Chapters The wind was a raucous, violent howl near the top of the mountain summit, and the cold air bit viciously at Arid Amulet's skin even through her several protective layers. She was at such a height now that the clouds weren't just a dark blanket above her but an ominous fog that permeated the mountainside. It was a shame, really, because if the fog hadn't been present or if the cloudy night had allowed more than just a fraction of the starlight through the veil, she knew she would have been treated to a spectacular view.
Amulet ground to a halt again, clenched her eyes shut, wheezed, and coughed horrendously. The coughing began two days earlier in her journey up Mount Celestia. It was harder to breathe, and she was always short of breath, as if there was less air around her, and an old, familiar pain was throbbing in her forehead. She opened her eyes again and continued her labored climb.
It was cold up here, dangerously so, and she knew it. She hadn't been prepared for these freezing temperatures, but no amount of snow or ice could keep her from her pilgrimage. She was determined to reach the summit, to be the first pony since Celestia herself, and to meet the princess, the only pony to do so in thousands upon thousands of years.
That summit was close. Amulet was certain of it. She was so certain that she knew, for a fact, that if it weren’t for the fog obscuring her vision and blocking the light from the moon and the stars, she would be able to see it clearly. At this point, in fact, she wished she were a unicorn, so she could simply magically light her path, but the foolish wishing was just a distraction from the cold.
Before long, a dark, looming mass became just barely visible through the fog. At first, as Amulet got closer, she thought that it was a rampart, that some magical castle had been built on the mountain, but instead she was just greeted with more emotionless rock. The cliff face climbed well beyond her admittedly limited sight, but there didn’t seem to be any other upward path she could take, so she ruefully flipped off her pack—all nearly forty pounds of it, minus the food she’d eaten en route— wiped off the accumulated snow with a gloved hoof, and retrieved the climbing gear therein. Amulet had never climbed a rock face before she began her ascent nearly a week ago, but since then she had gotten several opportunities to practice. However, those opportunities were all during clear, warm days, before the air got so cold and thin and the surfaces of the rocks so slippery.
A few moments later, Amulet carefully wrapped a complex series of rope belts and sashes about her body and tied them through the loop of a piton crafted by a particularly-skilled blacksmith in Canterlot. She gingerly reached up, piton in mouth, and groped along the frozen stone for a hoofhold. Finding purchase, she pulled herself up, exhibiting the natural, part-magical, part-physical strength inherent to earth ponies, hoof over hoof, until she felt that she reached a height from which, if she fell, she would surely die.
She brushed her hoof about the smoothness of the rock until she felt a crack that would serve, if it weren’t completely cemented with solid ice. Grumbling incoherently and perhaps insanely to herself, she drew the small ice pick—also a product of the Canterlot blacksmith—and swung it against the frozen fissure until it hung of its own accord. With a few strikes of her hammer, the pick was sufficiently buried in the ice, and she withdrew it, replacing it with the piton, which, with a few more hammer strikes, was strong enough to support her weight. The tedious, menial task was one she’d have to repeat every few paces until she reached a point where she could climb without risk of falling to her death. As she climbed, it became much more apparent why no unicorns had tried to make the exhausting climb up Mount Celestia before her.
A blast of biting-cold wind pushed against Amulet as she hung from the piton, sufficient to set her swinging back and forth below the metal spike like a pony pendulum. She hadn’t had to deal with such powerful wind in her previous climbs, nor had she been so high or the air been so cold for the ice to steal her hooves from her, but now it would difficult even to rest along her climb.
Although it would take only the most devout Celestian to try to make her pilgrimage, Amulet made a whispered, grateful prayer to both Celestia and Luna as the wind died down enough for her to reattach herself to the rock face. Steeling herself, she reached up and climbed another distance she deemed sufficient before pausing to strike another piton into a similar crack.
As she chipped away at the icy crevice, another powerful gust of wind hit Amulet broadside, forceful enough to fling her off of the cliff and out, hooves flailing, into the foggy air below. For a moment, the piton held, and Amulet’s rope went taut, pulling her back towards the stone, but the combined weight of a fully grown earth pony and her encumbering pack was enough to rip the piton from the ice, and Amulet crashed into the wall before falling down into a heap on the hard-packed snow, solid ice, and sharp gravel below.
The wide streets that had dwarfed Arid Amulet in Crystalwell on her way east were perhaps half the size of the massive patchwork of cobblestone she currently stood on, and the two track ruts that served as roads back home in Rosegate, barely wide enough to suffer a chariot cramped passage, were smaller still. Wide-eyed, she studied the ornate rocks and smooth gravel at her feet and slowly looked up, drinking in the overwhelming visage of the bustling throng of ponies, all the way to the great white castle that was built on the side of the eastern mountain, Mount Celestia, and sprawled all the way down the mountain and several miles out into the Equestrian Valley.
“Hey!”
“Ammy!”
“Oof!” the filly gasped and was thrust skyward by a warm, all-enveloping embrace, landing with a gasp on her mother’s shoulder. Amulet coughed violently, and a few light spatters of blood sullied Lace Sketch’s otherwise snowy fur.
