Equine, All Too Equine II: The Days of the Prophets

Chapters

Prologue: The First of the Prophets
Chapter I: The Foal
Chapter II: The Griffon
Chapter III: The Captain
Chapter IV: The Father
Chapter V: The Alicorn
Epilogue: The Others

Prologue: The First of the Prophets

“You heard me just right, son,” said Mr. Grasswell, not even looking at the youth behind his desk this time. “You’re fired. Pack your stuff and get out.”

The earth pony colt’s eyes, wide from the shock, blinked. “Mr. Grasswell, you can’t! You have to gimme another chance! Please! I beg you!”

Grasswell snorted into the papers he had started arranging. And that was that.

The youth’s lip trembled as he took as step forward. “You don’t understand: my landlord said she’d kick me out if I couldn’t hold onto a job until the end of the week! And it’s Friday! I’m gonna wind up on the street!”

“Plenty of room in the beggars’ house still, I hear,” grumbled the aged stallion, again mostly into his papers. “Besides, that ain't my problem. Got enough of those already. Off with you now, before I lose my calm.”

The colt winced at the mention of the beggars’ house. Most of them were indeed empty, that was common knowledge. One barely had to get two blocks from them to get why they were shunned. It wasn’t correct to call the place a dump, but only because that would have been an offense to dumps everywhere.

He kneeled in front of the massive oaken desk.

“Mr. Grasswell… I beg you. I pray to you. One more chance. I’ll do a triple shift with half the pay. I’ll do anything. Please.”

From under his thick eyebrows, Grasswell glanced at him. Whether the glint of pity the youth saw in those grey eyes was simply a reflection of his glasses or the genuine thing, he could not say. The sigh that followed was heavy with something, at least.

“Look, kid… I’m not doing this ‘cause you’re a bad dyer. Frankly, you’re the best in the lot I hired this month. The best and the only one whose damn uncle ain’t my wife’s cousin or something like that.” He put down the papers and gave him a blank look. “Times are hard. Folks ain’t buying clothes like they used to. I got to lose employees or lose the business. And that’s the long and short of it.”

The colt remained on his knees, shivering, eyes cast on the mattress. The sight made Grasswell feel wretched inside. The colt was not a bad dyer nor a bad pony. Really he was a joy to have around: funny as heck, or “as funny as they come”, as he’d often said to him.

There was nothing funny about him now, that was for sure. “Get up, son. You’ve no reason to kneel in front of anypony. Me least of all.”

Partly to his surprise, the colt got up. His gaze remained on the carpet. As he slowly walked to the door, Grasswell made himself say: “I’ve heard a rumour that somepony crazy enough is planning to open the mine at High North Lane again. If that’s the case, they’re gonna need somepony as crazy as them to go down there and see what’s up with the old tunnels.”

The youth gave him a short nod, then closed the door quietly behind him. Grasswell fought against the urge to run after him. The kid really was a good worker, and there was a time when he would’ve fired himself before losing a pony like that. But hiring a relative meant hiring more customers on the side. They might do half as fine work, but at least he could count on the products to get passed on. In these days, that seemed like the only thing that mattered anymore.

The damn griffons were behind everything, of course. Last week, the city had almost been evacuated because of them. Things were calmer now, supposedly, but you could still sense that something wasn’t right. Everypony was standing on an edge made out of rumours, and the only thing holding it all from collapsing was that nopony dared to move much. All this considered, it wasn’t the best of times to try and sell new clothes to folks.

Still, not all the rumours were born of panic. The new Captain of the Guard, whose face stared at Grasswell from the front page of the paper on his desk, seemed like a pony with a Plan. Just the day before yesterday he had held a big speech, all loaded with big words like Peace, Future, Freedom and such. Apparently they had made a deal of sorts with the beaked devils. Whether “they” meant the Parliament, the city or the Guard didn't mean much to Grasswell. So long as somepony was in control, keeping things rolling in a way that could distantly be recognized as the everyday, he’d be content.

In the meantime, that new batch of saddles wasn’t going to sell itself…

***

It was early next day when the youth found himself in line with five other ponies whose last straw in life went by the name of High North Lane mine. He looked around, wondering what stories lay behind those hollow, hungry faces and tired eyes. Or was it only his own reflection that he saw there? Either way, he was alive, here and now, and the world wasn’t going to offer him anything he wouldn’t be willing to fight for. Or so said the overseer who introduced himself as Iron Hard.

“Only six answered the call, eh?” he said, eyeing the would-be recruits over his dense moustache. “And here I was thinking the times were difficult. Must be false when an honest job only stirs five buggers from the bottom of the barrel.”

A colt about the same age as the youth coughed on his left side. “Are we gonna get payed extra for the first time?”

Iron Hard gave him a smirk which any shark would have envied. “Sure, luv. As sure as you’re gonna find a free bordel down there.” He spat on the colt’s feet, and gave the others the same toothy smile. “I dunno what you all have heard about this place and job, but whatever that was you’re gonna forget it right now. You’re the bottom of the barrel, like I just said. That ain’t slander but truth. I could tell there’s a changeling army down there in the shaft, waiting to suck the life out of you, and all you’d ask to know was if that got me to pay you extra. It wouldn’t, mind you. But the point is that you need a job worse than a mare in heat needs the tender touch of my tongue, and that’s saying a lot. So if any one of you has anything to say that includes the words ‘pay’ and ‘extra’, they can consider themselves sacked on the spot. Questions? No? Great.”

“Sir?” said the same colt carefully. “You were joking about the changelings, right?”

Iron Hard rolled his bulging eyes. “‘Course I was, sonny. If I weren’t, I’d be hiring them instead of you. Would cost me nothing to feed ‘em all the orphans I could get my hooves on.”

He laughed long, heartily and absolutely alone.

“Okay, okay, ‘nough with the jokes, “ he finally said, wiping his eyes like a frog’s. “Since no one has left yet, I take it you’re really into this. As I figured the moment I saw you. So here’s the deal: I plan on opening this wreck of a mine. For that, I needs to know how bad the situation is down there; which tunnels have collapsed, which are about to and so on. And for that, I need somepony to go down there and see for themselves. Here’s where you lot come in the picture.”

“But wasn’t the place closed when it ran out of gems?” asked somepony.

“For starters, it’s a crystal mine,” corrected Iron. “Second, it never ran out of anything but workers brave enough to hold on to an honest job. Let’s just say that ‘unfortunate circumstances’ led to its closure. One nasty accident, to be frank. But it’s all ancient history,” he hurried to add when a collective shudder travelled over the collected ponies. “Trust me: the tunnels that still stand are sound to trot on. Just don’t touch anything much and you’ll be right as rain. On that point, hoof up anypony who can’t tell a lethal fracture in rock from non-lethal?”

Six hooves rose up in unison. Iron Hard shook his head slowly. “Okay, okay, this might take a tad longer than I anticipated. Whatever, that mine’s not going anywhere. Not likely, anyway.”

After a two-hour speed introduction to the “essentials of the art of prospecting”, like Hard called it, the youth, along with two others, started their descent into the tunnels on an abandoned digging site right outside the city. According to Hard, it was the surest, if not the safest, place to start inspecting the mine’s condition. The first team to go in, while definitely not getting any extra pay, enjoyed the advantage of “cementing the nigh-eternal future in the coming mining corporation Iron Hard & Co.”. The promise was not the hardest currency around, but at least it was currency.

The three of them arrived to the first crossroads. The youth opened the side of his lantern and lifted it in the air, seeing if there was any draught. The flame flickered, but not strongly enough to give any hint of the right direction.

“Any ideas?” he asked.

“Let’s just get back and say the tunnel’s collapsed,” said the colt who had stood on the youth’s left. He was a pegasus, and clearly uncomfortable with his immediate surroundings. “What do we care? He has to pay us anyway. If you can call it pay.”

“Good point,” said the third one, an earth pony like the youth. “If he’s gonna treat us like rats, we might as well act like ones.”

“I can’t,” said the youth. The two others frowned, so he had to add: “I need the money. All of it.”

The two others exchanged a look. It was clear they could not return alone. The youth wondered whether they were thinking of a possibility in which the tunnel had not already collapsed, but came down on him as they were inside.

“Fine,” said the pegasus. “We’ll move on. You first.”

“We still got to decide where to,” said the youth. “There’s no draught except where we came from.”

“Split up?” suggested the other earth pony.

“I don’t think that’s a–”

“Sure it is,” said the pegasus, walking beside the other earth pony. “We’ll just take this tunnel and you the other one. Saves time and effort both, yeah?”

Yeah, thought the youth grimly. It’ll be much more effortless to wait a few hours on an empty corridor and then walk out without the risk of getting caught or told on. Out aloud, he said nothing, but only walked to the tunnel assigned to him. An argument wasn’t something he was keen on stepping into, on top of everything else.

The tunnel forked four more times. At every crossroads he made a mark on the wall with glowing chalk and another on his map. The air was stale but dry, which was important. Nothing would ruin a mine like water, he had been told. He spotted some cracks in the walls, but otherwise the mine seemed to be in better condition than Iron Hard has expected it to be. The notion came as somewhat of a relief to the youth. His heart still upped its beat with every step deeper into the darkness. Sweat stained his hauler from inside even though it was comparatively cold in the tunnel. He flinched at every sound of rock scratching rock, half expecting his footing to give away at every new step. But nothing happened, not even as his wrist clock told him he had already spent over an hour here. At his sixth intersection, he actually believed he might survive to claim his first meager pay.

Then the ground gave away under him. His scream choked on his heart that had jumped to his throat, then on the tons and tons of gravel that fell around him. His lantern went out in a shower of splintering glass. After all the noises died, he thought he himself had, too.

After a few minutes, or perhaps some hours, he felt calm enough to try and find his way out. It seemed like he had fallen into another tunnel from where he could not climb up. Thus he had to pick a direction and hope. It was a situation he had been in before. His whole life, in fact.

He felt his way along the wall to the left. Soon, puddles of water splashed under his hooves. The air was humid and filled with dust. He tried to think of happy thoughts; sights of meadows of midsummer, flooding with flowers, sunshine and life. It was a shame he hadn’t actually seen any such sight forever. Nopony had. Such things belonged to books, or to the old mares’ tales. But they were everything he had now, so they would have to do.

His breath convulsed when he hit the end of the tunnel. It had collapsed, which meant the other end probably was just another trench, nothing more. He sat down, wrapped his front legs around him and let the tears come. He had held them back too long. I’m going to die here. I’m going to die here. I’m going to die here. He tried to think it, really think it, but couldn’t. It was just a sentence. It didn’t really mean anything. My death means nothing.

That was a thought anypony could rage at.

“No!” he screamed, bouncing up. He started digging into the wall, hurling rocks aside, scrambling to remove every last boulder in his way to freedom. He shouted, cursed, screamed until his limbs grew heavy as lead and his lungs felt like a pair of sandbags.

The rocks did not end. His power dwindled with every new breath of the lifeless air. Still he dug. Blood oozed from the cuts and scratches on his hooves. Still he went on. Through rock and stone, he fought for his life. His meaningless little life.

A draft. There was a draft; a breath of an angel. It came from a crack in the rock, barely the size of a feather. He dug into it in frenzy. Gradually, the hole grew larger; now it could fit his front leg. There was more than mere rock behind it – space. Precious empty space. Few more rocks to fit another hoof; two more to let in his head, shoulders, pelvis…

He got through and rolled on the ground, panting. The air was cleaner here. Not much, but enough to make him praise the gods for it. Moreover, it smelled different: organic. Like a sewer. I must be near the surface.

The thought pulled him up just by itself. He sniffed around, trying to locate the direction of the sweet, rotting stench. It came from that way, he decided, and carried on. The rails ran here, which meant the ground under must be pretty solid. He hastened forward.

Soon the wall ended, expanding beyond his reach. He had come to some sort of a room. Water flowed here. A whiff of something burnt, like a candle, lingered amidst the disgusting smell. He went on, but more carefully now.

His leg bumped on something. Something alive. Or something which had at some point been alive. It had fur. And four legs. All this considered, it seemed like a pony. A dead pony. His ears pressed against his skull.

”Hello?” he called out. ”Is anypony there?”

His voice sank into the tumult of the stream. And then a hoof landed on his shoulder.

“Hi.”

The youth wanted to fly, but could not so much as shudder. Plain terror was not completely at fault. The hoof did not feel hostile, nor did the voice. In some strange, eerie way it was the most soothing touch he had felt for years. It felt like his own numb limb did in the mornings when he had slept on it – foreign yet familiar. Uncanny.

“What is your name?” asked the voice. The hoof still rested on his shoulder, perfectly at ease.

“Bolt,” the youth said without thinking.

“Just Bolt?”

“That's what they sometimes call me, too. 'Just Bolt'.” The terror was still there, right under the surface, but the joke stuck from it like a surfacing whale from sea. An involuntary shudder passed over him. “I thought I'd die here. I was prospecting the mine, but fell into a hole. I don't know how long I've been here. Please, could you help me?”

“Yes. Oh yes, we can help you. More importantly, you can help us.”

“Us? Are there others here?”

“More than one,” said the voice. Bolt could not quite tell if it was a mare or a stallion he was talking with.

“Were you working here, too? We're in the sewers, right?”

“No, not in the sewers. The drain you hear and smell only leads there. We're still in the mine; right above the Parliament.”

Bolt sighed in relief. “So you know how to get out of here?”

“Yes. We know the way. Have no worries.”

“You have no idea how glad I am to hear that.”

“Perhaps we do, 'Just Bolt'. Perhaps we just do.” The pony humphed, as if they had spotted the punchline of a particularly complex joke. “Just. That rhymes with lust. And with must.”

“Yeah...” said Bolt carefully. “Say, for a second I thought there was a body right in front of us. I know it isn't really, heh, but... well, I just can't decide what it exactly–“

The hoof grew a tad heavier on his shoulder. “It was not by chance that we met, Bolt the Just. Providence has guided your fall, delivered you to us. Without you, we would have perished here. And with us, the world.”

“Ah-ha.”

“I hear suspicion in your voice, Bolt the Just.”

“That's not my name,” said Bolt. “It's just Bolt. Can we go now, please? I think they're missing me up there.”

“You said it, Just Bolt. We will go in a moment. But first, we want you to see something.”

“Uh, look, I appreciate the offer, but I think I really should be going by now. It's not that I wouldn't want to stay, you know, it's just that, uh... well, I don't.”

“You are funny, Bolt. Isn't that what they say about you? Funny as heck? As funny as they come?”

Bolt turned to look over his shoulder, but the darkness was just as thick there. He could not even make out the hoof on his shoulder. “Who are you?”

The hoof let go of him. It took Bolt a moment to realize it had. Suddenly, the air felt very chilly.

“Hello?” he ventured.

In the night under the earth, a star lit. A twinkle in the distance, gradually growing stronger. The light was soft, gentle, calm. Newborn.

“So you're a unicorn?” said Bolt, blinking as the light came closer. “Could you turn that on a little bit more? I can't really see–“

He saw. The light did indeed come from a horn, and it really was newborn. Right before him, in a small cradle, a little unicorn foal lay, covered by a blanket, looking the world through large, round eyes. It's horn illuminated that and nothing more.

Bolt knew nothing of magic. But even ponies who knew nothing of magic knew that it took time to learn to wield it. He had seen unicorns over ten who could not even lift a feather with their horn. Never had he heard that an infant could manage anything more than random spurts of wild energy. This was not random, that much was obvious. It was as if the foal knew what it was doing.

“Why you have a baby in a place like this?” he asked, mesmerized by the sight.

“Not any baby,” said the voice holding the cradle. “Watch. Witness. Believe.” The speaker removed the blanket.

Bolt stared. He stared until his eyes watered, for the lack of blinking.

He fell to his knees.

“My gods. My gods. Forgive me. I did not know. I'm not worthy to see. I'm nothing: less than nothing. My gods.”

“You are wrong, Bolt the Just. You are worthy, and more. You have been chosen. Rise now, Bolt the Just; rise and rejoice, for you are the First of the Prophets.”

Bolt gazed up. “A Prophet?”

“The First. Much and more will be taught to you so that you, in time, could teach others. But for now, it will do if you can lead us out from this place. It has been quite a while since we last ate.”

Chapter I: The Foal

The gentle knock on the door was a gunshot in the middle of a bird flock. Deck Heart’s body jerked as if ravaged by an electric shock and his head sprang from the desk in a flurry of paper.

“Yes?” he snapped while trying to round up his thoughts scattered in all four winds.

From the crack of the door to his office, one of the secretaries peeked inside. “S-sorry to bother you, sir,” she said. “I was, uhm, about to bring you these papers…”

“...But thought to make sure I was awake before stepping in,” finished Heart. He yawned widely. “Next time, just give the door a good bang. Serves me right, sleeping on duty. Come in.”

The mare stepped in, closing the door behind her and cutting short the din that momentarily flooded in. The Captain’s quarters were designed to be soundproof to prevent eavesdropping, but the full absence of noise had some drawbacks. For one, it encouraged involuntary napping like nothing else. Seems like father’s excuses for passing out weren’t all cooked up after all.

“Well, one might say it’s your duty to be well rested,” said the mare as she walked to Heart’s desk. “We can’t have the Captain’s judgement become clouded due to lack of sleep. Not at a time like this, at least.”

“At a time like this…” echoed Heart under his breath. In truth there probably hadn’t been “a time like this” ever before in the Guard’s, or the city’s, history. A week after the near-death experience of the world, the Parliament was still all over the place, literally. Several of the Senators were missing, most probably hiding for the fear of public humiliation and possible charges of desertion. The ones brave enough to have returned were far too busy blaming each other for the catastrophe to get any actual ruling done, which meant that the Guard was the most functional public organization in the vicinity. And Heart was its leader. He could not quite recall when he had last slept, but he was certain it had to have happened at least once during the passing week. The red imprints of paperclips on his cheek were the proof of that.

The secretary started spreading the papers she was carrying atop the sea of other documents that flooded his desk. Heart had quickly learned to delegate the task of prioritizing to the army of clerks and to focus all his energy on whatever job happened to find itself under his muzzle. “What’s this?” he asked.

“Well, first there’s a report from the pegasi weather patrol unit. They’ve detected signs of an oncoming M-storm building up on the plains, and they can’t guarantee that the barriers will stop it. They’ll monitor the situation for now. Then there’s the weekly grain ratios, ready for your signing. If you wish to inspect our calculations, I can–”

“Where do I sign?” asked Heart, reaching for the quill. As he started scribbling something distantly resembling his signature on the designated spots, a loose thought drifted on his tongue. “Give me an estimate: as is, how far can the silos take us?”

The mare’s eyes glazed for a second as numbers danced behind them. “Out of my head, I can’t say for sure, but… With reasonable rationing, we should make it over the winter.”

Heart nodded. “Reasonable” was a code word for “not enough to feed a pigeon”, but it would have to do. Food was getting scarce, and that was a fact. Actually, it was just a drop in the sea of facts in which Heart swam, but a particularly nasty drop at that. Ever since he had become de facto ruler of the city, he had made a mental vow not to decide on anything but the short term, leaving the long planning for the people who had been elected for the job. Yet, every passing day had meant that the long became a little bit shorter and closer. If the Parliament would not pull itself together at the end of the month, he would have to make some really big decisions; way above his actual mandate. It was either that or let ponies starve to death.

There was also the matter of the griffons. True, they had played football with them; even won a few matches. But the game itself was far from over, and there was no telling when it would lose even the resemblance of rules it now had. The words of Cecil still ran clearly in his head, as if she was whispering them over his shoulder right now. Dead things don’t know their own name. It made the Fifth Law’s point rather moot. But the point was that, for the griffons, there was no point. Hadn’t been for a hundred years.

“Sir?”

Heart blinked. “Hmm? Oh, right, the signature goes theeeere. Sorry.”

“It’s quite okay,” she said, starting to pick the signed documents. Even with Heart’s lethargic state of mind, the detective in him noted how deliberately delayingly she went about it; as if she was pushing something off.

“Something on your mind?” he asked, looking at some papers. From the corner of his eye he saw a faint blush flash.

“N-nothing special, sir,” she muttered, suddenly hurrying up her work. She stacked the papers neatly, then coughed neatly. All around, Chart Top was a rather neat young mare, Heart reckoned.

“Go on,” he urged. “Whatever you go to say, it won’t leave this room.”

She gave him a shy glance. “Sir… I just wanted to say – I mean, express – my – I mean, ours, the whole staff's – gratitude. For you. For what you’ve done for us all, despite everything you've had to go through recently. Uhm. Thank you.”

She disappeared into thin air, or left the room in such a hurry it made no difference. Heart watched the still door for a moment, then turned the chair to stare into the distant horizon that spread beyond the city. Sunshine flooded the streets, the buildings, and the figures he could make out from up here. A rare sight this late in the autumn. He had of course seen the same view before. Only now did it feel like he actually saw it.

Had he really saved the city? Everypony seemed to believe so, now that he had held that little speech a few days ago. Somepony had had to say something out loud then. There hadn’t even been that many ponies present, and the kernel of his message could have been squeezed to “Okay, the worst didn’t happen, not yet, but unless we want to make sure things stay that way, we better start doing something about it”. Not very inspiring, if you had asked him.

But the speech had started a rumour, which had started a story, which had started a legend. Of a pony who Had Been There And Done Something. Nopony knew exactly what that was – Heart least of all – but it had made an impression on the public. And apparently there had been a reporter following the speech, for the next day the city’s biggest papers were dealing what was basically the juiciest version of the rumour in a spiced up form. Heart couldn’t remember having said half of it.

The fact bothered him less than he knew it should. They had called him a hero, yes, but he had read enough comic books to know what eventually happened to heroes. They got sacrificed. For the Greater Good. Heart had nothing against that, not as such, not as long as the Greater Good went by the name Lily and was his daughter. Of all other kinds of “Greater Goods” he’d steer clear away from. They reminded him all too fondly of Feinsake not to make him sick on the spot.

But there was more. At times like this, a city needed a hero. If one could not be found, one would be created. Everypony knew that, even if they didn’t know that they did. It was one of those laws of the world that never got written down, which no experiment could ever prove. That only made them stronger. Heart could feel the grip of the Law moving his limbs, his mind, his words. He was becoming something more than himself. It reminded him of what Hilt had said, on the last night they had met. “What we are and are not goes beyond us.” That was the Law speaking, right enough. Heart really did not know what to think of it. So he didn’t.

“I’m just doing what needs to be done,” he whispered at the window. “Might as well be me doing it.”

The air moved in the room, and Heart knew the door had been opened slightly.

“You awake, old mate?”

Heart turned around. “Always, old bugger. You sneaking to steal my drinks again?”

Lieutenant Cowl performed his world famous “got me there” expression, a piece of art in and on itself. “Just thought to let you know: the squad has returned.”

“What squad?”

Cowl cleared his throat meaningfully. “The squad.”

Heart’s easy smile evaporated. He stood up and grabbed his Captain’s uniform from the rack while striding for the door. “What did they find?”

“Don’t know: I came straight to here.” He fell in pace with Heart as they half-galloped through the next room, drawing all the eyes on themselves. Heart tried half-heartedly to button his uniform, but avoided getting slowed down by the task. The squad had returned. And perhaps with them, the answers he had been starving to hear ever since he climbed out from the pits of Tartarus itself.

***

In the gloom, the stallion’s ears pricked up. He kept on lying still in the bed, listening. Aside from his own breathing, he could not hear a thing. The silence was absolute. Nothing could have assured him more of the fact that, contrary to the usual, he was not alone in his bedroom.

So it has finally come to this, he thought. They had found him. But as far as he could tell he wasn’t dead yet, so either somepony hesitated or – and this made his train of thought pause – they were waiting for him to wake up. Familiar tingling gathered in his horn. With any luck, he might still have a chance.

He acted quickly. A bright light flashed, banishing the night in an blink of an eye and leaving any opened ones blazing. He got up and saw two stallions staggering in the doorway, whining and rubbing their closed eyelids. Both wore shabby cloaks with deep hoods, and had their manes cut off. As expected, thought the unicorn while sneaking between them into the living room.

There were six ponies there. Four of them were unicorns. All had the same blank cloaks and shaved heads. None looked especially threatening alone, but together they managed to create a very terminal impression.

“I don’t suppose you came here for the silvers,” said the unicorn. “No doubt you’ll take them anyway. They’re in the top drawer over there.”

The intruders exchanged a few looks. “You knew we were coming?” one of the unicorns asked.

The pony sighed. “I had the just the inkling of a reason to believe so, yes. I’ve made all the necessary preparations, too. I even stacked the silvers neatly so you wouldn't have to ransack the whole place in search of them. They’re in the top drawer, right over there, like I said. I’d hate to leave my heirs a mess to clean, not on top of all the funeral arrangements.”

“We didn’t come here for your bloody silver.”

“Yes, I realize that, but you might as well have them, now that you’re here. They’re worth quite a lot, you see. Quality craftsmanship. And what’s a petty theft on top of a cold blooded murder?”

“We didn’t come for your life, either,” continued the same unicorn. “Get dressed. The night is chilly.”

The pony paused for a moment. Things we’re not going along the script he had mentally written for this occasion. When he thought about it, the intruders really did not look like they wanted his blood. Their faces were solemn, but not in any way hinting at murderous intentions. And every hood had this strange, round symbol painted on them, which he could not quite make out in the dim room.

“Where are you going to take me, if I may ask?”

“To see the Foal.”

“The Foal,” echoed the five other ponies, and touched their foreheads with their hooves.

A shudder came that close to running down the pony’s spine. Even if the encounter had not been arranged to end him, it clearly had something to do with his work. Why else would they be saying something like that? Was the point not to lynch him but to make him regret his deeds? To make him repent? Either way, he didn’t seem to have much choice. Clearly they weren’t going to fall for the nasty trap he had hidden to the top drawer. It was such a shame. He had spent years waiting to witness it in action.

***

In the lobby of the Guard House, a dozen ponies saluted as Heart marched in, with Cowl right on his heels.

“At ease,” hurried Heart. “Now, report.”

A Sergeant stepped forward. “It was just like you said, sir. A mine full of bodies, including Chancellor Feinsake’s. Judging from the smell, they’ve been there for days. We also found several suspicious instruments, notes, books, and other equipment which–”

“Yes yes,” interrupted Heart. “Did you find anypony alive?”

“No, sir. Not even remotely.”

Heart’s heart sank. He should have sent somepony there earlier. But there had been a thousand and one other things to do, each one more urgent than the other, and one mad, blind pony was not difficult to lose on the background then. Not that a part of him would have liked nothing more but to do just that; to forget everything that had happened there. He doubted he ever could, though. Not when Lily had been there, too…

“I left a few soldiers guarding the site,” continued the Sergeant. “How would you like us to proceed, sir?”

Bury the whole thing under all the gravel you can find. That’s what his heart said, but the Captain in him would never allow it. It was a crime scene. It would have to be treated as one.

“Follow the protocol,” said Heart distantly. “Seal the area. Look for evidence. Haul up the corpses and deliver them to the mortuary. I appoint you in charge over there; get a forensic team there at once and start the investigations.”

The Sergeant saluted. “Yes sir.”

Heart studied his young face. He had seen it before, he knew he had, but for the life of him he could not recall the name that came with it. “What’s your name, Sergeant?”

“Willow Fall, sir.”

“Watch you back over there, Sergeant Fall. The mine is treacherous all by itself. There’s no telling what horrors might make it even more so.”

When the squad dispersed and Heart was left alone with Cowl, he said: “I think I bribed that pony once: on the night when I went to report to Hill about Berry Pie’s murder. Who in the hay made him a Sergeant?”

“I did,” answered Cowl jovially. He shrugged at Heart’s raised eyebrow. “If we punished everypony who has touched a black bit around here, we’d soon be running short of ponies to do the punishing. You know this. Fall is a stand-up soldier; worth his weight in gold in a pickle. He had been waiting the promotion for a while, and as soon as you gave me mine, I chose to keep the good deeds circulating.”

“Without my approval?”

“I believe you snored slightly more approvingly when I came to ask you about it,” said Cowl, smiling into his moustache. “Anyway, why’d you bribe him in the first place?”

“It was the easiest way to get in, and I was in a hurry” said Heart. He headed back to his office. “Took me twenty bits to make a private obey an order.”

Cowl, walking by his side, let out a low whistle. “With those prices, even I would’ve had to pause. For long enough to reach my baton, of course.”

Heart only snorted at that. After some wordless walking he said: “I don’t know what scares me more: the knowledge that I will never get the answers I wanted, or that fact that I wanted to know them in the first place.”

Cowl gave him a sideways glance. “What were the questions?”

Heart laughed dryly. “Would that I knew even those. Was Feinsake really going to give birth to an alicorn? How could that be? And if Twilight’s heir’s cutie mark was all she needed, why didn’t she take mine? Who was that blind pony I left there to die, after he had saved my and Lily’s life, apparently for no reason at all? Why did Feinsake want to start a war with the griffons? What happened?”

“That’s plenty enough of questions all right,” admitted Cowl. “Bound to be a few right ones hiding there. Who knows, maybe the forensic will find a couple of those? And answers to fit them?”

“Perhaps,” said Heart. “We need to send our best there, then. I’ll tell Violet to–”

He stopped on his tracks. Cowl cringed, then laid a hoof on Heart’s shoulder.

“I forgot again,” muttered Heart, staring at nothing. “How could I forget? How can I forget?”

“It slips by my mind sometimes too,” said Cowl quietly. “It’ll get better, after the funeral.”

“Better?” echoed Heart, his lips barely moving. “How can it get better, Cowl? How?”

To that, Cowl said nothing.

“I’m sorry,” said Heart after a while. “I didn’t mean it.”

“I know you didn’t,” said Cowl. He squeezed his friend’s shoulder. “It’s a bloody disgrace. What a waste. I swear, that Feinsake bitch… We ever meet in the afterlife, she better pray it’s true what they say and that you can’t remember a thing of your life, ‘cause if I do, and I see her, I’ll… I’ll… godsdamnit…” He sniffed, and wiped his eyes into his sleeve, muttering something which Heart was not sure he wanted to hear.

