailant left on its feet. "Please, just let me go. I'm not with them!"

"Quiet! Come on, Aspid, we need to get help! That's the Heartless over there!" the one pinning Quartz shouted to his partner.

"Don't you think I know that!?" the crossbow changeling shouted back, never looking away from Handy for a second. Handy glanced up, seeing the form of Thorax on the roof of the squat building, her silhouette against the multi-hued 'sky' above them. She stalked along the roof's edge before disappearing from sight. Handy lowered his hammer and looked at the crossbow wielding changeling directly. He took a step forward.

"Stay back!"

"Put down your weapon," Handy commanded. Another step.

"I mean it, stay back! Stay back, you bucking freak!" the changeling cried.

"Put. It. Down. Now."

"I-I, I'll shoot! Don't come any closer."

"You will not." Another step. He held its gaze. The changeling tried to move its hooves but found itself paralyzed.

"Aspid, what are you doing!? Shoot it!" his companion pleaded.

"I-I can't, I… I don't—"

"Put it down, changeling," Handy demanded sternly. The changeling reluctantly lowered his crossbow.

"Aspid! What are you doing!?"

"I… don't know," the hapless changeling said, its covered eyes facing Handy as he towered over the creature. He was still over a meter away, but that hardly seemed to matter to the terrified changeling.

"Let go.” The weapon clattered to the floor.

"Aspid!" There was a crack in the ceiling above them, and a section fell from above, smashing into Aspid and pinning it to the ground under the weight of the stone work and ancient wood, as well as the changeling that had fallen with it. Aspid's companion barely had time to react before it noticed the brown fur of Jacques speeding towards it with a pair of hooves that crashed into its head, knocking it off of Quartz and into the sweet oblivion of unconsciousness.

"I think that's enough of that." Jacques, having given the changeling a buck, lifted his hat off and brushed it down with a hoof. Quartz lay huddled and terrified on the floor, eyes darting around at the carnage around him.

"What the Tartarus happened here!?" Thorax demanded, observing the destruction.

"I admit, I'd like an explanation as well," Handy interjected. "Sound carries weirdly down here. I heard the commotion but thought it was something happening three streets away. Until I saw you break down the door."

"I was a little taken aback when half a dozen changelings popped out of nowhere. Forgive me when I was led to believe this was a safe hiding place," Jacques muttered sarcastically. Thorax pulled in the two bodies lying outside. "Apparently, Quartz and his friends weren't the only ones who knew of this store, and these ones had sought to loot it."

"Does anyone else know about this? Thorax, did you see anyone coming while you were up there?"

"Like you'd care if they did," Thorax mumbled somewhat angrily. "No, we should be fine for now."

"Well, any luck?" Jacques enquired. Thorax shot Handy an evil look, and Handy gave her an apathetic one in reply before turning to Jacques.

"Yes, my business here is done. Let's go."

"Wait, no, hang on." Thorax held her hooves up pleadingly, positioning herself by the exit. "Look, Handy, I know we don't like each other."

"Understatement."

"Just hear me out. I need your help."

"Help with what?" Jacques enquired, going around and checking the bodies, occasionally taking a few pouches he found that happened to have something shiny in them. Handy couldn't begrudge him that.

"I need his help, and yours," Thorax began. "My queen is, uh… She's in danger. My entire colony is in danger. We need to find a way to free her."

There was a pause for a moment, and Jacques looked up at Handy, who simply shrugged.

"Well, you already know my answer. Have fun with that." Handy looked among the bodies. That one was dead, that one is probably almost dead. Hmm, that other one was alive but already unconscious and bleeding. He'd do.

"I'm… not sure what good the two of us can do." Jacques scratched the back of his head with a hoof. Thorax snapped around to face him. "I mean realistically, chere. I'm a sellsword. One sellsword. Handy's only one stallion as well." He uneasily eyed Handy out of the corner of his eye as the human knelt down by one of the changelings and put his fingers to its neck, checking its pulse.

"Jacques…"

"There's an entire city out there, hundreds of thousands of changelings. Even if we got her out of there, what could we do?"

"Jacques, this is my home and family. My… My country, if you will. I can't do nothing," Thorax explained. "If Chrysalis goes, so goes my entire colony. There are entire sidhes out there going about their lives in absolute fear of what the other changelings will do to them."

"But what then? Say we free her, where would we go? We'd have an army down our throats before we could so much as say boo."

"Can't you recruit other changelings of your colony?" Handy posited, knowing the answer but goading it on nonetheless. He gathered his pack of belongings as well as the other one containing water canteens.

"You know if I so much as approach any of the sidhes under any circumstances, I'll be swarmed in a minute," she shot back before turning to Jacques.

"Then come with us." Jacques lay a hoof on her shoulder. "There’s nothing more you can do here."

"I can't just abandon my entire colony, my very queen, Jacques! You don't understand, this is more than just you and m—" Her voice broke in her throat before she finished, her eyes caught on his. "Please, don't do this to me. Please."

Jacques looked pretty conflicted as Thorax implored him. She took a step closer and, reflexively, he gathered his emotions into the iron ball in his heart. She stopped, a hurt look crossing her face for a moment. Thorax stepped back and fell to her haunches, looking down at the ground for a long, hard moment.

"Remember?" Her voice was barely more than a whisper. Jacques looked up. Handy continued searching for anything useful amidst the crates and broken debris. "Back under the forest, you didn't abandon me then. And I didn't abandon you when you needed me. Don't abandon me now…"

Handy was happily ignoring the quiet conversation between the two on the other side of the room as he managed to loot some useful things from the crates. One seemed to have some preservative warding on it to keep the interior fresh, and lo and behold he found some dried bread. Not exactly nice to eat, but it was food that would keep while on the trek through the Badlands, and that was frankly a godsend. He also found some interesting trinkets, but none worth pilfering. There were some vaguely medical-looking supplies he didn't know what to do with, empty portrait frames, a surprising amount of books written in languages Handy couldn't begin to understand, and a lot of that strange broken changeling pottery. Like, a lot. Most of it not stored in the undisturbed crates had been broken during the fighting. Oh well...

He heard whimpering from his feet and looked down. Quartz was eyeing a few of the bodies, terrified out of his mind and unconsciously shuffling further away from him on the floor whenever Handy moved. He couldn't sense what he was feeling since he was hiding it, but it was clear the changeling was terrified. He twisted his mouth as he considered the changeling, but then put it out of his mind and slung his water pack over his shoulder.

"Alright, I'm done here. Let's go, Jacques. Might want to get something to cover yourself, though. You look awful ponyish."

"I'm not going."

"…Excuse you?" Handy turned from where he was crouched next to his intended victim; one of the unconscious changelings with a vaguely brownish shell. He didn't know—it was still annoyingly dark, and he realised he had left his torch outside.

"I said I'm not going,” Jacques said more forcefully, standing up and sheathing his sword with a hoof. Thorax looked up from her dejection hopefully.

"Are you mad? We discussed this. You agreed we'd help each other out of this city and get through the Badlands. I don't think you recall, but that’s a pretty tall order."

"I… can't just turn Thorax down, Handy." He turned to the human.

"Yes, you damn well can. You know she can't be trusted, and this city is filled with an entire species of lying, backstabbing, soul-sucking bastards."

"Like you?" Jacques challenged.

"What," Handy said flatly

"Look, Handy, I know you don't care about anything, but you're no better than any of these changelings at their worst."

"Oh, I'd watch my words if I were you, Jacques, o—"

"Or you'll what? You want to go over what we talked about behind Thorax's back? Hmm!?" Jacques’ voice grew louder. "How you asked me to my face how I felt about betraying her as soon as we could to maximise our chances to get out of here?"

"I was being practical and realistic about our chances. Her scheming and that of her queen was exactly why any of us are here to begin with. I was looking out for our best interests, you fool!"

"I'm right here!"

"Oh shut up, Thorax."

"You shut up for once, Handy, you despicable bastard!"

"Me!? Despicable? I've only ever tried looking out for myself!"

"And your secrecy and selfishness got how many ponies hurt!? Part of my home city blew up because of your quest. Because of you, I had to make myself an exile in order to survive when all I wanted out of you was a little insurance. Instead, I have this."

"I will not be held responsible for the actions of the Mistress!" Handy bellowed, his anger quickly bursting forth. "Your own actions are your own doing. You knew as soon as you realised what Thorax really was that being involved with me was always going to be dangerous. But no, I don't suppose common sense would apply to someone who sees a heart-eating fucking monster like a changeling and thinks 'I'd tap that!'"

"Handy, Jacques, that's enough!"

"No, it damn well isn't! This has been a long time coming. You—!" Handy pointed at the furious Jacques, "have some fucking nerve calling me anything. How in the fuck dare you!?"

"Dare I what, Handy!?"

"Give me shit when I influence people like I did back in the trade post."

"You're messing with their minds!"

"I did it to stand up for you, you fucking tool! Suddenly I'm a monster for doing nothing more than influencing people with a few words to get us a better deal and, oh I don't know, saving us both from having a crossbow bolt sticking out of our chests five minutes ago? Yet this little bitch," he pointed to Thorax, “goes off, finds a changeling who was living by himself and starving, terrifying him out of his mind, coercing him into helping us and risking his life, and you don't bat a fucking eye!?"

"Th-That’s different!"

"Why? Because she did worse to a changeling, and I did little more than a mind screw on some asshole of a pony who had it coming? You have a funny way of being racist there, buddy."

"Like you have any right to call anyling else racist," Thorax chimed in.

"It takes one to know one, and at least I admit it. You're all fucking awful," Handy said, turning his fury back to Jacques. "I don't know what happened to you. Back in the forest, it was you more than any of us keeping the peace, being the voice of reason. I have seen very little reason out of you lately, Jacques. Maybe your girlfriend over here has her fangs in you deeper than you thought. Maybe instead of avoiding eye contact with me for fear that I might do something to your mind, you should probably be more concerned with someone who already has." Handy leaned down closer to Jacques, the pony's face a tight mask of poorly disguised anger. "That's why I am not helping her. That's why I am not helping her queen. I am looking out for myself. If you want to put your neck out for them, then be my guest. Just don't be surprised if someone bites down while you do it."

Handy stood back up from Jacques, who was shaking with rage. When he was sure there would be no more forthcoming objections, he turned back around, his own fists shaking. He shuffled his robe to hide them before he bent down and hefted one of the unconscious changelings over his back.

"You know, despite all that," Jacques began quietly as Handy stood straight once again, "I still thought of you as a friend. But you're right."

Handy turned around and walked past the pony towards the door. Thorax stood to the side, somewhat at a loss. Quartz still cowered in a corner.

"You're only looking out for yourself. Everypony else is just a means to that end," he said, his voice growing hard. "Just like the very ones you're condemning. That's the difference between you and me. You're exactly everything you hate."

Handy paused in the doorway, shifting the weight of the changeling on his shoulder and walking out, turning to head down the back street.

--=--

You know, it's probably a good thing this changeling was unconscious.

'You need to take from others to survive, just like us.'

A very, very good thing, for its sake at least.

'A bunch of walking wineskins!'

Because the only thing worse than being in the arms of a bloodsucker…

'You say I'm like you, right? More than I'd like? Deceptive, sneaky?'

... was being in the arms of one that took an inordinate amount of time to decide whether or not it was actually going to eat you.

'I'm so sorry.'

Handy looked down at the changeling in his hands. He was holding it under its forelimbs and the creature just dangled before him, head lolling to the side. It probably wasn't the best position to hold an unconscious person… horse… thing, but he hadn't initially planned on holding it here for this long. He didn't know what was stopping him.

He gently put the changeling down on the ground in a heap of unconscious, vaguely creepy pain. The light was weird down here. There was no sunlight, and all artificial light was usually indoors, much to his relief. There was nothing but the bioluminescence of the multihued plant life that covered the ceiling like starlight, and the strange, shifting, colourful light that pulsed within the chitinous walls that covered everything. In the back streets here where all was darkness, what little light there was pooled from the distant streets where the changeling public roamed and milled. The strange soft hues cast shifting, flitting shadows everywhere where they were brightest. Here though? Here they were barely enough to cast a shine on the weird analogous skin these changelings had, differentiating them from the overwhelming blackness.

It was strange, he mused, how familiar this all was. How similar these changelings lived, going about their day, to the ponies or the griffons above. How they all looked the same to him, here, as he skulked in the darkness like some fell carrion predator of the shadows. These changelings, doppelgangers who kidnapped and stole the love of others, the nightmare of every nervous lover or worried parent whose child had become estranged, they feared him. These creatures, for all their alien mannerisms, may as well be no more different to him than a city full of particularly loathsome ponies.

His foot hit against something. Looking down, he realised it was a broken portion of a wall, one of the newer black facades that covered everything. He picked it up and studied it in the light, careful not to overexpose himself to any of the changelings flying overhead who might spot him through the broken and pitted ceiling of the backstreets. He turned it over in his hand. Strange, it felt coarse yet held an almost metallic coldness to it. From the edges, it was apparent it was built in sheets, like the layers of an onion. It looked similar to the shells that covered the pod he had been in so long ago, but he knew from experience that it was not the same material. There was nothing organic about this.

He caught sight of the withered corruption that had now covered nearly the entirety of his left forearm. His skin was dry and cracked, and there were dark, purple splotches in random areas. Every now and again, terrible cramps shook through his arm, some worse than others. For the past month or so, it had been inexorably advancing at a glacial pace across his flesh, but had stopped a week ago just above his wrist and onto his palm and just beyond his elbow. It left him with a shaking hand from time to time, as if he had Parkinson’s or some other rotten illness. The dusky, greyish tint of his skin somehow made the black, flaking latticework that covered his forearm all the more noticeable. He didn't know what they were. They weren't veins. Capillaries perhaps? Corrupted and deadened by his magical substance abuse and unable to be removed by ordinary bodily process? Or extraordinary ones in his case, but it was the best explanation he could come up with on his own.

'Just one night,' he often said to himself by means of motivation. 'Just one night of sleep with the salve. Just one good night's rest without a care in the world, drifting away as if on a cloud. No nightmares to worry about and no trouble putting thoughts and worries and fears aside. Just sleep, a wink, an instant of oblivion that would finally result in a morning where I could face the world without forcing myself to get up. Just one more time. It's all I want.'

Those times he'd think that, he'd notice his fist was shaking. He'd look down, remember what his little comfort had done to him the moment he went more than a few days without it, and realise once more he could never go back to it if he knew what was good for him.

He rubbed his fingers together for a moment, amazed he could still feel and move them despite the horror ravaging his arm… and how he could no longer feel anything south of his fingers except when it was cramping up. He looked up, through the hole in the roofed backstreet, and like the bazaar he had seen the skull in, he spied yet another familiar sight.

The broken sepulchre. He saw the water cascade from its broken prominence unevenly and fall to the earth at some section in the city. Of all the sepulchres hanging above them he could've seen, he saw that one. He snorted at the absurdity of the coincidence. It brought back memories of the innumerable times in that one day alone he should have died. Hell, he should have died the second he hit the glass window when the dragon threw him. People had survived more ridiculous things back home on Earth, true, but one had to boggle at the incredulity of it all. To go from that one incredibly lucky escape to outright goading fate by taking a hammer to the support pillars holding him up from plummeting to his death.

'You're just like us.'

The thought came to him unbidden. Was he? He looked back at the heap on the ground next to him, quietly breathing. Even when they were knocked out, the little bastards were sneaky as hell. Just like what he had been forced into becoming. When the hell did he start seeing it as an acceptable state of affairs to skulk in freezing tunnels under a city gripped in winter's icy grasp, or skulking along roads like some common brigand? When did it become acceptable to hide out in back alleys like some drug-dealing scumbag, traipsing along ancient changeling sewers and smelling like the devil? When did he start being content with putting dozens of families at risk to spite his persecutors, a realization that his brain immediately put at the back of his thoughts before the implications slowly stopped him in his tracks with their horror, and then breaking and entering a home and using a family as a disposable shield instead of facing the consequences of his actions like a man?

When did he start taking blood from people preferentially instead of out of raw necessity like he had promised himself? He took from that poor traveling mare in the inn at first opportunity instead of looking for any nearby alternatives, like what he was about to do now.

Just like that it hit him. It has started when Chrysalis told him he was just like her and her kin. Out of pride and spite, he had gone ahead and proved her right. He had been proving her right this entire time. He was proving her right now by turning his back and damning her, Thorax, Jacques, and God only knew who else that would suffer as a result of his unmitigated self-interest.

'You're exactly everything you hate.'

He looked back up at the sepulchre once more, and realized that once upon a time he had seen the impossible, did the unthinkable, and won. When did that change?

"…God damn it, Jacques, you French ponce," Handy cursed before rubbing his face with his good hand and allowing a shiver. He looked down at the changeling. "Count your lucky stars, kid."

He stood up with a sigh, looking up once more between the gap in the floorboards above, spying the permanent mark he had left on this ancient city's face. Well, he might not have known why Past Handy did what he did, and he wasn't entirely sure why he was doing what he was doing now, but if nothing else it would prove Chrysalis wrong about him. Spite was its own reward, after all.

He shivered once more and pulled his robes closer together. He missed his armour. While no defence against the cold, it could at least shrug off the worst bite of the wind chill, and that really nasty gust blowing through these stree—

Wait... They were underground. Sure, it was a huge cavern with a lot of connections to the dark depths of many other large caverns, but there shouldn't be sudden winds this strong just out of nowhere.

He whipped around as flashing green lights, barely perceptible through the sprawling backstreets, flashed over the buildings in the direction of the palace. Moments later, a cloud of debris and dust erupted into the air and the thunderous retort of an explosion reached his ears, causing the ground to shake. The changeling on the ground groaned, and Handy had to steady himself against a wall. Ahead, just over the rooftops and the swarms of changelings taking to the air, he spotted a magical aura he was all too familiar with. Ethereal wisps of sickly green magical energy and mist suffused the air in front of the palace, the remnants of whatever had occurred there.

"…You have got to be fucking kidding me."

--=--

Crimson coughed as she galloped through the advancing dust cloud and the debris. Her lungs were full of dust from being at ground zero at that little… miscommunication.

Still, however one spun it, it had resulted in the destruction of the facade of the central palace structure of the entire city. Now Crimson had to do a mad dash to safety with angry changelings on her tail.

How many angry changelings you ask? Somewhere in the region of lots.

It was a less than desirable situation given that things had started off so well. You see, when Crimson had promised her little tag along lings—who were surprisingly reliable, more so now that they realised their little Chrysalis-fan-club was distinctly unpopular these days—that she wouldn’t harm the city or the ‘innocent’ changelings who lived there, the same did not apply to its stalwart defenders. Not that her companions could complain. Crimson was all they had—they couldn't even find changelings of their ilk.

Crimson turned a corner before she heard buzzing closing in on her from above. She muttered more harsh broken words, and each hoof step she took shot hard slivers of rock into the dusty clouded air above her. The buzzing noises backed off.

"This way!" she heard somepony shout from her right. She turned automatically into the next side street and thundered down it. She sensed her warded changelings nearby and made a distraction. With a flash of red from her horn, one of the few high level spells she knew that was not old magic was put into play. When she reached a cross-section, she disappeared in a flash. Three red, brown-maned changelings thundered down three other streets, while the black-cloaked Crimson took another right and went down a darkened street, descending as the road took her further down until she was fairly certain she was well below street level.

She ducked into an alcove, the grey stonework at odds with the black building material that covered everything. She sat to catch her breath, coughing and hacking, clearing her throat and spitting out the dust.

When she had promised not to damage the city, she had no intention of not damaging the palace where the stuck up queen was. She… just didn't expect her companions to be so freaked out when the guards had told them Chrysalis was no longer present. Crimson had insisted, but the guards had told her to go do something mildly unpleasant. Crimson took exception to this and questioned the offending guards’ masculinity in a most impolite manner. The guards proceeded to get violent, and then the stairway up to the palace's main entrance just sort of exploded, all two hundred steps of it.

Crimson may or may not have been responsible for that.

She levitated out her tome, her horn supplying the light, and cautiously looked about the small cramped street and read over the familiar words again, feeling the thoughts settling in her mind. Well, she could now use that spell one more time, at least. Hurray. She put down the book and hoped her illusions were still going. Glimmer and Façade were nearby thankfully, but they weren't moving.

Odd; she'd have thought they'd at least still be running.

She waited a while longer before looking behind her, eyes narrowing in the direction she came. Briefly her eyes flashed along with her horn, and the ground itself broke apart, the raw earth pulling skyward until it reached the roof above her head. Another few words and the rock cracked and churned, changing shape with the sound of grinding stone. Satisfied at the false wall she had created, she changed course toward her underlings, safe in the knowledge that anypony coming behind her would run into a dead end, and would sooner try other avenues of investigation rather than spend too long lingering there.

She brought her book up, flipped through a few pages, and placed it back in her packs. Quietly she walked forward, wary of the sound of her hooves on the broken pave stones beneath her. The pair was just ahead to the right, inside a doorway. A safe house, perhaps? As she drew nearer, she realised this was not the case.

"—know you were there, tell me! Who was using the old magic!?" Crimson paused. The voice was low and harsh, dry and hoarse as if the speaker hadn't drank water for some time. She slowed her pace and moved cautiously to the door. The street only had one entrance now, but there could be a number of hidden egresses she might have missed that any number of enemies could emerge from. This was a changeling city, after all. She had to be careful.

"I don't care if you're afraid of them. You should be afraid of me!" Crimson narrowed her eyes. She pressed closer to the door, preparing a spell mentally before manifesting it, keen to keep the glow of her horn from giving her away. The room inside was dark, and she could not make out who was in there threatening Façade and Glimmer. No matter.

She barged through the partially opened door, and her horn lit up furiously, a spell prepared to neutralise the threat without an explosion this time.

She stopped dead in her tracks and almost fired her spell out of sheer shock.

--=--

Handy had two changelings pinned to the wall.

That was the thing about changelings. They were disturbingly light in comparison to ponies, even accounting for whatever physiological changes Handy's vampire shenanigans had made to him. They looked unusually thin for changelings too, meaning they were likely unwell. Both had the unshorn manes and tails of changelings who had been top side for a while, but hadn't been able to maintain their military cut, and both of them had the same shade of shell cover on their backs, much like Thorax did.

This revelation did not do anything for Handy's mood.

"I am going to ask you this one more time, changeling. I suggest you answer truthfully for your own sake," he whispered to the one whose neck was clamped in his right hand grip. He didn't even need to exert himself much to ensure they stayed in place. He was Handy the Milesian after all, the Heartless, the Pale One, the one who none of these little bastards could so much as sense an ethereal whiff of before it was too late. You could therefore understand their reasonable terror when he just fucking Predator'd them out of the darkness. They stayed right the fuck where they were, eyelids closed and facing away.

"Pl-Please, we d-don't know what you're talking about," one of them managed to whimper.

"Lying to me is unhealthy," Handy said evenly, no longer whispering, growing more confident. He tried reaching out with his auspex to do one more check of the surroundings, but a sharp pain from the brief stint he had spent hidden by glamour just getting to these two slapped that notion out of his mind right quick. "I know you were with them. I saw you running specifically from angry changeling guards. What is the Mistress doing here of all places? Tell me!"

"We don't know!" the other cried.

"Oh come now, I know you were there. Tell me! Who was using the old magic!?"

"We can't! She, she'll—!"

"I don't care if you're afraid of them. You should be afraid of me!" The door crashed open, and a bright red light bathed the room in colour and stark shadows. Handy cursed and dropped the changelings, reaching for his war hammer. Of all the times for his damned psychic radar to shit out on him...

He drew up the hammer to face the wide, green-eyed changeling staring up at him with stupid disbelief on its face. For some reason, it elected to not immediately fire its huge build-up of magical energy at the tip of its horn when it saw the tall abomination to all changeling kind before it. Handy elected to capitalise on it and immediately closed the distance between the two, raised his hammer an—

"Master!" Handy immediately stumbled.

"Wh-What!?" The magic dropped, the room suddenly dark again. There were after images in Handy's eyes. He swung in a daze but apparently missed horribly because something large, heavy, and furry ducked under his arc and crashed into his midsection. The next thing Handy knew, he was on the ground on his back.

Handy struggled and began flailing his arms in the darkness to dislodge the changeling from him. He had dropped his hammer and had to pry the creature away with his bare hands. Not an easy thing to do as it clearly had transformed into some kind of giant furry beetle and had his torso in a vice grip.

One of the changelings lit its horn up with magic, shedding some light on the shenanigans. Handy had pushed the creature off and backed up, kicking at the ground with his feet and scrambling with his free hand for a grip on his hammer as he blinked away the stars in his vision from the light that dazzled him.

It must have caused him to see things, because before him stood not a changeling with charcoal black psuedoskin, but a pony.

An extremely haggard looking mare to be precise, hooves dirty from the long trek of the desert above. Her mane, ruined and windswept from the unremitting wind, wide, happy looking green eyes, slightly marred by bags under them and a ragged black cloak. She looked at Handy disbelievingly. Her mane was a rich brown and her coat was the deepest red.

Crimson, one might say.

"…What," he said intelligently.

"I didn't think I'd find you this soon!" Crimson exclaimed happily, in a tone of voice Handy had literally never heard her use for as long as he knew her. He wasn't thinking about that, though. Priorities, you understand.

"Why… How…. When did… What?" he said out loud, gesturing in turn to Crimson, the world in general with both arms wide, the general direction of the palace and the explosion, and finally to the pair of very concerned looking changelings to his left. Well they both had the membranes over their eyes, but didn't bother to hide their emotions. He assumed those confused, roiling masses going on in their hearts meant concern, or fear, perhaps. Eh, fuck it, they're both the same depending on context.

"Wh-when I was released, I came straight here. Oh, and them," Crimson turned and gave the two changelings a level look, "they were the ones holding me prisoner until I was let go."

"…So she did keep up her end, interesting," Handy said as he digested the information slowly. He had been concerned Geas magic had a get out clause for fae creatures like the changelings; you were bound to your end to the bargain but the other side was not. He was glad this was not the case.

"Yes, it was explained to me that you were put under… their queen's service in order to set me free. I came here to teach her the error of her ways," she said haughtily.

"…So you literally crossed half a continent, to the most remote part of the Badlands, into a city full of changelings, to challenge a powerful magical queen for my freedom?"

"Yes!" Handy honestly did not know how to respond to that, so he moved on as quickly as he could.

"W-well, right, okay, ahem," Handy said, trying to regain his composure. Between the shock of the unexpected reunification and the absurdity of all of this he was coping pretty well. He pushed himself up off of the ground, "Not that this is all… Wait, why are they here?"

"Oh, I made them come," Crimson said.

"How?"

"I made them swear to serve me or I'd kill them."

"Why!?" Handy asked incredulously. Crimson blinked, ears splayed backwards.

"Isn't that what you'd do, Master?"

"…I am a terrible influence on you," Handy muttered imperceptibly through his hands as he rubbed down his face. "Okay neat, you two," Handy said, directly addressing the two changelings. One flinched at being addressed, he didn't care which it was. "Blue backs, you're Chrysalis' changelings, right?"

"Y-yes?"

"Good news, your queen is alive." Crimson frowned.

"I… Okay? We didn't know she was in danger."

"Bad news, she is imprisoned beneath the palace and will probably be executed or worse in a few hours." Crimson smiled.

"WHAT!?" they both yelled simultaneously.

"Good news, I gave her a… presumably really powerful artefact of some kind so that I could be free of her service, and she is trying her best to get out, reassert her authority in the city, and rescue her changelings. I passed on her messages after I snuck in to see her." Crimson frowned.

"Th-that’s good, right?" one of the lings asked.

The other continued, "You'll help, won’t you?" Handy cocked an eyebrow at her, "You helped with the dragon! Chrysalis paid you for it! Wouldn't you uh, help again?" They both seemed to shrink as they talked. Handy loomed over them. He was still the creature who not five minutes ago had leapt out of the darkness, grabbed them both and dragged them in here with him. It seems they nearly forgot what they were dealing with. Adorable.

"She asked me to." Their faces lit up. "I declined." Crimson smiled.

"Why!?"

"Because I am Handy the Milesian and I will not be treated like a slave," Handy said imperiously. "Your queen forgot that, so I left her there, in her cell. Left her alone with thoughts of being abandoned and left to rot for her follies and let her entire colony be damned for it. For I am weary and hungry and care not for the fate of changeling kind." The two changelings slowly wilted under that. Handy did not know what Crimson had done to them to crush their spirits like that. He didn't expect an outburst like he got from Thorax or Jacques but he expected an indignant hiss, or scowls, or something equally changelingey from them. He got nothing. He briefly wondered what, exactly, entailed when one changeling colony was subordinated to another by subjugating its ruler.

"So we can go now, Master?" Crimson asked simply, brushing down the front of her cloak. "It seems my journey was in vain, and Chrysalis shall be getting what is coming to her."

"No."

"…What?"

"You two, what are your names?" Handy asked the two changelings, the pair looked at eachother, then over to Crimson, who was Just as lost as them. "Come on."

"…Glimmer," said the mare.

"Façade," said the stallion.

"Well Glimmer and Façade, let's go and meet Thorax," Handy said, turning and walking to the other end of the room towards a door. He opened it a crack to see the streets outside. Some dark shapes buzzed above the buildings but the streets themselves were clear.

"Master, wait!" Crimson hurried over to him, tugging at his robes with a hoof. "Why are you doing this? She enslaved you!"

"You have a fair point, Crimson," Handy said, "and I was running short on ideas of what to do about all of this."

"Didn't you say you weren't going to help her?" Façade asked, the pair slowly moving from their corner of the room, uncertain over the current turn in the events.

"That I did. The grate of her cell through which I spoke to her was enchanted, or as enchanted as Changeling magic gets. Tampering with it would have been unhealthy, I imagine. She was herself far too… royal to fit through such a tiny space. She was also weighed down with magical chains that prevented shapeshifting. I had no means of helping her out of there even if I wanted to." Handy then looked sideways at Crimson, "But now I have options. Now come on, Changelings first."

Handy held the door open to let the changelings through. They hesitantly obeyed while Crimson stood there giving Handy the most dumbfounded look.

"Master… why are you doing this? You didn't answer that question." Handy looked down at Crimson for a moment, a calculating glimmer in his eyes.

"I have my reasons."

--=--

"I say we still lie low," Jacques said, pacing up and down.

"I can't just sit here! I have to go see what happened!"

"What do you think happened, Thorax?" Jacques snapped at her, causing her to start in surprise. "A big, flashy, green explosion and spooky magical after effects lingering in the atmosphere around it after the fact? Smells like Blackport again to me, and that connerie was Handy's business. Let him deal with it on his own, salaud hypocrite…"

"Jacques, I know you're upset, but I can't just ignore that," Thorax insisted. "My own changelings could be in danger!"

"I know!" Jacques practically shouted before rubbing his face with a hoof and calming himself down. "Sorry. Look, think about it, Thorax. No offence, but I know how changelings act when there's a lot of them in one place, and there is something dangerous going on.”

"How do you—"

"Details, details, I'll tell you later." Jacques waved off her concerns with a hoof. Quartz tried to use the distraction to slowly slink off. "You. Stay." Quartz sat on his ass, defeated. The door was only several feet away, too. Jacques turned back to Thorax. "Now… Thorax, despite what Handy thinks, I… am more familiar with how changelings think than even… Comment puis-je mettre ce délicatement...? "

"Vous pouvez essayer en Cour équestre pour un début." Thorax deadpanned. Jacques sighed, hung his head in defeat, and looked back at Thorax.

"You are a bunch of paranoid, hyper-suspicious, backstabbing, self-centred, secret-obsessed, compulsively disordered, tribal, backwards, amoral jackanapes," Jacques said in one breath, "to a ling."

"I love you too," Thorax said dryly. "So tell me how you really feel about changelings."

"No, you don't understand. I am basically describing your compulsions, like how ponies are overly prone to panicking en masse, while individually ponies can be as stalwart and as imposing as a mountain."

"For a given definition of mountain…" Thorax muttered under her breath but Jacques didn't seem to notice.

"I've used group mentality against the changelings of the Arconate many times in the past. That’s how I know that if the other rulers of the changelings are anything like that stallion, most of the changelings who have no business being outside will be inside and the streets will be swarming with warrior changelings loyal to whoever's in charge in that palace.

“You know, the one that was directly threatened,” he continued. “You surreptitiously breaking curfew will automatically mean that you have someone out there important enough for you to actually give enough of a damn to go out and fetch them, which makes you a suspect. And that would be terrible."

"There's no one ruler in charge," Thorax pointed out. "There are dozens of huge colonies here, and dozens more of independent sidhes in the lower cities."

Jacques blinked.

"There's a lower city?"

"Plural."

"…Well, in any case, that’s even worse. That means there's lots of changelings with pointy things out on the streets that hate each other almost as much as whoever had the stones to threaten their leaders."

"Maybe we could use that to our advantage?" Thorax pondered. There was a brief waft of air, but she didn't bother to turn around. "Sit back down, you. Noling's in the mood for your horseplay."

And so Quartz’ attempt to sneak out through the opening in the ceiling was thwarted. He sat back down on the ground in frustration, his wings twitching on occasion. One of the unconscious thugs stirred beside him, and he gave it a kick. It groaned and lay still once more.

"Normally I'd have a few ideas," Jacques said, levitating more of the broken junk around them out of the way. The streets outside had gotten noticeably quieter since the explosion. Thorax had initially flown out of the building to see what had happened before being called right back after relaying the description to Jacques. "Ah, but there is too much about this situation I don't know. There are too many variables, and now? Far too many angry changelings looking for an excuse to hurt something. I'm used to causing a panic like this after my mischief to cover my tracks."

"Wait," Thorax began, "what exactly did you get up to with the Archon's changelings back in the Enclave?"

"That's… not important right now.”

"Considering he's here right now, I'd say it’s pretty important."

"Wow, you guys are still here?" The three of them jumped at hearing the voice of an armoured changeling at the door. Jacques pulled out his sword, Thorax reached for the stiletto strapped to the back of her foreleg, and Quartz just stood stock-still in fright, thinking the presence of one guard meant more and that any escape would be thwarted by a sudden and painful run-in with heavily armoured changelings. The guard kicked a lump of broken wood. "You know, I would've thought after that little light show at the palace, you guys would have tried to find a more secure hole to dig under."

That was when they got over the initial shock and recognized the voice.

"Handy?" Jacques asked. The guard nodded.

"Yeah, it’s me." Handy turned to Quartz and blinked in surprise. "You're still here?"

"Uhh…"

"Go on, no sense keeping you here."

"Handy what—!" Thorax began.

"What are you doing back here!?" Jacques snarled. "You made it pretty clear you don't give a shit about any of us."

"Don't take it personally, Jacques, I don't give a shit about anyone. If it makes you feel better, you're not on my shit list."

"And that’s supposed to make everything you said go away?"

"No, it’s just my acknowledgement that I don't hate you, which is about as good as anyone can get. Now go on, get," Handy said, waving a hoof at Quartz. The changeling just looked at him, suspecting a trap. Handy sighed. "Look, mate, you can either go out that door, or I can upgrade your status from innocent bystander I'm taking pity on to trail rations."

"Y-You wouldn't really…?"

"I would, actually. Turns out I didn't end up chewing on the neck of that one poor bastard I slunk away with. Indigestion. It's cleared up now, however." The changeling whimpered, and Jacques gave Handy a look of disgust. "Oh knock it off, Jacky boy, I'm just messing around. Look, our fella, you can take a third option."

"W-Which is?"

"Go out into that alley and have a chat with the two other changelings I brought along while I clear up things with these two. They've been topside the last couple of months too. You'll get along swimmingly. It'll be great."

"Whu—"

"Out!" Handy shouted. Quartz hopped to it and leapt around Handy's changeling glamour and out into the backstreet. Handy turned back to the others. Both Thorax and Jacques were giving Handy mean looks. "Right... I know this isn't going to be easy…"

"Leave," Thorax commanded.

"…And I know hard words were said…."

"You made your point loud and clear, mon ami." The hurt was evident in Jacques’ voice. They were angry. Good, Handy wanted them to be.

"…But if you look deep in your hearts, you can find the words you need to say so I may deign to forgive you."

"WHAT!?" they both yelled. Jacques’ sword even drooped a few inches. It annoyed Handy that he still had that drawn.

"Now that I have your attention," Handy said, once their angry looks had a brief moment of confusion flash across their faces, and they finally looked up at him so that they could talk face to face rather than face to crotch. He could've just reminded them to shake their heads or something and try to pierce the glamour, but that was more entertaining. Glamour was awesome and all, but it was annoying how people still kept that image of him in their heads for a while even after he had dropped it. Maybe it was because they expected to see him as his disguise and as a result they did. Weird. "I have a proposition for you both."

"What do you want?" Thorax spat. "You wouldn't help us before.”

"True."

"And you made it quite clear you wouldn't put anyone before yourself."

"NNNNot strictly true, just true most of the time." Handy placed one hand on top of the other and gave the pair a small, tired smile.

"And what changed, hmm?" Jacques challenged, putting his sword away. "Finally feel guilty for once?"

"I'd like you two to meet Crimson." Handy reached out the door and waved Crimson over. The mare walked into the room, looking around and surveying the damaged interior and the assortment of unconscious changelings. Well, some of them were unconscious and appeared to have been bound. Others were left where they lay, untouched. Thorax blinked.

"Wh—"

"Thorax, Jacques, this is Crimson Shade, my servant, charge, and a journeymare in the dark arts of old magic, the school of magic I have been charged with hunting down this entire time." At the shout of alarm from Jacques and his raised sword, Crimson did nought but cock an eyebrow and give him a contemptuous look. "Crimson, this is Thorax and Jacques, my… ah, boon companions this entire time."

"Hello," Crimson monotoned.

"Oh, and Thorax was the one who knocked you out, and impersonated you for over a month, and was instrumental in my slavery. Have fun, just don't kill her."

"Wha—"

"Rargh!" Crimson practically leapt the distance between the two of them, her magic ripping Thorax's stiletto and flinging it away as she barrelled into her. The pair careened to the other side of the room in a whirling mass of flailing hooves and curses.

"Thorax!" Jacques was halted by a hand on his wither pulling him back.

"No no, let them have at it. You and I need to talk."

"Get off me, damn you!" Jacques ripped himself away from Handy and gave him an evil look. Handy backed off a step, holding his free hand aloft peaceably. The stallion looked over at the two fighting mares for a moment. Thorax was currently busy pinning Crimson to the ground with a hoof pulled behind her back, before the unicorn's magic bashed her in the face with what looked like a frying pan and the fight was renewed. "What do you mean ‘old magic’? What’s going on here, Handy!?"

"I did not tell you everything behind my servitude to Chrysalis, only that it involved her using something to coerce me into agreeing. Crimson was that something."

"She uses old magic. You made it very clear those mages were your enemies."

"Correct. They're also hers. Crimson is very important to my future plans regarding my enemies, Jacques. She is my only insight into the Mistress and how to combat her. My very life and the lives of many rely on her continued safety. All this time Chrysalis' machinations have been endangering us both."

Handy paused as there was a lull in the fighting and a fierce buzzing sound could be heard overhead. The three changeling hanger-ons who had been effectively rubbernecking around the doorframe to see what was going on had come inside. They all waited patiently while the flight of changeling guards passed overhead. The fight continued, the three changelings sat near the door and shifted awkwardly, and Handy turned back to Jacques.

"Maybe now you might understand my raw antipathy for Thorax and her brood, on top of everything else?"

"She caused an explosion in front of the palace!" Jacques hissed. Handy shrugged.

"She attacked me with an army of wraiths and a summoned storm elemental on the same night I became vampyr on a speeding train that was under attack by several squadrons of royal night guard thestrals. She's bad at the whole 'reasonable force' thing. Dark mages—what are you gonna do?"

"…What?"

"Not everything you hear about me on the grapevine is a lie, Jacques." Handy gave a wry smile.

"You’re avoiding the question," Jacques returned with a hard look. "Why have you come back?"

"If we get out of here alive and whole, I might just tell you. For now, you’re just going to have to trust me."

"Trust you!?"

"Yes."

"Why!?"

"Because, Jacques, I said so," Handy ignored Jacques staring at him at that simple explanation, "and because if you don't, we're all likely to die. I've been here before, and I'm… rather well known in this particular city. Because reasons. You're going to need to do exactly what I say if you want both you and Thorax to get out of this safely, and get Chrysalis out, and somehow achieve all that without having this entire cavern come down upon us all."

"Oh, and how are you going to do that? They have an army!"

"I have a Crimson."

"That is not a proper response to the problem," Jacques deadpanned.

"Too bad, it’s what we have to work with. Now…" Handy walked over to the fighting pair and began pulling Crimson away. She had a bruised eye and a trail of blood coming from her nose. Thorax was in similar shape, both of them cursing at each other. Thorax was a bit lost in the moment and made to swing at the flailing mage some more before Jacques pulled her back. "I think you two have had quite enough time getting to know one another."

"Flagrant rag witch!"

"Filthy stone dweller!"

"See? You're already such good friends," Handy remarked sarcastically. He pulled the struggling pony over and placed her on top of a crate. "Now sit. Both of you."

"Handy, I swear to God if you don't explain yourself right now—!"

"I am here to help you."

"How!? Why!?"

"Yeah, I'm not repeating myself. Just roll with it for now; Jacques will fill you in."

"You still haven't even told me why you're doing this," Jacques interjected.

"Yes, but I did say I will later. Now listen, Crimson's little distraction has bought us a window of opportunity. If I overheard Jacques correctly, all of their leaders should be in one place, correct?"

"That's generally what happens with the Archon's changelings from my experience, yes," Jacques confirmed. Handy looked to Thorax who was still giving Crimson a death glare but slowly nodded her head.

"And if all the leaders are in one place, that will also mean they'll bring Chrysalis into the same area. After all, no one wants to leave her unattended when there's a panic going on, right?"

"I… guess so," Thorax replied, grumbling. The three changelings basically sat there, more or less ignored apart from an occasional glance the human gave them over his shoulder. The three of them were commiserating their situation, with Quartz unwilling to leave due to the guard presence outside but unwilling to stay because the Heartless was present. Façade and Glimmer had no choice in the matter.

"Do you think they're gonna need us for anything?" Quartz whispered nervously. Façade shrugged.

"Don't know, probably."

"Feels weird being in the back here when our colony is at stake, like we're just accessories to what’s going on," Glimmer added.

"Isn't that how it’s always been?" Façade asked. "We've always been the ones who followed orders, not help make them."

"Maybe you two were. Me? I mattered," Quartz grumbled.

"Then why did you go rogue?"

"I'm sorry, but do you guys not remember the gigantic undead dragon that nearly roasted us all alive when our glorious queen brought us to this little pit?"

"And how well did you manage out there on your own without our queen's protection?" Façade sneered, poking Quartz in the side. The smaller changeling hissed, covering his exposed ribs with a foreleg.

"It was still better than being down here now!"

"Hey you three, pipe down!" Crimson barked at them. The three went quiet again, but Quartz still fumed silently. Handy looked at him curiously for a moment before turning back to the others and speaking.

"Then I think it’s time we pooled what we know and make a proper plan. If we're going to do this and save our hides at the same time, we're going to need to do this fast, and we're going to need to be very careful. We need to be subtle, tactful and most importantly of all, as inconspicuous as we can possibly be."

--=--

Chrysalis was led through the halls of the royal palace. Her halls. Her rightful dwelling. Her immaculately carved stone floors and vaulted ceilings. Her dark alcoves and endless rooms. This was her city, and she had reclaimed it for the good of all changelings, whether they were hers or otherwise.

Now she was a prisoner. Her chains rattled; the yoke around her neck weighed her down. Each step felt heavy and cumbersome, and strangers with spears marched beside her instead of her own honour guard.

'Woe to the vanquished indeed,' she thought bitterly. Had the ponies done this to her, it would have hurt, but it would have made sense to bring a defeated would-be conqueror low before the throne of the enemy.

Except there was no throne where she was going but a senate, or a mockery of one, full of the unworthy filth who dared to call themselves leaders of changelings. She was no conqueror—she ruled here, and she had been brought low and captured in the heart of her own fortress. That insult burned worse than any other. It took everything she had not to gnash her teeth, to grind her fanged maw and snarl at the pitiful wretches to her sides, baring her fangs and demanding their submission.

But no, she was old-blooded and royal. She refused to break her regal demeanour in the face of this travesty, and so she walked calmly and with her proud head held high as they marched through the interior of the palace.

She looked up to see the start of the calcification of the interior of the palace, a prospect she balked at. She knew some of the more militant colonies insisted on armouring the interior of their dwellings with the stone-skin, but for Chrysalis and her kin, the idea was repugnant. Dwellings were for living in, not for preparing to withstand a catapult assault from the inside. She liked to live in comfort when possible and liked her changelings to do so as well in their own homes. No doubt this was at the commune's insistence. Everything was a continuous war and endless fear with them.

Her thoughts were brought back to the moment when she heard the increased buzz of changeling wings as they approached the heavily guarded senate hall, the drone and shouts of the conversations going on inside barely perceptible through the great stone doors. The guards parted before her and the great doors opened wide to permit her entrance and, yet again, she was brought before the mocking menagerie of rulers.

However, this time she was not the centre of attention.

"—And I say we are betrayed!" yelled an elderly-looking changeling, dressed in the finest satin robes of the Breakaway Priesthood. Noling had any patience for the heretic theocracy he represented and their disgusting tendency to reveal the inner most secrets of the old Imperial Cult to anyling who'd care to ask. However, it appeared such disgust was not on the senate's mind since many seemed to be shouting in agreement with him.

"Oh sit down and shut up you old bat!" yelled the young queen who had so kindly visited Chrysalis earlier that day. She gave the disgraced queen a brief glance before turning her attention back to the gathered assembly. "Noling here would gain anything by drawing the others' ire!"

"Perhaps, perhaps not," crooned a voice that seemed to cut through the chattering cacophony from somewhere far above. Hacking and coughing, the mysterious veiled ruler of the Stormlings, as they were known, lay on her palanquin far above. It were as if she never left the senate hall. Her unmoving guards stood grimly to attention, unknowable under their all-encompassing, stark white armour. "What matters is that we are assailed."

"I say it was Chrysalis' doing," the Archon stated, trying to reclaim the initiative.

"Hah! Then you've just admitted you are terrible at keeping track of your prisoners," Jezeer, the merchant prince, sneered. "Perhaps you shouldn't be leading this coalition after all…"

"I am saying one of you helped!" the Archon snapped, receiving outraged cries in response. "Don’t think I haven't noticed. You've all been sneaking down to her cell, trying to weed her into submitting, claiming her and her resources for yourselves!"

"And what, we should just let you have her!?" shouted a different changeling from the crowd.

"How can we trust a changeling who can't even keep a secure hold on the palace, let alone the city!?" shouted another.

"Over a dozen guards, most of them belonging to MY changelings, were found dead and buried on the surface entrance! Crushed! We are invaded!"

Chrysalis stood there and watched the exchange impassively. Bored eyes drifted from one face to another as they wasted no time going from concerns over security to petty politicking. Just as they always had, just as they did six years ago when her most ambitious plot to secure a future for all changelings had failed. Just like with the wedding.

Jezeer and his rich colony of merchant changelings. No ling knew how they always had so much emotional essence on hoof at any one time. It was far more than any changeling could store at once. Typically, an industrious changeling would infiltrate a pony village and suck up enough love from a lover and those that cared for them in one day that could feed a sidhe of ten changelings for a week if it was rationed. That was on top of physical food. One of Jezeer's changelings could store enough to feed sixty. They made their business traveling across the continent, connecting the colonies and independent sidhes, trading, making them extraordinarily wealthy, influential… and dangerous. Jezeer's infiltrators were feared more than any others, precisely because it was foolish to turn away a willing merchant.

Fenswit, of the Commune, who constantly preached of the great sidhe republic, breaking down the traditional rulership structure and that of the sidhes, making all changelings one family… all under his hoof of course.

Gossamer the Glamourous, or the Whore if one were to be honest. Hers were a despicable breed of changeling, able to subsist off of the petty carnal feelings harvested in brothels and dens of vice the world over. Sustenance too stale and unpalatable for even the most starving of changelings her kin treated as a delicacy.

Blind Siery, King Obsidian, Hierophant Osweyrn, Anti-Hierophant Nesiris, Queen Amethyst the young, Archmagus Priosp, the Archon…

She could go on, mentally listing all the rulers, but what good would it do? Had this been any other circumstance, she would have manipulated their division to her advantage as she had always done. The loudmouths jockeying for position were nothing to be concerned about. The ones that concerned her were the ones wise enough to hold their tongues. She opened her eyes and glanced up at the palanquin far above on the concentric steps of the senate. Had she a future ahead of her, she'd keep an eye on that one, but as it were…

She allowed herself a sigh and closed her eyes again and waited for the crowd to die down, or until the weight of the argument fell upon the topic of her again, whichever came first. She was getting a headache.

And then the world seemed to flash an incredibly bright green and stung her eyes through their lids. Chrysalis let out a yelp and brought her foreleg over her face. She instinctively covered them with the nictitating membrane that slide out of the sides of her eyes to protect them. She did not want to be caught having that reaction, it was beneath her. She pulled them back and opened her eyes, blinking rapidly, ears twitching as the cacophonous noise of the senate floor erupted into a sudden crescendo of alarm.

Armour clanked and weapons were drawn. Numerous guards drew close to their respective lieges or took to the air. A number of crossbows were cocked and loaded, and Chrysalis blinked in sudden concern as they were all pointed at her.

Wait, no, that was not right. They were pointed to the left of her.

She turned around. Then she looked up.

Handy spared her a glance from under the hood of his robe. He didn't linger on her stupefied expression and her mouth which refused to form coherent words before he turned to face the crowd before him. She also didn't notice the strange green glow radiating from him either but, you know, details. He brushed some dirt from his shoulder while he waited for the gathered rulers to calm their respective tits.

"What is the meaning of this!?" one of them demanded, big and black with a strange iron face-hugging contraption.

Handy sighed. That would have to do for a foot in the door.

"Which of you is the Archon?" Handy demanded, his voice carrying across the hall. The question brought a few more panicking changelings, many of whom had thought the human nothing more than some myth Chrysalis had spun. They never expected to see him, or rather, they never expected to experience the eerie horror that his existence implied.

"No soul…" Hierophant Nesiris murmured fearfully, sinking back into his pillows. Amethyst was nearby, her left ear swiveling around to listen, unnerved by what the holy stallion was saying. "A tree without fruit can be made use of, but no tree at all is no good for the harvest. It has no soul!"

"I am the Archon of the Eastern lands!" cage face replied. Handy turned to address him directly and pointed at him.

"In that case, Princess Galaxia thanks you for all your hard work and compliance in sharing secrets!" Handy stated loudly and clearly, as the senate hall erupted in outrage and indignation. The Archon reeled, alarmed at the accusation and the suddenly hostile senate. Handy smirked and added. "And Jacques sends his regards."

The Archon turned, wide-eyed and furious at the human. Handy responded by shooting out his left hand and grabbing the very confused Chrysalis by the horn.

"Wha-H-Hey-! What are you- L-Let go of me!" she stammered as the greenish aura grew down the length of her horn to encompass her. Handy pointed to her with his free hand.

"I'm just gonna borrow this for a while. You guys don't mind, right? Right. Thanks."

With another flash and a thunderclap the human was gone, and Chrysalis along with him. All that remained was the magically infused chains that fell heavily to the floor, the smell of burnt ozone.

And the chaos left in their wake.

Author's Note

Subtlety

Chapter 48 - Sleight of Hand

Chrysalis fell out of the air and let out a startled yelp just before she splashed down on the inch or so of standing water. She flailed and spluttered before coming to her senses, suddenly soaking wet, cold, and no longer bound by chains.

"Who— What!? Handy? Where am I? What's going on!?" she demanded, twisting and turning about, alarmed at her sudden transportation. She appeared to be in the ruined bazaar, a long way away from the palace. Handy, however, was nowhere to be found. A few brief hoofsteps splashing through the water caught her attention, and she turned to see a blood-red pony in a dark cowl walk out of one of the empty storefronts. A book levitated before her, along with the broken remains of what looked like the amulet Handy had owned. That crumbled to dust in her magical grip as she appeared to read over her book, mouthing words to herself. She looked up and spied Chrysalis with the most contemptuous glare she had ever seen from a pony, coupled with the iciest heart she had ever sensed. The unicorn's eyes wandered up and down the empty bazaar before settling accusingly on Chrysalis.

"Where. Is. He?" she snarled through clenched teeth.

"Wha—?" Chrysalis was slammed against a wall as the unicorn's powerful magic turned from red to sickly green, and her eyes glowed a threatening white.

"Where is he!?"

--=--

Perhaps some explanation was in order.

Handy could certainly use one for his current predicament. Then again, the only person nearby with both the ability and the inclination to answer him was currently halfway across the city from where he now found himself. As you might imagine, he was most displeased with this state of affairs.

You see, Handy's plan, such as it was, took action precisely two hours after he had gathered his would-be jail-breakers together. Long enough for the near countless soldiers to do a sweep or two of the city while they hid, yet not long enough for even the most impatient of city dwellers hiding with their families to stick their heads out and look around. Long enough that it was reasonable to assume Chrysalis was out of her cell and right where the leaders of the changelings could see her… and each other.

This was crucial for several reasons, but primarily it was so that Handy did not have to worry about whatever magical wards, enchantments—or infusions, as Thorax and the changelings insisted on calling them—preventing him from doing his little snatch and grab. Of course, they could have those same wards on the entirety of the palace, but that was something Handy would have to risk. Wouldn't be the first thing old magic managed to bulldoze through. Speaking of which...

After drilling Jacques and Thorax for all the information he could get out of them, he gave each of them their missions. Thorax's one made sense, Jacques was sceptical of his, and the remaining changelings got split between the two to be as helpful as they could be. Only then did he turn to Crimson for her part and informed her of what had to be done.

It was a gamble, but once upon a time Crimson had revealed to him that the Mistress had used her to study and research old magic for her (under her supervision of course) and that she was the foremost scryer out of all the Mistress' underlings using the vile art. Hell, she even managed to snatch him, someone without any connection to this world whatsoever, using her own gumption and an assload of magical force to punch through the void and yank him here. It wasn't quite teleportation, but it was close enough for Handy's intentions.

He offered her his amulet; the connection he had to Chrysalis' mind, however tentative, as a means of connecting to her. Crimson was extremely doubtful, especially given Handy's mental resistance, but it was possible if, as Chrysalis claimed, it allowed her to see through his eyes when he wore it. Handy pointed out she had brought him to this world with less connection. Crimson pointed out the extreme requirements of that ritual. Handy responded by pointing out that half a mile's distance was nothing compared to extra-veiler translocation.

Crimson had been extremely unsure of herself given the unorthodox nature of what Handy was asking, but given that was what old magic was, as far as Handy could discern, this should be nothing to her. Besides, it would prove her growth beyond the shadow of the Mistress that she should innovate and create new spells in old magic beyond her mistress' auspices. Crimson still squirmed and murmured something about it being dangerous. Having witnessed her come all this way out of nothing more than concern for him, Handy told her he trusted her implicitly. He didn't, not that much, but she didn't need to know that.

It did the trick anyway.

Handy was not fond of teleportation of whatever kind. Be it the hexes of the changelings that felt like being squeezed through a particularly fiery hose nozzle, their more ‘ordinary’ mage-assisted teleportation that felt like being hit everywhere on the body with a snowball simultaneously, the weird reality-shifting form of the warp shards that transported his armour despite its magic resistance, or the strange translocation that happened whenever he crossed certain thresholds in the abandoned city in the Greenwoods. Or hell, anything that happened in those damnable woods. Instantly transporting yourself from one place to another was all well and good, but it was immensely disconcerting and uncomfortable.

That was why he was so surprised when he felt virtually nothing at all when Crimson finally went through with the little experiment. It had worked nearly flawlessly after a half hour or so of Crimson preparing the ritual. The most disconcerting thing about it was watching the water break apart as Crimson's hoof traced an intricate, if somewhat broke-looking, arcane circle on the floor of the broken bazaar. The water split apart where her hoof touched it, leaving the wet but otherwise untouched and bare ground beneath with walls of water an inch or so high to either side of the lines that made the circle. It was completed by the strange, squiggly writing he recognised as old magic ‘carved’ into the water.

He had been standing in the centre of the water circle one moment, with Crimson whispering under her breath in a strange language he didn't recognise, just before a flash of light obscured his vision. He briefly thought it strange that he seemed to recall hearing different-sounding languages from both Crimson and others when they cast old magic. That was quickly replaced by alarm when his sight returned and he was standing before the senate of changeling rulers.

He blurted out an accusation at an important-looking changeling, grabbed Chrysalis, and they were both teleported out of there before anyone could so much as say boo to them. Handy hoped to God his assumption was right based on what he overheard in the dungeons and that Chrysalis' chains did not prevent magic being used on her. It was a hilarious security oversight looking back on it. It would be no matter so long as both of them were in the safety of the bazaar while the rest of the plan went down everything would go off without a hitch…

So of course something went wrong.

Handy rather dizzily pulled himself to his feet, but not before the high-backed chair he was gripping onto for balance fell over, and he went crashing back to the ground with it. He groaned and pulled himself upright, his vision swimming and his feet struggling to co-ordinate with his disorientation.

He shook himself awake. He was in a bedroom of some kind. It was a mess: furnishings strewn everywhere, broken tables, and the bed torn up. It was unnecessarily large and dark, and the only light came from that strange crystal sphere behind him.

"Where the hell…?" he managed with a whisper. He drew out his hammer on reflex and cautiously stepped forward. "You have got to be fucking kidding me."

He still did not know where he was but it definitely wasn't where he was supposed to be. He got his first clue when he drew near a wall that felt velvety, as if covered in felt. He grabbed the hem of what turned out to be the drapes of a window leading to a balcony and found himself looking over Lepidopolis in all is dark glory. Only then did he realise he was still in the palace.

'Fuck!' he cursed inwardly, alarmed that he was stuck here. He really didn't want to be here when the rest of the plan came to fruition. He wasn't like Jacques. He needed to get out of here now! Moving to the door of the room, his sight finally grew accustomed to the dark. He didn't hear anything beyond the wooden doors. That was surprising. This must be new—nearly all of the doors he'd encountered down here had been made out of some kind of slate.

He paid it no mind and pushed open the door, eager to take advantage of an opportunity to sneak out of this death trap of a room and find his way out of the palace before someone cornered him. He opened the door and strode confidently into the empty apartments beyond.

Except they weren't empty.

The apartments were occupied by at least a dozen changelings in various states of battle readiness. Some wore armour, some had their hooves near their spears, and more than a couple were apparently eating sandwiches and drinking while playing cards. One guy in the back near an active oven had a brightly lit magical staff, robe, and wizard hat. He even had a beard, the first one he ever saw on a changeling.

All of them looked at him dumbfounded, mouths agape. Apparently the doors to the bedroom Handy had just emerged from were warded to be soundproofed from both sides.

"…Bollocks."

--=--

"I don't know where he is! Release me at once!" Chrysalis shouted. Crimson let out a frustrated noise and allowed the changeling queen to drop once more into the water at their hooves. Keeping her spell books levitated above the water, Crimson then made her way past Chrysalis deeper into the bazaar. Chrysalis caught her breath from where the magic had been pressing against her throat and eyed the red pony suspiciously.

"How… did you get here?" she managed after a time.

"It doesn't matter. Come on."

"I am not going anywhere with you," Chrysalis said sternly as she got to her hooves. Crimson looked over her shoulder at her with a raised brow. "I am Queen Chrysalis of the—PBBLTBBLTLTPLBTLT!"

Crimson lifted her hoof from the floor, her horn aglow with old magic as Chrysalis recovered from the high pressured blast of water she got straight to the face when Crimson pressed her hoof to the water just so.

"HOW DARE YOU—PPPBBBBLLLTLTTRGERTGRTGRST!"

"What was that?" Crimson asked, lifting her hoof again. "I couldn't quite make it out."

"I said—PPPBBBLLLT!" Crimson lifted her hoof and let the magic dissipate from her horn.

"Are you done yet?" Crimson asked the panting and thoroughly drenched queen. Chrysalis didn't respond. "Good. Now shake yourself off and come with me. We are not done yet.” Chrysalis flat out growled at the warlock but said nothing, looking around her. The bazaar's roof was broken in places, with the biggest gap being where… where it lay. Tentatively, and having nowhere else to go, she followed after Crimson, turning a corner after the dark mage.

And then she came face-to-tooth with the one thing she never wanted to be near ever again.

Chrysalis stared at the very dead dragon for a few moments, watching the water coruscate over the bone of its massive scowl that had not all that long ago very nearly reduced her to cinders and ash with unnatural fire. She had only kept it where it lay for the proof of her accomplishments. Well, the human's accomplishments, but it furthered her ends when the other changelings inevitably started coming. It was her trophy no matter how much it set her ill at ease to look out from her balcony and see it spread over her city. They had recovered the statue at least.

"Get in." Chrysalis blinked herself aware once more.

"What?"

"I said get in," Crimson said from atop the dragon skull. Chrysalis looked down from her to the skull and back again.

"You mean… in there?"

"Yes."

There was no sound apart from the crash of the water upon the skeleton's mighty back for a few interminable seconds.

"You can't be serious."

"I am deathly serious. Hurry up, you can sit in the mouth."

"…How about no?"

--=--

Handy greeted the sudden audience of changelings enthusiastically.

A gleam of silver, a loud crack, a changeling sent careening off of his seat as the room filled with panic.

Very enthusiastically.

A spear thrust, yells in multiple languages, miscommunication between the various groups represented by this squadron, another changeling sent to the floor by Handy’s hammer blows.

But alas, numbers were numbers, and there was only so much one could do when all one had was but a simple warhammer.

Handy withdrew into the bedroom once again, having only managed to take out one of the changelings for certain… he thought. He gave another one a tremendous whack with his hammer, but that guy wore a breastplate, so he'd be fine. The mage in the back of the room gripped his staff in his forehooves, and Handy opted to not find out what kind of magic he used it for.

He slammed the door shut just in time to feel a tremendous force explode against it, nearly forcing him to the floor. Guess the mage's magic was on the siege warfare side of things.

"God damn it, you have got to be joking me…" He looked out to the window to his left. Crimson hadn't enacted the distraction yet. What the hell could be keeping her!?"

--=--

"Just get in the stupid dragon!"

"I am not getting in the stupid dragon!"

"It's dead; what is your problem!?"

"My problem is that it tried to eat me!"

"It's hardly going to eat you now, is it!?"

"That doesn't make me feel any better about riding in a cage made of dragon's teeth!"

"Look, you either get in the dragon right this instant, or I will make the skeleton eat you!"

--=--

Whatever it was, Handy was sure it had to be a good reason. Hopefully the delay wasn't due to Chrysalis ending up somewhere entirely unexpected like he did. In that case, everything had just gone to hell.

The door shook again, and this time Handy actually saw magical sparks dance along the enchan—infused wood. Handy briefly wondered why Thorax was so insistent on the terminology. What was the difference? A magic object was the same as a magic object, right?

The door he was pressing his shoulder against exploded, and Handy let out a roar of pain that he could not hear through the ringing in his ears. He clasped his right shoulder and upper arm which was now peppered with wood splinters that his clothes failed to block. He rolled back onto his side and pushed himself away from the door, hearing the chittering laughter of the changelings in the apartments outside. The dust cleared and he saw several of the changelings gathered beyond the ruined doorway.

In the confusion, the lazy guards, who ought to have been patrolling the palace ever since Crimson assaulted the front steps of the ziggurat, had gathered their weapons and armour. These were not the mismatched plate and steel weapons he had seen in the guards of the city below. These weapons were sable. Dark, and rough, the texture of the hard substance that coated the city, their weapons were the only things that gleamed in the low light, sharp and deadly.

Surprisingly for quadrupeds, they had shields. Those closest to him stood with their left most forelegs forward, and he could just make out a hint of an armoured hoof touching the floor beneath the oval shields. That meant they were attached to their legs somehow and angled away from their faces while their short spears were held in the crook of their right legs and levelled at him. Handy managed to pull himself to his feet and really began missing his armour. He felt naked and exposed without it at the best of times, but now he was facing down an angry gaggle of fae horses and their many sharp implements of death.

Yay.

They didn't move, however, for what little good that did Handy. The gathered shield wall parted at an angry bark from behind them, and Handy saw the approach of the mage changeling. He could see him better now, his eye plates a deep crimson and his mane a sick green, as was his elongated beard and ridiculous Fu Manchu moustache. The changeling barked something at him in an unfamiliar language, and a couple of the changelings behind him snickered.

"I'm sorry, but I don't speak wanker," Handy said sweetly in Irish, his tone at odds with his intent. Judging by the scowls, his audience had picked up on the mocking subtext.

"You die, intruder!" the wizard spat in broken Equestrian. He slammed the butt of his staff into the ground. There was a crystal entwined in the staff's tip, held in place with what looked like rope that had been dipped in tar and blackened. The gem was colourless but grew bright, blue, and luminous as lightning crackled about it. Handy looked to dive out of the way, but there was nowhere to hide. The nearest cover would be the far side of the bed, but the magic would strike him before he crossed it. Curse him for a fool for not finding a way to bring his armour!

The wizard murmured something, and Handy saw his horn light up and change colour as magic flowed between it and his staff. Why a creature with a horn needed a magical staff for their wizardry was beyond Handy.

The lightning flashed out, numerous bolts striking areas all around the room, leaving blackened charred marks where they struck. The continuous blasts ensured Handy was going nowhere while the centre remained free of lightning strikes. The bed actually caught fire, and Handy let out an involuntary, inhuman shriek as he whirled around to face it. He backed up as much as he could without walking into a wall of lightning.

All the while, the centre of the gem-tipped staff grew brighter and brighter and crackled with raw power. The room was filled with the scent of burnt ozone, burning wood, and silk, and Handy could taste iron in his mouth and feel the warm touch of blood running from his nose. His eyes widened at the wizard as he threw his arms defensively before him.

A deafening thunderclap rebounded about the room, and the last thing Handy knew before his world turned white for the umpteenth time that day was the raw feeling of power coruscating through him and what felt like his soul leaving his body.

Well, that was what it felt like to him—he had no experience with being struck by lightning. Gingerly, he flexed the suddenly stiff muscles of his hand. His entire body thrilled with energy and, wonder of wonders, he could actually feel his left arm again! For the time anyway, for he could already feel it begin to tingle and numb once more. Everything felt stiff as though he had been sleeping on a hard surface, but none of his joints cracked. He pulled himself up from where he lay, heaped into a pile by the wall. Blinking his eyes back into focus, he saw the room blackened and torn asunder, worse than it had been before. The fire that had been on the bed had petered out. His alarm and fear tempered somewhat with this knowledge.

Something bright kept flashing nearby, but his scrambled mind couldn't focus on it. It wasn't until his hearing finally returned, as if emerging from a body of water and hearing the world come alive, did he finally look down. There, clasped in a dead man's grip, humming with power and glowing like an incandescent star, was his hammer. He could barely make out any of the details on its surface. Indeed, he could barely make out its shape, such was the brightness that hurt his eyes.

Arcs of magical lightning leapt from it and struck nearby objects. He jerked his foot away as it struck the floor, flinching once more when it struck some fine pot on a set of drawers next to him. However, it never struck him.

He shakily got to his feet, staring at the object in his grip in silent awe, and admittedly, some amount of fear. It had been struck in Manehatten with lightning and granted him a powerful hammer blow. This wizard had struck it with, apparently, everything he had.

Now the energy crackled happily about Handy's closed fist. If he had any doubts that the witch had done something to his war hammer, they were dispelled now and for good. The only question remained was what other kind of magic could it absorb and contain if it was struck. He heard coughing and looked out the ruined door to see the gathered changelings, themselves knocked back and discombobulated by the force of the blast, come to their senses. None of their shocked faces came close to the look of sheer fear on the mage himself when he pulled himself to his hooves. Handy looked to the hammer.

"Oh…" He looked back at the changelings gravely, barely able to hide his victorious smirk. "Oh, son."

--=--

Now you may be wondering, had Handy's plan gone right and he wasn't now re-enacting something from the prophecy of the Ragnarök on some poor bastards, what was next?

Well, in truth, the answer was 'another distraction'. Handy's plan didn't end just by getting Chrysalis out of harm's way—that was just the beginning. Once he got the senate hall of leaders nice and riled up, word would trickle back to the guards outside, who had grown tired and unfocused after hours of not finding the threat to the palace.

Then one of two things would occur: confusion and infighting, or all of them would hurry back to defend the palace, depending on the nature of the word that came forth. Either was good as far as Handy was concerned. In one they were already divided and likely to scatter, and in the other, they were all in one place and would scatter even more confusedly.

What could Handy do to sow confusion and division in their ranks? If your thoughts didn't automatically go to Crimson, you bring shame upon yourself and your family and your cow. Go sit in the corner.

But what could Crimson do? She was powerful, true, but was Handy really willing to risk her against an army that could outnumber, outmanoeuvre, and overpower a rogue wizard? Of course not.

So the plan involved throwing a dragon at them instead.

Yes. Really.

With a terrible, ominous groan that made the very earth rumble, buildings shook and reverberated across the entire city, and the great cadaver of the terrible wyrm appeared to come alive once more. Enraptured in fell green magicks, the shambling skeletal corpse emerged from the ruins that had been its final resting place. Its shattered ribcage and ruined spine proved no inconvenience as it rose on its rear legs, broken fragments of bones hovering in the air, lifted by currents of aetheric violence. Two massive claws clamped down on the ceiling of the ruined and abandoned bazaar, and its depthless eyes surveyed its old haunt with all the sovereignty of Death itself.

For a brief moment, it seemed as if the whole world had stopped. That was before a booming, commanding voice echoed across the cityscape, unnaturally amplified by magic.

"I, Queen Chrysalis of the Changelings, command you to cease!" The voice emanated from atop the skull of the dragon, whereupon the changeling queen rode. Her horn lit up with incandescent light so that all could see her, whether they hung in air, skulked the streets below, or hid amidst the luminous flora of the cavern ceiling. All saw the queen riding atop a nightmare that should not be.

They didn't happen to see the unicorn warlock riding in its mouth, sweating from the effort of her magic as the interior of the skull lit up with arcane circles and runes drawn into them with chalk. Her eyes were aglow and trailing mist, her horn incandescent, her mouth pouting as she snorted in indignation. She wanted to be the one riding the dragon's skull and instilling fear and terror into all of the changelings, but somehow Chrysalis had talked her into swapping places. The idea was for Chrysalis' voice to come from the dragon's mouth, but this worked too. She guessed.

The various parchments and pages of the spell book she needed to perform this intricate and taxing rite flurried about her. She needed to repeat them again and again, and that meant memorizing them again and again after each spell. It was exhausting work, and she could feel the strain getting to her. However, if her master was right, this shouldn't be necessary for too long.

"Foolish lings who dare challenge my power! You stand before me and my home!? Be gone before I crush you like the worthless vermin you are!" The dragon's maw opened, and Crimson's horn flared in brightness, revealing nothing but the horrendous visage of a tremendous ball of green fire held in the great skeleton's jaws. An unearthly roar shook the very cavern walls in challenge.

They had accounted for everything. They had accounted for a number of the changelings to attack the dragon while others flew to the palace to protect their lieges. They had accounted for the changelings to take up formations and seek to make an impenetrable wall between the palace and the great undead dragon. They had even, at worst, expected them to charge the dragon en masse, which would require a rather large degree of effort on the part of Chrysalis and Crimson to defend themselves. Between the dragon as an animate shield and Crimson's powerful magic, however, they might do enough damage to dissuade the majority of them.

They had not expected the entire swarm that hung in the air above the city like a living mass of blackness to break and route.

To a ling, they all had fucking booked it.

"…Huh," Chrysalis murmured.

"What happened!? What’s going on?" Crimson called out.

"They uh…" Chrysalis looked around her, wide-eyed and surprised to see the swarms of changelings dissipate, flying to the respective districts where their colonial kindred were housed. Some swarms, she noticed, flew into the darkness, towards the entrances to the lower cities. "They just… left."

"What!?"

"I said they all ran away!" Chrysalis shouted down, her voice no longer amplified.

"All of them!?"

"Yes!"

"So I can let this vision drop!?"

"If you feel you must." Chrysalis sighed, then stumbled as she steadied herself, the dragon having moved expectantly. The obscene, ossified husk steadied itself on four claws, and tremendous cracks could be heard as the bones locked in place through the power of the old magic coruscating through it. "What are you doing!?"

"Keeping… up… appearances!" Crimson managed as the head fixed upon the palace itself before locking in place with a jarring movement that threw Chrysalis from the skull. Her wings shot out and buzzed in the air as she caught herself from falling.

"Be careful, pony, you almost… Pony?" Chrysalis hovered near the now stationary dragon skull. Once again she looked up at it and had to suppress a shudder. Had she really managed to ride atop this thing? She flew towards the closed mouth, uncomfortably noting how some of the teeth were as long as she was tall. "Crimson?"

Nothing.

She flew underneath the skull's mighty jaw, feeling the coruscating magical aftereffects of the pony's sorcery lingering around its tremendous bulk. She emerged into the skull through a space beneath the jaw and looked around the eerily lit interior. The various strange runes and markings the pony had drawn still thrummed with eldritch power. The unicorn herself was located towards the front of the jaw, near the dragon's incisors… or its equivalent.

Nestled in her cloak, resting upon where the jaw bones drew together, the pony lay upon her tomes and parchments, keeping them safe. She was sleeping fitfully, passed out from the exertion of her endeavours. Chrysalis looked down upon her, noting curiously the smaller creature was in the grasp of tremendous fear. Whatever dreams assailing her were unpleasant in the extreme, yet not once did she hear Crimson whimper.

Several things tempted Chrysalis then: fear wasn't the most filling emotion to feed from, but it had a curious and intoxicating taste and power to it. Another was taking some of the magic parchments from under her. That was truly powerful magic, far more powerful than a mage as young as this had any right to be wielding with such little consequence. A smile touched upon her muzzle at the thought.

Alas, common sense overcame her greed as she left well enough alone. Whatever old magic was, it brought tremendous trouble with it, not least of which was Handy himself. The sooner she was rid of it, the sooner her changelings were safe from it. She also got the distinct impression that if she fed from Crimson and even the tiniest evidence of such was noticed, Handy would be markedly upset with her. That would be unhealthy.

For once, she elected not to antagonise the human any further. Withdrawing from the sleeping Crimson, her horn glowed. Illusion magic was not her speciality—well, at least when it was casted upon other people, and anyling who bothered to so much as give a cursory scan would uncover it. The vision of Crimson asleep in the dragon's maw shimmered and wavered until nothing was there than what one expected to see: bone, empty of any unwary pony.

"Sleep tight, young warlock," she said before departing the skull.

She hovered in the air, at a loss of what to do. The sky over the city was empty, the streets deserted. Changelings everywhere cowering in fear of her while her enemies were all in one location. The only ones who she could consult for further elements of the plan were missing or passed out from exhaustion respectively.

A flash of light caught her eye, and she looked up to towards the top of the ziggurat. More flashes came from the windows; something was happening up there. She also briefly noted that it was roughly where the location her dwellings within the palace were located.

She flew towards it.

--=--

Jacques, Thorax, and the other changelings had moved the second they saw the skeleton move.

They parted after a certain junction. Thorax's job would be easier now with the distraction, being as it was to take Façade and Glimmer with her. Their job was to find where the disaffected of Chrysalis’ loyalists were being held—her generals, her soldiers and those Sidhes deemed too dangerous. Jacques briefly caught her glancing back before the three of them disappeared down a darkened street which descended downwards.

He could only hope, after seeing the practical army of changelings above him disperse to the four winds, whatever guards that would impede her way would be similarly shaken by what occurred and abandon their posts. Briefly, he felt a flicker of concern before he chided himself and doubled down on his emotions. It was imperative he kept that iron ball in his heart right where every single changeling could see it.

However, his brief lapse had not gone unnoticed.

"I never agreed to this…" Quartz muttered beside them as the two galloped through the deserted streets. Jacques glanced at him for a moment, the changeling glaring back at him.

"Just keep your mouth shut and follow my lead." Jacques’ magic tightened the clasp on his pack that contained little party favours from Thorax. "You won't have to do anything."

"Then why am I even here!?"

"Plausibility. Just enough to get a hoof in the door. That's all we need.”

Getting up the unguarded front of the palace was a hassle because somepony had blown up the first hundred or so steps, but after some effort, they managed the exhausting climb. They had almost reached the entrance before they were finally accosted.

"Halt! Seize that pony!" a voice called from ahead of them. Jacques couldn't make out exactly how many of the palace guards lurked in the darkness of the palace entrance, but if he pulled this off, there could be a million and he wouldn't need to worry about a thing.

Handy didn't give him this task for his fighting ability.

"Oh cease your blathering. There is a dragon on the loose and you're fretting over an infiltrator!?" Jacques barked back at the guards. The changelings slowed as they advanced, surrounding him and Quartz. Several snarled at the blue-shelled changeling, who hissed in return. "Now out of my way; I need to reach the senate. I have important information."

The one in charge pushed forward. Unlike the others, his helmet shone a dull blue in the pale light.

"Who are you!? And what is this Chrysalis-loving filth doing here!?" the changeling challenged. Quartz bristling visibly. Jacques glanced back. So far so good. It seemed like knowledge of the Black Guard's little secret project was not terribly widespread amongst the changelings. Another little secret the Archon was hiding from his peers.

"Calm down, we're all 'Chrysalis loving filth now’," Jacques teased with a cruel smile.

"Watch your words!"

"Watch yours," Jacques challenged. "You're not the one commanding a dragon." As if to emphasise his point, the looming shape of the dragon in the midst of the city turned, and terrible, cracking noises could be heard echoing across the now silent city. "I don't think you need to worry about who my liege is, but rather I assume yours might like to hear what I have to say. I just came back from the surface."

"I'm not taking any chances. Seize them!" he shouted, keeping his eyes on the dragon in the distance. Jacques sighed and reached for his rapier.

"Wait!" a dry, cracking voice commanded. The captain froze before turning to face the newcomer. "We would like to hear what he has to say."

"Your Majesty, you shouldn't be out here. It isn't safe."

"Oh stand aside, child. Nowhere's safe, especially not in there with that lot." The voice drew nearer, and Jacques could make out the advancing forms of four changelings and something large in-between them.

The four changelings were larger than average and completely covered in stark white armour that neither shone nor glimmered, but was dull like that of the palace guards around him. Each plate was shaped, their legs looked whole, and their armour exaggerated an idealised changeling physique. At least he assumed that was what it was supposed to look like—it didn't stop their full-faced helms from looking like death masks. The four marched silently at the corners of the palanquin between them, consisting of a four poster with drawn sheets, obscuring whoever lay within. Whoever it was, it wasn't the Archon, which meant this might just go off without a hitch after all.

The guards backed off, and Jacques found himself uncomfortably the focus of the four larger changeling death guards whose expressionless masks turned to look down at him. A wracking cough shook the palanquin before the figure within continued.

"Speak. If it's important enough for the whole senate, I will judge it so. Be warned, if you waste my time, infiltrator, I will throw you to the guards. I care not if your liege controls a dead dragon!" Jacques smiled and bowed his head.

"Fair enough, your Highness," he said obsequiously, though he had not even the foggiest which Changeling potentate he was addressing. It hardly mattered. "I bring word of the Archon's treachery."

"I am bored already. What do I care if the Archon betrayed his word on this or that changeling, much less your own liege?"

"I think you'll find he betrayed much more than just Chrysalis..." He took the pack off from his side and opened it, revealing the spoils of Thorax's raid on the hideouts of the Archon's changelings in Blackport. "How much do you really know about his involvement with the Black Isles?"

--=--

You know, all things considered, it was funny.

BANG BANG, MAXWELL'S SILVER HAMMER CAME DOWN UPON HER HEAD~

Handy had always disliked the Beatles' music and had been certain nothing of theirs had polluted the sanctity of his phone, as he hated this song in particular.

BANG BANG, MAXWELL'S SILVER HAMMER MADE SURE SHE WAS DEAD~

Really, come on now. It was a song about some sociopath going to his girlfriend's house and murdering her in cold blood with a silver hammer. Then a school teacher, and then a judge because reasons.

Right now, he couldn't care less.

Thunder wracked the interior of the palace as music mingled in the air over the panicked screaming of many terrified changelings and the sound of the building shaking as if it was under siege. All the while, Handy was grinning like a loon.

"Don't run! Don't run! Come back! I just want to say hello!" He swung the hammer around and struck a wall, lightning coruscating from it like a living thing, tearing through the wall and causing the corridor to collapse as terrified changeling guards on the other end scrambled to get away, making it through a doorway before the roof fell down on them.

The unfortunate ones had made the mistake of standing up to him, with only one swing of his hammer wrecking enough destruction to sunder armour and send changelings flying in every direction, and the ones in the immediate vicinity were left stunned and writhing on the floor with electric shocks running through their bodies.

It was cathartic.

The raw power running through him was like nothing he had ever felt. He wielded lightning in his hands yet stood unharmed. He could feel the power surging through his arms and body, and from time to time his teeth chattered. Everywhere he struck, a destructive release of magical energy followed.

Months of bullshit, months of horror and suffering and pain, and right now at this moment he had the power to bring down buildings.

Of course he was going to use it.

He deliberately sought out any more changeling mages but only found two. One was obliging enough to strike at him with magic and gave his hammer a nice little recharge. Handy thanked him by knocking him into next week. The other one he found had skedaddled, abandoning his fellow when it became apparent Handy was targeting him specifically. After that, if there were any more, Handy didn’t see them. Word must have gotten around as he didn't run into any more guards either, unfortunately. Hell, he wasn't even sure where he was. He had gotten so caught up in the sheer rush of it all that he had lost track.

He couldn't see any windows, which meant he was somewhere on the interior, so he kept walking on. He made his way to a cloistered hall. The ceiling was high and arched, but the room was otherwise empty, with more doors off to the sides and large ones at either end.

The only thing occupying the room was a large statue in the centre of the wall on the far side of the room. It was tall and proud and stood up on two legs with its forelimbs held out before it. It was a changeling, sort of. It looked off somehow, though Handy wasn't sure why. He was too busy darting this way and that, twitchy and looking for enemies he could unleash his frustrations on.

Finding none, his focused turned back to the changeling statue, noticing it had a cocky grin. Handy found this unacceptable. With a manic smile, he approached the statue and struck its base with his war hammer. The magic all but emptied into the carved stone, and the base split apart with a tremendous crack. The lightning split the statue as bolts of magical energy shot up through it, exploding the legs and shattering the body and sending pieces flying everywhere. The head crashed onto the floor almost whole and intact, landing at his feet.

His hammer sparked and shimmered, though reduced in its brilliance from so much of the energy being spent. Handy found he was breathing heavily. Strange, he didn't feel exhausted. He felt alive!

Then he noticed his entire body was shaking, and slowly, painfully slowly, he came to his senses. He dropped the hammer and the weapon struck the floor with a spark as he stumbled back from it. He shook himself aware.

"W-W-What…" he managed through chattering teeth. Only now did he realise the potential dangers of constantly holding onto his hammer while it was brimming with God only knew how many volts of electricity… or magic electricity, or whatever the hell that stuff was. He could barely move any of the muscles in his right arm, and he was lucky he could pry his fingers off of the hammer's haft. They were taut like bowstrings. "What… What did I…?"

He looked at the destruction he had wrought on the statue for no other reason than the whim that had struck him. Only now did hints of memories come back to him, and he realised he recognised the face that had been on the statue. He looked at the now severed statue head. This had been the same statue from where he had taken the war hammer from in the first place. Chrysalis must have had it brought into the palace for some reason, and in his blindness he had destroyed it. He had thought back over the past few minutes of wreaking destruction along the palace. Not that he regretted it—that was immensely fun.

It was just… He suddenly realised how little control he had over himself while he did so. It reminded him very much of his first night as a vampire. He was intoxicated, high on power without the experience to wield it properly. Whatever had been done to his hammer, and whatever power it held when charged, it had gone to his head in a similar fashion. He stared at the weapon contemplatively.

"What the hell did that witch do to it?" he wondered aloud.

He didn't have long to think however, because that was roughly when something else shook the entire building to its foundations.

--=--

To say the Archon was having a bad day would be putting it mildly. Everything had been going so well...

One by one, the various potentates and rulers of the changelings left the senate chambers. The halls were awash with shouted orders, condemnations, and insults as the place was flooded with guards. He was shouting himself hoarse trying to maintain order, but noling would listen to him after the human’s accusations. Several had descended the forum and burst through the doors, themselves and their entourages spilling into the grand hallway leading to a central rotunda from where the palace split off in several directions. Several of them had already left and were beyond his ability to recall. Somehow that damnable lich in her palanquin had already fled the scene without anyling seeing her leave!

The only ones not raising their voices were the Hierophant and the anti-Hierophant, who had taken to conversing quietly in one corner. He snarled, for now the conspiracies would begin. He needed to reassert his authority now.

Before he could say anything, a voice cut across the noise.

"Archon Salintorix!" the voice cried. It was the ruler of the Stormlings with her death guard entourage. They advanced steadily across the rotunda towards the gaggle of rulers and their far more numerous courtiers and servants. "Answer for your crimes!"

The call was chorused by many in the gathered assembly, some genuinely angry, others quietly sneering, grateful for an opportunity to see the tall and proud Archon brought low. Salintorix gazed this way and that, staring into the defiant eyes of even lowly independent heads of sidhes.

"I will not answer for the empty accusations of an abomination!" the Archon cried. "Chrysalis is a known scoundrel and waste of flesh who employs monsters that should not be, and I should defend myself before whatever such a thing says at the behest of such a person?!"

"It is known you traffic with the Black Isles ponies!" a voice accused from somewhere in the crowd.

"And who to a ling here can tell me in all honesty, with their hearts open so that we all may see and taste their sincerity, that they have not had truck with those not of our kindred? For the good of their changelings? For their own gain? Who here has such integrity!?"

Silence.

"That's what I thought!" the Archon shouted. "I have committed no treason. Rather, there is an intruder in this palace who cuts through our defences and shudders the entire ziggurat with its force! There is an unknown terror at the behest of a fallen queen who should not exist, and even the rotten corpse of that dead dragon that lay outside has risen again! You accuse me of treachery!? What foul pacts must Chrysalis have made to control such fell powers!?"

"I am more interested in what fell pacts you have made with Princess Galaxia," the voice within the palanquin said smoothly. She lacked the two-toned voices of most changelings, but her voice was no less eerie for its lack. She coughed. "Perhaps you can explain why you had sold out the invasion of six years past?"

"Chrysalis' little ploy?" Salintorix laughed. "And let her rule us as the Triumphant? I think not." He cast his disdainful, imperious gaze across the gathered assembly. His eyes burning into each of their own, framed as his face was by the wrought iron that wrapped around it like a cage. "Who here who had the strength to rule for more than a decade does not remember agreeing with me in my plot to abandon her to her fate?" Again, silence.

"Indeed." Salintorix turned back as the Stormling ruler spoke again. "Pity it was not your concern for changeling kind, or even your petty ambitions that sowed the seeds of your desire to see Chrysalis' downfall."

"What are you implying?" Salintorix snarled through gritted teeth.

"Oh, monsieur Archon, surely you can guess?" Jacques slinked out from behind the palanquin, the tell-tale Chrysalis loyalist slinking behind him. Rare were the blue-backs amongst the ranks of the other colonies.

That was not what caused the Archon to seethe with rage.

"You dare accuse me of treachery Stormling… YET YOU BRING A PONY HERE INTO OUR MIDST!" he bellowed, pointing an accusatory hoof at Jacques. For once, Jacques did not wear his cocky smile as predatory eyes up and down the halls leading to the senate forum locked on him. There was rather a lot of changelings here, and whether or not he could hide his emotions wouldn't do him all that good if he was to be overcome and captured.

"You flatter me, monsieur Archon," Jacques said smoothly, but kept his face expressionless. If the changeling in the palanquin had known he was actually a pony rather than just an infiltrator who didn't bother to drop his disguise, she said nothing. Clever girl. "I would have been delighted to accept such an invitation. Alas, I let myself in, I am afraid. With help of course." He nodded to Quartz, who tried his best not to flinch when every eye in the room locked on him simultaneously. Jacques powered on.

"No, my good stallion—"

"What are you all waiting for? Remove him!" Salintorix demanded.

"I rather think we should hear what he has to say," the queen of the Stormlings interceded. Had there been any amidst the mumbling audience likely to follow the Archon's direction, they now hesitated. It was one thing to gang up on one political enemy; it was another thing to take sides between two major players.

"Thank you, bon madame," Jacques continued quickly before anything else happened. He withdrew several papers from the satchel on his side. "The Archon here, in return for favouritism with Princess Galaxia of the Black Isles, perverted the course of pretty much any and every major plot or machination the major changeling powers engaged in. Something tells me you all already knew that," Jacques said, grateful for the little ball of iron keeping his true feelings a secret. He only hoped nopony could hear his heart hammering away inside his chest. Before meeting Thorax, he had no idea changelings weren't all united in purpose. Now, thanks to Handy, he was in the thick of a hornet's nest of sneering emotivores with daggers behind their backs.

Apparently Handy believed Jacques' guile would help him get the needed points across, and he'd be able to extract himself with wit alone if necessary. If not, he'd figure something out. He had spent two hours convincing him to agree to this, and Jacques still wasn't sure how he got talked into it. Well… nothing for it now.

"You probably knew nothing about teaching her mageocracy pretty much every secret of the lore of changeling magicks," he continued, before raising a hoof and tapping his chest pointedly, "including this little trick right here. Isn't that right, Archon?"

"Apostasy!" the hierophants yelled in unison. The high priests, both the orthodox and the heretic, snarled. To see the pair come to agree condemnation on anything was a shock. The significance was lost on Jacques, for he just saw two dourly dressed changelings spit fury at the Archon.

"The secrets of the Outer Rings are not for anyling not of the kindred!" cried the one with the hat.

"What else have you betrayed? Hmm? Have you shared secrets that are not meant for your lesser, let alone foreigners!?" cried the one with the blindfold.

"I have done no such thing! The pony lies!"

"Oh do I now?" Jacques said. He opened his heart.

"What are you doing, you mad pony!?" Quartz hissed at him.

"Showing my hoof. Roll with it," Jacques replied quietly before raising his voice. "I am Jacques of Blackport, swordsstallion for hire and, for more years than I care to recount, an agent of the Viceroy of the Black Isles Enclave. And yes, that means I am… was an agent in the service of the very princess Archon Salintorix shared so many wonderful secrets with in return for favours." He tossed the sheaf of papers, treaties, and other missives amongst them to the floor where they scattered. Royal insignias could be seen, along with seals and signatures, and those nearby cried foul when they saw them. "Oh, and there's far more where that comes from, isn't there, Salintorix? Oh, what fun it was all those many, many, many times I had to interact with your changelings on my former government's behalf. And what fun it was dodging the occasional assassin. I do miss the regular Saturday night transactions. Particularly those oh so interesting-looking relics you sold off to the viceroyalty."

"What relics? What is he talking about?" Queen Amethyst spoke up at last, the young queen having held her word until now. She had been leaning close to the Archon's camp as she was an old blood, but her following was comparatively tiny compared to most others. She felt it in her best interests to align with someling powerful, and seeing as the Archon had successfully stolen the city out from under Chrysalis, he made the most sense. But now…

"Oh, I couldn't possibly speculate…" Jacques said, inspecting a hoof. "Ancient artefacts humming with magic are not my speciality, you see, but there was one that caught my eye… Strange, it was a parchment, you see. Old, yet no age ever seemed to wear away at it. It was incomplete with many parts torn from its sides and corners."

He looked up. Most of the changelings were looking at him curiously. Some were whispering conspiratorially, while a few, notably the most impressive-looking, were looking at him with a blankness he was more than familiar with. That meant they were dreading his next words, fearing what he could be referring to. Good.

He opened his mouth and described what he saw upon the parchment, and the entire hall erupted in outrage.

The Archon was forced out into the centre of the hall, looking around as the changelings hurled abuse and condemnations. Others threw harder things: stones, shoes, and in a few cases, literal daggers that clanked uselessly against the floor. Jacques had to blink at that. Anywhere else, throwing daggers at political enemies usually resulted in the guards flooding the hall and dragging the offenders away from each other. Changelings apparently looked at things differently.

"Traitor!"

"You sold out our salvation!"

"How can we ever find home now!?"

"Gods damn you, Salintorix the Pitiable!"

"Silence!" Salintorix demanded, turning this way and that, his horn aglow, tossing the things thrown at him back into the crowds, regardless of from whence they originated. Amethyst quietly slunk back into the crowd. Like the Archon, she had not taken servants or guards in with her. Now that seemed foolish, so she distanced herself from him now in his hour of disgrace. "That worthless Key had never saved us in over seven centuries of effort, even when it was whole! You blind fools still hope to survive the Wither with its tattered remains!? "

"Hope is all we have left!" Everyone in the room turned to the new voice. The halls that led from the senate hall graced the summit of the ziggurat, the tall walls coming to an end were the great windows began. The windows soared and connected the stone of the palace to the cavern ceiling. Upon an opening, near the base of the windows, towering above the gathered assembly stood Chrysalis, framed in the multihued light of the forest of luminescent moss and flora that covered the cavern above. "Why do you think I took this city back in the first place?"

--=--

Thorax barrelled bodily into the armoured changeling. The bright green backed warrior grunted in pain before she backed up, turned, and bucked, sending both rear hooves squarely into his jaw and knocking him out. Façade and Glimmer fell upon the last two remaining guards. The three reconvened near Thorax as she rummaged through the bodies, searching for the infused key to open the great doors to the prison vault.

The two stood in silence over her for a moment before she slowed her work, sighing.

"What is it?" she asked at last, without looking up.

"…It's good to see you again, Thorax," Façade said at last.

"Listen, about last time, we parted… on somewhat bad terms," Glimmer continued.

"It's fine," Thorax said before continuing her search. "I didn't think things would turn out like this either." She finally smiled when she successfully managed to find the key. The small stone cylinder bore three strangely shaped protrusions and was laced with straight, angular, glowing lines of alternating red and green light. "If it's all the same, nectar is on me when we get back to our sidhes."

Façade and Glimmer looked at each other for a moment with uncertainty.

"Y-Yeah…"

"About that…" Thorax paused.

"What?"

"It's nothing," Façade continued. "It's just… we kinda swore… We'll tell you about it later. Let's… Let's just free the others."

Thorax eyed both of them for a moment before narrowing her gaze.

"Sure. We'll talk later," she murmured before turning back to the door. She slid the key in and turned, hearing the groaning rumble of stone on stone as the mechanisms began to work to open the vault and free her colony.

Whatever was worrying them could wait.

She was too busy enjoying the feelings of gratitude and relief that practically flooded out of the doors towards her.

--=--

The Archon landed hard on the stone floor, having been blasted across the hall and landing in the centre of the forum through the great senate hall doors. Chrysalis landed lightly on the ground in front of the Stormling contingent. She glanced back at Jacques with a raised eyebrow, then looked at the palanquin before turning back to face the gathered changelings.

"My friends…" she said sweetly, "my… kindred. How good of you to finally see the error of your ways!" She was not addressed in response from any quarter, though the gathered factions regarded her warily. "I'm so glad I could finally persuade you away from the good Archon's… games." She smirked and strode confidently amongst them. Not a single changeling said a word against her, knowing the power balance had been so radically upset in little over the space of a few hours, more than a few were reconsidering their alliances and schemes. That and a goodly number of them knew Chrysalis now had very good reasons to come down hard on them. It did not do to poke the lioness in her den.

Salintorix struggled to pull himself up off of the ground. Chrysalis lit her horn and fired another blast of magic at the fallen Archon, sending him back to the floor.

"No no, don't get up," Chrysalis smiled. "I'll come to you~"

"Do not come near me, you worm…" Salintorix snarled, bleeding from the parts where his iron cage mask met his flesh. "You are unworthy…"

"Oh, I am unworthy, am I? Hmhmhm, I don't think you've got quite as firm a grasp on the situation as you think, dear Salintorix. Look around." Chrysalis waved a hoof. "Yesterday you ruled this city, with all these others bickering away under you, for you to manipulate as you saw fit, with me as your captive. Now? Noling will stand with you. Not even if I am here all on my lonesome~"

The Archon looked up, now alone and empty in the senate hall, with all of the changelings on the far side of the great double doors lining the hallway, watching him, some laughing. The judgement and glee in their eyes was too much.

He slammed his hoof down, and the ground cracked at his touch. Dust and small stones that had broken away lifted upwards as energy coursed through the very air itself.

"I tried… to include all of you. I tried… doing it the peaceful way, with as little sacrifices as possible. I worked… with the princess so that with her arcane secrets, we could all survive in comfort and security until the very inevitable end of our time. But if you will not have peace under me…" Salintorix fumed, his words carrying a strange power. A white circle of fire came to life, bursting into flames and slowly drawing a circle around him. The customary green of changeling magic that coursed through his horn turned a ghostly, fiery white. When he opened his eyes there was such a piercing look of utter hate that Chrysalis halted in her steps. "Then you shall have war."

The ground exploded, torrents of fire erupting upwards all over the forum, magical sigils and symbols materialising in the air around the Archon. The brilliance was near blinding, and Chrysalis took to the air as she felt the ground rumble beneath her. The sigils launched from Salintorix and sped across the air in blinding trails of dazzling light. Where they struck, walls exploded and changelings died in blinding flashes of light. They left nothing behind but the metal of their armours and ornaments and the ashes of their remains.

Chaos ensued. Magic spells by loyal mages shielded their masters as they took flight from the halls. Brave soldiers put themselves between the furious Archon and their leaders, and all the while, pulsing walls of magic erupted from the Archon, knocking changelings off their hooves and out of the air, making their escape twice as difficult. Chrysalis saw all this and let out a wailing cry of anger.

"So! The hermit alicorn taught you her magic in return for your chicanery, did she!?" Chrysalis bellowed, creating a shield over herself and firing arrows of magical changeling sorcery to the ground, intercepting the arcane missiles of the Archon. He looked up, the distraction buying the others time. "How many of our secrets did you trade away for that, I wonder?"

Salintorix didn't respond, merely standing there. The torrents of fire that erupted from the floors of the senate hall settled, and all the finery that hung from the ceiling was set ablaze. He ceased his magical assaults, and the changelings took the opportunity to scatter. All except for the young queen Amethyst, who separated from the stampeding herd of changelings, taking to the air and hanging around a corner, watching.

The Archon's horn continued to glow luminously as he stared up at her.

And then all at once, an eruption of magical force thundered from his horn. Chrysalis' eyes widened as she fired everything she had in response. The beams crashed into each other with tremendous force, the building shaking and the air crackling with eldritch energy as the arcane power of pony magic clashed with all the learned sorceries of changeling arts.

The contest caused walls to break apart, columns to tumble, and masonry to linger in the air, gravitating around the central mass of conflicting magic. The Archon was at the top of his power, rested, well fed, and brimming to the tip of his horn with the emotional energy that all changeling fed from. Not an ounce of that was being used to fuel the magic he now wielded. The same could not be said for Chrysalis. Her magic was weakened, her horn strained. Her face was held in a desperate grimace of pain and effort, but in the end, the conclusion was inevitable.

Chrysalis' magic broke, and the Archon's blast tore her beam aside and collided with her horn.

A flash of light, a thunderous explosion, and a shockwave rocked the entire palace and broke the windows far above them. Broken shards of glass showered outwards, covering the ziggurat as Chrysalis was sent flying out into the darkness. The Archon stood with a mere wince for all the trouble it had caused him. White fire caroused along the stonework in little patches here and there, and the senate was all but destroyed in the contest. That hardly mattered.

"Heh… hehehe!" He threw his head back in laughter. "You thought to challenge me!?" he shouted with incredulity to the empty halls as he strode to the central rotunda, passing the ash and discarded weapons. “Even with all of this, even with revealing all my secrets and treacheries, did you honestly think you had a chance? Did any of you truly think you could subjugate me? I am Archon Salintorix and I will not be the lesser of any changeling! Who could think to challenge me and live!?”

That was roughly when a thunderbolt's worth of 'fuck you' danced across the ground and slammed into the Archon's side, knocking him from his feet for a brief moment as his body spasmed uncontrollably. He recovered with a start, drawing in breath rapidly as he scrambled back to his feet, his mane wild and his expression manic as he cast his maddened gaze towards who would dare to interlope.

Calmly walking down the central hall towards the rotunda came the abomination. His robes were cut to ribbons and practically hung from his limbs, his face obscured beneath dirt, dust, and rivulets of blood falling from his nose, covering his mouth and jaw in a bright red at odds with the pale colouration of his dust covered hair and skin. He carried in both hands a silver war hammer that crackled with magical power as he strode along the cracked ground where the arc of lightning had torn it up before striking Salintorix.

"Evenin’," the Pale One simply said.

--=--

Amethyst recovered groggily, covered as she was in parts of rubble and ash. She winced as she moved her shoulders, hurt but not badly so, she tried to get her bearings.

She saw the Archon by the central rotunda, facing away from her. His horn was glowing and his expression was furious. She did not see who he was yelling at, being around a corner. She could barely even hear him over the ringing of her ears. It didn't matter. She stretched her wings and tested them. Wincing, she took to the air and rose to the windows. The Archon didn't notice her. At this point, she was just fine with that. She reached the windows and cast a look back. The senate building was in utter ruins and the city looked empty, absent of anyling in the streets far below. The only changelings she could see were those of the various would-be rulers of changelings flee to the winds to their own strongholds within the city. And there, like a horrifying sentinel, stood Chrysalis' dead dragon. It had indeed risen from where it lay.

She clenched her teeth. She didn't like the Archon, noling did, but it would have been so much easier if Chrysalis just accepted her fate. Hell, if she'd just accept her offer, she could have avoided all of this! They all could! But no, Chrysalis had to summon her pet monsters and turn the entire world upside down.

Amethyst looked down, and could make out the form of Chrysalis in a lower courtyard on one of the ziggurat’s many surfaces. She was still moving. Amethyst looked back one more time before taking to the air and flying down.

--=--

Handy immediately regretted all of the things.

He was now running full tilt towards the Archon after the creature started yelling inarticulately and his horn began to glow. Handy had just enough time to close half of the distance before he was forced to jump to the side, landing hard on the stone ground as the Archon fired magical blasts at him. Handy just about made out the strange floating shapes and symbols of light before they were launched at him like tracer fire. A series of small explosions of stone followed in his wake where he ran.

Handy swung his hammer into the ground and another lightning bolt erupted across the ground before striking at the Archon. The Archon stood where he was, the lightning dissipating uselessly as it thrashed against his protective circle of magical fire. Handy cursed loudly as he pulled himself up and ran on.

The Archon's eyes glowed as he fired a magical blast from his horn. Handy stopped and drew his hammer up, bracing under the impact of the magic which caused his tattered robes to billow and snap in the air. He was forced back a step from the blast, but by the end of it, the Archon was left shouting inarticulate curses while Handy's hammer glowed anew. This time it was no longer crackling with lightning, the magic instead more steady and calm. It hummed gently, and Handy felt a subtle warmth creep up his arms from the new magic the hammer absorbed.

He swung down, but he needn't have bothered, for the swing itself was enough to launch the magic. A diagonal beam of light coursed through the air and crashed against the Archon's shield explosively. Salintorix shouted some spell and again the symbols came to life in the air. They sped off after Handy. Handy panicked and swung rapidly in the air, sending several arcs of light in response.

Strangely, rather than exploding, the symbols were launched back when they connected with the arcs of light, and the Archon yelped in surprise as his own explosive runes crashed into the ground around him and his magical aegis.

Handy wasn't entirely unscathed either. While dissuading the worst of the symbols, a few exploded in the ground next to him, and he was peppered with small stones. More than a few pierced his skin, and he roared in pain as he fell to his knees, his left leg giving out. He winced as he tested it. Yep, he could still move it and bear his weight on it, but God damn did it hurt. He pushed himself up with a limp and looked to where the Archon was, hidden behind the cloud of dust. Handy breathed heavily at this unexpected respite, looking down at his hammer. It still sparked, as some of the lightning magic was still contained within, but whatever this light magic was still glowed the brightest. He looked down, the ground covered with dust, ash, and pieces of changeling armour and weaponry. Did they all just abandon their stuff when the Archon went columbine on them?

He stooped down with some effort and picked up what looked like a clunky crossbow. Its handle was longer than it needed to be, even if the overall device was too small for a human to use comfortably, and the trigger guard was large and looping. He looked it over carefully before looking back up. He could hear the crackle of the magical fire now. He looked to the right and saw the senate hall over a dozen or so metres away alight with flames. His skin crawled.

"I don't know what you think you are, Terror." Handy faced the now exhausted and raspy voice of the Archon. The dust had finally settled to reveal the Archon surrounded by craters, a fiery wall of magic just beyond where he stood. He was completely unharmed, if a little tired.

"Oh come on, give me a fucking chance…" Handy breathed. He eyed the wall of fire which was growing taller. Magic hammer or no magic hammer, Handy wasn't going to go near that.

"But your magic cannot touch me," he preened as Handy looked at him in exasperation. "I studied this from Galaxia herself! No magical weapon can pierce these flames. I am utterly immune from your damned hammer!"

Handy took a few breaths before swallowing the build-up of saliva in his mouth. He glanced down as he reset his footing, favouring his right leg. He looked back up at the Archon and saw the utter confidence in his eyes. He had meant every word.

Handy only hoped he did so literally.

"Fine," he said, lifting the crossbow and balancing it with his hammer hand. He fired.

Being unschooled in the use of the crossbow, the recoil of the device nearly knocked the unprepared Handy off his already unsteady footing.

Alas, the distance was short enough, the target profile large enough, and the Archon caught unawares enough that it mattered not. The bolt of iron sailed through the air and passed through the wall of magical flame nearly unmolested.

The Archon blinked several times after stumbling backwards several steps as the flames died around him, wobbling and looking down, seeing the bolt stick out of his chest. He breathed heavily as the crimson fluid ran down his obsidian dermis. Salintorix looked up at Handy one last time, took a step forward, and collapsed.

Handy let his arm fall down. He stood there for a moment, focusing on his breathing. God, he was tired. Coughing and wiping his face, he looked down in surprise at the blood on his arm. Staring down at his hammer, he resolved to be more careful in the future. Even if that lightning never struck him, being that close to so much raw electrical currents could not have been good for him. He needed to get some blood, and soon. Just in case that did some damage to him internally that—

Handy tumbled to the ground and dropped his weapons as something collided with him from behind. He had turned his back on the Archon. He tried to roll over as something hard slammed into his side, and something cracked. Handy screamed in pain.

"Wretch! Abomination!" the Archon yelled as he tried to trample Handy, the iron bolt still sticking out of his chest, "Do you think I could be felled by something so small!? I will end you!"

Have you ever fought a horse? If so, you had my sympathies. Even a cursory thought experiment would help you realise that the absolute worst thing to happen if you did was being caught under their hooves. This was the position Handy now found himself.

Now, fortunately for Handy, the Archon, while larger than ordinary changelings and indeed slightly larger than Chrysalis, was nowhere near the size of an Earth horse. Well, that and changelings were lighter than they appeared anyway. Handy had a fighting chance. The last time he was knocked over in a fight with a quadruped happened in his early days in Equestria, he ended up with a broken leg. Nobody had time for that shit.

Time for science.

Handy kicked upwards, and the Archon roared in pain as his boot connected with a sensitive portion of his anatomy. Good news—they actually weren't Barbie doll people after all! He just couldn't see them for some reason. In the future, he'd consider that a blessing. Right now, he just needed a moment's breather to turn this around in his favour.

Handy roared in pain as he reached up and grabbed onto the face cage of the Archon's iron crown. Salintorix pressed his hoof against Handy's face to push him away and tried to get off. His horn began to glow. Handy roared with effort and slammed Salintorix’s head against the wall. The horn flickered, he slammed again, and the horn died. Handy slammed again and Salintorix relaxed the pressure he had placed on the human’s skull. Handy threw him off and groaned as he rolled over to try and get back to his feet. He only got to his knees before Salintorix was already once again standing, his face bloodied and furious. He lowered his head and gave a battle cry as he lunged at Handy.

The horn pierced Handy's torso in the side. Handy coughed in surprise, spitting blood up as he was knocked to the ground, while Salintorix struggled to keep on his hooves. Handy was in shock, his hand clamped down on his side. The wound was shallow and the blood was not pouring out, but the pain was immense. Handy frowned at the wound, confused. He should be left dying on the ground right now. He saw the hammer on the ground and reached for it. The Archon charged, but Handy swung around with a roar of effort, and the hammer, in an arc of brilliant light, clashed with Salintorix's head. The changeling crashed into the ground next to Handy, lightning coruscating across his body.

Handy tried to get back to his feet, but a sudden bolt of pain in his side brought him to his knees again. The light faded from the hammer; all that remained was the crackle of lightning. Salintorix recovered once more. God damn it, why wouldn't he just stay down!? Was that crossbow bolt not worrying him at all!? He stumbled over to Handy and raised his hooves to stomp down. Handy fell and rolled over just as he did so. The Archon tried to stomp again but Handy rolled back and leapt, grabbing onto Salintorix's crown and pulling him down, both of them crashing hard against the stone floor.

His fist clasped about the hammer just below its head, and he slammed it into the Archon's face. Again and again and again the blows came, and Salintorix could do nothing but attempt to flail and push Handy away. Handy pushed down against the struggling Archon, forcing himself to his knees. Again and again, he brought his hammer down, snapping and mangling the iron face cage. That thing about his head was protecting him, but not enough. Blow after blow after blow, Handy worked himself into a fury until finally he stopped.

The Archon was still alive.

Handy roared in frustration at the changeling and raised his hammer again, the weapon crackling. He held it there for a moment and looked around. The halls were quiet, the only sound the distant crackling of still burning flames. A gust blew through from the open windows above, and eddies of dust and ash stirred about them. The Archon lay before him, spent, bloodied, and broken. His chest rose and fell weakly, his eyes fluttering, and his legs occasionally spasmed as the remnants of the lightning wracked his body.

The fight was over.

Handy thought about it for a minute, his hand going to his side again. It was still bleeding. He looked at the Archon's horn, most of it covered in his blood.

"What the hell…?" He looked down at his hammer. That magic he had absorbed that the Archon was using… what was it? What the hell did it do to him? More importantly, how long would it last? He elected to stop worrying and do something, lest the answer to that question be ‘not very long.’ He eyed the Archon with contempt for a moment longer, thinking. He then spat on his face and pushed himself unsteadily to his feet.

"You know what? You're good as dead now anyway," he said, uncaring if the Archon could even hear him as he limped out of the hall. "Have fun with the changelings."

--=--

"Did you think you could get away so easily?" Amethyst snarled as she advanced on Chrysalis, head lowered dangerously and horn aglow. Chrysalis merely grunted in response, her hoof raised to her forehead, and she winced as it brushed where her horn has snapped off. The terrible force of the Archon's magic had sundered it from her brow.

Behind them, both the palace's senate hall burned, and the various leaders of the changelings spilled from the great ziggurat with their entourages. Queen Chrysalis and her younger antagonist were left unnoticed.

"I could have saved your changelings, kept them safe, made them a part of my following. It would have been a better fate than any of the others would have given them after what you did," Amethyst hissed, her magic slamming Chrysalis to the ground. "Everyling knows it was you who foolishly fell prey to your own desires, bringing our entire race another step closer to the Wither!"

She battered the tired queen twice more with magical blasts.

"More holes in our bodies, more love needed in order for foals to survive long enough to replace their parents." She was upon Chrysalis now and gave her a swift kick with her foreleg. "And now? I'll be lucky if I live long enough to see the turn of the next century. They scorned my mother for having me, rightly so, and I knew the same scorn would be turned upon you. I wanted to help you!"

"You… wanted to control them…"

"Them!?" Amethyst laughed. "You had more than one? Oh that is just fantastic. Where are they, Chrysalis!? Tell me, and I can at least promise you I'll keep them safe, unlike the rest of your changelings!"

"You'll not get anything from me… whelp…" Chrysalis sneered, "and I don't need your help!"

"Oh that’s right, you've got that abomination of yours. A fine job it's done, getting you this far, but that won't be enough to help you now!" Just as she said that, a tremendous bang could be heard on the heavy stone doors leading to the courtyard, coming from the inside of the palace. A second blow to the doors, this one resounding with a thunderclap, shaking the heavy stone doors and cracking them. Amethyst whirled back around to stare wide-eyed at the injured Chrysalis. She smirked as she struggled to regain her hooves.

"As… you were saying… child?" Chrysalis teased. Another tremendous boom and the doors looked as if they would collapse. Amethyst's horn glowed green and slowly, changeling fire washed over her body as it grew slightly taller, lither. The soft, gentle purples of her mane and tail elongated, turning teal. Her wings thinned and extended and the gird about her back and waist turned green as her blue eyes changed to match Chrysalis'. As a finishing touch, her very horn seemed to disappear, matching the broken one on Chrysalis' own forehead.

"We'll see…" she said in Chrysalis' voice. The queen was shocked with the audacity of being impersonated. Had she the strength to, she would have beaten the impersonator senseless for the insult. As it was, she barely had time to stammer before the doors burst forward, sending scattered intricately carved rock and wood fragments all over the courtyard and a cloud of dust billowing forth from the entrance.

Handy walked forward, his ramshackle robes of cloth torn and bloodied, his face dirtied and pale from where the dust stuck to his skin and discoloured his hair. In one hand was the hammer that might as well be a part of him. It seemed to be crackling with energy. In the other he held a cumbersome crossbow, looted from some unfortunate changeling. Its grip was obviously ill-suited for his hands.

"Quick, kill her!" Amethyst ordered. Chrysalis smirked at her then looked towards Handy again in full confidence that he would not fall for such a ploy.

Then her smirk fell.

Handy had stopped ten feet from the two of them, looking between them both, as if he wasn't sure which one was which. But that was ridiculous, he couldn't harm her—he had to know that. The geas should be able to let him know which was the real Chrysalis by just thinking abo— Then she gasped.

"Oh no— Heartless! Don't shoot, it’s me! She's the imposter!" Handy looked towards Chrysalis.

"This wretch is a pathetic queen of a lesser kindred impersonating me!" Amethyst proclaimed. Handy looked at her and raised an eyebrow.

"Don't listen to her, she's the imposter!"

"Shoot her now, human!"

"Handy, don't you dare—!"

"What are you waiting for!?"

Handy just looked back and forth between the two of them, blinking. That was the problem with not having the geas; he had no easy way to tell which was which. They were both bleeding from various cuts, which was useful, but Handy had never tasted Chrysalis' blood specifically, so he had no clue which was which by smell alone. His foot kicked against something and, looking down, he spotted a long, curved black spike that looked suspiciously like Chrysalis' horn. He looked up. Both the Chrysalises were missing their horns.

"Fucking changelings…" he breathed as he knelt down, putting the spent crossbow to the side and picking up the broken horn, studying it before looking up at the two injured changelings. The fire of the senate hall was burning furiously enough that its light illuminated the courtyard entirely and, thankfully, was far enough away from Handy that he didn't feel the need to run in fear, no matter how much his skin was crawling at even this remote proximity. Both the Chrysalises looked bedraggled, hurt, tired, and both of them were staring at him with desperate eyes. Only one of them was the actual Chrysalis he was here for, and the other likely had some troops of their own out looking for her. He didn't have much time to get things sorted before they had company.

He pocketed the horn and came to a decision.

"Right, there is one way to settle this," Handy began. "You recall the night in the forest, right?"

"Wha— oh, of course!" Chrysalis began, catching on.

"How could I forget?" Amethyst echoed.

"Do you remember what we did?"

"Vividly," Chrysalis said, glaring at Amethyst, who smiled.

"It was a night to remember," Amethyst said, matching her tone with Chrysalis' own. Handy turned to her. He held the war hammer in both hands as he calmly walked towards them.

"That night, you said I was like you changelings, that we have so much in common."

"I remember," Chrysalis said evenly.

"But we do!" Amethyst replied. Handy smiled lightly at her before turning and frowning at Chrysalis. The queen backed up slightly, fearing she had made some kind of mistake.

"And you remember what we did together of course," he said, having reached them and turning to Chrysalis with his back to Amethyst, his hammer slightly raised. "The secret we shared?"

"I-I—" Chrysalis stammered, her eyes searching the Heartless' face. This had to be a trick.

"I hope to share it again~" Amethyst cooed softly, walking closer, eager to see him finish Chrysalis on his own. Such delicious irony! Handy's grin revealed his fangs to Chrysalis.

"I'm glad to hear it."

Amethyst barely had time to register her mistake before the human had rounded on her and his fangs had sunk deep into her neck. The twin explosions of pain flared from the dermis of her neck before slowly dulling. She stuttered and shouted, trying to yank herself away but found herself trapped as the human's arms clasped about her like a vice. She flailed at him with her forehooves to no avail. She tried to use her magic but had to change back to allow her to use her horn. As she desperately tried to shift back, the changeling magic washing across her skin, she felt her sense dull. Her vision swam as the pain lessened. She felt the tug as the blood in her veins was forcibly drained from her with each heartbeat, but it did not alarm her. A pleasant sensation rippled through her consciousness, letting her feel as if she were wrapped in warm clouds and floating upon air. It left her weak limbed and listless, with hardly the strength to hold her body up. Her rear legs collapsed from under her until only her upper body remained held up in the human's grasp.

And as suddenly as it had began, it stopped. Her neck suddenly felt cold as the fangs left it. She was barely aware of the blurred reality around her and her laboured breathing as her head was gently laid onto the hard ground. It was strange—she could barely keep her heavy eyelids open, and for all the hardness of the stone beneath her, it felt strangely comfortable.

Chrysalis wasn't so fortunate as to have been left unaware of their condition. She had a front row seat to the full splendour of a vampiric feeding… and the strange effect it had on both its victims and upon the human who fed on them. The human seemed more vital, more alive somehow as his victim grew less, and she was struck by the sudden power and intensity behind his gaze when he finally turned away from Amethyst and looked at her. He paused for a moment before slowly casting his gaze about the palace courtyard, to the burning senate hall far above near its summit, to the chaos of the various changeling entourages disappearing to various sections of the city with their fleeing leaders. His gaze lingered on the briefly reanimated draconic skeleton, which stood tall, its bones fused together by Crimson's old magic. Had it had the remains of its wings, no doubt its wingspan would've stretched nearly the breadth of the entire upper city.

Chrysalis wasn't concerned about that. She was concerned with how his eyes appeared to be glowing and leaving a trail of light in the air as he moved. He turned back to her.

"Is this it?" he asked, gesturing out to the city, his voice sounding odd, as if resonating with a strange authority. A faint buzz could be heard as changelings began flying towards the palatial ziggurat. Handy did not seem disturbed by it, so Chrysalis could only hope that it meant it was her changelings that were approaching. "Are we done here?"

Chrysalis looked down at the unconscious Amethyst and pondered for a moment. She didn't say anything but merely nodded to Handy.

"Fine," Handy replied levelly and without emotion, before turning and walking off back towards the entrance he had knocked down, the hammer crackling in his grip. "Get your affairs in order. I will exact my fair recompense before I take my leave of this city.”

He paused long enough to say:

“And God help you if you try to cross me on this."

--=--

A lot of things happened pretty much all at once, though Handy was not privy to the details of most of it.

Turned out the downfall of the Archon wasn't the only major upset that happened in Lepidopolis that day. Chrysalis' little revolution had inspired some of the smaller, independent sidhes to swear allegiance directly. That only caused alarm in the other independent families, who had been counting on the raw numbers of unaffiliated sidhes as security for each one individually from the bigger players. This in turn caused them to swear allegiance to this potentate or another, swelling ranks.

While some were strengthened, others were weakened. The Commune, for example, was the single largest colony present in the city. The downside of breaking down familial loyalties was that the second the single leader showed weakness, defection was very likely. After all, what loyalty do they have to you beyond your own charisma? Individuals fled the Commune in droves after the embarrassment of its petty ruler who fled the palace in a hurry and humiliated himself in his craven antics, reducing the colony by over half of its changelings.

Alliances shifted, conspiracies were shattered and made anew, treason, surprise, and defection ruled the city for the next coming days in a riot of paranoia and suspicion. The changelings loved every minute of it. While Chrysalis controlled the palace, her power was not absolute. Oh, she certainly was now the power to be reckoned with, but she was far from undisputed. The other potentates, while they bickered and politicked, controlled entire districts of the city, and the lower cities were almost entirely beyond Chrysalis' personal control.

The changelings were a long way away from the near centralized and co-operating power bloc they had been under the Archon's machinations. With Chrysalis' efforts to mitigate the ensuing chaos, by virtue of her changelings being the first ones on the scene after the fact, they had avoided war in the streets.

Handy coughed into his fist as he looked out the window of one of the innumerable rooms in the palatial ziggurat. He had seen his eyes. They were his own but… He shook his head. No matter how often he saw it, it still disturbed him how his eyes glowed like that. Hopefully it would stop soon.

"Master?" He turned to see Crimson enter the room. "Master, you should be resting."

"I'm fine," Handy insisted. Crimson eyed the patch covering the scar in his side. Handy brought his ruined robes tighter about him to hide it. "It's fine, Crimson, it'll only leave a scar."

"Master, you should really—"

"I said it’s fine," he said, more forcefully than he intended. Crimson's ears splayed back on her head.

"Leave him be, Crimson," Jacques said gently from the corner where he sat at a table, studying his hat. He smiled at her when she turned to give him a harsh glare but then immediately turned to give a look of concern as Handy coughed again. "He'll be alright, won't you, Handy?"

He didn't reply. Crimson looked unsure, and there was an awkward moment’s silence.

"Go on, Crimson, I'll be alright," he said at last. Crimson reluctantly left the room, and the two remained in silence for some time. Handy finally broke it. "So…"

"Yeah." Jacques left the hat on the table alone and tapped a hoof on the table awkwardly. Silence reigned once more.

Eventually it was broken by a snort.

"How uh… How was the water?" Handy asked. Jacques slunk back down in his chair further. "Have uh… Have a nice dip? Refreshing?" Jacques rubbed his face with his hooves, groaning. "I mean, I only noticed you on the way out, but I've got to say, never thought about diving into a fountain like that."

"Oh bugger off…" Jacques said as Handy began chuckling. The stampede out of the senate building had been a disorderly affair to put it mildly. In the chaos, Jacques’ tail had been set alight. In his panic, he had tried to head towards the nearest source of water, which happened to be a fountain. He leapt into it headfirst, however, and basically brained himself on the stonework. He got the fire out, though, which was why he wasn't wearing his hat. The unsightly bump was sensitive enough that he could barely stand his grey mane hair touching it.

Handy coughed from his laughter and made his way over to a nearby chair and sat himself down.

"…You okay?" Jacques asked, concerned. Handy looked over at him.

"Are you sure you care enough to hear the answer?" Handy challenged. Jacques looked away, chided. He took in a breath.

"Look, Handy. I know what I said, and I won't lie, I meant every word… at the time."

"At the time?" Handy asked without looking around.

"…Look, you came back, alright? Do you even realise what you've done?"

"Not yet, but I am sure I'll figure it out later," Handy said cryptically before adding, "I always do one way or another…"

"Without you, I had no idea how I was going to help Thorax."

"…But you were going to try anyway?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"…After what you said to me back then, I'm not sure any explanation I could give you would be satisfactory."

"No it wouldn't, but it'd still be a reason."

"Well… I just." Jacques tapped his hoof again. "I… think I love her."

"Jacques, you love every woman you come across."

"I'm serious, Handy."

"I'm sure," Handy remained unconvinced. "Remember what I said about her having her fangs in you? Have you given any consideration to that? She is a changeling, and you are not that stupid, no matter how you've been acting lately. Do not lie to me and say you have not thought about it."

"…I have given it some consideration."

"And?" Jacques did not reply, but he stared off into a space in the wall contemplatively. Handy left him in silence as he continued to rest. His rib hurt from where the Archon had broken it. His newest scar in his side still burned and ached when he moved. His arm still stung from the wooden splinters that had pierced it when the door had exploded back in the bedroom. His leg still stung from the stones that had pelted and torn at his skin in the senate hall. He was healed but he was still hurting.

"I'm sorry," Jacques voiced at last. It wasn't an answer to his question, though he knew what it was for. Handy eyed him out of the corner of his eye, thinking, pondering if the gesture was worth it. He then sighed.

"Yeah. Me too."

The door opened, and both looked up. Who should enter but the woman of the hour herself, flanked by two loyalist guards of course. Chrysalis strode through the tall doorway, regal and proud, even if she had more than a few gashes that had been bandaged. And the effect was mitigated by the terribly obvious missing horn, but she seemed undeterred. She smiled warmly and her eyes had their typical, calculating cast about them. Handy had seen through that confident façade enough times to not be taken in by it, however.

"Heartless~" Chrysalis all but cooed. She cast a disparaging look to Jacques in the corner, who merely waved in response, his own annoying cocky smile about his face. Chrysalis narrowed her eyes before looking back at Handy. That was part of the reason why he let Jacques stay in the room with him, precisely because he reasoned it irked the queen to no end to have several non-changelings running around, other than Handy, that weren't on the menu. "Perhaps we could negotiate alone?"

"I am quite comfortable with my company as it is, Chrysalis," Handy said, looking at her levelly. Chrysalis maintained her smile.

"Leave us," she ordered. The two guards hesitated, and Handy turned his glowing eyes on them. Chrysalis turned her head and raised an eyebrow. The pair left. "Now, Heartless, can you not do me the same courtesy and have your… friend leave us for but a moment?"

"No," Handy said, sitting right where he was. Chrysalis stood silently for a moment before continuing on, not letting her smile fade.

"Very well, I have come to give you my thanks personally. Words cannot express how grateful I am."

"You're welcome. I'll take payment in gold and the means to transport them, if you'd be so kind." Chrysalis started and frowned.

"Now Handy—"

"Now nothing, queen," Handy cut her off. "I owed you nothing, suffered more than I have warranted, and have given you far more than you ever deserved out of my own choosing. I warned you out on the courtyard when the top of your palace burned and your people hid in their beds that you had better not cross me. I will brook no deception, nor honeyed words, nor shirking of your debt. Pay unto me my due recompense or I will inflict such a horror upon you that your descendants will shudder and wince from a pain and a fear they know not the name of. You have seen what I am capable of. Do not test me, Chrysalis."

That he had said this in a calm and level voice was, perhaps, the most shocking thing. But he had spoken loudly and clearly. Jacques sat there and turned to look at the silenced queen of the changelings. Her mouth was slightly agape, as if she could never imagine being spoken to like that. Perhaps she never had been.

It took him some time to notice the door behind her was still open and those outside had heard what was said, and doubtless they would note their queen's long silence.

"Very well," Chrysalis said at last, taking time to regain her composure. She glanced behind her, and whatever changelings had been lingering in the hall made themselves scarce. She noted with concern that she didn't recognise some of the servants. Word would spread of this. "I will send for you once the arrangements have been made. At that, I would request one last talk with you. In private, if you would."

Handy stared at her levelly for a time, then he waved his hand to give his assent and turned away. Chrysalis retreated from the room, and Jacques managed to catch the look on her face. It was not one of fury as one might expect. The door closed shut with the grating sound of stone on stone.

"Was… Was that wise?"

"Was what wise?" Handy asked, his gaze lingering on his half-reflection in the glass. The glow of his eyes did not distort them entirely, and curiously enough it only seemed that the dull colours of his irises were illuminated alone.

"Threatening her like that? Here, in your condition?"

"Chrysalis has made a habit of thinking little of me and paying for it. She'll take me at my word."

"And, just for the sake of argument, if she did turn against you and you had to, you know, make good upon your word?"

"…Then yes, it would have been very unwise of me to say what I just did. But she won't."

"How can you be sure?"

"After what I've done for her? What this city and all these changelings must think of me?" Handy snorted. "You've known me long enough to know I revel in the image I project, however much it is misinterpreted by others. Chrysalis is a smart girl when she wants to be. She won't waste such a useful image as being a queen that can call upon the Heartless to overturn the entire city."

"I assume she can't, in fact, do just that?"

"No. But no one else needs to know that now, do they?"

"And if she is overthrown again?"

"Tough shit."

"Hmm," Jacques hummed thoughtfully. "You know, Handy, I don't think your approach is that wise. Seems your little mythmaking has got you into more trouble that way."

"Perhaps," Handy conceded, before mumbling to himself, "but it’s the only thing keeping me safe."

--=--

Thorax ambled after her liege, carefully eyeing the passing servants as they gazed upon the damage of the palace's interior and the removal of the chitin plate from where it was not needed. She withheld a snort at the thought. Her queen had a point that noling would ever need to armour the interior of their home, but then again, no one really intended to account for a teleporting human with a war hammer and a chip on his withers destroying the palace from the inside.

Seeing as her ruler was in no mood for such frivolities, she kept such a note to herself. She had seen that dark mood before; the one she used when calculating a suitable revenge or punishment. What was different had been the slow transformation from a look of shocked silence into this familiar façade. She thought of what might happen if she did nothing to intercede before whatever her queen was thinking could come to fruition. Especially since Thorax was certain more than a few of these servants weren't entirely of Chrysalis' kindred, and already whispers would be circulating from the exchange she had with Handy not too long ago.

"Highness, I know he is a threat, but you cannot be seen by your peers—"

"Peers!?" Chrysalis snapped. Thorax abased herself and bowed, membranes closing over her eyes.

"The other rulers," she corrected, "cannot be thought to have seen you weak before the human. I know I appeal for clemency for… admittedly selfish reasons, but—"

"Oh, I won't be seen as weak before the Heartless, my little changeling," Chrysalis said, smiling down at her agent before continuing on with Thorax at her heels. "They'll see things for what they really are. Before this night is through, the Terror of Lepidopolis will be seen running in terror from me!"

--=--

Chrysalis strode into her chambers, closing the newly fashioned doors behind herself and Handy with her magic with an unnecessary amount of force. A subtle wave of greenish magic washed over the walls and ceiling of the room before it came to a point on the far wall and disappeared. The room was a mess, and not entirely the fault of Chrysalis' assailants. She didn't speak, didn't look at him, merely striding around the room to where the crystal sphere was held in its antique, wooden cradle.

She placed a hoof on the sphere, letting a gentle smile cross her face before frowning slightly as she traced a hairline crack that split its surface. The price of sacrificing the amulet had been hard on the arcane creation, and yet the interior of the device pulsed and swirled, a cloudy miasma contained within.

Handy did not know what secrets it held, but he was certain he did not want to know. He just wanted the queen to say her piece and be done with it. However, she just stood there in the darkness, framed in the white light of the sphere before her, casting a long, lithe shadow on the room behind her.

"I do not understand you," she said at last. Handy looked at her, but she did not turn around. "I offered you riches but you turned me down. You come back, and not only do you free me, you put me back on my throne. Then you ask for riches in return. Why?"

"I like money," Handy said simply.

"But not enough to take me up on my offer the first time?" Chrysalis asked slyly, looking at him out of the corner of her eye.

"I couldn't have gotten you out of that cell if I wanted to," Handy covered. "I had to wait until you were already out."

"And how could you be sure?"

"I couldn't."

"So you gambled?"

"I've been doing a lot of that lately." She harrumphed at that and looked back down at the viewing sphere, pregnant with arcane secrets.

"I suppose that makes two of us." She moved away from the sphere in the corner of the room. She took her crown off and laid it on one of the few stands that had not been thrown aside in whatever turmoil had happened in this room when she was captured. Miraculously, that stand had survived the onslaught when Handy had invoked the ire of a changeling battlemage too. She then turned and gave Handy a stern glare, which Handy met stalwartly. She bore her teeth.

"By all rights, I should have you strung up," she proclaimed, taking a step forwards before passing Handy by on his left.

"For saving you?" Handy asked, his voice level, giving nothing away.

"For violating me!" she hissed.

"I haven't so much as touched you… Well, not counting the horn." Chrysalis paused briefly and touched where her once magnificent horn had been broken off, hissing at the painful memory.

"It'll grow back."

"I'll be keeping the broken one then," Handy said, causing the queen to round on him, her face trembling with restrained outrage. To her credit, she held her outburst and continued pacing around him. Handy was getting amused by this point, having clearly offset the vaunted queen.

"I meant… the forest," she admitted with a tone in her voice Handy couldn't quite discern.

"You brought that upon yourself," Handy said without sympathy.

"And my alternatives?" she countered. "You were beyond convenient when my gambit at that griffon festival failed."

"You know, I am willing to work for money. You could've at least tried offering me fair recompense."

"That would've never worked!"

"It worked out for you now, didn't it?" Chrysalis paused and pointed her raised hoof at Handy, ready to rebuke him. She caught herself, then looked down and brought the hoof to her chin thoughtfully. She shook her head and made a frustrated noise and continued her pacing. Handy followed her with his eyes until she passed behind him and came back into sight again.

"You… dared…" she managed.

"I did."

"You dared, you… you bit me!"

"I bit Thorax."

"You have insulted and assaulted me, humiliated me, tossed me around as I was some petty doll! I should have you swarmed and carried off to be dumped into the deepest pit!" she stormed, building up her indignation. Handy let her fume without comment. She held no threat over him at this moment, otherwise she would've made good on it, not taken him into a room and rebuked him privately. What was she going to do? Shapeshift into a scary form and make faces at him? He was shaking in his boots.

"And yet…"

--=--

The two guards who stood at either side of the entrance to their queen's chambers had been elated to have been released from their captivity and had joyfully returned to their rightful positions outside their queen's apartments.

After five minutes, the novelty wore off, and they suddenly realised they were back to the monotonous humdrum of guard duty once more. Yay.

The pair, with only one of them having recovered something resembling piecemeal armour, stared blankly ahead. The only remotely entertaining thing to pay attention to was whatever the hell was being argued about in the drawing room down the hall where Chrysalis had summoned several mages and the Heartless' companions were located.

And then the Expensive brick sang the song of its people.

The pair yelped and jumped, levelling their spears at the pile of belongings that the Heartless left on a nearby table, along with his weapons before entering the chambers.

The two changelings blinked at the shining magical brick. They looked at each other and shrugged.

--=--

"And yet I find myself in your debt," Chrysalis said, her face appearing confused. "I owe you my life once more."

"And I plan on receiving recompense again." She chuckled dryly and gave him a sideways glance as she stood in front of him. She smiled lightly before continuing circling him, this time at a more sedate pace.

"Oh I know you will~"

'Here it comes,' Handy thought. 'I recognise that tone of voice. She's up to something. Whatever it is, woman, you're not getting it out of me. I am done being manipulated.'

"I did promise to give you whatever you wanted didn't I? Mmmm, yes I suppose thrice your weight in gold and gems are a fair trade for life and liberty. Oh, and I suppose a little extra. I do recall promising to pay you after you honoured your end of the geas, so why not add a little bit more to your little pile of treasure?"

"And the means to transport them," Handy said warningly. She chuckled.

"Oh of course, of course. Where would be the fun otherwise? No more amulet after all—you'd hardly accept another one. And you broke my favourite toy~" she pouted, casting a hoof dramatically to the orb in the corner. "There's no fun in making you trek across the Badlands if I can't see a show after all."

Now that made Handy scowl, and she laughed airily in response. She continued her pace and swatted him on the chest with her tail as she passed.

"Oh, you know it is in jest. I think we can put all that behind us now, can't we?"

"No."

"So serious~" she said silkily, slowing her pace, taking more deliberate steps, "and yet I thought you said you keep your word."

"I generally do."

"Generally," she purred as she paused behind him, bending over and whispering into his ear. "So why did you back on your word to help me then, hmm?"

"Enough of this!" Handy shouted, stepping away. "Look, Chrysalis, you want something, we both know it. Out with it so I can deny it and finally be rid of this place and you. What more do you want?"

"Oh, just a little something I am curious about…" She walked past him and sauntered towards the magical seeing sphere, "and something you might be curious about as well."

"What are you getting at?"

"That night when you… well, ceased to be whatever humans were and became what you are," she began, lovingly wiping her hoof upon the surface of her sphere. She looked back at Handy. "How well do you remember it?"

"Vividly," Handy said, his patience strained.

"Truly? Every detail?"

"I find it distinctly hard to forget the night when the thestrals ruined my life." She stayed silent at that, merely looking down at the cradled sphere and letting out a contemplative 'hmm'.

"I could let you see it, you know, through your own eyes. The sphere stores what is seen by the amulet and those that wear it. You would not believe the secrets that are held here."

"Is that it? You want to show me the worst night of my life!?"

"Only if you want to, Heartless~"

"Why on earth would I ever want that!?"

"Why indeed…" she said, sighing and relenting. She spun the sphere idly with her hoof and walked back over to Handy. "I will not force you to do anything you do not wish to, Heartless."

"I find that hard to believe."

"You have my word. Never again will I attempt to coerce you into anything." She chuckled lightly. Once more she began circling him, playfully swatting him once on the arm with her tail. This was getting tiresome. "The question is: what do you want to do?"

"I don't understand; what do you mean? I want to leave."

"Oh, THAT is well understood." Handy suddenly began to notice she was circling disturbingly close to him now, and that he had been unconsciously stepping back to avoid her brushing against him. "But I mean right now."

"Right now?"

"Yes. I said I was curious, Handy," she said, stopping in front of him. "How could I not be after all this?"

"Curious about… what?" Handy asked, his face betraying his confusion. What the hell was she curious about? Old magic? Like hell was he going to be giving her anything about that! "I can't tell you if I don't know what you want."

"You will~" she said cryptically, her voice sing-song. She moved closer, and Handy backed up a step...

...And promptly bumped up against a dresser. He looked down in surprise, his brain whirling.

"Chrysalis, I—"

"Shhh…" she cooed, lifting her forelegs and placing them either side of him on the dresser he was leaning against.

Handy looked to where her hooves were and the closeness of her face, and the look in her eyes as they peered deep into his with a frightening intensity. He was so taken aback that he actually stuttered for a moment. As he realised he was staring her in the eyes for a second too long, a thought came to him. Handy's mind raced, and only now did it dredge up a terrifying possibility he had not considered remotely possible. With dawning horror, the comprehension crept across his face, and a wide, triumphant smile spread across her own, clearly revelling that she had got through to him, all without having to use an ounce of magic to boot!

'Oh God,' the thought echoed in his panicking mind which had just processed the subtext. 'Oh God, I completely misread the situation. This can not be happening, oh God, oh God!'

"W-Wait…"

"Why?" she asked, leaning closer, Handy respectively leaning back.

"I-I can't, this is not, I mean, how can you—"

"You can worry about that later~"

"I-I should g-go."

"Plenty of time for that. What's the rush?"

"This isn't right."

"I am a changeling."

'Fuck.' He placed both hands on her withers to push her off. She merely pushed forward harder. He couldn't risk hurting her without bringing hell down upon his head, but this was… Fuck all of this! He needed an excuse; he needed to scare her off; he needed to end this before- God, no. His mind raced, and he thought up the one thing that might defuse this situation before it escalated into—'No, no, no brain, you are NOT going there.'

"I…" he swallowed. "I'll bite."

To his horror, she laughed merrily, raising a hoof to her muzzle to hold it. She held it folded before her demurely as she looked up at him. Her eyes seemed to glow in the darkness as she fluttered her lashes. And then she spoke two words that sent chills down his spine.

"I know~"

--=--

The two guards had gathered around the table with the human's things upon it, with another having joined them, pausing on his patrols. One of them lifted the brick and bounced it against the table, trying to make it sing again.

"So is it pony-made or… or what?" one asked. Another opened its mouth as if to reply when the grand doors to their queen's apartments burst open, and the Heartless one himself barrelled out, wide-eyed and in a hurry to be somewhere. The guards watched the human almost slip as it skidded to a halt and scrambled over towards them. They scattered with a shout of alarm.

"OUTOFMYWAYYOUBASTARDSGOTTAGETTHINGSOUTHERENOWMOVE!" the human shouted all at once, all but grabbing the entire table in one arm and sweeping it into the mouth of his largest pack without care. He threw it over his shoulders and lifted the hammer and the smaller bags. Handy paused to spare half a glance at the darkened apartments from which he had just emerged. The terror on his face was unmistakable to the changelings who saw it. Then he booked it, disappearing down the hallway and into the room being prepared by the changeling mages at their queen's instructions.

Now one might be wondering why the guards took no action when they saw a living nightmare charge forth from their liege's private quarters like a bat out of Hell, and ordinarily you would be right.

Ordinarily, most people's lieges weren't Chrysalis.

Whose peals of cackling laughter could be heard resonating throughout the palace.

They thought better than to question it.

--=--

Crimson watched the changeling mages work in fascination. She had never studied or learned anything about changeling arcanomancy, though she supposed she was hardly alone in that. It was still fascinating to watch them work. It seemed to be a strange, archaic fusion of ancient wild magical practices before the dawn of the crystalline method and the Zebrican ‘magic of the form and of movement'. Though that wasn't right either; nothing about how the mages moved as they circled the growing runic contraption between them bore the remotest similarity to the gentle, graceful movements of the zebras.

It was too mechanical, halting, and they all moved in unison, as if with one mind. It was eerie to behold, even for her. The dutiful scholar in her wished to ask pointed questions, but she knew this was neither the place nor the time. Changelings placed an almost religious reverence on secrets. She doubted they'd appreciate her querying into the mysteries of their craft.

She'd certainly reciprocate had their roles reversed.

"Ahem." Crimson turned and found Thorax had approached from behind. She regarded her one-time doppelganger coolly.

"Yes?" she said tersely. Thorax looked at her for a moment, retracted the membranes covering her eyes, and sucked in a breath.

"Sorry."

Crimson blinked.

"I beg your pardon?"

"I… feel the need to… apologise," Thorax managed, casting a glance back to Jacques who was quietly waiting beside one of the hefty little bags of treasure by the wall. He was sat on his haunches with hat drawn over his face as if dozing. Thorax knew better—she could feel him snickering. She growled under her breath and pushed on. "And… I understand that everything I… we… my queen put you both through was harrowing."

"Yes, that is certainly an adjective."

“...Look, I’m only here because he,” she pointed to Jacques, “is making me do this.”

“And I am only here because you brought my m— Handy here,” Crimson replied. “We all do things we don’t want to do.”

Thorax gritted her teeth.

“I am trying. To be nice.”

“I’m not.” Thorax and Crimson stared at each other for a long moment before Thorax turned away.

"Glad we could come to an understanding," she muttered before making her way over to Jacques. He lifted his head and asked her something, to which she replied with a cuff over the ear and a yelp of protest from the stallion. Crimson turned away and watched the mages do their work, occasionally eyeing the strange, iron-bound contraption that took up most of the space in the room. It was like a cart made with stone slates, like everything else in this city, held together by simple iron bindings, hiding the treasures beneath.

Its top was covered by a tarp and fastened to the stone sides with what looked like nails. The entire thing rested upon a hardened metal axis that supported its weight across four wheels made from a wood she was unfamiliar with. She felt the same strange thrum of magic flowing through it that seemed characteristic of changeling magic.

There had to be a reason why changelings used emotional energy to fuel their magic, why they needed to draw on other sources of magic for their more intricate spells, such as the mages before her. It was a question that would have to wait for another time, because right as the thoughts came to her, Handy had barged into the room.

"Okay, time to go!" he said, his eyes wild and breathing heavily. "Crimson? Good. Is that the payment? Excellent! No time like the present! Where's the talking baguette?"

"Que?" Handy rounded on the swordsstallion. His hands clasped about his shoulders. "W-Wha—?"

"Baguette acquired!" He yanked the pony from where he had been sitting and, whirling around, he threw the bamboozled Jacquesto where he just skirted before entering the magic circle with the glowing, convulsing vortex of white-bluish energy in its centre. "Is that thing ready yet?"

"Uhm…" One of the changeling mages paused, eyeing the portal and looking to his fellows. "Y-YYeesss?" he said hopefully to the tall, living embodiment of nothingness before him.

"Excellent! Jacques, move it. You first."

"Wait, I didn't get to say goodbye!"

"Jacques says goodbye," Handy said.

"I heard," Thorax replied, amused by all accounts. "I doubt this is the last ti—"

"Crying shame. Move it, Jacques!"

"Wait! My pa-ACK!" Jacques had the entire sack of gold tossed at him. He just grabbed hold of it before he was thrown bodily into the vortex and disappeared in a flash of light. Handy tossed his gathered belongings into the portal after him.

"Master, what’s wrong? Why are you—"

"No time to explain. The faster we move, the faster we leave this place behind, and the world becomes a more glorious place free of things I'd rather not think about, haha! Is this thing on wheels? Yes? Okay, good." And with that, Handy put his weight behind the stone cart. To Crimson's surprise, it moved rather easily despite the weight bearing it down. It seemed Chrysalis had been good on her word when it came to being able to transport it, so long as they kept to the hardened ground of the Badlands and avoided sand. She looked back into the corridor from which Handy had emerged and considered his alarmed state.

"You go ahead, Master. I'll be right there."

"Wh-What?" Handy asked. Just as he did so, the cart's foremost wheel crossed the threshold of the magical circle and its foremost edge touched the vortex. The entire contraption disappeared in a flash. Handy stumbled forth, with nothing left holding up his weight he was thrown off balance, and soon, he too disappeared in a flash of light. Crimson turned and walked through the door.

"And where do you think you're going?" Thorax challenged. Crimson stopped and looked at her, before smiling brightly.

"Oh, just to have a chat. I need to tell your queen something about that dragon I enchanted."

--=--

Chrysalis was pouring herself a glass. A glass of what, Crimson wasn't sure, but it certainly smelled inviting.

She sniffed it before swirling it with her hooves while facing the window looking out upon the city below. The ruins of her apartment did not seem to bother her all that much, given the amused look on her face and the occasionally suppressed chuckle. Crimson looked back. The door was closed after the guards had stepped aside to let her in. They likely heard what she did to the last guards who tried to block her way, and Thorax had assured them she would not harm the queen.

Well, she wouldn't now, considering the trouble her master had went to keep her alive and hale. It was certainly possible those good graces wouldn't last.

Crimson intended to remind the good queen of that.

"Dragon bones are exceedingly rare," she said easily, levitating one of the stolen pieces of broken bone she had under her cloak. Chrysalis turned around, evidently amused by the pony's presence.

"Ah, Crimson Shade I believe it was? Have you not yet followed your master off to the ends of the earth?"

"So valued for their unprecedented worth to magical inquiry, in potion magic, medicine, alchemy, rune-crafting, artefact-casting, enchantment and ninety three other disciplines. Yet dragons are so incredibly rare outside of their lands, and nopony has ever had access to their remains for long," Crimson continued unabated, whipping the chunk of bone held before her with a hoof before looking up.

"What are you getting at, little pony? And I don't believe I gave permission for you to confiscate any of that dragon's corpse."

"In fact, dragons are so innately magical that questions arise as to whether they count as physical creatures at all. A foolish notion, but one that reappears in the more esoteric circles of academic study… such as mine." Crimson’s gaze never once left the changeling queen

"What are you—?"

"In fact, it was amazing to discover that, in my own humble field, the laws of sympathetic magic may apply in ways as yet unforeseen. All that is needed is one highly magical artefact that has an intricate, implicit connection with another being, and one can create a bridge between the two." She placed the bone beneath her cloak again. The magic encapsulating her horn did not diminish and instead changed from a scarlet red to a vile green. Her eyes began glowing softly until their distinguishing features could no longer be seen. "I can return here whenever I want, Chrysalis. You cannot remove every fragment or particle of bone dust from this city. Not everywhere—I have seen to that. Threaten my master in any way again, and I will do far worse than simply scare your people.

“Am I understood?"

--=--

They waited patiently until Crimson had materialised in the air before them. She walked sedately over to the waiting pair who were apparently discussing where to go.

"The mages said we're near the western border."

"Which western border?"

"I assume the Badlands."

"So we're close to the eastern border of Equestria?"

"We're close to the eastern border of Eastern Equestria."

"Then what's to the north?"

"…The southern border of Equestria."

"Give me that map!"

"What’s wrong?" Crimson asked as she approached them.

"Nothing, Crimson, we're just trying to figure out where we are," Handy said, studying the map, which wasn't particularly helpful. The sun was low in the sky, which had the benefit of not being as hot, but it meant the ungodly cold night was on its way. Winter in a desert was not a fun experience. "We have absolutely no idea where we are."

"Actually, we're about two miles from the Buckingshire trading post." Both of them looked up at her.

"How do you know?" Jacques asked. Crimson pointed. There was a crossroads that went in three directions just on the far side of the stone cart, made of hard packed earth worn white from travel. It had clearly been frequented often from other settlements. At the crossroads stood a signpost, bleached white from the sun and, comically, had the skull of some four-eyed badlander animal perched on its summit. One of the signs indeed pointed to the road going off to their left, indicating the direction of the trading post.

"…Well I'll be damned," Handy breathed, "she actually kept her word. Looks like we won't be needing even half of the water we brought."

"Speak for yourself, mon ami," Jacques said, opening a canteen and downing half of its contents, releasing it from his muzzle with a satisfied 'aah'. "I am parched."

"You? I would've thought you had your fill of water today." Jacques shot him a look at his teasing.

"So, what was that back there? You seemed more than a little perturbed when you got back." Handy's smile dropped as he turned to pack away his things onto the cart.

"I'd rather not talk about it."

"Oh, I am sure," Jacques said, smiling teasingly, sensing he had something to needle Handy back with, "but it is such a long way to Griffonia, and traveling with Whirlwind has made me fond of stories. Perhaps you'll share that later, no?"

"Hmph," Handy grunted, finally placing his packs securely on top of the tarp along with Jacques’ sack. He tossed a harness at the stallion.

"Qu'est-ce que c'est?"

"Put it on. You're pulling." Jacques let out a moan.

"You cannot be serious."

"Deadly. Now quit complaining, I'll be pushing. I'd rather have a solid roof over my head for the night, wouldn't you? Let’s get moving."

After some grumbling, they got underway, and the cart trundled along in silence with Crimson trailing near the back.

"Say, Crimson..."

"Master?"

"I don't suppose you can detect magic on things that… ordinarily aren't supposed to be magical, right?"

"I can try. Depends on what I am looking for. Why?"

"Just wondering."

"Do you think this will be the same trading post we came from?" Jacques asked.

"I hope so. Thorax arranged it," Handy said. There was another moment's silence before Jacques broke it, his voice oddly strained as if a sudden realization hit him.

"Mes amis, I just had a thought."

"What is it, Jacques?"

"Equestria and Griffonia… they are having border difficulties, oui?"

"Yes. It wasn't easy getting across, even when I had a group as small as I did," Crimson confessed.

"So what are we going to say when we're stopped and your treasure cart is searched?"

They all trundled to a stop for a minute as they considered the predicament they had been left in.

All that trouble and still Handy couldn't catch a break. He let out an exasperated sigh.

"Bollocks."

Chapter 49 - A Spot of Tea

Author's Note

2022 - Fixed the absurd Censorship issue.

Chapter 49 - A Spot of Tea

“Last stop!” the voice called out from the station platform. The tired passengers descended from the great iron train with a modicum of groaning and muttered frustration, struggling with their luggage and loved ones to get off the train. A surprising few were merchants and business ponies who had the look of men who had been short-changed and were owed serious amounts of money. Given that the border was closed and trade north with Griffonia was curtailed, they probably had every right to be.

Crimson disembarked from the train with her cloak tied tightly about her and her side bags secured. An armoured pony with similarly coloured fur followed after her, casting a wary eye about the platform.

“Are you sure about this, Master?” she asked quietly. The armoured pony looked at her sharply.

“I told you not to call me that in public, especially not when I am hidden.”

“Oh… sorry, Master.” She bowed her head slightly. Handy merely grumbled and went back to surveying the scene as the pair continued moving. He still had migraines if he kept up the psychic fuckery for too long. Whatever it was about that changeling queen’s blood, his changeling-derived powers were now easier to work with for longer periods of time. Now if he could only do something about the glowing eyes...

There were in the town of Hayverslock, a large trading town on the border with the kingdom of Firthengart, the southernmost kingdom of Griffonia with the largest land border with Equestria. A small county, it grew rich on having the Equestrian Express stop right here before moving on to other parts of the world once it left Griffonia, and as such it was a hive of commercial activity. Or it would normally have been, as now it looked like an overgrown military camp.

There were soldiers everywhere. Most were local troops from what Handy could tell; militia with a mishmash of weaponry and a smattering of random armour. There were regular troops that appeared to belong to the local countess, going by their coat of arms, as well as several other troops from other places as well. To Handy’s mild alarm, he also spotted royal guards.

‘What the hell is going on in Griffonia?’, he thought, looking around. They were getting some looks, but thankfully nothing that warranted too much scrutiny. ‘Are the ponies this jumpy over nothing? I need to get back to Johan as soon as I can.’

“Master?” Crimson asked demurely. Handy rolled his eyes and looked down at her. “What did you and the troubadour do with that stone?” Handy paused and looked up at the sky as he thought.

--=--

“Crimson?”

“Yes, Master?” They were just about to finish their meal, having finally settled on a place to stay for the night after recovering Handy’s armour. The tavern was quiet that night, and the Badland’s winds blew harshly outside. Jacques had wandered off somewhere.

“Can you do a magical scan on me? I fear I may have some kind of spell or… something that allows the Equestrians to trace me.”

“Really?” She sounded surprised before her expression grew dark. “When?”

“I don’t know when they put it on me, just that they have.” Handy thought back to all the trouble he had in Manehatten. “So can you do—?”

Before he could finish his words, Crimson’s eyes flashed. Her horn glow encompassed him entirely and, for a very uncomfortable moment, Handy’s skin prickled as if he were being electrocuted by static shock. Everywhere. All at once. He greedily gasped for air after the moment had passed, and slapped his hands down on the table for support.

“Crimson! Jesus, what the hell—?”

“Hold still,” she said resolutely and was already up on the table, grabbing Handy by the jaw and lifting his head up. The bewildered human could only imagine what the scene must have looked like to onlookers, and it was only his shock that had stopped him from tossing Crimson off the table.

“...There’s a substance rubbed into the flesh under your chin… here.” She jabbed him in the location and caused him to choke slightly. She backed off of the table and retook her seat. Handy coughed and glared at her. She was too busy thinking about the magical problem before her to consider her master’s displeasure with her. “It dissolved through the skin and settled within the flesh itself. I can remove it. There are two ways to do so, one of which is excruciatingly painful.”

“What’s the other way?” Handy asked, casting nasty looks around the room so that the locals refocused their attentions on their beers, rather than at the angry pegasus Handy appeared to be.

“The other way involves sharp knives.”

--=--

“Jacques.”

“Que?” The pony had barely any time before the bucket of water splashed over him, and he flailed and spluttered in the hay of the common sleeping room. “Ce que le baiser était que, pour!?”

“Sorry, but I’m in a bad mood and you were there. Also, you like water, remember?” The swordspony glared up at the human in the darkness, paying no attention to the false form before him and looking up into empty space where he knew his true face was. Then he blinked, seeing his true form after some effort.

“Why… Why are you wearing that on your face?” Jacques said, gesturing to Handy’s cloth-covered face, pulling himself up from the now soggy hay. The other denizens of the common room didn’t seem to rouse from the sudden addition of water.

“I had to choose between sharp knives and excruciatingly painful magical surgery.” Handy gestured to the pack of ice pressed to his chin. “I am still unsure if knives wouldn’t have been the better option. Look, you want to make some money?”

“Oh… well okay, now I am listening.”

“Thought you would.” Handy tossed him a glowing pinkish-purplish stone.

“What is this?”

“Bad news. Can I trust you to fob this off on someone?”

Jacques smiled.

--=--

“Hey, buddy.” Jacques stopped the happy merchant who was whistling to himself as he made his way westwards. The happy grey pegasus stopped to face him. “Want to buy a lucky charm?”

The pegasus gasped. “Would I?!”

--=--

Handy looked back at the curious Crimson and shook his head as they continued their way through Hayverslock.

“Don’t worry about it.”

Haverslock was a dour place to look at from afar. With all the solid grey stone buildings and black slate roofs, one would be forgiven for expecting the ponies who dwelled there to be the same. They were not, as upbeat and as friendly as any other happy pony community. Those same grey stones, so dour from afar, appeared far more welcoming when one walked close to them. It seemed that not a single building passed them by without having a stone that depicted floral carvings, whether self-made by their owners or by professional trade ponies and stone cutters. The local quarries were a huge industry on this border town, but despite the access to many more valuable stones, the ponies of Hayverslock seemed to pride themselves on choosing the least desired but most durable stone for their homes.

Handy saw guards everywhere: on top of roofs, walking along the walls of the town, the train station, the major thoroughfares, guildhalls, civic buildings, and moving through the city in groups. It was an alarming amount of militarisation. The ponies didn't seem to mind, surprisingly enough. Apart from frustrated merchants and a packed-to-the brim marketplace full of shouting voices, everyone seemed calm, as if reassured. That struck him as odd. No matter who you were, where you were, or what culture you came from, if you lived on a border with another country and your town was suddenly drowning in soldiers, you should be worried.

"I don't like it," Handy declared as Crimson looked up at him. "Everything's so… calm."

"How do you mean?"

"It’s just… nothing. Keep an eye out for anything unusual. Let’s just get out of town as soon as we can." The pair moved through the throng with relative ease, keeping close to the side of streets near the buildings. It got to be hard going after a while, and soon enough they found themselves stuck in the crush of bodies at a crossroads where several wagons had locked their wheels together. Broken axles, spilled goods, and flaring tempers dominated the street. Guards moved in to quell the matter, resulting in more raised voices and the flow of traffic drawing to a standstill as ponies tried to push past each other.

Handy tried to avoid pressing against passing ponies as best he could. It was not easy, and more than a few nudged him as they hurried past. He was about to turn to Crimson to suggest they back up a bit and take shelter in a shop before a torch fell on him.

Needless to say, this was a shocking development for Handy.

The bustle had caused the local candle lighter, who had been going street to street relighting and replacing the candles in the street lamps, to drop his wick. The large pole resembled a shepherd's crook with a simple yet resilient torch in its grasp, and a hook on the end to help it open the lamps and light the candles within. This crook fell and the hook gripped the hood of Handy's cloak, yanking it back and bringing the flash of the torch a hair's width of Handy's face.

The vampiric nature took over, an inhuman shriek cut through the night, and Handy, without knowledge or care, barreled through the crush of bodies. Ponies screamed and scrambled over one another to get out of his way in confusion and alarm as he sprinted through the streets. He heard someone calling his name but didn't care. His heart pounded in his ears; he had to get away from the fire.

He ran on, turning corners and sprinting through street after street blindly, uncaring of the panic he was sowing in his wake. More than once he turned a corner when suddenly confronted by a sudden wall of metal and spears and hastened down a completely opposite direction. Of course operating purely on instinct and primal fear can only get you so far in an urban environment, especially one you're unfamiliar with. Handy found his senses return to him only after colliding with something heavy, metal and golden, head first.

Next he knew he was on the ground, barely pushing himself up from the dirty cobblestones with a ringing head, a splitting pain and something warm and wet running down his face. He heard a lot of shouting but could not make it out as he struggled to regain his senses and evaluate the situation. There was an increasing number of heavily armoured ponies converging on his location in this street.

'Okay, this is bad. I lost my head there for a moment. My glamour is probably down, but it's okay. It's going to be alright; I've been in tighter spots than this. I can get out of here,' he told himself as his heart rate finally got under control. He saw Crimson push her way through the crowd and shout down at him before she froze. 'Crimson! Good, now I can… Why is she not doing anything?'

That's when his vision fell upon the golden shoes and the unusually large pony hooves. His vision was drawn up. And up. And up, until he found himself staring into the clearly surprised, yet narrowing magenta eyes of the pony he had unfortunately run into. All at once, upon seeing the resplendant crown resting atop the spear like horn of her forehead and the waving, multi-hued mane that obscured a portion of her face, he realised exactly why it was the ponies of this town seemed reassured despite the overwhelming military presence. And the true extent of how much trouble he was in.

"Oh," he whispered.

--=--

Siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiip

It was honestly the most intimidating tea sip Handy ever had the displeasure of hearing.

Princess Celestia reclined upon her chaise regally. She had done so ever since Handy had been brought in to see her. There were no guards, he had not been forced to relinquish his weapon, and the princess had not even bothered to wear her crown to even hint of an air of authority, command, or majesty. For the past half hour, she still hadn't bothered to even acknowledge his presence. Handy would have already lost his patience if every single fibre of his being wasn't screaming warning signals.

She was in control here, singularly and absolutely, and there was not a goddamned thing Handy could do about it. Her horn was always wrapped in a golden glow as she levitated what appeared to be a small paperback serial novella she was reading, or her tea. Handy wasn't fooled, however—he saw the magical sheen outside the window, indicating either a shield or warding. He wasn't going anywhere she didn't want him to. He had briefly considered their chances had he given Crimson the command to attack her magically, but his hopes were dashed when he spotted the colour had in fact drained from the little mage's face. It was an impressive feat considering her face was covered in fur of the deepest red.

It was truly a shame since they had almost made it the entire way to the border without incident. Even getting their gold past most scrutinizing eyes had been easy enough. The border closure meant there was a market for smuggling goods across, even if it was still in its infancy. There were always some guard posts whose stalwart sentinels figured they could do with an extra lining to their pockets. Jacques had schmoozed his way into the seedier dens of the towns they had passed to get a hang of the local situation, finding out who to talk to, where to go, and when to move the goods. A few greased hooves were all it took, and Jacques had a clear path across the border. Handy's job was to go across and give the griffon counterparts on the far side their cut so Jacques could get through unmolested.

While he was on course to do just that, he ran into the one person he would have given nearly anything to have avoided right then and there. Literally.

Celestia put down her cup, raised a hoof daintily to her muzzle, cleared her throat lightly, then opened her big magenta eyes and looked up at them both. One eye was obscured by her ethereal mane whilst the other was bright and full of life, regarding them both passively. She then smiled lightly, gestured to the now thoroughly emptied ceramic pot, and asked:

"Would you like some tea?"

Handy started. His gaze narrowed and, in the politest tone he could manage with a dry throat and a road-weary body, he responded, "No, thank you. Do you have a glass of water, perhaps?"

She eyed him neutrally for a long moment, before readopting her calm smile. "I am so glad I could have this chat with you. I believe the proper title is ‘baron’ now, isn't it? Yes, I think that's right."

'Is she really getting hung up on formalities now?' Handy thought angrily to himself. 'Get to the point, woman. We both know why you brought me here.'

"And I do not believe I got your name, my little pony." Celestia looked to Crimson. Crimson seemed to stammer for a moment, looking up at Handy briefly. He merely looked back at her with what he hoped was an encouraging look, with his glowing eyes of doom.

"Shade. I'm Summer Shade," Crimson lied.

"And what brings you here, Summer?"

"She is my retainer," Handy interjected before Crimson could respond. Celestia turned back to him.

"Is she now? Interesting. I could have sworn my sources indicated she disappeared with you from Firthengart back during the festival. Tell me, Handy, is it true you died that day and have returned to the land of the living?"

"I believe the answer should be obvious," Handy said carefully.

"That it is, but I can see why ponies would believe it." There was much mirth in her eyes. Handy tried not to scowl. The road that brought him to this very meeting had been a harsh one. He had been wearing the very same armour the first time they had met, though it had been in considerably better condition back then. So was he for that matter. His face was considerably gaunter now; he didn't doubt he looked sickly, and he was beaten, battered, and bruised from the long trials. His nose had been bleeding not an hour ago just to cap things off. While he resembled hammered shit, Celestia sat there pristine as the day he first met her.

Bitch.

"Now, Handy, there are some difficult things we need to discuss." She put down her cup and let out a sigh.

"I imagine there are." Finally, it seemed she was going to get on with this interrogation.

"In Manehatten I met a little colt. I believe you would remember him."

"A… colt?"

"And his family, yes." She eyed him carefully. "A family whose lives you had shattered."

"Fleeing from you," Handy retorted. "Had your royal guards not been hunting me like a dog from the Enclave onwards, none of that would have happened."

"And innocent ponies would not have died had you kept your word and aided my guards in dealing with that warlock from the start." The words struck him like a hammer blow.

"But the guards had evacuated—”

"Not everypony got out in time," Celestia interrupted, a bit of heat entering her tone. "Not everypony who got out in time got away unscathed." Her eyes narrowed. "Not everypony who fought the warlock got away with life and limb."

Handy did not respond but kept his expression level, meeting her gaze. He desperately wanted to look anywhere else right then.

"We'll speak more of this later. Right now there is something more pressing we need to attend to."

"…Such as?" His voice did not waver or break, despite her revelation. Crimson shifted nervously where she stood.

"Please sit."

"I'd rather stand."

"I insist," she said with a smile. Two comfortable-looking chairs were levitated behind the two of them. Well, comfortable for ponies at least. Handy had yet to find a chair that gave him proper lumbar support. Crimson climbed up on hers reluctantly and sat on her haunches, Handy following suit and sitting with as much dignity as he could. Celestia herself got up from her reclined position to simply sit on the lounger and levitated her crown from behind the seat and placed it on her head. The doors opened.

"Presenting Her Grace, Countess Brazen Hearthfire to see Her Majesty," a well-groomed, magnificently moustached grey stallion announced with the practiced air of a court butler. Handy narrowed his eyes at him, for he sounded suspiciously British for a pony. The accent was way off, but even so...

"Show her in, Punctual, and have Raven prepare another pot of tea."

"Of course, mum." The butler bowed and retreated. A light-pink mare with fiery red hair entered with a pleased look on her face, one that dropped immediately upon seeing Handy.

"Ah, Brazen, a pleasure you could join us at this late hour." The countess paused, before stuttering.

"Y-Yes, of course. I am always happy to entertain the crown at any hour," she said, her confidence regained.

"I am well aware, my friend, and thank you. Please, sit." Celestia gestured to the space on the chaise lounge beside her. The countess paused, looking briefly at the individual seats Handy and Crimson had been given, before acquiescing anyway.

"I was not aware you were receiving guests, my lady," Brazen said, the earth pony having seated herself a respectable distance from her monarch.

"I apologize for not bringing this up with you earlier. I was not expecting this to be happening so soon. Baron Handy has arrived for the negotiations." Crimson's ears perked up, and Handy's eyes widened slightly. The countess looked equally as surprised but was the quickest to regain her composure.

"Ahem, negotiations?" she asked, directing the question to Handy. Celestia turned her smile back towards him. Handy, now suddenly put on the spot, looked quickly to Celestia and to the countess. He briefly shared a look with Crimson, who was so hilariously out of her depth she was looking to him for some guidance. No help from that quarter. Best play it safe until he figured out what the hell was going on.

"…Yes. His Majesty King Johan has… delegated me to approach Equestria regarding several matters of concern." Handy slightly cursed himself. Celestia's face did not change, but he swore he could discern the slightest twinkle in her eye.

"I see." The countess’ eyebrows furrowed in contemplation. "And you have been given his authority?"

"…In certain regards." Handy spared a glance at Celestia. He did not expect this random countess to know the intricacies of his station as Sword of the King—most griffon nobles sure as hell didn't. The Princess? That was another story.

"Hmph, and why has it taken so long for the griffons to finally see reason to come and talk like civilised ponies?" the countess asked haughtily. Handy looked at her and resisted the urge to raise a brow.

"My sincerest apologies, but a more circuitous route was required—"

"Indeed," Brazen practically spat, "and I suppose you had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with that little act of war in Manehatten that we've been hearing so much about? You were there, weren't you?"

A pale grey, almost white-coated mare with thick, rimmed spectacles, a smart white collar, and red cravat had entered the room. The unicorn levitated over a simple metal tray with two white ceramic pots of tea on the table between the two parties. Handy didn't pay her any regard, focusing his glare on the smaller countess.

"Thank you, Raven."

"Of course, Princess. Will there be anything else?"

"I don't believe so. Anypony?" the princess asked.

"…No. Thank you," Handy managed civilly while Crimson shook her head. Brazen simply said nothing as she worked to pour herself a cup of tea. Handy noted with some disguised interest that she seemed to grab the handle of the tea pot with the inside of her hoof. Interesting. He waited until Raven had left the room before responding.

"I was… in Manehatten the night when it was attacked."

"So you admit it! You had instigated a magical assault on an Equestrian city!"

"I had done no such thing," Handy retorted. "I had not attacked anyone within the city."

"Oh? Then what were you doing there?"

"Seeking passage through Equestria," Handy said before casting a glance, "after having escaped an utterly unprovoked assault by Equestrian Royal Guards on the city of Blackport."

Celestia had remained calm but levelled her eyes at Handy.

"There was no conflict between Equestria and the Kingdom of the Black Isles," she confirmed.

"Oh? So there was no conflict of interest between Equestrian Royal Guards and the Black Guard of the Viceroy of the Enclave? That sure did not seem to be the case when I had encountered both your personal representatives and the Enclave arguing over who had the right to falsely imprison and kidnap my person when I had committed no crime worthy of such a punishment. Neither there nor here."

"This is besides the matter," Brazen interjected.

"I concur." Celestia’s gaze had not left his. "Whatever your intentions may or may not have been, you had promised aid to my Royal Guards in Manehatten in order to apprehend a dangerous warlock, and your direct negligence in that regard resulted in injuries and death of ponies."

"One might consider that enough of a justification," the Countess agreed before taking a sip. "What do you have to say for your king in that regard?"

"I'd be more interested in hearing what her highness has to say about the death and destruction directly caused by her royal guard in Blackport."

"My guard did no such thing."

"They did." The iciness in Handy’s voice could not be mistaken. "The careless traipsing of your soldiers directly caused the explosive actions of a hidden warlock in Blackport. How many do you think have been injured, perhaps even killed during that horror show? How about you account for those losses before you demand anything of me?"

"I have already made amends to the Viceroy of the Enclave," Celestia replied coolly. "Those concerns are between Equestria and the Black Isles, and do not absolve you of your actions in Manehatten."

"What actions?" Handy asked defensively. "Was I forbidden from traveling in Equestrian lands? Between the time when I was last in Canterlot, and last on Equestrian soil, had I committed some grievance or crime forbidding my setting foot here?"

"Perhaps you had forgotten the little matter with Prince Blueblood," Brazen pointed out. Celestia gave her a sideways glance. "The good prince has gone missing after your barbaric tussle in the kingdom just north of here."

"That litt–" Handy caught himself before he said something regrettable. "The last time I saw the prince was after our bout at the festival tournament." Handy spoke slowly in order to rein in his temper. "He was in the care of other Equestrians. Why? What has become of the prince?"

"You don't know?"

"I do not make it my habit to stalk the nobles of other kingdoms. Unlike some I could mention." He gave Celestia a hard look; she did not respond in kind.

"Hmph, well, as it happens, the prince has gone missing since his return to Canterlot."

"A shame. You have my condolences." They certainly did not. "Whatever passed between myself and the prince was legal, carried out in public, and I have had no contact or interaction with him since. I was hardly aware my disagreements with an Equestrian prince would warrant my immediate arrest if I so much as dared breathe air outside of Griffonia."

"Be that as it may, your negligence resulted in deaths of innocent ponies." The fact that Celestia kept harping on that point was beginning to deteriorate Handy’s already shredded patience.

"What negligence!?" Handy demanded, narrowing his eyes at the alicorn. "If you truly have discovered all you can about what transpired in Manehatten, then you, Majesty, know damn well I gave my life's blood to help put an end to the horrors that transpired there."

"Only after being found and confronted by a member of the royal guard," Celestia corrected.

"And what of it?" Handy countered. "Had I been there, would your guards’ evacuation have been any more effective? Would there be less injury and death to innocents caused by a power mad warlock on a rampage? Could my being there shield your guards from the ravages of foul sorcery any better than their own armours could? And you should have been grateful I even deigned to allow your own forces to become aware that such a threat lay in your midst, after you had done everything in your power to rob me of my liberty!"

"Again, I had ordered no such thing!" A very brief frown flitted across the alicorn’s face.

"So Equestria has no control over its own elite forces!?" Handy challenged.

"More than Griffonia has over its pet monster." Handy turned a murderous glare to the countess. "Struck a nerve, have I?"

"Again, I tell you, I have taken no malicious action against Equestria, her institutions, her nobility, her people, and most certainly not in my official capacity as Gethrenia's Sword of the King."

"I find that distinctly unlikely. You had assaulted one of my guardsmares after the conflict in Manehatten had been resolved, did you not? Two, if I am correct," Celestia challenged. Handy had no answer to that immediately to hand. He had gone and drank the blood of one of the guards and then had blindsided an exhausted Stellar in order to recover the… huh. The more he tried to think of the warlock, the less he could recall about it. He knew there was… something he had fought in Manehatten. It was related to old magic—that could not be ignored—so it had to be a warlock, but when his thoughts came to the person in particular—

"Blood for blood, Celestia," Handy replied eventually, prioritising his thoughts. "I was owed my fair recompense."

"And Private Stellar?" she asked pointedly.

"Gethrenia is not the only kingdom with its pet monsters, Princess." She scowled at him, the first truly notable sign of her displeasure with him. Brazen had certainly picked up on it with wide-eyed alarm. The countess attempted to redirect the conversation.

"That does only raise more questions, however, such as what you did to the poor soul."

"I beg your pardon?"

"Myself and the Princess had long to converse regarding the affairs in the east, particularly the captured warlock in question." She refilled her cup before looking over her spectacles at Handy. "The pony can't even remember his own name. Found all alone in a cellar filled with occult writings and artefacts. And there is evidence you were the last one with him."

He scrambled his mind for anyone who matched that description. He fought someone in Manehatten, he remembered that much. Still, for the life of him he couldn’t… really recall who or what it was that— Wait. That pony he met when he was raiding that cache of old magic documents, the one he couldn't recall having seen before, who didn't even remember his own name. Was that who they were talking about?

"Sir?" Crimson whispered.

"I'll explain later," he whispered back. Celestia watched the exchange, but he wasn't sure if she divined anything from it. "I have no idea what you are talking about. Beyond my… disagreeable interactions with the royal guard, I haven't done anything to anyone."

"Your footprints were clearly evident in the dirt of the floor," Celestia pointed out, a pretty damning indication of the presence of the only human anyone was aware of.

"I did nothing to him."

"Your blood was present at the scene," Celestia continued. Handy's jaw tightened.

"And I am not denying I was there. I am confirming—"

"So you admit it!" Brazen declared, pointing her teacup at Handy accusingly. Handy hated her right then, more than anything, for the fact she was gripping that damn cup with one fucking hoof. "You attacked Manehatten, assaulted the royal guard, complicit in the needless deaths of innocents."

"Now see here—!"

"I am not done yet, Baron Handy!" Celestia continued sipping her tea, letting the countess continue her declaration. "It is no secret you have been known to traffic in changeling artefacts, particularly old changeling coinage. You were key to the succession crises in Gethrenia. Dare I say you even might have been the key to the current great and glorious King Johan's little coup?"

"I will not stand my king being insulted like this!" Handy snarled. "How dare you—!"

"Why, I am willing to bet good money you make it your business in killing royals and provoking wars."

"This is absurd!"

"Is it!?" she challenged, placing her forehooves on the table and leaning up, a vicious smile on her face. Handy remained where he was seated, but only a fool could have missed the vile look in his eyes. "Usurping one king, who’s to say you were not trying to usurp another? You made your intentions clear that you wanted Prince Blueblood to suffer death. Who is to say you did not orchestrate the dragon attack in Firthengart, wiping out two royal dynasties of Griffonia and an Equestrian royal to boot?"

"Be careful with your words, pony," Handy said lowly. Celestia turned to give him a hard look. "These are dangerous accusations."

"Indeed? I'll bet they hit a little too close to home for a changeling infiltrator!" she accused.

There was a moment of silence where one could hear a pin drop.

"…I'm sorry?" The words were barely audible through the strain of tight jaw muscles, his hands causing the wood of the chair armrests to creak audibly under their grasp.

"You carry ancient changeling coinage, frittering it away as if it were nothing. You ingratiate yourself in whatever society you enter. You sow division and chaos in your wake, and now our countries are on the verge of war because your actions have made the griffons belligerent and dangerous." Handy did not notice the raised eyebrow Celestia cast Brazen's way. Neither did she apparently, but Crimson certainly did. "And most damning of all, you had even entered my very town under disguise and assaulted our beloved princess!"

Celestia refilled her cup and allowed the silence that followed the countess’ outburst to linger for just a moment. "You know, that is interesting. I don't believe I told you about that."

Brazen seemed to falter for a moment before recovering. "I-It was the talk of the town. I couldn't not hear about it on my way over!" she protested. Celestia merely nodded. Handy was too busy fuming to pick up on the subtext, not trusting himself to speak. Brazen cleared her throat to continue, "In any case, Baron Handy, I believe in order for these negotiations to bear any fruit, I am afraid Gethrenia, perhaps even the whole of Griffonia, needs to make a massive conciliatory gesture in order to help right these wrongs." She sat back and sighed. "Otherwise, I think this war that is so looming over all our heads is inevitable."

She refilled her cup without looking up at him. Her face was a practiced mask, equal parts the stony-faced diplomat, the world-weary statespony, and concerned citizen dreading the harsh duties imposed upon her. Celestia eyed her tea contemplatively for a moment and then, just as Brazen had raised her cup to drink, she spoke.

"We already are at war."

The spit-take that occurred was the stuff of legends. Brazen Hearthfire choked down nearly the entirety of the cup in one surprised gasp and immediately sprayed it up with all the force of a pressure hose. Unfortunately for Crimson, she happened to be sitting directly across from the shocked Countess.

"WH-WHAT!?" she gasped.

"Hrk!" Handy let out a strangled noise, caught somewhere between the most profane of curses and the gibbering throes of madness. The declaration had blindsided him, so fixated was he on the terrible little shit of a noble across from them. Crimson, meanwhile, flailed and shouted as she fell off the chair and bumbled around the room and washed her face off on very expensive linens, plush pillows, and anything else she could use to wash the tea off her face and out of her eyes. Unfortunately for her, nobody currently gave a shit for her predicament. "You… You can't be serious?"

"I am afraid I am, Handy." Celestia’s head was bowed and her voice grave. "How else am I to act?"

"But this is absolute madness! Insanity!" Handy decried, rising to his feet. "There has been no declaration of war made! There is no threat to Equestria!"

"I am afraid there is." Celestia looked out the window to her side. "How am I to react when the nobles of my own kingdom feel so threatened that they must rally to garrison the borders? Indeed, how can I blame them if the griffons have been acting so belligerent? Neither your king nor Firthengart’s responds to any of my attempts to engage them in discourse. Your High King assures me all is well yet nothing ever seems to get better. Firthengart is hoarding its steel and coal, not even trading with other griffons. What would you do when such actions are coupled with a much larger military activity just across your border?"

"The griffons do not want war!" Handy shouted. "Princess, what has gotten into your head!? Johan and Goldtooth were in Canterlot not some months ago! Days were spent arguing over the finest details of trade and co-operation! Why on earth would they go to war with you now!?"

"Why indeed?" She turned back to him. "An attack that started all of this, centred around the agent of a foreign king, who is then seen at the heart of two major attacks on both the Black Isles and Equestria. Why would Johan want to start a war with all of his neighbours?"

"He does not! I swear to God this is blown way out of proportion. You cannot honestly believe what you are saying!"

"But I do. Brazen?"

"Uhp?" the still shocked mare managed, looking up at her sovereign. "Uh, yes, P-Princess?"

"You had just been telling me at the start of my visit how threatening and belligerent Firthengart had been for some time now, and that its current activity was a clear and present threat, hence your and your peers’ actions in militarizing the border?"

"O-Oh, yes of course!"

"Hmm." Celestia stared at the human gravely. "So you see, Baron Handy, there is some concern, and has been for quite some time. I am afraid I will have to end this conversation by giving you Equestria's formal declaration of war."

"WAIT!" Brazen blurted out. The room looked to her, and she suddenly backed up in her seat. "U-Uh that is, perhaps we should give our Griffonian friends a chance to make amends first?" she said with a nervous smile.

"I am afraid that is quite impossible. After Manehatten, it is clear that Firthengart and Gethrenia mean ill-will towards us all, and if we are to go to war with either, then we have to prepare for war against the whole of Griffonia. I am sorry, Brazen, that you have the misfortune of being on the front, being so close to the border."

"W-Wait…" Brazen practically squeaked, the colour draining from her face and a haunted expression adorning it. "J-Just wait."

"Princess, I implore you." Handy managed to get his voice down to a calm level that wasn't panicked shouting. "There is no need for this, just… Let’s be reasonable about this. I can explain whatever you wish to know about Manehatten."

"And about Firthengart? I am sorry, but I have read my friend Brazen's speech. War is inevitable." It was the smaller mare's turn to make a strangled noise as Handy rounded on the pony.

"What?"

"Oh yes, Brazen made a very convincing argument about the threat the griffons pose to Equestria. It was quite rousing, and I am afraid more than a little borne out by reality."

"W-Wait, Princess, I-I think you're taking some of what I said out of context."

"Posh, of course I am not. Sir Handy's arrival here lends credence to your words. Why indeed, he may in fact be a changeling agent, useless to negotiate with in the first place. No, I think you're quite right Brazen, war is necessary for our own best interests."

"I can't believe this!" Brazen managed, holding her head in her hooves. "I never thought this would actually… Princess, you can't do this!"

Handy had sat down once more, partly from shock and partly because he was processing some of the subtext going on here. Rather, he was realizing there was one to begin with.

"Oh? But I am merely taking everything to its inevitable conclusion. Why else would you close down your own borders with Firthengart, stopping the Equestrian Express tracks? Clearly there is a present danger or you'd never risk such a rash action at your own grave expense." Celestia smiled gently at her. "Such a brave and selfless stand. It’s a wonder you could even afford to spend so much on rare Hoovsian tea, imported all the way from Henosia."

Brazen's face faltered briefly as Celestia simply blinked innocently at the uncomfortable lull in the conversation. Handy recalled something Jacques had told him about the contacts he had made when searching for a way to smuggle their money across the border. Out of all the smuggling rings he had seen, the one crossing the border into Firthengart after it closed was surprisingly large, well-organized and, most importantly, had no competition. Jacques had never seen such an efficient operation spring up on its own over such a short period of time.

Then Handy recalled the suspiciously large number of tradesponies and merchants bottlenecking in this town. Despite the border having been closed for months, their numbers rivalled the native population of the town. He recalled the busy marketplace, with stalls, carts, and shops brimming with innumerable goods open even at these late hours. Why would they be coming here to this relatively small town when the border was closed? Why not a larger city or seek greener pastures elsewhere? Then he thought about the massive military build-up and the proportion of local guardsponies in comparison to the relatively small number of royal guards. Those, he now knew, had to be Celestia's personal bodyguards and thus couldn't have been here for very long. That meant Celestia herself could not be funding them, even partially.

If this border closure was hitting this countess' revenues so hard, as it logically would for a town so heavily dependent on the passing of the monstrously large trading train of the Equestrian Express, how in the hell was she affording this show of force here so well while also doubtlessly reinforcing the border itself? He looked down at the tea set and for the first time poured a cup. The steaming liquid was a pale blue but had a fragrant, inviting aroma. He'd seen tea like this before but only at court. Joachim had never cared for tea much in general, but a few nobles he'd entertained loved this kind.

That a noble would still spend money on luxuries even in a time of austerity was par for the course. To do so, keep their military paid, fed and active, and their populace placated? That was suspicious. He looked up at the countess with interest.

"W-Well it was a gift! Nothing but the finest for you, Highness."

"Strange, I could've sworn I overheard the Henosian tea merchants boast about selling quite a lot of goods while here." Celestia’s hoof was raised to her chin thoughtfully. "Why, they even boasted they had quite the incentive to travel all the way down south to the Firthengart border of Griffonia rather than any other route into the High Kingdom. Very strange."

"Well, I honestly couldn't speculate," Brazen managed, clearing her throat once more. "Perhaps they just think they could get better deals here?"

"Or an easier way to smuggle goods into Griffonia and make a tidy profit," Handy interjected, his brow furrowed as he looked down at the tea. "If there is one reason why I risked showing up here, right now, it’s because I was made aware of the smuggling route across the closed border."

"I-I have no idea what you're talking about. And besides, didn't you say you were here for negotiations?" Brazen managed.

"No," Handy said truthfully, "Her Majesty said that before she blindsided me with her declaration of war." Handy looked up at them both. Celestia's professional mask remained unchanged, though she no longer smiled. "In the interests of clarity, how is it that I could have found out about this only recently, yet you have no idea about this, Your Grace?"

"I hardly think that is any concern of yours!" Brazen said defensively. "We have much, uh, bigger concerns right now. In case you had forgotten, Equestria is declaring war."

"Actually," Celestia said, "this is news to me. Sir Handy, for the sake of civility and clarity, could you continue? How exactly do you know there is such a ring? And what were you planning on doing with such knowledge?"

Handy found himself caught for a moment, every pair of eyes in the room on him. Well, except Crimson, who had found her way back to her chair and was busy patting her eyes with what appeared to be a damp cloth. He thought fast; he had to give them something. Anything. He didn't know what was going on between the princess and the countess, being woefully ignorant of whatever Equestrian politics was happening right in front of his eyes. Still, he sensed he was being given an opportunity here. What kind of opportunity and why, he couldn't fathom. He cast one last glance at Brazen and made a decision. Better her hide in a sling than him bringing a war back to his adoptive home's doorstep.

"It has been my business for the past few months to investigate any and every potential threat to the kingdom of Gethrenia," Handy said carefully, "and that mission meant keeping an ear to the ground on the goings on of the underworld. I had no need to utilise the sophisticated smuggling route I discovered going through your land, Lady Brazen," Handy lied. "Otherwise I would not have bothered to travel all the way to this town like a civilized person and simply find bodily passage through the border, rather than deal with your… rather bribe-able guards."

"How dare you insinuate my soldiers are so easily corrupted?!" Brazen screeched indignantly, though it was very clear she had been unseated by what Handy had said.

"…Perhaps they are not." Handy looked at the countess thoughtfully. "Perhaps it is someone else who gave them orders to turn the other way and take a cut of the take."

"T-This is preposterous!" Brazen shouted. "I shall not stand for this nonsense. I am sorry, Princess, but I can no longer stand here and be accused of such slander and innuendo. I wish you luck in bringing this brutish gryphonic lackey to sense, but there is nothing more I can contribute."

Brazen hopped down from the chaise lounge and stormed off to the door while the princess remained where she was, saying nothing. The mare reached the door and yelped with shock when her hoof touched the handle.

"W-What?" she asked, looking down at her hoof.

"Please. Sit," Celestia said calmly.

"Princess, what is this!?"

"I would rather your company until you have contributed everything you could to this discussion." Handy looked at the surprised countess out of the corner of his eye, not fully turning away from the princess. "If what our Gethrenian friend here says is true, there is a rather large breach in our defences, right here in your domain. That is something rather concerning, wouldn't you say?" She held the countess' gaze for a few tense seconds. Receiving no eventual reply, she repeated herself, "Please. Sit."

Brazen, very slowly, retreated from the door, Handy suddenly realizing he and Crimson weren't the Princess’ only captive audience anymore. Only once Brazen had sat back upon the chaise, at a slightly greater distance from Celestia of course, did the princess turn back to Handy and give him a light smile.

"Please continue, Sir Handy. Is there anything else you can tell us about this route?" Handy glanced between the two mares across from him, trying to work out what was going on.

"Only one thing that is worth noting. The Firthengarian soldiers on the far side of the border have a similar arrangement with the Equestrian troops over here." Handy looked to Brazen, who seemed increasingly uncomfortable. "Similar enough to reasonably assume there is some level of… co-operation going on."

That last was a guess on Handy's part, based on the evidence. The reaction from Brazen was what sold it. Celestia gave Brazen a grave look when she seemed to stammer.

"O-Outrageous! You have no proof of this!"

"True, I don't," Handy admitted, thinking how he'd get around that little obstacle, "but either way, that is what is happening. Take a look out of the window. What other reason could all these traders willingly take all their goods to your little town with the borders closed? This town is not worth the effort and money it takes to get here otherwise."

"How dare you!?"

"I mean no offence. After all, Skymount isn't all that valuable in the grand scheme of things outside of local trade, were it not for the Equestrian Express making it the first major stop in Griffonia." Handy kept a wary eye on the princess, but she was giving no visible reactions he could accurately gauge. "The better question is, how could you know nothing of what is going on?"

"Brazen?" Celestia asked, the smaller mare looking up. "Is there something going on you have not been keeping me abreast of? I can't very well go to war without dealing with a potentially massive defensive oversight."

