Thicker Than Water

Tonight, it wasn’t excitement keeping Apricot awake.

He blinked in the dark tent, still curled up and facing away from the entrance. He hadn’t moved once since lying down for the night; so still that his parents must have believed he was asleep. It was a skill he’d mastered long ago, in order to fool them into thinking their nine o’clock curfew worked at stopping him from reading books about magic under the covers late into the night.

The shouting had ended a while ago. Most of it had been too indistinct for him to make out, but he didn’t need to hear the words to know what it meant. Afterwards, his mother had stormed back into the tent before sinking to her bedroll and sobbing. Apricot had lain there for what felt like an hour, motionless, until at last her quiet crying had faded into the fitful breathing of a fragile sleep.

Apricot’s best friend back in Canterlot, besides Strawberry, had been a colt named Beeswax; Beezy for short. The two had spent many an afternoon playing around in Clement Park, climbing trees and seeing who could skip stones furthest across the pond. Apricot almost always won the stone game, thanks to his horn, but his earth pony friend could swarm up a tree like it was a ladder. Sometimes, they’d share their lessons with each other: the history that Apricot was learning from his mother and Mr. Strudel, and the art of candle-making from Beezy’s parents.

And then one day, he’d come to their meeting place near the park apiary to find Beezy sitting beneath a tree and weeping. Something had happened, his friend explained, between his mom and dad, something bad. The arguments had abruptly turned into icy silence, and finally his mother had decided to leave the city—without his father. She was moving to live with her sisters and all Beezy’s cousins in Fillydelphia, almost five hundred kilometers away on the western coast. His father was staying here at the chandlery in Canterlot. They’d sat Beezy down and soberly given him the choice of whether he wanted to stay here, or go with her.

Tearfully, he told Apricot that he was packing his bags for Fillydelphia. It was too far away to come back and visit—the two colts would never be able to play together in the park again. Apricot’s own tears had flowed then, but with a hug, they promised to make their last week together one to remember. And they had, exploring the city and the wending creeks of Cottontail Wood with a bittersweet zeal. When they parted, Apricot had given him his favorite book about Starswirl the Bearded. In turn, Beezy had left Apricot one of the candles they’d made together after sneaking into the chandlery the night of Beezy’s third birthday. It was still in his room, up on a shelf. He’d sworn to never light that wick as long as he lived.

Almost a year later, on days when the pain felt as fresh as when they’d said goodbye, Apricot kept trying to understand what had happened to his friend’s parents. How could two ponies who loved each other fall so far apart that they just… left?

Flashes of his mother and father, burning with anger as they discovered his stowaway attempt, kept interrupting his thoughts. Other memories, too—his father, assuring him weakly that everything was fine after that hit from the rock; his mother, waking with a start before crying to herself and whispering recriminations in the quiet tent. It wasn’t really that complicated, he suspected, with a sinking feeling in his stomach.

He’d done this. They’d been happy and united until he’d snuck into that barrel. Putting himself in danger, only for Dad to defend him against Mom’s fierce worry, that had been the moment that everything had begun to collapse.

Just how far would they go…? Apricot stared, unblinking, at the dark corner of the tent. He could still remember waving farewell from atop the city wall as Beezy turned to give him one last wave in return. He’d watched as his friend disappeared down the road, trudging behind the trundling cart pulled by his mother.

The silver-and-rose cutie mark imprinted on his flanks, a symbol of absolute triumph only the day before, suddenly felt like a sick joke. He could sing with the whole forest, block a cast stone, even flash a blazing wildfire into smoke and cinders, but there was no spellsong to make his parents love each other again.

When he closed his eyes and opened himself to the song—keeping his hornglow dim, so as not to wake his mother—it wasn’t even to do any magic. It was just comforting to hear the music, calm and alive, wending through the air and earth around him. No matter what happened, no matter where he went, at least he would always have this. Usually, listening to it for a few minutes on his bedroll was enough to lull him to sleep.

There was a strange feeling in the music tonight. Apricot’s brow furrowed. It wasn’t a discordant voice, or anything like the angry wailing of the wildfire. Instead, a shadowy silence seemed to lurk at the edge of the magical harmonies. It was a vague, formless cavity, like an acoustic dead spot in a cathedral, where all the noise of the congregation seemed suddenly muted. But even stranger than the presence of a musical void was the fact that it moved.

Apricot frowned, focusing more closely on the void. It was an odd, jerky thing. It seemed to shift and scurry as the music passed over it, reminding him of an ant racing for cover after its stone shelter had been lifted away. Curious, he reached out a tendril of magic toward it, his song quiet and questing. Gingerly, he touched the void.

Instantly, he felt an ice-cold chill in his horn. The emptiness spasmed hungrily, and suddenly clung to his song. It devoured his notes, stealing his voice with silence as he was drawn into the umbral dark. Mentally, he clutched his throat, trying to force sound to emerge from his suddenly mute lips. He was falling into it, unable to escape that terrible pull. With a gasp, Apricot snapped off the contact and sat upright, panting.

“Honey?” His mother’s sleep-slurred mumble drew his attention to the front of the tent. Blinking blearily, she rubbed her eyes. “Oh, it’s you, Apricot… Something wrong?”

“Nothing. It’s fine. Go back to sleep, Mom.” Apricot lay back down, stomach swimming. Whatever that thing had been, at least it was far away. His mind whirled with puzzlement. Every living thing had a song of its own—what could the absence of one signify? He needed to tell Pollux about this in the morning; perhaps his teacher would have answers. Unnerved, he closed his eyes once more, willing oblivion to come with a newly anxious edge. He didn’t try opening his horn to the song again.

* * *

Cool air whistled through the canyon walls. High above the stone fissure, the aspens swayed in the breeze. The calls of crickets and katydids carried down, along with the distant music of spring peepers. The Mare in the Moon, cold and enigmatic as ever, gazed down at the earth. If she had anything to say to her sister’s guard-captain, it was beyond his hearing.

Inger’s eyes traced constellations through the starry expanse, ruminating on the size of the heavens. How far would one have to fly to reach those stars? How long had Celestia and her sister walked together through that firmament in the time before they descended to the earth? What wondrous sights lay up there, beyond mortal reach? He fantasized about walking amongst the glimmering points of light, letting his hooves trail through the nebulae and his wingtips brush the Via Nubilum.

His little dragon had been blessedly quiet since Cranberry’s departure. Perhaps Inger’s fury was finally spent, or perhaps he simply had no more fears for it to prey on. Maybe the worst had already happened.

Soft footsteps in the sand made him straighten. His head dipped back down from the stars, eyes flicking nervously to the side. Had she come back looking for another fight? Or perhaps an apology? The dragon coiled around his neck in anticipation. Then, he heard the telltale slosh of a half-empty bottle, and the tension faded. Slumping forward, he exhaled. “Kaduat.”

“Evening, Hero.” Her voice was subdued, without her usual good cheer. She settled down beside him, on the side opposite where Cranberry had been.

“Some hero,” he muttered darkly. “Surely you heard some of that.”

“Didn’t have much choice,” she admitted, clearing her throat awkwardly. “Got up to take a leak, and when I came back the two of you were going at it. Figured I’d best stay over by the carts till things settled down.”

So she’d heard all of it. No point in trying to play it down, then. Inger put a hoof to the bridge of his nose, fighting the urge to simply spread his wings and fly away. “I don’t know what to do,” he confessed.

“I do,” she said, with unexpected vigor. The bottle sloshed again as she offered it.

Inger eyed it hesitantly. He was tempted, sorely tempted, but then the smell of alcohol hit his nose and mingled with the fumes of the ginkgo tonic. The combined stench was enough to turn his stomach. “Thanks, but no thanks.”

“Suit yourself.” She tipped the bottle back to her lips. “If being drunk all the time was easy, everyone would be.”

Squinting at her in the dim firelight, Inger raised an eyebrow. “What’s your story, Kaduat?” he asked, seized by a black mood of curiosity. “What sent you chasing the bottom of a bottle?” She’d already seen him at his worst tonight; she could at least return the favor.

Kaduat took the graceless question without a change of expression. Blowing a note across the top of the bottle, she set the rum down and hunched forward toward the fire. “I had seven siblings. I was the second-oldest, after my brother Fadil. He and I practically raised the rest of them. When the two of us joined the navy together, it was the proudest day of my life.”

She blinked. “Before he left to fight in the Golden Isles, Fadil made me promise to take care of his family should anything go wrong. His wife had died years ago, but he had two sons, my nephews Meketre and Nebit. Three and five years old. When Fadil didn’t come back from Zyre, I was granted leave from the military. I gave them the news myself. The boys came to live with me and my sister in Thonis, the small wrack-fishing village where I grew up. Not that different from Port Faeloch, really. I taught the kids to gather seaweed, how to dry and store it, to gather the salt and simmer it down into soup stock, just like my mother and grandmother taught me.”

Her voice shook as she gripped the bottle. “I loved those boys like they were my own.”

Inger stayed silent, wishing he’d held his tongue. Why had he asked about her painful secrets? Did he really need more misery tonight?

“When the civil war started, the officers came into the village, summoning everyone on leave back to duty. I left the boys with my sister, and did my job. They pressed the navy into ground service, because they needed bodies more than ships. For months we fought over the same dozen cities again and again, spilling blood across the sands. I killed and killed, more than I had ever done at sea against my nation’s enemies, but it seemed like we lost ground every day. In the final weeks of the war it became clear that our foes were victorious, and in no mood for mercy. When our commander was killed, my entire unit scattered, fleeing back to our homes in preparation for the coming storm.”

Kaduat paused, her foot white-knuckled on the bottle. “But when I returned to Thonis, I found only ruins. I don’t even know which side destroyed it, but there was no one left. No one to gather seaweed and dry it by the piers…” She took a deep breath. “I don’t think my nephews perished. Plenty of civilians were displaced by the war. They and my sister might have just fled, might still be alive somewhere…” Her eyes glistened in the firelight. “But I had to leave the country with the rest of the defeated forces, or die. So I’ll never find them. I’ll never see them again. If they’re still out there, they probably think I’m dead.”

Inger couldn’t meet her eyes. “I’m sorry.”

Suddenly, she smiled, all pain vanishing from her face. “Don’t be. No point in dwelling on the past. I don’t let it define me.”

Don’t you? he wondered, eyeing the bottle. She noticed his glance and her smile turned crooked. As she took another drink, with her free foot she withdrew her silvery knife from her jerkin and began twirling it in her dexterous toes.

Inger watched it dance. “Is it really that easy for you?” he asked, envious. “To just… move on? Forget it all?”

