Telos

by Foehn

Rating: everyone
Tags: My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Slice of Life
Length: 6241

Seven ponies board a train departing from Canterlot: three guards, a young couple, and a thief. Things would've been much simpler if the previous statement contained an error. It doesn't.

Seven ponies board a train departing from Canterlot: three guards, a young couple, and a thief. Things would've been a lot simpler if the previous statement contained an error.

It doesn't.

Finalist in The Writeoff Association's June event, "A Matter of Perspective"
Proof-read and otherwise made legible by Not_A_Hat

Published 2015-07-28 03:20:02 UTC
Last updated 2015-07-28 03:20:02 UTC

Or, On The Reason for Mountains

Alone at the station the white mare sat waiting, hearing
The songs the others sang and the stillness of their silence.
Not content, she listened, for there was another song to be heard
And this one sang of the reasons for ghosts, demons, and old memories
And of all the lines of the world, and the need of sleep and dreams
Of an unknown wanderer, bright and brilliant, wrongly pursued
And of a final light, at the end of it all, and a silence that sang all the louder.

The train...moved.

“...nothing. It was nothing. I thought I’d seen someone there for a second.”

“What, right in front of us? Are you absolutely sure you’re sober, Pauldron?”

CRRRRRRCK

“What was that?”

“Gimme a sec, Dusk.”

A faint humming, a flicker of something static, a shiver of light.

“Anyone there?”

“Not that I could feel. Probably just a piece of luggage moving, nothing to ruffle your feathers about.”

“You stay here, alright? I’m just going to give it a look.”

Silence

A door opened.

A head poked through, remembered, recalled.

“Dusk and the other one are checking it out now, Sir. Just a bit of cargo moving around. Nothing to worry about.”

“Very well.”

Head removed, door closed.

Silence.

A muffled thump in the distance.

The sound of something long and wooden lifted from its resting place.

“Dusk? Dusk, was that you?”

‘And the other one’.

There was no one else here. Why had he said ‘and the other one’?

“Celestia damn it Dusk….”

Hooves step slowly, softly, silently, entering the carriage.

A pegasus sprawled out before the guard, unconscious, the container open and light spilling forth.

A noise near the door.

Turning around, too slowly.

A second thump.

Silence.

Everything went white.

The train…moved.

And Emerald found she didn’t really care about the train moving, insomuch as she cared about reaching the station at the other end. A station meant other ponies, and other ponies meant somepony, somewhere, selling coffee. A casual observer might’ve been inclined to point out that she was, in fact, holding a mug of said beverage. Said casual observer might be similarly inclined to question the need for a second beverage, considering the one she already held in her hoof.

Said casual observer clearly didn’t understand that this was a Two Coffee Morning.

Said casual observer was, bluntly put, an idiot.

Emerald raised the mug to her mouth and lo, there was coffee to behold, and she found that it was Pretty Damn Good. She took a sip and caught up with the conversation.

This proved to be an action that was almost immediately regretted by all parties involved.

"What? You couldn't possibly have— "

“No, I wish I was lying... I just...” the stallion across from her sighed dramatically, gesturing with his forelegs. “You know, we’d just made surgeon. This was it. We were Canterlot’s elite. The world was ours.”

That was one Scalpel, Ardent: coltfriend, surgeon, and loudmouth, occasionally in that order.

“Seriously?” she asked, incredulous. “Where did you even find that spell?”

“To be fair, it was really her fault,” said Ardent, his muzzle in a wide grin. "She’d found it in an old textbook, in the Starswirl the Bearded wing— "

“Remind me why your sister has access to that again?” she interrupted.

“She doesn’t,” responded Ardent. “But that’s never stopped her.”

“And she was looking for…?”

“Not a clue, and given what she found, I didn’t ask.”

Emerald snorted in derision. Ardent was one of those ponies for whom mere mocking was insufficient. Mocking was to Ardent what a friendly ‘hello’ was to most other ponies.

