Little Problems

by Starscribe

Rating: teen
Tags: Drama, Original Character, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Adventure, Breezies, Human
Length: 40242

Being a breezie was never easy, particularly after the end of the world. In a world that's much too big for them, a pair of best friends intend to survive whatever threats assail them, no matter how large.

The Event changed all of humanity. Many were lucky, and ended up as creatures more or less the right size to live in their world. Ordinary ponies might be small compared to old human ruins, but they can make due.

It's a lot harder when you're a few inches tall, and the entire world is rotting away around you. Beset by dangers on every side, a few refugees are determined to survive no matter the price. Come god, demon, or locked door, they will triumph no matter what!

Cover by Zutcha. Editing by Two Bit and Sparktail

Part of the Ponies After People universe, by me. This story is independent of any of my other fics, but readers should probably familiarize themselves with the basic ideas of Last Pony on Earth. This story takes place around 7000AE.

A few of these chapters (2,3,4) began their life as part of Bedtime Stories. I decided I loved the characters far too much, and so I've removed those chapters and greatly expanded the story around these characters. Breezies have only been done once in this universe to my knowledge, and that story died very quickly. It was time for someone else to write about them.

Published 2018-02-23 12:20:06 UTC
Last updated 2018-03-12 00:55:16 UTC

Chapter 1: Ruins and Butterflies

“I wanna go!” Avery heard the squeaking voices of the other breezies in the air above her, each one of them braver and more imposing than she was. April was brave enough to fly right up into Julian’s face, where even a friendly giant was still dangerous. Even if he had been their friend, before all this.

She didn’t even bother calling for him. Yes, she wanted to be the one he took. Yes, she would be disappointed if he didn’t choose her. But she didn’t really see the point in shouting for him. Avery sat on the edge of the birdhouse she lived in with half the current population of their little camp, clutching her satchel close to her with one hoof and trying not to let her sisters step on her wings in their eagerness to get out.

Julian stood just ahead of them, wearing one of the outfits they’d scavenged from the ruins. Sturdy fabric, well suited to keep him dry if it rained again today. But he had that luxury—he was big enough to wear the clothes of this extinct pony civilization. A single jacket would’ve been plenty big enough to cover Avery and all her sisters and have plenty of room to spare.

“I’m very flattered,” he said, retreating a step from the little buzzing cloud of fairies. He was just a pegasus, three and a half feet tall, yet to them he was a towering giant. Avery wasn’t afraid of him, not like she had been on that first day she woke up this size. The first day any of them did. She only felt sad when she thought about the difference between them, and the relationship they could never have.

The Event had taken much from the world—what little it gave, it also found ways to steal.

“But I need Avery today. There are lot of locked doors in this building, and she’s the only one who can get them open.”

Avery felt herself grin involuntarily. She rose to her hooves, antennae tasting the air as she tried to make herself more visible on the edge of the birdhouse. She waved out at him with one hoof, though at this distance the ground was a distant blur and Julian himself was more of an outline. There was no way he’d hear her through the crowd. “Julian! I’m down here!”

There was no mistaking which of them he wanted, not with a request like that. Breezies were all magic, but only one of them had a unicorn horn. Her, with her tiny black glasses, her braid of blue mane, and near inability to fly.

She heard the general disappointment from the other fairies, with April chief of all. “You don’t have to just take one. We could still go with you.”

Julian shook his head. “I’m sorry guys, but I can’t keep track of more than one of you at a time. If I misplaced you, and I accidentally stepped on you or something… I wouldn’t be able to live with myself.”

“But she’s supposed to be doing research!” moaned someone else. Posy, based on that bright tan coat and the tiny notebook in her forelegs. She never went anywhere without it. “She’s the only one who can make you proper-sized! She should stay back and work! You should just salvage somewhere else!”

Julian brushed her aside with a gentle flick of his feathered wings, which produced enough wind that the other breezies around him were driven back. There was plenty of space around him, so none were smacked into trees or bushes. Such an accident might very well be fatal for creatures as fragile as they were. “I’m sorry, everyone. I’m sure you’ll get lots done today in the colony while I’m gone.”

He stepped up to the birdhouse. It had been attached quite firmly to the trunk of a tree, just like several others. They’d talked about connecting them with bridges, but for now everyone just flew. Even though Avery’s flight was so weak she could barely get up to sleep every night. Or into her workshop, even further up.

Julian knew this, even if the other breezies didn’t seem to care. He extended a hoof to her, and Avery scrambled up onto it, scurrying up the fur of his leg until she rested beside his shoulder. The pony was so big compared to her that even her clumsy hooves could grip his fur and holding onto him was easy. Not to mention the warmth of his body felt great on such a chilly spring day.

Avery didn’t look back at the disappointed group of breezies she knew they would be leaving behind, just clung to him as they walked away and kept her wings folded as tightly as she could. Even the force of walking generated enough motion that she might get swept up and off him if she wasn’t careful.

There had once been nothing but shriveled white fungus, with fruiting bodies towering taller than a pony with soggy green caps. All that had been swallowed now, consumed by the jungle. Trees with species she couldn’t name were already growing taller than the giant Julian, some of which had leaves bigger than she was.

Julian remained silent as they walked away from Formenos. The others would still be listening at this distance, and a giant’s voice would carry far. But she could taste his relief on the air, and see it in his glance. Julian had been waiting a long time to choose her for another salvage mission. He had to, as to not give the other breezies the impression he was playing favorites.

He stopped suddenly as a songbird twice Avery’s size flitted up to them, a cardinal with bright red feathers. He stopped to hover a few inches from Avery—but she felt no fear. Her magic had helped create this little oasis of life in a sea of white death. Every creature who came here to find shelter seemed to recognize that, and treated them with respect. Not one of them had been eaten, or even threatened by an animal.

The bird gave a few polite chirps, then flew off to the nest he seemed to be building in a nearby tree.

Julian visibly relaxed as the bird flew away, settling his huge wing against his back. “I keep thinking the next one is going to attack you for sure,” he said, in his unusually deep and slow voice. Avery was mostly used to it by now—though fixing it was one of the many things keeping her motivated in her research.

“Not in our forest,” she said, or nearly shouted, up towards his ear. Ponies had pretty good hearing, though, and he could hear her well enough from that close. Presumably she would sound high-pitched and pathetic to him now. “These animals are grateful to us. They know if it wasn’t for us the fungus would come back and kill everything.”

It was a price worth paying. We’re both still alive.

“I don’t think animals are that smart,” Julian said. They were nearing the old village—the ruins where they’d both returned. Avery knew they’d pass the old crashed car if they turned down the nearby street. They didn’t though, and kept walking past the pony houses up towards main street.

The strange ecology of their growing forest had now begun to creep up on the pony ruins. The city’s paved streets were cracking and covered with creeping moss. Seedlings burst through the dried brown husk of what had once been healthy fungus. Murderous, mind-controlling fungus, which had nearly killed both of them in its way. Now, at least here, they’d gotten their revenge.

“Where are we going today?” Avery asked, not arguing the point with him. In truth, she didn’t understand breezie magic that well, and wasn’t the one who could’ve explained it. That was Emily, and she was one of the few who hadn’t wanted to come on this trip. She never left the forest anymore. “Somewhere with lots of locks…”

“There’s a bank,” Julian muttered. “I’m not sure what the point of it is, though. I’m sure we won’t need it to build Formenos. Unless you want to build the next house out of gold.”

“Tempting,” Avery muttered, though it was completely untrue. Building a house out of something hostile giants might want to steal was a bad idea. “I think… I think I wanted to rob a bank before the Event. Now I finally can!”

Julian reached down with one hoof, nudging her very gently. He had to stop walking to do it, obviously. “No you didn’t. You were basically a boy scout—I don’t think I even saw you cut in line.”

Avery looked away. Whenever they disagreed about something in the past, Julian was almost always right. His memory hadn’t been badly damaged by transformation like hers had. “Oh. Well… I want to rob a bank!” She fluttered into the air for a few seconds—a brave showing for her, considering they’d left the protection of the forest. She settled back onto her perch as quick as she could. Before an errant breeze could take her away.

“Mostly I wanted to talk to you without the others making it impossible to think,” Julian muttered, trying to keep his voice quiet. He tried, but he still boomed louder than she could when she was screaming. Still, they were far enough from Formenos that it was probably safe. “I know I don’t get to very often. It seems like they keep you prisoner in that lab, and it’s too small for me to come visit.”

The ‘lab’ he meant was really just a doll house he had found in one of the ruined houses, which now held lots of her magical tinkering and all the pre-Event stuff small enough for her to use. Avery spent most days there, with whichever breezy had upset April the most lately banished there as her helper.

Avery lifted into the air again, flying up towards his face. It took a little courage—even if she trusted and wasn’t afraid of him, he was still many times her size. His nose was so large she could land on it if she wanted, and those eyes were bigger than she was. “What about when I finish? Will you visit me then?” She glowered, looking away from him. “Never, I bet. You’ll be too busy spending time with April and Posy and—Eeeep!”

Something snatched her out of the air. A wing, which Julian moved so delicately that she never felt crushed. Each feather was so big she could see the little veins in each one, see the almost neon green as sunlight shone through them. He moved for a few seconds, and then suddenly she felt herself falling onto something made of cement.

Avery squealed in surprise as she fell three whole body lengths—a height that easily could’ve broken bones or worse when she was human. But Avery wasn’t human anymore, and falls just didn’t hurt the way they used to. She landed with a light thump on the top of a huge, round cement sphere. She grumbled, straightening her wings and righting herself, and looking around. She was standing on a decorative part of a large fence, one that put her at about head level for Julian.

He seemed annoyed today, or at least he smelled annoyed. Avery wasn’t sure how much of her antennae’s information she could trust without someone else’s antennae to touch and find out for sure. Julian didn’t have those.

“Avery, don’t be like this. You know I still care about you. I hate it when you talk like that.”

Avery glared stubbornly back up at him. “I know you’ve got a baker’s dozen of us to choose from and every one of the others is prettier than me!”

Julian flicked her with a wing. “Quit it. You’re already tiny, acting pitiful doesn’t help.”

She staggered forward, but managed to stay standing. It was amazing how something so big could be so gentle with her—no doubt it would be trivial for Julian to learn forward and crush her if he wanted. He could fly now—better and better every day. Even Formeno’s fastest flyer, Janet, couldn’t outfly a real pegasus.

But I have my magic. I’m not helpless!

She almost never used her magic on other ponies. Breezies were so delicate that she could easily hurt them by accident. She had only been small a few months, and was still working out how to adjust. So far as she knew she was the only breezy in existence with unicorn magic, so even her manual didn’t have advice.

“Are you saying I’m wrong?” she finally asked. She glanced around, and found a little acorn on the edge of the fence, about a hundred subjective feet away. She levitated it towards them easily, setting it down in front of her and resting one hoof on it. “Admit it! When I work this out, I won’t see you again.”

“No.” He glared right back, stubborn. “That isn’t true. I know what you’re gonna say… and no, I’m not going to never spend time with any of the others either. That would be just as wrong as never seeing you. You’re all from the same place, Avery. Our old world… we have to stick together. The world’s too dangerous to cut anyone off. It wouldn’t be right.” He hesitated, reaching out again and running a careful hoof along her wings. “Is that why… you haven’t been studying transformation spells yet? Because you think once you figure them out, I won’t spend time with you anymore?”

She didn’t answer—though the former part wasn’t true, she did genuinely believe the latter.

“Avery.” He yanked the acorn out from under her hoof. It had already started to sprout from her attention, a little green shoot emerging from within. He tossed it down to the ground, where it might have a chance. “Listen to me. If you figure out this magic, so I don’t have to be giant compared to everyone else in my world, I promise to spend at least one day with you a week. I want more… you know you’re my favorite. But if I give you more, the others will riot. One day is already more than I should promise.”

Avery couldn’t help herself. This wasn’t just some random pony to her—and it wasn’t just the big pony who protected her and the rest of Formenos. Julian was a pony she loved so much she’d faced down a god. And survived to tell about it. In a manner of speaking.

She hugged his hoof as affectionately as she could. Which probably wasn’t much, since she couldn’t even get her legs around it. “I have been working,” she said, when she finally let go. “I’ve been studying almost as hard as I did when I tried to cure you.”

“Really?” Julian’s ears perked up, and he leaned a little closer to her. Without realizing it he also got louder, causing her to cower, pressing her ears to her head and whimpering in protest. “Sorry. But… what have you learned? Are you close? I know we’ll probably still need me to be myself for a while yet—we need to be sure we have all the supplies Formenos will need, since it will be so much harder after I change… what have you figured out?”

Avery took a deep breath, clutching the little satchel slung across her shoulder. Mostly for comfort—the manual was the only real possession she had. She treated it with as much care as she would have a little breezie of her own, and sometimes she could swear the book was feeling affection towards her in return.

“I learned that permanent transformation is Alicorn magic—it’s impossible. Buuuuuuuuuuut—” she hastily added, once she saw his expression falling. “But there’s a loophole. I could make a… a charm. That way the magic would be targeting the charm—as long as you wore it, you’d be a breezie like us. It wouldn’t even have to be that big…”

Julian leaned closer to her, expression eager and volume so intense she stumbled away from him. “Are you almost finished? Do you think you’ll be done today? Or maybe tomorrow? That sounds perfect!”

“Hey!” Avery’s horn glowed briefly, and she shoved Julian away. Her push was enough to cause him to stumble back a few steps. It shocked her every time it worked, but she was strong enough to push him. For the same reason she couldn’t use her magic on other breezies. “It’s not that simple. Transformation is really hard. Easier than curing a fungus infection… but not easy. It needs things we don’t have. Raw ingredients. They won’t be easy to find. I… haven’t been brave enough to ask you.”

Julian shook himself out, taking a moment to recover from her shove. But it hadn’t been meant to hurt, and its effects didn’t last for long. “What are they?”

“Well…” She took a deep breath. “We need something long and sturdy, something that won’t corrode or rust or decay. But it has to be strong too, since if you break it by accident the spell will end and that could kill people.” If he was trapped somewhere small, he’d almost certainly die while he was growing back to normal, not to mention anyone else stuck with him.

“Like rope? No, rope decays. Wire?”

She nodded. “I was thinking of a metal necklace. Then we need some quartz crystal, a soldering iron, some gold and lead and pewter…” She trailed off, looking downcast. “See what I mean? I don’t know how good our chances are for making it.”

“What if we couldn’t?” Julian asked, approaching the fence again, but careful to keep his voice down this time. “If you can make it into a charm, you could still cast it normally, right? Just not permanently?”

“Well… yeah.” She looked away. “But casting is harder than enchanting. When I’m making an enchantment, I can take my time. No pressure, no rush. If I screw up part of it, I just start over. Nobody notices because we don’t put magic into the spell until it’s finished. But a casting is live—if I screw up a transformation, I could turn you into…” She whimpered. “Dead. I could turn you into dead.”

“Well.” Julian scooped her up again, depositing her back onto her usual place on his shoulder. “Forget the bank. I think I know where we can look for some of that stuff. There’s a jewelry store.” He set off at a brisk walk, about as fast as he could go without risking throwing her off. “It seemed like a waste of time. But maybe I was wrong.”

Avery concentrated on holding on mostly—she needed to keep clinging to him when they were outside of the jungle and he was in such a rush.

She did notice their old shelter as they passed it—one of the many similar looking two-story pony houses they had found abandoned in a village covered with thick fungus. The jungle killed all of that as it grew closer, but the once-living fungal growth had been transformed into something shriveled and brown, that Julian had to chip off of doors and windows with his hooves if they wanted to get into any of the ruins.

If she’d been a giant and the growth hadn’t covered everything, it might’ve been a nice place to live. But fate had stolen that chance from her—or rather, she’d given it away in trade. A worthwhile trade, but seeing this charming village always made her a little depressed. They could’ve fixed this place up together, back then. The ponies who had lived here had been surprisingly modern. Their abandoned homes were almost intact, with only the most essential camping and travel supplies missing. There had been no looters before them.

Eventually they reached the jewelry store, which Avery could identify thanks to the way even this advanced pony culture liked putting out huge models of the things they were selling. There was a jewel-encrusted necklace on the sign, along with prominent writing in a language they couldn’t read.

There were translation spells in the manual, just like there were spells for everything. But they worked using an existing speaker as a template, borrowing their knowledge. Language divorced of anyone who spoke it was as impossible to read for them as it would’ve been for any other archaeologists.

“Locked,” Julian muttered, gesturing at the door. “So we won’t have to lie when we get back. We can tell them that we needed your magic.” He scooped her off his shoulder again, holding her out on one hoof a few inches from the knob. The metal was covered with dry, brown fungus, but didn’t look damaged at least.

Avery reached out with a hoof, scraping some of it off the metal and looking at her own tiny, frightened reflection. She levitated the satchel open, and lifted the tiny survival guide out beside her. Its cover was even more scratched and dented than it had been the day she got it, though it was surviving its new small size remarkably well. “Hey, manual. Can you turn to the knock spell again?”

The book flipped rapidly through pages, settling on a fairly simple incantation. “Looks like it should be easy!” Avery shouted up. “Apparently it doesn’t do wood, but this is a steel lock, so that won’t be a problem.”

“You made that up. There’s no way it says that.”

It didn’t, though Avery couldn’t remember why she’d said it. Something… they had watched… once. No sooner had she thought about it than it was gone, like dew melting before the rising sun.

Casting the spell took a few seconds of concentration, but nothing Avery couldn’t manage. Ever since she’d woken up in this new world, magic had been the one thing that still made sense to her. The door clicked open.

The interior of this shop was the first she’d seen that did look like it was broken into. Julian walked gingerly over shards of broken glass, slowing a little as he crossed a series of empty display cases. A large window on the other side of the store had been broken into, and that opening had been used by some previous visitor to get in.

Julian stopped in front of a mannequin that had gone brown and started growing a variety of mundane mushrooms from its base. “What do we need exactly?” he asked, brushing the dust from a storage bag of some kind near the wall, and dumping it out. File folders and papers went scattering about from where he tipped it. He set the bag out on an empty table, brushing off the last of the dust with a wing. “Not more than would fit in here, right?”

“No,” Avery muttered, though the bag looked so big to her she wasn’t really sure. Every breezie in Formenos could fit in there with plenty of room to spare, though they wouldn’t be comfortable while they did it.

She went over the ingredients. They found several of the tools they needed in the back of the store. Looters had been far less interested in the soldiering setup, complete with a fairly complex hoof-mount that even a non-unicorn could use to control it if they wanted. “We’ll need to get some power back up,” Julian said as he hefted the whole thing into the bag. “We can’t just plug this thing into a tree. I think I saw a generator another few stores over…”

“Kari knows about that stuff,” Avery interrupted. “You can work with her to get that part working. I don’t remember electricity. Go back in there and grab the solders. I think there were spools of raw material in there.”

He took them back into the storage room, over an overturned bookshelf that had strewn gigantic books all over the floor. There was already a hole in the ceiling, and where rain had gotten in the whole thing was transforming into a pulpy mess. “How long do you think it’s been since ponies lived here?” Julian asked, as he stepped into the workshop and began opening drawers. “It feels like… centuries. Like one of those fallout games.”

“Maybe a decade?” Avery corrected. Whenever she saw something that looked useful, she would grab it out of the drawer with her magic. A coil of gold solder heavier than she was soon levitated beside them, along with a few bags of small gemstones and crystals. We don’t have to use quartz. We could use diamond instead.

“No way.” Julian grabbed each of the objects she chose from the air, shoving them into the waiting cargo bag. “Everything is coming apart! That takes ages!”

“Not as many as you think.”

“Why not?”

Avery opened her mouth to reply—and found she couldn’t. She was sure of what she was saying, as she always was around Julian. But she couldn’t remember why. “I dunno. Ask… April. She’ll know.”

“Whatever.” Julian made it a few steps further into the gloom. The hole in the ceiling was far enough back that there was only a faint glow illuminating this innermost room. “Can you do that light thing?”

She did the light thing, casting the whole room in even gray. There was a shelf of little safety-deposit boxes, all broken-into and empty. At the far end of the hall was a steel safe, one that looked like someone had fought very hard to tamper with it. There were huge metal chunks taken out around the door, and the handle sat broken on the floor in front of them.

“Well someone thought there was something good in there.” Julian walked right up to the safe, inspecting the wheel. There were five hundred hair-fine little tick marks on it, which were easily visible at Avery’s size. No keyhole at all. “Do you think your spell would work on this?”

Avery fluttered off his shoulder and down to the lock. It was a little less dangerous indoors, when she didn’t have to worry about being swept away. She landed delicately on the wheel, resting her hooves on the grooves meant to give a pony grip with their hoof. She shoved, and the whole thing lurched forward a single tick mark. She wasn’t going to be able to open this.

“No,” she said, without hesitation. “No key. It’s a different kinda mechanism—the book talks about them. Locks you can make that unicorns can’t crack. Makes sense… a third of all ponies are unicorns. You don’t want us to be able to steal your stuff.”

Julian sat down on his haunches, looking down at her. “We still didn’t find a good necklace, just a bunch of loose stuff. How are we gonna break it open?”

Avery wanted to give up. But Julian’s eagerness was obvious—he wanted her to start today. And some part of that was flattering. A day a week with him if I can get in.

“There’s… another kind of magic I could try,” she muttered, lifting her book into the air beside her and sitting down on the mechanism. Her back was to the steel of the safe—uncomfortably chill, but she wouldn’t be here long. “A teleport. Short-range teleports work by…” She stuck her hoof into the page. “Right there, manual! That’s good.” She brought it closer, so she could read. “They work according to mass.”

“Easy then!” Julian exclaimed. “You’re a unicorn’s worth of magic and only a few grams of mass! You could pop right in there!”

“I… could…” she hesitated. “But what if it’s full? I’d get squished like a… like a bug.” She grinned weakly up at him, but he didn’t return the feeling.

“Oh. If it’s dangerous, I change my mind. I don’t want you to do anything that’s too risky.”

Avery skimmed forward a few more pages. “I could try teleporting something small and delicate first, like… some leaves. That’s what I’ve been practicing with back at the village. If they don’t come out crushed, then I could go in after them.”

“Oh, great idea!” Julian sat up. “I’ll be right back, I’ll go get some!” He didn’t wait for her response, just turned and galloped out of the cavernous jeweler’s shop.

A shop made for giants, that had been rotting for at least a decade.

Avery felt the whole building settling around her. The wood and stone shifted audibly, and she could hear a sudden, gnawing sound through the wall. Avery squeaked pitifully, taking to the air and scrunching her legs tight to her body. She spun around, keeping herself far away from the walls.

She barely even noticed the gigantic spider dropping down from above her. Not until one of its legs brushed against her, and it sprang for her neck.