“Keep a good hold on that filly, or she’s liable to get herself run over!” the chariot driver yelled back at the mother and her daughter as he rode off. Lace turned to confront the stallion, but he was too far away. The pastel purple glow faded from her horn in synchronization with the matching aura around Amulet as she set her still-hacking daughter back down onto the pavement.
“Arid Amulet! You have got to watch where you’re going!” Lace snapped, but relaxed and regained her maternal grace when she saw the sorry state that Amulet was in, eyes-clenched and choking. “Oh, Ammy…” The mare put a hoof behind Amulet’s head and pulled her into an embrace in the middle of the street.
“Lacey! What happened?” yelled her father, Onyx Flint, as he galloped upon the scene.
“Oh, Amulet wasn’t paying attention and almost got hit by a chariot, and now she’s having another coughing fit.” Lace’s lips tightened against each other, and she squinted at Amulet as she came down from the fit.
“I-I’m… okay!” the filly squeaked, her voice still raspy. When his fears had been assuaged, Onyx’s face donned a look that can only be found on a father with his child, one of incomparable joy in which a stallion forgets all the troubles in the world and focuses all of his attention in a way unattainable for normal tasks.
Onyx leaned down and lowered his head to the ground, and Amulet scrambled up onto his back, taking a seat on his shoulders and peering out from above his scraggly, whitening mane.
“Well, that’s good!” He chimed as the family joined the countless ponies running about the streets. “If you got smushed by a chariot, me and your mom would have to walk all the way back to Rosegate by ourselves!”
“Daddy!” Amulet scolded her father, giggling, and Lace Sketch rolled her eyes but couldn’t contain a smirk.
From her heightened vantage point, Arid Amulet could see the whole city instead of the legs of a thousand busy ponies. Even from a head above an adult pony, the buildings seemed to sprawl around her, and the giant double doors carved into the mountain a world away were seemed somehow larger in the context of how all the giants of history, even the princesses themselves, must have seen them.
“Did you get the papers, then?” Lace asked.
Arid Amulet stared down curiously at a passing gaggle of gray-robed ponies, all unicorns evidenced by the horns sticking out from under the hoods that otherwise concealed all of their faces. As she craned her neck behind her father-mount, she watched one of them stop, and his companions continue on obliviously. He turned around to look at her, pulling down his hood with an inaudible-but-visible crackle of magic. His eyebrows furrowed into a deep, analyzing scowl, and he brought a hoof to his chin to stroke his whitening beard. Before more than a moment had passed, his colleagues had noticed his absence and were calling after him to join them. With a shake of his head in Amulet’s direction, he returned to them, and they disappeared into the large gray doors of a church.
“Yes, and the old Celestian coot—” Amulet noticed a couple of ponies within earshot frown when they overheard her father, “—just about chatted my ears off in the process. ‘The high priestess’s time is not to be disturbed lightly, if this is just another child with a bump on his forehead, she will not suffer it, blah blah blah’.” Lace Sketch’s own mouth furled into a frown at her husbands tact, or lack thereof.
A quartet of soldiers, clad in the blue, green, and gold leathers of Windport, filed by, tall, reaching pikes and polearms tucked under their wings. Sometimes, Amulet would dream of flying around in the skies like a pegasus, zipping around faster than the eye could see, fighting windigos and—
“Daddy, what are those doors for?” Amulet asked after they disappeared from sight, blocked from view by a closeby two-story building. Her old train of thought had departed as quickly as the new one had arrived.
“Dragons.” He responded, completely serious.
“Dragons?” Amulet said incredulous and giggling. “Come on, Daddy, even I know there’s no such thing as dragons.”
“Well, of course there’s no such thing as dragons… around here!” Onyx glanced back at his daughter to see her bemused at best. “What? Do I have to know everything?” He cocked an eyebrow and smirked.
“Yes.” Amulet deadpanned.
“Oh. Well, I guess if someone has to do it, it’ll have to be my moon to bear.” Onyx put on his best theatrical voice. “A long time ago, back when Celestia and Luna were here in Canterlot, dragons used to roam the valley with ponies, but mostly they lived up north, past the mountai—”
“Oh!” Amulet interjected. “With the crystal ponies? Did the dragons live with the crystal ponies?” Crystal ponies were her favorite. She loved to dream of being a shining crystal pony north of the mountains even more than she loved to dream of flying as a pegasus.
“Oh, yes, of course.” Onyx humored. “Today they all live up there, but back then they lived down here with the rest of us, too. Then, one day, an evil sorcerer unicorn cast an evil spell of evil eviln—”
“Daddy!”
“Oh, sorry,” Onyx said with a smile that said he wasn’t. “Where was I…”
“The spell!”
“Oh, the spell! The evil unicorn cast a spell on all the dragons in the world, turning them all evil like him.”
“How were they evil? What did he do to ‘em?”
“Oh, easy. Before the spell, the dragons… never… ate little fillies named Amulet!” Onyx stopped dead in the street, whipped his head around, and play-chomped on his delightfully-shrieking daughter’s hoof.
“Hey! Act your ages!” Lace Sketch scolded, though she couldn’t hide her own laughter very well.
“Yes, mom.” Amulet and Onyx said in tandem.
“Okay,” Onyx began, “so, when Celestia and Luna saw that all the dragons had turned evil, they sent all the dragons north of the mountains and cast a powerful magic spell so that they get back in, like your mom does when she keeps me out of the pantry. Except even more powerful. Slightly.”