“You’d think that when your sister’s one of the most powerful unicorns this side of Equestria, you’d learn not to play pranks on her,” she said, sipping her coffee.

“It wasn’t such a big deal,” he protested.

“Your sister turned you into a mare, and that wasn’t a big deal?”

To Emerald’s surprise, Ardent chuckled. “She’s done worse,” he said, staring out the window. “It made for an entertaining childhood, if nothing else.”

“We’re meeting her at the station, yes?” she asked. “I don’t even know what she looks like.”

“Oh, don’t worry. She’s...hard to miss,” he replied.

“Oh? Both take after your parents, then?” Emerald asked without thinking.

Oh, buck me.

“No, it’s alright.” Ardent preemptively waved off her apology. “I love them dearly, I really do, but I feel sorry for them sometimes. When they decided to take in two orphaned foals, I don’t think they were quite expecting her.”

“She’s that smart?” Emerald asked, curious.

“Makes me look like a foal every time I open my mouth.”

Emerald took a moment to process this. “To be fair,” she said with a grin, “that’s not saying much.”

Ardent opened and closed his mouth a few times, before sitting back in his seat with a focused look on his face. She waited in silence for him to speak because sometimes, that's all you could do.

“Alright miss smarty-mare,” he said after a moment. “What—” and because this was Ardent, there was a pause for dramatic effect “ —is the reason for mountains?”

Emerald laughed aloud at the absurdity of the question. “What, you skipped your geography lessons as a colt?” she jibed.

“No, no, not how they’re made,” he corrected. “Their purpose, Emmy. Their rationale. Their raison d'être.”

Emerald laughed again, shaking her head. “They’re objects, Ardent. They don’t mean anything. They don’t have a reason. They just are.”

"You see, that’s where you’re wrong," he insisted. “They might not mean anything to you. But what about all the ponies who rely on the rivers that flow from them, hmm? Or the birds that use the forests up there as nesting sites?”

"Now you’re just being— "

"As we round the bend, those on the North side of the train can take in the views of the famous Crystal Bore—"

The loudspeaker announcement cut her off, and she turned to find an old, grey stallion toppling towards her— and just for an instant, there was another pony, hastily stepping out of the way— and then her coffee went flying from her hoof as the stallion collided with her.

Emerald mentally ran through her vocabulary of choice words, and found it to be insufficient.

“Oh my word, ma’am, I am so sorry” the old stallion said, tripping over his sentences. "Are you alright? I don’t know what I was…."

Emerald wasn’t listening.

Coffee. Gone.

Emerald’s mind searched the words, looking for a qualifying negative and not finding it. With a mental grimace, she forced herself to smile. If the universe was out to ruin her day, she would laugh just to spite it. Or sleep. Sleep was good, too. Though ‘she would sleep just to spite the universe’ didn’t have the same ring to it.

Hmm.

It was surprisingly difficult to remain angry when you could barely keep your eyes open.

"…so let me, ma’am, apologise for-"

What?

Huh. He was still talking.

She supposed she should answer him.

Emerald abruptly looked up at the elderly stallion, whose voice suddenly died in his throat. “It’s not a problem,” she said. “Really. It was lukewarm at best.”

The stallion's face shifted through several expressions before settling on somewhere decidedly south of relieved.

“Don’t worry about it,” she added.

He let out a deep breath. “That’s…good. Well, I’ll be on my way,” he responded, before turning around and doing just that.

Emerald let out a breath of her own.

CRRRRRRCK

What was that?

Emerald looked up, finding that Ardent’s look of concern mirrored her own.

“I’m sure it’s nothing,” she said, preempting Ardent’s question.

The idea of it being, well, nothing, was plain silly really. She knew that, as did Ardent and everyone else on the carriage. Knowing it was one thing. Saying it was another.

“Nothing to worry about, folks,” the guard called out from the far end of the carriage. “Just a problem with some cargo.”

Point in case.

Emerald gave Ardent a tired smile as she leaned back and closed her eyes. Ardent, finally getting the hint, gave a sigh and leaned back in his own seat, fiddling idly with the empty coffee cup.