“Easy? No.” Kaduat dangled the bottle by its neck and gave it a little shake. “That’s what Madame Zenubia’s here for.”

They fell quiet for a time, listening to the crackling fire and the breeze in the canyon. Judging from the height of the full moon above, it would be many hours yet before the sun rose. Inger watched Apricot’s gorgeous, glowing flames slowly die down, entirely willing to stay here and watch them burn to cinders rather than go back into that tent or fall asleep outdoors. The tonic was starting to give him a pounding headache, but at least he was awake. The minutes dragged by with insufferable torpor.

Kaduat’s ears perked up. “Did you hear something?”

He’d almost forgotten she was here with him. Inger shook his head, his ears detecting only the calls of the bugs and frogs in the distant forest above.

“Hmph.” She listened for a few more moments before shaking her head. “I’m jumping at shadows. Damned spooky out here.”

It was hard to disagree. The black sand seemed to soak up the moonlight like a sponge, leaving the canyon dark and gloomy. The cavern entrance loomed beside the campsite, like a vast mouth ready to swallow them up. The fragile campfire was a lone candle in all that darkness, keeping the shadows at bay. Inger shivered.

“So…” Kaduat continued, idly swirling the nearly-empty bottle by its neck. “You had a dream about your wife, didn’t you?”

Bristling, Inger looked away. “What of it?”

“Virgil mentioned nightmares of his own, earlier. You’re not the only one seeing things, you know.”

His eyes sharpened as he turned toward her. “Are you?”

“Mmm.” Kaduat’s lips tightened. “No unfaithful lovers in mine. I keep seeing Fadil.”

“A memory,” said Inger. It wasn’t a question.

“Well, it starts as one…” She flipped her knife, deftly catching the blade between her toes without cutting herself. “We’re on the deck of the Aten-Re, the ship we both served on before he was transferred for the attack on Zyre. Every morning we’d get up before the sun rose to go upside and practice knife-fighting.” With a wistful smile, she tossed the knife again, this time catching it by the handle. She studied her reflection in the blade. “He was always better than me.”

“I’ve tangled with knife-users before,” said Inger, with grudging respect. “The good ones are terrifying.”

“That’s not why we did it, though.” With unconscious ease, she rolled the knife around her foot, inverting it. “I’ve learned it’s different for the other species, so you need to understand—in Dromedaria, we don’t have a king. The pharaoh is something more than that. He isn’t quite a god, like your princess, but he is more than mortal. He’s an intermediary between this world and the next, charged with guiding both his living subjects and the dead, as they make the perilous journey to the next world.”

Setting the bottle down, she juggled the knife between her forefeet. “No gratitude is sufficient thanks for such a gift. And so a soldier doesn’t just serve, we belong to our pharaoh. We’re his property. We don’t swear oaths to the state, like the griffons, or serve as vassals to liege lords, like the ponies. We are slaves in armor, existing only to serve his will. By doing so, we secure our place in the afterlife, shepherded there by his guiding grace.”

It sounded like ruthless tyranny to Inger’s ears, but Kaduat seemed entirely unfazed by the concept. It was simply the truth she’d grown up with, he realized with dismay.

“Do you think it’s true?” he asked, as neutrally as he could manage, “About him being more than mortal?”

“Hm.” The knife’s aerial dance stopped as she caught it. Resting the tip on her other foot, Kaduat swiveled the blade as she considered. “No,” she said at last, sounding almost disappointed. “No, not anymore. Hard to believe it after the war. Turns out the pharaohs bleed just like the rest of us.” Shrugging, she tapped the dagger against her foot. “But I used to. Just like I used to believe in star-reading. And when your whole existence is about serving, focusing on your own pleasure is more than dereliction of duty. It’s blasphemy.”

Inger nodded slowly. He couldn’t truly understand living as she described, giving up your freedom for the tenuous guarantee of safe passage after death, but it was clear that beneath the cynical bluster, she missed it somehow. She had total clarity of purpose, he mused. I guess someone could find comfort in that, if it was all they ever knew.

“So we had to find ways to entertain ourselves that furthered the glory of the pharaoh. Some prayed; others carved holy symbols. My bunkmate on the Aten-Re was a fantastic whittler.” She mimed carving a talisman with her knife. “My brother and I chose our daggers as our outlet. No officer could reprimand us for keeping our skills sharp. So we trained and trained, morning and evening, dancing and darting around each other till our legs ached and our mouths were sore.”

She paused. “And that’s what we were doing the morning he got the notice about his reassignment.”

Inger lifted his head with slow realization. “And… that was the last time you saw him.”

“It was,” she said, quietly. “That’s when he made me promise to keep the boys safe. To give them a home, to always be there for them. And he gave me his favorite blade, as a memento, in case things went wrong.” Kaduat held up the silvery knife, exhaling. Reluctantly, she slid the dagger back into her jerkin. “I wanted to go with him. I thought there was nothing that the two of us couldn’t handle; that if I went, he’d be sure to come home safe and sound. Part of me wonders if he’d still be alive if I had. More likely we’d both be dead. But instead, I made that promise, and I let him go to his death alone.”

She swallowed. “And now that I’ve turned my back on my people, I’ve lost our pharaoh’s guidance through the underworld. I’ll never reach the Field of Reeds where Fadil’s akh—you ponies call it a soul—walks in the shallows.”

Despite her denial mere moments ago, he suspected that deep down, she still believed. He had never seen her look this lost. She gazed into the fire with despair in her eyes. “I’m all alone, Inger.”

He wasn’t sure what comfort he could give her. “You’re not alone right now,” he said softly. “And there were camels before the pharaohs, weren’t there? You’ll find your own way to your brother, someday.”

Kaduat gave him a simple, sincere smile. “I hope you’re right.”

Melancholic, Inger kicked a half-burned log deeper into the fire. A cloud of rosy sparks floated away. “You didn’t mention…” he asked hesitantly, “Do you see any aspen trees in your dream?”

“Trees? On the ocean? No,” said Kaduat. She hefted the bottle, watching the rosy firelight play in the glass. “But as my brother turns to leave, the whole ship shakes and grinds like it’s hit something. A reef, maybe, but we’re in the middle of the ocean. There’s nothing to hit.”

Her eyes grew wide and blank. “Fadil drops his daggers, staring toward the prow. And then something rises up out of the water ahead of the ship. A giant black slab, covered in swirling patterns and dark stains. I hear whispers, though no one’s speaking. And then the ship carries forward, touching the surface. It… it sinks into it, slowly, like putty, casting ripples across the surface. The Aten-Re shudders as this thing starts to swallow it whole.”

Shivering, Inger glanced toward the cave. This black slab of hers sounded disturbingly familiar. In the darkness, it felt as though the door with the bloodlines was calling out to him from within. He remembered the way Cranberry had stared at it for ages, lost in a trance.

“I grab my brother,” said Kaduat, rubbing the bottle’s neck, “pulling him away, toward the stern, yelling that we have to get to the lifeboats. He doesn’t move, for some reason. Just stands there, not budging. I scream, begging him to run with me, but he looks me in the eyes and—” She inhaled sharply. “He tells me not to worry. That everything is going to be fine. He says that he’s seen what’s on the other side, and it’s not so bad. He wants me to come with him this time. He thinks I’ll find peace there.”

Haunted, she hunched over her bottle. “He reaches his foot toward it, letting it sink into the surface. I cry his name, Fadil! Fadil! Get away!” Her eyes burned. “And as he’s pulled through, he looks back at me and smiles. The last thing he says is I’ll see you soon. And then he’s gone.”

Inger shivered. “Do you ever follow him through?”

“I always wake up right before I touch the surface.” Kaduat shook her head, before craning back with the bottle held vertically and draining the last of the rum. She wiped her lips and tossed the empty bottle into the campfire. It clanked onto the wood, coming to rest as the label began to peel and curl back in the flames.

With a sigh, she watched the little image of Madam Zenubia burn. “That was my last one. It’s going to be a long trip from here on out.”

“I’ve got some tonic, if you want any,” he offered. “Tastes like the wrong end of a skunk, but it’ll keep you up…”

“Thanks, but no thanks,” Kaduat declined with a grimace, echoing his earlier refusal. “I’ve had Zaeneas’s swill before. Took a week to scrub that taste out of my mouth.” Inger shrugged, letting the flask fall back to his chest.

Sitting back, Kaduat looked up at the night sky and smiled. “Besides. Not all of my dreams are bad. In fact, there was one that was pretty good. Funnily enough, it started a lot like this. You and I, alone by the fireside.” She sounded strangely coy all of a sudden.

Blinking slowly, she turned her head toward him, eyes glinting in the firelight. “You know,” she said, “there’s more than one way to forget your troubles.”

The dragon stirred. That sick sensation from his fight with Cranberry was suddenly back, worse than ever. “Kaduat…” he warned.

“Relax,” she said, lying back against the seating log. “That ring on your ear hasn’t escaped my notice. I don’t want to get between you and her. But,” she said with a deceptively casual tilt of her head, “after what I heard tonight, I wondered—are you two still together?”

Oh, purred the dragon, like a cat discovering a mouse. Yes, this would hurt her. This would hurt her worse than anything.

His whole body vibrated like a plucked string. “Enough, Kaduat,” said Inger, dry-mouthed.

Obviously disappointed, but trying to stay aloof, she shrugged. “Okay. I’ll still be here, if things change. One perk of having first watch is the privacy—”

“Enough.” His voice could have frozen a river.

Suddenly looking sober, she withdrew. “As you wish.” She sat up, reaching a hesitant leg out before thinking better of it and letting it rest in the sand. Softly, she said, “I hope it works out. But if it doesn’t, my offer stands. Even if all you want to do is talk.”

The air was filled with that incessant aspen whispering again. He wanted to tell her where to shove her offer. To scream and curse at her, to rage and howl, to let the dragon breathe flame and for once, burn someone he didn’t love.

Instead, he sank listlessly further into the sand. What would be the point? Taking it out on Kaduat wouldn’t fix things between him and Cranberry. It wouldn’t silence the damnable echo of his father’s voice.

She doesn’t have a horn…

“Well,” said Kaduat awkwardly, looking away, “my shift is almost up. I guess I’ll—” Her eyes suddenly narrowed. “Hey. There it was again. Did you hear it this time?”

As if he could hear anything under the mocking laughter of the aspens. “It’s just the wind, Kaduat.”

“No… listen.” In the span of a moment, she’d undergone a remarkable transformation from garrulous drunkard to terse, vigilant watchcamel. Inger blinked in astonishment. Craning his ears, he listened, wondering what had her so spooked.

