The Isle of Magic

Chapters

Sap of Life
Wild Raids
Burning Passions
The Side Moss Grows On
Tides of War

Sap of Life

"Kith sap is dangerous in the clutches of the other kingdoms. They will birth more young, control more monsters, and sway the lesser clans to follow their rule."

~ King Dessable II

Drip drip drip.

Silic watched as another droplet of sap slid off the branch of a kith and rolled off the waxy leaves. It was from the kith that all things on the island came to life, and as a Cultivator, it was his sworn duty to protect the trees that lived in the Sand Kingdom.

He hung a basket on his hoof and reached out. The sand below him, inanimate as sand normally was, came to life. The magic within him shaped the sand, adding it to his body until his foreleg reached out and hung the basket just below the kith sap.

And he did so again, all day. Three hundred kith, give or take, that was his charge. In a single day, the lord's collectors would expect three baskets from Silic's grove. He always managed to meet his quota, even after skimming a little bit of sap for himself before the collectors arrived.

Yesterday had been one of the few times it actually rained in the Kingdom of Sand, so the kith gave exceptional amounts of sap. Silic placed the lids over his baskets as the sun dropped from its peak, making sure all three were filled to the brim.

He had finished early, as much as he wanted to get a head start on tomorrow's work today, it was dangerous to take too much from the kith. The trees never said it, but they were intelligent, and the magic in their sap had always cursed those who they deemed too greedy.

With hours to spare, he figured he could finally fix up the fences around the grove. He retreated, then, to his home to fetch his hammer and nails. It was the skull of a giant that he lived in, one of the many remnants of an ancient era, long before the kingdoms had formed.

Most of it had sunken into the sand, but he could still walk through its eye socket to the back of the skull, where he put his cultivating tools and bedroll. Knives and spears were laid out in the sand, tools for cutting sap nodes off of trees. The nodes were often massive clumps of sap that had dried somehow within the tree, swelling up its formidable bark.

The tools were cut from crystals and were the sharpest blades that Sandmolds had ever made. But they still struggled to break the bark of the kith. Only the bark sickened by swelling sap nodes were thin enough for the tools to cut.

Silic paused for a moment. He knew every bit of sand in his home, but there was a patch of shimmering copper dust on the ground that he knew wasn't there when he left in the morning.

"Cupine, if you're still in here, please don't do what you did last time." He looked around. One of the clans that lived outside the borders of the Kingdom of Sand was the Coppercasts. Their kind came from the caves in the Copper Mountain, the only one of its kind on the Isle. Their bodies were a lot like the Sandmolds, except made from copper dust instead of sand.

Silic paced around his house until he reached the farthest end of the skull. The little bag he put there to store his personal vials of kith sap was opened, with half of its contents opened and emptied.

He sighed, understanding why his "friend" had taken from him, despite how much he was looking forward to having some sap for dinner.

At the very least, the Kingdom of Sand's deserts were fertile land waiting for some black water to drink. But the Copper Mountain was a harsh place to live according to all the accounts. Their soil was filled with rocks and gravel and was equally as dry as the land within the kingdom.

Their kith were sparse and yielded almost no sap, making them completely dependent on the kingdom's exports. In return, they traded any copper ore they didn't need for making more of their kind.

Silic turned back and grabbed his crystal knife, absorbing the tool into his body. Dried kith sap was useless on its own, but mixed in a solution of fresh sap and black water he could make a decent watered-down version of the pure thing.

He found the nearest tree and circled around it, looking for bumps in its bark. Then he circled a second, and a third. Sap nodes were rare, but with a grove of three hundred Silic knew he would find one.

It was the tenth tree. Reshaping himself, Silic slithered up the side of the tree like a snake, except leaving a trail of sand all over its bark as he went. A small lump had formed at the base of where a branch split from the trunk. Just underneath the thick, black bark of the tree, he could see the red hue of the dried sap, blocking nutrients to the area around it, making the tree sick.

He set himself to work as naturally as a grindhound chewing up stone. He cut carefully, making sure as to not hurt the tree. Slowly his knife broke through the bark, cracking the clump of sap underneath. Cutting around was a little easier as the node opened up, but nonetheless, it took almost an hour to get the whole thing removed. Once freed, a hardened chunk of sap the size of his head tumbled down to the ground and into the clutches of a familiar Coppercast.

"I see you're hard at work there, Mr Cultivator," she called out to him.

Seeing Cupine, Silic released his form and let his sand slide off the tree and pile up on the ground. He reformed in a second, wrapping his hooves around the dried sap and snatching it back.

"I have to," he grumbled, "since a certain copper pony doesn't know how to ask nicely." Silic picked his knife off the ground and sunk it into his sand, slinging the dried sap onto his back. He stretched out his sand to put a thin dome around it, holding it in place.

"You look like a camel," Cupine laughed.

Silic marched past Cupine. "It would be nice if you could visit without messing with my stuff Cupine. Just once, to change the routine."

"Don't be like that," she said, walking beside him.

He shook his head. "You can't keep doing this. Lord Gravelfort has the right to imprison any pony in his land, and he hates anything that's not a Sandmold."

Cupine rolled her eyes. "Coppercasts have traded with your kingdom for centuries. He doesn't have any reason to arrest me."

She continued to skirt around Silic's worries as they walked back to his house. Despite the close relationship between the Kingdom of Sand and its satellite clans, sentiments against peculiar or rare ponies were common. Mosslings and Ironmounds were often blamed for all manner of things, but that didn't leave Coppercasts excluded from the hatred.

Silic released the dried ball of sap from his back and rolled it into the centre of the skull. He stretched his sand from his hoof and fused it with another Cultivator tool, a flat and round clay pan. It was curved slightly and had its edged filed down, a good tool for both collecting black water and digging up dirt.

"You should head home, Cupine," he said as he left for the creek of black water that ran through the middle of his grove.

"Still trying to get rid of me?" She stuck close and bumped him. "I remember you were having a lot of fun the last time I visited."

"The last time," Silic said, a twinge of embarrassment in his voice, "you waited until after I had work to do. Rainfall finally came and I finally have the chance to finish my other chores."

The two of them came to the creek. Black water was not named for its own colour. When shallow, it looked crystal clear like all the other creeks on the Isle. It was the soil around it. Like the kith, the life magic coming from the black water had turned the dry desert earth around it fertile and dark.

The banks shimmered like the night sky with grains of sand in the black soil reflecting the sun. Even Cupine's playfulness was silenced by the awesome might of black water's magic. It gave life to the kith, and by extension, was the mother of all ponies on the Isle.

The two tread on the black soil with reverence. Not much grew in the Kingdom of Sand, but by the creek, there were small sprouts of green. They'd die in a year or two if a drought came, but for now, Silic enjoyed them.

He tenderly reached with his pan into the creek and skimmed the surface. He willed some of his sand to slither over the pan, gripping tightly to harden it into a lid.

"It sure is nice, having black water so close to your home," Cupine commented slyly.

Silic eyed her, the intricate marbles of polished glass narrowing as eyelids of sand honed in.

She caught him staring as they walked back.

"You know I know the Copper Mountain is a rough place to live," he said upfront. "But what am I supposed to do about it, move the whole creek?"

"I wasn't blaming you," she replied, her voice consciously moving away from her previous tone.

"So what were you doing?" Silic asked, his grip tightening over the pan as he spoke firmly. "What would I have to do if you were seen by Gravelfort's collectors? It doesn't take much for them to accuse any pony who isn't a Sandmold."

"Then I'll deal with it," Cupine answered confidently.

"It's not that easy." Silic shook his head and sighed. "Even if you leave safely, guards will be sent out here, collectors will be sent to keep count of every drop of kith sap, and Gravelfort will finally have a reason to cut trade ties with your clan."

Cupine hung her head and frowned, the copper dust of her face contorting downward. "Still, would it hurt so much just to share?"

Silic's pace slowed as they returned to his home. "You know I want to."

"Yeah, I know," Cupine replied.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Collector arrived as the sun crawled halfway down the horizon, a pack of gravelhounds behind him dragging a sledge constructed from relics found from the coast. Ever since the Kingdom of Water began its desperate expansion, the Sandmolds there have been fighting the Waterforms.

Every now and then, foreign artefacts washed up on the shore. Most were harvested by the Breezies that lived northeast of the Kingdom of Sand, but Sandform soldiers were usually able to bring a few pieces to sell.

The sledge today was something special, a large plate of fired clay, painted over with designs of flowers and branches. The only modifications were two little holes cut out of the plate to harness the hounds. Whatever manner of creature lived beyond the ocean, Silic liked to imagine they were beings of great creative ability. Most of their artefacts never seemed to have a functional purpose, anyway. They seemed entirely devoted to art.

"News from his Lordship's castle?" Silic asked the Collector as he loaded the kith sap onto the sledge.

"Same old stuff, kid," said the old Sandform. "Gravelfort's willing to marry his son to his niece if it means he gets to keep his holdings."

"How does the boy feel about it?" he asked.

"You'll have to ask him," the Collector said. "I say he's old enough to feel urges, but he either doesn't know or doesn't care about what's right." Silic hauled the third basket of sap and helped the Collector load it onto the sledge.

"Say, you're about that age, aren't ya?" The Collector asked.

"How do you mean?"

He shrugged. "Figured you would've lost your mind by now, working this grove alone. My grandson married two years ago, about your age he is."

"Born and raised here," Silic said, looking over to his skull home. "If I'm missing out on something, I wouldn't know it."

The Collector shook his head. "Boy, you have to take a trip into town one day. Find yourself a nice girl, plenty out there want a place like what your folks gave you."

"I'll keep that in mind if I ever get time off," said Silic.

The Collector nodded. Freetime was few and far between under the rule of Lord Gravelfort. He grabbed the reigns of his sledge and hopped onto the back, shaking the rope to signal his gravelhounds to start running. Silic watched him go, the sunset casting his shadow far alongside the road out of the grove.

The sky bruised as the sun slithered away, and the kith trees looked eerily down onto Silic. He remembered the stories his parents would tell him, that the kith were more than trees, but living and thinking beings who guarded all life on the Isle. A line in his face of sand drew itself into a smirk. They also told him that the kith watched over children, and punished them when they didn't do their chores.

But they were gone, ordered by the Sand King to manage his personal grove, as a reward for their years of service of Gravelfort. Silic made his way back to his skull house. It was all his after he decided to stay behind. The king hadn't asked for him and staying kept his family influential over the sap production this far away from the capital.

But the Collector had a point. When would he have a family to pass this legacy on?

"He seemed nice," Cupine said, making a sand castle in the middle of the house. "I don't see why I had to stay hidden."

Silic laughed. "Don't let that fool you. His hounds would have had you if they saw you." He sat down and helped stack up a tower. "Ponies have ways to hide their real feelings about outsiders."

