Scarlet

by Skijarama

Rating: teen
Tags: Sex, Profanity, Gore, Violence, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Dark, Death, Alternate Universe, Sad, Changelings, Original Character, Other, Adventure
Length: 197088

Forced to leave her peaceful hometown and flee for her life alongside a mysterious orphan filly named Primrose, New Equestrian war-veteran Scarlet Frost will have to use every resource at her disposal just to stay alive.

Scarlet Frost has had more than enough death and violence in her life and has spent the last several years living quietly as a librarian and scholar in the New Equestrian city of Swanrun. Sadly, it seems that death and violence are not yet done with her, as she is about to discover.

After a chance encounter, Scarlet is forced to leave her home and flee for her life alongside a mysterious orphan filly named Primrose. Now being hunted across the land she once went to war for, Scarlet will have to use every resource at her disposal just to stay alive. And if she is going to make it through this, she must confront the ghosts of not only her own past, but those of this long-broken world as well.

A special thank you goes out to my editors, Mister Hypothetical and Chromio!

Now with a reading over on YouTube!

The sex tag is for occasional blunt discussions on the subject matter and implied sexual behaviors between consenting adults.

Published 2019-07-09 19:20:01 UTC
Last updated 2020-03-17 20:34:16 UTC

Scarlet

The body in her trembling hooves felt far heavier than it should have. She was barely able to find her breath as the terrible sight stared back up at her. Blood stained her hooves in copious amounts, and more was joining it with every passing second as she tried in vain to staunch the crimson flow.

“Please, no! No, no, no! Say something! Stay with me! Look at me! PLEASE!”

But there was no response. The world around her began to fade away, leaving nothing but the sound of her despairing wails and the blood on her hooves to keep her company. Somewhere, far off in the distance, a crack of thunder rolled across the world.

“Uh, Miss Scarlet?”

Scarlet Frost opened her amethyst-colored eyes with a sharp intake of breath, reality coming back to her the moment the voice reached her ears. Taking a deep breath, she swept her eyes over her environment to ground herself back in the here and now.

She was laying down in the grass in an open courtyard, surrounded by the white stone walls of the academy. The distant sound of ponies going about their days in the city could just be heard over the high walls, and a few students could be seen trotting by with their friends, enjoying their lunch break. Sunlight streamed in from overhead, the angle, and colors suggesting a mid to late afternoon hour.

Taking one more deep breath, Scarlet finally turned to look at the pony who had addressed her. It was a young unicorn stallion, no more than a first-year student at the academy. He had a beige-colored coat with a dark brown mane and tail, each one bound neatly in a ponytail. His orange eyes were wide open, glued onto hers. “Miss Scarlet, are you feeling well?”

She nodded, wiping an ice-colored hoof over her face. “Yes, I’m fine. My apologies. Did you need something, student?” she asked, affixing him with a stern look.

The student did not seem convinced by her statement but nevertheless chose not to question it. It wasn’t his place to do so, after all. Recognizing this, he drew himself up and cleared his throat. “Y-yes, I did. I’m doing a research report on The Fall, and I was wondering if you could answer a few questions for me on the matter,” he explained, his voice hitching for just a moment as he began. “Seeing as you have been studying it rather intently yourself, as I’ve heard.”

“The Fall?” Scarlet echoed, raising an eyebrow in curiosity. “I suppose I can answer a few questions… Come with me.”

Confused, the student fell into step beside her as she strode past him for an ornate and well-polished wooden door.

The door took them into her place of work, the Swanrun Academy Library. The walls were, much like the rest of the academy, made up of smooth white stone, inlaid with various abstract patterns, most notably of a six-pointed starburst. Tall, translucent green windows lined the walls, letting in rays of pale light to illuminate everything.

Bookcases lined the walls, each one packed with thick tomes of all shapes, sizes, ages, and topics, while a large area in the center was devoted to various seating arrangements, where a few students could be seen with their muzzles buried in books. Far to the right side of the room, curving staircases made of a fine, dark-colored wood ascended to a second floor that stood suspended over the first, where yet more bookcases could be seen.

“What do you know of The Fall?” Scarlet suddenly inquired, moving for the stairs.

The student jumped at the sound of her voice and scrambled to keep up with her brisk pace. “I know that it is the period of history that marked the end of Old Equestria and that it happened many centuries ago,” he told her, his brow furrowing in thought. “But specific details are hard to come by.”

“Unsurprising. Archeologists and historians are still finding scraps and remnants from the Fall, much of which is mangled and destroyed beyond being helpful,” Scarlet recalled, humming quietly. They ascended the steps and came onto the second level. Her eyes became affixed to a specific section farther back, a few books already in mind. “What we do know was largely passed down by word of mouth, and the unreliable scribblings of scattered survivors.”

“I see… but, what exactly happened back then? Do we have any ideas whatsoever?”

“A few,” Scarlet nodded before turning down into one of the rows of shelves. “But again, most of what we know as fact is largely speculative. Only a few things are known for certain.”

“Such as?”

“I’m not here to pass your tests for you,” Scarlet shot back with a small smirk on her face. The student winced and shied back under her eyes, prompting her to give a good-natured chuckle. “But, I can tell you one thing…”

The student looked back up at her, still looking sheepish. “Y-yes? I’m listening…”

Scarlet’s smile faded as she pulled the knowledge up from the depths of her memory, and she was barely able to keep a bitter scowl from appearing on her face. “The collapse of Old Equestria, The Fall, was not an incident that happened just out of nowhere. No, Old Equestria fell into ruin because of a race known as the Changelings. They spread across our old home in a swarm of fire, blood, and death, and everything in their wake was rent and torn asunder.”

“Changelings… Where have I…” he mumbled, a hoof flying up to rub at his chin in thought. Suddenly, his eyes widened, and he peered into Scarlet’s eyes. “Oh… oh, by The Five, I am so sorry-”

“Stop,” Scarlet cut him off immediately, her eyes narrowing and her nostrils flaring. “Don’t say another word. I do not need to hear one more damned utterance of sympathy, and especially not from a student. Do I make myself clear?”

The student bowed his head and took a step back. “Y-yes, Miss Scarlet! Crystal,” he stammered.

She glared at him a moment longer before turning away with a huff of annoyance. Her agitation did not last long, however, as it was soon replaced with guilt. Scarlet heaved a sigh and shook her head before flashing him an apologetic glance. “...Forgive me. It was unkind of me to speak to you like that,” she said quietly before her horn sparked to life with purple magic. Three books lit up with an identical glow before floating through the air towards the student. “These books, when read in order from shortest to longest, are the most useful for gaining an understanding of The Fall.”

The student looked up at the books. Reluctantly, he took them in his own magical grasp, holding them close to his sides. “Very well. Er, thank you for your time, Miss Scarlet. I’ll take my leave,” he muttered before turning and trotting away, his hoofsteps echoing on the hardwood floor.

Scarlet watched him go, then turned to smack her forehead into the bookcase in front of her. “Stupid!” she chastised herself internally.

Oh, this was going to be a long day, she just knew it.

The sun was starting to get lower on the horizon, slowly turning a shade of yellow over the previous pristine white. Clouds were beginning to roll in, and Scarlet was able to recognize that a storm was on the way. She grimaced at the thought of walking home through rain and high winds and adjusted herself in her seat.

She was currently seated at a table next to one of the windows on the first floor of the library, a few books scattered before her. There were no other students currently in the library, the only other pony being the head librarian, who Scarlet could just hear faintly shuffling about somewhere among the shelves behind the counter.

She was about to return to reading the book in front of her when one of the library’s doors swung open with a heavy thunk and loud creak. A dark-colored pegasus stallion with a graying mane stepped inside. He adjusted his glasses and scanned the room before his eyes found her. “Scarlet Frost?”

She sat upright and nodded his way. “Yes? What do you need?”

The pony closed the door behind him and strode across the room until he was by her table. “Forgive me for interrupting your work, but Headmare Shine wishes to speak with you in her office.”

Scarlet raised an eyebrow, confused. “Did she say what for?” she asked, idly closing the book in front of her with her magic.

“Not to me, she didn’t,” the stallion replied, his brow furrowing. “But she asked that you not delay. I assume it must be somewhat serious.”

Scarlet sighed quietly and rose from her seat. “Very well, I’ll go see her,” she relented.

The stallion nodded. “Very well. Please follow me.”

He led her from the library and out into the halls of the Academy proper. The floor in the corridors was made up of dark blue carpets with that same starburst pattern repeating down the middle. Unlit torches sat in evenly-spaced wall sconces. Ornate busts of an alicorn with a straight mane were placed at intersections, and Scarlet couldn’t help but pause briefly to examine one of them.

The alicorn was a mare, her eyes closed and a serene smile on her face. The base of the bust resembled her wings, curving around her neck to shelter it before smoothly transitioning into the pedestal it rested on. A plaque rested just below that, in which the name of the alicorn had been inscribed.

“Twilight Sparkle, The Princess of Friendship, Goddess of Knowledge, Patron of Students, Teachers, and Mages.”

Scarlet didn’t linger long on the bust, and soon she was being ushered into the office of Headmare Star Shine.

Much like the library, the walls were white stone, while the floor was dark hardwood. Paintings and framed certificates sat on the walls in large quantities, each one either displaying a fond memory or one of the many qualifications that Star Shine head. Directly across from the opening, a large, circular stained glass window was set into the wall. It depicted the very same alicorn whose bust Scarlet had just been examining.

Her lavender wings were spread wide open as if in an invitation for all to take shelter, while a grand library stretched out behind her. Coiled protectively around her was a large dragon with purple scales and a green underbelly, emerald flames licking at the edges of his maw.

“Scarlet, there you are,” Star Shine’s voice drew Scarlet’s attention away from the window and to the center of the room. Shine was an elderly mare with a cream-colored coat and a mane and tail that had long since lost their color. She was seated behind her desk, her aging hooves pressed together on the surface her sky-blue eyes showing nothing but kindness. “Please, come in.”

Scarlet closed the door behind her and stepped forward, giving her superior a respectful nod. “Headmare Shine, you asked to see me?”

“I did, I did,” Shine nodded along, her smile never wavering. “How has your first day back to work been?”

“It’s been as well as I could expect,” Scarlet replied, her eyes wandering the room again. “I had a student come to me with questions about The Fall earlier, which I was not expecting. But, in all, I’m feeling better now that I have something to occupy my time with.”

Shine nodded again, her smile starting to become strained. “Yes, I heard about the student… word got back to me that you snapped at him when he went to give you his sympathies.”

Scarlet’s head snapped back to Shine, her eyes wide. “How did-?!” she went to demand before catching herself. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath before continuing in a more respectful and level voice. “Ma’am, I assure you, I’m well enough to work.”

“Scarlet…” Shine spoke with nothing but doubt in her voice, her smile fading away. “I’m sure you think so, but I’m not so sure of that myself.”

“With all due respect, I do not need more time off, if that is what you are about to suggest,” Scarlet stated, barely able to hide her impatience. “I’ve had more than enough of that.”

“I understand,” Shine replied soothingly. She rose from her seat and slowly trotted around towards Scarlet with a warm smile. “But I also understand that after what you went through, three months may not be enough time.”

“I’m fine.”

Shine studied her for a good long while. Scarlet was not able to maintain her stern expression under the kind old mare’s gaze and looked away with her ears drooping. That response seemed to be what Shine was looking for, as her smile grew. She placed a hoof on Scarlet’s shoulder to get her attention. “Well, maybe you are, Scarlet. But maybe you should go home early all the same.”

Scarlet blinked. “Ma’am?”

“You’ve been away for a few months, Scarlet, with little and less to fill your time with,”
Shine elaborated before gently pushing the mare for the door. “Coming back to a full day of work may not be the best thing for you right now. Go home early and relax, and we’ll see how you’re feeling when you come in tomorrow.”

Scarlet let herself be ushered out before turning back to Shine, about ready to object and request that she work as long as normal. However, the first look she suddenly received from the older mare cowed her into submission. Repressing a sigh, Scarlet gave a slow nod. “Very well, Shine. I will speak with you tomorrow.”

Star Shine beamed upon hearing that. “I look forward to it. Farewell!”

And with that, the door closed in Scarlet’s face, leaving her to her own devices.

Swanrun. Scarlet’s home.

Resting at the top of a sheer cliff along the western coastline of New Equestria, its buildings were made of smoothly-cut white stones harvested from the cliff-side. Meanwhile, down on the beach, the harbor was alive with activity. Sailors of all races meandered along the various waterside inns and taverns, talking loudly amongst themselves as they wrapped up their work for the evening.

In the core of the city stood the Pearl Keep, a towering castle that served as the city’s central bastion in the event of a siege. The landmark presided high over the rest of Swanrun, filling the inhabitants with comfort and a sense of security. Aiding this were the regular patrols of the city watch, keeping the peace.

It was all very familiar to Scarlet, which was why she chose to ignore most of it. She was currently standing on an overlook along the edge of the cliffs, gazing off to the west at the approaching storm clouds. She could faintly see a few flickers of lightning and electricity amid that looming darkness, and the rumble of thunder could just be heard from this distance.

A few foals went scampering by, happily yelling at one another and waving around toy swords in their ill-practiced magic auras. Scarlet couldn’t help but turn to look and watch them play their game of soldier.

“Haha, I got you now, evil griffin!” one of the foals, a colt, declared as he lightly smacked his playmate, a pegasus filly, over the head with his sword. “You’re dead, now!”

The filly played along, dramatically flopping over onto her back and thrusting her hooves towards the sky. “Noooo! Curse you, pony!” she cried out before both of them burst into fits of giggles.

Scarlet grimaced at the sight and looked away. She had half a mind to spin around and scold them for daring to misrepresent the war like that, to dare depict the griffins as villains when most of them were just like the ponies they were fighting. She held her tongue, though, and heaved a heavy sigh. “They weren’t there like I was,” she told herself in the privacy of her own mind. “Let them have their fun.”

The foals played for a few moments longer before the voice of their mother called out to them. Their game came to an end, and they went galloping away, leaving Scarlet alone on the overlook. She remained there for a short while longer before turning away and starting to trot down one of the many cobblestone roads for her home.

The light gradually grew dim as she meandered through the familiar streets, the sun ready to retire for the evening until it was time for the morning. Just as it was becoming difficult to see, however, the streets were suddenly bathed in purple light. Scarlet paused and glanced over at one of the sources, finding a metal lamp post that curved over the street with a bundle of blue crystals glowing on the end.

Scarlet tore her eyes away from the invention of Arcane Engineering and continued on her way. The clouds were starting to roll over the city when, at long last, she came to her home. It was a modest two-story building that shared the same architectural style as the rest of the city. Smooth, straight white stone walls, domed dark stone roof, simple glass windows fit into the sides.

Silently and begrudgingly thankful to be back home, Scarlet pushed open the door and slid inside just as the first drops of rain began to fall on the world. She lingered by the door for a moment before looking into the entrance of her home.

The front room was small and modest. Directly across from her was a flight of stairs that would lead to the bedrooms. To her left was a wooden door that would lead to her personal study, while to her right was an archway that led to her kitchen, pantry, and dining room. The floor was, in sharp contrast to the walls, made of wooden planks that creaked softly under her weight.

Scarlet stood there for some time, unsure of what to do. Normally, she’d still be at the academy, shelving books and answering the questions of curious students of history. But she had been told to come home early, all because her co-workers saw fit to extend excessive sympathy and concern towards her.

Stifling a groan, Scarlet turned and departed for her study. She could fill the time with a book or something, she imagined.

Hours passed, and the world outside faded into darkness. The rain had gotten heavier, now pummeling the windows with reckless abandon. The only light in the home of Scarlet Frost was, at present, a single candle on the desk of her study, allowing the seated unicorn to comfortably read the pages of her chosen book.

Time passed her by, the hours bleeding together. She briefly pondered descending into her cellar to get some wine to ease the time when a flash of light came in through the window. Curious, she glanced outside and began to count in her head.

“One… two… ”

The deafening boom of thunder interrupted her thoughts, briefly making her jump in her skin. She laughed at her own foolishness before returning her eyes to her book.

She didn’t get to keep reading, though, as something else suddenly drew her attention. A muffled squeak reached her ears from below the floor, followed by a loud crash. Immediately, Scarlet was on her hooves, her horn lighting up with magic. “What in the world…?” she asked herself, her eyes scanning the darkness beyond the light of her candle.

Silence was her answer, and an uneasy feeling began to crawl up her spine. Swallowing heavily, Scarlet pushed more power into her horn, creating a pale light on its tip. She made her way out of her study, ears perked up and listening carefully. The white noise of the rain only seemed to get louder, the only other sounds being Scarlet’s steadied breathing and her hooves gently scraping across the wooden floor.

The noise had come from below, she recalled, meaning it must have come from her cellar. With the uneasy feeling in her chest growing, and a healthy dose of curiosity rising to join it, she passed through her kitchen and dining room to slip into her pantry.

Once she was inside, she cast her light about for any signs of a disturbance. Nothing stood out to her right away. The shelves of non-perishable foodstuffs were utterly untouched from how she had left them, meaning that whatever had caused the crash had not come through here at any point.

Her eyes fell to the corner by the entrance, where an old trap door waited for her. She pried it open with her magic, grimacing internally at the deep creak given off by the aging wood and the metal hinges. A wave of stale air drifted up to meet her, swimming up into her nostrils and flooding them with the smell of wood, and perhaps, a little bit of mold.

She’d need to tidy up down there at some point, she decided.

Putting aside any thoughts of cleaning for the moment, and channeling a little more power into her light, Scarlet carefully descended the steps. The sound of the rain assaulting her home became almost inaudible, becoming little more than a low and ominous rumble in the depths of her ears. The steps creaked loudly in protest under her weight, accompanied by the quiet hum of her magic.

The cellar was less than pleasant to look at. But then again, she figured, it didn’t need to be. It was a small and cramped space with a low ceiling and an old wooden floor that creaked even worse than the boards upstairs. Along the walls, a few shelves with odds and ends that had no other place in the home could be seen. Below them, racks loaded with bottles of wine were neatly arranged. Kegs of ale hugged the corners where the racks were absent. A few rats scattered away from the glow of her magic, squeaking in panic and making her cringe. She’d need to deal with them when she cleaned up later.

But all of that was of little importance at the moment. Scarlet swept her eyes across the room, intensifying the light from her horn to illuminate everything.“Hello? Is anypony here?” She called out before scanning the room again, this time spotting the disturbance she had been looking for.

“Oh, for the love of... damn it…” she grumbled under her breath, dragging herself towards the wall, where one of the racks of wine had been dislodged to crash to the floor. Glass bottles had shattered on impact, their shards scattered far and wide, while the rich red liquid they had once contained spread out like a pool of discolored blood.

As she drew closer to the scene of carnage, though, something about it struck her as odd. With her muzzle scrunching up in confusion, she crouched down to get a better look. The oddity stood out like a sore thumb. Hoofprints made of wine were leading away from the massive wine stain, leading to the corner on the far end of the room before vanishing behind a collection of ale kegs.

Somepony else was down here. Scarlet scowled and rose to her full height, the light on her horn intensifying as she prepared a small assortment of combat spells. She stalked towards the kegs, her stance low.

“I know you’re there,” she announced in a loud, warning voice. She came to a stop a short distance away, glaring intently at where she knew the intruder was hiding. “Show yourself, right now.”

There was a long moment of silence, nothing answering her demand. Scarlet was about to impatiently tear the kegs aside with her magic when, finally, the intruder moved. They took it slow, clearly trying not to alarm her, limping out from behind the kegs with their head held low.

Scarlet could not maintain her glare. Her eyes flew wide open, and her jaw dropped at the sight of an earth pony filly, no more than nine or ten years old. Her unkempt teal coat was messy and smothered in a thick layer of dirt. She was doused in wine, to the point it was dripping off the right side of her coat and pattering softly against the floor. There were no cutie marks adorning her flanks.

Her purple mane and tail were both long and wild, hiding one side of her face from view with a curtain of knots and matted hair. Only one of her darker teal eyes peered back at Scarlet, shimmering with fear and dread. Her right forehoof was held up to her chest, and Scarlet’s heart fell into the pits of her stomach when she saw shards of glass stuck into the flesh there, drawing small rivers of blood out to join the wine.

She was speechless and mouthed uselessly like a fish for several moments. Finally, when at last she found her voice, all she could utter was a baffled and mortified “...What?”

“I was just trying to get out of the rain, miss,” the filly told her in a timid whisper, shrinking away from Scarlet’s shocked face. “The thunder scared me…”

Scarlet stared at this filly for a few more seconds before finally clamping her jaw shut. She stepped forwards, reasserting a firm look on her face. “What’s your name?” she asked cautiously.

The filly looked down and to the side, her mane hiding the entirety of her face from view. When she spoke again, there was barely any strength to her voice. “...Primrose.”

Author's Note

7/23/2020: Scarlet now has a theme.

Primrose

The fireplace in Scarlet’s kitchen had been lit, filling the interior space with a gently-flickering orange glow. Primrose was seated at the table, her eyes watching with anxious anticipation as Scarlet studied her glass-peppered hoof. The white noise of the rain was now accompanied by the snapping and spitting of the fire and the low, aetherial hum of the unicorn’s magic as she carefully extracted each piece of glass from Primrose’s hoof one at a time.

“Okay, last one. It’s big,” Scarlet muttered before using her magic and pulling the next and final shard away with a quick flick. Primrose barely even winced, the most intense reaction she had given to the process so far. Scarlet briefly looked at her before quickly levitating over a roll of bandages from the table and binding the hoof in it. “There, you should be fine.”

Primrose withdrew her hoof and looked over the bandages, her face expressionless. She turned the limb over several times before setting it down and lowering her head in a small nod. “Th-thank you, miss…”

Scarlet was quiet for several seconds, just staring at the filly. Primrose had been remarkably cooperative with every request Scarlet made of her since being found in the cellar. She had barely uttered a word, and the composure she displayed from having shards of glass pulled out of her leg was more than a little impressive.

“You’re welcome,” she eventually said before folding her hooves in front of her on the table. “You were very brave. I’ve known full grown stallions who were wailing for their mommies over less than that.”

Primrose didn’t say anything. A heavy silence fell over the two, disturbed only by a low rumble of thunder outside that made the windows rattle in their frames.

Scarlet leaned forward, her expression curious. “Now, then… where’s your home? I imagine your family must be worried sick about you,” she asked while searching her memory for anypony she knew who may have looked similar. Swanrun was a big city, but she at least knew the faces.

Before she could find anything in her memories, though, Primrose looked down, her matted mane falling in front of her face and hiding it from view. “I don’t have any family,” she whispered solemnly, her ears drooping to rest flat against her head.

Scarlet’s eyes went as wide as saucers, and her jaw fell partially open. She was quiet for a second before finding her voice. “What do you mean?”

“I don’t have a family,” Primrose repeated, her voice louder than before.

“You’re an orphan?”

Primrose nodded before looking up at Scarlet again. Her eyes were still distant and almost devoid of emotion. Almost. There was something there, now, and Scarlet knew it all too well. Pain.

She sighed and looked down. “I see… what about friends? Do you have anypony in this city who would be willing to look out for you?” she asked, leaning back and running a hoof over her face.

Primrose shook her head but said nothing.

Scarlet let out a heavy breath and looked up at the ceiling, wracking her brain. This was not what she had been expecting to come home to after her first day back at work, and it was one of the worst things she could have stumbled upon. “Are The Five testing me?” she wondered to herself before taking a deep breath and collecting her thoughts.

She leveled a firm look at Primrose, a plan coming to mind. “Alright… You can stay here until the storm passes. But once the rain is gone, I’ll be taking you to the nearest orphanage. Do you understand me?” she explained simply, her tone leaving no room for argument.

Primrose was quiet for a moment, then nodded her head again. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Good,” Scarlet rose from her seat and turned for the various cabinets and cupboards that hugged the wall. “Now, would you like something to eat? With how skinny you are, I imagine you must be hungry.”

Primrose’s ears lifted at the notion of food, her eyes latching onto Scarlet intently. “Um… if it isn’t too much trouble for you,” she answered, a tiny bit of energy seeping into her previously monotone voice.

Scarlet shook her head. “It’s no trouble at all. I have some… excess food laying around. Might as well make sure it doesn’t go to waste,” she said before pulling open one of the cupboards and retrieving a healthy red apple. She set it down in front of Primrose, smirking in amusement as the filly eyed it like a chest of platinum bits. “Go ahead and start with that. It should hold you until I can throw together something more substantial.”

Primrose gingerly took the apple in her hooves, her eyes wide. Then, with a lick of her lips, she bit into it with a loud crunch that echoed in the room.

Maybe half an hour later, Scarlet had thrown together a pot of bubbling soup and served both herself and Primrose a bowl, the two eating in relative quiet. The filly had been seemingly stunned when she saw the food and all but drooled at the smell. Scarlet found the sight endearing, but also saddening. How long had this poor filly gone without a good, home-cooked meal?

For that matter, with how dirty and rugged she was, Scarlet had to wonder how long it had been since Primrose even had a roof over her head to shelter her from the elements. How long had it been since she had bathed herself? How long had it been since she had a home to call hers? Had she ever had one?

By the time Scarlet was halfway done with her bowl, Primrose was greedily and sloppily polishing off the bottom of hers with a frenzy of licks, desperate for more. When it became apparent there was none left, she hesitantly set the bowl down and looked sheepishly up at Scarlet. “Uhm… thank you for the meal, miss. It tasted good.”

“You’re welcome,” Scarlet responded simply after swallowing another spoonful of her own. “And my name isn’t ‘miss.’ It’s Scarlet Frost.”

Primrose dipped her head. “It’s nice to meet you, Scarlet,” she said before looking down into her bowl again, her muzzle scrunching up into a solemn frown. “Um… uh… is there more soup?”

Scarlet didn’t answer verbally. Her horn sparked to life with amethyst magic. She levitated Primrose’s bowl over to the cauldron above the fireplace, refilled it, and brought it back to the table. All the while, she delighted in the wide-eyed look Primrose was giving the floating dish.

“Be careful. It’s hot,” she warned as she set it back down. Primrose did not seem to register the warning, however, and immediately shoveled another spoonful of delicious soup into her mouth.

Eventually, Primrose finished her second bowl of soup, while Scarlet was still on the last fourth of her own. The filly gave off a satisfied sigh, then reached down next to her chair to lift up her saddlebags. Scarlet raised an eyebrow with curiosity. That feeling only became more intense when Primrose withdrew a most peculiar item from the left pouch.

It was a lamp, not unlike what one may expect to see in a story about wish-granting genies. However, instead of being made of finely polished gold or some other precious metal, it was roughly carved from blue crystals of the same variety used in the Arcane Lamps that lined the streets of Swanrun. Primrose held the lamp close to her chest and closed her eyes, humming quietly to herself.

Scarlet blinked. “Primrose… what is that?” she asked after a moment, pointing her spoon at the lamp.

Primrose looked down at it, then up at Scarlet. She tightened her hold on it protectively, her ears drooping. “It’s… it’s a family heirloom,” she explained simply, her voice going back to the empty monotone she had started with.

“A family heirloom…?” Scarlet echoed, shocked. Something like that was not only rare, it was probably very valuable. Who were Primrose’s parents if one of them had that to pass on?

Primrose nodded and said nothing more, her eyes closing again.

Scarlet felt herself starting to ask another question about the lamp, or about Primrose’s family. But, in the end, she elected to hold her peace. It would not do to get invested in the orphan’s personal struggles now, she decided.

Time began to pass, and the rain did not let up. If anything, it only got heavier, drenching the world in moisture. Thunder was booming more frequently, now, making the whole world shudder and shake with every flash. Scarlet and Primrose were still in the kitchen, the former standing by a window to observe the weather, while the latter kept to herself at the table.

Scarlet winced as another flash of lightning spread across the heavens, and not even a second later, the near-deafening boom of thunder slammed into her eardrums at full force. The window in front of her rattled and shook under the noise.

“...It’s not getting lighter,” Primrose suddenly spoke up from the table, her voice quiet.

Scarlet sighed and nodded her head, disappointment written on her face. “You’re right. It may carry on well into the morning.”

She turned away from the window to look at Primrose. The filly was staring back at her, a worried look on her face. “So… what’re we gonna do?” she asked, her hooves fidgeting over her chest. “I don’t wanna be out in the rain again…”

Scarlet sighed and looked outside again, trying to assess her options. She didn’t exactly have many of them, and none of them were exactly pleasant. She could either take Primrose to the orphanage through the dark and the rain, but the chances of them being accosted by a streetside thug were higher than was appealing. There was also the problem that getting the attention of anypony who worked there would be difficult.

She could kick Primrose out and let her fend for herself. Scarlet quickly sent that idea from her mind with a bitter shake of her head. She was tired and not interested in caring for a foal for any longer than necessary, but she wasn’t cruel or heartless. She had standards, she had morals…

And right now, those morals were pointing her towards the third, and almost least desirable, option. Scarlet struggled with the decision for several seconds before turning around and making her way for the door to the front room. “If the rain doesn’t let up, then I guess you can stay the night. I have a…” she stopped mid-speech, her face twitching. She sucked in a breath through her nose before continuing. “I have a guest room that you can use.”

Primrose eyed Scarlet curiously, her head tilting to one side. “Oh, uh… that’s kind of you, but-”

“No buts,” Scarlet cut her off with a shake of her head. “I’m not letting an innocent filly wander around Swanrun at night all by herself. It can be dangerous out there at this hour.”

Primrose clamped her muzzle shut and slowly nodded her head in understanding. “Okay. Thank you, Scarlet.”

Scarlet looked away. “...Think nothing of it. Now come on. Let me show you where you’ll be staying,” she commanded simply before stepping out of the dining room.

Primrose came trotting out after her a moment later, her saddlebags nestled on her back. Scarlet gave her a sideways glance to make sure she was following, then led the way up the stairs and into a hallway. There were three doors, two along the left wall, and one against the right. A window sat against the far wall, letting in a faint hint of the light from the street lamps outside.

Scarlet paused in front of the first of the two doors on the left, her eyes lingering on it. She took a deep breath, then stepped aside. “This is the room. Go ahead and get comfy. I plan on turning in soon myself, and I don’t want you running around when I’m trying to sleep,” she instructed.

Primrose glanced up at her for several seconds, a thoughtful look on her face. It was getting to be just a little creepy when, finally, the filly pushed the door open and stepped inside. Scarlet was still for a second, then reluctantly turned to look inside as well.

It was a fairly small bedroom, all things considered. A bed rested against the left wall, while a chest of drawers sat directly across from it. In the far wall from the door was a window with old linen curtains pulled over it, blocking out the purple light from outside. A nightstand sat beside the bed with several underused candles resting on top.

Aside from that, though, there was nothing in the room. No decorations, no miscellaneous items. It was just the bare necessities for a sleeping space. Primrose gave it all a wide-eyed look before turning back to Scarlet and smiling. “It’s very nice… thank you, Scarlet.”

Scarlet shook her head. “It’s nothing. Go ahead and get some rest, and try to keep it down. My room is the next door down the hall, and the bathroom is against the other wall,” she explained before backing out of the room.

Primrose’s smile withered away, and she lowered her head. “Oh… alright. G’night, Miss Scarlet,” she called out just before Scarlet closed the door with her magic.

She stood there for several moments, her face tense, and her posture rigid. Slowly, agonizingly slowly, she sucked in a deep breath, then let it out in a heavy sigh. She shook her head and turned away from the door to head for her own room. “...Goodnight,” she whispered under her breath before disappearing into the confines of her room, closing the door behind her.

Silent

The rain never stopped.

Scarlet’s eyes bored into the wall of her bedroom, an exhausted and bitter scowl on her face. The blankets covering her body felt tight and constricting, her pillow felt cold and uninviting, and her head felt heavy but oh so alive. It was like sleep itself was refusing her at the door, driving her away with pitchforks, torches, and angry curses.

She growled in frustration when thunder boomed outside again, and capitalized on the deafening sound to sit up and drive her hoof into the pillow below her several times to vent her frustrations. As the rumbling died down, so too did her efforts, and she collapsed uselessly onto the brutalized cushion again.

“Just let me sleep,” she thought desperately, screwing her eyes shut. “Please, for the love of all that’s good and right, just let me sleep well tonight!”

Her silent prayer was met in kind, leaving her all alone with nothing but her tumultuous thoughts for company. She grimaced and tried not to think about anything, to force herself to relax. The sooner she could do that and get some sleep, the sooner that foal would be out of her home and the sooner she could go back to work.

But how could she sleep? How could she close her eyes and rest peacefully when there was a little foal sleeping where they did not belong in the room right next to hers? How could she hope to ease herself and dream of anything but the worst nightmares when that room was in use when it should be as silent and empty as a lifeless corpse?

The comparison made her shudder, her chest clenching involuntarily as a flurry of unwanted memories began to bubble to the surface of her mind. Whether she liked it or not, they rose up like hot air in a pot of boiling water, and she was the frog that let itself get caught in it.

Thunder boomed outside again.

Scarlet’s eyes snapped wide open. Just barely withholding a scream of anger, she enveloped her pillow in her magic and hurled it across the room with as much force as she could muster. It struck the top of her dresser with enough energy to make it wobble, and something heavy and metallic slid off to clank onto the floor below.

Scarlet held still, taking several deep breaths to calm herself down. As the roar of the thunder faded away into the distance, she slid out of bed and drowsily made her way for her dresser, her horn lighting up to guide her path.

On the floor, sitting beside her pillow, was a slender, silver-colored yoke with a thick, dark blue cloak hanging off of it. Scarlet’s eyes locked onto the piece of apparel, and her heart twisted with guilt in her chest. “...Stupid,” she grumbled to herself before using her magic to pick it back up and neatly replace it on the dresser. She studied it for several seconds, her mind going blank save for one thought.

“I may have to use this, soon…”

It was thick and designed to shelter whoever wore it from the elements. While the fabric offered no protection for the head, the rest of the body would enjoy near-total coverage, and thanks to the density of the material, it could serve very well as a blanket if one were traveling.

That had been the point, after all.

“I don’t want to.”

She eyed it for a few long minutes, her ears drooping. “...Why do I still have this?” she asked herself in barely even a whisper.

No answers came, only more silence, and the unfortunate sensation of being wide awake and unbearably exhausted at the same time. Scarlet heaved a full-bodied sigh and finally relented herself to the fact she would not be sleeping tonight. Not without some serious help, at any rate.

So, making sure to be quiet about it, she turned on her hooves and slipped out of her room. She needed a drink.

A short time later, Scarlet was sitting in her study again, a glass of wine on the desk next to an open book. It was a history book, one she was still steadily working her way through. Her eyes scanned the pages intently, trying to use a combination of the fascinating subject matter and the wine in her system to drive out her unwanted thoughts. She took a sip of her wine and turned the page.

She grimaced when she saw the header for the next chapter.

“Chapter XIV, The War of Retribution.”

“Of course,” Scarlet mumbled under her breath, her eyes slowly starting to skim through the words. Her mind didn’t absorb any of them, though. She didn’t have to, after all. She had been there. She had lived it.

She shuddered, unable to prevent herself from recalling the details. A new king in Talonreach to the east began to oppress and violate anything that wasn’t a Griffin within his territory, disregarding all sense of morality and restraint. Ponies were ostracized en masse, accused of being witches and warlocks, one and all, and any who dared to speak in protest were either publically shamed and humiliated, or outright disappeared. It didn’t matter if they were Griffins, either, no creature was safe from that tyrant.

Eventually, things had come to a boiling point when Violsta, another, smaller pony nation that had long been a protectorate under Talonreach, was all but sacked by order of the King. They had only just been able to repel the force, and finally, that was the last straw. New Equestria had declared war to come to the aid of their kin, a few of Talonreach’s larger cities broke away in open rebellion, and the Hippogriffs from Eris sent forces of their own to help put down the madman that had assumed the Griffin throne.

And Scarlet had been foolish enough to get involved. Her grimace deepened into an openly bitter scowl, a low growl sounding in her throat. Without thinking about it, she suddenly slammed the book closed, taking several deep breaths to calm her mind and force the phantasmal screams of past battles back to where they belonged.

Suddenly, a series of sharp knocks reverberated throughout the home, making her jump in her skin. Scarlet’s ears swiveled to face the noise, and her brow furrowed in confusion. Who in the world could be knocking on her door at this hour?

Still bitter from the reminders of her past, and bemused by her new visitor, she rose from her desk and dragged her tired body out of the study and into the entrance hall. With a less than dignified growl, she enveloped the door in her magic and pulled it open, her horn lighting up so she could see who it was.

Before she saw their face, though, she was already speaking in an impatient snarl. “It is the middle of the night. What the hell do you want?!”

“That’s certainly an interesting way to say hello to an old friend, don’t you think?” a smooth, calm stallion’s voice answered her aggressive words in a far more cordial fashion.

Scarlet blinked and took a moment to actually look at the pony in front of her. He was taller than her by a good few inches, and his body was covered in the form-fitting black and blue leathers, the signature armor of a Nightblade, elite spies and assassins in service to the New Equestrian Lunar Council. His coat was a muddy gray color, while his swept-back mane was a dull and unappealing shade of blue. His eyes were yellow, and feathered wings partially encased in more armor twitched at his sides.

After a second, recognition ignited in Scarlet’s eyes. “Silent?” she asked in disbelief, leaning forward and squinting through the rain. “Is that you?”

“Would any other Nightblade knock on your door?” he asked with a roll of his eyes.

Lightning exploded across the sky behind him, and there was no gap between the flash and the deafening blast of thunder, leaving a subtle ringing in their ears. Scarlet winced from the noise. “I suppose you make a point…” she said once the rumble had died down enough so she could speak. “Do you want to come in?”

“If it’s permissible,” Silent nodded his head low as he spoke.

Without another word, Scarlet withdrew into her home, leaving the door open. Silent followed her in, closing the door behind him with barely even a sound. He turned from there and looked around, squinting through the darkness. He opened his mouth to speak when a spark of purple magic flickered across the room, and the unlit candles sprang into life. Scarlet was in the middle of it all, smiling at him.

He smiled in turn before shaking himself to dry. “Thank you, Scarlet. That rain has been pouring for hours. Doubtless, I look like an albino raisin under all this fur.”

Scarlet scoffed. “That is truly a charming mental image. I wonder, if I had somepony paint it, would the fillies and colts run and scream in terror?”

Silent chuckled at that. “Ha! Ah, I am glad to see that the years have done little and less to hinder your snark.”

Scarlet managed to smile herself. It didn’t last and was soon replaced with an uneasy frown. “Silent… as pleasant as it is to see you again, I’m afraid I still do not know why you are here. You were never the sort to make social calls, especially at this sort of hour.”

She studied his reaction carefully, taking note of every little thing. He hesitated for a moment, his expression contorting. He then took a breath and nodded his head in confirmation. “Yes, you have the right of it, Frost. I am here on business, but it can wait for a time. I haven’t seen you in… how long has it been? Seven years?”

“Eight,” Scarlet clarified with a wince. “It’s eight years as of two weeks ago.”

“Ah, I see. Forgive me, but the dates from back them are all sort of muddled,” Silent apologized slowly, lowering his head. “And you left so suddenly. By the time I heard that you were gone, I was already swamped with new tasks. It all just… blurred together.”

“Don’t be too hard on yourself, you were busy,” Scarlet dismissed, her gaze briefly darting back to her study. “Would you like to sit down in the kitchen? Maybe have a glass of wine? I have plenty to spare.”

“No, but thank you for the offer,” Silent declined politely. “I must keep my wits about me. On business, remember?”

She deflated somewhat but nodded. “Of course…”

“...How has civilian life been treating you?”

Scarlet let out a short, humorless laugh, turning in place slightly. “Well, I’m not killing creatures every week, so it’s a definite improvement from the battlefield,” she said, not even trying to hide the resentment and bitterness in her voice.

Silent’s eyes softened somewhat with sympathy. “...You always hated fighting, didn’t you?” he ventured, making Scarlet cringe.

“...I hate killing,” she stated matter of factly. “I never should have joined the army. Worst mistake of my life.”

Silent frowned in disapproval. “Scarlet, far be it from me to tell you how to live your own life, but need I remind you how many battles were won thanks to your magic? If you hadn’t been there, who knows how many more lives the griffins would have taken before we could stop them?”

“Griffins died in that war, too,” Scarlet was quick to remind him, her eyes blazing. “griffins who were no different from you or I, save for the banner they were born under. They were defending their home as sure as we were, and to them, we were a horde of warlocks and witches hell-bent on cursing and destroying their entire way of life.”

“Which was blatantly untrue,” Silent immediately pointed out, his tone remaining level and calm.

Scarlet growled in frustration before taking a long, deep breath. Once she was calmed, she nodded her head. “Yes, it was untrue… but it is equally untrue to claim that the Griffins we faced were villains worse than ourselves. Their king started the war, not them. They were fighting to defend their home, just the same as us.”

A heavy silence fell between the two of them. Scarlet took one more deep breath before turning away entirely with a shake of her head. She could feel Silent’s gaze boring into her back. “...Scarlet, are you quite alright? I remember you being fiery, but this…” he asked quietly, starting to trot across the floor towards her.

She sighed and closed her eyes. “Forgive me… the last few months have been… trying, to say the least. I would rather not speak further of it,” she said simply, her words short and clipped.

Silent came to a stop a few feet from her. The two were utterly silent for several moments before he sighed quietly and shifted back. “Very well, I shall not pry. I should be getting to my business anyway,” he relented.

Scarlet perked up somewhat and turned to face him. “Oh… shall I see you out, then?”

He shook his head. “No, not yet. My business actually involves you. Or, rather, it involves somepony you may have seen,” he explained simply, adjusting himself in his armor and twitching his wings. Scarlet’s eyes just caught the faintest glint of steel hidden between his feathers.

She frowned, confused. “I see… who?”

“A little filly, earth pony. She had teal fur and a purple mane and tail. She has saddlebags that are several times too small for her, and she has a peculiar lamp made of blue crystal. A few little birds told me that they saw her disappearing into your cellar. Is this true?” Silent described, and Scarlet’s eyes widened at once as the image of Primrose flashed through her mind.

Silent’s lip twitched just slightly, and the way his brow furrowed sent an uneasy feeling crawling down Scarlet’s spine, like a millipede working its way for her tail. She swallowed, a lump suddenly forming in her throat. What could Silent possibly want with Primrose? It didn’t make any sense… but, alas, after a moment, she nodded her head. “I may have seen her. Why? Who is she to you?”

Silent’s lips curled up into a smile, and the unease Scarlet felt only grew worse. “I have been tasked with returning her to the capital, Newcanter. She is very important to a few members of the Lunar Council, but she ran away from them, the foolish little thing. They would very much like to have her back, now.”

Scarlet eyed him carefully, sliding back a few inches instinctively. “...Important how?”

Silent gave a few quiet ‘tsks’ and shook his head. “Unfortunately, Scarlet, I can say no more on the matter. As it is, I have already said more than you are legally allowed to know, but I trust you to be quiet about it. Now, do you know where she is or not?” he asked, his voice growing noticeably more impatient as he went on. His wings unfolded just slightly, allowing Scarlet to see the blades he kept hidden within.

She swallowed heavily, a brief battle waging within her mind. She couldn’t wrap her mind around why Silent wanted Primrose… maybe it had something to do with the lamp? It was quite odd, after all, and not something she would expect to see in the possession of an orphaned filly. Did she steal it? She had said it was a family heirloom, but foals were more than capable of some pretty elaborate lies, she knew that firsthoof.

Slowly, however, she began to relax, her mental battle dying away in favor of just going along with this. She didn’t want Primrose here anyway, so she may as well just let Silent have her. Besides, it wasn’t like she had anything to gain from lying to him, aside from perhaps a criminal record.

So, finally, she straightened her posture and nodded. “Yes, I know where she is. She’s sleeping just upstairs. I let her use my guest room until the storm passed. I was planning on taking her to the orphanage come the dawn, but I don’t suppose that will be necessary now, will it?”

Silent, too, relaxed, his expression softening considerably. “It won’t. Please, take me to her.”

Scarlet, shaking off the feeling of bugs crawling on her spine, smiled, and turned to lead him up the stairs. Thunder boomed outside as they went, and Scarlet couldn’t help but wince. Silent followed close behind her, a persistent smile on his face.

They came to the door in question. Scarlet lifted a hoof for the knob when suddenly Silent’s reached out and took hers in a vice grip. She gasped from the force of it and looked up at him in surprise. He was glaring back at her intently, his eyes narrowed. “Allow me,” he whispered, his breath tickling the hairs on her face and flooding her nostrils with a bitter stench.

Shaken, Scarlet nodded and backed away from the door. Silent eyed her for several seconds until she was a good five feet away. Then, as silent as the night he served, he reached out and pushed open the bedroom door. It was pitch dark inside, of course. Something immediately stood out as odd to Scarlet, however.

She could hear the rain far, far too clearly.

Silent ducked inside, and Scarlet heard him swearing under his breath. Curious, she strode forward and peered inside, her horn glowing brighter to illuminate the room. Her eyes widened when she saw the window across from the door standing all the way open, the curtains billowing in the stormy wind.

Silent approached the window and glared out into the rain, a growl of irritation coming from somewhere deep in his throat. “The stupid child must have heard us and ran,” he spat before turning to Scarlet and giving her a friendly smile. Somehow, it made her blood run cold. “Do me and yourself a favor, Scarlet. Stay right where you are and say nothing of this to anypony you meet. For your own safety, yes?”

Before Scarlet could go to utter any kind of response, Silent turned and dove out the window, his wings snapping open and carrying him down to the street below, leaving Scarlet once again all alone in her home. Bewildered, she cantered up to the window and looked down at him. He touched down and broke into a sprint down the lamplit street, and Scarlet could just make out a few other shadows following him. Other Nightblades.

Something was wrong, she could feel it. With the adrenaline caused by the sudden shift in the situation, her mind went into full swing, allowing her to pick out flaws in her earlier reasoning she had missed.

Silent Edge was a Nightblade. That meant that he was a spy, an assassin, and a trained killer. He wasn’t one to go around and pick up stray foals, not unless they were of extreme importance, and even then that didn’t add up for him. If he had come alone, then maybe Scarlet could dismiss it as an oddity in his orders. But he didn’t come alone. He had brought a whole team of Nightblades, and each one of them we likely just as dangerous as he was.

And all of them were following Primrose.

A memory of blood on her hooves and dead eyes staring into hers passed through Scarlet’s mind. Her blood cooled to match her last name, and she inhaled quietly. Before she even knew what she was doing, she was sprinting back into her room and retrieving the cloak that she had previously sent falling to the floor.

Treason

Without the walls of her home to deaden the sound, the sudden blast of thunder that shook the world made Scarlet’s teeth rattle together as she sprinted down the street. Her cloak hugged her body, soggy and dripping from the downpour already. Rivulets of water poured over her face, forcing her to squint to see, and her mane clung to her neck and shoulders. She swept her eyes back and forth to scour the streets as she ran, making sure to keep her breaths even and steady.

She came to a four-way intersection, the only source of light being the purple glow of the street lights. She slowly spun in place, her eyes frantically darting back and forth to study the environment for any sign of her quarry. However, nothing stood out to her, and she inwardly scolded herself for thinking she had any hope of tracking Silent or his Nightblades. They knew better than to leave tracks...

She was knocked from her thoughts and her ears swiveled when a loud, high-pitched scream echoed from down the street behind her. Without missing a beat, she spun on her hooves and broke into a gallop after the sound, her heart beating faster in her chest. As she drew closer, she could just make out voices, shouting to be heard over the din of the storm.

She rounded the corner and slid to a stop. She could see Silent at the entrance to an alleyway, his posture low and his wings flared out. Razor sharp blades poked out between his feathers, catching the purple light menacingly. His Nightblades stood around him, three in total. One of them was a unicorn, and in his amber magical aura were two curved daggers. The others were earth ponies, the horseshoes they wore adorned with sharp claws that now pawed restlessly at the earth.

“Nowhere left to run, girl,” Silent shouted, starting to stalk forward. “You’ve run out of holes to hide in, tricks to pull, and ponies to cower behind. Now, be a good girl, make things easy on yourself, and pass me that lamp.”

“No!” Primrose’s shaking voice barked back from the alleyway, making Scarlet’s blood run cold. “You can’t have it! I promised I’d protect it!”

Silent rolled his eyes before taking another threatening step forward. He lowered his head closer to the ground, like a predator stalking its small, pathetic prey. “Ah, well, I never said you had a choice in the matter.”

He flared out his wings and tensed to lunge.

Primrose screamed.

Scarlet sprang into motion.

Before she even knew what was happening, her horn had been enveloped in a bright amethyst light, and several barrels were hauled from under a nearby awning and hurled at the gathered assassins at high speeds. Silent was the only one to see them coming in time and quickly sprang back to avoid being clobbered. His comrades were not so lucky, each one being struck with enough force to shatter the projectiles and send them sliding, out cold, into the mud.

Scarlet’s horn brightened again, her teeth grinding together. It had been a long time since she’d had to use this spell. The light on her horn pulsed, and suddenly spread out in a blinding flash of light, accompanied by a loud burst of sound. The world around her, for a fraction of a second, ceased to exist. It was just light and sound and arcane winds. Then, as quickly as it began, it ended, and Scarlet reemerged in the alleyway, facing the street.

“Wha?! Sc-Scarlet?!” Primrose squeaked from behind her.

She didn’t turn to look, her stance widening and her ears going flat against her head. “Shut up and stay back!” she barked, leaving no room for argument.

A second passed before Silent slowly came back into sight, his cold eyes glaring into Scarlet’s. “Frost… I told you to stay home,” he noted in a low, warning tone. “I warned you not to get involved. Step aside. Right now.”

“How can you expect me to do that?!” Scarlet demanded, her nostrils flaring and her horn sparking into life again. “How can you tell me to get out of your way when you were clearly about to slaughter an innocent filly?!”

Silent’s face visibly tightened with frustration. He took a deep breath before speaking again. “As I said back in your home, I have already told you far, far too much. I cannot tell you anything else.”

“You told me she was valuable to ponies in Newcanter,” Scarlet rebuked, her eyes narrowing. “And that you were here to escort her back to the capital. But then you started chasing her through the streets with wingblades drawn and a squad of trained assassins! You weren’t going to take her anywhere! You LIED to me, Silent! So until I know exactly why you were about to murder a foal, then I am NOT going to get out of your way!”

A heavy silence fell over the two of them. Thunder boomed in the distance, little more than a low rumble that made Scarlet’s chest quiver in dread and anticipation. Silent stared at her in disbelief for several seconds before letting off a long, disappointed sigh. “Very well… forgive me, Scarlet, but you leave me with no choice.”

His wings unfolded, the blades within snapping out with a metallic sound, before he sprang forward. Scarlet’s eyes widened, the light on her horn erupting forth in a beam of magic. The pegasus charging her skillfully swerved around it, closing the gap quickly. His eyes were focused, and Scarlet knew in that moment that he was not going to hesitate.

So she didn’t, either.

The air in front of her rippled and shimmered with mystical energies before a curved sword of raw magic materialized there. She brought the blade up just in time to catch Silent’s, sparks flying free and energy crackling along the point of impact. She took a step back, knocked off balance by the force of her opponent’s swing. Silent followed through quickly, his other wing slicing forward.

Scarlet met the strike, but only barely. Her eyes flew wide when she saw the tip of Silent’s blade mere inches away. She could easily see how sharp they were, and her muscles tensed involuntarily.

Before she could make to counter, Silent followed up on his swings to spin in the air and buck her hard in the face. She cried out and staggered back, her sword swiping before her in a clearing sweep to give her some breathing room. Silent skillfully leaped over the blade and dove back down for her, his hooves outstretched.

He plowed into her, knocking her down into the dirt and dispelling her sword. She rolled one before coming to a stop, mud and muck clinging to her face, fur, and coat. She lifted her eyes, briefly catching sight of Primrose watching from the back of the alley, her eyes wide open with shock. Those eyes then darted to look at something behind Scarlet, and the filly’s pupils shrank.

Acting on pure reflex, Scarlet conjured a dome-shaped barrier over herself, just barely catching the swing of Silent’s attack. It bounced off with a distorted clang, and he stepped back with a grunt. Scarlet capitalized on the moment, the barrier fading away and replaced with not one, but two magical swords. She shot up to her hooves and spun on her enemy, swinging the swords in rapid succession to drive him back.

He blocked each strike masterfully, though his face became twisted with strain and effort. Seeing an opportunity to push an advantage, Scarlet stepped forwards and intensified her assault, a guttural shout of rage tearing forth from her lips. Silent took another step back, grunting with effort.

Sadly, she got overconfident. She went in for a lunge, but Silent was expecting it. His blade knocked it aside, and one of his hooves reached forward to strike her in the jaw. Stars exploded across her vision as she staggered back before a thin cut appeared on her cheek. She gasped sharply, a hoof flying up to the injury while her swords vanished and another dome appeared before her to stop Silent’s follow-up.

“Hmph. You’ve gotten rusty, Scarlet. You can’t defeat me as you are. Give up now, and you have my word you’ll be shown mercy,” Silent told her, confident.

Scarlet glared at him through the purple barrier before pulling her hoof away from her cheek and looking at it. A bloody smear stained the fur. Silent had gotten the first blow, and Scarlet had to admit that he was right. There was not a chance she could beat him, as out of practice as she was. She opened her mouth to acknowledge this, to accept his terms and surrender, when a small bead of the crimson began to roll down her hoof.

An image flashed into her mind again, empty eyes staring back at her and blood staining her hooves. Her heart twisted in her chest with guilt, guilt at what she was seeing, and guilt that she could even begin to consider surrendering an option here. With every second that passed, that guilt began to simmer and boil. It turned to anger, then rage, and finally, it flooded her system with a liquid fire that burned at the base of her skull.

She looked back at Primrose to see the filly watching her intently, her big eyes silently begging Scarlet not to give in. The rain pouring down her body made her look so much smaller than she really was, like the world itself was pressing down on her. The image seared itself into Scarlet’s mind, and she turned back to Silent.

“Buck you.”

He scowled at the profane remark, his wings spreading out again. “...So be it,” he snarled before charging again. He lifted his blades and thrust them forwards, their tips hitting Scarlet’s barrier. To her horror, they pierced right through, sending particles of dust and magic flying by her face. Cracks began to appear on the surface of the dome, spreading out with the sound of breaking glass.

The blades were less than an inch from her face, and Scarlet’s heart leaped into her throat. She recovered quickly, and just as her barrier shattered into nothing, her horn sparked into life and unleashed a wave of energy at Silent. He folded his wings in front of himself like a shield, catching the wave and shielding his body from the worst of it. However, it did little to protect him from the forces of momentum, as illustrated when he was sent flying back through the air several yards. He crashed into the wall of the building on the other side of the street with a grunt before landing on his hooves again.

Scarlet quickly conjured her blades again, her eyes looking around for an escape route. She didn’t have enough time to properly formulate a plan, though, as Silent kicked off the building and shot for her yet again. She lifted her swords just in time to catch his wingblades with a deafening clang. She grimaced and slid back a few inches, trenches being dug into the mud of the alleyway.

Silent growled, and shoved forward, folding his wing up on his back. Scarlet gasped as he slipped past her defenses and tackled her. They fell to the ground, Silent’s weight pinning her to the mud. She looked up at him and went to lift her forehooves over her face to protect it, but his own had hers pinned down.

He snarled down at her, his wings unfurling and the blades extending once again. Scarlet’s eyes latched onto them, and her heart began to hammer in her chest as panic overtook her. Her horn lit up with amethyst light, and she was about to unleash a point-blank burst of magic when Silent suddenly leaned down and clamped his teeth down on it. Scarlet screamed and thrashed as her magic was cut off, desperate for any way out of this.

Silent’s wings angled themselves to the tips of his blades were aligned with her chest, and Scarlet’s frantic cries swelled in volume. She screwed her eyes shut, trying in vain to tell herself that she had actually fallen asleep and that this was all just a bad dream. She would wake up soon, take Primrose to an orphanage, and forget she had ever met her.

She felt Silent tense, ready to plunge his blades into her.

Suddenly, his weight shifted back, and his teeth detached themselves from her horn. She could hear Silent letting out a shout of alarm and pain, and her eyes snapped open to see what had happened. To her rapidly growing shock, Primrose was there, a rock in her hoof and a terrified look on her face. Silent was rearing back, his right eye closed as blood ran down his face from a sizable scrape that had just been created on his brow.

“Gah! You brat!” he spat, angling his blades for her, next.

Primrose dropped the stone to the mud with a moist thump, the color draining from her face. Her entire body went rigid, and the barest hint of a squeak could be heard coming from somewhere deep in her voice.

A surge of adrenaline flooded through Scarlet’s veins. Acting fast, a raw blast of unfocused magic leaped from her horn and into Silent. The air was knocked from his lungs, and he was thrown off of Scarlet to land with a thud at the entrance of the alley. He was already starting to pick himself back up, though, and would not give either of them another chance.

Scarlet moved quickly. She reached out with her magic and encased Primrose in an aura of telekinesis before hauling her over. The filly squeaked before being wrapped up tight in Scarlet’s hooves. “Hold on,” the unicorn told her before screwing her eyes shut and focusing. She could hear Silent lunging for them again, and could feel the air shifting around them as he made to cut them both down in one fell swoop.

And then she and Primrose were encased in a rush of wind and sound, disappearing in a teleportation spell. They came out of it with a mutual grunt as they landed on something cold and hard. Scarlet opened her eyes and looked around, trying to figure out just where her panicked spell had placed them.

They were on a rooftop, and judging by how high they were, they were a good block or two away from where they had just been. Scarlet let out a heavy sigh of relief before looking down at Primrose, who was gasping frantically and clinging to the unicorn like a lifeline.

“What happened?!” she asked, her eyes darting around in a panic. “Where are we?! Where’s Silent?! What is- MMPH!”

Scarlet silenced her by quickly covering her mouth with a hoof. “Shh! Shut up!” she hissed into Primrose’s ear before perking up her own and listening. The filly squirmed in her grasp for a moment longer before going still and listening as well. Several seconds passed, and the only sound was that of the water pummeling the rooftop around them.

Eventually, Scarlet released her hold on Primrose and looked down into her wide, terrified eyes. The filly looked none the worse for wear, thankfully, though she was shivering from the cold, the rainwater soaking into her coat steadily sapping the warmth and strength from her body.

“Are you alright?” Scarlet finally asked in a whisper.

Primrose nodded shakily, offering up a timid “Mhmm” as her response.

“Good,” Scarlet breathed before standing up. “Come on, we need to get out of here.”

The foal looked at her in confusion, her head tilting to one side. “Where are we going?” she asked, briefly glancing over her shoulder.

Scarlet came to a stop at that, her ears slowly drooping and her eyes widening as the reality of the situation finally hit her. She opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out.

“...Miss Scarlet?”

She felt sick. Scarlet staggered to one side, her eyes slowly panning over the cityscape before her and taking it all in as she finally realized what she had just done. “...I’m a fugitive,” she choked out, her heart starting to hammer in her chest. Not out of fear or anger, but out of sheer despair. Starting to shake, she turned around to look at Primrose. The filly stared back at her, her own eyes wide and confused.

Primrose took a step back, unable to meet the unicorn’s increasingly hostile gaze any longer. Her ears drooped, and her entire body wilted under that cold stare. “I… I’m so sorry,” she whispered. “I didn’t… I wasn’t trying to…”

Scarlet shook her head. “Shut up,” she spat before looking out at the city again. “Spare your apologies until we’re safe. Silent will be looking for us, and we don’t want to be up top when he starts searching the roofs.”

Primrose nodded but didn’t say anything.

Scarlet gave her a cold glare before taking a deep breath and letting it out in a heavy sigh. “Don’t blame her,” she told herself emphatically. “She did nothing wrong. I’m the idiot for getting involved…”

With that thought burning in her mind, Scarlet turned back to Primrose and put a hoof on her back. “Close your eyes and keep your mouth shut. I’m going to teleport us again.”

Primrose nodded and did as told. Scarlet observed her for a moment before channeling her magic and picking a destination. Her home. They wouldn’t have long, but if they were going to be fugitives, there were a few things she was going to need.

Then, in a flash of light, they vanished from the rooftop, the sound of the spell lost amid a blast of thunder as lightning filled the sky.

Fugitives

Scarlet was acting almost entirely on autopilot, everything around her fading into nothingness. The second she and Primrose came out of their teleport in front of her home, she sprinted inside and scoured the entire place. In just under two minutes, she acquired a pair of saddlebags and loaded it up with a few stray fruits from her kitchen, an old combat dagger, and a pouch of bits she had kept on her nightstand.

After that, it was a frantic dash through the rain-soaked streets of Swanrun, guiding Primrose as she ducked into alleyways, only ever using her horn to light the way when absolutely necessary. With every step she took, every drop of rain that drowned her in more moisture, the fear and anxiety of her situation swelled in intensity several times over.

Finally, they came to an outside balcony that overlooked the ocean and waterfront. Scarlet slid to a stop there, giving Primrose a second to catch her breath while she swept her eyes over the area for any sign of their pursuers. Sadly, with things as dark as they were, and with only minimal arcane lighting on the docks, she wouldn’t be able to see a Nightblade even if they were in plain sight.

“Shit,” she swore under her breath, her face contorting with strain and frustration.

Primrose looked up at her before gulping down a lungful of air. “Where… where are we going?” she asked between her pants, her own eyes scouring the area below them intently.

“Somewhere safe, I hope,” Scarlet answered, her eyes following where she knew the shoreline was to the south. “But we need to get down to the beach without drawing attention. If I teleport us, though, the flash of light will draw attention. If we take the stairs, we’re likely to be seen by anypony below, and you can be sure that Silent already has Nightblades scrambling to block any ways out of the city.”

“I don’t think there are a lot of ponies down there,” Primrose said, squinting into the darkness. “I’m not seeing anypony, at least…”

“Welcome to a cloudy night in Swanrun,” Scarlet bit before shaking her head. “Still, teleporting is faster. We’ll just have to risk it and hope nopony’s looking. Grab on.”

Primrose nodded her head and curled her hoof into Scarlet’s cloak. Once her grip was firm, she nodded up at the unicorn and closed her eyes in anticipation. Scarlet looked down at her for a moment before igniting her horn and focusing on the spell. She needed somewhere out of the way, somewhere hard to spot. The only problem with that plan was that most of the good places for that were too far away for her to reach, tired and out of practice as she was.

Grimacing, she realized she would have to settle for the bottom of the cliff itself. A risky move, given they could very easily get caught up in a bunch of shrubbery and brush, maybe startle a sleeping bird or wild animal using the docks to get out of the rain. But there weren’t exactly many other options.

Scarlet closed her eyes and focused. Her magic flared brighter on her horn before, with a loud pop, she and Primrose vanished from their elevated position. The world around them flashed away before they re-emerged at the base of the cliff, thankfully none the worse for wear. Soft sand and small pebbles shifted under their weight as they landed.

And then Scarlet fell, a sharp gasp fleeing her lungs. All at once, her skull was filled with a fiery migraine, and her lungs were finding it difficult to get enough air. Her legs trembled and shook, feeling as if they may give out at any moment.

She had overdone it. She was spent. She would be casting no more spells tonight.

“Scarlet, get up,” Primrose whispered to her, shaking her shoulder. “C’mon, please get up!”

“Stop shaking me,” the unicorn eventually grumbled before forcing herself to stand on wobbling legs. She faltered once or twice before finally regaining her balance and composure. She looked down at Primrose to see her looking over her shoulder towards the stairs that worked their way down the cliffside.

“Are we safe?”

Scarlet shook her head and turned to the south. The beach stretched that way for quite some distance, and heading that way would leave them in the open for longer than was ideal. But, if she was remembering the layout as well as she thought she was, there would be shelter before long. “Not yet. Come on, and stay low and quiet,” she ordered before starting forward, her ears up and her body low to the ground.

Their progress was slow, but it was steady. Thunder occasionally rocked the world alongside flashes of light, providing brief instances of perfect clarity before the world was plunged once more into darkness. The sound of the waves crashing against the shore to their right was soon all that could be heard above the constant roar of the rain and the howling of the wind.

Scarlet looked up at the sky every so often, searching for any signs of pegasi following them. Thankfully, there didn’t seem to be anything, and soon enough the docks and the rest of Swanrun became obscured by a bend in the cliff face. She picked up the pace the moment the city was out of sight, turning her attention instead to the natural white stone wall on her left.

Finally, their sanctuary came into view. In the side of the cliff was a cave entrance, no higher than six feet tall and ten feet across. Relief flooded her system at the sight, and her power walk turned into a full-blown gallop. “Here, right here!” she shouted back at Primrose to be heard over the din of the weather before ducking into the cavern.

It was pitch dark inside, something that would normally be easily rectified. Sadly, with her magic as drained as it was, creating illumination would be difficult. She had to try, though. She took a deep breath and then channeled all of her remaining strength into her horn, just trying to get a tiny bit of light. Her skull pounded in protest to the action, and her chest constricted painfully, but she was able to get a faint glow on the very tip of her horn, just enough to let her see.

The cave was small, but it didn’t need to be anything more than that. She could imagine that were it not for the low roof, a collection of ponies could set up a campsite with a fireplace and three tents arranged in a circle before things became too cramped. Stalagmites and stalactites rose and fell from the floor and ceiling around the edges of the cavern, while the central floorspace was thankfully smooth and unmarred, save for a light dusting of sand blown in by the ocean wind.

Scarlet visibly relaxed, seeing that the place was both unoccupied and as she remembered it. She took a few steps before turning back to Primrose. “We’ll be safe here until the sun comes up,” she explained matter-of-factly.

The filly dragged herself into the cave, finally able to truly catch her breath and collect herself. She glanced around the cave for a few seconds, looking profoundly relieved. Then, with a whimper, her legs buckled underneath her, and she slumped to the ground with a thud.

Scarlet cussed bitterly, shed her saddlebags and marched over to the fallen filly. With a grunt of effort, she hefted Primrose up onto her back and slowly trudged for the end of the cave, kicking her saddlebags along with her the whole way. Once they were there, she deposited her passenger and promptly collapsed next to her to catch her breath.

After that, the two of them fell into a heavy silence while they rested. In that wordless quiet, Scarlet’s mind began to wander and catch up with everything that had just happened to her. She looked down at Primrose thoughtfully, gauging the filly’s condition. She was worn out and covered in even more mud and dirt than before, but she was otherwise unharmed.

Scarlet exhaled with relief, some tension fleeing her system. Her efforts had paid off, then. She saved the filly.

...But why had she?

Scarlet gazed out into the world outside and allowed the light on her horn to wink away. Without the spell clogging up any of her mind, she was able to think clearly and rationally again. And with that clarity came the return of a horrifying realization.

“...I’m such an idiot,” she muttered to herself, despair gripping her heart.

Primrose shifted beside her, and Scarlet could practically feel the filly’s eyes boring into her. “What do you mean?” she whispered.