It took him a moment to realize exactly why the trees seemed so loud all of a sudden. All the insects and frogs had fallen silent. And just then, the wind quieted as well, a pause for breath in its endless whispering. In its wake, a new sound echoed faintly through the gorge. A thin, faint scraping noise, like something sharp dragging across stone. It was intermittent, a teeth-grinding shhhhhink tink tink tink that repeated every few seconds. It echoed around them, quiet and diffuse, seeming to come from every entrance to the campsite at once.

“I’ve never heard an animal make that sound before,” whispered Inger, gritting his teeth as it echoed. “Like metal on a chalkboard…”

“Danger?” asked Kaduat, equally hushed. She held a horn, so small that he hadn’t noticed it dangling from her jerkin, hovering near her lips and ready to sound the alarm.

“Shh,” Inger whispered. “If it is, let’s not draw it to us.”

“Every path in this canyon leads right to the center,” she hissed. “It’s bound to find us anyway.”

Before he could answer, there was the unmistakable sound of falling rocks. A small cascade of pebbles and loose dirt scattered down the side of the canyon wall, drawing their joint attention like a lightning rod. At the northernmost passage, the one blocked by a crushed cart, Inger squinted into the darkness.

Then, from high above, came the sound again, this time louder and unmasked by echo. Tink. Tink. Tink. Shiiiiiink.

Inger and Kaduat’s eyes drew upward, and he could feel his stomach falling. Above, perched between the narrow walls of the passageway, an enormous black lump sat motionless in the air. Four spindly appendages stretched out from its sides, pressing against the walls and supporting the dark mass with apparent ease. Large, swaying lengths extended from the thing’s front and back. It swallowed up the moonlight, its silhouette barely visible against the starlit sky.

Kaduat sucked in a breath, bringing the horn back to her lips, and Inger frantically pulled her foreleg down. “No!” he hissed. “If that thing comes down onto the tents—”

She hesitated, the horn trembling in her toes. With incredible swiftness, the thing above them suddenly surged forward. The four legs slid with a scraping shiiiiiiiiiink! across the stone, flinging it toward them. Kaduat and Inger fell back into the dark sand as the titanic mass landed on the tips of its legs near the center of the campsite, with a small thump far too quiet for something of its immense size. Now, lit by the rosy flames of the campfire, the creature was fully revealed.

It was gargantuan, misshapen lump, like nothing he’d ever seen. The central core of the beast was as large as two of their carts. From the back rose a pair of tails, unequal in length, each curling up and over its back like a scorpion’s. Instead of stingers, both ended in a forest of piercing, antler-like spikes. The slender, spider-like legs, double-jointed and bladed on the insides of the scythe-shaped feet, gleamed sharply in the firelight. They had to be incredibly strong to support such an immense weight on four needle-thin tips. From the creature’s front extended a vast, sinuous neck, flexible and tube-like, curving around to end in not a head but a round, jawless mouth, filled with concentric, pulsing rings of jagged and glittering teeth. Its skin was dark, clear, and covered in millions of tiny, hairlike filaments.

The creature had no flesh. Instantly, Inger recognized the material. The entire beast was made of solid obsidian. At first glance, its surface looked smooth, but a closer inspection revealed that it was composed of countless minute facets that shimmered in the firelight. Every part of it was glass—the teeth, those filaments, the lethal spiked tails, and the double-jointed insect legs. It was covered with dark runes, sprawling grooved whorls and spirals like the ones on the bloodline door. It creaked quietly with the sound of scraping glass as it flexed and moved, yet beneath the translucent surface of its skin were neither organs nor any obvious source of motive power. Instead, the firelight glinted off the stark white of bone.

They weren’t the beast’s own bones, Inger realized in awestruck horror. They followed no structure, more a pile than a skeleton. There were broken ribs, cracked spines, shattered skulls and splintered femurs; unicorn horns and griffon claws, deer antlers and antelope prongs. Within them all, forming the base of the central mass’s roughly elliptical bulk, was the giant skull of a dragon. Like the fleshless head of Merys that lay beneath the Sun Castle, it stared out of the onyx depths with black, empty sockets. Mammoth and jawless, it was twisted to the side, glaring at Inger as if promising vengeance for the kin he’d once slain.

This creature was a walking grave of glass.

Its infinitely tessellated neck twisted back and forth with jerky, violent swiftness. Was it blind? Could it hear them, smell them? It seemed to take no interest in Kaduat or Inger at all, that twitching mouth of glass-shard teeth not even pausing as it swayed around the campsite. The whole thing seemed to ceaselessly tremble under an immense tension, those hair-like filaments all constantly rustling like a cat raising its hackles.

A log burning in the fire suddenly collapsed, rattling the glass bottle. Another cloud of rosy sparks flew into the air. With fulminate speed and force, the creature’s neck burst forward. The thing’s head shot directly toward the firepit, halting for an instant above the flames, before plunging fully into the fire. From deep within its throat, a bone-vibrating thrumming filled the air, followed by a rattling series of clicks. The hair on Inger’s neck rose as the creature’s teeth flashed out, and the fire splashed across its obsidian surface.

The grooves across the glass began to glow, streaking upward across the thing’s neck. All the little filaments stood upright, trembling as the luminescent runes refracted through them. The light of the curling symbols was a brilliant rose, unmistakably the same color as Apricot’s hornlight. It swept in alien patterns across the beast’s skin, but as they neared the creature’s central mass the campfire flickered out and died. The runes remained lit for a moment, before fading away.

The grave-glass did not seem sated. Its head jerked back up from the smouldering embers, twitching back and forth like a wolf that had scented prey. The concentric rings of glassy teeth flexed and twitched within its open maw, and Inger heard a faint ringing from within, as if a thousand tiny tuning forks had been struck in unison. Its head swayed aimlessly once again, and it suddenly skittered forward with astonishing agility, passing Kaduat and Inger without heed. Stopping dead in its tracks like a frozen statue, it paused for an instant before resuming its swaying search.

It had consumed the magic within that fire in mere moments. Inger had no intention of finding out what it would do if it found a greater source—like a unicorn. “We’ve got to draw it away from the tents,” he whispered to Kaduat.

“And how do you plan on doing that?” she hissed back, staring at the creature in awe.

A shiver traveled down the grave-glass from its head to its twin tails, and it swiftly reoriented itself toward a single tent. Apricot and Cranberry’s, Inger realized, as lightning shot down his spine. They were out of time. He scooped up one of the stones encircling the firepit, and hurled it far away from the campsite with all the strength he could muster. It smacked the canyon wall with a ringing echo, but the beast’s only reaction was a faint tail-twitch.

Damn. No choice, then. Inger took a deep breath. Hefting another stone, he nudged Kaduat. “I’ll have to draw it off the hard way,” he whispered. “As soon as it’s away from the tents, arm everyone with whatever weapons we have left.”

“Be careful.” Tension lined her face.

Taking wing, Inger flew toward the passage that the creature had appeared from. He tossed the stone up, feeling the weight, and caught it again. It was a good thing he’d gotten all that practice in with Apricot, he thought darkly. Taking a moment to aim, he drew his foreleg back, timing his wingbeats. Then, like a cracking whip, his hoof shot forward. The stone soared through the night, slamming into the creature’s glassy side. Several of the tiny filaments shattered easily away, falling into the dark sand like glittering raindrops.

Instantly, the beast’s head swiveled to stare directly at him with eyeless intensity.

Cold sweat ran down his neck. Oh, it can see, all right. His wings beat frantically, flinging him back as the grave-glass burst into motion. Tails extending behind for balance, it came swarming across the sand like an enormous beetle, eerily quiet as it raced toward him. He had to lead it on a chase through the canyon, as far away as it would follow, giving the others time to prepare or flee—

A blue light pierced the darkness from the campsite. Inger’s eyes bulged, recognizing Beatriz’s silhouette, as she stepped out of her tent with a yawn, her prongs aglow. The grave-glass’s motion toward him instantly ceased, before its head arced up and backward over its body. He saw the entire beast quiver, before that rumbling, clicking sound shuddered out from its throat again.

Beatriz, on her way toward the latrine pit at the camp’s edge, stopped abruptly as she spied Kaduat, still frozen with the horn halfway to her lips. Beatriz’s eyes tracked the camel’s gaze toward the creature, widening as she saw its innumerable facets reflecting the pale moonlight. The antelope trembled, her hornlight wavering, and then the beast whirled into a spin before sprinting toward her and the tents. Beatriz’s scream rent the night, and all hell broke loose.

* * *

As a scream shattered his attempts to sleep, Apricot’s eyes snapped open.

Another fire, was his first terrified thought as he flung his blanket away, but no—he would feel the heat, hear the roar. Besides, there was nothing down here to burn.

“Mom, get up!” he said, hushed, shaking her as he scrambled toward the exit of the tent.

She woke with a start. “What’s happening?”

“I don’t know, yet.” As Cranberry fumbled with her blanket, he slipped out of the tent.

Stepping outdoors, the first thing he saw as he lifted his head was a plume of dark sand rising in the night just ahead. His eyes were drawn by the bright blue glow of Beatriz’s horns to his immediate left, and then to the enormous, speeding mass of glinting black that was barreling straight toward them.

A tremendous blast of sound filled the night as a horn blared in alarm. It echoed through the gorge, reverberating between the canyon walls. After a moment, shouts followed, as mercenaries began to spill from the tents.

The creature slammed into one of the circled carts in its way, easily knocking it aside with a careless blow that buckled the wooden side. The cart skidded through the sand, wheels spinning crazily. The beast was almost upon them, charging straight toward Beatriz. More on instinct than sense, Apricot ran between them, lighting his horn. This thing was far bigger than those tiny stones he’d blocked before, but there was no time to think as he reached for the wardsong.

As he dipped into the magic, he instantly felt that same cold void from earlier, now careening across the sand toward him. He froze, staring transfixed as the beast trampled over the first of the tents. Its long, wending neck came streaking through the moonlight, jawless mouth vibrating as it plunged forward.

A wall of crimson light sprang from the earth, accompanied by a familiar magical song. The beast smashed headlong into it, its neck folding like a limp rag as its momentum carried its whole body into the magical barrier. Pollux galloped forward, horn blazing in the night. “Get away!” he shouted.

Apricot stumbled backward, less out of obedience than rising panic. What was this thing? Almost as frightening as its size and speed was that emptiness he felt, a ravenous nothing that seemed to have no life or thought behind it.

