The scout burst into the royal tent amidst a gust of snowflakes, just as I’d set Princess Platinum’s brose before her. “Your Highness,” he panted, dipping a hasty bow, snow falling from his cloak. “We’ve found them. We’ve found Lord Sunstone’s marching column.”
“Sunstone’s column?” Princess Platinum rose from her breakfast abruptly and somewhat stiffly, wobbling slightly as her eyes bored into the scout. I stepped up by her side, ready to steady her if need be. This recent march through the mountains had weakened her, for all she wouldn’t admit it. “You’ve found them? Where are they? Are they well? Tell us their condition. Speak.”
“Northaways of here, Your Highness, on the other side of the ridge.” The scout’s horn blazed orange and he lifted his hood and pulled off his slitted snow-goggles, revealing the tired eyes and hard, frost-blistered features that had become the norm among unicornkind in the course of this hellish journey. Tools of his trade jangled about his person: a tinderbox, emergency pouches of oatmeal, an enchanted looking-lens, and a set of snow-shoes strapped at his side. “Glimpsed a moving mass amongst the troughs and valleys at the mountain’s base, struggling to make headway through the snow drifts. Winds are driving right at them something fierce. But they look largely intact, and I recognised Sunstone’s banners.”
I breathed out, briefly giddy. The several marching columns that composed the entirety of the unicorn kingdom had done their best to stay within sight and galloping distance of one another. But since entering the mountains and snaking our way through the passes, driving winds and unexpected ferocity from the snowstorms had seen us lose contact with the column led by Lord Sunstone. Their absence had been a dark weight on the mind for the last week.
“Did you make contact? Do they know we’re here?” I said. The scout turned to me.
“No, Clo— my lady. Observed from a distance for a few minutes, but thought it best to come here at once.” He hesitated for a moment. “I’m not sure they know where they are. Their direction of travel was slow, unsure. And they seemed to be angled a shade too north-west. Those winding passes and the snow-shroud’ll be playing havoc with them.”
“We must correct them,” said Platinum firmly. She frowned, as if thinking. “Clover, remind us of our intended destination. The name and exact locale temporarily eludes us.”
“Evergreen Mont, Your Highness,” I said for what wasn’t the first time, as the scout’s expression carefully remained impassive. I turned back to the table, to where several griffon-scrawled maps lay spread out, and swiped up the top one for inspection. “Another two day’s journey at our current pace, but the griffon tribes told us there’d be firs and pines there fit for grazing and lumber. We could rest there while hunting out the best route south-west out of the Greycairns and into the uninhabited lowlands. But if Sunstone’s column keeps on its current course … they’ll just head deeper north-west into the Greycairns. Where the griffons have put down labels like ‘The Wailing Wastes’ and ‘Herein Ice-Wyrms’.”
Platinum stood straighter, with some effort. “We assuredly must correct them. And if they have been lost for over a week, amidst what sounds like harsher conditions than what even we have faced, we must grant them courage also.”
“I can head back out there, Your Highness,” said the scout. “Descend down the mountainside, advise them to change course, and pass on any message you may see fit —”
“No,” replied Platinum. “You have exerted yourself enough, good ...” She broke off suddenly into a coughing fit, and when she next spoke, her voice was that little bit more strained. “... Good pony. We require our scouts to remain able.”
“I can go, Your Highness,” I said, a vague premonition of doom flickering in my mind as Platinum’s possible intent suggested itself. “If I can borrow a sledge, I can alternate between it and teleporting and reach Sunstone’s column soon without overly tiring myself, and keep myself fresh for clearing any obstacles in their path. I can stay with them and guide them. As well as pass on any encouragement you wish, word for word.”
“Our words are fine and encouraging things,” said Platinum after a moment’s consideration. She looked directly at the scout. “And yet … What is your name, good pony?”
“Surehoof, Your Highness.”
“We would have you do two things, Surehoof. You have a scout’s sledge? Lend Clover your sledge. And bear a message to the tent of Lady Nightshade. Inform her that I give her authority over and responsibility for this column and its progress until we reconverge.”
“Give Lady Nightshade authority over the column?” I said with weary dismay, as the premonition was vindicated. “Your Highness —”
“This column is in good order and the morale of our subjects here holds,” Platinum said, with the determined finality that invited no discussion. “But Sunstone’s falters, and has wandered lost for far too long. Our words are fine things. We ourself are finer yet. Retrieve our russet — no, our burgundy cloak and our snow-goggles, Clover. And accompany us to Sunstone’s column, lest we need any heavy thinking done while we are there.”
My princess is a pony some charitably describe as ‘dauntless’, and who less charitable others deem ‘bloody-minded’. Danger doesn’t dissuade her. Centuries of an ancestry that spent their time hitting others over the head with swords whenever they weren’t being hit over the head with swords themselves has wrought a certain base stubbornness and inability to acknowledge the existence of personal risk in her and her line. Once she has committed herself to something, nopony could alter her mind with anything short of unorthodox trepanning techniques.
But as we advanced up the slope of the mountainside and to the high ridge, past all the guttering fires and flapping tents of our camp, and through a wild wind that screamed snow into our faces, I felt I had to make the effort.
“I could handle the matter by myself, Your Highness,” I insisted. I squinted out at a narrow window of the world through my own slitted snow-goggles. My saddlebags were stuffed with supplies and rolled-up maps, and I pulled up the harnessed sledge at my back. Atop that sledge perched Platinum.
“We will hear no more on the subject, Clover. We will not be gainsaid,” she muttered. She’d donned her cosy burgundy cloak, though it couldn’t be cosy enough, and her crown had been jammed down atop a fur-lined hood. Her jewelled, hiltless sword rested in a sheath at her side. I’d watched her pick it up with some trepidation. I knew the quality of her bladework. I’d tended to her cuts after umpteen sessions in which she’d grumpily insisted the training dummies had been cheating. Still, if we were ambushed by anything unfriendly, I could make use of it myself.
“The unicorns in our column would benefit most from you at their helm, Your Highness,” I pressed. “They have to be led on to —”
“Lady Nightshade shall do so admirably. She is steadfast and knows our course and destination,” Platinum said obstinately. “Our unicorns in Sunstone’s column struggle on through darkness and distress. Are we to not go to them?”
She is demanding, she is obdurate, she has a host of qualities which fail to ingratiate, but there are reasons she has my loyalty. I could only sigh and reply, “The descent could be perilous, Your Highness. I advise against undergoing the peril. For your sake.”
“Our sake is unicornkind’s. No more, Clover. Must we say it thrice?”
She didn’t. I held my tongue for the rest of the journey up towards the ridge, passing by the last of the pitched tents and fires. Winds and snow flurried and whipped all about us, the unending chill biting past whatever warmth our cloaks gave, biting through to the bone. Overhead, pale grey clouds roiled in the sky from horizon to horizon, shrouded by the snow that ceaselessly pelted down. The clouds seethed and pressed up against one another, their motions striking up distant and constant thunder.
And I knew that past these clouds, when the snowfall lightened and sunlight made meagre silhouettes against the thick grey barrier, that things lurked behind. Long, twisted, pony-like forms, always galloping, always flying, mixing their cruel laughter with the wind and sending the snow scything down, again and again and again …
I forced them from mind. We had a task before us. The skyborne horrors would have to wait.
Along the stony crest of the ridge, there was a short cleft, and we struggled up towards it. Upon reaching it, craggy rock rising on either side of us, I undid the sledge’s harness, took a trepid step towards the ridge’s edge, and pulled out an enchanted looking-lens. I rose the wooden tube of it towards my eye, willed magic through the gems set within, and squinted through.
There — far off and far, far below, all but invisible past the blizzard, I sighted a shifting dark mass of what had to be Sunstone’s column. What seemed like tiny, colourful banners flapped wildly at their head, lashed by gusts of wind-driven snow.
I turned the looking-lens down, adjusted the magic in the gems, and focused on the slope down. Broad, sharply-sloping slabs of glacial ice ran down much of the mountainside, pockmarked with jags of black rock and the odd treacherous crevasse. Descendible by sledge, with a little care.
Well, let’s not understate. A lot of care.
“Right,” I muttered. I put away the looking-lens and regarded the long slope down, down all its pale, snow-shrouded, rock-studded vastness. Vertigo swooned in around the edge of my mind, and I tried to will it away as I checked the sledge. It looked solid enough, at least, with the runners and crosspieces fashioned from tough walnut wood and lashed together, and engraved with little magical runes to impart additional lightness and sturdiness. I rested one hoof on the front and tried to steady my breathing as I pondered the route ahead.
“Clover?” came Platinum’s voice, and I turned on her, abruptly and wearily reminded of the other pony’s wellbeing I had to safeguard as well, as if the next while wasn’t going to be fraught enough. A stubborn, ailing pony who hadn’t even finished her brose before plunging headfirst into this. But whatever bitterness flared up in me was dampened as I met her gaze. Under her crown and the rim of her hood, her tired eyes radiated genuine concern. “Are you well?”
I sat down in the front of the sledge as Platinum shuffled back to make room, and I pulled on as reassuring a smile as I could muster, as a unusually chill wind cut through the cleft. “Quite well, Your Highness. Just steeling my nerves for the descent.”
“Take heart from us, Clover,” Platinum replied, her voice thin and with a hint of rasp to it. “We don’t see any reason for fear in a mere mountainside.”
I glanced pack to where the cleft plunged down into the glacial slope, blistered with rocks and crevasses all the way down its impossible length, and I glanced back to Platinum. Wryness came naturally then. “No reason at all, Your Highness?”
“What reason do we have to be afraid, Clover?” said Platinum. “We are with you.”
The chill wind slowed. My answer, when it finally emerged, came with a hitch in my voice. “Well. Hold on tight to me, Your Highness. I’ll try not to disappoint.”