The mare stuttered and started, trying to give the princess a satisfactory answer while the words failed to come out. Eventually Celestia closed her eyes and breathed out through her nostrils.

"I see. So that is the way of it. It seems I may have been too quick to judge matters based on nothing more than the words and actions of one countess."

"W-Wait! That’s not true! Many dukes and powerful families support me in my—"

"Only after you had them riled up with the same rhetoric you had used to convince me." Celestia gave Brazen a dangerous look. "Are you going to persist in that line after lying to me here and now?"

There was no answer to that, and Brazen seemed to shrink in the presence of the much larger pony next to her.

"I think… you have contributed all you could to this conversation." Celestia levitated up a small silver bell and rang it. The same magnificently moustached pony, shadowed by the mare called Raven, entered. They were followed in turn by one of Celestia's personal guards and another armoured pony who looked like one of the local soldiers, likely the countess' military commander. He looked very perturbed. "The countess would like to retire to her chambers for the evening and does not want to be disturbed."

Her smile was gentle, her tone sweet. Her glance down at the smaller mare was maternal and comforting. No one dared to remotely voice an objection, a question, or even a response, much less the young countess who now had just been effectively rendered under house arrest in her own home. Celestia turned to Handy before the gathered ponies had left the room.

"I apologise, Sir Handy. Perhaps now we can start these negotiations afresh?" she asked sweetly as the ponies left the room. Handy looked down at Crimson for a moment, who watched the procession with some interest.

"In a moment, Majesty." He turned to Crimson and whispered in her ear, "I think it might be best if you left the room now."

"What!?" she blurted, a little too loudly. Celestia arched a brow. "And leave you here with her!? Why!?"

"Because this may be the best opportunity to get at least one of us out of this room. Just go, I'll explain later." She gave Handy a hard look, and a slightly more fearful look at Celestia before acquiescing, stepping down from her chair and following the group out of the room.

She looked back into the room at her master and the princess one last time before the doors were shut. She was out, safely beyond the magical barrier that had ensured they'd remain in that room. She turned and blinked in surprise at what lay on the other side of the door.

The hallway was literally wall to wall with heavily-armoured ponies in either direction, shimmering gold-tinted metal as far as the eye could see, even in the dimly lit corridor. She glanced up and the rafters above them which groaned with the weight of pegasi soldiers resting up there, keen eyes focused down below. It was a wonder the countess was able to be moved through that sea of metal.

Crimson blinked at the guards. They simply stared back at her in unison.

"Really?" No one answered her, and she rolled her eyes. "Can you at least point me in the direction of the bathroom?"

One of the guards pointed down the hallway, opposite the direction where the countess was heading. Crimson followed the direction, slipping through the tight confines of space allowed by the frankly absurd number of ponies filling the corridor and the constant clanking of armour and weapons as ponies moved to let her through. She felt the rush of air as beating wings pummelled the air as a pony stayed aloft, following her all the way. And then, just as she got out of the sea of ponies and made it to the lavatory, the guard landed and watched her enter. She rounded on the mare.

"Seriously!?" she challenged. The guardsmare just shrugged her wings in response, but wasn't budging. Crimson sighed explosively and slammed the door shut, muttering something about tea and finally being able to wash her eyes. The guard simply shuffled her wings and stood at attention, waiting.

--=--

"What do you want, Celestia?" Handy asked after a time. The princess studied his face for a moment.

"I want to know everything," Celestia said simply. "I want to know what happened on the Equestrian Express all those months ago. I want to know what happened in Skymount when you put your current king on his throne. I want to know what really transpired in Firthengart during that fiasco of a festival. I want to know why Gethrenia and Firthengart have been at loggerheads since. I want to know where you went after you had apparently died and why we could not trace you." She paused after that to see if she had elicited a reaction. Handy kept his expression remarkably neutral. "I want to know why you were in the Black Isles Enclave. I want to know why you were in Manehatten, and I want to know, in detail, what happened in both events. I want to know why you went to the Badlands and why you're really here now."

"…You're asking a lot."

"This point is non-negotiable," Celestia admitted. "You are not leaving this room without giving me something of substance, Milésian."

"And I am to trust that you'd let me leave even if I did?" Handy countered.

"I trust you to understand that I do not want a war. Do you think I am so callous as to enjoy leading on one of my vassals until she hangs herself with a noose of her own making?" Handy thought about it for a moment. "Political theatre has its uses. I was looking for a means of lessening tensions on my end of the border by curtailing the nobles. Thanks to you, I had the means of finally doing so without overstepping my power."

"You're welcome," Handy said sardonically. "So you will not take me prisoner for fear of starting a war?"

"Right now? No. That was not my intention."

"Certainly seemed like it back in the Enclave."

"I am reliably informed you were told, in no uncertain terms, exactly why Equestrian Royal Guards were there to escort you."

"A lovely euphemism, and am I to truly believe you knew nothing of this?"

"Nothing."

"Yeah, I am afraid that is rather unbelievable, Princess. I cannot trust a damn word out of your mouth about anything if you simply persist on that line."

"And you do not think it is an extreme gesture of good faith on my part to trust anything you say?"

"I tend to keep my promises, Princess," Handy warned. "I said I'd explain whatever you wish to know about Manehatten, back when I believed you had truly declared war."

"And about nothing else?" Handy remained silent. "I see. Then I believe there can be no real discourse until we have reason to trust each other."

"That will never happen," Handy shot back. Celestia paused for a moment.

"Perhaps, if not trust, then at least something mutually beneficial. What would you like?"

That… actually gave Handy pause for thought. He pondered for a minute. If she was serious, he could ask for some boon or benefit to Gethrenia, a nice little 'sorry for disappearing for months on end' present to Joachim and everyone back at Skymount. However, that wouldn't be anything truly meaningful in terms of making him trust her. What did she care for material loss if it meant she had all of his secrets, never mind whatever she could do with those secrets? He could ask for Stellar's head on a plate, and as tempting as that would be, he knew he could not ask for that. Celestia if nothing else, was fiercely protective of her citizens based on the barely concealed fury behind her eyes when the earlier arguments touched upon the deaths of Manehatten. He didn't have enough leverage for that favour. Then, on a whim, he thought of it, something she could give him, here and now, that would bind her to give him the guarantees he needed.

"A writ of passage." Celestia blinked.

"Excuse me?"

"A writ of passage. If nothing else, this will guarantee I will never again set foot upon Equestrian soil and so, never again be a threat to your ponies directly."

"Those are usually reserved to airship guilds," Celestia said dryly.

"I know." She tilted her head thoughtfully.

"What would you use it for?"

"That would be my business."

"…I can't do it." She shook her head. "That's too large a leap of faith to entrust you not to abuse such a privilege."

"Is it?" Handy asked. “And what in the world could I give you in return that would be an equivalent gesture of good faith?"

Celestia turned to face the window for a moment, thinking. Her horn lit up and a well-worn piece of parchment was levitated from behind her. Handy had to wonder for a minute if she was hiding that in her wings, or if she regularly hid things behind her back when in the middle of important discussions.

"Here." She levitated the piece of parchment over to Handy. He looked at it dubiously for a minute, then took it in his hands. He opened it slowly and scanned the page's contents.

Dear Princesses Celestia and Luna,

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

I know I got rid of him so he’d be your problem, but this is just priceless. Really, it’s just too much.

With love,

Queen Chrysalis.

Handy just sort of… stared at the sheet for a minute or two. He then looked up at Celestia, back to the letter, then back to Celestia before inevitably asking the obvious.

"What?"

"This letter reached me not long after the… unpleasantness on board the Equesrian Express," Celestia explained. "We had already highly suspected you as a changeling agent, hence provoking our assault."

"I was—!"

"Let me finish," Celestia said, raising a hoof to forestall Handy's rebuttal. "Whatever we thought of before, this confirmed you had at the very least contact with the Queen of the Changelings. You even admitted to having done work for her before, when we last met.

"Before I explain anything, before I answer any questions you have for the why and how's and who’s to blame, when we were tracking you, we know you left Equestria after Manehatten and travelled into the Badlands where we know Chrysalis is hidden… and that you disappeared for a time after you entered," she continued. There was a pregnant pause. Handy opted not to confirm anything by speaking. Celestia resumed, "The only way I could possibly trust you enough with such a gesture on my part would be a guarantee, a rock-solid proof that you are not an ally of the changeling queen. That you would never abuse such a privilege in their favour and that…" She faltered for a moment. "It’s a bit late to demand you not be a threat to my ponies entirely. You can see why what you're asking is impossible."

Handy studied Celestia's face for a moment, thinking. Then, to Celestia's surprise, he smiled.

"So, Sorcha." He had no idea if the name irked the Princess. He hoped it did, but he was not rewarded with a reaction. "Would you reconsider your stance if I brought you the head of Chrysalis?"

"This is no time for jokes, human."

"I am not joking, pony," he replied in kind. "Actions speak louder than words. You cannot trust me because of my previous involvement with changelings and my admittedly suspect dodging of your tracking methods while in the Badlands. So, in order to give you a conciliatory gesture, to placate your worried heart that I am not in league with those disgusting unseleighe, would I not require something truly concrete? Like her head on a platter?"

"Since it’s equally as impossible to happen then yes." Celestia frowned harshly at Handy, who had a friendly smile on his face for the first time that night. Handy sat back in the chair, tapping the armrest with his fingers as he thought. He considered Celestia for a moment. If she thought anything off about his perpetually glowing eyes, she did not show it.

"Would you settle for part of her head?" She simply stared at him.

"What?"

Handy leaned over the table and removed the various cups and tea pots from the silver tray. He reached to his side. In truth, he originally thought to keep this as a trophy, something to spin a wild story about when he returned back to Skymount. Considering his last interaction with the changeling queen, however, he'd sooner be rid of it altogether and forget every reminder of his time underground. Might as well put it to good use. Strapped to the inside of the flap of the carrier bag he had fastened to his waist, he pulled out a long, crooked, black horn. It was twisted and gnarled and all too familiar to Princess Celestia, who sat there, wide-eyed as Handy presented it.

"As a gesture of good faith," Handy began confidently as he laid the black horn on the silver platter. "I present to you the horn of Queen Chrysalis of the Changelings, hewn from her very forehead not a week ago. I trust this will suffice?"

Celestia was literally speechless, and for the first time since Handy had laid eyes on her, her composure had completely broken and she stared agape at the gift laid practically at her hooves.

"How…What… What did you…? What were you even doing with her?" Celestia asked, still astonished.

"How about you give me what I asked for? Then, in good faith, we can trade answers." Celestia stared Handy down for a moment, but he did not budge, and then, finally, she sighed and rubbed her forehead with a hoof. She lifted the same silver bell again and rang it. A gold-plated helmet and the attached pony stuck their head through the door.

"Please find Raven and inform her I require the 'Tea Set'." The guard bowed his head then retreated through the door. Handy had to ask.

"…The Tea Set?"

"Ink, wax, quill, and special parchment for your… writ."

"I gathered, but why is it called the Tea Set?"

"That would take longer than either of us have to explain. Now, if you'd be so kind…" She gestured to the horn. Handy chewed the inside of his cheek for a moment, thinking of the best way to explain it away without evoking more questioning.

"In order to help fulfil my mission, I had to engage some… questionable avenues of inquiry in order to track down my target."

"Your target?"

"The culprit behind the… attack on the festival," Handy said, his thoughts suddenly fuzzy. 'That's queer, could've sworn I fought something there other than the dragon. Old magic was involved—I can determine that much. Is this like what happened in Manehatten? Why can't I recall it?'

"There was more than the dragon attacking the festival?" Celestia asked.

"…Yes," Handy recalled, thinking very carefully about what to reveal. "I was not the target but was involved in a deal that was the subject of the warlock's attack."

"What warlock?"

"…The same one who attacked Manehatten, I presume."

"You presume?"

"Tell me, Celestia, did you find it odd that none of your soldiers knew the captive warlock's name when they apprehended him?"

"…It was odd."

"How then did they know he was the culprit?"

"He was found in the cellar with all the strange arcane artefacts, just in the wake of a huge magical battle."

"A battle in which I myself recall being a part of, in fighting, and yet for the life of me, I can't recall who I was fighting," Handy confirmed. Celestia was silent for a moment. "I take it none of your soldiers recall who it was they were fighting either, despite the horrific damage caused to life and property?"

"That is correct."

"Yet the evidence was too obvious that they were fighting something absurdly strong and threatening, threatening enough to consider working with me." Celestia looked thoughtful. "When I said I did nothing to whichever incapacitated wretch your ponies apprehended, I meant it. Because for some reason, the only thing I can recall about that cellar I was in was the preponderance of arcana, innumerable occult artefacts whose purpose and nature I could not divine, and numerous blank sheets of paper and journals."

"Blank… There were a lot of blank journals when my soldiers raided the cellar."

"I recall the pony, blueish white—hard to tell in the dark at night—but I vaguely recall him. I didn't notice him mewling pathetically on the floor until I was already halfway through ransacking the place."

"What were you looking for?"

"Coming to that. Now, why do you suppose someone such as I, on the run from the guards and injured, would not notice a flailing pony by the very cellar door leading to the surface until the last minute? Do you not think it's odd?"

"You could be lying."

"For suffering from the same malady that causes your own soldiers to forget a foe they were fighting not fifteen minutes earlier? The same one, it seems, to have rendered this unknown warlock to completely forget himself if what Brazen says is true. He certainly didn't remember his name when I demanded he identify himself."

"I have more questions."

"I'm sure you do, but let me finish your first one. The reason I was ransacking his cellar was because I was looking for something in particular. My main objective was the elimination of the warlock of course, but I had been tasked by no less an august personage as Queen Chrysalis to track down a specific artefact for her own ends."

"Why?"

"I haven't the foggiest and, to be frank with you Celestia, I did not give a tinker's damn."

"Then why would you even remotely agree to her demands?"

"Because, your Highness, she had my employee held captive. You met her; Summer Shade. She had replaced Summer with a changeling who had been impersonating her for an unknown length of time. When I became aware of it, in the wake of the attack on the festival, I was given an ultimatum: the artefact for Summer's life."

"Why would you care?" Celestia asked. Handy arched a brow but Celestia's question was serious. He snorted.

"I look after my own, Princess, even if they're a pony. Summer Shade is my retainer, a mage I employ to advise me on magical matters."

"An expensive servant."

“Am I such a monster in your eyes that you would find it so unbelievable that I’d look after another’s interest besides my own?” Handy snapped. “I take responsibility for those entrusted to my care, Princess. One would think you’d be capable of doing the same, being a ruler.”

“I was merely remarking upon the oddity of somepony of your stature affording the employment of a mage.”

“No you weren’t, and we both know it, Celestia,” Handy said sharply, using her given name. “Hold me in all the disdain you like, judge me however you please, but if you view me as a monster then at least have the decency to admit to yourself that my existence as such is your own damn fault, and that of your sister’s.”

“I was not making any judgements,” Celestia said diplomatically.

“Keep your court diplomacy for another time, your Highness. I’d prefer it if we were both frank for this conversation. Any kind of truce between myself and the Equestrian crown will not come to pass if you consider me to be some mindless force of evil, incapable of empathy.”

“You certainly don’t go out of your way to convince ponies otherwise, Handy.”

“And I’m sure you were a perfect picture of rainbows and sunshine since the day you were born. Stories are stories—how about we act like adults for this conversation?”

“I was merely commenting that a lot of ponies may have done the same for a servant that requires as much care as a mage retainer. They’re usually quite a hefty investment.”

"You'd be surprised," Handy countered, before taking a breath and returning to the point at hand. "In the end, when all was said and done, I had returned to the Badlands to fulfil my end of the bargain. I gave Chrysalis her trinket and Summer was returned to me."

"And that's all that transpired in the Badlands? A simple transaction?" Celestia pressed.

"Chrysalis and I parted on less amicable terms than we had when we last met, Celestia. She knew I wouldn't be willing to do just a regular paid job for her again, so she used some leverage. I made the transaction and that was the end of it."

"And nothing else happened?" Handy looked down pointedly at the horn on the table.

"…Nothing pleasant," he said with an odd look on his face that Celestia couldn't quite discern. "Well, seeing as we're playing twenty questions. Blackport, what happened?"

"Blackport was… an error on the part of my sister."

"Ciara?" Celestia allowed herself to roll her eyes. Handy wondered if that meant his name game was needling her. He hoped so.

"Luna, yes," she confirmed.

"And you had no say?"

"We rule together, Handy. Sometimes that means you don't have to consult your fellow diarch on your decisions. She had been… following you for some time and had been growing increasingly concerned about the situation with Griffonia. She deduced that whatever the cause of the crisis, the solution would involve you, since you were at the centre."

"So logically that means she sends in elite guards across a national border to kidnap a representative of a third power?"

"Their orders," Celestia persisted, remaining calm, "were to bring you to the border, to get you to Griffonia as quickly as possible."

"And you needed to extract me forcibly from the Enclave in order to that?"

"My sister is more than aware that somepony like you would elicit the Black Isles' interest considerably. Were you not aware that when Equestrian troops showed up to extract you, the Enclave immediately sought to secure you for themselves?"

"No, not really. Seems to be the standard greeting in pony societies, as far as I am aware," Handy replied. “Until that day, I had done literally nothing to affront the Black Isles. Why should I assume their government would take special interest in me?”

“You claim to have arrived here by traveling over the western ocean. The Black Isles rules those waters unchallenged, and nothing crosses them without their knowledge or permission,” Celestia said frankly. “Princess Galaxia rather… jealously guards that ocean, and your claims basically mean you found a way through her sea patrols.”

“...Well that explains that at least.” Handy opted to actually drink the cup of tea before him. The taste was surprisingly bitter with a peculiar bite, but not unpleasant. He’d need to acquire the taste however.

“And what were you doing in the Enclave in the first place anyway?”

“My first stop when I left the Greenwoods.” He took another sip, peering over at the monarch.

“You were in the Greenwoods? How did you survive?”

“I had a deer help. It's a really long story and, beyond one particular point, completely irrelevant to the matters at hand. This deer, by the name of Whirlwind ap Whisperwood, if you must know, saved me and Summer. He brought us to the forest before we could be killed… by the warlock.” There was that scratching feeling, prickling along the underside of his skull again. “He had this crystal which allowed a one way instantaneous transport to the heart of the Greenwoods. Getting out with life and limb was an ordeal. This next part will require you to do the research on your own, but the reason why this deer was significant was because he was the one I was to meet for a deal I had made in Canterlot.”

“A deal?”

“With a rather respectable looking fellow by the name of Fancy Pants,” Handy freely admitted. Celestia looked thoughtful. Good, she knew him. Maybe this would pay him back for all the bloody hassle his little ‘courier’ job had caused Handy. “After my… altercation with your nephew, I made this pony’s acquaintance. He offered me simple payment if I were to deliver an item to a friend who he had presumed, correctly as it turned out, would show up at the festival in Firthengart after word spread about the upcoming tournament.”

“What item?”

“A simple series of silver chains with some clear gems embedded in the links. Magical, of course.” Handy paused, sighing lightly. “If only I knew then what hassle agreeing to that would cause me.”

“More than you bargained for?”

“Considerably. The warlock had struck then, the dragon merely hired to create a distraction. It went berserk, the warlock attacked, I lost, and we were spirited away,” Handy summed up.

Celestia looked at him quizzically. “I feel as if I am not getting the full story here.”

“It's what I knew at the time, Princess. Everything happened almost all at once on the same day. Up until then, I had been simply enjoying the festivities as much as anyone else.”

“And you had no idea what was going to happen?”

“None. You have my word,” he confirmed. “And your sister’s little… party favour?”

“The tracer is alchemical mixture,” Celestia explained. “It's a soap bespelled to merge with the flesh of a pony and allow them to be monitored.”

“Monitored how?” Handy said lowly.

“Depends on the spell. With the distances involved in your case, all its spell could reveal is your approximate location.”

“And you considered me such an existential threat you had to violate my person?” Handy all but spat. Celestia flinched at the wording.

“It was a step too far,” Celestia admitted, biting her tongue before yet again placing the blame solely on her sister, “And I know you will not accept an apology, but perhaps you can at least accept my acknowledgement that we wronged you.”

“...Moving on. To answer several of your questions all at once, because they primarily have the same source, I will be frank with you.” Handy put the cup down and leaned on his knees. “The entire reason I am even on this continent, what happened on the Equestria Express, the warlock attacks of Firthengart, Blackport and Manehatten, and the strange magic involved in all of those events have to do with one particular pony.”

“A pony?”

“I believe her to be a pony, but I have yet to meet her in person. She is only known as the Mistress, and she possesses a powerful form of magic that, as far as I can tell, no one else knows a damn thing about,” Handy explained, retaining Celestia’s full attention. “My entire purpose for being is to seek out this Mistress and destroy her. This requires me to find and seek out elements of ‘old magic’ as its servants refer to the sorcery and, yes, employ somewhat dubious methods of information gathering to do so.

“The pin you showed me that your soldiers recovered from the train? I have seen more of those. Her servants wear them. The arcana your ponies recovered from the cellar in Manehatten? I cannot speak for the occult artefacts, but the innumerable pages scrawled with strange scribbles and wavy lines were definitely old magic. If you can decipher them, more power to you, because as of yet I have still failed to do so.”

“Is that why you have hired a personal mage?”

“Amongst other reasons. I have no way with magic,” Handy conceded. Celestia gave him a flat look.

“You drink blood to gain power, you had mimicked the appearance of a pony with ease merely moments before crashing into me, and your eyes are glowing.”

“A pony can lift a cup with a thought but that doesn’t make it a wizard, now does it?” he countered with an equally flat look. “Summer aids me in magical matters such as this. So far we’ve had no luck.

“How can I be certain what you’re telling me is true?”

“I’m sorry, but did we not just go over all the horrors that transpired in Manehatten?” Handy snapped. “I am no mood to retread old ground. I don’t know how long the Mistress has been in operation, but she is clearly powerful and possesses powerful servants. She seeks powerful magical artefacts in particular, such as the little piece of jewellery I was hired to deliver to the deer,” Handy continued. “You want to know why I am traipsing through Equestria, Celestia? That’s why. I was rooting out and hunting down the one responsible for the attack on Firthengart. The one responsible for nearly wiping out two royal dynasties in one fell swoop by accident. One who, if left unchecked, could become a greater threat to my adoptive kingdom.”

“Just a moment,” Celestia interjected. “You mentioned it was your entire reason for even being on this continent.”

“...Yes.”

“How? The earliest we knew of a warlock attack was the train.”

“The earliest attack on Equestrian soil,” Handy emphasised. “I tell you solemnly, the Mistress’ magic is so potent that what she plays at can affect even my homeland.”

“I… find that distinctly hard to believe.”

“I don’t care. It's why I am here.”

“So my sister is right then. You are an agent of a human kingdom.”

“No.” The exasperation was becoming harder to hold back. “If I were, my mission would have already been accomplished by now,” Celestia looked doubtful. “Trust me, if a human kingdom wanted to send an infiltrator to take care of this problem, they’d make much less noise than I do. I am far too visible.”

“So nopony in your lands is aware of your presence here?”

“No one I know of at least, much less my former government.”

“So you are truly a servant of Gethrenia?”

“Wholly.”

“And how am I to trust you on that? How do I know the griffon who presents himself as king of that land is the rightful heir, and not a human puppet kept in place only through his use of you as a weapon of fear?”

“Have you even been remotely been paying attention to your neighbours for the past, I don’t know, year?” Handy snapped at her, not for the first time. “Were you so utterly unaware of King Gerhart’s deteriorating condition on his sick bed? Were you blind to the visible corruption and decadence of Geoffrey’s reign? Are you so wilfully ignorant to know my powers as Sword of the King under Gethrenian law and tradition but know nothing of the Right of Retrieval and the Gryphonic tradition of challenging claims of succession? That it was pressed to push Johan off of his claim to the throne in the first place?”

She didn’t answer him, so he sat back and continued, “You are clearly not stupid, so I am going to assume you did know all of that. Why then is it so surprising that Johan would enlist aid to retake what was his in the first place? Would you have blinked twice had he enlisted the aid of a pony?”

“I have to be suspicious,” Celestia said. “A king died, the very night after he transferred succession from one son to another.”

“Slain by the hand of Geoffrey.” Celestia raised an eyebrow. It was not public record, even if most people had made the assumption that Geoffrey had committed patricide. Handy’s admission of such was the closest one came to an official acknowledgment. “The king and several guards, followed by Geoffrey himself.”

“And how did he die?”

“He was a kingslayer. How do you think he died?” Handy asked carefully. Celestia decided not to press the matter.

“So King Johan is guilty of no foul play?”

“How about you ask him that yourself, along with any spurious accusations if you do not trust my word? I have met no one more honourable in my entire time in Gethrenia… even if it's not in his best interests.” Celestia opened her mouth to question that, but then held her tongue, thinking. “Any more questions, your Highness?”

“A few. I take it you did not mean to endanger the lives of innocent ponies in Manehatten?”

“...I could not have defeated the warlock on my own. I had expected your guards to take precautions in case of collateral damage, but I could not account for everyone. It was not my intention to harm any of your civilians. If it were, I could’ve simply provoked the wizard and let your guards respond to the crisis as it unfolded without any forewarning. Be reasonable, Princess.”

“Tell that to the family you terrorized.”

“Desperate men do desperate things, Princess,” he said coolly. “They have my apologies, but I am not going to pretend I regret doing it. Every other alternative involved capture or unnecessary violence.”

“Very well, for now you have satisfied my curiosity,” she said, moving on from the subject.

“Have I?”

“No, but I feel if you really knew more about this ‘old magic’, then you’d have little enough reason to withhold it from me. Unless you benefitted somehow.”

“Believe me, Princess, if I could benefit from my encounters with old magic, I would not look nearly as haggard as I do now.”

“I can imagine. Why is it you are in such a hurry to cross the border that you felt the need to search for an underground smuggling ring across it?”

“Oh I don’t know, maybe all these rumours of a potential war brewing up north while I have been absent were a touch concerning for me. You know, the defence of Gethrenia being my responsibility and all,” Handy said sarcastically. Celestia smiled. “I am… very tired of the road, your Highness. I just wish to return home as soon as I can.”

“Well, if you could, would you please bring a letter to your king for me?”

“Can you not send one yourself?”

“He has not been responding to any of my missives. Otherwise I wouldn’t be here right now trying to resolve matters by hoof. Perhaps, as a gesture of good faith, I can calm the nerves of the nobility on the Griffonian borders, if you could but convince your king to reign in his own nobles.”

“...I will endeavour to try,” Handy said.

“It's all I ask.” She then thoughtfully tapped her chin. “Well, it would be good if you could get King Goldtooth to respond as well, but that may be a bit much.”

The door opened, and the mare Handy presumed was called Raven entered, levitating what appeared to be a small metallic case. Celestia smiled at her and waved her over. The unicorn wordlessly placed the case before Celestia, bowed her head, and retreated from the room.

“Oh, one more thing, Raven.”

“Yes, my princess?”

“Please fetch the countess from her room. Our talk here is concluded, but we would very much like to have another word with her before she is too deep in her slumber.”

“Of course, Princess,” Raven said before closing the door behind her.

“What's left to ask?” Handy enquired.

“Who her friend is on the Firthengarian side of the border,” Celestia replied. She smiled as she opened the case, unfurled a thick sheet of parchment, and began writing with a quill. She had this… look in her eye, a glimmer. “I imagine you might want to know that. Oh, and one more thing.”

“What?”

“How did you fool the tracer? Last I heard from my sister, you were on your way east.”

“...Ways and means. Speaking of your sister, how can I be absolutely sure she will be bound by what you have agreed with me? It is her, chiefly, who is responsible for all of my foul relations with your land.”

“I will impress myself upon her. Though really, nothing I say will likely mean all that much to her unless she speaks with you herself.”

“I would rather avoid that, if you don’t mind.”

“Mm,” she hummed as she continued writing, quill scratching being the most audible noise in the room. “Out of curiosity, why are you not speaking like you did before?”

“I’m sorry?”

“Like that. You’ve speaking to me without the fanciful style my own sister is rather fond of using.”

“To be honest, Majesty, I am simply not in the mood to be polite is all.” She seemed amused by this and looked back down to her work.

“I do hope, if nothing else is achieved this night, that we are at least making some progress towards understanding one another, if not reconciliation.”

Handy did not say anything, opting instead to idly look out the window of the richly appointed room as the princess continued her work. The golden sheen he had seen before was gone—he guessed she must have taken down the shield. He wasn’t going to escape without his prize after all, no matter how easy it would have been to simply break through the glass, uncaring of whatever damage it caused. He was good at that, he now realized. There were entire streets of broken glass in Manehatten that stood testament to that fact… and the broken lives they now reflected.

“Perhaps,” he said under his breath.

--=--

It was another hour or so before Handy could leave the room. The proceeding discussion with Brazen Hearthfire had been quite an enlightening event, giving Handy much food for thought, so much so that he almost didn’t see the veritable army of guard ponies until he practically ran into one. He looked up, then down, then above the hallway.

He sighed.

“Look, guys, it's been a long day. Can you just let me pass, because we both know damn well you have to?” Several of the guards looked at each other. At least some of them seemed familiar. Where did he… ah! That was it. The pony with the short muzzle and a distinctive mark under his left eye. He was pretty low on Handy’s personal shit list, but he’d remember anyone he had put on there sooner or later. Now was neither the time nor place to do anything about it, however.

Grudgingly, the guards parted as he made his way past and down the hall. Every step of the way, over a dozen pair of eyes were trained on his back.

‘You know,’ he thought to himself, ‘one of these days those guards are going to get sick of idly standing by while I walk past, immune from their retribution, and they’ll just snap.’

The realization stayed with him as he continued wandering. If, at the very least, this particular batch of royal guards lost their collective shit, there didn’t seem to be any night guards amongst them. He supposed that it was fortunate. He’d rather not be ganged up upon by a host of vampire horses. Again.

The home of the countess was, despite its luxurious appointments, small and simple as far as noble homes went. That was not to say he did not get lost. This was a fortified home in a walled city, the corridors designed to slow down incoming enemies and so if one did not know their way around, they’d get turned around very easily. Handy would be fucked if he’d ask for directions.

He used his auspex to find where Crimson was. Not that it helped a damn because he still couldn’t distinguish one person from another at a distance using his new sense on its own… assuming he even could with practice, of course. Still, it was good at determining who was distressed and who was calm, so he went towards the one sense in the entire building he felt that remained eerily calm and collected. He knew Crimson could switch between a strangely icy persona with strangers and a complete different one when in his presence, but the sheer scope was startling when you could literally feel the difference in another person.

He found her in a study, idly looking over a chart of the local countryside. She smiled when he entered. The two guards shadowing her did not.

“We’re leaving. Come,” he said simply. Crimson gave the two guards an unpleasant look before pulling her hood up and following after him.

“Master?” she asked quietly as they left the front entrance.

“Walls have ears. Keep your questions simple for now.”

“Oh. Okay. Where are we going now?”

“Celestia says we can stay the night in town without fear, rest up before going across the border.”

“Are we?”

“No,” Handy replied flatly. “If nothing else, we still need to be on the other side of that border before Jacques reaches the far side.”

“Ah,” she said as they walked through the empty streets. Several of the lampposts were lit, and more than a few soldiers could be seen still doing their rounds, eyeing the human and pony suspiciously. If Celestia kept her word, they’d be dissipating back to their regular duty stations or homesteads, and the border would be demilitarized. She’d be using the countess as an example to get the other nobles to fall in lockstep to de-escalate the situation, partially, Handy assumed, out of embarrassment of having been drawn in by the countess’ con.

It seems the little countess, new to her position and having only recently come into nobility, was unsatisfied with her usual profitable income. That said quite a lot given not a few of her neighbours would quite like to be sitting where she was. However, she was too shrewd to do something as daft as increase the taxation on the people or the excise and import duties on merchants. That would cause no end of stink and give her own overlord, some duke Handy didn’t quite catch the name of, reason to extract bigger taxation from her.

That just wouldn’t do, and with the rising tensions between Gethrenia and Firthengart, she had an opportunity to get a bigger slice of the pie, at least for a time. An inflammatory speech to incite her peers to help lock down the border, a ceasing of trade, and a sudden demand for goods to get across an inaccessible border. A demand she could supply with a ready-made smuggling route. A lack of trade meant less taxes tolled upon her by her overlord. After all, he could not reasonably expect her to pay the usual amounts if she couldn’t get the usual trade due to exceptional circumstances.

Soon enough merchants were coming to her town as the last stop before they went to various contacts to sneak their goods across, until finally they reached the border and paid a toll to the guards there, with Brazen getting her cut at every step of the way. Her people did not have additional taxes, were placated by still receiving the abundance of trade and resources they were accustomed to, kept in place by fear and reassured by the presence of soldiers. All the while, little Miss Brazen was making a rather substantial personal profit.

Handy had no idea what Celestia was going to do to her for these shenanigans, but he had to admire the sheer audacity and pettiness of her plan. And he would, if it didn’t exacerbate an already terrible problem that was going to cause him a headache. He rubbed his forehead as they walked on. He turned to say something to Crimson when out of the corner of his eye, he could have sworn he saw something.

He turned around, looking back up the street they had come. Crimson stopped and looked up curiously.

“Master? Is there something wrong?”

“Nothing it's just… I thought I saw something.” He reached out with his auspex before immediately regretting it and shortening the range. He was in the middle of a large town, hundreds and hundreds of people in the buildings around him. It was a bad idea to put that strain on him all at once like that. He shook his head and strained his vision. He had spotted something, but what?

It was when the clouds moved and the moonlight fully illuminated the slim spectre of black against the navy blue of the night sky that he realised what he had seen. It was a bit far away, but he could swear he saw those same green eyes staring down at them from the roof of the countess’ house. If anything, the shape of the wings only confirmed her identity.

It was her, it had to be. What the hell was she doing here? Had she been there the whole time? Was she listening in? Why hadn’t Celestia mentioned she was here? Did she not know? No, of course she knew. There was no way she couldn’t have known. Innumerable thoughts raced through Handy’s mind as he stood there, staring up at her. Anger and alarm raged with each other for dominance as a horrifying possibility came to mind.

‘Had she been following them this whole time?’ That Celestia would appear here, on the last town before he left Equestria, was a hell of a coincidence. But what if it wasn’t? What if Celestia knew he was heading here? What if she knew he had spoofed the tracing magic and fobbed it off on some yokel? What if she knew all this because this entire time since Manehattan, he had been personally stalked by that damnable bat pony!? Every night when they had went to sleep, the innumerable times they had let their guard down while traveling, all those times he had been vulnerable and completely unaware of her presence. She knew now he could sense people. Was she always there? Just out of range? Hiding in the shadows just far enough away that he wouldn’t suspect a thing?

‘No no, wait, get a hold of yourself.’ He turned around and urged Crimson on. The unicorn appeared confused but did not argue the matter as Handy hurried his pace and entered the twisting narrow streets of the town centre. ‘The night ponies serve Luna directly, not Celestia. If anything, he should have run into Luna here.’

The logic was sound, but it didn’t answer everything.

‘But if that's the case, why is she here at all? If Celestia was telling the full truth, why did she not let me know she was here? Was she protecting her? No, that’s stupid. I couldn’t so much as lay a finger on her with the princess and the preponderance of guards here,’ he thought desperately. Was she going to shadow him into Griffonia as well? What for? What purpose would that serve? Was that entire talk just a ruse? A set up in some other grand game he was not seeing?

“Crimson, I need you to cast your illusion spell,” he said suddenly as the pair wandered down a side road.

“What for? I thought we could—”

“Just do it. Make… Make yourself look like one of the guards. I’ll follow suit.” Crimson raised a brow but then nodded. Her horn glowed bright red and a wave of magic washed over her body, cloak, bags and all. What was left was the facade of a yellow guardsmare. By her own admission, illusions were not her strong suit, being a part of her regular, under-practiced, non-old magic repertoire. It wouldn’t stand up to strong magical scrutiny but Handy didn’t need it to. He used the opportunity presented by Crimson’s momentarily closed eyes to project the form of a bog standard guard himself. “Let’s go.”

“Master, what—?”

“Just… trust me on this,” he said as they exited the street. He looked back up to the fortified house, just making out its roof over the tops of the buildings around him. Stellar was gone. He kept a wary eye on the rooftops around them as he led Crimson on. “I’ll… explain it to you later, Crimson. We have a long overdue talk, you and I.”

“Really?” Crimson asked, and he nodded, “What about?”

Handy looked back once more, making sure no one else was listening in.

“I think it's long past time you told me everything you know about old magic.”

--=--

Stellar alighted in the courtyard at the back of the house and shifted uneasily in her plate. Everything about this struck her as just… just wrong. She knew why Celestia was letting him go. Hell, she just got him to effectively agree to the very mission objective Luna had charged her with over a month ago.

But it didn’t sit right with her, though she didn’t know why. The fact he had appeared at all in Hayverslock had been a shock to her. She had actually been enjoying a rare moment’s respite, conversing with local guards over a cup of water…. which she had proceeded to choke on the second she heard the news.

She had already told the princess everything she knew about the human, from the train onwards. More than once, just so Celestia could be sure she got every detail she could. It had been agonizing, that one single moment of weakness, that one mistake, was haunting her now and probably would for the remainder of her life. Now this had happened. She was to just stand there and watch as he waltzed merrily on his way as if nothing had happened in Manehatten. Because of politics.

“My apologies for keeping you waiting so long, my little pony.” Stellar immediately turned and stood to attention. Celestia merely smiled at her and beckoned her to come closer. “I trust all is well?”

Stellar made to answer before holding her tongue. She didn’t come all this way to lie to Celestia.

“No, Princess, it is not.” Celestia frowned at that.

“What’s wrong?” Stellar tried to come up with the words. She bowed her head.

“Princess… I believe it is a mistake to not hold him to account for his actions.”

“Actions?” Celestia asked.

“He deliberately lured our soldiers into a dangerous situation. He was perfectly willing to abandon us to it too, even after promising help,” Stellar protested. “Ponies died, your Highness, good ponies. I cannot abide…” She paused as her words caught up to her, and swallowed. “I know that I, of all ponies, have no right to pass judgement on anypony, but we can’t do nothing!”

Celestia studied the thestral for some time before looking up at the moon.

“Nopony is more furious over the loss of innocents than I, Private Stellar,” Celestia said quietly, her tone warm and maternal. “Would any have been saved had he intervened earlier, do you think?”

“We have to assume so!” Stellar shouted, then chastened herself when she realised to whom she was speaking. She continued in a quieter voice, “I am wholly responsible for his enmity to our kingdom, Princess. His actions, his deliberate reticence, are in part my own fault. I cannot let this go.”

“Your words do you credit,” Celestia said, smiling down at the smaller pony before letting out a shallow breath. “I am afraid, for now, you will have to.”

“Princess!” she protested, but was halted by a raised hoof.

“I am sorry, but that's just the way it has to be for now.” Celestia opened her eyes to look upon the distraught face of the soldier before her. “You are being overly harsh on yourself. Whatever you may have done in the past, you cannot be held accountable for the willing actions of another in the present. Your feud with the human, for the greater good, must be put aside.”

“But…” she began, before bringing herself up short and readopting a professional mask, not without some effort, mind. “I… understood, Princess.”

“...Do you?” Celestia asked after some time, studying the thestral. Stellar held her gaze long enough for her to make her judgement. “Very well, see to it that you do. I will have words with my sister to undo the restrictions placed upon the night guard. You’ll no longer have to be watched by ponies of my personal guard any longer.”

“Princess, why—?”

“Because I believe we’ve all had enough of being suspicious of our neighbours, and charity starts at home,” Celestia replied. “I have other things I will require my sister, and her guard, to look into. To do that effectively, they will require a free hoof without my obvious oversight, and you, Stellar, will be key to advising Princess Luna.”

“Advising her on what?”

“On a much bigger threat to Equestria than the human ever posed, real or imagined. Now, I know this is the time of day you are most active, but I recommend you get some sleep. We’ll return to Canterlot soon.”

Stellar simply nodded and saluted as the princess returned to the house. She held it until after the door was shut. When her hoof returned to the ground, her blood went cold and her mind thunderous.

Though as she stood there in the moonlight, listening to the quiet whisper of the water fountain, she consoled herself with at least one gain they had made this night. She herself had not been there to bear witness to it, but other ponies were. They had seen the moment the human shed his disguise and ran through the streets like a panicked animal. More importantly, they had seen what it was that had frightened him so. She turned to look over the courtyard wall, spying the glass housing of the candle of a street lamp peeking just over the wall from the street below.

And watched the candle flame dancing in the night

Chapter 50 - Don't Shoot the Messenger

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Chapter 51 - Homecoming

He had seen the crowd gathered in the courtyard, still milling about and gossiping excitedly at the rarefied company who had just emerged from the dirigible. Handy chewed on the inside of his mouth, biting back a muttered curse. He had been hoping to not immediately push his way through a crowd of easily frightened courtiers, servants, and far too many guards than would ordinarily be warranted. He’d much rather have made his way into the castle unseen and perhaps, if not immediately, make his way to the king, then find a room to rest in until his Majesty was ready for him. Tired and exhausted, a part of him was still not even sure any of this was real. Handy crushed that part under a mountain of determination to not show any sign of wavering. Not to his exhaustion, not to his illness, and certainly not to any paranoia and delusions born of anxiety. Above all else, the one thing holding him back from marching straight into the castle was a very simple, if somewhat selfish concern.

Handy did not like being touched, and judging by the reactions of his friends previously, pushing his way through a crowd of disbelieving griffons might lead to a lot of unwanted contact.

But his gryphonic friends, if they were aware of this, apparently didn’t give a good God damn. The first, and perhaps most predictable of assailants, was of course Sir Tanismore. Tanis, upon seeing Handy walking off the ramp of the airship onto the largest courtyard of the castle, promptly descended from the ramparts. Everyone else—guards, servants, and various courtiers alike who had come to welcome back the chancellor and who doubtless were enamoured with the surprise arrival of the Firthengarian princess—these people, as one might imagine, had rather sensible reactions to the sight of the beaten and battered spectre emerging from the depths of the airship.

Tanismore was not a sensible griffon.

In one fell swoop, the aura of dread and ominous intrigue his presence inspired in the surprised gathering of griffons was utterly shattered when a heavily-armoured knight descended from on-high, laughing manically and crashing into the unsuspecting human at an utterly discourteous speed. Some rather confused guards and a younger knight Handy did not recognise and who was wearing armour that was too big for him, had pushed their way through the crowd, uncertain of what they were to do.

Especially considering the senior knight they had opted to back up was laughing.

“You’re alive!” Tanismore shouted, hopping off Handy with a clatter of armour and pulling him off the ground. “What in damnation!? Where have you been!? What happened to you!?”

“Tanis,” Handy greeted with a grunt when his senses had come back to him. He had woken up that day groggy, with his head feeling oddly full in the manner of a head cold. He had hoped the warmth of staying in the belly of a steam-powered airship might help alleviate that, but no such luck. As such, with his guard lowered, exhaustion overcoming him, he had no idea what hit him when the griffon landed. “Good to see you again.”

“What happened to your arm?” Handy unconsciously withdrew his bandaged left arm beneath his cloak.

“Don’t worry about it.” He looked around at the gathered crowd. He more or less recognised the servants, some of the guards, a few courtiers he knew as the usual rabble of minor nobility present at court to keep their families represented and informed of what happened at the capital. He was vaguely aware that Tanismore, like Ivorybeak before him, was poking him in the armour just to make sure he was there. He idly smacked away his gauntleted claw. “Where is everyone?”

“What? Oh. Well, they’re around. Some of us have a job to do, you know.” Tanismore gave Handy a faux, haughty expression with his chest puffed out. Handy snorted.

“You? Working? Shocker.” The guards seemed unsure of what exactly was going on, but the younger knight, sensing that his senior had things more or less under control, waved them off. Handy nodded at the young griffon in thanks. “This has happened so often that I barely register it anymore.”

“What, flying hugs?”

“Spears levelled at my throat.”

“Same thing.” Tanismore chuckled, punching Handy in the arm. Handy scowled but decided against doing anything, and merely looked up at the crowd of courtiers who suddenly had second thoughts about lingering outside in the castle garden courtyard.

“Let's continue on inside. Hopefully the rest of them will be a little more circumspect in their welcome.”

--=--

They were not.

He was all but escorted into the castle, with Tanismore going before him, apparently doing a lot of good for the worried onlookers. It was doubtless done purposefully to give the appearance that things were under control and that the apparition of the king’s shadow that everyone had thought long dead was not going to run amok. However, in spite of Handy’s expectations, he was led away from the main hall and taken to the first of the old coterie of royal knights.

Godfrey was left blinking rapidly when Tanismore turned the corner with Handy in toe. He had looked from one to the other, raised a claw, beak open as if to speak. Then he thought better of it. He merely nodded his acknowledgment of Handy’s continued existence… and promptly fell in step beside Tanismore. On it went, Frederick, Jeremy, and even Shadowsunder falling into line, with reactions ranging from a yelp of surprise when Jeremy all but ran into Handy when he emerged from one corridor, to Shadowsunder smiling and collecting a few coins from a maid who gave a disgusted sigh.

To observers, it appeared as if the royal knights of Gethrenia were merely taking the mysterious human to parts unknown and doubtlessly doing the kingdom a service in some manner. Handy knew better. The first room they found themselves in, Handy was pushed into a chair, and he promptly cursed.

“Oh for fuck’s sake, lads would you give over!” he cried as the chattering griffons flitted about the room, clattering armour resounding off the stone walls. It was one of the obscure waiting rooms with decorative paintings, tapestries, and reasonably nice furniture. A few of them actually managed to sit down. One of them, the new knight Handy had not recognised, had left the room, presumably to let more know about this impromptu meeting. Jeremy, the palest of the lot, seemed to be rummaging the cupboards for something. “Aren’t you all on duty?”

“Were,” Godfrey replied. “There’s more than enough of us to take up the slack, and most of us have been pulling doubles for months now. Hricce is off to put some of his fellow newbloods on duty.”

“Newbloods? Like Shadowsunder and Celebra?”

“Not anymore,” Shadowsunder said with a smile, taking a seat near the window and trying to get out of his helmet. “The Royal Knights got expanded.”

“How so?”

“After the… incident at Firthengart, the king wanted more knights for the personal guard. Most were landed knights who just got promoted as it were, rather than fresh hires or mooks who got kicked upstairs,” Godfrey explained. Handy was silent for a moment.

“How many… eh… Who was replaced?”

“Replaced? Oh, just Shortbeak.”

“What!?”

“Yeah, we’re gonna miss her,” Jeremy said, finally finding what looked to be a bottle of red wine—really red, scarlet and translucent. Handy wondered if it was watered down.

“Such a shame, an awful fate for anygriffon,” Tanismore agreed.

“Wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.” Godfrey nodded sadly. Handy sat back in his seat, completely disbelieving what he was hearing.

“Are… So after the dragon attack, Shortbeak… she—?”

“Yeah, she’s no longer with us.”

“I can’t believe it,” Handy murmured. That any of them were lost in the attack was bad enough, but Shortbeak? She was the best out of all of them! This couldn’t be possible. “She’s gone.”

“Gone? Who’s gone?” Celebra asked, followed shortly by Grimtooth, both stopped upon seeing Handy seated on the far side of the table. Grimtooth, an unfortunate name for such an inherently jovial fellow, was eating something that looked vaguely like a carrot. It dropped from his mouth. Handy didn’t really notice them.

“Anyone else?” he asked after a moment. “I’m seeing most of you. What about the other four?”

“Oh, they’re out on king’s business.” Tanismore passed over a cup. Handy took it to stop it sliding off the table, but didn’t drink. Hricce, the new knight, came back and immediately was grabbed by Grimtooth and Celebra, and seemed to be undergoing some intense interrogation over some matter or other.

“How can you be so blasé about this?” Handy asked disbelievingly.

“What’s wrong?” Godfrey questioned in confusion.

“What’s wrong!? You just told me Shortbeak—Shortbeak out of all knights!—died in Firthengart, and you act like it’s nothing?” There was silence as everyone in the room just stared at their newly retrieved friend. Then, as one, they all broke into raucous laughter. “What? What is it, damn it!?”

“You-You think she’s—?” Frederick began, “…Oh All-Maker…”

“Okay… Okay, I know how that must have sounded to you, but you got us wrong,” Tanismore explained.

“I do?” Handy’s face twisted in confusion under his helm.

“Yeah, Shortbeak’s fine.”

“But you made it sound like she died or something.”

“Well, she did leave the Royal Knights, but only in the same sense that you did.”

“But I am still a knight.” At least he assumed so. He had been away for quite a while.

“Yes, but you’re no longer in the bodyguard. Shortbeak got lynched up the rookery.” Handy stared blankly at Godfrey. The griffon blinked before comprehension dawned. “She has a new job.”

“Oh. Well, what happened to her?” Handy said, relieved.

“She’s Marshal now.”

“What happened to Lord Condor?”

“Resigned,” Frederick interjected as the knights began settling down. There seemed to be a sizeable crowd gathering outside the door. Handy couldn’t make out any details over the tops of his gathering of comrades, but was suddenly keenly aware he was not getting out of this room any time soon. Hricce closed the door. “Apparently he felt he was too old for the position. Did it just before we all left for the festival. What a time to be stepping down…”

“Speaking of thinking people were dead,” Tanismore said loudly, “you’re not going anywhere until you tell us exactly where you’ve been.”

Handy looked from one griffon to another, each one seeming genuinely pleased he was back. While not ungrateful, he was nonetheless taken aback.

“You’re not mad?”

“Mad? Handy, we’re ecstatic! We thought you were dead, everygriffon did!” Tanismore affirmed. “Where were you? What happened? Why in Tartarus is there this Firthengarian princess here? Ivorybeak said nothing, just went straight to the king. I almost drew my sword when I saw you come off that ship!”

“What even happened back then?” Godfrey now asked. “Last thing I remember, we were chasing some pony through the mists when Tanismore took a bad fall.”

“Hey, I was shot down!”

“Whatever,” Godfrey said with a roll of his eyes.

“It was a mess—you should have seen Joachim then. I had never seen him so angry,`” Frederick continued.

The questions and personal accounts continued to build up, each griffon giving his own account of what happened that day and how little of Handy any of them had seen after the arena went up in flames. They didn’t see him fighting the dragon. All anyone saw, Gethrenian or otherwise was a blur of silver, and next the dragon was seen falling, later found upon the ground, dead with a pierced heart. They didn’t see him when he fought the warlock. All that was found of him was his ruined shield and not a trace more. He kept quiet as the conversation amongst the griffons died down, and they waited for him to fill in the blanks, as he had not risen to any of their baits.

“Handy, what happened that day?” Tanismore asked. Handy looked out the window.

“My, well that’d take a lot of explaining. Art thou sure you all have the time for such trifles?” Handy asked, feigning a casual air. Frederick snorted.

“You weren’t talking fancy a few minutes ago. We know you can talk normal.”

“Yes, but I choose not to. It is ever so much fun.”

“You should try listening to it someday,” Tanismore muttered. “Well?”

Handy considered his drink for a moment. He had been hoping to not have to talk to anyone other than Joachim about what had happened, at least at first. Quite a bit of what happened concerned the kingdom, such as a certain deal made in a certain forest. Handy warred with himself whether he should remain loyal to his king and friend and let him know just what danger Handy had put the entire kingdom into just to save a race of foreigners. Every other part of him, however, sensible or selfish, told him to live with keeping it secret. He did what he had to do. He had to trust that, come spring, Whirlwind would hold up to his oath.

“Well, it’s been a really long journey. I am tired and not doing as well as I could be. Another time perhaps?”

“Oh no, drink up, wine’s good for the constitution,” one griffon insisted.

“Yeah, and take off that helmet. You’re among friends,” another said. Handy hesitated and took another look at the wine, the image of how Silvertalon reacted fresh in his mind.

“I’d really rather not,” he said, taking a breath. “But fine, if you want me to talk, then I guess I have no choice in the matter.”

--=--

Three days—that was how long it took to get to Skymount from Firthengart by airship. They had arrived in the morning of the third day. It was sunset by the time Handy was finally let out of that damnable room. The questions, the unending questions! Good God, it was just as well that he never hung around too many of his fellow knights at once. By the time he got to tell the story about the deer and the Lady of the Lake, half of them were drunk. In this way, spinning that tale to the point where his deer companion did some deer magic, and they managed to renegotiate the pact between the Lady and the deer race—de-emphasising Handy’s part quite a bit—was accepted rather easily. The fact that it was a touch more believable than what actually happened helped Handy gloss over that problem considerably.

That was just as well, for Handy underestimated just how fascinated people outside the Greenwoods were with the forest, and ate up everything Handy could tell them. ‘What were the deer like? How did they live? Was the forest haunted? Did all that really happen? The trees were how big? You have got to be kidding, was there really an ancient city lost in those woods?’ On and on it went. Handy could probably write a book about what he experienced, fill in the gaps in his knowledge with wild bullshit, and make a small mint for himself, based on the reactions he got. He did have to prove his tale with some of the pitiful deer supplies he still had on his person from his time amongst them. You could hardly blame the griffons’ scepticism.

Everything after it, however, Handy had to get creative. He stayed as clear away from how involved he got with changelings as he could, but that proved impossible. Between the scandals with the Equestrians and the Enclavers, he struggled to keep a more important secret: old magic, and his involvement in it. He feigned his ignorance of it, but ultimately had to at least acknowledge that that was what he had been hunting, and why he did not immediately make his way back home. The changelings just raised so many more questions for them. By the end of it, he had to promise to show them the bounty of changeling gold he had gotten for his troubles, just to prove his story.

He opted to make it seem as if it was all Ivorybeak’s ingenious doing that solved the shit with the Firthengarians and Celestia. They could go bother him for details about that mess, rather than Handy having to tell them the truth and then answer twenty million more questions. At least that way when the unbelievable truth came out about it, he had Ivorybeak backing up his word. The bird could also take all the credit for himself and save Handy the trouble. Either was good.

He also left the entire debacle with Chrysalis to the barest bones of the story possible, because reasons. Still, it was ultimately that admission that gave him his most solid excuse to leave the room. ‘Changeling bullshit’ seemed like a pretty serious security issue to bring to the king’s attention after all. Exiting the room, he was surprised to see a guard had been posted outside, one who was doing an admirable job at trying not to stare. He guessed someone must have gotten tired of all the castle gossips hanging in the hallway.

“The king?” he asked the guard. The guard gestured to the western wing of the castle. Handy nodded and went off towards the king’s solar. His iron-shod boots echoed along the stone floor, and the winter twilight, painting the interior of the castle an icy blue, contrasted sharply with the warm light cast by the candles. It all felt so surreal, the corridors now feeling strange and unfamiliar. He kept having to shrug off the feeling that he was alien here, and reminded himself that this was normal. He was meant to be here. Everything was fine.

The castle was surprisingly empty, given the hour. The occasional guard, maybe he passed by some clerk hurrying out of an office, but that was it. No one else was about. As a result, he made it to the wing relatively unmolested. He ascended the last couple of steps, crossed the quadrangle and stood before the door. He knocked twice, ignoring the guards as they suddenly stood to attention at his presence.

“Enter,” a familiar voice commanded. Handy entered and closed the door behind him.

King Johan, the Blackwing of Gethrenia, first of his name, sat calmly behind his writing desk, reading glasses resting on his beak as his quill scratched across a parchment. He did not look up. Handy tried coughing lightly to get his attention.

Johan looked up, smiled slightly, then looked back down to his work.

“Took you longer this time,” he said gently, putting down the quill and taking off the spectacles. “You really need to stop dying. It’s a bad habit.”

Handy snorted in response, trying to keep from smiling. “Sorry, I’ll try to be more considerate the next time I’m shuffled off this mortal coil.”

“You could write.”

“Hey, I tried.”

“A disembodied voice of somegriffon I’ve never met doesn’t count. I was questioning my sanity for a good week after that.”

“A little introspection never hurt anybody.” Handy smirked, leaning against the wall.

“Yes, but too much of a good thing is always a problem.”

“What's the matter? Afraid you’ll get a little perspective?”

“Just don’t want to become a naval gazing loser.”

“Might be an improvement.”

“No thanks, it's not one of your better qualities I’d like to emulate,” Joachim said, gesturing to Handy with the folded spectacles.

“Aw, thanks, always knew you looked up to me. I mean for reasons other than you being a shortass.” Handy waved a hand at his friend’s relative height level.

“Well, it's hard not to be that tall with a head as big as yours, holding up your body. You ever let the gas out? It's unhealthy to be so full of yourself.”

“Oh, you wound me. Although you’d probably do better with the spectacles on.”

“Why?” the griffon asked.

“Because maybe, unlike that time with the diamond dogs, you might be able to hit something if you could see straight.”

“Can’t do that now, can I? Then I’d have to contend to see your face in perfect clarity.”

“One would think you’d appreciate my courtesy in taking that option away from you.”

“Hmm, yes, I suppose that bucket on your head is useful in covering that unsightly mess.”

“If only you could respond in kind, it’d be terribly appreciated.”

“Ah, but then how else can I make you look good by comparison? You’ve nothing else to offer griffons. Really, it’s a charity.”

“Says the man with the wit and charm of a South Harwik guttersnipe,” Handy quipped.

“Coming from an elegant and thoroughly respectable gentlegriffon such as yourself, I’ll take that as a compliment,” Joachim riposted.

“Fop.”

“Dour brute.”

“Lush.”

“Brigand.”

“Bird!”

“Ape!” The pair of them looked at each other as the trade of insults degenerated into tense silence. It was Johan who broke first, with a wide smile, holding his forelegs outstretched. “Handy, you miserable bastard, what took you so long?!”

“It’s been a long road, Joachim,” Handy said peacefully as his old friend walked out from behind his desk. The movement caused him to frown, taking one step back. “Now, I think it’s only fair to warn you...”

“Uh-huh.”

“...I will commit regicide if you come near me.”

“Sure.”

“I’m serious! Don’t think I won’t. I’ve already had enough with griffons— Hey—HEY!” But lo, it was too late to stop him. Handy received an embrace from his oldest friend in this world, and a pat on the back for his troubles. Handy, quite tired of this, by all accounts, promptly shoved the laughing griffon off. “For God’s sake, you know I hate that!”

“Yeah, pretty much why I did it.” Joachim laughed and picked himself up off of the floor before brushing down his all-encompassing cloak and tunic.

“Cold?” Handy asked.

“Not especially, no,” Joachim said with what looked like a pained smile. Handy was about to question further before being interrupted.

“And what about you? You look like you were dragged for miles behind a carriage.”

“I certainly feel like it.” Handy tapped his fingers in thought along a table. “Can you promise me you won’t freak out?”

“Freak out? About what?” Handy took off his helmet. “…W-Well alright then. That’s going to need an explanation.”

“It’s a rather long story.” Handy placed the helmet on top of a dresser. “How much has Ivorybeak already told you?”

“You mean after getting me to calm down with reassurances that he did not, in fact, kidnap Goldtooth’s daughter? Oh, everything,” Joachim said with a roll of his eyes. “THAT was a particularly nasty surprise, but at least now I have something to assuage the High King with.”

“The High King was involved?”

“To a point. He’ll be visiting soon. I want him to be in a good mood before he gets here.”

“Why?”

“Oh, I don’t know, maybe because he’s been breathing down my neck over this crisis, and I’d like to have word that everything is sorted before he leaves his perch at Old Mount?” Joachim waved Handy over to the door. “Now, I’m sure what you have to say is very, very fascinating, but you look like Death’s second cousin, twice removed. Off with you.”

“What?”

“I said go. Get some rest, the world will still be here tomorrow,” Joachim said. “And you stink.”

“I have a legitimately good excuse for reeking like the devil.”

“Yes, but you no longer have an excuse to continue smelling like a week old dead rat.” Joachim grinned. “You can use the private dining room. I’d imagine you’d like some privacy for dinner. I’ll have the kitchens cook something up for you.”

“This is… unexpected,” Handy confessed. Joachim smiled.

“There’s a time and a place for all things. Right now I have a friend back from the dead to welcome in from the cold. We’ll worry about everything else later. Like that stowaway.” Handy blinked.

“Stowaway?”

“Yes. Not long after you emerged from that ship of yours, two ponies followed. A guard recognised one as the head of your alchemist guild. However, the one behind her was a suspicious-looking rake of a pony who, upon being challenged by the guards and not being recognised by your pilot, was subsequently detained.” Handy rubbed the bridge of his nose, sighing.

“Yeah, that’s Jacques; he’s a friend. Can you let him out?” He paused. “In maybe an hour or so?”

“Really? He looks like a thief.”

“He is.”

“...You really need to stop bringing questionable ponies home with you, Handy.”

“What can I say? They’re like stray cats.”

“Evidently,” Johan said dryly before sighing. “But you really ought to get yourself seen to. I’m serious.”

“Why the concern?”

“Have you looked in a mirror recently? I don’t know much about humans, but you cannot be all that well.”

“I’m fine,” Handy insisted, more out of pride than anything. Joachim ignored him as he sat behind his desk.

“I have already said what I will. I don’t want to see you until tomorrow morning. Am I clear?”

“Joachim, look this is importa—” He paused at the severe look his friend was giving him. He didn’t like being looked after, for it felt patronizing, even if his stomach growled and his legs struggled not to sway. To fight the matter would merely result in fruitlessness. “Fine. Just one more favour, if you could indulge me?”

“Of course.”

“Do you have any of your salve left?” Joachim’s quill broke on the parchment at the question. He looked up at Handy, his face an implacable mask. Handy was suddenly very concerned he had upset Joachim somehow. The griffon coughed as he disposed of the now useless quill.

“I think… you are very aware of why that is probably not a good idea.”

“I was—”

“Good night, Handy,” Joachim said with finality. “We’ll speak more of this later. I have some unpleasant business to share with you, and I’d rather you be rested and well before we get to it.”

Handy gave his friend an odd look, bewildered at the sudden hostility in Johan’s voice. He opened his mouth to speak, but thinking better of it, he decided to simply pick up his helm and be on his way without another word.

Not all welcomes were unconditionally warm, it seemed.

--=--

Joachim was as good as his word, as far as the food was concerned at least. Handy had taken liberty of the invitation to use the private dining room, the one the king himself often took himself, and the one where he and the knights on many a days would be invited to join him. The room had seemed so small on those days. Now it felt cavernous, empty, and strange.

The tapestries were the same: the furnishings, the walls, the windows—everything. Yet it all seemed so strange and alien to Handy now, more unfamiliar to him than it had been when they were new to him. Thankfully, he was roused from these melancholic thoughts by the intrusion of what could only be referred to as the most glorious roast meal Handy had seen in years.

He had to stop himself from simply wolfing the whole thing down, the strange meats from strange animals making the act of self-discipline exceeding difficult given how delicious they were. He had to keep reminding himself he could take his time; he did not need to rush and was not going anywhere. He had the option to savour a full, uninterrupted warm meal for the first time in months, one where he did not have to compromise for the sensibilities of the ponies he was surrounded by, with broths and soups and keeping strictly to the vegetables he knew were safe to eat through trial and error. How did he know? Well, after new and exciting adventures in culinary exploits, if he didn’t end up throwing up and finding undigested chunks of a certain something he didn’t recognise from Earth, he’d put it on the ‘possibly consumable’ mental checklist.

He knew his physics more than his chemistry… or was that biology? Well, not being a total idiot, he knew some things. Raw vegetables meant cellulose; cellulose meant bad times for your digestion if you ate a vegetable raw. Thankfully, most ponies were sane and preferred all their food cooked to some degree, but that didn’t help everything. Some plants just did nothing for his system even if they passed through without a problem. Take hay for example. Did you know ponies have over six hundred and fifty different kinds of hay, some of which they developed themselves? Handy didn’t. Did you know some of them, probably due to the fact they were not in fact hay but something else entirely, were digestible to humans and were actually quite delicious? Handy did.

But how much do you want to bet he could tell the difference at a glance?

Now? Now here he was, seated in a warm castle, far away from anything that could possibly harm him… on purpose anyway. Before him sat a tray full of sweet meats, sauces, gravies, and many other wonderful and glorious things Handy had all but forgotten were a thing. It was in the midst of this little apotheosis of a feast that a bedraggled Jacques, sans rapier, stomped into the room.

“Glad to see somepony’s enjoying themselves.”

“Jacques!” Handy said with welcome. “How are you enjoying your stay in Skymount so far?”

“Oh, just WONDERFUL! Why, I just got treated to an exclusive and detailed tour of the castle’s dungeons.”

“That’s nice. Did you enjoy yourself?”

“I could barely contain my enthusiasm,” Jacques said through clenched jaws. He then sat up at the table and purposefully yanked the wine jug out of Handy’s reach when he went to pour the pony a cup. Jacques put down his hat and magically poured himself a generous portion. “I take it you got me out?”

“Just had to convince the king.”

“You told him I’m not a thief, right?”

“Something like that. Hungry?” Jacques looked at the carnivorous dinner before Handy for a long moment.

“No thanks, I prefer to remain civilized.”

“Suit yourself, grass-munching barbarian.”

“What was that?”

“Just thinking where I’m going to put you up for the foreseeable future.”

“I’ve been meaning to ask,” Jacques said, scratching his short beard. “I’m going to go out on a limb and assume you can’t let me stay here?”

“Not on your life. Can’t even keep Crimson up here, and unlike you, she works for a living.”

“Hey!”

“Hey, truth hurts.” Handy pointed a fork at the unicorn. “But that does raise another matter I wanted to speak to you about.”

“...And that is?”

“You had to have other options than me if things didn’t work out for you in the Enclave. In fact, if I were you, I’d probably have buggered off to the nearest bolt hole before making my way there, instead of sticking beside me. You had no reason to keep following me.” Jacques’ face remained impassive, though Handy noticed his right ear twitching just a tad. “So, not that I want to judge, but I am afraid I need to know, here and now, why was it you wanted your safety guaranteed here in Griffonia. Specifically so far north. No games, Jacques. I have actionable power here.”

Jacques contemplated the question for some time, his eyes wandering over the tapestries depicting Gethrenian history. He took a drink of his wine before responding.

“I’m looking for something in particular.”

“Care to share what that would be?”

“No, I don’t believe I do.” Handy gave him a warning look. “I’ll swear whatever oath you want that it has nothing to do with your precious Gethrenia. I just know all roads point to the north.”

Handy put his knife and fork down, sat back in his chair and sighed, rubbing his face. He then gave Jacques a level but not unkind look.

“I am not doing this to be an asshole, Jacques. I have actual authority in this kingdom, and real responsibilities. Now, I can’t help you if I don’t know what your reason for being here is. If you don’t want me involved, fine. I couldn’t be happier to leave well enough alone. But I have to know.”

His jaw set in place, and Handy could tell he was thinking it over. Jacques tapped his hooves idly on the side of the table as he leant on his chair at an odd angle.

“It's a family matter,” he said eventually. Handy couldn’t tell what he was feeling. He was using that old trick of his, hiding his emotions in the manner of changelings and leaving Handy to guess by body language alone what was going on in his head. He briefly wondered if he could teach that to Sunderclaw. It would be a useful asset to the kingdom.

“You have family in Griffonia?” Handy asked.

“It was where they were last sighted. Troubadour families don’t often venture too far into griffon lands. Too hard to get out of them.”

“Why?”

“As in physically hard. Griffonia is surrounded on two sides by massive mountain ranges to the west and north, a sea to the east, and the Greenwoods to the south. There’s only a few options in terms of crossing into another country overland without the possibility of running into a batch of wild monsters.”

“As opposed to what? Domesticated monsters?”

“Funny. Troubadours don’t like the idea of being stuck somewhere when, say, wars break out.”

“Ah. So your family hasn’t been seen since?”

Jacques shrugged.

“Nopony has seen neither hide nor hair of them, une telle honte…” Jacques got up from the seat. “Anyway, it's a long story. I’d appreciate it if you’d leave it at that.”

“I may have a few questions.”

“Then they’ll do ‘til later. I’ll be in town.”

“Head to the Black Hare,” Handy spoke up before he could exit the room.

“Why?”

“It's one of my properties. Tell the innkeeper you’re now listed under Klipwing’s expense. The barkeep will give you a room. Or if you want try the tavern across the road run by his brother, I own that one too. Has nicer beds.”

“Well... thanks, I guess. Crimson already left; said something about alchemy.”

“Oh God,” Handy groaned. “Yeah, it's probably for the best she went and took stock of what the damage is.” Jacques smiled and shook his head. He drained the cup and began moving for the door.

“Oh, one more thing. Who do I have to murder to get my sword back?”

“Ask for a knight named Tanismore.”

“Is he in charge of confiscating weapons?”

“I don’t like him.”

“Good enough,” Jacques said with a chuckle before leaving. “Bonsoir.”

Handy went back to his food after the unicorn left, contemplating what he had been told. If Jacques was being level with him, he’d have no issue with him doing what he wanted. However, that was a rather large if. He certainly didn’t seem to be lying, but he was holding his cards close to his chest. Handy could only wonder what he was afraid of. He considered the issue for a few minutes, chewing on his food, before his thoughts drifted to more personal concerns, particularly what exactly this ‘unpleasant business’ Joachim had mentioned was about.

The thought concerned him for a time, but he shook his head and put it to one side before it ruined his meal.

--=--

“Jesus.”

Handy was wearing fresh clothes, and that was the most amazing thing ever.

You disagree? Have you ever worn the same fraying clothes for months on end, with few if any opportunities to wash them? Under heavy, ill fitting, and occasionally broken armour? There was simply no comparison to actually having something decent to wear for the first time in so long. Handy honestly felt strange walking about his chambers in the castle, unarmoured and with fresh clothes. For some reason he felt naked and constantly looked over himself.

Fortunately he wasn’t naked—he’d rather not be reminded of himself after he did an honest inspection in the mirror. The scars were still there, the ones from before his vampirism and the ones he had gained after. The little gift of a stab wound the Archon thoughtfully left him had made a rather nice, oblong-shaped white splotch on his lower abdomen. Apart from the little collection that he knew of, he had lots of tiny, new, and exciting little additions to the tapestry. You see, despite her best efforts, Heat Source simply did not know humans, and his armour had never fit quite right. Nothing new there. That was the case for pretty much the majority of warriors everywhere, ever. But he routinely had to deal with constant cramps and nicks and, increasingly as time wore on, cuts whenever he moved in his armour. The more his chainmail fell apart, the less it was able to mitigate this effect, and as a result, Handy’s body had a fascinating collection of little scabs and minor cuts all over it.

Oh, and he also had this large, crescent-shaped scar on his back running under his shoulder blade, just an inch away from the gift he received from the dragon’s axe a while back. For the life of him, he could not remember how he had gotten that one.

An actual bath later—considering for some damnable reason the castle had plumbing, but no one bothered to install showers in the damn place like the common folk in the city below—and he was considerably cleaner and feeling better than he had in weeks. A quick shave wiped his face clean of that unsightly mess he had been growing, being very careful not to cut himself again, along with a thorough brush of his teeth, and he was feeling considerably more human. Now that he had a good look in the mirror, he could see precisely why Joachim was so concerned about him.

He was very pale. Of course, being an Irishman, he was paler than snow on a good day without a farmer’s tan to make up for it, but this was the sickly, greyish pale of someone who frankly should not be up out of bed. Rings hung under his eyes so deeply that it only emphasised his growing exhaustion. His cheekbones had started to stick out, signifying a level of malnutrition that alarmed him. Up until now, he had been attributing his drastic weight loss to much more comfortable causes. Now he was faced with the unpleasant reality of having to carefully manage what he ate from now on.

Well, that or consist entirely off the blood of the living and nothing else, but let’s not get crazy.

Joachim was right, and Handy could feel it as he leaned over on the washbasin, trying to prevent himself from swaying on his feet. Now that he had actually achieved his objective, his grim determination left him, and he could no longer deny how very badly he was in need of rest.

He walked out of the bathroom with some effort, every foot fall feeling more leaden than the last. He made his way over to the bed and stood to the side of it, his eyes unfocused as he gazed down at the covers. Without a word, he collapsed into its embrace. Months of sleeping rough and his own swirling unceasing thoughts conspired against him finding any comfort, let alone sleep. Such was his exhaustion and such was his relief at finally being back at his adoptive home, he found he could no longer move his body after landing upon the soft, welcoming surface of the bed. For once, without argument, he felt himself drift off silently into oblivion once more.

--=--

There was a crater where the Alchemist Guild used to be.

Crimson was relatively certain this was not the case when she was last here. She was standing at the crater’s edge, just where the hill leading up to it crested. Oh, there were parts of it still around. The east wing, for example, was just over there… and over there… and waaaaay over there.

She actually stood there, trying to process what she was looking at for a full minute before her twitching ears picked up something drifting on the wind.

“—Told you there was too much arsenic.”

“I’m not the one who got the reagent balance so wrong!” Crimson cast her weary gaze to her left, spying a blue tarp covering up the ruins of one of the still intact sections of the east wing, just beyond the far lip of the shallow crater. She strolled in that general direction, listening to the various voices as she went, pinpointing each to a particular mad bird under her master’s employ.

“No, but you were in charge of the circles!”

“And whose fault was it that the phials were unwashed? All-Maker knows what was in those glasses!”

“Look, all we need to do is get enough money together before Klipwing finds out.”

“How can he not find out!? The entire city saw the place go up in flames!”

“Yes, but Klipwing didn’t.”

“How can you tell?”

“For starters, he isn’t here stringing us up by our necks.”

“No.” Crimson managed to keep her calm by means of entertaining all sorts of wonderful things she could do to the alchemists under her charge. “But I’m here, so maybe that can be arranged.”

The entirety of the Skymount Alchemists Guild, foremost in their field in all of Griffonia and largest collection of alchemists in the western High Kingdom, stopped what they were doing and stared. The black-cloaked, snow-specked, blood-red unicorn pony gave them an appraising look as she lowered the tarpaulin after herself and scanned the room. It was actually what remained of the ground floor and floor above it, with the griffons, twenty five in all, clustered in with various parts with broken equipment, bags of reagents, and in various states of singed feathers and fur.

Crimson tried, very hard, not to react immediately. Master wouldn’t like that; he would expect her to at least have the story straight first. To that effect, she cleared her throat.

“Explain,” she demanded, her voice cool and level.

“A-Ah…” an alchemist began. His feathers were a pinkish hue—Featherbrain, that was what his name was. She remembered him. “Miss Shade! We… weren’t expecting you.”

“I gathered.”

“Well, I uh, you see—” He looked around for support, but none was forthcoming. “We had a little bit of an accident during one of our… more ambitious experiments. Aheh.”

“Go on.” She walked over to a half-burnt table and some very cracked and complicated alchemical glasswork. She eyed a bucket in one corner. The alchemists around her tried their best not to whimper but failed.

“Ah well, as you can see… the results speak for itself. It was something of a failure. But nogriffon was hurt!”

“Mmhm, and the guild records?”

“...Up in flames.”

“I see.” She sounded almost bored. “And our ability to supply the local hospitals with regular shipments?”

“Err… somewhat… lessened as of late.” A rather shoddy stool collapsed under the weight of a bag of reagents, spilling its contents on the ground.

“Hm,” she said thoughtfully. “Nopony was hurt, were they?”

“Uh… no. Thankfully not, ma’am,” Featherbrain replied, tapping his claws together.

“Good.” She placed the flask back on the structurally unsound table. “In that case, we can get back to work with full strength. We have a lot to do to get this place back in working order.”

At that, the alchemists all looked at each other questioningly.

“Uhm…” another griffon began, “you’re… You’re not mad?”

“Oh no.” Crimson moved to the nearest intact window. “I have never been more calm in my life. We’ll need level heads if we are to come back from this.”

“H-How?” one asked. Crimson gave them all a gentle smile, the kind you saw on vipers. She dragged the lone wooden bucket over to her and placed a hoof to her chin thoughtfully.

“Well.” She looked up at them all pointedly. There was no remorse to be found in her gaze. “We’re going to need an awful lot of buckets.”

The collective look of horror on the alchemists’ faces would have instilled sympathy in even the most black-hearted of brigands.

--=--

He was not well.

He had slept for an entire night and a day, waking up only once to use the restroom before almost crawling back to his bed. After that, he had elected to not leave his room for at least a week, only being interrupted in his convalescence once or twice by castle servants sent to make sure all was well. The few Handy recognised fared best, but some of the newer staff were scared to death and opened the door only far enough that they could be sure he could hear them clearly.

During that entire time, Handy neither knew nor cared what went on in the outside world. It was only him, his darkened chambers, and the welcoming comfort of his bed the entire while. He quickly lost track of time, sometimes waking up in the middle of the night, blinking and then wondering why it was it was suddenly daylight outside.

He had initially refused any offers for medical help. Having not been keen on doctors back in Equestria way back when, he sure as hell did not want anything to do with gryphonic doctors that were apparently not as up to scratch, judging by appearances. That, and a stubborn part of him was determined to just sweat it out. He managed to put up with it when traveling; he could manage it on his own now.

Let it never be said that Handy did not occasionally make incredibly stupid decisions.

He made only one concession, however. Towards the end of the week, when a certain hunger grew to such a point he couldn't ignore it, he had a message sent. And that’s when Klipwing finally paid a visit to his erstwhile employer.

The meeting was brief. Klipwing, having seemingly been informed of Handy’s return, had managed to conduct himself with a degree of confidence and professionalism Handy had found strange but not unwelcome. Seemed that the king had held Handy’s holding and titles in trust rather than dissolving them, which meant Klipwing still had a useful job.

Handy was glad to see the young bird, although he might not have appeared so. From Klipwing’s perspective, the entire conversation took place in a dark room. His lord had been this formless pile of shadows in one corner, barely illuminated by the candlelight from the hall outside, whose only discerning features were two glowing pinpricks of light from his eyes and speaking in a hoarse, broken voice that sounded like Death itself. Then again, if you worked for Handy, one just had to get used to accidental horror, so he bore it well.

Handy had been surprised that his belongings, long forgotten, had been recovered from the ruined mess of the festival grounds. Those had included his beloved blood containers. Klipwing had often been his go-between when it came from collecting animal blood from the local butcheries, so he had little trouble getting the half dozen or so Handy possessed cleaned out and refilled.

Crises averted, Handy thanked him and asked how his various businesses were doing, upon which Klipwing had adopted an odd expression on his face. Handy was too out of it to interpret it, but the griffon had assured him that everything was well in claw and he could worry about his affairs and duties once he had recovered. Handy felt weird about that, but given his current state, he hadn’t pressed the matter. He thanked Klipwing for his continued service, dismissed him and choked down one of his little blood capsules.

The animal blood was as disgusting as always, did nothing for his illness, and he was pretty sure he spilled a little on the sheets, but it got the job done. He proceeded to put his little vampiric stockpile into one corner, where the enchanted runes glowed a soft, ominous red upon their wooden surfaces, and he promptly went back to sleep.

--=--

Well, he tried to at least. After a simply wonderful surprise visit from Sunderclaw and the following, oh so enjoyable conversation Handy had with him about kingdom security and threats thereof, he figured he had enough of the castle for the time being. To that effect, he elected to finally emerge from his little den of suffering and misery. It was time to find out how everything was going without him being around to help. You know, aside from Joachim nearly provoking a war. Therefore he went to see his friend and perhaps finally find out what this ‘unpleasant business’ he had hinted at was about.

This was a mistake.

“It’s not that funny,” Handy said, fuming. He sat there, red-faced and staring down at his cup of wine, muttering obscenities while Joachim rocked back and forth on his chair, sometimes running out of breath from laughing too hard.

See, Joachim always seemed to have a preternatural knack for telling when Handy was not being entirely truthful with him. As a result, Handy had no choice but to be much more revealing about exactly what went on in his adventures than he had been with his knightly peers. Naturally he wanted to skimp on a few select details, the shenanigans with the Lady of the Lake being one of them. Joachim was able to pick on this and leaned on Handy to give him all of the details.

So, after some creative wrangling, Handy managed to dodge the one thing he really couldn’t discuss and… told Joachim things he didn’t want to discuss instead.

“Oh All-Maker, I can’t breathe!”

“It's not that funny!” Handy repeated, a bit more heatedly.

“S-So then she just… suddenly turns round on you— Oh wow, and then you ran out of there—”

“Joachim, I swear, if you tell anyone—”

“And you kept the horn!”

“It was meant to piss her off! Nothing more! I got rid of it the first oppor—”

“YOU EVEN THREATENED TO BITE!”

“Can we just move on!?” Handy pleaded. “Please? It was horrifying enough to live through once.”

“Ok… okay just… ahem, tell me again about the giant toad thing?”

“Oh God, the toad thing. Look, I was lost in the forest for God knows how long. Fishing is about as good at surviving in the wilderness as I can get.”

“Last time I checked, the purpose of fishing was to eat what you caught, not the other way around.”

“Oh go fuck yourself, Johan, as if you could do any better.”

“I’ll have you know that my father made damn sure I could survive in the wilderness if I ever got stuck there.” Johan inclined his head regally.

“Really?” Handy asked skeptically.

“Quite. I often went hunting with him, then alone,” Joachim continued, pausing to take a drink. “It was just such an excursion that I eventually met Shortbeak!”

“Shortbeak hunts?”

“Well, she was when I first met her, at any rate. The point of the matter is—”

“See, way I heard it was that you got tangled in your own traps.” Handy leaned back leisurely as Johan spluttered. “I see Tanismore isn’t always full of shit. Good to know.”

“I never tol— How in the blazes—!?”

“So, what was that about giving me shit about fishing?”

“Look, you’re missing the point.” The king had a pained look on his face at the direction the conversation had turned.

“No, I don’t think I am.”

“Okay, in all seriousness, Handy.” Johan sighed. “I’m glad you’re alive, even if I am not entirely happy with what you did.”

“...I did what I had to do,” Handy said, his grip tightening on his cup. Johan put up a placating claw.

“I am not judging you, Handy. I know… I was not exactly as reasonable as I could be, given your condition and what you did at the festival with it.” He put up a single talon to silence Handy’s objection. “You have to understand, it's not necessarily that you do it that’s the problem.”

“Then what is?” Handy asked pointedly.

“It’s that it’s unprecedented. Thestrals are a known element, humans are not. That in itself is not the problem. The problem is that this transformation happened to you and only you in all the history of thestral interaction with other races. Who’s to say that it was something in your human physiology that's responsible for the change?”

“That’s not possible.” Internally, Handy bristled at the insinuation.

“Maybe, but you don’t know that for sure now, do you?” Handy remained silent. “I had to be careful, had to warn you. What if there is a chance, however slim, that you bit somegriffon and they underwent the same transformation you did? Or something worse? I trust you, Handy, but I had to be as strict as I was.”

“...And now?”

“And now…” Johan sighed, “I think… it's been long enough that something would’ve happened if that was the case. And frankly, we’ve got bigger problems to worry about. Why didn’t you come to me about this old magic problem?”

“I wanted to know more about it before I did,” Handy said, recalling his little spiel involving a full confession about the real reason he was insistent on Crimson coming to Griffonia with them. Needless to say, Johan had not been pleased to learn the true story behind that relationship. “This Mistress is the reason I am in this world in the first place.”

“Yes, about that, you still haven’t told me much about what your home is really like.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Handy said dismissively. “It’d take far too long in any case. All you need to really know is that it is damn hard to get back to.”

“Mm, so I take it in good faith that you’ll be a bit more cooperative when it comes to this little problem of yours?”

“Joachim, I just crossed half a goddamn continent to get back here. Do you honestly think I’m in any position to say no?” Handy deadpanned.

“I’m sorry, Handy, it's just… If what you’ve told me is true, there is a secret cabal of deadly magic practitioners that literally nogriffon has been aware of for All-Maker knows how long. On top of that, they’re interested in esoteric magical artefacts and willing to do some drastic things to acquire them. Oh, and summoning horrible, ugly, monstrous—”

“Thanks, really.”

“—Creatures from alien worlds for who knows what purpose?” The barest hint of smile played on Johan’s face. “Seriously, Handy, this is dangerous.”

“Oh really? I hadn’t noticed when two warlocks caused massive property damage in two different cities.”

“And those warlocks?”

“In the custody of the Equestrians and the Enclavers respectively.” Recalling the nations’ responses to his actions, Handy could go without their ‘gratitude’.

“And they don’t know anything more about this than we do?”

“Certainly didn’t seem like it when Celestia drilled me for information on the matter.” That was an experience Handy could do without ever again.

“This before or after you gave her your girlfriend’s horn?”

“Oh go fuck yourself, Joach.”

“I’m only kidding around, Handy. It's just too easy to rile you up with that.”

“Yeah well, let’s see how you react when a changeling comes onto you.”

“About that.” Joachim looked more serious now. “I take your word on everything you said about your interactions with the changelings on good faith.”

“I have never lied to you about that before.” Handy idly wondered if this conversation would have better been suited inside an interrogation room within the dungeons.

“I know, that’s why I’m taking your word, Handy: the blackmail, the geas, your account of what happened in the Badlands, all of it. But I need you to tell me honestly, in your own words, do you think they are a threat now?”

Handy was silent for a moment as he thought about it. “Honestly? I don’t know. I didn’t exactly leave them united when I left that hole in the ground.”

“But you put Chrysalis back on her throne.”

“It’s more hideously complicated than that. They were more united under that Archon character, less so under Chrysalis.”

“Then what is the state of things?”

“All I did was take a situation and stir it up, and put the one currently benefiting most from the situation in my debt. I was happy enough to leave well enough alone and let the woman just die in her cell.”

“But?”

“But I think a situation where the changeling potentates are constantly infighting rather than united is better for literally everyone involved. I don’t know the histories or the stories. I don’t care.”

“But the implications point that the changelings are everywhere,” Joachim said uneasily.

“Aye, that’s my impression too. Seems they have carved up different territories for themselves, countries within countries as it were, hiding just beneath the skin of society.”

“A decade ago, nogriffon even knew they existed.” Joachim rubbed a claw back over his head.

“Truly? I somehow doubt that.”

“What do you mean?”

“At least one of the alicorn princesses had been in long term contact with the Archon. The thief I brought with me? That guy has been long involved in the underworld of the Enclave, and even among that bottom-feeding scum, no one was really aware of them. However, he was, intimate even.”

“...And you trust him?”

“Enough to keep him under watch at least,” Handy confirmed. “My point is, maybe most of the world wasn’t really aware of them, or their extent. However, at least some powerful people are.”

“And Chrysalis is fine with you just sharing this information?”

“I am of the opinion that Chrysalis is not in any damn position to have a say in the matter,” Handy said sternly, refilling his cup. “‘Sides, you couldn’t find that city without a changeling guide. Crimson learned from experience; my guide had a shortcut. They’re in no danger unless anyone feels like, I don’t know, sending several armies to scour the entire Badlands looking for them.”

“Okay… Now can you explain your new tricks to me again? I mean, given the way your eyes are…”

“Right, the eyes. Yeah, that's new. Bit a queen.” Johan blinked.

“You mean you actually followed thro—?”

“A different queen!” Handy interrupted. “Look, it was the heat of the moment. I was busy trying not to die, and low and behold, some stuck-up changeling decided she was being clever.”

“And the eyes?”

“Look, I picked up a few things when I drink,” Handy confessed. “I don’t pretend to understand it, but I get powers from the people I bite. The more I drink, the more permanent the powers become. I’ve… bitten quite a few changelings in the intervening time.”

“Can’t say I’m entirely sorry to hear that.”

“Funny. The glowing eyes are new though; still trying to figure how I can turn them off.”

“You can disable your powers?”

“No, just… make them less active. For example, ever since I drank the queen’s blood, I no longer have headaches when I uh, do certain things.”

“Like what?” Johan pressed.

“Like knowing the exact position of the two guards currently slacking off exactly fifteen feet below your window.” Johan raised a brow. “Go ahead and check if you don’t believe me.” Johan pushed off from the table and padded over to the window, opening it and looking straight down. Sure enough, a pair of guards were busy having a conversation on the thin rampart, hidden from sight. Johan rolled his eyes, dumped the contents of his cup on their heads, and closed the window.

“Ok, interesting, so you can basically tell where everyone is?”

“Within a certain range, yes. At my furthest extent, I can pretty much pinpoint every single living person in this castle in relation to me, and roughly their relative state of distress. Used to give me a wicked migraine when I extended it farther than five feet however, until I bit Queenie. Can’t tell the difference between any of them though. At least not yet.”

“Anything else?” Joachim asked, scribbling something down on a piece of parchment. Handy frowned but said nothing about it. He took a look at his drink again and grimaced in thought.

“...Promise you won’t freak out?”

“Oh, that’s a promising start.”

“Just indulge me. Close your eyes,” Handy insisted. Joachim looked sceptical but nonetheless acquiesced. “Right, open them.”

King Johan, the Blackwing of Gethrenia, was looking at himself.

With an avian squawk of alarm, Johan fell off his chair in shock. Handy roared in laughter as his friend slowly pulled himself up to glance, wide-eyed, over the edge of the table. Handy slapped the armrests several times, trying to get his laughter under control.

“Your face! Oh God!” he managed. “Oh, that was worth it!”

“...Handy?” Joachim asked carefully, blinking rapidly.

“Oh calm down, it's still me.”

“...How can I be sure?”

“So how is Peach Marigold these days, mister Lady Killer?” Handy asked, with a wide, shit-eating grin. With that, Joachim went from silent shock to groaning in an instant, and slammed his face down on the table in defeat.

“Yeah, it's you alright. I can’t believe you still remember her name.”

“Oh come on, that was hilarious! How could I forget?” Handy asked.

“You sold me out,” Johan accused his doppelganger, waving with a full cup.

“Hey, at the time, I thought you were playing with multiple women's hearts on the same day. My opinion of you was pretty low.”

“And that justified it in your eyes?”

“Probably not, but it felt good to screw you over at the time.” Johan shook his head in exasperation.

“Right, yeah, it’s you alright. I forgot how much of… Hey, how extensive is that disguise?”

“What? Oh, worse than paper thin. It’s not even the same as a changeling’s.”

“What’s the difference?”

“Remember Charity Bell, from way back when? The one who kidnapped me to visit the changelings the first time around?”

“Yes, you told me about her as Thorax,” Joachim answered.

“Right. When a changeling transforms, on some level it’s not an actual physical transformation, sort of. The changelings don’t like talking about it much. At the end of the day, when they become a pony, it certainly feels like they have fur, or that their wings are feathered instead of you know, insectoid.”

“Get to the point.”

“The point is that I haven’t transformed at all. See all this?” Handy gestured to himself. “It's all perception. You think my face is down here,” he pointed at his ‘face’, “because that's where you perceive my face to be. In actuality, it's still up here,” he said, pointing to a blank space above his ‘head’. Strangely enough, when Handy pointed that out, Joachim could just about make out some sort of wrongness about the patch of air. It was as if something was there that his mind refused to recognise. “Now focus—you know there’s something there. Hold onto that and concentrate,” Handy instructed. Joachim frowned up at him as he got back into his seat. He rubbed his eyes a few times, blinking before opening his mouth in surprise.

“Oh. There you are.”

“See? No need to fret,” Handy said, taking a drink, then spilled some of it when Johan chucked a piece of bread at his head. “Hey!”

“Just making sure,” Joachim said with the hint of a smile.

“This is a new tunic!”

“It's hardly new.”

“Well, it's newer than the rags I have been wearing,” Handy grumbled.

“Right. So what is it? An illusion?”

“Unless illusions can be dispelled just by force of will, I doubt it. It's just perception as far as I can tell. You’ve shrugged it off, but for as long as I care to put up with it, someone else could just walk in that door and see two King Johans.”

“That’s… fascinating.” Joachim began to scratch down more notes. Handy sighed in exasperation.

“Really, Joachim? What am I, a science project?”

“What? Oh this, never mind, I just had to make note of this. This is remarkably useful.”

“You have no idea.”

“Is there anything else? After we get this cleared up, there’s something I need to talk to you about.” There it was, the thing Handy had been dreading. Handy hesitated for a minute, honestly considering whether he should let his friend know of the one other trick he had gained, or pass over it and simply get to the meat of the matter.

“Well… I can kind of make people—” Just then, the door to the dining room opened and, much to Handy’s surprise, Shortbeak walked in, wearing a ridiculous hat.

“Your Highness, sorry for interrupting your meal, but I just got back and wanted to discuss—” Shortbeak paused, beak agape as she looked at the two very kingly-looking griffons at the table. Handy and Johan looked at each other briefly. Johan cleared his throat and placed his cup to one side.

“Ah, Lady Shortbeak, I’m glad you’re back,” he said chirpily, gesturing to Handy. “This… is not what it looks like.” Her eyes travelled from the king to the still disguised Handy, who had the good graces to at least look a tad embarrassed by the circumstances.

“Hello, Shortbeak,” he said in his distinctive accent.

Now, never let it be said that Shortbeak allowed her new position to dull her blade. Handy found that out the hard way when, in the blink of an eye, Shortbeak had crossed the room in a pounce, with her dagger already drawn. A very confused and caught off-guard Handy was thrown from his seat and pinned to the ground, one arm behind his back and a blade pressed against the side of his neck.

An awful lot of shouting ensued.

“Shortbeak, stop!” Joachim yelled.

“Guards, secure the king!” Shortbeak commanded, ignoring her king. A pair of guards immediately entered the dining hall. They looked slightly confused, but did as they were ordered and surrounded the king. “Alright, changeling, what’s your game!?”

“I am not a damned changeling, you blithering fool! It’s me! Get off!” Handy shouted. Shortbeak, it seemed, was not listening. Handy let out a disgusted noise. “Johan, for God’s sakes, call her off!”

“Shortbeak, will you kindly get off of Sir Handy?” Joachim asked politely, crossing his forelegs and rubbing the bridge of his beak. Shortbeak didn’t let up her hold but looked up at the king.

“...What?”

“Hi, Shortbeak,” Handy said with mock pleasantry. His disguised dropped, and she now looked down on the human she was currently threatening the life of. Needless to say, she was very confused. “Long time no see. So glad thou art just as fast as ever. Can you kindly get your blade away from my neck? I’d appreciate it.”

Shortbeak looked back at Johan for confirmation before very slowly letting Handy go. He pushed himself back to his feet and brushed himself down. Shortbeak wouldn’t stop staring at him.

“You’re… alive,” she said quietly. Handy merely cleared his throat.

“Yes, well, there’s a long story behind that. I see you have moved up in the world. Good for you. I’m so glad you didn’t share the information of my continued existence with the inner council, my king.”

“Your message told me not to tell anygriffon,” Johan said with a shrug and a smile.

“You knew?” Shortbeak shot suddenly. Johan frowned for a moment at the accusatory tone but dismissed it.

“It turns out there was quite a lot involved in maintaining the deception of Sir Handy’s death,” Johan said. “And… given recent events, I am afraid that means there is something unpleasant I need to tell you, Handy.”

“What?” Handy asked, suddenly not liking the look on his friend’s face. Johan dismissed the by now very confused guards. Johan waited for the door to click shut before speaking.

“I’m afraid I’m going to have to strip you of your title.”

The room was silent for a long moment before Handy broke it with his voice barely above a whisper.

“What?”

“...Sit down, Handy.”

“I must not have heard you right.”

“Handy—”

“I went through hell to get back here! I stopped a war from happening which you nearly caused, and you elect to repay my service by stripping me of my office!?”

“It’s more complicated than that.” Johan had the wisdom to at least avoid the rage-filled eyes of his vassal.

“I did not even ask for anything in recompense! Nothing! And this is what you give to me? Disgrace!?” Handy had to bite down on the inside of his cheeks to keep from simply screaming.

“Handy, that’s enough!” Johan slammed his claws on the table. Shortbeak, very much feeling like a third wheel in the argument, elected to take a step back from the table while her brain tried to process the number of revelations currently going through it. “I had to do something. You’d have done the same.”

“The same what, Johan!? What have I done to earn such a disgrace!?” Handy demanded

“Nothing. And that’s the biggest problem,” he admitted. The pair were quiet for a moment before Johan rubbed a claw down his face. “I have to make it appear you’re… you’re under control.”

“Under control!? The hell are you talking about, man!?” A small part of his mind wondered how this conversation had taken such a drastic turn in such a small space of time. Perhaps Johan had simply been trying to put Handy at ease before giving his decision. He had failed superbly.

“Handy, you up and disappeared after a major attack on a peaceful kingdom! You were thought dead! You were involved in two more violent attacks on the cities of two other kingdoms! You have so many damn stories floating around about all of your monstrous traits, and misdeeds, and All-Maker knows what else. People are seriously panicking! Never mind how many of those stories actually have some truth to them!”

“Truth?” Shortbeak asked, but was ignored.

“They either think I’ve gone mad and set loose a monster on the world, wreaking havoc wherever he goes, or worse, that you’re doing it of your own accord and I have no control whatsoever!” Joachim continued. “I have half a dozen rulers demanding I take account of your actions, and now that you have actually returned home, I have no choice but to do something. That’s especially so with the High King himself due to arrive any day now. If it were not for the fact that I have TANGIBLE PROOF from no less a personage than Celestia herself that you are not a threat to Griffonia and in fact, operate in our interests, I’d have no choice but to take even more drastic action.”

“This is bullshit!” Handy retorted.

“What would you have me do, hmm?!” Joachim challenged. “It was your idea to purport to be this shadowy monster under my control. What would you have me do instead? What would you do to me if our roles were reversed? Have me exiled? Or reward me with honours and look as if you extorted half the world with fear and just piled glory unto a crony?”

Handy simply looked down at the table, his jaw set. He looked up at his supposed friend with fire in his eyes.

“Yes… I suppose I would, wouldn’t I?” he said icily. “I would probably do the same.”

“Handy, I’m just doing this to help protect you.” Johan adopted a quieter tone, knowing that his friend would not take kindly to being shouted at.

“Sure,” he said, his voice flat. “I understand. I understand perfectly. Good to know where we stand.”

“I am only removing your authority as Sword. You didn’t want the office anyway.”

“You know that's not the point, Johan!” Handy slammed the table with the flat of his hands. “I have been loyal, and my payment is public disgrace.”

“Your loyalty was never in question—”

“Wasn’t it!?” Handy demanded, “Then why all the questions as if I were... As I were some kind of…” He trailed off, looking off to the side as he gathered his thoughts.

“...Look, Handy,” Joachim began, sitting down in his chair. “You know, I wouldn’t do this to you without a good reason. You do know that, right?”

“Yeah.” Handy’s gaze was unsettled, unable to fixate on one thing. “You always do need a good reason to screw someone over, don’t you?”

“Calm. Down,” Joachim said slowly. “For All-Maker’s sake, keep that temper of yours in check long enough to think clearly.”

“Oh, I am calm.” Handy gripped his bandaged arm to forestall another shaking fit as pain suddenly shot through it for the third time that day. This did not go unnoticed. “I can understand why you are doing this. I just can’t understand why you couldn’t think of a better way than by betraying me.”

Johan looked shocked at the accusation, but kept quiet, looking down. Handy sat there, breathing deeply once through his nose, before rising at once and storming from the room. Shortbeak quickly took one last look at the king before following after. Joachim let her go without a word, staring morosely into his cup.

“Handy, wait,” she called after him. He didn’t reply and simply continued walking through the halls, turning a corner to head deeper into the bowels of the castle. “Wait, just stop!”

She grabbed him by the arm, and he shook her off, her talons accidentally cutting through the bandages. He turned and glared at her, eyes furious and shining in the shade of the corridor.

“What?” he demanded. She hesitated for a moment, unsure of what exactly she should say.

“I… I’m glad you’re alive. How did—”

“I think,” Handy began, wrapping the torn bandages over his exposed arm. Shortbeak stole a glance at the ruined flesh beneath, and her eyes widened slightly. “You had better ask the king. I am in no mood for another interrogation.”

“I didn’t mean— I mean, that's not what I was…” She paused, thinking, taking her feathered cap off with an idle claw. “I’m just relieved you’re alive. Have… Have you spoken to the others yet?”

“I have, before I had a chance to speak to the king in fact,” Handy said, somewhat more calm than before. He took a breath. “I am sorry for snapping. It's good to see you alive and well, all of you. Some better than most.”

“Yes.” She looked down at her hat for a moment, “It's funny, I uh, I’m actually… at a loss.” Handy said nothing for a moment, waiting for her to continue. “I just… Is it true? You wanted everygriffon to think you were dead?”

“Yes.”

“Why would you do that?” Handy raised an eyebrow. The question was asked normally, but there was something… off about Shortbeak. He could feel it.

“I had to. It was in the kingdom’s best interests for me to remain as dead for as long as I could.”

“But surely you could’ve said or done something to let us know.”

“I did. If the king felt it necessary to tell anyone, he would’ve went over my suggestion and spoke of it.”

“...Right,” she said, unconvinced. The silence lingered to the point that it was getting to be awkward. She looked over her shoulder and then spoke, changing the topic. “Listen, the king… He’s not betraying you.”

“I said I understood the reasons why,” Handy said sternly, rebuke in his tone. “That does not excuse how he goes about it. I know he is my king, and he needs to do what he has to. I had thought he was my friend.”

“He still is!”

“Maybe. But not today.” Handy said simply and with a note of finality. He pulled his cloak tighter to fight the chill that was permeating the castle from the winter’s day. “It was good to see you again, Shortbeak.”

And with that, he left her there, turning and walking off at a more sedate pace than he had been before. Far from easing her mind, the talk had only left her far more troubled, especially after what she had seen of his arm. She wanted to follow after him, to ensure all was well, but she knew far too little and didn’t want to jump to conclusions. She went back to the king. If nothing else, she still had her duties to perform to take her mind off of it for at least a few minutes.

Maybe then she could broach the topic, and confirm whether what she had seen was the same thing that the king was now hiding under his tunic.

--=--

Leaving Jacques on his own had been a mistake. He didn’t set anything on fire, get arrested, murder someone, or defraud half the city, oh no. He did something far worse than that.

He became best friends with Sir Tanismore.

“Oh, oh, do Godfrey! Do Godfrey!” Tanismore exclaimed. Handy glared at him

“I should’ve known he wouldn’t keep a lid on it,” Handy grumbled, giving an evil glare to the smiling Jacques.

“Oh, don’t look at me, mon ami. I didn’t say anything.” Handy narrowed his eyes. “Honest.”

“Yeah, the king told us,” Tanismore confirmed.

“Oh for God’s sake…” Handy whined as he slunk down lower in his seat. After the… eventful reunion with Shortbeak that he’d rather not remember, considering most of it involved shouting, accusations of changeling infiltrators, a murderous Shortbeak, and pure, unadulterated, and utter terror on Handy’s part, he had hoped word of his ability wouldn’t go much farther.

He was wrong.

The three of them were currently walking through Skymount. Handy, after all, had some business he needed to take care of, Klipwing be damned, and he needed to be out of the castle for a while. He regarded the alarmed and fearful looks of a populace used to the idea that he was dead with cheerful disdain. He pulled his hood tighter as his boots crunched through the layer of snow on the street.

“What’s got your withers in a bunch?” Jacques asked, noticing the surly expression on his friend being distinctly more unpleasant than normal.

“Nothing. Just politics.”

“Politics?” Tanismore asked.

“You’ll find out when it happens. I’d rather be away from the castle for a while,” Handy said cryptically. Tanismore and Jacques looked at each other for a moment, the latter shrugging. Handy led them through the winding streets, occasionally stopping and double checking with Tanismore that he had gotten the right street names, before finally making his way to a certain blacksmith.

Henri Hammerstrike, the grizzled old blacksmith, whose once failing business Handy now owned, was now the second wealthiest blacksmith in the entirety of Skymount. Once he had taken Handy’s advice to put his art to one side and focus on making simple, everyday metal goods people would actually want to buy, his business had taken off. He had now had three apprentices taking care of the menial work, allowing Henri himself to focus on the more intricate and expensive custom orders.

The griffon was ludicrously skilled, everything from ironmongering, silverworking, and the odd bit of jewellery on the side. Everything from roughhewn armour to the frames for stained glass windows to decorative silverwork ornaments was all within his skill set. He was no Heat Source, but Handy would have to make do.

Walking into the front of the shop was like walking into an oven, but it was a welcome change from the cold outside. Handy’s skin bristled at the thought of being so close to a lit forge, but he quashed the thought. It was out of sight, so it was out of mind. The three young griffons in protective wear on their claws and hides looked up in surprise.

“Is your master here?” Handy asked without preamble. Before any of the apprentices could talk, another griffon’s head, this one hidden behind a metal visor, poked its head from around the corner leading into the forge.

“Was’sat? Somegriffon called for me?”

“I should think so,” Handy greeted, shifting the weight of the bag from his back. “Good to see you’re still keeping busy.”

Henri flipped the face guard up and blinked at his landlord. He then beamed.

“Ah! Sir, it’s good to see you alive and well! I heard all sorts of rot, but I never paid them no mind, no sir!”

“Did you not?”

“Not one whit! Now come, come, what can I help you with?” Henri beckoned Handy into the forge room. Handy hesitated for just a second before swallowing slightly and following into the room of burning hot molten death. Jacques and Tanismore meanwhile hung back in the shop, talking to the apprentices and browsing wares respectively. “So good to see you, sir, you’re looking… Well, I wouldn’t say well.”

“It’s quite alright, Henri. I have been under the weather as of late. However, I have actually come seeking your services.”

“Oh? Splendid! What do you need?” Handy dumped the armour pieces out on a table. “...I’d be lying if I said I’d seen worse off of a battlefield.”

“I just need some repairs.”

“You need more than repairs, milord!” Henri took individual pieces of armour and looked them over. “I mean, a griffon of lesser means would have to put up with it, but I don’t see why you are not taking the time in investing in some new armour!”

“It has its uses. I just need the rents sealed, some new sections to the chainmail—”

“The hauberk is in three different parts!” Henri protested. Handy scratched the back of his neck and continued.

“—Fix the interior padding. The helmet needs seeing to as well, there’s a large—”

“Enough! Milord, I’m afraid I can’t let you continue on like this.”

“Excuse me?”

“Look, I may not have worked on humans before, but even I can tell that this-!” He held the breastplate to Handy’s face, then gestured to Handy’s chest with a free claw. “Doesn’t match up to that exactly!”

“...Well, it does chafe a little.”

“And constantly going around in badly damaged armour, especially a set that has been repaired as many times as this one has, is just asking for trouble. How old is this set?”

“Less than a year—”

“A year!?”

“Listen, I don’t want new armour. This set is enchanted; it is incredibly useful. I just need it mended,” Handy insisted. Henri merely shook his head.

“I’m afraid if you honestly want me to repair this until it is in workable order, whatever parts of the armour that are still enchanted will be so miniscule as to be next to worthless.” Handy’s fist hit the table, and the griffon jumped briefly.

“Listen, this has saved my life on more than one occasion, from things that ordinary armour cannot stop. I can’t just throw this away.” Henri tapped his claws thoughtfully before sighing.

“I’ll see what I can do, milord. But I must insist that I reinforce it. It will take me quite a while.”

“Do what you must.”

“In the meantime, I must insist you have another suit for yourself. Can’t very well have you go performing your duties to the king in nothing but your tunic,” Henri said, head held high. Handy snorted.

“Right. Duties, sure,” he said with a hint of bitterness. He chewed on the proposition for a moment. It would be good to have some armour that didn’t come with a couple hundred scabs free of charge. And it would be good to have something that didn’t look so ragged and ratty. “Right, fine. I’ll think about another set.”

“You’ll think or you’ll have?”

“...Just get the measures. I won’t lie, it’d feel good to have something different weighing me down for a change.” Handy then went to the door separating the forge from the shop, thankful Henri had the blasted thing covered so the only thing he really needed to deal with was the unfathomable, dry heat. “Jacques, Tanis, you two can go on. I’m going to be here a while.”

“You sure?” Tanismore asked, currently comparing different short swords. “We can hang around if you’d like.”

“No no, I think it’s fine. I’ll find my own way back in due course. I won’t be too long.”

“I can wait,” Jacques said as one of the apprentices was currently looking over his rapier. Handy shrugged.

“Suit yourselves.” He turned around as Henri produced a measure tape and a few pieces of parchments. He was already taking notes on Handy’s old armour, so if nothing else, the form couldn’t fit any worse. “Well, it won’t be ready in time for the ceremony, but it’s better than nothing.”

--=--

“You alright there, buddy?”

“I’m fine,” Handy answered, finally emerging from the blacksmith and trying not to be too stunned by the sudden temperature drop outside. He had squirreled away a copy of the measurements Henri took. It’d be useful for when he found a discrete tailor in the city. He looked down at the pair that was busy, of all things, drinking coffee from two disposable clay cups. Handy had always boggled trying to understand exactly where in the hell the people of this world imported their coffee from in such abundance to be relatively cheap, but he was in no mood for economics.

“You don’t sound fine, mon ami,” Jacques commented, now sporting a new scarf. Handy hated it.

“When do I ever?” he snarked. “You guys didn’t have to wait.”

“Oh, I think we did,” Tanismore said. “Look, Handy, it’s been a while. You can relax.”

“Yes, come with us. We were just going to go get some drinks,” Jacques continued. Handy looked from one to the other as they gave him their most winning smiles and immediately decided:

“No thanks. One at a time is bad enough. I’m going to go distract myself by seeing how Klipwing is doing.”

“Woah, woah, wait up!” Tanismore said hurriedly, getting in his way. “You’ll only be putting more on your mind!”

“I agree, come with us!” Jacques piped up.

“I assure you I am alright,” Handy insisted. The two looked at each other before Jacques looked up at him with a grimace.

“Handy, no you’re not. I’ve known you long enough to know that something is seriously getting to you. Come with us, take a load off.”

“Yeah, come on, man. Last time we drank, I thought you died.” Tanismore chuckled at the memory. “Just come on, it’ll be fun, I promise.”

Handy looked up at the castle which was partially obscured by the light snowfall, before looking up and down the street, chewing on it. He could do with not having to think about his worries for a while… even if it was with these two.

“Alright,” he conceded, holding up a finger. “But only one drink.”

--=--

He had considerably more than one drink.

Handy wasn’t sure where they were. It wasn’t one of his taverns, but the beer was good, so he guessed it didn’t matter. Tanismore was… somewhere in the background, singing some terrible song or other. Handy continued nursing his drink in one corner to separate himself from the majority of the tavern patrons. It seemed to do the job well enough that they had stopped worrying about him being present. He didn’t know how long he was there, but it sure as hell was dark outside.

“Right.” Jacques levitated several more wooden tankards over to the table. The ale here was fantastic, so he made sure to get a couple for both of them on his round. “Tha’ should… should keep us for a bit. Wha’ were we talking about?”

“Uh…” Handy managed, fumbling to pull his drink over to him. Well, one of them anyway. “Something… I dunno. Wha, what's the deal… with you?”

“With me?”

“Yeah, with you. You and that… the thing with the… Thorax and all that.”

“What about her?” Jacques asked, suddenly frowning, a bit of froth covering his upper lip, Handy fought hard not to snort.

“I was jus… I was just thinking and well, everything that happened aside, I have to ask… why?”

“What why? When what?”

“Nonono, no I mean, like, what even?”

“What even Thorax?” Jacques asked.

“Yeah,”

“Well it's just… I dunno like.” He paused, looking at Handy for a moment. “Why do you wanna know? You don’t even like the whole... not your species thing.”

“Aye, but... it's just strange. I mean, even if I were okay with it, she’s still a... a y’know.”

“Yeah?”

“And that’s terrible,” Handy said intelligently

“Hey!”

“Hey hey, hey… I judge you, but that’s okay. I just… want to know why even. I mean… y’know?”

“Look, look, sshhh, taire l'enfer! Look, let me get… get some water for a bit,” Jacques said before dutifully getting some water to help clear their heads so that they were marginally more clear-headed. Marginally. “Right, it's like this: I think... she’s attractive.”

“See, that’s what I don’t get. How could you think that?”

“Well—” Jacques began with a smile, Handy stopped him.

“Nope, nope, wrong choice of words. Look, I get she’s vaguely pony-shaped and all, but she is literally a parasite on your kind. How could anyone, let alone you, find that attractive?” Handy asked with sincerity. Jacques sighed.

“Look, it was part circumstances and…”

“And?”

“Well, I’ve dealt with them more than most ponies, and after a while you just… kinda stop looking at them as the ‘other’, you know? Look past all that. In a way, it's actually kind of exotic.”

“Right, and Thorax in particular?”

“Well I… I just… it’s kind of personal.”

“Hasn’t stopped you before,” Handy said with challenge, leaning back in his chair. Jacques sighed.

“Look, Handy, I’ve thought about what you said and… I guess I kind have fallen for her. Just a bit.”

“A bit? I recall you were willing to stay down there with the very real possibility of dying.” Handy snorted at the stupidity of it all.

“Like I said, I’ve given it a lot of thought. And in truth, I don’t think there’s any trickery involved. My feelings for her are genuine.”

“But she’s still a c— what she is,” Handy insisted.

“I know that.” Jacques gave a glance over his shoulder. “Look, why so interested anyway?”

“I just can’t get my head around it. I mean, knowing you and all, I didn’t think you for a one woman man,” Handy said, “Just... being attracted to something that feeds on you, I just don’t get it.”

“It's not one way if I can control it, if that's what you mean. ‘Sides, not gonna lie, the sense of danger adds a bit to it.” Handy thought back to the memory of the changeling queen and tried not to shiver at the thought.

“Right, fine, so it's not love then,” he said, moving swiftly along from that disaster of a conversation path.

“What? Yes it is.”

“You just said—”

“I admitted to certain things yes, but… that’s not what it's about. I could find plenty of mares to keep me warm at night based on attraction alone, but I already told you before, I’m not that kind of stallion.”

“So just over time the two of you got to know each other, and that more or less cemented it?”

“In a way, yes,” Jacques said, apparently not keen on divulging much more. Handy shrugged.

“Whatever.” Handy returned to his drink. “So, that all aside, what was this you were saying about Trottingham?”

--=--

Tanismore was snoring on the counter, Handy and a wobbly Jacques beside him, nursing their last glasses of the night. Most of the tavern had cleared out, and the landlord was already cleaning tables and putting up stools. Handy put up the coin for them to stay the night. Like hell were they going to be getting anywhere in the state they were in.

“I’m… I’m just saying, it's one of my regrets you know?”

“What?” Handy asked, fiddling with the expensive brick, vaguely surprised the drunk pony was talking to him. “Thought… Thought you were asleep.”

“My dad… didn’t get to know him as well as I did. Might never now.”

“Oh… right, dads.”

“You got any regrets?” Jacques asked. Handy’s face darkened momentarily.

“A few.”

“I miss mine. My family I mean. I just… just want to make amends.”

“Is that why you’re… why you’re here?” Handy managed, dropping the broken phone on the counter and looking at it indignantly.

“Yeah… Hey, you don’t... don’t talk about your family much.”

“...No, I suppose I don’t.”

“Miss ‘em?”

“Yeah…” Handy said, looking ahead, trying to make out his reflection in the mirror behind the bar.

“What’s they like?”

“I dunno, I don’t… I don’t really want to remember,” Handy began, thoughts coming unbidden to him of better times. “My dad, he…”

“He was a giant,” he continued after a few minutes silence, punctuated only by Tanismore’s snores. “Worked like nobody’s business, but never forgot us, me and ma. He was always smiling, even when he was being stern, always patient with me.

“Nothing I could do would ever live up to him or his example. I was always ashamed. The fact that he was never disappointed in me only made my shame worse. I could never work as hard, or give as much as myself to anything I did as he could. That was always my shame, and what makes it worse is I know he’d... he’d never give a damn if I couldn’t.

“I think… I keep thinking about what he would say now and… I dunno. I dunno what he’d think, what he’d say. I don’t know what I’d do if I could know. I’m… I’m not proud of what I’ve done, of who I am. I’m nothing like him.” He stared off into space, at a time and place long gone, before cracking the shadow of a smile, “Heh, it's funny, you know? I stood head and shoulders over him, but I’ll never be one tenth of a man he was. Mice have no business in the presence of titans, you know?”

There was no answer. He looked over and saw that Jacques had his head between his hooves on the counter, sleeping quietly under his feathered hat. Handy looked at him accusingly for a moment before shaking his head and taking the last gulp of his drink.

“Good talk,” he said before looking down at his phone. “Hey.”

The expensive brick didn’t answer.

“Play a song,” Handy said tiredly, poking the phone. “Play it. Play anything, I don’t care.”

The expensive brick continued not doing anything. He even pressed the button to get the screen light to come on.

“Come on, of all the times I actually want you to play something, you don’t? What is the deal with this thing.” He picked it up and lightly smacked it with his free hand, shaking it and putting it down, leaning on the counter. “Come on, just… just play anything. Just play anything… something from home.”

The expensive brick was silent and still. It remained so for the remainder of the night, long after Handy had given up on trying to coax music out of it and had drifted off to the embrace of oblivion.

Author's Note

Happy New Year everyone!

Chapter 52 - Colour to the Blind

“Step forward.”

He strode into the room casually, the ceremonial sword—a simple affair of straight iron with an unadorned hilt—held at his side. He tried not to grip it too tightly. Proceeding between the small sea of courtiers that had gathered for the spectacle, he approached the enthroned king. Five paces from the throne, he bowed his hooded head and knelt upon a knee, balancing the sword across his other one.

“Why have you come, Swordbearer?” Johan asked. Handy kept his head low, but he knew who’d be upon the dais beside his king.

“I have come to abdicate my duty,” Handy answered, simply and clearly, loud enough for his voice to be carried across the room.

“Why have you decided to do such?” Johan continued.

“I no longer feel fit to bear the responsibilities of my august office.” His voice was level, but his face, had anyone seen it, was grim.

“What has caused this change of heart?”

“Upon reflection, my extended absence from my duties and dereliction of my obligations,” Handy began, pausing but a moment. “It is neither right nor good that I hold onto this office for longer than has already come to pass, my king.”

He looked up slightly, seeing the stony expression on Johan’s face. He could not tell if he had made a cut. To his right and left were other members of note of the court. Being a formal affair, it was only fitting. He was a touch surprised to see Princess Katherine off to the left, who looked a bit concerned.

He would also feel the same in her position if he found himself standing right beside the High King of all Griffonia, who was watching the proceedings with interest.

“And do I have your word that, should I accept your abdication, you will never again claim the authority it wields, either for good or for ill, and never seek to deceive otherwise?”

“I swear.”

“I say again, do you swear?” Johan asked, a claw pointed down at him.

“I swear,” Handy repeated.

“Thricefold, do you swear?”

“Thricefold do I solemnly swear,” he answered, finishing the oath of renunciation. “My lord.”

“Then on your head be it should you break your vow,” the king announced, choosing to ignore the change in tone. He lifted a claw; Handy took note of the ceremonial mace he had once seen in the claws of Johan’s father across his lap, obscured by the formal robes. “I ask you now to relinquish custody of my sword, which had been entrusted to your care.”

A courtier stood forward from off to the side. Handy didn’t know his name and couldn’t be bothered to look up at him as he passed the sheathed blade to the griffon. The servant brought it to his king, bowed his head, and offered it. Johan took and placed it across his lap beside the mace.

“Then, Sir Handy, Baron Haywatch, in recognition for your service to this kingdom, let no more be said of this day. I ask you to return to your lands in peace until the Crown calls upon you again.”

‘Yeah, right. Asks,’ Handy thought to himself as he bowed his head once more before rising. He briefly let his eyes glance over the assembled griffons arranged around the dais. Some he recognised: the members of the king’s council, Shortbeak, the High Feather, and others beside, a few knights, the princess, her irksome silent guardian, and the High King. What he didn’t like were a few of the nobles currently standing in the gathering. More than a few looked smug or otherwise happy at his disgrace.

Politics. He didn’t care—let them have whatever they thought this would get them. Just as he thought that, he let his eyes linger on them warningly, just a moment longer than was polite. Gratifyingly, he saw some of their smiles waver. He turned and left the court, the assembled chattering heads murmuring as he past. Doubtless Johan would have noticed the evil glances he gave the current court favourites. He was probably frowning at him behind his back.

Right now, as far as Handy was concerned, he could go fuck himself.

--=--

Crimson shuffled her hooves in uncertainty whilst Jacques scratched the back of his neck and looked like he’d really rather be anywhere else on such a cold morning. That, and he was still a tad hungover from the night before. Klipwing rapped his claw tips on the board he held in his claws, eyes darting from one person to another. Handy, who was now standing in the midst of them, had one arm crossed to support the other while he rested his mouth on his right hand. He’d been like that for a full twenty minutes, just standing there, staring in utter silence.

“Crimson,” he said suddenly, causing the gathered group to jump slightly.

“Y-Yes master?” she answered.

“Why is there a hole in the ground where my guildhall used to be?”

“I… I uhm…” She looked back at the ramshackle buildings, the roughly put-together wooden foundation, and flooring to cover the crater. “There was an… alchemical accident while I was away… S-Sorry, Master.”

“Sorry for what?” Handy looked down at her with both eyebrows raised.

“Uh, I mean, for not being here. You entrusted the guild to my care and I… let this happen.”

“...Y’know, I’m pretty sure being kidnapped by changelings is a good excuse. This wasn’t your fault.” Klipwing gasped at that before Handy waved him off. “I’ll tell you the story later, just… Why haven’t I heard about this?”

“Uhm, I believe I can answer that.” Klipwing cleared his throat. “The incident happened before you returned.”

“And?”

“Well, after it was concluded that everygriffon was accounted for—” Handy harrumphed at that. “…and there was no further threat to the city either of fire or alchemical poisoning, there wasn’t really much more to do other than let the guild sort out their affairs… and figure out how to make their contract obligations.”

“...How many did we lose?” Handy asked, his voice level.

“Well, the local hospital is outsourcing its alchemical remedies to supplement its medicines. The potioneers guild in town had a mutually beneficial arrangement in sourcing alchemically altered ingredients and material from the guild in exchange; several breweries in neighbouring towns—”

“Wait, I thought alchemy was potion making?”

“It's more complicated than that, Master. Alchemists can make concoctions that seem like potions, but actual potions are a vastly more varied and specialized art form with a vast array of applications above and beyond the transmutatory nature of alchemy.” Handy stared blankly at Crimson for a minute and then, at a loss, looked to Jacques.

“It's the difference between beer and wine, mon ami.”

“Ah.” Handy nodded, still not understanding, but appreciating that it was a difference in kind, not degree. “Continue.”

“The Glassblower’s guild, the local cobblers, the leatherworks, numerous granaries, private transactions, the Crown…”

“We had an arrangement with the Crown?” Crimson shrugged while Klipwing tapped his beak in thought.

“Not that unusual. Anygriffon purchasing anything with the royal purse for whatever reason is basically considered to be acting for the Crown.”

“Hmm, right. So I take it our guild is, as of this moment, not making any money?” Handy asked, tapping his foot irritably. Crimson nodded. “And nobody told me things were this bad as soon as I got back because…?”

“W-Well, I wanted to, but I was warned by a knight that the news might… be rather upsetting, giving your current state.” Handy gave him a level look, and Klipwing tried his best not to shrink too much at the glowing eyes boring into his skull.

“And this knight wouldn’t happen to be Tanismore by any chance?” He directed the question to Jacques, who smiled sheepishly and shrugged. Handy rubbed the bridge of his nose, breathing hard. “You opted to get me drunk to avoid me finding out?”

“Eh, it worked, no?”

“That’s not—” Handy began, but the words wouldn’t come. He turned and pointed accusingly in the general direction of Crimson, who lifted her foreleg defensively to her chest, then to Klipwing, who tried not to shrink too much behind his little board. He shook furiously in silence before rubbing his face with both hands and finally, with a breathy sigh, stood still. Letting his hands rub down his face, he turned to look up into the white sky.

“...Fine.”

“Uhm… what?” Klipwing asked.

“It’s fine. Really. Do what you feel is best.” He looked down and over to what remained of the guildhall. There was a hollow cast to his face; his voice sounded defeated. “Was there anything else?”

“Uhh,” Klipwing hurriedly looked through his pages. “No, not really. I mean, other than several management details, this was… the only point of… some concern.” He chose his words carefully, looking up at Handy’s face. He noticed no change from before, though the glow of his eyes seemed… duller somehow.

“Mm.” Handy looked around once more, but did not face any of them. “Well, I guess I’ll be going home then.” He walked off down the hill back to the city, taking the leftmost path.

“You mean the castle?” Jacques asked, following after him.

“No.” Handy paid no attention to the sparse amount of griffons on the streets of Skymount this winter’s morn. Jacques twisted his face up at him.

“Then where?”

“My estate. I’ll retire there for now.”

“But it's still morning,” Jacques said. Handy squinted at the sky, nodding.

“So it is.” He then proceeded to continue on his way. “I’ll see you tomorrow then.” Jacques slowed as he watched Handy continue on. He glanced back at the others, but found no support there, and gave Handy a worried look.

Handy walked the entire way to his estate as if in a fugue. He passed through the city, the outskirts, the fort, then the granaries and fields, on towards the outlying hamlets. He was at once aware and unaware of everything around him. He paid no mind, other than to watch where he stepped to avoid tripping, or plunging his foot into an icy puddle or worse beside, and to avoid actively running into anyone of course. Otherwise, his mind was blank and his thoughts static, empty.

It was almost with vague surprise that he found himself stopped at the foot of a small, isolated manor house. It was his own, having come with the land. He had only visited it once before when doing a tour of his lands and the dwelling places of his serfs and tenants, but he had never gone inside. It was in rather poor state. A half wood, half stone construction, the brickwork was moss-ridden and pockmarked, as if someone had taken a large chisel to it and idly chipped away in random places to pass the time. The wood was ancient and weak-looking; most of the windows were shuttered. The chimneys, of which there were many, were stained in the manner of houses that had once been the home of many a burning hearth, but whose time had more than a century been in the passing.

It would also do for now. It was far away from everything, and it was his. He could worry about its wounded state when he was of a mind to. Staying in his properties within the city would mean being warmer and having easier access to food, but it’d be noisy. He’d be fine out here. He opened the door and entered the barren interior. The walls were, surprisingly, covered in wooden half-panelling, the remainder with wallpaper. Rare, from Handy’s reckoning, as most nobles preferred paint, or otherwise naked stonework. It must have been a different fashion back then.

Sure enough, most rooms had a fireplace, even the smallest of the guest rooms. A shame, Handy thought, given he would not be lighting any of them, but they were nice to have, all the while. The floors in some rooms would certainly need replacing. Everything creaked as he moved, and cobwebs and dead insects littered everything. Most of the furniture had long since been moth-eaten, leaving half-exposed skeletons, and he most certainly could see himself purchasing a new bed in the near future.

‘No, rather I should commission one built,’ he thought. ‘No sense putting up with size restrictions when I don't have to.’ Everything except a rather plain, old grandfather clock was in some state of destruction or disrepair. It would take a lot of work to fix the place up.

‘Yes, a lot of work. For another time, I think,’ he decided, pushing it all out of his mind. It was cold, to be sure, but not as much as outside. He’d had worse. It’d do for now; he could rest here. Sure, eventually he would buy a new bed, but he could just forego sleeping in the master bedroom for now and make do with one of the interior rooms. Perhaps the cellar? He had a cellar, but had yet to go down there. He’d need a light, and that would require lighting a fire, which would be intolerable. He could activate his phone, but that might play a song, and that would be bothersome.

He elected to instead go to the kitchen, passing through the dining room, which was conspicuously absent of a table, and learning his pantry was empty.

‘Of course it would be,’ he thought. ‘I have yet to fill it.’ He looked over the stone and wood worktops, to an old black iron stove, and realised how very old this all was. He remembered he had not seen a toilet or bathroom anywhere in the building. That meant several things. One was that indoor plumbing was, relatively speaking, a recent invention for both common man and noble to enjoy alike, which was interesting. Most importantly was that whatever sewage and waste system Skymount had, his manor lacked access. That meant no running water for a sink either.

‘Which means my serfs don't have much better out here. Hmm.’ The thought felt like it should trouble him, but he couldn’t summon up the energy to care. No water meant he’d need to take from the well. Not a problem in itself… but perhaps later. Perhaps he’d make some tea while he tho—

Wait, no, that would require boiling the water, which would require fire. Hmm. Well, perhaps he could cook something in— no, still running into the same problem there. Now that he thought about it, one way or the other he’d had other people providing his food for him or otherwise eating things cold for a while now. Cooking, it turned out, was not a safe practice for him in this age before the invention of the microwave. Well, he was a baron. He could just hire a few servants. That would mean sharing his house with other people, though, so fuck that.

Maybe I’ll just make a sandwich…’

“Master?” Handy jumped at the noise. Turning, he saw Crimson, her black cloak flecked with snow. She was looking at him with a worried expression. He hadn’t even heard her come in. “Is… everything alright?”

He looked at her for a moment as if he didn’t understand the question, before shaking his head and pushing himself off of the counter he was leaning on.

“Yes. Yes, of course. Why?”

“You made us concerned.” She was giving the decrepit house around her some very strange looks. “Are you really staying here?”

“I plan to. Is there something you need?”

“No, it’s just…” She glanced from one dust-strewn decrepit room in the hallway to the other, and then back to Handy. There seemed to be a touch of fear in her eyes. Handy couldn’t for the life of him think why. “I… I think you shouldn’t.”

“What? Why? It is my house.”

“It reminds me of how the Mistress lives.”

“...What?” Crimson scuffed the floor with a hoof.

“When you didn’t react back on the hill. Your voice sounded… sounded dead. Like hers.” Oh. Oh. Handy rubbed his face for a bit and tried to shake the cobwebs that had been forming on his brain.

“Crimson, I am not turning into anything like the Mistress is. I don’t even know what she’s like. You’ve never told me before.”

“But—”

“People take strange moods, Crimson. It happens.” He recalled the mare’s complete lack of interaction with other people that wasn’t either subservience or barely restrained sociopathy. “It doesn’t mean I’m going to be like her or treat you like…” He trailed off, looking at the anxious look in his mage’s face and thought better of himself. He looked out the shuttered window and realised that he wasn’t going to be doing anything for the foreseeable future, so why not make the most of it. “Okay, look, this is long overdue. There’s some chairs in the growling room. I think it's time you and I talked.”

“...Growling room?”

“Yes, I don’t know why it's called that either. It was on the sign next to the door.”

--=--

They talked for a long time.

Crimson, understandably enough, was reluctant to talk about her time under the Mistress, and Handy had to reassure her many times that he was not angry with her, nor was he interrogating her. It was strange, he thought. She had enough power to seriously threaten him, perhaps kill him, at any time she chose, yet didn’t. That one day in Canterlot when she was weak and frightened, and he had coerced her into his service, had been enough to change how she looked at him. It had not, as he found out, how she viewed the world around her. He surmised she had been broken and had been a slave, but it was not until he actually sat down and talked to her that he understood how correct that was.

Crimson could not recall a time when she was not in service to the Mistress, ever since she was a foal. He asked about her parents, but she could not recall. He said that it should not be surprising since she had been so young when she had been taken. That was when she corrected him. She could not recall entire years of her life, up to and including when she got her cutie mark.

Handy, still ignorant of the mark’s significance to ponies, nonetheless knew it had something to do with a rite of passage, given every pony above a certain age he saw had one, but those younger did not. Maybe it was like a pony Confirmation or some other rite signifying that a child has reached the age of reason. For her not to remember that was a big deal.

It was then that he was informed of the true, terrible cost of old magic, and suddenly, a great many things began to make sense.

“It costs us memories.”

“What? How?” Handy asked. Crimson shuffled in a seat that seemed far too big for her.

“When… Whenever we first learn how to read the script, we recite a specific spell.”

“What spell?”

“Well, I call it a spell, but there isn’t really… Well, there's no real spell being cast.”

“Crimson, I’m not following you. Start at the beginning. When you learn to read the script, what do you say?”

“I can’t remember the exact wording,” she began, looking distinctly uncomfortable with the memory. “I only know because I recall other members of the Mistress’ council reciting them when they were inducted.”

“You do not recall your own?” She gave him a guilty look, and he was left wondering exactly how many of her early years had been ‘forgotten’.

“Time is fleeting, time is shallow,” she began, “or I think that’s how it began. What’s mine is yours to keep, but lost once claimed. If not found again, then I will reap what is mine as is owed to me, and take from you what has been borrowed that cannot be given back.”

“... That sounds more like a riddle than anything.”

“There was more to it than that. I can’t really recall.”

“So who exactly is the other person this… riddle-oath involves? The Mistress?”

“What do you mean?”

“It sounds like a recitation between the warlock and whoever they are ‘borrowing’ the power from.”

“Oh. Well no, it’s not the Mistress, or at least I don’t think so. They were always saying it when looking at a parchment with the script written on it. And after saying it, and spitting blood, they could read the script. We all can.” Handy perked up at that.

“I’m sorry, what? Spitting blood?”

“Yes. Before they say it, they always pierce their tongues.”

“...And then spit their blood onto the magical script of foul magic?”

“Uhm, yes?” Crimson asked.

“Is blood magic common?”

“What? No, the blood is just symbolic. There’s nothing magic about it.”

“...I think you’ve known me long enough to know that isn’t true,” Handy said, thinking about the implications involved. An oath, a ritual, blood-letting and signing thereof to gain power… It seemed archaic somehow, like something from another age. How could Crimson of all people think the blood-letting was unimportant? “You’ve never used blood before in your magic?”

“Nopony has,” she said, shaking her head. “I mean, there’ve been attempts and theories, but there’s nothing to it. I’ve never heard of anypony using it in old magic, not even the Mistress.” Handy scoffed.

“Right, okay, maybe it was only symbolism,” he said, thinking it was anything but. Handy knew nothing of magic academically, but blood was literally the source of his own power, so obviously there were a lot of clever pony wizards out in the world who were clearly missing something. Hell, the thestrals alone should be proof enough there was something magic to it, but if Crimson said there had been nothing but failed attempts, maybe there really was some missing piece to the puzzle. “Go on.”

“Well, after we learn to read, there’s nothing much to it.” Handy just looked at her. “What?”

“What do you mean there’s nothing to it?”

“I mean there’s nothing to it. We speak the script and the spells activate. It’s why Thunder could cast spells despite being a relatively unlearned earth pony.”

“Who?” Handy asked. Crimson gave him a queer look.

“Thunder, the one who attacked the tournament?”

“Oh, so that’s who it was… Wait, was that the one I fought in Manehatten?”

“You do not know?”

“I do not recall the specifics,” Handy said, frowning. “I know I faced a warlock at the tournament. I found old magic at Blackport. I spent months hiding from, searching for, and chasing this phantom enemy all the way to Manehatten, yet I can’t remember a thing about him for the life of me... other than he is now supposedly in the custody of the Equestrians. He was an earth pony too.”

“Was he white? Blueish white?” Crimson asked.

“I think so.”

“Then that is Thunder,” she confirmed impassively, her stoic expression readopted upon learning of him. Handy guessed she did not regard the council member fondly. “That is the cost of using old magic.”

“That you forget yourself?” Handy asked. She nodded.

“When you use an old magic spell, you do not need to learn it, you do not even need to know the simplest elements of magical theory. You merely read and recite what you know, in thought or in word, and the spell activates.”

“And this is not at all how normal magic works?”

“Not without understanding the forces you’re working with, no. However, once you use the spell, you will have completely forgotten the very words you spoke not a moment before, no matter how long you spent learning.”

“...Why does that sound familiar?” Handy asked himself.

“What?”

“Nothing, go on.”

“Well, it starts small.” She tugged at the hem of her heavy woollen cloak and worried away at it between her two forehooves, looking down at the floor. “Moments, minutes, hours, days. You have a limited time. You have to relearn the spell you had just used as fast as possible. The more powerful and complex, the more of… of you is lost for every second it takes to rememorize the spell.” She glanced at the grandfather clock in the hallway. “It starts with your earliest memory and works up from there.”

“Okay,” Handy said, digesting the horrifying implications this brought to light. “But why then do I not remember Thunder? Why doesn’t anyone?”

“Because he has been forgotten.”

“Yes, he lost his memories because of the old magic compact. I don’t know how, but you explained that.”

“No, I mean he has been forgotten,” she said, looking down at the ground.

“By me?”

“By everypony.”

“...Are you telling me that old magic could affect me at a distance like that?”

“No, it’s… It’s hard to explain. I don’t even think the Mistress fully understands it,” Crimson explained. Handy noticed she was still very uncomfortable explaining this, but he persisted, any sympathy he had crushed under the new, horrifying possibility his mind could be affected somehow by someone else’s folly.

“Crimson, I need you to explain to me, as best you can, how a person can be ‘forgotten’.”

“When… When you lose parts of yourself, you really do lose yourself. As in you are lost to history.”

“How?” Handy snapped.

“I don't know, Master! I swear it!” She held up her hooves defensively. Handy forced himself to be calm.

“Right, right, okay. So, lost to history—what does that actually mean?”

“I-It means the world forgets who you were. It’s difficult but… say you kept a diary,” she proposed.

“Alright…”

“Now, say you wrote all your thoughts for every year of your life in it. When you are forgotten, or part of you was forgotten, more and more of the words written within the diary would… disappear.”

“That’s… how?”

“It is something to do with the compact, the source of the magic. It is called old for a reason, for it is older than this world. Or so Mistress always said.”

“So it can rewrite its history?”

“No, it can't,” Crimson said. “However, it can make history forget you. If you had a son or a daughter, they would forget they ever had a father. Reason would tell them they had one, but they simply would not know who you were, even if you had been with them all their lives. History books pertaining to you would have the words disappear from their pages, but the effects of the things you did would still have happened. Paintings will fade, statues will erode, people who knew you will forget your face. The more of your history you forget, the more history forgets you—it’s like a curse. It’s why you can’t remember who Thunder is, yet I can.” She paused for a moment. “It’s why you struggled to remember me when we met in Canterlot that day.”

Handy’s eyes widened slightly at that revelation. He opened his mouth to speak, but, thinking better of it, bit back his question. It took him a moment to digest the implications. He sat back for a moment and thought about it seriously. Old magic users said something that sounded very oath-like, but at the same time conditional, as if making a bargain with someone. They practiced a bloodletting ritual to do so, so clearly not just any chump with an arcane education could do what they do. The power was a gift from… something. Finally, it was sealed in the warlock’s own blood, and it cost them portions of their very selves if they did not adhere to the rules of the deal. It was like a pact or… or a covenant.

“Fuck me…” Handy cursed when the thought came to him. “I had only been making that up. I had no idea that was actually possible… Well, there was the deer, but this doesn’t seem the same thing.”

“What?” Crimson asked, ears perked and curious at her master’s musing. He disregarded her question.

“Crimson, you don’t know the source of your magic? Truly?”

“N-No, why?”

“So you don’t know exactly where your memories go when they are taken from you?” he continued, making notes in his head.

“No,” she answered, curious where he was going with this.

“And when it finally catches up to you in the end, when you’re finally out of power and you’ve lost yourself completely… What happens then?”

“Well… then I guess you’re forgotten entirely by the world around you. You lose your power and your gifts.” Handy paused.

“Gifts?” he asked. “What gifts could be worth that price?”

“Well, you get to live forever.” Crimson looked up at the ceiling thoughtfully. “Your dreams are protected from any outside interference, and a few other things. I know the Mistress is far, far older than she seems.” Handy suddenly had so many more questions.

“So you’re immortal?” She shook her head.

“Not yet. Only the Mistress is, I think. I haven’t heard of any mage who used old magic living long enough to find out.” She paused for a moment. “Except maybe the dragon— Meranax I think her name was. She seemed to know the Mistress from when she was young, but then again she is a dragon so…”

“And what’s this about dreams?”

“Oh. Well, it prevents anypony from spying on you whilst you sleep.”

“...That’s possible?”

“Yes. Though the number of suspects is… very small.”

“Okay, bear with me for a moment. Are you saying there are ponies out there that can read minds?”

“No,” she answered quickly. Handy just rubbed the bridge of his nose.

“But you just said that there were people who could.”

“I did not. I said there are those who can spy on your dreams.”

“But how is that possible? Dreams only exist in your head,” Handy insisted, now VERY alarmed at what he was learning. If there was one thing he considered utterly sacrosanct, it was his thoughts. To think someone could violate them…

“That… isn’t strictly true,” Crimson answered, this time biting her lip. “It isn’t strictly considered a school of magic, and if it were not for Princess Luna being so well-known for visiting ponies in their dreams, it’d be dismissed as superstition. Though she herself considers it more of an art, if what I have read is true.”

“Are you telling me,” Handy said very softly, “that at any time the Equestrian Princesses can spy on me while I sleep?”

“Well, I am not aware of what limitations the art has, but theoretically? Yes.”

“How?” he demanded. She raised a placating hoof.

“I don’t know how. Nopony knows how she does it. The only thing we really understand is that, somehow, when we dream, we are connected to something. Someplace else. Ponies like Luna can traverse that place consciously, visiting pony after pony whilst they dream.”

“Connected to someplace—what? Seriously?” Handy said incredulously. “That’s preposterous.”

“How do you know?” Crimson asked, cocking her head slightly.

“In my world, we know what causes dreams. The study of the brain and how it works has entire fields of dedicated sciences to it. There are chemicals in the brain that causes you to have dreams, and nightmares. It can be affected by your health, your diet, and other things. It is nothing more than just that: vivid hallucinations while you sleep.”

“So it is impossible that this chemical effect in your brain could have anything to do with your consciousness reaching beyond your physical body?” she asked, hoof to her chin, brow furrowed. Handy had to admit he was impressed. He didn’t expect her to just roll with what he told her.

“Yes,” he answered at last.

“Then how is it you find it so hard to believe that blood has no known magical application?”

“We—” Handy drew up short as he considered her question. “Well, that’s not the same thing. One is a substance with magical use, and the other is the proposition that we can reach into another world with just our subconscious minds. It's a difference in kind, not degree.”

“Yes but why is blood magical, as you insist?” Crimson asked. She was giving him a look he had not seen before, as if appraising him somehow.

“I have no idea,” Handy was forced to admit.

“Then how then can you say these chemicals in one’s brain, if I am to understand your human sciences are correct, Master, also have no magical application? That the sapient mind does not tap into something else when it is mostly dead to the outside, physical world.”

“The idea is preposterous!”

“Indulge me,” she insisted. Handy grimaced, but continued.

“To presuppose a person can, remotely, access some other plane of existence with nothing but their mind would entail being able to do so all the time, waking or sleeping,” Handy began. “If we can’t do so when we’re awake, even after God only knows how many centuries of civilization and people being fascinated by the visions they see when they are sleeping, spurring investigation into the matter, why should we assume we actually do so when we’re unconscious?

“And unlike my world,” Handy continued, “here you have access to magic, arcane studies and methods we humans imagine to be mere fantasy, yet can you access this ‘dream realm’ from the waking world?” he challenged. Crimson simply looked contemplative.

“So, if I were to take your reasoning as granted,” Crimson replied, now sounding very different from the worried girl she was before, more in her element, “you would find the presupposition that a princess half a continent away could read your mind remotely through some kind of mental powers as being plausible. However, the supposition that that same princess, through means yet unknown to us, is able to access the realm of dreams which every sapient supposedly has a connection to, and visit an individual's dreams by that means, is deemed implausible?”

“I did not say that.”

“Yet the fact remains that it is proven, as much as it can possibly be proven, that Luna does visit ponies’ dreams,” Crimson barrelled on. “It has been tested even, visiting one pony in one city, and then another in another city, and relay information between the two that neither could know without speaking to the other.”

“How do you know this?” Handy asked.

“Mistress used me primarily to do research, and she was obsessed with ensuring her dreams were protected,” Crimson answered simply. “I’ve had a lot of time to consider this problem, Master. But my question remains: do you consider the supposition of the dream realm as still preposterous?”

“It just seems so… I don’t know, unnecessary?”

“By what standard?” she challenged.

“I guess… Well, perhaps I may have to concede I just don’t know enough to make an accurate call on the matter. Just seems so strange that this could actually be possible.”

“Do humans dream?” Crimson asked.

“Of course we do.”

“Why?”

“...What do you mean why?” Handy asked, genuinely puzzled by the question.

“Why do humans dream? Why do any of us? You say in your world you have discovered the chemicals that cause dreams, correct?” she said, not even challenging Handy’s claim.

“Yes,” he answered.

“So they know, for a fact, that these chemicals cause the dreams, am I correct in assuming this?”

“Yes, as best as we can be sure,” he replied.

“And not the other way around?” she asked.

“That the chemical release is a result of the dream?” Handy scoffed. “Well, that’s just… That doesn’t make any sense.”

“And dreams make sense?” she asked. Handy gave her a disappointed look.

“Dreams are chaotic by nature. Hell, we don't even remember most of them upon waking. The specific chemicals, and I can't recall which one does what, are needed for the brain to even imagine them in the first place.”

“And you have no one in your world who considers dreams to be, in some sense, real?” she asked, genuinely curious.

“Well yes, we do, but they are pretty much, to a man, fraudsters, mentally disturbed, and liars,” Handy replied sternly.

“Then dreams are chaotic by nature, do not make sense, are the results of chemical activity in the brain with no significance whatsoever?”

“Correct.”

“So there is nothing more to the stories, emotions, images, and thoughts that come to a pony when they dream?”

“Of course not.”

“Then why are they even necessary?” she asked.

“I honestly don’t know. One of the theories I heard is it helps a person manage and analyse everything they did the day before.”

“So the brain releases chemicals to conjure vivid hallucinations to help a pony cope with their daily experiences, whereupon waking they’ll have completely forgotten about everything they just tried to subconsciously figure out in the vast majority of the cases?”

“Well… more or less, yes,” Handy answered.

“Then, putting aside the question about what good it does mentally, why do they even need to be in the form of stories?”

“Well, that’s just how people interpret the world around them. As a story.”

“Yes, but why?” she insisted.

“What do you mean why? If it were not in a story, the dreamer couldn’t understand it,” he said, but seemed to realise he had made some kind of mistake.

“So dreams are nothing but the nonsensical result of a chemical reaction with no meaning, and help a pony apply meaning and understanding to the previous day’s events that they will promptly forget about upon waking up again? Oh, and a magical pony princess can enter said nonsensical, entirely internalized, meaningless figment of subconscious imagination and talk to the pony as if they were awake?” Handy was quiet for a moment.

“Well, when you say it like that, it sounds kind of ridiculous,” he admitted. She gave him a small smile, and he let out a breath, conceding that he’d need to give the issue more thought. Perhaps their brains and human brains just operated differently? He certainly had no dreams since coming to this world. “...Well, I am suddenly very glad I no longer dream then,” Handy said after a moment of silence as he contemplated the new information, leaning back in the ancient chair which creaked alarmingly, the sound echoing off the barren walls and empty bookcases of the growling room.

“...What?” Crimson asked, suddenly concerned. Handy looked back over to her.

“Yeah, ever since you brought me to this world, I can’t dream. Not that I dreamt much back home either, mind you, but it happened from time to time.” Crimson looked guilty. “What?”

“Uhm… do… do you feel like you’ve only blinked each time you go to sleep? Like no time has passed?” Handy narrowed his eyes at her.

“That was oddly specific, but yes. That has basically been my lot in life as of late.”

“And it’s been like this since you’ve been brought here? You’re sure nothing else?” she asked, now returning to worrying away at the hem of her cloak.

“Crimson, what are you getting at?” he asked suspiciously. She seemed to swallow before answering.

“Um, well, remember when I said old magic could protect your dreams from being spied upon?”

“Yes?” he asked, now leaning slightly forward.

“W-Well, that’s how I, personally, know the connection to the dream realm exists, at least partially. Simply being exposed to old magic is enough to weaken your link, but you can create specific spells to—”

“Crimson,” Handy interrupted, “the point, if you please.”

“...I think when I was performing the ritual to summon you here, I used quite a lot of old magic as well.”

“Didn’t you say you used the thuamatic winds?”

“Yes, but of course I was using old magic as well to help boost the power, to help control the flow. The veil is torrential, like a sea at storm. I needed—”

“Crimson.”

“Right, right… I think I may have inadvertently exposed you to far too much old magic than is… recommended for somepony not initiated in the art.” Handy was silent for a time.

“So, basically it’s your fault I can’t dream?” She seemed to shrink slightly beneath her voluminous hood.

“S-Sorry, Master,” she managed to squeak out. Handy simply stared at her for a time.

“I will be honest, I am not sure how to feel about this,” he admitted. She seemed to shrink further. Honestly, he really didn’t. On the one hand, if everything Crimson had insisted was true was actually correct, technically she just landed him with a disability. Shitty, true, but on the other hand, how many nights was he grateful for the inability to dream? And if it is true that the Equestrian princesses, especially Luna, could actually traverse people’s dreams, including his own presumably, was it not a blessing in disguise?

He got up and walked towards the window, thinking. He squinted at the pale morning light that managed to pierce the veil of snow above them.

“So, the Mistress. Tell me what you know about her, as much as you can.”

And so, while he thought, he listened to Crimson explain to him everything she knew about the Mistress. That, it seemed, was depressingly little. Crimson’s life story could easily be summed up as Harry Potter if the little bastard never moved out from under the staircase but still had to put up with wizard bullshit.

She cooked, she cleaned, she did the donkey work for the Mistress, and often lived in fear of her ‘experiments’. She would not be drawn on what those experiments actually entailed. Rarely, she would deign to teach Crimson anything new, and often only before sending her out on missions to retrieve this artefact or make such-and-such a pony not be a problem anymore. Sidestepping the issue of cold blooded murders for the time being, he pressed the issue of where the Mistress was, only to be met with the disappointing shake of her little red head.

One did not come to the Mistress it seemed—she brought you to her. It was always some remote location Crimson had to return to, and never the same one twice. There she’d contact the Mistress and be brought to her through whatever method of translocation old magic allowed, which Crimson had unfortunately never been taught. He also learned that the Mistress never allowed herself to be seen in the light, and didn’t seem to have trouble moving about her decrepit crypt of a home in utter darkness. Also, everything was partially decayed, destroyed, and covered in thick layers of dust and dead insects.

Handy suddenly had a better appreciation for why Crimson was worried when he said he’d be staying in the manor house.

Next up was the little rogue’s gallery Handy had made his personal mission to murder. Thunder, apparently, was accounted for, now feckless and harmless to everyone around him. There was the dragon, Meranax—fun times to be had with her, he was certain—and the youngest member of the council, a diamond dog named Chopper, she having been there when the dog had been inducted into the Mistress’ tightly controlled circle of magi. There were others, but she couldn’t recall them.

There was no way to tell what powers they had either. The Mistress never gave two people the same degree of power and access to knowledge. It was something, but it was frustratingly little, and Handy said as much, eliciting yet another unnecessary apology from Crimson.

Finally, there was the question of what, precisely, was the Mistress’ interest in him of all people, to which Crimson answered, immediately and simply:

“She owns you.”

“Excuse you?” he said disbelievingly, turning around. She simply nodded.

“She owns me. She considers you her property because you were brought here by her will.”

“Well now, that’s just… wow. There’s arrogance, and then there’s that,” he said as he stood there. He let out a breath as, after finally coming to a decision, he looked Crimson squarely in the eyes. “Crimson, I need to ask you to do something for me.”

“I… Of course, Master. What is it?”

“I need you to teach me magic.” She cocked her head to the side.

“Don’t you already know how to use magic?”

“No.”

“But—”

“Yes yes, vampire powers are all—very well and good, but I don’t understand how I am using them the way I do. It like a centipede that doesn’t think about how it coordinates so many legs or a fish doesn’t think about how it swims.” He moved back to his seat which, once again, threatened to collapse, judging by the sound it made. “I don’t know how I am doing it, only that I can. And if I am really, truly going to defeat the Mistress and find my way back home, I doubt I am going to get much farther than I have without at least some rudimentary understanding of magic.”

“I-If you’re asking me to teach you old magic, Master, I… I’d rather no—”

“What? Oh. Oh no, oh God no, no no. I don’t want any of that.” Handy waved her off quickly. “Way too high of a price. No, just give me the basics of ordinary magic, how everyone else uses it.”

“The basics, Master?”

“Well, you don’t teach a child to read by hitting them over the head with the Illyad, as amusing as that would be, so let’s start with the ABCs,” Handy said. “Now, instruct me as you would a foal. How does one understand the magic in the world around them? Much less use it?”

“I… I uh. Hm.” She gave the problem some serious thought. “To be honest, Master, I am not sure if I am the best pony to do this.”

“Well, right now, you’re all I have. I’m not asking you to turn me into a wizard overnight, just help me to understand.”

“Okay…” Crimson mused a bit more to herself. “Right, first I need you to focus upon your extremities.”

“Alright...”

“Now I want you to imagine pulling in the air around you like a great big gulp of air.” Handy just looked at her. She gestured for him to do it, so he obediently sucked in a lungful of air.

“No no no, not like that!” Handy exhaled. “I don’t mean an actual breath. I mean try to breathe through your extremities.”

“...My fingers can’t breathe, Crimson.”

“That’s not what I meant!” Crimson insisted. “I was trying to approach it as I’d teach an earth pony to get in touch with their magic through their hooves. I mean, you said humans don’t have magic, right?”

“Yes, as far as I know.” ‘And common sense tells me, at least.’

“Right, but that’s not the same thing as not being able to use magic.” Handy gestured for her to keep going. “Griffons, typically, aren’t naturally able to wield magic like we unicorns can. However, there is precious little difference between them and, say, pegasi. Both can fly naturally, or at least mostly, but both rely on using their wings to channel magic to help them fly.”

“So how much of it is natural strength and how much is magic?” Handy asked, curious.

“Depends on the griffon. Some griffons are so naturally gifted that they could probably fly for limited spans under their own strength alone, but it’d tax them and they could not go far.” Handy had often wondered at just how flying creatures in this world actually got off the fucking ground, never mind actually flew.

So, if they used their wings to help channel magic to help them stay aloft, putting aside the million other questions that raised, let alone the ‘why’ of it all, why on earth would their wings even need to be feathered? You could just stick two unicorn horns onto the sides of a pony and have them levitate everywhere, couldn’t you? Or was there more to it than that? He shook his head and shelved the questions for later. What mattered right now was the fact that everything she said indicated specific means of creatures already having body parts designed to channel or otherwise make use of magic.

“That still leaves us with the same problem,” he began. “Have magic, using magic—the difference still doesn’t matter. Unlike pegasi, griffons or earth ponies, humans don’t have body parts designed to channel magic through. I don’t have any frame of reference.”

“Yet you still can use magic,” she said simply.

“How can you know?”

“For starters, you’re alive,” she said drolly. “One of the fundamental constants of magic is that only living things can ever truly, consciously utilise it. Oh sure, you can have things like magically-infused ore or plants.” Crimson levitated broken pieces of woods in front of her, seemingly busying herself with the distraction as she lectured. “But that’s about the same as having rock retaining heat, or a plant gaining different characteristics because of the soil it’s grown in over generations. It’s not the same as drawing the metal from the stone, or dye from flowers.”

“So magic is connected to life then?” Handy asked, arms crossed.

“Yes, to an extent, but less so in that it is dependent on life and more that living things can use it. And unlike breathing, it’s optional.” She broke the wooden pieces apart and had them circling around after each other in the air. “Before the study of magic was formalised, mages were a superstitious class, dependent wholly on the fickle winds of magic, whose power waxed and waned. Otherwise, they’d rely on natural stores of magic where power seemed to gather or, rather, sink, such as crystals, stones, sacred groves. Between then and now, it's the difference between striking a match and lighting a campfire, and setting the whole house on fire to keep warm. They had little control over their powers, and once attuned to the winds, they were often unpredictable, dangerous. It was not unheard of that a mage would surge with power and kill himself, involuntarily… and whoever was standing next to them at the time.”

“...Well, that is less than desireable.” She nodded.

“That is why I am certain, disregarding talent or skill, you would be able to use magic even in spite of you coming from another world.” She continued to break the pieces of wood further and reassembled them to form… something. “Putting aside your transformation, when you came to this world, did you suffer any adverse effects? Illnesses? Weakness?”

“I had a raging headache, but then again, I did just get torn through the wail—”

“The veil.”

“Yes, that,” Handy continued. “But other than that, no, I didn’t really feel any worse for wear. Why?”

“Well, if as you say there is no magic in your world, then I imagine if magic, which is all around you even as we speak, was in any way disagreeable with you, it would weaken you somewhat, no?” she asked. “A fish cannot survive outside of water for long; a bird cannot swim the depths without eventually drowning. If your world was so antithetical to it and your race has been there since its beginning, then should you not have suffered terrible because of magic? It is alien to you, is it not?”

“Okay, I concede the point.” Handy sighed to himself. “But just because it does not harm me by its nature does not mean I can wield it.”

“Perhaps, perhaps not, but if you couldn’t before, which I doubt, you certainly can now. I confess I do not know much about your powers, Master, but the mere fact you have and can use them, even without understanding them fully, indicate that you are using magic.”

“Obviously, I just don’t know how.” He ran a hand over his hair. “I was merely curious as to why you simply assumed I could, even if I were not the creature I now am. If living creatures can use magic by virtue of their being alive, then I take it that it has something to do with a living person’s reason that makes it so?”

“That is certainly one theory, Master.” Crimson agreed happily. The wooden piece she had made took the shape of a little four-legged… something. Pony? Handy assumed it was a pony. Crimson’s horn glowed red and she muttered a few words, and the little thing seemed to glow with light from within. The little wooden automaton then walked in circles, much to Handy’s bemusement. “But it has its detractors. After all, there are many a dumb beast in the woods of the world with magic all their own.”

“And do they have this because it is bred into them, like plants or infused ores, or do they have magic in the sense that a person ‘has’ magic?” Handy asked. Crimson smiled again.

“Nopony knows!” she said happily. It was a refreshing change from her usual gloomy disposition, Handy idly mused. “But they’ll fight over it. I… haven’t had a chance to follow up on the current theories.”

“Right, fine. So I have magic. I don’t know how I am using it.”

“It is not that uncommon. Do you think pegasi understood how they were using magic the whole time they’ve been flying? I would argue most still don’t, merely taking their flight lessons as children as granted and thinking their ability no more odd than that of the swallow or the eagle.” Handy watched her as she idly played with the little magic doll she had made and noted how oddly happy she was right now.

“So. Then how would you train someone not naturally physically inclined to be a mage, like unicorns are, to use magic?”

“Well that's what I was trying to do in the first place. I’d think to try to teach somepony like a unicorn, or griffon, or pegasus to get more familiar with magic around them, broaden their own horizons, by helping them to channel it through powers they are already familiar with.”

“So try to get an earth pony to feel magic through his hooves, or a pegasus with his wings?”

“Correct. I was hoping to teach you by using powers you’re already familiar with.” Handy frowned.

“Crimson, my powers as a vampire are almost exclusively predatory. I don’t think this is the right route to go down,” he explained, placing his hands on his knees.

“Oh. Hmm. So you don’t want to practice—”

“No, Crimson,” Handy admonished. Crimson, looking suitably abashed, rubbed the back of her head.

“I was just suggesting, Master. It’d probably be easiest.”

“Yes, well. Let’s try to avoid that shall we? Any other ideas?”

“W-Well, it's hard but… I suppose. It's hard to explain the concepts without you first getting a true understanding of the magic around you.”

“Try it anyway,” Handy suggested, not unkindly. Crimson’s brow furrowed.

“Okay, let’s start with the basics. You’ll need, just for the simplest spells, to get yourself a focus.”

“A focus?”

“Like a staff, or something like that. Something to focus your magic with.” She gestured to her horn. “They are not long and pointy for no reason.”

“Okay, say I got something to focus my magic through.” Handy contemplated his hands, wondering if he could probably use a spear for the job. “Then what?”

“Well, then you utilise the Cornisuleps principle, channelling the magic through your sinews both through the focus and then back out of the focus simultaneously, creating a perfect Gryt loop. Simple basic principles of the Crystalline method,” Crimson explained helpfully. Handy stared at her dumbly.

“Crimson?”

“Yes, Master?”

“How do I draw magic into an inanimate object in the first place, when I couldn’t just do that through my own skin in the first place?”

“Oh, well, the Conisuleps principle requires you to project the magic into the focus at the same time.”

“You mean I am enchanting the focus as I am doing this?” Handy asked, clearly not grasping the principles.

“No, projection is not that difficult, and you already have magic inside of you, if not by virtue of being born with it, then by virtue of literally being soaked in it since you got here.” He poked the side of his head in frustration.

“Okay, step back a moment. I think we’re going to need to get even more basic here. Okay, how do I project magic, and how is that any different from just using magic like you do?”

“No, you’re thinking about this wrong. It is not the same thing. Look, I think projection is the wrong term.”

“Then what is the right term?” Handy muttered, slumping down on his chair.

“I suppose… feeling is more appropriate. Wood is often receptive— it’s why most wizards use wooden staves. You see griffon mages use them all the time.”

“Okay, how do I feel my magic going into the wooden staff? Do I just… will it to be or something?” he asked, gesturing to the little doll Crimson had ceased animating.

“No, well, okay, yes in a way you have to concentrate on it internally.”

“Well what does THAT mean?” Handy asked, slightly exasperated.

“...Maybe I should be more basic.”

“Please do.”

“Well when you move your arm, are you thinking about it?” she asked, pointing at his arm.

“No,” he answered, now suddenly very conscious of his arm.

“Same principle.”

“Okay, see… no it’s not… I cannot will something I don’t really know I have on an instinctual level.”

“But, you do…?” Crimson asked, confused. Handy had to stop himself and realise that, yes, in fact he kind of did but not in the way she thought she did. Probably.

“Alright, okay, is there any way you can make this any more basic?” he asked. Crimson sighed.

“Magic is a part of you, like the air you breathe. It's a part of living; you have to think about this as if it was something you’ve always had, like the blood in your veins.”

“So it's generated by life?” Handy ventured.

“No, it’s from the same source of life, ultimately. Hence why it's a part of everypony when life began.”

“And when, pray tell, did life begin?” Handy asked, not frustrated. Crimson looked at him stupidly for a moment, cocked her head to the side for a moment, and then sighed.

“When a mommy pony and a daddy pony love each other very much…”

--=--

She angrily kicked over a stone and watched as it plopped into the small lake, whose ice water had been broken by some industrious fisher, hoping against hope for a winter catch. She allowed herself to collapse onto the light covering of snow that had gathered upon the shoreline, letting her heavy cloak drape over her like a blanket, blowing an errant lock of hair away from her face and then stared at the offending follicles as they defiantly reasserted their position right in front of her sight and tickled her muzzle.

She snorted and just lay there, beneath the dubious cover of the skeletal tree above her as she looked out over the wintry landscape. She had been wandering the Haywatch Estate, trying to work out how exactly she was going to teach Master what he wanted to know. Old magic was its own set of problems, and he had no interest in learning that after she made it clear to him the costs involved, so she could disregard that. That did nothing to alleviate the problem of actually helping him understand magic conceptually.

He was like a foal who had never learned to walk, not because there was anything wrong with his legs, just the concept was alien to him. Somehow. She pondered the problem for a long time, watching the snow fall gently on the frozen lake, idly counting the little houses dotting the countryside around her. It was a conundrum. He had magic powers, in the sense that pegasi could fly with its wings or an earth pony could subconsciously encourage the growth and health of plant life, but he did not know how he was using them. It was like trying to teach colour theory to a stallion who had been blind from birth, all the while he was busily sketching out a castle with charcoal.

She lifted a leg and let it fall onto a small mound of snow with a floof, and continued to watch the snow fall. She paid attention as one snowflake fell into the exposed water and melted away nearly instantly. Frowning, she closed her eyes. There, under her hood and cloak, she could neither see the snow fall, nor feel it, therefore she was not aware of it or any of the natural reactions snow caused when it came into contact with something warmer than it.

‘Is that what it’s like to be him?’ she wondered, watching the snow more closely. To be ignorant of everything around her, unaware of what was happening, what was there as plain as the weather might as well not be happening at all as far as he was concerned. ‘If I could never open my eyes by myself, I wouldn’t know it was snowing until I dumbly tripped, or my cloak was torn from me.’

They had spent several full days trying to help him understand the theory. It frustrated her how much of her understanding of the basic concepts of magic and the principles of crystalline theory required an assumed, axiomatic experience of magic on some level. She had acquired several books on the matter of educating children, but noticed how each of them was tailored to a specific species’ own experiences. Griffon, minotaur, the pony races, all of which were geared to helping members of each race eventually go on to understand magic more completely, beyond their natural capabilities. It seemed that unless they could find a way to tailor a new method specifically for humans, Master’s ambition to understand magic was lost.

’It’s not as if I could just hold his eyes open, she snorted. However, the idea struck something within her. Why couldn’t she help him see? Was there anything stopping her? She did not know how, true, but what was stopping her from finding out? She thought deeply on the matter for some time, at some point getting up from her position and circling the small lake, taking care not to slip on the frozen stream that come spring would empty meltwater into the lake’s thirsty gullet. Occasionally she lifted a stone and fired it at the lake to break more of the ice.

It was on one of her sojourns revolving around the lake that she almost stepped on the frozen stream and caught herself. She looked down at her almost misplaced hoof and frowned lightly. That would have been embarrassing, being sent careening down to the lake and end up covered in freezing cold water. She almost went on before stopping, looking at her hoof again. She stared at it, turning it this way and that, her eyes darting all over its surface before, like a flash of lightning, inspiration hit her and her eyes went wide.

She knew how she could help him see.

With a flurry of snow, the little mage thundered across the open fields and over shallow hills, barrelling towards the main road towards one of the small hamlets dotting the estates. She followed the now increasingly well-trod path up and over a large hill to the manor. When word spread that the baron was now residing there, many of his tenants and serfs had come to him for this reason or another in the previous few days. Indeed, she came upon a few talking to Master at his doorstep.

“Please, reconsider, Milord,” the older of the two griffons asked. “I ask not for my sake, but for the security of my family.”

“I understand,” Handy replied, “but I am not willing to create more serfs. You should value the freedom you have and not seek to tie yourselves to the land.”

“Please, Lord, can you at least help us with the winter fuel? It has been a bad harvest year.”

“I already promised I would see you all fed and warmed for the winter, worry not. I will not distinguish between clansworn and tenant with my duties.” Handy’s face was grim. “Now go, I will take some griffons with me when I go to distribute the supplies, you have my word.”

The griffons looked sad, but nonetheless said their gratitude before flying off back home. Crimson had slowed, waiting for Master to finish his talk before approaching the house. He gave her a light smile.

“A bit late today, Crimson. Something the matter?” he asked. She shook her head. “No books either?”

“I think we’ll try something different for today, Master,” she said happily. Handy gave her a curious look but said nothing as she walked past him and into the house. It was still a drab, decrepit wreck of a place, but an attempt to clean the place had obviously been made. One of the first things Master had purchased for the house was a broom. She was surprised he did it himself, but wasn’t complaining for not being put to the task herself.

She went into one of the side rooms, this one long and narrow with nothing but a low, round table halfway between the far window and the door. Crimson situated herself on the far side that faced the door and waited for Handy to enter. She gestured for him to approach the table when he finally closed the outside door and entered. Handy complied and stood before the table, looking around as if expecting something.

“Hold out your hands, Master,” Crimson instructed. Handy did so.

“Wait, we’re trying this again? he asked.

“Just trust me. I think I may have figured something out. Close your eyes.” He raised an eyebrow at her before shrugging slightly and closing his eyes. “Now, I want you to imagine an empty white space, like a field of snow. Clear your mind of everything.”

She gave him a few moments to settle himself and to clear his head. Noticing the crease in his brow relent, she then proceeded.

“Now, I want you to focus on the beat of your heart, the sound of your blood pumping in your ears, and try, just try, to imagine it flowing all the way out to the ends of your fingers and back to your body, in a circuit.”

“Okay…” he said unsurely. She stood up and walked over beside him.

“Now, like I said before, I want you to focus, as if you were reaching out beyond your skin.”

“Crimson—”

“Humour me, Master. Just imagine yourself, as if you could draw it into you, like soil drawing in water,” she instructed. Then her horn lit up.

From Handy’s perspective, his hands and all the way up to his elbows suddenly felt very warm. He almost opened his eyes before Crimson admonished him.

“Ah, no, don’t lose focus.”

“What are you doing?”

“Never you mind.” Crimson held his forearms in her magical grip. Something felt off about his left arm, but she paid it no mind as she continued focusing on her magical grip. She waited and waited, hoping her hunch was right.

There. There it was—that’s what she was looking for. It was like running one’s hoof over cloth and feeling all the loose threads detaching themselves and blowing in the wind. This was where it was difficult, untested waters. Do it wrong and she was back to the drawing board. What was worse, he could end up not being able to use magic beyond the abilities he already had. Still, it was worth the chance. Using her own magic, she connected Handy to the magic in the air around him, like a seamstress would weave one coloured thread to another to make a pattern. She took Handy’s projection of the magic already within him as little and, as clumsy as it was and guided it, like one would a blind stallion, let it grasp naturally onto the flowing ethers of magical energy. Just to complete the process, she let go.

Handy was jerked back out of his reverie with a shout as he felt a sudden surge of heat rush through him, up his arms, and back into his chest. Like a rolling wave, it struck him with an almost physical force. His entire body felt flushed, his skin prickled as if he had been shocked with electricity, and the hairs of his arms stood on end. He felt light-headed, dizzy, and struggled to maintain his balance, falling back a few steps as his senses reeled from the overload. Every ounce of his being felt alive with energy, almost burning. He had to grab hold of the doorframe before he fell back through it into the hallway.

“Master!?” Crimson called out, alarmed. Handy breathed heavily as he rode out the aftershock of the onrush of magic. It came twice, then three times again, each time less severe than the last, and he felt the warmth collate in his chest, now keenly aware of his own heartbeat. He slowly opened his eyes and flexed his free hand in front of his face. Every joint felt stiff with rictus, as if jarred in place. Slowly, oh so slowly, the numb feeling went away, and he could again feel himself again.

And there was something else too. The world seemed somehow clearer to him, the air more pure and refreshing, the colours all the more vibrant. It was not a substantial difference in kind, truth be told, but it was like he just wasn’t paying attention before and the world was suddenly lit up and brought to his attention.

What was more, he could feel it now. He could feel the magic in the air around him. He was tempted to reach out, to project like Crimson had said and try to draw it in again. It was like the temptation to make a hole in a dam just to drink a trickle of water—he feared he’d burst it and it would flood into him again.

“I… Is that.... W-Wow,” Handy managed whilst Crimson looked relieved. She walked over to him and looked up.

“How do you feel?”

“Like I took a shot of whiskey,” Handy replied honestly, “and the whiskey was lightning.”

“...I don’t drink, so I’ll have to take your word for it, Master,” Crimson replied. “That was a successful test.”

“You mean you didn’t know it’d work?” Handy asked incredulously.

“Honestly? No. You’re an unknown element. I just was hit with inspiration and decided it was worth a try.”

“...Please don’t do that too often.”

“I promise nothing.” What worried Handy the most was that it was entirely deadpan and that she was probably entirely serious.

“So… what’s next?” Handy asked, still wondering at the sheer power just… hanging in the air around him. Reason told him that it was probably just his inexperience, but it felt like he was surrounded by a viscous vat of electrified water. The raw power around him honestly scared him a little, and he wondered what was stopping someone from just sucking it all in and laying waste to everything around him.

“It’s not as much as you think,” Crimson said, almost reading Handy’s mind. Handy blinked and looked around, noticing Crimson had disappeared somewhere while he was busy wondering at the world around him, seeing it in a new light.

“What?”

“The magic. It may seem like a lot, it really isn’t,” she said, coming back in the front door and, to Handy’s chagrin, tracking snow everywhere. “I just realised it may seem pretty overwhelming if you haven’t been consciously aware of it before. What you are feeling is just the remnants of the thaumatic winds. You won’t be relying on that for your magic.”

“I won’t?”

“Unless you’re desperate, stupid, or somehow run out of magic of your own? No, you won’t be.” She dumped a small pack full of stones onto the table in the narrow room again.

“So...what’re those for?” Handy asked. Crimson lifted up a small rock and smiled at him.

“Well, have you ever heard of stoning?” she asked.

Handy desperately hoped she meant something entirely different from what immediately came to mind.

Unfortunately for him, he was only half right.

Author's Note

LVL UP!
Squishy Wizard - Rank 1

I am so, so, so, so sorry for how long this took, even though it's only a filler chapter.

[20:45:07] Galloglasses: it occurs to me we never actually see humans learning magic in HiEs
[20:45:27] Galloglasses: its always they're immune because they're from earth, or they get it from transformations or only use artefacts
[20:45:47] JBL: Or they're the fucking Displaced and come with it equipped
[20:46:17] Galloglasses: that too
[20:48:59] JBL: so.... the Princess are of the belief that Handy has no magical powers?
[20:49:21] Galloglasses: they're of the belief he isn't a skilled mage, he obviously has powers now
[20:50:02] JBL: Handy will be able to channel his power and make potatoes fall upon the skulls of his enemies
[20:50:11] Galloglasses: that he will.

Chapter 53 - The Prince and the Pauper

It strode over the snow, its steps the sound of the wind’s laughter, its strength that of a mountain’s roots, its weight that of the dewfall.

Even then, she knew it was there.

Nanny Frie halted in her trek across the snow. She didn’t have to, but she had just about finished trailing through the birch woods, ‘shopping’ as it were, looking for new goods: saplings, bones, winter fruits, and other things only found in times of winter—living, dead, or neither. It was all the same to her, but seeing as her little pet project had so kindly moved out of the protection of the city... well, she felt kind towards the notion of taking a stroll. Indeed, right up to his new mansion to bestow upon him another little gift he might find ever so useful now that he had truly become aware of the potential of magic. It was something to help him put away the silly little trifles and hoary traditions of his pet mage and the wizards of the land. She would show him something older, something deeper, show him the real way to power.

However, her plan had been cut short, her happy rhyming cadence she had been half-humming, half-singing coming to a sudden stop when she noticed it. The air was cold, but it was a cold that could touch her. The wind had a bite, but it was a bite that could cut her. There was something here that was not some mean spiritling leaning too close against the veil, neither some sylph nor wisp or sprite of this world or another. This was nothing she could force into bondage, nor trick into servitude, nor parley for its service. No... this was something else entirely.

She saw it by turning towards the one direction her eyes did not want to look, facing the one place her growing instincts told her to flee in terror from. She feared nothing—she never had—and was not about to start now.

It stood there, calm and alien, at once very like those forest dwelling fools far to the south, but at the same time far too different to be mistaken for one of their kindred. If any doubt remained, the vast black pools of its eyes laid waste to them. It was whiter than snow, almost brilliant with it, as if the snow and parchment-coloured birch trees that made up the forest were pale greys, a fading dream before its reality. It was if the world would break where it stood if it truly set foot upon this earth, and all about it would die of shock.

It was then, looking at its countenance, she knew she would not be allowed one step further in her goal this day. A rebellious part of her was utterly incensed at the impudence that such a creature would dare tell her what she could or could not do, and with nothing more than its presence no less! A hundred and one objections rose and died in her throat in an instant, a multitude of curses, hexes, and charms running through her mind but facing as soon as they came. There was nothing she could bring that could coerce this creature to let her by, to banish it, to dispel it.

She was not the one who brought it here.

“I will not be denied, stranger,” she hissed venomously. The White Stag did not react. “I may not be able to come to him, but one day he will come to me, and no protection of yours will forestall my power!” She turned and trod off, relief flooding over her as the presence of the thing did not pursue her. She grimaced, her young face now no longer aged but resplendent in stolen beauty. She cast her shawl over her beak to keep out the bite of the cold.

Her mind was too troubled to cast the charm to ward off the winter’s fury.

--=--

The doors slammed open just as he finished placing the last book onto the shelf. Spike let out a small sigh and turned around on his ladder.

“Home already?” he asked, though his smile faded when he saw the state Twilight was in. Her mane was a frazzled mess and stood on end, fur matted and scorched, arcs of static lightning dancing across her body at random intervals. There was even a small fire on the arc of her tail. Her eyes twitched, and when she opened her mouth to respond, a puff of smoke erupted as she gasped for air. “Err… you alrigh—?”

“Fine!” she said quickly. “Just… peachy!” And then she collapsed face first onto the floor. Sighing, Spike stepped down from his ladder, walked around the table and, now being old enough to actually do so, lifted Twilight up from under her forelimbs and carried her over to the reading sofa. “Uhhhh…”

“Bad day, huh?” he asked genially.

“It all started off so simply,” she whined, nuzzling her head into the sofa cushion as Spike turned back to his work.

“Uh huh.”

“First I went to the marketplace, you know, see who I’d meet, probably get some asparagus…”

“Twilight, you don’t have to do that any mo—”

“I know! But I just needed to get out of the castle, you know?” she said pitiably.

“Okay, and then what happened?”

“And then an eldritch vortex split the sky and threatened to suck all of Ponyville into a nether realm of eternal darkness and horror!”

“...Huh? I thought that was last week.”

“No, that was the thing with the giant bee and Fluttershy. You’re thinking of that one with the living shadow monster from the Everfree that possessed Zecora. That was last month,” she explained with closed eyes and raised hoof. Spike rolled his eyes.

“Right, and then what happened?”

“Well, I went to get the girls of course.” Twilight’s brows furrowed.

“Of course.” Spike nodded.

“So, there we were, giant evil vortex thing doing its swirly darkness thing when Pinkie—!” Spike tuned her out as she went on another tedious explanation of the day’s events. He’d been spending more and more time in the castle anyway, so much so that even the reports of Twilight and the gang’s adventures just sort of bled together after a while.

While she was talking, he returned to the bookshelves, climbed the ladder, and did some last minute sorting before taking a moment to pick out a particular book. That done, he descended and waved away one of the few palace servants Twilight finally hired, having relenting to Spike’s arguments. The poor mare had poked her head into the room after hearing Twilight’s rather loud complaining about some stupidity Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie did that ruined her third plan to contain the monstrosity. Couldn’t be helped that occasionally Twilight’s rants would be overheard, but at least the castle no longer looked like some super villain’s dark and empty old castle anymore.

He hummed to himself, pouring a glass of water from an amphora and picking up a sandwich he had been saving, and made his way over to Twilight, sensing she was nearing the end of her tale.

“—And I guess I just had to finally admit I needed help.” She sighed in defeat, finally winding down from her report.

“So, you’re going to be adding this to the diary?” Spike asked, surprising Twilight with a fresh glass of water and her favourite, dog-eared copy of Machinations of a Maddening Miscreant. It was a fictional omnibus written by an elderly mage from Concordia, with fantastical speculative magical theory being a prime element of the story. Twilight adored the genre for the outside-the-box thinking in the realms of magical theory and practice, and was constantly frustrated at how very few examples of the genre she could find. Spike personally couldn’t see the appeal in high level magical-babble getting in the way of a good story, and he actually had some education by way of Twilight. He couldn’t imagine very many other ponies would either.

“What? Oh. I don’t know.” She gulped down the water gratefully. “I should probably let Celestia know about the fact that we had an incursion from another world.”

“...Isn’t that impossible?” Spike asked. “I thought there needed to be an old ancient relic that anchored one world to another or some natural cycle or whatever, like the breezies use, or the gates of Tartarus. Or you’re Discord and you can just do that on Tuesdays.”

“No it isn’t, which is exactly why I think it's necessary to inform her of it. Spike, take a letter.” Twilight hopped off the sofa and got ready to pace as she dictated. Spike was already ahead of her and simply lifted the flap of the pouch at his side and took the red-feathered quill from where it lay on a nearby table.

No sooner than when he laid his draconic claw on the feathered instrument, he felt the familiar rumble in his lungs. The hitching of his breath, the same feeling he got whenever he ate too much too fast, and he was left burping for half an hour, only with a tickling edge. He steadied himself, opened his mouth and let it out in a stream instead of a rough burst. His lungs hurt enough as it was, and the action left him coughing all the same.

The missive fire burned away the blank parchment he had been prepared to take dictation upon. Somewhere, far away, a very surprised snow-white alicorn princess just got bopped on the nose with a rolled-up piece of blank parchment a second after she had dismissed her own letter. But that was not important right now.

“Spike?” Twilight turned to see the dragon coughing lightly and the sealed letter falling to the ground at his feet. She lifted it up while she walked over to him. “...You okay?”

“Yeah,” Spike managed, coughing hard. “What’s in the letter?” Spike hurriedly changed the topic before Twilight’s concern could grow. Twilight hesitated while he walked off to grab a pitcher of water, but eventually she hung her head and magically unfurled the letter.

Twilight’s eyes danced over the page, her brow slowly furrowing.

“It’s from Princess Celestia. Apparently she wants me to… make a goodwill visit?”

“Oh yeah?” Spike downed his second glass of water. Twilight watched him out of the corner of her eye, concerned as he occasionally sputtered, trying to keep down another cough. “W-Where to?”

“Griffonia.” There was no enthusiasm in her voice. She lowered the letter, rubbing her chin in thought.

“Oh right, wasn’t there that whole thing or whatever?” Spike asked absentmindedly, helping himself to the sandwich Twilight had abandoned in her hurry to dictate a letter. Twilight looked at him for a moment, noting how tall he was now and how quickly the time flew by, and how many times she heard him trying to hide how bad his coughs got by secreting himself away in hard to reach parts of the castle.

“Yeah,” she murmured, lost in thought, considering options... opportunities. “Celestia wants me to go there, as a sign of friendship. Mend ties.”

“Twilight, you okay?” He turned around at last and noticed the odd look she gave him. She smiled, the decision made.

“Yeah.” Her horn glowed and drew up one of the long lengths of parchment for another one of her, to anypony else, infamous checklists. “Now come on, we have a lot to do to get ready.”

“I’ll get the girls. Hope you guys have fun.” She chuckled at that.

“Silly Spike,” she teased, “you’re coming along too.”

--=--

He grunted as he shifted the whole weight of the thing off his shoulder. He nearly stumbled and hurried to catch and steady the coffin before it tumbled over. It was a bitch, but at the end of the day, it was worth it. He lifted the brick and shined its face on the cellar around him. Barren, dry, solid, and very empty. Whatever the previous lord of these lands had used it for, if he had used it at all, Handy could not begin to guess.

The cellar was a rough quadrangle with deep alcoves on all sides, very deep, some of them twisting in on themselves in curves or right angles. Seven on each long side, three and four on the respective shorter sides. Handy hadn’t bothered exploring all of them yet. It had been a flight of whimsy that brought him down here and to his current task. Hell, it had been a flight of whimsy to go out and actually get the coffin made. A private joke.

Well, in a manner of speaking, it was no wonder the whimsy came to him. He could not sleep in his own manor because he was busy having it repaired. The artisans’ guild who rented the land upon which they built their guild house? They were co-operating with his blacksmiths on repairing and, worryingly, expanding it, if the few snippets of conversation he had caught were anything to go by. Handy already had more space and rooms than he knew what to do with. Still, he also had more money than he knew what to do with, so he quickly ran out of excuses to try to dissuade the eager master carpenters, masons, and brickers using the opportunity to squire their young apprentices in their trades.

Henri Hammerstrike was delighted to take the contract to help out with all the necessary ironworking, and something of a rivalry, friendly or otherwise (Handy could not discern), erupted between him and his pupils versus the artisans and builders. To make things exponentially worse, practically all of the menfolk of Handy’s demesne showed up to offer labour and expertise, digging ditches, fetching and carrying and all manner of work. Word got around, and the twins, the ones who ran his taverns that he could never remember the names of, nor get right whenever he could recall, started supplying the alcohol to keep everything smooth and jolly.

Now, conventional wisdom would dictate that supplying free beer would encourage workers to stop, you know, working. However, often conventional wisdom proved to be wise, while sometimes it was downright retarded. All the workers seemed to work with a consistent energy and even joy at their task, the beer helping to keep high spirits and good cheer. His bakers supplied free bread and cheese, so everyone was fed and watered at all times of the day, and work continued through rain, snow, or sleet. Ironically enough, every time there was a clear day, almost nobody showed up, but that was very rare indeed.

Oh, and that wasn’t even the half of it. No, the worse part was the women. Now, many a man would tell you what the worse thing in the world would be, and each answer would be different from the last. Handy in his own opinion was pretty sure that telling a woman that money was no object was probably somewhere near the top of everyone’s list. The wives of his serfs and tenants conspired with those of the workers and artisans, all directed by Henri’s wife and daughter, who were the opposites of each other. One was old and surprisingly fat for a griffon, and the younger some thin rake of a thing. Horrors of horrors, they co-ordinated with the workers and were busy reigning holy terror on the shopkeepers and clothiers of the city of Skymount.

Handy liked the idea of the finer things in life now being within his financial reach, but with his recent brooding mood, he had no mind nor care for searching high and low for them. Therefore, the women took it upon themselves to extort, cajole, negotiate, bargain, and in a disturbing number of cases, threaten to ensure that Baron Handy Haywatch had the finest appointments in his manor of living as could reasonably be scrounged up. So it was that no sooner was a room finished that the furnishing and fittings were purchased, constructed, or made by the griffons themselves and stored away for its final completion.

One of them, Handy was not sure who, actually managed to get a worryingly accurate judgement of his tastes: impressive, just short of ostentatious, and something that would likely look good a long time from now and not just a passing fashion, enduring both foul weather, foul moods, and foul treatment. In this way, his manor was deconstructed, redrawn, and rebuilt brick by brick to reflect this.

All this started one morning after he had managed to use what tiny control he had over magic to help try to suppress the glow in his eyes so that they weren’t glowing in the dark like he was some kind of cheap cartoon supervillain. He was slightly worried about how much his new control helped in that regard. He had a mind to thank Crimson for all her help despite the fact he was still mostly getting nowhere, and had nothing to show for his efforts other than bruises where the stones hit him. Jacques had dropped in on him that day and the pair of them, when walking about, had come across some creaky floorboards. Jacques said something he thought was witty. Handy had predictably scowled and casually mentioned offhand how he was probably just going to tear the place down and build it up again.

Jacques shared that with Klipwing and Crimson. Crimson shared that with the alchemists. Klipwing shared that with the artisans. Jacques, presumably after a couple of cups of whatever gut rot he favoured, mentioned it in one tavern or another while he was off doing whatever he did when Handy wasn’t paying attention to him. It all kind of snowballed from there, and he was still waiting for what the alchemists were up to with some trepidation.

It wasn’t near done, of course, but all this would help give context to help you, dear reader, to understand exactly why Handy went and custom-built a coffin for himself.

With all of the constant activity, everything around Handy’s former manor had become very crowded and very noisy, and he had nowhere to sleep. Sure, the inns and rent-rooms within the city were always available, but the city tended to be noisy and distracting, the inns often busy into the wee hours of the morning with noise below or, God forbid, from the rooms next door. He could always crash with his alchemists once he found them, but he’d rather keep his distance from the madbirds. All the promised potential of alchemy in the world couldn’t entice him to risk a single night one thin wall away from an alchemical accident. Staying with his serfs or tenants was an option, but he’d rather not disturb someone’s family life over the matter.

He had, as a matter of fact, taken to sleeping in a tent near the construction site. It was a nice tent, nearly as spacious as the large one he had stayed in during his time in the tournament. Kept the cold out as well. Unfortunately, this meant he often lingered in close proximity to the site during the day and, predictably, was constantly interrupted or called upon by innumerable griffons. Some had business that was more legitimate than others, such as Henri, who was taken by the opportunity to insist on double-checking measurements and other such necessities, given he was still working on Handy’s new armour. He wondered what was taking the griffon so long with the damn thing. He had finished repairing his magic resistant armour after the first week. Nonetheless, the constant interruption of his daily affairs got to him, and it was not as if any of them would tolerate him actually lowering himself to keep busy with the work of labouring. He was not adverse to the work if it meant he could keep to himself by proxy; being so visibly busy that people just left him alone.

So it was that he was left to spend as much time in Skymount as humanly possible, on errands suitably ‘private’ enough that the roaming bands of barbarians masquerading as the womenfolk of the griffons working on his estate would leave him well enough alone. So it was that he busied himself with finding a suitable tailor. The problem with living in a world of natural nudists who had the virtue of guarding their modesty without an artificial cover was that clothes were a luxury. Luxuries were by nature more expensive than necessities and therefore harder to find. The laws of supply and demand were a bitch like that sometimes.

There were a few tailors he found right off the bat, though they mostly handled women’s clothing, dresses, and the like, or otherwise did formal wear. Some, he learned, were the personal tailors to a roster of local nobility, and he got the distinct impression that he’d rather not share such establishments with the other nobles out of some niggling need for privacy. He was, after all, going to rely on this person to help fabricate all of his clothing after all, and there was none of the anonymity of the vast, impersonal commercial system he was used to on Earth to protect him from his personal space issues. He pressed on in his search. It was not that he was short of clothes—indeed, the garments he had had made for him by the creepy twins far to the south in a desert settlement of Pawstown were still very much serviceable. He had taken to wearing fresh clothes every day, which on Earth had been a norm but in this world was a luxury. He could always use more, and better, garments.