“We should go out tonight,” he said quietly. “Just the two of us. A drink for her memory. After Lily’s bedtime.”

Cowl sniffed again, looking away. His hoof still touched Heart’s shoulder, now searching support rather than offering it. “Hmh. Yeah. Good idea. I’ll have to let Soy know. She’ll understand. The old place?”

“The old place,” said Heart.

“Nothing like the old place,” continued Cowl. “Beats a brand new world every time, a good old place does. No doubt about it.”

***

The line between cowardice and caution has always been fluid, at least for those who’re not quite sure on which side they themselves generally fall. Mr Gruff had no illusions of himself in this regard – he was a firm coward. This didn’t mean he was extremely prone to getting scared. To the contrary, only a very few things in this world could make him truly frightened anymore. He had seen too much of the other side to be afraid of such mundane things as violence, for example. Granted, he didn’t particularly like the prospect of getting beaten up, just as he didn’t fancy waking up to a cold room. Such discomforts he did his best to avoid. But right now, walking through the city night with a bunch of completely strange ponies, he was getting kind of worried.

It was no secret that he had enemies. That pretty much belonged to his job description. There were few things that united the numerous religious sects of Canterlot more than their bitter hate of Mr. Gruff. He could not understand them. From a certain point of view not completely inequine, he was actually doing all the poor foals a favour. Getting to birth was not such luxury in this day and age. And many a mare had thanked him for his services afterwards, although they always made sure nopony else saw that. All things considered, he had a hard time imagining himself as the spawn of Tartarus that someponies made him to be – in speeches held to hundreds.

His current company no doubt had attended such meetings. Still, he was not completely assured that they wanted him dead, or even to punish him a great deal. They didn’t seem like the type to start torturing ponies. A difficult to describe air of ordinariness hung over each one of them, despite their clear attempts to cover it with all this cultist business. That symbol they were all carrying didn’t resemble anything Gruff had ever seen. He still hadn’t had a good look at it, but basically it looked like a conjoined sign of the sun and the moon. Wrapped together, the two celestial orbs seemed to be consuming each other. It had some style to it, he had to admit. More at least than the moronic forehead bumping did.

Despite the deep mid-fall darkness, Gruff had a pretty good sense of which part of the city they were in now. It was called the Ledge. The name was accurate in its unimaginativeness. In the old days the site hadn’t had one single name, for it was divided into numerous subsections which were all very particular about their identity. Food alone had had a baker’s dozen’s worth of blocks dedicated for the culinary arts. Once, the place had been the jewel and pet of Canterlot’s cultural heritage.

It had all gone downhill, literally, when the Catastrophe had hit the land. The enormous halls and towers of marble, jade and crystal had collapsed to the valley below. Their ruins still lay there, now haunted and shunned by everypony save the most daring. Rumours said that all kinds of treasures could still be found there, if one knew where to look. Almost a kilometer above, there was nothing but the Ledge and what remained of it. Lots of ponies still resided there, for the housing situation in the city was as acute as one might expect it to be in a city built on a mountainside. There’s another incremental favour of mine, all for the common good, thought Gruff in passing.

They stopped in front of a building in no way distinct from the others around it. “Shabby” was just the right word for it in Gruff’s mind. Built of wood like most of the buildings on the Ledge, it had not a trace left of the proud elegance of the old Canterlot. It even stood straight, a thing the ancient architects would have called a sacrilege. Their holy duty had been to bend their structures into a frozen dance flowing in the melody of the mountain; not to crudely fight against it. Before, a flat floor had been unthinkable in Canterlot. All this and more Gruff thought while trying not to think about what would come next.

That turned out to be nothing, for a while. Then, the front door of the shack opened. The unicorn who had so far served as the spokespony for the group turned to Gruff and nodded towards it.

He felt in his bones that this would be his last chance to escape whatever fate they had in store for him. Inside, there could be anything. He could not fight nor bribe his way out, but perhaps he could manage a decent bluff.

“I’ve got friends who’ll start looking for me if I don’t turn up to the arranged meetings,” he said to the spokespony. “Powerful friends.”

The unicorn nodded at the door again, more insistently.

Gruff tried to think of another lie, but the last one had already scraped the bottom of the barrel. It was true he had affiliations among the highest ranks of the city’s social pyramid, although it was also true that they’d rather lose a leg than so much as nod at him on the street. At times, he was indispensable. At all other times… well, perhaps his brother would mourn for him, should he ever find out he had disappeared in the first place.

He swallowed and walked into the house.

There were four more unicorns inside. These were also wearing cloaks, but significantly better ones than the lot outside. They were black and white, reaching all the way to the ground so as to hide their owner’s legs, and had the intricate symbol painted on the spot covering their cutie marks. Aside from its occupants, the room seemed like any other living room in the world. Like as not, it probably was somepony’s living room.

One of the unicorns opened a hatch in the floor with her horn, then pointed into the gloom with a hoof while looking Gruff in the eyes.

Why must all the cultists always gather underground? he wondered while descending down the steps with the four others. For a second he thought to ask the question aloud in a sorry attempt to lighten the mood, but he didn’t want them to know his throat was drying out quickly. The situation was turning more unsettling by the minute, which started testing even his usually steady nerves. To calm them, he tried to focus on the facts around him.

The tunnel, like all others in Canterlot, had been dug through solid stone. It didn’t resemble a usual cellar, nor was it a mine, which severely limited the actual functions it could have been designed for. Smuggling was the likeliest alternative. With food prices climbing up every day, the black market business had escalated into the most profitable business around. The Parliament did everything it could to guarantee an equal distribution of supplies, but it was fighting a losing battle even before it had dispersed itself. Gruff had heard rumours that the public economy had days to live. After it would collapse, these tunnels and Canterlot’s food supply along with them would be left at the hooves of moneylenders, loan sharks and outright criminals.

Suddenly, a waft of cool air blew on Gruff’s face. He halted in surprise.

“Keep moving,” said the mare behind him.

“I just felt wind,” he said, touching his cheek. “Where are we going?”

She answered by nudging him with a hoof. Such insolence sparked something sharp inside Gruff. He looked over his shoulder, blinking in the light of the mare’s horn.

“I’m not taking another step before somepony explains to me what’s going on.”

The stallion who had been walking before him touched his shoulder gently. His face, and the parts of the neck Gruff could see, had also been painted black and white. The smile he offered him also has a painted look to it.

“I feel your fear, brother,” said the stallion. “Our fraternity is built on it. Or will have been, until you meet the Foal.”

“What bloody Foal?” asked Gruff, trying his best to ignore the oddly fond hoof touching him. Even through his suit, he could sense the sympathy of it. He liked it not one bit. “I demand a proper answer.”

“Then you must finish the stairs you’ve started,” said the pony. He let go off him and showed the way. “My name is Bolt the Just. You can call me Just Bolt. On my life I swear, nothing bad will come to you. Come, we are close now.”

Gruff grinded his teeth behind the cover of his lips. The youth reminded him of a used cart seller. Weirdly enough, the notion gave him some comfort. A pony he would have felt obliged to trust would have been way more suspicious. In any case, at this point a shy curiosity was growing on him. He hadn’t felt this this much excitement in years.

The stairs went farther than he had anticipated, but finally came to a halt. At the end of them was an opening and, indeed, open air. As if guided by fate, the moon chose to show its face the moment Gruff stepped from the tunnel, offering him a generous view of the surroundings.

They had arrived into some sort of a large indentation in the bare cliffside. At first Gruft thought it was the Catastrophe’s doings, but the smoothness of the floor and the ceiling suggested that the large underground space had been merely exposed by the cataclysm. What the place had originally served as, Gruff could not tell, for there was nothing around but wind, coldness and moonlight. And the Foal, of course.

It sat on the edge, facing the nothingness spreading before it. Even from afar Gruff couldn’t but admire how pleasantly the pale light played on its smooth, black and white fur on which byzantine patterns played. Particularly noteworthy was also how still the foal sat – one could have mistaken it for a statue. But apart from all this, it was just a foal.

“Wrong,” said a voice behind him. It sounded strangely familiar, yet he could not quite say if he’d heard it before.

“What is?” he said, facing the speaker detaching from shadows.

“You were thinking it was just a foal you saw,” said Stick, or the pony who once had been known by that name. “It is not.”

It took Gruff some effort to stifle a cringe at the sight of the pony, and that said a lot. Two terrible scars above his eyes made what must’ve already been a creepy appearance truly gruesome. That made the eerie tranquility and easy timbre of his voice even more disturbing. An impression of ventriloquism was inescapable.

“Do I know you?” asked Gruff carefully.

Stick’s nonexistent gaze aimed right through him. “We have met. In a sense. The matter is complicated.”

Gruff frowned. “Feinsake? Is that you?”

Stick smiled, and Gruff gasped.

“It’s not,” said Stick. “Not completely.”

“Fascinating,” said Gruff. “I’ve never heard of anything similar. How did this happen?”

Stick waved a dismissing hoof. “Not important. Perhaps someday you can perform all the analyses and dissections you want on me. But before that, we need you to finish the work you have started.”

“What work?”

Stick nodded at the foal. The question how he knew the right direction passed through Gruff’s mind, but right now it was just one tiny riddle in a sea of enigmas. He glanced at the edge, where the foal was still sitting, still staring into the night.

“I don’t understand,” he said.

Stick walked next to him. Nothing in his movements hinted of hindrance caused by his condition.

“A few months ago, Feinsake came to you with a request you conceived as rather strange. She wanted to delay the birth of her foal. You obeyed. Last month, she called for you again, with the same intention. Again, you obeyed, although it made you a murderer.”

“Now hold on–”

“First you drained the lifeforce of Feinsake, to keep her body weak enough to stop the birth, even at the risk of miscarriage,” continued Stick without missing a breath. “Next, you resurrected her with the life of her secretary. Her name was Chip. You turned her youth into a heap of ash.”

Gruff stared at him. “If you’re not Feinsake, how can you know all that? There was nopony else there.”

“I’m sure you would know,” said Stick. “I have memories. No, that’s not the right way to put it. I have memories of memories. Glimpses of mirrors below ice.” He looked at Gruff. “Let us not cling to irrelevancies. I’m not offering you accusations but a redemption. You have sinned, but your sin was for a higher purpose. All you need to do is to carry out that purpose to its end.”

“Why don’t you finally cut to the business, then?”

Stick smiled playfully. “I’ve made you nervous. Forgive me.” He looked at the foal, then said something which to Gruff sounded like Saddle-Arabian – a short sentence or a name. Whatever it was, the foal reacted by starting to approach them.

I don’t understand, thought Gruff as he followed the foal’s surprisingly steady progress. It’s just a unicorn foal. I know nothing of children.

“Look closer,” said Stick by his side. Gruff paid him a sideways glance. If the pony was simply guessing his thoughts, he was doing a bloody good job of it.

When the foal stopped in front of him, he followed the advice and gave it a good look.

He kept on looking for a long while.

“Can you see?” asked Stick.

Gruff flinched as if he had woken up, then took a few slow steps backwards. “No. No. It can’t be. Impossible.” He looked at Stick. “It’s a trick!”

Stick smoothed the foal’s black and white mane with a hoof. “Listen to your own heart, Mr. Gruff. Listen to it beat and ask me then: is it really a trick?”

Gruff made a suffocating sound. He lowered his eyes on the foal, who was looking curiously back at him. Curiously. As if there was more intelligence behind those strange eyes than the first sight would imply. To his horror, Gruff felt a strong urge to kneel.

“No need for that,” said Stick. He bent over the foal’s ear, whispered something, and watched as it paced to the cloak-clad cultists. They disappeared up the stairs, leaving Gruff and Stick alone on the cliff.

“What do you want from me?” asked Gruff after a while. “What could I possibly have to offer for… for…”

“Everything,” said Stick. “You have everything to give. Despite what you saw, the Foal is not yet ready for the task that is fated for it. Feinsake, formidable as her efforts were, could only manage a beginning. As I’ve said, it is you who must finish it.”

Gruff, his head spinning, sat down on the cool stone. “Finish it…? I… How…?”

“All will be explained to you in good time. Have no fear of failure. Providence leads us now. Defeat is beyond us.” He walked to Gruff, helped him stand up. “Say, how would you like to be a prophet?”

***

For once, It was a quiet night in Canterlot, and nowhere else was it quieter than in Mercury. That was not the name Heart and Cowl knew the bar by, though. For them it would always remain the Blueberry Inn it was, no matter what the actual owner decided to call it. The same went for their trusted table at the far back corner, which at some point had been threatened to be replaced by a flygel. Heart had had to pull a few strings and abuse his Lieutenant's badge to stop that, but the end had outweighed the means. Old places did not crop up like mushrooms after a rain.

Wrapped in gloom and lethargically drifting dust, Cowl and Heart studied the rest of the bar with a critical eye.

“It’s got too modern,” judged Cowl. “All those colors don’t belong to a proper bar. I dunno the names of half of them.”

“The music’s all wrong,” reflected Heart. “What, they think this is a circus? Or an opera? I can’t even tell.”

“And what’s with the drink names?” said Cowl, picking up the menu. “I can’t even make out the letters!”

“You’re holding it upside down,” noted Heart.

Cowl grunted, and finished his bright teal drink served in a glass as thin as his sense of adventure. He had already broken one of those by sneezing at them. “Can’t even keep darn menus right way around here…”

“It might be that we’ve turned old,” said Heart, turning his attention to the rest of the customers. All could have theoretically been his children. The nasty thought that one or two of them actually were his children crossed his mind, but he flushed it away with another “Sunset Shimmer”. It had cinnamon in it, gods knew why.

“No no no, everypony else‘s just too young,” corrected Cowl, slurring a bit. His brow wrinkled in concentration. “How old are you, anyway?”

“Around thirty?” ventured Heart.

“Hah!”

“Okay, okay, closer to forty,” he conceded. “But I know for a fact I’m younger than you. I had to wear a fake moustache to get in here the first time, but you walked right in without the portier giving a second glance.”

“That’s ‘cause his little brother cut a debt that way,” said Cowl. “Anyway, I recall the moustache didn’t do you much good. Didn’t the portier make you eat it?”

“Perhaps I shouldn’t have called him by all those names,” said Heart. He focused on drawing random patterns of spilled beverage on the table. It was made of good, honest oak – not the fancy mountain crystal like all the others around. The initials he had scraped on the bottom where still there, too. “It all happened ages ago. Ages.”

“In another life,” rumbled Cowl, leaning on his front legs.

For a while, they let the silence carry the discussion. When enough time had passed to clear the air of melancholy, Cowl waved a waiter over and ordered two apple brandeys.

“Never saw Violet drinking nothing without a little drop or two of the stuff in it,” said Cowl quietly when the glasses arrived. The contents were clear as water, and made Heart’s throat burn just by sloshing around. “To spike the taste, she always said.”

They drank for Violet. Nothing was said; the drinks were raised and emptied in one go. It was the Guard’s way, although you could not find it written down anywhere.

“Bloody hell,” coughed Heart. “No wonder she always had such a sharp tongue…”

Cowl’s shaking affirmed the opinion. He started telling a story about the time when they had been patrolling near the Cliffs with Violet, and ended up in the middle of a gang fight.

Heart listened with half an ear, and not only because he had heard the tale a dozen times before. Should I break it to him now? he thought. It has been decided already, so what point is there in delaying the inevitable? I might not get an opportunity like this for a long time. Him and me here drinking the night away in the Inn, as if the world hadn’t gone mad after all.

“You’re not listening,” observed Cowl.

Heart blinked. “Uhh…”

Cowl pardoned him with a wink. “It’s okay, I understand. Heard it all before.”

“Yeah…”

Cowl’s eyes narrowed. “But that ain’t the long of it. You’re thinking something.”

Heart squirmed a bit on his seat. He had forgotten how long friends he and Cowl actually were. Besides, Cowl was no fool, a proof of which was that he’d often prefer to keep this a secret.

“Which one is it this time, then?” continued Cowl, fixing his posture. “Lake? Or Lily?”

“Cowl…”

“Lily it is – I saw how you flinched at the name.” He leaned slightly over the table. “Want to talk about it? And don’t you think saying no.”

Heart stared back at him. It seemed that the die had been cast on his behalf. He might as well stay to witness it land.

“We haven’t talked since that day,” he said. “Not really, I mean. Not about it. I don’t know if it’s me or she who’s delaying. Gods know I have no clue what to say to her.” And that was the first lie of the night. Heart had the premonition it would not be the last, and not only on his side.

Cowl combed his moustache with a hoof. “She been staring empty walls a lot lately, has she? Waking up at nights, screaming? Any that sort of thing?”

“No.”

“Generally a good sign, that,” said Cowl, one of nature’s own psychologists. “Sometimes talking only makes things worse. I’ve seen it, same as you. Every felon knows this: the more you talk, the more screwed you’re gonna be, one way or another.”

Heart studied his friend’s face with a renewed sense of comprehension. It was an honest face, and loyal. There was a lot he could love about that face. But some things Cowl and he could never share. Not because Cowl couldn't understand what it meant to be a father (he had four sons to testify to the contrary) or because Heart would have been somehow smarter (which he doubted). At bottom, their differences came to a much finer grain, and the thought that in truth they really were alike was not the smallest of them.

“I don’t think the analogy applies here,” said Heart.

“Was worth the try.”

“It’s the way she looks at me sometimes,” said Heart, his gaze moving from one empty glass to the next on the table. “Especially when I’m wearing the uniform. Her eyes… She’s always been such a quiet kid. Keeping to herself mostly. And to the books. She reads them until the text fades from overuse.” He looked at Cowl. “Her eyes; it’s as if she wanted me dead sometimes.”

“You know it’s only you looking back at yourself, right?” said Cowl slowly.

“They’re her eyes. I don’t know what I see in them anymore.”

Cowl shifted on his seat. “Maybe it’s, you know, some phase or something? She’ll get over it. Maybe she should go out more; make friends of her own age. There’s this kindergarten I could–”

“She’s never, ever again going to be trusted to ponies who haven’t sworn to die at my command,” said Heart. “Never again.”

Cowl eyed him warily. “That might not be something you want her to hear.”

“I told it to her yesterday. She will be safe. I swear, she will be safe, even if I have to stay awake over her bed every night for the rest of my life!”

“You’ve been doing that a lot lately?”

“Every night, Cowl.”

Cowl sighed. It was all he needed to say, if not everything he wanted to.

“I know what you’re thinking,” said Heart. “You think that I can’t keep it up, that it’s wrong to try in the first place. And you’re right – it is impossible. At least, as things stand.”

There was a point hidden in that last bit. Cowl did not fail to notice it, as his confused expression showed. In the corner of his eye, Heart saw the die fall like a star from the sky.

“I’m going to leave the Guard.”

For a moment, the complete lack of reaction on Cowl’s face made Heart think, in bottomless relief, that his friend had seen this coming. Such illusions shattered along with glass on Cowl’s grip.

“You can’t do that,” he said.

“I can and I will. At the end of the month, you will have to vote for a new Captain. No, let me finish. This is not a random impulse or a decision made in panic. I’ve been thinking this seriously even before Hilt died. Since then, the circumstances have spoken for themselves. I can’t be a father and a soldier at the same time. I didn’t ask for the decision, but it’s up to me to make it, and that’s what I’ve done. You can punch me if you like.”

He actually expected him to. Cowl really looked like he wanted it, and deep down Heart had a hunch that he deserved it; if not for this, then for something else. At the end, it was perhaps only his offer as such that saved him from its fulfilment.

“Now, you listen to me,” he said. “You literally can’t resign just like that. Not just because the city’s living the end times, not because losing you would be the biggest blow for the Guard since the Catastrophe, and not even because it would make me resign, too. No, the regulations forbid the Captain from resigning by himself. It’s the law.”

“I’m aware of it,” said Heart calmly. “Only the majority vote of the Parliament, the Chancellor or the unanimous decision of all the higher officers can discharge the Captain. And you’re the only Lieutenant whose consent I don't yet have.”

Cowl stared at him.

And then he walked out.

Considering it was only the third worst outcome Heart had been expecting, he dared to feel quite optimistic about his situation. In truth he would leave the post regardless what anypony else had to say about it, but going by the official route would save a lot of trouble.

It bothered Heart somewhat that he hadn’t gotten to tell Cowl the whole truth. He would learn it eventually in any case, but he hoped from the bottom of his heart that a peace would be made between them before it came to that.

Around him, the bright neon lights went on whirling, the dull music playing, the little ponies dancing. He followed them with less than a detached frame of mind. Or he did, until he recognized one of the meaningless faces, and was recognized in turn. It was the shy secretary, name of…

“Top,” said the mare, about ten minutes and a few more curious glances later. “Chart Top.”

“I swear, I had the name on my mind just during the day,” said Heart.

“The name label must’ve played a role then,” she said, gracing the vicinity with another one of those perfect smiles. Slender it was, easy to surface; yet full of joy, especially around the edges where the well-worn dimples lived a life of their own. The pearls of sweat she had earned by dancing were only stressing the tender youth that her whole presence radiated. Far from pushing Heart into the contrast, it actually spread on, aided by the long looks she was giving him one after the other.

“You been working long in the Guard?” he asked, trying his best to keep his voice casual.

“Joined last week, like many other secretaries from the Parliament. There’s no work there anymore. I wanted to do my share for the city, so…”

A lot of the bureaucracy had indeed switched sides on its own in the aftermath of the Parliament’s downfall, Heart reflected. There had been nopony there giving orders, or too many giving the wrong sort of ones. It was a stroke of luck, really. Guard had been in desperate need of clerks when the duties of running the city had fell on it, but technically Heart could not have seized the state apparatus without declaring a martial law, which as such was the very definition of a grey zone, both in a legal and moral sense.

“That was no small decision, mind you,” he said. “The work you’ve all done has been irreplaceable. It’s too bad there’s little more in the way of a reward we can offer you save a lousy pay and a few words of gratitude.

Another smiled lit up her face. This time, the sunny impression had a touch of dusk mixed in, heavy with possibilities. “Oh, I’m sure you can come up with something… perhaps on the more personal side… Such small things often count their weight in gold when it comes down to gratitude.”

Heart was not sure whether what was currently happening was actually happening. Was it only fair, then, that he played along just to be sure?

“An innovative idea,” he said. “It’s a shame we haven’t had the time to get to know all of you… personally.”

That came out a lot cheesier than he had thought it would, but Top didn’t seem to mind one bit.

“I don’t suppose there’s anything we could do about it, is there…?” she said, leaning across the table. “You do work so much, sir Captain… Wouldn’t it be wrong to bother you with work after hours?”

“I live for my work,” said Heart, cracking a grin. Mentally he was kicking himself in the groin. Gods, I’m more rusted at this than the locker room’s doors. Then the thought that he ought to be rusted crossed his mind.

“Perhaps we could… uhm… finish the introduction session in my place? It’s just a few blocks away.”

Maybe he ought to have stay rusted, reflected Heart later, when they were strolling the streets to her place. Lily was waiting, after all, and he had just had his worst argument in years with his best friend. What he was about to do didn’t fit really well with that. In truth his only excuse, had anypony asked him, would have been was that he was still alive.

Chapter II: The Griffon

In the shy light of the early dawn, a group of shadows moved restlessly on a mountain ledge overlooking the lands below. A stifled yawn or a rustle of feathers would occasionally break the quiet, which would then descend like house dust over the early scene. Waiting as such did not come easily to griffon nature, reflected Cecil, who was one of the more immobile shadows. Stalking, now that was different. The fervor of the hunt ran in their veins and pulsed from the marrow of their bones. Nothing but the wind in your wings, the sea below you, the trusted companion by your side. It had been too long since she had enjoyed any of that.

A lot of things that did not come easily to griffon nature nowadays constituted the everyday of their lives. Living in a cave was not the least of them. Starvation came a good second. But all these could be endured like any other inconvenience. The true deathblow had been the loss of the jewel of their kingdoms, known to mortals as Griffonstone. The Fall had swallowed it all up during one single day. A fortnight later there had been nothing but ash there; ash and the overwhelming stench of sulphur.

Cecil had heard the city was not that different nowadays, although no one alive could say for sure. The only description of the event had been sung by the poet Cassandra, right before she had hurled herself into the very same flames she had bled her heart out for. Cecil had heard the poem once. She had empathized with the author's suicide better then. All and all, it had been a very mediocre poem, insofar as she understood anything about the field.

Everyone said that the real downfall of the griffon race had come the moment that Griffonstone fell. Cecil could not see it. From all she’d heard, it had basically been a piece of rock somewhere far off. The majority of griffons through the ages had never lived there, hardly even visited the place. Right before the Fall it had been kind of a dumb, as one source would have it. If anything it was a convenient excuse for loitering and general depression, in Cecil’s mind. Something to blame everything for, rather than look into a mirror. She would not fall for it, not while there was one feather left hanging on her skin.

In the far distance, something drew her eye.

“They’re here,” she said. “Get up and try to look sharp. We don’t want these guys to think you woke up half an hour ago. They’ve been flying since yesterday.”

With obligatory minor grumbling and cursing, the griffons around got to their feet. There were a dozen of them. Cecil would be hard pressed to trust them guard half a fishbone for an afternoon, but she didn’t have many options available. Someone needed to ration the food. Otherwise they’d be eating each other – or anything that moved – within days.

It took the arrivals twenty minutes to get to the ledge. Funny enough, those were the most anxious minutes of the day for Cecil; she almost took off and flew to meet them halfway. When the first griffon landed, she was next to her in a flash.

“Welcome back,” she said, perhaps too eagerly.

The griffon unloaded several bags off her back before so much as glancing at her. Then she went to help the others with their carriage. Cecil watched her in dismay, up until someone behind her asked if they should be helping them.

“Yeah, let’s get to it,” she said.

They worked in silence, unpacking the loads of fish and delivering them inside to the storages. It had been fried and salted, to make it preserve through the journey from the sea. The fresh taste was of course all but ruined, but at least they wouldn’t get sick from eating it.

Every now and then Cecil caught a glimpse of the first arrival’s face, and could not escape the conclusion that she was avoiding her. First, it increased her confusion. Next, it boiled her anger, which was already steaming due to all the waiting. Third, it made Cecil pull the griffon aside from view and press her back first against a massive boulder.

“Hello? Hi? Nice to see you?” she snapped. “Any of that ring a bell to you?”

The griffon raised her eyes from Cecil’s chest to her face. An overpowering sadness clogged them. It faded in a heartbeat as she shoved Cecil off her, but the impression had already done its ugly job, and now spread its tendrils quickly around Cecil’s worst fears.

“Falke…” she whispered. “What happened?”

Falke squeezed her clawed fists. “Nothing you haven’t guessed already.” She paused for a moment, and then added, “Camu went fishing for the sun.” Her left hand slammed against the rock behind her.

Cecil closed her eyes. She had noticed someone was indeed missing from the squad. Up until now she had been praying Camu had stayed behind for some reason, or that he had never left in the first place. “How did it happen?” she asked, eyes still closed.

“Like it always does. He’d been quiet for a few hours, untangling the nets alone on the shore. When I went to see him, I only found the nets.”

“Maybe he just–”

“We searched,” snarled Falke. “It’s why we came late. He went after the sun. End of story.”

Cecil heard Falke leaving. Instinctively, she tried seizing her arm. Instead, a second later she found herself flat on her back, with her friend’s claws an inch from her throat.

She opened her eyes as something wet fell on her forehead.

“I shouldn’t have left him alone,” said Falke, voice shaking. “My squad. My responsibility.”

Very tenderly, Cecil brushed her cheek, from there moving to her neck. “What happened to ‘every griffon for themselves’?”

Falke grunted in irritation, and for a split-second lost her concentration. It was all the time Cecil needed. She moved her neck out of the way of her claws, grabbed the other griffon’s temple and pushed her off her. Their fight continued fiercely as both tried to subdue the other under them. An outside observer could not have said at which point the struggle turned from brutal to tender, then loving, and finally lustful.

Sometime later, Cecil and Falke lay on the rocks, greeting the first rays of the breaking dawn with their panting. The air was chilly, and made their breath steam.

“Camu would’ve appreciated that,” said Cecil.

Falke humphed. “He would have.”

They both laughed. It was a good laugh. So was the silence that succeeded it.

“Do you really think it’s a disease?” asked Falke quietly. “Or a choice?”

Cecil stared at the purple sky. A few late stars, or planets, still fought the overpowering might of the sun. An age old celestial theatre, played over and over again no matter what happened under it. Completely irrespective of them. And here she was, staring at it and wondering if, right on the spot she had once taken to be empty, a new star had lit itself.

“It’s sick to choose that way,” she answered. “That’s what I think.”

Falke stood up abruptly. “Yeah, but who cares anyway? Someone’s got to fish. A lot. Speaking of which, come: I put the best of the batch aside.”

Cecil got up and followed her to the fish bags. All seemed empty. The rest of the griffons had gone indoors. “We’re not supposed to do that.”

“We are if we need to,” said Flake. “Those who work for the food of all deserve to eat better. Besides, the route’s not that easy, like you know. I’m going to need all the energy I can get.” She opened one of the bags and pulled out two fried fishes from a side pocket inside it. She ripped the other in two and tossed one half to Cecil, who caught it mid air.

“There’s plenty of time to rest,” she said, uncertainly eyeing her friend as she gobbled down the fish.

Falke shook her head. “Nope. I’m flying back this evening. Gather up a new squad for me, will you?” She winced as Cecil dropped the fish. “Hey, have you any idea what I had to do to get that for you?!”

“And have you any idea what I have to go through, waiting for you on this blasted rock!” shouted Cecil back. She started pacing back and forth. “It’s driving me nuts, not being able to do anything but play with the damned ponies and their games! You know we almost went to war with them the other day?”

Falke stopped eating with the fish halfway down his gullet. “War?”

“Yes, a bloody war! The ponies think we’re planning an attack against them! As if we could even plan how to get everyone fed around here!”

Falke swallowed, a thoughtful look in her eyes. “A war… might solve a lot of our problems.”