Lace grunted, and one corner of her lips curled up.
“So, why do they need the big doors?” Amulet pondered as said big doors returned to view as the family rounded another corner, ever closer to the large, castle-like buildings at the base of the mountains.
“Well, one of the dragons didn’t turn evil, and he needed a door big enough that he could get through it without having to fly over and get squashed against the barrier.”
“Could the princesses just have made the spell so that that dragon could get through, but not the evil ones?”
“Nope.” Onyx responded. Amulet, however, wasn’t having any of it.
“Why not?”
“Magic reasons.”
“That doesn’t sound like very good ans—”
“You’re the one who said I have to know everything!”
They rounded another corner, and the leviathan doorway returned to view, its imposing enormity towering over them like a giant. The clouds above previously concealed by the top of the mountain drifted lazily into view, the difference in motion lending Amulet the illusion that as she craned her neck up at the portal, it was slowly toppling over, its impending, impossible weight about to crush her and what seemed like half the city.
The doors were monochrome. The one on the right, carved from deep obsidian into the mountains that rose up to the east , was a gray so heavy that it seemed almost black, but upon closer inspection, even darker miniscule whorls and loops patterned the surface; the door on the right was immaculate marble, showing no signs of the impurities that would normally plague such an otherwise elegant stone.
According to her father’s questionable narrative, the doors were designed to allow a dragon entry, yet it seemed to Amulet that even these enormous doors were poised at any moment to burst open and flood Canterlot with a swarm dragons a thousand strong. The idea that the monolith before her was built with only a single dragon in mind as astonishing, to say the least.
Flanking the doorway on either side and matching their respective colors were two magnificent castles, the largest buildings Amulet had ever seen. They were, of course, miniscule in comparison to Canterlot Castle just a head’s turn away and up the mountain, but the castle was far away and irrelevant with its smaller cousins front and center in Amulet’s vision.
On her right and to the east was the scale likeness of Canterlot Castle but for the fact that this smaller building was pure marble instead of the trademark yellows, purples, and whites. The castle was much less magnificent without the opulent decoration, but there was a certain austerity and functionality that came with the simplicity.
Conversely, on Amulet’s left and to the west was a complete stranger of a building. The architecture was stout, blocky, and entirely unlike that of every other building in Canterlot. Where any other building had tall towers, domed ceilings, and colorful, shingled roofs, the black building had blocky battlements. Instead of the upward-spiraling mode of everything else, there were simply three square levels—a dark brick, on a larger brick, on another, largest brick, all shoved partway into the side of the bottom of Mount Luna, where it met its larger twin.
As the approached the tall, pristine doorway to the white castle, Amulet’s father informed her that the twin castles were named the Sun and the Moon, which didn’t make much sense to Amulet. If the Sun was named after the sun, shouldn’t it have been yellow, and the Moon white?
Before she could finish her line of thought, Onyx leaned forward and shrugged his daughter off his shoulders so he could open the tall doors into the Sun. Built into the side of a mountain, the Sun’s main hall, the center of Celestia’s worship in Canterlot, had no windows and, therefore, no natural light even in the middle of day. Instead, it was kept illuminated by thousands upon thousands of individual candles suspended in their candelabras near the ceiling by some force of nature or magic Arid Amulet couldn’t see.
The candles’ light flickered off of the walls, just barely revealing the densely-patterned black sketches on the walls. From the cathedral-style ceiling to the thick, heavily-oiled oak floorboards, pencil thin lines looped about in mystifying patterns, some depicting archaic symbols, others elaborate drawings, and more still random designs and ornaments.
Two diagonal rows of several dozen ornate, wooden pews lined the room, almost intersecting in the center and forming an aisle wide enough for four ponies to walk abreast. Someone in a gray-white leaned forward at the end of the aisle, tending yet more candles on steps up to the altar: an elaborate white slab of marble with golden crenellations and and a carved depiction of Celestia sitting regally and looking over the pews with opulent mane flowing in a powerful wind, the thin, chiseled lines filled with a rainbow of dark pastels.
Amulet’s mother and father strode down the center aisle, paying no attention to their awestruck daughter as she broke off and stared, dumbfounded, at the reverent beauty of the hall. They went to converse with the robed pony, mistakenly confident in their ability to exclude Amulet, who was now gravitating slowly toward a particular large mural depicting the history of the Equestrian Valley, from the conversation with hushed, hurried tones.
“You’ve arrived.” The pony, a mare of dubious age and race.
“We couldn’t travel quickly.” Onyx Flint’s voice lost its youthfulness when he spoke with other adults. “We had to avoid large roads, and… it gets worse when she travels.”
The scrawls on the wall in front of Amulet weren’t as beautiful or pleasantly-colored as the Celestian altar’s visage, but they rather consisted of thin lines of solid black. Beginning from the right hand side, a towering picture of the royal sisters sat neatly against the corner, Celestia standing a head taller and in front of her dark, younger sister. Under them, a miniature Canterlot sat devoid of life. Both of their horns flared in unison, bolts of magic flying to the left and meeting in an explosion of sparks. Three solid black figures were silhouetted in the flash against the browning marble, three ponies, one horn, and two wings.