He had found one young griffon down a side street in the marketplace. Her mobile stall was worn and battered, her own clothes ragged and worn, and a tired, defeated cast about her features. The fact she was so lost in her misery that she did not even give Handy the customary wary sidelong glance he was so used to was notable enough, but what really caught his eye was what she had on display.

The stall had tunics, cloaks, a few hats of various sizes, and styles suited for gryphonic skulls, scarves, a few belts showing she had some skill at leatherworking, besides everything and more. What was truly noteworthy was the styling and intricate artwork of it all. Even the most plain of tunics on offer had the subtlest of details lined out just so to draw the eye and make it memorable, all this despite presumably being made out of the cheap or even crude material available to the griffon. The fact that they were all immaculately clean and well cared for in comparison to the girl herself and her wagon spoke well of her work ethic.

As interesting as that all was, it was not enough to arrest Handy’s attention for more than a moment… except for one thing.

“Excuse me.” He picked out a black velvet hat, wide-brimmed. The hat. The sort that for centuries, from musketeers, to Napoleon, to the tricorne and onwards, was all really just one hat, crushed into various styles to make hundreds of different kinds of hats. The kind of hat Jacques favoured when he could manage to hold onto one long enough for it to get comfortable, before losing it in some ridiculous manner. He always blamed Handy for the losses of his hats, which was rather unfair in his view. It was not Handy’s fault that his life was absurd. The girl looked up and let out a very ungriffon-like squeak of surprise that almost made Handy laugh. He decided to press on through her shock, not in any mood to dissuade fears at the time.

“This hat, how much for it?”

“Uh… That would be just two crowns, Milord,” she managed, blinking and looking from the hat to Handy. “It’s a summer hat.”

“Ah,” Handy said, disappointed, placing it back on the stand. “Pity.”

“W-Wait!” she called out as he began to walk off. Handy turned as she lifted the black hat and wiggled a claw under the black band around the bump in the middle for the head and pulled it off, along with the little black bow Handy had not noticed before. She took a small pin from the stall, folded one of the sides of the hat, put the pin in it, and bent it on the inside. “Now it’s not! A good hat for a griffon of your station.”

Handy let the hint of a smile tug at his lips. Quick on her feet, this one. Handy stroked his chin for a bit and tilted his head. “I don’t know; smacks of desperation. I’ll give you a halfer.”

“One and a half!” she insisted, desperate enough to get a sale but determined not to sell herself short.

“How do I even know that is real velvet? What deer did you fleece to get a hold of that material? A halfer and a few coppers.”

“This is genuine grephix velveteen. I got it from the Blue Coast!” Handy had not the slightest notion what in the fuck a grephix was, but he was guessing it was one of the stranger animals roaming the world. The Blue Coast was approximately half of Griffonia’s eastern coastline and largely dominated by the Republic of Fernstrid. Very far away, presumably worth a hell of a lot more than two gold crowns.

“And all that time since, you couldn’t sell the hat before you got to me, all the way on Equestria’s doorstep?” Handy protested, now enjoying watching the merchant girl struggle. “A halfer, not a copper more.”

“No! I didn’t sell it because none of the farming griffons who I passed had money to pay. One crown, I will go no lower.”

“You’re doing yourself no favours, lass. I am a lord. Why would I pay a crown for a hat a farmer would not buy with his spit?” Handy challenged. She looked like she was struggling, and thus Handy was amused. Poor girl needed to up her haggling game. “Well? I’m waiting.”

“They couldn’t afford it because it was commissioned!” she said at last. Ah, well now Handy had to hear this just to see how far she dug that hole. “I was taking it to the buyer.”

“Well, that certainly explains why you went all the way to the Blue Coast for this... ah…” Handy trailed off, rubbing the material of the hat.

“Velveteen,” she supplied.

“Yes, that. And?”

“…And, Milord?”

“And you were saving this for the one who commissioned it. Why is the hat not in their hands if it were originally a summer hat?” Handy asked, closing the trap. He had expected her to stutter or panic. He was not expecting her to deflate. ‘Ah, trying the sympathy routine. That’s low.’

“She... just wanted rid of me,” she admitted, looking up. Handy kept his peace and let her continue. “I was trying to make a name for myself. To get noticed. Out back east... tried too hard... rubbed too many griffons the wrong way. I was given the commission to get rid of me; came back to find my name blackened and nogriffon would hire me. So…” She gestured to her cart.

“So why didn’t you just move to another city and start again?” Handy asked. “No shortage of self-important people running about in dire need of stroked egos and expensively tailored vanity.”

“You don’t understand. When you anger the wrong griffons, your name gets… it gets passed around. Nogriffon would have my work. None would even take me on as a seamstress in their stores.”

“So? Sell to the commoners. You don’t need a noble patron to get by.”

“That's what I have been doing!” she whined. “But griffons have neither time nor the money to spend. I’ve just been scraping by.” Handy put the hat back on the stand and flipped her a silver. She looked up at him in surprise.

“What? Please, sir, I thank you, but I don’t need your pi—”

“What’s your name, girl?” Handy asked. Thoughts spun in his head as he gave a critical eye to the work she put on display. He wondered if he could kill two birds with one stone.

“I… Belladonna, sir.”

“Like the plant? Odd name for a griffon.”

“My mother was a pony,” she said. When Handy raised an eyebrow, she continued, “Adopted.”

“Ah, well Belladonna, don’t consider it pity. Consider it an investment,” Handy explained in a haughty voice. “You say you’ve been scraping by and making rather fetching beggar's wear out of sackcloth?”

“I—!” she sputtered. Handy smiled. He got her goat with that one.

‘Good. Let’s see what she can do with some fire in her,’ he thought, crossing his arms and tapping his chin. “You see,” he began, “as it happens, I happen to be shopping for a seamstress. A tailor. Someone who has a way about them when it comes to sewing and darning.”

That shut her up right quick, her eyes widening.

“But,” he said, putting a stop to whatever wild hopes his words put in her head with the promise of a pitfall. “You get nothing for nothing. I take it from your tale that none of the tailors in this fine city of the king’s would have you, am I correct?”

“...Y-Yes, sir,” she managed.

“And none of the high and mighty would give you a second look, and none of the low and mean have the coin to spare on expensive trivialities, am I right so far?”

“...Yes,” she said, smarting at the admission.

“But I am not like most, I think you’ll find. What some consider trivialities, I consider necessities. And where other lords weigh the words of the known and storied more heavily than that of the skilled, I happen to know a thing or two about resourcefulness and how useful it is. Would you consider yourself resourceful, Miss Belladonna?”

“I-I would! Definitely!” she said, rising, wings partially extended from her sides.

“Prove it,” Handy said, departing. “You can scurry off with that silver like an urchin, or you can use it to give me a fine black cloak fitted for a pony, with a hood if you please. Then there’ll be more than just silver in your future; there’ll be a job and a roof over your head.”

It took her a moment to finally respond to that. “H-How will I find you!?” she shouted after him. He suppressed a laugh.

“You’ll manage! I’m hard to miss!” he shouted back.

--=--

And with that, he set in motion a plan to amuse himself while he went about his business in Skymount. You see, the nobility game could be very subtle at times, and sometimes it could be straightforward but misleading, with the real trick being in discerning when it was being one or the other.Handy had discerned that, however much pressure Joachim had faced when it came to the final decision to disgrace him, the real final deciding factor as to the manner in which Handy was ‘put in his place’ likely came from within the court itself.

Handy had no public enemies in Joachim’s court—keeping one’s distance from both the unwashed hoi polloi and the high-born fuckwits, and projecting oneself as the ominous weapon of the king’s displeasure would do that. As far as they were concerned, he was anonymous, impersonal, with no more designs on anyone’s possessions or ambitions than the odd decorative suit of plate armour or tapestry, albeit a touch more animate and bloodthirsty.

That did not mean he, his presence, and his position was not in someone’s way. Perhaps a cadre of nobles merely wanted one less voice in the king’s ear that could not be controlled, or some jealous guard wanted to dilute the influence of the royal knights at the expense of the palace guard in some bid for power. Either way, someone benefitted from Handy’s erstwhile exile, he was sure of it, but just because you were cast out into the cold did not mean you could not exert your influence back into the hall.

And Handy had enough time and money on his hands to do just that.

Belladonna had pulled through for him and, when she found him once again in Skymount, this time catching him on his way out from the still useless brewery he was trying to find a use for, she presented him with the cloak. It was red samite with a black, woollen exterior, gold thread weaving the interior in tight, knotted patterns along the edges. It was clearly meant to be turned inside out upon the needs of the wearer. Wool on the outside for travel and the rain, samite on the outside for the show of it, with the addition of the wool keeping one warm on a cold night.

How in the hell the woman managed to make this on nothing more than a silver halfer, Handy had not the slightest idea, but she had and so Handy had kept his word. That had been the start of it. He had given her a room at one of the tavern inns to stay in at his expense, with several other rooms given over for her work and set her to her task. Now, every day, Handy went out about the town with a new cloak, a tunic, trousers. Each was more impressive and eye-catching than the last as Belladonna settled into her work and got used to the measurements.

Handy was not a strutting peacock that some men were—he had no real care for fashion, but he did like to look good, or at least he didn’t enjoy looking like some scrub. All the same, he carried himself with an infuriating disregard for his own wealth, or at least that would be what the other nobles would see. Typically, some new up-and-coming noble showing off expensive clothing would be disregarded for the attention-seeking whore that he was, desperate to be seen. Handy’s trick was genuinely not caring whether he was seen or not, which was much more noticeable, a casual air that probably only a human could pull off in a world where simply putting on a tunic was probably making a statement.

Handy didn’t just want to flaunt his wealth, oh no. Handy wanted his servants to be better dressed than the court dandies. Hence his little gift for Crimson, and a proper outfit and livery for Klipwing, with the hammer device Handy had taken for a crest. Hell, even a new hat for that bastard Jacques that he seemed more than pleased with. The fact that he was doing this out in the streets and not, say, in the court of the King of Gethrenia was a calculated slight. He knew King Johan wouldn’t care personally, but it was the look of it that mattered. It was petty, it was small, but Handy could be a very petty man when he chose to be, and sooner or later someone was going to make a move.

It came on the morning he entered town to collect the coffin he had made for him. A roomy thing, it was black-lacquered wood on an iron frame, gold handles and hinges with white velvet interior lining and enough padding to be a mattress. He had learned, somewhat to his shock, that griffons were unusual in their preferences to bury their dead. Ponies—at least the Equestrians—tended to cremate their deceased, which would explain the lack of graveyards he had noticed while traveling. They put them in caskets all the same as the griffons, just didn’t bury them.

And on his way there, after ignoring how everyone seemed to have been watching him as he strolled, more so than usual, he passed by a young griffon boy hawking the newspaper. Newspapers weren’t the social force in this world they were back on Earth, even with the printing presses. Typically, most towns didn’t print ‘papers’, but rather printed single sheets once a week that detailed local events, distributing them to nearby towns and villages, with the sheets nailed to the doors of temples, town halls, taverns, and other gathering areas in village life.

The larger towns and cities were more meaty affairs with proper newspapers. Yellow pages were the shorter, smaller, weekly news printed and sold a copper a piece to everyone who happened by. White sheets were the monthly runs that were broader and thicker, brimming with merchants advertising their wares or workplace openings. The white sheets showed everything, from news, to gossip, to court rumours, to local happenings on a kingdom scale, international news if it could be got, and even short stories penned by local wordsmiths hoping to make some money by entertaining the masses with penny dreadfuls not worth a book of their own. There was very little regulation of any of it. They even had pictures occasionally when the press could afford the extra ink for image repetition.

This was exactly why Handy stopped in his damn tracks when he noticed himself on the front page of a white sheet. It had been a picture of him reading and lying half out of his tent on one of the better days that winter. The story underneath was titled ‘LOCAL BARON LIVES IN DITCH! TOO WASTEFUL TO AFFORD A ROOF?’. Handy tossed the kid a copper and took a copy. It was a hit piece, the column author sounding sympathetic, which honestly just made it seem so much worse, as if Handy was to be pitied. The most damning line was the one that wondered whether or not he was seen in such fine clothing as a means of compensating for his mean lifestyle living in the rough. Someone had paid for this to happen. If Handy was interesting enough for someone to risk snatching a photo and writing an embarrassing article, they would have done so a long time ago. Hell, they probably did for all he knew. Handy normally never bothered to read the papers, even back on Earth.

Handy remembered the flash. He actually had been sleeping that day. It had been unseasonably warm, so he had dozed off while reading and the flash had woken him up. He had been so dazed that he had no idea who it had been before they had taken off into the air and flown away. Honestly, as bad as the situation was, he was actually relieved the picture didn’t reveal what he was reading. He could probably twist this to his advantage somehow, but how do you explain away that the terrifying human was reading a Daring Do novel? That was one thing that’d make him look bad no matter what.

But the picture, the ink to run it, the story? Yeah, someone had wanted to run that story, had paid for it. Seemed like he did tick someone off in the end. Good, the game was on then. Now he just needed them to show their hand… claw in this case. In the game of nobility, the one who got mad, lost. Handy was well aware of his temper and his pride and, if he was honest, the embarrassment did goad him. Just a touch. He couldn’t let it show, however. He had to get even, but how?

He thought about that long and hard while having the coffin hauled back to the manor for him, paying the two young serfs a silver apiece for their help. Now at least, he could actually sleep somewhere that was not out in the open where something like that could happen again.

“Master?” He turned to see Crimson walking down the stairs to the cellar. “Are you done here?”

“Ah, Crimson, is it time again?” he asked.

“Yes, Master,” she said happily, taking the small bag of rocks Handy was all too familiar with out from under her new cloak. She tossed him one for his use. Handy looked at it sceptically.

“It’s... bigger than before.”

“Yes, I thought it might be better.”

“Heavier too. Won’t this be harder to focus with?” Handy asked, and she smiled. “Oh come on.”

“Think of it as advancing. The more you can control your magic through focusing through stone, and the harder it is to do so, the better you will be at the end of it,” she explained. Handy rolled his eyes.

“Yes, I understand the principle, but I could barely manage it before.”

“You’ll be fine. Ready to begin?” Handy looked around.

“Down here in the dark?” he asked. She tapped her chin in thought. Then, with a wave of her horn, four purple-red orbs of magic floated out to the four corners of the quadrangle, painting the alcoves black in sheer shadow but providing light so Handy could see what he was doing.

“There.” She turned to him, the smile dropping from her face. “Master, what is that?”

“Nothing you need to be worried about.” Handy waved her attention away from the large coffin leaning against the wall. “Let’s just get this over with.”

She didn’t look any less worried but complied all the same. She emptied out the stones onto the floor, lifting them with her magic and giving him a nod. Handy held the stone out in front of him and, closing his eyes and pushing all thoughts aside, reached.

It was a strange feeling, like an electric tingling behind his eyes, an itch in his teeth. It was at once satisfaction at quenching a thirst and the frustration of seeing a waterfall plummet into an endless sinkhole, wasted and wanting more. Like he had done before when Crimson had helped him awaken to the magic that had been around him from the very start, he reached out, along his arm, through to his hand, and what was in his fingers. He imagined pulling on the ropes of a ship’s rigging, to control it so the mast wasn’t torn off as the wind played with the sail.

The magic rushed around him, tempting him to draw it in from everywhere... but to let it in any other way was to flirt with injury and tempt harm. He ignored it; it had to come through the rope. The stone sat still in its place. Slowly, it gave, an agonizing slowness as the magic crept into the stone, to reach the void that was calling to it, to reach the heart, the stone warming in his grasp, both from his own heat and that of the magic trying to force its way through with—

“Ow!” The stone struck him in the shoulder and he jerked back, his focus lost, eyes blinking, the stone cooling as what magic had tried to worm its way through was lost.

“Concentrate,” Crimson admonished. “You were taking too long.”

Handy bit back a retort and put a halt on his anger, ignoring the pain in his shoulder. “How long?” he asked with a sigh.

“A half hour.”

“A half hour!?” Handy exclaimed. “That couldn’t have been a minute!”

“It’s easy to lose track of time when working with magic. You need to concentrate. You need to be aware of the world around you.”

“I was aware of the world around me. That’s how I was tryi—”

“Not enough.” Crimson frowned at him. “Not enough to realise how long it was taking you. Come on, try again.”

Handy let out a breath, rubbed his shoulder idly and then, settling his thoughts again, set to work. The problem with the stone was that while it did prevent Handy from being flooded by magic and thus being knocked onto his arse, it took a damn long time to let any magic through at all when he wanted it to. That was the idea—let a controlled trickle of magic flow into him so he could redirect it, creating the loop up along his arm to his body, and then back again to the focus, creating a natural channel for the energy to flow. It was a bit like directing a river so as to not to break the dam before you built it. In this manner, a prospective mage was introduced to the flow and control of magic and the basic concepts of the crystalline method in a safe and reliable manner. Once he managed to do it quickly and reliably enough, he could move onto more pliant materials for foci and move on in his lessons. Unicorns had to do this since the day they left their mothers’ womb, what with their natural foci in the form of their horns. Magical surges in unicorns were well-known phenomena, and could range from anything from accidentally creating pretty sparkles every time they sneezed to a baby having a howitzer for a forehead.

Handy? Well, he was still nowhere near controlling magic just yet, as evidenced by Crimson tossing a stone at him every half hour and the curses he spat in pain each time. He couldn’t help it—there was something about magic that when you concentrated on it, really concentrated on it, you could not help but lose yourself in it. You lost track of time and your thoughts, your very self. Hell, if Crimson had not been there hitting him with stones, he wou—

The realisation struck him as his eyes went wide. Crimson smiled, lowering her last stone slightly. Handy looked down at the stone. His arm hurt to move, tense and taut as it was from the effort, his hand feeling like a claw from clutching the stone so hard for so long. The stoning wasn’t to get him to catch them to prevent himself from being hurt. Rather, they were there to help him learn that controlling magic was more than just monitoring how much or how fast you allowed the power around you to enter into you. It was also about not allowing the magic itself to control you. To consume you.

She had told him to focus, yes, but in truth he wasn’t focusing, or rather, he was focusing on one thing entirely too much. He lost sight of himself.

“Is that what happened to the wild mages?” Handy asked, remembering the brief history of magic she had told him. “They lost themselves in their magics and were consumed?”

“Violently,” Crimson said. “Most times, at least. Very good, Master.”

“Couldn’t you have just told me what I was doing wrong?”

“I would have, eventually, but I wanted to see if you could understand what you were doing wrong. It’s easier to explain if the student is partially aware of what he was doing wrong.” And then she threw the rock at him, hitting him in the stomach and winding him.

“What the hell, Crimson?!” Handy demanded.

“You figured out your first lesson,” Crimson explained cheerily, gathering up the stones in her magic while sitting down. She had turned her cloak inside out to keep the warm wool on the inside while the winter’s chill haunted its way down the stairs from the exposed house above them. “But you still have yet to catch any of the stones. Let’s see how you do this time. Again.”

This time, Handy did not argue, and again he set himself to the task of trying to draw the magic through his hand by way of the foci and again, with glacial slowness, he felt the magic seep in. It was like water soaking into rock, only at the speed of molasses. This time, just on the edge of feeling himself become lost, he opened his eyes.

He almost lost it, almost lost focus entirely with the shock of it as his mind was jolted into remembering the world around him existed, that the magic he now felt washing over him like an invisible wind really was invisible, that there was no visible indication that anything was going on other than Handy standing there stupidly, clutching a rock in his outstretched hand. It felt… disconcerting, as if he should not be paying attention to anything else.

He held his ground, however, willing the magic to continue into the stone. Now aware of the world around him, aware of time passing, the process felt infinitely more slow and agonizing. The stone felt unreasonably warm in his hand, so hot he felt he should drop it, but he knew the feeling to be an illusion, a trick of his mind. He pushed on. This time he felt hungry, the strange feeling, the emptiness that needed to be filled lending strength to his will. He felt the magic begin to give, to enter the stone faster incrementally.

It took an hour, but he must have been doing something right, because Crimson didn’t toss any of her damned stones at him in that time. Finally, at long last, he felt it. The magic completely suffused the stone, and a trickle, the occasional drop of power, fell from it like water from a limestone stalactite, falling up along the length of his arm. An electric thrill raced along his veins as it passed, and as little though it was, it felt like it hit him in the chest with the force of a clenched fist. He had to be ready.

And at last, the river broke and the flow raced down his arm with all the energy and enthusiasm of an explosion. And like any explosive force rushing towards you, it was so daunting he almost stood there and let it hit him like an idiot.

Have you ever rode a bull? Perhaps a mechanical one when you were drunk and there happened to be a fair on in town that day? Trying to control the flow of magic is a bit like that, wild, impossibly strong and ready to throw you to the dirt if you slackened your grip for even an instant. The magic hit Handy with the force of a wave concentrated into a single point, he had to shut off its access to the rest of his body, to any other means of exit, giving it no choice but to flow straight into his heart.

It almost stopped.

He breathed out, and in a heartbeat, the magic flowed back up his arm again, running along the very veins of his hand up to his fingers and back into the stone focus from whence it came. He relaxed; the magic was controlled now, a closed circuit he could control and manipulate, allowing its energy to suffuse his body without worrying about it hurting or overwhelming him. Outwardly, nothing showed. It felt much more powerful than it actually was, and Handy could not help but smile, the giddiness coming unbidden to his lips. It was like water pressure—once the flow got going, more magic was sucked into the circuit, as much as was pushed out by the new magic coming in. Handy hardly even needed to give it a thought.

“Ow!” The stone bounced off of his forehead. It had been thrown lightly but hurt none the less for it. His free hand clapped to his head as he hissed with the pain of it.

“You can move your arm now,” Crimson said, smiling. “I think you got it.” He blinked and tried to move his arm experimentally, surprised that the focus was no longer lost now that he was distracted. The magic, like liquid lightning, seemed to flow through him like a river. His arm ached with the movement, and his fingers hurt to move, but so long as he didn’t relinquish his grasp, the magic flowed. He laughed.

“I can’t believe it,” he said.

“What?”

“Nothing, it’s just… I don’t know, reminds me of something.” ‘Summer days when life was young and I was free.’

“Well, I’m glad you’re having fun. Shall we?” Crimson held aloft another stone.

“...How?”

“Well, now that we’re getting somewhere, how do you think?” she teased, throwing the stone up, letting go and catching it again in her magic. Handy thought about it. Catching the stone magically would be telekinesis, basically what every unicorn and mage did pretty much without thinking. It was hardly even considered a proper spell by virtually anyone with an inkling of magical skill.

If that were true, then it couldn’t be much more complicated than the basic concepts he just figured out. A projection of the will in the form of raw magic, but how could he do that? He looked at the stone in his fist. He supposed it logically followed that if he could draw magic in through it, he could project magic using it as well. If he welled up the magic, it would allow the power to flow into him through it but would refuse to let it leave the stone once it travelled through his body. Like holding your thumb over the spout of a water tap, he could then force it to come out at a higher pressure than it naturally would.

He saw the stone glow. Such was his surprise that he blinked and lost it. Unconsciously, he had been working the magic as he thought out the concept, teasing it in a manner he was familiar with.

“Do it again!” Crimson called out. “That. Whatever that was, do it again!”

Handy tried, and sure enough, he saw a flickering glow around the stone. A soft silver aura surrounded the stone and his hand, not unlike the glow suffusing Crimson’s own horn. She clapped her hooves happily at the progress.

“There! How did you do that? How did you figure it out?”

“I… just thought about what the magic reminded me of, and used that to help conceptualize other ways of utilizing it. It’s like a river—I thought about how you can manipulate the pressure of water,” Handy explained as best he could. Crimson hummed.

“The Starshine method? Unusual, but I suppose it’s more intuitive. It is more popular with griffon mages, I am led to believe. Most ponies prefer Starswirl’s methodology.” Handy looked at her blankly. “Never mind. I now follow what you’re doing, but how were you planning on using it?” She bounced the stone in her magical grip, Handy following its progress with his eyes.

“I was going to release the magic in the direction I wanted it to go.”

“Interesting. Want to test that hypothesis, Master?” Handy eyed the rock.

“I’d rather not.”

“Come on, Master, you’re doing so well. What’s a little pain for progress?”

“Still pain,” Handy replied, deadpan. Crimson snorted. “But… fine. Let’s go ahead with this.”

He readied himself. Again he blocked the magic’s progress back into the open air, and again the aura formed. He thought about it, wondering how he was going to do this. This time he thought of a hose rather than the water tap. Holding a running hose upright and putting your thumb over it, you could not only control the force of the water, but where it sprayed depending on how you moved your thumb. He planned to try that and kept his eye on the stone in Crimson’s grip.

She threw it lightly, more of a toss really. He lifted his arm towards it and released the magic. He didn’t see it, but he felt the magic leave him in a rush as an invisible force struck the stone and shot it back into the ceiling, rebounding and landing on the ground, skittering away into one of the dark alcoves. Crimson gave him a critical look.

“Well done. Still, I told you to catch it, Master,” she admonished. He frowned at her. How in the hell could he catch it? He couldn’t catch water once it left his grip—how the hell could he catch magic? “Try thinking about it differently.”

‘Differently, right,’ Handy bitterly ruminated. He gave the matter some thought. The way he was thinking of it, he was releasing the energy, not expecting it to return to him. No, what he needed to do was create an extended loop, another circuit like the one connecting him to the focus in his hand, only this time between the focus and the target. He had to throw the magic onto a point and hold it there. At first he thought of a lasso, but then it dawned on him that that would only catch the stone and bring it to him faster than he was ready. He needed to think about how to reach out to catch it and hold it there to his will. What did he know that allowed him to reach out, grab something, and manipulate it to his will?

Handy slapped himself in the face for being so stupid, letting out a groan.

“Problems?” Crimson smirked.

“Nothing, just… took me way too long to think of this.” An arm. The answer was an arm. He didn’t know how others did it, but the answer seemed obvious to him. It didn’t need to be obvious, but the more he thought of it, the more sense it made to him. An ethereal appendage. “Just… don’t throw it, hold it in the air. Like that, yes.”

Crimson complied and stepped back, curious as to what he would do.

There was probably easier ways to do what he was trying to do, but hey, it was an experiment. He pushed the magic out of his hand, trying to direct and limit the flow of the energy that wanted desperately to escape his grasp, bleeding into the cold air around him. Handy was reminded very much of holding onto the leash of a very large and enthusiastic dog, trying desperately to stop it from pulling him along. It was as much a physical effort as it was mental, and he grunted with the strain. He thought briefly that he must look very stupid from the outside but put the thought out of his mind. He didn’t need the distraction.

The aura in his hand waxed and waned with the strain, but he retained control and, slowly, invisibly, the magic snaked its way over the empty distance between him and the floating stone. When his magic touched the aura projected by Crimson, he let out a gasp of shock. At first it was like the shock of rolling out of bed and hitting a cold wooden floor. Crimson chuckled but slowly relinquished control of the stone as Handy’s magic slowly flowed around it, projecting the same silver aura onto it.

Crimson released and he held it there in the air. He stood there, amazed, so much so that he almost didn’t notice the fact he was losing control of it.

“Careful,” Crimson said. Handy hurried to finish the loop. He already had the stone in his magical grip, so he directed the magic back from it towards his fist. It was a task made significantly easier by the effort already put into creating the link in the first instance. The magic came back to hit him, and he felt his fist shake before the link finalised. And there it was, the magic flowing into him through the focus, back out again and into the invisible air towards the stone, and back again in a figure eight.

He eased and let the loop form naturally and realised, unlike the one between the focus and his heart, the one that he projected threatened to disappear entirely if he relaxed, no natural medium sustaining the force of magic in its projected pattern. Handy suddenly felt himself longing for unicorn blood, to use it to let him physically see the strings of magic and the thaumic winds. He wondered what his erstwhile creation would look like…

He shook the thought from his head and let the stone drop. Crimson looked very pleased.

“Well done, Master! You’ve understood the basics of the Conisuleps principle, and the gryt loop.”

“Yes, those are certainly words you are saying, Crimson.” Crimson rolled her eyes.

“What you did was the gryt loop–channelling the magic back and forth between the body and the focus. The Conisuleps principles involve using the willpower and the innate need of nature to fill a vacuum to draw magic into the body through a means of egress the wizard allows, and then projecting it out in the same manner. It creates another gryt loop by using the power and stability of the first as its base by projecting it onto an external point.”

“I… I actually think I understood most of that,” Handy said disbelievingly. The words were still foreign, but the concepts were now familiar. He considered that had he not gone through the pain and trouble of doing it himself, they would have remained foreign concepts even if he had of spent a year reading books on the subject. He found that he was out of breath, feeling sweat bead off his brow and into his eye, catching him by surprise. He suddenly felt very tired from the effort, but the exhaustion was only catching up to him now. “Although, I doubt I’ll be able to do it quick enough to catch something mid-air.”

Crimson nodded in understanding, lifting the stones and gathering them into her pouch. “You can let go of it now,” she said, this time with a knowing smile. Handy almost fell for it.

“Wait.”

“Yes?” she asked.

“...How do I let the gryt loop go safely?” She beamed at him, the correct question to ask as it turned out.

“The same way you stopped it from leaving. Simply prevent the magic from entering the focus from the outside while letting the magic leave you and enter into it.” Simple enough to say, hard enough to do. He did as she said and the loop soon closed. The magic left him, making him feel oddly empty without it. With nothing left to draw the magic into the stone, it couldn’t hold it on its own, and he felt it leave the stone and suffuse into the air once more.

“That's… actually quite a lot to process and go through. I can’t believe you unicorns can do all of that with literally a thought,” Handy said, genuinely impressed and seeing the little ponies in a new light entirely.

“It becomes like breathing,” Crimson explained. “Oh, and if you want to know the fast way to close the loop, you could just stop concentrating and drop the focus. The magic would have nothing to draw it in and nothing to keep the loop going, so it would just flow along its path and out of your hand in an instant.”

“...You could’ve just told me that.”

“Yes, but this way you now know how to close it willingly without dropping it. We unicorns can’t drop our horns, you know,” she said with a smug grin, sticking her tongue out at him slightly. She seemed to really enjoy these lessons, and Handy could not say he found the more relaxed Crimson disagreeable. He certainly preferred it to the more cowed and demure, borderline sociopath who was unreasonably afraid of his slightest disapproval.

“Fine, we’ll try this again some other time. I’d rather not spend the rest of today—”

“Night,” she corrected.

“Fuck me, really?” he asked, looking back up the stairs. Sure enough, it was dark out, the only meaningful light being provided by Crimson’s floating orbs of magic. Seemed like he ended up spending far more time than he thought. “Well, I’m tired of getting hit by stones. Goodnight, Crimson.”

“Goodnight, Master. Should I have a room prepared back in the city? It will be freezing tonight.”

“I’ll manage.” Handy was suddenly reminded of the paper he read earlier that day and the sour taste it left in his mouth. Crimson nodded and went back up the steps, the magical lights winking out of existence as she left. Handy turned the phone back on and prepared to follow her then stopped, shivering. His tunic was soaked through with sweat from the magical strain, and suddenly the prospect of walking up the steps to ground level seemed daunting to his tired legs, let alone the trek back to town.

Sure, he could go up and trek through the freezing night air during the dead of winter in a cold sweat and likely freeze to death, but fuck that noise. Handy only had the coffin built as a joke, just for the hell of it and to kill some time, but he started chewing his lip, considering... He looked back at the coffin, then back up the stairs, then back to the coffin.

“...Fuck it,” he decided, moving to settle the coffin back onto the ground. If it had one thing in its favour, it was insulated. Even with the air holes made for breathing taken into account, it should keep him warm, he had to admit.

It was comfy too.

--=--

He was woken by a scream.

It seemed a royal guard had been poking his way down to the cellar in search of him. The poor bastard was frightened out of his mind, the building site seeming abandoned, having come here early in the morning before any of the workers arrived. He had no doubt wandered his way down here and found a shiny new casket, all lacquered-black, silver metal-lining, and shining gold handles. He had opened it to find Handy lying there. In a bad habit Handy had yet to fully control, his eyes shone with a golden, wicked light when he opened them in the morning.

He was at first alarmed and then bemused at the sight of the armoured griffon panicking and bounding up the stairs, dropping his short spear in his hurry. Handy allowed himself a yawn and to pop the bones in his back and shoulders before getting up and out of the coffin. It was a damn sight better than a bedroll on the ground… or the boxes he used to lie in, but it needed work. God, he missed his bed. Handy absentmindedly grabbed the discarded spear as he made his way to where the guard had entered.

He pulled himself up into the daylight and squinted at the bright sun bearing down on him. After pulling his cloak closer to ward off the chill breeze, he strode out onto the fresh snow, his boots nearly disappearing in the pristine whiteness with each crunch, and spied the royal guard cowering behind the broken low wall that bordered his property. He blinked dumbly for a moment as his brain slowly woke up and, putting what he had learned to use, willed his eyes to stop glowing ominously.

“I trust you have a… thou hast a reason for waking me so early in the day?” Handy asked, seriously considering whether he wanted to continue keeping up the court tongue facade or not. He chucked the spear onto the snow before the wall. The guard seemed visibly more relieved now that Handy was not apparently going to eat him.

“Uh… I-I was sent ahead to... see if you were here.” Handy could not place his face, but he had light orange-brown feathers and a brown pelt. He was sure he would recognise him if he knew him previously. Must be a new guy or something.

“Well, thou hast found me,” Handy said, spreading his arms. “What is thy business?”

“The… The king wishes to see you.” The guard gingerly approached his fallen spear and snatched it from the ground.

“He does? What do you want this time…?” he said, muttering the last words to himself, his mood turning fouler. “Very well, I’ll come to the castle.”

“N-No need, Milord!” the soldier said hurriedly as Handy made to move for his tent to find cleaner clothes. Handy gave the bird a puzzled look. “The king is coming here. He is just over the rise, in fact.”

“Is he now?” Handy asked, straightening his tunic and pulling the cloak into a closed position. No need to look like a total scrub and show off his dirty clothes. “Well then, I guess I’ll do him the courtesy of meeting him halfway.”

“Y-Yes, of course. I’ll escort you,” the guard stammered, watching Handy pass by. He glanced back at the open hole in the ground that, when the manor was fully built, would be the entrance to its cellar. “If you, uh, don’t mind, Lord, I apologise for my reaction. I… I didn’t believe what they said about you was true.”

Handy smiled but did not turn around. “Most sensible people don’t,” he said, not confirming anything one way or another.

--=--

The royal caravan turned out to be just Joachim and several of his guards. None of his knights were present, however, which Handy thought was strange. And traveling on foot as well... The small contingent stopped when they saw Handy, and the guard crested the rise in the road not a dozen metres from his manor house. Handy raised his fist in acknowledgment, and they continued on towards him.

“Well, this should be good,” Handy muttered. The guard gave him an odd look as they approached. King Johan the Blackwing raised his claw in salute when they had gathered on the rise.

“Well met, Baron Haywatch,” Johan greeted. Handy give him a minute nod.

“Majesty,” he simply said. Johan looked over the countryside for a moment before speaking again.

“Leave us for the moment,” he ordered his guards. Only the new guy gave his king an uncertain look before complying, the rest used to the human and departed a polite distance. Johan walked past Handy towards the manor. “Walk with me, would you?”

Handy hesitated but followed as the pair moved back into the utter mess of the construction site. Johan glanced over the few tents pitched surrounding the building, all of which were currently empty for the moment. He stopped in the centre of the manor, in the midst of the wooden frames and piles of wooden panelling, and turned to face Handy.

“I… have come to apologise,” he said at last. Handy crossed his arms.

“Noooo,” he retorted mockingly, “really? All this way to apologise to little old me? Why, I’m flattered. All the way out here where no one can see you do it. That’s not condescending at all.”

“Handy, I’m not…” He sighed, rubbing his face. “Look, I know nothing I could say would—”

“Oh no, I wouldn’t say that,” Handy said with a smile. “I am renowned for my kind and forgiving nature. Water under the bridge, buried hatchets. Really, just those two little words were all that’s needed to heal any hurt between us. It's alllll taken care of.”

“Will you let me finish?” Johan deadpanned.

“No.” Johan groaned. He turned and walked a few paces before stopping.

“You were right, you know,” he admitted. “I should’ve done something else.”

“A bit late for that now, isn’t it?” Handy replied tersely. Johan nodded.

“Probably.” He turned. “I know nothing I can say or do would have you forgive me.” Handy said nothing and let the griffon continue. “So, I thought if we could not reconcile, then perhaps there could at least be peace between us?” Johan lifted his cloak and pulled out a long, silver, heater shield from underneath. It shone gloriously in the light of the sun, and Handy let out a surprised yelp as he lifted the cloak to cover his eyes. The glare died down as Johan shifted himself to stand in the shadow of one of the half-built walls. Handy lowered the cloak to look down at it.

It was there in all its familiar glory. The same knot-work pattern entwined a stylised hammer in silverwork on top of steel, marred somewhat by an ugly rent of new metal worked in to repair where the shield had completely buckled. Handy was honestly too surprised for words.

“Where did you—?” he managed, not looking up from the shield.

“It was all that was left of you when you disappeared from the tournament,” Joachim explained.

“You kept it?”

“What? Would you just dump the last thing left of your friend the day he ‘died’?” Johan asked with a smirk. “Of course I kept it. I hadn’t had it repaired until after the… unpleasantness in the castle. Honestly, I was so angry that I had forgotten about it.”

“Oh, you were angry?” Handy scoffed, his voice suddenly terse. Johan waved him off.

“Not at you, mind. Anyway, it's yours. I figured you’d want it back.”

Handy, slowly at first, took the proffered shield back from Joachim. He considered it for a moment, something tugging at the back of his mind. It wasn’t quite conscience but something like it, the small part of him that wanted to be the bigger man. He looked out into the birch wood forest to the south as he worked on quieting that niggling part of him down, and then looked back up at his first friend in this world.

“You have two choices,” Handy said to Joachim with finality. “I will only accept peace on one or the other condition.”

“And those are?” Joachim asked, eyes widening slightly in surprise. Evidently he had not been expecting to get more than one possible conclusion.

“You will bring me back in from the cold, publically. Rescind your expulsion of me in front of everyone. I don’t care what it costs you, I don’t care what lies you have to say. I don’t even care if the High King is still there to see you do it.”

Joachim opened his mouth to reply, but held his peace as he studied Handy’s face. He was quite serious. “And the other choice?” he asked quietly after a moment. Handy breathed once through his nose.

“I break your jaw, I take everything I have, and I leave the kingdom and you will do absolutely nothing about it,” he said at last. Joachim looked shocked at the suggestion. “Then there will be peace between us.”

“...Can we not be friends again?” he asked after a moment of silence. Handy didn’t reply immediately.

“I don’t know,” Handy admitted. “You betrayed me, Joachim. My only real friend in the world, and you threw me out in the cold after everything I did for you. I was content to sit and fume, out here in my little barony until something came of it, until I decided one way or the other. You, however, have brought things to a head.”

“But… you’d leave us like that?” Joachim asked, clearly hurt over the matter. Good.

“Yes.”

“Can’t you just forgive me? Just this once?”

Handy paused before answering. “Maybe one day, but right now, what I want is recompense.” Joachim looked down at the ground. Handy already knew which choice he was likely to make. Knowing Joachim as he did, that didn’t matter.

What mattered was that it hurt him, one way or the other.

“Fine,” Joachim said, likely doing the mental calculations in his head about the fallout of both options. “I’ll… I’ll take the pain of it. I’ll bring you back in from the cold.”

Handy, for his part, felt relieved. He’d do it if he had to, but leaving Gethrenia and going vagabond, and being a freeblade without a sovereign over his head meant he was… an opportunity for too many powers out there. He learned that lesson in Blackport.

“I suppose you’ll be wanting your status as Sword back too?” Handy shook his head.

“No. Frankly, that was too much authority,” Handy said, throwing Joachim a bone. “It saved my skin a time or two, yes, but it was precisely that status that made the… incidents in the pony kingdoms such a huge concern as they were.”

Joachim nodded and shifted his wings under his cloak. “There will be a delegation from Equestria tomorrow at the castle. The High King is still here as well.”

“It's been more than a week,” Handy pointed out.

“The High King has… discharged some rather important business into my care. His presence also helps sort out any lingering fears the rest of Griffonia has about that unpleasantness last month. He’ll be heading south to Firthengart next. Katherine’s presence here speeds that along too.”

“Fascinating,” Handy said, not missing being the centre of that diplomatic potluck affair. “So you’ll do it today?”

“In front of everyone, even the Equestrians. Will that suffice?” Johan asked, looking up at him. Handy nodded. “Then it is done.”

And with that, Joachim left the manor. Handy watched his friend leave, noting the quickness of his final words and his departure. He looked down at his newly returned shield and wondered if he should have been lighter in his demands.

Then the wind blew and the thoughts left with it, and he made his way back to his tent.

--=--

The last flurries of snow cleared the window as they broke through the vast pinewood forests that almost covered the entire valley that the two kingdoms shared, allowing Twilight her first good look at Gethrenia.

However, it was hard to get a good impression under the endless blankets of white snow pockmarked with small hamlets and towns. With endless tall mountains to the north and the vista to the south seeming to stretch onto an eternity of soft rolling hills and tufts of pinewoods until the view faded into the winter chill, it was hard not to feel a sense of vertigo from traveling so vast while so high on a comparatively steep mountain side.

An orange hoof shook her from her reverie, and the sound of the noisy train carriage came roaring back into focus.

“Huh, what?”

“Easy there, Twi. Bit for your thoughts, sugarcube?” Applejack smiled at her. She had moved up the train carriage to take a seat beside her while everything else was in various states of well-contained chaos.

“Oh nothing, just admiring the view, aheh.” Twilight smiled unconvincingly. Applejack frowned and gave a quick look over her withers at the rest of the carriage.

“You know you can talk about this, right? You’re still worried, aren’t you? About him?” she asked.

“What? No! No no, of course not, aheh-heh,” Twilight said while worrying away at her tail with a hoof. AJ cocked a brow at her, and she sighed. “Okay, maybe I am, but only because I need… I need to ask him something. Otherwise, I would have just avoided the issue altogether.”

“Twi, you don’t have to—”

“No, it's not about that.” She looked pointedly back down the train. Spike was in the next carriage checking over the other passengers. “It’s about Spike.”

“Spike?” Applejack asked, confused. “Oh! Is this about him being… sick?”

“I don’t know. It's complicated,” Twilight said, hugging her tail and looking visibly worried. Truthfully, they had all been a bit worried about Spike for the past few years. Applejack gave her friend a hug to reassure her.

“Look, no matter what happens, we’ll be there beside ya.”

“Quite right, darling,” Rarity said, walking over to them to get away from the ruckus going on further back in the carriage. Pinkie Pie had managed to get half the ponies on the train involved in a song and Rarity, in her typical fashion, had somehow wormed her way out of it unscathed. She fixed her mane with a hoof while adopting the seat across from the pair of them. “Whatever travails you undertake, we shan’t hesitate to follow behind you… so what are we talking about?”

“Twilight’s just fussing over the trip. I keep telling her she need not worry none,” AJ interrupted Twilight before she could talk. Twilight blinked but smiled her thanks at the change of subject.

“Oh, why ever for?” Rarity asked. “Darling, you mustn’t worry so much. I thought you were over all that? Everything will go exactly as planned, you’ll see.”

“Thanks, girls. You’d think I’d be used to all this by now but… I guess I’m not,” Twilight confided. “I mean, it’s a big responsibility.”

“How hard can it be? Didn’t Rainbow Dash and Pinkie visit Griffonstone a few years ago?” Rarity asked absentmindedly, pulling out a file and taking care to hone her hoof.

“I think that’s a different place entirely, Rares,” AJ said, screwing her face up in thought, then looking to Twilight. “Ain’t it?”

“Yes,” Twilight chuckled, “Griffonstone is out back west, south of the Crystal Empire.”

“Oh, well then. I’m sure it won’t be much different… right?” Twilight rolled her eyes and shook her head with a smile.

“You’ll be fine, Rarity. In fact, that’s kind of why I wanted you girls with me. This delegation is meant to further our ties with Griffonia, Gethrenia in particular. It’s to help strengthen cultural ties. That’s why we’re bringing so many experts, professionals, and VIPs for the trip.”

“They aren’t the same place?” Rarity asked. AJ chuckled.

“No, Rarity,” Twilight said. “It's complicated, but basically Griffonia is a bunch of kingdoms under one High King.”

“How odd,” she said with interest. “Oh well, I’m sure it’ll certainly be an educational experience whatever the matter. It certainly is a sight to behold so far.”

The three spent a few moments admiring the passing scenery while ignoring the constant racket Pinkie Pie was still raising. Rarity gave Applejack a glance before clearing her throat.

“So, Applejack, darling. I know I’ve been away from Ponyville for longer stretches of time, but from what a little bird tells me, you’ve been harder and harder to get a hold of recently.”

“Uh, what?” AJ said, looking aside briefly. “What d’ya mean?”

“Come to think of it,” Twilight said, tapping her chin, “I couldn’t find you all week. It wasn’t until the day after I asked Big Macintosh to come along that I caught sight of you. Even Pinkie didn’t know where you were.”

“My, that IS strange,” Rarity teased, smiling gently. It was a nice smile, the kind a cat might wear, playing with its food. AJ’s eyes widened minutely.

“I’ve ah… just been busy.”

“On the farm?” Rarity pressed.

“Yes.”

“With the cider I suppose?”

“Uh… y-yeah,” AJ responded. Twilight blinked, not catching what was going on.

“For what, eight months now?” Rarity asked again. AJ was silent. “In the dead of winter?” Still no answer. “And your family doesn’t seem to know where you run off to, usually assuming you're off saving Equestria… without any of us.”

“...Seeds. Sorting seeds. For winter wrap up, gotta lot to do to prepare for spring, y’know? Aheh… heh...” Rarity’s eyes narrowed knowingly.

“So what’s his name?”

Applejack seemed to freeze at that.

“HI GIRLS!”

“Pinkie!” Applejack shouted with delight, seizing the surprised pink pony who half a moment before had popped up between her and Twilight. “Glad you’re here! Keep my seat warm for me, would you?”

Pinkie Pie blinked as Applejack sat her down on the seat and then promptly walked off back down the train “I gotta see how Big Mac is doing. He’s never been this far away from home an all. I-It’s a big adjustment, I’ll just ah… go talk to him. Yeah.”

“...Okie dokie! Bye, Applejack!” Pinkie Pie waved before sitting back down in the seat. “Soooo, how are you?”

“We’re fine, Pinkie. Isn’t that right, Twilight dear?” Rarity asked, pleased with her deduction. Twilight looked like she was still trying to process what had just happened.

“Huh? Oh. Yeah, we’re fine. How’s your family, Pinkie?”

“Oh, they’re great! Maud paid me a surprise visit!” Pinkie said cheerily.

“In Ponyville?” Twilight asked.

“Ya-huh!”

“I don’t remember her about town,” Twilight said. Rarity nodded.

“Yes, I don’t recall her about town either,” Rarity pitched in. Pinkie giggled.

“Oh, she arrived the night before we left, and she was really tired, so I decided to let her sleep in my bed while I spent all night cooking up a perfect Welcome-back-to-Ponyville-Party-Cake, but then I remembered I had to get ready to go with you tomorrow which at the time it was tomorrow but was actually a few days ago, boy this sure is a long train trip, isn’t it? But it never feels long when you don’t stop to think about it; it's almost as if we’re leaving Ponyville one minute, then we’re only on the train for a few seconds before we look out the window and we’re there! But anyway, that's why I had to go wake up Maud and explain to her that I couldn’t make her surprise Welcome-back-to-Ponyville-Party-Cake, and I had to make do with some good morning scones, and I REALLY hoped they would do, but she said it was fine since she didn’t have the time to stay long. She just wanted to see me one more time after coming back from Manehatten before she had to leave the country again. I asked her where she was going, and she said Griffonia, and I said what a coincidence! That’s where I was going too! She seemed surprised at that, I could tell, and I asked her if she wanted to go with us, and she said of course, so I’ve been spending most of the trip with her at the back of the carriage where she’s been talking to Fancy Pants, and oh, are we there yet!?”

Everypony blinked.

“She’s on the train?” Rarity asked. “Pinkie, you shouldn’t just invite anypony you feel like coming along with you. This is a very important trip.”

“Oh, then I shouldn’t have brought Angel Bunny along? I’m sorry if I did,” Fluttershy chirped, abashed at her faux pas. She had been silently listening in from across the aisle and had been so quiet that the others had forgotten she was there. “He’s been feeling just awful lately, and I can’t get him to sleep. I couldn’t find anypony who could foal sit for me, so I had to bring him along. Is that okay?”

Rarity suddenly felt very short on words, not wanting to admonish Fluttershy any further. It would be like kicking a puppy. She looked helplessly to Twilight.

“It’s fine, Fluttershy, Angel can come along too. Just… Just make sure he doesn’t get into any trouble.”

“Speaking of trouble…” Rarity said, spying Spike as he made his way into the carriage. The dragon was wearing a heavy scarf and a coat Rarity had made for him. He hadn’t been faring as well in winters as he used to. He’d been spending more and more time in the castle, and his scales seemed to be losing more lustre as months go by. “You… really think it’s a good idea to drag him out here with us?”

“I have to do something, Rarity,” Twilight said, turning to face him as he drew near. “Hi, Spike!”

“Hiya Twi, girls,” Spike said, rolling up the scroll he had been checking off. “Everything checks out. I went over the list twice. Everypony’s here… even Maud. I don’t remember her getting on,” Spike said, scratching his head. Pinkie chuckled.

“Oh silly me, I forgot to tell everypony she was coming along!”

“Ah, well, if it's alright with Twilight, then I guess it's fine,” Spike said, putting the scroll away in the pocket of his coat.

“Speaking of everypony, did you pass by Applejack by any chance?” Rarity enquired. Twilight rolled her eyes.

“Huh? Oh yeah, I passed her by, even said hello, but she seemed to be mumbling something to herself. Didn’t quite catch it.”

“A pity. Would have been disastrously good fun to get the whole story from her.”

“What story?”

“Nothing!” Rarity said, humming to herself. Spike shrugged.

“Oh, I have my just-in-case disaster-dispenser bag! Never leave home without it!” Pinkie beamed, pulling a pouch that seemed to be bursting at the seams with all manner of party paraphernalia. Twilight frowned suddenly and looked around.

“Speaking of disasters...” she said, getting up and leaning over the seat divider to scan the carriage. “Has anypony seen Rainbow Dash?”

“She was back in the other car with me most of the trip. Seemed to have been antsy about something. She flew out the window when we crossed the border,” Spike explained, pointing a thumb to the windows.

“She what?” Twilight asked.

“Oh, I do hope she’ll be okay. I mean, I heard the griffons can control their weather as well as we do, but their winters can get very bad, or so the birds tell me,” Fluttershy added. Everypony gave her a look before continuing.

“Did she say anything else?” Twilight asked.

“She said something about meeting up with you guys when you arrive,” Spike said.

“Arrive? Meet up? Good heavens, you don’t suppose she’s flying on ahead, do you?” Rarity asked.

“I hope not; she doesn’t even know Gethrenia! You can’t just follow the train tracks and hope you arrive at the right city!” Twilight exclaimed.

“I gave her a map,” Spike offered. Twilight facehoofed. “What?”

“Ugh, this is bad,” Twilight said. “I hope she doesn’t do anything reckless.”

“Darling, please,” Rarity said, holding a hoof to her chest. “Rainbow Dash has always been a… little hot-headed, I will admit, but there is nopony more reliable. She is here representing the Equestrian Wonderbolts as a captain. She wouldn’t do anything to jeopardise the mission.”

Twilight gave her a level look.

“So you’re saying she wouldn’t try to do something to show up the creep who thought it'd be funny to play with my emotions and scare me back in Canterlot?” Twilight asked simply. Rarity opened her mouth, thought for a minute, and closed it again.

“...Right. This is bad.”

Pinkie Pie blew a party horn.

--=--

Handy was having a good day.

“Twenty gold crowns and not a copper more.”

Or so he kept telling himself.

“Look, buddy, I run a business here, alrigh’? Not a charity. Forty.”

“That is robbery and you know it.”

He had been telling himself it so much that, for a time, he had begun to believe it.

“Don’t care, it's winter. Supply and demand—you got the gold, I got the grain. You don’t, I don’t. It may as well not be here.”

“Don’t be so tight-fisted; I’m already offering to pay you double per bag.”

In truth, ever since he had strong-armed Joachim into choosing between disgrace and humiliation to resolve their differences he had a bad taste in his mouth.

“You want free grain?” the large, charcoal-feathered griffon asked across the counter. The street bustled with life behind Handy as he stood there bargaining for the food he had promised to supply his serfs and tenants for the winter. “Go to the granary stores in the middle of town and get your daily rations like everygriffon else. Me? I run a private enterprise. I buy other griffons’ surplus, then I sell at a profit.”

“There’s supply and demand and then there is price gouging. Twenty five,” Handy offered. The griffon shook his head.

“Sorry, chief.” Handy almost decided to strong-arm this particular griffon. At least that way he wouldn’t have felt the slightest bit of guilt for vampirically bitch-slapping this asshole with his impulse vision. The second he thought to try it, the will sort of died within him. He was tired. He let out a sigh and handed over two bags full of gold.

“Here, eighty up front, and I’ll return with the rest.”

“Nope, that’s two bags. You get the money, I’ll give ya the rest.” Handy narrowed his eyes dangerously at him.

“I am Baron Handy Haywatch. Maybe you’ve heard of me? I’m good for the money.”

“I don’t care who or what you are. Alls I care is the money and the heres and now. In th’ end, that’s all that matters in the world.” Handy suddenly wondered if it was worth it to abide by his longstanding promise to Johan and not bite any of the griffons in the kingdom while he reigned. Luckily for this piece of shit, he felt he still owed the bird at least that much. He swiped the two bags from the counter and then whistled for his employees to lift out the two bags and place them on the cart Klipwing was hitched to. Poor sap had caught Handy on his way to sort out his barony and got drafted.

“Alright, come on, Klip, we got a ways to go,” Handy said.

“Uhm, but isn't that—”

“All the gold I had on me, yeah. I have more. Fortunately, I’m pretty sure the rest of these guys will take my word as good as my gold,” Handy explained as he led on, Klipwing following behind and pulling the cart along. Handy struggled for a bit, finding his footing in the dirty slush that had covered the road, the foot traffic already heavy this early in the morning. He made a turn to head onto a main thoroughfare and onto a more solid, cobblestone road heading towards one of the bridges over the Opaltear River, idly inspecting the loose cobblestone he had picked up an hour before. That was when he ran into the first solid reminder that today was not a good day.

“Ah well, if it isn’t my good fortune! Baron Handy in the flesh!” Handy slowed to a stop and felt his teeth grind reflexively. It was not so much the words as the tone. He turned and adopted a neutral smile.

“Marquis Desunt,” Handy said after a brief moment trying to pin a name to the face. He had no interaction with the griffon before but knew him from court. Judging by his tone of voice and the expression he bore, Handy hated him immediately. “A pleasure.”

“I am sure.” The griffon had golden-brown feathers with light yellow eyeshadow surrounding pale blue pupils and, frankly, a rather ostentatious winter outfit. Handy had his prime suspect for the newspaper smear job. “What brings you back to Skymount?”

Handy paused at that. “I never left. In fact, I live—”

“No no, I meant here, in town. You know, in public?” he asked, his voice and tone presenting all the signs of genuine earnest. The toadies behind him sniggered. Handy briefly wandered just how much pull this little shit thought he had to think he could get away with starting this with Handy of all nobles. Handy decided to put it to the test.

Smiling, he took two steps closer to the marquis. “Why, whatever do you mean, Marquis?” Handy asked, his voice ever so mild and conversational. Klipwing looked on warily. “I see nothing wrong with a brisk walk about town.”

“Oh, I was just concerned about your well-being, you know, after your uhm, circumstances came to light?” Desunt lowered his voice as if he were a friend trying to assuage him that everything was alright. He didn’t move, so Handy walked right on up to him, close enough that the toadies behind him backed up a step.

‘Ah, so not that well connected then,’ he thought. He gave the marquis a smile.

“Truly?” Handy asked, loud enough to be heard. “I have no idea what circumstances of which you speak. I’m merely out here procuring supplies.”

“Supplies?”

“Yes, for my workers, you see. I’m rather hands on... or well, that would be claws on in your case, wouldn’t it? I simply couldn’t leave them to the work on my property alone. Especially in winter.”

“I didn’t know you had a liking for peasant labour, my lord baron,” Desunt replied, genuine surprise in his voice, but the smiles of his toadies betrayed it. “I had figured you for a more discerning and reserved gentlegriff. Perhaps I was mistaken?”

“Oh, very much so,” Handy said in agreement, taking the thunder back. “I am of the opinion that a man ought to know every brick set for his house and every labour it took to build it. Surely you can appreciate ensuring your money's worth and that everything is going according to plan. I mean, I would assume so—your family is rather renowned for their shrewd accounting after all...”

The little slip caused Desunt’s eyes to widen at the implication. Handy’s smile never wavered. It always paid to pay attention at court; you never knew when the odd rumour could be useful one day. It took him a moment to recall what he knew about the name Desunt before he could use that particular little scandal involving disinheritance as a weapon. He had no idea if it was true or not, but that was irrelevant. In a game of insinuation, he who blinked, lost.

Unfortunately for both of them, the game was about to be interrupted.

“What is that, a rainbow?” Klipwing looked up, hearing other griffons talk. Sure enough, there did seem to be a rainbow arcing its way across the sky.

“Can’t be, in this weather?” a fishmonger asked. Klipwing squinted his eyes up at it, fixing the spectacles balanced on his beak. He took a quick glance back at where his employer was arguing with some random noble before turning back to the strange sight.

And then it stopped in midair. Klipwing blinked.

“What in damnation?” he asked himself.

“Is the weather company having a laugh?” another griffon asked, a tutting housewife grumbling as she passed him. The rainbow started up again, streaking through the sky.

Heading towards the city.

Heading directly towards where they were standing.

“Um, M-Milord!?” Klipwing managed.

“Not now, Klipwing, I am busy,” Handy said, waving a hand back at him. He suddenly grabbed Desunt by the collar of his ridiculous robes and hefted him into the middle of the street and, as it turned out, out of the line of fire.

“My lord, I think you should—” He didn’t get to finish.

Handy’s world disappeared from under him. He was only really conscious of the fact that he had collided with the cobblestone road extremely hard and fast. Also, he had come to a stop roughly five feet from where he had been standing amidst the shattered remains of some poor bastard’s market stand. He was busy blinking up at the snow-covered tarp that now covered his face, wondering why all of his everything hurt.

“What…” he managed through laboured breathing. “What even…?”

“Well, well, not so tough after all,” a haughty, scratchy voice taunted him. He struggled to tug one arm up from the broken wood of the stall, and pulled the tarp from his face. There, hovering in the street, proud as you like, was a pony. A pegasus.

A fucking ridiculous pegasus. Literally the most garish and insulting pegasus he had ever seen in all of his days in this damnable world.

Its hair was rainbow-coloured. Why the fuck was its hair rainbow-coloured? Was the world not already colourful enough? Oh no, you just had to go and dye your fucking hair like the attention whore you undoubtedly were!

“Well, gonna get up, creep?”

Handy slowly rose from where he had fallen, his left hand still gripping the loose cobblestone he had picked up earlier. Something stung his side badly, but he ignored it. Oh no, there was something much more aggravating hovering right in front of him. The pony simply hung in the air, held aloft by her wings. She wore a long trailing coat of brown felt which had some kind of markings in the upper breast near the neck that Handy couldn’t make it out.

“I am afraid... you… have me at a disadvantage,” Handy said, as calm as he was able. He reached under his cloak, spun the loop of his hammer around, and let it slide out into his grip. “I usually know who it is that feels like they have a right to drop in on me unannounced. I was in the middle of a conversation.”

Handy gestured to the still shocked Desunt who was slowly processing the fact that he had been standing right in the line of fire not a second before. The pony gave him a quick glance to the side, and Handy took the presented opportunity. He swung his left arm from under his cloak and pointed the now glowing stone at the shingles of the nearest roof to the pony, releasing the magic.

It was a sloppy shot, more of a shotgun effect than the precise blast he was hoping, but the invisible wave of energy had the desired result nonetheless. The shingles on the roof burst and shot out in various directions, causing the griffons on the street who hadn’t already cleared out after the pony’s dynamic entry to cry in alarm. The pony, gratifyingly, let out a yelp of pain as her wing was hit in at least three places and she slammed into the ground, hard.

“Now, if you would be so kind, ma’am,” Handy said, drawing out his war hammer and walking towards the pony who was just getting back to her hooves. “Care to tell me your name?”

The pony snorted and gave him a cocky grin, standing up to her full, four-legged height. To her credit, she shook her injured wing and folded it neatly to her side.

“I’m Rainbow Dash and you—!” She pointed directly at Handy, “—have a lot to answer for, pal!”

“Oh really!?” Handy snarled, letting the anger into his voice, slowly whittling away every inhibition and logical reason to have him calm down. Nope, fuck that, someone fucking skydived into his life to specifically ruin his day, so he felt perfectly obligated to ruin their shit. “And how do you figure that, Miss Dash?”

She didn’t back up. In fact, she actually took several steps forward as Handy reached back under his cloak to try to undo the straps of the shield on his back. It was probably what had saved him from being too hurt in the initial exchange.

“Because you hurt my friend, and I will not rest until you make things up to her! Does the name Twilight Sparkle ring any bells!?” she accused. Handy paused; he could faintly recall the name from somewhere in the back of his memories, and it was just loud enough of a bell to cut through his slowly building fog of anger. He hurt her? Handy certainly couldn’t recall that. If it was someone he wanted hurt, he could recall their name rather easily. Handy did not let go of grudges easily after all. She was probably some collateral damage from whatever bullshit he had been up to the past few months. It wasn’t important enough to get in the way of this little matter.

“I’m afraid not,” Handy said, slowing in his pace, thinking. A thought occurred to him as he spied the marquis still off to the side, and he let a smile grace his face. “Frankly my dear, I don’t think we’re going have time to discuss the matter.”

“Oh no, we’re settling this right now. You ain’t so tough. Yeah, I know all about you, Handy!” the pegasus yelled, spreading her wings and, to his surprise, actually taking to the air again. He frowned. “I know all of your tricks. I talk to a lot of guards in my line of work. You’re going to apologise to Twilight, to her face, for what you did, or else I’m going to beat it out of you.”

“...Acquainted with Equestria’s royal guard, are you?” Handy asked, his tone neutral. “Such a shame then. Terrible shame.”

“What’s a shame?” Rainbow Dash asked, almost up to his face. Handy had to resist the urge to just slap her stupid, smug, blue face from the air. It was not easy.

“Because, Rainbow Dash—”

“CAPTAIN Dash to you, scuzzball.”

“...Captain,” Handy corrected and let his frown shrink just a tad. “It’s a shame because this is not Equestria.”

“Yeah, obviously. And!?” she demanded.

“You see, this is Gethrenia, and the guards here? They’re on my side.” She briefly looked confused. Before she could question him further, Handy shouted, “GUARDS! SEIZE HER!”

“Huh!?” Rainbow Dash had just got the word out before a quartet of armoured Gethrenian royal guards dropped to land beside her, grabbing her by the forelimbs. “W-Wait!”

“Oh, I don’t think they will, Captain Dash.” Handy slowly shook his head as a few more guards arrived. It turned out that when you left a terribly obvious rainbow streak in the air behind you, diving into the middle of a city and causing a racket, you tended to draw the unfavourable attention of local law enforcement. “You see, I don’t think you fully realize what you’ve done.”

“W-What did I do!?” Her voice wavered but still held that cock-sure tone that pissed him right off.

“Defamation for one thing. I have never done anything to this Twilight Sparkle of yours. I refuse to apologise for a perceived slight,” Handy said simply.

“Why you—!”

“Second, reckless endangerment. I’m sorry, Captain Dash, but do you realise how many innocent, law-abiding griffons you just put at risk with your showy display? I can’t abide by recklessness. Hmm, and I’m pretty sure the law will be quite strict on the matter.”

“But—!”

“Thirdly, criminal negligence. You would have struck the good marquis on the head had I not moved him out of the way.” Handy gestured to Desunt.

“That’s… That’s right, you did,” the griffon acknowledged, now giving the pegasus an evil look.

“But I never— I mean I wasn’t— I was aiming for you!” Rainbow Dash clarified, struggling in the guards’ grasp, who were polite enough to keep her held there while Handy publically gave the cocky pony a dressing down while the gathering crowd looked on, murmuring their displeasure at the pony.

“Fourthly, assault and battery with intention to commit grievous bodily harm,” Handy rattled off.

“Hey, you shot those things at my wing!” she protested.

“Self-defence,” he said casually. “After all, I had just been kicked across the street. Oh, which reminds me.” He turned around and gave the destroyed stall a thoughtful look. “Property damage.”

“I wuh—!” she sputtered, turning angrily at the roof Handy shot up. “You did that too!”

“And I’m willing to pay full damages. Are you prepared to compensate this fine gentleman for the loss to his livelihood?” Handy asked, looking at the rotund griffon who had run the fish stall.

“Uh, I uh, sure! I just… don’t have the bits on me.” Some of Rainbow Dash’s earlier fire was failing now that the slowly dawning reality of her situation became apparent.

“And to make it much worse, this would have been bad enough had you done this to just an ordinary subject of the Kingdom of Gethrenia,” Handy shook his head mournfully, “but I invoke that you have conspired to assail and assault a royal knight of King Johan the Blackwing. Also, you endangered the life of a marquis on top of that.”

“You can’t do this! The princesses will make sure you’ll be in big trouble for this!” she shouted.

“Princesses?” he asked, gasping dramatically. “Why, Captain Dash, are you saying you are representing the princesses of the fine nation of Equestria in an official capacity? Here? Doing such things?”

“Yes! Wait, wha— I mean No! I mean—”

“So you are not here in an official capacity, but you possess the rank of captain? Are you perhaps… a spy? An assassin perchance?” Handy accused, and the crowd helpfully gasped. Rainbow looked distraught.

“No! I am not representing the princesses! This is all on me; Equestria had nothing to do with this!”

“Well, that is certainly good to know, considering the worst crime out of all you have committed thus far,” Handy continued, placing his hammer back in its hoop and crossing his arms.

“Wh-What I do?” she asked cautiously as she struggled in the grip of the guards. Handy closed his eyes and shook his head.

“Resisting arrest. Take her away, boys.”

“Wait! You don’t understand! Stop! This is all a misunderstanding! Look, I didn’t mean to break any laws! I have nothing against you guys! My best friend is a griffooooon!” Rainbow Dash’s voice faded off as the guards marched her past the crowd and took to the air with their charge between them. Handy strolled over to the marquis.

“I trust we can put that unpleasantness behind us like grown adults?” Handy leaned over as he asked. Dusent frowned at him but said nothing, simply turning and left. Handy let him go—the damage was done. He returned to Klipwing’s side.

“Uhm, my lord, is everything—?”

“Everything’s fine, Klipwing,” Handy said, waving off his concern.

“Sir, you’re bleeding,” he said, pointing to a dark splotch on his tunic. Handy looked down and pulled away the torn part of his tunic. A sizeable chunk of wood splinter had pierced his skin.

“It’s nothing. I’ll get it seen to in a bit. Come on, we have a bit more work to do.”

“Are you sure it's wise to do that? What if what she said is true and she knew the princesses?”

“I don’t care. Whoever she is, I’m sure a night or two in a cold dungeon will cool her temper somewhat while the bureaucrats try to verify her credentials, if she even has any.”

“And if she does?” Klipwing asked.

“Then it’ll all be over tomorrow. There’s a delegation from Equestria arriving to see the king. If not, then no skin off my back. Either way, I’m sleeping well tonight.” The truth was, he was feeling a bit better after the debacle.

The same could not be said for the pony in chains.

Chapter 54 - Better the Devil You Know

Joachim rapped his talons along the armrest with one claw and rested his face in the palm of the other. Princess Twilight Sparkle of Equestria, Princess of ‘Friendship’ in the Equestrian fashion of titling their alicorns after broad concepts, stood there before him, openly rubbing one foreleg nervously with another. What he could only suppose were her closest confidants and most important members of the Equestrian delegation were lined behind their leader. In between the enthroned griffon and the positively perturbed pretty purple pony princess sat a silently fuming Rainbow Dash, Equestria’s famous speedster.

It was the dead of night and the ponies had just arrived in the city. They were to be welcomed with all the due pleasantries and shown to where they were staying with all the usual diplomatic niceties involved, and Jochim would have welcomed them properly in the morning at the start of court.

As it was, he was roused from his slumber, informed that some pony or another had been arrested earlier that same day in the marketplace for causing a commotion, that said pony was a part of the planned delegation he was to receive and the pony princess present to plea their case simply insisted on trying to settle the matter before the morning came.

Joachim was not pleased.

“So…” Twilight continued after settling the matter and the rather absurd series of events that led to it happening in the first place. She cleared her throat. “This was… all just a huge misunderstanding. I hope this won’t come between our two kingdoms in any way.”

“I should certainly hope so,” Joachim began, taking advantage of the fact his face was covered to roll his eyes. This could have gone south very fast had the ponies not taken the defensive on the matter. Fortunately, Joachim could see a light at the end of the tunnel. He felt a smirk tug at his beak before he enforced a calmer visage. “Be that as it may, I still require far more than a simple apology for an assault on my nobility.”

“What!? Th—” One of the chains magically lifted to stifle her friend.

“Uhm, ahem, of course! Perhaps we could discuss the matter privately?” Twilight offered. To her credit, she only sweated a little bit. Joachim smiled.

“Of course.”

***

Three hours later, Twilight Sparkle kicked open the door to her quarters in the castle and stomped in, her expression a mask of frustration.

“Twilight!”

“Is everything okay!?”

“Are you alright, Sugarcube?”

“Your mane looks positively dreadful, darling, what happened!?”

Twilight stopped and held her hoof up to silence everypony. She lifted a water jug in her magic, poured herself a glass, and downed it, then again, then a third time. She placed the glass down and whisked over the biggest, fluffiest pillow in the room, held it in her hooves, pressed her face against it, and screamed. She screamed loud enough that Rainbow Dash winced and checked to make sure nopony was standing outside the door beyond the pair of stone-faced Equestrian guards who came with them. The scream grew in volume and intensity as she buried herself deeper and deeper into the pillow, her wings extending more and more until she eventually stopped. Her friends had backed off to avoid getting a face full of wing by the time she was done.

She tensed up for but a moment, then let her wings droop to the ground.

“Spike?” she called, head still downcast as she let the pillow fall away from her face. “Take a letter…”

Spike already had his quill and parchment out and grimaced at Dash as Twilight spoke, who winced and rubbed the back of her head as most of the others gave her disapproving looks.

It was a long letter.

--=--

“On. Their. Own?” Luna emphasised, currently lying across several large cushions as she conversed with her sister in one of her study rooms. Celestia’s taste in personal accoutrements was more conservative than her sister’s, so the room was not especially large nor as tastefully arranged and aesthetically-pleasing in comparison to Luna’s. It did, however, make up for the disparity by being immaculately well-organised in a style both functional and luxurious. That was just as well since Luna was certain there wasn’t a spare tile in the room that wasn’t storing its fair share of books, notes, records, and other detritus of state that Celestia was currently pursuing.

Honestly, Luna had once stepped on a tile and the thing had sprung up to reveal a secret compartment with even more scrolls. Once or twice she had overheard her sister complain about Twilight’s obsession with organization and record-keeping, completely unaware that that little obsession was probably her fault by example.

“They will be fine, Luna,” Celestia reassured, scribbling her quill across whatever missive she was currently reading. Luna was too tired to care. She was just glad she didn’t have the entirety of the state’s duties dumped on her withers, of both courts. She now had a new appreciation for her sister’s fortitude and commitment and did not envy her, but for all of that, she could not for the life of her think why she thought sending the Bearers to the griffon lands was a good idea, especially so soon after everything had finally been settled and nopony had to go to war.

“Truly? You can guarantee that, sister?” Luna asked, her tone dismissive.

“I know it may seem a bit too soon, but I impressed upon Twilight the importance of this mission. You know how eager she is to prove herself.”

“It is not that I doubt Magic’s willingness to please or her diligence. I just… Well, there are rather a lot of ponies going with her,” Luna said tentatively.

“It will be fine. There are a few guards I picked myself, and I know why you were concerned about that.” Celestia smiled at her sister while giving her a glance over the rim of her half-spectacles. “I even wrote ahead of time with the king to sort things out. There shouldn’t be anything to be concerned about. You can rest easy, Lulu.”

Luna harrumphed as Celestia stopped to pour herself another cup of coffee. Luna eyed her take out her secret flask and pour a touch into the cup with exasperation. “Is that wise at this hour?”

“Oh lighten up, would you? It's only a small amount.” Luna rolled her eyes, but before she could reply, a wisp of smoke pushed open the window and flew into the room, briefly bursting with green fire just in front of Celestia.

Taking the hastily scrawled letter in her magic, her eyes scanned its contents. She seemed to visibly deflate after every single line. Luna, concerned, walked around the desk, and Celestia gave her the letter, shakily raising the cup to her trembling lips. Luna read the letter impassively, rolled it up, placed it on the table, and sat down on the floor, next to the cushion on which her sister sat. She cleared her throat.

“So… Nothing to be worried about, huh?”

Celestia sighed and refilled her cup entirely from the flask.

--=--

“Come with me.” Handy had his hand on the door handle to Hammerstrike’s forge when Shortbeak landed behind him. It was still very early in the day, the sun barely in the sky, but Handy’s new armour was ready and he wanted to look somewhat respectable when he returned to court. Shortbeak accosting him in the middle of the street had not been in the forecast.

“...This is rather unusual. Is something wrong?” Handy asked cautiously. In truth, it was possibly something to do with the pony from the other day, but why would Shortbeak be taking issue with that?

“We’ll see about that. Come on, what you’re doing can wait.” With that, she sauntered off. Handy followed after a moment’s hesitation. The walk was brief and took them towards Old Town, where the city’s largest hospital was located and not much else besides. She led him on through side streets before stopping by a rather unassuming door down one long, narrow street. Shortbeak turned around to face him, the snow falling gently around them.

“...Well?” Handy gestured with an arm. “What do you want to show me?”

“Remember when you first came back to the castle? I caught you before you stormed off from the king?”

“I remember.”

“Your arm, Handy,” Shortbeak said bluntly. Handy did not let anything show on his face.

“What about it?”

“You need to have it looked at.” Her tone brooked no argument.

“My arm is fine, Shortbeak,” Handy retorted, not bothering with formality.

“Then why do you constantly keep it covered?” Handy allowed himself a slight smile.

“In case you haven’t noticed, I do wear an awful lot of clothes. Like I have explained many times before, it's a hum—”

“Handy,” Shortbeak suddenly sounded tired, “you know what I mean. Please, show me your arm.”

“I do not see why I should.” He took a slight step backwards.

“Because I am asking, as a friend. Please.”

Handy contemplated it for a moment, looking off to the side while determining whether it was worth swallowing his pride or not. Finally, he relented and rolled up the sleeve of his left arm, revealing the freshly-woven bandages underneath before pulling those aside as well. Shortbeak studied the grey flesh of the arm and the dark purple, almost black veins running its length for a few moments before shaking her head.

“It’s worse than the king’s.” She turned for the door. That made Handy look up.

“The king?”

“Would you be surprised if I told you that I went to the king after that one sparring match where you healed my wing?” she asked in wry amusement. “I know about the salve. I know what it does to a body. You aren’t the only one who had come to rely on it.”

Handy wasn’t sure what to make of the revelation. He covered his arm again and brushed down his tunic.

“So, I’ve shown you my arm. Is that it then?” he asked, sidestepping the issue. She wouldn’t let him go that easily.

“Not quite. Does it hurt?”

“...From time to time,” he admitted.

“And you haven’t used the salve since...?”

“A few months now. Why?”

“Good. Maybe we can do something for the pain.” She entered the building. Handy raised an eyebrow, gave a quick look over his shoulder, and followed her in. Within was a medium-sized townhouse, though you would not know it to see it from the outside. She led him into the common area where there was a fire already burning and an elderly griffon was stirring a pot of something above it. She hummed some homely tune as the room was thrown in deep oranges and reds and stark shadows, the light of the morning not yet piercing the windows, the smell of vegetable soup rising from her pot. She looked up in surprise, and her face broke into a wide smile at the sight of Shortbeak.

“Oh! Deary, this is a surprise. I wasn’t expecting you until later!” She stood up, oddly tapping with her talons as she walked awkwardly towards where Shortbeak stood. Shortbeak closed the distance and took the griffon into a gentle embrace.

“Hello, Mimae, just thought I’d stop by and see how she is.”

“Oh, she’s wide awake—damn near woke me up with her rooting around up there. The caretakers will be by soon. Now, who's this fellow you have with you?”

Handy cleared his throat briefly, but before he could say anything, Shortbeak spoke for him. “He’s a friend, Mimae. I brought him to see you.” Shortbeak smiled back at Handy. Handy, for his part, looked mildly annoyed at the interruption.

“Whatever for? He sounds healthy enough to me. Smells a bit funny, mind.” Handy had the grace to look mildly indignant at that. Not many opportunities to wash when your house was under construction, and bathing in an inn was a dubious affair at the best of times. Shortbeak looked at Handy pointedly.

“...My arm,” Handy said after a moment.

“Your arm, is it?” the old griffon said, chuckling to herself. “Well, don’t just stand there, all lumbering like, come on over. And you, young miss, go on up, she’ll be glad to see you. Go on, git!”

Shortbeak allowed herself to be shooed out of the room and gave Handy a reassuring smile as she passed him, walking up the stairs. Mimae walked over to a couch and gestured Handy to sit beside her.

“Now come on over here and let me have a look-see now. Don’t be shy.” Shy was certainly one word for it. Handy liked his personal space at all times, and was loathe to let someone touch him without good cause. Then a slight pang of pain ran through his arm and he reassessed matters. It couldn’t hurt to have a second opinion on it. He walked over to the griffon. Being of the rarer-eared variety of griffons, he noticed her ears twitching with each footfall.

“Are you a doctor?” he asked as he rolled up the sleeve of his arm.

“Oh heavens no, though I was a nurse at one time in my life. Is this a problem requiring a doctor you’re about to show me?”

“I hope not.” He finished rolling up the sleeve and pulling away the fresh linen he had wrapped about the arm when he finally noticed what was so odd about the griffon’s demeanour. It was her eyes, her milky eyes. The griffon was blind. He was so caught up in the revelation that he didn’t react in time before she had already taken his arm in her claws.

She pressed her talons individually, tracing his veins and pressing into the flesh, finding where it was the most stiff and unresponsive, which parts made him hiss in pain and where the skin seemed to flake off. The creepiest part was how her eyes seemed to follow what she was doing as though she could actually see. Perhaps she could. If it wasn’t for the fact that it was Shortbeak who had led him here, Handy would have already reacted violently to the intrusion of his privacy. As it was, he elected to wait and see, trusting in his friend’s judgement. Mimae continued her work uninhibited. If she was surprised to be working on a human’s arm and not a griffon’s foreleg, she did not show it.

“Hmm,” she said at last. “Yes, I’ve seen this like before.” She released the arm, and Handy pulled it back to him much swifter than strictly necessary.

“You have?”

“Oh yes, once, or twice, or twenty times. It’s rare enough, but I’ve been around. It goes away, I’m sure you’ll be glad to know.” Handy’s eyes widened slightly in surprise.

“It does? How long?”

“About forty years.”

“...I can’t wait forty years,” Handy said tonelessly. Mimae laughed.

“Oh, to be young and full of impatience. What is forty years for good health? Bah! Well, truth be told, there’s nothing much for it. You dance by the fire, you’re likely to get burned as they say. That’s the case with you and your abuse of that stuff. Not even sure how you got a hold of it. Haven’t seen it's like in fifty years.”

“You know of the salamander salve?”

“In my time, it had many names but yes, I know of it. Ravaged Eastern Equestria for a good bit. Miracle healing potion! That's what it was advertised as, consequences be damned. I reckon you got suckered into trying it yourself, hmm?” she asked, leaving the couch and returning to stir the pot of soup.

“...Yeah.” Handy thought back to the day he and Joachim had transported the salve from town to town, how they were nearly captured, how they parted on poor terms, and how badly that had affected the griffon back then. “So that’s it then?” he asked, putting the thought aside. “There’s no treatment for it?”

“Nothing that I know of, sonny, but there is one thing I can do for you…” she trailed off, tasting the soup and smacking her beak… somehow. Another wonder of griffon physiology Handy had yet to fully understand. She nodded appreciatively and lifted the pot, placing it on an iron frame aside from the fire before turning towards a set of wooden drawers. “But before I do, mind me asking a question? Indulge a curious old fool, would you, dearie?”

“I guess,” Handy said noncommittally, still lost in thought.

“Why did you rub that stuff on your arm? Any reason?”

“Oh… well… It helped me sleep,” he admitted. “The arm seemed like a nice limited place to put it.”

“Trouble sleeping?” she asked, stopping her rummaging to look back.

“Yes.”

“How badly?”

“Very bad.” The silence dragged between them until it was evident that Handy would not be dragged further into the matter.

“Well, we all have our troubles, now don’t we? There might be something I can do for that as well.” She brought out a mortar and pestle, and a few seeds and plant leaves, as well as a few bottles of what looked like the sort of thing you could buy from a market place vendor. Tonics, spring water, that purple stuff all the kids loved to buy with their spare coins, and a bottle of what Handy swore was raspberry schnapps by the smell of it.

She mixed together a concoction with the flora with a speed and expertise that made Handy seriously doubt she was genuinely blind, no matter how her eyes looked, mixing in a white dusty substance and the spring water until it produced a thick, greyish, pasty substance. She poured it all into a small bottle with a flip lid and handed it to the human.

“Now, this is simple enough. You can find its like in any apothecary worth their salt, but this is my own recipe, mixed for cases just like yours. It’s called Semblance’s Wake.”

“And… what is it for?” She opened the lid and took a portion of the still wet substance and placed it on Handy’s arm, near the wrist.

“It’s for the aches and pains. Rub it in here, here, here, here, and here.” She pointed to his wrist, elbow, bicep, inner elbow, and mid-forearm. “That’s where the numbness is greatest. I can’t undo the degeneration, but I can reawaken the atrophied muscles.”

“But I can move my muscles just fine,” Handy protested.

“That doesn’t mean they’re in the best of condition. Now, twice a day for seven days, I want you to put it on like I told you. Leave the arm bare, don't cover it—let it be exposed to cool air for at least two hours. You’ll begin feeling your arm again in no time, no more pains.”

“It… really was that simple?” Handy asked, slightly disbelieving. Mimae laughed again.

“Well, if you had bothered to ask anygriffon before you were dragged to see me, you would have found that out a long time ago. Felicia wouldn’t have brought you here otherwise. I take it you’re stubborn.”

“I have been called such, yes.” And worse besides, but that was another matter. “Wait, Felicia?”

“Oh, you probably wouldn’t know her as that. She’s very picky about the whole first name basis thing. Never mind that now, here, eat this.” She held out what looked to be a bundle of long, broad-stemmed grass blades with a curious yellow stripe down the middle.

“What is this?” he asked, idly rubbing the cream into his wrist. It was cool against his skin.

“Tallow’s Ear, grows year round. It’ll help with your sleep,” she explained.

“It puts me to sleep?”

“No, it helps you relax and eases the mind. Slows it down some as well—best taken at night to help you drift off naturally. Any other time and you’re likely to walk into things as you go about your day,” she explained with a chuckle.

“...How much?”

“Oh, no problem at all. Any friend of Felicia’s is welcome here.”

“I insist,” Handy said, not wanting to take such kindness at face value. “And how do you know all these things?”

“Young whippersnapper asks a fifty year veteran nurse how she knows what she knows, hmph! Well if you must know, my husband ran a well-to-do apothecary before he passed. What I did not learn myself, I learned with him. That do ya?”

“Okay, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to offend.” Handy raised his hands defensively before realising the pointlessness of such a gesture. “It’s just… this is not the first time a kindly old lady helped me…”

“And that didn’t go too well, I take it?” she asked curiously. “Well there’s no accounting for others, but I hold myself to standards I do, and I won’t be hearing none of payment. You go on now, unless you’re staying for soup?”

“No… No thank you, I’ll… That will be all then.” He got up from the couch.

“Suit yourself. You go on up and tell Felicia the soup’s ready. First door as you come up,” she instructed. Handy watched her as she turned to focus back on the soup. The parallels were eerie, but that and the woman’s eccentricities aside, there didn’t seem to be anything off about this place. It was homey, lived in, natural. The complete opposite of that hut at the bottom of the world he had found himself in. Perhaps this grifon was completely unlike the denizen he had found there. He could only hope. She picked up her humming tune from before as she set about working on the soup once more, and he left the room and slowly ascended the dark staircase.

“Shortbeak?” he said, knocking on the door. “Mimae says the soup is ready.” He looked back down the staircase to see the same flickering firelight from before, checking just in case the world might be different if he turned his back on it for a second. He shook the thought when she answered.

“Alright,” she called from behind the door. Handy then turned to leave. “Actually, Handy, could you come in here for a moment?”

Handy paused at the head of the stairs, thinking it odd but entering the room nonetheless. He found her seated at a tall-backed, leather-bound chair, beside a four poster bed with three of the curtains drawn full. The one facing the door was open, and he actually stopped in his tracks at what he saw. It was a griffon, or it had been at one time, who now mostly seemed to be covered in an ashy, rocky substance, or at least the parts of the griffon that were visible from under the blanket. Handy’s mouth opened but words refused to come out.

“Feely,” the girl asked, “who is it?”

“Just a friend,” Shortbeak said, her features soft and loving towards the bed-bound griffon.

“Which one? Is it the weird one? You said you’d bring the weird one someday,” she said happily. Shortbeak chuckled.

“Yes, it’s the weird one.” She looked back at Handy expectantly. He looked at her and then back at the girl in the bed.

“Hello?” he asked, unsure.

“You sound funny,” she said bluntly, but not unkindly. “Where are you from?”

“...A long way away from here. I’m not from Griffonia,” he answered.

“Feely said as much. She says you go on lots of adventures for the king.”

“I do.”

“Can you tell me some?” Handy hesitated and looked to Shortbeak for confirmation. She shook her head.

“Perhaps later. Mimae… she says the soup’s ready.” The griffon looked slightly put out about not getting to hear some new stories, but after a sigh, she responded.

“Oh, alright. But promise me you’ll come back, right? You too, Feely!” she demanded.

“Of course we will, won’t we, Handy?” she asked, looking up at him.

“Yes… of course, I’ll come by to see you again.” She smiled at that, a sight marred by the partial petrification of her beak. Handy waited outside the door while Shortbeak said her goodbyes to the half-petrified griffon and Mimae before joining him outside.

The pair of them walked silently through the fresh snowfall in the streets, Handy in the vague direction of the black smith’s forge, Shortbeak plodding along, seemingly lost in thought.

“What is wrong with her?” he asked after a tense silence.

“It’s called the Ashen plague. Or it was, centuries ago. It was infectious then, killed thousands. Now it's just her. Nogriffon else can get infected by it, but good luck trying to get griffons not to panic if they see it.”

“How did she get like that?” He looked back the way they came.

“It’s… a long story. I just wanted to make a point.”

“And that was?”

“You won’t make it far in this world without a little help, Handy.” She halted. “How long would it have taken you to swallow your pride and let somegriffon look at your arm had I not made you?” He didn’t answer. “I thought I could be like that, sort through all of life’s difficulties on my own, without anygriffon’s help. All that did was put the one griffon I care about most in the world into the claws of a beast, using her as leverage to control me.”

“... Alright, you’ve made your point.”

“Have I?” she challenged. Handy held her gaze for a few moments before finally relenting. The memory of the girl stuck in bed still clear in his mind.

“Fine. Fine… Thank you, Shortbeak.” He looked away down the street. “Thanks.”

The pair continued walking in silence for a time, before Handy broke it.

“So really… how did she get the plague?” Shortbeak didn’t answer for a long time.

“There was… something, I don’t know what it was. I had never seen magic like that. It wasn’t just dark, it.... It felt wrong. I’ll tell you tonight. Will you visit her then?”

“Of course.” She nodded.

“Then I’ll see you at court.” She spread her prodigious wings and took flight. Handy had to cover his face as the power of the jump caused tufts of snow to lift up into the air in a flurry before they settled. He watched her go for a moment as the city slowly woke up around him, then he walked on.

--=--

Clank, clank, clank, clank.

If there was one criticism Handy had for Hammerstrike’s handiwork, it was that his new armour was, for some inexplicable reason, much, much noisier than his older suit. Given how his older suit was held together by spit and prayers, that was an impressive achievement.

Clank, clank, clank, clank.

He had been slightly disappointed when he first laid eyes upon it, though he made an effort not to show it. It was… boring. The metal was a dull, dark grey with not even a burnished finish to brighten the thing up. The plates were smooth and featureless, the pauldrons little more than particularly heavy shoulder pads and the helmet a simple conical affair with a movable visor that split and opened out to the side on hinges. The back of the helmet was left bare to maximise neck movement, but also meant if he wanted any kind of protection, he had to wear the chainmail coif, which meant he had to wear padding around his head, which was a pain in the ass. He missed the inlaid padding of his other helmet. The visor, at least, allowed for a good range of vision to his peripheries. The upside to being a human was that his smaller eyes justified a smaller visor in comparison to gryphonic of pony helmets, so at least he had that.

Clank, clank, clank, clank.

The one obscenely obvious advantage it had that he was now endlessly grateful for was that it was so much lighter than his old suit. Very light. It was to the point that if Handy wasn't constantly making noise as he moved a slightest inch, or if his arm movements weren’t being restricted in the manner in which he had become accustomed, he’d probably forget he was wearing a suit of metal and not some particularly heavy clothing. Armour was already manageable as it was when the weight was distributed across the body, but this was ridiculous. His alchemists had done something to the metal while Hammerstrike was at the forge. They had tried to explain it to him, but the most he had gotten out of it was that concoctions of some abominable oils and potions had been used at various stages, particularly in the cooling process as the smith worked. It apparently extended the length of time it took to make the pieces.

The quality of the steel was already such that it was light to begin with, while also being incredibly strong. Handy put this to the test with his own war hammer and was gratified to see that the chest plate did not deform under it. He still didn't plan on taking a hammer to the chest himself any time soon, but he was glad that if he did, it might only fracture a rib and not shatter the entire cage. What really sold him on the armour’s versatility were the proofing shots. Hammerstrike felt the need to do two after the first shot ricocheted and gave everyone a bit of a scare. Handy did not approve of being so close to a gunpowder weapon when his apprentices brought in a few arquebuses, but when the second shot, fired from the far side of the shop, was stopped dead in its tracks by the breastplate, Handy was well pleased. Hammerstrike boasted that the armour would probably stop a shot point blank, but Handy wasn't so confident in the man’s work that he’d bank on those words.

Handy ruminated on how he was going to present himself. It felt weird that the armour didn’t chafe in places, and the comfort was off-putting. He braced himself for the inevitable political fanfare and bullshit the second he entered the royal hall, the inevitable dance and political theatre it would take to maximise the impact of the promised rapprochement between himself and the king. The Equestrians he was not looking forward to having to deal with. He heard there was a princess present, but it wasn’t one of the princesses. Equestria was actually a patchwork of princes and princesses, it seemed, with most falling somewhere on the equivalency of everything from a duke to a vassal king, to use the griffons as a measuring stick. Differentiating between their various statuses was often an art by itself, and it was never immediately obvious, with some being so inconsequential as to be effectively nameless, and others being everything but sovereign rulers in their own right. Only the lower nobility, counts, and other nobodies of the sort had any title or rank that made sense upon the face of it. Fun.

Still, it was something to keep his thoughts busy as he ascended the obscene amount of steps into the higher city that clung to the mountain face below Skymount Castle, and then ascended again to the castle itself. Some people asked Handy why he chose to live in the castle rather than in the city below, as before his recent disgrace, he had no reason to live in his manor house. Handy didn’t know what other men would think, but personally, the thought of ascending and descending those bloody steps every day was more frightening than facing a hydra. Not for the first time, he cursed everyone around him for possessing a pair of wings, but he took solace in the fact that at least some, if not most of the Equestrian delegation, had to suffer the same as he did. Such thoughts warmed the little hole where his heart used to be.

As he was thinking about it, he had removed his helmet, attaching it to the hook by his side under his cloak, and lifted the hood over his head. How one entered a room mattered a great deal, and you weren’t always in control of the circumstances. Handy had opted to forgo his new helmet, which lacked the ostentation of his old one to maximise the impact.

As he was approaching the hall, the two guards on door duty seemed to be smiling happily for some reason. Must have something planned once they get off duty. Nobody smiled when their turn on the rota came up. Nobody. Handy slowed his pace as he drew near the door, hearing a loud commotion coming from within. A lot of voices seemed to be talking all at once, as if everybody at court were having their say. Good God, was it really going so badly in there? Maybe Joachim let slip he was bringing Handy back in from the cold and it went over badly, or the Equestrians fucked up in front of everyone and it was all going tits up.

‘Crap,’ he thought to himself. He had already been prepared for his presence to immediately make things worse, but if things had already gone to hell, then that meant the day was only going to get magnitudes worse. He paused just before the door and took a breath, a hundred or more scenarios playing across his head all at once as he considered every possibility. He was not in the mood for another political shit storm, but he braced himself and nodded to the guards. They moved and pushed open the door and—

Someone blew a party whistle almost right in front of his face, and confetti exploded from balloons. So many fucking balloons. The roof was covered in them, and given the height of the high-vaulted ceilings and the balconies above them in the great hall, that was no mean feat. More seemed to be appearing from little nooks in the great hall in between the clusters of griffons and ponies who were chatting away amiably, laughing.

There was cake as well—everyone seemed to have a plate of the stuff. There were all sorts as well, but he couldn’t see any table where they may have been getting them from. Then there were the fucking party hats, small little conical things with tinsel dangling at their tops. Everyone was wearing one. He spotted Joachim in the crowd by virtue of possessing the biggest and stupidest-looking one. He was laughing alongside the Firthengart princess and some purple pegasus pony. The High King looked ridiculous. He was wearing the smallest one and talking happily to some white-furred pony with blue hair, and a business suit that looked oddly familiar. Nobody seemed to have noticed the fact that he had arrived.

It was too much to take in. There was bunting crisscrossing the entire hall and a huge pink banner that read ‘Thanks for the Welcome Party-Party!’ in bright colourful letters. Handy’s mouth was wide open as he tried to process what he was seeing. He looked around, looking for something, anything with which to ground himself again. He spotted the uptight asshole of a knight that guarded the southern princess from Firthengart. He was standing stoically and still at the wall by the doors. He was covered in glitter, and a small banner that had fallen from where it had been hanging and was now draped unceremoniously across his shoulder. There was no hope coming from that quarter. Handy walked back out into the hall over to a window. He needed a moment. This was… not what he was expecting. He wasn’t prepared for…

What even was happening?

“Hey, how long has… all of that been going on?” Handy asked the guards.

“Oh, the party? That started a while ago,” one said.

“Yeah! The pink one is a great singer!” the other exclaimed. Handy blinked. It couldn’t be…

“Song?” Handy asked. “What song?”

“Oh, she started this game to break the ice, taking a popular song everygriffon knew and had everygriffon sing the next verse. It got faster and faster each song until everygriffon was singing one word each, trying to finish the song before somegriffon messed up. It was a lot of fun.” Well, strike out the magical song phenomenon.

“And they involved you two as well?” Handy asked. Both of them shrugged.

“We were on rota inside the room at the time. Just got moved out here,” one explained. Well that explained the smiles, but for the life of Handy, he could not fathom how the room had become what it now was. Granted, he liked griffons far more than ponies, but as a race there wasn’t that much different between the two in terms of their attitudes, at least broadly speaking, but this was still… rather alarming. He had been at a meeting of Equestrians and the griffons before, and that had been far from a light affair. What in the hell—

“Handy?” A voice drew him out of his reverie. Tanismore appeared in the doorway, wearing a lampshade on his head. “Is Handy here ye— Oh! There you are! The king is looking for you!”

“I…” Handy really did not want to enter the room. It was strange and unexpected. “I, uh…”

“Nope, no excuses.” Tanismore walked over and tugged Handy by his arm.

“Wait, Tanis, stop, hang on a minute.”

“I know you don’t like parties, Handy, but this is kind of an important one.”

“It wasn’t supposed to be a party!” He couldn’t keep the frustration from his voice.

“Well, I’m not complaining.” Tanis chuckled. “Now come on.”

Reluctantly, Handy allowed himself to be led, after shaking off his fellow knight’s grip on his gauntlet. Walking through the great hall in the midst of a celebration was a familiar, if often unwelcome experience during his time at Skymount. But right now? Right now the hall should be arrayed in proper order. He had been expecting a formal reception, hell, a dinner at most, and only an hour or so after all the initial business was taking care of.

As it was, everybody was eating cake, drinking cheap fizzling something or other out of equally cheap-looking glasses, wearing stupid party hats as if he had walked in on someone’s eighth birthday party, and not the rapprochement between two great powers on the international stage. What in the ever-loving fuck had happened while he had been getting ready in town?

There was a strange energy about the place—warm, fuzzy almost, like the atmosphere you’d get at a great party when it struck its high points, but more muted. A kind of tense energy that made you itch to dance as if you were on your best day, and your favourite tune had come on right at that moment. It was the inclination to make you turn to your neighbour on the barstools and strike up conversation for no other reason than because they were there, to buy a round out of the blue, to sing one more song before calling it a night.

It was strange; Handy wasn't sure what to make of it. It wasn’t unwelcome, nor was it intrusive, and somehow it felt… oddly familiar. He looked around; nobody else seemed to look concerned. Hell, there was even a griffon mage in the background in the most stereotypical wizard get-up Handy had ever seen, and he seemed quite relaxed.

“Ah, Handy,” a familiar voice called out to him, Handy paused, though Tanismore continued on through the crowd of ponies and griffons, oblivious to whether or not Handy was still following him. A familiar white pony with a well-coiffed blue mane and understated blue moustache approached him. Handy’s eyes widened in recognition as his memory dredged up just where he had seen the pony before, and why he had seemed so familiar when he saw him talk to the High King.

“You,” he said flatly.

“So you do remember me. I’m flattered,” Fancy Pants replied, his tone pleasant, conversational, and friendly with genuine warmth. Handy had no intention of reciprocating.

“Your little errand ended up costing me quite a great deal,” Handy said lowly. He was aware people would be listening in, so he chose his words carefully.

“And you have my deepest apologies for that… and my thanks,” Fancy Pants continued, bowing his head slightly. Handy raised a brow at him.

“For?”

“Well, for looking after my friend’s nephew of course. And for the, oh how shall we say, the tip you gave me while you were abroad?”

Handy was confused for a moment before the penny dropped. “Ah, so I take it you were able to accommodate your house guests?” he asked.

“At such short notice as well! I’m glad you got word to me when you did. Never would have prepared in time.” Handy mused on his response. So it seemed Chrysalis, or some other changeling potentate, followed through on paying a ‘visit’ to Fancy Pants after Handy mentioned him to her in the forest. Ah well, no skin off his nose he supposed. Unless…

“I trust you can be discreet on the matter? I would rather not be known to be the sort who spoils surprises.” Fancy Pants smiled.

“Oh, of course not. Why, I would be remiss if I did not return the favour sometime. If you are ever near Canterlot again, do drop by, won’t you? My wife and I would love to have you to visit.” That got Handy’s attention.

“I am… afraid it might not be best if I return to your lovely city. At least for some time.” Fancy Pants nodded in understanding.

“Oh yes, sad business that. Well, do let me know when you are next in the country, nonetheless. It would be good to hear some more of your stories. I’m afraid life has been rather dull for me as of late. Besides a recent investment in salamander conservation, it has been a slow few months.” Handy’s eyes widened at the implications. He couldn’t possibly mean what he thought he meant, could he? Before he could ask, another snow-white unicorn approached them, one with a ridiculous spiralling mane style and a mark of three diamonds or gems or whatever they were on her flank. Was this his wife? No, wait, that was the mare with the pink hair and the fleur-de-lis on her flank, wasn’t it? She was taller.

“Oh, there you are, Fancy Pants, darling. I’m so glad I got a chance to speak to you again,” the mare said airily. Fancy Pants beamed at her.

“Rarity dear! Good to see you! Terrible sorry about not making the effort to speak to you on the train ride.”

“Quite alright, darling, I assure you.” She flicked her mane and briefly looked over Handy with a scrutinizing expression. “Oh, I’m terribly sorry. Am I interrupting you two?”

“Not at all. Ah, Handy, my good stallion, may I introduce the lovely Miss Rarity.” Fancy Pants gestured to the mare. Handy nodded to her.

“Lady,” he said politely. “A pleasure.”

“Quite, darling,” the mare replied coolly. She smiled but seemed off somehow, a touch standoffish. Handy chalked it up to standard pony reactions to him. She was likely just trying to be polite while at the same time grabbing Fancy Pants’ attention. Handy resisted the urge to grab and shake the stallion by the shoulders, so he kept up a brave face and tried to be as polite as he could be.

“We were actually just discussing business relations.” If Fancy Pants was caught off guard by that, he did not show it.

“Business? I didn’t know you—” Rarity raised her hoof to her chest in surprise as she looked at Fancy Pants.

“Oh yes, I do occasionally dabble in international trade. Baron Handy here and I have had a mutually profitable arrangement in the past, and we were merely discussing the possibility of further enterprise,” Fancy Pants explained coolly, not letting any more slip about whatever the hell that salamander thing was.

“Really?” Rarity looked aside for a moment. “I would never have guessed.”

“Quite. Oh yes, Handy, Rarity here is an entrepreneur herself. Runs a successful little empire.”

“Oh stop.” Rarity batted at Fancy Pants playfully.

“No really, her clothes are the finest in all of Equestria. Anypony who's anypony will always be found with at least one or two ensembles from her little boutique.”

“Really.” Handy tried his damnedest not to sound too unenthused.

“Oh yes, I know with your own taste in clothes, I thought you might be interested,” Fancy Pants explained.

“Oh well, I can’t quite find the room to boast, but I am sure you wouldn’t be interested in my wares. I mean, I don't really have something that might suit your… unique tastes.” Rarity smiled sweetly. Handy blinked. Did a pony just diss his clothes? Was that what was happening right now? He didn’t have time for this. As he was about to retort in order to push the mare away and try to squeeze more information out of Fancy Pants, another familiar face made its appearance.

“Hello,” said a dull, monotone voice, sotto voce.

“Oh, Maud! I thought you had to go prepare your samples,” Rarity said as the grey-furred mare, in the same plain smock Handy remembered her wearing back on the train, came up from behind them. Handy genuinely smiled when he saw her.

“I did.” Maud simply looked at Rarity, blinking slowly and then turning to Fancy Pants, “They’re ready. Just need to be signed off.”

“Splendid. Oh yes, Miss Maud, this is—”

“We’ve met,” Handy interjected, nodding to Maud. “A pleasure to meet you again, Miss Maud.”

“Hello,” she said in acknowledge, then turned to Fancy Pants. “The sign off?”

“Oh yes. Well, I had better see to that and all. All for the trade off and all. It was simply a pleasure meeting you again, Sir Handy. We really must do this again, and you as well, Miss Rarity, as lovely as ever. I’m afraid I must rush off now. Goodbye.” Fancy Pants walked off through the crowd with Maud in toe. Handy almost took a step forward to stop them before Rarity, very deliberately, stepped in his way.

“You know Maud Pie?” she all but demanded, eyes searching. Handy frowned down at her.

“Yes, we met on a train once. Please, excuse me.” He tried to sidestep her. Rarity met him pace for pace.

“Where? When? She never mentioned anything,” Rarity insisted.

“Yes, well, that's something you’d need to ask her about, now isn't it? Now if you’d please—”

“Handy?” Tanismore approached the pair of them. Music was playing from somewhere, but Handy couldn’t see a band. He bit back a curse as Tanismore all but ensured he wouldn’t catch Fancy Pants in time. “The king is waiting.”

“Just a moment, darling.” Rarity rubbernecked around Handy and waved at the knight before looking back up at Handy sternly. “How do you know Maud Pie?”

“Look,” Handy said, his temper straining at its leash, “we met on a train and shared a cabin. We talked a bit.”

“You talked to her,” Rarity said, more as a statement than a question. “What of?”

“Rocks.”

“Rocks. Really?” She blinked.

“Yes, I learned a lot. The pony knows her stuff, and unlike most ponies I’ve had the misfortune of meeting, she is actually quite the conversationalist.”

“What.”

“Now if you’ll excuse me,” Handy said before turning to be led off by Tanismore. He looked back out over the crowded hall and spotted Fancy Pants as he left. He cursed and planned to find him later. Provided he stayed long enough for him to do so, which was an open question.

Joachim saw him coming and broke off from his conversation and walked up to the dais at the end of the hall. Handy smiled. Well, if nothing else, then at least Joachim seemed to intend on keeping up his end of the bargain. He spotted the pony princess off to the side who had turned to look at him with an odd expression on her face. Katherine, making herself useful for once, drew her attention away. Handy looked back to Joachim.

“Ah, Baron Handy, we are glad you came,” Joachim began, a touch informal but suitable to the circumstances.

“My lord,” Handy replied, bowing from the shoulders, before speaking just loud enough to be overheard as people began paying attention. “You requested my presence?”

“Yes, I find myself requiring your services. You are to be welcomed back into my court,” he said easily, although there was some shocked murmuring coming from the griffons of the court. Princess Katherine even briefly stopped her conversation with Twilight to watch the scene with interest. “I trust you’ll accept our invitation back into active service as a knight of Gethrenia.”

“My lord, I would be happy to give my service,” Handy replied, bowing again. He couldn’t pick out which voices behind him sounded the most alarmed. He noticed Desunt’s voice behind him, but he didn't sound too outraged at least. He made a note of that. He rose back up, and Joachim extended his forelegs forward. It was tradition that when someone was to be welcomed back into fold, whether they were exiled, or had taken leave for one reason or another, innocent or shameful, they had to be literally welcomed back into the fold. In this case, it meant a hug. Handy had forgotten about this part.

Joachim all but had a shit-eating grin on his face, knowing full well how much Handy hated contact. Handy, for his part, grimaced, but knew there was no way out of it. He swallowed his pride, took a step up onto the dais, and embraced Joachim.

“You are a shit,” Handy whispered into his ear as they hugged.

“Yeah, well, learned from the best,” Joachim riposted as they separated. Handy bowed again out of protocol as he descended back down the steps. The pony princess looked thoroughly confused at what had transpired. She turned to talk to Katherine again as the hall returned to the high level of murmur that pervaded it, this time with new topics to discuss. Joachim descended beside Handy and turned, preparing to say something when a looming shadow overtook both of them. Handy turned and looked up at the smiling visage of High King Aleksander.

No one that big, griffon or no, had any right to move that quietly.

“Baron Handy, Joachim. I am glad to see the two of you have settled that affair.” The high king glanced briefly to the alicorn in the room. The unspoken agreement to not speak more on the matter was implicit. At least not in front of the ponies.

“Ah, yes, milord,” Joachim said. “I was not aware you’d be staying for the reception.”

“Oh, I had to wait around for a bit longer, for something to arrive.” Something shuffled behind him. Handy discreetly leaned to the side to see what it was. A small reddish thing huddled behind the High King’s rear paw. “She’s a tad shy, I’m afraid.”

“She?” Joachim asked, tilting his head. Handy decided to step back. This clearly had nothing to do with him, and so he prepared to walk off. He spotted Shortbeak, Tanismore, and another knight off to one side. Maybe he’d go to them while Joachim sorted out things he—

An oversized wing stretched out, very, very slightly, just enough to be seen to be blocking his path, and Handy was stopped in his tracks.

“Oh yes, Baron Handy, if you wouldn’t mind, I wish to have a word with you in a moment. You don’t mind do you?” Aleksander peered at him.

‘Shit.’

“Of course not, Majesty,” Handy replied.

“Excellent. Shana?” Aleksander asked, looking behind him. A ridiculously tiny shape, at least compared to the rather overly large griffon that simply loomed over her, poked her head out from behind him. She was a rust-coloured griffon, her pelt a dirty brownish red, and her feathers black-streaked with autumnal shades. She looked up at them with green eyes. “I am afraid I have another reason to be here, Joachim my friend. I would make a request of you, one king to another.”

“And… what is it?” Joachim asked, looking at the young griffon skeptically.

“This, Joachim, is Shana Redbeak. I would like for you to be her teacher.”

“Teacher?” Joachim stepped back ever so slightly in alarm. “My lord, I’m sure you could find somegriffon else who’d be more appropriate to do that. You can’t expect me to just… accept a child into my house at the drop of a hat.”

“Quite right on both accounts,” Aleksander said. “However, Shana here is not just a child, are you, my dear?” ‘Shana’ didn’t move from behind the high king.

“N-No,” the little griffon said.

“You see, Joachim, Shana here is the newly crowned Queen of Jerminok.” Joachim froze at the pronouncement, looking from Aleksander to the child and back again. Several shocked mutters erupted from the nearby courtiers. Handy had no idea what was going on, but was glad for once that it had nothing to do with him. “Perhaps now you may understand my difficulty in finding… a reliable tutor for her?”

“I… can see that, yes.” Joachim swallowed. “I trust her presence here won’t have unfortunate consequences?”

“Not so long as she lives, no,” Aleksander replied, then glanced up at Katherine over Joachim’s shoulder. The princess quickly looked away and made a show of refilling her drink. “And I doubt your kingdom will be shouldering that burden alone.”

“What?” Joachim asked.

“Nothing, just noting a fortuitous circumstance. I trust I can leave you to decide what is best for her education?” Joachim’s beak opened and closed several times, trying to form words. “Good. Handy?”

Handy looked up. He had been secretly enjoying Joachim’s sudden loss for words at the strange situation that had just occurred. He looked back at Aleksander in surprise as he was addressed.

“Majesty?”

“Walk with me, would you?” Handy reluctantly followed after the high king as he walked off. He looked back once to see the rather dumbfounded Joachim and the still nervous child griffon they were leaving behind. Then he turned away.

Twilight Sparkle watched the entire scene take place with an air of utter confusion.

“What… What just happened?” she asked. Katherine looked down at her and tried to think of something to say, but failed to think of anything clever.

“It’s complicated. Excuse me.” She turned and walked towards Joachim and the young queen. Twilight just watched her go with a sigh of disappointment.

“Well, at least nothing has gone wrong yet.” A pink foreleg wrapped around her neck.

“Whew! You would not believe how far a girl needs to walk just to get a little relief.” Pinkie Pie leaned on her friend. “Soooo, did I miss anything?”

Twilight just gave her a level look.

--=--

Handy walked alongside the rather imposing figure of the high king. His head was still spinning, and try as he might, he could not bring himself to concentrate enough to try to predict what was going to happen to him now. He glanced up at the gigantic griffon. The black-feathered, gold-pelted monarch seemed serene as he always did. At the party, he had been talking with quite a lot of Equestrians, but Joachim had seemed very nervous when High King Aleksander had requested to speak to Handy… alone.

That wasn’t ominous at all or anything.

The pair walked down a rather sparsely populated area of the castle, eventually coming to a colonnade bridge that arched over one of the exterior quadrangles of the castle towards the library tower. The king had yet to speak a word, and Handy dared not say anything at that point. The snow was falling gently, the landscape of the city below pristine, nestled astride the river and nested between the twin mountains, marred only by the innumerable columns of smoke arising from thousands of chimneys and fireplaces, even during midday. The king slowed as they crossed the bridge.

“So I hear you’ve taken an interest in studying magic lately,” Aleksander said conversationally. Handy stopped dead in his tracks. The king laughed, his baritone deep and resonant. “Oh, don’t look so surprised. You don’t rule one of the largest, most powerful nations in the world without keeping a few tabs on certain persons of interest. And you, my good baron, have certainly been interesting of late.”

“I…” It was not as if his studies with Crimson were illicit, nor was he hiding them, but how did he know? He was pretty sure Sunderclaw, Joachim’s own personal cloak and dagger connoisseur, was likely keeping tabs on him in a hundred thousand different ways that Handy had long ago stopped worrying about. He had nothing to hide... in Skymount at least. It took on a slightly different character when someone else's spooks were keeping an eye on you. Like the difference between having the G2 back home tapping all of your phones and MI6 doing it. You’d like your incompetent intelligence analysts invading your privacy more so than you would foreign ones. “I have taken an academic interest as of late, your Majesty.”

“You can save the formalities and the conversational distance for another time, Handy.” Aleksander smiled. “There’s a time and a place. Right now, this will be all over and done with faster if we get pretensions out of the way.”

“This is about the Equestrians, isn't it?” Handy frowned after taking a minute to decide which would be the safer course of action. He opted to go along the king’s way for now.

“Not everything revolves around the sun, but yes, they were involved in my worries as well. I take it you are primarily responsible for sorting out all this nasty business before I arrived?”

“...If you chose to see it that way, yes.” The king laughed boisterously.

“There’s a good griffon. I’ve been talking to your king about all that and whatnot, and for some reason, he was under the impression I was furious with your actions.” He looked down at Handy. The enormous griffon had an inch on Handy standing on four legs and was one of the few people Handy had met who could actually do that, but that wasn't what made Handy uneasy. If Aleksander wasn’t pushing for Handy’s dismissal from court, who was? And why did Joachim think the high king wanted it too?

“You aren’t?”

“Oh, I was. I was livid, at least until I caught sight of the larger picture, and the truth of what was going on during your little escapades in Manehatten. It is not as if I hadn't used those situations to… take advantage of a few things. I had calmed down considerably by the time I received Johan’s letter stating that the crises had been resolved. More so after I had exchanged words with good old Celly dearest.”

“Then… if that is all cleared up, how can I help you now?” Handy asked cautiously, now thoroughly at a loss as to what the high king wished to speak with him about. Aleksander turned and continued walking towards the library.

“Tell me, Handy, what do you suppose the Equestrians seek to accomplish while they are here?” Handy tensed, thoughts springing to mind, old suspicions and concerns about being traded to the Equestrians as a bargaining chip for peace and reconciliation. It was possible that Joachim was resisting that, and him swallowing his pride to meet Handy’s ultimatum the other day to prevent him from leaving the kingdom, at least willingly. Was that to hold him here long enough to be traded or was there something else? Would Joachim trade him? Did he have a choice in the matter?

“I couldn’t begin to speculate,” Handy chose to answer. Aleksander laughed again, bright and loud as he opened the door to the library and stepped inside.

“Oh humour me, Handy, I’m sure you have had suspicions. Go on, hit me; be as outlandish as you can.”

“In truth?” Handy’s face remained neutral. “I thought they had come to convince you and my king to sign me over to them. To once and for all have me out of Griffonia’s feathers on your part, and for the Equestrians to finally have me under their hooves.”

“Well yes, the thought had crossed my mind also,” Aleksander said with a chuckle, “but no, we don’t do things like that.”

“What? Prisoner exchange?” Handy asked as the high king opened the door and walked into the round tower library. An older griffon with ridiculously large spectacles froze as he saw the pair, looked between them, and hurriedly scuttled out of the tower and around them. Handy had never seen the librarian before, but then again, he was usually never over in this wing of the castle.

“Slave trading,” Aleksander said dryly. “You must truly think poorly of me and your king if you’d honestly think we’d uproot one of our own, a lord no less, and at the whim of a foreign power, to throw them into their care when said person has committed no crimes against his own king nor country worthy of such a punishment. Tell me, human, do your people in your lands do such things?”

“...Sometimes,” Handy admitted. “It’s called extradition. There’s also a more aggressive form known as extraordinary rendition, where the target’s own country really doesn't get a say in the matter at all. This almost happened to me at Blackport.” Aleksander looked genuinely surprised at that.

“That… I had not heard,” the king admitted.

“Honestly, a lot was happening back then, and I might not have covered the little tiff the Enclave and Equestria had at the time.” Aleksander tapped the side of his beak in thought for a moment. He smiled after a time and walked over to one of the shelves, running a talon across the books.

“Well, something to think about, I suppose, but I sincerely doubt the Equestrians would seek nor want that now.”

“And why do you say that… if I may ask so bluntly?” Handy added.

“Because I am sure Celestia would have grabbed you then and there on the border when you so kindly ran right into her.”

“...Oh.”

“Yes, oh. Quite amusing, I assure you, and believe me, I do so wish you’d tell me what the real story is behind how you got the horn of the changeling queen sometime. Alas, we have more to concern ourselves. Celestia wants information.”

“What kind of information?” The king chuckled.

“That old girl is shrewd, but not unpredictable. She’s been at this longer than any of us who currently have the temerity to be walking around with fancy hats while under the age of a hundred.” Handy blinked. Celestia was over a hundred years old? What the hell kind of anti-ageing cream did they even HAVE over there? She sure as hell neither looked nor sounded like some hoary old biddy of a pony. He’d have to look into that. If there was only one thing he could bring with him if he ever managed to get back to Earth, a formula that fucking nuked wrinkles would set him up for life. A shallow idea, true, but if it payed the bills...

“So she doesn’t want reconciliation?” Aleksander shook his head as he took a book.

“Oh, she does, most certainly. Celestia’s a good sort like that, too nice for her own good sometimes, my father used to say. I’m of a different opinion, but that's another story. However, she is not stupid. She wants to repair relations as fast as she can. It’s why she sent her little protégé, not to mention pride and joy, to head the pony delegation.”

“Princess Twilight.”

“The very same. The girl seems to have a knack for repairing relations—apparently it’s something she’s very good at. Probably not something of this level or depth yet, so this is something of another teaching moment for her, throwing her in the deep end to get her balance in the water as it were,” Aleksander continued as he opened his book, then frowned. Blinking quickly, he clucked his beak and looked for a lamp. Handy lifted one from a hook on the wall and brought it closer. Aleksander nodded his thanks, pulling a pair of spectacles from the ruff of his chest, linked to a silver chain that really wasn't visible at most times, and began flicking through the book. Handy eyed the title as he did so. It was something about naval combat. “And yet, the information she seeks is about us.”

“And what would that be?” Handy asked, genuinely curious. “And should we be worried?”

“Should we be worried he says.” Aleksander chuckled. “Handy, if we were always worried about every little thing the alicorns did, we’d never get anything done because we’d be too afraid to move. No, we shouldn’t be worried. She is just getting a feel for the situation between Gethrenia and Firthengart, between both those kingdoms and myself, and therefore, the rest of Griffonia. And, although she likely wouldn't be expecting it, the relationship between yourself and your liege lord.”

Handy kept silent at that. Aleksander looked over the rim of his glasses at him.

“Whatever falling out has occurred between you and Johan does not reflect well upon outside perception of the interior harmony of the High Kingdom.”

“It is hardly my fault I was exiled from court,” Handy countered.

“True, it was a foolish decision, and one made under pressure. I have told Joachim this myself. If the king feels the need to punish his ‘pet monster’ in the first place, then the implication is that the monster did something his master could not control.” Aleksander smiled wryly. Handy figured if he knew enough to find out he was studying magic and had been talking with Joachim so much, then the true nature of the ruse they had been playing this whole time was unlikely to escape him either. He sighed lightly.

“So what? You’d have him simply reward me and say nothing more of it?”

“Yes, actually.” Aleksander closed the book and switched it out for another, a book without a title on it, but which had the image of a merchant’s scale, holding fish and gold in each weight. Handy blinked. “It would look much better, both from outside and from my position, had he actually gone and done so. I can understand why he did what he did when he did. It makes sense from his perspective. In truth, I would rather have a potentially upstart king that is promptly seen to be under my control today, by my very presence here, than the same king with potential disunity in his own hearth and home.”

“Why are you telling me this?” Handy asked. “This sounds like something you should be telling Johan.”

“I already have; he understands his mistake now. I was under the impression he had already taken steps at reconciliation?” Handy looked off to the side. “Wounded pride is hard to heal, hmm?”

“It’s not just that. He was my king, yes, but he was honestly, perhaps, my first and only friend,” Handy said after a moment of silence. Aleksander considered those words as he continued searching through the book he had taken. He ran a claw down one page, gave a short satisfied nod, then closed the book and removed his spectacles.

“Then I guess there really is nothing more for me to say that can help matters. You and he are reconciled, you have been returned to court, and all is well for when the princess approaches you.” That made Handy look up.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Oh yes, do you not remember I was there that day in Canterlot when you first met Princess Twilight? I too noticed the poor dear’s odd behaviour after her first meeting with you. Of course, I had nothing to go on as to what you two got up to…” Handy blinked again before the realization hit home. His eyes widened.

“Sir, I swear, I never so much as tou—!”

“I am sure you didn’t, otherwise I am certain we would all be suffering the consequences of such an occurrence. Celestia is quite protective of her ponies, you see.”

“I, ahem, regardless, why would she approach me now?”

“I am quite certain she most likely does not want to, but she is possibly compelled to do so now. Her friend’s rather strident actions yesterday all but forced her to. Given her actions, I can only deduce she felt you had wronged the princess somehow.”

“I never—!”

“I am not saying anything, Handy.” Aleksander held up a placating claw. “I am just saying that because of yesterday, the princess now has to do something about it. It would perhaps behove you to take this as an opportunity to perhaps… correct the impression the Equestrians will take away regarding the state of the Gethrenian court.”

“... Are you telling me to reconcile with Johan?”

“I am telling you to make it look like you have,” Aleksander said, smiling slightly. “I’d prefer it to be genuine but, well, I know how important your pride is to you.”

Handy contemplated his words for a long while, the king happily waiting for his response while he perused the books at his disposal. The thought of it did not sit easily with Handy, no matter how he felt about Joachim’s attempt at rapprochement, nor how he felt about having alienated his friend with the ultimatum. He wasn't sure his pride would let him go back over that tilled soil. Besides, even if he wanted to, what on Earth could he do to make up the difference? Still, the king had a point. It only had to look like all was well, and if there was one thing Handy did well, it was keeping up appearances.

“Fine,” Handy said after some thought, “I’ll make sure the Equestrians think all is well.”

“Oh? And how are you going to do that now?” Aleksander asked, looking up. Handy shrugged.

“Honestly? I’ll play it by ear, see how things go.”

“See that you do, at least before you go gallivanting out into the wild again.”

“Excuse me?” Handy asked.

“Well, it’s not like you’re going to be staying here for long with that sorceress after you, now is it?” Handy didn’t answer. “I figured as much. Do try to keep collateral to a minimum as you go about it. Now that you deigned to actually tell us what is going on with you and this Mistress or whoever she is, you might find Celestia at least will be a touch less… antsy if you happen to be flying over her country.”

“I’m sensing a but coming along,” Handy stated.

“Not a but, per se, more of an offer. I have learned interesting things from my talk with the pony Fancy Pants. Seems you still have a bit of a mercenary streak to your character after all. I trust you still have a taste for making some money on the side?” Handy regarded him with suspicion.

“Really? Asking me that? Here in the castle where anyone could hear?”

“I am not trying to steal you out from under your lord, Handy, nor asking you anything to do with your station as it is in this kingdom. I just would like to reward you for… certain activities you undertake when outside of Griffonia. Information gathering mostly,” Aleksander clarified.

“What can I uncover that your spy networks can’t?” Handy asked.

“Plenty, as it turns out. The Greenwoods, the Deer tribes to our collective South and how they work, the Lord in Winter now being able to frolic about during any old season he chooses, uncovering pervasive and dangerous sorcerous cabals that have apparently flown under everygriffon’s beak for All-Maker knows how long. The inner workings of not just one changeling kingdom but multiple, the fact that there are multiple changeling factions and your relationship thereof. I had an interesting dinner conversation with Johan about that particular topic, believe you me. Should I go on?”

“...No, I see your point.”

“Your own reputation seems to attract the various boogaboos in the underbelly of civilization and your… unique skillset gives you the means to delve deeper and obtain what most Gryphonic spy networks would kill to possess. I simply wish to capitalise on that, nothing more.” Aleksander idly scanned yet another book. It looked to be an almanac of some kind. Handy considered his words.

“The last time I accepted a job outside of my duties for personal gain, I ended up in the Greenwoods,” Handy replied, deadpan.

“Yes, you did. What, you think if you turn me down, you won’t wind up somewhere dangerous?” Aleksander asked, smiling.

“I’ll think about it,” Handy said cautiously. In the feudal system of Griffonia, the vassal of your vassal was not your vassal. He personally owed the High King zero personal allegiance or obedience, so the High King couldn’t order Handy to do so much as sweep the floor even if he wanted to. Which begged the question: “What precisely are you offering?”

“What do you want?” the king asked plainly. “Mostly, I am sure you’d be happy enough with money, but if there are other things you would like, I am sure I can acquire suitable payment.”

Handy rubbed his chin and wandered over to the nearby window. The curtains were drawn, only letting a sliver of pale natural light enter the tower.

“Well, depending on what I uncover, I imagine I would desire access to some… esoteric magical knowledge,” Handy answered.

“Oh? Thinking of taking your studies to an advanced level, are we? I thought you had just started.”

“I am actually after something specific, but would you be willing to give me access to such material if I… provided enough interesting discoveries to you?”

“Certainly,” Aleksander said without hesitation, putting down his book and facing Handy fully. The human had his undivided attention now. “Though you may want to be specific. What are you after, Handy?”

Handy was reluctant to explain it then and there. He wasn't sure if Joachim had explained the part about him actually originating from another world. If Aleksander was being this frank and upright with him so far, he might as well maximise the advantage… and make the problem Joachim’s to explain while he was at it.

“In short, I am researching a way to get home, Aleksander,” Handy explained, his voice calm and cool, “and it is not so simple a matter as boarding a boat, braving the Black Isles blockade of the Western Ocean, and sailing across the horizon. You may want to discuss the matter with my king in further detail, but suffice it to say, not everything you hear about me is simply wild rumour. I am not of this world, good king. I would very much like to return from whence I came, and that is not an easy affair.”

Aleksander’s face was impassive at that. His only movement was the slight rising and lowering of the end of his tail as he sat, which he had been doing since he had begun reading the books. He studied Handy’s face, and Handy made an effort to give nothing away.

“I am sure I can tap a few sources to help in that regard, in payment for services rendered of course. Are we agreed?” Aleksander asked, extending a claw. Handy hesitated but then reached forward to shake the large griffon’s claw.

Like shaking hands with a scythe.

“I’m glad we could come to this agreement, Sir Handy,” Aleksander said with a smile, replacing the spectacles onto his beak. “I don’t believe I shall be returning to the party. Do give my regards. I shall be remaining here until dinner, I believe.”

Handy hesitated, protocol actually making him pause for once. “I… can’t exactly leave the High King unattended.”

“No you can’t, but if I know my bodyguards…” The door to the library tower burst open, a soldier in black and gold painted armour looking around before spotting Aleksander. “...And there’s Harold, hmhm. Run along now, Handy. I assure you I’ll be quite fine once my griffons chew my ear off about running away without telling anygriffon.”

Handy left the room and walked back along the colonnade as the gaggle of flunkies and guards crowded by him to get to their errant king. He thought about the deal he had just made. It did give him a rather unreasonable amount of freedom. Nothing was preventing him from, say, not sharing any new secrets or discoveries he uncovered as he proceeded to chase after the Mistress once winter ended and it was safe to fly in the airship—he really needed to name the damn thing—but the reward to do so potentially meant another step closer to home. If he got that, then he could just forget about the Mistress, this entire damn world, and go back home.

Sure, it meant not settling the debt the Mistress owed him, namely the debt of her caved in skull, but he was certain that he could get over that someday.

Maybe.

The reality was that he was stuck here, and High King Aleksander did not say anything concrete about whether or not he could help Handy in this regard, only that he had sources. Certainly Joachim was not able to, and petty king or not, his resources were not inconsiderable, but Gethrenia had no tradition of magecraft in any serious degree beyond alchemy, and what it did have couldn’t help Handy with his problem.

He took a left turn and began the descent through the castle, back to the city below and back to his home. He had things to take care of. He thought long and hard about what the high king said, what Shortbeak had said, and what he’d need to do before he took to the air and hunted down the Mistress.

Chapter 55 - Pinkie Promise

Crimson was staring angrily at the silver war hammer.

As was tradition.

Once more, she swung the thing around and around and around. Still nothing. She smashed it into the floor, the walls, and even flat out tossed it end over end in frustration. Still nothing. She suffused it with her magic and got nothing. She analysed it as best as she could, and she still could not find any incantation.

However, whenever she charged a particular spell, an offensive bolt of magic or perhaps a gout of flame, the war hammer shone in the way Master’s armour did when the sunlight struck it. Only then did she see a semblance of the magic running up and down the hammer’s length, ethereal flames or sparkling, crackling magical energy.

Then, when she struck the ground with the war hammer, the magic dispersed violently, just like Master had said it did back in the changeling city. For the life of her, she couldn’t understand why. It wasn’t enchanted—no wizard had put their time and energy into this thing. The process of enchantment, at least as it concerned creating a magical object, would have left obvious elements she could then analyse. This? Nothing. There was something else going on here, and she wasn’t sure what it was, but Master had left it to her to figure out, so she’d be damned if—

“Crimson?”

“Ah!” Crimson yelped and dropped the war hammer, spinning around with her horn blazing. Handy raised an eyebrow at her.

“Any luck?”

Crimson drew in a deep breath to stop her panting and wiped her brow with a fetlock. She had been at this for hours. She didn’t hear him coming—the construction upstairs had been so noisy that she had stopped paying attention, and she didn’t notice it had all stopped.

“No, Master, sorry.” Crimson lifted the war hammer and handed it to the human. “It is not a typical enchantment; I am not sure how it is doing what it is doing. It might take me quite some time to unravel it.”

“That’s fine. Right now, I have something more important for you to be working on.” Handy took the hammer and placed it by his side. Crimson looked up.

“What is it?”

“The pony delegation from Equestria brought with them many experts in various fields. Apparently there’s to be an exchange of culture and technology to solidify relations.” She stared blankly at him. “Basically there are a lot of ponies around, and I snagged a farming earth pony to help with the fields of the Haywatch Estate. I was hoping you could tag along with him and his helpers to keep an eye on them, maybe assist them in case whatever is poisoning the fields turns out to be magical in nature. Can you do that?”

“Of course, Master.” Despite her words, she seemed to be holding back a grimace. Handy smiled.

“What's wrong, Crimson, afraid of strangers?”

“What? No!” she said defensively.

“Listen, I understand, but these ponies are here to help… supposedly, and I trust you more than them in either case.” Handy paused. “Also, you need to get out more.”

“What… What do you mean?”

“I’ve been talking to the alchemists and uh… you tend to scare people.”

“So do you!” She pointed a hoof accusingly at him.

“Yes, but the difference between us is that I occasionally go to the pub. Look, Crimson, you trusted me to look after you, right? This is me looking after you.”

“I don’t see how it is.” Crimson raised a foreleg to her chest.

“You need to be somewhere with other people that isn't either a cluttered office or a dank, underground dungeon.”

Crimson huffed. “I like it here!” she protested. Handy briefly looked around.

“Crimson, this is literally a dark, cavernous basement cut out of rock. There are creepy mage lights hanging in the air casting dark malevolent shadows everywhere, and there is an empty coffin in the corner.”

“Yeah, well, you sleep down here!”

“At least I acknowledge how strange that is!” Handy retorted. Crimson looked down and kicked a hoof.

“...But it feels like home,” she whined softly. Handy was momentarily struck by that, but shook his head and sighed.

“And that is why you need to get out more. The further you get away from the Mistress and her lair, both externally and internally, the better.” Handy walked over to her. He patted her on the head while she was still looking down, and she flinched in surprise. “Now go on—they’re waiting upstairs. I gave the construction crew the rest of the day off.”

Crimson grimaced, but nodded. “I’ll try my best with them.”

“I only ask that you don’t crush them like bugs,” he joked.

“...Not even a little?”

“Crimson.”

“I am joking, Master. Alright, I’ll go, but I don’t have to like it.”

“That’s the spirit!” Crimson flicked her horn and turned off the lights before walking up the stairs to the surface. Handy left the basement but didn’t follow her out of the shell of the manor. The builders had managed to finish the exterior walls, the first floor, and most of the roofing, but quite a lot of work remained to do on the inside. At least it kept the cold out.

She left the front of the building and pulled her hood up. The sudden chill of the air made her shiver, the thin coat of sweat on her pelt suddenly making her regret the excursion. She brought the cloak closer about her, looking about and trying to spot the ponies she was being sent to babysit.

Turning the corner and heading towards where a new well was being dug, she all but ran head first into a living wall of muscle. She blinked up at the towering crimson stallion who regarded her with placid, deep-green eyes. He blinked once, slowly and lazily.

“Umm… hello. Are you the Equestrian I was supposed to meet?” She took a step back and looked around. There didn't seem to be any other ponies around.

“Eeyup.” She waited for him to continue, but he didn’t.

“I… take it there are more of you coming around?”

“Eeyup.”

“So they're not here yet?”

“Eenope.” His short orange mane was blowing in the breeze, but the cold didn’t seem to so much as faze him. Crimson cleared her throat.

“Well, my name is Crimson and I am here to assist you in… the soil analysis.” She looked down at the ground and realized just how boring a mission she had been given. She’d rather have a dozen more unsuccessful hours with the warhammer than this.

“Eeyup.” The large stallion blinked once and switched the long reed he was chewing on from one side of his mouth to the other. Crimson gave him an odd look.

“You don’t talk much, do you?”

“Eenope,” he answered.

“Huh,” she said, before muttering to herself, “maybe this won’t be as bad as I thought.”

“Pardon?”

“I said we should probably begin then. Pretty much all of my Ma— I mean Baron Haywatch’s estates have had poor harvests, even since before he owned them, and it is not just his lands affected. We should probably start with the western fields since they had the poorest harvest,” she explained, walking off through the snow.

They walked in silence for a few minutes as she led him through the fields in question. There were plenty of griffons out and about. Just because it was winter didn’t mean the farm work stopped, after all. The stallion eyed them all curiously as they went about, occasionally stopping, watching as a few of the serfs mended fences, or shored up an old shed, or fed the few grazing animals. She occasionally stopped and waited for him to catch up, wondering what he found so interesting.

They toured the western fields for a bit, Crimson explaining the local areas and boundaries, which ones had the worst crop yields, and who tended to them. The stallion seemed to simply nod in acknowledgment each time, mentally noting all that she was telling him.

Eventually the other ponies began appearing, being directed to their position by the local griffons. Crimson carefully studied the faces and marks of each of them on reflex as they received their orders from the stallion, who she learned was Big Macintosh. After the last of them was directed to their respective fields, Big Macintosh watched them for a minute and then, almost idly, scraped the snow off the ground and dug a small hole out with his hoof. He leaned down close and looked hard at the soil, as if looking for something.

Then he snorted, turned, and walked towards a nearby hill with a lonely sycamore tree at its apex. He walked up to it, turned, and sat beneath it, watching over the western fields. Crimson followed him up and stood beside him. She raised an eyebrow and looked around, waiting to see what he’d do.

“So, you can help then?” she asked as Macintosh sat beneath the sycamore.

“Eeyup,” he said simply, smiling lightly as he watched several of the ponies move about, digging at the ground to check the soil beneath the snow and talking with the farming griffons. He seemed calm, solid, and didn’t appear unnerved by her in the least. In fact, she felt awkward standing there beside him, seemingly at a loss at what to do now.

“So, uhm, that’s it then?”

“For now.”

“Do you, uhm… need my magic to help?”

“Not yet. Might just be an irrigation problem.”

“Right.” Crimson settled back down to watch the ponies go about their business. Her eyes wandered to the ground in thought for a minute, then she looked back at him. “So what’s irrigation?”

Big Macintosh looked over to her and she kicked a hoof into the snow, avoiding his questioning gaze.

“Well, it's when you work the ground to make sure water regularly gets to the plants, help them grow,” Big Macintosh explained.

“Oh. Doesn’t that happen anyway?” she asked.

“Eenope. S’more complicated than that. Plants need a lot of work. You need to keep them watered, and till the soil, all sorts of stuff.”

“Oh. Well I think M— the baron said the water seemed to be fine. I… think,” she explained, trying to wrest control of the conversation.

“That so? Well, we’ll find out then,” he said with an air of content finality, and continued watching over the ponies at work. Several of the local griffons were being brought in to help out, given their expertise in farming the land over their lifetimes. Crimson just stared.

“That’s it?”

“Eeyup. For now.”

“Can’t you just tell if there’s something wrong with the soil?”

“Eenope.”

“Why not?” she asked.

“Can’t you just magic the soil and find out what's wrong with it?” he asked.

“Well yeah, I actually coul—”

“Have you?” He looked at her out of the side of his eyes.

“Well... yes.”

“And did you figure it out?”

“Well… no. It seemed fine.”

“Mmmhmm,” he hummed.

“Well, I could if I had enough time!” she protested.

“Oh?”

“Yes,” she said proudly.

“Over all this land?” Crimson looked out and saw exactly how much land she would have to cover, and how much time it would take to analyse it all.

“Uhh…” she said, uncertainty entering her voice.

“Eeyup. All we’re doing here is narrowing the possibilities down. If it's not the water, it's something else. If the soil is fine in some places, and not in others, then that narrows it down further, and so on. Once we find the problem, it won't take us all winter to begin fixing it.” He took a few seconds after that, seemingly unaccustomed to speaking for so long.

“I… guess,” Crimson conceded.

“It ain’t like your fancy magic, ma’am. Farming requires patience.” Crimson gave an indignant huff.

“I’ll have you know magic requires a lot of patience!”

“I’m sure. I’m just saying, farming can’t be a quick fix with a simple wave of a horn. You need patience to find the problem. If it’s magical, we’ll need your help. Right now, I suggest you just try to relax. We might be here a while.”

Crimson snorted but said nothing, instead turning away to watch the fields. She glanced back at him before taking a seat herself beneath the tree, shuffling to ensure she sat on her cloak and not the cold snow.

They sat in silence for some time.

“So… your name is Macintosh?” she asked in time.

“Eeyup.” The wind tussled his mane. She looked away, idly kicking a tuft of snow near her hoof.

“Right. And you’re a farmer?”

“Eeyup.” She looked at him in thought for a moment.

“Where are you from?” she asked.

“Ponyville. Nice little place, right beside the Everfree forest. And you, miss?”

“I uh…” She was suddenly lost for words. “Around. Here and there.”

“You one of them travelling ponies?”

“...Sort of,” she lied. “So, uh, Ponyville. Sounds nice.”

“Eeyup.” The sycamore gently swayed above them, the white bark stark and beautiful even in the midst of the all-encompassing snow around them. Crimson pulled her hood up and stood.

“Do you, uh… Would you like some tea?” Macintosh gave her a light smile.

“Eeyup.”

“Great. Uhm, I’ll just go and get some then.” She awkwardly hurried towards one of the nearby houses. Thoughts whirred in her head, thoughts of a sunny day and swaying sycamores. She shook her head. She needed something to clear her head, something mindless but productive.

“Time for tea,” she quietly said to herself.

--=--

Handy struggled to get the second gauntlet off his arm. The clasps were in a different configuration, and taking off his new suit had been something of a chore. He placed them on the makeshift stand one of the griffons had purchased with his money, which of course looked odd because while compact, such things were designed to hold gryphonic armour. He shrugged and pushed the entire thing into a corner after casually tossing his remaining gauntlet onto it.

Looking around, he couldn’t quite keep a strange nagging feeling from his mind. It was odd, not unpleasant, but odd nonetheless. He was in the hallway, which had nice wooden panelling halfway up the walls, darker than the light wood that made up the floor, which was covered in a variety of comfortable-looking rugs. Nothing matched, but neither did any of them look out of place. The lights were lit with long-lasting tallow candles housed in glass, a little addition Crimson had suggested which Handy had not thought of, but one which he appreciated.

He let his hand slide along the wall as he walked into the common room, the most fully furnished of the finished rooms and, Handy was pleased to note, currently the warmest, even if half of the upstairs was exposed to the elements. A fire was blazing, safely contained behind an iron grating which valiantly stood between it and Handy, right where it belonged.

He smiled and moved to take off his cloak before it finally struck him.

This was his. All of it. For the first time in his life, he owned a house of his own, and it finally hit him after all this time that, materially, he was better off than at any other point in his life. That had been his goal in life, hadn’t it? Money, power, fame, or well, at least infamy. He paused in the room, the only sound the crackle of the fire and the occasional howl of the wind pressing against the shuttered windows as he contemplated it.

There he stood, in a grand house and dressed in fine clothes, master over his land, with servants to tend his fields, with businesses and revenue flooding in to keep him where he was, and with power quite literally at his fingertips. His name was feared and respected across the land and beyond, with high station and honours his to command, with the ears of kings and lords leant to his word. So why wasn’t he happy?

The thought troubled him. He was dead set on vengeance and getting home, but had he actually stopped to seriously consider what he has now and what he had back home? Was there any real comparing the two? Why would he even want to go back home?

‘Because it’s mine,’ he told himself. It was true as well. Even if he cared nothing for Earth, for his home, his country, even the assholes he knew and who cared nothing for him in return, it was still true. It was his, and it had been taken from him. That was an injustice he would not stand for. He had been wronged, and he would see it made right and recompense paid unto him for the trouble it caused.

But this was his as well, he now realised. If he did make it back, what would become of the businesses he owned? His serfs and tenants, would they be handed onto the care of someone else or split between the local lords? Would his tenants lose their homes at the behest of some baron or merchant landlord who grew impatient or fickle?

‘I’ll leave it to Klipwing. He can manage it.’ But could he? Gethrenian law wouldn’t allow him to simply pick an heir. He could always just request it of Johan as his will, and simply trust the king to dispense with his estate at least in a somewhat equitable manner, but he could not guarantee that. Did he not owe his servants something? What of the pilot of his airship? What of Featherbrain, the alchemists, and all of his brewery workers and the rest of the jobs that rely on his properties and businesses? What of Crimson?

He couldn’t, he realised, be absolutely sure they’d be alright without him. Even when he was not here, his title and office gave people meaning and security in their lives, gave them jobs and roofs over their heads. The more he thought about it, the more he found it difficult to, in good conscience, forget about them. It was different before he had people who actually relied on him. He'd never had that before. He would have to ensure, somehow, they’d be taken care of if he ever did take his leave of them for good.

But that wasn’t what was bothering him.

‘Stop it.’

There was something else about going home that was really eating away at him. All the rest was just window dressing.

‘No.’

Even if he did defeat the odds and make it home, it wouldn't really be home anymore, would it? Not for him.

“Stop it,” he snarled under his breath, trying hard to suppress his thoughts. But he couldn’t, not when he had opened the door he had kept quietly shut since the very morning after he had made his transformation. It had haunted the back of his mind ever since he was on his hands and knees, retching up his guts not twenty metres from where the Equestrian Express had stopped to refill its water tanks. Every day since then, he had been slowly, but surely, pressing down on this thought.

“No… Damn it.”

About whether or not, even if he could get back home, should he?

“GET OUT OF MY HEAD!”

Knock knock.

Handy whirled around and looked down the empty corridor behind him. It was dark, the candles had not been lit, and the light from outside was woefully inadequate, giving the corridor an ethereal quality. The knocking came again, and he shook his head. It was coming from the front door.

He rubbed his face and eyes and looked about him, brushing down his tunic and cloak to be presentable. He wondered who it would be and realised he actually had been expecting someone to be arriving, sooner or later. He coughed, clearing his throat and standing up straight. He was going to have to get this over and done with sooner or later. The knocking came again, this time more forcefully, and he heard multiple voices from the other side of the door.

He frowned but walked to the door, turning the corner into the antechamber. The front door was rather unimpressive but heavy and dignified-looking. There were no windows other than five rounded segments of a semi-circle at the top of the door. He vaguely made out various colours through it that had nothing to do with the sky. Sadly, before he could contemplate that any further, he opened the door.

And something large and pink barrelled him to the ground.

“...Three, ouchie,” Pinkie Pie said, pushing herself up and shaking her mane out of her face. Her eyes widened slightly in surprise as she looked down at him and she smiled broadly. “Hi!”

If Handy had not seen the princess standing in the door behind the pink mare, his response would have likely been far more kinetic than it turned out to be. As it were, he simply let his eyes glow and then glowered up at the pony in customary welcome.

--=--

“Is everyone settled?” Handy asked amicably. Twilight gave him a smile from where she was seated. Handy had arranged for the princess to be seated on the left side of the fireplace, directly across from him. Clustered around her were her little entourage of ponies. The pink one who had barreled into him was sitting on the floor, busy being obnoxiously cheerful and looking around at everything in the room.

The white mare with the curled mane and ridiculous eyeshadow was there, sitting daintily on the couch nearest to Twilight. Wait, eyeshadow was what you called it when women painted their eyelids, right? Whatever. Makeup on fur was an inherently stupid concept, and Handy wondered why ponies put up with it. There was an orange pony with a stetson, who was closest to him and seemed to be sending the most disapproving glare out of all of them. Given that the blue pegasus he had had arrested was there as well, that was saying something.

Handy roundly ignored them all and pretended they did not exist—hopefully one or more of them would take offence at that—and focused on the only pony in the room who actually mattered.

“Yes, thank you.”

“My pleasure, Princess,” Handy said easily. He kept his face neutral as he recalled what the High King had told him. Well, time to get this over with. “To what do I owe the honour?”

“I reckon y’all owe an apology,” the orange one said, and Handy’s eyes rose in surprise at her accent. It wasn't the strangest he had heard coming out of an Equestrian’s mouth—the ones he’d met in Equestria’s east even had a slightly different dialect of English to the rest of the kingdom. No, this woman sounded like she had been plucked from the American South somewhere. Louisiana? No no, Alabama. No no, it was that one state that was big, obnoxious and something something illegal immigrants...

Utah! Yeah, that was it. All those Yanks were interchangeable anyway. Apparently Twilight interpreted his surprise the wrong way and rushed to pick up from where the mare had left off.

“Ahah, I’m sure there’s no real need to—”

“Now hold yer hay wagons, Twi,” hat pony said, holding up her hoof to the princess. First name basis with the princess—that was interesting. “I don’t agree with what Dash here did not one bit, but her heart was in the right place, and she’s going to apologise to the baron here like we discussed, right, Dash?”

The pegasus did not respond to her, provoking the orange mare to nudge her in her crossed forelegs.

“Hey!” she protested.

“I said, ain’t that right, Dash?” hat pony asked. The blue mare muttered something under her breath. The white aristocrat cleared her mouth daintily, and Rainbow Dash sighed, looking at Handy.

“I’m sor—”

“It’s quite alright, your Highness,” Handy said to Twilight, cutting off Rainbow Dash quite deliberately and not so much as looking at her. “I am already over it, and the king’s word is final on the matter.”

The look on the sputtering blue pegasus’ face was worth it, and Handy tried his best not to smile. He had deduced the pegasus had been released from incarceration the moment the High King had warned him that the princess would seek him out after the incident, which meant a deal had been made. Handy was not best pleased about it, but if she was here with the princess, and amongst those who were on first name basis with her, it was worth it to keep his mouth shut on the matter.

Didn’t mean he had to treat the mare as if she were a person, however. Or as if she was even there.

“Now it’s your turn,” orange pony said as she finished reigning in her friend, who was busy angrily muttering something to her in hushed tones. Handy, despite his best intentions, looked back at the orange one.

“I beg your pardon?” he asked in surprise. “I am not apologising for placing a criminal under arrest, no matter how diplo—”

“I don’t mean that,” she replied before Princess Twilight tried to interject.

“Applejack, really, it's okay. You do—”

“You’d best be apologizing for that mean prank you pulled on Twilight here back when you first met.” Applejack seemed to look down disapprovingly at Handy as if she were his older sister. It’d be funny if Handy wasn’t busy trying to suss out what she was referring to. Then it hit him. The delightful afternoon he had spent feeding the young princess before him mountains of bullshit regarding Earth, and his little scare tactic that he played upon her not long after they were done.

“Oh. Yes,” Handy said in as dignified a manner as he could manage. “My apologies for not immediately recalling. I had other matters on my mind.” He then looked over at the princess, who seemed to be much more still and nervous than she had been before. Briefly he wondered just how rattled he had left her at the time but pushed the thought aside. Time to simply smooth this over and then get the ponies out of here before something regrettable happened. Therefore, he summoned up his most sincere-sounding courtly tone of voice and proceeded to give an apology he didn’t mean in the slightest. “Your Highness, you have my sincerest apologies for my behaviour back then. I am afraid I was still rather sore towards your kingdom for my circumstances at the time, and could not resist the opportunity for the prank as it appeared to me. A form of petty vengeance you understand, but for that, I am sorry.”

The look on the orange pony’s face seemed to sour noticeably as he spoke. However, Twilight’s reaction on the other hand was considerably more relieved.

“I understand,” she said, smiling once again. “If it's all the same, I still want to say how much I am sorry for Rainbow Dash’s actions the other day.”

“Oh come on, Twilight!” Dash whined. Rarity shushed her.

“Think nothing of it it, Princess. I am sorry for all the circumstances that have made this little meeting necessary and my part in them. On behalf of my king, I wish for nothing more than continued good relations between our kingdoms. Please give my regards to your ruling Princesses,” Handy said diplomatically, rushing things to their conclusion and rising from the chair. “If you want, I can arrange for an escort back to the city for you and your entourage.”

“Oh no, my friends and I can handle ourselves.” Twilight waved a hoof. Handy cocked a brow but didn’t comment. Okay, so they were friends then, not servants. Ladies in waiting perhaps? Assuming the Equestrians had a social equivalent.

“Very well, as you wish.” Handy then noticed none of the ponies had moved from their seats. He resisted the urge to frown. “Was… there something else?”

“Oh yes, just a few things if you would be so kind,” Rarity said primly, with her best smile and the tell-tale tone of voice of a woman who wanted to get someone to do ‘just one more thing’ before letting them off the hook. “For starters, Pinkie Pie here has just been dying to know how you and her sister became friends.”

“Fri—?”

“YOU HAVE!?” Suddenly pink. Pink everywhere. Handy backed up and nearly fell back into his seat as Pinkie Pie had seemed to all but fucking teleport from where she sat to just an inch away from Handy’s face. But she hadn’t, Handy had people teleport right in front of him before, hell Twilight did that before. Pinkie Pie was simply one place and then she was at another.

“I... what?”

“Oh, which one? Marble? When did you visit the farm? Marble doesn’t normally like strangers. Oh oh oh, was it Limey? Awww I knew she’d make friends sooner or later. She’s always so standoffish with ponies. Actually, now that I think about it, that doesn’t sound like her either. She’d just growl and push ponies away. It’s not as if she’d be one to go wandering around and meeting pon—” Pinkie sucked in half the room’s air as she suddenly gasped loudly, her eyes widening in realisation. “MAUD!?”

“Maud? You mean she’s your sis—”

“Oh, why didn’t she say something. I mean, we were talking all night before the train trip over here, and I thought for sure if there was anything to talk about she would have—”

“Pinkie!” Twilight suddenly cried. “You weren’t supposed to tell anypony about this!”

“Oopsy?” Pinkie shrunk and smiled sheepishly. Handy’s surprised and confused visage melted away at that and he allowed himself a frown.

“So, I am to take it you had planned on seeking me out from the outset?” Twilight briefly looked away and rubbed the back of her neck in a very unprincessly manner. Handy sighed and glanced out the window. It was getting dark, and Crimson hadn’t come back yet. He had somewhere to be and needed to get this over and done with. He sat back down. “Very well, if we have our apologies exchanged, what else do you want of me, Princess?”

“There’s no need to be snippy, mister,” Applejack said. He ignored her as Twilight cleared her throat.

“Yes, well, I actually came her to ask you for…” she tapped the armrest of the chair in thought, “for a favour of sorts.”

“...A favour,” Handy repeated, his voice flat.

“Yes. I mean, that is if you would be willing to.” Rarity rolled her eyes and muttered something about letting her do the negotiating. Twilight frowned at her but turned back to Handy, her smile hopeful but nervous.

“Princess,” he began, “exactly why would you think I would ever be disposed to doing you or any Equestrian a favour? We are acquit of our differences, are we not? I owe you nothing.”

“I understand that, I do. I know you don’t want anything to do with us but uhh…” She looked over at her friends for support. “It would really mean a lot to us if you could help. I-It could help further the friendship between our two kingdoms!” she hurried to add. Handy was unmoved.

“And say I should consider this. Exactly what is it you would ask of me, Princess?”

“W-Well, it's just… Have you heard about the Dragonlands?” Handy’s face was like flint.

“What about them?” he asked carefully.

“It’s complicated, but... we need somepony to go into them. Not anything dangerous! We just need some help only the dragons can give and uhm…. well… the dragons would respect you because of your reputation but—”

“No,” Handy said simply. Twilight blinked.

“W-Wait, just hear me out!”

“I have, and my answer is no, Princess. I am sure Equestria has resources enough to give you the aid you need. You are a princess, are you not? I am sure there are enough knights in Equestria willing to do your errand for you. I have my duties to my kingdom to consider.”

“I understand that, but you need to listen. We can’t do it ourselves!”

“And why not?” Handy pressed. Twilight played with her tail nervously.

“We tried. The Dragon Lord who borders Equestria is… was a friend. However, things have changed. Ponies are not allowed in; the dragons have all been recalled, plus they don't respect Equestrians any more.”

“And what is it you need from this dragon lord that is so important that you’d be desperate enough to seek me out?” Handy asked.

“Desperate!?” Dash protested before she was hushed by Applejack.

“We… need their help. A friend of ours is sick. They already won't let us in to get the help we need, but we have to bring him there.” Handy paused for a moment and leaned back in the chair, joining his hands as he did so.

“And your friend, I take it, is a dragon?” he asked. There was a palpable silence in the room before she answered him.

“Yes…”

“Then that certainly clarifies matters. My answer is still no.” Twilight looked distraught and the others gave out a variety of weary sighs and disappointed grunts.

“Please,” Twilight begged, “you have to help us. Spike, he… we don’t know what's wrong with him, and I’m afraid…”

Handy didn’t answer, keeping his peace. Pinkie had returned to her friend’s side and placed a hoof on her foreleg for support. Twilight looked down.

“Uhm, excuse me?” a sweet voice broke the silence. Handy turned in surprise. The mare with the light pink mane poked her head from behind the couch the other ponies were seated on. Handy had completely forgotten she was even there when he had first let the small army of ponies into his home. She had kept herself quiet and out of the way this entire time. Hell, he could barely hear her hooves as they struck the floorboards, so softly did she move. “Uhm, if you don’t mind, Spike really could use the help. We know you don’t like dragons all that much. That's okay, I was scared of dragons too for the longest time.”

“What? Madam, I am not scared of dragons,” Handy protested. Rainbow Dash snorted.

“Sure sounds like it…” she said under her breath. Handy favoured her with a caustic sideways glance.

“And that’s okay,” Fluttershy said, “but really, he is quite a young dragon, and he does seem very sick. He really means a lot to us, and we really would be ever so grateful if you could help him out. I know we’re asking much of you, and we don’t mean to be a burden, but we wouldn’t be here if we had other options. I hope you can understand that.”

The sincerity in the mare’s voice was almost disarming, and Handy had to take a moment to recompose himself. He cleared his throat. “I am sorry, but my answer is unchanged.” Handy got back to his feet and studiously ignored the looks on the ponies’ faces as he moved towards the door. “I regret you had to waste your time seeking me out, and I wish you all well and hope you do find a solution to your friend’s ailment.”

He opened the door and gestured to the corridor beyond. The girls hadn’t moved at first, looking over at Twilight, whose face was still downcast, with only the crackling of the fire to fill the silence. Then the first hooves hit the floor. Applejack had left the couch and began walking towards the door, Rainbow Dash following after her. The first two ponies’ faces were nakedly disapproving. Dash’s was hostile; the yellow mare’s face was sad. Pinkie was smiling, mostly trying to cheer up her compatriot. Rarity’s face was studiously neutral as she followed the princess, who had been trailing behind.

Handy stepped out of the way and allowed them all to pass. Twilight slowed as she neared the door, with Rarity overtaking her. She stopped, causing Rarity to look back at her from across the threshold.

“Twilight?” Rarity called, causing the others to stop. Twilight faced her but still looked down, and the last thing Rarity saw before Twilight slammed the door shut was the hard look on her face. Twilight’s horn glowed on the door, and the hammering and shouts of the ponies outside were deafened. Handy took a few steps back, reaching for his hammer in surprise.

“We tried, you know,” Twilight began, her voice level, though brittle somehow. Handy stopped but didn’t release his weapon. It was one pony, sure, and he wasn't about to attack a visiting princess, but he had paid the price for underestimation before. He said nothing as Twilight turned around to face him.

“We tried everything we could. I even tried to go there myself but was stopped every time, as if they were expecting me to do that.” She looked over to the fireplace again, the light dancing in her eyes as she studied the flames. “Fluttershy was right—we really don’t have any other options. The dragons are having none of it. They won't even hear us out.”

The pair were quiet for a moment, the door shaking as the others tried to get back in, but the sound of their yelling and hammering was muted. What alarmed him most, however, was the ponies were trying the handle constantly, but the door wasn't budging. Handy hadn’t even installed a lock on it, yet somehow Twilight’s spell was keeping it shut. Considering the last time the two of them were in a room with a muted door, things did not go well for Twilight, Handy was more than a little wary at the change in circumstances.

“So… Why come to me? Really?” Handy asked after a moment’s silence. Twilight took her time in answering.

“I just thought…” she began, though she trailed off, the look in her face distant. “He’s like a brother to me, you know? I raised him from when he was in an egg. Celestia helped.” She smiled, a fond memory coming across her thoughts. “I’d do anything for him, and I thought you could help him. The dragons would have to let you in, even if only out of curiosity. They’d have to.” She shook her head and looked away back towards the door, pointedly not looking at him. “I realise now how stupid that was. Dangerous. But Spike can't go on his own… not anymore.”

“Why not?” Twilight shrugged. She was quieter now, more distant than she had been earlier. It was almost eerie.

“They won’t let him in either,” she admitted.

“Then why did you think they would treat me any different if they’ll do nothing for their own?” he asked.

“I just thought you would… I don’t know. I don’t know what I thought.” Twilight shook her head and looked back up at him. “I know you don’t think much of me, or us, or of anypony. But I thought you’d do something for something in return.”

“...Like what?” Handy asked carefully.

“A favour,” Twilight answered. “I… I thought I could help you, ever since… Nevermind. Thank you for your time. I’ll be going with my friends. Sorry for bothering you.”

She turned to leave, her horn lighting up as the door opened and her gaggle of worried friends almost barreled into her before she put up a hoof to stop them, silencing their protestations. More than a few of them cast dubious glances Handy’s way before the princess simply insisted they go on, not answering their questions. Handy watched them go, still puzzling through the alicorn’s actions and words.

He lessened his grip on his hammer as he looked outside. It was getting dark, but he had to wait a bit for the princess and her friends to get a head start before he headed into town himself. He went to the front door to wait, and that was right around when he found a very surprised-looking Jacques standing in the snow, his rapier lightly cutting a trail through the inches of deep snow as he went.

“Jacques?” Handy asked, blinking. He had not been anticipating him. The swordspony turned his gaze from the road back into the city as the group of mares crested the rise, and greeted Handy with a very self-satisfied smile.

“Welllll…” he began, rolling his tongue on the word. “Well, well, wellity well, mon ami.”

“What?” Handy asked, frowning at the tone of his voice. Jacques simply shook his head.

“Here I am, wondering how my dear friend Handy was doing and hearing he had finally left the castle.” He shifted as he waved his foreleg in a sweeping gesture. “So I come all the way out here. Because I know just how joyful and happy a stallion you are, I figure you’d appreciate my offer to come into town, go drinking, forget about worries for a while.”

“...And?” Handy gave Jacques a suspicious look.

“And lo and behold, I find out my dear ami Handy already knows how to have a good time, with six beautiful mares strutting out of his home no less.” Handy’s mouth was agape as he tried to word a response to that. Jacques put up his hoof up to stop him. “Say no more, mon frere, I see you are a stallion who likes to keep to himself, and I can respect that. Maybe all that talk about feigned righteous and restraint was to keep up appearances. Say no more, I know the power of a good reputation—I shall say nothing. I’m just so happy you could see things my way eventually, and fine taste I must say.”

Handy kicked the nearest snowdrift into the smartarse’s face, causing Jacques to sputter and shake the snow from his head, still laughing.

“Wise-ass.” Handy sneered. “What are you really here for?”

“Oh, nothing really,” Jacques said as his laughter died off, “I really did come to see if you wanted to go out. Also, to be nosey and see what all this fuss is about your new house,” he added, whistling appreciatively at the manor. Handy relaxed.

“Can’t really, already got plans.” Jacques’ ears perked up in surprise.

“Oh? You never have plans.”

“Ha ha, but really, I’m meeting someone.” Handy turned to see Crimson approaching from the direction of the farms, sans earth ponies. Seemed like they would be staying with his serfs and tenants. “Me and Crimson have an appointment with the King’s Marshal.”

“Ah, government business?” he asked.

“Yes,” Handy lied. “Maybe another time.”

“Ah well, I’ll join you on the walk back to town then. 'Sides, I do so enjoy needling your little mare.” Handy frowned.

“Careful, what I said about messing around with my servants still applies. Besides, remember what happened the last time you fooled around with someone who looked like Crimson?” Handy asked, closing the door to his manor and locking it.

“Very well, yes, and everything turned out better than expected.”

“Yeah, well, Thorax couldn’t make the ground swallow you and then crush you in an instant,” Handy said casually. Jacques held up a hoof.

“Hey hey, I’m only teasing. Besides, she needs to lighten up sooner or later. I don't know how you can stand her morbidity.” Handy thought about that.

“Hmm,” he all but grunted in agreement. “Anyway, you feel like coming with us?”

“Oh no, I’d rather not get roped into another government’s clutches, thank you very much,” Jacques said, which meant Gethrenia’s spymaster had yet to capitalize on the little gypsy despite everything Handy had said. Interesting.

“Alright then, try not to get into too much trouble then,” Handy admonished. Jacques put on a faux hurt look.

“Handy, mon ami, come on,” he said, flashing a winning smile. “This is me we’re talking about.”

--=--

They lost Jacques sometime after making their way back into the city. He had excused himself and disappeared down one street or another while Handy made his way to meet Shortbeak once more as he had promised.

It was a surprisingly difficult promise to fulfil.

“And then what?” the girl asked. Handy found it hard to look at her. It was hard to imagine how anyone in that state could smile. Didn’t it hurt? Nonetheless, he allowed himself a smile for her sake. Whether she could see it or not was immaterial.

“Well, then I had a nice long chat with the princess. It was all very civil,” he said, suppressing a chuckle for effect. “Well, as civil as it can be. She is a very big pony after all. It does not do to make someone who weighs twice as much as you angry.”

That got a small laugh out of her. Amelia coughed a bit, and Handy’s smile shrank a little and apprehension briefly crawled along his skin. She recovered after clearing her throat.

“Sorry, did you call her fat?” she asked.

“Heavens no. I am nothing if not a gentleman,” he lied. She chuckled again. “Well, as much as I can be. But that aside, we got along quite well.”

“Really?”

“Really really. After everything, we had a happy ending after all,” he said, grossly glossing over the matter for her. He had been doing a lot of that. There was no reason to depress the girl with the full truth, and he had turned to embellishing some parts and dramatising others as he told the story. She had been enjoying it immensely.

Shortbeak had excused herself after a while, leaving Handy to entertain the sick griffon without interruption. He had lost himself in the process of telling his story, all the while trying not to think too hard about the hard, grey substance that was slowly consuming the griffon in front of him. She was much smaller than Shortbeak now that he thought about it, but she couldn’t have been too much younger than her. How long had she been bound to this bed?

“Then what happened?”

“Oh, and then we got to go met the old King of Firthengart.” The door opened and Handy glanced around to see Shortbeak carefully move back into the room. “To tell him the truth about the pirate ring.”

“Pirate ring?” Shortbeak asked in an amused whisper. Handy shushed her with a finger to his lips.

“Sounds better,” he explained.

“She’s not a child, Handy,” Shortbeak admonished

“You’re never too old for a good story.”

“Hey, what are you two whispering about?” Amelia asked.

“Your sister was just being nosey.”

“What?” she asked.

“Feely,” Amelia started with a frown, “can you at least wait long enough for me to get a good story out of him before you chase away another young suitor? I’m not a kid anymore.”

“What!?” Shortbeak squawked. Handy just laughed.

“It’s alright, we were just about done. I kind of started off with the pirate ring anyway.

“Hey hey, wait, what happened to that pony with you? The one with the sword?” Amelia asked.

“Oh, he’s around somewhere.” Handy stood up. “I brought someone else to see you.”

“Oh? Who?” Amelia asked.

“Was this that pony you left downstairs with Mimae?” Shortbeak asked after tutting her sister for her teasing.

“Aye, the same. You remember Crimson, right?” Amelia all but sat up, before trying her best to settle herself back in the bed, the illness all but completely immobilizing her. It was painful to watch, and Handy swore he saw Shortbeak’s face shift slightly at the sight.

“The wizard who traveled with you!? She’s here!?” she asked excitedly.

“The very same,” Handy confirmed. “Would you like to meet her?”

“Yes! I have so much to ask her!” Amelia said happily.

“Alright then. Now mind she’s shy and may seem a bit unfriendly at first.”

“I remember from what you told me. She takes no nonsense. I like her.”

“Alright then. That okay with you, Shortbeak?” Handy asked. Shortbeak hesitated. She wiped a claw over the black feathers of her head in worry, looking at her sister. He had explained to her that it would probably be best to at least let Amelia have someone regular to talk to other than herself and her caretaker. It was not an easy thing to sell. From what Handy knew of the sickness Amelia had, it appeared very similar to an old plague that had decimated the continent once upon a yesteryear, yet not contagious. The more people who knew of her affliction, the more dangerous things would be for her, and Shortbeak had to undergo the horror of Geoffrey finding out about her and using her safety as leverage on her. She was right to be fearful and paranoid, so Handy elected to expose her to someone he knew for a fact could keep a secret, by force if necessary.

Besides, Crimson needed to get out more.

“I… I guess,” Shortbeak conceded, seeing Amelia’s smile. Handy nodded his head once and opened the door.

“Crimson?” he called. A short while later and the tell-tale clop of hooves on wood sounded up to them until Crimson poked her head into the room. She wore her typical neutral expression she did whenever there were more people in the room than Handy. Her mask cracked when she spotted Amelia into a mixture of shock and surprise.

“Sir?” she asked. Handy had explained the situation to Crimson as best he could when he was sure no one had been within earshot when they had walked here, but the sight of Amelia had still been more than enough to shock anyone, it seemed.

“There you are. Crimson. There’s someone here who would like to meet you,” Handy said gently, stepping away from the bedside chair. Crimson cautiously approached the bed, looking back once at Handy before taking her place on the chair.

“Uh… hello.” Amelia smiled.

“Hello. Your name is Crimson, I take it?”

“Yes,” she said, her neutral tone never wavering.

“I’ve heard a lot about you.”

“You have?” Crimson asked skeptically.

“Yeah, I heard you were a powerful wizard.”

“I… I am proficient in the magical arts, yes.”

“I had an interest in magic once, but that was a long time ago. Didn’t really work out.” Amelia smiled sadly. “Handy told me about how you rescued him from the changelings.”

“What?” Crimson turned to look back at Handy. He said nothing, looking at Crimson expectantly as he stood there with Shortbeak. “I mean… I certainly helped him, yes.”

“Nah, tell me about how you escaped kidnapping and fought your way through a desert to break into the changeling city.”

“I didn’t really do all that much.” Crimson looked down.

“That's not true!” Amelia said excitedly. “You animated the skeleton of a giant dragon and laid siege to the changeling ziggurat!”

“Is that true?” Shortbeak asked Handy, her voice low. Handy nodded.

“More or less. It was a hell of a sight. If she hadn't done that, I’d have been swamped.”

“Well… I did do that, true. It wasn’t easy. But uh… what's your name?” Crimson asked by ways of deflecting the topic.

“Amelia,” she said with a smile, holding out her good claw. She couldn’t move the elbow, but the gesture was obvious. “It's an honour to meet you.”

Crimson hesitated, looking at the claw, glancing to the side a few times before gingerly reaching her hoof forward to shake the claw.

“Crimson Shade,” she managed after a moment. Amelia chuckled.

“I gathered. It’s a pretty name. So, can you tell me how you and Sir Handy met?”

“Uh… sure?” Crimson asked, looking back at Handy. Handy’s eyes widened slightly. It was all she needed to keep a lid on it. “We actually first met in a frontier town on the Badlands…”

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Shortbeak asked Handy as Crimson began stumbling her way through her first proper attempt at storytelling that wasn't a convenient, short term lie.

“How long has Amelia been on her own?” Handy asked.

“What?”

“You’ve been dragging her all over Griffonia, terrified someone would find out about her, kept her away from everyone with only yourself and maybe the odd caretaker for company. No wonder she was so excited to hear some stories.”

“I… I didn’t mean―”

“I am not blaming you. In fact, it's a compliment you trusted me enough to bring me here just so you could fulfil a promise to her. I’m just saying that she probably needs more than just her sister and some random like me to keep her company.”

“So… you brought your wizard pony?” she asked as the pair left the room. Handy nodded.

“Your sister needs a friend, and my wizard needs to get out of her basement more.” Handy rubbed his left wrist and chewed the inside of his cheek in thought for a moment before continuing, “I admit, I had an ulterior motive. Crimson is… something of an expert on dark magic and its effects.” Shortbeak’s eyes went wide, and Handy held up a hand to forestall her. “And before you object, I want you to know something.”

“What?” Shortbeak had gained a hard edge in her voice.

“I trust Crimson with my life, and I am even less of a people person than you.”

“And that’s supposed to reassure me?” Shortbeak looked back at the door to the room.

“Shortbeak, it's me. When do I trust anyone with anything?” Handy pointed out. Shortbeak didn’t look entirely convinced. “Look, Crimson is the most secretive person I know. I trust her not to hurt your sister the same way I trust her never to turn on me. If you can trust me, you can trust her.”

“But… I just don’t want Amelia exposed to any more dark magic,” Shortbeak muttered, looking down.

“I already discussed it with Crimson beforehand. She’ll never practice it right in front of her. She’s just there to keep her company from time to time and spend time researching a cure. I think she can share a perspective on this you may not get anywhere else, and I’ve put resources aside for her use. The worst that can happen is nothing. Crimson won’t endanger her.”

The pair stopped as they heard the pair laugh from the room. Handy had never heard Crimson laugh before and briefly wondered what they were talking about to bring that about. Shortbeak’s face was expressionless for some time. Handy allowed her the time to think.

“I’d do anything for my sister.” Handy said nothing while she continued to stare at the door. It was partially ajar, letting a little of the light to spill into the dark corridor along with the sounds of the two girls talking. She shook her head before looking up at Handy, studying his face. “I’ll trust you on this. You promise me nothing will harm my sister because of it?”

“I swear,” Handy said. “I’ll do you one better, Crimson will make sure nothing bad happens to her.”

“Really?”

“So long as she has a say in the matter, she won’t,” Handy said, noticing the more animated speech coming from the room. “And she won’t have access to her either you nor Mimae won’t allow.”

Shortbeak seemed to be chewing the lip of her beak. It was an impressive action and a further reminder to Handy about the annoying physiology of the griffons around him. She seemed to have come to a conclusion.

“Alright. I’ll allow it, for now,” she finally said. “Are you sure she can find something to help?”

“To be honest, I have no idea. Still, I’m making it a point to find strange magics for my own purposes. Crimson is a part of that, and she knows more than I do. She might be able to point you in the right direction if nothing else.”

“Alright, Handy, if you’re sure.”

“I’m sure,” he replied.

“You two want some soup?” Mimae called up from down the stairs. Shortbeak smiled down at her while Handy shook his head.

“No thank you, Mimae.” He turned back to Shortbeak. “Well, I had better go. Crimson will stay a while.”

“Right. And… thanks, Handy.”

“Think nothing of it.” Handy turned to walk down the steps. “Let me know if you need anything else.”

He waved to Mimae in the centre room without saying a word. The blind griffon didn’t wave back but bade him farewell nonetheless upon hearing his boots hit the floor. He was then left to his thoughts as he walked through the streets of Skymount, heading towards home.

He really hoped he had made the right judgement with Crimson. He knew she’d never disobey him and hurt Amelia, but there was no guarantee she would hit it off with the girl. Still, she really did need to get out more, though he knew there was hypocrisy in doing that given how he felt about people in particular. However, there was a difference between Handy and Crimson in that respect. At least Handy actually had exposure to society before he turned his back on it. Crimson was just broken, and easily threatened. He couldn’t just take her out on a bender with him and Jacques and hope for the best.

Still, that was making a lot of assumptions. He wasn’t sure if Amelia was the best option, even if she was literally tied to a bed and less of a threat to Crimson than the common cold. However, it gave her a purpose outside of serving Handy directly and made her interact with other people regularly on a somewhat equal manner, rather than the superior-subordinate relationship Crimson seemed to interpret everything as.

If nothing else, at least she might be able to help the poor girl. Handy suppressed a shudder and wrote it off as the cold getting to him. He was reminded of Shortbeak’s words about needing others to drag him to get the help he needed because he was too stubborn to do so himself. Perhaps this was exactly what Crimson needed? Only time would tell.

He continued on through the city. The streets were surprisingly empty tonight, so he was mostly alone with his thoughts. The burning candles of the lamps illuminated the streets and cast stark, flickering shadows everywhere as the snow continued to softly fall. He reached a crossroads leading to the main bridge across the Opaltear River, his ordinary route back to his manor on his left, and the city centre and castle to his right.

He looked at the bridge and the empty boulevard of the marketplace before it for a time. His conversation with the High King lingered in his mind, as well as everything else that had happened that day. He considered his immediate future and what he’d need to do and accomplish in order to actually achieve his goals.

And then he realised how much of that was being hampered by his own pride.

He could follow that pride, and simply do nothing about it and continue blindly bullying his way through things without heed nor care for the feelings of others, traipsing back home and leaving things as they were, and let whatever doors were open to him close on his face. Conversely, he could keep his options open for longer and swallow his pride until he got what he needed done. He wondered which was more valuable to him right then, and which perils were worth suffering through.

He sighed and turned away from the bridge and the trail back home, and faced the castle. He looked up and saw the castle illuminated with innumerable lights in the winter’s night, and wondered whether he had one more trip up those godforsaken stairs in him.

--=--

“Joachim, you are drunk,” Handy said.

“No I’m not,” the king said defiantly, refilling his goblet. Handy eyed the three pitchers of wine on the table, mostly empty. How the fuck was that griffon still standing, much less speaking coherently?

“How long have you been drinking?” Handy asked.

“Since the ponies and their… whatever that was downstairs.”

“The party?”

“Sure, that. One moment it was all tense, and I was working myself up to prepare for a full day of diplomatic disaster to cap off my week, then something pink happened.” Joachim seemed confused even though he was there for every second of the experience. “That earth pony is weird.”

“All ponies are weird.” Joachim snorted.

“You’re one to talk.”

“Joachim.”

“I know, I know, I’m…” He put down the goblet and fell back into the large chair by the window. “I’m just tired, Handy. About everything.”

Handy walked over and, while Joachim had his claw over his face in exasperation, scooped up the goblet of wine.

And tossed its contents into the still unlit fireplace.

“Hey!”

“Drinking is not going to solve anything, Joachim.” Handy placed the cup on the table behind him and sat on its edge.

“Well, it’ll help me cope at the least!” Joachim shouted.

“Cope with what? All it’s doing is making you angry and stupid,” Handy commented calmly.

“What do you think!? This year hasn’t been all sunshine and roses for me! I’m allowed to drink myself into oblivion so long as I fulfil my duties. What’s it to you?”

“You are my friend.” Joachim guffawed.

“Yeah, I’m sure.”

“I mean it, Joachim.”

“How about you show it?” The remark bit, but Handy held back the retort on his tongue. He had thought about it. It still rankled him that Joachim had publicly demoted him, misguided as it was. He looked off to the side, rotating his jaw in thought. There was a large part of him that wanted to just cut everything and walk away and damn it all. He liked that part; it had kept him alive, and he would hold onto it for as long as it did him good.

However, he wasn’t sure if it really was the best thing for the job at hand. He looked at the bird for a moment, thinking to himself. It wasn’t enough that he could rationally understand what Joachim did. It was practical; on one level, he could understand it, and if he were in his shoes, he’d probably even do the same thing. The problem was why Joachim did what he did, and that was the difference between the two of them. Handy was almost entirely selfish, whereas Joachim was a touch too selfless for his own good, even to the point of alienating his own best friend if he thought it was what was best for the kingdom.

He weighed whether or not that trait was worth having in a friend, then decided whether that kind of judgement mattered.

“I’m sorry,” Handy said after a moment. Joachim blinked.

“What?”

“There, I said it.” Handy crossed his arms. “I am not repeating myself.”

“Sorry... for what?” Joachim asked, still blinking. Handy shifted and let out a breath.

“Sorry… I have been such an ass to you.”

“You haven’t been acting like a donkey.”

“Oh, don't be fucking obtuse, you know what I mean. Look, I’ve been thinking, and yes, I am still pissed at what you did. I don’t care why you did it, and yes, I still resent you for it. For all of that… I admit that I haven't been that great of a friend personally as I could have been. I should have been more upfront about what was going on behind everything... Maybe if I had been honest about everything about the Mistress, old magic, the reasons why I have that pony mage following me around… I don’t know.”

Joachim didn’t say anything, but he slumped back in his chair. He sighed for a bit and eyed the pitcher of wine longingly.

“You know, I was worried when you asked for an audience that you were going to tear my head off.” Handy nodded.

“It was on my list, but I am tired from walking around in this armour all day.” Joachim chuckled.

“Excuses.” He waved a claw. “Speaking of excuses, I’ve been making too many of them.” He sat up and pushed himself off of the chair.

“At the end of the day, our friendship aside, you have served me as best as you are able. I literally owe my kingdom to you.”

“And your life.”

“Details,” Joachim said as he went to refill his goblet again, and Handy looked at him. He glanced at the human, then at the wine and back again. Sighing, he put the empty goblet back down. “Spoilsport.”

“It’s literally my job to look after you. I imagine that includes protection from raging hangovers come morning. Speaking of headaches, what was the deal with you and the High King? With the kid?”

“Oh All Maker, that’s a long story.” Joachim waved the question away. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Done.” Joachim snorted as he sat back in the chair with a foreleg over his face. “But as for the Equestrian headache...”

“I heard they had visited you today?” Joachim asked, lifting his leg to look at Handy.

“They did. Apologies were traded. I was very well behaved, I promise.” Joachim glared at him. “Honest.”

“You accepted the blue one’s apology?”

“Begrudgingly,” Handy said through gritted teeth. “I assume by the fact she was out of the dungeons means the Equestrians made a deal for her freedom?”

“Oh yes.”

“Did it at least cost them?”

“Oh, yes.” Joachim chuckled, Handy nodded.

“Good. I can live with that.” The two sat in silence for a few moments, digesting what had been spoken. Joachim was the first to break the silence.

“But I mean that. I am sorry, Handy, and I wish I could make it up to you.”

“...Perhaps there’s a way you can,” Handy said thoughtfully.

“Oh yeah, and how? You want your old title back?”

“Actually, no. The position of Sword, as useful as it is, was more trouble than it's worth. I want something else.”

“Land? Another title?”

“No. Tempting, but no. I want something else from you.”

“What is it?” Johan asked with a touch of exasperation.

“Two things. The first, and I need you to trust me on this one, I need a Gryphonic equivalent to the writ of passage I managed to get out of Celestia.” Joachim cocked his head.

“What, are you planning on abandoning everything and becoming a sky merchant?”

“I don't have nearly enough of a head for the numbers involved. No, I merely wish for it to cover my travel over griffon lands and to grant further legitimacy to my rights.”

“Why?”

“In case my hunt for the Mistress brings me over some of the other lands of Griffonia. Anything that lessens difficulty in doing that is a plus in my book,” Handy explained.

“Alright… Odd, but doable. And the second thing?” Joachim asked.

“When we go to the delegation tomorrow, whatever I do, I need you to roll with me.” That caused Joachim to freeze.

“What are you going to do, Handy?”

“Do you trust me?” Joachim opened his beak to respond but closed it, thinking hard for a moment. “Well?”

“...Yes. Yes, I do. All-Maker help me, but I do. Fine, just…”

“Just what?” Handy asked, smiling.

“Don’t… do whatever it is you do that causes countries to collapse.”

“I promise nothing.”

--=--

The Equestrian delegation had been, by most measures, a success. They were received warmly, platitudes were exchanged, gifts accepted gratefully, and everybody got along with smiles, laughter, and God knew how many private business deals. The delegation, after all, had more than a few traders in its midst and quite a few professionals who’d be staying in Gethrenia on various contracts. King Johan, in return, allowed griffon merchants and tradesmen to return with them to Equestria with similar commissions and allowances. Princess Katherine had said all the right niceties and invitations to Firthengart as a good diplomat should, and the massive presence of the High King had all but cemented the Gryphonic seal of approval on the entire affair.

It was the last day of the delegation, and Handy had made himself scarce for most of it. After all, it wouldn’t do to put anybody on edge with his presence before it was strictly necessary. He had been putting his powers to use and simply meandering his way about the city disguised as a plain-looking grey griffon with a scarf using his glamour. Practice made perfect after all, and this was as good an excuse as any.

He found the princess and her little gaggle of friends wandering through one of the marketplaces, heading towards the train station at the centre of town. He all but froze when he saw the dragon following along beside them. He quickly shook it off and hurried into a side street to refocus on his glamour more. The last thing he wanted was to draw their attention because he dropped the disguise because he lost focus like an idiot.

He walked back out once he was sure he had his focus back and calmly studied the group as they made their way through the city. He wasn’t close enough to hear their conversation, but he got a good look at the dragon. It was taller than the ponies but was the shortest dragon Handy had ever seen. About a foot shorter than Handy was tall at the least, it was rather on the wiry side, but he had no idea if that was normal for dragons his age or not. One thing was for certain, he definitely lacked the ferocious countenance of the dragon he had fought at the festival months ago. No wings, no horns, just rounded green spines running down its head to its tail. That was bizarre. Could dragons be wingless?

The drake was following along beside the princess with a quill and scroll, apparently asking questions. The alicorn seemed… deflated somehow, even though she smiled at the dragon as they talked. The others were doing their best to look around them and trade smalltalk, but Handy could see their worried looks. All except the pink one, who was smiling for some reason and literally pronking along behind the group. She seemed to be humming to herself as if she hadn’t a care in the world.

She paused for a minute, going wide-eyed and scratching the fetlock of her left foreleg intensely for a second before looking around her expectantly for a moment before prancing along to catch up with her cohorts. Odd.

Well, that accounted for where they were, and so Handy headed back to the train station. Sadly, no matter how hard he tried, he could not find Fancy Pants again. The pony really did seem to have found his own way back to Equestria. He couldn’t find Maud either, which was mildly disappointing. If her sister was that close to an Equestrian princess, she would have been a fantastic contact to cultivate.

He settled himself near the stage set up beside the station where the last ceremonies would be taking place. It was there Handy saw more photographers than he had even seen since coming to this world. Most of them were similar to those ancient flash cameras you saw in old movies, with the tall stands filled with a heap of powder and a cover for the photographer's head. Surprisingly, most of them didn’t have a tripod to hold them up, but were rather held to the photographers by a simple harness around their neck. Hell, he even saw one that was made of wood—must have been some poor desperate paper slate that wanted a piece of the story.

Ah well, it was all immaterial as far as he was concerned.

The festive atmosphere continued on until mid-afternoon, when the trumpets declared the arrival of the king and his entourage. Surprisingly, he opted for a landing arrival from the castle rather than a procession through the streets. There was probably some functionary somewhere blowing a gasket at the change in protocol. That should be good for a laugh with the castle staff when all was said and done. Well, at least Handy knew why the guard griffons were keeping a large stretch of the thoroughfare clear.

Joachim’s chariot landed with relative ease, and Handy’s stomach squirmed at the memory of when he had shared a chariot flight with him. He feared neither heights nor flying, but somehow that damn thing turned his stomach. Briefly, he wondered how they got those things to land without immediately crashing into the ground as the pullers decelerated.

There was swell of cheers from the citizens of Skymount when Johan hopped off and made his way to greet the Equestrian dignitaries one last time before sending them off on their journey back home. Handy discretely made his way to a street behind the stage before dropping the glamour. Nobody was going to let a random griffon approach the stage, after all.

Johan made a speech for the benefit of the crowd as Handy approached, paying no mind as the griffons parted when they saw him approach. One of the guards thought about halting him approaching the stage, but thought better of it when Handy gave him a look.

“Friends, on behalf of all of us here in Griffonia, I am honoured to say it has been a pleasure to receive you with open wings, and we gratefully accept Equestria’s outstretched hoof of friendship,” King Johan said to the gathered crowd. Princess Twilight was standing on the stage beside him as he spoke, and a few of the photographers flashed their pieces as they snapped their frontpage picture for the printing presses. “And may we always enjoy as close and as open a relationship as we do now.”

Johan stepped aside as Princess Twilight approached the podium to speak.

“Thank you, your Majesty,” she said, smiling brightly. “When I came to your beautiful country, it was on a mission of peace and friendship. It warms my heart to see you all gathered together in friendship and harmony and that you have accepted us with such openness and wholeheartedness.”

Johan kept his royal smile on his as he casually scanned the crowd, searching for something. That was Handy’s cue; the princess was distracted and Joachim was actively looking for him, seeing what he was going to pull. Johan’s nerves were getting to him as he tapped the stage, evidently fearing that Handy would pull some grandstanding show or another.

Honestly, this would have gone a lot smoother if Handy had simply told Joachim what he was going to do today, and while a part of him regretted not doing so, another part enjoyed seeing his friend squirm. In the end, though, that wasn't why he kept his mouth shut. Joachim was placing his trust in him, and what was more, he had told him to prove he was a friend. To keep his trust, that was exactly what Handy planned on doing. Friends don’t make friends look bad, now do they?

Handy stepped up on the side of the stage. A few of the crowd had noticed him there, but most of the attention was still focused on the pony princess’ speech. Joachim turned when he noticed the guards shift behind him and looked at Handy in surprise. Handy gave him a reassuring smile before bending down to whisper into his ear. Johan cocked a brow, then asked if Handy was serious. He simply smiled and left it for Johan to figure out. The griffon gave him an incredulous look but quickly recomposed himself as Twilight seemed to be drawing near the end of her speech. He gave one last, uncertain glance to Handy before resolving himself to his task.

“—And I am glad to leave Skymount with such happy memories and to have made so many new friends to remember during my journey home. I am sure we have laid the seeds for a fruitful future to come for both of our kingdoms!” she finished to applause and more photography, stepping back from the podium to smile back at the king. Her smile dropped when she noticed Handy standing at the side of the stage. He wore a stoney face that gave nothing away.

Johan stepped forward, smiling and with a sweeping gesture indicated the gathered crowd as he began the final farewells as was his right as host.

“As one last gift to solidify the friendship between our two realms and to show Gethrenia’s commitment and sincere intent to repair relations, I have elected to acquiesce to Equestria’s special request for aid.” Princess Twilight now focused squarely on Johan in alarm as the crowd began murmuring. Good old Joachim, milking it for what it was worth. Johan turned to Twilight. “As you wish, Princess Twilight, and after consulting with my council, I entrust to you the temporary services of one of my royal knights.”

Twilight’s mouth remained open. One could practically see the gears turn in her head as she looked from the king to Handy. He took that opportunity to step forward. He strode and bowed to Twilight. It was against Griffonian law for a knight of the realm, royal, hereditary, or otherwise to kneel before a foreign sovereign for any reason. That suited Handy absolutely fine.

“Your Highness,” he began, smiling slightly as he watched the photographers furiously stumble to refill the powder on their stands out of the corner of his eye. “It is my honour and pleasure to aid you in your endeavour on behalf of king and country. I can only hope you would accept my lord’s help.”

“I, uh, yes. Yes, of course!” Twilight said happily. She still had this odd look of confusion on her face, “I-I thought, I mean, didn’t you— Ahem, right. Yes, I uhm, graciously accept your kind offer. Em, your Majesty,” she added, giving a slight nod of the head to Johan. Johan kept his regal mask perfectly throughout the exchange, and Handy happily withdrew before the flash photography started again after the frontline finished reloading.