She drifted off to—

SCRIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII—

Emerald started as an ear-splitting whine filled the air. She glanced up at Ardent, but a sudden, piercing light filling the room forced her to close her eyes. It wasn’t just bright. It wasn’t just brilliant. It was blinding. It shone through blood and bone, blazing straight through the walls of the train, straight through her eyelids.

The keening heightened pitch, her head feeling as though someone was slowly ramming her horn back inside her skull.

—IIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

Everything went white.

The train moved.

Although that was not, precisely speaking, correct.

Given its proximity to Canterlot the train was, in fact, travelling at a constant velocity, and hence it was equally correct to state that Equestria moved around the train. Tacit was, for all intents and purposes, completely stationary.

Except that the train had left the station, and was presumably arriving shortly at a destination. If one considered Equestria was moving around the train, where was Equestria’s destination? Where was its point of origin?

Tacit shook his head, moving forward as he—

The door was unlocked. He never left the door unlocked. Well, specifically, he normally locked the door, the summation of such being that the door was not left unlocked. He was fairly certain that he had, in fact,locked the door.

And yet, the door remained unlocked.

Tacit stepped carefully into the carriageway, closed the door and waited for the click of the lock, before continuing on his way. It was a simple task, being a train guard, and like most simple tasks gave the mind ample opportunity to wander and wonder.

And even that, after a time, became mechanical.

Snow-capped mountains rose up in the distance as the train approached, and Tacit thought of mountains, and he wondered. Ponies were straightforward thinkers. Why was a fork? To help them eat. Why was a train? To take them places, of course. Why, then, was a mountain? Where was the purpose, when it was of no use to them?

And Tacit thought of mountains, and he remembered.

He remembered the mountains, the caverns, the nights. And how before then he’d never felt the shadows, but in those moments he’d felt them, and was endarkened.

The old pain, old darkness forgotten from dreams too real, endless corridors all the same. In each and every one they stood, tall and faceless. Who were they? Around them the memory-gems sped through endless conversations. He remembered, recalled parents, their voices. Not his parents. That was important. He remembered. Who were they? Words snarled by crystals, words that his parents –no, their parents, he remembered that now – had never uttered. Couldn’t have uttered. Not the ones he knew. He remembered.

They were never meant to die like that. To cease to fly, to fall and freeze. A flicker, a flutter, time stuttering to a stop and then that, too, stops, silence as the world resumes but they’re gone, not silent or still but gone, and wait long enough and you’re never really sure if they were ever even here so why do you think that they’re gone?

You can’t know the future, they said, too hard, can’t be done, but the past is just the present reversed as the future is forward so how could you know that either? Thoughts can be changed, memories erased, eroded, and then you died that second death, the death of what you were and were to be until you weren’t even sure what was you or if you ever had been.

But not him. He remembered. He remembered the pain pounding, pulsing, a life of frustration finally to fall, to freeze. ‘Terrible’ they said, ‘imagine them, traitors’ they said, '’for the best’ they said, so simple to erase what you couldn’t atone for, to pin your sins on the soul of another. So easy, he thought, to forget what they’d been now their purpose was passed. It wasn’t for them, but they were dead, so what did that matter to the those who remained?

And he remembered—

“As we round the bend, those on the North side of the train can take in the views of the famous Crystal Bore—”

The voice of the train driver broke Tacit from his reverie, only for him to trip over the hindlegs of a pony that had suddenly appeared in front of him, sending Tacit flying face-first into the mare in the seat beside him. Rising to his hooves, Tacit looked around—

— and found that he had no idea quite what it was he was looking for. Odd.

Bemused, Tacit turned to the emerald-green unicorn, who was grasping at a now half-empty coffee mug rolling between her legs. It was, he noted, becoming progressively more empty, and the floor progressively more wet.

“Oh my word, ma’am, I am so sorry,” he said. “Are you alright? I don’t know what I was thinking.”

