Sycamore Trees

Keep your head down.

Keep researching.

Keep Chrysalis in the dark.

The moon was high in the sky now, oddly plain without the menacing silhouette of my sister painted across its surface. Summer Zephyr had long since fallen into a deep sleep beside me, his rusty brown mane sprawled across the pages of a particularly large tome. I could feel my own eyelids growing heavy with sleep and words.

I found myself catching winks of sleep between paragraphs, barely able to enjoy the respite before jolting awake. The cool night air was just so soothing, so comforting, rocking me to sleep...

My eyes closed for the millionth time, and somehow, without opening them, I was met with a new sight.

Not new, exactly.

The green wasteland. The cloying brown smog, now all the more real with a horrid stench. Had there been smell in this world before? I couldn't remember it.

I looked over my shoulder. The torch floated there, crackling and throwing off sparks. I could smell the burning wood now.

The singing lilted through the darkness once again. It was so, so familiar! As I searched my mind so desperately for a connection, the voice cut in, like every time:

"What are you waiting for?" Chrysalis shouted in ardent desperation.

I closed my eyes and winced away from her voice. "I'm scared..."

"Stop being a baby and kill it!" she screamed. "Kill the weasel!"

I opened my eyes. The singing, the crackling, the howling winds all stopped. I was back in the library.

The need to find the crow, I noticed, was gone. Even in the context of this strange dream, this vision, I knew that the crow had been found. A new feeling, a new creature, had taken its place.

"The weasel..." I murmured.

Summer Zephyr startled awake beside me with a snort. His mane was considerably less dignified after his unplanned nap, and now stuck out at odd angles. His eyes were still glazed with sleep.

I shook my head and started closing books. The night's research was done-- the next round could wait until morning.

In the corner of my eye I could see Summer stretching, yawning, looking around all dazed and sleepy. He seemed to remember where he was and shot up into a sort of attention, then very slowly turned his head to look at me.

"Salamander."

I froze. "Did you say something?"

Summer blinked his globe-like eyes. "Salamander. You're The Salamander, from my dream!" He said it with such authority, as though this animal was a title of mine and not just an element of these odd visions.

My tongue traced over my lips. I continued to stare at the book in front of me, fearing what sort of realizations I might have if I met his eyes.

"I'm... looking for you," he said. "I've been looking for you for a long time, I think."

I swallowed.

"Princess?" he whispered. "Are you The Salamander?"

I couldn't help it anymore. My eyes flicked over and met his, and in that fraction of a second my world was shattered for a second time.

"Weasel," I breathed.

He put a hoof on his chest. "I-I'm weasel?"

Chrysalis' words echoed in my mind. "Stop being a baby and kill it!"

I winced away from Summer's gaze, occupying myself quite poorly by stacking the books strewn across the table. To his credit, he did not press the issue. He waited, frozen, watching as I tidied up and waiting patiently for an explanation. Unfortunately for him, I had none.

Once all the books were stacked with obsessive neatness, I ran out of occupying tasks. Summer was still sitting there, so still, his mind working slowly and carefully to put together the pieces of a puzzle which I had not yet solved myself.

"Kill the weasel!"

I looked back to Summer. His eyes were just so young, not yet clouded with knowledge of the evil which he would surely find one day. I couldn't bear to be the one to show it to him, and yet I was certain that it was my destiny.

"Princess?"

"I don't know what it means," I said. Admittedly, I blurted it out like a lie.

Summer blinked. He was silent for a long time. Then, "If I am The Weasel, and you are The Salamander, than who is The Crow?"

I bit my lip.

"Do you know that much?"

"I don't think I can say."

Summer looked away, turning his head to instead gaze out the window. "I understand. I have to find them myself, don't I?"

That's a poetic way of looking at it. Probably for the best. he couldn't exactly leave the castle while he was on duty.

Although... if previous experiences were any indicator, this meant that Chrysalis would be looking for Summer, too. It was a bit of a toss-up: would Chrysalis risk coming back and running into me before the three days were up, or would her need to find Summer take over?