Cecil gave her an unbelieving look. “Like what? The problem of living in general?”

Falke kept on rolling the fish in her knife-like talons. “Think about it. There’s too many of us here. What does it matter if some die of fighting instead of starvation? And the survivors would have a lot to gain. The ponies have plenty of food in store, I’ve heard. They just don’t like sharing it with a griffon.”

Cecil threw her hands into the air, laughing. It was not a good laugh.

“Oh, now you're planning a war, just as you got back from a fishing trip? Thought to change profession, did you?” Her grin melted instantaneously. “You’re mad! It’s mad to think war would be a solution to anything! We have no army; the ponies do. We have no government; the ponies do. A war is the last thing any griffon needs.”

Falke turned a dry look to her. “You sound more like a pony than I remembered.”

Cecil opened her beak, but Falke was faster. “We are a warrior race; a hunter race. The ponies are prey. They got an army precisely because they need to train their soldiers. For us, battle is just another instinct.”

“You actually believe that?”

“I believe what I must to survive.” Falke ate the rest of the fish in few easy swallows. “You are right. Maybe a little rest would do good. And after that, a meeting: a High Summit. Would be the first one for a decade, I think.”

Cecil shook her head without breaking the eye contact with her. “I will have no part in that. None whatsoever.”

Falke, while walking right past her, said, “Then do something useful for change and go fishing. Who knows, maybe one day you’ll catch the sun.”

“It’s you who's flying to it!” screamed Cecil, swirling around. “Your war is just another sun!”

Falke disappeared into the gloom of the cave. Cecil stared behind her, then snatched the closest rock and threw it after her. It bounced off some wall, and the echoes of the hit died away quickly.

She turned towards the rising dawn. Never before had she despised the sight more. It was laughing at her, she felt. Mocking her, taunting her to pursue it until her wings failed and she would fall, fall, fall…

The cursed sun, the blessed sun. No wonder the first of the alicorns had been its incarnation. The only good thing about their kin was that they were all definitely dead.

***

“An alicorn lives!”

“Sure one does,” said Helm Cleaver with what almost counted for a sympathetic smile. Gently but insistently, he removed the pony’s hooves from his uniform. “Hop along now, will you? Don’t want to get caught on disturbance of public peace with an alicorn watching the streets, do you?”

The pony’s pupils shrunk from the size of needle heads to their tips. “You think she’s watching?” he whispered, covering under the used newspapers he wore for clothing.

“With alicorns, who can tell?”

The stallion scrambled away to the nearest alley, shedding pages as he went. The sight scraped the last of compassion out of Helm’s lips, leaving but amused contempt behind.

“And that makes four before lunchtime,” he said, making a little mark on his notebook. “All alicorners even! This must be my lucky day.”

By his side, Stone Mill snorted disapprovingly. “You think the Captain would approve of gambling on duty?”

“What’s the harm?” said Helm, pocketing his notebook. “It’s not like the loonies care who’s counting them, or for what purpose. And the Captain must have a thousand and one more important things on his desk than his underlings making their tours a bit more interesting for themselves.”

Mill had to admit that the last argument had a very practical, if not morally sound, reasoning backing it up. And betting on how many “loonies” each guard encountered during their tours was definitely a more harmless form of corruption than, say, bribes were. In a sense it was even progressive. The system of points the participants had created was more complex than the basic principle would initially suggest. Scores were awarded based on the type of loony in question, which was determined mostly by their rantings. These were easier to categorize than Mill could have imagined, which no doubt had been the key spark behind the game in the first place.

For example, just looking down the street they were strolling, Mill could spot another “alicorner”, at least three “gibberers” and a possible “end-be-neigh-er”. Although he wasn’t particularly proud of it, he had become quite good at the labeling part of the game, not by playing but by simply observing Helm. The rules demanded that the other of the pairs on each tour was not playing, to prevent cheating. That part worked surprisingly smoothly too, for each week the pony who had gathered most points would collect the whole pot, and pairs were changed daily.

One might think it hard to find a way to profit from ponies rambling about the end of the world on streets, but as so often before, the Guard had found a way. And once the road had been opened, there was no stopping the traffic. If anything, Canterlot was in no lack of what, in absence of a better name, were known as loonies. Especially alicorners – ponies claiming to have seen a living alicorn, also known as “Ali”s – had been trending for the past week.

“Ooh, that looks promising,” said Helm, nodding at the crowd ahead. They bustled around a unicorn mare shouting atop some boxes. “Come, let’s get closer: maybe she’ll offer us leaflets!”

Mill sighed but cantered along nonetheless. Leaflets meant extra points. You could not ask for them, however, just as you could not directly approach any loony as such. They had to come talking to you, preferably to touching distance.

“Make way, make way for the Guard!” shouted Helm while pushing into the crowd.

That was where Mill drew the line. Minor gambling, that he could look past his hooves, but only as long as it did not interfere with their actual work. Right now, it seemed to be required. The crowd was restless, more so than usual. Looking around, he could see many crying, or shaking, or shouting something. And the mare in the centre of it all was only getting warmer.

She was definitely an alicorner, that much was clear. Class A+, if Mill was any judge, which he was. White and black stains of paint covered her whole body in mismatched order, almost covering the original, pale green fur underneath. Despite the blindfold with the pictures of eyes drawn over the actual ones, she didn’t hesitate to wave about like a weathervane in a hurricane. Switching on from appearance to audio, Mill focused on the words of her hollering.

“...of which there is no redemption! The hours are upon us; on the weak, the strong, the just, the unjust – it makes no difference – everypony, it’s time; a time of bliss; a time of terror – the time of times is at hoof! Come join the mass! Come and rejoice for the end is here, and the end is the beginning, and the beginning is the end! On the morrow! Tomorrow! Rejoice! Rejoice! Rejoice!”

She tore off her blindfold and with that, the only resemblance of sight she had anymore.

The crowd convulsed. Mill’s ears pressed against his helmet. Something was wrong. Very, very wrong.

“A morrow in flames; in blaze; in conflagration – in fire!” the mare went on. From somewhere, a small barrel was hooved over to her. She smashed it open and started pouring the dark, oily contents over her head, mane, neck and rest of the body. The paint on her face ran along with the oil, creating an impression of large tears. Her lips were moving, but the bustle of the crowd through which Mill now rushed drowned her words.

“Helm!” he cried over the shouting. “Stop her! Stop her! Sto–!”

Somepony rammed into him with such force he almost lost his helmet. A big stallion, covered in the same black and white paint as the mare, reared over him. Mill rolled aside half a second before the massive hooves shattered the tiles where his head had been. The next blow hit him in the ribs as he tried to scurry to his feet, bringing him down with a cry of pain. For an instant, he could see a torch being passed on to the mare on stage. She staggered towards it, guided by the smell of smoke, the heat; she extended her hoof, a terrible grin lighting her lips…

The scene disappeared from Mill’s vision as he had to again roll for safety. His training tried to tell him he was a unicorn fighting against an earth pony, but all his mind could hear was the future sound of his skull crunching. It made it kind of hard to focus on such an intricate task as standing up, not to mention using his horn.

The hooves surged for him again. This time they stopped midair, to the confusion of Mill and the stallion both. But that was nothing compared to the astonishment of seeing him rise from the ground and fly through the air like a volleyball. Mill watched him soar, mesmerized, until a hoof landing on his shoulder made him flinch.

“You okay?” asked Helm worriedly, his horn aglow.

Mill nodded shakily.

“Then get the buck up and do your job!” barked Helm, yanking him up. “We need to call reinforcements, secure the area, round up the usual suspects–”

“The mare!” exclaimed Mill. “What happened to the mare?”

The crowd had mostly dispersed, but many curious heads still peered around alleys, behind corners and from windows. Only then did Mill spot the stage where the mare lay stunned, along with another black and white pony. The torch was in his hoof, extinguished.

“I had to rough them up a bit before I could get to you,” said Helm. “It was close, I can tell you that.”

“What was, exactly?” asked Mill. He look around, and noticed that the stallion who had assaulted him had slipped away. “You saw that? She was going to…”

“Yeah,” said Mill darkly. “And she wasn’t alone. Go on, send the signal: I think there’s–”

“The morrow…” said a voice behind them. They swirled around, and saw the mare stagger up. Her horn flickered on and off dangerously. Her mutilated gaze pierced them. “The morrow… will burn…”

Before either of the guards could so much as blink, her horn let out the tiniest spark.

Helm averted his eyes, retching. Mill could not but stare. Even as the smell of charred flesh and hair trailed to his nose, he stared.

Somewhere around them, ponies started chanting.

***

Heart rubbed his temple, eyes closed. Sunset Shimmer had more punch to it than the name would suggest, he had found out. Or perhaps he was catching a sickness. He couldn’t remember any hangover which had taxed him this badly in his youth. In addition, Cowl had not signed in for duty this morning. All and all, it wasn’t the best of times to be dealing with a series of self-immolations. On the other hoof he couldn’t have said if such a time existed in the first place. He opened his bloodshot eyes at the roomful of ponies waiting for him to speak.

“Okay, let’s recount the facts. Two hours ago, in three different locations around the city, simultaneously, three ponies set themselves on fire. Before that, somepony had blinded them.” He paused to let the gravity of the situation settle in. “Anypony have any ideas what prompted such action from them?”

Lime Light was the first to cough, but Amber got to the speaking before him. “It doesn’t sound anything like we’ve encountered before. As far as we know, all the religious sects in the city forbid suicide. It must be a new player we’re dealing with here.”

“A proof of which is that the three victims were all different race,” said Lime. “The old sects are very sensitive about that sort of thing. And many witnesses report seeing some sort of cultists singing around the crime scenes. They had either painted their fur black and white or carried cloaks of the same color. They also intervened on any attempts to interrupt the… performances.”

“That’s what you’re calling them?” asked some sergeant.

“Obviously enough, they were designed for show,” answered Lime dryly.

“By whom?” asked Heart, taking a sip of water with his headache medicine. “And for what purpose? Those are the questions I want answered. Who are these people? What do we know about them?”

“Religion is not really my field,” said Lime, “But I know somepony who plows it every day.” He gave the room a knowing glance.

Luckily, Brightmail was in the building at the moment. They had yet again moved him to the armory, for lack of willing partners. The pony had so much religion in him that others started feeling sinful just from standing too near him. After a briefing he fell into one of his little quiet moments that boded for a pious quote or, hopefully, more silence.

“Three sacrifices,” he said quietly, almost to himself. “We are sure there weren’t more?”

“Not that we’ve heard,” said Heart. “Why? Is three a significant number here?”

Brightmail gave him a funny look, as if he had asked whether it was important having air around or not. “Three is everything, sir; the holy unity of the three races; the number of original alicorns; the days the Final Battle raged. Three is the number of the omens. And you say the sacrifices were from different races? Isn’t the meaning of all this obvious to you?”

The assembled officers and sergeants exchanged doubtful looks and threw annoyed ones back at Brightmail, who was only a private.

“Speak your mind, Brightmail,” said Heart.

His blue eyes turned to him. “An alicorn, sir.”

“An alicorn what?” said Heart over the mumble that erupted immediately.

“A portent of one, sir. The end times. The beginning times. You know the prophecy, sir. One day an alicorn will return. It’s just the details everypony argues about. And now we have the Sacrifice.”

“Why would an alicorn need a sacrifice to return?”

“The sins of the past must be washed with the blood of the innocents,” cited Brightmail. “Thus has been written.”

“Written where?” demanded Heart.

“Well… in my church's leaflets, among other places. It’s part of the prophecy. Although I must stress that we have always held a more metaphoric interpretation of it.”

“You’re dismissed,” said Heart wearily. “Go and see if anypony in your church has heard about a new cult in town.”

After Brightmail had gone, Heart gave the room at large a stern look. “In the case anypony had doubts about this, we’re investigating these deaths as a triple murder. Somepony out there messed three citizens badly enough to make them light themselves aflame. We can figure out why they did it after we’ve found them. That shouldn’t be too difficult, considering this cult isn’t trying to play it slowly. Officially, I’m hoofing this case to Lime Light, but I want everypony else to keep this in the backs of their minds. Now, go do your work.”

Heart’s office emptied quickly. Soon only one pony sat in the corner, writing fervently. It was Chart Top, finishing the transcription of the meeting. Once done, she set out to leave the room like the rest, with not a glance dedicated for Heart.

“Wait,” he said when she was already out of the door.

Top closed it before turning to him. “Sir?”

Heart watched her, then the wall, then her again. “I… about yesternight… we…”

Top waited patiently for him to finish. Heart wished she wouldn’t have. A little bit of frankness from her part would have made him feel a little less awkward.

“I hope you didn’t mind me leaving so early,” he concluded lamely.

She smiled neatly. “Not at all, sir. I understand you're very busy.”

This would have been so much easier if she had just given him the cold shoulder or outright sued him for something. But she simply stood there, neatly as always, smiling. As if last night had not existed after all. For some reason, it was the most irking – and strangely alluring – reaction she could have offered him.

“Well, I… hope we can keep working in the future as usual,” he struggled.

“I see no reason why we shouldn’t.”

“Right. Uhm. You can go now. Thanks,” he added, before he could stop himself.

She winked at him. “Anytime, boss.” And with that, she was gone. A part of Heart wished she wouldn’t have. He could have used somepony to talk to right now, and Cowl wasn’t around. On the other hoof, it was the very reason he was gone that he wanted to talk about.

He turned in his chair to face the window. The beautiful weather kept on going for the second day now, which must have been a mistake higher up. Perhaps the pegasi were experimenting on some new technique to keep the skies clear. Heart hoped that was the case – good news were something he could really welcome at the moment. If they ever learned to control the weather as well as the ponies of old, perhaps they could make the growing season longer and winter shorter. The profit would be measured in saved lives directly. Maybe we could send another salvage expedition to Cloudsdale…

The thought floated its course and then barged on a reef. It was a long term plan, which he had explicitly forbidden from himself. In a week, I’ll be out. Anything crossing that deadline will be somepony else’s problem. Speaking of which… He opened the top drawer and pulled out the map of Equestria. Dozens of notes littered its surface, along with arrows, crossed-out zones and big question marks. He gave it an overall look, searching for spots he had not yet considered. The number of them could be counted with his days left on the office.

Leaving the city was a risky move, Heart had no illusion about that. Food was the biggest issue – there was no telling which of the settlements on the map were still inhabited, which were but ruins. Mostly it all was desolate wasteland. Ponies did live there, in groups of few dozens or less, but they moved often and did not fancy showing their faces to strangers. Still, with some luck they should be able to make it to the sea. And from there… From there… was a question he’d solve on the way.

It was the journey that mattered, not the destination.

***

Even after they had carried away the corpses, the stench of rot lingered heavily on the murder scene of High North Lane mine. Technicians and guards had to use special masks just to keep themselves from fainting. Combined with the imminent risk of collapse, everypony’s nerves were rather taxed, which at the best of scenarios led to strained silence, in the worst to trivial bickering and arguments. And still there was no place in Equestria where Willow Fall would have rather been. This was his big moment; his first actual crime scene. And only last week had he been made a sergeant! Should he excel in this task, there was no telling where he might end up at the end of the month. A little bit of nasal stress counted for naught in comparison to that.

“Sarge!” came a shout from the exit tunnel.

Fall rolled his eyes. “It’s pronounced sergeant, Corporal,” he said, facing the shouter. “What is it?”

“There’s some folks up in the factory wanting to have a word with you,” said the Corporal.

Fall frowned. “Folks? What folks? Guard folks?”

“No, Sarge-ant. Civilians. Funnily dressed. Said it was urgent.”

“Sergeant, Corporal,” corrected Fall. “I thought I said no civilians are allowed near the site? Send them away. With force if need be. The integrity of the area is to be upheld at all cost.”

“Yes sir,” said the Corporal and trotted off. Fall thought of reminding him of the salute he had missed, twice, but let it pass this time. He was himself, too, still getting used to his new elevated position, after all.

“Sarge!” came a shout from the opposite direction.

“It’s sergeant, godsdammit!” burst Fall, turning around. “You should know better, Tin!”

Tin Key, one of the crime scene technicians, sneered under his mask. “Willow, seriously? You’re seriously going with the ‘get promoted, act like a snob’ cliché?”

The parts of Fall’s face that weren’t covered by his respirator blushed mightily. “I… That’s no way to address an officer!”

“You’re a Sergeant, not an officer,” said Tin, shaking his head.

“I–”

“Yes yes, I’m sorry and beg your forgiveness, oh lord,” continued Tin. “If we can move past that, there’s some stuff we found you should probably see.”

Fall muttered something under his breath. “You could at least not shame me before all the others…”

“You’re doing all fine on your own there. Now come, this is important.” When nopony else was looking, he whispered to Fall’s ear, “At home, I can call you sergeant until your ears fall off.”

Unlike the blush, the grin that spread on Fall’s lips remained his secret only. And Tin’s too, of course, who could guess such things about his partner in life quite easily by now.

They entered the room where Chancellor Feinsake’s and Senator Trail’s bodies had been found. Magical light lit a scene of two chalk outlines, dried blood, some chains and a few technicians working on these. Fall had no precise idea of what they were doing, but he decided to complement them for it anyway.

“Okay,” started Tin. “From the Captain’s account we have a rough idea of what happened here. First we have the insane Chancellor, torturing Heart and her foal. Then this fella Trail comes along, and she tries to kill him for a change, but ends up killed by him instead. Next, this fifth pony – let’s call him X – enters in, kills Trail and lets our Captain go.”

“A real tragedy,” commented Fall. “What did you want to show me, exactly?”

“Can you count?” said Tin. “There’s two chalk contours; Feinsake’s and Trail’s. The Captain and her daughter got away. So where’s the fifth pony?”

Fall frowned. “In the other room?”

Tin shook his head. “Nope. Those three were pegasi, and the mystery X was an earth pony, says Captain. We’re still trying to work out how the pegasi connect to all this – or how anything here connects to anything – but right now we can’t say anything but that they were skinned after they died. Also, we couldn’t help but notice that Trail’s cutie mark had been removed too, and that Feinsake’s belly had been cut open. Captain mentioned nothing of the sort in his story.”

The conclusion slapped Fall on the cheek. “So the Pony X is still alive.”

“Or he never existed,” said Tin, but quietly enough so that only Fall could hear him.

Fall gave him an amused look which still begged the question.

“Think about it,” said Tin, drawing Fall farther from the other technicians. “Feinsake tortured Heart, with his daughter present. That kind of thing can be quite upsetting. By that I mean he was probably mad with rage – anypony in his stead would’ve been. So what evidence do we have that Heart did not kill Feinsake and Trail himself and invent the pony X from thin air as a convenient scapegoat?”

The amusement quickly drained from Fall’s expression. “Okay, if we did not live together, I’d have to bring you in for questioning for that sort of thing.”

“Why? Can’t one suspect the Captain of a murder?”

Fall glanced at the other ponies just to make sure they weren’t listening. “That might as well be. But the point is that your theory is full of holes. Heart might’ve been ready to kill Feinsake and Trail, even with his daughter watching, but why on earth would he skin them? Or cut open Feinsake? And why would he even bother making up lies when he could have told nothing of the whole incident? The whole reason we are here is because he sent us here – you really think he’d be stupid enough to do that if he had anything to hide?”

“Fine, fine, I don’t have a full-fledged theory figured out yet” said Tin defensively. “The thing is, Captain’s story is not exactly the most waterproof I’ve heard of, either. For one, he said the pony X was blind and probably suffering from bloodloss. You really believe he would’ve been a match for Trail, a unicorn? And even if he had been, where is he now? Heart himself said he was in no condition to escape on his own.”

Fall paused for a moment. He knew Tin was not the kind of pony to rush into hasty conclusions or accusations, not in work nor in life in general. And it was true that this whole business stank like a week old corpse, and not just in the literal sense. It was the worst mass murder the city had seen for decades, and somehow the current Captain of the Guard had been right in the middle of it, along with the Chancellor herself. Somehow, Fall was starting to feel he had been appointed to a case that went far beyond his actual level of competence. The possibilities made his head spin.

“We have to play this nice and steady,” he said. “It’s too much for either of us to deal with, alone or together. For now, let’s go with the story Captain gave us and try to prove it.”

“And if we can’t…?”

Fall was about to answer, but another mispronounced call made him wince. “We’ll figure it out then,” he said. “Play it cool, Tin.”

“You too, Willow,” said Tin, watching him leave the room. He turned back to the crime scene, to the outline of Feinsake that rested against the wall. She had been pregnant, that much had been obvious. In the wake of the notion, the disturbing idea that perhaps there was also a sixth pony they were supposed to be looking for crossed his mind. It was cut short when he heard Fall curse loudly from the other room.

As he got there, he found Fall shouting at three funnily dressed ponies.

“Who in Tartarus do you think you are, marching into a crime scene?!” cried the Sergeant. “Get the hay out of here before you’re arrested for trespassing!”

Tin Key could see that the threat had very little effect on the ponies. All three wore ordinary cloaks which covered most their bodies. The middle one’s – a middle aged unicorn stallion – was dyed black and white, like his face was. Despite that, Tin could not help but wonder if he had seen him before. Or more precisely, a picture of him.

“Good day to you, Sergeant,” said the black and white unicorn courtly. “Could I perhaps speak to the officer in charge of this crime scene?”

“I am in charge here,” growled Fall. “Who–”

“Mr. Gruff, if you must know,” said Gruff. He smiled jovially, although in a strangely morbid way.

Tin Key saw how Fall’s expression tightened. The name of Mr. Gruff, while not exactly popular knowledge, had certainly been familiar in the Guard’s investigations, and more than once. He had a file on several categories, from witness to victim and class C suspect on cases which hadn’t even been considered crimes before he had committed them. In truth the pony was a walking category in and of himself.

“And in that case,” continued Gruff, “It would be my citizen’s duty to notify you of certain circumstances most vital for your investigations.”

“You can do all the notifying you want in the station,” said Fall. “Guards! Arrest these ponies and bring them into custody.”

“A move like that would be beyond inadvisable,” said Gruff calmly before anypony could move a muscle. “Our authority abides no infringements, I’m afraid.”

“Authority?” burst Fall. “What authority?”

“Divine.”

The voice had come deeper from the exit tunnel. Once inside the room, it appeared to circle around like fine mist, coiling around the ponies who had by now all ceased working. Hoofsteps approached them from the darkness, and soon revealed an earth pony walking alongside a unicorn foal of unidentifiable sex. They stopped at the edge of the glow of mismatched horn light.

“What is going on?” asked Fall, now evidently tense. “How’d you all get past my guards?”

The earth pony turned his mutilated eyes towards him. “They let us through. Without asking, mind you.”

Tin Key was starting to have a really chilling feeling about the situation. His knotted stomach was not the sole reason. The whole room was suddenly on edge. But of what? he thought, eyeing in turns the blind pony, Gruff, and the foal. There was something about the foal that drew the eye; something he could not quite put a hoof on; something uncanny. Fall had noticed it too, for he kept glancing at it from moment to moment. Tin saw sweat pearling on his neck. He opened his mouth.

“This is… I… am in charge here. You’re under… arrest…” He blinked, shook his head and then stared at the foal. “You… foal… Walk into the light so I can… see you better…”

The kid looked up at the blind pony who nodded. And then it walked into the light proper.

A couple horns died immediately as their owners forgot to keep them alight. A few more started flickering. Somepony fell to his knees. Mr. Gruff and the two other cloaked ponies bowed their heads. Distantly, Tin Key realized that the knot in his stomach had faded. Now only a plenum of nothingness remained.

It was not an alicorn. For that you needed a horn and wings. Perhaps it would’ve been less of a shock, to see a full alicorn. In a sense, there was nothing mystical about a foal with a cutie mark – save for the blatantly obvious fact that the kid was way too young to have a cutie mark. And what a cutie mark it was…

The sun devouring the moon; the moon consuming the sun. The sign of the prophecy. A symbol of the Catastrophe – the ultimate cataclysm. All the religious sects in the city had forbidden its use, and even many atheists shunned it. There was no name for it. For most it was known only as the Last Sign.

The reverent atmosphere of the room shattered at Fall’s snort.

“Really?” he said. “You really think you can fool us like that? A few cloaks and paint don’t yet make a prophecy come true.” He bended over the foal. “Somepony must’ve spent a good while on this, I have to admit. The paintwork is practically flawless. Might even be a tattoo.”

The guards exchanged confused glances. The cultists eyed Fall like he was a stain on a brand new mattress. But most of Tin’s attention was focused on the blind pony, whose expression of mild amusement now had a dangerous gleam to it.

“A nonebeliever, are you?” the pony asked with that eerie voice of his.

Fall raised his eyes to him, still smirking. “So you’re the ringleader of this little circus? An impressive achievement, considering your… disadvantageous condition.”

“You miss my blindness for sightlessness,” said the pony. “Personally, I take it for a blessing. Never have I seen clearer than I do now. I recommend it most warmly.”

“Right,” said Fall, straightening himself up. “Well, the show’s over. Guards! I think I gave you an order just a moment ago!”

“Before that,” said the blind pony, grabbing hold of the foal and lifting it up, “Would you mind taking a look closer of the Foal you’ve so carelessly judged false?”

“I try to keep my distance from children in general, if you catch my drift,” said Fall. He turned to the soldiers behind him, who still hesitated to move. “What’s the matter with you? Get on with it or else I’ll have you arrested for dis–”

I said look.

Fall stopped mid-sentence. The voice had not entered his conscience through his ears. Rather, it felt like he had thought the words himself, but he was sure he hadn’t. With glazed eyes, he turned his head.

In the lap of the blind pony, the Foal was staring at him more intently than any kid of that age ought to be able to. One eye was the finest shade of midnight, the other glowed the pearly white of pure light. Fall looked into them, and they looked into him, and together they looked into the beyond.

Seeing is believing, Willow Fall the Sergeant.

***

Unlike the ponies, griffons did not have family names. As an allegory for descendance, blood meant nothing to them. It was not uncommon for a griffon to forget who their parents, offspring or siblings were, especially if distance and time intervened between them. There was no vocabulary for family as close as a cousin. Having lived her whole life in Canterlot, Cecil was slightly more aware of his family tree than the average griffon was, yet even then she was in doubt if she had brothers or not. The male griffons she had lived with had moved from the city when she had been just a hatchling, and her mother rarely spoke of them as her children.

Pony scholars had for centuries wondered how a mating system seemingly as bizarre and chaotic as that could prevent the culture from degenerating in a matter of a few generations due the imminent risk of incestial mutations. Cecil, in her time, had read a few of the more influential tomes. It turned out that, in the conditions that counted as ordinary in the griffons’ racial history, the rapid flux and flow of individuals between tribes went a long way in securing what the pony scholars called “a healthy, natural, and sustainable population growth”.

Cecil had read because she had wanted to learn, not about herself and her kin, but about the ponies. Her need had been nothing but practical. Ever since the Fall, the two races had been forced to deal with each other more than they had in centuries. The truth was that neither knew the other very well, not at the level of society nor individual. Like all the griffon refugees, Cecil had had a very limited experience of the city outside the griffon district in her chickhood. Safety had been a big reason there: as big as the suspicion on both sides of the mountain.

And yet she had come to the conclusion she still held: the ponies were not the enemy. They were different, strange even, but not profoundly hostile to the griffon race. History, with some minor and regrettable exceptions, proved that. Their presence could be build on that, although it would demand mutual understanding and compromises. Yes, they had almost succumbed to a war recently.

“But the lesson there,” went Cecil on immediately, “Was that the real danger is ignorance, not any truth about them and us.”

She eyed the crowd gathered at the mountaintop as the murmur passed through it. It would have been a terrible mistake to call it a high level political summit, although no doubt some observing pony scholar would have named it just that. There was no tribe inside the mountain – only tattered remnants of tribes, constantly shifting in number and composition. There was no order, never had been. What there had been was chaos, spread all over the land. The problem was that it had concentrated too much.

“There is another lesson there,” said a voice behind Cecil. “One you are, for all your words, yet to speak.”

She turned around to face Falke, who circled the ring of griffons to the opposite direction.

“The ponies made the first move,” said Falke to everyone in general, although she never let Cecil fall out of her sight. “They moved, and what did we do? Curl up inside rock and stone? Gather to meet them head on? Flee?” She paused, basking in the howling wind that blew around them. “We did all that and more! We were unprepared! We moved in their terms. The question is, what are we going to do when they move next time?”

Someone stood up and started talking, right over another one. No one minded, but everyone focused on whoever happened to interest them at the moment. It was griffon decision making at its purest, in good and bad both. People came and went as they pleased. There was no timing, no secretaries to write things down, no deadline. For a meeting that might decide the fate of the griffon race, its organization was less than ideal, even in Cecil’s mind.

“Or better still, shouldn’t we be the first movers next time around?” went on Falke. “Living on this rock, sheltered from wind – it has made us go soft. And pathetic. We were a proud race, once. Now what are we? Molting husks waiting for the sun to finish us off?” Suddenly, she raised her voice above all the other speakers. “Blast the sun! And the moon! Those are pony gods, not griffon! Only ponies look up in their weak prayers, waiting for the worst; a griffon never does, because she is the worst there is! For the prey!”

It chilled Cecil to see how many listened to her. And they were really listening – her truth shined from their eyes. She could sense the hunger in them; a starvation that had nothing to do with fish. It had been too long since anyone had dared feed them anything but despair, and this foreign taste had a tantalizing taste to it. Bitter yet sweet; salty and primal. The taste of blood.

“Pony are not prey,” said Cecil, stepping closer to Falke. “Not under the Laws. What are we without them? Beasts! No, worse; beasts by choice! There is no pride in slaughter, no glory. No future.”

“Future…” said Falke, stretching the word. “Future… is bleak for the beaked folk. The past, too. We live in the present. Who knows about the morning to come? There’s only another sun waiting there.” With a single beat of her wings, she rose over Cecil. “These are your words. The words of despair. Why the sudden change? Why worry about the morning now? Tell us, Cecil. Tell us how all these pony words came to bind your tongue.”