Scarlet’s nostrils flared while the back of her skull began to tingle with anger. She turned her gaze down on Primrose, just able to see her shrinking down in fear under the unicorn’s ire. “What do I mean…?” Scarlet parroted slowly, one of her eyes twitching. “I just went and made a fugitive of myself by fighting members of the most elite group of assassins in all of New Equestria, interfering with them on a mission!”

Primrose cowered even further away with every word she heard, her ears falling completely flat.

Scarlet, too blinded by her own self-deprecation, couldn’t be bothered to give a damn. She rose to her hooves and began to pace back and forth. “My entire life has been uprooted! My job at the academy, my home, my friends! My mother lives up in Swanrun, did you know that?!” she ranted, her hooves stomping harder as time went on. “She’s going to learn that her only daughter, who barely made it out of the war alive, is now a wanted criminal! What is she going to think of me, then?! Will she hate me? Will she be disappointed? Is she going to grieve because the daughter she knew is long gone?!”

Primrose whimpered and screwed her eyes shut.

“What the hell was I thinking?!” Scarlet finally bellowed, idly sweeping her hoof out against one of the spikes of stone jutting up from the floor. Her blow carried enough force to break it, sending a long piece of rock falling to the floor and sending sand scattering aside. But with that, thankfully, Scarlet’s fury was spent. She heaved a tired sigh and turned back towards Primrose before crumpling back down onto her belly.

The silence returned, so thick and intense that being choked to death would probably be more comfortable. Scarlet’s ears twitched when she heard Primrose shifting in the back, though she didn’t bother lifting her eyes to look. Instead, she kept them glued firmly onto the cave floor, her mind lost in its own dread.

“...I’m sorry,” Primrose suddenly spoke up, causing Scarlet to jump and stare at her in bewilderment. The filly adjusted herself some more before speaking again. “I’m sorry you’re being hunted. It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have broken into your house. I’m really sorry.”

Scarlet stared at her for a long while before sighing and shaking her head. “Ugh… apology accepted…” she grumbled before setting her chin down on her hooves. “But tell me something: why is Silent after you?”

Primrose’s ears perked up at the question, her head tilting to one side. “Huh?”

“I know him,” Scarlet went on, her eyes wandering back to the cave mouth. “We fought side by side a few times during some of the bloodier battles in the war. You don’t go through that with somepony and not develop a strong bond. I know his modus operandi, and I know he isn’t the sort to kill without reason. And try as I might, I can’t think of a single reason for him to want to kill a homeless filly like you...” she lifted her head in thought, her eyes narrowing. “So either he really hates you for some reason, or he’s operating under orders. But then that just begs the question of who on the Lunar Council would want you dead… any ideas?”

Primrose was utterly still, her eyes wide. She curled up a little more before finally sliding off her saddlebags and reaching into them. When she withdrew, she held the crystal lamp in her hooves again, its surface reflecting more light than anything else in the darkened chamber. Primrose eyed the family heirloom with curiosity, as did Scarlet before the filly at last answered. “I think it has something to do with this…”

Scarlet frowned. It made some degree of sense, now that she thought about it. Silent had been demanding that Primrose hoof it over when he had her cornered. If that was the case, though, then…

Scarlet hauled herself to her hooves and dragged herself painfully over to Primrose’s location, her eyes affixed to the odd object. “I remember him mentioning it, yes. What is this lamp of yours if it’s so important Silent would be ordered to kill you for it?”

Primrose shook her head. “I dunno… My mom gave it to me right before Silent killed her. She told me to run and keep it safe for as long as I could before going to draw him away. He killed her, and he’s been chasing me ever since. It’s been years, and every time he catches up to me, he tries to kill me and take it…”

That gave Scarlet pause. “Silent has been after you for years?” she echoed in complete disbelief. “And you’re still alive?”

Primrose tore her eyes away from the lamp and nodded at Scarlet. “Mhmm. Somepony was always there to help me, or I just got lucky,” she explained. But then her ears fell, and her gaze returned to the lamp. “But… h-he gets closer and closer to getting me every time. If you hadn’t shown up, he w-would have k-killed me… and I would have broken my promise to my mom.”

Scarlet watched Primrose for a few seconds before giving a quiet sigh and holding out a hoof. “Let me see that,” she instructed simply.

Primrose immediately clutched the lamp tighter against her chest as if to protect it, and her entire body compressed around it.

Scarlet rolled her eyes. “I just want to have a look. If somepony wants you dead over this, and I’m mixed up in it, I’d at least like to know what I butchered my entire life to defend.”

Primrose hesitated for a few seconds, but she eventually conceded the point. She slowly uncurled herself and timidly hoofed the lamp off to Scarlet.

Once she had it in her hooves, she restored the glow to her horn, painful as it was, to get a better look. Now that she was really looking, the signs of age became readily apparent. Every single edge had been worn smooth by erosion and the passing of time, and there was a colossal number of scratches and scrapes marring what would otherwise be a pristine surface. It was made of the same material as the crystals used to power Arcane Engines, though the origin of those crystals was as of yet a mystery to scholars everywhere.

She turned it over and caught sight of some aged inscriptions along the bottom. She immediately recognized them as runes from the long-dead language of Old Ponish, a tongue she had neglected to learn during her own studies. However, even if she didn’t understand the runes, it did tell her something about this artifact.

Something she intended to test.

Closing her eyes, she slowly lowered her head until the tip of her horn, and the gentle magic light that resided there made contact with the surface of the lamp. All at once, her mind was overwhelmed by an intense surge of magical feedback. Her ears were filled with the sound of distorted thunder erupting within her skull. Her entire body began to tingle with pins and needles, and her mouth was flooded with an excessively sweet and sugary taste. Her eyes suffered the worst, being assaulted by a formless blast of vivid and ever-shifting colors that made her migraine a thousand times worse.

Shouting in pain, Scarlet yanked her head back and dropped the lamp, allowing it to fall to the floor with a clatter. Primrose immediately scooped it up and held it close to her chest while her eyes remained trained on the now gasping unicorn.

Scarlet took several seconds to catch her breath and rain in her thoughts before allowing herself to speak. “W-wow… alright…” she stammered before looking down at the lamp with wide eyes. “That lamp of yours… it’s magical.”

Primrose tilted her head and looked down at it. “Well… I always knew it had magic in it. Part of that magic makes it unbreakable,” she explained before looking at Scarlet again. “But I dunno what the rest of the magic is.”

Scarlet gave her head a firm shake to clear the stars still cluttering her vision. “Neither do I, but whatever it is, it is powerful…” she stated before glaring at the lamp with scrutiny and fascination. “...And it does not wish to be fiddled with. I don’t think I have ever encountered so many wards placed on one object before.”

Primrose tilted her head again, one of her ears flicking. “So… what does that mean?”

Scarlet huffed and settled back down onto her belly. “It means, Primrose, that there is not a chance in the world that I could safely figure out what that thing is. I was a battlemage, I never dealt with wards this dense,” she explained before lowering her head and resting it on the cave floor. “So if we want to figure out what that thing is and why Silent’s superiors want it, then we need a ward expert…”

Primrose was quiet for a second before shuffling her lamp back into her saddlebags. Once it was secure, she shifted closer to Scarlet until she was pressing up against her side, sharing their body heat through the still soaked cloak. “Do you know anypony like that?”

Scarlet sighed and closed her eyes. “...Yes. An old and… very good friend,” she mumbled before letting out a long breath. “We can talk about it more in the morning. For now, get some sleep.”

“Oh… okay. Goodnight, Scarlet,” Primrose mumbled before settling down and closing her eyes.

Outside the cave, with the passing of time, the rain slowly began to die down, and the last clap of thunder was barely audible far in the distance. Soon, even the wind fell still, leaving the world in a state of near-perfect silence, disturbed only by the waves breaking upon the shore before receding back into the oceans as a new day began in New Equestria.

Sunrise

This was getting ridiculous.

Silent Edge barely stifled a low growl of frustration as he came to a quiet landing atop one of Swanrun’s higher buildings. The streets were slowly becoming visible as the sun rose on the horizon, its golden rays somewhat smothered by the leftover rain clouds that stretched across the horizon. Despite that limited light, though, the world sparkled and shimmered with the still freshly fallen moisture.

It was quite the particularly dreary scene.

None of that mattered to him at the moment, though. Primrose had gotten away for the umpteenth time, and Scarlet, one of the only ponies he had ever deemed fit to call a friend, was now actively opposing him. He’d been scouring the streets for hours while his comrades scouted out the surrounding countryside. Alas, the darkness of the night and the rainfall did wonders in obscuring their vision. Even if one of them had gotten close to her, they may have easily missed her.

He wasn’t able to keep in his growl this time, one of his hooves scraping along the smooth stone roof in a display of agitation. “Why, Scarlet…?” he whispered to himself, his mind focusing in on the mare in question, and how adamant she had been when she stood against him. “Why did you do it?”

It didn’t make any sense to him. He knew her, or at least he thought he did. The Scarlet Frost that he had fought alongside was practical and pragmatic, never one to stick her muzzle where it did not belong. So why, then, had she decided now of all times was a suitable moment to involve herself in an event that had frankly nothing to do with her?

His mind wandered to the moment she had first put herself between him and Primrose. She had been adamant in her resistance, refusing to budge an inch without information she was not at all allowed to have. And then, despite how rusty she was, the ferocity she had fought with when the battle began was on par with how she had been on the battlefield all those years ago.

But again, the question remained… why? What was it about Primrose that made her go to such lengths?

His ruminations on the strange twist of fate that had befallen him and his friend were cut short when he heard somepony else touch down on the roof behind him. Their landing was soft, and most other ponies would have outright missed it. Not him, though.

Silent was quick to compose himself before turning to face the Nightblade who just landed. It was a mare, her head obscured by a dark blue hood. She pulled it down to reveal a cream-colored coat and a short mane of fiery orange tied in the back into a ponytail. Her topaz-colored eyes bored into Silent’s. “Sir, I’ve come to report,” she declared simply.

Silent nodded, facing her fully and putting all else aside for now. His duty had to come first. “I am listening. Did you find them?”

The mare closed her eyes and lowered her head in an apology. “I’m afraid not, sir. The targets have managed to slip away. We were able to find some tracks on the beach, but between the rain and the rising tide, we were unable to track them for very far before they blended back into the sands. The others are continuing their search right now, but I fear we may be wasting our time.”

Silent hummed in thought before turning to gaze out on Swanrun again. Where could Scarlet be going, he wondered? He was quiet for several seconds before sighing and nodding his head. “Very well. Rejoin the others and aid them in their search. I will search for any clues as to where our prey may be headed and link up with you as soon as I am done. Go.”

The mare nodded sharply before pulling up her hood back up and leaping from the rooftop, her wings unfurled. She rose high into the air and sped off for the waterfront to the west, quickly disappearing into the distance and leaving Silent all alone on the rooftop.

He wasn’t there for long. With a graceful leap, he sailed through the air and wove his way through the buildings, a specific destination in mind. As he went, his keen eyes occasionally drifted down to study the streets below. He caught sight of a few ponies starting to emerge from their homes to begin the day, many of them looking tired and restless. Doubtless, the storm had done a number on their rest. Some glanced up at him in curiosity as he sped by, but none took much of an interest.

Silent pulled his attention away from the commoners and focused on his flying. Soon enough, his destination came into view. With an easy descent, his hooves lightly touched down on the street just outside of Scarlet’s home. The front door was standing ajar, swinging gently and creaking in the gentle morning breeze.

Silent stepped inside, scanning the front room. He hummed quietly to himself when he saw that the place had been tossed up since his initial departure. The wooden floorboards in front of the doorway had been soaked by rain that managed to slip inside. The candles had all been blown out by the winds and sent rolling across the floor.

Scouring the first floor revealed that things were more or less as they had been before, although several of the cupboards in the kitchen had been thrown open. If Silent had to guess, he would say that Scarlet had gotten food for the road. Given how things were thrown around, she had been in a hurry, which was not at all surprising. She knew perfectly well the fate she had locked herself into.

The study was left more or less untouched. All he found of note was a modern history book closed on the table and a half-empty glass of wine. He briefly remembered Scarlet’s offer for some of the alcoholic beverage when he first arrived. He grunted dismissively to himself before finishing off what was left in the glass. It wasn’t much, and nowhere near enough to affect his senses, but it tasted fine nonetheless.

Searching the desk revealed nothing of use, however. Convinced that there was nothing here in the study, he turned to go and scout the second floor. As he went to make his departure, though, something caught his eye on one of the many bookcases that lined the walls. It was a row of books that were far smaller and thinner than the others. They filled an entire shelf, each cover spouting one bright color or another, contrasting sharply with the rest of the tomes.

With his curiosity growing, Silent approached the bookcase and studied it for several moments, his eyes taking in each title. It didn’t take long for him to deduce what he was looking at. “...Foals’ books,” he mused to himself after a minute, his muzzle scrunching up. “...Since when did you have a love for the stories we tell to children, Scarlet?”

His question would not be answered here, he knew, and so he made his way upstairs and for the mare’s bedroom. He found both bedroom doors left wide open, and a chilly draft worked its way through the hall from the open window in the guest room. Silent made a quick sweep of the space before moving on to Scarlet’s room. Scanning the room, he saw that the bed was in complete disarray. The blankets were wrinkled and crumpled into an impressive mess, implying that Scarlet had been tossing and turning.

She must have been having a hard time sleeping.

Searching her dresser revealed nothing of interest, save for one or two pieces of formal attire. But when he made his way to the drawer in Scarlet’s nightstand, he did find something. A rolled-up scroll, and a crumpled up sheet of parchment, both tucked into the very back and hidden from view. Curious, Silent unrolled the scroll and studied its contents. It was a map of New Equestria, specifically the northern half. It was a broad strokes depiction, mostly showing the large cities or settlements of importance. Oddly, there was a line drawn in red ink that connected Swanrun and Shimmervale that followed the main highway.

Silent pondered that for a moment before moving onto the crumpled parchment. Unraveling it, he was taken aback to find that it was a note. To be more precise, it looked to be a page from a journal that had been unceremoniously torn from its bindings. There were several spots where some kind of stain marred the page, blurring the ink and obscuring some of the words. Nevertheless, Silent read it.

“We’ll be leaving for Shimmervale in a few days.

I will be honest, the prospect of seeing him again is making me more than a little uneasy. After so many years without contact, and with the news I need to bring to him, I can’t help but wonder if he’ll take it well. Lens was always a bit of an eccentric worrywart, and the way he reacts to unexpected problems is… well, unpredictable.

But Crystal keeps telling me that everything is going to be fine, and I can’t help but believe her. She’s excited, too, more than I think I’ve seen in a long time. That is a good thing, of course. I’d rather she be happy and excited than anything else...

Oh, look at what I’m writing. All of this emotional and sentimental talk makes me sound like some saccharine flower mare, for pony’s sake. But… I cannot deny that I am happier like this. Although it amuses me to think that if somepony saw the mare I am now, they would not believe that I used to be a hardass battlemage who fought on the frontlines of the war.

I guess having a family changes everypony, huh? I just hope Lens sees it the way I do.”

Silent was quiet for several minutes as he soaked in the words on the page, the gears turning in his head. His eyes then shot up to look at the date at the top of the entry. It had been written over three months ago.

“I see. Lens, was it? That makes sense...” he muttered to himself before slipping the note and the map into one of his pockets and taking his leave from the house.

As he stepped out and closed the door behind him, he couldn’t help but smirk somewhat with pride. Scarlet’s actions made more sense to him, now, even if they were still foolish and inevitably futile. Silent would find them again, and he would not allow Primrose to get away again.

And now, Silent had a clue as to where his prey was going.

And that meant he could beat them there.

Without a word, he leaped into the air and began the flight for the waterfront, where his team was waiting for him.

History

“Do you see them?” Primrose asked anxiously from somewhere behind Scarlet, her voice a low and nervous whisper. Scarlet didn’t answer immediately. She swept her eyes across the area ahead of them, ready to duck down at a moment’s notice.

The mare and filly were presently situated in a small cluster of trees and bushes that was nestled comfortably between a couple of rises in the terrain. Grassy hills rolled out before them for miles and miles, the city of Swanrun visible some distance to the north. A few pegasi could be seen in the sky, most moving in straight lines to and from the city, while a steady stream of foot traffic followed the main highway.

Eventually, Scarlet came to the conclusion that they were probably safe. Nightblades didn’t fly in such obvious patterns and all of the ponies she was seeing looked to be focused on travel rather than scouting. So she shook her head and turned back to Primrose. “I think we’re safe for now. Come on, let’s go. Keep your eyes peeled and be ready to run if I tell you to, got it?” she instructed before turning and hopping out of her cover.

Primrose followed after her, adjusting her saddlebags with a shaky nod. “Okay, Scarlet… where are we gonna go?” she asked timidly, cantering up to the mare’s side and falling into step next to her.

Scarlet hummed as they began walking, her eyes wandering to the east. “Well, our end goal is the city of Shimmervale. A friend of mine from the war, Sharp Lens, lives there, somewhere. He can tell us more about your lamp, I hope. Have you ever been there?”

Primrose shook her head. “Nuh-uh. I’ve heard about it, though. Isn’t it really beautiful?”

“Yes, it is. Or, so I’ve heard. I’ve never been there either. Not for lack of wanting to go, mind you,” Scarlet replied before turning away from the east and settling her gaze on the southern horizon. “But before we can go there, we’re going to need a few things for the road. Swanrun’s guards will be looking out for us, so we can’t go back to the city. The nearest settlement we can go to instead is Twinwood Canopy to the south. We’ll go there, get some supplies, and then be on our way.”

“What kinda supplies?”

“Camping gear is most important,” Scarlet stated without hesitation. “We don’t want to be caught asleep in the middle of a storm. Next up will be a dagger for you so you can defend yourself properly. Then we’ll need something to hide our faces from view so that we’re not so easy to spot. A simple travel cloak with a hood will suffice for you. Lastly, we’ll need waterskins so we can keep ourselves hydrated.”

Primrose nodded along before tilting her head. “But… what about food?”

Scarlet answered that question by immediately leaning down and taking a healthy chomp out of the grass at her hooves. It was stiff and fibrous and carried a very poor taste, relatively speaking, but her stomach offered no complaints when she swallowed. She then turned to Primrose with an expectant look. “We graze.”

The filly blanched, her eyes going wide and staring down at the grass in disgust. “We… eat grass? But… but it’s so yucky.”

“Trust me, military rations taste far worse,” Scarlet assured her before continuing on her way. “Grass is bland and boring, but it will stave off starvation and keep our strength up. Buying food for the road will cost bits, which we may need for more demanding situations.”

Primrose didn’t seem entirely convinced, but in the end, conceded the point. “Okay…”

The two fell into silence, the sound of their hooves brushing through the grass mingling with the wind as it swept across the plains. The distant calls of seagulls prowling the beach for any scraps they could snatch up echoed from afar. Scarlet kept her eyes focused ahead of them, periodically looking up at the sky and scanning the less-traveled path they were trotting parallel to. They would probably get situated on that later, once they were farther from the city and Silent’s Nightblades, but for now, they had to keep moving.

Suddenly, a loud noise pierced the air from the distance, originating from Swanrun. It was the high pitched blaring of a train horn, clearly audible even from this far away. Scarlet didn’t pay it any mind, but Primrose jumped and spun around to face the noise, her ears going flat. “Wh-what was that?!”

Scarlet rolled her eyes and used her magic to grab Primrose’s tail and pull her along. “It’s just the train horn. It’s nothing to worry about,” she assured.

The filly didn’t seem totally appeased by the explanation, though, taking up a position much closer to Scarlet as if for shelter. “What’s a ‘train’? Is it some kind of monster?” she asked, glancing fearfully over her shoulder.

Scarlet paused and glanced down at Primrose in abject bewilderment. “Hang on one second… are you serious? You don’t know what a train is?”

Primrose shook her head. “No… what is it?”

Scarlet’s brain took a moment to process this before she let out a quiet sigh and shook her head in exasperation. “Oh, dear… okay,” she stood upright and continued walking while launching into her explanation. “You know about Arcane Engineering at least, right?”

“Kinda,” Primrose nodded along, her muzzle scrunching up. “It’s this thing that some ponies do so they can make machines run, right?”

“You’re close,” Scarlet nodded along, going over what she knew of the practice in her head. “Arcane Engineering is a trade taken up by many of the brightest minds in the world, where machines and contraptions are designed to fulfill various functions and are powered by magic crystals - the same sort your lamp is made out of.”

Primrose nodded along, her muzzle scrunching as she took the information in. “Okay… what does that have to do with the train?”

“That train is one of the most impressive feats of Arcane Engineering to date,” Scarlet explained, gesturing over her shoulder. “The project was first started a little over two hundred years ago as an attempt to recreate a luxury that our ancestors enjoyed in Old Equestria before The Fall, over four hundred years ago. A means of getting from one side of Equestria to the other in a mere fraction of the time it would take to get there on hoof.”

Primrose’s eyes slowly widened in awe at the idea. “Wooaah… that’s amazing! Why aren’t we using the train to get to Shimmervale?”

Scarlet grimaced, her attention drifting to her saddlebags. “...Well, first of all, there’s our lack of money. The trains of New Equestria are very different from the ones they were modeled after. Maintaining the tracks and the trains, and ensuring that there are enough crystals to power them has made it borderline impossible for a common civilian to afford a trip on one. So, most of the time, they are reserved for important ponies or those living in the lap of luxury who can afford the price of admission. Secondly, they are all very heavily guarded due to how precious they are, and we’d be seen long before we could get on board.”

“Oh…” Primrose lowered her head, her ears drooping. Then, her eyes once again lit up with a question. “But… if they’re so expensive, how come ponies build them the way they do? Why not build them like the ones from Old Equestria?”

Scarlet sighed and shook her head. “If only it were so simple, Primrose. The vast majority of the tracks in Old Equestria were said to have been destroyed in the early days of the Fall when the changelings were tearing across the land. When the dust settled, and ponies were trying to re-assemble, there was very little left. Blueprints and schematics were burned in their libraries, construction sites were leveled, and most of the ponies who knew how to make such things were slaughtered in the fighting.

“Maybe something could have been salvaged by the survivors, but they were so busy squabbling amongst themselves just to survive that they trampled a lot themselves. And then the remains of Griffinstone swept in and formed Talonreach. They swept across the land, claiming territory and driving ponies out of their home. King Garius I, was an amazing conquerer, but he was an intellectual dullard. Anything and everything that they couldn’t use to build their new empire was scrapped and tossed aside, meaning much of the remaining wreckage we could have used as a foundation was broken down beyond use.“

Scarlet sighed to herself and shook her head in disappointment. “What little survived comes in the form of scribblings in the journals and notes of a few scattered groups of survivors. What little has been found in those texts was never enough to recreate what was lost, and the few pieces of scrap ponies have been able to scrounge up never tell us enough.”

Primrose was quiet for several seconds, her eyes wide. Eventually, she looked directly ahead. “I think I get it,” she said quietly.

Scarlet glanced down at her for a moment, her brow furrowing. In the end, she elected not to press the subject and instead focused her attention directly ahead. They fell into silence after that, neither one speaking as they made their way to the south. Scarlet busied herself with doing some basic math in her head, determining that getting to Twinwood Canopy would take about two or three days of travel, assuming nothing interrupted them on the way.

She was in the middle of figuring out the best route to Shimmervale from there when Primrose spoke up again. “You know a lot of things, don’t you?” she asked, her voice regaining some of its earlier energy.

Scarlet nodded. “I suppose you could say that, yes. I’ve been studying history ever since I came home from the war.”

“You fought in the war?”

Scarlet faltered for a second, then nodded. “I… yes, I did. I was an artillery battlemage. I’ve mentioned it a few times, have I not?” she asked, her eyes narrowing.

Primrose withered under the unicorn’s tone and shifted away a few paces. “Y-yes, you have, but I was too scared to ask at the time…” she mumbled, her ears drooping.

Scarlet sighed and shook her head. “Understandable. Yes, I fought in the war against Talonreach. Unlike so many who were conscripted, I joined up of my own free will,” she explained, a distant look coming over her. “I was such a fool, back then. I had this romanticized vision about war and battle, and I looked up to some of the most renowned war heroes in history. I wanted to be one, myself. I thought that it was somehow honorable, that it was something to be proud of…”

Primrose said nothing, her eyes unable to look at Scarlet as she went on.

The unicorn shook her head and sighed. “Well… on the day of my first battle, I saw ponies I had trained with, mares and stallions I thought of as my friends being gutted and burned alive. I saw an entire squad of ponies plucked from the fields and dropped from the sky, liquifying when they hit the ground at terminal velocity. I…” her ears flattened, her lips drawing into a thin line. “...I killed my first Griffin, that day. I saw him bleeding out in front of me, his throat slit, his eyes wide and so full of fear… he couldn’t have been older than sixteen. No older than me…”

The image appeared before her eyes, and her pace slowed for a moment. “...I may have survived that day, but… my dream did not.”

“Scarlet… please, stop…” Primrose muttered from the side, her head low, and her entire body sagging. “Stop talking about it.”

Scarlet started, only then realizing that she was letting herself get absorbed in her memories. She blinked a few times and then realized that tears were forming in her eyes. Moving fast, she wiped the back of her hoof across her face and took a deep breath. “...I’m sorry. The memories are just… vivid.”

“I can tell...”

The two of them fell silent after that, continuing on their way. In the distance behind them, the city of Swanrun became smaller and smaller, until at last, it vanished from view amidst the trees and hills of the western New Equestria coastline.

Twinwood

Scarlet and Primrose traveled for around two days, taking shelter, sleeping off of the road whenever night fell and pressing on quickly in the daylight. Their eyes were always over their shoulders, keeping watch for Nightblades or any other threat. Luckily, no enemies presented themselves, and the surrounding countryside was steadily becoming obscured through patches of trees and shrubbery.

About halfway through the day yesterday, they had truly slipped between the Twin Forests. The road weaved neatly between them, leaving a mile or two of mostly empty grasslands separating the road and either treeline. Wild animals could periodically be seen prowling the hills, though they always gave the traveling duo a wide berth. More often than not, the extent of the wildlife was merely the odd case of a wild bird of prey flying by overhead.

And now, coming over the top of a small rise in the terrain, Scarlet felt her body relax with relief as Twinwood Canopy came into view. It was a cozy town, able to comfortably house maybe two or three hundred ponies. Every building was carefully made by hoof with notched logs stacked together. Some had foundations made of cobblestone, but most were without such a luxury. The occasional chimney stack poked up from the slanted, wood-tiled roofs, emitting puffs of smoke.

Perhaps the most eye-catching structure of the settlement was the impressive wood mill. Even from this distance, Scarlet could clearly make out the sound of wood being carved down into planks.

And, of course, there were the ponies. They all had something they were doing, that much was clear even from this distance. In such a small village, there was hardly time for luxury until the day’s work was done. Most ponies who were out and about were hauling supplies from one place to another, delivering messages, or doing some other mundane task that worked with all the others to keep everything moving like a well-oiled machine.

“Is this the place?” Primrose asked hopefully, no doubt eager to get off her hooves for a little while. “It looks nice.”

Scarlet nodded. “Yes, this is Twinwood Canopy. Don’t get too comfortable, though,” she pointed out simply. “We’re not going to be here long. We’re just grabbing supplies for the road, and then we’re leaving. Come on.”

Primrose groaned quietly in disappointment but did not otherwise offer up any form of complaint. She fell into stride beside Scarlet as they made their way into town.

A few ponies on the outskirts gave Scarlet and Primrose curious glances, most of their attention drawn to the former. Her well-kept appearance, hardened expression, and expensive travel cloak were severely out of place, and having a scrawny and dirty filly following her around only made it worse.

They would be easy to remember, which meant Silent and his subordinates would get a trail to follow if they came by asking after them.

“We’ll just have to be quick, then,” Scarlet whispered to herself, trying to soften her expression into something less intense.

“Uh, miss?” One of the ponies suddenly called out to her, making her come to a stop and shoot him a questioning look. He tipped back his wide-brimmed sun hat before nodding at something behind Scarlet. “Yer foal’s fallen behind.”

“She’s not my-” Scarlet immediately went to retort before catching herself. She looked to her side and, sure enough, Primrose was no longer there. Scarlet turned around and, to her relief, found that the filly hadn’t wandered far. She was standing in front of a wooden sign that had been erected right at the edge of town, a distant look in her eyes.

Scarlet was quiet for a second before offering the stranger a short nod. “Thank you for letting me know,” she said plainly before turning and cantering back to Primrose, curious about the holdup. She slid up to her side and looked at the sign.

On it was a crudely-drawn depiction of a creature that resembled a pony impaled upon wooden spikes jutting from the soil. However, instead of colorful fur and cheerful eyes, the creature had dark chitin and compound eyes that were narrowed in a feral hatred for all around it. A curved horn rose from its forehead, sharp teeth jutted out from its open mouth, and a long, forked tongue lolled limply from the corner of its lip. Holes tunneled through its hooves and wings, giving the creature a tattered and ragged appearance.

“Wh-what is this…?” Primrose asked quietly, a tremor in her voice at the gruesome depiction.

Scarlet’s eyes remained glued on the monster on the sign, her heart accelerating with long-buried loathing. “That… is a changeling,” she stated in a low, cold growl. “The lowest denominator of life. Demons that should be slaughtered on sight…”

Primrose’s eyes turned to look up at Scarlet in surprise, her jaw hanging open. “What?”

Scarlet huffed, her nostrils flaring. “They are feral monsters, and a small swarm of them attacked this town, perhaps two decades ago. They drove the villagers out, slaughtering many and turning the abandoned homes into their own personal nests and breeding pits. When the lord of Swanrun caught word of the tragedy, he sent a large force from the garrison to drive out the invaders. When the villagers moved back in, they put these signs up as a warning to any other changelings to stay away.”

Primrose was quiet for several seconds, her eyes again latching onto the sign. “Ponies really hate changelings, don’t they?”

Scarlet shot Primrose a disbelieving look. “Hate them? Why wouldn’t we? If ever I met a creature that held even a shred of sympathy for the abominations that caused The Fall, I would have every reason to believe they had taken leave of their sanity,” she remarked with no small degree of bitterness before giving the sign another scowl. “The lives they have taken cannot be returned, and the world is proving slow to recover from their evil deeds. The changelings that died here deserved it.”

Primrose didn’t say anything else. Her eyes lowered somewhat before she gave a timid nod. She turned away from the sign and drew close to Scarlet’s side, displaying her desire to get a move on.

Scarlet gave the filly a somber look, and internally, she berated herself for allowing her personal hatred for the species to bleed into her speech so much. She gave a quiet sigh and gingerly guided her away and deeper into town. “...I’m sorry if I scared you. I just feel very strongly about this, that’s all.”

Primrose said nothing, only offering a tiny nod.

With that, the two fell into a tense silence as they made their way deeper into Twinwood Canopy.

When Scarlet and Primrose arrived in the central plaza of the village, the amount of activity had increased significantly. The plaza was wide and long, a rudimentary fountain having been built in the center. Wagons loaded with a wide range of goods had been parked at the edges of the plaza, the ponies in front of them occasionally calling out to announce what they had on sale that day. Mostly food and produce.

Casting her eyes beyond the wagons, Scarlet took note of the various signs hanging over the doors of the buildings. She was quickly able to pick out personalized images that clearly advertised what each store sold, and by extension, which ones she was going to be visiting.

“First order of business, a dagger, and cloak for Primrose,” she told herself simply, turning first for the smithy. “Then camping supplies, then waterskins.”

Before she set off, she gave Primrose another glance, concern starting to gnaw at her heart. The filly had been quiet ever since they came across the sign, more than usual, and her overall demeanor had taken a turn for the solemn and subdued. Not really surprising, given what little she knew of the filly and her past, but it was still worrying.

Scarlet contemplated sitting Primrose down by the fountain and letting her rest while she bought what they needed, but the practical side of her brain made it perfectly clear that the risk, however slim, of Silent or one of his cronies strolling by and spotting her was far too great.

Before she could give the matter much more thought, a voice cut through the air from behind her. “Scuse me, miss!”

Scarlet turned to face the stranger, having had just about enough of random ponies interrupting her. Her feelings of discontent were washed away and replaced with a far more complicated emotion when she saw the creature before her.

It was a Griffin, male. He was colored primarily in browns, with the feathers on his head and neck being a few shades darker than the rest of him. His eyes were a shade of orange that resembled finely-polished amber. He gave Scarlet a warm smile and a nod of his head. “Sorry to bother ye, but I noticed ye were new in town. Was wondering if ye’d be up for a spot of conversation?”

Red flags shot up in Scarlet’s mind in an instant, and try as she might, she couldn’t force them down. She took a deep breath through her nose before giving the griffin a sideways glance. “I’m afraid not, sorry. We’re not going to be in town long, and we’d rather get a move on sooner rather than later. Excuse us,” she deflected his request plainly and bluntly, though she inwardly cringed when she realized she had allowed some venom to slip into her tone.

“He’s no different from me,” she reminded herself vehemently. “I’m not at war with him. He’s just a Griffin.”

He leaned away from her, his face scrunching up in surprise. “Well, pardon me, miss. I just don’t see newcomers very often and thought I’d be friendly,” he replied with a furrowed brow. “But if ye’d rather be left alone…”

Scarlet looked away, her cringe becoming visible on her face. He must have caught her tone, then. For a moment, she toyed with the idea of apologizing and relaying that she had fought in the war to try and make him understand. She quickly discarded the notion, however. The odds of him misinterpreting her attempt at rationalization for plain and simple racism were too high to be worth the effort.

So, instead, she offered up a different explanation. She turned back to him with a quiet sigh. “I’m… sorry for my tone. It’s just been a very difficult few days, and I am short on patience,” she explained simply before glancing down at Primrose again. “Now, we need to be going. Farewell.”

The griffin’s tail flicked to the side, though the intensity of his frown decreased, albeit only somewhat. He looked Scarlet up and down for a moment as if he were sizing her up. A tingling sensation formed on the base of her neck under his scrutiny. He then turned his eyes to look at Primrose. The filly shrank back before diving under Scarlet’s cloak, taking shelter beneath the larger mare.

That seemed to be the last sign the griffin needed to see. He let off an indignant huff before shrugging his shoulders. “Fair enough, I suppose. Have a good day, lass,” he said slowly before turning and walking away.

Scarlet watched him go, feeling very interested in finishing their shopping and leaving town as soon as possible. She glanced down at Primrose to see that the filly had replaced her solemn mood with one of anxiety and unease. She looked back up at Scarlet with a pleading look in her eyes. “C-can we get our stuff and go?” she whispered.

Scarlet looked back up to where the griffin had been only to find that he was gone. Somehow, though, the unease she felt only grew worse. “Yes… come on,” she replied to Primrose’s question simply before turning and making her way for the nearest of the shops they needed to visit, making sure to keep Primrose within hooves reach at all times.

Battlemage

“Let’s see, here… there’s a small village called New Lapiz on the way to Shimmervale,” Scarlet said absently, her eyes studying a map of New Equestria floating before her in her magic. “We could probably stop there for a day, rest at the inn, and learn if there’s anything we need to worry about going forward.”

She lifted her eyes from the map to scan the environment ahead of her. She and Primrose were back on the galloping road, the main highway that cut through the heart of New Equestria. It was a wide and neatly paved stone path, although this stretch looked like it was in need of some repairs. Tufts of grass poked up through numerous cracks in the stone, as were far more unseemly tendrils and weeds.

To the south, the larger of the Twin Forests was plainly visible, stretching on for miles and miles, blanketing the hills in lush green. On the other side of the road, it was largely open grasslands and rolling hills with only a few smatterings of trees here and there, growing less common the further north one looked.

They had been walking for about an hour, and the sun was starting to make its gradual descent towards the horizon. They had a fair few hours of light left, though. Primrose trotted by Scarlet's side, looking to be in higher spirits after they left the village. Perhaps she was just eager to get back on the road.

The foal in question glanced up at Scarlet and, more specifically, her map. She drifted a little closer and stretched her neck to try and see. Her face scrunched up a bit with the effort before she relaxed and huffed indignantly.

Scarlet raised an eyebrow. “...What? What was that?”

Primrose nodded towards the map. “Can I see the map?” she asked curiously. “I wanna know where we are.”

Scarlet slowed to a stop at that, one brow arching to vanish under her mane. Primrose looked back up at her, her eyes wide and hopeful. It was almost as if she was trying to look cute to get what she wanted.

A trick that Scarlet was, sadly, only all too susceptible to. With a roll of her eyes and a quiet sigh, she lowered the map to Primrose’s eye level and sat down beside her. “Oh, very well. But only for a moment; we need to keep moving,” she instructed firmly before looking at the map herself.

Primrose gave her a thankful smile before looking down at the map herself. “So… where are we?”

Scarlet lifted a hoof and pointed right where a smaller path branched off from the galloping road, heading south. “We are a little to the east of this spot here,” she said before moving her hoof to point at Shimmervale’s icon. “And we’re trying to get here. It’s going to take us a few weeks to make the trip on hoof.”

Primrose let out a slow breath, her eyes soaking in every little detail on the rolled-up parchment with fascination and wonder.

“Has she never seen a map before?” Scarlet pondered idly, observing the foal’s fascination with some of her own. Considering the state she had found Primrose in, it didn’t seem to be too much of a stretch that she was very uneducated and had missed out on many things. Scarlet’s heart withered with sympathy for the little thing at that thought, and she looked at the map again in hopes of finding a distraction. “...Do you see where you come from on here?” she asked after a moment.

Primrose glanced up at her for a moment, then studied the map again. “Uuuuhhh… no, I don’t,” she answered a few seconds later, disappointment in her voice.

“Where did you come from, anyway?”

Primrose was quiet for several seconds, her ears drooping. “Uh… I dunno where I was born. My mom and dad wandered around a lot, and so we were always traveling. But when Silent killed them, I found a little village called Stonethrow...” she answered slowly, her eyes going distant. “I lived there for about a year before he found me again...”

Scarlet gave a quiet hum, studying the map again. “Stonethrow… Stonethrow… I think I’ve heard of that village. It’s surrounded by foothills and gets plenty of heavy snow in the winter, right? Stone buildings, thatch rooves, and it has a chapel of Cadance, right?”

Primrose perked up and looked up at Scarlet in surprise.”Yeah! How did you know?”

The unicorn laughed and shook her head before pointing to a spot on the map southeast of Newcanter. “I was there, briefly, during the war. My unit was passing through the area while en route to the border. It’s right here, at the foot of these mountains,” she explained before rolling up the map and depositing it back in her saddlebags. “Anyways, we need to keep moving. Come on-”

Thunk.

Primrose cried out, and Scarlet immediately sprang back up to her hooves in a battle stance when an arrow pierced the earth a mere few inches in front of them. “Shit! Come on!’ she shouted before grabbing Primrose in her magic and breaking into a mad gallop down the road. Her horn lit up with magic, and a dome barrier formed around her just in time to stop another arrow from piercing her throat from the side.

She glanced in the direction the assault was coming from and saw a large patch of trees. She could just see figures moving in the darkness with agile swiftness. However, any fears she had that they were Nightblades were summarily put down when she realized how clumsy these creatures were. Not to mention the fact that the first arrow had missed its mark. If it had been a Nightblade, either she or Primrose would be dead already.

Her assumption was only proven to be correct when one of the figures came darting from the shadows, revealing itself to be a griffin. He was dressed in thick leathers that had been slapped together in something that could loosely be defined as armor. He eyed her and Primrose hungrily, his beak curling into a sadistic snarl. With a deafening eagle screech, he slammed into the ground right in front of Scarlet, stopping her dead in her tracks.

“Surround ‘em!” a familiar voice called out. Scarlet turned to face it and saw four more griffins emerging from the treeline, two of them armed with crossbows while the other two had swords clutched in their talons. Scarlet growled when she saw the leader of the group was the same one that had approached her back in Twinwood.

In short order, she and Primrose were surrounded by the five hostile creatures. With slow, deliberate movements, she removed Primrose from her back and set her down on the ground. “If this becomes a fight, I want you to run and hide, do you understand?” Scarlet whispered back to the filly, never taking her eyes off the enemy.

“B-but… what about you?” Primrose whimpered, backing away despite her protests.

Scarlet drew herself straight and set her jaw. “...I can take care of myself. I’ll come find you,” she stated firmly, hoping that the confidence she had just conveyed was believable.

Primrose eyes her skeptically but did not otherwise argue any further.

“Well, well, lookit who it is!” The lead griffin cackled as he approached the barrier, casually resting the blunt side of his sword on his shoulder while tilting his head to one side. “The rude unicorn bitch and her neglected foal.”

“Rude?” Scarlet spat incredulously. “So says the griffin bandit that just tried to kill a couple of innocent travelers. What the buck is your problem?!”

The griffin’s entertained demeanor immediately faded away, replaced with a bitter scowl. “Watch it, pony! In case ye missed it, yer surrounded and outnumbered!” he snapped angrily, his pupils dilating. After a moment, he drew back and took a deep breath.

Scarlet took that as her cue to try a more diplomatic approach. “Well, I hope you can forgive me being a touch cross at the moment. You and your friends did just shoot at me and my charge. What do you want from us?”

The griffin’s eyes narrowed, and his beak again curled into an ugly grin. “Well, first of all, we want anythin’ and everythin’ ye have that’s valuable.”

“Yer bits, especially!” another one piped up, his voice broken and hoarse.

Scarlet looked at him out of the corner of her eye for a moment before focusing on the leader again. “You’re robbing us, then,” she deduced the obvious with a slow nod of her head. “...If I may ask a question before this proceeds?”

The leader scoffed, looking up and to the side in dismissal. “Pfft. Fine. What?”

“...Why are you doing this?”

The leader blinked and looked at her in bewilderment. “Why are we doing this? Why?” he echoed, no emotion in his voice.

Primrose shrank back even further with a quiet whimper, her pupils dilating. “I think you made him mad…” she whispered.

The griffin, as if to prove her point, snarled and brought his sword down on Scarlet’s barrier. It wasn’t quite enough to cut through, but it did create a spiderweb crack pattern across the front of it. “Ye wanna know why we’re attackin’ ye?! HA! As if ye don’t fuckin’ know already!” he shouted, his eyes going wide with fury. “All ye ponies, constantly lookin’ down on us, spittin’ on us! We never fought in the war, ye bloody bastards! But do ye care?! Of course not! None of ye care! We’re all just the evil griffins to ye!”

He drew back and struck again, causing Scarlet to wince and step back to keep her barrier up. Half of her barrier was cracked, now. The griffin leaned in, glaring daggers into her eyes. “Ye think we want this?! We just wanna make an honest livin’ like everyone fuckin’ else! But a griffin can’t do that anymore, can he! Because you ponies keep kickin’ us out!”

Scarlet cringed, her heart trembling with guilt and remorse. Images of blood-stained, fire-scorched battlefields flashed through her mind, and the memory of a dying griffin with his throat slit bubbled up to the surface. She screwed her eyes shut and clenched her teeth, forcing the memory down so she could focus. “Do not mistake me for a common fool!” she bellowed before focusing on her barrier, causing it to resolidify.

With a shake of her head and a grimace, she opened her eyes and glared up at the griffin leader again. “I am well aware that the way griffins have been treated by ponies since the war is unfair and borderline cruel. But do you honestly believe things will get better for you if you do things like this?!”

“We gotta eat, don’t we!?” The griffin snapped back. “And ye have all already proven yer not gonna bother lightenin’ up! Now shut up and hand over yer things, now! Maybe then ye can get out of this mess alive!”

Scarlet took a step back, glancing back and forth amongst all of his comrades. She took a deep breath and looked into his eyes again. “You’re making a huge mistake. If you keep doing this, you’re all going to suffer for it in the end. Please, I am begging you… stop this. Just walk away now and abandon this violence. It will only bring you misery and an early grave, and it will only make things harder on griffins everywhere else.”

There was a moment of silence before the griffin leader shook his head. “Nah. Sorry, miss. But walkin’ away won’t put coin in our bags or food on the table,” he denied, his voice lower than before. He shifted back and pointed his sword at her. “Last chance. Drop the barrier and give us yer things. Yer nice, so if ye cooperate, we might let ya go unharmed.”

Scarlet was quiet for several seconds before glancing back at Primrose. The filly was looking back up at her with pleading eyes, her body low to the ground. She was so small, fragile, and most of all, scared. Scarlet looked down at the dirt below her hooves, a war briefly waging in her mind. It ended quickly, though, and she set her gaze back on the leader, resolute. “I am afraid I cannot do that. If we’re to finish our journey, we need what we have. I cannot give you anything.”

The bandit growled. “That’s okay. We can kill ye and take it off yer corpse if we must,” he stated before nodding at his friends. “Kill em.”

And with that, chaos erupted. The two other sword-wielding griffins immediately lunged forwards, thrusting at the same time, while their bow-wielding counterparts leaped back and took to the air. Scarlet ducked low, her barrier fading out just before the blades made contact. With the obstruction gone, each griffin overextended, their blades locked together over Scarlet’s head with a spine-tingling scrape.

With a grunt, the unicorn rolled off to one side, her horn igniting with dangerously sparking magic. “PRIMROSE, RUN!” she commanded before turning towards the two recovering griffins, ready to unleash her spell.

She was not able to do so, however, as the leader charged her himself, bringing his sword in an arc for her throat. She reacted quickly, jumping back and avoiding the strike. The moment her hooves touched back onto the soil, the air before her shimmered before her two magical blades snapped into reality.

The griffin’s eyes widened. “What the?!”

Scarlet’s eyes narrowed as she entered a trance-like state. The motions were all coming back to her, the world beyond the immediate battlefield ceasing to exist. With a battle cry, she charged her adversary, her swords blurring into motion. Slash. Thrust. Stab. Parry. Sweep. Block. Repeat.

Her target backed away, barely fending off her offensive push. With a growl, he lifted his sword for an overhead carve.

Opening.

Scarlet lifted one sword to catch his before thrusting the other right under his foreleg. It pierced the flesh with ease, fresh blood squirting out of the wound and across her face. The griffin screamed in pain, his wings flaring open. With a guttural shout, he lifted his hind legs and kicked out, hitting Scarlet in the face and causing her to stumble back. Acting fast, she turned and ripped her sword out of him at a sideways angle, creating a sizable gash in his side. More blood sprayed free, and he crashed to the ground a few feet away in a crumpled, writhing heap.

She just caught a flicker of silver in the corner of her eye. The glow on her horn intensified just in time to halt the arrow from piercing her cheek and invading her mouth. Eyes wide with shock, she looked past the projectile to see one of the ranged griffins already preparing to fire off another shot.

At the same moment, the two other sword-wielding griffins were charging her, blades raised. They had left Primrose alone, thank goodness, though the filly had not run as she had been told. She was rooted to the ground, eyes wide, and full of terror.

Scarlet snarled before using her magic to redirect the arrow she held to fly back at the sender, hoping to at least give herself a moment to breathe. At the same time, her swords vanished and were replaced with half of a dome barrier in front of her, blocking the incoming swords of the griffins. Sparks flew on impact, both of her adversaries snarling viciously at her.

She responded in kind. With a quick push, her barrier became partially immaterial before rapidly expanding out in a magical pressure wave. Both griffins were caught by surprise, and both were sent flailing back. That was until Scarlet’s magic encased the right wing of one of them. With a swift appliance of pressure, the wing was snapped in the middle, drawing an agonized scream from the victim.

Acting purely on autopilot, Scarlet dragged him back to her, one of her swords quickly rematerializing beside her. She just heard the other griffin she had knocked aside calling out a name, though she was too focused to make it out. She hauled the injured griffin up and lifted his writhing form to block the oncoming arrow from his companion.

He cried out again, this time in a weaker voice, when the tip of the projectile just came out of his back, sending another fresh wave of blood across Scarlet’s face. With a grimace, she finished him off by lifting her sword so it was over his head and stabbing it into his skull, embedding it up to the hilt. His body went rigid before falling limp, the life draining out of it.

His friend was crying out in a rage, lunging for her. Scarlet stepped back and hurled the corpse at his friend, and both of them went tumbling to the ground. She took the brief melee respite to look to the skies at her ranged opponent. He was already reloading, albeit now with far more frantic movements than before.

Scarlet narrowed her eyes, realizing that he was far enough away for the most powerful spell she knew. Her horn swelled with energy, her eyes narrowed, and a growl of effort came from her throat. A sphere of unstable, crackling purple magic formed on the tip of her horn, expanding rapidly until it was almost a foot in diameter. Then, with a deafening bang and a shockwave tearing out from Scarlet’s horn, the sphere was launched at the flying griffin.

He looked up to fire, only for the blast to strike him directly. He didn’t even have time to scream. An explosion of purple magic, easily capable of reducing a modest single-story home to dust erupted from the point of impact. From the cloud of smoke, a collection of blackened, smoking limbs and feathers descended along with a fine red powder.

Scarlet let out a huff and returned her eyes to the enemy in front of her, who was back on his feet and eyeing her warily. She met his gaze evenly, narrowed her eyes, and took a threatening step forward. “Are you sure you want to keep this up?” she asked slowly, her horn sparking to life again.

The griffin took a step back, his confidence wavering.

Scarlet matched his retreat with her advance, her swords once again appearing by her sides. “You can still run away.”

Before her opponent could make good on her offer, a heavy weight slammed into her back, forcing the breath from her lungs. Scarlet crumpled under the weight, her blades vanishing as claws tightly encased her horn. She tried to stand, but she was pinned. At that moment, she remembered the second crossbow-wielding griffin and cursed herself for losing sight of him.

“You gods damned son of a…” the griffin on top of her snarled into her ear while placing his other claw on her throat. “You murdered our friends!”

Scarlet shouted at the top of her lungs, pouring more energy into her horn in the hopes of getting around the claw still holding on. Her head began to hurt immensely from the blockage, but luckily her endurance was greater than that of the griffin. She heard him crying out as he yanked his claw back, as if it had been burned, and released her magic. Scarlet quickly encased his other claw in telekinesis and bent.

A sickening series of snaps and cracks filled her ears as each of the griffin’s talons on his left front leg were snapped backward, followed shortly by his breathless scream. She felt his weight on her relax, and she capitalized on it. With a grunt of effort, she forced herself to her hooves and threw him off of her with her magic, sending him crashing to the ground off to one side.

As she returned her attention to her sword-wielding enemy, she caught sight of a sword swinging at her, about to connect. Alarmed, she jumped back, barely evading a fatal blow. The sword still created a thin, shallow cut across her chest, and put a small nick in her cloak. The sound of the fabric shredding filled her ears, and a fire began to flood her veins.

“How dare you!” she bellowed, her sword rematerializing on driving into an offensive in an instant. The griffin was quickly put on the defensive, backing away with every strike she made. “This! Was! A! GIFT!”

With one more heavy blow, Scarlet knocked his sword out of his claws, leaving him wide open. His eyes were wide and frantic. “W-wait-!”

Scarlet did not heed his words. She drove both of her blades into his gut before twisting and ripping out. The griffin’s corpse toppled back to the ground with a heavy thud, all but cut in half. She looked down at him for a second, gasping for breath. Had he been about to beg for his life? Was he about to surrender? If so, then…

Scarlet did not get a chance to feel any shame over her actions, as yet again she was tackled, this time from the side. She gasped in pain as the griffin with the broken talons plowed into her and pinned her to the ground again. This time, her efforts at fighting back with magic were ceased not by his claws grasping her horn, but by the blade of a dagger in his uninjured hand stabbing through her cloak and into her side.

White-hot pain exploded around the injury, causing Scarlet to scream and thrash. The griffin was determined, though, and quickly bit down with his beak on her ear. It pierced the skin with ease, and a fresh trickle of blood started to flow down her head. At the same time. The dagger was ripped free.

Scarlet thrashed again when the blade stabbed into her a second time, her vision swimming. She tried to focus on her magic to throw him off, but she was in too much pain, her body starting to go into shock from the suddenness of her new injuries. Another stab wound was made in her side.

Suddenly, the griffin on top of her gave off a yelp, his entire body tensing and lurching back. With his beak free from her ear and his weight on her body decreased, Scarlet turned to look up at him, her horn finally sparking into life again. She only just took note of the dagger that had just been plunged into his shoulder before she unleashed a precise beam of magic at his head, reducing it to cinders.

The headless corpse fell back and off of her, giving Scarlet some room to breathe. She looked around, her horn alight and ready to fight off more enemies. However, after a moment, she realized that, save for the leader, who was seemingly unable to stand, all of the griffins were dead.

With a sigh of relief, Scarlet allowed her head to slump back down into the grass. As she did so, she caught sight of Primrose a few feet away. Her eyes were wide with shock and horror, and a few spots of fresh blood were on her hooves and face. Scarlet briefly glanced down at the corpse beside her, again seeing the dagger in his shoulder.

“...You saved me,” she whispered quietly, her magic idly pulling the dagger free. She slowly levitated it back to Primrose. The filly gingerly took it in her hooves, her eyes not once leaving Scarlet’s.

“Ye bitch…” the leader croaked from his place on the ground, drawing Scarlet’s attention back to him.

He was struggling to pick himself up, but with one of his front legs all but severed, it was all but impossible. The pool of blood beneath him was growing rather large as well. He wouldn’t last much longer without treatment.

He rolled onto his side and gave Scarlet a glare that bespoke a hatred and resentment that defied words. “This is our lot… the only lot we’re ever gonna get again. To be stepped on and killed by ye bloody ponies...” he growled before letting his head come to a rest.

Scarlet, with great strain and effort, hauled herself to her hooves. Moving slowly, she dragged herself over to him, her ears drooping. “...It did not have to come to this,” she muttered to him in sympathy. “You could have walked away, proved you were better than this.”

“Ha. What shit,” The griffin snorted before closing his eyes. “Long as ponies remember that stupid war, we griffins will be less than scum to you…”

“Not to me,” Scarlet countered without missing a beat, drawing a confused glance from the griffin. “I am no fool… The way you have been treated is unjust and undeserved… but striking out in anger and vengeance will only ever make things worse for the griffins that call New Equestria their home.”

The griffin stared at her for a second before closing his eyes again. “Humph… whatever ye say…” he mumbled, his voice growing weak.

Scarlet slowly lowered herself onto her haunches, her horn lighting up and reaching into her saddlebags. “Please, let me help you. I have bandages, I can-”

“Don’t you dare!” The griffin snapped at her, his eyes opening again. “Don’t ye dare have the gall to take pity on me after murderin’ all my friends! YE DID THIS! DO YE HEAR ME?! I’d rather die than let myself be helped by you!”

Scarlet fell silent. After a moment, she allowed the light on her horn to fade before closing her eyes. She bowed her head and began to speak in a low whisper. “Five above, I humbly beseech you, please, forgive their wrongdoings and allow this tortured soul and his friends a place in your paradise, that they might be reunited and free of the hell they have already and unfairly been forced to endure.”

With her prayer offered, she opened her eyes and looked down at the griffin. He was staring back at her with wide eyes and a hanging jaw. “...A prayer?” he asked in disbelief.

Scarlet sighed and rose back to her hooves. “I do not know if the Five can work the miracles many say they can… I do not even know if they exist. But if there is a life beyond this one, then I hope it is a happy one for you and your friends.”

The griffin looked at her a moment longer before closing his eyes. “Heh… fate’s a cruel bitch, ain’t she? Killed by the only kind pony I’ve ever met…” he mumbled, barely audible. Then, with one last exhale, he fell completely and utterly still.

A heavy silence fell over the area, the only sound being a gentle breeze whistling by. Scarlet stared down at the corpse below her for a short while longer before turning and looking at Primrose. The filly was looking back at her, still looking quite shaken.

After a moment, Scarlet began to drag herself over, wincing and hissing in pain as her injuries reminded her of their presence. “Primrose. A-are you alright?” she asked before slumping to her haunches with a heavy sigh.

Primrose rigidly nodded her head in response, the bloodied dagger still clutched in her hooves. She didn’t say anything, though. Scarlet gave her a quizzical glance before using her magic to gingerly pull off her cloak and set it to one side to keep any more blood from getting on it. She reached into her saddlebags, withdrew a few rolls of bandages, and set about binding her injuries. After a while, her eyes glued onto Primrose’s dagger, and she frowned. “Clean the blade, don’t let the blood dry on it.”

Primrose jumped in surprise at the command. She nodded again and quickly set about cleaning the blade off by brushing it on the grass. When that was done, she slipped it back into its sheath under her saddlebags.

Scarlet nodded in satisfaction before glancing down at her bandages. They would hold, and she was already feeling better. “Alright… come on, we need to keep moving,” she stated plainly before putting her cloak back on and rising to her hooves. Primrose, however, did not move to follow her. Scarlet went to leave, but when the foal made no attempt to follow, she turned and looked back at her in confusion. “Primrose?”

For several long seconds, she did not answer. Primrose’s eyes wandered from corpse to corpse, her body shrinking fearfully with each one she saw. “...Y-you killed them,” she finally whimpered.

Scarlet flinched back when Primrose looked up into her eyes, her ears folding back in shame. “...I did, yes,” she acknowledged, nodding her head. “I am sorry if it was disturbing to you, but please understand. They were going to kill us both if I didn’t. I didn’t want to kill them, and if any of them had run, I would have let them. In the end, they left me no choice.”

“I know, I know,” Primrose said with a bit more energy than before. “I’m not stupid. I’ve seen a lot of ponies dying before. But… it was always Silent killing them, and they were always ponies I cared about…” she looked back at the corpses and shuddered. “N-nopony I have ever been with has ever fought like that… Nopony I have ever been with has killed like that.”

Scarlet looked down, not sure of what to say. Eventually, she settled with gently placing her hoof on Primrose’s back and ushering her away from the scene of carnage. “Come on… let’s go.”

Primrose had no argument.

And so the two of them left the bloody scene behind, disappearing into the distance even as scavenger birds began to circle above the collection of corpses.

Riverside

It had been several years since Scarlet was this far away from Swanrun. It was a somewhat intimidating thought, not even considering that she was making this journey as a wanted fugitive. To the north, she occasionally caught sight of the distant blue line that was the Melodia River snaking through the hills, while to the south, the larger of the Twin Forests sprawled on and on, an impressive monument in terms of sheer scale.

For the last several days, Scarlet and Primrose had followed the Galloping Road. It had, mercifully, remained more or less straight the entire time. Every so often they would pass by other travelers or side roads that led to smaller, unmarked villages and hamlets. They never bothered to see where they went, despite Primrose’s periodic curiosity.

It was early in the afternoon. The sky clear save for a few stray tufts of wispy clouds, when something finally disrupted the otherwise static appearance of the highway. Up ahead, the road shifted into a curving, sturdily-made stone bridge. A stream flowed under it, maybe a foot deep and a few yards from one shore to the next. It was moving south and east, no doubt coming from the larger river up north.

Scarlet relaxed somewhat at the sight, her pace picking up. “A stream, good. The water should be fresh here if I’m remembering my geography right. We can refill our waterskins,” she instructed plainly.

Primrose eyed the stream curiously while scampering to catch up with her protector. “It’s really clear,” she mused absently as they drew closer.

Scarlet nodded. “Yes, it is. The Melodia river has a reputation for its purity and clarity,” she said before coming to a stop at the shore and sitting down on her haunches. She leaned down and took an experimental lap at the water. She hummed quietly in satisfaction when she found that it was indeed pure and free of salt. “Alright, get a drink and refill your skin.”

Primrose settled down onto her belly, quietly sighing with relief as she took her weight off her hooves. She then dunked her head into the water, eagerly guzzling down mouthful after mouthful of the life-giving liquid. It was a solid fifteen seconds before she finally came back up with a spray of water and a deeply satisfied gasp, her entire head dripping wet.

Scarlet looked on, briefly smiling at the filly. It was nice to see her smiling for a change, and so widely at that. Primrose went down for another drink, again keeping her head submerged for quite some time. This time, though, she got a bit too enthusiastic and came up with a jerk and a series of coughs.

Scarlet immediately went into motion, putting her hooves on the filly’s back and giving her a shake. “Hey, are you alright? Hey!”

After a second, Primrose coughed one last time before shakily nodding her head. “Y-yeah. Sorry… water went down the wrong way,” she mumbled apologetically. There was still plenty of water dripping from her muzzle, and with an annoyed grimace, she wiped a hoof across her face to stop it.

However, combined with the moisture in her fur, this served to smear the dirt that still clung to her coat. Scarlet cringed at the sight, her attention once again being brought to just how, well, filthy the foal was. “Be more careful,” she scolded quietly before her horn lit up and withdrew a simple rag from her backpack.

Primrose blinked when it floated over, but did not protest when it began to rub against her face. She gave Scarlet a questioning look but otherwise held still until the unicorn pulled back to examine her work.

“Hmmmm… no, no, that won’t do at all,” Scarlet muttered under her breath. If the smear in the dirt had been distracting, the one clean patch over Primrose’s muzzle was even worse.

The filly, oblivious to the problem, touched a hoof to her nose before looking in confusion at Scarlet. “Um… what won’t do?”

“Go ahead and put down your pack, we’re camping here tonight,” Scarlet instructed simply before standing up.

Primrose blinked. “Wha- why? The sun’s still up,” she pointed out, turning to the distant celestial object in question.

“I am perfectly aware of the time of day, Primrose,” Scarlet shot back without missing a beat. “But we’ve been on the road for a while now, and I can tell you’re not used to a soldier’s pace. You need some rest, and no offense, a serious bath.”

Primrose tilted her head, watching Scarlet take off her saddlebags and set them down against the base of the bridge. “A… a bath?” she echoed before glancing down into her own reflection in the water’s surface. She examined herself for a minute before cringing and leaning back. “Oh… I see what you mean.”

“Yes, you are covered in dirt to the point your coat and mane have been matted down. I’m honestly shocked the ponies of Twinwood Canopy didn’t stop us and ask if I was abusing you, seeing as they probably thought you were my…” Scarlet trailed off before shaking her head. “R-regardless, I can’t imagine being so filthy feels very good, does it?”

Primrose shook her head in the negative. “Nuh-uh.”

“Then set your things down over here and get in the water,” Scarlet commanded. “I’ll join you once I have some of our camping gear laid out.”

Primrose looked at Scarlet for a few more moments before pulling her saddlebags off and setting them down next to Scarlet’s. She then returned to the river and, after testing the waters for a moment, jumped right in with a sizable splash. She let out an involuntary gasp from the cold but was quick to adapt and start splashing around.

Scarlet watched her for a moment, a tender smile starting to spread on her cheeks. In all the time she had known Primrose, this was the first time she had seen the foal actually playing. It was more subdued than what one would expect from a foal her age and was just as practical as it was entertaining, but all the same…

Primrose was being a foal for a change.

Scarlet watched her for a few more minutes before shaking herself out of her trance and getting back to work on assembling their campsite. The whole while, the sound of Primrose splashing in the river and occasionally giggling filled her ears.

The sun was starting to dip towards the horizon, now, slowly turning a darker shade of yellow with each passing minute. A fire pit had been constructed, though it wasn’t lit yet, and a single tent had been erected not far away. Two bedrolls had been unrolled under the canopy, and the saddlebags were safely stashed within.

Seated under the entrance flaps of the tent were Scarlet and Primrose, both of them looking much more refreshed after a prolonged time bathing themselves in the cool river water. It had been a refreshing experience for both of them, and Primrose’s coat was the cleanest Scarlet had ever seen it. Only a few stubborn spots of dirt remained, but for the most part, the foal was clean.

The same could not be said about her mane, sadly.

“Ow!” Primrose yelped when Scarlet’s brush got caught on a particularly dense knot in her hair.

The unicorn winced. “Sorry. This knot is proving troublesome,” she quickly apologized before applying the brush at a different angle. This time, the knot gave far less resistance before giving out under the bristles. “Alright… I’m not seeing many others, so I think we’re almost done. After that, another rinse to clear out the vestigial dirt, and you’ll be a clean filly again.”

Primrose’s muzzle scrunched up for a moment in thought. She shifted on her belly for a second before closing her eyes. “Clean… it’s been a while since I was clean.”

“I could tell, believe me,” Scarlet replied quietly before starting in on another unsightly knot. “I hardly recognize you without the dirt. How long has it been since you really bathed yourself?”

“Uhm…” Primrose’s muzzle scrunched up before she shrugged her shoulders. “I dunno. A long time.”

Scarlet sighed and shook her head sadly before returning to her brushing. “Alright, almost done,” she whispered.

The two fell into quiet, companionable silence at that point, leaving them to their own thoughts. Scarlet’s mind began to wander as she was working, the mundanity and monotony of something as simple as cleaning up a foal’s mane taking her back to better times. A tiny smile appeared on her face, and before she knew it, she was lost in a sea of memories.

“Are you alright?”

Scarlet came back to reality with a start before looking down at Primrose. The filly was looking back at her in concern, the last of the knots in her mane long-since undone by the brush. It was only then that Scarlet realized that she had continued the motions for minutes, even after her work was pretty much done.

She looked away, some of her long mane hiding her face like a convenient curtain. “Y-yes, I’m fine,” she stated quickly, caught off guard by the tremble in her voice. “I was just… thinking about something.”

Primrose opened her mouth to speak, but whatever it was she was going to ask, the words did not come. She clamped her muzzle shut after a moment before looking away as well, her ears drooping. “I won’t ask.”

Scarlet took a deep breath to steady herself, forcing her mind back into the here and now. “Thank you. Now, then...”

She rose to her hooves and took a few steps forward, past their unlit campfire and towards a particularly lush patch of grass. “I’m going to eat. Go rinse out your mane and do the same,” she said before leaning down and starting to graze.

It was better than the grass she had eaten so far on this journey, but it was still very bland, boring, stiff and fibrous. But it kept her fed and kept her strength up, and that was all the reason she needed to chow down with vigor. A few minutes passed before Scarlet determined she had her fill, and she rose back to her full height. Her eyes were met with the sight of the setting sun casting a brilliant pink light along the underside of the few clouds that were scattered across the sky. She paused for a while, soaking in the view. Off in the distance, a flock of birds assumed the typical arrow shape as they sailed through the air before vanishing into the forest to the south.

“Wow…” Primrose’s voice whispered from Scarlet’s side, drawing the unicorn’s attention. Her eyes went wide as a sight that she deemed even more impressive met her gaze.

Primrose was, for the first time since Scarlet had met her, finally and totally clean. The filth that had clung to her coat and mane were all gone, leaving her natural colors unobstructed. Her teal eyes were locked onto the far horizon, her jaw hanging open in awe. “It’s so pretty…”

Scarlet was silent for a short time before settling down onto her haunches and nodding. “Yes, it is… A sunset this beautiful is surprisingly rare around Swanrun,” she explained, thinking back on her home city with longing. “The wild storms and clouds from the ocean are all but impossible for the pegasi to control, meaning that the sun is often hidden by a dense layer of storm clouds in the evenings.”

Primrose glanced up at Scarlet, her wondrous expression persisting. She didn’t say anything, though.

After a few minutes, Scarlet’s expression hardened and she glanced down at Primrose. “A beautiful view that you can see while you eat,” she ordered sternly. “The grass here isn’t that bad, and you need to keep your strength up.”