The collision with Pollux’s barrier hadn’t stunned it for long. It swiftly reoriented itself, slamming both spiked tails against the wall in a brief alternating drumbeat. WHAM-WHAM-WHAM-WHAM! Cracks splintered across the magical surface. A trembling series of clicks emanated from the creature, as it latched its flat mouth onto the wall of light. Pollux yelped like he’d just stepped into a puddle of icy water, and glowing crimson runes suddenly raced across the creature’s head and neck.

Apricot felt a tug. “Come on,” hissed Cranberry, yanking him backward. “Run!” She grabbed Beatriz too, still frozen in fright, and pulled the two into a retreat. Apricot stumbled after her, but he couldn’t tear his eyes away from the quivering bulk of glass. Red light glittered all across its body as the wall of light shattered into sparks and vanished.

The camels coalesced around the makeshift armory cart, where Kaduat had hopped up onto the back and begun tossing spears out to her fellow soldiers one after another. Many cast fearful glances toward the beast as they caught the weapons and formed their lines. There was no time to put on armor—offense alone would have to suffice. Grabbing the last spear for herself, Kaduat leaped from the cart and landed in the sand at the head of her troops. “Falit-Ka!” she yelled to them, resting the spear on her shoulder with the tip facing forward. The mercenaries rushed forward in a wedge toward the glimmering rune-glass.

The beast shivered as the crimson runes on its skin faded away. Its head—or what passed for such—snapped up to stare directly at Pollux, who had tripped backward onto the sand. Apricot stretched out a hoof, horn igniting. “No!”

A cherry-red streak slammed into the creature’s neck from the sky, sending its head ploughing down into the sand. Inger landed lightly on his hooves, sliding across the ground beside it. Without hesitation, and seemingly unfazed by having its head planted violently into the earth, the thing’s twin tails stabbed forward like lightning. In an elegant pirouette, Inger leaped into the air and twisted between them, pulling his wings tight as he slipped through the narrow gap. His wings sprang out again as he shot back into the air.

The formation of camels reached their foe, crashing into the creature with their charge of spears. The metal tips hit the glass uselessly, scraping the surface and deflecting away. A few spears snapped outright, leaving their wielders holding broken shafts with blank looks of fear. The creature pushed itself back up, whirling in a circle and sweeping its tails into the camels’ ranks. The whole line of mercenaries was tossed aside, tumbling like ragdolls across the ground.

“Apricot,” came a voice, hard and focused. The young colt’s attention finally broke away from the chaos, to find Castor at his side with his mother and Beatriz. Virgil and Zaeneas stood behind them, both staring in horror at the battle. Castor’s eyes were locked on Apricot. “Listen to me. I need you to take the other noncombatants into the cave, do you understand?”

His mouth still hanging loosely open, Apricot nodded. Then he looked back toward Pollux, who was still struggling to stand. “Wait—no! I can help!”

“This is how you help,” said Castor, clapping a hoof to his shoulder and staring intently into his eyes. “Whatever that monster is, it’s too large to fit inside that cave. You’ll all be safe there until the fighting is over. Take your mother, Virgil and Beatriz as far back as you can go. I need you to protect them, all right?” His wings rose as he looked toward the melee, where the camels shouted in Dromedarian as they regrouped. “I haven’t seen Pwyll or Tybalt, but I’ll send them to you if I find them. Now go!” With that, he charged toward the fray.

Apricot still wanted to help Pollux, but Castor had given him an assignment—a real one, an adult responsibility. Apricot couldn’t let him down. Swallowing, he looked around at the others, his horn glowing to light their way. “Okay. Let’s go!” Cranberry gave him a tense but proud smile, and nodded.

Virgil took Beatriz’s shaky hoof in a claw and pulled her beside the others as all five broke into a sprint, with Apricot leading the way. They raced past the empty tents as more shouts and the clanking of metal and glass filled the air. Suddenly, he heard a terrible rumbling, and the telltale rushing of bladed legs across sand. Without slowing, he turned his head to see the beast charging after the fleeing group—straight for the glow of his horn.

“Run,” gasped Cranberry, her hooves pounding beside him.

The cavern mouth was just ahead. A faint orange glow flickered from deep within, like a warm promise of safety. Apricot’s legs shook the sand as he threw everything he had into galloping, but he could hear the thing grow rapidly louder behind him. Turning his head for another moment, he saw it so close that it blocked out the starlight above, those giant lamprey-teeth streaking toward him with the glittering promise of death.

Apricot screamed, twisting in midair as all his hooves left the ground. His horn flared without conscious thought, as he followed the muscle memory from all the practice with his father. As he crashed into the sand, sliding through the coarse grains, a small rose-colored dome of light flashed up over him. The creature’s head slammed into his ward, and before it could stop itself, its whole body followed. The beast crashed onto his shield-dome. In his horn, he felt an incredible strain as, for a moment, his barrier bore the full weight of the monster. It rolled over him with its legs and tails flailing in a frenzy.

The thing twisted, landing on its razor-bladed needle-feet as its sliding bulk cast a cloud of dark sand into the air. The rest of the group jerked to a terrified halt as the beast blocked the entrance to the cave. Its head lashed out again, colliding with Apricot’s glowing ward in a punishing staccato. He stared at it from behind the barrier, too scared to think. He felt that icy absence seize his music again as the thing’s filament-hairs all shivered, and its mouth closed the gap with focused intent. The warmth of his spellsong was suddenly stolen away, and his shield winked out.

An entire supply cart, enwreathed by an aura of blazing crimson, flew from the right and smashed into the creature’s core with a meteoric impact. Splintered wood and shattered glass exploded as the cart burst across the obsidian monstrosity, sending the beast reeling. A huge crack rent the creature’s side, an irregular bull’s eye with a starry corona of lines almost two meters across. It staggered to the left, leaving the cave entrance wide open.

“What are you waiting for?” yelled Pollux. “Move!”

“Go!” shouted Virgil, pulling Beatriz forward. As Zaeneas and Cranberry raced after them, Apricot just stared at the obsidian beast. The barrels and supplies from the cart scattered across the sand around the cavern mouth as debris tumbled through the air. Tiny shards of glass rained down from the new crack as the beast twitched, its head swaying violently as it searched for the source of the attack.

“APRICOT!” yelled his mother, her pale face visible in the moonlight as she paused at the entrance of the cavern.

He found his hooves, keeping his horn doused as he broke back into a gallop. He crossed the gap in a moment, racing inside behind his mother. He felt the breath rushfrom his lungs as he passed into the safe confines of the tunnel. Behind him, the outside air rang with shouts and the scraping of glass.

The two retreated into the depths of the cave, as that orange glow he’d seen earlier grew brighter. At the end, they found the others gathered in the light of a burning torch, held by the safe end in Pwyll’s mouth. “Professor! What’s going on?” he asked. The shadow of the young deer’s antlers wavered on the vast, black wall behind him. Apricot’s eyes were immediately drawn to the curling patterns across the glass. It looked exactly like the skin of that thing outside. He shivered.

“Pwyll?” panted Cranberry in bafflement. “What are you doing in here?”

“I couldn’t sleep,” he said, shifting uncomfortably. “My antlers kept itching.” He gave one an urgent scratch, eyes squinting until he exhaled and set his hoof back down. “So I came back to give the door another look…” As he turned back to the graven glass, he lifted his head and the torch. His eyes traced the grooves. “Beautiful, isn’t it?”

“Didn’t you hear the horn?” asked Virgil, harshly. Beside him, Beatriz was sitting on her haunches in the sand, eyes closed as she took short, panicky breaths. “We’re under attack.”

That seemed to snap Pwyll out of whatever strange mood had taken him. “What?!” He looked around at their tired faces in astonishment. “By who?”

“I don’t know,” said Cranberry, still breathing hard as she recovered from the run. “A creature. The size of a house, and made of thick glass. I’ve never seen or heard of such a thing.”

“Some kind of guardian, maybe,” suggested Zaeneas, glancing back toward the exit with weary, frightened eyes.

“No…” Cranberry shook her head. “An elken guardian would look as elegant as it was deadly. That… thing was just a jumble of glass limbs. Did you see the bones inside it?” She shivered. “I don’t think anyone made it. Not on purpose.”

Virgil spread a wing around Beatriz as he pulled her closer. “I guess now we know what killed Hermia,” he said darkly.

More shouting and crashes from outside echoed into the cave. Apricot looked back, starting to light his horn, but then he remembered the way it had attracted the creature, and let it remain dark. He didn’t dare draw it in here to put Castor’s guess about its size to the test. Swallowing, he took up a position between the exit and the others. If that creature did try to get in, his shields might be the only thing that could stop it.

Without his horn, he felt blind, despite Pwyll’s torch burning behind him. He couldn’t feel Pollux or the void outside, completely unable to follow the fight. All he could do now was wait.

* * *

Inger wove through the creature’s slashing limbs as if dancing in a thunderstorm. His hooves cracked against the glass, his wings beating strong as he spiraled between blows like a feather on the wind.

Behind! warned the dragon, as his ears caught a wooshing of air.

He dodged the incoming slash from the beast’s tail, kicking his hind legs against one of the antler-spikes. The tip snapped cleanly away, but it left an edge just as razor-sharp as the spike had been.

We have to find a weak spot, the dragon urged. Sink your teeth in and tear!

Yet the creature seemed to have no such weakness. He’d delivered dozens of powerful strikes across its core, neck, and tails, yet despite the tiny cracks his pounding hooves left, he had the sense that he wasn’t even slowing it down. While he had yet to take a serious blow, he couldn’t keep up his aerial dance forever.

The legs, hissed the dragon. Go for the legs!

Those slender, bladed legs were the creature’s most dangerous weapon. They slashed about at the mercenaries, sharp and strong enough to cleave a pony in two. But they were the thinnest structures on its entire body, hair-filaments aside. If he could just land a blow to one of the joints, it might snap, and cripple the beast.

Easier said than done. The creature twitched and bolted around, moving with incredible speed for something so large. By the time Inger reached one of the legs, a moment would pass and the beast would sweep away out of hoof’s reach. After another close swipe of its tails, Inger broke away, flying up above the fight to gather his breath for another attack.

Below him, the grave-glass roiled across the sand, knocking tents and caravan carts aside with its passage. It whirled like a thresher of blades amidst the scattered camels. The thing was so fast and wild that formation fighting was useless. Under Kaduat and Castor’s leadership, the mercenaries had resorted to evasion, darting in to deliver a single blow before retreating. A familiar tactic—the Firewings called it killing with bug bites, which they employed when fighting monsters like manticores or hydras that were large and strong enough to crush through armor with a single blow. Yet against a creature so agile, it was of limited effectiveness: several camels, unable to pull away before the thing’s counterattack had caught them, already lay bleeding in the sand.