“You never do, Clover,” she said, and as I shifted to secure my seating and rested my forehooves on the top of the front-runners, she wrapped her own forelegs around me from behind, pressing her thin frame close. I heard her sniff once, twice. “That said, Clover, we really must urge you to find the time to give yourself and your cloak a good wa—”
She has a rare knack for ruining moments, but I found myself able to forgive her. “Hold tight, Your Highness!” I said, interrupting her, and kicked forward the sledge with my magic. It lurched across the ground, clearing the lip of the cleft and slipping down onto the slope. For one breathless moment, it skittered over the layers of ice and packed snow, gathering direction and speed.
And then, direction and speed thus gathered, it tore down the slope, and we were borne with it.
The world blurred by, turning to so much pale indistinctness. Biting wind pelted my face, and even past my snow-goggles, I felt compelled to screw up my eyes against the volleying snowflakes. Platinum’s grip about me tightened, even as she whooped in my ear. “Hah! Most exhilarating!” she laughed, with more energy than I’d heard from her in a while.
A fierce grin broke across my features, and I forced my eyes to resist squinting. There — up ahead, a jag of black rock hurtled towards us. I brought my magic to bear on the sledge and smoothly pulled us to the right, curving clear of it. The world kept whipping by, and I was aware of the mountains on either side of our own, great looming shapes past the veil of snow. If I’d craned my head to see where we’d come from, how remote and small would the cleft be? Would it still have been in sight at all?
A sudden bump in the slope arrested that line of thought as the sledge skipped over it, left us briefly airborne, and smacked down in the snow a few metres hence. The impact jolted us, leaving me wobbling in my seat and eliciting a slightly more breathless whoop from Platinum.
In the corner of my vision, there was the faint suggestion of darkness creeping into the pale, wild sky. I barrelled on regardless, heedless. Forwards was that mattered, all there was.
Ahead, we were coming up on a small crevasse, all but hidden in the snow. Small enough, I reckoned as we neared it. A metre wide, maybe less, enough for the sledge to clear at this speed. But no sense in leaving things to chance. Magic gathered about my horn, and as we came upon the lip of the crevasse, I wrenched the front of the sledge up a fraction. My world tilted up, and I glanced down as we skipped right over the crevasse. For a brief second, I glimpsed a gap descending deep down into the glacier ice, glimpsed ice walls falling down into blackness, turquoise light swimming in their heart.
And then the glimpse passed, and we slammed down onto the snow, hurtling on our way and leaving the crevasse far behind almost as quickly as we’d seen it.
“Why do we not do this more often?” Platinum enthused in my ear, as I kept my attention firmly on whatever might come rushing at us next. “Make a note, Clover! When we settle, we settle where we may regularly — ah.” When she next spoke after a moment, her voice was perturbed and soft enough to all but go unheard over the rushing wind. “Clover?”
“Hmm?” I replied absently. The wind and snowfall was growing fierce as we descended, and I was sure I could spy a greater crevasse in the distance.
“Clover, there’s something —”
And before she could finish, that something struck. A great force suddenly buffeted the sledge side-on, wind and snow crashing into us like a hammer-blow, and the sledge was thrown into a mad spin over the slope. The world whirled, wind screamed in my ears, and as I tried to desperately reassert control over the sledge, the something flew overhead. A long, house-sized, ice-coloured mass that left a trail of bone-cracking frost. Cold, cruel, alien laughter pealed.
The wind screamed and I swept my head about. My magic crackled out and caught the sledge, and I poured force into arresting its spin, force enough to make my horn itch. As the sledge slowed, I saw the long form of the thing, galloping through the sky over us and laughing in a mad whinny like a gale at a windowpane. It was one of the windigoes that lurked behind the clouds, demons of ice and wind and darkness, descended from its high lair.
My head turned, and a new reason for my blood to run cold presented itself. There wasn’t just one. The clouds had descended, wreathing the slope at our backs, and in their depths, I saw more monsters capering. Dozens, at least, their crackling laughter breaking like thunder.
“Back, beasts!” came Platinum’s snarl, and a burst of magic erupted from her horn, flying out and blazing harmlessly through the skies. She tottered upright in the swaying sledge, one hoof resting on me for support as she gestured with the other. “Back! Lest we —!”
“Down, Your Highness!” I screamed, my magic forcibly planting her back down into the sledge and wrenching her forelegs around me again. As she squawked with outrage, I wrenched the sledge round to speed straight down, missing another crag of rock by inches. Wind and monsters howled, chasing us down, and I thought desperately through the fog of terror.
To Sunstone’s column. There’d be ponies. There’d be fire. There’d be safety. The monsters didn’t strike directly where ponies were gathered, as far as we’d seen. They just sent down snow and wind to make us struggle.
The sledge hurtled down, buffeted by the wind at its back, and I felt Platinum writhing behind me. “Clover!” she snapped. “Clover, do not mishandle us! These coward beasts think to hunt us when we’re isolated! We must show them their mista—!”
“Be quiet, Your Highness!” I snapped back, my gaze frantically combing the way ahead. The large crevasse I’d sighted earlier loomed ahead, still distant but rapidly drawing closer, and past it, rolling hills ran down towards the ever-closer lights and mass of Sunstone’s column.
Platinum’s reply was drowned out by the scream of wind at our back, and motion in the corner of my eyes made me glance from side to side. Two of the great monsters had galloped down through the sky and were loping on either side of the sledge, casually keeping pace like hunting wolves. Their white eyes burned down with a terrible, hungry glee, and as I watched, they edged in closer, and closer, and closer.
Time stood still. I closed my eyes. I breathed in.
And the magic for teleportation gathered about my horn and wreathed about the whole sledge and in one impossibly brief instant, whirled us far ahead of the surprised monsters, keeping all of our sledge’s speed and momentum. I released my breath with a yelp of pain as my horn protested the magical exertion, and opened my eyes to see the crevasse coming up before us, many metres wide. A faint rising lip made a ramp up into the air over it. It might be enough. It might not.
“HOLD TIGHT!” I yelled one last time before the ascent. Platinum reflexively tightened her grip on me, whatever her current state of pique might have been, and before time allowed for any more thought, we crested the lip.
And for a long moment, we became pegasi, flying through the air over the great crevasse. All the shades of blue and green twinkled in the vastness under us, some detached part of me noted, so many imprisoned colours under a wintery prison. For a moment I felt weightless and breathless, and the sky extended endlessly all around.
And at our peak, another of the monsters came slashing in. Its winter-grey form blurred past, trailing an ice-flecked gale, and the sledge helplessly like a toy in the air as orientation entirely deserted me. Pale skies and the shades of ice and howling greyness whipped around me as I felt my hoofhold on the sledge vanish, and my flight became freefall.
Burgundy flashed past my vision, and something below my conscious thought made me clutch out at it, at Platinum, seizing her mid-air and holding her close to me. The pain in my horn stopped mattering, stopped existing, as with one great magical wrench I teleported us over to what I hoped was the air over the slope past the far side of the crevasse. A much healthier place to fall. I twisted us in the air, holding Platinum in my forelegs and turning my back to the ground.
I crashed into hard layers of snow and ice, all my breath and all my remaining sense departing me. Helpless, I tumbled down the shallower slope, Platinum falling from my hooves and getting lost somewhere. Sky and snow and sky and snow blurred together.
Then I hit a rock, and the cold blur of motion yielded to a hot blur of pain. For a long moment — I couldn’t tell you how long — I lay slumped against the stone’s side, wheezing wretchedly and struggling to move. The world lay side-on in my vision, grey skies and oncoming dark clouds on my left, and endless white snow and ice on my right. Before me, there was a sledge as well, embedded front-down in the snow.
I lay still. I might have lain there for a while. But before I could drift entirely off into blackness, burgundy and the gleam of jewels entered the mix, and a figure lurched through the snow towards me, the snow coming up past her fetlocks.
“Clover?” came the voice of Platinum, as if from a great distance. And now there was desperation and fear in her voice. “Clover? Clover, are you hurt? Clover, tell us you are not hurt! Clover, answer us, please!”
“Y’Highness,” I murmured, lifting my head a fraction. The sensation of cold crept in around the edges of my world, as well as memories of where I was and what I was doing and what terrible life choices had led me here. I blinked blearily up at Platinum. Her crown was askew on her head, and her eyes were wide and frantic. “Keep moving. Keep moving. Sunstone’s not far ...”
“We shall move on in company! With you! On your hooves, we command it!” When I didn’t dutifully spring to my hooves, she forced her muzzle under me and tried to push me upright. “Clover, we order you to rise,” she said pleadingly, and it was now her voice’s turn to develop a hitch, “Clover, this is rank disobedience —”
The dark clouds drew in. Shapes emerged from them. Tall, twisted, monstrous shapes. Moving slowly, without a care and all the time in the world. A pack of cats with two trapped mice. And if those mice never made it to Sunstone’s column...
“Behind … behind you,” I wheezed. I tried to push myself to my hooves and failed. Platinum turned, and saw the monsters incoming. The foremost of them towered above, its eyes like stars in the night sky. Its fangs gleamed like the first icicles. Its long form, too twisted and stretched to anything equine, was shadows and snowstorms and pitiless chill.
Platinum stared up at the face of winter. And she drew her sword. It twirled up in her magic, up into the high, impractical stance her fencing tutor had always patiently told her to stop doing.
“Approach Clover, monster, and die,” she rasped.
The monster laughed, and desperation all but lifted me off the ground. I tried to rise again, past the foggy pain in every part of me and the blinding ache in my side, and very nearly succeeded.