Spiders were heavy things, their flesh rough and hard like the body of a rusty old car. A pair of fangs half as long shot down towards her unprotected skin, oblivious of her feeble, kicking legs. She looked up, horrified at the swollen, pale creature. Not like any spider she’d known from before the Event, but one that must be at least eight true inches across, with white flesh and greenish fluids underneath. Exactly like the fungus. It’s one of the tenders.

“No!” Avery squealed, channeling all the magic energy she could reach into the body of the spider. The resulting bang sent her staggering back in the air, bouncing up against the wall a few times. The first impact was enough to bruise her right through to the exoskeleton, or whatever the hard layer under her fluff and skin was called.

“Damnit.” She finally righted herself in the air, searching for the spider. Why was the room so bright all of a sudden?

Because there was a fresh hole in the wall, just above the safe. A little greenish ichor had smeared on the sides of the wall, leading down to a single leg. Evidently it had fallen there, still twitching. Of the rest of the spider, there was no sign.

Julian emerged a few seconds later, panting from a run. He clutched a few leaves in his mouth, no doubt brought all the way from their jungle. “What… the hell was that?” he said, dropping them to fall to the ground in front of her.

Avery swooped down on him almost as fast as the spider. “You abandoned me!” she squeaked. “You abandoned me, and I had to fight a monster all alone! I was THIS BIG!” she made the biggest, widest gesture with her hooves she could.

Julian wilted, looking away. “I… of course, Avery. I’m sorry! I just…” He trailed off, looking up at the hole in the brick wall, and the sunlight coming in from outside. “It… it looks like the monster got the worse end of the fight. Is that a leg?”

“It’s got seven more,” Avery muttered, landing on the ground beside one of the leaves. Not that she really thought the huge ugly thing would be coming back. If it had hit hard enough to break brick, it wasn’t still alive. Shouldn’t it have just squished against the wall?

There were still things about her magic she didn’t understand

A few minutes of testing later, and Avery popped back into existence on the other side of several inches of steel. She brought a little bang of air, just in case there wasn’t any in here. Immediately she felt claustrophobic—the safe had two shelves, both heavily packed with little paper envelopes. There weren’t papers in them, though—they were lumpy and uneven, each one deformed differently by the jewels they contained.

There was an ear-splitting bang from above her, then another. She covered her ears, waiting for it to stop. “I’m safe!” she shouted back, as loudly as she could. Hopefully it would be loud enough for Julian to hear. Just to be safe, she levitated a coin up from beside her, and smacked it against the steel a few times.

Good enough. Avery didn’t waste time searching, that would take too long. Instead, she clambered over the stacks of envelopes, touching any that were big and heavy and teleporting them through the wall. She made more and more room as she worked, until only little marked packets of gemstones and fine pieces of jewelry remained with her.

But the glow from her horn was getting weaker now, her magic drained. Avery had strange powers for a breezie, but she was still a breezie. Being locked in a metal box far from her forest would squeeze her out like a sponge before too long.

She closed her eyes, concentrating on the return trip—and for a few terrible seconds, it seemed she didn’t have the strength. She whimpered, took a few breaths—and popped back to the other side. She flopped onto her back on the pile of paper envelopes, spreading herself and breathing heavily. “Th-that’s… that’s it…” she muttered, hoping Julian would hear her. He sat only feet away, watching with concern. He’d brought the bag over while she worked, though hadn’t touched the teleportation area as she instructed. It would be too easy for him to get hurt by mistake if he tried to load while she robbed.

“That’s… that’s everything you’re getting out of me today,” she finally said, feeling a blush creep across her cheeks. He was looking up at her, and she was only wearing the bag—he’d been staring at her.

She quickly rolled onto her belly, lowering her tail self-consciously between her legs. Doesn’t matter, he didn’t see. He doesn’t care.

“You get to carry me back,” she declared, though she sounded too weak to enforce what she was saying. “I used all my magic right up stealing today.”

Julian nodded, working quickly to load the rest of the envelopes inside. They jingled and rustled with more money’s worth of gold and jewels than Avery had ever known in her human life. A life she barely even remembered.

But I should. It hasn’t been that long.

Julian set her into the bag last, after he had slung it around his shoulder. Avery rested her hindlegs on the pile of junk, propping her forelegs over the zipper and staring at the world as It went by. She felt tired—but that would change. Once she got back within the borders of the jungle, her energy would return. It always did.

Julian didn’t slow down until they reached the wreck of Avery’s car. The front bumper had completely caved in from where Julian had smashed into a building. Dry, dead fungus covered it, from the days before. Even Julian looked small as they approached it, with the door handle just a little below his eye level. The smooth, polished metal looked supremely unfriendly to Avery’s tiny eyes. It smelled awful—the oil was starting to leak, and her breezie antennae did not like the smell of oil.

“Hard to believe it’s only been four months,” Julian muttered, sliding one hoof around to the handle. He didn’t actually open it, though. What would be the point? It couldn’t drive anymore. It hadn’t moved since the crash, and never would again.

“Hard to believe we used to be so gigantic,” Avery responded. “You could fit a thousand of me in there.”

“Not that many…” Julian muttered. He lowered his voice a little more, solemn. “How much do you remember, Avery?”

“Enough!” she snapped back, before he could realize. Though in reality, the answer was different. “I remember studying. Lots and lots of studying. And being big.” She cursed under her breath at how unconvincing she sounded, but it was too late now.

“I remember everything,” Julian said, after a long silence. “Like the crash.”

And in that moment, Avery found that she could, too.

Chapter 2: Unhealthy Growth

Author's Note

This chapter was first published as part of Bedtime Stories, and has not been changed aside from editing and corrections. If you've already read this chapter there, you can skip this one.

Chapter 2: Unhealthy Growth

The first thing Avery felt was the dashboard as she smacked into it. Her seatbelt had somehow slipped off her arms, though it held her more firmly around her legs. If it wasn’t for that, she might’ve gone through the windshield. She could smell the fuel after that, hear the persistent siren in the car as it wailed.

She must’ve hit damn hard, because nothing felt right. Her extremities had gone numb, and her head throbbed in a way worse than any of her migraines.

After an indeterminate length of time, she felt something moving her. Air went rushing by, and she saw a dim shape over her. The shape was wrong, and the colors were strange, but at least the voice was familiar. “Stay still. You hit your, er… whatever that is. There’s so much blood.”

“J-Julian,” she croaked, reaching out and trying to touch him. She couldn’t—her arms weren’t working right.

The shape with Julian’s voice wrapped some bandages around her head, and she hurt some more. But he ignored her protests, and after a while she started to feel cold. She told him so, her voice shaking with pain.

“I know,” he said, breath fogging in the air above her. “I had to get away from the car. Plenty of… don’t know if it’s safe to move you… how I would.”

“You look weird.”

Was that a smile? She couldn’t tell. “You sound weird.”

“I am… weird.”

She drifted again. She saw gigantic stalks of hideous fungus, saw the entire world drowning. She heard the desert scream.

She jerked awake on somebody’s sofa. Blankets and pillows scattered around her, and she squeaked pitifully. Her breath fogged in front of her. It felt a little like there was something glued to her face, but when she shook it the thing didn’t go anywhere. She gave up once she realized that shaking was only making her head throb.

Something stirred from the ground in front of her, something that stood warily taller than she was, with feathery wings and a light blue coat. She probably would’ve run away, if only she could’ve. As it was, her whole body still ached, and her head felt like it might explode whenever she moved it too fast.

“Sorry… must’ve burned out while I slept…” the creature with Julian’s voice muttered, taking a few steps forwards to a stone fireplace. He started tending to the fire, stoking a few of the embers, then building to scraps of paper and wood all piled up beside it. He struggled a great deal during this process, dropping the logs more than once, and nearly burning one of his little hooves as the paper caught.

“You’re… Julian,” she managed to say, once he’d finally got a fire going. The more the room warmed up around them, the more she woke from her stupor. “And I’m…” She looked down. She looked like he did. Well, in lots of ways. Not all of them.

“Yep,” he agreed, sitting down on the ground in front of her. He sat on his haunches there, not at all like any human could’ve comfortably sat. But then, he didn’t look human—he looked like a Greek myth. “I guess I should’ve let you drive after all, bird. I actually crashed into the worst alien planet ever.”

Avery slumped back onto the couch. Her head still hurt, and she’d localized that pain to a stupid spike jutting out of her head. A horn, wrapped in bandage along the base. “Where are all the aliens?”

Julian shook his head. “Haven’t found any yet. Unless you count us. For all we know, we’re breathing something awful, and we’d be dead if we weren’t aliens too. There could be arsenic in the air.”

The pain practically guaranteed Avery’s head would stay clear. Even so, everything Julian was saying sounded like a dream. If she didn’t have the proof right in front of her eyes, she never would’ve believed him. “Where… is this?” She stretched her neck just a little, looking over the edge of the couch.

It looked like they were in a modest, comfortable home. She couldn’t place any of the artistic styles, but the general shape of much of it was familiar to her. There was a big flat thing that was obviously a TV, and a kitchen behind them with an oven and a refrigerator and a sink. There were even photographs on some of the walls. The pounding in her head didn’t let her focus on them, but she could tell there were aliens in every frame.

“Looks like home,” Julian answered. “Except that you’re shorter and I’ve got wings, and everything is covered in fungus.”

Avery didn’t really want to know what that meant. But at the same time, she couldn’t help her curiosity. Though it wasn’t likely she’d be staying awake much longer, at least not right then. “What do… what does that mean? Like, the house is moldy?”

“The outside is… it isn’t mold. It’s way grosser than that. Like the nastiest thing you ever saw. Just an ocean of… well, you can see once you feel better. You shouldn’t be any more exposed until you finish healing.”

Avery slept a long time. She ate a few meals from cans heated over the fireplace. Julian kept going out, and coming back with more food, or more wood, or water. Over the next week or so, Avery eventually reached the point where she could walk. Or at least, the point she could learn to walk.

Which was just in time, because that was when Julian started getting sick.

Avery saw it first around his legs—a spindly growth of white fibers that clung to his fur when he moved. Then he stopped eating.

“It’s fine,” he assured her, the first day of their second week. “It’s just… I’ll be fine.”

Avery wasn’t so sure about that. He already looked thinner, and made a pained wince whenever she touched the growth on his haunches. So she stopped trying to clean them off.

It was no mystery how he had gotten so bad. Avery could see it out the window.

Through the glass was every bit the alien landscape she had been expecting. A small town with a blanket of wispy white tendrils covering everything. Whenever there was something for it to lean on, the fungus grew tall, wrapping and constricting and pulsing with a life that made her sick to look at. The fruiting bodies grew dark, and every few hours they snowed a fresh curtain of spores.

“I don’t think they’re natural,” she muttered, looking to Julian. As usual, his eyes had started to glaze over. He seemed to do that more and more, particularly when he went outside.

“I… can feel it,” Julian said, after a long silence. He adjusted his wings on either side, as though trying to dislodge a tick from the skin underneath. “Downhill is… somewhere else. It’s there.” He pointed with a wing, feathers shaking.

Avery still couldn’t control her tail, much less imagine what it would be like with two more limbs. It was probably for the best her friend had been the one to grow the extra limbs instead of her.

“You sure there aren’t any more antibiotics left in the medkit?”

Julian nodded. As he did, Avery could see a thin strand of white creeping up his neck. Like a garrote, ready to strangle him.

She turned away from the window, back to the rest of the house. More and more it was feeling like a shelter on an alien planet—they had moved all their living upstairs, since none of the appliances worked and there was another fireplace. Here was where they kept supplies—cans and pallets of water Julian had dragged here, cords of wood for the fire. Books written in a language neither of them could read, useful for eventual study or future kindling.

Avery selected a thick raincoat from the closet, struggling into it with difficulty. She wetted a cloth next in the open sink, which was filled with water for washing. “Help me tie this around my mouth.”

“You shouldn’t go out there.” Julian stopped beside her, with the first real emotion on his face. “It’s bad enough this stuff is making one of us sick. I don’t want it to get you too. You have to… have to survive this.”

“We both have to survive this,” Avery argued, sliding the moist cloth along the counter towards him. “Tie me up. I’ll only be out there a few minutes, I promise. It’s my damn car. I’ll see if there’s anything in there you missed.”

Julian glared at her—but Avery just glared stubbornly back. She was several inches shorter than him now, and smaller in some other ways. But no less determined. After a few more seconds of glaring, he finally grunted and reached for the cloth.

Julian had more practice with his hooves, but it still took him almost ten minutes to tie it off. She held uncomfortably still the whole time, conscious of the strange smell of his body. It had smelled nice in her first few memories after waking up, but didn’t anymore. Now he only smelled like sickness.

She stepped out into the entryway a few moments later, waiting until Julian had shut the inner door securely. She used the time to stomp out a few of the creeping feelers that had wormed their way in from the outside, using a pair of stolen boots to protect her hooves.

The aliens had been so like humans in their habits. As she stepped outside, she found the similarity a little disturbing. She would’ve enjoyed walking down the street between these modest homes before they’d been covered with putrescent white fungus.

There were no animals nearby—no birds dared fly close enough, no insects buzzed. Well, none alive.

As she walked slowly down the empty street, Avery could feel eyes on her. A large vulture that had been completely covered with white fungus was perched on a streetlight, its whole head pivoting to follow her as she walked. Its eyes were sunken pink pits glittering with moisture, and it never opened its mouth. Faint white feelers waggled in the air all over its body, as though scenting for pheromones.

Julian had told her nothing out here was dangerous—apart from the fungus itself. He’d made several trips a day for the last two weeks, breaking into other houses, going to the river for water, and who knew what else. It had to be safe to make the trip back to their car.

She found it not much further along, where it had smacked straight into the side of a house. With the wall open, now the white curtain was crawling its way in. The front of the car had been almost swallowed by the fungus, or at least the hood and engine had. But the back of the car was intact, and the metal and glass apparently did a better job keeping it out.

Avery walked around it as briskly as she could, conscious of just how small she was. The alien world she’d been transported to was built to the size of this strange body. She had to rise onto her hindlegs to reach the handle and yank it open, and practically collapsed into the backseat. She reached out, tugging the door closed behind her. Only when it was finally shut did she feel even a little safe again.

Her breath fogged out in front of her, turning the windows cloudy. She didn’t start to shiver right away, though—the jacket was thick, and she had warm fur underneath. She could go back to feeling embarrassed about it once it wasn’t keeping her warm anymore.

Despite Julian’s fears, the car hadn’t exploded. There was no fire-damage at all in here, no sign of the crash except for the spiderweb of cracks across the windshield. Bits and pieces of glass had broken in, and she could see a few tiny patches of white from the openings they made. In time, her old car would be swallowed just like everything else.

It didn’t look as though Julian had even bothered to open the backseat. Her backpack was still here, along with a trash bag from In-N-Out. “Lazy butt,” she muttered, clambering over the divider towards the front seat. She stole the flashlight from the map compartment, along with her Bluetooth transmitter and a few music CDs. No idea what she’d do with them, but she knew she’d never get them back if she didn’t bring them now.

She’d been hoping the old pocket-medkit she’d made in the scouts would still be hiding in the divider, but she couldn’t find it. At first, it didn’t seem as though she would find anything of value here. Julian was probably right—they really could just leave the old car to rot. Maybe coming out here had been too dangerous.

She took one last look around, intending to toss everything in her backpack and drag it back, when she noticed something she hadn’t before. A pair of thick books was under the driver’s seat, books she didn’t recognize. Not just dropped down there either, but wedged so firmly against the brake that it was still stuck down against the floor. It took a fair amount of effort to break them free, several minutes of frustrated kicking.

The books practically shot loose, bouncing against the plastic sidewall before coming to a stop. Both books looked about the same size as the ones she’d seen in the alien houses, the size of a small human paperback. Only they had thick covers, well-worn and scuffed, and she’d never seen them in her life. One of them was facing back-up, and she could read the bold English text printed there with ease. She no longer needed her glasses.

“READ ME!

Refugee—I know you must be terrified right now. You’re lost, confused, and alone. You don’t know what you are, where you are, or how you got there. Your body is strange, and your friends are gone. You’re looking for answers. Please, find somewhere safe and read me. I have the answers you’re looking for.”

“No shit.” Avery clambered with her loot into the backseat, turning one of them over and letting it fall open in front of her. It felt like a library book, one with many bent pages and stains on the cover. An artifact that had seen many owners over the course of its life. Yet the pages felt strange under her hooves, obviously not made of paper as she knew it.

The book fell open to one of the early pages. There was a symbol printed there, like an open book with a human outline on one of its pages. Below that, was a simple section entitled “How to use this book.”

This book is not what it seems. Though it might look like paper and leather to you, it is actually a sophisticated device, made of the finest craftsmanship. I do not give it to you to keep, only to borrow until your life is over. If you die, or if you take poor care of it, I will reclaim it from you.

That was long past the point an earlier Avery would’ve given up reading. Such things she might expect to be printed in something in a novelty shop, not something for her to take seriously. But considering what had happened to her, considering where she had arrived, she had no grounds to disbelieve. So she read on.

My name is Archive. I am the memory of Humanity—all its achievements, all its failures. I have done everything I can to see that humanity is remembered. More important than that, I want to make sure that humanity survives.

You hold in your hooves a summary of all that we suffered. A record of the end of our world, and the beginning of the next. Following this, I have included a detailed guide to every species you might have become. You should be able to find biological information within to enable you to adapt to your new environment, and take advantage of your new abilities.

Following this, I have explained in the simplest terms the principles of technology that enabled our species to succeed. I could not include every invention, but I hope what I have provided to you might serve as the seed around which the tree of knowledge might regrow. The best that two worlds could learn has been distilled to fit within these pages.

I am sorry I could not protect each one of you. I am sorry I could not explain this personally. But the human spirit is enduring. I know you have the strength to survive.

Publisher’s Addendum: Innovations in spellcraft have replaced the static printing of this volume with a causally-linked arbitrary Otherspace index. Consider all statements about the limited nature of the information contained in the BOOK OF SAND edition of this volume revoked. This edition is voice-addressable by the individual to whom it was assigned. -Mercy

Something smacked into the roof of her car with the force of a bowling-ball. The steel deformed on impact with an awful groan, even as a few sharp points appeared over her head. It wasn’t just the metal of her car screaming.

“Shit shit shit, what do I do?” Avery lowered herself down, cowering away from the growing opening above her. It was the vulture—or what was left of it. Only the lower half of its body was still moving, claws digging into the metal. Its upper half slid down the side-door, trailing sickly green slime as it went down.

Beside her, the book ruffled through pages, as though it had been startled by a breeze. It settled somewhere in back, on a page that looked like it had been mostly overcome with diagrams.

Avery hardly had the mind to read as the lower half of the monstrosity kept trying to claw its way through.One of its claws was now grasping for her, even as the ragged steel tore up the flesh of its leg.

Avery was no coward. If she’d been human, she would’ve grabbed the first thing within reach and tried to beat the monster away from her. But she had no limbs for that—it took great concentration to apply even a modest amount of force with her hooves. What was she supposed to do?

Leaning over to one side, Avery could see the words printed on the open page, the one that the book had turned to when the monster let the breeze in.

“EMERGENCY FORCE AMPLIFIER.”

There was a pattern on the page, one with an unmistakable hoofprint on it. There were few words on the opposite page, only a single block of bright red text so big she could read it in a single glance.

1. Aim horn at danger.

2. Place hoof on page.

3. Recite the following while thinking angry thoughts:

Avery never would’ve dreamed of trying to obey what the book said—not in any other situation. But her whole world was gone, her body was gone, and much else that she had known. And she was being attacked by the lower half of a rotting fungus bird. The rules she knew obviously needed some revising. “Take some of my blood, ancients! Give this one wrath in exchange!”

The top of the car ripped open like a tin can filled with explosives. Glass shattered from around her, and charred bits of creature began to rain down in flaming chunks. Avery panted, feeling so tired all the sudden. Like she was about to fall asleep.

She couldn’t, though. Not out here. She remained still a few more seconds—long enough to be sure that she wouldn’t be attacked again. She wasn’t. A few minutes later, she felt strong enough to move. Avery tossed both books into her backpack beside her laptop, then spent another few minutes securing it on her back so it wouldn’t slip. All the while she was conscious of the profound attention focusing on her from all directions. There was no swarm of rotting creatures attacking her through the opening, but it did feel as though one might arrive at any moment.

What the hell did I do? There was no time to linger outside and figure it out. She had to get back to Julian with her haul.

By the time she made it out, the sun was starting to go down. Where the red light of sunset touched the fungal mat, it changed to a sickly green instead of red, like she was seeing through its flesh to pulsing veins of rot beneath.

There was already the flicker of firelight coming from her target, and a plume of smoke rising from the chimney.

She staggered through the door, then stopped in the entryway to leave her dirty clothes behind. They would wash the fungus and slime off those, but not today.

She hurried through the rest of the way with her backpack, and was unsurprised to see Julian in the kitchen, preparing another meal of too-salty beans. He hadn’t managed to properly open the cans so much as puncture them wide enough that they could shake the contents out into a pot. He stood holding one of the cans in his hooves, shaking it methodically out into the pot. He kept repeating the gesture—kept on repeating it without looking up for nearly a minute straight. He made no sign of hearing her as she crossed the room towards him. Didn’t stop what he was doing until she smacked her backpack down on the kitchen table.

“Hey, bird!” she called.

That was enough to startle him back to reality. Relief flashed across his face, then annoyance. “That’s your nickname.”

“Well, maybe it was. Except now you’ve got wings. You need it more than me.” She put the backpack back on as she spoke, getting ready to go upstairs.

Julian frowned as he looked over her shoulder at her backpack. “I don’t know how much we need that. Unless you want to watch Madoka one more time before your battery dies.”

She shook her head, a grin spreading across her face. Her ears perked up, her tail moved—and she couldn’t control any of it. “You won’t believe what I found, bird. You won’t believe what happened to me!”

She told him as quick as she could, trying very hard not to let her mind wander in her excitement. She lavished the story with details in her usual way, and most of them were right.

“You sure you didn’t fall asleep in the car?” he asked, before taking the pot by the handle in his mouth and turning to head up the stairs. The pot was shaped for this—made to be used by creatures who used their mouths. The stairs were short too, short enough for them to climb each one with ease. That did mean over twice as many before they finally got to the top.

“Positive! You wait until you’re over there, you’ll see what I did to the roof! And… I’ve got the books with me as proof. We can read one together after we eat that… slop.”

“Don’t,” Julian warned. “If I can eat it, you can. We’re going to survive, remember?”