Cecil was about to answer, but another voice drowned hers. “Falke speaks the truth!” cried the griffon, rising to the air to meet Falke. “Sister, I am in your debt! You have blown the wind under my wings again! For as long as I live, I will follow you!”

Others joined the choir, despite Cecil’s attempts to make herself heard. Few more griffons rose to the air to greet Falke, then a few more, and suddenly the whole mountain top was flooding with wild cries and oaths shouted into the wind. Soon Cecil stood alone on the cliff, staring at the storm raging above. In its eye, Falke was staring back at her. She was reaching out, offering Cecil her hand.

Cecil took off and glided effortlessly to her. An avian smile played on her friend’s face; hard and ambiguous. Cecil answered it in kind.

“Sister,” said Falke. “Will you fly with me?”

Cecil stopped before her extended hand. “Tell me, sister… How many fish did it take to make the first dozen join your little show?”

Falke’s hand fell limp. “You’d be amazed.”

“This cannot be the way,” said Cecil. “War will only bring us all to ruin. You know this.” She thought her own words, and her eyes widened in disbelief. “Oh no. You do know it.”

Falke gave her an empty look. “The Fall is behind us, Cecil. So are all the wars. Survival is all that matters now. Again, your words. Do you deny them now?”

Cecil shunned her gaze. “I…”

“That’s what I thought,” said Falke, and grabbed Cecil by the hand. She pulled her to an intimate embrace, stared deep into her eyes. “Every griffon for themselves, remember?” she whispered.

“...And us for each other,” muttered Cecil softly. She squeezed her hand. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”

Falke grinned like only a predator can. “Only tomorrow will know. It can wait for us to catch up.”

Chapter III: The Captain

Towards the end of the day, one at a time, scattered clouds began drifting over Canterlot. From beyond the mountain they came, via the route of barren plains that now paved the way to the eastern coast. Some of that barrenness had clearly rubbed into them, for the herd that finally accumulated above the city was black as coal. Veins of dark purple ran on the undulating ceiling, promising something more than mere water for rain. In the light of an oil lamp, in the office of the Captain’s mansion, Heart followed their ripples like swimming snakes.

Even a hundred years after the Catastrophe, many pockets of raw magical energy still littered the areas around the city; remnants of the terrible powers that had been unleashed that day. Sometimes, especially in autumn, some of that power rose up and mixed into the overpassing clouds, which would then rain on whoever was unlucky enough to be below at the time. There were stories, supposedly based on witnesses, of ponies who had turned to stone upon such encounters, or simply melted away as if they were made of sugar.

Most unicorns knew such fables to be little more than rubbish, but the two thirds of the pony race who were not as familiar with arcane lores had insisted that the city be protected against the magical downpours. Thus were the Barriers built. Occasionally, however, the discharges they were meant to bar were too strong, which led to leakages. These were rare nowadays, somewhat to Heart’s displeasement. The M-rains, as they were known, had a most positive effect on crime rates in the city. Nopony dared to go outside during them. It wasn’t even raining yet, and still the streets were as barren as they would ever be.

Such is the power of superstition, combined with panic, thought Heart. He reached for the glass, found it empty, and went for the bottle itself, which was dry as well. That was funny. He didn’t feel drunk, not one bit.

He got up from the chair, wavered about and tripped on his first step.

“Godsdamnlegs,” he mumbled while trying to figure out which muscles moved his front hooves. This only managed to get him tangled on the carpet. Finally he gave up and focused on breathing heavily and on his mane that had fallen over his eyes.

Hilt had left an ample storage of his home made liquor behind, and the weird thing about it was that the more you drank, the better it tasted. It was like magic. And certainly better than sleep. That didn't demand much nowadays, though – not for him. Not for the poison that he had for dreams.

Lying on the carpet, it occurred to Heart that his father had died in this very same room. The thought wasn’t newborn, of course. Still it felt like it, every time it hit him. Perhaps Hilt had succumbed on this very same spot. Heart had never asked about the details of his demise. There had been no time, or when there had been, something else was lacking. He had the shameful notion it was courage, and a terrible fear that it was not; that he simply did not care.

His father had died in this room to a heart attack. But that wasn’t the whole truth. The room had killed him; the room and everything it represented. It turned into his grave the moment he stepped into it as a Captain. And now it had a new soul to feed on, to grow on, to swallow and digest. The room was a beast, and a machine; a beastial machine. A machine for ponies. I may be the largest cog, but a cog nonetheless. Get too near me and you get crushed.

He rolled lazily to his back, and screamed.

“Sir!” shouted a guard who rushed into the room a few seconds later. “Everything alright?”

Heart panted on the floor, staring at the window with wide eyes. “I… I saw a shadow… an angel of death… it stared right through me…”

The guard glanced at the window. There was nothing there but his own reflection, staring back in the lamplight.

“I can’t see anything, sir.”

Heart, the more official part of his mind becoming increasingly aware of his less than presentable condition, made him stand up. The brief moment of terror forced enough order to his limbs to only make him shake slightly. “Right… I may have imagined it…”

“As you say, sir.”

The room spun in Heart’s vision, but he ignored the fact for now. He coughed, wiped his mane out of the way and gave the guard the sternest look he could muster at the moment. “How’s the night been?”

“Quiet, sir. Was just about to change shift.”

Heart nodded. “And Lily?”

“Sleeping soundly I hear, sir.”

“Good,” said Heart. “That’s good. Gravel, Grain, and Blunt still on guard there?”

“For a few more minutes, sir.”

Heart nodded again, for any other gesture would’ve been much too hazardous from his balance’s point of view. “Good. You’re dismissed. Oh, and…”

“Like said, I saw nothing, sir,” said the guard, smiling the faintest of smiles. With that, he left and closed the door behind.

Heart swayed on his legs, wondering what rumours would start seeping into his ears in a day or two. No matter how tact the smile, everypony knew that guards gossipped like little fillies on cider. With any luck, he wouldn’t have to deal with sudden shrill screams behind every corner he would pass. Or drawings of angels of death sketched in the corners of daily reports…

He turned around, and saw the angel of death.

This time he didn’t scream, for his heart was in the way of his voice. He merely froze on the spot as the apparition stared at him from the darkness beyond the glass, its eyes gleaming in the faint light. He could hear a clock clacking, although the room had none: a mechanic, hollow ticking trickling into his ears, boding annihilation.

Before Heart got to deciding that screaming might be an option after all, he realized that the ticking voice came from the glass, which the thing beyond was tapping. With a claw, it seemed. Suddenly, pieces started falling into their places like bricks; hard and real.

He marched to the window and hurled it open so quickly that the visitor on the other side almost broke the swinging panel with her beak.

“Hey, watch it!” said the griffon angrily, floating a few meters outside the window.

Heart blinked at the sight. Dozens of ingrained protocols made a plea to implementing themselves, and all of them led to a conclusion where the griffon ended up as a wet smear on the pavement below. It was ultimately the alcohol that dragged the decision long enough to make him actually think before acting.

“What… who… why?” he asked.

The griffon tilted her feathered head. “You drunk or just overjoyed to see me again?”

There was something in her voice that stirred a memory in Heart. “Wait… Cecil? It’s you?”

“I recalled you were a clever pony. Will you let me in now?”

Heart had a rich history of actions way more stupid than letting an almost unknown griffon into his house in the middle of the night. An equation between curiosity, suspicion, and open rage at the world in general sought balance in him. He was in no condition to fight, if it came to that. Somehow, he doubted it would.

Heart stepped aside to let the griffon in, and closed the window after her. “What do you want?”

Cecil looked around the room with apparent disinterest. “Pony homes. Full of so many things that a griffon would never need. You folks live in museums.”

Heart was about to bark at her to get to the point (which, at two o'clock in the morning, better not be about his interior decoration), but a quiet voice within reminded him that griffons weren’t at home under direct questioning.

“It was furnished when I moved in,” he said dryly.

“Whatever, I didn’t fly here to discuss that,” she said, turning her attention sharply to him. “I came to deliver a warning. Tomorrow, a war will start between griffons and ponies.”

For the first time in his life, Heart’s jaw dropped.

“Or that’s what you people will call it,” continued Cecil. “It won’t happen like you think. There won’t be any fancy declarations, neat forming of regiments, any of that crap. There will be violence. Not all griffons will partake in it, but enough will that it makes no difference. I think the first attack will be on the grain si–”

Her words choked on her throat as Heart’s magic clenched it. She struggled against the ethereal grip, fighting to remove the fingers that weren’t there. Her paws shredded the carpet as she kicked mindlessly, and her tail smashed a pot plant as it whipped the air. Still Heart strangled her, eyes wide, jaw shut so tight his teeth were about to crack.

“Who… the hay… do you think… you are?” he said, voice trembling. “Making threats… in my house…”

Horrible, smothered noises left her. She was blinking now, losing focus. Her left claw was still on her throat, drawn there by instinct, but the right one groped blindly behind her. It hit something, clasped and hurled the object at Heart.

For the record, it should be said that it was a book on the pre-Catastrophe history of the races griffon and pony. This was relevant only because it had over two thousand pages and for all intents and purposes weighed like a brick.

Heart caught the tome with his forehead. Even in his best condition that would’ve offered a major distraction. Drunk as he was, it almost knocked him over. It didn’t need to, for Cecil, now released from the spell, was on him in a split second. She swiped his legs from under him and rammed his head against the floorboards in one seamless motion.

“I should cut your head off for that,” she hissed. “But maybe I’ll settle for a little reminder instead. Something you’ll certainly remember.”

“Ihllsomgh,” said Heart. It was a miracle he was still conscious after that last blow.

“For your luck, I’m not in the mood for staining my feathers,” she said with a voice like a razorblade. “I only came to say you this: be prepared. I didn’t want it to come this. You know that. But some things aren’t ours to control. The last hundred years, for one.”

Heart was distantly aware that she was speaking to him. For the most part he verged between fainting to the booze or to the pain.

Hoofsteps hurried towards them from the corridor. Cecil snarled under her breath and leaned closer to Heart’s ear. “If you can hear me still, know that I’ll be among the ones who won’t leave the caves tomorrow. And I’ll make sure that as many as possible do the same. It’s the best I can do. I suggest you do the same in your end, whatever that is.”

When the door burst open a few seconds later, the guards found Heart alone on the floor in a messed up room. The window was closed. They tried to wake him up, which only made him snore louder.

The guards had been assigned to the mansion already when Hilt had been the Captain. This sort of thing was less unorthodox to them than one might expect. Thus they hauled him up, delivered him to his bed and tucked him in.

The next morning, they were sincerely stunned to find Heart cursing them to the lowest pit of Tartarus for doing this, right before he rushed outside half dressed and apparently gone mad.

***

Heart galloped through the streets chased by the end of the world. For a good, chilling while he was convinced it had already made it past him, for there was practically nopony in sight. Then he gazed up, and saw that the M-clouds were still there, filling the sky from horizon to horizon. That was odd. Usually they rained themselves out quickly enough and dispersed afterwards in due order. Now they almost seemed to be waiting for something. Had Heart not been driven by terrible panic, he might’ve stopped to wonder about that.

He made it to the guard station in record time. The insides of his head felt two sizes too big for his skull, and sweat had glued his badly dressed uniform into his skin, but still he managed to begin barking orders right as he stepped into the building.

“Everypony, listen! I want every horn we got on patrol duty in two minutes! Fully equipped! This is not a drill! All officers, meet me in my office in one minute for briefing! This is not a drill!”

He stopped to draw a precious breath. To his relief, the lobby was already filled with movement, shouting, and general rushing. It was as if they had heard his orders even before he had issued them. Wait a minute…

He seized a guard running by from his tail. “Soldier! What is going on here?”

“Captain?” said the surprised guard. “You’re here? When–”

“Of course I’m bloody here! I’m the Captain! Now start explaining: have the griffons launched an attack already?”

The guard’s face radiated confusion. “The griffons…? No, sir?”

“Then why is everypony running around like the building was on fire?”

“Uhh, because of the event? It’s been like this the whole morning, sir. Something’s going on on the east side; near the Ledge. Something big.”

Heart tried to comprehend some of that. He couldn’t. “Where did you hear about this? And what were you going to do about it? By whose orders?”

The guard seemed to shrink under his stare. “I… I don’t know, sir. There was only the rumour. And I heard that somepony said you weren’t available today. Some Lieutenants started giving orders, but they were all contradicting each other, and–”

“I get the picture,” said Heart grimly. “Well, I’m here now. Start spreading the word. I want everypony on their positions in ten.”

“Minutes, sir?”

“Seconds. Go.”

He left the guard and marched across the lobby, shouting orders as he went. Where he went, an order of sorts followed. As he got to his office door, he was pretty certain that already half of the Guard was back in line, and the rest would catch their cue from them. In a few minutes, most of the officers had found their way into his office.

“Now,” started Heart. “What happened here?”

In contrast to the din that had reigned only moments ago, the sudden silence was the clearest answer Heart could’ve got. It figured all too well. The Citizen Guard was a fractured organization at the best of times. It was meant to shelter the city, mostly from itself, but nopony had really thought that sometimes it was the Guard that needed protection. It wasn’t immune from the general doubt and insecurity that had plagued Canterlot for years, now more so than ever before. There were days when Heart could feel that if somepony sneezed too hard, it would all collapse.

“I got the impression that something was going to take place on the east side,” he continued. “Somepony here has to know something more about that.”

“I heard an alicorn will come,” said a Sergeant warily.

“Heard from whom?” pressed Heart.

The Sergeant swallowed, looked around and pointed at some other pony. “Wasn’t it you who said first, Cliff?”

Sergeant Cliff looked panicked under all the gazes that turned to him. “No! No, I swear! It was Hull who told me about it!”

From somewhere back, another denial erupted, followed by an accusation. This went on for some while. At some point the ring made a full circle and returned to the original Sergeant. By then the room was bubbling with conversations, and Heart was closing in on a boiling point.

“Everypony, shut up!” he snapped. “Okay, let’s forget where the rumour started. Why did it drive all of you crazy?”

“Not all of us,” said Lime Light, stepping into the front row. “I knew the rumour was rubbish the second I heard it, but then it was already too late – the poison had taken effect on the body. We tried to restore order with a few other officers. But some wanted to get to the east side at once, along with the crowds, although we couldn’t–”

“Wait,” interrupted Heart. “You’re saying there’s people gathering on the east side? Because of the rumour there’s going to be an alicorn? Despite the M-clouds?”

There was something like a collective nod. Heart sank into his chair.

“This is insane… Why has everypony gone insane? We’ve been promised new alicorns ever since the Last one got sucked into the void! Why has everypony suddenly started believing in that crap?” He waved an irritated hoof at his own words. “It doesn’t matter. We’re what counts for a police force in these parts. If the M-rains won’t keep the crowds at bay, we will. Besides, there is something else I think you should know…”

He recounted the yesternight’s encounter with Cecil, or the parts he could still remember, sieved through carefully and hastily woven censorship.

“They’re going to attack us?” asked somepony.

“In some fashion, yes,” said Heart. “There’s a possibility it was a griffon’s idea of a joke, but I’m not counting on it. I want fifty horns per grain silo. Guard them with your life, and call for reinforcements if needed. Some other locations need to be secured also: this building, the armories, city gates–”

“–the Parliament?”

“–buck the Parliament. They can have it if they will. Secure what is important: food, water, weapons, main streets.” He drew the map of the city from a drawer. “I’ll mark here the key spots: start making copies and distribute them. Lieutenants: begin organizing the squads.”

“How about the east side?” asked Lime Light.

Heart gritted his teeth. “Does anypony actually know what’s going on there? Anyone visited the site?”

“It’s on the Ledge, is all I hear,” said somepony. And that seemed to be it.

Heart stared at the map. The Ledge was not a good place for a lot of ponies to meet. Regardless what the construction companies promised, the area was known for its unstable geography. And with a possible M-storm ahead, literally anything could happen, not discounting a mass panic. And what if this connected to the self-immolations of yesterday? All this sudden chaos had a distinctly engineered taste to it. Somepony was rocking the boat. In a storm.

“I’ll go there,” said Heart to the map. “Me and a few soldiers who can keep their heads cool.”

Lime gave him a doubtful look. “Sir? What is your plan?”

“To observe,” said Heart, looking up. “Evaluate the threat. If things go as I think they will, there will be a lot of waiting for nothing. In that case it’s good that the citizens are at least out of the fighting's way. But I want to be updated every hour, or in case something decisive happens. Different squads are to keep constant contact with each other, to know that nopony is taken out by a surprise attack.”

By now, the momentum of a clear objective, combined with the means to achieve it, was starting to pull its weight. Heart could see the subtle change in the group; the strange way their figures turned sharper. They knew they were soldiers again. The next trick is to remind them what that means, exactly…

“One more thing,” said Heart. He waited until every pair of ears was listening. “The situation is grim. In the turn of an hour it may turn desperate. But I want each and every one of you to swear, not so much to me but to themselves, that it’s not by their hoof that that happens. The Guard is not to commence open hostilities. In other words: you see a griffon, you ask first and go from there. Remember that our first duty is to see that there is law around. Officially, that same law applies to griffons, too. The moment you start treating them as the enemy instead of a citizen, you’ve failed your true purpose.”

“And what if one of our good compatriots is trying to slice my throat?” asked somepony from the back.

“You arrest them,” said Heart bluntly.

“And if that fails…?”

Pray they don’t have a history book on them. “You give them fines for resisting arrest.” This got out a nervous laugh. That was good. At least they could still pretend to be relaxed. “Well then. You know your assignments, and if you don’t, you know where to get them. Go do your work.”

Aside from a few higher officers who stayed behind to discuss details with Heart, the room emptied quickly. As the noise level came down, Heart could make out somepony writing in the back of the room. He glanced past the Lieutenants, and saw Chart Top sitting in a corner, putting down the minutes as always. Still the sight surprised him: he had no idea at what point the mare had slipped into the room. He was further surprised when, after the Lieutenants had left, she walked to him timidly. A trinket of some sort hung from the corner of her notepad.

“Uhm… Could I have a brief word with you, sir? Please?”

“Sure,” said Heart carefully. Top didn’t seem like her brisk, cheery self today. A veil of hesitation hung over her, its stings making her fickle. “Is something wrong?”

She gave him a sad, slightly scared look. “You’re… Are you really going to go to the Ledge?”

“...yes?” said Heart.

“Could you… uhm… No, it’s silly of me to ask. I’m sorry for the bother. Bye.” She swirled around and scurried for the door.

“Hey, wait!” exclaimed Heart, standing up. “Whatever it is you’ve got to say, you can say it. Consider that an order if it helps.”

She stopped, turned, and walked meekly to him. A lone tear appeared to the corner of her eye. “I’m so sorry… It has all been so hectic here today; my nerves are shredded. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” said Heart. He faltered for a moment, and then laid a compassionate hoof on her back. “We’ve all been on edge lately, myself included. No shame in that. Really.”

She smiled at him weakly. “Thank you, sir.”

“Never mind the sir. Now, what you wanted to say?”

She chewed her lip a bit, then offered him the trinket. It was a small necklace with some kind of a gem hanging from it. A few bits would buy you a score of those, if you knew the right alley to look for.

“Incase an alicorn really comes to the Ledge… Could you give her this?”

The request wasn’t quite what Heart had been expecting, and a great part of him was overly relieved of that – to the shame and guilt of another one. He accepted the jewel nonetheless. “I’ll do my best. Can I ask what for?”

“It… belonged to my sister. She is gone now. No, don’t be sorry, it happened years and years ago. I’ve gotten over it. Still… They say an alicorn can pass on gifts to the Other Side. For the loved ones. It’s silly, I know… Really, what was I thinking…”

He raised her chin gently with a hoof. “If that is what counts for silly nowadays, then I’ll carry the name with pride.” He pocketed the trinket like it was worth all the gold in the world. “You should, too.”

Her smile grew stronger. “You have a good heart, Captain.”

A smile lit his face now also. “A deckful of them, actually. But only when stakes are involved, of course.”

***

It just had to be him, hadn’t it? Of all the ponies in the guard, it had to be him. What had he done to deserve such treatment? Four years of mostly impeccable service, and for that he always got the most dangerous, looney tasks they had to offer. Perhaps it was his fate to–.

“Oh, shut up already,” said Stone Mill, interrupting his friend’s lamentation. “It’s not as bad as that. You’re only roiling yourself more.”

Helm Cleaver made a wounded face. “Oh, really? So I’m just blowing it out of proportions agains, am I?”

“Things could be worse, is all I’m saying,” said Mill patiently.

“A very original comment,” replied Helm. “Indeed, out of my head I can imagine a dozen scenarios worse than walking into a possible riot in the Ledge, with no back up and with a bucking M-storm about to hit the city!”

Helm shook his head slowly. “Well, would you rather be defending the silos from a griffon attack?”

“At least then we’d have back up.” He paused to gnaw the strap of his helmet. “I don’t get it: why do we always get picked to go on the Captain’s crazy adventures?”

“Because I happen to trust you,” said Heart, who entered the lobby around a corner.

The two soldiers sprang to attention. The effect was somewhat ruined by the strap that was still stuck to Helm’s teeth. Heart eyed them with a hint of amusement and a great deal of irony at his last words.

“Lieutenant Cowl trusted you enough to send you fetch me from my home in an emergency,” he continued. “And back in the Cliffs, you showed exemplary courage and steadiness. Both are acutely needed on this mission, which is why I once again picked you.”

Helm spat the strap from his mouth. “Yessir! Thank you sir!”

“A question, sir?” said Mill, who was trying to bury his smile. At Heart’s approval, he said, “We were told to accompany you on a mission to observe. What are we to observe, exactly?”

Heart considered this for a moment. “We’ll know it when we see it, I suppose. In the meantime, watch out for anything suspicious; anything out of place. A pony in an attempt of setting themselves on fire, for example. An alicorn would be another one.”

“You really believe there might be…?”

“I don’t know,” said Heart. “And in truth it does not matter. We’re there to evaluate the threat to public peace. Everything you’ll see there, you’ll see through that lense.” He narrowed his eyes slightly. “Do either of you consider themselves especially religious?”

The guards blinked. Suddenly, neither were very comfortable meeting Heart’s gaze.

“I wouldn’t say especially…” started Helm. He coughed into his hoof. “I mean, we visit the Temple of Hexagonicity and Crystal Church every week with the kid and wife… Mostly for the wife…”

“I pay my tithes,” said Mill. “Not always to the same church, though. I mean, there’s so many of them… Kind of betting it safe, I guess…”

Heart couldn’t have been less surprised. He had once heard a statistic which claimed that Canterlot’s various religious movements combined had twice the city’s population worth of members. It wasn’t uncommon for an average pony to visit a different church every day of the week. But “betting it safe” was not the driving reason behind the spiritual multiplicity. The sects were highly specialized. There were dozens of churches, cults and whatnots focused on the diverse parts of ponies’ souls and what would happen to them on the Other Side, all fighting for members or, as Heart saw it, customers.

Naturally, when religion was just another market, normal ponies tended to get kind of irrespective of it. And yet, today, something had stirred a part inside the souls of Canterlotians to which no sect had yet found a name – belief. Something had made them dare the weather and gather on the Ledge, waiting for an alicorn. Until he knew exactly what that something was, he’d treat everypony as possibly infected. But until he found one good atheist, these two would have to make do.

They left the station in short order and headed to the Ledge at a gallop. Enough light filtered through the roof of the clouds to announce that noon was approaching. The streets ought to have been filled to the brim, but they hardly encountered a single citizen on their way. Five blocks from the edge of Ledge, Heart stopped. “Undress yourselves,” he said, and started removing his armor piece by piece.

Helm and Mill exchanged a look. “Sir… You mean we’ll go in unarmored?”

“Steel won’t do us any good there,” said Heart. From under his plates, a worn, plain robe unfolded. “Indistinguishability will. Remember: we’re there to observe. The best way to do that is to not to be seen yourself.”

The guards watched him wrap the robe tightly around him, then started stripping their own mail and plates.

“Sir: do we get cloaks, too?” asked Helm.

“You won't need any. But somepony might recognize my face. It’s flashed on the papers lately.” He messed his mane and patted some dirt on his face, after which he drew the deep hood over his head. He kept his original uniform underneath the robe, just in case he happened to need its authority. “How do I look?”

“Like a class A gibberer,” said Mill automatically. Both him and Helm froze immediately, but Heart only raised an eyebrow at them.

“An interesting description. I trust in its accuracy. Now, let’s move. At trot.”

“You nearly blew the lid off the game,” hissed Helm in Mill’s ear as they set off.

“That’d be the least of our problems now, wouldn’t it?”

“Maybe for you it is,” spat Helm. “Just so you know: uniforms or no, I’m still playing, and you’re judging. I got the fifth anniversary and a couple of birthdays coming on top of a Heart’s Warming Eve. The real apocalypse comes when I don’t win the week’s pot.”

The three ponies trotted into the Ledge, leaving a pile of armor behind some trash cans. Soon enough, a fourth one came to study them, although not for long. It was their owners that he was interested in.

***

Like all of Canterlot, the city built on a mountainside, the Ledge had an extremely economic grid. No space was wasted for stray alleys or backyards, and all the buildings were built side by side. The streets were narrower than usual, for traffic in general had grown scarcer in the post-Catastrophe city. There was but one main square in the district – a crescent shaped clearing right at the edge of the cliff, slanting slightly to the breathtaking drop. Even the more optimistic developers had considered it too risky a site to build on.

And now it had been packed full of ponies. Heart could scarcely believe his eyes. There were thousands of them, squeezed on the clearing and even on the streets leading to it. Young, old, rich, poor – everypony. The air was dense with feathers, wing beats, and indistinct murmur. Its commanding tone was definitely tense. Out around him, Heart could see a few brawls going on. Countless makeshift stages had sprung from nothing, along with whatever prophet happened to holler above them. All the major churches seemed to have a representation present. Heart even fancied seeing a glimpse of the famous rainbow cloak traditionally worn by the Deacon of the Unity Church, although it was more likely that somepony had stolen it from him again.

There were a million different things happening. The thing was, as far as Heart could see, this included nothing much. The situation was chaotic, but only as chaotic as one would expect a ten-thousand strong crowd to be. Heart was looking for a special sort of chaos while hoping from the bottom of his heart that he’d fail.

Over the tumult, a noticeable puff carried to Heart’s ears. He looked up and saw an intricate magical pattern flash against the background of dark purple clouds. It lasted for a few seconds, then evaporated. All’s well, recounted Heart. No sign of griffons. Yet.

The sky signs weren’t an ideal tool for any more complex communication. There was no helping it, though. No courier could find him in this mass, not unless he wanted to. But drawing attention to himself wasn’t the first thing on his to-do list at the moment.

All was well, for now. It would not last. Heart felt it in his guts. The sensation burned like a hot coal, galvanizing his senses and pushing fine sweat on his brow. He could see that others had caught it, too. The herd knew what was coming, although no individual did.

Although in theory the crowd remained still, in practice this was but an illusion in the same sense that a lake may appear as calm as a mirror. It was calmness fractured with countless little vibrations, tiny streams and fluctuations. Heart swam along, aiming nowhere in particular. He was observing. And, according to all the laws that govern these things, was observed in turn.

A hundred eyes glanced at him every second, and yet he only felt a pair of them. He was being followed. Had someone asked him how he could know that, the answer would’ve had something to do with needles and haystacks. That was because analogies were the closest thing language had to a hunch of a seasoned copper. That, and a face painted black and white was rather hard to miss.

They can’t know who I am, can they? he thought while navigating his way deeper into the herd. My face shouldn’t be that familiar. Besides, nopony should know I’m even here. He made a sharp turn to the left, strode forward and looked if the pony was still on him. She was, and now she had a friend. They shouldered people aside while closing in on him. Heart cursed under his breath and headed straight ahead. He had no idea which direction the city was, but neither did it matter anymore. Now the goal was to lose his twintail.

He zigzagged in the mass of moving bodies, but his pursuers were relentless. At times they even managed to cut his course, random though it was. Then he realized that there now four ponies after him; then six; and then he could not tell anymore…

They had him surrounded. In the middle of a horde, he was suddenly being hunted. It made no sense. They must be mistaking me for somepony else. They must be. They came from all angles, all sides, all at once. Heart’s sweat – no longer fine but thick and cold – glued the uniform to his fur under the robe. The closest pony was about to grab him, but a passerby pushed into his way. What do I do? What do I do? I can’t start a fight in the middle of civilians. What do I–

He happened to glance at his chest. It was glowing. Mesmerized, he peeked into the folds of his robe and into the pocket of his uniform. Inside, curled together like some animal, the little trinket radiated soft, green light.

A hoof landed on his shoulder from behind.

“Captain Heart. May we have a word with you in private?”

Heart looked around slowly. The unicorn mare’s horn was glowing with the same shade of green as the amulet.

“Who’s asking?” he said. The mare nodded past him. Heart turned his head, right in time to get to know what it felt like to be hit by a speeding truck. He dropped out cold the same instant the big stallion landed his iron reinforced hoof.

Nopony paid much attention to the little scene, not even as they carried Heart away. It was just another brawl; just another problem that wasn’t theirs. Besides, they had more important things to attend to. An alicorn was coming. The pyres had promised thus. A hundred years had promised thus. This was it.

And for hay’s sake was it about time.

***

As Heart woke to the massive headache, he could not help but to think there was something painfully familiar to all this. I’m sure it’s not in the regulations that an address with the Captain of the Guard requires kidnapping and beating him first…

He opened his eyes and saw nothing. It was pitch-black around him, but from the general experience he deduced that he was in a room of sorts. It had a stone floor and some hay for sleeping. The smell reminded him of the cells under the guard station – used and dry. It wasn’t the most comforting smell to wake up to, but at least it beat the previous two times. The remnants of his hangover, coming to him with delay, made up for the lacking nausea more than handsomely though.