Their sole advantage was the beast’s mindless focus on retaliation. It seemed to act without any concern beyond lashing out at whatever had attacked it last. No matter how inconsequential the strike, any blow to the creature’s body drew its whole attention in an instant. If it was about to cut down a helpless mercenary with one of those bladed scythe-legs, a tossed stone would cause it to abandon its victim without hesitation in favor of chasing the latest assailant across the ravaged campsite.

It was evident that their weapons were dealing cosmetic damage at most to the creature’s smooth glass surface. Spears chipped and clinked harmlessly off of the solid mass. Even Inger’s first diving strike to its neck, which had left a weltering spiderweb of cracks, hadn’t slowed it down in the slightest. The only one who’d dealt it a serious blow so far was Pollux, but hurling that entire supply cart had taken a lot out of the mage. Now he was standing at the edge of the melee, tossing smaller bits of debris at the thing to little effect. A direct magical attack seemed suicidal, given how the beast seemed to suck down any spell it encountered.

In the air, Castor pulled up beside Inger, wings flapping vigorously. “We’re barely making a dent,” he muttered gravely.

“We’ve got to hit the joints,” said Inger, blowing out a hard breath. “If we can take one of those legs out, we’ve got a chance.”

“All right,” Castor nodded sharply. “Together!”

Despite the carnage and the blood and the danger, an undeniable sense of euphoria filled Inger’s chest. It had been such a long time—years, he realized, sourly remembering Wheatie’s joke about flying a desk—since he’d been in a simple, straightforward, good fight. There was no time for emotion or self-doubt. There was only him, and his enemy. Kill or be killed. He’d been longing for this, and here it was: a chance to hurt something, something hostile and alien, not even really alive enough to feel a moment of guilt about slaying it. He could let it all out on this monster, punish it, pummel it with his hooves until it was a pile of crumbled glass.

There was a purity, an honesty to combat that he craved. To be a great soldier, you had to be more than willing to take a life. Some part of you had to enjoy it—the thrill of outmaneuvering your enemy, of shattering his defenses and bringing him low, surviving when he did not. You had to have a lust for battle that Equestria pretended it was too civilized for, that only the nordponies embraced with all the vigor it deserved. It was a side of him that even Cranberry couldn’t understand the way that Wheatie or Windstreak could. This was what he lived for.

Come on, snarled the dragon, clinging tightly to his shoulder. Let’s kill this thing.

“Go!” he barked, and together with Castor, his wings folded and he dove toward the frenzied melee below. Inger locked his hooves forward, ready to put all the power of his dive behind the strike. The wind whistled in his ears as the grave-glass grew larger before him. A hurled spear bounced off its side, and the beast swiveled, exposing its left-sided legs.

His hooves cracked into the second joint of the thing’s front leg, with so much force behind the blow that the limb slid forward and sent the beast’s core plunging to the ground. Behind, Castor collided with the other leg, sending a ringing tone of vibrating glass shuddering through the creature. The legs were cracked, but not broken. Both pegasi flew on, swooping back above for another attack run as the creature stood and followed their arc with its eyeless gaze. “Again!” called Castor, as they tucked their wings tight in unison and plummeted.

As Inger and Castor reached the terminus of their dives, one of the camels below gave a frustrated yell and swiped at the beast with the broken haft of his spear. The wood clunked off the creature’s tail. Instantly, it whirled and slashed a leg across the camel’s chest, sending blood arcing through the night in a crimson geyser. Where the damaged leg had been, a forest of tail spikes now waited. Inger instinctively converted his attack into an aerial roll to the right, just like every Firewing had been trained. Focused on the grave-glass, he missed Castor doing the same in the opposite direction. The two pegasi collided, bouncing off each other in a moment of surprise.

Then the creature’s mighty neck came swinging about and slammed into them both from the side. Castor went flying away as Inger found himself tumbling in the air, his lungs emptied by the force of the blow. Disoriented, his wings flapped crazily as he spun out of control. Up was down and down was up, the stars spinning wildly around him. Then the ground rushed up to greet him as he crashed into the sand.

He skidded through the coarse, dark grains, wincing as the friction seared his side. For a moment, he simply lay there, completely winded, hearing another camel scream in pain from behind. Inger planted one hoof beneath himself, pushing up weakly as he tried to regain his bearings. He’d been thrown clear to the other side of the canyon, which at least gave him a moment to recover.

The sound of moving sand drew his attention. His head snapped up as he sought the source of the noise, and his eyes widened in surprise as the moonlight revealed Tybalt, still dressed in the half-length white summer robe he’d worn the day before, frantically digging in the sand with both forehooves. “Father…?”

At the sound of his voice, Tybalt straightened. His father’s head jerked over his shoulder, landing on the battered pegasus. “Inger!” He leaped to his hooves, rushing toward his son.

As he helped Inger stand, Tybalt’s eyes shone with worry. “Are you injured?”

“Nothing broken,” grunted Inger, fluffing his wings as sand drizzled from his feathers. “Ah! It’ll be a hell of a bruise, though.” He took a step back toward the battle, before the air puffed from his chest and he nearly collapsed again.

“You can’t go back in there.” Tybalt shook his head. “It’s suicide!”

“I’m a Firewing,” said Inger, eyes narrowing on the skittering grave-glass. “I’ve fought worse.”

“Don’t be foolish.” Tybalt withdrew, returning to the spot where he’d been digging. “Here. Help me with this!”

Inger blinked, peering into the darkness, and took a step toward his father. His hoof banged into something heavy and hard, sending up a hollow ringing. “Ow!” With a start, he realized it was Zaeneas’s pewter cauldron, lying half-buried in the sand. Ahead, he now recognized the object of his father’s desperate digging as the zebra’s little alchemy cart, turned onto its side. The back side faced upward, leaving the front doors pinned below, and the whole cart was covered with a thick layer of sand. No doubt it had been knocked over by one of the grave-glass’s frenetic, wide-ranging movements. “What are you doing?”

“The Elyrium,” said Tybalt, panic creeping into his voice. “Zaeneas told me she’d finished the batch before we made camp tonight. We have to get it out of there!”

Elyrium, Inger thought, new hope igniting in his breast. He recalled the way the beast had absorbed Apricot’s flames, and fed on Pollux’s shield. Obsidian’s a powerful reservoir of magical energy, Pwyll and Cranberry had both said. That meant a monster made of the stuff ought to be destroyed from even a splash of Elyrium, if Rye’s tales of its potency weren’t exaggerations. “Yes… yes! That could work!” He joined his father, scooping hoof-fuls of sand away.

The cart was soon freed from the sand, but the doors were still underneath it. Tybalt scrabbled at the underside of the cart, straining with his hooves to turn it over. “Not like that,” said Inger, bracing a shoulder against the cart’s side. “Come on. Push together!”

His father joined him, and the cart groaned with a creak of wood as it tipped. It passed the balance point, rolling onto its side with a loud rattling of broken glass from inside. Not waiting for an instant, Tybalt darted forward and tore open the doors, revealing the inside of the tiny cart. “No, no, no!”

When the grave-glass had bowled the cart aside, the cauldron had done significant damage as it tumbled its way out. The vials and ingredient bottles once carefully organized on the sides of the cart had been smashed and tossed freely about, covering the inside of the cart in splattered potions and wilting herbs. Ginkgo fumes filled the air, mixed with a dozen other unidentifiable smells, but cutting through them all was the incongruous yet unmistakable scent of vanilla.

One bottle immediately caught Inger’s eye. It was a spherical glass container, big enough to hold at least a liter and a half of liquid, with a short cylindrical neck. It was filled with a clear liquid that seemed to glint like it had bits of reflecting metal floating in it, even from within the darkened cart. Though the bottle was still firmly ensconced in the iron framework on the side of the cart that was now acting as a ceiling, a thin crack extended along the sphere’s side. Liquid seeped out like tears, dripping steadily onto the mess of shattered glass and ruined potions below.

“No!” gasped Tybalt, sinking beside it. He reached under the dripping stream, as though he could catch the liquid with his hooves. “It can’t all be—this isn’t…”

Inger glanced down at his chest, and the small flask of tonic still dangling from his neck. Swiftly, he pulled it off and uncorked the top. He jerked it sideways, tossing out the remainder of the ginkgo mixture, and crouched beside Tybalt. “Move over.”

“This can’t be happening,” muttered Tybalt, his eyes wide with terror as he pressed his hooves over the crack in the bottle, doing nothing to stem the flow. “The Elyrium… all gone… all for nothing…”

“Father, I can’t get to it with you in the way.” Inger’s brows furrowed. It wouldn’t be surprising if the monster attack had sent anyone into shock. But he was familiar with those symptoms, and this wasn’t quite the same—rather, Tybalt looked like he was having a full-fledged panic attack. “Father?”

“I can’t stop it! It’s leaking!” Tybalt was hyperventilating.

“Father. Tybalt!” No response. It was like the other pegasus didn’t even know he was there. Those golden eyes were still transfixed with horror on the pouring liquid. Inger leaned in. “Dad!”

That snapped his father back to reality. “Wha…?” Tybalt blinked, looking back at him. “Inger—I’m sorry, I—”

“Move, quickly.” Inger shooed him aside, thrusting the empty flask beneath the dripping Elyrium. Seeing the large quantity that remained in the glass container—too much for his little flask—another idea suddenly sparked. “Actually, here. Hold this.”

As Tybalt took the flask with unsteady hooves, Inger raced away from the cart toward the cauldron. He scooped out sand from the cavity with a hasty hoof. Hefting one of the handles with a grunt at the dead weight of the pewter, he dragged it through the sand back toward the cart. “All right! We can fit all that’s left in here.” Gently nudging Tybalt aside once more, he reached in and unseated the glass vessel. Yanking out the stopper with his teeth, he poured it into the upright cauldron. When it was empty, he tossed the container back into the cart with the rest of the broken glassware.

“Come on. I’ll need your help to carry this.” Inger stood upright, hooking his left hoof under one of the cauldron’s handles. Tybalt stared at the Elyrium, still breathing heavily. “Come on!” barked Inger, and his father jerked again.

After quickly re-corking the flask and stuffing it into the pocket of his summer robe, Tybalt reached down with both hooves to take the other handle. “On three,” he said, shakily.