Except I don’t see you eat anymore. But she didn’t say that as they reached the top floor. There were three bedrooms up here, along with another family gathering area they’d used as their kitchen/workspace. There was an old-fashioned wood stove up here, with an iron top waiting to receive the pot full of beans. There was already a kettle going for tea, though it wasn’t boiling yet.

“Alright, show me,” Julian said, settling down onto the ground in front of the stove. He opened the metal door almost on instinct, tossing in a few bits of wood.

So she did. She left everything else inside her backpack, much as she was tempted to rip out the cliff bar and taste the first familiar thing she’d eaten in two weeks. It would keep longer than that—it would still be there when they had some occasion to celebrate.

“You weren’t kidding… I mean I knew you weren’t lying, but… I thought maybe you were… wrong somehow.” Julian pulled one of the books in front of him, skimming it. His eyes seemed to get wider the more he read.

They spent the rest of the night reading after that.

Chapter 3: Helpless Treatment

They read through most of the night. They read until the fire burned down and the sun filled the top floor of their shelter with creamy light. By the time Avery even remembered there was food to eat, the pot of beans had been completely ruined. But she didn’t feel hungry anymore, and the limits of their food supply no longer made her apprehensive. There were far bigger things to worry about now.

The books told the same, troubling story. They told the story not of the two of them transported to an alien planet, but that the ground they were walking on was the same one. The moon looked so familiar in the sky because it was the same moon. That was why the culture and technology of the homes they looted seemed so familiar to them. They were children of the same civilization, many years removed.

Julian mostly listened—his infection had made him less inquisitive than he had been. Mostly he listened with sympathy as Avery read the account for him, flipping pages with rapt attention and rarely looking up.

“It can’t be true,” Avery said, when they’d finished reading the summary. “Aliens saved us by making the whole planet into a petting zoo.”

“Does… look like it’s true,” Julian said with a yawn. It looked like it was a struggle for him to stay awake at this point. Only a few hours before, she’d survived a creepy animal attack and blasted a car apart, and he was the one who couldn’t stay awake. “Except for the fungus.”

The account they’d read hadn’t contained anything about the fungus—not even a hint at where it might’ve come from. It seemed to expect they would have woken to a primitive world, with lots of little pony cities. Except they were in the ruins of a city like that now, and it didn’t seem that primitive. It might’ve even been more advanced than the world they left behind—it was hard to tell with no electricity and nothing working. Might be 1950s, or 2150s.

“I’ve already tested one part of what my book explained,” Avery muttered. “That attack, like I said. That part worked. Probably… probably that means the rest of it is true too.” Either that, or it had been given one useful ability to trick them into believing everything else it said. But… for what purpose? The book went on and on about “magic,” clarifying once it had given its explanation that magic was how they had received their books. Magic was the key to so much it promised. That word seemed like it could be used to explain anything away.

Unfortunately, Avery didn’t have any other explanation. The book’s picture of events was the only one they had to work with. It might as well be the correct one. “When we wake up tomorrow…” she began, her voice low. “That stuff about our abilities. You being able to fly makes sense… and my magic.”

“Sure.” Julian rose from beside her, shaking out his legs one at a time. He moved more stiffly than she was used to, like the fungal spores gripping him had sucked out a little of his youth. “We can talk about it after we get some rest.”

He wandered into one of the bedrooms. They hadn’t used the same one—some aspects of their transformation had been too uncomfortable to confront in that way quite yet. Maybe they would have, except that Avery had spent so much time recovering. By the time she did, Julian had become sick. “And I don’t want you to get it too.”

So, Avery made her way to the other bedroom alone—the one that didn’t have a window to the outside. She brought her whole backpack with her, though she didn’t remove anything else. Her laptop’s precious charge wouldn’t last forever, but she did want to use it for something special before the batteries died. One of these days…

“There’s got to be something I can do for Julian,” she muttered, curling up in bed with the book. “He’s so… He deserves better after saving my life.”

She didn’t feel tired, even though she was reading by the glow of a flashlight also salvaged from the car. Also, with limited battery they could never replace. So, she searched, skimming from page to page for anything that might help her friend. “Medical emergencies,” she said to the book, feeling silly as she did it. But the book had said it was voice-indexed.

As before, the pages shuffled and turned, taking her near the back. Well… where she thought was the back. Yet as the pages turned, there always seemed to be just one more between the open section and the cover. She saw first aid diagrams, along with instructions for the treatment of many simple ailments. She skipped past them, not seeing anything remotely like what Julian was going through. A few diseases, along with herbal or “magical” remedies. Potions that could alleviate pain, or bring down fevers, or other such things.

“No.” She snapped the book closed, frustrated. Tiredness was starting to grate on her too by then, but she resisted her urge to sleep. “My friend has got a gross fungus growing all over him. Is there any way to get rid of it?”

She stared as the book turned its own pages—third time or not, it was still almost impossible to believe. Her eyes didn’t quite want to believe what she was experiencing. Yet there was no mistaking it as it finally settled open again to more magical diagrams.

This was not the simple pattern she’d seen when she asked it for help—there was no place for her hoof on this page. It looked, rather, like opening an advanced mathematics theory book after taking an algebra class. There were numerous words she didn’t recognize, patterns and explanations for things she had no names for. Sets of raw ingredients and something called a “progression of mindsets.” The spell recommended the caster have mastered “Life 4, Death 2” before even attempting it, with severe warnings for anyone who tried to cast it while unprepared.

Avery read anyway. She read about the delicacy of a spell that was apparently so difficult it was easier to kill the patient than to cast it correctly. She read about how essential each of the dozen raw ingredients was for the casting to proceed correctly, and the precision that the diagram needed to be replicated for the casting to succeed.

“If cast in this way before the patient dies, this working results in a permanent immunity to the fungal rot,” promised the spell, near the bottom. “The number of doctors who can work it successfully is never large enough for the number of perspective patients suffering. Considering the alternative waiting for your loved ones, it would be vain for me to suggest that you shouldn’t attempt it. Know, however, that you take their life into your hooves.”

Avery stared down at the pages for a long time, feeling her depression mount. It wasn’t just that the obvious remedy to Julian’s position seemed out of reach—but that the consequences of her lack of involvement were here too.

The tome seemed to sense her hunger for information—as she kept turning, there was always another page. The fungal rot was described in detail. It had two forms—one that fed on a living host, and one that could only grow on a corpse. The latter was incurable, though corpses didn’t tend to care how they were used.

The former appeared to be a rare thing, only a danger to those who spent a long time around tainted ground without respiratory protection. Once it got root in someone, the infection was almost always lethal within a month. Only a few advanced drugs they didn’t have or advanced spells they couldn’t cast had any hope of curing someone before they died.

This should not be a serious concern to most who encounter the fungus. Its presence never enters civilized lands for long. It can be prevented with the casting of a simple charm upon the user every morning, or with the use of filtration protection to 500nm.

Avery woke the next morning to a gentle prod from Julian, who had already cooked her a little bowl of rice and put it on a tray for her. The sun coming in behind him through the open door suggested it was already afternoon—Avery had fallen asleep reading.

“Sorry. I thought you’d be up by now.”

Avery yawned, jostling the blankets from around her. “I…” She should’ve felt self-conscious around Julian, embarrassed to be naked. But she couldn’t manage those feelings. This body didn’t really belong to her, even if she was growing to appreciate some parts about it.

Survival was more important than her taboos. “I was… doing research. The book has a treatment for you.”

“Really?” His eyes widened. “I… I looked for that a little this morning. It kept pointing me back to something called the Morpheans. Too Lovecraftian for me, so I stopped.”

“That wasn’t in mine at all,” Avery said, frowning. She hadn’t even seen that word last night, at least not that she could remember. But she had been specific with her requests.

“Well, what was in there?” He glanced past her to the still-open book beside her in bed. “Anything we can use?”

“Maybe.” She hastily snapped it closed. The book was still open to the medical information about the progression of the infection in living subjects. The symptoms coming for Julian were… pretty grim. She didn’t want him to see how dismal his prognosis really was. “I’ll need to practice before I can do any of it.” She tapped her horn with one hoof. “Apparently this thing can cast some amazing spells with practice. There’s one that can heal you, but it’s difficult and might hurt you if I do it wrong.”

Julian shrugged. “I’m… already hurting pretty bad, bird. Can’t get much worse.”

She shivered, imagining what Julian’s body would look like in another week. And a week after that, he’d be worse than dead. The fungus would claim him, just like it had to that awful bird that had destroyed itself trying to kill her.

It didn’t want me to get the book. Why? How smart is this stuff? Avery had more research to do. Maybe there were other options. “There’s a… a guide to basic magic in here. Real Harry Potter type stuff. I just have to get good enough to cast a healing spell, that’s all.”

“Go out and grind some low-level enemies,” Julian suggested, before wincing as the fibers around his neck tightened. “Paladins get healing touch at… level three?”

“I don’t think this is 3.5.” Avery stared down at the book in front of her.

“I’ll… let you get to it,” Julian said, retreating out the open door. He left it open, lighting the bedroom with even orange.

Avery hadn’t eaten dinner yesterday, so she did enjoy the bland rice. Not ideal, but it was still food. We’re so lucky that fungus doesn’t get into tin cans. At least, not yet. It probably would, given enough time. Most of the house interiors were clean on the inside, with only the exteriors covered with growth. For some reason, the fungal mat didn’t seem to do well anywhere it couldn’t get direct sunlight. Even some of the houses with broken windows and doors only let the fungus in a few feet.

Avery read while she ate, and she read after that, until Julian came in a few hours later with a lantern for her bedside table. And she kept reading.

The magical instruction in the book was incredibly detailed. There was no subject that didn’t have lessons going through all five levels. Every one of the ten “arcana” were explained here, starting with the simple charms that many unicorns knew, and growing gradually more specialized.

Every level of each arcana seemed to have as much to it as entire college courses, with hundreds of pages of theory and practice. At one point, the book in front of her had become as wide as both hooves combined and sagged the mattress down in front of her.

“There’s got to be a way to do this,” Avery muttered to herself. “I’ve got a manual, and I’ve got time. Two weeks. That’s practically an eternity.”

It wasn’t. From the way the book seemed to grow, she could probably read for decades without finishing the “Refugee Survival Guide.” And reading was a long way from mastering the techniques discussed.

Julian arrived with dinner—more rice—a few hours later. He didn’t even speak this time, just smiled at her and left the food on her tray. She kept reading.

There weren’t really any other pressing tasks for them to accomplish. Julian’s looting had likely cost him his life, but he’d gathered all the supplies left in every home for a mile. Considering how little he ate, it was probably enough food for years. Less water, but they had the river to go to when they ran out of bottles.

It took Avery three days before she finally managed to levitate something for the first time. Another two to cast her first light spell. She transformed the bedroom into a workshop—they had looted more than food, after all. There was plenty of paper and spellcasting supplies—obviously some of the ponies who had lived here had been unicorns themselves.

Avery spent every day cramming more intently than she ever had for any college final. Yet still, it wasn’t enough. By the end of the week, Julian couldn’t bring her meals anymore. His body had grown weaker, breathing raspy as the fungal rot ate him from the inside. Little waving feelers followed her movements as she took care of him as best she could.

“W-when… when this is over…” Julian croaked one morning, after she’d finished helping him drink. He didn’t eat anymore. “I don’t want you to… blame yourself,” he said.

“I won’t,” she agreed. “Because I won’t have anything to blame myself over. I’m going to save you.”

But the more she studied, the clearer it became that she wasn’t going to save him. After a week of intense reading, she could read the runes and the power requirements on the healing spell and see that there was no chance in hell of her casting it. Maybe if she had five years to study… but certainly not with three weeks.

“Fuck you!” she screamed at the book, late one night. “Fuck you for not having a way to help him! It’s not our fault we ended up here! Why couldn’t we be anywhere else? Why couldn’t we appear somewhere safe? You murdered him!” The book didn’t respond—it wasn’t a person, it couldn’t talk to her. Its pages could turn on their own to anything she asked, but an insult wasn’t a question.

Avery even tried to rip the book in her frustration, completely without success. Its pages were more resistant than any rip-proof paper she’d ever felt before. Just like she couldn’t mark them with any of the pens or pencils she found.

“What the hell am I supposed to do to save him?” Avery screamed, her new voice shrill and higher than ever as tears streamed down her face. “I’ll do anything you want!”

The book opened on her desk. It turned and turned until it was thicker than several phone-books. Avery watched, more out of spite than anything else, as it settled into a rear appendix.

“The Rogue Sister, Matron of Nightfall, Morphean of Unwoven Fate” said the heading. Avery glanced at the section listing near the top of the page, and her eyes just got wider. “Gods and Near-Divine Creatures.”

What was that about not playing 3.5?

Julian had said something about Morpheans. What had he said about them? She couldn’t remember.

According to the survival guide, the Rogue Sister was a god of dream—a powerful nonphysical being that could be persuaded to intervene in the affairs of ponies when fate had bound them tight enough and their passion to escape was strong. Much of the description discussed ways that “thestrals” could contact her, such as where in the “Dreamlands” she tended to appear.

All useless to Avery, who wasn’t a thestral and had no way of traveling to the Dreamlands. But there were instructions inside for attracting her attention. Unicorn magic, as it happened, could be coaxed into doing what many of the other races could do with ease. If there were spells for flying and strength, why not manipulating dreams too?

It seemed a futile hope. The ritual made it clear that the Morpheans couldn’t be summoned against their will—if the Matron of Nightfall was unimpressed with Avery’s petition, she wouldn’t come.

And there’s no more reason for me to believe in this god than any other. Just because magic is real and the book has been right about so many other things doesn’t mean it doesn’t have any superstitions in it. Everything she read in this section suggested more myth than fact. It was all couched in the language of “some observations suggest” and “those that have met her describe” rather than the concrete terms used in the spellcraft section.

But Avery was out of ideas. Julian would be dead within a week—every day he remained infected he suffered more permanent harm.

Avery made sure Julian was asleep, then prepared the ritual as the survival guide instructed. She copied the diagram with painstaking detail, found a chain she could break (some delicate jewelry they’d stolen from the master bathroom) and cut into her own foreleg with a knife to draw a little blood. The pain was nothing compared to what Julian was suffering every day now.

She dipped the pencil in her blood and scribbled onto the torn bit of paper. “My best friend is doomed to die of an infection because he saved my life.” Simple, just as the ritual instructed. She burned it, mixed the ash with water, and drank the whole bitter concoction.

Could the book be spiting her? If it was, Avery supposed it must be getting quite the laugh at her expense.

By the time she was done, Avery didn’t have to go through any effort to fall asleep with her head atop the diagram. She could barely keep her eyes open to begin with.

Avery was standing in a jungle. The thick growth of a primeval forest surrounded her on all sides, filled with the hostile calls of distant predators. She wandered for an impossible distance, walking on two hooves on a body that was mostly pony but still bore some suggestions of the person she’d been. She had breasts, which were new, but no clothing, which was also new.

Beasts came from the trees—terrible creatures covered in fungus and rot and dripping with sea-water. Avery didn’t care—she broke herself a spear from a length of strong wood, and sharpened it with rock and flint. She threw her spear like it was Gungnir. And when it broke, she used rocks.

Avery heard the distant drums beating through the night, and she followed them. The closer she got, the more savage her enemies became. But she only grew more determined, ignoring her own wounds and inflicting terrible harm on all that opposed her. By the time she reached the court, her pale coat was stained with dark blood.

The courtiers were mostly human—though many of them had a few traits that didn’t belong. Tusks, or batlike wings, or other things. A few bat-ponies attended the Matron of Nightfall alongside all the others, though they watched Avery with no more recognition than the others here. The courtiers wore mostly pelts and skins, and everything in the camp was made from bone, wood, or stone.

Avery stood before the matron with red blood still dripping from her body. “I’m here for Julian,” she announced, as fearless in the presence of this being as she had been in the face of so many monsters.

Smoke billowed around the court, which was lit only with the bonfire and the distant stars. The Matron was larger than any human Avery had ever seen, easily twice the size as the apparent humans in her court. She wore a single gigantic pelt stretched over her, far more for glory than modesty.

“I am pleased to break bonds for you,” she answered, her voice rumbling like thunder. “Your friend has been tightly wound by death. I can break that chain… but are you prepared for my price?”

“Anything,” she answered, without hesitation. Just as she had not hesitated facing terrible monsters. “I would do it myself if I had time. But I don’t. That’s all I want.”

The Matron of Nightfall rose from her throne of bone and ash, striding forward and inspecting Avery with a critical eye. Those few moments seemed to stretch into eternity before she finally spoke. “My prices are always higher than supplicants expect. Yet part of that price is the trust they must invest.

“I tell you, child of fixed space, you cannot imagine what I will take from you. And from him, though less will be required. Only enough to survive. I will take away your hoofprints from fate, so you can slip through its clutches. I will use you to remake the smallest fraction of the phenomenal world, so that my war drums will sound again in the hearts of men. Do you accept this price?”

Avery nodded. Then she exploded.

Chapter 4: Splinters of Something New

Avery felt… less.

For a long time it was all she could manage to lay in bed and try to figure out what was different. Except her bed didn’t feel like a bed at all, but like a slab of something rough and rigid, grating against her coat. She belonged somewhere else, but she couldn’t name the where.

I tried the ritual last night. I agreed to pay… something… for Julian. He should be cured. What had the night matron said? “I will take away your hoofprints from fate, so you can slip through its clutches.” She could remember her voice clearly, just like some other things remained clear in her mind. She had studied a great deal about magic in the last few days, and when she opened her eyes she could still see her horn poking out from her forehead. So that seemed to still be working.

But something wasn’t right, something obvious—she could hear voices. It didn’t sound like Julian had come in to wake her, after his miraculous recovery. The voices sounded familiar. They sounded like her.

“I think we should work together. I bet we could open the door with all of us pushing at once.”

“That’s stupid. We should pass a message to Julian.”

“He can’t get up,” argued a third voice. “Don’t you remember?”

“Except we cured him!”

So many voices, all sounding exactly like her. Avery winced, and finally opened her eyes the rest of the way. It was very dark, so she lit her horn instinctively—the magic came more easily than she remembered—actually, it came right to mind without effort. Her glasses were beside her, and she levitated them back into place. Wasn’t there something strange about that?

She could feel the uncomfortable surface beneath her in more ways than she should be able. Like huge sections of her skin were rubbing up against it, grating on her and causing a persistent discomfort.

The colors were wrong too—her pale coat was gone, replaced with bright pink with a blue mane. And there were lumps in front of her, lumps emerging from her forehead that danced through the air as though they were tasting for something.

And they were. With a sense she had no words to describe, Avery could taste exactly thirteen people nearby, including herself. Thirteen people that smelled surprisingly different, for all they seemed to smell alike and sound alike.

“Woah, look. The one in the diagram knows magic.”

“I used to know how to do that.”

“No you didn’t, you don’t have a horn.”

Avery looked up, eyes widening as she finally saw where she had been brought.

It wasn’t a fresh alien world, as she had briefly wondered. It was the bed, grown so tremendously that its surface was larger than most rooms. She wasn’t on a flat slab of concrete—she was resting on a sheet of paper, the same one she’d ripped to make her spellcrafting diagram the night before. She was resting in the very center of the diagram.

Stranger still, the creatures around her could fly. Well, some of them could. They landed beside her on the diagram, light enough that their hoofprints didn’t press the paper down. They were in many different colors—this one peach with an orange mane, that one pale like her old self, that one purple. They were different sizes too—but they all seemed bigger than her. A crowd gathered around the light of her horn, and Avery felt like the shortest pony in class. What was a class? She remembered… she’d been to a class before. When she was younger?

She couldn’t remember.

They looked like ponies, kind of. Ponies that had been shrunk, and given transparent wings that were wide and delicate. They glittered in the light from her horn.

“We need to act rationally here,” said the only pony who was as short as she was. The one with the orangish mane and skin-colored fur. She didn’t have a horn, which was even stranger to her. Come to think of it, none of them did. Avery was the only one. “You’re Avery, right?” She was addressing her.

Avery nodded. “Y-yeah.”

“So are we,” said a taller mare with an athletic build and a confident smile. “So are all of us. Maybe we should fight over it.”

“Maybe shut up,” hissed the peach one. “Your proposal isn’t rational at all. We’re too delicate and we don’t know Julian’s condition. Maybe he’s still infected and he needs to be taken care of. We won’t know until we find him and check.”

The longer Avery stayed standing the smaller she felt. The ceiling was so massive it was lost to sight above her, a blur her eyes couldn’t comprehend. All these ponies looked so different—some of them looked mature and confident. A few, like the peach one, looked confident but not mature. Then there was her, who felt like neither.

“It’s just turning the lock, right?” asked another one. Avery couldn’t keep track—they all sounded the same! “Pink one, you’ve got a horn. Can’t you do magic to get it open?”

“I, uh…” she hesitated. Her wings spread when she thought about them, but they didn’t want to flap for her. How the hell was she supposed to know how to use wings? “I can’t fly.”

“You don’t have to fly,” said peach. “You can see the door right there, right? Light coming in from under it. Turn the knob. Everyone who knows how to fly will all push on it at the same time, and we’ll open it.”

“I, uh… okay.” She winced, pawing nervously over to the edge of the bed. Well, as close as she dared to go. The drop off the side of the blankets was certain death—like standing atop a skyscraper. Nothing should be this big nothing should be this big nothing should be this big.

But another part of her—the part of her she would expect to be angry—wasn’t. If Julian is okay, it’s worth it. She had said she would pay any price for his life, and she meant it. Even this. Whatever… this even was.

“O-okay, everyone. Get… into position.” They didn’t move.

Peach took to the air with a confident burst of speed. “You heard her! With me, everyone!” And most of them did—except for two—one with a gray coat, and one she hadn’t noticed in back. This one actually looked like a child, though she wasn’t sure how she could tell. Something to do with the size of her head?

“Now!” called peach from the door.

Avery winced, and cast her levitation spell. She expected something terribly difficult—the knob was now bigger than she was, after all. But to her surprise, it twisted easily despite the distance. It didn’t open quite so easy—so she pushed on the door too. Harder than she was probably intending, because the vortex of air sucked the little ponies through with squeals of surprise as they tumbled through the air.

Like my magic hasn’t realized I’m smaller. She would have to be careful if she ever tried to interact with anything her own size. A push like that against a pony instead of a door could’ve killed them.

Sunlight illuminated the top floor as brightly as ever, though it was so large and distant to Avery that she could only make out the general shapes. Like the door to Julian’s bedroom, already open. The flock of little ponies seemed to see that as their target, because that was where they went, with peach’s voice shouting commands to be calm and orderly fading into the distance.

That left the three of them. Avery glanced down at the drop, spreading her wings—but just wanting to go with them to check on Julian wasn’t the same as actually knowing how to fly.