“En-garde, then!” Platinum drew the sword back for one of the wild, telegraphed swings she regards as the last word in swordsmareship, but as she lashed out, another coughing fit overcame her. She all but doubled over, her trachea seemingly trying to escape out through her mouth, and the sword fell from her grip. She stumbled on regardless, and promptly became one of history’s few swordsmares with the distinction of tripping over her own blade. “Gah!”
Every sinew of mine bent to getting me up, every ounce of will fighting its way through my battered body, and slowly, achingly, I got up. I lurched through the snow towards Platinum, who coughed indignantly as she tried to rise, and tried to get between her and the monster, the whole pack drawing in towards us.
As I tried to stand between them and Platinum, Platinum tried to return the favour, even if coherent words had fleetingly deserted her, and we struggled to safeguard the other, there on that bleak mountainside. The monster’s eyes shone the cold, hungry white of winter vastness, and it lunged down.
And I acted first. I wrenched away from Platinum, my horn blazing and spluttering with whatever magic I could to bear, and, driven by nothing more than the drive to stand with Platinum, to protect her, to keep the darkness at bay from a fellow pony, let fire with a gout of spellfire. It roared up in my usual lilac tint, save for scattered flames around its edges.
And though it could have been my imagination, they seemed to flare a brilliant pink.
And past the rush of fire, the low, icy laughter of the monster suddenly became an ice-cracking scream. Magic torrented from my horn, and I was only dimly aware of Platinum shifting at my hooves, of the strange and untapped magic that seemed to come rushing up from my heart and through my horn, of the darkness on either side of the fire receding.
I let fly with my magic, and when there little left to let fly, only then did I stop. I stood, and tottered, and gasped at how sore my horn was, and blinked and peered through watering eyes for any sign of the monsters. All I saw was white vastness, rising to a distant and dark mountain-ridge, a vanishingly tiny cleft therein, and pale grey skies high above. The snow still fell, but seemed to have thinned, and the vague suggestions of shapes past the pale clouds seemed to be slinking, to be keeping a wary distance.
Not gone. But at bay, for now. And by what means, I was in no frame of mind to even guess.
“H-how?” I babbled to myself, wobbling where I stood. “Magic. Didn’t work before. Magic? Pinky fire. Went whoosh. Fire of … of … horn hurts. Pink.”
Something to consider later.
“Clover.” Platinum murmured in my ear, and I felt her hooves on me, gently pulling me down to sit on my hindquarters. I slumped, and felt her against me. “Clover, Clover, Clover. Steady, now. Stout heart. Commendable work. Rest.”
And rest I did, all but collapsing into Platinum’s hooves as we sat there in the snow. Silence descended upon the mountainside, a welcome moment of peace after our sledge-ride.
“Never, never, never do that again, Clover,” wheezed Platinum softly, after a long and unbroken hush. “We are your princess. We face the foe.”
“Yes, Your Highness” I murmured to my ailing princess. “But you’ll face them in company.”
“Rank insolence,” she muttered without rancour.
The hush descended once more, and just at the point where I glanced at our upright, half-buried sledge and felt it was past time to make a move on, there were flames, and voices, and the sound of sets of snow-shoes scuffing up towards us. “Princess Platinum?” somepony said.
We turned, and saw cloaked unicorns coming towards us, from the direction of Sunstone’s column. They neared us, a half-dozen or so, and at the front I recognised the grim, gaunt features of Lord Sunstone himself. He stared at us, clearly surprised. “Your Highness?” he said. “Was that your magic we saw?”
“Ah, Lord Sunstone,” Platinum said. She drew away from me and staggered upright, aiming for properly royal poise and getting some of the way there, and smiled benevolently. “We come to deliver you from distress and to correct your course. Clover brings maps. We bring ourself.”
Knowing my cue, I worked one last flourish of magic. I unclasped my saddlebags, presented the maps to Sunstone and his ponies, and duly delivered them from distress.
And as exhaustion closed in, and hooves and sledges caught me and bore me to where there were ponies and warmth, they returned the favour.
Author's Note
Best read after reading The First Stitch.
Thaw
“We would have it noted that we continue to regard you as a ghastly blot on the face of Creation,” rasped my rightful sovereign, Princess Platinum of Unicornkind. “In regards to the fact of your existence, we often find it hard to decide which outweighs the other; our abhorrence or our rank contempt. We witness you, and accordingly deduce the existence of a malevolent Creator and its interference in our affairs. But regardless ...” She gritted her teeth, and after a moment, when she made the effort to speak again, spoke as if the words left a bad taste on leaving. “Regardless, for the sake of our people, and on the fervent advice of our closest and most dearly trusted aides, we are willing to extend an offer to … cooperate. For what will amount to your benefit, of course. You utter affront.”
“I do love our conversations, Princess,” replied Commander Hurricane dryly. The pegasus sounded hoarse herself, her own frame shrunken within her barding since I’d seen her last. Past her wither, I briefly met the gaze of Private Pansy, and saw her wince at the exchange. I flashed my most reassuring smile, and meant it.
My princess was approaching good health again. And in an unusually diplomatic mood, I could tell.
The Princess and Commander were seated at either side of a fire, red-gold flames murmuring between them and filling the hastily-erected wooden hall with a warm, smoky mugginess. To Platinum’s left and Hurricane’s right, there sat Chancellor Puddinghead of the earth ponies, with Smart Cookie at her side. Smart Cookie’s own expression was wry, but a deep happiness held sway just past the surface, I knew.
Puddinghead herself flicked her gaze from Platinum to Hurricane, her face cold and composed, her eyes as sharp as a marksmare’s. And then she abruptly beamed, the expression all but running right round her head, and she turned to beam her bright gaze into Smart Cookie. “Cookie, do you know what sort of thing renders fabulous service to cooperation negotiations? And all other sorts of -ations, for that matter?”
“Is it warm possets by any chance, Chancellor?” said Smart Cookie with practised stoicism.
“Exactly so! Inflict cupfuls on any and all, and then take some fresh air. I suspect these particular -ations are going to get fun.”
“Yes, Chancellor.” Smart Cookie stepped away, and Pansy and I moved to join her.
We trotted to a smaller hearth set in the hall’s wall, while at our backs from the central fire, the sound of Platinum and Hurricane expounding on one another’s shortcomings rose, accompanied by Puddinghead’s cheerful interjections. Smart Cookie smoothly pulled down the kettle of steaming milk that rested over the hearth. “I call this progress,” she murmured. Pansy and I presented cups half-full of ale and she topped them up. “So far, nopony’s kicked one another.”
“So far,” said Pansy, sounding strained. “I know the Commander. Clover, I’m not sure the Princess keeping on calling her a blot on Creation’s going to result in anything but a kicking.”
“No disrespect to your Commander,” I replied, as I stirred all three cups with my magic, “but right now, I’m not sure she’s got the strength to kick anything. None of them do.”
“She’s a trier.”
“Best we get ‘em all too warm and content for impetuousness, in any case,” said Smart Cookie, finishing pouring and putting the kettle back. “Come on. I could use a break from this room anyhow. Last one to ply their ruler with a posset’s a rotten egg.”
I couldn’t disagree on the need for a break, and the three of us picked up our respective cups in whatever telekinesis or mouths we had available and made our way back to the central fire. The locus of arguing seemed to have shifted to between Puddinghead and Hurricane, with Platinum huffing and grumpily inspecting the trim of her worn cloak. I set the cup down by her, and her expression softened briefly.
“Most timely, Clover,” she said, and I couldn’t help but be glad of the fullness and health that had returned to her tone in the last short while. “We required something warming. We would have privacy for a moment, as the Chancellor suggested. Many lofty topics lie ahead.”
“As you command, Your Highness,” I replied.
“But do remain ready to come in if we call. On the off-chance we need any heavy thinking done.”
“Of course, Your Highness.” I turned to depart, and Smart Cookie and Private Pansy fell into step beside me. As we left through the front door of the hall and passed into the brisk morning air, I heard a parting shot from Platinum to the effect of, “Now let us — gah! Why are there curds in this?!” And then I heard no more, as we trotted out closed the door at our backs.
The air was chill all about us, but not as chill as it had been, and the bright sun glared down through the clear and frosty morning sky, as if trying to make up for lost time. Before us, down from the slope atop which the hall had been erected, there lay the broad and thawing expanse of Dream Valley.
And across that expanse, the three pony tribes.
Earth ponies and unicorn encampments hugged the southerly and northerly sides of the valley, respectively, and the air was thick with shouts and axes hammering into wood and the steam of ponies exerting themselves. Hooves mulched the frosted grass underhoof, wagons trundled hither and thither with full loads of firewood. Above, low-hanging clouds hoached with pegasi, flitting this way and that, several of their patrols just visible on this horizon.
I kept watching, and though the three encampments were separated for now, I saw ponies mingling at their edges. I heard laughter, more than I’d heard in many months. Wings flapped and heavy wagon-loads trundled and magic flashed, none of it in anger. And I looked up, up to skies that so recently had been crowded out with snow and dark clouds, that had all but swallowed the world, and the insidious laughter and cantering shapes that lurked behind them…
Until that last, terrifying night, when three ponies had struggled through the last and most ferocious of the snowstorms to the same slope where the hall now stood. And where those three had, against all odds and in circumstances that had blurred past my mind, made an end of things.
“I’m, ah, actually glad they’ve not been fighting too much.” The voice of Pansy broke me from my thoughts. “The Commander’s being nicer to your Chancellor and Princess than she was last time. She’s not being as cold as I know she’d like to be. She’s trying.”
“Hmm.” Smart Cookie smiled. “What’s brought that on, do you reckon?”
Pansy looked at the ground and muttered something inaudible.
“Say again?” pressed Smart Cookie.
“...the night of that last snowstorm, I might have gotten a bit … um, sharp with her before heading out to meet you.”