"Perhaps Luna is The Crow?" Summer asked, leaning back over to properly re-enter my line of sight.

I turned away.

Summer cleared his throat. "Apologies."

"It's alright," I said.

The Crow is coming.

"We should leave. Your shift is more than up," I said. I stood up and started scooping books off the table in hurried sweeps. "I will be continuing this in the morning."

"Is that an invitation?" Summer asked.

"No!" I said, albeit with a little too much gusto. "No. Come if you wish, but nopony is forcing you to attend."

Summer shuffled his hooves. "Then you don't want me there?"

I brushed past him with a messy stack of books. "I don't want you getting the idea that you need to accompany on every little mission I undertake. You are of the royal guard, not my personal assistant."

The books slid one by one back onto their dusty shelf. Summer did not respond. There was just a flare of fear in my chest; I couldn't even figure out exactly what I was afraid of. Afraid of killing? Afraid of why I would have to kill him? Afraid of him?

Just a dream, Celestia.

The Crow wasn't a dream.

"I suppose I'll leave you, then."

"Goodnight, Summer," I said.

His hoofsteps departed at a steady clip. I was very aware of how exposed and alone I was in this library, in the dark of night.

Nothing to fear, Celestia. Just a dream, Celestia.

But The Weasel wasn't a dream.

Such formal titles. Such boldness. Why were such simple titles so bold and powerful? Nothing more than animals. And yet the power, the meaning behind those animals seemed to run much deeper than the words or even their forms. I couldn't quite find it just yet. I would soon.

Just a dream, Celestia.

"Kill The Weasel!"

The Crow was close.

I dropped the books without a second thought. The Crow was close. She had come back, I could sense it. Stupid, stupid Chrysalis. What was that spell again? What was the plan?

The wingbeats of The Crow, surely very far away and through solid glass or stone, rippled through the library.

I steeled myself. "Show yourself, Chrysalis!"

The fluttering wingbeats echoed through the darkness again. It took all of my strength not to shiver, to quake, to whirl about and dash out of the room at the greatest speed I could muster.

"This is no time for games!" I shouted. "Show yourself, fiend!"

And there she was. Her round and unassuming face peered over the sill as though she were nothing but an innocent foal searching for her mother. I could see the very tips of her dark wings flashing in the moonlight with each beat as she hovered high above the streets of Canterlot.

Our eyes met, and she nearly balked at the sight of me, the drama queen.

I stormed to the glass and leaned in to face my enemy. "What are you doing here?"

Chrysalis seemed to babble something, but the glass muffled it.

I rolled my eyes and opened a single pane just wide enough for her to whisper to me.

"The Weasel is here."

"How is that any of your business?" I spat.

"It's very much my business, they're in my head," she said. "And I want very badly for them to be dead, don't I?"

"Your negotiation skills are abysmal," I said.

She scoffed. "I'm not going to kill somepony without knowing why!" she hissed. "I'm civilized. I'm not a contract killer."

"You aren't much better."

It was Chrysalis' turn to roll her eyes at me. I reached up to close the window.

"Wait!" Almost and order, but a hint of desperation there. "I need to find them. If I don't, I'll just go mad."

"What a tragedy."

She stuffed her hoof into the window, preventing me from closing it. "I need to see them, just from afar. Let me see them and I'll leave straight away."

"How did you get here so quickly?" I asked. "I only just found out about The Weasel a few minutes ago."

Chrysalis blinked. "Don't change the subject!"

"I'm not taking you to The Weasel," I said. "You must think me the fool."

"I think you are kind to a fault," Chrysalis said.

I pushed down on the window pane, and Chrysalis cried out from the pressure, her wings buckled. She now hung by one hoof, clutching the window sill precariously. I could hear her back hooves scrambling to find a notch in the stone walls.

"Leave," I ordered.

"I won't come in!" she said.

I let up on the window pane a bit. "You won't?"

Chrysalis shook her head. "I need to find them. Just tell me where to find them and I'll look through the window. I just need to find them."