“You two stuck too?” she asked, sitting back down on her haunches with a sigh. The cloth wasn’t as uncomfortable as the paper, though she still didn’t like the feel of it. Too dead, too fake. It wasn’t where she belonged.

To her surprise, both of the others shook their heads. The one who had the same pale color as her old self rose into the air to demonstrate. “Are you sure you can’t do it? Flying is… so easy. It’s like swimming. You just have to push.”

The child nodded in agreement. “I dunno how. But it’s in there. Everything is in there.” She tapped the side of her head with one hoof. “Not much of everything, but it’s something.”

“Uh…” Avery rose, walking a little ways away from the edge. Until she was so far from it that she no longer felt like she was risking falling by attempting to fly. She moved her wings, but the new limbs didn’t seem to work right. Worse, her tail and mane seemed to be larger—when she leaned forward, she tripped on her mane, and ended up planting her face in the giant blanket.

At least it didn’t hurt to fall.

“That’s weird,” said the child, lifting up beside her. “You think it’s your horn? We don’t got those, maybe it’s too heavy.”

“I don’t think it’s her horn,” said the gray one. “Though it might be… magic-related?”

A bright green pony flew in through the now-open door, looking slightly out-of-breath from the trip. “He’s okay! Julian is cured! There’s just one of him, but… he’s not sick anymore!”

“We should help,” said gray, taking off again. Even the child followed.

“Sorry,” she said, with one last departing wave. “This is what we wanted. I wanna see it too.” And they were gone.

Avery kicked at the empty bed, grunting in frustration. But there was nobody to hear her—her voice was too small. She could barely make out a chorus of excited voices from down the hall—her own, though they all had slightly different ways of speaking. Their own unique tones and emotions, blurring together in the distance. She found she suddenly didn’t care.

“What the hell even am I?” Avery moaned, all alone. She could hear so much happiness coming from down the hall, but she couldn’t share it. She couldn’t even get to him.

Something moved on the bed with her. Near the pillow, she saw the massive tome that was the survival guide snap open. The ground shook underneath it, and the air began to billow as the pages turned. Avery crouched low, keeping her wings close to the ground so she wouldn’t get swept away. She might not know how to fly, but they could still act like sails.

The book stopped moving a few moments later, open somewhere near the middle. From her size, the walk looked like at least a block away. She started her trek.

A few minutes later and Avery arrived at the base of the tome. She adjusted her glasses, then walked around to one of the sloped edges. The curve was gentle enough where the pages leaved out that she could walk up onto the surface, and look down at what the book contained.

She only got a few steps before the floor was yanked out from under her. She flopped onto her face again, even as the book retreated from in front of her.

Avery squealed in fear—she might not remember much, but she knew how important this book was. She got up and galloped after the book as it began to fade, trying to get a grip on the pages.

She needn’t have been so worried. Though it was barely a speck compared to its previous size, the book settled onto the sheets in front of her at exactly the size a book should be.

Avery approached it slowly this time—cautious for more magical effects. The magical senses she had tried to cram in the only clear days of her memory were working better than ever before, and she could feel power swirling about this point. It wasn’t really a book, that was just the shape the magic had taken here. It looked like that so she could understand it.

But now it melted, forming a sliver of crystal about the same size the book had been, with a polished surface like a mirror. It lifted up in front of her, and a face appeared in the surface.

It was a pony—a pony made entirely of white crystal. The most perfectly-carved statue in the world, with eyes that glowed with green and purple.

“This is… peculiar,” said the voice. “I have never observed this before.” The crystal shot forward, until the pony’s face was hovering right in front of her. Her eyes narrowed suspiciously. “If you are trying to steal my master’s power, it will go badly for you.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” Avery squeaked, her little antennae drooping down to cover her face. “I’m not trying to steal anything!”

“Then explain to me,” said the carved pony. Avery could see the world behind her now, though it was hazy. She seemed to be standing in a library, the biggest and grandest library that had ever been built. “Explain to me how it is that the connection this artifact made with a unicorn is now made with a breezie. This requires powerful magic—and breezies are not general spellcasters. How does a nature spirit reweave sympathetic connections?” Purple energy glowed out from the edges of the crystal. “Do not think because the Alicorns are distracted preserving this planet that their creations rest idle. Tell me the name of your master, and she will be punished. Who robbed the unicorn mare?”

“I am the unicorn mare,” she said, fumbling over that last word. It still felt strange on her tongue, for more reasons than one. Though now that she thought about it, most of her discomfort with it had faded. She knew she ought to be bothered—but it didn’t feel like she’d been the one to keep that emotional turmoil.

Avery felt a little anger entering her voice. “You’re Mercy, aren’t you? The pony who wrote the survival guide?”

“I didn’t write it,” said the crystal pony, glowering at her. “I maintain it. There is a difference. The original was written by Archive, but much has changed since then. She’s too busy fighting monsters to write these days.” She glared through the glass. “Your answer does not make sense, nature spirit. This artifact reads as genuinely connected to you—explain your forgery.”

“No forgery,” she practically shouted. “I made a deal with the Matron of Nightfall. Your fucking book taught me how to do it!”

The creature made from crystal stopped glaring. “One moment,” the image faded, and for a few seconds it only showed Avery’s reflection. A frightened, animal face, though the glasses and tightly braided mane both didn’t belong. Without even thinking, Avery lifted the glasses off her face, and found the whole world turned blurry almost immediately. Since when am I so nearsighted?

The shard of crystal that had been her book became a screen again, with the same imperious face behind it. “Yours is the second case I know of where a non-bat has managed to attract her attention. I would need to examine you personally, but… I am satisfied with your explanation.” Her horn glowed, and a notebook and quill appeared beside her. “For my records, what was your boon? The curse is obvious.”

“My friend,” Avery muttered, “was infected with a… fungus. I wanted him cured.”

“I notice you still have your horn. Does it… still work? Your curse didn’t include making you into a true breezie, then. I suppose I’ll make sure your guide retains access to unicorn magic in addition to breezie wyldcraft.”

“I… the curse wasn’t just being this,” Avery croaked. She felt suddenly self-conscious, but would she ever get another chance? “It’s becoming a dozen of them. It feels like… I don’t remember very much. I think the others must all know different things. Maybe if you put us all together we’d be the person I should be…”

“Oh.” Mercy’s tone became solemn. “That’s… extreme. I can only guess at her purpose. Regardless, I have some advice for you. Do not attempt to reverse the process. A price paid to creatures like the Matron cannot be stolen back through tricks. Either you will fail, or she will revoke your boon and your friend will die. You must make due with the life you asked for.”

“O-okay.” She shivered. “I… I understand.” She wanted to ask for more, but suddenly she found she just couldn’t muster the courage. Avery had been a brave… person, who could fight monsters and never look away. That part of her must’ve ended up in someone else.

“And since I spent the glamour to make this connection, one more thing. Don’t wander too far. Breezies are delicate creatures ill-suited for life outside their… well, you can read, it’s in the book. Just know that the world has become a dangerous place, for all creatures but especially for you. The minor creatures of the rot will make short work of you if you provoke them now. You must not become a threat, or you will be destroyed.”

The pony didn’t wait to say more, not even a farewell. The crystal went reflective again—and a few seconds later, it had changed back into a book. Though it remained at the convenient size.

Avery levitated it over to her, and found the gesture as effortless as before. So long as she was careful enough not to smack herself with the tiny book like a bullet, anyway.

It was still opened to where it had turned when she spoke before—the page about breezies. I wonder why the others didn’t look this up before I woke up. They would have known all about themselves.

Avery could still hear the excited voices from the hallway behind, and other motion. Those massive hoofsteps would no doubt be Julian, a pony so large now that he shook the whole house through her hooves.

It was worth it. I won’t get to have him, but at least he’ll live. I kept my promise.

Avery might not have kept her courage, but she had kept the determination that had prompted her to study magic with such vigor. She didn’t get to be a part of the celebration with the others, at least she could learn what they had become.

Breezies were described in far less detail than unicorns. The survival guide mentioned they were extremely rare, surpassed only by dragons in terms of “refugee conversion ratio.” Physically they were the weakest intelligent species—there were no others of this size and frailty anywhere in the spell.

The book went on to discuss their role as nature spirits—ageless beings of the oldest and most dangerous forests. Apparently their presence was enough to bless the land so thoroughly that they were actually a threat to civilization. They didn’t just bless the crops, but make everything grow out of control wherever they lived. Their magic was so strange and hostile to other kinds that they were often hunted.

The book’s short description of them closed with a recommendation to any refugees with that form to find larger allies to protect them and to never gather in groups of more than two or three. This would prevent their magic from interacting with the natural world, and keep them from threatening civilization. With just a few together at a time, they were no danger to anypony and thus would probably not be hunted.

“I will use you to remake the smallest fraction of the phenomenal world, so that my war drums will sound again in the hearts of men.” She made thirteen of us. Made them from us, somehow. She wanted us to be together.

Maybe Avery would have felt bad about that. A part of her probably would have, anyway. But this Avery was too small to be bothered about changing the world when the outside was nothing but rot and putrescence. Rot that had almost killed her best friend. Rot that had cursed her with… smallness. Of all kinds.

Something huge rumbled nearby, and the massive door shut. Avery squeaked pitifully, and her horn went out, plunging her in darkness. To Avery’s surprise, an outline stood in the doorway. A familiar outline, though she’d never imagined she would see it from so small.

Julian was an impressive and frightening creature now. She could see the individual hairs in his coat, feel the bed shake under her. And he couldn’t see her at all.

He sat down just behind the door, and she realized now there were no more of her little clan of breezies to be seen.

Julian was healed. True to the price she’d paid, there was no trace of the suffocating fungus on his body anywhere. He didn’t even seem to have the scars the book had suggested would linger for life, or the stunted muscles that the fungus had fed upon. He looked as though he’d never been infected.

He also looked overwhelmed.

“I can’t believe what you did for me, bird,” he whispered, to nobody. He made no glance at her—didn’t seem to even realize she existed. “I don’t know if I can face you. So many little voices…” He shook his head, shivering all over. “I told you to let it happen. It wasn’t your fault I was dying.”

Avery made her way along the bed, getting closer to Julian. She tripped a few times as she made her way down, but it didn’t hurt. Falling never seemed to hurt at this size.

“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with you,” he muttered, voice as downcast as before. “I guess I’m a zookeeper now. Or a babysitter.”

Avery was as close as she dared to the footboard. It was too high up for her to climb. “You could’ve left me behind after the car crash,” she called up to him, as loud as she could. Her voice seemed so small by comparison, she worried he wouldn’t be able to hear her. “You didn’t. How could I leave you behind?” She lit up her horn just in case he couldn’t see her—she might not be able to get out of the way in time if he decided to try and sit down on the bed.

“Oh.” The glow from her horn was as bright as it had been before, yet somehow it didn’t hurt to look at. She could see Julian’s expression fall as he saw her. “There’s another one in here. I just… I just wanted a few minutes alone.” He rose, and made for the door again.

“Hold on!” Avery squealed after him, tugging on his tail with her magic. “You can’t just say things like that and walk away!” Where had that courage come from? Avery could hardly believe it. It’s how I used to talk. It was as though being near him was reminding her of things she’d forgotten.

To her surprise, Julian did stop. He turned, making his way to the edge of the bed, and glaring down at her. “Alright, bird. What do you want?”

She whimpered, wiping away tears with the back of one leg. She’d almost never seen him this upset—but she couldn’t back away now. “I-I… I dunno. Just don’t… I still want to be your friend, Julian. I’m sure all the other bits and pieces of me want the same thing. It’s the one thing we all seemed to have in common.”

His expression softened. “It’s not fair having this conversation like this. You’re adorable and I’m not. Did you make those glasses yourself?”

“No,” she whined. “Stop trying to distract me! I went to the edge of hell for you, Julian! I went to the Morpheans and demanded that you be cured! Doesn’t that say how much I care about you?”

Julian nodded, then sat down on the bed beside her. His weight made the whole floor sweep down towards him, and Avery tumbled, sliding and smacking into his leg. Still didn’t hurt, though it was incredibly embarrassing to be sprawled out in front of him like this. Avery was enough of herself to remember the nudity taboo.

Julian didn’t help—he lowered one hoof, lifting her up as delicately as a butterfly. Which was good, since anything more would have crushed her. “You’re easier to deal with when there’s one of you. I don’t like crowds.”

That’s probably gonna be difficult, since all those fairies think you’re their best friend. But she didn’t say that part just yet. She couldn’t help but see the fall waiting for her if she tumbled off his hoof, and so she clung to it desperately. “Why aren’t you… flying?”

“Can’t,” she whimpered, shivering. “Dunno how.”

“That makes two ways you’re different than the others,” Julian said. “Are you the original? Are you the real Avery? Maybe the rest are clones…”

Avery nodded. “I’m the real one—but they’ll think they’re the original too. I don’t think it was a copy thing. I think it was more like… my life was a big Hawaiian pizza that got sliced up into thirteen slices.”

Julian shrugged, holding his hoof as rigidly as he could. “Well, you must be the slice without any pineapples. You didn’t attack me like a swarm of glass butterflies.” He lowered his hoof to the pillow, slowly enough that she didn’t go flying. She scrambled off quickly, rising into a standing position and looking up at him.

She should probably feel bad for all the other little parts of her that weren’t in here. But considering how much they’d overwhelmed Julian, she found it hard.

“While I was studying… trying to learn the spell that would cure you… I used to drift off… plan out what we’d do once I did it. Burning back the fungus for miles around, planting some crops. We could make a home out here. Maybe if we really worked at it we could get the power back on. Then maybe in a few years if it seemed like things were staying safe we would maybe have a few kids, and start chopping up the ruins into a castle or something. It would be such an awesome place to grow up, and none of them would get sick and…” she trailed off, realizing what she’d said. Her ears flattened and she squeaked pitifully. “Uh… pretend you didn’t hear that last part.”

Julian wasn’t very good at pretending. “Might have a hard time with that one now, bird. You’re… what, three inches?”

“I’ve been reading all about magic,” she said, before she could stop herself. “There are transformation spells. I could—” But she stopped, remembering what Mercy had said about trying to get around her curse. “I can’t make myself bigger. But I could make you smaller.”

Then she realized what she was saying. Avery whined, covering her face in her hooves and making a pitiful sound. A little like the videos of moths she’d seen once or twice.

Julian had been the shyer of the two of them once. That seemed long gone, lost to his size advantage. He leaned down over her, looking sympathetic. “I’m not committing to anything, bird. But it would be nice to be able to hug you properly. For saving my life, I mean. Not that having those little ones land all over me wasn’t sweet of them.”

And every one of those little ponies would probably want the same things from Julian that Avery did. They were all her, after all. Some parts of what they’d taken were exclusive, but others overlapped, and she suspected Julian was that constant.

“Well, come on.” Julian reached down for her again. “I’m not facing the mob without you. You can ride on my back.”

“Wait!” Avery squeaked, gesturing to where he had picked her up before. “I dropped my book! I don’t want to lose it!”

“Oh… hey, there is something there.” Julian bent down, though he frowned at his hoof. “Too small for me. You’ll have to get it.”

Avery concentrated, and the book shot back across the room towards her. Not too fast that she couldn’t stop it. She kept it moving over to the bedside table, where she set it just beside the lantern. “Don’t spill anything on it! I’m not gonna ruin my wizard’s manual before I read it!”

“I’d have a riot on my hands if I did,” Julian muttered. “I guess you’ll have to figure out how to distribute book privileges. And… lots of things.”

“I don’t think so,” Avery muttered, clambering up onto his offered hoof. He moved her to his back, and she climbed down again. It was surprisingly easy to hang on—she probably could’ve climbed up to his shoulders. But she wasn’t brave enough for that yet. “The others can’t do magic. Or… not unicorn magic. I think they have another kind… wyldcraft? I haven’t looked it up yet.”

“You all can work that out,” he said. “But… thanks, Avery. For saving me. I’m sorry I… I know how much this cost you. I’ll try to make it worth it for you. For both of us.”

“Open the door slowly!” Avery squeaked. “They might be waiting on the other side. Don’t squish me!”

“Oh, right!” He did open it slowly—which was good, since there were three breezies waiting in the air just outside it, watching. Julian’s slowness meant that they only went spinning through the air, instead of getting crushed between the door and the wall.

Their hideout didn’t seem that different. Aside from everything being impossibly massive, the world was the same. It was only Avery who had changed.

Well, all of the Averies.

I said I’d pay any price, Avery thought. I did mean it. Julian’s back. It’s worth it even if I never get to be with him. Even if none of us do. Even knowing the price, she would’ve done it again. That was what love was about.

Chapter 5: Rule by Committee

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Chapter 6: Jungle Colony

Julian knew he shouldn’t play favorites. Every single one of the surviving ten breezies that had been Avery wanted time with him, and they all got it in various capacities. It had been worse during the first few years, when they argued over time with him (behind his back) like children, but didn’t seem terribly interested in his own feelings on the matter.

But there had always been one exception—one Avery that wasn’t like the others. She was easy to tell apart, both by her magic and the way she didn’t fight over him. It was this Avery he was on the way to visiting now—not the prettiest, not the kindest, not even the smartest. But still his favorite.

Some part of him never fully adjusted to seeing the world from a few inches tall, but in Formenos it was easy to forget. Mayor April had been a demanding master in the first few months, but all that work had created a city that took his breath away every time he got to visit. Granted, some of that was pride, since he’d done lots of the heavy lifting himself. Before Avery had made the charm he wore around his neck.

It looked like something out of middle Europe, dozens and dozens of little white-walled homes set into the trees at various heights with rooves made of still-living leaves. Gigantic mushrooms grew along the ground and all over the various walkways linking the homes of extended families. They smelled sweet to him as he walked along one of those walkways, but had he been anything dangerous, the spores would’ve paralyzed him in seconds.

At first they had used only three trees for Formenos, like three central skyscrapers that sheltered the little town. But that had changed in the last few years—there were over a dozen of them now, spread so far that he couldn’t even see the edge from here. There was too much light, too many peaceful homes. The ground was a blanket of wildflowers, source of clothing, building material, and food for the residents here.

I wonder how many of those cans I found are still good after all these years. But Julian found he didn’t really care. If he never ate another can of refried beans, it would be too soon. Nectar was inarguably the superior diet.

He waved to more than a few breezies as he made his way up the twisting path. Not just children anymore—Julian was now a grandfather.

“Evening, eldest father!” called a bright orange stallion with a yellow mane. He was carrying baskets across his back filled with pollen—no doubt bound for his family’s stewpot.

They could always tell which one he was. Julian had one thing no breezie in Formenos did—a cutie mark. He’d acquired it on the day he’d been cured, but that day had been so traumatic that he hadn’t noticed at the time. It looked like a heart, wrapped so tightly in vines it was being squeezed.

Julian waved back, priding himself in remembering his name. “Everet, good to see you. Being nice to your little sister?”

“Always, eldest!” He hurried off then, fluttering through the air towards a house one tree over. Despite how unsafe the world might be beyond the boundaries of the jungle, there was nothing to fear in Formenos. Even children could explore here, without fear of being blasted by dangerous winds or attacked by fungal spiders.

But Julian wasn’t here to see any of them. I guess if Adam was real, this is probably how it felt to him after a few generations. Everyone looking up to him. Everyone connected. Breezies were not like humans, or even the ponies they had been before. Instead of a single child after a year, female breezies could produce half a dozen eggs in three months. Survival rates had been low at first, until they learned exactly what was feeding on their larvae and how to protect them.

And it wasn’t just that. Breezies didn’t take two decades to fully mature, they only needed a few years. Then they were ready to lay some eggs of their own—and so the cycle continued on.

With one exception. His destination for the night was easily the largest home of any in Formenos. It was not a little house attached to the side of the tree, but a massive mansion that somehow grew into the living wood.

Avery—the one still named Avery, the one he wanted to see—was a creature of contradictions. Where the other breezies past the first generation were generally spartan in their lifestyles, Avery held on to relics of her human life. Where they grew dozens of eggs, she had taken many months to bring just one to term. Where they relied on nature magic, she was a wizard of supreme skill.

She was the only one who could interpret Julian’s dreams.

He shuddered as he remembered the latest nightmare. He banished it quickly, or at least tried. But julian’s dreams didn’t go away, not until they were resolved. He had put them off for weeks before, reliving the same nightmare over and over until he couldn’t sleep anymore and he finally went to the hospital for help.

Now that he knew what the problem was, there was no need for the hospital. He settled in front of Avery’s door, and knocked lightly with a hoof. Well, everything breezies did was light, but light even for him.

A few seconds later and it swung open, and he saw the bright face of Lynn. This daughter had Julian’s bright green coat, though her mane was her mother’s blue with streaks of pink. Poor Lynn, who had been a child long enough for the sisters of her generation to become parents. She was just turning eight now, and looked it. From her stubby little horn to her spectacles, there was no guessing at Lynn’s parentage. “Daddy!”

The child embraced him with an innocent joy that melted his heart. Julian remembered this feeling for many of her brothers and sisters—but he hadn’t been able to enjoy it for long. Except for her. “Hey kitty. Smells like mom’s doing something fun in there. Making pizza again?”

“Making things explode again,” the little breezie squeaked, holding onto him for a few more seconds before finally letting go. “Why are you back, Daddy? You only visit on Fridays. It’s not Friday.”

“It’s not Friday,” he agreed, rubbing her mane with a hoof before kicking the door closed behind him. “So, she’s in the lab?”

Lynn nodded, flitting past him down the hall into the house. Julian followed more solemnly, keeping his wings folded. They passed quickly through the mostly-unused part that had been a doll house he found in the ruins, and through a corridor into the heartwood. There was a large sitting room here, with an old laptop for an entertainment center almost as big as a modest movie theater.

“She gave you nectar for dinner, I bet,” Julian said, walking past the old screen. He ignored the brief return of that profoundly small feeling, not looking at it for too long. “Did you eat it?”

“She always makes us eat nectar when she’s working,” Lynn muttered, ears flattening to her head. “But… you could cook something? Maybe pizza!”

“Maybe pizza,” he said, briefly touching antenna with her again. The simple ritual still felt strange to him—it was too intimate, like letting someone rub up against his brain. He still didn’t let anyone who didn’t live in this house do it to him, after all these years.

Being the eldest had a few perks.

The kitchen was a strange hybrid of old salvaged parts from the ruins and Avery’s new magic, such as the glowing crystals on everything electric. They were the real innovation—the trees somehow grew electricity, a trickle that anyone could use with the right spell. Their whole miniature civilization ran on it—without that little fusion of unicorn and breezie magic, they’d probably be a bunch of primitive nature-fairies by now.

