A good bard was one who’d try anything at least once.

A great bard was one who’d tried everything at least once.

That, Spinner knew, was because bards were storytellers, and no matter how captivating a bard’s voice was, it was more powerful when it was the voice of experience.

After all, experience was another word for truth, and the only thing better than a wild tale was a wild tale that was part of the speaker’s own life. A story that hadn’t been personally undergone could be tedious or enthralling, depending on the skill of the tale-teller. But when relating a memory, even the most talentless of ponies became animated in a way that breathed magic into their words. And those ponies who excelled in capturing the attention of their fellows became that much more captivating when the stories they shared were from their own life.

Telling a story could be powerful, but telling your own story was that much more powerful.

That was why Spinner – who’d known ever since she was a filly that her destiny was to be the greatest bard of her age – had spent her childhood preparing for a life as a wandering adventurer.

It was a dream that her mother, herself a troubadour of considerable skill and renown, had always encouraged. She’d paid for her daughter to be educated as a filidh, a religious bard in service to the greatest of all raconteurs, The Author. She’d made sure to pass on all of the knowledge that she’d accumulated from her own adventures and exploits, wanting her daughter to find the joy and wonder in Everglow without the naïveté that would turn her into a victim. She’d even bequeathed to her the steel-lined lute that she’d used on her own adventures, and which was now Spinner’s most precious keepsake.

And then, with happy tears and promises to send her mother advance copies of her magnificent exploits – in other words, to write and let her know that she was doing okay – Spinner Talltail had set out.

Her adventures had finally begun!

She’d started small at first, taking the Empire’s famous lightning train to Deepcrag, the city of dwarves situated on the southern border. Word of the dwarves’ dour nature and mistrust of outsiders made it the perfect place to begin the epic that was her life story!

Alas, it was a beginning that had been tragically cut short, much like the beard of the local constable after she’d sampled just a bit too much of Deepcrag’s famous ale. Which was really quite unfair considering that he’d said she could sooner have his beard than a pass to Deepcrag’s undercity. Sure, in hindsight he was being sarcastic, but he really should have realized how dumb it was to say something like that to someone who was so obviously sloshed.

Fortunately, there’d been a caravan leaving for Blaze’s Roost, a town nestled to the volcanic mountain range in the east. After hastily signing on with the agreement that she’d sing for her supper, rather than for money, she’d moved on to the next leg of her grand journey.

Which had also ended faster than expected when a pit stop at Bit N’ Bolt – the home of the clockwork ponies – had resulted in her being charged with assaulting one of the residents. Fortunately, the charges had been dropped once she’d explained to the magistrate that she hadn’t attacked that clockwork stallion she’d bumped into in the marketplace, she’d just been trying to tug her cloak free from where it had gotten caught in his gears. But by then her caravan had left without her.

Fortunately, there’d been a merchant convoy of purrsians headed toward Murrage who’d been happy to have her along. Which had sounded like a great deal at the time, since while Bit N’ Bolt had non-clockwork residents, most of the town’s population not needing to eat meant that food was priced more like a luxury than a necessity (something Spinner still suspected was the clockworks’ way of trying to keep the non-clockwork population down). With her bits running low, a change of scenery had seemed prudent, especially since the purrsians had been willing to pay her to accompany them.

It had only been when they were three days out that Spinner had found out that she’d unwittingly sold herself into indentured servitude.

Thankfully, an attack by dust diggers – giant carnivorous starfish that lived beneath the sand – had happened shortly after they’d entered the desert proper, giving her a chance to escape...

Things had continued on like that for some time, with one misadventure after another, and while it wasn’t exactly what she’d pictured when she’d left home, it was still shaping up into an incredible collection of stories. All the more so when she’d met her friends – four mares whose luck seemed as fickle as her own – and they’d formed Fail Forward.

But of all the experiences which she’d collected, and all the memories – pleasant and otherwise – that she’d made, there was one which remained her single least favorite experience.

She and her friends had been at Port Mareheart, a little town on the coast, working onboard a fishing barge in an effort to pocket some change. It had been as boring as it was smelly, not to mention the motion of the boat had left Valor slumped over the side, heaving up her breakfast every time the waves had crested. But while it hadn’t been anything worth writing to her mother about, Spinner had gotten used to the fact that there was a decidedly unglamorous side to adventuring.

Looks like this won’t make for much of a story, she’d thought at the time.

In hindsight, she really should have known better.

After a few hours of bad fishing – possibly because Spinner had exaggerated ever-so-slightly how skilled she and her friends were at angling – the skies had darkened early as storm clouds had rolled in. But despite the winds picking up and the waves becoming choppy, the captain had refused to bring the boat in, furious about the poor catch and swearing that they wouldn’t return to shore until the five mares he’d hired had earned their pay.

By the time he’d changed his tune, the storm that they’d found themselves in had gone from bad to worse. And with no chance of an intervention by pegasi to calm the tempest – Port Mareheart, having less than a thousand residents, didn’t have its own weather team – there’d been nothing for Fail Forward to do but hang on as the ships’ captain had fought to keep them from being capsized.

But while he’d been cursing the storm and fighting with the helm, Spinner – who, along with the rest of her friends (save for Valor, who was too nauseated to move), had been forced to help due to it being a literal “all hooves on deck” situation – had been sent to climb the rigging and cut free a sail that had come loose from its furl. She’d just managed to slice the last of the soaked cloth free and had been ready to climb down when she’d glanced behind her-

And seen something rising up out of the water.