"Oh? Speaking from experience?" Cupine looked at Silic. "Do you have any hidden feelings?"

The sand on his face stirred. "What do you mean?"

She crossed her forelegs. "You've been treating me like a pest all day. Didn't even give me a hug."

Silic slumped his shoulders and dissipated his sand with the rest of the ground. "We're not having this talk. You know I like you."

"Do you?" She jumped over the sand castle and into his pile of sand. "You rarely show it."

"Hey!" Silic recoiled and his sand shifted away, piling up to reform his body a safe distance away from Cupine's aggressive teasing. "That really hurt," he said, rubbing his chest. "Starting to question if you're not the one with hidden feelings."

She tilted her head. "Maybe I am. But, I can unhide them tonight, if you let me."

"Not a chance, the kith sap will be dried up and stick tomorrow," he said. "I gotta get some sleep, and you need to get going at dawn if you want to make it back to your folks tomorrow evening."

He dug out a small pit in the sand and sank himself into it, letting his body slowly release its form and turn soft. Cupine did the same, nestling up as close to Silic's back as possible.

"Maybe it's best that you sleep," she whispered. "Then you won't know all things I'm about to do."

Silic shifted away, but Cupine already had him, pouring copper dust from her foreleg over his sand pile. It didn't take long until they were completely mixed, the magic that formed their bodies merging together so that their mind and emotions were open to each other. In this embrace, they understood each other.

I hate you so much, Silic said through his magic, though it was impossible to hide the smile in his thoughts.

Cupine's emotions warmed to him. And that's what makes it fun.

Wild Raids

The loyal clans of the Kingdom of Water are the source of its power. We rely on their lands for growing kith, and we must do everything in our power to maintain the peace.

~ King Aquablue "The Mad"

Waeve River slunk through the cracks in the ground that snaked up the cliffside to the Mistforms' territory. They were devout loyalists to the Sea Throne, and as such, it was the responsibility of the Waterforms to keep them safe. A few hundred other soldiers moved with him up to the foggy plateau that the Mistforms used to create their young. The mist was unlike anything else of the Isle.

Icy clouds from the distant mountain peaks carried cold winds to their land, warming up and turning snow into light showers and fog. The ice was frozen black water, filled with enough life energy to fertilize the valleys below the Mistforms' plateau.

They were on the watch for Blooders, bizarrely violent ponies to the east whose bodies were made from the blood of other animals. They, who were always in conflict with giant beasts for their blood, did not have fertile land, nor did they have much black water to speak of. That made the Blooders desperate for kith sap from neighbouring clans.

Waeve reformed at the top of the plateau, waiting for his fellow soldiers to arrive. As a scout, he was used to leaving the main force behind, but today every pony had been given orders not to break away from the primary formation.

"I hate this place," said another scout, Shellfome, as he reformed from a split in the ground. "It makes me feel weird."

"Why's that?" he asked.

"Mistforms make themselves from mist, don't they?" Shellfome waved a leg around in the air. "This place is full of fog! I feel like I could be walking through some pony's body."

"If it keeps you on your hooves, I don't see the problem."

Waeve slunk low along the ground, coming up to a tree growing from an outcropping of rock. The black water that had pooled under the large stone and created a place where life could thrive. Dipped himself into the blackened, fertile soil, letting his body melt into the tree's roots. He felt its water channels dragging him up, stretching him to every leaf and branch, and it took a strong will to not let its natural forces pull him apart.

He reformed himself at the highest branch that could support his weight, looking off the edge to try and see a little further. The small, beady crystals of ice that made up his pupils worked hard to cut through the fog. He knew there had to be Blooders. The fact that there was a tree, one not replaced by a kith tree, was a sign that the area had been abandoned generations ago, long before the war with the other kingdoms officially began.

And finally, in the distance behind a low-sitting bush, he spotted a flicker of red. Waeve waved to the other scouts, sending silent signals by hoof to relay the enemy position.

Rendevous point, 9 miles, reminded another scout in the tree across from him.

Their job was not to engage in open skirmishing, but to reach the Mistform village at the centre of the plateau. They needed to move unseen until they reached a defensible position.

Hammerhead advance, ordered the commander of the two companies. A standard formation for an open landscape like the plateau, First Company would make a defensive line in the front, covering more ground it identify threats. Second Company stayed in the centre, able to reinforce any part of the front and offer additional fighting strength.

But, as a scout, Waeve's duty was to alert First Company about anything he saw. In the dense fog that the Mistforms loved to live in, that knowledge was essential.

He descended from the tree and hurried ahead, keeping his body flat to the ground as a slithering sliver of water. He reformed behind a boulder and checked around him. The red speck in the fog was still there, but it had moved away as well. The question was whether it was running away, or retreating to a larger group.

Blooder scout, left flank, he relayed with a hoof signal. He waited until he received the acknowledging hoof signal and then pressed forward.

The light shafts shining through the fog helped pick out distant movement. Still rising, the sun cast long beams of light that flickered every time something ahead passed through them. Waeve counted the movements, reporting at least six enemies, all larger and faster than the average Blooder.

One of the other scouts hurried up to Waeve. "You think they'll attack us?"

Waeve frowned at him. "You're asking this now? You should be at the left end of the formation."

"But I can't see anything," he replied. "I came to check what you've been seeing."

Waeve shoved him off. "First Company needs to know our information, we can't swap around enemy movements and confuse them. Now go do your job."

"I-"

An explosion erupted from the left flank of the formation. Through the dense fog, Waeve could see the rose-petal red flickering through the air. A Blooder had taken his own life, releasing the magic in his body and splattering the blood that made up his body into a fine mist.

"Oh no," panicked the scout, running back to his position.

Waeve kept his guard up, peering across the plateau for more attacks. By now the army was probably shuffling its forces, engaging the enemy. He couldn't make out details from his position, but that wasn't relevant. He had to hold his ground now and call out any other enemy movements.

He tightened his hoof and charged a heavy droplet with magic. Silent signals weren't going to get the message across in the middle of battle. The protocol was to send out a flare to warn others about incoming danger.

"What are you standing around for?" Another scout, Coldflow, crossed over to his area. "They split the army in half, we need to reinforce them."

"That's not our job," replied Waeve. "Watch for more hostiles, that's what we do."

"There's no way the Blooders have more troops," he snapped. "Protocol doesn't plan for situations like this."

"I'm not going," Waeve insisted. "We have positions for a reason. We have to trust our formation."

"Stubborn ass," cursed Coldflow, leaving him to run toward the fighting, like many others were.

They were falling out of position now, helping the First Company surround the Blooders, trapping them from the outside while the Second Company engaged them inside the formation. But scouts were few, no more than two dozen of them. In a skirmish of a few hundred, what help were they?

He almost got distracted in his conflict to stay or join. In the corner of his vision, he spotted more movement. Large, but not slow, they moved like nothing he had ever seen before. At the very least, he had read about them in basic training.

Stonehounds, their large, beady-eyed fanged heads were double the size of their body, their bite big enough to swallow a Waterform whole. There was a lot of them.

And they were charging from the inner plateau. Without hesitation, Waeve swung up his hoof and let his orb of magic and water shoot up and explode. He felt the force of the blow from the ground and the light from the magic lit up the fog-covered sky as if a star had been pulled down from the heavens.

What should have been ample of time to react, however, was useless when his fellow scouts failed to relay the warning to the right flank of the army. Where the battlefield was darkest, that was where the Stonehounds struck, tearing up their ranks and turning Waterforms into dead mist.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Waeve kept marching ahead, sticking close to any cracks in the ground that he could hide in if the enemy came. A number of other scouts that had been at the edge of the battle also made it out with him, following close behind with unnerved eyes.

Their little lights of magic-filled water wiggled about in their aqueous heads, flicking from rock to rock as if any of them could be a stonehound. Which, strictly speaking, was possible, even if unlikely.

"Is it dangerous?" asked a young scout. Diz Oliver was his name, or it was close to that at least.

Waeve shook his head and crept out behind the tree where they had taken cover to pick the next spot. A boulder, three times their height, looked good enough. He waved them forward as he skirted along the ground in a stream-like fashion.

"We should be heading back to the staging ground," Shellfome said. "Away from the Mistform village, where the reserve guard is waiting. You know, reinforcements!"

"Forty more soldiers who've never seen combat won't change the situation," Waeve replied.

Shellfome wanted to protest more but Waeve was already drifting ahead to the next tree. As far as he could see, the village just a mile ahead was empty of enemies, both Blooders and their stonehounds. But what concerned him was the lack of Mistforms as well.

The village was a small hillock in the centre of the rocky plateau, an artificial hillock, four miles in radius. According to Mistform myth, their kind descended from Waterforms, moving away from the northern shore in search of rich soil to grow their kith.

Instead, they found a rocky landscape, consolidated all the soil they could into one mound, and settled there. Underneath them was a source of magic, a secret only the King and his court was privy too. All Waeve knew growing up was that the Mistforms were valuable assets to the Kingdom of Water, and that's all he needed to know.

He signalled Diz to circle to the right with five other scouts. He took the other six and crept slowly, but directly, toward the village.

It was hard to discern buildings from the ground. Mistform culture believed that soil was the most sacred thing in nature, even more than black water or kith sap. The made their homes out of the dirt, creating little mounds that could only be accessed by their kind's ability to seep through almost any permeable surface.

"If the Blooders killed them, do you think we could be headed for an ambush?" Shellfome's surface bristled at every sound they made. The fact that the only thing he could hear was his own steps brushing across the grass put his senses on edge.

"Only Mistforms can go in and out of their homes through the soil." Waeve pointed around them. "Unless we see holes in the mounds, the Blooders can't be here. And you can forget about the stonehounds, we'd be able to see those massive things coming."

The only visible structures above the soil were the pulleys that burrowed into the body of the plateau. The assets of the Mistforms. There, around the stone base of the structure, were buckets of a kind of crystal. They glowed mostly yellow, though a few were clear white or red.

"Think they're down there?" Shellfome asked.

"Possible." Waeve turned around to where Diz and his scouts were coming, galloping quickly to reach him.

"We came across a crater on our way here," he said, pointing back. "From the looks of it, it was a house that was dug up."

"Sounds like stonehounds at work." Shellfome looked back the way they came as if worried they'd have no way to escape.

Waeve nodded, then picked up a few samples of the crystals. They were too dense to simply float in his body, so he loaded them into a bucket and set it on his back. The military was not in the know of what the Mistforms offered to the kingdom, but if they wanted to succeed here, there was no choice but to bring it back to their staging grounds and figure out what their enemies wanted.

They turned around a mound of soil to find the crater Diz mentioned right at their hooves. Tucked between other mounds of soil like a valley between mountains, the crater was invisible almost invisible to anyone just passing by, despite being enough to hold a small army of Blooders.