“Perhaps she should have suffered the hastier journey.” The robed pony deadpanned.
“She might have died.” Onyx and Lace’s scowls were practically audible.
“She may die anyway.”
There was a small space after the creation scene, immediately after which the three ponies were seen leaving Canterlot as Celestia and Luna, both still towering above, tended to a herd of others in the city. The unicorn didn’t go far, into a smaller city similar to Canterlot: Crystalwell. The earth pony went further, into the fields of the Equestrian Valley, a city composed of dozens of barns and fields with a ring of seven broad oak trees: Seven Oaks. Finally, the pegasus flew the farthest, up into the clouds near the southern end of the valley, a city made entirely of clouds and fog: Windport.
“The church has been looking for you, Onyx.” The robed pony said after a pause, without any inflection. Lace flinched.
“That’s why we avoided the roads.” Onyx said, grimacing.
“The church is more cunning than you think. Would you honestly believe it mattered what route you took?”
Further down the wall, Celestia’s head was juxtaposed with a nose-sized cloud mere inches away from her glowing horn. Her eyes glazed over, she cast a spell and sent a pegasus soldier plummeting from a cloud. Next, a dark mass loomed over a mountain, and its namesake monarch stood upon Mount Celestia in a mirror image. Her head drooped, six jewels floated around Celestia as she prepared a spell, firing it ov—
“Come.” The robed pony, an old purple unicorn mare, was standing over Amulet’s shoulder, startling the filly and sending her into another coughing fit. The mare tapped a hoof implacably before turning back to the parents, who were watching through downcast eyes.
“Come, child.” The robed pony grabbed Amulet by the hoof with an aura of purple magic and began to drag the filly none-too-gently through an opposite door.
“Mommy! Daddy!” Arid Amulet half screamed, half coughed as the door slammed shut behind her.
In her few panicked moments of flight, Arid Amulet had expected a crippling amount of pain when she hit the ground. Instead, her back hit the top of a small boulder with a sickening snap, and she rolled off and fell onto her side into the deeply packed snow.
She noticed it immediately. Amulet’s entire body was numb, and she no longer felt so cold. She tried to turn her head to look herself over, but her neck muscles wouldn’t respond to the orders her mind screamed at them. Her eyes shot wide with shock as she came to a sudden, terrible realization.
Eyes flitting about frantically, searching for help that some deep part of her knew was never coming, Arid Amulet screamed internally as flakes of snow began to hover from the sky and cover her in a blanket of cold she could not feel.
“You’re a freak!”
“What is that thing!?”
“I think I’m gonna vomit!”
Arid Amulet awoke with cold sweat soiling her fur from the neck up, sobbing like a newborn foal at memories half remembered. With great effort, she attempted to rise, but her commands fell on deaf and broken nerves, and only her neck, chest, and bandaged front hooves responded.
“She’s awake, my lord,” said a dry voice from beside the bed. Amulet opened her eyes to the frowning, concentrated face of a grizzly old unicorn stallion with a pointed gray beard bordering on white that matched his thickly-threaded robe.
Someone grunted to the left of the bed.
A muted-red unicorn stallion towered above, gazing down at Amulet with a hard frown and narrow yellow eyes. His sharply-pointed chin sported a short, stubbly ashen beard, and the thick blocks of hair on his brow matched suit. Amulet could see giant tufts of fur spilling out of the heavy cloak he wore, and perhaps, if she had seen the back of it or possessed the lucidity to comprehend, she may have discerned the lord’s allegiance from the colors.
“Who are you?” the stallion commanded unblinkingly.
“I… the Sun… Mount Celestia…” Amulet could taste the words in her mouth, but they tasted like copper and salt.
The lord was unfazed. “As I suspected, then. The Sun was foolish to send you here, mare. Clearly you aren’t trained as well as they must have thought.”
“... trained?”
“It must be her teleportation spell, my lord.” The gray priest gently pressed his hoof to her forehead. “She’s probably delirious, and considering the power the spell put off when she arrived, I’m surprised she’s alive at all. I’m afraid if you want any reliable information, you’ll have to wait until she’s more lucid.”
If it were possible, the lord’s frown would’ve deepened at the priest’s assessment. “It could be a ploy.”
“In addition to the most powerful teleporter I’ve ever seen, she would have to be the world’s best actress, as well.”
“Even so.” The lord nodded in affirmation of his own judgement. “Attend to her in a cell from now on. If she’s so powerful, I won’t risk her in a half-guarded bed like some noble ransom. See to it that I’m summoned when next she wakes.”
“As you command.” The priest watched contemplatively as the lord slowly and deliberately stood, turned and walked out of the room.
Before Amulet could muster the mental fortitude to ask after him, her eyelids began to droop, and the priest returned his attention to her. Grasping a small wooden cup with a red aura of magic, he half-poured the bitter contents into Amulet’s mouth, and she instinctively swallowed.
A fly buzzed through the barred window in her wooden cell door and flew about the room. First, it landed on the torchless iron sconce that was the only furnishing of the left wall. After it was satisfied there, it departed and lazily drifted upwards to the ceiling, disappearing into the shadows where the light from outside the cell failed to reach. It returned to existence just above Brother Smoke Cast’s head, only to land promptly on top of his bald head.