“I wanna help, I wanna help!” proclaimed Lynn, landing on the counter and pointing her horn at the cupboards. A little concentration and they swung open, as though someone with extremely weak arms was pulling them. Lynn might’ve inherited her mother’s magic, but not its potency.

“Okay, kitty. But you have to get down off the counter. I don’t want dirt in my crust.”

Julian had to use hooves to open the fridge door—no cheating unicorn magic for him—but at a glance he could see they had everything they needed.

An hour later, and the smell of something cooking had attracted a pony from the laboratory below. Avery had a pair of thick goggles resting on her mane, covering the glasses underneath. She was a little taller than she’d been on that first day—fully matured in the years since she’d been shattered. Thanks to Lynn, her figure was a little more motherly than other breezies—eggs didn’t stretch like a foal did. But that was fine—Julian thought it made her look more mature.

More attractive, too. He’d been embarrassed the first few times he’d noticed that—but that embarrassment was as dead as the world they’d left behind. “I smelled you from downstairs,” she said, her antennae twitching a little in the air. “Nobody but you would’ve cooked solid food. You know we aren’t supposed to eat it.”

But her reproving tone rang hollow—she was the one who stocked the kitchen, after all. She met him in an embrace, and Julian briefly felt a few sparks of magic come off her. Nothing new—Avery was always like that. The magic of a whole unicorn did strange things when you boiled it down to butterfly size. “Maybe other breezies aren’t supposed to eat this much of it. But I don’t think you’d enjoy it so much if it wasn’t safe for you.”

Avery rolled her eyes. “I used to love Cafe Rio, too. But it went straight to my thighs and I knew it.”

“I made it, Mommy!” Lynn proclaimed, standing between Avery and the oven. “That means we get to eat it.”

“I… guess it does.” Avery broke away from Julian’s embrace, nodding to her. “It would be a shame to waste all your hard work.

Julian was in no terrible rush to explain his problem to Avery. He hadn’t put off this dream nearly as long as the last one, so it didn’t seem like his head was going to explode from lack of sleep.

It took a few hours. Lynn didn’t want to sleep, not once he arrived. But she did, after a storytelling. Julian would’ve preferred to read from something, but even shrinking down the pony books wouldn’t help when they were written in languages none of them knew. He had plenty of old ones to pick from, stories shared with another Avery long ago.

But that part had gone somewhere else—that part of her was named Posy now, and spent most of her days scribing things in city hall. She was fun enough—if a bit one dimensional. But all the Averies were like that. Each one had a single aspect that they had become hyper-competent in.

Only this one could remember more, and only when he was around. They still hadn’t figured out why.

“I thought you liked playing soldier in the middle of the week. Out patrolling the defenses with the Wolves.”

He shook his head. Though she was right—he did like the border. They weren’t really patrolling, they were growing it. There was nothing more deeply satisfying than watching the dead ground get covered in green. “I would be. But I’ve been having another nightmare. I was hoping you could help me with it.”

“Right.” Avery briefly leaned against him, touching antennae to his. She wasn’t like Lynn, she was intimate about it. He felt everything for a few moments—her frustration with a spell that had been bothering her, her anxiety over Lynn. Loneliness at having him gone. But that was nothing new either.

Breezies, he had learned, were fiercely loyal to their first mate. To his knowledge none of the Averies had ever had another male. Granted, there were some other, more human reasons for that, but judging from their children’s behavior he didn’t think that was the case.

Am I like that now? He hadn’t ever been with a non-Avery, either. Though a few had died before the charm he wore, and one only wanted him around for his friendship.

He had no way of keeping things back the way other breezies did. They used antennae to communicate every day, and so grew practiced at it. But Julian only used it with two, and so he never learned. Not yet, anyway.

“Good, you didn’t sit on this one for too long.” He tasted her eagerness through the connection for a few moments before she pulled away, floating into the air and dragging him along by a hoof. Avery was a terribly weak flyer—weaker than any breezie he knew, even young children. But she could manage basic gliding indoors. Their hooves just didn’t seem made for walking. “Come on! I’ve got something I want to try.”

“A cure for these nightmares?” Julian asked, taking to the air behind her and catching up easily. Julian’s flying, by contrast, was easily the best in all of Formenos. He could fly with such vigor that he could knock other breezies out of the air if he wasn’t careful. So, he was careful, in the same way Avery was careful with her horn.

“I’m not sure we should cure them,” Avery said, as they descended the shaft into the laboratory. There were no stairs or ramp, not in a city populated exclusively by flying creatures. The lab itself was probably only a foot across, but it was one of the largest rooms Julian had seen in their world. Only the theater was bigger, and that mostly because it had a seat for him at pony size. He had wanted to see their little plays even before Avery had made him his charm.

“Not sure?” He stopped in a dead hover, glaring at her. “They’re nightmares, bird. Nightmares that keep coming back.”

She landed on the third floor of the lab—there were many catwalks, each without railing, connecting many different pieces of equipment. Some were magical and beyond his comprehension, but others were quite familiar. A stolen soldering iron, a pocket oscilloscope, some screwdrivers. Coils of copper wire and little drawers with scrap electronics. Dismantling electronics was easier when you were small enough to read the circuit board with your naked eyes.

“Come over here,” she called, gesturing to a machine that hadn’t been here last time. It was made from several coils of wire, and connected directly to… his old cell phone. She’d gotten it to work again, or at least the screen, and it filled the room with an amber glow as bright as a mushroom.

And he did, landing in front of her, though he was still glaring. “Why shouldn’t we be trying to cure me?” he asked, a little more demanding. “I hate these nightmares.”

“They saved us twice,” Avery said, her voice a nervous squeak. “You knew that sea monster was gonna attack months before it got here.”

“We should’ve been prepared to fight it anyway,” he argued. “We knew we’d get attacked eventually.”

“What about when the fungus got into the granary? If we’d kept eating that flour for much longer…”

One breezie had died from it. They were too filled with life to be infected, but that didn’t mean enough poison couldn’t kill them. “Not soon enough,” Julian muttered. “And I notice you’re not talking about the dozen other nightmares that never amounted to anything. Like those weird flying cats, what the hell was that supposed to mean?”

“I, uh…” Avery looked away. “Okay, maybe not every single one is important. But just a few hits on reading the future is more than anyone else can manage.” She tapped the little satchel slung over her shoulder—it was the only thing Avery wore besides her glasses, and she wore it constantly. Inside was the “Refugee Survival Guide,” what she called her “Manual.” She treated it with almost as much love and affection as their daughter. Almost.

“First, get up here,” Avery ordered, gesturing into the coils. “I figured out how to trace the sympathetic connection. We can find the source of these dreams, whatever it is. Then we can decide if we want to cure you.”

“We do,” Julian muttered obstinately, before fluttering over the coils and into the center. It went without saying that he trusted Avery’s magic—the charm around his neck was proof enough of that.

“You’ll feel a little charge,” Avery muttered, a few seconds before it felt like he’d been electrocuted. His fur puffed up to absurd volume at the flow of static, enough that he felt trapped inside the coils. Though the worst part of it was his heart. It felt like it was struggling to beat in his chest, straining against the energy.

He groaned. “You better hurry with that, Avery. I’m gonna need the crash cart if you leave me in here much longer.”

“And done!” She flipped a switch, and the energy was gone. He slumped sideways against the bare wire, catching his breath. His chest was still surging. “I… I don’t think my insides liked that much,” he croaked. “Am I getting old? I thought you said that breezies didn’t do that.”

“We don’t,” Avery muttered absently, staring at the phone screen. A screen facing away from him, so he couldn’t see what had distracted her.

“But I’m a pony underneath,” he argued. “That means I’m still getting older underneath, doesn’t it?”

She shrugged, still not looking away from the screen. “Probably. We’d have to leave you as a giant for ages to find out. Pegasus ponies usually do at least two centuries before you kick it.”

“My insides feel awful,” he argued, though at this point it wasn’t even true anymore. He was mostly just moaning to tease her. “You almost killed me. Maybe I shouldn’t take the charm off anymore. We should think about implanting it.”

That was enough to get her attention. Annoyance, really. “I told you, the animal trials are still going on implants. It might not be safe. If you’re really that scared, just don’t take the charm off again. It’s not like you do anything giant anymore but be a float in the parade.”

There was something half-hearted about her response, though. Julian often teased her, in ways Avery never appreciated. Yet there was something in her voice that didn’t belong. Annoyance was typical—fear less so.

What’s on that screen?

Julian clambered over the wire and over to her faster than she could banish whatever the screen contained. Avery spread her wings, trying to cover the screen—but her wings were transparent. It didn’t really slow him down.
He got a full second of good look before the screen whited out again.

It wasn’t just some magical thing, it had looked like an x-ray. Avery had zoomed it in on Julian’s torso, looking at the strange array of breezie organs. None of them looked right—their insides were much closer to an insect than to a mammal, no matter how they looked on the outside. But that shouldn’t have been a surprise to someone who practically lived in the survival guide.

“What were you staring at?”

The old interface was gone. Avery pressed the button on the side, and the image returned. She pointed at the x-ray. “You know we have four hearts?”

Julian shook his head. “That sounds… weird. I don’t think I have four hearts.”

“No,” she agreed. “There’s nothing here… or here… or here…” She made gestures with her hooves, pointing at each place in turn. Then she touched the single dark lump in the center of the image. The one that Julian would’ve thought meant bones, except that breezies had exoskeletons under their fluff. Even he knew that. “What… is that?”

Avery zoomed the image in until it filled the whole screen, bigger than either of them. She tapped again, and a bizarre array of colors filled the screen. “It’s… metal,” she whispered. “And it has veins… well, not veins. We don’t have veins. But it’s got something wrapped around it.”

She pointed her horn at him, and he felt a slight buzz from inside him. He looked down, and saw his insides were glowing. Glowing so bright that it was like he’d swallowed a flashlight, and it was shining through all his gross bug organs.

Avery stumbled back a few steps, antennae drooping. Her eyes were wide, which was even more striking on a creature with such gigantic eyes. “It’s her,” she muttered. “She’s… left something behind. There’s so much magic in there! If all that went off, you could blow up a city!”

Julian watched her with concern, though not much fear. Avery was prone to overreactions. “Hey bird, just take a few deep breaths. Calm down… What are you talking about?”

She didn’t, not until he touched her antennae with his own. A few quick strokes calmed her right down, and she was leaning against him again. Breezies might be sapient creatures just like humans, but there was something simpler about them. They had a few triggers that even a weird exception like Avery had to submit to.

After a few more seconds of contented buzzing, she finally looked up at him. “It’s… her. The Matron… the one who changed me. She said you had to pay. I thought maybe it was more abstract, like having to lose me. But I don’t think it was.” She pointed at the still-on screen. “I don’t think we can cure your nightmares. You, uh… you don’t have a heart. Her magic is keeping you alive, somehow. That means we can’t cut you off from her.”

“Oh.” He looked down, feeling a weight settle on him. Discovering he didn’t have a heart was shocking enough, but knowing that the nightmares were going to be with him for life was worse. She’d always said she would find a way to cure him eventually. And he’d never had any reason to doubt her, considering everything else Avery could do with magic. “What was that about power?”

“We just solved the mystery of how the jungle is growing so fast,” she answered. “And probably why you always want to be on the borders when you’re proper sized. It’s her instincts. You’ve got more magic than… than every breezie in the jungle.” She broke away from him, pointing at the diagram. “That thing… that’s why all the monsters want you dead the most! That’s why we always win the battles.”

In gruesome fashion, sometimes. Fungal monsters that got too close to him had sometimes been devoured by plants from the inside. There was a whale he’d accidentally turned into a Redwood just a few miles from Formenos. “This has nothing to do with my nightmare. You haven’t even let me explain it yet.”

“Fiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiine.” She walked back to him, taking one of his hooves. “Come on then. What’s your dream about?”

“It’s about the city,” he said. “We’re gonna be hit by a bus.”

Chapter 7: Greyhound Dream

“Hold on,” Avery muttered, her horn glowing for a second. There was a brief flash, a moment of disorientation, and suddenly they were on the bottom floor of the lab.

I’ll never get used to that, Julian thought, pawing at the ground and trying to get the frost off his coat. Teleportation wasn’t so bad when he was “big,” but the cold was much harder on a small body. He shivered for a few seconds and could see Avery was shivering too. You shouldn’t be so afraid of flying you freeze yourself instead of doing it, bird.

The bottom floor of the lab had another phone screen—Avery’s own, which hadn’t been damaged in the crash. Avery could do a few things with it, though all of it had been set up by other Averies. Tinkering with circuitry and code were not talents this shard had retained.

This phone was set up like her computer, set on its side with a homemade keyboard in front and even an IR-sensor wired in like a mouse. Julian could still remember the first time he’d used it, playing a silly card game against her. But the touch-sensor didn’t work anymore, so that was over.

The screen filled with an image of Formenos, taken from a camera mounted in a towering tree. It was a wide enough angle to also display the huge field of dangerous plants that surrounded the city—the last resort against any kind of natural incursion.

“We’re going to get hit by a bus,” Avery repeated, eyes going up. “In the middle of the second apocalypse, while all the giants are fighting a war with a fish.”

“I think… I think it’s a refugee bus. The ponies on it sounded pretty terrified, and they were flopping around like they didn’t know how to move.” Julian frowned, pointing at the image with one hoof. “There. It’s gonna come through right there. It broke through the eastern tower. Must’ve…” he shivered. “Looked like a hundred breezies died in the crash at least. Everyone in the tree.”

And every single one of them were his family, somewhere down the line. He wasn’t in the eastern tower now—Avery’s tree was at the center of the village. Maybe he should’ve felt guilty that he was reassured his favorite was not in danger.

“Probably nothing,” Avery muttered, using the keyboard to zoom the image in on the area in front of the eastern tower. She was probably seeing the same thing that Julian was noticing right now—there were no other large trees for as far as the camera covered. They had initially expected to be planting crops in the east, before they understood that they basically just drank nectar and wildflowers were prolific in their jungle.

“But we should do something just to be sure. Does your nightmare show how far the bus comes from?”

“Uh…” He shook his head. “Mostly just the crash. It’s not fast enough to kill very many ponies aboard, just the driver. They get out, wander around breaking even more and killing a few more breezies who get in the way. Not on purpose… but that’s where it ends.”

Julian felt as though a weight were being lifted from his shoulders—as he usually did when he shared his dreams with Avery. Well, whenever he did the thing that he needed in order to prepare for the disaster they warned of. It just so happened that Avery was often the solution to his troubles.

Or the one to point out that they weren’t going to come true. But she hadn’t said that this time.

“I’ll put something together. It shouldn’t be that hard—forces on the scale of a bus aren’t natural to our world. It won’t trigger on a breezie accidentally and melt them.” Avery gestured, and her manual floated into the air beside her. As it moved, it left diagrams behind, which gradually drifted down to the pages of the workspace behind her.

I swear that book gets smarter every day. It was a shame he couldn’t shrink his down and give it to Lynn. Unfortunately, the charm he wore wasn’t enough to fool it into thinking he was a breezie. Not even Avery’s magic had been able to shrink it for him.

“Whatever you’re doing…” Julian muttered, following her across the lab to the open pad of paper the book was somehow transferring words onto. “Make sure it won’t hurt the ponies on the bus.”

“Why?” Avery asked, not looking up from her work. She’d levitated over a little quill, and was dipping it in ink to write. “They’re going to kill a hundred people, you just said so.”

“They’re refugees,” Julian repeated. “They’re just like us. Remember when we crashed? They’re not a sea monster sending fungus to kill us, they’re innocent people. From our world.”

“From the giant world,” Avery muttered, though Julian could tell the objection was mostly a matter of pride at this point. Her ears had gone flat and her tail had stopped moving—both obvious signs that she was convinced. She scribbled out a few sections of her diagram, and moved over to start writing somewhere else on fresh paper. “Fine, fine. That means we’re going to have some giants to deal with. How… how full was this bus?”

“Maybe… half?” He shrugged. “Like, maybe twenty people. It looked like a regular greyhound. I’m guessing our jungle might be on the inner state somewhere.”

Avery gritted her teeth. “I’ll talk to the mayor about planting some new ironwood trees around the city. But until we can… it’s a good thing we have your dreams.”

Avery worked quickly, and had written them a protection spell in one night. Mayor April listened to her chief of all her advisors, so there were half a dozen breezies out to help prepare. They worked, clearing ground with wyldcraft and lifting chunks of crystals on wooden trusses tied together to support harnesses. Avery’s drawing had been pinned to the bark of the nearest tree, big enough that any breezie who wanted to help could look and see what they were planning.

Julian had come to watch—not because he was terribly good at wyldcraft or planned on being big to move the pieces for them (he wasn’t, and he didn’t). But he wouldn’t be able to sleep soundly for sure until he saw that his nightmares had been put to rest. Once he saw the city protected, he could return to the front.

It was already calling for him. But this was important too. Barren land could wait a little longer for the touch of life. Just not too long.

“I wanna help!” Lynn squeaked into his ear. She was riding on his back just now, though she could fly just fine on her own. He knew her protests about “not being able to fly like Mommy” were entirely fictional. She just wanted to be with him, believing perhaps that if she watched him closely he wouldn’t leave again. “You think if I ask, Mommy will let me help?

Sorry, sweetie. Doesn’t work like that. “You already asked, Lynn. You’ve got lots of practice to do before you’re ready to do what Mommy’s doing. How’s your teleporting going?”

“Uh…” She fell silent, slumping against his back and not complaining again.

Julian hovered high over the construction without too much effort or fear of falling. They’d long since learned that breezies actually didn’t get hurt when they fell. It was something to do with their size—they could jump off trees or even buildings and not take damage when they hit the ground.

Then he saw the explosion up ahead. A flash of magic and light so powerful it physically blasted most of the breezies out from around the construction site. Safety harnesses ripped free of the cargo they were carrying, and chunks of crystal large enough to crush someone alive went plummeting to the ground.

Julian was much sturdier than other breezies—he had a “solidness” that they didn’t, and the sudden onslaught of wind didn’t throw him around. Little Lynn clung desperately to his back, but she wasn’t ripped away.

He already knew what had made the explosion. At the other end of the field—an enormous distance at this size, but growing smaller with every second—he could see the old greyhound bus.

Of the breezies down below, only one other had managed to stay put. Not because she was stronger than the others, but because of the shimmering little shield she conjured, anchoring her unmoving in the air.

They had maybe twenty seconds before the bus arrived. Julian couldn’t see it now, but he already knew—the driver was unconscious in his seat, completely overwhelmed with the new sensations of a pony body. If nothing changed this time, he would not wake up.

There was a painful flash—sudden and violent. Julian felt Lynn yanked right off his back as he was torn through the freezing chill of a teleport. The world returned with an overwhelming assault of sensations.

“Break!” Avery was beside him, hovering in the air next to the unconscious driver. Her shield was gone, though her whole body still glowed. Her manual and her force of will held her still.

Julian didn’t have more strength than any other breezie. But what he did have was a charm around his neck. Julian tore it off in a single surge of strength, blasting through the air towards the pedals. He was already growing by the time he hit the break. At first, he was much too light to make a difference, and was nearly crushed by a fallen boot. He dodged around it though, and the pedal started to go down. He slammed down another second later.

Wheels squealed in protest against dirt and broken stone. He barely fit by the time he’d returned to his regular size, and he had to shove the unconscious driver out of the seat to make room. He could apologize once they lived through this. Yet as he pushed, he felt something strain. A momentary strain on his body, like pressure was building in an organ he couldn’t see. It passed quickly though, and his gesture must’ve worked because he couldn’t feel the bus driver against his back anymore.

It felt like the bus took yearsto finally come to a stop, so close to the east tower that they were over the ring of protective mushrooms. So close to the tower that the grill was practically pressed against the bark of the tree.

I hope you sent Lynn somewhere safe too, Avery. Now where had he put his charm? Julian rolled out from under the aisle, almost tripping over the driver’s empty clothes. Yet there was something else all around him, something he didn’t really know how to process. He did have instincts, instincts honed over years living with Breezies. There were so many of them all around him—a dozen at least, scattered on the ground and around the seats and the cushions.

Julian had made many mistakes, and caused serious damage a few times. He’d never killed a breezie yet, though. He didn’t start now. Refugees are supposed to be random, but where did all these come from? And where’s the driver? There were plenty of other passengers further back, an assortment of giants but mostly ponies. Typical for North America, according to the Survival Guide.

He didn’t see any sign of the pony he’d shoved—maybe Avery had moved him.

A second later and the pink breezie landed on his shoulder, staring into the bus with its terrified passengers.

There were so many of them—an army of giants powerful enough to tear down his entire civilization, if they wanted. “Don’t touch any of them,” Avery whispered into his ear. Her voice now sounded high and squeaky, though it hadn’t moments before. Her whole body still glowed with magic. “Keep them from leaving the bus.” She vanished in a flash, reappearing beside one of the fallen breezies on the floor. He vanished with her, and she continued, returning every few seconds to take another of the delicate fairies away.

“What’s going on?” Someone asked from the front row—a male with a high voice, trapped in a gigantic jacket. Julian could see a scaly face beneath, and tears in the front of the jacket.

“Where are we?” asked someone else. That was more coherent than most of the others. They were just whimpering, or screaming. Most of the passengers appeared to be asleep, or at least they had been. The speed of their near-crash had probably woken many of them.

Julian was mostly scouring the ground for where he’d dropped the charm. It would’ve grown as he did, though it was still dark. A thin steel cable with a dark crystal wrapped in metal at the center. He mostly felt for its familiar magic, not really using his eyes for the process.

He felt blind without his antennae, unable to taste anything about the people here. He didn’t know their species, or their numbers, or their feelings. Well… he could probably guess most of that.

“You were just in an accident,” Julian began. “It was… well, it sucks.” He found the charm on the ground, and he scooped it up with one hoof. He didn’t put it around his neck—not with the beginnings of a mob facing him down.

“Who are you?” asked the little lizard thing. Dragon, maybe? “What are you?”

“You almost crashed into my home.” He gestured through the windshield, where the miniature city with its electric lights from every window were visible. Though most wouldn’t be at the right angle to get a good look. “I saved your lives.”

“No you didn’t!” shouted the second voice, from a few rows back. She stumbled forward, looking angry. An earth pony, staring at him with horror on her face. “I saw you attack the driver! He fucking exploded! You’re standing on his clothes!”

Julian was standing on his clothes, and he couldn’t see the driver anywhere. I just pushed him away so I could stop the bus! What the hell is going on? Of course, there was something painfully familiar about the description this mare had given. Exploded the driver. He knew about at least one other pony who had exploded. Please don’t let that be where those breezies came from. Oh god, not another one…

But how? Julian had never seen one of the Morpheans for himself, but he knew only their power was this great. That had been what cured him in the first place, and split Avery.