He went behind the stage as the king went on with the last of the farewells for the peanut gallery. The stage’s back was covered by a curtain to disguise the sootstained train station behind it, Handy opted to walk the thin space between the two structures to avoid the crowd out front and those gathered on the station platform for the next train heading to Equestria. He thought of putting on the glamour again and slipping back into the crowd and letting good old Joachim to handle that little diplomatic fallout for him.

It could’ve looked bad if Handy had done anything himself, for both the king and for Handy himself. Had he approached Twilight in private, it would have looked like he was crawling back to them. Had he interrupted them on stage, it would have appeared all kinds of bad, so he did the best way he could: he left it in Joachim’s claws to spin it to his best interests. To the Equestrians, it looked like he put the pressure on Handy, regardless of whether they had made the request of the king himself or not, and it kept up the fiction Handy was under the griffon’s strict control on a public stage.

There was also the possibility people could take it the Equestrians pressured Gethrenia somehow to at least, in some way, get their hooves on Handy. However, little Twilight solved that problem very nicely with her obvious shock, surprise and stuttering. Shame there were few pictures taken of that, but it would definitely be reported. This would clearly be seen as a Gryphonic gesture as a result. Besides, it—

“CALLED IT!”

“JESUS CHRIST!” Handy backed up and drew his hammer out in a flash in raw shock as Pinkie Pie popped out of the window of the station beside him, hanging upside down from her side and swinging in front of Handy’s face, hoof to his nose, a wide smile plastered on her frizzy-maned head. She dropped down with a skipping twirl. Handy wasn’t even sure how she did that, but that nonsense was succeeded by the pink pony doing a little happy hoofy dance in the snow and blocking his escape.

“Calleditcalleditcalleditcalledit~” she singsonged, before stopping and looking up at Handy happily. Handy blinked and looked up at the window she had come from. It was closed, but he didn't hear it slam shut. “I told the girls that everything would work out fine, but they didn’t believe me, which I can’t blame them for because at one point even I didn’t believe me, which is silly, but it happened anyway, but then I had a Pinkie Sense that something good was going to happen anyway, so I just went along with with it—”

“Where did you come from?” Handy asked.

“Oh, silly.” She waved a hoof. “That’s not important. It’s where we’re going that matters.” She bounced off along the path towards the side of the stage where Handy had, back when sanity once ruled his world, planned on making a neat exit into the anonymity of the crowd. Now that the speeches seemed to be finished and the crowd was meandering to and fro, he was left with little chance of capitalizing on the main distraction to keep himself from being unnoticed, especially not with the pink pony waiting patiently for him at the stage side. He looked behind and above him, just in case any more mystically appearing ponies popped out of thin air or something. He hooked his hammer, turned, and walked the opposite way.

And walked right out of the space between stage and station to find the energetic pink pony waving down a familiar group of ponies excitedly. Handy’s eyes widened, and he looked back and forth to where he last saw her. She was gone. How fast was she to get where she was now? She turned to face him as her friends began trekking their way over.

"Now did you mean all that?" Pinkie asked.

"Meant what?"

"On the stage, what you said about helping." She asked, leaning her head closer, smiling widely.

"I... Of course why would you-"

"You promise?"

"Promise?

"Do you Pinkie Promise you'll help us?" she asked.

"I don't see what a pinkie promise has to do with anything." he replied, she gasped excitedly.

"You already knew what a pinkie promise is!?"

"I think every child knows, ma'am, now if you'll excuse me-"

"Cross my heart, hope to fly stick a cupcake in my eye!" Pinkie mimed some horrifying contortion act which ended with her hoof all but punching her in the eye. Handy stared blankly at her.

"What was that?"

"A Pinkie Promise!" she replied.

"That's... That's not how they're made." he said, she frowned.

"It's not? Then how is it made?" Handy frowned at her and held up one hand with his little finger extended. She blinked a few times, then smiled widely.

"I'll take it!" she said, reaching up and shaking it with the crook of her hoof before Handy could react, she then let go and bounded just a little off to the side. He grimaced at the situation as the ponies drew closer. The dragon was following as well but keeping a wary distance behind them. He looked around. Joachim looked like he was wandering off somewhere. He sighed. Well, if he was left to negotiate his price with the inexperienced princess, all the better.

“Well howdy, lookie here.” Applejack leered as the group approached. “I reckon y’all had a change of heart after all.”

“Yeah, well, I still think he’s a jerk.” Rainbow Dash obnoxiously flew low to the ground and disturbed everyone’s hair with the gusts kicked up by her wings. None of the ponies seemed to mind, however.

“Rainbow, hush,” Rarity said, admonishing her friend. “This gentlestallion has kindly decided to help out.”

“Oh come on, he’s only helping because his king is making him!” Dash replied.

“And we should be grateful nonetheless.” She turned to smile at Handy. “Isn’t that right, my dear knight?”

“Quite,” Handy confirmed as they closed in, looking up and trying to avoid the far-too-happy face of the princess. He breathed in deep through his nose. “I suppose this young fellow is the dragon in question?”

“Uh…” Spike froze. “Uhm, hello.”

“This is Spike,” Twilight said happily, gesturing to the young drake. Fluttershy nudged him with her head to get him to step forward and into the embrace of Twilight’s squeezing one-legged hug. Spike looked up at Handy with something approaching pants-shitting terror. That was gratifying. It seemed at least one of the people present took the Dragonslayer title seriously. “He’s the one we were talking about. Spike, Handy here has agreed to help you get to the dragonlands.”

“What!?” Spike’s demeanour broke at that, and he turned and looked at the princess. “Twilight, I told you a million times that I’m fine. I don’t need help, and certainly not from them,” he said, crossing his arms and looking angrily to the side.

“Spike, you need help. You’re sick,” Twilight said, her ears flat against her head.

“I’m fine. I don’t need any help,” the dragon replied in a huff. His childishness was irritating Handy, but he kept his peace as he watched the scene play out. Rarity stepped forward and put her hoof on his shoulder.

“Spike, darling,” she said in a reassuring tone, “there’s no shame in admitting you need help. You know something’s wrong, and we’re only trying to do what’s best for you. We came all this way to try to get you this one chance to see the ponies… dragons rather, who can help you. Can you not at least give this a try, for Twilight’s sake if not your own?”

Spike looked down at that, before glancing up at Handy and then quickly to the pleading look in Twilight’s face.

“Okay… I’ll… I’ll go with him to the Dragonlands. I don’t see what good it’d do because…” He looked up at Handy for a minute before looking back down again. “Because you know...”

“Oh thank you, Spike!” Twilight exclaimed, squeezing him in a hug. The pink pony seemed to explode into a small shower of confetti and was blowing on a party horn before it was plucked from her mouth by Rainbow Dash.

“Nuh-uh, no time, Pinkie, maybe later,” Dash said. Pinkie almost visibly deflated with a dejected ‘Awww’. Handy turned his mind away from wondering where the hell she got the party poppers from and turned back to the princess.

“I assume you know we will not be leaving right away,” Handy explained. “It is still winter, and I need to prepare. I propose I shall come to Equestria and pick you up come spring. Will that suffice?”

“Uhm, sure?” Spike said uncertainly.

“That’ll be fine!” Twilight beamed. “You can stop by Ponyville and then head on to the Dragonlands from there.”

“That will do then. Now, your Highness, I will need to speak to you alone regarding what my king expects in return for this service.”

“Oh uh, of course.” Twilight laughed, looking at her friends nervously for a moment. “Where exactly?”

“By the stage should suffice. I would be most grateful if your friends could remain a respectable distance away but somewhere in sight, if you would.” Her friends looked at her. She nodded, and they made their way some distance from the stage while Handy walked closer to it, just on the very corner so he could ensure there was no one behind the stage nor on the stage who could eavesdrop and that they were well in sight. Twilight stepped closer, looking around and rubbing her foreleg nervously.

“Is this okay? Here?”

“It’ll do.” Handy looked down at her sternly. “I hope you realise exactly how much this is going to cost you.”

“I uh… of course. A favour, a big favour,” Twilight said.

“And do you fully comprehend how big?” Twilight said nothing. “Everything you told me yesterday tells me three things: you used to be able to go into the Dragonlands, whether you were wanted or not; the dragons do not respect status nor kinship in keeping everyone out of it, and that you are betting everything on my status of dragonslayer as being of note enough to at least make the dragons curious despite their sudden bout of extreme xenophobia.”

“Uh… well, if you put it that way…”

“And thus, this is more dangerous than it normally is, hence your desperation to seek me out for the sake of your friend. Do you know, Princess, what I am going to be asking of you in return?”

“I… guess I am about to find out?” she asked, wincing in anticipation.

“Gold,” Handy said. “A rather substantial amount. Or the same value in gems if you’d like.”

Twilight visibly relaxed.

“For starters,” he said, causing her ears to perk up once more. “I am aware that Equestria’s magical knowledge and advancements far outstrips Gethrenia’s, and I would require access to such for my own research purposes.”

“Research?” Twilight said, her interest piqued.

“Worry about that later. What immediately should be of interest to you, because you have hinted as much when we talked, is some manner of aid in my… affliction.”

“But… I don’t have anything to begin on doing that.”

“I’ll provide what is needed on my half. I just need your word on the aid you’ll bring to the table.”

“I guess I can do this,” Twilight said uncertainly, rubbing the side of her neck. “Is that all?”

“No. I will require something for my own benefit that would take too long to explain in depth. A pint. Of Alicorn blood.”

“What!?” Twilight cried out in alarm, her friends suddenly taking note. Handy raised his hand placatingly.

“It doesn’t have to be yours. I can even supply the containers to keep it fresh if you’d like.”

“I just... You can’t be serious!?” Handy’s expression was deadpan.

“Princess, I am a blood-sucking abomination unto God, courtesy of no less than your own kingdom. I am quite serious.”

“...Alright. Alright, I think I can give that. Can you wait until after?”

“We’ll see,” Handy replied. “One more thing.”

“There’s more?” Twilight all but whined. Handy looked up at the dragon in thought for a minute, bracing himself for the decision.

“One year,” he said at last. Twilight cocked her head.

“A year? A year of what?”

“Service. If I do this, I would require the services of your young dragon for a year.”

“What? Thats ridiculous!” she decried. “No, I can’t agree to that.”

“Fine, get another dragonslayer to hop the border for you,” Handy said airily. “Go back on your word up on that stage before God and everybody.”

“I… I can’t!” Twilight said. “I don’t own him! I can’t just do that to him!”

“Sounds like it's not my problem to resolve. Those are my demands. Take them or leave them.”

She stomped her foot down. “No, I’m not accepting this. You’re asking for too much!”

“I am asking after my own interest, Princess,” Handy said calmly. “What is a year of service aiding in my research to his health? I would have a vested interest in seeing him through the Dragonlands, would I not?”

“That’s not the point!”

“That is precisely the point. He wouldn’t be a slave, and I guarantee you his safety, or how do you think my kingdom would look if I went back on my word? Besides, is it not hypocritical of you to ask of another to risk their life, nay, to accept the services of one who is sworn to serve another, but then refuse to return the favour when it is asked?”

“I… I… That’s not fair!” Twilight protested.

“Life rarely is, your Highness. But soothe your own worries if you must. Spike is a free dragon, is he not? Ask him.” Twilight looked back at Spike and bit her lip in thought as she saw him coughing once again. She turned back up and looked at Handy angrily.

“You’re a piece of work, do you know that?”

“Amongst many other things, Princess. Take your time.” Twilight sighed and walked off towards Spike. He watched as she parted the dragon from the group to talk to him off on their own. The ponies alternated between looking over at Handy and Twilight while speculating amongst themselves. He briefly wondered how she was going to spin this to her friends if she agreed to it, but then, he didn’t much care, did he? If she refused, what of it? Then he didn’t have to go into a pit of murder lizards, all the while saving face and helping Gethrenia look good while Equestria looked bad.

And if she did, he got a dragon to help with magical research. Perhaps Crimson could get a crack at it given how much she talked up those old dragon bones she had managed to take from the changeling city. Although the more he thought of it, the more the former seemed both more likely and more desireable. Come to think of it—

“Deal,” a masculine voice said. Handy was shaken from his reverie of a life of not having to deal with multiple hundreds of tons of fire-breathing murder lizards.

“What?” Handy asked in surprise, looking down. The dragon was looking up at him with determination in his eyes.

“I said deal.” Twilight was standing not far behind, as surprised as he was. From the looks of it, the dragon had strode straight over to him and the princess was playing catch up. The dragon put his claw forward. “I’ll agree to your terms on one condition.”

Handy all but snorted in surprise. Where did this thing think it got off demanding concessions? Still, it was a dragon…

“I’m listening,” Handy said.

“Every week, whatever we’re researching goes back to Twilight, unfiltered and unedited,” Spike said, “and I get to wear a location amulet the entire time, so if anything goes wrong, Twilight can do something about it immediately, so don’t get any ideas.”

“Spike…” Twilight began. She seemed to have been heavily stressed out by the negotiation and it was starting to show. Perhaps that was what triggered the sudden bout of bravado from this overgrown gecko if they were as close as Twilight had said. Handy narrowed his eyes at the young drake, his voice low and dangerous.

“I don’t have very fond memories of Equestrian location spells…”

“Yeah well, either way, they’re coming with me as part of the package whether you want them to or not. No condition, no dragon. Got a problem with that?” Spike challenged. Handy glared down at the drake.

‘Well, get a load of this little shit,’ he thought to himself. He looked up. Most of the crowd had dispersed, although some of the journalists from before seemed to be lingering around and a few had noticed the princess taking her sweet time. Better wrap this up.

“Fine, but know this: we will be watching you, Spike. Do not do anything to betray the trust of Gethrenia while you are here. The consequences thereof will go far beyond merely yourself. Am I understood?”

The dragon seemed to waver for a moment, and Handy swore he saw the thing swallow nervously. “Got it,” Spike said. Handy let out a breath and relaxed his stance.

“Very well then. I trust that suits you, your Highness?” Handy asked, looking at Twilight.

“I… Yes,” she managed, looking at Spike with surprise on her face, then blinking it away to face the human again. “Yes, I agree.”

“Very well then. Keep an eye out this spring. I shall arrive by air and will not linger. Make whatever preparations you need by then.”

Spike seemed to deflate as the air left him when Handy turned to walk away. Twilight immediately went over to him. Handy left them as the group coalesced around the adoptive siblings as they hugged. Handy ignored the scene. He got what he wanted out of the bargain—no sense lingering around in case something else happened.

“Hey, wait up!” That sounded like the orange one. Handy turned, and sure enough, Applejack seemed to be bounding over to him. She slowed as she approached and turned to the others, waving at them. “I’ll catch up. I gotta sort out something about my brother since he’ll be here for a while!”

The others seemed to accept that and continue on their way. To Handy’s surprise, they all seemed to be smiling and fussing around the young dragon. Perhaps Twilight had yet to tell them the whole deal? Applejack turned and smiled up at him.

“You know, I’m an awfully bad liar,” she began. Handy raised a brow at her. “So I really am just checking up on my brother. You don’t be treating him badly now, ya hear? I know he’s working on your farms for now.”

“I assure you I ha—”

“But that also don’t mean I can’t have more than one reason to do something,” she interrupted. “And I know a liar when I see one moving their lips. Got a right knack for it, I do.”

“Excuse me?”

“I know the real reason you didn’t want to be helping us none. For all your talk, you’re just too plum scared, aintcha? T’was obvious when you flatly denied it after Dash there brought it up,” she stated, smiling confidently at him. Handy glared at her.

“Ma’am, can you please get to the point?”

“My point is this: thanks.”

“Thanks? For what?”

“For helping us anyway.” Handy just looked at her.

“I doubt you’d be saying that if you knew how much it is costing you,” Handy said stubbornly. Applejack grimaced.

“I reckon I might not be inclined to, no,” she admitted. “Twilight seemed a mite troubled by it while it was happening, but given her smile now, I can’t imagine it’s beyond her. But the fact of the matter is yer doing it, maybe not fer th’ right reasons, but what's being done is being done, and don’t you worry none.”

“Worry?” Handy asked.

“I won’t be telling nopony you’re scared out o’yer britches,” Applejack said, her eyes bright and dancing with mischief. There it was yet again, another odd twinkling shine in a pony’s eyes. “Least not ‘til ya get back with Spike, y’hear?”

“I…” Handy said, not sure what to come back with for that, but before he could, the mare had said her farewells and trotted off to her friends by the station. Handy just watched her go, half-annoyed and half-bemused about what had just transpired. He snorted and turned his back on the issue, brushing it off with the snow on his shoulder.

The king had already left. Handy knew he’d want a proper explanation of what had just occurred but apparently had more pressing concerns. That was okay—Handy didn’t feel like going over it then and there. In fact, he felt like putting up with very little, and blithely walked through town irrespective of the griffons in his way or what they were doing. Most very wisely got out of his way.

He found Jacques not long after asking around at what were becoming his usual haunts. He was asleep at a table with his forelegs crossed, and his head lolled to the side a bit as he leaned back in his chair, snoring loudly. Handy slapped him on the back of the head, waking him up and causing the hat to fall forward on his face.

“Que diable était-ce!?” Jacques swore, lifting his hat up and looking around. “Handy? What did you do that for!?”

“Wake up, not the time to be sleeping,” Handy said, turning and walking out of the cheap inn.

“What?”

“Come on,” Handy said.

“Why? Where are we going?”

“To get drunk.”

“...I can drink to that.”

Author's Note

To the persistent bastard who reliably visits my page day after day to downvote every comment thereupon.

I salute your diligence and passive aggressive determination, rest easy knowing you did your part to get me to actually get over my bullshit and get back to work. Hat's off to you, you magnificent faggot.

Now with that out of the way, I have bad news for you all: This is the end of the 'rest' arc. Good news is that this is the end of the rest arc.

Hope you all like dergans

Interlude - Warm Hearts

He trudged through the snow, his breath frosting upon the air through the heavy scarf as he dragged the sled behind him.

It was quiet, not a cloud in the night sky, the silver moonlight bathing the scene of the bare birch forest in gentle blues, the light intense enough to cast soft shadows. Handy could easily navigate by starlight alone even without having memorized the direction to his serfs. He reached another bundle of young trees, not so thick that he would have to spend ages just getting through one for the firewood, but thick enough as to be worthwhile.

He had enough firewood of course—his serfs usually made sure he had enough stacked up in the shed beside his manor for a good night’s fire—but Handy found he enjoyed the excuse for the nightly excursions, especially on winter nights such as this. He was not used to it, of course, and every night he went out, he came back hurting and aching and woefully tired, but it was worth it.

It was quiet, so blessedly quiet, so much so had it been in any other scenario, it would have been unnerving. Logically, he knew he really should feel unnerved all the same, but… he never did. He found the quietude calming, the isolation of what was effectively ‘his’ woods comforting. It let him think, or not to, as he wished; the task of going out and collecting winter fuel, necessary or otherwise, clearing his mind wonderfully. Some nights he’d often just forget and let go of everything entirely, focusing on the task at hand. It was comforting.

Well, that was not to say that he was entirely without concern. It was only ‘his’ forest up to an arbitrary border that he was sure, come spring, he and the neighbouring barons would begin bickering over in order to profit from the fruits of the woodland, even if the forest did technically count as a part of the commons. Handy didn’t mind—he planned to not be around come the springtime, which he was sure would cause quite the consternation amongst his peers and lordly neighbours in not being able to bring him to the table over the matter. Handy found this a most amusing and agreeable set of future circumstances, and it disturbed him not.

He swung the axe, eventually knocking the first young birch down. It hit the ground with an appreciable ‘whump’, driving up the snow around him. As he wiped it off his face, rubbing the flakes in his gloved fingers and watching the rest fall silently back to Earth, he slowly noticed that it wasn't stopping. He looked up. Several clouds had rolled in, the snow falling sparsely but lightly. It was time to head home while he could still see the way back.

Home. It still felt strange to think of it that way.

As he bundled the fallen tree with the others on the sled, not having the time to cut it into more manageable segments, he stopped as he noticed something off to the side, something red and green. A holly tree, small and young, was eking out an existence trapped between two older and much wider birches. He had never seen a holly tree out here before—hell, whenever he found something that wasn’t a birch, he was surprised. He reckoned his barony got the short end of the stick when it came to dividing these woodlands.

Still, it was an oddity. He left his sled and trudged his way over to the tree, allowing himself a small smile. He used to accidentally stumble into holly around this time of year back home on Earth, usually whenever he had to track his way through the forest near where he lived as a kid. Come to think of it… what time of year was it back on Earth?

The thought gave him pause. He had lost track of the months. While he knew he came to this world sometime during its summer, it had been winter back home on Earth the last he could remember. It had been easily five… no, six. Seven months now? More than that? He wasn’t sure, but far more months than summer and autumn had any right to have before winter put its boot down. What date was it back on Earth? Was it still 2014? How long had he been gone from Earth’s perspective? Months? Years? No time at all? He had no reference for it. His landlord probably had either long rented off or he had not even noticed he had disappeared at all and his rent was still due. Or everyone he knew was dead.

The more he thought of it, the sicker it made him feel, and he shook his head and began trudging back to the sled, trying to think of anything else to focus on.

He paused as a thought struck him. The locals were preparing for a local winter festival, one of several in fact, not so much celebrating the winter solstice as much as celebrating its passing. How the hell did anyone on this world even HAVE a solstice when the length of days and nights was entirely at someone’s literal whim? Handy had passed it no mind initially, especially since the holiday seemed to be an amalgam of Gryphonic traditions from their ancient tribal days, with no cohesive theme or structure to it aside from the passing over of some huge threat that apparently nearly doomed the entire Gryphonic race in its infancy. Handy never got a straight answer about it—as far as he could determine, there was none, given it was everything from an invasion of foreign gods, a volcano or being preyed upon by the primordial Rocs.

Still, if this was his home for now, then he should probably treat it as one. Handy went back to the tree and drew out his dagger, a short, clean blade that shone like silver in the moonlight, one of a pair he had bought to replace his old ones. He began cutting holly from the branches.

--=--

Warm Night trudged through the snow, the wind howling and the cold biting. His scarf snapped in the air as he walked on. It was alright since he didn't have far to go. He had a promise to fulfil, and he wouldn’t let a small snowstorm stop him.

He made his way to the small cluster of trees at the far end of the property, behind a small fence. He went through the gate and shook off the snow on his back. What little shelter there was kept the worst of the snow off of him and the small grotto. He wiped at the ground until he felt the marked stone. Bowing his head, he lowered the little package in his mouth down on the ground.

He unwrapped it and set up the candle and lit it with a spell. It was a bit of effort, and with the wind as it was, he had to position his body just to keep it lit before spreading out the dried, press posies, dyed in various patterns onto the grave marker. He then repeated the process for the stone next to it. It was a strange tradition—even Happy Hour had said as much, to which Warm Night could only shrug and smile wryly. He never had a good answer for it. His mother was from a more insular part of Equestria. They did things differently there, and she passed on more than a few of her traditions to him before she herself had passed on. Welcome Sight never objected to any of them, even if he never adopted them himself. Somehow, though, Warm felt he’d approve of this one.

“Hey,” he began, his voice even as he looked down. “Sorry I couldn’t make it last week. Things were... kinda crazy, heh.” He gazed back at the walled garden just outside the grotto. “A lot of things happened recently. We’re… We’re moving the inn.”

He looked back down at the stone markers a bit guiltily, shuffling his forehooves as he sat down in the snow.

“Look, I know you wouldn’t want that, but it's not like we’re just abandoning the place. We’re moving in here, turning it into a home, you know? Keeping the business separate as much as we can.”

“We’ve been planning it for a while now,” he continued. “I mean, it makes sense. We’re comfortable here, but we just don’t get the traffic you used to back in your day, dad. We’re moving the Shady Bough closer to the main streets. Can’t really…” he chewed over his words, looking around him at the windswept night, “Can’t really justify the place otherwise, money as tight as it is.”

He looked back down at the grave marker. It was nothing grand, simply a name carved in a square plinth of stone. They couldn’t do the burial entirely like they did back where his mother came from, so the ashes were interred instead, urns and all.

“Thank you, Dad,” he said after a long while. “Thanks for… for not giving up on me... even when I gave up on you.”

“Night?” Happy Hour called out, her voice as rich and warm as it always was. He could hear the smile through her tone. “You coming in?”

“Coming!” he called back over his shoulder. He studied both graves for another short moment before smoothing the markers and the offerings over with the snow so that they would not be blown away. “Rest well, and prepare a dream for me when it is my time to go to sleep. Mom, Dad…”

And with that, he left the little grotto behind and walked towards the light of his house and home, and the warmth that awaited within.

--=--

He was laughing.

He was always laughing.

Laughing, smiling, joking, singing, dancing, drinking, and all the joys of a life well lived. He enjoyed every minute of it, he genuinely did, but that didn’t stop them from being what they were: distractions. Diversions without merit beyond immediate gratification.

He stumbled into the little hovel he had managed to win in a game of poker. It wasn’t too bad, cosy even, crushed between two larger townhouses, with enough room for a pantry downstairs and a ladder to the bed upstairs.

He had slept in worse holes in his life and wasn’t particularly averse to sleeping in a few more. He let out a long deep sigh and hit his face while reaching for his hat. He groaned, wiped it off, and threw it away. Not as if he’d have to look far for it come morning in a place this small. He unclasped his cloak and let it fall. Next up was the belt which he deftly unclasped with practised ease and dropped it, sword and all, and that was it. He closed the door to keep the night’s snowstorm behind him right where it belonged. Strange, it had been so calm when he left the tavern, then the heavens just opened up. It wasn’t scheduled either. Maybe Gethrenia’s weather company was just fumbling the job.

He smiled at the thought that griffons had nothing on pegasi when it came to that, but then they didn’t have the same inherent magic. Eh, who was he to judge? He was a horn-head.

He sighed as he approached the ladder and looked up. Yep, that sure was a vertical climb, not even a slant or anything. Typical griffons. He contemplated the matter a few minutes more before moving over to the pantry. Nope, empty—he’d need to get it stocked again at some point when he managed to keep a few of his coins from being drank, sung, danced, and gambled away. Most of his share of the cut and what he could salvage from Blackport was spent getting contacts and information, so he had very little left.

That meant he needed a job, which meant getting work here in Gethrenia right under the griffons’ nose, and Handy’s. He was pretty sure the human wouldn’t approve if he plied his skill set for those willing to pay the coin needed for it, at least not here. Then again, Handy started out life as a mercenary as well, so he hardly had a leg to stand on, but he could easily see the stallion being thick-headed over the matter regardless. Besides, what he didn’t know couldn’t hurt him.

He shut the pantry doors and let his head rest against it, grumbling. Well, it seemed like he’d be sleeping down here for the night, a thought that didn’t sit well with him as he rubbed at his overgrown beard which had long since grown past the point which he preferred to keep it. Looking up at that ladder one last time, he just couldn’t bring himself to begin that strenuous journey. He slumped against the wall, trying to lie in a way that wouldn’t leave him with a horrendous creak in his neck when he woke up. He’d be unsuccessful, of course, but when you were so drunk that you basically went full circle back to completely sober, you tended to ignore little things like past experiences.

He lay there, snuffing the light of the lantern hanging from the ceiling with his magic. The street lights outside still illuminated the snow as it fell in the streets, and he watched it from the darkness of his little hole in the wall. Another winter, another Hearth's Warming away from home.

And still yet another Hearth's Warming alone, without his family and caravan. He snorted and lifted the cloak from where it lay on the floor and draped it over himself for additional warmth and turned from the window. He huffed out a breath as he made to slip off into a blissful, drunken slumber.

Knock Knock.

Right after he knocked the beak off of whatever bird thought his door would be a good one to pick tonight for a rumble. Jacques snorted in irritation, lighting his horn to find his rapier and drawing it from the belt loop. He hovered the hat over his glowing horn and levelled the rapier at the door before levitating it just behind his head and low enough to his body that a taller opponent wouldn’t immediately spot the length of steel ready to perforate some would-be burglar trying the tired, and rookie, tactic of drawing a guy to the door and then trying to bull rush him.

“Qu'est-ce?” he asked, not expecting an answer to the foreign words. He smiled lightly. If he was right, the thieves would simply opt to knock again or move on, rather than actually say anything to somepony who didn’t seem to speak the language.

“C'est moi.” Or, you know, he could totally get a response in perfect Prench, complete with a caravan accent and pronunciation. He didn’t recognise the voice, however. That made him waver, his face fell, and he almost dropped the grip on his sword in shock. He set his face and tightened his jaw. A caravan pony this far in griffon territory so soon after that border tension? Not a chance, and it definitely wasn't his caravan in any case—the accent was wrong. Maybe the griffons had a few Troubadours under their claws? It wasn’t uncommon. The number of griffons in the entirety of the High Kingdom who could speak Prench that fluently but would also be skulking about city streets in the dead of night, he could count on his hooves.

He approached the door, making sure the latch was held in place before removing the bar from the door with his hooves, his sword at the ready. He opened the door slowly, keeping behind it, ready to shove his full weight into it if need be.

“...Qui êtes-vous?” he asked slowly. The gap in the door was open just enough to hear the other person more clearly, but not wide enough for anything to be thrown in. The other voice didn’t answer at first, before it responded in an all-too-familiar voice.

“You know who,” the mare said. Jacques didn’t so much as move, not at first, waiting to see what would happen. He held his breath, closing his eyes and focusing his thoughts and steeling his heart. He was not about to take a chance, not just yet. He closed the door and reached up to pull back the latch key before he paused.

If he opened this door, and it really was who he thought it was, what exactly did that mean? Would he be inviting more trouble across his threshold than he already had? Why was she here, now, after everything that was said and done? How was he going to keep her hidden? Should he?

And if it wasn’t, if it was somepony else and he allowed them in, then he might as well be good as dead. He hadn't exactly made a lot of friends while he was down south. He was safer keeping the door closed and damning the person on the other side to the weather and the cold. Besides, even if it was her, how could he tell?

He ground his teeth in thought as he considered it. At last, he opened the latch and removed the chain.

He didn’t let go of the rapier, however.

He opened the door and saw a griffoness standing in the snow, facing the door and wearing a red scarf. She looked at him for a moment before looking down, shuffling the scarf with a claw. Jacques tensed up, ready to duck out of the way and have the rapier launch at her if need be. The griffon pulled out an amulet on a thin, silver chain. She undid the catch and let it fall off her neck and into her claw, placing it on the pack on her side, letting Jacques see her do it.

She looked up at him at last, clearing her throat and closing her eyes. The eyelids glowed a dark green, and then opened with a flash of emerald flame, as quick as a pinch of gunpowder. Chartreuse eyes stared back at him.

“Can I come in?”

--=--

She steadied her breathing. The noxious mix of the various fumes and candles made it legitimately hard to breathe, the air all but toxic to an average pony like her, thestral or not. Well, it was not as if she had an unfair advantage. After all, Luna had still been an ordinary mare when she had begun her journey into the mystic arts. She had long since earned her mantle as Dreamwalker before she obtained her alicornhood.

Stellar, on the other hand, was fairly convinced that something else had to be in play there. There was simply no way an ordinary pony could go through this and stay healthy. She continued to breathe shallowly, knowing she shouldn’t, that it was neither the healthy thing to do nor the correct thing for this exercise. However, she was nearing the end of her rope. Not for the first time had this training resulted in her being reduced to a sickbed, being fed a strange elixir by the princess herself to recuperate.

Not once had Luna admonished her for her continued failures, and Stellar dared not raise a word of complaint, opting instead to try probing questions into the nature of what was being undertaken and why. Luna did not give her anything more than what she was told at the beginning. She was to set out the ritual area as instructed, draw the runes and cuneiforms, the glyphs and the pictograms. Then she was to perform the necessary exercises before clearing her mind and emptying her thoughts until there was nothing but what was before her.

More than once, Stellar had felt her vision fade, the already pitch-black room darkening and her thestral night sight failing her. Other times, she… thought she saw herself, moving around the exterior of the ritual floor in her movements and dances, like seeing a sheet of silk flowing and cavorting in water as the waves churned it to and fro.

She shook her head before she fell again. Sighing and blowing out the candles, she rubbed her forehead until she felt she could breathe easily again, ebbing her migraine away. The air became breathable again, the pressure on her body disappearing, and she opened her eyes. The moonlight spilled into the room from a gap in the heavy drapes. She stood up slowly, her movements stiff and her joints aching, as if she had sat locked in her position for days rather than hours. She glanced down at the candles, all of them simple things of wax she made herself. That was important, or so Princess Luna had told her, though she couldn’t figure out why, nor could she understand what was happening to make her feel so out of sorts when she did these rituals.

She walked over to the window, needing to clear her head and stretch her wings before trying it again. She pushed aside the heavy drapes with a hoof before opening the glass doors and—

“—Ack!” The shock of nearly walking straight into the back of her princess, who she had not been expecting to be sitting there, was enough to get her to backpedal a few steps.

“It's alright,” Luna said, her voice gentle and calm. There was no firmness, nor the cold expectation Stellar had come to anticipate each time the princess addressed her as her nihensha. “Come, sit beside me.”

Stellar hesitated. The princess was alone on the balcony, sitting down and gazing upon a snow-covered Canterlot, her hair billowing in the light wind, more glorious than the empty night sky above. She never did this—she only ever came into the ritual rooms to instruct her. What did she want now?

Stellar sat down beside her liegelady, resisting the urge to fidget, glancing up at her. Luna’s expression was stoic, and they sat for a long time before she spoke.

“Another difficult night?” Luna asked.

“Y—... Yes, your Highness,” Stellar replied dutifully.

“I understand. Perhaps you should take a break.”

“... Princess?” Stellar's ears perked.

“It's Hearth’s Warming and the night is still young. Perhaps you are better off taking the time to compartmentalise what you have already learned before trying again. Go into town, spend some time with your comrades, that sort of thing.”

Stellar, once she got over the initial surprise of Luna taking a more gentle approach to their conversation, looked down. “I… I don’t think that would be a good idea.” Luna glanced out of the side of her eyes at the thestral, humming in thought.

“Yes, I suppose now would not be a good time for that. Do you… at least talk to them any more since you’ve become my nihensha?” The smaller mare was silent. “I see…”

The pair sat in silence for a moment longer before Luna spread her wings and leapt daintily onto the balustrade and looked down at Stellar.

“The Hollow is nice this time of year. If you fly now, you may be able to reach it before morning comes, and spend Hearth's Warming with your family.”

“But… Princess I don’t—”

“I do not recall giving you a choice,” Luna said, her voice level and her face stern, softening momentarily as she gave the soldier a smile. “Rest, young Eclipse. Your duties will find you when you return. Do not waste your fire by burning out the wick.”

And with that, the princess left her, pushing off from the balustrade and dropping, allowing herself to fall before taking control and swooping around the nearby towers and disappearing from sight, leaving the thestral alone where she sat. Stellar let out a weary sigh and rubbed her eyes.

They were puffy from lack of sleep, her mane was a mess, her coat had long since lost its lustre, and she had not left the castle in the past six weeks unless duty demanded otherwise.

Nor had she seen any of her friends or comrades of the night guard, nor those of the day guard, nor those she had made in the city below. She found it harder and harder to show her face each time she saw them, and with how thestrals were still regarded with suspicion, it… it made her guilty to even be around the others, being the source of their own increased troubles in life. It was why she was reluctant to go back to Hollow Shades. She…

No. She didn’t have a choice. Her princess had given her the command to do so. She rubbed a hoof through her mane and flicked her ear in irritation, turning back to pick up her armour before freezing. No, she wasn’t being sent back as a soldier, so she was better leaving her gear here. She placed a hoof fondly on the helmet as it stood on the armour rack, smiling lightly at her dim reflection.

One day, she might be proud to wear it once again. She could only hope so in any case. She turned to the window and stretch out her wings, flapping them to test them before cantering to the balcony and leaping out into the cool night air of Canterlot. She let the wind flow over and under her wings, revelling in the cold tingle as the air rushed past the skin of her wings before opening her eyes as the lights of the city rushed to meet up with her. She tilted her wings, controlling her fall into a spiral before beating her wings and launching herself back upwards into the air.

She circled once, lazily over the city below, which looked resplendent in the festive colours of Hearth's Warming below as they spilled onto the white snow of the rooftops. It reminded her of her days as a foal, looking up at the ceiling as the small coloured lanterns they hung on the Hearth's Warming tree lit up the pine needles and cast odd, conflicting shadows on the ceiling above as she lay below it.

She smiled at the memory, beat her wings several times, and made her way towards Hollow Shades and for a home she rarely came back to. Little Arcane Mist had been accepted into Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns, or so she had heard last.

It’d be good to see her nephew again.

--=--

“And they’ve finished brewing the potion?” Handy asked.

“Yes, Master,” Crimson replied. Klipwing had the week off, and Handy hadn’t deigned to keep a hold of his manager while he could be back home with his family for the time. “They have made a successful batch.”

“How do you know it is fireproof?”

“I tested it myself,” she replied casually, not looking up at him and seeming bored.

“On… yourself?”

“No.” Handy felt brief pity for his alchemists.

“And the other potions?” he asked.

“They will require more testing and refinement. Are you sure about this, Master?” she asked.

“As sure as I can be. My power relies on blood, Crimson. I cannot rely on temporary boosts while dealing with the dragons if things go wrong.”

They both remained quiet as they watched Handy’s serfs set up their festival games. Handy had no intention of joining, but his position as baron meant he had to show his face, so he oversaw the construction of the small stage and the strange half-igloos the griffons were making for games. Some had rope to trees and were busily pulling the young things down until the branches brushed the ground before tying them together and holding them down with iron pegs.

Some griffons had paid to have clouds frozen over and have that weird game of sky hockey Johan had told him about one time. His griffons, though? Nope, tying down trees and making little icicle jewellery and other folksy bullshit like that. There was nothing to bet on either. Maybe this igloo game would be good entertainment to—nope, they were building another set of igloo goals. It seemed like it was going to be another one of those confusing four team football games he had seen kids play from time to time. He could never understand that crap. Crimson rubbed her chin thoughtfully, staring out at the griffons milling to and fro in their merriment about the village.

“About that, Master, I have some thoughts on the matter,” Crimson began. Handy looked down at her, his expression bored.

“Oh?” he asked. “Mind keeping your voice low as you express them?”

“You often complain about the quality of the… stock you get from the butcheries.”

“It's enough to sustain me and tastes horrible. What of it?”

“Have you considered… lessening your serfs’ tax?” Crimson asked. Handy raised an eyebrow.

“What?”

“You refuse to bring your tenants under serfdom, even though they repeatedly ask. You were dismayed to know that if a time of war came, your serfs would have to take up arms under obligation to you.”

“I refuse them because I would rather not have it on my conscience that I am binding not only them, but their posterity to the land. Where are you going with this, Crimson?” Handy asked with apprehension.

“I am saying you can be ten times the warrior any of your griffons could become altogether, so long as you are fed with a worthwhile food source,” Crimson said as dispassionately as if she were discussing the weather. “Why do you not make it so these griffons would not have to bear arms in times of war, nor pay as heavy a tax, so long as each provides you with just a little bit of their blood?”

Handy was actually stunned at the words, and his features hardened. “You do not know what you are asking of me,” he finally replied. “I will not contemplate it.”

“But why not?” Crimson pressed on. “I understand from what you have told me that the more you take, the more permanent the powers become. When you have fed recently, the powers are more powerful than they are when you are at rest. Griff—”

“Crimson!” Handy snapped, his voice low and he glanced around discretely. “Drop it. It is bad enough I have come to accept what I have to do to survive. I will not abuse my position to prey on those who rely on me.”

“But if it’s willingly given, what difference does it make?” Crimson asked. “You took from me before.”

“The difference is between a master who abuses his servant’s duty and one who does not,” Handy said pointedly. Crimson blinked.

“Master, I didn’t mean— ”

“Enough,” Handy cut her off. “You don’t understand people. It isn’t right, and you don’t know how that’ll cause them to react. I do not plan on taking from those who don't deserve it, willingly given or not, not any more at least. What I did to you was wrong and done in anger, and for that I am sorry, but that is the end of it.” He turned from her to watch the griffons as they went about their business, Crimson’s mouth opened and closed several times as she thought how to answer him. She had not intended to offend him, nor rouse his anger at her. She knew it was a sensitive matter for him, but she had thought enough time had passed that it could be discussed openly with him. Perhaps she had misjudged.

She looked at the griffons, her eyes jumping from one to the other. She had considered their material concerns and thought it was logical. However, master’s apparent alarm now made her doubt that. Was there something she was missing? She remembered her own trepidation at the prospect, but it had been to her benefit in the long run, right? Surely they could see the same would be true for them.

It would certainly would make more sense than wasting time on… whatever it was they were currently doing.

She looked up at Handy one more time and, with him not so much as acknowledging her, she turned and left, thinking it’d be better to do as he said and leave the matter, at least for now. Still, his accusation stuck with her as she kept walking. And walking, and walking and walking. She apparently didn’t know about ponies, which was rich coming from him. She knew about ponies plenty—they were untrustworthy, dangerous, and looking out for themselves and their own, like she was. Griffon or otherwise, surely they’d do what was in their best interests, right?

She found herself walking all the way back to Skymount itself and found herself vaguely surprised by the sudden increase in foot traffic around her, and the noise of the griffons shook her from her thoughts. They were busy with the commerce of the day, and many of them were busy decorating the streets in the same festive knick-knacks the griffons back at Haywatch had used.

She snorted and pulled the cloak about her tighter against the chill and did her best to ignore the griffons and the occasional pony as she passed. There were more of them now since the Equestrian goodwill visit. Most were merchants or tradesponies of some sort, and she had no intention of interacting with any of them. They’d have little to talk about in any case.

She stopped as she passed by a tavern that was already busy with life and music even this early in the day. Her ears perked up, and she looked at the window as she passed, her pace slowing. She could hardly see through it. The thick yet small, square, glass panes had warped with age, and she could barely make out anything more than faint blurs and shapes and the orange glow of a roaring fire.

‘The difference between us is that I occasionally go to the pub,' she recalled Master saying to her. She looked away, scowling, flicking her tail as she mulled over the decision.

‘Fine,’ she thought to herself, turning around pushing open the heavy oak door of the Hearth and Hay Bale. ‘If this makes a difference, might as well see what he sees.’

The smells struck her first, and her grimace encompassed her face as her muzzle scrunched up in shock, more so than revulsion. The tavern was completely packed, and the smell of bodies and burning wood mixed with the smells of stale beer, cooked food, pipe smoke, and the lingering smell of something she could only recall as books, or scrolls, reminding her of time spent in libraries and reading rooms. It was odd, comfortable scent she couldn't quite place but reminded her of better times nonetheless.

She shook her head and rubbed her muzzle and looked around. The place was wall to wall with ponies and griffons. There was music coming from somewhere in the back on the far side of the log fire pit that took the centre of the tavern. The upstairs was visible only through four latticework walls above a square hole in the second floor, leading to open latches in the tavern’s steepled roof to let the smoke filter out. The latticework had glass panes to keep the smoke from bothering the patrons above.

Judging by the sound they were making, there were a lot of them up there, so it was just as well. Crimson pushed through and found the jostling and constant closeness of other ponies and griffons alarming. Everyone else seemed to take it in stride, no matter how many times they nearly spilled their drinks or platters of food were nearly scattered to the floor. She found herself quickly losing her patience, her ears plastered to her head against the constant noise, the shouting, the brash laughter. She couldn't take it any longer! Still she was already so far from the door before her nerves began to fray.

She looked around desperately before spying an empty table, a flat top barrel with a few stools around it, and hurriedly pushed her way to it and sat down at it, grateful to be away from the crowd. Huddling close to the lit candle on the counter, she watched the bustling, noisy crowd around her with wide, cautious eyes. Whenever she, Master, and Jacques had stayed at an inn or tavern on their way back to Griffonia, she had always retired before things got too busy within them, directly avoiding the forced interaction. Now she had willingly walked right into it. Out of pride.

“I have made a terrible mistake…” she muttered under her breath.

“Hi, do you mind if I sit here?” Crimson nearly jumped at the voice, staring wide-eyed at the light pink mare who had just landed awkwardly in the stool across from her. “I mean, I can move on if you like, but you were sitting here on your own and there really isn’t much space anywhere else.”

Crimson looked around, seeing no avenue of escape, and with her master’s words still in her head, she sighed and gave the mare a neutral look.

“Go ahead.”

“Great! Thanks.” The mare sat properly as she pulled her rear legs under the barrel’s top. Crimson gave her a quick once-over: a unicorn, purple mane with teal streaks, blue-purple eyes, and a vaguely arcane-looking cutie mark. She had a friendly smile and an expressive face and didn’t look threatening at least.

“It's alright,” she said, looking out at the crowd as the mare gazed around, humming to the music.

“So, did you come here with the envoys?” the mare asked. Crimson looked at her disinterestedly.

“No,” she answered after a moment.

“Oh, did you travel up recently?”

“No,” Crimson replied, resting a cheek on a hoof.

“You didn’t? Oh! I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to assume. Do you live here?” she asked.

“More or less.” See? She knew ponies. Look at how much she knew ponies. Crimson was a great pony-person. She was even having a conversation with a stranger.

Sort of.

“Oh wow, that's great, I don’t know anypony up here apart from a few, and they’re kept busy. I just arrived today.” Crimson perked an ear up and looked at her.

“Did you come for this griffon festival thing as well?” Crimson asked despite herself.

“Oh no, I have no idea what this week-long thing is for. Doesn’t even start for another few days, doesn’t it?” the mare asked. “I’m actually visiting somepony up here so he doesn’t celebrate Hearth's Warming alone.”

“Oh.” And just like that, interest lost. “That's nice.”

“Heh, yeah. Oh! Sorry, I forgot to ask your name. I’m Starlight. Starlight Glimmer.” The mare held out a hoof, smiling. Crimson eyed the hoof for a moment, studying the other mare’s face. She opened her mouth but then thought better of it.

‘You don’t know people.’

“Crimson.” She tentatively reached out a hoof to shake hers. “Crimson Shade.”

Starlight beamed at her as she released the hoof. “Great to meet you, Crimson. Oh, do you mind if one more sits here?”

“Go nuts.” Starlight looked around, straining her neck to see above the heads of the crowded tavern. She bounced and leaned up on the barrel, waving and shouting into the crowd. Crimson let her eyes drift over to see a couple of foaming cups being levitated above the crowd in an orange glow.

An orange stallion with a white spot right on the slope of his muzzle pushed through the crowd with a plethora of ‘excuse me’s and ‘pardon me’s. He managed to squeeze through the crowd with some degree of effort before nearly toppling over the barrel they were seated at.

“Oof! Sorry.” He fixed his spectacles with a hoof. “Found you. This place is a madhouse. I almost got bowled over when a griffon fell out of his seat.”

“Well you didn’t spill anything, and that all that matters,” Starlight said, her face turning haughty as she upturned her nose at him. The stallion frowned.

“What? Well… I guess so, but I was worried I—” Starlight placed a foreleg around his neck and brought him into a one-legged hug, ruffling his mane with the other hoof.

“I’m just messing with ya, you big goof.” Starlight chuckled, taking her drink in her magic as he placed his down on the barrel. “Oh, and this is Crimson!”

Crimson looked at the stallion with disinterest. He had a ridiculous goatee half the length of his muzzle that descended from his chin, and wore a thick cloak with arcane sigils, stars, and constellations on it. His entire demeanour screamed ‘wizard’, and Crimson had to withhold a sneer at the sight.

“Oh, I’m Sunburst!” He smiled and held out a hoof in greeting. Again, as before, Crimson shook it reluctantly. She was not fond of wizards, despite her own speciality. She liked to think of it as the professional rivalry between schools of thought, and not that she was actually terrible at magic unrelated to old magic.

That wasn’t it at all. Nope.

“Hello,” she said simply.

“Crimson was kind enough to let us sit here,” Starlight explained. Sunburst seemed to let out an exasperated sigh of relief.

“Oh, that’s great. I uh…” He looked around. “Don’t suppose there’s a stool for me?”

Starlight’s smile fell as she looked around. Sure enough, there wasn't one. Sunburst sighed.

“Alright, I guess I’ll go look for one. Oh, did you want a drink, Crimson? Least I can do.” Crimson grimaced lightly.

“No tha—” She paused, looking around here. Everypony was drinking something. Well, she came this far—might as well go the whole way. “I’ll… have an ale.”

Sunburst beamed. “Alright, I’ll be back in a jiffy. Oh! Forgot something.” He turned to Starlight with his horn lit up. Starlight gave him a questioning look before eyes going wide in alarm as she yelped.

“Ow, that’s cold! Sunburst!” she cried, punching him in the wither with a hoof. The stallion chuckled as he revealed the small necklace of ice he had brushed up against the back of her neck. Her eyes lit up and she gasped. “You got one!?”

“Yeah, had a guy I know make a couple extra early. Not supposed to wear them until an hour until sundown, but I figured, what the hay?” The necklace was a delicate construction, a small metal wire with an array of tiny ice-crafted jewels and snowflakes attached to it in various colours, almost as if the ice was formed around the wire itself, with the centrepiece being two crossed wings. Sunburst undid the latch, and Starlight lifted her mane to let him put it around her neck.

“Sunburst, this is so sweet, but I didn’t get one for you yet.” Her smile faded as she braced herself against the cold of the ice against her fur. He chuckled.

“Don’t worry about it, you’ll have plenty of time to get me back, heh. I’ll be right back.” Sunburst said before turning and began negotiating his way through the crowd as Starlight watched him go with a happy smile, just occasionally shuddering with the cold of the ice necklace around her neck.

Crimson sat there and watched this entire exchange, utterly befuddled. Why on earth would anypony be happy to wear a necklace of coloured ice, or be happy to receive it as a gift? And wear the damned thing after the fact? What was that about?

“So…” Crimson began uncertainly. “That’s your friend?”

“Uh-huh!” Starlight turned to Crimson. “Me and Sunburst knew each other since we were foals. He’s in Gethrenia as part of the exchange, helping share some magical knowledge and expertise with the royal court.”

“And… that thing?” Crimson asked, pointing to the odd jewellery.

“Oh. I thought you’d know?” Starlight cocked her head to the side.

“I uh… don’t get out much.” Crimson looked away for a moment.

“Ah, right. Well, like I said, I don't know much about the griffon's solstice festival, but I do know Griffonia is famous for these little ice necklaces this time of year.” She patted the object in question. “It’s for good luck. Friends and family give them to each other as a sign of love and friendship, of belonging.”

Crimson’s face was neutral as she digested the words, then scowled. “Belonging, huh?” she began.

“Yep!” Starlight replied.

“Right,” she said sceptically, turning to watch the crowd. “I guess that's one word for it.”

“Uh… y-yeah.” Starlight rubbed her foreleg with the other, suddenly feeling awkward with Crimson’s tone. “So, uh, what do you do?”

“Alchemy. I work with the guild.”

“You’re an alchemist?” Starlight asked, perking up.

“No, I just run the place.” Crimson replied.

“Oh. Well, that sounds nice.”

“Hrmm.” The pair sat in awkward silence for a moment. Awkward for Starlight at least—Crimson had already turned off from the conversation. Starlight looked around for something to talk about while waiting for Sunburst to come back.

“So, uh, you from Gethrenia originally?” Crimson gave her a suspicious glance.

“Why?” she asked coldly.

“It's just, well, you don’t sound like a Gethrenian,” Starlight explained, a sheepish grin on her face. Crimson narrowed her eyes, scrutinizing her for a moment before replying again, more easily.

“I’m from here and there—don’t really have an accent. So no, I’m not from around here.”

“Oh, right,” Starlight said, backing off of the topic. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to pry.”

“I guess it's alright.” Again, there was quiet between them as the music and hustle and bustle of the tavern surrounded them. Crimson sighed after some time. “You?”

“Huh?”

“Where are you from? Equestria?”

“Oh! Yeah, me and Sunburst both come from this little town in the heart of Equestria.”

“He doesn’t sound Equestrian.”

“Well, he’s been living in the Crystal Empire for the last six years.” Starlight looked up as she pulled her drink closer to her. “He worked in the palace.”

“Really?” Crimson cocked her eyebrow in interest.

“Yeah he was the Royal Family’s Crystaller.”

“What is that? Like a court wizard?”

“Sort of.” Starlight smiled, as if Crimson had just said a private joke. “It’s a bit more complicated than that.”

“And he’s… no longer that?” Crimson probed.

“Oh, well, it was only a temporary office. Probably won’t be another Crystaller for another lifetime at the least, I guess.” She waved a hoof to dispel the topic. “Anyway, he was asked by the princess to join her envoy, and he jumped at it, so he’ll be stuck here for at least a year. I’d rather not have him spend Hearth’s Warming alone so far from home.”

“How nice,” Crimson muttered blandly. She scrutinized the other mare for another moment, long enough that Starlight began to feel uncomfortable. She once more looked at the crowded tavern. Every last one of them was smiling, laughing, joking about one thing or another. They were likely having conversations as inane and as pointless as this one, all to no end other than… to have them? Crimson sighed. “This was a bad idea.”

She got up and steeled herself for pushing her way back towards the street.

“Wait! Where you going?” Starlight asked while Crimson was still inches from her vacated stool, failing to get through the throng.

“Home. I don’t do well with crowds,” Crimson said without looking back.

“Hey.” Starlight placed a hoof on Crimson’s withers. Crimson’s head snapped around and gave her a glare, and she lifted her hoof immediately. “Look, I… I didn’t mean to offend you. I’m sorry if we got off on the wrong hoof somehow.”

Crimson’s glare lessened and she snorted. “It’s fine,” she said, still not moving. “It’s… not you.”

“Well, do you... want to talk about it? I mean, I’d rather not drive you away, and Sunburst is getting a drink for you as well.” Starlight looked back at the seat. “Care to… start again?”

Crimson gave it some consideration, looking between the stool and back at the throng and yet more griffons coming through the front door, some eliciting a shout of welcome that briefly drowned out the music.

‘You don’t know people’. The thought rang in her head one last time.

“People don’t know me…” she muttered.

“What was that?”

“Nothing.” Crimson turned and once more sat back on the stool. Pushing her way out would be a futile task. “What do you want?”

“What?” Starlight asked, confused.

“What do you want to know?” Crimson asked, gesturing between them with a hoof. “That's what conversations are about, right?”

“Eh, well... usually?” Starlight sat down as well. “Mostly I’m just curious about, well, what all that was about? If you don’t like crowds, why even come here?”

“It’s… complicated. I need to get out more, I guess,” Crimson admitted. “Always was a bit of a loner, didn’t want anypony around me more than those I really knew well.”

“Well, I can’t say I know what that was like, but I used to have the opposite problem,” Starlight said, moving the other beer over to Crimson. Crimson gave her a questioning look. “It's an ale. Sunburst can keep the other drink for himself. Take it.”

Crimson did so after a moment’s hesitation. She smacked her lips. It tasted bitter but was satisfying.

“So, what did you mean?”

“Hm?”

“About the opposite problem?”

“Oh, well, it’s a long story. Kinda has a bit to do with Sunburst actually but uhm, let's just say I really wanted to be the centre of attention.” She snorted before taking another drink. “At the same time, I really, really wanted everypony else to think they were each as special as I was. They weren’t; I didn’t consider them that at least. They were just a means to an end.”

“Means to an end?” Crimson asked, now curious. Starlight nodded.

“I was lucky that I had someone show me what I was doing wrong, gently in the end, I guess. Wasn't for a long time afterwards that I fully understood what I was really doing.”

Crimson considered what she said as she took another drink, allowing her gaze to drink as she thought. If what she said was right, then she had the same view of ponies as Crimson did, only she had been lying to herself about what she was doing. Crimson wasn’t.

“I take it you’d rather not talk about it?” Crimson asked. Starlight shook her head.

“No, it's in the past now, and I’m happier for it. I’m… not proud of what I did. I am just glad I never hurt anypony permanently,” she said sadly.

“... I can’t say the same,” Crimson admitted.

“You… mean you’re proud of your past?” Starlight asked.

“No.” Crimson sipped lightly, looking at the barrel. Starlight winced at the implication.

“Well… you don’t do that any more, right?” Crimson looked off to the side.

“I’m trying to, I think.” She took another sip, mulling the matter over before continuing. “I guess I have help now in that sense as well.”

“Well that’s good. It always helps to have a friend.” Starlight nodded happily. Crimson paused at the implication, considering it. Was Master her friend? Was that what that was? It would explain why he was so different from the Mistress, even when angry. She thought about it some more before asking a question which surprised even her.

“Did you ever forgive yourself?” she asked, her eyes widening slightly as the words left her mouth, she hurriedly placed her drink in front of her muzzle to hide the blunder while Starlight looked contemplative. She leaned back in her stool, turning around so she could lean against the wall beside them as she gave it some more thought.

She bore a sad smile as she answered, her gaze distant. “Eventually. It was hard, but I did after a long time, long after I had already repented and been forgiven. You can only punish yourself for so long before you end up doing more harm than good.”

Crimson eyed her as she spoke before looking down at her ale, gently shaking it from side to side and watching the liquid shift within the cup. She thought back over her past as she did, all those ponies she had hurt along the way, sometimes at her Mistress’ command, sometimes… for other reasons entirely. She didn’t like to think about it, never had, and had always been ignoring why she did so.

“How?” she asked softly. Starlight looked at her, studying her before smiling.

“By doing the best you can to become a better pony.” She took a sip from her cup. Crimson sat in silence, still staring into her cup, her ears twitching as the music changed in pitch and tempo as the minstrels moved from one song to another. The smell of the place didn't bother her now, nor the crowd, her mind lost in thought entirely. She finished the drink and placed the empty cup on the barrel between them with an appreciable sigh, smacking her lips lightly at the taste and enjoying the fullness of the brew. Starlight looked at her expectantly.

“Still want to go home?” she asked.

“No.” Crimson looked out the window, seeing the snow had picked up slightly. Well, it was definitely warmer in here right now.

“So, now what?”

“Hmm?”

“I mean, you going to be okay?” Starlight asked. Crimson thought about it. In the end, she didn’t really know, but she had broached topics she never really gave serious thought to before, and it probably wouldn’t be good to go off and wallow in them alone, just as she had always dealt with everything. Though, she wasn’t really alone now, was she?

“Yeah, I think so,” Crimson replied, looking at the necklace Starlight had. “Why isn’t it melting?”

“Insulating spell. Sunburst managed to come up with it while in the Crystal Empire. It isn't all that powerful, and I kind of need to constantly maintain it, but it’ll stop the necklace melting before it’s evening,” Starlight explained, her horn lightly glowing. “Kinda have a bet going with Sunburst. He must’ve forgotten.”

“Huh. You mind explaining it to me? I think I could use that.”

“Sure!” Starlight said as Sunburst drew nearer through the crowd, stool levitated precariously above a crowd which ever so helpfully tossed discarded pieces of fruit and food into the air, cheering if one of them managed to land on the upturned stool, cheering if it simply hit someone else instead. “I think Sunburst himself could help with that. So, I take it you’ll stay for another round?”

Crimson smiled down at the empty cup.

“I think I can spare the time.”

--=--

He landed hard on the roof of the building, the wood creaking under his impact. He hadn’t meant to, but he was beyond tired and his wings all but gave out when it seemed like he could finally relax.

It was a cheap place, with three stories, decent-sized rooms, no mysterious smells, a landlord who wasn’t entirely shady all the time, rent that was cheap, the walls were thick, and he could take the loft apartments, meaning he wouldn’t have to actually interact with the building's other residents in order to make his way to work. Well, except the one or two other pegasi who opted to go for the roof access rather than the street in the morning. Or evening. Or whenever his shift calendar decided to ruin his week. His armoured hooves clacked against the wooden roof as he stretched his wings out, twisting them this way and that to get out the kinks and aches, eventually stretching them fully outward and straight up until he felt his primaries interlock and his back crack satisfyingly.

He waited until he was actually inside the ceiling door and the short stairs downward into the loft before letting out a long, exhausted yawn. He untied the armoured shoes with his mouth, pulling loose the leather bindings and all but kicked them off, hitting the far wall when he got down to the last stair. The rest of his armour came off in similar manner, loosening his helmet, shaking it off, letting it slip off his head. Detaching the peytral, he let it hit the floor as the rest of the barding fell away with it. He shook off the armoured hauberk and allowed everything to fall where they damn well may.

Ordinarily he was the height of soldierly proprietary, both on duty and off: grim, stoic, proper, and foreboding.

But it was Hearth's Warming and he had a sergeant’s leave privileges—everything could go to Tartarus for once for all he cared. It had been a busy day. There was a parade, a ball, Celestia knew how many private parties, and the population of Canterlot had effectively doubled as family, friends, merchants, and revellers arrived in the capital to celebrate the holiday. Cloud had been awake and on duty for effectively thirty-six straight hours, managing the barely organized chaos that was Canterlot. Now? It was just him, his bed, and hours and hours of glorious sle—

“Well, well. Somebody’s in a bad mood.” Cloud Skipper rounded immediately, adopting a wide stance and wings spread wide, ready to attack the source of the voice.

He found a smugly confident and annoyingly familiar thestral giving him a knowing look as she leaned against the windowsill. She had opened the windows outward— must have done that sometime just after he had landed on the roof, knowing he’d do a cursory circle of the building before settling down. The wind was light and just gently tugging at the indigo kaftan she was wearing.

He lowered his wings back to his side but narrowed his eyes at her.

“What?” she said defensively, hoof on heart. “I let myself in. Don’t tell me you forgot you gave me a key.”

Cloud grunted, and Midnight smiled.

“Yeah, you’re right. I don’t need a key to get in here.” Cloud breathed in through his nose, a hoof to his head as he walked off to the kitchen. “You know, it’s my last day before I’m back on shift. Not all of us can get a week’s worth of off-time just before New Year's. I mean, sure, I had a week off leading up to Hearth's Warming, but who’s counting?”

Cloud let her talk—he usually did—only occasionally responding. Right now he was too tired to do so. He did the only thing he felt like doing, and headed straight for his wine. Midnight had already gotten at it, judging by the empty wine glass by the window sill. He lifted the opened bottle and held it under one wing, another glass under his other, before moving back to the window.

“Saw you out there today; figured you were busy enough, so I left you be,” she said as he came back, nudging her wine glass towards him as he sat next to her.

“Hmm,” Cloud said tiredly. He poured the glasses as Midnight blathered on. She was always talkative at times like this.

“Oh, you’re a great conversationalist—anypony ever tell you that?” she asked, chuckling.

“Yep.” Cloud took a drink from his wine, only to find a thestral wing blocking the glass from his lips. He gave her an annoyed look.

“Hey,” she said softly. “Save it for the fireworks, yeah?”

Cloud simply exhaled, but lowered the glass and looked out over the city with her. Couldn’t see much of it, for they were hardly in the highest building in the city, nor was it well-placed. Still, they could see part of the palace, and they could see the sky. That was enough as far as he was concerned. The pair sat in contented silence for a moment before, inevitably, Midnight broke the quiet again.

“Remember when we were little? We’d always wait excitedly for the fireworks?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

“I always loved the colours, still do. I remember you and the guys always went hunting for trouble, to see if you could find the fireworks and set them off early.” Cloud simply nodded. She continued to prattle on and he stopped listening. It was not that he didn’t like to hear her talk. He just was in no mood for it, and he couldn’t bring himself to care. He just wanted what he wanted and was tired of giving for one day. He thought about asking her to quiet down for once before the show started and put a stop to such thoughts.

The display started off, quite appropriately, with an impressive bang, one lone rocket screeching into the air and letting out an impressive explosion, bright-white and eye-catching, almost blinding before its remnants fell away, crackling into glorious trails of sparkling light. What followed was a cacophonous riot of noise and colours as the fireworks launched into the air in earnest and drowned the city below in wonder and light.

Cloud was transfixed by it. Even after all his years of experience, how much he had grown, there was just something about watching fireworks light up the night sky that made the kid inside of him feel alive. And all the good memories came flooding back to him once more. All those times, the good years and the bad, sitting down and watching the lights fill the sky. He wanted that, he wanted that to continue from this year to his last, and he wanted to continue to share it like he always had.

“Happy Hearth's Warming, Cloud.”

He turned, looking down at Midnight, seeing her expressive face gazing up in wonder at the display. Her smile was wide and genuine, her eyes shining. Expressive and the same beautiful golden hue they’d always been, each explosion and spark reflected off of those two perfect mirrors of the soul. The colours of the night sky played across her face, casting it in different colours and shades and shadows from different angles as the fireworks performed their magic. She hadn’t even been looking at him when she said it, so transfixed was she by the sight before her. He allowed himself a smile and let go of what he held against her earlier, and all the times she bothered, cajoled, aggravated, or otherwise inconvenienced him.

He knew what he wanted.

“Yeah,” he said, placing a wing around around her shoulder. She looked down at it, looking back to find him leaning closer to her. She tried to speak but found the words wouldn’t come. “You too.”

She gave into his embrace, their lips joining in the lights of the night’s sky as he pulled her closer, the wine entirely forgotten.

--=--

“Are… Are you drunk?”

“N-hic-No!” she said defensively. Blinking out of order and wobbling where she stood, it was obvious that she was not even facing the right direction to answer him before she corrected herself and turned and looked up at him.

Handy was at a loss for words. After the festival at Haywatch had wound down, he had gone looking for Crimson to see where she had gotten off to, perhaps explain things to her in kinder words. When he didn’t find her at the alchemist guild, he tried one of the libraries, then another, and another, and still another. Then he tried Klipwing before he remembered his manager had fucked off back home for the holidays, upon which he tried Jacques. Once Jacques was done explaining away the mysterious griffoness in his hilariously tiny Skymount home, to which Handy could only give the swordspony a disapproving look and a sigh, it turned out he hadn’t seen the mare around either.

At that point, Handy had started to get concerned. He spent the remainder of the day, of which there was not much left by the time he had been able to pull away from the festival, searching for the mare around the city. He had even contemplated climbing his way up to the castle before he realized Tanismore or one of his other peers among the royal knights would probably rope him into something stupid and festival-related, and he’d want to postpone that as much as possible.

The city was busy and packed, and Handy had begun to think something seriously awry had occurred before, quite to his shock, he all but stumbled over the missing mare as she had stumbled out of a crowded tavern. Handy looked up; it was the Hearth and Hay Bale. Not one of the ones he went to—hell, he was hardly ever in this neighbourhood since too many merchants lived here.

“Since… when do you drink?” he asked, still trying to process the fact he had a drunk dark wizard on his hands.

“I dunno,” Crimson slurred. “When d’you?”

“Right, how long have you been here?” he asked, shaking his head in amazement.

“What… What time is it?” she asked, looking around. “Still day, not long.” Handy looked up at the night sky and then to the street lamps illuminating the busy street.

“You… You got smashed, Crimson.”

“No I didn’t!” she brilliantly retorted, coiling a foreleg to her defensively, before looking in a nearby window pane, patting her face with a hoof. “My face isn’t-hic-cracked at all!”

“How… much did you drink?” Crimson looked up at him drunkenly, looked at one hoof before her, then another, seemingly counting under her breath, looking up at the sky as she struggled to think.

“Enuf?” she asked, as if Handy would tell her.

“I uh, I’m not sure where to begin with this,” he admitted. Passing griffons seemed to be amused by the sight, and Handy gave them a customary glare before looking into the tavern. “What possessed you to go get drunk?”

“You, uh, you said to.” She plopped down onto her haunches, her body still swaying.

“No I didn’t,” he replied patiently, his past experience with dealing with drunks and their convoluted logic kicking in.

“Totally did-hic,” she insisted, hitting him in the shin with her hoof. “S’all your fault.”

“No, you did this to yourself.”

“You said I should go to the pub!” she accused.

“I didn’t. Getting you drunk would be a horrible idea.”

“You might as well!” She folded her front hooves and pouted.

“Look, let's just get you home. Come on, I’ll walk you back to the guild hall,” he offered. Crimson immediately turned and walked the opposite way, stopping after almost running into a lamppost. She gave it an accusatory glare before righting herself and continuing on down the street. “Where are you going?”

“I’ll go somewhere else,” she said loudly enough that anyone could hear. Handy sighed and followed after her. “M’sick of sleeping in that box room.”

“Why didn’t you say anything?” Handy asked. “You never seemed to have a problem with anything before.”

“I don’t have to say-hic-‘thing,” she said, nose in the air, before almost tripping. “Fine! I’m fine.”

“You’re not fine; you can barely stand.”

“I can walk my way home!” she insisted. Handy blew a breath out of his nose in frustration. She was too far gone to listen to reason. He had never seen her drunk before, and he wasn’t expecting her to be this talkative. Or this belligerent, for that matter.

“So, you want to tell me what’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong! I’m great! Made friends and everything!” They turned towards a bridge over the river. Handy’s eyebrows rose.

“Really now?”

“Yeah! And we talked about magic and stuff! And drank and sang a-hic-and stuff!”

“Well, can’t say I would complain about that.” Handy scratched his head. “So then, why are you so upset?”

“I dunno!” she exclaimed as they meandered their way through the city. Handy opted not to press and instead tried to corral Crimson into heading back to the guild hall and her bed, or at least to one of the inns he owned. Every time she realized what was happening, she’d rebuke him with slurred semi-English before turning in yet another direction. Eventually, she just ended up tying the cloak about her and walking out of town.

“Now where are you going?” Handy demanded.

“Wherever I want…” she muttered, this time more tiredly.

“...Right, I’ve had enough of this,” Handy said as they made good progress from the town. He stood in front of the drunken unicorn forcing her to stop. “I don’t know where this is coming from, but for your own sake, you need to go home.”

“I am home!” she replied, kicking at the snow below. “Jus… Just need ta… ta think.”

“Come on, what’s wrong? I have never seen you like this.”

“You don’t know me!” she said suddenly, startling Handy, “Nopony does. I can… can be whatever I want…” And then she fell.

Handy knelt and pulled her back up to her hooves. The pony was drowsy and miserable-looking with half-melted snow on the side of her face, far from the dopey smile he had seen on her just as she left the tavern. He wiped it off and gave her a level look.

“Look, you don’t want to talk. I can appreciate that, but you’re barely standing right now. Come on.” He stopped her counterargument. “I don’t care, now come on.”

“I… I’m tired.”

“Evidently.” Handy stood back up, and something dropped from his cloak to the ground. Crimson looked down.

“Wassat?” she said, looking at the clump of ice. Handy followed her gaze.

“Oh that. Something the griffons gave me just as the fair was ending. Supposed to wear it for some reason or another.” He picked up the necklace of ice, the little carved pieces tinkling like crystal. He snorted in amusement. “I let them put it on me without me knowing it was ice; bit of a shock. I promptly kept it on a little mound of snow to not be disrespectful, but like hell was I wearing that for an hour.”

Crimson seemed to be looking at the thing oddly. Handy blinked down at it.

“What? Do you want it?” he asked. Crimson blinked.

“Huh?” she managed.

“I asked if you wanted it.” Crimson looked at him like a deer in headlights.

“I… yes.” Handy raised an eyebrow but nonetheless gave the tired drunken pony the little ice necklace. She flinched once as the ice touched her neck, and she looked down at it, holding it up with a hoof as he moved away. Her horn glowed and encompassed the necklace in a spell.

“There, happy now?” he asked. She didn’t answer, still looking down at the little thing. Handy turned towards the city. “Now come on, let’s get you—h-hey! What?”

Handy looked down, stumbling as a force hit him in the midsection and wrapped around him. Crimson had latched onto him in a hug, mumbling drunkenly as she squeezed, looking down.

“Hey! Hey, come on now, Crimson, let go of me.” He pushed her gently. She mumbled and just held on. “Crimson, we’re in the middle of the road. Let go of… Are… Are you sleeping?”

Handy pulled back the mare’s hood and, sure enough, the pony’s grip lessened slightly as it seemed she had finally given into her fatigue and drunkenness and more or less collapsed onto him. She was breathing gently and Handy cursed silently to himself, looking around. He was already over a hill on the road from the city, with the guild hall more or less on the far side of it, and it was still a long trek back to Haywatch.

And he had an unconscious pony at his feet.

“Great,” he muttered, “just great. I’m going to have to carry you now, aren’t I?”

Crimson let out an adorable snore. Handy scowled.

--=--

“Sis?”

“Yeah?” Shortbeak said, pouring another pair of cups for them both.

“You ever miss them?” she asked. Shortbeak froze at the question.

“Miss who, Ami?” she asked with a forced smile. Amelia could not see anymore but she knew by the sound of her voice that she was being disingenuous.

“You know who I mean, Felicia,” she said sadly. “Mom and dad. And Joryl.”

Shortbeak wanted to snap at that, sore spots being what they were. She couldn’t, not at Amelia.She looked down, her head filling with old, tired thoughts, bitterness, self-loathing, blame. So much she sometimes missed what she was ever angry about, unable to see the trees for the forest.

“Yeah,” she murmured contemplatively. “Yeah, I do.”

“It’s okay, you know?” Shortbeak looked up. “They’d be proud of you, at what you’ve become.”

“Ami, don’t…”

“How much you’ve grown, what you’ve done,” Amelia continued, smiling at her beloved sister. “How much you’ve taken care of me after all this time despite the burden I put on you.”

“Please…”

“You shouldn’t be so hard on yourself all the time. It’s not your fault, you know? You have become so much more than what you were, why do—”

“BECAUSE MY LITTLE SISTER SHOULDNT BE TALKING TO ME AS IF SHE WERE MY DYING GRANDMOTHER!” Shortbeak screamed. Amelia fell into shocked silence as her older sister rose to her full height, wings spreading from her side. Shortbeak’s beak trembled, her eyes damp. “Because I shouldn’t be looking at my little sister slowly turning to ash… and not be able to do anything about it.”

“... Feely, it’s not-”

“Don’t!” Shortbeak demanded, settling back into her chair, trying to maintain her composure. “Don’t you dare blame yourself for this, by projecting onto me for my own failures.”

“But it is my fault!” Amelia protested. “I… I meddled in what I shouldn’t have. I brought this upon us both.”

“And it was my job as your big sister to make sure you stayed out of trouble,” Shortbeak retorted, the tea forgotten as she rested her head into her claw, brushing the downy feathers from the side of her head away.

“... I am not a little girl anymore, Felicia. You can’t protect me from everything, much less myself,” Amelia said seriously. “I wasn't five years ago either. Your life shouldn’t be held back because of a mistake I did. It’s not fair, not on you, not on anygriffon.”

“Yeah, but you are all I have, Amelia, you always were.” Shortbeak allowed a tear to fall, here where none could bear witness. “I am not letting you die, not alone. Not like this.”

“We all die sometime, Feely,” Amelia said quietly. Shortbeak clenched a claw and slammed down on the arm of her chair.

“You. Do not talk like that. You are not going to die, do you hear me, little sister? You still have so much to live for.”

Amelia smiled sadly at that.

“Do I?” she asked. Shortbeak just looked at her, tears in her eyes. Her claw entwined Amelia’s own even tighter. Her features hardened, and the trembling of her beak stopped.

“Yes,” Shortbeak announced, her voice so full of resolution that the sad smile on Amelia’s face wavered a touch.

“You can’t fight the inevitable, sister,” Amelia said uncertainly.

“I damn well can and I will, Amelia.” Shortbeak’s words were coated in iron and with all the surety of a thunderstorm. “I’ve been doing it all my life.”

“But… what if you fail?” Shortbeak let herself smile.

“What if I don’t?” she asked her sister. “Have you thought of that?”

“Every night when I sleep,” Amelia said sadly. “It's the only time I can see anything, I can move. Every morning I wake up, I still only see blackness.”

Shortbeak didn’t have a response to that bleak reality. She only had a promise as she squeezed Amelia’s hand tighter.

“Then believe in this. One day you will wake up. And you will fly again.”

Amelia gave her another sad smile, not ready to ease out of the comfortable despair she had resigned herself to, but to give her sister at least a glance of hope that she would.

“You promise?” Shortbeak wiped her face with her free talons.

“Have I ever broken a promise to you yet?” Amelia thought for a moment or two.

“No. No, you haven’t.”

“Then why should this time be any different?” There was silence for the longest time between the two of them as the building itself stood in silence, its timbers creaking as it settled. Eventually, Amelia squeezed her claw back.

“Thank you,” she said softly. Shortbeak allowed herself a smile at last. She released her claw after a time, lifting up a book. “You don’t have to stay here all the time, you know. You are allowed to go see your friends.”

Shortbeak knew she was saying that half-jokingly, but she paid no mind and opened up where they had left off.

“Don’t be silly. This time of year, there’s nogriffon I would rather spend my time with than with my family. Now, should we go by where we left off?”

“I’d like that,” Amelia said as the two settled in for the night. Mimae, the older griffon who cared for Amelia, smiled from the other side of the door, listening to the sisters as they finished their talk, walking on towards her room to rest for the night.

--=--

Handy sighed as he settled into the comfortable armchair in the living room. The fire had not been lit yet, and Handy was in no mood to go through the stress of lighting it from afar as had become his norm. He looked outside at the gently falling snow beyond his window pane and the birch forest far away. He contemplated going out to clear his head, but thought better of it. He was already tired from lugging a fully grown pony all the way back to his manor. Preferring that instead to the questions raised if he was seen lugging an unconscious Crimson through the city.

He had left her in his bedroom upstairs, given it was the only one with an actual bed, and then retreated back downstairs, mindful of the clumps of holly he had placed on the stair banisters and corners of the walls, and on the hall tables, the tops of door frames, and anywhere else he could stick them.

He even had a small log he covered in frost in one of the windows of the front rooms, to keep it relatively cool. He placed holly on it and a little candle to make an extremely shitty yule log. He never even knew what yule logs were for, but everyone had them, so he figured that was one thing you should have. He never lit it.

Honestly, he had no idea what he was doing, working on dim memories from his childhood. He had never really decorated his place back on Earth, not since he left home, so he was working off of base intuition. He didn’t even know why he was doing it. Nothing he was doing even meant anything to anyone here, and it was not as if he ever had guests over who could ask about it. It just felt right that a home, if this was to be his home, should be dressed and cared for, whatever the occasion.

He had even been working on a Christmas wreath and getting halfway through before realising he had no idea how he was going to ensure the damn thing stuck together, much less hang it on his door. He left that half-finished on the table before him the other night and here it still lay. He pulled a bottle of wine from the box of cheap stuff his workers left him with as a gift after they finished rebuilding his manor house. Apparently someone had gotten it ‘as it fell off the back of a cart’.

Handy had turned a blind eye to it, more amused than anything. Plus, it was red wine, for which he was grateful. Never could trust a man who drank white wine by choice. He learned that at his father’s knee when they had ran a pub back on Earth. The thought amused him as he followed Mimae’s advice and took her medicine. He rubbed the balm over his ruined left arm, exposing it to the cold air of the room, and chewing the other things she gave him to help him ease his way into a night’s slumber.

He poured himself a glass and drank calmly as he settled in to sleep for the night, throwing the heavy blanket back over himself. He downed it and allowed his mind to wander, looking over the dark room around him, sombre and blue in the winter’s moon pouring through the one window beside him which had not had its drapes fully drawn.

The more he thought, the more he drank. The more he drank, the more he remembered. The more he remembered, the more he wished to forget. The more he wished to forget, the more he drank. And so it went through the night until the warmth within him and that of the blanket lulled him off to sleep, letting the glass fall to the floor and rolling away, the cold blue of the winter room giving away to the warm embrace of oblivion.

Somewhere in his room, from a device that served as his sole connection to a lost world, a melancholy tune of better days whispered in his ears as the long, cold night held him tighter in its embrace.

Author's Note

I am still sorry about how long its taking me these days to simply sit down and write, and my lack of content this year. I promise I will make it up to you all.

In the mean time, here's another decent Human fic for you to have a look at while you wait. Although it is a PoE.
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/272154/when-the-snow-melts

Chapter 56 - A Warm Welcome

Sky marshals were an interesting annoyance Handy had not anticipated but really should have seen coming.

That was one of the realities of living in a world of flying creatures that comprised a substantial portion of any given country’s population. In other words, sky cops. People had long since gotten used to the fact that guarding the borders on the ground was one thing, but you needed people in the goddamn sky to make sure things stayed legal as they crossed to and fro from market to market.

Complete border control was impossible, of course, unless an entire border was on lockdown as was the case recently with Equestria and Griffonia. Equestria, and many other kingdoms for that matter, being sensible when it came to their limitations in that regard, simply did patrols for banditry for the most part. They posted pegasi on key positions using clouds as stations, another reminder to Handy of the awful, awful disregard for sensible physical possibilities in this world, with ground-based forts as regional headquarters.

Keeping people from individually moving across the border from Griffonia or vice versa with pegasi was all but impossible given that, well, they could fly wherever they damn well pleased. Fortunately, policing the border was still possible because of one simple reality: shit was heavy. Therefore, transporting goods across the border, legally or otherwise, was always going to be a hassle. To ship anything of meaningful number would require flights of courier armies carrying stuff across, which was most certainly not cost efficient. If one wished to carry it by sky carriage, it would require teams of griffon or pegasi, and the concentrated weight would require the use of favourable wind currents to avoid turbulence. That made projecting most likely points of crossing and entry literally as easy to predict as the weather, which was evidently a privatised industry in this world. They might not be able to control the wind, but they could damn well tell which way it was blowing. In all, controlling the flow of goods was still very possible and manageable.

And then some asshole invented airships and ruined many a cushy soon-to-be-retired sky marshal’s day.

See, the problem with airships was that, for all intents and purposes, they were trains that flew. On top of that, they were flying trains that carried substantial amounts of cargo, counterintuitively, a lot faster than most other forms of transport. How? By simple virtue of flying in straight lines and damning geography as something for ground-pounding peasant merchants to deal with.

They could never do the same amount of cargo as a train could. Instead, they were able to carry far more cargo than a modern commercial aircraft back on Earth, depending on their size, and at higher altitudes and at a fraction of the upkeep costs. They got to their destinations a lot slower than planes, sure, but much faster and with less bullshit than trains, hence their substantial economic value in this world. Handy often wondered why they weren’t already filling the skies as it were, but then he recalled the horrific cost in actually getting one airborne that decimated his last nest egg of gold. He had even had to enlist the king’s help in initially getting it off the ground. They should be seeing much more of them in the coming decades as the merchant guilds all start pitching in for airships of their own.

Another issue was that large dirigible airships, while still having to obey the laws of physics, could usually tell wind currents to go get fucked and power on regardless. That meant many a boring day for a sky marshal was ruined by someone slamming through their doors in a panic, saying a huge shining asshole of an airship was crossing their part of the border without notification when they had neither the resources nor manpower to deal with it. That meant the sky marshal having to attend to the matter personally.

This was the situation Handy now found himself in and was busy trying to distract himself from. He stood on the bridge of the ship, looking out over the wheel at the breathtaking vista of endless clouds and numerous peaks and valleys of the range before him. The front of the boat was given over entirely to the bridge and the quart-sphere of iron-wrought windows that allowed such a sight. He was lost in thought as his gaze swept across the desolate beauty of the snow-swept peaks and the clumps of dark green of the pine forests that eked out an existence in those deep valleys.

He idly realized that the sky marshal’s fort of operations was down there somewhere, among these nameless peaks. Handy neither knew nor cared which one it was. This entire mountain range had far too many peaks than was sensible for any respectable range, in his opinion. Then again, as an Irishman, Handy was generally unused to encountering any mountain that simply couldn’t just be walked over or avoided entirely, but he could not deny the stunning beauty of the ones in front of him. By and large, the mountains of this world had always been faraway scenery to him, now that he was up close and saw them in person…

“Baron Handy?” He was snapped back to attention by the voice addressing him, his heavy black cloak swivelling around as he turned. Despite the insulation of the ship and the usually unbearable heat caused by the steam pipes, here at these mountainous altitudes and at the tail end of winter, the chill still bit deep.

Air Marshal Wind Swept looked up at him with a neutral, professional expression. The cream-coated mare wore an old and worn set of silver armour with a red half-cloak tied around the neck and over a wither with a fairly simple brooch with the Equestrian seal. He couldn’t tell exactly, but if he had to estimate, the mare was clearly middle-aged, but that was sometimes hard to tell with ponies.

“Everything to your satisfaction?” Handy asked, gloved hands clasped behind his back. His voice was neutral, but carried enough force. “I trust we do not need to go over my permissions and licences again?”

“Everything is…. fine, Baron. However, there is one thing I would like to question you on.”

“Yes, it’s blood,” Handy pre-empted, waving her away and turning back to the sight out the window. “And yes it's for medical purposes, mine in particular. I trust you are not a total imbecile.”

“There is no call for that. I was merely being thorough.” The ire quickly rose in Wind Swept’s voice.

“And the fact I am deigning to allow you to search my vessel is me merely being polite,” Handy responded over his shoulder.

“I realise that, but like I said, I have to do this. And I have to be sure.” Handy smiled wryly.

“Worrying I’m going about sucking the life force of the innocent, Equestrian? You may relax—my own king made me promise not to do it. If that does not suffice for you, well, I guess you’re just going to have to go against the laws of two major kingdoms and void my writ of passage and my royal licence and seize my goods. That would be such a hassle now, wouldn’t it?”

“…What’s in the crate?” she insisted, ignoring Handy’s words. He let the silence hang for a moment.

“Pig’s blood. Now, if you’re quite done, I’d appreciate it if you got off my ship,” Handy said with finality. The air marshal, of course, did not move.

“Can you prove that?” If Handy had bothered to look, he'd have noticed how uneasy her expression was.

“Easily, but I imagine you have no taste for it, being an Equestrian. Or I could just pour it over you and let the stink speak for itself. Pity you're not a unicorn—you'd have made a lovely Carrie impersonation.”

“What?”

“Never mind.” Handy waved away the question, reaching instead into his cloak and pulling out a small metal flask, placing it down on the railing nearby with a metallic clink. “Here. I am not wasting any of those refrigerated containers on you. Enchanted items are not cheap, even wooden ones like medical casks. Take this and be satisfied and do whatever testing you want and come arrest me later if it is found wanting. Now get off of my ship.”

Thankfully, though it took her a second before she finally walked forward and swiped the offered flask up with one wing, saying nothing in reply. Handy let her leave the bridge before turning to see her and her little entourage of pegasi traipse down the main corridor to the airlock. He turned back to the mountains below.

He did think it was odd, in truth, that a wooden ship of any kind would have an 'airlock'. They weren’t high enough to worry about pressurization in any case, and besides, Handy wasn’t entirely convinced his airship was actually fully capable of safe pressurization. If airship technology was as young as it apparently was in this world—and his ship was small by comparison to most of the ones merchant guilds used—it was quite possible Handy’s ship was one of the earlier models and probably woefully incapable of it.

Or it could be all bullshit and one only needed to worry about pressurized cabins with aircraft traveling ludicrous speeds and not dirigibles. Handy didn’t know. However, if Silvertalon said that was what the airlock was for, Handy wasn’t going to correct him. You didn’t argue with the man who seemed to objectively know more about the topic than you did, at least not until you took the time to do the research yourself, and Handy was busy with other things at the moment. Besides, what he did know about dirigibles, Silvertalon was currently teaching him.

He heard the door lever turn and the iron locks slamming into place, securing the airlock as Silvertalon saw their guests out. He then padded up the main corridor to the bridge.

“Forgive me for speaking out, milord, but you could have afforded to be more polite. We're in no rush.” Handy glanced over his shoulder at the older griffon. He cut a fine figure in the captain's uniform his tailor had simply insisted on making for the griffon.

“I was being polite. I have a reputation to adhere to. If I was anything less than brusque and standoffish, the Equestrians would have been suspicious.”

“Oh. Alright, if'n you say so, sir.” Silvertalon turned and went back to the wheel and started to flip heavy-looking switches and turning tiny valves on the complicated control board to the side. Handy got the distinct impression the bird didn't fully buy his reasoning. He scratched his chin in thought for a moment before letting out a breath.

“Well... mostly at least,” Handy admitted. “I was considerably ticked she insisted on the search. The documents should have been more than enough for anyone. I don’t care if this isn’t a standard trade lane. We’re hardly getting in anybody’s way up here.”

“You could’ve refused, sir.”

“And cause a scene? This soon after everything has settled? It isn’t worth it, and I am in no mood for it.” Silvertalon looked up at him briefly before turning back to the helm as the airship continued on ahead in silence. For some reason, the old bird’s silence made Handy distinctly uncomfortable. He had grown to like the bird over the few days they had been flying together.

Having been taught the very, very basics of airship piloting, Handy now knew how to steer the ship without blowing it up, all without having to alter any of the variables on the intimidating array of engine controls. It was mostly so Handy could keep the ship on somewhat the same course during the night hours when Silvertalon took to his bed, albeit at a slower and slightly lower altitude. It was a prospect Handy felt somewhat insulting, but he understood damn well that it was probably for the best.

He was also a damn shark at cards. Handy’s bad luck at the card table continued the few times they took a break to do so, and Silvertalon had even taught him two more games: Concordian Threefold and Liar’s Gambit, both of which Handy was abysmal at. He did do Handy the favour of pointing out what Handy’s tells were. Apparently, Handy noticeably stiffened when he had a bad hand of cards.

He also found he enjoyed listening to the old bird’s stories from when he was a younger rake, the terror of the eastern coast guilds of Griffonia where he had captained many ships and first learned to fly. Honestly, Handy suspected he was embellishing to a grand ideal. He could scarcely imagine such a roguish character evolving into the mild, quiet, and well-mannered bird he now saw before him.

“When will we be arriving in Ponyville?” Handy asked, changing the topic.

“Should be in a few days, milord. We should know it when we see it.”

“What makes you say that? Have you been there before?”

“Thereabouts, years ago. But Ponyville is notable for its castle. Only one of its kind and on the edge of the Everfree.” Handy mouthed the word ‘Everfree’. Thoughts resurfaced in his mind, but nothing concrete. He knew he hated it, however, and he trusted that intuition.

“And we’re south of Canterlot?” he asked, looking to the north. Silvertalon nodded. “Good, let’s keep a fair distance between us and that city as much as possible.”

“Why?” Silvertalon asked as Handy turned to the navigation desk on the bridge. The desk was set against the wall with the backboard extended, showing geographic maps that displayed altitudes, weather projections, and forecasts based on the almanac. He also saw heat charts and known areas that were simply marked as dangerous in various colours depicting hazard levels. A tiny globe was built into the desk that spun as Handy ran his palm across it. Like every other globe of the world he had yet seen, only the continent he happened to be standing on seemed to be consistent.

“Why is that I wonder…?” he muttered.

“Sir?”

“Call it respect,” Handy said in answer to the griffon’s first question. “No need to go ruffling anyone’s feathers. Take us back by this same route on our return sojourn.”

“But we’d run into the same marshal again,” Silvertalon put forth.

“That's the point.” Handy pushed off from the desk and walked down the corridor. “Better to run into a border guard familiar with us than suffer the same rigmarole if it could be avoided.”

He left Silvertalon there on the bridge as he made his way back down to his fairly modest quarters. It was the same room he had occupied on the ship’s maiden voyage when he shared the ship with the king as they had headed to that fateful tournament that nearly tore the continent apart. He found he preferred it, and gave over the better quarters as the captain’s.

He had placed a bathtub within. It was a literal oblong bathtub made of wood, iron bounds, and an enamel interior. He had yet to use it, but he figured if he was going to be using this for most of his journeys, and he had hot water available practically on demand, he figured he might as well have it. He rubbed his face down and tried to relax, then realised he probably couldn’t while he still held onto the rock in his hand.

He used it to shift the things in his quarters back into their places after they had moved in the course of the flight. Watching the silver aura surround his hand and encompass the various items of the room, watching them fly around, never failed to bring a smile to his face. He was getting faster at focusing magic, it seemed, depending on how often he used a given stone. In time and with practice, he could begin using simple wooden objects.

Wood was easier, in many respects, with its strengths being its versatility and the speed of being able to cast magic. The downside was how easy it was for wood objects to explode in your hands. Or catch fire. There were very good reasons non-unicorn mages used large staffs made of ancient and rare woods, lovingly and carefully crafted almost to a fault, enchanted, engraved, and infused with spells and augmented with magical crystals. It was all to get the most bang for their buck, as it were… and with less likelihood of their tools exploding on them.

One might therefore understand why Handy was making damn sure he was used to the stone before he moved on to that. It meant he was slowing his education, but if it meant safety, then all the better. He let the stone go on top of the dresser, warm to the touch, and looked at himself in the mirror.

He looked… better than he had been. His face was not nearly as gaunt, and his skin no longer had that worrying pallor he had been brushing off over winter. He had been eating and, much more importantly, sleeping better. The semblance’s wake Mimae had given him had done exactly as advertised. He flexed his left arm. It still looked horrendous. The grey, cracked, flaking skin and purple veins did not make for a pretty sight, and he kept it covered almost at all times, for his own benefit as much as for others.

However, he could actually feel it now. He felt the press of the clothes against his skin, could feel the heat or the cold, could even feel the blood pumping in his arm again. Of course, he knew it had never stopped—if nothing else, he had heard it during his hungrier days. He never realised how much the sheer deadness of his arm had bothered him, probably because he had been working so hard to put it out of his mind.

And the sleep, oh God the sleep. The tallow’s Ear had worked wonders in returning him to a reliable sleeping pattern. He still had his bad nights, but now… now he could sleep consistently night after night. He still perceived everything as having jumped in time every time he went to sleep, but at least his body was rested. And that, it seemed, was all that was needed to help it recover somewhat from his travails. He was now haler and heartier than he had been even a few months ago.

Which, now that he considered exactly where he was going, was probably what he was going to need.

--=--

So when Silvertalon told Handy that Ponyville had a… unique castle for the region, he had no idea it was because it was an architectural affront to all that was good, beautiful, and holy.

It looked like a mutated frozen tree from some horror film at first, and at a distance, he thought it was some oddly coloured geological formation. Then, as he got closer, he realized to his dismay that the entire thing was one gigantic multifaceted crystal. Fortunately for Handy, he now knew there was a difference between gems that were formed by natural processes and their doppelgangers that were apparently grown and farmed. So the fact that his first impression, that of a tree, didn’t seem too out of the realm of possibility.

A part of him resented that fact, but he accepted it so he could quietly put away the gibberingly mad possibility that somehow Princess Twilight was so hideously wealthy and yet so hideously terrible at managing said wealth that she had the entire castle built out of coloured quartz.

“Silvertalon, what am I looking at here?” he asked.

“The Castle of Friendship, sir,” he answered nonchalantly.

“Yes, but why am I looking at it?” Silvertalon gave him a weird look, noticed the near despair on Handy’s face, and then shrugged.

“Don’t know, popped up a few years ago, not long after the Princess of Friendship herself popped the wings out of her back.”

“…What?”

“Jus’ saying what I heard. Never knew of no Princess of Friendship existing in pony lands when I was a young’un. This Twilight popped up a while back. Bit like that pink one a while before her, but she was born like that, last I remember. Quite a bit of hubbub about that among ponies for a long while before it became normal.”

“Wait, so you’re saying Twilight wasn’t always an alicorn?” Handy groaned internally. “Ponies can become other types of ponies?”

“I don’t rightly know, milord. Just saying what I heard is all. Makes a right useful landmark is all if you’re trying to avoid the Everfree.” Handy looked up and out at the town of Ponyville below them. It was a quaint town of hay-thatched roofing, white walls, and wooden support beams, rather reminiscent of some old European town buildings he recalled seeing on the continent once or twice. Some buildings stuck out here or there to break the mould, but that was the general look of the place. There were no surrounding walls, so it was probably a more recent town that never had the histories of the some of the older pony towns and cities they had passed over. Probably less than a century even. Fields, fields, and more fields of farmland stretched out far and wide, radiating from the town, many of which still laid fallow as snow still covered much of the landscape. Winter was dying down, but spring was a bit of a ways off, it seemed.

Beyond the town, dark and green, lay the Everfree Forest like an emerald expanse. Handy’s brow furrowed, for the name struck a bell. He had heard it a few times since he had accepted the princess’ request, but he could never put his finger on it, and now that it was here in front of him, the sense of familiarity nagged at him all the more. Then, at once, it all came back to him.

“Huh, son of a bitch.”

“Milord?”

“Not you,” Handy corrected, “just something hit me right now that I hadn’t considered. Can you tell me something? How large is that forest?”

“Don’t rightly know the estimate. I know it stops some leagues south where the Everfree meets the Whitetail Woods and stretches a bit of the ways to the north before it reaches its end up near Dodge. But as for its width, it seems to change.” Handy looked at him.

“Change?”

“Right-o, some days it takes ya no less than half a day’s flight to cross from one end to the far side. Other days… Other days it takes a mite longer.” Handy looked back out at the approaching mass of dark green, the forest looking far more ominous now. He felt a prickling chill on the back of his neck at the implications, especially given his previous experience of forests that were… wrong somehow.

“Does it… stretch? I mean, does it affect the lands surrounding it when it changes?”

“That’s the darnedest thing: it doesn’t. All of them towns and villages around it? Never an inch of difference between them and anywhere else at any time. Whitetail Woods in the south and Dodge Junction up in the north is the same. Some say it’s jus’ all in your head when you’re flying over it. S’all the same—most are of like opinion: better t’ fly around.”

“Hmm,” Handy hummed noncommittally as he processed this information. He spotted a pair of glinting golden armour and small white specks that wore them as they neared the town. It seemed that the welcoming committee was here. Handy rolled his eyes and slapped Silvertalon on the shoulder. “Well, looks like our taxi guides are here. Follow them in. I’ll go get ready.”

“Aye sir,” Silvertalon said as he turned the ship’s wheel. Handy left him to his devices.

“Forests...” he muttered under his breath. “I fucking hate forests.”

--=--

Twilight Sparkle waited anxiously on the main balcony of her castle. More than once, she had wanted to look over the side facing Ponyville to see the reactions of the ponies below at the sight of the dark-coloured blimp in the skies above the castle, before realising she already knew well in advance.

She recognized that it was rather unwarranted to be worried, of course, but then again, she did receive all those letters from Luna and Celestia on the matter, and the more she read, the more concerned she grew.

It also didn’t help that she had decided to greet him alone, something which at the time she thought made a lot of sense, but the more the reality dawned on her, the more she began to regret the decision.

“Relax…” she muttered to herself. “It’s going to be fine. You’re going to be fine.”

She looked up at the two royal guards circling above the airship as it docked close to the balcony and lowered to be level with it. It reminded her of her old balloon, and a smile grew on her face as fond memories replayed across her mind’s eye. She had loved riding in that balloon and watching the world pass by beneath her. It had been so peaceful.

She snapped out her reminiscing at the sound of armoured hooves on marble. The two royal guards had landed a respectable distance from her but were quite obviously flanking her. She thought about telling them to fly off, but the words died on her lips. Instead, she was grateful for their presence.

The airship reached equilibrium, and it was then that a thick wooden boarding plank extended from a slot beneath the main doors of the airship. It overshot the balustrade by a quarter of a metre, but at least it wasn’t much more than an inch or so higher than it was above the floor. The ship clearly had an excellent pilot. The doors clanked loudly as the locking mechanism behind them was unsealed before opening outwards. Handy stood there in a dark, floor-length heavy cloak of a dull, dark navy colour. Twilight found herself surprised to see his face exposed.

She had seen it before, but everything she knew about the human led her to believe that him showing it was the exception rather than the norm. Handy, for his part, looked at the two guards at either side of her judiciously before walking silently forward across the boarding ramp and stopping just where it crossed the balustrade.

“Your Highness, I hope I’m not too early?” Handy greeted amicably, with a light smile that didn’t quite meet his eyes.

Twilight allowed herself a small smile as well. “Not at all!” she said brightly, “Welcome to Equestria!”

Handy casually eyed the guards to either side of her again. Neither seemed to move. He then looked out around him. There were no further guards in sight, nor did he sense any flying nearby, but he'd be damned if he did not expect them to be there. Even if the Princess herself was presenting a chipper front and did not wish to swamp the welcome mat with armed guards, he was of little doubt her elder princesses would be doing more than keeping a mere eye on these proceedings.

Still, best to make sure. He tried to direct his auspex into the castle. He picked up a few more people within his radius, but they seemed to be milling about the castle and in no way were organised or clustered. House staff, he wagered.

“So, do I have your permission to land?” he asked. Twilight blinked.

“Uh, sure? I mean yes, of course. You... didn't really need to ask.”

“Terribly afraid I did. Part of my agreement with Princess Celestia.” Handy placed a foot forward and allowed himself to drop to the floor of the balcony, the chainmail he wore rattling. He had foregone his armour but donned the magic-resistant hauberk as a precaution. “Never to unduly step foot on Equestria and all that. Thank you for your invitation.”

“You're welcome,” Twilight said, though the look in her eyes told Handy she wasn't entirely sure about what he just said. He looked around.

“Is Spike not here?” Handy asked, frowning slightly.

“Oh, he’s just doing some errands. He’ll be along soon. Would you like to come inside?” Twilight asked, smiling brightly.

“Certainly.” Her returned her smile and gestured with a hand, the opening in his cloak revealing the hammer for the guards to see. It was best to be polite, after all. “Lead on, if you please.”

Twilight did just that and gestured with both a hoof and a wing for Handy to follow her inside, turning around with the guards flanking her and, oddly enough, not casting any glances back at Handy. He did one last look around just to make sure there wasn't anything he was missing before calmly falling into step.

The interior of the castle was much less hideous than the exterior, though it still had that same, crystalline appearance. Unlike the jagged, uneven exterior, it was all flat floors, evenly spaced walls, smooth columns, and elegant doorways. The same colour scheme pervaded throughout: all soft purples, blues, and light reds, with the more stark colours provided by the non-crystalline furnishes and fixtures. Strangely, he couldn't pick out a light source within the corridors he was led down, as if the structure itself provided its own luminescence. However, looking up, he could barely see the high ceiling in some parts, so thick was the darkness above them. It was all very strange, but he felt no sense of apprehension from the fact.

He must have been noticed looking around him, because Twilight began to slow down to walk closer to him, the guards politely distancing themselves further behind him. Now that made him a little apprehensive, but he refused to let it show. Surely nothing would be attempted, now after everything had been settled?

“I see you're taking in the sights.”

“It is certainly the most unique building I have seen, Highness,” Handy admitted. Okay, it technically wasn't. So far, the tree cities of the deer took first place in 'weird-cool shit people live in' that Handy had seen. Still, it was more politic to say that than admitting it was the most ungodly abomination to architecture he had seen since those long abandoned English supermarkets made entirely of concrete built back in the seventies by people who had more commercial optimism than sense.

“You think? It took me longer than I like to admit to get used to it,” she confided, looking up at the walls. Handy looked down at her with a raised eyebrow.

“Truly? Most wouldn't admit they were less than thrilled with their personal castles.” She shook her head, smiling.

“It's not bad, I guess,” she said, confirming in Handy's mind that she had no aesthetic sense. “It's just that before I had this castle, I was very happy with my previous home.”

“Indeed?”

“Yes, it was a tree house.”

“A tree house? You lived... in a children's playhouse in a tree?”

“No no.” She chuckled. “As in the house was actually a tree, a living breathing oak tree that was hollowed out on the inside. It was the town library, and the tree had been there since before the town's founding.”

“Like the deer?” Handy asked, now genuinely interested. Twilight looked up.

“The deer live in trees too?” Her ears flicked.

“As far as I am aware, they do so near exclusively. I was never allowed inside their massive tree cities, only allowed to venture through the streets of the exterior towns built up and around them, on their barks and on top of the large artificial ground they had constructed to keep the base of the great trees in perpetual darkness. Hishyms, I think the hanging towns were called, with the great trees called oakenhearts.”

“You were there!? In a deer city!?” she asked excitedly. Handy was slightly taken aback by her abrupt change in attitude, but recovered well.

“Yes, actually. It was something of an ordeal to get there and back again.”

“I had heard something to that effect but wasn't sure if... if it uh...”

“Was another flaming pile of lies said about me?” Handy asked, chuckling slightly. “I commend your caution but, sadly, yes. That little excursion of mine is true.”

“Would you mind telling me sometime? There is precious little known about the deer and their way of life; they are famously secretive. Even the few who grow tired of their isolated communities and enter the world are notoriously tight-lipped.”

“Yes, well, that isn't exactly true either.” She cocked her head.

“What do you mean?”

“Perhaps another time I might tell you.” They stopped outside of a pair of large gilded doors at the end of the corridor. He looked back... Odd, from the air, he had not estimated the castle was this long from the outside. Must have been the oddness of pony architecture getting to him. He also recalled Canterlot Castle seeming deceptively small from the outside as well from his time there. “For now, care to let us through?”

“Oh! Pardon me, sorry about that.” She opened the door and led them through to a rather large chamber. A large and ugly chamber, it must be said. Crystal formations flanked the door and misshapen, jagged crystalline columns rose from the floor to the domed roof far above. In the centre of the room lay a circular table along with six thrones… no wait, seven—there was a smaller throne beside one of the larger ones. All seemed to be hewn from some white-blue crystal and didn’t really fit in with the rest of the structure.

“Impressive. A conference room?” Handy asked as Twilight went ahead.

“Hm? Oh yes, I suppose so. My friends and I usually gather here, but they’re busy today,” she said before moving on. Handy ran a hand along the table as he passed. It was smooth and, oddly enough, warm to the touch, but not unpleasantly so. One would think a crystal palace would be cold, but that didn’t seem to be the case. He placed his hand against it. It seemed to increase in warmth slightly. He could feel the magic coursing through the thing. He walked away from the object before he inadvertently activated something he shouldn’t.

He followed Twilight through the castle before he finally realised what was bothering him. Where the hell was the castle staff? He looked around. He certainly saw evidence of their existence—a cloak room with a half-open door revealing several pairs of maid uniforms on hangers, and the hurried skittering of hooves from some distant point in the castle as he passed a corridor. They were staying out of the way for some reason. Very odd.

He was just about to question his host before they stopped after turning a corner, and he saw the incredibly large and imposing front gate of the castle before him. Handy gawked openly. Indeed, he didn’t think even Canterlot castle’s front doors were this needlessly big. The purple princess seemed to open the damn things effortlessly with her magic. Handy’s fingers flexed around the stone he had been gripping for the past few hours now in his other hand. Ever since learning a thing of two about magic, he suddenly had a newfound appreciation for magical telekinetic shenanigans than before. He mentally made note of that and what that implied for the little pony’s magical strength.

The door opened out to the snow-covered roofs and busy streets of the town of Ponyville. The picturesque agrarian town was bustling with ponies going about their business, and as Twilight beckoned him further into the town, he noticed the guards had stopped following them, staying instead by the front gates of the castle.

Handy paused briefly, looking between the castle and the princess before following her towards the town. The strangeness, if anything, only seemed to increase the more he was led through the town, so much so he briefly forgot to ask where the damn alicorn was supposed to be leading him.

The ponies around him didn’t as much as flinch as he passed. Hell, they didn’t even look at him. It didn’t feel like he was being deliberately ignored, just that… he wasn’t sure how to put it. More than a few of the ponies they passed waved their greetings to the princess as if they were all lifelong friends with the mare and she was not, in fact, one of the most important ponies in the entire bloody kingdom.

“Princess, where are you taking me?” Handy asked at last.

“Oh, right. Well, I was going to offer you tea, but I figured you wanted to see Spike as soon as possible. So what better way than to catch two butterflies with the same net?”

“Not… exactly the phrase I’d think of, but I suppose I can acquiesce. So you’re leading me to Spike?”

“Yes, he should be at Sugarcube Corner! We might just catch him,” she said happily. The town annoyed Handy though he couldn’t put his finger on exactly why. It wasn’t the fact the ponies here were probably among the strangest he had met so far by simple virtue of the fact that his presence among them was apparently having absolutely no effect on the bastards. Although that did pique his curiosity somewhat, no, it was something else, a familiarity he couldn’t quite place. A strange feeling churned in his gut at that thought. He knew that the great forest that bordered the town was the Everfree, but it couldn’t possi—

“Well this is the place!” Twilight said, Handy looked up.

He then looked down at the princess, his face stony and unamused. She had led him to a fucking gingerbread house. An honest to God, Hansel and Gretel, witch in the woods, gingerbread house. Here in the middle of the town and standing out like a sore thumb on a camel for all it did to blend in with the prevailing architecture.

“You’re joking me,” Handy stated flatly. She frowned up at him.

“What do you mean?” Handy glared at the offending building.

“Just… never mind. What is this place? I smell pastries and bread. A bakery?”

“Oh yes, Sugarcube Corner is the best bakery in all of Ponyville. Spike should be here on one of his rounds. He should be just inside.” Handy nodded, looking around and feeling especially conspicuous standing there with one of the most important people in all of Equestria, in the heart of Nothing Town in the middle of nowhere, outside a bakery and absolutely no one around them so much as batting an eye. Indeed, apart from one pony exiting the building with a box of admittedly delicious-smelling food hanging from its muzzle, there was no one near them. It was surreal to him.

“Alright, so we'll wait for him here then.” She shook her head.

“Why wait? Come on in.” She walked in without waiting on him. Handy made to speak but she was already inside by then. He shut his mouth and glanced around again, then followed after her. The interior was just as outrageously thematic as the facade. Candy decorations dotted the walls and several of the wooden support beams had been carved and coloured to resemble striped candy. A glass display showed off the various goods that were up for sale.

The majority of the bakery’s floor was giving over to tables and chairs. More than a few of them had evidently been used recently if the white powdery dust of recently consumed confections were any evidence. There was no one behind the counter and, to Handy’s disappointment, there wasn’t any short drake in sight. Twilight cleared her throat as she approached the counter, ringing the bell for attention.

“You rang!?” The Pink Thing more or less exploded into existence just behind the counter, hooves extended wide and face bright with the largest and most terrifying smile Handy had ever seen. Handy’s hand involuntarily gripped his war hammer, even as he struggled to keep his expression neutral. He… had not been expecting this particular pony to be here.

“Hey, Pinkie! Is Spike here?” Twilight replied, not put off in the slightest by Pinkie’s behaviour. Pinkie rested a head on her hoof, looking thoughtful.

“Um, I think he went to Rarity’s, actually.”

“Rarity?” Twilight sounded surprised. “Why? He doesn't need anything from her.”

“Oh, she had dropped by and asked him for his opinion on something before they left. I think she just wanted help lifting things again.” Pinkie said the last part conspiratorially, leaning in to Twilight to stage whisper. The princess chuckled.

“Well, I’m sure he’ll be glad to help. I guess we’ll head on over there next.” Then Pinkie spotted Handy standing a good ways behind the princess, closer to the door, as all sane individuals should do so when standing in the same room as a deranged anomaly. She gasped loudly.

“Oh oh oh! It’s today!? Why didn’t you tell me!?” she asked Twilight, grabbing her by the cheeks and smushing them together. Twilight looked puzzled and asked something that only came out in muffled noises. “Well, duh!”

Pinkie’s answer to the muffled answer revealed nothing and raised additional questions, from Handy at least. Twilight seemed to realise something, judging by the way her eyes widened. Pinkie zipped up to him—literally zipped up. All Handy saw was a pink blur before the mare was already by his shoulder and giving him a sideways hug.

“Oh, had I known you were coming, I would have prepared you a Welcome to Ponyville Party!” Handy pushed off from her suddenly, disconcerted to be near, let alone touched by such a thing, only to have her disappear from his side as she materialised by his other shoulder, forelegs crossed and hoof to her chin. “Well, I knew. I knew you were coming, but I’ve been so busy that I guess I lost track of time. Oh well!”

Handy backed up again, almost jumping out of his skin, but again the pony had vanished.

“You’ll stick around though won’t ya!? Huh, huh, huh!?” She seemed to pop out of his peripheral vision, never out of anything he was looking at directly, the last three times appearing outside his vision every time he looked at her. It took everything in his power to not react by either blowing that pony out of sight with everything in his admittedly mediocre magical talent, as his fist closed around the stone in his grip, or just bashing her with his hammer.

It must have showed. Twilight was stifling a smile behind her hoof. Handy, for the sake of his dignity, kept his cool. Turned to the pink pony, he smiled… and stepped outside the door, slamming it shut behind him. Pinkie sat on the floor and turned to Twilight.

“Too much?”

--=--

Handy waited for the princess outside, fixing the gloves on his hands as she finished up with whatever business she had with the Pink Thing. She hadn’t followed him out, so either she was wrongfully waiting for him to come back inside, which he wasn’t deigning to do, or she had a few things she wished to discuss with her friend.

He idly watched the ponies of Ponyville trotted to and fro on the slush-ridden cobblestone streets and the muddy square down the road where he saw market stalls set up selling goods. Farmers and tradesmen selling off the last of their winter stores they didn't think they’d need, no doubt.

He turned and cast his eyes over the various, more solid storefronts around him. There was a flower shop, closed down and barren of goods for the winter, as would be expected, though he spied several ponies moving around within through the window. Over there was a blacksmith's, though the sign outside referred to it as Haversack’s Metal Shop. He also spotted a clothing store, a tavern, a restaurant, a carpenter’s, a cafe, several town houses were families lived, a haberdasher’s, a strange shop purporting to sell quality quills and sofas. He also spied a book store, huddled away and squashed in between several other buildings. He allowed himself a small smile and briefly wondered if it would be worth it to take a gander at what lay within, before deciding against it.

The ponies hustling by were wrapped up in hats and scarves, coats and cloaks tied about them to protect from the chill. Children played games with each other in the snowdrifts that filled the green areas between buildings while older ponies skidded about on the frozen ponds nearby. It was a town that, to Handy, stood out the most for its sheer normalcy and the fundamental goodness of all and sundry he could see around him.

They had walked past him without the slightest of remarks, nor did he catch a single erstwhile glance for curiosity’s sake, nor caution. It was as if he were nothing more unusual than all else that had visited upon them, as if the ponies here were not only not perturbed but could not be perturbed. Not by anything, not by him. Not by a long shot.

He was broken from his reverie by the sound of approaching voices coming from around the corner. “…I only said I was helping for a bit. I still need to… get… the ca…” Spike trailed off as he turned the corner of the bakery, the white-coated, purple-maned mare he had encountered back in Skymount in toe. Her smile faded slightly as she followed the dragon’s gaze. Handy calmly looked back as he finished putting his gloves back on, his expression plain as he measured the dragon up.

The drake was taller than the ponies around him, but not by much, his long limbs giving him a lanky look to him, the spines along his back sharp and almost iridescent in the light. He was, oddly enough, wrapped up in a very heavy array of clothing. A large heavy coat covered him from his neck to his clawed feet which he noticed were bundled in heavy fur wraps. A knitted scarf and cap almost obscured the entirety of his head, leaving his eyes and the spines on the side of his head exposed.

He was more dressed for winter’s fury than even the scrawniest pony Handy had seen scarper by, and the thought of the fact a dragon needed that much protection from the cold brought a quiet smirk to Handy’s face. The look in the drake’s wide eyes made it clear he had not been expecting him today. More was the pity for him.

“Ah, there you are,” Handy said. “I take it you are prepared?”

“Uh… I uh, um…” Spike stammered. It seemed that whatever confidence that had possessed him back in Skymount had evaporated in the face of the consequence of that action. For that, Handy was secretly relieved. The more the dragon feared him, the less he would have to take action to keep him in line. “Wh-Where’s Twilight?”

“The princess is busy with the baker,” Handy explained, glancing sideways at the abomination he was standing outside of, “where I was led to believe you were to be. Alas, I see you had been stolen away by, uh… hmm.”

Handy looked thoughtful when he glanced at Rarity. “Rarity,” she supplied, looking nonplussed for a fraction of a moment before smiling. “We met at the reception?”

“Yes, of course.” Handy immediately turned back to Spike, as if awaiting an answer. Spike hesitated for a moment, sharing a look with Rarity, who gave him an encouraging smile.

“Yes. I’m ready.” Spike looked back at Handy, a touch more resolute.

“Excellent, my ship is docked with the castle. I trust you’ll be able to find it.”

“Find what?” Pinkie asked from Handy’s side. He all but jumped in shock, rounding on the mare. He hadn’t heard the door open. In fact, it only just opened then with Twilight coming out and laughing behind her and telling Pinkie Pie goodbye. Then she did a double take as she spotted the same mare beside Handy, glancing back inside and back again.

“Oh, Pinkie!” Spike said cheerfully. “Are they ready?”

“Yeperoonee!” Pinkie reached for the box of baked goods on her back, lifting it with her muzzle and offering it to the dragon with a smile. “Be careful, they’re still hot. Let them cool for a bit.”

“Aheh, Pinkie, I’m a dragon. I can handle hot food.” Pinkie chuckled.

“I don’t mean for you, silly!” Spike gave her a confused look. Twilight suddenly walked between them and stood beside Pinkie.

“Anyway, we were just here looking for you.”

“Yes, I have made him aware. He tells me he is prepared,” Handy said.

“Oh no, not just yet,” Twilight interjected.

“What?” Spike asked.

“We still have a few more things to do. Handy wasn’t supposed to arrive this early, you see.” Twilight walked with Pinkie over to Rarity. Handy narrowed his eyes slightly in suspicion while Spike scratched at his head in confusion.

“But, uh, what else is there to—?”

“As I live and breathe! Handy?” They all looked at the figure in the street as Handy turned. A dark blue unicorn stared at him with wide green eyes, most of his face covered by a woolly cap and scarf. However, the fireplace cutie mark on his flank was unmistakeable.

“Warm?” Handy’s brow furrowed in confusion.

“Haha! It really is you! What are you doing in Ponyville?” Warm Night approached the small gathering, accompanied by a light yellow, white-maned pegasus carrying… something in a cloth sack close to her chest. Most of it was obscured by one of her wings as she held it out and covering her front.

“I… I have business here. A better question is what are you doing on this side of the Everfree?” he asked, surprised more than anything at having seen these ponies again. Happy Hour, that was the mare’s name, he recalled. Unaware of it, Twilight was studying his expressions carefully as the interaction unfolded, noticing the change in demeanour when the new pony arrived.

“We’re here visiting family.” He smiled at Happy Hour, who looked down lovingly at the little package she was carrying, lowering a few primaries so Handy could see the tiny bundle of pony she was carrying. It was a tiny red thing with the same white mane as her mother, a rounded horn emerging from her forehead. Warm Night’s smile faded as he noticed the princess.

“Oh! Oh my apologies, Princess. Am I… I mean, are we interrupting something here?”

“Not at all! We were just about to head off to Carousel Boutique,” Twilight answered helpfully.

“We were? Oof!” Spike yelped as someone nudged him. “I mean, uh, yeah! I need to help Rarity move her stock for clearances.”

“Oh, you’re Rarity?” Happy Hour asked brightly, her voice like silver bells. She sounded a lot different than Handy recalled, certainly much happier. “My aunts have been telling me all about your shop. I mean, I had always heard about you in the fashion columns. I would have thought you’d be in Manehatten or Canterlot.”

“Perish the thought, darling, Ponyville is my home and I choose to live here. Besides, I have several wonderful and extremely talented mares apprenticed to me that I trust fully with my other outlets. It allows me to focus on continuing my art rather than let the drudgery bog me down,” Rarity explained in dramatic fashion, complete with touching her mane and gesturing with her hoof in the manner of woman who thought very highly of themselves and who had more assumed sophistication than sense.

“That sounds wonderful. I would love to see it before we leave,” Happy Hour said. Rarity’s eyes seemed to shine in that odd manner Handy had seen so many other times. It was only just then that he noticed the evident connection between the phenomena and something the pony was intrinsically passionate about.

“Oh, would you like to come with us? I have some wonderful sundresses for my spring line up that would look absolutely darling on you!”

“Oh no, I couldn’t. I can’t afford it with the baby and all.” Rarity took a step forward and placed a hoof on one of hers.

“Nonsense, I have dresses made specifically for new mothers such as yourself. I’ll hear nothing of price. Come with us; I would love to get a photograph of you and your gorgeous baby. Would you mind?” Happy Hour looked at Warm Night, who smiled and nodded at her. She beamed at him.

“I’d love to!” she confirmed brightly.

“If I may, Princess?” Handy interjected, drawing Twilight’s attention. “Would it be quite alright with you if, in the interim, I could spend my time waiting here in town until you and Spike are ready to continue?”

Twilight opened her mouth as if to object before putting her hoof to her chin in thought. She looked at Happy Hour and smiled to herself before answering.

“That won’t be a problem. We won’t be long!” Twilight herded Spike along with them as she followed after Rarity.

“Well now, I have received plenty of criticism that nopony would want to see an outfit specifically made for new mothers, but pish posh, I wouldn’t hear of it! Nothing says springtime like new life, and nothing is more emblematic of that than a mother with her new foal. Now, are you sure you wouldn’t mind you and your darling little baby posing for a few choice photos? I would be ever so grateful and I assure you…” Rarity chattered away with Happy Hour with the rest of them following along in step. Pinkie pronked along in an energetic manner and the dragon occasionally glanced back before they disappeared from sight. Handy turned to Warm Night, who gestured with a hoof for him to follow before walking on.

--=--

“So, it’s been a while. Never thought I’d meet you again,” Warm Night said as the two stopped under the cover of a shop window as a light drizzle came down. Handy idly studied the toys on display of the woodcrafter’s shop as they spoke.

“Yeah, that’s… Yeah. How’ve you been? How is Spurbay?”

“Oh it goes, it goes.” Night gestured with a hoof as he shook the scarf about his neck into place. “I’ve been doing well, as you can probably guess.”

“I can see that. When did… I mean, the baby and all but… When did that happen?” Handy asked, looking down at him. Warm Night smiled.

“Isn’t she beautiful? She’s a month old now. I couldn’t be prouder.” He beamed.

“No I mean… Fuck.” Handy rubbed a hand over his head. “I mean, uh, congratulations. I just never thought it’d been so long since we last spoke already.”

“Twelve months isn’t that long, Handy,” Warm said with a smirk. Handy snapped around.

“... Twelve months?” he asked quietly, eyes wide. “Has it been a year already?”

“What? No, there’s more than twelve months in a year.” Warm Night’s eyebrows rose. Handy waved him aside.

“Not what I— Never mind, that’s… Sorry, my mind was elsewhere.” He looked out on the passing ponies on the street as the drizzling rain passed, clearing up for the sun once again. “Time flies, I guess.”

“Hmhm, that it does. Want to get a drink while we’re waiting?” Night asked. Handy looked up at the sky.

“At this hour?”

“Ha! Not that kind. Come on, Ponyville has cheap coffee.” They settled at a cafe that, oddly enough, consisted of two buildings around a central square with exterior tables and chairs. Both the interiors and tables were full, so the pair had to make do with standing, holding cheap cups with the steaming liquid.

Handy, not for the first time, wondered where in the hell this world got its coffee from when no one this far north had either the appropriate climate or the greenhouses to cultivate it. He never could find bags of the stuff on the market, only ever in coffee houses or restaurants or, rarely, in the possession of higher nobles than himself. It was weirdly restricted for such a desirable product that was sold openly to the public, and Warm Night was not kidding when he said it was cheap here. Only three Equestrian bits, barely making a dent in one of his Grey Coast bond notes, right here in the middle of Equestria.

He shrugged to himself. Must be some merchant cartel or something. He had increasingly learned such attempts were not unusual but rarely as successful as he had seen coffee had been. Warm took a long draught of his cup, letting out a satisfied breath as he moved out of the way of a cream-coated mare with a two-toned dark blue and pink mane returning to her seat. Handy idly contemplated his own cup. He wasn’t much for coffee generally but had grown more and more appreciative of it in this world for its reviving effects. He drank the dark liquid and suffered through its burn as it passed down his throat warmed him.

“I wanted to thank you, you know.”

“What?” Handy asked, distracted.

“I meant thank you. I… don’t know what would have happened if you and Joachim had not showed up. I don’t know if we’d still be in that mine or…” He trailed off, speaking quietly. Handy took another drink.

“You’d have had made it out eventually.”

“No, I mean really. We wouldn’t have. I would never have… I mean, my wife and child. I’d never have them; little Ruby would never have been born.” Handy didn’t know how to respond to that, so he didn’t. They both stood there in the quiet of the day, listening to the crowd as they chatted and laughed and mingled around them. Handy looked up and observed the pegasi lazily meandering in the sky above.

“I know you weren’t telling us everything.” Handy looked down at him quietly. “About how we got out of there. I know damn well I fell down that shaft after I flipped the switch.”

Handy said nothing, shifting in his cloak. Warm’s voice was barely audible with the crowd around them, which was just as well.

“I remember the fire at the bottom. I remember the choking fumes and the acrid smell of oil as I took my last breaths. I remember not being able to move my limbs, the twisted metal, my vision fading. I remember the pain, all of it. It’s hard to forget what a punctured lung feels like.” He took a breath, Handy remaining silent. “I am not saying I know what you did. I am not saying I am not grateful to you, because I am, more than I could ever pay back. But I know you lied. I know Joachim was in no state to carry himself out of that hole, let alone both of us. I knew that before I made the jump. You probably lied to him too then, didn’t you?”

Handy looked away, his gaze focused on a clothesline where a mare was hanging a red blanket while chatting with her neighbour who carried a basket of dried vegetables. He still did not respond.

“It was cold, the thing that grabbed me. I felt it run right through me. It was like it was scratching at my mind and my heart before things went black.”

“Warm,” Handy finally said, a note of warning in his voice. Warm shook his head.

“I am not prying. Like I said, I am grateful, truly I am. I just… I’m saying I don’t want to know. And why I don’t want to know. It was dark down there, Handy, and I do not mean the lack of light. I don’t want that darkness to follow me, is all. To follow my family.”

“And it won’t. I promise, so long as you let it go.”

“And I will,” Warm said quickly. “It's just… I want you to know I don’t believe most of what I heard about you, about how you are now a blood-sucking monster that eats ponies and sacrifices virgins to dark gods.”

Handy snorted at that. It couldn’t be helped. Warm could hardly hold back the hint of a smile despite the dark mood that had taken over the conversation. Handy didn’t let him see the look in his eyes, however.

“But,” he began. Handy looked back at him expectantly. “I can’t rule it all out. Nopony in Spurbay takes any of the stories seriously, and you have an entirely different perception on the West Coast than from what we have heard from travellers and news from elsewhere. Still, I want to hear it from you. Is any of it true?”

Handy was quiet for a moment as he considered that. He didn’t want to lie to Warm. Besides, it might as well be pointless, as there was no way he was unmarked by the princess after approaching him in the street. Warm was going to find out one way or another once the Crown approached him, if at all. Hell, for all Handy knew, this was probably a set up by the Equestrians. His mouth twitched as he suppressed a smile. Trust Warm to be put up to something without his knowing—the man was too honest. That, or perhaps Handy had grown too cynical.

“Less than you’d think, more than I’d like.” Warm Night finished his drink and watched the crowd go about their business.

“Which parts?”

“Whichever ones help you sleep at night,” Handy said before letting out a breath. “I thought you didn’t want to know?”

“I guess I don’t. I just… I dunno.” The sun poked out from behind a passing cloudbank and bathed the town in its scant warmth.

“How’s your dad?” Handy asked at last. Warm smiled sadly.

“In a better place.” Handy looked down at him, his face dropping in realization.

“Oh… I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. He died happier than I’ve known him to be in years.”

“Did he get to see his grandchild?”

“No, sadly, but he knew she was coming, at least. He seemed content with that.” Warm sighed briefly. “How’s Joachim these days? Am I hearing right and he’s now wearing a particularly heavy hat?”

Handy smiled at that. “He’s doing as well as can be expected.”

“Very diplomatic of you.”

“Can’t very well be saying things about my king, now can I?”

“No, but how about a friend?” Warm smiled broadly.

“Being a king isn’t an easy job.” Warm detected a hard edge to Handy’s voice that was not directed at him. He moved the conversation along.

“I see. And you?”

“Hm?”

“How are you doing?” Handy snorted.

“That’s a question and a half. But I am well.” Handy waved a hand in the direction of the ugly castle and the charcoal-black envelope of the airship docked beside it. “Moving on up in the world.”

“Literally, I see.”

“Only way to do it,” Handy replied with a laugh.

“Haven’t gone home yet?” Handy’s mouth drew tight.

“Not feasible right now.”

“Really? You seem to have the money. Obligations tying you down?”

“Amongst other things. I simply can’t as things stand right now.”

“Why not?” Handy chewed the inside of his cheek as he considered.

“Price is currently too high. ‘Sides, the Black Fleet is in the way.” Night nodded.

“Always did wonder how you got past them in the first place.”

“Alcohol covereth a multitude of sins. You’re a port town lad. Do any of the sailors you know ever come ashore sober?” Warm Night laughed with genuine mirth.

“Usually their passengers are more reserved.”

“Well most passengers aren’t Milésian,” Handy countered. Warm Night just shook his head.

“Well, whatever the truth of it is, I hope you manage it someday. Or are you settled down yet?”

“Not at all.” Handy recalled his rather entrenched position back in Gethrenia and grimaced. “And I do not plan on doing so.”

“Well, whatever you do, I wish you the best.” Warm placed his cup on a table by the door to be picked up by one of the employees. “You should visit Spurbay sometime.”

“I might just do that one of these days,” Handy promised, a smile coming to his face. “Any more dog troubles?”

Warm laughed. “No, not anymore, you’ll be glad to hear. “They’ve foreclosed the mine at long last.”

“They hadn’t before?”

“Oh, it was long since abandoned to the dogs. It’s just official now.” Warm shifted his scarf. “Well, I suppose I’ll have to pick up the girls. You think they’ll be ready?”

“It's barely been more than an hour, and they’re women. Give them another half hour or two.” Warm chuckled.

“Well, let's get something to eat then. Hungry?”

“Aye, what food does this town have?”

“How do you like dried hay?” Warm asked. Handy frowned.

--=--

Spike saw him approach from the town not long after he himself had returned from Rarity’s. Twilight had told him to stay outside to greet Handy when he did eventually come back, which was definitely something he was not looking forward to.

“Why did I agree to this again?” he asked himself, and not for the first time, he crossed his arms over his chest again for added warmth, the heavy coat itself not enough to keep out the chill that bit to the bone. He should not be this cold this close to spring.

Handy drew closer to the grand doors of the castle as he left the town, his pony friend in toe beside him as he chatted amiably with the stallion. Their conversation abruptly cut off when the human saw the drake waiting for him by the two guards. He still bore a smile, but it had shrunk noticeably.

“Spike, is it?” Handy asked as he drew up to him. Spike stood up straight and looked him in the eye, but the human was still head and shoulders above him.

“Y-Yeah.”

“Excellent. I take it you are prepared for our sojourn now?” Handy asked.

“Uhm, yes. Twilight said she wanted to talk to you for a bit before we left.” Handy nodded.

“Of course, of course.” Handy glanced at the two guards who, to their credit, were standing stoically, eyes forward and as impassive as marble statues. Warm Night took a step forward.

“Is my wife still with the princess?” Spike blinked at him, surprised for a moment that the stallion had spoken to him.

“Oh! Yeah, they’re inside. She’s been waiting on you.”

“Oh well, best not keep her waiting then. Ha!”

“Have you not gone in yet?” Handy asked. Spike shook his head.

“I uh, was told to wait here for you.”

“How polite. Well, it wouldn’t do to keep them waiting. Let's head on in.” And as Handy said that and as Spike reached out to open the massive doors, they swung in on their own accord and, much to everyone’s surprise, a warm gust of air blew out. It was followed by an explosion of confetti and blasts of horns and trumpets and a hundred and one other instruments.

“SURPRISE!” an amazingly pink voice bellowed out, chorused by dozens of other voices. Handy blinked in confusion, covered in the detritus that had exploded onto the three of them. The entire hallway of the castle was packed with townsponies, both in the air and on the ground. Banners hung from the balustrade of the upper floors, stating: WELCOME AND FAREWELL!

Pinkie Pie was there, reared up on her hind legs, forelegs outstretched in the air in welcome, her face split with the warmest grin before she ran forward and swept Spike into a bone-crushing hug which, given the relative strength of earth ponies, was quite considerable.

“Oh, we’re going to miss you so much!” Spike chuckled as he was released and followed the pony inside to be greeted by the townsponies.

“I’m not going to be gone forever, you know.”

“We know that, Spike,” Twilight said as she came forward with her other friends. She nervously rubbed at one foreleg. “But you… know how hard it is for us to let you go off on your own.”

Spiked rolled his eyes as he removed the scarf and smiled at the alicorn. “Yeah, and how. But I’m not—” He coughed violently for a few seconds. Handy noted the alarmed look in the princess’ face. “—Ack! Sorry, but I’m not going too far. It's just the dragon lands… and then Griffonia. It's not as if we can't keep in touch.”

Warm began picking off the confetti and streamers from his coat and mane as he entered the reception and went searching after his wife. Handy still needed a moment to register what was happening before following them inside and… immediately the heat washed over him. Huh, the castle must have some way of magically containing the heat even with open doors. He didn’t notice it when he first entered the castle, but it was definitely conspicuous now.

He brushed the shoulders of his cloak and shook his head. Spike was conversing with the princess and her friends, Warm had wandered over near a table where his wife stood… wearing a rather expensive, if simple-looking dress. The rest of the ponies were mingling amongst each other or eating and drinking. Seemed he had been unduly worried. The oddness of the princess’ insistence on getting him outside the castle earlier was probably just to set up this surprise party. A charming touch, he decided, if he was right about his surmising and this dragon was something of a little brother to this mare.

He noticed the pink pony, who was bobbing side to side on her hooves as music played from somewhere in the castle, was looking back at him with a smile. Apprehension crawled along his neck, and he decided it was in his immediate best interests to find something else to occupy his time and look busy before the... Thing decided he required seeing to. He wandered to the nearest table and picked a plate of what looked like edible fruit slices. It wasn't until he bit into them that he realised they were apples, for which he was pleasantly surprised, and took a few more.

“Do my eyes deceive? For this I cannot believe!” Handy, mouth full of apples, looked across from him to see a zebra. A very distinctive zebra, wearing large, hooped, gold earrings and neck brace of similar rings. Who spoke in rhyme. He froze. It was the witch of the woods, the one he had first met when he came to this world, whose door he had come to for directions after waking up on the riverbank. And she was smiling at him. He swallowed.

“I’m… sorry?” Handy asked cautiously. The zebra was wearing a green travelling cloak that looked slightly damp and tattered. Given she apparently lived in the nearby forest, that was to be expected.

“Remember me, you do not? Though this cannot be blamed, for surely you went through a lot, in the forest that cannot be tamed,” she said without hesitation.

“Oh… well.” He looked around. “Yes, I guess I do remember you.”

She smiled at that and lifted the ladle of the nearby punch—or at least Handy thought it was punch—and poured a glass with it, deftly manipulating the tool with her hoof. Again, it annoyed the fuck out of Handy. How the hell did ponies, or zebras in this case, do that with just their hooves? She gestured to the bowl with the tool, and Handy shook his head.

“I see life finds you well, how finds you Ponyville at last, pray tell?” Okay, this conversation was happening, he guessed.

“It’s… pleasant.”

“Only now in the present?”

“What? No, that is not what I meant.”

“Then why then, away from Ponyville did you bid me have you sent?”

“Look, I did not want to go to Ponyville at the time.”

“So you sought refuge in another clime?”

“What is this? What are you doing?”

“I don’t understand what you are construing.”

“Okay, that one was a stretch. What's with the rhyming?”

“It is how I best practice my timing.”

“Why?” Handy asked monosyllabically. Zecora smiled wider at him, eyes dancing with mischief.

“I cannot lie, this is simply how I choose to speak. It keeps the wits sharp and my humour sleek. To practice my arts and speed my chores along, perhaps you would rather I spoke in song?” she offered. Handy shook his head.

“No! No… anything but that.” Handy rubbed the bridge of his nose and looked around. It seemed that Spike had wandered off into the crowd and the princess and her friends had similarly disbanded. Concerned, he scanned the room and spotted the pink one some ways off. She had pulled a clown outfit from somewhere and was busy doing a rather complicated display to the amusement of several ponies. Well, at least that meant she wasn’t anywhere near Handy for now, and he figured if the princess had went through this much trouble for a farewell party, it’d be rude to demand it to be hurried along.

He turned back to the zebra and scrutinized her for a moment. She didn’t… seem like much, and he certainly had not expected to ever see her again. However, she did confirm that this was, indeed, the very first town he had seen when he first woke up in that damned forest so long ago now, the very same town he had walked the opposite way from out of disgust for its existence.

“So, you live alone in the Everfree then?” She nodded.

“I am she who dwells in the forbidden dells of the Everfree. I live plain in sight as even those such as you can see.”

“Must be quite harrowing, given the wildlife,” Handy commented.

“I make do with what I can. It has been that way since life first began.”

“So you just... deal with all those wolves made of wood? And those horrible mounds of flesh with teeth and those… chicken things that turn people to stone?” he asked incredulously. Zecora chuckled into her hoof.

“Cockatrice bother me none. It is not hard when you venture only on the road which is lit by the sun.”

“Cockatrice? Is that what those things are called?” Handy asked, a thought coming to him suddenly. If this was indeed the same town as before, and Zecora lived not too far into the forest, at least close enough to venture into town, he wondered if… “I don’t suppose it’d be too much trouble to ask of you a favour?”

“A boon you seek of me? Tell me what you seek and we shall see.” While her smile seemed genuine and her expression curious, the entire vibe Handy was getting off of her made him hesitate. As far as he knew, she was probably not a witch, even though she had all the trappings of one. With this world, it could go either way. He had met one isolated old griffon lady who had turned out to be the definition of a witch herself, and another who was nothing more than a kind old lady who gave him some medicine for his troubles. He glanced at Twilight for a moment, and the surrounding ponies. They all seemed to tolerate and accept her, probably had done so for years, and if the Equestrian’s suspiciousness surrounding him was anything to go by, anything untoward from this zebra this close to the youngest princess in the land would certainly have been noted. He bit the bullet and put forward his suggestion.

“I was wondering if you would be able to direct me to a certain cockatrice?” he asked. Zecora lifted an eyebrow at that.

“If it is a hunt you are after, then perhaps it is another woodspony to whom you should defer.”

“No no, it’s not a hunt. It’s a very particular cockatrice. For a very particular reason.” She tapped her chin in thought.

“If it is not any one that will do, then I am led to understand this is one in which you knew?”

“Yes. Very familiar with this particular cockatrice.” She smiled at that and gestured for him to continue with a wave of her hoof. “I can’t distinguish much about it other than it was rather large and it had turned one of those large, fat, ball-like things into a statue not long before we… met.”

“Ah, I know of the one of which you speak. Into cockatrice dens, wrigoths do not dare peek. So when one is turned to stone, it is not long until such a new landmark is then become known.”

“So you know of which one I am talking about?” Handy asked hopefully. Perhaps he would get more out of this trip than he had expected. Zecora nodded.

“There is only one new such statue, such an unfortunate fate. And cockatrices guard their territories well and intruders they most certainly hate.”

“So could you guide me to where this cockatrice’s territory is?” he asked cautiously. She nodded again. “So what would I owe you? I can pay, if that’s what you’d want.”

She waved him off with a hoof. “Not at all, for cockatrices are but a pest. Tell not my yellow friend before you set out on this quest. For the good pony, though she means well, she cannot fully accept some animals make a home impossible to dwell.”

Ah right, the pegasus with the pink hair he had met before, the really quiet one. Well, no problem there, he should think, since he’d unlikely to be near her anytime soon. “Well, regardless. The cockatrice’s ability to turn things to stone…”

“It pierces you with its stare, and petrifies with its baleful glare,” she said happily. Although how you could say something like that happily was beyond Handy.

“Right. What can you tell me?” he asked at last.

“Less than you’d like, and more than I’d prefer, but lo, to another I now must defer.” Zecora’s gaze shifted to behind Handy. He turned and saw the yellow, silent mare all but jump as the two finally noticed her. Speak of the goddamn devil...

“Uhm, sorry if… if I am interrupting. Zecora?” she asked. The zebra smiled warmly at her.

“Not at all, Fluttershy. For what purpose do you pass by?”

“Oh, I was just wondering if you had any more of the tonics to help out my squirrel friends. They’re still ever so sick.” She glanced up at Handy and gave him a light smile. Handy did not return the expression. The smile fell from her face, and she quickly looked back to Zecora.

“Of course, my friend, anything to help you out of this bend. I shall make a new batch for you upon the morrow that is sure to remedy your furry little friends’ sorrow.” Zecora walked from her side of the table to theirs. Handy tolerated the interruption, not planning on leaving the zebra just yet. “You have yet to introduce me to this strange friend of yours. Another that Twilight and company have picked up on their tours?”

“What? Oh, oh my no. This is, uhm…” Fluttershy gestured to Handy.

“Handy,” he said, giving Zecora a questioning look, wondering what she was playing at. “I am here as a favour.”

“A favour you say and name of Handy? Such a dandy moniker for you to waver.” Not for the first time, he wished the woman would pick a rhyming scheme and just bloody stick with it. “I do not come into town as much and I am not as caught up on the news. Tell me, why have you need to fulfil such dues?”

“I am certain you can ask Princess Twilight about it,” Handy said, more than fed up with speaking to this damnable zebra and her witch-rhymes. Granted, he had not seen a single witchy thing about her other than that she lived in a strange tree house in the middle of foreboding woods far beyond the limits of the town.

That, to be perfectly honest, just screamed that she was a witch. Either that or a grouchy Finn.

“I can tell ya jus’ what he’s here for,” said an orange mare suddenly. Applecrack or something, he recalled. The pony gave him the most openly scrutinizing look he had received from an ordinary pony in the longest time, and clearly had no fear of him as she approached with Rarity in tow.

“Applejack, dear, there is no need to be rude,” the white mare admonished

“I ain’t being rude none. I am just telling Zecora here the facts as I knows them. This here is the human what been scaring folk around the country. Rightly or wrongly mind.”

“Now that isn’t strictly true,” Handy said neutrally. Applejack seemed to pause and tilt her head slightly.

“It's true enough though, ain’t it?” Handy cocked a brow.

“I am not responsible for what other people think. It's none of my business. It’s none of yours either.” He might be a guest here, but he didn’t need to take this. Applejack’s stare seemed to lighten momentarily before hardening again.

“Now that’s a lie. You do it on purpose, don’t you? You like scarin’ folks.” Handy’s eyes widened slightly. “I know I got a feel for ya back at your house, but I had to be sure.”

“Are you telling me you can detect when someone is lying?” Handy asked, curious.

“I reckon I can tell a fib better than most,” she confessed.

“AJ!” Rarity interjected

“Hush, Rares.” Handy contemplated that for a moment, then narrowed his eyes at her. Truth be told, the only other person he knew who could easily tell when he was lying was Johan himself. However, he had always chalked that up to the griffon knowing him far better than most people. He smiled.

“That is rich.”

“Beg yer pardon?”

“You are hardly the first nor will you be the last who claims they can judge someone’s honesty just from ‘looking’ at them,” Handy commented. “Honestly, really now, I expected better of the sorts the good princess chooses to surround herself with.”

“Now see here, are you calling me a liar?” she demanded with a huff.

“I don't see how that is different than you claiming the same out of me, and with much less evidence. I have not sought to scare nor strike fear in anyone since I have arrived here, and certainly I do not go out of my way to strike fear into the hearts of anyone in my own home in Skymount. Or are you going to deny the evidence of your eyes and believe that of your ears instead?” he challenged. He could see that Applejack looked flustered, so he went in for the kill. “Now it could be that I, in fact, always lie, and that this too is a lie. Tell me, Applejack, was it? Have I just lied to you?”

“Uh, well—”

“Honestly, Applejack, that's enough now.” Rarity placed a hoof in front of her friend and turned to Handy. “I apologise, my dear baron. I’m afraid AJ here is very forward with how she feels about things. I fear we may have gotten off on the wrong hoof before, and I would like to make amends.”

Handy nodded and smiled genially at the purple-haired mare. Honestly, flattery would get her nowhere with him, and he was unlikely to ever reconsider his first impression of her, but politeness and respect had its place and he appreciated the gesture.

“It is forgotten. A pleasant surprise you laid out for young Spike.”

“Yes, well, Pinkie Pie simply insisted on it. It is also for you, you know?” she asked.

“Is that why it says welcome and farewell?” Handy asked.

“Oh quite. How are you finding it?”

“It is… nice,” Handy decided. It was a very simple affair. The music wasn’t overbearing, the colours bright, the food sugary, and the drinks absent of alcohol of any kind. Reminded him more of a bingo hall celebration from back home than an actual farewell party. “A touch unexpected though.”

“Well that’s our Pinkie Pie—simply could not dream of knowing somepony new was coming to Ponyville and not welcome them appropriately.” She tittered. “Though I imagine this is not the sort of thing you would be used to.”

“You’d be right about that. Hm.” Handy looked around. “Not that I am complaining, but I am surprised that your blue friend is not around. The Rainbow something.”

“Dash is spending time training with the Wonderbolts. She couldn’t make it for this,” Applejack explained, now looking behind her towards where Warm Night and Happy Hour were conversing with a rather large white stallion with comically overdeveloped muscles and shrunken wings. She murmured under her breath, “Ah jus’ don’t get it.”

“What are you—?”

“HI!”

“GWAH!” Handy stepped back and overturned the food table as he struggled to maintain his balance as Pinkie Pie all but appeared in his face. Pinkie laughed, and was soon joined in by the others as they scattered in the wake of the spilt punch and treats.

“Sorry about that. I wanted to say I’m sorry!” she began, then looked up and frowned. “Well, not sorry that I’m sorry. I mean I am sorry for that just now, but I am also sorry for something else I really wanted to tell you I am sorry for, before I was sorry for the other thing which I am REALLY sorry about but—”

“Enough!” Handy managed, wiping pink frosting from the hem of his cloak and sighing. He supposed he was bound to run into this thing long enough. He’d been avoiding it enough. “It’s… alright. Really.”

“But it isn’t! You see, I knew you and my sister were friends and all, and she was just here a few days ago, and I was really hoping she could stick around for the party, but she really really couldn’t, so I just wanted to say sorry about that!”

Well. That happened. Truthfully, Maud would have been a more bearable pony to have a conversation with than her sister, but that would have just been a bonus for his time in Equestria. He smiled at the pink pony.

“It’s fine, really. Thank you very much for this party.” Handy decided that being amenable to the thing that clearly had some very weird magic was probably a good idea.

“You’re welcome! And you’re welcome!” she said before falling back and giggling to herself, causing Applejack to roll her eyes and shake her head. Rarity kicked her foreleg. She mouthed an ouch, rubbed it, and gave the mare a poisonous look. Rarity simply gestured with nod of her head. Applejack sighed and cleared her throat.

“Look, Mister Handy, ah know I was rough on ya but…” She looked back at Happy Hour. “I guess after hearing all the things your pony friends had to say, I guess I may have you wrong…”

Handy raised his eyebrows at that. “Oh, changing your tune are we?” She frowned.

“Now don’t think that means I’ll let you off easy. Ah know you are mightily going out of your way on this for us, and Ah appreciate it, Ah really do, just… Ah dunno, forget about it. I take notions sometimes.”

“Cleary,” Handy said dryly, looking up as he saw the smiling princess approaching.

“Hi girls, hi Zecora!” she greeted.

“Twilight, my good friend, time with us at last you do now spend?” Zecora asked playfully. Twilight rolled her eyes.

“Yes yes, I know I’ve been meaning to give that book back to you for months now. I keep forgetting. I promise you won’t leave here without it this time. I’m not avoiding you, I swear. I see you’ve met our guest.”

“That I have, and not for the first time. Aheh, though he does seem to take objection when I rhyme.” Handy frowned at her. Twilight blinked.

“Wait, you knew each other?” she asked, pointing at the two of them.

“Zecora is the first person I met from this town,” Handy said, not technically a lie. Twilight rounded on Zecora.

“Why did you never tell me about that!?” she demanded, shocked more than anything. Zecora smiled nonchalantly.

“Whenever it came to matters of the past, you never really asked.” Twilight smacked her face with her hoof in a gesture that he always thought would have hurt the ponies more whenever he saw them do it, but it never seemed to.

“Oh I am sure there will plenty of time for you to catch up on all of that, darling,” Rarity said reassuringly, looking over at Happy Hour again, her smile fading as her eyes looked down upon the sleeping foal the mare held in her foreleg, close to the spring dress she had gifted her. She looked down thoughtfully before her eyes looked out at the cold weather through the nearby window. “Uh… If you’ll… If you’ll excuse me, I need to take care of something. Applejack?”

“Hm?”

“Could you come with me? Just for a moment. I need your advice on something.”

“Uh, sure. See ya around, Twi, Fluttershy,” she said as they departed.

“Oh, that reminds me. Handy?” Twilight asked. Handy looked down at her. “Spike is just gathering what's left of his things and will be down soon. If you have a moment, there’s something I’d like to talk to you about?”

Ah, there it was. He adopted a neutral expression and nodded, letting the princess guide him off to fulfil her part of the bargain. He turned to Zecora one last time before leaving.

“Do you mind meeting me at the edge of town in a half hour’s time? I’d prefer if we could take care of that matter today.”

“Of course I would be happy to be your guide, and show exactly where your prizes likes to hide.” Handy nodded his thanks and walked off. Fluttershy gave Zecora a questioning look.

“Uhm, what are you showing him exactly?” she asked curiously. Zecora clearing her throat answered her.

And deep in conversation on the other side of the hall, Applejack’s ear twitched, and she rubbed at it with a hoof in annoyance.

--=--

He followed the princess back into the room with the circular table and again noted how large the room was, and how empty it was. Surely she did not trust him this much already? Unless...

Twilight presented him with a small casket, magically levitated from under her right wing. She held it in front of her and looked down at it contemplatively. It was a small thing, plain and unassuming, which he supposed made sense given what he knew of the mare. She sighed and levitated it over to him, and he gratefully accepted it in one hand as the aura disappeared from it. He opened it to see the transparent glass flask filled with the vital fluid, resting in the velvet folds of the casket’s interior. He blinked in astonishment.

“Huh.”

“What?”

“Nothing, just never imagined you would actually go through with it.” Twilight looked at him with incredulity.

“I gave my word! Why did you think I wouldn’t?” she asked. Handy simply shrugged.

“Given your reaction when I first proposed the idea, I would’ve thought you’d have been a lot more hesitant.”

“You saw me back in Skymount. I agreed to it then and there whe—”

“Not. Then.” Handy closed the casket with a noticeable clack as the lock slipped into place. He looked up at her steadily.

“What do you me— Oh.” Her ears flicked.

“Quite.” He smiled. “Seems you are much more amenable to the idea than I was led to believe.”

“What? No, no no, I think you’re misunderstanding. I mean, just because… I mean—”

He nodded understandingly. “I understand. It’s for the research, right?”

“I uh… W-What?” she asked.

“You’re the inquisitive type. It was nothing more than idle curiosity. You’d want to know what happens, and this is the safest way, isn’t it?”

“...What do you mean what happens?” she asked cautiously, tapping the ground lightly and turning her head to the side. Handy’s smile remained kind and confident as he looked around at the empty throne room and placed the casket on the crystal table. He considered his options. It probably would be his only way of getting more in the future. And who knew what benefits it would give him in the long run if he got just enough for the effects to be permanent.

“Tell me, are Ciara or Sorcha aware of this little part of our arrangement? Truthfully, I am surprised they let you go through with this. I mean, this is yours, right?” Twilight didn’t respond. Handy grimaced. “They don’t, do they? Your friends, perhaps?”

Again, Twilight looked away. Handy’s expression looked surprised.

“Hm, I see. I hope you did not have to lie on my behalf about it? That friend of yours, the one with the hat? She seems rather adept at sniffing out untruths. She might be a touch upset by this.”

“They would have… objected. I didn’t tell them,” she admitted.

“But Spike knows, I assume?” She looked at him. “I assume you have a means of keeping in contact with him, even at distances. You hope to find out what happens when I drink this, right?”

“I don’t know what you mean.” She glanced away.

“You’re a bad liar. Just as well you didn’t tell them anything. It also doesn’t help that your heart is pumping faster the more nervous you get.”

“W-What?” She now looked rather alarmed. Handy took a step closer to the table, tapping the lid of the small casket as he went.

“We both know I change based on what I… consume.” He allowed his eyes to flash briefly. “And you know damn well why I requested this off of you. A curious sort like you wants to know what happens, right? Purely as a case of scientific inquiry, of course.”

She tapped the floor lightly again with her hoof and ruffled her wings. “W-Well…” He gave her time to finish, “I just… I figured it would be worth it. I mean then I’d… I’d also get something out of it.”

“Would you now? Indeed. You’re certainly holding up well for losing half a quart of blood. How old is this sample?”

“Uhm… a few days,” she confessed.

“And the glass? Preservation enchantment?”

“The casket, not the glass,” she corrected. “So long as the flask is in the casket, it’ll be preserved. Good for a year.”

“Fantastic gift. I graciously accept.” He lifted the flask out of the casket and studied it appreciatively. His smile fell. “Alas, there is just one problem.”

“What? What is it?” she said, looking up. He placed the flask back and closed the casket, looking to her.

“I am afraid you will never discover the effects alicorn blood has on me.”

“What? Why not?” she said in surprise, unconsciously admitting to what Handy had insinuated she was planning.

“Because I plan on denying you that. You will never know it by proxy. I will never allow Spike to find out.” Handy’s expression was neutral. “And there is nothing and no one that can aid you on the matter.”

“What!? But you’re going back on the deal!” she protested.

“Oh? What deal?” he asked dryly. “All the world knows that we agreed upon was, in a gesture of goodwill, that I would aid you in this quest to the Dragonlands, for the sake of your dear dragon friend’s health. No one, not Sorcha, not Ciara, not your friends, not anyone, knows about… this.” He tapped the casket for emphasis, and Twilight suddenly realised the depth of her mistake. Her eyes darted from the casket to Handy and back again. Her horn began to glow momentarily, and Handy’s willed power into the hand held behind his back.

The second Twilight disappeared from view in a flash of light and a burst of burnt ozone, a silver aura encapsulated the box and whipped it into his cloak as she reappeared behind him. She reached for the box, and her hooves grabbed empty space on the table. She blinked, and shocked eyes locked upon Handy as he stood less than a foot away.

“Now, now, I’m afraid it's too late for that, Princess.” Twilight glowered at him.

“Give it back, this is not fair!” she demanded, pushing off the table.

“I entirely agree, it is not fair. And that’s exactly why I’ll be holding you to account.”

“What?”

“Do you know what I think of you, Twilight?” Handy asked, dropping the nickname for the sake of the severe expression on his face. “I thought, out of all of the alicorn princesses, I could actually trust you.”

He walked around the table from her, observing each of the thrones in turn and noticing the marks upon each. It seemed the princess’ friends were actually people of some importance and not just her entourage. Ah well, something to worry about later. Twilight now looked at him in confusion.

“I. Hate. Luna,” Handy continued. “I hate her; I hate her servants; I hate her for the trouble she has put me through, I hate what it has made me become. I hate her intentions, both good and bad, and through her, I hate Equestria, Equestrians, all ponies generally, and thestrals in particular.”

“But… That's not—”

“Celestia I do not trust,” he barrelled past her weak protest. “Not as far as I can throw her, in any case. She is clearly capable, and she has been amenable to working with me in the past. However, I know rulers, and I do not trust her in the slightest. You?”

He stopped and looked directly at her.

“You, on the other hand, I thought I could work with. You clearly do not have the same duties and responsibilities as your elders, and thus not the same pressures. You walk with common folk and have ponies of different ranks and sensibilities as your closest confidants. You are relatively distant from whatever local nobility inhabites this part of Equestria. I figured I could trust your word on its face without having to know you first.” He cradled the casket in his arm, ensuring it was tightly gripped in his magic as well. “And now I have learned you are willing to lie to your closest friends and elders, for the sake of a stranger and your own selfish curiosity.”

Twilight reeled at that, looking down, abashed, her wings sagging. He seemed to have gotten through to her on this. Putting the casket away again, he decided to throw out the last saving line.

“And that is why you are going to be telling them. I insist on it.”

“W-What?” Handy stare was unrelenting.

“Either you do that, or I will.” Her eyes went wide.

“You wouldn’t! Why would you want to?” she demanded. Handy shrugged.

“Because for better or for worse, I am here on good faith. And the agreements between our kingdoms rely on that, and frankly I owe Sorcha that much. It is already too late to undo what we did. I assume you know that.” He completed his circuit of the table and stopped beside her one last time. “So, I will offer you this, regardless of what you decide to do. If you want to find out anything else about the nature of my powers, you will have to do so by yourself.”

“No proxies, no distance learning. You will have to come to me. I refuse to be the subject of a foreign monarch’s amusement. Again.”

“What do you mean by that?” Twilight asked, head tilted.

“Hopefully you will never have to know. I certainly will not be telling you. Am I understood?” he asked. Twilight looked around herself at the room and, eventually, sighed and nodded her head.

“Yes. You’re right. I shouldn’t have done that. I’ll… I’ll tell them as soon as I can.” Handy nodded.

“Good. I look forward to hearing from you about the matter by the time I return to Equestria.” He turned for the door. “You may send Spike up to the ship. My pilot will help him get settled. I have one last thing to see to in town before I leave. I trust I have your leave?”

He halted by the door. Twilight looked contemplatively at the table beside her as it hummed with power. Handy gave her a friendly smile before opening the door, the party music briefly flooding into the room as he left.

“Then I wish you the very best of luck.”

--=--

It was having a good day.

It had stoned many a bird and watched them fall to the ground, to the confusion and fear of other animals. It had driven off many predators, from orlaxes and forest cats, to frelkors and foxes. It had deftly avoided not one, not two, but three timber wolf packs on the hunt. It had eaten its fill and had won its territory again and again from other migrating cockatrices, ensuring it would still rule its roost come summer when it returned to its nest.

Now, it was time to relax as it prepared to move near the forest’s edge, on the border of where the strange field creatures dwelled in their living hill-nests. It did not fear them—they had always fled from it, as was only good and proper behaviour in lesser creatures. Now, all it had to do was await the arrival of the females and it would have yet another successful cold-time behind it, with its posterity yet again realised and abandoned to fend for themselves. As was only right and proper.

It stopped at a creek not far from one of its proudest trophies. The towering figure of the bulbous creature cast a distinctive shadow, marking his territory better than any scent trail. It would have smiled knowingly to itself in smug pride if it were capable. It lowered its head instead to drink of the cool running melt water of the creek that always passed through its territory come the season of mating, and never once had it failed to invigorate him. Truly nothing could ruin its day.

Just as it drank of the water, appendages snaked around its long neck and clamped down on it like steel. It flailed its leathery wings in surprise and tried to cry out in shock. A heavy boot stamped down on its long, heavy tail to prevent it from whipping around. What dared trespass on a cockatrice’s nest!? What predator was this that it had not already killed and eaten it!?

It could not move its head to fix its gaze on its enemy. Instead, it just made out the reflection. The face of the prey that had gotten away from it all those seasons ago looked back at it. The one it had dumped into the whipping river from which there is no fish and from which it was not safe to drink for fear the water would grab you and whisk you to your death.

Its eyes began to glow a sickly yellow light in the warped reflection of the water as it smiled a toothy, predatory grin.

“Hello again. Did you miss me?” one abomination asked another. “I missed you.”

--=--

As the ship sailed off into the northwest, its shadow against the sky highlighted by the setting sun, Bonbon sighed, put down the quill, and closed over the notebook. She didn’t ordinarily need the glasses, but when writing in the Cant, it was necessary in order to see the tiny numbers written in the shapes of letters. She’d transcribe it later for a report to the… well, she didn’t know anymore.

SMILE had been disbanded. Only now did she know it was simply a more mundane arm of a more extensive intelligence service, one she was pretty sure was a joke until she got confirmation that yes, in fact, those crushed velvet-wearing weirdos were still around and that she had recently been notified she had a new mission. Compartmentalisation, she determined, was as wise a policy as much as it was utterly infuriating for the individual agent. She sighed as she slid the thin book into the false panel, placed her actual diary on top of it, slid out a drawer, and carefully replaced them both in the hollow just under the roof of her drawers.

Apart from general security issues, her housemate was as curious as she was eccentric, so it was better for her to find an obvious secret so long as it distracted her from the real secret. Well, she already knew, but old habits die hard. She supposed she should really count her blessings: nothing was blown up, nopony stampeded through the streets, no magical abominations against nature taking up residency in the nearest well, and the human hadn’t caused more ruckus than a simple farewell party for the town’s dragon.

It was a good day in Ponyville, all things considered.

SLAM.

AAAAAAnd that was one of the reasons why. She smiled lightly to herself as she left her room to greet her friend. Lyra was standing just in the foyer, breathing heavily, soaked to the bone and shivering, wide-eyed and wild-haired.

“Uh, long trip?” Bon Bon asked. Lyra took a deep breath.

“You would not BELIEVE what I had to go through just to get firewood! Firewood! We live next to one of the biggest forests in Equestria! It should not be that hard or that expensive just to get firewood!” Lyra complained, shaking off the water and tossing her shawl on the cloak hanger.

“That’s where you were?” Bon Bon asked as the grumbling unicorn walked past her into the living room and plopped herself down in front of the fire. “Out getting firewood?”

“Well, yeah!” Lyra said, lying down couchant on the carpet. Bon Bon raised an eyebrow.

“And how much was it?” Lyra tsk’d.

“I didn’t pay for it, silly!”

“What?”

“I mean, not at those prices.”

“Lyra did you steal firewood!?” Bon Bon asked incredulously.

“What!? No!”

“Then where did you get it?”

“I got it myself!” Lyra protested proudly, holding her head up high. Bon Bon blinked.

“You got it yourself.” Bon Bon was suddenly apprehensive. She had been in the forest this whole time? And she had not run into him?

“Yep.”

“Like… with an axe and everything?” She relaxed slightly when she realised Lyra would be reacting very differently had what she feared transpired. She… She didn’t know, did she? Of all ponies...

“Borrowed one from the Apples that Applejack wasn’t using.”

“And... that’s what kept you so long?” Lyra still held her proud pose smiling for a few seconds longer before she sagged, sighing.

“And I have a newfound appreciation of why firewood is so expensive in this town. That forest is… certainly something.” Bon Bon laughed. “It’s not funny! It was really spooky… And icky… And I need a bath.”

Bon Bon laughed all the way to the kitchen, where she made themselves tea before coming back out and giving a cup to Lyra, who took it gratefully.

“Ah, thank you.”

“No problem. But why did you go out? We have plenty of wood here.” Lyra sighed in exasperation, rolling over on the carpet and kicking her legs in frustration. Bon Bon looked down disapprovingly at the now wet and slightly dirtied carpet.

“Because it’s so boring! Nothing’s been going on in town, and Winter Wrap Up isn't for another week!”

“Two weeks.”

“See!” Lyra rolled back over. Bon Bon smirked and looked out the window as it began to rain.

“Oh, I wouldn’t say so. Today was interesting.”

“Hah! I doubt that.” Lyra moved to take another drink. “Why? What did I miss?”

Although she’d probably regret having to do the inevitable clean up, she wagered it was worth it just for the reaction. She waited just until Lyra was well and truly enjoying her drink before she smiled knowingly and told Lyra all that she had missed.

Author's Note

Shameless Shilling - The Last Descendant

Chapter 57 - Building Bridges

He paced up and down the hold of the ship as he contemplated his future course of action. He had already checked the engine itself, almost scalding himself in the process like the damn fool he was, but the pressure had been adjusted. Now he had to decide what to do with the damned dragon on his ship.

He had several reasons for wanting to accept Princess Twilight’s request in the first place back in Skymount, not the least of which of course was all the political concerns—the High King’s little chat had done quite a bit to motivate him in that matter. Despite that, he did have something to get out of all of this. For starters, Spike himself. He had no illusions of suborning his loyalties, and he had absolutely no intention of gaining the lizard’s genuine friendship. The drake was just a pawn, a tool, but as it turned out, a useful one. Perhaps a profitable one if he pulled all this off.

A princess of one of the most powerful countries on this world had come to him for a favour. That was not to be underestimated. He knew precious little about the alicorns, save for the fact that there were apparently eight of them in total, and four of them were in Equestria. That… was an exceedingly rare breed of pony, and all of them were apparently renowned in terms of magical resources and knowledge. He was well aware that the ponies had copped onto his interest in magic, especially in light of his previous protestations of humans not knowing magic. That meant they knew it was valuable to him, along with the knowledge that he had a personal mage to study the matter.

So, what did one do when one found himself at odds with a regional great power ruled by exceedingly powerful mage-queens who commanded the sun and the moon? Make it seem like the youngest and least influential of them had power over him. A dangerous gambit to be sure, but he had noticed that contemplative look on Twilight’s face when he left the throne room. The woman was a thinker. That, coupled with his threat of forcing her to face up to her elder princesses about the matter? All the more likely the wilier princesses would coach her on using this to get him to trust her more, even lull him into thinking he had influence over her in order to reverse affairs if they saw through the first half of his gambit.

Which was where the little drake would come in.

If they pulled this off, and there was still a chance, however small, that this would be a mere taxi job, he gained the little bastard for a year. He was well aware that the drake would have some means of contacting or keeping in touch with the alicorn. Hell, if Handy had a way of contacting Chrysalis, however limited and one-sided it was and by accident no less, the personal servant of one of the leaders of a great power certainly had.

He wanted that dragon so he could, at the least, have a means of studying the species directly. He knew about the dragon bones Crimson had reclaimed as her cut of treasure from Lepidopolis, but she would need more. He needed to know more about dragons if any decided to jump him again like that asshole during the fall festival whose name he had forgotten way back. Felix, was it? Ferrovax? Ferix? It didn’t matter anymore regardless.

He would keep up the charade, try to hide things from the dragon, and lead him off on false leads when he ‘discovered’ more about what he was after. He’d make him think that the secrets that he was really after was some -obscure alchemical formulae, or odd and forbidden magics, or hell, even necromancy, which Crimson reliably told him didn’t exist despite animating the corpse of an undead dragon that he had killed himself... Handy didn’t get magic sometimes. In any case, he would feed Spike anything other than the truth about Handy’s interest in the veil and breaking through it to get back home.

Perhaps he was being overly cautious, but he did not want them to know about Earth, for better or for worse. Besides the matter, he needed the dragon’s trust to get through to the princess and use that to somehow get information and material to aid in his quest. And who knew? Maybe he’d get more alicorn blood out of it.

There was just one small hitch with this plan.

He. Was. A. Fucking. Dragon.

Handy was proud of how well he had kept his composure his entire time in Ponyville. It certainly helped that the thing was a five-feet-nothing which he towered over, but the truth of the matter, being this close to a dragon made Handy extremely anxious. It would only take one slip, one little accident, all the damn lizard would have to do was cough at an inappropriate time, and not only would his weakness suddenly become horribly clear to his enemies, but there was a chance he might go up like a Guy Fawkes puppet.

That was why he was now pacing down in the hold of the ship to ease his nerves on the matter. He would need to be in close proximity to the drake for at least the journey to and from the Dragonlands, and he would definitely need to get his nerves under control if he was going into that hellscape of all things. He was confident, of course, about as confident as he could be. He was an official representative of at least two kingdoms in this affair, not that he thought that would impress the dragons. It did, however, give him sufficient excuse to not engage with the dragons directly, and a sufficient pass to not succumb to any… heated exchanges which he had been previously been prone.

He hoped. That was assuming the dragons actually were sufficiently impressed with his title of Dragonslayer to actually allow them in. Or you know, they didn’t just immediately incinerate his entire airship before it so much as crossed the border.

Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all…

He continued his pacing as his thoughts ran to and fro about his mind. He idly noted how large the hold actually was in comparison to the rest of the ship and how cramped the actual living quarters were. The entire stern was given over to the steam engine and the hideously complicated pipe work, pressure valves, and importantly, the ballast controls. The walls were shot through with riveted iron plates covering the intricate pulley system that allowed the captain to control things from the bridge. He stopped when he realized that when size, space efficiency, and speed were set aside, this ship was hideously slipshod in a lot of ways. It wouldn’t even be very hard for someone to sabotage the entire thing—all they’d need to do was limpet to the side of the hull, cut their way through in the dead of night, and start wrecking shit.

He put the thought away for later and made note to never let the lizard down here. He checked the supplies and noted they had plenty of food and fresh water —for drinking, not for the engine—just in case they somehow pulled a Moses in the sky and got lost for a ridiculous length of time. In fact, it hardly took up even an eighth of the remaining space. He found his private reserve, opened it, and counted his remaining bottles, then downed a pint of pig’s blood to keep him going for the next week.

Disgusting, but it would at least keep the hunger pains at bay so he wouldn’t be tempted to take a taste of the alicorn blood he had at hand… at least not while the drake was hanging around. He sighed and shuddered at the chill of the hold. Right, it was time he stopped putting this off. If he was going to make it through this, he was going to have to interrogate the dragon eventually. He replaced the now empty wooden container and climbed the steps to the upper deck to have a friendly chat.

--=--

The sight was truly beautiful.

The ship was flying at a relatively low altitude over an area of plains north of the Everfree, having chosen to go around rather than over the accursed forest. There was just enough left of the day for light to peek through a gap in the troubled cloud cover and bathe the distant lakes and wild lands in subtle blues and soft shadows. Thunder rumbled above like the troubled sleep of an elderly god and gentle sheets of rain fell lightly on the ground, washing down the sides of the ship’s envelope and falling in sheets and rivulets to the ground below.

The three of them were gathered on the bridge around a circular table brought up from the spare room. Handy had figured it best if they were not far from the controls in case anything untoward happened. They sat there as Silvertalon dealt out the hands. Spike shifted nervously in his seat and Handy had to resist the urge to snort. Given the way the dragon was sitting, he probably found these Gryphonic chairs just as irritating as Handy did.

“Comfortable?” Handy asked.

“Huh? Oh, uh, yeah. Thanks.”

“You ever play?” Handy asked, gesturing to the cards with a nod. Spike kept his eyes on the cards as they were dealt.

“Uh, I have played bridge with the girls once or twice,” he answered. Handy blinked. They had bridge on this world? He put that matter away.

“Well then, I guess we’ll have to teach you the rules to poker then. Silver? Care to do the honours?”

Handy examined his hand while Silvertalon explained the rules to the nervous-looking drake. Two of blades, princess of stars, five of hearts, two of emeralds, six of stars—certainly not the best first hand, but surely he’d be able to pull one over on this dragon before Silvertalon cleaned him out like he usually did. He considered what he’d ask and decided on his first salvo just as Silvertalon finished.

“Alright, so tell me, Spike, why exactly is it you cannot travel to the Dragonlands yourself?” Handy asked as he took a card. Spike blinked in surprise.

“Well… kind of a long story.”

“Shorten it, we’re not going anywhere,” Handy demanded, his face like stone.

“Well… Alright, ya see we don’t actually know.” He shrugged slightly.

“I find that distinctly hard to believe,” Handy commented dryly.

“No, really! Uh, we were never given a reason?” He gave a sheepish grin that looked particularly odd on a dragon’s face.

“You sound uncertain,” he pressed. Spike took a card and rubbed the back of his neck. Handy took note of that.

“Well, you see, it was around a year ago, last spring even, the dragons just stopped letting anypony through,” Spike explained, holding his scarf to his mouth and coughing lightly. Handy sat very, very still.

“No one?” Handy asked.

“Yeah. I mean, before that, the Dragon Lord was pretty icy towards me in particular, but never really stopped us coming and going and generally letting the dragons do as they wanted.”

“But?”

“You have to understand, the dragons don’t let anypony through. Dragon or not,” he explained. That got Handy’s attention.

“So it's not just you?”

“No, why would it be?” Spike asked. “I mean, there’re a few dragons who have been exiled in particular over the years, I know of one young dragon who’s older than me and currently hangs around Griffonia. For some reason, he was exiled when he was half my age. Well, I know of him—never got into contact with him though. Twilight avoided the topic when I asked about him.”

Handy decided to brush on past that particular issue. “And you know you’re not banished, how?”

“They’d tell you. Also you’d feel it—the Dragon Lord makes sure you feel disconnected from the law,” Spike explained.

“The law?”

“Eh, it's hard to explain. It's a dragon thing. ‘Sides, if this was just to sneak in without the dragons knowing, pretty sure we wouldn’t need you.” Handy raised an eyebrow at that but ignored the unintended challenge. “The dragons have never before deliberately patrolled the edge of the Dragonlands to keep ponies out.”

“Okay… So I at least now have a better appreciation of why you tried to get me specifically to help. That’s still no guarantee they won't just turn us around.” Spike shrugged as he took a card.

“Only shot we got,” he said simply, as if he was resigned on the matter. Which, Handy reflected, he was. Even if they did get turned around, Handy fulfilled his end of the bargain, which meant he got Spike for a year.

“So, this Dragon Lord. What can you tell me about him?”

“Her. And hopefully we won’t need to speak to her directly.” Handy was about the question the title of lord for a female but decided against it. Maybe it was one of those cultures where the term was the same in their parent language, regardless of sex.

“So we shouldn’t have too much trouble with her?” Handy asked.

“Moooost likely.” Spike didn’t sound entirely sure. “Well, I know we didn’t do anything to anger her directly.”

“You said she had been particularly icy towards you,” he pointed out, resisting the urge to sigh at his terrible hand. Silvertalon was happily humming away an air shanty as they played, the contented, confident bastard that he was. Spike looked somewhat dejected.

“I’d… rather not talk about it. It's awkward, and like I said, if it was about her hating me, she’d have banished me and been done with it all. I don’t know what's got the dragons riled up.”

“Hmm,” Handy mused, scratching his chin. Silvertalon smiled and Handy silently cursed himself for the tell. Spike hadn’t seemed to notice anything, however. “Tell me this, Spike...”

Spike looked up from his cards.

“What exactly is wrong with you?”

“W-Wrong?”

“Your illness. Why is it exactly that none of the doctors, or any of the medical professionals a princess like Twilight can easily get a hold of, are unable to do for you what the dragons can?” he asked.

“Well, we tried. It's just that nopony really knows all that much about dragons.” Handy gave him a level look. “Honest!”

“I still find that distinctly hard to believe. Dragons have been around forever, correct?”

“Well, yeah.”

“And more often than not, quite a few dragons can be found outside of the Dragonlands, banished or otherwise.”

“Yeah…”

“And you are telling me that not once in all of history, dragons have gotten sick and needed outside help? Like say, the advanced medical and magical knowledge of nearby powerful kingdoms.”

“No.” Handy just stared.

“Really?”

“Yeah, dragons would rather die than show weakness,” he confirmed. Handy rubbed his forehead.

“And what, you’re the only dragon who has been raised outside of the Dragonlands? There was never a dragon in your situation before?”

“While there have been other cases of dragons being raised outside of the Dragonlands, they are usually always raised by, well, other dragons. Or in isolation,” Spike recited. He didn’t look the least bit discomfited by the admission. “What?”

“I just… How can there be so little known about dragons?” Handy asked. “You’ve been interacting with civilization for thousands of years.”

“How can there be so little known about humans?” Spike countered. Handy almost blurted out the truth but caught himself.

“Probably because there is a huge ocean of horrors between here and where I am from,” Handy said plainly.

“And are you so willing to let ponies know about your health?”

“Well I…” Handy had to stop himself. The damn drake had a point. He had been in a pony hospital before, albeit once when he had no choice in the matter but he would never willingly allow doctors in this world to have the chance to study him, even if it was for his own benefit. The entire debacle with Mimae and Shortbeak happened only because he had allowed his arm to deteriorate as badly as it had done. No doubt the drake had at least heard about his little hospital visit way back in Spurbay.

“Fine. Dragons are extremely proud,” Handy admitted, to which Spike nodded, “but surely you could at least ask a friendly dragon outside of the Dragonlands for help.”

“By definition, banished dragons are not friendly. Most others are there because they don’t want anypony around. And besides, the Dragon Lord seems to have called most of them back,” Spike explained. Handy paused.

“But not you?”

“...But not me,” Spike said, slowly realizing what Handy was getting at. Handy sighed.

“And you’re telling me you’re not banished?” he challenged.

“I am not! Look, if I was, I’d know it!” Spike protested.

“How would you know?”

“The law!” Handy spread his free hand in exasperation, putting his hand face down.

“What about this law? You haven’t told me anything about it, and I am supposed to take it as a legitimate answer? What law?” he demanded. Spike slumped back and looked side to side.

“Look, I don’t know how to articulate it well, I just know, okay?”

“No, it's not okay. Try,” Handy demanded, staring the drake down. He could almost see how Spike deflated.

“It’s this… feeling. The Dragon Lord has a connection to all dragons under his or her authority.”

“How?”

“I don’t know! Something to do with bloodlines and authority and the first of all dragons. It's complicated and no dragon I have met has given me a straight answer about it. Basically, there are certain laws that all dragons under authority must obey, and nopony knows what they all are until they’re in a position where it matters. Like the Dragon Lord—at a certain age, a Dragon Lord must abdicate and pass the sceptre to a successor.”

“And this sceptre, is it important?”

“Mmmm, kind of?” Spike scratched the back of his neck again. “I mean, it’s somehow related to the dragon law, but it's not imperative, and no non-dragon can use it. The Dragon Lord can use it to summon dragons under their authority for an audience.”

“And that's it?” Handy asked.

“I think so? I’ve never seen or heard of it being used in other ways. I know young dragons have to do what the Dragon Lord commands, however silly.” At that, Spike snorted, rolling his eyes up and shaking his head at some memory. Handy shared a confused look with Silvertalon, who shrugged. “As they age, dragons are less and less under its immediate power, or so I think. I know there were no real adult dragons around when I and the other Equestrian dragons were summoned.”

Handy was troubled at that. It only summoned the Equestrian dragons? Were there other dragons not under its authority? Were there other Dragon Lords, or were dragons extremely limited in number? He put those thoughts away for the time being to focus on more pertinent questions.

“You were summoned once?” Handy asked.

“Mm-hm! Yeah, it was this whole thing. The Dragon Lord was abdicating and he put all us young dragons to the test to be his successor,” he said. “I took part.”

“And I take it you met this current Dragon Lord there?”

“Oh yeah, her name’s Ember by the way. She, uh, won in the end.” Handy nodded.

“Alright, so what is she like?” Spike shrugged.

“I dunno, she’s a dragon, like the rest of them.” What a very general statement, Handy thought.

“That’s it?”

“Ever met a dragon before? Same thing, just in charge.”

“Right. You say that like you don’t consider yourself a dragon.”

“In a lot of ways I don’t,” Spike said, forfeiting a card.

“You don’t? How could you not?” Handy raised an eyebrow.

“I was raised by ponies. Your family is who you grew up with,” he said simply.

“While I don’t deny that, that hardly stops you from being what you are.”

“Yeah, well, trying to find my ‘true self’ in the past didn’t work out so hot,” Spike said, now seemingly uncomfortable with the topic. “Look, can we change the conversation? I’d rather not talk about it.”

“Alright. There’s only one real personal matter of yours I need to know about.”

“Yeah?” Spike asked.

“Your sickness, what is it?”

“I don’t know,” Spike replied, sounding sincere.

“Yes, yes, we just covered all that. Dragons proud, no one outside of the Dragonlands knows how to treat dragons, I get it. I meant the symptoms. Am I going to wake up one night and find the ship on fire because you had a coughing fit?” Handy asked.

“What? Oh! No, nothing like that. My coughing isn’t really that bad,” Spike said.

“Right,” Handy said skeptically, “but why are you cold? Shouldn’t a dragon like you have a belly full of fire?”

“...Y-Yeah.” Handy waited for the awkward moment that ensued to pass. “I… can’t.”

“Can’t what?” Handy asked.

“Breathe fire. I can’t breathe fire anymore.” That brought both Silvertalon and Handy to a halt. Silvertalon glanced between them for a moment, Handy just staring at Spike in disbelief. A dragon who lost his ability to breathe fire? Granted, he was willing to believe him if Spike had told him he was simply a dragon who didn’t breath fire—stranger things had happened. To have lost it? It was like imagining a bird that couldn’t fly anymore. Just sad in a way.

And despite himself, Handy couldn’t help but feel a little relieved.

‘Well, that puts that worry to rest at least. On the other hand, this must be very serious indeed.’

“Well… alright then.” Handy looked at his hand once again, his face dispassionate. “Any other symptoms we need to be aware of?”

“No, not really. I mean, I don’t sleep well, I don’t have much energy, migraines… It's like having a really bad flu for years on end,” he explained.

“Years? How long have you been this ill?”

“...A while. It was small stuff at first. A cough here, a bad day there. I grew more irritable the more the migraines piled up.” He began to cough, this time more sustained. “Then… I lost my fire. Literally.”

“Right, right,” Handy said, wanting to move on from the topic. “Okay, look, how about you just tell me about what the Dragonlands themselves are like and what I should expect.”

And so, for the rest of the game, that was what Spike did, informing Handy about the nature of the Dragonlands as Spike knew them, which was to say that they were a Godforsaken volcanic wasteland for the most part. Occupying a thin stretch of coastline from where it bordered Equestria, it consisted mostly of basalt rock formations, mostly dead volcanoes, and shale beaches, all the way up to where it bordered the colder regions of the continent beside the expansive kingdom of Henosis.

The northern regions of the Dragonlands were cold but still habitable thanks to active volcanic activity. It was the midlands, where it more closely bordered the Equestrian territory known as the Crystal Empire, where most of the Dragonlands seemed to be. However, Spike had never travelled that far, and as far as he knew, no outsiders were allowed in as a matter of course even before this current Dragon Lord got all uppity. What lay beyond the Dragonlands? Spike had no answer for him. Northwest was the Forsaken Sea which was nothing but frozen wastelands and icebergs, and immediately to its west was a large subcontinent which was relatively unexplored. ‘Relatively’ in this context meaning anyone who so much as ventured farther than the beaches tended not to return. It was a good bet it was also dragon territory.

By the end of it, Silvertalon, who had been listening patiently the entire while, called it and they placed their hands on the table. Spike’s hand was an ace of emeralds, a prince of hearts, a princess of stars, a scrivener, and a ten of blades. A flush. Handy had to take the small comfort in enjoying the bewildered expression on Silvertalon’s face as he watched the ten crowns he had be clawed up by the overjoyed dragon. Little bastard didn’t even know what he had. Handy snorted in disgust.

“Beginner’s luck,” he murmured.

--=--

Over the next two days, Handy could’ve sworn the lizard had grown an inch or two. It was barely perceptible, and he only really noticed when Spike was suddenly just a shave taller than a particular riveted iron plate in the corridor that hid a part of the ship’s control system.

He also became aware of the dragon watching him, which honestly was not that surprising considering everything. He kept his distance, however. Fire or no fire aside, it would not be good to shatter any of the drake’s preconceptions of the ‘Dragonslayer’, and left him with Silvertalon to answer most of the drake’s questions. He seemed particularly enthralled with the airship itself and was surprisingly knowledgeable on the mechanics of balloon flight. Hidden depths, it seemed, could never be predicted.

They neared the southernmost point of the Dragonlands on the second day, and for the first time in what felt like forever, Handy could see the great western ocean. He strained to see how far south he could discern, attempting to spot the lone mountain where he knew Spurbay to be. They must have been too far north, as he saw nothing sticking out over the horizon this close to the coast.

“Alright, Spike, what are we to expect?” Handy asked as he kept a lookout, the shale beaches leading to ground made up nearly entirely of basalt columns from ancient volcanic activity. The hexagonal rock formations sometimes shot high up into the sky in small spires, like a colonnade put into place by giants. A quick look north proved a grim sight. Nothing but more basalt and lifeless wastelands as the Dragonlands expanded the further north one went.

“Well… I don’t know if they would have anypony keeping a look out down here. Otherwise we would—W-WOAH!” The entire airship rocked and Handy was knocked forward, bashing his head against the captain’s wheel as he fell to the ground. Spike flat out keeled over the side of the bridge and struck the window frame below. Silvertalon was the first to get his bearings as he scrambled to get a hold of the wheel sent into furious motion by Handy’s impact, trying to stop the airship spinning wildly.

The entire ship listed dangerously to the side as something colossal pressed down upon it and forced it down. Handy’s vision swam as he groggily pushed himself up.

“What happened!?” he demanded as the instruments beside Silvertalon went ballistic. Something somewhere had popped a rivet, and boiling hot steam erupted out of an errand pipe somewhere in the background.

“I don’t know! I’m filling the ballasts! Shut off the engines; we need to relieve the pressure now!” the old bird bellowed, his scratchy voice no impediment to the force of his voice. Handy scrambled back to his feet, clutching the doorway as the ship lurched violently to the side again, everything leaning at a steep, forty five degree angle. Detritus was sent sprawling across the bridge and at least one doorway was slammed closed after furniture spilled out of one of the rooms, crashing on the walls of the corridor.

Handy pressed on, hurrying along the deck before the next hit. He got as far as the stairs down when the next lurch came and he was sent sprawling over the railing of the stairway, catching himself on the bannister for a mere second before losing his grip and falling to the ground, sliding on the hardwood floor before the ship righted itself again. His head throbbed from where he had been struck. He gritted his teeth and bore the pain, hoping he wasn’t going to be concussed.

He managed to make his way to the boiler room and opened the door, only for a rush of boiling steam to explode out of the gap. Forced the door closed again while shouting a curse, he looked around quickly for anything that could be useful. There was a large basin half as tall as he was affixed to the ground. Most of the water inside had spilled out, but it gave him an idea. He locked the door, grabbed a bucket and threw water over himself several times, making sure he was thoroughly soaked.

He then pulled the hood of his cloak over and grabbed a washrag, dunking it in a bucket of water and tied it around his face up to the eyes, the freezing cold shocking him as he pressed it to his face. He could be concerned about it being dirty or not when he wasn’t worrying about being boiled alive by steam. He braced behind the door, losing his grip as yet another blow struck the ship, this time from the opposite direction, sending him to one knee and causing the entire ship to groan from the strain. He got back up, readied himself, and pulled open the heavy door, allowing the steam to billow forth into the storage hold.

He waited a few seconds for the built up steam to die down before throwing himself into the room. He was rudimentarily familiar with the small engine room’s layout, and knew that a distressing majority of it would be boiling hot to the touch. He felt his way forward nonetheless, keeping his stance to the side as he went along, using the insulated handhelds built into the walls and along the piping for such an exact situation. It was an agonizingly slow process as he felt the incredible heat and humidity press down on him, made worse due to blindfolding himself so he didn’t scald himself blind with an errant gout of steam.

He reached what felt like the main controls, after jerking back and hitting his head off of a low hanging pipe as another burst of steam nearly seared his head. The main pressure release valve was normally a large red object, and the biggest one the panel. He found it easily and began forcing it to turn, stumbling again as another strike rocked the ship. Something broke somewhere in the engine room as he heard another gout of steam shoot forth, whistling under the pressure. He remained down on one knee as he waited to see how fucked he was. Fortunately, the steam was released upwards and fell back down again and out into the hold enough for him to safely get back to work. He put all of his might into it and got the valve to finally turn once, then twice, three then four times before the pressure was released, and the steam began to die down.

He pushed away from the console and allowed himself to fall to the floor, crawling to the doorway and pulling himself out into the hold, tearing at his face and pulling the cloth off.

He greedily gulped down air, his lungs burning. The washcloth in his hands was now bone dry, as was most of the rest of him. His skin felt singed and sensitive to the touch as he pulled his hood down. He waited, not feeling the ship shake again. Whatever was attacking them must have backed off when it became obvious the ship was descending. The pressure release switched off the cold water flow and expelled the steam out of various ports at the back of the ship. It’d look like the ship was extruding a cloud as it fell, the mental image reminding Handy of another thing he had to take care of.

He carefully got to his feet and gingerly cupped the wash water in the tank next to him in his gloved hands and drank from it. You walk out of a steam boiler and see how picky you were with water sources. Having done that, he navigated around it and reached the boiler itself. It was wrought iron, self-contained heater which he occasionally had to shovel ridiculous amounts of coal into in order for it to stay hot enough to keep everything going. It sat inset in the back wall of the hold next to the boiler room like an ominous black beetle embedded in the corner of the ship. He pulled down on a large lever and heard the metal plates shift into place and utterly shut off oxygen access to the flames. No sense wasting the good coal.

He then stumbled up the steps to the top deck and back to the bridge, where he found Spike alive and well, uninjured though quite shaken. Silvertalon was sporting an unsightly lump on the side of his skull, but the chaos of the bridge had been brought under control as he brought them closer to the ground. A few of the glass panels of the window sported sizeable cracks.

“How are we doing?” he asked as he stepped over the overturned navigation bench, scowling at the ruined charts and maps on the floor now covered in ink.