Primrose pouted at that, scuffing her hoof through the green blades. “Bluegh… but it’s so boring. I don’t like it,” she complained, her ears drooping.

“And I don’t like getting stabbed in the ribs,” Scarlet countered without missing a beat, a tiny smirk appearing on her muzzle. “But I did it to keep you safe, did I not?”

“What the hell kind of distinction is that?!” Primrose demanded in exasperation, giving her guardian a glare and pout. “That’s not even remotely the same thing!”

“It’s close enough,” Scarlet continued in a teasing tone before shaking her head and getting serious. “Look, the point I am trying to make is that yes, it’s not exactly a pleasant experience, but it’s an abundant source of food, it doesn’t need to be prepared, and it’s high in the nutrients and fibers we need to stay healthy.”

“Besides,” Scarlet continued while lightly nudging Primrose in her still visible ribs. “You’re still skinny, so you shouldn’t be skipping out on meals, alright?”

Primrose huffed, looking away. “...We’ve stopped a lot earlier than normal. Can’t we look around for something better to eat?” she suggested hopefully after a few seconds of childish sulking.

Scarlet tilted her head and looked around, giving the idea some consideration. “Hmmm… I suppose we could try. There are probably some decent berry bushes and fruit trees along the edge of the forest… but that isn't a guarantee.”

“Can we at least look?” Primrose pressed, looking up at Scarlet again. “Please?”

Scarlet flinched back when the foal opened her eyes as wide as possible, her lip starting to quiver. “Wh-where did you learn to make faces like that?” she demanded after a moment, trying to look away and ignore the adorable image that had manifested before her.

Primrose did not answer, instead sniffling and pawing at Scarlet’s foreleg.

“I have come to a decision,” Scarlet thought to herself in resignation. “I hate foals.”

“Alright, alright, fine!” She said out loud, giving Primrose a small shove. “Just stop staring at me like that. It makes you look like a poor lost puppy.”

At once, Primrose sobered up and smiled. “Thanks, Scarlet!” she cheered before turning and galloping off towards the treeline.

“Don’t go running off by yourself!” Scarlet called after her before giving chase.

But despite her frustration, she couldn’t help but chuckle to herself before she caught up to Primrose and their search for ingredients began.

Author's Note

A bit of a change of pace for this chapter, allowing Scarlet and Prim to bond a bit.

Campfire

Scarlet’s mouth watered as the smell of freshly cooked vegetable soup wafted up and into her nostrils. Primrose was resting right next to her, eyeing the bubbling pot over the fireplace with a certain smug intensity that made Scarlet groan internally. Well over half of the fruits and vegetables they were now using to cook their meal had been found by the foal herself, with a stunning degree of efficiency.

“This filly is something else,” Scarlet thought to herself, briefly turning her attention to Primrose. Surviving Silent and his team of Nightblades for years while protecting a heavily-warded magic lamp, showing little to no hesitation to leap to Scarlet’s aid when the odds were against her, and now an impressive skill at gathering food and resources.

It made sense, she supposed. With the life Primrose had lived up until that point, the only way she would have been able to stay alive would be to develop those traits. But to have to do so from such a young age…

Scarlet looked down at the dirt, her face twisting into a sour grimace. “No filly should have to live a life like she has,” she thought, bitterness flooding her mind. “On the run, scared, and alone… it’s not fair.”

She was jarred from her thoughts when, somewhere in the distance, an owl hooted, briefly drawing her attention. Looking up, she saw how the sky had been swallowed by the serene darkness of the night some time ago. Half of the sky was blotted out by a loose scattering of clouds, while the other half was pristine and completely clear, allowing the sparkling stars to shine down on them like a thousand tiny candles.

After a moment, Primrose looked back at the pot and shifted anxiously. “C’mon… isn’t it done yet? I’m starving,” she whined pathetically, causing Scarlet to roll her eyes.

“I’m not sure. Let’s see,” she shot back before using a simple wooden ladle to bring some of the contents up to her lips. After blowing on it, she took a sip and pondered the taste. After a moment, she nodded and hummed in satisfaction. “Yes, it’s ready.”

“Yes!” Primrose sat up a little, watching with her full, undivided attention as Scarlet filled up two wooden bowls with soup before levitating them over. As soon as hers was before her, much like how she had done back in Scarlet’s home, she immediately dug in, greedily scarfing the food down.

“Is my soup truly that great?” Scarlet asked with a raised eyebrow while taking a sip of her own.

Primrose smiled up at her. “I’m just glad to have some good food for a change!” She replied before looking down at her reflection in the broth. Her smile wavered. “I… never learned how to cook. All the time I spent on the road, I had to eat what I gathered raw. Sometimes…” her hooves curled around her bowl. “...It made me sick.”

“I see…” Scarlet responded in a low voice, looking down into her bowl. She was quiet for several seconds before affixing Primrose with another questioning look. “You know, you were pretty skilled in gathering ingredients earlier. I daresay your knowledge of how to find food surpasses my own.”

Primrose glanced up at Scarlet in surprise. “Really? You think so?”

Scarlet nodded. “I do. You were very impressive earlier.”

Primrose’s face twitched into a small smile. “Thank you, Scarlet. I…” she looked down again, her smile immediately fading away. “My… my big brother taught me how to find food.”

Scarlet’s ears stood upright at that. She took a slow sip of her soup and hummed in thought. “A brother… Come to think of it, Primrose, I know very little about your family.”

“...I really miss them,” Primrose whispered, her ears drooping.

Scarlet was quiet for several seconds. Then, with a quiet sigh, she lifted her cloak until it fell over Primrose like a comforting blanket. “If you don’t wish to speak of them, I understand… but may I ask you to tell me about them?” she inquired carefully, studying every part of the foal’s response.

Primrose was quiet for a while, completely unresponsive to Scarlet’s question. Just when the unicorn was convinced she would get no answer, the filly took another gulp of her soup and leaned into Scarlet’s side. “...I had three brothers, all of them older than me,” she began, her voice distant. “Thistle was the oldest. Then there was Dandelion and Arum. Arum was… just a couple years older than I was. My mother was Sclera, and my father was Sparrow.”

Scarlet hummed, noticing a trend. “Aside from your parents, you were all named after plants, mostly flowers…”

Primrose nodded. “Mom loved flowers. She knew what each and every single one of them meant, what they represented,” she explained. “She named us after the flowers that represented what she wanted for us. The traits she wanted us to always nurture. Thistle was supposed to be the one to take care of us if mom and dad couldn’t, Dandelion was supposed to keep our spirits high and make sure we overcame any hardship. Arum was supposed to be the purest of us…”

“And then there’s you, Primrose,” Scarlet furthered before falling silent.

Primrose nodded. “Y-yes… mom wanted me to always love the world and everyone I met. She wanted me to never let hatred or resentment have a place in my heart…” she sniffled and shook her head. “They were all so wonderful… Thistle always knew how to cheer me up… Dandelion always had the most fun games to play. Arum was so sweet and nice… and mom and dad…”

Scarlet winced and looked down, her ears drooping. “...I am so sorry for your loss, Primrose. It is a cruel fate you are forced to endure, one that I would not wish on any other creature,” she whispered.

Primrose sniffled before reaching over and sluggishly hauling over her saddlebags. She reached inside and procured the lamp, cradling it gently in her hooves. It almost seemed to glow with the way it caught the flickering light of the campfire. “...I lost them. All of them… because of this…” she whispered, almost sounding angry. But she held it to her heart and closed her eyes.

“...Do you mind telling me what happened? How Silent… took your family away, I mean,” Scarlet pressed, immediately wondering why she had asked. “Maybe his actions could shed some light on why he’s after you? I know him, after all. Maybe I can make a deduction?”

Primrose fell silent again, starting to shiver. “W-we… we had set up a small camp in the wilderness near a river a mile or two outside of Stonethrow. We’d had a big dinner and a long day of travel ahead of us. W-we… It… I don’t…” she suddenly shuddered, stifling a sob. “It all happened so fast… one moment I was sleeping, the next, I heard Thistle, Dandelion, and Arum screaming in the other tent. When I looked to see what was happening, I… I saw…”

Primrose sniffled, screwing her eyes shut. As if by muscle memory, Scarlet draped her foreleg over the filly and began to make soothing sounds. After a moment, the filly pulled herself together and continued. “I s-saw one of Silent’s goons… his shadow, on the side of the tent. He had a dagger, and… h-he… he just kept stabbing… And Thistle stopped screaming… Dad w-was trying to protect us, but there were so many of them… not Nightblades, just… just guard, I think.”

“Guards…?” Scarlet whispered in surprise, her brow furrowing. That didn’t make any sense. Why would a band of regular guards join Silent Edge in an attack on a small campsite? If the Night Blades weren’t involved yet, that would imply that they didn’t know about the lamp yet, or at the very least, that it wasn’t a priority. Was there some other motive?

Before Scarlet could question it further, Primrose continued. “M-mom took me away, and we hid by some rocks. She gave me the lamp, and she told me to run into town and hide, and that she’d come to find me. But… she… she made me promise to take care of the lamp and protect it with my life if she didn’t. Then she went back, and I ran, and… and I never saw her again…”

Scarlet gave Primrose a gentle squeeze. “I’m sorry… I shouldn’t have asked…” she whispered before looking down into her bowl of soup, her appetite well and truly destroyed.

“W-what about you?” Primrose suddenly asked.

Scarlet blinked. She turned to face Primrose with a bewildered expression. “Wh-what?”

The foal gestured at her. “Do y-you have a family? You mentioned a mom back when we were in the caves near Swanrun.”

Scarlet froze, her blood going cold. She looked down at her soup again, getting lost in the reflection that stared back up at her. For a moment, she contemplated declining to say anything, but after everything Primrose had just told her, it was only fair that she return the favor.

She took a deep breath and nodded. “Yes. Yes, I have a family. I was an only child growing up, so I can’t claim to know anything about what it’s like to have brothers or sisters. My mother came from Violsta. She was a jeweler over there and fled to New Equestria, seeking asylum, when things began to get worse with Talonreach. She saw the signs and acted before most others. After wandering around, she settled in Swanrun and… met my father.”

“And who was he?” Primrose asked, listening intently. No doubt she was eager for a distraction from her own tortured thoughts.

“My father was… in many ways a brilliant stallion,” Scarlet sighed with a shake of her head. “Although, he was also something of an idiot. He served in the military as a soldier. Most days, that consisted of keeping watch in Swanrun and patrolling the walls. He met my mother in the streets one day when she was trying to find her way around. She looked lost, according to him, and being that she came from Violsta - Lover’s Shade, no less - he found her to be… exotic in her beauty.”

Scarlet let off a wistful sigh. “Their love story is nothing particularly grandiose or spectacular, I am afraid. They loved each other, they were happy, they got married… and one day, they had me.”

“And… were you happy, growing up?”

“I suppose you could say that, yes,” Scarlet replied with a nod. “I was never very social as a foal. I had other things on my mind, you see. I was enthralled with magic, and I attended the Swanrun university to learn all I could about magic, and Twilight Sparkle, the goddess of magic and friendship. Of the Five, I held her particularly close to my heart for a long, long time.”

Primrose hummed and nodded along before wiping a hoof over her eyes to clear away the leftover tears. “Alright. But you said that your father was an idiot a minute ago. Did you two not get along?”

Scarlet was not able to withhold the sudden bark of laughter that tore past her lips. “Oh, heavens no! I adored that stallion with every fiber of my being. He was strong, kind, clever as can be, and determined to protect his home and family to the very end. I looked up to him more than anypony else in the whole world. I wanted to be just like him. I…” she sighed and shook her head in disappointment at herself. “...I wanted to join the military if only so I could stand by his side. I wasn’t blind, I saw the tensions rising with Talonreach, and I knew a war was inevitable. I was determined to sign up as soon as I came of age... ”

Primrose tilted her head. “And… did you?”

Scarlet scoffed. “...I did, yes. But it’s a bit more complicated than that, I am afraid,” she stated before looking up at the sky. “You see, the war began, and my father was shipped off to the front lines. Every so often we received letters from him, detailing his time on the front, how he was doing, how we wanted to see us again, et cetera. Each time we got one, it just fueled my desire to sign up. But my mother… she always talked me down, convinced me to look at other options while I was still young.”

Her expression turned somber, her ears lowering. “And then, one day… we received a letter saying that my father had died in battle. He was cut down by a griffon while helping evacuate a small village on the border.”

Primrose’s ears immediately drooped, and she shied away from Scarlet as if she had suddenly started shouting. “O-oh…” she mumbled, not looking at the unicorn.

Scarlet continued. “At the time, I was infuriated. I turned sixteen only a few weeks later and signed up, ignoring all of my mother’s protests. And then, well… I spent the next few years of my life fighting in a war that I quickly realized was little more than a glorified bloodbath where there were no heroes; only survivors... That's why I believe he was an idiot. He took pride in being a soldier, and it got him killed in the end... When I came home from the battlefield, my mother…” Scarlet smirked and let out a quiet, humorless laugh. “She was just as infuriated as I had been. I remember shying away under her shouting rant as if I were six when I was in my early twenties.”

“She was that mad at you?”

Scarlet glanced down at Primrose with a knowing glint. “Never underestimate the terror of an angry mother. I…” she hesitated and looked away. “I know it rather well.”

Primrose tilted her head, a confused look on her face. “...Scarlet?”

“I-in any case,” the unicorn was quick to press on, dismissing the foals’ questioning look. “My mother ranted at me for a while, slammed the door in my face, and then let me back in with hugs and sobs. I… spent a good few months with her while I looked for work and… dealt with a medical issue. Then I got my job at the academy as a librarian, started studying history, moved out of my mother’s home and into my own. And, well…” she sighed and shook her head. “We… hadn’t spoken for several months when you and I met.”

“Did something happen between you?” Primrose pressed gently, leaning forward to try and look into Scarlet’s face.

“No. Nothing happened,” Scarlet responded her voice low. “Now… finish your soup, or it's going to get cold.”

Primrose blinked and leaned back, a surprised look on her face. Scarlet couldn’t find it in her to worry about that at just that moment, though. She instead began to focus on her soup, trying to wash the thoughts on her mind away with a flood of lukewarm dinner. As she ate, her eyes got lost in the dancing flames of the campfire.

Chapel

A full week had come and gone since Scarlet and Primrose camped for the night by the stream. In that time, neither had said much to the other, each of them focusing mostly on the journey ahead. There had been some idle small talk exchanged here and there, of course, and every so often Primrose would ask a question about something or other. Scarlet always took full advantage of those opportunities, telling the filly all she could.

The straight path of the Galloping Road was starting to become quite boring after a while. Thankfully, their turn away came in the form of a smaller, far less extravagant dirt road that broke away and went to the north. The terrain, which had long been a series of rolling hills with little actual variation in altitude, began to steadily climb up as they approached the mountains. The Twin Forests disappeared behind them while the Glimmering Woods emerged in the foothills ahead.

Finally, early in the afternoon with only a smattering of small, puffy clouds in the sky, the first sign of civilization for miles around made itself known to them. It came in the form of a village higher up on the hills, looming over them like a promised reprieve after an arduous climb.

The settlement, called New Lapiz, was a charming affair. The foundations of each of the buildings were made up of neatly-assembled stones, while finely-cut wooden planks made up the majority of the walls. Most of the roofs were sharply angled and made of rich blue tiles of a hue that matched the settlement’s namesake.

Primrose visibly relaxed the moment she caught sight of the town up ahead, a relieved sigh fleeing her lips. “Finally, a town! Is this Shimmervale?” she asked hopefully, glancing up at Scarlet.

She shook her head regretfully. “I am afraid not. We have several days of travel yet before we reach our destination,” she stated before gesturing at the town. “This is New Lapiz. It’s a small mining and logging town that was established in honor of a mountain village from Old Equestria called Little Lapiz. The founder of this town also ran the inn, which is still in business to this day, run by his descendants.”

Primrose looked ahead at the town with interest. She tilted her head to one side with a curious hum. “Huh… Why do you know so much about it?”

“If you can believe it, my mother wanted to live here, once,” Scarlet answered, a nostalgic look on her face. “When she was wandering New Equestria, one of the first towns she spent any notable amount of time in was New Lapiz. According to her, she fell in love with it. Charming architecture, friendly locals, wholesome culture, fascinating folklore. The only reason she didn’t stay was that there just wasn’t any work for a jeweler like her. When I started studying history after the war, I made sure to brush up on this place. It…”

Scarlet’s smile became distant and wistful, a quiet sigh slipping past her lips. “It sounded like a nice, quiet place to settle down, someday… get away from the hustle and bustle of Swanrun, have a more tight-knit community… that sort of thing.”

Primrose was quiet for a few seconds before perking up and lightly nudging Scarlet’s foreleg as they went. “Well, maybe you can settle down here, someday? You know, when all of this stuff with my lamp is sorted out?” she suggested with more optimism than Scarlet was used to.

It made her smile return in full force, along with a short laugh. “Ha! Assuming I live that long,” she retorted before shaking her head and sighing. “Unfortunately, we won’t be here for very long. We’ll get a room at the inn for the night and move on at first light. We should have enough bits for that much, at least.”

Primrose wilted somewhat at the decision but offered no words of protest.

It was at this time that they passed into the village proper. There were only a few ponies out and about, most notably a few foals running by and kicking a ball along the street, giving the impression of a lazy day. To their immediate right was the inn Scarlet had mentioned. It was easily the second-largest building they could see, standing at a solid three floors. The only structure taller was an out-of-place stone chapel that rested some distance to their left.

“Let’s go, the inn is right there,” Scarlet pointed out, turning to head for the building in question.

“What?” Primrose blurted, surprised.

Confused by the filly’s tone, Scarlet turned and looked down at her. Primrose was looking back and forth between her and the chapel in the distance, a conflicted look on her face.

Scarlet frowned and gave the church a cursory examination. It didn’t have any of the specific markings that allied it with any one of the Five in particular, so it must have been a general place of worship. Given the hour and day, the odds were high that it would be quiet right about now.

But they were hardly here to pray to the Alicorns of Old. Scarlet frowned and turned a stern look on Primrose. “What about the chapel?”

Primrose hesitated for a second before glancing back at the structure in question. Slowly, her ears began to droop. “I-it’s just that, uhm, after Silent killed my family, the first pony to take me in and look after me was a priest. I lived in a church for over a year.”

Scarlet fell utterly silent, her ears drooping. “Ah, I see,” she said quietly. “I take it that you want to step inside, then? For remembrance’s sake?”

Primrose nodded. “Yeah... especially since Silent killed him, too…”

Scarlet’s eyes widened somewhat, the back of her scalp starting to tingle with intense outrage. “Wh-what?! He killed a priest?!” she asked in an intense hiss, leaning her head down to be closer to her charge.

Primrose looked down. “Yes. He was trying to protect me. He fought Silent, but…” she didn’t say anything else for a few seconds before looking up at the chapel. “He died, and I got away.”

Before Scarlet could open her mouth to offer any condolences, a ball made of cloth and stuffed with something vaguely bouncy rolled right in front of them, followed shortly by the pack of playing foals. Scarlet and Primrose watched them until they vanished from sight around a corner. A few seconds passed, their delighted giggles still echoing in their ears.

“Come on, then,” Scarlet whispered, gently ushering Primrose along towards the chapel. “We can stop inside for a little while. We have time.”

The old wooden doors of the chapel creaked loud and heavy as they were pushed open, revealing the interior space. A quick glance confirmed Scarlet’s earlier assumption of this being a place of general worship with no one of the Five taking prominence. The row of five stained glass windows in the back, each one portraying a different figure, were all the proof she needed. One more stained glass window, circular in shape, rested above them, allowing a stream of afternoon sunlight to pierce into the large chamber and fill it with an almost divine radiance.

A deliberate design choice, no doubt.

Several rows of simple wooden pews lined either side of the room, at the end of which stood a wooden podium and a rudimentary altar. Scarlet ushered Primrose to the very back pew on the left side of the room, far from anypony else.

The filly wasn’t paying much attention to where they were going, though. Her eyes were glued onto the windows on the back wall, her mouth hanging open. Once they were seated, she swallowed and leaned forward. “Woah… so those are all of the Five?” she whispered.

Scarlet frowned down at her in surprise. “You mean you didn’t know what they all looked like?”

Primrose shook her head. “No, I didn’t. I only ever knew what Cadance looked like. The church I lived in was about her,” she said before resting her chin on the backrest of the pew in front of her. “The goddess of love, compassion, and family.”

Scarlet was quiet for a moment before panning her eyes across the windows from left to right. After a moment of collecting her knowledge of each in her mind, she leaned down and pointed to the first of the windows, which depicted a dark blue alicorn with a majestically flowing mane and tail. Her eyes were closed and a serene smile adorned her lips, while her wings fanned out. Behind her, a full moon cast radiant beams of light upon an endless grassy field.

“Well, the first one there is Princess Luna, goddess of the night, sleep, dreams, and the inner self. She is said to be the first pony to ever be capable of ‘Dreamwalking,’ a unique form of spellcraft that allows ponies to enter into the dreams of others, and even connect several dreams together.”

Her hoof moved on to the window on the opposite side. This one showed a similarly depicted alicorn of white fur with a mane and tail of many colors. Her eyes were open, and behind her, the sun was blazing with an intense light over a valley of clouds. “The one across from her is her elder sister, Celestia, the goddess of light, leadership, and wisdom. For a thousand long years before The Fall, it is said that she and her sister maintained the cycle of day and night.”

Primrose nodded along slowly. “Woah… do they still do that?”

Scarlet sighed and shook her head. “Unfortunately, no. That duty has fallen to a special order of sorcerers in Newcanter. The process is draining and difficult, and many have permanently lost their ability to use magic of any kind as a result. It is a grueling task, but one that must be done.”

Scarlet’s hoof then moved on to the window of Cadance, which was directly next to Celestia’s. A Pink alicorn with a darker pink mane and tail. She was depicted from the side in a resting position with one wing outstretched as if to offer shelter. She was surrounded by the outline of a blue heart made of crystal. A purple and green dragon was coiled around the heart, its wings flared out protectively. “Cadance is, as you mentioned, the goddess of love, family, and compassion. Many couples pray to her when they desire foals in their lives.”

Primrose nodded. “Yeah, I remember…”

Scarlet then went on to the window opposite of Cadance. The alicorn that was shown there was quite different when compared to all the others. She was pale pink, to the point she was almost white, while her short, bouncy mane and tail were pink with cyan highlights. She was shown as frolicking through a more exaggerated field of clouds and surrounded by musical notes, a cheerful and elated smile on her face. In the sky behind her, the same purple dragon from Cadance’s window could be seen keeping a close eye on her. “That one is Flurry Heart, the innocent.”

“The innocent?”

Scarlet nodded. “Yes. She is something of an oddity among the Five… You see, it is believed that she wants to be friends with every foal who lives. But, being without a body in the material world, the only way for foals to be her friend is to follow her teachings. It’s a common tactic to try and raise foals right.”

“Oh… I see.”

Scarlet then pointed to the central window. In it was, of course, Twilight Sparkle, the lavender alicorn. Much like in the window from the academy office in Swanrun, Twilight was depicted as having her wings unfurled and a peaceful smile on her face. However, unlike the one from Swanrun, this window included the purple dragon, and a white unicorn stallion with a blue mane and tail who were standing back to back behind her, their heads bowed low in respect.

Scarlet smiled softly before she spoke. “And lastly is Twilight Sparkle. The princess of friendship and goddess of magic and knowledge. Many scholars and mages look up to her to guide them in their studies, while diplomats pray to her to guide them in seeking the desired outcome for any negotiations. Of the Five, she is the one I look up to the most.”

Primrose looked up at Scarlet curiously. “How come?”

“Because, Primrose, I believe that, if the Five are really out there... if they truly exist, then out of all of them, Twilight Sparkle is the one I believe is best for the world. It’s in her name,” Scarlet explained, gesturing at the window again. “The princess of friendship. Our world has long been broken by war, conflict, bloodshed, and hatred… If anypony could ever work the magic to put things right, I sincerely believe it would be her.”

Primrose nodded before looking at the window again. She was silent for a minute before asking a question Scarlet had hoped she would not ask. “So… if she can make the world so much better… why hasn't she?”

Scarlet looked down, her ears falling flat. Primrose looked back up at her, her own ears drooping and a guilty look coming over her face. However, before she could speak, Scarlet gave her answer. “Because the Five are dead… and they have been since the Fall came to pass.”

Primrose leaned back, taken by surprise by the coldness of the statement. “I… what?”

Scarlet looked up at the windows again, a less-appreciative look on her face. “I’ve studied their history. Many ponies don’t know this anymore, but The Five were once just like us, living in Old Equestria. Celestia, Luna, and Twilight were the rulers, while Cadance and Flurry lived in the northern Crystal Empire, a place long since overrun by malevolent snow spirits known as Windigos. But when the changelings swept across our home, they went for the mares we now worship as immaterial goddesses first and foremost. And…”

Scarlet sighed and looked down with a shake of her head. “And killed them. Celestia, Luna, and Cadance are said to have given up their lives to end the advance of the swarm, taking the changeling queen with them. Twilight and Flurry were lost to the blizzard that raged in the aftermath…”

Primrose was quiet for several minutes, digesting this information. After a while, she shifted uncomfortably on her haunches and spoke up again. “S-so… if the Five are ponies who died a long time ago, why do ponies worship them like this? I mean…” her face lowered, her expression darkening. “A corpse can’t talk back… I’ve tried.”

Scarlet went rigid at those words. “Just how many ponies has Primrose lost?” she wondered quietly before shaking her head and answering the question. “For many, they don’t know that they are dead. And those who do believe that, even in death, they can work small miracles on the world. They were the only alicorns in all of recorded history, and the towering paragons of their millennium. Most believe that beings like that can’t just… die like other ponies.”

Primrose stared at Scarlet for a few seconds before looking ahead at the windows and giving a quiet hum. With that, the two fell into a long and thoughtful silence. Scarlet took the break in the conversation to look at the foal and consider her. The question from a moment ago, about how many she had lost, rang in her mind again.

Primrose had been born on the road with a mother, father, and three brothers. All of them had been killed, leaving her orphaned at a very young age. She had been adopted by a priest for a year before losing him, too. And if what she had said before was anything to go off of, the priest wasn’t the last pony Primrose had been taken in by.

“Even I haven’t lost as much as she has,” Scarlet eventually concluded sadly, looking away and closing her eyes.

Her train of thought was disrupted when Primrose suddenly asked another question. “Who’s the dragon?”

Scarlet opened her eyes and looked at her. “Huh?”

Primrose pointed at the windows of Twilight, Cadance, and Flurry. “The purple dragon. He shows up in the three windows in the middle. Who is he?”

Scarlet quickly looked at the windows again, gathering her wits again before speaking. “Oh. That is Spike. He isn’t one of the Five, but he is highly revered as a part of the pantheon. He is said to have been Twilight Sparkle’s oldest friend and faithful assistant. He also served as the protector of the Crystal Empire before The Fall, hence his depictions in Cadance and Flurry’s windows. He is also believed to have perished in the Empire.”

Scarlet’s smile slowly returned before she leaned back in her seat. “Interestingly, the New Equestrian’s equivalent to a royal guard was, in part, inspired by Spike,” she pointed out as that bit of trivia entered her head.

Primrose perked up, surprised. “Really?”

Scarlet nodded. “Spike, and that white stallion in Twilight’s window. That is her brother, Shining Armor. The two of them are seen as examples of bravery, courage, honor, and self-sacrifice. Those virtues form the backbone and baseline for the Dragon Sentinels, the most elite warriors in all of New Equestria.”

Primrose blinked and looked ahead at them for a few moments, her head tilted to one side. She hummed quietly before leaning back and leaning against Scarlet’s side. Then, after a moment, she closed her eyes and whispered under her breath. “Cadance… I don’t know if you can hear me, but if you can, then… please tell Lovestruck that I am so sorry that I got him killed and that I miss him...”

Scarlet gave Primrose a sympathetic look, her heart twisting in her chest. After a moment, she draped a foreleg over her shoulders and pulled her closer, but otherwise did not say a word.

Author's Note

Well, that was quite the lore dump, wasn't it? And now you all know some of the specifics about this world's pantheon. Have fun with that.

Feral

Scarlet and Primrose departed the Chapel shortly after the filly’s prayer had been offered. The remainder of their day had been spent at the local inn, resting and relaxing in preparation for the uphill climb that awaited them. Primrose had been more than a little enthusiastic about sleeping in a nice, warm bed for a change. It was a sight Scarlet had found charming and endearing.

They slept well that night. Then, as Scarlet had stated previously, as soon as the sun rose from the horizon, they gathered their supplies and set out from New Lapiz. Within an hour of departing the town, the open sky and foothills were steadily consumed by the canopy of the Glittering Woods.

Shafts of sunlight pierced through the branches between the trees, creating gently-wavering spots of sunlight all along the trail. Birds sang their songs and various other forms of wildlife could be heard calling out in the distance. A subtle breeze washed by every so often, causing the leaves to rustle and shift.

Scarlet took a deep breath, savoring the fresh air. It had been quite some time since she had last been in a forest. Long enough, in fact, that she had all but forgotten how lovely the air was. After a few seconds of letting it fill her lungs and rejuvenate her system, she let it out in a happy sigh with a small smile on her face.

“You seem happy,” Primrose noted curiously from beside her.

Scarlet turned to see her looking back up at her with a small smile of her own and a bounce in her step. Scarlet chuckled and looked up at the forest canopy overhead. “What can I say? I forgot how much I love forests,” she said plainly. “The air is fresh here, and smells like all kinds of plants that you simply do not get around Swanrun.”

Primrose’s face twisted with curiosity, and she took a few experimental sniffs at the air. Her smile grew immensely with satisfaction, and she mimicked Scarlet’s previous deep breath with one of her own. Once it was released, she nodded, the bounce in her step increasing. “Wow, you’re right! I never really thought about it like that before. I was always just trying to keep moving and stay alive.”

“That should be your priority, of course,” Scarlet conceded with a shrug. “But wherever possible, do take a moment to ‘smell the roses,’ as it were.”

“I will,” Primrose chirped with a nod.

After a few seconds of quiet, Scarlet took another deep breath. Only this time, she wasn’t alone. Her ear twitched at the sound of Primrose breathing in at the same time, and sure enough, both of them now had full mouthfuls of air. They made hard eye contact for a while, their pace coming to a complete stop.

Primrose bulged out her cheeks in a comically-exaggerated display of trying to hold it in.

Scarlet lost it. Her held breath was immediately expelled in a series of short, entertained chuckles. It wasn’t long before Primrose joined her giggles, looking down at the ground as she did so.

Finally, after almost a minute, Scarlet managed to regain her composure. Forcing down a few residual chortles that were trying to push their way out, she reached over and ruffled the filly’s hair affectionately. “Ha. Thank you for that, Primrose. I needed a good laugh, I think,” she said before taking one more deep breath to calm herself down the rest of the way.

Primrose pouted as her mane was mussed up, but smiled while pushing it back into line with a hoof. “So did I. We should laugh like that more often,” she suggested before looking further up the road.

“You think so?”

“Yeah. You’re always so serious all of the time,” Primrose elaborated, moving ahead a little bit and turning around to face Scarlet. “You’ve always got this big frown on your face. You’re always worrying about whether or not we’re being followed or about to be attacked and stuff…” she then spun around and took another deep breath. “I think you should smell the roses more, too.”

Scarlet blinked, her pace slowing somewhat. That was surprisingly insightful for a ten-year-old filly. But at the same time, there was a reason for her caution and seriousness. They were on a life-or-death mission, after all, and they were no doubt still being followed by Silent Edge and his subordinates.

But she also had to admit that laughing like that had felt really good…

Scarlet smiled and picked up her pace again. “I’ll keep that in mind, Primrose. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” she said in response, falling into step at Scarlet’s side again.

The two carried on in silence for some time, enjoying the forest’s atmosphere.

Alas, the peace could not last.

At around midday, Primrose suddenly came to an abrupt halt in mid-step. Her ears fell flat against her head and her eyes went wide with fear. A terrified whimper slipped past her lips, drawing Scarlet’s attention.

“Primrose?” she asked in concern, now on high alert.

“D-did you hear th-that?” Primrose whispered in a trembling voice, shrinking down to the ground and looking around in sharp, panicky motions.

Scarlet frowned and perked her ears up, listening carefully. For a few seconds, all she heard was the rustling of the trees in the wind.

Then she heard it. A shriek, distorted into two tones, accompanied by the sound of buzzing insect wings.

“We need to hide!” Primrose all but screamed, suddenly sprinting over to Scarlet and grabbing onto her hoof with a vice-like grip. “We have to hide, NOW!”

She didn’t need to be told twice. She frantically swept her eyes over the environment for anywhere they could take cover. She spotted a few possible places, but the best came in the form of a small drop off on one side of the road that was partially sheltered by large tree roots.

The buzzing was getting louder.

Acting fast, Scarlet lit her horn and focused. With a flash of light, she teleported herself and Primrose into the safe space under the roots. Primrose squeaked in fear from the sudden burst of magic and pressed herself up against Scarlet for protection.

“Stay quiet,” Scarlet whispered to her before turning and looking through a gap in the roots so she could see the road. The buzzing was almost on top of them now, and it was accompanied by more animalistic shrieks and hisses.

Suddenly, just ahead of where Scarlet and Primrose had been on the road, mere moments earlier, a grizzly bear burst through the wall of foliage and onto the path, making a mad and frantic dash for the other side.

It never made it.

A green bolt of putrid magic struck it in between the shoulders from above, sending the colossal creature crumpling to the ground with a bellowing roar of agony. It slid for a few feet before quickly hauling itself back to its feet, smoke rising from the singed fur on its back. Another bolt of magic struck the ground in front of it before it could make a move, forcing it to take a step back.

Then, with a feral hiss, a creature of black chitin and glowing blue eyes emerged from the leaves overhead. Its hole-riddled hooves slammed into the back of the bear, keeping it off balance.

Primrose gasped, her whole body being ravaged by horrible tremors. “Changelings…” she choked out, her eyes starting to shimmer with tears.

As soon as she said that, more and more of the creatures emerged all around the bear. Four, six, nine. When at last they stopped coming, there were twelve of them, surrounding the bear with their horns alight. It turned to them with a great roar before reaching up and prying the drone off of its back. After a brief struggle, the grizzly bear brought the drone down onto the ground with enough force to crush it, kicking up a cloud of dust and a splash of blood.

The remaining changelings were not at all phased or disheartened. The glows on their horns grew brighter, ensnaring the bear in their magic and pinning it to the ground. It fought, it struggled, but under so much power there was nothing it could do but roar and growl in rage in terror.

Scarlet looked on with wide, horrified eyes as the changelings then opened their mouths. The bears' roars of rage became howls of agony as streams of pink mist began to leak out of its body. Its eyes, its mouth, its nose. Everywhere. The drones snarled and hissed like savage dogs as the streams of pink diverted course and flowed into their waiting maws.

Scarlet shuddered with revulsion, her skull beginning to burn with fury and rage. Her pupils dilated, and her horn began to glow with purple light. “Those monsters…” she seethed, a vein building in her throat.

“Scarlet…?” Primrose whispered uneasily, her voice still trembling along with her fragile body.

The green glow fled the bear's body after several more seconds, yet it did not rise. It remained on the ground, gasping for breath and weakly trying to crawl away. The drones all watched it for several seconds, their wings twitching in anticipation and their forked tongues writhing in the air.

Then, as one, they pounced upon the grizzly. It gave another agonized roar as eleven pairs of razor-sharp teeth bit into its body. Primrose was barely able to contain a mortified cry when she saw the bear’s blood starting to spread out in a large pool on the ground.

Scarlet’s breath was coming in increasingly labored gasps. Was the world-shaking, or was it all just in her head? It felt like she was on fire from the inside out, her heart hammering in her chest to pump adrenaline through her veins. Everything was turning red. They were right there, those savage, feral, abominations. How could she just sit here and watch them like this?

Suddenly, her swords snapped into reality next to her, and she went to rise from her hiding place with a furious snarl.

“Scarlet, no!” Primrose hissed, reaching out and pulling her back down by the cloak.

She turned to face the filly, her eyes wide with rage and unleashed hatred. “Let me go, Primrose!” she spat, forcefully tugging her cloak away from the foal’s grasp.

“Please, don’t fight them!” Primrose pleaded desperately, grabbing for Scarlet again. “Just let it go!”

“How can you ask me to do that?!” Scarlet snapped, looming over Primrose threateningly. “I will not let those creatures survive to murder and kill anything else! They deserve to die!”

Primrose hesitated, her lip trembling. She took a shaking breath and looked away, her eyes starting to water while she fished for an answer. “P-please, Scarlet. There… th-th-there are too many of th-them. If you attack them, they’ll kill you, too…”

Scarlet paused, her swords slowly dissipating. Her heart dropped in her chest when Primrose suddenly collapsed to the ground, barely stifling a sob.

“P-please… don’t die on me, too… I don’t wanna be alone again…” Primrose went on, looking up into Scarlet’s eyes with tears rolling freely down her cheeks. “I don’t wanna lose you…”

Scarlet took a shuddering breath, the raging inferno in her skull starting to die down into smoldering coals, and then stray embers. She looked down, gave off a quiet growl of frustration, and then turned back to the pack of drones. Primrose was right. There were far too many of those things for her to take them on as she was. Even if the foal backed her up, they would be overwhelmed very quickly.

The wails of the bear finally fell silent, the only sound being that of the changelings ravenously devouring the corpse. They were snarling and snapping at one another if any of them got too close to the other one’s meat. Every so often, one would bark out a few broken words in Ponish, usually ‘mine!’ or ‘back off!’

“It will take them a while to eat that bear…” Scarlet whispered under her breath before looking around. If she couldn’t kill them, she needed to find some way of getting rid of them. Eventually, her eyes settled on a thick, fallen branch not far away.

“Alright, stay silent,” she instructed to Primrose before lighting her horn and lifting up the branch in her magic. With a wince of effort, she silently levitated it across the road to the opposite side that she and Primrose were on. She lowered it down into the brush not far from where the changelings were feasting, trying to ignore the stray bit of intestine that splattered onto the ground.

With a grunt, she applied a sharp pressure to the branch. It snapped with an echoing crack, before she released her magic and dropped them into the dirt with a muffled thump.

The changelings all turned from their meal with loud hisses, facing the disturbance. Then, as one, they lifted into the air and flew off into the woods, disappearing amidst the trees long before the buzzing of their wings faded away.

Scarlet and Primrose were quiet for what felt like an eternity, holding their breath and waiting to see if the swarm would turn around. Thankfully, fortune seemed to be favoring them this day, for the buzzing did not return.

Scarlet let out a sigh before turning to Primrose. “Come on, let’s get out of here before they come back,” she instructed quickly. Without waiting for an answer, she hefted the filly onto her back with her magic and broke into a mad sprint down the road, past the mutilated bear carcass and, with any luck, well past the hungry swarm.

Scarlet maintained her sprint for almost thirty minutes before she had to come to a stop to catch her breath. She staggered and slumped to the ground, gasping raggedly for breath. She was only numbly aware of Primrose sliding off of her back and trotting around to stand in front of her. She smiled softly at the foal as if to encourage her. “You’re not hurt, are you?” she asked between gasps.

Primrose nervously shook her head. “No, I’m okay. What about you?”

“I’ll… ugh, I’ll be fine,” Scarlet dismissed with a shake of her head. “Just let me… let me catch… my breath… of…”

Primrose nodded and fell silent. She sat down on her haunches, patiently waiting for her guardian to pull herself back together. It took a while, but eventually, Scarlet’s breath eased back down, and while her legs were still burning intensely, she was able to haul herself to her hooves.

“Alright… okay, let’s be on our way,” she ordered simply before starting to trot at a slower rate. “We want to put as much distance between us and them as possible.”

Primrose hummed and fell into step by Scarlet’s side, her face downturned in thought.

The two were silent for a while, both of them lost in their thoughts. It must have been another twenty minutes before Primrose looked up at Scarlet. “Um… Scarlet?” she asked slowly as if worried she might upset her.

“What is it, Prim?”

“I, um… why do you hate changelings so much?” Primrose said, her pace slowing somewhat while her head tilted to one side.

Scarlet came to a sudden stop, her eyes wide and the fire in her legs spread to the base of her skull. “Wha… what the hell kind of question is that Primrose?!” she demanded incredulously, stepping around to be in front of the filly and gesturing the way they had come. “Didn’t you see what they were doing back there?!”

“Of course I did,” Primrose countered, meeting Scarlet’s gaze again. “But… that’s not why you hate them, is it?”

“What more reason do I need?! They are foul, mindless monsters that reduced Equestria to dust and blood!” Scarlet shouted, her voice starting to break and tremble. “They caused the Fall! How many ponies died back then because of those abominations?! How many ponies have died since then because any of them are still alive?!”

“I just…” Primrose looked down and shook her head. “You tried to talk those griffon robbers into letting us go. You tried to avoid a fight. But here… you wanted to kill them. That just doesn’t seem like you.”

Scarlet scoffed in dismissal before turning around and resuming her trot up the road. “The courtesy I afforded the griffons does not extend to monsters. Now come on. We need to keep moving.”

Primrose was silent for several seconds before nodding her head. “Right. Monsters,” she whispered. After another second, she started trotting as well, eventually catching up to Scarlet and walking beside her.

Author's Note

And so the creatures that caused the Fall reveal themselves.

Shimmervale

After their close encounter with the changeling swarm, Scarlet and Primrose made good time heading further north. The forest around them thinned away into a series of rocky foothills, beyond which loomed a series of mountain ranges. The air gradually became cooler the further they traveled, and fresh grass became harder and harder to find in plentiful quantities. Luckily, however, due to their proximity to snowmelt streams, freshwater was not a problem.

Over the next week, their hooves carried them through one mountain pass and down into a forest that was very different from the two they had seen previously. The bark was a pearly white, while the wide-spread leaves were a gorgeous pink in color, almost seeming to sparkle and glow whenever struck by light. They reminded Scarlet of supposed ‘cherry blossom’ trees that had once grown in certain, isolated regions of Old Equestria before the fall.

Those beautiful trees eventually thinned out as they climbed in altitude for the second mountain pass, this one much higher than its predecessor. The night they spent under an overhang of raw stone saw the arrival of an intense blizzard, one which threatened to put out their poor, under-fueled campfire on numerous occasions.

But the flame persisted, the tent shielded them, and their coats blocked what little of the chill managed to worm its way through their other defenses. The following morning, the clouds had parted, allowing golden sunlight to start melting the thick blanket of white that snow smothered the observable world.

They kept going, the incline of the pass starting to level out. Then, at long last, they reached the top, and the land sprawled out below them for miles and miles. A vast mountain valley came into view, surrounded on all sides by towering, snow-capped peaks. The same white-trunked trees formed two enormous forests that blanketed the southwest and northern ends of the valley, while rich green grass filled everything else in a series of rolling hills.

And, at the base of the slopes they stood on, surrounded by pink leaves, was a shining amethyst of a city. Even from all this way away, Scarlet and Primrose both allowed their jaws to drop at the sight.

At the city’s core was a great pillar of glowing blue crystal that took on the vague resemblance of a tree. Every structure was built around that towering formation, each one mirroring the valley around them. The buildings were mostly round in shape, each ones walls made of a white stone that fairly gleamed like silver in the sunlight. Their roofs, shaped like domes, matched the surrounding leaves.

All of this, surrounded by both the dense forest, and a tall wall made of the same silvery stone that made Scarlet think of roots rising from the earth. It was almost like the earth itself had taken a liking to this town and was making an active effort to defend it.

This was Shimmervale.

“Woah…” Primrose breathed in awe, her eyes wide. “It’s so… sparkly.”

Scarlet nodded slowly, finally clamping her muzzle shut. “Yes, it is… how fitting,” she agreed before continuing at a quicker pace than before. “Come on, let’s go. Sharp Lens will be somewhere in that city.”

Primrose remained planted for several seconds before the command fully registered in her wonderstruck mind. With an alarmed squeak, she broke into a gallop and was soon by Scarlet’s side again. “So… who’s Sharp Lens?”

Scarlet froze mid-step for a fraction of a second but was quick to resume her pace. “As I said before, he is an old friend of mine from back in the war. He was conscripted, and we fought side by side a fair few times. Before the war, he was an archeologist and ward expert, and I can only assume he picked those trades back up after we saw ourselves out.”

Primrose blinked. “Saw yourselves out?”

Scarlet shook her head. “It’s a long story, and I’d rather not get absorbed in memories right now. I’d like to learn what he can tell us about your lamp and then be on our way without getting him involved. He’s a good stallion, and…” her eyes went distant, her face drooping. “And I do not want to get him hurt if I can help it.”

Primrose eyed Scarlet curiously for a few minutes before returning her attention to the city.

The two were quiet after that, focusing on making it into the city. They passed by a series of farming plantations outside in the miles leading up to the walls, seemingly established to harvest odd purple fruits from the trees. The odd farmer nodded or waved at them as they passed, a friendly greeting.

“It would seem word of our wanted status hasn’t quite gotten here, yet,” Scarlet mused to herself while returning one such nod. “Either that or the farmers just don’t know.”

The sun was practically kissing the horizon when they finally made it to the city gates. There were a few guards stationed outside, keeping a careful eye on the few ponies that were passing through at this hour. Chances were the gates would be closing up before long. Scarlet drew herself upright before glancing at Primrose. “Prim, I need you to listen to me for a second.”

The foal looked back up at her. “Huh?”

“Until we reach Lens’ house, you’re not to call me Scarlet while we are here. We’re using fake names. Hopefully, it will make it harder for Silent to track us down. I will be Sapphire. Do you have a name you want to go by?”

Primrose was quiet for a second, her muzzle scrunching up. After a moment, her eyes widened, and she nodded. “Yeah. Uh… I’ll be Protea,” she decided before glancing up at Scarlet again. “Does that work?”

Scarlet smiled and nodded before reaching over and ruffling her mane. “It sounds lovely. I assume it has some underlying meaning, like your real name?”

Primrose nodded, looking directly ahead. “Yeah. It does. It’s supposed to represent courage and bravery.”

Scarlet frowned, slowing down. There was something off about how Primrose had said that. Before she had a chance to question it, though, one of the guards gave them a look and began to approach, his chainmail armor clinking with every step.

“City gates are about to close up for the night,” he stated in a firm voice, bringing the duo to a halt. “And I don’t recognize either of you. Who are you and what’s your business in Shimmervale?”

“I’m Sapphire, this is Protea,” Scarlet replied without missing a beat, gesturing between the two of them. “We’re here from Twinwood Canopy to visit a close family friend over the next few days.”

The guard hummed quietly, giving his head a slow nod. “Alright… how long are you and your daughter planning on staying?”

Scarlet went to correct him, to tell him that this filly was not her daughter. But she quickly caught herself, biting down on her tongue. It would do better to go with that assumption then not. One more monkey wrench to add to Silent’s line of inquiry if he followed them here. So, she gave a nod and a friendly smile. “Not much more than a few days. I can’t imagine staying here any longer than that.”

The guard was quiet, giving them a long, hard stare. Thankfully, he smiled and nodded, satisfied with her answers. “Alright, head on in. Just don’t cause any trouble, miss. Enjoy your stay.”

Scarlet nodded her head respectfully. "Thank you, sir. Have a good night.”

“You as well.”

With that, Scarlet ushered Primrose passed the gates and into the city streets. There was a surprising number of ponies out and about. The vast majority were unicorns, but a fair few of them were of the other races. Judging by how many there were, it seemed that there was something of a night-life in this city.

With the gates shrieking as they swung closed behind them, Scarlet and Primrose watched with wide eyes as the great crystal at the heart of Shimmervale suddenly emitted a gentle pulse of light. Then, one by one, lamp posts like the ones in Swanrun began to flicker on, casting purple light along the streets to chase away the darkness.

“Wow… this place is so beautiful…” Primrose whispered, shifting closer to Scarlet’s side.

“Indeed…”

“So where does your friend live?”

Scarlet’s awed expression melted into a concerned frown. She looked back and forth across the street, hoping against all odds that maybe Lens lived right by the city gates and that she could see some identifying mark outside his home. But alas, there was no such luck. It was with that disheartening revelation that she had to make a confession. “To be entirely honest, Protea… I haven’t the faintest idea.”

Primrose looked up at her with a flat look on her face. “...What?”

“Hey, I’ve never been here before,” Scarlet protested weakly, using her magic to place the foal on her back before starting down the street. “And I never learned his address.”

“So how do we find him, then?”

Scarlet winced, weighing their options. “I’m not sure… but the streets are pretty active. I suppose all we need to do is find a place he’d be likely to frequent and ask around some. I’m sure we’ll find a lead sooner or later.”

Primrose hummed in response to that, keeping her eyes open as they made their way deeper into the mystifying city.

Perhaps an hour later, Scarlet’s opinion of Shimmervale was very much a double-edged sword. On the one hoof, the entire place was absolutely breathtaking in its arcane beauty. On the other hoof, trying to find somepony’s home in it when you didn’t know your way around or where any of the local establishments were was a colossal migraine.

She had spent the better part of an hour slipping briefly into various late-night taverns, asking anyone and everyone she could think of if they knew anything about Lens at all. Sadly, even with what info she was willing to share being on the table, she was only able to narrow down their search area to the West Hill, a sprawling residential district that sat atop a large foothill and overlooked much of the rest of the city. Such a shame that trotting to that area would take a while. It wasn’t exactly next door, and this city was far from small.

But, if there was a silver lining to this leg of the journey, it was that the city was still very pleasing to look at, and it was refreshing to be among civilization again.

Eventually, their path brought them to the base of the crystalline tree that stood at the heart of Shimmervale. It rose from a pit in the earth and towered high above them, a hundred feet high at least. All around it, stone walkways and overhangs had been constructed to allow for a wide range of views of the staggering formation. A fair few ponies, mostly young couples, had taken advantage of this, gazing either at each other or at the crystal in awe and wonder.

Primrose shifted on Scarlet’s back. “Woooow…” she breathed before slipping off and cantering up to the rail to get a better look.

“Wha- Hey! Protea!” Scarlet called after her before giving chase. She caught up in a moment and was about to heft the foal onto her back and scold her about running off like that. However, she stopped in her tracks at the look on Primrose’s face. The filly’s wide eyes and hanging jaw put her awe on clear display.

Scarlet was quiet for a few seconds, her mind wandering back to what they had talked about on the road a week ago. She looked between the tree and the foal a few more times before a tender smile graced her lips. “What the hell. Let’s smell the roses for a bit… Lens isn’t going anywhere,” she thought to herself before sitting down on her haunches. “Impressive, isn’t it?”

Primrose nodded her head rigidly. “Y-yeah… it’s huge.”

Scarlet gently nudged Primrose closer until she was seated between her protector’s forelegs. Scarlet looked up at the tree as well at that point, its pale glow reflected in her eyes. “Yes, it is. If I’m remembering my history correctly, this tree was the first growth of these arcane crystals discovered after the Fall. When its arcane properties were discovered by explorers in the early days of the country, scholars and mages from Newcanter flocked en masse to study it. So it was that Shimmervale was born as a city of scholars and magicians of every type. It even became the birthplace of what is now Arcane Engineering.”

Primrose looked up at Scarlet. “Really?”

“Really. The magical properties of these crystals were originally used as a mere extension of a unicorn’s magic, enabling for the casting of larger and more elaborate spells with far less effort from the pony. But with time, a few great minds found other ways to harness this power, and much of the technology we now use in our everyday lives stemmed from their research. A good example would be the street lamps we passed on the way here,” Scarlet explained, briefly gesturing behind them. “Before Arcane Engineering, the streets would be dark and hard to navigate at night. Criminals and thugs would lurk in the shadows and mug anypony who wandered by. It is far harder for them to do so in this light, though.”

“Wow… that’s so cool,” Primrose murmured. She smiled widely and leaned back against Scarlet’s chest, relaxing into her. “Ponies really have come a long way, haven’t they?”

Scarlet’s smile shrank at that question. She shifted on her haunches but eventually nodded. “I suppose we have, yes. The Fall broke us, but we’ve built a new life for ourselves. But we still have a long way to go…”

“You’ll get there,” Primrose said back to her confidently, a confident glint in her eyes. “I know you will.”

Scarlet smirked. “You sound sure of yourself.”

Primrose stood up and turned around to look at Scarlet more directly. “I am.”

The two were quiet for a second. The crystal tree gave off another gentle pulse, and the street lamps around the city grew in brightness somewhat to compensate for the increasing darkness of the night.

Primrose turned to look at it and raised an eyebrow. “How does it do that? Make the lights turn on like that, I mean.”

Scarlet stood up and looked over the guard rail at the base of the tree. “To be honest, I am not entirely sure,” she admitted with a shake of her head. “My studies were focused more on the events of history, rather than the technicalities of the objects throughout. I can only imagine there is an arcane engine at work directing it, or maybe some old spell to give it that function.”

“Ooooh,” Primrose replied, giving the tree another up and down look. Then, with her smile widening, she spun back around to Scarlet. “I like it here. Can we stay for a while?”

Scarlet rolled her eyes and got back to her hooves. “It all depends on what Lens finds in your lamp and how fast he finds it. That thing is pretty heavily warded, so it may take him a while to get any answers,” she stated before starting for West Hill. “Speaking of Lens, let’s go. We still need to find his home.”

Primrose followed shortly after her, a spring in her step. “If it takes him a while, can we explore some more tomorrow?” she asked hopefully. “This place is really pretty. I wanna see more of it.”

Scarlet chuckled at the foal’s energy before lifting her onto her back with her magic. “We’ll see, Prim. We’ll see,” she said as they left the great crystal behind them.

Lens

It took longer than Scarlet would have liked to finally get a concrete address. The hour was well past midnight, and both her and Primrose were becoming visibly exhausted from the prolonged search and entire day on their hooves. A good night of rest would not at all be unwelcome.

However, as the two of them made their way up the street for Lens’ home, sleep was the last thing on Scarlet’s mind. After eight years, she was about to see Sharp Lens again. Eight years without any contact whatsoever. No visits, no chance encounters, not even a letter. How would he take it, she wondered? It was hard to tell, really. Eight years is a long time, a lot can change in that kind of time. Who knew if the stallion she was about to meet was at all as she remembered him?

All of those concerns and feelings of anxiety finally came to a head when the home came into sight. It was a modest, two-story building made of the same materials as everything else. What set it apart from its neighbors was the fact that the lights were on, and a few faintly-glowing runes were etched in various places around the property.

“Proximity wards,” she deduced after a moment.She took a deep breath and glanced down at Primrose. “Alright, Protea. This is the place,” she said softly.

Primrose glanced back up at her. However, instead of the relief or excitement that Scarlet had expected, the foal’s face only showed concern and worry. She was silent for a few seconds before leaning closer. “Scarl- Sorry. Sapphire, are you okay? You look nervous,” she asked in a low whisper, her eyes darting back and forth.

Scarlet blinked. “I do?” she parroted in surprise.

Primrose merely nodded.

After a few seconds of contemplative silence, Scarlet sighed and reluctantly nodded her head. “Yes, I suppose I am nervous. A little. I just haven’t seen him since the war...” she relented, turning her eyes to the home. It looked far larger than something its size should have, almost towering over her like an imposing tyrant.

Fighting back the urge to shudder, Scarlet drew herself up and began her approach. “Come on. He has proximity wards up, he’ll know we’re here. Let’s not keep him waiting.”

Primrose stayed close to Scarlet’s side, any other comments she had dying in her throat.

Suddenly, as they were coming up to the thick wooden door, a loud crash came from the other side, followed shortly by an exasperated exclamation. Scarlet and primrose both leaned back out of reflex to the burst of sound, and each gave the other a questioning look.

And then the door opened, revealing the sole occupant of the house.

Scarlet’s breath hitched in her throat. He looked just like she remembered him.

Standing in the doorway and dusting himself off, was a unicorn stallion. He was wearing a simple blue shirt with a green bandana hanging loosely over his shoulders. His fur was a dull brown color, like a fine coating of dust, while his mane and tail were a few shades darker and rather messy. A pair of circular glasses that were balanced perfectly on his nose framed his ocean blue eyes. From this angle, Scarlet caught a brief glimpse of his cutie mark, a magnifying lens with a glowing magic rune reflected in the glass.

He stared at her, eyes wide in disbelief and his jaw hanging open. Scarlet wasn’t much better, blinking a few times and trying desperately to find her words.

Finally, though, it was Lens who spoke. “Wha… Ahem! Oh, uh, Scarlet! I, uh, um…” he babbled quickly, reaching up to rub the back of his head. “I, uh, I wasn’t expecting you! It’s, uh, it’s been a long time!”

“Eight years,” Scarlet acknowledged through the lump in her throat. “It’s been eight years.”

“Yeah, it has. Wow, uh, uhm…” Lens looked around for a second, clearly not sure what to make of this turn of events. Eventually, his eyes settled on Primrose, who was peeking nervously from behind Scarlet. Lens focused on her and slowly lowered himself down to be at her eye level. “Oh… hi, there… is this your daughter?”

“N-no!” Scarlet immediately shot that notion down before she could stop herself. The volume and sharpness of her denial drew a questioning glance from Lens. She cleared her throat, composing herself. “No, no, she isn’t my daughter. I’m just looking after her for now. May we come inside?”

Lens stared at her for a few more seconds. His glasses slid down his muzzle a few inches, and that seemed to snap him back to reality. “Oh! Of course, of course, come on in! Make yourself at home!” he invited while backpedaling in and stepping aside.

Scarlet let out a sigh of relief before nodding at the filly behind her. “You go first.”

Primrose nodded shakily, then did as she was told, quickly scampering inside. Scarlet hesitated for a moment, taking a long deep breath and forcing her raging thoughts under control. Then, with her head held high, she too stepped in and closed the door behind her.

The room she entered was spacious but did not come with any seats. All along the walls were a series of framed maps, sketches, certificates and one or two artistic renditions of what some scholars believed Old Equestria looked like in its prime. Between those were bookcases, each one full to bursting with what would look to be scrap metal and junk, as well as a lot of books. A simple chandelier dangled from the ceiling, the crystal formation at its core emitting gentle golden light, in stark contrast to the purples from outside.

Lens stood in the center of it all, looking at her and Primrose with an obvious blend of confusion and excitement. He smiled broadly and stepped closer once the door was closed. “It’s good to see you again, Scarlet. How have you been?”

Scarlet winced. “I’ve been through hell and back, and when we leave here I’m diving back in again,” she wanted to say. But such an assertion would only invite concern and questions, both of which would be better off evaded. So instead she offered up a small smile. “I’m doing fine, Lens, thank you for asking.”

“That’s good to hear,” Lens said before looking down at Primrose. He studied her for a second before looking at Scarlet again. “So, uh, you gonna introduce us?”

“I’m Primrose,” the foal answered before Scarlet could, her voice low and timid. It was almost as anxious as it had been when Scarlet had first found her in her wine cellar.

“Primrose, huh? That’s a pretty name,” Lens noted before standing upright. “So, uh, Scarlet. I’m really glad to see you again, believe me, I am, but uh… what are you doing here?”

Scarlet was quiet for a second, her expression steadily becoming one of apology. “I’m sorry, Lens, but I’m afraid this isn’t a social visit. We need you to identify something, and then we should be on our way.”

It was like somepony had popped a particularly bright and cheerful balloon. Lens’ whole external demeanor shifted from elated confusion to abject disappointment. “Wha… really?” he asked as if hoping he had misheard her.

Scarlet looked down and to the side, unwilling to stare into those eyes. “Really. Again, I am sorry…”

Lens was silent for several moments, working his jaw from side to side. His disappointed expression steadily faded away, replaced with a neutral look. “Alright… uh, what is it you need me to identify?” he asked, his tone becoming simple and direct.

Scarlet turned to Primrose. “Show him.”

She hesitated, glancing back and forth between Scarlet and Lens with uncertainty. Before long, though, she withdrew the lamp from her saddlebags and held it out to him without a word.

Lens’ eyes widened, and some of the excitement from before returned to his features. “Woah! Lemme see that!” he chattered, his horn lighting up with blue light and pulling the lamp up to his face. He examined it carefully, squinting and humming to himself.

“It’s heavily warded,” Scarlet explained, stepping up to give it another close look herself. “That’s why we came to you. We were hoping your understanding of such things could tell us more about it.”

Lens didn’t say anything at first. He got a curious look on his face, and the glow on his horn grew brighter. Scarlet didn’t have time to stop him before he applied the tip to the lamp and tried to scan it.

Well, at least now she knew what it looked like from the outside.

Lens spasmed where he stood with a loud exclamation, his entire body lighting up as if struck by a lightning bolt. Scarlet could have sworn that, for a fraction of a second, she could see his skeleton silhouetted through his body. Then, with his cry tapering off, Lens dropped the lamp to the floor with a heavy thunk. He stumbled back, a hoof pressed to his head and his eyes wide. “Woah! Okay, yeah, heavily warded, I believe you,” he stammered out.

Scarlet couldn’t help but giggle to herself at the display. She was quick to compose herself and return to his side, though. “Are you alright? That looked pretty painful.”

“Well, my skull feels like I dropped a train car on it, but otherwise, yeah, I’m fine,” he dismissed her with a wave of his hoof before focusing on the lamp again. Now treating it with far more caution and respect, he lifted it in his magic and gave it another look. “Wow… where did you get this thing?”

“It’s been in my family for generations,” Primrose said, trotting forward with a little more confidence. It seemed she was taking some comfort in Scarlet’s casual candor around him. “But I dunno what it really is. Neither did my mom or dad. We were just supposed to protect it.”

Lens nodded slowly, his eyes never leaving the lamp. “I see… and where are your parents?”

Primrose’s ears folded back, her hoof scuffing along the ground. “Um… t-they…”

“Lens…” Scarlet suddenly interjected, getting his attention and looking into his eyes. “Trust me when I say that is one question you do not want the answer to.”

Lens gaped at her for several moments before clearing his throat. “Right. Sorry. Not my business, I get it,” he mumbled dejectedly before looking at the lamp once more. “Well… with all the wards this thing has on it, figuring anything out will take me a few days, at least, and I’ll need to bust out a few tools.”

“That’s fine, the lamp is pretty much indestructible,” Scarlet assured with a nod.

“Alright. I’ll get a start on it in the morning,” Lens said, his smile returning. “In the meantime, uh, would you two like to spend the night here? I mean, I have a guest room and plenty of room.”

Scarlet glanced back at Primrose, a cringe on her face. “I… appreciate the thought, Lens, but I think we’d rather use an inn-”

“No no, I insist,” Lens asserted with a raised hoof and a stern look. “No offense, you two, but you look terrible. Like, weeks of travel on the road terrible. You need a good bed, a roof over your heads, and going to an inn will just eat up your bits. I have space, food, and beds.”

“Lens, really,” Scarlet went on to protest. “I really have to decline. We’re already invading your-”

“Scarlet, stop,” Lens suddenly interrupted her, his eyes boring into hers with such intensity that any further words died in her throat. He stepped closer to her, lowering his voice. “Please, just… just stay here for a while, okay? I haven’t seen you in so long, and… I really missed you. Can I at least have a chance to catch up?”

“Lens…” Scarlet whispered, taking a step back. His eyes kept boring into her, though, making her squirm uncomfortably in place. Why did he of all ponies have to be good at looking at her like that?! It was so unfair! Eventually, Scarlet sighed in defeat and lowered her head. “Alright… thank you, Lens. Where is the guest room?”

Lens’ face lit up with a cheerful smile. “You’re welcome. The guest room is right up the stairs, the one on the left. My room is right across the hall from it,” he directed with a point of his hoof. That said, he lifted the lamp in front of him and gave it another quizzical look. “Go ahead and get comfortable. I’ll go and get this put away, and then maybe I can get you two some food?”

“The food won’t be necessary,” Scarlet said with a smile, turning for the stairs on the other end of the room. “We ate not all that long ago. Feel no need to empty your pantry on our account.”

Lens took a step after her. “You sure? I have some of those big, flat pastries you liked so much. What were they called again? Elephant ears?”

Scarlet came to a complete stop. She slowly turned to Lens with a twitching eye and a crooked grin. “Okay, now that’s just cheating.”

Lens laughed.

Around an hour and a batch of elephant ears later, Scarlet and Primrose found themselves stepping into the guest room of Lens’ home. It was a small and compact room, featuring one queen-sized bed, a simple rug, and a lamp on the nightstand that emitted sunset orange light. A few small particulates of dust floated around the light and in the faint blue shafts of light coming in through the only window in the room that gave a stunning view of the city.

Scarlet couldn’t help the immense sigh of relief that fled her lungs when she finally dropped her saddlebags to the floor and crumpled onto the bed in a heap. The tension that had built up in her entire body from weeks of sleeping on a basic bedroll bled away like a glacier in a desert as the plush mattress practically swallowed her whole.

Primrose wasn’t long in following her up, her own saddlebags resting neatly next to Scarlet’s. The filly came up to the resting mare’s side and settled down next to her. “Whew… we made it,” she mumbled, letting herself roll lazily into the crater made by the larger pony’s weight.

Scarlet nodded into the blankets before lifting her head up. “Yes, we did. We’re here…” she whispered quietly. She rolled over onto her back and stared up at the ceiling, her eyes going unfocused.

They had finally made it to Shimmervale, they had finally found Lens, and hopefully, he could give them the answers they were looking for. Hopefully, they could finally learn something about this blasted lamp and just why Silent was trying to kill Primrose over it. With any luck, this whole situation would start to make a lot more sense and she could finally know what she had uprooted her entire life for.

Sadly, her good mood could not last. Scarlet’s relaxed expression gradually began to tense up as a question wandered into her mind.

What were they going to do now?

If Lens found any answers from that lamp, they could probably set their next destination accordingly. But if he couldn’t, or if something happened that forced them to leave prematurely, then what were they supposed to do? They were both wanted fugitives, after all. There was not a place in all of New Equestria they could go where they would be safe from Silent for long.

“Scarlet?” Primrose’s voice cut through the silence, drawing her attention. The filly had sat up on her haunches and was staring at her in concern. “What are you thinking about?”

Scarlet was quiet for a few seconds before staring up at the ceiling again. “I’m just thinking about where we should go next, Primrose. When Lens is done with your Lamp, I mean,” she answered honestly. After a moment, she sat up herself and gingerly pulled her cloak up and off of her head. She folded the cloth neatly under the metal collar and set it down on the nightstand by the lamp. “I’ve been so focused on bringing us here and getting some answers that I haven’t given much thought to what we were to do after.”

Primrose hummed, leaning against Scarlet’s side. “Well… Silent’s gonna find us eventually if we stay put,” she pointed out, shuddering at the name. “So, maybe we can just run?”

“Just run?” Scarlet echoed with a short, disbelieving laugh. “And where would we run to, Prim? How long would we run for?”

“I dunno… running is all I’ve really been able to do for the last five years,” Primrose mumbled, closing her eyes. “I never think about where I’m going or who I’m gonna meet. I just go and hope…”

Scarlet sighed and draped a hoof over Primrose’s shoulders. “Well, maybe that’s worked so far, but you said yourself that every time Silent has caught up with you, he’s gotten closer to killing you and taking your lamp. If you add me to the mix, he’ll catch us far more frequently, and I’m not a match for him in battle.”

