Under a Grey Sky

Chapters

Chapter One: Dreams Fall Through
Chapter Two: The Name of Honor
Interlude: Contemplations
Chapter Three: Burning, Setting Off
Chapter Four: First Frost
Interlude: What Was Said
Chapter Five: Tainted
Chapter Six: Moonlight
Interlude: The Sphinx
Prologue

Chapter One: Dreams Fall Through

Chapter One

Dreams Fall Through

There was no warning.

The dawn cracked over the rolling hills to the east, the distant lonely mountains jutting out of the plains, the low-hung deepness of the forest to the west, the vast plains to the north, and the town settled just out of the center, just outside of somewhere.

Ditzy lay in bed again, wondering when the next visit would come. Having processed at last the events that had culminated in fire and ashes, she somehow found a longing for the sky-hung city in the distance. Her earlier travels in life, all years past except for the recent debacle, had not been enjoyable. They were the cost to find the home she had now, and to escape her wretched situation of birth.

Yet situations of birth are much more than location; they are a mixture of heritage, legacy, learning, and character as well. Sometimes the scars of the past lingered, distant or recent.

But that was not the case, for once.

Ditzy rolled around in bed, her flaxen-blond mane peeking out under the edges of her pillow. The perpetual headache of worry had subsided, at last; she had given her last damn. And perhaps that was a good thing.

Definitely a good thing…

After she had taken Dinky to school, an activity so normal and trivial as to be surreal, Ditzy had found the inspiration only to flop back into her bed and let its softness massage her into blissful oblivion. Today was an off day, or so she assumed. Ditzy rolled again, mane splayed out beneath her, all underneath the warmth of blankets. I’ll go into the office later… do some work, catch up ‘nother day…

A more pristine self would have protested the apparent laziness, but Ditzy had been pushed to her absolute limit and could tolerate no other thought than rest. So she lay, and for a long and fortunate while Ditzy had what she ostensibly wanted.

Hours passed before her mind wandered to thoughts of her monochromatic visitor and guest, and the slightest tweak of guilt pierced her restful repose. Ditzy rolled out of the morass of blankets, noted it was nearly noon, and with a reluctant groan began the arduous process of removing herself from her warm bed.

I really ought to go see how he’s doing… he might need some distractions or some company after being let down like that. It’s a crazy business… maybe he can take more time to explain it to me.

Traipsing out of her room and down the stairs, Ditzy shook her messy mane into a passable façade of neatness. Although she had slept well, she had not slept much. Ditzy imagined Tick had experienced something not quite as restful. Especially given…

Ditzy shook those memories off, shut the door to worrisome speculation and retrospect. Glancing in a mirror, Ditzy caught a view of her own morning demeanor.

Ugh.

She was not resplendent, to use a choice word.

Nonetheless, the young mare and mother reached the end of the hall and the guest room that Tick had taken temporary tenure of. Before she did, however, Ditzy on sudden impulse glanced into the living room, the now-empty room. What seemed like ages ago, Ditzy had glanced in upon Tick and her daughter playing a game, and the memory sparked—something—no—

…What?

Disoriented, Ditzy shook off the vision and continued down the hall. Entirely too tired to trawl into vague feelings, Ditzy decided easily that she would rather deal with the more tangible issue of Tick—or at least, take notice of his issues. And so she knocked.

Yet the knocks were long echoed by silence.

Ditzy put her ear to the door, listened for a moment, called out for Tick in a mild volume, and after hesitating swung open the door.

Yet the room was empty, the bed unruffled, the dust resettling.

He must have made it.

Light confusion followed Ditzy as she swept through the house in her late-morning haze, checking the rooms and finding them lacking of a particular rhythmic-eyed visitor. He might have gone to the library, or he might still be upset and is running around trying to blow off steam; he could be drinking again, but there’s not too many places to do that around here and it’s really early to be doing that, but I can’t say I’d blame him. I’d better go looking.

Her peace would not last much longer.

In the foyer, Ditzy swung her mailbag up onto her shoulder, thinking of stopping by the office as she searched for Tick. She might as well search for him and catch up on work simultaneously, yet Ditzy could not shake the pervasive odd feeling of the morning as she shifted the bag around on her shoulder.

As Ditzy exited her haven, she glanced back—and on the edge of her vision, she realized the source of her odd feeling.

That’s not my bag…

Turning around and retreating back into her house, Ditzy held it up before her eyes, spotting the guard’s insignia on the black material, and a twist of memory locked her joints: Ditzy’s mind raced, and then she remembered.

The book! And Tick—

Ditzy doubled back, checked the bedroom again, and the revelation became much clearer.

Tick hadn’t made the bed. He hadn’t slept at all.

~~~~~~~~

In the blessed dark of a back room in an inn, the last guest lay in the half-light, staring up at the ceiling that seemed as distant as a cathedral’s arch, memory locked in the combat of only a few hours ago. The late shift of workers hadn’t bothered to talk upon seeing the grimace in the armor, the wicked cut of shadows created by the joints and the lone candle. Those metal shells lay on the floor by the bed, only the sinuous leather pieces left covering the night-winged guard.

Eris would not sleep, for her cause was yet unfulfilled.

“Rest until dawn cracks the horizon, and then search him out. Thy ambition hast seized our attention, yet more important things lie ahead. Go, knowing that we watch you with attentive eyes…”

Luna would bring glory to Eris’s station, would bring recognition for her ability. Yet Eris has not said all that could be said to her commander, but the doubt of reserving that personal encounter she had shut down before she arrived.

Confliction was not something Eris was familiar with. For split between two brothers her desires lay.

Tick had disgraced her, had challenged her supremacy and for a split second broken past all barriers. He had tried to harm Eris, but had only managed to humiliate her in light of her philosophy. Self-control was Eris’s highest principle, and Tick had made her lose it, if only for a moment.

Out of all the pains he could have inflicted, that galled her the most. Eris would find him and break him, show him the truth of her strength of will.

Quirk was a means to an end, a pawn for her to achieve what else she valued most: respect in her order, the dignity of the chain of command, and recognition for her talent, her values unbroken. It was her lot in life to be a guard, but it was one she had chosen with dignity.

But all she was left now was an unspeakable truth:

I can only hunt one. And I can honor one tradition or the other…

Growling inside, Eris rolled out of bed and forced the feelings of confliction into a box, and then tossed the box into the pit where she disposed of her many other trials. Unraveling the knots of her remaining armor, she fitted it away into the plate armor. It was practical, efficient. Eris felt it snap satisfyingly into its smallest form, and for a moment distracted herself as she slid it underneath the bed. It would stand out too much to be wandering the streets ready for battle.

Eris shook herself out, forgetting all tension as she sharpened her mind for the hunt ahead. It would stand out enough that her wings were webbed instead of feathered, and eyes slit into piercing ovals. She did not know which she was going to hunt. She stopped asking the question, and it ceased to exist in her mind.

Eris had not found an answer, but she didn’t need one to find them.

~~~~~~~~

To walk without armor was not a nervous experience, not something of weakness, uncertainty, or vulnerability. On the contrary, it was to feel the air prickling against her skin: to excite the nerves and prime the instinct, to hone the ears on a thousand vibrations and to move unfettered and swiftly.

Eris slipped out of the populated streets quickly, a black flicker avoiding all but the quickest of glances. It’s not far now.

To hunt properly, a guide was needed. One familiar with the prey.

~~~~~~~

A solid knock broke the morbid spell, and Ditzy jolted back towards the foyer. Damn, that had better be him! He has to have the book.

Ditzy cursed herself as she knocked into the end table, the guard’s bag catching on the edge before she untangled herself and opened the door.

Solid and dusky, her coat just off black, the bat pony simply stared back at Ditzy. A dark blue mane cascaded to the shoulders and beyond, several inches longer than average. For a few moments, Ditzy looked on in blank confusion until Eris’s growing irritation at the silence provoked her into speaking.

“I didn’t think your mane would be—” Ditzy blurted without thinking before Eris interrupted her. What are you doing here?

“There’s no time to waste. Princess Luna has ordered that I hunt down the missing member of your expedition.”

“Then what are you—”

“Your…. expedition.”

The silence hung like a curtain separating the two from the rest of the world, and Ditzy noticed that Eris’s glare was no less sharp unarmored. Her slit eyes rolled as Ditzy stood and watched, unaired thoughts flitting about like will-o-the-wisps in the sudden situation.

“The fault is on your shoulders for letting him loose. We have to get looking before the trail gets any colder. Get Tick and…”

Eris tilted her head as she spoke, noticing the bag lying behind Ditzy, insignia unmistakable. “Why do you have a guard’s bag?”

The interrogative words pierced Ditzy’s myriad thoughts like sharp cold spikes of air. Am I allowed to tell here about the book? And Tick is gone, and he probably took it with him, damn, damn, damn…

“Tick is gone; he left sometime after we got back. I don’t know where he is. I can’t just get up and—how long is this going to take? I have a daughter, a job, obligations, there’s—”

Eris shifted abruptly, turning to scan the streets around them and cutting off Ditzy’s words. “Princess Luna will be here later this day. If you have concerns, take them up with her. We have to deal with the more important things. Even more so now that you’ve let the other brother slip away.”

Ditzy seethed, a clear, vitriolic anger that was not lost on the unimpressed Eris.

“You gave her your word,” Eris said simply, coldly.

Ditzy swept back inside and slammed the door behind her. The last glimpse of Eris didn’t even flinch as the door crashed, booming on its frames only an inch from her face.

Celestia help me.

Ditzy staggered, the room spinning before she managed to right herself. I thought this was over, at least for a while. I should’ve known better…

When I find Tick, I’m going to kill him.

~~~~~~~~

Eris moved with the lazy gait of a hunting cat, eyes casually observing everything. She was the antipode of Ditzy’s smoldering anger; calm, collected, and waiting. Yet Ditzy managed to keep her grievances locked inside, to Eris’s approval. Swiftly meandering through the center of town and out, Ditzy made a few quiet inquiries while Eris silently watched the scenes around, never getting too close to Ditzy, never chancing the odd observer making the connection that the two of them were looking for the same thing.

Ditzy may have put her anger to the side, but Eris could still see the tension in her movements. Eris paused to watch Ditzy strike up a short conversation with a pony at a stall and then slipped into an alley, running into a stall owner as she did.

“Sorry,” the mare said, moving around her.

Eris brushed her aside, not even bothering to glance at her, and leaped into the sky. Alighting on a roof, she scanned towards the edges of town, cursing the bright morning’s sun.

We won’t find them here if they’ve fled. We can’t even give chase to a trail. It might be futile, but there is no excuse not to try anyways.

Eris dropped down and walked out and around the building, making eye contact with Ditzy and motioning for them to move on with an imperceptible dart of her eyes. They walked on, away from the center as the after-morning flow of shoppers, errand-runners, and wanderers began to dissipate. As the crowd thinned, Ditzy’s dour demeanor came more and more into focus, a moody stare that kept her eyes on something a thousand yards away.

Eris sighed as she watched Ditzy sink. Useless…

Far ahead of Ditzy, Eris glanced back again to catch a glint in Ditzy’s eye. The brooding mare whirled around and rose up like a hornet before diving back down out of Eris’s sight around the corner of a building. Thought roared into motion as Eris launched herself after the striking mare, cutting a tight turn around the corner to find something she had not expected to see.

“Where is he?! Where is Tick?”

Or lucky, maybe.

Eris walked up, eyeing the bandages drawn tight around Quirk, and noted with disapproval Ditzy’s unrestrained anger. Despite, she raised an eyebrow at how effectively Ditzy had pinned her prey.

This must be his brother, the one Princess Luna was talking about.

“Get off him,” Eris cut in shortly, and pulled Quirk upright after Ditzy moved off of him, her glare unmoving.

Ditzy and Eris spoke simultaneously.

“You’re going to come with us and fulfill the terms of your contract.”

“Have you seen Tick? Do you know where he is? Why in Tartarus didn’t you come back?”

Quirk shook his head, wincing, holding his side, words thickly coated in momentary pain and everlasting sarcasm. “I’m glad to see I was missed in my absence. What’s this about Tick? I’m not exactly in a condition to go much of anywhere myself.”

The avenue held quiet, listening.

Ditzy moved in close, her glare a menace as threatening as the blood rising inside her. Quirk, wary, glanced at Eris yet found her unmoved, a casual observer. Still, he noticed that the pedestrian guard seemed to be paying more attention to the mare in front of him.

“Listen to me,” Ditzy hissed, a whisper cutting like an icicle through Quirk’s chest, freezing him in place.

“I might, assuming you bother to tell me what’s going on and why I’m being assaulted openly in the streets.” Quirk rubbed his sore wounds lightly, leaning away from the venomous mare in front of him and keeping cautious eyes on her.

“I’d let her do worse considering you’ve dishonored and abandoned your expedition."

Ditzy glanced back at Eris in annoyance, a caustic glare that Eris ignored flat-out.

“Well, I’ll be glad to be in such great company then,” Quirk deadpanned, his eyes narrowing as he glanced back and forth between the two. “Although I’m not sure I’d be able to stick around, even if it does promise to be such a good time…”

Eris looked back at him with her casual and seemingly permanent slight frown, unimpressed by his dryness. “You go willingly, or I tie you up and carry you on my back.”

Quirk paused for a split second, and then a crooked grin crossed his face. “I wouldn’t mind you giving me a free ride, although the ropes might be a bit much for the first—”

Eris walked up to Quirk as he talked, let out a miniscule one-sided grin, reached up with a hoof as if to touch his face, and with a swift crack to the head knocked him to the ground.

“It’s not a negotiation. Are you going to come with us, or will your attitude need to be adjusted further?”

Quirk muttered and spat some curses that would have made Ditzy blanch, had she not already stepped back in wariness from the scene.

Ditzy watched the spectacle as she might an old satirical play, at a distance despite being right next to it, disgusted by both the violence and Quirk’s word-twisting yet harboring a sizable-enough (if somewhat repressed) desire to do just what Eris had done to Quirk.

But how could she just hit him like that when he’s clearly injured?! I don’t think she’s allowed to do that… I hope she’s not allowed to do that.

Eris pulled the still-cursing Quirk upright, gave him a second to regain his balance, and asked again.

“Yes, yes, fine…” Quirk stared at Eris with undisguised wariness heavily coated in anger, and as she turned away and started to walk he glanced back at Ditzy.

“That sounded more painful than it was,” Quirk remarked offhandedly. “She really didn’t hit me that hard. I’ve handled much worse.” A wolfish grin passed his face for a moment at some undisclosed memory, but quickly fled. “It’s just, as you plainly see, I’ve not been overly lucky recently.”

Quirk watched her for a moment more, but Ditzy said nothing, her expression guarded. Her thoughts were still whirring around and making sense of the event. She looked to Eris, who had moved several yards away, only for her to stare back at them. She beckoned.

“There’s not much time. This mess has to be figured out before Princess Luna gets back.” Eris kept her voice low as the few distant ponies who had watched the spectacle faded back into other lives.

Yes, Ditzy thought with a tinge of bitterness and a hidden blade-edged glare at Quirk. All this had better be explained...

They traveled back to the house, the sun breaking through each gap in the trees on the quiet avenue. No quarter was given to the blessed shadows and sanctuaries, blinding flashes obscuring thoughts even as minds darkened. The sun touched them all with its blades of light, intermittent flares leaping into the souls of the regretful companions, and all the horizons of the mind were consumed, burned away by sunlight.

Chapter Two: The Name of Honor

Chapter Two

The Name of Honor

“You haven’t changed at all, have you?”

The displeased Ditzy tossed Quirk no more asides, staring ahead into her recent thought as Eris trailed somewhere behind them. After some moments lacking a response, Ditzy finally glanced to find Quirk caught in thought at the rhetorical question. But she would interrogate him no further; she did not desire to see into another brother’s mind.

Boredom, however, provokes innovation.

“What do you think of Eris?”

Quirk met Ditzy’s eyes and shrugged as much as he was able, even and unconcerned.

“You’re not mad at her for hitting you hard enough to knock you down?”

Quirk opened his mouth and then paused for a moment as he noticed Eris casually catching up, and he smirked in a way that had Ditzy mentally cursing the gag she knew was coming.

“How could I be angry at a lady with such throws of passion?”

Ditzy blinked, missing the wordplay initially. On realization she closed her eyes and gritted her teeth, silently wishing for something to hit her head against. Quirk grinned in his crooked mirth and only took more pleasure at Ditzy’s pained frustration.

Eris said nothing.

Quirk, victorious grin lingering, let it fall slowly as he sized up her lack of response.

He declined to make another pun. It was quiet until they reached Ditzy’s house.

~~~~~~~

“If he’s walking around like that, he can take a little smack.”

“Believe me, I’m not a fan of him either, and he’s not exactly suave, but-“

Ditzy’s continuing barrage of protests to the display of violence caused Eris to sigh internally, regretting the instant she had walked in the door and given Quirk an opportunity to retreat to another room to rest.

Half urbane and half scandalous… that one would be a riot among any kind of court. Give him enough time, and I’m sure he’d cause a literal one.

Eris shook her head among the flying words, and her thoughts drifted. It reminded Eris of her short experiences with some of the nobility of Canterlot, a few meetings bestowed upon her by awards and honors. Her perpetual frown thinned slightly as she remembered the pride and attention she had gained from those encounters.

Pride that I crushed and attention that I let fade. After all, they were not fitting for Eris’s aspirations, despite her hunger for advancement. It had to be earned, properly, by distinction, and the only treachery she would use would be the stealth she prized to defeat her enemies. And her enemy, Eris knew, was no doubt getting further away by the second…

“It just wasn’t appropriate!” Ditzy finished, Eris shaking out of the haze of thought.

“Was tackling him appropriate either, then?” Eris countered, not even looking at Ditzy anymore and only paying half attention to the indignant mare. Ditzy, stymied for a moment, managed to pause her rising anger and reply.

“No, but that doesn’t give you any sort of right to do so!”

Eris rolled her eyes. Hypocrite.

Frazzled and exasperated, Ditzy moved out of the kitchen and up the stairs after another second of silence.

~~~~~~~

So it seems to be the curse of brothers, that we drag each other into pain and through torment even by simple association. Quirk watched from inside the lock of the window, watched the vagaries of the northern forest and northern sky. There was not much use in melancholy, he knew, and with some tired inner harassment chased the dour notions out of his mind. On a whim, Quirk tore himself away from the window and set off back towards the two he had left behind.

And what has Tick done anyways? Did we sign away our souls when we agreed to that venture? I don’t believe this ‘Nightmare’ crap at all, at least for me. How could a shadow of a memory…

Quirk stopped at the door as if running into a wall. He whirled around, looking through the window at a phantasm. Stricken by the words, he saw at once the lake, the cottage, the soft dark forest and deeper demons lurking.

A shadow of a memory…

Quirk, his expression still and cold, left the room and shut the door behind him.

Leave it. Leave it behind.

A sharp, quick exhalation, a longer breath, a steadied mind.

Quirk found his way back towards the kitchen, which he assumed was the waiting place for what he had been told was only a short visit. He ached and longed to stretch, but bound and injured as he was he knew it to be a poor idea. Nonetheless Quirk found the flexibility to crack a few joints, wincing among the relief.