“Please don’t get any closer,” he warned, putting up one hoof defensively. “Whoever you are… you really should stay calm. I know how crazy this looks to you right now. I know you’re scared…”

He was the one who was scared. Julian was hyperventilating already. He’d be in full panic-attack mode before long. Julian did not do crowds, certainly not angry crowds that wanted to stomp right past him and start mindlessly killing his family without even seeing them there. Lynn is out there somewhere. I won’t let them hurt her.

“Let us out!” shouted the lizard. “I think I see a city in the distance! We should go out there, where it’s safe! Maybe they know what’s going on!”

“No!” he argued, stepping sideways so he was blocking the way out. “Listen, you can’t leave yet! My mate is… figuring this out. She’ll be back soon with instructions. Probably she’s figuring out a way to get you all to somewhere we left alone for giants, and…”

The earth pony started walking towards him. She had lost most of her clothes, except for a tank-top that hung off her midsection comically. She didn’t seem to notice. “Out of the way, whoever you are. I’m getting off this bus. We all are.”

“No.” Julian spread his wings, taking off and hovering for a few seconds in the aisle. It was a dramatic display, though a difficult one for a pony. Weight was different at this scale—his body wasn’t really built for flying suddenly.

Julian scanned around, searching for a weapon. But he couldn’t see any—not even a knife. He landed, picking up one of the fallen boots and throwing it as hard as he could towards the earth pony.

It hit her in the chest with a thump, but it didn’t stagger her. She charged. A few of the other passengers started stumbling forward too.

Julian whimpered, retreating a few more steps back. The breezies were gone now—Avery had taken them all away, but hadn’t returned herself yet. She didn’t come in time.

The earth pony smashed into Julian with much less force than he was expecting. His skimming of the survival guide suggested they could take bullets without bleeding and bend steel with their hooves, but this one hit about as hard as Avery could when they were the same size.

That wasn’t the only thing he felt, though. There was a brief surge of magic again, and a sudden choking around his heart. Julian nearly fell over as he felt the magic leave him. But he got the better end of the deal by far.

The earth pony seemed to swell for a second, then she burst apart. There was no blood, no organs and guts—only a showering of breezies out in all directions. Most to the sides, though a few into the path of the young dragon behind her, to be crushed as he too smacked into Julian.

Screams sounded through the bus as he exploded, violent enough this time that the rest of the passengers came up short. Clothing and fairies fluttered to the ground in front of Julian, who stood in the entrance like a vengeful god.

Needless to say, the rest of the passengers stopped struggling after that. There were screams as they backed away, retreating into the back rows of the cabin and cowering.

Julian stepped carefully over the breezies, though he could do nothing for the two the dragon had inadvertently killed. They were already dead. “Listen to me!” he called, his voice shaking with the horror of what he’d just seen. The bus fell still.

“I don’t want to hurt you! I told them to stop—and they didn’t listen. Make sure you don’t get close enough to touch me.” He resisted the urge to vomit as he said it, though they’d probably see him gag. Where the hell was Avery? He couldn’t keep this up for much longer! I did it… the same thing I hated… I did it to them and couldn’t stop it.

Julian had never even met a non-breezie before today—not since he’d been cured. Only the sea-monsters and the fungus, neither of which were people. But this… he wasn’t sure Avery would be able to cure this particular nightmare.

Another second later and there was a flash from behind him. He wasn’t even surprised to see Avery appear there. She seemed taken aback by the number of fairies in the bus with them—another twenty at least. “You weren’t supposed to let them touch you.”

“They attacked me,” he muttered, voice very small despite his size. “What do we do, Avery?”

“I need you to open the bus doors. We’ll get help to get all these ponies to safety. Then… then I’ll teleport the bus to the street.”

She meant the street where they’d first appeared, the one they had left alone. A city block’s worth of houses with the shriveled corpse of fungus clinging to them, but otherwise intact. They weren’t salvaged like so many other ruins, but left alone. In case they ever got visitors.

“You can teleport a whole bus? Why didn’t you just do that before?”

Avery glared at him. “It’s a hard spell! I couldn’t have done it in ten seconds, with the bus coming at us that fast, my daughter behind me… no way.”

“Stay there!” Julian called down the aisle. “Some breezies are going to help get these out of here. Then we’ll send you all away to somewhere safe. He lowered his voice as he turned away from the aisle, stepping carefully over fallen breezies as he made his way to the bus door and started shoving at it. “I don’t think I’ll make for a good ambassador after what I did to those people.”

“We’ll come up with something,” Avery replied. “One disaster at a time.”

Julian felt relief wash over him as the bus vanished from in front of the eastern tower. He finally slipped the charm back around his neck then, and felt even better as the world returned to its correct size. Avery was waiting for him on the grass, looking as exhausted as he felt.

“What did I do?” he asked, letting her rest against him as they watched the last of the insensate fairies flown off to the hospital. How many confused breezies could it hold at once? “What the hell did I do?”

But of course, that wasn’t really what he was asking.

Avery seemed to realize that, because she was staring at his chest. His heart, or where it should’ve been. “I think we just learned what all that magic does. I can’t even imagine the power she must’ve sunk into you. That kind of spell… I think it’s excision. That’s Alicorn-level. Ponies aren’t even supposed to live long enough to learn spells like that.”

“I didn’t cast anything,” he muttered. “You have to get it out of me, Avery. I’m… I’m the most dangerous person alive. I just killed those people.”

“No.” She held his shoulder with one hoof, her glare unyielding. “No, Julian, you didn’t. Nobody’s dead. No more than I am. It… it’s not ideal. I hope you don’t do it to anyone else. But they’re still alive. Being in different parts isn’t the same as dying. Unless you’re saying I’m dead.”

“No.” He slouched a little. “Of course not, Avery. I’d never… you know how much I care about you.” He wrapped one hoof around her shoulder for emphasis, though just now it felt like he was the one who needed to be held.

And she did, though she was smaller and weaker and obviously drained from all her spells. Maybe a normal-sized unicorn would’ve been able to do what she had without much difficulty—but in such a small package, seeing her magic was staggering.

Another pony landed beside them a moment later—Mayor April. She nodded once to him, though she was mostly addressing Avery. Julian himself had basically no leadership role in Formenos—entirely through his own choice. The flock of Averies had wanted to make him ruler for life in the first year, but he’d rejected that. He had no desire to lead much of anything.

“We’ll have to do something about the other giants, Avery. Maybe the spell you used to convert the others.”

“NO!” exclaimed Avery and Julian together. Though it was only Avery who continued. “It wasn’t…” But Julian kicked her, and she coughed. “I don’t think I’ll be able to cast it again. Even if I could, it wouldn’t be right. We can’t put others through what we went through.”

“We can’t feed two dozen giants,” April argued in response. “Maybe we could scavenge for one. But not that many.”

“Maybe they could care for themselves?” Avery suggested. “They’re huge. They could plant their own fields, or… whatever giants do.”

“Maybe.” April looked to Julian. “You’re the biggest one here, eldest. What do you think?”

“We…” He shivered, then rose, shaking himself free of Avery’s grip. “We can’t send them away. If they wander the jungle without us they’ll be hunted. If we set them loose… o-outside, the rot will kill them.”

“The preserve has mushrooms around it,” Avery said. “And plenty of cans and stuff inside. They’ll live one night without us, and they won’t get loose and get hurt.” She turned away. “Forgive me, Mayor. I don’t have the energy right now. Sending that bus took all I have.”

“Of course.” April touched her on the shoulder with one hoof, then Julian in turn. “Real heroism, you two. We’ll do a parade or something when this is over.” She flew off.

That didn’t get rid of the many observers—there were dozens of breezies watching now. Gossip was passing between them, Julian could smell it. He was being branded a hero for saving them from the bus. His mystique would only grow after this.

Except for our newest citizens. I bet they won’t be happy with me when they wake up. That earth pony’s probably gonna want to kill me. Of course, he could always take the charm off if she did attack him. It would be very hard for even a large group of determined breezies to hurt a regular pony if they didn’t know any magic.

“I want to go home,” Julian muttered, sounding exhausted. “That’s where you sent Lynn, I hope.”

“Yeah.” She nodded. “Can’t… send us, though. I’m dry.” She fluttered into the air. “Let’s… just fly back. Before Lynn wanders off on her own and gets lost.”

Julian followed her into the air, dismissing the crowd of well-wishers with a wave of his antennae. He didn’t have the energy for anything more just now.

“We should probably keep you far away from ponies from now on,” Avery muttered, as they landed on the wooden walkway leading up to the massive doors. “Just in case. And I don’t know what the hell we’re gonna do with all those giants.”

“You could… make more charms?” Julian suggested. “Can’t be that hard.”

She stopped, her glowering disbelief enough of a signal for just how wrong he was that she didn’t need words. She still used a few. “It took me a month to make yours. There are eighteen people on that bus—I counted before I sent them.”

“I thought you told the mayor you don’t want to think about this right now.”

“You’re right.” She sighed deeply. “I just… know nobody else will. It’s gonna be me who works out what to do, because it’s going to need tons of magic and turning them into animals with wyldcraft would be the same as killing them.” She whined. “I’m gonna need you to go with me to the council tomorrow. I know you’re not on it… but if someone proposes something stupid like turning them into animals, I need you to be there to shut them down. They’ll listen to you if you do.”

“Sure.” He imitated her sigh. “You think you could change those three people I… hurt?”

“Nope.” No hesitation. “That would take Alicorn-level magic to fix. Believe me, I’ve thought about it for… another case.” Her own, obviously. That went without saying. “They’ll just have to get used to it now, like we did. It’s not the end of the world.”

“It is for two of them,” Julian said. “They got crushed.”

Avery stiffened. “Yes, well. I’m sure that wasn’t you.

“It wasn’t.”

They didn’t even finish getting the door open. Another second later, and it swung open on its own, and Lynn emerged, smacking into both of them with a mixture of terrified and ecstatic sounds. “You’re back! You’re okay! What happened, Daddy? You have to tell me what you did! Where’d the metal giant go? Is anyone hurt, will Formenos be okay?”

“Shh.” Avery made a hissing sound. “Not all at once, sweetie. Formenos is fine, but it was hard on Daddy and me. We need to rest.”

Lynn whined a little at the explanation, but didn’t argue with them. She was a perceptive child, and had her antennae to read just how exhausted they felt. It was hard not to sympathize with someone when you could feel their pain firsthand.

“Do you think…” Julian muttered, a few hours later once they’d put Lynn down for bed. A bed that hadn’t been crushed by a rampaging bus. “Do you think you could stop it? The magic I… I used.”

Avery shivered. She was resting against him in their bed, big enough for both of them to share whenever he visited. Instead of leaves like lots of breezies used, Avery had cut a little square of quilt from one of the houses, and made it into something firm and comfortable.

The room was lit with little mushrooms growing in pots near the walls, making it glow evenly blue. Avery lay on her back, looking up at him with concern. “I, uh… I don’t know. I could try, Julian… but I’d have to set up observation spells. I’d have to watch you do it to somebody else if I wanted to come up with a protection spell. It’s… probably better if you just don’t touch anyone for the time being.”

“Anyone who isn’t a breezie,” Julian corrected. “You’re still one person.”

“Yeah,” she agreed. “Lynn is too, which is the main thing. I’ve already been split. There’s not… there’s not a whole lot smaller you could cut me.”

“I don’t want to do it to anyone else.” Julian slumped onto his side, ignoring Avery’s invitation. The breezie still dealt with stress in a breezie way, one he wasn’t interested in sharing just now. The charm had only changed his body, after all. But those people… I changed them as much as I changed Avery.

“That’s probably better,” Avery muttered, though there was a little disappointment in her voice. “I’ll visit the victims in the hospital tomorrow, see what I can learn.”

“And I’ll come with you,” Julian said. “I want to apologize. Even if… there’s no way to fix what I did. I still want to apologize.”

Avery shrugged, then levitated the sheet up and over her. “If that’s what you want. Probably won’t do anything but make you feel guilty.”

“Maybe. It’s still the right thing to do.”

Chapter 8: Small Dates

Julian woke much earlier than Avery—well, this one. Having such varied schedules was actually an advantage for Julian, it meant that he could spend his time with more than one of the pieces of his best friend. It would’ve been much simpler to think that only Avery was the same person and that all the others were clones—but that worldview had not survived evidence. The truth was that every little piece was something he recognized, and every one of them cared about him in her own way.

So he took advantage—rising carefully so as not to wake an Avery who rarely rose from her bed before noon. She moaned faintly, reaching for him with one hoof as he rose. Julian nudged a pillow into her arms, then pulled the covers up over her and slipped out the balcony. Lynn wouldn’t be up either—the child had learned her mother’s schedule—so he wouldn’t have to peel her off him to escape.

Julian slipped out the balcony window, and was unsurprised to find a pony floating in the air outside, with a basket slung over her back. It was Posy, her tan coat and orange mane helping her blend into the morning sunlight a little. “I thought you’d be up,” she said, as though she had just happened by. “Want breakfast?”

“Sure.” He could see the little jar poking out of her basket—filled with a meal of mixed nectar and pollen. Only Avery really had much taste for solid food. But that was fine—nectar was inoffensive enough. Meals made from it would never impress him, but at least they never offended his picky sensibilities. “Did you have a spot in mind?”

“The top.” Posy pointed up the trunk of the tree. “The sun is just coming up. We can watch the rest of it if we get up high.”

“Sure.” Julian knew the spots she liked, so this suggestion was not terribly strange to him. It was either atop the trees, or near the pond, or in the cafe that Pepper ran. Posy liked her routines. “Let’s see if we can catch it.”

They didn’t, but then they didn’t try terribly hard. Actually watching the sunrise was rarely the point anymore, now that they’d been living here long enough to see hundreds of them.

Flying along the trunk of the tree was a frightening thing, even in Formenos where there was nothing dangerous to threaten them. Julian could fly almost forever, but Posy was clearly straining her wings by the time they broke through the canopy of the tallest branch, and into the ocean of leaves and twigs. In other parts of the jungle, being up so high would invite being eaten by a passing bird—but at the very center of the jungle, the only birds that got this far were friendly. No one had ever been eaten in Formenos.

Posy served him, and Julian made sure to comment vocally about how much he enjoyed her latest concoction. The breezie was always experimenting with different plants and types of nectar in her food, but the profiles were similar enough that it was almost impossible to make a mistake. Today’s nectar had been chilled and blended with bits of mint. The two of them made a point of using spoons and bowls, even though it would’ve been easier to just reach out with a disgusting long tongue and slurp out of the jar.

“Do you think you’ll have any more with Avery?” Posy asked, one hoof resting all the time on her tiny notebook. She typically didn’t write it in during their visits together, except for on the rare occasions when Julian was with her for the whole day. In those cases she could never keep her hooves away for quite long enough.

“We haven’t stopped trying.” Julian looked away, blushing. “Isn’t it weird for you to be asking about things like this? Shouldn’t you be… uncomfortable that I’m with someone else? This is supposed to be really uncomfortable… like those weirdos who used to live out in the desert… the Amish?”

“No.” Posy shook her head. “Not the Amish. And I don’t think so. Avery is me. April is me, Emily is me… they all are. Loving them is just loving me. We either had to accept it or kill each other with jealousy. I’m glad I was so practical, otherwise fairies might get hurt.” Her eyes narrowed. “Now, if you flew off with some other fairy, like one of those new ones you made yesterday… then I’d be angry.”

Julian slumped slightly, grumbling quietly. Not because he planned on dating someone who wasn’t an Avery—rather, because he remember the hospital. He had planned on visiting them today. In a few more hours they would all wake up, and then he could fly in. And after that, he would have to help deal with the ones who were still giant.

“Don’t remind me,” he muttered. “I’ll be lucky if they don’t want to kill me after what I did to them. Also, one of them was all guys.”

“Is that why you and Trip haven’t had any eggs?”

Julian nearly coughed up his last spoonful of breakfast. “N-no. Trip is fine. She’s cute in a… vocaloids sort of way. It’s not that I don’t like her, it’s that she doesn’t like guys.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Posy said, without malice. And she probably meant it—knowledge of that particular subject wasn’t in this fairy. She was simultaneously very traditional about her ideas of what ponies ought to do, which was why she made him breakfast—but also creative in her hobbies. She was a pretty good storyteller, and even better at poetry. “But if you’ve got a few minutes, I’ve got something to read for you.” She put away the jar, opening her notebook. “I’ve just about got this pitch worked out for our tabletop on Saturday. Don’t tell the other players I gave you spoilers.”

“My lips are sealed,” Julian muttered. “Oh, uh… are you ever gonna tell us what happened to the boat?”

Posy groaned loudly, snapping her notebook open to the middle. “I’m gonna pretend you didn’t ask that so I don’t have to push you off this tree.”

“They don’t look happy,” April muttered from the bushes ahead of Julian, peering through the glowing mushrooms at the “preserve.” Julian could see the ponies beyond gathered around the corpse of their bus, eating salvaged food and muttering darkly to one another.

He tried to imagine what they might be saying—but nothing his mind conjured was good. How would I feel if I was being held hostage by evil fairies I’d watched kill some random people right in front of me? That wasn’t what had happened, obviously, but that didn’t mean they would understand all the facts.

April seemed to realize that—she was the only breezie who had dared come this far with him, even though the city ostensibly had an army that obeyed him when it came time to fight. An army that they had trained to be prepared to fight—against monsters. April wasn’t in the army, but she was the mayor, and she was also the bravest Avery there was. She’d saved his life once, when he’d been trapped by one of the fungus-tenders in a little rock crevice on the border. When no breezy in the army had dared, she’d descended with a little pointed stick, and risked her life for him.

“But what do we do with them?” Julian asked. “I already talked to Avery—there’s nowhere safe for giants to live on the whole continent. There are only a few safe places left, all in Africa.”

“We can’t kill them,” she muttered, as though chastising a thought she knew he had. He didn’t—though he shivered a little as she said it. Obviously she had, if she felt the need to say that. “They’re humans like us.”

“I know!” He landed beside her in the shrubs, shoving her with one hoof. “I hadn’t planned on it.”

She looked sidelong at him, as though she doubted it but wasn’t going to argue. “What about that new power of yours. I haven’t had the chance to visit the hospital yet.”

Julian had, this morning. He shook his head. “They weren’t… they weren’t happy about it. Don’t you remember how upset you were? How you… tried to get back together?”

“I never tried to get back together,” she argued. “And I wasn’t that upset. I knew the price I was paying to save you.”

Julian looked away, antennae tucking behind his ears. “You all say that.”

“We all knew what we were doing,” April muttered. “Because they were all part of me back then. Once those other parts got split they lost their spines. Anyway, I’ve already considered forcibly splitting the other 18 giants. It’s a terrible idea. That’s over two hundred new breezies—about the same as our current population. Our services couldn’t handle it. Thirty-seven is going to be hard enough. Unless you think you could convince them all…”

“No.” Julian stuck out a hoof. “I’m not even going to try that. No one in their right mind would accept an offer like that.”

Avery almost looked offended. “That doesn’t seem fair. Didn’t we turn out okay?”

He nodded. “Sure, you did. But I know the others real close. It was painful for them—still is for some of them.”

April made an unhappy grumbling sound. “The city council and I have come up with an alternative. We could… expand the preserve. Give them… however much space it takes for giants to grow food and stuff. Not try to supervise them at all, just—let them be their own colony. So long as we respect each others’ borders, it shouldn’t be a problem… in the short term. In the long-term, we are depending on their mercy. If they’re successful, a few generations down the road and I’ll have a thousand giants burning up the jungle and attacking Formenos. We’ll have to make sure we keep diplomatic ties with them the whole time, so they don’t want to.” She sighed, antennae falling flat in front of her. “Being moral is a lot of work. It would be so much safer to just… turn them all into rabbits or whatever and forget about it.”

I knew you were thinking about killing them. Most Averies would not have been comfortable with a proposal like that. But April—she was leader for a reason. She’d always been better at making tough choices.

“It’s worth it,” Julian muttered. “Working together with the giants could be great for both of us if we can work it out. Just think about how much more we could do when I was stuck as a huge monster. Formenos wouldn’t be half the size it is right now.”

“I guess you’re right.” April took off again, prompting him to do the same. Together they started flying towards the ruined bus, over the poisonous plants that would sedate any of the giants if they tried to stray too far. Julian was pleased to see they had obeyed his cautionary instructions from the night before, and none of them had tried to flee.

He wasn’t going to enjoy this—but at least it was the last worst thing on his schedule for the day. He would find a way to make it work. Mark down another miracle for Julian today if they don’t try to murder me.

And they didn’t, though Julian couldn’t take much credit for that. As it turned out, the bus had contained just over half a dozen of the Survival guides, which its passengers had found during the intervening hours. This meant Julian didn’t have to take up that burden himself. That meant they were more receptive to learning the brutal truth of their situation.

The passengers were not a single faction, which was an advantage and disadvantage. Advantage, because the three people on the bus he’d exploded didn’t mean much to them—they hadn’t been family of anyone. But it also made things more difficult, since they couldn’t act as a unit. They didn’t have to win over one faction, but 18 individuals. No simple task.

With April’s help, and the later arrival of the more cognizant parts of the people he had exploded, Julian eventually managed to get everything out and extract an agreement of peace. Whether they would keep it remained to be seen. Avery would be unavailable for the next few days, as she devoted all her time and magic to teleporting the army back from the borders.

If the fungus won a few more miles during the time it took to settle things with the new giants, then that was the price they paid. He could ignore the gnawing desire in his gut to keep expanding the jungle for a few years.

Eventually, the negotiations ended. Julian didn’t fly back to Formenos, though, because somepony else was waiting for him in a monster truck.

Well, a monster truck from the perspective of a breezie. Kari’s vehicle had, of course, been built from salvaged parts, mostly toys and other detritus they’d salvaged from the ruins. It was probably not even two feet tall, but even at that size the little thing looked monstrous—huge rubber tires, a single giant battery in back, and a cabin that was disproportionally large for the vehicle’s size.

Kari popped out the open door, grinning up at him from behind her goggles. There was nopony else aboard—most breezies scattered when one of Kari’s little machines got close, including her own children. But Julian wasn’t afraid, he landed delicately on the other side and clambered into the cabin.

It wasn’t professional-looking in there, not exactly. Kari had made much of it with glass sheet and salvaged silicon glue, meaning they could stay dry inside even when it rained but also look out at the world as they drove. There were four seats in here, and Julian took the passenger’s side, returning Kari’s grin.

“I didn’t know there were good trails this far out.”

“There aren’t,” she responded, manipulating a series of levers and dials with her forelegs. Despite the toy-car base, the controls didn’t really resemble an automobile interior—it was all salvaged sensors and scrap parts.