Now let’s see… I still got my horn, so “they” probably just want to talk, not torture. I wonder what it is this time? Are they first going to go over their childhood; how they’re not really that bad; how they’ve got a real good reason for doing this. The best there is. I’m just not sure how many “best reasons” I can handle anymore…

He fumbled his way forward and hit a row of steel bars. They had been coated with powdered obsidian – the bane of all magic. So maybe it’s torture, after all, he thought with disdain. At least it’s a clue of my whereabouts. Not many can afford magic-proof cells nowadays. Could it be some millionaire turned cultist? But what the hay would they want from me? Well, I’m sure they love nothing so much as to explain that, as soon as they turn up…

Heart sat down to wait and, more or less to his own detriment, to think.

Time passed.

Funny. They don’t usually take this long. Maybe they’re testing my nerves? Trying to soften me? Good luck with that. I’m used to waiting. Especially in the dark.

I wonder if they think I’m still unconscious?

How long have I been here?

No rush. I can wait. I’ve waited all my life. They’ll come, sooner or later. It’s not that they’d just forget me here, right?

Right.

What time is it?

This is stupid. What, they think I’ll break this easily? Some nerve. Who are they even? What do they want?

I hope Lily’s okay.

Okay, that does it. Come now. Come now before I get really mad at you. We can still settle this. I’ve used to settling things like this. I’ve used to.

If I start shouting… Will they come then?

Is it morning already? Or day still? Night?

Nopony came for an incalculable time. Heart shouted. Not loudly; just a bark informing that whoever was pulling the strings could raise the curtain now. Nothing happened, save the death of the echo. He shouted again, this time banging the bars too.

Nopony came.

Instinct urged him to shout more, but his sense of pride refused to obey. This was all part of the game. Perhaps it was a different game than what he had been used to, but a game it was nonetheless. Twisted, malicious game.

There were hoofsteps. Coming closer. Now, a faint lamplight: he could see other cells in the glow. They looked oddly familiar.

“About time,” grumbled Heart as the pony stopped before the bars. The light stung his eyes, so he could not get a good look at the figure. It had sort of a cubic look to it. “So, what’s it going to be this time?”

“Hay,” said the dull voice. He seemed to look behind Heart. “Haven’t finished the last batch yet? What, stuff’s too good for a goody four shoes?”

Several thoughts crossed Heart’s mind. He recognized the voice, although every part of him was convinced that he was wrong. He knew now where he was, and couldn’t believe that either. Third, he had apparently slept on his own meal.

“Dab?” Heart managed.

Dab the Jailor tuned down his lamp just enough so Heart could catch his grin. “Who were you expecting? The Spirit of Heart’s Warming Eve?” He dropped the bail of hay from his back and shoved it past the bars. “Now, don’t get too picky this time, eh? Won’t come here until the midday.”

“Dab,” said Heart. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“Why, my duty only, sir. Or is it sir anymore? Don’t think it is. Going to call you that anyway. Has a nice ring to it, ‘sir’. Sir.”

At this point Heart was convinced that either of them had gone insane. That was the only reasonable explanation for the situation. How else could the Captain Of the Guard lay imprisoned in his own cells while being mocked by the lowest ladder in the many-stepped hierarchy of the organization: the Jailor?

“Dab,” he tried again. “I’m Heart. You know I am. Let me out. That’s an order.”

“No can do, sir. Got new orders, and new orders makers. Can’t see the difference, really, but what’s it helping? Not my duty, seeing the difference…”

To Heart’s horror and rage, Dab started to walk away.

“Wait! Let me out of here! Whose orders? What’s happening here! Get back here! That’s an order!”

“See you later, sir,” was all Heart heard past his own shouting. “Hope they go easy on you. You weren’t all that bad, in the end.”

Dab left. The darkness returned. The questions screamed on inside Heart’s head, tolling insanity.

He tried to lit his horn. Although the effort was successful, the weight of the nearby obsidian made it presence known. It was like trying to swim in syrup. If I try to break those bars, I might crack my horn.

He tried to break the bars.

His horn didn’t crack, but only because his consciousness got there first. He stumbled back, hissing in pain, and collapsed on the stack of hay. The shivers came soon, hot and cold both, boiling the rage which had never left.

In the same way the darkness never had.

Chapter IV: The Father

For as long as she had lived, Canterlot had been shadowed by her mountain like a fruit shaded by the trunk. The relation of the two had always been an umbrage; sometimes leaning more towards protection, sometimes closer to danger. But the two could never have been separated. Every autumn, the fruit would fall, only to replay the process of its own demise. It was beautiful, really, when one thought about it. At least for Lime Light it was.

“...and Silo Seven reports the same,” finished the messenger. “No griffon activity in sight anywhere. So far, it’s all been quiet.”

“Dead quiet,” rumbled Sergeant Hall. “They’re up to something. I feels it in my guts.”

There were four ponies around the table beside Limelight: his two closest subordinates, a clerk and the messenger. All were looking at Light, who was looking at the mountain. Silo Five, on the yard of which they had set up a temporary command center, was the closest one to the Cliffs. He had been the only officer to specifically request deployment here.

“That may be,” said Light distantly. After a pause he added, “Indeed.”

The rest of the guards exchanged a look. Light had a reputation among the lower ranking officers. The thing was, nopony could put much content to it. The pony was as enigmatic as the names of the books he could be seen reading in his office at times.

Hall coughed into his hoof. “We have orders, sir?”

Light gave the mountain yet another, almost longing glance, then turned to the Sergeant. “Reconnaissance. Sent out two teams of five to scout the roads leading to the Cliffs.”

Hall hesitated. “Sir… If I may say so, can’t see a griffon using roads for an attack.”

Light’s stoic expression didn't change. “That is exactly why I want those roads secured, Sergeant. You’re dismissed.”

As Hall trotted away, he formed the word “tit” with his lips behind the Lieutenant. The others tried not to see that.

“Sir,” started another Sergeant, named Moss. “Not meaning to question your orders, but why do you want us securing roads we know the griffons won’t use?”

Lime, his focus yet again wandering towards the mountain, said, “Exactly because. The griffons aren’t stupid. If they know we know that they won’t be using the roads to attack, they will probably use the roads to attack. That’s what we would do.”

Sergeant Moss gave this a thought. “Uhm… But sir: what if the griffons decide that they know that we know they know. Won’t they then attack us from the air?”

“Ah, but that is why we have the pegasi weather teams patrolling the skies, don’t we?” answered Light.

“Right, right,” said Moss.

“Uuh…” began the messenger. “Sir… Haven’t they told you? There’s no pegasi patrols on air right now. It’s the M-clouds: flying above rooftops is strictly forbidden while there’s a danger of a M-storm. I had to navigate amongst the buildings to get here.”

Light turned around, in slow motion, to stare at the pegasus. “Why wasn’t I informed about this?”

The messenger gulped. “I-I don’t know, sir! I just got here myself! Please, I’m just the messenger, I didn’t know you didn’t know!”

“Maybe the griffons won’t dare fly, either,” hurried Moss. “I mean, they can’t stand magic at all? Maybe they won’t–”

“Of course they will,” snapped Light. “We know that they know we know that! Quickly: deliver this to the pegasi patrol quarters: I want every damn pair of wings they got laying around into the air, and I want them to–”

“Above! Griffons above!”

While all others instinctively turned their heads at the direction of the shout, Light looked up.

About a hundred meters above them, a pack of shadows on wings circled restlessly. There were about two dozen of them. Nothing suggested they were about to charge; more than anything, they seemed to be observing. Waiting, thought Light. Precisely like we are.

“In your positions, now,” he commanded with a steady voice. The messenger he grabbed by the collar. “And you: make sure the Chief of Weather Team understands that in the case he fails to follow my orders, I’ll personally pluck him clean. Did I make myself clear? Good. Now go. And don’t get caught.”

Right as the wide eyed pegasus zapped off, a guard rushed to Light. “Sir! Do I sent the emergency signal?”

Light looked up again. The griffons had moved in the sky, but kept the same altitude. He saw how two of them started following the messenger. Is it a diversion? A trick? Are they hesitating? Or simply having fun, making little ponies run around in circles…

“Not yet,” he said. “But keep it at the tip. And stay close to me.”

For a while the yard was filled with shouting and hurried movement, but it all settled down surprisingly fast. Everypony knew their orders. Don’t wander into the open, stay close to your partner, and never, ever look down. That was the long and short of the griffon versus pony combat – from the pony’s point of view. For the griffon, it was all stalking, stalking, stalking, until that one moment when they would swoop down like an arrow. They didn’t have magic, but the common unicorn had nothing else against them. And history had taught that, when one person invented a club, the other was soon to come up with a helmet… Or a sling.

In the dark sky, magical light flared. Every head on the yard turned towards the signal, which stood only for one word: help.

That came from the city center, thought Light. Were the griffons trying to cut the city in half? The effects would be devastating should they succeed. Light turned to the table and opened a copy of Heart’s hastily devised plan of city’s defense. He frowned as he saw there was nopony stationed in the center. Who then sent the distress call?

By now a couple more magical signals had lit the sky, promising reinforcements. Light’s frown deepened as he followed them fade.

Running by a wall, Moss came to him. “Sir? They’re asking for help. How do we respond?”

Light rubbed his chin ponderously. “I wonder who ‘they’ actually are. There’s not supposed to be anypony there.”

But clearly there was, and clearly they needed help. The signals were 100% reliable. The spells designed to produce them were top secret, as was the code they carried. The possibility of an outside party interference was minimal, if not nonexistent. And yet…

“We’ll stay put,” said Light. “They have help coming, and we’re not that close. Besides, we have company at our hooves already.”

“Not so sure about that, sir…” said Moss, looking up. Light followed his gaze.

The griffons were leaving. At least most of them were. The flock dispersed into all the directions they could, leaving only two individuals behind.

“Are they retreating?” asked Moss.

“Trying to conceal where they’re heading, I would say,” said Light. “They’re still keeping an eye out for us.” He eyed the two griffons suspiciously. One of them waved at him. “Guard: prepare to send a message. To Captain Heart. Inform him that the griffons are scouting us, and that his presence will be required soon. Indeed. Leave out the ‘indeed’.”

“You really think it’s going to get bad?” asked Moss. Right as he finished, another call for help splattered against the sky. This time it came from the direction of the Ledge.

“I think it it already has,” said Light. “Send the message.”

***

In the blackness of his cell, Heart lay on his dinner hay. The backlash from the obsidian made his veins throb, and together with the creeping hangover it offered a formidable enemy to reckon with. Considering that, laying still was an essential strategy of survival. I swear, that was the last time I touched any of Hilt’s bottles. The absolute last. If I make it out alive. In that case, I might have one more shot, just because–

A tiny clang echoed in the silence. It had come from the bars. Heart opened his eyes, but couldn’t see much better either way. With a grunt, he let the finest pearl of light appear from his horn. In it’s glow, a pebble struck his eye on the smooth floor.

“Captain?”

For one hollow moment, he thought it was the pebble speaking. It wasn’t though, and not simply because a rock would obviously have a more gravelly voice.

“Who's there?” Heart croaked.

“Captain, is it really you?” said the voice, louder now. “Can you prove your identity?”

“It’s me, for buck’s sake,” said Heart, staggering up. Walking to the bars, he had to give up his light. “Who are you?”

A relieved sigh travelled through the darkness. It seemed to come a few cells down the corridor.

“Oh, thank goodness, it’s really you. I thought it might be another trick; or maybe I had gone insane… Gods, how long have I been in here?”

The pony sounded distantly familiar, but not enough so to foreclose the obvious possibility of a trick. As the stranger talked, Heart tried to think up the safest, surest way to proceed.

“Do I know you?” he asked.

“No, you don’t. At least I don’t think you do. I’m only a technician. My name’s Tin Key. Sir.”

“How did you end up here, Tin Key?”

There was a pause.

“Frankly, I’m not sure,” said Tin. “It’s all bit of a blur, and the parts I know are right seem utterly ridiculous.”

“Try me,” said Heart.

Tin Key sighed. Already Heart could tell this was a habit of his.

“It began on the second day of the month,” Tin started. “I was part of the team sent to investigate the murders at High North Lane. Things were going as normal, until a group of civilians trespassed the site. Dressed funnily, they were: all paint and robes. Mr. Gruff was leading them.”

“Mr Gruff?” said Heart. “Are you sure?”

“Positive, sir. I’ve only seen pictures of him, but there was no place for mistake. It was him. He wanted to take charge of the mine. Sergeant Fall – he was leading the investigations – tried to arrest him. But then something even stranger happened. Another civilian appeared on the scene. An earth pony stallion, with horrible wounds on his eyes. There was something… disturbing about him.”

A blind pony, thought Heart. A chilling feeling crossed his spine. Could it be…? No, that’s impossible… There’s no way he could’ve survived this long.

“And just as I was certain the situation could not get any stranger, it did,” continued Tin Key. “The blind pony had a baby foal with him. A completely ordinary foal, at first sight. But… the foal… it drove everypony crazy. Fall too. Suddenly they were convinced the foal was an alicorn, or something close enough as made no difference. It was crazy, sir. Just crazy.”

The chilling feeling had now plumaged Heart’s bones into an ice age. “Did you see it? Was it really an alicorn? Did you believe it was?”

Another pause, longer than the previous one.

“If I had, sir, I wouldn't be here now. I’ve always been somewhat of an agnostic myself. But even if I wasn’t, the foal didn’t feel right. Its eyes… they weren’t the kind you usually see on a child.” He sighed. “Still, suddenly I was surrounded by believers. The foal had the Last Sign as a cutie mark. Fake or no, I couldn’t tell. I had no chance, for they captured me soon enough as they realized I wasn’t as… enthusiastic about the turn of events as they were. Even Sergeant Fall was completely in it at that point. He knocked me out personally. Must be the reason the whole experience remains rather fuzzy. I woke up here sometime ago, I have no idea how long. Could be days.”

“It’s not,” said Heart. “It’s the third day now. I think. You were captured yesterday.” He gave the notion a thought, and frowned at the result. “Which means the turncoats had a whole day's time to sabotage the Guard by spreading rumours.”

“Sabotage the Guard?” said Tin. “Sir? What do you mean?”

“I mean that the Guard, or at least part of it, has been taken over by traitors,” said Heart grimly. “We are in the dungeons, Tin. It was Dab the Jailor who just left us.

A gasp cut the dusty, heavy air. “The whole Guard? Oh no… How’s that possible?”

“With brainwashing bloody hypnosis,” growled Heart. He kicked the bars so hard his whole body shook. “I know who’s behind this. The blind pony – he must be the same person I left rotting in the mine after Feinsake’s death. He must’ve gotten out, somehow, and started all this.”

“Some kind of hypnosis would make sense,” said Tin carefully. “But he was only an earth pony… I don’t know, sir. None of this makes much sense to me.”

“You’re not the only one,” said Heart tiredly. He regretted the blow he had dealt to the bars. All it had earned him was a sore hoof.

“What are you going to do, sir?”

Heart peered into the direction of the voice. The pony did seem honest, and Heart somewhat prided himself in the judgement of such things. Still, there was no reason to go trusting him completely all at once.

“Wait,” said Heart. “I suggest you do the same. These cells were designed to be absolutely inescapable. For now, all we can do is gather our strength.” And think, he added to himself. Heeding to the advice, Heart grabbed some hay and started chewing. It must’ve been hours since he missed his breakfast.

Supposing Tin Key was both sincere and correct, it was clear that the blind pony was striving for something, and if they were anything like Feinsake, the answer was power. The only real issue was how exactly he was going to get it. What did he want from the Mine? Was there something important hidden there? Hadn’t the pony mentioned some notes, some books, on that fateful night? Heart struggled to remember; remember the night he had spent days trying to forget.

If the pony is anything like Feinsake… and nothing thus far suggest that he isn’t… he is obsessed with alicorns. He wants to make an alicorn. But for that, he needs spells, the lore, books, and somepony who knows how to use them… Is that what Mr. Gruff is in for? And what’s the thing with the foal? In any case, he needs the cutie marks, too. That is, he believes he needs them.

He needs the cutie marks. He’s got them. All but one.

Lily.

Heart stopped chewing.

“Tin,” he said.

“Sir?”

“Do you know what the blind pony was after in the Mine?”

“I’ve no idea,” said Tin. “I don’t know if they were after anything, really. There was nothing there but corpses. Well, that’s not quite true.”

“Yes?”

“We found this room filled with books and papers. A terrible place for keeping them, mind you. We didn’t get to take a good look at them, but it was obvious they were arcane.”

The straws fell from Heart’s unmoving lips.

“Sir?” asked Tin Key after a while. “Are you still there?”

“We need to get out,” said Heart. He stood up. “Now.”

“Sir?” asked the baffled voice. “You just said these cells were absolutely inescapable; that the best thing to do was to wait and–”

“I said they were designed inescapable,” said Heart. “There's a big difference between that and the actual thing.” There must be. There must be. He began examining the bars with the care and haste of a person defusing a ticking time bomb.

“Uhm… Is there anything I could do?”

“You said you’re a technician,” said Heart without interrupting his work. “See what you can do with the lock in your end.”

“Uh… Without light and tools, not much I’m afraid.”

“Then the best you can do is shut up let me concentrate,” growled Heart.

I have to get out. I have to get out. Lily’s in danger. Her guards won’t know what’s coming for her. I must get out.

But he couldn’t. The bars were solid steel. It would take quite the horn to bend them even when they were not covered with obsidian. And even if Heart would never admit it, Tin Key was right about the locks.

Hoofsteps approached them down the corridor, along with the familiar glow of the lamp. Heart gave up his hopeless attempts, but not their goal. “Dab! Listen! I don’t know what they’ve told you, but it’s a lie! If you have one brain cell left in your skull, you know this is a coup! You have to let me out before–”

The lamplight stopped in front of his cell, and in the soft glare he could see it was not Dab carrying it. It took Heart a moment to recognize the newcomer, for the black and white paint gave his all too familiar features a new life.

“I hate to say this, I really do,” began Cowl, “But you don’t look all that displaced behind those bars. A bit of a strange quality in a Captain, am I right?”

“Cowl…” gasped Heart. “No… Impossible… Of all the people…”

Cowl’s eyebrows plummeted. “What are you on about?”

He barely managed to get out of the way as Heart’s hooves surged for him past the bars. “You bastard! You sold me out! Of all the people! Bastard!”

Cowl’s expression was a masterpiece. “What? What? Why do you…?” He stopped, blinked, and sacked. “Oh, right. The paint. That’s what threw you off. Makes sense, kind of. Not really, though. You, taking me for a turncoat? It wounds me soul. Really, it’s a blow.”

Heart’s extended hooves stopped grasping the air mindlessly. “You’re… you’re not one of them?”

Cowl winced. “I wish! With friends like that…” He produced a key from his pocket and turned it in the cell’s lock. “How else d’you think I could move around the place except with bloody paint on my face, if everypony else does the same?”

The cell door swung open. Heart hesitated a moment to step through it. “I… I…”

“Just forget it,” said Cowl. “Now, I’ve got a decent grasp of what’s going on here, but honestly I wouldn’t mind a brief recap. Starting with how’d you get locked in your own prison.”

Heart explained. Cowl listened, and nodded a couple of times.

“So the trinket she gave you…” he said.

“Had some sort of a tracking spell inscribed,” finished Heart. “And I fell for it like a brick.”

Cowl clicked his teeth. “Always so sad, seeing a good mare turn bad.”

“Anyway, how’d you find me?” asked Heart.

Cowl gave him a guarded look. “I followed you. To the Ledge. I lost you there in the crowd, looked around for a while and then returned here. Found out there was a new boss in office. It’s a real mess up there, Deck. All I had to do to infiltrate was to splash some paint on and walk like I owned the place. Without you, it’s all going to shreds. Ponies don’t know who to listen to.”

“They’ll learn,” said Heart through his teeth. “Oh yeah. They’ll learn.”

Cowl grinned at him. “What’s the plan?”

To save Lily, Heart almost said. But that was not a plan – it was the goal.

“The mess upstairs,” he said. “Describe it to me.”

Cowl spat on the floor. “Most of the officers are gone, don’t know where. The clerks are treated like chickens, and act accordingly. The guards get to choose; get painted or get out. Can’t say how many there are left. And then there’s a bunch of civilians, or cultists, trying to look important. You get the picture?”

“Only too well… Have you seen who’s leading all this?”

“Wouldn’t have thought anypony did,” snorted Cowl.

“There you’re mistaken,” said Heart. “There is somepony behind this, and I have a strong suspicion that I’ve met him before.” He told Cowl what Tin Key had told him.

“Isn’t that right, Tin?” asked Heart from the darkness as he finished.

“Yes sir,” he said.

Cowl’s moustache twitched. “Bloody hell…”

“I know,” said Heart. “But we’ve talked long enough. We need to get out of here, and to get to the mansion. Can you get more of that paint from somewhere?”

Cowl’s forehead wrinkled. “Wait… Don’t you think we should secure this place first? No, listen: they’re like chickens up there: bark a few orders in that uniform of yours and they’ll line up before they know it. The cultists are just civilians, we could–”

“I’m not starting a fight before I know Lily is safe,” said Heart, stressing every word. “The station is a building, Cowl. It can take care of itself for a while. Lily can’t. She needs me.”

“It wasn’t the building I was worried about,” said Cowl sourly. “The city, Deck. Whoever controls the station controls the Guard and whoever controls the Guard controls the city.

In the flickering lamplight, the two stallions stared at each other. Silence hummed between them like the tiniest hive of bees.

“If you don’t mind me asking… Why were you following me in secret?” asked Heart quietly.

“No, I wouldn’t mind. Not one bit. While you’re at it, why don’t you go asking why’s the sky blue. Or why the sun bothers to rise every morning.”

The most imperceptible of smiles appeared on Heart’s lips. “I suppose it has nothing better to do these days.”

“Damn right,” said Cowl. He shook his head slowly. “There’s a shop across the street. Wait a second and I’ll go fetch some more paint, and maybe some different clothes. You won’t be sneaking out from anywhere in that costume.”

Makes we wonder why you even bother wearing it, he added while walking away.

***

Far above the city, Falke waved her claws at the ponies below. Beside her, Cecil snorted.

“Having fun, are you?”

Falke stopped waving. “Exclusively. Why not try some yourself for change? I’m getting sick, looking that sour face of yours.”

Cecil responded with another snort. It was meager resistance, but better than none.

“Besides, it’s disorienting to see your enemies waving at you,” continued Falke, looking down again. “See? They’re running around like rabbits already. I always knew the Guard was a joke, but I was hoping it’d at least be a funny one. But this is plain sad.”

Even as she said nothing, Cecil had trouble disagreeing with her friend. From up here, the ponies made for a rather sorry sight. The colorful spells they fired up were nowhere near hitting anything. Up close it’s a different animal though… Her hand wandered to her throat. It was still sore from last night.

“Of all your mistakes, underestimating them will be your last,” she said.

“Which is why we’re in this together,” said Falke. “My recklessness and your caution make an ideal team. The ponies won’t know what hit them.”

“But we’ll make sure they’ll know afterwards,” stressed Cecil. “No killing, remember? That’s the only reason I came along.” To make sure no one gets killed. You included.

“Yeah, as if I could forget,” said Falke, rolling her eyes. Her wings whipped the air hard a couple of times. “You’re too soft for this world, you know that? One way or another, this will come down to blood. And the little warning you gave them will only make it more likely it’s griffon blood that spills first. Your little rules will be the end of us.”

“There are no rules,” snarled Cecil. “There never were. But there can be fairness. There has to be. Without that, there is nothing. That’s something you will have to understand.”

For a while Falke said nothing. Then she pointed down. “Everyone’s in their place. Time to choose. First or second?”

“First,” said Cecil eventually. “These aren’t fish we’re dealing with. Keep close, fly tight, and remember: no–”

“–killing,” finished Falke. “Gosh, how many times you have to say that?”

They dived in: Cecil first, Falke second. Their goal was simple: food. The silo had more than enough, as everyone knew. The only problem was that it was pony food, both in sense of property and taste. Neither reason weighed much to an empty stomach. Cecil had spent the better part of the night talking with different parties, trying to convince them to stay behind. Most griffons indeed had, but mostly because they wished to see what would happen to the first wave. That’s what Cecil had realized in the long hours of the night: the first wave would mean everything. It was the watershed, the milestone, the horizon. Being there would not just mean making the difference: it would mean being the difference.

Cecil and Falke swooped down and landed in the middle of the yard of Silo Five.

“Ponies!” shouted Cecil. “Stand down! Don’t move! Stand down!”

Around them, guards exchanged puzzled glances. Every horn in the yard glowed like a candle. Cecil could feel their heat on her feathers. Come on, come on, come already…

“What’s the meaning of this?”

Cecil turned towards the voice she had been expecting. One of the more colorful uniforms – “Lieutenant” was what Cecil though they were called – approached them. He stopped a safe distance away, or at least what he presumably thought was a safe distance. Could be half a meter too short, said the predator within Cecil. She prayed it was right.

“You’re in charge here?” she asked. The pony certainly looked like he was. While the others had more or less covered look about them, he stood straight as a plank, and stared right into her eyes.

“I am,” said the pony. “And I demand to know what is the meaning of your little aerial show.”

“We want no trouble,” said Cecil calmly but loudly enough that everypony in the yard heard her. “All we want is a little bit of food. We know there’s plenty here. Why not share some? We’re citizens too, right? We have the same rights as you do.”

The pony’s face remained blank, but from his pause Cecil deduced that he did not have a ready made plan for the occasion. Whether it was a good or a bad sign, she had no idea.

“This is an issue you ought to address with the Parliament,” the Lieutenant said. “We have our orders to guard the silo from all unauthorized intruders, citizens or no. If you want food, go to a ration center at the appropriate time. Otherwise, I have to ask you to disperse.”

“We’ve been in the Parliament,” said Cecil. “We’ve been in the centers. You know as well as I do that neither serves a griffon. Citizen or no.”

“I ordered you to disperse,” repeated the Lieutenant. Cecil could see the sweat break from under his helmet. He took half a step back. Not enough still, the predator whispered. Might be soon.

“There’s chicks who haven’t eaten in days up in the caves,” said Cecil, staring right through the pony. “Days. Please. We won’t take but what we need.”

“I ordered you to dis–” began the Lieutenant. He stopped when another guard whispered something hastily to his ear. He looked at the rooftops surrounding the yard. As his ears pressed against his helmet, Cecil knew that the game was up.

“Soldiers!” yelled the Lieutenant. “On your guard! They have us surrounded!”

“Time to choose,” said the edgy voice of Falke behind Cecil. “First. Or second?”

Within her, a pair of claws scraped her ribs.

“Stand down!” shouted Cecil, ignoring the predator and Falke both. “We don’t want to fight, but we need the food! Use your reason! What would you do in our stead? All we ask is fair treatment. A bit of fairness.”

The air around the yard bubbled with strained silence, stretched thin by the clinking of metal on metal, the humming of horns, the rustle of feathers. Cecil felt blood rushing in her ears, fresh and hot. Her heart fluttered in beat with the claws of the beast within. She watched a drop of sweat fall from the Lieutenant's brow. She watched his lips move as if time had slowed down; she could make out an “A”, a “T”, another one…

Before he had made a decision between “E” and “A”, the predator had moved.

As so often before, it had not been mistaken about the distance.

***

Old coppers tended to develop all kinds of extra senses, like the ability to spot fine differences among shadows on a dark alley or to instinctively know which way the closest pub was. Among such phenomena, a mysterious shiver in a spine was more or less mundane. And yet this particular shiver had a nasty aftertaste to it in Heart’s mind.

“You felt that?” asked Cowl next to him.

“Yeah,” said Heart. “A nasty one. Very, very nasty.”

“What?” asked Tin Key behind them.

“D’you think it came from the Ledge?” said Cowl, scratching his neck.

“Can’t say,” said Heart. “Seemed like the whole city had shrugged. I could feel it in my bones.”

“What are you two on about?” went Key on.

“Should we return to the Station?” said Cowl.

“No,” said Heart immediately. “We’ve come this far already. And it could’ve come from here. Let’s not lose our focus.”

“What are you–” started Key. He quieted when he saw Cowl’s eyes.

“You’re the boss,” said Cowl, turning back to Heart. “So, how you want to do this?”

Heart raised the telescope to give one more look at the mansion which until this afternoon he had called his home. The apartment on which they had performed an emergency occupation (meaning they kicked the door ajar and walked in like they owned the place) had an ample view to the frontside. Four guards loitered behind the gate, five more on the steps leading to the front door. All had the same, worn cloaks and painted faces. All were unicorns, too.

A part of Heart had wanted nothing more but to march straight in and, if necessary, send the cultists to meet their maker. Cowl, with the help of the rest of him, had saved him from the idea. However, after half an hour of observation, that plan was still on the table for lack of serious competition. The problem was that, even without the guards, the mansion was a fortress. A three meter wall surrounded the perimeter, and the only gate was made of solid steel. Getting in unnoticed was comparable to drinking the yolk of an egg without cracking the shell.

Heart turned away from the looking glass. It had been a convenient for them to burst into an empty apartment, but one might consider it plain lucky to find such a useful item within also. The occupant was clearly a fan of astronomy. Or simply of spying on other ponies’ houses. The flat was ideal for both. Located in the fourth floor corner of the tallest tower in the block, it offered a handsome view to a large part of the city; from the base of the mountain all the way to the Ledge. Heart hadn’t paid much interest in either, but now that he did, something he had been aware of all the time caught his attention.

“What was the last signal you saw?” he asked.

Cowl smoothed his moustache thoughtfully. “There was somepony asking for help about an hour ago, and some responses. After that, nothing. Why?”

“Who asked for help? What for?”

“Didn’t say,” said Cowl.

Heart hearkened to his thoughts. Since Cowl had been following him most of the day, he had had no idea of the griffon invasion until he had told him. But if that was all he had seen, it meant there had been no signals sent for over an hour, not even regular check-ins. But no news is good news, right? Right… Can’t lose focus now. Can’t lose Lily. The other stuff can wait.