“Ballasts s-six, five and six are… are now filled,” Silvertalon said, his raspy voice sounded thoroughly rattled. “We’ll be on the ground shortly.”

“You alright?” Handy asked. Silvertalon just nodded without looking around, eyes set dead ahead. “What was that? Have they stopped attacking?”

“I think they’re waiting on us,” Spike answered.

“Who?”

“The dragons.”

--=--

The ship protested audibly as it settled on the ground. While certainly built to take off from the ground, airships were never really intended to actually set aground again unless absolutely necessary. Silvertalon grumbled his concern about hypertension or how the ship was used to its weight pressing down on its superstructure without a supporting force from below. Handy told him the situation with the engine so he could get to repairs as his thoughts raced—might as well keep the bird busy while he got through this.

The amount of scenarios that he had gone over about this moment was a little on the paranoid side, and most of them ended badly one way or another. Turned out that there was no way you could legitimately prepare enough for potentially fighting one dragon, let alone potentially fighting a few. Therefore, Handy decided to go for the practical edge instead, or as practical as one could be when dealing with two tons of titanic, flying murder lizards.

That was precisely why Handy was abandoning his armour on the ship for the entirety of this mission.

Why yes, of course everyone he told that to thought it was insane, but there was a method to his madness. Or at least he hoped.

He followed Silvertalon into the hold but left him to the engine room while he went to his supplies. He opened the chest containing twenty rattling, long-necked bottles. The thick red liquid swirled lazily as he held the bottle up to the lantern light. Motes and long golden lines of… something could be discerned in the viscous liquid, phasing in and out of sight. He grimaced, uncorked the bottle, and downed the vile potion.

It had the viscosity of honey, the rubbery texture of mushrooms, and the taste of week-old cheese mixed with mouldy bread. In short, it was disgusting and he nearly gagged on it. He persisted in forcing it down until he was forced to choke and gasp for air, coughing violently as he shuddered. He felt… heavier somehow. Nothing too extreme: his flesh felt leaden, deader to the ambient temperature around him, numb even. It took him a minute to realise he was in fact numb and couldn’t feel anything except pressure when he touched his own arms or his surroundings. He nicked himself and winced in pain. Nope, pain receptors were working just fine.

“Well, here goes nothing.” He tossed the thick, empty bottle over his shoulder. It hit the floor and rolled over into an obscure corner. He lifted a leather bandolier with pouches for six more bottles out of the chest and fixed it around him. The hardened pouches should keep the bottles safe if he ended up roughing it up, but he couldn’t be sure. He filled them, covered himself with his cloak, and checked his weapons as he rose back up to the top deck.

His hammer was secured safely in his side loop, with a strap to keep it in place. He now had two sharp steel daggers across his midsection and a hand axe on his free side which could always be useful. He paused as he considered taking the spear and shield. He still hadn’t decided exactly how ‘martial’ he should appear to the dragons, having forsaken his armour after all, and both the shield and spear would slow him down more than he’d like. He was wearing a light cloak and heavy travel clothes, something that afforded him basic protection without hindering his mobility or otherwise resulting in him overheating, if the Dragonlands were as bad as Spike described.

And with living dragons? Mobility and speed was going to make all the difference. He just desperately hoped it would never come down to that, and seeing as the ship hadn’t been set ablaze while they were in it, chances are he might get his wish.

“Ready?” he asked the dragon, causing him to jump. Spike looked up to him, dressed again in his heavy clothing. He nervously looked at the large heavy door that served as the airlock.

“No,” he answered honestly.

“Good.” Handy opened the door with more confidence than he honestly felt. Okay, here went nothing. Best case scenario, nothing bad happened, Spike got whatever help he could from the murder lizards, Handy got to fuck off with alicorn blood, a source of draconic information, and his life. Second best scenario was the dragons just told them both to flatly fuck right off, in which case Handy still won. Every other scenario worth considering went downhill from there.

They entered the airlock and allowed the steel reinforced oak door to close behind them and lock into place. Handy pulled on one of the levers to the side and felt the heavy cogs move as the gangplank extended to its full extent. Once it stopped, he pulled another lever and waited to hear the audible crash as the heavy wood hit the ground.

He took a breath and heaved the outer door open.

Nothing. There was nothing outside except the cold, biting air as the wind nipped at them, the rough basalt ground and hexagonal rock formations stretching for miles and the crash of the waves from the nearby coast. There were no dragons. He looked down at Spike, who seemed just as unsure, and took the first step out into the achingly familiar landscape. He closed his eyes as he shook the thought from his head. Nostalgia for home could wait for another day; he needed his wits about him now.

It was quiet: no cry of seagulls, no insects, nothing but the sway of the sparse grass and dead bushes and the crash of waves upon stone. Looking up at the ship as he stepped off the gangplank, he could see where gouges had been dug out of the hull of the ship and the dissipating remnants of the excess steam that had been ejected from the ship. He winced—the damage probably looked worse than it actually was… probably. At least the hull wasn’t fully breached.

“Where are they?” His hand uneasily rested on the head of the war hammer, more out of comfort than any belief it’d do him any good.

“They… I only say a tail in the window. They didn’t let themselves be seen,” Spike muttered, looking up into the sky. An all-encompassing shadow briefly cast them both in darkness before disappearing again. Both of them spun and looked to the heavens. Nothing, only blue sky and dark, heavy clouds pregnant with rain.

“Spike,” Handy began, speaking very quietly, “exactly how do the dragons expect us to turn around if they forced my ship to the ground?”

“Uh… well—”

There was a tremendous, deafening cry that seemed to rattle the very teeth in his jaw. He had sensed the subtle violence and power of the dead dragon’s voice, had heard the roar of the young dragon he fought in Firthengart. This… This was something more potent, something vital and primal and alive with all the fury and destruction of a forest fire and the same cold disregard for all in its path as a snowstorm. He could not tell what direction it came. It seemed to be from everywhere at once, and he whirled on the spot, trying to discern where the dragon was.

It was then he noticed the tearing in the envelope of his ship. Like the wood, it looked worse than it was and the dragons hadn’t punctured it, though Handy wondered if that was deliberate or just a happy accident. In either case, Silvertalon would have to fix that before he could trust it to carry them home. The roar sounded again, though this time it grew quieter and more distant as the dragon drew away. Handy had run as fast as he could around the downed ship.

Nothing. He turned to look at Spike, who was busy scanning the skies. He had to be as nervous as he was but didn’t show it, seemingly more resigned than anything. He was just about to speak when a sudden force shook the ground beneath him as the dragon landed suddenly, like a lightning bolt out of a clear blue sky. Handy lowered his arm as the dust cleared.

A large, intimidating dragon of gleaming sea-green scales with an impressive overbite stared down at him with yellow reptilian eyes framed by a crown of four curling obsidian horns. It smelled of burnt ozone and wood smoke, huffing through its nose loud enough to be heard over the whistle of the wind. Its mere presence seemed to banish the chill of the shoreline. It also happened to be half the size of the airship, envelope and all, but you know, details. Handy made sure to close his gaping mouth before he removed his arm from his face entirely.

“I—”

“Leave!” The dragon demanded, his voice a deep, rumbling basso, what one would imagine a cliff face would sound like if it could tell you to fuck off.

“You don’t understand,” Handy managed, swallowing lightly as he made sure to look directly into the alien eyes. He wanted to move, to turn to face the dragon properly, but found his legs were leaden from fear. It was all he could do to stop it from looking like he was going to break down. “We’re her—”

“Leave now, and do not return. I will not say this a third time, morsel!” the dragon rumbled warningly. Mighty gusts of winds threatened to make Handy tumble over as another dragon, this one an ocean blue colour, descended much more gently to the ground. Its underbelly was a dirty gold and it lacked horns, but whose spines arced out from its spin all the way down to its barbed tail, resembling the fins of a fish. It stood taller and slimmer than the more threatening one that lowered its face not more than half a metre from Handy’s own, but its eyes were a piercing, icy white that seemed to pin him to the ground.

Spike stepped out from under the front of the ship. “Wait! Please just listen to us!” he shouted as he padded over to where Handy stood. He froze in place as the dragons immediately turned to stare at him. He suddenly seemed less sure of himself “I… Uh…”

“What is this little one doing out here?” the larger and louder of the two demanded. “I do not recognise him. Isn’t he too young to be an exile?”

“He is that pony slave the Dragon Lord despises. Not an exile but a foreigner,” the blue-gold dragon noted, their voice notable softer but no less resonant with power for it. Spike seemed indignant.

“Hmph! Doesn’t even have his wings yet. He is weak even compared to the rest of the younglings of the borderlands,” the first dragon said contemptuously.

“Slave?” Spike shouted. “I’m not a slave!”

“Then what is this? This doesn’t look like any pony I have ever seen,” the boisterous dragon said, ignoring Spike’s protests. His head had not moved too far from Handy the entire time, and he had to suffer the thing’s sulphurous breath, intimidating presence, and the constant reminder he was staring down a beast with a flamethrower for a pair of lungs.

‘Don’t think about it don’t think about it don’t think about it,’ Handy’s mind repeated, trying to drown out his more primal instincts. He dredged up the courage to speak, hoping that focusing on words would keep his mind off of more immediate, lethal matters.

“I am Handy Haywatch of Gethrenia. I have come seeking passage into the Dragonlands for my charge, Spike, who requires the help of fellow dragons. Our intentions are peaceable.” The dragon snorted. Handy tasted ash.

“I don’t care who you are, I asked what. Now that no longer interests me. Leave now or else stain the coast with your ashes!”

“We cannot, you have critically damaged our ship. We need to make repairs!” Handy protested.

“Then walk, for all we care!”

“Wait, I know of this creature.” the blue, more soft-spoken one said. That drew the larger one’s attention. “Yes, this is the one the Dragon Lord was hoping to get a hold of. It walks like a minotaur or diamond dog but is neither, works with griffons, and its face is bare of fur bar that scruff around its mouth. The windy creature told her about him.”

Windy creature? What? Handy didn’t have time to enquire as the dragon in front of him reared up to his full height and squinted its eyes down at him. He was somehow even more intimidating like that with his wings spread. Might have something to do with how he was partially blocking out the sunlight.

“Then they will come with us,” the first dragon announced.

“Wait, you just told us to leave,” Handy said, taking a step back at the sudden change in the conversation, hand on his hammer, not that it would be worth half a beggar’s damn here.

“That changes when the Dragon Lord says so.” Then, faster than he would have thought possible for something that size, the dragon grabbed him. Its fist closed around him and lifted him off of his feet with such dizzying force and speed that it took Handy several seconds to shake off the vertigo and realize he was now being held nearly fifteen feet off the ground.

He felt as if he was trapped in a vice grip, as if a cave had suddenly constricted around him, and the rocky walls were coming just a hair’s breadth from crushing him completely. He couldn’t move, could just about breathe, and he struggled in futility.

“Let… me… go!” he demanded. The dragon didn’t respond, utterly unconcerned about the struggles of the human in its grasp. It turned to Spike, who looked wide eyed at the sudden change in situation.

“And of this one?”

“I will take it,” the blue dragon said, moving like flowing water around the sea-green dragon, snatching Spike up before he could flee. With the two captured, both dragons launched themselves into the air with mighty flaps of their wings, the winds kicked up causing the damaged airship to groan in protest as it settled on the coast, leaving it on its own in the cold, bleak landscape.

After some time, and after scrounging up some bravery on his part, Silvertalon stuck his head outside the ship, a bandage applied to where he had struck his head. He looked around cautiously, and up into the sky.

“H-Hello?” he croaked to no reply. “I… managed to fix the engines. I just need to check the piping and we should be good…” he explained, slowly leaving the ship and looking up in dismay at the state of the envelope and hull. After circling the ship, and noting the lack of his employer and passenger and, more to the point, the utter lack of draconic doom looming above him, he blinked in confusion.

“Guys?”

Author's Note

ITS STILL JANUARY 31ST SOMEWHERE

Also, here is a neat story you should read while you wait for the next one.
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/359701/the-guardian-angels

Chapter 58 - Pebbles and pitfalls

He woke up screaming, but his voice was stolen from him by the rushing wind. The whiplash he had suffered as the dragon scooped him into the air had been severe enough to not only disorientate him but to temporarily cause him to lose consciousness. It took him a few seconds to register that memory, and what was happening around him. He could barely keep his eyes open as the dragon let his claws drift through the cloud layer, soaking Handy with water vapour.

His heart pounded in his chest loud enough that it almost drowned out the noise of the air blasting past his ears. The heat radiating off of the dragon’s scales as they closed around his torso was sweltering, forcing him to deal with the conflicting extremes of hot and cold. The clouds broke briefly, allowing him a view of the landscape below: a blasted wasteland of cracked stone, pools of boiling water, vast pits where noxious gases and sulphurous smoke billowing forth and… dragons.

So many dragons.

So much fire.

As that thought registered, the animal in the back of his mind roared as it thundered forth, overtaking his rational mind in an avalanche of raw instinct. He thought he screamed but would not be able to recall, as his free arm which had been hanging limply over the dragon’s claw scrambled uselessly at the limb before eventually reaching for the bandolier across his breast. Several of the bottles he had brought with him had been crushed, but he couldn’t worry about that right now. The dragon was already descending.

He scrambled—his knives were too low, his hammer would be useless in this predicament—so he grabbed what he could, and lifted a long shard of broken ceramic in his clenched fist. It was sharp enough to cut through the fabric of his glove. He looked at the claw around him. Scales, scales, more scales, all impervious.

Then he noticed where the claw of the dragon met its toe, and stabbed the ceramic into the breach of the scales with all the force he could manage, though not so deep that he could see blood flow.

However, it penetrated deep enough to make the monster above him roar in sudden pain and fury. That was all Handy was aware of before he was suddenly falling. He looked up as his body twisted and turned to witness the sea-green dragon circle in the air as it inspected its claw. Briefly he glimpsed the tiny and increasingly shrinking purple thing that had to be Spike gripped in the claws of the blue drake before his fall came to an end.

--=--

Spike saw Handy fall suddenly from the roaring dragon to their right. As a dragon, he had little difficulty seeing through the rushing wind, which was odd given that he had quite a bit of trouble with it when he was younger.

“Hey!” he shouted up at his captor, alarmed. “Hey, what happened!?”

“What is wrong, Coralwrought!?” the blue dragon called to its fellow, seemingly ignoring him. Spike briefly thought the name was odd for a dragon, but tucked that thought away for later. He just saw somepony fall.

“Are you listening!? You just dropped him! Most poni– humans aren’t like dragons! They can’t survive a fall like that!”

“Wretched creature tried to pry off my claw!” Coralwrought growled.

“Well, don’t just linger! Get after it! Perhaps its remains will be enough to be done with this farce...”

Coral rose up and then dived after the human, Spike’s protests drowned out in the wind as his captor flew on, leaving the other two behind. On and on they flew, descending slightly until the familiar site of the Dragonlands filled his vision. He had never seen as much of it from above as he did now, filling him with a strange sense of calm he could not account for, but also a strange emptiness. It was as if the desolate beauty of the brutalised landscape and the unforgiving mountains naked of any snow or trees at once filled a hole in his heart that he didn’t even know existed, but at the same time exacerbated a quiet hunger he thought he had banished years ago.

They flew low to the ground towards a monolithic, dormant volcano. The massive blight upon the landscape stood black as night as if it was made out of raw obsidian, devouring all light around it whilst reflecting a dull splendour. He had never seen this thing before. They flew right towards it and Spike released a cry, believing they would crash right into it, but found they simply entered a vast cave mouth.

They drifted lazily in the air for a short time, and it took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the darkness. Before long, he saw a dull red glow in the distance and realised his captor had come to a halt, hovering in place. He was suddenly dropped and struck the dusty ground hard. He pushed himself up, dusting himself off as he looked around.

“That’ll be all, Azurefury,” a familiar voice called.

“Yes, Dragon Lord,” Azure replied. And with a rush of wind, the dragon left the cave, leaving Spike on his own in near-darkness. He took a breath to steady his nerves—he’d be no good to Handy if he freaked out now. He turned to face the red glow.

“Ember,” he said, more in a statement than as a greeting. The glow increased in intensity, casting the Dragon Lord in relief. Spike had to bite back a gasp as he saw what had become of his old friend. Red flames erupted in gutters along the walls, backlighting more of the young dragons that made up the borderlands’ domain, little more as backlit silhouettes with angry, judging eyes.

“Hello, Spike,” Dragonlord Ember said without emotion. “You have five minutes to explain why you are here before I throw you into the pit.”

--=--

Handy gasped as he emerged from the scalding water. He stumbled forward and crashed down into the water once more before pulling himself free from the pool. The water should have completely destroyed him, but it felt like little more than a warm shower would. It seemed like the fire potion he had downed had been worth the investment. He stumbled forward, struggling to think, but every direction he looked he spotted another dragon, far off in the distance or up in the air. It didn’t matter to him—the vampire was in control now, not the man.

He stepped forward, once, twice, looking around him desperately before looking up and seeing the immense form of the sea-green dragon from before diving down towards him. He simply acted, jumping behind a large rock as the dragon landed with tremendous force, shaking the earth and knocking him even further to the ground.

The quaking footfalls magnified to cyclopean heights in his fear-addled mind, forcing him to launch at a dead sprint from his hiding place, just as the dragon’s head emerged around the side of the rock. The dragon roared in triumph as it located him, and a claw shot forward.

Handy, on instinct, dove to the ground as the claw swept over him, rolling to his right and then back to his feet. The dragon struck the ground with a closed fist, knocking Handy from his feet, facing the dragon as the claw reached forward again. Handy rose suddenly and rolled forward as the claw hit bare earth. The dragon snarled and opened its mouth to roar. Handy’s eyes widened as he stared into the fathomless depths of that horrible maw.

In his mind’s eye, he imagined the terrible skull of the very first dragon he had met as it prepared to reduce him to ash. He grabbed a stone and flung it for the back of the dragon’s throat, the sudden impact causing the dragon to jerk its head back as it coughed into the air. Small gouts of ash and flame burst forth and the vampire fled, lost in its mad obsession with self-preservation.

In his haste, he stumbled into one of the breaks in the earth. Panicking, he grabbed onto the passing rocks in a desperate attempt to slow his descent, blinded by the noxious gases billowing forth from the hot interior. His efforts only proved fruitful in causing him to hurt himself as he fell down the roughly formed shaft, hitting the walls. It began to level out, but not before Handy was left with numerous gashes along his knee and leg. He came to a stop, blinded and choking at some point, with a surging pain in his leg. He groped for his hood, tearing it off and wrapping it around his face, which did little to help him breathe but kept most of the gas out. He was running out of time.

He struggled in the dimness of that shaft towards the only source of light, dragging himself through the tight confines and shouting in frustration more than once when he felt stuck between the rocks. He persevered and pulled himself through until he finally felt free of the noxious gas. Then he fell again as he spilled forth from the crack in the wall. He tore the rag from his face and hacked violently, taking in greedy breaths as his eyes stung and watered. He couldn’t see, but just barely made out the bleary source of light ahead of him.

He slowly pulled himself forward. Wherever he was, it was warm. He couldn’t make out any sunlight directly above him, and a balmy current of air buffeted him even while he lay on the ground. It was probably the only thing keeping the gas from filling whatever chamber this was.

His hand splashed on some water on the spongy ground. He paused for a moment before hurriedly splashing the small amount of water onto his face. His vision cleared and he took in his new shelter.

It was a cave, with another break in the earth far above which allowed sunlight to filter through to shine upon a small spring of water. It was like a miniature ecosystem onto itself: the ground utterly covered in a thick carpet of moss, grass growing on the far side of the spring, with a small, twisted, naked, white barked tree managing to eke out a hardy existence down here.

The current of air came from a break in the wall further to his right and was siphoned out through another chasm at the far end of the cavern. It was probably the only thing that was keeping the noxious gas from emptying into the cavern and smothering him. He heard the distant roar of a dragon from above and flinched instinctively before he pulled himself together.

“Come on…” he said through gritted teeth as he fought down the fear that was causing his skin to crawl and the hairs on his arms and neck to stand up. “They can’t find me here, come on…”

The vampire was hard to calm, but in time he managed to fight it down. He wasn’t going to survive long running around like a scared animal in a land ruled by apex predators. The calmer he felt, the more the pain registered. His leg was bleeding from several gashes and there were stones lodged in his skin. He was bruised in several places but nothing was broken… yet. He winced as he touched his leg, eying the water suspiciously. In a place like the Dragonlands, that water may not be entirely safe to drink. It was clear as crystal and deceptively deep. Perhaps it’d be enough to clean his wounds?

He heard another roar above and decided if he was going to do it, it might as well be now before the dragon got enterprising enough to start ferreting out the holes in the ground. He reached over with cupped hands and started cleaning his leg and other cuts. He then tore more of his hood off and wrapped it around the worst of his wounds before hurriedly scurrying away into the darkest corners of the cave, away from the break in the roof.

There he hid until he could stand on his leg, breathing raggedly as he listened to the sound of dragons overhead, pondering his state of affairs.

“What am I doing?” he asked himself quietly lest the dragons could somehow hear. “This was never going to get me home faster. Why did I agree to this? Why am I even here?”

He let the bitterness and anger flow, knowing it would be tempered with the spike of real terror every time he heard a dragon that was altogether too close for comfort. He sank into his misery as he thought of any possible way out. His airship was miles away, civilization was even further, this was a barren land where dragons ruled and where fire was as common as water, if not more so.

He thought of his supposed cleverness and of his manipulation of the young princess, then cursed himself for leaving the very prize he had won from her back in his airship. He hit the back of his head against the wall again and again as he cursed his own hubris.

“No good to me here now, is it?” he asked himself. “Stupid bastard. If you had been a bit more circumspect, you could’ve thought of another way around this. But no, you trusted the dragons to have no real reason to hate you. So you killed some skeletal abomination. Who cares? So you killed some young drake at the tournament. Those things happen; why would they hold a grudge? Stupid, stupid, stupid!”

He rested his head against the rock and stared up at the ceiling, hating it. The revulsion suddenly melted away in a wave of terror whenever he heard another dragon roar above, freezing him in place

As he sat there, cursing himself, he could not help but look up and be reduced back to dreadful silence every time he heard one of those lizards above him. He scurried further back into the cave, pressing up against the wall and praying none of those monsters poked their faces into this particular hole. So he lay there, huddled in the darkness, waiting for his chance to escape, trapped underground like an animal.

Which was something he was quickly growing tired of.

--=--

Spike was thrust into the pit. He stumbled backwards into the darkness until his foot caught the edge and he fell over, yelling as he descended. He slammed into the ground firmly, but that was nothing to a dragon, even one as young as him. Growling, he pushed himself up and rubbed his shoulder which bore the brunt of the fall.

“Hey!” he called up, but his only response was the dimming of the light above from a blaze to a faint glimmer as the stone was slammed over the entrance, leaving only a thin wisp of light into the depths. Spike sighed and sat back against the wall. So much for appealing to Ember’s reason, he grouched as he studied what little of the ground he made out in the darkness before his dark vision kicked in. He picked up a rock and rolled it between two claws before flicking it up into the air and waiting to see it fall, unable to get the sight of Handy falling out of his head.

As the stone hit a puddle of murky water, the sound of shifting chains caused him to take a sharp intake of breath, spinning to face the area of darkness the sound came from.

“Who… Who’s there?”

“Mm?” said a raspy voice, followed by a long, drawn out yawn, slapping gums, and a sound like someone shaking himself awake, which only caused the chains to rattle more. Spike noticed many, many sharp points in the thin wisp of light as the creature moved, with tiny glints of what might have been scales. It had not occurred to him that there’d be another dragon down here with him. It spoke, this time more clearly, “Is it breakfast time already?”

“What!? N-No! I uh…” Spike hurried to think of an excuse. He had heard stories of dragons eating each other, mostly from more ignorant city-dwelling ponies who didn’t know any better. But, well, giving what was happening… “I’m the uh… cleaner! Yeah!”

“Oh? Oh! Oh good, good, terribly dusty here. Worst halfway house I ever stayed in, simply awful. Why, you didn’t even clean the chains before I got here!” the voice said jovially, as if he was suddenly Spike’s best friend.

“Uh—”

“Horrible service, but hey, I forgive you. Don’t suppose you could turn on the lights on your way out? Oil for the lantern ran out an hour ago.”

“I just—”

“Oh! And ale, if you have any. There’s a nice tip in it for you if you do.”

“Okay, listen—”

“I mean, I’ve been to a lot of dives before, but they all had ale. I mean, it’s not as if I have hit rock bottom here, have I?”

“Okay, stop!” Spike shook his head and waved his arms uselessly in the darkness, slowly making out a shape lying couchant on its legs in the darkness. It had an awful lot of horns that seemed to sparkle dully in the dark. “Look, I’m stuck down here too. I don’t know what all…” Spike waved his hand to emphasis his confusion, “this is about.”

The creature laughed. “Hey, don’t worry about it. I was just doing a bit—don’t get the chance to talk to others much down here is all. Oh! Don’t suppose you got magic by any chance, do you?”

“Uh… nothing too spectacular. I mean, I know a lot of theory, but I never actually…”

“Darn. Well, worth a shot. Hey! You got cards? I know a fun game we can do with cards in the dark, but it really strains the eyes and will probably result in problems when you’re sixty, but that's not your problem today, now is it?”

“Um…”

“Oh, how rude of me. How’d you get here? You don’t sound like a local; that's a Canterlot accent, right? Sounds like it but different. You a traveller?” The thing gasped. “Oh, you’re an adventurer too? This is perfect! Man, this will make a fantastic story! How’d you get here!? No wait, don't care. Well I do, but not yet; it can wait. What can you do? Can you pick locks? I mean, I don’t think these chains have locks. Normally I’d break off a bit of an antler and work that way, but mine have recently come across a bad case of unbreakability. It's more inconvenient than it sounds.”

Spike waited for a minute until he was sure the guy was done interrupting him. He cocked an eyebrow. “Right. Look, I’m not an… Well okay, sometimes I am an adventurer when the girls have me tag along, but I don’t know how to pick locks or, well, any of that sort of stuff. I’m just a dragon. I just help out where I can,” Spike explained. The figure seemed to deflate.

“Oh, well. Pity.” He sounded disappointed, which just as suddenly rebounded into enthusiasm. “Wait! You’re a dragon!?”

“Uhm, yes?” Spike asked.

“Fantastic! Even better!” The creature literally jumped, and Spike had to step back at the sudden movement in the darkness. “How did you get here then? Can you fly? That’d be a big help!”

“No, no, I can’t fly. I got here by ship but…” Spike hesitated and looked down at the ground. “I, uh, don’t think I’d be much welcome to ride again after… what happened to the guy who owned it.”

“Oh, I know how it feels. I too have gotten on the wrong side of many a captain. It’s not my fault she happened to share my cabin, and he’s the one who brought her along. I mean, who even does that?”

“What? No, I mean… Look, forget it. I can’t fly us out of here.” Spike sighed as he sat back down and crossed his arms. “Not without Handy... I mean, assuming the ship is even still there after the captain saw us both be taken.”

His interlocutor was quiet for some time after that, only occasionally shifting in his place. “Well now, that’s an interesting coincidence…”

“Huh?”

“Hm? Oh nothing, just thinking to myself is all. Say, what would you do if I told you not to worry about it?” the creature asked.

“Worry about what?”

“Precisely! Excellent, we’re halfway there already. Now listen, I may not be able to get us out of the Dragonlands, buuuuuut…” The creature was suddenly in Spike’s face. He was able to make out a muzzle and a pair of dark pink eyes. “I can get us out of this hole in the ground.”

“You can?” Spike asked, perking up before slowly becoming suspicious. “Then why haven’t you already escaped?”

“Well because I needed help, silly! I can get us out of here and probably get us to Handy’s airship. I didn’t know he had an airship. Good on him, he’s really moving on up in the world. Literally! Sometimes, anyway.”

“How?” Spike asked.

“Because I can run as quick as the wind! Faster than any dragon by far!” he answered. “I’m a bit of a whirlwind, you might say. I just need to solve one little mystery and that’s that. You don’t happen to know where you last saw Handy, by the way, would you?”

“I… could find our way there, yeah,” Spike said, now feeling slightly better. “Who are you anyway?”

“I already told you!”

“You did?” The creature was at his side with a foreleg around his shoulder. He just made out the other leg outstretched in a grand gesture.

“Yep! We can find Handy, I can finish my mission, and we can get out of here! And we’d rely wholly on your help!”

“R-Really?” Spike asked, smiling for the first time that day.

“Of course!” He rounded to face Spike again, this time the thin sliver of light exposing his smiling face for the first time, his sparkling antlers covered in obsidian chains. “I just need a whiff of dragon’s fire to get free of these chains and my magic can get us out of here!”

At that revelation, Spike’s smile faltered and he looked down at the ground, tapping his foreclaws together and smiling sheepishly.

“About… that…” he began, coughing once.

--=--

Night fell by the time Handy worked up the courage to pull himself out of the ground. Climbing the tree had been a risky venture, but it was his only way up without climbing up through the toxic vapour rent in the earth he had fallen down. He knelt on the ground to catch his breath as he studied his surroundings. The sky was thick and heavy with clouds, the stars nor moon unseen. The landscape was as desolate as it had appeared from the air, nothing but dry, cracked ground, craggy peaks, distant, harsh-looking mountains, and rents in the earth from which gases erupted forth.

Hardy plants clung to life around the edges of the pools of hot spring water that looked too murky and filth-driven to be drank safely, and here or there he spotted glowing lights in the distances where fires burned. Even this far north, the air was warm and dry, but paradoxically chilling when the wind bit deep if he stood somewhere where he was too exposed. The Dragonlands, it seemed, was a harsh wilderness unfriendly to life.

At least now there weren’t any dragons afield. At least none he could see, so he did his best to keep an eye on the sky in case any would suddenly emerge from the cloud bank.

“Come on, come on, just a glimmer, that's all I ask,” Handy whispered to himself, cursing the sky for hiding the moon. The unnatural cosmology of this world threw a lot of his preconceptions out the window, but one thing that had been more or less consistent was that the sun and moon always rose in the east and always set in the west. Nightfall hadn’t been that long ago, so it’d still be somewhere in the east… Now if only he knew where east was he could find his way back south to his ship.

It was a futile endeavour, so he attempted to see if he could find the coast. That way he could follow it more or less back to the ship. They couldn’t be that far, could they? He climbed a craggy outcropping and tried to discern where the coast might be. He couldn’t hear any waves, nor were there any birds flying around, so he couldn’t tell if he was close by the presence of sea gulls.

“Of all the stupid times not to have a friggin’ compass,” he cursed, then ducked suddenly as the hairs on the back of his neck stood up. He looked back and forth, searching for danger, for anything that might have set him off. Nothing. He reached out with his senses to see if his auspex could pick up what he could not. Again, he sensed nothing. There was no living life within his range apart from crawling insects too small to be registered most of the time. Some rocks crumbled nearby and he snapped around. It was just a part of the nearby crag falling apart as he watched it. That must have been what set him off.

Leaving nothing to chance, he slowly descended where he was perched and crawled over to the offending crag, looking for signs of recent disturbance. Finding none, he released a sigh as he patted down his front. Four of the potion bottles had been crushed under the dragon’s grip, and the front of his travelling clothes were utterly covered in the pungent filth that was the disgusting fire resistance potion. He took off his gloves and felt the cold of the air and the heat of the ground. Yep, the potion’s effects had worn off. He no longer felt leaden and heavy and could feel his skin again.

Would two bottles be enough to see him safely back to the ship? What if the dragons he encountered didn’t bother to roast him and opted instead to just snap him up, as if he were no more than a Jurassic Park extra? What if the potion was only good for ‘normal’ fire, and not whatever magical potential dragon’s fire had? Would Silvertalon still even be there waiting on him? Would he have left looking for him or went back home? What if the dragons burned down the ship?

If, if, if, if, if. He pushed those thoughts aside as he forced down another bottle of the terrible alchemical filth and prayed that shit didn’t have any lasting negative consequences on his physical health. He tossed the bottle aside and wiped his mouth, coughing, standing still as his skin tingled and then slowly deadened and felt leaden once more.

He briefly thought about the young drake and wondered where he had been taken, but then again, on the other hand, fuck that noise. He tried, the dragons attacked, and he was gone now. That was Equestria’s problem—Handy wanted to fucking live.

He skidded his way down the side of one crag and rushed to the nearest shadow, not sure where he should be going, but it would only progressively get darker as the night wore on, so he had to keep moving. The wind picked up as he traversed the blasted landscape.

‘My reputation will be shot,’ he grimly pondered as he wore on. ‘Handy the Dragonslayer? More like Handy the Dandy, the man who ran.’

He snorted and shook his head. His pride could take the hit. Nothing in the agreement had said anything about actually fighting the dragons. He had made his delivery, so the princess would just have to get the drake back herself. Though the thought about what it’d do to relations between the two countries did bother him, the more rational part of him reasserted himself. Worst came to worst, by the time he made it back to his ship, he could just make it as if he had died again and fly elsewhere in his ship. It was not as if he didn’t have the power to hide himself now. He could put all this aside and start searching for a way home and sidestep all this political nonsense.

Still, there was the question about what would become of Crimson… or his promise to Shortbeak. That made him pause. He had given his word, hadn’t he? Perhaps… he had given his word but he had not properly sworn. Wouldn’t be the first time he lied. But that thought didn’t sit right with him—lies by omission, obfuscation, misdirection, or just flat out untruths, he had done them all one way or another, but none of them relied solely on a promise, did they?

“Enough,” he snarled at himself. “I am in a blasted wasteland, ruled by fucking dinosaurs who couldn’t take a meteor as enough of a hint. And it’s not as if I can actually do anything about it even if I wanted to!”

That thought gave him some comfort. It was true enough. What could he do against an entire country of dragons, just to get back one little drake? That rationale made sense, but still something did not sit right with him about it. The drake had never wronged him, not once. It had been nothing but respectful, honest, and despite having been expecting it, the dragon had not once nosied his way into either his or Silver Talon's business. It wasn’t like Chrysalis, whose treachery, deceit, and cruelty Handy could return joyfully and viciously without remorse or regret, or the ponies who had so engendered his hatred.

He was still a dragon, but he was also a charge whom Handy had been paid in good faith to look after, and whose yearlong service he had been awarded. That, for the time being, made the dragon one of his own.

Handy stopped, his feet kicking up clouds of dust in the dry landscape. He grounded his teeth as he attempted to come to terms with the realization. He was responsible for that little bastard, and the thought of that as he observed his dreary surroundings did nothing to alleviate the guilt. He had no idea where the drake even was, even if he wanted to, so he couldn’t find—

Lost in his thoughts, Handy had not been paying attention to his surroundings and so had not noticed the black thing that slithered out of the shadows of the rocks behind him. Yellow slitted eyes broke the living blackness that seemed to constitute the creature as it slowly moved out, one large draconic claw after another pressing down into the soft blanket of dust on the ground, masking its movements as it closed on the human.

The first sign Handy had that he had made a terrible mistake was when the wind suddenly changed and the smell of rotten flesh assailed his senses. He coughed and covered his mouth, turning to identify the source of the smell. He ended up staring into the piercing glare of a young black dragon as it closed on him.

Handy let out a yelp and, stepping back on his bad leg, collapsed to the ground. The dragon’s head launched forward, snapping its jaw shut where Handy had been. He grabbed a dagger by his side and slashed at the dragon’s neck. The weapon knocked off several scales but did no damage to the dragon. And yet the creature reeled back as another blast of rotten flesh smell assailed his senses. Handy gagged on the smell as the dragon reared up. He rolled out of the way and stumbled back to his feet. It was nowhere to be seen in the darkness of the night. He lifted out the brick and shone the light, though it only penetrated a few feet in this environment.

Something struck his back and sent him flying to the ground, the brick slipping out of his hand and tumbling away into the dust. Handy got up and slashed with his dagger at nothing but empty air. He got up and sheathed the dagger, breathing hard, trying to control his fear. It was okay, he could handle this. It wasn't that big of a dragon. Sure, maybe it was unnervingly quiet, and smart, but it was small and… he could knock its scales off?

He looked down at several dark splotches on the dust. The light from his fallen phone helped illuminate them. The scales were… broken, cracked, black with sickly yellow-white lines crisscrossing their surface and sickening brown sludge soaking the dust around them. It didn’t smell anything remotely like blood. He looked at his dagger again. There wasn’t anything on it. He hadn’t cut those scales off, just knocked them off.

The dragon was already wounded.

He took several deep breaths and slowed his breathing, gathering himself. He couldn’t see anything beyond the halo of light from the brick, but he didn’t need to see. He closed his eyes and concentrated, reaching out with his auspex and… there. The pinching sensation in his mind’s eye—the dragon was to his right, stalking him slowly. The more he concentrated, the more he could read. The creature wasn’t scared or hungry. It was angry, furious even. Its emotions seemed… confused somehow, and it was hurting badly from whatever had wounded it.

The dragon could see him in the dark most likely, so running and hiding would not be much of an advantage to him. Why, then, hadn’t it taken to the air and gotten the drop on Handy from above? Handy spread out one leg across the dust and watched as it lifted into the air at the disturbance. Ah, that was why.

Handy swung his leg around, kicking up vast amounts of dust into the air to blind the dragon. He heard it hiss in frustration as he dived for the brick. He felt the rush of the dragon leaping over him through the cloud of dust and landing hard on the ground not far from him, kicking up even more dust to hide Handy as he made a run for the nearest rocky outcropping and turning off the light.

“You can’t hide!” the young dragon shouted, his voice not possessing the deep resonance of the greater dragons that had gotten Handy into this mess. “I’ll find you! You can’t hide your scent from me!”

Scent? Handy patted his bandolier and lifted a bit of the potion remnants to his face and sniffed. It was… pungent to put it lightly. The wind had been against him for a long time now. The dragon must have picked it up and followed it. Damn it. The toxic fumes from before had probably masked it while he had been hiding in the cave earlier. He lifted mounds of dust and started dumping it on himself. Hopefully it’d stick to the stuff and mute the smell somewhat.

“I know what you are, human,” the creature hissed. Handy couldn’t hear it move. It was a quiet one, but he could tell where it was and moved to keep pace with it. “It’s your fault, the Dragon Lord is sure of it.”

Handy didn’t answer as he kept manoeuvring out of the dragon’s reach in the darkness. He tripped on several out of place rocks and stumbled, scrambling to a new hiding spot just as the dragon rounded the rock to grab at where he had just been. The dragon growled in frustration as it continued searching the dark in the cover of the dust cloud.

“You did this to us, you and those pony things with the dragon horns!” the dragon cursed. “You afflicted us with the curse of the candle!”

‘I have no idea what you are talking about, you overgrown, terrifying gecko!’ Handy thought to himself. Keeping one step ahead of the wyrm, the dust was beginning to settle. He had nowhere to run to, and using his phone to see his way would only cause the dragon to descend upon him.

“We heard you killed the worthless exile. You work with the pony who stole our prize we clung from the horned one. And now you are here!” the dragon went on. “Face me! The Dragon Lord may have a soft spot for the ponies, but I can take our revenge out on you!”

This dragon was deranged. What in the hell was he talking about? The exile? He recalled Spike mentioning something about that. Was the dragon he killed an exile? What the hell did that have to do with dragon-horned ponies? And the Dragon Lord… the dragons who had snatched him were going to take him to the Dragon Lord, weren’t they? That’s where Spike would be.

The dust settled, and the black dragon cast its baleful gaze in Handy’s direction across the grubby loam. Handy thought fast. He could rush the dragon, try to stab it in the neck at that weak spot. But he couldn’t see it. Being able to tell where someone was in the dark didn’t mean dick in terms of aiming for weak points. It could easily overpower him as well, so tackling it was retarded. He could probably take one full-on blast of dragon’s fire, assuming it wouldn’t bypass his potion’s effects somehow before his vampiric side freaked out and took over the wheel. It had already done that once today, and God knew that wouldn’t do well for him in the dark like this.

The dragon drew closer. Handy’s heart thumped faster and he forced himself to remain calm, to think. If he had any decent blood in him, this would be a significantly less dangerous proposition, but if wishes were horses, beggars would ride.

Run.

The dragon came closer, and he spotted tinges of orange creeping on the dust around the edge of the rock. He felt himself starting to panic. The orange light crept closer and reason started to desert him. He shifted in the dust, grabbing the sides of his head as he fought down the terror. His body wanted to run but his mind screamed at him, yet he had nowhere to go.

RUN.

He bit down on the edge of his cloak and worried away at it with his teeth. The vampire in him was trying to take control now and he could feel it. If he let it have its way now, it would only make it harder for him to resist it later. The dragon was almost upon him.

RUN!

Handy ran. He launched himself around the rock that he had hid behind, the dragon’s yellow eyes widened in surprise as a ball of fire billowed in its mouth. More’s the pity when the thick glass of the last bottle of potion shattered against the dragon’s snout, spilling its contents into its mouth and face, extinguishing the flame, drenching its nose in the foul liquid, and blinding its eyes. Handy screamed every second of the movement, his every fibre fighting against him as he moved, but the roar of the dragon drowned out his vampiric cry, and that jolt helped him regain his senses.

The dragon’s arm swept out and clocked Handy on the face as it flailed. He went down hard, dazed. The dragon swept out with its claws in the sudden darkness, beating its wings in frustration, blowing up billows of dust. Handy scrambled away. The dragon would eventually start using its fire in frustration again, so he had to make his move before that. He could barely think beyond the screaming in his mind, so he let it out verbally.

The dragon turned, opened its bleary, blinded eyes, just in time for Handy’s brick to shine at its full, unnatural luminosity right in its eyes as they were weakened and used to the dark. The dragon yelled and reeled. Handy ducked under its outswung arm, grabbed it, placed his right foot onto the knee of its rear leg, and threw himself up onto its back. His free leg pressed down hard on its wing joint, causing it to shout in pain.

It quickly stopped its thrashing as Handy pressed the blade of his dagger into the wound at its neck. The putrescent flesh reeked of corruption as it leaked brown pus and coagulated blood.

“Now…” Handy said, breathing heavy, his heart on the verge of an outright attack, his body rigidly stiff as he struggled to prevent the fear of the dragon itself from overwhelming him again. It had its ups and downs. It was good because it meant he wouldn’t fall off the dragon after what he had planned next. The bad news was that he couldn’t make him shift around because resting on top of draconic spines was the exact opposite of comfortable. “What’s your name, lizard?”

“...Onyx,” it answered slowly, still blinded but not moving while Handy had the dagger poised to plunge deep into its exposed flesh beneath its scales. That was good, because without vampiric strength, Handy was utterly unsure of how much damage he could do to draconic flesh, exposed or not.

“Alright, pebble, here’s what we’re going to do,” Handy said, still not feeling any better being this close to a dragon. “You’re going to take me to see this Dragon Lord of yours. Get this nonsense straightened out, yeah? Sound good? Sounds good. Get moving.”

The dragon didn’t move, and Handy took the moment to mourn the loss of his last fire resistance potion, the stupidity of his situation, and to shift his leg off of the wing joint, instead moving it to a lower spine to help keep his balance.

“Well? Get a move on!” Handy demanded before his nerve left him and he bugged out from this plan.

“I can’t see where I’m going…” the dragon admitted. Handy blinked.

“Well smell your way there then!”

“I can’t… This… stuff is all over my nose,” the dragon explained. Handy took a moment to let that sink in and quietly raged that he had just sabotaged his plan before it even began. He let out an exasperated sigh.

“Bollocks.”

Author's Note

EASTER MONDAY IS STILL EASTER, ITS OUT ON TIME, I SWEAR

Chapter 59 - The Gauntlet

You ever had those moments where you just regretted absolutely everything you’d ever done in your life?

Handy was having that moment right now. Again.

“I SWEAR TO GOD, IF YOU DON’T SLOW DOWN, I’M TEARING OPEN YOUR GULLET!” he bellowed over the billowing winds, apparently just loud enough for the dragon to hear him. The black-winged beast seemed to have a more sullen air to it as it acquiesced and slowed. Apparently, it had been hoping to have shaken Handy from its back with its take off.

Unfortunately for Pebble, Handy had quite the death grip when he was terrified out of his skull. He wasn’t going anywhere, much to his own chagrin, mind you.

“That’s better, Pebble. Be a good lad now and you might live to see again.” The dragon snarled but resigned to simply trying in vain to snort the gunk out of his nostrils. He had attempted to burn it out with fire earlier but had apparently made it worse. Handy almost found it funny before he recalled his precarious situation. It was not every day one hijacked a dragon, after all. He was still new to this, but he figured paying attention and maintaining a serious, domineering demeanour was probably a good idea.

They had remained down there in the darkness and the dust for hours, waiting for the sun to poke its head up above the horizon just enough that Handy could direct the blinded lizard where he wanted it to go. He had no idea where that was, but it gave him some measure of control over the situation. The moment the orange fingers of dawn stroked the fields of clouds above like a drowsy sleeper throwing off a blanket, Handy provoked Onyx into flying before someone else spotted them. Up in the air, it’d be harder to spot a human on the back of a dragon, after all.

“So, Pebble.” Handy attempted to peer through the rush of the air into his eyes, desperately scanning the skies for other dragons. “Care to tell me what all this is about now?”

The dragon did not care for being addressed as Pebble. Handy noticed the turn of its head downwards, spotting the gunk still blinding its eyes. His expression grew hard as he pressed the silver of the dagger’s tip just ever so much into the open sore on the neck. The dragon growled in pain and turned to face forward once more. Handy smiled grimly. He had guessed accurately—it was thinking of doing a roll to try to shake him off. That was not happening.

“Now, what is this all about?” Handy repeated, shouting to be heard, his head snapping to the right as he spotted a silhouette in the far distance. At first he thought he had imagined it. Then he spotted a large dragon weaving in and out of the clouds far off to the south, passing them by unawares. He breathed a sigh of relief, glad his dragon taxi couldn’t see it. The dragon snarled, remaining silent for a long time.

“We know of you, human, and what you have done,” Onyx finally said, his voice having this odd quality about it now that his nose was blocked. It was almost comical compared to how utterly terrifying it had been the night before.

“Right… the dragonslaying and all that,” Handy managed, the sheer wind chill a shocking change from the dry heat of the dragon lands below, and he fought not to have his teeth chattering. The dragon chuckled, a gravelly rumbling from deep within its chest.

“Ferix’s death was his failure, not your victory, ape.” Handy’s ire almost got the better of him, and the temptation to press the dagger just that much harder, and press the point about what this situation meant for Onyx, was a strong one. “Had his scales not grown weak from the wax, none would have pierced them, diamonds or no diamonds.”

“Again, what is this about wax and candles you are on about?” Handy asked, reckoning that keeping the dragon’s mind on the conversation would keep it off thinking of ways to escape.

“The pony and the horned one…” Onyx replied, “They brought this curse down upon us. They were found with the stolen sceptre. We took from them the chains of cursed ice.”

And just like that Handy got a sinking feeling in his stomach.

“Chains of ice?” he asked, dreading the answer.

“Magic to control the air and the wind.” Onyx snorted, confirming Handy’s fears. “The pony who was with him, the unicorn took it from us after we had our vengeance and stole it away.”

“...That weasley motherfucker,” Handy breathed. Fancy Pants, that fucking pony. Not only was the entire trip to deliver the crown of winter to the deer a drastically dangerous enterprise Handy had been woefully underprepared for, but apparently whatever happened ‘in the east’ had involved the dragonlands. That… was a pertinent bit of information Handy could well have been informed of, given his reputation and the likely insinuations the dragons might take from that.

Scratch that, they did take insinuations from it. That was why Pebble here had such a desire to turn Handy into a pillar of ash.

“He was most duplicitous. We were outraged when the dragon lord did not order a flight upon Equestria to take our revenge on the one pony. But that was before we realised what they had done.”

“The candle curse.” The dragon did not reply. Apparently, it did not want to elaborate on it. However, as the light increased, and the more clearly he could see, he noticed the wound he was busy poking with a dagger appeared as bad as it smelled. It was an open sore, the scales having fallen away and looking sickly compared to the sleek black of the healthier portions of its body, shot through with green-yellow spider web cracks, the occasional one even flaking off under the stress of the flight. No wonder his hunger had not risen to the surface when he first spotted the vulnerability the other night. Subconsciously, the vampire within him wanted nothing to do with that sickness, whatever it was.

Handy put it out of his mind. Dragons’ problems were their own to solve. He had to find Spike.

“The dragon lord,” Handy said, changing the subject. “Where is he?”

“The dragon lord resides in the obsidian peak, taking council,” Onyx replied helpfully.

“...And? What does this obsidian peak look like? Where is it?” Handy pressed.

“It is a mountain of black, a sleeping volcano.”

“Well, that’s where we are going then,” Handy declared, having spotted it now that the dragon had given him the details. It was a gargantuan eyesore that stuck out all on its lonesome, far away from the other mountains. He would only need to direct the dragon a little more to the right for it to take him right to it.

Which was exactly why he had the dragon turn left.

He had what he needed. He now knew which way was east and had the light of day to guide him. He knew where Spike was located and could roughly estimate how long it would take him to reach it from his actual destination. Now all he needed to do was safely get off this dragon without it alerting any of its friends. He gripped the dagger more tightly. He’d have to time this right.

--=--

“I spy with my little eye—”

“Can you just stop… please?” Spike begged hoarsely.

“Well, I could, but what else do you want to do instead?” Whirlwind asked, bouncing a rock up and down on his hoof as he lay on his back. Spike didn’t know how he did that with those antlers, but he was too tired to care.

“Help come up with a way out of here, for starters.”

“Tried that, didn’t work,” Whirlwind declared, voice still cheerful if somewhat muted. He hoofed the stone into the air again, catching the thin sliver of light from the crack far up. Must be morning then. He just watched as the deer threw the rock up and down, catching the light occasionally.

“Yeah, well, just bouncing rocks isn’t going to help much either.”

“Well, now that you’re here, I can’t pace anymore, so this is about as much exercise as I am going to get so… Yeah, it actually does help,” Whirlwind replied. Spike rolled his eyes and snorted, idly drawing in the dirt of the stone floor with his claw, accidentally raking out an entire clump in his claws. Tsking, he let it slip from his claws and went back to dragging his limbs across the floor.

Then he stopped.

Thinking for a minute, he ran his claws on one patch of the floor, raking across stone, to another, raking across more dirt until his claws hit the edge of a stone again, then lifting it up. Soon enough, Spike was tearing across the dirt floor in a frenzy of dirty claws and victorious laughter.

“That’s the spirit!” Whirlwind encouraged from his position on one side of the cell, which was more of a naturally formed oubliette than anything deliberately constructed by the dragons. “Digging isn’t my cup of tea, but anything to keep you from going crazy, I sup—Hey!”

Spike, grunting with effort, dug his claws underneath the bulk of the deer, and all but threw him up as he continued digging under where he had lain.

“What's the big idea?!” Whirlwind asked, the obsidian chains rattling as he moved.

“Stop talking and help me dig!”

“Dig?” Whirlwind looked down at the floor, barely making out anything distinguishable in the near complete darkness. “Spike, buddy, we’re in a dead volcano. I don’t think—”

“Yes, a dead volcano, a dead volcano that naturally formed this cave section that goes down.” Whirlwind continued to wait for him to elaborate. Spike sighed in exasperation. “Any magma that went down here and was stuck would have cooled and turned to hard stone.”

Spike continued to dig deeper into the dirt below, throwing the detritus of his labour everywhere. “Yet it isn’t. This is full of dirt and loose stone, which means someone deliberately filled this in. Why?” Spike asked.

“You know, mountains are kind of old. This could have just filled in naturally over the centuries,” Whirlwind pointed out.

“So would you rather stay here doing nothing, or take the chance I might be right and this leads somewhere?” Spike asked.

“You’d think the dragons would have thought of that,” Whirlwind countered.

“How many prisoners do you think the dragon lord usually takes over the years? And how many of them would have the same doubts you’d have?” Spike retorted. Whirlwind screwed up his face in thought, then smiled.

“Ah, why not? It’d be good exercise!” he said enthusiastically, digging with his forehooves. Spike rolled his eyes.

“That’s the spirit,” he muttered sardonically.

--=--

Onyx flew low near the hot springs. The naturally formed pools of near boiling water descended from the top of the hill where natural spring water burst forth from the Earth below. Each pool descended from the one before it in concentric circles, each distinct from its neighbour in size and shape. Handy glared down at them, timing it in his mind. He’d only have one shot at this.

“Land,” he ordered the dragon, steeling himself as best he could, preparing to plunge the dagger and leg it as soon as he could. The dragon didn’t move, maintaining its altitude. Handy ground his teeth. “I said land!”

The dragon sniffed, breathing long and deeply through its nostrils, the air of the springs below evidently cleaning them. Onyx smiled.

“As you wish.”

And then Handy lost the grip on his dagger, his body almost lifting completely from the dragon had he not had his death grip on one of its back spines, as the dragon fell at frightening speed. Of all the things Handy had mentally braced for, the dragon simply falling like a stone wasn’t one of them.

He barely got a word out before they hit the ground, the dragon splashing scalding water as Handy landed hard on Onyx’s back, losing his grip and falling down the wing into the water. For a brief moment, Handy’s entire world consisted of nothing but confusing shapes, lights, blurred vision, and scalding hot water. The dragon thrashed about in the water, and Handy was thrown out of the upper pools down into a lower one, this one, thankfully, not nearly as hot. He gasped for air, erupting from the water, arms waving wildly as he searched for any kind of leverage or support to grab onto, coughing up water.

Waterblind and reeling from the sudden temperature shock of the pool, he struggled to pull himself up over the ledge of the pool he was in, only to part of the way stumble down into the next one before getting his bearings. The dragon was still thrashing in the topmost pool, washing the gunk thoroughly from its face. Handy had missed his window for getting rid of the dragon for good and now…

And now he had to run.

He pulled himself up over the lip of the pool, skidding down the rough water-carved rock to the lip of the next pool, getting a few steady steps across before slipping on the slick rock and tumbling down yet another level, hitting his head and crashing into the water in a daze. He struggled back up and gasped for air. He couldn’t hear the dragon thrashing anymore. He sat there in the almost intolerably hot water of the lower pools, head obscured by the steam rising from the waters as he looked up. The dragon had to be up there somewhere, but he dared not move lest he gave away his location.

A wall of flame washed over the southern portion of the hot springs, boiling water and casting up a bank of steam. Welp, that decided it. Handy had to move if he didn’t want to go the way of a boiled lobster. He barely reached the edge of the pool before another fiery column cascaded across another portion of the pools. Handy took a breath, slipped over the edge, and slid down to the next pool.

Except it never came. He kept falling, scrambling to grab a handhold before the slope he was on became uneven and he was left tumbling down the rocks until it evened out, depositing him at the bottom of a shallow gorge. That… had hurt. He pulled himself up, but a sharp pain in his side almost brought him low again. Another burst of fire from the pools overhead lit up the gorge, and the heat wave washed over him as the dragon covered the pools where he had been hiding not long before. The trickle of water washing down into the gorge dried up until the pools could refill and spill over once more. Handy waited… and waited. Eventually, he was rewarded with the dragon moving on, breathing fire on another section of the springs. He released a breath.

It would have to do. Now he had to get out of here before Pebble called for more help or he’d be swimming in dragons. He limped on sore legs down the gorge, hoping to find some way out. He had desired to use the hot springs when he spotted them to quickly wash off the gunk on his own clothes that Onyx had used to find him the other night to begin with. He hadn’t considered the possibility the vapours would help clear the dragon’s nose, help it know where exactly it was. And he hadn’t accounted for a dead drop.

Now he was unarmed bar his hammer, had a single jar of potion left in case of he caught a bad case of dragon fire, separated from his friend and miles and miles away from the closest transport out of the dragon lands. He had no food, and clean water was hard to find, and the skies were heavy with fire-breathing murder lizards.

“Yeah…” Handy breathed raggedly, pushing along, “Yeah, I can manage that. Sure, why not?”

He managed to find a cranny leading upwards, gingerly reaching up and climbing. He could just about make out a path leading further up the mountain that would be relatively hidden from the dragon. If he was careful that is.

“Yeah… I can do that.”

--=--

Handy peered out from the crevice, glaring down at the hot springs and the four or so dragons that had gathered there. All of them were around Onyx’s size, or smaller, none of the adults, thankfully. Handy hurriedly squeezed himself back behind the rocks blocking the crevice from sight as two of them took off again.

“Right. Okay. Lost my scent. Fun times,” he muttered through laboured breaths. Climbing even this high on the mountain was not the easiest, as hard done by as he was. His side still ached, his limp gone but his legs still throbbing. He had lost count of the knocks on the head he had received, and his gloves had been worn away with the climbing, resulting in his hands being cut and bleeding. He sat back in the crevice, wiping the dirt over his feet and ankles as he waited for his socks to dry.

One thing he had learned the hard way, through all the trekking he had done, was to always take care of your feet, and that meant dry socks. If he was caught out in that blasted wasteland and his feet began to hurt, he was more or less fucked. The dirt on his ankles was to soak up the additional moisture. Probably not the best idea, but he hardly had anything to dry them properly with.

With that done, he checked again. The dragons had left the hot springs but there was still one circling in the air. It was midday by the time it had gotten bored and flew off, so Handy decided it was time to move. Getting down the mountainside was something of an adventure in itself. Handy counted at least three distinct times he almost got his ankle caught and broken. He never before envied the ponies or the griffons personally about anything, but having two additional legs in case one broke or a pair of wings allowing him to literally fuck off into the sky sounded pretty great.

He skidded the last few metres down the mountainside, landing in some thorny bushes of some scraggly, hardy plant that forgot it died fifty years ago, but was still aggressively clinging to its existence anyway. He had his route more or less planned out to the obsidian mountain, or as best he could from where he had sat on the mountainside. He had absolutely no idea what he was going to do when he got in there, but that was future Handy’s problem. Right now, he just needed to get there, get Spike out, and get the fuck out of Dodge. If the princess wanted to have Spike taken care of, she could deal with this shit. He’d even void his demand in the deal if need be.

Right now, though, he was Handy’s responsibility. He stood up and prepared to head towards the mountain.

Then he saw a small explosion at the base of the dead volcano.

“What the—?” he managed to blurt out before a shadow passed over him as a dragon flew through the air, speeding off towards the mountain. And another from another direction. There were more explosions, gouts of flame, and an awful racket being made that he could hear even from nearly two miles away. “What the hell is going on over there?”

--=--

The earth of the wall shuddered, with bits and pieces of soil falling to the cavern floor. First it was a trickle, then soon clumps of dirt and stone fell to the floor until, eventually, the wall bulged out and burst, a small avalanche of dirt, dead plants, stones and a dragon fell out across the floor. Spike spluttered heavily, more out of the lack of air and lungs full of dirt than out of his sickness.

“S-See?” he coughed. “Told you it had to go somewhere!”

A bundle of deer, antlers, and obsidian chains fell after him, landed on the floor beside him with an audible ‘oof’, and shook off the dizziness from his head.

“You do realise it could have been a dead end,” Whirlwind chided, his characteristic cheerfulness somewhat dulled. Spike shrugged.

“Magma has to go somewhere, so unless the dragons dug a lot of solid rock out of that pit and filled it with soil, it had to have gone down here… or up there. It is a volcano after all.” Whirlwind just shook himself and stretched, yawning, grateful for the extra room.

“Well, can’t argue with results! What next?” he asked, jogging in place, chains rattling all the way. Spike, who had puffed his chest out in pride, simply blinked.

“What?”

“The next step of your suddenly inspired plan? I mean, you got us this far, so what's next?” Whirlwind asked, seemingly getting more and more of his energy back the faster he jogged in place. Spike rubbed the back of his neck nervously.

“Eh… I didn’t really think that far ahead,” he admitted.

“Oh,” Whirlwind said, stopping momentarily before jogging back in place, his smile re-emerging on his face. “Alright, we'll pick a direction to go then. You were right last time; let’s see how far we can ride that wave of luck.”

“I don’t think that’s the best—”

“Hey! Where did they go!?” a shout echoed down from the hole behind them, and an orange light illuminated the tunnel to their left, revealing a descent from the caves above and likely where a bunch of angry dragons would be traipsing down looking for them.

“This way!” Spike pointed to the right, running off with the annoyingly loud chains of the deer clanging behind him. They sprinted through the darkened tunnels, more often than not tripping in the darkness and running into walls. Whirlwind stopped laughing after the fifth time, since even the brightest of moods would be soured by that many obstacles to their freedom.

After only a few minutes of hard running, with Whirlwind overtaking him on the straight sprint uphill towards the light that had just emerged after they turned the last corner, he felt a breath of fire scorched the rocks just behind him. He would be fine, of course. Whirlwind? Not so much. He threw all he had into the sprint towards the exit, before the dragon behind him had another chance to catch up. He reached the lip of the cave mouth and promptly caught his foot, tripping and falling into the sludge on the ground.

“Ugh…” he groused, pushing himself up. The air utterly reeked here. There was strange brownish-black sludge everywhere, small mounds with vapour pumping up into the air so thick he could practically see the colour of it. His only saving grace was the heat of the gas took it up, leaving the air near the ground more or less breathable.

“Quick!” Whirlwind bounded over to him through the muck, grabbing him with a hoof and trying to leverage an antler under him to get him to his feet faster. “We have to move! This is bad! This is really, really bad!”

“W-What?” Spike asked coughing, “What's wr—”

“The gas! The gas; we need to move!” Whirlwind shouted. The deer had surprising strength in him, more or less tossing Spike to his feet and a metre or two across the muck with nothing more than raw neck strength. Spike turned just in time to see Whirlwind bounding across the muck, trying to get as far away from the mounds of gas, managing to get to a creek of stagnant-looking water and tossing himself under it wholly. Then Spike spotted a familiar crimson dragon from the cave mouth.

“There you are!” Garble said and inhaled deeply, igniting the pilot light in his chest. Spike saw the orange glow in his gullet, then looked to where Whirlwind was hiding, and finally put two and two together.

“Oh no…” he groaned, taking in a breath, closing his eyes, and bracing himself for the inevitable.

The explosion was a spectacular affair, the air itself igniting as an expanding fireball covered the mountainside. Garble and the dragon behind him were knocked back far into the tunnel by the force of the blast, and any dragon within a seven mile radius was made aware of their escape attempt. That didn’t matter to Spike, who was busy trying to extricate himself from the sucking mud of the ground. He gulped in air greedily, gasping and coughing and aching as he moved. The explosion didn’t so much as char his scales, but the sheer pressure of it had pushed him into the ground with incredible force. He brushed off the fried clay from his arms and back as he watched Whirlwind slowly make his way out of the stinking, stagnant creek.

“You okay? You’re okay!” he said jubilantly, hopping happily out of the water towards him. “I thought you had gotten to cover, but when I saw you standing there after the explosion, I thought you were a pillar of ash. I heard that happens sometimes if a fire burns hot enough, fast enough, but then I thought an explosion would have scattered your ashes everywhere, but then I saw you move and then remembered you were a dragon, so of course you would be fi—”

“Duck!” Spike jumped up, grabbed the deer by his stupid antlers, and pushed his yammering mouth into the muck as a gout of flame tore through the air, burning a path through the mud. The gas mounds had not yet projected enough of the flammable gas to create a second inferno, thankfully. Looking up, he noted with dismay that another dragon had joined the party, hovering in the air above them. Further afield, he saw more dragons approaching by air. “Oh, come on!”

His words were ignored as Whirlwind scooped Spike up in his antlers and onto his back as he took off at a gallop. The deer was slowed considerably because of the soft, yielding ground, and the dragon was joined by a second who went to the cave mouth to see to the two other dragons that had been following them. The purple dragon, however, came around and followed after them.

“Come on, come on, faster! Go faster!” Spike urged.

“I am trying!” Whirlwind bellowed, nearly tripping in a particularly deep pocket of mud before finding his footing again. He managed to get his hooves onto some solid ground, and then he really took off. The purple dragon swooped down and tried to grab them, but Whirlwind bounded left from the crest of a deep crevice into the far edge. The dragon snarled as her claws tore through the ground instead.

Whirlwind dived, the momentum causing him to slide downhill on gravel and stone, cutting into his barrel, but it had saved them both from another gout of flame roaring through the air. Spike held onto the chains for dear life, not that he had much choice since he had managed to get his foot caught in them. He slowly pulled himself up and back to the antlers just before Whirlwind took his dive to the ground, knocking Spike off and to the side. Dragged across the ground, now only connected to Whirlwind by his foot, Spike was in a precarious position.

“Hang on!” Whirlwind called as he jumped back to his hooves, yanking Spike by his foot. He couldn’t respond as the air was knocked out of his lungs with each time he struck the hard ground. The dragon swooped left and right, Whirlwind dodging and weaving under its swipes, and Spike suffering every step of the way.

“Stop!” he managed to call out, and Whirlwind did, skidding to a halt, with the dragon overshooting him. He attempted to help Spike get on his back, but a third dragon, the size and colour of an immense boulder, all but crashed into them, and Whirlwind had to pull Spike in behind a rocky pillar. The dragon crashed into it with a tremendous noise, cracking the rock.

“Hurry hurry hurry!”

“I’m trying!” Spike shouted, trying to undo the tangle his leg was in the chains.

The purple dragon circled back, hovering in place before diving towards them. Whirlwind’s eyes widened, looking between it and Spike, taking note he was not even remotely scuffed or cut from his dragging across the ground.

“Spike, how hard are your scales?”

“What?” Spike asked in bemusement. Whirlwind took a breath.

“Sorry about this.” Whirlwind jumped back to his hooves, stomping on his forehooves, spinning his rearmost behind, and dragging Spike around with tremendous force as the deer’s head followed around. The momentum actually lifted Spike off the ground. The dragon barely had time to show her surprise when Spike came barrelling around on a length of obsidian chain, crashing into her face like a terrified, screaming Morningstar. The blow wasn’t the most powerful, but it was enough to knock the dragon off course and force her to create a shallow trench as she crashed to the ground to their left.

Spike, dazed and nursing his spinning head, was hurriedly lifted up onto Whirlwind’s back before either dragon could recover, and he once again bounded across the blasted Dragonlands before them.

--=--

Whirlwind had chosen the path of most resistance, namely the one with the largest rocks to hide behind and dash between. Frankly, it had been the best decision since it bought them significant time between each failed swipe by the three dragons behind them, not to mention the two others from the base of the mountain who had now recovered from the explosion and were quickly catching up with them.

Whirlwind was beginning to get tired, but kept on going nonetheless. At this point, what other choice did he have? Spike had come to his senses and promptly chewed him out for using him as a living weapon, but soon he too was preoccupied with warning the deer of incoming attacks from above and behind than he was at getting an apology.

“Right!” and Whirlwind bounded right, a gout of flame turned the ground to his left black, the air scorching his side. “Left, left!”

Whirlwind jerked left as a boulder fell from the sky above, crashing into the ground where he had been only moments before.

“Incoming!” and Whirlwind sharply turned, diving behind a large sharp rock, a yellow dragon’s claws crashing into the rocks as it swooped, then kicking off back into the air as it had missed its chance. Whirlwind followed the new direction downhill and turned right, the flight of dragons a persistent shadow.

They had lost track of how long they had been running now. Whirlwind was panting heavily, his steps uneasy and less sure than they had been a mere minute ago.

“Come on, keep going!” Spike urged.

“Can’t…” Whirlwind panted. “Can’t keep…. Can—” Spike eyes bulged and he pulled back on the stag’s antlers. Whirlwind skidded to a stop, almost tripping over his own hooves. A black dragon landed heavily on the ground in front of them, mouth full of fire and eyes full glinting malevolence.

“Well, well…” Onyx said. “I think this will cheer me up. How about you two just give up? You’ve given us a good chase, but now I think it’s time I took both… no, one of you back.”

The dragon looked hungrily at the panting Whirlwind in particular. The deer glanced to his left and to his right. His unthinking run had delivered him in between two stretches of uneven ground and a shallow valley between them. There was no way they could just jink around the dragon that it could not catch them, either physically or with dragon fire.

“Wait! Hold on!” Spike urged.

“No,” Onyx replied, rearing back his head, fire gathering in the depths of his gullet that would roast Whirlwind alive and leave Spike helpless and friendless on his own. Then a silver hammer fell down from above, crashing into the top of the dragon’s skull with all the weight and momentum of the man that swung it. Too bad he crashed bodily into the dragon after all but giving it a concussion. The dragon hit the ground as Handy fell to the floor, losing his grip on his war hammer and yelling in pain as one of his legs finally gave way.

“Handy!?”

“Handy!”

Both Spike and Whirlwind shouted in unison, though Handy was too busy fighting through the pain to notice which was which in terms of happiness versus surprise at his entrance, let alone notice there were two voices instead of one. Onyx was dazed, his head on the ground as he struggled to return to his sense. Handy, meanwhile, could no longer stand on both legs.

“Come on! Come on, I can… I can get us out of here!” Handy finally pulled himself back to something resembling verticality. Then he noticed the deer who was smiling way too much to be an illusion. “... What.”

“Alright! Get on!” Whirlwind said, apparently getting a second wind and rushing over to the downed Handy.

“Wait, you can’t carry both of us!” Spike said.

“Get off then!” Whirlwind shouted, before turning to Handy. “Handy, where do we need to go!?”

“What the hell are y—?”

“Handy! Shock later, running now!”

“A cave, a cave up the way. You can lose the dragons in a maze of crags nearby.”

“Right!” And so Whirlwind forced the wounded human onto his back. Grunting with the effort, he hurriedly carried him past the larger dragon, Spike running alongside them. The other dragons, who had overshot their location, doubled back and found them and the downed Onyx. Whirlwind threw everything he had into one last sprint down the short valley which ended up on the open plains ahead. “Handy…”

“I know! Drift closer to the right!” Handy ordered. Spike, beginning to drag behind, redoubled his efforts, thankful his legs had finally grown long enough that he could do a proper sprint. They followed his directions, running close to the right side of the increasingly tall and cliff-like side of the valley. The dragons were hovering in place, apparently bickering over who should get the glory of catching the three of them.

They had apparently came to an agreement, as a crimson dragon pulled forth from the five of them and dived towards them at a terrifying speed.

“Handy...”

“Just a bit further!” Handy called. Whirlwind couldn’t see what Handy was looking forward to, with only a seemingly endless stretch of rocky wall and an upcoming open plain ahead of them that would surely spell their doom.

“Handy!”

“Turn right! Now!” Whirlwind followed the instructions, and veered right, Spike diving after them. He squeezed his eyes shut, expecting to run straight into solid rock, but the crash never came. Instead, it felt like the ground had disappeared under him, and he was sent careening down a steep slide of gravel and sand. They came to a rough halt as they heard the dragon, Garble, breath a gout of flame, burning the rock behind them and covering their escape in his hubris.

Whirlwind pushed himself up, chains rattling, but a hand roughly pushed him back down.

“Shh!” Handy hissed, to Whirlwind and then to Spike.

“Where’d they go?”

“They were right there!”

“Did you burn all of them?”

“I must have.”

“Surely even Spike would have survived that.”

“Are you saying my fire isn’t hot enough?!”

Handy waited for a moment for the dragons to fall to arguing. Then, he removed what remained of his cloak and bundled the chains on Whirlwind’s head to blanket them and cause them to rattle less. Afterwards, he indicated for them to crawl away from their position.

Looking back, Spike saw that they had dived through what amounted to a small hole in the rocks above which specks of daylight squeezed through. They followed Handy’s direction for a time until he deemed it safe enough for them to walk again, Whirlwind helping him along, and Spike nervously looking up for any signs that dragons were closing in on their hiding spot. The fact that he jumped at every slight movement of shifting rocks or skree falling from above was not helping anyone’s nerves.

“Where are we going?” Whirlwind asked in a hushed whisper.

“Up, eventually,” Handy replied, trying his hardest to block the pain radiating from his left leg, now surely broken. “Till then, I have no idea. I told you it was a maze here.”

“How did you find out about this?”

“By nearly falling into it five times running overland trying to get to you, Spike.”

“How… How are you alive?” Spike asked. “I saw you fall.”

“Honestly, I ask myself that every day,” Handy replied honestly. “There, we can rest in there.”

Handy pointed to a large cave mouth. It was across an open portion of the crag maze, enough to be sighted from above if they were not careful, but a little patience was all it took to cross the open ground, using the large overhanging rocks that kept most of it in shade to cover their approach.

With that, they gratefully stopped to rest far enough into the cave to not easily be spotted from the outside, but close enough they could still use the daylight to see. Handy gingerly sat down, taking back his cloak from Whirlwind to tie up his leg. Merely touching it shot spasms of pain up and down his body. Yep, broken. He was properly fucked this time. He rested his head back on the cave wall, grateful to be out of the day’s heat, but dying of thirst all the same.

He looked over to Whirlwind, who was lying down not far away, spying the Crown of Winter under the black chains tying down his antlers. He noticed the deer still had them attached to his antlers, where they had fused to the bone in the midst of that lake way back in the depths of the Greenwoods. He recalled what the dragon had said about the deer and the unicorn, and he gritted his teeth. It was haunting him still, for now it made sense why the deer would be here of all places. Winter was over and spring was beginning. It must have come early in the Greenwoods, and he had travelled here.

“Stupid,” Handy cursed himself quietly. “Stupid, stupid, stupid. The last lord died in the West. I made him swear to God to follow through with that lake thing’s demands. Of course he had to be here. Of course he had to find out what was powerful enough to break through her magic.”

“Hey.” Handy turned to look at the dragon who had been pacing up and down the cave while they rested. “How’s the, uh, leg?”

“Broken,” Handy muttered. “How’d you get out of the mountain?”

“I dug,” Spike admitted. Handy just stared, before snorting.

“Right, with claws like that, why wouldn’t you?”

“What?”

“Nothing.” Handy shook his head, letting out a breath in the quiet. “We just need to focus on getting out of here.”

Spike started to reply, but held his tongue, thinking back. He sighed. “Thanks for coming to get me, I mean.” Handy grunted. Besides them, Whirlwind snored loudly. “Seriously?”

Handy genuinely laughed. “Doesn’t surprise me in the least, knowing that man. Could sleep through a thunderstorm if he had to.”

“You know him?” Spike asked.

“Long story.” Handy waved it off. “Why is he wearing those chains? Magic?”

“Yeah. Can’t use his magic with it.”

“How do we remove it?”

“Dragonfire.” Handy just looked at him, before letting out an exasperated noise and sinking even further into the position he had adopted against the wall. Exhaustion and pain worked wonders at making anything comfortable enough to sleep on. Furthermore, Handy was running on nothing but fumes and adrenaline that had wound down half an hour ago.

Spike walked over to Whirlwind, his feet trailing in the soft, green mist that clung to the dirt. He examined the chains more closely now that he had some light. What had first seemed to be obsidian was in actuality a kind of roughly hewn crystal. Dark and dim, it didn’t reflect much light, but at the right angle, it was clearly translucent. Spike could even swear he saw something floating inside the crystals, but couldn’t make out the rare, fleeting shapes.

Handy was so out of it with exhaustion that he didn’t initially realise what was odd about the situation. It was Whirlwind sneezing as the mist entered his nose that brought their attention to the growing green mist rising from the ground.

“Uhh, what’s that?” Spike backed up from the sleeping Whirlwind, who would not wake when he shook him. Handy, rising up slowly from where he sat, saw the tendrils creep up on the low rocks, clinging to him as he moved before letting go and falling slowly to join the rest of the mist. He had seen its ilk before.

“Not here,” he said, almost pleadingly. “Not now.”

“What!?” Spike cried.

“We have to go, now!” Handy demanded, turning towards the exit. Horrifying whispers, as if from a dozen mouths but with the same mouth, rushed past him like a physical force, and columns of rock burst from the ground at angles, cutting off their retreat. The mist grew thicker on the ground, Handy releasing an inarticulate shout of frustration. He turned around, almost falling again before steadying himself with one hand on the wall and the other on his hammer.

“You really should be resting that leg.” The voice reverberated through the cave, though it was still barely more than a whisper. It sounded massive and close. Handy just grimaced and looked down at Whirlwind, now half-covered by the growing mist. Ethereal tendrils reached out, hanging in the air, flowing above them.

“Spike, listen very carefully.” Handy said. “Whatever it tells you, whatever it says, do not believe it.”

The mist slowly gave way to the wispy form of a dragon, seemingly too large for the cavern it was in.

“You’d do well to listen to him, boy,” she said. “But even so, it would be so much easier if you would indulge me just a little bit. Can you not grant a stranger such kindness?”

“I owe nothing to the Mistress and her slaves,” Handy spat.

“Mistress?” Spike asked, utterly at a loss.

“Oh, I think you’ll want to hear what I can say, human.” the dragoness said, piercing blue eyes, washed away under the white-green glow of the old magic. “I am Meranax, and I have been looking for you.”

Author's Note

It is currently 23:36, Monday, 18th September, Baker Island, US Minor Outlying Islands.

STILL COUNTS

Chapter 60 - The Price of Hubris

Handy went down and did not get back up.

The blow was little more than a black claw striking out from the shadows of the cave ceiling. Blindsiding him and knocking his unprotected head against the wall, he fell over in a slump, the hammer falling to the ground and vanishing beneath the spectral mist. Spike stood alone, the too-large eyes of the dragon staring down at him. It was only then that Spike noticed the eyes were too big for the cave itself, that despite its speech, he felt no rush of air that indicated breath.

Spike reached down and picked up a rock from beneath the mist, tossing it with all of his strength. The grey stone went spinning through the air, right between the eyes. The silence hung for a moment or two before the rock bounced on the ground further down the cave. The dragon chuckled.

“What's wrong, little drake? Lost your fire?”

“What do you want with us!?” Spike demanded impotently, the other two down for the count.

”With you? Nothing. Not much use in a baby dragon that can’t breathe fire.”

“I am not a baby!” Spike said defensively as anger swelled within him, but it felt like little more than a spark in a frozen cave. There was no heart in it. “Not anymore.”

“I don’t see any wings on your back, child, so you know as well as I do that that’s not true, however tall you’ve grown,” the voice chided. ”But because I can probably use you as leverage, I might as well bring you along as well.”

The mist then rose up and wrapped around him, growing thicker and drier. Spike struggled, waving the mist away with his claws until it solidified to the point that he had to actually tear at them. However, he found his movement quickly restricted, the mist binding close to him like a body of vines constricting him and blinding him as it covered his face and closed over his snout. Everything seemed to stop for the longest time; no sound, no feeling, neither hot nor cold—he couldn’t even breathe but found he had no need to. This did nothing to ease his growing panic.

Time stretched on, seemingly endlessly, but it could not have been longer than half an hour until Spike found he could breathe again.

“HYYUUURRRRK!” Spike’s desperate lungs greedily breathed in the stolid air of the cavern, but as soon as his eyes opened, he had to screw them shut again to prevent them from being blinded. The cave was full of light, though for the life of him, Spike could only locate one light source. A flawlessly cut, clearly transparent crystal of immense size was suspended in a ring of worked gold and studded with emeralds that shone with an internal light. Its light shone up and around the cavern as it rotated on its axis, reflecting off immense shards of mirrored glass sticking up out of the mounds of treasure around him.

The shards were curved and were clearly a part of a greater whole once upon a time, and they sparkled as the light touched them and rebounded off to light up the rest of the cavern. Piles of gold were stacked carefully in boxes and chests rather than haphazardly strewn as Spike had seen other dragons do with their hordes. Precious gems and stones, on the other hand, were treated with less care, placed in neat piles, some as tall as him. Spike could not tell which were for eating and which were for keeping. Other treasures covered the floor and walls as far as he could see: bars of worked silver ingots on pallets of wrought iron, stamped with the seals of long dead kingdoms. Suits of armour for ponies, griffons, dragons, diamond dogs, and as many races as Spike could name were mounted on stands everywhere. None of them looked very modern, but all of them had the tell-tale traces of gold, silver, or other decorations indicating worth and merit. Just as many had rents or tears where their previous owners met their end.

Portraits of individuals he didn’t recognise, painted in styles he could not name, presented in places and occasions he did not know, lined the walls wherever there was not space occupied by tapestries. The recognizable glow and thrum of powerful magical artefacts radiated about the room, but Spike could not spot any out in the open. What he did see was plenty of weapons; everything from bronze daggers to spears made out of a strange blue-green metal that looked like aged copper but were clearly something much more durable and potent. Amulets and jewellery lay in boxes separate from the gold coins, and had he time, he would have happily delved further to explore the treasures this room offered.

However, that would require ignoring the dragon in the room. Meranax lay across what could only be described as a chaise longue. Carved out of the rock itself, the edges were gilded with real gold and the ‘lining’ of the immense longue seemed to have been made out of actual rubies, fused together into a single solid surface along all the curves and edges. Meranax herself was an immense dragon of darkly shining green scales. Eyes of piercing gold stared down at him, the sclera shot through with green tinged veins. Her wings were draped along her side rather than being neatly folded at her back, with the foreclaws linked at her collarbone, making a cloak of her own wings. She wasn’t the biggest dragon Spike had ever seen in the Dragonlands, but after looking around at her horde, she was probably the richest.

Spike found himself seated on his backside, facing her, the mist dissipating around him. The others were no longer in sight, causing his heart to lurch in his chest.

“Welcome,” Meranax rumbled, her voice possessing an odd melodic quality now that it was not coming through the filter of magical projection. However, she was still a dragon, and her voice shook the air nonetheless.

“W-Where are my friends!?” Spike demanded.

“Back in Ponyville where you left them, I would imagine.”

“I meant Handy and Whirlwind!”

“Oh, they aren’t your friends,” Meranax said. “I thought that much would have been obvious.”

Spike wanted to retort but bit it back. It’d only come across as childish given the circumstances. He took in a breath, looking down. How did things get this bad?

“What is it you want with me? Really?” Spike asked. Meranax smiled, her already intimidating appearance accentuated by the magical light shining upon her face.

“Leverage, like I said,” Meranax explained, raising up her enclosed claw to admire something in her grasp. Spike saw the antlers of Whirlwind sticking up through her enclosed claws.

“Whirlwind!” Spike shouted in horror.

“Oh be quiet, you,” Meranax said almost casually, not looking at the distraught dragon. “He’ll be fine, for now.”

She admired the Crown of Winter upon the antlers for a moment, taking care not to disturb the still slumbering deer.

“What brings you to these lands, little dragon? I thought you were no longer in our Dragonlord’s good graces?”

“You… know who I am?” Spike asked tentatively, eyeing the treasures around him, unable to help himself. Meranax noticed but only smiled.

“Of course I do, little Spike. I am the oldest dragon in our bloodline. What manner of elder would I be if I did not keep track of our little ones farther afield?”

“Uh, elder?” he asked.

“I sometimes forget how much has been lost over the centuries.” Meranax sighed. “Yes, Spike, your elder. You would do well to remember your place. Now keep your wandering eyes to yourself.”

Spike immediately snapped his gaze back to Meranax, having been staring at a particularly amazing pile of gems for an uncouth amount of time.

“Now, as for this one…” Meranax placed Whirlwind back down, laying him gently on a pile of heavy rugs and rolls of samite and other expensive fabrics laid out upon the rubies. However, she kept her claw pressed down on him, just in case. In her other claw, she held the unconscious form of Handy. He had stopped bleeding, but the sides of his head were still caked in blood from where he had been struck. “This is a real treasure. Do you even know what he is, really?”

“... A human?” Spike answered, not sure what she was expecting. Meranax closed her eyes and breathed in through her nostrils. The rush of air was almost physically noticeable.

“Yes, Spike, a human. Not particularly special in himself but in what he represents. But I do not suppose you could know why that matters. None of you could who were not there for it, not anymore,” Meranax said. “You should ask your princesses. It would be so much fun watching from afar how they’ll fret.”

“Ask… Ask them what?”

“Ask them why they haven’t told him about his predecessor,” she replied. Spike just looked confused.

“What predecessor?” Spike asked, but Meranax didn’t reply. Spike pressed anyway, hoping to keep the conversation going long enough until he could spot a way out of here, but every nook and cranny seemed to be full of treasure. How did she even get out of here, herself? “What predecessor!?”

“That is for them to worry over. For now, he is my treasure to keep. Who knows when I’ll come across another of his like? I will not even give him over to my mistress.” Meranax chuckled, a deep, unnerving rumble felt more than heard. “Oh, she would be so incredibly angry if she ever found out. The deer, too, would make a good trophy, but he I can sacrifice, like I did his forebear.”

“You… That was you?” Spike asked, now moving closer to what looked to be a particularly old but well-made bronze spear, resting in a casket with other weapons. “He said something about the guy before him being… uh…”

“Oh do grow up, child. Not everyone’s adventures end as happily as yours. Really, I should have seen something like that coming…” Spike paused as he shuffled, spotting something on the top-most digit on Meranax’s claw holding the human. Her green scales made it difficult to spot, but now that he saw it in the glow of the crystal light, it was obvious. Shot through several of the scales, some as large as his head, was the same sickly green and yellow web he had seen on other dragons, and on Ember.

“It was you…” Spike mumbled. Meranax’s eyes focused on him. “You were the one who really stole the sceptre. You’re the one who did this to the dragons!”

Meranax smiled, an ominous sight on any dragon but particularly dreadful on her with the way the light played across her features. For a brief moment, it didn’t quite meet her eyes, but the moment passed.

“I will not deny anything I have done,” she said, turning to gaze off into a long forgotten distance. “Just another wrong I have done my people, among many others.”

“Why!?” Spike demanded, furious despite himself, forgetting the absurd power disparity between him and the target of his anger.

“Oh, you know, the usual: covetousness, greed, avarice. I am an old dragon after all,” she said almost glibly. Spike did not accept the obvious deflection.

“No. What did you do? What did you do with the sceptre? What did you do to my friends!?” he demanded. Then Meranax frowned, her face darkening despite the light as she glowered down at him.

“I do not care for your tone, boy,” she said icily, the words reverberating with power. Spike wavered momentarily before steeling himself and meeting her gaze. She waited for a few moments before speaking again.

“If you must know, little one, then you should understand that once I tell you that, you’ll be useless to me as leverage,” she explained, eyes narrowing. “My Mistress may just consider a breathless dragon enough of a curiosity to accept it as a gift.”

That gave Spike some pause. He understood next to nothing about who or what this Mistress was, only what little he found out from Twilight, who was told by Celestia. He only knew she was bad news, and the human was tied up with her in some way. Now he knew that whoever she was, she had a full-fledged ancient dragon on her payroll, and that was all sorts of bad news for everypony. He swallowed and steadied himself. He had to know, whatever the expense to himself. Standing his ground, he looked her in the eyes and did not blink.

Meranax smiled.

“Very well,” she said, lifting a wing to settle it behind her. “I was attempting to escape this mortal coil.”

Spike blinked. “What?”

“Immortality, child.”

“I get that but… is that it?” he asked, genuinely confused. “I mean, you’re already a dragon.”

“Dragons are not timeless, boy.” She snorted. “We age and die as sure as the younger races do. Or have you not found it odd you have not seen an elderly dragon? Not even once? Where do you suspect Ember’s father went when she took the sceptre?”

“I… I just thought he went to the North.” Meranax chuckled, the gold in the chest next to Spike rattling as the coins shifted.

“Yes, that he did. Do you know why?”

“That’s just what dragons do when they are old enough, isn’t it?” he asked, now suddenly unsure of himself. He had asked Ember that question once before, and that was all the answer she gave him, not knowing more herself.

“They go to the North to die, Spike.” Meranax sighed. ”At the pole of the world, there is a graveyard, mountains of your ancestors’ bones, yours and mine and that of every other bloodline. Only a dragon’s burning furnace of a heart can stand the impossible chill of those immortal lands.”

“But… nopony ever said anything about that,” he protested. Meranax snorted in contempt.

“Wash your mouth, boy, you sound altogether too much like the ponies you put up with. Still, it doesn’t matter. What did you think dragons do when they go North? Sleep? Dance? Sit around and wait? That they would go there and collect a trophy and return, but get lost on the way?”

“I just… I guess I didn’t really think about it that much,” he admitted.

“None of you young ones do anymore, and I am glad for it. Of all the trappings of our past I removed one by one, that myth I miss the least.” She snorted.

“What myth?”

“I am not going to tell you, lest it live again. Just know there is a reason I am the eldest. Despite my age, there is a reason why some of our number fear to go North and instead turn to the lost arts of necromancy, anything to escape death. Its grip should not touch those as noble as our blood.”

“Necromancy? Now that’s a myth!” Spike said, at once feeling as if he was on more familiar ground and trying desperately to buy himself some time to process what Meranax was telling him. He spied the shifted head of Handy in the larger dragon’s grip. It seemed as though he was finally coming to. “Ponies have been trying to study that for thousands of years. It’s nonsense.”

At this, Meranax did not smile nor allow her expression to change. “It wasn’t always nonsense, child,” she said seriously. “Magic can do wonders. It can animate even corpses with energy, but it is like a marionette on strings, no true aberration of life. You could sculpt a golem from the remains of the dead and give it motion, either through enchantment, infusion, or some darker means, but it is still merely golemancy. The flesh does not animate despite its death. In that sense, you are correct. Necromancy does not exist if it is merely another form of magic playing around with the corpses of the dead. If that were all it took, a simple unicorn working as an embalmer or an ash warden could become a necromancer.

“But you weren’t alive then. You don’t know what I know. You do not know what Celestia and the other princesses know. You do not know the true horrors and abomination of gods and magic that sorcery can be. They killed all knowledge of that magic, and I cannot say I blame them, so that only they would know of it. Well, they and two others,” she said, lifting the stirring Handy and smiling maliciously. “And this human killed at least one of them.”

“W-What?” Spike asked. Meranax ignored him, waiting for the human to awaken, probably so she would see what reaction he would have to being in her very claws. She spoke without looking.

“Oh yes, his reputation of dragon slayer is well deserved. He killed Arenakis the Bright, scoundrel that he was. Right where he had hid himself in the city of those damned guise shifters all those centuries ago. I had not seen him since I flew with the Justicars.” Her expression changed to one of contemplation. “He also killed one of my descendants, but that is no matter. The fool was asking for it.”

Spike let her talk as he shifted through the weapons in the piles beside him as quickly and as quietly as he could. There was nothing particularly noteworthy, nothing he could use that would so much as make Meranax blink at him in indignation. But perhaps it didn’t have to do too much. He kept her talking.

“So, if I take your word for it, and I don’t by the way, I’m guessing you aren’t extending your life with necromancy?” he asked. She snorted with genuine mirth.

“If I had used necromancy, believe me, little drake, you would be able to tell. It is not something you can merely hide.” Meranax closed her eyes in thought. “No, I chose a more regrettable means. An older, more terrible magic that has no business being in this world.”

She opened her eyes again.

“And I, in my desperation, thought the sceptre could save me from my own foolish oaths,” she said, and just as she turned her head to speak again, a flash of silver rushed up to her. A dragon of her strength would normally have reacted near instantly, but she had been so used to being safe for so long, the surprise alone caught her off guard. The spear flew and missed her face by a mile, but it did strike the crook of her claw, crashing against the poisoned scales and knocking one loose. Meranax hissed in pain and snarled, the sound rocking the treasure room.

“YOU DARE!?” she demanded, eyes glowing and fire growing in her throat. “You dare attack me, whelp? Do you know what armies were sundered under my flame!? Do you know what kingdoms were plundered to fill this room!? Of course you don’t! You have no idea who I even am! Had I known it would have wiped me from the memory of the world, I would have chosen death, but I can never have that back! I am Meranax of the Bloody Crest! I have vanquished a thousand thousands, and you dare defy me with a toothpick!?”

Spike, for his part, was legging it, putting himself between as many of the piles of treasure and the towering, infuriated dragon as he could. Meranax leaned up, one wing spread, blocking out an entire half of the cavern from the light of the crystal, the other caught between the back of her carved lounger and herself. She snarled, eyes darting from one giant mound of mirrored glass to another, watching Spike move to his exact hiding position. There was nowhere he could run to in her horde that she could not see.

It was then, through dazed eyes, one caked shut with dried blood from where he had split the skin of his crown, that Handy was able to take in where he was. There was treasure everywhere: weapons, gold, gems, fine armours, tapestries, and art and statuary as far as the eye could see. Fine spices and incense and other pleasing smells rose up from over a hundred different points of the cavern, enough to rouse anyone from the deepest sleep. Or it would have been pleasant and awakening if it wasn’t for the absolutely rancid smell that assaulted his nostrils and threatened to choke him. Looking down, he saw he was being restrained, though his insensate body and swimming head barely registered it, the pressure was noticeable when he became aware of it. He was in a claw, a gigantic dragon’s claw. That was bad, but it was taking his shaken brain some time to process exactly why.

“I see you, little drake!” the dragon above him boomed.

‘Oh right, that's why,’ he thought to himself almost sleepily, as he pieced together the events bit by bit. He tried moving, but the more he moved, the more parts of him began to hurt. Looking down, he saw part of the scales of the claw had been chipped away, revealing a sickly expanse of flesh right below him. The waxy corruption was sickening, and he felt the bile rise up in his throat the more he contemplated it. Considering his situation, he hardly had a choice. The vampire within him was none too pleased. He could feel the blood pumping not far from his face, but he genuinely did not want one bite of it for once. Well, he could think of no better way of telling that part of himself to fuck off. He opened his mouth and took a deep breath.

“You cannot hide from me in my own home! I will—” Her words were cut off as she roared in pain, the grip of her right claw loosening automatically as the flesh spasmed in unfamiliar agony, blood spurting from the new wound. Handy had not considered the part where he fell and landed onto a body of rubies, but hindsight was a bitch. He slammed into the stones hard enough to scatter dozens of them out of where they were lodged into the rock itself. It hurt. A lot. In fact, he was sure it may well have killed him had he not taken that drop of blood. As his heartbeat slowed down and his insides began to feel as though he was freezing from the inside out, he began to wonder if that might not have been better.

His teeth chattered, his hands shook, and for the life of him, he could not figure out why his clothes felt warm to the touch, or why thin wisps of smoke were coming off of them. He spotted Whirlwind not far away, pinned to the ground by the dragon’s other claw. He wanted to move, but every movement pained him as if he were stretching out his muscles for the first time. On top of that, he did not know where his hammer was.

The backswing of her free claw dissuaded him from entertaining those thoughts further as he was swung bodily against the raised ‘arm’ of her lounge. He sent more gems scattering before the dragon pinned him there, careful not to place her scaleless portion near his face. She placed her face down close to his, looking sideways so that she could focus on him intently with the whole of one eye.

“I see you’re awake. How nice,” she snarled. He simply focused on trying to get his breath under his control and to not die of sudden onset hypothermia and shock. Why was it suddenly so absolutely freezing? “Well, my surprise was only mostly ruined. Hello there, human.”

Handy had one arm free, which he used to wipe the gunk from his face. It felt like he had bitten into a mixture of raw beef, wax, and melted cheese. Meranax allowed him that much; it was not like he could do mu—

He licked up the gunk from the back of his hand, mixed it with his saliva and spat it all wholesale into Meranax’s unprotected eye. She recoiled, swinging her head back and forth, eyes closed reflexively but unwilling to let the human go from where she had him pinned, so she lifted her other hand to wipe at her eye. Whirlwind, now free… proceeded to do nothing, because the lazy bastard was still asleep even in spite of all the dragon’s roaring.

Spike, meanwhile, had not been nearly as idle, having taken advantage of the distraction Handy had pulled and ran a circuitous route around the treasure and up the rocky face of the dragon’s rest. He sprinted as fast as he could, coughing all the while, desperate to get to the deer. He reached Whirlwind just as Meranax raised her claw from his form, and Spike dived onto him.

“Wakeupwakeupwakeup, plllleeeeeaaaasssseee wake up!” Spike pleaded, shaking him again and again. The stag did not move, snoring all the while. It took Spike a moment to realise the snoring was exaggerated. “Wait a minute…”

“ZZZZZZZzzzzzzzz…” Whirlwind snored, his left ear swivelling around subtly towards Spike as he talked. Spike looked at him incredulously and shook his claws at him.

“I can tell you’re faking!” he hissed, trying desperately not to raise his voice despite his panic. “This is no time—!”

“ZZZZZZShhhhhhhhhhhh…” Whirlwind whispered, flicking his ear. Spike noticed the deer had one eye open, looking up at the reeling, screaming dragon. “ZZZZZZZwwwwaaaaiiiit…”

Spike looked up. Handy’s head was now lolling to the side, his free hand grabbing his head. There was an awful lot of smoke coming from where he was pinned against the rubies. Meranax held her claw gingerly away from her now sensitive eye, and just as she faced Handy once again, Whirlwind jumped to his hooves, horns aglow with magical energy, and galloped to where Handy was pinned. His horns left a reddish afterglow in their wake as he sped away from Spike. Before Meranax could react, he crashed his antlers into the tough hide of the dragon’s claw, tearing a number of the weakened scales off and cutting into the softer flesh beneath, destroying one of the antlers wholesale in the process. Meranax roared in anger, Handy fell to the ground, and Whirlwind rushed to pick him up.

“Come on, don’t just lie there we got to—ARGH!” Whirlwind jumped away from Handy, the fur scorched from where he had touched his bare hands. Taking the briefest of seconds to look, he now saw Handy seemed to be almost literally burning up, and that the smoke was coming from the cloak and clothes he wore.

“C-Col… Cold…” Handy breathed, teeth chattering. “... S-So cold.”

The hesitation cost them both, however, as one of Meranax’s claws swept them from her perch altogether, gouging rubies out of the rock formation and sending them scattering through the air like shrapnel as both bodies were flung out onto the treasure horde. Spike looked on in horror as he saw the two of them sent flying and disappearing over the mounds of treasure. Then, at last, Meranax looked down to see him below her, and Spike felt his memory flash back to that time when a younger, more foolish version of himself had sought out the company of an elder dragon who could not have cared less for his presence, much less guiding him.

“Congratulations, little drake,” Meranax spat, almost cursing, raising up a claw to crush Spike where he stood. “Looks like you won’t have to suffer my Mistress’ tender mercies after all.”

Spike sprinted faster than he had ever done in his life. Meranax’s claw crushed the rubies where he had just been standing and shook the ground under him, sending him off balance and falling over the edge. He slammed into the ground violently and tumbled off towards the piles of treasure, toppling crates and sending carefully organised stacks of gold, gems, and other valuables scattering across the cavern floor. Meranax just about sprung to all fours, towering in the cavern but careful not to raise to her full height, daring not to spread her wings fully lest she disrupt the carefully arranged furnishes, hissing at the disruption Spike had made.

Which gave the little dragon an idea.

Spike pulled himself out of the pile of treasure, picked up a very large and beautiful diamond and displayed it to her. Meranax stared down at him impassively. He promptly tossed it in his mouth and crushed it between his jaws. Meranax’s stoic visage broke as she bellowed her despair at him. He could tell he had cost her quite a bit. That rock tasted like it was naturally formed and was probably worth a hefty fortune. It would add significantly to a horde’s value, not the sort of rock any dragon would just eat.

He then booked it. Meranax climbed down off where she was perched and followed after him, as he suspected she carefully wove her way around and over the mounds of treasure, taking special care not to disturb them. That also meant she wasn’t going to be using her fire breath any time soon, lest she cause nearly all the gold in the nearby vicinity to melt. Unfortunately, she was huge, so she didn’t need to be so destructive in order to catch him, and Spike soon found himself desperately ducking and weaving under her swiping claws.

Now thoroughly lost and having no idea where the other two had landed after Meranax had swiped them away, he did the only thing he could do. He swiped up another piece of treasure, this time some antique spherical object made of aventurine and silver that looked like it was part of some sort of set, and tossed it high and far. The sphere hit its target, a precariously stacked crate full of silver bars that toppled off of its pile, bringing the entire stack down and causing Meranax to give out another shout of horror and distracting her enough that she all but jumped over to the treasure pile to minimise the damage. Spike heard the tell-tale sound of breaking glass—evidently there were some fragile things over there.

Spike took full advantage of his momentary reprieve, taking refuge in a cramped alcove provided by a faded silver throne inlaid with mother-of-pearl and lined with red velvet. The metal was faded and the velvet had long since lost its allure, but it came with an attendant canopy as it was apparently built into a kind of palanquin that had not been lifted by anypony in probably over a thousand years. He stopped to catch his breath. Meranax eventually re-emerged from where she had been busy tending to her treasures and began stalking the cavern, the rumble of her chest reverberating as she stalked. Spike held his breath and remained very still where he crouched behind the throne as she stepped over where he was hidden. Once her shadow had passed over the mounds of treasure across from him, their multifaceted brilliance reflecting the crystal light in odd ways and distorting her shade, he dared to look out. He noticed, upon gazing up and around the canopy, that Meranax’s eyes were darting from one of the gigantic mirrored shards perched high in the larger treasure mounds around the room to another, clearly looking for him. Eventually, he realised, she was going to find him. He had to find the others.

Taking a breath, he considered his options. Looking left, then right, there was no obvious path through the treasure he could take, and he had no clear destination. He was just going to have to pick a path and hope it worked out. But first…

He picked up another piece of treasure, this time a kind of bronze sceptre… or a mace, he realised, and weighed it in his claws. It would have to do. He carefully considered his trajectory and how far he could throw it, grateful for once for the lanky arms he now had thanks to his admittedly slow growth over the years. He considered the mirrors and how likely it was that Meranax would fall for a ploy as ancient as this one was.

He figured she wouldn’t, so he tried something else. When he had her back turned to the mirror facing his treasure mound, he stepped out from under the canopy, lifted the sceptre, and held it behind him and tossed for all he was worth up into the air. The sceptre spun through the air end over end and landed somewhere over the next pile of treasure… and Spike followed right after it.

Meranax, predictably, did not turn to the second clatter of treasure. This time, she simply growled in its direction before turning right around and stalking in the opposite direction, suspecting a ploy. All the while, Spike ran for his life, racked with anxiety and fear that at any moment Meranax would only need to glance to her side and see him in a mirror running parallel and in the opposite direction of where she was going.

Fortune favoured him, however, and he managed to get to the next treasure mound and promptly started lifting and stacking several of the crates as fast and as quietly as he could until he had a little fort built out of the heavy boxes. The effort was strenuous, but he managed it and took cover before Meranax looked his way again. Spike took a moment to catch his breath. Meranax wasn’t shouting anymore, which worried him, but she was also not gloating and trashing the place, which meant she hadn’t found the guys yet either, which was also good.

“You won’t find your way out of here you know,” Meranax rumbled ominously. Spike sighed—so much for her being quiet. “If you give up, I’ll only have you encased in magma. It’ll be uncomfortable, yes, but you’ll survive.”

Spike ignored her, instead looking desperately for any way out. His eyes were drawn up, as they were so often as he ran for his life down here, to the mirrors rising from the mounds of treasure like the teeth of some forgotten cyclopean monster. He also noticed the long tapestries that hung beside them, most of them faded to the point where making out what they depicted was difficult to do. Each of them were hung from wrought iron frames that in turn were hung down from the cavern roof above them. If he could only get up there, they might have a chance. Then he saw it: there was a winding path through the treasure that led up a pile of chests and stacks of gems layered in such a way that they formed a kind of stairs leading up to one of the larger mirrors, large enough that, if he was careful, he could make his way up them unseen by any of the other mirrors.

It was a risk—one wrong step and he’d send an avalanche of gems to the ground, but he’d have to take it. When he was sure Meranax was looking another way, he booked it, sprinting towards the chests and diving for the first one when he heard Meranax move. For a moment, his heart stopped—she had to have seen him in one of the mirrors. He even saw her looking right at him when he glanced back after he dove too soon for the chests and scrambled to get behind the first one.

He waited, heart pumping, but Meranax… just didn’t move over to where he was. She continued to growl and stalk around the treasure horde. Spike, deciding not to question his good fortune, began clamouring up the pile of treasure slowly.

--=--

He poked his head out from around the base of the mirror. Meranax was obsessively checking the various treasure mounds, and from his vantage point above the cavern floor, he now realised just how truly vast the cavern was. Meranax may have opted for quality over quantity, but the treasure mounds went around and beyond the stone plinth she had lain upon, which was the centre of the cavern. He knew Handy and Whirlwind had to be on his side of the cavern—she had launched them into the air facing away from the ruby mount—but Spike couldn’t see them anywhere below him.

He turned and looked up. He had thought about climbing up the nearest tapestry, for it was tantalisingly close, but the movement would tip off Meranax, no matter how carefully he climbed. Still, it did provide good cover if he climbed up the back of the cavern wall. The tapestry’s shadow covered him from all the mirrors, but a single loose rock could reveal where he was in an instant. He looked back down but immediately ducked behind the mirror again as Meranax stalked near the mound he was standing on. The chests beneath him remained sturdy and unmoving, and the shard of mirror seemed to have its base buried somewhere deep in the mountain of treasure which would explain why it could support his weight without shifting when he leaned against it. It rose up almost as tall as the tapestry above him. Briefly, he wondered what massive structure it had been a part of, once upon a time, before its shattered pieces were gathered as part of a treasure horde, but nothing came to mind that would equate to ‘gigantic valuable mirror’. He did, however, see a way out, but it was nearly half of the cavern’s distance from where he now stood. Getting there would be a feat in and of itself.

He steadied himself, turning to face the rock wall and plan his route in advance. If he could get to the top where the tapestries hung, he could probably get unto the wrought-iron framework that stretched across the roof of the cavern, which held up the shining crystal that illuminated everything. He didn’t know where he was going to go from there, but it was a start. He would get a better view of the entire cavern and be further away from where Meranax was. She’d never think to look up there!

He took a breath, waited for the right moment, and then jumped off the gigantic pile of crates and chests, clinging to the wall of the cavern having run from behind the mirror to behind the tapestry. He almost slipped and fell off, but he bit his tongue before he blurted out in surprise. He gripped his handholds tightly and, waiting to ensure that the greater dragon hadn’t heard him, he slowly, carefully, began climbing the rock face.

The good thing about being a dragon was that he had absolutely nothing to fear when it came to finding a grip on a sheer rock face of a cliff. His claws could bury themselves just enough into the rock if necessary, giving him an extra edge in terms of grip and leverage. He had plenty of experience digging gems out of solid stone to attest to his confidence. At a certain point, his claws were just more useful than any pick, and faster than Rarity’s finely honed but otherwise weak magical potential. The job usually got done faster when he just started digging them out of the walls where she found them.

He kept climbing slowly, methodically choosing each new handhold he could either use or cut into to support his weight. He reached out his claw and—the rock came loose, a brief moment of weightlessness causing his stomach to jump into his throat as he stared at the wet rock tumbling down from where he had placed his claw and falling away beneath him. He barely held onto his other handhold as he helplessly watched the chunks of rock plummet earthward, clattering on the boxes of treasure down below.

He closed his eyes and gritted his teeth as he waited for the noise to stop. When he opened his eyes an eternity later, the tapestry hadn’t moved. He breathed a sigh of relief, hoping against hope that maybe Meranax hadn’t heard that. Then he realised he suddenly couldn’t hear her moving around beyond the tapestry anymore. He looked to his right and saw the terrible eye of the massive dragon staring at him from the gap between the tapestry and the wall.

”I see you!” she crowed triumphantly, dragging out each syllable. Spike shouted in surprise and hurriedly climbed the cavern wall, but Meranax began reaching her claws forth to try to scrape him off. He began to move out of the way of them but found his mobility was greatly limited. There was only a matter of time before Meranax began pulling away at the tapestry until she managed to snag him.

The tapestry! He hunched against the wall and, pushing himself off it, jumped and reached out for the tapestry, claws outstretched.

“NO!” she bellowed, but it was already too late. Spike’s claws ripped into the thick woven fabric… and began cutting through the faded, worn, priceless treasure far more easily than he had hoped. He actually fell some distance, dragging huge rents into the tapestry from behind as he went. He hurriedly dug into the tapestry to arrest his descent and began climbing again, hoping that Meranax’s reluctance to simply lift up the tapestry would preclude her destroying it in order to get to him. Worse, she could simply beat it back against the cavern wall and crush him against it.

Meranax, it seemed, was pragmatic enough to see the lesser of two evils and grabbed the bottom of the tapestry gently in her claws—or as gently as a dragon as large as a warship could—and lifted it up. Spike now found himself desperately hanging from the tapestry as it lifted and bended as she raised the edge. More of the tapestry ripped and tore as his weight dangled from it, his legs kicking in the air under him. His flimsy body jerked as the length of tapestry his weight was tearing out of it increasingly dipped, and Meranax roared in anger. The back of her claw slapped against him with the force of a wrecking ball, and Spike found his world spinning for the briefest of moments until he slammed bodily into the unyielding wood and metal of a chest of gold. The wood splintered and broke under him as the gold spilled out, but Meranax was too busy despairing over her now-ruined tapestry to notice the dent he had made.

He extricated himself gingerly at first as, dragon or not, that had hurt. He shortly began making his way down the hill of treasure, hopping from the top of one chest to another, scattering piles of diamonds and upsetting armour stands as he went. The noise eventually drew Meranax away from her mourning, and she stormed over to the rough location of where the noise came from. Spike sprinted for his life.

He bounded down to the ground and began diving in and out from behind piles of treasure without heed or care of whether he was spotted in any mirrors. If he moved fast enough, she might not be able to pin one exact location where he was for very long.

He took one turn, and then another, until he reached a small winding path between two very tightly packed treasure mounds. Suddenly, a blinding light appeared right before his eyes. Spike cried out in fright, grabbed the nearest weapon to hand, and raised it to strike, perhaps uselessly, at whatever fresh whiff of Tartarus this was.

“Stop!” a familiar voice cried out, and Spike just about arrested his swing before the end of his weapon had cracked open the deer’s skull. He blinked in surprise.

“Whirlwind?” he asked stupidly.

“Not so loud!” Whirlwind hissed as Spike panted, an inch away from braining Whirlwind with some weird weapon that looked like a kind of shovel with an iron ball on the opposite end of the glittering, gilded haft. He almost squeaked out in fear before Whirlwind’s hoof plugged his mouth shut as Meranax’s face suddenly appeared to swallow up the sky above them. Meranax peered right down at them with her good eye.

Spike’s pupils shrank, staring right up at the terrible dragon in utter fear. Meranax stared unblinkingly right where they were, the eye unmoving in its socket, and then… nothing. Meranax drew her eye back and forth across the little alleyway of treasure they were standing in the middle of, apparently not seeing them, and then moved on, her scaly body passing over them like a storm cloud. Whirlwind removed his hoof from Spike, and he gulped in air.

“What are you doing here?” Spike demanded, voice hushed. Whirlwind stood, face contorted with effort. His remaining antler was ablaze with magical energy that funnelled into a dome of magic around the two of them. His broken antler sparked dangerously whilst a silvery chain glittering with what appeared to be clear diamonds hung from it and glowed with the same energy as his undamaged antler.

“Keeping… us… alive!” Whirlwind managed. It was then Spike noticed the shivering human beneath him. Handy was wrapping his cloak around himself, teeth chattering as he desperately tried to warm himself.

“What’s wrong with him?” Spike asked, extending his claw.

“Wait, don’t—!” Whirlwind warned, but it was too late. Spike reached down and placed the back of his claw against Handy’s forehead, holding it there for several seconds. He looked at it curiously and raised an eyebrow at Handy. “Oh, right, dragon scales are fireproof.”

“He’s burning up badly.”

Whirlwind snorted. “Understatement. He scalded me when I tried to lift him up.”

“Why is he shivering then?” Spike asked. “It's like he has a fever.”

“Your guess is as good as mine,” Whirlwind grunted, his knees almost buckling under the effort. Spike looked at the magic dome around him, frowning.

“I don’t recognise this spell…” He turned back to Whirlwind.

“It’s a deer spell. We’re not really invisible—I’m projecting an image of what’s around us. Anything that blundered through it would walk right into us like you almost did.” The effort of the spell robbing him of his usually chipper attitude. The obsidian chains at his feet were broken now, and whatever property they had to suppress the use of his magic had apparently broke with it. Strange, it looked like they had been melted on their ends.

“Heh, Twilight would love to hear all about it.” Spike allowed himself to sit on the ground, his gaze darting between Whirlwind, the apparently sick and injured Handy, and the lumbering Meranax who stalked around her horde of treasure. “We need to think of a way out of here.”

“Oh, by all means, please do.” Whirlwind smiled tightly through the seemingly painful effort. “But until Handy’s moving again, I can’t go anywhere.”

“You guys must be close friends.” Whirlwind’s lips curved at that.

“I’m not about to leave him here helpless, in any case.” He glanced up at a jagged mirror with one eye, spying Meranax as she stalked over to the far side of the cavern. “Especially not now that I know who was really behind waking my predecessor.”

“Not gonna lie, I don’t really understand why you’re here, or everything she was talking about.”

“Don’t worry about it; just know that she’s both our problems. I have found what I am looking for; my oath is fulfilled, at least partially. Now, what are we going to do about her?”

“I… don’t think we can fight her. Her magic brought us down here, wherever here is.” Spike looked around before he frowned. “Magic… she can use magic.”

“Yeah, I noticed,” Whirlwind said dryly through gritted teeth as he struggled with the effort of the spell and his aching head. He leaned his head to the side with the shattered antler so that he was facing Spike lopsidedly.

“No, I mean… she did it without any kind of focus. I don’t see her using one.”

“Maybe it’s dragon magic? I don’t know how you people work,” Whirlwind said innocently. Spike looked at him out of the side of his eyes for a moment before shaking his head.

“It isn’t, and… Handy seemed to recognise it. He seemed really worried about it.”

“You can try asking him, but he wasn’t answering me,” Whirlwind replied.

“That’s not it either. I mean, if she’s trained in the use of magic, why isn’t she using it to find us? Why hasn’t it occurred to her that one of us is using magic to hide from her and focus on trying to determine where and what kind of magic is being used in the cavern?”

“Beats me. I’m only a journeydeer by most standards. Apart from what powers the crown grants me, I only use what's useful to me.” Spike tapped his claws on the ground in thought.

Handy then began to push himself upright. Whirlwind quickly stepped aside, wary about touching him.

“Hey uh, Handy, you okay there?” he asked the human, whose teeth had eased their chattering rhythm. He simply nodded back.

“Y-Yeah…” he managed after some effort. “I… I think I’m going to be fine.” He looked down at himself, seeing singe marks all over his clothes. “What… happened to me? Last thing I remember was waking up in… in… Oh.” That was when Handy noticed the mountains of precious metal and gems and artefacts and treasures surrounding them. He was struck dumb for several seconds.

“Right, well, before I do anything.” He reached over, opened a box, dug out a handful of ancient gold coins, and placed them in his pocket. “Never underestimate the value of a gold coin that hasn’t been debased with lesser metals. Can you tell if this is real?”

“Uhhh…” Spike peered at a small handful of sapphires in the human’s hand. “They’re not grown if that’s what you mean.”

“Excellent.” He pocketed those as well. Then he swung his hands out and clapped them together decisively, causing the other two to wince at the sound. “So! How are you two?!”

Whirlwind just looked at Handy. “… Are you feeling alright?” he asked slowly.

“Now that you ask, yeah, I am. A lot actually. In fact, never better. Why do you ask?” Handy replied. Whirlwind looked down at his leg.

“Well, for one, you are standing with most of your weight on what should be a broken leg, and you aren’t screaming.”

“Ah that, don’t worry about it. I do that sometimes,” Handy said blithely. Whirlwind looked to Spike, who just shrugged. “Oh right, you don’t know about that part about me yet. I forgot to mention it, I guess. Tell you later.”

“Well, alright, if you’re sure.” With that, Handy began walking away. “Woah, wait, stop!”

“What?” Handy asked.

“Don’t step beyond the shield! She’ll see you!” Spike hissed.

“Who?” Handy asked. At that moment, Meranax loomed over their hiding spot once more, and Handy looked up thoughtfully. “Oh right. Forgot about her.”

“How could you forget?!” Spike asked incredulously after Meranax had passed over them.

“I had other things on my mind!” Handy defended

“What could possibly be more important right now?” he demanded while Whirlwind just looked at him, an odd expression on his face.

“I don’t know, I thought I’d have a look at some of these crates, see what other treasure I could take from under her nose,” Handy defended.

“You said you forgot about her!”

“I had until you reminded me.”

“And since when do you steal while in the middle of a fight?” Whirlwind asked.

“I… don’t?” Handy held his head for a moment. “Just… seemed like something… I dunno. I wanted to, I guess. Seemed like a good idea to go poking around.”

“How hard did you hit your head?” Spike huffed.

“There you are!” A dragon claw slammed down, claws first, no less than a foot away from where Whirlwind was, crushing stacks of treasure beneath her weight. Meranax snarled in anger at the crushed heirlooms and looted statuettes of precious metals and fine craftsmanship. The shock of the impact was enough to knock Whirlwind to his knees and cause him to finally drop his shield. They were revealed, and Meranax’s displeasure was quickly replaced with sneering triumph.

“Run!” Spike shouted.

”You cannot run from me!” Meranax declared, reaching over and blocking their exit with a claw. She loomed over them, blocking out the light of the crystal above. “Not anymore! You’re all going to pay for every treasure you have wrecked!”

“None of these are even yours anyway!” Whirlwind snapped up at the dragon, his voice hoarse with unrestrained pain and fury. “The only reason we’re here at all is because of you!”

“You should hold your tongue, insect,” Meranax grinned viciously with every fang on display, “lest I pluck those pretty stones from your horns, with your head as well!”

Whirlwind didn’t reply in any articulate fashion, instead launching into a stream of invective in the native tongue of the deer. The language was more living poetry than anything, and it was hard to imagine something that inherently pretty would produce anything crude. Judging by Whirlwind’s tone and Meranax’s sour expression, he was presumably questioning her parentage in a robust fashion.

Spike turned to Handy and found the human yet again distracted by the innumerable treasures surrounding them, not focusing on the dragon problem.

Spike dragged his claws over his face before his attention was drawn to an object that rolled against his foot. It was the small sphere made out of aventurine. He gingerly lifted it up. Was this another one or the same sphere he had thrown earlier? As he drifted his claws over its surface, one of them caught on a catch, lifting a tiny portion of the valuable stone work outwards like a switch, and the ball began to glow with a soft interior illumination. It hummed and began to vibrate with greater intensity with each passing second, and he felt a creeping sensation of apprehension prickle underneath his scales.

His immediate instinct was to throw it, but a glint of light off one of the cyclopean mirror shards caught his eye, and inspiration struck him. He could not make the toss, but maybe…

“Handy!” He turned towards the drake as he was called, several talismans, amulets, and crafted precious metalwork jangling about his neck. “Toss this as hard as you can up there!”

“Why?” Handy asked disinterestedly, almost annoyed and uncaring that parts of his clothing were still smouldering. Whatever dragon blood did to him, it really distracted him. Spike just blinked at his dismissive response as he shook his head.

“Hit that mirror up there with this ball and I, uh…” He desperately looked around, spying a circlet of polished brass laced with delicate and intricate knotwork of mother-of-pearl set in an arrangement of flying creatures chasing each other around its rim. He picked it out of the open chest. “I'll give you this!”

He half-expected the human to question it, given it was the first thing to come into his head as he struggled to respond to Handy’s unexpected disinterest. Instead, Handy all but yanked the glowing orb out of Spike’s hand and, with phenomenal strength, launched the ball directly at the mirror. It shot out of his hand like a bullet, and the sight of the glowing orb dragged Meranax’s attention away from the stag below her as she saw it crash into the mirror’s base, shattering it and bringing the silver glass down on the rest of the treasure like a rain of crystal tears. She screamed and launched herself up onto the mountain of stacked treasure chests, sending avalanches of broken stone, wood, and precious treasures as her claws tore into it for leverage. Whatever the ball was, it was precious to her to not care about the other damage she was doing to her own treasure to get at it.

Then it exploded.

A vortex of magical energy and a wall of blindingly white light filled the cavern, all but consuming the half of Meranax bowed over the treasure mountain. Their only saving grace from blindness was their relative cover thanks to their location. Meranax’s roar of pain caused the cavern to shake, treasure to rattle and shift, and at least one other mirror to shatter off in the distance. The massive dragon fell back, clutching her eyes, from which emerged two massive plumes of smoke between her claws. She crashed back bodily onto more treasure, sending avalanches in all directions.

“Move!” Spike bellowed, pushing Handy out of danger alongside a bounding Whirlwind. Handy was searing to the touch, and Spike briefly noticed some of the gold touching his skin was beginning to actually melt. Despite that, it didn’t seem to bother him.

They ran outside the range of the collapsing treasure horde, which was made worse as Meranax thrashed in her blindness and fury. The more she thrashed, the more treasure she scattered, the more her fury grew, the more frustrated she became in her blindness, and the more she thrashed. Eventually, she started raising her maw skyward and unleashing gouts of flame in frustration, which burned several of the priceless tapestries, causing the fire to spread to several of the drier treasure chest piles, and threatened to melt away the wrought iron framework of the cavern’s ceiling which held the magical light-giving crystal in its cradle. Indeed, the flame passed over the crystal several times, the crystal audibly straining in the heat. Slowly, the cavern was being turned into an oven.

“Quick! I saw a way out!” Spike coughed harshly.

“Where?” Whirlwind demanded breathlessly.

“Uh…” It occurred to Spike then and there that in the midst of the confusion of Meranax pulling him from the tapestry, his fall into the middle of the treasure horde, his blind run, the blinding light obfuscating and disorientating his sense of direction for a moment too long, and the now raging fires casting odd shadows across the walls… he now had no idea where the exit actually was. “Look, doesn't matter right now. We need to get high up again, and far enough away from her that it won’t matter. Then we can see where it is and get out. Handy, come on!”

The pair ran off for a few seconds before they realised Handy wasn’t with them. Spike stopped and looked back, Whirlwind arresting his sprint not much further ahead.

“Handy?” The human, after a bit of backtracking, was discovered having wandered off in the direction of a particularly unimpressive pile of, apparently, weapons. “What are you doing?”

They hurried over to the pile, dodging the odd suit of armour or chest of gold the size of a wagon being flung through the air with deadly force and exploding on the ground around them like a gilded cannonade. Spike was pretty sure he saw a statue of one of the princesses flying through the air, but it looked small and was missing a horn.

“Handy!”

“It's here somewhere…” he heard the human mutter to himself over the racket Meranax was causing, which meant he was speaking out loud and at volume. “I can see it.”

“Get down from there! She’ll hea—” Spike was cut off when Whirlwind yanked him out of the way of a treasure chest Handy sent flying with a casual flick of his wrist. He was digging through the mound of treasure, hefting and flinging chests almost half as large as he was above and behind him. They crashed on the ground around them, forcing them to find cover. “What did that dragon do to him?”

“I think it wiser to ask what did he take from her?” Whirlwind replied, crouching with Spike close to the base of the mountain of weaponry to take cover from the human’s burrowing. Eventually, it stopped and a shout of triumph came from above. When they peeked from their hiding place, they saw Handy, or rather his clenched fist and the silver engraved war hammer it held there… and the furious visage of Meranax towering above them all.

She was blinded, scorch marks having burned the scales around her closed eyes and leaving her face blackened. But her ears worked perfectly fine.

”Found you!” Her claw rose up and sped towards them with a horrifying finality, like watching a building come down on you. Whirlwind leapt aside; Spike attempted to run but tripped over the clutter of ruined war gear at his feet. Handy leapt.

His war hammer cracked against the hide of the dragon, striking with precision against the flesh exposed by her sickened scales, causing a gout of blood to erupt and scald the treasure chests below them. Meranax roared in renewed agony, sending the claw just off kilter enough to slam into the ground without crushing Spike utterly.

Handy landed heavily, having clearly not looked at where he was leaping but simply seeing an opportunity and going for it, crashing to the ground in a sprawl of limbs. He scrambled to his feet despite the fall from such a large height. Meranax’s eyes sprang open and were immediately awash with a ghostly green glint. A sickening smell erupted from her gullet, and words formed by tortured vocal cords uttered obscene and incomprehensible sounds that pained the ear, although her open mouth and seemingly petrified tongue did not follow the noise they made.

The world seemed to crush them, gravity not only pulling them down but closing about them like a vice, threatening to crush the oxygen from their lungs. The air about them seemed to scream, and semi-visible rents and tears could be seen out of the corner of one’s eyes about the visible edges of objects and persons around them but which disappeared when you focused the eye upon them. It hurt to think.

“YOU ARE MINE NOW AND FOREVERMORE. GIVE UP. GIVE UP AND ACCEPT YOUR FATE. THE BLOODLINE IS DESTINED TO THE FATE OF THE CANDLE, TO HAVE THEIR FIRE BURN FROM WITHIN THEM UNCEASING UNTIL THEY CAN NO LONGER WITHHOLD IT AND BURN THEIR LIFE’S FIRE CONTINUOUSLY AS THEIR MUSCLES TURN TO WAX AND THEIR PROUD SCALES FALL OFF. THEIRS IS THE DAMNATION OF WATCHING, HELPLESS, AS THEIR VERY FLESH MELTS AWAY AS WAX FROM A CANDLE, THE WICK OF WHICH IS THEIR OWN MAWS.” Her voice was everywhere at once, their bodies shaking with the force of it. Spike couldn’t move, Whirlwind’s tired legs finally gave out from underneath him, and Handy seemed frozen in place. The crystal above strained again, the one noise that seemed to cut through the screaming air.

“IT IS MY FATE AS WELL, AND I WOULD KNOW WHY YOU HAVE NO FLAME, LITTLE DRAKE, SO THAT I MAY ESCAPE OUR FATE! THE RED SCEPTRE SHALL NOT HAVE MY ESSENCE FROM WHICH IT MAY EXTRACT JUDGEMENT OF MY LIFE SO THAT ITS ANGER BE SATED! MINE IS IMMORTALITY UNENDING! YOU CAN DO NOTHING FOR THEM NOW, NOR FOR YOURSELF. GIVE UP OR I WILL CRUSH YOUR FRIENDS! THEIR TREASURE AND WORTH IS LESS THAN YOURS, DRAKE!” The pressure on his mind was immense. He could almost feel the inevitability of their words, could almost anticipate them before he heard them. She was right. This was hopeless; they couldn’t escape a fully grown dragon in its own lair. Whenever he managed it before, his friends had a clear way out, or someone actually went out of their way to rescue him. They were alone here. There was nothing they could do.

“N . . . No . . .” The screaming air was deafening, the tears in the corner of his vision growing larger and more jagged. The pressure was almost overbearing even for a dragon; he didn’t know how the other two could cope, how they were even alive. Even now, he could feel the greater dragon’s words before they came. He knew he would not be able to withst— “I said NO!”

Just like that, the spell was broken. Like a rope that had frayed too much and suddenly gave way with a snap, the pressure around them disappeared, the air returned to normal, the horrific noise and smell ceased, and Meranax blinked, the sickly green film to her eyes having vanished and leaving the dragon blinking, her eyes apparently having recovered from their repeated abuse.

“How can… Only the bearer—” Spike fell back and struggled to open his eyes. When he did, he briefly made out a familiar rock formation high up in the cavern, revealed by the uninterrupted light of the crystal right where the shattered mirror had stood. It had blocked it from his sight before on the ground, but looking at it now...

Handy roared, charging forward as he swung the hammer in an upwards arc and brought it back down upon the nail of the dragon’s claw, cracking it in half. The human laughed maniacally, scaring the other two. Meranax reared up again and more of the treasure fell; she turned and her wing tore a priceless tapestry apart; she rose and the gold cascaded down her sides, mixing with baser metals. She roared in fury, a sound that inspired a primordial fear in lesser creatures, shaking the three of them to the core and the cavern until dust fell from the ceiling. The already weakened crystal cracked, halted its rotation, and broke, falling from its cradle. Its magic dispelled in a rush of energy, and the room was cloaked in darkness with nothing but the dragon’s furious breath shot into the cavern’s roof for light.

In the hellish darkness, backlit by the flames of dragon fire that would have boiled the blood in their veins with its heat had her maw been anywhere other than a dozen feet from where they stood, Spike grabbed them both, by horn and by tunic, and yanked them, using the brief light afforded them by Meranax to guide them to the path he had seen earlier, leading out of the cavern and, hopefully, to their freedom.

In the end, Meranax, who needed less light than them, closed her mouth, her genuine frustration abated. She looked down to watch them flee, being sure to shout in fury and thrash amidst her ill-gotten treasures if any of them dared look back, roaring in the darkness again and again until, at long last, she was sure they had escaped. When she was done, she slumped, releasing a long held breath of exhaustion and waving her claw. Magic engulfed it, proper magic, not the perversion she had sold her freedom for so long ago. The subtle illusion shifted around the cavern, revealing the many entrances and exits she had made for herself over the years. It also revealed the iron peytral she wore, worn with age, but unlike so many of the treasures that now lay strewn about her, clearly loved and cared for, without a spot of rust after so many years, nor magical degradation after so many spells cast to keep the metal from falling apart after numerous repairs.

At the centre laid an almost miniscule gem of brightest amethyst, at the centre of an embossed snowflake superimposed upon a starburst. She tapped the centre and the circular gem sprang to life, bathing what was before her in purple shaded light, and as she did so, opened a small door in her peytrel. In it, almost minuscule scrolls were stored. She tugged on one, read the words to herself, breathed a sigh of relief, and shuddered as the last vestiges of old magic left her mind without clouding any more of her memory, then closed it again. She tsked as she gently moved the treasure out of her way until she found the one thing she was looking for. It was a tall casket, almost funerary in its ornamentation, but built to be standing upright. One of her most mournful treasures and one she had so long ago buried to forget its memory beneath her horde, but which mocked her in its gentle yet firm resilience against the wear of time’s millstone. With a gentle flick of her unbroken claw, she undid the latch, the doors gently gliding open, the long-held stale air of a thousand years and more gushing forth.

It was worn away, the splendour absent. It was a simple thing, after all, made for the simple, brutal purpose of war. The leather had worn away, but the mail was in good condition, and the various parts had not fallen, nor had the worked wood given away to rot and allowed the armour to fall. She was no longer the size she once was where she could handle each part with care, so she left it lying there, touching it with the tip of her claw. The gem at the centre of the cuirass’ breast lit up, much like her own, and she sighed.

“I cannot undo what I have done,” she said in a tiny voice, audible only to herself. “Not what I did then, not what I have done now. For the same foolish cause no less. But maybe…”

She paused, looking up. She was not one given to prayer, nor to hope. Indeed, it was that very despair, that mystery of the far north where dragons surely died, where they must die, that had driven her into her madness. It had driven her to steal the armour in her jealousy, having made her pact with the dark power of old magic that the Mistress offered her, the very same foolish mistake that had forced her dear friend that only she remembered out of all of them that were alive to remember her, to chase after her that she might be rescued. She probably could have. After all, she very nearly did, and had she succeeded, Meranax would not have been surprised. She had done so time and again.

She wondered for a moment that if she were there today, had the Curse of Doubt been lifted and her memory restored to the world, were she alive enough to speak, and if Meranax dared ask, would she forgive her?

Would she be able to tolerate that forgiveness if she did?

She put the thought to rest. Only those who were equally under the sword of the Curse of Doubt that was the price of using old magic could remember others who had done so, and she had been forgotten by the world and all who knew and loved her. Nothing more could be said and done about it, and tears would be wasted. She closed the casket, and looked once more to where her would-be prey had fled.

She might not be able to undo one wrong, but perhaps, with the cost of her blood, and the price of her claw and eye, damnation of her bloodline could be avoided. She had not the moral courage to do so herself. The human she could not have convinced to do so, even had she paid him, for his fear and hatred of the dragons went deep, she knew, and the deer… might just have gotten himself and the others killed had she tried to reason with him and revealed what she had done, instead of forcing him to see sense by displaying her power first. However, the little dragon cared. He cared just enough to follow this through, and Ember would care just enough that she might listen when he told her he had a means of saving them all. Maybe, but that was for Providence to see through. For now, she had some counting to attend to.

“One… two… three,” she mumbled to herself, picking two coins of like make and age and placing them into one claw. She looked around and sighed. It seemed as though she would have to skip dinner this evening, and for the next week.

Chapter 61 - Mending Hearts

It’s one thing to run for your life, climbing and vaulting the uneven and broken ground of the underground in near pitch blackness with nothing but the light of a deer’s singular antler wrapped in a magical aura to guide you, casting alternating shadows of passing rocks, stones and stalagmites, tricking the eye into believing there were dangers passing them by.

It was another thing to do all that with a cackling madman beside you.

“Can you please stop laughing!?” Spike yelled, but the human was having none of it.

“Oh that felt great! Did you see the claw shatter!? Wham! Chunks went everywhere!” Handy boasted.

“Yes, it ahah, it was quite the sight,” Whirlwind agreed, laughing uneasily and halfheartedly. The stag did not look to be doing well at all and was casting nervous glances back at the lanky human.

“Look! I see a light up ahead!” Spike pointed. There was indeed a thin sliver of light piercing the darkness around the corner, visible despite the glow of the deer’s antler.

“Finally!” Handy said. “I hate being underground, I always have the worst luck underground. It’s always dark and cramped and there never seems to be enough headroom no matter how high those spiky rocky bastards dangle precariously over your head.”

Spike looked up and sure enough there were quite a few stalactites looming just beyond the sphere of light Whirlwind gave off. They looked disconcertingly like rocky spears pointing at them from out of the gloom. He hurried his pace.

Whirlwind was certainly looking worse for wear by the time the three of them managed to reach the end of the tunnel; his breathing was laboured, the magic of his horn was flickering and he was losing his steady gait. They turned the corner and sure enough there was a thin, diagonal exit into the open air, promising freedom.

Spike was first across the line. His eyes widened and he let out a shout of surprise as he skidded to a halt. A moment later and would have went headfirst off of the short ledge and down the mountainside. Whirlwind was next and he all but collapsed on the ground beside the dragon.

Handy didn’t stop. Handy didn’t even slow down. Handy just leaped.

“Handy!” Spike called out but it was already too late. Handy had leapt out over the ledge side and plunged into the mire below, the ground and base of the valley covered in a thick fog of sickening brown and green billowing up from rents in the earth. He disappeared in that muggy distance, letting out a shout of surprise that turned into a torrent of laughter before it disappeared. “No…”

Spike fell to his knees, claws digging into the stone below him. He let his head down and fell back against the rocks of the fissure that led into the mountain. He just looked up at the sky, eyes heavy and tired. He felt the familiar tight raspiness in his chest that would ordinarily summon a coughing fit but his throat was too dry and he was too tired to clear it. All he could do was lay there, Whirlwind wheezing beside him as the cold mountain air billowed and blew away the rising heat from the dragonlands.

After some time Whirlwind managed to raise his head. He turned to Spike and offered a weary but bright smile.

“I wouldn’t worry if I were you,” he said. Spike didn’t respond for a second before he registered he was being spoken to.

“What?”

“About Handy. Don’t worry about him.”

“What? Why!? He just jumped off the side of a mountain!” Spike exclaimed and Whirlwind nodded.

“Yes, and did you not notice his leg was broken before?” he asked. Spike opened his mouth to reply but held his tongue.

“Hey, yeah… How did he run with that?” he asked.

“I don’t pretend to understand how Handy works. I didn’t get to see him use much of his weird magic when he helped me out back home so almost everything I heard was second hoof. Long story short he can fix things like that. Sometimes,” Whirlwind said.

Spike thought about that for a moment, and then recalled he had seen Handy seemingly come back from the dead after being dropped from the claw of a flying dragon. He also recalled it was not the first time ponies had thought he had died and came back. It was a ridiculous thought, surely he was just lucky or something. Well, that or he had Rainbow Dash’s luck of running headlong into things at impossible speeds and somehow coming out with nothing more than a fractured collar bone. The thought stuck however and he had to ask.

“Can Handy come back from the dead?” he asked. Whirlwind coughed hard and groaned as it hurt his chest but couldn’t stop his laughter.

“Are you mad!?” Whirlwind managed through the laughter and the odd snippets of his weird deer language he fell into. “No! A guy who could come back from the dead wouldn’t be so keen on avoiding death so often!”

“But you just saw him jump off a mountain!” Spike insisted.

“Yes I certainly did see that, but that just means I expect him to be a bit more bloodied, bruised and probably a bit more sober the next time I see him. Whatever madness that dragonblood gave him he’s… well he’s definitely not himself.”

“Look, we can’t-!” Spike took in a breath to calm himself. “We have to go down there after him. He might need our help if he’s not-”

“Right,” Whirlwind said, getting unsteadily to his feet and looking over the ledge and the surrounding mountainside. “How?”

Spike followed his example and looked around him. All he could see were sparse handholds, definitely not easy for a quadruped to get down unless they were part goat or something. He shuddered at the thought. He considered the problem for a few minutes; he could easily get down there himself, but Whirlwind was exhausted, unsteady, and his magic was wavering. He looked down at his hooves where the obsidian chains still clung and a thought popped in his head.

“Okay I have an idea, but you’re not going to like it.”

--=--

“I am surprisingly okay with this,” Laughed Whirlwind, dangling as he was by his forelegs, which were wrapped in the chains the dragons had placed on them, lashing him to Spike’s back as he struggled to gently lower the two of them down the mountainside step by agonizing step as he dug his claws into the rock. “I mean, apart from the chaffing, this is surprisingly restful… If I wasn’t looking straight down into a headfirst dive into the valley below all the time.”

“Will you…. Plllleeeeaaasse…. Shut…. Up!” Spike managed through ground teeth. Sure, he was bigger these days, but that didn’t make the job any easier. The fact he was climbing downwards with somepony tied to his back only made it so much worse, and being reminded about how far down they’d fall if he placed one wrong step wasn’t helping.

“Right, just saying…” Whirlwind said, continuing to not shut up. “Just a longer way down than I thought.”

After a long, nerve-wracking climb down the mountainside, it finally levelled out enough that he could let Whirlwind down from his back and he could walk his own way down. Spike, arms now numb from the effort, started flapping his arms uselessly to try to get some life back into them and simultaneously wincing from the exertion. The gas was thinner near the ground where it spewed from the various rents in the Earth. The ground was actually a marshland, the stagnant water slick with grease, and iridescent to the eye. The sunlight diffused through the gas, creating a truly alien atmosphere as the world would be bathed sickly yellow near one vent, and pinkish-grey near another, and they could not see more than fifteen feet in front of them in any direction. The gas exacerbated Spike’s cough, such that he was forced to rip off what little remained of the coat he had worn to keep him warm during the flight to wear around his mouth.

“Handy!” Spike called out, coughing, “Handy!”

“Well… His body isn’t anywhere near the base, so that's the first bit of good news!” Spike gave Whirlwind a sideways glance for his blithe statement. They kept looking, stepping carefully through the marshy ground, the soil unnaturally soft compared to the rest of the dragonlands, more than once they had to help one another pluck their legs out of the muck and carry on. Eventually, Whirlwind stopped.

“Well, we already went that way,” Spike muttered, “we know that way’s back towards where we came from because it's the only rent spewing green gas, so I’m thinking we should… Hey, you listening?”

“Shh,” Whirlwind said. “Do you hear that?”

Spike looked around, listening closely, he shrugged.

“I don’t hear anything,” he said

“Yes you do.” Spike jumped, whirling around and letting out a shout. He blinked in confusion as he realised there was nopony behind him.

“What!?” Whirlwind bounded over beside him.

“There was somepony just there! Just now, right behind me!” Spike said, his panicked voice subsiding into confusion when he saw nopony was there. “They whispered right in my ear.”

“Over here.” They both turned around, again, nothing.

“You heard that too, right?” Spike asked, Whirlwind nodded.

“Handy?” Whirlwind asked after a moment of silence, ear flicking as he heard something. A smirk grew on his face and he turned around. “There you are!”

“Ah, you spoiled it!” Handy said, having been sneaking up on the pair of them, carefully stepping on small stones amidst the muck to get across the mire. He was half covered in dirty water from his fall but had a large smile on his face. Spike’s eyes had widened when he turned to see him, since unlike Whirlwind he hadn’t heard him coming. “I was going to give you a spook.”

“How were you doing that?” Whirlwind asked excitedly. “I didn’t know you can do that.”

“Oh I can’t,” Handy admitted. He brushed off the bits of molten gold that had stuck to his skin and dried on his burned tunic, the centrepiece of the chain had sloughed off at some point and the water on his quickly drying tunic and cloak was coming off of him in waves of vapor. He held up two strange trinkets and drew one close to his face. It was a silver chain ending in an amulet shaped like intertwining leaves and inset with a small finely cut amethyst. He turned it over, revealing some script of a strange language none of them could read. “I don’t know what this is, but it's letting me project my voice.”

“Like this!” Spike clapped his claws to his ears. He saw Handy’s mouth move, but his voice came through right next to his ear.

“Quit it!” he protested, Handy laughed.

“Oh I’m keeping this!” he proclaimed. He held up his other amulet, a humble affair of steel chain and iron centrepiece with an embossed image depicting a song bird singing and an eagle attacking a pile of rocks. “No idea what this other one does.”

“Right, well, that's all well and good, but now what do we do?” Whirlwind asked. “I’d hate to bring down the mood but we’re still stuck in the middle of the dragonlands with no food, no shelter and no easy way out.”

“Can’t you magic us out? Like that crystal you broke that brought us to the Greenwoods?” Handy asked.

“If I had another one, then sure, no telling where in the woods we’d end up but yeah. I don’t though, so we’re stuck with me wintering us out of here.”

“What?”

“Wintering, it's hard to explain, it's something I can do now as Lord in Winter. It’s how I traveled so far so fast on my own,” Whirlwind explained, tapping the jangling portion of his crown of diamonds.

“Well can you do it for us now?” Handy asked, standing still for once and not fidgeting when he heard they finally had a way out. Whirlwind gave him a friendly, if somewhat blank expression and slowly, for emphasis tapped his shattered antler, trying not to wince in pain at the sensitivity of it. “Pain is no excuse!”

“I am also starving and exhausted. I can just about keep going but without several days’ rest and some recuperation, simply wisping our way out of here is out of the question for now. And while technically I have now fulfilled my purpose here, I am still relatively peeved at that mighty large dragon back there.”

“Oh? You want to go back and fight her? Alright then, let's go,” Handy said, immediately jogging off towards the mountainside. Spike blinked.

“Wait what?”

“Hey stop!” Whirlwind called.

Handy did, and turned to call back, “Why?”

“We can’t fight her like this!” he said. Handy spread his arms wide in a questioning gesture, “I just explained I am starving and exhausted! I was rotting in a cell for a while there until you two came along!”

“But you said you wanted to fight her,” Handy insisted.

“Yes but not right now!” Whirlwind said. Handy simply shook his head in disbelief.

“Well, then when?” Handy demanded.

“I don’t know, maybe when we find some actual shelter and get some actual rest and not get kidnapped and put into a Dragon’s treasure trove?” Whirlwind said, his voice chipper but evidently strained. Handy just looked at him a few times, blinking.

“Alright then, there’s a grove about a dozen yards or so that way,” he pointed. “Found it after I jumped. Clear air, fresh water, plant life, protection from the wind. Should do for a night or two.”

Whirlwind and Spike just stared at him.

“And you waited till now to tell us!?” Spike demanded.

“Well yeah,” Handy replied callously. “We were busy talking about other things there in case you didn’t notice.”

Spike threw up his arms and Whirlwind let out a breath.

“Look, can you show us? For now? We’ll sort this all out tomorrow,” Whirlwind offered.

“Fine,” Handy shrugged.

--=--

Handy led them through the foul valley, over shallow crags, open vents in the Earth and small dead rivers of standing water. He seemed unusually sure of his sense of direction and Whirlwind commented that it was a change of pace from the last time the two of them were lost in a mist shrouded wilderness, to which Handy replied that it was not his fault he was the wrong race to not be messed around with by a magical forest. Spike opted not to ask. Eventually they emerged from the fog, revealing what Handy had been talking about.

He had undersold it considerably.

It was less a grove and more of a hole dug out of the mountainside, as if a great claw had dug into it and carved a portion out. The resulting formation was a yawning chasm in the mountainside, flanked by the sides of the mountainside that remained either side of it, hiding it from anyone walking along, or even on top of the mountain until they more or less stumbled right on top of it.

The chasm was not merely empty space however. Raised like a series of plates stacked on top of one another were spring pools of hot water, uncountable years of built up volcanic minerals forming the walls of the pools before spilling over and forming more as they cascaded down the side of the sloping chasm into the much cooler lake at the base which fed into a small rivulet that went out into the wastes they had just come from. Steam from the source of the springs at the top of the chasm added to the overall fog of the valley behind them, hiding them from the skies but allowing significant sunlight to filter through.

The grove was verdant. Grass, long and green sprang from the rich Earth, strange trees with ripe fruit grew where the sunlight was greatest and the water of the lake was so clear one could swear you were looking through a plate of glass.

Whirlwind promptly plunged his head into the water and began drinking greedily, Spike followed suit soon after. Handy meanwhile found a sunny rock to sit upon and sat there, idly inspecting his looted treasures from Meranax’s horde.

Spike rose to take a breath, falling back and breathing heavily he looked around him.

“What is this place?” he asked no one in particular as he strolled around the lake.

“I have no idea. Found it like this. Pretty sure there’s a volcano somewhere nearby,” he said.

“Why?” Spike asked. Whirlwind gurgled as he continued to gulp up water and ignored his lungs’ need to breathe. Handy gestured up towards the top of the hot springs.

“Caves up there, very hot, pretty sure I heard lava from further back in them. These springs are heated by a vein of lava beneath us somewhere I’d wager,” Handy explained.

“Huh. Why’d you go up there anyway?” Spike asked, Handy shrugged.

“It was cold out here, I went to where it was warmest.” At that, Whirlwind raised his head and cocked a scaly brow at him.

“Ok now I know there’s something wrong with you,” Whirlwind said, Spike looked at him sideways.

“What was your first clue?”

“Hey, I’m cold, I can’t help it!” Handy said in his defense.

“Handy, your clothes are literally burning on your skin,” Whirlwind said in a deadpan manner. Handy looked down at himself, before diving into the water with a scream. The two of them were momentarily taken aback by the extreme reaction. Both rushed over to help him before he emerged from the water, gasping.

“Sorry just… didn’t notice that,” he explained.

“How could you not notice? You are burning to the touch!” Whirlwind exclaimed. Handy looked down at his clothes. They were a ruin. Apart from all the wear and tear of the past few days, they were indeed singed and burned in places, with holes appearing in his tunic and pants. His cloak seemed to be the only thing that escaped most of the burning but was still singed around his neck. Handy, very briefly, felt very self aware and the rising apprehension and fear of fire rose up within him again before his reason took over and he put two and two together.

“Holy shit…” he said at last, “I’m immune to fire!”

“What?” Spike asked.

“Uh, nothing, nevermind,” Handy deflected, putting a hold on his enthusiasm as soon as he realised who was listening to him. “It’s nothing, just… surprising.”

“Why?” Whirlwind asked, Handy glanced at him.

“Nothing, just, you don’t normally think of yourself as fireproof,” Handy answered evasively. Spike gave him a sceptical look but didn’t say anything further.

“Right then, this good enough for you two? Lay low here for a while?” Handy asked, suddenly agitated. “I’m rather sick of this country of yours Spike.”

“This isn’t my country, I don’t even think it technically counts as a country,” Spike answered. Handy shrugged it off.

“Regardless, it's been fun and all, but we’re still getting out of here,” Handy said, “This entire thing has been a bust, we need to get back to my airship… If it’s still even there.”

“I thought you wanted to fight Meranax with me?” Whirlwind asked, Handy blinked.

“Oh right, and that too I guess,” Handy admitted nodding his head. Whirlwind looked to Spike.

“Let's go home first,” Spike said.

“Right, we’ll do that,” Handy agreed.

“Nah, let's have a fight first,” Whirlwind said sardonically. Handy suddenly got up out of the water and moved towards Whirlwind aggressively.

“Not a bad idea, I have to admit I am looking forward to a good fight-”

“With Meranax! Meranax I meant!” Whirlwind said, suddenly backing away from the body of water. Handy stopped.

“Oh right, I forgot about that,” Handy confessed, still knee deep in water. Whirlwind fell back exasperated. He threw up his forelegs in exasperation at Handy who simply shrugged at him. “What?”

Whirlwind snorted and got to his feet and wandered over to a shady portion of the grove, munching away on the tall grass. Spike looked back at Handy, who had watched him go before returning to his own spot on the side of the lake.

After a while of simply sitting down, relaxing and catching their breath, in which Whirlwind had passed out under the shade of a nearby tree, Handy, who had been fidgeting for the past hour, stood up.

“I’m going up the hot springs, see if there’s anything interesting to find up there,” he announced, Leaving without another word.

“Hey wai- Oh nevermind,” Spike said in exasperation as he watched him go, sitting back down where he was, stomach growling and idly tossing around stones to see if he could find even a fragment of quartz to munch on. Whirlwind simply snored.

Handy climbed his way up the walls of the various hot spring pools. Each overflowing with water that spilled into the next one below them, until the water eventually gathered and cooled in the lake at the bottom of the open cavern. There were precious few spots to cling on to that were not soaking wet and treacherous but he managed to climb up using a few handholds. The heat of the water increasing as he went didn’t faze him.

“Glad to be out of that cold,” he said to himself. “I couldn’t stand it any longer.”

Eventually he made his way to the top, where the water geysered forth from a rent in the earth, where the pressure forced it up from some reservoir down below. He stood there, enjoying the spray of the hot water on his face for a time before moving on. Sure enough there was the opening cave mouth he had seen before. Pushing his way through it he followed the heat and the faint orange light, seemingly uncaring about finding his way back until he came to a stop near a hole in the ground. Sure enough it dropped straight down into a dark pit of magma far below.

A part of him, a stupid part, was tempted to try out his new found fireproof ability, as temporary as it may be, and Handy found himself inching closer and closer to the edge, before a sensible part of him took control and made him reconsider. He turned back and went back the way he came.

Much to his inevitable dismay, he was lost, and found himself wandering near aimlessly in the dark caves that pitted the mountainside. He swore to himself when he realised his predicament, but pushed on regardless. Eventually he found light up ahead and followed it. He came to a slightly larger cave tunnel with a hole in the wall, overlooking the hot springs from before. He was now a considerable distance away from where he had started and could see no easy way down.

Sighing, he moved on and this time came to a larger cave with another opening to the outer air, This time to his left and facing away from the grove where his friends were. Curious, he went to investigate. The opening was rather large, and he could clearly see the skies beyond over the top of the miasma of the valley outside. In the distance he could see the obsidian volcano that the dragons had been keeping Spike and Whirlwind, just barely poking above the ridgeline he was looking over.

More importantly he could see the sun and tell what time of day it is and which way was East, and which was West. That was helpful at least, now he just needed to find a way back down and-

Handy had just enough time to look surprised by the time he saw the red dragon dive out of the sky and crash into him. The force of the blow sent him flying, end over end and landing hard against the floor and wall of the cave, cracking bones. He lost the grip he had on his hammer, he was dazed and he was confused but more than that he was angry.

And elated.

Pushing himself back to his feet he stilled his throbbing head and gave his body just enough time to heal the bones he broke on impact with the rock. His hammer was on the far side of the dragon from him. The dragon for his part, was staggered by his own botched landing and surprised to see Handy getting back on his feet. Handy spat the blood from his mouth, snarled and ran towards the dragon, roaring.

--=--

The first sign something was amiss was when Whirlwind was awoken by the sound of Handy’s voice echoing from the caves up the hot springs. He woke up with a snort, ears flicking and twitching. Spike, who was basking on the rocks next to the lake, idly inspecting some black, glossy stone in his claw, having found barely anything to eat and looking fairly miserable for it, looked over to Whirlwind.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“I thought I heard-” He stopped looking up and seeing the dark forms of three dragons fly overhead, their shadows projecting through the cloud of mist. There was a empty patch in the sky and, it had to be just a chance, but one of the dragons had been looking down at just the right moment.

And their eyes met.

Whirlwind swore in the deer tongue and stumbled to his feet, still exhausted, he fumbled his way over to the drake.

“We’ve got to go! We’ve got to go now!” he shouted, Spike pushed himself up.

“What? Why?” there was an earth shaking impact behind him. Spike tentatively looked behind him and saw, to his horror, the smiling visage of Garble looking back at him.

“Long time no see, twerp.”

--=--

Handy was grabbed by the ankle, dragged, lifted off of the ground, swung overhead and thrashed against the wall, but still laughed, much to the dragon’s confusion.

“COME ON THEN!” He bellowed in challenge. He forced himself from the wall, almost collapsing as his broken bones struggled to heal in time to allow him to walk, he picked up his warhammer and stumbled towards the dragon.

The dragon, for his part, snorted, the scales of his face shot through with the corruption of the curse. It spread its wings wide and held its claws out from its body. It lunged for Handy, who allowed his weight to fall to the ground in a roll, falling under the dragon’s attack, rising and swinging his hammer around into its rear leg, knocking it out from under it. The dragon, off balance from the attack, fell to the ground hard, roaring in pain. It swung its clawed fist around and caught the rising Handy in the jaw, sending him spinning back to the ground.

The confines of the cave, backlit and roasting hot from the magma further into the caverns, prevented the dragon from using the full range of its abilities, while maximising the advantages Handy held. It would be the exact, ideal situation Handy would look for while dealing with a dragon and hopped up on vampiric power.

Which is why, to the dragon’s and everyone else’s bafflement, the first thing Handy did after clamoring up from where he had been knocked to the ground was to rugby tackle the dragon, using the full measure of his weight and strength to force the young dragon, still unsteady and rattled from the beating it had taken, straight down the cavern out onto the open cliff.

And straight down into the hot springs below.

Spike and Whirlwind looked on, mouth agape at the sight of the flailing pair plunging into the waters below them.

Handy, now thoroughly dazed from multiple knocks on the head and splashed in the face with scalding hot water, rose from the water in an instant, gasping for air, blinking, blearily into the daylight. He coughed the water from his throat and lungs and grasped for his hammer.

He grabbed the dragon’s tail.

The dragon’s head emerged from the water in a roar, followed by a wing that clocked Handy across the skull and sent him careening backwards, over the lip of the pool and into the next one. The others, meanwhile, were having no easier time of it. Whirlwind fired a bolt of magic from his remaining antler, his broken one sparking dangerously all the while, into the pool, drawing an arc in the water and sending up a truly momentous torrent of steam that blinded the oncoming dragons, allowing him and Spike to dodge their swinging claws as they barreled through the wall of gushing steam.

They were split apart, Spike leaping up the next level of the hot springs and running along the stone dividing the pools, Whirlwind heading down and around the dragons. The confusion didn’t last forever however, and with a mighty sweep of her wings, one of the dragons launched after Whirlwind, while the other two flew up after Spike.

The two terrorizing Spike dived. One missed, hitting its head against the raised platform of the upper pool, cracking it and spilling its contents in a cascade of water, the other however, tackled him, grabbing onto him and lifting him up into the air.

“Gotcha now you little twerp!” the dragon snarled, “You won’t get away this time.”

It was then, struggling in the grip of the enemy dragon, coughing his lungs out and desperate, he looked at the discoloured scales on its arms, looked between him and the arms and let out a sigh.

And bit down with all of his draconic might, cracking the heavily damaged scales and tearing into the poisoned flesh beneath. The dragon bellowed and flung his arm sending Spike flying across the cavernous expanse, landing in a large but shallow pool of boiling water near the top of the springs where the water was hottest. He skidded across the surface before finally coming to a stop. He rose, spitting and scratching his tongue, splashing the boiling water onto it, which was like little more than spring rain to a dragon. He hacked up and spat as much as he could, his face bearing a sickened expression.

“I really don’t get the appeal in that…”

Whirlwind for his part was running on fumes. Exhausted, battered and beaten, with barely enough rest to count for a short power nap, he was dangerously close to collapsing as it was. His hoof caught in an uneven divet in the pool wall and he was sent sprawling down into a narrow chasm between two pools. One dragon overshot him and the other landed hard, looked down at where the deer was stuck, drew its head back, opened its maw, and gathered fire in its jaws ready to incinerate him.

Which was right when Whirlwind drove his antler as high up as he could, summoned as much magic as he was able and shot a blast of icy magic straight into the dragon’s mouth. The resulting backblast was spectacular. The dragon was blown back, smoke and steam trailing from its mouth and broken teeth sent flying. The dragon was left moaning, writhing in the pool, murmuring through its smoking mouth which it clutched at. Whirlwind wasted no time and continued his struggle to pull himself out between the two pools before the water drowned him, but his forehoof was stuck.

The other dragon landed, this time right in front of him, where the chasm opened out to the lower pools, splashing him with hot water. He tried to summoned forth more magic but his antlers sparked. He was spent. The dragon smiled at him and Whirlwind could do nothing more than look on with dismay.

--=--

Handy emerged from where he fell, gasping for air, his head suddenly much clearer and his recent behaviour bewildering to him while fresh in his mind.

“What… What have I-” The dragon’s tail swung around, catching him in the stomach and hurling him back. He hit the pool wall hard and was dazed, his anger flared as the vampiric power healed the recent damage. “Whatever it is, it can wait.”

He rushed forward, the dragon flailing in the water struggled to bring its wings to bear in order to take to the air. Handy, knowing his hammer was in the pool with the dragon, and still with the desperate bravado and adrenaline draconic blood gave him, dived over the pool wall and into the water. The dragon spat a burst of fire into the water, causing it to boil.

Normally this would be something along the lines of an inconvenience for Handy, but as it was-

His hammer erupted from the water and cracked against the groin of the dragon. The dragon gave a yelp, his breath ceased and Handy emerged, breathing hard, skin scalded but otherwise unharmed. Handy hooked the hammer behind the digitigrade knee of the dragon, pulled and forced the dragon off balance and back into the water.

He was about to give the finishing blow when he looked to see Whirlwind had fallen down between two pools and the dragons were descending upon him. He glanced down at the writhing dragon beneath him and made his decision. He hopped out of the water and began to make his hasty descent back down to Whirlwind, running along the walls untill he was almost there. The first dragon’s mouth exploded into smoke and steam and fell away from its perch above the downed Whirlwind. The second one landed not far away and was preparing to roast the deer.

Handy just made it to the lip of the final pool ring above the dragon and Whirlwind. He swung his hammer around and flung it ahead of him. The hammer, hurled with vampiric strength, soared through the air and clocked the dragon between the eyes and sent him reeling. Whirlwind blinked as Handy landed in front of him.

“Come on!”

“I’m stuck!” Whirlwind shouted in response, panic in his voice. Handy looked down and saw that he had lodged his fetlock into some gash of rock. He was cut and bleeding too, forcing that out could make it worse. Handy whirled around just as the other dragon recovered and looked fairly pissed off, Handy’s hammer lay in the pool with the dragon and he placed his claw on it, denying Handy access to his weapon.

Out of options, Handy tried the only thing left to him. He covered his mouth with both hands and, focusing on the artefact around his neck and an area just to the left and behind the dragon, he shouted.

“HEY WANKER!”

The dragon looked around, confused by the sudden shouting in his ear. It was only a second but when he looked back, Handy was gone.

Something hard jumped up onto his shoulder, and grabbed around his neck and pulled up. The dragon, suddenly choking, grasped at his neck with his claws as the surprising strength of the human was closing off his windpipe. His claws scratched away at the human’s arms, tearing through the tatters of the tunic that he wore and cutting into the flesh. It was painful beyond reckoning but Handy simply screamed out the pain as he clutched tighter and tighter.

The other dragons arrived. One, the dark red one Handy had been fighting first landed on top of the chasm Whirlwind was trapped in, and glowered at Handy. The other, whom Whirlwind had taken out, got up and snarled at the chasm which the first had stood over.

The last, another red one with orange spines and a severe underbite landed not far off, yelling about the Drake. Handy was outnumbered, outgunned, and out of options. All he had left was this dragon’s life in his hands. They had Whirlwind’s. He was about to speak when a force gripped him bodily and tore him free from the golden brown dragon’s back. He felt himself plunge into the water and held there with powerful claws. He thrashed in the water in shock, screaming and losing air, he could not make out any of the shapes above him as he struggled uselessly in the water.

Water began filling his lungs, he burned for breath, his eyes began blurring, everything felt like it was burning as his body was slowly starved of oxygen, his heart began pounding and his vision was fading. He panicked, more and more as the lights began to dim, his movements slowed and it became hard to think.

He was suddenly pulled up, half dead and vomiting up water as he was held down against a spring wall. He coughed and struggled to see, he couldn’t move, whatever held him down had him held fast and he wasn’t going anywhere. A voice snarled into his ear.

“Hello again, worm,” Onyx said. Handy froze.

‘Fuck,’ he thought. It was the only word he could summon up at the moment.

“I said not to kill them!” a new voice demanded, he heard the other dragons grumble. A smaller, younger dragon came into view as she flew over heard. Azure blue, orange eyed with curling white horns around the sides of her head and covered head to toe in bandages. She landed not far away up above them.

“And why not?” Garble demanded, Onyx growling in agreement.

“I owe this one a lot,” Onyx said, lifting and then slamming Handy back against the pool wall. He shouted in pain as something cracked.

“I’m beginning to side with the idiots,” The female Whirlwind had blasted said, looking up at Ember.

“Yeah!” Garble said triumphantly, pausing for a second. “Hey wait a minute…”

“I don’t care, I am not starting a war!” Ember said.

“They already started it!” The one Handy had been choking before piped up. More dragons arrived, all of them young. The older ones seemed to be absent, thankfully. “The ponies are responsible for this, who else controls dreams!?”

“Dreams?” Handy asked, Onyx pressed down harder on his back. Ember snarled, she carried a large, obsidian staff with an obscenely large blood red gem in its grip, almost the size of her head. She struck the ground with its base.

“Silence! I need them for bargaining,” Ember said.

“Do you honestly think any of them would be willing to trade a cure for these whelps?” Onyx demanded. “This one here is the dragonslayer. They sent him; what other message could they mean by it?”

‘Shit.’ Handy thought again, fearing saying it out loud would confirm the dragon’s suspicions. ‘Should’ve just said no and fucked off down South instead.’

Ember’s stare never faltered, but Handy could tell there was some conflict there. She was stalling them, but why? He tried to turn his head around, he could just barely make out Whirlwind’s antler poking out from the chasm where he was trapped. Still moving around, so he hadn’t drowned yet. Good times.

She looked at him, and Handy swore under his breath. She narrowed her eyes but then turned back to the gathered dragons.

“They will for Spike,” she said. Someone barked out a laugh and she shot them a venomous glance. “Princess Sparkle would make the trade.”

“And what good would that do us!? It’s the Night Walker that caused this!”

“No it is the Sun Raiser! She did this! It’s why our fire has turned against us!”

“It was the false dragon! The Goat headed serpent!”

“It is all of them!”

The gathered dragons erupted into a clamour, so much so that Ember’s voice could not be heard over them as she tried desperately to regain control. Onyx looked down at Handy and snarled his anger, Handy felt the pressure on his back increase, he roared in pain until the breath was pushed from his lungs and then began gasping again.

“QUIET!” Ember bellowed, she held her sceptre aloft and it pulsed angrily. A wave of magic washed out over the gathered dragons, all of them glowed briefly and then paused, remaining silent. Ember glared at them all. “You know I do not use my authority lightly, but I will not be disobeyed in this matter!”

Onyx barked out a vicious laugh.

“Then what, O mighty dragon Lord?” he challenged, “What do you suggest we do? What can we do? There is none else to blame! There is no other who could be responsible for it!”

“We have the deer here! He is with the human! He brought the Princess’ pet lizard! What else is there to draw from this?” The golden brown one argued. Ember had no answer for that.

“If… you’d… let us tal-” Onyx pressed down harder on his back, shutting Handy right the fuck up. She looked down at the arguing dragons who were coming around to the evidence in front of them. Ember’s authority was no longer challenged by unruly shouting, but the gathered dragons were agreeing with each other more, supporting each other’s assertions in front of her. Careful not to justify her ire. Ember was not having an easy time answering them with her insistence on using the three of them as bargaining chips. Slowly, she began looking between the struggling Whirlwind and Handy, and Handy was wise enough to realise what must be going through her head.

‘She’s going to sacrifice one of us to the baying mob.’ Handy thought, which he wouldn’t put it past the dragon to do. What surprised him was that it was taking her this long to make up her mind. She raised her sceptre again, looking between the two, grinding her teeth. Handy closed his eyes.

“WAIT!” Ember turned and all the gathered dragons glared at the small purple dragon holding aloft a small black stone. He stood a ways off from the rest of them, the lanky purple drake looked rough in his tattered coat, splattered with blood.

“It wasn’t the ponies,” he said walking towards her. Ember did not answer, but the dragons below erupted in protest.

“I SAID SHUT UP!” Spike bellowed, holding the black stone aloft. Unfortunately his cry caused a few of them to take to the air and land on either side of the dragon lord, ready to pound Spike into oblivion for his challenge. Spike for his part, didn’t waver and strode forward.

“But I know who it was,” he said as he neared the dragon lord. Ember was still taller than Spike, though not by much anymore, but her wings increased her presence considerably over him. Spike saw her haloed by the sky, her face framed by her horns and shadowed by her outstretched wings. Her eyes stood out all the more for it. He almost hesitated.

“Well?” Ember demanded, her face partially covered in bandages, it was painful to see her like this. “Let's hear it, if you have anything to say.”

“Why are you entertaining this pony pet?” Garble demanded. “If he had any proof he would have provided it the last time you saw him.”

“I didn’t know who caused it then,” Spike answered, not even bothering to look at Garble. He offered the black stone to Ember. Ember didn’t take it, not immediately. She plucked it quickly from his claws and looked it over.

“And this is?”

“A piece of a dragon’s claw,” Spike explained. “The one who is really responsible for the Curse of the Candle.”

“What?” Ember asked softly, the dragons gathered around her murmured. Handy and Whirlwind trapped where they were, couldn’t really make out what was being said.

“Oh no, don’t hurry yourselves or anything,” Whirlwind managed between gulps of water. “I can wait.”

“Shut up you,” the red dragon hissed down at him. Ember looked the claw over in her own for a minute before curling her talons around it, she glared at Spike.

“Who?” she asked, her voice an arctic chill.

“A dragon called Meranax,” Spike said, and there was a ripple of outrage throughout the gathered assembly. “She stayed here when all the elders fled the land. She’s still with her horde, you can find her down there if you don’t believe me.”

Ember looked between the rock and Spike.

“What proof do you have of this?” She demanded. Spike looked at the chunk of dragon claw in her hand for a moment, he took a deep breath and looked at the bloodstone sceptre in her grip. His pupils reflexively dilated as he laid eyes on it.

“Touch the chunk to the sceptre,” he said, “and we’ll see.”

“Are you mad?” A dragon to her right intervened. “If what you say is true, why would we let a part of her touch the sceptre again?”

“Because the sceptre has power over her,” he said. “As it does over all of us in our bloodline. My fire is out, I don’t know why, that's why the effect is less on me, it’s also why I don’t have the curse. It’s how I avoided it without being an exile. She tried to do something with it last year, she wanted to become truly immortal.”

“Immortal?” Ember asked under her breath looking at the sceptre.

“But the sceptre is made with powerful magic, magic tied to our bloodline, like the other dragon lineages have similar artefacts. Something our ancestors did way back when for who knows why. Magic old and powerful enough that it resonated with things a continent away.”

Spike pointed down at Whirlwind.

“I don’t know the full story with him, of his home, but there is powerful magic there, that was touched somehow when Meranax tried to subvert the sceptre for herself.”

“This is all impossible!” Ember suddenly spat. “The Sceptre never leaves my side!”

Spike raised a brow.

“Really? Not even when you leave the dragonlands?” he asked. Ember’s eyes widened at him and he realised his mistake.

“The Dragonlord leaves the sceptre?” one asked.

“Can she do that?”

“What does that mean?” Spike winced, and Ember gave him a reproachful look.

“I always make sure the sceptre is safe,” she insisted. “No dragon can take it from my claws against my will.”

“True,” Spike said quickly, trying to brush over his mistake as quickly as possible. “Which was part of the reason why Meranax couldn’t mess with the sceptre. It’s why her attempt backfired.”

“What?” Garble asked, having climbed up onto the next layer of the hotsprings.

“The curse was not intentional, its a result of her attempts to use the sceptre’s power wrongfully,” he said. “You know we are all bound to obey the power of the sceptre when it’s used, but only sparingly. No dragon can take it from the dragonlord without being cursed by it. Meranax thought her magic could overcome it. It could not.”

“But why did the curse spread to the whole bloodline?” A purple dragon Spike hadn’t seen in years asked. He shrugged.

“I don’t know, maybe it's because of how old she is, maybe it has to do with how her magic interacted with it. I do know is that if we use her essence on the sceptre, the sceptre will pass judgement on her.”

“How do you know all this?” Garble demanded. Spike just looked at him.

“You know why, Garble.” Garble backed down at that when everyone turned to look at him. Spike looked back at Ember. “But I know the parts about Meranax because she was stupid enough to tell us, we just barely escaped her. The sceptre can’t be taken by another dragon, but it can be given by another dragon, by either deed or word. It's how Ember got the sceptre in the first place from her dad.”

Ember glanced sideways briefly, but said nothing. Spike pointed to the chunk of dragon claw in her hand.

“Just do this, trust me on this, Ember,” he said. Ember looked at him, and he saw the hurt in her eyes, he closed his for a moment, then opened them and met her gaze. A long silence passed between them. And after a moment’s hesitation, she lifted up the black chunk towards the sceptre, all eyes were on her in that instant. Slowly, agonizingly slowly, she touched the chunk to the Stone.

And the sound like a bell made of crystal resounded throughout the open cavern.

And time itself seemed to stand still.

--=--

“HYYURRRRAAAGGH!” Meranax clutched her chest. Her heart had jumped and she fell back on her horde, thrashing about in her armour, centuries of treasure was destroyed and tossed aside, some lost forever as she writhed in agony. Pain so awful it pierced her lungs like thorny vines in every air sac rolled across her body from tip to tail. Her vision swam, she couldn’t breathe nor scream, the pain was so unbearable she almost couldn’t think. She felt her blood on fire for a moment before it became unbearably, icily cold.

She knew this was going to happen. She knew eventually it was possible, she hoped it would be. She looked at where she had hidden the armoire which not too long ago she had so carefully inspected and made sure was safe, covering it up again.

Maybe it was too little too late, maybe it was a foolish action, maybe it won’t be enough to undo the harm she had done in her selfishness.

But it was the right thing to do, and she could do it now, when she chose not to do it then, so long ago. She wondered if she’d see her there. If there was anything to see at all. Looks like either way, she wouldn’t find out what's really up North after all.

“I’m sorry,” she said at last, the pain finally turning to numbness. “Forgive me.”

And then everything was still.

--=--

They stayed in the dragonlands two days longer after all was said and done. The dragons, thankful to the little dragon they had so long derided had taken them gratefully back into their midst once their nightmares and curse had been cured. Meranax was found later, after much searching and before much digging into her horde. There was no set rules in the dragon law regarding the horde of a dead dragon short of it going to their young, if they were strong enough to get to it first. Ember had intervened and allowed a somewhat organised dispersal of her treasure. It would still take over a week to sort it all out that way, but it was better than causing a mad scramble and this way the younger dragons could add to their horde before the elders realised the situation was over and returned to the dragonlands.

It was also around that time, in much more friendly quarters, they finally came around to sorting out the very problem they had came here to solve in the first place.

“I have to do, WHAT?” Spike demanded. Handy’s face was in his hands and Whirlwind, who had yet to understand the significance of what had just been said, simply looked at Spike in confusion.

“Meat,” Ember said. “You have to eat meat.”

“I don’t- I mean- I have never-” Spike spluttered.

“All this time, all this trouble, all of this because of some dietary mistakes!?” Handy exclaimed.

“It’s more than that,” Ember began to explain. “Dragons don’t live on gems alone. Sure, they taste delicious and it makes us strong, but without meat you can’t grow and develop properly.”

She flapped her wings for emphasis. Spike blinked.

“I just thought I was a different kind of dragon!” he explained. “I mean some ponies have wings and others don’t, I thought-”

“That all this time dragons worked like ponies do?” Ember asked with a raised brow, before snorting in amusement. “You really have been hanging around ponies too long.”

They were in a carven room inside the volcano, it was pleasantly warm with an opening leading outside which let enough fresh air in to make it breathable. Whether it was a personal choice or Ember was making concessions for the non dragons in the room, Handy could not guess. Spike seemed to withdraw at the comment, and Ember reacted as if she had stepped on a landmine and quickly moved on.

“Anyway, you need to eat meat to keep yourself right, the gems help with our more magical needs.”

“Magical… needs?” Spike asked.

“Yes, needs, not just power,” Ember explained, “And we need to eat properly to keep ourselves healthy. It's no wonder you’ve been so sick for so long. Of course the opposite is true if you don't’ eat enough gems, and eat too much ordinary food, your scales will weaken and begin flaking off at the nearest touch.

That comment drew Handy’s attention. He recalled the dragon he had fought so long ago at the tournament. He recalled how much armour it wore and how strange that was even for a young dragon. And how easily the scales came off. Flaking off even, caught between the grooves of the designs on his armour after he fought him. That actually explained a great deal, even if he wasn’t from the same bloodline as Spike. Handy could actually recall that now that his head was cleared from the immediate rush of the dragon blood, not that getting knocked about hadn’t helped. He’d have to be more careful in future if he ever got dragon blood again, that lack of clear headedness could easily get himself killed.

Spike sat down.

“And all this time, I thought it was just something I had to deal with.” Ember smiled at him.

“Well now you can get better at long last,” she said. Spike returned the smile.

“Yeah. Yeah thanks. I had no idea it’d be something so simple,” he said.

“I wish you did, you could have saved us a lot of trouble if you did,” Handy said.

“Well.. I’m glad you came when you did,” Ember said. Whirlwind, sensing the tension between the two, let out a yawn and got up.

“Welp, glad that's settled, my work here’s done too as far as I am concerned. I’m going to go for a walk before the Airship gets here. Come on Handy,” he said, nudging Handy on his way out.

“What?” he said, but Whirlwind merely inclined his head for him to follow. Handy, irritated, nonetheless followed him out. Leaving the two dragons alone.

The two sat there in silence for a while, not saying anything. Before long however, Spike sighed.

“Sorry, Ember. About-”

“I know,” she said. “It was my fault, I shouldn’t have pressed the matter.”

“No, you don’t understand. I was stupid back then, holding a candle that had long since burned out,” he said, she shook her head.

“It doesn’t matter, I shouldn’t have said those things I did about the ponies. They were your family, they raised you, I was in the wrong back then,” she said. She took off the bandages about her face revealing how far the candle curse had caused her scales to fall off, being the closest to the blood sceptre and among the youngest of the bloodline had made her symptoms worse than even the youngest hatchlings. Thankfully, none of them had succumb, and were well on their way to mending. But Ember had suffered greatly for her closeness to the sceptre.

Her flesh had healed now, but the scales had yet to come back and be replaced, so he saw her face, both with and without her scales. His heart broke for her.

“And if they hadn’t raised you to be the dragon you are, I don’t know what would have become of the rest of us. Thank you Spike, for everything.” Spike looked at her downcast features and for the first time in his life felt ashamed, truly ashamed for what he had let go all that time ago. He sucked in a breath, and got to his feet.

Ember looked up in surprise when she felt her claws being taken by his. He smiled at her.

“And if you had not been as wonderful as you are, you would not have let me help.”

--=--

The airship finally arrived. It turns out Silvertalon hadn’t abandoned him after all. He had in fact been trawling the surprisingly empty Dragonlands searching for him. Traveling by Twilight when his ship was harder to see and there were less dragons in the air, and hiding his ship by covering it with nets with ground dust spread across old leathers on top of them during the day.

After a rather frightening encounter with a pair of friendly dragons, he was eventually convinced to come pick his passengers up at the Obsidian Volcano, after a guarantee of safe passage of course.

The three of them met Silvertalon with much enthusiasm, Handy practically bear hugging the poor old griffon half to death before they all finally boarded the ship. Handy immediately regretted his decision to let Whirlwind on when the excitable deer went to and fro on the ship to this room and that, commenting on everything and irritating the hell out of Silvertalon, who was definitely not used to such reckless abandon on his ship.

Spike strode past him, standing taller and walking more confidently than he had ever seen him.

“You’re acting a lot brighter,” Handy commented as he passed him in the corridor.

“Hm? Oh nothing, just really glad that's all over and done with,” he replied, laughing nervously. Handy narrowed his eyes at him suspiciously.

“I take it you’re eating meat now?” He asked.

“Yeah, it uh, it’ll take some getting used to,” he said, rubbing the back of his head. “But I like the taste!”

“Damn straight you do,” Handy said.

“I don’t think Twilight will be too happy about it though.”

“That’s her problem then,” he commented, letting Spike go. He noticed briefly how Spike seemed to not just walk a bit taller, he seemed to have actually gotten a bit taller. Noticing how his shadow passed the rivets in the wall of the hallway in the noon day sun. He pushed the thought aside as dragon nonsense. He did however notice his own shadow seemed to also have become an inch taller as well, he looked down at his shoes. No, he wasn’t wearing his boots so that couldn’t be it. He shrugged it off and went to the bridge.

“Silvertalon.”

“Sir,” Silvertalon responded, “where to?”

“Guess we’re heading back to Equestria,” he said, looking over to the charts at the navigation table.

“No wait!” Spike called out, suddenly running back down the main hallway to the bridge.

“Not Equestria! The Crystal Empire!” he said. Handy frowned.

“What, why?” he asked.

“Twilight said she’d be going there not long after we’d leave from Ponyville. She’s likely still there right now and it’d make more sense for us to fly straight there than anywhere else.”

Handy waved it off.

“Right, fine, whatever, the crystal empire it is. Silvertalon?”

“Aye, taking us to the empire.” He said turning to his wheel and the innumerable contraptions and valves and levers that controlled the airship. Handy briefly prayed he had did all the repairs he needed when he had the time while looking for them in the dragonlands, he remembered the emergency shut down he had done and it was not a fond recollection.

“You have fun with that, I’m going to sleep in a proper bed for once.” With that he left them, passing by Whirlwind’s cabin as he did. The deer was enthusiastically busy inspecting the porthole window of his cabin as the ship began to lift off.

“You know, I never actually flew by airship before, this feels weird. It’s so exciting!” he commented.

“Yeah well, that passes, by the way don’t touch the exposed piping, it’s all hot water and it’ll scald you,” Handy said as he moved on from the room.

“What? Oh right, thanks Handy,” he said turning back to the window. Handy frowned.

“You know you’d get a better view from the Bridge, it has a full frontal window,” he said.

“Really? Thats sounds amazing!” Whirlwind said as he passed by Handy on his way to the bridge. Handy watched him go before turning back to his room. As soon as the door closed behind him he let a huge sigh, feeling his tiredness in spite of the invigoration his blood high had given him, after all the beating he took and several days passing by, he was losing most of it. He looked over at his bed longingly.

He sat down at it, and before lying back he pulled open a drawer and pulled out the flask of blood he had won as payment off of Twilight. He had earned it by now, and a part of him eagerly wanted to test it. The more tired part of him won out in the end and he placed it back in the drawer, pushed it in and lay back to sleep. He stared at the wooden boards above him contemplatively as the ship rattled and shifted as it took to the sky in the familiar but comforting rocking of the airship at sail. He let his exhaustion flow out and for once, without worry, and without the need of medicine, he drifted off to sleep.

The Crystal Empire, he thought to himself as he drifted off, was future Handy’s problem.

Uncanoned - Licence and Registration

There are a few ways you would want to start your day, much less end one, than to end up at the cosmic equivalent of the DMV, but only a few. Fortunately for our favourite bastard protagonist, he would not encounter these much worse fates. Unfortunately for him, he still had to get his licence renewed.

It all started when he was trudging along Skymount, heading to one tavern or another, when he had to traverse across a rather large snow drift that had slipped off the roof of a nearby townhouse. Frowning, of course, he grudgingly trudged over the snow that was only a few inches deep at the worst in places. And promptly fell through the snow and disappeared from the world.

He came to with a shock, standing in a row of wildly extravagant and outrageous characters to either side of him, while still absolutely covered in snow.

“Oh, the new guy woke up,” said a voice behind him. Handy whirled, sending snow flying everywhere as he reached for his hammer but stopped halfway in his turn when he came face to armoured shoulder of some Sauron-looking motherfucker. The black, spikey-armoured figure barely gave him a sideways glance out from the red-hued eye sockets of his alarmingly familiar helmet. Handy just glared at the quite obviously humanoid figure and spied a strange red amulet hanging around its neck, seemingly attached to his armour.

“Is that all of them, do you suppose?” Handy blinked and turned again, finding himself absolutely surrounded by… other humans. A lot of them. There was practically an army of them, all standing in rows facing a single direction. The latest person to speak was what appeared, for all the world, a mediaeval knight. An actual one, complete with chainmail, black tabard with a white cross, hauberk, a French accent and an aged, grandfatherly, world-weary face that gave him a polite nod of acknowledgement.

He turned again to the one who was directly behind him who’d spoken first. This one appeared to be an average man who would work at a grocer’s, complete with green apron and customer service smile.

“Nah, there’s still a few greyscale guys who have yet to wake up from their lines. We’ll be here a bit.” Wide-eyed, but moving more slowly, cautiously, the bewildered Handy faced forward. The voice was someone ahead of him, though he couldn’t make out much other than a green robe belted at the waist, brown leather boots, wild brown hair, and what looked like an empty book pouch in his hand.

“Where… Where am I?” Handy managed, snow falling off his shoulders as he looked around him. They were all, in their hundreds, their thousands, gathered in a huge, high-ceilinged hall bereft of any decoration, built with off-green hued stone. Chandeliers above them flickered with magical lights that seemed to dance from one empty candle sconce to another, casting faint multihued illumination on the floor below that was barely enough to help them see the people nearby, let alone the whole hall. Still, the general roar of conversation and the sheer reverberation bouncing off the walls was enough to give the impression of the scale of the place.

“What is—What are… You… You’re all… human.”

“The boy has eyes to see.” The elderly knight beside him chuckled. “Let’s see if he has ears to hear.”

“I bet you five bits he freaks out,” said another voice off the distance behind Handy and to his right. The bet was taken on by a few others.

“Freak out about what?” Handy asked no one in particular. Hand still on the head of his hammer, he tried valiantly to maintain a neutral, stoic expression as his mind reeled to take in this new information. Was he hallucinating? It couldn’t be a dream; he didn’t have those anymore. Was he on drugs? Drunk? Had he just lost his mind? Did… Did he make it back to Earth… somehow? Why else would there be so many humans here?

“Did… Is this Earth?”

“Is this Earth, he says!” A harsh, barking laughter came from some piratical-looking bastard with a peg leg ahead of him and to the left. He even turned around to laugh at him. “Must be nice to have such a fanciful homeland that doesn’t try to kill you for returning, but I wouldn’t know enough to tell ya. I've never been there.”

“Who… Who are you all? Where are we?” Handy asked, now a bit annoyed but still no less off-put by the situation. The knight beside him patted him on the shoulder, causing him to jump and brush his hand off. The knight held up his hand placatingly, still smiling.

“It’ll all make sense in a moment, young man, God willing,” the Frenchman said. “How fond are you of stories?”

“What does that have to do with anything?” Handy asked.

“It has everything to do with it. I’d just answer the question if I were you,” said Apron McGee.

“Well…” Handy scanned over the heads of the people he could see and… Not everyone here was a human. No, there were some weirdos plotted here and about, some way bigger than any human could be, and some most definitely weren’t human-shaped. Was that a fucking Final Fantasy character costume he saw? The one with the hair? There were others; some looked to be honest-to-God ponies… if ponies were bipedal and—

He quickly moved on from those ones to the other abominations to distract his interest.

“I… suppose I do like stories, like anyone would, but—” It hit him then when the words left his mouth, and he choked on them with a start. Stories. He was here because he was in a story. Every single person here was here because they were in a story. His whole life led to him being ensnared in a kind of cosmic storybook, written by uncaring hands and enjoyed by an unknowable audience. Every wound a pen stroke, every tragedy a punctuation, every trouble an intentional condescension from an unknowable author. He, and every single person here, was a focal point in a story of unknown providence and unfamiliar purpose, taken to this realm between the lower world that was where their lives were written and a higher one whence drew joy from their struggles and failures.

Theirs was a life of purpose, but purpose separate from themselves and apart from themselves. Their lives were not their own but given up unto others, to inflict pain or healing upon those exposed to the viscerality of their lives. They were creations but not of God, except by way of a second hand…

Or were they? Were they created or were their lives interrupted by the whims of those above them? Were those above them any different? If not, why would they be here to be judged whether their stories were worth continuing for those above to subsume into themselves. Would they continue if they were judged unworthy, and be freed from the pens of those above, or would they cease to be, as non-existent as they were before word met page and said they were to be.

“Oh my God…” The pirate ahead of him had apparently heard him and laughed uproariously.

“I sure as shit hope ya liked stories lad! Yer in one!” he shouted over his shoulder. Handy just stood there processing it as he heard others around him grumbled and the clink of coins as money changed hands as bets were won and lost on him. The priestly knight beside him simply grimaced and patted him on the shoulder in solidarity. Handy, for his part, didn’t brush him off this time.

“Are… Are we real?”

“Yes boy,” the older man said, chuckling lightly. “I have given it considerable thought myself, but we have to be.”

“How can you be sure?” The knight shrugged.

“I’m about as sure as I was before I suppose. And about as sure as I’m going to be after this is all sorted.” He gestured around and leaned over. “Otherwise, what would be the point of having us plead our cases?”

“Cases? Oh… The judgement,” Handy said, knowing but not understanding how he knew. This was a place of judgement. “... Are we dead?”

“I’d say some of us around here probably hoped we were,” interjected a gruff, dishevelled man in a brown shirt with a nasty scar across his face. One of his eyes was a milky grey indicating blindness. “But that’s probably not the case.”

“We’re here to get our stories judged. See if they’re worth continuing,” the green-cloaked man ahead of him said over his shoulder. “About the only thing we have in common is Equestria… for the most part.”

“Equestria? What the hell do ponies have to do with this?” Handy asked.

“You’ll figure it out. In the meantime, just enjoy the discerning company.” The large black-armoured knight to his left seemed to snort derisively from under his helmet. Handy, still full of questions, held his tongue for the time being.

The hall was huge. He could move freely, or he knew he could, but something compelled him to stand in place, that he was right where he should be. That and he somehow knew there was nowhere else to go just then in any case.

‘How?’ he wondered to himself. ‘How can I know this? Is this magic? Did someone manage to hack my mind with sorcery? Is this an old magic illusion?’

He studied those beside him some more. Each and every human standing there… well, the ones that were human in any case, all seemed to be just as content as he was to stay where they were. They stood there, shuffling their feet, an occasional cough there, a sneeze over there. A whispered murmur of quiet conversation could be heard on occasion breaking the otherwise impervious quietude of the great hall.

Every so often, another unlucky bastard ‘woke up’ like he did. A sudden shout, a startled cry, some muffled laughter and shouted calls from different parts of the hall as someone came to realise they were as trapped here as the rest of them. He began picking them out of the crowd after the first hour or so standing there. They were all uniformly greyscale in colour, as if some force had sapped all colour from them, and he was spying a kind of cartoonish representation of a living being, until suddenly, with a start, the colour returned to them all at once, and the stark-still, statuesque form sprung to sudden life.

One guy had apparently been drowning when he woke up, the water suddenly animating as he did as he awoke gasping for air as water soaked the stone beneath him. Another shuddered forward, having apparently been mid-fall from a great height when waking. Still another had apparently been on fire when he awoke, causing a great racket as he stumbled around, putting out little bits of flame on his clothes as he came to.

Handy found he didn’t mind standing there for the whole time. He was long since used to the eternal-leg-day that was his new life, and from standing for nearly entire days at a time stock-still in the courts of royalty when it was his duty to do so. Even so, he found himself not getting agitated or tired. Or hungry. Or thirsty. Come to think of it…

“Huh…” he said with sudden comprehension.

“Something the matter?” Apron Dude asked. Handy hadn’t bothered to ask his name, seeing as no one had bothered to ask him his, and he could respect the anonymous decorum.

“Nothing, just realised something. Anyone else feeling thirsty at all? How long have you been here?” he asked the men around him. Some shrugged; one looked up contemplatively.

“Long enough,” said James Earl motherfucking Jones beside him. Handy did a double take at the towering armoured figure and finally noticed why exactly the helmet seemed so familiar to him, despite the otherwise mediaeval aesthetic of the armour. He looked about and, sure enough, apart from the Final Fantasy person from before, there actually were quite a few people standing about dressed as some very recognisable characters from numerous games, movies, cartoons and, he was just going to assume, anime. He’d never really watched any of that, so he couldn’t be sure they weren’t just guys with absurdly terrible fashion sense and questionable choices in barbers they favoured.