The mare ignored Tacit, which was fine by him; his mind was elsewhere. He’d tripped over something, that much he was sure of. Well, he thought he was sure of it. He supposed there was a chance he’d just, well, slipped.

"Falling over my own legs. As much as that’s excusable at my age, I should have looked where I was going, ma’am—"

The mare abruptly turned to face him with an almost bemused expression.

“It’s not a problem,” she said. “Honestly, it was lukewarm at best.”

Good? Good. Yes. Good.

“Don’t worry about it,” she added, patiently.

He let out a deep breath.

“That’s…good,” he responded. “Well, I’ll be on my way.”

She gave him another little smile as if to say “If you wouldn’t mind hurrying up with that, then?” and turned to face the stallion opposite her. Tacit shook his head and continued his trundle down the carriage, shadows flickering like mad dancers across the aisle as the train passed a grove of pines.

Tacit wasn’t sure when he’d become so clumsy. He wasn’t sure why the decision had been made to transport a Class V on civilian transport, nor why it was being handed to the mare for whom it was purposed at the station. Tacit was, in fact, unsure about a lot of things, but he didn’t mind, not really. So long as one understood one’s purpose, what did anything else matter?

CRRRRRRCK

Oh bother.

The background murmur in the carriage had ceased, heads turned in worry. Tacit sighed, moving briskly to the rear end of the carriage.

Why was the door unlocked?

He stuck his head inside the doorway, catching the gaze of the solitary unicorn Guard, who wryly waved off the question before Tacit could open his mouth.

“Dusk and the other one are checking it out now, Sir,” the unicorn flippantly replied. “Just a bit of cargo moving around. Nothing to worry about.”

Tacit responded with a brief affirmative, resisting the urge to lecture the offending stallion on how one treated one’s seniors thank you very much, before making sure to shut the door behind. Heads turned towards him as he turned back around to face them.

“Nothing to worry about, folks,” he called out. “Just a problem with some cargo. All fixed now.”

Concerns satisfied, the myriad conversations resumed. Tacit gazed back at the rear carriage, catching the sunlight playing across his reflection in the glass panelling.

He could've sworn he’d spied another pony walking down the carriage...

Spy.

And he remembered.

I spy, I the spy, the whirring of the gems, the lies. A tear, I cry, out of fear of distant darkness, the dark within and the dark without end.

They don’t understand, you see, say we live in the present, should look to the future (which can’t be done, they said, it’s ‘for the best’) but we live in the past, a step behind, time’s too fast, acting now to change what will soon become what we’ve done in the hope that when we’re done then what’s then now is brighter but it’s black, and blank, and gone—

And he remembered, what use is a candle when you have a sun? She, who above all others acts for the many, and not the one. What use are all the little flames, save to blur the lines between wrong and bright, and then they, too, go. It’s ‘for the best’, they said, to burn brief and right, and then you’re gone, the darker the flame, the brighter the shadows and though the shadowsshone, it was ‘for the best’—

And he remembered standing at the end of it all, in front of Her Radiance, hoping.

That the darkness inside them was ‘for the best’ before they let their light shine.

No, that wasn’t right, she’d never known. How could he remember something that had never happened? He couldn’t. Wouldn’t. She hadn’t known. Had she? He—

He didn’t know.

He’d forgotten.

SCRIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII—

Tacit’s train of thought derailed as a high-pitched whine filled the air, rising in pitch. He turned in horror, staring at the brightening glow emanating from the back carriage.

He recognised that.

Someone was breaking the teleport wards. How? That wasn’t possible.

Tacit spun, sprinting for the rear compartment as light filled the room. He slammed his eyelids shut but the brightness seared through mere flesh and blood, burning a pattern in his retinas, his mind. Shadows fled before it, and he remembered.

“Dusk and the other one are checking it out now, Sir.”

And he’d tripped over someone, he remembered that now. A guard. There were only meant to be three of them on the train. Three, not four.

Tacit reached the end of the carriage, throwing the door open, and—

—IIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

Everything went white.