Poking his head into the impromptu meeting room, Quirk spied a plainly bored Eris and felt more than one emotion rile up at the sight.

Well, well. I do like a challenge. The stakes are high, I’m hurt all over and can’t run, she has no apparent sense of humor, and we’re going to be traveling together. What could go wrong?

Quirk walked into the room and behind a counter. Without a plan, he simply took to observing the room, paying no special attention to the bat-winged guard sitting at the table. If Eris noticed his entrance, she didn’t acknowledge it, her head propped up on a hoof and bored slit eyes staring at nothing.

“You. Get over here and tell me about your brother.”

Quirk complied; he sat opposite Eris and took note as she smirked ever-so-slightly at him. Without pretense he took a moment to sift through his thoughts, measuring and remeasuring the fanged brick wall across the table.

I take it back. You do have a sense of humor, although it’s not likely to bring me much mirth.

An open book and an open question, Quirk kept his quiet calm for a few more moments, seeking a mode of caution in his gamble. Eris’s eyes refused to deviate from his, unceasing, waiting. Seeing no reason to continue in silence, Quirk replied.

“What are you looking to find out about him?” Quirk caught his tongue, and then released it anyways. “A detailed explanation of what’s gone on might help.”

“The expedition continued as planned, minus you, and your brother abandoned as at the end of it.”

“I’m in awe of your mastery of comprehensive accounts.”

“I’ll tell you what happened.”

Ditzy walked in, no shortage of hardness of heart in her. Her anger veiled by control bisected the tension, drawing all eyes.

As entertaining as a catfight between these two might be, I think it would be more a duel of lions. Best that I stay far away from this one…

But Ditzy addressed him directly, and her anger did not spill over into wrath.

“Luna took me, Tick, her, and another guard to the abandoned fortress in the Everfree. Then she forced us to go inside without her. No thanks to you either for leaving us. I wish you could’ve seen the place; I thought we had wandered into Tartarus. We were all split up without a moment’s notice, wandering through the dark with horrifying traps and this ball-of-light-thing I can’t even begin to understand or explain. Thank Celestia we all made it out alive.”

Ditzy found her breath and shut her eyes for a moment. The strength of her memory was as plain as if it had been painted on her face. Quirk took the moment to glance at Eris, who was as calm and unaffected as Ditzy was dramatic.

“But then we found out that the whole trip was pointless anyways. The whole library had been burned, and all the books—”

Ditzy seized on something, a memory, and for a moment her mouth hung open and she said nothing. The passion drained from her face, and she sounded at once tired.

“That’s what happened. If more of that is in store for me, I might do what Tick did as well.”

Ditzy left the room.

“So,” Eris resumed casually, “what can you tell me about your brother?”

~~~~~~~~

I let it fail.

Ditzy lay down in her room, shaded with the darkness of a distant light, and stared at the ceiling.

Trapped in continual catastrophe, the fresh light suffusing her sight had faded, vanished. Ditzy was a maelstrom of mixed emotion; she considered all that had happened at once. Things long past now roared to the forefront, of her bleak childhood, of the contours of a mind running, of a paw and claw steepled together and blasting pain. All her reason was shredded, all her conscience was barren; what little she knew of this world seemed to be slipping into obscurity. She hung tenebrously on the last thin line of hope.

When Luna gets here, I’ll…

But her thoughts brought chaos, a cacophony to her mind. It was the illness of torment past brought to the present, and Ditzy was as fearful and lost as a distant child’s dream.

What will I do about Dinky?

Ditzy held herself still before the shuddering worry could overtake her, and hung to the thin line.

~~~~~~~

Like a maw of the void, the absence left by Ditzy seized Quirk for a few moments until Eris none-too-subtly coughed and tapped the table.

“Ah…” Quirk fumbled on the silence, unused to having no words for a situation. It was too delicate, too variable. He knew not his audience, nor did the tumultuous subject seem a safe topic.

“Your brother,” Eris prompted.

Now what do I tell her? I’ll have to watch carefully; she’s dangerous, but advances can surely be made. They always can.

“He’s a bit of a shut in,” Quirk started, his eyes set on her if only to assure him she wasn’t in striking distance. “He’s not very social, either, although he’s not a bad speaker if you can prod him into it. The first thing most notice about him is his eyes.”

Quirk sat back in his chair a bit, losing track of Eris. “You probably noticed them if you spent any time around him; they rotate and have little different black and white and gray sections. That’s how he got the name ‘Tick’. Despite the fact that he spends most of his time buried in one academic interest or another, he’s not helpless in nature.”

Eris had closed her eyes and locked her jaw, an inner conflicting energy only subtly noticed. Quirk picked back up without a significant pause, and her eyes opened without another moment’s passing.

What provoked that? The academics, the eyes, how he lives? I’ll be damned if he did something stupid with that ‘talent’ of his again. You’d think he’d have learned his…

“We spent most of our youth traveling alone. We weren’t always the friendliest to each other, and we still aren’t, but our parents had left us with an obligation to care for each other.”

Quirk let his judgments fall away and out of mind as Eris patiently absorbed the information, every once in a while pushing him on with a small nod. Expecting some kind of interruption, Quirk was instead intrigued by her willingness to let him ramble on.

“…as we got older, we started looking for a place where we could actually get to know ponies better and find a place and a purpose, and eventually we found Canterlot.”

Quirk stopped to catch his thoughts, but he soon found that they were straying. I should be careful with what I tell her. I still don’t know what she wants. She received the familial obligation stuff warmly, yet her reaction on the whole was overwhelmingly blank. What can I read from her?

The peculiar focus in her eyes seemed driving, hungry. She had noticed his hesitation, no doubt, and Quirk knew he was playing games with somepony of a caliber unknown to him. And with different goals, no doubt.

“That’s a reasonable summary.” Quirk stretched in his chair, the motion an excuse to pass the obligation of conversation to Eris. He kept an eye on the unreadable mare as he did, suppressing a yawn and erratic suspicions

“Seems like you talked about you as much as him,” Eris replied—were her eyes a tad narrower, her tone a bit sharper?

Heh, I’m such a sly bastard that I even outsmarted myself. Now, to open the door…

Quirk shrugged. “We influenced each other.” He itched to say more, insinuate that she learn about him to learn about Tick, but the mood had shifted. Quirk’s sixth sense warned him to let it go, but before he could strike out a new trail or not Eris waved a hoof in dismissal, got up, and wandered off.

So much for that foothold.

Puzzled, Quirk pushed thoughts of the iron-faced guard away and let his head rest on the table, forehooves crossed under him and feeling the minor pains of his body come to realization and slowly dissipate.

He would have plenty of time in the days ahead. And risk.

~~~~~~~~

Harried and swept out of the winds of the west, Luna slipped below the trees and out of sight. She had circumnavigated the forest out of desire and necessity, but she at last approached the town with growing resignation and a sigh of the past. The rhythm of the road began to fade from her, and the spontaneity and occasional peace and piece of reflection gained from it evaporated like restful water onto boiling rock.

“You have been measured and found wanting.”

The oracles’ ancient, layered words flittered through her mind again as she set down on the outskirts. Eyeing the distant offshoot of the town, Luna muttered.

“Why doth you bother us, strange thing of the distant past?” No need, no clemency, and out of no desire did we recall you. Indeed, it would have been much nicer to think not at all and to continue in that blissful state…

Luna broke from her pause to cast a quick veil over herself. Reluctance dragging on her like the mire she had avoided, she snapped into movement and cast off the sun striking her, becoming a simple mirage to any curious eyes.

Luna had long since tired of action. But she had a thousand years to make up for, and there was no possibility of another’s atonement sufficing.

~~~~~~~

Quirk did not particularly like the deep, studying glare Luna focused on him. With no excuse to slip away, he resorted to a false show of confidence: sitting high in the chair, Quirk met the searing gaze head-on.

I’m fucked.

Eris stood in the doorway, observing the silent exchange with an ever-bored glance, and then lazily ascended the stairs to gather the missing member of the party.

Deprived of his usual escapes, Quirk at last broke under the withering stare and looked away at something else—anything else.

“We hope that, whatever the cause of your injuries, they serve as a lesson to you as to the wisdom of so trivially abandoning a pursuit mandated by an authority.”

Luna’s words seized Quirk and he found himself meeting her hard and piercing eyes. Her power gripped his attention, and could not rip his eyes away even as she turned to watch Ditzy and Eris enter. Ditzy, clearly already rattled, opted not to speak. Ditzy’s objections writhed clearly inside her, though, and toiled heavily to confine her rampant emotion for a safer time.

For a long minute they were all quiet, uncomfortable shiftings the only noise. Luna looked at each in turn, then issued a question that had Ditzy cringing noiselessly.

“Where is Tick?”

“He vanished,” Eris answered without hesitation.

The ridiculousness of the entire scene dawned on Ditzy. In her kitchen, where minutes previously there had been nothing of consequence, was now a low-life of Lower Canterlot, a seemingly sadistic royal guard with leather wings to boot, and one of the two rulers of her country.

Ditzy seized up and fought the urge to wail or laugh uncontrollably.

Eris, in her usual unconcerned state, failed to notice. Neither did Quirk, who sought only to hide himself from the onslaught. And Luna ever-sphinxlike issued what passed for a silent sigh and took a few short steps away.

"They throw away their honor like a leaf in the wind."

The flat statement did not break the spell, but left Luna in possession of her audience, poised as she turned back to them. And on seeing her eyes, Ditzy knew she would not break first.

"Can they not hear the voice of dignity inside them?" Luna thundered, a sudden burst that rocked all else back. "Is there no justice, no strength in thy hearts? Have the trials of past ages the people have endured been forgotten? Hast thou no honor at all?"

Luna stood tall with her wings flared, the portrait of a mare at merciless war. Something electric rode high in the air, and even Eris's eyes had widened at the spectacle. The warbound mare eyed them all, her precise glance riveting them in place, looking for all the world as if she was about to condemn their very souls as the atmosphere darkened to black.

I can’t take any more of this!

"Do they even know the name?"

Luna's eyes softened immediately, the vapor of fear vanishing, the height of tension drained, something regretful brought to mind. Ditzy felt the rush of air returning to her lungs, the trick of fear harbored in the back of her mind retreating.

"What once was," Luna paused, inflecting her words carefully, "must be again."

The room took a collective breath, Ditzy steadying herself against the myriad onslaughts, Eris returning to her normal discontented observation, albeit thinking steadily about the outburst, Quirk shifting slightly after trying to fade into the background.

Yet Luna’s quiet was intentional.

The three started at the low pulse; the floor rocked under them. Eyes of all kinds darted to the source of the sound: Luna stood, bracing herself, and the only thing she caught was a shimmering halo of magic around them all—

~~~~~~~~

Ditzy’s wings shot out for balance as she dropped a few inches to the floor, her eyes fighting the disorientation and the dreadfully familiar insight that the floor had changed under her. A window and an exit corridor were the only significant features of the hexagonal room. Luna watched Ditzy recover, her expression unreadable as ever. Cold premonitions trickled into Ditzy’s mind as she raised her head, only to freeze when she did not recognize the room.

Ditzy rushed to the window, eyes widening as she found a city perched below. She turned and rose up like a dragon awakened, wings spread in the sunlight. Ignition flooded through her limbs, fear and anger a whirlwind at how Luna had seized her. Like a phoenix burning, Ditzy fixed her stare on the regal mover, each eye a furnace. The question, searing, locked within, went unspoken before Luna’s utterance broke the air.

“Come.”

~~~~~~~~~~

The teleport was complete and unexpected.

Buffeted by the displaced air, Quirk stumbled and nearly collided with the floor. Wildly he sought a glance of the familiar, yet found Eris the only rememberable form. The bat-guard was slack-jawed in surprise and confusion, a revealing display that slowly hardened into measured suspicion.

“Where are we?” Quirk asked, short, stabbing breaths punctuated by similar pains shooting through his sides. What possessed her to teleport us two with no explanation? Where is that crazy bitch, anyways? Dammit, Tick, you just had to go running around with some old books and drag me into this pile of…

Quirk’s profusion of mental cursing overflowed into acidic mutterings as he righted himself and noted his surroundings warily. A plain beige room contained them, hexagonal, one side opening into a hallway.

“Canterlot,” Eris finally answered. “Princess Luna teleported us into the palace.” She hesitated. “I don’t know why.”

Eris did not look at him as she responded, staring down the corridor. Quirk shifted, knowing that things would only get more complicated and thus aggravating. Rubbing a hoof on his forehead, the dismayed pegasus nearly missed his unarmored companion begin walking down the hall without another word. Quirk followed, hastening despite his bodily aches to stay abreast of her. Better than standing around and being awkward. She knows this place at least. Oh Celestia, how much for a restraining order on your sister…

“Where are we headed to?”

Curious to see how the detached mare was reacting to the turn of events, Quirk kept an eye on her that stayed slightly narrowed in a hint of caution. She’s the quickest way to find out what in Tartarus is going on. She’s also the most dangerous way. Fun.

The mental sarcasm and grumbling settled Quirk in and he eventually settled into a rhythm. Giving up on observing the impenetrable guard, Quirk glanced down the halls they passed and out the windows they moved by. Spotting a helmetless guard walking away from them in a parallel hall, his guesses began to solidify into theories about where they were. Near the barracks? Wait—she still hasn’t answered my question.

“So where are we going?”

The irritation of being ignored was tempered by the knowledge that she would be stuck with him for some time; Quirk let just enough annoyance into his voice to get across his displeasure at being ignored yet not enough to provoke a vengeful reaction.

Eris brushed off the repeat easily and answered with a quick line: “We’re going to find out why we’re here.”

“And how would we be accomplishing that?”

“What would telling you that accomplish?”

“I could think of something that would speed the process.”

Eris snorted. “What are the chances of that happening here?”

Quirk stopped, knowing a lost cause. They turned a corner, Eris taking the lead as they approached an exit to the open grounds Quirk had glimpsed earlier.

Ah, but if only I could find a means of communicating with the feisty beast, then what fun we might have… Quirk sighed internally. I’ll get there eventually. Although at this point I’m not sure that I want to get there.

The dazzling light accentuated every polished stone and dutifully tended blade of grass as they entered the appropriately well-kept terrace. Guards in various states of padding, armor, and the rare wooden practice weapon ran about, and Quirk found that he would have no time to study those who he really knew quite little about as Eris trotted out a steady beat towards a concave of the castle walls. The traveled, out-of-place pegasus had no desire to draw attention—not in that place, at least—and so matched Eris’s quick pace. Vague thoughts of a distant amphitheater poked into Quirk’s consciousness as they approached the stairs leading down into the concave—and then Eris stopped him abruptly.

“Wait,” she ordered more than asked, and Quirk followed her gaze. Below, a legion of troops had gathered onto the open-air platform: a stone stage surrounded by terraced seats; the ghosts of a thousand performances flashed before Quirk. His eyes fixated on it, almost against his will, and his breath caught in his throat. Every sound the legion made, be it a scuffling hoof or murmur, echoed in powerful intensity to announce itself undiminished to his ears. Those sounds faded—the moment stilled—memory held Quirk in place.

But it was not memory that had stilled the noise.

Below, a white mare stood in front and waved a hoof in measured gesture. All mouths drew breath at her command. Eris watched intently, expectantly, while Quirk stared into empty space, held tight by corruption of the past.

And Quirk could not deny the solemn glory of a thousand voices—and the breath-stealing beauty of one.

The legion sang.

Swept into being by the wave of a limb, the humming foundation sprung into their ears. Submerged in waves of sound, preserved by curves of stone, the mouths opened as they had of old and let loose melody. No restraint held them now: a single note split into two, four, eight; a profound chord rattled through, enlivening the senses. Breath held and split by tongues somehow ordained sound with majesty. Quirk, mouth agape, saw nothing and only heard.

The past channeled into the present and Quirk found himself transcendent. He beheld it, drank it in, an earthbound stone watching the stars swirl in their magnitudes; it was an eternal dance brought so close to his self, his soul. Scarcely aware of his own amazement, he saw as much as heard the mounting crescendo, the tenor of the voices rise in might and subside. Carefully, so carefully, they drew together now, increasing into a drumbeat that hammered the veins. There was war thundering in their voices now; a darkened march arose from the sweet synergy. It was the essence of the army—the movement as one! Quirk could not breath in the moment, could not be in the presence of almighty beauty, a dark surreal splendor. Had it only just begun? Was it close to the ending? So caught up was he in sweet harmony, sweet energy, that he lived not in thought nor past nor present but was succored on the strength of the moment.

And then the last note cut out.

As if hanging on thin air Quirk caught himself, stunned at what had passed.

Eris approached with what looked bizarrely enough like a true, if smug, smile on her face, and Quirk could only mutter to himself as he stared and remembered.

“Dulcissime rerum…”

Eris stood alongside him, approving of his still-stunned expression. Then the legion began to march away, an unorganized claptrap that gently shook Quirk back into the mortal world. She nodded to herself as if confirming their superiority and began to walk down into the amphitheater. Quirk started as she moved, something of him still spellbound and urgent.

“Among the arts of the warrior, the next highest to martial prowess is singing.” Eris let the statement lay as it would, but Quirk seized it as soon as she let go.

“I haven’t… what about you?”

“What about me?” Eris turned her head back on him with a flat, slightly edgy voice.

“Can you sing?”

“Yes. Barely.” Exasperation lay thick in her tone along with a warring, warning irritation, but Quirk, shot through with amazement as he was, heeded none of it. The unparalleled glory rang in his ears still, yet Quirk saw something to advance in his own right, a door opening into the elusive Eris.

No! Later. Don’t be a fool.