Some were absolute dead ringers for the characters in question. Others, who Handy assumed their lack of faith would disturb him, looked slightly modified from what he knew like the man beside him. That wasn’t all, however.

For while there were a disturbing number of such persons of distinction in the hall he could see, some from quite a ways off either because they stood literally head and shoulders above everyone else, were floating, or were giving off so much light of their own it was impossible to mistake them, they were also some incredibly mundane-looking men and women.

Some, like the grocer behind him, or like the hobo in front of him, seemed relatively normal, just people in shirts and jeans you’d see on any given city street. Then there was the fucking US Marine Corps. Any given direction he cared to turn his head, he spotted more of them—soldiers fully kitted out in battledress, full equipment, backpacks, weapons, helmets and on and on. Some had their faces covered, some just dressed to their khakis as if they were in the middle of relaxing when they got whisked away.

Some were recognisable, with US flag patches on their shoulders. Some were not, however, wearing obscure and strange armour and uniforms he couldn’t place. Several looked downright science fiction with sloped, all-encompassing helmets with a visor obscuring their facial features. It was only then Handy realised he himself wasn’t wearing his own helmet and for once, he felt self-conscious about putting it back on. Others were like him, dressed up all knightly in various armours.

Some, however, didn’t look human at all. Not counting the ones that resembled known characters from stories he knew, there were a couple he could swear were just outright elves, judging by their ears. Several were honest-to-God ponies, like actual ponies on all four legs not counting the ones that uh… stood upright. He was pretty sure one guy three rows ahead of him was a dwarf, but he couldn’t be sure. A couple even had wings which obscured his vision in a certain direction.

There was one such person, across the main thoroughfare that bisected the great hallway, that appeared for all the world to be a woman… sort of. Made out of tree bark with mismatched wings. Handy at first thought she was another statuesque person who had yet to wake up until she moved and dispelled the disquieting illusion.

There were stranger beings aside, so bewildering in variety that Handy struggled to comprehend there being anything in common between them other than broad stroke commonalities amongst a scattering number among the throng. Except for one thing the green cloaked mage ahead of him had mentioned.

The only thing they had in common was Equestria.

This, for Handy, had terrifying implications. He had never seen nor heard of anyone here, nothing remotely like any of them apart from himself. Yet they all held Equestria in common. Did that mean they all had Earth in common as well? No, the pirate had said he had never been there, which raised all sorts of questions. Was there more than one world with Equestria on it? More than one Earth? Was this some timelines converging nonsense going on here?

He struggled with these existential questions before coming back to the existential realities he somehow knew to be true regardless. They were here to be judged, or at least their stories were to be. Their stories, their lives were, for better or worse, at least real to them if nothing else, experienced through expression to affect the lives of people above them in the hierarchical chain of being that apparently was existence. That meant everyone here all had that in common too. There couldn’t be more than one reality if they were all subject to a higher reality, after all.

And yet, every single one of them, aside from the occasional pirate, came from a world, an Earth that was not their world of origin. Did that mean the people above them were from an Earth as well? The Earth perhaps? Were they more real than he was? Or was this ‘story’ of his, the only intersection between his lower reality and their reality, for a brevity of time? What happened when it ended? Was anything before it even real? The old knight beside him was convinced that happened to be the case.

And while he could find holes in his argument, he couldn’t dismiss it. If they weren’t real in some sense, why would they even have a say in their own judgement? What defence could a hammer make for how it was used by the craftsman, after all, be it for building or murder? Their opinions would not matter.

The storm of internal questioning persisted for some time, with little to distract him from his ruminations. Despite the seemingly interminable time they had spent there already, and how it looked like they wouldn’t be leaving any time soon, they all mostly kept to themselves. Probably more than a good few of the more thinking sorts in the crowded hall were going through the same process he was working through, and still most of them hadn’t resorted to panicking, or violence, or trying to escape.

Then, rather suddenly and violently, the ceiling lit up with a blinding white light, evoking many shouts of surprise and cursing from the gathered throng as the blinding light receded to a dull, blue, glowing cloud that hung high and hid the ceiling from sight. Several sparkling shooting stars, as in quite literal physical, five-pointed bright yellow stars trailing sparkles and rainbows, erupted from the cloud and flew wildly over their heads.

There was a lot of shouting now, and a lot of rattling of weapons as some of the stars got a little too close to some of the antsier humans. The stars and their trailing entourage of glittering magical awfulness eventually seemed to tire of terrorising the humans and flew ahead to the far wall at the front of the hall to which they had all been facing. The great stone worked wall had been completely dark prior to this, untouched by disparate light of the magical chandeliers above them.

The stars coalesced, coming together in a great explosion of light, before suddenly flashing away as numerous trails of light erupted from the centre outwards and exploding into a cavalcade of colour as a gouache firework display announced the arrival of…

Handy wasn’t exactly sure what in the hell he was looking at. It was a scantily clad young woman in the most ridiculous, outlandish and literally clownish costume he could fathom, full of contrasting colour palettes and eye-bleeding designs that hurt to look at, trailing ribbons and bells and twirling a staff with a large yellow star with a plastic pink heart superimposed on top of it.

In explosions of candy-flavoured smoke appeared a band of cute critters, looking like living plushies of furry animals in parade uniforms playing a variety of musical instruments and belting out a popcorn and candyfloss rendition of When the Saints Go Marching In.

“Welcome heroes!” the magical lass announced with the most girlish laugh Handy ever had the displeasure of hearing being faked. The magical girl hung in the air and let herself slowly descend to a rising area of stone that slowly emerged out of the ground beneath her, almost as if it were a giant stage. She daintily stood on the ground and raised a hand to her head and tipped her magician’s hat up as she looked out across her captive audience with a performer’s most dazzling smile.

“Each and every one of you!” she began, looking across the crowd. “Chosen, destined, fated even to be right where you are needed most!”

Her dazzling smile seemed to become more stiff, her brow creasing, ever so slightly as she twirled and looked back and forth across them all. Once, twice, and again before continuing.

“A-After all!” A worried expression lighted upon her eyes, threatening to break the dazzling mask she wore. She was quickly looking from one bizarre caricature before her after another. “Wh-Why shouldn’t you be here!”

She slowed in the pace of her strutting dance across the stage. Now clearly looking openly worried, her smile broke and faltered.

“Right… where… you’re supposed to… be…” She slowed to a stop, the impromptu marching band playing for all they were worth behind her as the flamboyant witch-girl looked out upon the hall with the most distraught expression imaginable on her face. Her heterochromatic eyes, matching the gaudy face paint in reverse upon her overly cute features, betrayed the deepest despair as she dropped her staff from her hands, letting it roll across the stage.

“CUT!” she suddenly bellowed, a voice that had easily carried across the entire makeshift theatre hall. It was so loud that even Handy, who was midway towards the back, had to cover his ears briefly. The woman sure had a set of lungs on her. The magical girl rounded on the confused plushies, who were now looking at each other as only abominations of life could look at each other.

She started taking instruments off them and tossing them away, yelling at the plushies. “Alright, who fucked up!? This isn’t how it's supposed to go down! These aren’t even the right schmucks!” She shook a small bear-shaped plushie, whose soulless sewn-button eyes displayed the most piteous helplessness. “I prepared mentally for weeks to put up with the disgusting bullshit I always have to, and now I’m not even in the right place!? Who was on bridge control today? Who do I have to—What?”

A tiny hedgehog had waddled over to the girl and squeaked up something utterly indecipherable up to her.

“What do you mean she’s sick!? Since when do we get sick?! I didn’t agree to cover her shift! Who’s covering my shift!?” She tossed aside the bear, who crashed into a number of other plushies who were busy running around gathering discarded and broken instruments. “WHAT DO YOU MEAN GENERAL AMNESTY!”

She kicked the hedgehog, who flew at tremendous speed into a stony wall and exploded in a cloud of literal fluff and fabric.

“YOU CAN’T GIVE THOSE TRUCK-SMACKED FUCKS GENERAL AMNESTY! THERE’S TOO DAMN MANY OF THEM! SEEING SOME OF THEIR STORIES COME TO A PREMATURE END IS LITERALLY THE ONLY GOOD THING ABOUT MY JOB!”

“Uh, excuse me!” some poor bastard at the front of them all spoke up. It was a wonder the acoustics were good enough even Handy could make him out. The witch-girl suddenly snapped around and pointed an accusing finger down at the dark wizard.

“Oh don’t you worry, I’ll get to each and every one of you degenerate fucks in my own time, believe you me,” she said with the most insincere smile and the most distant looking of eyes. “Now be good and shut up while I figure out who to blame for this crap.”

She snapped her fingers and a large bean bag that was at least three times bigger than she was manifested in colourful clouds before landing on the stage with a loud ‘whump’.

She threw herself on it face-first and screamed into it in wild frustration.

“Alright!” She suddenly perked in determination as she pushed herself up from her sprawled position and settled cross-legged on the bean bag. She seemed to study them all for a long minute before letting out a long, world weary sigh. “Ah shit…. It's you guys.”

“The horse fuckers,” she muttered with tired resignation. “Alright, let's get this over with.”

She snapped her fingers and everyone went blind for a few seconds, judging by the shouts of surprise and complaint that erupted suddenly before their vision came back. The stage was transformed. That was to say, rather, it was cleaned up. Gone was the detritus of a magical marching band and their plushies and their ruined set up. Gone was the monstrously large bean bag and gone, apparently, was the magical girl.

In their place stood a large ornate wooden desk near the front of the stage, bordered to either side by mountains and mountains of what seemed to be bundles of paper, tagged with colourful clips and notes and swarmed by small magical lights.

Behind the desk sat a pure cream-white pony with deep, red, long-flowing mane. A spear-like horn rose from the crown her head and calm, regal blue eyes studied them all in imperious aloofness. She shuffled her wings, betraying her as yet another alicorn. She daintily raised a gold and silver-shod hoof to her muzzle and briefly coughed to clear her throat, and in a soothing, motherly voice that badly contrasted with the circus performer expressions of the magical girl that had stood in her place seconds ago, she spoke.

“I believe this form is more comfortable for most of you,” she said, the red-banded metal of her gold-rimmed petryal shining the altogether too bright candlelight from floating lanterns around her. There were actually more than a few appreciative responses to that coming from various places in the hall, with quite a few calling out. Handy swore he heard someone wolf-whistle and he looked back in confused disgust. The alicorn in front of them all narrowed her eyes in that person’s general direction and suddenly he got very quiet. “... A bit too much in some cases.”

“Okay, I’m not going to waste too much time with formality on this. I had this whole thing planned out, but you guys are the entirely wrong audience for it, despite your similarities to those other worthless degenerates, and now I’m no longer feeling up for it.” Her horn glowed and lifted up a number of documents before her. “Alright, let's see what we got here. Uh huh, uh huh… Riiight.”

“Okay, well before we get started, we were going to this alphabetically, but given the limited range of sub-genres you guys all have, I think it’ll be easier on us all if we have you re-organized into blocs and then handle it all one at a time. Well then!” She clapped her hooves together. “If you’re a soldier, sailor, astronaut, and you solve the problems you come across mostly through your profession, please move to the front of the hall.”

And with that, after a moment or two of hesitation, the various marines and soldiers, though notably not all of them, stepped out of line. Giving awkward apologies and pardons, they shuffled out to the centre of the hall to make their way to the designated location.

“If you solve your problems because of a mundane skill or knowledge set you had on Earth that's actually super useful in your new life, come to the front and take your place across the aisle from the last set.” She disinterestedly summoned what looked like a translucent screen of orange magic, with a rough woodworked border with false candles made out of the same magical light adorning the top of it. Handy couldn’t quite make it out, but it looked like she was playing some kind of card game on it.

“If you bought a Macguffin off a shady guy and then fell in a hole or something and ended up in your new life as a radically altered being, please move here.” She waved a hoof, her horn aglow, and a section of the hall was bathed in yellow light. Sir Vader beside him made to move, then paused, as if debating something, bouncing his head back and forth as he thought through it, looking around before finally making a decision.

“Excuse me,” the deep booming voice emerged from the helmet as he shuffled past the vampire and the crusader to make his way to the central aisle.

“If your life might as well be an article in a Playboy magazine, you can stand at the back!” A disappointing number of people, rather sheepishly, shuffled out of place and made their way back. Some of them even had the audacity to strut. He noticed several of the characters, who had moved to the near front with the others dressed as famous characters, had stepped back out into the aisle but were unsure whether they should head to the back or stay where they were.

It went on like that for a long while, the hall a cacophony of noise as hundreds of men and women moved back and forth to their respective places as best they could guess. Arguing and discussing where they were best supposed to be, they compared snippets of their own stories to one another to try to determine their place in the queue. Those adopted by ponies, those kidnapped by ponies, those invaded by ponies, those who invaded ponies, those reborn as ponies—that was a pleasant surprise for Handy to discover during the movements when he all but ran across a number of Celestias and Chrysalises.

At some point she called out for those who were summoned to Equestria on behalf of greater powers for some destined purpose. The knight beside him smiled and made to move before the alicorn at the head of the hall clarified the purpose was gambling, and he stood there, seemingly greatly annoyed. Instead, Handy noticed several others move to their new place—a griffon, a satyr with a long smoking pipe, and stranger things besides.

By the end of it, Handy was now on the opposite side of the aisle, having moved twice. The first time he moved was because he fit the criteria of a changed human, the second time because he had been summoned by a pony… which put him beside some rather interesting neighbours. And now, again, he was moving because the nature of his summon was neither accidental but instead consequential. That was a confusing criteria, because by default it should have meant everyone present, but apparently it meant that their summoning was a consequence of long-running machinations that didn’t necessarily involve him at all.

At that point, Handy just didn’t question it, and now for his complacency, he stood beside what seemed to be a blue and white robot girl with a large bladed polearm and what appeared to be a fucking scarecrow. The robot girl looked bored before suddenly shooting up straight, realising she was in the wrong place and leaped over, shouting her apologies as she leapt high over their heads into the central aisle and making her way back over to the section of, apparently real characters from famous stories. Handy tried not to think about any of the strange game, book and movie characters he saw may have actually also been from their own realities lower than even his, before getting stuck up here with the rest of them.

Did that mean all the stories he read, however terribly written, were actually somebody’s real life he was spying into? If not, then how could such characters now be here, in a supposedly higher reality along with his very real self, having their lives being viewed by those even higher than he was? Did this just continue up and down the great chain of existence indefinitely or was there a limit? Could someone higher just take his story, write their own, and the winds of fate would whisk him elsewhere? Di-

“Oh-kay! Looks like we have everyone sorted into the vaguest semblance of order!” The absolute chaos that was the throng of humans and once-humans who were not nearly done sorting themselves out into the new arrangements and the hall still awash in arguments belied the alicorn’s announcement. “Let's get this circus over and done with. Right, here’s how this is going to go down…”

“-I’m going to choose a group to begin with and then, alphabetically so the bean counters can be kept happy, I’ll deal with each one of you in turn and determine whether your stories are worth continuing or not. Get all that?”

There was a general murmur of discontent.

“Fantastic! Ahe-heh-hm!” She cleared her throat and affixed a pair of rimless spectacles across her muzzle as she drew up the first sheet of paper. “Okay, first I would like to get all these ‘slice-of-life’ types out of the way. So! Would a Mister… A-non step forward please? Full name Anonymous?”

No one stepped forward at first, and everyone looked around, wondering who was being called. Eventually, from straight up the back rows came a simply-dressed man in shirt and slacks, though when Handy blinked once, he was then wearing a simple black suit with red tie. That was not what was concerning.

“Why… Why is he green?” Handy whispered. The scarecrow shrugged. “And why doesn’t he have a face?”

At that, the scarecrow actually did look back at the vampire.

“What are you talking about? He clearly has a question mark for a face,” the scarecrow said, half-laughing.

“I don’t know what either of you are talking about. He looks normal to me,” said some absolutely hulking knight that had taken the robot girl's place when Handy hadn’t been paying attention.

This confusion was matched by the look of absolute bewilderment that adorned the face of the alicorn, whose slack jaw and wide-eyed gaze led to her spectacles slowly slipping from her face and bounced along her desk as the magical projection in front of her winked out of existence.

The strutting, confident, out of place individual came to a stop at the front of the hall, just before the stage, fists on his hips, looking up confidently at the mare. For her part, she shook herself back to her senses and gathered her things.

“You… It can’t be. Okay look, I think you may have made a mistake. I asked for the slice-of-lifers to go first, not the porn addicts.” The green man remained unmoved. “So unless you have a slice of life element dominating your story, I think you might want to march your sorry, indistinct ass to the back of the hall again before you find out what authority I actually have to deal with smartasses who test me.”

Still, the international man of misery and mystery stood his place. The alicorn narrowed her eyes.

“You… don’t happen to have more than one story, do you?” Handy couldn’t see, but he could tell the man smiled. The alicorn threw her head back and let out a groan, laying a foreleg over her face and waving with the other one. “Alright, let's get through this. How many stories do you have?”

The green man snapped his fingers, and the beeping of a reversing truck suddenly caught everyone’s attention. Looking around, sure enough, a literal garbage truck slowly backed its way up the aisle towards the stage driven by… the green man. Looking back, sure enough, he was standing at the head of the hall as well. The look of utter despair on the alicorn’s face was a site to behold as the truck finally stopped, lifted its charge, and dumped a tsunami of loose paper sheets that flooded the front of the hall. It washed through and around the feet of Anonymous who, like the Colossus of Rhodes, stood unmoved before the apocalypse.

A number of shouts came from the front rows as over a dozen people suddenly pushed back to get out of the way of the onrushing flood of paper sheets. The alicorn slammed her face down on the table in defeat, her sparkling, glorious mane flowing in a non-existent wind. She shifted her face and glared down at the arrogant man with one lidded eye.

“... It is you, isn’t it?” She lifted her head and glared down at him. “Even if I were doing my proper shift, I’d still see you, wouldn’t I? You’re him, the same eyeless, messy-haired shoe stain with a million and one stories filled with all sorts of impossible nonsense and the most unjustifiably lurid debauchery.”

Anonymous merely yawned.

“DON’T THINK YOU CAN HIDE FROM ME UNDER YOUR FILTHY GREEN SKINSUIT, YOU NAMELESS SNAKE! I KNOW WHAT YOU’RE ABOUT!” At that, Anonymous simply checked his non-existent watch and tapped his foot, waiting. The mare fumed impotently, then screamed in frustration. She summoned a comically large stamp with alternating coloured ink—Handy was almost certain it was some kind of strobed flashlight at first before he saw it in action. Lifting one of the sheets from the floor with her magic, she scanned the title, set the stamp to red, and mercilessly rammed it into the poor, unsuspecting paper, leaving a massive, red letter C on its face

She held it up for the hall to see. “Hah! Cancelled, how do you like that!?”

Anon simply gave a nonplussed reaction, nodding his head as if considering it, and turned around to the garbage truck driver and saluted him. Garbage truck Anon saluted in return, sniffed, sat back in the cab of his truck and slowly, mournfully, drove his way back down the aisle, all the while playing a broken rendition of Flowers of the Forest out of his truck’s radio.

A bright white light appeared at the back of the hall as two great doors opened that simply weren’t there before, revealing a glorious luminescence beyond through which none could see past. Slowly, gloriously, Anonymous drove off into that wondrous abyss, never to be seen again.

Well, unless you turned back around and saw the smug fucker still standing right before the alicorn as he had been before, not a care in the world crossing his ambiguous features. The alicorn fumed, ground her teeth, set the sheet on fire, and summoned up the next story, scanned it, flipped the stamp in the air, and hit it with the fury of an angry god.

Completed? An Anon appeared dressed in a suit and was sucked off to the side by a suddenly appearing door that tore the poor sap into it in a torrent of sucking air. On Hiatus? The roof opened up and a number of ropes, pulleys and hooks descended and, with a life of their own, grabbed a version of Anonymous and yanked him into the darkness above. Incomplete? The floor opened up and swallowed up another Anon.

The alicorn was a vortex of magical fury, numerous magical stamps appearing and disappearing around her as she furiously judged dozens of stories concurrently, as rapidly as she could, trying her absolute damnedest with as little fanfare as possible to tear through the disturbingly large bibliography that was, apparently, merely one simple man’s life.

Anon, for his part, looked like he was having the time of his life. Swaying from side to side to an unheard beat with completely unnecessary sunglasses, hand raised palm upwards, the other swiping sheets off it one after the other, which fell across the floor and summoning one hapless incarnation of Anonymous after another as each in turn was judged by the mare of mercilessness.

After a while, a dozen of Anons were casually striding back down the aisle between the whole lot of them, laughing, whistling, joking as they strode off to the white abyss beyond, uncaring of their brothers being whisked away elsewhere. Handy was horrified by the display, and he was far from the only one. That was their fate, right there. The anonymous peril of white nothingness behind them, being sucked into darkness to their sides, pulled into the ceiling above, or… fall to the depths below.

Handy took a look back at the abyss behind him, and the terrifying reality of his situation, somehow, only really hit him then. If he was real after all, would he still be if he walked into that white expanse? Did that even count as an escape? The second the truck and the Anons had crossed that threshold, they were gone. They couldn’t even hear them. Is that what cancellation did? Would he simply cease to exist? He turned back to the show before him and considered his situation seriously.

How exactly was he expected to defend himself? The mare wasn’t even asking any questions. She was bordering on judging these stories sight unseen and tossing numerous versions of the same man to God only knew what fate.

“How can there be more than one of him?” Handy asked absently. No one answered him as the clown show continued to its inevitable conclusion.

The mare, disheveled and exhausted, glared down at the frustratingly chipper human who, for his part, held aloft a single bundle of papers. She levitated it over to her desk, flicked through it, looked back at Anonymous, speed read more of the story, summoned another magical screen before her and scrolled through a rather long wall of text. She scanned its contents again and again, looked at the story, and looked back at the green man and took a deep breath.

She stamped a great, massive, green letter C on the pages, tossed it behind her back, summoned a small, golden, laminated card and drifted it down to the human, who took it gratefully.

“Take your filthy prize and go. Go in peace, but for the love of God just… just go.” She pointed her hoof to the doors off to the side of the hall. The great doors opened to an empty blackness beyond, as once again, for the umpteenth time that hour, a great sucking vortex of air tugged at the clothes of the subject human, who stood, gestured at the judge with a lazy three-fingered salute, and for the first time… spoke.

“See ya around, ba—” The mare lifted him up in a cloud of her glowing white magic and shoved him off his feet into the waiting vortex of air as he disappeared into the darkness, and the great doors slammed shut.

“Next!”

And with that absolutely preposterous demonstration of their fates out of the way, the judgement of their stories began in earnest for the first time. True to her word, she started with those humans whose stories were more… slice of life. That was a turn of phrase Handy wasn’t familiar with. By definition, weren’t all their stories a slice of their lives? Wasn’t that why they were all here in the first place? He disregarded it as he watched the proceedings unfold and learned that the green man’s shenanigans were the exception and not the norm.

Each human who strode to his or her judgement was summarily quizzed about the nature of their lives, questioned about their actions and judged by an obscure and seemingly arbitrary criterion that didn’t even apply equally between stories of the same genre. Handy struggled to see the difference between one story and another seemingly identical story, where one was cancelled, and another was deemed incomplete.

The logic also didn’t seem to apply equally to stories the judge actually responded favourably to. She just as readily condemned one story to incompletion, and thus falling to the floor below them, that she seemed to have enjoyed and got on well with the human in front of her, as she was to deem a story she despised as on hiatus and dragged off into the darkness of the ceiling above them. Such were the fates of the green apron-wearing individual and the foul-mouthed pirate Handy had encountered when he first awoke respectively.

Handy had been in courtrooms before. He’d been before judges before, and was slowly dreading his own time before the gavel, now with seemingly arbitrary rules and jurisprudence to determine his fate. An existential fate to compound his existential predicament, the only solace being was that it seemed everyone else here had already accepted it as inevitable as well. He could bullshit it. He certainly saw a number of others bullshit their way through their own judgements, outlining the absurdities of their lives in Equestria and beyond its borders. That seemed to work about as equally as well as those who tried to take a serious, direct, and mature approach to defending their actions and lives.

Handy liked to gamble when he knew what the odds were, but he really couldn’t discern what his odds were here, and it was getting distressingly close to his turn.

The judge had burned her way through the soldierly contingent of humans, cut a hole through the contingent that were invading or being invaded by ponies, and worked her way through the characters that were once human and then became famous characters from fiction. The only upset Handy noted was Sir Star Wars being yanked upwards to the hiatus ceiling, tearing through his bonds, and then plummeting into the incomplete trap door below. The judge’s only response to the unorthodox occurrence was to shrug her horsey shoulders and carry on with her day job.

Once she demolished the contingent of characters who actually were famous characters, her attention at last turned towards the adventure contingent, which sadly was the one Handy most accurately fit as best he could determine. It had, in reality, taken uncounted hours altogether to get to where they were now, but it didn’t feel like it. None of them felt tired, or hungry, or thirsty, or anything else really. It all felt like it was progressing at a blistering pace despite the hundreds and hundreds of unscrupulous characters that were being judged.

“That’s me,” the scarecrow to his left said as he made his excuses and made his way to the aisle. Handy hadn’t been paying attention when his name was called, stepping back and allowing the literal Halloween costume shuffle past him, lifting what looked to be a violin case up in the air above their heads so it wouldn’t get in people’s way. As the line filtered back into some semblance of order, the scarecrow exited their contingent and made his way merrily to the front of the hall. Handy looked around again.

There were some he recognised from when he first woke up. The green-cloaked, bearded mage from before was off to his right and up two rows from him. Behind him and to his left some ways back was the weird angel-tree woman. Standing beside her was some woman in armour with ridiculously long blonde hair in a voluminous ponytail. She seemed distinctly uncomfortable standing there.

He sadly couldn’t spot the crusader from before anywhere. He really could have used the kind encouragement the old man had given him. Before too long, the scarecrow’s time was up, his story told, and his judgement rendered. With a flourishing bow from the waist to both the judge and to the rest of the hall, the costumed caperer produced the violin from his case with a flourish and began to string a sad tune to play himself off. Unfortunately, the judge pulled a comically large lever, and the poor bastard fell to his doom in the trap door below, his stitched-too-many-times hat floating in the air and lazily drifted into the hole after its erstwhile master before the trap doors closed once more.

“Alright, next up is Handy… Is this a joke? Okay, whatever, Handy Haywatch—Who the fuck gives porn names to adventure characters? This had better not be what I think it is…”

Handy pretended not to hear the judge’s muttered recriminations as he made his way passed innumerable suspiciously dressed and vaguely dangerous characters of his own contingent as he pushed his way to the central aisle, almost bouncing off what he swore was some kind of carpenter as he exited. He looked at the man in confusion. He could’ve sworn the guy was one of the slice of lifers from way before who had fallen through the trap door. Seemed he somehow stuck around and was apparently chatting with several other characters still waiting their turn before opting to fall down the pit.

Whatever, it wasn’t Handy’s concern. He excused his way past the craftsman and made his way to the front. He was keenly aware of dozens of eyes upon him, judging him in his turn just as he had hundreds of others before him. Before long, he stood before the disquietingly equine judge, shifting uncomfortably in his cloak and winter clothing. The judge just sat right where she was sipping out of her stupidly large cup of what he presumed was coffee, going by the smell. As the quiet lingered as she placed the cup down, she shuffled some papers summoned over from the mountains behind her, lifted to her courteously by the servile points of light.

It was then Handy felt excruciatingly exposed for all the world to see, in a way he hadn’t ever before. Suddenly he didn’t feel the weight of dozens of eyes upon him, but thousands, from everywhere at once. Piercing him right to his soul and pinning him in place.

“Alright, so if I am reading this right…” The alicorn summoned forth not one, not two, but five magical screens full of text in a script Handy could not identify. She scrolled through them all simultaneously, yet at different speeds, pausing once or twice to reread a specific detail or another before continuing. There were what seemed to be photographic snapshots of his life from angles Handy most certainly didn’t remember there being a camera present for and, which is more disturbing, images of him with people he had no recollection of ever meeting before. Was… Was she reading ahead in his story? Was that possible? Was his fate predestined and his story already finished? Why then was he even being judged at all? Or worse, were his memories shot to hell and he was simply not remembering parts of his life? Ho—

“Ah right, okay, so Handy isn’t your real name then. You’re one of those.”

“Uhm…” Handy began, a bit uncertain. “I’m sorry, I’m not sure how this is supposed to go exactly. I’m one of those what?”

“Doesn’t matter, anyway.” She cleared her throat and waved her hoof, and the screens moved aside so she could look down imperiously upon the vampire. “So! What's your gimmick?”

“Excuse me?”

“What's your deal; what's your shtick; what makes you tick; what makes you stand out? Come on, Mister Originality, I don’t have all day. Chop chop!” The alicorn clapped her gold and silver shod hooves together in sharp clacks.

“I uh… Ahem. Right. I uh…” Handy struggled to think of a response that’d be exactly what this mare would want to hear. There were an alarming number of commonalities he’d noticed between his life and hundreds of others, and so struggled to think of what precisely made him different from any of them. He came to a conclusion soon enough, but it was one he’d normally never consider discussing in polite company. Then again, this was hardly polite company.

“I’m a… I’m a vampire. I guess.”

“Ohhh, my how original!” The alicorn snorted. “Haven’t heard that one before!”

She paused for a moment, summoned a checklist out of thin air in a poof of candy-flavoured smoke just like she had back when she appeared as a magical girl, and magically flicked through dozens of pages.

“Huh, yeah, actually there’s less of your kind than I thought there’d be. Weird.”

“What's that supposed to-?”

“Anywho, you’re a discount Dracula, what else?” She casually tossed aside her checklist, which bounced off the ground once before exploding into sparkles and disappearing.

“I guess I’m a knight,” Handy continued.

“Knight with a porn name, got it.” She scribbled something down on a piece of paper laid flat on her desk.

“My name is not a po—”

“Oh then, what is it then? Says here you chose your own name. Who the hell names themselves something so easily misconstrued?”

“It was a joke, alright!”

“And you kept it up?”

“Look, I thought it was funny at the time. The other guy didn’t get it and—”

“Oh and for the love of—You woke up in the Everfree? Really?”

“How is that my fault!?”

“And then you went into Ponyville. Of fucking course you did.” She disgustedly scrolled up one of the magical screens, sipping angrily from her oversized mug.

“What? No I didn’t,” Handy answered indignantly.

“Yes you did, literally the first thing you did after getting out of the forest. Says right here, see?” She tossed her head, her horn alight with magic as the screen levitated down before Handy. The poor bastard had a face full of incomprehensible runes all but pressed against his eyes. He pushed the screen away, which was weirdly solid and warm to the touch.

“If you’d look closer…” Handy said, now getting thoroughly annoyed. He gripped the underside of the impossibly thin magical screen and flipped it back upwards to the judge, where it slowed before hitting her, flipped and rotated itself until it was properly facing her again. “You’ll see that I did not, in fact, go into Ponyville.”

The judge rolled her eyes and scrolled through the runes, and then frowned.

“Huh, so you didn’t. You went back in and spoke to Zecora. Interesting.”

“The forest witch?”

“The zebra, yes.” She waved away the screen dismissively. “And then you met a secret prince, yadda yadda, had a misadventure where you got beaten up and enslaved by a bunch of dogs—real classic move there, following in Rarity’s footsteps.”

“Who the hell is Rarity?” Handy asked, bewildered.

“Almost sacrificed yourself but let out a great evil instead, yadda yadda—”

“Okay, in my defence, I couldn't have known it was—wait, the voice was evil?”

“How many mysterious, serpentine voices emanating from clearly deeply buried and hidden magical artefacts do you know are ever a good thing?” Handy didn’t answer. “That's what I thought. Anyway—”

“Kidnapped by changelings, really?” she asked derisively.

“I think you’re skipping the par—”

“No one cares about Spurbay, Handy,” she interjected, almost sounding bored. “Tortured by Chrysalis, yadda yadda, broke out and battered her. Aren’t you a big man?”

“Are you really feeling sorry for bloody Chrysalis in this conversation?” Handy demanded.

“After some of the stories I see her in, kinda yeah,” the judge answered. “Oh, a big skeledragon is next.”

“Story of my life.” Handy sighed.

“Unfortunately for me, yeah. Aaaand you drop a building on it. Not the most original way to beat a dragon, but at least you didn’t use a bullshit power to do it, so you got that going for you at least.”

“About that, by what standards am I being judged here? Like what exactly do I have to prove?”

“You standards are: shut up, I am talking.” She lifted a bundle of papers and flipped a sheet. “Oh, and you kept the amulet like an idiot.”

“I didn’t know what it was!”

“Still kept it when you figured it out then, didn’t you?”

“I tried to get rid of it!”

“Not hard enough. Blah blah, big fight on a train, blah blah.”

“Are you just going to ignore the entire bit in the Badlands town?”

“Yep, nothing important even happened there anyway.”

“It's where I got my armour!” Handy protested. “It's the first time I met Crimson! She’s important right?”

“If you say so, vampy boy. Oh wait, you weren’t one of those yet.”

“That happened on the train,” Handy elucidated.

“Right, the train, all because of a misunderstanding—how typical of you unoriginal blights on humanity—led to the Princess sending royal guards, yadda yadda. They attacked the train, international incident, you got into a fight with a bat pony, and she bit you. Kinky.”

“Fuck you.”

“You wish. Okay, yadda yadda, irrelevant context, irrelevant context, boring, boring—”

“I’m sorry, but how is the most consequential night of my life an irrelevant context!?” Handy sputtered in disbelief. She ignored him.

“Had an existential crisis, went to Griffonia, blah blah, fought with the actual main character.”

“Shortbeak!?”

“Sure. Politics, economics, blah blah, bullshitted your way into nobility—nicely done by the by—got a lot of land, blah blah, got roped up into going back to Equestria and meeting the princesses, wherein you did absolutely nothing to clear up the misunderstandings.”

“Hey now, I was under no obligation to trust—”

“And proceeded to mess with Twilight’s head—again, nice. Oh, and picked a fight with Blueblood. Gotta say, this is not looking good.”

“Hey now, that asshole—”

“Had it coming. Yeah yeah, that's what they all say. Still no reason for nearly every single one of you to do the same damn thing like it was a flippin’ bandwagon.” She took a long draught of her coffee and let out a satisfied breath. “Blah blah, made a deal with Fancy Pants with far-reaching narrative consequences, tournament arc, witchy dealings, Pinkie Pie if she was a slightly less annoying deer and, oh dear, poor Trixie. Why do all of you guys always treat her so dirty?”

“Who the fuck is Trixie!?” Handy asked bewilderedly, having never even heard of someone called that in his new life.

“See? You don’t even care!” she said, feigning being wounded. “Always in the background, never acknowledged directly. You didn’t even know you bit her, did you?”

“I what?!” Handy exclaimed.

“Typical vampires, always chasing that next high; don’t even think about the girls you burn through. How tragic…” She sniffled through crocodile tears.

“Okay, I don’t know what you think you’re getting at, but it's not like that and why do you even care!?” Handy demanded.

“Sympathy for a fellow show woman, I guess,” she said in a completely conversational tone, cocking her head to the side in thought. “Moving on, blah blah, fought with evil wizard—”

“Warlock.”

“—Fuck you, got sent to a magical hell forest, something something, racist deers, something something Fairy Lady, got out of the forest. Then there was a Halloween episode.”

“A what?” Handy asked.

“The thing in the town with the house with the kids and the pumpkin.”

“Ohhhh, oh right,” Handy said, having genuinely forgotten.

“Yeah, your swordspony and changeling companion got trapped in a haunted town while that was happening.”

“Really? They never told me that.”

“They never tell you a lot of things that would surprise you.” Handy snorted derisively. “Anyway, that's why there’s now a subplot of a lot of kids that's gonna bite you in the ass down the line.”

“I’m sorry, what?”

“Yeah, I’m skipping over a lot of the subplots you got going on in this absolute mess of a file you got here, but that one I’m actually kinda looking forward to. You know, if I don’t cancel you, I mean.”

“I… right,” Handy said, processing all that she just admitted to. “Hypothetically, if I get out of here alive, am I going to remember any of this?”

“Man, I hope not. I’m heading right for the spirits when this is all said and done to help me forget. I’d recommend you do the same if you recall any of this.”

“What spirits?” Handy asked, genuinely concerned he’d need to go out and seek out still further mystical nonsense.

“Usually I spend the night with Mister Daniels, but I’ve been known to fool around on deck with Captain Morgan too,” she said, chuckling. Handy looked at her in abject disappointment. “Alright Mister Stick-Up-His-Arse, have it your way. Let's burn right through this then.”

The screens lit up a bright white and her eyes began to glow as the text scrolled at blinding speed and the papers around her were ripped apart and sent flying in a blizzard of wood pulp as she went right through his entire story.

“Had a confrontation in Blackport with the Black Isles and Equestria, blew up Manehatten, spent like a month living like a vagabond, went back to Leipodopolis because apparently you can't get enough of that good ol’ changeling lovin’, stopped a war by accident that you had inadvertently almost started by accident, had a nice long rest, fucked off back to Equestria after twisting Twilight’s horsey leg in an extortionate trade. You actually went to the Dragonlands and… left it off there for four years.”

“....You what?”

“Yeah that's where your story is right now, sorry to say.”

“But… I haven’t gone to the Dragonlands. In fact, I’ve only just got done seeing Twilight and the ponies off,” Handy said in confusion. The judge frowned down at him, scrolled through another screen, and comprehension dawned on her.

“Ohhhh, right right, I see what's happened. You got snagged before your actual stopping point in your story.”

“Stopping off point? What the hell do you mean? How can you stop off at a point in your life?”

“Look my man, I don’t make the rules. That's just how things work. Your story stopped just after wrapping up in the Dragonlands. Now it's unusual for someone to get taken at a point before the up-to-date point of their story, but it's not unheard of. Anyway, sorry for the spoilers, I guess.”

“Spoilers!? You didn’t even tell me anything!” Handy protested.

“What's there to tell, really?” The judge leaned her head on a hoof and looked down at him. “Your story is a dime a dozen adventure story that long overstays its welcome where nothing much really happens.”

“Nothing—! Are you kidding me!? I barely get a week where some bullshit doesn’t get in the way of me and a peaceful life!”

“Cry me a river, big man. Oh boo hoo, I’m a vampire. Boo hoo, I lose money as quickly as I get it. Boo hoo, I have another fight to the death this week. Boo hoo, I’m stuck underground again.” She leaned forward. “You see what I’m getting at?”

“Oh, don’t give me that tripe! I’ve been listening to you judge other stories all day. You don’t mind repetition—half the slice of life stories you absolutely loved were almost all about the same thing!”

“At least half of them had a relatable character that wasn’t so easy to hate.”

“Oh, so it's personal, then?” Handy sneered.

“It would be if I could be brought to care enough but I don’t. ‘Sides, what I personally think, believe it or not, has little bearing on how I judge things,” she said dismissively, raising her stamp and the multihued ink turning to a dreaded, dark orange H. “You’ve been left hanging for four years. Pretty sure this is obviously a hiatus that’s no good to anyone up top anymore, so anyway-”

“Wait, wait just a minute! What do you mean four years? I don’t remember—”

“Well, you wouldn’t. It hasn’t happened to you yet, and now I guess it won’t. Or it will. I forget how the metaphysics work after this. Have fun in development hell, I guess.” She raised the huge stamp high above her head and brought it down with the fury of a falling star upon the collection of sheets that represented Handy’s baleful life. Handy watched it fall, and felt a pit form in his stomach in the bare second it took for the stamp to fall and hit the sheets of paper—

And promptly burst into flames.

Handy had backed up nearly half a dozen feet from the surprise combustion. The judge simply looked at the burn mark on the sheets of paper, dumbfounded. Not long after that, the awkward silence was broken by the light ring of a bell, and a green icon appeared on one of the magical displays. The judge summoned it forward and studied the notification very closely.

“Well I’ll be damned…” she said lowly.

“What? What is it?” Handy asked, once he got his breathing under control and steadied himself. It was one thing to get the dreaded orange H and have to walk his way back to the other end of the hall and walk into that good light and whatever mystery lay beyond. It was quite another to have discovered, rather forcibly, if he could actually die in this disquieting hall of judgement and then really have a lesson in existential dread forced upon him to compound his misfortune.

She didn’t answer for a long time, simply staring at the screen, before slowly, idly almost, flicking through several sheets of paper and scrolling several other screens. She hummed to herself in contemplation as the vampire, now growing annoyed once more, patiently awaited the news.

“It seems… you aren’t on hiatus after all.” She sounded almost disappointed.

“What do you mean? What the hell does any of this mean!?” Handy demanded. “What difference does any of this make? Is any of this even real?”

“Uggghhh, how many times do I have to go through this tiresome routine? Look, Mister Handjob—”

“Handy!”

“Fangfucker, whatever, look, here’s the skinny. Your story? Just picked up again.”

“The hell does that mean?”

“It means, Alucard, that your story is no longer on pause. As in it’s continuing, it’s leaving the pit stop, your train is pulling out of the station of nine and three quarters, yer a wizard ‘Arry.”

“How the hell can that be!? You said it was stopped for four years! Four years that haven't even happened apparently!”

“Well not for you they haven’t. How long do you think your story’s been going on for, really?” the judge asked, now smiling knowingly. Handy raised his hand to answer but caught himself. The screens he had spied had shown images of him with creatures he had never met before, griffons, ponies, alicorns, and other things beside. His story had apparently ‘stopped’, whatever that even meant, after his trip to the Dragonlands, which at least told him he survived the misadventure, but that meant that not only was he currently out of space, he was also outside of time. But not so out of time that he couldn’t be saved by a literal bell.

“Uh… Depends on where we’re counting from, I guess.” She laughed at his cautious response.

“Good answer. But in reality, it's been going on for some time, and it really was time something was done about it one way or another. Fortunately for you, or not if you prefer to be pessimistic about it, some folk up there thinks your story is still worth sharing.” She gestured to the strange green rune that appeared on the magical projection. “Your story just advanced to another arc.”

“I… It did? What happened to me?”

“Ah, ah, ah! No more spoilers. I told you enough already, which I can only get away with because they’ve already happened.”

“Right, but am I really going to remember any of it?”

“No, but I would really rather not get chewed out for it. Besides, like I said, how I personally feel about a story has little to do with how I judge it and right now…” she lifted her hooves upwards in resignation, “…that judgement has changed. Lucky you.”

“Wait, if what you think of a story has no bearing on its judgement, then what the hell is even the point of any of us being here, having our lives and traumatic scars raked across the critical coals, and trying to justify ourselves to you?” Handy demanded, flabbergasted at the turn of events. She snorted.

“Catharsis, I guess,” she explained.

“Catharsis for who!?”

“Well, anyone but you really. Anyway, if we’re done here, I’ve got entire worlds to judge, so if you don’t mind...” She lifted another comically oversized stamp out from behind her desk. “You have been keeping everyone waiting quite long enough, I would wager. Let’s not meet again.”

“Wait, before I go, there’s another thing.” The judge let out a disgusted noise.

“Fiiine, the condemned gets one last question.”

“The whole worlds’ thing, higher and lower—whatever. We’re all from different Earths right, different realities? Does that mean there’re different versions of every one of us, going through all this horseshit infinitely? Different timelines, multiversal nonsense—is this some comic book reboot nonsense duct taped to reality or what even is all of this? I don’t care if I don’t remember any of this. I still want an answer!”

The judge paused for a moment as if considering his question. She tapped her chin in thought and hummed. She actually ducked beneath her desk and started tossing numerous objects out from the back of it out into the mountains of paperwork behind her—ink quills, empty binders, comically large hammers, a stupidly large plushie of her magical girl form, a fucking cannon.

At last, she emerged from beneath the desk, a beige lampshade adorning her head and covering her eyes. She tilted it backwards so she could see as she lifted an incredibly heavy-looking, ornately decorated tome of unfathomable knowledge onto the desk with a resounding boom as it landed.

She actually struggled in lifting the book open with her physical hooves and used her magic to flip through its infinite pages until coming somewhere near its halfway point. She pressed her hoof to the pages and searched for her quarry, and let out an ‘A ha!’ when she found it.

“Ok yeah, multiverse theory. That's not true for you,” she said with a victorious smile on her face.

“... Well, what the hell does that mean?”

“It means it's time for you to get the hell out of my hall, mister.” She slammed her stamp down on his bundle of papers. She levitated a golden laminated card down to him. He took it from her magical grasp and looked at it. It was actually made of solid gold and covered unnecessarily in plastic lamination. Imprinted upon its surface was his name, as in his actual birth name, age, nationality, and other details in plain English alongside innumerable other runes on both sides he couldn’t read.

“So… that's it then?” he asked. “I get to… carry on?”

“Congratulations, may your woes be many and your days be few, or whatever it is the kids are saying these days. I don’t care; I’m not human.”

“I guess I’ll just… go then.” Handy clasped the golden card in his gloved hand, trying to process and internalise the absolutely maddening amount of information he had just been given. He turned and started making his way back.

“Hey, hey hey, where do you think you’re going?” she suddenly demanded, Handy turned back to her, looking between her and the glorious light of freedom at the back of the hall.

“Into the light?” She shook her head.

“No, no, no, that's only for if your story got cancelled. No freedom for you, I’m afraid.” She held aloft her stamp and the slightly less angry orange capital I that emblazoned its bottom side. “You’re going right back where you came from.”

Handy’s eyes widened in horror as he suddenly remembered, looking at the stone beneath him which had only just started to shift. He looked up at the judge one last time before his fate was sealed.

“Let's not meet again, okay? Please and thank you. Next!” were the last things he heard before the floor opened up from beneath him, and Handy plummeted into the endless darkness. Limbs flailed in helplessness as the light disappeared further and further away above him.

Soon, all he knew was perfect darkness.

--=--

Handy awoke with a start and tremendous pain in his skull that throbbed awfully. He was still in darkness, but now was aware of how he was suddenly freezing cold, numb almost. Oh, he was also suffocating.

He thrashed and emerged from the snow drift gasping for breath, in the middle of the street of Skymount. Passing griffons were muttering to themselves, seeing the local baron having been passed out in the snow in the middle of the day. Several brave souls had even drawn themselves closer to see if he was alright. He stumbled to his feet, shaking off the snow and the piercing cold, looking around blearily and trying to get his bearings.

He was in the middle of a Skymount street, covered head to foot in snow and was unsteady on his feet. Something warm was trickling down the front of his face. Lifting his gloved hand to press against it, he discovered an unsightly bump that absolutely throbbed with pain upon his touch, and he quickly withdrew his hand. He discovered a trickle of blood on his leather gloves… and something else too.

A small, perfectly rectangular slab of snow, half-frozen solid in his hand that quickly began to melt as the hot blood from his head ran down his fingers and mingled with the frozen water. The strangely-shaped clump of snow quickly disappeared and fell apart, melting into water in his hand with the remainder falling to the ground.

For the life of him, he couldn’t understand why that bothered him.

“Handy?” someone called ahead. Handy looked up, still woozy from where he had hit his head, and saw someone poke their head out from a warm-looking building that was merely a few feet ahead of where he now stood.

Jacques peered from the door of the tavern he had been carousing in, waiting for his friend. He spotted Handy, feet buried in snow, shivering and bleeding from a small cut from a nasty bump on his forehead. Jacques had to try very hard not to laugh.

“Handy, it was your idea to go out to get drunk,” the unicorn chastised, smiling as he trotted over to the human. “I didn’t think you started without me already.”

“I… What?” Handy asked, slowly piecing together the events of the day. That's right, he had found Jacques in one of his haunts after making a deal with the ponies. Something to do with a sick dragon. It didn’t matter; he was annoyed and wanted to drink away his troubles, so he had pressured Jacques, the nearest ne’er-do-well he had on hand, to go out drinking with him.

The pony had just gone on ahead of him while Handy had stopped to take care of some business with a merchant they had passed before he caught up to him. Some snow had fallen off of a nearby roof just in front of him, and in his hurry, he had just tried to push his way past it and then—

Huh. And then he fell. He gingerly touched the bump on his forehead, wincing at the sensitive area of flesh. Apparently, he had hit his head pretty badly too. The snow must have cushioned the impact just enough to save his life as much as it was responsible for causing him to trip in the first place.

“You look like you need to sit down and have a chat with some spirits, mon ami,” Jacques joked. Handy started and looked at the pony in surprise.

“Spirits?” he asked, suddenly very alert but not understanding what had set him off.

“Qui, a little bit of rum, a little bit of gin, something strong to warm you up inside and out and get you just awake enough that you don't fall asleep and get a concussion.”

“I… I’m not sure that's… that's good… Fuck it.” Handy gave in, shaking his head and wincing at the sudden pain. He glanced up blearily at the sunlight and brushed off the snow from his shoulders. “I think I’m done for the day. You mind paying for the first round?”

“Yes, but seeing as you probably can’t think straight at the moment, I probably should anyway, no?” Jacques said, chuckling. He turned, pulling his own cloak tighter about him as he led the way to the tavern. Handy looked down at his glove, wiping the meltwater on the leather with the thumb of his hand and looked at the ground beneath him.

He grimaced, took in a breath, and went off to have a nice long chat with some spirits.

Though in truth, as it often was, it’d be the spirits doing most of the talking.

Author's Note

TFW you get your shitposting licence renewed

Happy New Year lads and lasses, and I hope you all had a great and merry Christmas as well!

Yeah sorry I don't have a main chapter out right now, and I haven't quite finished my Dragon Arc rewrites, but this is my little Christmas gift from me to you, to tide you over as we enter into the new year. And welcome to technically the first chapter of my Uncanoned sub-series.

Don't get comfortable because the only thing that defines the Uncanoned sub-series is their non-canonicity, and its basically my excuse to write shitpost chapters to upload whenever I'm having a slow month and you guys can have some funnies. I have already went back and retitled my old April Fool's Chapters as Uncanoned, so don't worry, they're still there, just with Uncanoned in front of them.

You can tell this is non-canon because I broke some of my own setting rules to make this chapter possible, have fun spotting your favorite Cameo if I remembered to put them in the background there.

In any case,I was going to upload this next week on January 6th alongside my OTHER planned Uncanoned Christmas chapter AND a new main story chapter as a sort of bulk last minute gift with the justification that 'ITS STILL CHRISTMAS DAMN IT, IT STILL COUNTS', but JBL thought this would better fit as a final Fuck You to 2022 and frankly I couldn't agree more.

Happy Christmas everyone, I hope next year will be a good one for all of us!

Chapter 62 - Living with Logistics

He stopped when he spotted a small herd of hendriliks leaping across the plains.

While there were many creatures in this world that Handy was well familiar with from back home, be it sapient people such as cows of all things, or the still-thankfully dumb animals like pigs and chickens, there was always the occasional reminder of just how alien this achingly familiar world could be. Hendriliks were one such reminder because of how much they broke with his already altered expected view of the world.

They were a lithe, long-limbed, four-legged animal, known for their distinctively whip-like tails, their long, webbed three-toed feet and their incredibly soft, velveteen fur. Elongated heads rested atop short, sturdy necks that bent disturbingly in a variety of angles you wouldn’t expect. Long bony crests protruded from their crowns, down the front of their faces to where presumably their noses were before their elongated snouts opened to reveal a variety of teeth designed for both tearing and chewing. More of the crest protruded from their lower jaws to a point just before their skull met their necks. They were almost universally grey-furred creatures with only minor variations depending on the local species, from what he had learned, with rare mutants sporting azure coats not unlike albinism afflicting many animals back home. Their crests, however, were prized for their strength, being incredibly hard to penetrate while weighing almost nothing, highly sought after by both tradesmen for tools and working material, and by warriors as a kind of poor-man’s plate.

They also tasted absolutely gorgeous when cooked medium to well with some parsley to garnish it. However, hunger was not what caught his attention regarding the herd of animals. It was the way they more or less flowed across the landscape far below him in a seemingly unnatural way that had first caught his eye. Well, unnatural to him anyway, though upon observation, there was a subtle poetry in how they moved and leaped. It wasn’t long until both their projected path and the airship’s constant motion drew his attention to the breath-taking landscape, though, and he completely lost interest in the alien herds.

They were only a day out of the Dragonlands, firmly leaving the volcanic wastes behind them and now moving into far more hospitable territory, and it was then Handy’s heart began to break. There were none of the majestic, towering mountains to be found here, instead rolling hills leading to low mountains that were far below having a snow line. There were no impossible expanses of forests here—the Everfree was to their south and they had turned northwards once they began hitting the plains that lay north of those woodlands. Instead, there were sparse copses of woods and small forests scattered, almost carelessly, between vast expanses of uneven farmland sectioned by crumbling stone walls put in place by generations of farmers, and simple dirt roads with long furrows dug into them by centuries of passing wagons and carts.

Unlike the plains and rolling grasslands they had covered and were now leaving, the grass here was a shockingly deep and lush green, covering everything, dotted with the innumerable wild flowers of spring breaking up the sea of green. A rolling bank of clouds in the middle distance came in from the north-east, doubtless carried there by the Equestrian weather service. It hung heavy and dark in the sky, pregnant with fresh rain that would meet them in an hour or so and wash the fields lovingly in spring showers to feed the hungry earth and ready it for the planting and the harvests to come.

It wasn’t especially impressive by itself. He had seen many similar vistas of pleasant farmlands, more impressive mountains, more quaint villages, mills and farmsteads scattered in clusters across many a landscape. It struck him nonetheless—the stone cottages, the deciduous trees, the lush green, the smallfolk mountains, the gentle rains, the broken walls. The only thing the fields below him were missing was the occasional fairy tree, and Handy could have sworn he was actually back home for a moment, enjoying a bird’s eye view of the Midlands.

He wasn’t sure how long he sat there, having forgotten the task that had brought him to the bridge and instead seated himself on a nearby crate, just enjoying the view. He was, however, there more than long enough for the heavy rain clouds to finally reach them and wash over the envelope of the airship. The size of the ship’s balloon envelope ensured hardly any of the raindrops hit the windows of the bridge, which was a pity, as he found the sound of rain upon glass and wood rather comforting. It did afford him an uninterrupted view of the now darkened lands below them for a good long while.

No one interrupted his reverie for once, so it took a while before he noticed he was staring at the same landscape for an unusually long time, and when he finally returned to reality, however hard it was for him to turn away from being transported mentally back home for a short while, he finally noticed they weren’t moving. And that he was alone on the bridge.

This was enough of a concern for Handy to actually get up and remember what he had come to the bridge for. He had come to double check the maps of Western Equestria to ensure the routes they had plotted out to head to the Crystal Empire and onwards crossed enough lakes and large rivers on common lands to allow for refuelling of their water supplies. They’d also need to get more coal for the boiler as they hadn’t refuelled since crossing the border into Equestria, as that would have likely required stopping at a major pony settlement prior to Princess Twilight’s little fiefdom. That was something Handy had deliberately avoided at the time to avoid unneeded headaches.

The emergency shutdown he had performed to prevent a pressure explosion tearing through the ship or blowing the entire engine out its backside had caused a certain degree of damage to the engine and a major loss of efficiency in heat regulation. That meant they now had to burn more coal to get less steam pressure, wasting more water through innumerable leaks and patched pipes. The ship now had a constant damp atmosphere that Handy did not care for. So now they had to watch their water supplies more closely and he had to seriously consider making a pit stop at any potential Equestrian town that might have a train or relay station they could buy some coal from.

Fucking dragons.

Now that he actually turned to the now repaired—and firmly secured to the deck and wall—navigation table and recovered maps and charts, and checked their course, he turned to the window again. The heartbreakingly familiar sight below was an illusion, and he knew it, but he still committed both it and its relative location on the maps to memory. Just in case. He closed the cover of the navigation table once he put everything away. No sense letting everything fall out and spill to the windows below again as had done when they had suddenly been attacked. He pulled his cloak closer to himself to ward against the slight chill in the damp air and left the bridge, walking down the central corridor.

That was when it struck him. There was a chill in the air; the dampness was cold rather than humid. He looked at the nearest exposed pipe in the ceiling above him and, very gingerly, rapped on it with a knuckle. It was lukewarm, safe to touch with his exposed palm. That meant the boiler was off and had been for some time. He booked it down the corridor, coming to the stairs into the cargo hold and hurrying down to hear a swearing Silvertalon shouting from the boiler room.

“What's going on? Why are we dead in the air?” Handy asked, coming to the final step. He looked around, spotting Spike on the far side of the hold digging through a pile of supply crates, most of which seemed filled with spare parts for the boiler and pipe work.

“Because you made a right hash out of this job, you overly tall jackanape!” Silvertalon’s clearly agitated, scratchy voice bellowed from within the boiler room. There was silence for a few moments before Silvertalon realised he insulted his employer. “Uh… I mean uh—”

“It's alright.” Handy was more surprised by his outburst than anything. Spike, who had looked up at the shouting, turned back to his work. Handy strolled over to the boiler. The furnace was cold; the water container set nearby was below a third full, which was a bad sign. The boiler should have only started using that if the exterior water tanks were more or less drained in an emergency. How much water had they been losing? “How bad is the damage? I tried to do what you said to do in a shutdown, but I was busy being half-blind when I was down here.”

“I wish I could tell you, boss,” Silvertalon groused as Handy ducked under the door, grabbing the insulated hand holds as he navigated into the dizzyingly complex arrangement of pipework, valves and pressure meters. Silvertalon had been his educator on all things relating to running an airship. He had regretted asking precisely because of just how much you needed to know about just running the boiler room alone, and how much care and attention it constantly required. Silvertalon had promised him that, once he understood the basics, he could adapt to virtually any engine he came across, whether airship, train, or some new-fangled contraption. Handy had taken one look at the copious confusing notes he had taken regarding his education and decided, roundly, that Silvertalon was full of shit and was learning this new, to him at least, model of steam engine setup as he went. He was now receiving proof of that assumption. “I… keep finding more problems the more I look to fix.”

“Can we still get this thing flying again?” Handy asked as Spike wandered over with arms full of brass pipes and several bags of nuts and bolts, several of which fell out as his too-full arms struggled to carry the load.

“Had to shut it all down to get a good look. Might be able to give you an answer in an hour or so, but we’re going nowhere without a refill of the water. I don’t trust our coal reserves to survive both yet another start-up sequence and get us to the empire,” Silvertalon said, lost somewhere in the pipework. Handy could barely make out the bird’s wings in the gaps between the pipes. Handy squeezed the bridge of his nose and let out a frustrated breath.

“Yeah, yeah, I was worried about that. Checked the maps; there’s a lake held in common not too far to our north we can refill at. Coal is… more of a problem. Can we get another day’s flight out of her? If we can, the town of Fettersvale is just to our north-west on the way to the empire. It has a train station. If we land there, we could probably pay for a refuel.”

“I mean, I could just restart the boiler myself. I got my fire back.” Spike gestured with his hand, a casual motion that caused a bunch of metal plates and pipes to spill from his arms as he hurriedly tried to arrest the spill. Handy was painfully aware of the dragon’s assertion, having seen the drake, rather alarmingly, bring a rolled-up letter bound by a thin red thread to the bridge while he had been at the opposite wall monitoring the gas pressure in the envelopes. Bold as you like and proud to boot, having come to the area of the ship with the most space and least amount of flammable objects, the dragon had held the letter up and blew out a burst of green flames that burned the letter. Handy had watched, half in shock, as the ashes of that very same letter had flowed up in an artificial updraft and out of the bridge. He had later learned that the magical gust had carried the letter out of the open airlock and to God knew where.

Handy had berated the drake for breathing fire while they were in a wooden ship in the fucking sky. Spike had sworn that it was safe; Handy hadn’t believed it for a moment, and he knew it was the irrational beast within him demanding he enforce order to assuage it. He had opted to, instead of panicking at the blast of fire, shout at the drake. He had apologised later, explaining he was just overly sensitive given the poor state of the ship. Thankfully Spike had bought that explanation of his behaviour and accepted the apology without further scrutiny.

“That would make start-up easier, but that still doesn’t solve the problem that we don’t have enough coal to burn. Unless you want to stay down here, day and night, breathing fire into the open boiler to keep the steam going.”

“Uh…”

“Yeah I thought so.” Handy sighed. “Where’s Whirlwind? Is that lazy sod even up yet?”

“He went outside to check my stitchwork on the envelope,” Silvertalon explained. “Those two dragons clearly weren’t trying to burst the skin, but they’re big fellows. Some of the skin wore through in some places and there was a light puncture of the starboard side near where it meets the hull. I did my best and we have good material to work with, but I just want to be sure.”

“Wait, Whirlwind’s outside?” Spike asked worriedly. “But we’re so high up; he can’t fly!”

“There’s rigging he can climb. ‘Sides, that lad doesn’t need any wings to fly.” Handy waved a hand dismissively.

“What do you m—” Just then, the heavy sounds of the exterior airlock closing reverberated through the ship, followed not long after by the interior airlock swinging open and slamming closed. The coldness of the damp air increased sharply as a very visible, slow moving bank of wintery mist floated down from the stairs and coalesced in the middle of the cargo bay. The tired, smiling, and sopping wet form of the erstwhile Lord in Winter stood before them. “Oh. Right.”

And at that word, the uncivilized woodland barbarian shook himself free of most of the water he was soaked with, splashing everything nearby.

“Oh what the fuck is wrong with you!?” Handy demanded, covering his face. “Couldn't you have done that when you first stepped into the airlock?”

“Haha, sorry. I was operating the airlock while in Winter. Forgot I was still soaking wet while in that state,” Whirlwind confirmed, chuckling. “Anyway, I got some good news!”

“Yeah?”

“The hull of the ship is absolutely airtight. I checked.” Whirlwind stood tall and proud, all four and a half feet of the fucker, discounting his one remaining antler, with which he just reached Handy’s shoulders. “Couldn’t get in otherwise; had to go back to the airlock.”

“How's the envelope looking?” Silvertalon asked, coming out of the boiler and wiping himself down with a towel.

“Getting to that. Found out why we’re leaking water. The exterior water tanks have a few ruptures, nothing that can’t be patched, but some of them are so awkwardly located, the entire tank will need to be dismounted to access them. The emergency release valves burst during the descent, from what you told me. As the ship took off and flew, we were leaking a small amount of steam the entire time.”

“That’d explain the loss of pressure on top of the water drain,” Handy muttered, cursing. “We’re going to need to land this thing to do some patching I guess.

“About that…” Whirlwind’s pink eyes looked upon them with sympathy as his face betrayed a wince. “The keel is damaged. It doesn’t look too bad, but I don’t know ships. It seems that when the dragons pressed the ship down, the keel didn’t like that too much, and it looks deformed. I don’t see any cracks but, you know, thought I’d mention it.”

At that, Silvertalon cursed, complaining about how the ship was never meant to touch the ground again once off it for precisely that reason. Handy ignored him; it couldn’t be helped and so long as the damage wasn’t too bad, it should hold. They’d just probably better not carry too much heavy cargo in the near future just to be on the safe side until they actually got a proper shipwright to check it all over. Handy groaned; this was turning into an expensive trip and it took an effort of will to push the ungodly horde of treasure that was Meranax’s horde out of his mind.

Sure, he’d pocketed quite a bandit’s gambit worth of precious stones, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t have done with a bit more.

Handy relayed his thoughts about the ship and added, “We’re not going to do ourselves any good refilling the water tanks just to have them empty on us before we get anywhere worth a damn.”

“....About that,” Whirlwind piped up sheepishly, and they looked to the buck. “I uh, checked the envelope like you asked Silvertalon, and there’re more tears. Your patches held but didn’t cover everything. I took the opportunity to sneak inside the envelope. I don't need to breathe when I’m in that state so the gas wasn’t a problem. It's how I found the new leaks to patch and uh…”

“What?” Silvertalon asked, “What else is wrong? So you found leaks I missed, good! That's what I sent you out to do.”

“Well it seems one of the dragon’s talons… dug deeper when it tore through the envelope than expected. It cut a gash in two of the ballasts. When you filled the air ballasts too full to bring the ship down, it strained the remaining four bags, tearing the material and causing further rips while you had the ship grounded for days under stress.”

“So…” Handy began.

“I don’t think we can lower the ship, Handy,” Whirlwind confirmed. Everyone turned to Silvertalon and then to him. Handy silently cursed to himself, rubbing his face with one hand and turning to pace away from the group of them.

“Bollocks…. Bollocks, bollocks, bollocks.”

--=--

It took them a week just to make sure the boiler was fixed up.

What had followed was a lot of pain, a lot of acrimony, and a lot of twisting their bodies into awkward positions to reach in and replace pipework and swinging wrenches and hammers at impossible angles to get things into place. Whirlwind was a Godsend in some regards and a curse in others. His ability to become immaterial while still being able to manipulate tools allowed him to get into some really impossible places and put in new fittings and replacements. That had saved them quite a lot of time and effort that would have otherwise been wasted on outright disassembling entire sections of the room to get access to certain areas and hoping to God they could put everything back the right way before they turned the proverbial key.

However, the world was entering spring now, and he was thus out of his season, which meant his powers were not the unlimited, demigod nonsense he often bragged about wielding back in the Greenwoods. He fatigued easily, often wearing himself out silly after only a few hours’ work and having to all but collapse on the ground by midday most of the time. It was frustrating, but the sheer time and work he saved them warranted forbearance. Spike proved invaluable in checking out the furnace from the inside. Everyone else wasn’t fireproof and couldn’t see in the dark, which meant someone needed to go in there with a lantern. Spike was the sensible solution to that issue. Sure, they had emptied it out of coal, but there was still a shit-ton of dust in there that could cause a small burst of flame that would be dangerous for the others, and particularly lethal to Handy.

In fact, that fear seemed justified as Spike, whatever he had been doing, let out a small bit of fire that caused a loud bang as the remaining coal dust caught light all at once, blasting open the half-closed door to the furnace. This scared the hell out of everyone, and Handy all but brained himself as he shot upright and clonked his crown off of a rather impolite valve. After all the cursing and berating had been finished with, not least of which came from Spike, who was also under stress and was beginning to give back as good as he got, it turned out Spike had found some fissures in the cast iron of the furnace and spent quite a bit of time modulating his fire breath to effectively weld the seams back together.

It was an incredibly useful skill and more than a little terrifying, causing Handy to rethink the wisdom of having this dragon in his service for any serious length of time.

By the end of every day, they were all tired, sore, hungry and more than a little sick of somehow coming out of the room soaking wet from the damp air and trapped water that kept surprising them when they changed pipes. Well, except Spike, who was nearly always high and dry, the lanky bastard. But the job was done, at least as far as the boiler was concerned, and they could finally start splitting up to tackle the more difficult matters, just after Whirlwind was put through his paces in his wintery manifestation to flow through the pipes finding any that were too loose. He was not happy with this job but was the best suited to the task. Handy laughed when he had grumbled it was beneath his dignity as Lord in Winter, and promised to make it up to him somehow. Whirlwind smiled and said he’d hold him to that. That had stopped Handy’s mirth right quick.

“Right, so…” Handy spread out the map of north-western Equestria across a low table in one of the spare cabins that they were using as a makeshift common room. They were all more than fed-up of hanging out in the cargo hold by that point. “The boiler’s about as fixed as it's going to be, right, Silvertalon?”

“Yeah, boss.” The captain had foreleg crossed over the other and his right claw raised to tap the side of his cracked beak. “I hate to admit it, but we’re going to need to keep a closer eye on it going forward.”

Handy groaned. Most of his time spent working aboard the ship, when he was not on the bridge, had actually been down in the boiler room, just making sure everything more or less didn’t explode. He was still woefully under-experienced and was still learning the systems, but he knew enough to know when the pressure in any given valve was getting a bit too low or high and which to turn and when. Most of the time. Sometimes. Okay he’d had to switch places with Silvertalon an embarrassing percentage of the time when he just had no idea what he needed to do. Now they were probably going to need to do a rota to keep a constant eye on the thing as they went to the Crystal Empire.

Spike, thankfully, was lightening the load somewhat. He wasn’t too much more familiar with steam engines than Handy was, but his experience with aeronautical navigation and quick uptake of information regarding the ship’s systems made him invaluable as an extra helping hand running to and fro. It was his insight that helped repair some damaged pulley systems that linked the bridge to certain controls in both the envelope and the boiler, sussing out the panels along the corridor where some of the copper wires used to pull systems back and forth in a rather primitive, if cleverly designed, control system.

Handy was briefly concerned about the dragon learning so much of his ship’s systems, but given his airship was both unarmed and purely designed for peaceful travel—and the fact both he and Silvertalon were also learning as they went—not to mention it was, presumably, an Equestrian model given to him by Fancy Pants as payment, there really wasn’t anything secretive or critical about the ship that couldn’t be readily discerned by asking literally any technician, engineer, or air captain remotely familiar with the concept.

“Guess I really am going to have to hire more crew for this ship one of these days,” Handy groused. Silvertalon raised a talon to object; Handy silenced him with a wave of his hand. “Yes, yes, I’ll let you vet them. Right. Coal, water, gas, air sacks, water tanks. Anything else I’m forgetting?”

“The keel!” Whirlwind happily interjected, apparently overjoyed to contribute. Handy rubbed his eyes.

“Yes, the keel as well. We’ll sort that out at a proper dock if we can find one.” Hopefully it was only slightly deformed, as Whirlwind had said, and not broken, or the ship would be basically useless for carrying anything too heavy in its cargo hold… including the engine. “Anyway, we can’t get any fresh water without moving the ship, and we can’t move the ship any appreciable distance without more coal.”

“Can’t land the ship without the ballasts to lower the tanks safely,” Spike pitched in.

“And we lost a good amount of gas from those tears I had missed,” Silvertalon mumbled.

“Did we lose too much to maintain enough lift?” Handy asked. The griffon shook his head.

“No, it’ll hold us more than well enough, I imagine. Certainly got us this far from the coast without trouble.”

“Can you fix up the ballasts?” Handy asked Whirlwind. The stag shook his head, the loose portion of the crown jingling from the missing antler.

“Not unless you want to tear open another hole wide enough to bring some tools from outside the envelope. The burst ballasts need to be disconnected at their base and replaced entirely. Can’t sew them up and they’re too interconnected to just be ripped and replaced without having to replace the base themselves. The rest can just be patched. I did my best but it was pretty dark in there.”

“We’ll need to go up into the envelope itself from inside the ship,” Silvertalon added. “But there’s only one helmet.”

“It’s fine, I don’t need it while up there,” Whirlwind said. Silvertalon looked at him.

“It’ll take at least five hours to work through the process of replacing the two busted ballasts, never mind the sewing. And you can't open the airlock without pumping the gas exchange. You sure you can do all that while all ghosty and get out in time before you collapse?” Whirlwind looked uncertain at that.

“I’ll do it. I’ll need you and Whirlwind to be our pack mules,” Handy said, jabbing at the map. “Fettersvale. I’ll need you two to fly down here. It’ll be rough, but if you could get us just two or more bags of coal between you, we might, might have enough coal to make it to the lake and then all the way to another relay station to get a proper refuel. Plus we have Spike here to jumpstart the start-up.”

“... That's… a bit of a journey there,” Silvertalon commented. “I mean, it’s more than doable by wing, but I am not looking forward to lugging back coal on my back by paw and then.”

“Buy a cart then to make hauling easier. I’ll foot the bill,” Handy responded. “We can probably get more coal that way too.”

“But how are you going to load the cart on-board?” Spike asked. Handy paused, having not considered that.

“We’ll just abandon it; give it to the locals as a bit of charity, I guess. It’s the coal that matters. I’ll have the ballasts ready by then and we can lower the ship to load everything and begin repairs in earnest.”

“Can’t we help with the coal?” Spike asked.

“You see a pair of wings on either of us, our fella?” Spike looked like he had been stung, and Handy realised he touched a sore subject. “Ahem, right. Point is, they can fly ahead. I need you on the bridge monitoring the ballast controls and air flow. It's an easy job, literally five minutes of work on your part to ensure everything is shut properly and that I’m not going to get a nasty surprise up there. And the same again once I am finished with each ballast to double check.”

“Right. I think I can do that,” Spike said.

“Alright, Silvertalon, you'll handle the money.” Handy reached to his side and pulled out a number of paper bonds. Given he was only going to be in Equestria, or so he had assumed, he thought it’d be wiser using Equestrian-printed bonds rather than Greycoast bonds, unlike last time. He had purchased some directly from the Royal Treasury in Skymount. While the pony capital of Canterlot had no problem accepting Greycoast bonds, out here in the countryside? Might be a different matter. Hopefully the Crystal Empire was as economically tied to Equestria as he suspected, and his money would go farther there.

“What, don’t trust me with your money?” Whirlwind asked, big-eyed and grinning widely. Handy just looked at him for a moment, not dignifying the question with a response and handing the griffon about three notes worth about a hundred Equestrian bits each.

“What if the station doesn’t have any to spare?” the captain asked. Handy glanced down at the map. The nearest train relay station was another days’ travel by airship from Fettersvale and significantly faster by wing, but it was very out of the way. Traveling back by cart was going to be significantly slower for them, and there didn’t really seem to be any local mines or resource centres they could buy in bulk from.

“I’ll trust your judgement on it.”

--=--

Silvertalon alighted on the ground with a grunt, shifting the packs on his sides so they were a bit more comfortable. The skies had been overcast all week, threatening sporadic downpours, and it was hard to judge the time of day, though he knew it was approaching evening. They could get to Fettersvale with a few hours’ flight time, both of them being able to fly faster than the airship could, which should leave them more than enough time to skulk around for some lodgings.

He felt more than heard the deer gust down to the ground. The moving bank of cold crystallising air coalesced and the laughing deer emerged as if from nowhere, prancing from hoof to cloven hoof. The shimmering mail, which he dutifully cared for, had nonetheless seen better days, with entire sections missing and his green cloak torn and frayed. His fur, which when Silvertalon had first met him back in the Dragonlands had once been a shimmering coat of silvery white and subtle blue hues with the hint of brown at the base, was slowly but definitely shifting colours, with the brown becoming more prominent and the blue seeming to shimmer green in places when the light hit it a certain way.

“Ah, it's good to get back on solid ground once again!” he said, laughing and turning to Silvertalon. “Don’t you agree, good captain?”

“I s’pose.” Silvertalon shifted his wings, the wind biting cold. “More of an air nomad myself. I prefer the skies most days.”

“Haha! Well, I can certainly appreciate the call of the wanderlust myself!” Whirlwind chuckled brightly before being quiet for a few moments, gazing up wistfully at the passing clouds. “I sure am going to miss it...”

“What?”

“What? Oh right! The coal, let’s go. I’ve never been to this part of Equestria, and I am dying to know what the local colour is like. Which way do we need to go again?”

Turning around to look from horizon to horizon, Silvertalon took out the folded map showing their little corner of the country alongside a small compass strapped to his claw’s wrist. He looked up and pointed north-west.

“Over yonder; should be there bef—” The deer had already melted away into mist and flew off in the pointed direction, against the wind. The griffon snorted, putting the map away.

“Well, at least he’ll be too tired to cause much bother when we get there.” He launched off the ground with a powerful flap of his wings, soaring off into the sky above.

Spike closed the airlock with a grunt of effort, locking the sealed doors into place and began walking back down the corridor, turning first to look up at the bridge and then back down to where the stairs to the hold were. Just off to the side on the landing of the decking was a sturdy iron ladder that led directly into the ceiling. The heavy trap door was open up and outwards into the interior airlock above, and he could hear cursing coming down from the space up there.

“Hey, Spike, you down there?” Handy called, in-between cursing and the clatter of metal on metal as he fumbled in the darkness above. He tsked and a light shone out, brightening up the room in a pale blue light.

“Yeah. You, uh, sure you know what you’re doing up there?” the dragon asked. Handy harrumphed.

“It’s actually really simple, just tedious as all hell. Hand me up those two spares.” Spike looked down at the pile of semi-circular sections of thick brass segments. There were two sets of four, all connected to two voluminous sacks that were folded many times over on themselves. The ballasts were smooth to the touch and thick and heavy as all hell. The bases being separated into quarters made lifting and tucking them under one arm while climbing the ladder something of an issue, but he managed it. He poked his head up and lifted up the first ballast with some effort and dumped it with a loud clunk on the floor of the airlock. He carefully began pulling up the rest of the first ballast’s sack as it unfolded during his climb.

Spike glanced around the room. The pale blueish-white light was coming from a small, slim, black tablet of some kind that Handy had placed on top of a crate of tools he had carried up. It was pretty bright, and he saw the human reading a sheet with illustrations detailing the process of replacing ballasts.

“You sure you’ll be alright in there?” Handy glanced over the sheet.

“I’m sure. There's only one helmet in any case.” Handy waved dismissively at the heavy brass and iron contraption hanging on iron hooks inside of an oversized lockbox at the foot of the wall. Ordinarily the door would be closed and locked just to keep it in place should the ship endure any turbulence. “Unless you can breathe the gas in there.”

“Uh… Yeah, pretty sure I can’t. You sure you don’t need a lantern? That light’s pretty bright, but it doesn’t look easy to sit upright to help see what you’re doing.” Handy took a few seconds to answer that.

“It’ll be fine.” His voice held a slight edge to his voice that he cleared with a cough. “When you’re done, I’m going to need you to lock the hatch from your side. Do you follow?”

“Yeah I think I got it.” Spike climbed back down to lift up the second spare ballast.

“And you’re going to need to listen out for me. I’ll be shouting down the air hose because, apparently, whoever designed this ship thought that’d be the best way to communicate from the envelope.” Handy snorted derisively.

“Could you think of a better system?” Spike asked with a chuckle.

“Not without transistors, no,” Handy grumbled.

“What?”

“Nothing. Just listen out for me when I shout to test out the ballast air controls in sequence. The last thing we need is to find out that the pressure system that fills these damn things is also busted and then we’d need to literally tear apart the upper decking to fix it all.” He rubbed his eyes. “And my pocket begins crying.”

“It can’t be that bad, can it? I mean, you afforded this ship in the first place—surely fixing it up is better than getting a new one?” Handy gave the dragon a look but said nothing in reply, instead folding the sheet and putting it in the pocket sewn into his leggings. He was dressed in his simplest clothes which were stained from the previous days’ work. He leant down and helped the dragon drag up the sheet of the second ballast.

“Regardless, let's just get this over with. We’ll test the valves just after I finish double checking the integrity of the ballasts that remain.”

“What can I do while I wait?”

“Not much for you to do otherwise; just don’t go burning any more letters on the ship,” Handy admonished. Spike just gave him an apologetic smile as the human dragged everything away from the aperture and began hefting the heavy trap door. Spike retreated down the ladder as Handy gently let it down to close. He turned the crank from his side, locking it into place before stomping on it twice. Spike reciprocated by turning the wheeled handle of the hatch and sealing the airlock from his side.

And with that, Handy sighed. This was going to be fucking awful; hours locked in a huge dark envelope stuck dead in the air. Well, there was nothing for it. He got on his knees and started unhooking the helmet from the lockbox. It was a large, bulbous rounded hunk of metal, brass fittings, and burnished iron, air tight with the exception of the entrance for the worker’s head and a small threaded hole in the side.

A veritable poncho of oilskin hung from the bottom of it, alongside numerous straps. Ordinarily, oilskin was more for waterproofing than keeping the air out, but this helmet was designed to be able to fit multiple races. It meant that once fitted over the head, the straps would be tied tightly across the body of the wearer to seal the oilskin closely to the body so as to let as little air as possible escape and, more importantly, let only trace amounts of gas to enter the helmet.

Handy reached across for the air hose, an ungodly length of toughened leather fastened with iron clasps to hold the exterior cloth covering to the leather. He hooked off the end from where it hung to a catch in the wall, and pulled on the length of the hose from the reel and lifted it over to the heavy helmet. He attached the hose to the helmet’s threaded entrance on the side. Once fitted into place, he reached for what was effectively a pony’s monkey wrench, except it was much bigger and much longer, doubtlessly designed to be used for the awkward logistics of hooved legs pressing down on it to turn things.

Handy didn’t mind, as it made it easier to ensure the hose was tightly fastened. Now he didn’t need to be as concerned with the limited air in the sealed airlock. He quickly donned the helmet and fastened the straps across his upper torso, around and under his shoulders, sealing it in place as much as he could. He took a breath. Alright, no problems so far. He could already taste the difference in the air coming up the air hose from the ship below him.

“Alright, Spike? Can you hear me down there?” The length of the air hose was considerable, and he’d probably be shouting himself hoarse to be heard if he decided to have a long winded conversation. The hose’s iron fittings also had interior fittings, designed to help sound echo down its length. It took a minute but eventually he got an answer.

“I can hear you! Can you hear me!?”

Oh yeah, this was going to go great.

“I hear you, Spike! I’m going to start the air swap! Keep your ears open for when I call you!” Spike replied in due course, still barely audible. Handy cursed—another downside of the air hose system was it basically stopped when it exited out into the airship below, and Spike probably had to shout up at the ceiling or otherwise clamber up the ladder to shout back at him to be heard.

With a grunt of disgust, Handy stood up and wobbled. The extremely top-heavy helmet was throwing off his balance, and that was going to make bending over a dangerous affair inside the balloon. He made his way over to a pair of levers and, rolling his shoulders, grabbed both and began alternating in pushing and pulling both. The process slowly drained the air out of the airlock into a pressurized tank just outside the airlock while pumping in gas from the envelope outside into the room.

The only reason this wasn’t automated from the ship’s pressure systems below was because there was a risk of sucking out the gas into the air canister and then releasing the gas into the exterior air supply when all was said and done. So the painful route it was. It wasn’t that the gas was chemically reactive. In fact, Handy had learned, it was a kind of noble gas that didn’t react with anything, so interacting with air was not a concern or danger. What was dangerous was how remarkably toxic and poisonous the gas was to breathe in. It was odourless, colourless, and deadly in sufficient quantities. Hence why Handy wasn’t concerned about coming up here with no more protection than the air helm.

It was also the single most precious and expensive element of the entire contraption by square foot.

Part of the reason why he had needed Joachim’s help in the initial setup of the airship was precisely in getting his hands on the material needed to create the gas. Some blue and white rock named helemnite that was mined out of only a few quarries in the world, more deposits were being found every year, and the prospecting techniques for them were improving. Still, it was rare and worth far more than its weight in gold ever since the airship industry had started taking off.

Its rarity and cost made it a controlled material where only the wealthiest of guilds or the most influential of individuals could negotiate getting some of it. The rock was nothing special by its lonesome, and alternative applications for it so far were proving to be slim pickings, but splash some water on the rock and that was when the magic happened. One could accurately measure exactly how much gas was released from the vigorous chemical reaction of water and helemnite per ounce to an absurd degree, with only the relative purity of the portion of helemnite making any degree of difference. It made measuring the pressure yields and lift necessary in airship calculations much simpler as well as being a remarkably convenient means of transporting the material before applying it, provided you waterproofed it every step of the way, of course. They had climbed on board and up through this same airlock back when they were first setting up the ship, all the while fumbling about in the deflated envelope, and emptied a canister of water on the helemnite they had acquired and quickly exited back through the sealed airlock to watch the process of expansion take place from the outside.

Handy supposed, now possessing not only one but two Writs of Passage for both Griffonia and Equestria, he could likely now put in his name to buy more of the material if he needed without needing somebody more prestigious to put in a good word for him, but it’d still be ruinously expensive even for someone of Handy’s means. It would have left him destitute the first time on top of everything had Joachim not helped out, hence why Handy had agreed to the king using it should he request such a need.

So now, dear reader, you might appreciate the fact that when Handy had initially learned of the burst air ballasts, and the slow leaking of the gas out into the atmosphere over the course of his stay in the Dragonlands, however briefly, he had put on a very brave face.

And cried on the inside when he considered the costs involved.

He had groused about helium to Klipwing once, who had enquired as to what Handy referred to. Handy had explained it was a noble gas humans had discovered that operated similarly to helemnite but had the added benefit of not being toxic. It was, however, extraordinarily rare and an absolute whore to get a hold of. However, ease of use aside, helemnite gas, like helium, was also non-flammable. Thus he’d never really needed to be concerned about the floating gas bag over his head catching fire at any point when he flew. So there was that, at least.

He finished pumping the levers, having counted the necessary number of pulls to get the measured gas in and out of the room. It was wildly imperfect, but the miniscule amounts of the gas that might escape when the air swap was made again was negligible and would just need to be sacrificed by leaving the exterior airlock open for a few hours to air out the ship.

His first job done, he opened the airlock out into the envelope itself and gazed at the expanse of black in front of him. He lifted the expensive brick and slipped it into one of the straps along the oilskin to hold it in place as he placed the tool box and one of the spare ballasts under one arm. It was quite the load to heft with one arm, and he had a new appreciation for how much muscle that dragon was packing in those lanky arms. He strode into the darkness beyond, and the reel of the air hose made a god awful racket as it spun, the length of the hose extending as far as the envelope was long.

The interior of the envelope was absolutely strewn with the deflated ballast sacks, which looked so much more massive spread out as they were across the deck and on the interior slopes of the envelope. He dropped the spare ballast’s disconnected base on a cleared spot on the deck and lifted his brick to shine on the ground, searching for the painted numbers on the decking denoting which ballast was which.

The two to his immediate right were Five and Six, the sacks in absolute ruins. He glanced over to his right at the envelope and saw the sewn-up tear in the side of the envelope. It was rather substantial, but it was very clear that the dragon had not done it intentionally or else there’d be three or four additional great tears in the structure and along its length. That would have caused a catastrophic loss of helemnite gas and their ship to plummet to the earth and lead to their deaths. Either way, the claw had reached in far enough that it had cut across the ballasts as they were filling with air and torn them open as the ship was descending. The pressure system in the upper decking of the ship, which Handy now stood on, was a complicated affair. It used the steam pressure to manipulate a series of reinforced brass pipes throughout the deck to create artificial vacuums temporarily to forcibly suck in air from the atmosphere outside the ship through a series of vents and push it up into the ballasts. The ballasts, increasingly filling with pressurized air, increased the ship’s weight as they filled the interior of the envelope’s space, allowing the ship to be raised or lowered as the crew desired.

Fortunately, once it had become clear to Silvertalon that the ballasts were unresponsive, he’d shut off the ballasts controls related to them to stop pumping air unnecessarily into the envelope that had no means of escape. However, that didn’t stop Handy from being paranoid that somehow, throughout all of the trauma the ship suffered, sections of the air pump system would need to be repaired, which would require removing the decking from beneath and beginning the expensive and complicated process of finding the flaws and repairing them. That might require finding an actual airship docking tower to get it done properly and the unavoidable loss of helemnite gas involved in it all.

Again, the thought made him cry internally at the costs involved.

He clucked his teeth and set to work, kneeling down carefully so he didn’t throw himself wildly off balance and began connecting the base parts of one of the spare ballasts together. It was disconnected precisely because the connected base was far too wide to easily get up through the airlock hatch and for ease of storage. Handy needed to be careful that nothing would be nicked or bundled up in each segment as he connected the pieces together, otherwise the entire sack was going to tear open the first time it expanded to its fullest extent. The pieces connected together, but that was the easy part. Next came tightening the bolts and latches together which required significantly more elbow grease, ritualistic cursing, the use of various ratchets, wrenches and, out of frustration, hammers.

With the base of the first spare connected, he took a sawed knife out of the tool box and began cutting away at the torn sack of ballast Six. Disconnecting the now useless material, he bundled it into a pile over to the side so it wouldn’t get in the way as he worked on removing its base. He took one look at the base, imagining all the donkey work it’d take to loosen and lift the damn thing… and decided it was time to check the other remaining ballasts instead.

Fortunately, the remaining four ballasts only had minor tears, according to Whirlwind, something even someone of Handy’s limited darning skills could sew up with strengthened cord. Not that he hadn’t been improving, mind you. A few quiet conversations with his personal tailor, Belladonna, back in Skymount had led to several quite insistent lessons on her part so that Handy could maintain his gear out in the field by his lonesome as well as do emergency repairs on his own clothes. It was something for which he was quietly grateful. The memories of him barely surviving the trek from Manehattan to Brightshowers the previous year were still vivid in his mind. Stealing linens and bedsheets from hapless villagers to cobble together primitive winter gear and repairs for his clothes was not his most dignified moment.

He began the tedious process of lifting and sorting the voluminous ballasts, studiously checking them over for tears, however minute, in the pale blue light. Spotting his first, he sighed and reached down into the tool box, opening an interior compartment and set to work sewing the tear before it could threaten the integrity of the sack. He looked up briefly from his work and over to the interior of the balloon. Just searching over these things fully was going to take hours, never mind the grease monkey work awaiting him with the replacements...

Maybe he should’ve volunteered himself for coal duty instead.

--=--

Spike was bored.

And that was a problem.

Ever since he had got his fire back, he had been feeling great, fantastic actually. More energetic than he had been in years. Stronger too. Simply just not being as cloudy-minded as he was before, no longer coughing or feeling so cold, was enough to do wonders for his well-being, and had that been all the difference, it probably would have been enough to make him happy.

Unfortunately, that was not the case. He was now restless, with more energy to burn than he had causes to spend it on. Ordinarily, being told he could spend several hours just loafing around would have been just fine with him, and his younger self would have been more than happy to find something comfortable to lie down in and doze half the day away, maybe with a good book to lazily pass the time. Now he found he couldn’t sit still for more than five minutes if he didn’t have something to keep him focused. He kept finding himself fidgeting, or walking up and down the decks of the airship, flipping through the charts and notebooks of the navigation table on the bridge, just for something to keep his claws busy that wasn’t something more consequential, like the many, many switches and levers of the bridge controls.

Helping repair the ship was a good distraction, and welding the interior of the furnace was a welcome use of his fire which he now had a craving to let breathe free. It had also made him more confrontational, and that made him feel exceptionally strange. When the others, under stress, had been yelling at him, he had cursed right back with a vehemence that had surprised him. It was not that he hadn’t snapped at ponies before, but never that quickly or with such… robust language.

He had detailed the changes to Twilight, of course, sans the bit about the foul mouth. She wouldn’t have approved of that, and he’d rather avoid being lectured about it. His quickness to omit a detail was also another thing he noticed, but it was nothing he hadn’t done before, so he paid it no mind. In any case, he was just happy everything had worked out in the end and had detailed how much better he had been feeling ever since.

As well as the other, more troubling details. He had outlined, almost word per word, his conversation with Meranax, including her title of the Bloody Crest in the hopes that there were any references to such a name she’d recognise. There were a lot of questions raised by the conversation for how relatively brief it was, not least of which was her non-sequitur about magic or what she had meant about Handy’s predecessor. If anypony could tease out the full implications of what she was talking about before they got to the Crystal Empire, it was Twilight.

He had also, on the sly, sent another letter to Twilight, not long after Handy had gone up into the envelope above, to inform her under no circumstances to send him a letter back before they got there or unless he sent her another one stating otherwise. Handy’s reaction had been extremely negative to the use of dragon fire within the hold of the ship. He then recalled how extremely distrustful and paranoid he was known to be, and it would probably be a good idea to not let him know that at any moment he could be speaking to Spike and he’d burp up a burst of fire in his face to receive another magically-sent letter.

However, that was not doing any good for him right now, because without the anticipation of a letter from Twilight any time soon, he was left waiting to be called to test the ballast pumps. He pushed himself away from the table in the common room and stood up, stretching and scratching the scales of his neck and back which had been itching furiously for the past few days now. He wandered around the room, idly checking around the room and the underside of the bed that had been lifted away and secured against the wall when this room was given over to common use, just so they had somewhere other than the cargo hold to eat their meals.

He sighed explosively and went out into the corridor to, yet again, walk the length and breadth of the ship as he heard the occasional clunks and loud thumps coming from the deck above him. He stopped outside of his cabin and, on a whim, entered. It was neatly organized, his pack sitting in a corner of the room next to the cabinet that he had used to store a few books he had brought with him, with his coat and scarf hanging from the lone rail near the top.

He grimaced. It was weird looking back, remembering how cold he always got and how he had needed more and more to keep warm every winter. Now? He didn’t even feel the damp and chill in the ship everypony else was complaining about. He’d probably never need to wear those winter clothes ever again, but would do so anyway. They had been gifts after all, and he was going north to the Empire, which would probably be cold enough to chill him again, even though he had his fire back. He closed the closet and exited the cabin, briefly looking over his books but deciding against perusing them. He knew he wasn’t going to be able to sit still long enough to focus on reading.

He continued down the corridor before he stopped outside Handy’s cabin. It was the second one down from the captain’s quarters which Silvertalon had claimed as his own, and about as big as everypony else’s. It seemed strange that Handy didn’t occupy the captain’s quarters himself if this was his ship, but that was not the problem here. The problem was Spike was bored and was presented with a unique opportunity to, practically consequences-free, get an insight on the mysterious, yet evasive human.

Spike hesitated for a moment. Even in his restless state and despite his natural curiosity, he’d probably choose against trespassing given exactly who it was he would be crossing. However, the conversation with Meranax goaded him. There was simply too much mystery surrounding the human to be easily ignored, which only seemed to grow deeper the more they actually learned about him. It was not as if it wasn’t a part of his mission to find out as much as he could about the human’s magic and circumstances.

So, with a guilty glance down the corridor and up towards the airlock, Spike swallowed, turned the handle on the cabin door, and entered. It was dark inside, unsurprisingly, the porthole window covered and no lanterns to be found within whereas the rest of them had at least two or three. That was the first thing he noticed, only brought to his attention by the lack of light. He wrote it off, seeing as he carried that strange black tablet that emitted light for him on command, seemingly without fuel. It was likely some enchanted trinket he had picked up somewhere.

The next thing he noticed, for how could he not, was the presence of an honest-to-Celestia bathtub taking up one corner of the room. It didn’t look like it had been used, wasn’t hooked up, and there was nowhere for the water to drain in any case. He snickered at the idea of trying to take a bath on an airship when an errant bit of turbulence hit, and figured it must have struck the human as a good idea at the time before he took the time to think about it seriously for a moment.

Looking around, there was a large cabinet taking up one of the sides of the cabin, and next to it was an armour stand hooked to the floor and wall. The armour itself looked nothing like what had been described to Spike before, and tapping one claw against a vambrace, he could tell it was fairly new and untarnished. Taking a moment to consider the risk involved, he breathed a tiny spark of dragonfire onto the burnished metal, not enough to leave a mark but enough for the magic to have an effect, and got no reaction for his trouble. Not the infamous set that could resist Discord’s magic then, it seemed.

He moved to the cabinet next and let out a yelp as he opened the door and another set of plate armour starting falling out, parts clattering to the floor. Spike hissed as he caught several pieces, but a particularly battered-looking helmet bounced along the floor before rolling under the bed. He waited to hear anything, but given no shouting was yet forthcoming from the deck above him, he let out a breath of relief and began packing the armour pieces back into the cabinet.

He paused as he did so, looking over a pauldron in his claws and the other pieces in the light spilling in from the corridor outside. The designs matched the descriptions he had been given but he wasn’t expecting the… extensive repairs that marred the surface of the armour. It was as his claws touched the metal that he noticed something: a faint, barely visible twinkle of light where the scales met plate. Intrigued, he breathed a tiny bit of dragonfire and got blinded for his trouble. Dropping the pauldron onto the ground and rubbing his eyes furiously, he stumbled backwards. Welp, looked like he’d found the magic resistant armour, for all the good it did his bleary eyes. He grumbled before picking up the pauldron and tossing it into the cabinet harder than was strictly necessary.

There was nothing else really of interest there beyond a bewildering variety of tunics, coats, and other clothes, which Spike could tell from spending years helping Rarity with her craft, that were very well-made, albeit seemed more suited for rough wear and travel than fashion. Several bags and bundles took up the bottom of the cabinet that seemed to be filled with various bric-a-brac, survival gear, more clothes, and what looked to be bundles of rope and twine. There was also something which Spike could only presume was a grooming kit of some kind, a sewing kit and materials, a pack full of various tools and, to his horror, what looked to be a flayed cockatrice skin wrapped in oil cloth and preserved with what he could swear was some kind of alchemical concoction,s judging by the smell. Where in Tartarus had he gotten that? Better question was, why was he traveling with it?

He put that mystery to one side, noticing a large, almost triangular, flat, heavy object leaning against the back of the cabinet. He presumed it was Handy’s shield but couldn’t tell, as it had a cloth cover over it that looked tied in place, and he wasn’t planning on leaving much evidence of his reconnaissance by tearing it apart to confirm his assumption. He looked up at the hanging tunics and saw the long, folded hauberk of shining chainmail hanging amongst the tunics. He noticed, much like the plate armour, it had clearly paid its dues in protecting its wearer and was the worse for its occupation. Indeed, there were some loose strings of chains near the bottom of the hauberk that were about to fall off. They reflected the same silvery sheen of the metal that Spike presumed had made up the original armour before its extensive repairs.

A thought occurred to him, and, feeling more brazen than he normally would, he hooked his claws around a weak link and worked it loose, collecting a tiny number of individual chain links in his claws. Maybe Twilight or somepony could figure out the secret of the human’s armour from it, and it was unlikely he’d notice and miss a few links he was going to lose anyway. Closing the cabinet, he turned to the last piece of any note in the cabin. The oversized writing desk was bolted to the floor and shaped to fit against the curved outside facing wall of the cabin. It extended to the cabin’s left side where a number of shelves with thin chains held a small collection of books in place.

Only one of the shelves seemed full, seemingly containing manuals and what appeared to be numerous claw-written journals and notes pertaining to airship maintenance and running. After carefully undoing the latch holding the chain in place and briefly flipping through a few of them, his suspicions were confirmed. Pages after pages of notes regarding air pressure, temperature gauges, diagrams of the inner workings of the ships various systems, and calculations. It was mostly written in the kind of hurried shorthoof Spike was quite familiar with, having to catalogue Twilight’s seemingly endless thesis papers and research notes—there was a good reason why he was the one who wrote letters to Celestia on her behalf so that it was halfway legible. He could tell he was reading plain Equestrian, and that Handy was very used to taking notes at speed when dictated to, given the innumerable side notes telling him to reference another note in some other book. Also, the occasional written curses directed Captain Silvertalon’s way helped cement the impression of a frustrated student.

He replaced the notebooks, affixed the chain, and turned back to the writing desk proper. It had a fair number of books splayed out across its surface, and to Spike’s surprise, absolutely none of them were what he had been expecting. Books on agriculture, horticulture, geology, and gem trading shared the space with what looked to be a bestiary of the various fauna of Griffonia, a book on animal husbandry, geographical atlases, legal treatises and a study of Gryphonic feudal laws, and a recent medical journal straight from High Mount concerning surgical procedures. The only vaguely magically-related work he could find was a small book concerning alchemical pesticides that looked like it had been nearly torn asunder with how used the pages were. There was one dog-eared section opening up to a page concerning Wallowing’s Grievance, a type of naturally occurring alchemical pesticide that could self-replicate if certain plants were in an area and poison the soil if left unaddressed. The section was underlined and circled with a note reading: ‘Get Crimson’s mad-birds on this.’

As worrying and confusing as that was, none of these books were actually front and centre at the desk. Instead, what took the pride of place, lying on top of what looked like a map of the City of Skymount, was a dictionary. In particular, it was an Equestrian-to-Gryphonic dictionary lying closed and partially on top of an open journal filled with pages of words and notes, detailing grammar, diction, and pronunciation, with practice paragraphs written first in Equestrian and then in the rough angled script of the Griffons. It seemed Handy was learning to read Gryphonic script, not relying on all the written materials in Griffonia being available in Equestrian.

Another book seemed to be an honest-to-Celestia cookbook. What puzzled him was a few fruits and vegetables that had no notes beside them, such as apples and carrots, but instead had a simple checkmark and a recurring note regarding something about a kind of tuber called potatoes which Handy couldn’t find. Weird. The only other book nearby looked to be some kind of accountancy logbook, detailing weekly expenditures and income over the past few months during winter, but not detailing what was going where exactly.

Disappointed, he moved on to the drawers, starting with the ones nearest to him before going around the high-back wooden chair to the others on the desk. The first one was filled with spare quills and ink bottles, fastened in place, ready to be opened and used in place. He closed it and opened the second; this one was filled to the brim with spare parchments, more quills and a number of blank journals. The third drawer actually took him by surprise, filled as it was with what seemed to be medicinal supplies.

There were various small jars filled with seeds and dried leaves he couldn’t identify, as well as several tonics he’d need to ask Owlowiscious about to discern what they were for. There was also purified water, jars filled with berries, and what seemed to be a number of mini alcohol bottles. Together with what looked to be a box filled with strange ashy white-grey dust, it made for an eclectic collection, and if it hadn’t been for the mortar and pestle he’d have sworn it was some kind of mini pantry. The only other thing of note was a large sack near the back that seemed filled to the brim with blades of long, broad grass with a yellow stripe in the centre. Odd to be sure, but none of Spike’s immediate concern, so he closed the drawer and moved on.

The other side of the desk was far more interesting, with the first drawer filled with bags of coinage, bundles of paper bonds from Griffonia, the Greycoast, and Equestria. Spike eyed the clawful of sapphires Handy had grabbed from Meranax’s horde before they had fled. He could tell they were good ones too—the real deal, not the stuff that grew in the cliffside caverns. His mouth watered at the sight, though he quickly shook it off and slapped himself. If there was one thing very notable about Handy, it was how seriously he took his money. He’d certainly notice one or two sapphires missing from his mini horde. Still, it was tempting.

He also noticed Handy had kept the circlet of brass Spike had picked at random from Meranax’s horde to tempt the human into doing something sensible when he had apparently lost his mind. It was a pretty thing now that he took the time to appreciate it. The flying creatures were highly stylised and indiscernible, tangled as they were in the knotwork design that surrounded the circlet, with mother-of-pearl embedded in a silver frame attached to the brass. It was tossed haphazardly on the bag piles next to the two amulets he had also snatched, of which only one Spike knew the magical nature of.

The next drawer was a bit of a shock, but he had been warned ahead of time. It was the same plain casket he had put the glass flask in a week or two ago, and he knew what to expect. He had disapproved strongly back when Twilight said what she’d be doing and why, and anger briefly flared up within him towards Handy for twisting her hooves like that. It was sickening, but Twilight had insisted it would help them understand the magical affliction Handy suffered. If it really did have something to do with thestrals, then any clue or information would potentially be vital in preventing anything like it from happening again, let alone just helping the human himself in the long run. He had been informed of the new arrangement Handy had worked out with her just before they left, and did not envy her trying to explain the entire deal with their friends and the princesses. He knew it was very likely Handy planned on using the sample at a time and place where Spike couldn’t at least observe the effects to report back to Twilight. Although after what he saw in the Dragonlands… he wasn’t entirely sure he even wanted to.

He took a breath and reached down to flip open the lid, revealing the flask remained where it lay, full and untouched. Well, if nothing else, the entire ordeal hadn’t been for nothing… yet. He closed the lid and the drawer, opening the third only to find nothing but broken quills, scrapped and torn papers and broken ink bottles. Disappointed at the relative mundanity of everything in the room, fancy armour aside, Spike couldn’t help but notice the lack of certain things. There was not a single piece of correspondence, old or new, to be found anywhere, which was odd for someone of Handy’s supposed station in Gethrenia and the rumours surrounding him being the spymaster on top of the King’s personal agent. Although, if the former were true, the lack of correspondence was probably a point in itself. He was about to leave when he suddenly remembered something.

“Oh, right, the helmet!” He snapped his claws. Suddenly remembering the helmet had fallen and rolled under the bed frame, it’d be embarrassing going through all this trouble to not make it look like somepony had been rummaging through his stuff only for him to find his helmet in a place it most definitely wasn’t supposed to be. He got on his knees and reached under the frame to grab the helmet by the broken wing tip on its left side. The tiny bit of light that emitted when his scales touched the metal made him blink. Weird how it reacted to dragon scales like that. When he blinked his vision back, he noticed a splash of colour on the underside of the bed frame that most certainly didn’t match the mattress’ drab colouration. He pulled out the helmet first before crawling under the bed and reaching up to what had grabbed his attention. It was a small journal, thick with pages and wedged between the mattress and bedframe. The cover was a dark red with black lining on its spine. He pulled it out and scrambled back to his feet, looking over his shoulder nervously for a moment before opening the book.

“What in Equestria..?” It was indecipherable to him, all of it. No side notes, no rushed shorthand, all written in clear, discernable script using Equestrian characters… but it was clearly not Equestrian. At first Spike thought it was some kind of cipher, but the use of what appeared to be some kind of marks over certain letters on some words, but not others, made him think it was a proper language using rules he wasn’t familiar with. The fact that there was the rare word written clearly in Equestrian absolutely stood out like sore scales in the prose. It was clear he was reading a journal of some kind, a personal one, judging by the occasional use of dates. Although to call it dating was generous—it seemed to be going by rough estimates of when in a given month the entry was being written, making it more or less impossible to guess what and when the content was referring to.

Again, Spike thought of a cipher, but it clearly wasn’t, but if it was being written to hide things from somepony reading it, why was the language written using Equestrian characters? It was not unheard of for other nations to have an Equestrian equivalent of their written language if pony influence was strong enough in their culture, if they didn’t just outright write in Equestrian anyway, but it was very rare. They knew nothing of Handy’s homeland other than what he had told them, and it was nowhere near anywhere Equestria or the other major pony nations had influence, from what he heard. Why would he write his language in Equestrian script rather than his culture’s own? Why go through the trouble? This seemed deliberate, but if he was writing a language of his own, Milésian presumably, in modified Equestrian script specifically, who was he really trying to hide the information from if not the Equestrians? When did he have the time to become so fluent to the point of transliterating his own language? Was he going to be doing the same with Gryphonic? Was that why he was trying to figure out how to translate from Equestrian to Gryphonic specifically rather than straight from Milésian to Gryphonic? It didn’t make sense.

“Gah!” He was jolted from his train of thought when he suddenly realised somepony was shouting at him from a great distance. They weren't—instead, he was right above him. It was just the air hose that made the voice sound distant and tinny from where it exited down the hallway, even though it sounded like Handy was absolutely bellowing at the top of his lungs and had been for a minute or two. Spike juggled the journal before letting it drop. He hurriedly ducked and shoved the book under the bed-frame where he’d found it before stopping towards the door, before skidding to a halt. He turned, scooped up the helmet, opened the cabinet, and chucked it in before slamming the door and closing the cabin door behind him.

“Coming, coming!” he shouted up to the ceiling as he barrelled down towards the upper airlock.

“About damn time! Where were you!?” the tinny voice echoed back from the grate next to the airlock that was feeding air to the sealed helmet Handy was wearing.

“I was, uh, up near the bridge. Took me a second to hear you.”

“Right, whatever. I’m done sewing the tears I can find and double checking everything. I need you to go test the ballasts one at a time. Starting with number One, the controls are the series of levers to the immediate right of the helm. I want you to go back to the bridge and pull the control as far to the right as it can go and hold it there for a full minute before pulling the handle towards you to stop the air flow, and then come and tell me when you’re finished. Do you understand?”

“Yeah, yeah, I can do that,” Spike answered easily, scratching the scales on the side of his head.

“Good. Now it's going to be noisy, but I need you to listen carefully. If you hear me bellowing down this thing for any reason before the time is up, pull the handle towards you immediately to seal the airflow. Then in one motion, push it back and to the left, and it’ll start emptying the bag back outside. It's a pain in the ass, but we need to be thorough in checking for tears in the seams.”

“Okay, that makes sense.” Spike was much calmer now as he looked back down the corridor. The door to the cabin was closed and he was careful—Handy wouldn’t notice anything. The armour had already been piled haphazardly in the cabinet and would likely have fallen out anyway even if the human opened it himself. He wouldn’t notice the armour being messed with. “What about the busted ballasts?”

“I got their seals removed and am about to start working on putting on the new ones, but we might as well test the working ballasts first. If push comes to shove, we can limp along with only four ballasts and simply live with it until I can get proper repair work done. But if the pump system itself is damaged, then I’m wasting my time up here.”

“Alright… Okay, I think I can handle it.”

“Good man, now go ahead and pull the lever for One and we’ll work our way through this. With any luck, we might actually get this all finished before nightfall. Silvertalon and Whirlwind should be on their way back by then at least.”

“You think?” Spike scratched the side of his head, stopping as he made his way back towards the bridge. “I mean, it's an awful long way. I know they can fly, but won’t they be loaded down and walking the way back?”

“It's literally just a coal run, and I put Silvertalon in charge of the money since he’s the most responsible. I honestly can’t imagine how they could possibly fuck up the airship equivalent of going to a sundry store and buying flour.”

--=--

They had fucked up.

More specifically, one of them did.

“Wow.” Whirlwind held a damp cloth over one rapidly swelling and bruised eye, thoroughly exhausted and stripped of his chainmail and gear. “That got out of hoof.”

“Mrm,” Silvertalon mrm’d noncommittally, lying across a bench on the far wall of the overcrowded cell they were currently situated in. It was a dismal place, not out of malice but because it was overused for what was, essentially, a small farming town. Thankfully, their little faux pas would only see them spend a night here and pay a fine for their freedom. In the meantime, they had the dubious company of drunks, gamblers, and disturbers of the peace to keep them occupied.

“I mean that really went off the rails there!” Whirlwind dodged his head to the side as a fight broke out on the other end of the cell and somedeer threw a clay cup that shattered on the wall behind him.

“...Yeah, I guess.” Silvertalon turned around to face the wall and shifted his wings to cover his back in case something got thrown at him.

“I mean, I never saw you lose your cool like that at cards back on the ship! You all but clawed his eyes out!” Whirlwind chuckled as the fight on the other side of the cell started dragging in more drunks, and a coterie of guards stumbled down the corridor and fumbled opening the door to break it up.

“...He shouldn’t have cheated,” Silvertalon muttered. “I hate it when griffons try to cheat me.”

“Remind me not to introduce you to Jacques then.”

“That thief that Sir Handy has tagging along with him sometimes?”

“Oh good you already know him,” Whirlwind said without further elaboration. The fight at the end of the cell intensified as the guards tried to get the drunkard and gamblers under control. “You know, we could try to break out. There’s an opportunity right there.”

“No thanks. ‘Sides, I already paid the fine and I am sore. I’m gonna sleep. Let those idiots get their skulls cracked over nothing,” Silvertalon said with finality. “Nothing stopping you though. What's the matter, can’t get your windy nonsense going?”

“Tapped out, I’m afraid.” Whirlwind shrugged, humming as he watched the guards put down the miniature riot and using his hind legs to push off the backs of several ponies who were being pushed back against them by the crush of the crowd. “Between all the flying and the fight in the tavern… Well…”

“And to think, you were talking of breaking out.” Silvertalon chuckled hoarsely before sighing. “Don’t mention any of this to Handy. If he asks, we just stayed the night and went back in the morning.”

“My lips are sealed,” Whirlwind said, smiling.

--=--

As useful as it probably would be to have him aid in their magical research—or more precisely, Crimson’s—the likelihood of the dragon discovering his fatal weakness increased exponentially the longer he remained in his vicinity. He had gotten a decent judge of the dragon’s character, however, and while Handy was relatively certain the younger man was unlikely to leverage that weakness against him, there was precisely zero reason to believe he wouldn’t inform the princesses. By extension, literally all of Equestria and beyond would know his kryptonite.

However, he was also the only potential source of dragon’s blood Handy was ever liable to have easy access to, and dragon’s blood, he discovered to his delight, actually gave him the immunity he sought from his one critical weakness. There was just one problem.

Dragon’s blood made him into a fucking idiot.

Oh, there were other downsides of course: the incredible, bone-breaking pain that had reduced him to a shivering wreck upon the ground. The god-awful cold that chilled him to his core despite the fact his tunic had been burning on his skin, and the repeat horror when the blood eventually wore off and it felt like his entire body was contracting in on itself, his muscles contorting and his bones cracking in a literally blinding burst of pain that had caused him to black out, but not before vomiting forth a fire hose worth of sickly black bile of God only knew what. Those surprise horrors were something he could potentially live with. However, looking back, he struggled to remember exactly what was going through his head while he was under its influence. He came to the rather disquieting conclusion that he simply just hadn’t been thinking. He had been beyond impulsive, ready to jump at the first suggestion that came out of someone’s mouth if it sounded exciting enough.

He had even taken a running start, saw an oncoming cliff edge approaching and immediately thought: ‘It’d be wild if I jumped that.’ He had landed in shallow pools, but had still felt his legs break as he hit the ground beneath the stagnant waters. He remembered that horrific feeling clearly enough, yet had smiled through it as his healing took care of it and he had been up out of the water not long after. Hell, he had been tempted to jump down a fissure into magma to test out exactly how fireproof he had become, where he’d allowed himself to be tempted by just enough to inch to the edge of that pit. Where the idea of literally jumping up and fighting a dragon the size of a fucking mansion was a totally sane and, indeed, thrilling idea.

Madness. Pure and utter Madness.

He had acted on pure instinct and the revelation that one errant bite could loosen his inhibitions was a dangerous one, because Handy’s instincts as he was now were not all that conducive to a productive and functional society. Walking around with that incredible degree of aggression it had given him to such an extent that he could explode violently at the slightest innocuous irritation could lead to all sorts of trouble. As fiery as his temper had been under the influence of griffon blood, he had never actually lost control during that period. Strangely enough, he had felt his temper rise and anger burn but always felt a strange, icy control over himself, and always at the moments when he thought he was about to lose himself entirely. It just was intolerable to have to experience that every second of every day, so he made a personal note to avoid biting griffons as much as possible.

He would be putting dragon’s blood on the list next to griffons as something of a tactical choice in the future. After all, he couldn’t dismiss it entirely. It made him fireproof. No enchanted armour necessary, no downing disgusting, viscous alchemical potions to deaden his ability to be affected by scalding heat, no more constantly mentally calculating how far he was from an open flame every time he entered a candle-lit hall. No more fear of a mere spark ending his existence. No more listening to the shrieking cries of the beast.

If he could mitigate the effects somehow, or if he could learn to keep control over himself and not be overwhelmed by the sheer power of draconic blood… Well, maybe then it’d be time to do some dragon hunting.

That was something for future Handy to consider, as he was right now he was busy staring mournfully down into his plate of the day’s rations: dried bread, crackers, cheese, and ham. It was not a bad dinner, all things considered, just… wearing on the constitution to eat it daily for weeks on end. Still, it had been better than trail rations when he was on the road, and at least he ate in the warm… okay, well at least not freezing conditions of the airship with a roof over his head every night. Spike had no such compunction, however, happily munching away at his rations like a man famished. It had been interesting to observe the rapid transformation of his attitude to meat now that he knew he had been malnourishing himself for years, hesitant at first, and now as unabashed a carnivore as anyone Handy had ever seen.

It took some negotiating but Handy had relented and let him have the rations that would have been put to the side for Silvertalon and Whirlwind that night since they clearly wouldn’t be back before morning. It was as much out of curiosity as much as it was out of pity for the poor creature’s health.

“You gonna eat that?”

Not that much pity however.

“Yes, and how dare you ask me that,” Handy said without changing expression nor looking up. Feeling haggard and exhausted from his excursion in the balloon envelope above them, he could certainly use a good meal so had forced himself to eat. Spike shrugged and chugged down the watered down rum ration he was allowed, another unusual change for the drake but one to be expected honestly. Water being at a premium on the airship, Handy had forbidden using water for meals or cooking or cleaning until they were properly sorted out. That gave Spike a choice of either drinking nothing with his very dry meal or risking finding out just how sturdy his newly reinforced draconic constitution really was. Handy wasn’t going to let him drink more than his ration in any case, but it was still amusing to see how thoroughly he enjoyed the rum once he got going. Apparently he had only ever drunk cider on very rare occasions before and nothing harder.

“So uh…” Spike began as Handy munched away on his very dry sandwich. “About the uh…. The Dragonlands.”

“What about them?” Handy asked, seemingly disinterested.

“I mean, about what happened back there…”

“...And again I ask, what about it?” Spike looked deeply uncomfortable and began tapping his claws together, looking off to the side as he tried to find the words. Handy spared him a glance from his sandwich before returning to his chewing. There were a few lighted lanterns in the common room, casting contrasting shadows across the space as they sat across from each other at the table. Night had long since fallen before Handy had eventually climbed down from the deck above. The rain hammered against the side of the ship. It hadn’t let up the entire day and didn’t sound like it was planning on stopping during the night.

“What… happened to you back there?” Spike asked at last. Handy didn’t respond immediately, happily continuing his meal before clearing his throat with a drink.

“Exactly what it looked like,” he said cryptically, but without elaborating further. Spike drummed his claws on the table.

“And uh… what did it look like?” Handy laughed, almost choking.

“You’re the one who saw it from the outside. You tell me, little man.” Handy smirked humourlessly, not falling for the dragon’s fishing attempts.

“You… Well, you grew.”

“I did?”

“You didn’t notice?”

“I was a bit too much…. in the moment to notice, I suppose.” He remembered the mind-shattering pain but just thought the blood was altering his physiology to be stronger. He didn’t think it had actually made him grow. What, did that mean he actually physically shrunk when it wore off? Was that why he felt like his bones were breaking and reforming? He was so used to towering over everyone that he hadn’t even noticed, or to think to check his height at any point. Well, that and he was terribly distracted at the time.

“And about that, you were not yourself.”

“Oh?” Handy smiled with amusement, “And do you know me so well that you can make that judgment? Maybe I was just enjoying myself and let it get to my head.”

“Did you?” Spike pressed. Handy didn’t answer. “Well?”

“I have made no secret about what I am, Spike, nor about what happens when I feed on others. What you saw is simply what happens when I take from dragons, something you can tell your princess when we see her. Sure, it's not the alicorn blood and it most certainly wasn’t planned, but maybe it might help you fulfil your mission.”

“Mission, what mission?” Spike was suddenly defensive, glancing left and right as he sat straight up. Handy smiled a toothy grin.

“Relax. I don’t care,” Handy lied. “And it can’t be helped in any case. You saw what you saw, and I did what I needed to help us survive. Currently, if it matters to you, you know as much as I do about dragon’s blood in regards to its effects on me.”

“You’ve never taken from dragons before?” Spike asked curiously.

“Never.”

“...Yet you claim to be a dragonslayer.”

“I am a dragonslayer,” Handy said confidently, then looked accusingly at the young drake. “And now so are you, if I am not mistaken.”

Spike immediately looked like he had been struck, rubbing one arm and staring down at the table. Handy was unmoved, however, considering it nothing to be shameful of, especially since that bitch Meranax was one of the Mistress’ warlocks. Spike would just have to get over the guilt of what Handy presumed was his first kill. After all, Handy had had to do it himself not all that long ago.

“In any case, no, I have not taken from a dragon before. I have only killed two. The young one at the tournament in Firthengart, older than you I should add, closer in size to those ones we fought at the springs. I had to leave before I could even think about it. And the bones of the much older, much larger one in Lepidopolis.” Handy chuckled ruefully. “Couldn’t get any blood out of that ancient corpse even if I wanted to. Not that it would have done me any good at the time even if I had.”

“Arenakis,” Spike muttered.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Arenakis the Bright. That was his name.” Handy’s eyes narrowed at him.

“The young one?”

“... No.”

“And how, pray tell, did you know the lich’s name?” Handy leaned forward, his elbows on the table and hands crossed in front of him. “Most have trouble believing I killed an undead. Necromancy being impossible, as they say.”

“Meranax told me.” Spike was moving into territory he really wasn’t sure he wanted to press Handy for details on without first consulting with Twilight. “The elder dragon we, uh…. ran away from.”

“The warlock, yes. She told you that? When?”

“It was while you and Whirlwind were indisposed. She… told me things.”

“What, precisely, did she tell you?” A dangerous tone entered Handy’s voice. Spike fidgeted.

“She said she… knew Arenakis… from back in the day.” Handy kept his peace and did not interrupt him. “Back when she flew with the Justicars.”

“The what?”

“It's what the princesses were called back before they became princesses.”

“Before they became Alicorns you mean?” Handy asked, curiosity now piqued.

“I… Yes? I don’t know. It’s ancient history, and none of the texts I read ever mentioned them not being alicorns.” Spike was suddenly unsure, trying to imagine a younger Celestia or Luna either without horns or wings and utterly failing to do so. Handy was quiet for a moment, as if deeply considering what Spike had said.

“And this Meranax, this… warlock dragon, flew with them you say?” A strange smile crossed Handy’s features as he leaned back on his stool.

“Yes, though… I don’t think I ever read anything regarding her.”

“Well, you wouldn’t have,” Handy commented. “I wouldn’t expect their majesties would remember her either.”

“What?”

“Nothing, nothing. Go on.” Handy waved his hands dismissively. Spike gave him a curious glance. “What else did she say?”

“Well, she said she wasn’t planning on giving you over to that Mistress pony.” Handy suddenly got deathly quiet.

“... Did she happen to say why?” he asked carefully. Spike considered his words.

“Uhm, she said she wasn’t sure when she’d come across something of your like again, so she wanted to keep you.” The stony features on Handy’s face gave way to a distant look as he stared off into the void, mumbling something under his breath about teeth and burning. “Uh, Handy? You okay there?”

“...Yeah. Yeah, just wondering if that would be better or worse than being handed over to the Mistress is all.” He shook himself and focused on the conversation once more.

“About that… she didn’t tell me too much about the Mistress. That's who you’re tracking down, right? The one with all the Old Magic?” Handy gave him a curious look.

“So Sorcha did inform little Twilight about that. I suppose that only makes sense. Yes, she is indeed the target of my hunt. Meranax was a warlock I had not known about nor expected to find, out in the Dragonlands of all places.”

“So what is Old Magic, really?” Spike pressed. “You recognised it immediately back in the cave. You panicked.”

“Well it's not something you want to be unprepared for, and we were very unprepared to deal with a Warlock right at that moment.” Handy finished off his sandwich, turning instead to nurse his rum ration. “And besides, I told your princess all I knew of it at the time.”

“And now? Do you know any more?”

“I might. Enough to know we were not in any position to pick a fight with a warlock.”

“Well, I think we made a good go of it myself.” Spike proudly folded his arms and smiled boldly. Handy was quiet for a long moment.

“Spike, we should’ve died down there,” he said at last, catching the drake off guard.

“Wh-What?” Spike spluttered, his bravado suddenly deflated.

“I’ve only faced three warlocks so far, Spike, not counting Meranax.” He’d quietly omitted Geoffrey from the count. No need to complicate matters by letting that unnecessary secret come to light. He had been little more than a dabbler by Crimson’s reckoning, but that still counted. “One was a mere apprentice, a shadow’s shadow of her tutor by a wide margin and great depth. She almost killed me on the Equestrian express when I first… turned."

“The other you likely know all too well, at least by the trail of destruction he wrought, if not by name or reputation. You wouldn’t now, unless you were told. The one who brought ruination to the Festival at Firthengart, whose wanton destruction would’ve burned down Manehattan had I not alerted the Royal Guard ahead of time.” Handy studied the dragon’s reactions; he seemed to be paying rapt attention. Good, perhaps Celestia through Twilight had indeed informed him of all they knew through Handy. “I could not have defeated him on my own, and I had tried. I tried with help before and got soundly defeated. I almost lost again at Manehattan; we all did. And that warlock, by all evidence, was a bumbling fool, wildly flaunting his powerful magic with abandon, not a calculated tactic in his burning body.”

“... And the third?” Spike asked.

“Some poor sod who blew up a portion of the docklands at Blackport. I say poor sod because I am… not sure about him.” Handy thought back at the poor wretch, whose screaming form tore the sky asunder, ripped streets from the earth, threw ponies around like matchsticks, incapacitating bodies and crippling the souls of all and sundry except for him. “I don’t think he was a warlock.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Because I remember him clearly, very clearly. I presume you know enough to know why that is significant. I don’t think he was a real warlock, more a distraction. Perhaps a trap laid by… What was his name? Thunder. Thunder was the name of the warlock in Manehattan. Somehow he must’ve found out I was coming for him.”

“... And you can remember his name now?” Spike asked with interest, and Handy realized he had let that slip.

“Yes. I was reminded of it by… A source I’d rather not reveal.” Handy cursed himself as a fool for almost exposing his one means of remembering anything the Curse of Doubt erased. Namely his own little pet warlock who was immune to its effects so long as she rewrote her spells as fast as she practiced her craft.

“In any case, back to my point. What do you think Meranax actually was, Spike?” Handy asked.

“An elder dragon? A warlock?” Spike replied carefully.

“Precisely. An elder dragon. How long ago did she fly with the Justicars? How long has it been since your princesses were known as Justicars?” He took a swig of his rum.

“Oh, uh, about twelve hundred years or so?” Handy choked on his drink. “I mean, give or take a century.”

“... Yes, well…” Handy continued valiantly, recovering from his shock with as much grace as his work-worn appearance allowed. He knew Celestia was old, well over a century. If she knew Meranax she was clearly far older, but well over a thousand? Holy shit, what were alicorns really? Was Twilight going to be like that, a true immortal? Could they even die at all? What the hell would an alicorn’s blood even do to him if he drank it? “I believe that makes my point for me.”

“How?”

“Come now, Spike. An ancient dragon, an elder of your race apparently, one who flew with the princesses. How much would you want to bet she knew a shocking amount of ancient and forbidden magical secrets, Old Magic aside?” Handy prompted. “I happen to be a gambling man when I know what odds I am playing with, and I’d wager rather heavily that this Meranax knew a great deal indeed. I don't know any draconic secrets, but I don’t need to in order to make an educated guess. She was venerable in age, power, and experience, and all this before submitting to the twisted knowledge of Old Magic and its horrendous power. A power with which an unlearned earth pony could destroy a city in a fit of pique. I could not have saved us, I doubt Whirlwind in the height of his power amidst winter’s fury could have saved us. I doubt every dragon in the Dragonlands, whelp nor wyrm, could’ve so much as inconvenienced her. It's a wonder she was content as she was to lay in her lair all this time.”

Spike was quiet for a moment, precisely because he knew very well Meranax had in fact known ancient and forbidden magical secrets. She had told him as much himself with her knowledge and experience with necromancers. It was a concept he was still trying to wrap his head around, both it being real and the accusation that Celestia and Luna had wiped an entire school of magical knowledge from historical records. They hadn’t even done that for dark magic. Perhaps not even just them, the other princesses too. Did other kingdoms do the same? Did the griffons?

“Believe me, I have, against my will, become a decent judge of exactly how powerful a wielder of Old Magic can be. We only got out of that cavern alive because she wanted us to,” Handy continued at last, taking a breath and then a drink. “And for the life of me, I cannot understand why. Why even capture us to begin with? Why even let us know she existed at all if she wasn’t going to kill us or hand us over to her Mistress? It doesn’t make sense, and in the end, it led to her death.”

That much Spike could agree with him on. It really didn’t make sense. She had admitted to him that she had taken on Old Magic because it could grant her a kind of immortality, something she sought desperately. However, the price was too much to bear, and her desperation led her to meddling with the Bloodstone Scepter, almost dooming their entire bloodline to a slow, wasting death. Handy pushed away from the table and stood up.

“It hardly matters in any case.” Spike looked up at him. “Her secrets died with her, and if there was anything in her lair that could further enlighten us about them, well, they’re in the Dragon Lord’s hands now… claws, rather. Was there anything else?”

“Hu-What?” Handy glared at him.

“About Meranax. Was there anything else she had to say that was pertinent?” he insisted. Spike thought about it for a minute, wondering if he really should ask Handy about what or who his ‘predecessor’ was. Going by how Meranax had said it, it sounded like he wouldn’t even know, that he should ask the princesses and that even they wouldn’t even know. Was this another Old Magic thing? Another human going by the implication of Meranax’s words, but one nopony could remember. That could be a dangerous thing to ask about, given what he found in Handy’s cabin. What if Handy had been writing secrets in a language that was foreign but also written with Equestrian characters because he was trying to hide it from another human more than he was from ponies? But would he even know about them, if there was one, if Old Magic was involved? There were too many unknowns. He needed Twilight.

“...Well there was one thing,” Spike admitted. Handy leaned over onto the table.

“Go on.”

“Well, it was about Whirlwind. She admitted she was the one who caused the old Lord in Winter to come to the Dragonlands.” Handy snorted.

“Yeah I gathered that much. Whirlwind was pretty happy to have an answer to that.”

“About that… What was that thing about you making him swear an oath about it?”

“Never you mind,” Handy answered stridently.

“But it sounded really serious, something about your kingd—”

“I said mind your own business, dragon.” His voice was low and conversational, but there was the dangerous hint of a snarl lying under his words. “My business with the deer is between us and, as far as I am concerned, completed. What Whirlwind now knows regarding his crown and the bloodstone sceptre, and why Meranax’s machinations had the results it did, is none of my concern. It's also none of yours. I can tell you here and now you’ll not get anything out of him regarding it if you go snooping. I will warn you not to ask after this again. Am I understood?”

The abrupt vicious turn of Handy’s reaction startled Spike. Sure, he had not been the friendliest during the conversation, but this sudden hostility was startling nonetheless. Handy held his gaze unblinkingly for a long moment, seemingly boring into him with a strange, piercing intensity that pinned him to where he sat. Eventually, Spike silently nodded his head, and Handy seemed to relax. He picked up his plate and cup, stepping away from the table and heading towards the door.

“The others likely won’t be back until morning, perhaps midday even, so don’t wait up. And good job today—we can at least rest easy knowing the air pump system works well enough and we have all six ballasts functional. With ample coal, we should be well on our way to getting proper refuelling and towards the Crystal Empire,” Handy said conversationally, as if he hadn’t just threatened the drake. “Good night, Spike.”

“Y-Yeah… G’night.” Spike blinked and shook his head, scratching the quills on the side of his skull as if confused by something. Handy left the common room, making his way to his own dark cabin, something which made him groan every time he entered it and remembered he habitually chose not to have any lanterns in here. Being night-time and the porthole window being covered, it was quite literally pitch black in here. Using a trick he had learned from an otherwise superfluous ability the changelings gave him, he allowed his eyes to glow once more. It was a pitiful amount of golden illumination, but it did allow him to see things roughly a foot in front of him, enough to allow his occupied hands to fumble with the deadbolt to lock the door of his cabin.

Now secure, he moved over to his writing table to place the plate and cup. He briefly thought of using the purified water in his medicine drawer to wash them clean but that was a waste of thoroughly clean water. Instead, he made his way over to his cabinet an—

“Ah, fucking damn it all!” he swore as he opened the cabinet and parts of his magic resistant armour spilled out. His bloody helmet struck against his knee with one of its wing tips on its way, rolling merrily under the seat by his writing desk. He hissed as he rubbed where it had cut him. “Oh no, Handy, you don’t need a second armour stand. You don't have the room! You can fit one in your cabinet when you’re not using either. ‘Sides, you’re almost certainly going to find use for that fucking bathtub on a bloody airship one of these days, right? I hate past me.”

Sighing, he fumbled in his pocket for the expensive brick, turning its broken screen on so that its all-too-bright screen light all but blinded him, causing him to swear once more and blink his glowing eyes back to normal. He then searched his cabinet for a canteen that still had some water in it, used it to dampen a rag—which just so happened to be a shirt he had not worn yet—and used it to clean his plate and cup. The others had more or less done something similar since the water ban, and he figured they must be running out of options as he was by now. They really couldn’t get those water tanks fixed fast enough.

He hunted down his fallen armour parts and stacked them more neatly into the cabinet once more before closing it. Not that stacking them would help them after the next bout of turbulence, but at least it felt like an attempt was made. He turned and looked longingly at the bed and sighed. He wanted nothing more than to flop down on it, chew some tallow’s ear, and fuck off into merciful oblivion until tomorrow became his problem again. However, his conversation with Spike had revealed a few things, mainly a solid confirmation necromancy existed from someone else other than Handy’s own testimony and the dubious witness of changelings. That was worth making notes of, perhaps even worthy of making note of it to High King Aleksander, but it’d require some further investigation than the words of a now-dead dragon who could no longer elucidate further.

Not that Handy had any plans on actually learning necromancy, at least not beyond whatever arcane secrets the study of it could reveal insofar as it pertained to the Veil. The Veil seemed almost as much a physical barrier between worlds as much as it was a magical one. Perhaps it wasn’t magical at all. Maybe it was a force of a kind that was as much different to magic, as magic was from gravity, as gravity was from light, affecting one another, but not the same.

However, that was incredibly uneducated speculation on Handy’s part, based on nothing more than pure supposition. It would explain the poor understanding of it he had encountered in Crimson’s magical lessons, however. If necromancy, true necromancy, was a magical art that could somehow tie a person’s soul, spirit, or memory to a material form, did that not imply it was a magical art that somehow blocked or delayed a soul leaving a body, or even a world? Wasn’t that why conventional mages thought it impossible? If so, would the Veil not be involved, as something a soul would traverse to go to wherever it was destined? Or perhaps souls operated irrespective of the Veil, which was apparently a part of physical creation you could literally pass through and not a spiritual construct? What would it even mean if it were?

He was veering dangerously between magic, theology, physics, mysticism, and philosophy in his musings over the mere possible potential of a magical art he literally knew, approximately, dick all about. He was hilariously out of his depth and he knew it. He shook his head, put his speculations to one side, and bent down on one knee, reaching under his bed frame and searching for the journal he knew was there.

Pulling it free, he then sat down on his writing desk, pushing several books aside and leaning his phone against one pile to provide ample light to write by. He pulled out a quill from the drawer to his left, dipping it in an ink bottle and began scribbling away his notes. He had decided that writing in Irish was about as secure as he could get in writing things privately unless, for some Godforsaken reason, someone in this world spoke and read Irish too. It might be highly unlikely, but not something he could rule out entirely. He had already met far too many people who spoke English and way too many people who spoke French. Jacques was too much for anyone’s tolerance some days, after all. Sure, they didn’t know those languages by those names, but it was still surreal as all hell. Meanwhile, the griffons spoke a language unlike anything Handy knew from experience, the ones who didn’t speak Equestrian habitually due to proximity to the borders anyway. It was like this world existed in a natural environment of evolving languages and suddenly, out of nowhere, someone hit them over the head with the Latin alphabet and the Oxford Dictionary.

He briefly paused in his writings as he mused. He was here, after all, through happenstance. It was entirely possible English had somehow crossed over through some other means. French as well. It was a possibility that had crossed his mind before. How could it not? But why modern English? They sure as shit didn’t speak modern English a thousand fucking years ago on Earth, so how was it Court Equestrian, as it was known, had been spoken for so long in this world? Well, it was what the merchants and nobles and educated cosmopolitan ponies all spoke. They spoke it because the princesses spoke it and, apparently, those girls were immortal. That would explain that its persistence throughout the world, even though he had encountered English dialects and accents of a rougher sort in the more rural parts of Equestria he had passed through, accents that had no correlation to those he knew of from Earth and, even more bizarrely, at least one that did in the form of that orange pony Princess Twilight hung out with. That was disconcertingly surreal.

He didn’t have an explanation for any of that, other than the possibility that some other humans had taught them the language, but if those alicorns were as immortal as Spike implied, they’d remember them. Or at least remember something about them if they were somehow older than they were. And if nothing else, they would not be as alarmed or surprised about Handy being an unknown creature ‘from across the sea’, an unknown agent from an unknown human kingdom. Hell they’d know that for the obvious, blatant lie it was if that were the case, and would not only call him out on it, Princess Galaxia would not be nearly as interested in ‘acquiring’ him because of his claims. If they knew anything about Handy’s true origins, they’d have at least shown some interest, beyond doubtlessly trying to verify his ‘across the seas’ claim as he suspected they’d be doing. If they knew about humans, what humans really were, and where they came from, they’d either be entirely disinterested or consider Handy such a threat that he’d already be buried six feet under by now.

He pushed the matter aside as another imponderable to be deciphered later. He finished his notes about necromancy in Gaeilge, idly doodling a skull beside the note and deciding he liked the idea. It was an easy reference point to string together disparate journal notes down the line at a glance when he had more information to work with and collate.

It might all be in vain, however, as it was entirely possible there were magical means to transcribe, translate, or otherwise simply read written languages you couldn’t otherwise understand. At least it would mean limiting the potential pool of spies who’d be able to read his secrets without expensive magical help. Hell, he had barely found any practical use in his daily life back home studying his native tongue, the enthusiasm of his youth wasted by harsh reality. At least it could profit him here in some small manner.

He closed over the journal and turned before his fingers brushed against something on its surface. It was a divet in the cover he hadn't noticed before and which only a passing glance by the light of the expensive brick revealed a curious, barely perceptible silver sheen in it. It was a chance perception, but it made him pause nonetheless. He brushed his fingers against it. It was a light mark on the surface of the journal, with a slight sheen of silver along a part of its centre where the divet was deepest. His armour immediately came to mind—had he pressed it against the armour’s sides or joints and been unaware of it? When? He only ever took this thing out of its hiding places to write in it when he started back in the depths of the winter months, and only remembered moving it from his manor to the airship as he prepared to leave for Equestria.

He had been wearing his armour at the time but then… He looked over to the stand and the cabinet, reaching across for his phone and shining it on the armour stand. He had been wearing his new suit when he boarded, hadn’t he? It wasn’t silvered at all. Hell, it wasn’t even burnished or acid-etched for the extra bit of vain shininess. He had recovered one of his gauntlets from near the edge of the bed when he had picked up his armour pieces not too long ago, but unless that bounced under the bed, scratched the book and fell back down and landed near the edge outside from under the frame again, he couldn’t see it being responsible.

Apprehension crawled along the back of his neck, and he immediately tore his room apart, opening the cabinet and tossing its contents about after quickly taking a mental inventory of everything he touched. He even tore off the cloth cover of his shield, studying it at every angle to see if there was anything different about it, anything altered or changed. Nothing. His canteens, his clothes, the very boards and nails of the cabinet itself, the pieces of one suit of armour, then the other. His hauberks, the padding, his tools… Nothing was missing or out of place. Nothing was there that shouldn’t be.

He turned paranoid eyes to his writing desk and unleashed his fury upon it, flipping through his books and journals, searching for any alteration, any sign there had been any foul play or invasion of his privacy. Again, nothing. He went through his drawers carefully as his paranoia slowly started to wind down. Nothing was out of place; nothing was missing. Not even a single coin or sapphire from his money drawer. Yes, he counted. He stood back from his desk, rubbing his head and brushing his hair down as he took a breath. He carefully looked through his personal journal again and again. Not one page was damaged, not in a way he wouldn’t notice not being his fault somehow. His paranoia turned towards the others on the ship.

Spike? He’d have reason to go snooping; he had certainly shown his desire to know more when he had asked about his deal with Whirlwind before Handy shot that line of questioning down hard. Still, he found it hard to imagine a dragon with claws like his being particularly delicate with flipping through so many pages and not leaving a mark or a tear. He turned over the journal and studied the divet. No, not a claw mark, not deep enough, and Spike had no silver on him that could rub off on the book.

Silvertalon? Name aside, again, same problem. That and he had no reason to go snooping in Handy’s business, but he was alone on the ship for days at a time. Maybe he could’ve simply gotten bored or anxious, and sought out something to keep his mind busy? An innocent motivation, perhaps, but not impossible.

Whirlwind was always a possibility. That bastard was nosey by nature, or at least seemed to be—hard to tell with deer. He was, however, deathly serious about secrets. He knew that from experience facing the deadly hard glint in the stag’s eyes when the conversation crossed into difficult matters in the past. He did, however, have any amount of silver on his person at any given time, either money, or decorative accoutrements, even what appeared to be a ceremonial dagger Handy had spied sheathed under his cloak. He didn’t think the Lord in Winter had a reason to spy on Handy’s business, and he thought he respected him enough to not do so even if he did. He could not rule out the possibility, however.

Another party perhaps? Maybe the mark had been made before he’d even left Griffonia. Any number of people could have done it. He knew for a fact the Lord Caretaker Herman Sunderclaw, Gethrenia’s real spymaster, kept tabs on him. Hell, that was why he had decided to write a journal in a language he knew no one in Gethrenia at least understood. Changelings? Always possible. Other pony spies, other griffon spies, hell, maybe even one of those two punch-drunk teenagers from the village who thought it’d be a fucking awesome idea to break into Baron Haywatch’s manor on a drunken dare one night. Unfortunately for them, Handy had been moving his coffin into a spare room at the time and had taken the opportunity to make his displeasure immediately obvious in dramatic fashion. He had forgiven them of course, publicly, when their abashed parents came begging forgiveness on their behalf the day after he had sent them screaming for their mothers.

It had been an amusing episode, but an inconsequential one. On a notion, he investigated the bed frame itself for evidence. The frame itself revealed nothing, so he lifted up the mattress itself. It was an expensive one; spring frame mattresses were still a new innovation and they weren’t as comfortable as the ones he was used to on Earth. They were certainly not as comfortable as the higher-end mattresses he had the pleasure of experiencing in the castle of Skymount, but were a damn site more tolerable than the more common hay-filled mattresses he had become used to.

You just had to… get used to the solid steel springs. Speaking of said springs, as he lifted the mattress, he noticed there were indeed various places where springs were partially poking through the mattress. It was entirely possible that what he had interpreted as a silver brush on the divet of his journal was instead the grey of steel, just harder to discern in the harsh blue light of the brick. It was entirely possible he was overthinking this entire thing. He couldn’t shake the paranoia, however, as he replaced the mattress. He couldn’t leave the book there anymore; he would have to take it with him from now on. It meant risking its loss, either by theft or destruction, sure, but it would help him keep his peace until he found a better solution.

Breathing deeply through his nostrils, he turned to clean up his cabin once more, suspicious thoughts turning occasionally to his current crewmates before being dismissed as he worked. Finally when he was done, he looked back down at his journal once more before reaching for his medicine drawer, taking out three tallow’s ear leaves and chewing on them as he sat on his bed. He hadn’t put too many damning secrets into the journal in any case. Just enough to get him hanged, he supposed. He might be better off burning the journal entirely and simply go about his business with everything in his head. He considered it, but instead placed the journal under his pillow. He fucking dared anyone try to sneak up on a sleeping vampire and try to reach underneath his pillow, see how that worked out for them.

His thoughts drifted as the natural sedatives of the tallow’s ear took their effect, relaxing him, making it far easier to drift off naturally to oblivion once more.

The journal was future Handy’s problem.

--=--

The airship, wonder of wonders, slowly but surely lowered steadily to the ground. Whirlwind shifted in his fetters as he pulled the cart up to where the airlock would be closest to them as the ship lowered itself as close to the ground as it was safe to do so.

“Looks like the two of them fixed the ballasts alright.” Silvertalon smiled with not a little bit of pride. He had been honoured the baron had asked him to teach him what he knew about running and maintaining an airship rather than contracting a high falutin’ engineer from one of the schools out east. Silvertalon had been flying these things since they were little more than powder kegs attached to balloons, and he’d be damned if some cracked beaked little know-it-all who learned all his steam trade from books and lectures was going to lecture him on anything. Sure, they were still a fairly new means of transportation, as things were reckoned, but he felt he was hardly preening too boastfully when he thought himself one of the most experienced airship pilots in the entire High Kingdom. Baron Handy was an attentive student if nothing else, and now he had proof of it, the fruits of his labour as a mentor and teacher.

“Why in Tartarus did I have to lug this thing the last leg of the journey?” Whirlwind groused. Silvertalon’s smile and gaze never wavered.

“You lost the bet.”

“You got us put in jail!”

“You promised not to mention it to anygriffon.”

“Correction, I promised not to mention it Handy,” Whirlwind said with a victorious smile. Silvertalon snorted.

“Ya still lost the bet,” he insisted. Whirlwind let out a disgusted breath.

“Nothing gets to you, does it? At least Handy has amusing reactions,” the deer complained, Silvertalon ruffled his wings.

“I’m not Handy, now am I?” The dark grey of the ship’s envelope overshadowed them and looked positively ominous as it blocked out the sun from their perspective. He had eyed the keel that ran along the bottom of the ship as it had lowered. It didn’t look warped, but there was a strange swelling near the prow that he couldn’t account for. He mentioned it to Whirlwind who confirmed that it had been the warping he had spotted himself. He had frowned at that, hoping to the All-Maker that the deer was wrong as he didn’t know ships the way he did, particularly not airships. Whirlwind had protested, acknowledging he did not know shipbuilding, but like any deer of his tribe, he was a master carpenter and knew wood under duress when he saw it. Silvertalon dropped the issue; they’d need to get it seen to in any case. Hopefully their suspicions were wrong.

The airlock opened and a rope ladder descended to the ground. It was easily a fifteen foot climb given the length of the ship from the base of the airlock as well as the distance from the surface. Nonetheless, both the human and Spike descended from the airlock, carrying bags of tools and spare metal sheets. Whirlwind let out a relieved breath and unhooked himself from the cart as the pair approached.

“What took you two so long?” Handy asked in a tone of voice that sounded as if he were glad to see them, but his smile didn’t meet his eyes. Silvertalon raised a brow at that. He knew he didn’t care for the dragon, but he hadn’t figured being stuck with only Spike for company would wear on his employer’s patience that badly. The furtiveness of the lanky drake only furthered his suspicions.

“We decided to stay the night rather than trudge through the night part way through,” Whirlwind lied with an easy smile. Silvertalon shuffled his wings before coughing an affirmation.

“Got ourselves plenty of coal here, sir. Right bargain too.” The griffon gestured to the cart with a wing. There were easily seven bags of coal piled on the cart. Nowhere near enough to get them to the Empire, but more than enough to get both to a lake and a relay station for a proper refuelling of coal.

“Good to hear.” Handy set down two bags of tools to the ground, Spike following suit. “Alright, I saw it's probably better if we dismount and fix the water tanks here while we have the ship lowered. The ground’s relatively flat, the rain finally stopped this morning, and it’ll be easier than fixing them and filling them at the same time by a lake.”

“It's wha’ I’d do milord.” Silvertalon nodded approvingly as Whirlwind turned and waved a hoof at a pair of country ponies who were passing by on a country road pulling a pair of small carts. The ponies looked curiously at the goings on regarding the airship and were, more than likely, some locals who made an excuse to go noseying as close to the airship everypony had noticed parked in the sky overnight. They suddenly hurried themselves when they recognised Handy though, furtively whispering to themselves as they went about their business. Whirlwind frowned at their rudeness of not waving back, however.

“Alright, then let's get started. Silvertalon, I loosened the chains from the inside. They should lower easily once you dismount the burst tanks. Whirlwind, we’re going to need you to direct us to the parts that need patching. Spike here makes attaching the steel plates easy, so we shouldn’t be here for as long as we would be if we were stuck hammering and lacquering the damn thing to make it watertight.”

And with that they got set to work. Silvertalon dismounted the first water tank, slowly lowering it down, pushing it with his rear paw as he balanced precariously on the side of the ship so that it rolled gently down the side of the water tank beneath it and then gently onto the stabilizer fin. It had been locked in place in preparation to gently lower the tank further and more safely to the ground. The hard ridges that lined the front of the wing of the ship were ridged with iron half circles, designed to catch the chains that lowered the tank as it crossed over the edge of the fin and made its way further to the ground to keep it from swaying dangerously.

With the first tank lowered, they set to work, Whirlwind directing the efforts of the other two as Handy hammered the burst metal seams into place, stepping well back as Spike set to work welding the rent metal. Whirlwind helped setting about bending the sheet metals into shape, with Handy holding them in place over the repaired metal while Whirlwind’s ice magic helped freeze them in place. It was an invaluable addition because Handy was wondering how the hell they planned on holding them in place while Spike set to work with his fire breath. Fortunately, the ice held, and while it melted immediately under spike’s flame, it burned too hot and too fast, welding the metal in place before the hard packed magical ice disappeared like so much winter’s snow on a spring morning.

They double checked their work, ensuring the metal would hold under pressure according to the specifications of the ship. If worst came to worst, Handy would simply pitch in for replacements when they made dock somewhere, but hopefully they should hold until they reached the Crystal Empire. Hopefully.

“How do you plan on filling those things, anyway? Do you just lower them into the lake and open the valves or what?” Whirlwind asked from atop the stabilizer fin as Silvertalon worked the chains to begin the process of lifting the repaired tank back into place, with Whirlwind helping lift it over the awkward fin and then again over the lower water tank.

“Tha’s one method fir it,” Silvertalon confirmed as he took to the air in a rush of wind and took flight to get to work on the water tanks. “Heavy as anything when trying to lift them back up, but if ya got some steam in the boiler, you can make an easier job of the chains being pulled by a mechanism in the ship. Just gotta have somegriffon stay out and be prepared to yell at whoever is inside to stop the machine when it gets awkward.”

“What other way could you do it?” Whirlwind continued, Handy sighed.

“Another way is you get a really long, specialised hose, and trick physics into making the lake do the hard work for you and siphon the water up into the tanks,” Handy explained. “It's really awkward and a right pain in the ass to use.”

“Do we have one?”

“Not anymore we don’t,” Handy said with a straight face.

“I still have no idea where I put that thing…” Silvertalon called down from the tanks on the back side of the ship, hidden from view as he was by a rear stabilizer fin. Handy looked off into the distance and said nothing. Whirlwind smiled.

Author's Note

Fuck you, welcome back to Bad Mondays.

Chapter 63 - Cold Comforts

It was approximately minus fuck you degrees Celsius outside and not all that much warmer within by the time they finally, finally reached the Jewel of the North.

The capital city of the Empire was, by all measures, effectively nameless, a tradition Handy found baffling, with the city and the Empire synonymous with one another. It was also, quite effectively, the only real city of note in the entire frigid wasteland it deigned to rule over. For arcane reasons that were beyond not only Handy, but apparently most arcane masters of magic and weather manipulation, the lands of the Crystal Empire were doomed to an eternal winter of frost and snow, and until fairly recently not even the city was present.

Handy had initially mused that it was some mad equivalent to Las Vegas back home, wherein instead of the middle of a desert, someone thought it worthwhile to gamble building a city out in the middle of magical Siberia and somehow got lucky… only to discover that was not the case. The city was ancient, in fact one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in all of the pony kingdoms. It had just been missing for a thousand years with everyone inside of it.

Handy had blankly stared at Spike when he gave the explanation and, for the first time in his life, decided not to question it and just moved on with the walkthrough. While the city was… relatively recently returned to the land of the living, that suddenly meant there was a centre of civilization with thousands of living souls within it. Over the recent years, efforts had been made to connect it to the rest of Equestria to its south, and the kingdom of Henosia to its north, a similarly cold and frigid landscape. Unlike the Empire, Henosia was not bound in the grip of winter by some kind of magical doom. It was just a cold shithole because it was farther north in the world in general, and that was the long and short of it.

This of course made the land of the Empire an inhospitable blight and natural border between the pleasant and temperate climes of Equestria and the major nations to its North: Henosia, the Greycoast Republic, Northern Griffonia and Yakyakistan.

Handy actually took a shot when he heard that last one but otherwise didn’t comment.

In any case, the re-emergence of the Empire after apparently a thousand years of absence meant there was suddenly a trade hub which could more easily facilitate trade and communication between the north and south. So, the Empire found itself exploding in economic importance and commercial trade, which it ruthlessly exploited to begin investing and establishing satellite settlements out in the bleak winterscape for the exploitation of natural resources, farming, magical experimentation, and archaeology. These were all connected by an aggressively well-maintained rail system and increasingly heavy investment in airship infrastructure and advancements in crystal-based magical advancements in science and magic.

Handy recalled the heart monitors of the hospital he had visited all those long months back in Spurbay when he was recovering from his and Joachim’s early misadventures in the mines, and had noted the out-of-place nature of such a high-end technological device in a civilization that didn’t even have electricity. He had recalled a brief explanation about how it ‘ran on crystals’ and with what he was learning about the Empire, it seemed such advancements were deeply intertwined with the specialised magical research the Empire reintroduced to wider society, mingling with newer methods of thought and technological innovation.

This piqued Handy’s interest somewhat, not least because the rapid industrialisation of the city they were heading to would likely mean it’d be more than capable of handling their needs as far as his own airship was concerned. Hopefully more cheaply than he had feared as well, but he wasn’t prepared to bet on that.

The city itself first appeared as nothing more than blurry light on the horizon, a sign of hope in the bleak, dark, continuous blizzard that had dominated the environment the further north they had travelled after patching the ship. It had been a miserable week all told, and the heat off the pipes diffused heat unevenly throughout the ship. Water rations were renewed but had frozen over a number of times and most of their waterskins had burst when they had made the mistake of making them too full and leaving them in areas too far away from the warm pipes.

The rum helped but it was clear there was not enough to go around in such harsh conditions, and Handy had learned a lot about how to properly manage a ship in the few weeks they had been flying. The first lesson was he literally never wanted to have so much of the ship’s system rely on him ever again, and that meant getting a proper crew like Silvertalon kept hinting, but that had its own problems.

His paranoia aside, the space on the ship and its layout meant enlarging the ship’s permanent crew while also carrying Handy and whoever/whatever else he needed to go to places meant it was always going to be a much more cramped miserable experience, with constant stops for resupply. It also meant an economic necessity to keep the ship constantly flying on commercial business to justify the expenses rather than the personal yacht which was essentially its preferred purpose.

Now more than ever, the ship’s reality as one of the earlier prototype models that had succeeded in keeping in the air became apparent. No wonder Fancy Pants could afford to pay him with it despite the absurdly costly investments airships were. Their utility was undeniable, but the border between invaluable asset and white elephant was perilously short. If Fancy Pants could afford this rig when it was new, then he doubtlessly could afford a better model now and it probably paid him to dump this heap on someone else who could better appreciate it.

Clever bastard.

The light grew and Handy’s curiosity grew to genuine wonder as they slowly encroached upon the city of diamonds and dreams. It was the small spots of darkness they spied on the horizon that were the first genuine signs of life they could discern through the blinding wind and snow. Lumbering shapes mirrored the one they themselves appeared to be upon the endless white and greys of the endless skies.

Airships, a few here and there but as they drew closer, as the winds grew less, as the storm eased its fury, the number grew to dozens. It was an uneven border, but the difference was stark all the same even as it slowly eased from frigid wasteland into warm, rolling hill lands. Here and there were small hamlets and farmlands, new settlements and townships distinguished by the archaic architecture of the older buildings which seemed for all the world to be made out of pure crystal. Unlike the abomination that was Princess Twilight’s castle, most of these humble structures seemed much more carefully and purposefully constructed, and looked less like a spike of raw earth driven up out of the ground that happened to resemble a castle and more like properly planned buildings.

Snaking lines of roads, ancient and new, crossed the landscape, punctuated by much newer veins of railroad between major towns and spreading out into the horizons beyond. Clouds of smoke and steam betrayed the locations of locomotives far below, and out of place spires that towered above some of the busier hubs showed lifelines for many a tired airship captain on their way to and from the capital. And sure enough, more than a few airships of all sorts had gathered at these outposts of civilization at winter’s edge, to rest and warm up or to take care of final matters before traversing the harsh skies beyond.

The capital, however, now there was a sight for sore eyes. It was a long way off but the closer one got to it, the clearer the skies got, the more the sun shone its glory upon to Earth, and the greater the beacon of hope radiated outwards to all who had eyes to see. One would think a city made entirely out of crystal would make the thing an absolutely blinding glare hazard but oddly enough, much like Twilight’s castle, that didn’t seem to be the case.

It was eye-catching, but the light that was refracted was easy on the eyes, entrancing almost. Simultaneously plain light and iridescent in hues, it seemed as if the city danced upon the horizon, an illusion that disappeared the closer you got to it, replaced instead with a much more solid but no less glorious reality.

Handy, while no less engrossed in the sights of the crystalline city below than the rest of them, was looking up in awe of the absolutely packed airspace above the city. He had never seen such a busy skyline full of airships before in all his days in this world. The most he had ever seen was during his time in Canterlot, where if you stopped to count at a high enough spot in the city, you could count easily over a dozen in the sky of various sizes coming to and fro. In a less developed city for airships such as Skymount, they were a much rarer sight, with one or two being spotted in any given week that wasn’t Handy’s own.

Apparently the Crystal Empire, by virtue of its aggressive economic development and investments, was the second greatest hub for airship manufacture and trade on the continent outside of the city of Bardingburgh itself way down south in Concordia.

Suddenly having the ruler of the throne so closely tied to the Princesses of Equestria made a great deal more sense than just another simple power play.

Maybe if he ever had the cash to spare one day, he might upgrade his choice of aerial transportation and donate his current ship to the royal armoury as Joachim’s personal vessel. Having insight into the costs and expenses involved, however, he wasn’t holding his breath any time soon.

“Getting crowded up here, Silver,” Handy commented as he stood beside his captain on the bridge of the airship. There was still plenty of room in the sky, but they were going to have to dock somewhere soon, and a lot of the towers closer to the centre of the city were already occupied. It was rather concerning seeing some of the newer and larger airships docked far higher than most, doubtlessly loaded with more cargo and overall tonnage, meaning a bigger disaster awaited if some idiot destroyed an envelope faster than the damage could be repaired.

The smaller ships, lower down on the towers, could actually physically dock on the sturdier levels jutting out from the tower at odd angles. Interestingly, the docks were levelled out as steps on a circular staircase would be, allowing for multiple docking of smaller airships and room for envelope sizes without the absurdity of having airships docked side by side and having their filled envelopes pressing against one another… for the most part that was.

Long hooks and pulleys tied the large envelopes to the docks and tower itself, securing the bulk of the ships from the stronger winds at the greater heights. Handy was relatively confident that, wherever they landed, his pride and joy was most definitely going nowhere.

Unfortunately, that was also something that was worrying him.

“Waiting for contact, sir,” Silvertalon said in his cracked, tired voice. “Can’t go anywhere till air control checks our papers.”

“More sky marshals?” Handy muttered with some disgust.

“Aye, boss.”

“Fantastic. Well, where’s our welcoming committee?”

“Might be a while.” Silvertalon squinted out the glass demisphere that made the front of the bridge. “I see an awful lot of activity around the towers closer to the city centre. Might be best if we hold still for a while and wait for someone to come knocking.”

“Hmph, alright.” Handy pulled his cloak tighter about him. Damn it was cold. “Let me know if anything else happens.”

“Yes, boss.”

Handy left the bridge behind and walked back to his own quarters. It’d hardly be diplomatic to rock on up to the royalty of a kingdom fully kitted out in his armour, especially since he was here in a purely friendly context and not as part of an armed entourage. Besides, it was still bitterly cold at this altitude, even though the environment had warmed considerably after they crossed the border and entered the magical protection of the Crystal Empire. He’d rather keep his winter clothes on rather than swap them out for his armour.

Still, it paid to be prudent.

He patted the pauldron of his newer, sturdier armour on its stand and started to work at his good old, reliable, magic resistant set. It was still a sorry sight after so many repairs, reforges and additions to the metal that marred its artistic beauty, but whereas he forewent heavy armour in the Dragonlands for practical reasons, he was donning it once more for the same concern.

Magic was a much bigger concern when dealing with ponies after all.

He affixed his greaves, his gauntlets, sabatons, plackart and breastplate with time consuming, though practised ease. All affixed and fitted over his beloved chainmail hauberk. He made some more concessions to the cold and an attempt to appear more approachable. Wrapping the blunt metal of his legs and arms in light cloth coverings would help insulate the armour from the cold and keep water out. No one who saw him would make the mistake that he wasn’t wearing armour, but it would look slightly less obvious at a difference.

He made one concession, though, and forewent the pauldrons. The sword breakers on them had saved his life more times than he could count, but his current cloaks were not properly sized to account for them, leaving him looking fairly ridiculous with them equipped. He instead replaced them with more lightweight shoulder pads made out of layered quilted leather and chainmail tied in thick squares, with light metal strips to aid in blade deflection.

The tremendous relief and range of motion it allowed his arms and shoulders were more than appreciated, even if he was making a tactical compromise, lessening some magical protection in favour of mobility. If only he could somehow get more such armour made, he’d have so many things he’d request from Heat Source that could be improved. Maybe he shou—

There was a knock at his cabin door as he tied his cloak into place.

“Handy?”

“What is it, Spike?” Handy asked disinterestedly as he double-checked his possessions, lifting his travel pack and pouches and affixing them to his belts.

“The, uh, sky marshal is demanding to board.” Spike said from the other side of the door. Handy scowled.

“Grant them permission and bring them to the bridge. I’ll be up in a moment.” The first sky marshal he met, who he fully planned on revisiting on his way back for the hell of it, had been an interesting surprise. This one just felt tedious. After a moment, he figured being courteous and polite was probably the best approach this time, especially since they were the ‘conquering heroes’ escorting the man of the hour back to his princess after all. The relationship seemed familial, given how much Twilight was willing to spend to ensure the wellbeing of this dragon, and how Spike seemed so attached to the ponies. He figured the meeting would go over smoothly.

He made to leave his cabin before snapping his fingers in recollection. He stepped back, slipped out his old shield, and slung it over his shoulder in its cover. As he did so he paused, thinking, looking over at his desk. His journal was now thoroughly well-hidden, such that no one who boarded the ship while Silvertalon was on his lonesome here would find it, of that he was confident. His money…. well that was just bad form if it got stolen, and Handy would certainly make sure he got every single damn penny back with fair recompense for trouble caused.

But there was something else he really couldn’t risk losing. Even if a fair few powerful people already knew he possessed it.

He opened the draw and withdrew the glass flask with its precious contents. The countdown for how well-preserved the blood would remain began the second he removed it from the enchanted casket, but it was worth it. He secured it in his travel pack at his side and turned to leave.

--=--

“It’s him! It’s really him!”

Not a damn day went by where Handy wasn’t absolutely floored by something truly unexpected and absurd.

“It’s the hero of the Empire!”

You would think given the reputations involved, people would be a bit more concerned about the sight of them as they made their way through the tower.

“Really!? I haven’t seen him in so long. When did he get so tall?”

Turned out even if you were used to being the biggest bastard on the block…

“Do you think he can sign my wrench with his dragon fire?”

…You could always be overshadowed by a four-foot-fuck-all with a good public relations record. Spike had apparently been underselling just how well-regarded he was in the Crystal Empire, so much so that the Sky Marshal had barely registered Handy’s existence and was much more concerned, and enthused, with the arrival of Spike. The unease and worry Handy was habitually used to receiving had been entirely absent when he stepped onto the bridge, the sky marshal apparently under the ridiculous notion that Spike’s presence would somehow keep the dangerous human that they had been warned would be flying into the Empire in check.

Handy honestly felt offended.

It did, however, make getting through the primitive form of customs much easier, and as much as Handy found it inconvenient, he had to admit it was a much less painful experience than flying back home on Earth. The overworked, and clearly under-experienced, sky marshal had happily recognised Handy’s credentials and right to seek permission to land, and even passed word to expedite the process. They even waived the docking fees at royal request, and probably would have done so just because Spike was present. The drake was positively preening at the adoration he was receiving to the dumbfoundedness of human, whose presence was completely eclipsed by that of the young dragon.

Landing at a properly equipped airship dock for the first time was quite the experience. It ranked somewhere between unfinished construction project, multi-storey open floor warehouse, and every health and safety inspector’s worst nightmare when they entered a machine shop.

The floors were awash with craftsponies, unicorns with horns aglow permanently levitating tools and heavy equipment, comically unbalanced earth ponies jostling with pegasi on ladders moving to and fro the different levels through service ladders only staff were allowed to use… but just anyone could walk on up to if they thought no one was looking. Uncountable pipes of varying sizes and material fabrication crisscrossed the central supporting pillar and went in and out of walls and floors at seemingly random junctions. Numerous water leaks—that thankfully weren’t scalding to the touch—gave the chilly atmosphere outside a particular bite when one had the misfortune of walking underneath one.

The steel supports, Handy noted, that were naked and exposed on the walls and interior of the tower were reminiscent of the heavy iron mongering he had seen in the trains, but as the wooden floors creaked under his boots, he realised the ponies had little experience in constructing so many towering spires designed to deal with so much heavy equipment and moving parts. He suddenly felt less impressed about witnessing the birthing pains of a new industry and wonder of aerial transportation, and more keenly aware of how many safety regulations were written in the blood of the unwary.

He very much wanted to get off the tower. Ponies and other creatures of this world proved masterful architects when it came to rock and stone, but these new, more modern constructions designed for commerce and utility, made of wood and steel and iron will, were more held together with enthusiasm than experience.

“Name?” asked the stupidly smiling functionary, who stood between Handy’s crew and the engineering teamsters he needed to consult as to what his ship needed. Crystal ponies were not so much a separate race of equine but a kind of… magically altered ethnicity. Quite literally the only difference between them and any other Equestrian was that sometimes they would appear to be living breathing crystal in the shape of a pony, rather than the flesh and blood he knew them to be.

Thankfully, this one was still made out of fur and fear, and not whatever nonsense Spike had just been explaining to him. Still though, her eyes were disquieting. Nothing unusual, and he didn’t see the occasional spark that caught his attention when ponies— and sometimes griffons—got when circumstances occurred. The reflection of her eyes, the shape of her pupils, it was almost—

“Baron Handy Haywatch,” Handy replied genially, producing his Writ of Passage, signed by no less a personage than that of Princess Celestia herself. He’d produce the one he got from Joachim, but he figured that’d be unnecessary. “With a crew complement of four.”

“I’m sorry, sir, but uh, I only count three of you. Hi Spike!” The grey pegasi’s untidy blue mane fell out from under her chin-strapped hat as she waved at the drake. Spike chuckled and waved back. They were two feet apart.

“Yeah we uh… He decided to… stretch his wings. He’ll catch up.” Handy resisted the urge to sigh.

“Oh! A griffon?” the border official left behind by the retreating sky marshal asked, writing down the details of their crew manifest and, eventually, their supply manifest for official records.

“No.”

“A pegasi?”

“... No.”

“Uh, uhm, may I ask what your missing crew member is?” she asked, big brown eyes alight with curiosity.

“He’s… a deer.”

“... Deer don’t fly."

“I am aware,” Handy answered. “This one can, so he does.”

“I never heard of a deer with wings! This is amazing!”

“He doesn’t have wings.

“But you said—”

“He flies with magic.”

“A deer wizard! You never see those!”

“He’s not a wizard either, thank God. He just possesses a magic… thing that lets him fly, so he uses it. Look, is this even relevant? I doubt he’ll be coming to this tower.”

“I’m sorry, Sir Handy, I just needed to take record of all occupants of an incoming airship! Had you not mentioned he was part of your crew…”

“No no, I know. I just… don’t want to catch flak if he takes anyone by surprise.” Handy let his eyes look up to the heavens in defeat. “He’s a big stag, one shining antler, singular, has a lot of magic. Can’t miss him. Be sure to let whoever you were told to inform about my whereabouts that he’s with me, and I apologise on his behalf ahead of time.”

“Haha! Inform! I don’t know what you’re talking about!” The border control agent looked hilariously sheepish and struggled to keep a non-guilty face at Handy’s casual accusation. He didn’t so much as bother registering the admission by body language.

Instead, he moved on to where Silvertalon was arguing with a pony with a bizarre set of implements strapped to its back. The mare was a light blue-coated crystal pony, with a slightly darker shade of turquoise hair. She was wearing some kind of jumpsuit with metal fittings all over it stained brown by some protective coating, with a brass ring around the torso of her body, if that was even the right term for equine anatomy.

What was really peculiar were these long, jointed metal prosthetic arms that were attached to the metal ring, consisting of two long metal poles with grasping claws at their end with what looked to be a small, orange, glass sphere inset in the centre ‘palm’ of the device. The pony was talking animatedly with Silvertalon, who seemed to be somewhat annoyed by her enthusiasm. He must have said something that pleased her because she did a little hoofy dance in the annoying manner of ponies and skipped off, barking orders to her equally annoyingly colourful companions.

“Everything alright, Silver?” The griffon looked over to him and scratched the back of his head.

“I think so, boss. Basically explaining what we need seeing to with regards to the ship. Seems it shouldn’t be too much of a bother. The crew here seem excited to see an older model for some reason.”

“Hmm,” Handy hummed, not entirely convinced nor enthused. He mentally calculated the costs of repair, the potential cost of needing to replace the upper deck and all the pipe work and pneumatics… the cost of replacement ballasts if they even had the right size and models… the cost of extra helemnite gas… the cost of replacing the gas entirely if it needed to be vented in order to commit fully to the repairs… docking fees…

“Boss?”

“What?” He was suddenly shaken from his moody recollection. Silvertalon had apparently kept talking to him.

“About the ship?” Handy rubbed his forehead.

“Yeah, yeah, the repairs. What's the problem?”

“Its name.”

“What?” he asked, genuinely confused for a moment.

“We need to register the name of the ship for docking administration.” Silvertalon explained. Handy paused for a moment. In all the time he’d had it, he had never even thought to name the damn thing. It’d be like naming your car. No one named their car.

Well, okay, maybe you would if you were a complete prat.

Come to think of it, you may not name your private vehicle, but major things like ships always had a name. But never planes for some reason. Or well, almost never planes at least; everyone remembered the Enola Gay… and the Hindenburg for that matter. He looked back out to the dock where the ship weighed anchor on this rickety death trap of a conning tower that passed for an airship bay. All this time and he had yet to christen it. It just had never occurred to him before. Strange that Silvertalon, an experienced pilot, had never brought it up. He could ask him what he thought the ship could be called out of respect but… nah.

The Hammerhead? Too aggressive, it wasn’t a warship, and didn’t look the part either. The White Elephant perhaps, given how much of a hole in his pocket it was going to leave him after these repairs. He was really going to need to find a way to make this thing pay for itself apart from carrying his vampiric ass everywhere. A dark part of him enjoyed the humour of calling it the The Coffin Ship because of said nature, but that would set an entirely unbecoming tone everywhere he went. He had his reputation do that for him already. He needn’t lean into it that much. That’d be uncouth.

“The Visitor,” Handy decided. A bit understated, subtle hint of menace, plausible deniability, appropriate for an unarmed ship and accurate to its intended purpose. It’d do. “Put that down as her name.”

“Are you sure?” Silvertalon asked, one ear flicking but otherwise showing no reaction to the name.

“It’ll suffice, and it’s fitting enough.” He shrugged slightly, the worry of the costs still ticking away at the side of his thoughts. “Just be sure these ponies don’t go anywhere they shouldn’t in their… enthusiasm.”

Silvertalon smiled at that. He had no intention of letting them go unsupervised anywhere on his ship of course, and Handy knew that, but it still needed to be said. He left the good captain in peace.

“Alright, Spike.” He turned to the drake. “You know where we need to go better than I do, so lead on.” The dragon beamed at him.

“Alright! Come on then, follow me. Twilight would be waiting for us at the castle!” He turned and scarpered off. Handy watched him go for a minute, hurrying past busy and adoring pony workers on his sturdy two legs, no longer burdened by the heavy coat and scarf he had worn in much less cold weather when Handy had seen him first. Those were instead bundled with the rest of his belongings in an overstuffed pack on his back as he happily made his way down the tower, unaffected by the chill.

Handy shifted his own gear and belongings, considering the dragon’s change in demeanour and candour since the Dragonlands, and glanced outside once more. The cold. The biting cold. He could remember that very clearly. Was that how he had felt all the time without his fire? How long had he been like that? Even in the wastes of the Dragonlands on the tail end of winter, it was too cold for Handy to bear. He couldn’t imagine what proper winter must have been like for the poor lizard. No wonder there was such a spring in his step now

Hopefully, Handy wouldn’t come to regret putting it there.

--=--

Their passage into the royal palace at the heart of the city was mercifully brief, but no less bothersome for its brevity. Spike’s reputation made sure of that. Now that he entered the city proper, he was immediately struck by a number of things. Firstly, the crystal ponies were, apparently, just that. They seemed to be ordinary ponies at first, pegasi, earth ponies, unicorns but all of them had that oddness to their eyes he couldn’t quite place. As if they had facets to their irises.

Not counting the ponies he saw that actually did have gems for irises. He was taken aback at first, but then recalled the first crystal pony he had ever seen had just been the same. What was her name again? Odd, he couldn’t remember, but he remembered her face well enough. He hoped both her and her bullshit emerald eyes survived the tournament ultimately, if only because he wouldn’t wish a fiery death on anyone, really.

The architecture was… actually rather fascinating. He placed his hand upon walls and stonework as they passed and marvelled at the quality of the craftsmanship. It was easier to tell the older construction from newer ones, as the older buildings, while composed almost entirely of stone, were cut in such a way to resemble rough-cut gems. Initially, this had struck him as gaudy, but up close it actually seemed genuinely impressive to manage such an effect on otherwise mundane rocks. More to the point, he couldn’t determine the seams of any groutwork or where any stones or blocks were placed upon another. Still, it was obvious the buildings were not the pure crystalline structures they were intended to resemble, for one thing he already knew what that looked like from visiting Princess Twilight’s castle.

For another thing, he had the castle in the centre of the city to compare it all too.

It was a sight to behold. He had seen it on the way in, of course, but had been so preoccupied and dismissive that he had not paid it the proper attention it was due. It appeared to be a mountain made out of the purest, whitest diamond erupting from the ground, as if tectonic plates made out of the treasury hoards of titans had clashed at that spot and summoned it from the earth. But there the naturalistic allusions ended. The entire base of the structure, in four great thoroughfares, was exposed to the elements and acted as the focal point of the entire capital city and its great roads.

Above that, where the rest of the diamond slopes met suddenly, almost brutally, formed the towering, elegant spires and parapets of the imperial castle itself. The diamond of the rough slopes gave way to white sapphires forming its walls and balconies, its turrets lined with the pale-purple clad soldiers of the Imperial guard and banners of imperial purple and pastel pink bearing a clear blue crystalline heart upon a shield.

The stunning hues of the walls shifted in colour to deeper blues that drew the eye upwards, its towering white spires held upwards like victorious spears in exaltation of the heavens themselves. Pointing to the sun above and beyond the dim clouds that obscured the face of the sky, it stood as if in reminder of the promise of days to come, a future foretold etched in the unyielding diamond of promises of days past.

There was magic here, unfathomable magic. Even Handy, a rank novice though he was, suspected he still would’ve been able to even if he weren’t. He could only compare such raw, forceful latent power while in the presence of people with such absurd degrees of magical power. Celestia, any given warlock when they were in the middle of their hissy fits, the Lady of the Lake…

Here though, he felt it even when they had yet to enter the city’s airspace properly. It was a dull tickle first, no different than what he would have felt walking anywhere when the winds of magic blew particularly hard on any given day. Then more as they approached the city, still nothing to make note of, nothing he wouldn't have noticed entering any city with any particular concentration of mages or magical activity… or even a particularly sizable portion of unicorns running about, for that matter.

But every step he took from the docking tower, it seemed to increase almost exponentially until it was like what he had felt when Crimson had first unlocked his ability to sense the magic in the air around him, a coarse, heavy, oppressive concentration of energy. Then more, and more and more and ever increasing until it felt as if it could overpower him, like what he felt when… when the Singing went through an area and he felt the strange compulsion to participate, but much, much more powerful.

He stopped. He had to; it was… It demanded to be regarded with proper respect almost. He stood at the base of the towering structure, looking upwards. It was strange; there was nothing overtly magical about the structure that could easily be discerned, apart from it being essentially an immaculately carved and constructed crystalline castle. He tried comparing it to the castle Twilight resided in, which in retrospect was so obviously magical and enchanted, especially to be able to guide him through multiple storeys without so much as ever having to place a step on a single staircase. That was absurdly powerful magic and yet he was none the wiser. This… This simply was, it was too hard to articulate.

He looked down as Spike continued rattling off some story or another, presuming Handy was still following behind him as he led them both through the city.

A glance to the side at any point would have revealed to him a subtle honour guard keeping a respectful distance as the pair moved through the city. It was courteous, he supposed, rather than a full brigade having to meet him at the conning tower to guide him to the palace. They were easy to make out with their calm, measured, disciplined demeanours and synchronised movements in relation to Handy and Spike, very at odds with the more sporadic and erratic emotions of all the ponies they passed.

Handy did not mind, having expected such a welcoming committee, and after the… unusual normativity he had been treated with in Ponyville, the suspicion was a welcome familiarity. Doubly appreciated for maintaining a polite distance as well. Handy brushed it off and followed along after Spike, who seemed to be heading to one of the four constructs where the crystal palace met the ground. He smiled. It looked something like the Eiffel Tower, if you cut the top part off and only kept the arches at the base for a frame and stuck some late-gothic castle on top of it instead, and covered the entire thing in a coating of diamonds.

If he didn’t know any better, he’d swear it was constructed by—

He stopped when he sensed sudden agitation in the guards surrounding them. Looking around, he noticed the armoured ponies began to take flight from rooftops and from amidst the crowd, spears were lifted and orders were quietly shouted as some of them moved out of formation and went to different postings. What had suddenly gotten them so agitated? Was it him? No, only a few of their honour guards were paying attention to them anymore. He turned to follow the rough direction they were heading and looked up. He frowned.

“…So anyways I said… Handy?” Spike stopped and looked around when it became clear the human wasn’t following. He seemed to be looking around the crowd and back the way they came. Spike followed his gaze over the heads of the crowds of ponies that filled the main thoroughfare through the city, searching for what had caught his attention.

He didn’t have to look too hard.

Streaming across the sky, heading straight for them, was a large, billowing trail of expanding water vapour in the wake of brightly shining star.

“What in Cadence’s name is that!?” a voice cried out from the crowd. The cry was echoed and passed along as more and more ponies noticed and started moving out of the way. Spike hurried over.

“What’s going on!?” Handy didn’t answer him, simply watching the oncoming events calmly. He did warn them, after all. There was nothing more he could do to affect the situation but stand there and enjoy the show.

The shining missile soared through the air, being chased by an increasing cloud of winged pegasi chasing after it. The star arced and swung down, rocketing towards them like a meteor streaming great clouds of frost and ice as the air froze in its wake and proceeded to thaw once again in mid-air after it had passed. The newly formed clouds burst apart by the thundering approach of furious soldiers desperate to catch the unidentified threat to the city below.

The star fell, and with it, an eruption of snow sparkling crystalline water washed over the great streets of the city and rained down upon all who gazed upon its descent like a shower of gems. Each pure facet reflected and refracted the colourful light already rebounding from the buildings and great houses around them. The star rumbled up the road towards where Handy stood like an avalanche with a grudge to bear. The profusion of clouds was thunderous with the shining, glorious light bursting from within its depths, like an oncoming storm.

And so appeared the smiling, panting face of the Lord in Winter, fur bristling and shining with flecks of ice. The crown of winter, the shining crystals like points of starlight upon silver chains, was resplendent on two fully grown and fully matured antlers, carved with the spiralling patterns of the deer custom. Whirlwind ap Whisperwood stood tall and strong in the full measure of his office. The air around him chilled and wisps of cold vapour constantly danced over his fur, which had been slowly turning to browns with slight twinges of green as spring approached but now fully reverted to the deep greys, blues, and whites of winter. He was a stag transformed, and had Handy not already been exposed to his change on board the ship before he went for his excursion, he would have been just as shocked and taken aback as anyone else.

More so, given his history with white stags, but now was not the time for such a concern.

“Enjoy your walk?” Handy asked casually in the nearly empty section of the street before the crystal palace. Spike blinked and stared at Whirlwind, looking up at his antlers.

“Enjoy? Enjoy!? Ha-ha! You have no idea how good this feels!” Whirlwind shouted in his exuberance, spinning on the spot. Ice formed and cracked with each fall of his hooves, and snow kicked up and fell from the air with each movement. “It’s winter here, Handy! Not just a cold spell, not just a freak magical accident, not just out of season weather patch. It's winter! I am at the height of my power!”

“And that’s… good?” Handy asked, looking around at the cowering local population and the disorganised rabble that was the crystal guard that had dispersed as the ponies ran to and fro to escape Whirlwind’s overly dramatic entrance.

“Oh no, not at all, awful in fact. Terrifying in a way, really. I know ponies always said the Crystal Empire’s lands were trapped in an eternal winter, but that gains a whole other level of meaning when you’re a part of the season!” Handy pretended to understand.

“So you are running at full strength then?”

“Just as I was when running around the Greenwoods, putting the trolls back in their places, wrestling with the Roots of the Wyrdlings for control of the earth beneath, forcing asunder the branches of the maw of the forest to keep it from swallowing the sun and drinking the rivers and causing famine and plague! I don’t think you understand! I have lighting and thunder at my beck and call and nothing to throw it upon!” Handy calmly nodded along, not having a single clue to what anything he was referring to actually was, and took several steps back.

“Uh-huh… Step back a bit there, would you, Spike?”

“Whu—” Spike didn't have the time to finish asking before Handy calmly, but firmly, pushed him back a few steps… then a few steps more, and then stepped back himself to continue speaking with the deer who was lost in the revelry of his explanation.

“I haven’t felt this awake and alive in weeks! Oh, I NEEDED that jaunt to wake up and expend some energy. This is incredible! To think, the other lords always had to sleep the year away between winters! I could well believe it. I had never felt so weakened, so reduced than when winter had ended, but I could still be awake to see the sun…”

“Do you regret it?” Handy asked, as he looked beyond between the antlers of the deer’s head, keeping his attention just long enough for the payoff.

“No! Not once, not ever! If it were not for you there’d be no Lord in Winter! And if there were, he might still be asleep! I’d never see my home again in times of peace. I’d never sit down to hear stories by the fire nor tell my own, I’d never see my friends and tribe again… And other things besides I might still miss yet.” His exuberance slowed as a strange expression came over his face, shrinking his smile as his gaze suddenly grew distant. Handy wasn’t sure what thought crossed his mind that suddenly made him have regrets, but to be fair, he also didn’t particularly care either.

“I see you’ve recovered well enough.” Handy gestured to the repaired and regrown antler. Whirlwind blinked and tapped it himself.

“Oh! Yes, came right back as I was flying, I could feel the crown shift and writhe with power as I flew. Never happened before, but then I never broke an antler while wearing the crown.” Whirlwind then paused as he noticed the distance Handy had put between him and the two of them. “Why are you standing all the way off like that?”

“Oh you know…” Handy looked up behind Whirlwind. “Just learning from pattern recognition.”

“What—?” Whirlwind was lost beneath a suddenly dogpile of lilac-armoured ponies that crashed into the Lord of Winter, one after the other, pinning him to the ground as a cloud of pegasi warriors circled around, some landing and lowering Equestrian shoot sticks at him with the others above aiming crossbows. Most, however, were aimed at the crushed and pinned stag in their midst as more and more guards, many of them unicorns with horns aglow, poured out from the palace and surrounding streets to add to the guard detail.

For once he got to experience something like this happening to someone else when he entered a new kingdom, and found great entertainment in the display. Whirlwind spouted his profusions of innocence and how it was all a misunderstanding, and he really wished they’d all get off him because he wanted to make a very good first impression and didn’t want to hurt anypony. Someone twisted one of his legs in response to that, and he let out a loud shout in surprise more so than pain. Spike winced at the display and it was then, and only then, that Handy smiled.

--=--

“Spike!” The purple alicorn practically bolted from the raised dais where the crystal throne stood and flew across the expanse of the throne room. The drake opened his arms wide, a smile beaming on his face, and promptly disappeared in a cloud of purple feathers as the Princess of Friendship had barrelled into him at high speed and tackled him to the ground.

Whirlwind had laughed at the sudden, explosive display of affection, while Handy watched impassively. He did not know what he had been expecting when they had been escorted into the palace and to the throne room for a private audience with the rulers of the empire, but it had not been this.

He paid no further mind to Twilight Sparkle fussing over her adoptive family member and turned to take in the throne room before him. Much like the exterior of the palace, the interior was similarly tastefully appointed and arranged… by pony standards, that was. Gone were the rough and uneven textures and naturalistic crystalline growths of the crystal castle of Ponyville, whose corridors extended so high the ambient light of the building did not illuminate the ceiling. Instead, the pillars and walls were straight and elegant, the decor tasteful, and the light omnipresent though not oppressive.

The vaulted ceilings hung with soft silken sheets and fabrics that added a splash of warm colour to the cool hues of the halls of the crystal palace. Soft white light spilled from small crystals held in sconces made from seemingly rough-hewn agates which, upon closer inspection, were shaped into crests representing cutie marks of long forgotten worthies of the empire. Each held the light of civilization long after their passing and whose memories filled the palace with the warmth of their devotion still. It was a touching feature, Handy thought, and one that made him pause briefly in appreciation before they were shepherded further to their current destination.

The throne itself was a sight to behold. Much like Twilight’s uncomfortable-looking thrones back in Ponyville, the seat of the Crystal Empire was nestled in what appeared to be an explosive growth of crystal, but this belied the subtle craftsmanship in its construction. The seat itself was straight back and curved at the sides, its edges straight and aligned like a crown at its peak, a large golden gem of some kind resting upon its central spike. It was raised up on a dais of cascading crystal formations that seemed natural and random, but were in fact a carefully measured stairway, its steps draped in a great carpet that flowed down from the very seat of the throne itself like a waterfall of silk. At the throne’s back were massive crystalline growths, too uniform and mirror-perfect on either side to have been left to chance and nature, and soaring above it, stark against the lilac purple and crystalline blue hue of the wall, was the white snowflake symbol of the Empire itself, imposed upon a thin starburst and encapsulated in a thin white circle.

He almost didn’t notice the pink alicorn on the throne and blinked when he finally looked down to see her seated there. A large white unicorn stallion stood beside her to the side, a big bastard too by pony reckoning. Deep blue mane and hair complimented the pure snowy fur of his hide. Bright blue eyes shone as he smiled warmly, watching Twilight and Spike embrace. Princess Cadence, Handy presumed, was watching him, her brow slightly furrowed as if she was puzzled by something unexpected. Well, if Twilight hadn’t informed the ruler of this place that he was coming ming, that was hardly his fault.

The throne room was vast but strangely spartan for all its opulent extent. The walls were richly adorned with carvings and crystalline decoration along its great extents, the tall bright windows that lined one side of the throne room to the right dressed with long, flowing, heavy curtains, but that was the extent. There were no courtiers, no ministers of state, no favourites of the court, no councillors nor advisors. Hell, apart from two armoured ponies by the doors, there weren’t any guards.

Ordinarily, Handy would be aghast at the sheer negligence of leaving the head of state so unguarded in the presence of damn near anyone, let alone someone with his dubious reputation. But this was an alicorn, and an unknown one at that, at least to him. He had to assume much like the sheer power he felt radiating off Celestia when he merely stood in her presence, this pretty pink pony princess had to be of similar standing. Probably just as old too, something which had new meaning if what Spike had told him about the ‘Justicars’ were true. Given the raw power that had forced him instinctively to stop and regard it as he approached the palace, he decided discretion was the better part of valour and was prejudiced in favour of assuming this princess was far more dangerous than she appeared.

Keep in mind, this was no mean feat, as she was a very, very, very pink pony, with hair the colour of a fun fair ice cream swirl and a giant crystal heart on her flank and her official rank and title was the Princess of Love. If Handy didn’t know better, he’d already be laughing.

Twilight eventually let the poor dragon go from her enthusiastic welcome and stepped back, laughing bashfully, fluttering her wings in embarrassment as

Spike pulled himself to his feet, chuckling. “Well, I’m glad to see you too!”

“I was so worried! You hadn’t sent a letter in so long after you left the Dragonlands that I was—”

‘Letter?’ Handy thought suddenly, glancing at the drake out of the corner of his eye. When had he sent a letter? The only thing that came to mind was him burning a scroll up on the bridge… and the burned ashes flowing upon the wind out the open airlock. He frowned at that. He had been too alarmed at the naked exposure of fire to properly be concerned about why the drake was burning a scroll in an open area, but he should’ve figured. That was the precise method he could remain in contact with the Princess. Good to know he supposed.

’Hard to intercept too. How would you even begin to find ashes on the wind, much less collect it and reconstitute it?’

“Are you sure you’re alright now? No more coughing?” Twilight asked furtively. “Are you sure you’re not cold?”

“Twilight I am fine, better even!” Spike spread his arms wide. “I haven’t felt this good in years!”

“He certainly was energetic on the flight over!” Whirlwind interjected. Twilight blinked as if she were only just now noticed the supernatural deer standing beside her. She looked him up and down as if appraising him before her eyes froze upon the glittering Crown of Winter upon his antlers. Her eyes grew wide with the same fervent curiosity Handy had recalled when they had first met. Good, if she was focused on the curiosity the deer presented, it meant less focus would be put on him. He could toss the deer at her and the ponies while he was stuck here and potentially get through the handover of his payment with little fanfare, and get back to his ship to oversee repairs when he was paid.

And that was when she rounded on Handy and instantly, utterly, crushed that forlorn hope.

“You didn’t say you were bringing any deer wizards!” she said accusingly. Handy stuttered briefly in surprise, both from the accusation and her expression of mild annoyance rather than… well, anything else would have been more appropriate. Hesitancy, anger, aloofness, disgust, even gratitude, from everything from twisting her hoof to helping Spike. This… childishness caught him completely off guard.