He happened to glance at the couch, where Tin Key had slumped the moment they had came in. They had taken the pony along mostly because Heart hadn't had the heart to leave him behind. Sadly, the pony had turned out to be all but useless. Broken inside, that one. Spirit gone. Should’ve left him in the dungeon. Can’t lose focus: focus, focus, focus… wait…

“We need a decoy,” he said.

Cowl followed his gaze to Tin Key, then raised an eyebrow. “Are you serious?”

Ignoring him, Heart walked straight to Tin Key. “Soldier. On your feet.”

“But… I’m not a soldier…” muttered Key as he stood up.

Heart scanned the room, looking for the most curious object around. He found it in the bookshelf.

“You’ll take this,” he said while grabbing the thing with his horn, ”March to the gate waving it and come up with the longest story you can. And put that robe on.”

“I’m no soldier…” stammered Key, peering at the carpet.

Heart yanked his chin up. “How long have you been on the Guard’s payroll?”

“F-four y-years and a quarter?”

“I’ve seen privates die for this city within the first hour of their duty. If they were soldiers, so are you. Get dressed.”

Key’s eyes turned wide. He threw a pleading look at Cowl, who only shook his head. “I… I… What if they recognize me…”

“They won’t,” said Heart. “You’re nopony. If you want to stay that way for the rest of your life, I suggest you find another job. In another city.”

“Canterlot is the only city left in Equestria…”

Heart shoved the heavy object into his lap so hard it knocked him back to the couch. “It’s decided then. You got one minute to get prepared. I’m counting.”

Key shuffled into the next room, dragging the robe he picked from a rack. The object he left on the couch. It was a silver sculpture of Twilight, the Last Alicorn, depicted in the rather unorthodox pose of getting sucked into the void. The sculptor had really let their imagination run wild while working on her face.

Heart stared at the thing, wondering what his great-great-great-aunt would have done in his stead. He hoped he would never get to know.

“You okay?”

Heart turned around, his expression an empty blackboard. “My daughter is in the hooves of a homicidal lunatic. How ‘okay’ would you be with that?”

Cowl’s moustache twitched. “Is not what I meant. You okay to do this? Got your mind all set? No liability to hasty action, that sort of thing?”

“My thought is clear as rain.”

“I see,” said Cowl. There was the tiniest pause before he continued. “So, we have a decoy, kind of. What’s the main plot?”

“While everypony’s watching the show on the front gate, we’ll teleport into the backyard.”

Cowl gave him a long stare. “Funny. I always thought the mansion was designed teleport-proof.”

“I know. I also know the same pony designed the tables in the place. Haven’t still found one which wouldn’t rock.” He let the silence sink in, and then added, “That was a joke. But don’t worry; I have a plan that will at the very least get me inside.”

“You’re not thinking what I think you’re thinking, are you?” said Cowl carefully.

“I’ve done it before.”

“Yeah,” said Cowl darkly. “And almost lost your head in the process.”

“I’m ready,” squeaked Tin Key, peeking behind the doorframe. “At least I hope I am…”

“Good enough for me,” said Heart, who was already striding for the door. “There’s no time to waste; come on. And don’t forget the sculpture.”

“Heart, wait!” tried Cowl, but he was already in the staircase, with Tin Key hurrying after him.

Bloody pie in a bucket, cursed Cowl and followed in suit.

***

There were few things in the world more stupid, difficult and dangerous for a unicorn to do than teleporting blind. Most individuals simply couldn’t do it, and not just because they were aware of the very real possibility of materializing in the middle of a brick wall or something like that. The thing was that, for most it was plain impossible. Teleporting, while theoretically no different from other ways of moving from place A to place B (the subatomic particles shifted in space just like in walking, except maybe in a bit funny order), in practice demanded a great deal more mental control, because in truth it was nothing but.

“Take running,” had Hilt once said to Heart. “Think about it. Do you ever really think what you’re doing then? How the legs arrange, which muscles to move? Yeah, you don’t. You just do it. Teleporting, well, that’s a different animal. In teleporting, you have to know precisely which part goes where, you understand? The parts don’t know that themselves, not after the ride you’ve given them. The body moves the mind, the mind moves the body, and you better be sure which one you’re doing. There won’t be an end to the mess otherwise.”

The Captain’s mansion had indeed been designed to be teleport proof. Unlike what most ponies thought, this didn’t take all that much effort. All you needed was to ensure that no building too close offered a good view to the premises. 90 percent of ponies would give up the attempt if they could not see where they were going to land. The rest… Well, there were stories circling of some very unfortunate discoveries the patrols in the mansion had made in times past. These were more than enough to fully convince nine of the remaining ten percent away from their folly.

Every now and then though, you encountered the remaining one percent.

“You know I can’t follow you; not if I wanted to,” said Cowl. They had moved in the shadow of a nearby alley outlooking the gate. Tin Key was already wandering near it, waiting for his signal. Dressed in a morning robe four sizes too big for him and carrying a statue most people would find sacrilegious, he was drawing the guards’ attention already.

“I’m not blaming you,” said Heart. He tightened the last strap of the armor he had picked from the Station. They had been in a hurry so he had grabbed what looked like the right size, and of course it had turned out wrong. The extra padding was a poor fix, but there was no helping it now. At least he wouldn’t be charging the place naked.

He noticed the deep silence of his friend and said: “If you got something to say, you’re about an hour too late.”

Cowl shook his head slowly. He’d been doing that lately, Heart reflected.

“You want to know why I followed you today?” Cowl said.

“Because the sky is blue? Because the sun rises?”

Cowl scoffed. “I tell no lie: this morning I was still pretty damn angry about what you had said the other night. By the time you called in the briefing today, I didn’t exactly feel like jumping in your lap.”

Heart frowned. “You were there?”

“In the back. Anyway, it was then I chose to follow you. Someone had to. You’re practically the bucking head of the city, and what does it mean to you? Running headlong into trouble at the first possibility? You’re the leader, Deck. Accept it and start acting like one.”

There was a fine scratch to Cowl’s voice that Heart could not quite place. This was the first time he had heard him speak like this.

“The damn Station is overrun by cultists; the bloody griffons are about to attack; thousands of people gather in the Ledge,” went Cowl on. His moustache trembled with every word he stressed. “And instead of fixing any of that, you’re charging alone against the enemy… again…”

“Lily’s inside,” said Heart, staring right into Cowl’s eyes.

Cowl grinded his teeth together, and then said, “Yeah, she is. And that’s where you should, for now, leave her.”

Heart struck him.

After he had staggered back up, Cowl spat a lump of blood on the cobblestones on Heart’s feet. “Yeah, I said it. Seems like you heard it. What’s next?”

Heart opened his mouth to shout. Instead, he closed it like the door of a tomb. He turned to give Tin Key the signal, then gave Cowl a stare that made him flinch. Gradually, Heart’s horn began to glow.

And then he vanished. A moment later, a green light flared behind the mansion wall.

Cowl stood on the alley, rubbing his jaw. It hadn’t been the first time Heart had hit him, although he suspected it had been the last. But, in his mind, it had been the first time he had really deserved it.

After all, he had just sold out his best friend.

***

Cecil stared at her left hand as if she had seen it for the first time. Covered in blood, it looked like the most alien thing in the world. The beast within, withdrawn in the wake of the battle, stirred once more at the smell of it. For a moment, she could not tell her own thoughts apart from its growling.

Her gaze shifted to the original owner of the blood. He sprawled on the street like a rag doll, a terrible wound on his flank marking the spot where the spell had made its home. She had tried to stem the bleeding, even though the griffon had probably been dead at that point already. On afterthought, it had been a rather silly gesture. Only got my feathers stained.

Someone moved behind her. The beast flinched, swirled and–

“It’s me,” said Falke, raising a calming hand. She glanced at the dead griffon. “Did you know him?”

Cecil shook her head. Her muscles felt like steel wires trying to chain down a raging dragon. “How many more?”

“Well, I saw two more over there, and one who’s not going to make it through the night. Overall, less than I–”

Cecil moved in a heartbeat. In the next instant she was atop Falke, holding her down against the street.

“How many more before you see this is not the way?” she said. Her words sounded like they had to fight their way through a meatgrinder.

The two griffons were so close their beaks almost touched. Their breathing mingled into fine steam in the cool air. Drop by drop, the blood from Cecil’s hand fell onto Falke’s feathers.

“Get off me,” she said.

Cecil did. By the time they were both up again, a wave of nausea washed over her. She looked at her hands. They were shaking all over. The blood stank like a thousand corpses in the sun; itched like a million spiders under her skin.

“There’s a water barrel over there,” said Falke. “Go have a wash. You’re stinking of hypocrisy.”

“It could’ve worked,” she whispered. A tear fell to her gory hands, off which she could not tear her eyes. “It should’ve worked. It ought to have.”

Falke looked at her standing there, weeping. Then she took her by the hand, more gently than she ever had, and walked her to the barrel. The water was stale and there was barely enough for a cat to drown. It colored quickly as Falke washed Cecil’s hands. She did not resist.

“You gave it a shot,” said Falke. “That’s more than most would’ve. It’s not your fault ponies’ heads are filled with straw.”

Cecil peered into the barrel. Already the water was so murky she could not make out the bottom. “Why he didn’t surrender? I had my claws on his throat… On his bloody throat… I could’ve had him twitching before he let out a vowel…”

“Then why didn’t you?”

Cecil’s fists squeezed shut under the water. “I… I…”

The fists unclasped, powerless.

“I didn’t want to kill him,” she said hollowly.

Falke raised her hands from the water and shook them dry. “If you could make the choice anew, would you decide otherwise?”

There was no answer; not from the water, nor from Cecil.

“Come,” said Falke eventually, putting a hand on her shoulder. “The ones who got away will return soon. With reinforcements. By then, we need to be back in the caves with as much food as we can carry. If it helps you move, think of the chics.”

“The chicks…” mumbled Cecil. “Yes… The chicks… need food…”

“That’s right,” soothed Falke. “That’s right.”

They made it to the silo in short order with whoever had still stayed around. The battle had been brief, albeit fierce. Deserters hadn’t been lacking on either side. Eventually the guards had retreated when Falke had managed to cut down their leader. Strange enough, he had been the only casualty on the pony side.

The first door to the silo was plain wood and did not take much to bring down. The second, which they found at the top of high stairs, was made of steel. For that they had to go look for the key, which they found from the dead Lieutenant. When they turned it in the lock and pushed, a gasp fled them at the sight.

Falke bent down on the edge of a small platform and scooped a handful of the dry, golden grains. It flowed through her claws like water. “All this time, they had all this food, just sitting here…”

She stood straight and threw the remaining seeds all over the bed of their siblings. A series of griffonian curses accompanied their flight.

“Grassfeeders!” she cried. “They had all this to themselves and nothing for us!”

Cecil couldn’t but gape at the sight. Like most, she had known that the city was better off than the Cliffs, but how much had been anyone’s guess. Until now.

Falke turned to the rest of the stunned griffons. “Make sure to fill every sack we got. If you can’t carry them, leave them somewhere out of sight. We’re coming back for them.”

“But won’t the guards be here by then?” asked someone.

“I hope so,” said Falke. “Oh yes.”

Cecil blinked. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying,” said Falke, “That we’ve found ourselves a sea to fish much closer than the other one.”

A murmuring consent passed over the griffons. In short order they started filling their sacks with the precious load. Soon, only Cecil still stood on the platform, frozen.

Falke walked over to her, leaned to her ear and whispered, “What are you waiting for?”

“The sun,” said Cecil with a low voice. “I can see the sun. I’m flying to it. We all are.”

Falke leaned closer still. “I know. In the end, all griffons fly to the sun. It’s only a matter of choosing it yourself, or letting the sun choose you.”

“Which one am I seeing?”

“That,” said Falke, “We shall have to see. Start working. For the chicks.”

Chapter V: The Alicorn

As an experience, teleporting was highly dull in the same way sleeping was. You couldn’t feel a thing, because for the briefest of moments there was no you to do the feeling. In sleep one could at least dream. The comparisons did not stop there. Waking up and re-materializing were akin in the sense that, at both times, most persons went through the fleeting moment of utter confusion: an effect of their very identity, stretched thin by the void, snapping back like a rubber string. Few ever got completely used to it.

Heart appeared on the yard of his mansion holding his breath and eyes closed. He waited a heartbeat. When no part of his body complained of an uncomfortably placed tree branch or a rock, his lids flashed open. When he saw the protruding rosebush a horn-length from his face, his stomach turned around itself. Half a meter more and I would’ve had a brain full of flowers.

He saw movement on the other side of the plant and crouched instinctively. Peeking through the holes and gaps in the leaves, he could see that most of the guards has gathered to the gate. The familiar looking statue flailed above their heads. He could make out Tin Key’s voice but not the words; he spoke much too quickly for that. That should keep them occupied long enough.

The problem was, there were still two more guards at the doors, looking more vigilant than Heart had hoped. He couldn’t rush them without alerting the others. The building had two other exits – the kitchen and the roof – but both were locked tight from inside at all times. He used to personally inspect that the rule was obeyed. Thing is, I’m not there now to do the ordering…

The mansion garden was ideal for sneaking around even in daytime, and the dark cover of the M-clouds made Heart practically invisible among the shrubberies. Now that he paid attention to the fact, the shadows had indeed grown darker since the morning, although Heart’s internal clock assured him that it was still hours until evening. Above him, purple veins pulsed in the cumulus flesh. The storm might break out any minute. Can’t think about it now: need to focus. Focus on Lily. Lily. Lily…

Arriving to the kitchen door, he tried it carefully with a hoof. It was locked. He felt the urge to smash it down, but reined himself in. Then, he heard noise from the other side – somepony was talking. Heart took off his helmet and pressed his ear on the wood, but the thick planks sucked in the words. He could make out two different voices though, then hoofsteps. He got the impression that the other pony had stayed behind.

He knocked on the door and pressed against the wall. There came more noise; somepony was walking; they fumbled with the lock, pushed the door…

…and were yanked flat on the grass by Heart’s horn.

He pressed a hoof hard on the pony’s exposed neck. “Breathe and you’re dead,” he said while glancing at the corridor. It was empty. He turned back to the pony, and cursed the day he was born.
“Please don’t,” stuttered the mare. “I-I-I don’t want t-t-t–”

Heart removed his hoof quickly and bended over her. “Hush, Pin. It’s me: Deck. Are you okay?”

A face like bloated muffin dough turned a frightened look at him. It belonged to Roll Pin, the cook of the mansion. “Captain?”

Heart grimaced. Roll Pin had lived in the mansion longer than anypony else: long enough so that she herself couldn’t say when exactly she had come there first. Many were the cookies Heart had stolen from her kitchen, more for the fun of them both than for the sweet need. The puppy eyes he had had as a foal only needed to wink at her for any treat in the house. And when Hilt had made the windows shutter form the shouting with his wife, no volcano had been as warm, no void as quiet, as the top of Pin Roll’s massive stove. And now she lay at his feet, begging for her life.

“Yes,” said Heart. He forced a smile on his lips, even though he knew Pin would see through it in an instant. “Listen, I don’t have time to explain. Lily’s in danger. I need to get her out of here. Do you know in which room she is? How many guards she has?”

The cook’s limp cheeks quivered as her mouth moved in pace different from her actual words. “Sir… Lily? In Danger? I… I had no idea… Guards? I, I can’t say – the usual number, I suppose?”

Heart’s smile thinned. “What do you mean, you had no idea?”

Pin Roll blinked profusely. “Sir, I thought everything was alright up there! I brought her the dinner as usual: there was nothing wrong with her, I swear!” She huffed and puffed, trying to stand up.

Gently but firmly, Heart pressed her down.

“Tell me, Pin,” he said, very quietly, “How come you haven’t noticed that the mansion has been overrun by hostile forces?”

The old mare looked at the hoof that held her down, then in the eyes that pierced hers like icicles. “Sir… Hostile? What? I don’t understand. Could I stand up now? I have cookies coming.”

Either she’s with them or she’s been hypnotized, decided Heart. Nothing else made sense. He looked into the watery, beady eyes he had once loved like a mother’s, and saw nothing there. Nothing at all. As in trance, he raised his mailed hoof.

“Sir? Sir? What are you…? What are y–”

The first blow failed to knock her out. Heart’s hoof had trembled too much. The second time, it didn’t.

He dragged the mare inside and locked the kitchen door. The kitchen closet had some rags to tie and gag her before shoving her inside. Luckily, there had been nopony else in the kitchen today. Unluckily, he happened to peek into the oven. There were two trays of cookies there, already turning black. He left them in and started his way for the next floor, where Lily’s room was.

Lily… I’m coming for you… Through anything and anypony, I’m coming for you.

***

Mill Stone felt alone. Getting lost in a huge crowd tended to have that effect, as little sense as it made. Even stranger it was to see the exact same loneliness on every face he came across. They were all alone, together.

High above, the sky roared. Mill did not dare look up. The storm was finally about to hit the city, and it would be bad. All around him, ponies were moving restlessly. A beast stepped among them, whispering. It was called the Herd. Wherever enough ponies found themselves alone, it would emerge. As a copper, Mill Stone had met it eye to eye more than once. Before, he had always known where he stood with the Herd. Now, he wasn’t so sure.

Someone grabbed him from behind.

“Helm?” he said as he saw his friend’s face. Or what he at first thought was his face. It was the second thoughts that made him ask.

“We need to get out,” said Helm. The corner of his mouth twitched.

“Did you find the Captain?”

Helm shook his head. “No sign of him. Probably fled hours ago. We should, too.” He started drifting away, although Mill got the impression he wasn’t aware of this himself.

“What’s gotten into you?”

Helm’s restless eyes stopped to him. Beads of sweat gleamed between them. “Can’t you feel it? Something’s coming. Something bad. It’s in the air. My family: I’ve got to find them.”

Mill Stone hesitated. The thing was he, he could feel it, whatever it was. It wasn’t just the storm; not just the fact that they had lost sight of the Captain hours ago; not just the Herd. Something bad. Like blinking in front of a mirror and catching the other side disobeying their que.

The thing also was, they were soldiers. And soldiers leaving home without permission were deserters.

“Pull yourself together,” growled Mill. “We need to keep searching: the Captain might be in trouble. And what d’you think I’m going to have to tell him when he asks where you’ve gone?”

Helm blinked. “Hey, no call for that kind of attitude. I’m just saying we can’t know he’s even around anymore. Maybe he returned to the Station when he saw that signal for help. Ever thought of that? In that case we should get back, too – for new orders.”

“I thought you were going home just now?”

“Hey, some of us happen to got one!”

Before Mill could answer, the heavens split open. Down on the Ledge, every single neck bended up. The roof of cloud spasmed. Giant muscles flexed in the purple flesh as the very epitomes of power and chaos. Yet it was quiet. The last roar had driven all the other noises away, sucking them inside itself like a vacuum. The clouds pulsed once more, trying to contain their own might. And then the sky exploded.

Before it did, somepony down below had reasoned it’d be a lot easier to flee in panic while all the others were still gaping at their doom. Unfortunately for him, ideas like that spread in a crowd like ink in water.

Mill quickly lost sight of Helm in the flood of bodies that ensued. The Ledge had no single exit but several, which meant any direction was equally good for an escape, which then meant no direction was. For a moment Mill tried to hold his ground, to bring even a tinge of order around him. The tide swept him along like a leaf, swallowed his shouts like a hurricane.

The Herd was on the move. It was all alone. There had been no alicorn, not a hint of one. Ísolation pressed them. Solitude choked them. Seclusion trampled them.

They were all alone. Together.

***

In comparison to the rest of Canterlot’s manors, the Captain’s mansion was on the average side as far as bare size was concerned. It didn’t seem like that inside. Apart from the large main hall, the house was a maze. Few rooms were alike in shape, size or furnituring, and there was hardly any logic to how to move around the place. The main reason for the mismatch was that every new Captain had wanted to shape the building during their stay, to better suit their own taste. But since the Captains changed relatively often, none of them could quite finish the changes they had started before the next wave insisted on starting from scratch again. A studious architect, or an archaeologist, would’ve had a field day tracking the hundred year old history of the estate, room by room, floor by floor.

For Heart, who knew his way around the house better than most, all this meant relative ease of sneaking closer and closer to his goal. Whenever a patrol would threaten to corner him, there was always a room to slip into at hoof. Whenever a room he needed to cross had somepony inside, there were three more to choose from. The chaotic floor plan, etched into his mind already in foalhood, spread before his eyes at every turn. Then, too, he had been hiding from the master of the house; his grandfather, who had housed the whole family at one point. It had all been a fun game then. A part of him thought that a game it was still, yet with stakes far different from a furious tickling.

He was in the third and last floor now; Lily’s room lay just around the corner. But before he could turn it, the sound of hoofsteps made him halt and press against the wall. He listened to them approach, then stop at what he estimated was right in Lily’s doorstep. And then they started talking.

“So, what’s your score of the week?”

“Forty two,” came the answer, with a hint of smugness. “Got me three Alis just yesterday – one with leaflets.”

The first stallion scoffed. “Not bad… for a rookie. Myself, I’m comfortably at fifty.”

A low whistle. “What’s your secret?”

“Simple: not telling it.”

“Oh, come on! You still owe me one for taking the extra shift last month so you could run away with that mare. Fair’s fair.”

“First of all, rookies get no debt; second, the mare ended up thieving my bit bag, so it counts not. Third–”

Heart stopped listening as another pair of steps came from behind him. He could barely slip through the closest door and close it before they entered the same corridor. Holding his breath, he heard the steps pass him and meet the other two guards. By the sound of it, they joined the conversation of comparing their points of their looney game.

Two thoughts consumed the majority of Heart’s attention. The first was that the broom cupboard he had squeezed into had barely enough room for him to turn, and that it smelled strongly of mold. The other was that his own guards had turned against him. Old Roll Pin, that he could still comprehend. The pony hadn’t been the sharpest knife in the box to begin with, and the years had done her no favours in that regard. But there was no excuse in the world for his own soldiers to not be aware of what was happening around them. It was inexcusable; unforgivable. It made black tar of Heart’s mind.

There was the third thought, however. Or rather, a fact. He was tired. No, he was exhausted. The hangover of the morning formed a solid base on which the aching blow on his jaw built a handsome nausea. His armor weighed a ton; the weeks of insomnia even more so. And right behind a wall there were four professional soldiers, with all their youth and strength by their side. Heart knew they were his best ponies. He had picked nothing less to guard Lily.

And that was, finally, the fourth thought, so omnipresent he barely acknowledged it anymore. Not a thought anymore; just a word. Lily.

He focused on that thought. Really focused.

He busted through the door right as one of the guards said: “...So long as the boss don’t find out, we’re gol–.”

Can’t give them a moment, thought Heart, in the peculiar calm that one finds in the eye of a storm. He had already caught the first guard by the throat by the time the others were blinking in astonishment. Can’t give them quarter. He wrenched, and the guard slumped like a sack of potatoes.

That woke up the other three. “Hey hey hey hey!” began the second. His eyes were nailed at the fallen guard, whose neck was what orthopedists see nightmares of. “Whah–”

His words choked on his throat as Heart’s magic clasped it. He was about to twist again, but another force blocked his. Heart’s eyes met with the third guard while their magics fought over the second’s life. The one called rookie was yet to move a muscle.

“Stop him!” screamed the third guard over the choking sound of the second. “Stophimstophimstophim!”

The rookie flinched, his horn lighting up, but not before Heart scraped the bottom of whatever barrel fuelled his horn. Shouting his lungs out, he swung his neck and the guard he was holding. He collided with the second one, brought him off balance. He scrambled fervently to get up, to shout, but quieted when his helmeted head broke through the wall next to him.

Despite having no wind left in him, the second guard managed to cast a spell to protect himself from further telekinesis. It was no shield against a nasty kick to the forehead.

In Heart’s vision, the red mist settled down. He breathed like a volcano. Black smoke filled his lungs. Energy crackled over his horn, which swayed along with him, leaving colored strands lingering in the air to evaporate. Nothing else moved in the corridor. He felt the rookie’s eyes on him like a tiger does, when it knows the deer has seen it. Come on. Do it. Go for it. One spark. A shadow of a glow. Do it.

“Do it!” he shouted at the youth, who almost jumped out of his skin. Heart took a step forward. “Do it. Make a move. Defend yourself. Do it.”

The youth’s mouth twitched open. “My gods… my gods… You killed them… You killed them all…” He fell to his knees. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I swear, I only gambled once! For my life, I didn’t know it was that serious! Please, please, I don’t want to, to… I don’t… want… die…”

The sobs came out like the tears: fat and flooding. The pony shook all over now, barely able to breathe. Heart’s mute stare went right through him, like he wasn’t there after all. For an eternity Heart stood there, trying to make sense of what he had just heard.

And then he walked right past the covering guard into Lily’s room. It was empty. He returned to the crying pony and kicked him in the ribs. He yelped, curling into an even tighter ball.

“Where’s my daughter?” asked Heart. Ash fell from his lips as he spoke.

“I… I don’t know… in the office… in the office… I don’t know… I don’t want to… die…”

Heart pushed him on his side with a leg, then pressed down his chest until he could only wheeze.

“She is in the office?” said Heart. “On this floor?”

The youth’s nod was the sorriest thing in the world. It made tar run in Heart’s veins.

He bent over the guard until their horns touched. And then he whispered, “Don’t move.”

Next, he marched straight into his office. Nopony crossed his way, which was just as fine, because he couldn’t have cared less if they had.

Nopony stood in guard at the door. He wrenched it from its hinges and hurled behind him while striding in.

Somepony sat in his chair, back towards him. The chair turned slowly around. A smile came along with it. The smile he had seen nightmares of.

At first he was about to sent the whole thing, chair and pony, to meet the pavement below via the window. What stopped him was the gaze that was not there; the blindfolded eyes which looked past him, to the corner. They drew Heart’s focus along like a rope.

“Dad?” asked Lily. She was looking at him in slight worry. “Why’d you break the door?”

Heart heard the question, but his mind was still working on the sight before him. By Lily’s side, there was another filly. Or a colt, he could not quite tell. Either way it was way younger than Lily; at most a couple years old. It, too, was looking at him. But unlike with Lily, this gaze questioned him for nothing. Instead, it seemed to put him into question.

“It was a lousy old door,” said the pony by the desk. “Needed to be changed anyhow. Go on, keep on playing now. Your father and I have some adult things to discuss.”

Lily looked at the blind pony, then at Heart, and then she returned, with the foal, to the game of Monopony they had been occupied with before Heart’s entrance. All this happened like the most natural thing in world.

Heart turned to face the blind pony. The prospect of sending him flying had never stopped being an option, but now it floated so deep in the background he could barely recognize it anymore. In contrast, the running steps approaching them were all too familiar.

“Everything is quite okay!” called the blind pony as five guards, two of them cultists, appeared in the doorstep to meet Heart’s glowing horn and beastial expression. “We simply had an irrelevant accident with the door! Now, why not one of you make yourself useful and go fetch it back from wherever it landed, yes? There might still be a chance to reattach it. No point in wasting quality woodwork, is there?”

“Sir…” said one of the guards without taking his eyes off Heart. The face stirred a memory within him: a name. His name was Fall. “We found three bo–”

“Did you now?” chirped the blind pony, rounding his desk and walking in between Heart and him. “Well, upsetting as that may be, there’s no crying over spilled milk, is there? ‘Daring be thou who throweth the first stone’ – words of wisdom. Besides, what adults we would make, bickering and arguing in front of children? An excuse of an example, that we’d be.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Heart saw Lily following the scene. Little by little, his horn died down.

“A paradigmatic attitude,” said the blind pony. “Nothing that I wouldn’t expect from the Captain, of course.” His cream white blindfold turned to the five guards. “That door, now…?”

Five minutes later Heart, Lily, the foal and the blind one were alone in the room, sealed in privacy by the old door. Fixing it had went smoothly with so many helpful hooves around. The whole ordeal was that close of assuring Heart he was actually dreaming, or perhaps gone insane.

Behind his desk, the blind pony looked at him. Two glasses and a bottle had appeared before him at some point, signaling an invitation. At this point, refusing it would’ve cut the last hair that still held the whole world in one piece.

Heart sat on the carpet opposite to him. For a while, the only sound in the room came from the occasional dice hitting the cardboard in the corner.

“Would you mind doing the pouring?” said the blind pony, waving at the bottle. “I’d loathe to neglect my duties as the host, but even more would I loathe to spill the fine liquid all over my guest.”

Heart made no move. “Are you sure you got the roles correct here?”

The ever-present smile peaked briefly. And that was that.

Heart filled his glass halfway, the other up to the brim. He noted it wasn’t the usual stuff, but from the stock in the basement, perhaps as old as the house was.

They raised the glasses simultaneously. Not a drop was spilled on either side.

“Why do you bother with the blindfold if you forgo the whole fumbling business,” said Heart. There were a million things that made no sense right now, but the apparent ease of movement which the blind pony showcased was a particularly bothersome detail.

In response, the pony cracked the cloth covering his eyes. The sight made Heart almost choke on his drink.

“Convinced, I’m sure you are,” said the pony, pulling back his bandage. “I do understand your suspicion, though I can hardly explain the minutiae of it. Honestly, it’s a mystery even to me, the way I seem to grasp my surroundings despite my obvious condition. I sort of… trust that things are where I think they are, and go with that.”

Heart took an ample sip of his wine.

“However, such things ought not to derail us from the general theme of our meeting,” continued the pony. He extended a hoof across the oak. “Call me Stick.”

Heart stared at the limb over his glass. I can tell you where to stick that, at the very least…

“Hah!” exclaimed the pony. The hoof withdrew casually. “A good one. A sharp mind, you have. Very edgy.”

Despite the stale, dry air of the room, a chilling breeze blew over Heart. “How did you…?”

“Read your thoughts?” said Stick. He shook his head slowly. “Would that I could. It’d be a ball, certainly. Alas, mine is only the privilege to an educated guess. A bit like with the sight thing, I suppose. I have this sense, you know, of a thing like a letter – better, a color. A form. A whisper. I could go on hours, just describing the sensation of it. Hmm, yes, it is very puzzling, I agree, especially from a non-unicorn as myself. Or more precisely, from an ex-unicorn…”

While speaking, Stick pulled back the mane on his forehead. Under it there was a furless, round spot of bare bone marking the spot where a horn had once been.