“Say no more.” Smart Cookie puffed out and turned to regard the valley, her breath steaming in the crisp air. “It’s a time for thawing and finding out what we all had underneath all along. Guess it had to start somewhere. Glad you stood up to her at the finish. We’d all be sorry if you hadn’t.”
“Never liked seeing things suffering,” Pansy murmured. She lifted her gaze. “We all were.”
“I hear that. Old earth pony proverb has it that you all stand together, or you all fall apart. Guess I had to put that to the test at last. Glad Puddinghead’s rising to meet it too.” Smart Cookie glanced my way. “You must have felt the same, Clover.”
I glanced back, but struggled to meet Smart Cookie’s gaze. I flatter myself I’d have done the same, would have gambled all on that one last hope to meet my fellow ponies and uncover some way to drive back the winter at long last.
But I didn’t know that. Because I’d known what would come. Or what might come, at any rate.
And maybe depending on that made me too fearful a pony to associate with heroes like Smart Cookie and Pansy. But at least it had seen ponykind survive that last terrible night. And that had to be worth anything.
“Something of the sort,” I said evasively. My magic opened my saddlebags. “I’ve wanted to thank you both. And a … well, another unicorn gave these to me. And I can’t think of better ponies to receive them than you.”
“Gave what to y— oh my days.” Smart Cookie’s voice trailed off as I levitated the set of boots out of the saddlebag where they’d been awkwardly compressed, and floated them over to her. “These … these are ...”
“Made for sturdiness and warmth, according to the giver,” I said. “The make’ll be peculiar to your eyes, but the weaving and fabric are better than anything else you’ll find. I only wish I could have given them to you some time before the journey here.”
“They’re wonderful,” Smart Cookie said after a moment, her voice thick with joy. She rapped the sole of one with a forehoof. “Darned sturdy. My hooves’ll be glad of these. Thank you dearly, Clover. And thank whoever gave these.”
“I wish I could. And, ah, Pansy,” I said, turning on her. “I don’t know if warflock duties’ll give you much chance to don this, but if they do, or if you can repurpose the fabric into anything you need … then feel free. The giver wouldn’t mind.”
Pansy regarded me, and then regarded the bundle of fabric I pulled out from my other saddlebag, and her eyes widened when I unfolded it in the air. A dress fanned out in the air, the design curious, but the warmth and good weave undeniable. A dress with one peculiar aspect to the design, when coming from a unicorn.
There were openings along the back, to accommodate a pegasus’s wings.
“I, I, oh my, I,” Pansy stammered as the dress was presented to her, and she flapped off the ground to let it spread across her forehooves. She blinked at me, delighted and bewildered. “I don’t know what to — another unicorn gave these to you?”
“Yes,” I said softly, remembrance stealing over me once again. “A very good and generous one indeed. Far away from here.”
And, if we didn’t let her down, still to come.
Private Pansy had just unbuckled her barding and waded into the river up to her withers, a scrubbing brush in her mouth and Smart Cookie’s own hoofmade snowdrop soap balanced on her outspread wing, when she heard the far-off gurgling.
Off-duty though she was, warflock training kicked in. She paused and glanced this way and that, trying to peg the source. Past the thrum and murmur of the forest on all sides, the river itself roiled cheerily and noisily, swollen with meltwater. Pansy strained her ears, and caught a reprise of the strange, thick gurgle. It somehow sounded doleful, as if a jar of treacle was being upended against its will. She kept listening and on its heels, she heard an unfamiliar voice.
And what that voice said was, “Would a badger help? Here, have a badger.”
The warflock training was a bit lost on that one, and so was Pansy.
There was a distant schlft sound, as might be made by something warping out of thin air, and a querulous snort, as might be made by a mustelid coming to terms with unexpected genesis. The same sad gurgle came as if in answer, and the stranger’s voice took on a plaintive edge. “Come on. Yummy badger.”
Pansy had questions. And she was forced to conclude that they wouldn’t be answered if she stayed where she was.
She was a soldier of the warflock. Her long-hoped-for peaceful bath could wait. The warflock needed her to investigate. No, ponykind neededher to investigate.
Pansy edged back towards the riverbank, clambered up and out of the water, spat out the brush and flapped away the soap, and made for her barding. With some desperation, she tried to wriggle into it quickly and noiselessly and efficiently, and achieved none out of three. Flushing with embarrassment, being the sort of pony who could do that even when completely by herself in a secluded river-clearing, she scooped up and shoved her heavy iron helmet on atop her dripping mane.
Last, her crossbow. She fumbled it up into the crook of one foreleg, and reached for the quiver strapped against her barding’s flank. Iron-headed and unicorn-made alarm-bolts jostled for space inside it. Pansy hesitated for a moment, her hoof hovering over one then the other, and eventually picked up one of the alarm-bolts.
No matter how often she’d forced herself onto a practise range and how often the drill serjants had patiently tried to bellow aptitude into her, the iron-heads made the hide on her back itch, and loosing one of them from the crossbow made her reflexively squint her eyes shut every time. With any luck, she wouldn’t need one. Maybe she wouldn’t even need to warn ponies about whatever this was.
Maybe.
Pansy yanked back the bowstring, slipped the alarm-bolt into the bow’s groove, and flapped up off the ground and into the woods in the direction of the voice. She wove through the wide spaces between the trees, keenly aware of her own throbbing heart rate, of the way the forest whispered around her, of the excruciatingly loud way water kept dripping from her heavy barding and pattering on the leaves. The voice rang out again, becoming clearer as she drew near.
“How about something from the desert? You liked it there. Lots of fun shouty beings who yelled the most colourful names at me and whose pitchforks you ate.” There came a sudden thunderous crash and the sharp retort of splitting stone, making Pansy all but jump out of her hide and causing her to swerve directly into a tree. As she fell to the ground, clutched at her snout with her free hoof, and swore plaintively to herself, the unseen stranger spoke again, distinctly worried. “That was meant to be a morale-lifter. Why’s your morale not lifting?”
His conversational partner emitted the same sad, low gurgle as before.
Pansy, blinking away the ache of her snout, her crossbow wobbling in her grasp, shuffled forwards and craned her head round the tree trunk, angling for any sign of the speakers. Past the trunk and a few scrappy saplings, a forest clearing spread open under the sunlight.
Pansy beheld the speakers. And many other things. Her eyes slid slowly from side to side, taking it all in, and her mouth dropped open. Over the grass of the clearing, there lay knick-knacks and baubles, finery and trash, things which beggared description, and things which didn’t so much beggar description as kick description repeatedly in the head and make off with its money-pouch and the clothes on its back.
A haystack lay against a pile of multicoloured tomes, themselves resting at the base of a marble statue of a particularly dour-looking goat imperator. Here, a set of game boards and playing pieces, none of which matched; there, a set of fine dining furniture, atop which rested a termite mound with a ribbon wrapped around it. A great stone sarcophagus covered in strange hieroglyphs lay split open, and a mummified zebra had flopped out to regard the world with a partially-revealed and somewhat world-weary expression. A patch of the colour blue shimmered in mid-air, and flitted around to investigate things. Closer to earth, a badger snuffled at the mummy’s hooves and nibbled dubiously at one. All these and yet more, like the treasure hoard of the world’s maddest dragon.
And amidst the whole kerfuffle, two figures. One of them, a pale-green gelatinous blob with a downcast mouth, came up to about twice the height of a pony at the withers. It gurgled lowly and unhappily, and didn’t seem to notice Pansy as she edged her head around the tree.
The other had their back turned to Pansy, and towered above the blob. Mismatched horns jagged up from a long, goatish head, crowning a long, serpentine form. His mismatched arms folded sternly before him as he loomed over the blob, equally mismatched legs propped him up, and as Pansy boggled at him, he spoke with the voice she’d heard earlier. “Work with me here. What do I have to work chaos at to get you back in fine fettle? I’m not usedto solving a problem rather than making one. At least give me a hint!”
The blob, whose shade of green looked distinctly sickly, wheezed unhappily.
“Swearing isn’t a hint!”
Pansy backed away slowly. It seemed only sensible. She’d make a quiet exit. She’d tell the Commander. She’d probably get told to lie down in the shade somewhere until her brain uncooked. It’d all be …
Her hoof came down on a treacherously rustly patch of leaves.
The monster stopped talking. His left ear twitched.
Pansy held her breath for a moment, hardly daring to so much as twitch a muscle. But the monster didn’t move, and after a brief eternity, she dared breathe out.
She took another step back.
“Ah, excellent!” the monster boomed, as his full length suddenly swept out from a flower on the ground by Pansy and loomed up before her, gazing down with bright yellow-red eyes, over a manic, snaggle-toothed, and sharp grin. Dark brows crawled atop his eyes, and a jet-black tuft of beard jutted from his chin. “You can help me fix the Smooze, whatever you are!”
Pansy screamed and, without any conscious effort, brandished her crossbow at him. Her other hoof hammered up against the trigger and the alarm-bolt shot forth, flying right past the monster’s ear. He blinked and turned to look at it as it whirred up into the sky over the clearing.
The bolt erupted, casting a great corona of green-and-purple light through the sky, sparkling as if it held a whole night sky. It was bright, it was visible for miles, it would be visible from Canter Vale and the new cloud-fort, it would surely be noticed and bring her help, Pansy prayed, oh please, oh please, let the Commander come …
The corona spread, and the monster eyed it. He extended an arm, held up a thumb and forefinger and angled them to encompass the whole flare in the curve of his paw. Then he flicked his wrist and brought his cupped paw down. And in it, there glittered the corona of the flare.
Pansy boggled at it, as small in his paw as it had been far away in the sky. She looked from it to the monster, who was frowning quizzically at it in his paw, and to where it had erupted in the now-empty sky, and back to the flare. “That, tha, I, how, that’s,” she stammered. “Y-you can’t, that’s not, that, how, you-you can’t, that’s —”
The monster tossed the glittering flare over to the blob, which wearily opened its mouth to catch it and gulped it down. It sat there for a moment, looking as confused as a blob with no features save a mouth could. Then it wheezed and seemed to deflate, looking even paler.