But the camps set around the crater hinted at another group instead. Blooders, like all other ponies, had no need for campfires to cook food supplies. Stonehounds also didn't need tools like shovels to do their work. Neither of them needed to drink water, either. But those things were plentiful inside the crater.

Waeve slid down and examined the first firepit he saw. Leaves piled into beds and chairs had shovels next to them, the tools of the Breezies who slept in them.

"The Blooders were running away when they met us," he realized. "Breezies ambushed them here, drove them out, and harvested anything they could find."

"They couldn't have gotten all the Mistforms," Shellfome said, looking at a long tubular object that laid by the charred ashes of the campfire. Going by many names, the instrument doubled as a weapon that let the Breezies harvest magic directly from a pony's body.

Waeve frowned and kicked it away when he noticed it too. Breezies were not like any other creature on the Isle. They weren't made of magic, even though they could eat kith sap for its magical powers. They preyed on living things like trees, plants, mushrooms, and even other fleshy animals like them, using up precious life to sustain their own.

But to have crept so close to the Kingdom of Water was not expected. The Blooders were at constant war with the Breezies, since their kind was made from the blood of fleshy animals. The King allowed their little raids with the other clans for the simple fact that Blooders were the only ones who were keeping the Breezies from attacking the other kingdoms.

"We're going back," Waeve decided, finally. "We can't do much with just the twelve of us. Besides, General Rapids probably wants to know that there are Breezie attacks within our borders."

"About damn time," Shellfome sighed. "First sane thing you've said so far. Let's go."

He turned and started climbing out of the crater when a spear of blood burst through his back. More followed, weapons made from the bodies of Blooders, captured and contorted into violent shapes.

"Move!" yelled Waeve, pushing Diz up the way they came. The Breezies started to emerge from the ground. Short things about half Waeve's height, they made up for their stature with their swarm.

The camps weren't abandoned at all, they dug trenches and buried themselves in the soil to hide. Waeve covered the other scouts as they escaped over the cusp of the crater. He picked up a pot of water from the nearest campfire and splashed it onto the dirt. With a burst of magic from his hoof, the mud grew up into a wall, breaking the line of sight.

"Get Shell up!" he shouted to the scouts, who were still covering their heads from the spears launched at them. They tried, but his body had already been mixed with the spear's blood. Contaminated, his energy was too conflicted with the remains of the Blooder to make a cohesive body, and he began to sputter out into the dirt, nothing but a puddle.

Waeve moved back and started up the crater as well. "Damn it, Shell," he passed him by. It took hours to purify a body back to a healthy state, but they didn't have a minute more to spare.

More Breezies were flanking them, throwing dry material like dirt and sand from slingshots to slow them down. One scout took too many hits and fell apart into water before his body to form back together, and others were already limping with muddy limbs.

"Diz!" Waeve shouted while he condensed the mist around them into a thin barrier of water. "You're the fasted runner we have. Run back to base and tell them the Mistforms were taken by Breezies."

"Sir, there's no way out," cried the young scout.

"We'll cover you," he replied, turning to the rest of the scouts. "Whatever you do, make sure this stallion gets out of here alive. We have to get the message across."

"I can't ask them to die for me," Diz protest was cut short as he flattened out to duck from a ball of soil.

"You're not," Waeve pushed him ahead, moving the scouts to safety behind a stumpy hill. "I'm asking them to. Now run before we all die for nothing."

"We got this Diz!" shouted another scout, throwing out a ball of water charged with his own magic. "I'll get you a souvenir, don't worry."

Breezies approaching, Diz nodded to Waeve and split from the group. He kept low, slithering along the ground like a piece of a river. The scouts covered his path, throwing out droplets from their own bodies to catch the spears and dry soil that went his way.

They took a position on a hillock with a few bushes on it as cover. Behind them, Diz ran like hail in a storm. Their enemy, numerous and unrelenting, pressed ground and moved closer to their position. Even behind the bushes, Waeve felt his shoulder and leg drying up from the scattered dirt and sand.

He grabbed a bundle of branches off the nearest shrub and pumped it full of magic, dampening the plant with a thin coat of water. The branch launched like a thunderbolt and cracked open five or six Breezies charging up the hill together. He threw the second branch and broke another bundle of them.

The other scouts did the same, as much as they could with their bodies slowly falling apart and turning to mud. The Breezies slowed down their attack until Waeve couldn't see them at all. The only thing around them were lines of rising dirt as trenches were dug around them.

Waeve flattened out and slithered around to the other side of the hilltop, seeing the same on the other side. The Breezies, he realized, turned their defensible position into a deathtrap. Surrounding the scouts on all sides, they were happy to dig in and wait for them to surrender or, more likely, run out of water fighting.

Burning Passions

There is no greater threat to our northern border than the Kingdom of Water, who has developed the most organized and systematic government on the Isle. If a conflict were to ever break out, our warlords will have to learn to unite, or we will face extinction.

~Wyrrefir The Valley Warlord

The Brule smoked black clouds as singers from every warlord gathered for the ritual. Black, voluptuous pillars of hardened ash held up the roof of the temple. The Brule was the only thing that could really keep the Kingdom of Fire together. It was the birthplace of every pony in its borders, the result of a holy sacrament that all other life condemned as impossibly cruel.

Prya waited among the congregation, watching as prisoners were brought to the altar of the Brule. The wide metal dish had space for five sacrifices to stand around its central flame. Branchlings, harvested from the clan west of the kingdom, made up most of today's procession.

But they weren't the only ones. An Oilform with a glistening black surface sat quietly once he was chained to the sacrificing stage. There were Mosslings too, two red and a green, who continued to struggle uselessly against the Burning Ones. Ponies who trained their whole lives to capture more fuel for the kingdom, they did not let simple Mosslings trouble them.

Yet, despite the rare catches, eyes widened most at the two Breezie spies that had been caught sneaking into the kith forests. They flailed and squirmed the hardest, crying out in their incomprehensible language. One was dragged away for the afternoon ceremony, while the other was placed by the Oilform.

"Colts and gentlemares," announced the procession's leader to the congregation, "stallions and fillies of all lands, we undertake today's rare occasion of unity to witness the rebirth, our kind's purest gift to the world."

The small coals of Pyra's eyes rolled at the notion that they were a gift. Burning Ones taught the belief that Fireforms, as beings of pure energy, inherited the spirit of everything they burned, from dead things like metals to kith trees, it was their predestined duty to preserve old lives and memories, while making space for new ones.

"These beings, taken to our Mother Blaze, have reached the end of their lives. Some are sick, some are old, others must be punished for crimes that threaten life itself." The leader gestured to the Breezie. "But they all will have their essence burned into the mind and body of a new generation of Fireforms."

Pyra looked at her own flames flickering off of her body. How did any pony fall for their lies? She had no memories of her mother, the Branchling that her father had apparently "redeemed" during a skirmish into the Branchling clan's forests. Her governess told her it was because she was born from mundane fighting, not from their precious ritual sacrifice, that made her connection so weak.

"Step forward, young Fireforms," beckoned the leader.

The Brule was a long amphitheatre that stretched into the side of the volcano where sons and daughters of warlords and their commanders were selected to contribute their own fire. They were selected for their heat, the defining trait of will so that the bodies of the sacrificed didn't mix into a single tortured being, but five newborn individuals.

Pyra glared from her seat among the common ponies. Down there, among the first five chosen for the ritual, was her half-sister, standing lustfully over the Oiling. Her half-brother would be along later to take a sacrifice too. There was no doubt all her half-siblings would have children today, their father was "The Falling Star of the South," Wyrrefyr, a proud lineage eager to pass on its glory.

More morbidly, as the participants approached the centre, the Burning Ones tightened the chains on their sacrifices. They wore special linings made by Breezie soldiers who needed protection against their kingdom's extreme heat, allowing the Burning ones to grip the sacrifices by the face and turn them up toward their killers.

It took only one drip of magic and fire from each of the participants and their sacrifices transformed into a hellish orange. The Oilform, quiet until now, roared the most. His voice was ripped and shredded as the fire ate through his body the quickest, elevating beyond the emotion of anger to pure rage.

"Burn 'em!" laughed a young Fireform in the lower seats in front of Pyra. Born only a few weeks ago, she guessed.

The cries of pain quickly turned into the mewling of newborn Fireforms once they entered the Mother Flame. It was a pile of wood set on fire by lava a few centuries ago. The came out with wide black eyes, the hot coals in their heads looking around like nothing was real.

One of those down there was now her niece. So quickly did fire burn.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A moving brazier awaited Pyra outside the steps of the Brule, standing by it was her governess, Tulene. Stonehounds, the kind that lived in heated chambers of magma under the kingdom's volcanoes, blew smoke up in thick curtains, providing privacy while they pulled the brazier.

"Miss Starling," Tulene uttered in a soft-spoken manner, though it was a merely for show. Pyra knew well the wrath that mare had within her. "Let us return home. Training begins shortly."

"I'm not going home yet, ma'am," Pyra replied politely while her flames crackled slightly hotter.

"You know what your teacher would say. Your aunt isn't exactly the kind of lady this kingdom needs."

Pyra rolled her coal eyes and walked away from the brazier. "My teachers should learn to give Lord Wyrrefir's sister a chance. The rest of my family's a bunch of stuck-up royals anyway, whether or not I learn the right lessons won't change how little I matter to them."

Her governess stretched out her hoof and placed a circle of fire around Pyra. The newborns, just coming out of the Brule with their new parents, watched.

"You are making a scene, young lady," hissed the governess.

"You almost sound like a real parent" Pyra goaded her. "But if you were, you would've asked my father to visit me for once in my life."

"Are you really going to resist me?" Tulene laughed, ignoring the taunt. "I thought you wanted to get out of hard work."

"Oh, this isn't going to be hard." Pyra engulfed the volcanic earth around her and burned off her governess's magic, cutting back her hoof. He reached out her own magic and her flame followed, eating up the energy like they were a pile of dry leaves. Her hoof knocked over the brazier, scattering hot coals over Tulene.

Her governess, enraged by their transport being destroyed, burned out of the coals and grabbed up a chunk, knocking Pyra over in one hard throw.

"You are a lady of the Kingdom of Fire, Miss Starling," she said. "A lady has no time for the ridiculous games Aunt Bonfyrre wastes her time with. Now, you will stay there like a soldier while I get some pony to clean this mess up."

Pyra burned her way out of the coals slowly. It seemed Tulene was as tired of their arguments as Pyra was. She had never gotten mad like that before. No, Pyra cleared her mind. Rarely, not never. She was there when her father scorched up her mother, a lieutenant in the warlord's raiding party.

She was assigned her like any other job. Pyra knew that whatever she felt for her governess, the mare had a long and great career before her, and will return to that glory once her father found a family who would have her as a daughter-in-law.