The train moved…

…and he couldn’t believe it had been that easy.

Decloaking and sweeping spells were standard precautions for intercity freight and transport. Trains, airships, boats, they all had them. Of course, Class V constructs were classified that way for a reason; they had a tendency to disrupt ambient magic.

Relatively harmless to most living creatures, if handled properly, but unbound thaumological fields, well…it was safer not to trust them around little things, like illumination charms, levitation fields, or your ordinary run-of-the-mill detection matrices. Nothing too important.

As for the security, he could only assume they simply weren’t expecting anypony to come after it. Honestly though, three guards? Was that really the best they could do? A pony could almost feel insulted.

Echo looked around the narrow passageway between carriages he was presently standing in.

DO NOT TRAVEL BETWEEN CARRIAGES.

And what was that supposed to mean?

His horn flared as he quickly checked the integrity of his cloaking spell (because you could never be too careful), then cast a small, additional silence field around himself, before giving the door a gentle nudge open and stepping (silently) into the first carriage. A mare to his right turned her head, and his heart froze for a moment, before she blinked, shook her head, and turned away. Nopony else paid him any lasting attention.

Nopony ever did.

The term he’d heard used to describe it was ‘blindsight’; ponies could still see you and would, unconsciously, react to you. The key word there was ‘unconsciously’ - ponies would follow you with their eyes, and even step out of your way but would, if asked, have no recollection of what exactly it was they’d just moved to avoid.

Echo wasn’t fond of invisibility. Invisibility, whilst great for say, sneaking on trains, was bucking terrible if you wanted to walk in a straight line, or do anything around other ponies. Whoever had coined the phrase ‘invisible amongst the crowd’ had clearly never attempted to actually try it. Being blindfolded was one thing. Walking invisible was like being blindfolded with a painting of your surroundings without you in them, and...

…that one had gotten away from him.

“As we round the bend, those on the north side of the train can take in the views of the famous Crystal Bore —”

The announcement startled Echo for a moment and he stopped, the elderly stallion behind him accidentally tripping over Echo’s invisible hindlegs. Hastily stepping forwards and out of the way of the sudden mess of limbs, Echolit up his horn, heart pounding.

The grey stallion stood up, shaking his head as he did so, and turned to the mare on his left. “Oh my word, m’am, I am so sorry. Are you alright?” he asked.

The guard's mouth went into autopilot, while his brain temporarily resigned captaincy and went to the restroom. Silently snickering, Echo kept walking.

It raised an interesting question. Whilst the mare wouldn’t have dropped the mug if the guard hadn’t fallen on her, she also wouldn’t have dropped it if she’d been holding it a little tighter, or paying a little more attention. And the guard wouldn’t have fallen in the first place if Echo hadn’t been distracted by the announcement. And—

— Echo blinked, realising that he’d reached the end of the carriage aisle.

Glancing behind him to make sure he had enough time before the guard caught up, Echo focused. The first thing he did was cast an immediate-vicinity ‘ghosting’ spell around both him and the door. It would act as the thaumic equivalent of an invisibility spell – any sweeping or detection magic originating external to the ghost field would pass straight through, as if nothing were there.

Now it was safe to cast without threat of detection he focused again, this time creating an illusory duplicate of the door occupying the same space as real one. Finally, he cast the same cloaking spell that surrounded him on the real door, which promptly vanished from sight, leaving only its illusory counterfeit in its place. Echo reached out and grabbed the real door’s invisible handle, stepping through the doorway before shutting it behind him again. Making sure it was properly closed and in the same position as the illusion, Echo dismissed his work of the past few seconds.

Pony minds were malleable, but only to a point. Whilst the blindsight spell might clear memories of him, most ponies would find it difficult to process the sight of a unicorn that wasn’t there opening a door that very clearly was. Difficulties caused problems, and problems made a mess of things.

Echo hated messes.

Wincing slightly in pain as he let his spell die out, Echo walked cautiously past the two oblivious guards.