“Hmm,” said the creature, turning back on Pansy. “Got something else?”
Pansy stared up at the monster, up at that snaggle-toothed mouth that was more toothy than any mouth had any right to be, at that black goatee, at those terrible red-yellow eyes, at everything which didn’t match with anything around it, and finally at the clearing full of miscellany. Finally, she forced out something like coherent words in the highest pitch she’d ever yet reached. “What … what are you?”
“What an excellent question! Do you know, I’m not altogether sure? There’s so many answers.” The monster absently drummed his claw against the tree trunk, which evaporated wherever his talons touched it. “At least, there’s so many things I’ve been called. Every creature Smoozey and I have run into over the years came up with something different! Pejoratives, mainly. Let’s go for my favourite. Call me Discord.”
Pansy absorbed this in stock-silence. The shimmering patch of blue fluttered up to her face and flashed an affectionate shade of turquoise. “D-Discord?” she finally managed. If only the name had been the oddest thing.
“Think you slipped in a extra D there, but close enough. Oh yes, I’m Discord, or a Discord, or however this whole name thing works exactly.” The monster — Discord — sprouted a thumb from his tail and waggled it at the green blob. “And that’s Smooze over there, or a Smooze, or … look, you know how this goes. Help me fix him.”
“I ...” Private Pansy swallowed. She was a private of the warflock, protector of all pegasi and now all ponykind. The oaths she’d taken rose in her memory, and the thought of Hurricane’s low, coaxing voice helped her steady her heart. “I am Private Pansy. A-and in the name of the warflock and the united tribes of Equestria, I demand that you submit and explain your—”
“Speaking of tangents,” the creature said idly, “what an odd turn of phrase. In the name. How are any of you limited types meant to get in a name in the first place? I can, of course, though even I have to make an effort. Look.” He snapped a claw.
“Wha—” started Private PanDiscordsy, before she stopped, scrunched her snout, and sneezed. Private Pansy winced as the blurry instant passed, and tried to shake away the sensation of a full-body hiccup.
Cold dread seeped into the storm of fear and confusion roiling through her mind. Invoking the name of the warflock at this creature wouldn’t help her. It wasn’t clear what would.
“See?” Discord said. He frowned suddenly, shook his head, and gestured at the blob. “This is a tangent. I like those normally, but Smoozey is the focus right now. Didn’t I tell you to fix him?”
“Fix … what? How?” Pansy turned her gaze towards the pale blob. Against every instinct in her body and the advice of whatever sane parts of her mind still felt up for commenting on events, she took a step towards the clearing.
The Smooze didn’t look in the finest of fettles, inasmuch as Pansy could judge. The green wobbliness of its frame slumped, and seemed to be especially oozy around the edges. Its colour was pale, its mouth turned down at the corners. As she watched, it leaned down as stiffly as a jelly could and tried to lick the passing badger.
“What’s wrong with him?” Pansy hesitantly ventured.
“If I knew,” growled Discord, a nervous and testy timbre leaking into his garrulous tone, his gaze fixed on the Smooze, “I wouldn’t be asking. I’d just be fixing him and sauntering off merrily into the sunset. Setting the sun ahead of schedule, if need be. Making a bespoke horizon for the purpose. But I don’t fix. Mostly anything but.”
“And you think I’ll know what to do?” replied Pansy, trying and failing to not mewl the words.
“You’re a ...” Discord waggled his paw irritably. “You’re one of these little entities that has to obey cause-and-effect and suchlike, aren’t you? Your sort always has to try to account for it and learn about it, correct? Well, figure out what’s causing his current effect. You do it all the time. Do it here. Do it now.”
Pansy looked round at the Smooze. It hiccuped forlornly.
She remained acutely aware of the looming form of Discord to her side, all the mixed bits of him radiating testy worry with no useful outlet. She remained excruciatingly aware of what he could apparently do. And she couldn’t so much as guess what else he might be able to do.
The picture of the delicate new settlements in Canter Vale, full of unsuspecting pegasi and earth ponies and unicorns alike, rose to the forefront of her mind. And when she mixed the picture with an angry, fearful Discord…
It should have been a braver pony who went for her bath in the river earlier. A braver pony should have investigated the noise. A braver pony would be able to handle this.
But here she was.
Pansy breathed in, breathed out, and swallowed. “I’ll try to help him,” she declared. She looked up to Discord’s face for any sign of a smile, and could have fainted with relief when one indeed appeared. “I’ll help him. And you’ll, ah, saunter off into the sunset? Once he’s well?”
She looked up at the toothy smile, waiting for an answer. The sun beat down, and all around was the murmuring hush of the clearing.
“Oh, maybe,” said Discord at last, shrugging.
“...Maybe?” Pansy replied.
He ushered her towards the Smooze. “Go fix.”
Pansy hesitantly ventured towards the Smooze, her gait wobbly as she picked her way over strewn miscellany. The patch of blue flitted in the air around her, and the badger shuffled out of her way. The mummified zebra continued to regard the world as if he had endured many things to grumble about in life and was enduring yet more in the hereafter.
The Smooze itself lifted its head at her approach, and Pansy had the impression it was trying to look at her, for want of any eyes to do it with. She stopped before it, and one corner of its mouth twitched upwards, feebly, briefly. It tried to lean towards her, a motion which turned into more of a slump, and crooned something indistinct.
Pansy knew where she sat in the warflock. The Commander’s aide and pet charity-case was its scorned and lonesome outsider. She couldn’t aim a crossbow to save her life, had been known to get herself tangled up in her own stormclouds, paled at the sight of spilled blood, and went all but transparent when confronted with any being trying to spill her blood.
But if there was one thing she thought she could do, it was help others.
Memories came back of a day during the long migration, where roars and screams and flames had suddenly erupted further ahead in the column, past the driving snow, and in the moments after, pegasi had come flying back bearing injured soldiers. Some desperate, starving dragon had attacked in the vain hope of finding gems and precious metal among them. One of the injured had been thrust at Pansy, crying and thrashing as dragonfire still crackled along his flank.
Memories and tricks from the time before she’d joined the warflock came back to her and filled her mind, showed her the way. And just like that, the whole world had crystallised for her, turned cold, turned simple. In a haze, as if some other pegasus had taken control over her motions, she’d whipped off her own cloak and smothered the flames, shouted at a passing serjant — her, Pansy, shouting — to be brought cool water, had lashed together a dressing from appropriated whisky and strips of her much-abused cloak, had worked like a demon.
And the day after, the burned pegasus had lived to see the dawn. Soldiers who’d hitherto pointedly ignored her nodded at Pansy as she flew by. A new patched cloak had appeared in her tent, as if by magic. In Hurricane’s tent that evening, the Commander had opened one of her last bottles and wordlessly poured her charity-case a cupful.
She could help creatures, sometimes. Equestria just needed her to help another creature again. That was all.
“I’ll, ah...” Pansy rested one forehoof against the Smooze’s head, and found it cool and gloopy underhoof. “I’ll need to ask some questions.”
“Ask away,” came Discord’s reply at her back.
Pansy detached her hoof from the Smooze with some difficulty and leaned her face closer towards it. “How long have you been sick?”
The Smooze burbled incoherently.
Pansy blinked, and then looked helplessly round at Discord.
“That was just an incoherent burble,” he said. “He’s not on his best form. But I can field that. Only this bad for a couple of days now. He was a bit groggy and out-of-sorts before, ever since we came over the sea and started traipsing through this land. I even nearly beat him in a game of cards, just about.”
“Alright.” Pansy gingerly circled round the Smooze, checking for any rents or wounds, for anything that was oozing that didn’t seem like it ought to be oozing. “Did he eat anything funny before then?”
“I once fed him a jester when we poked our heads into a gazelle king’s court. He wasn’t that funny a jester, though. Screamed a lot rather than dispense witticisms. Smoozey just ate his bells and let him run away. Do you think I should summon him here?”
“I, that … no. Don’t do that. I mean, has he eaten anything unusual? What he wouldn’t normally eat?”
“Did he? He’s Smoozey,” stated Discord, as if that explained everything. “He just eats. If there’s any fine details involved, I certainly don’t pay attention to them.”
Pansy breathed out. “Right. Has he been exposed to any foul miasmas? Has anything happened which could imbalance his humours?”
“Jesters who just wail all the time wouldn’t be great for my humour, I can tell you that.”
Pansy decided to haul off and approach the matter from another angle. Her hoof gently tapped the Smooze where she hoped its shoulder would be if it had had shoulders, and she pointedly opened her mouth wide. The Smooze seemed to understand, and mimed the motion with some effort, its own maw unsticking and drooling green tendrils as it opened up. Pansy peered inside in hopes of seeing anything resembling recognisable biology, any obvious obstruction, any hint.
She saw plenty of green, and little else.
“Where does he usually live? Where’s he from?” she ventured, turning back to Discord. Climate was important, shaped a creature, drove them onwards. Ponykind knew that well enough.
“No idea. Maybe from where I’m from?” Discord said. Out the corner of her eye, Pansy couldn’t but notice that he’d wandered up to another tree and was waggling his finger back and forth at it like a conductor. Each branch and leaf swayed along, none of their motions matching Discord’s. “I met him there, unless he went wandering hitherto. I rather doubt it. Smoozey’s the more … sensible of us, you know. Not a natural wild-oat-sower. Does his best to keep me grounded.”
“And where are you from?”
“Oh, elsewhere, hither and thither, by way of strife and darkness in the deep places of the abyssal sea-depths, that sort of thing,” Discord replied. His tone was vague and breezy.