Primrose shuddered, pressing herself up to Scarlet’s side as close as she could. “You really think he’ll kill you? You’re his friend.”

Scarlet hesitated, then nodded. “Yes. He was about to kill me in the alley when you intervened. We may have been friends in the war, but if there is one thing he cares about more than his loved ones, it is his job. He won’t hesitate to cut me down if it is his duty.”

Primrose was quiet for several seconds, her head lowering. After a minute, she shifted and glanced up at Scarlet again. “And what about Lens? He’s your friend, too. If he knew what was going on... if it was his duty, would he kill you, too?”

Scarlet leaned away from the question, almost appalled. “What?! No, heavens no! I know Lens! He hates violence just as much as I do, and…” she hesitated, the words catching in her throat. She mouthed like a fish, trying to find the right way to say it, before sighing and letting the words tumble out in a quiet whisper. “And… and I know he cares about me far, far too deeply to ever do something like that.”

Primrose tilted her head to the side, her muzzle twisting with thought. “Wait… are you two in love, or something?” she asked quietly.

Scarlet’s heart skipped a beat. She gave Primrose a disbelieving look, her cheeks turning a faint shade of pink. “W-wha?! B-but… w-well, I… I mean…” she stuttered, completely and utterly flummoxed by the abrupt question. But, after a moment, she lowered her head, took a deep breath, and answered it in a low, regretful whisper. “...We were, once. Before the war ended.”

“Are you not anymore?”

Scarlet was quiet, a conflict starting up in her mind that she had tried so hard to avert by simply not thinking about it. But there it was, a battle raging in full force within her own mind. She lifted a hoof up to her chest and closed her eyes, her ears lowering. “I don’t know, Primrose… I hope not.”

“Huh?” Primrose shifted back slightly, her eyes widening. “You don’t wanna be in love? Is he a bad pony?”

Scarlet shook her head quickly. “No! No, he’s wonderful! He’s charming, he’s optimistic, he’s clever, and while he’s a little scatterbrained, he is easily one of the kindest ponies I have ever met!” she denied before realizing how she sounded. She quickly cut herself off and looked down. “It would pain me more than anything to hurt somepony so good. And if we’re in love, then...”

Scarlet sighed again and looked out the window, catching sight of the moon dipping towards the horizon in the distance. “...Then saying goodbye will be one of the most painful things I could do to him..”

Primrose just stared at Scarlet for a while, seemingly lost in thought. Then, with a gentle smile, she leaned over and rested against the unicorn’s side again. “Well… I think he probably still likes you like that,” she murmured before her mouth stretched wide open in a large and unattractive yawn. “He was really happy to see you when we showed up.”

Scarlet’s expression darkened even more. “...Yes, he was.”

The two were silent for a while after that, Scarlet trying in vain to calm down the storm that was her thoughts. After a while, though, she slowly slipped off of the bed, earning a confused, albeit drowsy, glance from the foal in the room. Scarlet smiled back down at her before putting a hoof on her head. “Go ahead and get some sleep, Prim. I have a few more things I need to tell Lens. If you need something, come get us, or shout, alright?”

Primrose allowed herself to fall over so her head thumped into the pillow. In short order, Scarlet had tucked her in and turned out the light.

“Night, Scarlet…” Primrose mumbled from the bed as the unicorn turned to go.

Scarlet paused in the doorway and nodded back at her. “Goodnight, Primrose. Sweet dreams.”

And with that, she stepped out. She closed the door behind her, plunging the room into darkness.

Author's Note

And so our third and final main cast member enters the stage.

Fun fact: Scarlet's love of Elephant Ear Pastries is a character trait I inserted into this chapter purely as a gag, and I absolutely love it. A cute little quirk to offset so much of her serious tone and attitude.

Crystal

Scarlet found Lens sitting at the table in his dining room, his tired eyes wandering over the pages of an old, thick, leather-bound book. A glass of wine was on the table by his hoof, looking to have only just been started on. A few candles were scattered along the counters and a few shelves on the walls, casting an omnidirectional, gently flickering light across the whole room.

Scarlet leaned against the doorframe, her tired eyes settling on the stallion. She didn’t say anything or move for a long while. She just looked at him, taking in the details, noting any differences. And the longer she looked, the more she realized that, unlike her, he hadn’t really changed all that much in the eight years since the war. He had a few new wrinkles, to be sure, but other than that?

His eyes were still the same bright blue, a spark of energy and light practically visible within. His face was still just as Scarlet had remembered it, especially twisted into that stubborn and determined frown he would always get when reading a particularly interesting book. It was an expression that screamed ‘five more minutes.’

“...Lucky stallion,” Scarlet thought to herself, her face falling somewhat when she internally compared herself to him.

The silence was suddenly disturbed by a soft exclamation, followed by Lens speaking in hushed surprise. “Huh? Scarlet? I thought you were going to bed.”

Scarlet jumped in her skin, jarred out of her reverie. She looked up and saw Lens staring back at her with surprise written on his face, alongside a tentative smile. She cleared her throat and looked away sheepishly. “Oh, er… My apologies, but I am not as ready to sleep as I thought,” she said quietly, her ears drooping. “I’m tired, yes, but… you’re not wrong. It’s been a very long time, and…”

She sighed quietly and met his gaze. “I have missed you. Very, very much. And as long as we’re here…” she took a few tentative steps forward. “I might as well catch up with you.”

In an instant, Lens’ book thumped closed and drifted off to rest on the nearby kitchen counter. The unicorn grinned and gestured at the seat across from him like a foal pointing at a piece of candy he wanted. “Well, go on and get comfy, then!” he encouraged, energy and enthusiasm wiping away his tiredness.

Scarlet rolled her eyes and strode forwards, taking her place across from him. She had just gotten comfortable when a wine glass and the bottle itself levitated in front of her in a pale blue aura. She could see Lens’ expectant face on the other side, his smile eager and infectious even when distorted and ballooned out by the glass. “Wine? I know you like wine.”

Scarlet chuckled and nodded, taking the glass in her magic and allowing her host to pour her a drink. “It is my preferred beverage when it comes to alcohol, yes,” she acknowledged, watching as the red liquid filled her glass. Once it was filled, she took a curious sip and found it was a particularly fruity wine. Sweet and potent, just how she liked it. She hummed to herself in contentment before lowering the glass down to the table and smiling at Lens. “So, how have you been since we made our grand exit?”

Lens took a sip of his own wine before speaking. ”Oh, uh, I’ve been doing very well, thank you! I went back to Newcanter for a couple of years after the war ended and finished up my studies, and I’ve been on a few expeditions since then. You know, exploring old ruins, researching historical sites, that kind of thing.”

“That so?” Scarlet asked, glancing briefly towards the living room, thinking back on all of the old scribblings and books he had laying around in there. “I’m not surprised. You always did love anything and everything old enough to be coated in a thick layer of dust.”

“What can I say? I like knowing about the world around me,” Lens explained with a shrug of his shoulders. “And actually, I’ve been invited to lead another expedition here in a few months.”

Scarlet’s ears perked up, her eyes focusing on Lens again. “You’re leading an expedition?” she asked, not sure if she should be skeptical or impressed.

Lens’ grin grew in size and enthusiasm. “Yeah! There are some ruins up to the north of Newcanter, and the Solar Council wants them explored and their historical significance cataloged. Supposedly, they date all the way back to the Three Tribes era!” he exclaimed eagerly. “It’s up in the mountains, and they want me to lead it not just because of my experience in archeology and navigation, but because I served in the war.”

Scarlet frowned, idly tilting her glass so the wine inside swirled around. “Because you served in the war? What does that have to do with digging up some ancient ruins?” she asked before taking a sip. “I mean, I remember the trenches, we’re all too familiar with dirt and mud, but it’s not quite the same.”

Lens’ expression darkened for a moment before he replied. “Well, if the reports are anything to go by, there’s a giant dragon in those mountains,” he pointed out, making Scarlet pause. A dragon in the mountains north of Newcanter? This was news to her.

“Is that so? Is there any intel on it?”

“Nope. Just a big dragon that a few ponies spotted not long after they found the ruins. They only saw it’s silhouette flying around in the sky. We dunno if its a male or a female, if it’s all grown up or if it succumbed to greed, or if it has anything to do with the dragon lands' political structure,” Lens explained before leaning back in his seat. “So the council wants me and my military experience up there to help get around it and avoid any unwanted conflicts.”

Scarlet smiled at Lens before looking down at her reflection in her wine. He had really come a long way, hadn’t he? An established career, the respect of his peers, and enough of a reputation that the Solar Council itself was calling on him to lead expeditions to discover the past. She had to admit, she was a little jealous. She’d held down a job as a librarian, but that wasn’t exactly anything special compared to what he was doing.

She couldn’t find it in herself to feel that way for long, though, and her smile grew, albeit with some strain. “I’m happy for you. It sounds like you’ve gone up in the world,” she whispered before meeting his gaze again. “You deserve it.”

Lens chuckled and awkwardly rubbed the back of his head. “Eheh, thank you, Scarlet. I had to work up to it, but I’m pretty happy with how things are going,” he said before giving her a more curious look. “What about you? How have you been? I can only imagine what career you went into once you were hauled back to Swanrun.”

Scarlet’s smile twitched, her ears drooping just a little bit. “Oh, uh… I struggled to find work for a while, but I was eventually able to find stable employment at the academy as a librarian,” she explained before taking a sip of her wine. “Sorting books, answering questions, and in my spare time, a lot of reading.”

Lens blinked, a bewildered frown appearing on his face. “You? Working in a library? Reading? I’m surprised, Scarlet. I never took you for the studious type,” he noted quizzically.

Scarlet chuckled and shook her head. “Well, I have you to thank for that,” she told him with a quick wink. “You were always regaling our squad with trivia and obscure facts about everything we walked past. Eventually, I started to get interested in what you had to say. And the more I saw of war and how… mindless it is, I decided I wanted to learn more about history as a whole. Once my job was stable, I took every chance I could to read up on Old Equestria and the rest of the world before The Fall. It got to the point that some students actually started asking me about the period instead of their instructors. I became something of a local expert on the subject.”

Lens whistled, his eyebrows flying up and disappearing beneath his mane. “Wow. That's, uh… that’s pretty impressive in its own right, Scarlet,” he complimented before his expression hardened a bit. “As long as you enjoy the work, at least.”

Scarlet hesitated for a moment, biting down on her tongue to keep herself from telling him that her time in Swanrun was over, probably forever. So instead, she simply smiled and nodded while taking another sip of her wine.

Lens did the same, and for a moment, the two were quiet, basking in the silence of the night and the company of the other. Eventually, though, Lens leaned back in his seat, his eyes drifting up to the ceiling and a thoughtful look on his face. “So… do you mind if I ask what the deal is with Primrose and that lamp? How do you two know each other?”

Scarlet’s smile faded entirely, replaced with a hard frown. “Lens… please, don’t ruin this by asking me about that,” she implored him, looking down into her reflection again. “I do not want to speak of her, and I meant it when I said you would be better off not knowing.”

Lens blinked, clearly taken aback by her tone. “I… I’m sorry, Scarlet, but…. It’s just that you never wrote to me once since we were discharged. You never came by, never sent word, never visited, despite us promising to see each other. It was like you dropped off the radar, and I had all but conceded that I’d never see you again,” he explained, slumping back in his seat and taking a bigger swig of wine.

“But then, suddenly, you show up with a foal and a really bizarre magical item, asking me to identify it. I guess I just wanna know what changed...”

Scarlet was quiet for several seconds before heaving a soft sigh. “What changed…” she mumbled under her breath, her expression going distant. “The better question would be, what didn’t?”

Lens’ muzzle twisted with confusion, one of his ears lowering down to one side, making him look a little off-center. “Scarlet?”

Suddenly, with no warning, Scarlet swallowed the rest of her wine in a series of rapid and unrestrained gulps, uncaring about how it burned on the way down, or the sudden kick her senses took from the rush of alcohol. As soon as there was no more wine left to swallow, she set the glass down with a thunk and heaved a long, heavy sigh.

“Lens… tell me. Do you remember that night, by the pond in the woods? Where we decided we were sick of fighting, sick of killing?” she asked slowly, her voice devoid of any and all emotion. “Where… where we made love?”

Lens’ eyes widened, a slight red tint coming to his cheeks. “Er… er, wha, y-yeah, of course, I remember. It was the best night of my life, and the best decision we ever made as a team,” he eventually stammered out, clearly flustered by the sudden shift in the subject matter.

Scarlet was quiet for a few seconds, her eyes narrowing and her lips drawing into a thin line. “...After we were discharged and I was put under house arrest in Swanrun, I… I began to notice symptoms. Nausea, headaches, cravings, irritability,” she listed off slowly, refusing to look at Lens. “It didn’t take me long to figure out what had happened. I… I was pregnant… I was carrying your foal inside me.”

Sharp Lens audibly gasped on the other side of the table, and Scarlet heard the legs scraping on the floor. “Wait, what? You were pregnant?” he asked in a shocked voice, sounding unsure if he really believed it. “Wha… b-but… Scarlet, why didn’t you ever say anything? Why didn’t you come and see me or, or, uh, or even send me a letter?”

Scarlet closed her eyes, swallowing the lump in her throat. “...I never came to see you, Lens, first because I was under house arrest until the war ended for having sex with a member of my squad. Then, when the war ended, there was no way I could travel such a distance while carrying a growing foal in my belly. The journey would have only caused harm to the baby. And when she was born…”

Scarlet shook her head, her eyes closed so tight they began to hurt. “When she was born, taking care of her was more difficult than I ever imagined it could be. She needed me all the time, and… and she was so small. So fragile… I couldn’t come and find you with her when she was so little. The journey would have k-killed her.”

A long silence fell over the two for a minute before a gentle rustling noise told Scarlet that Lens had sat back down. “Okay, I get that, then… and we never exchanged addresses before, so a letter would have been hard to send, I suppose…” he admitted quietly.

“I’m sorry,” Scarlet whispered, struggling to keep her voice calm and even.

Lens was quiet for a few more seconds before leaning forward, placing one of his hooves on Scarlet’s. This finally drew her gaze up to see his tenderly smiling face. “So, uh… where is she? What’s she like? Can I see her someday?”

Scarlet’s breath hitched in her throat. Somewhere deep inside of her, a dam that had stood, teetering on the brink of total collapse, got a new hole in it. Emotions and memories she wanted to bury and smother began to leak through the gaps, making her chest constrict involuntarily.

The reaction did not go unnoticed by Lens, whose eyes widened in surprise before his whole face morphed into one of concern. “Scarlet? Are you okay?”

No. No, she wasn’t okay.

She took in a shuddering breath before pulling her hoof away from his as if it burned. “L-Lens,” she stammered out, more holes starting to form in the dam at the display of concern and affection. “Lens, I… I d-don’t… I can’t… you can’t...”

For a long while, Scarlet tried and failed to formulate a coherent sentence. Her jaw hung open uselessly while her eyes bored into his, pleading for him to let it go, to stop looking at her like that so she could patch up the damage and be done with it. But, alas, fate conspired against her, and Lens’ worried features only became more so.

“Scarlet, what’s wrong?” he asked in barely even a whisper, rising from his seat and circling around towards her. “It’s okay, you can talk to me. Tell me what’s going on. If there’s some kind of problem, maybe I can help.”

That was the last straw.

The dam broke.

Scarlet screwed her eyes shut and held out a hoof to keep Lens away. Not that she needed it, because the barely stifled sob of grief that tore past her lips without her consent was more than enough to halt the stallion in his tracks. He stared at her, eyes wide in disbelief as she began to cry openly, tears spilling down her cheeks and her entire body starting to shake like mad.

For almost a full minute did this carry on, Lens completely at a loss for what to do. Finally, Scarlet managed to compose herself enough to speak, her voice hoarse, and her eyes still watering. She sniffled, took a deep breath, and turned to look at Lens again. “C-crystal… her name w-was Crystal Clear… a-and she’s dead,” she choked out, uttering the name for the first time in four months.

The look on Lens’ face only made her pain worse. He took a step back, his entire demeanor withering with dread. “Wha… what?” he asked slowly, his voice carrying barely any strength behind it.

Scarlet looked down at her hooves folded on the table and nodded. “She… she was murdered… by a changeling,” she started, closing her eyes and trying to think of something else. Her first battle against the griffins, the night she’d made love with the stallion right next to her, anything. But none of those memories were powerful enough to erase the images now flooding into her mind.

Scarlet choked down another sob before finally finding her words. “It happened ab-bout three m-months ago. W-we were making plans to leave Swanrun a-and come see y-you. Sh-she was almost eight years old… I thought she was old enough to make the journey with me there to guide her…”

The image of the Swanrun market place flashed into her mind, and she could practically hear the hustle and bustle of a thousand ponies milling through the streets while merchants peddled their wares, calling out to be heard over the competition. She could feel the claustrophobia of it all, and the stone beneath her hooves. And, of course, the small hoof curled around her own.

“What happened…?” Lens asked in a whisper, slowly lowering himself onto his haunches.

Scarlet shuddered involuntarily, another sob escaping her. “B-but we got separated in the crowd… there were s-so many ponies. We lost track of each other, and I looked everywhere for h-her…” she explained, her body trembling more and more with every word she spoke. “Th-then… everything broke into a panic. Ponies started r-running and screaming, and… and… it had her...”

Lens’ face went ashen, and he swallowed heavily. “It… had her?” He echoed, his own voice starting to shake.

Scarlet nodded. “Mhmm… I-it was hiding in an alleyway somewhere, and C-crystal stumbled on it… when she screamed for help, it g-grabbed her, held her hostage… it was trying to use her so it could get away…” she winced, her ears drooping and more tears spilling down her cheeks. “I felt so powerless. There was nothing I c-could do… if I attacked, it would kill her. If I let it go, it would kill her…”

“The city watch didn’t try to save her?” Lens probed, sounding as if he didn’t really want to know the answer.

Scarlet scoffed. “Save her? No… as far as they were concerned, there w-was a changeling in Swanrun. Leaving it alive would mean the death of even more ponies… killing it was all they cared about. Nothing else mattered… not even my little girl… and w-when it r-realized they weren’t going to b-back down, it… it...”

She could say no more. Scarlet let her face fall forward, burying it in her hooves on the table and emitting a storm of sobs. Violent tremors ravaged her whole body as grief-stricken wails long-buried were finally released. As she screamed, images and memories she had wanted to never see again began to flare inside her mind.

The body in her trembling hooves felt far heavier than it should have. She was barely able to find her breath as the terrible sight stared back up at her.

“Please, no! No, no, no! Say something! Stay with me! Look at me! PLEASE!” Scarlet begged, desperately trying to staunch the bleeding from the chunk of missing flesh from Crystal’s throat. The filly’s blue eyes stared back up at her, wide with shock and terror and starting to glaze over. Her mouth hung open in an eternally silent scream of agony, a trickle of yet more blood leaking out the corner and adding to the stains on Scarlet’s hooves.

Somewhere, far off in the distance, a crack of thunder rolled across the world.

For a long while, Scarlet’s uncontrollable sobbing was all that could be heard in that dining room. After a short time, she felt Lens’ hoof rest on her shoulder and give a firm squeeze, trying to comfort her. But she was inconsolable, her hooves curling closer together as the long-buried desire to just hold her little girl one more time made itself known.

Finally, after what felt like an eternity, she lifted her head and looked at him, their eyes meeting. His expression was broken much like hers, but for the moment, at least, he seemed to be keeping himself under control. He closed his eyes and gave her a gentle nuzzle. “I’m so sorry…” he whispered to her. “I am so, so sorry…”

Scarlet screwed her eyes shut again and looked away, another series of agonized sobs ravaging her system. “I f-failed her… I l-let her down…” she choked out between her grieving wails. “I s-shouldn’t have lost t-track of her… I should have protected her… I should have… I should have…”

Her words trailed off, and she once again broke down entirely. Lens didn’t say anything, simply keeping his hoof on Scarlet’s shoulder.

Finally, after what felt like an eternity, Scarlet’s wails died down, and she was able to lift her head and blink the remaining tears from her eyes. She took a long, shaky breath, and turned to look at Lens.

“Are you going to be alright?” he asked slowly, his eyes never once straying from hers.

Scarlet hiccuped and looked down, a few more tears spilling free. “I… I don’t know, Lens… I haven’t been alright since I lost her…”

Lens was quiet for a few seconds, his expression solemn. Finally, he heaved a soft sigh and withdrew his hoof from her shoulder. “Scarlet… go on and get some sleep, okay? I…” he slowly turned for the door, his posture sagging. “I’m gonna get an early start on that lamp. I… I think better when I’m working, and I need some time to think.”

Scarlet nodded and rose from her seat, too drained to argue about it even if she wanted to. She wobbled slightly on her hooves, but quickly found her balance. She stared into the back of Lens’ head, her heart constricting with guilt. “...I’m sorry,” she whispered before dragging herself out of the room.

She was passing through the door frame when she just made out Lens saying something under his breath. “Yeah… me, too.”

Scarlet hesitated for a moment, wondering if perhaps she should tell him he had nothing to be sorry for. But in the end, she just couldn’t bring herself to stay in the room any longer. With a sigh, she dragged herself out and back up the stairs for the bedroom.

Primrose appeared to be sound asleep when the exhausted mare trudged in. The foal was curled up under the blankets, her long and wild tail held in her hooves like an additional blanket. Scarlet stared at her for several moments, her eyes distant.

“I failed one filly…” she thought to herself as she slumped onto the bed, her magic sluggishly pulling the blankets over her. “I won’t fail this one, too.”

Her eyes fluttered closed, and she felt herself drifting off to sleep within seconds. But before she succumbed entirely to its alluring embrace, she was numbly aware of a small body shimmying up to her, and a pair of skinny forelegs wrapping around her in a tender embrace.

With her mind falling away, she didn’t even realize it when she returned the embrace, holding the small foal close to her heart.

Author's Note

And so Scarlet reveals a critical piece of her backstory. This is one of two or three chapters that I hope will add a whole new meaning to a lot of earlier chapters on a second reading.

Ambush

A father.

For the last eight years, Sharp Lens had been a father and never even knew. And now… now he’d never gotten a chance to meet his daughter. He would never get a chance to hold her, to see her face, or get to know her. She was dead, now… murdered by a changeling in her own home town. If fate had a mind of its own, then it was a cruel, cruel mistress.

Those thoughts and many, many more raged within Lens’ mind as he hunched over his workbench, a pair of comically large and clunky metal goggles covering his eyes and magnifying his view of the glowing crystal lamp in his hooves several times over. His hooves worked on autopilot, as did his horn. His hooves applied a tool to the lamp, a light touch or a gentle scrape, his eyes observed the reaction, and his horn jotted down anything of note on a nearby note pad with a quill.

But despite already having a stack of notes on the arcane oddity, his mind was barely absorbing any of it. It was old, it was heavily warded, and if he had to make a deduction, he assumed that something was held inside of it. Whatever that might have been, though, he had absolutely no idea, and at the moment, he didn’t rightly care.

“...Scarlet,” he finally breathed after what felt like hours of work. With a heavy sigh and his shoulder sagging with exhaustion, he pried the goggles off of his head and set them to one side with a loud, metallic thunk. He lifted his head, his eyes glossing over the scrambled and haphazard appearance of his workshop. There were diagrams, notes, and illustrations pinned all over the walls, while tools and parts were scattered across tables and stuffed into drawers to the bursting point.

“You should have come sooner,” he went on in barely even a whisper. “Or tried to reach out. I know you could have found a way…”

He stood there for a while, completely still and trying to imagine what his daughter had looked like. What color had she been? Did she have a short or long mane and tail? What color were they? Was she a unicorn? Probably, given that was what both of her parents were…

Lens let out a quiet growl of frustration before closing his eyes taking a deep breath. When he let it out, he opened his eyes and noticed just how heavy the lids were getting. He frowned and glanced at the pile of notes he had accumulated. Curious, he peered over them and began to read what he had written down if only to distract himself and make sure he had it all memorized. Scarlet and Primrose had come all this way so he could study it, had they not?

But as he studied the pages, the words began to blur together or split into two or more copies that drifted aimlessly across his vision. Lens blinked several times before giving off a humorless chuckle and a shake of his head. “Figures… too tired to even read,” he grumbled before setting the notes aside on his workbench and heading for the door. He could read them to his guests in the morning.

Suddenly, a high-pitched ping sounded in his ears, and a short spark of magic danced along his horn. Lens stopped in his tracks, his eyes narrowing. Someone had just tripped one of his proximity runes. Someone new was on his property. But who?

Before he could contemplate it any further, there came the sound of three short knocks on his front door. Lens blinked a few times to clear his vision before dragging himself tiredly out of his workshop and for the front door. “This had better be really good,” he grumbled to himself before throwing the door open with his magic and glaring out.

“Hello, Lens,” the dark armored pegasus on the other side greeted in a smooth, level-tone, his eyes flashing with recognition.

Lens’ eyes widened, and his jaw fell open. “Wha… Silent? Silent Edge? Er, that is your name, right?” he asked, adjusting his glasses on his face with a hoof.

“The very same,” Silent replied with a respectful nod of his head. “I do not wish to waste your time or mine, for that matter, so I shall be brief. You are currently housing two wanted fugitives and a highly dangerous piece of contraband in your home, and I want them turned over to me immediately.”

Two wanted fugitives? Lens blinked in confusion, his groggy mind trying to connect the dots. “Wha… I don’t understand…”

“Don’t be stupid, Lens,” Silent cut back, his voice gaining a stern edge. “Scarlet Frost, the filly Primrose, and the lamp the filly carried with her. Both of them are wanted dead or alive by the Lunar Council, and I am here to collect them.”

“Wait, what?! Uh, wha- j-just hold on one minute! What did they do?!” Lens demanded in confusion, his eyes going even wider and his exhaustion now long forgotten.

“That is way above your paygrade, Lens,” Edge shot down the question with his eyes narrowing and his wings twitching on his back. “I will not ask you again. Bring. Them. Out.”

Lens took a step back, sweat starting to form on the back of his neck. “I… I don’t…”

And then everything exploded into chaos.

There was a blinding flash of purple light in the center of the room, and Scarlet emerged from it with her cloak billowing in the residual burst of wind. Lens scrambled back, crying out in alarm before watching wide-eyed as the mare charged her horn and fired a bolt of raw magic right at Silent. The pegasus reacted quickly, snapping out his wingblades just as Scarlet emerged and catching her attack with them. He staved off the worst of it but was still sent sliding back several yards.

“Scarlet?!” Lens shouted, scrambling back to his hooves. “What in the world is going on?!”

“Where is the lamp?!” Scarlet demanded in turn, whirling to face him with desperation written on her face. “Where?!”

“M-my workshop,” Lens stammered out by instinct, his ears drooping. “But-”

Scarlet shoved past him without another word, all but tearing the workshop door off of its hinges with her magic before sprinting into the room.

“Hey!” Lens shouted after her. Before he could go to follow her, however, more pings went off in his mind. Three. five. Nine. The color drained from his face and his eyes turned back to the front door of his home.

Nightblades. Not counting Edge, there were nine of them, weapons drawn and converging on the home.

Acting by reflex, Lens’ horn lit up with magic and shoved his front door closed just as the first pony, a unicorn, arrived. He grunted with strain when he felt their weight slam into it, and he quickly ran to bolster it with his body weight. “SCARLET, WHAT IS HAPPENING?!” he screamed, his heart hammering in his chest.

The mare in question emerged from the workshop immediately after, the lamp floating behind her in her magic. “No time!” she snapped back before glancing for the stairs. “PRIMROSE! COME ON!”

Lens turned and watched as the foal came scampering down the steps, her eyes wide in panic and her saddlebags loosely thrown over her back. “Scarlet, he found us!” she shouted in terror, sprinting for the older mare. “What do we do?!”

“We run,” Scarlet replied simply, her horn glowing brighter before two curved swords made of pure magic snapped into existence by her sides. “And we fight through.”

“Scarlet!” Lens shouted as the unicorn at his door charged again. He was growing desperate, and it must have come through in his voice because Scarlet finally looked at him directly. They made eye contact, and her entire posture changed. She went from ready to leap into battle at a moment’s notice to staring at the stallion before her with unbounded guilt and fear in her eyes. He leaned towards her as well as he could from his door. “Please, tell me what’s happening!”

Scarlet opened her mouth to speak, but before she could, the window to the left of the door suddenly shattered into the room. Silent Edge swooped in, his eyes affixing themselves onto Primrose. “Got you!” he snarled before lunging forward, his wingblades ready to carve her in half.

Primrose screamed at the top of her lungs, scrambling back.

Thankfully, Scarlet was there before Silent could reach his target. Her horn swelled with light, her swords vanished, and a half-dome barrier formed in front of her, catching Silent’s swing with a distorted clang. She gritted her teeth and bent her legs under the force of the blow before shoving back.

Lens grimaced before dropping to the floor and crouching low, evading the expanding pulse of magic. Scarlet’s eyes flew wide in horror, and her swords began to materialize as Edge leaped forwards, his blades angled to bite into her neck.

Time slowed to a crawl, and Lens’ eyes widened. Scarlet didn’t have enough time to raise a proper defense. By the time she could conjure her swords or another barrier, Silent would have already taken her head clean off.

Instinct took over. Lens’ horn lit with sky-blue magic and latched onto Silent’s short tail long enough to drag him back. His grip faltered in an instant, but he had made just enough of a difference to make the pegasus’ attack come up short by mere inches. His hooves spread wide, an agitated snarl slipping past his clenched teeth as he steadied himself.

Scarlet capitalized on the window of imbalance, unleashing a blast of raw concussive force against Silent and sending him back into the wall. “Primrose, on my back, now!” she barked before turning to Lens. “Get out of the way!”

Her tone of voice left no room for argument. Neither did the two magic blades angling themselves to thrust through him if he did not comply. With a gulp, he ducked to the side. His ears were filled with the sound of splintering wood and a muffled scream of pain. He rolled over just in time to watch Scarlet blast the door into sawdust with a focused burst of magic, sending the three Nightblades positioned outside of it flying back.

Silent recovered at this time, his eyes flashing with rage. He turned and tackled Scarlet’s side just as Primrose was climbing on, sending them all falling to the ground in a tangled heap. They struggled for a brief moment before Silent reared back and punched Scarlet on her horn with his armored hoof. She cried out before falling limp, her eyes rolling up into her skull. With her dazed, Edge turned to Primrose, who was still pinned beneath her weight.

Lens’ heart went cold when he saw the look on Silent’s face. That wasn’t the look of a soldier carrying out his duty anymore. The dilated pupils, the manic grin, the tremble in his cheeks. This was the face of a bloodthirsty, sadistic predator. A predator that was now readying to plunge his blades into the frantically screaming filly pinned beneath him.

“NO, NO, NO!” she was repeating at the top of her lungs, tears flying free from her eyes while she tried desperately to pry herself out from under Scarlet.

“The chase is over, filly!” Edge snarled before thrusting his blades forward.

Only for a beam of magic to strike him in the face, sending him rocketing back into the opposite wall hard enough to put spiderweb crack pattern into the stone. He slumped to the ground in a heap, groaning in pain.

Lens was quick to get back to his hooves, his horn glowing even brighter as confusion, anger, and fear all surged in his veins. He encased Silent in his magical aura and forcefully shoved the stallion out of the window. With that done, Lens lifted his head and focused. His head began to pound from the exertion, but sure enough, a dome of pale blue magical energy expanded from his horn and encompassed his house, forcing the Nightblades back and denying them entry.

He could already feel the Nightblades chipping away at it, but at least now he had a second to focus on other matters. He shook his head to clear the fog and reached down to the still panicking filly. “Hey, hey!” he said to her, his voice firm.

Primrose looked back up at him, her breath coming in heaving gasps and more tears rolling down her face. “H-help us!” she begged through the quivers ravaging her small body. “P-please, h-help us!”

Scarlet began to stir, thankfully. Her eyes fluttered open and she sluggishly pushed herself back to her hooves, taking her weight off of the pinned foal. “Guh… ugh,” she groaned, slumping against the door frame. “Damn him…”

“Scarlet, for the love of the Five, would you please tell me WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?!” Lens demanded, stomping up to her. “WHY ARE THERE NIGHTBLADES ATTACKING MY HOME!?”

Scarlet made eye contact with him for a few seconds before looking outside at the barrier, which was already starting to flicker. She winced before lifting Primrose onto her back with her magic. “I’m sorry… I didn’t want you to get involved,” she whispered before looking at him directly. “I can explain it all later. For now, we have to run.”

“Run?!” Lens asked impatiently, his eyes narrowing. “Run where?! Those are Nightblades Scarlet!”

“If we don’t run we’re all dead anyway!” Scarlet shot back, her ears drooping. “Please, just trust me!”

Lens stared at her, incredulous. His mind was still a raging inferno of confusion and adrenaline, but in this brief moment of composure, he inwardly swore as he realized that she was absolutely right. The moment he had used his magic to hinder the ponies outside, he had made himself an accomplice. He was a target now, the same as they were.

He only wished he knew what they had done.

“Alright, alright, fine!” he finally relented, adjusting his glasses on his muzzle. “Where are we going?”

“Away,” Scarlet answered simply before glancing up at the barrier. “Is this thing mobile?”

“No, sorry,” Lens shook his head. “It wouldn’t last half as long if it were.”

Scarlet growled under her breath before turning to face the street. The Nightblades were still pounding on the barrier, and cracks were starting to form on its surface. She hummed for a moment before spreading out her legs. “Alright, I have an idea. Grab onto me. On my mark, drop the barrier.”

Lens blinked. “Huh?”

“Just do it!” She barked, her horn starting to glow.

Lens was quiet for a moment before shaking himself and placing a hoof on her neck. “Alright, I’m trusting you…”

She glanced back at him out of the corner of her eye. “...Thank you, Lens,” she whispered before facing the barrier again. She gritted her teeth and let out a groan of effort as a dense ball of purple light began to form on the tip of her horn. It twitched and crackled with energy, and the Nightblades all began to stop their attacks.

Lens’ eyes widened. “W-wait! Artillery?! Here?! NOW?!”

“Do you have a better idea to get rid of them?!”

“Something that won’t blow up the house across the street would be nice!”

Scarlet shook her head, making the ball distort and ripple. “No time. On my mark.”

“Scarlet…!”

“Three… two… one… MARK!”

Lens screwed his eyes shut and reluctantly dropped the barrier. At the same instant, he heard Silent’s voice crying out ahead of them. “GET CLEAR!”

The spell went off.

If Lens had to find a way to describe what it was like to hold onto Scarlet as she made use of her signature spell, it was like holding onto a full-grown dragon that was bucking like an angry bull. The sound was deafening, drowning out everything but the ringing in his ears. He could feel it in his ribs, in his throat, and in the floor beneath his hooves.

If the initial shot was powerful, the explosion was simply monstrous. His mane was swept back from the gust of air that tore out from the point of impact, and the ground shook so hard he almost lost his footing. Before he had a chance to fall, though, there was a tingle of magic over his body. He opened his eyes just in time for them to be flooded by blinding purple light, while an intense gale whipped at his body from all sides. It lasted for barely an instant before it ended.

They emerged from the teleport in the middle of an intersection that he recognized as several blocks away from his home. Lens fell to his haunches, gasping for breath and looking around with wide eyes. Soon enough, he caught sight of the plume of smoke starting to rise into the air from where his home was, and his ears drooped. “By the Five…” he choked out.

“Pray for salvation later,” Scarlet said sternly, hauling him back to his hooves with her magic. “We’re not in the clear yet.”

“B-but…”

“No buts, soldier!” Scarlet snapped at him before craning her neck to look at Primrose. “Are you okay, Prim?”

“I’m scared,” came the trembling reply.

“So am I,” Scarlet assured her in a whisper before turning back to Lens. “Alright, we head for the wall, and we teleport to the other side. Then we flee into the woods. Clear?”

“I…” Lens replied, his body going numb, and his heart hammering in his chest. Was this really happening? It couldn’t be. He’d left behind this kind of stuff years ago. Maybe he was just having some really vivid fever dream? Yes, that must have been it. Scarlet’s sudden arrival and her story about Crystal had left him in such an emotionally broken state that he’d passed out at his workstation and was having a horrific nightmare about his entire life being blown up in front of his eyes.

Sadly, such hopes were dashed when a hoof slapped across his cheek, sending a flare of fiery pain through his entire face. He reeled from the blow, bringing a hoof up to rub the sore spot before turning back to Scarlet.

“LENS!” She bellowed, leaning in close and glaring daggers into his eyes. “Get a hold of yourself! Were you a soldier or a baby!? We. Need. To GO! Do you understand me?!”

That finally snapped Lens out of his horrified stupor. He stiffly nodded his head, swallowing the lump in his throat. “Y-yes… alright, okay. Lead the way,” he finally said, his voice getting some of its strength back.

Scarlet nodded before turning and sprinting down the street, heading for the western wall. Lens turned and followed after her, putting all else but his own survival out of his mind for the time being.

Every so often, though, he couldn’t help but look over his shoulder at the pillar of smoke that rose into the air. Every time he looked, he could just make out the screams of the ponies who had been close enough to be affected.

“My legs…” the Nightblade mare at Silent’s hooves gurgled out, blood and tears running down her face in equal measure. “I can’t… I can’t feel… my… my legs…”

“That would be because you haven’t got any,” Silent thought to himself as he stared down at her.

It was true, her entire body was brutalized. Her legs had all been blasted off in the explosion, reduced to a liquefied smear along the stone streets that reminded the assassin of smashed raspberries. Much of her lower barrel had suffered similar damage, and there was no doubt that she was going to die, soon. “A pity,” he thought. “She was a good scout.”

“Sir!” one of the others called over to him, drawing his attention away from the sobbing corpse-to-be and back to the house. Luckily, it seemed Scarlet hadn’t gone completely mad. She had aimed for the street below them instead of at them directly. The blast had absolutely obliterated Lens’ yard and put a sizable crater in the street, but it had not caused any damage to innocent bystanders.

The same could not be said for his troops, though. Of the nine he had brought, only two were still in fighting shape. Three had been incinerated, one more was about to bleed out, and three had been given crippling injuries. One of them was never going to walk or fly again.

The one that approached him now was the same mare with orange eyes that had met him on the roof in Swanrun a few weeks prior. Amber Blitz, if he was remembering her name correctly. She came to a stop in front of him and pulled down her hood. “Sir, there is no sign of the target or the lamp inside the home,” she relayed simply. “It appears they teleported away in the confusion.”

“I see…” Edge said quietly before turning back to his fallen soldiers. His expression darkened. Scarlet just had to make things difficult, didn’t she? With a grimace, he turned to his last remaining soldier, a unicorn stallion who was frantically tending to the wounds of another injured Nightblade. “You!”

The unicorn glanced up. “Yes, sir?”

Silent nodded towards the wounded. “Take care of the wounded and deal with the corpses. If ponies ask questions, dissuade them,” he ordered simply before turning back to Amber. “You, you’re with me.”

“Where are we going, sir?” She asked, falling into step beside him as they started down the street.

“We’re finishing what we started...” Silent replied simply before unfurling his wings and taking to the sky.

Accomplices

Just like it had been back in Swanrun, everything became a blur for Scarlet as she led Lens and Primrose to the western wall of Shimmervale. Luckily for them, between their headstart and the chaos left behind by her artillery shot, the trio encountered no problems while in the streets. Before long, they had teleported to the other side and broken into a mad sprint toward the woods.

They must have been running for quite some time, Scarlet realized, as they eventually broke through the other side of the forest to find themselves at the base of the towering mountains that made up the walls of the valley. More than that, the sky was turning a soft shade of blue, informing her that the sun was about to rise.

“Stop,” she gasped out, coming to a halt and crumpling to the grass to catch her ragged breath. “Stop, stop… ugh… catch our breath...”

Primrose, still positioned on Scarlet’s back, slid off and sat down in front of the panting unicorn, while Lens flopped over onto his side a few feet away, his own breath even heavier despite having carried nothing. He had probably let himself fall somewhat out of shape over the years.

“Scarlet?” Primrose whispered, leaning forward and staring into her eyes. “Are you alright?”

Scarlet sucked in several lungfuls of sweet, life-giving air before she mustered the strength to respond. “I… guh… I think so… I’m just tired…”

“Tell me... about it,” Lens moaned in discomfort, rolling onto his back. “I haven’t… run that far… in… years…”

They all fell quiet after that, taking some time to catch their breath and calm their frayed nerves. Primrose, for her part, stuck close to Scarlet, occasionally glancing up at the sky to keep an eye out for Nightblades. Luckily, they seemed to be in the clear, for now, and nopony came to attack them while they were vulnerable.

Eventually, after almost fifteen minutes, Scarlet slowly began to push herself up into a standing position. She grimaced and hissed through clenched teeth as her throbbing legs screamed at her in protest to even the slightest motion, but she knew well enough they weren’t safe, yet, and staying put was a sure-fire way to get caught.

Once she was standing, she took a few wobbly steps over to Lens and reached down to help him up. “Lens, get up,” she urged quietly. “We need to keep moving.”

To her surprise, the stallion did not take her hoof. Instead, he swatted it aside and pushed himself up under his own power, his eyes glaring into Scarlet’s all the way. “Scarlet… what the hell is going on?!” he finally demanded, taking an angry step forward. “First you show up on my doorstep with a weird magic lamp, and then a full squad of Nightblades shows up telling me that you two are wanted fugitives AND that your lamp is contraband or something! And considering how fast you reacted to them, you knew they were coming?! Why didn’t you say anything?! WHAT IN THE WORLD IS GOING ON!?”

Primrose whimpered and shied away, her eyes darting back and forth between the two and her hooves curling up to her chest. “Guys, please… don’t get mad-”

“Shush,” Scarlet silenced her out of the corner of her mouth, her eyes never leaving Lens’. Se took a long, deep breath before looking away, her ears drooping. “...I’m sorry, Lens. I knew they were following us, yes, but I did not realize they were so close on our tail. I thought we had more time, and I had hoped that by not telling you what was happening, you wouldn’t get caught in the crossfire. I wanted to get what info we could out of you and then leave before you could be dragged into things. I messed up, I got you involved, and I can never take that back. I’m sorry.”

Lens’ nostrils flared in agitation. “That doesn’t explain why they’re following you to begin with! Nightblades are assassins and spies, Scarlet! They don’t go after just anypony! What did you do to piss them off?!”

“That’s what we’re trying to find out,” Scarlet responded, her voice becoming strained as frustration and impatience burned at her skull. “We don’t know, alright? All we know for sure is that Edge attacked Primrose and her family five years ago and has been following her ever since. For whatever reason, he wants her dead, and his superiors want the lamp. We don’t know what it is, and that’s why we came to you. We had hoped you could tell us what it was, and then we could be on our way.”

Lens was silent for a few moments. He took a deep breath, then another. “Alright… fair enough,” he eventually answered in resignation between grit teeth. “Still, you could have warned me what the situation was. I would have kept you a secret, you know?”

Scarlet sighed, slowly nodding her head. “I know… but I had hoped that leaving you in true ignorance would have given you the best chance of staying safe. Evidently, I was wrong...”

Lens shook his head before turning to look back in the direction of the city, his ears drooping. He was quiet for a while. No doubt a million and one thoughts were racing through his mind right now. Scarlet winced and looked away at the sight, guilt and shame replacing her frustration. Eventually, the stallion heaved a heavy sigh and closed his eyes. “...What are we going to do, Scarlet? I just lost my home…”

Scarlet cringed before turning to look at the surrounding landscape, scanning the mountainside for any possible routes. There were a few lesser-trod paths that weaved through narrow passes at various points, and each one would take them in a different direction. In truth, any of them would be as good as any other right now, as far as she was concerned. “...I don’t know,” she finally relented, turning back to Lens. “I was hoping that the path would become clear once you had studied the lamp and given us some information. Now, though…”

“We need to find someplace safe,” Primrose suddenly spoke up, drawing the attention of the two ponies. She shrank back a bit from the sudden attention but bravely continued. “Somewhere we can hide… we can’t plan anything right now. Silent and his goons are too close.”

“A place where we can lay low, huh?” Lens asked, bringing a hoof up to rub at his chin. “Well… uh… there are a few small villages peppered throughout the mountains. Maybe we can take shelter in one of them?”

Scarlet shook her head. “Not a good idea. We’re bound to the ground, while Silent can fly. He’ll be able to hit most of the towns in those mountains and spread word about us long before we can reach them. Going to any of them is likely to result in them trying to detain us. And I am not in any mood to kill innocent civilians to secure my freedom.”

“What about caves?” Lens offered hopefully. “The mountains are rich with old mineshafts and cave networks from when Shimmervale was first founded. Maybe we could hole up in one of them?”

“Assuming we can find one,” Scarlet countered, sweeping her gaze across the mountains again. “As plentiful as those might be, without a map showing where they are, we could spend weeks turning over rocks and find nothing. We’d be in the open the entire time. Too unreliable.”

“What about the woods, then?” Lens offered, turning back to the forest behind them. “It’s pretty dense.”

“It’s also really close to the city,” Scarlet countered with a huff. “Not to mention Silent is well-trained in tracking targets through such terrain. I know. I ran a few missions with him in the Everfree Forest during the war where that skill of his came in handy.”

“Well, then where are we supposed to go?” Lens asked with his brow knitting in frustration.

“I’m thinking, I’m thinking!” Scarlet shot back before looking away and taking a deep breath. She rattled her brain, trying desperately to think of somewhere, anywhere, that would be safe for them. A few ideas came to mind, but none of them really stood out to her as good fits.

“...Windrain,” Primrose suddenly whispered, her ears slowly standing up.

Scarlet turned to face the foal, her eyebrow going up. “I beg your pardon? Windrain?”

Primrose jumped slightly at that before looking into Scarlet’s eyes, her own starting to shimmer with hope. “Yeah, Windrain. She’s one of the ponies I stayed with in the past. She and her husband took care of me for a few months after I ran from Stonethrow. I ran before Silent could find them, so they might still be alive! They can help us!”

Scarlet hummed in thought, glancing up at the skies. It sounded promising. If Primrose was suggesting them, then she must have trusted them, given how shy she had been when Scarlet first found her. “Perhaps… what kind of ponies are they? And where are they?”

Primrose turned towards the south, her muzzle scrunching up. “Um… I know they’re south of here, somewhere. They live in a collection of farms and stuff, and I remember them saying that Shimmervale was a few days of travel to the north.”

Lens’ eyes widened, and he turned to face Primrose directly. “Hey, was that farming community called ‘Hoofrest Shire?’” he asked, and Scarlet turned to him with a small flicker of hope igniting in her breast.

Primrose nodded emphatically. “Yeah, yeah that was it! Windrain and Apple Juice, they run the biggest farm there, and I know they’ll take care of us!”

Lens’ face lit up and he adjusted his glasses once again, this time with confidence rather than anxiety. “I know where that is!” he proclaimed excitedly, his exhaustion starting to fade away as hope was restored. “If we follow the main road back towards Little Lapiz; then head east on a side road once we exit the second pass before the Glittering Woods, we should find the community in just a few days!”

Scarlet smiled in relief before kneeling down and ruffling Primrose’s mane. “Well done, Prim… I think you’ve just saved us,” she whispered to the foal.

Primrose shook her head to knock the hoof away before coming forward and pressing herself up against Scarlet, giving her a gentle nuzzle. “Thank you… I hope we get there. I really wanna see them again. They were nice to me.”

“We should probably get a move on, then,” Lens suggested, glancing up at the sky. “We should probably take a side road for a while and get onto the main highway later.”

“Good idea,” Scarlet agreed, hefting Primrose onto her back with her magic. “They’ll have it locked down tight. Let’s go.”

And with that, the trio set off, leaving the edge of the forest behind. Lens took the lead, heading for one of the lesser trails out of the valley. Scarlet followed along close behind, periodically glancing over her shoulder at the sky and terrain behind them for any sign of Silent. Luckily, the Nightblade was nowhere to be seen, and little by little, her dread began to ebb away.

Just because Silent was nowhere to be seen, however, does not mean he wasn’t there. He stood at the top of a cliff near the base of the mountains, Amber by his side, and both of them were watching the group as they left Shimmervale behind.

Amber turned to her superior with a curious look on her face. “Sir, with all due respect, shouldn’t we assault them now while they are tired?”

Silent shook his head slowly, his wings twitching at his sides. “No, Amber. They will be expecting that, and while Lens was never a direct combatant, his expertise with wards and protective magics would make a direct assault all but impossible, especially if Scarlet brought out her artillery spell again,” he explained before unfurling his wings and lifting into the air.

Amber followed dutifully after him, her brow furrowing. “Then what are we to do?”

“For now, we watch, and we wait,” Silent responded coolly, his eyes never leaving his prey. “We wait for them to drop their guard and think they are safe. Then, we strike and take out the foal before they have a chance to stop us.”

“Understood,” Amber nodded before her lips curled into a frown. “But… what of Scarlet and her new accomplice? Should we not deal with them as well?”

“Secondary priorities,” Silent dismissed. “Our orders are to bring the lamp back to Newcanter. If we can bring Scarlet and Lens with us as prisoners, then we do so, but we aren’t going to go out of our way for that.”

Amber eyed him from the side for a few seconds before focusing ahead. “Yes, sir.”

“It’s also because I don’t want to kill my friend,” Silent eventually admitted within the privacy of his thoughts. “Ponies I care about are few and far between… so please, Scarlet, when next we cross paths, do not give me a reason to cut you down.”

With that sentiment ringing in his ears, Silent picked up the pace, and he and Amber disappeared amidst the clouds.

Stories

The next week passed in a paranoid blur for Scarlet. She barely said a word the entire time, constantly looking over her shoulder to make sure they weren’t being followed, and bringing the group to a halt whenever she heard anything out of the ordinary. She didn’t want to run the risk of letting Edge catch up to them again. She and Primrose had been far too relaxed in their previous pace, and it allowed the Nightblade to be right on their tail.

Thankfully, her fears seemed to be unfounded, as no sign of the assassin or any of his lackeys was ever discovered. They seemed to be in the clear. That wasn’t enough to make her completely drop her guard, but it was enough to allow her to start getting some actual sleep when night rolled around.

They passed back onto the main highway after the first three days and made pretty good time after that. The familiar mountain passes they had gone through came and went, and now they were situated in a small campsite a few days of travel north of New Lapiz. It was night, the sky overhead clear with a bright full moon casting its glow over the world.

Scarlet was presently situated with her front half outside of her tent, her eyes on the starry sky, distant and unfocused while her mind wandered. Primrose was sleeping soundly against her side, the blue fabric of her cloak draped over the filly and providing her with warmth and security. Every so often, she would shiver and snuggle closer to the unicorn, making anxious little whimpers. She was probably having nightmares.

Lastly, there was Lens. He was resting on his belly in his own tent, Scarlet’s map unfurled at his hooves. His eyes wandered over the details intently, his lips drawn into a thin line. He would quietly hum or mutter to himself every once in a while, reminding Scarlet that he was there.

The two hadn’t said much to each other for the last week, and Scarlet imagined it wasn’t just because of how much she was focusing on keeping the group moving. Her heart withered in her chest as the notion occurred to her that he was still angry with her. She couldn’t blame him, if so. She had uprooted his entire life much like she had her own, the difference being he had not had any say in the matter.

Scarlet chose this path. He didn’t.

She lowered her eyes from the sky to gaze at the stallion in question. He was still focusing on the map, whispering to himself about something or another. The flickering orange glow of the fireplace danced in his eyes and along the frames of his glasses, lending to the intensity of his face.

Eventually, though, her prolonged stare drew his attention. Lens looked up at her and adjusted his glasses with a hoof. “What is it?” he asked quietly, careful not to rouse the sleeping filly.

Scarlet looked down, her ears drooping. “It’s nothing. I’m just thinking, that’s all,” she told him, not explicitly telling a lie.

Lens didn’t seem satisfied by her response, though, given the incredulous frown that washed over his muzzle. “What about?”

“...About how I completely ruined your life, for one,” Scarlet pointed out regretfully before heaving a sigh. “I know I said it already, but I am so sorry for getting you mixed up in all of this. I never planned on it.”

Lens was quiet for a moment, his own eyes lowering. He heaved a quiet sigh and nodded his head. “I know you are… but why are you telling me again?”

“Because I can tell you’re still upset with me. This whole situation is a giant mess, and I would not be surprised if you never forgave me.”

Lens blinked and looked at Scarlet directly. “Scarlet… I’m not upset at you for uprooting my life or anything,” he suddenly stated.

Scarlet blinked, a wave of confusion flooding her system. She looked up at Lens and tilted her head. He wasn’t upset at her for that? Then what was it?

He shifted on his belly before nudging the map off to one side. He folded his hooves in front of him and took off his glasses with his magic, a solemn look on his face. “I’m not even really upset at you, specifically… just… in general. Yeah, this is a big mess, but it wasn’t really your fault. If anything, I’m happy to just be with you again,” he began slowly, looking down at the grass.

“Then… what is bothering you?” Scarlet ventured, although the small worm of trepidation in her gut immediately made her regret asking that question.

Lens was quiet for a minute before looking directly into Scarlet’s eyes. “I… was thinking about what you told me that night in my dining room. I was thinking about… about our daughter.”

Scarlet’s breath hitched in her throat, and her heart skipped a beat. She looked away guiltily, her ears folding back. She opened her mouth to speak, to say something, to apologize, anything. But nothing came out. There wasn’t really anything she could say that would ease the pain she had no doubt caused him with that revelation. She should have just kept her damn mouth shut.

“I never got to meet her,” Lens went on slowly, his voice gentle and cautious. “And more than anything… that’s what’s bothering me the most about all of this. I never got to see her face, hear her voice, watch her play. Anything. All I have is a name…”

Scarlet swallowed heavily, her chest starting to clench involuntarily as the memories resurfaced. She felt Primrose whimper and cuddle closer to her again, and she instinctively draped a hoof over her to pull her closer. “Right… I suppose you’ll want to know more about her, won’t you?” she asked, barely able to keep her voice steady.

“If it’s not too much to ask, then yes,” Lens acknowledged tentatively. “But if it’s too painful for you to talk about right now, I can wait. We’re gonna be together for a while, I think. If you need more time to grieve-”

“I don’t need more time,” Scarlet hissed, cutting him off. She caught herself before she could say anything else and took a deep breath to calm her nerves. She closed her eyes for a moment to clear her thoughts. When she opened them again, she was met by the sight of Lens waiting patiently, no frustration or disappointment on his face at all.

Scarlet let out a breath and spoke again, far more calmly this time. “Forgive me, Lens… but I grew very weary of listening to everypony offer me their condolences after the incident,” she explained in a low voice. “I appreciated the sentiment at first, but the words eventually began to blur together. They began to sound hollow, empty, and insincere. I couldn’t stand it… I didn’t want ponies feeling sorry for me, pitying me like that. Especially since I didn’t see a single one of them lift a hoof to do a damn thing about it. Not one tried to save her, not one tried to help. Save for the city watch, they all ran and cowered with their tails tucked between their legs...”

“Well, if nothing else, you know that it’s sincere coming from me,” Lens offered. “She was my daughter, too… and I’d give anything to meet her just one time. You got to know her for years, and then you had to lose her… I can only imagine how horrible that must have been for you.”

Scarlet didn’t say anything for several seconds, her ears drooping. He was right about one thing, at least. She knew he meant it when he gave her his sympathies. She took another deep breath to force herself to calm down before looking at him again. “It was… terrible, yes. The worst day of my life, without question…”

“And I already heard about that. Tell me a different story about her,” Lens redirected gingerly, a reassuring smile on his face. “I can never meet her, but maybe through you, I can know her.”

Scarlet was quiet again, running through her memories of her daughter. Eventually, one came to mind, and a small smile spread across her face. “Crystal Clear was… a beautiful little filly. She had your eyes, my mane, and silver fur that gleamed in the sunlight. I think she got that from your side of the family.”

“My late grandfather, probably,” Lens mused quietly.

Scarlet hummed before continuing on, steadily losing herself in the memory. “She was so sweet. She saw the good in absolutely everypony around her. She was kind, she was playful, she was friendly… I can only think of only one or two ponies who actually disliked her, and they just disliked foals in general. She was smart, clever, creative… curious about everything… She was always asking questions… I think she took after you in that sense.”

“She sounds like she was a wonderful foal,” Lens whispered, his eyes gazing into the fire as he allowed himself to get lost in Scarlet’s recounting.

“She was,” Scarlet confirmed with a nod of her head. “Such a wonderful, precious little thing… and somehow, against all logic, that little ball of purity and light came from me. Me.” She laughed humorlessly and shook her head as if in disbelief. “Me, the hardass, jaded, cynical battlemage who left a trail of corpses in her wake when she served in the war… it didn’t make any sense to me. How could something so good come from something like me?”

Scarlet was quiet for a moment, allowing that question to hang in the air. She lowered her head towards the ground before she continued. “Eventually, I stopped caring about the how or the why of it. What mattered to me was that I had given birth to a foal so beautiful and wonderful that she melted my long-frozen heart… and I saw a chance to finally begin to make amends for all of the death and destruction I wrought on the battlefield. I saw a chance to bring something wonderful into the world and make it a better place, instead of taking away and destroying.”

She closed her eyes and gave a slow, wistful sigh. “She was my one shot at redeeming myself. My way of making up for everything I had done wrong… she was everything to me… and… and I’d give a-anything to have her back…” she choked out, her voice starting to tremble again.

Primrose again whimpered by her side, and Scarlet’s hold on her once again tightened. The camp fell into silence for a while, save for the crackling of the fireplace. A full minute passed, and Scarlet was able to reign in her emotions and get a hold of herself. She opened her eyes, wiped away a few stray tears that had formed, and looked over at Lens.

He was smiling at her, although the dark streaks running down from his eyes made it clear he had only just reigned in his emotions as well. He took a shaking breath and nodded at her. “Well… I’m glad you got to know her… and I know that she had a wonderful life while it lasted,” he said, his words strained as he fought through his own feelings of longing and regret. His gaze then drifted down and settled on Primrose, and his smile grew. “...And what about her? I think It’s about time I learned her story in detail.”

Scarlet glanced down at Primrose and only then realized just how close she was holding her. She laughed quietly to herself before looking up at Lens and nodding. “I suppose it is, yes…” she agreed.

“I’m listening,” Lens said, perking up his ears and paying attention.

Scarlet took a breath, cleared her thoughts, and launched into the story. She started off slow, her mind still wanting to cling to the memory of her deceased daughter, but she was able to force herself to focus soon enough. She told Lens about what she knew of the foal’s past, of how Silent Edge slaughtered her family, how he has been chasing her ever since, and how it all seemed to stem from that strange lamp.

She then told him about everything they had been through so far since they met. From their flight from Swanrun to their battle with the bandits on the road, to their shared meal by the riverside to their run-in with the pack of changelings. She recounted everything she could in detail.

Eventually, after almost an hour, her retelling of events came to a close, and she fell silent to allow Lens to process everything he had heard. His brow was furrowed in thought, and a thoughtful frown had spread across his muzzle. “So… that lamp is really important, isn’t it?” he eventually asked, his eyes settling on the small saddlebags it was kept in.

Scarlet followed his gaze to the mysterious artifact, her own eyes narrowing. “So it would seem. The question remains, why?”

“No idea… and I left my notes on it behind in Shimmervale,” Lens lamented, burying his face in his hooves. “Guh…”

“It all happened far too quickly,” Scarlet consoled him. “It wasn’t your fault.”

“I know, I know,” he acknowledged before his mouth opened wide in a large, unattractive yawn.

Scarlet’s smile turned just a little mischievous. “Getting tired there, soldier?”

“I haven’t traveled like this in ages, gimme a break,” Lens shot back before shaking his head in dismay. He pulled the map back over to him and gave it a quick look over. “Ugh… we’re still a couple of days away from Hoofrest Shire.”

Scarlet nodded and slowly rose to her hooves, careful not to wake Primrose. “Then get some rest, we’re getting up early in the morning. I’ll take the first watch and wake you in a few hours. Sound fair?”

“It does,” Lens agreed, rolling up the map and returning it to Scarlet’s saddlebags next to her tent. He yawned again before retreating back into his tent for some rest. “Okay, goodnight, Scarlet…”

“Sleep well, Lens,” Scarlet called after him. She stood there for a few seconds, unmoving, then turned to look at the still-sleeping form of Primrose. A chilly breeze washed over them, and she shivered, her little hooves curling up to her chest.

Scarlet smiled before using her magic to lift her cloak off of her body and draping the thick blue fabric over Primrose’s form. The filly immediately grabbed onto it, snuggled deep into the cloak as her shivering began to subside.

Scarlet smiled at her, and her words from earlier came rushing back into her mind.

“She was my one shot at redeeming myself. My way of making up for everything I had done wrong…”

Scarlet turned away from Primrose, her eyes scanning the darkness of the night around them for any potential threats, her determination to keep the foal safe burning stronger than ever. She was not going to waste this second chance.

She couldn’t.

Brutality

Silent Edge stared at the campsite from his perch among the branches of a tree. Amber sat next to him, watching it just as intently. Every so often she would glance his direction, a question clear in her eyes. Eventually, Silent shot her a look from the corner of his own. “What is it, Amber?” he asked in a whisper.

She jumped, clearly not expecting him to speak so suddenly. She was quick to compose herself, though, focusing on the campsite. “Nothing, sir.”

“Do not lie, Amber. You have been looking my way for the last hour. What is it?”

The pegasus mare was quiet for a few seconds before turning to face him more directly on the branch. “With all due respect, sir, I feel we may be wasting our time following them like this. Their tension is clearly lessened since their departure, so should we not strike now?”

Silent hummed in thought, considering her words. In truth, they had been in an open window to attack for the last couple of days, but he had so far neglected to give the order to step in. His brow furrowed, his lips curling into a displeased frown. What was holding him back? Amber was right. They had their chance, they needed to act on it before it slipped away.

He looked up at the camp again, his eyes finally catching sight of Scarlet’s distant form as she idly trotted around the edge of the camp. It clicked with him, then. He grimaced, cursing his own sentimental attachment to the red-maned mare. She was what was holding him back. She and the fact that he did not want to kill her.

“...Sir?”

Silent took a quiet breath to steady himself before rising up to a standing position. “You’re right, Amber. The time has come to make our move,” he decided, forcing down any affections he held for Scarlet. “I’m going to infiltrate the camp and eliminate the target.”

“What about me, sir?” Amber pressed, rising to join him. “Shall I create a distraction?”

“No,” Silent quickly dismissed. “Stay back and keep an eye on the situation. If I should call for assistance, lend it. Otherwise, do not intervene. Do I make myself clear?”

“Sir, I-”

“Amber,” Silent hissed at her, leaning forward and glaring into her eyes. “Do I make. Myself. Clear?”

Any further protests died in her throat. She nodded her head before taking a step back. “Yes, sir… good luck.”

Silent’s lips curled up into a very rare smile. “I don’t need luck, Amber,” he told her with confidence before allowing himself to fall backward off of the branch. His wings snapped out and slowed his descent, and he alighted on the grassy ground without even a rustle. He moved quickly, darting from his position and making his approach to the campsite. He kept to the shadows, his wings held close to his body to reduce his size.

He could see Scarlet maintaining her patrol, her eyes warily scanning the environment, especially the sky. Every so often, she would look up at the heavens as if expecting Silent to dive into her from above.

“Smart,” he thought to himself before making use of one such glance to slip in under her vision and dart behind the tent he knew Primrose rested in. “But not smart enough.”

He waited for a few seconds, holding his breath, to ensure that Scarlet had not noticed him. When he heard nothing to indicate he had been detected, he allowed the very tip of one of his wingblades to slide free. With slow and careful movements, he put the blade against the fabric of the tent and pushed through…

The night had been peaceful thus far. Scarlet had kept a diligent eye on everything around her, though nothing had yet to raise any alarm or suspicion. It was a little hard to focus, though, when her mind kept wandering back to the conversation she had with Lens a few hours prior to him going to sleep.

She briefly paused partway through one of her rotations to give off a quiet sigh. There was still a lot about their child that he didn’t know, and it pained Scarlet to no end that she didn’t have the time to tell him of it all right now. Or rather, that she wasn’t brave or strong enough to tell him.

Ultimately, that was what it boiled down to. It hurt too much for her to even think about Crystal, much less talk about her openly for any stretch of time. If it wasn’t so draining, she might have found it frustrating. Her ears drooped, and she idly kicked a small pebble at her hooves, sending it rolling away to disappear into the grass around the campsite.

A sound caught her attention, then. A rustling, like fabric shifting. She immediately perked up, her ears at attention and swiveling to face the noise. It was coming from behind her.

And then she heard Primrose scream.

Her blood turning into ice in her veins, Scarlet immediately spun around, her swords snapping into existence. Her eyes widened in shock at what she saw. Silent Edge was somehow in her tent, looming over Primrose with his wingblades extended and poised to thrust. The foal had just woken up, pinned on her back, with her eyes wide with terror and her hooves frantically reaching to pull herself away.

“PRIMROSE!” Scarlet cried out, starting forward.

Silent’s blades plunged into Primrose’s gut and chest.

Blood spluttered free from the small pony’s mouth alongside her injuries, her scream silencing in her throat. Her eyes, wide with shock, began to go unfocused and lose their shine. They rolled back to look at Scarlet, one of her hooves weakly reaching out towards the trembling unicorn before falling to the ground with a deafening thump.

Scarlet froze at the sight, her heart feeling as if it had just stopped in her chest. All of the warmth fled her body, leaving nothing but ice. She watched, dumbstruck, as Silent then pulled his blades free from Primrose’s body, allowing more blood to spurt free. A few flecks of it appeared on his face and chest, marking him. He looked up at Scarlet as if in slow motion, his eyes cold and focused.

It was getting hard to breath. Scarlet’s blood began to melt from ice and burn like magma in her veins. The edges of her vision tunneled and turned dark, focusing entirely on the sight of Primrose, the foal she had devoted herself to protecting, laying on the ground in a pool of her own blood, her eyes drifting closed.

And standing over her, his blades dripping with crimson...

Scarlet’s pupils dilated, and a furious scream unlike anything she had heard before tore out of her, making her throat go raw. Her swords flared and crackled with energy before she charged, a blast of magic flying from her horn.

Silent lifted his wings in front of him just in time to catch the blast, but he was not prepared for the sheer force behind it. His eyes widened, and he cried out in surprise when it sent him hurtling back through the air. The tent was uprooted and sent flying overhead, allowing Scarlet to continue her pursuit unobstructed.

“SILENT!” she howled as she chased after him, not giving him a moment to recover. She came down on him hard, and he barely caught her opening overhead slash on his wings. His eyes were wide, his hooves digging into the earth to keep himself planted. Scarlet glared down at him, hyperventilating and with tears burning in her eyes. “YOU BASTARD!”