He didn’t notice. Arid Amulet did. She was acutely aware of every individual flap of the insects wings, its unnerving red eyes made knowing momentary contact with her own half-open ones, and the way it rubbed its front legs together atop Brother Smoke’s head made it seem to Amulet that it knew more about the goings on of the Equestrian Valley than any other one creature.
Brother Smoke brushed the bug idly away and scowled at Arid Amulet. “Have you even been listening to me, young mare?”
“Yes, brother,” she said. “Broken spinal cord, just above the shoulders. In all of your experience, you’ve never seen anyone walk after an injury like this.”
“You don’t seem too concerned about your new life as a cripple.”
Amulet didn’t say anything in answer, and continued not saying anything for several uncomfortable moments. The fly had come back and, presumably in hopes of avoiding Brother Smoke’s wrath, found a new perch at the tip of Amulet’s pale purple horn. Brother Smoke scowled at the distraction and gripped the distraction in his aura, hovering it just in front of his gaze. For a moment, a tiny flicker of black smoke rose from the aura. When the gray priest relaxed his magic, nothing but grains of dark ash fell to the ground.
For a time, the two unicorns sat in silence, or rather, Brother Smoke sat next to the sparse dungeon bed, and Arid Amulet lay upon it with expressionless eyes peering into the darkness above them both. Someone, somewhere nearby outside the cell, slammed a door, and a gust of air blew inside. The pitiful flames of the torch across the hall struggled for a moment before disappearing and bathing the cell in more darkness, leaving nothing but the faint ambient light from outside to illuminate the gray priest and the cripple.
Brother Smoke sighed and stood up to his hooves, shrugging his shoulders at the hood of his robes to better cover his head. Wordlessly, he strolled out of the cell to the snuffed torch, leaving the cell door ajar. He evidently had no concern for any attempts at escape that Amulet might concoct, and given her state of being, he was probably correct. For a moment, his face contorted into a caricature, and a short burst of flames blew lazily upon the blackened tinder atop the torch. After examining the renewed flame and determining that he was satisfied with the illumination, he strode slowly back to the cell door but didn’t enter.
“In my youth, I was considered a very powerful mage, myself, you know,” he said as he glanced up at something that wasn’t there. He shook his head, resumed eye contact with Amulet, and resumed, “My best friend was adept at teleportation and telekinesis. He could lift the heaviest things, sure, but teleportation was his passion. Once, at a tournament, I saw him teleport from the top of a pole some fifty feet high to another one… oh, it must have been half the grounds away, easily dozens of feet away. He landed right on top, without so much as a wobble, as if he’d been there the whole time. All the mares there swooned like he was a prince. Well, the unicorn mares anyway. I doubt that most of the earth ponies or pegasi even realized how impressive his feats really were.” He thought for a moment. “Of course, I was at those tournaments, as well, but… for different events.”
“What are you on about, you old sot?” Arid Amulet snapped. Brother Smoke’s brow furrowed, and his body tensed, but he quickly relaxed.
“Yes, yes, of course, my lady. My point is, that stallion was the most skilled and experienced teleporter I’ve ever met in my long life, and he must have been half again as old as you are when he was at his best, but you’re something entirely different. When I was rushed into Lord Storm Lance’s chambers two nights ago, there was snow melting on your robes and climbing equipment in your bags. It hasn’t snowed in months, and there’s only one thing for miles around worth climbing, and that’s the mountain.” A figure appeared behind Brother Smoke, silhouetted by the torch.
“Brother Smoke,” the voice of the lord, Storm Lance, spoke, “I think you needn’t not explain anything to the prisoner.” Brother Smoke frowned, but the lord continued, turning towards Amulet inside the cell. “We all know what’s going on here, and we don’t need to honey our words. Well, spy… or assassin, explain yourself. Why is the Sun interested in this city? Myself? Do your superiors have some kind of encampment on the mountain?”
“My lord! The mare is injured, even if she is a spy--”
“Of course she’s a spy, you old fool! Do you think the Sun would teleport a priestess in the middle of the night with a jug of wine and a swaying tail, or do you think she’d come with an eldritch dagger for my throat?”
“I’m not a spy!” Amulet finally shouted, interrupted the bickering. “And I’m not a priestess, either!” Storm Lance’s shoulders slumped, but his icy glare didn’t waver. Brother Smoke turned to the lord.
“Let her speak her peace, my lord. Then we can decide if she’s innocent… or a cutthroat.”
Amulet cleared her throat and made to cover her mouth with a hoof, but she choked as she was returned to reality. “I do come from the Sun, but I’m not a priestess. They took me in as a child to cure me of some… some evil thing.”
“How charitable of them.” Storm Lance remarked sardonically.
Brother Smoke raised an eyebrow. “They took you in? What happened to your parents?”
Amulet clenched her eyes shut and rolled her head back against the flat pillow. “They were there… they took me to the Sun, to get me cured.”
“And after?” Brother Smoke asked. “They just left you there?”
“No!” Amulet turned back to face the stallions. “They had to leave! They had to leave for… something.”
“You poor, blind, little girl.” There was no genuine pity in Storm Lance’s voice. “I think we have a pretty good idea of where your parents went. Damned fools.”
Brother Smoke’s frown deepened. “My lord, surely your hate isn’t so blind that you wouldn’t do the same if your children were at stake?”