To this day, she didn’t know what it was. It had to have been at least a half-mile away, and the storm and the waves had made it impossible to get a good look at it, flashes of lightning serving only to make it clear that something was there. But it had been gigantic, with its enormous head easily beyond the reach of even the tallest of waves as it broke through the waterline, and when it opened its mouth a moment later, Spinner hadn’t been able to tell if the deafening sound that had split the air a moment later was a peal of thunder of the thing’s monstrous roar.

But it had been what happened after that which had left a permanent scar on her heart.

The thing had looked at her.

Its eyes were perfectly round, as though bulging out of their sockets, and were bright yellow surrounding hideous double pupils. They were the eyes of something utterly alien, filled with fury and malice in equal measure, as though the very presence of other creatures was enough to drive it into an unquenchable rage.

Which had been trained directly on her.

Spinner had experienced fear plenty of times on her adventures. But it had always been either an exhilarating rush that heightened her sense of excitement, or a niggling worry that was easily ignored. It had never been an avalanche of terror that had swept her away, utterly destroying her ability to think rationally like it had then, blacking out from fear.

Shadow had told her later on that she’d fallen from the rigging and struck her head, losing consciousness and almost falling overboard. As it was, no one else had seen anything like what Spinner had described, and even the locals back in town had laughed when she’d asked them about it. While fish stories were part-and-parcel of a seaside community, no one had ever heard of a giant yellow-eyed sea monster, particularly one that was attracted to – rather than repelled by – foul weather.

The sheer lack of information on such a creature, even as a rumor, was enough to make Spinner wonder if she’d dreamed the entire thing.

As it turned out, there was no way to know for sure. Alongside the locals’ claiming to know nothing, there were no written records for Spinner to check; just like with a weather team, Port Mareheart was simply too small to have a library. Nor did any of her friends – or anyone else that Spinner knew – have magic that could potentially detect a monster that by now might be miles away, to say nothing of deep beneath the waves. And her own goddess-given power of prediction was with regard to questions of the future, not the past.

Ultimately, however, none of that had mattered. Whether or not the experience had been real, it had been terrifying enough that simply remembering it had left an indelible mark on Spinner. From then on, just looking at a body of water that she couldn’t see the other side of was enough to make her break out into cold sweat, her heart hammering in her chest.

It got worse if she so much as thought about getting on another boat. Even if it meant not being able to visit some of the outlying islands that were home to the Empire’s most exotic cities – such as Kailani, famous for mining ores that couldn’t be found anywhere else, or Fathach, where the mythical antean ponies had supposedly retreated after the Wars of Unification – the prospect of setting sail again was enough to make her shake so badly that even standing upright became a struggle.

The good news was that Spinner had found her problem to be easy to deal with.

Mostly by ignoring it.

Virtually all of the Pony Empire’s townships were landlocked anyway, and even the majority of the lakes that dotted its northern reaches weren’t terribly large. Besides, the ocean was boring anyway; adventures were found in cities and towns, forests and plains, deserts and tundras. The ocean wasn’t anything special.

Besides, what sort of friend would make Valor live through that kind of seasickness again?

With their ocean-going career over, particularly since they’d barely earned enough money to buy passage to a lovely little community nestled in some hills far inland named Stone Bruise, Fail Forward had put their one and only nautical adventure behind them. It had been enough to let Spinner slowly exhale after what had happened, glad to put the entire experience out of her thoughts. Maybe someday she’d be comfortable revisiting what had happened...but such a day was, she felt certain, very far off.

She really, really should have known better.

The sheer weight of Lex Legis’s presence, now that he was a titan, was enough to make Spinner feel like she was back on that boat.

It made no sense whatsoever. Lex was nothing like that monster, either in appearance, size, or – as far as Spinner knew – powers. And yet looking at him made her hooves shake and her stomach clench, sweat pouring down her back. She could almost feel her sense of balance starting to give out.

But even so, she had to persevere.

Mostly because of what Woodheart had just said, the druid’s eyes widening as she heard the conversation between Lex and the woman in the raven-styled armor whom he’d called “Branwen.”

“The Wyld fey?!” the druid had blurted, apparently unable to help herself. “We captured one of the Wyld fey?!”

The wolf-chick that Lex had called Nisha – apparently his fourth wife – had shrugged her shoulders at that. “What’s the big deal?”

“They...”

Woodheart had clamped her mouth shut then, putting her hooves over her lips and shaking her head.

But with his ability to read their minds, that didn’t do a thing to stop Lex from knowing what she was thinking.

“How is that possible?” he demanded, looking at Woodheart.

“Hey!” Shadow stepped in front of the druid then, giving Lex a glare. “Leave her...”

Spinner could almost see Shadow’s courage failing her as the titan glared right back at her, and the force of his displeasure made a whimper escape her throat. Or maybe that was Spinner’s own throat, suddenly too terrified to be sure. Nor was Valor any better; despite her namesake, her face was pale and her eyes wide, gulping down air as though she was having trouble breathing.

A moment later, Shadow collapsed to her knees, the mere impression of Lex’s anger too much for her to handle, leaving him free to turn his attention back to Woodheart.

“Your friends previously told me that you worshiped nature itself as the source of your powers,” he rumbled, and to Spinner it felt like his voice was making the entire room shake.

“So how it is possible that you’re receiving divine magic from the Wyld fey?”

Author's Note

Incapacitated by the terrifying force of Lex’s presence, Spinner and her friends can do nothing as Lex reveals a connection between Woodheart and the new fey faction!

Are the Wyld fey really granting divine spells to Woodheart? And what does that have to do with Lex and the Autumn Court?