“A story for another time, I’m afraid,” he said, letting his hair cover the stump once more. “Again, we are trailing. There is much and more we need to discuss in time we don’t have. So, if I may be so bold as to break this to you frankly – how would you like to rule the world?”

“Yes!” came a shout from the behind. “Manehattan, come to mommy. Now let’s see you beat those apples…”

Heart blinked. “What?”

“The world,” said Stick. “You know? That thing we all live in. I’m offering it to you. Take it. It’s your destiny, etcetera. Do I really have to sell this to you?”

There came another silence interrupted only by the occasional roll of dice. And then Heart said, “What?”

Stick sighed. “Look, all I’m trying to–”

The rest of his words came out choked. His forelegs twitched on the table for a moment, but then eased down. His lips curled back, and his teeth glowed green in the light of the halo surrounding his neck. “You do this kind of thing often?” he managed.

“You’re insane,” said Heart. “Insane. I’ve met crazies, loonies, whackos, idiots, madponies: all sorts. But nothing like you. Nothing as purely insane.” The steel plates shook over his shoulders.

Stick gagged. “Deck. Please. Not in front of. The children.”

Heart closed his eyes. The children. The absence of die rolls roared in his ears. On top of that, another voice told him that, were he to kill the lunatic, he’d better be ready to treat the five guards waiting behind the door just the same. There was no way out. In times like that, the only route was to go in deeper.

“Much obliged,” coughed Stick as the halo released him. He wheezed, groped for his glass and knocked it down on the floor. “Ah, blast it, I can’t see…”

“Take mine,” said Heart, opening his eyes again. He offered his drink towards the eager hoof which snatched it smoothly and emptied quickly, with no apparent difficulty.

Something about that bothered Heart the Detective a great deal, but the Father and the Captain told him to shut up and focus.

“My apologies,” said Stick, wiping wine from his lips with the back of his hoof. “Tact, or its lack, remains a great fault of mine. Must be all those cellars I’ve spent my years in. Anyhow, my cause is of some urgency, as you must of course know. The enemy at our gates and so forth…”

“The enemy?” asked Heart warily.

“The griffons. Who else? Me? Why, what have I done to – yes yes, we will get to the whole Ledge incident in a moment – hurt you or your kin, ever? Wasn’t it me who saved you from the pits of High North Lane Mine? Hmm?”

Heart could not decide which irked him more: the whole mindreading business or how casually the pony acted upon it. Either way, he wished the knack had been mutual. Now that he had decided not to kill the freak, he found he had more questions for him than could be in reasonable time–

“–Why not begin with the obvious one,” said Stick. “The motive, Deck! The cop you are, not starting with the motive!”

“Will you stop doing that already?” growled Heart. Sparks gathered at the tip of his horn.

“My renewed apologies. Bad habit, thy name be Stick.”

“Why?” asked Heart after a pause. “Why the griffons? Why the cult? Why me? Why anything?” Suddenly, he leaned forward. “Don’t say it: I know already. Power. It’s always power. Dress it, boil it, serve it on a bucking plate, it changes nothing, means nothing. Your smile reeks of it, just like Feinsake’s did.”

Stick smiled at him. “Too true. More so than you realize, I would say. It’s not my smile I’m wearing, but hers. It’s all hers. The plan, the execution – all of it. For, you see, I don’t actually want power. She does. Did. For me, it’s just noise. Another voice. Compelling, yes, but not overwhelming. It urges me, see? ‘Do this, do that, quickly now…’ So very tiresome… Haven’t seen a good cellar for ages… In any case, I don’t want it. Power, I mean. I mean, I want it, but not want it, see? It’s she, doing all the wanting. So I’m thinking, back in the mine, why don’t you have it all? Does that make sense to you?”

“No.”

“Figures,” said Stick, his neck tilting to the left. “Let’s put it this way. You said it yourself. A lunatic. That’s what I am. How do you expect one to lead a city? Insane, the bare thought! And that’s not even to mention that I’m blind! No no no no, don’t say a thing, think nothing – I beg you. Hear me out first. Good. That’s good…” He reached for the bottle again, but suddenly slapped the hoof with the other. “No more wine! I can’t stand the taste…”

Heart tried his best to ignore that. “What do you want, then?”

Stick’s ears pricked up. The blindfold turned slowly to Heart. “The strangest thing. Nopony ever asked that from me before.” His lip curled in thought. “Couldn’t say, really. I really couldn’t.”

“Really,” said Heart. “Well I tell you something. I don’t want the power either. Never did. Your games – or Feinsake’s, whatever – they move me none. So take you sorry excuse of an offer and–”

Stick raised a hoof. “No no no no no – you do not understand. I wouldn’t be making this offer to you if I knew you wanted power – in that case I’d simply let you take it. This isn’t the first time that I’ve handed the choice to you. Remember the mine? Remember what I asked you there?”

“I do. Unfortunately. You have my answer already.”

“Ah,” said Stick. “Yes. I’ve thought about that. A lot. Your daughter. She was on the way, wasn’t she? In the way of an alicorn. You couldn’t do it. I get that. Few could. So I thought to make it easier for you.” Stick pointed into the corner. “An alicorn. Take it. Have it. Use it. And the world will be your oyster.”

Heart glanced at the foals safely immersed in their game. “I see no wings.”

“Not yet you don’t. That’s because Feinsake could not finish her work. But she did enough: the ground is set, and I have just the pony working on the rest, right as we speak. He tells me there is a way to do it that won’t cut a hair from Lily’s mane. A way longer, but a way nonetheless.” Stick leaned forward and lowered his voice. “Between you and me, all the blood and sacrificing… not really fit for an alicorn, am I right? That was Feinsake’s problem: she wanted it all too quickly. All for power, Feinsake, as you put it. It doesn't have to be that way.”

“Even if I believed you,” said Heart, turning around, “Which I don’t, why can’t you believe it when I say that I don’t want the power.”

“Sure you do,” said Stick. “Power to protect is power all the same. Alicorns were made to protect. Let it grow, let it prosper, and it will shield us all in the end. From what, you ask? I said it already. And before you go on with the ‘griffons are not our enemy’ line, consider the fact that you have no idea what has transpired in the city, or in the Cliffs, in the past few hours.”

Heart stared at him. “What do you mean?”

“A war. You can’t stop it, for it has already begun. It took less engineering than I could’ve dreamed. The first blood stains the ground. I can smell it from here.”

Heart stood up. “What have you done?”

“Nothing that wouldn’t have happened by itself, in time. And even the bit I played came not from my mind.” He tapped his temple. “Occupied, remember? It was Feinsake’s idea to use the griffons’ degradation for the good of all ponies. One of her cleverer ideas, mind you.”

“For good?” managed Heart. “We’re talking of war!”

Stick stood up, walked around the table. “Sometimes, the only medicine to depression is getting angry. Works for crowds and people in the same measure. The pony race has always had its finest moments in the midst of strife. You know the legends. Was it not Nightmare Moon who first awakened the power of the Six? It was the enmity of the Sisters on which their friendship could be elevated. In that order only.”

Stick stepped easily to the Foal, lifted it from the game to his lap. His blindfold sucked in the stare of the mismatched eyes like a sponge.

“You recall what I said about the blood and sacrifices?” he said. The blindfold turned to Heart like a gunpoint. “It’s not all a lie. A power like that of an alicorn demands a sacrifice. Be it the Sun, the Moon, Love, or Friendship – an alicorn of anything – what is sacrificed for a greater unity of two is their shared difference to a third. Inside and outside. War is not the opposite of true Friendship or Love – it’s their condition.”

He put down the Foal and continued, “Or was there ever a moment when the love of your daughter burned brighter than with your mortal enemy standing by her side?”

Lily watched Stick, then her father. “What’s he talking about, dad?”

“The fate of the pony race rests in your hooves,” said Stick, staring at Heart. “Unity or death. Friendship or chaos. A future… or nothing.”

“Daddy?” asked Lily, slightly more worriedly.

Heart wasn’t listening. He was feeling – feeling the eyes like pearls black and white on him. They were speaking to him, in him.

A future for nothing. A Word for a world.

His mouth cracked open. “No.”

And the window exploded in a shower of glass. A gail swooped into the room, killing all the candles. The purple lighting that struck the yard outside set the room ablaze. In the bright glimpse it offered, Heart saw the city in lavendel flames. An M-storm at the peak of its glory.

Suddenly, everypony was shouting. Stick for the guards, Lily for his dad, the guards behind the door which Heart’s horn now fought to keep closed at all cost. The wind screamed like a dying animal. Only the Foal stood still, staring. Heart’s mind was about to snap for the strain it was under, but still he could not tear his eyes from the creature. Nor shut his ears from the whispers at the back of his head.

Are you a violent pony, Deck Heart the Captain?

I’m a soldier, thought Heart. He backed down as Stick started towards him. Violence is my profession.

Are you a soldier out of love for duty? Out of duty to love?

“End this madness!” shouted Stick. “Right now! Right now!” He came at Heart hard, reared and kicked him. His mind occupied, Heart could barely shield himself from the blow. Yet deep within, his thought remained calm as a breeze.

Out of family, really.

“I’m offering you everything!” screamed Stick. “Everything! Take it! Take it! Take it!”

His last kick made it past Heart’s fragile defenses and hit him square in the jaw. He staggered back, horn flickering, and saved himself from collapsing by grabbing support from the table. The bottle of wine shattered on the floor. Another lighting hit the ground somewhere, briefly coloring the room in purple blaze toned by Heart’s flickering horn.

“Why aren’t you taking it?” said Stick. “You should’ve taken it. I even asked you nicely first.” Carefully, he picked up a shard of glass among the ruins of the bottle.

Heart heard him only distantly. In his mind, the tranquil voice boomed even louder than the storm.

I could be your family.

Stick raised the piece of glass, but stopped when Lily lunged herself at him, biting him in the ankle. He shrieked, and kicked the filly in the chest so hard she flew backwards on top of the Monopony board, where she curled up crying. Heart tried to get up, but Stick pushed him down, and there was no strength left in him to fight against it. Meanwhile, the door was about to crack from its hinges again. In the glow of another lighting, the piece of glass gleamed like an eye of a beast.

“Everything,” said Stick. “You could still have it. Why refuse it? Why fight it? It’s your destiny. Take it. The griffons are dead already; extinct. Their sacrifice is a formality. What is that – what is that? – compared to everything?”

One of the hinges on the door gave up with a loud crack. The others were seconds away from following. Heart’s breathe was already there. Stick stood somewhere in his horizon, in the haze the whole room was now. Only himself and the Foal remained in pitch-perfect clarity.

Not a family, thought Heart. A destiny.

What is the difference? asked the voice black and white. Can you even tell?

You’re saying you can’t?

“Time’s up,” said Stick. The piece of glass rose at the same time the first guard broke in. “Choose. Decide. Accept.”

Heart looked at him, not even seeing the shard anymore. A temptation to say something clever would’ve had a field day, save for the fact that he could not make anything up. So he simply smiled.

“So be it,” said Stick. His hoof pulled an inch back, dived towards Heart’s pulsing throat in rhythm of Lily’s scream…

…Only to be leashed by the grey aura gathered around him. Stick made a sound like something small being stepped on. His neck twitched as it turned to look at the Foal, whose horn glowed with the same, fine grey light.

“Why?” gasped Stick. “Whyyyyy... ?” His ears perked up, catching words nopony else heard. A mixture of pain and rage ravaged his face. “No… no no no no no. That’s not… I’m not… I don’t want to!”

He wrenched his limb against the Foal’s magic, and the shard moved half an inch closer to Heart’s artery. “It’s his problem, not mine! His fault! His! Guards, do –”

His sentence ended with a shriek in mid-flight and a crash with the guards who were too slow to get out of the way. The Foal’s horn wasn’t glowing anymore: its whole body was, emanating the eerie grey light. Heart could swear its legs weren’t even touching the ground. He had no time to check though, not in the middle of grabbing Lily and jumping through the broken window.

He had dropped from the second floor of the house once or twice before – when he had been both twenty years more agile and foolish, and not carrying a hysteric foal in his lap. If the bush of roses they landed into had had any leaves left, it might’ve took off the first edge of the hit. As it was, it only made the spikes sink deeper into his flesh.

“You okay?” he asked weakly from Lily, who had landed on top of him.

“No!” she cried. “Dad, what’s happening?!”

“I wish I knew, Lily, I wish I knew. Now, could you please get off me? I think I broke something…”

Luckily, that ended up only being a rib, maybe two. Nothing he couldn’t jog off, which he did, although it made his insides burn. As he had expected, the yard was empty all the way to the gate. Most sane ponies tended to opt for inside locations during an M-storm. There was no sign of Tin Key at the gate, nor of Cowl. Lightning rained on the city wherever he looked. At least four of the buildings on the street were aflame. Their inhabitants were pouring out, desperate for new shelters of which there were none. That was the thing about M-storms. They didn’t turn you into sugar or any of that crap. They just got you dead.

Different kinds of shouting hit Heart’s ears from behind. Guards were filing out of the mansion, with Stick on the forefront, pointing furiously at various directions and shouting. There was no sign of the Foal.

“What do we do, dad?” asked Lily, digging into his armored side. “What do we do?”

Stick’s pointing was directed at their direction in increasing measure. Guards enclosed on them. Heart could not run, and he certainly could not fight. Although he would, if it came to that. Oh yes.

“Lily,” he said while keeping his eyes on the approaching guards. “Remember what I said about looking?”

“Not again,” sobbed Lily. “Not again…”

“Don’t look back. Whatever happens, don’t look back.” He pushed her away, but she wouldn’t let go. She wouldn’t let go. Heart could barely stand up anymore. She wouldn’t let go.

“Deck,” said somepony behind him. Heart turned to look who it might be, though he knew already.

“It’s over,” said Cowl. He took a step forward. “It’s over.”

Heart laughed. “How long have you been in on this, exactly?”

“In on what?” Another step.

“This,” said Heart, waving at the guards who now surrounded them. “This... betrayal…”

“Nopony’s betrayed anypony,” said Cowl, stopping a bit closer to him than the closest guard. “Nopony except you.”

Stick, who had momentarily vanished inside, came jogging at them, carrying the Foal who was all too limp to be conscious. Past Cowl and the guards, maybe twenty meters away, Heart saw a sewer lid that had cracked slightly open.

“Funny,” he said, looking at Cowl. “I had this thought it was just the other way around.”

“You were going to quit!” shouted Cowl. “Walk away just like that! Never mind the city, the people, the whole of bucking ponydom! Don’t you see the times we’re living in? The brink everything stands on? You think you can just walk away from that?”

Thick smoke cascaded over them, colored by the never ending lightings, filled by the distant screaming. Heart felt faint in the same way he imagined a person falling from very high does.

“I never asked to be a savior,” he said. “Never.”

“We’re way past thinking of who asked for what. We’re at war. War, Deck. The griffons have already seized one of the grain silos: they’re emptying it as we speak.”

“He speaks the truth,” said Stick, who had at least made it to them. He dropped the Foal from his back on the ground. It wasn’t moving. “And the Guard remains leaderless, scattered. You need to see the big picture here, Captain.”

“Why me?” said Heart. “You seem to have no trouble making my soldiers dance to your tune. You’ve already turned them against me. Have them, for all I care. What do you need me for?”

“Against you?” said Stick. “Are you deaf? I told you: I want nothing to do with anything that isn’t a nice, comfy cellar! I never turned a single guard against you! It’s you who shed the first blood; you who attacked the ponies who had sworn their lives to protect you and your daughter. That’s exactly what they were doing before you killed them!”

Heart shook his head. “No. No. That’s not how it –”

“Oh yes it is!” cried Stick. To the shock everypony around, he kicked the Foal lying limp on the ground. “This thing got them riled up alright, but how do you expect a newborn – let alone a lunatic – lead a city to war? I was merely trying to help you do the one thing that seemed so important to you: protect your bloody daughter from the bloody griffons!”

Heart’s head was spinning. “But you kidnapped me on the Ledge…”

“That was his idea!” continued Stick, pointing at Cowl. “He thought it’d be clever, making to think the Guard was about to get hijacked; that it’d surely make you come to your senses. And I thought I was the insane one…”

Heart looked at Cowl as if he saw him for the first time. “In on what, you were saying…?”

“It happened on the night in the bar,” said Cowl grudgingly. “Yeah. I went straight to another place after we split. Thought to get thoroughly drunk. But he came to me, and we started talking… One thing led to another… He seemed like the fella with the plan, or several, but no idea how to make it happen. So I told him to take over the Guard.”

“You told him to…”

“Just for long enough to call you back to reality!” yelled Cowl. He marched to Heart, grabbed him by the neck and drew him to the point where their horns met. “Maybe you didn’t ask to lead, maybe you did. In any case, the city needs to be led, and right now it doesn’t get much choice. The griffons are –”

“Tell me,” said Heart so quietly only Cowl could hear him. “How come you know all this about griffons? And why didn’t you share your knowledge earlier?”

“I tried, but you wouldn’t –”

Heart’s headbut put an end to his sentence and front teeth both.

“You told me nothing I didn’t already know!” Heart shouted as Cowl staggered back, blood spilling from his muzzle. “You warned me late on purpose! You want this war just as bad as he does! You can have it for all I care!”

He started walking, with Lily squeezed to his side. Nopony stopped them. The gates were right in front of them, as ajar as they would ever be. Farther down the street, one of the houses collapsed into a ruin of flames, dust and screams buried under rubble. Heart walked on.

“What are you doing?!” shouted Stick. “What are you doing?! Stop them! He’s your Captain! Stop them!” His voice had suddenly turned shrill, as if broken inside in countless tiny shards.

Sergeant Fall, who hadn’t blinked since the Foal had hit the ground, said, “What have you done?” He looked up at Stick, face blank. “What have you done?”

“Deck,” said Cowl. He spat half a tooth on the ground. “Deck. Please. We need you.” His horn lit up. “I need you.”

Heart increased his pace. Above there came a sound like a lightning tearing in two. The sewer lid was right at his reach. The broken rib was a knife stab inside him. The lid was that close. Behind him, he could hear Stick’s shouts turn into explanations tinged first with annoyance, then with fear. From the corner of his eye he saw Lily forcing her eyes shut, clasping onto him right on the spot where the rib hurt most. He could taste blood.

The lid was in his reach… as the lightning hit the gate and made the world go white, then black.

***

It was a wondrous sight, in its own, ruinous way. Whole blocks were still aflame, and most others were smouldering. Carmine light of the rising sun mixed in with the darkest umbras in a patchwork of shadows. Silence rang above all else. Even the usual high wind was quiet as a grave. The smell of ash and smoke climbed all the way to the Cliffs. Cecil had no reason to believe they wouldn’t have to get used to it for a long while.

“Do you think it’s ironic?” said Falke. She sat on a ledge above her, cleaning her feathers. “Or simply funny?”

“Funny?” asked Cecil hollowly.

“Think about it. They pushed us into this rock to slowly die. Instead, it allowed us watch in safety as they met their maker. Has to be something comedic there.”

Even if “funny” wasn’t Cecil’s word, she would have had to admit that there was something twisted in how things had turned out. While the city had been ravaged by the worst M-storm in a hundred years, the Cliffs had sheltered each and every griffon from everything but the terrible sounds. A million ton of rock over your head tended to do that, even if it was not meant to. All of a sudden, the city was the desolate periphery, and the Cliffs the promise of the future.

Ruffling the last of her feathers, Falke stood up. “It’s about time we got down there. You coming?”

“Yes,” said Cecil, after a pause.

“Great. I’ll let the others know.”

“But I won’t be coming to the silos,” continued Cecil. “Not right away. There is someone else I must pay a visit to first.”

“Should I be asking who that might be?”

Cecil turned around. “Not unless you need to.”

Falke humphead at that. “Just don’t get into trouble. I don’t expect the ponies to be at their most hospitable at the moment.”

Dead things rarely are, said Cecil, but only to herself.

As the griffons returned to the silo they had begun emptying yesterday, Cecil headed deeper into the city. Up close, the shreds of beauty she had witnessed from afar paled into cruel mockery. There was so much distance could hide. The countless bodies, for one. There were living ones among the ruins also, moving in small groups or wandering alone, but she saw it best for everyone to keep her presence a secret. Only once she stopped to make a contact, to help a pony stuck under a collapsed pillar. She left him there though, realizing she had mistaken the hunger of rats for signs of life.

Finally, she arrived at the Captain’s Mansion. Or what was left of it. She could barely recognize the building from her last visit. There had been more intact walls, for instance. And a roof. And the yard had not been filled with charred corpses.

Cecil tried to identify Heart among them as best she could, but could not manage better than a guess. The damage was too overwhelming, not to speak of her disgust. Only one of the guards seemed somewhat familiar, but she was certain it was not him. Heart didn’t have a moustache that dense.

She was about to leave, but noticed the opened sewer lid outside the gates. It was clear someone had escaped the storm there. It was considerably less clear who it was, especially when you could not see one meter into the underground darkness. Only a very stupid creature would plunge in there. What did the fate of a single pony matter for her anyway? They were supposed to be at war now. In any case, she was probably the last living soul Heart would like to see right now.

All these thoughts and more went through her head as she prepared a makeshift torch and lighted it in one of the smouldering ruins. There was no oil to fuel the flame, but it should last long enough to let her get a peek deeper. Just a peek.

The sewer smelled decisively worse than she had expected, but compared to the burned stench any change was improvement. In the glow of the torch, she sought signs of anyone descending here recently. The tunnel was narrow, and only one sidewalk followed the river of filth, which streamed quietly into the gloom. There were no hoofsteps there, and she was certainly not going to begin looking for them in the bottom of the murk. Luckily, she didn’t need to.

What looked like a full plate pony armor lay in pieces in the middle of the shallow current, gathering grime. Apparently somepony had indeed come down here, lost their armor and continued onwards. Most likely along the current, for that way lay the way out. Cecil had no proof whatsoever it was Heart. No proof whatsoever. And yet…

The tunnel was much too tight to allow her to extend her wings, so she walked along the sidewalk, kicking rats as she went. At some point the torch died down. Nonetheless she pressed onwards, albeit more carefully. The blackness was dense enough to make even her eyes less than useless. As a consequence, her ears worked overtime, catching the slightest deviation from the flow of water.

“Heart?” she said after walking a bit further. “Is it you?”

A needlepoint green glow grew gradually stronger until it revealed not only a horn, but a face to go with it. A face like what a ghost might wear.

“I’m not sure,” said Heart. His voice barely carried over the stream. “What're you doing here?”

“I wish I knew,” said Cecil.

“Welcome to the club then.” Heart’s light flickered, threatened to die down, but balanced out eventually. He coughed into a hoof, and the blood that came up did not escape Cecil’s attention.

She stared at him, unable to decide whether she should be glad or sorry for finding him. This hadn’t been how she had imagine the encounter to go. How exactly she had imagined it, she could not say. But not like this.

“The storm’s seized,” she ventured. “You want to get out of here?”

Little by little, Heart’s horn extinguished. Cecil thought he had died. But then he spoke, “I will. But I won’t be needing your help for that. There is something else I have to ask, though.”

Light returned for a brief while, this time illuminating not only Heart’s face, but a little filly curled into a ball on his lap. Her breath was shallow, yet steady.

Cecil’s eyes widened. “You’re asking me to –”

“Not asking,” he whispered. “Begging.”

“No,” said Cecil. “No. What would I tell her? She’d run away the moment she could. No. I didn’t come here for this.” She kneeled next to him, slipped his hoof over her shoulder. “You’re coming up with me even if I have to –”

She froze at the sight of Heart’s side.

“Yeah,” said Heart at her expression.

“This was done by magic,” she said. “How…?”

“A long story. Not important.” He smoothed the mane of the foal, who curled up tighter against him. “Not anymore…”

Cecil rose up slowly. “I didn’t come here for this.”

Heart looked up at her. “I thought you didn’t know that.”

“Shut up. You listen to me. Fine, I’ll take her up – and you right after. That’s all. And if you try to argue, I’ll leave you both here.”

Heart smiled. “Should’ve known better than to argue with a griffon.”

“Yeah. You should.”

Like a plucking a rose from a mountaintop, Cecil carried Lily back the tunnel and to the street, where she wrapped her into whatever cloth she could come by. The foal never so much as grunted, her sleep thick as midwinter ice. Next Cecil looked for bandages, or anything to tie Heart’s wound, and something to help lift him up the shaft. It would take more than her bare hands to haul a full grown stallion out of a sewer. Briefly she considered fetching help, but there was no time. Luckily, she found quickly enough a roll of thick rope that had survived the fire.

“Melancholy is the curse of you ponies,” she said while returning to the tunnel. “Too much dwelling in the past.” She bent over Heart, feeling her way in the pitch-black darkness. “Come now, make yourself useful for a change and light that bone of yours. I can’t patch you up blind.”

There was no response. Not even a tacit one.

Cecil waited for longer than she could tell. And then she tied Heart’s wound as best as she could, dragged him to the lid, roped him and hauled up into the sunlight.

“Told you,” she panted next to his unmoving body. “Should know better… than to argue… with a griffon.”

She collapsed on the street, completely out of breath and strength. Lying on her back, she saw the foal’s head peek from the bundle of rags she had wrapped her into. Thick as her dreams were, she wouldn’t sleep forever.

Not without help she won't…

The thought was there, in the distant horizon of Cecil’s strained conscious. A little closer and it might’ve counted for reality. A little bit closer, and they could both touch the sun.

The sun. It had now risen, valiant as ever, more beautiful than ever before. Colder than in an eternity. It shined on her and the foal both; on all of the city and the world together. Exposed forever.

Let it shine, thought Cecil calmly. Let it shine for all its worth. She got up, scooped up Lily and started flying for silo five.

The Cliffs got all the shade we will ever need.

Author's Note

Finished.

Almost. Or did you think I'd forget the fates of the rest of the cast? They shall all have their place in the forthcoming epilogue.

Thank you all for reading!

Epilogue: The Others

Wasted as the incontestable beauty of the day in many senses was, Mr Gruff saw no reason not to honor it with a little stroll accompanied by quiet whistling. Utter destruction had always allured him to a degree. Anyone with years of medical experience could respect the mortal frailty which lay at the bottom of flesh, the fine line between rejuvenation and decay on which life continuously verged, undecided. At times, the decision came from chance; at others, it had to be done by Mr Gruff. It relieved him somewhat, seeing that his choices sometimes coincided with those of nature itself.

Feinsake, during their meetings, had more than once referred to Canterlot as a newborn foal; exposed and scared at heart. Never had she doubted the analogy should lead to any other conclusion save salvation by motherhood. Mr Gruff had always held his opinions tacit on such matters. His view of motherhood indeed shared an intimate tie to salvation, although perhaps in a way reverse to what Feinsake had thought. Gruff suspected the fact had something to do with how differently they understood the concept of mercy.

At some point and not without some original intention, Gruff finally arrived to his house. To his surprise most of it was still standing. The numerous fires apparently had avoided this part of the city. Wind had still made a handsome mess of his front yard, and judging by the door that lay ajar, the insides of the place would not be that different.

On that he was mistaken. Walking inside, he could right away tell the difference the insides of the house had in relation to the outside. Although both lay in evident chaos, only the latter bore the mark of decisively inequine disorder. The corpse of the young stallion spread on his living room carpet was the strongest evidence of this. The little surprise Gruff had hidden among the silverware locker had clearly worked as intended on the looter. He almost felt sad for the poor kid. If anypony ever bothered to arrange funerals for him, there wouldn’t even be a question of an open casket.

“For anyone else who might still occupy this apartment,” started Gruff with a clear voice, “Know that you can have anything you like that is not edible. I’m going to be moving soon anyway, and I plan to travel light. But all food I must claim for myself. On the risk of a brawl, I should add.”

Only the sound of water dripping down the hole in the roof answered him. Either the colt had come in alone, his mates had been scared off by his sudden demise and possibility of more traps, or they had chosen that a fight with an old stallion would be worth it. On the last point, Gruff would be more than ready, if loath, to prove them wrong.

Something moved in the direction of the kitchen. It headed towards the living room. Gruff’s horn lit up.

“Peace,” said the stallion unicorn who emerged to the doorstep. “Peace, Mr Gruff. I come in peace.”

Gruff’s horn did not dim. There was something familiar in the pony, although he could not quite name what it was. By the look of it he had been through a lot during the night. Dark bags lined his eyes, his fur was matted and shaggy, and what looked like a self-made bandage covered his right side. Gruff himself had all his strength left in him, having spent the night in the deep safety of the High North Lane Mine. If there was to be a fight, it would not be a close one.

“Are you alone?” Gruff asked.

“No,” said the stallion. He swayed on his legs, drew support from the doorframe. “There’s someone else, in the back. That’s why I came here. It needs your help.”

“Do I know ‘it’? Or you for that matter?”

The stallion straightened himself. “Sergeant Fall, at your service. We’re talking of the Foal. It’s in the back. Please.”

Gruff studied Fall for a long while. “Show me,” he eventually said.

The Sergeant hadn’t lied. But neither had he spoken the truth. The Foal didn’t need the help of Mr Gruff. It no longer needed the help of anypony, as far as Gruff could tell, which he did.

“You have to try!” bursted Fall in the small kitchen. “You’re a doctor!”

“Not that kind of a Doctor,” said Gruff, stopping measuring the Foal’s pulse. He had barely been able to find it. “Why did you bring it here to begin with?”

Fall looked downtrodden. “There was nowhere, and no one, else to go. I haven’t met any officers since yesternight. I think the Captain’s dead; Stick too. It was a chaos. Nopony’s in charge anymore. But the Foal was dying… I had to do something… So I came here…”

Gruff’s face remained unmoved. “Your fate in hierarchy staggers me. Nonetheless, what you think I would or could do is meaningless now. I cannot save this foal. I’m not the type, you see.” He turned away and started scouring the cupboards, pulling out food items and gathering them on a table.