Pansy wasn’t sure what to say to that, and in the thoughtful silence that followed, the tree’s branches and leaves all stiffened, straightened, and spread out like an array of fans. It was carried off by a passing breeze, and Discord watched it drift away. “That, um,” Pansy ventured. “That must have been exciting.”
“Do you know, it really wasn’t?” Discord turned on another tree, which he squinted at and absently turned inside-out with a hideous splintering noise. “First I started existing in darkness and quiet, and then there was a long interval of yet more darkness and quiet and doing nothing. Then a lot of interesting noises outside, and a lot of shrieking, and a lot of crashing and sloshing. I wonder what I was missing. Then more darkness and quiet.” He was silent for a moment. “Lots of darkness and quiet. Something of a motif back then.”
He continued as Pansy absorbed this. “Lots of time for poking at the home I was in, and wondering what I was meant to be doing, and why I was here, and all that ... when suddenly there was this squelch-squelch-munch-munch sort of noise, and who else but Smoozey should come eating his way through the cage! Seemed a bit surprised to find me, but he takes these things in his stride, or his slither, or his something. Turns out I’d been at the bottom of the sea in a cage the whole time, not that I knew what a sea was or anything like that just yet, but it all came rushing into the cage and I was able to wander out. And lo and behold, there’d been this lovely big world outside for me to explore and play with all along.”
Discord grinned toothily. “Left home, grabbed my new pal Smoozey, took off through the water, and started making up for lost time. Blundered around the sea, and learned some good curse-words from a pod of dolphins, and accidentally dropped Smoozey in a thermal vent, and picked him out with only a little wanton ocean-trench formation, and then bumped into land and found some creatures, and decided to make their lives a little more chaotic for novelty’s sake, and that was all just the first day. There’s so many exciting things! And I made them excitinger!”
“So you’ve been travelling the world with the Smooze, then?” queried Pansy. She eyed the Smooze hesitantly. “Maybe he’s ill because he’s meant to be living underwater? I, um, not to sound flippant, but if you take a fish out from where it’s meant to live in water, they’re not in great form for long either.”
“Not the sort of fish I take out. After I’ve improved it, at least,” replied Discord. His gaze sharpened, and he frowned. “But no. We’ve been wandering for a couple of centuries, mostly over land, or sometimes over jam, whenever I’ve turned the land into that. Poking our noses and/or squelchy green face-fronts into lots of inhabited parts elsewhere. He’s never minded before. Why would he get poorly now?”
“Where were you last?” Pansy persisted. There’d surely be a clue in their recent history.
“Southaways. Hot and sandy and lush in various bits. Plenty of annoyed zebras wherever I went.” As he spoke, Pansy nodded. She vaguely knew of zebras, though the nearby mummy wearily taking stock of its lot was the first encounter she’d had with one in the flesh, as it were. “No sense of humour. All I did was invert their pyramids and let Smoozey eat some of the trinkets around their mummified pharaohs and conduct a little ventriloquism routine to an agog crowd with one of said pharaohs as a prop. Light chaos, by my standards. So we left about a week ago, wandered north over the sea, and found this new green land. Lots of chaotic potential.”
Discord trailed off, sighed contemplatively, and looked around. “You know, I might just settle here.”
Pansy balked. She looked right up at Discord. He had turned away, and seemed to be inspecting a far-off cloud. After a moment’s thought on Discord’s part, it burst into flames.
“Have you fixed him yet?” Discord asked, a shade too affectedly blithely. Far-off flames muttered.
“S-settle here?” Pansy trembled out.
“Oh yes. Been thinking about it for a while, and it’s time for me to try settling down. Turn my beard grey and whatnot. Time to situate myself and see what I can really do to a landscape. Keep the world guessing every morning, as and when I let there be mornings.” Discord glanced around with a contemplative expression, like an artist surveying a line-up of canvases. “Deflate the mountains and build them up again. Twist the trees together and boil the land and swap the sea and the sky. Open the land, see what I can pull out, and what I could stuff back in. Unravel and re-ravel and pre-ravel until time and space don’t know what’s when and when’s what. For a start. Unless I think of anything more chaotic. Any suggestions?”
Pansy swallowed, dread sinking into her gut. She stepped away from the Smooze and towards Discord. “I … we’re settling here as well.”
“Are you?” He studied Pansy. “Who’s we?”
“Me. My warflock. All ponykind.” It was an effort for Pansy to form coherent words, to force her panicking thoughts towards dissuading this mad power from settling here. “We … we’ve just come here after a long journey. We were driven from our first home by a dreadful winter, and we’ve been trying so, so long to find another. Somewhere peaceful, somewhere where we can settle down and live our lives in happiness and friendship, harmonious and united at last —”
“United?” Now it was Discord’s turn to balk. “I’ve come here just in time, then. Unity and harmony? What sort of way to live is that? No, no, no, you’ll have a home in my chaos capital. Every day and night different from the last, everything a novelty, every sensation a workout for the senses and sanity, every pony at odds in pandemonium, all the world a revel. Kindly Father-of-the-Nation Discord shall see to it.”
“No!”
“There’s this new trick I’ve wanting to practise for a while, too,” Discord said, as if he hadn’t heard her. He leaned down with a conspiratorial wink. “Turns a mind inside-out, sort of. Nothing better for setting a creature against their usual fellows, for changing things up. Mucks about with their hue as well, somehow, and blessed if I know why. Still, where’s the fun in knowing? Anypony you think I should try it on first? Or shall I just make my introduction to the rest and decide then?”
Pansy met the bright, cheerful yellow-red of his eyes. She wanted to scream. She wanted to find the right words. She didn’t know what to do.
She had to. Sometimes, she did know. Like when a burned pegasus cried for help before her. And like on that last night, the last night there had been three tribes rather than one. When the three had encamped within a mile of one other in Dream Valley, a distance which the last and worst snowstorm had made all but uncrossable.
She’d been with Hurricane, acting as her aide, feeding the withered and bitter Commander a thin broth as warflock bannerets and serjants braved the skies between her battered cloud. And she’d caught the whispers from some of them. A night raid on the unicorns and earth ponies, they urged. Take their stockpiles for the pegasi, stockpiles which were so badly needed, and scatter them and leave them to the mercy of the storm. I could lead such a raid, Commander…
Hurricane dismissed them all, for all that she stared at them longer and more levelly each time, and never even rose from where she sat. Pansy had never seen her defeated before, never seen her with no more reassurance and strength to lend, and now she knew the sight. And so Pansy had stepped forward for one last roll of the dice, one last suggestion of a plan that might now be accepted. She’d met with ponies from the other tribes when scouting, she’d said. She knew there were ponies close to the other leaders who were open to the idea of cooperation. Perhaps if they finally put aside their differences, they could find a way to …
Her Commander cut her off. Too little, too late, she’d snapped. And then all the mad bitterness came pouring out, uncorked and unstoppable. They’d never prevail, not in the face of winter itself hunting them down. If she, Hurricane, had any sense, she would bless the next raiding scheme that came to her cloud. Goodness knows it couldn’t end any worse for the pegasi than what she’d already led them to, than the failure she’d been as a Commander. She’d brought them too far, for too long, for nothing. The last thing she could do was stop one of her many mistakes making yet more in turn. Let the other tribes freeze and rot. Let them all. One way or another, let the pegasi have peace.
And like that, the cold place had enveloped Pansy again.
She wasn’t sure what she’d said then, not exactly.
She knew there’d been shouting.
And she knew she’d flown clear of the world and Hurricane’s bitter curses and into the white storm, to try and find Clover and Smart Cookie, to do whatever she could.
They’d done whatever they could, so she’d been told. The next morning, after that long and blurry and dim terror of a night, they were reminded what the sun looked like as the endless grey clouds peeled away. The tribes mingled in disbelieving delight. And the snow began to thaw.
Like hell Private Pansy would let it all be for nothing.
“Listen,” she murmured slowly, shakily, but with all the iron she could muster. She stepped further away from the Smooze. “We can’t live in a world of chaos. We can’t live like that. We’ve spent too long at the mercy of the wilds, at each other’s throats, at everything like that. My friends and I … we saw to it that ponies wouldn’t, not ever again. And if you do this, you’ll just hurt them. My friends, ponykind, everyone.”
Discord blinked, his expression unchanging, as if waiting for the part where this became relevant to him. Pansy fumbled around for another angle. How would Discord even understand it? “Look,” she gabbled desperately. “See it the way we do. It’d be like you and the Smooze. If you knew something would happen that would hurt him, then you’d want to try and stop it. You’d feel the way I do —”
“Smoozey is hurt right now,” Discord said suddenly, volatile as the sea, latching onto a topic he seemingly understood. His tone shifted, deepened, acquired a hint of snarl. “And you’ve still not fixed him.”
“I...” Pansy looked back round at the Smooze, which wheezed softly and sadly at nothing in particular. “I don’t know how. Just … just give me more time ”
“You’re one of these creatures which has to make a fuss about cause-and-effect! You’re meant to know!”
Pansy tried to answer that, but her treacherous throat seized shut. She could only move her mouth helplessly as no sound came out, looking up at Discord’s mad, desperate eyes.
“What’s the point of you?”
And that one crashed home, and everything she’d been before joining the warflock and every time she’d failed to live up to what the warflock expected stole back over her. A proper pegasus, a proper soldier, a proper anything would have snapped back, defended themselves, but all she could do was curl up into herself.
Discord, a snarl flickering around the edges of his mouth, looked towards the Smooze with a fearful expression, and then turned back on Pansy. His mouth set in something that was very nearly a firm line. “Right, then,” he growled, the words tumbling out, as if racing his plan. “Right. Right. All I have to do is change you into somebody useful. I’m not sure what one of those will be exactly, so there’ll have to be a little experimentation.” His claw flexed and rose in the air, and the sky distorted and clotted and seemed to faintly wail where he held it aloft. “Bear with me.”