A greater pony than I would have shut the window, locked it, and not given her a second thought. My sister could have. I'm sure my father could have. I, however, looked into the eyes of my sworn enemy and saw more new things. Where before I had seen a flash of fear, I could now discern a shred of need. Not the violent need to feed, but the same unnatural and all-consuming need to hunt down the being from her dream which had kept me awake for weeks at a time.

There was a similarity between her and I. As much as that scared me, I was willing to give her this.

She had asked for this without a please, without a thank you, without offering anything in return or even allowing me to lead the negotiations. And yet...

"He's a royal guard," I said. "His quarters are in the south corridor. I don't know which, but I'm sure you'll know when you find him."

Chrysalis' eyes widened almost imperceptibly.

"But if I hear you've--" my threat was interrupted by the massive downstroke of Chrysalis' falsely feathered wings, and she was gone.

Why had I told her the right place?

I was in power. I could have given her a false lead, lied about his occupation, given a wrong direction. What I really should have done was closed the window in her face and leave.

Why couldn't I?

Because Chrysalis wouldn't hurt him. She was meant to protect him.

I closed my eyes, resting one weary hoof between my eyebrows. The invasiveness of my own thoughts was a sign that I needed sleep, and lots of it. I could barely stand being awake.

My hooves carried me to my bedroom without much fuss. The logical part of my conscious mind, the one which screamed and panicked and scolded me for allowing Chrysalis to squeeze information from me so easily, had faded to a dull buzz in the very back of my mind. It was like the gentle lull of am electric fan. Like the quiet hum of cicadas.

I fell into a dreamless sleep. After so many restless nights of vivid prophecy, this was almost more frightening.

When I woke, the moon was still high in the sky.

"Kill The Weasel!"

I rolled to the edge of my mattress, rubbing my face with both hooves and wondering dimly why I couldn't bring myself to sleep through the night. It felt as though I had been awake into the wee small hours of the morning reading, slept long enough to be rested and satisfied... And yet, the moon still hung there, shining down blankly on the ponies below.

It was unnerving. Like an eye without a pupil.

There was a gentle knocking on my door.

"Princess?"

I turned to look at the door. "Summer?"

He must have had a fitful night of sleep as well. I stood, trotted to the door, and peered through the peephole. It was Summer, indeed, his horn barely visible through the mess of bedhead mane.

I unlatched the door and pulled it open a crack. "Is everything alright?"

Summer squinted at me. "I'm not sure... according to the clocks, it should be morning by now, shouldn't it?"

I shrugged. "The moon is still up."

"Yes, but it's been an awfully long night, hasn't it?" Summer asked.

I rubbed the back of my head with one hoof. "My father would not fall behind on his duties. I'm sure our internal clocks have been confused by the night of studying in the library."

"But the clocks--"

There was a tap on my window.

"Did you hear that?" Summer asked, trying to peer around me and into my room.

I looked over my shoulder. "I think that was..."

The face. The face in the window. The Crow!

"Excuse me one moment," I blurted, closing the door in Summer's face.

I bolted to the window and threw it open. "Chrysalis!" I hissed. "What in the hell are you doing back here?"

Chrysalis opened her mouth, but said nothing. She cocked her head, her mouth hanging open, and seemed to search for an explanation.

"I'm not waiting for an answer!" I scolded. "Leave!"

I slammed the window shut, and Chrysalis ducked out of sight.

"Er... Princess?" Summer rapped on the door again. "Is everything alright in there?"

"Fine!" I shouted back. I pulled the curtains closed over my window and returned to the door.

Summer seemed surprised to see me. "The clocks?"

I put my head in my hoof. A headache was brewing just behind my eyes, I could feel it. "Yes, yes, the clocks... Have you checked with your Commander? I don't have any answers for you just now."

"He seemed to think you would know..." Summer said.

"Ugh!" I cried. "I am a child! How could he think I would know anything about anything?"

Summer looked at me strangely.

"I just mean..." I shook my head. Don't try to defend yourself, Celestia. You'll only make things worse. "Please tell your Commander that, as far as I know, all is well, and he should proceed as he sees fit."