"I'm going to Aunt Bonfyrre," Pyra groaned, heating up the coals. They reddened and darkened, smoking up the air the same way the stonehounds did. A little trick her aunt had taught her to get out of a fight.

"Don't you dare-" Tulene caught a coal in her throat as hundreds of small pieces of coal burst from the smoke. They spread and burned and covered the steps of the Brule in a thick haze. Hot embers rising, it was too much to see through, giving Pyra more than enough time to stretch her form out into a blazing trail and simmer off to her aunt's manor.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Bonfyrre estate, for a warlord's sister, was pathetic. It was on an open field of grass that grew healthily green with the volcanic ash beneath their roots. It was far from the Brule, her father's castle, and the loud and cluttered city than clattered and sparked under the warlord's protection.

Pyra's aunt took measures to keep her grass protected from any passing Fireform. Wide roads made of paved stone ran across the fields in winding directions, and any embers that flew off of her body could never reach the grass unless she wanted them too.

"Pyra!" called out a squeaky voice from the manor's gardens. Her cousin, Helia, had spotted her from a little patch of kith saplings.

Pyra smiled, the fire on her face burning hotter and forming blue flames from cheek to cheek. "Good to see you're healthy today, Ia."

"How was the Brule?"

Pyra rolled her coals. "Ceremoniously boring as always. I can't believe my siblings are proud of something so dull."

"It's the one thing that unites the lords," Helia said, holding up a kith leaf in her hoof. The tiny green speck dried up and burst into a blue flame, rich in magic. "We'd immolate the whole Isle if the kingdom fractured apart."

"I'm not sure if that's true, Ia."

Helia chuckled. "You're probably right. We're all family, by flame or by marriage. The Brule's just a place to show off to every pony else."

"Spoken truth," Pyra said. "By the way, where is Aunt Bonfyrre?"

"Oh, of course, I almost forgot," Helia grabbed Pyra and brought her around to the back of the manor. "We have some guests, two sons from the Graphus family."

"Northerners, here?" Pyra's eyes burned brighter with interest. "That's days away, what do they want?"

"They're sparring with my brother right now. They came with their father, looking for a bride, I think."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

By necessity the training ground kept behind the manor was cleared of anything but stone. Black scorches patterned the asphalt bricks, while bronze and steel weapons glinted with bright reddish-orange eyes from the blazes of the fighters. Bonfyrre sat laughing away with Lignite Graphus, the head of the Graphus family.

Holding the honorific of "Field of Fire," the Fireform was a vast stallion. His flames wrapped around two eyes of bright red diamonds, proof of his claim that he had been born in the heart of a volcano. True or not, the magic in those gems put him a good head taller than any other pony in the kingdom.

"You're slouching, darling," Bonfyrre called out to her son.

Cufyrre growled and scrunched up behind his shield. "I know, mother." His hoof's flames were wrapped around a mace but he failed to attack Peatbog, Lignite's younger son.

"He wasn't this cautious against my other boy," Lignite said, looking over to his elder son resting against a weapon rack. "Training him to be merciful?"

Bonfyrre smirked. "Sweetheart, sometimes it pays to be diplomatic. Should he go all out, Peatbog might get hurt. You'd be honour bound to retaliate after that, and neither of us wants that."

"Bon you are a real spark," he mused. "Should've been born a stallion, The Valley could use a leader like you, now more than ever."

"But if I were a stallion, how could we-"

"Mother, cousin Pyra just came from the Brule," Helia said as she entered the training grounds. She gave her brother a wide berth and brought Pyra over to the porch where they were sitting. Helia bowed her head to Lignite, Pyra following her lead.

"Oh perfect!" Bonfyrre gestured to them both. "Lignite, this is my daughter, Helia. Pyra's my niece, here to escape her lessons I'm sure."

Lignite rose from his seat, demonstrating the full extent of his size. Pyra and Bonfyrre weren't short mares by any standard, but Pyra still felt her neck straining to look up at him. He extended his hoof and they shook, Lignite's fire feeling much cooler than Pyra's.

"I'm sorry for intruding on your rare meeting with your aunt, Pyra," he said, gesturing to Helia and Bonfyrre. "These two wonderful mares have been telling me how important days like these are to you. But, if you don't mind, I'd appreciate it if you'd let my son join your party today."

She looked over at Peatbog. The colt wasn't unfit, but he was a cautious fighter. He didn't have the ferocity that the kingdom preferred in its Fireforms. Her cousin Cufyrre was taking it easy on him.

"Are you certain? Tea parties can be rather cutthroat at times," she asked.

Lignite laughed heartily. "Parties are more his speed. He doesn't much care for fighting."

"Well then, Helia, why don't you and Pyra head up to the lounge while I finish up talking with Lignite? I'll be up shortly with our guest."

The two did as they were told and went into the manor through a door of black volcanic glass. Relaxing back into her chair now that the kids were gone, Bonfyrre grabbed a fresh branch from a kith sapling and put it in her mouth, burning the magic into her body.

Lignite opted to stay standing, watching proudly as his younger son struggled through the fight, tenaciously so. "Helia might be too sick to learn to fight, but what are you doing with Wyrrefir's daughter?"

"She's a bastard child, and it's not like my brother has any problem having children," Bonfyrre scoffed. "You said this kingdom needs leaders like me."

"But the fact that she's his bastard makes it harder," Lignite muttered. "She's spent most of her life in training ground like this one. Mare or stallion, that's what bastards do when they have a royal fire like hers. How is she going to drop her old lessons to learn about tea parties and diplomacy? Neither is my strong suit but even I know it doesn't have overnight."

"Same way as Anthrasus," Bonfyrre smiled, gesturing to the older son. "She wants to learn our 'silly little games,' and I'm certain she's spent every second of her combat lessons hating them."

Lignite huffed and sat back in his wide stone chair that would've been too big for any other Fireform. He grabbed a kith branch and smoked it with Bonfyrre to calm himself. Immediately his flames brightened as more magic burned into him.

"A war is coming," he said, speaking as if he was reminding himself as much as he was telling Bonfyrre. "Something happened in the Kingdom of Water, they've moved their garrisons closer to our border. Scouts from the Frostform clan have also started popping up near my home, though they let themselves get melted before we could learn anything."

"It's these Breezie rumours I've heard about," Bonfyrre said. "I've entertained enough Branchlings begging not to be raided to know that we're not the biggest threat on their radar anymore. Breezies are expanding their lands, and it's eating into the others clans."

Lignite waved the branch of kith around in his mouth. "Meaning fewer kith fields for us. May the Brule help us all."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Pyra relaxed as Helia helped her into her dress of chainmail. It was an old style that had been making a comeback among many lords. Not as protective as plates of metal, the chainmail let in more air for Pyra to breathe. Its loose, flowing look was elegant, her dress stretching out a short distance on the floor.

She powdered her face with magnesium powder, to brighten her complexion, and lithium powder to redden her cheeks. Over a normal fire, the two metals would have simply burned away, but Fireforms changed their properties for a short while when they burned different things. The edges of her fire clung to magnesium white and lithium red, reproducing those colours even after the metals themselves burned away.

Helia grabbed a metal handled comb that had been soaking in a solution of lithium, a comb with made of wood from a kith tree. She ran the damp claws along the top of Pyra's head to entice a mane to form around the kith's magic, while the lithium solution fused with the embers to make a permanent mane of violet-red fire. Permanent, at least, until Pyra's governess extinguishes it when she goes home.

"I could look at this forever," Pyra beamed, tossing her mane along the side of her neck.

Helia smiled and put away her make-up brushes. "If it means I don't have to redo it every time your governess 'cleans you up' then all the better."

"Actually, maybe that's not a good idea," Pyra corrected herself. "I love watching you work Ia. I feel like a canvas being painted on."

They strode out of the powder room together with their dresses on, Pyra feeling bad that she didn't know how to help Helia with her outfit. But together they looked like a matched set, a little detail Helia was attentive enough to keep in mind. The floors of the manor were polished black tile made from the same volcanic stone as the Brule.

But the walls were made of a bright and shiny white marble, the surface so clear that Pyra could see deeper into the stone and look at all the little crystals that reflected her light.

Brass mirrors and other wall fixtures adorned the hallway to the tea lounge. They passed by Pyra's favourite, a brass replica of one of the relics that washed up on the Isle from time to time. It was the top piece of a staff or cane, with an oddly shaped head of a pony with a horn sticking out of its forehead. Just looking at the eyes, she knew it wasn't depicting any of the pony races that lived on the Isle, which made sense. It was a relic from the sea, after all.

"What are we having today?" Pyra asked as she entered the lounge, a small, light-pink room carved from rose quartz geodes. A round marble table adorned the centre which was filled with napkins, porcelain plates, ashtrays. Lavender scented candles, tributes from Branchling families who didn't want to be burned alive, produce sweet flames.

Pyra passed her hoof over one of them, drawing a small bit of the fire into her body, shivering at the calm sensation of the candle.

"Silver White Rain," Helia said, lifting up the lid of crystal tea leaf jar. "My mother brought some back from the Kingdom of Sand after her last diplomatic mission there. We've been waiting for a special day to try it."

The aroma was strong enough that she didn't even need to burn a leaf to try it. Just by sitting down at the table Pyra felt like she was taking a breath on a rainy day of spring, without the agonizingly slow and deadly suffering brought on by water extinguishing her body.

She couldn't suppress a giggle from the sensation.

They sat and chatted about their recent interests. The last time they spoke was about five months ago when Pyra sneaked out of in the middle of the ceremony to avoid her governess. Helia had taken up charcoal sketching since then, drawing what she imagined the rest of the Isle looked like on thin slabs of marble.

Pyra told her how she wished she could do something so creative. For her, daily life consisted of polishing and sharpening her brothers and sisters' weapons, then sparring with her teachers. The only exciting days were when Branchlings were brought in for real fights; she told her cousin how she'd always draw out a fight to try to talk to them, but they were always too frightened of her to say anything interesting.

Halfway through their conversation the door opened and Bonfyrre entered with Lignite's son. He was not the sputtering scrawny one who was fighting Cufyrre, but the other son, a colt who looked like he'd one day outgrow his giant of a father. He may have been older than Pyra, but no pony should've have been a head taller than her at his age.

"This is Anthrasus," Bonfyrre introduced him, gesturing him to sit in the seat beside Helia. Bonfyrre took her own seat by Pyra. "He's expressed a lot of interest our 'little games,' and he has a lot to say about life on the northern border."

Pyra forced a smile, parting her mane to show a bright and cheerful face. "It's very good to meet you." She shook his hoof heartily but beyond that, she wasn't sure if she would be able to bear the next few hours. This young stallion was everything she wanted to get away from, the strength and ferocity of the training grounds, the need to do everything on her own.

Pyra wanted Ashling servants, she wanted bright sun and clean floors that weren't stained with charcoal and smoke. Before Bonfyrre brought up their first conversation, however, their tea was brought in.