“Hey, Dusk?”

“…yes, Pauldron?”

“What’s the reason for mountains?”

Silly question, that.

Echo continued down the hallway, passing through an open door into the rearmost carriage. In the center of a room filled with drape-covered boxes stood a large, black chest the shade of midnight, ornate silver clasps holding on a lid covered with runic script.

Craftsponies could be so dramatic sometimes.

Echo walked up to it, curious. He hadn’t been told what the chest contained – just its Class V classification, and that he was to take it. It could hardly hurt to take a quick look—

CRRRRRRCK

There was noise as a wave of thaumic energy exploded out of the casing and quickly petered out against Echo’s reactive shield, leaving behind the faint smell of ozone. He muttered several choice words under his breath. In hindsight, he probably should have extended the silence field to the container before opening it. In hindsight, he probably shouldn’t have opened the container in the first place. Hindsight was a wonderful thing. He sighed as voices echoed from the hallway behind him.

“What was that?”

“Gimme a sec, Dusk.”

Echo stood rigid as he felt the magic probing, and nearly laughed as it passed straight through him without so much as a ripple. He felt the magic aura wink out, and the voices picked up again.

“… just going to give it a look.”

His cloaking spell was still working. Good.

The grey pegasus entered the room and walked straight past him, spear held at the ready. Echo stood stock-still until the guard had his back to him, and then promptly hit him in the back of the head with a blast of aetheric force. The pegasus fell to the floor with a dull ‘thump’.

“Dusk?”

Oh joy. The other one.

“Celestia damn it, Dusk, if this is another one of your games…”

Echo stood there, waiting. The second guard entered the room, stopping in his tracks at the sight of his unconscious companion. Echo flung a second blast at the unicorn, who crumpled to the ground alongside his friend with a muffled grunt.

Silence.

Echo took a moment to breathe, before turning around and walking towards the center of the room, and stopped.

The container had been flung wide open, a pulsing, pale light emanating from within. That, whilst unexpected, was nothing to get carried away about.

What had Echo wholly terrified was the pony standing next to it. A bright, shimmering, flickering pony, whose whole body seemed to pulse in time with light spilling from the container like a luminescent heartbeat. She – and it was definitely a she – stood next to it, peering in with a look of fixated curiosity.

The voice in the back of Echo’s mind insisted that a) she hadn’t been in the room when he entered, and that b), there was absolutely no way that she could have gotten into the carriage within the last five seconds without him noticing, and that therefore, c), there was no way that she could, in fact, be there.

“Look again,” his brain insisted.

“We are,” his eyes responded. “Think again.”

Echo took a step towards her and the impossible mare looked up at him, meeting his gaze with a smile. He waited for her to speak, or to give some other indication of his presence, but she gave none, waiting right back at him with the kind of patience possessed solely, in his experience, by hardened criminals and elderly piano teachers.

That she could even measure up to the latter frightened him.

“Who are you?” he asked.

Held tilt. Blink. Flicker.

“You’re not possible,” he stated, trying again to elicit a response, before flinching as the glowing mare suddenly took a step towards him.

“And yet,” she said, in a strange sing-song voice, “Here we are”.

The train moved, but there was so much more.

She smiled, opened her eyes, and then opened her eyes again. And the train moved, standing still as the air moved around it through which she moved moveless within the train. And the wind danced, and sung, and its song was of the sky and the end of the world, and the faraway forests, where wild words were sung softer, subtler, not silent but still. And the sun, too, sang, and —

She closed her eyes, and looked around her.

She supposed the word was busy. Busy, like when you were halfway through the dish you’d made a dozen times and you knew you should’ve started on the onions before you put the water onto boil because this happened every time and now you had to do five things at once and where were the onions you’d definitely bought them ARDENT WHERE ARE THE ONIONS and what were you doing be careful with the knife —

Yes. Busy. The carriage was busy. Everything, these ponies. So much in their world.