There was another tap at the window.

Summer peered over my shoulder again. "What did you say that was?"

I leaned over to block his view as best I could. "Just... my bird, pecking at the cage!"

Tap, tap, tap.

"Are you sure?" Summer asked. He was now stretching up as high as he could stand, looking straight over my head into the room beyond. "It sounds like it's coming from outside the window."

"I'm sure!" I insisted.

Tap, tap, tap.

"Perhaps you should consider giving your bird a larger cage."

"Could you go speak with your Commander, please?" I asked, though it was more of an order than a question.

Summer, who had quite clearly forgotten his place for the lure of The Crow, straightened up. "O-of course, Princess. Shall I report back to you?"

"I'd prefer it if you didn't," I said. My hoof was pressing on the door, but Summer stood like a boulder in its path.

Chrysalis pounded on the window, just twice. Summer's eyebrows knit together and he looked at me suspiciously.

"She's a large bird," I said.

Summer looked me right in the eyes. For such a nervous sweetheart, he sure had a frightening glare. I supposed they had taught him that in training. It worked like a charm, I hate to admit.

"You won't mind if I just go take a look, will you?" he asked.

"Well, I--"

He ignored me, pushed past me and into my bedroom. On the one hoof, he was doing his job and investigating mysterious goings on. On the other, obeying royalty was meant to be his prime directive, and he was failing miserably at that aspect.

The Crow calls the Weasel.

The thought only echoed in my mind, but Summer shot up like a ramrod as if he had heard it, clear as day. He looked like a hunting dog as he surveyed the room with his piercing gaze.

His eyes landed on the curtain. Just a simple silk curtain which was gently fluttering in the breeze from the open door. Castles are quite drafty, after all. Its light fabric rippled and twirled in the softly moving air. Perhaps even Summer's movement in the room was enough to stir it into motion. Beyond the silken veil was--

"Crow!" Summer shouted. He ran to the window, nearly tearing the curtains off their mount with the speed and force of his magic.

"Summer, no!" I held a hoof out as if to stop him, but it was much too late.

There they stood, snout to snout, separated only by glass. Both snorted onto the pane, fogging its surface with their warm breath. I could feel my heart pounding across my entire body. The threat of death, from Chrysalis' own mouth, hung in the air. It occurred to me that Summer may have had a very different dream than I or even Chrysalis had; he may not even be aware of what danger he was in.

The stillness was interrupted when Chrysalis wound up and smashed her front hoof through the window pane.

Summer leapt back, already charging a magical blow. I stiffened like a board.

Chrysalis withdrew her hoof from the jagged hole and put her snout through it. "We need to leave this place immediately."

"Why should we listen to you?" I asked.

"The Crow is the messenger," Summer said. He bit down on his lip, as if to stop more words tumbling out. "I don't know why I said that."

My breaths were quickening. This was a trap, it had to be.

"Please!" Chrysalis was pounding her head on the sill. "I've tried so many times! This city is poison!"

"What does that mean?" I demanded. "How do we know you aren't luring us to our deaths?"

She growled in frustration, punched through the glass a second time. Her own breathing was quite ragged, as well; tortured, one might say. She moaned and snarled as if in pain.

"I can't..." She beat her head against the glass. "I can't remember!"

Summer's magic very quietly dissipated.

I looked to him. "You can't trust her, Summer."

Summer shook his head, not at anything in particular, just very slowly and with great concentration. "The Crow is the messenger."

"That doesn't mean anything!" I insisted. "We're all just-- just delirious! Having visions and waking nightmares, speaking in riddles. This is a curse! Do not trust her!"

Summer looked me in the eye. He had no reason to trust one of us over the other. He had only just met me, and I had done nothing to make him feel welcomed. Merely kept secrets. Chrysalis, on the other hoof...

The Crow is the messenger.

"Please!" Chrysalis screamed. She put her hoof right through the stone wall, spilling rubble onto the floor.

"Shit!" I moved to put a leg across Summer's chest in defense, afraid that Chrysalis was going to seize the opportunity to burst into the room and take us by force.