“No! Do you think I’m so selfish as further their goals for my own family’s sake? There are more important things at risk here than my life or even my children’s.” He stopped and turned to Arid Amulet. “So, at what point did they start your training? When you were a child? Just after they took your parents?” There was a pause, and Storm Lance’s muttered to himself, “Bastards.”
“What? No, the Sun didn’t train me for anything! They just helped me. They treated my, uh, condition, and all they asked in return was some work. I gathered tithes, ran errands, that kind of thing. I certainly wasn’t an assassin!”
“That remains to be determined,” Storm Lance said.
Amulet sighed. “Anyway, the Sun was never able to cure me completely. I still cough sometimes -- it comes and goes -- and my forehead hurts a lot, all the time.” She tried, once again, to rub her hoof against the scar on her head, only to remember herself too late. Brother Smoke mumbled something and squinted to get a better look at her. “I grew up with ponies talking about Celestia and the mountain around me all the time, so I figured… if I could get up there, then maybe… Celestia could help…” She was suddenly aware that she was still capable of feeling wet warmth in her eyes.
The wrinkles at the corners of Brother Smoke’s eyes creased, and he blinked several times. “You pitiful… delusional…” He sighed.
“Yes, yes, the story is downright heartwarming,” Storm Lance said. “Did you make it up just now, or compose it ahead of time as a precaution?”
“Dammit,” Brother Smoke scowled at the lord, “For the love I bore your father, would you give this--”
“Don’t speak to me about love for my father!” Storm Lance bellowed. “You didn’t see him butchered on an altar like some sacrificial lamb… no less by someone in those robes!” He gestured at Amulet. She started to stammer in protest, but he cut her off. “Silence, prisoner! Besides… we don’t know what she’s seen or what she knows. We can’t risk her reporting back to the archbishop. It could ruin everything we’ve worked for. I’d be executed, my lands and titles would be seized… and my father would have died for nothing.” He turned, his heavy red cloak swaying behind him, and, once Brother Smoke cleared the way, slammed the cell door shut with a dark yellow aura of magic.
“There are other options, my lord,” Brother Smoke pleaded from somewhere outside. “I know a unicorn in Goodcreek who can cast a powerful amnesiac, and we could send the girl--”
“No, Brother,” Storm Lance interrupted authoritatively. “My mind has been made on this matter: she will be executed tomorrow at dawn.”
Another door slammed shut, and the only sounds remaining were the flickering of the torch and Amulet’s heavy breathing.
The Commodore and the Blacksmith's Son
The Travels of Stride Farwalker
An excerpt of an oral tale
Recorded by Mark Down, Scholar of Celestia’s College in Canterlot
… when Stride Farwalker returned from across the sea, the villages on the coast were astonished to witness that he flew with a passenger. A pony, black as the flint they lit their fires with, accompanied him in the sky and upon his landing. He immediately sought quarter in an inn within view of the ocean, and he and his visitor stole away into their room for two days and two nights, the events of which have never been recorded.
Eventually, Stride and the mare emerged from the inn and met with the townspeople. He explained that he had met her in a village far to the West, far beyond what any sane pony believed to be the end of the habitable land. He told fantastical stories of a race of black ponies that had the wings and horn of an alicorn, the same but different, and spoke of magical powers possessed by these strangers that few ponies could replicate: complete bodily transformation, the pilfering and consumption of pure emotion, and other secrets still unrevealed…
The surf lapped lazily against the white sand of the beach without enthusiasm, and somewhere off the coast, the humped back of a whale crested the glistening top of the water and crashed down in soundless majesty. The jungle beyond the beach was alive with the songs of a hundred colorful birds and a thousand exotic insects. An enterprising red crab shuffled up to the embankment preceding the jungle and scurried away frantically when Acetyl stepped out onto the hot sand.
Copious amounts of sweat gripped her mane in unseemly tangles, and her forked tongue lolled from her mouth, panting heavily with exertion, but a satisfied smile spread her lips apart, and her shoulders slumped in satisfied relaxation. Her eyelids drooped as she reached into the small bag tucked beneath her transparent wing and withdrew an old wooden comb with her magic. She pulled it through the tangles of her green hair in an effort to restore to her visage some semblance of dignity.
“I’ll head back now, so that we don’t both come out of the jungle with stupid, obvious grins,” Chrocha said as he stepped out of the thicket behind Acetyl. He looked no worse for wear for their interpersonal traipse, as though he had only taken a leisurely stroll through the jungle. Males had no manes to tussle, and the short, backswept spines on his head had little issue dealing with the sticky byproduct of their time in the bushes. It infuriated Acetyl to no end as she struggled the comb through a tough knot.
“What?” Acetyl asked with an amused raise of her eyebrow. “And leave me to sit here until I can go back without raising suspicion? No, thank you.”
“Unless you want everyone in town to gossip about the two of us sneaking off and coming back looking like we jumped in a hot spring, one of us is going to have to stay here for a few minutes.” Chrocha’s logic was sound.
“And you’re such a gentleman for volunteering, Chrocha.” Too sound for his own good. Acetyl planted a hoof on his chest and firmly set him down on his haunches. She looked into his transfixing solid blue eyes and donned her most seductively persuasive face.