Eris reached the edge of the dais, the armored white mare who had lead the concave idling. “Perilune! There’s been a change…”

~~~~~~~~~

“Who are you, Ditzy Doo?” What is thy path, thy purpose…” Luna muttered, staring down at the intricate patterns of the door.

I am a mother. A very tired mother, who is quickly getting angry at not returning to her daughter. A friend to some, a face to others, and a mailmare to the rest. A better question is…

“Who are you,” Ditzy replied, shock gradually fading to reveal determination and no small depth of raw anger, “to wrap me up in plans beyond my knowledge and seize me from my home and a daughter that needs me?”

Luna stood as if rooted by a mountain, faced away from Ditzy and unmoving.

“We are the arbiter of things in the dark.”

What does she mean?

“We move with the grace of the light.”

Ditzy shifted, thinking to demand a reply.

“Let the steps of those who have gone before echo in our minds.”

Luna entered the hollow and beckoned. “What once was, must be again. Enter this hall and hear their tales.”

It was a grand sanctuary of shadow, starlight dotting small coves and beams etching out reliefs of rock and marble. The deep reaches crept into the mountain, ending a way off in softly illumined solitude. The patterned floors, red and black and gold, lay hard and hidden by the faded light. Each alcove harbored a great relief of stone: they were minutely detailed, as if to gaze into infinity. They composed great warriors and scholars, each warrior in valorous temper, each scholar in refined grace. Masterful inscriptions lined the reliefs, the letters themselves a testament to the dignity of the deeds and proud souls recorded there. Ditzy felt arrested by the silent strength of the room, senses primed, breath on edge and raptly watching. This was a place of respect: the silence was breathtaking. At the far end of the hero’s hall, empty places lay, foreboding in their deep winter stillness.

"These, these names of honor..."

The breath of the mountain dissolved Ditzy’s demands like snow on fire, and she wondered why Luna had brought her to this place of dark nobility.

“Enter this hall and hear their tales…”

Ditzy moved into the hall, every step a stumble before the grand ages, the inscriptions sharp and seeming to glow at her with a tinge of magic as she drank in spare words, forgetting everything else. Ditzy managed to utter a short question, spellbound by the stone faces.

“Why did you take me here?”

“In due time, you will know. Now hear the tale of the names of honor.”

Yet something prevented Luna from speaking. On quiet steps she whispered past the alcoves, Ditzy unable to view her face as she inspected each—long heartbeats passed—and then Luna turned, drawn up resolutely, and walked to stand next to Ditzy.

“This land has changed so very much. It’s nearly inconceivable the scope, manner, and depth of these changes. As we learn anew each day…” Luna’s glance slipped past Ditzy, who found she could not follow the now-wandering eyes. Luna stood as if she had been torn from another place and time; her brittle glance lingered on the last mural, pausing.

“Even after the defeat of Discord, the lives of the average citizen were often experiments in danger and fear. Monstrosities natural and artificial wandered the lands. Most cities, and the safety and civilization they bring, were either ancestral memories lost to myth and legend or the faith of fervent dreamers. We, so newly thrust into leadership, sought those who had strength and those who had lost to cleanse the land.”

Luna cast her gaze to the first hollow in the hushed chamber, and Ditzy, compelled, followed.

“Their memories we have preserved in stone. What we hath wrought is less than we should like, but that is a trifle for less troubling times.” Resting a metal-clad hoof on the stone remembrance, Luna shook her head slightly in regret. “There is more to memory… ”

Ditzy felt a pang of mirrored sorrow; she opened her mouth but held her tongue. Could my empathy even mean anything to her? I’m not sure that I want to, considering...

“But of what we mean specifically shall be told another time. It is not so simple as memory.”

Ditzy cocked her head, unable to discern Luna’s meaning. But Luna had shaken off the hints of a disconsolate mood and began her tale of living mythos, a quick thrust into the past.

“They came out of the earth.”

Minds warped back and created a place of the past, and it was all too easy for Ditzy to lose herself in it in the dark. Luna had begun abruptly and so left her audience of one with no option to be drawn in. She spoke a tale of elegant terror.

“Monsters without names were once more common than their counterparts. Hidden in cloaks of shadow, they crept out of their dens and into his village. He had been away on an errand and witnessed none of it. He returned to find his village slaughtered. Decimated. He was the last one, standing among the ruins of his life.”

Luna uttered the words deliberately, slowly, and without hesitation. She kept an unceasing vigil on the chiseled relief as if it brought the words back to her. Ditzy’s stomach turned at the words, cold spikes of fear and sickness tunneling like fangs into her.

“We remember only the desolation in his eyes, as if his soul had already passed from his body. It was then that Celestia and I knew that we were spread thin, and what we could offer was not enough.”

Luna closed her eyes.

“It was a miserable realization.”

Dragging herself out of mnemonic mire, Luna continued.

“The two of us knew that our growing responsibilities could no longer be bore alone. We could not be everywhere and could not protect them all. Thus we crafted a commission: granted him our aid in seeking the right path of justice for those fallen. We gave him time to recover. We trained him in war. He was the first. Years after we had trained him, he went back to the village… he had told us he had no desire to go back, and we did not tell him that he must go. It was a journey of only two days to the now-abandoned ruin that was once his small village. We did not see him again for seven.”

“When he returned, he was grievously wounded. He spoke then of how he had crawled into the deep dens of the monstrosities and had done battle with them, slew them, avenged his friends and family. Yet he said that his soul was not at peace, and as the sun set he exhaled his last breath.”

Addressing the speechless and visibly sick Ditzy directly, Luna changed tack.

“That was ages and aeons in the past, lost to history, lost to legend… lost to those, except we who witnessed it. There were many such tragedies over the centuries despite our attempts to prevent them. The mainstay of civilization is the hard worker: sometimes he must wield arms and seize honorable retribution in the face of murderous atrocity. As time passed, the commissions were reduced in number, formalized, and forgotten. Citizens rallied together and we formed armies and militias to fend off the dangers of the uncivilized lands. A commission became a rare thing. Militias became armies, armies became protectors, protectors became guards, and guards became a formality. Still we sought to recognize those who followed in his line: those given the opportunity to do the honorable thing against all inhibitions.”

Luna gestured down the row, eyes alighting on each knowingly. “You can find but a few remembered here. Most were lost when the castle in the Everfree was abandoned. Take for example the next-to-last; she found a cure for a plague at the cost of her own life. Thousands she saved. It is likely some of your ancestors owe their lives to her.”

Luna glanced at the last inscription.

“Even to this day, the need for valor lingers. Although progress has wavered in recent centuries, it is a far cry from the turmoil of old.”

Ditzy feared to move, yet inched closer to view the enshrined stone portrait.

“She is of a comparatively recent age. In the spirit of old, a mere hundred and some years ago she took up arms… but that is a tale for another time.”

Luna swapped her gaze from the portrait to Ditzy, nodded to herself and continued.

“So why hath I brought you here? Disasters are no commonplace occurrence in this land, nor is it for monsters to spread fear through our towns and cities. Yet through the ages, it has always been a solemn honor to receive a commission, a blessing to carry out these great acts. Thus, our anger.”

The last pieces of the puzzle of the ancients had fallen into place, and Ditzy, having absorbed the analects of yesterday’s tradition, found she had nothing to say. A whole other history had come to occupy her mind: she shifted slightly, lost in the conflicting desires to answer and question or contemplate. For certain Ditzy did not accept her fate as Luna implied it, and though her torn loyalties roiled underneath she stayed that storm instead of stoking it.

“For monsters to spread fear…”

Shrill flashes of a world gone mad and a paw and claw templed together raced across Ditzy’s vision, and she almost stumbled at the apparition. Yet Luna had not noticed, her eyes glimmering with a more recent memory. “We impress this trove of knowledge upon you, for although the dangers this kingdom now face are often of a different scale, be they smaller or larger, we are still in need of heroes. We tell you because you will need strength in this journey, and with luck you may draw power from theirs.”

Ditzy recovered, belatedly processing Luna’s next words, but she would need much more time to process Luna’s next words.

“The contract we made with you those long days ago is in the spirit of the commissions of old. We chose you because you are gifted: you are blessed, you are cursed.”

~~~~~~~~

Ditzy could see the life unleashed below, the astounding energy of civilization pressed together at work, at play, at creating greatness in all its forms. Their quest to release their spirit was grand indeed—but she had other things in mind.

Luna had granted her a reprieve, and had recommended that Ditzy seek rest and reflect on trials imminent and bygone. Yet Ditzy had acquired a strange urge in the fleeting moments after Luna’s invective. For in her muddle of thoughts, there remained one itch stronger than the others. And so she had abandoned the magisterial view of the city to dive into murkier waters.

The garden below lay shrouded in mist and mystery; the mind descending throbbed with unnameable agitations. Down defunct halls Ditzy flew until she had escaped the obscure corner of the castle, looking out on the great shroud covering sky and sun and earth.

No verbal thoughts in mind, Ditzy took a breath and walked forward. She thrust herself into the fog, her mind a single cog among machinations. For she feared—what did she fear? Ditzy heard her questioning thoughts, but told them to hush, demanded shivering quiet. Out there it was, the certainty, the purpose, the victory! It was a hot promise in a freezing winter, nearly inconceivable.

Honor.

The word shuddered and roiled around, seeming to stoke the fog into a wind, seeming to touch Ditzy’s every nerve as she held her wings against her. Warmth had fled in the garden. The seasons had changed, and her steps fell short of the grace that had empowered her.

If I can find him, then I can face it. And then…

Her spirit, half-loaded, floundered in the wind, seeking ignition. Yet the plants creeping with grey fog mocked her, an infinite vague mass obscuring all things.

“Oh my, what’s this? An unexpected visit? As much as I would love to feed off your conflictions, my dear Ditzy, I’m afraid you have other obligations. You also seem to have lost your way, but that I expected. Move along now, you have secrets and memories to chase.”

Her breath only multiplying the aegis of fog, Ditzy shouted “show yourself!” to no avail, and yet she knew her words amounted to a drop in a crumbling thundercloud.

Is he doing this to me?

As thick as the fog Ditzy’s quiet ran, delicate composure shifting in the formlessness.

The knowledge did not sit well with her, and Ditzy felt the cold brush against her skin, a harbinger of coming mountain snows.

Hanging on for a last lucid moment, Ditzy vainly searched the opaque void before despair slipped in.

I have to get back.

A turn and ascension through the fog availed Ditzy of her blindness, but she lacked true sight. No maze or barrier of sinister groves held Ditzy back, and within moments of flight she had spotted an alabaster wall.

Now emotions of displeasing color piled in at the gates, a tide as common and predictable as the movements of the moon. But Ditzy held it off, the sharp, cold air provoking her at every intake. Holding back the rising tide, she instead examined it.

What am I worked up over? The rhetorical question sat none too well with her, but Ditzy forced it down anyways. There’s no use getting like this. The most I can do is get on with this business, as much as I hate it.

The austere reasoning cut like a hot knife through the chill air, inflaming Ditzy’s wounds, yet hopefully cauterizing them. A few more breaths, a few more attempts to slow the tempo, and at last Ditzy had her exit.

On soft and desolate steps Ditzy traversed the emptied halls, seeking the quiet reverie so swiftly lost. She would have expected a greater show of life in the palace, although it was a cold day and she suspected only unusual routes ran through that particular hall. After climbing a few stories, Ditzy stopped to examine the sight offered to her by a well-placed window: some low-lying cloud had been severed by the mountain and now tumbled down and wafted away in bits and pieces. Her mind was mute for once. It relaxed her.

Eventually she trekked on through the remaining passageways back in towards where the two had first appeared. Resisting the urge to yawn, Ditzy felt the backswing of events liberally draining what little was left of her fortitude and wondered if it was at all acceptable or proper to find an inconspicuous place to curl up and nap.

Two increasingly familiar voices approached.

Interlude: Contemplations

Interlude

Contemplations

It was a more convenient, quicker ride than her last few that took Ditzy out of the mountain’s rocky cradle and toward the lolling plains that composed her home. In another day she would face trials and the unknown. For now she reclined against the fading light; Ditzy held soft by the window of the traincar.

In her mind she approached the mountain of events, deep and tall beyond her sight, and felt her mind run through by shivering worries aplenty.

I can’t let all of this… there’s not…

Shaking herself, Ditzy wrung the tension out of her body like a soaked rag with a few steps around the vacant car, achieving a moment of clarity.

What can I deal with? What can I plan for? I’ve been shut down by my own worry too much. I lost the point of even caring about things at all! It wasn’t by letting myself spiral that I got myself across the country. It was because I took a stand against everything that raged in and outside of me.

Ditzy stopped by the window and tapped on it absently, her inner industriousness awakened. Bright-eyed, she had at once forgotten all that came before, if only for a few moments.

“How many days has it been?” Ditzy wondered aloud in a half-mutter, adding up events and strange nights in her head. When I got on the train, it was Sunday. The next morning I ran into Capp, and it was that night that I found the falls, and the next day… that all started…

“Today is Sunday.” It’s been a week… has it only been a week?

Well, I guess the vacation is over, Ditzy thought, a crooked grin crossing her face. It was an odd feeling for her, to suddenly wrestle control over her flagrant self, but she dwelt not on it. She was not cured, but neither was she buried, and in that strange freedom of the moment Ditzy asked questions of herself and kept her calm.

If I’m going to be out gallivanting to who-knows-where, then I’m going to have to take care of Dinky somehow. Ditzy had burned through favors like dry kindling to get her week off on short notice, and as she walked the length and breadth of the car she knew without thinking that she had no desire to burden nor rely on others even more with something so precious.

Ditzy had halted in mid-step in meandering walk. She had the odd suspicion that something had changed, but brushed it off and returned to her thoughts.

It’s been a week...

Yet of all the miles and trials Ditzy had endured, she could not make herself move from the thought that it had only been a week. It was astounding. She marveled at it, and mentally agape she realized how tired she was. Ditzy wondered if there was enough of a journey left to—

“Miss?”

The door ajar, the conductor stood watching her.

“The train's been docked for some time. Do you need help with your things?”

Ditzy shook her head no; she felt not even a murmur would be appropriate. Looking around again as if she had just arrived in the car, she collected her few things, harried by thoughts like songbirds at night, and exited.

~~~~~~~~

The orange-purple horizon lay thick as Ditzy saw her house. She breathed and stopped, the rich sight prompting a deep exhalation.

She had a feeling of the full circle, an overpowering sense of the forces of life that had uprooted her, planted her again, and were soon to rip her up and launch her into the unknown again. It coalesced in her breast as a freeing of tension and petrified her sight as the weight of the moment impacted her. The glimpse into infinity was breathless, but it was only for a moment, and soon the slow cascade of colors returned. Fading, fading, the colors dripped away...

~~~~~~~

Now came night, the seeing time, where the lack of one sense stimulated the others, heightening the weary mind through the blurring of all things. Ditzy had only a few minutes to drop her things inside the door before it was knocked on, revealing a concerned Twilight accompanying a quiet, afraid Dinky.

She was looking for me all day thinking I was here.

The sight sent a wrack of pain shooting through Ditzy’s whole body like a fork of lightning, intense and scarring. Without words, Ditzy hurried to embrace her distraught child, fiercely keeping her close and barely aware of Twilight looking at her with an indecipherable expression.

“Thank you,” Ditzy managed to reply after a few breathless moments.

Twilight’s expression didn’t change. She walked past Ditzy and Dinky, the daughter’s eyes shut tight, and after a few more moments caught the edge of Ditzy’s glance and motioned to another room.

Ditzy carried her daughter up the stairs.

“You said you wouldn’t go.”

The words stung.

Ditzy held her daughter for another minute, then put her down: she was getting bigger and Ditzy was tired in body and soul. With a look straight into Dinky’s eyes, Ditzy said “I’m sorry I was gone today. I really am. Something came up, and I couldn’t come back. Get ready for bed and I’ll tell you about it, ok? I might have something you’ll like to hear.”

With a hopefulness tempered by the loneliness of the day—so strange for Ditzy to see in her child—Dinky nodded and wandered off.

Once again alone, Ditzy’s long exhalation turned into a sigh. Twilight… oh, how will I ever explain this to her? At least I’ll be out of sight and mind when this passes. Hopefully she’ll forget until we come back, and by the end of that I’ll probably be able to explain some of it. Eyeing the stairs with tired twofold trepidation, Ditzy pressed on and prepared herself for the frustrating questions she knew were coming. Down the stairs and toward the living room that now echoed with a memory of years passed, Ditzy’s temperament convulsed and her motherly woes turned to motherly protectionism, and by the time she stood before Twilight she was hard-set and ready to speak.

“I know what you’re going to ask,” Ditzy began, her expression and tone an intricate mix of pain, defensiveness, pleading, and slight anger. “You’re wondering where I was, what I was doing. What it has to do with my time away and this thing I wouldn’t tell you about. You know that I would never choose to leave Dinky like that.”

Ditzy stopped for breath, and Twilight replied cautiously. “I didn’t come here to accuse you of anything. I’m just wondering what would make a friend of mine do something they would never do and if I can help.”

“I can handle myself, and some things will only make sense if they’re explained later.”

The whole or half lie did little to convince Twilight, and Ditzy could see her doubt and questions nagging behind the weak disguise.

“Dinky and I are going to travel for a little while,” Ditzy added. “I promise it will make sense after we get back.”

After a moment’s hesitation Twilight responded encouragingly. “If you think so, I trust you. Just remember that if you need anything, you have us to help you and Dinky, even if we’re miles away.”

Ditzy nodded and murmured her thanks as Twilight left.

~~~~~~~~

On Ditzy’s return to her room, she found that Dinky had already scrambled up into her mother’s bed. Neither mentioned it. It went without saying that they would not stand to be separated tonight. Dinky watched as Ditzy collapsed into bed (she hadn’t bothered to clean herself nor perform any other nighttime ritual) and lay flat on her back, spread-eagled in the mostly-covering dark. Awaiting something, Dinky eyed her mother. After a short moment, she poked Ditzy. Both were well aware of the promise Ditzy had made.

Full-on exhausted, Ditzy stared at the ceiling.

“Dinky… would you mind… you would like to go on an adventure?”

~~~~~~~~

Ditzy was on the brink of sleep. The issue was decided; Dinky lay warm and asleep against her, a warm and reassuring presence. The last thought that crossed her mind before it drained into blissful oblivion was this:

The servants of Luna; to think I told Dinky… that’s what they were… that’s what we are now.

Chapter Three: Burning, Setting Off

Chapter Four

Burning, Setting Off

“My mom used to talk more but now she doesn’t talk so much.”

“Really.”

The underlying sarcasm and carelessness wasn’t lost on Dinky, who frowned with a child’s undisguised displeasure. Quirk kept his gaze ahead at the rolling hills as she stared at him, figuring out some response to his decided disinterest.

“I’m not stupid. Why don’t you talk?”

Because I’m too busy thinking about my damn sense-forsaken brother and the savior I abandoned and whether I should be thinking about that at all and if Eris has any experience in the arena that produces talkative annoyances like you.

“Because.”

Quirk looked ahead, his audible and plainly aggravated sigh losing itself in the whispering long grass of the endless field. Ahead, Eris plodded on, alone in the lead: Quirk supposed she was more comfortable in that observant, solitary, guiding role. Ditzy trailed behind them, and Quirk had not spared her any glances nor hardly any thought: she was probably in the same mode as him. Her child’s intermittent—though thankfully not incessant—questions had already ground his weak nerves to tenebrous threads.

“It feels like she hasn’t been happy for forever and…”

It was easy to tune her out. Quirk considered for a moment that in a different—a drastically different—situation he might be able to maintain some front of sympathy, but that thought slipped from his mind as quickly as sunlight through a sieve.

The day before they had set out; today they went north. With the vestiges of injuries and a child, they wouldn’t be able to fly much yet. Once Quirk, Eris, and Perilune had found Ditzy, Luna had shortly thereafter reappeared and sent Ditzy and Perilune away. After an unpleasant wait, Luna had explained to them that Tick would likely be heading to the newly-reclaimed Crystal Empire. Makes enough sense. There’s probably more of that stuff he’s found, and if he’s lucky there are ponies alive who actually understand it. I’m going to—

A blunt pain and sharp echo from his left rear leg rang out, and Quirk stifled a grunt and a curse as he stared at an unapologetic Dinky.

“Don’t ignore me! I’m not nothing!”

Quirk halted, stared, and wondered how inappropriate it would be to hit the insolent child back.

“Dinky!”

Sharper than the blow, Ditzy’s voice shot clear through to her child, and the tone froze her solid.

That wouldn’t have hurt at all if that leg wasn’t still sore. That was a tap, not a blow…

“Mom, I just—”

“You do not hit others! I don’t care what he said!”

“I—”

Ditzy closed the last bit of distance and scooped up her child, anger, pain, and remorse crossing her face in equal measures. Far ahead, even Eris had taken to observing the exchange.