Inger grunted out the count, placing his other hoof under the handle. “One. Two. Three!” The two pegasi heaved, and lifted into the air with their heavy burden, wings flapping madly. The Elyrium sloshed within the cauldron, full of glimmering specks.

Immediately, fresh pain spread out across Inger’s chest from the hit he’d taken. As his forelegs strained against gravity, he felt the ache radiating under his skin. He ignored it, focusing on the skittering mass of black in the campsite ahead. Katabasis had taken more losses, though in the dark it was impossible to tell how many had fallen. Inger’s stomach fell as he watched one camel crawl away from the grave-glass, only to be carelessly stepped on by one of those piercing legs as the beast swarmed over him to attack another mercenary. The camel jerked violently as the glass blade sheared through his back, giving a cry of pain before falling still.

“Hurry,” gasped Tybalt, wings faltering under the strain. “I can’t hold this for long.”

The two flew toward the creature as swiftly as their burden allowed. Gods, the cauldron was heavy. Inger felt rivulets of sweat running down his neck and back. “We’ll have to get close,” he grunted between clenched teeth. “We can’t afford to miss.”

Tybalt was visibly afraid, but he nodded. “Tell me when.”

Limbs slashed through the night as the grave-glass twisted and struck. It seemed tireless, a constantly-whirling dervish of sharpened glass, overwhelming the mercenaries as they grew exhausted by their constant darting in and out. To the right, Inger saw Kaduat pulling a wounded camel away over the sand. Above, Castor was still making diving attacks at its legs, but having no success as the creature twitched away again and again. Pollux’s artillery of cart debris had paused, as the mage sat slumped in the sand far off to their left.

The Elyrium’s our only hope, Inger thought, gritting his teeth. This had better work.

They hovered for a moment above the beast, as Inger tried to judge the distance. “Alright. Together, now. Drop it on my signal. Let’s go!” His wings pumped, and he broke into a dive with his father. The cauldron swung between them, tipping forward as they fell. Wind rushed past Inger’s face as his wings flapped and his forelegs strained, pulling the dead weight even faster than free-fall.

The glass monster rushed up beneath them, darting out of their travel arc and then back into it, slashing wildly at the mercenaries. Now! hissed the dragon. “Now!” yelled Inger. His legs surged, and the two pegasi hurled the cauldron forward.

His heart leaped into his throat as the pewter vessel sailed through the air. For a terrible moment he thought they had missed entirely, that it would crash uselessly to the ground and spill their precious hope across the sand. Then the cauldron hit the creature’s back with a tremendous CLANG, splattering liquid across the dark obsidian. He could see it glinting as it ran freely over the beast’s whorled surface.

As he and Tybalt pulled away, Inger watched and panted for air. The beast’s head jerked up toward them, and it leaped from the ground with a swipe of its forelegs. Inger barely dodged, feeling the air rush past as the blade sliced it so closely that it took off one of his feather-tips. His wings beat frantically as he gained altitude, out of the beast’s reach. A moment later, it was distracted when Castor came swooping down to deliver another hit to one of its tails, and it quickly bolted after him.

Inger and his father hung in the air, waiting for a few endless moments. Watching the beast continue its frantic chase across the sand, Tybalt cried out, “It didn’t do anything!”

Inger’s heart sank as the beast swiveled beneath them, swarming after Castor. “Did Zaeneas brew it wrong?”

“No! I’m certain the Elyrium works!” Tybalt shook his head, staring in horror. “I don’t understand!”

Suddenly, Inger realized the problem. It’s a reservoir, he thought, recalling the way it had consumed Apricot’s fire. It had sucked that energy into itself, deep down beneath the surface of the glass. “Stay up here!” he yelled. “I have an idea!” He ignored his father’s confused shouts as he dove away, streaking toward the edge of the battlefield and the crimson-robed unicorn who stood there.

Landing beside Pollux with a thump in the sand, Inger tucked his wings to his sides. “Cas?” asked the mage, turning sharply. “Oh—Lord Vallen.” His horn was aglow, with another piece of broken wood from the cart hefted in his magical aura. The unicorn’s exhaustion was evident in his voice. “I just needed a minute. I’m ready to fight again.” He turned toward the beast, cantering forward with his improvised missile.

“Hold on,” said Inger, following him. “Tybalt and I splashed that thing with Elyrium, but the magic’s too deep inside it to have any effect. Do you think you can get it to bring up those glowing runes again?”

Pollux’s legs slowed to a stop as his eyes widened. The aura around his missile vanished and he let it fall. His head jerked between Inger and the grave-glass, before he swallowed and nodded. “I think so.” With a weary puff of breath, he pulled his hood down. The unicorn’s pale mane fluttered around his head in the cool breeze. “I just hope it doesn’t take me with it.” His crimson eyes suddenly blazed beneath his brilliant hornlight, and he charged forward with Inger at his side.

They crossed the line of ruined tents as the beast cornered Kaduat, who stood guard over one of her wounded compatriots. She roared defiantly at it, hefting her spear. Then, a dozen blades of crimson light shimmered into existence, surrounding the creature in a hemisphere. The grave-glass instantly paused, turning its head up. Its teeth shivered as that tuning-fork noise emanated out from its throat.

Pollux roared yah! as every spear of light simultaneously shot inward. They collided with the creature’s glassy skin, seamlessly sinking into it. Beneath each spear, a ripple of crimson spread through the grooved symbols, like the surface of a pond in a rainstorm. Pollux’s horn grew searingly bright as he bent his head forward and fired a beam of pure magical energy. It collided with the creature’s side, where it was effortlessly absorbed. Red whorls of light raced across the thing’s impervious skin. It shivered, reaching its head toward the mage.

Pollux’s eyes rolled back and closed as his hornlight winked out. His galloping legs went slack. Suddenly limp, his momentum carried him forward into the sand, ploughing almost a meter forward. Inger skidded to a stop beside him. “Pollux!” The grave-glass, covered in crimson swirls, bent low and broke into a sprint toward them.

And then, the lights reached the splatter of liquid on the creature’s back.

In an instant, the glow went from bright red to a painfully blinding white. Electricity sparked, surging with blue sparks through the liquid. Blue flames suddenly flared along the creature’s back, streaking over its surface. The grave-glass’s charge faltered as it hunched in apparent agony, trembling violently. Then the thing reared back on two legs, piercing the ground behind it with both tails, lifting its head in a perfect vertical line toward the sky. A terrible, keening wail pierced the night.

Castor came streaking in from the side, moving so fast that he was little more than a bronze blur. He hit the thing’s damaged rear leg, finally shattering the slender joint. It snapped with a loud crack as glass shards went flying. The grave-glass tumbled sideways, crashing down into the sand as its wailing abruptly ceased. One of its tails twitched as its remaining legs moved, scratching at the empty air.

Kaduat raced toward the fallen beast. She passed its back, swiping her speartip through the dripping Elyrium on its back without pausing. She reached its neck, springing up onto the tessellated glass. Grasping her weapon’s shaft with both forefeet, she roared, “Die! Die!” and brought her spear down over and over onto the crack Inger’s first attack had left. “Die, you fucking thing!”

The spear broke through, piercing the center of the crack and smashing down into the beast’s throat. More sparks shot outward as Kaduat snarled. She raised a foreleg to shield her eyes as a gout of flame followed, before swiftly dying out. The creature’s tail rattled for a few moments, gradually slowing as it came to rest in the dark sand. Everything went still.

Inger lifted Pollux’s head from the sand, relieved to see the unicorn’s chest rising and falling with faint, shaky breaths. He crouched, pulling the mage onto his back. With a grunt, he stood, marching with his burden toward the fallen grave-glass, where the other survivors were gathering.

He was dismayed to see only about half of the camels standing beside the body, most with fresh wounds. Kaduat slid down off the thing’s neck, leaving her spear planted in the glass. “Break the rest of its legs off,” she ordered hoarsely. “I want to be sure it’s dead.” She shook her head and repeated the orders in Dromedarian. The other camels scurried to comply, beginning to chip away at the creature’s spidery limbs with their spears.

Castor landed beside Kaduat as Inger reached them. “Pollux!” he cried, racing forward toward his brother.

“He’s alive,” said Inger, and Castor sagged with relief. “But that took everything he had.”

“Here,” said Castor, extending a foreleg. The two pegasi shifted the unconscious mage onto his brother’s back. “I’ll go find Zaeneas. She’s in the cave with the others. Maybe—maybe she’ll have something for him,” he mumbled, with uncharacteristic hesitation. “Come on, Polly, it’ll be all right…” He trotted away.

Inger watched him go for a moment, before sharing a look with Kaduat. The camel’s eyes were as hollow as they’d been when she told him about her brother. Shaking her head, she looked around at the camels trying to break off the creature’s legs. “Twelve of my people,” she said, her voice dour and tense, “dead in less than fifteen minutes.”

All the companions who’d followed her from Dromedaria must have lost their pharaoh’s blessing, too, Inger realized. He swallowed. “Kaduat…”

Bitterly, she shook her head. “I should have blown that damn horn the moment we saw it.”

“It wouldn’t have made a difference,” Inger said, staring at the moonlit bones within the obsidian hulk. “You saw how fast it was. That was one of the deadliest things I’ve ever fought.”

She glanced at him in disbelief. “One of?” Then she followed Inger’s gaze to the giant dragon skull, staring out at them from beneath the creature’s translucent skin. “Oh.”

Tybalt alighted beside them, fluffing his wings to shake off some sand. “Are either of you injured?”

“Nothing serious,” said Kaduat darkly. “I can’t say the same for my troops.”

“I can pay for any medical care your people require,” Tybalt promised quietly. “I owe them that. You’ve saved all our lives tonight.”

Kaduat gave him a grim nod. “Thank you, Count Vallen. But we still need to get them there, first.”

Inger looked toward the cave entrance, still surrounded by barrels and crates from the cart Pollux had destroyed. “I’m going to check on the others.”

“I’ll come with you,” said Kaduat. Her eyes finally softened. “We’ll see if the kid’s okay.”

“I’ll join you, too,” said Tybalt, still looking a little pale and shaky.

Leaving the mercenaries to their work, the three picked their way through the wreckage of the campsite. As Inger stepped through snapped tent poles and crushed camping tools, he couldn’t even tell whether the shattered fragments of wood and shredded cloth belonged to Katabasis or the prior expedition. No mystery now what had destroyed the previous campsite. That glowing sphere in Hermia’s satchel must be what had drawn it after her. Retreating from the creature, she’d fled into the cave for safety—just not fast enough, Inger thought soberly. But if this beast was the cause of Locke’s disappearance, then where were the rest of the bodies?