Silent grunted and shoved her back to try and get some room to breathe, but the fire in her body made it impossible to stop herself. Scarlet charged right back in with a powerful horizontal slash that he barely managed to back away from.

She chased after him, the rest of the world fading away, save for the wretched creature before her. The creature she intended to kill. “You heartless son of a bitch! How could you?!” she continued at the top of her lungs alongside a flurry of blows. “She’s just a foal! What did she ever do to you?!”

“Dammit!” Silent hissed when one of her swords managed to put a small cut on his cheek. With a battle cry of his own, he ducked below another one of Scarlet’s assaults and leaped back while fanning his blades wide, putting a pair of sizable gashes into her legs. “Amber, support!”

Scarlet didn’t register the burning pain in her legs. The fire under her skin burned far hotter. “Why, WHY, WHY?!” she roared, dispelling her swords and unleashing another wave of magic at Silent, sending him once again flying back, this time into a tree with enough force to knock a sizeable chunk of the bark loose. Scarlet huffed and resumed her advance.

Movement, to the left.

Scarlet’s horn flared into life just in time to catch the oncoming orange-furred Nightblade that had been about to impale her in the side. She hauled the squirming pegasus in front of her, glaring into her eyes. “Get out of my way!”

The mare didn’t even have a chance to scream before Scarlet’s swords rematerialized and scissored her head off. She discarded the corpse to one side, seeing Silent picking himself back up from the tree with a hoof held up to his chest. He took a breath and looked up at her, his eyes only briefly registering the corpse of his companion.

Scarlet lunged at him, another miserable wail echoing out of her. She brought her swords against Silent’s defenses in a powerful swing, making him stumble.

She pursued him relentlessly, striking over and over with enough force to knock him off balance and force him into a retreat. “Damn you!” she shrieked with every strike, her voice cracking and breaking more and more. “Damn you, damn you, damn you, DAMN YOU, DAMN YOU!”

Silent finally ducked past one of her swings and shot past her, raking his left wingblade along her barrel and leaving a large gash in it. She growled through clenched teeth before spinning around to face him, firing off a shot from her horn. It glanced off of his flank, breaking his flight and sending him rolling to the ground.

Panting heavily, Scarlet advanced, her swords sparking dangerously. Silent looked up at her from his position on the ground, his eyes wide with an emotion Scarlet had never seen in him before.

Fear.

He was afraid of her. As well he should be.

Scarlet brought her blades over her head for a heavy downswing. Silent seemed to get his composure back at that moment, one of his wingblades snapping out and slicing across Scarlet’s chest. It was a shallow cut, but under any normal circumstances would have been enough to force her to back off.

Not this time.

She brought her swords down on him, his other blade only just lifting in time to catch the first one mere inches from carving into his skull. The second one bit into his shoulder, though his armor prevented it from digging in any more than an inch. He hissed in pain through clenched teeth, shaking from the strain.

Scarlet leaned down until her nose was right up against his, pressing down harder with her swords and forcing him into the earth. “I’ll kill you…” she snarled before rearing up and blasting him point-blank with a burst of raw, concussive force. Silent cried out as he was sent hurling through the dirt, creating a trench as soil and stone flew all around him.

Scarlet dispelled her swords and focused on her horn, gathering as much energy as she could. A purple sphere began to form, its shape distorting and rippling as she pumped more and more power into it. Even when her skull began to burn, and her eyes bulged in her skull from the strain, she kept charging. She didn’t plan on letting there be anything left.

Silent groaned in pain from his position in the dirt, half-buried as he was by loose stone and soil. He forced himself to sit up on his haunches, his body shaking. He shook his head as if to clear away a daze before looking up at Scarlet. His eyes widened, and she could see her spell reflected in his eyes.

“DIE!” she roared before unleashing the spell. The kickback was enough to send her skidding back several feet, and the sound was deafening.

Then the explosion came. Scarlet cried out when the intense winds it kicked up were enough to send her sailing back through the air a solid fifteen feet before she crashed into the ground, rolling and sliding an additional ten feet before finally coming to a stop. The air fled from her lungs, leaving her gasping desperately for breath. She didn’t dare stay down, though and forced herself to rise in spite of her pain. Her eyes focused on the result of her work.

Where Silent had been was now a large flaming crater, almost fifteen feet wide. A purple inferno blazed within, sending a plume of smoke rising into the air like a signal fire. Scarlet stared at it for several seconds, waiting for the flames to die away. She wanted to see the body. She needed to see the body.

But as the flames began to lessen, so too did the pillar of smoke begin to grow thin. Scarlet’s eyes widened, her heart pounding with fury when she spotted the silhouette of a pegasus hovering within.

Silent was alive.

His armor had been discarded in a hurry, and several injuries now covered his body, including an enormous and very ugly series of burns along his underbelly. His wing flaps were weak and somewhat out of sync, a visual display of his waning strength. His hooves were curled over his abdomen, his face twisted into an agonized grimace.

Scarlet snarled, moving to advance. “You fucking coward!” she roared, her swords appearing at her sides again, ready to carve him into pieces. It didn’t matter to her that they were flickering, now, she still had enough fight in her to see this through. “GET DOWN HERE!”

Silent winced, drifting back a few inches in the air. His eyes danced frantically back and forth between Scarlet, the corpse of his comrade, and the campsite not far away. After several seconds of indecision, Silent took a deep breath. Then, with no other warning, he turned and flew away, heading for the east.

He was running. Scarlet could barely believe it. The assassin was actually running away from her. But more than that, he was running from his punishment.

With white-hot rage flooding her veins, Scarlet dispelled her swords, trying to charge another artillery blast to incinerate him once and for all. “DON’T YOU DARE RUN AWAY FROM ME!” she cried after him, though the strength had long since left her broken voice.

Sadly, no matter how hard she tried to pour energy into the spell, she just did not have enough power left to form one. Sparks flew free from her horn’s tip, sending spikes of pain through her skull and forcing her to end it. Swearing, she watched as her enemy made good on his escape. In but a few moments, Silent was little more than a rapidly fading silhouette against the night sky, before disappearing altogether.

Scarlet stared after him, sending one last wordless shout after him into the void before everything finally fell still. For what felt like an eternity, she remained perfectly motionless, save for her heavy, exhausted gasps. A soft breeze washed over her, sending her disheveled mane drifting lazily through the air.

And then, with the adrenaline beginning to wear off, she slumped to her haunches, her eyes screwing themselves shut. Tears ran down her cheeks, her entire body shook, and her chest convulsed as anguished sobs and wails forced themselves past her lips. She reached her hooves up to cover her face and her eyes, hoping that maybe, just maybe, she could wipe away the horrible image that was starting to fill her mind.

But she couldn’t do it. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t force herself to think of anything but the sight of Primrose’s bloodied corpse on the ground.

She’d failed…

“Scarlet!” Lens’ voice echoed from the campsite some ways away, desperate.

Scarlet’s hooves slowly dropped from her face, all of the energy seeping out of her as her wounds started to catch up to her. Not that she cared all that much, just then...

“Scarlet, I need you!”

Primrose had needed her. But just like it had been with Crystal, when it really mattered, Scarlet had been unable to do anything to save her. Her one chance to make up for her past mistakes was gone, now… she’d failed.

“Scarlet, PLEASE!”

She was starting to feel tired… and she didn’t want to go any farther. What was even the point? Maybe she should just lay down and get some rest? Yes… rest. Rest forever. That sounded nice…

“Scarlet, she’s alive, but she won’t last much longer! HELP ME!”

That finally snapped Scarlet out of her miserable stupor. Her eyes snapped open, adrenaline flooding her veins once again. Primrose was alive? But how? She had been stabbed through the gut and chest! There had been so much blood...

Scarlet forced any questions out of her mind. It didn’t matter how. The fact was Primrose was alive, and that meant there was still a chance to put things right. She forced herself to rise, shaking and wobbling on her hooves as she did so. Bolts of white-hot agony shot through her entire body, but she forced herself to power through it.

“Please, please, please,” she begged to whatever would listen as she sprinted back towards the camp. “Don’t let her die!”

Run

It looked even worse than it had before.

Scarlet slid to a stop at the edge of the campsite, her eyes wide and her jaw agape as she took in the horrid sight. Primrose was still unconscious, her tiny chest rising and falling in a series of shallow gasps. With every single exhale she released, she also gave off a tiny, high-pitched whimper of agony. The pool of her own blood that had formed beneath her was still growing.

Lens was hunched over her, desperately applying pressure to both stab wounds with his hooves to try and stop the bleeding while rummaging through their saddlebags with his magic. He glanced up at Scarlet and nodded down at the dying foal. “Come on! Help me!” he shouted before chucking aside the apparently empty saddlebag and hauling over the next one.

Scarlet came up to his side and knelt down, her eyes frantically searching for something she could help with. “W-w-what do I do?!” she asked, her voice trembling in abject panic. “Lens, what do I do!?”

“Do you have bandages?” he asked immediately before passing the saddlebags over to her and focusing all of his attention on applying pressure to the wounds. “I don’t know what you have. We have to stop this bleeding, or she is going to die!”

Scarlet pulled open each pouch and scanned the contents. She pushed a few things around before finally finding a small roll of bandages. She lifted it out, a spark of hope and relief flooding her system. Alas, it was short-lived. The roll was small, and would not be sufficient to wrap around Primrose’s body enough to stop the bleeding from both stab wounds.

Lens became aware of this fact as well, his eyes briefly locking onto the roll and narrowing with dismay. “That’s not going to cut it. We need more!”

“We don’t have any more!” Scarlet replied, her trembling growing even worse. “We used a lot of it to treat injuries I sustained on the road a couple weeks ago!”

Despair and dread were clawing at her heart, and their ferocity only grew with every strangled whimper and squeak that fled Primrose’s blood-stained lips. What cruel twist of fate was this?! She had been granted a sliver of hope, a chance to make things right, only to learn that it was all for nothing! She was going to have to sit still and watch an innocent foal die all over again!

Her eyes fell onto the pool of crimson on the ground, her mind slowly blanking with renewed hopelessness. Lens was saying something to her, but her mind tuned it out. All she could hear were Primrose’s weakening gasps, and each one knocked her down just a little more.

But then her eyes caught sight of something out of place. Blue. Her vision refocused, and she saw her cloak, still on the ground where she had left it to serve as a blanket for Primrose. Well over a third of it was now soaked and stained with blood, but the rest of the blue fabric remained untouched.

Scarlet’s eyes widened, an idea coming to her and her hope reigniting, however faintly. She leaned over to Primrose, her eyes trained on the injuries. “Do the stabs go all the way through?” she asked urgently.

Lens shook his head. “No, thank goodness. Why?”

Scarlet took that as her cue to act. She unrolled the bandage until it was one long strip in the air. She measured it by eye before surgically snipping it into two, roughly even halves using her magic. Not enough to wrap around Primrose’s body, but enough to be folded several times and cover each stab wound.

“Move your hooves,” she ordered, focusing intently. Lens hesitated, then did as he was instructed, withdrawing his hooves. The moment he did so, Scarlet quickly applied each bandage to the wounds, folding them over themselves several times like a sheet of parchment made into a pamphlet. The gauss was already turning a deep shade of red, but it seemed it would hold enough blood for a time.

At the same time, Scarlet’s magic reached to her cloak and shredded away two long strips of the unstained fabric. Her heart twisted in her chest, and she visibly cringed upon doing so. She barely repressed a sob, but a quiet choking sound was still heard. Moving quickly, she brought the strips over and wrapped them around the small foal’s body, tying them behind her back in a tight knot and holding the bandages to her injuries.

“That’s not a permanent fix,” Lens pointed out, studying the arrangement. “That’s the last of your bandages. Without more, we can’t replace them, and Primrose could get an infection.”

“I know,” Scarlet growled bitterly, her skull prickling. They bought themselves some time, yes, but it was not nearly enough to save Prim’s life. She needed more treatment if she was going to survive. Scarlet turned her attention back to Lens. “But it buys us some time.”

Lens nodded before rising to his hooves. He winced and looked away, disgusted at the gruesome sight now that the immediate risk had passed. “Uegh… what do we do? Primrose still needs treatment.”

Scarlet huffed, her mind racing. Their options were limited… but one stuck out in her mind. She swallowed the lump in her throat before lifting her now damaged cloak and placing it over her shoulders again. She then reached out and gingerly lifted Primrose in her forelegs, holding the still whimpering filly to her chest. After a moment, she carefully placed her on her back and rose to her full height.

Her legs burned, and her own injuries reminded her of her presence, more of her own blood trickling down her legs. Lens looked at her with wide eyes as the extent of the damage to her own body finally registered with him. “And you need medical help, too,” he pointed out, grimacing.

Scarlet shook her head. “Forget me. Prim needs the help more than I do,” she spat before turning her eyes to the east. She set her jaw and narrowed her eyes, forcing herself to ignore her pain. “We keep moving, we go to Hoofrest Shire. The ponies there know her. They’ll help us.”

“That’s still a few days away,” Lens pointed out, worry clear in his voice and even more so in his pleading eyes.

“Not if we sprint and don’t stop,” Scarlet shot back, starting into a trot. “If we do that, we can get there by sundown.”

“Scarlet, are you insane?!” Lens all but shouted, baffled. “That’s way too far for you to sprint, especially as wounded as you are-”

“SHUT UP!” Scarlet suddenly roared, spinning to face him with her eyes ablaze and a fire raging in her skull. “If the trip is too long for you, then you can stay here for all I care! But I am not going to waste any time with rest! Prim needs help, and I’ll DIE before I keep her from getting it! Now keep up or fuck off!”

And with that, she turned and broke into a mad sprint in the direction she knew Hoofrest Shire to be. Her legs burned in protest, but the weight of the dying body on her back burned far hotter. Its weight and the dread it brought with it were more than enough to spur her on. She didn’t look back to see if Lens decided to follow her or not, but she could hear his hooves pummeling the earth as surely as hers were.

In the back of her mind, she was grateful for that. She didn’t want to lose him after all of this, and in the event that she fell down or passed out from exhaustion on the way, she would need him to carry on and take Primrose in her stead.

But those bridges could wait until they reached them. For now, Scarlet focused on her run, the faint tingle of death breathing down her neck, pushing all else aside.

Lens’ lungs burned with exhaustion.

“How long have we been running?” he thought to himself, his tired mind unable to register much else besides that and the sight of Scarlet’s tail bobbing up and down wildly to match her brisk pace.

The sun had come up some time ago, bathing both of them in warmth and light. However, it did little and less to quell the dreadful chill that filled their hearts or lift the shadow that filled their minds. Not even the tall and majestic mountain range to the north or the rolling hills of the glittering woods to the south were enough to alleviate their feelings.

“We must have been running for hours, now,” Lens continued, briefly glancing up into the sky at the distant orb of fire and light. It must have been noon, or perhaps a little after, and they were still going. He felt as though he would collapse at any moment, but somehow he was able to dreg up the strength to keep going.

Which only made Scarlet’s continued pace all the more impressive. Here she was, continuing to run at a solid pace despite being exhausted, sleep-deprived, and seriously injured herself. She had stumbled once or twice, yes, but never once had she slowed down. “How is she doing it?”

Of course, Lens knew the answer to that. It was the small bundle resting on her back, still whimpering every so often as her agony continued. From what he had heard about their developing relationship, Lens could only assume that Scarlet’s leftover maternal instincts for Crystal Clear had caused her to latch onto Primrose with every fiber of her being. An instinctual attempt to fill the gap left in her heart by her daughter’s untimely demise, perhaps.

Whatever it was, it drove her well past the typical limits of even a hardened soldier like herself. It was awe-inspiring, in a way... But at the same time, Lens found himself growing steadily more and more concerned for her. He could not miss the trail of blood that Scarlet’s injuries were leaving in their wake, or the increasing frequencies of her stumbles, or the way her breaths were coming out increasingly haggard and desperate.

“...She can’t keep this up for much longer,” Lens realized after a time, dread slowly starting to fill his soul. “She’s going to kill herself if she keeps going like this.”

That horrible thought finally stirred him into action. He put on a small burst of speed, despite the agonizing protests of his legs, until he was at Scarlet’s side. He looked at her from the side and spoke between his pants. “Scarlet! You need to slow down! You’re gonna kill yourself!”

“Save it!” Scarlet barked back, although there was next to no strength in her voice. She winced and shook her head before stumbling again. She briefly lost her momentum before pressing on, eyes focused forward. “If I drop, take her and keep moving!”

“I’m not going to leave you behind!” Lens informed her simply.

“Consider it my last wish!” Scarlet snapped at him before putting more strength into her hooves and forcing herself to pull ahead.

Lens stared into the back of her head as he fell behind, his jaw agape for more reasons than just to suck in air. “...Fine, then,” he thought to himself upon realizing he could not sway her. “If you fall, I’ll just carry both of you to the farm myself.”

With that determination blazing in his heart, he focused on steadying his breathing and continued his charge, his eyes remaining on Scarlet the entire time.

The sun was setting.

Scarlet and Lens had been fortunate enough to stumble on a dirt road, and the one or two street signs they had passed on the way told them they were heading in the right direction. They were almost there!

Scarlet, however, was starting to finally show signs of fatigue. Her pace was beginning to slow down, and more often than not, her labored gasps were accompanied by violent coughing fits. She forced herself to press on, though. They were so close, she couldn’t give in now! No matter how much her legs and lungs were both screaming and begging for a rest, no matter how much agonizing fire her wounds filled her veins with, she forced herself to keep moving.

Sadly, her determination was starting to run out. Slowly, her pace began to decrease from a full gallop. Without her permission, her body finally decided it had had enough, and the strength began to bleed from her muscles. Her neck gave out, causing her head to droop down, her eyes now staring at the dirt road beneath her.

“Come on… come on…” she gasped to herself, her vision swimming and her head feeling as if it were filled with a solid block of lead and dense helium at the same time. “Gotta… gotta keep… moving…”

She tried to lift her head as her pace devolved to a sluggish trudge, her hooves dragging in the dirt. How odd that she had four forelegs now… or was she just seeing double? It was impossible to tell. Her exhaustion was catching up to her.

As she reached the top of the next rise in the road, her hoof met a stray stone jutting up from the soil. That was the last straw. Unable to even cry out in alarm, Scarlet fell forward and crashed into the dirt with a heavy thump.

She heard somepony calling out her name, but through the haze and fog, she was unable to register the voice. She groaned weakly, barely aware of the sudden lack of weight on her shoulders. She looked around, her eyes lazily scanning for what she had dropped. Despite her blurring vision, she caught sight of it soon enough, coming in the form of a small teal lump with two blue stripes.

“P-primrose…” she choked out, reaching out with a violently shaking hoof and weakly pulling the foal up against her chest. Her already-foggy vision blurred even more as fresh tears began to fill them, her chest convulsing as the realization came to her. She had fallen. Her run was over.

Her vision began to go dark. She was just vaguely aware of Lens’ voice screaming out for somepony to help, but she didn’t have the mental strength left to care. All the world faded away, leaving just her and the small bundle of warmth clutched in her hooves.

And then she knew no more.

Farm

The first thing Scarlet felt as she came back to the waking world was the warmth of thick, soft blankets covering her body. It was a strange sensation, given that the very last thing she remembered feeling was unfathomable exhaustion and the cold hard ground rubbing painfully against her flesh as she collapsed onto it.

The second thing she felt was the soreness in her muscles and the burn in her legs. It wasn’t nearly as intense as she remembered it, giving her the impression that her wounds must have been treated. Slowly, she lifted her forelegs and felt over them, over each other, and over her chest. Sure enough, she felt bandages bound around her to cover her wounds and prevent them from bleeding any further.

But who had treated her? It couldn’t have been Lens, they had run out of bandages before they even began to run…

The run.

Scarlet’s eyes snapped open as she involuntarily gasped through clenched teeth. Primrose! What had happened to her?! She immediately looked around and tried to sit up, but a sharp flare of pain in her side sent her falling back onto the pillow with a hiss and a groan of pain. Her eyes screwed themselves shut as she forced herself to breathe, and soon enough, the pain died down. Then she opened her eyes again and looked around more slowly.

She was resting in one of two simple beds that occupied a small, square-shaped room. The walls were made of wood logs, while the floor was made of cobblestone that didn’t appear to have been cleaned all that recently. An end table was right by her bed, an unlit candle rested on it along with a wooden bowl, though Scarlet could not see its contents from here. A shuttered window was set into the wall above the table, through which Scarlet could make out the sounds of birds chirping and distant, muffled voices calling to one another.

Her eyes eventually settled on the only other bed in the room, while she wondered if she was alone. What she saw made her smile with unbounded relief, and she couldn’t repress a heavy sigh. For there, resting on her side under the blankets, alive, was Primrose.

“We must have made it, then,” Scarlet thought to herself, slowly peeling the blankets off of her body with her hooves so she could assess her own damage. She cringed when she saw just how much of her was covered in bandages. Both of her forelegs were wrapped from the elbows up, and pretty much her entire barrel had received similar treatment. She looked like a mummy from old Somnambulan hieroglyphs.

Suddenly, the door swung open, and a dust-brown earth pony stallion stepped in. His mane and tail were both short but scraggly, colored a vibrant dark red. A bushy mustache protruded from his upper lip that Scarlet could only imagine would soak up a lot of milk. He had a wide-brimmed leather hat on his head and a dark blue bandana hanging from his neck.

His eyes were focused first on Primrose, but quickly flew to Scarlet when he realized that she was awake. His emerald green eyes widened in surprise. “Oh! Well, howdy, ma’am,” he greeted, his voice perky and thickly accented. “Ah wasn’t expectin’ y’all to be awake, yet.”

“Well, I am,” Scarlet replied before slowly moving to sit up, careful not to agitate her injuries like she had before.

The stallion was at her side in a heartbeat, his hoof gently pushing her back down by her shoulder. “Woah, hey, easy now, miss,” he said soothingly until she was on her back again. “Just cause yer awake don’t mean yer ready to be up and about just yet. Y’all were all pretty banged up when ya came in.”

Scarlet eyed his hooves as he pulled back. They were rough and strong, and she could tell that he could put a lot of power into them if he wanted. She sighed and nodded, resigning herself to his treatment. “Fine… what happened to me?”

The stallion pondered her for a moment before leaning back and adjusting his hat. “Well, that friend of yours, Lens, came runnin’ into town a couple days ago at sunset, hollerin’ and screamin’ that he needed help. My wife heard the commotion and went runnin’ over to see what was what, and she brought y’all back here to our house and took care of you.”

Scarlet blinked, her muzzle morphing into a frown. “I… I’m sorry, but… a couple days?” she asked, surprised.

The stallion nodded. “Yes, ma’am. Y’all were on death’s door…” he said, his tone noticeably grimmer. “Slash wounds, exhaustion, bruises, muscle strain… Why, if y’all showed up even a minute later, Ah don’t think you’d be alive right now… either of ya.”

Scarlet’s eyes drifted past the stallion to Primrose, concern building up in her chest. She licked her lips and spoke slowly and tentatively. “Is… is she going to be alright?”

The stallion turned to the slumbering foal, a faraway look in his eyes. “Aye… Wind reckons she’ll make a full recovery. She’s a tough little one, Primrose is.”

Scarlet’s attention returned fully to the stallion, the realization dawning on her. “Wait, you know her name? Then… you must be…”

The stallion took off his hat and held it to his chest as he dipped into a polite bow. “Sure as sugar. Name’s Apple Juice, at yer service. Yer Scarlet Frost, and that…” he turned and smiled down at Primrose again. “...that’s Primrose.”

Scarlet was quiet for a few seconds. Eventually, she looked away, regret slowly starting to claw at her heart. “...She used to stay with you, didn’t she?”

Apple Juice nodded, adjusting his hat and heading over to the end table. “Sure did. She stuck with us for around six months. Got along real well with my boy, Apple Star,” he started to explain before picking up the bowl and bringing it down to Scarlet’s face. “Water. Drink up, ya must be thirsty.”

Scarlet complied, taking a few healthy gulps and sighing with satisfaction when it was pulled away. She hadn’t realized just how dry and rugged her throat had been until that moment. “Thank you,” she said, resting her head back.

Apple Juice smiled. “Mah pleasure, ma’am,” he said before peeling back her blankets himself and studying her bandages. He gave a low, contemplative hum before nodding in satisfaction and putting the blankets back. “Right, Ah think yer bandages are good for now. Wind musta changed ‘em this mornin’.”

Scarlet watched as he stood up from her and went over to Primrose’s bed. Her eyes widened when he pulled the foal’s blankets back, revealing the bandages wrapped around her torso. The deep red coloration was far worse than on Scarlet’s, staining almost the entirety of her chest. Apple Juice sighed and returned the blankets to their original place. “Poor thing… nopony deserves what she’s been through…”

Scarlet sighed and looked away, guilt and regret gnawing at her heart. “...Forgive me,” she suddenly blurted without even thinking about it. “It’s my fault… I allowed this to happen.”

“Nah,” Apple Juice shook his head and sat down on the edge of Prim’s bed. He reached down and gently brushed some of her long and wild mane out of her face, his lips curling up into a tender smile. “Wasn’t yer fault… accordin’ to Lens, y’all saved her life more than once…”

His smile faded, and he looked at Scarlet directly. “Although, Ah gotta admit to bein’ curious. How did ya meet her? Why are ya travelin’ together?”

Scarlet winced and closed her eyes. She hesitated for a moment before speaking up. “...I found her hiding in my wine cellar in Swanrun one night. She was trying to get out of the rain that was falling and… my home was her choice. She must have gotten startled by a thunderclap or something, as she shattered some of the older bottles. Some shards got stuck in her legs in the process, and I had to clean her up.

“After that, we were attacked by a pony following her. A Nightblade named Silent Edge…” she shuddered as memories from that night briefly flickered before her eyes. “...We barely got out with our lives. We figured that Silent must have been after her because of her lamp, and so I thought we should go to somepony who might know more about it.”

“Ah’m guessin’ that’d be Lens, then?” Apple Juice noted. “He knows a lot, keeps spewin’ all kinds of trivia, and he’s taken to answerin’ all kindsa questions my boy has.”

“Yes,” Scarlet confirmed with a nod. “He and I go way back. I thought he could tell us more about the lamp so we could figure out what to do next, but we were attacked again before he had a chance. We ran together, and we planned to come here anyway… but…”

“Silent caught up to ya,” Apple Juice summarized, drawing a slow nod out of Scarlet. He hummed in thought before rising from his seated position and trotting over to her bedside. She looked up at him, and the two locked gazes for a time. Then, Apple Juice smiled down at her. “Well… thank ya kindly for takin’ care of Prim for us. We’d all thought she died after she left.”

Scarlet was quiet for a moment before deciding it was her turn to ask some questions. “What about you? How do you know her?”

Apple Juice glanced back at Prim, his ears drooping somewhat. “Aw, shucks… was about two years ago, at this point. It was the middle of winter, and the snows were a lot worse than usual,” he began, bringing over the chair and sitting down in it. “One night, durin’ a blizzard, my boy was watchin’ the snowfall through the window while Wind and Ah were makin’ up supper. Then, out of nowhere, he hollers and tells us that there’s this little filly trudgin’ through the snow outside.”

The stallion looked over at Primrose again, his ears folding back entirely, and deep sympathy in his face. “First we thought maybe she was somepony else’s. We got a lotta foals in this community, ya know. But… we all realized we didn’t recognize her, and we saw how skinny she was. Then, outta nowhere, she just… collapsed, face down.

“Ah ran out and brought her inside to warm her up. Poor thing, she was so skinny Ah was worried Ah might break her like a little twig just carryin’ her inside on my back. Could see her ribs showin’ and everythin’. Wind set to work patchin’ her up, and Ah went out to talk to everypony else and see where she came from.”

“And, of course, nopony knew her,” Scarlet deduced.

“Eeyup, not a soul. So we let her stay in the spare bedroom and figured we’d ask her when she woke up,” Apple Juice went on. His brow furrowed and he sighed quietly, looking down at the floor. “Thing is, when she woke up, she weren’t in a talkin’ mood. She was… angry. Aggressive. She tried to bite at us anytime we got close, told us to leave her alone, let her go… that kinda thing. She was like a little monster…”

He scratched the back of his head and looked over at Primrose again. “...Lookin’ back on it, Ah think she was tryin’ to push us away. Poor filly’d lost so much so fast she musta been scared of havin’ anypony else… cause she thought she’d lose ‘em too.”

Scarlet eyed Primrose, her heart withering in her chest at this new information. “...What happened next?” she asked after a few seconds of quiet. “You said she got along with your son.”

Apple Juice adjusted his hat and nodded. “Aye, that she did. See, my boy’s tough, but at the time, he was dumb as a bag of hammers, lemme tell ya. Didn’t wanna take ‘no’ fer an answer from her, ya see,” he explained, briefly chuckling at his own description of his son’s prior intelligence. “But Ah think that stubborn insistence of his was what won out, in the end. While Prim was recoverin’, he kept goin’ up to her, talkin’ to her, showin’ her his toys. Ya know, foal stuff.

“She shrugged him off at first, but eventually, she slowly began to open up to him. Told him her name, fer one thing. Showed him her lamp… Eventually, she began to calm down and lighten up ‘round us. ‘Course, she had plenty of time. We weren’t gonna just let her wander off into the world when the snows were still comin’ down, and she was still recoverin’.”

“By the time the snow melted, and spring rolled around, she was practically part of the family,” he smiled at the memory, chuckling to himself. “Played with mah boy, talked with us, asked us questions, even helped us where she could. Once she opened up, she was just the sweetest lil’ thing, Ah swear… didn’t even look like she wanted to go anymore.”

Scarlet’s own face slowly lit up with a small smile, a gentle warmth filling her veins. “She was lucky to find you…”

“And we were lucky we saw her,” Apple Juice added before continuing on. “She had a few quirks, of course. Aside from bein’ terribly shy around everypony but us, bein’ weak as a wet noodle, and havin’ more scars than any foal ought to have, both on her body and in her mind… I ain’t no genius or nothin’, but even Ah could tell that the little girl was scared of somethin’ none of us knew about.”

“Silent Edge,” Scarlet clarified, her eyes narrowing with disdain and hatred. “The Nightblade. He’s been chasing her for five years, long before she ever met you.”

“Well, that’s probably why she left, then.”

Scarlet tilted her head, her anger swiftly being replaced with solemn curiosity. “...What happened?”

Apple Juice sighed, took off his hat, and set it off to one side. “Well, see, one day, Ah sat down with my boy and my wife. And we talked, and we talked, and we eventually decided that we wanted Prim to stay. We wanted her to join the family. Ah mean, she was practically our kid already in every way but blood. We… we wanted to make it official. And we asked her, and… well, she was reluctant, at first, but she said yes in the end. We had a nice big meal that night to celebrate, and she seemed so happy. Was like a whole world of weight had been taken off her little shoulders.”

He looked down at the floor, his ears folding back again. “But, well… few weeks later, we all woke up and suddenly, Prim had just up and gone. Ran off in the middle of the night, and only left us a note sayin’ she was sorry, but she had to go. Told us she loved us and would miss us, and that she’d come back someday, but… never happened… until you brought her back.”

Apple Juice looked up at Scarlet, his green eyes boring into her amethyst ones. He gave her a large, warm smile. “So thank ya, miss. Thank ya fer bringin’ our little rose back. And thank ya again fer savin’ her life. Ah dunno how Ah can ever repay you.”

“Think nothing of it,” Scarlet replied with a smile of her own. “And thank you for tending to her wounds. I may have only known her for a fraction of the time you did, but…” she looked at the foal again, her vision starting to haze over with tears of joy as she fully embraced the fact that she was alive. “...In that time, I have come to care deeply about her.”

“Ah can tell, ma’am, believe me,” Apple Juice replied before standing up and pushing the chair back into the corner. “Anyhoo, Wind’ll wanna know yer awake, and so will Lens. Just lay down and get some more rest, yeah?”

“Do I have a choice?” Scarlet asked with a roll of her eyes.

“Ah mean, sure,” he replied with his hoof on the handle. “Could choose to get up and wander ‘round, but ya risk hurtin’ yerself and openin’ yer wounds up again.”

“That isn’t a particularly compelling alternative,” Scarlet deadpanned.

The stallion gave a quick bark of laughter before replacing his hat on his head. “And that’s why ya rest up,” he declared before stepping outside, although this time, he left the door open.

Scarlet listened as the sound of his hoofsteps faded before the sound of another door opening was heard. When it shut, the house was plunged into silence, save for the quiet breaths Primrose let out with every exhale.

Scarlet looked over at the filly. Her face didn’t look peaceful, so to speak, but compared to the near-death grimace she had been wearing before, this was a significant improvement. Although, a few strands of her purple mane had fallen in front of her face again, making her eyelids twitch with irritation.

With a tender smile, Scarlet lit her horn with magic and gently brushed the locks back and behind Primrose’s ear. With the annoyance gone, Scarlet watched as, finally, the foal smiled.

Author's Note

So, we got some descendants of the Apple Family and some more backstory on Primrose.

The next few chapters are gonna be pretty chill and calm. A lengthier break from the darkness and violence then we've had before.

Calm

Scarlet waited patiently on the edge of her bed while Windrain gave her one final examination, making absolutely certain that she was fit to be up and about. The mare who had tended to her injuries was a pale-blue pegasus with a neatly braided silver mane and tail. Her cutie mark was a puffy white cloud with rain falling out of it, guided by the wind.

As she worked, Scarlet’s eyes kept wandering back to the still-sleeping form of Primrose. It had been well over a day since Scarlet initially woke up in this bed, and in that time, the small foal had shown no signs of getting back on her hooves. She hadn’t even stirred once. She remained well and truly unconscious, even though her wounds had all but closed at this point.

...Was she ever going to wake up?

“Okay, miss, I think you’re ready to get up and move around,” Wind suddenly confirmed with a smile and chirpy nod. She stepped back and held out a hoof to help Scarlet up. “Come on, up you go.”

Scarlet let herself be hauled back to her hooves. She took it slow, her muscles still burning from the run she had made. She wobbled a little once she was up, but quickly found her balance and held steady. After a second to make sure she would stay that way, she gave Wind an appreciative nod and smile. “Thank you for the assistance, Windrain.”

The pegasus waved off the gratitude. “It was the least I could do, don’t you worry about it. Just take it easy and take it slow for a few more days and you’ll be right as rain in no time,” she replied before turning back to Primrose. Her expression withered somewhat, and she knelt down to check her bandages.

Scarlet watched her for several seconds, wondering if she should ask if she could help. She was quick to reign in that impulse, however, reminding herself that, no matter how much it frustrated her, she wasn’t a medical expert, and thus far, Wind hadn’t needed any of her help. Prim’s health was safe in her hooves for the time being.

Wind glanced back at her after a moment, her eyes softening with sympathy and understanding. “Don’t worry about Primrose, I’ll take good care of her. Why don’t you go and get a breath of fresh air, hm?” she suggested in a hushed voice, nodding slightly for the door. “You’ve been cooped up in here for days. Some sun will do you some good, I think.”

Scarlet was hesitant, but after a moment decided that Wind was probably right. “Alright… thanks again,” she said before turning and seeing herself out.

The room she stepped into took up most of the floor space of the house if she had to guess. The walls, much like the bedroom she had left, were made up of wooden logs. There was the occasional shelf jutting out, loaded with sacks or small boxes, and plenty of unlit candles. Against the far left wall was a large stone fireplace that appeared to be without any wood at the moment. A series of open-air windows were in the front wall, the shutters open to allow evening sunlight to stream inside.

In the center of the room was a simple, square-shaped wooden table with four chairs situated around it, placed on top of a basic brown rug. There were a few other smaller tables and chairs placed around against the walls, accompanied by plenty of crates and barrels for storing supplies.

It was simple but charming. Scarlet smiled softly in appreciation before heading for the front door and nudging it open with her magic. A wave of fresh evening air washed over her, and all at once the tension in her body was considerably eased. She squinted against the sunlight for a second, allowing her eyes to adjust to the view in front of her.

Hoofrest Shire wasn’t a large settlement, by any means. It was even smaller than New Lapiz was. Despite its small scale, it was nonetheless rather charming. A dirt road wound its way between a collection of hills, snaking its way steadily higher and higher up before looping back down and reconnecting with the main entrance of the village, creating a large winding circle. Along the road was a series of modest wooden homes, each one accompanied by a collection of fields where their crops were growing under the sunlight. A few smaller roads cut through those fields, helping to define and clearly distinguish each plot of land from one another. Between all of that, it was largely open grasslands across the rolling hills, with the tall and majestic mountains looming in the distance like a protective wall.

A few foals went scampering by, laughing and chattering amongst themselves as they passed while their families worked in the fields. A few ponies that appeared to be in their early to mid-teens were sequestered away in various spots that they probably thought were isolated and hidden, but were in fact quite obvious, cuddling and talking.

Scarlet rook in a slow, deep breath, allowing the peacefulness of it all to soothe and relax her tired muscles. Sometimes she forgot just how pleasant the smaller towns could be. All her time in Swanrun made her used to big crowds and a rush to get where they needed to go.

“Scarlet, you’re up!” Lens’ voice suddenly called from the side.

Scarlet turned to face him, seeing that he had just emerged from a rickety old shed off to one side of Apple and Wind’s home, his saddlebags slung over his shoulders and a relieved smile on his face. She briefly eyed his bags before smiling at him directly. “Yes, I am, finally,” she replied in greeting before focusing on his bags again and raising an eyebrow. “Are you going somewhere?”

“Huh?” Lens tilted his head in confusion before following her gaze. His eyes lit up with realization. “Oh! Oh, no no no, not at all! I’m just, uh, I was… here!”

He lit up his horn and withdrew Primrose’s lamp from one of his pouches, levitating it over to Scarlet for her to see. “Apple Juice was kind enough to lend me his old shack for our stay, and I’ve been using the space to try and study this thing again.”

“Without your tools?” Scarlet asked with a raised eyebrow, gingerly taking the unusual artifact in her hooves. “I imagine your progress has been slow if that’s the case…”

“It has,” Lens admitted with a sheepish nod, his hoof scuffing in the dirt. “But, hey, I’ve had three days!”

“And what have you found out?”

Lens excitedly took the lamp back in his magic and stood next to Scarlet’s side, pressing right up against her. “Okay, so, I didn’t notice these runes here before,” he began excitedly, pointing out the ancient arcane symbols that Scarlet had noticed in her initial examination. “Kinda obvious that they would be there, in retrospect, what with how old this thing is and the nature of the enchantment. You don’t usually get wards this intense and layered without magic runes like these. Old Ponish, Hippogyphian Marks, Somnambulan Hieroglyphs - which, by the way, are absolutely fascinating in their own right-”

“Lens, Lens,” Scarlet suddenly cut in with an amused smirk. “Focus, please. You’re rambling.”

Lens’ face turned a faint shade of red, and he coughed into his hoof, a display Scarlet found more than a little adorable. “R-right, yes, well. Ahem. Anyways,” he cleared his throat before going on. “My Old Ponish is, er, shall we say, not very well developed, but I know enough about them to know what these runes in particular mean.”

Scarlet raised an eyebrow. “Is that so?”

Lens nodded and pointed each one out in succession. “Uh-huh. Each one is loaded with magic, but in the end, to cut a long story short, they add up to create probably the most powerful sealing spell I have ever seen!”

“A sealing spell?”

Lens nodded, grinning from ear to ear. “Yup! I dunno what exactly it’s sealing though, and all of my attempts to see through the wards have led to some pretty intense backlash. Whoever made this thing, they really did not want it being messed with.”

Scarlet eyed the lamp, a feeling of distrust slowly starting to creep into her mind. “So, is it possible that whatever is inside of this lamp is dangerous?” she questioned carefully, narrowing her eyes at the artifact in question.

“I don’t think so,” Lens replied without missing a beat before pointing out one rune in particular. “See, if the idea was containment, then this rune wouldn’t be here. It’s a ‘release’ rune, meaning that somewhere in the jumbled mess of wards, fail-safes, countermeasures, and redundancies, there is a way of opening this thing up and letting out whatever is inside.”

Scarlet’s eyebrow went right up. “Are you sure it’s already filled?”

Lens hesitated for a second, his prior exuberance wilting just a little. “Er, well, I can’t know for sure,” he admitted, rubbing the back of his head. “It could be that this thing is empty and just waiting for something to be put inside… but considering that Primrose and her family have been guarding this thing for generations, it just seems kind of odd that they would be trying to protect what’s essentially an empty box.”

Scarlet hummed in consideration, focusing on the lamp for a short while. Eventually, she turned to Lens and gave him a small smile. “Well, if nothing else, we know more about it now than we did before,” she said quietly before leaning over and giving him an affectionate nuzzle. “Thank you for that.”

Lens went rigid from the display of affection but was quick to return it, smiling pleasantly. “I wanted to do something useful for a change,” he whispered to her. “Ever since I got mixed up in all of this, you’ve done most of the work.”

“Don’t sell yourself short,” Scarlet scolded him lightly with a firm look and reassuring smile. “If it hadn’t been for you, Prim would have bled out while I was fighting Silent, and we wouldn’t have gotten the help we needed from these ponies if you hadn’t run to call for help after I passed out.”

Lens’ cheeks turned a faint shade of red, and he awkwardly looked off to one side. “Well, yeah, but…” he stammered, rubbing the back of his head.

“Not to mention you used a barrier to buy us time to think of a plan back in Shimmervale,” Scarlet went on, relishing in watching the stallion squirm. “And I’m pretty sure you used magic to keep Edge from cutting out my throat.”

“Okay, okay, I get it!” Lens whined, swatting at Scarlet in a vain attempt to make her be quiet. The two shared a quiet laugh at that before the stallion shook his head and gain a quiet sigh. “Still… I had to do something while you were out.”

“And you did,” Scarlet replied quietly with a slow nod. The two fell silent for a moment, allowing a warm breeze to wash over them.

Suddenly, the sound of somepony clearing their throat behind them caught their attention. Scarlet spun to face the new arrival, but alas, Lens would end up turning in just the right way that caused the two to spin into each other. Their necks collided into each other from the side, and both of them soon found themselves falling to the ground in a heap of limbs and rapidly mounting embarrassment.

Scarlet huffed indignantly before lifting her eyes to see who had just had to bear witness to that. She was greeted by the quizzical face of Apple Juice, his eyebrow cocked at an angle to betray his confusion. “Er… howdy, there.”

“...Hi,” came Scarlet’s blunt response before her horn lit up, and she lightly shoved Lens off of her. The two rose back to their hooves, dusting themselves off and trying to forget that that had just happened.

Apple smirked at them. “Well, Ah hope Ah weren’t interruptin’ nothin’. How ya feelin’, ma’am?” he asked, nodding towards Scarlet.

“Like I just fell in the dirt,” Scarlet deadpanned before shooting Lens an irritated pout. “Which was not my fault at all.”

Lens shied away from her, lifting his hooves in a placating manner. “Hey, it was an accident!”

Apple Juice shook his head and chuckled at their antics before turning and heading for the door. “Right, well, Ah’m gonna go ahead and get a start on supper. Probably won’t be more than an hour or two. Ah’ll holler when it’s ready,” he told them before slipping inside the house and disappearing from view.

This left Scarlet and Lens all on their own in relative quiet. She glanced over at him every so often before looking awkwardly at something else, her mind doing some rather impressive gymnastics to try and think of a way to break the silence and get the conversation going again.

Eventually, her eyes landed on the path in front of her, and a thought occurred to her. Slowly, her lips curled up into a smile, and she glanced back at Lens. “Come on… let’s go for a walk,” she suggested, her legs already going into motion.

Lens blinked at her in confusion, lagging behind a bit before cantering to catch up. “A walk? What for?” he asked curiously.

Scarlet looked directly ahead and took a deep breath. “I have been completely immobile for a few days now, Lens. I need to get some strength back in my legs,” she informed him, and she knew that was technically true. She drifted a little closer to him and gestured around at the peaceful little town. “But more than that… I just want to take a little bit and smell the roses, as it were.”

Lens hummed in thought. After a moment, his curiosity was replaced with satisfaction, and he drifted closer to her in turn. “Alright, fair enough. Let’s walk,” he agreed.

Scarlet’s smile grew, but she elected to say nothing else for the time being. She focused ahead on the path, savoring the fresh air, and genuinely peaceful atmosphere around them.

Dinner

In time, the sun fell away from the land, and the ponies that were out and about in the fields retired to their homes for the evening. Scarlet and Lens made their way back for the home of Apple Juice and Windrain, keeping their pace slow and relaxed. By the time they arrived at the cozy little house, Luna’s moon had begun its slow, but ever steady, ascent into the heavens, shining down onto the world in a waxing crescent.

The moment they stepped inside, Scarlet’s mouth watered. Her nostrils were inundated with a powerful and tantalizing aroma of a home-cooked meal. Her eyes followed her nose, and she caught sight of Apple Juice by the fireplace where a cauldron of soup was bubbling. She could also see two loaves of freshly-baked bread set off to one side, their tops coated with a thin scattering of some kind of seed.

Windrain was seated not far away, her eyes trained down as she worked on something that Scarlet couldn’t quite see. She could hear water sloshing about, and the way Wind was moving indicated she was scrubbing. She was washing something, then.

Scarlet’s eyes wandered briefly away from the family and settled onto a pair of shimmering eyes in one of the doorways. Her heart skipped a beat, and she instinctively went to cry out Primrose’s name, believing that the filly was finally up. But, to her shared curiosity and disappointment, the eyes were the wrong color. Instead of Primrose’s dark teal, these were an intense aquamarine color.

The moment those eyes realized they had been spotted, they ducked out of sight, hiding behind the door. Scarlet raised an eyebrow curiously but chose not to pursue the matter for now. Instead, she turned to Applejuice and Windrain, watching as Lens made the approach.

“Hmmmm,” the stallion hummed eagerly before adjusting his glasses. “That smells wonderful! When will it be ready?”

Juice chuckled and looked back at him with a coy smile. “Not long. Just waitin’ on the ears, Ah think.”

Scarlet’s face morphed into one of complete and utter scandalization. She turned to Lens, her ears drooping and her eyebrows angling up in dismay. “Wha- LENS! You did not!” she snapped in an odd mixture of accusation and defiance.

“He sure did, sugar,” Wind replied for him with a wink. “We got some of those ‘elephant ears’ in the oven right now.”

Lens wore a crooked, sheepish grin, scuffing the floor awkwardly with his hoof. “W-well, I just… after how hard you worked to save Prim, I just thought you’d like the treat?” he attempted, his grin growing more and more strained as Scarlet glared at him.

She tried so very hard to look unamused, but eventually, she heaved a heavy sigh and looked down with a quiet chuckle. “Ugh… You know how embarrassing my favorite food is,” she droned out before hauling herself over to the table.

Lens shrugged helplessly. “Hey, I know you love it,” he shot her a sly wink.

Scarlet leveled a flat glare at him but chose not to say anything else for the time being. Instead, she sat down, to take the weight off of her hooves, and got comfy at the dinner table.

Wind giggled merrily at the display before returning her attention to whatever it was she was scrubbing. A few seconds passed before she let out a satisfied sigh and sat upright, hauling the item up with her.

Scarlet’s eyes widened as she saw her cloak, now clean of muck, mud, and blood, rising from the water basin. The fabric was dripping wet and still tattered in various places, but was otherwise clean. Wind set it down by the fire to dry before giving Scarlet a warm smile. “It was all filthy. It needed a good cleaning. I hope you don’t mind.”

Scarlet’s chest tightened involuntarily, and before she knew it, she was back on her hooves and walking over. She sat down next to the cloak, ignoring Wind’s confused stare for a few seconds. She reached down and traced her hoof over the fabric where she had torn the strips off, and she felt a pang of guilt travel through her heart.

Despite the increasing urge to start shaking, Scarlet maintained her composure. She gave Wind a small, strained smile. “I don’t mind. Thank you. This cloak has a lot of sentimental value to me,” she said quietly.

Wind’s smile slowly returned, softer this time. “Least I could do. After everything you’ve been through, and everything I imagine you’re gonna go through in the future, it was the least I could do for you.”

Lens slowly approached, a tentative look on his face. Scarlet glanced up at him, meeting his gaze. The two fell silent for a time before Lens cleared his throat and asked whatever question was on his mind. “If you don’t mind my asking… why is that cloak so important to you?”

Apple Juice glanced back with a raised brow. “Ya mean ya don’t know?”

“We’ve only been traveling together for a week or two,” Scarlet pointed out before focusing on the dark blue fabric in her hooves. Despite the moisture soaking it, she lifted it up to her chest over her heart and closed her eyes. “As for why… this cloak was a gift from somepony… v-very, very dear to my heart.”

A silence fell over the room. Scarlet heard Lens sitting down before she felt his hoof on her back, and she could practically feel the confused glances that Wind and Apple Juice exchanged. Thankfully, the farmers decided not to question her answer. Odds are that they sensed the sensitive subject matter.

After a short time, the sound of a metal hatch opening and a happy exclamation from Juice drew Scarlet out of her somber memories. She opened her eyes to see him reaching into the oven and pulling out a large, flat pan with a series of similarly large, flat pastries on it. “Not quite the way they’re supposed to be made,” Apple Juice apologized as he brought it out. “But Ah don’t got the equipment to do it right. Basically just flatbread with cinnamon and sugar sprinkled on.”

Scarlet shook her head to dismiss his explanation before setting her cloak back down and rising to her hooves. “It’s fine. Frankly, I’ll just be glad to have a decent meal,” she told him before turning and making her way back for the table, this time with Lens by her side. He kept looking at her with a worried frown, and it became pretty evident that he wanted to ask her something.

She pre-empted him by giving him a small, albeit sad smile. “Don’t worry, Lens. I’m fine,” she said in a whisper before sitting down.

The stallion considered her words from her side for a moment. Then, with a quick flick of his magic, he brought over an unoccupied chair from a corner of the room and sat down by Scarlet’s side, bringing the number of chairs at the table up to five.

“Right, grub’s ready,” Apple Juice declared a moment later before standing up. “Wind, y’all mind gettin’ our guests served while Ah find Star?”

Wind nodded and set to work while her husband left the room. With quick, practiced motions, she filled up a series of bowls with soup before bringing them over to the table. She set two down in front of Scarlet and Lens, as well as a plate with the makeshift elephant ears on them. She smiled warmly. “Don’t worry about waiting for us, you two. You especially, miss. You need the food more than the rest of us.”

Scarlet went to object to the idea, not wanting to be rude in the home of the ponies that had saved her life. But her stomach had other ideas, banishing that sentiment from her mouth and swiftly replacing it with one of the elephant ears. She mumbled out a wordless response as her teeth dug in, and her eyes rolled up into her skull as the cinnamon and sugar met her tongue.

“Not a true elephant ear, to be sure,” she internally acknowledged before swallowing and shuddering. “But I don’t care. I need this.”

Soon enough, Apple Juice returned with a little earth pony colt by his side. He had a grayish-brown coat and a short, messy, navy blue mane and tail. His aquamarine eyes looked at Scarlet, shimmering with curiosity, but also anxiety. She gave him a friendly smile in an effort to show him that she was nice, and that did a little to make him ease up.

His father nudged him from above, making the foal look up. “Don’t be rude,” Apple Juice said to the colt in a hushed voice. “Introduce yerself.”

The foal stared at his father for a few seconds before reluctantly hopping up into his seat. He hesitated for a second before looking at Scarlet. “Erm… h-hello. Mah name’s Apple Star,” he greeted quietly, his eyes averting themselves partway through.

Scarlet’s smile softened considerably at the timid greeting. She swallowed her mouthful of pastry before answering. “Hello. I’m Scarlet. It’s nice to meet you,” she said before holding out a hoof to him.

He eyed her hoof for a few seconds before reaching out and shaking it. The brief contact finally seemed to be enough to make him lighten up, and his face lit up with a warm smile. “Nice to meet ya, ma’am,” he said with far more energy than before. “Yer the one that’s been taken care of Primrose, ain’t ya?”

Scarlet withdrew her hoof and nodded. “I can’t take all the credit, but I suppose you could say that, yes.”

“How has she been?”

Scarlet hummed thoughtfully, her brow furrowing. “Well… she’s…” she began, but the words hitched in her throat. She looked at Star and withered somewhat at his imploring eyes. “W-well… she’s certainly been better. We’ve been on the road a lot, so she’s tired and worn out, and…”

“Mama and papa said she got hurt by a bad pony,” Star pointed out, glancing over at his parents. “And they said you and Sharpy saved her.”

Lens pouted at the nickname. “Hey, I’m Sharp Lens, not Sharpy!”

Scarlet chuckled at his indignation before nodding her head, her ears drooping. “Heh… well, yes, that is true. Primrose was… she was hurt by a very bad pony, yes. But she’s going to be fine, thanks to your mother.”

Apple Star grinned before shoving his snout into his bowl of soup and digging energetically into his meal. Or at least, he started to before his father lightly tapped him on the head with a stern look. “C’mon, boy, show some manners.”

Star pouted but did as he had been told, eating with far better table manners than before.

Windrain smiled softly at the two before looking back to Scarlet. “So, Scarlet, how are you feeling now that you’ve been up and about for a few hours?” she asked.

“I’m still tired, but I’ll manage,” Scarlet replied before taking another bite from the elephant ears. When she swallowed, she continued. “This is hardly the first time I’ve suffered grievous injuries, after all.”

Wind hummed quietly in response to that before returning to her meal.

Apple Juice was next. “So, Scarlet, Lens. What are y’all plannin’ to do now?” he asked, looking between the two with a raised eyebrow. “Ah don’t imagine yer gonna be stickin’ round here.”

Scarlet went rigid with the spoon halfway to her mouth. What were they going to do? If she were being wholly honest with herself, she had not given that question much thought yet, either. They couldn’t stay here forever, obviously. Silent probably thought Primrose was dead, but without the lamp, his mission would only be half-finished, meaning he would be after them again before long. His injuries needed to heal first, of course, and that would take time.

But that only gave them time, not options. They couldn’t stay here, obviously, they would only be putting the lives of innocent ponies in danger if they did. But what other options were open to them?

Scarlet sighed and lowered her spoon. “...I don’t know yet. We can’t stay here, but I don’t know where else we can go,” she admitted regretfully.

“Ya can’t stay?” Apple Star asked, quirking his head to one side. “Why not?”

Scarlet turned to him. “Because… we’re being followed by the same bad ponies that hurt Primrose. If we stay here too long, they’ll just hurt you and your parents, too. I can’t allow that to happen, no matter what you’ve all done for us.”

Star wilted in his seat, but despite his disappointment, he seemed to understand. He nodded his head quietly.

Lens cleared his throat then, leaning forward to speak. “Well, it’s a bit of a risk, but we could try to get to Newcanter.”

Scarlet’s ears stood up in alarm. She turned to Lens incredulously. “What?! Go to the capital, are you mad?!” she demanded, a million and one ways that plan could go wrong flashing through her mind.

Lens leaned back from the outburst. “Hey, we need to learn more about the lamp, don’t we?” he reminded with a frown. “I went to the academy in Newcanter before and after the war. The teachers there know and trust me. They’ll let me use their facilities to conduct my research.”

“Yes, but that’s the capital,” Scarlet pressed in a low voice, mindful of the young foal in her midst. “We don’t want to get too close to that if we can help it. There must be somewhere else we can go to get the tools you need!”

“What about the Sanctuary?”

Scarlet’s expression shifted from exasperation to confusion. She turned to the speaker to find Star looking back with a quizzical look on his face. Scarlet cleared her throat. “Ahem. Excuse me, but what?”

Star glanced towards Primrose’s room. “Primrose used to tell me ‘bout this place her mama told her about. A sanctuary where ponies like her could go to be safe. It’s got two powerful guardians who protect it from anythin’ that might attack it.”

“A sanctuary?” Lens echoed with a raised eyebrow. He looked to Scarlet. “I don’t know anything about that. Did Primrose ever mention it to you?”

Scarlet turned and looked back at the closed door, a whole new barrage of questions about the young foal running through her mind. She slowly shook her head. “No… no, she didn’t.”

“Well, it sounds promising,” Lens admitted before turning back to Star. “Did she ever mention where it was?”

Star shook his head. “Nope. She always said she didn’t know where it was, but that she was always gonna keep lookin’ fer it, just like her mama and papa.”

“It was probably just a little foal’s story her mother told her,” Apple Juice said, his eyes downcast. “Somethin’ to keep her happy and optimistic. Like a fairy tale.”

Star turned to his father with an indignant pout. “Nuh-uh! Her Sanctuary is real! I know it! Her mama believed it! They were lookin’ 'fore she lost ‘em!”

Scarlet’s eyes lingered on the door while the ponies argued back and forth about the veracity of this so-called Sanctuary. But after a time, she shook her head and turned back to the table, cutting the argument off before it could carry on. “Whether it’s real or not doesn’t matter. We cannot risk our lives on something that might only be a fable, especially if we have no idea where to even start looking. We need another option.”

“I still think we could go to Newcanter, even if only for a short time,” Lens pressed, his brow furrowing. “It’s our best shot at getting answers about the lamp.”

Scarlet shook her head. “Forgive me, Lens, but I’m more interested in making sure we’re somewhere safe before anything else,” she told him before closing her eyes and going into thought. The conversation around the table carried on for a while as she ran through a range of options, most of which she was quick to shoot down for one reason or another.

Her train of thought was interrupted when Apple Star suddenly spoke up. “Mama, Papa? Is… is Primrose gonna leave again?”

Scarlet opened her eyes and looked to the foal. All eyes had turned to him, and he looked around with an uneasy look on his face. He cleared his throat. “Ah just… Ah’ve really missed her. And now she’s back home, and Ah don’t want her to go again,” he elaborated before turning back to his parents. “Can she stay with us, mama, papa? Please?”

Juice and Wind shared a hesitant glance. “W-well…” Wind began slowly. “I, uh… I don’t know, dear…”

“We’d all love for her to stay,” Apple Juice eventually said, adjusting his hat on his head. “But she’s been gone a long time, and she’s been with Scarlet here fer quite a while… she might wanna stick with her.”

Star’s ears drooped, and he leaned forward in his seat to protest. “But papa! She’s part of the family! Ah don’t wanna see her go! It sucks missing her! And what if she forgets us?!”

Scarlet chose this moment to cut in, lowering her head to be closer to Star’s eye level. “Hey,” she called out to him, drawing his attention. She smiled. “Primrose really missed you. All of you. She missed you so much that, when we were desperate for somewhere to go, she suggested we come here to you.”

“Yes, she was rather insistent on that point,” Lens concurred. “And because we knew about you and where to go, we got her here when she was hurt so you could save her.”

Scarlet’s smile grew. “She left for a good reason, little colt. She left to protect all of you from some very bad ponies that would have hurt you to get to her. And she missed you all so much that, when it mattered, it saved her life.”

Star was quiet. He slumped back in his chair, his eyes shifting sporadically as he processed Scarlet’s words. Eventually, he looked up at her, his ears slowly lifting back up. “...Promise me you’ll keep her safe if she goes away again.”

Scarlet sat upright and placed a heart over her chest. “I will protect her with my life as if she were my own. I swear it,” she said solemnly, and she meant every word.

A silence fell over the table after that, everypony’s moods significantly diminished. Scarlet closed her eyes and took a deep breath to settle her nerves and just relax. It was easier said than done, sadly.

That was, of course, until she heard the soft ringing of a magical aura fill her ears, followed shortly by something stiff and sweet-smelling poking against her nose. She cracked open one eye to glare in irritation at who she knew the culprit to be. Sure enough, there was Lens with a hopeful smile on his face.

“Come on,” he urged her lightly. “This is dinner. Let’s eat before it gets cold, huh?”

Scarlet let out a long, quiet whine of absolute humiliation before opening her mouth and letting Lens slip the elephant ear into her mouth. She took a bite before glaring at him.

Then she heard Star giggling, and couldn’t help the tiny smile that spread on her face. Lens smiled back at her. She swallowed her mouthful of food and turned back to the family. “Lens is right. Enough sad talk,” she decided.

Nopony at the table had any objections, and they all quickly began to dig into what remained of their respective meals. The atmosphere quickly brightened as the subject of discussion shifted from such dire things and meandered to the mundanity of farm life. For the duration of that meal, Scarlet allowed herself to finally relax and feel like she was just living again.

As she ate and talked with the kind strangers before her, she found the idea of someday settling down in a small community becoming more and more appealing.

Scarlet stepped into the room she shared with Primrose. Lens had since departed back for the shed, where he had managed to throw together a bed for himself. He had insisted that Scarlet take the bed across from Primrose’s, citing that she was still recovering from her own wounds, and the comfort would do her some good.

She let out a quiet sigh as she closed the door behind her. She looked across the dark room and was just able to make out the soundly sleeping form of Primrose in the occupied bed. Scarlet stood still, listening to her breathing and watching her rest before pushing away from the door. She sat down on her haunches by the bedside, her horn lighting up so she could see the filly’s face.

Primrose’s eyes were still closed, her mouth hanging open a little. She shifted slightly under the light, and her expression tensed with the movement. Her wounds were probably causing her pain from even that slight change in position.

Scarlet smiled and gently ran her hoof over her mane. “...You’re going to be just fine, Prim,” she whispered. “You’re going to live, and I am going to keep you safe, no matter what… I promise. I won’t let Silent or anyone else hurt you ever again…”

Primrose didn’t respond, although her open mouth slowly closed and morphed into a weak smile. Scarlet’s heart fluttered at the small motion, and she leaned down to give the filly an affectionate nuzzle. “I hope you wake up soon… Apple Juice, Windrain, and Apple Star are all really eager to talk to you again. They’ve missed you very, very much…”

Scarlet stayed like that for several minutes before pulling herself back to her hooves. She smiled down at Primrose one more time before turning and slipping into bed. In no time at all, her eyes drifted closed, and she felt herself falling into the world of dreams.

Simplicity

Unsurprisingly, the primary crop that Apple Juice and his family grew was apples. A sizeable orchard was sprawled out across the hills behind his home, the trees neatly planted to form even rows. While nowhere near as big as some plots of land for crops, especially around larger cities that needed that sort of food production, the orchard wasn’t exactly small, either.

Scarlet took in a deep breath through her nose, savoring the fresh air and faint aroma of the apples in the trees. A warm breeze passed between the trunks, making the leaves rustle softly. A few birds sprang from their branch, sang at each other, and then touched down on another one not far away. Late morning sunlight streamed down between the branches, creating a series of mesmerizing stripes across the ground.

A loud thunk from her right drew her attention. Scarlet turned and saw Apple Juice by one of the trees a few rows over, having just bucked the trunk. The force of the kick had shaken the tree to its roots and sent every apple on its branches falling neatly into the buckets that were arranged at the base. A few went bouncing and rolling freely away, although Apple Juice did not seem to notice.

One of those apples came to a stop by Scarlet’s hoof. She eyed it for a second before smiling and lifting it in her magic. “Juice!” she called out to the stallion. She waited until he turned to face her before lightly chucking it at him.

“Woah!” he yelped, just catching the apple in his hooves. He looked down at it, then gave Scarlet a small smirk. “Ya tryin’ to ambush me or somethin’?” he asked.

Scarlet shook her head and drew closer. “No, but that one got away,” she replied before lighting up her horn again and pulling off the saddlebags she had on her back. “Your wife sent me. She asked me to bring you your lunch.”

“She did?” Apple Juice blinked, confused. He then looked up at the sky, and realization dawned on his face alongside the surface of his hoof. “Aw, hell. Lost track of time, didn’t Ah?”

“You could say that,” Scarlet replied before setting the bags down. “If you will permit me to be so bold, I imagine this is a somewhat common occurrence? Wind was rather casual about you losing yourself in the orchard.”

Apple Juice chuckled before reaching into the saddlebags. Inside was an assorted lunch comprised of a daffodil sandwich, a condensed apple pie, and a small block of hay. He smiled at the meal and withdrew the sandwich first. “Ah’m ashamed to admit it, but yeah, sometimes Ah get a bit… well, ‘into’ it,” he admitted before taking a bite.

Scarlet raised an eyebrow. “And that never causes you any trouble?”

“Sometimes,” Apple Juice answered after swallowing. “Ah just wanna make sure my family’s alright, that’s all. Makin’ sure Ah got a big enough crop to sell off, so we have the bits fer the winter is a big part of that.”

Scarlet hummed in understanding, turning and staring out into the rows and rows of trees. Even if the orchard was small, relatively speaking, when compared to her, it seemed to be an enormous task to harvest that many apples. Especially by kicking the trunks. “I think I understand. But this is a lot of ground for one pony to cover.”

“Sure is,” Apple Juice acknowledged with a slow nod of his head. “But my boy’s too little to be buckin’ apples, and Wind’s better at things with a gentle touch. Call us old fashioned if ya wanna.”

“As long as you’re all happy with your role,” Scarlet eventually said before turning back to face Apple Juice directly, her expression turning serious. “But... you never get any help with the harvest?”

Apple Juice shook his head. “Nah, not really. Sometime’s Wind tags along if Ah got a cold or somethin’, but that’s just to make sure Ah don’t hurt myself,” he said before taking another big bite from his sandwich.

Scarlet was quiet for a few seconds, wrestling with an idea in her head. Eventually, the idea won out over her reservations, and she met Apple Juice’s gaze. “Well, would you like some help?”

Apple Juice was clearly not expecting that question, as he suddenly let out a series of coughs. He put a hoof up to his lips once they died down to make sure his food stayed in his mouth where it belonged, then swallowed. He affixed Scarlet with an incredulous stare. “What?”

Scarlet took a step forward. “I am offering to help you out. I’m no farmer, but I imagine I can make myself useful.”

Juice stared at her, slack-jawed, for a short time. He composed himself and set the sandwich back into the saddlebags. “Ah appreciate the offer, miss, but Ah can’t be askin’ ya to do that. Yer still pretty tender from yer wounds, after all.”

Scarlet held her ground, her ears drooping. “Look, as long as I’m here, I want to make myself useful. We’re taking up space in your home and food on your tables as long as we’re under your roof. I want to make sure I do something to make up for that inconvenience, and helping out around the farm however I can seems to me like the best way to do it.”

To Scarlet’s surprise, Apple Juice let out a short, barking laugh at that. He walked up to her and gave her a good-natured clap on the shoulder. “See, that kinda attitude is what would normally make me say ‘yes’ to the offer,” he told her with a big smile. “But this ain’t a normal situation we’re in. Y’all brought Primrose back to us after lookin’ after her and keepin’ her safe. Ya saved her life, Scarlet. Lettin’ you and yer friend sleep under our roof and eat our food is how we are repayin’ you.”

Scarlet didn’t have an immediate rebuttal for that. She fell silent, her eyes lowering. As true as the farmer’s sentiment may have been, he was missing the fact that Scarlet had been the one to drop her guard long enough for Primrose to get hurt in the first place. She’d failed to do her job as Prim’s protector, and the foal had almost died as a result.

“...I still want to help,” Scarlet eventually insisted, her expression hardening. “If not to make up to you for the inconvenience, then to make it up to myself for failing to protect her when it mattered.”

Apple Juice hummed at that, withdrawing his hoof. “...Ya really think it was yer fault?” he asked quietly, his voice low.