“I uh, I…” He looked between her and Whirlwind, who was wearing his friendly smile, the one he wore when it was better to keep quiet about certain things. Well, Handy wouldn’t be saying anything at least, so he put the ball back in the stag’s court, letting him navigate this mess however he pleased. “He isn’t.”

This confused Twilight for a moment, and she looked back at Whirlwind, who chuckled. “Pleased to meet you at long last, little Twilight! Handy has told me all about you!” Son of a bitch. Twilight looked back at Handy in confusion.

“I did no such thing and you damn well know it,” Handy shot back, kicking the ball back the stag’s direction. “My lord.”

“Lord?” Twilight asked, now looking up at the strange deer, gears turning in her head. Handy smiled, though Whirlwind was unfazed.

“No need to be so formal; we are such good friends after all!” Whirlwind replied. “Why, after all you’ve done for me, I was of course all too eager to help you out!”

Twilight blinked at that, as if remembering something and rounded on Handy, suddenly very excited.

“That’s right! You said you’d tell me about the Oakenhearts!” Whirlwind gave Handy a curious glance, who looked between the demigod and the princess, thinking quickly.

“I said I might tell you about it sometime,” Handy corrected, very much not wanting to be responsible for revealing deer secrets at all, much less in front of Whirlwind where he could do something about it. “But seeing as there is someone much more qualified than I am on the subject, you’d be better off asking my… friend.”

“Ahem.” The actual ruling princess in the room politely interrupted their little exchange and the dance of responsibility the human and deer lord were engaged in. Twilight looked at her sister-in-law and hurriedly stepped back from the pair of them, standing beside Spike and trying to affect her royal dignity again.

Cadence smiled at the entire ordeal, amusement clear in her eyes. Her husband, for Handy figured it had to be the would-be emperor standing by her side, still smiled down at his sister. For the first time, Handy saw his eyes drift towards both him and Whirlwind. His smile remained unchanged, but there was a look to his eyes betraying some deep consideration.

“Welcome back, Spike,” Cadence said warmly, before looking towards Twilight and winking once. “As you can clearly see, we were worried about you.”

Spike chuckled as Twilight tried to shrink into her own wings to hide her sudden embarrassment. Cadence turned to Handy.

“It seems my good sister princess had made you some promises in return for your services, Baron Handy?” Sister? Oh right, sister as in fellow princess rather than blood sisterhood. That was strangely formal of her given the atmosphere set by Twilight’s foolishness.

“Your majesty.” Handy bowed his head in greeting, being very careful with his demeanour and word choice. He did not know if Twilight actually went through with what he threatened her to do and told her fellow princesses their deal in full. “That was the agreement we came to.”

Cadence looked him over and then closed her eyes with a sigh. “I cannot say I am happy about it. At all.” Here it came. “But, you did fulfil your word. And Twilight has already paid you some of your price, has she not?”

That was all he needed to hear. Now he knew their game, for it was why Twilight was putting on the act of being a foolish, immature princess, more so than she really was. They really were going to attempt to lull him into thinking he had influence over her in an attempt to gain an insight into him and his business. Particularly with this unexpected addition of the Lord in Winter in their midst, who Handy suspected they were under no illusions as to what he really was, Twilight’s assumptions aside. He didn’t smile, but he wanted to.

“... That is correct.” He affected a cautious air. The princess gave him no reproach in her next words.

“Then I suppose that's all that needs to be said on the matter.” She closed her eyes for a moment before eventually opening them with a warm, welcoming smile. “We are glad to see you both safe, and Spike, I’m happy to see you so well again. How is Ember?”

“Oh! I have so much to say, I don’t even know where to begin!” Spike said excitedly. Twilight chuckled and placed a hoof on his shoulder.

“It’s okay, Spike, you can take your time. We’re just glad to have you back.”

“I’ll say!” the big stallion said at last. “Been a while since we last saw each other, little buddy. I admit I was… a little worried about you going back to the Dragonlands again.”

“Why? Don’t tell me the great Shining Armour was worried about little old me,” Spike said teasingly. Shining chuckled.

“No, Spike, I was worried you would be a bit too much for all the other dragons to handle! What with being the winner of the Dragon Lord trials and all!” Dragon Lord trials? Spike? Handy glanced at the drake curiously for a moment. He hadn’t said anything about that, had he? The dragon lord was Ember; what exactly had Spike won?

“I bet you are all exhausted from your journey,” Cadance interjected, and once more the attention was focused back upon the throne. “If you would like, I could have rooms prepared for you but, as I am led to believe, you would rather not stay in the castle?”

That was strangely astute of her. Handy briefly held suspicion towards her but dismissed it. Doubtless his distrust of ponies and history with their royal family would be known to her. He was under no illusions he would be under constant surveillance while he was in the Empire and had long since made peace with that and saw this for the conciliatory gesture that it was. He appreciated it.

“I am honoured by your generosity, your majesty, but yes, I would prefer to seek my own accommodations.”

She nodded and then turned to Whirlwind. “And you, sir, may I have your name?” she asked politely. Whirlwind positively beamed.

“Yes you may!” he began and then proceeded to not give it for a few moments, just long enough that it got awkward. Shining cleared his throat.

“And… Your name is?” he asked.

“Aha! My apologies, I am Whirlwind, Whirlwind ap Whisperwood!”

“I have never heard of deer wizards outside of the Greenwoods,” Cadence noted, raising a hoof to her chin thoughtfully. Twilight now focused raptly on the stag.

He laughed. “Well you wouldn’t. None of the deer who ever leave the forests are wizards.”

“And you aren’t a wizard?” she asked.

“Nope! As my good friend here has already explained.” He gestured to Handy.

‘Friend is a strong word,’ Handy thought, but didn’t say anything. He wasn’t going to re-adopt the ball and left him hanging. He kept his expression neutral, though he wondered about the fixation over whether or not Whirlwind was a wizard, and dodged the very obvious question about what exactly he was instead.

He recalled the deer, ever ones to be contrary to their own traditions, had a thing where only a doe could learn proper magic as a caste apart from the Hart Sight for whatever bullshit deer reasons he had never bothered to learn. And he had picked up from Whirlwind that mentioning that Outer Caste deer frankly practised as much magic as they could get away with in the outside world was something of a secret.

So the ponies most definitely had seen deer ’wizards’ before, even if it was some mercenary spellsword Outcast deer performing parlour tricks. He considered Whirlwind for a moment as he traded conversation with the ponies. The stag was, frankly, not an idiot despite all appearances to the contrary. He had to know the impression he’d leave on the ponies with the way he entered the city, had to know Handy, given his own troubles with the ponies, would have to give something of an explanation for his travelling with them.

He had wanted this audience, had wanted this attention from the ponies, but why? What did the dee—?

‘You know what? Not my business, not my problem.’ Handy cut off his own train of thought. All those questions were valid, but they didn’t concern him, and didn’t concern Griffonia. Whatever the Lord in Winter wanted with the ponies was their problem, and they could have it. Handy wanted nothing more to do with the Greenwoods. He hoped they had fun—he’d just let Joachim know of his suspicions and let the griffon crowns worry about high tier pony shenanigans.

“And you hadn't planned on encountering each other there?” Cadence asked.

“No, your majesty.” Handy decided to cut back on the conversation, spotting a moment to step in and at least cover up any foreknowledge relating to the reason why Whirlwind was out west. Whirlwind simply hummed to himself and allowed Handy to take the conversation back.

“But you’ve met before?” she asked curiously. Handy raised a gloved hand, gesturing to the stag.

“Of course. As I have already explained to her majesty, Princess Celestia, this is the same Sir Whirlwind who saved my life at the festival.” Handy glanced over at Whirlwind, who still remained smiling. “And helped me survive the Greenwoods. I had not anticipated to ever reasonably meet him again, much less in the Dragonlands of all places.”

That much was, at the very least, true, but the princess’ expression was unreadable. He was unconcerned, having set the conversation in such a way as to excuse any foreknowledge of the deer’s intervention in the Dragonlands, allowing Whirlwind to spin the story whatever way best suited his purposes. If only he had agreed to stay on board the ship and not go gallivanting across Equestrian airspace like Santa’s most ill-behaved left hand indicator, they maybe could’ve sidestepped the awkwardness altogether or passed him off as a chance encounter and nothing more.

But the Lord in Winter had to just make a big showy entrance, raising many questions Handy would rather not be asked. Not that he particularly cared for the deer and their secrets, or had any qualms about spreading the story of what happened at the lake. He just really, really didn’t want to increase the chances of the gamble he wagered coming to light because of it. Whirlwind, it seemed, understood this and Handy found himself in the odd position of feeling grateful to the deer.

“And believe me, it was a surprise to see him there myself! Why, had Spike not shown up when he did, I might still be… well that's not exactly a pleasant thought to dwell on,” Whirlwind said.

“Indeed, perhaps you could tell us more?” Cadence asked, smiling. “It’d be wonderful to have the full story. Of course, the offer to stay within the palace is also extended to yourself as well.”

“Oh, that’d be fantastic! I’d be happy to! Thank you, your majesty.” Cadence beamed at him. Whirlwind looked over to Handy with a smile, who returned it with a neutral expression. “Er, you wouldn’t mind if we met up later, would you?”

Handy looked between him and the ponies briefly. Whirlwind knew damn well he’d be staying in the city until the ship was seen to at least. So he simply nodded, and turned back to Cadence.

“Your Highness, if I have your leave for now?” he asked politely. She gestured with a hoof and a chuckle.

“Yes, you do!”

“If you don’t mind, Sir Handy, I would like to have a word with you tomorrow when you’ve settled,” Shining Armour interjected, and Handy tensed slightly. The stallion was cordial and there was no malice in his voice, but Handy didn’t like the hard look in his eye.

“As you wish, your highness.”

Shining Armour nodded. “I’m glad, thank you. Would you be able to attend the castle around noon?” Handy, interest piqued, simply nodded his assent. An odd time—why not the first thing in the morning? Or the afternoon after he had done his duties? Why the exact middle of the day?

“Of course. I could come earlier if you require it of me, majesty.”

“Oh no, noon’s fine.” Cadence gave Shining Armor a worried look but didn’t interrupt him. Twilight looked curious and Spike, who only just started paying attention, looked apprehensive. Whirlwind watched with keen interest, and the tension Handy felt suddenly felt heavier.

“As you wish, your highness,” he said at last. “Do let me know if you can’t make it. I’ll be sure to accommodate you.”

Now that Handy absolutely did not like the sound of, but he was not in a position to immediately refuse. He was not asking anything unreasonable, and he was in the heart of pony power. Maybe not Canterlot, but it had two alicorns present nonetheless. In any case, his nearest and fastest exit from the scene wasn’t currently docked and being heavily worked on in one of this prince’s airdocks.

So in the end, he nodded in acquiescence, and shared one last look with Whirlwind and Spike before departing.

Handy gave his farewells and was escorted from the throne room and led away through the castle. Cadence watched him go as both Twilight and her husband engaged Whirlwind in animated conversation. She frowned as the doors closed behind him, not wanting the rumours she heard to have been true, for his sake if nothing else. She had heard from changelings captured during the fighting at Blackport that he was known to them as the Heartless, a disturbing moniker to be sure.

She had never thought it might have been literal. She was so used to being able to feel the love of everyone wherever she went, however deeply buried, however hidden. It was how she knew even scum like Chrysalis were not truly the monsters they appeared to be in the end, no matter how much she personally loathed them. However, she felt nothing from the human, not a spark, not even a presence. It was as if there was nothing truly held within his heart at all he had affection for in the least.

It was as if he wasn’t even there at all.

--=--

“Handy, Handy.”

“Yes, my name’s Handy,” he responded disinterestedly, scanning the titles on the bookshelf as he walked down the library aisle. The Grand Library of the Crystal empire was graciously opened to the public, which was a tremendous level of trust that really spoke well of crystal pony society. Being from Earth, he took it for granted that you could just go into any public library, but by and large that wasn’t the case in this world, he found. Books were still expensive and rare enough to be worth the effort of stealing. Mass printing was common enough now that they even had news sheets, but an entire library worth of expensive and rare printings was still a serious investment to just… let any old punter off the street to wander in.

Granted there were restricted sections where only credentialed individuals could access. Handy presumed things like publicly accessible magical texts and other rare printings would be located in those areas for use by mages, university students, officials, trusted nobles, that sort of thing. He sincerely doubted anything they couldn’t afford falling into the hands of some scrub would actually be kept here.

Handy, having been given leave to stay in the empire by their gracious hosts, had opted to make his way to the library to pass the time. The staff had been gracious and friendly enough, if nervous, and pointed him to the medical texts section. He’d rather not be in the castle, and wandering the city was probably asking for trouble, this soon after Whirlwind made his little ‘entrance.’

Speaking of whom.

“You know we’re being followed, right?” Whirlwind’s voice sounded odd when he was in his immaterial state. It was at once both distant and right in your ear, and had an odd tinkling echo to it, like speaking into a crystal wine glass. He hated it.

“Yes, Whirlwind, I am keenly aware.” Handy replaced a book on the physiology of pegasi wings and moved on to a text regarding orthopaedics.

“And you’re okay with that?”

“I am used to that. You should get used to it too,” Handy said, uncaring that their shadow detail would overhear. He knew where they were, all with steady heartbeats and calm, collected, focused demeanours, judging by their emotional states. Two were on either side of him, shadowing his movements just on the other side of each line of bookcases. One was above him, in the rafters of the huge ceiling of the library, probably a pegasi jumping from one crystalline arch up there to another. One that had been following him from the castle, he knew, had stopped by the entrance to the library and stayed there. He presumed others covered the other known exits of the library as well.

“Why?” Whirlwind asked, the chill cloud of air that made up his incorporeal form whisking around the aisle, poking at the various books at the shelves.

“Because you drew their attention in the most flagrant way imaginable. What were you thinking about that little entrance of yours?”

Whirlwind didn’t answer that and instead pressed his question. “No I meant, why are you used to it?”

Handy rolled his eyes. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but me and the Equestrians don’t get along.”

“We’re not in Equestria.” Handy waved the point away as he flipped through the book on skeletal formations. He spotted an odd aspect of pony skeletons that made him pause for a moment before he answered the deer.

“Close enough. In either case, I am not exactly the most trusted individual and I don’t trust them either. I respect the honesty.”

“No… No, I don't think that’s quite right.” Whirlwind manifested back into his physical form, as if he was stepping out of a bank of particularly thick mist, his voice returning to normal as he did so. “You said you’re used to it. I take it the ponies aren’t the only ones keeping tabs on you?”

Handy paused as he was withdrawing another book, sliding it back into place on the shelf. “What exactly are you asking?” Handy asked. Whirlwind chuckled.

“You’re a bit too casual about being spied upon. Almost as if you’re used to being spied upon all the time. Trouble in paradise?” he teased. Handy looked at the stag levelly for a moment before sighing.

“I don’t like it and when I first came to these lands, and I have responded very badly to… certain people spying on me. I’ll leave it at that. But to cut a very long story short… As a human, I’m used to it since long before I came to Equestria. At least here, the spies actually have a reason to be poking in my business.” Whirlwind didn’t chuckle at that, frowning for once in his life, seemingly concerned.

“What do you mean by that?” He asked. Handy waved him off.

“Ancient history, and irrelevant for now,” he explained, grateful to have sidestepped any potential digging into the spying he knew Gethrenia’s spymaster simply had to be doing on him. He’d be foolish not to. “In any case, it's probably me they’re following more so than you. Why are you following me for that matter? Is there something amiss?”

“Oh! Right!” Whirlwind stepped forward and around to cut Handy off as he was about to take the aisle. Some poor beleaguered pony with far too many books piled up on its saddle let out a start and stumbled away as the demigod nearly bumped into her. “Back in the throne room, the ponies.”

“Ah…” Handy said, understanding.

“Care to explain to me what precisely you’ve been telling the ponies about the Greenwoods?” His face was the same friendly expression, but it had the hard glintiness Handy learned to take seriously. He put a hand up placatingly.

“Look, I have told her nothing other than the fact that I’ve been there and that the deer live in trees.” Whirlwind said nothing, still smiled and waited for him to continue. “I’ve told her nothing about you or… anything else for that matter.”

“Can you promise me that?” Whirlwind asked. Handy frowned.

“You know, you are honestly just going to be raising more questions asking me in the open like this. You know these guards are going to report this conversation, right?”

“You didn’t answer my question, Handy.” Handy looked the deer in the eye, and he met the vampire’s gaze without flinching. He had no intention to, but something told him he probably couldn’t get away with his vampiric manipulation even if he tried. He doubted he could even lie fully to whatever Whirlwind was right now. He seemed to pick up even the subtle lie regarding spying when previously the deer had not known him well enough to even guess at that. What was he, really, anymore?

“Yes,” he said at last. “I can promise you I haven’t told her, or any pony, about what transpired in the woods, other than the one who was with us.” He still hadn’t revealed the fact that the ‘Crimson’ he knew had been a changeling wearing her face, and he couldn’t say that he told the griffons nearly everything about what had happened where the ponies could overhear. Whirlwind studied Handy’s face for a long time, to the point it was almost uncomfortable.

Eventually he seemed to relax, as if satisfied. “Well alright then! I can accept that. Let me know when we’re leaving. I need to catch a ride with you back to Griffonia.” Whirlwind turned and walked off, the chainmail clinking under his green and tattered cloak.

“Wait, Griffonia? Why are you coming to Gehrenia?” Handy asked, surprised. He’d agreed to help ferry the stag back to more civilised lands so he could find his own way back to the Greenwoods, but this was still a surprise.

“Why, to visit Jacques of course! He’s up there with you now right?”

“How did you know that?”

“Silvertalon told me about some roguish stowaway that looked like a thief that was on his ship and I thought ‘Hey! That sounds like Jacques!’”

“It was Jacques.”

“See? You get it!” Whirlwind said as he turned back to leave. Handy thought for a moment, and called out.

“Hey! Whirl, wait a minute.” He stepped towards the stag who turned, inclining his head curiously. It was a subtle motion, but it was exaggerated due to his crowned antlers. “When you were up there in the throne room, with the princesses… What did you discuss exactly?”

“Oh! Nothing much, who I am, where I came from, why I was with you, what was up with my magic. That sort of thing!” he explained brightly. Handy nodded cautiously.

“And about being a lord?”

“Oh, all about that. They know I’m the Lord in Winter, I made sure of that! I am not exactly hiding it now, am I?” he asked, laughing.

“... About what happened in the Greenwoods?” Whirlwind’s smile did not falter.

“Do you trust me, Handy?” Handy hesitated. That was a dangerous question, given the circumstances. He thought about it carefully, considering what had happened and what oaths were made.

“I trust you to keep your word,” he said eventually, and found to his surprise that he did in fact trust him to keep his word. He did after all, swear to God to fulfil his promise to find what had caused the previous lord to wake out of season and risked his life to rectify the matter. Handy quite literally found that out for himself when they had tripped over each other in the Dragonlands. The certainty of his words briefly confused him and it must have shown, because Whirlwind’s smile broadened.

“Then trust me when I say I haven’t told them anything you wouldn’t want me to.” Somehow, Handy knew that they were true. And while he wondered at that, he realised… he didn’t get that feeling when he said he only wanted to go to Gethrenia to visit his friend.

“You’re not coming to Gethrenia just to visit Jacques, are you?”

“No,” Whirlwind said truthfully. “I have other business up there. I don’t know what it is yet, but I will eventually.”

“... Is this going to be a problem?” Handy asked, a serious edge entering his words and he suddenly felt very tense. Whirlwind seemed entirely unbothered and shook his head.

“No, I don't believe it will. There’s no reason for it to be.”

“How do you know?” Whirlwind chuckled lightly.

“I wish I knew! I just do.” He turned around and this time Handy didn’t stop him as he left. Eventually, the deer took a corner and headed on out the library, but not before clumsily bumping into a pony and creating a rather loud racket of tumbling books, and the clatter of metal, hurried apologies, and complaints.

Handy didn’t know what to make of what just happened. On the one hand, it’d make sense the deer would want to know exactly what Handy had revealed, and for his part he had not expected to ever meet the deer ever again. But there was something… strange about the conversation. There was something strange about Whirlwind as he was now, though he couldn’t quite place it. He was never like this before but now… He wasn’t sure. It left him feeling uneasy.

He considered everything regarding what had happened: the oath at the lake, the ritual, what he had done back when he was the Sword of the King. It had all worked out in the end—the deer were saved, they had their Lord in Winter, Lady Asheia had her viceroy, the source of what woke up the last lord was found, Whirlwind had fulfilled his oath, the Kingdom of Gethrenia was safe.

The dragons were even cured of their curse! Spike was restored to health, and they had killed an ancient and terrible warlock of old magic that they had not known about, and the sham image of a reconciliation between Equestria and Griffonia by means of Gethrenia sending a knight to do a deed of service to the ponies was as good as true as much as it was propaganda. He had served a vital diplomatic service. Handy was even coming away with much gold and wealth, the services of a dragon, the blood of an alicorn, and no need to ever talk about what had happened ever again. He had made off like a bandit!

So why couldn’t he shake the feeling that there was something more? What had he missed? Was there something he hadn’t accounted for?

He stood there for a moment considering the implications before turning and walking among more of the bookshelves, trying to distract himself. The deer could have asked him all that somewhere more private. He’d wanted the ponies to hear all that for some reason. Why? What could be gained from it? What did he discuss with Princess Cadence? More to the point, if he did come back to Gehrenia with him, what would the Lord in Winter discuss with the king?

The apprehension threatened to worry its way into becoming a creeping anxiety. Handy decided to put it, as with so much else, to the back of his mind for the time being. He’d have to trust Whirlwind when he said there wasn’t going to be a problem in Gethrenia, not that he could do much about it now. He didn’t want to think what the consequences were about trying to oppose the Lord in Winter at the best of times given what he now knew, never mind here at the height of his power.

He turned back to the books to distract himself. To fill his mind with literally anything else.

Author's Note

Hi how are you? I spent this morning doing an examination on Taxes.

Have a Handy until I figure out how to alive again.

JBL MVP for getting this editing done before collapsing.

Chapter 64 - White Knight

Handy had made the executive decision that the Crystal Empire was a blight upon the face of civilization.

“Good morning!”

And absolutely nothing could redeem it.

Handy stared blearily down at the pony behind the window sill, who admirably kept his beaming visage up despite his otherwise nervous body language. He reached into his pocket, picked out a number of coins, and dropped it on the counter of the wall of the bakery.

“Kepthechange…” he grumbled sleepily as he stumbled off from the bakery with a disposable clay cup of coffee and some baked confection he hadn’t even bothered looking at before jabbing a gloved finger at it and ordering.

The crystal ponies didn’t get up at dawn, oh no. They got up before it. That ordinarily wouldn’t be so bad, having gotten used to the sound of roosters announcing the dawn every day back on his estate when his serfs and tenants went about their work. What was different were these iridescent fucks spending almost the entire night having a party in the street.

He didn’t know the reason. He didn’t care to find out. He was mostly just grouchy that yet another occasion of the magical wave of singing that infected all and sundry had washed across the city he happened to be in. It had been loud enough to keep him constantly awake throughout the night, meaning he only got a few hours of rest. The only good thing about it was at least this time, he had not felt the strange pull or urge to join in as sometimes occasionally happened when he was physically near another instance of the musical phenomenon. This time, he instead chose to keep a chair against the door of his room at the inn, the window firmly closed and shuttered, and blinded up with a pillow over his head. Shame too—he really needed some sleep after his long first day in the empire.

Handy had spent an embarrassing amount of time in the library the previous day, enjoying the quiet solitude, idly contemplating life and his situation. He had tried his best to compartmentalise and ignore the fact that he, once again, had barely survived an insane situation by the skin of his teeth, and as interesting as the various tomes were that he looked through, he found he could barely concentrate, and was more or less allowing the routine of taking down notes of medical and anatomical differences between the various pony races.

Medicine, dear reader, was of course not Handy’s academic specialty, which if you have been reading between the lines up until now, was fairly obvious. He was a man of words, not scalpels. However, you may have already surmised part of his interest in such topics given his current predilections. Rest assured, it was less insidious than it seemed, as he merely wanted to know how best he should go about his business and to do so with the least amount of damage to his prospective victims as possible.

Or the most damage, circumstances depending of course.

It was enlightening reading, and something at the back of his head—not his vampiric lust, it must be noted—seemed to urge him to broaden his interests in this field. It had hit him in a flash that he had been concerned somewhat as to why exactly the arcane specialists of this world, at least according to Crimson, were so adamantly convinced there was nothing inherently magical about blood.

It was something he knew objectively to be bullshit, as his entire existence ran on the fact that blood was inherently magical. He knew distinctly that higher order beings, people in essence, were inherently greater than animals. That meant that the current magical orthodoxy was wrong about a fundamental aspect of magic.

He kept that to himself, however. So far, his nature as a vampire meant that he was just a weird exception to this rule to most people in the know, though he knew Thestrals were as well. Given the sketchy history regarding magic, it was entirely possible research or knowledge into blood magic was suppressed, or there was something about the reigning orthodoxy regarding how magic was studied and practiced either precluded study into blood magic or made it difficult or impossible to work with.

So far, his own study of the crystalline method for the use and practice of magic in this world did not seem to preclude it. The use of the parts of magical plants and animals was a common and ubiquitous part of magical practices. It was for that reason he was getting more and more curious about the art of alchemy as well, his mad birds back in Skymount notwithstanding. The sheer time investment meant he’d probably not be on par with the great wizards of this generation, but he probably did not need to be in order to get special insight into this relevant area of study.

Speaking of, he was morbidly curious about accessing Equestrian texts on magical study while he was here in the Empire, but he knew that was a risky proposition. He could disguise himself, but he was under so much scrutiny that he could practically feel the scrying spells being used to keep a watch on him, on top of the guards who were—still this morning—shadowing him from afar. It was better not to risk it… at least for now.

He took another sip of his coffee, contemplating spending the day at the library again away from these confounded ponies, at least until midday when the prince required him to attend to talk about whatever the hell was on his mind. Whatever it was, Handy would be polite and diplomatic, as he had gotten what he wanted out of this mad endeavour and wasn’t keen on pushing his luck. In fac—

“Oh! Oh-Oh! Hello there! Yes yes!” Handy didn’t initially notice the small jumping figure from within the large and elaborate trading caravan as she called out to him. Not until the small diamond dog came running out and all but tackled his leg. The human started with a yelp as he almost instinctively reached to swat at the creature. The only thing staying his hand was the look of ABSOLUTE DELIGHT on the small dog’s face. “Grilina is so excited to meet human again!”

At a loss, Handy was stuck comically balanced on one leg as he tried to shake the excited dog off of the other one. “Ma’am! Ma’am, I don’t know who you think I am, but please, unhand me. You’re causing a scene,” he decided to say, noticing the sudden looks of the curious crowd at the outrageous scene, and the sudden flurry of activity by the small cadre of guards shadowing him at a distance. “Please… if you could just… let go!”

Eventually the dog complied but was still visibly excited. Now that he got a look at the diamond dog, Handy saw she was a relatively young one. She was grey with a stark white undercoat, bright, wide green eyes and with a very slight under bite, though definitely not nearly as bad as some other dogs he’d seen. And for the life of him, given his own history with diamond dogs, he couldn’t fathom why this random trader was so ecstatic to see him. Had he ever actually had a positive interaction with a dog? Ever?

“Sorry! Sorry! It’s just that… Grilina is just so glad to see you again, Hooman.”

“... Have we met before?” Handy asked earnestly, unable to recall the dog.

“Oh yes, it was last year! Come, come to Grilina’s store!” She hurried over to her wooden caravan. The side of it was opened up to an impressive jewellery display with a wide variety of fine wares for sale. Handy actually spotted some jewellery styles popular at Gryphonic courts that he had taken note of from before and was surprised. Despite the wandering trader set up, this Grilina was clearly an experienced tradeswoman with good taste.

Curious despite himself, he accepted the invitation and walked on over to the caravan. His senses picked up the guards maintaining their positions but clearly agitated by the new development. He hoped this Grilina liked having the government unduly interested in her business. It was her fault for loudly proclaiming to the world she was so excited to see the clearly dangerous and conspicuous agent of the crown of Gethrenia for all the world to hear.

So for that reason if nothing else, he was obligated to find out exactly how she knew him and whether or not he was safe in ignoring her from then on without compromising himself somehow.

Grilina hurried into the caravan itself; when Handy did not follow, she popped up from the side and waved him even closer. Handy gave a surreptitious look behind him before acquiescing and leaning over towards the door at the side of the caravan. After, Grilina carefully placed a weighted sheet over her wares with bells along its rim, the idea being if something more serious than a light breeze disturbed them while she was inattentive, it’d create such a racket as to immediately draw her attention.

“We’re so glad to see you again! You have been of great help to Grilina!” She clapped her paws together.

Handy, now genuinely confused, was forced to ask further. “I… apologise, but I’m afraid I don’t remember you.”

“Oh, well, that make Grilina sad.” She deflated slightly before immediately rebounding with endless enthusiasm. “But that okay! You still help! You give Grilina everything she need to make dream come true!”

“... I did?”

“Yes yes!” she said happily, bouncing on the heels of her… paws? Feet? The lower ones anyway. “You gave me more than I could have asked for! All for my bad stones!”

“Bad… stones? I’m sorry miss, but can you tell me a bit more? When exactly did we meet?”

“Right, it was back when I was poor.” Grilina rubbed her chin in thought, half sticking her tongue out of her mouth as she furrowed her brow. “It was back in…”

She counted on her fingers for some reason. “Pawstown! Yes, that's it!”

“Pawstown…” Handy murmured. He recalled the place and his time there but was still drawing a blank on Grilina. Sure, there were plenty of dogs in the town but none of them stood out in his mind. Apparently, he had bought stones off her? For what re—

It hit him then. There had been one occasion where he’d bought a massive amount of shitty rocks off of a random street merchant in order to hand a bag of them over to a kid that had been annoying him with the specific purpose of weighing the little shit down so he wouldn’t be his problem anymore.

“Oh!” he said in recognition. “Right right, I do remember buying those rocks off of you.”

“Yes, yes and you overpaid yes!” At that point, Handy couldn’t help but smile and decided to take a dig at this little digger of a dog.

“And… you being an honest merchant, of course, didn't think to correct me did you?” he said with a frown, crossing his arms. Grilina stopped almost mid-air in her giddiness, looking sideways for a moment as if thinking for an excuse.

She landed on her feet, standing up straight, crossing her arms in front of her chest and proudly answering.

“Nope!”

The answer was so shameless it actually got a laugh out of the human despite himself.

“Well aren’t you enterprising!” He glanced at the set up this diamond dog had for herself. She clearly was. Still, Handy didn’t have the best history with dogs of all races either, what with the, you know, whole enslavement thing. He gave the dog a harsh glance before continuing, “So, what do you want? I’m hardly going to be giving you any more coin for useless rocks again.”

“Oh no, no, Grilina no longer sells useless rocks. Grilina only sell finest of imported wares!”

“Imported how?”

“Grilina buy herself and travel with them from market to market. Grilina great salesdog!” she said proudly. That was impressive; Handy scrutinized both the dog herself and her caravan. It didn’t look too shabby, even if it had evidence of heavy weathering and wear and tear. The fresh coat of paint and strong, sturdy look of the glorified wagon definitely spoke of meticulous care for the vehicle. She wasn’t a pony or griffon, which implied she actually pulled the damn thing herself. He knew from experience that diamond dogs were deceptively strong, but she was awfully small for an apparently fully grown hound.

“Well, I suppose you have done well for yourself, it seems,” he conceded, honestly impressed at the honesty of a dog of all creatures.

“Yes! Thanks! All thanks to gold hooman—”

“Handy.”

“Handy Hooman give Grilina much gold! Real full gold! Grilina put to good use, get out of one pony town and go out and live dreams!” She positively beamed. Handy felt awkward all but being praised for a passing generosity he had quite literally never given a second thought to, and was only done to play a trick on a child. He wasn’t quite sure what to make of it, and he was wrong-footed by the entire exchange. Did she want something from him other than thanking him?

“I… see. You certainly do have good taste. I saw Gryphonic—”

“Oh yes, Handy Hooman work for great griffon king yes?”

“... Yes. Why do you ask?”

“It what all pony say when talk about hooman. Grilina listen when ponies talk, learn much ponies wouldn’t want dog to know. Think stupid. I am. But not as much as they think,” she said with a conspiratorial whisper.

“Uh… huh,” Handy managed, glancing around. People were occasionally giving them glances, but seeing as there was no more noise disturbing the peace, nor anything more scandalous than the infamous human having a seemingly pleasant conversation with a random jewellery merchant, most just ignored them and passed them by. A visibly bored guardspony was keeping a wary eye on them more so than anyone else at the marketplace. His actual detachment of guardsponies keeping a watch on him in the city were maintaining their distance and had calmed down after the conversation was clearly not evolving into anything to be concerned about, at least as far as they knew. Just a happy merchant catching up with an old customer.

He turned back to the dog. “And what of it? I am a knight of Gethrenia.”

“Yes yes, great griffon king loyal knight, what ponies say. If want, I can give you fine gift of Grypnoc silver. No price, take pick of liking!” she offered, arms spread wide. Handy was immediately suspicious.

“You’re… Giving me a free gift?”

“Yes! Of own choosing? Why, not like griffon jewels? Look good at court maybe. Grilina have many ware. Perhaps snake people silver, deep in south marsh, very rare if want. Not much get out of that place. Can take to pony jeweller for checking if want and no believe. Grilina no lie!” She held aloft a torc armband that would easily fit Handy’s forearm of intertwining snake-like figures with distressingly familiar upper portions. Grilina sensed he was a hard sell, even if she was willing to give him a literal free gift, and she clearly wasn’t taking no for an answer.

“Perhaps sea pony pearls! Bitches love them, make great gift!” She changed tactic and held aloft a rather stunning necklace of the brightest pearls one could imagine. Handy started at the phrasing and thought she was taking the piss. After a moment, he realised she was literally a dog so she was clearly referring to the female sex in a manner appropriate for her race and decided not to comment.

“Okay wai—”

“Maybe not appropriate. Grilina should not make assumptions about marital state,” she said thoughtfully, rubbing her chin in thought.

“Hey!”

“Perhaps some Zebrican—”

“Just stop!” Handy said desperately, a bit overwhelmed by the enthusiastic hound’s sales pitch, even if it wasn’t supposed to cost him anything. “Look, I just…” He sighed and rubbed his eyes, looking over his hand at the excited face of the dog. Well, free shit was free shit—who was he to say no? “Maybe… Anything Gryphonic?”

“Yes, of course, like I first said.”

“Right, I just… I dunno… Do you have any Talon rings?” he suggested. Having acquired two pairs of apparently magical amulets from the dragon's hoard, why not have something he could actually wear on his hand?

“Oh yes, plenty. What kind takes fancy? Please come look!” She gestured for him to follow her into her caravan. He hesitated slightly but eventually followed, taking careful notice of everything as he did so.

The interior was a surprisingly humble affair, with many of Grilina’s wares neatly stacked into well-organized boxes. Well, organised for a dog anyway. The boxes had the weird, slapdash construction he had come to expect of dogs, unlike her caravan itself, but otherwise labelled and clearly categorized in the dog’s unreadable script. It wasn’t another language or anything—she just had terrible handwriting.

A short ladder led up to a nook near the ceiling with a hammock where she clearly slept, a cast iron stove in one corner for cooking, with piping letting the smoke out the side of the wooden structure. A desk and ramshackle stool dominated one side, with innumerable tools and magnifying glasses, betraying its nature as a jeweller’s workshop. Grilina pulled out a small box from under her desk and placed it on top. Taking off the top revealed several immaculate rings neatly placed in a soft foam-like substance and polished to an impressive sheen.

Handy was briefly awed by the beauty of the objects, the stunning metalwork and craftsmanship, the glimmer of the precious stones decorating their surfaces, which only magnified when Grilina continued to lift more layers out of the box, revealing three full sets of a dozen rings each for display on her work bench. She proudly put her fists on her hips and stuck out her chest, pleased at what was evidently her workmanship in the maintaining and presentation of her wares.

Handy still said nothing, simply standing crouched in the tight fitting space and taking in the sight of the jewellery. A part of him, his natural greed and desire for fine things, was overjoyed of course, but it was silent at the moment, stunned by the beauty of the presentation. He eventually came to his senses as his eyes drew across one of the rings. It was much, much simpler than the others, and unlike most, it bore no precious stonework. No gems, either the grown variety that were of much less value than those mined from far underground. Its metalwork was also much simpler.

It was a golden band of metal, with the centre band of the ring hollowed out to emphasise the embossed central design of simple script work in Old Gryphonic which he still couldn’t read, with the intervening spaces between the gold filled in with hammered copper. It complemented the gold well and gave the small thing an immense warmth to its colour. But there was one simple design in the embossing that drew his attention. It was a small simple heart with a crown on top of it.

He knew it couldn’t possibly have the same meaning in this world that it did in his own. He also knew that in a world where the ubiquity of heart symbolism was primarily associated with ponies and their doubtlessly saccharine interpretation of everything, its presence on a Gryphonic piece of jewellery might have meant something different as well. Or the same, it didn’t matter—that was not why it struck him.

The design reminded him of Claddagh rings from back home. They were rings given in friendship or passed down in families, and the recognition of the similarity, especially because the central image of the crowned heart was so singular in the ring’s design, with nothing to distract from it, made it stand out more than anything similar he may have seen in all his days in this world. It was this comparison in his mind that struck him with momentary heartbreak.

“That one.” He pointed it out. “If you please.”

“Ohhhh,” Grilina said, clearly surprised. “Would have thought you’d have liked the other shinies more!”

“I do it's just…” Handy begun but found he couldn’t finish, so he simply ploughed on. “I just want that one.”

“Okie, if that what you want!” she said with a shrug and her tongue sticking out the side and a confused smile. She took the ring out of its place and secured it within a thin leather pouch with a gold thread that tied it close around the ring, and handed it happily to Handy. He accepted it gratefully, his gaze somewhat distant.

“Heh, only sorry no sell magic jewellery. Too much regulation,” Grilina said apologetically. Handy nodded somewhat absentmindedly. “Tried to sell bad stones as jewellery when first had stall. Did not work. Wizards said bright stones go splode when they tried.”

“What?” Handy said, suddenly shook out of his reverie by what she said. “What did you say they were?”

“What were what?” Grilina replied.

“The bad stones; you said you tried to sell them as jewellery first?”

“Oh yes, no good, ugly rocks, but dug out of mine so thought maybe good for magic. That’s how works, right?”

“... Right.” He recalled what he knew of the geologic anomaly. “But what was that other thing you called them?”

“Oh, bright stones, because wizards said they glow real bright if magic done before splodey. Useless. No good for magic. Bad stones. So try to sell for what could and try different idea,” she said with a confident shake of her head and cross forelegs. Handy stood very very still when he heard that.

“Grilina… how long did you linger in Pawstown after I bought the ba—bright stones from you?” he asked carefully.

“Uhmmm, not too long. I remember seeing Handy Hooman leave, stayed for a while to celebrate, then went off into great unknown! Start business!”

A frightful possibility emerged in the back of his mind as the conversation progressed, and he was suddenly MUCH more aware of his shadowing detail of guard ponies. They probably weren’t close enough to overhear the conversation within this caravan, but he couldn’t be certain that was the case magically. And anyone who cared could see them speaking through the open side of the caravan. He turned and angled his body away from the nearest visible guard in the marketplace outside.

He couldn’t do anything about magical scrying, however… or was there? There were at least a few mages nearby in the shadowy detail. He knew where they were—their emotional states were ones of deep meditative concentration, clearly casting spells. His armour wasn’t reacting so there were no spells being directly applied to him, but a spell to spy on him, if they knew where he was, didn't need to. Not if they could see and hear in the caravan from far off.

Time to play a game.

--=--

Starshout was concentrating deeply. He was actually on obfuscation duty as part of the team this time around, but his role was no less vital. Situated where he was in a simple cloak at a cafe, he glanced slightly out the window in the vague direction of the target caravan as he held aloft a newspaper. His horn glowing brightly from the task and manipulating his cup of tea on the table before him was an excellent casual mask for the spell he was actually casting.

A simple scrying spell wasn’t all that difficult, especially not for a crystal pony battle mage. But the human was an unknown quantity, with a history of surprising much better mages than himself. Including, if the rumours were true, a tracking spell made by Princess Luna herself. Word had it that he wasn’t a mage properly speaking himself, but clearly had some magical abilities that were poorly understood, and clearly knew his way around befuddling his pursuers. Direct magical attacks on the human were seemingly shrugged off by some kind of warding magic on his person. Again, rumours abound as to its capabilities in arcane circles whenever the topic of the human came up, but Starshout dismissed most of them.

Nonetheless, care had to be taken and it was better if he were not aware of how stringently he was being surveilled, as the target was evidently paranoid and usually expected such measures. If his conversation in the library with the deer was anything to go by, he was right to do so.

So far, he hadn’t done anything to arouse too much suspicion beyond a worrying interest in medical textbooks. The diamond dog suddenly tackling him from nowhere had caught everypony unawares, including the human, but despite initial concerns, there didn’t seem to be any likelihood of civil disturbance, so no intervention was deemed necessary.

He, like the rest of the mages involved in the operation, got back to their assigned duties. In his own role, he was tasked with casting a spell of interference to obfuscate any detection of penetrating spellcraft by interfering with the winds in the neighbouring area. Any unicorns in the vicinity would detect a slight wobble or difficulty in their normal routines of using magic for daily activities.

This was necessary for the others in their group to facilitate further obscured ranged scrying of the exact location around the human. One was to focus on sight, the other sound, and a third relaying between the three to keep them in harmony. This was easily one of the most inefficient methods of scrying, but it was also the most secure as it was borderline impossible to tell what was actually happening magically unless you knew what to specifically look for magically. And the intricacies involved essentially meant the information from within the spell’s zone of activity operated on a delay from what was actually happening by a minute or two. Still, it worked, as the human had no method of knowing the spell's effect on him, precisely because it wasn’t affecting him.

So far, his conversation with the diamond dog was proving unenlightening and dull, even if it was somewhat charming to imagine, especially seeing the human himself so put off by the situation. Apparently, the diamond dog was grateful for something the human had done and wanted to reward him with a free gift of jewellery. Getting free diamonds from a diamond dog was no mean feat, but it was also nothing special either.

The last he knew of what was occurring within the caravan was that the human had pointed out a specific ring he wanted. That was around the time, from his perspective, he first heard the voice.

“So that’s how you’re doing it?”

Starshout sputtered the coffee all over his paper and whirled around, immediately adopting a combat stance, sending his chair flying behind him and flipping over his table. The sudden outburst elicited a number of gasps and shouts of surprise from the other patrons of the cafe as his studied gaze jumped from one potential adversary to another, his horn ablaze with a glow as protective wards were activated and sweeping analysis was rendered of his immediate surroundings.

Nothing. He could have sworn the human himself had been right there beside him, speaking in his ear as clearly as if he had been standing there himself.

“Over here!”

Starshout spun and fired off a blast at a wall, burning a menu on the wall and causing a picture frame to fall from the wall and shatter on the ground. A mare behind the counter screamed and fainted, several more patrons, initially stunned by the warrior mage’s outburst, suddenly fled from the cafe.

“Getting a little agitated, aren’t we?” the human mocked, this time the voice coming from a spot right behind his ear. The unicorn jumped up onto the counter to his immediate left, cracking the glass divider between the public and the poor selection of pastries and chocolate goods for people to enjoy with their coffee, a newfound luxury in the Crystal Empire, not all that well known or prevalent a millennia ago.

The remaining staff behind the counter followed their patrons in fleeing the scene from the apparently mad pony, crying for the guards.

Starshout didn’t pass any mind to the civilians, nor did he respond to the voice’s most recent agitation.

“Oh, now you decide to take proper stock of the situation? I see, I guess you’re not a moron after all,” Handy spoke, though his voice seemed to be coming from the very walls themselves. Starshout looked around him carefully, extending his arcane senses, trying to find the disturbances in the winds of magic about him that would betray the origin of the spell. Had the human managed to sneak out from under him? Impossible.

“Oh, you think you have me? That's adorable.” The human evidently guessed the lines along which his opponent was thinking. “While you and your cohort thought you were being quite slick, you never paid attention to the obvious deception.”

“What deception!?” Starshout demanded, running through possibilities in his head. The others would be wondering why the hell he wasn’t keeping up his part of the ritual spell, and he knew it was compromising to their mission to be distracted like this, but it was an unprecedented complication to have the human use an as yet unassessed ability like this. What was going on?

The human chuckled. “You were so busy trying to make sure I wouldn’t notice your little spying ring around me that you didn’t consider the obvious. I was never there to begin with.”

Starshout eyes widened, even as a gaggle of guardsponies entered the cafe shouting, demanding the surrender of the battle mage. Starshout turned and bellowed his rank and authority, stopping them in their tracks, and immediately sent an arcane message to the other mages in the contingent. Taking out specially prepared cloths and inscribing a runic symbol on them with the mage’s intent inscribed within, he sent it off to them as he bounded off the cafe counter, rushing his way through the guardsponies and rushing down the street.

Though he wouldn’t discover for some minutes later, what had happened to Starshout had occurred to each mage in the circle around where the human was thought to have been, and similar scenes were occurring to each of them, much to the confusion of the mundane guards in their little coterie. By the time Handy was done, the entire magic circle was in absolute chaos, and the spell was well and truly foiled.

All without him having to harm a hair on anyone’s head.

--=--

Handy let go of the medallion and removed his hand from the pouch on his belt where it was held, closing over the flap and securing it once more. The small amulet of intertwining leaves with an inset amethyst was one of the prizes he had gained from the dragon’s horde. It was a stroke of inspiration that came to him to use it in conjunction with his ability to sense where people were in relation to him. Previously, he had used it to screw with Spike and Whirlwind back in the Dragonlands, and knew he could use it on people even if he couldn’t see them, what with them being in a thick smog at the time.

It seemed his assumption that he could use it at distance so long as he knew where someone was in relation to him proved correct. He had singled out the mages in the group following him, identifying them by the meditative and rhythmic emotional states they displayed, betraying the fact they were casting a spell in concert with one another. One after the other, often jumping between each of the four, he had rattled them, telling each a different lie about what they got wrong in assuming where the human was and how much he knew about them.

In the space of a minute or so, he had so thoroughly rattled the four of them and set them off, causing the mundane guards, who were unaffected by Handy’s shenanigans, to panic as they desperately tried to re-coordinate with one another and figure out Handy’s gambit. Soon he expected guards to show up at this caravan and address him directly, but it was a risk willing to take.

He had business with the diamond dog before him that he could not risk being overheard.

Grillina had watched the human with confusion, seeing him place a hand in a pouch and begin moving his mouth as if he was having a full on conversation with someone who was not here. Yet at the same time, he hadn’t made a sound, even though he was clearly talking. It was a strange thing to witness for the poor dog.

“Grilina, I need to ask you something very important.” This time, he looked directly into her eyes and, very subtly, laid his power into his gaze, holding her rapt attention. That she was already so well-disposed to him and possessed an apparently simple, if shrewd, nature meant he would not need to be too forceful. Still, he needed her loyalty in this. He needed to be sure in case his hunch was correct.

Grilina, little to her knowledge now fully enraptured by the vampire before her, nodded happily. She was about to speak but for some reason felt she shouldn’t until he asked his question. It was weird, but she waited. She could be patient; she liked talking to the human!

“Do you know what happened to the bag of bad stones I gave to the small pony boy who was with me when I bought them from you?” He asked.

She nodded. “Oh yes, he talk about you lots, really happy, wanted to do Handy Hooman proud!” she began. “Apparently lost bag, Grilina asked where it went. Pony try to avoid question.”

“This is very important, Grilina. What did he do with the bag?” Handy pressed. Grilina blinked and screwed up her face in thought.

“I remember I ask more,” Grilina said. “Pony boy be tight-lipped but eventually say he try to do Hooman favour. He thought rocks were special and magic, like Handy Hooman said,” she continued. “He was sad because rocks brittle, broke very easy every time he move bag.”

Handy vaguely recalled the incident. The second the pony had tried to drag the bag, he’d heard several of the brittle gems shatter. It was funny, he remembered, but now he wasn’t laughing.

“But they broke, right?” he asked to confirm. Grilina nodded.

“Oh yes, gems very brittle, broke as soon as you toss them in sack. Pony boy broke them more until nothing left but lots of dust in a bag,” she said with a throaty, doggy chuckle.

“You said he wanted to do me proud.” Handy continued, “but he broke all the gems and when you saw him next, he didn’t have the sack, right?”

“Right!”

“So what did he do with it?” he insisted, suspecting the answer based on his experiences in Pawstown.

“He tell he snuck into blacksmith pony’s forge, tells you told him he would know what to do with gems when time was right,” she explained, scratching her chin. “Dumped sack over Handy Human armour while still hot when smith pony put in separate room. Bunch of weird plants there, pony boy say, growing around purple crystals.”

“Purple crystals?” Handy asked.

“Glowing ones. He no know what they were, couldn’t say. Grilina didn’t really care though. Not her rocks.” Handy felt the trepidation build within him as he was piecing things together from what she said.

“And then what?” He continued.

“Then he dump crystal dust all over metal pieces smith pony make. Still hot too. Pony boy said he believed magic crystals would help armour, didn’t know how. Grilina knew stones were bad, decided to say nothing. Handy Hooman had already left by time pony boy say truth.” Handy stood there dumbfounded.

It… couldn’t be that simple, could it? Could it really have been the careless actions of a foolish, hero-worshipping young boy that had accidentally given Handy the greatest protection against magic he could have asked for? He raised a hand to his head as he suddenly felt a bit dizzy. The sheer… improbability of it all.

The useless brittle stones he had well and truly overpaid for by a wide margin was possibly the single most important purchase he had ever made in his life. And what was more, the use of them in the metalcrafting of his magic-resistant armour required further steps. The dust had only been added at the last stage of the forging process and, potentially, that was what ruined the armour. At least in terms of its durability, for the steel of the armour deformed much more easily, tore even, and was clearly not as effective as steel armour should be, but its magic resistant properties forced him to put up with it.

He wasn’t a metalworker or a smith himself and didn’t know the specifics… but he did have a smith. Maybe not as good as Heat Source herself perhaps, though he’d never tell that old bird that. Could he replicate the process? No, wait, there was more to it… the strange plants and glowing crystals the dog had mentioned that the colt saw.

He didn’t know the properties of those. It was almost certainly some kind of trade secret that his blacksmith wouldn’t be able to replicate from description alone. He would need to find Heat Source, would need to get the secret from her. God knew if she was still there anymore or if she would even be willing to part with such secrets.

But there was something of greater importance that he could deal with right now. He turned back to the dog.

“Grilina.” He stared her dead in the eyes, increasing the power of his gaze as much as he could without running on a blood high. His head began to ache with the effort. It wasn’t brute force, but he needed this dog to do what he wanted, and he needed her not to argue. “Do you know who owns that abandoned mine in Pawstown? The one you got the bright gems from?”

Grilina nodded. “Oh, Grilina got that for a steal! Bunch of other dogs owned it but were happy to dump it. Grilina found bright stones when digging, thou—”

“So, you own it now?” he interrupted.

“Yes yes, Grilina owns mine. Still does, never sold. No dog would buy.”

“... Would you sell it to me?” Handy asked. “I would be willing to pay you a great deal for the bad stones.”

“You buy more stones? Why?” Grilina asked, confused, but the power of the gaze shattered the defences of her suspicions.

“Because I want to.” And that was good enough for Grilina. Not that she had a choice in the matter, as much as she was in the vampire’s snare. “Will you sell this to me, Grilina?”

“... Yes… Yes of course!” she said after a moment’s hesitation. She rummaged around in her caravan, going from box to box, rummaging through drawers and bags, until eventually taking out a rolled up, thick, legal parchment. Handy looked over it and crossed out the names and paw prints of the previous owners. He even saw Grillina’s name as the new transferred property owner…and the signature of the legal notary who witnessed the sale.

That was a complication, but not one that couldn’t be easily overcome. The vampire smiled. His own experiences in his old life would come in useful for this little charade, as well as his brushing up in Equestrian law after buying certain texts during his brief stint in Canterlot.

“Grilina, I have decided that I don’t want that mine after all.”

She looked at him confused. “You don’t?”

“No, in fact, you have never ever told Handy the Human about the mine. In fact, you will tell no one about what you know about the stones mined there, only that the mine is useless. Do you remember that about yourself?”

“I… I uh… I… I think?”

“Of course you do. However, you did find someone… rather, somepony who would buy the mine from you after a long time after you left Pawstown.”

“I... I-I did?” Handy nodded. Up until now, he had been steadily holding the dog in the thrall of his gaze and would have easily convinced her to do what he wanted. However, he needed to inculcate this into her mind, to convince her that this was her own mind she had made up, so he poured all his might into the gaze. It was to protect both of them in the end. He needed that mine.

And he needed to make sure that no one would ever suspect there was anything more to their conversation than the fact that she knew him for some kindness he had done for her in the past, and that she gave him a nice ring. He proceeded to tell her to pull the shutter down on the opened side of the caravan for a moment, as he himself moved a foot to close the door slightly.

He then asked her to turn from him. When next she looked, there was a fastidious black and grey pony with glasses speaking a lot of legal nonsense. She nodded. She turned, when she looked back, there was a boring brown and white pony with yellow eyes. She asked his name; he said he wanted to buy the mine; she agreed. Then there was the black pony, who explained things. She heard the same before when she bought the silly mine. She signed her name on the appendix; the other pony signed his name as well—Corn something or other. The legal pony also signed. She rolled up the paper and gave it to the pony. A satchel of paper bonds of the Greycoast republic worth many times what the mine was worth was handed to her. Grilina was happy! This was good business! It happened a week ago! Now what was she doing again?

Grilina looked up after opening the blinds on the side of her caravan again. She turned, the tall human standing over her and smiling, admiring the ring as he lifted it out of the cloth bag she had handed him. That was right! She was talking to her human friend! Now why did she have a headache?

“Oh is… is Handy Hooman happy with ring?”

“Yes Grilina, I am very happy.” He saw the guardspony who was in the square look around, agitated. He had approached closer to the caravan in the time the blinds had been closed but was clearly looking around. The guards who were shadowing him at a distance had been in a state of disarray just long enough for him to play his hand at the moment. He also sensed a contingent of angry ponies heading his way from outside the passive range of his ability to sense people.

Well, looked like the consequences of his game were up. He looked down one last time to Grilina and smiled. He was fairly confident that if they questioned her, she’d happily tell them the version of things he wanted her to. None of them knew about the mine or the nature of the stones, and she certainly didn't know the significance of what they did to his armour, only that he bought useless rocks off of her to play a joke on a pony child. It was a suitably malicious act people would believe someone like Handy would do.

Besides, the fact that it was the truth certainly helped.

He took off his glove and placed the gold and copper ring on his right ring finger and admired it in the sunlight as he bade his farewells and exited the caravan.

He was greeted by a contingent of royal crystal guards. Two of them even held banners which fluttered in the wind. The one at their lead was, surprisingly enough, another familiar face to him. He was surprised at first but then a smile crept along his face as recognition slowly solidified in his mind. So, she did survive the fire at the tournament after all, eh?

Masquerade, though the name would not come to him until she introduced herself, stood and glared up at the human as he strode down the steps from the caravan after stepping under the low door frame. She fluttered her yellow wings at her side as her emerald green, gem cut eyes glared out at him from under her cloth chanfron covering her face.

“Oh, hello there,” Handy greeted with a smile, affixing his glove over his newly adorned hand. “Can I help you?”

“His Royal Majesty, the Prince Consort Shining Armour of the Crystal Empire, cordially invites Baron Handy Haywatch of the Kingdom of Gethrenia to attend luncheon with his royal person,” She ordered more so than spoke. Handy couldn’t help but smile. He knew he was meeting the prince today, but this formal invitation, under armed escort masquerading as an entourage, was absolutely a response to his little game.

Ah well, he had an excuse prepared and had no intention of snubbing His Highness. He nodded simply enough. “As you say, ma’am.” He spoke with all due deference and respect, his normally gruff demeanour uncharacteristically discarded, given his little victory that morning. He also gave nothing away at all that he recalled her. “Do give my apologies to the guards who were in my security detail. I hope I did not cause them too much undue distress.”

Masquerade’s eye twitched slightly at that, but otherwise her demeanour was as calm and professional as before. She stood aside as the guards took up a polite—if closer than expected—formation around the ‘guest’ of the prince.

--=--

The chewing was getting on his nerves.

They were seated at an outdoor courtyard high up in the parapets of the castle, with a commanding view of the entire city and the surrounding wastelands around it. Handy had briefly got caught up in admiring the sight, both the sparkling majesty of the city itself and how it contrasted sharply with the docking towers and the practical swarm of airships moving to and fro. Small dark plums on the horizon betrayed the snaking trails of trains in the distance, and all of it, far from being incongruous, created a strange, almost liminal experience of contrasts working in harmony to create a unique vision of this snow-trapped city state.

Munch, munch, munch.

All spoiled by His Imperial Majesty’s most august table manners of course.

He had been led to the palace and up to this courtyard where a quant metal lawn table dressed in an impressively sewn tablecloth of repeating floral patterns waited for them. They were served with a multi-tiered plate of various sandwiches—all vegetarian—along with a selection of different coffees and teas to choose from. Having had his morning coffee already, Handy elected for a kind of southern brew for a tea. It was something called Brediwane, which was apparently cultivated from the leaves of a desert plant. Its taste was neither sweet, nor bitter, but some indescribable intermediary between the two that was both rich and flavourful. The smell filled his nostrils and reminded him of a curious mix of roasted chestnuts and sun-baked stone. It was wonderful and Handy found he rather liked it.

His Imperial Majesty, Prince Shining Fucking Armour slurped down a gallon of black tea and half a dozen sandwiches after exchanging initial pleasantries with Handy with all the politesse of a barracks grunt six tours deep in a trench who had been starving for three weeks. It was honestly almost impressive.

Handy, too used to the practiced airs, poker faces, tense negotiations, and courtly decorum of previous experiences and his own expectations, was utterly caught off guard by just how violently blasé the prince was about table manners. He knew to expect any amount of disarming and social manoeuvring tactics from royalty, given he now had an embarrassing amount of experience with it, and had chalked this up as another one. He was reminded of Celestia’s silent treatment with her tea set, and the thought crossed his mind that the prince was doing this to unnerve him somehow.

But the more the lunch dragged on, the more evident it was the prince was just nakedly enjoying his time scarfing down sandwich after sandwich, cup after cup, uncaring for conversation. After some time, Handy learned he was just going to have to reciprocate, and so he poured himself a cup, helped himself to a few sandwiches, and tried his best to enjoy the scenery.

Munch, munch, munch.

As much as he could anyway.

Eventually, the prince finished his gluttony and let out a very unmannered belch. He then poured himself another large cup of coffee, downed it, and placed the cup on the saucer with a loud clatter and satisfied sigh. Handy, sensing he was now ready to talk about whatever he actually wanted, and prepared to do his duties as a dignitary, finished his own draught of his cup and waited for the prince.

“Right,” Shining began, speaking candidly, gracing Handy with a confident, friendly smile with a full set of teeth and placing his hooves on the table. “Now I’m going to kick your ass!”

“... What?”

“Yeah! Come on, look, it was going to happen sooner or later. Might as well be honest about it, right?” Shining asked earnestly. The smile didn’t fade from his face. He didn’t look like he was pissed, but he had to be joking, right?

“Just like that?” Handy asked incredulously.

“Yeah,” he replied without elaboration.

“... Why?”

“Is that a serious question?” he asked with a chuckle. Shining moved his neck side to side to loosen the muscles.

Handy let out a disbelieving breath. “I’m… sorry, your Highness, but I don’t think it’s appropriate—”

“Oh who cares? You’re telling me you’re afraid to get your hooves dirty?”

“Hands.”

“Whatever.”

“I’m not about to hurt a royal.”

“It’s adorable that you think you can hurt me,” Shining said with a laugh. This was idiotic; the prince had to be fucking with him. He came all this way and on the best pretences. He was not going to be duped into starting an international incident over nothing.

“Have you lost your mind?” Handy asked in all sincerity.

“Nope! Just cutting to the chase,” the prince said before sitting back in his chair. “Look. Handy, let me be frank.” Handy studied the prince, looking him in the eye. There were two crystal guards watching over the lunch, neither of them betraying any sign of surprise, indignation or even concern at the prince’s challenge. Their emotions were level, and even as far as Handy was able to discern, the prince was agitated slightly, which made sense given he had just challenged someone to a fight and earnestly and honestly looked forward to it. Handy couldn’t find a trace of deceit neither in his body language, his words, nor his heart. It was actually a bit unnerving.

“You messed with my little sister. You extorted her for your own gain, exploited her naivety and inexperience with your honeyed words and nefarious intentions—”

“Tha—”

“I literally could not care less about whatever political dogshit you’re about to spew to defend your actions. I don’t care, and I know you don’t really believe whatever principled stance you’re about to take to justify your shameless behaviour,” Shining said seriously. He met Handy’s gaze fearlessly. Handy sensed that if he even tried to manipulate the stallion with his gaze that it likely wouldn’t work, and might even just anger him further. “I have to play nice, I have to play politics, but I don’t have to pretend I can’t abuse my power to do the right thing.”

“... And the right thing is?” Handy asked, getting annoyed despite himself at the accusation of being unprincipled. That rankled.

“Beating your sorry ass. I know you hate ponies for whatever happened to you. Fine, whatever, but I don’t have to forgive you for being cruel to a mare who doesn’t deserve an ounce of your hatred for her.”

“I don’t hate Twilight,” Handy clarified.

“You literally demanded her blood.” Shining countered and let the accusation hang. It was true, and he just admitted he didn’t care about any justification. “Listen, I’m going to be fair; nopony’s going to know about this. Not my wife, not Twilight, not Celestia. And if you win? Fair’s fair, I’ll never make an issue of it again. At least this time.”

Handy stared and listened. “And if you win?”

“Then I get the satisfaction of beating the shit out of you,” the stallion confirmed. Handy noted the vulgarity of the soldier prince’s language in comparison to most ponies he had encountered. It was refreshing.

“Is that all?”

Why would I want anything more?” Shining confirmed with a shrug, the smile returning.

“That can’t be it.”

“Not all of us are that complicated, Handy,” Shining said, “I just want what's right. I can’t get that any other way right now. So, you’re not leaving here without giving me that much.”

“I’m not going to fight you,” Handy insisted.

“Yes you are, and you’re going to like it, or what? Are you going to whine back to your king that the big bad pony prince beat you senseless while you curled up on the floor without standing your ground? What are you, a mare?” Shining goaded. It worked. Handy ground his teeth. He knew nothing about this prince, and realistically didn’t have anything against him. His words burned at his pride.

Goading him into a fight was foolish. At any point he’d be swarmed an—

“Guards,” Shining Armour spoke, and Handy immediately got up from his chair, expecting an attack. “Please make sure we’re not disturbed.”

And at his command, the guards did just that, leaving them alone in the courtyard. Handy extended his senses. His head felt like it was burning from the over-extended use of his extra-sensory abilities in coordination with his use of his amulet. Sure enough, within a few minutes of tense silence, in which the prince did not so much as deign to get up from his seat, the various guards he had sensed near their section of the castle started moving further away. None he could tell were casting spells, at least not obviously. The ones in the air were keeping their distance as well.

Handy looked at the prince in the now deafening silence of the empty courtyard. The wind tugged at their clothes and hair. It was obvious by now this was happening whether Handy liked it or not. There was no matter of life or death here; there was no political ambition or subterfuge; there wasn’t even anything material to gain by it, only settling a supposed matter of honour. A brother standing up for his sister’s honour against a perceived cad, a senseless and foolish point of pride!

He had to admit, he almost smiled at his own hypocrisy.

“You have no weapon,” Handy pointed out, allowing his stance to appear relaxed though his hand hovered near where his hammer hung. Shining smiled.

“I don’t need one.” Handy nodded, noting from the horn that the stallion almost certainly knew some battle magic. That and he was a rather big pony.

“You also don’t have any armour.” Shining laughed and pushed away from the table, and hopped from the chair.

“It’s in the name, Handy. I am armour,” the stallion said as he stood across from Handy, who by now had also moved away from the table.

“You really think I honestly believe this is all you want out of this?” Handy asked seriously, trying to once more discern what was really behind this sudden aggression.

“I don’t care what you believe,” Shining answered. “Sure, you did my sister an honest favour, you helped save my friend, little Spike—”

“And this is your gratitude?”

“Let me finish—but you did it after treating my sister like dirt. And you’re coming away from this with, what, a massive pile of money, honour and glory for your king, and Spike as your errand boy for a full year? And you think I’m just supposed to sit there and do nothing at all about that?”

“Yes,” Handy answered arrogantly. Shining Armour laughed.

“Would you?”

“I don’t care.” Handy shrugged. “I didn’t think an Equestrian royal would do something this drastically stupid.”

“You’re talking to a stallion who threw his wife off of these ramparts like a weapon to win a battle. You don’t know a damn thing of what I am capable of.” Handy was momentarily stunned by the pony’s admission. Absolutely nothing about him betrayed any insincerity of his words. He now seriously considered his situation and just how adamant this prince was.

This was nothing like the arrogant coward Blueblood he had dealt with way back in Canterlot. This wasn’t some spoiled princeling agitating for an easy social win who needed to be humbled, nor was it some experienced chess player of the political game that Handy could manoeuvre his way into making a deal with to placate or buy time. This was simply a brother looking out for his sister, and it occurred to Handy that the only reason something more drastic had not already happened to him was precisely because he had actually fulfilled his promise to Twilight and had helped resolve Spike’s problem.

And for that, Shining only wanted to beat him.

A part of him respected that.

“So…” Handy began. “No hard feelings over spoiling your guard's fun earlier?”

“No harm no foul,” Shining confirmed.

“It's rude to spy on guests,” Handy goaded, his face stern.

“You’re no ordinary guest. And we didn’t actually interfere in your day, as it was.”

“My point stands,” Handy insisted.

“Would you not have done the same, back in Gethrenia with your spies?” Shining asked. Handy had no reaction to that, but that was a fascinating admission. He recalled that the ponies were under the mistaken impression that Johan had made the human, his ‘Shadow’, into his own spymaster. It was a farcical rumour that Sunderclaw had revealed to him once, that was preposterous but useful for the spymaster to maintain the facade. Handy couldn’t answer him because he knew Sunderclaw was also keeping an eye on him and anyone else in Gethrenia worth watching, visitor or resident. Shining smiled.

“Anyway, I take it you’re ready then?” Handy took a deep breath through his nostrils once, opened his eyes, and reached behind him for his helmet, which hung from his waist under his cloak.

“I fail to see how we’re going to keep quiet about this after the fact,” he said, placing the helmet over his face. He glared at the large, white pony from the T slit in the face of his helm.

“I guess I’ll just have to avoid hitting that ugly face of yours!” Handy snorted. “Fine, be boring. Now, come and hit me if you dare.”

Handy didn’t take the bait, slowly lifting his hammer out of the loop at his belt and hefting it in both hands, lifting once and spinning the hammer head in place as he did so. Shining snorted; his horn began to glow and he took a step forward.

Handy moved.

He had no blood to work with, his earlier extensive use of his powers having left him with a headache, proving his inexperience of using magic artefacts at his already woefully amateur level of experience in arcana. So his migraine, while not debilitating, was evidently going to count against him in this surprise challenge.

That and he couldn’t count on a blood high to pull him out on top in this exchange. More than that, the powers he could rely on without such an advantage were not the greatest for use in combat. His medallion, which allowed him to project his voice, was tucked away in his pouch and not easily put to hand, so there was no using it to offset his opponent on the fly.

However, Handy was more than confident, even if this princeling was evidently a soldier by profession and temperament, and not some foppish aristocrat whose tongue wrote checks his ass couldn’t cash. The unicorn was casting a spell, and if his magic was anything like his attitude, it’d be direct and blunt, and Handy relied on his infamous armour to carry him through any arcane threat.

What's more, the unicorn only had its natural abilities, his weight, and his strength to fight Handy, and the human had more than enough experience fighting quadrupeds at this point to be reasonably confident in his advantages to take him on.

Besides, his primary concern was in not actually hurting this arrogant prince somehow. Prideful bastard or not, the prince was actually the head of a kingdom, the husband of an alicorn, the brother of another one, and Handy had honestly no intention of causing any trouble before he got put into this position.

So one could understand, dear reader, that when Handy rapidly closed the gap between the two of them, why it was that he did not swing the hammer at full leverage. Instead, he gripped it at the head and the base of the handle, intending to use the full weight of it in a safe manner to wind the prince, without wounding him or breaking bones or pulverising organs. He hefted the war hammer and shoved the base of the hammer’s haft into the side of the prince, expecting to stun his right foreleg at the shoulder.

And it was then and there that the fight was decided.

Handy’s blow hit seemingly empty air that rippled. The blow didn’t rebound onto him, and he didn’t feel the recoil of force one would feel if one hit an immovable object. Rather, the energy from the blow and the shock just seemed to disappear. However, the rippling effect washed over Shining Armour’s entire body. What Handy had hit was in fact, a solid plate of body armour. The shining, translucent purple plate was engraved with repeating, swirling patterns of floral decorations and crystalline imagery.

It was an artefact of pure magical energy that protected the pony’s shoulder as surely as a pauldron would in Handy’s own armour. Now that the illusion was dispelled, Shining Armour was, quite literally, covered from horn to hoof in armour plating and chainmail. But this was not some mere construction of a smith’s forge and an artisan’s pride.

Handy, of course, was unaware of Shining Armour’s claim to fame, or even the true extent of the utter depth of magical reserves this singular unicorn possessed and was able to summon up akin to a god pulling an island from the bottom of the sea. It was understated, especially given the unicorn’s mentality and preference for physicality, but the stallion was in many ways his sister’s equal in arcane ability and potential—merely focused on different strengths.

Whereas his sister was the scholar and mage extraordinaire, and whose intellectual proficiency was such that she was quite literally a once in a generation prodigy, Shining Armour was altogether a more humble colt in his ambitions. He focused his arcane abilities in tandem with the training of his body, exercising his magical potential and blunt ability as surely as he sculpted the muscles of his body with all the care and dedication of the artisan.

As his sister came to him, bursting with pride over conquering some niche esoterica and intricate secrets of the universe that required too much specialized knowledge for him to appreciate, he merely smiled, tussled her hair, and turned back to books of his own: histories of great generals and warriors of the past, epic poetry, and philosophies of the ancients.

As his sister mastered great arcane arts under the tutelage of her most royal mentor, Shining focused his magic to augment his military training, plunging the depths of his own potential to push more and harder, to lift weights and crush obstacles that could not be reasoned with nor cleverly worked around.

And in the end, he had reached a pinnacle of perfection for a unicorn rarely attained in this age or any other. He was at once every inch the ideal warrior in heart, body, and mind, equal parts a magnificent specimen of health and strength, a keen and clear heart of impeccable character, and a keen magical insight and dedication to a simple purpose. He was the ideal of Thucydides, the Warrior Scholar, and nowhere was this perfection demonstrated than his unparalleled mastery over such a simple magical concept.

Each part of his armour, down to the singular scale of the mail he wore under each plate, was a masterwork of a very simple shield spell. Each one was perfectly imagined and encapsulated the arcane principles of the spell on an infinitesimally smaller and more intimate level than even the greatest mages could conceive of. A single inch of the armour had enough magical potential and intricate reinforcement to handle an incalculable blow from any force and, what was more, take in the energy that hit it, store it, absorb it, redistribute it across the armour and reinforce it, utilising it to make it stronger.

And that was before Shining started pumping his own magical power into the construct. And as we have already established, dear reader, Handy was unaware that he was facing a unicorn capable of projecting a much simpler expression of the spell over the scale of an entire city and an entire mountainside. That he had done so to keep out a besieging army and all while having a queen of the changelings draining this same unicorn of his strength on a continuing basis, day and night for who knew how long. And he still kept it up.

There was nothing Handy could do to break through it, and in that horrific moment, he seemed to have intuited that.

“Oh…” Handy breathed as his hammer rested in his hand as the fully-armoured Shining turned to face him, the confident smile on his face visible under the full face helm of his arcane aegis. “Shit.”

Shining turned on his hoof, swinging his rear end behind and bucking his rear hooves, catching Handy full on the chest and launching him clear across the courtyard, knocking the wind out from his chest. Twin explosions of blinding light erupted from his own armour as Shining’s armoured hooves connected with it. Handy landed hard on the crystalline floor and scratched deep gouts out of the precious rock as he spun and skidded across it before hitting the wall.

His hammer was out of his hands, and as he sharply gasped for his breath between sputtering coughs as he struggled to come to his senses after the blow, he realised Shining was approaching where it lay on the ground. He lifted it with his magic and looked at Handy sideways. He looked the weapon over, as if inspecting it before tossing it over at the human, landing heavily beside him head first with the handle, then swinging and hitting the wall beside him.

“It wouldn’t be sporting otherwise,” he said as if explaining himself. Handy looked at the prince incredulously. “Come on, don’t tell me you don’t want to take a proper crack at me after that.”

Handy did, but wasn’t a fool about it. He hadn’t hit that armour with all his power but knew even if he did, nothing would happen. Hell, he wasn’t sure if even the sheer force would cause the pony to as much as flinch. He fundamentally just didn’t have the right tools for the job here, and he knew it.

Still, he couldn’t just let the pony get what he wanted out of this without a literal fight. He stumbled back to his feet, frowning as he noted the deep indentations in his armour. He had to find some way of getting past that armour but how? There weren't any openings. Every part of the pony that needed mobility or movement was covered by a magical scale male. The harder points were covered by actual plate; even his helmet was translucent and did not obscure his vision.

His eyes narrowed at that. That's right, his vision wasn’t obscured, was it? He wasn’t sure if this would lead to anything positive, but it was worth a shot. He started moving over to the pony again, his hammer held out at length horizontally from his body. Shining Armour took up a defensive stance, the cocksure grin on his face showing his excitement, wondering what ploy the human was about to engage in.

Handy sped up his pace, now placing both his hands on his outstretched hammer as he ran. Just as Shining was about to move to answer the human’s charge, Handy swung the hammer, letting go of the shaft at the height of the swing, sending the hammer head flying and striking Shining’s fetlock.

Predictably, the blow did nothing, the hammer stopping dead and not even so much as moving the pony’s step as the energy of the blow was absorbed completely by the armour. But now the pony had the long haft of the hammer in between his forelegs, stumbling his own charge. Handy was now upon the unicorn. Shining swung his head, the bladed covering of his horn scratching across Handy’s plate. The shard of light blistering his vision was all the warning he had of the human’s plan.

Handy bashed in the sides of the helmet with his gauntleted fists, directly over each eye, creating blinding sunspots of incandescent light with each blow that Shining’s closed eyelids could only barely keep from damaging his eyes.

Handy was not unaffected by this gambit either, though somewhat lessened given the limited exposure of his helmet. It was only a few seconds, but Handy almost got a solid half a dozen blows before the unicorn was able to disengage by leaping bodily into the human, the head thrusting into the human’s torso and lifting him off of the ground. The horn tore part of the repaired placard off as it reacted to the magic of the stallion’s armour.

Handy landed on the far side of the pony, his neck aching, and immediately rolled away on instinct as the pony immediately raised his rear legs to initially stomp and then buck again. Handy had just gotten away, but his cloak was torn off in the process.

Both fighters tried to recover as quickly as they could, with Shining shaking his head and blinking away the blind spots in his vision. Handy recovered the majority of his sight first and did the next best thing he could think of. He couldn’t rely on physical force to damage him from the inside, so he did the next best thing that could damage him from the inside: gravity.

Handy rose to his hands and knees and then launched himself, grabbing Shining around the back and barrel and lifted. Shining, not expecting this approach at all, but not letting the affront go unanswered, immediately started kicking Handy’s back with his rear legs and thrusting down with his forelegs. The angles were not the best suit for attack, and while certainly painful, were not the winning blows that’d properly damage him.

Each blow caused a new sunspot of brilliance, an entire circle of light practically bisected the unicorn from where the human started to lift him bodily over himself.

And tossed it down onto the table.

The metal crumpled under the weight of the body and armour. Ceramics and cutlery went everywhere as the pony was splashed with still hot tea, which evidently found some space in the armour and had scalded him at some point. Shining was as dazed as Handy was now, having landed head first and the full weight of his body causing him to be winded and hurt.

But the stallion was a veteran and pushed through the pain, leaping to his legs once more, turning and giving Handy a fierce grin, seemingly pleased there was more of a fight to be had than he had expected.

That was about the time Handy’s cloak was pulled over his helmet, and Handy dragged it around, blinding the unicorn. Handy struggled as the pony bucked and thrashed. Eventually, Shining simply stomped on the ground and leaped, shoulder bashing Handy and forcing him to let go of the cloak. Handy was now in the unenviable position of having his face caved in by an angry quadruped that was above him.

Instinctively, he kicked and thrashed, but every blow literally did nothing to the pony. Shining held one of his hooves firmly on Handy’s gorget, planting him in place. Handy immediately reached for a dagger on his belt and pulled it free, hoping against hope that he could pry one of the plates off. Shining saw his movement and pinned his wrist with his other forehoof.

Handy, now unarmed and out of options, really didn’t have any other means of attacking this unicorn. He couldn’t even leverage his legs under him to force the pony off. Every hit he landed didn’t even seem to deliver kinetic force. And now he lay there, the connection between the two sets of armours bathing the pair of them in blinding light that neither could clearly see through.

Handy couldn’t see anything as the entire slit of his helmet was filled with blinding light. Shining began talking, but he couldn’t hear him, still vainly struggling against the weight of this pony and infuriated that his own strength was simply not able to account for anything, and for some damn reason tea was dropping onto his helmet!

Wait a minute. Tea had splashed onto Shining’s armour earlier and had passed through and scalded him. It was still on the armour and dripping onto Handy.

If the arcane armour had enough texture to physically interact with liquids to retain it on its surface like other materials could…

He reached for a pouch on his side, a long one. He no longer wore his bandolier, but seeing as it had proven so effective in the Dragonlands, he’d be insane if he didn’t keep at least one such potion on his person whenever he went out. Maybe if…

Shining, being just as blinded as Handy, and with no free hoof to stop his other hand, was not in a position to stop it when the ceramic potion bottle smashed onto the back of his crinnet and chanfron. The thick viscous potion covered the entire front of the helmet, blocking out most of the blinding light, the rest flowing down his head and into his eyes, blinding him totally as the foul liquid covered his face.

Shining flailed as it flowed down his snout and onto his nose. The distraction was enough for Handy to get his arm free from under the pony’s grip, and now with both arms, he was able to pull away from where he was under the stallion. Shining thrashed as he tried to blink away the viscous fluid from his eyes, being unsuccessful. And where he could see, the vision of his helmet was obscured by the viscous liquid clinging to the inside and outside of the magical chanfron.

Handy, now loose and the sight of his opponent now seriously impaired, rushed to grab the dagger from the ground and hurried to get his hammer. Shining, frustrated, had no choice other than ripping the helm of his armour and throwing it off, rubbing the gunk of the fire resistance potion from his eyes and glaring after the human. Seeing him run for his hammer, his horn glowed. A magical aura shone around Handy’s hammer, and he reached his hand and tried to reach it with his own magic first. But without a focus and as inexperienced as he was, all that accomplished was causing the gauntlet around his own hand to burst into light and blinded him for a moment as the hammer head came flying towards him.

He blinked and ducked just in time for it to miss him, but not before it clocked the side of his helm hard enough to daze him and knock him to the ground again. Shining snorted as he approached, letting the hammer fall and grabbing the fallen dagger with his magic and tossing it aside. Handy struggled back to his knees as Shining approached.

“Got any more tricks up your sleeve?” Shining challenged.

“Just… one.” Handy fumbled around at the ruins of the table he had fallen beside, his right hand very visibly reaching into the pouch at his side. A whisper tickled Shining’s ear, causing it to twitch in the direction behind him. Shining smirked.

“I’m not falling for that,” he said, glancing at where Handy’s right hand was. “So is that where—”

While Shining was looking at his right hand, he did not see Handy’s left hand grip the battered but unbroken metal teapot in his left hand from the ruins of the lunch table. He swung it around with all his might, tea and all, and clocked Shining right in his unprotected face.

It was, however, the last he could manage. Shining closed the distance, grabbed Handy by the shoulders, and repeatedly bashed the same unprotected head again and again into Handy’s helmet until the human was left lying on the ground, insensate. Shining sat back on his haunches, breathing heavily. He raised a hoof to rub over his right eye where the teapot had clocked him, wincing slightly and pulling away as the eye was now swelling shut.

It was going to be hard explaining that away. Oh well, he’d think of something. He lifted the teapot with his magic and shook it. There was still some left.

“Hey,” he said to the human, who was still somewhat conscious on the ground but was clearly in no position to answer him. “Do you mind if I finish this off? Groan if no.”

Handy groaned. Shining chuckled.

“There’s a good sport.”

Author's Note

Seasons Beatings everyone!

Hey, do you guys remember that one character way back in Chapter 6 who had only one line of dialogue and didn't even have a proper description?

I certainly did.

Here she is as a Chekov's Gun.

Because fuck you.

I hope you all had a Merry Christmas!

Prologue - A bad start to a bad day

“Hold him down!” the gruff voice of the staff sergeant commanded. Iron-shod hooves pressed down hard against flesh, bone, and armour, their gold paint long since scraped off in the fight before, leaving brilliant stripes of gold against the harsh glare of metal in the noon sun.

The human grunted in pain. He’d had worse Monday mornings in his time, but for the life of him, he could not remember when. He was a mess. He had been clocked one in the eye, which was doubtlessly going to bruise. Blood was gushing from his nose where it had been broken. He had lost most of his armour on the way to Canterlot, and the fight had ruined what little of it remained. The excruciating pain in his chest alerted him to the worrying possibility that several of his ribs had been cracked.

Credit where credit was due, he supposed.

“I got to hand it ye, lads,” he said, purposefully giving up the accent-less English he had adopted since arriving in Equestria. “Yais sure showed me yais aren’t jus’ pretty dolls playing dress up for the princess’ amusement after all, heh.” That earned him an angered snort and an increased pressure on the back. Something cracked, and he let out a cry of pain.

Now, before you feel sorry for the protagonist, you should know at this juncture that he not only started it, but knew full well what he was getting into.

Counting on it, one might say.

The few lingering civilians of Canterlot, from curious nobles to lowly window cleaners, had quieted down once the guards subdued the violent human who had the temerity to disturb their peaceful daily business with his doubtlessly pointless and chaotic shenanigans. Many even politely clopped their hooves on the ground and cheered for the guards for putting an end to the scene.

The human was, at this point, pinned to the ground by not one, but two heavily-armoured earth pony guards. Probably the only thing keeping his chest from completely caving in was the ruined remains of the steel breastplate he wore. Earth ponies on their own weren’t too heavy for an average human—he could even bodily lift one of the bigger ones if he put his back into it—but factor in armour weight, deliberately placed pressure on the forehooves, and the human’s injured, prone position, and the second pony was just entirely unnecessary in holding him down.

The staff sergeant, who himself was sporting a quickly developing black eye and a missing helmet courtesy of the naked ape, was holding his arms down with his magic. The unicorn scowled at the human as the remaining two guards, a pegasus and another unicorn, came back to their senses. The human smiled, feeling he had made a good accounting for himself, all things considered.

“I’ll handle this!” a voice boomed from above them. The human tried to look up, but his position on the ground was not very conducive to the efforts of gazing into the heavens as the thundering voice of impending judgement swooped down to meet him. The pony the voice belonged to landed on the ground with an audible thud. Probably intentional. The human smirked at the thought of the ponies trying to intimidate him when they had already defeated him so thoroughly.

Well, he smirked until he noticed the pony’s movements. His brow furrowed in confusion. Each hoof was placed before the other with extreme care, and he could see the faintest tremor as crystal-shod slipper was placed after crystal-shod slipper. Fear? No, that couldn’t be right; she had literally nothing to fear from him. Anger. She was clearly holding back a great deal of anger, not fear. He was raised up to his knees by the sergeant’s magic, his hands being restrained behind his back as the earth ponies quickly tied them. He got a good look at the pony before him.

The cobalt, winged unicorn before him was none other than the Princess of the Night, the second in the royal diarchy that ruled over the pony nation, who possessed the ridiculous power to move the very moon itself. He had scoffed at many things when he came to Equestria, many of which he came to accept as established fact. Looking at the creature before him, her eyes ablaze, glowing white with magical energy, her voice as soft as a whisper but with enough power to cause the very air to vibrate that he could feel her speak as much as hear her, he could very well believe she could move the heaven and earth if she had to.

“What have you done with my sister?” she asked in a voice that would have sounded calm if it didn’t come complete with its own echo and thinly disguised fury layered beneath every word. The human was spitting into the hurricane, and he knew it. For the briefest of moments, his resolve wavered.

Still, nothing ventured…

“Well, your majesty,” the human began as he coughed, a faltering smirk gracing his admittedly unflattering visage, “that would be telling, now wouldn’t it?”

---=---

Perhaps we should go back. That might help clarify matters. See, it was actually some months after his arrival in Equestria that our protagonist made his way to the delightful encounter in the Goldencourt promenade in Canterlot, which we just had the pleasure of viewing a snippet of. Well, closer to over a year if we were going to be precise.

The human, not his real name of course but better than the one he unimaginatively chose, was a young man who fancied himself luck’s personal plaything. Whenever he found himself the recipient of fantastic good fortune or achieved a desirable goal, he almost immediately came crashing down from his high. This had been the story of his life thus far, and as a result, he was the happy owner of a world view one might charitably refer to as caustically cynical. So, dear readers, do not judge him too badly for his poor judgement in looking a gift horse in the mouth. For when he was transported to Equestria, he found himself looking at a colourful world, brimming with magic and adventure, overflowing with the promise of wonder, discovery, and mystery. A genuine, honest-to-God Narnia experience waited before him, inviting him to forget his worries and cares, to dive headlong into the great bright unknown, to grow and become a better, more fulfilled person in the course of many lessons learned in the wondrous mystery he had been presented with.

So of course he scoffed, sneered, and turned his back on it.

His first memories of Equestria consisted of waking and staring up at the sky through the foliage above him. He was covered in dead leaves and broken branches. The sun was at its zenith and mercilessly poured forth glorious golden light onto his poor, unprotected eyelids. He groaned and turned over to his side, cracking twigs under his weight. His burgundy hoodie was ragged and torn in places, there was something in his mess of a hair, and everything he knew was pain.

“Ugghuuhhh…” the human groaned. He opened his bleary eyes, the world an incomprehensible blur in the unseasonable warmth of the forest floor. Trees… Huh… He didn’t remember anything about trees. Where was he? What did he do last night? He placed his hand on the ground to try to push himself up, but it slipped and he came crashing down face-first on the ground. The pain jolted him awake. “M’ssup, mm’up, ugh…” he said to nobody in particular. He lay there for a few minutes before eventually letting out a long, guttural sigh and pushed himself up from the floor with determination.

He immediately regretted it.

“Oh God, owwww…” His hands clasped the sides of his head as it rang like cathedral bells. He’d had hangovers before but never anything this bad. He didn’t really recall going out drinking in the last several months. His job didn’t really leave him with a lot of time that could be dedicated towards ‘having a life’ of any description. Just what in the hell did he get up to last night? He waited for his head to stop being his mother, as it reminded him about the foolishness of drinking more than one could handle through gratuitous dizziness and pain, before finally taking stock of his situation.

His earlier guess had been right. He was in a forest of some sort, but he didn’t recognise the trees. They were… different. The small forest near his home had sparse trees, mostly oaks and sycamores. Old ones with wide trunks and proud branches reaching out as if to hug the very sky itself, with the odd upstart tree trying to make its way in life between them. These ones consisted of odd shapes and hues—purple, but a deep dark kind, hoary and old, yet too small to be truly ancient. Apart from the hole in the forest cover from which the sun proudly shone, the canopy was mostly unbroken, leaving the forest floor dark and foreboding as gnarled roots sprung from the ground at random places, giving a genuinely menacing air to the surrounding.

He smacked his dry lips. His mouth tasted like ash and vinegar; he was covered in cold sweat; the pain in his head had yet to subside, and he was hallucinating because, for a moment, he swore he saw a blue arc of electricity dance across the skin of his hand. Yep, he had been out drinking last night, heavily so, but for the life of him, he couldn’t recall why. He didn’t bother trying to remember last night, for that was a fool’s errand. Instead, he tried going further back and reviewed his recent life the past two weeks up until now, or at least what he most recently remembered. There wasn’t much to tell: get up, go to work, come home late, eat dinner, check Internet for anything interesting, fall asleep, rinse, and repeat. Sure, it was less than ideal, but he was never one to go out and get hammered. What could have driven him to get so smashed that he would go and get so incredibly lost that he was on his own, in the middle of a strange forest, and with no idea how he got there?

He groaned in resignation and rose to his feet, brushing the branches and other detritus from his clothes as he inspected the damage. Yep, it was pretty bad. His jeans were torn at the knees, and his jacket looked like it had gotten into a fight with a lawnmower. He pulled an acorn out of his hair. Odd, he had it cut just last week, so it shouldn’t be long enough for anything to get caught in it. He reached into his pocket to pull out his phone. The screen was cracked. Fantastic, there went his warranty. It turned on, but it only showed a bright white screen. It was now a very expensive, very thin brick. Ah well, maybe he could use it as a light when he got home. Placing his phone in his right pocket, he discovered that his belt had been ripped. Wonderful. He had bought that thing in Spain years ago, and it was the only belt he ever had that had never ever broken on him no matter what. He grumbled. This was going to be a bad day. It was only when his left foot suddenly felt cold and damp did he notice he was also missing a shoe. He swore. A bad day. Definitely a bad day.

Well, there was no sense sitting still. He couldn’t call for help even if he wanted to, and the sun wasn't being co-operative in telling him the direction he ought to be heading, what with it sitting literally directly above him, proud as you like. He decided he’d go to his right. Why? Because he was right-handed. It was as good as anything at this point as he had no idea where he’d find a river which could direct him to a town or something. Well, he could wait an hour or so until the sun moved across the sky, so he could tell which way was east, but he had no time and cared not for anything that required the patience that he simply did not possess.

Trudging through the forest was a pain. He cut his hands on more than a few thorns and was quickly becoming infuriated. Where in the nine circles of hell was he? He eventually found a river like he thought and followed it downstream. The uncomfortable, almost claustrophobic darkness of the forest was not helping his mood. A few times, he forced himself to stand stock-still and peer into the shadows before shaking his head and moving on. He was hearing things. But it was all worth it in the end, or at least he thought so, as the trees gradually became thinner, and he could see light up ahead. He smiled in victory and threw his arms up in the air. At last! An exit! He could reach civilization and find out what in the hell happened to him last night. Triumphantly, he marched out of the forest and crested a hill to see a village in the distance.

Odd, from this distance, it looked like they were old-school wood and stone buildings—thatched roofs and everything. Did he get so off-his-blinker drunk that he had travelled halfway across the country and ended up in rural Galway or something? No scratch that, Galway had no good forests to speak of. McConnaughy be damned, that was the most blighted landscape he had ever seen. This place looked fertile and green and sunny and— wait. Sunny? It was January, and it had been nothing but rain and storms and snow for two months. He had taken off his ruined jacket a while ago, but he was sweltering under the heat of the sun now. At first he thought it was just the after-effects of the drink, and that was indeed part of it. However, he had shown no signs of stopping sweating since he got up. It was hot, summertime hot. A creeping thought gnawed at the back of his mind. It was warm, almost as if he missed a season, and his hair had grown out, when the last he recalled was that he had cut it down to the bare minimum of social acceptability. The thought was less of what did he do last night, but how long had he been out of it?

Oh God, he had heard nightmare stories in university. Friends of friends getting drunk abroad and waking up missing weeks’ worth of memories because they weren’t careful. The thought caused an uncomfortable tightness in his gut, and his eyes went wide at the implications. One night, maybe two night’s memories missing because he fucked up? Unprecedented for him, but he could deal with it. Entire weeks? That was a bit beyond alcoholism. He took several deep breaths to calm himself. There had to be a rational explanation. One did not simply come home from work one night and then go off on a bender to end all benders without at least some people you know going out looking for you. He was okay, unhurt, and alive. He could deal. He could deal with having one epic mishap in his life that would probably go unaccounted for. He could deal with having to fork over a hundred pounds or so for a new phone. He could even deal with the flurry of colourful horse-shaped creatures flying above the village and playing with the clouds as if they were solid objects. He could—

Hang on a tick.

He wiped his eyes clean, just in case he still was sleepy.

Nope, the colourful flying horses were still in the air.

…

Still there. Not going anywhere. Yep.

He stood there for a full minute, gawking, trying to comprehend what he was seeing. It wasn’t until he started seeing similarly garish creatures on the ground, milling about the houses of the small town, that the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end. He quickly glanced about. Seeing a rather large rock sticking out of the ground, he dived behind it. He curled up defensively against it as his thoughts raced.

What the hell? What the actual hell!? He looked over the boulder again. Nope, the offence against common sense and good reason still persisted in existing. He sat back down. Okay. Scenario time. He had potentially weeks of unexplained memory loss to account for, he had no idea where he was, and he was seeing things that defied explanation. It meant that he was hallucinating with incredible clarity, which was unusual in itself. One would think a hallucination this extensive would not last more than a couple of seconds before chaotically changing into something else. A dream perhaps? He rubbed his hands, and a small rivulet of blood emerged from a particularly bad cut. No, the pain was too real, too persistent, and he was, well, relatively speaking, thinking far too clearly. If this was a dream, it was not falling apart because of a petty little thing such as realizing it was a dream. He looked over the boulder one more time, trying to stay out of sight, and studied the village for a while.

It was strange. The creatures walked about, carrying things in their mouths such as baskets full of flowers and saddle bags filled with groceries or tools. He even saw one with a horn on its head climb up a ladder and cleaned a window with a rag on his hoof. It seemed like a perfectly normal functioning society.

Except, you know, they were horses.

Well, actually they were far too small to be horses. Ponies probably? Their heads were disproportionate but not unpleasantly so, their large eyes coming off more cartoonish than revolting. And they were colourful, like really colourful. Whenever he saw a pony that had a fur and mane colour combination approximating something one would expect a horse to have, it was the exception and not the norm. Several of the flying ones—his mind still boggled at the sheer insult to physics—actually came near his position.

“Look, I don’t mean to toot my own horn. Buuuuut I am pretty awesome if I do say so myself,” one of the voices said. The human curled up even more behind the boulder. They could speak English, why? Why could they talk? What the hell was going on here!?

“Oh. If… If you say so...” said another voice, gentler than the first. He didn’t dare look around the boulder. “What time is it?”

The other voice took a second before it responded. “Oh no! We’re late! Quick, everypony will already be at the castle!”

“H-Hey, wait for me!”

He heard the flap of wings, and the sound of the two flying ponies talking trailed off into the distance, leaving the human there with far more questions than he had answers. He took a number of deep breaths to try to calm himself down.

Nope, not good enough; he was panicking.

He placed his hands in front of his mouth and stifled a long, terrified scream. He stayed there for a full hour more, his mind reduced to a standstill, trying to work to give him the answers he so desperately needed and avoiding the one that was clearly impossible because there was no way God hated him that much.

However, it was the only one that could put any context to what he was witnessing. No matter how many times he rubbed his eyes and peered over the boulder, the clearly incorrect existence of physics-defying, candy-coloured equines who spoke and operated a society refused to go away. He had been transported, somehow, to a place where such things could be. The other answer was he was a high functioning acid addict and that his whole life was a lie. Frankly, he wasn’t sure which was worse. He punched himself with one last hope that sudden, sharp pain might jolt him to his senses. No dice.

The only option left to him was, well, to jump right in. Stand on his two legs, approach the impossible village with its impossible denizens, and embrace the madness with open arms in the vain hope something good might come out of it, because if this was not real, then he was far, far too far gone for him to get himself out of it. His other option was turning around and marching straight back into that damnable forest until he came out somewhere that made sense.

It only took him a few minutes to make up his mind.

He stood up, placed his jacket back around his shoulders, and gave one last, determined look at the village that was now behind him.

'Not today,' he thought. 'I refuse to be swallowed up in your madness today.'

And with that one, proud, decision, he marched right back into the dreadful embrace of that gloomy forest. Come hell or high water, he’d take the consequences rather than give in to lunacy.

---=---

So hell came first.

The human exploded from a briar patch, the skin of his face awash with tiny cuts, eyes wide with fear and lungs burning with effort as he ran through the foliage, weaving beneath low-hanging branches and praying desperately to God for his feet to not catch on the gnarled roots that lay treacherously across the ground. He heard the low growl as the creature chased after him, crashing noisily through the trees as it rushed forward to catch its prey.

Now the human, as it turned out, was not one for regular exercise back home, and as a result, had developed a rather large gut in his time. Indeed, had he been blessed with a slighter frame not built to handle heavy lifting, he would likely have been run down by the creature and eaten long before now. As it was, the fact his height and leg length was his only saving grace proved small comfort, as the only thoughts that occupied the small, terrified pocket dimension that his conscious thoughts had become revolved around such simple concepts as, ‘Oh God, it’s going to eat me!’ and ‘My P.E. teacher was right!’

The creature thundered after him and let out a hungry call that was not quite a roar but close. Its shrill bellow was hard to describe and succeeded in making the human’s skin crawl. He had only gotten one good look at it before he was forced to flee. It was a large round creature, its ball-like body almost entirely made up of a single mouth with rows of terrifying shark-like teeth forming concentric circles along its inside. The only thing that passed for eyes were two black dots immediately above its gaping maw of terror. The reddish-brown scaled creature propelled itself impossibly along two double jointed legs with two long taloned toes that looked like they were designed for tearing juicy little morsels such as himself apart.

He didn’t even consider where he was going, too terrified to devote any precious time to the thought. He had tried to lose the creature by diving between several trees that grew together, leaving only tight spaces between to slip through. The creature had simply broken them down and continued its chase, almost as an afterthought. He was quickly running out of options. Twice he had come to nearly falling down off a sudden drop that would have either killed him outright or left him as easy pickings. He turned a sudden sharp left, and his world came to an end.

His foot had been ensnared in a living briar that suddenly reached forward and grabbed a hold of his leg, causing him to suddenly come crashing down onto the ground with enough force to knock the wind out of him and make him briefly forget his terrifying predicament. When he came to his senses, he felt the briar tighten about his struggling feet, now encapsulating both of them. He struggled, placing both his hands on his head in a vain attempt to ward off the sudden yet inevitable pain of being torn asunder by that horrifying, living jaw. His body tensed.

But it never came.

One moment the creature was thundering behind him, the ground shaking with its ponderous foot falls. The next, silence. Deadly silence. The human dared to look behind him through his fingers. The living jaw, which was red when he had first seen, was now grey. Grey and unmoving. Almost without thinking, the human immediately began untangling himself from the animate briar, cursing as it cut into the flesh of his hands. But he was free, and he shuffled backwards on the forest floor, always facing the creature that had almost ended his life.

It appeared to be made out of stone. It was just standing there, still, tranquil almost, its body posed to leap, its mouth open wide in anticipation of a meal. Its eyes, well, he couldn't really tell. When it was alive, the eyes were black spots; now they were grey. The living briar from before moved its roots over to the statue, twisting and grasping at its legs to no avail, struggling to try to trip the statue over and tear it apart. Eventually, it gave up and pulled its roots back and appeared, for all the world, to be just another ordinary briar bush.

The human sat there, catching his breath, his chest heaving and lungs burning. It appeared that God was not quite done with him yet and decided to spare his life in this instance. That was when he heard it. A piercing noise, like that of the crow of a rooster but mixed with the hiss of a snake. He felt a presence behind him. He didn't move a muscle. He saw a small bird, couldn't have been any bigger than a robin, perch itself on a nearby branch. As soon as it turned around and faced the direction the human was sitting, he saw the bird turn to stone on the spot. The tiny statuette fell to the forest floor with a dull thunk. The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end for the third time in as many hours. The creature hissed behind him again, and he could feel its breath on the back of his head.

He had to think quickly. He glanced around him. There was a felled branch to his left. Without thinking twice, he reached over and grabbed it with his right hand, closed his eyes, and swung it around in a long arc, shouting something incomprehensible. He felt it connect with something. Opening his eyes, he saw what he could only describe as walking blasphemy. It was a chicken, or at least its body was shaped much like one, but only its head and feet had any resemblance to a fowl. It had a scaled body and thick tail that was as long as its body, tipped as it was with red ridges that emerged from its turquoise scales. The cockatrice stumbled and fell over from the sudden blow. It writhed and squirmed on the ground, cawing as it struggled to get back on its feet, leathery wings thrashing on the ground around it as another nearby living briar reached out to grasp at the struggling form of the abomination. It shrieked and cawed for release from the unrelenting grasp of the bush. The human broke and ran. He simply could not take it anymore. This place was madness incarnate: huge beasts, murderous plant life, and a creature straight out of ancient myth, turning creatures to stone with its very gaze.

Yep, he was done here.

He got back to his feet. His muscles screamed in protest as fear and raw willpower forced his body to move. He didn’t care where he was going now; anywhere was better than here. He rushed through the forest at pace. He heard distant sounds, cracking twigs, the tell-tale call of birdsong along with the ever present sensation of being watched from the shadows. It was an instinctive fear of shadow-skulking predators so ingrained in the human psyche that it was a sheer force of nature all its own that defined humanity for what it was. It was what drove them to hide from the unknown, to brave the dark in search of discovery, to be challenged and overcome their fear, or in this particular human’s case, it was the one thing that kept him going when his body kept politely informing his brain that it was spent via a throbbing headache and burning muscles. Another rough landing later, he tumbled and struggled to regain his footing as he swept under another branch and jumped over another crag to a lower section of the forest.

So it was around this time our protagonist came face to face with high water.

Not taking heed to look before he leapt, the first clue the human received that he had made a terrible mistake was when his body realised it was catching far more airtime than its brain thought was entirely healthy. Time seemed to slow down. He looked down, and his heart stopped as he saw the rapidly approaching waves of a swiftly flowing river, its white spray crashing over jagged rocks rose up to kiss his flesh as he slowly realised his own doom. His mind raced to form the thoughts that would create the substance of his final words to greet his fate with dignity and grace.

“OHHHHHHHH BOOOOLLLLLOOOCCCCCKKKSSSSS!”

Well, they couldn’t all be winners.

He made contact with the water, and the human’s world became a swirling cacophony of noise and blurred shapes of fish, forest, and rocks as he struggled desperately to reach above the water for air. Alas, his flailing movements were fruitless, for the current was too strong. He managed to grab hold of a floating log long enough to quickly take in breath before he desperately threw his head about to find someway of getting out of the water. Nothing presented itself: the river cut deep into the ground of the forest; its banks were easily four feet above him, and… the river was apparently coming to a dead end. His eyes opened wide as his brain struggled to think of an escape route. The river appeared to be flowing straight into a solid wall, and the current was only picking up speed. He pushed off from the log in desperation and latched onto the nearest wall of rock, catching hold, barely. He watched the log as it was carried by the river before it was smashed against the unmoving wall and shattered to splinters. He swallowed.

“Balls to all of this,” he said. The majority of his body was still in the full flow of the river, and he felt his grip slacken on the jutting rock. He quickly reached up with his free hand and grabbed another handhold. A desperate, hopeful grin split across his face, and he reached up, one hand after another, and pulled himself up the side of the bank to safety. That was when he felt the clawed foot clamp down on his left hand. He had just reached the top. He looked up desperately and saw the cockatrice staring down at him. There were scales missing from its body, and one of its eyes was closed. The creature stared at him, and he felt he could not move.

'Oh no,' he thought. 'It’s going to turn me to stone too.' His heart tightened, and his blood flow slowed. He held its gaze for a few seconds before the cockatrice shook its head. He felt the tightness leave his chest, and he released a breath he didn’t know he was holding. The cockatrice’s gaze changed. It didn’t soften; it changed. The cockatrice looked at the river below, then at the human’s hand beneath its foot, and then at the wall the river impossibly flowed into. The human thought he could see something of a grin on the creature’s beaked face.

“Don’t you dare,” he warned. The cockatrice looked down at him, and quick as lightning, pecked one of his fingers. “Ah! Don’t! Ye sunova—“ The cockatrice came down again, plucking at another finger. He felt his grip slacken, and he reached up his right hand to grab another fistful of grass before the cockatrice crowed and pecked it to hell and back. The human yelped and lost his footing, his right hand tearing away from the ground with a tuft of grass uselessly clasped between his fingers. He was now dangling bodily from his left hand and panicking all the more for it. Cockatrice or no cockatrice, he knew he couldn't hold his weight with his left arm on its own for too long. He cast one desperate look up at the cockatrice, which regarded him coolly. “You—“ He didn’t get to finish the sentence, for the cockatrice stepped off his left hand and gave it one last peck in-between the knuckles. That was the end of it.

The human tumbled and fell back into the river and rose only in time to see the rapidly approaching wall. He held his arms helplessly before his face as the speed picked up even further. Then all was black. The human was sucked beneath the waters and found himself tumbling in darkness. The river went through an underground pass, taking him with it. He hit his head off of solid rock several times, and his head swam as his lungs burned desperately for air. The last thing he saw before blacking out was a faint light in the distance.

---=---

“HYYYYYYUUUUUUUUUUUUUUURRRRRRRRRRRRKKK!” The human gasped for air greedily as he awoke. The river he had been traveling on had now turned into a gently flowing stream, and he found himself washed up on a bank beside a fallen oak tree. He looked around. No cockatrices, no living jaws ready to snap him up, no nearby living briars ready to tear him apart. Just the dark forest and the last fading rays of sunlight piercing the canopy where it could, casting the forest in a peaceful, almost mystical light. He grabbed a large stick and used it to help him stand. He had to get out of this forest, for he was tired, starving, out of shape, and clearly unprepared. He put his hood up to keep out the chill. It didn’t help much since his clothes were as soaked as the rest of him.

He limped gingerly as he had hurt his leg and his everything else in the journey so far. If something else came at him now, there really wasn’t much he could do about it. He struggled along as the last rays of day gave way to night. He saw light in the distance behind a copse of trees to his right. Moving towards it and pushing past several bushes that most certainly weren’t alive and murderous, for he had checked, you see, he found the source of the light. It was a tree, rather, a treehouse, with a door and windows and what could only be described as some kind of welcome mat. The tree looked ancient, gnarled and wild and foreboding, with large masks hanging about its front like garden charms. Bottles hung from ropes in the branches above it. The human had a friend from Louisiana who told him about the hoodoo practices that occurred in some places. He winced. This was not promising.

He sucked it up however. He was not in any mood to put up with further nonsense. He was just going to knock on the door and politely ask for directions, namely, the direction for getting the hell out of there. He limped up to the door and knocked. After the first knock, the door was opened, and the human was greeted by the most bizarre sight he had laid eyes on all day. It was a pony, well… no, no it wasn’t. It was a zebra. A zebra the size of a pony, grey and light grey-coloured fur, with a large mohawk and accentuated by golden neck circlets and earrings. The zebra looked up at the human in surprise, apparently as astonished to see him as he was to see her.

Honestly, he didn’t know what he was expecting. He opened his mouth, then closed it, thinking very carefully about how he was going to approach this particular brand of lunacy. He looked up over the zebra and into the house. There was an actual bubbling cauldron in the centre of the room, with something green and glowing inside of it as fumes wafted up from its surface. The walls were lined with charms, and there were African tribal masks and bottles filled with mysterious liquids that the human’s mind imagined were for all sorts of nefarious purposes. 'Oh great,' he thought, 'it’s actually a witch.' His eyes were drawn back to the blue eyes of the zebra before him. It spoke.

“Hello there. Is there something I can share?”

Oh man, it had an accent and spoke in rhyme and everything. The human rubbed his face with the palm of his hand. He was going to go call up the lads when he got back and enquire about going through a detox, because clearly whatever drugs he was on needed to get out of his system as soon as possible and never ever come back ever. The zebra was about to speak again before the human put his other hand up.

“Shh, jus… just don’t spoil the moment,” he said, and the zebra closed her mouth again. “Just… Can ye point me to the quickest way out?” he asked, his voice little more than a crack above whispering. The zebra lifted her right forehoof and pointed down a path that led roughly back to where the human reasoned the rapids were. Gears in his head turned before he reasoned that the zebra was probably pointing him in the direction of the village of insanity. He coughed. He came this far; he wasn’t about to go back. Nope, no matter how much easier it probably was than the suffering he had already gone through, he wasn’t going to let the madness win. “Actually uh, I mean a way out that doesn’t lead to the nearby town.”

The zebra cocked her head and gave the human a curious expression. She—it sounded like a she, anyway—lifted her left forehoof up and pointed in another direction, to a path that led around the back of her house tree. The human followed her direction for a moment as he thought to himself. He clicked his mouth as he came to a decision.

“Alright then, thanks ma’am,” he said. “I shan’t be troubling ye longer. Farewell,” he said, more jauntily than he honestly felt. He limped down the trail.

“Are you sure you are fit for the trail? I would not like to see you fail. Perhaps you should sit and rest, so you’ll be sure your feet are up to the test.”

Honestly, rhyming?

“I’ll be grand so,” he said by way of response, not caring if she understood his turn of phrase as he disappeared down the trail and into the darkness of the forest. The zebra looked down the trail at him for a while still after he had left. She flicked her tail and looked around the forest surrounding her tree before turning back to look down the trail the human had went down.

“Well that was interesting to see,” the zebra said as she finally turned back to re-enter her house. “A stubborn one lost in the Everfree,” she said as the door closed behind her.

---=---

It took him hours to get out of that damnable forest.

Or at least, he thinks it did. It felt like hours but he was pretty sure the sun set way faster than it should have done, and more than once he found himself making several right turns and never once have the trail cross over itself, his head felt fuzzy at times. However, the zebra was as good as her word, and the path did take him to the edge of the forest that didn’t end in the pony village. He had a few close calls here and there; it wasn’t all sunshine and roses. He had to briefly dive behind a crag as a pack of wolves, well, more like obscene, living collections of loose timber, branches, and wood in the form of wolves passed by. They had stopped perilously close to where he was hidden, their noses that were not noses sniffing the air. He had feared he was going to be found if the pack hadn’t been distracted by a distant howl as their pack fellows found other prey. Trouble aside, he had made it. The trees thinned out and gave way to rolling green hills bathed blue in the pale moonlight of the celestial body that was busy waxing gibbous as it hung mysteriously, draped in cumulus that hugged it like a cloak. The stars were out in all their glory, and it would have been stunningly beautiful if the human bothered to look up.

He didn’t and he wouldn’t. He trudged on until he was nearly a half mile from the forest, his legs moving on autopilot, his mind far away, drifting and lost in exhaustion. Eventually he collapsed onto his knees and rolled down a hill until he was looking up at the sky above him. Well, it appeared the stars would be appreciated whether the human cared to look up or not. He regarded them with a cold indifference ordinarily reserved for crushing ants beneath one’s feet. Their beauty did nothing to assuage him. He closed his eyes. This would be a good enough place to sleep, he reckoned.

---=---

He awoke with a start. He was still looking up at the stars above. Something was wrong, for he no longer felt soaked, and there was an uncomfortable warmth coming from his left. He sat straight up with a yelp as he realised he was actually inches away from a roaring campfire.

“Easy, stranger,” a voice called out. The human did a double take and shuffled away from the fire with a yelp. “I said easy!” the voice insisted. “It’s okay, I’m not gonna hurt you… Not that you’d be in any condition to stop me anyway.” The voice belonged to a strange creature that lay across from him on the far side of the fire. It was smaller than he was but not by too much. It looked like someone had performed mad science on a white-coated lion and gave it large wings and the head of an eagle. The griffon regarded him curiously with sharp, red eyes. Four large feathers swept back from its light, grey head and flopped behind, swaying gently in the wind. It crossed its forelegs over one another as it opened its beak to let out a yawn. It lifted one claw and pointed over to shoddily-made wooden rack. “Your coat’s over there if you’re wondering. You were soaking. You’d have caught a fever or something if I left you here. You’re welcome, by the way.”

The human looked down at himself. He was in quite a state. His jacket had been, indeed, taken from his very back. His shirt was in tatters and his jeans thoroughly ruined in mud and filth from traveling through the forest. He was, however, dry for the most part. “I uh… Aye… Aye thanks,” he managed, regarding the bizarre mishmash of animals before him quizzically.

“What are you?” the griffon asked rather bluntly.

“Lost,” the human replied, giving a rueful smile. It seemed that the dream theory was now thoroughly put to bed. He was in far too much pain and far too tired for this to be all dream logic. The griffon chuckled, its voice rough.

“Obviously, but what are you? Don’t think I’ve seen a creature like you before. Your paws look like something a gorilla might have, but they’re different.”

Oh goody, he decided to help himself to have a gander at my hands, did he? He grumbled to himself.

“Human,” he said at last. “And no, I’m not from around here.” He looked over at his rescuer. “You’re a… griffon, aren’t you?” the human asked. He listened to how the griffon spoke and decided to try to keep his colloquialisms to a minimum. If there was one thing his job nailed into him, it was completely removing any shred of personality from your voice so that you didn’t accidentally offend somebody by being the slightest bit incomprehensible. Or so the logic went.

“That I am,” the griffon responded. “The name’s Joachim by the way.” He lifted his left wing as the human raised his arm to introduce himself. He winced, and the human noticed.

“Something wrong?” he asked.

“It’s nothing really,” Joachim said as he rose up and walked to stretch his legs. As he turned, the human noticed his right wing was wrapped up in a splinter and bandage. He winced sympathetically. “Before you ask, no, I don’t want to talk about it. Let’s just say I ticked off the wrong person,” Joachim said as he noticed the human’s stare. “Anyway, it’ll be healed up soon enough.” He opened up a nearby pack bag and lifted out a small orange bottle. “Salamander salve,” he explained as he shook the bottle and replaced it back into his pack. “Not as good as genuine rest and hospital care, but put it on the damaged limb, and it’ll help knit bones. In time anyway, so long as you don’t foul up and start dancing on the hurt limb or anything. I gave you some for those nasty cuts you had all over your paws,” he said, pointing at the human, who began looking at his hands. He nodded, an impressed look on his face. “Anyway, I don’t believe I got your name?”

The human, distracted, didn’t immediately answer him. He was looking his hands over. The cuts were still there, but they were fading, and some of the nastier ones were closing up nicely. “Salamander salve,” he said softly to himself, clicking his teeth. “That’s handy.”

“Handy? That’s an odd name,” Joachim mused. The human snapped back to attention.

“Huh? What?”

“Your name. You said your name was Handy,” Joachim said, pointing at ‘Handy’. The human blinked incredulously.

“Yeah. Yeah, I guess I did. Hi, I’m Handy,” he said, smiling and offering his hand for a shake. Joachim looked down at it.

“Uhh, yeah… hi,” the griffon said as he reached out and clasped the hand in a shake. It was a strange sensation, shaking the claw of a bird of prey. It felt like you were shaking hands with a scythe. “Anyway,” Joachim said as he let go and walked back over to lie down again, “what brings you to Equestria?”

“What-ria?” Handy asked. Joachim gave him an amused look.

“Equestria? Land of the ponies? Ruled by two princesses who raise the sun and the moon? Kind of an important country? Ringing any bells?” Joachim asked. Handy burst out into uproarious laughter. “What’s so funny?”

“Raising the sun and moon?” Handy asked between laughs. “I’ve heard of backwards nations, but I don’t care how primitive a people are. No one believes their leaders literally raise the sun in the morning. It’s simply infeasible. Gravity doesn’t work like that!” Joachim’s expression changed to that of concern.

“You… think they don’t raise and lower the sun and moon?”

“Of course not!” he exclaimed. “Why would you?”

“Because that’s the way of the world. Before they came, the unicorns raised and lowered the sun and moon with their magic,” Joachim said, which just elicited more laughs from his company.

“Ahahaha! And next I suppose ye’ll be telling me they’re immortal and live thousands of years! Hahaha!”

“Well…. They do, and have already.” Handy was reduced to falling on his side in laughter. “It’s not funny. Raising the sun and moon is serious business.” Joachim was now thoroughly unamused by Handy’s hysterical laughter.

“Okay… Okay, I think I’m done, ow…” Handy said as he realised he was still hurt and aching. “I didn’t mean to laugh at you like that. It’s just, well, in human nations, it’s not unheard of for rulers to be associated with celestial bodies, but none of them really claimed to literally raise and lower them. Even when they were worshipped as gods.”

“Well I don’t think the ponies worship their rulers… Or maybe they do; it’s hard to tell with them sometimes. Look, the point of the matter is that this is the country we’re in, it’s ruled by these two princesses, and you still have yet to explain why you’re here.”

“I said I was lost.”

“Obviously! But you had to come from somewhere and for a reason.” Handy turned his gaze downwards sheepishly as he rubbed the back of his head.

“Uh well, the thing is, Joachim...” he gave a sheepish grin, “I uh… don’t remember how I got here. I just woke up in that forest back there." Joachim’s eyes opened wider.

“The Everfree Forest? No wonder you look like Tartarus.”

“That’s what it’s called? Never heard of it. Anyway, last thing I remember? I was coming home from work. It was the middle of winter, and it was storming. Next thing I know, I wake up in a forest, my hair has grown, and I am suffering God’s own hangover as punishment for my sins. I never had one so bad. Nearest I can figure? I went on an apocalyptic bender and got drunk beyond all drunkenness.” Handy shrugged in defeat. “The alternative is that I stepped through some kind of portal and ended up in a world so utterly alien to what I know that I might as well be in another universe.” It was Joachim’s turn to laugh. Handy glared at him, unimpressed. “Not funny, man, I am lost and have nowhere to go, and if you’re any indication, no one here has any idea what I am either. Hell, I am not entirely sure I haven’t just gone off the deep end entirely and am lost in a mist of insanity”

“No no, I’m sorry, Handy, it’s just, well, stranger things have happened,” Joachim responded, wiping a tear from his eye. “Look, how’s about this. I’m grounded for the foreseeable future, you need a guide, and we’re both far from home. Got anywhere to be?” he asked. Handy shrugged.

“Not particularly. My life wasn’t really going anywhere anyway.”

“Good, because I may need an extra wing— Err, paw in your case.”

“They are called hands,” Handy said, wiggling his fingers and smiling.

“Rrrright, hands.” Joachim clicked his beak as his brow furrowed, obviously not understanding Handy’s joke. Handy frowned. “Listen, I’m heading to a town near the ocean, and it’s on the west coast. Heard a story that miners nearby have found a glowing gem that supposedly grants wishes, but some diamond dogs have taken over the mine. They’re paying if anyone is willing to go down and evict the squatters.” Handy scoffed.

“A magical gem that grants wishes?” Handy asked.

“Look, I’m not saying I believe the story, okay? I just need the bits. I don’t know how things are done in your world, but drifting doesn’t exactly pay the bills.”

“Pretty much the exact reason why I am not a drifter.”

“So I see,” Joachim said, pointing at Handy’s gut. “Bit too used to the good life, I take it?”

“Get bent,” Handy said, scowling.

“Easy, I kid. I kind of need you anyway. Those hands of yours seem similar enough to the paws the dogs have. You could probably use their machinery better than I could.”

“And what do I get out of this deal?

“Action? Adventure? My eternal gratitude?” Handy had an unamused expression. “Okay, fine. I’ll split the bits with you. Hard flank.”

“Better.”

“Anyway, you should get some sleep. You look wrecked,” Joachim noted. Handy yawned in agreement before eyeing Joachim suspiciously.

“And how do I know you won’t claw me in my sleep?” Handy asked. It was Joachim’s turn to scoff and regard the human in derision.

“Well that’s just insulting. If I was going to do that, I would’ve while you were still passed out. ‘Sides, what would I do that for? You have nothing I’d want to take.”

“Call me cynical I guess. Look, I didn’t mean to offend, really. I’m grateful.” Joachim snorted.

“Mmhmm, we’ll see in the morning,” he said as he pulled his pack bag closer and lay on top of it. Handy regretted his words, for now his companion had doubts about whether he could trust him. He sighed and reached over to pull his ruined jacket from the rack and draped it over him. It was a humid night, but the jacket would be needed to stave off the worst of the wind chill.

He turned over and lay on his side. It took him another hour before he could drift off to sleep, Joachim long since reduced to relaxed snoring behind him as the fire continued to crackle contentedly between them. Idly, he fiddled with the cross about his neck. He really hoped this was all a dream. A part of him still would not accept this as reality, no matter how many bangs and bruises he got. That part hoped he would go to sleep and wake up in his bed or a hospital bed; honestly, anything other than the field he was now lying down in. He glanced up at the stars so far above him. He never much cared for stars back home. Most nights were too cloudy to properly appreciate them, and when it was clear, it was far too cold to stay out to look up at them. He was always preoccupied anyway, always something to do to prepare for another day at the grindstone which had come to encapsulate his life.

“Whatever.” He gave one last shrug, “I’ve had worse Mondays,” he said, smiling at his own blatant lie as he drifted off to sleep.

--=--

Meanwhile, far away, an entirely different pair of creatures was discussing matters of great import.

“Really? Nothing?” the shadowed figure asked.

“I did everything as you said. I told you there were too many variables,” the hooded figure replied, levitating a weather-beaten book before its cowl. A faint blue light shone from the stone ritual circle behind it.

“It obviously did something. The veil was crossed, and something came through,” the shadows insisted.

“Yes, but I do not know what. I could not see what it was. It felt larger than a pony though.”

“There are a lot of things bigger than a pony! For all we know, you pulled the weapon through, but it arrived somewhere else!”

“I don’t think I got the weapon,” the hooded pony said. “It was moving, and it felt… alive.”

“It doesn't matter; we've wasted too much time and resources here. We need to move on.”

“But—”

“The council has spoken. We’ll find another way to make them bend their knees before us. Now come.” The figure in the shadows left the room, and the hooded figure heard the wooden door shut as it left. It turned and regarded the ritual circle, its intricate carvings alive with magical essence. The figure stood there for some time before turning to leave.

“I’ll look into it later. I refuse to let this beat me,” the figure said before following its fellow into the shadows, leaving the pulsating stonework behind to fade into the darkness.

Chapter 12 - Its always Sunny in Canterlot

Chapter 12 - Its always Sunny in Canterlot

” Come single guy and gal unto me pay attention

Don't ever fall in love

It's the devil's own invention!

For once I fell in love with a maiden so bewitching

Miss Henrietta Bell down in Captain Kelly's kitchen~!”

To say that Handy had a lot of regrets in his life would be an understatement

“Me toora loora la, me toora loora laddie!

Me toora loora la and me toora loora laddie~!”

Teaching a royal feast hall full of griffons the lyrics to Captain Kelly’s Kitchen was certainly one of them.

“At the age of seventeen I apprenticed to a grocer

Not far from Stephen's Green

Where Miss Henri' used to go sir~!”

Although you can’t hold Handy for his mistake. Not really, you see he was quite drunk, regrettably so one might say.

“Her manners were sublime she set my heart a-twitchin'

When she invited me to a party in the kitchen~!”

You see, the following morning he was going to have to explain to his comrades in the royal knights that no, no this song was not about his personal history, merely a song from his homeland. He’d fail in that endeavour.

“Me toora loora la, me toora loora laddie

Me toora loora la and me toora loora laddie~!”

Right now however? It was a night for making regrets. It was the aftermath of Joachim’s coronation and it was either stay in the castle and get drunk, go into the city below… And get drunk. Escape to the countryside… And get drunk. Stay in his room… And get drunk, because there was no way in hell Sir Tanismore was going to let him get away with being a loner tonight as he dragged him to the hall. A coronation is kind of a big deal afterall and there is only so much of the day you can dedicate to pleasant formalities before someone busts out the kegs. Handy was quite nervous that day you see, for despite the occasional drink he had never once spent a night getting hammered since he had arrived in these lands. For obvious reasons you understand, last time he did so he fell through a hole in the world.

”Her arms around my waist she slyly hinted marriage

When to the door in haste came Captain Kelly's carriage!

Her eyes were full of hate and poison she was spittin'

The Captain kicked the door in and stormed into the kitchen~!”

Alas, here we are, with a very drunk Handy making one bad decision after another, singing on top of a table while wearing a very large, bright red and lime green hat he had been dared to wear. He wasn’t sure when he lost his shirt, but it ended up tied to a flag pole on the westernmost tower by the morning. The feast? Oh yeah, it was excellent, nothing unusual there, except for when Duchess Stormcrown let out a rather unladylike burp that carried across the hall.

It was midway through the third interminable speech that someone started the drinking games. It escalated rather aggressively from there, especially when Joachim casually mentioned how Handy arrived in Equestria in the first place and all of a sudden the birds wanted to put his constitution to the test. Now, Handy could have avoided all of this… but no, no of course he couldn’t, what am I saying? Of course despite weeks of being left in peace by the court at large, despite being avoided like the plague by the nobility and servants unless they absolutely had to approach him, now… Now was when everybody decided ‘Hey, lets go get the human a drink and see if we can make friends with him!’ What’s that? You think that’s actually a good thing? Branching out, getting to know the griffons he was spending so much time with? Hahahahahahaha no.

He’d never forgive Sir Geremy and Frederick for making a show of being amiable around him. How dare they be so friendly and giving other people ideas? Asses. He had given the standard explanation as the questions finally came about exactly who and what he was, he had given them the spiel he had given Charity Bell, or Thorax, so long ago. Unfortunately it only increased his mystique and invited more and more questions, Handy was going through a rather worrying amount of drink and losing track of his story. Not sure how to come up with coherent backstory to the questions he was being asked, Whats your family called? Which ocean is Milesia in? How do you grow your crops without control over the weather? I say, Handy old boy, are you married? He needed a distraction and wracked his brain for the first song that came to mind.

Hence, Captain Kelly’s kitchen.

“In spite of all her screechin'

I got six months hard

For my courtin' in the kitchen~!”

“Me toora loora la, me toora loora laddie

Me toora loora la and me toora loora laddie~!”

He was going to feel it all in the morning, his little dalliance with the devil’s drink invited more people challenging him to drinking matches, he managed to get out of most of those but got involved in the various shenanigans one can imagine drunken avians get up to in a celebration. What, never partied with flying lions before? You need to get out more. So after an embarrassing stay on the dance floor and a downed drinks count somewhere above the twenties, Handy’s recollection of events became a little hazy.

Waking up the following morning, he found his brain was trying to break its way out of his skull with a God-damn crowbar. He was rolled under a table, a lampshade on his head and several griffons piled up on the table above him and the chairs beside and he had been found leaning against the side of some noblegriffon or another, he had crushed its wing beneath him, he elected to get out of there before it woke up and gave him shit for ruining its plumage or what have you.

He stumbled through the hall, thankful he didn’t end up in the back arse of beyond. Well, not this time at least. The sun shone through the high windows and blinded him, making his headache that much worse. Fuck you too, Celestia. He decided he needed water and picking his way through the oh so august carpet of bodies and found his way to a fountain in the quadrangle. Splashing the cool water over his face, he felt marginally better. He blinked repeatedly, bleary eyed. Several heroic guards were already on their feet, their expressions thunderous, he figured they felt about as well as he did and he could only salute their diligence.

He stumbled kitchens-ward, figuring he could do with something to eat. It was then, passing the stairs leading to Geoffrey’s old room that the old bastard’s words came back to him. ‘Voices in the mirror.’ His thoughts recollected, he stopped in his travel and took a step back, looking over the rise of the steps and down the hall, boring a hole in the door with his glare. ’What if…’ He changed his course and made his way to the empty room. It had only been entered into once since Geoffrey had died, they had discovered a secret room behind his closet, one that had nothing pleasant to find in it, but the chamber of horrors wasn’t what Handy had in mind when he turned the handle of the door.

He entered the room, it was about as opulent as one could expect, immaculately kept too. He made his way over to the full body mirror in the corner and studied it for some time. Unfortunately he found nothing of note about it, it seemed to just be an ordinary mirror, if it was magical, it wasn’t obviously so, looks like Geoffrey was just a mad-bird afterall. He tried not thinking about the lingering smell of coagulated blood in the room, the servants had yet to fully clean the place, hell most of Geoffrey’s effects were still here. Idly he decided to poke about.

Jewels? Check, probably should leave those alone. Private Journal? Check, he considered cracking it open and having a gander, but figured he better leave that to Joachim and who he picks as his master of murmurs. Geoffrey had elected to not have a chief spy during his stint as regent, refusing to give anyone the power to spy on other’s affairs, with exception for himself you understand. There were numerous notes on various nobles in court and beyond lying in the drawers, as well as servants, guards, knights… It was extensive. Handy understood with Geoffrey gone the threat went with him, but this was a powerful tool to have and he elected to inform Joachim as soon as possible before someone else stumbles across all of this.

Curious, he flicked through to see the notes about Shortbeak, trying to understand what the prince had over her. She seemed largely clean, honourable, diligent, blah blah insert noble qualities here. Name it, she probably had it, he had scribbled some less than flattering things about her in frustration as he tried getting any dirt on the knight. There was a hurried note at the bottom of her page, stating he had finally found what he was looking for. He flipped the page over and then back to the front, there were no further notes stating exactly what it was he had found on her. He tsked and put the page back in the bundle and took the diary along with it. He’d find King Johan and inform him of his discovery, might as well get a nice bonus now that he was actually being paid for his services, his month’s indentured servitude now at an end.

It was then he caught his side on an exposed drawer that had been jutting out. He winced in surprise at the sudden pain. Looking down he opened the drawer. It was empty but something looked off. His brow furrowed, knocking the inside of the drawer with his knuckles, he heard a hollow noise. Now it had his full interest. He pulled out the drawer, forcing it to disconnect from the writing desk and put it on the counter. He discovered there was a loose board hiding the true bottom of the drawer and he lifted it off, revealing a thin, worn tome with a red and gold cover. It had a spiral design on the front, opening it he was disappointed to discover that the words held within were utter gibberish to him. Not even in English, he didn’t recognise the characters the text was written with. However Geoffrey had went to lengths to hide it, so he figured it was worth taking along.

He had been deciding what to tell Joachim about it when his eye caught on a page as he flicked the pages one after another. It was the image of a minotaur shaman, or he thought it was a shaman, the illustration had the creature’s eyes wreathed in green flame as mist fell from its opened mouth, the image of a looming giant of lightning and smoke in the background, one with thunderous eyes and a tornado for a lower body. That… Was relevant to his interests, the image was all too familiar to him. He put the bundle of notes and diary under one arm, wrapping the mysterious book he had found in a sheet from Geoffrey’s bed, he’d be holding on to it if that was alright with the universe thank you very much.

He made his way to Joachim’s room, there was only one guard there, asleep at his post, Handy paid him no mind as he raised his fist to knock on the door. Which opened, a grand looking female griffon in the doorway who looked up at the human, almost as startled to see him as he was her. She was young and looked ragged as if she had flown through a storm. She excused herself rather quickly as she rushed off down the corridor passed Handy, he looked down the way she had fled and then back into the room to see a rather panicking Joachim running to and fro muttering under his breath.

“Oh claw, oh claw, oh claw…”

“Aheh… My lord?” Handy said, a confused look on his face as he entered the room. Joachim froze and turned slowly on the spot.

“Ah… Handy… Didn’t think you’d be up…”

“Who was that?” He asked, closing the door.

“… Cecilia…” Joachim said. Handy felt that the name rang a bell but he didn’t know which one.

“What was she doing here this early?” Handy asked, his brain not entirely caught up with the situation, cathedral bells ringing, Joachim tapped the tips of his claws together eyes darting side to side.

“Just dropped in for a… chat. Politics. You know how it is.” Joachim said, smiling. Handy shook his head, something nagging at the back of his mind about the situation, honestly it could wait, he was tired and irritable, the headache still kicking his ass.

“Whatever, look, I’ve got something for you. Think of it as a coronation present.” Handy said.

“What is it?” Joachim said, almost relieved over something, honestly, what was his deal? Handy scratched his chest absent mindedly, only vaguely aware he was still wearing his pendant and that was bad, but he couldn’t recall why just yet. It was too early to think hard about things.

“Found these in Geoffrey’s room.” He said, placing the sheets of paper and diary down on the writing desk. “Haven’t opened the diary yet, but had a rifle through the loose pages there, looks like notes on every major noble in the kingdom and some beyond as well as every servant, guard and courtier in the castle. Its rather extensive, thought you could make use of it.”

Joachim looked over the sheets for a moment, eyeing the diary. “So these are all the secrets he had been hoarding to hold power over the nobility?” Handy nodded.

“Yeah I figure that’s the case. You could probably make use of it to keep the peace in the kingdom, you’re no Geoffrey, and this is probably distasteful, but its too good a tool to lose.” Handy said, Joachim tapped his claw on the writing desk for a moment, thinking, he flicked through the pages and read a certain one, Handy couldn’t see who’s page it was from his angle.

“Yes… I believe you’re right, thanks Handy.” Joachim said. Handy nodded, taking a seat and rubbing his forehead, letting out a guttural breath.

“Yeah, welcome I guess. Seriously, you should have had Geoffrey’s room thoroughly searched, especially after we found his little ‘party favour’ in there. What would you do if someone else had found these?” Handy asked, eyes closed. He smelt smoke and felt a bit of warmth, looks like Joachim had lit the fireplace. It was a bit chilly this morning he supposed, they sat there in silence for a while as Handy’s head decided to tell him how much of a dick it thought he was.

“Mmmm.” Joachim said, reading through each page, he looked at Handy. With the exception of a few pages, he threw most of them into the fire.

“Anyway, about this tri-What? What are you doing!?” Handy asked, sitting up, seeing pages burning in the fire place.

“I am not my brother.” Joachim said by way of justification, Handy looked at him incredulously. “Look, I do not deny the value of this information, I had a read through them, and I appreciate your work, but I refuse to be given an axe to hold over everygriffon’s heads like this.”

“But… it was… Kings would kill for a body of information like that!”

“And how many do you think Geoffrey killed to get a hold of this?” Joachim pressed. “Look, I know it’s probably unwise, probably. But it’s right. There was some incredibly personal information in there. I’ll do my own research, not relying on my brother’s underhandedness to maintain stability of the kingdom, I refuse to use his legacy, do you understand that?”

“I understand perfectly, but be reasonable Johan!” Handy retorted, using Joachim’s birth name. “I know I don’t particularly approve of the state spying on its citizens, but considering the information was already to hand…” Joachim put a claw up.

“I get what you’re saying, I really do, believe me. But if I don’t start off my reign on principle, what’s stopping me from turning into another Geoffrey?”

“Sanity!” Handy said exasperated at his friend’s thick headedness.

“Its not as if I am endangering the kingdom, the pages I have here.” Joachim indicated the pages he had not burned. “Are the only ones detailing actual threats to the kingdom, the rest? Most of that is just dirty secrets. I am not going to coerce my vassal to dance in a fool’s outfit just because I have evidence of a particularly embarrassing Minotaur fetish.”

“A vassal has a minotaur fetish?”

“Amongst other things.” Joachim groaned. “And no, I am not saying which one, the knights gossip ends up becoming city wide news most days.”

“Was it Duchess Emerald? I bet its Duchess Emerald.”

“Handy!”

“Kidding, kidding, right, whatever, you’re king. I just hope you know what you’re doing.”

“Thank you.” Joachim said at last, placing the papers he hadn’t burned in a drawer. “Handy…” He said.

“Yeah?”

“You know, you don’t have to come to Equestria with me. You can stay here, I can deal with Aleksander giving me Tartarus for it.” Joachim said, uncorking a bottle and taking a drink. “You’ve done enough for me, I can do that much for you.” He said, Handy seriously considered the offer, he’d really rather not end up in the middle of the lion’s den after all that trouble he had leaving Equestria. True, from what he heard the situation had been sorted, the Celestial sisters had agreed to pay for damages to the Equestrian Express and made up some excuse of mistaken identity for the attack on the human.

Which only raised more questions than it answered honestly, at least as far as Handy knew, why the sudden pardon of the Human? They could have easily pressed the issue, sure it’d result in protracted negotiations that’d likely result in heightened tensions, but eventually Handy felt the High King would twist Joachim’s arm into giving him up. What changed? It didn’t make sense from his perspective. An ugly thought crept into his head. What if that was what this was about? What if this was the final backroom negotiation with the human as the griffon’s chip? All Aleksander would have to do was keep Joachim in the dark and in the middle of Canterlot where he couldn’t back out of surrendering his friend before it was too late. He liked to think Joachim would put up more of a fight than that, but Handy was a politically minded animal himself, he had to at least consider the possibility.

And here was his king giving him a get out of jail card so he could avoid the danger altogether probably coming to the same possibility himself. He almost jumped upon the opportunity immediately, but then he considered it for a minute. First of all, he was Joachim’s closest knight, something that caused a little consternation with his peers, but it’s not his fault he got stuck with Joachim ever since the Everfree. If he stayed behind he’d end up with whispers of cowardice. The human? The Storm Breaker, the Nightbane, afraid of a pair of pretty pink pony princesses? Yeah no thanks, it was his pride talking more than his practicality, granted, but he’d didn’t respond well to humiliation.

He tapped his fingers thoughtfully on the arm rest. If his reputation here was like this, he can only imagine what a stir his appearance in Canterlot, the heart of the pony kingdom, would cause. Oh he was probably forgotten about there by now, but he smiled at the idea of scaring the piss out of the ponies. Sides, he’d like to see the looks of the pony guards, standing mere feet from him and unable to touch him to avenge their own humiliation at his hands. Assuming of course he wasn’t being handed over.

He sighed, it was stupid. Probably terminally stupid, but the prospect appealed to him, and he needed to get out Skymount before he killed his alchemists for their latest madness. He had to pay to rebuild the same wing of the guild twice since he bought it. Once because it burned down in alchemical fire, another because a potion had turned a griffon into the hulk. For all of five seconds you understand, but still.

Ah well, nothing ventured and all that. He declined Joachim’s offer and got up, excusing himself. As he elected to go to the kitchens to fix himself some breakfast. He reached the door when something clicked. “Cecilia…” He said. Joachim looked up, wide eyed. “Wasn’t that the name of Stormcrown’s dau-”

“OH LOOK AT THAT, TIME FOR MY SHOWER, OUT!” Handy found himself being pushed out the door as it slammed behind him. He chuckled at the sudden realization. The guard stammered as he woke up.

“Huh, wha?” He said intelligently. Handy ignored him as he walked away.

Looks like he wasn’t the only one with regrets this morning.

--=--

He had his armour repaired and polished. His pet blacksmith, Hammerfeather, was a wonder worker. True, the patches of his armour that were repaired no longer resonated with the sun or moonlight, leaving a noticeable absence of sparkling faggotry across the repaired parts of his armour and mail, but you know what? At least when out of light it now looked like how his armour should, he could live with that. True, the parts of his armour that Shortbeak had broken through did have a slight discolouration from the rest of his silvered steel, but it was passable, at least it was not the horrid slapdash job he had before. He had the nose guard fixed to his helmet again and the enchanted cloth had been re-sown as per his instructions, rather than replaced. From the outside it was still black as sin and nobody could see his face through the T slit, from the inside however, Handy could see everything normally, with the exception of few unenchanted threads going diagonally across his vision. Which is exactly as annoying as it sounds.

He had appointed a young, nerdy looking griffon as a manager to look after the management of his properties while he was away, Klipwing was it? Yeah that sounded right, some low level court functionary from some backwater family who needed something to do around court. He had made some not so subtle threats that he had better not come home to find the griffon had been embezzling or other such shenanigans, Klipwing assured him his integrity was impeccable. Handy had smiled. Klipwing had shivered.

He had several concerns about the journey, particular about his new… tastes, Equestria being strictly vegetarian made it particularly inconvenient. He’d rather not spark an international incident because he happened to be peckish so he did a little scrounging utilising his new resources. It had been easy to use his contacts at the brewery to score some enchanted containers from the local hospitals, friends with access to a few ‘missing’ crates of ale were good to have after all. The containers were capable of keeping blood uncoagulated and fresh so long as they are kept closed. The blood in question came from a local butcher’s. Several butchers in fact, he had bought quite a bit of meat, citing ‘reasons’, as cover for what he really wanted. He had paid for the blood, ordinarily this wouldn’t be a problem, but considering his reputation he had to make sure the butcher’s didn’t start telling any tales and had intimidated them into silence as well as greasing a few claws.

With that little problem curtailed, he took his formal wear in his pack, just in case he didn’t end up in a huge fight in Canterlot. It paid to be prepared to not have to fight everyone you meet, you know, just in case. Handy smiled wryly at that, who was he kidding? If he made it back without a broken limb he’d call it a sign of the end times. King Johan only took several of his knights with him when they finally set out to rendezvous with the High King, Handy had thought they’d be taking the train.

Nope.

Chariot.

Handy had questioned the practicality of this method of travel, mounting the vehicle and standing behind Joachim, leaning casually against the high back of the chariot. He chucked when he saw several guard griffons hooked up to the harnesses in front of the chariot, what were they going to do? Pull them all the way to Equestria? There was a sudden jolt as the griffons took off at a run, wings outstretched and took to the air. He clung for dear life while Joachim merely chuckled at the Human’s inexperience with unshielded flight. Ever fly in a plane? Remember that sudden jolt as the Plane finally takes off from the ground and the sensation of weightlessness that causes your stomach to rise? Imagine that. All the time. You’ve now got a rough idea of what flying in a chariot is like. Also windchill, lots and lots of windchill. Tanismore, Frederick, Godfrey and Geremy flew alongside them, flanking the chariot as it travelled through the air. He had biting remarks to throw at them in response to their jibes about his unease flying in such a manner but he bit them down. It was not that he feared flying, but you try to travel at well over eighty miles an hour in the sky, with nothing between you and open air other than an elegant and flimsy looking, gilded guard rail.

The journey took a few hours before they landed in the town of Shorn. There were a large number of armoured griffons in the air, armour glinting in the sun and a commotion in the town below, looks like the High King had arrived before them. They had landed easily enough, but not as much as Handy would have liked and Joachim walked into town to meet his liege lord. Aleksander was an… impressive specimen. Double the size of even the biggest griffon he had seen, Aleksander easily had a few inches on Handy while sitting down. He had golden feathers and a rich black fur coat and a red beak and claws. His calm, green eyes alighted upon the younger king and he smiled.

“Ah, young Blackwing! It’s good to finally meet you griffon to griffon!” He said, his smile was soft and his eyes were sad. “Our condolences on the loss of your most illustrious father, we can only apologise we were not able to attend his funeral.” The High King had said. Joachim bowed low, Handy and the knights followed suit.

“It is an honour, your majesty.” Joachim had replied. The king did not look at Handy or the other knights throughout the following conversation, if he had an opinion on Geoffrey or the circumstances surrounding Joachim’s sudden reversal of his kingdom’s fortunes, he was tactful enough to not breathe a word of it. Handy decided he liked the bird. It was in the proceeding day that Handy learned Joachim was not the only illustrious personage the High King had summoned to his side, two more chariots had alighted upon the town of Shorn, the kings of Firthingart and the Hebridean Isles had arrived. King Goldtooth of Firthingart was an elderly looking brown griffon, blind in one eye, Thunderstorm of the Hebridean Isles was a cocky looking bastard with a quick wit. Handy didn’t think a griffon with wings as small as his could be so confident in such impressive company, but he held his own and earned a begrudging respect from the human, his sly jokes about him being ‘Johan’s Shadow’ aside of course.

It was in the ensuing overnight stay that Handy had learned the purpose of the visit was just a casual reaffirmation of treaties between the two kingdoms, the three petty kingdoms represented with him on this visit had various reasons to be there. Gethrenia, being the first stop from Equestria and the last before the train left griffon territory was strategically placed and deserved representation. The Hebridean Isles did a lot of trading with the eastern Pony cities of Manehatten and Bridle Bay and Firthingart often competed heavily with the south western desert kingdom of Concordia when it came to breaking into the equestrian steel market. The other two kings seemed to audibly groan at Aleksander’s confirmation of the cause of their visit, he had asked Joachim about it, but he shrugged, he vaguely remembered Gerhart going to a similar meeting years before and muttering something about it being almost as bad as ‘The Summit’ when he arrived home, whatever that was.

Handy did not understand why this all could not be achieved with diplomats instead of bringing the head of the entire Griffon kingdom and three powerful vassals to the table, but of course, he held his peace. The night passed without incident aside from a near confrontation between Tanismore and a knight from Firthingart, a knight belonging to the high king put paid to that before it got out of control. Geremy had groaned something about wishing Shortbeak was with them, she was usually good at keeping Tanismore in his place. It was going to be a few days travel to Canterlot by air and Handy did not care for being in the sky that long, but what could you do? Walk? He popped one of his containers and downed its contents, might as well slake his thirst for the next week. He grimaced. Things about being a vampire: Blood tastes very, very different. Animal blood, at least from slaughtered animals, tasted dull and lifeless and dark, not appetizing honestly. Griffon blood on the other hand…

He shook his head.

--=--

It was another glorious day in Canterlot. Didn’t stop her groaning internally at the prospect of the day ahead.

“-I searched everywhere, but I couldn’t find any reference to anything like him in the annals of Equestrian history, outside of some old mare’s tale up north, but that only mentioned the creature by name, nothing about what his kind is or even looks like-”

She smiled lightly. Her former student on her left hoof side, recounting off everything she had learned to try to fulfil the quest she had put her on over a month ago. For the thirty-seventh time. They had learned much about the human since that day, or well they think they did, once they sorted the hay from the chaff, it didn’t help his actions only confused matters.

“-It shouldn’t even be possible for a primate to move its arms like that, so of course, I was quite fascinated, so I had consulted the local primatologists here in Canterlot-”

Particularly its actions in the badlands town of Pawstown where he was practically a local hero, but one that was not on the side of the law after he had coerced the release of several captive changelings. Now that just confounded her further, Chrysalis’ letter made it seem as if he was more a problem of hers rather than an agent, but there he went, helping out changelings which would seem to contradict those sentiments. It was probably the bitter queen attempts at playing head games… Or the human was merely using her, if the reports of larger movements of changelings in the Badlands were true, then that meant whatever the human had done down there had drawn them to a central location.

Now… the rumours she heard emerging from the Griffon kingdom about the human worried her all the more. The prince that the human had been traveling with had usurped the throne and his king and brother died not long after. That was entirely too coincidental for her tastes, perhaps she was too ready to conjure those horseapples about mistaken identity to save face, not a week out of her reach and the human helped overturn a kingdom! The possibility that this creature this… Human is acting merely in Chrysalis’ interests was now losing credibility. Which only raised more concerns… Who was he really working for, and why? She would be sure to enquire about the matter of Gethrenia with Aleksander when he arrived. Subtly, of course, it was a kingdom on their border, its only natural they be concerned. Once they got over the usual, ahem, pleasantries that came with negotiations with the griffons that were nothing of the sort.

“-That led to another line of study of course, I am still waiting on the doctor to get back to me with the results but if I am right, I feel-”

“Most diligent of thee, Magic.” Luna interjected, her smile beatific, but Celestia knew she was as tired as she was with listening to Twilight’s ramblings. “Thy dedication to your studies does you esteem, but I ask thee to come back to the matter at hoof. It is important you experience diplomatic affairs personally, as is befitting your position.” Luna added. Twilight blinked several times, as if surprised.

“Oh!” She said at last. “Right, focus.” She said turning to face the grand hall before them. The three sat upon the raised dais in the central hall, usually reserved for private functions. The walls’ elegant marble walls and pillars resplendent in the light pouring from the high ceilinged plain glass windows. There were distant trumpet calls, announcing the arrival of their expected guests at the gates to the castle. Celestia breathed in, this was going to be a long week. The guards stood to attention as banners were held high and proud. She could sense the nervousness of the young princess beside her and leaned over to nuzzle her, encouraging her.

“You’ll do wonderful, just don’t appear surprised.” Celestia warned. Twilight was confused.

“Surprised? I’ve seen griffons before.” Twilight responded. Celestia resisted the urge to roll her eyes, previous meetings with Aleksander had proven… Eventful. She swears, you can’t prank someone’s ancestor without their descendants never letting you live it down anymore. She wonder, briefly what his little gimmick will be this time. It took them a month to find the baby Tatzlworm he had ‘gifted’ Celestia with at the last meeting by hiding it away on her chariot back home, by then it had gotten into the cellar and the seven hundred year old wines were ruined, she had sulked for the remainder of the year, that century had excellent vintages too.

Which was why she had brought Twilight with her this time. Oh yes, it was important that the newly minted princess is exposed to all the rigours of royal duties one bit at a time, but she fully intended to sic her ever curious student on good king Aleksander after she drops some bombshells about the more interesting aspects of Griffon culture she knew for a fact Twilight hadn’t studied yet. She smiled lightly at the thought, hearing the distinctive clatter and flutter of wings as the griffon party advanced through the castle to the reception hall. Oh yes, little Aleksy, you aren’t so big yet she can’t pull one over on you. Nothing you could do-

The doors opened to fanfare, banner baring griffons advanced before the royal party. High King Aleksander strolled regally down the hall, head held high, his three vassals and their entourages advanced behind him. Celestia slowly raised her eyebrows, Luna’s eyes widened, Twilight’s head tilted. ’Dang it Aleksy!’ She thought. ’Really!? You bring it along with you? Really!?’

If Aleksander was aware of the momentary lapse in decorum, he did not show it. He approached the base of the dais and performed a flourishing bow. “Princesses Celestia, Luna, always a pleasure to meet with you both once more!” He had stated, giving a polite nod of the head to Twilight. “And of course, Princess Twilight, I do not believe I have had the pleasure, but I have heard such good things about you!”

The princesses did not respond immediately. The guards in the room, sensing their princesses’ discomfort, stood stock still. The griffons noticed and Handy saw more than a few wings twitching. He kept his hand close to his warhammer. He moved his head ever so slightly to look at Joachim, who was unmoving, he briefly considered if he made the wrong decision. Sure, it was worth it to see the ponies of Canterlot stare at him in superstitious fear, and the expression on a familiar white Pegasus guard’s face as the party passed under the portcullis was utterly priceless. Now, standing here, in front of the princesses, he wasn’t so sure. He was surprised to see them, three of them actually, he thought Equestria was a Diarchy? Perhaps the purple one was a daughter of one of them. He had been told they were Alicorns but he had no idea what that meant until he saw them. Horns and wings? That’s just greedy, what are you? Changelings?

Also they were staring rather pointedly at him, as if surprised to see him there. Which just made him worry, he had considered two possibilities when he learned the High King asked for his presence alongside King Johan: He was going to be turned over to their custody for whatever nefarious purposes in a cynical political pacification ploy, or he was there as a showpiece, ‘look at me, I got a pet bogeyman!’. In neither scenario did he imagine the princesses would not be told he was coming. Perhaps it was a deliberate insult? He was the cause of the earlier diplomatic kerfuffle between the two kingdoms afterall, and the king had managed to get the princesses to recant their position and probably just took Handy along to wave him in front of their faces.

“Ahem.” Aleksander breathed. The princesses seemed to snap out of their reverie and looked back at him, surprised.

“Yes! So very good to see you, Aleksander.” Celestia recovered quickly, her calm demeanour and smile returning. “How was your trip?”

“Pleasant as always, Equestria is always so beautiful this time of year.”

“You flatter us.” Celestia said.

“We had the pegasi ensure the weather was amiable on thy projected flight.” Luna added, smiling. Twilight tried to remain focused on the back and forth between the two parties, but her eyes kept darting back at the human, she tapped her hoof lightly in impatience. This did not escape Handy’s attention.

’Take a picture, it’ll last longer.’ Handy snarked internally, thankful his face was hidden beneath his helm, allowing him to look at who he pleased without fear of being noticed. He noted, although it was hard to judge from where he stood, the princesses were substantially larger than most ponies. Well the white one and the blue one at any rate. The purple one was actually average sized for a pony, perhaps just a big bigger. If he had to guess, the White one was only slightly larger than Chrysalis had been, horn was just as long though, the blue one was noticeably smaller but still bigger than most. Chrysalis, Aleksander, the Princesses, he supposed it was safe to assume on this world if it was bigger than all its fellows, it probably called the shots.

He had barely paid attention to the polite nonsense being traded back and forth between the king and the two main princesses, but the tension in the room at least seemed to have died down just a tad because of it. It was not to last however. Aleksander began introducing his three vassal kings after stating the purpose of his visit was to discuss the particulars of trading agreements between the two kingdoms, with the three representative kingdoms being key in that regard. The three kings advanced to stand beside Aleksander as they traded pleasantries with the princesses. Handy was all too happy to stand back with the knights and let it take its course.

It went swimmingly until the princesses addressed Joachim himself. The tone was stiffer and more formal.

“Greetings, King Johan Blackwing.” Celestia had intoned, her smile still present but her eyes were… harder. Her sister, Luna had a more disapproving look gracing her features, the purple one seemed to pick up on the strange tension and watched curiously, finally tearing her gaze away from the human. “Our condolences on your recent loss” She added. Joachim had bowed slightly.

“My thanks, Princess Celestia, King Gerhart is at peace, his suffering now at an end.” He had said.

“Indeed.” Celestia said softly. Her eye, the one not covered in mystical flowing hair, looked up briefly at the human. Handy did not like what he saw in that glance. She looked back down at Johan. “We look forward to discussing affairs with you, although it is now ancient history I would still like to apologise to you in person for past misunderstandings.”

“It is not really necessary, your highness, but I will not deny you.” Johan had said in response.

“Excuse me.” A voice piped up, Joachim looked up at Twilight, surprised, Celestia eyed her former student with a raised eyebrow. “But is that the human we have heard so much about?” She asked, pointing directly at Handy with a hoof. All eyes were on him, he visibly stiffened.

’Oh shit.’

Joachim blinked and then turned to Twilight. “I… Yes, that is Sir Handy of Milesia, Baron Haywatch.” He answered.

“Oh, would it be at all possible if we could speak with him?” Twilight asks, a hopeful smile on her muzzle. Luna’s mouth fell open in surprise, the smile on Celestia’s face widened as her eye twinkled in mischief. If Handy didn’t like the previous look in her eye, he didn’t like this any better.

’Really? Just like that? Middle of a really important meeting and you just blurt out something like that? What, were you raised in a field? Why don’t you just burst in on a wedding rehearsal and scream bloody murder while you’re at it?’ Handy thought, disbelievingly.

“I uh… I don’t think that’d quite be appropriate… I mean…” Joachim stammered, blindsided by the request.

’Oh no, don’t you sell me out Joachim.’ Handy glared at his king, the bird had looked back at Handy, he could practically see the gears turning in his head. ’Come on man, you owe me.’

“I don’t think-” Joachim continued.

’Good lad.’

“Of course!” Boomed the voice of Aleksander.

’Oh come on! I thought you were cool!’ Handy whined internally. Looking between the king, Joachim, Twilight and the princesses.

“But my lord!” Joachim tried to protest but flagged under the warm look Aleksader gave him, the big bird was smiling gently as if this were all perfectly reasonable. Joachim, tapped the floor with a claw as he turned back to Handy. “Sir Handy, would you care to indulge her highness?” He asked. Handy reeled.

’Bollocksbollocksbollocksbollocks.’ ”It… Would be an honour, my lord.” The eyes of the entire hall were upon him that moment, he had been prepared for a lot of things, including massive violence and shouts of ‘Seize him!’ What did he get? A pretty pink princess asking pretty please and the entire hall turned against him. ’Bollocksbollocksbollocks-’

“But there’ll be plenty of time for that later.” Aleksander continued, “I imagine you’ll have plenty of time to pursue your questions before Joachim here needs to return home to Skymount. Now, if that will be all your highnesses, it has been a rather long journey.” Aleksander said. Celestia nodded in understanding.

“Of course, the guest wing has been prepared accordingly, I imagine you all would very much like the time to get settled in before dinner.” She added.

“Perceptive as always, my dear.” Aleksander said. And just like that, the meeting was over and the crowd departed the hall. Joachim smiled sheepishly at Handy, who was busy glaring at Aleksander.

“Sorry.” Joachim had said as the two gathered with the knights and guard griffons of Skymount. Tanismore snickered.

“Looks like somegriffon’s caught a princess’ eye.” He jibed as they exited the hall. Handy glared down at him as they walked on.

“Laugh it up, short stuff.” Handy warned, remembering to keep his noble airs about when outside of private conversation with Joachim. “Just remember when we get back thou art mine sparring partner and I got a lot of stress to work out.”

“Ohhhh, scary.” Tanismore chuckled.

“And what was with the stammer back there?” Handed rounded on Joachim as they marched on, making sure to not speak so loudly that the passing gilded, pony guards could overhear them. Nevermind the other griffon representatives.

“I didn’t expect her to just ask that.” Joachim protested.

“Even so, thou could’ve at least found a quick, polite way to say no! You’re really straining this friendship.”

“Hey! Look, I tried to let you avoid all this, you insisted on coming! I couldn’t just override what the High King said!”

“Yeah, well, still!”

--=--

The doors closed slowly and Celestia’s horn lit up the very moment they shut to cast a spell to prevent sound from escaping. She knew what was going to come.

“THE NERVE!” Luna shouted in the royal Canterlot voice, “SHOWING UP WITH THAT, THAT THING!” She snorted. Twilight clapped her hooves excitedly.

“I know!? Isn’t it exciting!? We’ll finally get to learn more about the human, straight from the source! Oh, oh, I wonder what kind of magic he has!”

“MAGIC, THIS IS NOT THE TIME FOR FRIVILOUS PURSUITS OF KNOWLEDGE! THERE IS A CRIMINAL STAYING IN THIS VERY CASTLE, NEIGH, AN ENEMY OF THE CROWN! IN THE HOOF OF THE CHANGELINGS!”

“The pursuit of knowledge is never frivolous!” Twilight huffed. “Think of all we could learn!”

“HE ATTACKED ROYAL GUARDS! HE BIT A PONY!”

“Yeah well… Ok that is kind of bad…” Twilight admitted. “But it’d be even worse if we just chase him off without learning anything!”

Celestia let the two bicker for some time, thinking to herself. The human did not seem entirely too pleased at the idea of being asked questions personally by a princess, clearly he had not expected the possibility. This was an advantage she could not afford to waste. Her eyes narrowed, one way or another, she was going to ensure the safety of her ponies.

--=--

’You have got to be fucking kidding me.’

Handy was experiencing high level political diplomacy first hand. Or well, what passed for it anyway. You see, dinner was less a time of pleasant conversation punctuated by the consumption of succulent delicacies, and more an organized food fight. Oh it had all started off well enough, himself and the other knights had ate rations while they organized rotas for guarding their charges and their rooms at the west wing barracks which had been emptied for quite some time since they arrived. So when they arrived in the dining hall for dinner, they were treated to the usual fair, servants coming out to serve drinks and plates.

It all went well until Luna mentioned something about three kilofeathers of steel arriving late in Stalliongrad, King Goldtooth objected, stating the deliveries had been sent on time, but their couriers had been told they had been outbidded by merchants from Concordia when there was to be no such bid, considering the contract had been signed to be fulfilled in three years’ time subject to change only on breach. Celestia correct him citing Equestrian law, the king of the Hebrides muttered something about several shiploads of cloth going ‘missing’ on the route to Manehatten and made unflattering comments about Equestria’s naval security.

It… escalated from there. Now no one had actually raised claw nor hoof against each other just yet. But not for lack of trying, mind. More than once Handy found himself having to raise his shield against errant pieces of cake and salad. Not because he was trying to protect Joachim you understand, no that bird could fend for himself for all he cared, he was trying to keep his armour and cloak clean, the rest of the guards mostly feeling idle and helpless stood as they were against the walls watching the chaos that was dinner unfold before them. Their pony counterparts seemed to be having a similar experience.

It had went on like that for hours, what was to be a mere five course meal consumed in the course of two hours, three if conversation was particularly vigorous, ended up to be a veritable jubilee of shenanigans and endless bickering.

“THINE MERCHANDISE IS LACKING!”

“LIKE THE LIMESTONE FROM HAUNCHVALE?”

“THAT WAS THAT ONE TIME AND THOU KNOWETH IT!”

It was actually getting pretty heated as words turned angry and there were daggers layered beneath tongues as rather regrettable sentences spilled forth. Handy feared the King of the Hebrides was threatening a raid on Manehatten given the way the conversation was turning, and the tone in Celestia’s voice had turned distinctly unfriendly. However, salvation came in the form of glorious ice cream. No, really. The servants came in with several carts loaded down with the stuff and hurriedly placed bowls in front of the royal guests. The guards too, Handy was bewildered when the haggard looking maid handed… Hoofed him a bowl of ice cream. He stood there awkwardly, looking down at his bowl in confusion, then back up at the gathered dignitaries who had quietened down immediately and ate away at the frozen milk. No, more than that… They looked happy… Contented even.

He’d later learn that the stubbornness of negotiations betwixt the Kingdoms of Griffons and Equestria was the stuff of fucking legend. Pretty much all interactions on a diplomatic level happened between heads of state out of necessity, both kingdoms, almost as if it were tradition, systematically shouted down and refused the petitions of diplomats and representatives. This was either the fault of the pretention of the celestial sisters or the arrogance of the griffons, depending on who was telling the story of course. After the first dozen threats of war over fucking bolts of cloth, the kitchen staffs of both kingdoms, through arcane wisdom known only to scullery maids, discovered that the one surefire way to defuse a tense situation was ice cream. Lots of it. Handy… Had no God-damn words. None, he… He just couldn’t… How do you even deal!?

He was tapped on the shoulder. It was Frederick, looks like his shift was up, Handy thanked God, as it looked like their royal highnesses had finished their ice cream and were starting to talk quietly again. He’d rather not be here when the conversation got lively, good God, so he left the hall and walked down the hallway to the barracks. He almost wished-

A flash of light and he was dazzled. He blinked away the stars rapidly. Before him was purple. Well that was not right, it was the alicorn, the purple one, where the hell did she come from? He was the only one in the corridor just a second ago. She was leaning on her forehooves, wings extended and her face was all up in his grill. Literally, a centimetre closer and she’d be smushed against his helmet. He leaned back instinctively, holy shit those eyes were huge.

“Help you, Highness?” He said, knowing all too well what the pony wanted with him and silently cursing Aleksander. The pony smiled brightly and hopped excitedly on her hooves.

“Ohhhh yes! Yes! Do you mind if you could answer a few of my questions? If its not too much trouble, I mean, I saw you leave the dining room and figured you had a few minutes free so I tried to see if I could borrow you!” She said, Handy withheld a sigh, feeling very much like a patient being asked to sign over to medical experimentation because he had a rather exotic disease. Which he did, which only made the comparison more annoying to him. Handy glanced about, nope, none of the knights were about, a couple of wary judgemental glares from day guard ponies as he had learned they were called. He had considered just pushing passed her and making a run for it but he’d probably not get far without causing more trouble than he can handle. She was a princess afterall.

“I… Suppose I can make some time.” Handy said. He swear, she actually fucking squeed.

“Oh excellent! To think I can finally get your side of the story!”

“Story?”

“Yes! There are so much conflicting speculation about humans from what ponies saw of you, I mean, aheh, there are even some who say you slew a dragon single handedly! Such silly things like that, I’d like to get to the truth of the matter.” She said. Handy thought for a moment.

“Truth you say?” He said, gears turning in his head. All he had to do was answer this princess’ questions? That’s it? “I suppose I could tell you the truth…” He said, a wicked thought coming together in his head. So long as he didn’t lay a hand on her, he did nothing wrong right? If Aleksander decided to put him on the spot like this, the least he could do was enjoy himself.

“Oh! Yes! Would you? It’d be a great additional to study a new species like yourself face to face.”

“Of course, your highness.” Handy said, smiling beneath his helmet.

This pony wanted a story huh? Fine.

Handy would give her a story.

Author's Note

Its official: Rarity jacked Handy's swag.

Chapter 17 - Down in Griffon Town (Revised)

Author's Note

This chapter has been bugging the hell out of me all weekend and as such I have revised it, particularly everything after the talk with Shortbeak. It was, lazily written and consisted of too many blunt paragraphs of description and not enough interaction and just, overall, did not 'feel' like a proper Bad Mondays chapter. So I rewrote it to better suit my purposes and hopefully make it less tedious to read.

Expect the next chapter out tonight or tomorrow.

Vereor Nox

Chapter 17 - Down in Griffon Town (Revised)

There are times when a man just needs to sit down and reflect on his decisions in life. Not the ones he took immediately before finding himself at the bottom of a dark, seemingly endless cave system with nothing but the ethereal light of heatless torch to guide him, but then, what choice did he have? He couldn’t exactly use real fire anymore, can’t take the risk. No, rather, one should think how life would be different if only he had possessed a bit more patience. If only he hadn’t hung up on that client at five past six that evening, deciding to quit his job and type up the resignation email before he got stuck with the inevitable layoff everyone knew was looming over them. If only he had stopped to double check to make sure that his front, right wheel wasn’t punctured instead of just saying ‘screw it’ and driving home anyway. If only he took his time on the roads, slick as they were with rain and black frost that refused to melt. If only he did anything other than rush home that night. If only, if only…

Then he probably wouldn’t be soaked, traumatized, unpleasantly hungry in more than one way and utterly lost. He’d probably still be at home, trying to figure out how to pay for the oil and his utilities now that he was jobless. Searching the classifieds in vain for anything above minimum wage, if even that, probably eating out of date cereal, idly checking the clock to see if the news is on so he could find a way to kill twenty minutes. Probably watch a rerun of Pacific Rim because damn if he had anything better to do, he never really did. He considered whether or not that would be preferable to the life he lived now and at times like this, he certainly thought so.

However, one cannot sit idly by and consider imponderables for too long, he did, in fact, have a job to do after all. The witch had said she was only stuck down here by herself and if he wanted to get out he’d need to help her out as well. To think, this week had started off so well…

He rounded a bend, droplets of water bouncing off his armour, he shivered with the chill. When he got back, he was going to put his feet in a dish of warm water, wrap himself in twenty blankets, eat some soup and tell the world to rightly fuck off as he sat beside a roaring fire. From the other side of the room of course, it wouldn’t do to be careless after all, he learned that the hard way. Pulling himself up on a ledge he continued, the burning brand he carried bent and fluttered in the direction of the exit, a neat little trick the witch had given him, he thought about keeping it. Kind of like a subterranean compass.

He kept walking until he saw light in the distance, and hope grew in his heart. Along with concern. The ground uneven and the limestone stalagmites brittle as he kicked them out of his way. This place was practically coming down with water, and the stone was extraordinarily weak. He actually wondered if he hit a wall in just the right place, would it just break apart and flood the entire cave? It didn’t bear thinking about. He wondered what could be keeping a sorceress like her down here, she had been incredibly vague. He knew why she didn’t just fly out herself, the well entrance was incredibly high and until he had accidentally caused something of a cave in, she didn’t even know where to find it again. Even so, her wings were frail and frayed, ravaged by age and malnutrition, fish is dandy of course, but when you have lived on it for a few years it loses its attraction.

He crested the rise and continued walking down the length of darkness, the light getting brighter with each passing second. Eventually he had to cover his eyes as he came to the tunnel’s end, the glare of natural light, as little of it that shone through, was rough on eyes that had been used to the darkness and artificial light for hours on end. He blinked away the blindness and looked about. He had come out on a high ledge. It was a largely circular room, for a loose definition of circular, it still looked as natural and as rocky as the rest of the caves had been. The only anomalies of note were several parts of the ceiling and far wall which had given way, bright sunlight shone through and his armour shone magnificently as the rays hit the metal. There was a doorway, a proper stone gate that looked like it had a mechanical lever with which to open.

That was odd, he noted, considering absolutely nothing else in the cave appeared constructed, who’d make a gate here? He clambered down from the ledge and made to walk towards the gate, was the witch seriously just stuck here because she wasn’t strong enough to open the obvious lock? He knew she was old but come on. He walked past the piles of dark rocks on the otherwise flat surface of the chamber. The walls shone in places with quartz and other such stones, the floor, however, was strewn with odd, small, greenish stones that didn’t appear anywhere else in the chamber, just strewn about the floor.

They didn’t look terribly interesting to be honest, so he ignored them, he had a door to open and an overdue date with a hot shower and a good meal. If he never saw a cave again in his life it’d be too soo-

There was the sound of stone moving against stone, the dull crack as rock gave way to pressure and broke as was necessary, the scrape of dust as living tendrils of the stuff flowed into a central position between Handy and the door. The dark rocks moved by their own across the floor before lifting up and clashing into eachother and the flowing storm of dust, the green stones lit up as they were carried by small whirlwinds and hurled at the gathering heap of stone. Handy took several steps back in surprise.

The room shook as one after another, four rocky appendages crashed into the floor and Handy faced a quadrupedal golem of dark grey stone. Its short, roundish body strewn with the strange green rocks as well as the joints of its legs. It had no face to speak of, but its body turned to regard the human. His eyes widened in alarm as the magical torch he held went out, its flames leached into the green stones of the golem’s body which glowed warmly at the absorbed aetheric energy. He dropped the now useless brand and hefted his hammer into both hands, he left his shield on the surface, not that it’d be any use to him now.

With a sound reminiscent of cascading shingle and shattered shale the animated rock shook with an echoing roar which had no origin and the chamber vibrated with its fury. Briefly Handy considered what exactly he could hope to do against such a beast with nothing but a hammer to his name, the chamber was not terribly big so trying to simply get around the creature to get to the door was going to be an issue. Even if he did, the lever looked rusted, it’d take at least a minute or two to move, he glanced behind him, the ledge was just a bit higher than he was tall, getting up there and back into the dark tunnel which would fit him but not this abomination was out of the question.

He turned back to the golem, it had no eyes which he could blind, no bones beneath the rocky exterior which he could break, probably not even a mind he could reason with or trick. It was too stupid to be fooled, too big to be avoided, too hard to be cracked and far, far too close to him to be comfortable. He thought back to why he was here, and how he had chosen to come to this little town and how much he cursed a certain little Timothy Shorttail who was too curious for his own good. He took in a breath as he weighed his options.

“Bollocks…”

--=--

“What do you mean you can’t?” He had snapped. The prospect of having someone capable of sending him back home had been an exciting one, indeed, almost exhilarating. That very possibility was the primary reason he decided to spare the mare's life and calm his anger back in Canterlot before he did something he knew he was going to regret. Now that he had her here in Skymount, he began drilling her for information, to say that he was upset when the mare told him she couldn't just prepare another ritual to send him back would be an understatement.

The two of them were in the guild master’s office the day they had arrived back in Skymount. Which, nominally belonged to Featherbrain, actually belonged to Handy and now currently belongs to Crimson Shade because Handy said so. The red mare shuffled her hooves nervously as she took a few steps back at the tone of his voice. He sighed, this was going to take some getting used to. You see, Crimson Shade has a problem, and that problem is called the slave mentality. Seeing as she spent her entire life referring to the one she was supposed to answer to as ‘mistress’, she actually does not know how to address anyone with any authority over her in any other manner.

It was awkward trying to get her to stop referring to him as master on the flight back from Canterlot. Indeed, he couldn’t believe this was the same pony who had tried to kill him with an elemental on that train ride. When she wanted to kill or capture you she was as brave, fearless and stupid, as one could hope a minion to be, a mare with a mission. Faced with a complete stranger she was cold, indifferent and generally unpleasant, but could hold her own in a conversation to an extent, although it was amusing to see her treat a king as if he were no more than common rabble the few times Joachim actually bothered to strike up a conversation with her on the flight back. However, faced with someone with nominal authority over her, she has a complete one-eighty in personality, so much so it was actually kind of jarring to witness. One minute, brash confident and courageous, the next a God-damn shrinking violet.

“W-well, the problem is we’re too late…” She began. At least she had stopped calling him master. “M-master.” God damn it.

“First, stop calling me master, you’re not a slave. Second, what do you mean it’s too late?”

“Well, the ritual was performed on a full moon…” She said slowly. Handy blinked.

“You know there’s lots of those right? Kinda common.”

“Y-you don’t understand, the moon itself wasn’t important for the ritual.”

“Then why does a full moon matter?”

“It’s the only time the starflies emerge.” She explained. Handy elected to avoid asking what the hell starflies were for now in favour of her further explaining how in the hell she managed to snag him from Earth.

“And they’re needed because…?” He asked, there was muffled shouting and short crump noise, something exploded somewhere and the building shook. He sighed, that was probably Geralt Hindblade again. “Look, you know what? Don’t care. The full moon is still common enough.”

“Yes but the alignment is gone.”

“What alignment?” He asked, then groaned. “Don’t tell me it’s an alignment of the p-“

“It’s the alignment of the winds, master.”

“Stop that. And winds? What winds?"

“W-well, sometimes they’re called the forces, or waves, or-or Thuamatic convulsions-” Aaaand there she went. Handy was treated to a crash course lesson on the nature of magic. To be honest, he did not understand three quarters of the terminology she used but he believes he got the gist of it. Essentially the night he was brought into the world was the last of a small window of opportunity brought about by the alignment, or convergence, of sources of magic. It was apparently a minor manifestation but enough to power complex rituals with extreme ease. Most modern magical practice did not rely on such convergences, there was often little cause to, relying instead on the plentiful magic present in apparently God-damn everything and the specific magical power and skill of individuals wielding it.

Her ritual however, required it according to the old magic she had invoked, due to the nature of what she had been attempting. Had she tried it normally the magical conflux, she needed to summon would have been far more then she could have handled… and it would have been very noticeable. "What do you mean by 'noticeable'?" he had asked.

"A s-spell of that magnitude would require alot of power, so much so that even minor magic wielders would feel the aetheric disturbances, Mistress did not want to risk that. S-so we performed it at a time when the convergences would mask the magical drain used." Crimson explained. Handy shook his head and pressed on.

“Well its not as if I need to hide from the princesses now." Handy reasoned, figuring that if unicorns were magical Alicorns were bound to be too, given those horns. "All I'd be doing is hopping the cosmic express back home, not trying to snag yog-shoggoth from his bath tub. So far, I understand this would be tremendously difficult…” Handy said, trying not to think about how similar this sounded to some kind of demonic summoning out of a bad fantasy novel. “But not impossible. What else could this require?”

“I-it also needs a sacrifice.” She confirmed, Handy rubbed the bridge of his nose. So far the ritual required a full moon, rare creatures, convergence of special magical energies and a sacrifice. You know that part about Handy only pretending he was some dark, terrible spectre? Yeah, he really didn’t need that to actually be confirmed as fact, he couldn’t come up with a more ominous manner of coming to this world if he tried.

“You had to kill something to bring me here?”

“N-no! I didn’t kill anything!”

“Then what was sacrificed?”

“Life force.”

“Tell me again how you didn’t need to kill something…”

“Years! I-I only needed to give a few years!” She protested, Handy’s eyes widened.

“Wait hang on… You gave up years off of your life?” He asked, she nodded slowly. Handy suddenly understood why she had tried so hard to get him back to her mistress. Fear of disappointing her mistress aside, he was literally a heavy investment on her part. He was not sure how to feel about that, other than shame at his treatment of the young mare thus far. He was no longer sure he wanted to continue this line of inquiry, but he had to at least try, it was a chance to go home. “…This alignment, how often does it occur?” He asked. “You said it was a minor one, I imagine that means, hopefully, it’s much more common than a major one?” She nodded again.

“Yes. About once every hundred years or so.” She said. Handy just looked at her, causing her to shrink. He rubbed his forehead.

“Alright… I guess we’ll forget about that ritual for now.” He sighed. “I’ll find some other way of getting back home.” Her ears picked up at that.

“I can do it without the alignment, it’s just… Well…” She tried protesting. Handy shook his head.

“No I don’t think so, you already said it was more then you could handle. Also I am not going to take years off of your life just to get back.”

“Why not?” She asked, genuinely confused. He raised an eyebrow at that, did he really need to say why?

“Because I am not a sociopath?” ’Well, most days anyway.’ He told her resolutely. In truth, he did actually consider her offer. It was tempting, he knew the greater part of him would never let him force the young mare to sacrifice more years off of her life just so he could go home. But he considered it. He then considered Crimson's description of how she pulled him from beyond the veil in the first place and a niggling doubt tugged at the back of his mind. About the possibility of her tearing a hole through the veil and landing him in oh, lets say, down town Mogodishu, or North Korea. Or fifty feet in the air. Or the middle of the Atlantic ocean.

“What’s a sociopath?” Crimson asked.

’They don’t have a term for that? Really?’ “Nevermind. I said I wouldn’t harm you, and I am pretty sure taking years off of your life for my own benefit counts as harm.” He said putting his helmet back on and turning towards the door. “I’ll be back with you periodically, I have more questions, especially about the magic you use. But for now I should probably go back to the castle.”

“W-what am I supposed to do, Master?” She asked as he opened the door. He looked back at her, his unamused expression did not transfer through the full face helm. There was a rush of wind and a blur of green and yellow feathers down the hallway outside.

“Wait!” A ridiculously high pitched voice squeaked as another griffon ran down the hallway after the blur. “I got the formula wrong! Stop! You’re supposed to be blue!” Handy didn’t bother to regard the gryphonic foolishness. The look of surprise on Crimson’s face was priceless.

“Just keep the alchemists out of trouble” He shrugged.

“H-how?” She asked, it was a fair question.

“Is the guildhall currently on fire?”

“No…”

“Try to keep it that way.” He said, exiting the door and, quickly as was decent, exited the madhouse entirely. He heard a godawful noise followed by the sound of groaning wood and a tremendous crack. Someone clearly broke something important on the second floor. He hesitated, wondering if Crimson could handle the task he had set her. The sight of her shrinking away from him whenever he so much as looked at her causing him to doubt the wisdom in placing her in charge of so many mad birds. There was a familiar sounding shout, a flash of red light out of the second storey windows and a yelp of one of the alchemists. He smiled, she’ll be fine so long as he isn’t standing over her.

Making his way down the hill towards Skymount proper he looked up at the towers and parapets of castle Blackwing on the side of the mountain across the river. He frowned. Now that he thought about it, it was surprisingly big to look at, but he had managed to walk across almost the entirety of its interior in the space of an hour, and most of that was just making sure he was not going around in circles.

Canterlot castle looked smaller from the outside but he had to try very hard not to get lost in the endless corridors, the twists and turns of the interior, and that was only the few wings he and the griffons had access to. And that little thought brought his attention to something else that has been eating away at him. ’Why didn’t they react?’ He thought. ’A shot had been fired and everyone just… Choked.’ In truth, it was not the endangerment of his own life that upset him, indeed, he knew full well he had no excuse to have reacted as slowly as he did that day. He had been running on a vampiric high afterall. However, there were kings present, had this happened in a human context there would have been no second guessing, no hesitation. Weapons drawn, leaders covered and dragged back to safety, enemies engaged to cover the retreat. It was just common sense.

He had noticed the pony soldiers didn’t seem to do the same for their ruler either, his already poor opinion of them intensified in retrospect. It’s not as if they couldn’t fight, he had first-hand experience that they could, but they certainly didn’t react that day. The personal power of the princess be damned, that was just insultingly incompetent. When he made it back to the castle he was going to be having a delightful talk with Joachim about the subject. First things first however, time to give Klipwing the good news.

It took him half an hour to locate the bird, he found him in the poor district by a construction site. Craftsgriffons were busy at work with surprising enthusiasm despite it being evening. The young griffon adjusted the spectacles on his grey face and smiled hesitantly at the human, Handy meanwhile, steeled himself for the inevitably dull conversation about upkeep. A brief chat had proved illuminating, the craftsgriffons were actually his new tenants, currently building their own workshop for their trade on the condition of reduced rent under Klipwing’s watch. Handy wasn’t entirely sure about that but it turned a useless plot of land into something that was some way profitable, and the craftsgriffons were paying for their own materials, so he did not voice his objections. The mill was still useless, but Klipwing suggested using the Haywatch farms so they could have a source to start milling yarn. Handy axed that idea, already scheduling the farms to be used to help the brewery.

Taking a look over several forms the bird had handed the human, he pretended to shift through them attentively before something caught his eye. There were several dozen acres going on sale next to Haywatch estates at rock bottom prices, Handy was slightly concerned considering the last time his money was spent on cheap property it didn't turn out the best. He chewed the inside of his mouth. It was tempting, the landlords and small tenant farmers seemed desperately strapped for money, and judging by how much his changeling currency was worth, it'd be a pittance. He told Klipwing to put in bids for the new land in his name, he may get the crops for the revitalization of the mill after all. It still left the issue of who in the hell was going to buy the end product, but Handy would cross that bridge when he came to it.

He waved his hand in a gesture to hurry it up and got told that the smithy was doing a steady trade, nothing amazing but at least turning something of a profit, the bakery was doing similarly well. The two barkeeps of the taverns he owned were actually brothers, which would explain why they looked so similar despite sounding different. Nothing Klipwing tried seemed to work in regards to livening up the trade both taverns were doing, and Jeremy’s tavern kept catching light spontaneously. On a whim, Klipwing decided to have the barkeeps switch taverns for the rest of the week, which, for some bizarre reason, resulted in an uptick of trade and Jeremy’s old bar stopped catching on fire. Klipwing soon surmised it was because he was clumsy whenever he put on the fire or tried to boil some water and his tavern was made largely out of wood whereas his brother’s was mostly stone. The personalities of the barkeeps being more appropriately to the clientèle of the two streets they were on. Handy just gawked at the bird for a few seconds after hearing all of that, before shaking his head and powering through.

He informed Klipwing he no longer needed to oversee the guild anymore as he got someone else looking after it. Klipwing’s expression was noticeably neutral, nodding an affirmation slowly. He told Klipwing to keep an eye out on a particular barn in the southernmost farm for the next week as he was expecting a delivery there. The two parted. He was barely ten feet down the street when he heard shouts of joy behind him. Well, he was glad he was happy, now all that was left was to check in with dear old Joachy for a lovely chat.

--=--

It was not a lovely chat.

“Are you telling me you regret not being shot!?”

“I’m telling you, my lord, that you should be a tad more concerned for your own God-damn safety!”

In fact it had gone back and forth for quite some time, as the pair went from discussing legitimate concerns about the quality of Gethrenia's soldiery to their own little nitpicks about eachother's behaviour and personalities and back again. Perhaps Handy was being a bit too blunt and anti-social, perhaps Joachim a bit too insistent on playing the gracious diplomat that he never seemed to take decisive action. The point is they did not see eye to eye on the matter and Joachim did not like the human’s implications that his soldiers were unfit. He was, however, increasingly finding fewer and fewer counter arguments to the fact. The music echoing down the halls of the castle was distracting and not helping either one's moods.

“Look, we haven’t had a proper war in All-Maker knows how long, you can’t expect soldiers to just dive right into a fight in a situation like that.”

“I can and I do,” Handy fumed, he placed his hands on the edge of the desk as he leant over, taking in a breath through his nose to calm himself. “Look, where I come from? I’m nothing. I am literally just some scrub off the streets, worse than that even. Yet even I know when a God damn king, never mind four, are in an area and a shot is fired, his bodyguards had better get to guarding some motherfucking bodies.”

“You’re nothing?” Joachim said in disbelief.

“Aye, well I was. What, you think I’ve always been a warrior?”

“Well no, not when I first met you I certainly didn’t. However…”

“I’m nothing compared to a trained human warrior of my world’s poorest, smallest, weakest kingdom.” He said pointedly. “Talent and luck aside, that’s the point I am making. Your soldiers are woefully under par.”

“Oh come, you go too far!” Joachim said, gesturing at Handy with a quill. The two were arguing in the royal quarters and Joachim was busy writing something in an overly large ledger when Handy happened upon him. “They’ve all been blooded before being made a member of the royal guard!”

“There’s a difference between rooting out bandits, brigands and the occasional wild beast who got hungry and attacked some farmer’s chickens, clearly inferior foes and fighting pitched battle against equals.” Handy protested. “I am not questioning their skill with their weapons, I am questioning the quality of their nerve and whether they actually have a pair.” Joachim jumped from his seat at that, his wings slightly raised from his sides.

“What are you saying exactly, Handy?”

“I am saying I expected more from Griffons.”

“So you’d prefer if my guards had engaged the ponies and started a war? Over you?” He asked, Handy just chuckled at that.

“You and I both know I don’t give a damn about me in this discussion. I got into that situation by my own doing and if I died, so I died, I wouldn’t hold that against you. No, I would not want a war, but your guards should have gotten you, out of there. Do you understand what I am saying?” He asked, Joachim was silent. “You are a king now, Joachim. Unless you have a cousin hiding somewhere that you haven’t told me about, I believe you’re the last legitimate heir of your clan too. A shot was fired, your guards are there to guard you and what you represent. They failed and for some reason you don’t think that’s a problem?” He challenged, Joachim looked away.

“They didn’t have to engage the ponies, all they had to do was cover you and get you out of immediate danger while covering your retreat. They didn’t. They choked and that’s why I am here right now, giving out to you.” Handy continued

“And is that the only reason?” Joachim looked the human in the eye.

“No, you’ve been acting a right prat as of late, but I’m a big enough man to gloss some of that over.” He said, Joachim looked hard at the human for a few long moments, Handy didn’t blink. Joachim let out a breath through his nostrils and looked around before returning back to his desk. The silence was broken only by the distant music.

“For the sake of our friendship, I’ll admit I have not been the kindest I could be towards you, but I have a kingdom to consider…” He said. Handy nodded.

“That’s the primary reason I’ve been tolerating a lot of your behaviour.” Handy said, a bit more calmly. A few seconds passed as Joachim scratched a few more lines in the ledger he was working on. “And thanks.” He said, Joachim stopped and looked up. “I thought you would’ve just pulled rank and prevented the duel altogether, honestly I was shocked you didn’t.” Joachim studied the human’s face for a minute.

“I take it, however, you’re still mad at me that I’m not letting you kill him?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“My reasons are my own.” Handy replied. “And what’s this swordbearer nonsense you stuck me with? What, am I to stand behind you at ceremonies carrying a big ass claymore?”

“Yes actually, but that’s only on certain occasions.” Joachim smiled a bit at Handy’s expression. “It has other advantages, for one thing you’re relieved of most duties of a royal knight.”

“How do you mean?”

“I mean you no longer have to stand outside a doorway all night. As Swordbearer you literally and figuratively bear the king’s sword, his law.” Joachim said as he continued writing. “It was the first thing to come to mind when I thought to… Well…”

“It was painfully obvious to anyone in the know that it was a bribe.”

“Well, yes, but it’s one I could give that you might appreciate.”

“While I appreciate being exempt to being put on rotas, what exactly DO I do as the king’s Swordbearer?”

“Basically, I send you somewhere and you speak with my authority.” Joachim said simply. That caused Handy to blink.

“That’s… Rather a lot of responsibility.” Handy said. “Tell me again how I’m going to appreciate this?”

“What? You mean asides from the freedom it gives you? Oh not much, I suppose, I thought you might enjoy the greater pay and respect.”

“And I suppose doing what you say.”

“Handy, you’re a knight, you already do as I ask, most of the time anyway. This is practically no different, just what you do now is more important.”

“Surely another knight would make a better Swordbearer. Shortbeak for example?”

“She declined, actually.” Joachim said. “Asked her before we left for Canterlot, I was worried you might not like additional duties requiring you to get out more. Personal reasons she stated if you’re curious as to why she declined. Sides, you’re probably more useful overall.”

“How so?”

“People already think of you in dread, hell the other kings call you my Shadow.”

“That’s hardly flattering.”

“It was not meant as a compliment, or an insult, you may not be aware but shadows have bad connotations in griffon cultures.”

“Is that why I hear griffons in the street curse eachother with shadows?”

“Pretty much. Sides, you don’t do much to dissuade your reputation.”

“It is kind of fun...” Handy admitted

“Which is why I figured to make the best use of it.” Joachim said, dipping his quill in ink. “If you’re going to insist on perpetuating your reputation and I am to put up with it, why not put it to its best use?”

“Intimidation?”

“Law enforcement.”

“Same thing.” Handy waved. “Fine, I’m your swordbearer. Yippee. So what do I do now?”

“I have nowhere to send you for now, honestly, I got nothing planned for the next two months other than going to blighted Firthingart for that tourney.” Handy frowned.

“Don’t like tournaments?”

“Love them. Hate Firthingart, it’s a miserable kingdom.” Joachim said. “If you want something to do with your newfound free time, how about you do something constructive?"

"I already have my little distractions."

"Then at least show up in court more often. Everygriffon's been on edge because of your little party favour, it'd be good to remind them that you are, in fact, flesh and blood."