“Well, when you put it like that…” Chrocha chuckled awkwardly. Acetyl smiled and pecked him on the cheek before turning around and prancing back to the town with a spring in her step.
The sun flew high in the sky, just reaching the crest of its flight before beginning its eastern descent. The beach was on the northern end of the island, so it wasn’t far before it curved sharply south and gave way to the old wooden boardwalk that Acetyl called home. As she looped south, it came into view in all its rough, salt soaked glory. The tide was high, so the bottom of the boardwalk’s foundation platform stood barely above the steadily lapping froth. The platform met with the ground at the innermost end of the beach, just before the highest point the sea reached each day, and gave way to a smattering of buildings in a clearing that made up the rest of the town.
Acetyl skipped cheerfully up to the edge of town, letting the waves tease her hooves. The dull din of the citizenry mulling about their business grew steadily louder: fishmongers peddling their wares on the docks at the very edge of the harbor, a blacksmith hammering away at a chain, children frollicking in the water, their mothers mingling at the shore, the distant bleats of sheep from the ranch just outside the village.
With a muted grunt, she hopped onto the boardwalk and weaved through the cramped huddle of stout buildings until she stumbled upon a crowd of zenti.
“Momma! I want to see the pirate ships!” Adecticus squealed from the rear of the horde, not far from where Acetyl stood. Still just a child, her brother was prone to tantrums, when his wishes were denied, and when he decided he wanted something, he could lock his proverbial knees and cry until his demands were met. When he happened to be riding between his mother’s wings, the sheer intensity of his pleas was enough to set her teeth, so she gripped him in a field of green magic and set him down in the sand with the gentle touch that only a mother can display in the face of such exasperation. The crowd had swelled just off the northern beach in order to watch the ships pass by on the eastern wind. The swathe of black forms stood much taller than Adecticus did, blocking his view, and darkening his already foul mood.
“They’re not pirates, Adecticus.” Their mother sighed and turned to look at Acetyl as she joined them. “They’re just royal navy ships passing by, hon.”
“Yeah, Addy,” Acetyl’s uncle, Lepid, trotted up from the shopfront he had perched in. “Haven’t seen pirates this far south in decades, kid. Well, at least I haven’t seen any.” He pointed a perforated hoof at the patch that covered his eye, and Adecticus giggled through his sniffling.
“That’s just what we need, anyway,” someone said from deep within the crowd. “Pirates! Filthy marauders to come burn down the village and kill the sheep.”
“You’re just upset because you’re too old to go live on a ship, so you have to stay here and pay taxes,” someone else retorted.
The first zenti scoffed. “I’ll have you know that I’m a proud patriot! Completely devoted to the monarchy!”
“You were a privateer before Clypeus showed up.”
“Uh… those were different times, I’ll have you know.”
“Mhm, sure they were. Hey, the ships are coming this way!”
“Pirates!” Adecticus said excitedly.
Acetyl craned her neck above the heads of those in front of her and peered out at the waves. Three specks dotted the horizon, one much larger than its compatriots, and were slowly turning their heading towards the tiny island. As they drew closer, Acetyl could see the tiny black flags that represented the royal navy; black flags for a government presuming to represent a race of black beings. The ships grew from smudges in the distance to proper navy warships that seemed to intimidate the island itself.
Lepid leaned down and scooped Adecticus up onto his shoulders. “Well, kid, do you know what kind of ships those are?”
“Pirate ships!” Adecticus giggled, trying to climb up and stand on top of Lepid’s head.
“No, I mean the actual ships, kid.” Lepid said, straining to keep the child settled. “See those two smaller ones on the sides? What are they called?”
“Frigates?”
“Boy, if those were frigates, we’d need bigger docks. Sloops of war.”
“Is now the time to be teaching my son about warships, Lepid?” Acetyl’s mother asked with a chuckle.
“Sure, Ceph, what could be a better time? Try again, kid, what’s the big girl in the middle?”
“A galleon?”
“What’s the navy gonna do with a galleon? Carry a bunch of guns in the cargo hold? She’s a corvette.”
The trio of ships reeled in their sails as they made their final approach and slowly drifted within range of the island. Teams of hulking, muscular zenti swung magic tinted grappling hooks around their heads and lobbed them at the docks. With the same incredible strength, the heaved in unison, drawing the ships to a standstill, rocking back and forth with the minute ministrations of the waves. The same zenti dropped a massive plank of timber off of the sides, bridging the gaps and allowing a royal navy official to disembark.
As he climbed down from the ship, he radiated an air of regal pomposity. He held his head high in the air and didn’t deign the crowd worthy of so much as a sweeping glance in their direction. The navy blacks that he wore were in careful repair, and he held a small paper in his magic, tucked against his side. Floating it up to eye level and unfurling it, he cleared his throat as he advanced upon the throng of zenti on the beach.
“Greetings, good zenti,” he said, his horn flaring slightly and his voice echoing over the heads of everyone present. “My name is Commodore Weev, and I have been sent north with the vessels embarked here under the orders of her majesty the Queen Optera. I have in my possession a letter of course signed by the good queen herself, which grants me the legal right to request able bodies for my voyage.”
Murmurs swept through the crowd as some young zenti looked at each other and nodded excitedly before turning their attention back to the commodore, while some dissenters scoffed and made swift withdrawals from the crowd.