“I’m so sorry, she never does anything like this.” Despite her apologetics, Ditzy seemed not to notice that Quirk’s face had softened from irritation. Without further words, Ditzy carried her now-frightened child away towards a lone tree in the ethereal sea of grass.

I probably should have said something.

Yet it did not bother Quirk for very long.

~~~~~~

The shade held them in stasis, a small world of their own, a refuge from the sunlight fading along the edges of the hills. Once hidden, Ditzy’s rage revealed itself as anguish.

“I just poked him! That’s it.” Dinky exclaimed, heady nervousness, fear, mild guilt, and a child’s inexperience mystifying Ditzy’s expression—eyebrows once taught but now released, mouth set in a slight frown, eyes soft with pain—into some accusation.

“I’m sorry I yelled.” Ditzy brushed a bit of Dinky’s mane out of her still-nervous face, lamenting the decision to bring her along. I shouldn’t pretend to know things anymore.

“I saw you poke him and then he flinched and turned to you. You have to remember, he’s very bruised in some places, so it’s best not to even poke him.” It’s probably better that you not talk to either of them at all, but I won’t be able to hold you back when there’s nothing else for you to do.

Sitting against the tree, Dinky’s eyes moved to something else other than Ditzy. As Ditzy turned to follow her daughters wayward gaze, she spotted Eris approaching, bound to breach their space like some comet crashing through a celestial sphere.

She reached the shade.

“If there’s no more reason to hold up…” Eris let it trail off. Her eyes swept the area lazily, not hastily, staying a hair’s breadth of an instant longer on Dinky than anything else.

“No,” Ditzy replied with an edgewise glare, and the breached silence of the plains crept in.

~~~~~~~

“I approve of your discipline.”

The slight rasp in Eris’s voice echoed the wind scything through grass and field and fur. Quirk lagged behind, Dinky was off ahead, and Eris had stubbornly matched Ditzy’s pace until they had created enough distance from their fellow-travelers to speak unmolested. Eris now watched Ditzy in a way she had not seen before: a distinct focus instead of a lazy sweep; it was a look of interest.

Ditzy fought the spontaneous surge of anger at Eris’s words, a nonsense impulse that had lay camped behind her eyelids, growing as Eris had walked beside her.

“I didn’t have the impression that you approved anything about me.”

“I have a great appreciation for parental discipline.”

The rasp in her voice had faded; perhaps it was only a mystery of the wind. Ditzy cocked her head slightly, uncertain and not quite happy with the situation. Yet it was different than most: Eris had offered something about herself and spoken with warm approval with tone more than words.

Ditzy felt something like a great void well up in her. With her usual lack of hesitation Eris quickened her pace, leaving Ditzy behind.

I don’t… ugh, I would rather not talk to her…

Eventually Dinky returned to her mother, and after some quiet observations to ensure Ditzy was no longer distressed at her, requested with a few short words to climb atop her and shortly thereafter nestled on top released a yawn.

Just off from ahead, the sun broke against the horizon. The shimmering crests of the rolling hills were a wonderful sight, or they ought to have been. Emptiness sat below the child, a product of hunger and errant thoughts. It broke up with steps, but Ditzy knew something unnamable was coalescing.

I wouldn’t be here, if it wasn’t for him. She wouldn’t be here, if.

“We’re going to stop soon. Don’t get too comfortable.”

Belaying that suggestion, Dinky yawned again and murmured some objections that didn’t quite turn into words.

There was a cold fighting the warmth atop her.

~~~~~~~

Burning. Burning, I would rather be burning.

Her breath sped up like an arrogant fire that had snuffed out but continued to linger under the ashes. Ditzy sat still and mute in the flickering half-shadow, the weak fire no comfort or companion to her.

How can she talk to me like that, as if… with some matriarchal attitude! Does she think there isn’t anything that I find wrong about her? That she has nothing to apologize for? She doesn’t have any humility at all, ugh; that’s pretty obvious…

It doesn’t help that we’re just walking. There’s nothing to do and the scenery gets old quick. I hope we get somewhere soon

The fire in front of Ditzy was pathetic in her mood, but she knew well enough that wood was scarce and the will to gather it at night scarcer. Across the fire sat Quirk, obscured by the darkness, his own conundrums, and his unwillingness to talk. Not that Ditzy was keen to talk to him. Eris lounged in a tree off to the side, invisible in the star-pierced branches. Dinky slept in one of the compact tents near it, and Ditzy did not stare for long into the flame’s glow before she retreated with a last damning thought.

None of this would have happened if it wasn’t for him.

~~~~~~

Above, Eris noted the fatigued retreat and contemplated her own recent feelings on Ditzy. She might be able to improve herself… she knows where to go. Getting there, that’s another thing. She had hastened to make sure Ditzy knew that she was capable of a change of attitude: Eris wasn’t naïve enough to think that Ditzy would turn all her thoughts and feelings around at a few words, but she knew an open door and a bit of encouragement could go a long way.

Unbidden, Eris’s thoughts drifted back just over half a decade. Ugh, to know I used to be such a mess, a willing thug in a hellhole... But Eris shook those thoughts away, for they were useless thoughts. Old, dead, stupid thoughts; discarded feelings.

I'm glad the guard beat that out of me. No short of thanks to Perilune.

With a roll of the head that turned into a full-body cracking of joints, Eris hauled herself into an upright balance on the branch and eyed the last remainder of the fire. Quirk still stared into it, or the distance, or the sky, or nothing. To intervene was for the best, Eris decided in a quick moment. Those two think too damn much anyways. They’ll drive themselves crazy because they don’t have anything to do.

A deft dive later, Eris hit the ground with a satisfying jolt. She had heard some mutterings from the fire about aches; she would have none of that. Quirk had laid back as if he had finally accepted the nothingness of the moment. He realized Eris’s presence with a look of restrained irritation, but she was oblivious, or more likely impervious to it…

~~~~~~

A world away, and there’s still something, and there’s still nothing.

Tick stared at the excavation. Buildings half covered in earth, layered in snow, brought to a standstill again.

And there’s still change.

For a year or two previous it had been excavated slowly: from discovery to interest, identification, and exploration. Sliding back on the scale of time it had been an outpost, a trading depot on the edge of an empire. That empire had disappeared in an instant, leaving the outpost to be buried under the calamities that any mountain town entails. And just as quickly as it had been discovered, it had been forgotten.

Hovering over the few buildings that were so rich yet rendered useless so quickly, Tick started back toward the bustle with sigh of resignation. The mountains cradled all around; it was a valley on the edge of winter. New buildings had sprung up as quickly as the empire to the north had reappeared, hundreds of passerby eager to plunder the knowledge, wealth, and opportunities of the lost race.

Eager to run to, eager to run from…

Put off by his sightseeing, Tick landed between a few other travelers preparing to push north. The weather was already chilling, but Tick hadn’t seen that turn any of them back.

Greed is a good motivator, I suppose.

Sparing not more than a glance at the passerby, Tick hastened to the end of the way. The iced ground crunched under his hooves and the sporadic light snowfall harried him as he passed some better-equipped travelers. There’s not much I can do about that. I’m not exactly wealthy at the moment.

Thoughts tossed aside, Tick quickened his pace and entered the smoky establishment. The factors of hasty construction and hastier travel rendered the room in a blackened, unclear air: everything was quick, hidden, surreptitious and hungry. A few tables scattered around uneven walls and dividers painted with smudgy soot and snow harbored a reasonable collection of unusuals.

Dodging amid the constrained furtive stares, past the bar and hearth, Tick maneuvered a path to the back stairway, eager to avoid being stopped by any of the residents sparing him a cautious eye.

Up the stairs Tick went. A door opened and closed swiftly; a distracted glance ensured nothing had changed. From under the bed Tick slid out a wind-worn bag and out of the bag a black-bound book. Lying on his side, Tick leafed through the first twenty pages in absent-minded frustration.

Why even bother looking again? Perhaps it was stupid to run… but out of sight is out of mind. Now that I’ve left that problem behind, I won’t be constrained. Or I could stop lying—

Tick avoided the aberrant thought, shifting off the bed. After a few minutes of pacing a rut into the rickety floor, he composed a spot in a corner by the bed and propped open the book. The room was cold. It fostered his concentration.

A few minutes, a few dozen, Tick lost track. The symbols, alien to him, swam before his vision. The last time he had looked he had found and understood nothing. This time he looked and his frustration burned into the cold of the room. Once he had transcribed symbols on a page onto another sheet; when he had returned to the book he couldn’t find the page. It was useless, fruitless.

Maybe that’s the point.

Tick tossed the book away carelessly, sliding it back under the bed. A final exhalation and he looked to the door. His heat had iced over. The door looked more and more attractive, if only for the promise of a hearth below.

~~~~~~~~

Cradling a questionable brew, Tick sought some shelter from the rest of the room. Not-so-minute cracks in the wall kept the frigid air circulating, but Tick had managed to find a spot to put his back to the wall and still stay close to the hearth. It was mercifully roaring.

Tick took a long draught from the mug, carefully at first, on guard for the peculiarities of new flavors. That is a good taste considering how this place is. Perhaps he took it with him. Refrigeration certainly isn’t a problem.

As Tick put his mug down, he caught the eye of an oddly-shaded traveler across the way. Tick deigned not to notice, comfortable in his nook and less than willing to converse in his present state of mind or in an unscrupulous place as this. Eventually the chill pricks of the wind stirred his eyes into motion again, and he noticed that the traveler across the quiet floor was making his way towards him.

Please leave me alone.

Unheard, Tick’s weary thoughts failed to stop the traveler, who had cautiously picked his way towards the hearth. Tick wrenched himself out of his nook and took to the bar. Tinges of memory like electric needles punctured Tick’s consciousness, calling back to the past that seemed so ancient and so close at hand.

Tick absentmindedly gave the bartender his mug, who replaced it under the bar.

“I saw you hanging around at the excavation.”

Why are you doing this to me? Am I going to have to run from this place as well as every other? I don’t want—

Tick pivoted to his left to face the voice, which turned out to be the traveler. He hadn’t taken the hint, or had ignored it.

“There’s very few that still have any interest in it. Even when it was relevant, there weren’t many inhabitants.” He eyed Tick directly. The chroma of his blue coat was diluted with silver, and Tick felt something peculiar about the way he looked, he talked.

—to think about this, think about anything, and there’s no reason—

“Not very many, but I knew them.”

—that I…

Four long seconds passed. What little color was visible on Tick's face disappeared.

“You’re from the Crystal Empire,” Tick stated. His shot nerves refused to cooperate, and Tick was keenly aware of the movements in his eyes and the screaming realization that, so suddenly, he was talking to a living relic that was talking to him about his deepest loss.

“Yes, that I am,” he responded with a distinct satisfaction. “My name is Silver Skies. I lived here. I was away on a trip to the heartland when Sombra’s spell locked us away in space-time. This place, far from the boundaries of the spell, continued on.”

Tick sat on a hair’s edge, unsure of everything and at once suspicious, cautious, horrified with a dash of amazement, and filled with the primal sense of focused awareness.

“If you’re anything like a reasonable pony, you’re wondering why I’m talking to you.” Skies paused for a moment, watching his counterpart’s rotating eyes with a plain curiosity deferred by some greater imperative. Lowering his voice, he continued. “The answer is simple but it has deep roots. You were the only one of these that I have seen in the past few days to bother to spend time in the ruins. Not looting, I mean. You thought about them, contemplated them. Appreciated them.”

Skies leaned back on the stool, his voice a mite louder yet still hidden from most others in the room by icewind and fire. “Although I have no shortage of purpose in life, I still need something to do to find an anchor again. All the worlds have changed. The skies have fallen deep in the north. You—”

What?

“—seem like an individual with respect. I want to set an example to quash these lesser feelings of greed, chaos, and nihil that run through all of those around.”

Skies paused. “What I am giving you is an open deal. I said that you seemed to have respect, which is why I offer it. I can help you get to wherever you are going in the empire and possibly help with what you are doing. I have connections and I know quite a bit myself about the empire, despite not having lived there for a few years. I offer this with the condition that you have honest intentions.”

He nodded in Tick’s general direction, then moved off the impromptu barstool and left him with a last line.

“Take some time to think about it. I will be here a day longer.”

“No.”

Skies turned around, a raised eyebrow punctuating his surprise. “No?”

Tick slipped by the hearth and out of the room.

~~~~~~~

Quirk, at first perplexed by her silence, was now irritated by her propensity to talk.

Where was this when I actually wanted to talk to you?

Eris sat a third of a way round the fire, rattling on about how this reminded her of a march earlier in her career. “…So we got there in the pouring rain and the dead of night and we hear that our transportation was out and we’d have to get back ourselves…”

All that time on the train and before we started out, and you said barely a word. Now you won’t shut up.

Finally reaching a lull in her narrative, Eris stared hard at the fire. Quirk had been more interested in the oddities of Eris’s bearing than the story: she did not seem like a natural storyteller. She’d looked off at things while she told it, her focus vacant. It wasn’t contemplative either. It didn’t seem right.

I have no idea what’s going on, which means the best option is out.

“It’s nice to hear.” Quirk coughed, part from the winding smoke and part to cover his shadily sarcastic attitude. “But I need to rest and recover.”

Eris didn’t reply, but her gaze relaxed as she nodded at him, still retaining something of her mysterious variance. A leap away into the void of leaves and she was gone.

Either your motivations are a strange desire to actually communicate or it’s one of many causes that I have no inkling of. Either way, I will be much more insistent about talking in the morning…

He and I are in danger. That much is plain.

~~~~~~

Tick was bludgeoning himself with difficult questions. For if he did not accept this aid, then what? What counsel could he seek? What friend could he trust? Throwing away kin and country, Tick had divided his options. And for what? Just so I could—Shut up! You didn’t leave for nothing; you’re raging.

Exiting through the back door, Tick faced the bitter night’s cold with an anger that only fed on itself. He faced the endless maw of mountains and stars and found himself without words to form a question. Tick’s heart thumped on, pouring the thick blood through his veins. His eyes turned, he stood, barely moving, the world continued to be. The wordless molten ache thrummed and faded.

Time passed and Tick’s breath drained slowly out of his body, crystallizing in the air.

I am a wreck and a wretch. Standing out in the cold, a fool among strangers, acting like an idiot. I don’t know where I’m going, what I’m doing. If I don’t take his help, even in the most superficial sense, then I will be much worse off. I haven’t made any dent in figuring out how the book works. He could have contacts, know those who could help me seek out information to prevent Luna’s wanton destruction.

Tick shifted around in the evening’s snow, slight crunches breaking the silence. Pride surged up in the pit of his chest again, compounded, and broke into shards more piercing than the icy snow. Echoes of his last barroom encounter and all that had followed had set him off, and now Tick painstakingly wrestled back control.

How do I go about it then, if I must? Getting back in the warmth is a good step…

Chapter Four: First Frost

Chapter Four

First Frost

Ditzy kept tight against her daughter, the armor that protected her from the world, the shield that could not shake the thoughts of her own vulnerability. She knew the sun would rise soon; out of the dark a lone bird or two whistled as the first hints of light broke the great emptiness. Lost in a veil of her own thoughts, Ditzy ripped herself away from her daughter, knowing that as great as her responsibility might be to her she could not think through certain problems with her close by.

Ditzy ascended to the top of the nearest hill and stared at the horizon. Mountains to her left, the camp lay undisturbed to her right as she gave a half-hearted ruffle of wings. She may have clung close to sleep and comfort, but Ditzy’s mind was sharp, clear, and worried. Hardly aware of the world around her, Ditzy’s gaze followed the sun as it hinted its might and finally rose, a raw display of burning elegance even before it was halfway risen.

“How in the bloody name of Tartarus can you stare at the sun like that?”

Quirk stood off to her right, far from awake yet still managing to sound incredulous. He did not look like he had weathered the night well; Ditzy could attribute it to his fading wounds or other oddities, but she instead turned her glance to him, blinking a few times as she realized just how bright the sun was.

Having no explanation, Ditzy gave a small shrug. Quirk walked away muttering and shaking his head his breath a waft of vapor, his eyes the barest squint against the morning rays.

Halfway curious, Ditzy turned her attention back to the dawning panorama. She found no problem with looking at the sun, although there was some irritation. So I can look at the sun better than others? It’s something, I guess; I haven’t heard that before. Or noticed it, really. But it’s something…

And something, she knew, would be a welcome distraction.

Quirk had grown more conversational over the last few days. As the boredom of long hours travelling through empty fields had set in, Ditzy had become more and more irritated at the thought that Luna could have just teleported them up towards the Crystal Empire and saved them the hassle of chasing Tick. Or so she assumed. She didn’t know that, not as a fact, and she unhappily supposed that if it was possible that Luna would have done it already to intercept Tick.

Quirk wandered off towards the ashes of their small congregation, deconstructing his tent. He kept from his tired muttering, his eyes sharper than usual, but Ditzy noticed none of it. I’m sure talking to Quirk would be better than ignoring them all. As much as I love Dinky, we’ve been in close proximity for a while now and I could use some adult conversation. I’m not fond of Quirk, but he’s not stupid and he more than knows that.

Ditzy sat up and stretched on the hilltop, the last of any weariness leaving her. The sun seemed to grant her fortitude, warm rays awakening an urge to move. Maybe it’s all the exercise.

Noticing Quirk packing, Ditzy held her position. Soon enough she would have to do that herself after awakening her child, and then off. Down through the rolling hills and into the taiga. Through that maze of dark wood and ice to a mountain town Eris had mentioned, then across those mountains themselves into whatever lay beyond.

Through that path Ditzy’s thoughts crept as Quirk finished his packing.

It was an explosion of all the thought Ditzy had ever entertained about him in a few moments. The feeling flashed through her from head to hoof to wingtip and back again, a mixture of ferocious anger, continued curiosity, deep suspicion, and lingering—vanishing—warmth. Sustained by the cold wind that overpowered the morning rays, Ditzy’s shudder ended in the pit of her stomach. Frigid feelings refused to melt, and even as the temperature dipped Ditzy knew it would only get colder.

Much colder.

Ditzy stared into the mountains ahead; gold eyes focused and frosted over.

You have a lot to answer for.

The wind accelerated, its low howl provoking a shiver that was not entirely free of emotion as Ditzy tore her gaze away from the mountain, closed her eyes, and forced herself to bury that feeling. It wasn’t that Tick was going to have to answer to Luna, to his brother, to whatever mad sense had exhorted him to cut and run.

You will answer to me for everything you’re putting us through.