Scarlet looked away, her ears drooping. “I… Maybe you won’t see it that way, but… I did fail her. She was injured on my watch. It was my job to make sure she was safe and protected, and she almost died because I wasn’t paying enough attention. There is nothing more to it than that. Nothing that matters, at least.”

“Bullshit,” Apple Juice shot down without missing a beat. Scarlet turned to face him again, her ears perking up in surprise. His expression had hardened, becoming stern. “She got hurt, yeh. Obviously, none of us wanted that to happen. Hell, maybe ya could have prevented it. Don’t matter now, though. What matters is that you brought her to us to save her. Far as Ah care, that more than makes up fer it.”

Scarlet went to offer up a counterpoint, but he silenced her by holding up a hoof. He slowly shook his head, his expression softening considerably. “Trust me, ma’am. Ah got a little boy of my own, remember? Ah hafta carry the responsibility of raisin’ him right all the time. It’s real easy to tell myself that Ah messed up, that Ah did somethin’ wrong whenever Ah see Star doin’ somethin’ dumb or stupid. And yeah, maybe part of it is mah fault…”

He looked directly into Scarlet’s eyes. “But Wind’s always the one remindin’ me that sometimes, there’s stuff that Ah just can’t control. All Ah can do is be there fer my boy when he needs me and try to steer him right when he goes wrong, and make up fer any mistakes that Ah made on the way. But you, Scarlet Frost, got nothin’ else to make up for. Ya saved her life. Ah can’t think of anythin’ more redeemin’ then that.”

The two fell into silence after that. Scarlet took a few steps back, her eyes wandering with indecision. After a few seconds, though, she was jarred from her trance when a bucket was set down by her hooves. Confused, she looked up and saw Apple Juice smiling back at her. “Now, all that said, Ah can tell that yer a stubborn filly. If ya wanna help so bad, then Ah guess Ah can humor you,” he said, flashing her a wink.

Scarlet’s muscles slowly began to relax, and she nodded gratefully. “Thank you. What do you need me to do?”

“Not much. Yer still recoverin’ from some nasty wounds, so Ah just want ya to place the buckets down and float ‘em into the wagon when they’re full. Cut a step outta my routine without strainin’ yerself too bad. Sound fair?”

Scarlet’s answer was to ignite her horn with magic and move the filled buckets of apples over to the wagon itself, settling them down in mere seconds.

Apple Juice’s smile grew. “Glad we’re at an understandin’.”

After Apple Juice finished off his lunch, the two set to work in the orchards. Scarlet did as instructed, her work mostly consisting of moving barrels around while Apple Juice bucked the trees and determined their course. Scarlet’s magic sped things along quite considerably, and more than once the farmer openly joked, saying something along the lines of ‘this must be cheatin’ or somethin’.’

It was a very monotonous and repetitive job, of that there could be no doubt. But despite how boring it may have seemed to an outsider, Scarlet got lost in the motions all the same. She wasn’t even sure what it was about the work that had her so enthralled. She wasn’t sure what it was that made her listen with rapt attention whenever Juice launched into a freeform lecture about what and what not to do when farming. She wasn’t sure why this boring, tedious task was so… relaxing for her.

It was only after they had been at it for two hours or so that it finally clicked with her. A memory from the early days after the war, when she was still early on in her pregnancy, came to her mind, making her briefly stop mid-task.

Her sudden halt did not go unnoticed. Apple Juice came by and lightly touched his hoof to her shoulder, drawing her out of her trance. “Hey, somethin’ wrong?”

Scarlet shook her head, smiling. “No, no. Nothing’s wrong. I was just remembering something, that’s all,” she said, putting the empty buckets down by the base of the next tree.

Apple Juice nodded and got into position. “That so? Mind if Ah ask about what?”

Scarlet hummed, looking up into the sky. “...you know that I fought in the war against Talonreach, right?” she asked after a moment, bitterness creeping into her voice.

Apple Juice hummed in acknowledgment before kicking the tree, sending the apples falling. “Aye, Ah know. Why?”

“...When I first got home after I was discharged, it was hard for me to adapt to being a civilian again,” Scarlet admitted, her shoulder slumping. “I had seen and done a lot of terrible things… and a lot of killing. Being surrounded by something normal again was just… hard to take in, at first. I had night terrors often, and found myself jumping at shadows, expecting a griffon ambush at a moment’s notice.”

Apple Juice said nothing. He simply stood still and listened as Scarlet went on.

“Eventually, though, I found work at a local academy. I became a librarian. Sorting books, returning them to the shelves, renting them out to students, slapping hooves over late returns, and the like. It was… just…” she closed her eyes and took a deep breath, a tiny smile growing on her face. “It was just so simple. I honestly kept thinking that I must have been missing something for a long time because there was no way I could be doing a job and have it be so… so… relaxing.

“But in the end, I think that’s part of why I wound up loving that job so much. It was just simple. There weren’t any high stakes, and I never once had to bust out my combat training when I worked there. I was just sorting and reading books…” she opened her eyes and let out a quiet chuckle. “After spending a good few years fighting on the frontlines of a bloody war, going to such a soothing line of work felt almost like heaven. My reward for finally getting out of there while I still had a life to live.”

Apple Juice’s face lit up with a warm smile. He adjusted his hat on his head slightly. “Well, shucks, that’s good to hear, Scarlet. Ah know that a lotta ponies who came home from that war could never really get back to a normal life… was almost like they forgot how to live.”

Scarlet hummed quietly, idly moving the now filled buckets to the wagon with her magic. “Well, I got lucky… and helping you out here on the farm is almost like a second wind of that same feeling,” she explained, her eyes shimmering slightly. “I’ve been on the road, fighting for my life and always looking over my shoulder ever since I met Primrose. To just help with something like this…”

Apple Juice came up to her side and gave her a light pat on the shoulder. “Well, Glad to know yer enjoyin’ yerself…”

Scarlet chuckled and brushed him off. She shook her head before giving him a meaningful smile. “Thank you for this… I think I needed to remember what the simple things were like before I forgot them again.”

Apple Juice nodded and made his way for the wagon. “Yer welcome. When all this business with Silent and the lamp is done, maybe you and that Lens fella could settle down somewhere quiet and you can have a simple life with him.”

Scarlet paused at that, her ears standing at attention. “A simple life… with Lens?” she echoed. She then let out a quiet laugh, letting her head hang. “Huh… You know, back when Lens and I got ourselves kicked out, I wanted nothing more than to settle down somewhere with him.”

“Somethin’ change?”

Scarlet sighed, her ears drooping. “...You could say that.”

“Ah won’t pry,” Apple Juice eventually said, hitching himself back up to the wagon. “Anyhoo, Ah think we’re just about ready to bring this load back to the barn. Why don’t y’all go on ahead and-”

“SCARLET! THERE YOU ARE!”

Scarlet jumped in her skin when Lens’ voice suddenly cut through the trees. Alarmed, she spun around and saw him sprinting madly through the trees for her. A lump formed in her throat and worm of anxiety wriggled its way into her heart. Had Silent found them? “Lens! What is it, what’s wrong?!” she called out.

Lens came to a sliding stop a few feet away, panting slightly. He pointed back towards the house. “It’s Primrose! She’s awake!”

Scarlet’s eyes widened. “What?! WHEN?!”

“Just a few minutes ago,” Lens answered. “She’s talking to Wind and Star right-”

Scarlet didn’t wait to hear the rest of it. She shot past Lens at a full sprint, disregarding the slight burning sensation in her forelegs from where she had been slashed before. She quickly left the two stallions behind, the trees of the orchard passing by in a wild blur. It wasn’t long before she barreled through the treeline and came up to the wall of the house. Her horn flared with magic as she came upon it before her entire body was enveloped in a burst of light.

She came out of the teleport in the living room, sliding for a few inches before coming to a stop. She spun on her hooves and threw open the door to the guest room. “Primrose!” she called out.

Windrain and Star looked over at her from their place by the filly’s bed, startled by her sudden appearance. Scarlet’s eyes drifted past both of them, however, settling on the tired-looking earth pony filly who was sitting up in the bed, staring back at her with relief. “...Scarlet,” she greeted with a worn-out smile, her voice quiet and weak.

Scarlet stood perfectly still as relief and joy flooded her veins. Her lip began to tremble, and a barely audible sound came from the bottom of her throat. She staggered forwards, never once taking her eyes off of Primrose.

Scarlet collapsed by the bedside before reaching out and drawing Primrose into a hug. She pulled the skinny foal close against her chest and cradled her in her hooves. She felt Primrose returning the embrace, and that motion alone drew a small whimper out of Scarlet. She closed her eyes as tears blazed hot trails down her cheeks and buried her face in Primrose’s messy mane.

“Primrose… oh my goodness… you’re alright…” Scarlet choked out, on the verge of sobbing as several days of tension and stress and anxiety finally got a chance to be let out.

Primrose hummed quietly into Scarlet’s chest fur, cuddling closer and basking in her body heat. “Mhmm… I’m okay…” she mumbled before shivering uncontrollably. “But… Silent got me…”

“I know, sweetie, I know,” Scarlet whispered, squeezing Prim up to her heart. “I’m so sorry… I won’t let that happen ever again, I promise.”

Primrose didn’t say anything else. She just stayed there, letting Scarlet hold her close while the unicorn mare wept tears of joy.

Author's Note

Ayyy, Prim's awake!

Recovery

The next few hours passed in something of a blur for Scarlet. She had held tightly onto Primrose for quite some time before Lens finally coerced her into backing off so the Apples could have their reunion uninterrupted. He had taken her outside to get some fresh air for a while, occasionally talking at her about something or other.

She hadn’t really been listening, though. A fact she looked back on with a small measure of guilt. But she had just been so wrapped up in her relief over Primrose finally being awake, and her own rapidly swelling impatience at having to be away from her. She had to remind herself time and again that, as much as she cared about Primrose, the Apples here had officially adopted her long before Scarlet had ever met her.

They weren’t the first, of course, and there had been plenty after if Scarlet had to guess. But that did nothing to change the fact that, to them, their adopted little girl was home and awake after being gone for years.

She’d hogged Prim to herself for over a month. She could wait her turn.

Eventually, the two had been called back inside as the sun started to set. Apple Juice had started an early and very large dinner to celebrate Prim’s recovery. Scarlet suspected that the generous size of every serving was also meant to help counteract the filly’s still-rather-scrawny form; to ‘put some meat on her bones’ and all that.

Scarlet had elected to keep quiet for most of the meal, only speaking when spoken to directly, usually to answer questions levied at her by the Apples about her time with Primrose. For the most part, as before, she allowed the reunion to proceed without interruption. She did listen, though, and she watched.

It was heartwarming in the extreme, seeing Primrose look so happy for once. Scarlet had only seen her really be a foal a few times since they had met, and those had been fleeting occurrences. But here, at this dinner table, talking eagerly with ponies she dearly loved and missed greatly… the smile on her face and the shine in her eyes was enough to melt away even more of the frost that had clung to Scarlet’s heart.

Eventually, though, the meal had to come to an end. The plates of food, all practically polished, were carried away by Apple Juice to be cleaned while Windrain rose from her seat and trotted over to Primrose. “Okay, Prim, I think you should be going back to bed, now,” she said in a soft voice.

Primrose pouted at that. “What? But I just got up a few hours ago!” she complained, her ears drooping. “I wanna stay up with you guys!”

“I know, dear,” Wind countered, giving Prim a tender smile. “We want that, too. But more than that, we want you to heal. You’re still hurt, and it’s going to be another few days at least before I’ll feel comfortable letting you be up and active for more than a couple hours at a time.”

Primrose opened her mouth to protest, but the words caught in her throat. Scarlet watched with a raised eyebrow as the filly looked down, her hoof drifting up to the bandages that were still bound around her barrel. She winced and nodded. “Okay… I understand,” she mumbled out, clearly disappointed.

Wind reached out and gently ruffled Primrose’s mane. “Hey, if it makes you feel any better, you get to share a room with Scarlet.”

To Scarlet’s amusement, that did seem to cheer Primrose up. A little bit, at least. Her ears lifted back up, and the disappointment in her eyes abated somewhat. She glanced over at the unicorn and offered up a timid smile. “Yeah… that does make me feel better.”

Scarlet smiled and reached a hoof over to grasp the filly’s other hoof. “I’ll be right there. And we can keep talking if you like, just so long as you remain in bed and resting.”

Primrose’s hoof curled tightly around Scarlet’s, her smile growing. Scarlet’s smile faltered for a fraction of a second when she felt the small tremble in the filly’s hoof, though. Something was scaring her…

Nevertheless, Prim answered. “I’d like that,” she said before looking to Lens. “Can Lens talk with us, too?”

The stallion adjusted his glasses with a warm smile of his own. “I don’t see why not, but I’ve been sleeping in the shed. Not enough beds in this house and you two need rest and recovery more than I do.”

Primrose’s smile grew. The shaking in her hoof decreased somewhat.

Apple Star perked up from hiss eat, throwing his hoof into the air. “Oh, oh, can Ah stay up with you guys, too?!” he asked eagerly, waving his hoof around frantically.

Before Scarlet could gently explain that she would rather he not, Apple Juice was on his son like a hawk on a field mouse. “Oh, no, none of that, kiddo,” he scolded with a playful smirk. “Yer not gettin’ outta bedtime that easy!”

“But papa!” Star protested indignantly, facing his father with puffed up cheeks and a scrunched muzzle. “Ah wanna keep talkin’ to Primrose! She’s awake fer once!”

“Primrose needs her rest,” Wind pointed out, leaning over to him. “And so do you. Growing boy like you needs his sleep if he wants to grow up big and strong.”

“But Prim…”

Apple Juice chuckled. “Boy, do ya wanna learn how to go apple buckin’ or not?”

“Ah do…”

“Then get some sleep,” he ruffled Star’s mane with a cheeky grin. “Can’t go buckin’ trees if yer all plum tuckered out from bein’ up all night talkin’ to Prim, now can ya?”

“...No,” Star eventually relented with a childish huff. He hopped down from his chair and quickly ran over to Primrose as she was getting down, giving her a hug. “Ah’ll see ya in the mornin’ Primrose!”

Primrose visibly cringed in pain, her face twisting up from the sudden pressure put on her wounds. “Ack! Y-yeah, I’ll see you… don’t squeeze me so hard, please,” she said between clenched teeth.

Star immediately released her and stepped back, his face going pale. “Wha- oh, Ah, Ah am so-”

“So going to bed is what you are,” Windrain interrupted him, reaching out and ensnaring him in her wings. He let out a startled cry as she held him to her chest but otherwise did not say anything as she swiftly took him away to his room.

Apple Juice chuckled in amusement before turning back to Scarlet. “Alright, Ah’ll be up fer a little while mahself. Still got a few chores ’n stuff to do. If y’all need me, holler.”

Scarlet nodded. “Of course. Thank you,” she said. She then turned to Primrose and gently lifted the filly onto her back with magic. “Come on, let’s get you tucked in.”

Primrose hummed quietly, her hooves curling around Scarlet’s neck and holding on. Her grip was tight. Not enough to make it hard to breathe, but enough to make it clear that she was looking for something to give her a sense of security.

Scarlet’s ears drooped as she stepped back into the room she shared with Primrose. Lens followed close behind them. He lit his horn and sparked a few candles on the end table into life before shutting the door behind them, giving them some privacy.

Scarlet sat down on her haunches by Primrose’s bed and set the filly down on the mattress. The room fell into silence for a short time, Scarlet and Prim staring at each other while Lens watched from the sidelines.

“...How are you feeling?” Scarlet finally asked, reached out to brush some of Primrose’s long, unkempt mane out of her face.

Primrose was quiet for several seconds. Her ears drooped, and her hoof once more wandered up her bandages. “...I’m okay,” she mumbled out, her voice low and quiet. “It still hurts, but… I’m okay.”

“That’s good,” Lens said quietly, coming forward and sitting down by Scarlet’s side. “With any luck, you’ll be back to full strength in no time.”

“Hmm…” Primrose hummed quietly, her hoof curling up over her injury. She was quiet for several seconds.

Scarlet watched her, her ears drooping, and her heart wilting at the sight. The signs of fear that she had noticed before were becoming more apparent the longer she looked. For a brief second, Scarlet recalled the blood-curdling scream that Primrose had let out that night just before Silent had stabbed her.

“...Hey,” Scarlet whispered, reaching out and lifting Primrose’s chin, so they were eye-to-eye. “It’s okay. I’m going to protect you. I promise you.”

Primrose was quiet for several seconds, her free hoof curling tightly around Scarlet’s. Her demeanor grew brighter at first, but then her eyes wandered down to Scarlet’s own bandages, and her expression soured. “...You can’t promise me that,” she whispered quietly. “A lot of ponies have, and most of them are dead. Silent almost killed you, too…”

“None of them were battlemages,” Lens pointed out, putting a hoof on Scarlet’s back for emphasis. “And none of them had quite the same drive that Scarlet does.”

Primrose did not answer for a while, seemingly lost in thought. She eventually looked up and locked gazes with Scarlet, then looked to Lens. “So… where are we gonna go when Scarlet and I are all healed up?” she asked, clearly trying to change the subject.

Scarlet felt the need to press the matter of Primrose’s safety but was quick to rein herself in. As much as it hurt, Primrose did have a point, and they did need to figure out what their plan was. She withdrew her hoof and let out a quiet sigh. “We’ve been discussing that off and on while you were out… We have one or two ideas, though neither is exactly all that great.”

“I want us to go to Newcanter,” Lens began to recite his plan. “I know ponies at the academy there. I can call in a few favors, and they can let us use their tools to study this lamp of yours some more. And it’s a big city. We could probably touch up our looks a little and blend right in with the crowd.”

Scarlet shot him a look. “Yes, that is… Lens’ idea,” she said slowly, allowing her dissatisfaction with that plan to be clear in her tone. “I have a different one.”

Primrose leaned forward slightly. “What?”

Scarlet looked to her. “I mentioned before that my mother was a migrant from the capital Violsta, Lover’s Shade, right? That she came to New Equestria when she realized just how horrible and tyrannical the king of Talonreach was becoming?”

Primrose nodded. “Yeah, I remember.”

Scarlet closed her eyes for a moment and took a deep breath. “...I say we go to Lover’s Shade. My mother isn’t there, but my grandmother is. We could seek shelter with her, get word to my mother back in Swanrun about what’s happening, and have a degree of safety from Silent and the Lunar Council. We’d be far safer to study the lamp once we got there.”

“But it’s a really long journey,” Lens observed with a frown. “We’d have to trek across well over half of New Equestria just to cross into Talonreach, and we wouldn’t be safe there for a totally different range of reasons.”

Primrose tilted her head. “What do you mean?”

Scarlet and Lens cringed. The latter spoke first. “Well… after the war, Talonreach fell into something of a cultural and economic depression. Things are bad for griffons outside of Talonreach due to lingering resentment for the war in the first place, but they’re bad inside because of ongoing efforts to rebuild in the aftermath. A lotta griffons were displaced and left without homes, the homes that still stand are overflowing with refugees, and there’s just not a lot of money to go around. All of it’s being swallowed up by repair and relief efforts.”

“And because New Equestria, with aid from Freewind, Eris, and Violsta are the ones who won the war and put them in that situation,” Scarlet went on, her ears lowering and guilt swelling in her heart. “They would blame us in large part for their currently miserable lifestyle. Bandits on the roads would be bountiful, and we’d be accosted frequently.”

Primrose looked down at her hooves, her face twisting with concern. “...That doesn’t sound fun…” she mumbled, clearly not a fan of either option.

Lens sighed. “It wouldn’t be… it’s a long journey, and we would not be safe until we actually got out of Talonreach and into Violsta.”

Scarlet sighed, recognizing that neither option was particularly brilliant. She lifted her gaze to look at Primrose. The bandages on the filly’s barrel stood out far brighter than usual in her mind, drawing her attention to them. The image of Silent plunging his blades into that small body bubbled up in her mind, making her blood go cold. She couldn’t let that happen, no matter what.

But how could she make sure that didn’t happen? Silent had already slipped past her once before, and those griffon bandits on the road near Twinwood Canopy had almost overwhelmed her with numbers. If Primrose hadn’t intervened, Scarlet would have died, and that would have left the poor filly at the mercy of those bandits. And she had no doubt that they would have killed her for the lamp, figuring to sell it off for bits.

Suddenly, an idea came into her mind. It made her heart skip a beat and rage at her in defiance, but her mind quickly deduced a simple truth. If she wanted Primrose to stay safe and alive, then...

“...There is a third option, I suppose,” she eventually began, the words fleeing her lips before she could catch them.

Lens and Primrose both looked to her, curious and expectant.

She swallowed heavily, focusing on Primrose. “Prim… Silent stabbed you in the chest and the gut. It’s frankly a miracle that you’re still alive… Silent probably believes that you’re dead. That means, if he has no reason to suspect you, then… he won’t be following you any further. You could stay right here with these ponies and be completely safe. You could start living a normal life…”

Primrose’s eyes widened at the idea, but she appeared quick to snap herself out of it. Her eyes wandered over to the end table, where her lamp rested. It caught the firelight from the candles on its polished surface, glimmering in the otherwise dark room. Primrose frowned. “But… the lamp. Silent will still be looking for the lamp. And you.”

Scarlet nodded along. “I know… and that’s why Lens and I would take your lamp with us and go. You would be without the very thing Silent uses to find you, and he would believe you to be dead. He doesn’t know about this place or the Apples. We could take the lamp and go somewhere with the tools Lens needs to study it, figure out what it is, and go from there.”

Primrose’s eyes shot wide open again, and she turned back to Scarlet. “What!? No, no, I can’t let you do that! It’s my lamp, it’s the only thing my mom left me! It’s all I have left of her, and I swore I would protect it with my life!” she protested, standing up. “It was the last thing I ever promised her!”

Scarlet frowned, leaning back from the outburst. “Yes, Primrose, I know. But right now, I’m more concerned with your safety than the lamp. I don’t want you getting hurt again, and this would be the best way to make sure you don’t,” she tried to refute.

Primrose shook her head. “No! It’s my lamp, Scarlet! I’ve kept it with me ever since my family died! No matter what, I am not getting rid of it! If you take it away, I’m going to follow you!”

Scarlet’s expression hardened. “Primrose, please! Just- just think about this for a second,” she stressed, her voice growing firm. “You cannot protect the lamp if Silent kills you.”

“I don’t care,” Primrose snapped, her eyes starting to water. “M-my mom gave it to me so I could keep it safe. It’s been in my family for generations. I am not going to get rid of it. I swore to protect it with my life, and I will! I’m not breaking my promise!”

Scarlet went to try and counter, but she felt Lens’ hoof on her shoulder. She hesitated and looked back at him. He frowned and slowly shook his head. “She’s made up her mind, Scarlet. Let it go,” he said quietly.

“But I…” Scarlet choked out, trying to find the words. She turned back to Primrose and saw her sitting back down with her head hung low. A tense, heavy atmosphere fell over the room, and finally, Scarlet let out a heavy sigh and relented. “Alright. Very well. Forgive me, Primrose. I did not mean to upset you. I just…” she closed her eyes and lowered her head. “I do not wish to watch another filly under my care die.”

She expected Primrose to be confused. She expected her to ask her what she meant. Instead, there was a short silence before she felt the filly draping her forelegs around her neck in a tender embrace. Confused, Scarlet opened her eyes. “Huh?”

Prim gave her a squeeze, the filly burying her face in Scarlet’s shoulder. “I know about Crystal Clear,” she whispered, making Scarlet tense up.

“Wha… how…”

“I overheard you and Lens talking about her back in his house,” she elaborated. She pulled back after a few seconds and looked into Scarlet’s face. “I never said anything because I didn’t want to upset you.”

“Prim,” Lens whispered quietly, his hoof on Scarlet’s shoulder, giving her a squeeze of its own.

Scarlet’s lip was trembling, her eyes starting to mist over. She sniffled and took a deep breath, trying desperately to reign in her emotions. “I… I don’t want you to die like she did,” she finally choked out, her voice shaking. “I failed her… I can’t fail you, too…”

Primrose looked down, her ears folding back. “I know… and I don’t wanna die. Even just thinking about it scares me to death. But…” her eyes wandered back to her lamp, and the fear on her face was slowly replaced with determination. “But if I do die, I wanna do it keeping my promise to my mom. I promised I would, and I won’t die a liar.”

Scarlet was quiet, her chest trembling and convulsing uncontrollably as a war of emotions raged inside of her. Slowly, a trembling smile appeared on her face. She let out a shaky laugh before pulling Primrose back in, returning the hug. “Oh, Prim… you really are a brave little filly, aren’t you?” she asked, a tear sliding down her cheek.

Prim didn’t say anything. She simply buried her face in Scarlet’s neck again, taking comfort in the mare’s presence and trying to offer what comfort she could in turn. The two remained locked that way for a solid minute before Lens finally cleared his throat, pulling the two out of their moment.

“That was very well-spoken, Primrose, and very admirable of you. I’m sure your mother would be proud,” he said gingerly, craning his neck down to look at the two from the side. “But that leaves us with one less option on what we’re gonna do when you and Scarlet are healed up.”

Primrose kept a hold on Scarlet, but turned her head to the side to look at Lens.

The stallion eyed her curiously before adjusting his glasses on his muzzle. “...Primrose, tell us. Did you ever find the Sanctuary, or learn where it is?”

Primrose went rigid in Scarlet’s hooves. She pushed herself back and out of the mare’s grasp to level a worried look in Lens’ direction. “What? The Sanctuary? How do you know about that!?” she asked, her voice suddenly shaking. She looked scared, all of a sudden. “I never told you about it!”

“It was Apple Star,” Scarlet quickly assured her, putting a hoof on Prim’s back. “He told us about it, and that you had been looking for it for a while.”

Primrose looked back and forth between them for several seconds before slowly relaxing. “Oh… okay, alright. That makes sense… Star did like to talk a lot, I remember.” she breathed out in relief before shaking her head. “No, I never found it. I dunno where to look. I stopped looking for it maybe a year ago. Asking around for anything about it never got me anywhere and just gave Silent another way to follow me.”

Scarlet sighed. She should have figured as much if she were being honest with herself. Such a place sounded far too good to be true, and somepony would have found it by now. And if Primrose had found it already or even knew where it was, she probably would have gone there no matter what, meaning she likely never would have met Scarlet, to begin with.

“Alright,” Scarlet eventually said, pulling her hoof back. “Lens and I have already debated our two options at length… But what do you think?”

Primrose was quiet for a few seconds, a thoughtful frown on her face. “Uhm… could we do both?” she eventually asked, raising an eyebrow. “Like, go find Scarlet’s grandma, but stop in Newcanter on the way for a few days? If we can find out more about my lamp, I wanna do it. I wanna know for sure what my family died for, and what I’m trying to protect.”

“That,” Lens opened up, sounding like he was about ready to point out flaws in the plan. He stopped himself, though, a thoughtful look mirroring Prim’s own coming across his face. “...Is actually not a bad idea.”

Scarlet glanced at him. “How so?”

Lens adjusted his glasses again. “Well, see, we’d probably have to pass through Newcanter on the way out of New Equestria anyways. I mean, I’m assuming that we would be taking the main highway, which cuts right through Newcanter and leads over to Talonreach and Old Equestria. If so, we’d need to pass through anyway. So we stop in, spend a little bit of time looking that lamp over, and then return to the road before the local authorities have a chance to catch wind of us.”

Scarlet mulled the idea over in her head. There was still a significant risk of getting discovered by Silent or any other Nightblades that called that city home if they stayed overnight. She had planned to just cut right through Newcanter. Maybe stop somewhere for a meal and any word from up the road, but that had been the extent of it. Staying any longer than that was an invitation for disaster.

But at the same time, Primrose had a really good reason for wanting to stay there for longer…

She eventually nodded. “I still don’t like it, but… if we make sure we’re only there for a couple days and keep a low profile, maybe we could make it work,” she eventually agreed.

Lens smiled and pat Scarlet on the back. “Thanks, Scarlet. I won’t let you down, I promise you.”

She brushed his hoof away. “You’d better not,” she told him, giving him a hard look.

Lens nodded slowly, his smile fading away. “Alright… Now then,” he stood up and dusted himself off. “I, uh, I need to go get back to the shed. Prim, do you mind if I borrow your lamp for the night? I’ve been studying it while you were out, and I’d like to make as much progress as I can before we head for Newcanter.”

The filly hesitated for a few seconds before nodding her head. “Okay, Lens. Just… be careful with it, please,” she said, nodding for him to take it.

“I will, don’t worry,” he assured her, taking the lamp in his magic and bringing it into his hoof. He looked down at Scarlet. “You should probably get some rest yourself.”

Scarlet snorted dismissively. “More rest. Of course,” she grumbled irritably before forcing herself to her hooves. “Ugh. Why does healing have to be so damned boring?”

“Hey, better boring than dead,” Leans reasoned with a playful smirk.

“Yeah yeah,” Scarlet rolled her eyes at him before smacking him on the shoulder. “Just go. Leave the girls in peace.”

Lens chuckled, heading for the door. “Well, I dunno if peace is the right word… ever since I started traveling with you, it’s been nothing but chaos and stress,” he stated. He paused with his hoof on the handle and shot Scarlet a knowing look. “In fact, explosions just followed you wherever you went since the day I met you.”

Scarlet’s eye twitched, her horn lighting up. “Would you like me to make one right now? I can make one right now.”

Lens chuckled and shook his head. “Ha! Ah, no thanks. I can’t exactly think right if my brains are all over the place,” he retaliated before giving her a far more sincere smile. “...Goodnight, Scarlet. Get some rest.”

Scarlet allowed the light on her horn to wink out, returning the smile. “You, too, Lens. Goodnight.”

The door swung closed.

Scarlet took a deep breath before turning back to Primrose. “That goes for you, too. You need more rest than I do, so you get some sleep.”

She expected Primrose to nod and go to bed, albeit perhaps begrudgingly. That was how it normally happened when they had been on the road. However, this time, Primrose had a distinctly different reaction. Her ears folded back, and her hooves instinctually curled around her barrel as if to protect it. “I… I don’t wanna go to sleep,” she said, her eyes darting back and forth.

Scarlet raised an eyebrow. “Prim, you need to sleep. You’re only going to cause yourself a lot of discomfort if you stay up.”

Primrose looked at her, and any further arguments Scarlet had died in her throat. The look on the filly’s face was one of dread. She shuddered uncontrollably, her ears folding back entirely. “I… I don’t wanna sleep… last time I did, Silent snuck up on me…” she choked out, her face starting to turn pale.

Scarlet’s eyes widened. She stared, slack-jawed at the quivering foal for a long while, her mind racing and her heart twisting in her chest. After a few seconds, though, she closed her mouth and out on a small smile. She walked towards the bed. “He did… but he won’t this time. He doesn’t know where we are.”

“But…”

“No buts,” Scarlet cut her off gently, hopping up onto the bed with Primrose and pulling the blankets back with her magic. “Here, I’ll hold you and keep you safe. How does that sound?”

Primrose blinked in surprise but did not say or do anything in protest. Scarlet reached out and pulled Prim up to her chest before laying down. She pulled the blankets over them, enveloping them in warmth.

“Scarlet…?” Primrose asked after a second, shifting in the mare’s hooves to look up at her. “I’m scared.”

Scarlet nodded. “I know, Prim. So am I,’ She whispered. She lifted a hoof and gently began to stroke the back of Primrose’s head. “But it’s okay. I got you. I’ll take care of you. I swear…”

Primrose hummed at that, closing her eyes. Slowly, ever so slowly, she began to relax, the tremors in her small body starting to fade away. Scarlet smiled at that. And then, in a soft, low voice, she began to hum. It was a slow, meandering melody, gentle and serene. The relaxing sound filled the room, and soon, Scarlet felt the tell-tale rise and fall of Primrose’s chest in her hooves as they fell asleep.

Satisfied, Scarlet lit her horn just long enough to snuff out the candles, plunging the room into darkness. All that was left was her, the foal in her hooves, and the quiet song that sang them both to quiet, peaceful slumber.

Departure

Scarlet, Primrose, and Lens had spent another whole week on the Apple Family farm, giving the wounded time to recover and Lens time to poke and prod at the lamp. Between bouts of rest and study, Scarlet and Lens had made themselves useful by helping out around the farm wherever they could. As Scarlet continued to insist, it was the least they could do to pay the Apples back for housing them for so long.

It had been a restful and refreshing week, to say the least. For the duration, Scarlet had finally started to feel like a regular mare again for the first time in months. The simplicity of working on a farm to earn her place and carry her weight, listening to the Apple family joke and banter and laugh with each other, and the delight of hot, home-cooked meals every night… it reminded her of simpler, happier times.

But no matter how much she wished otherwise, they could not stay forever. In truth, they had probably stayed for too long already. With every day that passed, the creeping fear that Silent would finally recover and resume his hunt gnawed at her more and more. Finally, it had become too much, and the decision was made at dinner to leave for Newcanter at first light.

That very light now shone in through the front windows of the house. Golden shafts of early morning sunlight came in through the open windows, illuminating the interior and slowly increasing the temperature in the space. Scarlet stood by the front door, her cloak once again draped over her back, and her saddlebags secured on her withers. Lens was by her side, checking over their map and planning out their route.

And then there was Primrose. She sat in the center of the room, putting some final things away in her small saddlebags. A few apples, her dagger, and, of course, her lamp. Windrain sat with her, the two speaking in hushed tones. Apple Juice and Star were standing a little way to one side, watching the whole scene unfold quietly. Star occasionally shifted in place and glanced hopefully towards his father, silently asking for permission to approach. Each time, he was met with a slow shake of the head. They could wait their turn.

Scarlet eyed them with a small frown. In the week since Prim had woken up, it became clear that she shared a particularly strong bond with Windrain. Scarlet couldn’t say for sure what the reason for that was, nor did she dare prod into their privacy by asking questions. This wasn’t her family, after all.

“Okay, I think that’s about everything,” Wind declared after a few seconds, trying and failing to sound cheerful. She gave Primrose a strained smile. “You’ve got everything you need for the trip.”

Primrose nodded along without a word, slipping the saddlebags onto her back. Once they were secure, she turned to look up into Wind’s eyes. “Thank you, Wind,” she whispered.

Apple Juice and his son took this as their cue to approach, both of them bearing somber expressions. Star spoke first, his voice low. “Do ya really hafta go, Prim?” he asked, scuffing the floor with a hoof.

Primrose turned to him, her ears drooping. “I don’t wanna leave, no… not again. But I have no choice. I need to find out more about my lamp, and I can’t let Silent find you guys. You mean too much to me,” she told him before putting on a small smile. “But I’ll come back someday and visit again. And I’ll tell you all about the adventures I’ve had when I do.”

That small assurance made Star’s expression lighten up, albeit only a little. “Y… ya promise?” he asked, his ears lifting.

Primrose’s expression wavered, but she nevertheless nodded. “I promise. I’ll come back someday and tell you everything.”

“Ah sure as hell hope so,” Apple Juice remarked with a more light-hearted grin. “Star’s gonna go nuts if ya go back on yer word there, Prim. So y’all make sure ya ain’t lyin’ and come back home safe.”

Primrose giggled at that, looking up at Apple Juice. “Well, I have to now, don’t I?” she asked, her smile growing.

“Damn straight!” Apple Juice responded, reaching down to ruffle her mane.

“Mama,” Star suddenly called over to Wind, giving his father a stinky-eyed look of disapproval. “Papa said a bad language word!”

Apple Juice’s expression soured from his son’s accusation. “Now you listen here, ya little twerp…” he growled in a playful manner, leaning down towards Star. Whatever he said next was quiet enough that Scarlet couldn’t make it out, but given the giggles Primrose and Star were both letting out, it probably wasn’t anything for her to worry about. Just a father having fun with his kid.

Probably.

Windrain merely rolled her eyes at her family’s antics before turning to Scarlet. She trotted forward and gingerly laid a hoof on the unicorn’s chest. “You’re sure you’re ready for this?” Wind asked in a serious whisper, her brow wrinkling with concern. “I know you used to be a soldier and all. You’re tough and strong, and long journeys are nothing to you. But… we can keep housing you if you need it.”

Scarlet blinked, briefly taken aback by the offer. She looked over at Lens, trying to see what he thought of the idea. But, predictably, his nose was still buried in the map, and he was muttering furiously to himself as he weighed the pros and cons of sticking to the highway versus using side roads.

Micromanaging Sharp Lens. How typical.

After a few seconds more, Scarlet turned back to Wind with a slow shake of her head. “I’m sure. As Primrose said, we can’t afford to put you in danger by letting Silent find you,” she said in an equally hushed voice. “And that means we need to go.”

Windraid nodded slowly, seemingly unsurprised by that answer, though nonetheless disappointed. She let out a quiet breath, her eyes looking down towards the floor. “Right… of course,” she mumbled to herself. After a moment, she met Scarlet’s gaze again. “Just… promise me you’ll take good care of Primrose for me? Please?”

Scarlet didn’t even hesitate. “As if she were my own flesh and blood,” she said, bowing her head. “I’ll guard her with my life to the very end. This, I swear to you…” the next words caught in her throat for a second before she forced them out. “...As one mother to another.”

Wind’s eyes widened in surprise. “One mother to… you have a child?”

Scarlet’s hoof drifted up to gingerly caress the metal yoke of her cloak, fond memories now forever stained with blood flickering before her eyes. Her ears lowered, and she visibly sagged. Lens must have taken notice of her sudden loss of posture, as she felt his hoof press into her shoulder to offer her some support. A small gesture, but one that she felt very grateful for.

After a moment, Scarlet nodded, lifting her gaze to meet Wind’s. “...I used to.”

Wind tilted her head in confusion for a second. “You used to…?” she asked quietly, not quite registering the morbid implication. Thankfully, it didn’t take long for it to click into place, sparing Scarlet the grueling task of recounting even a fraction of the tail. Realization dawned on Wind’s face, her hoof wandering up to cover her mouth. “Oh… oh, no, no, no... oh my word, I… did you… lose them?”

Scarlet’s hoof tightly curled itself into the fabric of the cloak to anchor herself to the here and now. She screwed her eyes shut and sucked in a deep breath, forcing herself to stay composed. “...Y-yes,” she said quietly, her voice breaking for a moment. “A few months ago. I would rather not speak further of it…”

She felt Lens’ grip on her shoulder tighten, steadily bringing her emotions back into life.

Wind was quiet for several seconds. Then, to Scarlet’s surprise, she leaned in and gave her a warm hug, squeezing her close. “I’m so sorry,” Wind whispered to her. “I am so, so very sorry. You have my condolences.”

Scarlet was quiet for several seconds, momentarily reminded of how those same words had been emptily echoed to her over and over back in Swanrun. For a moment, the same irritation flared in the back of her skull before she was able to reign herself in. She knew this was genuine, this time. With a sigh, she returned the hug with one hoof. She didn’t say anything, though. After a few seconds, Wind backed away and put her hoof on the yoke as well. She didn’t say anything else. After a few more seconds, she quietly backed away, leaving Scarlet and Lens to themselves.

The stallion’s brow furrowed in thought as Scarlet turned to face him, and he withdrew his hoof. “Crystal got you that cloak, didn’t she?” he asked in barely even a whisper, his eyes roving over the piece of apparel.

Scarlet looked down at the fabric, her heart twisting when she saw the various tears and rips it had suffered in their journey so far. “Yes,” she eventually confirmed with a sigh. “She went behind my back and worked at a local tailor for months so she could get it for me. It was… it was for our trip to come see you.”

Lens was quiet for a few seconds. He folded up the map and placed it back in his saddlebags before leaning in to offer Scarlet an affectionate nuzzle, one she swiftly returned. The two remained that way for several moments before Scarlet cleared her throat and turned back to Primrose, who was currently enveloped in a group hug with Apple Juice and Apple Star.

“Primrose,” she called out, drawing a surprised look from all three of them. “We need to get going. Finish your goodbyes.”

“Does she have to?” Star repeated for what was probably the millionth time. “Does she really gotta go?”

“She does, boy,” Apple Juice answered with a slow nod. He slowly released Primrose from his grasp and looked into her eyes. “Now, y’all be a good filly, ya hear me?”

“I will,” Primrose replied, standing up to her full height. She paused, her ears lowering. “I… I’m going to miss you.”

“And we’re gonna miss ya too,” Juice replied, ruffling her mane. “But we know yer in good hooves.”

He looked directly at Scarlet as he said that. She gave him a dutiful nod before using her magic to open up the door.

Primrose hesitated for a moment longer before shuffling back a few paces. She glanced over at Windrain, who smiled and nodded at her encouragingly. “Go on, sweetie,” she said. “We’ll be here when you come back.”

Primrose relaxed at that, her ears lifting. She held her head high, and when she spoke again, it was loud enough for everypony to hear her. “Thank you for saving me… all of you… goodbye.”

And with that, she turned and made her way to Scarlet’s side, her jaw set and her expression determined. Scarlet felt a small amount of surprise, seeing the usually timid filly with such a look.

“I shouldn’t be surprised,” she told herself after a moment, smiling. “She has a lot to come back too… and promises to keep.”

“So, shall we?” Lens asked, scuffing the floor and glancing nervously back towards the Apples. “I mean, we have a long way to go, so if there’s anything else we should do here…”

“We’re ready,” Scarlet assured him with a slow nod. She turned and slipped out through the door, Primrose following close behind her, followed shortly by Lens. Once they were all outside, Scarlet went to close the door. She hesitated when a thought occurred to her, though. She bit her lip for a second before turning back to face the family that had so generously offered their home to her when she had needed the help the most.

Scarlet’s face lit up with a warm smile. “And thank you. All of you. Thank you for everything.”

“It was our pleasure,” Wind replied with a nod and cheery smile, her family nodding in agreement.

“Be careful out there,” Apple Juice added.

“And bring Primrose back!” Star concluded with a small jump. “She promised me she would! Make sure she keeps her promise!”

Scarlet smiled back and nodded at all of them. “I will,” she said with finality, then closed the door. She, Lens, and Primrose stood in silence for a moment after that, allowing the silence to envelop them.

Scarlet took a long, deep breath, then turned to face the path ahead of them. It wove through the community for a time before leading off into the distance, vanishing between the grassy foothills and pockets of trees. It was going to be a long journey…

Scarlet held her head high and drew in a deep breath. “Let’s go,” she said simply, starting into a brisk trot. Lens and Primrose were quick to match her pace, and together, the trio made their way out of Hoofrest Shire.

Author's Note

And so their respite at the Apple Family Farm draws to a close. The open road lays before them, and at its end, the great city of Newcanter awaits.

Veterans

Over the course of the next few days, Scarlet, Lens, and Primrose left the verdant foothills surrounding Hoofrest Shire behind. They followed the dirt road out of town for some distance before, at the start of the second day, it turned sharply to the south and they found themselves passing under the canopy of the glittering woods once again.

The canopy here was far denser than it had been in the region Scarlet led Primrose through before. Sunlight struggled to cut its way through the thick ceiling of leaves, and animal calls were far more frequent; often far closer as well. The gloominess of the place set Scarlet on edge, and the possibility of crossing paths with the swarm of changelings they had encountered previously drove her to increase the pace of the group as a whole.

But, thankfully, no such encounters were to be had, and by noon of the third day they had crossed through the forest and come out the other side. As they passed through the forest edge, the land sloped down before them, granting them an impressive view for many miles ahead which largely comprised of grassy foothills with the occasional pocket of forestation and shrubbery. But more than that, with how much open space there was between those patches, there were few places for any potential threats to hide.

As Scarlet and her friends took their leave of the woods, she came to a stop and took in a deep breath. The fresh air filled her lungs and gave her entire body a rush of invigoration, awakening her senses and her mind. She looked up at the sky and her eyes caught sight of a lone white cloud drifting lazily across the cerulean heavens above. A small smile tugged at the corner of her mouth at the peaceful sight. She just stood there for a minute, taking it in.

“Huh? Scarlet?” Lens’ voice called out to her a few moments later, drawing her from her reverie. She looked down to see that both Lens and Primrose had stopped and were looking back at her curiously. Lens turned to face her fully and cleared his throat. “Why’d you stop?”

Scarlet’s smile grew. She shook her head in dismissal before cantering to catch up. “It’s nothing. I was just enjoying the view, that’s all,” she said simply.

Lens raised an eyebrow, matching her pace by her side. “You? Since when have you ever had an appreciation for impressive views?” he asked skeptically.

Scarlet paused at that for a moment. She couldn’t help but chuckle under her breath at the realization that he wasn’t really wrong. Caring at all about the view was something she had only started doing after they had been discharged. Once her chuckles died down, she offered him a helpless shrug. “I cannot say for sure, but I for one am glad for the development.”

Lens eyed her a second longer before smiling and looking ahead himself. “Yeah, same here,” he agreed with his own lips curling up into a smile. His pace slowed down a little as he, too, took in the view. “Heh… it is pretty impressive, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Scarlet muttered in agreement, her eyes following the trail of the Melodia River as it carved its meandering way through the terrain in its journey to the south. She could just make out the straight gray lines that curved across the plains and over the river in two long bridges. She picked up her pace on spying those, eager to get back on a well-maintained highway. “Come on, the galloping road isn’t much farther.”

The trio fell into a companionable silence after that, the only sounds being that of their hooves thumping on the dirt path, the wind brushing by, and the distant songs of birds or calls of wild animals.

The silence did not last long, though. Primrose, to Scarlet’s surprise, suddenly pulled ahead of the group before spinning around to face them directly. “So… I’m curious about something.”

“Sure, what is it, Primrose?” Lens asked, adjusting his glasses with a quick flick of his magic. Scarlet responded by merely offering Primrose a little nod and smile. Whatever questions Primrose had, she’d be happy to answer them.

Primrose bobbed her head at the two unicorns, one at a time. “How did you two meet? Scarlet told me you knew each other a long time ago.”

Scarlet’s smile became strained the moment those words reached her ears. She was not as happy to answer that as she had been expecting. She looked down for a moment, hesitating.

Ultimately, whatever qualms Scarlet had with telling the story were not at all shared by Lens.

His smile grew and shimmered with excitement, and he launched eagerly into the story without even waiting for a word from Scarlet. “Oh, I can tell you all about that! See, it was in the second half of the war, and I was getting reassigned to a new unit,” he began, glancing over at Scarlet eagerly. “Scarlet’s, to be specific. She was going to be my new commanding officer.”

Scarlet sighed and rolled her eyes in exasperation. “I guess we’re doing this, now,” she grumbled to herself. Although, the almost childish enthusiasm Lens was displaying was enough to at least make her smile.

A little.

“Yes, my squad,” She confirmed. “He was assigned to be our ward specialist and pathfinder. His primary objective in any combat situation was to block any incoming ranged attacks so that the rest of us could do our jobs, and outside of combat, he was supposed to help us find our way through the environment. His previous work as an explorer and archeologist made him remarkably suited to the task.”

Primrose nodded along. “Okay, and how did it go?”

Lens chuckled sheepishly, rubbing the back of his head. “W-well, you see, when I showed up with her unit, they had set up a camp at the edge of this forest. When I arrived, she came out of her tent to size me up and then told me to find a spot and get comfy for the night. Then she went back inside and, uh, well, that was it…”

Scarlet closed her eyes and let out a long sigh. “Lens, as much as I appreciate your attempt at honesty, do you have to make me sound like such a callous bitch?” she asked, lifting a hoof to rub at the bridge of her nose. She had all but forgotten how she had treated him back then, and could not imagine treating him like that now.

The stallion chuckled sheepishly at her remark. “Eheh, sorry, Scarlet. I’m just telling it how it is.”

“So, wait, hang on,” Primrose cut in, tilting her head in confusion. “It… wasn’t all sweet or anything?”

Scarlet sighed and shook her head. “Truth be told, Prim, I barely even noticed him at the time,” She said before Lens could offer up any kind of answer.

“What the- Hey!” he protested with a pout, shooting her a disapproving glare.

Scarlet looked back at him with a frown. “What? It’s true. I had enough on my plate, in case you were unaware. It was my first time being in command of a new unit! I was nervous as hell and didn’t want to get too attached to any of you. I was barely coping with the strain of having mere coworkers fighting and dying beside me!”

Lens let out a short bark of laughter before looking at her in disbelief. “You? Nervous? Had you not just told me, I never would have known. You only ever displayed confidence and control all the time,” he noted.

Scarlet shrugged her shoulders. “Had no choice. If I allowed myself to appear weak in front of my squad, what would that do for the team’s discipline and morale?” she asked, giving her head a slow shake.

Lens was quiet for a second before giving a slow nod of understanding. “Alright, fair enough,” he said plainly, and for a moment, Scarlet was glad that misunderstanding was out of the way.

And then she thought about it.

“What the- Hey!” she protested, it now being her turn to pout. “I beg your goddamn pardon?! Isn’t this the part where you try and lift me up and encourage me?! You know, ‘we would have looked up to you anyway,’ or some such drivel?!”

Lens lowered his glasses to peer at Scarlet over the top of the frames. “What? And tell a lie?” he asked before pushing them back up and chuckling. “Sorry, ma’am, I’m not allowed to lie to my CO.”

Scarlet stammered for a moment to try and find some witty comeback before groaning and looking directly ahead. “Remind me why I fell in love with you back then,” she grumbled under her breath.

“I don’t know. Is it perhaps my fetching good looks?”

Scarlet looked lazily over at him, her nose turned up. “You look like a nerd,” she deadpanned as he adjusted his glasses yet again.

“And is that a bad thing?”

“...Well, no, but-”

“And there you go.”

Scarlet sighed before firing off a quick bolt of magic to zap him on the nose. Lens let out a high pitched ‘yip’ from the surprise sensation of an intense static shock on his muzzle, his eyes crossing for a moment. He shook it off and leveled a flat look in her direction shortly after.

Scarlet smirked before looking ahead at Primrose again. “To cut a long story short, I didn’t really notice him or even especially like him for quite a while. It took him rambling non-stop at all of us about some ruins we had stopped to rest in for me to actually pay him much attention.”

Primrose blinked a few times, her muzzle scrunching up as she tried to comprehend that. “Um… how come?” she eventually asked. “I mean, aside from being too busy to run a squad. I mean, don’t you like the ponies you work with?”

“I was trying not to, like I said a moment ago,” Scarlet clarified, thinking back on her old team and wincing. Truthfully, many of those ponies had been really kind and caring, and had they not been her direct responsibility, she likely would have called them her friends without hesitation. She didn’t reminisce for long, though, and turned back to Primrose. “But more than that, we were on assignment. I didn’t have time to look at the new guy and think ‘aww, he’s cute, I should go say hi’.”

Lens chuckled, adjusting his glasses. “Wait. You think I’m cute?”

“Shit,” Scarlet swore internally, a tiny blush appearing on her face. She swished her tail and focused directly ahead. “I-It’s the glasses. And how you ramble on and on… and how you squirm when I pick on you.”

“And you never said anything before because…?”

Scarlet groaned, very rapidly becoming uncomfortable with the situation and topic of conversation. “W-we were a military unit! Thinking about my squad in that sense was not at all appropriate!”

“Heh, tell that to the other stallions on the team,” Lens remarked quietly.

Scarlet paused for a second, her brain taking a moment to properly register what had just been said. Of course, she knew exactly what Lens was referring to, but this presented her an opportunity to turn the tide of this odd verbal duel back in her favor. She turned slowly to look to Lens with an eyebrow going straight up and a displeased scowl forming on her lips. “I beg your pardon?” she asked slowly, her voice carrying a sharp edge that promised terrible pain to Lens if he gave her an unsatisfactory answer.

Lens went rigid like a deer caught in a spotlight spell, and a fierce red blush appeared on his face. “I! Uh, well, I, uh… W-well, see, the thing is, w-w-well, uh… w-we kinda, uh, that is, uh, well, you see… I mean, they would just…” he babbled incoherently, looking anywhere but at Scarlet and actively tugging at his bandana as if it were strangling him.

On the inside, Scarlet smirked triumphantly. Oh, what fun it was to watch a grown stallion squirm.

Not allowing any of her delight at the spectacle before her show through, Scarlet marched right up to him, a stern frown on her face. She placed a hoof on top of his head and turned it so they were eye-to-eye and their muzzles were only inches apart. “Lens. Why don’t you be a good boy and just spill it already,” she said slowly, her voice leaving no room for argument. “That is an order.”

Lens swallowed heavily before speaking up again, shaky and nervous. “I mean… a few of the other stallions on the team kinda liked to, uh… W-well, you know,” he tried to deflect, an uneasy chuckle slipping out of him.

Scarlet narrowed her eyes. “Would I be asking you if I knew?” she growled.

Lens’ chuckle devolved into a pathetic whimper, and he visibly wilted under her stone-cold glare. “...Some of them liked to make... inappropriate comments about you behind your back,” he eventually stammered out.

Scarlet let out a slow exhale before releasing her hold on Lens’ head.“I see,” she said slowly. Such talks had never really been much of a secret to her, of course. She hadn’t been an idiot, or deaf. She’d heard those murmurings herself on more than one occasion, and had slapped out a few reprimands about it before Lens had arrived. Luckily, such things had died down by the time he showed up. He must have caught just the tail end of it.

Her expression soured even further, but inside she was giggling like a school filly at what was to come next. “And did you ever partake in such... discussions?” she asked him, taking the edge in her voice and giving it a very nice run through the grindstone until it was like a razor.

His blush deepened. “N-no!” he denied way too quickly to be believable. When Scarlet narrowed her eyes dangerously, he caved under the silent pressure and stared dejectedly down at his hooves. “W-well… okay, one time… the others wouldn’t stop bugging me when they caught me staring, and… I caved. I’m sorry, Scarlet… I felt really wrong the whole time.”

Scarlet hummed quietly before shaking her head. Time for the punch. “Tsk tsk tsk, shame on you, Lens. You know, if you want to compliment a mare’s appearance, it’s generally better to do it in front of them, so they can appreciate the compliment,” she lightly teased before sauntering past him. “Doing it behind our backs might give us the wrong idea.”

She giggled merrily when the sound of Lens letting out a long and dejected whine reached her ears. She looked back at him over her shoulder with a good-natured smile instead of a predatory one. “Relax, Lens, I’m just messing with you. And for the record, I heard what you said that day.”

Lens looked at Scarlet with a gaping jaw. “Wha- and… and you’re not mad with me?” he asked.

Scarlet shook her head. “I was annoyed at the time, but come on, it was damn near ten years ago. I got over it.”

At that, Lens let out a long sigh of relief. “Oh, thank the Five…” he then chuckled and picked up the pace until he was by her side again.

Primrose had watched that entire exchange with an adorably bewildered look on her face. She tilted her head at the two before falling into step next to Lens. She looked up at him curiously for a few moments. “So… Lens. Scarlet didn’t notice you, but did you like her when you first met?” she asked.

Lens nodded. “Absolutely. I mean, yeah, I was really intimidated by her at first. She was so intense all the time. She didn’t talk much, didn’t take crap from anypony, and was just an all-around badass. But the more time I spent in her squad, taking orders and getting to see her unwind after a successful mission, I got to see just how passionate she was. Under that cold, hard exterior was a mare with so much wonderful potential and the raw, fiery determination to do whatever she set her mind to. I was struck by her almost immediately, and, well, it only grew from there.”

With every word that Lens said, Scarlet’s face heated up more and more with a vivid blush. First, it was the very tips of her ears. Then it was her cheeks, and soon the back of her neck. “So many compliments, so much positive reinforcement,” she thought inwardly with an exceedingly awkward cringe on her face. “It’s too much. I don’t know how to deal with this much praise!”

“Aaaw,” Primrose cooed, looking past Lens to give Scarlet a downright predatory smirk. “You hear that, Scarlet? Lens really liked you the day you met!”

“Yes, Primrose, I am aware,” Scarlet growled through clenched teeth. “I am right here and painfully aware of all of his gushing.”

Lens chuckled sheepishly. “Heh, sorry if that made you uncomfortable.”

Scarlet let out a slow sigh and shook her head. “No, no. It’s fine,” she waved him off before looking down at Primrose. “Does that answer your question, Prim?”

“Uh huh,” Primrose answered with a chirpy nod. Her muzzle slowly scrunched up, though, and she looked up at them again with a small frown. “I have another one.”

“Sure, what is it?” Lens asked.

“How did you two get kicked out of the military?”

Scarlet stumbled mid-step, her eyes flying wide and her jaw-dropping open. Lens did not seem to be faring much better. The two shared an awkward look, and both of them started blushing.

“Uh…” Lens stammered before swallowing heavily. “W-we, uh… we did something we weren’t supposed to do.”

Primrose tilted her head. “What did you do?”

“Grown up stuff,” Scarlet was quick to reply, having already given ‘the talk’ once before and not in any rush to give it again.

“Y-yes!” Lens agreed, pointing at Scarlet. “Very grown up stuff! Not something for you to worry about! Eheh…”

Primrose’s expression slowly went from childish curiosity to an unamused deadpan. “...You guys had sex, didn’t you?” she asked.

Lens went to say something, but the words caught in his throat. All that came out was a series of broken, wordless noises.

Scarlet leaned past him to stare at Primrose in shock. “Primrose… how do you know what sex is?” she asked, legitimately surprised.

Primrose shrugged. “I’ve stayed with a lot of ponies, Scarlet. Some of them were…” she shuddered, an uncomfortable grimace appearing on her face. “...Not good.”

Red flags went up in Scarlet’s mind immediately, and she felt the first tingles of disgust and rage burning at the base of her skull. She forced herself to take a deep breath before she spoke. “Did any of these ponies try to do anything to you?” she asked slowly.

Primrose blinked and then shook her head rapidly. “W-what?! Nooo! Ew! That’s gross, Scarlet! No, some of them just talked about it a lot, or did it where I could see!” she was quick to dispel before sticking out her tongue in revulsion.

The burning in Scarlet’s skull began to cool off. She let out a quiet sigh of relief before shaking her head. “Huh… well, at least I don’t have to give you the talk,” she said quietly.

“Nah, Wind was the one who did that.”

“I did not need to know that.”

Primrose giggled at that before the trio fell silent. Scarlet took the opportunity to relax and refocus her mind on the task ahead. However, try as she might, her mind kept wandering back to Lens and the recollection they had shared about their first meeting. She glanced at him from the side, watching as he kept meticulously adjusting his glasses or his bandana, how he would occasionally mumble under his breath to himself to help him think, and so many other little quirks she had slowly started to fall in love with back then. They were just as charming now as they had been back then...

It had been eight years, though. A lot had changed… did she really care for him that way, now? She growled inwardly as she tried and failed to reach a satisfactory answer to that question. “Gah! Why are emotions like this so hard to figure out?!” she shouted within the privacy of her own thoughts.

Suddenly, a low growl filled the air. Scarlet’s horn immediately lit with magic as she sprang to the front of the group, her eyes darting in the direction of whatever angry animal had decided to try and pick a fight with them.

To her immense confusion, however, there was no animal in sight. It was just her, Primrose, and Lens. They were all alone right now. The light on her horn winked out, a baffled expression crossing her features. “...huh?”

“Um…” Primrose suddenly piped up, and all eyes turned to her. Now she was blushing, and had one hoof on her stomach. “Sorry… I just realized how hungry I am,” she said, giggling sheepishly.

Lens looked to Scarlet with a teasing smirk. “Little quick to the draw there, aren’t you?”

Scarlet let out a heavy sigh before dragging herself back over to the group. “Oh, shut up, Lens. Come on, let’s stop for lunch. The grass here looks pretty good.”

“More grazing?” Primrose groused, falling to her haunches. “Ugh. So yucky.”

Scarlet rolled her eyes and lifted the filly in her magic. “Oh, come over here and eat your greens,” she teased before setting Prim down in the grass next to her.

Primrose huffed indignantly, but all the same did as she was told. Lens joined them shortly after, craning his neck down and joining them in nibbling away at the grass.

Boring, bland, stiff. It was the same as ever.

Between mouthfuls, Primrose suddenly shot up, a few blades sticking to her upper lip like a very green moustache. “Hey! Wait a minute! You two never answered my question!” she protested.

Lens stood upright. “Which question?”

“You fool,” Scarlet thought, closing her eyes and bracing herself.

“Did you two have sex or not?!” Primrose asked impatiently.

“You have doomed us all.”

Ruins

Primrose let out a frightened squeak from her position under Scarlet as a deafening blast of thunder rolled across the world. Scarlet grimaced, water running down her face in gratuitous amounts. Dark storm clouds were spread across the sky as far as the eye could see, unloading their contents onto the world without restraint or resistance.

Lens was to Scarlet’s left, his head down, and an uncomfortable scowl on his muzzle. He had it the worst out of all of them, considering his lack of a coat or cloak of any kind. All he had was a now-thoroughly sopping shirt and bandana, neither of which had done him much good in keeping the water at bay.

Scarlet sighed quietly before looking up at the sky, trying to gauge the time. The clouds had rolled in quick, too quick to be pegasus controlled, and the light of day was dulled and muted significantly. However, if she had to make an estimate, it was starting to get on towards night time. They would have to pull off to one side and camp, soon.

“We need to find shelter!” she had to shout to be heard over the roar of the rain.

Lens moved closer to her side to be heard better, his ears folding back from another boom of thunder. “Yeah, I know! But I’m not seeing much!” he shouted back.

Scarlet growled in frustration before looking out over the plains around them. They had gotten back onto the galloping road the previous day and had been following it since. While the straight path and smooth road were infinitely useful in traveling swiftly, it also meant carving through the heartlands of New Equestria, which were bereft of most things that could be helpful in a situation like this.

All around them for miles and miles were great, sweeping hills of verdant green grass. There was only the occasional patch of foliage, but they were too spread out and too thin to be of any use against a storm like this. By now, any such places would already be just as soggy as everything else.

“Wait, I think I see something!” Primrose suddenly spoke up, bravely poking her head out from Scarlet’s forelegs to squint at something in the distance. She yelped when more thunder erupted across the sky and ducked back, but a few seconds later, she re-emerged.

Scarlet slowed down a little, craning her neck down so her head was next to the filly. “What is it?” she asked, quickly scanning the horizon for whatever it was Primrose had seen.

“I dunno. It looks kinda like a bump or something,” Primrose replied, pointing. “Right there, see?”

Scarlet and lens looked where she was pointing. It took Scarlet a few seconds, but she soon caught sight of what the filly had spotted. It was small, but it gave off the impression of a building of some description. There were no lights, however, and the shape was not like anything she would expect from this region. “An abandoned ruin, perhaps?”

It was possible. Much of the land New Equestria occupied, particularly its northern half, had once been occupied by ponies back in the Three Tribes era. If she was remembering her history and geography right, then this was a tribe-era ruin and it would probably be an earth pony home.

“Well, it’s worth a shot!” Lens said before speeding up to a brisk canter. “I’ll scout it out, make sure it’s viable.”

“Be careful!” Scarlet hollered after him, but he had already vanished amid the rain. Scarlet huffed before resuming her previous pace. “Come on, Prim.”

Primrose whimpered and withdrew under Scarlet again, her pace matching the taller unicorn at all times. Scarlet wasn’t entirely sure how she felt about being used as a makeshift umbrella, but her cloak had done wonders to protect her body and legs. Her mane and head were not so fortunate. “Silver lining, I’m cleaner now than I used to be,” she thought.

The duo trudged on through the rain for several minutes, breaking away from the well-maintained stones of the highway and onto the grassy slopes. Soon enough, the structure that Primrose had spotted came into focus.

As Scarlet had predicted, it was a building. An old, dilapidated stone hut shaped vaguely like an igloo. Several holes had formed in the walls and roof over time and plenty of moss was growing along the sides. No door sat in the squat frame, having probably been removed centuries ago.

As they drew closer, Scarlet saw the cyan glow of Lens’ magic leaking out through the holes in the structure. The stallion himself came out a second later with a relieved smile. “It’s clear, and there’s a basement. It’s kinda musty, but it should keep us out of the rain for the night,” he stated with a big smile.

Scarlet let out a sigh of relief. She followed Lens inside and was greeted by the sight of one large room that comprised the entire upper floor. A pile of old, moldy, and largely-decomposed wood was pressed up against the far left end of the circular room, giving off a distinctly unpleasant aroma. Broken streams of water splattered against the floor through the holes in the ceiling. A square-shaped hole was dug into the back end of the room, just before the wall.

Lens pointed at it. “That’s the basement. You two head on down. I’ll be with you in a little bit,” he instructed before turning to the exit.

Scarlet glanced over at him with a raised eyebrow. “How come?”

“I’m gonna grab a few loose rocks and see if I can make a mobile set of proximity wards, like what I had back home,” Lens replied while poking his head out the door. “So that I can make sure we don’t get snuck up on again.”

Scarlet blinked in surprise. “Huh… that’s a good idea, Lens,” she said before starting for the basement. “Very well, take as long as you need. We’ll get comfortable while we wait.”

Lens offered up no response. Soon, Scarlet and Primrose were descending a pair of uneven stone stairs into the basement. The air was stale and musty, and an exceedingly thick layer of dust covered just about everything. There wasn’t much to be covered, though. Aside from the hard-packed dirt floor, the basement, while spacious, was completely empty. It was dark, but it was actually warmer than it had been outside. The walls must have provided at least a moderate amount of insulation.

Primrose ventured out from under Scarlet and shook herself, sending what little water had clung to her coat flying in all directions. “Whew! This is so much better!” she declared before looking around. “...This place is really old.”

“It is,” Scarlet said simply, her horn lighting up and projecting a small orb of amethyst light up to the center of the ceiling, illuminating the small space. “Easily over fifteen-hundred years old, to be precise.”

Primrose spun around to look at Scarlet directly. “No way! This place is still here after so long?!” she asked in disbelief.

Scarlet nodded, her eyes roaming over the old stones with slowly-building scholarly interest. “Indeed. This was constructed back during the three tribes era before Old Equestria was ever even founded. This small hut was made by Earth Ponies, and I imagine an entire family once called it home.”

Primrose looked around with her, her eyes wide. “Wow… how is it still here?”

“A combination of reasons, if I had to guess,” Scarlet said before setting down her saddlebags against the wall to her left. “First of all, at the end of the three tribes era, this entire region was covered in several feet of snow and ice. A lot of buildings would have collapsed under the pressure, but the Earth Ponies built their homes to last. Because of this, the ice almost served to protect and preserve constructions such as this. When the ice melted, presumably over the course of centuries as the Windigos moved on to new prey, there weren’t many incidents that would have caused any further damage. Natural erosion has done its work, of course. We saw plenty of that upstairs.”

“The holes and moldy wood and stuff?”

“Precisely.”

Scarlet trotted up to one of the walls and gently brushed her hoof across the ancient masonry. A small smile tugged at her lips. She was standing in the middle of a historic site right now, and inside she was grinning like a little filly yet again. “I think I’m going to have a look around,” she eventually said, glancing back at Primrose. “Why don’t you lay down and get some rest? It’s been a long day.”

Primrose nodded. “Okay, Scarlet,” she said before making her way over to where the unicorn had set down her saddlebags.