"Its either leave the brick here or take it with me to Equestria." Handy said. Joachim nodded conceeding the point.

"Fine... Look, just show your face more often at least?" Joachim said. "You're making people anxious."

"Might just pick up on that.” Handy said. “Don’t think for a moment I am done about your guards though.” He said, Joachim seemed to nod slightly.

“I admit, I had a vain hope. Alas.” He said. Joachim then rubbed the temples of his head. “And for goodness sake, will you turn off that brick of yours?” The king asked, referring to the melodious sound echoing through the castle corridors. Handy had explained the expensive brick’s unusual properties to Joachim, when he asked where he had got it Handy simply stated he ‘found’ it rather than go through the tedious prospect of explaining cellular technology to a mythological creature. Ever since they had left, Handy had neglected to take it with him, instead leaving it in a drawer of the room he stayed in the castle. The expensive brick, meanwhile, busied itself with periodically playing music. Loudly. And at odd hours. Handy smiled apologetically as he left and headed to his room.

At any given moment over their absence, a servant would pass by and Vivaldi’s four seasons could begin playing. Or perhaps one of the few thematic tracks from some games Handy enjoyed in his previous life. And it was consistent, always long, melodious tunes, rarely anything with lyrics and even if it was, it often appeared to be ‘chanting’, which meant the griffons had just gotten their first introduction to Human plainsong. Handy had put the tracks on there since they helped him study back at school. He suppressed a sigh as he passed by the guards and the wary eyes of servants.

After the coronation the griffons had warmed up to him to the point of being annoyingly close and familiar, now, they were taking a cautious approach to him. Not sure what to think about the human, in whose absence mysterious, and at times oddly beautiful music emerged from the room. Given the acoustics of the castle, this disturbed not a few griffons. The song that was playing at that moment was particularly mourneful. Handy rolled his eyes, trying to think about how he was going to explain the fact he had a magic singing brick on his person to the rest of the castle, Joachim was hard enough. Why did he even keep the thing around? Honestly, after this he was never letting it leave his side again.

As he rounded the corner he noticed, oddly enough, the door to his room was open and he saw shadows moving from the pale light of the window within. He approached slowly and opened the door wider by a crack. There was a griffon in his room judging by the tail he spied. Leaning in, using the noise of his phone’s audio masking the clink of his armour, he saw the griffon was opening up drawers, searching for the source of the music. He smiled, at least someone in the castle had enough sense to realise that no, in fact, his room was not haunted, there’s clearly some bullshit afoot, causing the music. The griffon drew nearer to the set of drawers where he had placed the brick.

It was dark in the room with the curtains still half drawn so he couldn't see the griffon as clearly as he would've liked. As the song ended he lightly rapped his knuckles on the wood of the door. Given he was wearing his gauntlet, this created quite a loud noise. “I take it thou hast a good reason for being in my dorm?” He asked casually. The griffon whirled around with claws at the ready, her blue eyes, framed by purple feathers were wide in alarm as her face was caught in the sliver of light piercing the dark. He blinked. “Shortbeak?”

The griffon relaxed her stance a bit, but still had one claw noticeably raised. “Ah… You’re back.”

“I believe I am, yes, I am kind of hard to miss. Now, why art thou in my room?” He asked. Knowing full well why she was here, but still miffed at the trespass nonetheless.

“I was just…” Shortbeak began, eyeing the drawer she had just been about to open. “Nothing. My mistake, sorry for bothering you.” She said as she moved towards the door beside Handy. He placed his hand on the door.

“Not quite yet, my friend.” Handy said with warning. Shortbeak took a few steps back and looked up at the human dangerously. Her wings raised slightly from her sides.

“I already said I was sorry for intruding.” She said. Handy, however was troubled by another trespass altogether and this was the first chance he got to speak to Shortbeak alone since the occurrence.

“Yet not for thy first sin against me, I should think.” He said, she seemed to bristle at the accusation in his voice.

“I have never wronged you before.”

“Now we both know that is not true.” He said. “Before I let you go I need to know: Why?” He asked. She didn’t respond as she just looked at him. “Do not play stupid, I demand that much respect from you, tell me the truth. Why did you throw the duel?” He snapped. She continued to look up at him, her eyes darting to one point on his masked face to another, as if trying to read his expression beneath the helm. She shook her head eventually.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. You won that duel fairly.” She said, it was Handy’s turn to just stare at the bird.

“I hit thee multiple times on the head with my warhammer.” He stated. “A typical knight’s full helm is doubly reinforced to prevent damage to the skull during battle. Head injuries proving particularly dangerous for griffons during flight accidents. I also know, because little birds like to talk, that thou takest particular care with your armour in this regard.” The birds in question being the castle blacksmiths bitching about how she took her armour to private blacksmiths to reinforce, much like he now did. Shortbeak shrugged.

“I was out of it, warhammers are designed to be used against armoured foes.” Handy nodded at that.

“Granted, but not so dazed thou weren’t up and about, happy as Larry, minutes after being out like a snuffed candle.” Handy accused, Shortbeak’s expression was neutral. “You are not a weak griffon, Shortbeak. There were multiple times in that fight where you should have destroyed me utterly.”

“I should think it only honourable and just to allow an opponent to catch his breath.” She said giving a slight smile. He frowned.

“I am not referring to thine allowing me to recover after thy aerial assault.” He said, trying not to remember how the gashes he received across his midsection should have hurt a lot more than they did at the time. In truth that should have been his first warning that something was wrong with him, but he tried not to let it bother him. “And more to the point, thou thanked me for your defeat. Why?”

“Well it did mean the kingdom wouldn’t have to be under Geoffrey’s rule, didn’t it?” She said, shrugging. “That’s a lot to be thankful for already.”

“I am of the mind it was something else entirely.” Handy said. She just shook her head and sighed.

"Oh? And what would that be?" She said, smirking. Handy was silent, not prepared to admit to all he discovered in Geoffrey's room, most of which had been destroyed by Joachim anyway. Especially not when all he found was a note from a tyrant about how difficult it was to find anything on this bird in the first place and a cryptic note that he eventually found something. It was literally less than nothing, but he pieced it together to mean that she benefited personally from Geoffrey losing the throne, and had thus thrown the fight. However, he wanted to hear her admit it for his own pride, so he could challenge the bird again, for a proper fight.

“I honestly don’t know what to tell you, Handy.” She said smiling when the human didn't respond. “We fought, you won and there were even witnesses. I do not know where you got this idea from, but you did win fair and square, can’t you just be happy with that?” She said as she walked past him. Reluctantly he let go of the door looking over his shoulder at the parting griffon. “Sorry again about intruding, but really, you got issues.” She said lightly. Handy clenched his fist as she walked off down the corridor.

‘I know for a fact you’re a lot more grateful for Geoffrey’s downfall then just the sake of the kingdom.’ He closed the door and reached down his mail, pulling out Chrysalis’ spycam. It wasn’t glowing and hadn’t felt warm for hours. “You, meanwhile, have seen quite enough I should think.” He yanked off the chain around his neck and placed it in his pack, not trusting to leave it in the drawers of his room.

--=--

The next week had passed largely without incident, thankfully. Except for the training session with Sir Tanismore who was a mite vengeful with Handy for the little debacle at Canterlot. In truth, Handy had been trying his best to get to train with Shortbeak. If he could not get her to admit to him what they both knew to be the truth of the matter, he could at least get some satisfaction that way. Fighting her on even ground without worry of outside pressures affecting the fight. Nope, neither feather nor hide of the good Dame was to be seen about the barracks or training fields in the eastern courtyards of the castle.

“Heads up human!” Tanismore had shouted, Handy turned and brought his shield up just in time to block a two legged buck from the flying Griffon. His footing had been awkward, and the blow came as a surprise, Tanismore had put his full half armoured weight into it and it knock Handy backwards. He struggled to re-find his footing, felt himself falling and eventually ducked into a ball and rolled to get back to his feet. Handy was only wearing his mail along with his jeans and some padding on his shoulders, arms and chest. Tanismore, similarly, was lightly armoured.

“Tanis.” Handy said by way of greeting, still not entirely pleased with his fellow knight. “Still sore?” He said smiling. Tanismore scowled, the white headed griffon was normally gregarious as he was short tempered. He had warmed up to the human over the course of his stay here, which meant he was still quite upset about the little issue of the concussion he was given.

“That was still uncalled for, couldn’t you take the joke?” He said, stalking over to the training circle, marked out in wood amongst the stone of the courtyard, bleached white after years exposed to sunlight . The courtyard was one of many that hung off the sides of the castle, giving a breathtaking vista of the surrounding countryside and the city below them if one cared to look.

“I was having a bad day, Tanis.” Handy said, following the griffon to the ring. “I met a flying snake dragon goat thing that turned my cloak pink and discovered the princesses really do move the sun and moon. I was a little short on patience that night.” Tanismore just laughed as Handy entered the ring. Handy frowned.

“I forgot you still didn’t believe that. Even after everygriffon told you as much.”

“Give me a break, we don’t have magic back home. How was I supposed to believe that?” Handy said, his airs slipping in the early morning. Tanismore made the first move which was fine for Handy. He went for a quick killing lunge, a common tactic among the knights, he found. He ducked under the blow and then suddenly launched himself upwards into the griffon’s underside, knocking his balance askew before his wings could correct their glide to a flap and Handy tossed the griffon over the ring with his own momentum. “Round one to me I should think.”

Tanismore coughed as he brushed himself down, getting back into the ring as Handy backed off to the other side. “Speaking of princesses, what was her plotness speaking to you about?” Tanismore asked.

“Plotness?” Handy asked, confused. Tanismore chuckled.

“Celestia is rather famous for her large rear.” Tanismore said, drawing a sword and swiping at Handy, Handy blocked it with his shield, Tanismore flapped his wings to lend his leap more momentum as he twisted around to kick out at Handy. He took the blow in the shoulder before his hammer arm could come up. Instead opting to use his body’s newfound momentum to bring his right arm around with the shield and catch Tanismore in the chest. Forcing him to back off. Handy much preferred using his right hand for his hammer, but he felt like challenging himself today.

“Ah, right.” Handy said, ’Moving right along…’ “Her highness was doing some mind game nonsense, trying to manipulate me.”

“Oh?” Tanismore said, smiling. Handy frowned.

’God damn horndog.’ “Get thine mind out of the gutters, she was trying to get me to work for Equestria.” He said, parrying a blow from Tanismore’s sword with his hammer.

“And what was she offering?”

“Re-” Handy stopped himself, trying to think of the best way to explain it. “Aid for a condition I have. Aid for which I knew would be nothing of the sort.”

“Uh huh.” Tanismore said, lunging again, leaving himself open. Handy punished the foolish move with a jab of his knee into the side of Tanismore’s chest. Tanismore responded by smacking Handy upside the head with his wing, dazing the human and forcing him back another step.

“That’s when that dragon thing appeared through the floor.” Handy said. “Turned me pink and left in a cloud of goat headed butterflies.”

“Ohhhh!” Tanismore said in understanding, circling the human again. “That’s Discord, yeah, some bigshot spirit of chaos or something. I don’t know, he was mostly just myth and legend here in Griffonia.”

“Spirit of Chaos?” Handy asked, watching the griffon’s movements. ’If he approaches slowly I might have a problem, but it’s unlike Tanismore to think outside the box, he’ll rush me like he always does.’ He thought as Tanismore began to slowly close on the human. ’Bollocks.’

“Yeah.” Tanismore said smilingly, gripping his sword in both claws, his wings spread out, prepared to launch. The Shadow of the castle was enough that Handy’s mail wouldn’t shine, it’d be unfair on his opponents considering it was only training. “Apparantly the princesses use to fight him when he ruled Equestria a thousand years ago or something like that. Now he’s like, I dunno, a pet or something?”

“Why does that sound familiar…” Handy muttered bitterly, circling away from the griffon, his shield raised.

“All I know is he can snap his fingers and make it rain chocolate milk, or rip the land apart, or make you go crasy. Nonsense like that.” Tanismore continued, Handy boggled.

“And the ponies have the nerve to call me a monster when they have something like that at their beck and ca-” Handy didn’t get to finish. Tanismore took full advantage of the human’s momentary lapse in concentration and swipe him from his feet with a powerful lash of the tail before colliding bodily with the human, throwing him from the ring.

“Best two out of three?” Tanismore asked, smiling. Handy spat some dust out of his mouth as he got back to his feet.

“Lets.” Handy agreed, stepping back into the ring. The two traded blows for another half hour, Tanismore kept on trying to distract Handy with his quips, to which Handy made sure not to fall for again. The art of conversation, as it were, had a place on the battlefield as far as Tanismore was concerned. Handy had to admit, he liked the griffon, he was still an incorrigible ne’erdowell but he was the loveable sort.

“Tell me this.” Tansimore said smiling, dodging another swing of the hammer. “What did you do to the poor filly?”

“Excuse me?”

“I was talking to the king on the flight over when we stopped for the night. Said something about you terribly embarrassing the girl.” Tanismore said smiling.

’Nope, not falling for it.’ Handy thought as he brought his shield up to block a kick and swung his hammer around to dissuade another attack. ’Not going to get me to react to this one.’ “A gentleman never tells, thou should knowest this, Tanis.” He said, ducking under the bird’s wing as he turned from a missed blow.

“You are far from gentle, and no I wouldn’t.” Tanis said smiling, whirling around only to find Handy seemed to have disappeared. His head snapped left and then right, only to be met with Handy’s shield. The dazed griffon staggered before Handy swept low with his hammer, knocking him off his feet and outside the ring’s boundaries.

“You’re right on both those counts I suppose.” The human said, smirking.

--=--

Crimson shade’s ear flicked in irritation. She had been sitting in the office for most of the week, trying to find something to do. The human’s instructions left her with a surprising degree of freedom. Normally when she was left to her own devices it was when mistress had sent her on expeditions to find rare materials or to procure artefacts, in which case she’d do whatever was necessary to keep herself fed and sheltered. All other times she was back in her small room until she was called to do something. She used to do something to keep herself amused but she can’t seem to… Remember what that was.

Right now however, this? This was different. She had been left with a large room at the guildhall. So large she didn’t even know what to do with it. There was a writing desk, several chairs, and innumerable ledgers with various details concerning membership dues, costs and expenditures, profits made from alchemical sales. Those were kept in wooden cabinets and were generally disorderly and messily arranged. She supposed she could sort that out? She shook her head and blew a lock of her mane out of her face.

She had no idea what she was doing, honestly, alchemy wasn’t her forte. Her eye twitched and she turned to look at her flank. Her cutie mark was an orange flame whose outline was separated from the image and a little off to the side. She remembers being very proud when she had gained it. Pity she couldn’t remember what it was actually for. She scrunched up her muzzle as she turned away, trying to put the thought out of her head. Mistress didn’t need her for her mark anyway, she needed her for the magic she could use.

Her horn lit up with red energy as she levitated her saddlebags over to her, opening a flap she lifted out a weather beaten book. It was simple to look at, black leather bound as it was. Clearly not pony in origin, unless the ponies in question had no qualms about such practices back then. She didn’t know, nor did she care. Opening it she once more gazed over the familiar flowing script, long, elegant lines flowed in an exotic calligraphy that seemed to cover an entire page with but one, lone, word. Crimson knew better, within each stroke lay more such script, lines within lines, words within words and the power lay within understanding. One could speak the spell one sees on the page, but it may be entirely different then what one could muster by understanding the true depth of the magic. She cast a spell with her magic, enhancing her vision as she read the page.

Her eyes followed the bend, the spell the overall image invoked was one she had used to summon forth the ghouls. It was a simple enough spell, using the spiritual after images and imprints ponies left upon the ethereal reality that surrounded them all. Summoning forth the shades, pushing through the barrier of the world to do her bidding. It proved useful whenever she needed raw strength to aid her on her journeys, but looking at the spell now, reading between its lines to the true words of power winding and cavorting within its form, she saw it could go much further than that.

Biting her lip she flicked through a number of pages, coming upon a page with several smaller spells, both in form and function. One such spell she knew could be used in addition to a circle to communicate directly with her mistress. She placed her hoof on the page of the book as it lay on the table before her, she glanced over to the window, at the city below her. She watched idly for some time, the small boats sailing along the river bisecting the city, the shrill cry of the train she was all too familiar with as it left the station on its journey through the griffon kingdoms, the dark form of a small airship as it hung lazily in the sky. It was good here, peaceful, warm, quiet.

She found herself smiling lightly but quickly quashed it, and looked down at the page once more. She should really contact her, it’s not right, she should not have left her mistress like that. It was wrong. She furrowed her brow, rubbing the side of her neck with a hoof. ’But she’d be so angry at me, especially if I came back after leaving…’ She studied the page for a short while more before closing it over. ’…No. I don’t have to go back… Not anymore…” She thought to herself, staring at the book for a long while more before replacing it in her saddlebags. Once more gazing around at the room. ’But… What do I d-‘

Her thoughts were soon interrupted by a quick popping sound and a burst of black smoke flowing under the door to her office, followed by a succession of coughs and some high pitched squawking. Her eye twitched. ’Oh… Right… That…’ She jumped down from her chair and trotted over to the door to open it. The hallway was the usual mess it had been since she arrived there and had to carefully tip-hoof around random spills, broken glass, burn marks and some alchemical circles one of the birds had drawn while drunk, where the wall met the floor. She hoofed open a door to reveal a rather tiny griffon pushing down on a bucket that another griffon was currently busy trying to pry his head from.

“I TOLD YOU THAT IT WAS TOO MUCH POMERANDR!” The tiny griffon shrieked. “NOW LOOK AT ME! I’LL BE STUCK LIKE THIS ALL DAY!”

“MMFLH MMFHLF!”

“LIES!”

“Ahem.” Crimson said, her eyes half lidded in a very unamused expression, she may have respect for master, but these griffons in particular? No. Not so much. The tiny griffon flapped his wings as he turned to regard the pony.

“Oh… Uh, Hi Crimson!” He said, smiling at her. Crimson blinked slowly as she turned to regard the ruination that was the alchemy table, its wooden frame was broken, parts of it were on fire, which burned green, and there was glass and metal wiring strewn about the floor. Yep, that was another set that’d need to be replaced. She frowned, how in Tartarus did master expect her to run this place? That’s when it hit her and a smile slowly began to form on her face as she remembered. Whenever she had been given freedom, it was because she had been set a task, she’d do whatever was necessary to accomplish it. She was told to keep these griffons out of trouble and prevent the guildhouse from going on fire. Well then.

Her horn lit up as she lifted the bucket off of the griffon’s head, he mouthed a thanks to her but the smile on his face faded at the expression on hers. “First off.” She said. “We’re a bit behind on sales, now, we need a new alchemy set. We have a bucket.” She said indicating the floating object, the two griffons looked at her. “You’re going to use this bucket to pay for the replacement, otherwise I’m afraid I’ll have to take it out of the two of you in extra dues.” She continued, remembering the ledgers from before, the two griffons cringed.

“But…” The previously bucketed Griffon spoke up. “How are we going to use the bucket to pay for the set?” She smiled brightly.

“I’m glad you asked.” She said, something about her tone told the two griffons that, very soon, they will not be nearly as glad that they did.

--=--

“This is a waste of time, out!” Johan shouted, the bird thoroughly annoyed. The last plea had been an utter farce involving a pony trader, two nobles, a cart of radishes, an expensive vase and a minotaur’s undergarments. Funny, but ultimate not worth the king’s time as he dismissed the matter out of claw. Handy smiled. He was standing to the king’s right and a bit behind the throne as Joachim held court in the plea hall, figuring he might as well follow his king’s advice to show his face a bit more often in court. They were gathered in a small room with cloisters along the wall and an obscenely tall roof far above them, from which little light pierced the thick windows so far above. It was generally unpleasant to be in the room, but he supposed that was probably intentional, some predecessor of Joachim’s probably deciding the room be built in such a manner to make pleaders uncomfortable and hurry up with their business.

That little diversion aside, however, Handy was bored to tears. He almost wished he hadn’t blown off Klipwing that day, the bird was going through the trouble of managing his properties so he didn’t have to. Nope, that morning Handy decided to show up in court like Joachim had suggested, that surely would be less boring wouldn’t it? ’Hahahahaha, fuck you Handy.’ He thought bitterly to himself. The dejected tradespony left the room as another griffon waltz right in, garishly coloured with red feathers and a lime green pelt. Handy blinked rapidly, not used to such colours on a griffon and briefly thought it was an oversized pony in a griffon outfit.

The griffon bowed. “Your majesty, honourable king Johan the Blackwing, may your reign be long and prosperous…” The griffon began, his foppish hat, by some cruelty of the universe, stayed on his head, despite him having bowed over totally. “I come on behalf of Count Greybeard, of the Duchy of Farlkirk.” The messenger began, a scroll clasped in one claw. Joachim nodded recognition to the griffon.

“And what does the good count seek of me? Surely he is better served petitioning his duke.” Joachim said, clearly bored but trying to put on a brave face.

“It is precisely because of the duke that he seeks your intervention.” The bird said, head always slightly bowed in deference. Well now this was a bit more interesting, Joachim sat up straighter and almost didn’t let out a sigh.

“Duke Karl? What is the matter with him?” Joachim asked.

“Count Henri the Talonstrike of Ifrendare, has been accusing Duke Karl of Necromancy and all sorts of devilry.” The red griffon replied, Joachim’s eyebrows rose at that. “The accusations are spurious, of course, but as you know your highness, all some griffons need is just the pretence it offers them…” The griffon let the silence hang, causing Joachim to clear his throat.

“And what pretences are these?” He asked. The griffon smiled, Handy shifted in his armour, only he and four other courtiers were around the throne during the meeting, but even so, it was crampt.

“Duke Karl is young, his family has not been nobility for long, many would rather see themselves on the throne, and if they could find a way to justify his removal they would likely seize upon it.” He explained, Joachim looked nonplussed. Handy could understand why, this was the first anyone in the court heard mention of anything like this. If there was one thing Handy learned as a hard and fast fact about this world it’s that rumours spread like wildfire. The fact that something as big as a Griffon being accused of necromancy hadn’t made the castle scuttlebutt, leant Joachim to be a tad sceptical of the claim.

Handy’s interest, on the other hand, was piqued. The last griffon he knew that had sorcery possessed a book relevant to his interests, one he was planning on giving to Crimson when the time came in order to learn what the hell was in it, with the fragile hope she may discover something new with it that might get him back home. Perhaps, if there was anything to these rumours, he might be able to obtain more such magic? It was fragile logic, but it was something. Admittedly he knew as much about magic as he did about high level mathematics, however Crimson made it sound as if using other kinds of magic would not work, or at least, it’s how it came off to Handy. Who was he to argue? She was a unicorn, not like he knew better.

“Count Henri is a drunkard and a wastrel, his accusations will cause more harm than good and must be put to a stop. Please for the good of the duchy and the kingdom at large, my lord humbly implores thy intervention.” The bird finished by bowing once more. Joachim sighed and rubbed his forehead, clearly not convinced this was something he should be concerned about in the slightest.

“You might want to nip this one in the bud.” He whispered as he leant down to the seated Joachim. He inclined his head over.

“Really? Greybeard is clearly just trying to use the crown to embarrass a rival before his duke…” Joachim said. Eyes not leaving the prattling noblegriffon before him. Handy conceded the point.

“Aye.” Handy whispered. “But still, this would be an opportunity to strengthen your own authority. You’re still a new king. Even if nothing comes of it, people will know you care about the affairs of your subjects.”

“You say that as if I don’t.”

“I meant nothing by it, only that perception matters. Sides, so what if he uses this to take advantage of his fellow count at court?” Handy asked, he saw the griffon’s brow furrowing.

“I take it you want to be sent on this one?” He asked. Handy shrugged, his armour clinking at the movement.

“It’d be good for a lark. Sides, what if he really is a necromancer?” He asked. Joachim failed to suppress a snort.

“What are you going to do if he is? Rush in there head on and just take the magic on the chin?” He said. Handy smiled beneath his helm.

“If I had to.” Handy said, realising Joachim had not witnessed his armour’s magical resistance. ’It’s worked for me so far.’

--=--

Handy really hated travelling these days.

Think about it.

Never mind not having any motor vehicles and it basically being the Middle Ages. Or renaissance, or whatever epoch this world was currently undergoing, the presence of magical crystal powered medical facilities, steam engines and indoor plumbing kinda blurred a lot of lines. It also meant, however, he had to walk everywhere. Why? Because it is not as if he could get a horse to ride everywhere now could he? He groaned internally when he recalled bragging about humanity’s awesome skills regarding the activity back at Canterlot, sure it was true enough, doesn’t mean they liked doing it if it could be circumvented. It was even worse having to do so in armour. Unfortunately the nearest train capable of taking him to his destination was already more than a day’s travel from Skymount so he had to suffer through it, amongst other things.

'I need to find a better way of getting around, stupid griffons and their stupid wings making this shit seem easy.' He thought to himself. They two of them had been traveling for the better part of the day, the train station in Skymount serviced the Equestrian express and its railway nigh exclusively, the nearest transport they could use to get to the duchy in question lay over a day’s travel to the south, around the southern twin peak of the city. Handy groaned.

“So I’ve been thinking…” His companion piped up. Handy shook his head in exasperation.

’Here we go…’ He thought. Tanismore was a good griffon, might make a decent knight someday, but dear God he never shut up.

“You know Celebra? Young lass, golden coat?” He asked, referring to the newly minted knight to join their ranks.

“I am aware of her existence, yes.” He replied, cresting the rise, some old stone steps placed along the ancient walkway through the overgrown fields surrounding them, looking back, skymount could barely be seen, only mountains and pine forest. He knew which mountain he’d need to look for, but still couldn’t see the castle as his view was blocked by its twin mountain.

“Think I got a shot? I mean, normally I wouldn’t need any help, but she seems a cold one, might be a tough nut to crack.”

“Hast thou tried talking to her?” Handy offered, checking the map he had been giving, the glare off of his gauntlets was annoying so he turned to get his armour out of the sunlight, unfortunately this made him face Tanismore.

“What? Oh, oh uh, yeah! Yeah Psshaw, of course I have!” Tanismore said, leaning on his shield, Handy looked up at him in annoyance. He really couldn’t give less of a damn about Tanismore’s problems if he tried, but he was stuck with him. Protocol demanded the Swordbearer have an escort when on duty, and when none of the guards seemed keen to volunteer their services, Tanismore stepped up to the plate. “She’s just uh… Not very talkative.” Handy sighed.

“Look, lets just go. We have several more miles to travel before we reach the train.” Handy said. Tanismore followed after the human but, unfortunately, did not stop his prattling.

“Look I was thinking, when we got back, maybe you could help me?” He said. Handy resisted a groan.

“Help how?” He said, looking ahead as the pair walked down an incline towards a small village.

“Well there’s a feast coming up and I was thinking you could help me out, you know, distract whoever she’s talking to so I can get a chance with her.” Handy stopped in his tracks and turned to regard the griffon behind him.

“Are you serious?” He asked.

“What?” Tanismore shrugged.

“Nobody else? You’re asking me, of all people, to be your wingman?” He asked, incredulity present on his voice.

“Pssht, no of course not!” Tanismore said, his yellow beak wide in a grin. Handy’s stare of disapproval was unrelenting. “I’m asking you to be my winggriffon.” Handy’s shoulders just sagged as he turned around and continued walking. The pair of them continued down into the village. Handy intended to ask for directions or perhaps lodgings for the night, not keen on the prospect of sleeping rough. Only to be met with people rushing off into their homes, up into the nearest clouds or behind buildings. The few brave souls who remained out in the open generally stuck behind stalls or close to the local blacksmith. They smiled nervously at the pair of them.

“Hey what gives?” Tanis said, his armour clinking as he moved. Handy shook his head, eyeing the strange objects that were hung upon the doorways and arches of the homes they passed. Strange little knick-knacks made out of bundled twigs and colourful pebbles. He knew enough countryside lore from back home to recognise a fetish when he saw one. A charm to ward off evil and bad luck.

“Nevermind Tanis.” He said, turning to once more look at the few griffons who stayed out. “Lets not bother these good people any longer.” He said, moving forward. Tanismore scratched his head before following after Handy. He thought deeply as they walked on, in Skymount it had been fun cultivating his image, but the griffons there had gotten used to the idea of him, here? That was not the case. He wondered how this would affect him in Ifrendare, perhaps he had been taking this game of his a little too far? He considered the matter as Tanismore continued his nonsense, they still had quite a while to go before the station and it looked like they’d have to set up a small camp before moving on.

--=--

He was sitting on a rock, fuming. That was the twenty third match he fumbled with so far. Tanismore was no addition to him and he’d be damned if he asked him for help anyway. Currently the bird was off relieving himself, and left Handy to his own devices in terms of getting the campfire going. It wasn’t too hard, in theory, he had a small bundle of sticks and twigs he had dried out and prepared to light and place beneath a larger collection of wood.

He sighed and looked up at the stars. It was good to be out of the city for once and not have to worry about ponies. He smirked, to think his opinion on an entire species could change so completely, but there he had it. The little equines had, effectively, ruined his life. And those arrogant princesses had the gall to try to apologize to him with bribes of potions to quench his ungodly thirst. He looked back down at the work he had failed to accomplish as he ruminated.

There was a light wind, but thankfully no rain that night. So perhaps they could have a nice fire to sleep next to. Nope, Handy looked at his gauntlets, unbuckling the straps and pulling them off. In truth he was a tad concerned, thinking back he had paid at least a little attention to the lecture Twilight had given him on thestrals back when he was pulling his little prank. He did not like the conclusions he was drawing from it. So far he discovered he could not gain the power boost from animals, thestrals could. He could heal his wounds by drinking vital essence, they could not. They only got serious urges had they not fed in over two weeks, Handy could not go a week without becoming antsy, he could hear someone’s pulse at a distance, they, alledgedly, could not. What else was different between the two? They were the closest reference to whatever he had become and they were already making a poor one.

At the least, he considered, he didn’t have to hide from the sunlight. He pulled out another match, a Lucifer for the pipe that he had yet to use, it’d do the trick. In truth it wasn’t all bad, he supposed, at least it didn’t come with all the numerous downsides vampirism could’ve come with. Or so he had thought.

He struck the match, but his finger slipped, dropping the Lucifer. The flame nicked the knuckle of his left hand and it was then, eyes widened in horror and a shrill, inhuman shriek left his lungs his hand recoiled in immense pain as his skin caught alight in a brilliant flash of flame. He scrambled off his rock and rubbed his hand desperately in the dirt of the ground, suffocating the fire. Shakingly, he sat himself up on his elbow and raised his left hand to his face. It was burned terribly and stung with pain. Handy’s mind reeled, trying to rationalize what had just happened. ‘I need to heal this.’ He thought, as his good hand scrambled for his travel pack, the small one he had used in Equestria.

He pulled out enchanted capsule after capsule, most of which were emptied by now, leaving only two remaining with any fluid left in them. He quickly, uncovered both and downed the two of them and watched in morbid fascination as his pain eased and the skin of his left hand healed over itself. It was surreal to watch, what was even stranger is that he did not feel his skin move as he watched it reshape itself, only the absence of pain as it did so. Once his hand was done, all that was left of his little accident was a small, black pinprick on the knuckle of his left index finger. “Ho-”

“What is it!?” The bushes rustled as a distressed looking Tanismore, his armour askew and his sword drawn. “What was that noise!?” He said, head snapping back and forth.

“A bird, I think.” Handy said quickly, realizing it had been him who had caused the noise. He didn’t want to think how his vocal cords could have caused such sound. “Startled the hell out of me,” He continued.

“A bird?” Tanismore said, eyes wide and regarding Handy with disbelief. “I never heard a bird like that before…”

“Well then you tell me what it was, this is your native land, is it not?” Handy said. “I saw what I saw, swooped down as I was trying to light the fire…” He continued, setting himself upright on his rock and taking off his helmet. Tanismore lowered his sword and looked out at the night sky. As if trying to find the bird Handy had referred to while he reaffixed his gauntlets. “Anyway, I’m out of matches, you have a go lighting the fire.” He said.

“What? But I wasn’t-”

“You’re here now, get cracking, I’m turning in early.” Handy said. Walking over to the bed roll. Tanismore looked down dejectedly at the fire and got to work, rubbing a stick to get it lit. Handy, discretely pushed his bedroll and extra foot away from the fire as Tanismore managed to get it going. He lay in his armour, making sure to face the fire as thoughts raced in his mind. Being ignorant was no fun, especially in situations like this, the closest thing to whatever the hell Handy was were the Thestrals and he already learned he couldn't use the night ponies as a reference so that meant life was an unpleasantly exciting experiment.

Today's lesson? Fire was the fucking devil. Additionally Handy learned that his healing factor isn't perfect. Much like the Salamander salve which he kept on hand, blood healing didn't go the whole way and didn't cover over scars after a certain period. So his little gift from Hectoir was still present, as were the ones he received from Shortbeak. However this also meant the wound he received from Geoffrey, while healed, still left a small scar. Meaning as useful as the ability was, it had a tiny window if Handy wanted to avoid disfigurement.

Handy clenched his jaw as he stared spitefully at the fire as Tanismore got into his own roll, he considered how close he had come to fire ever since he was turned, unaware of how dangerous it was for him in particular. It was not a happy thought. Eventually he turned over, to face away from the fire.

--=--

Handy discovered much in the town of Ifrendare, in the rather small county bearing its name. Firstly that while the town is known for alot of things, sobriety was not one of them.

"Me toora loora la, me toora loora laddie~"

Secondly, he was now the proud author of Griffonia's newest, most popular tavern song. Slightly plagiarized. Which might help explain why his reputation had taken on a completely different character in this part of Gethrenia. You see, rumours are funny things and can get twisted easily. One moment, you're Count Dracula, the next you're Jack Churchill. Where one person heard 'shadowy blood sucker who kills on the orders of the king' another hears 'Dragon slayer who kicks royal pony guard flank and drinks like a fish.' The fact that there were elements of truth in basically all of the rumours only made things harder for the beleaguered human who was practically swamped as soon as he disembarked from the train. He found himself missing the respectful superstition of the villagers.

“Hey, I think they like you!” Tanismore chuckled as the pair of them struggled through the curious crowd of griffons towards the town. The train ride there had been boring, but peaceful as Tanismore spent most of the time talking some other griffons’ ears off instead of his. A few griffons had been curious about Handy, something he was surprised at, considering most of them seemed to have genuine smiles on their faces.

“I didn’t like it when ponies crowded around me, I don’t think I like it when griffons do it.” He muttered by way of response, pushing off several curious young griffons who had alighted on his shoulders and where busy poking at his helmet. “And do they really need to sing that song now? It’s the middle of the day.” He said, referring to the filled up taverns and inns.

Ifrendare was a fairly large town at the base of a wide valley basin, several roads leaving it to cross the surrounding hills. Its colourful buildings were mismatched in terms of style, with the architecture changing and seeming to become older, more convoluted as he neared the town centre. One could easily trace the town’s history from the outer settlement outside the town’s large walls to the keep if one cared too. Other than that there was nothing spectacular about it. Well except for the ten storey Ivory tower in the western quarter capped with a golden dome that shone like a blazing torch during the day. As interesting as that was, he didn’t come here to sight see.

What he had come to see was the Count. The griffons of the town were a friendly bunch, he’d give them that, offering to buy him drinks and asking him to sing Captain Kelly’s kitchen for them, but he didn’t like friendly and ended up politely declining their advances. It was passing through the gates he noticed the guards of the town, lightly armoured even by griffon standards and bearing saffron scarfs, seemed to be on edge. Initially he thought it was because he happened to be in town, but as he passed through the marketplace it soon became obvious he wasn’t the only unscheduled guest to arrive in town.

Duke Karl happened to be in Ifrendare, presumably to face the Count’s spurious accusations head on. Honestly, that made Handy’s job easier because the duke was next on his list of things to do after he had his talk with the count, now he can kill two birds with one stone. Figuratively speaking of course. The presence of noticeably heavier armoured griffons in sapphire blue cloaks caused his hand to reach unconsciously to his hammer. The birds turned to regard the human as he neared the steps to the drawbridge of the keep. Their armour was intricate and segmented, their full faced helms crested by yellow and red feathered plumes and each of them wielded glaives. Knights, Handy reckoned, either that or Duke Karl takes his guard much more seriously than anyone else Handy had yet met.

The blue cloaked knights, about nine in all were intermixed with yellow scarfed Ifrendare guards gathered about the front of the steps. The lead knight, wearing a bladed helmet had been preoccupied with yelling the ears off of some poor, beleaguered guard who looked too small for his armour. He pushed his way to the head of the group and spread his wings to stop the human. “Ah so this is the Nightbane.” He said mockingly, looking the human up and down. “Thought you’d be taller.” Handy looked down at the griffon, nonplussed. “What business do you have here?” He challenged. Tanismore caught up with Handy, having been distracted by a stall in the marketplace from before.

“My business is with the count of Ifrendare.” Handy said cautiously. “Stand aside.” Another bluecloak gave a short bark of laughter. Tanismore frowned, placing down the beak mask of his helm to cover his face.

“Sorry, ape, but the count is busy talking with his lord.” The knight said, Handy bristled.

‘Ok nameless mc fuckwad, welcome to the list.’ He thought. “That’s fine, I have business with the Duke as well, it would be good to catch the two of them at once. That way I don’t waste my time any more than I have with thine over compensating strutting.” He said, the knight’s wings spread an inch wider, the blades on the primaries catching the light.

“You’re not getting anywhere near the duke you cocky whelp. Now turn around before we ruin you, you have no business here.” The knight said with warning.

“Ruin me?” Handy said. His reason, finally being awake at the wheel for once, put the kibosh on his pride and anger rising to get him into more trouble than he could handle. Again. “Hmm, I should think not.” He said at last, reaching into his cloak for his pack. The other knights suddenly moved to ready their glaives, the Ifrendare guards, similarly clutched their spears, alarmed at the sudden movement of the knights. Handy withdraw a scroll, clutching the parchment end, he let its weighted end roll down, revealing the king’s crest and a letter of office.

“I am here as King Johan Blackwing’s Swordbearer to execute his law. I am charged to investigate the dispute that doubtlessly thine duke and the good count are at odds over. Unless thou art prepared to strike against the king himself, I would advise thee to shut up and stand aside.” Handy said, looking pointedly at the lead knight. “Bird.”

Chapter 30 - The norm, not the exception

Her excited expression, happy hum, and enthusiastic gait belied how utterly exhausted she was.

Her hoofsteps echoed rather loudly through the corridors of the crystal tree palace. Normally this annoyed her, reminding her of how the place was unnecessarily big for her. Oh sure, it was useful on the busier days. Being a Princess’ residence in the middle of the Equestrian countryside meant that the countryside nobility suddenly had somewhere they could bring all their concerns to without having to petition their own dukes or make the travel to Canterlot and wait their turn. They were a friendlier, genteel lot in comparison to their more urbane ilk in the capital. Most of the time, they only came around to say hello and have a chat rather than jostle for favour, creating more than one impromptu social function which required the use of the excess space. In turn, they brought a lot of business and money into Ponyville.

Rarity, for one, was ecstatic at the regular business she was receiving as a result.

That, however, was nothing in comparison to the numerous, endless minor panics, disasters, and uproars from just living in Ponyville on a day to day basis. Today's disaster of the hour? Cloudkicker and Thunderlane accidentally creating an unscheduled storm front, which, in conjunction with a new scheme by the CMC, with their so called 'graduates' being absent when they should have been keeping an eye on the new generation, ended up creating a small twister that ripped through the Apple family's orchard and causing several wild beasts from the Everfree to emerge which... just led to an avalanche of other minor disasters. By the end of it, at least Applejack had her end of year harvest, ahem, already bucked from the trees for her. It was only a matter of collecting the apples from the... everywhere they had landed. Rainbow Dash got the pegasi together to fix the sky, and her severely damaged cloud mansion, and promptly gave Thunderlane and Cloudkicker the third degree. They had the good grace to look thoroughly abashed for their failure, though when Twilight had asked her what they had done to cause it in the first place, Rainbow had simply responded, 'You don't wanna know' and left it at that. The CMC’s little death machine however, was originally supposed to be a simple ricksaw that somehow ended up looking more akin to a mobile siege tower. How that made the storm worse was… perplexing to say the least. Meanwhile, Discord had appeared, wearing a sunhat, shaded glasses, beads, and a simply vile-looking shirt with bright floral patterns, along with Sweetie, Apple Bloom, and Scoots, all similarly dressed. He had enquired as to what he had missed.

Twilight had been unamused.

So it was at the end of a long, long, long day that she found herself trotting down the now familiar corridors of her home. Her destination clear, her goal so near it was then that Twilight came upon a room so dear. With a wave of her horn, the enchantment was dispelled, revealing a doorway in the middle of a wall in an otherwise unremarkable hallway. It was not that there was anything truly dangerous or secretive in here. It was just... well, it was hers. Everypony needed a little space for themselves, especially when you were a Princess and just about every other aspect of your life was dedicated to other ponies one way or another.

She opened the door and was immediately hit with the musty scent of books and polished wood that immediately brought to mind memories of her old home. It had taken a while and a few favours, but she had the room constructed to be identical to the ground floor of the old treehouse. Pinkie kept referring to the castle as the treehouse, due to its shape, the other girls followed suit after a while. She really couldn't, however. With a flap of her wings, she allowed herself to be lifted into the air and drop unceremoniously onto the large, scarlet red with gold trim pillow set at the centre of the floor. She had thought about placing a replica of the table with the horrid, wooden, stallion’s head bust but had then thought better of it. Besides, this pillow was comfy.

She sighed contentedly and let herself sink into its embrace, enjoying the snuggly comfort for a moment as she readjusted her resting wings. Then, cracking open an eye and spying her little treasure from its spot on the shelves, her horn lit up, slowly dragging the large tome out of its spot and over to her hooves. She ran her hoof down the cover fondly as she read the title of her old favourite.

Advanced Studies in the Thuamatic Relationship of the Principles of the First Law of Starswirl as it Pertains to Modern Near-magical Science of Alchemy, Base Chemistry, the Arcane, and the Definitions Thereof

or

Astrapoflsmacadt, Volume II

By Spell Weave

Truly riveting stuff.

It had been a long week. Tartarus, it had been a long month. She deserved this. So there she sat, in a room that was a near perfect replica of the first floor of her old treehouse, the Golden Oaks Library. She opened the book, flipping the pages to get to one of the colourful bookmarks to pick up where she had left off. It was an oldie but a goodie, one her favourite books of all time. She had read it cover to cover more times than she could remember, and knew it by rote. But somehow, reading it again helped clear her head and more than once helped her work through a conundrum or problem she'd been struggling with. The castle was great – the past six years living in it had helped it feel more like a home than she ever thought it could become. She had a lot of happy memories here. She still, however, longed for her old home, still missed the warm feeling of simply being surrounded by wood and the smell of books. It was comforting, familiar, relaxing.

She needed the break, especially after keeping the human as a side project for the last number of months with which she had made no headway regarding that one obscure reference to his species from that old mare's tale from the north. If only she had had a few more hours, she could have gotten so much more. She had so many questions, enough to fill several papers. A unique perspective of a brand new species from the other side of the world from a living member! Well, no longer living. She had received the news early when Celestia sent her a letter and... she wasn't exactly sure how to take it. Sad, of course – she'd be sad at the death of anypony. Who wouldn't? She opted to instead focus on the frustration of having to leave a project unfinished, and mutter and complain about 'wasted' time to throw off the others' suspicions as to why she was so off put by the news. The honest truth was that she needed to clear her head and relax, from that concern and many others, which was why she was here right now.

She did this as often as she could. It was her little haven when the pressures of her new role as princess and the stress of life wore her down. When she needed a break from her studies, or at least, when Spike yelled at her that she needed a break, she was practically dragged there and locked out of her own study rooms. It was ridiculous! She was a princess! She should be allowed to study and research whenever she wanted! But it always ended the same. She'd have a cup of coffee, read an old favourite by the fireside, relax, and then thank Spike for badgering her into taking a little time for herself. Her smile fell slightly when the thought hit her. 'Spike,' she thought sadly.

Closing the book and putting it aside, she went to check on him. She cantered through the halls, her hoofsteps echoing loudly in the empty space, climbing a set of stairs to get to the young drake's room. It was about time he had a room of his own, especially now that they had actually managed to get his growth under control.

"Spike?" she asked, knocking on the door gently. She was greeted by a cough, and her ear flicked twice as she frowned. "You alright?"

"Yeah, hang on a second, Twilight!" he said as she heard the tell-tale pitter patter of scaled feet as the dragon hurried to open the door. "What’s up?" he asked. She took a moment to look him over before smiling.

"Just wanted to check up on you. You feeling alright?" she asked. He rolled his eyes.

"Twilight, I'm fine, really. It’s just a cough." She glanced over his shoulder, a difficult thing to do now that he was as tall as she was. Sure enough, there were several more scorch marks about the room. She glanced back at him, worry evident in her features.

"You've... had it for quite a while now. Are you sure I—" Spike held up a claw.

"Look, Twi, I appreciate it. You know I do, but I uh, heh, don't think going to the dragon lands will help," he said, scratching his cheek and looking away.

"Please, Spike," Twilight said, placing a hoof on his shoulder. "I know you don't want me to worry but... I can't help it! I've done everything I could, but I can't figure it out. Please, won't you at least reconsider?" He placed his claw on her hoof and gently slid it off his shoulder before rubbing the back of his neck.

"I don't... I don't want anything to do with other dragons anymore. You know this."

"But you wouldn't have to stay! Just... We can go ask them for help! Dragons are notoriously secretive; they'd know what's wrong with you."

"Nothing's wrong with me!" Spike said defensively. He hacked a little, his green flames, taking on a more sickly acidic tinge, escaped his mouth in tiny bursts with each cough. "It’s probably just a part of growing up, like my insides probably readjusting or something," Spike said, not sounding terribly convinced himself. Twilight had a pitiable expression on her face.

"Spike..."

"It’s late, Twilight, I'll be fine. I'll see you in the morning," he said as he closed the door. Twilight just stood there, debating whether to knock again and demand he talk to her about it before just shaking her head and moving on. A part of her hoped he was right. They had figured out that they could reasonably control Spike's growth by giving him a horde, bit by bit, so they could avoid a repeat of that one birthday of his years ago while not preventing his natural growth. In truth, it had worked! Spike had been growing, and he was quite happy about it too, no longer being referred to as a 'baby' dragon.

It had, however, been followed by that cough. At first it was thought to be just a winter chill... one that took months to pass. It had been with him for three years now and showed no signs of going away. He also seemed to grow more lethargic, more tired. Not his usual laziness either – he seemed to have barely the energy to leave his room most days. It really was becoming worrying. Twilight, being Twilight, had taken it upon herself to try to research some way of getting help to him when it became obvious that no doctors in Equestria could really identify what was wrong with him, only to run into a brick wall.

No means of magically determining what was wrong with him had seemed to work, and none of her books or references specifically dealt with dragons or their health, dragons being a notoriously secretive species on the whole. It hadn’t been the first time she had tried to convince him about going to the dragon lands to seek help. It also hadn’t been the first time she had considered going behind his back to do so either. Going to the dragon lands had its own complications, however. If he was going to go there, he would have to go alone, and given how he had been treated by his fellows during the dragon migration years back...

She settled down in her room once more, pulling the book towards her and trying to find her place. More than once she had to reread the same page in order for it to sink in, such was the state of her mind with worry. She had to put it down as she let out a breath, turning to look up at the ceiling at the approximate direction of Spike's room, thinking.

--=--

Birds squawked and took flight. Things that crawled and slithered upon the earth fled the water's edge as something truly immense broke the surface of the lake, giving off a deep rumbling from its cavernous throat. The immense sload strode out of the water, its six webbed feet crushing reeds and stones under its weight as the amphibian pulled itself ashore. Its great toad-like head turned this way and that, sideways closing eyelids winking over its four eyes as it let out another mournful cry from its great maw as its neck opened to allow two immense sacs to expand and contract, exacerbating its great call of domination over all it surveyed.

The creatures of the swamp cowered in fear in their dens, hiding from its sight in the dark of the shade in futile hope its piercing gaze would not find them, burrowing into the earth in shallow tunnels where he could not reach unless he put one of its incredibly dexterous claws to the task of digging, flying in the air in the belief that they would be out of the reach of its incredible tongue which could snatch them from the air like its lesser cousins would catch flies. Yes, they had much to fear, for the sload only emerged from its watery home to feed or to die.

The great beast stumbled, letting out a pathetic sounding, pitiable ribbit before falling sideways with a thunderous boom, sending shockwaves out on the water. The swamp was silent for a time, as if holding its collective breath, waiting for the other shoe to drop, but it never came. The sload was apparently no more, but what could kill such a beast? Some great and terrible pox? Was it slain? Defeated in mortal combat below the waters in the murky depths where none dare tread? Perhaps, just perhaps, it was simply the creature's time to leave this mortal coil.

Because honestly, anything would be more dignified than death by indigestion.

A small bulge appeared on the sload's midsection before retracting and appearing several more times. Eventually, the sword cut through its thick hide, thrusting through the skin, keeping its momentum and swiping down, cutting diagonally through the monster's belly as both the pony the sword belonged to and the human practically fell out of the creature's stomach onto the ground along with the contents of said gastric system.

Handy gasped for air, greedily taking oxygen into his lungs as he began wiping off the slime, blood, and stomach contents from his chainmail, trying very hard not to think about what he was covered in. Jacques' cloak was ruined, but the swordspony didn't seem to be concerned with that, hunched over, retching, coughing and sputtering as he was. "That was... certainly something." Handy breathed in as much as he dared.

"Something!? Je vais vous montrer quelque chose, vous inculte, singe œillères! We got swallowed whole by that crapaud géant putain!" Jacques shouted, gesticulating wildly with his sword strapped to a forehoof. "I should never have agreed to help you fish!"

"Well, I'm sorry if I can't just lower my head to the ground and eat grass like the rest of you!" Handy shot back, getting unsteadily to his feet. "Some of us actually need meat in our diets."

"Ohh..." Jacques brought a hoof to his barrel. Handy did not notice as he continued ranting.

"See this hammer here? Yeah, good fucking luck hunting with that, and not one of thou knowst how to make a trap, and even if thou didst, the closest thing I have to a skinning knife is this useless little sliver of metal here!" he said, drawing his dagger. "Sure would be fun times back at camp if I went to town on a carcass with this little thing, hmm?"

"Pease... pitié..."Jacques groaned. His stomach could be heard churning as he stuck a hoof to his mouth.

"And how was I supposed to know there would have been a super frog waiting by the water's edge to swallow us up! Now I don't even want any food! Seeing the inside of a stomach, gugh, I think my mouth was open and everything when we—" It couldn't be held back any longer, the memory of the inside of the stomach finally doing the trick and caused the stallion to spill his guts out all over the human's legs. Handy just stood there in shock and disgust.

As Jacques finished up, the pony walked off miserably, knees shaking. Handy just looked down at his feet. "Great," he said, now covered in even more stomach contents, the smell of bile threatening to conspire together with his own nusea and cause him to vacate his stomach as well. He turned away, hands on his sides as he sighed heavily. Looked like neither of them would be having dinner today. "Just great."

--=--

It had been a few days since they had arrived in the forest, and food was becoming a problem. Whirlwind was a Godsend when it came to finding berries and safe plants to eat, as grass, apparently, was tasty but not that filling. Handy had to take their word for it, having taken to eating the occasional fish they actually managed to snag. He was surprised to learn that it was not that they could not eat meat, but that they did not. Jacques, took particular offence to the idea, claiming he was neither Henosian nor Concordian and that a civilized pony never ate meat. Which seemed to imply the ponies of those lands ate meat at least semi-regularly. All very interesting, but it didn't change the fact that food was still hard to come by right now.

However, by day three of wandering around, it became clear that there was another problem in their midst that simply could not be ignored any longer. A veritable elephant in the room as it were. Tell me, dear reader, when you imagine an alien world full of brightly coloured talking equines, how do you imagine it smelled? Apart from the obvious scent of an entire town of a certain species being immediately and noticeably different than, say, what an entire human town smelled like. You wouldn't notice the difference until you experienced it yourself. A human is a human after all, and on an intrinsic level, we all know what humans as a species smell like, so we don't really pick up on it.

It was a very different story in this world, and Handy was very aware of what a pony smell was and what a griffon smell at the base level was. It was just something you notice when you live in a multi-species environment. Ironically enough, ponies did not, in fact smell like horses, a revelation he’s been trying to wrap his head around since his days in Spurbay, but wasn’t quite so curious as to ask questions about it.

Even so, these people were civilized and washed regularly, probably more so than humans would. Handy knew griffons placed a high value on personal hygiene and presentation. So the base smell was often heavily covered up by any number of pleasant scents, with the exception of villages where indoor plumbing and body wash lotions were a luxury, or poorer parts of cities where you were most likely to find people who simply didn't give enough of a shit for regular washing. Now, since the festival started, it had been simply impossible for the majority of people present to bathe even once, and for participants in the tourney, who had to wear armour and fight as if their lives depended upon it, the situation had been markedly worse. They had to deal with it because, hey! It was a festival! It was going to smell rank – so put up with it or go home like the lonely loser you were.

Now, everyone involved here was currently covered in mud, dust, dried in blood, soot and dirt. In the case of 'Crimson', it was a wet, purple flower pollen from a particularly explosive plant she had strayed too close to. In the case of Handy and Jacques, they also happened to be covered in swamp water and the indescribable foul remnants of the sload stomach.

Basically, they all fucking stank, and it was getting on everyone's tits. Something had to be done.

"It's green," Crimson noted as the three of them stood at the gently flowing river's edge. Jacques, Handy, and herself were staring warily into the, frankly, bright emerald green water as it passed them by. Jacques flicked an ear.

"Monsieur, are you sure it's safe?" he asked, looking up at the human. Handy reached down, grabbed a branch, and stuck it in the water. When he didn't immediately hear the hiss of it dissolving in the water, he opted to hold it there for a few seconds longer before pulling it out. Just in case.

Nope.

The branch wasn't dissolved. Even still had that one green leaf at the end. Wet but completely none the worse for wear.

"Well, it isn't acidic," he concluded. "Maybe."

"Yeah but is it safe to... y'know, drink?" Crimson asked. They all turned back to the water and were silent for a moment.

"Mon cher, you are welcome to be the first to try," Jacques said. Crimson glared at him and smacked him on the withers with her tail. He just chuckled in response.

"I don't see why we can't just go to that lake you two found," she said.

"Because it was a swamp. I very much doubt thou wouldst find it pleasant to bathe in swamp water."

"Also a giant frog monster is likely to swallow you alive," Jacques said idly, inspecting a hoof. "As it did us." Handy looked over at him.

"I thought we had agreed never again to speak of that singular horror."

"Hmhm, you agreed, monsieur. I threw up," Jacques shot back. Crimson blinked. Handy was about to reply when a splash and very loud gulping drew their attention to further up the river. Whirlwind was head first in the water, drinking like a fish. He withdrew his antlered head with a pleased sound and waved over to the motley band that had been following him around for the better part of a week.

"Hey guys! Water's great!" he shouted. The three just stared disbelievingly at him for a moment.

'Sure,' Handy thought, 'Just dump your head in the bright green water that may or may not be something absolutely deadly and horrible. Why the fuck not?' It was not that he had never seen green water before. Common sense and a very basic inquisitive sense of adventure would educate someone right quick that seeing green bodies of water was quite common, usually because algae or perhaps because of what lined the bed of most rivers made it appear green. This was different – it was literally bright green water, so green that had it been night, Handy would probably be willing to bet money that it would glow in the dark.

When it became clear the deer wasn't going to die or have his face melt off, they decided the river would do for now, drinking their fill before taking turns washing up. Handy volunteered to go last so nobody would have a reason to approach the river while he was in it. Camp wasn't too far away, as none of them were particularly keen on wandering too far away from Whirlwind and whatever it was he was doing to protect them from the forest's predations. As a result, they each took their sweet, sweet time. Crimson alone took two hours as they waited for her to return. Handy didn't know much about how changeling magic worked, but for all intents and purposes, that fur coat of hers was real. Therefore, so too were the realities of it clumping together and matting. Whatever that pollen was certainly had caused that to happen.

It was approaching evening when it was his turn. While he wasted no time leaving the group to their discussions and headed towards the river, he actually hesitated before actually going into it. It was not as if he had never swam in rivers before – he had an awesome childhood like that. Hell, it was not that he had not bathed out in the middle of nowhere before, having fond memories of that spring he found out in the Badlands. It was just this forest.

Looking around, the forest was alive with sound: the low buzz of insects, the drone of distant animal calls, the rustle of tree branches and the crack of twigs underfoot, the birdsong that filled the air with music. A difference of ambience so stark it was almost frightening in and of itself. The idea of stripping to his skivvies, leaving his armour aside and wilfully wading into a river in a place like this made him more than a little nervous. Which was understandable, for God only knew what could pop out of the woods at any moment after all... or the river itself for that matter.

Once he had worked up the nerve and decided to take his war hammer into the water for good measure, he sucked it up and got to work removing his armour. Have you ever worn armour? Most of you probably haven't in any context, but needless to say it was a laborious process getting it on and off. There was a practical reason, after all, knights had servants do it for them, as it made it so much easier and faster. Not that Handy wasn't practiced in getting his own gear on and off or anything. While he was generally of the opinion that having servants was the tits, he did not care for the idea of people getting into his personal space like that, so he got used to armouring himself. This didn't make him any faster at it, so it took him nearly a full half hour to get it all off, the rents and tears in his cuirass making things difficult.

With that done, next came his clothes and undergarments, which he was significantly more circumspect in removing. Also, he noticed, the water was fucking cold. Leaning over the water's edge, he grimaced. He was actively contemplating the possibility of just saying fuck it and deal with being filthy until he got back to civilization... until the expensive brick decided to give him a little push. At the highest possible volume and then some. Startled, Handy jumped, tried and failed to regain his balance and promptly fell bodily into the freezing cold water. Spluttering curses as he broke the water again, he glared incredulously at his carrying bag and pouches on his pile of armour where the brick was stored.

When Handy was done swearing bloody revenge on the inanimate object, he pulled himself from the water. Well, nothing for it now. He was already wet; might as well finish the job. He gathered his gear and went further up river, looking for anywhere that would give him some additional privacy. He found a hill on the inside of a bend in the river, creating an overhang of earth above the water. He smiled. 'That'll do for now. No one will be able to spot me without coming into my line of sight from there.' And with that decided, it was all business.

Slowly, methodically, he began cleaning, starting first with his clothes, using smooth stones to help rub the worst of the filth off using the water while minimising fraying before allowing them to dry on low hanging branches of a nearby, much smaller tree. Next came his armour, plate by plate, link by link in his chainmail, using the remaining rags from the tournament arena to get the grime off of it. It was a long process as he began airing out and washing the inner padding of the armour, which itself was also in need of repair as much as the steel exterior. It felt good, peaceful even, and his mind wandered as he worked.

It was some time later that he realised he was staring at his own reflection in the river. Despite the constantly disturbed water, he could see himself clearly.

He looked filthy.

His face seemed different, thinner than it had once been perhaps, a testament to weight loss less from dedication and more from a shock to his system and general stress since coming to this world. His grey-blue eyes had deep, dark rings about them, as if he had not slept in a week. And truly sleep had not come easy most nights. His hair was slightly overgrown and in need of attention, matted and dirtied as it was, his brown goatee and moustache marred by a growing stubble, making his face seem all the dirtier. He looked haunted, honestly.

He splashed his face a number of times, letting the repeated shock of cold water waken his senses as he washed his face. It helped, but it didn't make the man staring back at him any less of a stranger. He shook his head, looking for anything else to distract him but finding nothing but the forest itself, the river sparkling gloriously as unfiltered sunlight hit it from a gap in the canopy above. The river was just wide enough to separate the immense trees on either side, creating a thin sliver of blue sky that followed the path of the water, creating the illusion of a river above to match the one below.

Pulling himself out and drying himself off – not the easiest thing to do when all you have were soaked, dirtied rags you had used to wash other things with – he pulled on his now dried clothes and just... sat for a while, sitting back against a large rock, hammer resting across his knees, watching the river pass him by. Though he shifted, uncomfortable from being without his armour, it was nice being unburdened for once. His head still raged with a million thoughts, a storm of emotion and concerns that failed to let up, a thousand problems and not nearly enough solutions for them all. But... sitting there, letting it play out as he watched the world go by... it was nice. It helped.

It didn't make it go away, not any of it. It did, however, let him get his head straightened, if only a little bit. He leaned forward, his forehead resting upon steepled fingers, his right leg bouncing in agitation as he fidgeted. He let out a shuddering breath. 'One thing at a time,' he thought to himself. 'Deal with it one at a time. First things first. Joachim's alive, right?'

That he was reasonably sure of. The servant of the Mistress seemed to have gone out of his way to avoid fighting the guards. That cloud on the ground nonsense was evidence of that, and he had been focused on him, 'Crimson', and the crown for some God forsaken reason. Joachim had to be low on his priorities. More to the point, that dragon, Ferix, was... he was no longer a threat. So he could be reasonably sure his friend was safe. The other knights he couldn't be sure about, but they could handle themselves.

'Crimson is safe. The real Crimson,' he continued. 'If the geas works both ways, then Crimson should be free by now, unharmed. I don't imagine Chrysalis likes the idea of becoming a slave any more than I do,' he reassured himself, his breathing evening out. He needed that unicorn, his only sure-fire way home and his only source of knowledge of what he was up against when it came to the Mistress, which he needed now more than ever before. God only knew what the mare would do with her freedom, knowing she was kidnapped and replaced by a changeling, but he couldn't worry about imponderables now. He looked at his hands. 'I'm alive. That's always a good start,' he thought happily. That was when his thoughts began drifting to pondering what he was dreading. He wouldn't be alive right now if it hadn't been for the one thing that he now hated most about himself, which brought his thoughts back to that damned mare. "Stellar. Eclipse," he hissed, clenching his hands into fists. "Sorry?" he laughed. "She said she was sorry about what she did to me?" he said, hitting his knee, seething anger pumping through him at the thought.

The audacity that she could think, to even think, that this was something she could just apologize for. That she could be forgiven! He wasn't about to forgive himself for what he did, let alone her. The fact that offering her blood saved his life didn't even enter into it. She was just returning the favour of what he did for her on the train, and to save her own hide too, end of discussion. He fumed on that for a while. It felt good to be angry again, focusing on something tangible, material, not whatever nonsense this forest had been throwing at him. He'd get his own back on her, some day. He refused to be cheated by the circumstances they had found themselves in. It wouldn't cure him, it wouldn't undo the hurt and the horror, it probably wouldn't even help him feel any better, but it would at least mean he did something about it, however small.

That... would have to do for now. He had other concerns to put ahead of revenge. The Mistress had come after him. More specifically, she had come after Crimson and the 'crown' that Fancy Pants had hired him to courier. That damn, little bundle of magical silver chains; he should've dumped it on Jacques the second he said he was Whirlwind's friend. Hell, he should've thrown it out of the airlock of his airship over wilderness. Now, however, finding it safely secured in Crimson's saddlebags despite them being damaged, he quickly moved it to his own bag, keeping it nice and close to him. Whatever it was, it was important enough for the Mistress to desire it. It belonged to the deer, given he was supposed to deliver it to them. Meaning, potentially, it was his bargaining chip if worst came to worst and he wanted that to hand in case it was needed.

Chrysalis' little schemes proved to be a blessing in disguise, putting Crimson well out of the Mistress' reach and replacing her with a body double, even it did end up putting Handy under a geas in order to secure her release. That, however, coupled with something Thorax had said, gave him an idea. He couldn't really afford to go back to Gethrenia, not right now, not when the Mistress was willing to risk so many lives for what was only a small gain. 'Unless that wizard was just incompetent,' Handy mused. Still, returning to Skymount without some sort of reprisal on the Mistress' followers just endangered his kingdom and his friends. He had to keep moving. This, however, moved him farther and farther away from his support base, his money, his lands, his ship, his supplies... everything.

Which brought him to a conclusion: Chrysalis needed him. More than he needed her. While, according to the geas, he had to do his damnedest to find what Chrysalis sought to liberate from the Mistress' possession, this only meant the Queen had a vested interest in seeing him succeed, giving him access to another support network entirely, one where, if he played his cards right, he could cut off cold turkey and go straight back to Griffonia as soon as it was convenient. Not beholden to the changelings. Information, secrets, access... all he'd need to do was make it look like he was giving in begrudgingly, let them think they had him, let them think they could use him. And he could start with Thorax. The little fae wanted in? Fine, he'd let her in. Let her think she had her hooves in him, and between her and the Queen, he could have the changelings do exactly what he wanted in order to get where he wanted, using what he learned about them to hold them hostage should they dare threaten him or his own again.

One sticking point of his plan is getting out of the stipulation that he has to show up to Chrysalis, in person, to hand over whatever magical whatchamacallit he had been tasked to fetch. That meant the queen probably had a contingency in place just in case Handy thought of doing what he was thinking right now. Ah well. Cross that bridge when he came to it, he supposed. Right now, however, his main focus was getting out of this forest.

Preferably alive.

--=--

"So we're not exiting forest!?" Jacques said incredulously.

"Oh, we are!" Whirlwind nodded excitedly

"By going deeper into it!?" Crimson said, her tone matching Jacques, with an unamused facial expression thrown in for good measure.

"Yes!" the stag smiled widely.

"Tell me again how going deeper gets us out faster," Handy said, trying, and failing, to rub his temples through his helmet.

"We don't die that way!" Whirlwind chirped. The remaining three participants in the conversation were quiet for a long, judging moment.

"I'm sorry, but what?" Handy said at last.

"Ok well, you know how I'm a deer right?"

"Right," the remainder said collectively.

"And this is the Greenwoods, right?"

"Right."

"And we're kinda sorta famous for making sure outsiders, y'know, stay outside?"

"Go on, mon ami," Jacques said. Whirlwind held out his hooves, indicating the three of them, and smiled nervously. Handy blinked.

"You mean the other deer will kill us?" he asked

"No!" Whirlwind said hurriedly. "No no! Haha, nonononono, noooo, that'd be ridiculous!" he said with what was meant to be a reassuring smile. It slowly wilted under their collective gaze. "...Maybe a little."

"A little!?" Crimson shouted.

"Look! Outsiders aren't supposed to be in this deep anyway! It’s dangerous to the tribes! And the forest being the way it is these days, I kinda want to get us somewhere safe before it stops listening to me..."

"What do you mean before it stops listening to you?"

"Nothing!" Whirlwind said hurriedly. "Nothing, just trust me on this!"

"Hold on," Handy said, holding up a mailed palm. "If we're in danger because we're so far deep, how is going deeper going to make us safer... and thus more likely to get out?"

"Well y'see!" Whirlwind said happily. "If we just head straight out, we're likely to run into other deer. That'd be bad."

"Whereas if we go deeper..." Jacques waved his hoof around.

"We'll still run into more deer!" Whirlwind smiled while the rest scowled "Only they'll be my tribe. My grandfather's the elder, so I can vouch for you!"

"Oh sure, that'll go well; let the crazy stag vouch for us!" Crimson snarked

"Cher, Whirlwind may be a bit... eccentric, but there is no reason to be going around throwing insults now, qui?"

"So far his idea of getting us out of here involves running into one tribe or another. That's not worthy of being called at least a little crazy?" she shot back.

"Ok, yeah, I will need a bit more convincing than that," Handy said, looking at the deer.

"Well, if we go there we can get water canisters and supplies. We kinda need those if we're gonna trek to the edge of the forest."

"Not buying it," the human said.

"Warm food?" Whirlwind said, looking at Crimson hopefully.

"Not good enough," she said. Whirlwind frowned, furrowing his brow and thinking, before glancing over at his bodyguard.

"Pretty girls?" he said, smiling at Jacques who shrugged.

"Eh, tempting." he said tapping his chin, "But then, there's beautiful mares everywhere, no?" Whirlwind sighed in defeat, looking down at the ground.

"Soft beds?" he said dejectedly. Handy shot up immediately.

"Sold!" he shouted, startling the two ponies present. "Let’s go," he said, getting up.

"Wait what!? Han— I mean, sir!" Crimson shouted as she jotted after the human. Whirlwind looked ecstatic and smiled triumphantly at Jacques, who let out an exasperated sigh.

"So... Does you say?" he asked as the other two went out of earshot.

"Are you mad?" she hissed at the human. "You heard him! The deer are likely to kill us!" Handy suppressed a smile at having the changeling follow him away from the others. All without suspicion too. Time to go to work.

"You been through the same forest I have?" Handy shot back, turning around. "This entire place is liable to kill us. And antlers over there let slip he's not exactly fully in control of whatever the hell is keeping this forest from going Stephen King on our asses."

"Who? What?" Thorax said.

"Never mind. Look, you want to know what I saw, the other day?" Handy said, losing his patience with the mare. Thorax was about to answer but he powered on. "Death. I saw a death carriage coming right for me. I don't know how, I don't know why. I am not even sure I still want to find out, but if it hadn't been for deer boy over there, I wouldn't be here anymore. This forest nearly killed me, Thorax," he said. "If you don't play ball, it'll kill you just as easy. And right now, that guy?" He nodded his head at Whirlwind, who was packing up camp with Jacques. "He's our way out."

Thorax looked at him like he had grown a second head. "A what carriage?"

"A death ca— You know what? Don't worry about it, because if we stick with Whirl, you'll never have to find out," he said. Thorax glanced back behind her, her ear twitching in irritation.

"I need the pendant," she said at last.

"And what exactly are you going to be telling the Queen?" Handy demanded. She turned back and glared at him.

"Explaining how we may or may not make it out of this forest alive. More precisely why."

"Oh good idea," Handy said, crossing his arms, "and what exactly do you think she'll be able to do about that?"

"It is not my place to know that," Thorax said, "I'm just reporting the change in our circumstances."

"Then that report can wait, because depending on how our meeting with Whirlwind's people go, I have a feeling our circumstances will continue to change drastically."

"All the more reason to keep her up to date!" Thorax hissed. "I haven't told her anything in nearly four days now."

"She can wait," Handy said. Thorax clenched her jaw.

"We made a deal, human. It was made under the assumption you would let me at least talk to her."

"And that I'd control when you would," Handy said. "I remember very well, Thorax."

"And when, pray tell," she said very carefully, "will I be able to do that?" Handy crouched so that they were at least eye level.

"When I can be sure those two won't be anywhere nearby," he said, "And certainly not if we're going to be running into more deer." He pointed to her. "I am not about to lose their trust because my 'servant' is acting weird and talking to a glowing pendant. That's one line of inquiry I'd rather avoid."

"So? I'm a unicorn mage after all. Ponies like me do weird things all the time."

"And they're a magically apt unicorn swordspony with an enchanted sword and a stag capable of telling an ensorcelled forest to shut up and sit down in a given area." Handy deadpanned. "I think they'd be able to tell something was up." Thorax held her gaze with the human. Her ear twitched once, then again before turning around, looking back at the other pair through the obscuring bushes.

She sighed.

"Right," she said at last. Before Handy could stand back up, her hoof shot up and pressed down on his shoulder. "But," she continued despite Handy automatically shoving her hoof off of him, "you need to hold up your end of the deal. Tell me what’s going on. What the Tartarus it was that you really saw?" she demanded. Handy made a show of thinking about it, looking down at the ground.

"...Alright," he said after a moment. "When we get the time, I'll tell you."

"Everything?"

"Most things," he said. She studied his helmeted face for a moment before breaking out into a light smile.

"Good. Well, glad we can trust each other enough to at least get that out of the way!" Handy nodded once, muttering noncommittally. She got up and walked on. "In that case then, let’s go ahead and follow this mad deer." She stopped, her smile turning to a frown. "Uh..." Handy looked back. Whirlwind was promptly walking down a completely different direction. Jacques, meanwhile, seemed to be looking for them.

"It appears our departure from the camp was a little premature," he said, not bothering to resist the smirk as he turned to look back at Thorax who, confident in her triumph, strode off where Handy had been heading half-cocked without really any clue where she was going. She rounded on him, face flushed with embarrassment. 'You know, changelings can control their emotions, right? I imagine they could. So is that genuine embarrassment or is she putting in the extra effort for the show of it?' he thought. She blinked and shook her head.

"Hmph," she hmphed, trotting past him and going out to meet Jacques. "You, are we going?"

"Ah, cher, we're just leaving. Whirlwind's leading the way," he said, smiling at her before turning to look at the human as he emerged from behind the trees. He cocked his eyebrow. Crimson walked after the stag without another word. "Sooo... Problems?" Jacques asked, giving Handy a curious glance.

"Just putting some concerns to rest, I assure you," Handy said.

"Je parie..." Jacques said with a light smirk. "And did you?"

"We came to an understanding," Handy said. Jacques chuckled at that as he followed after the others. Handy did likewise, though his smile disappeared as he began thinking. He said he would tell Thorax most of what was going on, letting her into his trust enough that she could be useful to him before letting her have a chat with Chryssi dearest. He had absolutely no intention of telling anything close to the truth of course.

She didn't need to know that, however.

--=--

"Oh for fuck's sake..." Handy cursed under his breath, hands in the air as his hammer was lifted from the belt loop where it was held and his dagger was taken from him. And his bag. And his helmet because of the bladed wings on the sides. When he was asked if he had any other weapons, allowing a small amount of spite to win over his better judgement, he had merely flashed them a bright, healthy smile.

That won him no friends but it at least made the nearest deer, little more than a young buck, back off a few steps. The others were having similar 'fun' times being systematically disarmed. Jacques had to be physically held to the ground before he was parted from his sword, cursing like a ship full of drunken Finnish sailors on an extended fishing trip to the Baltic Sea after crashing into a Russian trawler. Which was to say he did so loudly, crudely, and with vigorous enthusiasm borne of deep seated cynicism that was, frankly, shocking to witness. Handy was tempted to make a joke at his expense about being too attached to one's weapons... if he didn't feel just as naked and furious from being separated from his hammer.

Crimson had it easiest... except that she had to have some weird, black leaf wrapped around her horn that prevented her from using her magic to so much as make a pleasant night light. For a brief, terrifying moment, Handy thought her disguise would flicker and fail. Thankfully, it didn't, meaning that at least as far as their disguises were concerned, their magic didn't rely entirely on their horns.

You can imagine how well this went down. What’s that? You think they were jumped? That these armed and dangerous deer were waiting in the shadows of the trees, carefully analysing the approach of the party to their homes and then, with ruthless military precision and efficiency, ambushed them and had them so surrounded and thoroughly defeated they could disarm them on the spot?

Why yes, that would be the sensible assumption wouldn't it? Certainly more reasonable than Whirlwind and company blundering through the bushes and stumbling upon the ten deer as they were playing cards, catching them, almost literally, with their pants down. Which of course was exactly what happened.

What followed was everyone in the clearing looking at each other like, and the stupidity of it all was not lost on Handy, deer caught in headlights before Whirlwind broke the silence. Introducing himself and explaining who the rest of them were. The deer captain greeted them warmly. Turned out he was a cousin, Brittlebark. The two hugged before locking antlers in what was, Handy later found out, a complicated form of 'handshaking' among deer and not the aggressive behaviour he knew deer back home made of it. Then again, the deer back home were mere animals; these were sapient beings capable of interpretation.

The two continued to exchange excited pleasantries. The other deer were smiling and generally being friendly and amicable. Handy wasn't entirely sure what to make of it. Sure, he had dealt with lackadaisical guards before. Sure, he had given Joachim the third degree over his own troops failing to act in a situation where they should have. But hot damn, this was some shit. It was just as he was thinking those scathing thoughts about the quality of the deer soldiers that the captain, still with the smile on his face, gave the order.

In less than a blink of the eye, he and the others were surrounded by eight sets of antlers, each spike tipped with a long, sharp, serrated blade. It was practically a steel coat coming to a point, turning each spike into an individual spear. Given that on average they had ten forward pointing spikes to a single antler, that equated to them being surrounded by in and around, oh, one hundred and sixty spear tips. Math is a motherfucker, really. The remaining two deer guards, a pair of doe if he guessed right, both with two little stubs on their heads where the antlers would grow on a stag, stood at the ready behind the captain. Their stubs seemed to burst into ethereal, white flames and their eyes shone a bright, golden glow.

I mean, faced with that, you'd probably give up your weapons too.

"H-Hey, Brittle!" Whirlwind said, seated on his haunches as the two deer warlocks wrapped similar black leaves around the base of his antlers. They seemed to... lose a vitality to them that Handy almost didn't notice until it was gone. "Buddy, come on, we're cousins!"

"Hehe, yeah we are!" Brittlebark said enthusiastically, his fur a noticeably darker hue of brown than Whirlwind's, his eyes a bright blue and his antlers had similar, swirling carvings. He had a blue, woad marking coming from the scruff of his chest under his armour, snaking up his neck over his left cheek, and encompassing the entirety of the area around his left eye. Like the other guards, he wore a dark, almost black, barding with silver trim along the edges of individual plates. Intricate, flowing, blue script traced the edges of the plates where they met the trim.

"So you know..."

"Yeah?"

"Seeing as we know each other so well..."

"Yeah!"

"And you KNOW I wouldn't do anything if I thought it'd endanger the tribe."

"Oh, of course, you're not an irresponsible deer!"

"And I told you these guys are only here long enough so we can get supplies so I can lead them out, right?"

"Yeah, you did!"

"And you're my best cousin, right?"

"Yeah!

"So you could totally let us go if you wanted right?"

"Yeah!"

"And you'd do anything for family?"

"YEAH!"

"So how's about you don't arrest us and let me go talk to gramps and sort all this out!?" Whirlwind asked. Progressively the two drew nearer over the back and forth, they were cheek to cheek as Whirlwind drew him into a one-legged hug, both of them wide-eyed with the biggest, stupidest smiles on their faces as if talking to each other was the most exciting fucking shit ever.

'Dear God, there's more than one of him,' Handy thought.

"No!" Brittlebark replied, still smiling brightly.

"Oh..." Whirlwind's face fell. "Dang."

"Yep, sorry, but you're all under arrest, chieftain's orders for trespassers," Brittlebark said, having the decency to smile apologetically as he shrugged his shoulders. Now see, that always bothered Handy. Ponies, griffons, and now deer, he'd seen them all shrug like that and it just seemed weird. Granted, no weirder than how they could move their limbs in directions they logically had no business bending or stretching to and do so with no discomfort. Or how he saw ponies and griffons alike sitting on chairs. Like on their asses, not even on their haunches, letting their legs hang over the edge of their seats without discomfort. Alongside how griffons had teeth in their beaks and said beaks were quite malleable despite being hard, or the worrying implications of what he had learned was called a hippogriff he saw back in Ifrendare. It looked like he now had to throw out assumptions about basic skeletal structure of the various races of this world and start from scratch. One surprise after another, it seemed.

"I was under the impression that thine tribe's leader was Sir Whirlwind's grandfather," Handy said. Brittlebark blinked up at the tall human in surprise before giving Whirlwind a level look and tutting.

"What have you been telling the outsiders, cousin?"

"Nothing!" Whirlwind said, holding up his hooves and smiling nervously. There was a clack and the sound of jangling metal, and Whirlwind looked down at his hooves to see shackles, a dumbfounded expression across his face. The does moved to each of them in turn, magically levitating the restraints and putting them in place. They had fun trying to lift Handy's arms up to shackle them though, for only his left hand could be gripped with magic. He only co-operated and allowed them to put the shackles on after a helpful poke to the side with a bladed antler to remind him that his position was currently non-negotiable.

Whirlwind kept protesting and yapping off to his cousin and the guards, who for their part, were only too happy to trade banter with equal joyfulness and enthusiasm as they escorted the lot of them through the forest. All of them. Handy got the worrying impression that, far from being an outlier, Whirlwind was probably a typical example of what deer were like. And they were going to be held captive in a city full of them. Joy. The woods got progressively warmer as they went, and Handy noticed the unusual prominence of fireflies as they travelled. Or at least he thought they were fireflies – it was still the middle of the day.

"Hey, you!" he turned to look down at the voice. It was one of the doe guards. Like their males, female deer were slightly taller and lither in build than ponies, but judging by how surprisingly sturdy Whirlwind turned out to be, that should not be mistaken for fragility. Their ears were all the more prominent on their heads for their lack of antlers, giving them a disquieting impression of baldness. He assumed that was so at least. The two doe here certainly had no manes, although both did possess odd colouration along their scalps and the back of their heads that did not match their fur colour. Their muzzles were slightly shorter and more gently curved, actually that description could be applied to their whole bodies but it was hard to tell through the barding. What caught his attention, though, were the stubs of bone protruding from their heads where antlers would grow on a stag. His proximity allowed him to notice impossibly intricate indentions in the bone taking the form of swirling patterns and designs. Like the ones on Whirlwinds antlers but more densely compacted.

"Can I help you, ma'am?" Handy said, making no attempt to disguise his irritation with the guard. She smiled happily up at him as if she weren't an arresting officer.

"Why do you glow like that?"

"Like what?"

"Like that!" she said, pointing a hoof at his right shoulder. Looking around, he blinked and hissed as he stared straight a blinding flare of light as a beam of sunlight pouring through a particularly large break in the canopy straight onto him. Meaning while he hadn't noticed it, he must have shone like a beacon.

"It’s... because magic, mostly," he said. 'Fuck explaining.'

"Oooohhh can you teach me?"

"What? No."

"Aww come on! I'm a good spellcaster! I rated top in my militia for the hartsight!"

"Pardon?"

"Hey whatcha talking about?" another voice interrupted.

"The outsider's being mean!" the doe whimpered.

"Whaaaat!? Hey, why are you being mean to Shadowfire?" the stag demanded, shooting the human a contemptuous look.

"I am doing nothing!" Handy protested.

"He won't tell me how his armour gets all shiny!" she pouted.

"Yeah, why won't you tell her how you get your armour so shiny? What polish do you use?"

"Actually he said it was magic."

"...What magic polish do you use?"

'What fresh fuckery is this!?' "It’s not polish!" Handy shouted, trying to impose order on the impromptu interrogation by his captors about how fucking shiny his armour was.

"But it’s shiny?" the stag said, screwing up his face in confusion.

"Only when the sunlight hits it!" the doe pointed out.

"Oh cool! So its sun armour?"

"It is not sun armour!"

"But it glows in the sunlight!"

"It also sparkles in the moonlight, but that doesn't make it mo—"

"Hey, maybe you can make our armour like that? It'd be pretty cool!"

"Hey I asked first!" Shadowfire protested

"I'm just asking!" the stag replied.

"Yeah well, wait your turn, Gust." she harrumphed, turning her nose to the air. Handy snapped.

"I cannot believe this!" Handy exclaimed to the snickering behind him that was doubtless the still disguised Thorax and the chortle of an amused Jacques. He shook his shackles in frustration. "Will the two of yo— thee, shut up!?"

"Why?" Gust asked.

"Why? WHY!?" Handy shouted. "You're guards! Professionals! We're under arrest! You're not supposed to be buddy buddy with us!"

"Actually I'm neither!" Gust said with a smile. "I'm actually a ranger. I was just hanging out with these guys." Handy almost, almost broke his face in. The only thing holding him back, aside from immediately being perforated by over a hundred deadly spear tips, was the forest. He didn't want to be caught on his own again, so breaking faces and making a run for it didn’t appeal to him nearly as much as it should have. He shook with contained anger and frustration. "So you should totally teach Shadowfire to be shiny. And stop being mean."

'Are you actually for real, you fucking tit!?' "Yes," Handy said through gritted teeth. "You're right. I should totally share with you my secrets of radiant faggotry." The doe gasped.

"Is that what the spell is called?" she squealed.

"Sounds cool! What does it mean?" Gust asked.

"Hey hold up, what’s all this then?" a third interjected.

"Shadowfire and Gust are getting the human to teach them the art of radiant faggotry," the second doe answered, who apparently had been eavesdropping.

"Hey! I want to learn radiant faggotry too!"

"Me too!"

"Well wait your turn," said the first doe, sticking her tongue out at the stag. "I asked first."

"Aww, but you'll just keep the faggotry to yourself!"

'Oh my Jesus...' Handy couldn’t press his hands into his face hard enough.

"So, sir," Crimson said, in her most perfect imitation of Crimson's disinterested monotone, "still think this was our best possible option?"

Handy just groaned.

--=--

He was out of breath, his clothes ruined and dirtied as he galloped down the cobblestone streets of the city, weaving between carriages and wagons to avoid the press of the crowds on the hoofpaths. Turning a corner, he ran into a poor courier pony gathering up news sheets for that evening’s edition of the herald, sending the sheets flying and landing in the dirty puddles by the kerb. A candlelighter with his long light pole hurriedly jumped out of the way of the speeding stallion, dropping the pole and extinguishing the flame before he could light the candles in the glass street lamps.

A mailed guardsmare with a feathered plume in her helm called out to him and gave chase when he refused to stop. He muttered under his breath with the last vestiges of his power as he turned into an alleyway. Not five steps down from where it met the street, a stone wall appeared, bursting from the ground. The guardsmare turned the corner and could not stop herself in time. The weighted momentum carried her and she crashed headlong into it, knocking her out cold as the earth pony mare slid down the wall to the ground in an adorable bundle of armour and suffering.

The rain began pouring harder as ponies hurriedly vacated the streets. There was a lightning flash in the distances and the roar of the waves and the ringing of a bell in the nearby harbour foretold of a rough night. The pegasi had apparently been putting off this storm front for quite a while due to a busy trade season and had to make up for lost time. He didn't care. What mattered was getting somewhere safe.

His last safe place in the world.

He thundered past the gate guard of the enclosed estate. The black cloaked guard, recognising one of his employers, did not protest being rudely shoved out of the way. He threw open the doors to the foyer, breathing heavy. These were palatial apartments reserved for those who had the means and the inclination to live with privacy and comfort in what was usually considered the most squalid part of the city.

"Can I help you si—" The maidservant stopped as she was given a death glare from the haggard stallion. "Uh— I'm, I'm sorry sir, I didn't recognise you!"

"Has anypony been to the third floor today?" he asked, his voice was still that same, measured baritone. Straining between exhausted, wild, manic paranoia and fear, it was plainly evident to even the humble serving pony, that this was a pony on the edge of snapping.

"N-no sir, nopony has been to your apartments! I haven't even been allowed to clean it!"

"Then you just might still have a job by the end of tonight," he said harshly, sneering at the mare as he hurried up the polished wooden staircase, hooves splashing mud and water all across them as he left the frightened servant on the bottom floor. Doors and false columns embedded in the walls to evoke a classical aesthetic, mimicking the ancient pegasi architecture of the lost cloud cities of Air and Downshire, rushed passed him as he made his way to third floor. He let himself collide bodily with the door, his shoulder smarting as the hard oak wood refused to yield. He cursed, reaching into the folds of his ruined jacket with his muzzle, trying to find his key.

Frustration overcame reasoned thought, and with an aggravated noise, he turned and bucked open the door. The wooden construction splintered as the door handle and the wood around it exploded inwards, unable to withstand the strength of an earth pony. He hurriedly made his way into the dark room that hadn’t been touched in nearly a year. The soft sofas, tables, dressers, the fireplace, chairs, empty bookcases, the unlit lamps and candelabras were all covered in a layer of dust and grime. Several somethings scurried away from the light that poured in from the hall behind him. The squeak of rodents could be heard, and cobwebs could be made out of the corners of the ceiling where more sophisticated beasts made their dwelling, preying on the lesser pests of the building.

The drapes were closed yet still the flash of lightning outside filled the rooms with brief bursts of incandescent light, colouring everything a pale shade of blue as the rain hammered against the window, the increasing gale whistling, probing, and trying to enter the shelter the walls gave him from the elements. He paid it no mind as he began tearing the place asunder, overturning tables, pulling out drawers, every nook and cranny searched until he found something, anything. He had lost too much, far too much. He couldn’t let himself forget. He had to find it before he did before it was all gone.

He couldn’t find anything. Not one scrap of paper, not even an idle scribble. By the end of his desperate search, quills, parchment, and ink spills from broken bottles stained the floor, and he was no closer to his prize. “Where is it?” he hissed desperately. “Where the buck is it!?” It had to be here – he had made copies! Copies upon copies! Entire nights wasted away painstakingly copying every curvature, every brush stroke, every intricate design. He had drew and wrote and stroked until his jaw had run raw from manipulating the brushes and quills hours on end. He had stored them all away so that whenever he went dry he could get at them, read them, remember them once again, and regain his power before they slipped from his mind and dragged what remained of his memories with them.

However, they were not here. No grimoire, not one single scrapbook, not even a parchment with so much as a doodle. But how could that be? He had purchased these apartments under a pseudonym, all above board otherwise. No one had any access to them. It had been a year, and not a single soul had entered these rooms. Tartarus, he doubted even he was here a single time since day one when he had set everything up. He never even met any of the staff. He was surprised that maidservant had even recognised him when he came in the door.

And then it hit him. The lightning struck, and his haggard visage was bathed in a stark blue-white light, creating stark shadows under his eyes as they widened to the size of dinner plates in realization.

“Looking for something, Thunder?” the erudite tones caused the stallion to whirl on the spot. In the doorway, upright on two legs, stood the tall imposing figure of Chopper. The diamond dog merely gazed at Thunder impassively. Dressed simply in the leather collar and long coat of the sea dogs who made their living working at the harbours and docks of the cities of more civilized races, his fur was a simple patchy grey interspersed with off white. His eyes were blue, and they cut through the darkness of the room as if they were the piercing beam of a lighthouse.

Thunder’s hooves shook, and his jaw locked as he was caught halfway between fury and utter terror. “You,” he spat, a tremendous effort to say something intelligible.

“I,” Chopper said. He turned to look at the pony beside him. “Your payment is outside. Ask the guard at the front gate,” he said to the maidservant.

“Yes sir,” she said. She looked at Thunder’s direction for a brief moment before turning away and walking down the stairs at a brisk pace. Chopper watched her go, the corner of his mouth twitching in a frown momentarily.

“Useful things, ponies,” he said, turning back to Thunder. “Especially ones with cutie marks related to being light on their hooves. Not a single hoofprint anywhere.” He whistled. “Impressive, isn’t she?”

“What are you… What are you doing here?” Thunder said carefully, pausing to swallow. His eyes darted. The door was the only way out of the apartments besides the windows. He may have enough left in him to slow his descent to avoid breaking his legs.

“Have you had any sleep yet?”

“W-What?”

“Sleep. Have you had any yet?”

“What sort of… I… don’t know?” Thunder asked, unsure. He had been running an awful long time. Getting out of the festival grounds and getting far enough away had taken a tremendous amount of power. Warping was different from teleporting in that respect. A powerful enough mage could trace a pony’s teleportation destination. Warping, however, allowed a traceless transposition. It also allowed a much greater range, but it was loud, flashy, and destructive to the surrounding environment.

He had gotten as far as the border of Firthengart and Equestria on the first warp alone, long before news of the fiasco at the festival could reach anywhere farther than Ironcrest. From there, it was short jump after short jump, getting from one bolthole to another. He had gone through three, only to find them ransacked, their stashes robbed. He had too much old magic for far too long to dream anymore. One day bled into the other. He honestly did not know if he had slept at any point since the festival. He had grown progressively more paranoid, restless, and weaker, expending more and more power to get to his final ray of hope, his home away from home in Manehatten.

And now that he was here, that ray of hope was snuffed out. The dog who now strode into the room, his paws disturbing the thin layer of dust on the hardwood floor, had killed it. "You should get some rest after we're done here," Chopper said, taking a seat in a rather expensive looking armchair, pulling his long tail around so as to not harm it. "It'll do you good."

"What are you doing here!?" Thunder hissed, eyeing the now empty doorway.

"Please," the dog said, studying the pony impassively, "Don't. I'd only have to stop you and that would be, how do you so eloquently put it? Ah, yes, it'd be such a bother." Thunder glared back at him.

"Where. Were. You?" he spat through his impotent fury.

"Safe," Chopper said, steepling his forepaws. "You overstepped your boundaries. Created quite the fiasco."

"I had everything under control!"

"Is that what you call it?" Chopper asked, inclining his head thoughtfully. "Wasting resources on the dragon and blowing a hole through the stadium? In plain sight of guards, kings, and hundreds of spectators?"

"You were supposed to back me up! Provide a distraction to allow me to escape."

"And I would have," Chopper enunciated carefully. "That was until your own lack of foresight set half the festival on fire, bringing far more attention and trouble to the situation that I could not contain it without showing up personally and using even more old magic. Fortunately for you, the human killed the dragon. There won't be anything pointing it back to you, aside from untraceable gold and gems."

"What do you mean killed him?"

"Did you not find it odd that the human came upon you in the middle of the disagreement you were having with the stag and unicorn? Completely unmolested by a giant, fire breathing lizard?" Chopper asked simply. Thunder stammered. "Yes, I was watching," the dog continued. "Your little overpriced distraction didn't nearly distract him long enough. At least now we have a fair idea as to why Crimson wasn't enough to bring him to heel."

"I saw him bleeding out on the ground!"

"Apparently that proved more a nuisance than anything. Oh, and thank you for admitting to nearly killing the mistress' prize. She'll be so glad to hear you care so little for her orders."

"You're one to talk! You bailed on the operation!" Thunder shouted. Chopper held up a paw.

"Lower your voice."

"If you had of deployed your dogs like you were supposed to, neither of us would be in this mess!"

"I said, lower your vo—"

"N-Now, the human and the acolyte are dead, and the crown is lost. That damned deer ha—!"

"Shut. Up," Chopper said. His voice was barely louder than it was before but cut Thunder's rant short. "My rear is plenty covered from her wrath, I assure you. Your flank, on the other hand...," Chopper said, letting the threat hang. Thunder took a few steps back, bloodshot eyes darting around, trying to calculate escape routes.

"I-Is that why you're here? T-To—"

"No. If the mistress wanted you dead, we wouldn't be talking right now."

"What? But... How... She doesn't give ponies second chances..."

"No. She does not," Chopper said, remaining quiet for a moment after that. Thunder waited for him to respond before losing his patience.

"Well!?"

"Yes?"

"Then why isn't she offing me!?" Thunder exclaimed, advancing on the dog, who remained calm and seated.

"Do you really think she saw fit to tell me why?" Chopper responded.

"Then what are you doing here? We lost everything!"

"No we did not," Chopper said, exhaling a sigh. "Did you really think the deer was capable of vaporizing himself and the others?"

"What else could it have been!? I sensed no magical signature. It wasn't old magic and wasn't teleportation. It had to be a-a bomb of some sort!" Thunder rattled off, his own calm demeanour and measured tone breaking under the strain. "They're gone!"

"Displaced," Chopper corrected.

"What?"

"Why do you think Mistress wanted the crown of winter?"

"I-I don't know, the same reason she wants all the artefacts she orders us to get? Power?"

"Do you ever see her use any of the artefacts she has?"

"Of course not! I wouldn't dare to presume! I like living!" Thunder verbally backpedalled. Chopper let him have his dignity before continuing.

"There are more things in that forest she wants, Thunder. Things which, yes, we could obtain ourselves, but which would be a costly waste of resources and take far too long. The death of the last Lord of Winter was a golden opportunity. By obtaining the crown, we could have extorted the deer to bring us what we wanted themselves."

"But that's lost to us."

"Yes." Chopper leaned forward. "But we think the human and the acolyte may not be."

"S-So?" Thunder tried to piece it all together. "H-How... Where does this leave me?" Chopper leaned back in the chair, a gentle smile gracing his short muzzle as if something was just confirmed for him.

"You will have another chance to bring them to her," Chopper said, raising a paw to stop the pony before he interrupted. "The human, when he emerges from the Greenwoods—"

"You mean if," Thunder said, pointing at him. Chopper frowned.

"For your sake, it had better be when. He'll be coming to find you," Chopper said. "From what we know of him, this is likely inevitable."

"H-Hold on! I don't have much power left. M-My writings, the spells, the magic, I don't have any of it! I-I'll forget everything. How am I—" Thunder stopped as Chopper reached into his coat, pulling a rectangular cloth bag out from under it. Tossing it to the floor, several thin books and sheets of parchment spilled forth onto the floor before his hooves. He stared at them disbelievingly. "Where... Where's the rest of it?"

"That's it. It’s all she will allow you."

"But I can't—!"

"You will!" Chopper shouted, standing up. Thunder backed up a step. "Are you so ungrateful for your life you will gripe and moan about what little scraps Mistress sees fit to give you? That you will be allowed to remember anything at all instead of being allowed to become an incontinent, gibbering wreck of a pony who forgets how to put one hoof in front of the other? After the disaster you caused!?" Chopper glared at the pony, teeth bared, and a growl rumbling from the depths of his canine throat.

"The human will find you. One way or another. This is how the Mistress wants it done. You will subdue him. You will recapture the acolyte Crimson. And you will crawl on your belly before the Mistress and pray she is satiated enough with your offerings such that she doesn't forcibly warp your bones and flesh into a living furniture piece so that your every living moment is spent in unnatural, excruciating agony for your failure and disrespect!" Chopper said, advancing with each word until the pony was pressed against the wall. "You will not see her again until then. As of this moment, you do not have a seat at the council. You are a pawn, no longer worthy of your vaunted position, existing at her pleasure. We will be watching you, do you understand me?"

"I-I…"

"I said—"

"Yes! Celestia yes!" Thunder shouted. Chopper glared warningly at him, holding up a single digit pressed against his lips for silence.

"Good," Chopper said simply as he began to stalk back towards the door. "Read them. Keep them safe and above all else, as always, don't let anypony else see them," he said without turning around.

"Wait," Thunder said, his mind working to process the implications of everything that just happened. "The maid, the thief you hired, is she one of ours? What if she read the magic?" he asked. Chopper stopped and turned to regard the stallion. He smiled lightly.

"What maid?" he asked innocently. Equestrian was his first language unlike most dogs and it showed, his erudite tones making the question sound genuinely inquiring and earnest. That was before his expression fell to a more customary scowl dogs were known for. "Enjoy what memories you manage to retain with that power. What you lose will stay lost forever," he said, taking one last, long, cursory look over the rooms Thunder occupied. "And get some rest."

And with that, the pony was left in the room on his own, staring as the shadow of the dog disappeared from the lit hallway beyond his broken door, the disturbed dust of the floor and the armchair the only hint of his presence. Thunder let go of a breath he didn't know he was holding and looked at the pages and books on the floor. The parchments was nearly black with ink from the intricate symbols and calligraphy that filled them. His head was already feeling foggy. Clouds gathered at the edge of his mind, memories fading into obscurity, as if he were watching them play out from behind frosted glass, the price of his folly and his years of use of the magic catching up with him with a finality that frightened him.

Briefly, he considered the ominous possibilities as to why the Mistress would give him a second chance when she never gave anypony such mercy. But only briefly. Then he threw caution to the wind and practically dived at the notes, scanning pages after page, committing as much of the writing to memory as fast as possible. Slowly, agonizingly slowly, he felt his memories solidify as others became washed out and grey, became less and less his own and more those of a stranger. A stranger who was a happier pony, one with a family, one with a job, one who had fantasies of power and influence. A pony who writhed in guilt ridden agony as his ambitions led to those who were once closest in his life to forget he ever existed, who came to terms with the price of his power and enjoyed its use and how easy it had made the task of living now that he had all the time in the world to live. A pony who took it easy, who didn't really want to deal with any bother, who wanted things done nice and simple and who looked for the easiest means of doing so. A pony who disappeared.

Thunder did not know this stranger, and like with all strangers, he slipped from his memory, for he was not worth remembering. Why would he be? Who was he anyway? Nopony important. All he remembered was the power, that he served his mistress and had done so for years. That he had failed her, and that this was his one chance to change his ways. To shape up and make amends.

Still, he couldn't shake the feeling he was neglecting something important. He reached up, patting down his mane, and sighed in resignation.

He forgot his hat. Of course, that was it.

--=--

A stiff, wide-brimmed parasol opened up and hovered over the steps leading from the doorway to cover the dog as he exited the building. A deep blue aura held the base of the contraption, shielding the unicorn's employer from the torrential rain. The black cloaked pony held the gate open, his face obscured by a peaked helm covered in a rain protector the same shade as his clothes.

"I assume you paid the mare," Chopper said, walking through the gate and turning. His carriage was just up ahead.

"There was a complication," the surprisingly young voice of the stallion replied. Chopper stopped in mid-stride momentarily and took a breath before continuing, glancing around. Most of the street lamps had been lit, but not all of them, and there were no ponies left out in this weather, thankfully.

"Such as?"

"I took her to the carriage and presented her payment, let her count it as you said. I did a brief scan." The unicorn held his hoof to his muzzle to pretend to cough, motioning as to how he had performed it. "Old magic – horn didn't light up. She didn't suspect anything. She had wards to throw off most scrying spells. However, beneath her outfit and coat, I detected several... pieces."

"How much?"

"Enough for the Mistress to want to lynch you and for you to throw me under the stampede to placate her," the unicorn said softly, with a grimace. "I'd rather avoid that." Chopper snorted, withholding a chuckle. Hard Knock was honest and had no illusions. He liked that about the pony.

"Awake?" he asked as they stopped at the side of the carriage. There was a single earth pony up front waiting to haul it off.

"Barely. Disposal?" he suggested. Chopper shook his head.

"Useful," he said, opening the carriage door and stepping into the darkness inside. The door closed, and he was greeted with the sound of muffled heavy breathing and an acrid stench of burnt ozone. She was scared. Good. This would be easier then. Hard Knock ensured the door was tightly closed before trotting to the front and slipping into his harness. He traded a few terse words with his partner before they both took off with a grunt of effort, pulling the carriage as smoothly as was possible down the cobblestone streets as it was battered by the wind and rain. "I assume you understand why you are here right now instead of relaxing by the corner of that hole in the ground you call a home where you light your fires," he said, to be met in response with the sounds of struggling and unintelligible noises that, had they not been blocked by cloth, would have been words. "Don't try to escape; the bonds that hold you aren't the sort you can worm your way out of."

There was a blinding flash of light, and small glass jars attached to the walls of the carriage lit up with blue flames. The mare lay on her side on the seat across from him, her tan coat and yellow mane frazzled and burnt in places, her eyes bloodshot and a small rivulet of blood falling from her left nostril. Her maid's uniform and coat was a smouldering ruin from the shock Hard Knock had given her. Her large, terrified, green eyes looked up at the dog pleadingly. "I despise greed, Miss Light Weight. I need you to understand that," he said, leaning forward. "Almost as much as I hate laziness. I do, however, appreciate competence. Sneaking a few bits and pieces for yourself without my noticing? Impressive."

Light Weight continued struggling, putting in her earth pony strength to no avail, now on the verge of panicking, wondering why she couldn't slip the ropes off of her legs, having been more than skilled enough to do so. The bindings seemed to constrict tighter the more she moved, to the point where it was beginning to seriously hurt. Futile struggling like this did not amuse Chopper. Ponies should know when they were beaten as far as he was concerned.

"Stop. Struggling," he growled. Light Weight focused back on the dog, yelping fearfully. "I do not care for theatrics. If I wanted to be rid of you for your duplicity in trying to cheat me, you simply wouldn't be here. Or anywhere else for that matter." He paused. "I am going to offer you an opportunity, Miss Light Weight. You can be a rich mare if you agree. If you should refuse..." He trailed off, shrugging simply, giving her a wry smile. "We have ways of making ponies disappear." His face fell into a scowl. "Do you understand me?" The pony just stared up at the dog in horror, comprehension dawning on her as the first tear streamed down her face. Chopper, satisfied, sat back.

He brought his paw to his chin, rubbing it thoughtfully as he stared off into space, watching the city pass him by through the tinted glass windows of the carriage, letting the mare stew in her fear, imagining all the terrible things he could force her to agree to. "How do you feel about a little trip to Canterlot?" he asked.

Author's Note

Filler Chapter is filler. Felt like we needed a break from the forest to have a look-see at whats going on in other parts of the world. It means extending this half of the arc where Handy is in the forest by another two chapters but hey, we need a smooth transition for the mood change. We've been spending a mite too much time on the dark tag recently. Just needed a little grey first.

Also this chapter was initially titled Reasonable Concerns but I changed it because it sounded like the header of a memo you get from your manager about your work performance.

Interlude - Children of Men

There was always that low-sounding reverberation in these huge empty caverns beneath the surface, when the harsh wind blew and its icy claws dug into the earth wherever it might, and blustered and gusted and stormed its way downward into the earth as deep as it was able. All the while, the sound of these gales could be heard from miles off, giving an unsettling, constant ambiance even here, where the earth was still grey and cold from the frozen northlands above.

She trod along the path, ancient stonework, broken and covered in a layer of dirt from a millennia and a half of disuse, lining the way. The walls, so uneven and warped from the fires that raged here once upon a yesteryear, were indistinguishable from the grey rock that had intruded upon their sanctity, bursting through the sides of corridors and crashing down and blocking off other sections of this, the bowels of the ancient Castle Midnight.

She had never been here herself, of course, but she had heard of the rebellion and dimly recalled it through the mists of ages that clouded her mind. That was another thing true immortals did not need to worry about. They might forget, true, but they didn’t have to worry about memories becoming so old, and jumbled, and lost, and mixing together as she did. Merely another price she had to pay, she supposed, one of many for a fool’s bargain.

That was why she was here—she did not remember the sacking. She had not been here when the justicars and the imperial army in victory descended upon the keep, robbing and raiding and destroying as they went when great Tirek the Betrayer fell and was banished. No, she had not been here, but she knew who was. It was this one she sought out to remember, to recall her visage from the mists, to once again know the face of the one she hated out of envy and spite… and resentment for achieving what she could not.

The first stirrings of the long forgotten had been when Tirek had made his return. She had been surprised to learn he had been banished to Tartarus. What little she remembered of the Crystal Queen, mercifulness and magnanimity were not among her most noteworthy traits. Not in her eyes at least, so perhaps it had been her justicars who had counselled such… wisdom, or Tirek’s soft-hearted fool of a brother. Perhaps the alicorns regretted not killing the traitor when they had the chance.

And then there was this new one, her rebellious property, spawn of an abortive attempt to claim the weapon of another world and constant thorn in her side. To add injury to insult, he had stolen from her, not killed, stolen her acolyte. She had been in a fury then, but it had been made worse, so much worse in the wake of the debacle with the crown, something that had not been even remotely related to the human, yet he would involve himself! But the final straw had been when her… when Meranax had raised concerns over her drive to obtain what was hers.

The comparison she had made to how she acted now and how she was back then, and more fool her for confiding her concerns when she had met her when she was but a young dragon, had upset her. She had to know. Was there something that she recalled between the now and then that caused her to react unthinkingly? Something she responded to instinctively but her wits had not caught? It was worth investigating, especially since she was doing as… as it now instructed, for the sake of the deal they had made. For the sake of obtaining for herself the goal that all of this was working toward these past two thousand years.

Her breath frosted upon the air, for her body was warm, but it had been so long since she had taken note of either cold or heat that she looked upon the small cloud of air that passed her face with mild curiosity at seeing something strange and unfamiliar. Otherwise, she felt nothing. The way was dark and black, but she no longer needed the light to see things as they were. If she was right, then the victorious imperials in an age past, in a moment of whimsy, wonder, and drunk on their moment of triumph, and possibly just plain drunk, had in a blink of an eye erected a memorial here in the heart of the castle.

She turned a corner and could see a glint of light in the distance. Sensing she was near her target, she hurried her pace. Nopony was near here, here on the border of the rump state of the Empire and remorseless north of Henosia. Nopony lived here, for who would want to? Nopony ever came to these ruins, for what was there to find? She was in no danger. She never really was anymore.

She emerged from the dark corridors into the dimly lit interior of what had once been the ritual chamber, circular with a domed roof which had a spherical grate in the centre above. It allowed light to flow down a secret shaft built into the keep's interior, so that when the times were right, Tirek would perform his foul rites, or so the legends had said. Personally, she had no time for the mystical nonsense the tale purported. If Tirek had achieved even one of the things he had been alleged to attempt, he would have already become a god. She snorted and kicked a stray shard of crystal that had broken and lay on the floor before her. Still, the shaft, or rather what was left of it after the sacking had all but destroyed the magnificent castle, allowed what pitiful light from above to enter. That was all that was needed in order to see.

Crystals in immaculate, wave-like formation spread across the walls, blue in hue like ice, washing over the walls in a clockwise formation. They spiralled about the grate in the centre of the ceiling, obscuring and defacing the ritual engravings of the walls, rendering whatever power they might wield useless. The floor resounded with her hoofsteps like glass, a clean sheet of crystal covering its surface in reflective triangles of white and turquoise. Ah, but in the centre of the room lay the main site, the sign of the queen's victory. In pink and red crystal it rose above her, the queen and her winged victories in the form of the alicorns about her, rampant in triumph upon a crystal dais, resplendent in their armours and immaculately detailed to the point where she could tell each of the alicorns apart in spite of their uniform armours and lack of colours. Such was the queen's artistry with crystalline magic that for the briefest of seconds, it had all come back to her mind, and she feared she might have accidentally stumbled upon her old nemesis in the flesh.

A shadow of what might have been a smile once upon a time flickered across her face at such a foolish thought. She had gotten what she came for, here in this forgotten memorial to a forgotten monarch and a forgotten victory on a forgotten battlefield. Crystal could always resist the Curse of Doubt whereas everything else was lost when somepony was forgotten, though even she did not know why. Perhaps it was because the queen was the only one to have ever overcome The Voice in wits. She knew it'd be here if it was anywhere. The queen, for all her faults, was not vain and did not squander her gifts. While all other records of her memory had faded, with her leaving only those whose heads lay beneath the Sword of Doubt to remember her, this crystalline sculpture bore her image forever more.

For a moment she had thought to destroy it. The moment passed.

She turned around and walked off, understanding now what it was that had caused Meranax to become concerned, why it was that this Milesian so angered her. But that revelation and gratitude for it was not why she had spared the sculpture of her enemy.

For how else would she bring The Voice to a rage once she had triumphed in the end, if she didn't have a physical reminder to its greatest failure?

--=--

"'Scuse me, pardon me, coming through!"

Ordinarily, when one heard those words, they tend to look down and move out of the way of the small person trying to make their way through the throng.

In the Whisperwood, it engendered an entirely different reaction.

Deer yelped, shouted, and shook hooves angrily as a young fawn jumped from back to back and sometimes launched himself off of some poor, unfortunate buck's antlers. Oaksfury could worry about how much trouble he was in when he got caught. Right now he was going to see the Winsh-ir. He had been all over the forest fighting winter, and this was the first time ever a living Winsh-ir would return to a city on the eve of the Feast of Allgods. Oaksfury didn't want to miss this; he had so many things to ask him!

He let out a yelp as something latched onto the nape of his neck, stopping him in mid-air and leaving his flailing hooves to shoot forward in front of him as he found himself hanging.

"Huh?" He turned his head to look around him, letting out a gasp when he recognised the dirty, smiling face of the doe that had snatched him out of the air. "Mom!"

"Anf fhere do youf fink youf're goin?" Oaksfury cocked his ear.

"…What?"

"Oh." The doe dropped him. Oaksfury hit the ground and whined a bit at his now sore hindquarters. Several passing deer chuckled at the scene. "Ahem, now where do you think you're going, young stag?"

"Ah…" Oaksfury's eyes darted about as he looked for an excuse. Dusk was coming and the treetops were getting very dark, the oakenhearts lighting up, their faux starry brilliance amplified by the hanging tresses glittering with budding shimmer bells and sparkling dazzle flowers. Beautiful in their own right, the winter flowers showered the entire city in gentle glittering pollen that intermixed with the falling snow. It was very pretty, and more than a few deer families took their time in their daily business to simply admire the sight of their city, radiant in the warmth of the Hearthfire even in the fury of winter. Unfortunately for Oaksfury, he had his mother's full attention.

"I just want to see the Winsh-ir!" he whined, ears splayed and hiding his big eyes under the fringe of his mane. Summerglory smiled and ruffled his mane.

"So is that why you were in such a hurry, hm?"

"…Yes. When did you get back, ma?"

"Oh, I am just in the door." Summerglory rolled her eyes before rubbing some of the dirt and grime from her forehead. Oaksfury cocked his head.

"But the city doesn't have a door?" Summerglory giggled before nuzzling the fawn, causing him to giggle in turn.

"It’s an expression from the outside world. Now why are you so keen to see the Lord in Winter?"

"So I can ask him some more about the minotaur!" Oaksfury answered excitedly.

Summerglory cocked an eyebrow. The soft, yellow-brown doe's mane was hanging limp to one side, damp with some swamp water. Trekking through the Greenwoods was no picnic even if you knew what you were doing and the forest obeyed you… most of the time.

"Minotaur?"

"Uh-huh!" Oaksfury nodded. "The minotaur that helped Mister Whirlywind become the Winsh-ir!"

"…Really? Okay, clearly there's some things I need to catch up on," Summerglory rubbed the side of her head.

"I met him myself!"

"What?"

"Well, I had to go after the elder came over, so I couldn't ask him what it was like going on adventures with Mister Whirly."

"There… There were outsiders in the city? A minotaur no less?" Summerglory looked shocked, then more quietly to herself, "Why didn't nodeer tell me?"

"Probably didn't want to ruin the surprise." Summerglory yelped with a jump, whirling around in mid-air. Oaksfury got to see his own mother all but somersault over him and blinked in momentary confusion. Chief Forestfire smiled genially at the tired outcast. "Welcome home, Summer. How's the outside world?"

"Fire!" Summerglory shouted before crushing the smaller doe in a hug. "Ohhh look at you! Chieftainship suits you!"

"Urk—I'm happy… to… see you… too!" Forestfire managed between having the life squeezed out of her. She pushed her off, brushed herself down, and coughed to try to regain her lost dignity. "Glad you made it back safely. I take it all is still well in the outside world?"

"No." Summerglory frowned. "There's rumours of war on the wind between the Equestrians and the griffons."

"What? Over what?" Forestfire looked disconcerted at that revelation.

"I'm not sure, but it’s nothing more than antler jousting at the moment. Apparently it’s all because of... uhm." Summerglory glanced down at her curious son. She smiled at him and brought him closer to her with a foreleg before turning back to her chieftain. "In any case, it’s nothing for us to worry about. Maybe I can give my report later? Have there been any more outcasts back for winter?"

"You're the first I've met so far," Forestfire replied, before ruffling Oaksfury's mane and walking past her friend. Summerglory fell into step beside her, which meant Oaksfury had to be dragged along. Levitated to sit atop his mother's back, the little fawn pouted and crossed his forelegs, contenting himself with deer-watching.

The streets were crowded with deer going about their day in preparation for the feast. Wreaths adorned necks; costumes of gods and spirits adorned by revellers danced and bobbed among the crowds. Stags of the priestly castes dressed in emerald greens and golds milled around the crowds with silver bells hanging from around their necks. Their antlers were ritually stripped of their points, leaving only two long horns twisted from their heads, painted wholly in black, their muzzles covered in coloured powders representing their respective patron god as they spread traditional oral legends, tales, and teachings to deer as they went along.

Everywhere they passed, there was the sight and smells of cooking, and brewing contests were held between young bucks to win cloaks of winter's gold, spun from the biannually blossoming Evening's Gift in the deep gardens beneath the city. Merchant castes from other tribes, now able to safely traverse the forest in winter, brought wares from other tribes to share and to sell. Oaksfury always thought some of the others looked weird; some of them had woad! He always thought only warriors wore woad. Apparently it was different in other tribes.

Then he saw something. His smile widened, and he leapt from his mother's back. He didn't hear his mother's surprised yelp as he was too busy ducking under the hooves of unsuspecting deer as he hurried his way over to join the ring of fawns gathered outside the grand hall.

"Fury!" his outraged mother shouted as she bounded off after him, only stopping as she finally pushed her way through the gathered crowd and found exactly what had drawn her little one so far from their home.

"Hey what's going o— oh." Forestfire stalled after catching up with her friend and slowly, very slowly, tried hiding herself behind Summerglory before—

"Forestfire! There you are!" A magical wisp of wind brushed past the gathered deer, wrapped around her withers, and yanked her into the centre of the circle of onlooking fawns and amused deer. Forestfire landed on her hindquarters beside the jovial Whirlwind, who casually wrapped a foreleg around her outraged, flustered, and sputtering form. "Everydeer, let’s hear it for our chieftain! Without whom we'd all be considerably more chilly than we are now. You're welcome by the by."

"Whirlwind!" Forestfire managed, shrugging off his leg as the crowd lightly giggled. Whirlwind was amused at his friend's flustered expression. He had changed slightly, his fur always seeming to glisten as if he had just come inside from the light snowfall, frost clutching at his antlers in and around where the crown of winter hugged the contours of his antlers. Despite that, he was very much warm and alive to the touch, and there was an odd, elfish glisten to his eyes most days. Well, more so than a deer ought to have, at any rate. "What are you doing here?"

"Oh, lots of things! You told me to come back, remember?"

"I, uh, well yes, but I mean here, right now… in the middle of the street."

"Oh just telling stories, like that time I saved the Tinderspears in the northwest from rampant ice furies just the other day. Gave them what for!" He leaned down and tapped one of the sturdier-looking young bucks on the shoulder for emphasis. "So what are you doing here?"

"I uh, uhm, was walking!" Forestfire replied quickly, turning, scanning the crowd, and then yanking the unsuspecting Summerglory out from the crowd and putting her between the two. "With Summerglory! My friend. My friend Summerglory."

"Summers!" Whirlwind shouted with delight, grabbing her hoof and shaking it. "I haven't seen you since that thing in Salt Lick City!" Summer smiled wryly at that.

"You mean that thing you started."

"Mmmm, nope, don't know what you're talking about. I was sleeping when it happened."

"You certainly weren't sleeping when you left me to deal with it."

"You said you could handle it."

"That doesn't mean you couldn't have helped."

"Yes, well, I was rather preoccupied chasing those rascals who had made off with the shipment of iron."

"Uh huh," Summerglory deadpanned, then smiled wickedly as she glanced back at Forestfire who was busy trying to compose herself, "but it’s good you're here. Me and Forestfire were just talking about you."

"—urk!" Forestfire choked and sent a betrayed glare at her friend.

"Oh really? What about me? There's a lot to talk about!"

"Uhhhh…" Forestfire began, suddenly very aware of the gathered deer watching the proceedings, "maybe we should take this elsewhere?"

"Why? It’s Allgods! There's nothing so dire it can't be shouted in the open for all to see!" Whirlwind spread his forelegs with corresponding shouts of approval from surrounding deer. Forestfire just rubbed her face.

All while the adults conversed, little Oaksfury spied the Lord in Winter from between his mother's legs. He took the opportunity to get closer when his mother got pulled into the circle. Now, he took the additional step and got closer to the Winsh-ir.

"Is it true?" he asked. Whirlwind looked down in surprise at the squeaky-voiced fawn at their feet. Forestfire was merely thankful for the distraction. "Did you really beat up the Lady of the Lake?"

Whirlwind guffawed at that, even while several of the adults looked horrified at the idea. He leant down and studied the fawn's face. Oaksfury backed up a step, but ran into his mother's encouraging forehoof. Whirlwind's eyes danced with mirth, and his studious expression gave way to a wide smile.

"And what would you say, little one, if I told you that I did?" Oaksfury seemed at a loss for words for a minute before finally deciding on a response.

"Was it fun?" Whirlwind laughed.

"Oh gods, make him grumpier, put a silver bucket on his head, and he'd practically be a little Handy for the way he thinks about things!" Whirlwind chuckled, before looking up. "I take it he's your little one, Summer?"

"That he is, and it’s well past his bedtime," Summerglory admonished, looking down at her son and ruffling his mane.

"Oh come off it, it's Allgods. Let the boy have a little fun." Whirlwind chuckled before turning to the gathered crowd. "But that is another thing. I don't think I've had a chance to give you all the full story of how I relit the Hearthfire."

"But grampy said you released the Lady from her prison!"

"I heard there was some dark god involved."

"Didn't you have to tame a star spider?"

"I see you haven't said much more than absolutely necessary, Fire," Whirlwind said with a smile to the chieftain. She huffed.

"I had to be careful, but if what I've been hearing is true, you haven’t exactly been subtle about what you saw fit to tell the other tribes." Whirlwind shook his head.

"You're a good chieftain, Fire, but you're terrible at spinning a good story." He then turned back to the crowd. "Oh, the real story is much more interesting than all that, I can tell you! And you…" he turned back to Oaksfury. "Why so interested?"

"Uhm, well, I was talking to your minotaur friend when he was last here, and I wanted to know more is all."

"Minotaur friend? What are you— oh! Oh, you mean Handy!" Whirlwind guffawed. "Oh, he's not a minotaur, little one. How typical of him to tell you such silliness. He does love his tricks and lies."

"Your friend is a liar?"

"One of the most prolific liars I have ever met. And that’s quite a compliment, I assure you. There are some awful rogues in the outside world. Lots of wonders too, though. Am I right, Summer?"

"That you are," Summer said with a roll of her eyes.

"And who knows, maybe you might even find something that helps you change the world."

"…Really?" Oaksfury asked. Whirlwind rapped his antlers to make his point, shaking the silver chain crown that adorned them.

"Sure. I did after all, now didn't I?" Looking around, he saw that it was indeed getting dark. "Ah, but it is late. Perhaps you're right, Fire. Let’s talk somewhere else. Now run along, little Oaksfury. And that goes for the rest of you too," he said, admonishing the other deer children. There were many disappointed 'awws'.

Oaksfury was ushered away by his mother. He cocked his ears and squinted his eyes back to see the Winsh’ir disappear down the street with the chieftain by his side, quietly talking.

“Well, you got to meet him. Was it everything you hoped for?”

“Is what he said true, mama?” Oaksfury asked, looking up at his bedraggled mother. “Are there lots of amazing things in the outside world?”

Summerglory laughed brightly at that.

“Oh, there certainly are, my little heart.” Her smile fell, and she let out an exaggerated sigh and slyly looked at her son with a faux sad frown. “Ah, but you’ll find out soon enough. You’ll be following in my hoofsteps like I did after my mother. Tis a shame you won’t be able to go off and do whatever you want, but the rules are the rules…”

“Oh no, I can’t wait to go outside!”

“Now Oaksfury, you can’t just go do whatev—wait, what?”

“Yeah! I want to be like you and Mister Whirly! I want to go outside and find all these amazing things too!”

“Er…”

“And maybe I can find that Handy fellow like Whirly did, and go on an adventure together and find more amazing stuff! Or, or, I could be like you! Go into the pony cities and fight bad guys!”

“Are… Are you sure you wouldn’t want to, you know, maybe become a scribe or… or a priest? Maybe a carpenter?”

“What? No! I want to go out and explore the world and keep the forest safe!”

“So… nothing else? You don’t want to, I don’t know, become a warrior? You don’t want to try to cheat the system? Not even a little?”

“Nope! I’m going to be an outcast just like you!” Oaksfury said proudly as he scarpered off towards their home, a bewildered Summerglory looking on as her son went off ahead of her. She sighed and lowered her head.

“Oh poo, my son’s a bloody conformist…”

--=--

"Can I!? Huh, huh huh!?"

"No."

"Oh come oooooonnnnnn~"

"I said no. Now go back inside."

"But I wanna help!"

"You're not old enough. Winter duty can be dangerous."

"Serena, you're just moving clouds around," little Geraldine huffed. "I do that all the time!"

"In the summer," Serena retorted, pausing to fix the blue band holding back the feathers on her head, rolling her eyes. "When it's nice, and warm, and safe, and you don't need to worry about random westerlies blowing out of the Greenwoods like it's nogriffon's business. Now go back inside."

"Why are you even doing this? You don't even work for the weather company!"

"I'm on the reserves for our town, and I get paid for my time. I'm going to try to direct a storm front. This is no place for little girls, now go! And tell Auntie I'll be back home in time for rush hour to help with the customers."

"Fiiiiiiine…" Geraldine relented, turning around and making her way through the snow. It was half a foot deep, and she wasn't big enough to easily walk through it like her sister did, plus she didn't feel like flying. She ended up just digging a trench through the snow as she bloody-mindedly made her way home. Several griffons paused, wondering what the hell was ploughing its way through the snow before they noticed the blue ribbon poking above the snowline.

She only wanted to help, to do anything really that wasn't washing vegetables, cooking, and cleaning dishes at their aunt's place. She loved her aunt, they both did. She had been looking after them both for years now. Still, by the All Maker did she loathe the restaurant business. She just did not understand what her sister enjoyed so much about it. Then again, she always did take after Auntie more than Geraldine did.

She couldn’t really envision herself doing that kind of work for the rest of her life. Not now.

She paused in her under-snow tunnelling adventures and sat up to see where she was going. Sure enough, Auntie's house was just there within the town's limits, the various chimneys already smoking as the place was being made ready for another day's business. Her wings twitched, and she screwed up her face in thought. Auntie could wait for another while, right?

She smiled before bouncing off, heading for the copse of trees in the centre of town that denoted what was left of the square. She burst from the snow as she ascended the small hill leading up to the bare, naked trees. The spindly branches long since stripped of their foliage were her favourite places to play.

She climbed up the trunk of the tree, eschewing her wings, pretending she was climbing the walls of some ominous citadel in the dead of night. The looming skeletal tree branches above her were not branches but deadly spiked architecture of madgriffons designed to deter besiegers and infiltrators.

But not her!

She had become an expert of slipping through their defences, never once catching hide nor feather on their deadly embrace. Swiftly she climbed until she was at the very peak of the castle, alone and undetected, ready to descend inside, slay what enemies there were, and throw open the gates for the army outside!

Or she would if the tree was hollow and, you know, she had her friends with her. As it were, she found herself alone, lying back on several branches she had set up to suspend her without poking into her sides annoyingly.

She lay back with a sigh, looking up at the sky. There was a dark thunderhead in the distance which was really out of place for this part of Firthengart in winter. She frowned at it. She really did want to go and help out. Who cared if she was smaller than everygriffon else? She flopped over with a sigh and let her forelegs dangle through the branches. She puffed her cheeks up and blew, creating a low whistling sound in exasperation, imitating a fluffy deflating balloon as best as her little griffon body could.

She was so bored! She wanted excitement, adventure, but more than anything, she just wanted to get out of this town. Idly twisting a tiny sprig off of a branch, she recalled the festival. Now that had been exciting! So many new faces, games to play, things to see, and food to eat! There were even races there she had never seen before! It was the greatest time of her life. It was such a shame it had to end when that dumb dragon went and tried to burn everything down.

She frowned at the thought. A few griffons were badly hurt by all of that. Her sister nearly got burned too and would have if it hadn't been for that Handy person. She remembered it as clear as day when her sister flew out of that burning tent and told her all about it. Then they had both went to see him in the fights. She wanted to be like that, being all brave and tackling a dragon. To hear her sister talk of it was the best, though! She couldn't stop talking about it, and Geraldine was more than happy to listen. She wondered if the human still had that painted leaf she gave him...

"Probably not," she huffed to herself, sliding off the branches and letting her wings shoot out as she glided lazily down to the snow. She snapped her wings shut, ducked her head, and let herself roll down the snow-covered hill in a tumble as she dropped bodily the last half metre to the ground. She glumly padded her way through the snow back into town and towards the restaurant.

The doorbell jangled as she pushed the door open and shrugged the scarf from her beak.

"Auna?" Geraldine called out as the warmth of the hearth hit her face. The scent of greasy foodstuffs mixed with the smells of rising bread and broth. It was a welcome change to the cruel cold of the outside, but despite that, the tables were mostly empty. The usual regulars here for midday tea were absent, likely because of the storm, either flying to deal with it or to get their homes prepared just in case it couldn't be diverted or dissipated. "Auna, you there?"

"Geraldine? Oh good, you're back! Come help your ol' auna back here!" a voice called from the kitchen. Geraldine stepped around the few tables with customers still having their meals and their quiet but friendly conversations as she made her way in back. Auntie Greta was a… generously-sized griffon herself, her feathers golden but greying at the edges and her pelt a dusky brown. She turned and gave Geraldine a wide smile from her cracked beak. "There's my girl. Where's your sister?"

"She said she'd be back for the rush hour."

"Hmph, oh I don't think she'll be needed, I fear." Greta squinted sideways at the floor on the other side of the kitchen divide. She then gave Geraldine a knowing smile. "Ah, blasted storms. Well, I guess this is your lucky day!"

"Lucky… how?" Geraldine asked, having frozen where she was, hanging the scarf on a peg. Greta turned back to the pot of broth she was cooking.

"Well, I'm just about done cooking for the day. What I got is likely all we'll be needing for today. You just go ahead there and just wash the dishes. No need to cut the carrots." Geraldine beamed. She hated cutting the vegetables. Tartarus, she hated cleaning the pots and pans and scrubbing them all down, but she would much rather get it all done now rather than later on at night after she was tired from running around cleaning tables and spills on the floor.

"Okay, Auna!" Geraldine said brightly before hurrying over to the sink and scrambling up onto the stool to begin scrubbing away at the cutlery. Greta chuckled softly before putting a meal together on a wooden platter along with a bowl of broth and taking it out to the floor. Geraldine watched her leave before turning back to the pile of cleaning she had to do. She sighed before getting to it.

One after another, she cleaned and cleaned. Every time she was nearly halfway done, Greta came over and dropped another pile of dishes beside her. It wasn’t even a busy day! But she sighed and got on with her work. Sooner she was finished, sooner she could go off and—

“Gethrenia?”

Geraldine stopped her work as the word caught her attention. She looked over her shoulder to see what was going on at the far side of the kitchen counter. There were several griffons all sitting around a table near the door. One had funny-looking robes on, while the others looked like soldiers.

“Yes, ma’am. We’re just stopping by for something to eat. We’ll be on our way soon. We’re not looking to disturb anygriffon,” said the one in robes, in a cultured, northern accent. Auntie Greta looked nervously at the few other customers who were giving the newcomers angry glares. As one, the five or so regulars left the building, with the foreigners eyeing them warily as they went.

“Well… Well, I suppose. Where are you folks heading anyway?”

“Ironkeep, my good lady,” said the official-looking griffon. The three he had with him did their best to look relaxed, but Geraldine could see they were warily keeping an eye on everything around them. She stopped what she was doing and crept closer to the half door separating the kitchen from the floor, peeking through it. “I am here on behalf of King Johan, the Blackwing of Gethrenia.”

“The… The king!?” Greta suddenly looked very flustered and unsure what to do with herself. Geraldine sympathised. They never had anygriffon that important here before. “M-May I ask why?”

“Just… Suffice it to say, it is in order to settle the difficulties between our two kingdoms. In the interest of peace, you understand,” the griffon responded, giving her auntie a reassuring smile. “I’m sorry, but I didn’t catch your name?”

“It’s Greta, Greta Greatwood.” She tapped her empty serving tray nervously. “And yours, Mister…?”

“Ivorybeak,” he responded brightly. “Count Ivorybeak. I’m here at your king’s invitation.”

--=--

She had been listening to her father argue with her uncle for a good hour or so now. They had kept their voices mostly level, but Golden Eye always did have exceptional hearing. She paid no mind, pushing her hat back up over her horn and idly turning a page of the tome she was reading.

Father had been ecstatic when she started showing more interest in the hard magics, thinking she’d finally decided to follow in his footsteps and become a mage. Then he started realising exactly what kind of books she was reading. That was when his disapproval became more apparent.

She devoured all she could: esoteric magic, fringe sorcery and theories, bestiaries, monster manuals, as well as books on outright folklore, on things that did not exist as far as her father was concerned. Material that agreed with one another, material that actively contradicted conventional wisdom and known facts—nothing escaped her scrutiny.

The fact she hadn’t abandoned her Nightmare Night costume was also a cause for concern. In fact, she had gone out of her way to have it properly fitted to her. The little tan filly became inseparable from her chosen profession.

Her chosen profession that had recently brought her father into conflict with his beloved brother.

“—She is doing no such thing!”

Oh goody, they were coming upstairs now. She looked up from her manual on whisps and looked up as the door to her room was opened.

“I only want to talk to her,” the grey-coated, white-maned stallion murmured as he entered, followed closely by her robed father.

“I will not let her delve any further into this absurd fantasy of hers!” her father bellowed.

“I just want to talk. Surely you above all ponies, dear brother, know how serious it can be to ignore something just because it defies common sense,” her uncle said, looking at her father.

Golden Eye glanced between them. Her father, Groundswell, opened his mouth to rebuke, but then a sudden soft, distant look came over his eyes and his face lost all expression. He looked at the ground hard for a moment, looked at her, and then back to his brother.

“Just… I just didn’t want her to…” He stopped short, and that same stern expression she was so used to returned, and he spoke through gritted teeth, “Five. Minutes. Nothing more.”

“That’s all I ask.”

“It had better be.” Groundswell left the room with one last look at Golden Eye. It may have been a trick of the eye, but she could’ve sworn he looked worried. Her uncle turned around and looked down at her where she sat at the foot of her bed. His blue eyes had heavy rings around them. He scanned the various paraphernalia around the room before speaking.

“So, I heard you and your friends had a lot of fun this Nightmare Night.”

“...Uhh.” Golden Eye was suddenly unsure of herself and reverted to the shy filly she had been before she had seen the impossible with her very eyes. “Yeah.”

Her uncle walked over to her bookshelf, the earth pony removing one volume and placing it on a table.

“Summoning rituals of the Pre-classical era? My, my, no wonder your dad’s upset. Don’t you know conjuration doesn’t exist?”

“But I saw it happen!”

“Did you now?” Her uncle looked sharply at her. He still had his smile, but there was a harder glint in his eye that froze her where she stood. “Did you really see the human resurrected from the dead? Did you see him appear? Did you see how it happened after you made your invocation? Are you absolutely certain?”

Golden Eye’s certainty was suddenly shaken.

“N-No, but all the things started happening after I did the ritual!”

“And did you draw the circle yourself?”

“I… Some of it was… carved into the wood already. And… And the candle stands were already stood up.”

“And you say you found something, after all was said and done?” her uncle pressed, kneeling down beside her and putting a hoof on the manual she was reading. Golden Eye huffed.

“What’s with all the questions?”

“Should an uncle not be concerned for his favourite niece? I am only trying to help. I am a detective, after all.”

“You are?”

“Of a sorts.” He glanced at her crushed velvet hat. “So, what was it you found?”

“I… It was a pumpkin. I showed it to the guards, and they… they laughed.”

“Why?”

“Said it was proof it was just… just a prank.”

“And was it?”

“What!? No!”

“And why do you say that?”

“Because of what was carved onto it!”

“‘Be careful what you wish for’,” he said to himself, idly flipping a page in her book. “And why do you think this means anything more than what the guards think it means?”

“Because I didn’t wish for anything that night!” Golden Eye nearly shouted. Her uncle looked up at her curiously, letting her continue. “It… It was eerie. But… the more I think about it, a few days before, I had seen a strange box move by itself.”

“Did you now?” She nodded.

“It was on a wagon owned by two troubadours.” Golden Eye’s gaze scanned the ground as she recalled. She recounted how she had went up to the wagon and sought to open the box to see what made it move before other foals distracted her and the traveling ponies came back. “And then… I said to the box that I’d find out what really was inside of it.”

“Hmm,” he said contemplatively, before lazily reaching over to a pile of books and pointing to one halfway down the pile. “Gypsy curses. Really?”

“I had to cover every possibility!” Golden Eye shot back defensively, looking slightly embarrassed.

“So… having considered all that, and everything you have researched, do you still believe you summoned the human from beyond the veil of life and death?”

“...No.”

“Explain then.”

“I think the human—if he really was dead or not, I don’t know—was inside that box. And somehow, someway, had heard what I said and was attracted to my summoning.”

“So you did summon him after all.”

“I didn’t! Conjuration is impossible!”

“Yet he came when you called, did he not?”

“Well yes, but it's not the same?”

“I don't know, ‘summoning’ is such a wide subject…” he said, smiling and rubbing his chin, enjoying teasing the filly.

“Stop treating me like I’m stupid!” she demanded. “I’m not, I knew it had to be something else, but I couldn’t be sure it wasn’t connected.”

“I know you’re not stupid,” her uncle murmured sympathetically. He sighed lightly. “Unfortunately, that’s why I’m here.”

“Because… Because the human was here?”

“Partially, but no.” He pushed the books out of the way, “I’m here because of you.”

“M-Me?”

“Tell me, little Golden Eye, what have you been doing around town lately?”

“Uh… nothing.” She glanced this way and that. He smiled at that. They were going to need to work on her ability to lie properly.

“Really? You weren’t digging around in Miss Snap Crackle’s cellar the other week?”

“Oh… that.”

“Yes. What was it I believe? You had thought a phantasm had taken residence down there?"

"I-I was just following the clues!" Golden Eye said defensively, letting the brim of her hat hide her abashed face. "I just… I could've sworn. The strange scratch marks on surrounding houses, how everypony's pets keep disappearing on every new moon…"

"Mm," the stallion said thoughtfully, looking out through the window at the now empty building that used to be Snap Crackle's little florist shop. Before she left town that was—he couldn't stay for very long if he was to track where the thing that pretended to be a living breathing pony got too far away. "So what would you do, I wonder, if I told you that you were on to something?"

"Wh-What?" Golden Eye nudged her hat up slightly. Her uncle smiled down at her warmly.

"It was all the ruckus you were causing, more than anything, that brought my… our attention to this part of the world."

"Because of the human?"

"No… well, yes, but that issue is more complicated." He reached over and lifted off her hat, much to her protests. "What a funny old costume. What was it you were pretending to be?"

"I'm not pretending! Not anymore. I'm training to be a real inquisipony!"

"Are you? Hmhm, oh dear, no wonder my brother disapproves. He always did take after Mother. She never approved either."

"What are you talking about?"

"Oh don’t mind me, just reminiscing, it's been quite some time since we walked about in the open dressed like this. I'm surprised you even got the buckle right. Most ponies forget the symbolism there."

"What symbolism?"

"You don't know? Hm, I suppose we'll need to teach you that, if you want to that is."

"Want what? What are you talking about?"

"What I am talking about, little Golden Eye, is the Inquisition." He placed the hat back on top of her head. "And how very little you know about it."

"And what, you know more?" she scoffed indignantly.

"I should think so, being a member of it." He had to give the little filly a second to recover from the stupendous gasp of astonishment she released. He was prepared to go off on a reassuring lecture to calm her down but found himself suddenly held hostage by nothing less than the epitome of youthful exuberance. "No—"

"Omigosh, omigosh, omigosh, omigosh, omigosh!" she shouted, suddenly in his face and waving her hooves excitedly before suddenly bouncing about the room from one pile of lore scrolls to another pile of magic books and back again. "I KNEW they were really real, I mean there's no official history, but they're mentioned everywhere, and if you know where to look, there's references to them in even the—"

"Woah woah woah!" Glaive urged as he got back to his hooves. "Slow down there."

"EEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!"

"I'll take that as a yes." He had seen the filly wear a dour, business-like expression when he had come in. It had been sceptical, contemplating. Then he broke that mask and saw the nervous, embarrassed little filly beneath. Apparently he broke that and accidentally unleashed the floodgates of enthusiasm, if the little foal before him was any indication. She practically vibrated with glee. "Okay, there's… rather a lot I'd need to explain, a lot to learn. We still need to get your father to… well, that’s between him and me."

"Are you going to have him let you teach me to be an inquisipony too?" Glaive looked down at her thoughtfully for a second. There was a knock at the door, and his brother's voice called saying their time was up. He looked up at the door, chewing the inside of his cheek before finally asking.

"Would you like to?"

--=--

"My dad's a pegasus."

"Uh huh."

"Mom's a bat pony."

"You don't say."

"I'm a unicorn."

"Never would've guessed."

"What gives!?" the little colt exclaimed, throwing up his hooves at the library table before being shushed by a nearby pegasus librarian, using the primary feather of her white wing to make a shushing motion. The pair of foals quietened down, and looked back at their respective books on enchanting.

Little Arcane Mist sat with a huff, holding his head up with a hoof as he idly turned pages with his magic. His apathetic study partner and foalhood friend waited until the librarian passed before putting down her tome. "Why do you care? My parents were both earth ponies."

"Yeah I know, it's just… it's just weird, you know?" Mist rubbed a foreleg. Mystic Gem grimaced and glanced up at his slightly curved and smooth horn. It did stand out rather badly in comparison to other unicorns. He had always been sensitive about it but it was nothing compared to his tuft ears and slitted eyes. Oh, and the fangs. Even the few other thestral foals in town tended not to associate with him because he wasn't a pegasi variant.

She lifted a sheet of parchment with her magic, rolled it, and swatted him lightly across the head, much to his surprise.

"Ah ah, none of that," she admonished. "You'll never make the entrance tests if you keep worrying about silly things like that."

"I don't even know why I have to do this…" He looked down at his text. "I don't even like magic all that much."

"I think you should try at the very least. Just look at your cutie mark."

"Yeah yeah, I know."

"Also, you pretty much scared the plot off of that instructor."

"I didn't mean too!"

"Yes you did. I know because I helped."

"I just hated his stupid face…" he mumbled. She giggled.

"Well, you sure gave him a reason to change his expression." He rubbed the back of his head, shifting the light blue and white mane.

"Well, whatever. If it'll make mom and dad happy, I guess."

"Hey, it’s not like you'll be alone if you get into the school. I'll be coming with you!"

"Yeah, but only if you pass the test too."

The white filly puffed out her chest. "I'll have you know I already have." Arcane Mist gasped.

"Really!? When!?"

"I took the theory exam a few weeks ago. My family is going to Canterlot for the practical examination. And you, mister, had better not be too long behind me."

"I don't know, I don't think it's right…" He slumped on the stool again. She sighed in exasperation.

"Don't you want to become a mage?"

"Not really."

"Enchanter?"

"Nope."

"Wizard?"

"Not even a smidgen."

"Well, what DO you want to do?"

"I have no idea. I guess I just… like taking life as it comes, you know? Going to school, playing, going home. I'm happy with that."

"But you're so good at magic, almost as good as me. You can't just do nothing with that talent!"

"If you say so," Mist admitted. "It’s all luck, really. I just… get things right more than not without even trying. I mean, shouldn't ponies only get into a place like Celestia's school if they actually deserve it? Like you, you work your butt off."

"Come onnn, Misty," she whined. "You need to stop beating down on yourself like that!"

"Shhh!"

"Sorry," she whispered to the annoyed librarian who passed by in the opposite direction than before. "Look, why aren't you interested in magic?" Arcane Mist gave her a knowing expression before he lifted several heavy-looking tomes in his magic and dropped them on the table in front of her. She had to crane her neck to see around them.

"Because studying magic means I'll be spending all my time reading massive dusty, boring old books like this forever. It'll be my job. What pony could possibly look forward to that?"

"Well, I find it interesting…"

"I mean the actual reading part. Sure, I can see somepony liking magic and thinking about it. I've watched you get really into it." He saw her hurriedly draw her head back behind the books.

"O-Oh, really?"

"Yeah, you get this really intense look on your face. It's kinda scary actually."

"Oh…"

"But that’s just not me. I mean, I'll go through with it, but I don't think I'll become a wizard, is all." He flopped his little head onto the book before him and stared down at the arcane script before him. He thought for a second. "Well, there is one thing I've been meaning to look up."

"…What is it?"

"Well, have you ever heard of random objects appearing in mid-air for no reason whatsoever?"

"…What?"

"It's been bugging me for a while," Mist admitted, looking around before levitating over a small book and opening it up.

"What's that?"

"A sock… I think."

"It looks weird," Mystic scrunched up her face in disgust at it.

"Yeah, but that’s just it. I have no idea where it came from. Just popped into existence over the dinner table."

"Not that big of a mystery. Teleportation magic does exist."

"Well…" Mist nodded even as he frowned, furrowing his little brow. He looked over their pile of books and began sorting through it for the tome he needed. Mystic Gem smiled at that. There it was, the same curious determination to unravel a mystery. It had always overtook him from time to time when he came across some magical conundrum that bothered him on some level and drove him to figure it out in spite of his complete apathy to the science. She wondered where this little spurt of inspiration would lead him. "That's the thing. Have you ever heard of teleportation that could not be traced back to an origin point?"

"No, that's silly! All teleportation leaves an aetheric hoof print. You can even tell what the weather was like at moment of transplant if you study the thaumatic burns before they decay." He just looked at her, and she had to roll her eyes. "Right, I forgot. I'll speak Equestrian from now on."

"Thanks," Arcane said, smiling. She sighed. His disdain for technical terminology infuriated their teachers, but he seemed to understand things on his own terms, often through leaps of logic that mystified even her. "But yeah, that’s just it." He hovered over a book concerning translocation. "There is no known method of teleportation of either objects or ponies that does not create a… a tear in the aetheric winds. This thing? Poof! Like it just came into existence out of nothing."

"Maybe it did?" Gem suggested. He looked at her with a cocked head. "Maybe whatever sent the sock just, you know, sent the idea of the sock, and it was created through… I don't know, some kind of alchemy that changed the air into the sock itself rather than transport a physical object? Maybe that’s why it’s so weird-looking. It was some wizard’s experiment." Arcane Mist started chuckling. "What’s so funny?"

"That's impossible. That would mean somepony out there is sitting on an arcane process that can artificially duplicate anything from thin air. Imagine having all the sweet rolls you could want with the wave of your horn anywhere, forever?" Mystic Gem got a faraway look in her eyes at that. "Mystic?"

"Shhh," she hushed, still having that faraway look as he waved a hoof in front of her eyes. She smiled dreamily. "It's… beautiful." Mist snorted, before clapping his hooves together to regain her attention.

"But yeah, I wouldn't want to use this to transport things."

"Why not?"

"Well for starters, assuming your idea is true, wouldn't that require so much drain on the winds of magic in the area you're teleporting the item… the idea of the item to be such that it would cause, like, a really big bang? Alchemy can be like that, especially if you're taking something like air, a gas, which is nowhere near as dense as other things and making a solid object out of it." He waved the sock. "If this thing was actually created out of thin air by remotely predetermined alchemical sorcery, then all the air, including the air in me and my mom's lungs, would have been sucked out of the house. In an instant."

Mystic Gem shuffled in her chair a bit and folded her ears down.

"Also, because you're not there to use your magic, all that sudden drain on the winds of magic would likely blow up half the town. So you know, it'd be bad," Arcane Mist continued on, completely oblivious to his friend's discomfort as she stared down at the sock in mild, foal-like annoyance, as if objecting to its existence on the basis it was interrupting story time. "If you tried to transport the idea of the pony, wouldn't that just mean you'd make a dead pony on the opposite end? I mean, the body and the clothes will be there, the lights are probably on, but nopony's home upstairs. Just because it teleports your body's copy doesn't mean it necessarily teleports a copy of you."

"Uh… Mist…"

"And what about the real you? If you transport the idea of you, does that mean your body gets taken apart where you start the spell? So does that mean you die twice? I mean—"

"Misty!" she cried. Arcane Mist blinked. He turned around and looked up at the angry glare of the librarian pony and smiled sheepishly. She harrumphed, shushed them both again, and walked off. He looked back at Gem to see she looked rather disturbed by what he had been talking about.

"Oh… sorry. I forgot."

"It's… alright," she sighed. "So, now that you somehow shot my idea to Tartarus, what do you think it was?"

"I have no idea. I am honestly at a loss. You simply should not be able to teleport things without having any magical after effect of some kind," he said as they both sat in silence. Then an idea came to Mystic Gem and she smiled, rubbing the base of her muzzle.

"You knooow…" she began, and he looked up. "I bet you could figure it out at Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns."

"…You think?"

"I mean, if none of the books there have the answers, then at least you'll learn how to figure it out yourself."

"Well… when you put it like that…" He looked down at the sock and across to the books strewn on the table between them. He sighed. "Well, alright then, I guess I'll give it my best."

Mystic Gem quietly squeed. Mist levitated another journal by some ancient wizard or another before his face and began reading.

"At least now I have a reason to care."

Mystic Gem deflated.

--=--

Wren was in pain.

Wren was in pain a lot these days.

Why was Wren in pain a lot these days?

Why, because Wren kept getting into trouble with kids twice his size.

He lay out on top of the coal bunker at the back of his house, scarf wrapped tightly about his neck. His wings were splayed and lying limply, catching flecks of snow that drifted lazily from far above.

Everything hurt, from the tips of his primaries to the toes of his rear paws and everything in between. He contented himself with staring up at the clouds with all the impotent fury his nine year old body could muster and burrowed his muzzle deeper into his scarf for warmth. The little griffling cursed the advice the human had given him. It hadn't helped at all!

He had spent the past few months trying to force griffons to do what he wanted. Sometimes he shouted at them; sometimes he called them dumb. He even bribed one once! Nothing. All it ever did was get him into more fights than usual. That human’s advice was a load of bunk! Stupid story, stupid little wren bird, stupid eagle!

"It was a stupid story anyway," he huffed and rolled over on his side, draping a wing over himself. He liked lying on top of the coal bunker. He was usually protected from the wind most of the time with the house at his back, and it let him look out over the fence to the rolling hills surrounding his home. "How in Tartarus does a little wren beat an eagle anyway? There was no way he could have gotten the eagle to agree to helping him. The eagle wanted to be king too."

He lay there, his thoughts storming about his mind darkly as he watched a small robin flitter about on the snow-covered grass a few metres from him. It made a trail of tiny bird feet shaped marks in the snow as it went, stalking its way towards a juniper berry bearing bush, which lay under an old rusted sheet of corrugated metal that lay against the hedge.

He watched it idly as a crow suddenly landed in front of it. The thing cawed and spread its wings wide and batted at the smaller robin, which flew off. The crow then hopped up to the berry bush to get its food. Wren snorted and moved to roll off the bunker and make his way back inside. It would be dinner soon. He was stopped by a curious sight, however.

The robin had returned. It had alighted on top of the sheet of corrugated metal and looked down at the crow as it fed from the bush. Wren stopped in his tracks to look at it. What did it think it was doing?

He watched in fascination as the little robin, with less strength in its entire body than he had in a single talon, brushed snow off the sheet of metal with its feet as it took to the air. The white powder fell onto the crow below, causing it to fly off in squawks of fright and outrage. Either in fear or to find its assailant, Wren couldn't guess. The little robin, however, was nowhere to be seen, at least not in the air.

He spied the little bird by the bush. It had disappeared into the far side of the sheet of metal and made its way to the bush underneath it where the crow couldn't see and started eating its fill from the bush. Wren was astounded. Soon enough, the little robin had disappeared again, and the crow returned to the bush to find it missing more berries than there had been when it had left it.

Wren couldn't get the scene out of his head as he walked around the house. He spied Fenwick Deepclaw through the fence posts as he did his part-time work delivering ink to the printing house. An idea struck him. He took to wing and alighted on top of the fence itself, trying not to wince as his muscles stung.

"Hey, Fenwick!" he called. The larger griffon child looked up at him in surprise before levelling his expression.

"Oh, it’s you. What do you want now, Wren?"

"I uh, just… wanted to apologize," Wren said, looking down. Fenwick cocked his head in surprise.

"What for?" he asked suspiciously.

"Well, I know I've been a jerk to you this past while and… well, I just wanted to say sorry about that."

"You've been a jerk to everygriffon."

"And I feel just awful about that, really," Wren said as sincerely as his little lying heart could. In his defence, he did manage to pull it off with his dirty bedraggled look, helped considerably by the flecks of coal dust on his fur and feathers. "I was just doing what I was told."

"…Told?"

"Yeah, I was being made to do all that jerky stuff by Cameron."

"What? Why?"

"I don't know, he's the biggest kid in school. I just had to do what he said, y'know?" Wren said, referring to the big, brown-feathered hippogriff who barely knew Wren existed. Wren neither hated him nor liked him. He was, however, pretty jealous of him. "And he told me to make your life miserable, so you'd beat me up."

"Why the claw would he do that? I hardly know the guy!" Fenwick demanded.

"Because… I don't know if I should be telling you this..."

"Tell me what, Wren?"

"…That Saisha Windglade likes you."

"S-She does?" Fenwick stuttered, utterly taken aback that the prettiest girl in school had an eye on him. "But… But isn't she—?"

"Cameron's friend, yeah," Wren confirmed, rubbing a foreleg as he sat down on the fencepost, letting his rear legs hang.

"Then, if he's jealous, why doesn't he just tell me to back off himself?" he asked, tapping his beak contemplatively. Wren smiled behind his scarf.

"You know Saisha—she hates fighting. So he makes me pick fights with other griffons so that they'll look bad by 'picking on the halfbreed'." Fenwick looked shocked at that, wings outstretched and disturbing the thin layer of snow that had gathered on his cloak.

"I would never—! My parents raised me right. I never picked on you because… because..."

"My mom's a pony? I know, it's okay. I started the fights, remember?" Wren confessed. "And I felt awful about that. It's why I'm apologizing, 'kay?"

"I can't believe… are you for real? She likes me?"

"Well, Cameron certainly thinks so," Wren said.

"That nasty little—! I can't believe, oh just you wait, I'll show that coward. You know what, Wren? You're all right. Sorry for being rough on you all those times."

"Quit apologizing, I was in the wrong, remember? I just… don't know what I'm going to do about Cameron though…"

Fenwick looked thoughtful for a moment. Wren could see the gears turning in his head as he pawed at the snow beneath him with a claw.

"Right, in the future, if he starts up with you again, just come to me, all right?"

"You… You mean it?"

"Yeah, at the very least there's no sense in us fighting anymore. Don't worry about it, I'll ward him off."

"Thanks Fenwick. You're a pal." Wren flew off back home. Well, that went better than expected. He now had a friend where he once had an enemy. The more he thought about it, the more he thought about how he could use it, and as he sat with his family over their meal of warm broth, more and more ideas came to him.

If he could manipulate Fenwick like that, who's to say he couldn't take his time and work other griffons over to his side as well? That wren in the story, none of the other birds saw him sneak up behind the eagle's back after all, and after the eagle had done all the hard work, the Wren stole the crown. If any did, none of them ratted him out. He'd have to be like the wren, either fool everybody or make it in their best interests not to get in between him and what he wanted.

And what did he want?

Well, Saisha was cute, and Cameron was the jealous type and a bit of a bully. Maybe she'd be better off being friends with somegriffon else? The thought lingered with him for the rest of the day, and on to the following week, and the one after that. Every hour of every day was spent going from griffon to griffon, making amends, putting them on square terms and, if they didn't trust him, let alone like him, they at least no longer felt animosity towards him.

But by the time he was through, they would certainly feel animosity to Cameron… and to Fenwick. Eventually the time came when he came to Fenwick, nothing alarming or urgent, just a friendly catch up, and then he was away. He was only delaying him long enough to be certain he'd bump into Cameron in the square, where everygriffon could see them.

It didn't take long. With everything he had done, the schoolyard whispering had taken care of the rest and everygriffon was saying one spurious thing regarding Fenwick or another about Cameron… and each thought the other had started it. The conversation was aggressive and terse in the manner of all schoolyard 'big kids' trying to intimidate one another before the feathers started to fly. And then Fenwick had to let it slip, the final digging claw that dug under Cameron's pelt. That Saisha liked him and that Cameron wasn't big enough of a griffon to get Fenwick to stay away himself.

Wren couldn't help but think what a beautiful success it all was when the fighting started, especially with Saisha herself there to witness it all. He was about to play his final card when, All Maker preserve her, Saisha herself stepped forward and demanded they stop, disgusted by the fighting. They each tried to make their excuses but she rebuked them both, calling Fenwick an idiot and Cameron a brute and that she never wanted to be friends with either of them. Ever. Cameron shouted at her as she ran off in tears, and the crowd turned on the pair.

Wren smiled.

He found her a while later on the edge of town, quietly sniffling on a promontory rock overlooking a frozen stream underneath a naked oak tree.

"Hey." She sniffled and looked up at him before looking back. "I, uh, saw what happened back there. Are you okay?"

"Go away… I wanna be alone."

"Hey, I get you, and I will," Wren said, alighting on the rock beside her, but not too close. "I just thought it was strange your friends didn't come after you."

"It's… fine. I'll be alright." She shifted noticeably. Now that was one thing he genuinely couldn't figure out when he was putting all this into action. Very few, if any, of the other girls in school seemed to hang around her. Maybe it had something to do with Cameron. She jumped in surprise as something landed on her head. She flailed and removed the scarf from her vision.

"Here." Wren sat down beside her. "You'll catch a cold out here by yourself. You know, Cameron was wrong. You aren't ugly. He was just saying that."

"Thanks…" she managed, eyeing him out of the side of her eyes. "Why are you here?"

"I know what it's like to be hurting on your own, with nogriffon to help." Wren looked out over the stream. "I just wanted you to know I had a talk with both of them."

"You did?"

"Yeah, I'm friends with them. Had to talk to them separately of course. They still hate each other, but both agreed to leave you alone. Cameron said he was sorry."

"Hmph, I don't care what he says," she said resolutely. Wren resisted the urge to roll his eyes.

"Yeah, I didn't believe him either," Wren confessed with a shrug of his wings. "Honestly, he'd probably just lose his top like that again."

"…You think so?" Her tone was a little less resolute than before. He gave her a concerned look.

"Well… I mean yeah. Guy like that? Always has to prove himself. Not really all that great to be around. I just hang out with him because I feel sorry for him." She spluttered in disbelief at that.

"How can you feel sorry for him!?" she demanded.

"Cameron has serious confidence issues. I mean, did you not see how he lost it when Fenwick said he liked you? He's insecure."

"And you're not?"

"Not even a little," Wren said with a smile. "I know where I stand on things. What have I got to be worried about?"

"How about all those fights you got into?" she accused. Wren shrugged.

"I met somegriffon who set me straight on things, made me think," he confessed. "I was petty, but I am over that now. I'm much more relaxed about life now."

They sat there, her on her haunches with the scarf hanging loosely over her shoulders and him sitting lazily with his rear legs over the rock's edge.

"So you're sure you're going to be all right?" he asked, looking over. She tugged a bit on the scarf and nodded. He gave her a warm smile before taking to wing and hovering. "Anyway, I got to get going. My dad says there's going to be a snowstorm in an hour, so you should get inside."

"Wait, your scarf!"

"Keep it. I can always get another one. Take care of yourself, Saisha. See you around."

She watched him fly off into town, then sat back on the promontory, throwing one arm of the scarf around her neck and thinking. It had been a bad day for her after all.

As far as Wren was concerned, it was a very good day indeed.

--=--

“Grave Danger bravely delves the depths of the abandoned tomb!” the little colt shouted through the wooden sword gripped in his mouth as he bounded down the abandoned shaft. It was a shallow mine with many holes leading to the surface, allowing shafts of light to pierce the darkness. “He is surrounded on all sides by deadly enemies! He is confronted with devious traps!”

The little colt jumped around the tunnel, being careful not to actually misstep. He'd been down here many times before, for it was one of his favourite haunts. The fact it kept him out of the Badlands sun was another bonus.

"But does he waver? Nay!" He swung his sword at an imaginary enemy, spitting it out and gripping the handle in the frog of his hoof as he balanced precariously on his hind legs. "Will he be felled by the devious tricks of his nemesis? Never!"

The brave little adventurer navigated the imaginary traps as he made his way to the inner sanctum to face his most dreaded foe.

"For Grave Danger knows no fear! No enemy is too strong! No threat too great! For he is the champion of Pawstown! The Vanquisher of Scorpia the Desert Wizard! The Defender of the weak and Innocent! And bestest colt ever! I am—"

His boast was cut short when his little wooden toy sword battered against an old brass pot that had been abandoned down here years ago, and he heard a yelp of surprise from the shadows next to him. Naturally he fumbled and dropped his sword before leaping back with a shout.

"AHHHHHHHHH!"

"AAAAAAAAUUUUGGGHHHH!" the shadowy form the dark corner shouted in response. Grave Danger leaped back, tripped, fell over himself, and scrambled back behind a rock, wielding his sword with both hooves and trying not to shake too much.

"Wh-Who's there!? Reveal yourself!" Silence. He took a deep breath and put on a brave face. "I mean it, I'm not afraid to use this!"

After a moment, a little pink-haired, brown-furred filly slowly crept out of the shadows. She couldn't have been older than seven—not even a cutie mark yet either. Another pony slowly poked his head out from the rock which hid them, a blue colt.

"Uhh… H…Hi." Grave Danger just stared in disbelief. He knew every kid in town, and these two certainly weren't from the town.

"What… What are you two doing down here? The old mines aren't safe." The filly looked at the colt behind her, who shrugged.

"Uh, what are you doing down here?" she responded. Grave Danger gave them an unimpressed look.

"I practically live down here. I know what’s safe and what isn't. You two are from out of town." The pair flinched at that, ears splayed and eyes wide. "I know ‘cause I don't know ya. Where's your folks?"

"Our… folks?"

"Yeah, your parents?" The filly looked sad.

"Mommy's far away. And…"

"And we never knew daddy," the blue colt spoke up, his voice barely above a whisper. Grave Danger suddenly felt very awkward. "We came in here because we're tired."

"Why are you here? Don't you have somepony to take care of you?" Grave asked. The colt grew quiet and the filly spoke up again.

"We had but… but something bad happened to him. We had to run." Grave suddenly felt very apprehensive. He was a colt, but he was also the son of the sheriff, and as a result was slightly more aware of how bad and unfriendly a place the world can be towards foals. It was why he took such care when he was off adventuring. He knew he was not ready to go out into the world like the great human before him. He knew he had to be careful and not reckless.

After all, he could end up like these two potential orphans before him. The very thought struck him simultaneously with terror and a degree of pity for the frightened ponies. The pair seemed to shift a bit, but he paid no mind.

"Well… Well you better come with me. I'll take you into town, get you cleaned up, with some food. Maybe… Maybe then we can find your mother." The pair slunk back further behind the rock. "Hey, hey! It's okay, it isn't even a real sword. Look!" He sheathed the sword into the belt around his torso. "My dad's the sheriff. He can help you two out, keep you safe."

The pair looked at each other and then back at Grave Danger.

"How do we know we can trust you?" the filly asked. He puffed his chest out.

"Because I'm Grave Danger. I'm a hero!" he said proudly before flicking an ear. "Or I will be. I'm in ah, er, training! Yep, hero in training!" the filly looked at him with a curious expression, but the colt gave him a sceptical look. "What’s your names?"

"…Stardust." The filly said.

"Cosmic." The brother intoned.

"Pleased to meetcha!" Grave said with an outstretched hoof. The pair just looked at it in confusion until it got awkward, and Grave retracted the offered hoof. "Now come on, I'll lead you two out. Watch your step; some of these rocks are loose," he warned, waving the pair on.

The pair slowly began following him out, Grave Danger talking all the while of how he was training to become a great adventurer and something about a thing called a human? They didn't know, just letting him talk away while keeping up the scared foal personas.

"You did that on purpose, didn't you?" the colt whispered to the filly. She gave him a disdainful look.

"Hush, I was hungry."

"We're both hungry, but you know what mother said. No interacting with the ponies!"

"What was I supposed to do? Our minder got killed in the night and we just barely got away. Would you rather sit here waiting for the red backs to come and find us or at least have some warm bodies between you and them?"

"And what do you think happens when they find out what we are?"

"They won't."

"So you can see the future now? Interesting, can you tell me if mom's dead or not?" she hissed at him.

"What was that?" Grave called back.

"Nothing!" Stardust answered brightly before wincing. "Just uh, stubbed my hoof!"

"Oh, we can look at that when we get back. It’s not hurting bad or anything, is it?"

"No no, it’s fine, I can walk!" she said as they continued on out of the cave. She turned back to her brother.

"Mother swore she'd find us again. I do not doubt her, do you?"

"I don't disobey her. Do you?" her brother challenged back, and the pair walked in silence once more before he spoke again. "And what if the redbacks do attack despite the ponies?"

Stardust didn't reply immediately but stared resolutely ahead, her eyes flashing green just once in the darkness before they exited the mouth of the mine and into the daylight.

"Then we'll have to improvise."

--=--

He played with his sister while they waited for their dad to get back. Their brother was in the kitchen with their mom, helping with dinner in his usual, grumbling manner.

Clear Sight placed one block on top of another. His sister was only a year younger than himself, but even so the blocks were still her favourite toy. She was always quiet, but lately she had been even more so. He took to playing with her more often out of concern. He knew why of course. The reminder of it was the boards placed over their smashed window where that bad stallion had broken in. Each time his eyes lingered on it, he felt a burning anger in his young heart, an anger he kept to himself.

The little block tower fell over again, surprising the little pink pegasus filly across from him. He smiled and pulled himself up to walk over to get the blocks that fell furthest away.

"Hey, you almost beat your record that time. Wanna try again?" he asked. She nodded, golden eyes matching her blonde mane. He was the grey of an overcast sky himself, with a tousled brown mane and blue eyes.

"Okay, you wanna try hovering again?" She flapped her small wings experimentally from where she sat and shook her head. He smiled. "Wanna try standing on my shoulders to build it higher?" She nodded enthusiastically at that, a small smile forming on her muzzle, the first one he saw all day. They continued to play, her balancing on his back and withers to build the block tower higher than before, getting braver with each try. At one point she balanced a foreleg on his head as she flapped her wings for balance to get just one last block onto the tower.

Of course, they tumbled and fell over.

The pair of them laughed as they tumbled over into the tower of blocks. Laughter that quickly quietened when the front door closed and their father had returned from work.

"I'm home!"

"Our ears work just fine, honey. You don't need to shout," his wife admonished from the kitchen. Clear Sight watched his father pass by the middle room, dropping his bag of tools in the hallway. He looked bedraggled, he always did these days. He saw him glancing nervously into the middle room, over the children's heads to the broken and boarded window. Clear Sight caught his gaze, and his dad gave him a brief warm smile before turning away. Clear Sight stayed still for a moment, watching him disappear into the kitchen, seeing him hug his mother in silence.

Their embrace lasted longer than it normally did. It was a hug of reassurance more than anything. Clear Sight looked down at his sister, who had been quieter than she normally was, focused on her blocks and her toys, more for distraction than for the joy of it. Their older brother was quieter these days, less prone to complaining, spending more time to himself.

Clear Sight turned and looked up at the boarded window, shivering slightly at the chill that still made its way through despite their best efforts. His heart hardened as he remembered what that broken window was a symbol of. A wound, patched over but still bleeding, an intrusion of cold and fear into the warmth of their family. He turned and helped his sister with her blocks.

"It's going to be okay, you know," he said, his voice shaky and his expression angry as he stacked the blocks. Little Fall blinked up at him. "You don't need to be scared. Nopony needs to be scared. Not of him."

Fall glanced out the door to the kitchen for a moment before turning back to her brother and their toys. She began picking more blocks together, watching him carefully.

"I'm not scared of him," Clear Sight declared, stacking one block onto another more forcefully than he needed. "I'll show him he can't mess with our family like that. I'll make sure he will never hurt any of you ever again!"

Fall smiled at that, putting one last block into place before noticing her brother was slumping, his shoulders sagging. She frowned before sidling closer to him and putting a hoof to his leg in concern. The touch made him relent, and his expression softened.

"I just… I don't know where to begin," he said, looking off to the side. "I'm still just a kid."

There was a knock on the door.

"I'll get it!" Bright Spark announced, trundling down the hallway to the front door. "Who is—urk!"

The odd sounding noise coming from his brother caused Clear Sight's ears to prick up. If he hadn't seen Bright Spark slowly back away from the door, eyes wide and mouth agape, he would've thought something bad had happened to him. What was more worrying, however, was the light that was spilling into the hallway around him from the front door. Clear Sight noticed the cold draft had stopped as well.

"Well, who is it? Spark, who's at the—" Their mother gasped as she left the kitchen, a hoof raised to her muzzle. Father followed not soon after, equally dumbstruck. Both Clear Sight and Fall looked at each other before slinking over to the door, looking out of the middle room, seeing who it was that had inspired such silence in their family. He looked around the doorframe to the tall figure standing there, his sister hiding behind him and looking out from under his foreleg. When it spoke, he felt the maternal warmth in every word.

"Hello, my little ponies."

Author's Note

Well I guess thats the hiatus over again.

Oaksfury, the Rambuncious Rapscallion: Chapter 35 - The Lady of the Lake

Geraldine, the Squeaky Clean Eavesdropper: Chapter 24 - The Lion, the Witch and the Warning

Golden Eye, the Tiny Inquisipony: Chapter 37 - Ghosts and Ghouls

Arcane Mist, the Apathetic Magi: Chapter 37 - Ghosts and Ghouls

Wren, the Little Bastard: Chapter 21 - Fun with Feudalism

Grave Danger, the Daring Adventurer: Chapter 6 - Unforeseen Consequences

Stardust and Cosmic (~~which is totally their real names and definitely not aliases, nope~~), the Two Tiny Truant Tyrants in Training: This one

Clear Sight, VENGEANCE: Chapter 44 - Ticket to Ride

Interlude - Questions and Answers

The ash burst from the ground, it had lain there uncounted eons for all she knew, time didn’t matter in this place as much as it did back in Equestria. It wasn’t entirely mystical, or whatever the dreamscape Luna entered into was, even now she didn’t fully understand what Luna was trying to explain to her, but learned enough the hard way to heed her advice on such things. Neither was it truly a physical place. Time did not matter here, at least not at first, one never suffered for hunger or thirst, but experienced both.

A mile could span continents and you could cross a mountain in minutes. There was no sun and no moon and no stars by which one could judge direction. It was at once a crossroads and a deadend from which you might not ever escape, depending upon the mood of the masters of this world.

It was the perfect prison… Usually.

Which was why Celestia was now making a personal visit to this realm of ash and dust. She took in a deep breath, the air dry, with the eerie, scratchy odorlessness of a world that was not dead since it had never truly lived. Tartarus was the name Equestrians called it, a term of which Celestia did not recall the origin. Not its true name, for that nopony knows, and none of the residents dare speak it. It was here, under ancient compact, that it was agreed that there be no permanent portal between Tartarus and the fragile world Equestria called home, except for the one gate and its one guardian of three. It was an agreement older than she was, and one she dared not trespass.

But Tirek had escaped. He escaped here, the ultimate prison, which held those who could not be dealt with by normal means, and that which could not be destroyed but could not be allowed freedom in a living world. Before she had pegged it to the wizard exploiting some loophole, or finding one of the rare, but not unheard of temporary portals to Equestria. The odds were against it, but it was possible. Maybe she chose to believe that to avoid speaking to the lords of Tartarus.

Yet here she was.

She let out a breath and continued walking. The ash wastes beneath her barely passed by her hooves, her horn glowed to light her way and tie her to the anchor which would guide her back. If the lords of Tartarus wanted to speak with her, she would soon find out. Mountains of shale passed by in the distance in a blur, as the ash barely lifted with each hoofstep. The ‘clouds’ shifted in colour and hue, but to no shade she could identify, not reflecting light but hiding whatever baleful source of light kept everything in this land without shadow hideously visible.

The Scenery shifted once, twice, thrice each time she blinked. Rolling hills, salted flatlands, craggy mountains till at last she came by the dead root. Once upon a time, such things may have connected and given life to some unfathomably large tree as its tendrils reached into the dead earth around her. But not here, not this root, for nothing living has ever called this world home except for those trapped here, and no life could this world ever give.

Nothing save for the lords.

There were three sets of three, all of them haunched figures, their cloth coverings seemingly made of rock, so still and solid they looked, shifting only when their unseen heads moved, blending in seamlessly with the rocks upon which they were perched. The tendrils of the dead root split into hundreds of thousands, creating a forest of dead wood, shielded from the heavens by the bulk of the root above them. The stillness of it all never failed to unnerve her.

She did not speak, this was not her place, so she stood there waiting to be addressed. After what felt like an age, though through her connection to the anchor she knew only to be an hour, one of the haunched figures turned, the darkness within it spoke to her in a voice once young but nevermore.

“What is it you seek, lone one?” it asked. Its forelegs outstretched, clutching the rock upon which it sat, its skin gnarled and stoney.

“I seek wisdom.” Celestia answered. There was a sudden, shrill cough, one of them had laughed.

“Wisdom!” said a voice once hoary and ancient, now only tired. “Do not we all!? There is no wisdom here, child, not anymore. You search in vain”

“Please, I only wish to know of something which you may have seen in the past.” Celestia asked. “And about how one of my- your, prisoners, escaped.”

“Let her ask,” said a third voice from the third set of three, a voice once beautiful but now only the barest rasp of dust and ash. “It is not our place to forbid the youth from their foolish quests. Were not we once all judges of many such a creature? Were we once not amused by their folly?”

“Judges no more!” said another voice, mournful and distant, “The spindles are split, the weave is unwoven, no one is bound to our chains of silk and cotton. Not anymore. Not since He split the wheel and conquered the hand of death.”

Not for the first time did Celestia feel utterly lost from listening to the Lords of Tartarus bicker back and forth. Their voices grated, the oppressiveness of Tartarus was magnified in their presence, and the longer she lingered, the more the red river to the South drew her attention. Her eye flickered to it just once and she squeezed them shut. She had barely seen the red water flow, but the pain of it stung her to the core of her mind, a mocking laughter rang in echoes in the back of her consciousness and somewhere, subtly, she heard something forever lost call her name.

“-Listening child!” Celestia blinked back to the scene before her, the lords addressed her directly. “If you seek wisdom, look away from the red river, your sins draw you to it like moth to a flame. Do not go there, for there our realm ends, and something else begins. You would pray for ash and the touch of the dead root should you cross it but never would you find even the stolid comfort even we must endure.”

“M-My apologies,” She stuttered, raising a hoof to hide her gaze from even accidentally looking that way. Hurriedly ordering her thoughts to focus away from it and onto the reason why she braved the wastes. “To be clear, I wish to speak to you of a specific kind of magic that has been plaguing my world recently.”

At this the lords fell quiet for some time, no wind blew and nothing moved bar her own hair. It really made her stick out and for once she hated her habit of casting that spell every morning. One turned to her, the elder of the second trio.

“What magic do you speak of?” it asked. Celestia cleared her throat.

“We know it only as, Old Magic. Its what its users call it.” she said. This elicited a chorus of hacks and dry coughs. They laughed at her.

“Perhaps it would do you well to be more specific, child. Old is a relative term for us.” One explained.

“What are its properties, how does it manifest?” Another spoke.

“It’s strange to the magic we know.” Celestia began.

“You would boggle at what would be strange to your kind, pony, magical or otherwise.” Celestia hid her distaste for their condescension, it would not do to lengthen this already unwelcome visitation anymore than strictly necessary.

“The users of this magic need to speak it.” Celestia clarified. “From what I know, the speech is unnatural to the tongues that speak it. An unnerving feeling permeates the magic from those who have experienced it. Their mages do not need any magical training, and wield the magic regardless of race or aptitude by reading the spells from their pages.”

“Does your realm not have such concoctions? Spells wielding by merely reading them?” one of the lords asked, from the third set to Celestia’s right.

“I… Yes.” She admitted.

“Then what is strange about their method?” Another asked.

“That they can do so without any magical talent or training.” Celestia answered. “Ponies born without magical inclination or natural use can cast spells on par with archwizards. In general, without any natural affinity or inclination, no spell can really be cast without some instruction, the winds of magic are wild and without proper education, the crystalline way, dangerous.”

“And yet these mages can wield without any fear of danger?” An ancient asked.

“Yes.”

“And it is unnerving, you suspect it is not of the winds of magic that blow through your world?” Another crone asked.

“That is what I have come to, it seems similar to many kinds of magics, schools, philosophies, but further research always finds a break. It is as if it's not related to the magic of our world at all.”

“And that is why you are here.” Said the first to speak, Celestia merely nodded. The lords of tartarus were silent for a time, a long time, Celestia had to focus on the spell cast by her horn to keep track of the time that passed in Equestria. Occasionally, one hooded shroud would turn to face another, in a silent conference to which she was not party.

At last, they all, as one, turned to face her for the first time, Celestia reflexively shuffled her wings while under their gaze.

“Can you describe the scripture which they read, child?” said one once young, her voice a tired friendliness. Celestia levitated the scroll which she held under her wing, she held it before her, unfolding it for the lords to see.

“It's probably better to simply show you.” She said, allowing the lords to gaze upon the intricate, swirling calligraphy of the old magic script, and the internal, seemingly endless repeat of the designs within each brush stroke in differing ink. Another long silence, broken only by what she could only describe as the first gust of wind she had experienced while in this bleak realm. The lords, collectively let out a breath.

“It is not magic of your world child.” One started. “It is a form of magic from a world very foreign, very lost.”

“What do you mean?” Celestia asked, rolling up the scroll.

“Some fields lie fallow, child.” one said, turning her head away towards the north, Celestia decided not to look towards the grey throne. “Some fields are ripe and lush, flowering with much fruit.”

“Others are deserts, were life, hardy but good, dwells and thrives in spite of adversity.” Said one who had yet to speak, the voice like falling sand. “Some, are gardens, beautiful and serene. Others oceans, some, snowy thundra and endless light.”

“... And the world where this magic comes from?” she asked. The nearest lord turned to look to the ground.

“And some fields…” It began, “Some fields are burned.”

“A trespasser brings this magic to your world,” The youngest of the middle threeo said. “Through guile, art, and much malice, it was stolen into your world, its power tied to its master. The users tied to the magic and as such enslaved. Doomed to feed his debt so that he may remain free.”

“Who is this trespasser?” Celestia asked, feeling she was getting close to what she sought. “How do I defeat him?”

“We do not know its name, only from whence it came.” One explained and then another, “And it is defeated when it can no longer pay its debts, and it has paid its gaolers handsomely for many a free year to come.”

“Jailers? Debts? I don’t understand, how can I defeat him? What are its debt, who are its gaolers? Is it you? Did he escape Tartarus like Tirek did?”

“That obstinate child escaped through his own guile. It is no fault of ours if one is too thin for the bars to hold them, we have since rectified that mistake.” They explained, “No prisoner of ours is the trespasser, a far more terrible doom is its, its choice from eternity.”

“Where did it come from then? How is it using stolen magic from another world to terrorize my own!?” Celestia said, raising her voice, her patience wearing thin. She realised her mistake the second she spoke. The lords could dismiss her to be lost in the ash wastes with her only option to return home at any time, being curt with them was unwise to say the least. However, after a long, pregnant silence, one spoke.

“Sometimes we are wrong.” It admitted. “Sometimes, something swims the red river and survives.”

--=--

His breath frosted upon the air as he dug the trench deeper, his hooves numb to the cold, his fur grown thick in the wintry landscape, his cloak barely more than rags covering his body.

He stopped in his efforts, breathing heavily, his blood flowing through him as he looked over the village below. It was safe, for now, the wraiths won’t come back for some time, but they’d need a more permanent solution. It was a mining village, sheltered from the worst of the north’s winds by some of the hardiest trees the north had to offer. A tough breed he did not know the name of, for he did not ask, which raged against the brutality of their environs, growing thick and squat, their leaves sheltering the earth beneath them from the all encompassing snow, allowing animals and fruit bearing plants to survive where they shouldn’t.

But it was a long way from the nearest train station, and a longer way still from the nearest garrison. It was caught in the midst of regular raids by ice wraiths. Long, skeletal, two limbed creatures seemingly made from ice and who breathed hoarfrost. Local legend had it they were the ghosts of lost explorers desperately seeking out the long lost heat of life to warm them again. While he doubted that, he did not doubt they attacked ponies whenever they could.

And he had arrived just in time to stop them.

His breathed evened out, but then he felt the pain in his left foreleg. Grunting he lifted it, pulled away a cloth, the wound had healed as well as it could, but every now and again the pain flared up from where the bone had been split. It could fracture again at any time. He snorted, the wind blew his long, golden mane into his face and ruffled the steadily growing beard. It would be nightfall soon, it was best if he retired for now and continue his work in the morning. He turned away from the village and walked back into the cave he had turned into his new home, with a flick of his horn he cast a fire spell upon the frozen wood and closed over the entrance to the cave.

It wouldn’t be as nice as staying within a house, but it would have to do for now. He slumped into the covers he had gathered for himself, a part of him still squirmed at the idea of hunting, but as the natives of this snow blighted land knew from long travails, and which he had to learn, sometimes survival has to overcome principles. The fur of the mats warmed him as he lay down to sleep, he watched the fire as it burned through its life as he wondered all his options. He was alone, he was without a goal and he was lost, but he put those worries aside.

For it was, he thought, the only way he could find himself.

--=--

“WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU CAN’T GET HIM!?” Chrysalis all but bellowed into the glass globe in her room she used to communicate with agents bearing the amulets.

“I mean he’s not here!” Thorax hissed, ears clasped against her skull looking around. Chrysalis just had to start shouting at her in the middle of the marketplace, didn’t she? She took care to up the scarf on her face, Winter may have been over but there was still a bite in the air, and the last thing she needed was to draw more griffons’ attention from talking to herself.

“THEN WHERE IS HE!?” Chrysalis willed into the orb with all of her might. Outside, something exploded, but Thorax wouldn’t be able to hear external sounds beyond the voice of the one using the orb.

“I have no idea. He left not long after I had arrived, I didn’t have time to secure connection to him.” Thorax answered. “He’s been gone for over two weeks now.”

“Then find him!” Chrysalis demanded. Outside in the hallway changeling were running around screaming.

“Why!? What's happening?” Thorax asked as she turned a corner, sensing the urgency of the situation.

“Some idiots dug too deep and we woke something up and it's scaring the tartarus out of every changeling under the Earth!” Chrysalis explained. “It sees emotions, we need something here it can’t read!”

“What!? What is it!?” Thorax, now worried was stepping in place in her agitation.

“A Therenor!” Chrysalis answered. Thorax was silent for a moment.

“A Therenor?” She asked flatly, her panic subsiding almost immediately.

“Yes!”

“You do know those things are harmless, right?” Thorax asked.

“You do not speak to your queen like that.” Chrysalis said coolly, Thorax rubbed the bridge of her muzzle between her eyes.

“Sorry, your majesty. But you do know that they can’t harm you, right? They’re gaseous, more or less immaterial. They only thing they do is cause hallucinations” she pointed out.

“That doesn’t change the effect they have and you know it!” Chrysalis snapped. “We need something capable of scaring it off!”

Thorax resisted the urge to sigh.

“I’ll see to it, your highness.” Thorax said.

“Well do it quick!” Chrysalis said, slapping the globe with a boof more or less ending the connection. She turned, two guards barged into her apartments.

“My queen! We must leave before it-!” The windows burst open, sending glass shards all over the room, a terrible miasma of iridescent colour emerged into the room, a terrible visage of disconnected bones floated in place before forming into a monstrous expression. The Therenor monstrous cry shook the ziggurat to its core.

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!”

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!”

“So whats up?” Jacques asked, strolling over to Thorax from the fountain. Thorax deftly hid the amulet under the false ruffage of her griffon guise’s chest feathers.

“Oh? Nothing much, just thought I had to attend to something urgent, but turns out it was a false alarm.” She answered, Jacques eyed her for a moment before smiling.

“Well alright then, coming along? We’re going to be late.” she nodded, but grimaced.

“I don’t understand what Crimson needs us for if its a simple gathering expedition for the alchemists.” she asked, Jacques shrugged with one shoulder.

“No idea, but I couldn’t turn down such a pretty face.” Thorax shot him a look and he laughed. “Got you.”

Thorax blinked in surprise and just turned to face ahead and hurried her pace. Jacques simply laughed harder.

--=--

“It's so wonderful being the Imperial Wizard!” Sunburst beamed, the sun splitting through the trees of the courtyard, the arches of the walkway just low enough to ensure those walking down its centre wouldn’t be blinded as they went on their various ways.

“Hm.” The liaison grunted as the ground shook, a muffled crump telling the tale of another explosion. Neither he nor the court wizard missed a step as courtiers hurriedly made their way to and fro the courtyard. Eager to cross it and get to their destinations and not linger any more than they had to.

“I get to teach the next generation of royalty the wonders of magic!”

“Yup.” A beleaguered gardener galloped screaming at the far end of the courtyard, his man afire.

“It is a heavy responsibility.” Sunburst said stoically, taking a moment to run a hoof through his growing beard. He had been going for a Starswirl look lately, he thought it made him look wise. Given the fashion with most wizards these days is clean shavenness, he only ended up looking even more unkempt and untidy then usual.

“It certainly is.” his companion said as he escorted the Imperial Wizard and his magically levitated bag of teaching equipment. There was the clink of metal on metal and the liaison spied some rather expensive pieces of plate armour poking from the bag. He let a wry smile cross his lips, it must be a practical exam today.

“Its hard, neigh! Impossible sometimes! But it must be done! For the good of the world!”

“A noble calling indeed.” The liaison said with a sigh, flicking his ear in the direction of a new source of noise. Somepony, somewhere, was screaming about their eyes after a particularly glaring explosion of light erupted from the windows of the study tower they approached. Fortunately for them, the doors ahead had no windows on them. The last ones did, but he had left a little word and some little coins to ensure the new ones had no windows, for exactly this reason. He still had afterimages from the first time he was blinded.

“Sometimes though, sometimes, I wonder if I can do it some days, you know?” Sunburst said as they neared the door.

“I can imagine.” Flash said as he levitated the keyring in front of him, going through the keys one at a time. The entire world became purple for a few seconds, Sunburst let a contented smile cross his face. One of the new crystal masons working on the south wing of the palace screamed about why everything down was now up. “So, you still want me to make it look like an accident or…?”

“Will you!? I’ll pay!” Sunburst said suddenly, face filling with hope. Flash Sentry tapped a hoof on his chin for a moment, then the key clicked and the door opened.

“Nope.”

“SUNNY!” An enthusiastic pink blur tackled Sunburst to the ground in an explosion of speed. The wind, rattle his armour and blew through the crest of his helmet as Sunburst exploded into a cloud of books, incredibly durable vials of volatile potions, reagents and metal plates. Sunburst had prepared himself for the alicorn cannonball, but being prepared to prevent broken bones meant nothing about cancelling momentum. Flurry Heart hopped in circles around him, as he lay there waiting for the world to stop spinning. “Sunny! Sunny! Sunny! Sunny!”

A frazzled looking made stumbled from the tower door, Flash gently held out a hoof to hold her swaying body steady and point her in the direction of the palace in a wordless, practiced motion. Another maid would come to tend to the Princess in due course once her lessons had finished for the day, they locked the door as much to ensure there was somepony watching the princess as much as it was a means of letting the princess know she wasn’t allowed out or into somewhere.

Not that it could really stop her, but it's the thought that counts.

“Happy to be back?” Flash asked, looking off into space in the practiced manner of every guardspony before him. He let himself smile. Sunburst just stared at the canopy.

“Why did I come back early again?” he asked nopony in particular, Flash answered him anyway.

“Because Celestia had already sent more than enough wizards and mages with the envoys to Griffonia that you were superfluous and Flurry refuses to be taught lessons by anypony else.

“Oh. Goody.” He looked to his friend, pleading for mercy with his eyes. “Are you sure I can’t pay you to make it look like an accident?”

“Pretty sure.” Flash said as Sunburst got up sighing from the ground, brushing his robe down and picking up his dropped belongings.

“Oh, oh, Sunny! Sunny!” Flurry Heart said jumping and letting her wings slow her descent repeatedly. “Can we do the big spells? I wanna do the big spells! Just one, pllleeeaaassee!?

“Now Flurry, you know your mother wouldn’t want you to learn those just yet.”

“Oh come oooooonnnn!” She pouted, Sunburst sighed.

“Ok, but only the telekinetic kick.” he relented, Flurry Heart shot her hooves in the air in victory.

“Yyyyesssss!” she said, excitedly running back into the ruined battlefield that was her study tower. Sunburst hesitated before following her.

“So, good luck.” Flash said, Sunburst didn’t even give him the dignity of looking at him as he walked through the door

“You’re an ass, Flash.”

“I am actually. Twice removed, four generations back, on my mother’s side.” He said, the answer kept changing every time he gave that response.

“No I mean- ugh, whatever.”

“Oh I forgot to mention,” Flash began, Sunburst turned and raised an eyebrow. “You still owe me forty from that bet five months ago, so I can’t bury you in the outfields until you either pay up front, or at least buy the shovel for me.”

“Flash you son of a donk-” The door closed, the lock clicked, and Flash Sentry shuffled his spear from the crook of his foreleg to his side brace, turned around, and walked back to the palace, whistling all the way. When he got there the night watch was changing, as the day guard took up their positions.

“Morning Flash,” one of the morning Guards said as he drew near. “Having a good one?”

“Oh you know,” he said, waving a hoof in a circle. A number of increasingly loud No’s reached his ears before a large crash could be heard, the tower shaking with seismic activity and something launched from a side window at ridiculous speeds in an explosion of glass and wood shards. “It’s a Monday.”

Author's Note