Ditzy glided back to the camp.

~~~~~~~~

At least I don’t have to carry my tent.

Quirk hadn’t failed to notice how the ground under him had crunched under his steps, nor how the few errant snowflakes he spotted had originated from a great drift of clouds buffeting off the mountains ahead. There won’t be that much snow on this side. Hopefully. I think Tick called it the “rain shadow effect.” The prevailing wind is from the north, which is all I care to know, but he always wanted to know the official name…

Eris had dropped out of her crown of leaves with the sunrise and shown no hints of any sore muscles or tiredness that had afflicted the other members of the expedition. She had taken it on herself to carry most of the gear, and neither Ditzy nor Quirk had voiced any displeasure about that. They hadn’t voiced much of anything to Eris, and she hadn’t done much talking of her own. Except for the oddity of last night, which Quirk remembered with sleepy apprehension. Later, when I’m awake. I need to.

In the short time they had waited before they had set out, Ditzy had mentioned a few of the details about how they had gone looking for him. It was a short conversation, and Ditzy had been distressed and smoldering (no doubt not only because of who she was talking to at the time), but Quirk had noted details that worried him. Details of the very martial way Eris had decided to hunt him, the fact that the word “hunt” had been used, and the zest that they both had displayed in carrying it out. Obviously, Ditzy’s anger runs deeper and at more things. I hate the timing that my idiot brother chose to run off.

The hypocrisy of him thinking that wasn’t lost on Quirk. Every painfully mending inch of his body made sure of that.

I can’t exactly abandon him.

No, I can’t.

That didn’t stop me from leaving her without a word.

Quirk simmered for a moment, pissy. You had to be so damn nice and leave me feeling like even more of an asshole than I am. If you hadn’t been so damn nice, though, it would have killed me. I would have killed me, to be correct.

With a low sigh of deep, bitter exasperation, Quirk left his spot by the ruins of the fire and ambled over to the tree. Ditzy had collapsed her tent, her daughter was objecting to being woken up so early, and Eris was leaning against the tree, watching nothing in particular. Appearing to watch nothing in particular. That look, if I have read any, is deceiving.

“It’s time to move,” Eris announced as soon as Ditzy slid the last tent-pole into her bag, and they were off.

~~~~~~~

Ditzy and Eris led the troupe. What was stranger to Quirk was that they were having a conversation.

Odd as it is, I might as well get in the stream while it’s running. Providing that stream doesn’t run into rapids and end up throwing them off a waterfall. I was sure Ditzy hated her, or at least disliked her, although she’s not unreserved. What made Eris ready to talk so soon? Enough of these damn questions, anyways, let’s get some answers for once.

Quirk sped up. The assortment of pains that crisscrossed his body had readily faded over the last few days, or at a minimum he had become more resilient to them. Either way, he was less displeased about that fact than usual.

Happiness was a luxury.

Plodding his semi-stiff legs along, daring to stretch out his wings tentatively, Quirk caught up to the two. Or three, more correctly. Dinky had seized the opportunity for a free ride on her mother’s back, and perhaps it was a fortunate thing: Ditzy was keenly aware of the daughter on her back, and she no doubt inadvertently moderated the whole conversation. Quirk noted the hesitant way Ditzy looked at Eris when she spoke, and as he closed to a few feet he almost felt satisfied at his educated guess.

Almost pleasure.

It was better than self-loathing.

Ditzy nodded at something Eris was saying, and Quirk caught the last bit: “…not supposed to be any more than six inches on this side of the mountains. We shouldn’t have problems on this side with this few clouds. The other side will be a problem.”

“Avian operators all have the same basic training, including weather patterns, and I agree. It takes about ten inches of rain to produce an inch of snow, and there’s not enough cloud cover for that.”

Ditzy shrouded her caution as neutrality, but Eris’s utter casual confidence blew past that. “This is how it is,” Eris would remark casually, as if oblivious to Ditzy’s attempts to sound her out.

Basic training…

“It’ll change fast.” Eris let out a quick silent yawn, elongated canines flashing and vanishing. “But not faster than we’ll get over.”

That would be a good place to start.

Quirk came abreast of them at the natural end of the conversation, and soon Eris flapped ahead to get a better view of the nearing forest. Ditzy slowed, weighed down by her daughter and straining her brain to answer some convoluted question her daughter had asked. Quirk sped up to catch Eris, testing his wings cautiously and finding them able to move at will, if not painlessly.

“I’ve been wondering,” Quirk asked, announcing his presence as he closed the gap. “How does one go about joining the guard?”

Eris gave him a lazy half-glance as he approached, care lost to the constant wind.

“Sign up.”

Quirk bit off an acidic reply, hoping Eris’s laconic responses would lengthen once she realized Quirk was trying to start a real conversation.

Fine. You want direct, you get direct.

“How’d you get to be a guard?”

Eris was silent for a minute, then answered.

~~~~~~~

What’s the harm in giving him a little background?

Unwarranted exasperation and grumbling never passed her lips (when she didn’t want it to), but there was plenty of it trying to countermand Eris’s more reasonable thoughts. Eris shoved that aside with a minimum of discomfort, then set about composing a statement that would both satisfy her desire to keep to herself and Quirk’s query.

It wouldn’t be wise to cozy up to your prey after you’d caught it only to have it slip loose.

He needs something to chew on. Unfortunately for me.

“About seven or eight years ago Perilune—that mare we followed around in the barracks—hit me over the head, knocked me out. When I got out of the cell she put me in I applied for the guard.”

Eris didn’t look at Quirk as she talked, yet her focus was not on the story she told.

Quirk, however, had been keeping his eyes on her—respectfully, he knew better than to roam at the moment—and showed no lack of interest nor hesitation. His eyebrows raised for a moment, and revealed the barest hint of annoyance when Eris’s mouth remained sealed.

Looking ahead as she was, Eris didn’t catch it.

“Oh, come on,” Quirk prodded. “I told you quite a lot more than I needed to about Tick and me when you asked. Given the nature of our long and inevitably boring travel, you could at least throw an inch or two of dirt in the gaping holes in your story."

Eris replied tersely. “It was an interrogation. I don’t owe you anything, and not everything makes a good story.”

“You know, if you dropped the formality for a while you could have some fun.”

Eris halted over the span of a few seconds. She let that sink in, and then met Quirk’s eyes. Just stared.

Quirk met the blank stare for a few moments, then shifted as his features openly reassessed the wisdom of his statement. She held that stare, knowing that eventually he would sweat, eventually he would feel the pressure because he knew that Eris could be a danger to him, and she knew that he knew. It was easy to see the growing uncertainty on his face as his composure showed its broken edges, unpleasant memories brought back to bear the last time he’d pushed her. Although some parties would entertain the notion that he had deserved it.

Oh, really? So easy? Scared of me?

Eris hid the grin, but let a bit of it out anyways. For all Quirk knew, it was vampiric.

Quirk ran.

Quirk had bolted in spirit if not in form, an abrupt movement that retained some measure of dignity, which with a reasonable stretch could be construed as him launching off the top of the hill and gliding away.

For those less enamored with concessions, he fled like a spooked cat.

Eris let out a scratchy, sudden laugh and brought up a hoof to her wide smile, hoping he hadn’t heard as she watched his barely disguised retreat.

You don’t even know what fun is!

But Quirk’s ears pricked when he heard a distant laugh swiftly confined to snickering as his tactical readjustment landed him a ways away. Turning around to face his competitor with equal parts exasperation, admiration, and contemplation, Quirk watched as she resumed her endless march toward the mountains.

That, now that changes everything.

~~~~~~~

Ditzy observed Quirk’s sudden departure from the top of the next hill with curiosity.

Do I really want to know?

“Mom, why do the different cloud shapes make different weather?”

“Um…”

Gah. I used to know this.

“Dinky, you’re going to have to get off my back. I can’t carry you all the way.”

You’re too everloving heavy for me to carry you around much at all anymore. Especially when I’ve been walking for ages; we couldn’t fly if we wanted to with Quirk and Dinky.

“I don’t remember, love,” Ditzy admitted. “It’s been a while since I read about that sort of thing. Maybe you—”

Ditzy caught the words in her open mouth. Do I really want to tell her to ask them? Is my trust in them that weak?

Dinky cocked her head at her mother who had rolled her head around to pop her neck, using it as an excuse for another moment to think.

“You could go talk to Quirk or Eris about it,” Ditzy finished neutrally. The first true profusion of trees approached lay beyond the next hill, and at the top of that gently rolling crest Eris informed them that they would be stopping early that day.

~~~~~~~

Ditzy had sat down abruptly after they had stopped, moving a strand of her mane out of her face, thinking hard on something and looking in no mood to be social. Quirk, desiring to grab a bit of thinking space, cautiously exercised some of his newly regained wingpower and patiently ascended to a thick branch halfway up the tree made more convenient an observation post by the undulating terrain. They were truly hefty trees; most of them as thick as he was long and of a similar proportion to his age.

Staring beyond the mountains, Quirk drifted. Yet even as his normal eyes went about ceasing their work of paying attention to the world around him, the plain sight of the world in front of Quirk tore him back.

Framed in his memory like the edge of jagged glass, the mountain peaks leaped out at him.

Here!? It can’t be—but the mountains, it has to be so close to this spot—

Stumbling, Quirk knew he was about to fall. The understanding of that moment was second to the building eruption, the cacophony about to arise, but he managed to twist into a raw, sharp dive that rippled through his recovering muscles in painful bursts. The ground met Quirk too quick for his liking, and despite the fading wrench he managed to shake it off without a growl escaping his clenched teeth.

“Hi!”

Quirk turned to see Dinky, who was entirely too bubbly at that moment for him to ever tolerate. Just leave… go back to your mother…

She did not, however, and paused no longer, instead deciding to satisfy her inquisitiveness. “Why do you have a scar?”

Quirk ran a hoof over his recent wound as his mind jumped around a thousand times and places; a mixture of the calamitous recent past and the distant harrowing one confused him. Overloaded into stillness, there was little to say—to Dinky, at least—and the impulse to leave her hanging was strong as the dense oaks around.

No, no, I need to stay, should I go there, what do I do first? Do I even have time, could I go without being noticed, how would I explain my absence or why…

Quirk glanced back down when he remembered he was not alone, and he saw that Dinky had cocked her head, plainly expecting an answer.

“Ah…” Quirk muttered, still dazed. What do I tell her to satisfy her? How could I even begin to explain that to a child? “I got into an accident and somepony very nice helped me out of it.”

It’s to the west, judging from the mountains. If I can slip away for an hour, I can get there.

Unnoticed as far as he could tell, Quirk slipped away.

He flew at a low, slow pace, desperately wanting to move with great speed but experienced enough to not injure himself further. The rush of memory pushed him along now; he had been going for perhaps fifteen minutes and his anticipation surged as the eerie familiarity of the landscape increased. His slow search was soon rewarded: he happened upon the stream that led into the lake, that fateful location where so much of him had been decided.

Pausing, hovering by the stream, Quirk’s eyes narrowed as he oriented himself.

“Hey! Where are we going?”

Quirk spun around in the air to face the young voice, and his feelings sank to see Dinky.

“You followed me,” Quirk asked as much as stated, bland irritation coating his voice. Dinky nodded as she looked up at him, unperturbed.

“Your mother is going to kill me,” Quirk grumbled, loudly enough for Dinky to hear. Kill? No, too gentle… perhaps murder me in cold blood.

“Mom wouldn’t do that!” Dinky responded, eyes wide in vociferous objection, and Quirk settled down to the ground, running a hoof over his face.

I won’t stop here. I might never have this chance again and I’m not going to let them squander it.

“You really should get back to the camp.”

“Um…” Dinky looked left, right, spun around once, and looked back at Quirk with a face ruddy with embarrassment.

“You don’t know how to get back, do you?”

“No,” Dinky admitted quietly, looking down.

Why is there always something to screw my plans up? I shouldn’t make it any worse than I have too.

“You can come along with me, just make sure you stay close. And make sure your mother knows that I didn’t tell you to come along.” Quirk drew up his resolve, let out a silent exhalation, and the two continued walking through the forest’s columns of trees.

It was a slow walk, but his heart thudded; there was a light breeze that approached frigidity; the sun stabbed at Quirk like a desperate assassin through the leaves and it was all he could do to remind himself that he could be calm, that there was nothing to get worked up over. But it was nothing that had cursed him. Inevitably Quirk saw the break in the trees and sped up, beyond all thought and reason, driven by inexorable weight and feeling toward that moment, a moment of breaking. Quirk broke through the trees—

The lake was dark, solid, still.

Quirk’s breath caught in his throat, his mind in thought, his feeling in memory.

But there was nothing to feel.

Quirk almost stumbled to the ground, panting at the sprint and the mind racing, trying to find something in a vessel that was empty, seizing at phantoms that wisped like smoke.

What… why is there nothing?

Dinky scrambled to catch up, more or less aware of Quirk’s changed state, but for once too reserved to question it. Quirk had sat without noticing, and she timidly approached him.

“Quirk,” a child’s voice asked carefully behind him, “why are we here?”

This is where my parents left me and my brother

This is where I tried to kill myself at twelve

This is where hating myself became a habit

This is—

“I guess,” Quirk said quietly with decorum horribly out of place for his situation, “I just wanted to see it again.”

~~~~~~~~

Dinky was looking up at Quirk in his silence, fidgeting.

I don’t know what I think anymore. Why did I go here at all?

The question of so few words tumbled down an endless staircase, cracking a thousand times until the echo subsided to nothing. Quirk no longer understood even his own questions. He felt nothing: not the hopeless apathy of depression, not a cynical nihilism. There was no fear, anger, wonder, or pain.

Did I have a reason to go here? Is there not some feeling I was looking for? But there was nothing for him to feel here. It was that overwhelming, simple realization that had assaulted him with a battering rush and left him senseless, flooded around him, whispered and died out to leave him without illumination as ever.

Maybe this is a reminder of how stupid I am to think that I knew how I work or to know myself at all. By own talent maligned, then left behind; then I had the good sense to spiral off and let the wind blow me anywhere it wanted. Always the temporary pleasures, always the vivid vitriol of escape’s irony. I never had any roots, I never wanted them. And he kept me from the worst of it when it was plainly obvious. And she brought me out when I went alone into the depths of my own abyss. What have I been doing my whole life that I end up like this?

It was like trying to measure the world with a yardstick. Quirk sat down sometime in the endless tiring breadth of his own thoughts.

I don’t know what I think anymore.

“How much longer are we going to be here?” Dinky asked. Tinged with discomfort and a sense that not everything was fine and dandy, she had wandered around a few dozen yards with the tendency to glance back at the worryingly silent Quirk.
Quirk met her eyes, then swept his across the landscape as if seeing it for the first time, as if reading it for the last time.

“Not any longer.”

~~~~~~~

There was a face in the mirror that Tick didn’t recognize.

What is this?

The light-grey apparition conjured in the mirror before him blinked with his thought, his attention. The eyes ticked in perfect rhythm with the originals. Like the gaze of an alien Tick stared at the image which he could not quite believe was a reflection of his own self. The details of the face were trivial and upsetting. The details of his face revealed the difference between knowledge and arrogance. Eyes once blind looked away from the symptom of his malady.

I suppose it’s inevitable, but I don’t recognize myself. I have to figure out how to approach Silver Skies—sooner rather than later given the brief nature of this place—and I have to learn about where I’m going and get an idea of what to do.

The words were painful as the rest of his thoughts were. Tick looked away into nothing, working his jaw lightly with a tepid reluctance. The sparse, rickety room he occupied had not changed; it was getting later in the night and he would have to act now or tomorrow. So often he had bartered away his time on elusive solutions, yet Tick’s aversion of persistent company translated easily into reluctance.

And the golden shadow hung behind that veil as readily as it had ever.

A burst of tired determination would carry Tick out of his room to face the immediate challenge and chance that Silver Skies offered, but it was not that time yet.

~~~~~~~~

It is a shame to think that you have not acted, a travesty to think that you ignore it, a danger that you dismiss it. You know what was lost, what we must find! Have you lived so long with the fact of our schism that you consider our reunification to be the crown and end to all the problems it created? The seals are cut open; the Empire uncovered; the battle has not even begun and you pretend that those forces do not exist.

Luna seethed with tempting impatience, wrapped in the moody battlegear of old cataclysms. Her guard would have immediately picked up on her feelings, although she would have treated them with much the same respectful distance as all others. Her feelings, for the most part, were here own. We are not so sure that you are attuned to them!

The calmer sister walked abreast of Luna, eyes bright and darting to any guard or counsellor they passed, giving a small nod of acknowledgement to each (which seemed ridiculous compared to some of the more obsequious reactions). Yet they vanished into the menagerie of halls afterwards, for it was clear that only half of the entourage was ready to dispense pleasant nothings.

It was much whispered that Luna was only moody around Celestia, or, as the quieter of them postulated, that Luna only allowed herself to act in that manner towards Celestia. And even then it was rare: Luna’s insistent grip on the decorum of old, especially how she composed herself, had shifted with a glacier’s dull pace. In her better moods it melted more readily, but amusement was a concealed thing among their busy years. Her “official” humorous conduct, for the infrequent appropriate moment, was… strange.

None who spotted her at that moment would have thought of laughing.

Minutes later, Celestia abruptly veered into a small and disused room, absent of windows and any feature that could have brought interest. Luna thought of inquiring as to the change of plan, but Celestia’s eyes had blinked once and in the span of a second assumed a more serious demeanor. Knowing the look for what it was, Luna entered without word or noise and quietly shut the door behind her.

After all, it would be unseemly to give the unseen eyes and ears following them more direction.

“I will speak plainly and quickly. I know that you think ill of my lack of action for that particular problem. However, I think that you have it under control, no matter how much it seems to be out of control. Giving it more attention would inevitably draw others’ eyes. I have been at work on another project, turning a specific detriment into an asset.”

Celestia’s voice lacked the commanding echo of a throne’s guidance, replaced by the swift directness of a master at work. Luna nodded her on grudgingly, knowing when to leave the battleax mounted for later and curious enough to hear what scheme she had wrought. That dual curiosity and suspicion deepened with Celestia’s vague choice of words.

“I expect many to disapprove of this decision, not least those who I will entrust with carrying it out. This idea has hidden in the back of my mind for over a year, and Luna, I trust and hope you will receive this with an open mind…”

Because everypony involved will need it, Celestia added only to herself, another sighing problem in a mind that held the earth and sun in its grasp.

~~~~~~~~

Eris watched her without watching her.

Evidently nearing exhaustion, Ditzy had collapsed as soon as the party had ceased their endless march. Brought low by nag, wondering, or the enervating drain of the trip, Ditzy had taken little action besides lying on her back spread-eagled to watch the obscured heavens pass by. The trees about them were not yet colossal, but they would near ever-more gigantic heights and spread as they neared the north.

Eris watched Ditzy without watching her, a habit born of old days and hardly warranting whatever small threat Ditzy could have offered. Yet Eris knew despite her swagger that relying too much on her own gauge of threats could be fatal. The sly-eyed batguard had her limits, after all. And it would be pretty stupid of me to forget that. Better to look stupid because of caution than be stupid. Not that Eris had any worries about that. With those ominous and calm thoughts straying through her quiet mind, Eris approached the flattened mare without a sound.

“I need to talk to you about Tick.”

Absent from Eris’s voice was her usual laconic superiority, instead replaced by a sincere-sounding wave of emotion, an anchor in her voice that dragged it low, let her reach deep into emotion once callously lacking. The new depth was an invitation for solidarity. The new depth was a dangerous avenue. Ditzy started and sat up quickly, blinking, cautious, and uncertain. Her eyes were prisms of gold set in a statue shocked in tumult.

Ditzy appreciates sincerity. She will respect passion. She will honor honesty.

“I know that you have mixed feelings about Tick. There are things about that we have to discuss.”