Wind whipped about her head and the sky darkened, and Pansy lurched to one side in a vain attempt to dodge whatever Discord did to her, just as the high claw flexed …
...the same instant a storm blazed in stage right, and came crashing down upon Discord.
In less time than it took Pansy to blink, a dark, spear-shaped battering ram of clotted-together stormclouds and cracking thunderbolts smashed down into Discord’s side, and he toppled yelping and was lost from sight as the storm erupted and raged. Smaller arcs of lightning spat forth from the eruption, striking down at the ground, blazing holes into tree trunks, and one spitting down into the grass by the recumbent Smooze. Pansy looked up and around wildly.
There, flying in through the smoking wake of the thunder-ram, clearing the residue overhead with a single snap of her wings, she saw her Commander.
Hurricane’s battered barding hung off her frame. She’d not yet regained the weight she’d lost crossing the mountains. Her features were gaunt and scarred, made sharp to the point where her scars all but scraped over her cheekbones. But her wingbeats were sure and controlled, her poise perfect, and, as she glanced down to meet Pansy’s gaze, her eyes had regained their old shine. Her expression softened as she looked Pansy over, checking that she was alright, and then hardened anew as she turned on Discord. She seemed to take him in, as well as the Smooze and all the bric-a-brac covering the clearing, without letting a brow so much as arch.
The creature was slowly rising from where he’d fallen, dusting soot off his patchwork hide and fixing Hurricane with an irked look. Pansy blanched at the significance of that. Thunder-rams were what the warflock crafted when it wanted to punch holes in mountains. Thunder-rams were what you crafted when you went hunting for dragons. Discord had shrugged one off with nothing more than a faint patina of soot to show for it.
Hurricane surely noticed that as well, but if she had any thoughts on the matter, her face didn’t betray them. A Commander on proper form didn’t disclose a thing, didn’t give an inch to whatever fire roared within. She simply hovered in the air and met Discord’s piqued look with cold iron of her own. And she said, “Step clear of my soldier.”
Discord turned towards the Smooze. His gaze lingered on the smouldering patch of grass where the lightning bolt had nearly struck. The world seemed to turn eerily quiet as he regarded it.
“Commander?” Pansy whimpered. “Commander, please, we have to —”
“Oh dear. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear,” Discord rasped, his voice as flat as Pansy had ever heard it. His whole form suddenly twisted into a stance on all fours, slithering swiftly down like the offspring of a serpent and a lightning bolt. The red-and-yellow of his eyes flickered, as if they threatened to break out into pure flame, and a volcanic crackle entered his tone. “That very nearly hurt Smoozey.”
“Warflock, on me!” Hurricane bellowed. She glanced over her wither at Pansy. “Cut a contrail back to Canter Vale, Private. We’ve got this. We’ve got you.”
“No, wait!” wailed Pansy, to no avail. Hurricane was already turning back on Discord, and Pansy glimpsed another black mass sweeping in over the treetops. Pegasi of the warflock towed along one of the prepared storm-clouds, gaps in its black form glowing and crackling with the force of the compressed lightning at its heart. Other squadrons came sweeping in from the sides, and Pansy glimpsed the shapes of crossbows, couched lances, spurs gleaming in the sun.
She’d told them before that she was planning on bathing out here, Pansy remembered. And stars above, how they’d heeded.
“Nothing threatens one of my soldiers, beast. You’ll stand down if you want to leave this clearing alive,” Hurricane growled. The stormcloud rose overhead, filling the world with thunder, and Pansy found herself edging away from the sheer mass and volume of it.
From the forest at her back, she heard distant, galloping hooves, and the mass clatter of borne iron. A whole herd’s worth, with two raised voices at their fore.
“Stand fast, good pony!” Princess Platinum’s tones rang out, confident and clear. “Your Princess is coming! At the foe, unicorns! Tantivy!”
“Your Highness, please would you kindly slow down and let the trained combatants lead?” Pansy heard Clover wail in an imploring, long-suffering sort of way.
“We can’t hear you, Clover! Not over the sound of this blackguard’s imminent demise! Onwards!”
Pansy choked with horror. Scrabbling for a silver lining, she realised she’d at least not yet heard any earth pony voices. Nothing from …
“Chancellor, for the love of loam!” Smart Cookie’s voice rang out. “Ponies who rush ahead of their herd fill graves!”
“Haha! Aide of mine, every pony fills a grave sooner or later!” Pansy heard Puddinghead reply. “Faster now! Don’t let the princess embarrass you for speed! And everyone else, ignore that grave part! Everything’s probably going to be fine!”
“Cease trying to outpace us, you mud-bothering blaggards!” came Platinum’s indignant yell. “Attend us carefully, and you shall witness true ski—unk!” The yell became a yelp on the heels of what sounded like Platinum greeting a tree face-first.
Stars above, they’d all heeded the flare. All of them. Pansy couldn’t understand why.
All she understood was that she’d doomed them all, there was no way they could overcome Discord, they couldn’t fight something like that. None of them could. They’d come at him, and his mad, unstoppable power would answer them, and once the land lay still again, what would be left and recognisable of their new home? What would be left of ponykind? Would everything have been for nothing?
Pansy slumped, and a soft gurgle at her side made her dimly realise she’d lurched towards the Smooze. The creature leaned towards her and crooned sadly. She closed her eyes and leaned towards it in turn, her helmeted head resting on whatever passed for its wither.
She felt the creature’s form move and rest upon her helmet.
“You hear them, beast?” She heard Commander Hurricane speak to Discord, apparently unafraid. She heard the growl and crackle of his form roiling and shifting, as his limbs juddered and grew, as the hairs on his hide stood on end, and as magic made the air around him a screaming, rainbow-tinted haze. Past that haze, all of his shifting form grew more indistinct save for his eyes. They shone like falling stars, like fire against empty night. “Ponykind defends its own. You’re not the worst thing we’ve met and overcome. Ask the others like you in the Hereafter how it went for them.”
“You’ve met nothing like me.” The voice that snarled out of Discord could have come from a thousand mouths, all of them angry and fraying, as if he was coming apart at the seams and not bothering to hide it. One thing that might have been a claw extended and pointed at the Commander. “Come on, speck. Let’s see how many parts you have that I can invert. Let’s see how much I need to change.”
So much for resolve. So much for saving ponykind once if she couldn’t do it again when needed. Never mind the cold place she sought; a black pit seemed to have engulfed her, and down she spiralled. She couldn’t help anyone. Curse her. Curse Discord. Curse it all.
Past all those grim mists, she became dimly aware of another sensation, as if something was pushing on her helmet and slurping around it.
She opened her eyes and peered at the Smooze. And of all the damned things, it seemed to be tentatively sucking at her helmet. It struggled to get a proper purchase on the metal with its mouth, but was doing its feeble best.
And the drabbles and pieces of stories that Discord had told her unspooled before Pansy then, and lightning seemed to shoot right through her as some coherent thread of knowledge — somehow, from stories Discord of all creatures had told — dawned on her.
“Cages and bells,” she breathed, staring at the Smooze, which was still feebly sucking. “Cages and bells and trinkets and all. Like a dragon. Hold on. Hold on.”
The cold place overtook her. The iron thunder of the oncoming earth ponies and unicorns filled the forest at her back, chaos rippled about Discord like sheets of flame, and crossbow bolts shivered down from the hovering pegasi and passed through Discord’s form, They fell out the other side as flowers, flutes, newly-made birds, quivering shapeless things. He gestured with a claw, and the crossbows twisted in their bearer’s grips and snapped their arms up at them. Yells rang out, and she was dimly aware of Hurricane shouting something. It might have been directed at her.
Pansy didn’t give a damn about any of it. She swept off her helmet and gently pressed it into the Smooze’s mouth, helping it engulf it altogether. The creature sucked more avidly, and as it did, a darker, more vibrant greenish tinge seemed to suffuse through its form, like ink in water.
“Everypony, Discord, stop. Quiet, now.” Pansy heard herself mutter, even as her hooves scrabbled at and undid the clasps for her barding. The Smooze had perked up that little bit, and seemed to be regarding Pansy hopefully. Her spare forehoof scooped up and offered her crossbow stock-first, and the Smooze leaned forward to engulf the metal parts of the mechanism. “Everypony, stop!”
The hubbub bellowed on by her, though the oncoming hooves seemed to have slowed as they came within sight of what was happening. Pansy gritted her teeth and cleared her throat as she wrenched off her barding. “I said, QUIET! LOOK!”
Her throat stung with the effort, but whatever force she’d shovelled into it had worked. The hubbub hushed, and the rippling chaos that spread out from Discord seemed to freeze in its tracks. A crossbow bolt whipped through his form and flew out the other side as a confused budgie. He paid it no heed, and the two supernovas he had in place of eyes slowly turned to regard Pansy and the Smooze.
Something of Pansy’s customary mindset stole back over her as it dawned on her that she was at the centre of a great big ring of bemused attention. She briefly wondered how easy it would be to hide behind the Smooze. But the cold place steadied her, whispered reassuringly in her ear, and as the Smooze cooed hopefully, she hefted her barding and fed it to the creature.
It engulfed her iron barding with an enthusiastic schlurping noise. Pansy watched the silhouette of it obscured within the Smooze’s green bulk, slowly disintegrating around the edges into dark green flakes. She breathed out for a long moment and slumped back with a sigh, and the schlurping took on an ever-more delighted tone.
The quiver of bolts rested by her hooves. She picked it up, and as the Smooze seemed to finish the barding, she began to pick out one iron-head after another and feed them to the Smooze.