The door in front of her opened and a pale-grey unicorn stepped out and froze as someone looked through him. And she looked at him again through half-closed eyes and he was bright, like the flowers that killed you if you ate them. Nobody saw him, because he wouldn’t be seen. Nobody saw her because she couldn’t be seen. It made all the difference, really.

She started down the carriageway, and she stepped.

“It wasn’t such a big deal,” Ardent said.

She snorted. He didn’t talk to her. He never did, not like this. She wondered why, sometimes.

“It’s just an object,” the emerald-green mare opposite him stated matter-of-factly, turning to face her. “It doesn’t mean what they think it means.”

And she stepped, and she stood side by side with the old guard at the carriage’s end, and he turned to face her.

“Because they want to, in the end” he said, with an air of finality. “That’s the only reason there ever is.”

And she stood there, waiting for him to open the door like a gentlecolt and she stepped through, waiting for him to leave. The young guard stood there, staring at her.

“There are no lines to cross,” he murmured. “Only the one’s we’ve all drawn in our heads. And they’re everywhere.”

And she stepped once more,down the carriage, standing as he finally opened the casing, and the light spilled out. So brilliant, the colours, not like him, no harm but a promise to be kept. But that was not for her, not yet. Not now. She flickered into form, willing herself to be seen, and turned to face him.

“Who are you?”

She stood there, waiting.

“You’re not possible.”

And that was her cue.

“And yet,” she said –

– “Here we are.”

Echo blinked, staring at her, and found that he wasn’t entirely sure what to make of the situation. The plan, in his mind, had been rather straight forward. Get on train (tick). Steal object in question (tick). Get off train (pending). Two unconscious guards and an eerie, glowing mare were not part of the plan.

Said mare now staring off into the space behind him, a distant look on her face. “What do you think of the mountains?” she asked.

“I don’t,” he replied, unnerved.

“Yes, you do,” she stated. “You think they don’t matter, that they’re just objects. That they don’t have a purpose. You’re wrong; they have whatever purpose you give them.”

And that, Echo decided, was getting a little too weird. He took three steps towards the box, his hooves clicking on the wooden floor, and found that he didn’t want to take it. Not really. What he truly want to do was take the time to appreciate it. He took a step backwards, all the better to admire it, honestly, and—

—he really hated suggestion charms. He looked up at the mare, who hadn’t taken her eyes of him the whole time and was still smiling, and stamped a hoof against the floor in frustration.

“What do you want?” he demanded.

“What do you want?” the mare replied.

The voice in the back of his head silently noted that they were starting to sound awfully like two pre-school foals having an argument over who got the last biscuit. Being the highly rational being he was, he ignored it.

“What I want,” he said, his teeth clenched, “is for you to stop with this little game of yours.”

“And then you’ll want take the artefact, I presume,” the mare responded. “And then you’ll want to run, and hand it over to whoever asked you to take it. That’s not what I asked. I want to know what you want, not what you want to do.”

Echo tried to take another step forward, but was again stopped by whatever spell the mare had cast on the box. He closed his eyes and focused, looking for it with his magic, but finding nothing more than two faintly glowing unconscious guards and the brilliant light of whatever was within the box. He tried again, searching this time for any semblance of a cloaking or scrambling spell, but got the same result.

No mare.

No spell.

He was not going mad.

“If you don’t get sunshine, you wilt,” she said, and he blinked to find her staring directly at him. “She says she's not a plant, she's fine, but she’s falling, faltering, foolish. Ponies and power always end in trouble.”

Echo took a step backwards, as if stung.

“I—

“It wasn’t your fault,” she continued as if she hadn’t heard, her voice softer now. “Can’t stop the winter, any more than the setting of the sun and the frost that fell. Candles can’t fight the cold.”

“How—”

“It wasn’t your fault,” she repeated, her voice insistent now. She paused for a moment, looking around the carriage they were in. “But this is. Or will be. Could be. It depends, doesn’t it?”

She paused this time, waiting for him to respond.

“On?” he asked.