~~~~~~~~

I’m a lucky bastard not to have died yet. But at this point I’m fairly confident that will change when I get back to Ditzy. At least I won’t be able to run far before she catches and dismembers me like one of those ancient dramas Tick reads. Maybe if I’m lucky I’ll end up as one of the idiots in those plays if they get around to telling Tick of my demise. Assuming whatever they have in store for Tick doesn’t include a lack of survival or permanent incarceration. He had better be damn enjoying whatever he’s doing!

The anger faded quickly. The reasons for it would not. And Tick is a long way away. Relatively.

Quirk passed the last barrier of tree-trunks into the camp with Dinky close behind, readying himself for a barrage, but none came. No great utterances but the quick realization and relief that Ditzy had forgotten about her daughter for some short time. There was a jolt in Ditzy’s eyes, but it was already ongoing. It was no small wonder for Quirk, whose suspicions grew deeper as old responsibilities made way for the new.

While Ditzy brought her daughter into her tent as the sun collapsed beyond the sky, Quirk made his way to his. Eris must have set it up, he thought in the last quiet of his night. His mind was still shattered, obliterated, filled with the vast soundless indignity of how he had carried himself through life. Quirk did not listen to the wind. Sleep came for him to shape his mind for the morrow, a thousand subtle alterations made to break chains long woven.

The wind carried whispers of the moment. The cold carried the turn of the season.

Interlude: What Was Said

Interlude

What Was Said

Ditzy sat upright at the sudden words. Eyes widening, then narrowing at the honeyed tone. She stared down the batguard silhouetted by the gold and purple hues of the sun breaking.

“You won’t be happy to hear all of this,” Eris continued, “but more than your need, you deserve to know some things about Tick and all the reasons we’re making this trip.

I don’t believe you.

“When did you start caring about what I deserve?”

In any other circumstance it would have been a terrible thing to say. Yet Ditzy wanted to push Eris’s new attitude, test it. Because Eris wants something from me. Even if it’s just to listen. And then there was the hunger too, the promise inherent in word and tone. If Eris really wanted to tell Ditzy something, then Ditzy held the position of power in the deepening night.

Ditzy should’ve known Eris would have none of it.

“I don’t have to tell you anything.” Eris’s glare met Ditzy’s and equaled it. “I know things you will never know if you try to fight me now. That’s not what I want to do.”

The batguard paused and softened, letting Ditzy wrangle her rising anger. I don’t need to—

“Take me at face value,” Eris implored. “We have a long way to go and it will be safer to cooperate.”

As if this was my fault. But…

Slowly, Ditzy stifled her malignant feelings. Breathing calmed forcibly, tempered with reminders that Eris was not her enemy and prodded by the lurking thought that it had been awfully stupid of her to try to fight her.

It was my fault. And this is my fault. Ugh. She wins. Why does she win? This must be getting to me.

Ditzy lifted her head, refocusing, and spoke almost as a murmur. “Do you know about the Nightmare?” Her voice was without a trace of her earlier venom. Maskless, Eris went cold at the question, studying something inside. The conversation faded like a falling star, soundless, bright, then nothing.

“Yes and no,” Eris answered; Ditzy’s attention hadn’t faded and her eyes were locked on her opposite. “Princess Luna told me about it, but don’t think I got everything that happened before the ruins. Things Quirk said about your encounters before I was involved caught her attention. I have guesses… and suspicions.”

Eris gestured with her hoof, a little wave that said something else first or simply later. Leaning forward as the surrounding dark convalesced their weary minds, Ditzy made no show of hiding her hunger.

“What about Tick?”

Eris opened her mouth, then cocked her head, snapped it in another direction and then relaxed slightly. “Quirk is coming back with your daughter. I’ll explain all of this once you’ve taken care of that.”

What!? What did Quirk—

~~~~~~~

Near panic, Ditzy dove through the dying beams toward the two figures at the edge of the clearing. Upheaval and havoc played at the fringes of her mind; the jolt of Eris’s words was as rough as her hard landing in front of Quirk and Dinky. Harried, she glanced at both quickly and wasted no time in saying:

“What did you—”

Similarly, Quirk wasted no time in cutting her off.

“Your daughter thought it was a good idea to follow me when I was looking around. Without telling me. That’s all that happened. I’m tired.”

With those blunt proclamations out of the way, Quirk turned and threw up what there was of a door to his tent behind him. Dinky looked up at her mother, Ditzy feeling like a razor floating in air, sharp, ready, her mind chaotic.

What did she mean that they want me and Tick for other reasons? Who is they? What does Quirk know about it? What about those books and the Nightmare, those reasons that I’m doing all this in the first place, and they don’t even make sense! If they were that dangerous and I was touched by it then why haven’t I gone crazy or why hasn’t anyone else who’s been touched by it gone crazy and what could be beyond all this—

“Dinky, we’ll talk about this tomorrow. It’s time for you to sleep.”

Curious, sullen, and reluctantly compliant, Dinky retreated under her mother’s watchful eyes to the tent they shared.

Ditzy fled back to where Eris waited, not waiting a moment. The temptation to dive into the tent and hide with her daughter would take her otherwise.

~~~~~~~

“Some of the things I’m going to say won’t make sense without context. I know you’re waiting. This has to come first to make sense.”

Among her hammering impulses, Ditzy noticed in some observant corner of her mind that Eris gradually slid back towards her laconic and almost offensive confident tone. Desperate with a fire that fed a desperation Ditzy hadn’t felt just a few minutes ago, she halted the urge to squirm and waited. Just go, just talk, talk about something, get there!

“I was already a guard by the time that Princess Luna returned. Not for long; it was mostly training before. Nopony saw her for months. We thought Princess Celestia was keeping her alone for whatever reason, but it was guesswork. When she did appear in public months later, we all immediately noticed that she and her sister were different animals. I know you ran into Princess Celestia once; she’s very informal; blah blah and so on. It’s obvious that Princess Luna doesn’t act that way. Princess Luna has…”

Waiting in the maddening silence, Ditzy eyed Eris intently as she looked for the right word. Caught in worried feelings, she couldn’t act to cut to the core yet.

“She has an iron will,” Eris finished, tossing the words out in dissatisfied fashion. “It’s a boring way to say it, but I’m not a poet so I won’t try to be one. That’s not what is important. What’s important is how she uses it.”

If only you picked up some of that decorum, an internal voice whispered before being beaten back by every bit of sense Ditzy had. Oh come on! It’s obvious she’s trying to make an amend at least in some ulterior—

“She’s disinterested in everything. In a good way, so that she’s a fair judge. I saw this more than once. After Princess Luna came out of her seclusion, it didn’t take her long to get a guard organized. Mostly bats, obviously. Through the couple of years that I’ve been under her command, she’s not broken the pattern of being apart from things.”

Looking Ditzy straight in the eyes (not a chance of one wandering off now!), Eris breathed in.

“This is different from everything I’ve ever seen her do. It’s personal and discreet. So discreet that it’s not even listed in limited-access mission logs. I checked them myself. You remember that the only two guards that went into the ruins were me and Aphelion. That’s extremely out of our guidelines. We don’t ever go into a potential danger in groups of less than eight, let alone two. And Princess Luna ordered us directly not to talk about what happened inside. To not acknowledge that it happened if brought up. The few of us are the only ones that know that happened. I know that, whenever and however you got into this, Princess Luna made a contract with you. No, not a good word. An oath. You know by now that she expects you to follow it.”

Remembering how her mind had wandered when the details of that oath had been hammered out, Ditzy cringed but managed to hide it. Most of it. Eris continued without breaking her focus on Ditzy, giving no hint she had noticed.

“She… this isn’t how she likes to do things. She doesn’t like to bring in the everyday pony. And I’ve never heard of her striking bargains with them. I was talking about how she was disinterested. The reason I mentioned her strength of will is that I’ve never seen her take that personal interest in everything. She always keeps impartial. This is different. I can see her personal thoughts on the edge of her expression, and only barely, after serving her for years. She doesn’t let us in on why she’s doing it. Usually she explains her reasoning for her decisions when she’s not busy. But this? She’s kept apart from us.”

Eris brought her gaze to the ground, a minute bit of her composure unraveling into uncertainty.

Does Eris know how this started? Does she know about how Tick can look into you? And… I knew it seemed personal for Luna, I guess on some level at least, but what is Eris going to show me with it?

“Do you know all the details about how this started? And… are you endangering yourself by telling me this?” Ditzy put in, barely audible in the night’s veil.

Eris opened her mouth and closed it, waving the latter question away with a minimum of movement. “If she didn’t want me to talk she would have said so. She’s that way. Tell me about it another night.”

Given how abnormal the whole situation was, Ditzy doubted it that still held true.

There might be something that completely changes how you think about—

Eris stared out at nothing. The sudden thoughts disappeared into an incoherent whisper against that wall.

“There’s more. This is only the first thing and it takes all of it to get.”

Ditzy nodded slowly, but to Eris she might have been a hundred miles away.

“There’s more guards going to the Crystal Empire, except officially. They were in the mission logs when I checked back in Canterlot. Not just a few either. At least two dozen, with orders to search out and secure something that wasn’t recorded. They’re headed to the capitol, which is where we’re going. I’m certain that they’re not headed after Tick. The orders would be completely different: it looked like a seizure of property, and if it was Tick it wouldn’t mix with how everything has been handled. I think it has to do with Tick, because it was logged after…”

Eris stopped herself, pausing.

“I hope you don’t like Tick. Or hate him.”

The blunt words ricocheted off a cautious Ditzy, shaking her. From nose to wingtip she felt a little jolt of energy pass through and she resettled her sitting position with no small ominous ache.

“I hope you don’t like him because he’s not going to come willingly. I hope you don’t hate him because I think he’s more central than we know. I don’t think they plan on letting him go once they have him: there was an incident that caught Princess Luna’s attention in the ruins.”

Eris’s voice was low and dark as she described momentary connection between her and Tick.

~~~~~~~

That excited face, that conspiratorial intent stared back at Ditzy, even in the utter black of the tent.

“They must need him because of how he looks into minds, and they’re interested in you because of how you handled him; the order was logged after Princess Luna got back to Canterlot and they’re headed to the one place that information would be and the place Tick would go. It would be quite the coincidence. I think they’re going after the same thing—”

Eris did not mention the Nightmare.

No, no, It can’t be that but—if Tick touched Eris then is she? But if we’re all tainted, then why hasn’t something happened? Are we all going to go crazy? I don’t know, I don’t know, it doesn’t make sense; the only insanity is this! How can I tell her? Will she even believe me when I’m unconvinced that there’s danger in this? When I question the authority she swore to follow? And there’s more, there’s more, there’s always more. That prick with his cog-eyes went and did exactly what he wasn’t supposed to even before he abandoned me. If we need him after for Celestia-only-knows-what, this might never end…

We’re all tainted because of him, one way or another.

Chapter Five: Tainted

Chapter Seven

Tainted

At the edge of the figurative abyss, Silver Skies stood silent. Standing behind, Tick did not know his gaze. Skies’ gaze was a mask of grief: Skies’ gaze was a forefront to calculation. The ruins scattered before them by the iron hand of time offered neither solace nor clue to the expression.

“Meet me at the northern pass.”

There was no sound for a while. Skies did not move, and eventually Tick lost his impassivity and turned back to the makeshift inn.

And how do I take this? If this goes without any strings attached I will have been lucky, absurdly lucky. With his appeals to decency, he’s either honest or thinks I’m naïve.

Tick pushed through the solid door on rickety foundations, giving the few other patrons the usual respectful distance as he sought the stairs. If he thinks I’m naïve, I’ll have the advantage over him. Up the stairs and into a small room, Tick seized the relative comfort of obscure isolation and settled down on what passed for a bed, looking up at the roughshod ceiling and thinking.

He’ll want something. They always do, even if they believe they don’t. The question is what and how badly he wants it. The good thing is that I can always leave him behind once I get into the empire.

Halfheartedly throwing the few things he had left into his pack, Tick paused on the metal-bound book. At least the useless piece of junk isn’t heavy. There was nothing to see him grimace, but the thought occurred to him: Skies might know something. And out of all the assorted travelers he had come across, would not one incomparably familiar with the world of centuries ago be the most equipped to tell him what it was, let alone what it contained?

Tick’s eyes followed the book as he slid it into the pack last, leaving it at the top. I’ll give him a look at it. It’s not like the consequences could be too damaging. I’m leaving here anyways; I have no money left (not like I had much to begin with); if the book is monstrously dangerous and I’ve somehow missed it then I’d be best throwing it away.

Tick didn’t see the reflection in the one small mirror. He didn’t see how his eyes glinted gold whenever they passed over the book.

Outside, the lone grey thinker soured as the cold bit him, but Tick knew he’d had no chance to get adequate gear. Short of going to those few farms I passed and begging, there’s nothing I could have done.

The clouds grouped in between the mountains, a nocturne assault lending the falling snow a look of ashes and smoke. The transcendent mountains cut out the sun, leaving only little glances of light in the valley. That self-same snow twisted down amidst the two, setting a pallor across the valley in what seemed not to be morning. Yet it was, and before Tick could speak Silver Skies launched forth.

“I thought you had good in you, but perhaps I am not so sure now. You have done what is easy and waited until the last moment. Good is not easy, and if it is it is because of past goodness. Now what do I say to you? I will not take you with me? You must go alone? Condemn you like a criminal?”

Deep creases lined Skies’ pained forehead as he looked away, closed his eyes, and set his jaw. With a deep, excessively long rattling sigh that turned into unintelligible hissed words, he turned away towards the northern pass and rummaged in his pack. Tick’s dancing eyes mirrored his curious caution, darting back and forth as Skies tossed a rapidly-unfolding small cloth towards him.

“You can have this. Wear it or you’ll die from cold. If you want to come with me, then I will require…”

Tick managed to catch the projectile now resembling a parka. Forced to take his eyes off Skies for a moment, they darted back instantly to meet Skies’ narrow, measuring glance.

“… A favor.”

“What kind of favor?”

“The kind where you don’t bore me to death before the ice takes us!”

Tick didn’t share Skies’ sudden burst of laughter, but that only made him laugh more.

~~~~~~~~

The sun cracked like a flaming spear over the horizon, the dawn-line hurtling from the farthest sight to the tents nearly instantaneously. Yet Ditzy was already up and prowling, if only in her thoughts, as she lay in her tent with her daughter protectively snoozing across her chest.

Quirk first: then Eris. I’ll find out what I haven’t been told through them, and then I’ll find out how to end my involvement in this.

With a delicate deliberate shift of years’ practice, Ditzy edged her daughter off her enough to get up. Feeling her daughter beside her had put a coal of warmth in Ditzy, but it was incongruous with the low current of watchfulness, the edge of tension directed at all things around, near, far, and absent. Absent was the worst. Tick was not a subject that Ditzy wanted to hear any more about, especially then as she poked out into the sapping-cold air, but the fact of his existence was a niggling reminder, an aggravation that lurked behind the snowing clouds every time she asked herself what or why she was here. In most circumstances Ditzy could have moved on. But there was more, always more with Tick, and those details prompted a deep loathing.

Ditzy zipped up the tent with minimal noise, oblivious to the eye-searing dawn on snow, and she stilled with a deep exhalation the desire to tirade against him. The aches, pains, and blisters of relentless travel Ditzy also took no heed of; they had faded into the rhythm of the past few days. Little razors of the distant sun poked through the pine boughs and made Ditzy blink, although it might have been the sight of Quirk and Eris already up and talking.

Or at least, that was how it seemed. Having spotted Ditzy long before she spotted her, Eris was walking away, though Quirk hadn’t yet noticed their observer. It was clear to Ditzy there was something she was being kept out of. Another thing I’ll have to fight to find out.

“Hey, Quirk!”

~~~~~~~~~

If I hadn’t gotten his assistance, then I would have had to turn back and find another way through. Trusting a road like this on the eve of winter? I know there were other trade routes back when the empire wasn’t caught in a curse. This must not have been one of them.

The pass that narrowly sprawled before them was as if a struggling titan had hacked it out with a gigantic knife; it was rough, pointed, jagged, and black with tips of snow. Frost rimmed the crevices and lined the one discernable path, which would have looked treacherous enough without it. And despite all the cold threats of the road, Tick’s thoughts wandered to the oddly pleased relic guiding him.

He looks older—but not very old, and who could tell? The last of them not in the empire must have passed centuries ago. What did he say he was doing outside of the empire? Did he say?

Silver Skies watched Tick’s concerned, measuring gaze with amusement, then started down the slope, humming something under his breath.

“Hey! Will I leave you behind?”

In this place? No, I don’t think I want to die today.

With careful eyes and a sharp breath Tick took the step, committing to the road again.

~~~~~~~~~

“What were you two talking about?”

Quirk looked up and saw Ditzy. The interruption was complete; in that moment Quirk discarded all that he had been thinking about, because he saw her indefatigable hunger and knew better than to fight it.

Some of my run-ins with the city guard, which were really not unlike hers with a few long-term differences.

“Just casual stuff,” Quirk replied moderately, and he made to slip away.

“Wait,” Quirk heard her implore, and her voice was a tone and tenor of a color that dragged up curiosity from the depths against his long-standing “Do not talk to Ditzy” policy.

No, I think I’ll avoid breaking that rule today. Things have been going too well for me recently. And since I’ve broken the ice with Eris now, this is the best time to continue. Preferably without Ditzy interrupting.

And Eris, unlike Ditzy, was still very much in his mind.

For Quirk, after letting the obstacle rest for some time in his mind, had come up with his solution. He would not mention the first encounter once; he would entirely avoid its existence if it was not directly relevant. Rather, he would talk about anything that came to his mind. It wasn’t often in his existence in lower Canterlot that he would resort to common friendly tactics, but usually that was not what was needed. Among the clubs and more quiet stone avenues he ventured between, Quirk was only another bargaining chip, a piece whose behavior was accustomed. Why disavow himself of those oddities? They kept his experience regular and ensured he had what he wanted. And some of those experiences had granted him a point of common experience with him and Eris, a lathe to smooth out the splinters for that craftsman of conversation.

Although she’s still pretty damn prickly.

“Did it have anything to do with where we’re going?” Ditzy asked, in a voice so courteous it must have hurt.

“Uh, no,” Quirk replied after several moments: a few to recover his attention and a few more to wonder what Ditzy was getting at.

“I need to ask about something—but what were you talking about then?”

The hints of incredulity were there, but they were a distraction, a secondary thing. What else would she want? Something sensitive, judging by the way she’s going about it. About Tick, perhaps? No, she’s angry at him and would only think about him if there wasn’t another option.

“If you want to know you should ask Eris.”

Quirk knew it was misleading; it would lead Ditzy to a road she did not wish to travel and his deflection would be complete. Ditzy, however, showed no signs of stopping. One leg crossed in front of the other and looking off to think, her feelings were inscrutable. That she was off-kilter was all Quirk knew, and without another moment Ditzy looked at him and spoke.

“I need to know everything you told Luna or anypony else that would tell Luna about what happened when Tick did that eyes thing to me.”

“‘That eyes thing,’” Quirk repeated, but Ditzy was burning with more than embarrassment, and he thought better than to linger on it. “Um… that could be a few things. Few is an uncountable term, you know?”