Hooves shuffled, and Pansy heard some of them stepping towards her. She turned and saw Discord. He’d resumed the tall, mismatched form she’d first found him in, that he seemed to favour, and his eyes sparkled their guileless red-yellow again. He looked down at her and the Smooze, one paw tugging on his black tuft of beard. He seemed confused as he studied them, as if trying to fit a round peg into the square hole of his mind.
And then, as his gaze came to rest on the Smooze, she saw him apparently decide to not give a toss about whatever troubling newness he was trying to figure out, and he bounded down to snatch the Smooze up and away from Pansy and engulf it in a hug.
“Smoozey! You’re fine and fixed and fantastic and all sorts of f-things!” He planted a sloppy kiss on top of its green head, and though the Smooze initially wriggled and blibbled in protest as it tried to get back towards Pansy’s bolts, it eventually subsided and nuzzled Discord’s chin. Discord spun with it in his arms, and the two made noises that were equally cheerful and incomprehensible.
The cold place ebbed away, and Pansy sat and watched them. She trembled and breathed heavily, as a giddy smile threatened to break across her features. Hoofbeats rang out by her, and she turned to see ponies approaching her from the forest. Clover, Smart Cookie, and Puddinghead were at their fore, wearing matching expressions that suggested both delight at all the noise and horror and chaos suddenly subsiding, as well as deep bewilderment as to how that had happened, exactly.
“Well!” Chancellor Puddinghead recovered first, affixing a bright grin atop her features. “This all seems to have, er ...”
“What happened here? What’re those things, why’s that clearing full of everything barring a kitchen basin, and, generally, what?” Smart Cookie stepped up beside her chancellor, her eyes wide.
“Pansy?” Next, Clover, who trotted up. Her bright eyes met Pansy’s. “Did you just—?”
“We arrive!” interjected Princess Platinum, pushing her way forwards. Her words were somewhat slurred, her gaze a little unfocused, and the crown atop her head wobbled as she swayed. A fresh bruise spread across most of her face, sporting the faint imprint of a bark pattern. She waggled a jeweled, hiltless blade in her magic, and swung it vaguely hither and thither till pony life wasn’t safe in the vicinity. “Fear not, good pegasus, your princess shall deliver you from peril. Now … now then, present us with whatever interloper dared threaten the ponies under our protection. We shall educate them on the errororerrs … errors of their ways.”
“Princess,” interjected Clover, stepping clear of the blade, “I believe the situation’s already resolved, sort of. Somehow.”
“Oh.” Platinum took a moment to process this, and she let the blade droop in her grasp. “Well. Well, how fortuitous.” She blinked and tottered. “Clover? Clover, we are seeing double.”
“Still deeply bewildered, and I’ve not a clue what you did just there,” Smart Cookie said in Pansy’s ear. She stepped up just as Princess Platinum fell over and Clover wearily stooped to tend to her. The earth pony mare clapped a hoof over Pansy’s withers. “I reckon you did it well, though. We owe you one.”
“Excellent showing! Whatever you did and whatever this was.” Chancellor Puddinghead’s own foreleg clapped down across Pansy and jostled insistently with Smart Cookie for wither space until Smart Cookie grudgingly yielded. She leaned in conspiratorially to Pansy’s ear. “Put on a brave face back there. Between you and me? When I got close enough to see more of what was going on, darn near widdled myself. When I got close enough to see you were doing things on the scene? Widdling held in abeyance. Any more of that sort of thing, and you’ll ingrain even odder habits in me than I already have. Excellent showing. What exactly did you do?”
“I...” Pansy stumbled. Shifting her mode of thought from terror to resolve to despair to the cold place to a conversation with Puddinghead was about as dramatic a series of lurches as a mind could undergo, and she needed a moment to adjust. And to think about what exactly she did. “I … I just listened. And remembered, in the nick of time.”
Puddinghead didn’t look entirely satisfied with that explanation, but before she could probe further, Discord drifted down from the sky, up into which he’d been blithely spinning for the last minute or so. He descended to the ground before Pansy, the Smooze tucked under one arm. The green creature gurgled happily in the direction of Pansy, and it wriggled as if full of beans.
Discord, for his own part, studied Pansy for a long moment, his face sporting the same expression of faint confusion from earlier, as strange thoughts passed below the surface. Behind him, Pansy glimpsed hovering pegasi and Commander Hurricane, their weapons ready even as they kept a cautious distance. They were giving her the floor.
“So,” Discord said, slowly, eventually, as if fumbling his way through a foreign language. “You … you don’t want a reign of chaos, then.”
“Please,” breathed Pansy. “We’ve struggled for too long. We just want peace for a while.”
Discord’s face screwed up. “Really? It’d be fun chaos, you know. I’m very good at chaos, you might have gathered this.”
“I’ve gathered. But we don’t need it now. We need space and time to settle down. Plant new roots. Tether our clouds. And just … to just live. Can you let us do that?”
The Smooze burbled in what might have been agreement, or what might have just been general satisfaction with the world. It was hard to tell. Discord glanced at it, frowned, and then turned back to Pansy.
“I mean, it sounds terribly deviant and suspect and odd,” he sighed, “but oh, fine, I suppose. I’m sure a bit of order and harmony’ll make you see how dull it all is and yearn for chaos. I’ll be around if you change your minds. And I’ll be back. But, in deference to your odd, odd wishes and Smoozey being fixed, I shan’t be back. Not soon, at least.”
He clicked his tongue and contemplated. “Call it a couple of centuries, maybe? Just while I poke my nose into whatever this continent’s got.”
Pansy breathed out. All was fine in the world again. “Alright. And we’ll ...” She stiffened herself, and tried to inject a note of determination into her tone. “We’ll be ready.”
“Excellent!” Discord cheerfully spun away from her, the determined tone seemingly lost on him as he hefted the Smooze up onto one of his withers like the world’s most peculiar parrot. He pointed nowhere in particular. “Come, Smoozey! I think I saw some mountains over there! You like mountains.”
The Smooze burbled amiably. It twisted its head back to beam at Pansy while it did so.
And then, with a flash and a bang, and what sounded like a trumpet fanfare, Discord and the Smooze vanished in a hail of confetti. And they were gone.
The world hushed in their wake, save for the insistent snuffling of the badger somewhere in the undergrowth, and Pansy’s legs threatened to give out from underneath her with pure relieved trembling.
Said legs instantly stiffened out of sheer reflex the moment Hurricane’s voice rang out, barking orders every which way.
“Ten-hut! Clear the skies, warflock, and tow that cloud back to the stockpile! All of you on the ground, back to Canter Vale! Come back with wagons and salvage some of all this lying here! Chancellor, you and I’ll have to talk about all this! Expect me at your longhouse at sundown. Clover, just tow that princess of yours back to her hall. I’ll spare a medic to check her skull’s not more dented than it already is. Private, at ease! I want a word!”
Pansy stiffened into a at-ease stance, somehow, when she realised that last one had been directed at her. As the skies thrummed with pegasi, and as the ponies about her peeled away, chatting or murmuring or gurgling concussedly as they went, Hurricane landed on the ground before Pansy. The private swallowed and kept her gaze low as her commander stepped closer to her. The sounds from all around grew quieter, enough that Pansy could all but hear her own thrumming heartbeat.
Then one of Hurricane’s iron-shod hooves extended and gently lifted up Pansy’s chin. “Chin up, private,” she said softly, and Pansy met Hurricane’s steady gaze. Hurricane studied her for a moment before she remarked, “Private, you appear to be without your barding. Ill-advised out here, even during your off-hours.”
“Yes, commander. Apologies.” She swallowed. “Wish to report that I fed it all, along with my crossbow mechanism, to some ailing metallovore, which pacified their fraught and all-powerful friend, commander.”
“Yes, private, I was there.” Hurricane sighed and closed her eyes for a moment. When she opened them again, she spoke. “In light of that, charges of misuse of warflock property, underpreparedness in a manner unbecoming, and inevitable underdressed-ness in future drills would seem a bit churlish to level. The warflock’s armoury has seen better days, private. Acquiring a replacement set will not happen soon. Understood?”
“Yes, commander. Thank you, commander.”
“Do you intend to make a habit of this, private?”
Pansy swallowed. “No, commander. Losing my barding was a one-off, it shan’t happen agai—”
“Of saving ponykind, private.” Hurricane shook her head, her voice softening. “From the windigos. From whatever that creature was. From me. You’re acquiring form for it.”
“I … I certainly hope to not have to repeat it, commander.”
“Hmmph.” Hurricane’s features tightened into something like a smile, and she shook her head ruefully. “I’ve not made many good decisions this last while. Not many since becoming Commander, truth be told. But enlisting you? Centuries down the line, pegasi’ll praise me for that.”
And Pansy needed a few minutes to respond to that. “You sell yourself short, commander. You got us through the mountains. No other pony could.”
“Were you given leave to contradict your commander, private?”
“No, commander. Apologies, commander.”
“Accepted, but don’t let it happen again,” Hurricane replied dryly. She seemed lost in thought a moment longer, before she snorted. “You came out here for a bath, didn’t you, private? Go and finish taking your bath. Be back at my tent within the hour. I’ll require my aide then. Dismissed.”
“Yes, commander.”
Pansy turned away, light-headed. She could have her bath at last, what she’d only wanted to begin with. She let herself fixate on that, for want of something sane and peaceful to fixate on. On just getting herself clean amidst the babbling water, fed by winter’s thaw. Smart Cookie’s soap and her brush should still be where she’d left them.
She turned away. And as she went, she heard Commander Hurricane murmur something. It could have been directed at Pansy. It could have just been directed at herself.
“Finding you replacement barding could take a while indeed.” There came the sound of a hoof gently rapping off an iron chestpiece. “This might be the only set that’ll do you justice.”
And that kept Private Pansy terrified the rest of the day.