"Golden Kith Royal," said the two Ashlings. The coal-black Ashling placed two pitchers of distilled kith sap in the centre of the table.

"Bottled on the day of the Molten Sun," added the wood-white Ashling as he placed kith branches on their plates. "The Master of the Cellar says this was made to commemorate the meteors that caused the wildfire that spread the kingdom's southern border."

"Yes, I've heard you can taste ten thousand deaths in the alcohol," Bonfyrre joked, a gesture that made her servants uneasy and unsure of what to say. "Do be good helpers and return as soon as you can with the Mason Red. Kith can get too sweet without it."

Glad to be dismissed, the two Ashlings bowed and turned away, sealing the door behind them. Bonfyrre did the honours of pouring out the kith wine, alcohol made by fermenting the sugar in kith sap. Helia helped her mother by taking up the jar of tea leaves and adding them to their cups.

The alcohol in the Golden Kith Royal was an excellent solvent for the tea leaves. Pyra didn't know exactly what that meant, but on her first tea party, her aunt assured her that she simply needed to know that alcohol was the key to success in any diplomatic room.

Anthrasus watched carefully but in his shining coal eyes, Pyra could see his thoughts. Definitely, it was his first time. Aunt Bonfyrre trusted him though, so she would give him a chance.

Once the table had been set, Helia led the first drink to ease Anthrasus into it. Most Fireforms stayed away from liquids, many of the lower classes had never even heard of tea, while the lords and their families rarely had an interest in drinking it, though they did keep large cellars just for show.

Helia sucked on the tip of a kith branch, scorching it with her fire, and dipped it into her cup. The wine popped into a relaxing blue flame and, after a second, she lifted the cup up to her mouth and sipped up the sweet, spring-scented fire.

All the while, Antrasus kept his eyes on her, doing everything exactly as Helia did. Bonfyrre and Pyra drank their tea with them, though enjoying it at their own pace.

"Now then, onto business," Bonfyrre said, nodding to Pyra. "I hear I'm going to be a grand-aunt now, am I? Your siblings have all burned up their first sacrifice?"

Pyra nodded. "My sister Fiera was in the opening ceremony. She got to burn an Oilform for her child."

"Oh?" Bonfyrre raised a brow and turned to Anthrasus. "Was that the scout that was captured around your area?"

The colt nodded meekly, his voice much quieter than what Pyra had expected. "It could be. We found him five days ago, so he would've arrived yesterday during the sacrifice preparations."

"Certainly good for the family, Oilings burn hotter than most," Bonfyrre said. "He'll be a difficult child to feed though."

Anthrasus looked to Pyra. "Do you that's enough to put your sister on the seat of successor?"

She didn't respond for a moment, not realizing he had addressed her. When she caught Helia looking at her, her coal brightened with surprise. "Oh, uh, it might be. The rest of my siblings didn't get sacrifices as good as hers, but she is still a mare. Wyrrefir isn't going to take away my brother's birthright just because his grandson has a hotter flame."

"I just hope they don't raise that one like the rest," Bonfyrre worried. "A Fireform born from an Oiling, that's a card I'd like to be able to play when the time's right."

Only here, in the most private room, could Pyra's aunt make a comment like that about her grandnephew. To any pony who saw her, she was just the ditzy sister of the strongest warlord in the Kingdom. Her grasses and gardens and tea parties were considered popular games among Ashlings and Branchlings; Pyra had been told so enough times over her years.

But those games had a different strength in them, the kind that directed invisible strings around the kingdom. And the succession of the Valley with a leader who understood that was the keystone in Bonfyrres grand plan.

"We could begin a rapport with the Magmamolds," Helia suggested, looking to Pyra. "Do remember the history we talked about the last time we were here?"

"The Magma Carta was the peace treaty signed to ally the Magmamold clan to the kingdom," Pyra recited. "They sealed the treaty with a marriage between, um..."

Anthrasus picked up where Pyra stalled. "Lady Butene of the Desert South and Huo Tian Lian, head of the Magmamold family." She was surprised, more than that, she was shocked that he knew what she had forgotten.

But, he bade Pyra continue. "I've only read their names, I don't understand why it wasn't one of the other lords. There were plenty of others at the time who had larger holdings and stronger armies."

"Well," she spoke slowly, wondering if he really didn't know or was just trying to be courteous, "the Magmamolds burn a lot hotter than we do. Their volcano is the most active of the Isle, and it's so hot that we'd lose control of our magic, burning up into thin air after just a few hours. But Lady Butene had an unusually strong flame, so she was the only one who could marry Huo Tian Lian."

Anthrasus's eyes dimmed as he squinted. "Can anything be that hot? The north might be cold, but we still have volcanoes, and I've never heard of a Fireform burning up all their magic like that."

"It's all true," Helia told him, "I went there when I was young, I had gotten sick again and we thought the extra heat could bring back my health. I actually almost died then."

"So, you think the Magmamolds would be willing to marry one of their children to this new Fireform?" Anthrasus sipped the flames of his tea.

Bonfyrre looked to her niece to see if she had a good answer to that question. Pyra noticed, but spoke hesitantly to push across how delicate the situation was.

"They're proud and they have the strength to back it. Their land can't be invaded by our armies, and living so close to a volcano means they produce a little more than half of all the refined alloys in the kingdom."

"But Fireforms born with that high heat are very rare," Anthrasus said.

"True," Bonfyrre took over, smoking on her kith, "but that doesn't mean there can't be more. The right mixture of fuels added to a sacrifice could give birth to one such special child, or pure luck during the combustion. It'd be easy to know, except the warlords hide so many of their children away in convents and military camps. Just look at what my brother does to Pyra and you'll see how hard it is for us to know for sure if we have the only marriage opportunity."

A knock came from the door, the Ashlings servants again with the Mason Red wine Bonfyrre had requested. Helia let them in, a short reprieve from their concerns on the succession of the Valley.

Unburdened by fresh wine and tea leaves, Pyra's flames reddened as they cooled slightly. She didn't particularly enjoy having a stallion around at her social gathering, but she felt glad that someone outside her family could appreciate how she looked. Or at least, she hoped he appreciated it.

She pushed her hair back, feeling it for herself and showing it off a little. It was all Helia's hard work, but Pyra didn't let that deny the fact she wore her mane well. The Ashlings poured out new cups and placed new branches, quickly leaving the room afterwards.

This, more than the family politics, was what made her happy. Even meeting a new pony was fun, and she wanted to keep doing it, getting to know him better and meet even more ponies. The little desire manifested into a spark, one that almost leapt from her head and burst the Mason Red in a gout of flames. But she kept it under control and simply looked to her aunt.

"What is it, darling?" Bonfyrre asked.

It was a stretch, nearly impossible and highly improbable, but Pyra had an idea that could break her out of her cycle of training and give her aunt the information she wanted.

"I want to get my father to throw a birthday party, no, even better, a birthday gala," she said. "For all kids, of course, but especially for the oil-born."

"And show our hand too early?" Bonfyrre scrunched up the flames upon her face.

Pyra shook her head. "To show respect to the Magmamolds' pride. I think they're more likely to accept our offer if we bring it out into the open, more likely than small-room talks at least."

Bonfyrre thought about it. Apart from it being impossible to make her brother do anything festive, Bonfyrre didn't see a flaw in that plan. It was based on the chance that the Magmamolds would take interest in a way to refresh the Magma Carta, but that was a gamble with very good odds in her eyes.

"Are you sure that governess isn't teaching you my lessons?" Bonfyrre smirked proudly to her niece and swallowed a cupful of flames.

The Side Moss Grows On

The sun rose hotter today than the past two, much to Silic's dismay. The heat wave was taxing on the kith, and having to keep them all watered with black water was taxing on him. The collectors, at least, obeyed the king's laws and stayed away from his grove. With the health of the kith being the foundation of magic in the kingdom, no sap could be harvested or taxed during a heat wave like this.

Having Cupine stay helped, both physically and emotionally. It was good to have some pony helping him dig new channels for the black water to run through the roots. As they worked they talked, and it made the days go by quicker. Nights too.

"They look fine," she said, gazing up at the branches of the kith. "Look, that one's going to drip a drop of sap onto the ground!"

"If the kith give sap on their own, then we can take it," Silic looked to where she pointed, "but we can't go scooping it off of them. Their sap gives them life too, not just us. They may be magical, but magic trees are still trees, and they can be very fickle. Taking sap now could make them run dry for a month or longer."

The stopped at the base of one of the oldest trees in the grove, and Silic placed a smoothed stone on the ground to mark where the next channel could go without disturbing the roots of the kith. Anything well measure is bound to go well, he remembered the lesson from his parents before he inherited the grove.

But by the afternoon they hit a snag at the edge of the grove. They were marking where the channel needed to bend to feed back into the stream of black water when Cupine spotted a moving lump just outside the treeline. The heat waves distorting the sand made it hard to see, but as they watched curiously, it was clearly a pony.

A Mossling, one of the clans loyal to the Kingdom of Sand, like Cupine's clan. But that didn't seem right to them, the Mosslings lived in a forest close to the centre of the Isle, far from the Sandmolds' deserts. Their forest was the single most concentrated home of kith on the entire Isle, there was no reason for one of their members to have travelled so far.

"This can't be good," Silic sighed, dropping the last marking stone and galloping over to help up the Mossling. They were far away from the black water stream. Unlike most of the other pony species, Mosslings didn't need kith sap, instead drawing magic directly from black water.

"Help me lift him up."

Cupine wrapped the dying Mossling's other hoof around her neck and together they dragged the pony to the middle of the grove. "This would be easier," she muttered, "if there were already channels of black water running through this place."

"What do you want me to do about it?" he asked. "The last channels got covered up by the winter sandstorms. There hasn't been a chance like this to dig it out."

"Fine, just lift his head up a little more, his face is pressing against my shoulder."

They carried him back to the stream and laid the Mossling on the fertile soil that sprouted from the black water. He simply had to touch the stream with his hoof and the life began to return to his body. Wilted green turned lush and the mossy stones that made up his eyes rolled with energy.

The Mossling gasped awake, checking his surroundings in panic. He looked at Silic, who was trying to calm him by holding his hoof. Without a word, the Mossling gripped Silic and pulled him into the stream. Silic's head hit the water and broke apart, his will unable to command what was no longer sand.

Cupine reacted with a kick, knocking back the Mossling, and pulled Silic out of the water. He drew up sand from the ground and reformed his head.

"We saved you," he tried to tell the Mossling, but his argument was cut off when a hoof of red moss came from behind a tree and wrapped around Cupine's neck.

"No!" he shouted, hardening a hoof into a blade of sand and cutting through the moss. The other Mossling charged him, taking him to the ground. He reached out to the steam, absorbing black water and using the magic to grow his moss quickly, carpeting Silic's chest and draining the magic in his body.