While the filly got herself comfortable, Scarlet took her time aimlessly wandering around the ancient ruin, looking at everything in close detail. Despite the lack of any furniture or records, merely getting to really look at something so old was beyond fascinating, and a million and one questions swirled in her mind. Who had lived here? What kind of lives had they led? What became of them? Did they survive the ice age the Windigos created? What were their names?

She must have been looking around for almost fifteen minutes before Lens finally stepped down into the basement, dripping wet and shivering, carrying a collection of fresh sticks behind him in his magic. “Whew. Okay, I got six runes scattered around our position. Anything gets too close, we’ll know about it in advance,” he announced before shaking himself wildly.

Scarlet turned back to him and nodded. “Good to know.”

Lens straightened himself up a bit and smiled. “So, who’s up for some food?”

Primrose pouted. “Please, not more grass…”

Lens chuckled merrily. “Ha! No, I’m not that boring,” he said cheerily before taking off his saddlebags with his magic.

Scarlet’s eyes widened as she watched Lens procure a collection of berries and nuts from his saddlebags, and then a pan and some mugs. They were a little old and dinged up, and looked kind of familiar, but seemed serviceable. Scarlet took a step forwards, eyeing the ensemble in shock. “Lens, where did you get all of that?” she asked.

Lens smirked. “I did a little snooping around while I was setting up the runes,” he said, spinning the pan in place, like a fancy dagger. “Found a few berry and nut bushes nearby. And I’ve been carrying these cups and the pan with me since we left Hoofrest Shire. It was a gift from the Apples for the road. I just haven’t had a chance to use them yet.”

“Does that mean Scarlet soup!?” Primrose asked, her ears perking up, and her lips curling up into an eager grin. “Please?”

Scarlet frowned in thought. “We don’t have any bowls with us, I’m afraid, so it can’t be soup, per se…” she said quietly before her eyes landed on the sticks Lens was carrying behind him. A thoughtful smile spread across her lips. “But I might have another idea…”

An hour later, a small but comfy fire was burning in the middle of the room, providing warmth and light for the three travelers. Lens had started a fire while Scarlet filled the pan with rainwater from outside. Once the fire was going, she put the grapes into the pan and let it come to a boil while working on the second half of her idea.

Specifically, she took a few sticks that hadn’t been used in the fire and used her magic to whittle down the ends into sharp points. She had then impaled the nuts and berries on those ends, making one for each member of the group. It was a simple meal — boiled grape juice with berries and nuts on a stick — but it worked.

Primrose had been especially pleased with hers, having eaten everything put in front of her rather quickly before asking for more. She had complained, briefly, when she learned there wasn’t enough for second helpings, but her displeasure was short-lived. Sleep came for her soon enough, and she was now curled up into a ball against the far wall, her tail held in her hooves like a blanket.

Scarlet sighed quietly before taking off her cloak and draping it over the slumbering filly. Primrose cooed quietly and snuggled into the newfound blanket, but did not wake.

“She’s really lucky she met you,” Lens said in a whisper behind Scarlet.

She was quiet for a few seconds. “...I suppose she is,” she eventually agreed before turning around to look at Lens. He was smiling at her, his head tilted subtly to one side. His shirt and bandana had been removed before they started eating so they could dry, leaving his glasses as his only form of clothes for the moment.

Scarlet didn’t say anything else for the moment. She merely let out a quiet hum before trotting up to the fire and settling down on her belly, making sure to keep Primrose in her line of sight. Lens joined her not long after, settling down close to her side.

The two were quiet for a short while. Scarlet lowered her eyes to look at her hooves, a solemn frown slowly appearing on her face. “And I am lucky that I found her…” she eventually muttered, the words almost inaudible over the crackling fire.

Lens heard her, though, and shifted a little closer. She could feel his side pressing up against hers, his body heat warming her up. “What do you mean?” he asked in a hushed voice.

Scarlet didn’t say anything for several seconds. She slowly lowered her head until her chin rested on her hooves and closed her eyes. “When our daughter died, I was… broken In many ways. It felt like my entire life had crumbled into ruins around me. I couldn’t even perform my usual tasks at the academy for months. I had only just gone back to work for the first time since the incident when I found Primrose in my cellar… small, skinny, frail, and so, so scared…” she began, shuddering. “She needed me… and I think I needed her.”

Lens remained quiet, but he did drape a comforting foreleg over her shoulders.

Scarlet hummed quietly from the contact, and some of the tension left her body. “...Nothing could ever replace Crystal,” she went on solemnly, her eyes opening just a crack and shimmering with regret. “Never in a million years. She was our daughter, and now she’s gone… No matter how hard I wish it were not so, nothing can ever change that. But… Primrose...”

She hesitated, unsure of how to put into words exactly what it was she wanted to say. She mouthed uselessly for several seconds before Lens finally spoke up. “She makes it hurt a little less?” he ventured timidly, hitting the nail on the head.

Scarlet nodded. “Yes, I suppose so… In truth, when I first met her, I wanted to be rid of her as soon as possible. Having her there, sleeping in Crystal’s old room… it reminded me too much of what I had lost, and what I couldn’t bear to lose again. I had every intention of dropping her off at the orphanage and never looking back. But when Silent came, when he had her cornered in that alley, poised and ready to strike, I…”

She screwed her eyes shut as the memory of that night came rushing back. “I couldn’t… I couldn’t let another filly die like that. It didn’t matter to me that I barely knew her, or that she wasn’t my own flesh and blood. All that mattered was that she was scared, about to die, and I could save her. So I did.”

She went quiet for a few seconds to collect herself and gather her thoughts. She opened her eyes, the flickering flames reflected in those deep purple orbs. “...And now I have a little filly I have to protect and take care of, again. She’s not my daughter, but… if I can help Primrose, then… maybe… just m-maybe, I can finally start to make amends for what happened to Crystal.”

The two fell into a thoughtful silence after that. Lens’ foreleg gave her a comforting squeeze, and the tremor that had worked its way into her voice and chest began to decrease. She let out a quiet sigh, leaning into him and closing her eyes. For a long while, neither of them said a word. But, as it always seemed to, Scarlet’s thoughts began to wander to dark places. She grit her teeth, shivering involuntarily.

“Are you alright?” Lens whispered, lowering his head to look at her directly. “Hey… Scarlet?”

“I’m scared, Lens,” she finally admitted, her voice hitching in her throat.

Lens blinked. “Huh?”

Scarlet opened her eyes and looked directly at him. “Silent already got to Primrose once,” she said, her eyes starting to shimmer. “And I couldn’t stop him… We got lucky that night. Next time we meet him, Silent will not be so sloppy in his work. I just...”

Scarlet groaned and set her face into her hooves, anxiety, and dread waging an offensive war against her hope and confidence. “...I’m scared that I won’t be able to save her, Lens. The thought of letting another filly down like that… of letting another foal die when it was my job to protect them… it… it scares me more than anything.”

Lens stared at her for a few moments, his eyes wide with shock at seeing her openly admit to her fears. It must have been a surprise, she thought, given how much she tended to internalize such feelings. Eventually, though, his brow furrowed, and his expression hardened somewhat. Then, to her surprise, Lens leaned over to offer her a comforting nuzzle.

Scarlet lifted her head and turned to look at him when he pulled back and found that his lips had curled up into a warm smile. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there for Crystal,” he began softly. “More than anything, I wish I could have been there to shoulder some of the burden, to ease your pain,” he whispered to her. “I wasn’t there before… but I’m here now. I’m with you, and no matter what happens, you don’t have to carry the weight alone this time.”

Scarlet swallowed heavily, struggling to keep her face straight from the war of emotions raging inside of her. Finally, she closed her eyes again and leaned heavily into Lens’ embrace, letting out a long, shaking breath. “Th-thank you,” she finally choked out. “Thank you so much…”

Lens nodded quietly, pulling her close against his side and burying his face in her mane. “It is my pleasure,” he told her.

The two fell silent, after that, the dull white noise of the rain outside and the crackling of the fireplace being the only sounds in that quiet basement.

Soon enough, those very sounds were what finally lulled Scarlet and Lens to sleep in each other’s hooves.

Newcanter

Newcanter. After a few more days of uneventful travel, the city finally came into view.

The great capital of New Equestria, the place where ponies started over after The Fall, was just as grand and impressive as Scarlet remembered. Enormous walls of heavily reinforced stone enclosed a practical metropolis that had been built up over the course of four hundred years. At its heart was an impressive castle that towered over the rest of the city and warned off any who would dare threaten its inhabitants.

The various structures that lined the streets were taller the closer to the castle they were, making the city almost look like a mountain as the roofs sloped closer and closer to the ground, with the pointed roofs of the castle being the very peak. Visible to the south was a wide river that caught the morning sunlight, and a large harbor had been constructed there for trade vessels and naval ships.

Scarlet cringed. It had been years since she had last laid eyes on the capital of the country. Specifically, it had been when she was being carted back to Swanrun after her discharge from the military. Her ‘escort’ had stopped in the city long enough to finalize her dismissal and treat himself at the local inn and tavern for the night.

Not the most pleasant memory.

“You okay?” Primrose asked from her perch on Scarlet’s back. “You feel kinda tense.”

Scarlet hummed quietly. “Once upon a time, this city might have made me feel safe and secure. But the last time I was here, I was in chains. And now I am a wanted fugitive, and this is the source of the ponies that hunt us. I’m not exactly thrilled to be here,” she explained simply before glancing sideways at Lens. “Remember. We are only staying here for a day, two at the absolute maximum.”

“I know,” he replied with a curt nod, his expression serious. “I have no intention of staying any longer than that. With any luck, I might be able to smuggle out the tools I need to keep studying the lamp.”

“See to it that you do. The sooner we know what that thing truly is, the better.”

Primrose frowned before propping herself up on Scarlet’s head. “So, uh, are we doing fake names again?” she asked curiously.

Lens raised an eyebrow. “Fake names?”

“It was my idea,” Scarlet said. “Back when we arrived in Shimmervale, we came up with fake names to try and throw Silent off our scent. I was Sapphire, and Primrose was Protea.”

Lens’s eyebrow fell back down. “Well, considering how quickly Silent found us before…” he pointed out slowly.

Scarlet cringed at the implication and nodded. “I am well aware. Our false identities did little and less to hide our presence from Silent. However, it is possible that he knew we were going to you in advance. Our names didn’t slow him because he didn’t have to ask for us,” she reasoned, shuddering at the prospect of the assassin knocking down their door in the night again. “Better safe than sorry.”

Lens was quiet for a second before looking ahead at the capital. “Alright, fair enough… I’ll be Looking Glass, then,” he said, nodding back at his cutie mark for emphasis. “We have to be sure our names are believable, after all.”

Scarlet nodded. “Indeed. I’ll remain as Sapphire, and Primrose shall remain as Protea.”

“Okay,” Primrose nodded quickly before resting her chin on top of Scarlet’s head. “So, uh, what are we doing once we’re inside?”

“Our first objective is to head directly for the academy and have Lens call in whatever favors he has to in order to gain access to the tools he needs to study your lamp in detail,” Scarlet began without even a moment’s hesitation, her mind springing into action and picking apart everything she knew about the city. “Once that is done, our next priority is to secure shelter for the night. A local inn would be sufficient, although we would want one where we’ll blend in.”

“It’s a rather big city,” Lens pointed out calmly. “Finding a suitable place shouldn’t be too difficult.”

Scarlet hummed quietly. “True, I suppose,” she acknowledged before clearing her throat and lifting her head up higher. “Now, everypony hush. We’re almost to the gate.”

The tall and imposing city gates stood open, as did the two layers of heavy, reinforced portcullises, allowing a thick and steady stream of ponies, and even the occasional Hippogriff, to come and go. The gates were made of some manner of heavy metal, and on them was an engraved depiction of Celestia and Luna flying around one another, their horns touching in the middle. The paint that had granted the image color had faded and flaked away over time, leaving only trace amounts left.

It was easy enough for Scarlet, Lens, and Primrose to blend in with the crowd, keeping their heads down and slinking in. A collection of four guards stood watch on the outside of the gate, their eyes sweeping the crowds curiously. Luckily, they didn’t seem to take note of Scarlet and her entourage any more than the other ponies coming and going.

Scarlet let out a quiet sigh of relief once they passed through the gates and entered into the city proper, affording her an unobstructed view of the city up-close. The streets were pristine and well-paved, and the outermost buildings that hugged the edge of the wall were similarly well-maintained—pearly white stone walls with roof tiles of either bright yellow or dark blue. Ornately curving arcane lamp posts lined the streets in even intervals and curved over the street, creating the illusion of a corridor of light.

Primrose shifted on her back before speaking quietly into her ear. “Hey, what’s with all of the banners and decorations?” she asked softly.

Scarlet blinked before giving the city another, more critical look. Sure enough, there were tapestries, banners, and a whole assortment of decorations lining the streets, connecting the roofs of homes with their neighbors across the street, and livening up the homes themselves. They were all themed after the rising sun, making the city practically glow. And with that sight came the most unexpected of sounds; music. Somewhere farther ahead, ponies were playing a piece of lively music with harps, violins, an upbeat drumbeat, and flutes.

The realization came to her after a moment, and her eyes widened. “The Festival of Foundations…” she whispered, somewhat awestruck, but more just shocked that, out of every day of the year, they got to arrive in Newcanter today.

Primrose tilted her head. “What’s that?”

Scarlet’s lips slowly managed to twitch up into a soft smile. “It’s… it’s a festival almost as old as New Equestria itself,” she said, slowing down somewhat. “See, when Newcanter was first formed, it was really little more than a refugee camp made by ponies who fled the encroaching armies of griffons. For a long time, we were not recognized as our own sovereign nation. We were just a splinter faction to be brought to heel. But when the Griffons finally deigned to follow us, we were able to drive them off long enough to wear them out and be officially recognized as our own country. This festival was started to celebrate that day, the official beginning of New Equestria… and the beginning of a new dawn for ponykind.”

Lens shifted closer to Scarlet’s side to avoid getting lost in the energetic mass that was the crowd. “Well, we picked a good day to show up,” he said with a smile of his own growing. “It’ll be a lot harder for us to be noticed in all of this happy chaos.”

The group soon exited the thoroughfare that served as the entrance to Newcanter and entered into an enormous, sprawling plaza. Three ornate fountains formed a triangle shape around the edges, each one themed after night, day, and the twilight hours, respectively. In the center of those fountains was a grand statue, depicting Celestia, Luna, and Twilight, their backs pressed together, their wings fanned out, and their heads held high to look down on the ponies below with serene smiles.

But more than that was the sheer volume of activity in this plaza. A collection of stalls had been set up, each one continuing the theme of sunrise, the ponies who managed them calling out to be heard over the roar of the crowd. Market stalls selling food, trinkets, knick-knacks, and a whole host of other things were accompanied by services, competitions, and games. Foals flocked between them in a mad rush, their parents desperately trying to keep up.

Primrose’s eyes locked onto one such group of fillies and colts as they went storming past, giggling and laughing to one another in absolute delight as they chased after what appeared to be a pony dressed up as a manticore. After a moment, she tapped Scarlet on the head a few times. “Um… Scarlet?” she asked timidly. “Can we stay here for a while? I wanna look around…”

Scarlet paused mid-step to glance up at the filly, her expression hardening. “It’s Sapphire in public, remember?” she hissed, glancing briefly around to ensure they hadn’t been heard. Luckily, nopony else seemed any the wiser. Satisfied, Scarlet gently lifted Primrose off of her back and set her down so she could look into her eyes. “And secondly, Protea, no. I’m sorry, but we don’t have time right now. We need to get to the academy and-”

“Actually,” Lens cut her off softly with a tap to her shoulder. Scarlet turned to look at him and found him grinning at her. “It might do you two some good to stay here for a little while and relax. I can get to the academy faster on my own, anyways. I know the streets pretty well from when I studied here, but having to guide you two there would slow me down.”

“Splitting up is dangerous,” Scarlet pointed out with a frown. “We need to stick together here.”

“Hey, you’re a lot better suited to guarding her than I am,” Lens countered without missing a beat. “I deal in shields, barriers, and wards. None of those would last long against Edge or his men. Besides...”

He crouched down to be closer to Primrose’s eye level and ruffled her mane with his smile widening, making her giggle. He looked up at Scarlet. “Both of you could use some stress relief. And you can even look for an inn around here if you want to.”

“Come on, Sapphire, please?” Primrose all but begged, reaching up and hooking her hooves into Scarlet’s cloak so she was practically hanging off of the taller unicorn. “Please, please, please?”

Scarlet hesitated. On the one hoof, they weren’t here to play games or see the sights. They were only going to be here for a day or two at most, and then they were leaving. Getting mixed up in the local festivities would make their departure all the more grueling and unpleasant. But on the other hoof… she looked down at Primrose and into her eyes, thinking back on the journey they had shared thus far.

How many times had she gotten to see Primrose get to be a filly? How many times had Scarlet been able to say that she had seen the foal she swore to protect really have fun, laughing and enjoying herself? Only a few times came to mind, and they were few and far between. Of those times, one stood out to her. They had been walking through the woods and had both devolved into a fit of laughter after making dumb faces at each other. Among that moment of levity, Primrose had said something that stuck with her.

“I think you should smell the roses more, too.”

Scarlet’s uneasy expression eventually softened with a small smile. “Okay, I’ll tell you what,” she began in the ‘motherly diplomat’ voice she had used on Crystal in the past. “Let’s find an inn first. Once we’ve cleaned ourselves up a bit and done something to make us less recognizable, then sure, we can spend some time here. Does that seem fair to you, Protea?”

Primrose’s eyes lit up with elation at the prospect, and she suddenly jumped up to hug Scarlet tightly around the neck. “That sounds great! Yes, yes please!” she squealed, her hind legs kicking enthusiastically underneath her.

Scarlet tilted forward slightly from the weight now dangling off of her neck, her expression becoming pained. “Gah! Hey, down, you’re hurting my neck!” she protested indignantly.

Primrose let go, dropping back to the ground with a big, eager grin. “Sorry! Now come on, let’s find an inn!”

“Not so fast, little one,” Lens interrupted her with a laugh, catching her on his hoof when she tried to go sprinting into the crowd to find an inn. “I need something from you first, remember?”

Primrose paused at that, the joy on her face slowly diminishing. She looked up at Lens with an uneasy expression. Then, with a hesitant nod, she took off her saddlebags and passed them to him. “Just… take good care of it,” she whispered to him. “Please. It’s all I have left of my mom.”

Lens nodded quietly as he took the bags in his magic. He carefully transferred the lamp from her saddlebags and into his own, using the pouch flaps to hide it from any prying eyes. Once it was secure, he passed Primrose her bags and smiled at her. “I’ll protect it with my life, you have my word.”

Primrose was quiet for a second before backing up to stand under Scarlet.

Scarlet leaned down to offer Primrose an affectionate nuzzle, then turned her attention to Lens. “Be careful,” she said simply. “And don’t draw any attention.”

“You have nothing to fear,” Lens confirmed before stepping forward and wrapping her up in a warm hug. “You two just focus on having fun, yes?”

Scarlet stiffened from the suddenness of the embrace, her mind stalling. It didn’t take her long to recover and return the embrace, nodding into his shoulder. “We’ll try.”

Lens seemed satisfied with that answer. He pulled back, smiled down at Primrose, and then turned to march off deeper into the city. Scarlet and Primrose watched him go until, after a few moments, he became completely obscured by the shifting mass of ponies that formed the crowd.

Primrose shuddered and went to take a step after him, but Scarlet put a hoof on her back to stop her. “It’s alright,” she whispered sincerely. “We can trust him. Your lamp is safe with him.”

Primrose was quiet for a second before nodding. “I hope so…”

Scarlet sighed before gingerly lifting Primrose back onto her shoulders with her magic. “Come on, let’s find an inn room since you’re so eager to have some fun,” she said, hoping that the promise of a good time would be enough to assuage Primrose’s concerns over her family heirloom.

A hope that proved to be somewhat successful. Primrose focused ahead and nodded, albeit with slightly less energy than before.

Scarlet turned and began to walk, her eyes scanning the buildings for an inn. She was rather eager to find a place to stay so they could get to playing around in the festival. As much as she wanted to just keep moving, she had to admit… spending some time just horsing around with Primrose in a fair?

It sounded like a lot of fun, and she couldn’t find it in herself to feel anything but excited by the prospect. As she disappeared into the crowd, she began to bounce slightly with every step she took.

Festival

The Inn that Scarlet eventually settled on was a three-story affair just outside of the large plaza. Lively music played inside, and the rowdy cheers of creatures enjoying their drinks and whatever festivities were inside were only slightly muffled by the diamond-patterned glass windows. The sign that hung over the door depicted Celestia and Luna in a simplistic, pointy art style. They were chasing each other’s tails in an endless circle, in the center of which were the words ‘The Dawn and Dusk Inn’ engraved in bright, bold letters.

“This will do, I think,” Scarlet said with a satisfied nod before guiding Primrose up the steps and pushing open the door. She was immediately hit with a solid wall made up of the smell of cooking meat, and her ears flattened back on instinct. She had half a mind to turn tail and run the other way when she saw the reason behind the scent, and one reason to flee was swapped with quite another.

Griffons. A lot of them.

The heart of the room was home to a dense collection of circular wooden tables and, at almost all of them, griffons were seated and chowing down on cooked meat and guzzling alcoholic beverages from large steins. What few ponies there were in the room chose to keep to the tables near the edges of the room, casting anxious glances at the assembled flock every so often.

To the left side of the room, an aging stallion with an orange coat and a gray mane stood patiently. A short, trim mustache decorated his upper lip, while a high-quality, black button-down shirt covered most of his barrel. His emerald eyes scanned over the crowd in scrutiny, but his expression was otherwise unreadable to Scarlet.

“That’s a lot of griffons,” Primrose noted in a whisper, shrinking back slightly. “They aren’t gonna attack us like the last ones, are they?”

“Of course not,” Scarlet said in reassurance. She cast her gaze over the collection again, taking note of some more specific details now that her initial shock had worn off. Nearly all of them were garbed in some manner of armor, and some even still had their weapons on their bodies: swords, axes, maces, and even a crossbow. The distinct lack of unity or recognizable symbols between them made it clear they weren’t part of either the Talonreach or Freewind military.

Scarlet quietly ushered Primrose around the cantankerous griffons, heading straight for the bar. “They’re probably just mercenaries. If we don’t bug them, they won’t bug us.”

Primrose hummed quietly but did not speak further on the subject.

The bartender nodded at Scarlet as she approached, his face lighting up with a small smile. “Good afternoon, ma’am. What can I get for you?” he asked in a grave, yet cheerful voice.

Scarlet returned his smile. “Good afternoon. Just a room for two, if you have one,” she said plainly.

The stallion nodded. “Aye, I can do that.”

Primrose frowned and glanced up at Scarlet in confusion. “Room for two? But… there’s three of us.”

Scarlet leaned down to offer her a quick nuzzle. “That’s because you’re sleeping in my bed with me,” she said simply, opting not to openly mention the reason. Letting the stranger next to them know that she planned on guarding Primrose with her body as they slept that night would probably raise a few questions that she did not feel any pressing need to answer.

As that exchange had taken place, the stallion had bent down under the counter. He came back up a moment later with a clipboard and a quill in his mouth. He set them down before clearing his throat and speaking. “Right, so, the names of your party, please?”

“I’m Sapphire,” Scarlet gestured to herself. “And this is Protea. We have another pony who will be coming by later as well, a unicorn stallion named Looking Glass.”

Scarlet quickly lost herself in the fleeting interactions of getting the room arranged. Every so often, she cast a glance back at the griffons that occupied the center of the room, anxiety, and remorse nibbling at her heart. “How many of them did my actions in the war effect?” she wondered quietly. She had no way of knowing, but that only served to make her insecurities worse.

“Um, excuse me?” Primrose suddenly asked while propping herself up so she could see over the counter, her big eyes boring into the stallion. “Who are all those griffons?”

“Protea!” Scarlet hissed out, her eyes darting back towards them for a moment. “That’s none of our business!”

Primrose shot her a disapproving look. “I know, but they’re upsetting you,” she said before looking back to the stallion again. “Can we know? Even just a little bit? Please?”

The stallion chuckled through the quill in his mouth. He set it down once he was done writing something down on his clipboard and smiled at her. “Sure, a little couldn’t hurt. They’re a band of mercenaries from out east, recently rolled into town for work. Apparently, they got a pretty well-paying job from the solar council to do some scouting up in the mountains. Looking for that dragon that’s got a bunch of ponies anxious and making sure it’s not a threat.”

Primrose smiled and looked back up at Scarlet. “See? It’s okay!” she chirped before letting herself back down.

Scarlet blinked, taken by surprise by this information. Mercenaries from out east, was it? That would explain the lack of any unifying symbols in their attire. She hadn’t expected the council to so quickly change their plans in regards to that dragon, but given that they had lost Lens’ contribution, she supposed a quick solution only made sense. The griffons were around, the council needed the help.

She was only drawn out of her thoughts when the stallion cleared his throat, and she turned to see him smiling at her with a key resting in his hoof. “Alright, ma’am, here’s the key to the room. It’s upstairs, fourth door on the left.”

Scarlet nodded, politely taking the key in her magic. “Th-thank you. Uh, have a nice day,” she said before swiftly ushering Primrose away from the counter and for the staircase that ran up the wall by the entrance. She cast a couple more furtive glances at the griffons as they went, only relaxing when they finally fell out of view.

“Primrose?” Scarlet asked a short while later after the two had gotten comfortable in their room. Scarlet was seated on her bed, her cloak off to one side while Primrose was looking out the window towards the plaza.

“Hm?” The foal asked, turning back to Scarlet with a curious look.

Scarlet shifted on her haunches before nodding down at the floor. “When you asked the barkeep about the griffons, you told me that they were upsetting me,” she recounted with her brow furrowing. “How did you know that?”

Primrose was quiet for a second. She shrugged and slowly made her way up to the side of the bed. “You were keeping us far away from them, and… after everything you told me about the war, I just assumed…” she confessed before hopping up onto the bed herself.

Scarlet raised an eyebrow. “Is that so?” she asked, genuinely impressed. While it was true that she had not made her overall feelings towards griffons a secret, she had not expected it to be quite so transparent. She smiled after a moment and ruffled Prim’s long mane. “Heh. You’re a smart child, aren’t you?”

Primrose beamed up at her, exposing her teeth in a wide grin. “I have to be,” she said cheerfully before plonking down onto her haunches and leaning into Scarlet’s side. “If I wasn’t, I’d probably be dead by now.”

Scarlet’s smile became strained, but she was quick to recover. She draped a foreleg over Prim’s shoulders and pulled her close. “I suppose that is correct,” she agreed.

Primrose hummed, pleased by the close proximity and physical affections. After a moment, she leaned back and nodded towards the door. “So, when are we heading for the fair?” she asked in anticipation.

Scarlet rolled her eyes at the foal’s excitement before using her magic to pull her cloak back on. “I suppose we might as well get to it, huh? Otherwise, you’ll never let it go, will you?” she asked, although she already knew the answer.

“Nope!”

Scarlet laughed and rose to her hooves. “Oh, very well. Come, then. Let’s see what waits for us out there in the crowd,” she declared with an edge of flamboyance. She lifted a now-giggling Primrose onto her back with her magic before stepping out of the door and into the hallway beyond.

The moment they left the inn, everything became a blur. Scarlet had to struggle to keep up with Primrose, practically chasing the excitable filly as she bounded from one thing to the next. From a pegasus juggling sharp-pointed knives with his wings, to an earth pony playing lively music on his lute, to a unicorn creating an impressive light show with her magic. Every display of entertainment enthralled Primrose in one way or another, be it tension and impression from the juggler, to awe and wonder from the luminist.

Scarlet was starting to think that she was getting the hang of chasing Primrose around when the foal finally slid to a stop in the heart of the plaza, short of breath from all of the excitement. Her eyes were glued to something, and as Scarlet came to a stop, she turned to look herself.

A circular wooden fence had been erected near the heart of the plaza with the ground within the borders covered in mud and grass. A box-shaped wooden construct sat ten, maybe twelve feet tall, with a flap-based door set into one side. A crowd of ponies was scattered about, cheering and whooping as a collection of foals and one of their parents chased after… something. Scarlet couldn’t really see what it was-

“I GOT IT!” A colt’s voice cried out in elation alongside the cheers of the crowd. Scarlet watched with wide eyes as, suddenly, a two-headed canine creature, perhaps ten feet in length, reared up on its hind legs with a series of barks. Its fur was light brown with white patches along its belly and one of its heads. One of said heads was that of a Corgi, while the other was that of a Shih Tzu. Clinging to the fur on the Shih Tzu head was the colt who had spoken, a red pegasus, with his wings buzzing in elation.

A yellow earth pony stallion with a lanky build caught Scarlet’s eye from a raised platform that was on the outer edge of the fence, an ecstatic grin on his face. “AND THE RED TEAM WINS!” he called out, eliciting yet more cheers from the crowd while those who had been running around inside the fence began to make their way out through a gate that an attendant had opened up.

The announcer then leaned forward, sweeping his eyes over the crowd in a searching manner. “Now, who will be next to Challenge my orthros in a game of speed, agility, and cunning? Step right up, parents and foals, for there are prizes to be had!”

Primrose looked up at Scarlet with an all-too-wide grin. “Can we?” she asked.

Scarlet eyed the ‘arena’ with a raised eyebrow. Chasing around a huge two-headed dog—an orthros, as the announcer had called it—in a fenced-off area filled with mud? It wasn’t her usual idea of fun…

...But this wasn’t about her, was it? This was for Prim’s benefit.

Scarlet smiled and nodded. “I do not see why not,” she said before stepping forward to be closer to the announcer. Primrose clapped her forehooves together with an audible squee before scampering to catch up.

The announcer grinned widely as eight ponies and their foals came forward, not counting Scarlet and Primrose. He nodded in approval before clearing his throat. “Some returning faces, I see! And some new ones!” His eyes darted between a few of the ponies present, Scarlet and Prim included.

He grinned and leaned back. “Very well, then! Allow me to go over the rules again, for the benefit of all present,” he said before gesturing at the assembled ponies before him. “In this game, one parent and one child shall step into the ring with the intention of catching my orthros. He’s a fast bugger, let me tell you, so you must be swift, decisive, and you must work as a team. There is no flying for pegasi and no magic for unicorns. This is a contest of strength and ingenuity, after all!”

He gestured over to the orthros, which was currently chowing down on a large bowl of what looked to be jumbo-scaled dog food. “To ‘catch’ him, you must be the first team to place three rings from yonder barrels over one of his heads. Each team will get their own color of rings to differentiate! Each pony may only carry one of your rings at a time. When the game begins, there is to be no pushing, no fighting, and no hitting. You may throw some mud at the other contestants, though! It’s quite squishy and soft, and easy to wash out.”

Scarlet hummed to herself as a few chuckles passed through the air before clearing her throat. The announcer paused and nodded at her expectantly. “Yes, ma’am?”

“Just a question,” she said before reaching down and patting Primrose on the head. “I have never played this game, and neither has my foal. How safe is it? There isn’t a high risk of injury, is there?”

The announcer grinned and shook his head. “Nay, lass. In all the ten years I have run this game, there has never once been any serious injury. There were a few small accidents in the early days, I will freely confess, but those incidents were minor and easily remedied. If it puts your mind at ease, however, you have my word that I have a dedicated group of ponies on standby with medical training to intervene in the event that somepony is harmed. But that is highly unlikely, as Fluffernutter is a rather soft-hearted oaf, and would never hurt a fly.”

As if to prove his point, the Orthros—Fluffernutter as he was called, apparently—elicited a series of delighted laughs from the ponies on the other side of the fence from him by assaulting one of them with a flurry of happy licks while his tail wagged behind him.

A few pleased ‘aaaws’ made their way through the crowd at the sight, and Scarlet managed to put on a small smile. “Well… very well. My question is answered,” she said before sliding back into line.

The announcer clapped his hooves together. “Excellent! Are they any other questions?”

A filly’s hoof shot up. “What kinds of prizes are there?!”

The announcer grinned and gestured back behind his platform. “I have a stall over there. The winning team will be allowed to take whatever they so wish from whatever is available, one item per pony. Something for the parent, and something for their victorious foal!”

The filly bounced in place and began to excitedly jabber at her mother.

The announcer nodded. “Anything else?”

He was answered by a moment of silence.

His grin widened. “Very good!” he hopped back up onto his raised platform. “Contestants! Please enter the ring and choose your color! Please leave any personal belongings by the fence! We wouldn’t want the mud to ruin anything, now would we?”

Scarlet glanced down at her cloak and cringed, a brief flag of alarm flying in her mind. What if somepony recognized her cutie mark?

Primrose did not seem to have any such reservations, already skipping forward while humming a merry tune. Scarlet forced herself to set aside her worries for the time being. With a quick flick of her magic, she pried off her cloak and passed it to the growing mound of assorted stuff that sat by the edge of the fence. A pony stood guard by the pile, nodding at her and offering assurances to the ponies that went in that he would guard their stuff as they played.

Scarlet followed Primrose over to the barrels that were arranged along the edge of the ring, her eyes already settling on the barrel with the red rings contained within. A tingle built up on the back of her neck, and she knew then and there that somepony was staring at her. She glanced over her shoulder and caught sight of a few ponies in the crowd eyeing the musculature of her body and, more specifically, the small collection of scars she had accumulated in her travels.

She narrowed her eyes at them in a manner that said ‘mind your own business,’ and they were quick to avert their eyes and look at anything else.

“So, we’re red?” Primrose asked while taking one of the rings out of the barrel and looking it over. Scarlet nodded, reaching in and lifting out the remaining two with a thoughtful hum. The rings were made of wood, and each one was approximately two and a half feet across. They were lightweight, and it only took a cursory examination for her to realize that they were enchanted to be remarkably durable. No risk of them breaking mid-game, then.

“It would seem so,” she said after a moment before hanging one of the rings over her neck and turning around to watch Fluffernutter. The tall creature was being guided back into his ‘doghouse,’ his tongues lolling out and eyes carrying the glint of excitement that only an innocent puppy could have.

A hush slowly began to fall over the crowd as a few attendants completed the preparations for the game. The announcer received a collection of nods, and his grin reappeared. “Are the teams ready?!” he called out.

There was a loud collection of affirmatives from the gathered ponies, and Primrose was among the loudest, hopping up and down in place and squealing her head off. Scarlet smiled and nodded along.

The announcer turned to the crowd. “And are all of YOU ready?!”

A blast of cheers came from the audience.

The announcer faced the ring, raising a hoof into the air. “Then let the game… BEGIN!” he slammed his hoof down on the platform with an echoing thunk.

The door to the doghouse flew open, and Fluffernutter came bounding out.

The entire area exploded into chaos. Scarlet watched with wide eyes as all of the teams set off at a full sprint, all of them chasing after the orthros, who was already going into a series of energetic laps around the edge of the fence, his big paws kicking up sprays of mud and muck that splashed those foolish few who stood too close.

Primrose grinned. “Let’s go!” she cheered valiantly with one hoof thrown up into the air. She then broke into a mad sprint, joining the chaos.

Scarlet shook her head with a bemused sigh before taking off after her. She focused on Fluffernutter, trying to predict where he was going to go next. He was currently near one of the fences with his chest low to the ground and his tail wagging enthusiastically in the air. His tongues were lolled out, and he kept hopping back and forth as the foals tried and failed to corner him.

Scarlet caught sight of Primrose, who was by now on Fluffer’s far side. The two made eye contact and nodded before both of them sprang into motion. Scarlet circled wide around the mass of foals, passing by a parent on the way, and closed in on Fluffernutter’s right flank. Primrose mirrored the motion, coming in for his left.

The ears on Fluffernutter’s Shih Tzu head perked up, and he turned to look at Scarlet just as she shot past the foals. Moving quickly, Scarlet dug her hooves into the mud and angled her head down, allowing momentum to move the red ring forward and over her head. She reached out with a hoof as it went flying, catching it and then throwing it with more accuracy at one of Fluffernutter’s heads.

The giant dog was faster than she had been expecting and ducked under the toss, allowing the ring to go harmlessly flying over his head.

“Shit,” Scarlet swore under her breath before moving to chase after her ring. As she did, Fluffernutter bounded over her and the foals, landing in the middle of the arena and kicking up a veritable tidal wave of mud.

A few globs splattered against Scarlet’s side, making her stumble a few paces to one side. She shook herself and scooped up her ring just as Primrose slid to a stop in front of her.

“This thing’s fast!” Primrose said, her eyes wide and frenzied. “C’mon!” She didn’t give Scarlet a chance to respond before she was off again.

Scarlet rolled her eyes and chased after her, focusing on their target.

Primrose, ultimately, wasn’t wrong. Fluffernutter was big, fast, and had the advantage of having two sets of eyes, ears, and noses. He was incredibly aware of his surroundings, and that made successfully sneaking up on him practically impossible. If they wanted to win this, they would need a plan.

Scarlet smirked. Luckily for them, she had fought in a war. She knew a thing or two about plans…

“Now I know why they say no plan survives first contact with the enemy,” Scarlet thought around fifteen minutes later, short of breath and absolutely caked in mud. Primrose was on her back, similarly short of breath, but her eyes yet shone with a fiery determination that only a kid in the throes of an intense game could have.

Fluffernutter had made it extremely difficult for any of Scarlet’s plans to work. There was also the pony factor to consider, with the other parents and foals often taking courses of action that hurled enormous monkey wrenches directly into Scarlet’s ideas before she could even finish forming them. This wasn’t a game of smart thinking like she had initially pondered, but one of quick thinking.

Hence why Primrose now rode on her back while spinning one of their two remaining red rings on her hoof as if it were a lasso, a technique she had no doubt acquired back when she lived with the Apple family. Scarlet’s own ring was still hanging around her neck, while the third and final one was securely nestled around Fluffernutter’s Shih Tzu head, along with a practical rainbow of other rings.

“Mud, duck!” Primrose yelped.

Scarlet did so without hesitation, barely avoiding a thick glob of mud went sailing right where her head had been a moment earlier. She heard a colt growling in frustration to the side, and quite close at that. Grinning internally, Scarlet pressed her forehooves into the mud while giving her hips a sudden jerk to the side. Her leftover momentum caused her to slide around on her front legs while her hind legs swept through the top layer of the mud, sending a tidal wave to wash over the colt who had dared to lob a projectile at her.

His wails of alarm, followed by his chuckles of merriment, made the loss of momentum worth it. Primrose blowing a raspberry at the colt from her head only added to her enjoyment.

“Incoming!” Primrose called, drawing Scarlet’s attention back to the rest of the game. Fluffernutter was bounding in their general direction, looking over his shoulders with both heads as a small stampede of still-energetic foals chased after him. Their parents were lagging behind, either due to exertion or a desire to pace themselves. Maybe both.

Either way, the angle of Fluffernutter’s approach presented an opportunity. Scarlet smirked and resumed her sprint. “Be ready to jump!” she commanded, pumping her legs for all she was worth.

“Ready!” Primrose called back.

Scarlet bit on her tongue and narrowed her eyes, focusing intently on her timing. Fluffernutter’s path was about to intersect with hers, the enormous dog seemingly oblivious to her location. Just a few more steps…

Now.

Scarlet compressed her hooves before launching herself upwards towards Fluffernutter’s Shih Tzu head. Primrose was prepared and leaped with her, using Scarlet’s own momentum to boost her own. She flew right up in front of Fluffernutter’s face, drawing a confused snort from him. With a victorious shout, she slammed her ring down on his head, fitting it over his neck like one of a million necklaces.

Surprised, Fluffernutter reared up on his hind legs with a loud bark.

“My turn.”

Scarlet capitalized on the Orthros’ sudden end in movement by turning and leaping up onto his back. Her hooves slid a few times, scrambling to find some purchase on his smooth fur, but some of the mud had dried on top of him and she was able to find her hoofing. Grinning and grunting with effort, Scarlet turned and began to climb along his back for his heads.

Fluffernutter did not seem to take kindly to having a grown mare crawling on his back, and so began to spin rapidly in place as if he were trying to eat his own tail. A small vortex of mud was kicked up from the momentum, causing the other foals and parents to back away until an opening presented itself.

Which was good for Scarlet. Her strong grip kept her from falling off, and with one last surge of strength, she threw herself forward into the back of the Shih Tzu head, making Fluffernutter stumble. Then, with a needlessly fanciful flourish, even as the orthros shook his head around, Scarlet plucked her ring from her neck and settled it over his like it was a piece of royal regalia.

And with that, the crowd burst into cheers.

“RED TEAM WINS!” The announcer declared, blowing into his whistle loudly. “What a spectacular display of strength and acrobatics from the red-maned mare unicorn! Give her a big round of applause!”

And the crowd did just that, cheering and hollering out their approval for the show. Fluffernutter did not seem to care much for the noise, as he swiftly came to a stop and sat down on his haunches, panting for breath and clearly ready for a rest. The sudden drop caused Scarlet to lose her balance, and she fell lazily into the mud below with an undignified splat.

“You did it!” Primrose called out as she slid to a stop by Scarlet’s side, planting her hooves on the mare’s chest with an enormous grin. “Holy cow, that was amazing!”

Scarlet laughed quietly before reaching up and booping Primrose on the nose, adding a new layer of mud to her snout. “Yes, well, so were you,” she complimented between breaths.

Primrose’s eyes crossed to stare at the mud on her muzzle before she pouted indignantly. She was quick to recover, getting a mischievous glint in her eyes that made Scarlet immediately regret her recent life decisions. In one swift motion, Primrose dunked her hooves into the mud, lifted up a sizable blob of the stuff, and then dropped it onto Scarlet’s chest.

A few laughs rolled over the crowd at her expense, and Scarlet’s expression flattened. “You do realize the dirtier you make me, the longer we’ll have to bathe before we can come back to the fair, right?” she asked pointedly.

Primrose froze for a second before her muzzle scrunched up again. “That’s not fair…”

“Yes,” Scarlet rolled her eyes. “Because you know all about fair, don’t you? Making cute faces at me like that.”

Primrose stuck her tongue out at Scarlet, a motion that was quickly reciprocated before the two shared a few merry giggles and a warm embrace.

“Excuse me, miss?” a stallion called from the nearby fence, drawing their attention. He was one of the game attendants and nodded towards the new open gate further along the fence. “I hate to ruin your moment, but we need you to leave the ring now. You need to pick up your reward and make way for the next batch of contestants.”

“Ah, yes, of course. My apologies,” Scarlet called over in response before stiffly sitting up onto her haunches. She gave Primrose a sideways glance and a small smile. “So, then. Shall we?”

“Mm-hmm!” Primrose hummed cheerfully.

One Scarlet was up on her hooves, Primrose leaped up onto her back and got comfortable as they made their way for the exit.

“So, any idea what you want?” Scarlet asked after a moment.

Primrose hummed quietly, thinking the question over. After a moment, she shrugged noncommittally. “I dunno. I just wanted to chase the big dog.”

Scarlet paused, and then let out a loud laugh. After a few seconds, she shook her head in mock dismay and pressed on.

“Of course you did.”

Author's Note

Some adorableness!

Progress

“So, what will it be?” An attendant asked as Scarlet and Primrose stepped up to the prize counter a little while later, sweeping a hoof over everything on display with a large grin. Scarlet looked over it all and raised an eyebrow, somewhat impressed by the selection on offer.

A collection of display shelves made up the brunt of the back wall of the stand, each one loaded with a collection of smaller items ranging from cups, mugs, and various pieces of appropriately festival-themed cutlery to folded up pieces of clothing and travel attire in all manner of bright colors. A few larger prizes, including a giant stuffed orthros, were arranged in various poses to frame the shelves.

“Not many things that would be all that practical,” Scarlet thought quietly to herself, trying to remember that they still had a long journey ahead of them when they left the city. Whatever she got, she would want it to serve some pragmatic purpose to help them in their travels. After a few moments of indecision, she glanced down at Primrose to see how the foal was taking it.

Her eyes were as wide as saucers, her jaw hung open in awe, and her ears were at attention. “Wait… you mean, I can pick… any of these?” she asked after a second.

“Absolutely, little miss,” The attendant answered happily. “Any one thing, no matter how large or small.”

Primrose pointed at the giant Orthros plushie. “Even that?”

The attendant nodded. “If that’s what you want, although your mom’ll probably have to carry it,” he said, patting the nearly five-foot-tall stuffed animal on the back with a glance at Scarlet.

She shook her head at Primrose with an apologetic look on her face. She hated to let her down, but they needed to remember their situation. “Sorry, Protea, but I think you should pick something else,” she said soothingly. “Something like that, as huggable as it is, is just too cumbersome for us to reliably carry around. If we brought it along, it would just get shredded on the road by the time we got anywhere.”

Primrose pouted at Scarlet’s words. “I didn’t say that’s the one I wanted,” she pointed out before looking around at the stalls for a moment longer, a look of indecision crossing her face. “I just… There’s so much. I dunno where to start…”

Scarlet’s expression softened as the realization hit her. Primrose had probably never had a chance to pick something for herself like this before, having spent as much time as she had on the run and in hiding. Much of what she had in her life was whatever she could scrape together, or whatever the ponies who took her in saw fit to grant her.

“Um…” Primrose mumbled after a few seconds before her eyes landed on something. Her eyes widened, and she pointed with an enthusiastic smile. “That! The yellow one on the shelf, right there!”

The attendant looked where Primrose was pointing, a puzzled look crossing his face. “Er, you sure, little miss? It’s a bit big for you.”

“It’s not for me!” Primrose chirped before turning and patting Scarlet’s foreleg a few times. “It’s for her!”

Scarlet blinked. “What?”

Primrose’s smile softened. “I wanna say thank you for bringing me out here… and, you know, everything else you’ve done for me,” she said, her voice quieting down with sincerity. “You’ve given me so much. I wanna give something back…”

“Aah, the filly’s making a gift of it,” The attendant said with realization before smirking at Scarlet. “That’s a nice foal ya got, miss.”

Scarlet stared at Primrose with wide eyes, completely taken aback by the idea. She opened her mouth to protest, but the words did not come. Eventually, she closed her mouth and smiled. “Well, two can play at that game,” she thought to herself before turning back to the attendant as he returned with Primrose’s choice.

It was a sun-yellow shirt made of a thin, silky fabric with an abstract pattern of a sunrise, or sunset, weaving all along its surface. It looked lightweight but warm, and more than that, it looked far different from Scarlet’s usual attire of an increasingly-damaged blue travel cloak.

That, and it just looked really nice.

“Thank you,” she said quietly, taking the shirt in her magic and floating it back to hover with her cloak a few feet behind her. Still caked in mud as she was, she had no interest in making either of those pieces of attire dirty. “Now, then, time for my choice…”

She swept her eyes over the shelves, thinking critically on everything she knew about the filly by her side, and what she could possibly need. It took her a minute, but eventually, her gaze settled on something, and a smile spread on her face. “There. The saddlebags.”

Primrose raised an eyebrow. “Huh? But… you already have-”

“Not for me,” Scarlet cut her off with a cheeky grin and sideways glance. She reached out and mirrored Prim’s earlier action by patting her on the head. “For this little one, right next to me.”

“Aw, that’s sweet,” The attendant cooed before moving to fetch the indicated item.

Primrose’s eyes widened. “Wha- B-but, Scarl- I mean, Sapphire! I already got you a gift, why are you giving me one?” she asked, clearly shocked by the idea.

Scarlet rolled her eyes before crouching down to be at Primrose’s eye level. “Because, Protea, in the time since I met you, you have given me something far more precious than any other gift I could ever get from you… and I will never be able to stop repaying that kindness,” she whispered before leaning forward to offer her a gentle nuzzle. “A second chance… and a reason to keep going.”

When Scarlet retracted, she was met by the wide-eyed stare of a completely stunned Primrose. Several seconds passed where neither of them said a word, merely looking into each other’s eyes. The moment was subtly interrupted when the attendant returned with a pair of saddlebags in his hooves. They were made of fine leathers, each piece having been expertly stitched together and trimmed with ornate sunrise and sunset patterns.

Scarlet took the saddlebags in her magic and presented them to Primrose with her smile growing. “I’ve always seen how small your saddlebags are compared to you. They’re old, beat up, and far, far too small for you anymore. So…” she allowed the larger saddlebags to drift into Primrose’s shaking hooves. “Here. This is in your size, and it can carry so much more.”

“I… I…” Primrose whispered, looking the bags over in complete awe. It was true, they were much closer to being her size. If anything, these saddlebags were actually too big for her, albeit not by much. But that just meant she could grow into them and that they would last for a long, long time if she took care of them.

After a few seconds, Primrose’s expression shifted from awe-filled shock to elation. With a humongous grin, she set the saddlebags down and launched herself forward to tightly hug Scarlet around the neck. “I love them!” she squealed, squeezing her protector tightly. “Thank you! Thank you so much!”

Scarlet laughed, returning the hug with one hoof and burying her face into Primrose’s still muddy shoulder. “You’re very welcome, Protea,” she said after a moment before pulling back. “Now, what do you say to us finding a bathhouse and cleaning ourselves off? I can’t try out the new shirt you got me when I’m all covered in mud, dirt, and sweat, now can I?”

“Nearest bathhouse is right around that corner over there,” The attendant pointed out helpfully without missing a beat, probably having done so countless times that day alone. “Tell them you came from our game, and they’ll probably give you a small discount.”

Scarlet nodded at him before standing back to her full height. “Thank you, sir. Have a good day,” she said before reaching out with her magic and setting Primrose on her back. She made sure to add the new saddlebags to the floating trio of items she carried behind her before turning and making her way for the bathhouse.

“You too, and enjoy the rest of the festival!” The attendant called after them.

A few hours later, Scarlet and Primrose finally found themselves back in their inn room. Presently, while Primrose was over transferring things from her old saddlebags to the new, Scarlet found herself standing in front of a tall vanity mirror that rested against one of the walls to see how she looked in her new shirt.

She had to admit: yellow worked surprisingly well on her. Even more so after she tied her mane back close to her head into a high ponytail. It gave her a very different look than she was used to, and she found herself unable to tear her eyes away.

“Is this what I might look like when all of this is over?” she thought idly to herself, an amused smile spreading out on her face. She could see it, her walking through the streets of Lover’s Shade, looking just as she did in the mirror, Primrose cantering along beside her, maybe with a nice mane cut or something, so she didn’t look so ratty all the time. It was a pleasant mental image, to say the least...

Her smile slowly faded away as she remembered that something not too far from what she was imagining had been her life only a few months ago. She may not have looked like this, exactly, but she had wandered through Swanrun with Crystal at her side, the two of them laughing and smiling and chatting as they went about their lives.

And then it had all ended in tragedy.

Scarlet closed her eyes and took a deep breath, forcing down the memory. However much she needed to mourn, the fact was Primrose needed her to stay calm and focused even more.

“What are you thinking about?” Primrose asked after a moment, causing Scarlet to snap open her eyes and turn to face the filly. She had tilted her head to one side, a curious look on her face.

Scarlet chuckled and shook her head. “Nothing. Just some idle fantasizing,” she dismissed before making her way to their bed and joining Primrose on it. She curled down behind her so that Prim could use the side of her barrel as a pillow if she wanted.

Primrose narrowed her eyes in childish scrutiny for a few seconds before seemingly accepting Scarlet’s explanation and turning back to transferring things from one pair of saddlebags to the other.

A few minutes passed in silence for the two, both of them enjoying the quiet and peace. The softness of the mattress did not go unappreciated, either. The soreness and stiffness that had crept into their muscles from so much travel, not to mention their rather taxing game against Fluffernutter earlier, finally ebbed away so they could relax.

The silence could not last forever, though. It was soon broken by the door opening and Sharp Lens stepping inside with a proud, if tired, look on his face.

“Lens,” Scarlet called over to him, lifting her head. “You’re back. What did you learn?”

Lens turned to look at her and opened his mouth to speak. He then fell silent, clamped his jaw shut, and tilted his head.

Scarlet blinked. “What? What’s the matter with you? Speak up, we’re listening.”

Primrose shifted to look at Scarlet with a knowing smile. “I think he’s admiring the view,” she whispered mischievously.

The view? What view-

Scarlet’s face flushed as it occurred to her that Lens had not seen her looking like this yet. She looked at him intently, and sure enough, Primrose had hit the nail on the head. Lens’ own partial blush was a dead give away.

He awkwardly cleared his throat after a moment. “You, uh… you look good, Scarlet,” he complimented with a crooked grin.

Scarlet’s tail flicked in mild agitation. “I… Uh… th-thank you, Lens,” she stammered out before shaking her head and focusing. “Okay, enough with that. Stop ogling me and start talking, mister.”

Lens stiffened at the word ‘ogling,’ but was quick to recover and get himself back on track. With a quick flick of blue magic, he withdrew Primrose’s lamp and levitated it over to her. “Here you are,” he said with a smile. “You’ll find no new scratches, I think.”

Primrose immediately snatched the lamp up in her hooves and clutched it close to her chest with a squeak and relieved hum. She retreated closer to Scarlet, making good on the unspoken offer to use her barrel as a pillow.

Scarlet placed a hoof comfortingly over Primrose before nodding at Lens more seriously. “Did your research yield anything of note?” she asked, hoping that maybe they could finally start to get some tangible answers.

Lens nodded. “Not much, but yes. A moment.”

Scarlet watched as Lens turned, his horn lighting up again. The entire room briefly glowed blue before flickering and shimmering. When the magical glow faded, they were left in complete and total silence. Even the ambiance of the festival outside had ground to a total halt.

Primrose looked around wide-eyed. “Woah. What did you do, Lens?” she asked.

Lens adjusted his glasses and trotted over to his own bed. “I cast a sound-proofing spell over the room. Nopony can hear us talking now,” he said before hopping up and sitting down on his haunches. “I also put my portable proximity wards around the inn in hidden spots before coming inside. I’ll know if anypony is coming or going.”

“Smart,” Scarlet said simply before sitting upright. “Now that the precautions are dealt with, no more delays. What have you learned?”

“Yes, of course. Ahem,” Lens cleared his throat and sat upright. His eyes fell on the lamp with a whole new layer of appreciation. “You know how I spoke before about the lamp having the capacity to contain something, yes? Well, my research today allowed me to deduce that not only can it house something, but it actively is. There is something sealed inside that lamp.”

Primrose’s eyes widened, and she clutched the lamp closer to her chest. “What kind of something?”

“Hard to say,” Lens answered with a frown. “I can only say that there is something sealed inside. Whether it be a spell, an object, or even a living being, however, eludes me. See, I was able to piece it together when I probed at some of the finer intricacies of the enchantment. The patterns suggest that it’s holding something inside, preserving it.”

“Preserving?” Scarlet echoed, a number of implications making themselves known in her thoughts.

Lens nodded. “Indeed. And considering that this lamp comes from the same age as the Fall, perhaps even predating that apocalypse, it stands to reason that whatever is inside, if it’s an object or a creature, is a perfectly preserved piece of the past. Who knows what we could learn if we could get it out?”

Scarlet glanced down at the lamp with a furrowed brow. That made things interesting, and in some ways, it actually lent a degree of clarity as to why the lunar council would be after it. Assuming, of course, that they knew anything at all about it. Silent hadn’t made any outward indication that he knew what it was he was tracking since Scarlet had gotten involved.

“So… there’s a pony in here?” Primrose ventured after a moment, studying her lamp with curiosity. “Somepony from before the changelings… ruined everything?”

“Again, we don’t know what is in there,” Lens stressed. “Pony, object, spell. Hell, it could be a giant spider egg for all we know. All I can say for absolute certain is that there is something in that lamp of yours. Until I get another chance to probe at this thing, I cannot be sure of anything else.”

“Not like it matters,” Scarlet sighed with a slow shake of her head. “Even if we knew what was stored inside this thing, we would have no way of opening it. I’ve felt the enchantment firsthoof, and so have you. Neither of us is in any way capable of breaking through such a complicated and powerful labyrinth of wards. And if we were to try and brute force it open, we would destroy the lamp, and by extension, whatever was sealed within.”

“So, then, how do we find out what’s inside?” Primrose asked, sitting upright. “If it’s a pony, maybe they’ll know why my family was protecting the lamp!”

“Or they were sealed inside because they were dangerous,” Scarlet was quick to point out, not keen on the idea of letting out something that was sealed away with good reason.

Lens nodded. “A valid point, but regardless. In order for me to decipher what is inside, I’ll need more time and continued access to the tools at the academy.”

Scarlet frowned. “Which means we would have to remain in the city…”

Lens nodded reluctantly. “I am afraid so… I can postpone that research until we get to Lover’s Shade if you think it’s too risky, but I feel like I’m close to figuring this thing out,” he said slowly.

Primrose turned back to Scarlet, her expression pleading. “Can we stay another day, please?” she asked, placing her hooves on Scarlet’s chest and gazing deep into her eyes. “Please? I really, really wanna know what’s in my lamp. And…” she looked down, her lips twitching faintly into a small smile. “And I really had fun at the fair today… I wanna play there some more if we can.”

Scarlet was quiet, indecision wreaking havoc on her mind. On the one hoof, knowing that there was something in the lamp made her even more curious about it than before. In truth, as far as she was concerned, the lamp had been something of a secondary priority ever since they left Hoofrest Shire. She had cared more about getting Primrose somewhere safe before anything else. But now that she knew that there was something contained within, something that predated the Fall itself…

It had piqued her scholarly curiosity.

But at the same time, they were literally sleeping right under the noses of those who had ordered Silent to hunt Primrose down to begin with. All they would need to do is look down for even a moment, so to speak, and Scarlet, Primrose, and Lens would be almost certain to die…

For a moment, she thought that might be the end of it. The lamp could wait until they reached the sanctuary of Lover’s Shade, and they would leave in the morning before their followers could catch wind of their presence here.

She opened her mouth to announce that plan, but then she looked into Primrose’s eyes again. The words died in her throat when she saw the hope, the pure desperation in those teal orbs.

“How long has she wondered what it was all for?” Scarlet thought, her posture sagging. “How long has she asked herself why the ponies she loved had to always be ripped away from her? How long has she wanted to know what her family died for? How many families has she lost without getting those answers? ...And how long has it been since she truly, honestly, got to be a filly for a change; To laugh, and smile, and play?”

There was a moment of silence.

“...Too long. Far, far too long.”

Scarlet lifted her head. “One more day,” she said, finding it difficult to even reach that compromise in her head. “No more than that. And if I suspect that we have been compromised, then we are to drop everything and go. Do I make myself clear?”

Primrose grinned and lunged in to hug Scalet again. Lens, for his part, nodded his head respectfully. “Yes, ma’am,” he said.

Primrose snuggled deeper into Scarlet’s chest fur, humming in gratitude. “Thank you, Scarlet…” she whispered after a moment.

Scarlet sighed and leaned down to give Prim a nuzzle on the head. “You’re welcome.”

“I can only hope that I do not regret this decision,” she thought quietly.

Through the window, the last light of the sun dipped below the horizon, and night claimed the world.

Dance

It didn’t take long after the sun went down for Primrose to fall asleep. As exhausted as she was from running around the fair and chasing a giant two-headed dog, Scarlet was actually rather impressed that the filly had remained awake as long as she had.

Scarlet was seated on her haunches next to the bed, one hoof on the blankets. Her eyes were glued onto Primrose, watching her chest slowly rise and fall with every breath she took. She had a peaceful, happy smile on her face, only occasionally twitching or shifting. She was still, more so than Scarlet had ever seen her so far. Usually, Primrose would toss and turn, and sometimes mumble to herself. Now, though? Total silence.

“She’s pretty cute like that, huh?” Lens pointed out in a whisper from somewhere behind Scarlet. She turned around, finding him standing by the window, having been looking out it at the nightlife of the city for a while. His eyes were now focused on Scarlet and Primrose, though, a small smile tugging at the corners of his lips. “Sleeping peacefully, for a change.”

Scarlet’s heart warmed a little, and she turned her eyes back to Primrose. “Yes… very cute,” she replied with a slow nod. Carefully, she reached out and lightly brushed a small strand of Primrose’s messy mane out of her eye. “I’m glad she had a good time today… The Five know she needed it.”

Lens nodded and slowly made his way over to them. He settled down on his haunches next to Scarlet, close enough that she could feel his body heat. “I’m sure she appreciates you going to the effort,” he whispered. “I know how much you wanted to just sit tight and not draw any attention… but I think letting loose like that will be good for you two.”

Scarlet glanced sideways at him with a raised eyebrow. “Us two? What about you? You’re a part of this team as well, do not forget.”

Lens lifted his hooves in front of him. “Hey, it’ll be good for me, too. But I’m more worried about you and her than I am for myself,” he clarified before setting his hooves down and frowning at her. “I mean no offense, but… well, you’re not nearly as optimistic as I am. You’re always jumping at shadows and stressing yourself out. And Primrose is just a little filly; doesn’t even have her cutie mark yet. A filly like her needs time to play and laugh, or who knows how broken she’ll be when she grows up?”

Scarlet winced, not even bothering to contest Lens’s point. She looked away and let out a quiet sigh. “...I am as cautious as I am for a reason, Lens, you know that,” she pointed out plainly. “It’s helped keep us alive this far.”

Lens nodded quietly, placing a hoof on her back for support. “I know, Scarlet. I guess there’s a bit of a balance between us… you’re the pragmatic pessimist, and I’m the optimistic scholar who tries to make sure everypony’s spirits are high.”

Scarlet shook her head, snorting in amusement. “Heh. A balance between us,” she echoed before looking back at Lens with a smile. “Well, just remember. Once we’re back out on the road, this ‘pragmatic pessimist’ is in charge again. You’re only really holding the reigns for now because you know this city’s layout, and I don’t.”

Lens adjusted his glasses with a grin. “And I’m the one with contacts here.”

Scarlet rolled her eyes and lightly smacked him on the back of the head. “Yes, yes, of course,” she went along.

At the muffled smack, Primrose briefly stirred in her sleep, letting out a nearly inaudible mumble that gave off the impression of being annoyed. Scarlet froze, as did Lens, both of them realizing they had probably been responsible for that.

Scarlet looked at Lens, and he stared right back.

“Uh… maybe we should head downstairs,” he suggested sheepishly, a tiny blush on his cheeks. “Y’know, so we don’t disturb the filly.”

Scarlet frowned. “Are you sure? Shouldn’t somepony be here to watch?”

Lens gave her a reassuring smile. “I already told you, my proximity wards are in place. There’s no way anypony can sneak in here without me sensing it. If anypony sets it off too close to the room, we can go make sure she’s alright, and have plenty of time to get there. It’ll be fine.”

Scarlet took a moment to think that through, and eventually had to concede the point. She gave a slow nod and rose to her hooves. “Very well… come on, then,” she said, holding out a hoof to help him up. As Lens stood, Scarlet smirked at him. “If you are certain, then I have an idea of something we could do.”

Lens raised an eyebrow. “That so? What?”

Scarlet turned and made her way for the door. “Whether you think you need it or not, you could burn off some steam, yourself… and I know just where to go for that.”

It was mercifully quiet when Scarlet and Lens descended the steps and came out into the common room of the inn. A few of the griffons were out and about, albeit looking about ready to pass out from being so magnificently drunk. There were some ponies strewn about the central dining area with drinks and food in hoof, enjoying their evening.

As they passed by one of the windows that was set into the front wall of the room, Scarlet paused to look outside. She blinked in surprise when she saw that, not too far away, a sizeable crowd of ponies was assembled in the very plaza she had run around in earlier, all of them dancing their hearts away. She could just make out the steady thumps and plucks of the music that spurred the crowd on.

“So, uh,” Lens spoke up after a moment, adjusting his glasses awkwardly. “Where are we going?”

Scarlet nodded out the window. “Over there - to the crowd of dancing ponies.”

Lens leaned forward, peering at the assembly and squinting through the window. He blinked a few times, his eyebrows drifting to the north as he considered what she was suggesting. “So… you want to dance?” he eventually deduced, giving Scarlet a skeptical look. “Forgive me, Scarlet, but, ah… since when have you cared about dancing?”

Scarlet hesitated, her ears drooping. A distant look came over her, and she turned her eyes to the floor. “...Crystal. She… she enjoyed dancing. I had to start caring because she cared.”

“Oh…” Lens breathed out in response, his expression shifting rapidly to one of regret for touching the sensitive nerve. “I, uh… I’m-”

Scarlet silenced him by pressing a hoof to his lips. She turned to look at him, and despite the shimmering in her eyes, she managed to smile. “Don’t… don’t say it. I know… just…” she reached down and took his hoof in hers. “Come with me. Let me show you what I’ve learned… what she taught me.”

Lens was quiet for a moment, staring down at his hoof in hers. After a second, he cleared his throat and held his head higher. “If you insist. Lead the way, my lady,” he said with a deliberately eccentric accent.

Scarlet snorted at the sound before turning and dragging Lens along with her for the door. With a quick flick of her magic, the door swung open, and the two of them were stepping out into the cold night air. The music became clear, both of them able to pick out each of the many instruments that made up the song.

Soon, they were making their way into the mass of bodies. Scarlet tightened her grip on Lens’ hoof to ensure she didn’t lose him in the chaos while her eyes scanned for a relatively open space for them to get situated. It didn’t take long to find one, and, soon enough, she released Lens’ hoof and spun around to face him. “Right, now then,” she said, raising her voice so he could hear her over the crowd and the music. “What do you know about dancing?”

“That you move your body around and try not to step on your partner’s hooves,” was Lens’ answer, a sheepish look on his face.

Scarlet’s expression flattened into a deadpan. “Are you fucking serious…?”

“Well, what were you expecting?” Lens shot back, adjusting his glasses out of nervous energy, his eyes sweeping over the crowd around him. He shrank down a little in place, clearly feeling overwhelmed. “My whole thing is books, artifacts, relics, and anything old enough to have an inch of dust on it. I was never really one for dancing…”

Scarlet huffed in mild disappointment. “This is going to be more troublesome than I had thought,” she mused, cursing herself for not figuring that Lens wouldn’t know what he was doing. With an exaggerated sigh, she stepped forward and took his hoof in hers. “Okay, then… to reference something I know you at least have some familiarity with, dancing isn’t too dissimilar to something like a sword fight.”

Lens raised an eyebrow. “What?”

“Think it through,” Scarlet urged him before gesturing around. “In a sword fight, there is back and forth, there is hoofwork, there is spacing, positioning, and stances. One fighter makes a move, his opponent has myriad responses he can make to counter. The exchange ends, both are in a new stance, a new position, and both make another move. Many of the same elements carry over into a dance: position, hoofwork, your posture, the way you move, and most of all, making sure you are in sync with your partner.”

Lens nodded along, fidgeting with his bandana. “Okay, uh, I think I’m following you so far…”

“So,” Scarlet took a moment to consider the current energy of the music, the energy of the crowd, and the way the other ponies were dancing. Most of them seemed to just be flailing mindlessly with no real direction or coordination. The typical dance of a pony who either had no idea how to dance, or who simply didn’t care about making their dance look good.

With a small smile, Scarlet held her hoof out to Lens and nodded. “So, then… take my hoof and follow my lead. And, as you said, try not to step on my hooves. I’d rather not kick you out of reflex.”