That didn’t seem to bother Kari, though. She did a quick turn without so much as blinking, before roaring off the way they’d come. It was easy to see the path the little truck had taken, since various little plants had been destroyed in her way.

Not that it made much difference. This close to the center of breezie life, the entire jungle could probably regrow in a few weeks.

Other breezies would probably not be able to destroy whole swathes of it without feeling a little guilty. But this particular slice of Avery was entirely focused on her inventions, her machines.

“So, about the Saturday game…” Kari said, over the sound of the electric motor. It wasn’t difficult to talk while they drove, considering how quiet it was. “Do you think I should play an alchemist, or a paladin?”

Julian stiffened a little in his seat. “You pick me up from the preserve after a bus almost crashes into Formenos, and that’s what you wanna know?”

“Well yeah.” Kari used all four legs as she drove, and the controls were spread so she didn’t have to reach too far. She seemed a master of her strange setup, never needing to look down and see what switch she was about to flip, or what knob she was about to twist. “I’m not the pony handling that, am I? April has it in hand I’m sure. She had your help, and you’re smart. But I am in the game on Saturday, and I want to know whether or not Posy’s new campaign is going to have us fighting much evil or not.”

They splashed through what seemed like a roaring river, Kari squealing with glee as they did so.

“What makes you think I would know?” he asked, pretending as though he had become very interested in the view out his side window. Not that there was much to see, just the jungle with its glowing aura and the moonlight streaming in from above.

“Cuz’ Posy is crap at keeping secrets and I know you have breakfast with her when she’s in town. I know she would’ve talked about it…” Kari whined loudly, distracted enough that she slowed in her driving. “You don’t have to tell me everything! I just don’t want to waste time making a Paladin and find out that I’m never going to use half my powers because nothing is evil.”

Julian finally looked back. “I think you should make an alchemist. But you can’t tell her I told you that.”

Kari nodded sagely, drawing a hoof across her lips. “Not even the flowers will hear me when I eat breakfast in the morning.”

“At noon,” Julian corrected. “They won’t hear you because they’ll already be asleep.”

Kari pumped the brakes dramatically enough that the car jerked a little, glaring sideways at him. “Don’t even start with me. I’m not the only Avery who wakes up at a reasonable hour and you know it.”

They passed into an open field, and suddenly they were bumping too violently to hold pleasant conversation anymore. Julian stared out the window, and he could see why—the huge tracks the bus had made in the dirt here, almost as wide as Kari’s whole car, were what she’d chosen as their trail. Probably intentionally, since the terrain varied wildly. There were places where they’d dug in deep, places where they’d exposed rocks.

Judging on the sound, it seemed to be a real strain for the motors, which skipped a few times on the steeper slopes. But Kari never really cared about the fate of her machines—the destruction of one was only an opportunity to build another, even better than the last.

Well, except one.

Kari slowed to a crawl as they finally made it into Formenos. She turned on a bright light on the front and swung it around a few times to make sure there were no ponies hiding in the flowers. Most young breezies would be long asleep by now, but if they weren’t, such a bright light would frighten them away.

Only when she seemed satisfied did Kari start moving again, towards the tree on the furthest end of the city. The one with the massive structure built into and covering the bottom of the tree, the garage and workshop that transitioned to a hospital as it merged with the upper floors.

Kari’s house, but so much more. There was even an automatic garage, which opened for them as soon as Kari bridged two bare wires attached to the ceiling. The workshop itself was filled with gigantic tools, most of what they’d salvaged. Kari had a half-dozen apprentices, but few of them would still be at work so close to nightfall, and none had to get out of their way as Kari parked the truck on a raised platform made of toy blocks.

“Let me guess, we’re doing nectar for dinner.”

Kari ignored him for a few moments, switching off all the various knobs and dials involved with driving the truck. Then she sat up, glaring at him. “I’ll have you know I made a sugar cookie. Maybe I shouldn’t share it with you, with that attitude.”

Julian climbed out of the tuck, fluttering up to rest on the windshield. There was no danger of hooves as soft as theirs scratching the glass. “You used your oven again?”

Kari looked away from him as she climbed out. “But someone isn’t interested in that. He just wants nectar again, because that’s the only thing we like. It’s alright, I know how it is.”

He could smell it now—the oven was a tiny toaster-oven salvaged from the ruins, one she often used to cure plastic parts. But Kari sometimes used it for cooking, though little of what she tried to cook ended up tasting very good. Kari had inherited the desire to cook, but not the skill.

This evening’s fare turned out to be more tolerable than many of her previous tries, probably because she’d used a mix. It only tasted stale, instead of all the other ways it could’ve gone wrong. Julian made sure to praise it for her, which practically made her glow with pleasure.

“But how long will you stay here after dinner?” she asked, fluttering over to the elevator. A simple platform, without walls or ceiling, connected with a system of ropes and pulleys with a single switch that could be toggled for up or down. Julian landed beside her on the flat piece of plastic, and they started to rise. The motor was right below them since they were in the workshop, so he was forced to listen to its uncomfortable grinding until they were on their way back up the hospital.

Fortunately for him, he wouldn’t have to see the new citizens again today—they were going all the way to the top. Past half a dozen tiny floors, they eventually reached the end of the shaft—where a physical rod poking out of the wall struck the switch as they rose, switching it off.

Kari donned a white coat from one of the hooks, waiting impatiently until Julian did the same. He was only a little annoyed as he slipped it on—hopefully she wouldn’t see.

The top floor was called “incubation”, and it was easy to feel why. The room felt stuffy and humid, with moisture condensed on a layer of cooking plastic stretched over the ceiling. They moved along a plastic and wooden walkway, which rose over the floor below. A dozen tiny pots were arranged below them, each one with a different species of flower growing in it. They had been attached to rods that made it all the way up the ceiling, with only a few tiny branches also affixed to rods.

Kari stopped at a little microcontroller near the door, sticking her tongue briefly into the contacts. It had no screen, but she had gotten good enough to read the charge with just her tongue, which could apparently serve as an output. “Looks good. 98% humidity, 85 degrees.” She glanced briefly at the clipboard tacked to the wall beside it, but there was nothing on the page. “No hatchings today. Pretty uneventful night.” She glanced over her shoulder at him, and her antennae moved in a specific way. “Maybe there aren’t enough eggs. Maybe we should add a few.”

Julian rolled his eyes. “If you were a guy, your pickup lines would never work.”

“I’m not though.” Kari flicked her tail, but she scooped up another clipboard and set off down the walkway. There was a page for each of the dozen plants, with a number and location for each egg.

They stopped to inspect the first plot, lifting the leaves to expose them. There were seven clear eggs here, each one attached beneath the leaves, with a tiny spike puncturing the stalk of the plant. They were about the size of basketballs now, each one faintly pulsing. They looked perpetually wet—which was a good thing. It hadn’t taken them long to learn that drying out was the first thing that could kill their eggs. If that, and cold, and the death of their host plants could be controlled for, then mortality among the next generation could be reduced almost to a rounding error.

Nature has ways of controlling our numbers. Trying to get around them probably isn’t a great idea. But Julian didn’t care about great ideas. He’d watched hundreds of his eggs die over the first few years. Nature could fuck herself if she thought she was going to get away with murder like that.

“Looks good.” Kari made a few checkmarks, then lowered the leaves. Breezie eggs were even sensitive to light, which was why the only illumination was from a few mushrooms planted near the corners of the room, and whatever came in through the plastic ceiling.

“When was the last time you lost an egg, Kari?”

She visibly tensed at the question, tucking her tail briefly between her legs. She didn’t look back, though—obviously wanted to make it look like she didn’t care. Lots of the newer generation weren’t bothered by such things—eggs were so numerous that a few losses were nothing. They were expected, that was why they produced so many. But Kari, like all the Averies, had a more familiar attitude. “I think… two years ago. The last time we… the last time.” She sighed. “We lost every egg on that sunflower when it died. We should’ve known it needed more direct sunlight. I guess you weren’t really part of that…”

“I heard about it,” Julian muttered. “Even if I can’t follow all of them. You try having a hundred kids in one year, see if you can keep track of them all.”

Kari turned, glaring at him. “I have twenty-six. I can tell you every one of their names. How old they are…”

Julian stopped beside her, shoving her slightly with one hoof. “Kari, stop it, please. Trying to guilt me doesn’t help.”

She sighed, looking away. “Well, you asked. That was the last time I lost some of mine. Eggs still don’t make it sometimes. Maybe… one in fifty? They don’t attach right, and they shrivel up. I think there might be a way around that, some kind of surgery we could do. But I’m no good at doctoring, so someone else should figure that out.”

They checked the rest of the eggs—he wasn’t terribly surprised to see that they were all healthy, but still relieved. Perhaps a third of these eggs were his, instead of all of them. If it hadn’t been for his accidental creation of new citizens for Formenos the day before, every egg that ever came through here would probably be his by some number of generations.

Strangely, he found the heat and humidity didn’t bother him—if anything, Julian felt as though he were somewhere more comfortable in the carefully controlled conditions of the incubation chamber. No small wonder why there were always plenty of volunteers to keep an eye on things during the day.

Kari’s own apartment was past the end of the elevator. There were no ramps connecting down to the hospital, to emphasize the division between them and keep patients from wandering up. But it wasn’t far to fly to Kari’s little house—about average for a breezie in Formenos. They had long-since perfected the method, driving a single piece of curved wood into the trunk the size of the foundation. Plants could then be coaxed to grow up a lattice and form the walls and ceiling, which kept the inside damp and comfortable even on cold days. Kari’s house was two rooms instead of one, with an upper loft reserved for her children. But those had all grown up now, and she hadn’t tried to raise a new batch since the sunflower.

Kari switched on the lights as they came in, before slumping sideways onto the bed and stretching herself out. There were no walls to divide up the space, which melted from kitchen to bedroom to child’s playroom. But there were no children here now; they had the night to themselves.

Julian felt more than a little sleepy by the time he was done with tinkerer-Avery. He wanted to sleep, but he had one last promise left to keep for the day. He crawled out of bed and made his way as quiet as he could to the open balcony.

A pony had landed there, one a little smaller than he was but far stranger looking. Emily smiled at him as he exited the safety of Kari’s little house, embracing him with a light gesture. Her wings remained folded to her back, though Julian could still see how strange they were. Not transparent anymore, but tan and covered with patterns. Including a bright green eye looking out from each of them, like the Jungle itself was watching.

Emily had gotten fluffier over the last few years, her antennae longer and twisted on her head. She didn’t have hooves anymore, but soft pads, making her completely silent as she moved. She didn’t speak, just gestured away—Kari was a light sleeper, and they couldn’t talk here.

I wish you weren’t nocturnal. Emily was an interesting pony—in some ways, she was Avery’s opposite talent. Her powers were just as incredible, her determination to magic no less impressive—but towards breezie magic, not what unicorns did.

He could feel it around her as they flew together through the dark. Her magic was powerful enough that it glowed when she moved, like a trail of little after-images. Everything she touched seemed to grow a little better, including people.

She didn’t talk much anymore—Emily only spoke when she was alone with the person she wanted to talk to—and even then, only quietly. “You look tired, Eldest. Long day?” Emily didn’t use names very well, either. He’d tried persuading her, but… she still couldn’t be convinced.

“You can’t even imagine,” he said, trying not to sound sarcastic. “I didn’t think it was going to end. But… it’s almost over now, thank god.”

“You don’t like being the most connected pony in Formenos? Everyone watching, everyone wanting to know how you’ll protect us next… it seems like a dream to me.”

“Sometimes it’s nice,” Julian said, finally landing on one of the flowers they’d been angling towards. They only opened at night, bright yellow and white buds that flashed and shone through the dark. “But sometimes I just want some time to myself. I don’t even have my own house, Emily. Welcome everywhere, but nowhere of my own. I’m not sure I like it.”

“You have a dozen ponies who would love it if you never left,” she said, touching down beside him. Emily didn’t eat—at least, not with anyone around. Julian supposed the moth had to eat eventually, since she didn’t seem to get any smaller or weaker. But he’d never seen it. “You might say that means your home is everywhere.”

“You might,” Julian argued. He didn’t use his tongue, instead taking a long, thin cup from Emily’s offered hoof and sliding it down into the flower. He filled it, then pulled it back up to drink. It wasn’t like other nectars—it tasted almost like alcohol, potent and heady. He felt more awake after just a few sips. “But I haven’t made promises with trees and forests. Too esoteric for me.”

“I could help you understand. The forest would make the same promises with you it did with me. Of course… that necklace might not work anymore. You’d have to give up your dual-nature if you wanted any promises to stick. But I think you’d get the better half.”

Julian did like the idea of not relying on an enchantment—but at the same time, he remembered the x-ray. Remembered his missing hearts, and the bit of magic he had stuck inside him instead. Probably the one who put it there wouldn’t be happy if he tried to get around her work. But isn’t it her forest? She’s got to be the one Emily gets her power from too. She just hasn’t offered as much in exchange.

“I’ll think about it,” he said, in the voice of one who didn’t really plan on thinking about it. “I don’t want to rush into any promises. I know how hard they can be to break.”

Emily nodded. “That is wise of you. But remember, inaction isn’t wisdom. Life is meant to grow—changing is how we know we’re alive. If you try to remain the same person you were forever, you might as well be dead. Then, eventually, you will be.”

Julian shrugged. “Just so long as it doesn’t come in a hurry. I want to live long enough to see Lynn grow up. Maybe to see this little colony become a real city. I’d really like to live long enough for all the fungus to die. Doesn’t have to be our jungle that kills it, so long as it dies.”

Emily settled in against him. Her body was particularly warm, even for a breezie. But then, she didn’t have a house either, so he supposed it would have to be. She was always out here, even in the rain. Even in the snow. “I think you will. I heard about what happened with the giants—I think it’s a good plan. We never thought the jungle would be ours alone. So long as we can remind them what their place is.”

Julian shivered as she said it. There was no forgetting that he was a giant too, at least in some sense. “What place is that?”

Emily took a long time to answer. She looked up at the stars, still visible quite clearly through the trees even with so much electric light and glowing mushrooms. Far more than he’d seen in his human hometown before the Event, anyway. “I don’t know. Working the land, I guess? Building things? Breezies can live forever, but I don’t think we will. Everything we build is impermanent—that’s how it’s supposed to be. The death of one tree feeds an entire ecosystem in its rotting trunk. The wolf is devoured by the worm.

“But the giants can make things that live longer than that—they can build with ideas. One idea does not have to consume another of similar value—they are infinite, eternal. There is no limit to how much wealth we can create from them, without robbing anyone to create it.”

“Breezies can make ideas too. I was just in Kari’s workshop. You’ve seen her car—or the incubation room that keeps our young from freezing. What’s that?”

Emily shook her head sadly. “Avery was a giant—when she became us, we remained like her. But look at our children. In ten generations, how will they live?”

Julian sighed, slumping so far forward he almost fell off the flower. He didn’t, though only because Emily caught him. “I hate it,” he finally whispered. “Watching them give up a little each time. I’d do anything to stop it from happening. Anything.”

“Anything?” Emily repeated, a grin slowly spreading across her lips. “Do you really mean that? It sounds like a promise—I know someone who likes making promises.”

Chapter 10: A Little Thing

Julian woke trapped. He was inside something, wrapped up in slime and something like silk. There was nothing but darkness all around him, constricting his movements. He called out, but his voice was drowned in some kind of slime that surrounded him. It rushed down his throat, starting to suffocate him.

He began to kick, and he felt his containment give a little. He focused there with both of his hind legs, shoving as hard as he could. Something tore. Fluid poured out from the opening, and he realized he was hanging vertically. He’d made a hole in whatever kept him trapped near the bottom, and as he did so all the slime began to trickle out.

Julian remained still, taking a few hacking breaths and letting the slime drain from his lungs. He didn’t feel that different—didn’t feel different at all, in fact. But it was still dark in whatever had trapped him. How had he gotten out again? He couldn’t remember. He had gone into the valley to talk to Janus. He’d been… but how was he here?

None of it made sense. But there wasn’t exactly someone to argue with. I need to get out. Even in the jungle, I probably look like food hanging up like this. The problems were his wings. They still felt damp, and he knew that wet wings couldn’t fly. If he fell he wouldn’t die as he would’ve at his proper size, but he might tear something on his way down. Being on the ground anywhere was unsafe, even in Formenos.

He did his best to widen the hole, without moving so fast that he would get dislodged from the thing holding him and dumped. He could see moonlight through the crack as it widened, and his weight started pulling him through. He struggled for a few more seconds, gripping the side with his legs as he did so. One more kick, and the whole thing tore open.

Julian squealed as he went tumbling forward, but he didn’t have very far to fall. Not whole stories up the side of a tree, only about two body-lengths above the mossy ground. It wasn’t a tree at all, but a thick flower. Of course, he didn’t get a particularly good look as he went tumbling, not until after he landed in a soggy heap on the floor and rolled onto his back.

“Spread out your wings,” said a voice from beside him. Emily, resting on the moss. “You don’t want them to dry out all crumpled. It hurts.”

Julian obeyed instinctively, even if the command didn’t make much sense. Breezie wings were flexible, but that was mostly just a way to resist damage. They could only be opened and closed. Julian rolled onto his belly, shaking out his wings a little until they didn’t feel cramped anymore. He felt a little light-headed as they spread, like he had shrunken a little. He didn’t look back, just felt instinctively for the charm around his neck.

There was nothing there.

He squeaked in protest, rising suddenly. “Oh god, I’m so screwed. I lost it… Avery’s gonna kill me. I’m screwed…”

He felt a foot on his shoulder, and looked down to see Emily standing there. Emily was standing there. Not standing on his shoulder, standing on the moss. She looked a few inches shorter, which were obviously much less in reality. Still, the meaning was obvious. Julian wasn’t a giant anymore. “He didn’t kill me.”

Should he have been more upset? Janus had taken a useful tool away—his giantness had made Formenos possible, in a way. It had protected them many times. I wonder if I still explode people. That mystery would hopefully remain a mystery forever. Even the two giants who wanted to join their society were going to use the charms, not his method.

“Nope.” Emily hugged him, though her hooves were gentle around his back. Not touching his wings. “I told you, your desires were good. That’s exactly the kind of promises he likes. He wasn’t going to kill you.” She broke away from him. Her fluffy antennae moved in a way he’d never seen them move before—not since she’d been transformed. It was appreciation, interest.

“I know what you want. I hope you’ll tell me how we’re going to get it.”

“We,” Julian repeated. He retreated a step—not because he was afraid of her, exactly, but because he’d never seen such a reaction from Emily before. She was always so flighty these days, and never physically affectionate with him. “We’re going to change the city. Change everyone… well, mostly the kids. Not the Averies. We need them the way they are. Their kids too, hopefully.”

“How?”

Julian didn’t feel like his wings were weighing him down as much anymore. He moved them experimentally, and found that flapping them had become much harder. Yet with a single push, he stumbled into the air, legs kicking and struggling out under him for a few seconds. He didn’t move them again though, and touched back down a moment later. He could feel the moss under his hooves, more clearly than he had before. Was that taste? He wrinkled his nose. “Ugh. I hate moss.”

Emily grinned at him. “Now you know why I only land on flowers.”

It clicked. Julian glanced over his shoulder, and was only a little surprised by his huge wings, spotted with a pair of crystal blue eyes. They looked exactly like Janus’s eyes, one seeming to look forward and another back. Watching him, even now.

And those weren’t the only changes. There was fluff around his chest, and his hooves weren’t hooves at all. Julian wasn’t a breezie anymore. Makes sense. Only a moth could cast the spell.

“You didn’t answer my question,” Emily urged. “You, uh… got distracted. I can’t blame you. Just wait until you try landing on something made of steel. Don’t.”

Julian stashed that away—he’d never known Emily to exaggerate or to say anything she didn’t mean. “Moths don’t get so…” He gestured with his huge wings. “They care more. And I have the spell to make as many of us as we want. To change breezies… We can start with the army, teach the spell… then track down all the little colonies that got away. Janus… I think he showed me the future. Showed me that the moths won’t go all ambivalent like breezies do. There’s just the one problem with it… I think you know what it is. But we can get around that.”

Emily nodded. “I do. You must not plan on changing everyone.”

“Not everyone,” he agreed. “Not anyone who seems like they aren’t going to lose their minds. It would be good to have a lot of breezies, but even if we only have the Averies and the second generations, that could still be a huge number. It could be thousands if we don’t get crushed by rocks, or eaten by bats, or anything else.”

“It wouldn’t be easy to convince them,” Emily said. “Except… the only ones who care enough to vote are also the ones you aren’t asking to do anything. I’d be more worried about losing the ones we have down the road. I know I would get tired of being different, if I was. I’d be willing to give up having more children for that. Guess I… already did that, though. Decision is easy for me, since It’s already made.”

“I’ll tell Avery about it,” he said. “She’ll be able to make sure the spell is safe. We’ll have to find a volunteer. My grandkids won’t fight us, I’m sure of it. They don’t care about anything… as long as we make it seem like a fun game, they’ll be excited about it. Once they do it, they’ll all thank us.”

“Maybe.” Emily didn’t sound convinced. “It isn’t like I don’t agree with you that it’s important, Julian… but they aren’t going to forget the way they thought before. They’re not going to forget how carefree they were, how happy. They might curse you for waking them from that dream. How do you think it was for Adam and Eve?”

Julian took off. He moved jerkily, unsteadily in the air. But he didn’t crash into anything, and he was learning quickly. It was really the same basic principles of flight here, just with bigger wings and less flapping. It felt as though it had gotten much harder, as though he were missing something he’d always depended on.

But Julian could adapt to that. He would be asking the breezies to adapt, even if they wouldn’t understand the decision they made while they made it. And in some ways, he couldn’t give them a choice, exactly. If something happened to convince most of them to refuse, they would still outbreed the village and they’d be back with the same problem as before. They had to use the army. They had to make sure this magic spread.

I wonder what would happen if we tried it on regular ponies. Those two who want to join… they might not need charms after all. They’d be safer not to have them, anyway. What if they got mad and took them off, then hurt someone?

There were so many possibilities open to him. It was almost like Janus had opened his eyes through time, just a crack. Every new choice unfolded an entire chain of events. All he had to do was keep searching until he found the one that ended with civilization. It couldn’t be that hard.

“I knew something was wrong,” Avery said, as she opened the door to her little house. He heard lots of little mechanical sounds from the other side, and was grateful that the paths here were only made of wood. Wood wasn’t the worst taste in the world. “I locked everything down, just to be safe, I…” The door swung open, and Avery froze. She stared at him, horn glowing very faintly as she did so.

Julian grinned at her. “Hey, bird. Like the new wings?”