Cupine arranged her copper dust into a spike and drove it through her captor's head, driving back the red Mossling. She widened it into a blade and cut off the green one, pulling Silic up on his hooves.

Infected by moss, sand and plant fell off in clumps from his chest. He drew the earth up to replenish his body, but he was clearly recovering slower.

"Should've had more kith sap this morning," Cupine said as she positioned herself between Silic and the Mosslings. They positioned themselves away from their attackers, keeping them both in sight.

"I'll be fine," he said, grabbing her by the shoulder and running for his house.

They were sure the Mosslings were chasing them, but Silic grew up in the grove and weaved around the trees until he was sure they had lost them.

"What's our plan?" Cupine asked.

"Get you out of here," Silic told her.

"What? No!"

"I can hide anywhere in the sand, but they'll spot you if you try to mix with the ground."

"There isn't any moss in this desert," Cupine hissed, yanking back on Silic's hoof. "And there's only two of them. We can get rid of them ourselves."

A Mossling, one with bright yellow petals in her mane, lept from the tree branches above. Cupine reacted the moment the mare entered her vision, but she was too slow to push Silic out of the way. It landed on him, tangling strings of moss into his body.

Cupine kicked the Mossling away and lifted Silic up on his hooves. He shot back at the Mossling, hosing her down with a gust of sand he drew up from the ground. Under the weight of the earth, the Mossling stumbled back into the roots of one of the kith.

They ran. "How many are there?" Silic asked, checking above and behind them constantly.

"More than us," Cupine replied. "Hope you have a good idea."

"If we're going to fight, the house is a defensible spot," he said as they came upon the giant skull.

Red Mosslings, six of them, crawled around the perimeter of the house, digging up the little kith sap Silic had kept as his own supply. They shifted around in irregular forms, looking like flat spiders with legs that stretched in and out of their body to move around.

Silic pulled Cupine aside and they hid behind a kith. "What's going on? Why are there so many?"

"Tends to happen during a raid," Cupine whispered, peeking around the trunk.

"Since when do Mosslings raid? They have a whole jungle." Silic flattened into the ground and slunk across to another kith.

Cupine did the same. "Maybe they want more. But now isn't the time to guess answers."

Silic nodded. "If you go now I think you can make it back to your clan. I'll head to the lord's estate and get help to clear them out."

"Again with this," Cupine remarked, sinking her copper dust firmly into Silic's hooves. "I'm not going home. You're already soft and clumpy on the surface, you need me." Silic looked at himself. She was right, the outer layer of his sand had trouble sticking to the rest of his body.

"I'll be fine," he said, shaking himself down to a smaller size by shedding off the excess sand until his body was the right size for what his magic could animate.

She stared at him intensely. "I'm coming with you, short stuff."

Silic checked back on the Mosslings again. There were more, green ones, that looked like the ones who had attacked them earlier. He figured they'd start spreading out and looking for them once they were sure his house was empty, which left them very little time to argue.

"If you get arrested..." he said, pausing to consider the consequences of the possibility. "Just don't, okay?"

"We'll cross that bridge when we get there." The Mosslings had already begun to search beyond the skull. Cupine held onto Silic and dragged them both through the kith, putting more distance between them and the Mosslings, using the sun to go south, deeper into the Kingdom of Sand.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Gravel Fort, build in Lord Gravelfort's namesake, was a bleak grey stone keep surrounded by a village of sandstone on one side and his personal kith grove on the other. The fort was on a hill overlooking the villagers that worked there. Cactus farmers, ponies who trained to be Cultivators but didn't have the skills required, harvested their crop to turn into fibres for rope and wax for candles.

Sandforms stared at Cupine as they crossed the cactus fields into the village where vintners made wine from cactus fruit, glassblowers made bowls and bottles, and metalworkers broke down ore into pure metal ingots. Bakers cooked clay bricks and turned limestone into mortar. There were candlemakers, weavers, builders, merchants, tailors, and chanters.

"Came here a few times when I was a kid," Silic said, holding Cupine close to his side. "My parents would trade our surplus kith for new tools, but I always wanted to try the cactus wine."

"Uh huh." Cupine barely listened over the sound of her own awe. Nothing among the outer clans could compare to the industrious wealth of the Sandforms and their kingdom.

In her amazement, she spotted a soldier trailing them. The Sandform's body was wrapped in a blue coat and a tall azure hat, armed with a heated steel rod. She turned to tell Silic, but he had spotted the other two soldiers waiting for them ahead.

"What is this?" asked one of the soldiers abruptly. Cupine guessed he was an officer, he had a gold star on his blue hat.

Silic didn't flinch. "I'm here to see Lord Gravelfort, I'm one of his Cultivators."

"A Cultivator, here? During a heat wave Cultivators are supposed to tend to their groves, so either you're lying or I'm going to have to arrest you for negligence and trafficking."

"Trafficking?" No sooner did Silic ask when the other two soldiers pulled them apart. Cupine gripped tightly and resisted, but because she had tensed up the soldiers easily pivoted and threw her on the ground.

Silic tried to shift away but he was quickly sprayed with a gout of water. The officer took off his tall hat and revealed a jar of water with a nozzle, a simple trick to slow down any resisting Sandform.

It worked less effectively on Cupine, but the other soldier simply pressed his rod against her back and her copper melted together, falling off as a chunk. She screamed, the pain shocking her entire body. As she still tried to move, a hoof was melted off next.

"Get them up!" barked the officer. "He says he's here to see the lord, I'm sure he'll be pleased to meet a few criminals behind bars in the dungeons."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Lord Gravelfort stared at the pieces of copper lying on the floor. He examined one in his hooves and tossed it aside. He looked at the Coppercast lying in a pile on the floor, then at the officer who had requested he inspect her.

"Why have you brought me to look at this?" he asked.

"Well," said the officer, "I thought you would like to question her, my Lord."

He slumped his shoulders, already bored. "I have no meetings with Coppercasts today. I don't care why she's here or what she wants, she entered without a proper introduction so she is not a delegation, and I don't have to waste any more time on her."

"She had a partner though," he said, "said he was a Cultivator. He's in the other cell."

Gravelfort, who, in his impatience, had motioned to leave the cell and was already at the door, carefully turned around and eyed his officer. The lord had bright blue sapphires, unlike the grey and unnoteworthy pebbles of most Sandforms. He treaded around the officer and knelt by the Coppercast.

Her copper dust shivered at his touch as he felt the magic running through her body. He tasted her essence, but he was looking for the one thing that was irrefutably his property. The flavour of kith that belonged to the northern-most grove.

"You're an idiot," he seethed, glaring back at his officer. "That was one of my Cultivators. Get him out of that cell now, and when he's released, you can find yourself a new job down at the cactus farms, along with the rest of your team."

"But-"

"If I have to repeat myself once more I'll have you glassed instead."

The officer recoiled and stepped to the door. "Right away, my Lord."

Gravelfort looked down on the Coppercast as his soldier hurried away. "Don't act, I know you're not asleep." He shook his hoof clean of her copper flakes. "But what I don't know is why one of my own Cultivators would break the law for one such as yourself?"

Cupine raised her head, then body and limbs, from the pile of copper and smirked. "You should be asking my boyfriend why an army of Mosslings attacked his home."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Silic, bound in heated coils, could do no more than a few inches around. A cage of metal wire, heated to red, threatened to turn his sand to glass if he moved any further.

"The guards don't believe you, so why should I?" The dungeon keeper asked him from the other side of the cell. "Cultivators, like you claim to be, are required by the law to tend to their groves in heat waves. On top of that, you should know Grvelfort's policy on outsiders."

"Where is she?" he asked.

"You're trapped in there and all you can think about is a mare?" The keeper shook his head and mumbled to himself. "I'll never know what stallions see in them."

"She's... a friend," he said, "don't you have friends you care about?"

The keeper laughed. "And where would I find such friends in a job such as this?"

"Just let me talk to Gravelfort, or you might not have your job for much longer," Silic protested, his efforts melting off flakes of his sand as glass.

Followed by a young, soft voice, a knock on the cell door came. "Lord Gravelfort requests that you release Cultivator Silic."

"It's about time," the keeper said. He grabbed a long metal rod from behind his chair and prodded the cage carefully so that it fell aside without melting any more of Silic's body. "Orders are orders, even when the soldiers are idiots."

Silic stared at him. "You believed me?"

"I had a good guess," he shrugged. "Now get out of here. I gotta clean this place up, I'm torturing out a murder confession this afternoon."

The pony who had called for Silic was a short filly, one of very high breed he noticed as they walked out from the prison cells. Her sand was a much finer grain, probably felt much softer than most. He guessed that she was the niece he had heard about.

"I hope our kith are in good shape," she said as they ascended stone steps to the fort upon the hillock. "The heat's killing villagers who can't get fresh sap. Any longer and we'll begin having riots at the walls."

"Won't be expecting anything from my grove anytime soon," Silic answered as they entered the courtyard of the fort where soldiers trained and handlers tamed stonehounds.

"Defecting already?" the filly asked nonchalantly.

Silic couldn't tell if she was serious or not, but he didn't want to test her. "No, not at all," he quickly clarified, "but it may be something worse. Mosslings attacked my grove."

"Green, floppy, upset upstarts," she scoffed, "are you telling me you couldn't protect your home from some Mosslings in the middle of a desert?"

"Please, take me to your uncle if you want the whole truth," he entreated her. Sandforms, both noble and lowborn, didn't think much about outside allies. They were useful for resources but their small populace never got any respect in towns and forts. Gravelfort held a lot of the north, and if the danger was going to be treated seriously, Silic needed him to understand.

"My uncle?" She paused and looked at him. "So I'm not good enough to talk to?"

"No, m'Lady," Silic stiffened, "but please, they attacked the black water stream by ambush, there were dozens of them at my house by the time I got back from tending to the kith."

"It's not enough we send soldiers to fight Breezies for them," she scoffed, "now they want more kith!"

"That won't happen with your uncle's support," Silic offered eagerly.

The filly smirked at him. "You have too much faith. We're merely mortal, but perhaps he can help. Come with me, I'll entreat you in the dining room. My --ahem-- Lord Gravelfort will meet you after lunch has been served."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The back of the fort, a keep built from ancient bones of giant beasts reflected white light under the desert sun. Lime mortar sealed the walls and fixed the skull gargoyles on the overhanging turrets.

Silic could gaze to the sky and still see the keep. Four floors, each large enough for two full rooms, was more than he could imagine. Other than the king's own palace, Silic wondered if any other lord had a keep like this.

A long wooden table, real hardwood from a sacred dead kith, was the centrepiece of the dining hall. Long, dark curves emphasized the rings that represented a kith's age. Even though killing a kith was the gravest of all sins, there was a small market for kith wood. Cultivators sometimes failed to protect their charges. Selling the wood to a master carpenter would at least grant them enough money to live comfortably after they're sent to do other work, away from their grove.