The bones, suggested the dragon ominously, but Inger shook his head. As huge as the grave-glass had been, it couldn’t have fit all the corpses of the entire expedition within itself. And Locke had certainly had no dragon with him. There was something else going on here.

But his curiosity was now thoroughly overpowered by a desire to take his family and get the hell away from this gorge, this forest, and this whole damned island. Nothing his father said now could convince him the risks were worth it. He suspected that with Pollux injured and the loss of so many of the mercenaries, Castor would be in agreement. Once they’d regrouped, they would head straight back for Port Faeloch and then home to Equestria. Maybe they could even leave tonight.

The glow of a torch beckoned them into the cavern. It was crowded inside, Inger thought, blinking as his eyes adjusted to the firelight. Virgil and Beatriz sat beside the right wall, quiet and subdued. Near the opposite wall, Zaeneas and Castor hovered over Pollux, the zebra pulling various vials from the bandolier around her chest and tipping them into the unicorn’s mouth. They appeared to be having little success in reviving him. Cranberry, her mane still frazzled from sleep, sat beside the vast slab of glass with the glowing blue orb in one hoof, staring into the open red-bound journal. Inger wasn’t sure how much comfort she’d find amongst its blank pages. Her hooves were still shaking.

At the sound of Inger’s hooves scraping across the sandy cavern floor, she glanced up. Their eyes met, and for an instant hers widened with relief. But then, her gaze hardened. She looked away, scowling, and slammed her book shut. Inger felt the dragon stir, still hot-blooded and flushed with the thrill of combat, but bit his tongue. Now wasn’t the time.

Beside him, Kaduat sucked in a hissing breath. She stared at the grooved door with wide eyes. “Fadil,” she whispered, with religious terror.

“We’re not going through that,” Inger promised her, muttering, “We’re all getting the hell out of here.” She nodded a little too quickly, not tearing her eyes from the black glass.

“Dad! Kaduat!” Apricot came bounding forward, wrapping Inger’s foreleg in a hug.

“Hey, Junior.” He patted his son’s back. “We’re all right.”

“Did you kill it?”

“I’m not even sure it was alive in the first place,” said Inger, with a half-hearted smile, “but yes. I think we killed it.”

“Good.” Apricot shivered. He looked back over his shoulder. “Pollux is hurt,” he said in a small voice. “I can barely hear his song.”

“He’ll be all right,” promised Inger, hoping that he wasn’t lying. “Is your mother okay?”

Apricot’s eyes fell to the cave floor. He kicked a pebble. “Yeah.” His horn lit dimly as he drew the stone back.

“Oh… good,” Inger mumbled, swallowing. “Apricot—”

He was interrupted by a sudden clamor of shouting from behind. Kaduat was the first to react, whirling around. “Amir! Sariz!”

She was turning to run for the exit when Apricot gasped, his horn flickering. “No! I feel it, it’s still—”

Outside, the shouting turned to screaming. Inger’s wings spread wide as he and Kaduat rushed toward the cave exit. They made it halfway before the portal darkened. The dim blue of night was suddenly replaced by the stygian black of obsidian. The hulking mass dragged itself along on two spidery front legs, tails pushing it forward from behind. The grave-glass’s sinuous neck burst into the cave like a writhing serpent, letting out another ear-splitting shriek.

The two soldiers recoiled, avoiding the thing’s lamprey-like mouth as it thrashed and smashed against the walls of the cave. One of its front legs, covered with fresh blood, squeezed into the entrance, scrabbling for purchase on the rock. Debris from the destroyed cart was shoved inside, a barrel and one cracked wheel rolling down the inclined cavern floor. Inger and Kaduat stepped aside as they passed, staring in horror as their exit was completely blocked. The beast’s central core was too large to fit, crunching against the stone edges of the cave mouth as it pressed forward with mindless, murderous intent. Kaduat’s spear was still lodged in its neck, clanking woodenly off the stones as it flailed.

“Back,” rasped Kaduat, pulling Inger’s shoulder. The two retreated toward the others, who had all pressed up against the massive black wall.

“We’re going to die,” moaned Beatriz, covering her face with a trembling hoof.

A rosy light illuminated the creature, growing more solid as Apricot stepped ahead of the group. The beast’s head stilled, before it let out that familiar rumble-clicking. Then it shrieked again, thrashing violently. The cavern shook, raining dust and soil on them. “Apricot, get back!” ordered Inger.

“No! Dad, if it gets inside—”

Another hideous wail from the beast silenced them both, as they clapped their hooves to their ears. Inger stepped back, his hoof thwacking the barrel that had rolled into the tunnel. As the barrel rolled backward, it came to rest at Virgil’s feet. The engineer sat up sharply, eyes fixed upon it.

“It’s going to bring the cave down on us!” yelled Kaduat.

As the grave-glass’s cry reverberated, Virgil darted forward from his spot beside Beatriz. The griffon rolled the barrel over, revealing the DANGER label painted on the side. “Blackpowder,” the griffon shouted, raising his head. His eyes had a steely glint. “Pwyll! Give me your torch!”

The young deer was paralyzed, staring at the writhing monstrosity before them. With an irritated grunt, Virgil’s claw shot forward and he yanked the torch from Pwyll’s mouth. Inger watched in alarm. “What are you doing? If you set that off, we’ll all—”

“Trust me!” Virgil shouted, prying his claws into the barrel’s cap. He yanked it out, exposing a small, round hole in the top. Carefully holding the torch high above the barrel, he began shaking it out. Stepping forward, he left a trail of powder as he approached the beast.

Inger forestalled him with a hoof to the chest. “That’ll collapse the entire cave!”

“You have a better idea?” Virgil waved his torch at the monster. “Look! See that gap?” Inger followed the line of the torch. Beside the joint between the creature’s scraping leg and heaving body was a hole, exposing the night beyond. “If we can get this wedged in there, most of the blast will travel out, not in. With luck, it’ll take a big enough chunk of that thing with it to put it down for good.” His beak clenched tight for a moment. “We’ll make a trail to the barrel and light it from here. Apricot! Can you put up a shield when the bomb goes off?”

The young unicorn nodded, the fright in his eyes matched by determination.

Inger hesitated. Then another tremor rocked the cave as the beast’s tails smashed against the outside canyon wall. “All right,” he said, releasing the griffon. “Give me the barrel. I’ll get it there.”

“No,” said Virgil, with a curt shake of his head, “I’ve got it. Take this.” He offered the torch. Inger took it without thinking, biting down on the wood.

A hoof landed on Virgil’s shoulder. “No!” Beatriz pulled him away. “This is crazy!”

“Bea,” he said, exhaling. “Please. Let me do this.”

“You’ll be killed!”

He looked into her eyes, stroking her cheek with a gentle claw. “It’s blackpowder, Bea. My blackpowder. It has to be me.” He swallowed. “And if I can use it to save some lives instead of destroy them, save you, then those scales will feel a lot lighter.” Swiftly, he dove in to kiss her. Then he burst away, grabbing the barrel and hoisting it over his shoulder. The powder rained down behind him as he charged toward the beast.

“Virgil!” she screamed, reaching out, but Kaduat grabbed and held her from behind, with an anguished look after the griffon.

The beast seemed completely unaware of Virgil as he entered its reach. The thing’s head continued its wild, aimless struggle, smashing in a frenzy against the sides of the cave. Virgil ducked as it swept over him, crashing against the wall and raining down shattered filaments over his feathers. With catlike grace, he pounced to the other side, weaving out of the flailing neck’s path. His wings spread wide, and he leaped into the low space above it, rolling over the creature’s next swipe as he clutched the barrel in both claws.

Virgil landed beside the thing’s thrashing leg. He shoved the barrel into the gap, turning around and kicking both hind legs to wedge it firmly in the crack. “Now!” he shouted. Inger let the torch fall onto the blackpowder trail, which instantly sparked and popped as fire raced across the sand. White smoke burst from the line, filling the air with haze. It streaked toward the beast as Virgil’s wings stretched wide to flee.

The trail of fire reached the point where the griffon had leaped into the air, and the flame suddenly burned out. Inger sucked air through his teeth. Virgil’s aerial roll to avoid the creature had scattered the powder too widely to burn.

The grave-glass’s leg slashed, catching Virgil’s wing. He cried out, falling back against the wall and clutching it as blood splattered across the rock. The griffon collapsed to the ground as the leg scratched toward him, pressing himself down to avoid the blade. It scraped the wall above him, leaving white scratches on the stone. Virgil scrabbled back, using his hind legs to push himself up against the barrel. The wood creaked and bent as the weight of the creature squeezed it against the rocks.

Virgil’s eyes met Inger’s, and with his beak twisted in a rictus of pain, he nodded. Inger grimly returned the nod, and held the torch out between his hooves. He whipped it forward. The torch sailed across the cave, arcing over the grave-glass’s flailing limbs, before landing in Virgil’s waiting claw.

“I love you!” he called, and Beatriz screamed again, pounding against Kaduat’s restraining grasp. Virgil smiled, and then turned to jab the blazing torch into the open barrel.

Beatriz broke free, shoving Kaduat away as she flung herself toward the chaos, only to slam into a rosy wall of light that appeared in an flash. Then there was a colossal, earth-shaking roar as the blackpowder exploded. A wave of pressure flashed through the cave, enough of it passing through Apricot’s barrier to hit Inger like a river bursting through a dam. He flew back against the slab of glass, his head cracked against the the surface, and everything went black.

* * *

The first sense to return was hearing, as the ringing in his ears grew louder. “Inger,” came a muted voice. “Inger, get up.” It was Tybalt, he thought faintly, feeling two hooves gently shaking him. “Come on, Inger, please. We need you.”

One eye fluttered open. Half his face was buried in the sand, along with his right hoof and wing. Pain radiated throughout his body, and the pounding in his skull was suspiciously concussion-like. Inger puffed for air, blowing sand out of his mouth. “Mnngh,” he grunted.

“He’s alive!” Tybalt exhaled in relief. “Come on, Inger. Can you stand?”

I’m trying, he thought wearily, trying to ignore the lance of pain as he pushed his leg against the ground. Sand cascaded off of him as he slowly rose. The cave was dark, lit only by the flickering rose of Apricot’s magic. Inger blinked, looking up.

Above them, crumbled stones and massive boulders hung suspended, glowing softly in a magical aura. Ahead, where the exit of the cave had been, there was no griffon nor beast of glass, merely a vast pile of rubble. They were sealed in.