“Why you’re here,” she replied, in a voice that suggested that she was fairly certain this was, in fact, quite self evident.

“Why do you think?” he responded in kind, gesturing to the black container behind her.

“So ‘bad things’ won’t happen to you,” she fired back.

Echo flicked his tail in irritation.

“That’s the reason you’re telling yourself, isn’t it?” the mare said, her tone accusing now. “You’re afraid of what will happen if you don’t take it. They’ll come after you too, find you. And then they’ll hurt you like they did her.”

“Get out of my head.”

“But that’s precisely what would happen if you do take it,” she continued, ignoring him. “Ponies will die. Not here, not now, but you know that. It’s just that the ‘bad things’ weren’t going to happen to you, and that somehow makes it better. Because you think what happens afterwards wouldn’t be your fault.”

"None of this is my fault—"

“ -her coffee on the floor,” the mare interrupted. “Nobody to blame but herself, but you know it’s not true. Its fine, you say, not your fault... but you’re lying. Twist the words right, and they show their true form.”

"Stop doing that. This—"he angrily gestured around him, to the guards, the room, himself "—wasn’t my fault. Sometimes you don’t get to choose, alright? It’s—"

“—for the best?” she finished, sounding hurt.

He paused for a moment, struggling to gather his thoughts. “What does it matter?” he said at length, frowning. “If they don’t use it, someone else will.”

“Yes,” she said, looking down at her shimmering self. “Yes, they will, eventually. But I like to think that they see it for what it is.”

“And that is?” he asked.

“An object.”

Echo shook his head, halfway between bemused and frustrated.

“Do you know what a Two Coffee Morning is?” the mare asked suddenly, somehow pronouncing the capital letters.

He blinked, taken aback by the sudden change of topic. “A what?”

“No? Me neither, I’m afraid. It matters to someone else, though. Does that make it any less important?”

“What’s your point?” he asked.

“That’s what stops the two of us from being mountains,” she responded, now glancing down at the still forms of the two guards. “The freedom to choose our own purpose. To choose why. And right now, you’re doing one thing, and thinking another. That’s dangerous.”

Whatever purpose you give them. He watched her, flickering now as if she was the light, and his eyes started to itch.

"If I don’t take it—"

"They’ll come after you, yes," the mare said indifferently. "And if you do, then I’m sure you’ll find the guard on your tail. Again. But you didn’t do it the first time, and they’ll figure that out. Go and talk to them. Explain things. They’ll understand."

“Pity on a thief?” he asked.

“You’d be surprised.”

Echo took a step back, shielding his eyes now. Was she getting brighter?

“You’re trapped in there, aren’t you?” he said, finally. “That’s how you’re doing this. That’s what that thing does. It lets you read other ponies’ minds.”

The bright mare laughed, shaking her head in amusement. “Weren’t you listening?” she responded. “I’m not stuck in that. Don’t be ridiculous. I’m not even on this train.”

“I’m not sure I understand,” he said, furiously resisting the urge to blink.

She paused, looking thoughtful for a second, and then stopped. “I think you do, actually,” she said, before grinning at him. “Which means my time’s up. Might want to hurry along though, because I don’t think you’re going to want to be on the train when it arrives.”

His eyes were burning at this point and he shook his head, rubbing his them with a foreleg as he blinked his vision back, and—

—and he was alone in the carriage, with two unconscious guards and a box that was conspicuously not glowing. And the voice in the back of his head that had been listening to the whole exchange noted that yes, what he was proposing was all well and good but teleporting with the construct was one thing. Teleporting without it would mean breaking the teleport wards on the train first, and that would be messy.

He hated messy.

Echo looked down at the pegasus on the floor, who was just beginning to stir, then up at the mountains looming in the distance. He sighed.

And he focused.

SCRIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII—

But it was brief, and distant, and not yet for her
And so the white mare sat and waited for him,
Knowing not where he was, but where he was going.
Not when he’d arrive, or who he’d arrive with
But maybe, just for once, the why
And that was, for now, enough.