“Pirates haven't been seen this far south in decades, Commodore,” Uncle Lepid’s voice seemed to revert back to a rigid rhythm and tone acquired over long days of intense practice.
“Of course not,” Weev continued, turning to look at Lepid. “This is but one stop on a long voyage north, but Queen Optera’s treasonous opponents grow ever bolder in their crimes. That is why her majesty has contracted so many fine sailors such as myself to face the menaces.”
“You’re a pirate hunter!” a young voice called out with irreverence.
“Adecticus!” Acetyl’s mother scolded. “Hush!”
“Well, I wouldn’t use those terms myself, boy,” Weev said with a small, almost smug smirk. “But I do somewhat appreciate the sentiment… In any case, my crew and I will be in this port for the remainder of the week. Anyone who wishes to pledge their allegiance and sign aboard may do so as they please.” Satisfied with his speech, Commodore Weev turned and climbed the plank back onto the ship.
Acetyl closed the door with a quiet click and turned to face the village. The sun was setting over the water to the east, casting a thousand bright red, orange, and pink sparkling lights across the water. Most of the fauna had put an end to their activity for the day, but the insects of the night had only just begun their symphony.
As Acetyl’s hooves echoed off of the wood, she licked her lips slowly, and her eyelids hung low in idle anticipation. She swallowed deeply and bit her lip as she began her search through the village. Most of the people had begun to turn in, closing their shops and cutting short the ambient din of the merchants and the dockworkers, but Acetyl knew through repetition and experience that her target would be wide awake.
The sun was already half concealed by the horizon by the time Acetyl arrived at Chrocha’s house, and the beautiful oceanside view behind it was dim with twilight and almost completely void of the colorful swatches that had moments ago adorned the vista. Acetyl infiltrated the premises with practiced ease, teleporting vicariously to a perch atop the shed just outside. The momentary disorientation faded quickly, and Acetyl absorbed the moist, warm night air, complete with the increasingly bright, cold white glow of the moon, the chirping of some distant, nocturnal bird, and the fleeting glimpses of a swarm of torchbugs. Acetyl teleported through the empty space and into Chrocha’s bedroom through his half-open window with the ease of a child leaping over a puddle of water.
An old, ornate candelabra lit the room with the dynamic presence of a dozen small flames. Chrocha stood, oblivious to the intruder, over a pile of hastily stacked clothes strewn haphazardly over his bed, lifting each article and examining it with a critical eye before tossing it aside or shoving it into a small canvas bag. Acetyl silently stalked up behind him and analyzed him in turn, picking up on a minutia of details that only she with her personal familiarity of him could detect. The muscles in his back, concealed through thick black skin, invisible to most but not to her, were taut and tight, and a small vein throbbed in his neck. After a seemingly long while, he set the bag slowly onto the bed and gazed blankly at the far wall, deep in thought, somewhere else.
Acetyl squinted at the back of his head as his gaze drifted back down to the bed. Sitting just aside the pile of clothing was an old sword, his father’s sword, a long, slender blade, sheathed in a dark black leather with a hint of steel peeking out from the end, forged long before Clypeus rose to the throne.
Chrocha was packing. Everything on the island was within walking distance. There was only one way off. He had his father’s sword.
“You want to leave with the commodore…” Acetyl’s words were a statement, but her voice trailed off in subtle disbelief.
Chrocha, having long since grown accustomed to Acetyl arriving in his bedroom late at night and unannounced, barely reacted. His voice was sunken. “I… uh… yeah.”
“You want to leave. Leave the island, leave the village, leave your family.” Acetyl drew in a deep breath. “You want to leave me.”
“I didn’t say that, Acetyl,” Chrocha said. His voice rose slightly, but he still held a strange calm as he turned to face her. “Don’t make this what it isn’t. This isn’t about us.”
“Not about us?” Acetyl almost yelled. Hoofsteps shuffled somewhere downstairs, and she lowered her voice to a high-pitched, strained whisper. “Not about us!? Of course its about us, you nitwit! It’s all about us, everything is supposed to be about us! Did you think that this somehow would affect us? Did you think nothing would change?” She sighed again. “Did you think?”
Chrocha was resigned to the interrogation. He clenched his eyes shut and rubbed his forehead. “I thought that I didn't’ want to spend the rest of my life as nothing more than ‘the blacksmith’s son’, doomed to do the same thing my father did until the day I die. I thought that I’ve always had my life planned out for me, and no one ever cared about what I wanted. I thought that there has got to be something more to life than growing old and dying on some rock that doesn’t even have a name. And now I think that I’d like to go find it.”
Acetyl was incredulous and now outright yelling.. “You want to leave the only home you’ve ever known to go on a fucking soul searching journey?”
“Please, Acetyl, keep your voice down…”
For an awkward, silent minute, she fumed. She thought about her life in a way that she never had before. She thought about her uncle, and her mother, and her brother, her friends in the village, the conspicuously nameless island itself, and her path in life that ashe had never thought about in any capacity beyond an unchangeable, immovable destiny. The stress in her shoulders drifted away, and her wide eyes closed a fraction.
“Well,” she said, her voice mellowed with reflection, “you’re not the only one with a soul to find.”