Fall stared at him. “So… that’s it? You’re just going to leave? After everything?”

Gruff said nothing, but only continued stacking the items. There was plenty of dried vegetables, some flour… Water was what he lacked most. He would have to find a working well from somewhere, and then –

He stopped as the familiar sensation of foreign magic tingled his neck. He sighed deeply.

“You can’t force me to do the impossible,” he said wearily without looking at the Sergeant.

“But I can make you try,” said Fall. He stepped forward and closed the cupboard before Gruff’s face. “And for your sake, I hope I don’t catch you slacking.”

I really am too trusting, thought Gruff while bending over the Foal again. As before he first checked the pulse, which was as weak as it would ever get before disappearing. Aside from that, he had no idea how to continue. There seemed to be no visible injuries, no clearly broken bones, nothing deviant. Except that the whole creature was by nature deviant. He had not the faintest idea what kind of experiments Feinsake had made herself go through during her pregnancy – his role had merely been to extend its course – but the effects were evident on the foal she had left behind. Evident and elusive both. Gruff could not even swear the creature was equine.

“Get on with it!” demanded Fall behind him. “If the Foal dies, there is no reason for any of us to live. Maybe that gives you some motivation.”

“Why do you care about it so much?” asked Gruff, studying the creature before him. “It’s not an alicorn. And even if it were, it’d be a fake one. Manufactured. Engineered. Not the real thing.”

“I said get on with it.”

The tingling turned to stinging on Gruff’s skin. Why were all fanatics so attracted to him? Feinsake had been bad enough, but her bits had been good. Stick had at least retained some of her charisma. But what the Sergeant was asking was simply blind mad, both in intention and content.

Weak as a puff, the Foal coughed.

“See?” burst Fall, the glee on his voice sickening Gruff on the spot. “It’s alive! There’s still hope!”

Gruff’s jaw tightened in rhythm with Fall’s grip on him. “I will need to use my horn,” he said.

“Do whatever you need to do.”

“I’m glad you agree with me,” said Gruff, his horn lighting up. “Oh yes.”

Delicately, Gruff lifted the Foal’s head. And then, in one swift motion which left no room for feeling, he broke the uppermost vertebra of its tiny neck.

A fleeting moment passed on Fall’s face when a void consumed the little thought his mind still clung to. Gruff neutralized him before he could even blink. The stallion slumped on the floor, devoid of life.

A little while after, Mr Gruff walked out of the front doors, his saddlebags filled with all the food he could carry. On the gate he threw one more glance at his old house. A sense of drama urged him to say something, but the only options available were far too trivial for his liking. Instead, he recalled the controversy he had shared with Feinsake.

She had always thought the greatest virtue of motherhood to be mercy. That a mother could forgive anything her foal would ever do, and love them more for it. The point had been one of the few Gruff agreed on with her. Mercy was the essence of motherhood. But what Feinsake had conceived as the mother’s mercy towards her foal, Gruff had always understood rather as the extended mercy for herself. The true mother’s mercy, for him, in fact presupposed the complete opposite. It wasn’t dying for the other which was hard, but continuing to live in their stead.

On the way back, Mr Gruff whistled no longer.

***

The Ledge lay still like the corpses that littered it, up until one of them decided it was not dead after all. Mill Stone’s body trembled at his first cough, then jerked as a cluster more exploded from within him. He stood up, spitting dust and shards of memories. The picture they formed on the ground resembled one of those ink stain tests he had to go through as a recruit. Now as then, he could not but think of the image as a bloody senseless mess.

A metallic clang echoed around the clearing as Mill dropped his helmet. The hoof-shaped dent on its side was proof that it had saved his life, if not his consciousness. The last recollections he had were a blur. Bodies pressed together, screams drowning in the tumult of running, a terrible sense of suffocation… And above all, loneliness. He shuddered.

After the reality of the situation, in the view of the perfect sunshine, had hit him, Mill tried to think of what his training had taught him to do next. There was a protocol concerning complete catastrophes in the Guard’s Guidebook, but unfortunately Mill could not recall but the first clause of it: find somepony higher up. From all evidence it was clear he was that somepony. He would have to decide what would happen next. The notion struck a chord stranger in him than he feared ought to have been the case. He wished Helm had been there.

Helm.

“Helm!” he cried suddenly. He looked around, turned a few promising looking bodies, then shouted again. And again. And again. He shouted until the rest of the dust he had swallowed climbed up his throat and choked him.

He tried to remember where he had last seen Helm. Instead he could only recall how he had seen him – scared. Terrified. He had wanted to flee; Mill had tried to stop him. And then they had been separated.

Helm had wanted to go home. Helm was not here. Deductively, then, he might be home. The thought made sense, at least more so than anything else around did.

But first things first: he would have to report to someone. There had to be someone higher up somewhere. The best place to start looking was of course the station, where he chose to head next. Across a field of trampled bodies. Disconcerting as the observation was, deep within Mill a voice whispered – extremely diligently – that it was not really his problem anymore.

The route across the city contained many more such issues which really were not his problems. Their scale went far beyond him. All the ruins, all the death, all the sorrow: it overwhelmed him. His duty was to find somepony who knew what to do next, who would tell him what to do next. After that, perhaps he could consider some of the surrounding chaos a problem specifically of his. But until then… No way.

He arrived at the station and walked right in. It was easy, there being no front doors. Somehow they had ended in the middle of the lobby. The funny thing was, this was not the first novel feature Mill noticed about the room. He hardly could recognize any familiarity under the mess. The Captain would explode if he ever saw this. Mill felt obliged to consider at least that much to be his problem. Thus he started cleaning.

He managed to tidy a spot on the main floor quite neatly before collapsing where he stood. A laugh like a rubber band stretched to the point of snapping escaped him and rang around the hall, bouncing along the walls. Uncontrollable shaking came next. He couldn’t have thought there was any place on earth lonelier than the crowd he had been part of yesternight. What a grave mistake.

“Excuse me?”

Mill looked up. A pony stood at the end of the stairs leading to the second floor, eyeing him carefully.

“Identify yourself,” said Helm. The automaticity of the command was not the least disturbed by the tears he still shedded.

“I’m nopony,” hesitated the pony. “Just a technician. Tin Key. That’s my name.”

Mill got up, wiped his eyes. “You got an ID?”

Nervously, the pony pointed at the white collar all the technicians wore in the guard. “That’s all I have.”

Mill advanced towards him. The pony remained still, yet seemed to shrink the closer Mill got. The fact, among the whole appearance of the pony, reinforced the image he had of the average crime scene technician. He stopped in front of him.

“You alone?”

Key nodded.

“You’re saying there’s nopony else in the building except you?”

“I-I can’t be sure: I only arrived recently… But it seems like it.” Key’s lower lip trembled. “How… how about you?”

Mill shook his head low.

Key sat down, buried his head into his front hooves. “My gods… My gods… They’re all dead…”

“They’re not,” snarled Mill. The pony’s weakness, spilled all over him, made bile rise up his throat. “They’re momentarily disorganized. As are we. So we need to recoup.” He paused, trying to think something more to say. “We need to find an officer. Any officer.”

Key kept on weeping. Mill sneered.

“Coward,” he spat before climbing rest of the stairs. There had to be somepony else around. Had to be. This was the Guard’s headquarters: the most natural location for everypony to gather. Sooner or later.

The second floor was in much better condition than the lobby. Apparently the storm had not reached up here. Only a few windows had been smashed in, and the wind had thrown around some papers, but overall he could not spot much difference to how the place usually looked like. Save the fact that there was nopony anywhere. Not a soul.

He smashed a nearby table in half. “Buck!” he cried at the emptiness. “Buck buck buck! Buck!”

“I told you,” said Tin Key’s quiet voice by the door. “There’s nopony here.”

“Wrong,” said Mill. He turned around to stare at Key. “There’s us. That’s a start.”

An unbelieving grin tempting mockery spread on Key’s tear-stained face. “Us? A lone grunt and a technician without a team? Give me a break…”

Mill’s face grew grim. Then he noticed something.

“Why did you come here?” he demanded. “What did you come to find if not a new start?”

Key’s smile withered. He turned to leave.

“Hey!” shouted Mill, stepping forward. “I asked you a question!”

Tin Key kept on walking. Mill sprinted after him, cut in his way. “Why did you come here?” he repeated.

Tin Key tried to sidestep him. Mill blocked his path. When Key tried again, he shoved him so hard he fell on the floor, yelping.

“I asked you a –”

“There was no place else to go!” yelled Key. “I have nothing else! Nothing except the Guard! Nothing except…” His broken voice died down to more weeping. “Fall… Where did you go… Fall…”

Mill stared at the sorry sight. And then, without looking behind, he left the building.

It occurred to him some two blocks away that he had no other place to go, either. He had a flat nearby, true, but what of it? His parents had been gone for years, thankfully. There was no single soul in the city who would recognize him as a friend and who did not work in the Guard. None whom he would care to meet at this very moment at least.

He sat next to a fallen street light to consider his options, and lack thereof. There had to be more guards alive in the city. There had to. So why were none of them around at the station? Where were they? What were they thinking? Did something keep them from recouping? Perhaps a war had broken out, and somewhere there was a big fight going on. Yeah. It had to be that. What else could it be? Everypony couldn’t have just gone home, could they?

He laughed loud at the thought and at the absurdity it represented. The Guard could not go home. It existed so that everypony would have a home to go to. They all knew that.

Helm also knew that. And he had wanted to go home.

Mill stopped laughing. It had started to hurt his lungs. The ravaged street rang with fresh silence, the weight of which he could feel on his shoulders. Nothing weighed like loneliness. Nothing except nothing.

I’m done with crying, he told himself. I need to do something. Anything. I need… to find somepony.

Perhaps it had been a random chance that had guided him already towards the direction of Helm’s house, but he did not stop to ponder about the fact. He just kept on walking, then running. He galloped along the streets which he did not recognize, past the houses he did not know. Over the bodies he did not see. And then he was there.

Helm lived in one of the block flats near the centre of the city. Many had suffered a lot during the storm; some were not there anymore. Mill stood surrounded by the ruins, trying to make sense of the sight, his ears ringing with silence. It deepened the closer he got to his friend’s apartment. At the front door even the ghosts were absent. He knocked on it.

A crack appeared between the frame and the door. From within, a corner of a frightened eye peered.

“Who are you?” an equally scared voice whispered. “What do you want?”

“I…” started Mill. “Uh. Is Helm there?”

The door slammed open and hit him on the face. The next thing he knew, he lay on his back on the street, staring into a mare’s face pressed half an inch from his. Compared to her eyes, the storm of yesternight was but mild drizzle.

“You know my husband?” she demanded. “You know where he is? How he is? You do? Do you?”

“Jade!” cried Mill. “It’s me! Mill Stone!”

The pools of violet blinked, and the tempest disappeared. “Mill?”

He tried his best to avoid any sudden movements and to speak slowly. “Yes. Yes. We met briefly last year. In the Guard’s Heart’s Warming Eve party. I spilled punch on your dress. You remember?”

“My dress…” repeated Jade equally slowly. “You’re that idiot?”

“Yeah,” said Mill in relief. “The same. Could you get off me now?”

She did. Mill got up, shook off worst of the dust, then gave his first good look for a year at the mare. It might as well have been a decade. Terrible exhaustion did that to a pony.

“I don’t know where Helm is,” he said. “That’s why I asked.”

Without warning, Jade burst crying. Panic overtook Mill.

“Hey hey hey,” he said, kneeling over the collapsed mare. “I meant nothing by that. Come now, come now. Everything’s okay.” He hesitated, then put a hoof on her shaking shoulder. “Everything’s okay.”

She bounced up and shoved him away. “It’s not! Look around yourself! Look! Does this look like okay to you?” She wiped her eyes clean of tears, if only to make room for more. “I haven’t seen my husband since yesterday morning. I haven’t slept since. And then the idiot who ruined my favourite dress knocks on my door, saying everything’s okay…”

Mill watched her pave the ground. Magic concentrated at the tip of his horn, but he quenched the instinct to use it. “I’m sorry, okay? Look, it hasn’t been that easy for me either. I didn’t mean any harm. Not now or in the Eve’s party.”

She eyed him doubtfully. “Why are you looking for my husband?”

There was no honest answer he could give her which would not sound lunatic, so he said, without batting an eye, “They’re calling troops at the station. All hooves who can move. I… I was ordered to spread the word. I figured Helm might be here.”

“He’s not at the station?”

“Not as far as I know.”

The mare’s eyes moistened again. “Then where is he?”

Mill could not meet her gaze. “I… I don’t know…” He coughed into a hoof, then happened to glance at the still open front door. A colt about the age of five stood on the porch, looking at them with round, sleepless eyes.

“Grain!” yelped Jade as she saw him. “What did I told you? Get back inside this instant!”

The colt flinched, then reared back, only to stumble on the carpet behind him. Jade hurried to help him up. Mill followed her tending to the foal as if from a theatre audience. He almost felt like reaching for the popcorn.

Popcorn. Food. Hunger. It finally occurred to him he hadn’t eaten for over 24 hours. There had been no time to think about it too deeply. There still wasn’t, but his stomach did not care of such details. It grumbled loudly.

“Do you… do you happen to have food in there?” he managed.

“We do. Why?”

“Well, I… I could use a bite of breakfast… if that is okay with you. And Grain.”

“Aren’t you on duty?”

Mill shuffled his hooves. “Uhm… This was the last address I was supposed to visit. Helm might come home any moment now. I might as well hang around for a few minutes.”

She looked at him in silence. “There’s some leftovers from the breakfast we had. You can have them.”

“Thank you,” said Mill. “Thank you.”

She disappeared inside, leaving the door open. Mill closed it after himself.

***

In the Ledge there was a house of no particular importance. In the first floor, hushed voices grasped their way over an air of doubt.

“It has been hours now… How long can he stay down there?”

“Should we go see him?”

“He told us not to, didn’t he?”

“Did he? When?”

“I heard him say nothing. Just climbed down there the moment he woke up.”

“We’re doomed.”

That last line quieted down the rest of the cultists. They all turned to one hunched up figure in the corner. The hood of his robe had been pulled over his face. Rays of sunlight cascaded through the torn curtains, throwing golden stripes on his otherwise shaggy appearance.

“We’re doomed,” he repeated. “We failed to protect the Foal. Now all is lost. We’re doomed.”

Nervous glances criss-crossed the room. Someone coughed. Another one slipped into the kitchen and out through the back.

“Brother,” started the cultist who had coughed. “The Prophecy… perhaps there’s something we have missed… some metaphor we haven’t interpreted correctly…”

The hooded pony stood up. All the others took a step back. All except one.

“The Prophecy has been fulfilled,” he said. “Can’t you see it? Shouldn't you see it? What a First Prophet you are…”

Bolt the Just, First of the Prophets, corrected his bearing. “That’s right. I am the First Prophet. And I say you are wrong.”

The hooded pony spat on his feet. The room gasped.

“You’re a fool,” he said. “You all are, continuing to play this stupid game without knowing the rules. You thought the Prophecy would solve all your problems? Purge the realm of evil and suffering?” A hollow, dry laughter burst from within the hood. “Didn’t the storm do just that?”

Bolt’s expression tightened. “Despair is the cruelest of poisons, brother.”

The hood was thrown aside. “I’m no brother of yours. All we have in common are these stupid robes, and mine’s been itching from the moment I put it on.” Violently he pulled the cloth over him and tossed it aside. “There, much better.”

“How dare you?” cried somepony from behind Bolt. “That’s sacrilege!”

“What, this?” continued the pony, stomping the robe under his hoof. “Or this,” he said, rubbing the white and black paint off his face.”

Bolt sensed sudden movement behind him. “Everypony calm down!” he shouted while blocking the path of the would-be assailant. “Fighting gets us nowhere. Please! We can’t let our base emotions dictate our behavior like this.”

A thin sneer cracked the lips of the dissenter. He was young, Bolt now saw – roundabout of age with him. There was also something familiar about him; something he could not quite put his hoof on. Not until he could.

“Brother,” he started again. “I feel your despair. And not for the first time. Then as now, there is no light for us in the horizon; only darkness. All I ask you is to do what you did then, and share the path with me.”

The youth frowned. “What are you on about?”

Bolt stepped forward. “Don’t you remember? High North Lane Mine? We were both applying for the inspector’s job. Under Iron Hard.”

The youth’s expression did not change. “Might be were. Big deal. This job’s been an even bigger mistake than that one.”

“Not a job. A destiny.”

“Whatever,” said the youth. “It’s not paying my bills either way. You keep your destiny; I’m keeping my time. Adios.”

He headed to the door. Fervent whispering arose from behind Bolt as every pair of eyes in the room watched the pony leave.

“What nerve…”

“Is he really letting him off that easily?”

“I wouldn’t have, was I the First Prophet…”

“Should we scram, too?”

Bolt felt how the moment was slipping into waters he did not wish to navigate. Responsibility forced his shoulders. Duty held up his chin. Indecision choked his throat.

“Wait,” he gasped when the youth was almost out of the door. “Wait. You can’t leave.”

The youth stopped, then gave a long, slow stare at Bolt. “You’re forbidding me?”

“No,“ hurried Bolt. “Of course not. Everypony is here only because they want to.” He turned to the rest of the cultists. There seemed to be less than a moment ago, he could swear. “You decided to come to the Foal, not the other way around. Now, I know it is not with us anymore. But we are. And we can still choose to stay. All I ask you,” he continued while looking to the door again, “That you are certain you trust your decision, whatever it is. Doubt is our worst enemy now.”

“I’m pretty damn sure I want to be long gone from here, thank you.”

“Then,” smiled Bolt, “Why not say your farewells to him before you leave. He has earned that much from you, wouldn’t you agree?”

The room fell silent. Bolt and the youth kept staring at each other in the eyes. Bolt made sure not to blink first.

“You’re… you’re inviting me to meet him?” the youth said.

Bolt walked to the hatch in the floor and opened it wide. “We’ll go together. Just like before.”

The youth eyed both him and all the other cultists eyeing him. His ears twitched a couple of times. Ordinary cultists were not invited to meet the Blind One. That wasn’t something that happened.

“I’m sure he’s expecting us already,” said Bolt.

It was the last straw that broke the camel’s back. The youth closed the door and walked through the hatch, almost meekly. Bolt gave the room one general glance, then followed in his wake. The bang that shut the entrance made everypony upstairs flinch.

Neither spoke anything in the stairs or in the tunnel, but the closer they got to the ledge ahead, the slower both of their steps turned. It was as if neither really wanted to be the first one to meet the Blind One. Eventually, when the bright glow approached them, the youth almost came to a halt. Thus it was Bolt who first entered on the ledge below the Ledge.

The cliff bathed in sunlight, blinding him. When his eyes gradually got used to it, he saw the pony whom (was it really only last week?) he had found in the darkness under the city. Or, as he now knew, who had found him from the darkness of his mind.

The pony stood right on the edge of the cliff, facing the nothingness that spread at his feet. It chilled Bolt to see him like that. The wind was unpredictable here, and a random gust could well throw even an adult off their balance. The pony seemed to be bothered by the prospect not in the slightest. He just stood there. As if he was actually waiting for them.

Only now did it occur to Bolt that he actually had no idea how to address the pony properly. “Blind One” was more of a description than a title, and it was never used in his presence. Would “your holiness” do? “Your excellency?” “Master?” “Prince?” All those sounded wrong. He served the pony as his saviour, yet he did not even know what to call him.

“What is it?” the blind pony suddenly asked.

Bolt glanced at the youth, expecting him to say something. The paleness of his face hinted that no such luck existed.

“We… We came to seek your council,” started Bolt. “We… I mean, some of us, uhm… feel the weight of ignorance in our hearts. The Foal is lost. The storm has wrecked the city. We don’t know what to do.”

Wind toyed with their manes, and nothing more. The doubts that had gnawed Bolt ever since yesterday raised their heads once more within him. Some of the cultists had found the Blind One in the Captain’s Mansion’s yard, badly injured and unconscious. There had been no sight of the Foal. They had carried him to shelter overnight, and come the morning they had brought him to the house on the Ledge, which still served as the headquarters of sorts. Bolt had been there along with a bunch of others, huddled in the tunnel as the storm raged. At some point the pony had come to his senses. Or at least he had gotten up and walked down here. Not a word, not a gesture to guide his followers. Such things tended to test the faith even of the most pious. People had been trickling away all day. The youth next to Bolt had just been the tip of the iceberg; the one to say what they all had been thinking. They were doomed.

Come here.

Bolt was not sure he had actually heard the words: only that he needed to obey them. They both did. They walked to the pony, one in each side of him, although not as close to the edge.

“What is your name?” the blind pony asked.

“Flint,” said Flint. His voice sounded a lot dryer than it had upstairs. “My name is Flint.”

“Do you doubt yourself, Flint?”

Flint glanced sharply at Bolt. “Why… Why would you ask that?”

“Because you are shaking.”

How does he know? asked Bolt from himself, for the umpteenth time. Flint was indeed shaking, now that he paid attention. Shaking in pure sunlight.

“You said we would be saved,” he said. “You said that. But now the city is ruined. And there is no Foal. There’s nothing.”

The blind pony turned his head so that they could see his left, burn-scarred face. He raised a front leg, waved Flint to come closer, which he hesitantly did. The hoof landed gently on his quietly trembling shoulder.

“What can you see?”

Flint gazed the landscape before them. “Uhm. Nothing special? Wasteland. Mountains over there. Ruins of the old city below.”

The blind pony nodded. And then he pushed him off the cliff.

“What can you see?” he asked when the waning screaming abruptly ceased.

Bolt’s mouth hung open. Every muscle in his body had turned into a block of iron. He couldn’t move an eyelid.

“While you think about it, I’ll tell you what I see…” said the blind pony. “I see no wasteland; no mountains; no ruins. I see nothing. Do you know what, in the end, that is?”

“Possibilities,” he continued at the same breath. “In void, everything is equally possible. I never promised you salvation. I promised you redemption. That, too, is possible in nothing. In fact, the way things are for us now, it is only nothing that makes it possible… For, you see, freedom is what nothing is all about.”

“You… you pushed him off the cliff…”

Bolt yelped when the hoof touched his shoulder. Instinct pressed him to scramble away. He couldn’t. For his life, he just couldn’t.

“What can you see, Bolt the Just? Honestly?”

Bolt squeezed his eyes shut. He didn’t know how to pray but he tried nonetheless. The echo of Flint’s scream chimed louder than ever between his ears. His tongue struggled to form the words his life clung to.

“I… see… nothing.”

The grip on his shoulder turned into a pat. “My words exactly. Now, get back up there, round up everypony who’s still around and order them to start searching for supplies. Food and water are top priority. Weapons too.”

Bolt backed away slowly. Only when he was sure he was far away from the edge did he open his eyes. The blind pony had returned to his original position, as if he and Flint had never trespassed on his tranquility.

Bolt ran back upstairs and did everything he had been told to. When somepony asked where had Flint gone, he looked at them for a long while and then answered, “He didn’t see nothing.”

Back on the ledge, Stick stared at his precious nothing, basking in all the warmth the sun had to give. It was like being smiled at, really. And like Feinsake had once said, nothing spreads like a smile.

***

“The roar of the manticore shook small stones loose from the cliffside, and the bones of ground itself shook. Rawr! What a fell beast! Full of fury and power! Not a bear nor a chimera, nor any other creature, had ever crossed its way in the woods it roamed as the lord. Not until Rainbow Dash the Loyal, at least. The air was a blur as the pegasus sped towards the red feline; its roar barely dead in the forest clearing. But this was Rainbow Dash we’re talking about, after all…”

Mill Stone became aware that he was being looked at. Jade stood at the door of the living room, an unreadable expression on her face. Their eyes met briefly before she nodded at the direction of the clock. It was almost nine.

“Whah happened then?” asked a tiny voice next to him on the couch. “Did Dashie win?”

“We’ll have to find that out next time,” said Mill. “I wager it’s time for you to hit the hay for today.”

“But I wanna know now,” complained Grain. “Now!”

“Don’t you want daddy to know, too?” said Jade, walking to them. “And how can he do that if you read the whole story tonight?”

The foal’s round, sleepy eyes looked at her mother. “Daddy’s not home yet?”

“I’m sure he’s right on his way,” said Mill when he noticed Jade had no answer for that. “Working a late shift again probably. Your dad’s a very important pony, you know? The Guard would be lost without him.”

“I’ll send him to your room the moment he comes through the front door,” said Jade. She scooped the colt up to his back and headed upstairs. Grain put up some obligatory resistance, but Mill could see the fourth story of the evening had worn the kid out good. That much was assured by that fact that Jade returned downstairs in short order.

“Thank you,” she said. “I don’t know if I would’ve had the energy to read all that to him. He’ll sleep like a log now.”

“Consider a fair exchange for the breakfast,” said Mill. “And for the lunch. And the dinner.”

She smiled at him. “The supper is on the house then.”

He smiled too, and followed her to the kitchen. As she laid the table, he stretched his shoulders tense from all the reading and playing he had done with Grain. Foals were really something. The world might’ve come to an end, but castle’s needed to be built and dragons slain all the same. Mill couldn’t exactly say how he had ended up to fill in the role of a playmate, but once he had, it had felt more natural than he could’ve imagined. Helm was a lucky stud to have a kid so unshy and bright as Grain.

Watching Jade work, he couldn’t help thinking that wasn’t the only reason Helm ought to be called lucky. After the intense first impressions had been dealt with, he and Jade came along like old friends. After the breakfast, when both knew he was supposed to leave, neither came around to actually saying it. So they didn’t. And the next moment, he had been playing with Grain. It was all bit of a miracle, really.

The plate that hit the floor shattered into dozens of shards, yanking Mill back from his thoughts. Jade was trembling against the sink, sobbing.

“I’m sorry,” she said when Mill walked to him. “By Luna… Ah. I’m sorry, I don’t know what came to me. All this stress… The day has been crazy. My gods.”

“It’s okay,” Mill said. His hoof waited for a moment, then brushed her back. “It’s okay.”

This time she didn’t burst out in disagreement. This time, she hugged him tightly. Mill did not resist.

“I’m so glad you came to us today,” she sniffed. “Without you, there wouldn’t have been anypony else. I would’ve thought they’re all dead. Or worse, that it was all chaos out there.” She pulled apart from the embrace, looked him in the eyes. “It’s good to know the Guard is still out there, doing its job.”

Mill forced a wooden smile on his face. “Yeah.”

They enjoyed the supper in silence. For the whole time Mill was terrified that she’d start asking questions about the Guard; how they would deal with the situation; would there be emergency ratios; was Captain Heart still in charge. But she never said a word, but kept on staring at her vegetables in quiet.

The food was quickly consumed, although they ate in no hurry. There wasn’t much extra to spare. Jade had told him there would be enough food in the house for the rest of the week, but beyond that… wasn’t something they had discussed. That tacit understanding was that everything would’ve returned to normal by then. The Guard would take care of everything.

“Thank you,” said Mill when he finished.

“Don’t mention it,” she said. She started collecting the dishes. Mill offered to help, but she would have none of it. Instead she guided him to the living room with a cup of tea.

Mill Stone did not have extended experience of living rooms. He had never lived in a house with one. But he could tell this was basically a paradigm of its kind. There was a couple of old sofas with mismatching colors. A rug with unravelled corners. A tiny stove where to keep the cold away. No photos anywhere, but that didn’t surprise Mill much – few guards could afford photographs in this day and age. Instead, there were a lot of drawings by Grain, although Mill could not decide which of those depicted his family and which some horrible monster.

Mill had been to the Grand Hall of Parliament a couple of times. He had seen the finest rooms the Captain’s Mansion had to offer. He had seen pictures of the old Canterlot Castle at the peak of its glory. But no other place in Equestria had made him as envious as this simple living room.

“You could stay for the night.”

Mill turned around. Jade was drying a plate by the door; a plate that needed drying as bad as a desert would have.

“I mean, to wait for Helm,” she continued. “We have extra mattresses. It would be no problem.”

Mill looked in turns at her, then at the plate into which she had almost rubbed a hole. “I… I don’t know. He might’ve turned up to the station by now.”

“I know he wouldn’t,” she said. “This is where he’d come first. Wherever he is.”

“I really should be reporting back myself…”

She put down the plate, then walked to him. “Stay. Please. I don’t feel safe spending another night alone with Grain.”

Mill did not need to ask a reason for that sentiment. All day shadows had been gathering behind the windows, lurking in the ruins. Scavengers were finally on the move, along with ilk far worse.

Still… this was not his home. It was Helm’s. It did not feel right, staying here for the night without his knowing.

But wouldn’t he like his family to be safe? And if he couldn’t guard them himself, wouldn’t Mil be his first choice for replacement?

“Okay,” he said. “I’ll stay.”

“I’ll make you a bed here,” she said, her relief evident. “And feel free to have more food if you get hungry during the night.”

“Thank you.”

“Oh, don't thank me for that: we have barely leftover to offer.”

“I didn’t mean that,” he said. “Eh, well I do, of course. But also, thank you for letting me stay here for the night. For trusting me that much.”

She only smiled at that.

When the bedding had been laid on the living room floor, the last of the sunlight had disappeared. The small stove offered now heat and illumination both. In its glow, Mill Stone stood at guard, watching the streets by the window. It was quiet out there like it was in here. Quiet, yet not calm. A thousand worries and a million questions littered his mind. What if Helm would not come home tomorrow either? What about when Jade found out there was no Guard anymore? Where would they get food for the next week? Was there even “them” to speak of?

For the longest while, he had no idea what tomorrow would bring along.

For the longest while, he knew he wouldn’t be worrying about it alone.

Around midnight, the shadows outside started moving. Mill didn't let that mind him too much. The looters would have plenty of empty houses to rob before they’d turn to the inhabited ones. The glowing stove would be enough of a signal that this house belonged to the latter category.

Despite everything, he fell asleep smiling.

Author's Note

By Celestia, that took me awhile. Stupid master's thesis, ruining my pony fic writing schedule. Anyhow, onto the next project!