Silic followed the filly's gestures and took a seat at the left side of the head of the table. A stallion came by and delivered a bowl of kith sap stew. The bowl had bones and salt blocks resting in the viscous, honey-yellow sap that grew on the Lord's lands. The waiter produced a stick of chalk and a pumice stone, a kind of rock with a rough but spongy quality. He grated the chalk, decorating the stew so when it dried up in Silic's body, it'd leave a fine powder instead of grain, rough sand.

He looked around and then to the filly. "My friend, the Coppercast that was with me, where is now?"

"She's safe and comfortable enough," she said, "but she won't be eating here if that's what you're wondering. Luxuries like these are a privilege she hasn't earned."

Silic nodded and drank the stew quietly, though he wondered what the filly had ever done to earn the privileges she was born into. As he finished his bowl, another servant entered through the door, announcing Lord Gravelfort's presence as he joined the dining hall with his personal guards.

"So you are here," he said to Silic, "meaning whatever you have to say must be important enough to my wife."

Silic turned his head, confused for a moment. The filly sitting across from him rose to meet Gravelfort and whispered in his ear. His face contorted as she spoke, seeming embarrassed overall by what she said.

Gravelfort sighed and looked at her. "Was that really necessary?" She shrugged an sat back down.

"Well, I suppose I should be the first to apologize to my guest," he sighed. "Lady Zveipierre thought it'd be a funny joke if she let you believe she was my brother's daughter. My wife is not, I assure you, my niece." He cast a dirty look at her. "And she could at least try to be as mature as an aunt ought to be."

"My dear," Zveipierre waved his disappointment away, "the young Cultivator has news for you. Mosslings, he tells me."

The mention of Mosslings drew a wide frown across Gravelfort's face. He focused his pebble eyes on Silic, dropping the topic of his wife's sense of humour.

"Tell me what happened," he said, "and why you're not at your grove."

Silic pushed aside his empty bowl. "Started out with just a few of them, but there must've been at least a dozen Mosslings at the grove when they attacked us. They drove me from the black water to my house, and if it wasn't for Cupine, they would've had me too."

"Savages," Gravelfort snapped, "no demands, no diplomats. Their civility breaks down at the slightest adversity and they just take what they want."

"I don't know anything about that, lord," Silic said, "but does that mean you're going to send your soldiers to drive them away?"

"With Mosslings so close," Gravelfort considered it for a moment, then peering out a window to the village that surrounded his fort, he made his choice. "No, your parents were the best Cultivators under my protection, the skills you've learned from them will be more useful here."

"Here?" Silic stood up. "You mean I won't be going home?"

"Sit down," Gravelfort ordered, and Silic quickly composed himself again, following his words. "Even if I wanted to, your isn't the first grove to be attacked. They struck in the east, days after the king sent emergency Collectors to collect additional taxes to overcome the heat wave. Nearly half of my own soldiers were levied into his Majesty's army."

"But if they're in open rebellion, shouldn't you stop them here too?"

"With what army?" he asked Silic. "Something has happened on our western border. The kingdom of Fire recently rekindled their alliances with their surrounding clans. I've sent the other half of my forces to my brother's groves to protect my son's future bride."

Silic glanced at Zveipierre. He wondered how a stallion who broke so many marriage customs could still be so judgemental about other clans. It was his own damned fault for not leaving enough troops to protect his home, and now everyone else had to suffer the consequences.

And though he wanted to change that fact, there was nothing he could do. Silic bowed his head. "Didn't realize we had so many enemies. Things seemed so peaceful in the grove."

"It's not much, but know that I don't intend to let those foreigners stay in my lands for long," Gravelfort told him. "A few months is all it takes to levy and train a small army. A hundred or so of our kind should have no problem crushing the Mossling's insurgency."

"Foreigners," Silic said, "does that include Cupine? What happens to her?"

Gravelfort turned to his wife, who gave a shrug as her answer. As serious as he had been, Gravelfort's both softened and deepened as he relaxed slightly and grew his frown.

"No doubt she came with you here because she was on your grove when the Mossling drove you out," he said, tapping his hoof on the table. "I don't have to tell you how expensive kith sap is, but if she's been living off your surplus and not my due, then I suppose no wrong has been committed."

Silic settled his sands and finally relaxed in his seat. Knowing she'd be at his side was a small comfort in all of this.

"When can I see her?" he asked.

A smirk crossed over Gravelfort's face. "She really wasn't kidding, was she?"

"My lord?"

He laughed. "I don't approve of who you spend your time with, but I'm willing to bet mares are the same no matter what they're made of. Keep calling her friend and she might think you're too timid to move forward."

Gravelfort wrapped his hoof around his wife. "I know what other nobles say about me, but Zveipierre was the one who arranged our marriage," he laughed, looking at her. "It might've been a purely political move, but even so, when a mare knows what they want, the best thing to do is to listen."

He slapped the table firmly and stood up. Gesturing to one of his guards, Gravelfort ordered one of them to escort Silic to his new home in the Gravel Grove.

"You'll need my guard to see her," he finally answered Silic's question. "That foreigner's under house arrest until I know she can do grove work instead of stirring up trouble. I hope you're as good a teacher as your parents, Cultivator. Coppercasts don't live in the Kingdom of Sand for free."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Gravel Grove, unlike the rest of Lord Gravelfort's stronghold, was not a sight to boast about. The black water that ran through its land fertilized the sand into thick, rich mulch, but it could do nothing about the chunks of marble, granite, and sandstone that gave Gravelfort's home its name.

Chirping desert birds, weird things made of flesh like Breezies, didn't have to sing far for their call to be heard. Birds fluttered around each other, some flaring up rainbows of feathers in the fresh sun.

Gravelfort wasn't lying when he said Silic's skills would be useful. The pony who had established the grove clearly needed his spacing skills examined. The kith were too close, Silic guessed their roots entangling was what made them so short compared to the giants he and his parents had reared.

"Soldiers say I can't leave the grove," Cupine complained from their new clay-brick cottage, bringing out the toolbox stored in the back room. They were at least high-quality tools, sharp crystals and hardened iron that could cut out any larvae burrowing in the kith; that was another problem from having them so close together.

"He's delusional," Silic said softly. "He has no respect for natural laws, his wife's too young and he can't make two cousins wed."

"Oh?" Cupine looked at Silic startled as she slung a sling of tools over his back. "You don't usually speak ill about nobles."

"Maybe I just don't like how he talks about you," he replied, thinking about what Gravelfort told him. Cupine was brash, not foolish. What exactly did she say about their relationship? Silic didn't doubt they liked each other but announcing that to Gravelfort's face was different. It was dangerous. If he wasn't a Cultivator, Silic would have no status to defend himself.

So what did she say?

"Thinking about home?" Cupine nudged him. "You don't look too happy."

They moved in yesterday, but this morning was the first time he noticed that she was shorter than him now. A few inches of her copper dust had been melted away in the lord's prison.

"Are you sure you weren't hurt?" he asked her. Last night, because the soldiers kept guarding Cupine, they slept in separate rooms for the first time they were together.

She smirked. "I never said that. I just meant that it doesn't bother me. I can always get copper filings by shaving down a candle holder or something."

"Okay," Silic replied, running the back of his hoof down her neck. For the briefest of moments, he felt their magic intertwine and he was relieved to feel her presence with him. "Let's take it one day at a time then, and hope that army gets ready soon so we can go back home."

Tides of War

"Get a cup of kith sap, Diz," General Gyser Rapids said.

Diz Oliver stood there, staring at the general. He had told him everything, how their army was ambushed and destroyed, the presence of Breezies in the Mistform village, he expected the general to appear the least bit worried.

"Sir, we still have scouts under attack, shouldn't we be doing something about that?"

"You said Waeve was leading the remaining scouts, right?"

Diz nodded.

"Then if there's a chance of getting out alive," he said, "they'll make it. Waeve's the best Special Operator among the scouts. And, knowing him, he'd tell you to trust in our chain of command. We're cautious for a reason, private. Now go, I have to figure out this problem and I don't need panic dripping down to every soft-bellied rookie in my camp."

"U-understood, sir," Diz stuttered, making his way out of the general's tent and trotting over to the mess. This morning the whole camp was alive with movement. Massive tanks of water and oil had been brought from the sea and lake to fuel the hungry war machine of the Waterforms. Other ponies, in smaller numbers, walked around the camp too.

They were situated in a valley that cut through the mountain range leading to the Mistforms' plateau. Vulnerable to attack on multiple sides, it would've been a terrible spot for a camp if the valley didn't have a river flowing through its valley. Dots of bright blue and white light shot back and forth the water. They were soldiers and suppliers, keeping a constant connection between the camp and the kingdom's capital.

Most of the tanks stored oil from the sea. Unlike the main army, the Oilform forces couldn't use the river water to maintain their numbers. So, for every tank of water placed in the camp, there were three filled with slick, black oil.

Eyes cast about on Diz as he trotted to the meal tents. Word spread as fast as he could walk that he was the only survivor of the assault that was supposed to be foolproof. The odd Frostform here and there cast the worst looks. They thought they were better because they were solid ice. The North Never Thaws was their clan motto.

As he walked, Diz passed a group of soldiers he recognized from scout training. They ended up dropping the scouting program and becoming infantry, but they all still remembered the long night runs that were cold enough to freeze the water off their backs.

"Hey!" shouted Wake Sail, the only one who made it through enough scout training to qualify for the officer program when he dropped. He waved Diz over to join him. He was a captain now.

"Don't yell so loud, Sail," Diz replied, walking up to the table in the middle of the tent. The flaps of the tent were opened to their fullest, so he could see a row of jars of differently flavoured kith sap. One jar was filled with small frozen beads of amber, a favourite among the Frostforms. They crunched on them with their rigid glacial jaws, but a Waterform could also dissolve a pellet into softer sap.

"Heard what happened, but you can at least be polite," his friend replied.

Diz picked up another jar, lemon-flavoured sap made from kith grown at the base of the Frostform's mountainous home. Being across a river from the Ashling clan, the volcanic soil that blew up from the south made the soil around the mountains very fertile, growing lemon trees that flavoured over half of the Kingdom of Water's sap.

Picking up a large bowl, Diz poured his share and sat down on a waxed mat next to Wake. "I don't feel like doing anything but going back up there," he said. "I ran for so long, away from the fight and down the cliff that took hours to climb. I trickled down those rocks so quickly, I thought I'd just splash off one of them and turn into droplets."

Wake frowned. "How many Blooders were there? Word around the camp is that you were ambushed."

"Not by them though," Diz shook his head. "I think, no, I'm sure they came across us by accident. They ran at our forces like suicide even though we outnumbered them. They were fleeing the Breezies who took the village."