Apricot’s mane was soaked with sweat, his eyes wide and dark as he looked up at the cave-in. His entire body trembled with the strain of holding it above them. To the side, Castor held Pollux’s still-limp body, whispering desperately to him. Zaeneas sat beside them, staring at the blocked exit with fatalistic eyes. Near the rockfall, Beatriz was frantically digging with her bare hooves, but for every stone she pulled away, more came tumbling in to fill the gap.

Kaduat sat beside her, reaching out a gentle foot. “He’s gone, Bea.”

Beatriz slapped it away. “No! Just help me!”

“Bea, if you keep digging, you’ll bring the rest of it down on us.” Kaduat tried to still her frenzied digging with her foot. “I’m sorry.”

Apricot let out a strained whine. “Pwyll…” he pleaded apologetically. “I can’t keep this up by myself forever.”

“I’m trying!” The deer’s eyes were shut tight as he gritted his teeth. A few light green sparks snapped around his velvety antlers. “It’s still too early in the spring! If it were two weeks later—damn it, I should have brought one of Ciaran’s foci. Damn it, damn it, damn it…”

“Any ideas?” Tybalt quietly asked Inger. “We can’t dig through all that before Apricot’s strength fails him. Or our air runs out.”

“I… I don’t…” Inger’s head was still fuzzy from the impact. He held it, breathing deeply in the smoke-choked air. “Let me think.”

They were left in the quiet, with only the sounds of Beatriz’s digging to rattle their nerves. Inger could already taste how dead the air had grown. They had maybe half an hour of oxygen left. Less, given how much Apricot and Beatriz were exerting themselves.

“There’s only one way out of here.” Cranberry’s voice cut through the stagnant air, drawing everyone’s attention. She walked forward, almost reluctantly. “Kaduat… I need to borrow your knife.”

With a hesitant nod, the camel withdrew her brother’s silvery blade and offered it, grip first. Cranberry eyed it for a moment, pausing. “Listen up, everyone. Locke came here to find a city. He and I traced it here from the echoes in a magic artifact beneath a tower in Equestria. Locke believed that it was a portal—a gateway—and he thought the other end of that gate lay somewhere below us.”

She took the knife, clenching it in her teeth and walking away to the back of the cave. “We have no supplies, and no one is coming for us. Now, our only hope of survival is to make it down there and activate one of those gateways.” She tilted her head, holding the gleaming knife aloft in the smoky hornlight and running her right hoof along the blade. “The only way out is through.”

With a swift slice, she drew the knife across her fetlock. Shocked, Inger croaked out a noise of protest, but she casually dragged the back of her hoof across the surface of the obsidian wall, just below the paint that read USURPER in elkish. As her blood smeared across the glass, the engravings beneath it instantly began to glow. The light was not red, as Inger half-expected, but a sickly, eerie green. The glow spread quickly, as the whole wall came to life. Antlers and flowers seemed to unfurl as they filled with light, curling and arcing in beautiful patterns across the surface.

As the light rose, racing through the grooves, Inger’s eyes followed it up. At the top, perched at the highest point above the engraved tree, the green lines began to trace out a familiar shape that sent a chill seeping down to his bones. With rapid precision, the bloodlines revealed a circle with eight identical, wavy rays of light extending from its center. Ice filled Inger’s belly as he stared up at Celestia’s unmistakable cutie mark, rendered in perfect detail upon a five-thousand year old relic.

Cranberry poked the wall with a hesitant hooftip, and the glass rippled beneath her touch like water. “Okay,” she whispered, more to herself than the rest of them. Turning her head, she nodded. “Come on. Wounded first. Inger, help Castor with his brother. Kaduat, you next.”

She stepped away from the glass, heading toward the camel. After returning the knife, she placed a gentle hoof on Beatriz’s back. The antelope’s digging had degenerated into weeping, punctuated by weak hoof blows against the wall of rock. “I’m sorry, Bea… we have to go.”

Inger walked over to the twins, anxiously aware of the quivering mass of earth hovering just a scant meter above all their heads. Together with Castor, he lifted Pollux onto his brother’s back. “So,” grunted Castor, eyeing the door with evident wariness. “How does this work…?”

Glancing at Kaduat, Inger remembered how she’d described her dream. Sinking into a vast black slab… “We just walk in,” he answered, exchanging a look with the camel. Kaduat slipped the knife into her jerkin, so focused on the door that she forgot to wipe Cranberry’s blood off it first. Inger bit his lip. “Come on.”

He turned to face the great glass wall, breathing deeply as he centered himself. He reached forward, pressing his hoof into the surface. The glass rippled as his hoof sank in, and he took a sharp breath as he felt a shocking coldness surround his skin. It felt like plunging his hoof into an ice bath, but the consistency wasn’t quite as thin and fluid as water. “Hold your breath,” he warned Castor, before pressing forward. He closed his eyes and sank into the obsidian. As it engulfed him, the shudder that wracked his body was not entirely from the chill.

In an instant, he was fully suspended. Gravity seemed to vanish, and he found himself floating in the void. The pressure of the strange substance around him kept his wings pressed to his sides, like freezing mud. His lungs began to protest, and he felt panic rising. Was he moving at all? It felt as if he was trapped in here, stuck like an insect in amber, drowning, just like in his dream, waiting for sand to come pouring into his nose and mouth and down his throat—

Suddenly his hoof broke through a surface, feeling the kiss of cool air. Then a suction took hold of his entire body, pulling him forward and out. His head emerged after his foreleg, and he gasped hungrily. The air was stale and saline, filling his nose with the salt-soaked stink of a long-abandoned subterrane. The rest of his body followed, as if being pulled from a sucking mire. Inger stumbled out into absolute darkness, a deeper black than even the cloudiest night on the surface. This was a place where light was alien, and sight was meaningless.

He took a few unsteady steps into the abyssal blackness, hearing his hoofsteps echo off the walls. Inger winced as his ears suddenly popped. We’re deep, he realized. Very deep. Dozens of meters down, if not hundreds. That door hadn’t been a simple barrier across the middle of a tunnel. Wherever he’d come out, it wasn’t a very large space, judging from the echoes.

Behind, he heard liquid ripple, and then a gasp for air. He wanted to help, but he couldn’t even see Castor’s hoof to grab and pull. The other pegasus managed without him, staggering out and breathing hoarsely. “Ack! Not a…” The mercenary leader was stricken by a coughing fit. “Not a pleasant way to travel,” he said, audibly wiping his mouth. “Lord Vallen, are you here?”

“Yes.” Inger lifted a hoof automatically before realizing neither of them could see it. “How’s your brother?”

“Still breathing,” said Castor, with suppressed worry. “Can’t tell anything else in this darkness.”

“I…” croaked another voice, “may be able to help you, there.” The gloom was suddenly pierced by a faint red light. As his eyes adjusted, Inger took in the chamber they now stood within. Another wall of glass, identical to the one above save for its darkened bloodlines, stood with forbidding stillness across the width of the space. Aside from that, the chamber was relatively featureless, just a tunnel of pale stone with stalagmites all around them and dripping stalactites hanging above. Opposite the door, multiple tunnels opened up, each stretching on into oblivion beyond the light.

Pollux, horn aglow, lifted his head weakly from Castor’s side. “Thank you, Cas.”

“Oh, Polly, I thought…” Castor closed his eyes, sighing with relief. He carried his brother over to the nearest stalagmite, helping him down to rest against it. “Can you walk?”

“I think so, but…” Pollux laid his head against the damp, lumpy rock. “Let’s just sit here for a moment.” His eyes fluttered closed, but his horn remained lit.

Suddenly the surface of the door rippled again, and a shaky Kaduat pulled herself through. The panicked way she yanked herself out of the wall belied her silence. With a thousand-yard stare, she walked as far away from the door as Pollux’s hornlight allowed, sitting down with her back to one of the stalagmites. She nervously stroked the handle of her brother’s knife, looking anywhere but the wall of glass.

The others followed in an irregular procession. Tybalt came next, followed by Zaeneas. Cranberry and Beatriz emerged together, the antelope clinging to Cranberry like a drowning mare holding on to a piece of driftwood. Cranberry helped her away from the door, over toward Zaeneas, who offered an awkward pat on the shoulder as the antelope sat beside her.

Cranberry adjusted her satchel, looking back up. Inger approached her, swallowing. “Apricot?”

“He had to stay behind to keep the ceiling up until the rest of us were through,” she explained, her mouth tight. “Pwyll said he’d pull him into into the door as he went, to get through before the rocks collapse.”

They watched the door together, as Inger’s heart beat painfully. A minute passed. Then another. “I should go back for him,” Inger said.

“He can do it,” Cranberry answered, quietly. “You wanted to give him the chance to learn—and he has.” Her chilly words softened with sadness. “Faster than a little colt should have to.”

The surface rippled. An antler poked through, and Inger’s breath caught. Then Pwyll’s head, followed by his shoulders, and then beside him a pink snout emerged from the liquefied obsidian. Inger nearly sank to the ground with gratitude as Apricot stepped out after the deer, coughing. “Junior!” he said, running up to greet his son. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” Apricot said, sounding every bit as tired as he looked. Looking between his parents, his eyes sank, before passing to the side and suddenly brightening. “Pollux!” Apricot raced over to his teacher, who opened his eyes and beckoned his apprentice with a weak smile.

As Inger watched the two weary unicorns sit and exchange hushed words, he couldn’t help but see the dull resignation in his son’s face. The truth of Cranberry’s words sank in as he exhaled heavily. First Apricot Strudel, now Virgil and the twenty-four other mercenaries who’d fallen before the monster… his son had already seen more death before his fourth birthday than most ponies did in their whole lives.

Inger felt a piercing loss as he recalled his son’s pealing laughter on the last day they’d raced together to the bakery. That carefree young colt must still be in there, buried somewhere behind those grave blue eyes. Wondering how to bring him back out, Inger looked over at Cranberry, but his wife had already turned away.

“Come on, everyone,” she said, tiredly holding the glowing tóirse aloft. “We should get moving.”

Castor lifted his head. “My brother—”

“I’m okay, Cas,” said Pollux, standing stiffly. He took a deep breath and nodded to Cranberry.

“Which way do we go?” asked Tybalt, uncertainly eyeing the multitude of tunnels.

In reply, Cranberry pointed to one in the center-right of the far wall. In the blend of light from the tóirse and Pollux’s horn, Inger spied a pale chalk outline matching the one in the canyon above: the wide, downturned head of a fountain pen, whose gap widened into a keyhole.

Cranberry looked up at it with a weary smile. “Just follow the locks.”