Celestia, I wish I never had gotten caught up in this shit. At least I didn’t tell her it was Tick that told me that and shove her further towards instability. Not like I—

“You need to tell me everything.” Ditzy started on demand and ended in desperation.

Quirk looked at her, halting, looking around for any clue. “Can I know why you need to know?”

“If you want to know you should ask Eris,” Ditzy deadpanned, remarkably chill and smooth for being distraught. “What did you tell Luna?”

And now I need to go lay in the snow.

“I don’t know if you know this, but I’ve been interrogated a lot recently, and by a similar number of demanding mares, to which I can now add you to the list. That’s a lot of things to get jumbled around in my head. If and when I remember what I said on that subject, I’ll tell you. If you’re calm, so that might be a while.”

Quirk spread his wings, his grimace worsened by the pain of doing so, and instead limped away in the midst of triple pains.

Oh, to be rid of the road, the wounds, and the healer.

~~~~~~~~~

Frustrated, Ditzy threw out her tension in a sharp exhalation as the voice in the back of her mind returned, aghast and mildly interested at the thought that Quirk and Eris could have a conversation that remotely approached friendliness. It bothered her, more than bothered her, for Ditzy was realizing the cage she was weaving for herself. I’m not doing enough. I can’t leave myself alone all this time and I’m not giving Dinky enough attention. I’m not fond of either of them, but if I want to make the best of a poor situation…

Looking around and realizing she had naught else to do, Ditzy walked off towards a small clearing near the camp, feeling as if the world was unreal because Quirk and Eris were talking about “casual things” and not blows. Ditzy poked into the clearing, and she thought it was unreal, because there was a chest-high column with a scroll on it that hadn’t been there before. Ditzy thought it wasn’t real as she took a few steps in, because everything had gone quiet like the depths of perfect loneliness. And Ditzy knew it wasn’t real, because there was Discord standing before her.

~~~~~~~~~

“Tell me! Do you always become prickly when asked for favors?”

The wind whipped above them without much snow, although there was already a foot of it on the ground. Picking his way behind skies, wings trapped yet warm under the parka, Tick let out an impertinent question made less so by the hours of constant cheer of his companion.

“Do you always get so happy when the rest of the world skips forward a thousand years without you?”

Skies slowed and gave Tick a particularly sharp look. “No, and though I do not like it, it is over. Those that I lost did not have much time left, and some I did not mind leaving. Besides that thing, there…”

The essence behind the words dented Tick’s esteem, but the small remorse he felt for the snappish comment was forgotten as Skies went on.

“There is a real favor,” Skies resumed, working his way cautiously down a slippery section of the slope, “that you can do, once we get into the empire. Favor? Ha! I should have said payment, just to see you stiffen! Now I really only mean for you to keep the trip interesting. I am past the age where I want my life to be interesting. You could escape my old and boring grasp easily once you get into the empire, easier than you escaped whatever you are running from, so I make no false demands on you. Watch your step!”

And true to his words the ice under Tick turned slick. Without his wings, Tick fought harder than he anticipated righting himself, catching a glimpse of what crashing down the mountain would be like as he skidded down past his bearded compatriot.

“than you escaped whatever you are running from”

“There’s not a lot of mountain left to fall down, at least,” Tick muttered to himself.

“Heh. We’ll stop when we reach the bottom.”

~~~~~~~~

Utterly without words, shaking, and staring at the casual monster in front of her, Ditzy stood. Discord floated in front of her, and paw and claw crossed over each other, his gaze observant and dissatisfied.

I’m hallucinating, this is just one of his tricks, there’s no way he could ever get out of there again—

“My dear Ditzy Doo, I must admit I’m disappointed to see you in such a state at the sight of me. Really! I thought you were ‘beyond me’; I believe those were the words you used. Since I’m here, though, there is some unfinished business between us.” Discord pulled out a pocket watch and glanced at it resignedly, tapping it with his claw as it unfolded repeatedly to reveal yet more watches, some three-dimensional, all of which would have utterly confused Ditzy had she had a single thought that was not oozing rage and terror. “Quite a bit of it, actually…”

Suddenly Ditzy felt every drop of blood in her body, every cell and limb responded to her again. Wings had flared without realizing, muscles poised on the brink, a thousand shouting impulses full of rage and pain all prepared to scream at once. Deep red, she could not see, and neither could Ditzy decide to fight or hold still.

“There really is so much you miss when you spend most of your time locked up in Celestia’s glorified stone motel,” Discord sighed, lazily watching as he spun the whole contraption around on its chain. “I’m afraid I’m out of practice. Really, it would be hard to overstate—and you know how terribly melodramatic I am—how dreadfully, agonizingly, unendingly boring it is in there.”

“How did you get out!? What do you have to say to me!?”

Discord laughed for a moment and swung his watch into the air, his eyes on Ditzy as it disappeared without a blink.

“Surely my good friend Ditzy can predict while I’m here! Now, don’t shudder at that word: you may yet appreciate some of the things I have to say! But why beat around the bush when I can tell you?”

It was then Ditzy realized she was sitting in a chair. She half-leapt out of it as she looked down, blonde mane whipping in front of her eyes, but the look back up gave her pause. Discord was sitting in a tall chair behind a large desk, suit and tie trimmed to a flawless fit with thin reading glasses that somehow did not fall of the end of his very long face. With a quaint bureaucratic brush of paw and claw he straightened the papers he was holding, lay them down, and spoke directly to Ditzy.

“You see, my dear Ditzy, there’s something Tick has that our good friend Luna wants very badly. He also has something that both sisters want very badly, despite them not knowing it.”

Snowflakes started to form a light coat on the desk between them, and in that moment Ditzy noticed it to the exclusion of all other detail and fought the overwhelming, dizzying push to laugh and cry and fly over the desk and release it all at once, to eviscerate such enduring, malicious pain into Discord that his debt would be paid ten times over.

Ditzy did not look him in the eyes.

With a practiced flick, Discord put the tip of his claw to his tongue and flipped to his next page.

“While trapped in that loathsome place, I made some mental notes of the goings-on—”

Dinky! Is she—

Submerged below a thousand thoughts, one surged to take the forefront. Ditzy caught the words in her throat, unsure if asking would achieve relief or prompt the monster into more malice. The mess of adrenaline rushed around her body, but inside her hammering ribcage there was a suspicion that there was another purpose for this devil’s visit, that she should listen cautiously. Nerve-wracked in her seat, Ditzy knew it was a cage to hold her close. Just listen, what is he saying? And then why, but hear it first!

“My deepest apologies,” Discord intoned as Ditzy looked up to see him with the top of his head popped off like a bottle, papers stuffed into brain matter ad hoc. “In my haste I’ve mistaken the cookbook I’m writing for my notes! Do grab that scroll off the pedestal for me while I sort this out; it’s relevant.”

Ditzy’s stomach lurched and spots flew in front of her eyes, but she looked away and kept from fainting. “What is it? Why should I get it and not you?”

With a simpering beam, Discord shut the top of his head with a clack like hardwood. “I was merely preoccupied, Ditzy. If it assuages your worrisome self, then I’ll get it.”

And then Discord, chair and all, pivoted upside down and rolled on thin air to the pedestal. Ditzy closed her eyes, her tolerance for phantasmal sights already far exceeded. It’ll be over soon, he’ll leave or run, there’s no way he can be out and not be hunted…

“Now, where was I?”

Eyes swept through air to the source of the words, and, held still by the sight of him, Ditzy waited. Discord slipped a few pages aside disinterestedly until he alighted on the right one.

“Ah yes, my notes on the first encounter between our friends Tick and Luna, in the palace at Canterlot, near the end of summer.”

Discord took a moment to eye her, ensuring Ditzy was paying attention. If I could call them friends.

“The long and short of it is that Luna recognized Tick’s ability for what it is: psionics. Fresh off the figurative boat from her vacation on the moon (oh, how I envied her; at least she could move), she was more apt to recognize it, while Celestia had a thousand years of rebuilding and governing to forget all about that painful little detail.”

“Psionics,” the Draconequus started, heading off the question they both knew Ditzy would ask, “is not magic. It is something else entirely, the interaction of emotion and thought of multiple minds through the most direct medium. It is exceedingly rare and without much practical use. Even fewer of those who do have potential ever realize it. The weakest psionist is, in absolute terms, incomparably closer to the strongest as compared to, say, a magic-user. On the whole, it was never an important art, never one that could be used to gain much power, and so it was lost in the unholy, fiendishly lovely mess that existed around a thousand years ago. But I digress…”

Discord turned a few pages, humming-muttering something to himself as he did.

“Celestia and Luna, fitting their pattern of having great powers of magic, flight, intellect, being killjoys, etc. and so on, at one time had an affinity with that art. They existed in constant communion with the other: what Luna would know, Celestia would know that instant, and what one would feel would be echoed in the other.”

Discord paused—and Ditzy felt her heart skip—she saw the smile creep across his face, that smile so familiar, and she felt the rage take hold inside her like a torch on an oil well. Don’t think about it, don’t think about it, don’t think about what happened.

“I watched them for centuries. The desperate attempts to hide dissent from the other, the jealousy, the glory… you know how that delicious tale ends. When Celestia gave Luna the glorified boot, the touch of their minds finally became too much to bear and they severed their sense of psionics separated entirely. What was left collected in the place that they split it. Given a thousand years, it had more than enough time to warp and mutate, interact with whatever magic they were using in that fabled fight. By this day it must have collected into something tangible, which brings us to what Luna wants so badly.”

Every breath and touch of a snowflake was the birth and death of an age. Discord had Ditzy’s absolute attention, and he did not rush through the tremulous silence.

“I do hope you took care of whatever you found in the ruins.”

~~~~~~~~

Quirk watched everything. He did not see the appearance of wherever the monster had emerged from. It was always hard for him to miss a voice he had not heard before. Watching from the tree’s boughs, Ditzy now hidden in front of the chair, Quirk waited atop his tenuous perch for the creature he had only heard about before to pass. So smart. Get in the tree so you can see what the hell is going on. Now you can’t get out without it being obvious.

“Oh, enough with the look! Let me say it plain. Luna longs to hold to hold the hatred they once nurtured: not to use it, but to crush it, to see it out of existence. You, Ditzy, so carelessly left the book, just as carelessly as you had let the one who carried it off fall away from you.”

Then the desk and chairs were gone, the suit disappeared, and Discord stepped in closer.

~~~~~~~~

“The desk was borrowed,” Discord mentioned offhandedly. The snow which had accumulated on it dropped to the ground in a sheet and he raised an eyebrow, bringing his paw to his mouth momentarily in contemplation. Ditzy was ablaze with thinking, a fireball in the snow steaming heady and terrible thoughts about what was said and unsaid and unremembered.

“What about the thing that they both want?” Ditzy queried, almost demanded, but for that moment caution overtook her boiling blood. Why is he doing this? What does he want to trick me into doing? If he so much as touches me, I’m not even afraid anymore, I hate him I hate him I hate him, but I am afraid of him, I don’t know what he’s doing, he only wants my pain—

Discord leaned in close and every muscle froze, every muscle tensed, and that tension raged in such a small place, blinded her until Ditzy knew she would flare and burn like the sun. And not die like a phoenix but go into nova, a final eruption to obliterate the thing that stood in front of her, the thing that was inches away, the thing that dared not touch her. Reeling through memory, Ditzy was closer and closer, she saw it again and she knew what was coming.

“I’m afraid I have to run soon, but it might interest you to know that while Celestia and Luna have lost their sense of minds, I retained it entirely. In fact, it’s how I twisted your memories of your mother to always lead to her death! As vivid as the day it happened. Do you remember, Ditzy?..”

~~~~~~~~~

The scream rose all at once and shook the great trees like twigs. The scream rose and it proclaimed murder and rage, shaking to the primal core. Quirk heard the noise like death and knew terror, and he saw Ditzy’s mortal lunge at Discord. It could not have missed; there was not enough space to evade it. So sure was he that one of them would reach the ill grave in that embrace of destruction that he thought Ditzy had swallowed the Draconequus up completely. Yet he was gone, and the scream that wrought a bloody mess out of the nature around them collapsed into pain, into sorrow, into violent sobbing.

“It really is a droll thing to get reformed,” a voice very close to Quirk intoned.

Quirk looked over before his mind could accelerate into panic, seeing the Draconequus on the branch next to him, observing the show. Quirk launched his body into futile motion, seeking to scramble away, but Discord only laughed quietly as the branches held Quirk in place. Holding up a claw to his mouth in a shushing motion, the vehement grin in his eyes only served to heighten the sick rigidity in the air.

“Let it be known that a good friend always keeps his promises. Do give Fluttershy my regards,” Discord whispered, and then he was gone.

~~~~~~~~~

Eris heard the unearthly sound and came flying, jack-knifing through the trees. She was too late. She saw Quirk slip out of the tree and land roughshod on the ground, dazed like he had seen every one of his ancestors staring right at him. Careening to a halt in front of him, she demanded:

“What happened?”

“It’s over,” Quirk whispered, barely there. “I don’t know. Ditzy…”

Eris was on the brink of the world, looking down at the wreck below her, and she knew that whatever had been wrought, she would be long in unmaking it. She took in a sharp breath at the sight, and the sound became the low howling of the wind. The wind rolled over them all into the south, over hills and through endless plains, and pain was felt in the mountain…

In the clearing, Eris said many words to Ditzy, but they were all lost.

Chapter Six: Moonlight

Chapter Six

Moonlight

“Mom is sad again.”

Despite his indifference towards children, or perhaps because of it, the regularity with which Dinky had accepted and knew that her mother had broken down was clear as the empty winter skies. Quirk knew somewhere that he ought to care more than the superficial consideration he had given that bit of information, yet he was disinterested. Impartial. There were a thousand ways to start the question, a question he would ask anyways, but only one way to end it.

“Is she like this often?”

Dinky nodded, the pain in the answer alive in her eyes.

“She’s not good. Sometimes she’s like that for days and days and she doesn’t talk to anypony, but not for a while. I think she might’ve already been thinking about something bad, ‘cause she didn’t want to play or talk much. I got bored. And you guys never wanted to talk to me either! So why are you talking to me?”

To the point, are we?

Sitting down, still sifting through the madness that had occurred, Quirk decided to match her directness. “Ditzy is very upset.”

Dinky’s eyes narrowed, a remarkably venomous expression for the child she was.

“I know.”

Those words were beyond a statement; they were aggression, a demand for more. Quirk looked back, neither particularly astonished nor bored, only flat and thinking, delaying his own ominous contemplations. Yet there was more, a hearkening back to his younger days, and the abrupt end of an age.

I know the question she’s still asking, because she knows I didn’t give her a real answer, or what she thinks is a real answer. She has some sense that I… of course she does, she said “I’m not nothing!” when I tried to brush her off. What is she, seven, eight? She’s not oblivious. Why should I make some ridiculous lie when she’ll only uncover it later? Why should I lie about anything that she would remain oblivious about, even? What point is there in any of it, when innocence is a flowery substitute for ignorance? A veil, that’s all, that society made up. A shield from the world that finds you anyway.

“Ditzy is very upset and Eris told me to take you a long way away from the camp so she could try to calm her down.”

“Did you hear that noise earlier?” Dinky pressed on, her hunger only whetted and still the farthest from satisfied by Quirk’s more comprehensive answer.

“Yes, I saw it happen.”

“Where did it come from?”

“Your mother.”

Dinky looked distinctly sickened, but she didn’t let up, and Quirk gave her every answer.

“How?”

“Discord said something to her. He probably did something to her.”

“But Discord was nice to me! And he got locked in a statute again, Twilight said so! Where is he?!”

“Wherever he is, he’s not here now.”

“What was he doing?”

Oh, if only I knew. Quirk drew in a long breath, wondering how to go about what he had half-heard. “They were talking about the reasons we’re on this… expedition. It had something to do with Tick and Luna. I would need to explain a lot to give you the details, but they’re unnecessary.”

Unnecessary for you. It’s a dodge, but it really would take me ages… and Ditzy—who knows what she would do?

“I heard about Tick at home when you were in the kitchen,” Dinky put in, almost apologizing, “I heard Eris say he was gone, but why is he gone? Why are we following him?”

~~~~~~~~~

“Where is Dinky? Is she safe? Where is he?”

“Quirk is keeping an eye on her.”

“Please, let me see her, get her away from—”

“I want to help you. Yes, Quirk is a scumbag, but you need to tell me what happened first. It’s over now.”

Ditzy was still breathing heavy, golden eyes bloodshot, a complete wreck. She squirmed around in the small tent, Eris like an iron curtain before the exit. The question about Dinky had been the first coherent words Ditzy had uttered; Eris had carried the shell-shocked mare back almost entirely to the tent before Ditzy had regained her faculties. Though not without compassion, Eris knew her overwhelming prerogative in that moment was information.

First thing about trauma is to get them away; now I have to figure out what it was. Quirk said something about Discord. I’m not sure if he’s a hundred percent, but I need to get this out of Ditzy first. Discord, of all the things!

“Where is he?!” Ditzy demanded again, looking for all her strain like a wounded animal trapped in a corner, ready to strike against the unassailable fortress between her and the outside. Her stance was bent, hunkered down, still hinting of the rage that had provoked the unholy noise that had caught Eris’s initial attention. A mess of golden hair hung over her face, looking feral, but Eris would not yield, her stare immortal against the decanter of rage Ditzy had poured out. I need to know before I do anything. I’ve only heard a scream like that in one place.

“Who is he?”

“Discord,” Ditzy spat out. Genuine bewilderment took its place in Eris’s mind, and before Ditzy launched into her tirade, she had time to think one thought: this is so far beyond my pay grade.

“He came back,” Ditzy whispered, and then Eris saw the fear in that scarred face. “He got out of his prison. We have to tell Luna, and the book—he wants the book, that’s the only reason he would have told me, even if he’s lying. Tick—”

She wouldn’t finish her sentence. Eris moved faster than her eyes could see.

~~~~~~~~~

Ditzy yelped, twisting to fight as Eris tripped her, masterfully landing the struggling mare on her back. Caught under the pin, she had no time to react before Eris spoke.

“Think about breathing.”

“Get off me!”

“I’ll get off when you think about breathing.”

Ditzy felt the weight of Eris on her, moved as if to kick her and then hesitated, her mind a crashing jumble of urges all going at once. The hard swift breathing that was the only sound now then cut through to her; the world was done trembling; there was solid cold earth below and Eris held her down from above. Minutes slipped through the cracks in the tent and Ditzy forgot about her tormentor, felt the solid presence. Her mind had been going a mile a minute, but now it was exhausted. Her body had been dripping with the nectar of rage and terror, yet she was expended, the shock dissipated. The pain twisted deep into her was a memory buried again. There was only the world directly around her.

Breathing? I’m breathing so fast. What does she want about my breathing?

Yet nothing was said.

Finally the hammer of time slowed Ditzy’s breath, and in another minute’s passing Eris stepped off her.

“Are you all here?”

“Yes,” Ditzy answered instinctually, but she instantly regretted it, for she was not sure at all if she was all there, or all right. But that’s not the question…

“I need you to tell me what happened,” Eris said. It was not a demand, not even impatient. The words thudded in the air once and they were gone. Eris’s gaze was even, calm, and level even as Ditzy was unbalanced; she had just sat to regain her senses and was not at all sure she should trust that guise of levelheadedness. Had not Eris retained her superior attitude even in the depths of the ruins?

Eris stood before the door.

“What do you need to know?”

“I need you to tell me everything that happened and what needs to be done to prevent this from happening to you again.”

Ditzy laughed. She laughed, because she could see how Eris phrased it, coiled the words so innocently into a picture of care, a care that—if she had any at all—looked more generous than reality. She laughed, because after the agony she endured, she now had something that Eris wanted. It was power, and normally it wouldn’t have mattered, but she’d been a pawn without it long enough.