"Don't dry me out like that. You can't joke like that and expect me to ignore that look in your eyes."

Diz tilted his bowl and poured some lemon-flavoured sap over his head. The thick fluid clumped up in his watery body, sticking to itself. But slowly the sap glowed, little particles flying off the sap and fading into his water, charging it with magic. But the aura in his eyes was the same.

"There were so many of them, they must've outnumbered the Blooders too. And they had weapons, I think they made them out of the bodies of the Blooders. Spears of blood that could contaminate a Waterform's body."

Wake turned away and shut his eyes. "Joking would've been better. The truth sounds-"

"-terrifying."

They sat like that for a while, drinking kith sap. Being former squadmates, they knew each other well enough to communicate through silence. But they couldn't stay like that all day. As soon as the sun stretched past its zenith, some commotion started to pick up around the camp.

"Hey, time to scramble!" someone shouted from another tent. "Breezies spotted at the perimeter of the camp."

Diz's face looked up from his cup of sap, then at Wake. "Waeve didn't hold them back."

"Think so?" His friend put down his cup and started heading to his barrack. "Could be that they just missed them and came for us instead. Either way, you know the drill."

"The evacuation signal hasn't been lit," Diz followed, still holding out hope to see the other scouts again. "I'm going to tell the general that we have to-"

Diz stopped and watch the sky as an Oilform launched a gout of fire.

"There's your signal." Wake slapped Diz on the back. "See you at the rendezvous."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A field of slick, black fluid greased the camp. From where he stood, Diz thought it looked more like a pit than a valley. Oil dripped into the river that connected to the tents, the river that the Waterforms used to empty the camp in minutes. He knelt by an Oilform captain, using a glass lens to spy on the camp itself.

The lens was one of the few goods the Kingdom of Sand was willing to exchange with Waterforms for sap when their groves dried up. It magnified whatever Diz looked at, helping him spot the Breezies that were investigating the camp.

"They've walked about a hundred metres into the camp," he told the captain, who had turned his hoof into a charged lance of oil. "The ones in the lead look pretty curious, they'll probably get into a better range."

They waited for a better shot, for when all or nearly all the infiltrators were in their camp. Diz couldn't help but think about Waeve, but it didn't distract him from doing his job as a spotter. He may have been the rookie scout, but his training was sharp and instinctual.

"They're as far in as they're going," he noted when the Breezies started to break apart. They dug up anything they could find, mainly looking for kith sap. Some of them were armed with branches and slings, but the majority still carried spears made from the bodies of Blooders.

"Confirm it," the captain told him.

Diz nodded. "Enemies are within the trap's radius. Fire when ready."

Sizzle. Magic sparked along the surface of his hoof and ignited the tip of his lance of oil. With a compact pivot, the lance flew off, jettisoned with immense speed so that it hit the camp before the Breezies even noticed. The infiltrators didn't take any notice of the oil splattered around the camp. Assuming it was just a strange custom of Oilforms, they ignored it until their hubris blew up in the face.

Red flares glared off from Diz's watery surface. If Waeve was dead, he felt reassured that the Breezies responsible paid for it. Still, without any confirmation, he held out hope. Reports would list him as missing, so there was no reason to give up so soon.

"We better catch up with the rest," the captain said. "They're probably waiting for us to push into Mossling territory."

They packed their sap rations and the spotter lens into a water-tight case. Diz absorbed it into is liquid body, holding it on his back so it wouldn't get in the way. They started back down the mountainside toward the river.

"You really think that's why we were ordered to gather on the east coast?"

"Blooder territory is weakened, now that the Breezies seem to be striking back at them. If I were the general, I'd use the opportunity to cut straight to the Mosslings. Without their kith, the kingdom might not be able to recover from the loss of the Mistforms."

"Well well," Diz mused, "sounds like you're gunning for a promotion with ideas like that."

"You'll get there rookie. Who knows, maybe when this war's over, you'll be calling the shots."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

When the Breezies started passing them, Waeve River knew they were trapped on the wrong side of the line. He was sad to say it, but the other scouts were dead, save for Shellfome, who clung to his back the way seafoam stuck to the waves on the coast. Wherever there was an opening, they slipped by Breezie guards together. If they went too far, they retreated behind the safest outcropping of dirt or rock.

The last four hours was the same game of hide-and-chase. Whenever Waeve found a blind spot between patrols, they'd run up too far and meet with the larger Breezie troops. They'd be forced to retreat back into the abandoned Mistform town.

"Think they finally moved on?" Shellfome asked.

Waeve shook his head sadly. "They're too encamped here. Part of their forces might have moved on, but the ones here are meant to stay."

"What more do they want? They don't need kith to live."

"Maybe if we find out, we can make a distraction that'll give us a way out."

Waeve relaxed, letting his body drop into a puddle, which turned into a stream and began slithering along the ground to the centre of the town. All-day, he had watched the Breezies bringing equipment into the town from somewhere in the east, most likely a larger camp.

Metal things and wooden frames placed on top of a dirt mound, one they had already excavated. There were no traces, thankfully, but Waeve still knew that a family of Mistforms that lived inside that mound. They may have been elusive, and more incorporeal than any other clan of ponies, but if a Mistform was disturbed enough, their bodies never regained cohesion. That the Breezies could do so mindlessly to innocents disturbed him deeply.

"Check it out," Shellfome whispered from behind a boulder. He pointed to the centre of the town where a well burrowed into the surface of the plateau. It was the same one they had passed when they came in.

Waeve found it funny how quickly situations changed. He had passed by that well so dismissively, while the Breezies seemed to have a fascination for it. The well had buckets of bright crystals. Most were yellow, some were white or red, but they were all extracted from the plateau indiscriminately.

The equipment the Breezies used were assembled at the former homes around the well. Some were simply carts, others carried large heavy spikes that could be lifted with leverage and dropped back down to crack the stony surface.

"They're making it bigger," Waeve told Shellfome.

"Yes, I can see that. What are those crystals for?"

"They have magic, that's all I know. And they're important to the King."

From behind a rock at the corner of a derelict dirt mound, they observed the Breezies working in unison. The creatures chattered in their strange language, constantly moving carts back and forth to carry more crystals away from the well more was brought up.

Eventually, one of them let out a cheer of some kind. The others stopped what they were doing and rushed to the well to see the crystal that had come out. In a bucket of yellow, white, and red crystals, a blue crystal had gotten itself caught up in the Breezies' fervour. One of the Breezies walked by the others and took the blue crystal from the one who had cheered.

He looked at it, inspecting it from all angles. He even used a sharp metal spike to put a scratch on the crystal's uncut surface, to the shock of the others. They watched and waited for a verdict with as much curiosity as Waeve and Shellfome. The judging Breezie grinned and said something which brought gleaming looks of relief to all the others. They suddenly rushed back to work with even more energy than before.

Waeve noticed a new structure being put up, a tall metal spire with a glass receptacle at its tip. It stood as tall as the trees around them, its metal beams bolted to planks of wood, which were pinned down into the plateau by large metal stakes.

"I can shoot it down before they secure it," Shellfome said, beginning to reform into a pony so he could launch a blast of water from his hoof. "Bet they won't

Waeve rippled his water around. "Hold on, we still don't know what they're doing. If we leave now, we'll escape without knowing why they want the crystals."

"Yes, but we'll escape."

"We'd be useless scouts if we didn't get information about our enemy."

"This is above our call of duty, Waeve," Shellfome muttered, still readying himself to fire. "Let me take this thing down and we can get out of here. We don't even know what the crystals here do."

"But the King does, and the Mistforms have always been critical parts of the kingdom. Our orders were to secure and investigate what had happened here in the first place. We still have that mission."

Shellfome rippled with irritation, but he slunk back into a puddle. "We better not die."

"I sure hope we don't," Waeve replied. They held themselves low, following the contour of the land, trickling as close as they could to the metal frame being built. When it became stable enough, the Breezie who had inspected the blue crystal mounted his prize onto the glass bauble at the top.

The Breezies talked to each other, muttering incomprehensible things. Waeve could tell they were excited, however. They were all watching him, slowing down in their work. It took a rough bark from the apparent leader to get them all bustling again.

The crystals that had been dug up in the meantime began to pile up. Each Breezie not reinforcing the tower dragged bags of other coloured crystals to its base. Yellow, white, red, it seemed like the colour didn't matter for the rest of the crystals. The pile grew higher and higher until it filled the bottom half of the tower frame.

"A shrine maybe?" Shellfome whispered to Waeve. They had retreated a little farther back, simultaneously watching for an opening to escape as they observed the Breezies.

Waeve considered the same thing. Whatever the crystals' purpose, nothing seemed to be happening. "Why would Breezies worship our crystals?"

As if to answer, flashes of light started to flare out from the blue crystal. The magic from the others below flew up in a single beam, siphoned into the glass receptacle. The Breezie leader shouted some orders, and two soldiers quickly climbed up to the glass and faced it down. Like a mirror reflecting sunlight onto a single point, the glass around the blue crystal focused the light onto the ground.

Quickly the leader produced a bottle from the mining equipment and threw it down into the light. The rocky plateau immediately softened into dark, fertile soil. It was black water. Waeve watched as the light heated the black water, sending it into the air as a hotly-glowing mist.

The mist glowed blue, dancing in the sky like the auroras in the Frostform lands. When all the water was gone, the shimmering mist collapsed into a swirling disk on the ground.

They waited. Waeve and Shellfome were as gripped by the sight as the Breezies. But only the Breezies cheered when an impossible limb stuck itself through the disk and crawled out. The scrawny limbs were unmistakable. Another Breezie had climbed through.

Waeve rippled, reforming himself behind a jutting piece of stone. He watched intensely as more came through. It was an endless line. Only minutes passed before the ruins of the Mistform village was filled with Breezies. The magic they had discovered, or perhaps they already knew it was there, posed a greater threat to the Kingdom than Waeve could have imagined.

In an instant, the Breezies could bring an army to Waterform borders. If they ever felt pressured, they could retreat without delay.

"There's too many of them Waeve!" hissed Shellfome, who was still bubbling on the ground, hiding as a puddle.

"Go, now," he said without a moment's hesitation. "We have to tell the King they've built a portal. If we can't stop them now, they won't just destroy us, they could conquer any kingdom on the Isle!"

A shout from behind the rock neared them. More followed. Waeve instantly called himself an idiot for panicking so loudly. To Breezies, a Waterform's voice must've sounded like a flowing creek or a bubbling hot spring, sounds too common to notice. But a panicked cry here, an outburst there, and the sounds were like a sizzling Fireform.

It was just a matter of time before the sheer number of Breezies overwhelmed them. Even if they hid as puddles, one lucky step could force them out. So Waeve turned and did the only reasonable thing. He ran like death itself was chasing.