Instead, she disappeared, crawling back to wherever she came from, or perhaps assuming that we were only a few steps behind her.

Without a word, Summer turned and set off at a gallop down the hall.

"Where are you going?" I called after him.

He did not respond, just skidded about a corner at the end of the passage and vanished from my sight.

I considered my options. The hall, the window, the bed. Give chase, give in, give up.

I threw open the window.

I flew at the greatest speed I could manage over Canterlot. The now bitingly cold night air cut at my feathers as I rocketed towards the front gates. So many hunches and gut feelings... all foolishness. A leader must use logic and precision, only the occasional gut feeling in the most dire and time-sensitive of emergencies. I had been here for twenty-four hours and all I had done so far was listen to visions and a voice in my head.

I could see Chrysalis on the outside of the wall, barely a speck. She was waiting on the mountainside for us to arrive.

I touched down before her, my back to the stone wall.

Chrysalis honestly looked afraid.

"Summer Zephyr has done nothing to you," I said.

Chrysalis scoffed. "I never even once implied that he had."

"You are luring him out of my protection," I accused. "Trying to... to head off all of this vision nonsense and kill him ahead of time."

"Trying to change the course of time is a fool's errand," Chrysalis said. "And I am doing nothing of the sort."

"Well then what in the name of Equestria are you doing?" I demanded.

Chrysalis' eyes drifted away from mine and up to the walls behind me. She said nothing, only stared in a mix of fear and awe just over my shoulder.

I hesitated, but turned to look after only a moment.

My blood ran cold. Hundreds of thousands of papers were plastered to the stone walls of the city, coated every bit of stone and turned the once grey surface the sickly yellow of parchment. I took a few steps forward, looking to both sides and seeing the same sight stretching on in both directions.

"What..." I murmured, my voice getting lost along the way.

As I stared, the wind kicked up a great fuss and caused all of the papers to shiver against the stone. The sound was like waves on the sand.

A single page detached from the stone as the wind howled past us. The paper was carried on the wind almost right into my grasp.

The image of a foal. One large word: missing.

Looking at the paper was excruciating. It was like trying to focus on small print while intoxicated; I could barely make out the foal's face, let alone the details of where it had last been seen or who to contact.

I released the paper back into the wind.

"That city," Chrysalis said with great disdain, "wouldn't let me remember this while I was inside of its walls."

"That doesn't make sense," I said.

"It doesn't," Chrysalis agreed. "But I guarantee the moment you set hoof in it again you will have no memory of this."

I shook my head. The longer I looked at the wall, the more ill I could feel myself becoming. Some of it was a seasick swimming sensation as the letters and images scrambled themselves with no rhyme or reason, but the rest was my heart dropping straight through my hooves and into the earth below. So many missing foals...

"Are they all real?" I asked.

Chrysalis shrugged. "I'm just the messenger. I am the one who was coming and going. I was meant to find this and bring you to it."

"And you're so willing to just do as you are told?"

"Not as I was told." Chrysalis' tail flicked. "As I said, trying to change the course of time is a fool's errand. This would have happened eventually, I am simply helping along the natural course of events."

"It didn't happen last time," I said.

Hundreds of thousands. All missing. All from this city? I couldn't remember anything so devastating in my time at the throne, or even before.

Chrysalis looked at me out of the side of her eye. "You must not have been paying attention last time."

I looked to her in fury. "You dare suggest I overlooked thousands of missing foals?"

"If the shoe fits, Princess," she spat.

The front gates creaked open. Summer, out of breath and looking somewhat pale, cantered out from between the heavy doors and came to stand beside me.

He stared up at the wall in a subdued sort of shock.

The wind picked up again. This time, with barely any force at all, every single page was violently torn from the wall.

We ducked as the wind shrieked past us, carrying a library's worth of parchment in a veritable tornado of tragedy. The papers swirled up into the air, higher and higher, until they disappeared into the night sky.

The clock chimed noon.

With a stone-cold thud, I realized why I had been brought here to see this sight.

"Luna. Luna is missing."