~~~~~~~~~

The profound silence matched with the cold and fading light. I said she’s not oblivious. It’s a shame I am.

“You know what,” Quirk started, getting up from his stationary position. Dinky had started pacing around to warm herself as the afternoon hours ticked away “I really don’t know. I know he ran away, but that’s all I actually know. We should go ask Eris and Ditzy whenever they get done.”

A foal-sized package of insurance helps.

“Can we start a fire too?”

“That is the best idea I’ve heard all day. I don’t think we’re getting anywhere today and it’s too d- it’s too cold. It’ll only get colder from now on.”

Dinky looked at him askance for a second, and then they meandered back towards the camp. The three tents were situated under cover of some pine trees for the purpose of shelter, and the forest around them was patchy. To the southeast there was a hillock where Quirk and Dinky had waited; to the west of the camp was the clearing where Discord had appeared and vanished like a rip in space. It’s possible that he somehow talked to Fluttershy about—wait.

Quirk halted. Dinky was just barely in sight to the north, trying to move a lopped-off branch that was probably too big for her. There was a scroll. There was a scroll that Discord kept trying to get Ditzy to take, but she never did, and I never saw Eris pick it up and she didn’t mention it. It could still be there.

His eyes shot to the foreboding tent containing the two mares, the clearing in the distance, and soon settled on the clearing. I’m not going near either of them right after this crazy shit.

Poking his head quietly around the snow-dipped trunks, Quirk took his time wandering all the way around the clearing. The pillar lay lopsided and the scroll was only a few yards from it, both frosted lightly. Picking up a rock, Quirk tossed it with his better wing and watched with disappointment as it bounced off the pillar without issue.

“If he wanted to hurt me, he would’ve done it already,” Quirk mused to himself, “or he would guess that I would think that and make me feel like more of an idiot later. Or it was a trap for Ditzy. I could do the egalitarian thing and see what it is, since she’s got her hooves full.”

My first half-decent act to repay my years of earnest stupidity and selfishness! Though it will be a long road, I will faithfully recompense…

Quirk gave the column a blunt kick before he seized the scroll, held it up before him half unrolled, and waited a moment for inevitable agony.

Nothing happened.

Eh, close enough.

Holding the not-as-mysterious-as-anticipated scroll up into the dimming light, Quirk made out a short note and list scrawled out in flowing text upon it. Surely these words will leap off the page and claw my eyes out or somesuch.

It read:

Ditzy: I entrust this to you in the hope that it will serve as a peace offering. Should you continue on your journey, I think you’ll find good use of this. I would include this in my cookbook, but my editor advised me against it.

2 cups Flour

1 & ½ teaspoons Vanilla Extract

2 teaspoons Mother’s Bloody Tears

…

Quirk read until he had gone halfway down the list of exotic and disturbing materials and then decided he was better off leaving the list unfinished.

Now I can conclude that Discord does not need to result to supernatural means to confuse me. It’s probably better that Ditzy hasn’t seen this yet.

There was a lack of moderation in Quirk’s steps toward the tents; in the wet crunches of snow he thought he heard a rhythm; he found himself humming something half-remembered as he went. Though cracking cold and vapid silence waited for him, Quirk shrugged it off. The scenes of the day, though utterly bizarre, were apart from him. With no desire to question it, he satisfied himself with meandering until he stood before the tent. Soon enough he and Dinky would confront Eris and Ditzy. And in a few moments more, Quirk announced his presence with a rather blunt “Eris!”

Eris poked her head out of the tent and locked her withering gaze onto him and it took all of Quirk’s restraint to not roll his eyes.

Oh, don’t look at me with your serious face like that. You’ve been in there for hours; you were going to be interrupted eventually.

“You forgot something.” Quirk proffered the rerolled scroll to Eris. Behind her, an iron-grey apparition stood—not sitting—at the back of the small space. Quirk only saw it for a moment yet it felt like an arena, a tension of power grinding. And Ditzy, that weathered rock from the side of a mountain, stood with pride.

Eris, by the look of her fading grimace, was tired of locking horns with that pained nobility. All but Quirk stood, befuddled for a second, then Eris stuttered forward, trying all at once to shield the sight from Ditzy, close the cloth door, and seize the infernal scroll.

“Give it to me!” Ditzy shouted, charging forward the barest instant later. Haggard thought she was, the voracity of the leap and the fury of the ensuing struggle convinced Quirk instantly that the molten core of her being was yet aflame. Having no time to think, he tossed the scroll straight up and ducked.

In that moment Quirk realized an inescapable truth. The two would wrestle on forever, and the scroll would hit the ground sooner or later. The mural of matched mares colliding with the scroll hanging above entranced him: in the eternity of that long moment he knew he could, ought, to get involved, if only to expedite the process. His thoughts thrust even deeper in that spike of realization, knowing what he would entertain were he to remain noncommittal to everything. But the world was happening now, and Quirk didn’t have time to think.

~~~~~~~

The jolt, the roll and tussle of unarmed melee broke through whatever haze lingered in Ditzy’s mind. Eris was on top of her, then she had thrown her off, and somehow through the madness she caught a glimpse of Quirk flying and catching the scroll. Heedless, Ditzy traded blows—though Eris sought not to injure—and in a few more moments found herself knocked on her side, the air exploding out of her lungs. Light-headed, she recovered in a few moments, Eris’s perpetual frown bringing her back. Her reflexive instinct had been to fight; she had sought the scroll and was now not sure entirely why she did.

“I think we really ought to take a break from trying to kill each other and ask ourselves what we’re trying to accomplish,” Ditzy heard, and she tilted her head up to see Quirk hovering a few feet above and away, holding the scroll. “Can I talk for a moment before we resume this duel?”

Eris turned about to him and opened her mouth—she held ready—she closed it slowly and grimaced.

“What do you want?” Eris flatly queried, none too happy with his initiative. Ditzy struggled up, knowing it felt worse than it was even as remorse loomed ahead. I tried to fight. The first thing I did was to fight…

Quirk held the scroll close, mockingly thoughtful, and slipped it behind his back teasingly. “While locked deep in the midst of highbrow intellectual discourse, Dinky and I realized that we actually know nothing about why we’re running after Tick. Zero. Naught a sound. No real reasons, anyways. If one or both of you could be fortunate and kind enough to share some new reasons with us, then perhaps we could find in our travel-weary bodies some new sense of cooperation. What do you two think, hmm?”

~~~~~~~

“I want to know… it’s scary that you won’t tell us. Even if it’s bad, I want to know. I don’t want to hide. It’s more scary not knowing why, because if it was good you wouldn’t hide it from me.”

Dinky, having nothing else to say, looked down, her young face twisted by a dual self-shame and worry.

Eris had pointed her out, having heard everything Ditzy had said in the tent, and, sickened by the thought of lying to her daughter, Ditzy couldn’t find the breath to deny it. Nor could she contain her own guilt: irrefutably it was at least some of her fault that Tick had escaped with the book. Quirk, knowing where Ditzy’s love lay (and did not lay), let Dinky do the talking.
And now, from the brink, from the summit of conflict, having fought the red raging tides and spilled her heart bare to one she distrusted, Ditzy faced the broad expanse again, the great range of tempestuous questions roaring across the plains. And the sight of her daughter set hurt and against her cleaved her ragged heart, and the voice that brought her down to earth was the voice of defeat wailing. The burning strike of light that had empowered her had dipped below the horizon and the blessed water of night took hold of her. There was no pain; there was black moonlight coming down and separating her; the world was surreal like through a fogged window. Ditzy watched the night sweep them up until they were all alone. She was all alone. It only lasted a few moments, but that was long enough.

Why is she here?

Ditzy told them, but she was only telling herself.

~~~~~~~~

Eris knew this was the time, the time to take the issue and crush it—seize, obliterate, eliminate it—for the weak artificial bonds that had brought the group together were blazingly clear in all eyes. She needed naught but orders, complemented by a quiet, vengeful promise. Bide her time though she could, Eris knew the others could not, and therefore heeded close to the descendant mare’s words.

Shifting, broken with tension that seemed not to go even close to Ditzy, she had to wait to hear the start. Not even in the tent had she heard what had occurred with the last convergence of Discord and Ditzy: she had only rambled on about her mother, her last two encounters with Discord, something to do with Celestia and a waterfall, and a nightmare that “wasn’t real.”

“This is why we’re really going now,” Ditzy started ad hoc, her slow, low voice puncturing the night veil. “Because Discord isn’t lying and even if he is then I can figure it out. I lost the book, the book that was in the ruins. Aphelion told me to be careful and I was stupid and I lost it anyways. He told me not to tell any of you because Tick might find out—” Ditzy let out a ragged, angry breath but hardly seemed to notice. “—but he found it out anyways and took it and left. I was supposed to tell Luna about it. But then everything got worse, and…”

Ditzy trailed off.

Aphelion! Dammit, why didn’t he tell me?! What did he think I was going to do?

“Then Discord came back.”

Ditzy’s breaths were short and hard, staring slightly upward.

“Luna told me a bunch of old stories the last time I was in the palace about ponies that did heroic things and died afterward. They had a hall carved out of the mountain for them. I don’t want to die. I wonder if any of them asked why. They didn’t really seem to question anything.”

Eris sat up straighter (if that was possible), memory electrifying her every pore. She was in the hall of honor? That place is closed off! It’s sacred!

“It’s not just some stupid book or I would leave. I thought it was about Tick. It was never about Tick, it was always about the books. Tick found those freaking books in the palace—”

Ditzy seemed to have almost said a different word, yet she must have regained some sort of cognizance, for her eyes betrayed her and flicked down to her daughter momentarily.

“—and they didn’t have things Luna liked in them so she got rid of them. And then she told us we’d been touched by the Nightmare, THE Nightmare. Because Tick had looked at her mind and then we’d looked at Tick’s mind. I went along with all of it, because I was afraid of losing what I had. Then Discord explained everything and it fit too well. Tick’s talent is some uncommon lost art. Celestia and Luna had it, they lost it, I don’t know how. In the ruins. It turned into the book, so the book wasn’t actually a book or maybe it was. They used to be able to talk through minds like Tick does but they did it constantly. They forgot how to do it… they lost it; they left all the pain and the connection behind.”

Staggering in her explanation, Ditzy faltered in her breathing as well, and for a moment Eris was ready to rush forward to catch her. Yet no such fall came.

She’s piecing this together from what Discord told her? How much did Discord tell her and how much is she coming up with on her own?

“It’s why Luna wouldn’t go into the ruins, because she didn’t want to risk coming into contact with all their old feelings and connections. And Discord said everything had been forgotten about psionics for over a thousand years. And Eris, you told me that there are guards going to the Empire, that don’t have anything to do with us. Luna didn’t go into the ruins because she wasn’t ready. She didn’t know enough. She sent the guards so she could gather information quietly in the only place that would have it. And she doesn’t want Tick to have the book because he might be able to tap into their past conflict. And she needs it, because she wants to destroy the feelings that lurked in her for so long. So she can get her connection back. That’s everything. I’m so tired… I’m tired but I’m not…”

Ditzy let out a few more uncertain breaths and fainted.

Bound in the night, the other three gradually slipped away minutes later as they realized that whatever limit was left had been pushed and the commodity of rest was slipping away. Dinky protested—she feared dreadfully for her mother—but Ditzy was safely asleep, breathing regular, yet out completely.

Eris lay watch over the tent, knowing inside somewhere that even if Ditzy was wrong, she was too close to being right.

Author's Note

I apologize for the long break between updates, but this really needed to all be written (and published) at once. To abuse a quote through paraphrasing, life finds a way (to get in the way).

Interlude: The Sphinx

Interlude

The Sphinx

“Use my tent.”

Her head cocked askance at the mare who seemed to fade more readily with the stillness, Dinky opted not to move as she sat and waited.

“Why am I using your tent?” How do I use a tent?

It was Eris’s turn to twist her head slightly, and Dinky couldn’t tell if the unusual eyes before her had narrowed or remained the same in the ethereal shadow. The ghostly night’s chill had rather the opposite effect on the child than it did on most: enthralling, Dinky felt the danger, yet she was a wide-eyed wonder-seeker and knew of little reason to fear, save the tricks the edges of her eyes played on her.

“So you have shelter,” Eris replied.

Oh… oops.

Tinged with embarrassment, though none would see it in the lightless breeze, Dinky wandered off. All in all, the sphinx did not move an inch from her position in front of Ditzy’s tent, and Dinky spent a few minutes looking around, watching the fire turn to smoldering coals again, watching the obsidian guardian desist in movement save for her eyes, which slipped about when Dinky wasn’t looking. Yet it was no idle movement; she was thinking (in an inarticulate way), wondering how she could slip around the formidable mass of few words and subtle superiority.

Why are they both like that? Maybe they’re tired or mad or something. I get tired but I’m only tired at the end of the day and we didn’t really go anywhere today so I’m not tired. But Quirk talked to me! Finally.

Dinky rolled her eyes theatrically, something she was more prone to do when her mother was absent. Leaning against the tree nearest Eris’s tent she saw a night sky that was truly a bastion of stars, clear, chill, crisp; it drew her breath for a long moment. Idly, she drew up a stick with her magic, drawing dots and lines in between the stars.

Maybe I could sneak in from the back… no. She’s too sneaky. How did she get so sneaky? I thought guards were supposed to just be big and tough. She’s strong too, but not big.

Tossing the twig off into the distance with a softly voiced “woo!” Dinky poked her head into the tent she had been unceremoniously assigned. Lacquered leather plates were stacked in a back corner, with various straps and apparel that Dinky did not recognize ordered around it. It was a warrior’s disassembly. Not much else could be elaborated on that simple armory, and Dinky soon reasoned after carefully poking around those resistant leather curves.

The moonlight slipped through the open door, illuminating half of Dinky’s face as she turned to the exit. Then as she started to move a dull gleam caught her eye: some slim length of metallic glimmer lay hidden in the front wall. Immediately she reached out to touch it, wanting to see through the tricks of the night sky, and as the set of silver blades clinked behind the camouflage she gasped and fell back. The one she had noticed swung like a miniature pendulum, rasping against the tent wall, and entranced by the dulcet rasping Dinky stared for a few moments before little tremors of fear shook her.

I… I don’t think I’m gonna stay in here.

~~~~~~~~

Eris could not figure how to puzzle through the gain and loss of the other mare’s day. The young fighter sat still for the night, the lack of sleep doing little to bother her. What transfixed her was the mare inside the tent: the gain and loss. After her catastrophe, Ditzy had had nothing, not a drop of power nor control. After she regained short-lived clarity, she had exulted, basked in the strength and the power and the leverage that she had been given and put together. Ditzy had laughed in Eris’s face, but it was a laugh full of pain, a laugh of defiance, like the prisoner before the gallows. It was a cry that thoroughly rattled Eris, for it made no sense to her, because Eris did not know what freedom is like, because Eris mastered the body and sought the mind and lacked what was needed most.

It reminded her of Tick. It reminded her of their twining. It reminded Eris of her inadequacy.

“Miss Eris can I please not sleep in your tent because it has a big knife in it and-”

With a jolt of instinctual panic Eris leaped, caught off guard for once, and hearing Dinky’s words she at once picked up the foal, spun her around to make sure nothing was cut, and also drug her away from the tent to prevent any chance of Ditzy waking. Eris thought a thousand things at once, but none of them with any clearness, and the loud muddle of voices only exacerbated her momentary insecurity.

Stupid, stupid, did I not tell her to not mess with anything?

“Um,” Dinky said, standing with an awkward face, glancing away from her temporary abductor, Eris having put her down moments ago.

“Did anything get cut?” Eris blurted out very belatedly.

“No… can I go and sleep with my mom?”

“She needs her rest.”

“But it’s better for her when I’m there!”

Eris stared at her in the dark, not quite condescendingly, yet Dinky glowered anyways.

“I asked nicely.”

Her sour face would not dissuade Eris, and after she removed the set of blades from the tent and Dinky exacted a promise that there were no more lethal instruments inside Dinky found she was quite tired and the roll Eris had brought quite warm.

~~~~~~~

I’m never going to sleep with all these damn thoughts flying around like buzzards, waiting to tear out my innards.

Quirk rolled around on the ground, only a few layers separating him from the earth. Every new minute brought a new thought, and the thoughts were more vitriolic and piercing than usual, for Quirk knew as he stared up at the close cloth ceiling that there were a damned hundred more questions he’d opened, and he was thoroughly- how could he say it- not exhausted, not angry, not fitful, but exasperated. The sick songs of the thought-vultures were apart from him: he looked at them from another perspective, with derision. The fundamental change escaped his attention. Quirk rolled over again.

Enough!

~~~~~~~~

Eris looked at the set of four blades and denied the urge to wear them. She stared at the eight edges and felt that the stars had cracked open and the firmament changed on those thousand sunderings. It was not so poetic in her mind: she was off balance. Various voices goaded, pleaded, and reasoned that it would be better for her to wear them. Wouldn’t it be better for her to practice, allowing her to cordon off her most arrogant and disturbing thoughts?

Her breath was delicate enough to waft the grass. Her mind was quiet enough to break an iron bar.

With the skill of an artist that is the warrior, Eris saw the motions of her art and knew the metal of her body: the three prime arrangements of the blades, the nine strikes that would snap them out of concealment.

Eris crept back towards her tent to get the essential pieces of armor for her exercises. Shadow-dancing within two feet of the sleeping child, the only thing Eris could not mask was her heat. Once, all the way through, then I go back to watching.

The armor clacked softly once as Eris equipped her garb, and in her absent depth of thought she let the slip pass. With four of them, things were bound to become sixteen times as complicated.

The obsidian sphinx whirled with grim succor in the moonlight.

Prologue

The sky was not grey.

The wind bit and shook them like a wolf’s jaws, air tearing against and around their bodies, exposing flesh to the frigid air.

It’s not supposed to be this cold yet. There’s not even a cloud in the sky for this wind to carry.

Frozen in crystal, the clear sky held no barrier or courier for the tempest of winter wind. From the north it came: one continuous rebound of wind thrashing against the cold mountains, only to deliver their frost back to the more southerly climes. Caught in the whirling of winds, Ditzy nonetheless pressed forward, her daughter shivering as she lay on her back. Two distant figures stood at the crest of the next hill and the backdrop of the mountains, speaking of things lost in the curves of the landscape and the crashing wind.

Dinky shivered at the touch of cold, and Ditzy slid her off to hold her close.

“Sshh, don’t worry now. We’ll stop and make a fire soon. It won’t be much longer.”

They walked on, under the infinite sky, and Ditzy stared at the grey mass of the mountains, wondering and afraid.