Avery remained silent for another few seconds. She glanced behind her, obviously looking for Lynn, but it was probably past her bedtime by now. The child needed as much sleep as a pony kid, not the few hours a breezie got away with.

“What… what did you do?” she asked. She hadn’t gotten out of his way yet, and he could see a stiffness in her posture that had almost never been there lately. “You shouldn’t have… you didn’t… you aren’t wearing the charm.”

“I’m not a giant anymore, bird.” He hoped she would hear his relief. He tried to touch her antennae, to show her how he felt, but she tucked hers behind her head, dodging him. That hurt more than her posture, more than her tone.

“You aren’t… a few things… anymore,” she eventually said. She stumbled backward, into the hall beyond. “Why?”

“I can explain it,” he said, taking advantage of the open doorway and following her inside. Not too close, though—she was obviously frightened. She would adjust to this, but forcing himself on her would not help.

“You’ll understand once you hear. I know this seems a little crazy. It was crazy to me, too. But I’ve been thinking about it for a long time. It’s important, and it didn’t even cost as much as I thought it did. Let me explain.”

Avery did. They sat together in her kitchen, and he told her everything he’d been thinking about. Everything he’d seen. She shared his pain about the later generations—even if she had no eggs of her own, and no descendants who went through their lives like butterflies, she knew about them. Her sisters were all experiencing it, and Averies talked.

“I went to Janus… that’s the god in the forest…” He wasn’t sure Janus was in the forest, at least not in terms of the physical world they were living in. Moths could… Emily had taken him somewhere else with her magic. He wasn’t sure how, but it didn’t matter for the sake of explaining this.

“Well, he showed me the future. He showed me how to wake them all up, how to give them the minds they would’ve had if they’d been born to us as ponies. We won’t have to pay much. I know you’ll agree with me about how worthwhile it is.”

He explained his vision for their culture—for the society they would establish, once they had tracked down and changed all the breezie colonies that had flown off. She could make tracking spells, it would be easy. He explained how their new society would change all breezies as soon as they grew up, before they wandered off. Explained the spell itself.

“I…” Avery stumbled when he had finally finished, expression still dark, pained. “I’m not sure… that’s such a good idea. Offering it as a possibility is one thing, Julian… but doesn’t it seem wrong to force them? We were forced, and we hated it. Won’t they hate it too?”

“No!” He rose from his chair, spreading his wings for her. “It’s just like being a breezie, Avery! Basically just more colors and different hooves. We’re practically the same!” Not quite true. Their magic was a different flavor. The jungle would have a different character when moths made it instead of breezies. But he didn’t have to volunteer the little things if she didn’t ask.

Plus, there was the other part of the cost, the one he hadn’t mentioned. The one he was hoping to take naturally, so that she’d never even need to know it had been paid. It was such a little thing…

“You could be the first one,” he continued, hoping it sounded natural. “You could experience the spell. Then you’ll know how safe it is, and we’ll have an example for all the others.” And besides, you can’t have eggs. We already have Lynn, and she’s immortal. One is enough.

Avery didn’t react the way he hoped. She shook her head vigorously, resting one hoof on the little satchel she always wore. The one with her manual in it. “No. Julian, there’s… no. I’m not changing again. I’ve already lost my whole life twice. I’m not gonna do it a third time. Maybe it’s great for those fairies we’ve almost lost, the ones that barely seem awake. But not me. I wouldn’t be me if I was someone else.”

Julian acted as though it didn’t matter to him. It wouldn’t have, a little earlier. Sure, it hurt that his favorite Avery, the one who still had her name, rejected the magic he had won for them. Even if she didn’t actually argue against using it for the village, she refused to take it herself.

But Julian hadn’t got to choose the terms of the deal. Now that it was made, he didn’t have a choice about whether or not he would follow it. It was a little like falling down a tunnel—once he started, down was the only direction he could go. He couldn’t even feel sad about it. Regret, maybe. But not sadness.

He joined Avery to sleep that night, though there was nothing else between them. Avery barely wanted to touch him right now, let alone anything else.

But that wouldn’t last much longer.

Staying awake longer than a wizard with insomnia was not an easy task, except that Julian was now nocturnal. Eventually she slept, and he could cast his spell.

It was so easy. Just touch their antennae together, say a few words… she didn’t even have to be awake.

For the rest of his life, Julian would swear he didn’t make the bed creak on purpose. He had just been moving over to her, that was all. It was the truth, obviously. Because he had to pay the price Janus asked.

Avery’s eyes opened when he was about halfway through the spell. Bright blue energy swirled around her, enough power that one of her four wings had already changed to match his, even if it was one of her smaller ones.

Avery reacted like a bullet. Her eyes snapped wide open, taking in the situation in a second. She drew one hoof through the air, and her manual fell into it out of nothing.

For a fraction of a second, the fairy met his eyes. Julian would never forget her pain—not then, and not ever. The betrayal on her face was far worse than any agony he could’ve imagined.

Avery vanished in a flash of light, and his spell imploded. Julian screamed as he was thrown against the wall, and the bed itself was torn to pieces. Shreds of cloth went everywhere, and he was nearly knocked unconscious by the blow.

By the time he came round, Avery was gone. He wandered through the house, first to Lynn’s room. She hadn’t been part of the price—he might never have come out of Janus’s domain if she had been—but he was still worried about her.

She was gone, along with a handful of her belongings. There was a note on her bed, written in Lynn’s stationary, but in Avery’s dense script. “I know you don’t want to. I love you.”

Julian cried. Not just because of what he was reading, but because he had to keep looking for her. Even if he had many moths searching, even if he became a mighty wizard in his own right, he somehow knew he’d never find her.

Janus’s vision came about much as he’d seen it. The joy of seeing his descendants wake from their dream was enough to make up for a little of the suffering he had experienced.

Not everything went quite to plan, though. The breezie colonies they converted became more cooperative once they became moths, and many reported losing a few of their smartest members before the army arrived. Some of them even reported strange stories of a mysterious pair of fairies with powers they’d only heard about in school.

Julian never found out what had happened to them. He looked, but not too carefully. The “army” was not some despotic force, bent on domination. Once converted, the colonies could go right back to living the way they had, if they wanted.

Sometime later.

Avery winked into existence without a pop or a flash. Teleportation had become so second-nature to her after all this time that she didn’t even think about it anymore—placeness was variable and ever-shifting. It was the only way she had escaped so long.

Her daughter was her height now, and prettier than she was. Lynn generally stayed with the airship, since there weren’t any others aboard who could use magic like theirs, but considering the danger of the place they were visiting…

It had been a long time since Avery had seen this fungus. They moved by day, since even the most determined moth scouts would be asleep by the time noon arrived. They just weren’t worth looking for. Most of them didn’t even understand why the Eldest wanted her captured so badly.

A few spiders moved in the gloom, emerging from the pale carpet of a dilapidated building. Avery lifted a hoof, and tore them in pieces. As they walked through the city, a few larger things rose up. This place was important to some distant enemy, a lotus of power. She could see the crystal spire glittering in the sun, however encrusted with slime it was now.

Avery no longer cared what the sea-demon wanted. When a monstrous creature the size of a whale tore itself free near the base of the tower, she showed it a nice view of the moon.

Cleaning off the tower would be harder, since she couldn’t just teleport the slime all off of it.

“You think that’s everything?” Lynn asked from behind her, wearing thick boots and a bandana over her face to keep out the spores. Avery had the boots, though she used a little shield instead of anything on her mouth. Keeping up multiple spells at once wasn’t really hard anymore.

“Everything that’s dangerous.” She could see the airship high above, though descending rapidly. It was a lot like a breezie—extremely delicate. It was gigantic from their size, so big she could hardly take in the whole thing at once when it was close. A swept, elegant zeppelin, big enough to hold fifty ponies. That was quite a bit more in breezie terms, as it turned out.

“Get up there and tell them to drop the napalm. I’ll join you before it lands.”

Lynn nodded, vanishing with a flash of light. You’ll get it, sweetie.

Avery sat at the base of the tower, watching the airship approach. The jungle hadn’t grown nearly as much in the time since she left, but it would eventually reach this far. She needed somewhere for her refugees that could keep it back. Somewhere with the magical defenses to fight a god, if she had to.

It had apparently been important, once. The capital of several ancient countries, and the workshop of the greatest pony wizard who ever lived. He was gone now, but his laboratory remained. Her lab, if she could find it. She had some good ideas about where to look.

I’ll find a way to set you free, Julian. One day.

In the meantime, at least there were the fireworks.

Chapter 9: Offer You Can't Refuse

Julian took a long time to decide—maybe longer than he should have. Weeks passed, and he ignored the desire to return to the front and help his world expand. That was important, but the danger of the giants was too great. At least so far, diplomacy was going well. Interacting with their own changed former-passengers helped, as they were able to see the fairies who had attacked them more as fellow victims than some evil force that lurked in the woods.

He stayed close just in case, though he wasn’t sure what he would actually do if the whole group rose up. The army was more than capable of turning eighteen giants into animals if they attacked, and their predators were flowing back towards Formenos in greater and greater numbers. Any giant who left the reservation was in for an untimely death. Such was the same for Julian, who had always had to be careful with his charm whenever wolves or other things were near him. They’d never eat a breezie, any more than the bats and other creatures would. But if he changed back into a giant? Well, that was a different story.

But the disaster never came, and for a while that meant time for him to watch. Time for Emily’s words to sink in. He made a point of visiting with as many of the latest generation as he could. Many of them didn’t even have their own houses anymore, but instead kept a single large, communal sleeping area. They wore no clothing and used few tools, and many of them had stayed in their mandatory school for only the minimum year. They were graduating with less of a grasp on reality than some first graders Julian had known before the Event.

It’s no wonder ponies have always been at odds with breezies. True, the latest generation didn’t seem particularly afraid of the giant settlement—thinking that far into the future seemed to be beyond them. They were mildly curious, or mildly afraid, but largely ambivalent.

And the deeper Julian looked, the more disturbing the picture became. The latest generations had ambition for only two things—expanding the jungle, and expanding their numbers. An investigation into the offices of Formenos proved that all were either Averies or Julian’s own direct descendants. Not one member of the third generation held any position more significant than soldiers and gardeners. Mostly they just spread, wandering off in groups of a dozen or two to form their own colonies that would fly through the jungle and maybe never be seen again. There were two hundred fairies in Formenos—not because they’d disciplined their reproduction like the Averies did—but because so many of them didn’t live there anymore, and didn’t want to. Not even April could tell him how many people had gone.

If they keep breeding like this, it won’t matter if every fairy in Formenos lives forever and never gives up our way of life. We’ll be so few compared to them that we’ll be irrelevant.

Could the lack of access to the hospital keep those new groups from growing out-of-hand? Even a fifty percent infant mortality doesn’t matter if females can try for a dozen eggs a year.

Julian probably should have spoken to Avery about what he was doing, but he didn’t. There was a little guilt there—but not much. Avery’s attention was devoted mostly to setting up the magic for the new preserve, as well as creating three new charms for ponies from the bus who wanted to join their city instead of helping build the giant one. As awful as Julian’s predictions for the future made him feel, they were looks into the future. They were calamities for another day, which depending on the way the charm worked might even be beyond his lifetime. Avery could work them out one day, not him.

But Julian’s brain didn’t work that way. He couldn’t just banish one of his concerns and leave it for ‘future Julian.’ No, it festered. Eventually, he realized he was having nightmares again, and he knew he was really in trouble. Avery couldn’t just cast some spell to make the feeling go away—she helped him sleep again by solving the issue. How was she supposed to solve a problem that might not exist for decades? Or, alternatively, something that was already torturing them, but which didn’t have a solution.

It’s like the human is wearing out of the blood. Teaching them doesn’t help when their instincts are so strong.

Julian felt gratitude toward the Matron of Nightfall, for not cursing Avery the way their children were cursed. Watching his best friend turn into shallow copies had been bad enough. Watching her become a step away from animal would’ve been unbearable. And if that had happened, Avery wouldn’t have made me a charm. She might’ve just flown off into the woods never to be seen again.

Instead of going to Avery, Julian went to Emily. It wasn’t as though he was sleeping at night anymore anyway, so he didn’t have anything to lose. Anything to lose except whatever Emily’s master of the forest required.

“I knew you would be here,” said the moth, resting beside the little pond Julian himself had dug in the center of Formenos. She balanced perfectly on the edge of a lily, only two of her feet on the ground. Curiously, she didn’t seem to be flapping her wings to hold herself that way. She was balanced, her tongue just above the water as she drank. Like a breezie, not like a person.

But she rose a moment later, facing him. “You have been thinking about what I said. You can’t stop thinking about it.”

“How can you…” Julian muttered, not hiding his surprise. “I haven’t even said anything yet.” He landed beside her on the lilypad, making the whole thing rock and wobble. Somehow Emily managed to remain elegant and still on the edge, except that now all four paws were on the ground.

“Nothing supernatural,” Emily said, chuckling. “Those bags under your eyes are monsters. You should come with me to the spa tomorrow, no matter what happens tonight.”

“I didn’t know you did anything during the day,” he said, trying to put off what had to be asked as long as possible. Julian had brought nothing tonight, except his tiny jacket. Nights were so much colder than days, even in the jungle. He didn’t have the endurance for it that the moth did.

“I do things every day,” she answered, puffing up her chest. “Sleep, generally. Not always. Sometimes I photosynthesize. Sometimes I dream. Often I do all three at once—more efficient.”

“I need to talk to your master. The… the spirit of the jungle, uh… the Chain Breaker?” Despite being the first to learn about the Morpheans, Julian had done very little to research them, even now. He still saw the whole thing as Lovecraftian, wherein the more one knew the more danger one was in. Avery had got to know them and she’d paid dearly for the privileged.

“I don’t serve her,” Emily said, her voice suddenly flat, humorless. “I mean… we respect her, and I suppose just living serves her a little. I don’t oppose her. But her goals aren’t the same as mine. The same as the one I do serve. She’s too… she’s not part of the world much. She hates bonds so much she wants to make a world where we live free of all of them. That’s what the jungle represents. It’s the law of tooth and claw. It’s the law of strength, it’s as much sex as you want, it’s eggs abandoned to grow up on their own, its society boiled down to instinct.”

She rose into the air, flapping her elegant moth wings one at a time. “But Janus knew this would happen. I… don’t know if that’s his real name. I just call him that because he looks both ways in time. He doesn’t talk exactly, so I’m not sure if I’m right or not. But he hasn’t corrected me yet.”

Julian took off, far less elegantly. “I can’t fight her. The one who saved me… her magic is keeping me alive, somehow. I can’t ask your… Janus… for help if he would do something that might make her angry.”

But in some ways, this wasn’t sounding quite like Lovecraft anymore. It sounded almost Greek, like they were pawns in some divine scheme. Heroes favored by different gods. The problem was Emily was obviously right about the Matron of Nightfall. She brought the end of connection, of boundaries, of society itself. Some parts of that had been good for Julian—his exploded friends didn’t mind his relationship with all of them, instead of picking one. That would never have been possible in the world he left behind.

But if she hadn’t exploded her, I wouldn’t have had to choose between more than one.

“I know where to find him,” Emily continued. “Janus is… private. But the places he lives and the material world do line up.” Emily slowed, flying beside him as they drifted away from Formenos. “I should warn you, though. You need to be certain of this before you go. You won’t be able to tell him you’ve changed your mind and you’d really rather just leave. Once you enter his territory, you only get to leave if he wants you to.”

“Has…” He hesitated. Maybe he wasn’t supposed to ask this kind of question. But he couldn’t help himself. “Has he killed fairies before?”

“Yes,” Emily said. “A few. The ones who are insincere. Are you?”

Julian didn’t even have to think about it. “No. I really want… I really want to stop what’s happening. The Matron of Nightfall got her jungle, but there’s no reason we shouldn’t be able to keep most of everything else. Our way of living, our civilization, our… humanness.”

It seemed to Julian as though they were traveling much faster than he expected. Already he couldn’t recognize any familiar trees here. The glowing mushrooms near their base grew bigger and fatter here, in a strange variety of colors. The flowery perfumes in the air smelled strange to his nose, without any of their ordinary appeal. It was like he’d flown into a foreign country.

“You should know that Janus isn’t… he doesn’t think like we do. He might not grant your request the way you expect. Make sure you’re clear about what you must have, and what you just want. There’s a difference.”

“Couldn’t you do it?” He felt a little cowardly asking it—he was larger than Emily by far, and stronger. Apparently he had enough magic in his body to explode a city. In that way he was a little like Avery, all the magic of a full-sized pony boiled down into a tiny body. But even so, he couldn’t help but ask. He’d missed so much in his life simply by not asking for it. “I mean—you know this place. You know this magic. You’re already working for him. Maybe he’d give it to you.”

“No, he wouldn’t.” Emily didn’t sound upset with him. She didn’t even sound annoyed. “I am sad to see the world changing, but I have not had children. There are no eggs of mine to watch grow into ignorance and suffering. Janus can grant desires, and it isn’t something I want. It is something you want, and perhaps the other Averies. But none of them would be intact enough to come here. You have to have something to trade, and we’re… not much. Souls take a long time to heal.”

“He took you.”

“He took me,” she agreed. “But I wasn’t asking for anything in return. I came because I wanted to. I found meaning out here, but I didn’t ask for it. It was just… something I found. I’m sure if I was a proper fairy, I’d be all mysterious, and I’d try to manipulate you, or… who knows. But I’m not. I don’t want you to do anything you’ll regret.” She stopped flying. There was a fog up ahead, and a valley descending down into it. Only the tops of the trees were visible below, along with a few desperate flashes of light. Mushrooms didn’t glow in those colors. “This is as far as we go, unless you’re sure. Once you go down there… you’re on your own. Either Janus finds you, and you impress him, or… he finds you, and you don’t.”

“How do I impress him? It would be easier to know how to make him like me if you told me what supplicants are supposed to do. Is this one of those Anubis heart and feather things, or…”

Emily shook her head. “Don’t do anything. You just have to want what you want badly enough to pay for it. You have to be willing to pay whatever he asks, because you don’t get to negotiate. Once you’re inside, you either take the terms or he takes you. Those are the only choices.”

Julian watched the strange way the fog seemed to curl around the edge of the valley, not rising up to creep towards them. Like something invisible was holding it trapped there.

He could still turn around, right then. He could fly back to Formenos and forget he’d even been considering this. Emily probably wouldn’t judge him, and she certainly wouldn’t tell anyone about this. They would never know.

Instead, Julian moved forward, wings buzzing. “Just tell me what to do.”

Emily pointed into the dark. “Keep flying and don’t die. Don’t try to lie either, just keep going. Keep going until Janus finds you. You’ll know what to do after that.”

Julian found that promise extremely hard to believe, but what was he supposed to say? No one knew what Emily knew.

He embraced her one last time, squeezing a little tighter than he probably meant to. She hugged him back, without any reservations in the way she did. “Come back, idiot.”

“I plan on it,” he said. Then he vanished into the fog.

The world became distant, frightening shapes, and Julian was briefly tempted to return to his “normal” size. It wouldn’t be hard—just a little tug on the charm, and he’d be person-sized again. He could hardly be blamed for a little fear, could he? And Emily hadn’t said anywhere that being small would help.

He stayed small anyway. Maybe he didn’t need to, but he wasn’t going to take the chance. It seemed like the thing a hero in a story might have to do, braving all kinds of terrible danger to prove their commitment to the one they loved. After facing all kinds of hardship, he would eventually be rewarded with access to some secret valley, or maybe a magical sword.

Unfortunately neither of those things were what he’d come for, so even if they happened he wouldn’t be better off.

Julian kept far enough off the ground he thought he would be out of reach of any predators that happened to be passing nearby, a distance he mostly had to guess since there were no actual predators here. No living things at all, not even insects.

Yet as he moved, he could feel the fog beginning to thicken around him. It didn’t feel like he was flying through smoke anymore, but something much more solid. Every flap of his wings became a strain. He squealed in surprise, fought with all his strength—but just like that, he was stuck.

It was no substance at all, nothing that could hold his body. It was, rather, as though time itself had stopped moving. Julian was the fastest breezie in the jungle, but he could not outfly time.

Something approached from the darkness, something that towered over him at incredible height. The ground shook as it walked, the fog melding into half a dozen discordant shades.

Those are antlers, he realized. That’s a deer. It was a deer as tall as a building, a deer as large as a bear. One of its great legs stopped beside him, looking as thick as the trunk of a large tree.

He could feel the inquisitive mind probing at the edge of his own, curious. It demanded answers. It demanded to know what he wanted, and why he had come into his domain.

Julian couldn’t move, not even to talk. His whole body was still stuck, frozen in amber. He now had a guess of where the others Janus had not liked might’ve gone. Not killed, as Emily thought, but still frozen here, probably in a similar position to the one he was in right now.

So he did the only thing he could, and he tried to imagine his difficulty. He tried to picture watching his children growing up increasingly ignorant, watching the order of the city fall apart. He remembered his guilt at being the one to bring them into the world, thinking he was giving them a legacy but discovering too late that they were barely even people. He felt his defiance anew, his determination to ensure that the old way of doing things survived. If not in custom, then at least in ability.

The godlike being—the only thing that wasn’t frozen in the air around, seemed to spend an incredible length of time in silent consideration. It did not reply with a voice, but Julian could almost interpret the images like one. It showed him doors that were closed, showed him power barred and spells already sworn. It showed him how its own abilities would be unable to erase what the Matron of Nightfall had done.

But maybe it wouldn’t have to. There could be another way. A difficult, painful way, but one that would not be beyond them.

Julian saw a spell—a spell that worked along similar principles to breezie magic. Except a breezie couldn’t cast it, only a moth could. It was the way they would reproduce—not through any biological means, but through magic. Moths were not the same as ordinary breezies, they were creatures of magic and stories. Their minds would not decay over the generations as breezies were doing.

In that way, Janus showed him a vision of the future. A vision of this spell cast on the army, who could hunt out breezies from one end of the jungle to the other. They would greet them in friendship, then wake them from the Edenic dream. Their powers would not be taken from them, only changed slightly.

The vision Julian saw depicted the future of Formenos, where breezies would be born and grow as carefree as today. They would spend their whole childhoods looking forward to becoming proper citizens, which could only be accomplished when the spell was performed on them. They would wake into the world with joy and gratitude.

There was a price, of course—everything had a price. But they could find a way to pay it. Their new society could work around it. It was such a little thing, and they had Avery. It was really only the third generation removed that got bad.

Janus was not making an offer, but it still required Julian’s consent. He could reject the magic, reject the transformation, and remain trapped here forever. He didn’t. Julian would soon become a creature of two masters.

The great stag looked down, spreading jaws wide. Creamy white flames emerged from within, and Julian was powerless to avoid them. He was consumed in an instant.