Lens, with a gulp that would have been audible, were it not for the music, reached out and took Scarlet’s hoof in his. He managed to put on a small, crooked smile. “Okay… lead on.”

Scarlet’s smile widened, and she went into motion.

To say that Lens was not prepared would be an understatement. The very first thing he did was stumble and almost fall flat onto his face. Scarlet was quick to catch him, though, helping him back up. “You know, you’re supposed to move in a dance, Sharp,” Scarlet whispered to him once he was stable.

He blushed furiously and looked away. “W-well, I… you yanked me!”

Scarlet snorted. “Oh, shut up. Here,” she grabbed both of his hooves in her magic, placing one on her shoulder and taking the other in hers. “Just stay like this, and keep up.”

Lens was ready for the movement this time. Scarlet stepped into a fairly simple set of moves, one she knew even a total novice like Lens could understand, and sure enough, he started following along. His motions were stiff and janky, reminding Scarlet eerily of the various rigid machines he so loved to poke at, but at least he was moving.

She frowned when she noticed his eyes darting all over the place as if he were trying to figure out what all of the other ponies were doing. “Focus on me, Lens,” she instructed, drawing his eyes back to her. “Don’t worry about them. Just focus on your partner.”

“R-right,” he replied with a stiff nod.

No more words were exchanged between them for the time being. Scarlet took the lead, moving in time with the music, but making sure Lens could keep up and keep track of what she was doing. Slowly but surely, to Scarlet’s pleasure, Lens’ motions began to loosen up and become less robotic and more dance-like. He was still awkward and clumsy as all hell about it, but she could not deny that there was something rather… charming about that.

A little quirk she found cute, among others.

As the song ramped up in energy and speed, so too did the dance. Lens stumbled once or twice as things went on, but sure enough, he was quick to catch on and adapt. The tense look of concentration he had on his face slowly began to dissolve, replaced with a large, goofy grin as he lost himself in the new experience.

“This stallion needs to stop being handsome right now!” Scarlet mentally complained at the sight. Despite her protests, though, she couldn’t help but grin in response. It was contagious, really.

The music had started to crescendo into a mad frenzy at this point, and Scarlet knew that the song was about to come to a close. So, with a small flicker of devilish anticipation in her eyes, she decided to do something that would either be very fun or very embarrassing. Perhaps both. Who could be sure until she tried?

Just as the music reached its final climax, Scarlet suddenly ditched the dance moves entirely. Coming out of a spin, instead of following up and taking Lens’ hoof for the final motion, she suddenly ducked down and spun around, kicking out one of her hind legs. As intended, her foreleg struck Lens’ three planted hooves with impressive force, knocking them out from under him and sending him falling for the ground with a startled yelp.

Moving quickly, Scarlet completed her spin and reached out with her magic, slowing Lens’ fall enough that she could reach out and catch him in a dip with her hooves before letting the magic wink out.

And with that, the song came to a close, and the crowd burst into ecstatic cheers and applause for the performance.

Panting from exertion, Scarlet grinned down at Lens, who looked back up at her with the look of a stallion who wasn’t entirely sure what had just happened. With a flickering spark of magic, he righted his crooked glasses and pouted. “Hey, what was that for?” he asked, indignant.

Scarlet smirked. “What can I say? You’re fun to toy with,” she teased.

Lens’ pout became scrunched as his cheeks began to burn a furious shade of pink. “Why, you…”

Before he could say anything else, Scarlet’s eyes widened when Lens’ face suddenly became illuminated with red light, followed shortly by a loud bang filling the air. The crowd erupted into cries and exclamations of awe and wonder. Confused, Scarlet turned her head to look up and see what had happened.

There, in the sky, a collection of colorful explosions were going off over the city. She could see bolts flying up from the sides of the plaza, and quickly realized that there were unicorns strategically positioned at the edges of the area to fire off those gorgeous spells as a cap-off for the dance.

“Huh. Pretty,” she mused, admiring the view for a little bit. It wasn’t unfamiliar to her. She had heard of the spell, as well as the non-magical variation: 'fireworks,' she believed they were called. She hadn’t seen them in Swanrun in all of her years, however, and so seeing them now was more than a little mesmerizing.

“Uh… Scarlet?” Lens’ voice drew her attention away from the sky. Looking back down, she was taken aback by the look on the stallion’s face as he stared up at her. His eyes were wide with awe, his pupils had dilated significantly, his blush had turned several shades darker, and he was actually starting to shake a little bit.

“...Yes, Lens?”

Lens’ mesmerized expression finally formed into a timid smile. “Just… with the fireworks behind you… uh… y-you’re beautiful,” he finally stammered out, averting his eyes. “Really, really beautiful.”

Scarlet’s heart skipped a beat in her chest, and she could feel her own blush coming on. “O-oh… uh, th-thank you, Lens,” she whispered, not quite sure where to look or what to say to that. “I appreciate you saying so…”

Lens shifted in her grasp until he was back on his hooves. He faced her, still blushing furiously. “S-so, uh…” he mumbled, clearly unsure of where to go from here.

Scarlet was quick to collect herself, though. She lifted a hoof to his lips to silence him, her eyes softening affectionately. “Hush… no need to say anything else,” she whispered to him before trailing her hoof down his chest to grasp his again. A new song was beginning to sound from the stage, and fortuitously, it was a much slower piece. “Just dance with me…”

Lens blinked a few times but gave a short nod. His hoof held tightly in hers, and with the new, slower song beginning, the two went back into motion. From one side to the other they swayed, never once sparing a glance for anypony else. At that moment, in that plaza, under the night sky and the moonlight, nothing else existed to them but each other.

The next time the fireworks came, they were even brighter than before.

Author's Note

Fun Fact: Scarlet knowing how to dance because of her daughter is not a detail I had planned. I made it up as I was writing this chapter because it made way too much sense not to.

Report

Newcanter castle was a truly impressive structure. Since its completion a few years after New Equestria’s independence was secured, it stood the test of time, weathering both nature and assault from unfriendly forces. Even in the low light of the moon and the stars, it stood proud as a beacon and a symbol, one that announced to the world at large that this nation, that Equestria, new or old, was here to stay.

To Silent Edge, however, it was little more than where he got his orders.

His eyes wandered over the tall towers and ramparts with an almost bored expression on his face as he searched for his destination. Countless flickering orange lights shined from the various windows or posts along the walls where ponies were yet awake in spite of the late hour. Every so often, a Dragon Sentinel or Nightblade could be seen on patrol, be it on the walls, in the grounds, or glimpsed through the windows.

None of that mattered to Silent. His destination was very different in appearance to the rest of the castle, and even the rest of Newcanter itself. It would be hard to take seriously in the day, and in the night, it was all but impossible to find if one did not know how to find it.

At long last, however, his keen eyes picked out a squat, square stone building at the end of a darkened, seemingly long-abandoned courtyard nestled between two of the larger keeps that made up the fortress. Nothing about it was eye-catching. It was bland, boring, and so old looking that, to any reasonable outsider, they would assume there was nothing of value. An abandoned garden, nothing more.

Silent knew better.

He tucked his wings close to his sides and entered into a quiet nose-dive for the courtyard. At the last possible second, he spread out his wings to slow his descent, coming to a feather-light landing in the very center. His hooves touched down on dusty cobblestone and soggy moss without a sound, his eyes glued onto the building in front of him.

“I always hated this place,” he thought to himself after a moment, scowling with irritation. “That my commanding officer should make his home, and the home of the Nightblades, in a place fit for naught but rats and cobwebs… had I not spent so many of my early years on these grounds, I would assume they were designed to mock me.”

Without a word, Silent stepped up to the wooden door set into the bottom of the tower. His eyes briefly flickered to one of the windows, seeing only darkness beyond. Unsurprising. The primary resident of this tower had no need for light, after all.

Silent pushed the door open with a hoof, a pale stream of moonlight filtering around him and painting a long, narrow square of the wooden floor with soft light. A few small motes of dust went drifting by, and the musty stench of stale air and fermenting fruit flooded his nostrils. The door creaked loudly, like a mouse’s teeth dragged against chalk.

Slowly, Silent stepped into the shadowy room before closing the door behind him. His eyes, despite having already adjusted to the night, were straining to pick out any details in the shrouded room. What few beams of light were let in by the windows were soft and subtle to the point of being useless.

That was, of course, until two purple eyes with slit pupils opened overhead, high above him in the rafters of the dilapidated room. Their owner was completely obscured in darkness, and they did not move an inch.

Silent unfurled his wings and folded them together over his chest while bowing his head in a solemn, centuries-old salute. “Spymaster Nocturn,” he greeted respectfully. “I have returned.”

The eyes stared at Silent for several long seconds before suddenly vanishing from view. Silent remained perfectly still, his ears standing at attention and all of his senses on high alert. Then, after almost a minute, hoofsteps to his left could be heard. He did not lift his head, however.

“At ease, Silent,” a silky, silvery smooth voice that hid a thousand intentions spoke as an off-black pony with large, leathery bat-like wings stepped into Silent’s line of sight. “Report. How did your personal errand go?”

Silent returned his wings to their sides and held his head high. “I have delivered my offer to Scarlet Frost and ensured that all avenues of escaping the city have been blocked. She is cornered,” he said simply, keeping his eyes locked onto those of the thestral in front of him. “I have confidence that Primrose will be in the custody of the council by this time tomorrow at the latest.”

Nocturn hummed, his sharp fangs briefly flashing in the moonlight. He turned and stepped back into the shadows, soon fading from Silent’s view entirely. “Then all that remains is to wait and see if your confidence is well-placed,” he said after a moment, his voice seemingly coming from everywhere at once.

Internally, Silent cringed and shuddered, both due to being intimidated, but more than that, because of the raw disdain he held for the pony speaking down to him and showing off like this.

“Is there anything else?” Nocturn’s voice cut through the darkness as he emerged again, this time with a simple wooden mug held in one hoof. The stench of fermented fruit grew stronger as he drew closer, to the point that Silent’s muzzle wrinkled in disgust. Nocturn did not seem at all perturbed by the look, though, his expression unchanging. “Go on, speak freely.”

Silent hesitated for a moment before slowly relaxing. He looked to one side and took a deep breath, clearing his nostrils with the far more preferable smell of dust and stale air. “It... would seem that Scarlet was not aware of the fact that Primrose is a changeling,” he began, his eyes lowering to the floor with indecision. It was a rare thing for him to truly care about the feelings of others. He hadn’t even felt any remorse about picking through Scarlet’s home for clues about her destination.

It was strange, then, that seeing her staring back at him in such a broken way… as if her whole world had just been shattered and torn apart in one fell swoop. It had stirred something in his heart he was uncomfortable thinking about. He looked back to Nocturn and continued. “When I left her there on the street, she was all but catatonic. The revelation seemingly came as a severe shock to her.”

Nocturn didn’t say anything at first, instead electing to sake a sip from his mug with an audible slurp. When his lips pulled away, his fangs were glistening with a faint sheen of red juice. “Does that trouble you, Nightblade?” he asked after a moment, one eyebrow slowly drifting up.

Silent looked down again. “It… does, sir. To see her in such a state, especially knowing how deeply she has come to care for the foal…” he sighed and shook his head. “I hope she makes the right decision. I do not wish to see her perish for the sake of a monster. Especially one that she did not know the truth about.”

Nocturn’s eyes flashed at Silent for a moment, reading his every word and movement with intense scrutiny. After a few seconds, the spymaster was seemingly satisfied before turning and vanishing into the darkness again.

Silent was quiet for a moment, a civil war raging within his thoughts. There was still the chance, however small, that Scarlet would side with Primrose in the end, and fight against him. He needed to find some way of quelling that possibility and ensuring her cooperation. Maybe...

Before he could stop himself, Silent was taking a step after Nocturn. His words came out more direct and confident. “Nocturn, sir, with all due respect, wouldn’t this process become significantly easier and faster if we told them about the one we have in-”

His words died in his throat when Nocturn spun back around to face him, his eyes narrowing and cowing the Nightblade into biting his tongue. Silent immediately regretted speaking up, his ears folding back. After several seconds of an intense, borderline predatory glare, Nocturn stepped back into the light with a disapproving scowl. “Silent Edge, you know full well that such immoral behavior is what cost you your chance at being the Spymaster at the end of the war.”

Silent nodded. “The murder of Talonreach’s mad king. I am well aware of my past actions, Nocturn. I do not need to be reminded of them…”

“Evidently, you do,” Nocturn shot back, making Silent take another step back. “You lashed out in anger and rage. While one could argue that the death of that mad griffon won us the war, in the end, it remains abundantly clear that it was not necessary. We had them cornered and under siege, and you used that as an excuse to get revenge for the death of your teacher. That is not our way, Silent.”

Silent remained true to his name, his expression turning darker and darker with every word the spymaster said. “Who does he think he is to lecture me on this matter? The bastard had it coming!” he thought before opening his mouth to speak aloud. “With all due respect, sir, we are assassins. Our line of work is based on secrecy, lies, and killing. We are not morally good ponies.”

“No, we are not,” Nocturn agreed with a slow nod. “But we are only as evil as we have to be to preserve our home and our way of life. We do not kill without cause or out of anger, we do not lie without cause, and we do not use the lives of others as leverage to force our enemy into doing our bidding. It is cowardly, dishonorable, reprehensible, and, lest you forget, those very acts of malevolence were what led to the Fall. So long as I am the spymaster, I will not allow my Nightblades to replicate and perpetuate such baseless evils. Do I make myself clear?”

Silent’s teeth ground together behind his lips with frustration for several seconds. Then, with a defeated sigh and grimace, he looked away. “...Yes, sir. Perfectly.”

Nocturn’s eyes bored intensely into Silent for what felt like an eternity. Finally, his expression steadily softened with understanding. He took a few steps forward until he was right in front of him. “I get it, Silent, I do. You are eager to finally complete this mission and receive the promotion my predecessor promised to you. It is only natural that you wish to hurry things along and be done with it. But this is the most critical step. The manner in which you conduct yourself here, in this city, at the end of your task, will be weighed far more heavily than anything that came before.”

Silent withheld his wince when Nocturn’s hoof found his shoulder. He glanced up into the thestrals eyes to find the other stallion smiling back at him.

“And so none of this can be rushed. Be patient, be careful, and above all else, conduct yourself with the excellence and moral integrity expected of anypony in service to New Equestria. Do that, and I will happily relinquish my seat to you upon the completion of your mission.”

Silent was quiet for a few seconds, his brow furrowing with a mixture of annoyance and resignation. In the end, he settled for a slow, subtle nod. Nocturn was right, of course. There were eyes watching him here, and he could not afford to screw any of this up in front of them. “Understood, sir. I will keep that in mind.”

Nocturn’s smile faded, and he withdrew his hoof. “Good. I look forward to seeing your performance in the days to come. Now go and get some rest,” he commanded lightly, turning to head back into the shadows. “Depending on what that old friend of yours decides to do, you will need it.”

And just like that, Nocturn completely disappeared from Silent’s senses. The pegasus took in a deep breath before giving another salute and slipping back out into the cold night. The door clicked shut behind him, and he was left all alone with nothing more than his thoughts to keep him company.

The quiet around him dragged on and on. Silent’s eyes drifted up to look at the moon, his lips contorting into a grim frown. “Scarlet… for both of our sakes, I hope you do the right thing,” he whispered to himself.

He then lifted from the courtyard on his wings, flying into the air and vanishing from sight between the towers of Newcanter Castle.

Cornered

“Lens, Primrose, wake up!” Scarlet’s strained voice cut through the silence of the inn room, jostling the slumbering occupants from their rest. Lens moaned in discomfort, burying his face in his pillow and hoping that he could get just one more minute of rest. Alas, his hope was torn apart, and he let out a grunt of surprise when his sheets were suddenly ripped back and off of him by a burst of magic.

Sitting upright, he looked around the room to get some idea of what was going on. The sky outside was still dark; although, Lens could just make out the faint beginnings of the dawn’s light starting to paint the horizon in shades of dark teal and orange. The crowd had completely dispersed, leaving the streets outside barren and empty, save for a lone guard on patrol.

Rubbing at his eyes, Lens then turned and caught sight of Scarlet. Whatever irritation he had felt at having his sleep interrupted was swiftly washed away when he saw just how disheveled she looked. Dark bags had formed under her bloodshot eyes, and her mane, now free of the ponytail she had tied it in, was unkempt and messy with odd hairs poking out here and there. Her every move was janky and stiff as she stuffed her yellow shirt into her saddlebags.

Sliding out of bed, Lens made his way to Scarlet’s side. “Scarlet? What’s wrong, are you okay?” he asked, his eyes briefly darting over to see Primrose with a similarly worried look on her face.

“Are you okay?” the filly asked tentatively, reaching a hoof out to Scarlet.

“Don’t touch me!” Scarlet snapped as she jerked herself away from the hoof, her voice sharp and impatient.

Primrose immediately cowered back into her mattress, her ears folding back in a display of submission. “S-scarlet, you’re scaring me…” she squeaked out in a tiny whimper. “What’s going on?”

“Be quiet!”

Lens frowned in severe disapproval, quickly closing the distance and placing his hoof on Scarlet’s shoulder to get her attention. “Hey! Scarlet, what’s gotten into you?! Calm down and talk to us. What is going on?”

There was a moment of silence where Scarlet stared down at the foal. The look on her face was strange, to Lens. It was almost as if she was studying the filly, trying to make out the tiniest of details without drawing closer. Eventually, the frazzled unicorn shook her head and pulled away from his hoof while reaching out for her cloak with her magic. “Get your things, we’re leaving. Silent knows we’re here.”

Primrose whimpered fearfully, taking her tail in her hooves and holding it in front of her protectively like a blanket. “W-what?! How?!” she asked, her eyes darting towards the window.

“He talked to me outside,” Scarlet replied, pulling her cloak over her head and securing it to her neck. “Tried to convince me to turn you in. Lied to me. Told me things that can’t be true. We need to go before he decides he’s done waiting.”

Primrose blinked, and for a moment, Lens swore he saw an even deeper level of fear in the filly’s frightened eyes. A level he hadn’t seen in them before, even when the assassin had been about to end her life back in his home. “W-what did he tell you?”

“Nothing that matters,” Scarlet dismissed with a shake of her head. “Now get up. We’re going, and we’re going now.”

The mare’s words left no room for debate. With a quiet, shrill squeak, Primrose hopped down from the bed and quickly made her way for her saddlebags. Lens pulled on his own with his magic, but all the while, he kept his eyes locked on Scarlet. Something was wrong. She looked exhausted, frustrated, and… “Are those tear marks on her cheeks?”

Cautiously, he approached her as she finished securing her own saddlebags on her back. “Scarlet… are you sure you’re alright?” he asked in a hushed whisper, his eyes briefly darting over to Primrose again. “I’ve never seen you act like that toward Prim before. What did Silent say?”

“It doesn’t matter, it was a lie,” Scarlet deflected immediately, putting her hoof on Lens’ chest and gently pushing him back. “Don’t ask me again. Are you ready to go or not?”

Lens’ ears folded back, the worry and concern swelling up several times over in his chest. “What the hell happened out there, Scarlet…?” he thought to himself before shakily nodding his head. “Er, yeah, I have my things already… But I don’t have the tools from the academy-”

“Forget the tools. We can worry about that when we’re as far away from Silent as possible,” Scarlet cut him off while turning to glare at Primrose. “Are you ready yet?”

The filly nodded, lowering her head in such a manner that her long, wild mane hung in front of her face like a protective curtain.

Scarlet didn’t say a word. She lifted Primrose in her magic and set her down on her back. “Alright, hang on and keep quiet.”

Primrose shuddered once she was settled, her eyes screwing shut and a very uncomfortable grimace emerging on her face. It almost looked like she was struggling not to throw up in her own mouth after tasting something absolutely rancid. Lens reached out to pat her on the head with an affectionate smile, trying to impart whatever courage he could onto the scared filly.

“Let’s go,” Scarlet said before any more words could be exchanged. With a flick of her magic, the inn room door was thrown open, and she stepped out at a brisk pace. Lens struggled to keep pace with her without escalating his trot into a canter.

His eyes briefly wandered back to the door as it swung shut behind them, while his mind wandered to his wards outside. “Scarlet, what about my proximity wards? Should I pick them up?” he asked, turning to look at the back of her head.

“No time,” Scarlet told him. “Once we’re out those doors, we stop for nothing. You can make new ones later.”

Lens opened his mouth to retort, but the words died in his throat, constricted into silence by the suffocating tension in the air.

The trio stepped out into the streets and turned to make their way for the eastern gate. A breeze that felt far colder than the late summer air should have allowed washed over them, making Lens shiver slightly.

“No, I’m not shivering from the cold,” he realized after a moment, his heart plummeting. “I’m scared…”

Aside from her grief over Crystal, Lens had never seen Scarlet this frazzled and unstable. The tremors that worked their way routinely through her body, the frantic, paranoid way her eyes darted to look at every shadow with suspicion, the sharpness of her words, and the shortness of her temper. All of them were completely foreign and unsettling sights on their own for Lens, and when added all together, they made for a truly frightening image.

What could have happened? What had Silent Edge told her that sent Scarlet, the calm, collected, badass battlemage he had served under and fallen in love with, plummeting into such disarray?

He had no idea, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to know.

“Hide,” Scarlet suddenly hissed, ducking off to one side and into the shadows of an alleyway. Without waiting for an answer, she ensnared Lens in her magic and hauled him along after her, being sure to hold his muzzle shut so he wouldn’t make a sound.

Lens struggled for a moment, grunting through sealed lips, trying to tell Scarlet he couldn’t breathe. “Mmph, mm mmmmph!”

“Quiet!” Scarlet snapped back at him in a low voice before releasing him from her magic.

Lens dropped to the paved stone ground, sucking in a deep breath. “Guh! Scarlet, what the hell-”

“Patrol,” she cut him off, leaning over to peek around the edge of the building that was their cover. “City watch. Silent told me he had increased them and told them to look out for us. Best to believe he was being honest about that much, at least.”

Lens clamped his muzzle shut, his expression hardening in understanding. Slowly, not wanting to give away their position, he slinked forward and peered around the corner as well. Sure enough, just like Scarlet had said, a patrol of three guards was making their way down the street. The leader was a unicorn, a cone of light emitting from his horn and sweeping across the street in front of him. His two pegasus companions were carrying lanterns that hung from their lower jaws, bathing the trio of armored figures in flickering orange light, and casting their shadows against the buildings around them.

Lens held his breath, his heart starting to hammer in his ribs as the patrol passed them by. He snuck a quick look towards Primrose to see how she was doing. His eyes were met with the sight of the foal covering her mouth with one hoof and shivering uncontrollably on Scarlet’s back, her ears pinned back.

“Okay, move,” Scarlet suddenly hissed the moment the patrol was a sufficient distance away. They slipped back out onto the streets and kept moving.

As they went, Lens gradually deduced that Silent Edge had been telling the truth about increased patrols. They had to hide from four more in only ten minutes, each one was clearly on high alert and keeping their eyes out. The fact that they hadn’t been found yet was, honestly, a miracle.

Sadly, that miracle would prove to be short-lived when the eastern city gates came into view. They were closed off, and portcullises had been lowered to prevent access. More than that, though; even in this low light, Lens could make out six ponies standing watch in front of it, and four more arranged on the wall overhead with crossbows in their possession.

Most of them were wearing the conventional armor of the city watch; rudimentary, lightweight, and plain. However, two of the ponies on the ground stood out from the others. They were both earth ponies, dressed in heavy plate armor that was colored in regal purples, rich greens, and vibrant golds. Green spines ran down the back of their all-encompassing draconic helmets. The eyeholes were angled into a perpetually intimidating glare that sent a chill down Lens’ spine.

“Dragon Sentinels,” Scarlet breathed in dread, her ears drooping as she, too, caught sight of their opposition. “We can’t fight through that… I’d struggle just to fend off one for even a short time, but two? And with back up…?”

“Damn… they really went all out. And we can’t climb over the walls, either,” Lens realized, grimacing. “Between a lack of tools and all of the sentries they have up there…”

“Can we teleport through?” Primrose suggested weakly, opening her eyes to survey the scene from Scarlet’s back. “Like we did in Swanrun and Shimmervale?”

Lens sighed, his ears drooping. “Sadly, that won’t work,” he lamented, calling back to his time studying in this city as a younger stallion before the war. “This is the capital of New Equestria. It’s built to last, and a big part of that means resisting magic. The walls are covered in several layers of protective wards, each more powerful and intricate than the last. They encase the entire city in a dome of sorts, blocking certain types of magic. Teleporting in or out without the right counter-spell is impossible.”

“So… what do we do?” Primrose asked, swallowing heavily.

“Shit…” Scarlet seethed, dragging her hoof along the ground and revealing her teeth in an ugly snarl. “Shit, shit, SHIT! We’re cornered! The bastard wasn’t kidding, he has us completely boxed in!”

Primrose withered on the mare’s back, her eyes screwing shut again and one hoof flying up to her lips. There it was again, that look of trying to keep herself from being sick. Lens frowned, reaching a hoof out to Primrose. “Hey, are you okay, Prim? You keep covering your mouth.”

The filly stiffened under his hoof, her large eyes staring back at him in fear. Shakily, she nodded her head and pulled her hoof away. “Uh-m… y-yeah, I’m just trying to keep myself from breathing too hard…” she whimpered.

“Shut up, I’m trying to think,” Scarlet spat, immediately silencing any further discussion.

Lens frowned at her, a small amount of frustration making itself known. “Scarlet, calm down. We’re not going to get anywhere if we’re-”

“I said shut. Up.”

Lens went to retort when, to both of their surprise, Primrose jumped down from Scarlet’s back. She stumbled deeper into the alley they were hiding in before doubling over. Thick, murky, foul-smelling liquid pushed past her lips to splatter across the ground, her eyes bulging in their sockets.

Lens’ eyes flew wide as saucers, his mouth dropping open in shock. “What the- Prim?!” he asked, galloping over to her side and placing his hoof on her back while his mind reeled in confusion.

Scarlet turned to look at the scene as well, an unreadable expression on her face.

After a few seconds, Primrose’s retching came to an end. She coughed a few times before running the back of her hoof over her mouth and leaning queasily into Lens’ embrace.

“Hey, are you alright? What happened?” Lens asked, placing his hoof on her forehead to check for a fever. To his surprise, her temperature was completely normal. Had she eaten something bad last night? If so, then what could it-

“Scarlet…” Primrose mumbled, slowly turning to look back at the red-maned mare with fearful eyes. “...What did Silent tell you?”

Scarlet stiffened, her ears drooping. Her mouth hung open for a moment before she shook her head in dismissal. “It doesn’t matter-”

“Yes, it does!” Primrose shot back with surprising strength in her voice. “Whatever he said to you, you’re angry and tired! You’re scaring me, Scarlet! Please, just…” she closed her eyes, sniffling and stifling a terrified sob. “Just… tell me what’s wrong. What did he t-tell you?”

Lens blinked, looking back and forth between the two in abject bewilderment. Primrose cuddled closer to him for protection, while Scarlet herself looked torn and pained beyond measure. After a few moments, Scarlet sighed, her shoulders sagging in defeat. “...Not here,” she muttered dejectedly, turning to head back the way they had come. “Come on. We can’t get out of the city right now… let’s go back to the inn.”

She set off at a sluggish trudge, her head hung low. Lens stared after her, holding Prim close and giving her an affectionate squeeze to ease her terrified shivers. After a moment, he looked down at her. “Are you gonna be okay?” he asked in a whisper.

Primrose didn’t say anything.

The journey back to the inn was far slower than their trip to the gates. Lens carried Primrose on his back the whole way, and now it seemed it was his turn to pull Scarlet out of the sight of the patrols they passed. All the while, Primrose shivered, and Scarlet didn’t make a sound. By the time they finally returned to the inn, the sun had finally become visible, looking as if it were resting precariously on the edge of the world.

Soon enough, they were stepping back into their inn room. Primrose jumped off of Lens’ back and trotted over to the window to look outside. Scarlet, meanwhile, closed the door behind her and slumped against it, letting out a long, exhausted sigh.

Lens turned to face her, his expression hardening. It was time for some answers. “Okay, Scarlet, we’re here. Now, what in the world is going on?” he demanded, disposing of manners. He was fed up with them at this point.

Scarlet did not answer him for a long while. Eventually, she lifted her head, her eyes boring into Primrose’s head. “...Is the room soundproofed?” she asked in an emotionless monotone.

Lens blinked in surprise from the question. Then, with a grimace, he set about casting the spell. The room shivered, and what little ambiance there was outside faded into nothingness. He looked to Scarlet with a stern frown. “It is now.”

Scarlet dipped her head. “Thank you… now…”

She pushed herself away from the door and moved to stand in the center of the room, her eyes never once leaving the filly on the other side.

“Primrose,” Scarlet called out to her, her voice starting to shake with emotion.

Primrose turned away from the window to face Scarlet directly, her eyes wide with fear and anxiety. “Scarlet… what did he tell you?” she asked after a moment.

Scarlet took a deep breath before starting to slowly, ever so slowly, advance on the foal. “First, a question of my own… and if all of the time we have spent together, if everything we have done, has meant anything at all to you, then you will tell me the truth, do you understand?” she asked, her voice starting to tremble and go hoarse. Her eyes were beginning to shimmer, despite her obvious effort to control herself.

“Scarlet…” Lens choked out, his eyes widening.

Primrose leaned back, her own eyes going wide. “I… I promise. I won’t lie to you,” she whispered.

Scarlet didn’t say anything for several seconds. She opened her mouth and worked her jaw, getting out several false starts that ultimately ended in one or two words. Finally, with a deep breath, she was able to force the words out. “Primrose… a-are you a… are you a changeling?”

Lens blinked. “What? Scarlet!” he protested, trotting up to stand by her side, his eyes glaring into her incredulously. “Come on, that’s ridiculous! She’s nothing like those-”

“Yes.”

Lens’ words died in his throat, his blood running cold. Slowly, he turned to stare at the filly to find that she had bowed her head, obscuring her face behind her mane.

She hadn’t even hesitated. That one word had been clear and direct.

Scarlet sucked in a deep breath, her pupils dilating. “...Show me.”

There was a brief instant of silence. Then, Primrose’s entire body flickered and snapped into green flames. Lens staggered back in shock, gasping at the sight. His first instinct was to try and put her out. Less than a second later, such measures proved unnecessary. The flames vanished as quickly as they had come.

Where once there had been a small, frail, frightened earth pony filly, there was now a creature of dull teal chitin. She was still skinny, but her rugged appearance was worsened by the presence of narrow holes that tunneled through her lower legs. Tattered wings stretched out from underneath a dull red shell that covered her back as if they hadn’t been used in years. Sharp fangs jutted from her upper lip, while two orbs of glowing blue light—so pale they were almost white—looked back at Scarlet with regret and resignation. A sharp-pointed horn curved upwards from between those eyes, and a transparent purple fin started just behind it and ran down the back of her neck. A tail made of the same material twitched stiffly behind her.

Silence dominated the room for what felt like forever. Scarlet stared in wide-eyed shock, her brows starting to angle down and her lips pressing together into a thin line, while the changeling looked back at her with boundless regret.

Then, Primrose opened her mouth. And when she spoke, the voice was distorted unnaturally into two tones.

“My changeling name is Protea…”

Author's Note

Protea

Silence. Nopony moved in that small room. They barely even dared to breathe, as if even the tiniest, most insignificant sound would send the whole world crumbling into dust.

Scarlet stared long and hard at the image before her, blinking several times, trying to will it out of existence with just her thoughts alone. It was an illusion or a hallucination. It couldn’t be real. It could not be real. There was no way that Primrose was one of them…

“This is… it’s just a nightmare,” she eventually thought to herself, clamping her teeth down on her tongue as hard as she could. A spike of white-hot pain ran through her skull, making her wince and close her eyes.

“Wake up…” she pleaded with herself, slamming a forehoof against her head when her almost-bleeding tongue failed to yield the desired result. “Wake up, wake up, WAKE UP, WAKE UP! DAMMIT, JUST WAKE UP!”

But no matter how many times Scarlet blinked, no matter how hard she bit down on her tongue, no matter how many times she practically punched herself in the head, nothing worked. This wasn’t a dream. The changeling was still there, staring back at her, its glowing eyes shimmering with fear, guilt, and a whole host of other emotions that Scarlet was far too distraught and confused to make sense of.

Finally, Scarlet’s efforts to wake herself up came to an end, and she set her hoof down on the wooden floor. She affixed the chitinous creature before her with an unreadable look.

The changeling, seemingly emboldened by her stillness, lowered its head and took a few timid steps forward. “Scarlet,” it began in a distorted voice that made the unicorn’s blood boil and her skin crawl. “Please, listen to me… my-”

“Shut up and get the hell away from me!” Scarlet suddenly shouted, taking a step back and igniting her horn with magic as fire flooded her veins.

Protea’s eyes went as wide as saucers, and she retreated several steps to cower against the wall, her tiny body shivering.

But no matter how much Scarlet’s heart may have once cried out to her to go to the child’s side and offer her whatever comfort she could, she couldn’t bring herself to do so now. She couldn’t even think through the haze of fire and hatred flooding her veins. One of her hooves scraped slowly along the wooden floorboards in a display of aggression.

“Scarlet, hey,” Lens’ voice came from her left, low and soothing. “Just calm down, alright? Let’s hear her out before we-”

“Lens,” Scarlet snapped, cutting him off before glaring into his eyes. He recoiled and backed away from her, his own eyes flying wide. She bared her teeth, not having the patience to put up with him right this moment. “Shut the hell up, and stay out of my way,” she snarled before turning back to Protea.

“Scarlet, please…” Protea whimpered, shrinking down under the mare’s hateful gaze. “I… I’m still the same filly you found in your basement-”

“Bull. Shit!” Scarlet snapped, her face starting to twitch. Oh, how she wanted to rip this abomination apart just now. The only thing holding her back was the horrified eyes of Lens and the terror in Protea’s. There was also a desire to learn the truth from the strangely intelligent changeling, and corpses don’t talk.

“Listen to me! I only ever lied to you about my race!” Protea protested, looking away in shame. “Everything else I have ever told you was the truth! I just…” she suddenly sniffled, and Scarlet’s heart skipped a beat when she saw a tear rolling down the changeling’s cheek. “It’s the worst feeling in the world to lie to the ponies I love… but I had no choice...”

“The ponies you love?” Scarlet spat, incensed at the mere idea that this thing was even capable of that. “Don't make me laugh!”

“I’m telling the truth!” Protea shot back, lifting her head to look into Scarlet’s eyes. “Please, Scarlet! I… I do love you. You’re like a mom to me!”

“SHUT UP!” Scarlet snapped, her pupils shrinking to pinpricks. She stomped forward and slammed a hoof down in front of Protea, forcing the small, quivering grub to press herself into the wall. Scarlet leaned down until her face was mere inches from Protea’s. “You do not get to talk to me like that! You are NOT my daughter! You never were, and you never will be!”

“Scarlet, please,” Lens tried again, approaching her tentatively from behind. He mouthed uselessly like a fish as he hunted for the words.

“I said, stay out of my way!” Scarlet scowled back at Lens, her horn flaring with magic. “Shut up and stay in the corner!”

“Listen to me!” Lens countered in as soothing and placating a voice as he could manage while lifting one hoof in a disarming gesture. “I’m upset, too, but we need to keep our heads together. Prim- ...Protea is clearly different from the rest of her kind! We can talk to her, reason with her. If nothing else, we should hear what she has to say before we lash out.”

“And give her the chance to lie to us again?!” Scarlet roared, appalled at the mere idea of giving that demon a chance to speak. “I think not!”

“...I never lied to you,” Protea whimpered quietly from behind her.

Scarlet, already on the verge of completely losing control of herself, slowly turned back to face the changeling. “Is that so?” she growled in disbelief. “Do you truly expect me to believe that?”

Protea looked back up at her, her entire body shaking. “Y-yes! Silent killing m-my family, hunting m-me, the l-lamp… everything I e-ever told you w-was true… I’m not going to die a liar...”

Scarlet snorted, but before she could say anything, Lens stepped in front of her and put a hoof on her chest, silencing her. “Hey… let me talk to her for a second, okay?” he said in a soft whisper. “Let me get some answers…”

Scarlet scowled, severely tempted to bite his hoof off for the suggestion. But after a moment, she relented and took a step back. “Gah! Fine! Just be quick about it! I won’t tolerate that thing any longer than I have to!”

“Scarlet-”

“Get. Talking.”

Lens eyed her for a short time, concern written all over his face. After a second, though, he drew himself up and nodded. He turned back to Protea with a more disarming look on his face. “Okay… so… Protea, was it?” he asked, adjusting his glasses. “I have a few questions for you.”

Protea nodded, looking down at her hooves. “...Go ahead.”

“First… how is it that you can talk?” Lens asked, settling down onto his haunches as well. “Most changelings can barely even form single, broken words, much less communicate like this. What makes you different from the rest? Are you special, somehow?”

“No,” Protea shook her head, her eyes drifting closed. She let out a tired sigh, her ears drooping. “The ones you’re talking about… my mom called them Ferals.”

“Ferals?” Lens echoed.

Protea nodded. “Yes. They’re changelings affected by some kind of horrible curse. I dunno much about it… mom never wanted to talk about it before she…” she sniffled and choked down a sob.

Scarlet scoffed.

Protea continued a moment later. “I just k-know that the Ferals are cursed, and I’m not. I’m a Free Changeling. Th-that’s why I’m so different from them. That’s why I can talk… the curse makes them like that.”

“Do you know where the curse comes from?”

Protea shook her head. “No. I just know that, sometimes, it can spread. If one of the Ferals ever gets too close to me and hurts me, then… I c-could possibly become like them…”

For a brief moment, the fire in Scarlet’s veins dies down, her mind wandering back to how terrified Primrose had been when they had first crossed paths with ‘Ferals’ on the way to Shimmervale. It wasn’t just because changelings are foul, wretched, and absurdly dangerous beasts. If she was telling the truth, then she was at risk of becoming one of them.

Whatever pity she felt for her didn’t last long, however. Different or not, Protea was still a changeling… one that had wormed its way into her life and tried to take her dead daughter’s place.

“Changeling,” she suddenly spoke up, cutting off Lens before he could voice his next question. Slowly, Scarlet lifted her eyes to glare into Protea’s again. “Tell me. What was your plan? Why me? Why did you choose my house that night in Swanrun?”

Protea shifted uneasily on her haunches, her eyes turning to one side. “...I just wanted to get out of the rain,” she said quietly. “I had no idea who you were or anything about you. I just… I was scared of being out in the open. I wanted shelter, and the door to your cellar was nearby…”

Scarlet was silent for a second before slowly stepping forward. She brushed past Lens until she was looming directly over Protea again. “...I don’t believe you.”

Protea’s eyes widened fearfully. “H-huh?!”

Scarlet’s eyes narrowed, the fire starting to build up in her body again. “You can sense emotions, can you not? You can taste them. You feed on them!” she accused, her eyes starting to shimmer as her vision blurred.

“W-well, yes…” Protea admitted with a shaky nod. “B-but-”

“So then I can’t help but be skeptical of your claim that you found me by blind chance!” Scarlet went on, her coat bristling with rage as her hold over her composure began to slip. “I was still grieving for Crystal! Every day I spent without m-my little girl in my home to smile a-and laugh and play was torture! I had never felt so lonely or miserable in my entire life!”

She leveled a hoof at Protea, her lips peeling back to show her teeth. “And then, one night, a foal around my daughter’s age suddenly appears in my home! A weak, cold, hungry child in need of aid and shelter!”

Protea began to stiffly shake her head, tears rolling down her cheeks. “S-Scarlet, please… I n-never meant to-”

“YOU TRIED TO TAKE HER PLACE!” Scarlet roared, her composure finally breaking apart. “You tried to put yourself where my daughter belongs! You tried to replace her in my life and my heart so you could suck up all of the love meant for her! And I was blind enough to let it happen!”

“W-what?!” Protea asked in horror, her eyes flying wide. “N-no! No, I would never do that!”

“HOW CAN I BELIEVE THAT?!” Scarlet went on, her face starting to twitch erratically in her rage. “You are a changeling! A shapeshifter, and one of the monsters who caused the fall! One of the demons that murdered my daughter! How can I trust a single thing you say?!”

“Scarlet, stop,” Lens said forcefully, reaching out to grab her shoulders. “Listen to yourself. You’re being-”

“Let me go, Lens!” Scarlet snapped, thrashing against his hooves in a bid to get at the cowering changeling in front of her. “Let go, dammit!”

“Listen to me!” Lens shot back, grunting with the strain of trying to hold her back. “You’re being unreasonable-”

“I DON’T CARE!” Scarlet shrieked like a banshee, her patience finally running out. With an agonized scream, her horn flared with magic. Lens’ words died in his throat as she lifted him up in her aura before turning and hurling him across the room to pin him against the far wall. With a growl of effort, she cast a simple sleeping spell over him. Lens shuddered, a breathless gasp slipping past his lips as Scarlet released him, and he fell to the floor with a dull thud.

Satisfied that there would be no further interruptions, Scarlet turned her shimmering eyes and hellfire glare onto the terrified changeling in the room. Protea was crying and weeping hysterically, trying to push herself up against the wall in an effort to get away.

“Scarlet, NO!” she screamed out between her sobs, tears running down her cheeks. “PLEASE, NO! I DON’T WANT TO DIE!”

The child’s pleas, however, did not reach Scarlet’s ears. With a long, anguished scream, her horn flashed with light, and a magical blade burst into reality in the air by her side. The purple edge showed in Protea’s reflective eyes and chitin, and the terror she was putting on display grew so much worse.

“PLEASE!”

Scarlet screwed her eyes shut and lifted the blade over her head before bringing it down, her mind flashing back to all of the moments she had spent with Primrose over the last few months. Every laugh, every smile, every tear, every embrace… everything.

She remembered, and she made her choice.

Primrose’s voice screamed in Scarlet’s ears, filled with terror and fear and grief. Scarlet flinched.

The blade met its mark.

Crunch.

Scarlet was only vaguely aware of the sensation of her blade burying itself into something hard. She couldn’t hear anything through her own heavy breathing and the ringing in her ears. Shivering, she slowly opened her eyes to assess the damage.

Her sword had embedded itself into the wall less than an inch away from Protea’s head. The changeling’s eyes were glued to the sharp edge of the magically manifested sword, her chest rising and falling in heaving, frantic gasps. Sniffling and barely stifling a sob, she slowly, gingerly turned her eyes to look into Scarlet’s.

Scarlet’s heart began to wither in her chest when the image of Crystal Clear staring back at her in the same way filtered into her mind, overlaying itself on top of the image of the crying changeling. Scarlet’s breath hitched in her throat, and her hyperventilating gasps began to devolve into pitiful sobs. Her sword flickered and then vanished in a shimmer of light. The energy coursing along Scarlet’s horn sputtered and faded, announcing the end of her magic.

She couldn’t do it… not to a child.

Protea sniffled, her lip trembling. “Scarlet…?” she whispered, lifting a hoof.

“Get out.”

The words came out cold and emotionless. Protea recoiled upon hearing them, her ears flattening back against her head. “But… b-but…”

Scarlet’s nostrils flared, her coat bristling up with impatience. “I said, get. Out. Get the hell out of my sight before I change my mind. I never want to see you again,” she explained, drawing out each word slowly and methodically to ensure that the child understood.

Protea whimpered again before lowering her face. “I… I understand,” she choked out. Slowly, she rose to her hooves, her hoof wandering over her barrel to ensure her saddlebags were still secured. “I’m sorry…”

“Don’t be sorry,” Scarlet snapped, stepping away and pointing for the door. “Be gone.”

Protea stared back at her for a few seconds. From the way her face was twitching and trembling, it was painfully clear that it was taking all of her might to maintain her composure. She closed her eyes, a swirl of green flames enveloping her body. When they faded, Primrose stood there, her face hidden by her rats nest of a mane. “Goodbye…”

Scarlet’s eyes widened at the sight of the earth pony filly… the one she had come to care for as if she were her own daughter… the one that she now knew was a lie. Fire flooded her veins all over again, the last of her restraint burning to cinders in the inferno of her rage.

“GET OUT!” she screamed, her voice going hoarse from the volume. “JUST GET THE FUCK OUT! GO! GO! LEAVE!”

That outburst seemed to be the last straw for Primrose as well. A few tiny sobs leaked past her lips before, with a long, miserable wail, she broke into a sprint for the door. Even in her disguised state, her magic kicked in, throwing the door open in a green aura and briefly disrupting Lens’ soundproofing spell. Scarlet stared after her for a moment, the filly’s echoing cries filling her ears.

With a scream of rage, Scarlet grabbed the door in her magic and slammed it shut, silencing Primrose’s crying as the spell retook effect. The room was plunged into a tense, heavy silence. Scarlet remained planted in that spot, gasping desperately for breath as her emotions, at long last, began to come under control.

From the back of the room, Lens groaned and lifted his head, his eyes staring at her in shock, horror, and disbelief. “Scarlet…?” he asked in a stunned, breathless whisper. ”What… w-what have you done?”

Scarlet didn’t say anything. She didn’t even register the words, to be entirely honest. It felt as if her entire world had just crumbled into pieces around her, leaving her stranded, cold, empty, and alone in the middle of an ocean of despair. Everything she had done, everything she had worked for since leaving Swanrun…

All of it… it had all been for nothing.

“We’re finished…” she whispered, slumping to her haunches. Her vision blurred with tears again, the horrible truth coming down on her like an avalanche. There was no longer any point to this fight. The whole reason she had left her home and uprooted her life had just gone running through the door with the direct order to never show herself again.

The child that had come into her life, the last chance she had to redeem herself for letting her daughter die, was gone. Silent and his Nightblades would come looking for her soon enough, and in this city, there was no way she would be able to get away. And then they would come for Scarlet and Lens.

Scarlet slumped forward, burying her face into the bed that Primrose had slept in. With her agonized eyes hidden from the world, she broke down into a fit of broken, hysterical sobs. Her tortured cries and screams, despite being muffled by the blankets, were deafening as they echoed in that small, silent inn room. With every wail, she was announcing to a world that could not hear her that she had given up…

And that nothing could have hurt her more.

Author's Note

Fun fact: I was tempted to cut this chapter off with the 'crunch' and leave you hanging on that cliff for a while.

Hatred

Were it not for Scarlet’s muffled hysterical cries of grief, the room would have been left in total silence. Lens stared on at the sobbing mare, his back sore from its prior impact with the wall, and his eyelids heavy from the sleep spell that Scarlet had cast on him mere minutes ago. He just sat there, utterly dumbfounded and at a loss.

His eyes fell on the spot where Protea had been. Despite the fact that no sound had been able to enter the room from outside since the moment Scarlet closed the door, the changeling filly’s wails still echoed loud and clear in his ears. Some small part of him shriveled up and shrank away from that echoing howl as if he were being accused of some heinous crime.

“You let this happen,” that miserable voice seemed to whisper to him. “You didn’t do anything to help. You let Scarlet drive Protea away!”

Lens shook his head, dismissing the notion. He had been knocked out cold. Any and all say he had in the situation had been lost the moment that happened. He couldn’t be held accountable for what happened afterward.

“But what about before…?”

Lens shuddered. It was true. He could have done so much more to prevent this, yet he didn’t. Maybe it had been his shock or his own love for the broken mare in the room that caused him to hesitate and put forth such a pathetic attempt at mediation. Ultimately, the reason did not matter. All that did was the end result.

And the end result was that Protea was gone. Running away, probably never to be seen by either Scarlet or Lens ever again.

“No.”

Lens growled deep in his throat, a flicker of fire building up in the back of his skull and driving him to his hooves. “I refuse. I won’t let it end like this. We’ve come way too far and been through too much for this to be how it all ends!”

Mustering what little strength his still-drowsy mind had at the moment, Lens marched up to Scarlet’s side. Her face was hidden from view, buried in her blankets, and curtained off by her red mane. She was still sobbing uncontrollably, and her entire body was being ravaged by horrible tremors.

Lens opened his mouth to speak, to reprimand the unicorn before him for lashing out the way she had, but nothing came out. The longer he stared at her, the longer he took in the shuddering, devastated wreck that had once been Scarlet Frost, the more he realized that now was not the time to be angry with her.

Lens reached out and gingerly rested his hoof on her back. “Hey,” he called out to her, his voice barely rising above a whisper. “Scarlet.”

She didn’t say anything. She pushed away from the bed and turned to instead bury her face in his chest. He felt the dampness of her tears soaking into his coat, and he could feel the convulsions in her body. Again, his words died in his throat, and his forelegs slowly drew around her in a comforting embrace.

For what felt like an age, he held her, letting her weep and sob and cry into his chest. All the while, he ran his hoof over her mane in a feeble effort to calm her down and bring her back to a place where she could at least talk. His other hoof wrapped tightly around her, holding her close and slowly running up and down her back in a comforting manner.

Finally, after an indeterminable number of minutes, Scarlet’s cries tapered off, leaving the two of them in silence yet again. With stiff, sluggish movements, the mare pulled back to look into Lens’ eyes, revealing that her own were red, puffy, and bloodshot beyond belief.

Lens’ heart withered at the sight, but he maintained his composure. “One of us has to,” he figured.

“...That was a very bad thing you just did,” Lens eventually told her, his eyes narrowing in disappointment.

Scarlet looked away as if in shame, though the scowl appearing on her face said she was feeling every other emotion except for that. “Don’t you dare lecture me, Lens,” she said in a hoarse croak. “She- ...It was a monster. The fact that I let it go is more than it-”

The fire in Lens’ skull returned with fury at hearing her speak in such a manner. Before he could stop himself, Lens lifted a hoof and brought it across Scarlet’s cheek, hard. The resounding smack that filled the air killed Scarlet’s words in her throat while her head lurched off to one side. Her eyes went wide, bulging in their sockets while her jaw fell open in abject shock as if she could not comprehend the fact that Lens had just hit her.

Of course, he could scarcely believe it himself.

“She is not a monster,” he rebuked without hesitation, grasping both of Scarlet’s shoulders in a firm grip and glaring daggers into her eyes. “She is a scared, frightened child, one that trusted and cared about you, and you just sent her running in one of the most horrible things I have ever seen you do.”

Scarlet blinked a few times before the fire returned to her eyes. “You can’t be serious,” she rasped, brushing his hooves aside and standing up. She took a few shaky steps back. “She’s a changeling. How can you even say any of that about her?! She LIED to us!”

Lens grit his teeth together, following her to a standing position. “Can you blame her?! After what just happened?!” he argued, stepping forward. “I’m honestly amazed she decided to tell the truth about it at all, considering how you reacted! How brave did she have to be to show her true face to you, Scarlet?!”

“She tried to take our daughter’s place!”

“No, she did not!” Lens snapped, marching up until he was right up in Scarlet’s face. “She didn’t even know about Crystal until after I met her! She just wanted somepony to look after her! And if you could calm down for one fucking minute and think, then maybe, just maybe, you’d be able to see that!”

“SHE’S A CHANGELING!”

Lens’ pupils dilated. “And?! What’s your point?!” he shouted, anger and incredulity fighting a war in his mind. He just couldn’t wrap his head around this. “It’s pretty damn clear that she isn’t at all like the other changelings you’ve seen! She can talk, she can cry! She was willing and able to show herself to you even though she knew you would despise her, something her cursed counterparts wouldn’t even be capable of comprehending, much less doing!”

Scarlet inhaled sharply through her nostrils. In a flash, her horn snapped into life with magic, and Lens found himself being thrown back across the room from a burst of magic. He grunted with effort, barely keeping his hooves under him.

“CHANGELINGS MURDERED OUR DAUGHTER, LENS!” She screamed at the top of her lungs, stomping forward with tears in her eyes again. “I couldn’t care less what sob story they feed me! I can never forgive those creatures for what they did to me and my family! I can never, ever forget how that demon tore out my little girl’s throat!”

The wave of energy finally died down, and silence fell over the room again, save for Scarlet’s heavy breathing. She crumpled to her haunches again, lazily wiping a hoof over her face to dispel her tears. There were more to replace them the moment she lowered her leg. “...You weren’t there, Lens… I don’t expect you to understand how I feel... What I had to see. What I had to watch.”

Lens took a deep breath, fighting to calm himself down and get his raging emotions under control. After a few seconds, he nodded to himself before approaching again. “You’re right… I wasn’t there. And in this case… I think that might be a good thing.”

Scarlet glanced up at him in confusion. “What?”

Sighing, Lens flopped down onto his haunches in front of her, deciding to try a more diplomatic approach. “Look… I told you before that I wish I had been there to help you,” he began with a sigh, his ears drooping. “I never got to know our daughter and that… that’s always going to haunt me. I wish, more than anything, that I could have been there to help you raise her and see her growing up.”

He looked down at the floor, one hoof wandering up to hover over his softly aching heart. “If I had been with you, maybe I could have helped save her… hell, maybe she would have met Prim, and the two would be good friends at this point…”

He looked back up to Scarlet, his ears rising and his eyes narrowing with conviction. “But I wasn’t there… and as much as that pains me, it also means that I didn’t get to see how she died… and it means I can think about this more logically.”

Scarlet blinked at him a few times before shaking her head. “You cannot be serious…”

“Listen to me,” Lens said in a soft voice, gently taking one of her hooves and squeezing it between both of his own. “Listen. You hate changelings, and you have a very good reason for it. But it’s still a fresh wound… if this were a military operation, you would be removed from your post due to being emotionally compromised.”

The mentioning of military procedure seemed to have the intended effect. Scarlet’s ears drooped, and she looked away. She mouthed uselessly for several seconds as she tried to find her words. When at last she spoke, her voice was quiet and timid.

“B-but… how can you dismiss how she came to me?” she croaked. “As a child, only a little older than Crystal… she must have felt that I was still grieving…”

“Maybe she did,” Lens shrugged before giving her hoof another squeeze. “But don’t forget how much she’s lost, too. How many families has she been through?”

Scarlet closed her eyes.

“More than one. And no creature in this world deserves that kind of pain,” Lens went on, his expression softening. “If she was pulled to you by anything you were feeling, it wasn’t because she wanted to replace Crystal… it was because she just wanted a family…”

Scarlet winced, her breath starting to shake again. “But… her form…”

“Remember the Apple family?” Lens countered softly. “They recognized her because that was how she appeared to them. It wasn’t a choice she made in Swanrun just to try and pry at your feelings… that’s just who she is.”

Scarlet took a deep breath before pulling her hoof away. Opening her eyes, she sluggishly rose to her hooves and dragged herself over to the window to peer out at the cityscape beyond. “...It doesn’t matter,” she mumbled in resignation, all of the hope having long since fled her voice. “Even if you’re right about her, it doesn’t matter… she’s gone. It’s over...”

Lens frowned, taking a step forward. “No, it’s not,” he said in open defiance with a sharp shake of his head. “Because I am going to go out there, find Protea, and bring her back so we can talk this through like reasonable ponies.”

Scarlet turned back to him, her eyes wide in bewilderment. “W-what? Lens, you can’t go out there-”

“Yes, I can,” Lens shut down her argument with three simple words. He stepped closer and put his hoof on her shoulder. “You’re not in any condition to be going out there right now. I am. So you just stay here, rest, calm down, and pull yourself together. When I get back, we’re going to sort this out, and then we’re going to escape this city. Together.”

Scarlet stared at him long and hard for several seconds, her gaze searching his for any sign of weakness or hesitation. She would find none, as he felt none. He was sure of his course of action, although he would be lying if he said he wasn’t afraid that he might fail. Protea had quite the significant head start on him, after all. He’d have to give it his all to catch up to her.

Finally, the mare nodded and looked away. “...Just be careful, Lens,” she choked out, her face hidden by her mane. Lens did not miss the brief sparkle as a tear fell to the floor, however. “And come back to me… I can’t do this alone.”

Lens was quiet for a moment, lifting a hoof up as if to reach out to her. Eventually, he set it on her back before rising to his hooves. “Alright… I’ll be back soon.”

Primrose had barely stopped running ever since she fled the room, terror of inciting Scarlet’s wrath driving her to run harder than she had in years. She tore through the common room of the inn and back out into the open streets of Newcanter. Remembering the increased patrols, she had then ducked into the alleys and ran for all she was worth.

And all the while, she cried.

“I’m all alone again,” she thought to herself over and over again, despair tearing into her heart. She had been afraid that Scarlet would find out sooner or later, and she had always known that it would be a very difficult time for both of them.

After learning about Crystal, though, Primrose should have known that this would be how it would end. The fact that her head was still on her shoulders was a miracle.

After some time, she came sliding to a stop in the middle of a four-way intersection in the network of back alleys. She staggered over to slump against a nearby wall, her lungs burning with fire and the desperate need for air, her legs throbbing with pain and agony, her stomach churning in revulsion as her own negative emotions flooded her system.

Slumping down between a few old barrels so her back was to the wall, Primrose allowed herself the luxury of her magic, something she seldom used, to prise open her saddlebags and extract the lamp. She settled it into her hooves and looked at it, catching sight of her reflection distorted in its many-faced surface. She turned it this way and that as she struggled to get her breathing and her sobs under control.

So close… she had been so damn close to finding out what it had all been for. Why her parents had been murdered, why she had run for half of her life… For the first time since that horrible night, it had felt as if the end was in sight. There had been hope. Hope for answers, hope for safety, hope for her life.

But now…

Choking down another sob, Primrose briefly looked around to ensure she was alone. Then, with a quiet whimper, she allowed her disguise to flicker away, and Protea emerged back into the world. Her eyes fell on the lamp, and her stomach churned with disgust at the wretched creature she saw before her. The face of the creature that had caused Scarlet so much pain…

The dam broke, and Protea began to openly sob again. Shivering and curling up into a ball, she held the lamp up to her chest, sniffling all the while. “I’m… I-I’m s-so sorry, m-mom…” she blubbered out, tears running down her cheeks as an all-too-familiar pain stabbed her over and over again in her poor, abused heart.

Suddenly, the sound of a wooden door opening reached her ears, followed by a feminine voice echoing down the alley. “Hello? Is somepony there?”

Protea’s heart leaped in her throat, and she was quick to snap back into her disguise. Moving quickly, she stuffed her lamp back into her saddlebags and got up to her hooves, her ears perking up to listen in.

There were ponies coming. Two of them, if she had to guess. They were muttering to one another under their breaths as they drew closer, their words slowly coming into focus.

“They’re quiet now,” the second pony, a stallion, muttered. “Do you think you scared them off?”

“I don’t think so,” the mare replied. “I hope not. It sounded like they were in trouble…”

Primrose sniffled, her eyes lowering to stare at the ground.

The mare spoke up a moment later, raising her voice to call out over the empty alleyway. “Hello? I thought I heard crying!”

Primrose took a deep breath, fighting to maintain her composure. Slowly, she stepped out from behind the barrels and into view, keeping her head down.

She was met by the sight of a mare and a stallion, both looking to be in their mid-to-late thirties. The mare was a rich yellow unicorn with a dark teal mane and tail, the former she had tied back into a ponytail, and a pair of reading glasses that were balanced on her muzzle. The stallion was a silvery grey pegasus with a black mane and tail, both of which were long and somewhat unkempt.

The mare jumped at the sight of Primrose, her hoof flying up to her chest. “Oh… oh, dear. Uh, hello, there, little girl. Are you alright? Are you lost?” she asked, nothing but kindness and worry in her voice.

And in her taste. Primrose’s tongue shifted around in her mouth at the familiar flavor, but she chose not to act on it for the moment. She shook her head. “N-no, ma’am… I’m not lost…” she said, not technically lying. She had no idea where to go or what to do, true, but she knew exactly where she was. And she knew she couldn’t stay here.

“Well, what’s wrong, then?” The stallion asked a bit more carefully, craning his neck down to get a better look at her. “We heard crying a minute ago…”

“Oh, dear,” the mare remarked after a moment, her eyes wide. She lifted a hoof to point at Prim’s body. “Honey, do you see how skinny she is?”

“I see,” he replied before offering Primrose a tiny smile. “What’s your name, little filly?”

“I… I…”

Primrose took a step back, a small war breaking out inside her heart. On the one hoof, she needed shelter and safety sooner rather than later. Getting off the streets would be her best bet for that, and if these ponies were offering, she would be a fool to refuse them. But at the same time, she couldn’t bring herself to introduce herself or even contemplate going with them, not with the wounds left in Scarlet’s wake still so fresh.

Sadly, she was not afforded enough time to properly consider her options.

“Her name is Primrose,” a new, frighteningly familiar voice interrupted them from above. Primrose’s eyes snapped wide open, her blood turning to ice in her veins. Terror filled her body, every fiber of her being shrieking at her to run away, to duck into the alleys and try to flee. She had to get away from him.

But no matter what her panicking mind said, she couldn’t make herself move. Slowly, she turned around to stare at the pegasus that had spoken.

Silent Edge was perched on the edge of a nearby roof, smiling down at them with smug satisfaction.

“Silent…” Primrose choked out, facing him directly and backing up a few paces.

Silent Edge unfurled his wings and dropped down from the roof, coming to a soft landing approximately ten feet in front of the cowering nymph. He stared at her for a moment before gazing at the mare and stallion she had just bumped into. “My apologies for the disturbance, you two, but this filly is of great importance to some ponies up in the castle. I am here to retrieve her.”

“She is?” The stallion asked with a raised eyebrow. Primrose could taste his skepticism and his doubt. “How so? And to who?”

“That is not your business,” Silent rebuked with a slow shake of his head. His eyes fell on Primrose, narrowing impatiently. “Now… are you going to come quietly, child?”

Primrose opened her mouth to cry out in defiance, to tell him no, absolutely not, to warn the ponies behind her that he was lying and that he was out to kill her. But something caused the words to catch in her throat. She looked back at the two who stood behind her, her vocal cords constricting when she saw their confused faces.

If she resisted, if she fought back, then those two would almost certainly leap to her defense… and Silent would slaughter them. Just like he had murdered her brothers, her father, her mother, and almost every other family she had been accepted into over the last five years. She could see it in the air around them. She could taste it on her tongue. They were confused, scared, and uneasy, but both of them were more likely to take the side of the quivering, terrified filly than the predatorily-smirking Nightblade.

“I can’t let him kill anypony else,” she decided after a moment, swallowing heavily. She turned back to Silent and looked into his eyes, her knees going weak below her. “I’m sorry, mom… I just can’t do this anymore...”

“As long as you leave Scarlet and Lens alone, then yes...” she finally stated, closing her eyes in defeat. “I’ll come with you…”

Silent blinked in surprise before slowly nodding. “I see… Come, then,” he stepped forward and placed his hoof on her back. The touch made her cringe and shiver in disgust and revulsion, but she did not resist as he began to guide her away.

“Wha… H-hey, hang on, a second!” the stallion went to protest. Primrose’s eyes widened her heart rate spiking.

“Stay away!” she snapped without looking back. She heard the telltale scrape of his hooves on the paved floor of the alleyway, signaling that he had stopped. Taking a deep breath, Primrose turned her head just enough to look back at him from around her mane. “Leave us alone. It’s none of your business…”

Whatever effort to defend her the two ponies back there might have made died with those words. The stallion took a few steps back and nodded in understanding. Sighing, Primrose lowered her head and closed her eyes.

As Silent Edge led her away to somewhere as of yet unknown to her, she thought back to Scarlet, and of the time they had spent together. How safe that mare had made her feel, how happy she had been traveling with her… and how all of it had been ruined because of what she was.

A single tear ran down Primrose’s cheek to splatter against the paved stone below.

“I’m sorry, Scarlet…”

Persuasion

The moment Lens left the confines of the inn, he slipped into the nearest alleyway and got to looking. He knew Prim long enough to figure that she had probably done the same, a theory that was proven correct when he found a pair of foal-sized hoofprints heading deeper into the labyrinth of alleys. He followed it with a grim frown, his mind periodically wandering back to Scarlet.

The question of what they were even supposed to do if—no, when—he brought Primrose back still hung over him, breathing down his neck like a hungry beast about to tear into his jugular. Regardless of the gravity of her mistake, Scarlet had not been mistaken in pointing out that they were boxed in. There weren’t any other ways out of the city, not that Lens knew of at least, that wouldn’t be heavily guarded or warded. Edge would be coming for them come sundown at the latest, which left them precious little time to formulate an effective plan and carry it out.

“This whole situation is fucked,” he growled within the privacy of his own thoughts.

He rounded a corner, coming to an intersection in the network of narrow alleyways. To his surprise, he actually found two ponies standing there, talking to one another in hushed voices. A mare and a stallion, both of whom looked a little on the uneasy side.

Lens paused mid-step, a pearl of hesitation making itself known. He didn’t know these ponies, and he had lived in this city long enough when he had studied here to know that, sometimes, there could be very undesirable ponies hidden in the less-explored cracks. Crime, while not abundant, was nevertheless a notable problem, and not one he had the time or patience to tangle with right now.

He took a few soft steps closer, careful to keep quiet as he studied the two. As he drew near, it occurred to him that they didn’t seem malicious or seedy. If anything, they appeared to be little more than a middle-aged married couple. A somewhat confused and perhaps even distressed married couple, but still…

The stallion looked up and caught sight of him a moment later. He frowned skeptically and pointed Lens out to the mare.

“Spotted,” Lens grimace before approaching at a more relaxed pace. “Might as well see if they saw her passing by…”

“Excuse me,” he called out once he was close enough. “Did either of you happen to spot a filly running by here a few minutes ago? Maybe ten years old, earth pony, long purple mane, and teal fur? No cutie mark?”

The mare and stallion both stared at one another with wide eyes, and Lens knew he hit the nail on the head. A few moments later, the stallion stepped forward to speak with him, his brow furrowed with caution. “Maybe we did… what’s it to you?” he asked slowly.

Lens stopped hid advance and slowly adjusted his glasses. “I’m supposed to be helping look after her with somepony, but, uh… well, she got in an argument with her other guardian and ran off. I’ve been trying to find her so we can head back and talk things through,” he explained vaguely.

“Are you from the castle?” The mare questioned curiously.

Lens frowned, an uneasy feeling swelling in his gut. “Er, no… why?”

The stallion glanced briefly back at the mare. “...Because that’s where she is. A Nightblade came by and escorted her off after we bumped into him. Said she was important to some ponies up there.”

Lens’ jaw dropped open. His heart stalled in his chest for a moment while the feeling left his legs. He stood there, stunned, for what felt like an eternity before finally clamping his jaw shut and pulling himself together. “A… a N-nightblade?” he asked. He needed confirmation. If they were telling him the truth…

“Yes. A pegasus. The filly called him Silent.”

Lens’ mind blanked, all sound fading away. He licked his lips before nodding his head. “A-alright… thank you,” he mumbled quietly. Then, without another word, he turned and broke into a sprint back the way he had come. He ignored the exasperated shouting from the mare and stallion he was leaving behind.

Things just got a lot more complicated.

Scarlet’s eyes didn’t leave the window after Lens took his leave. She sat there in total silence for what must have been an age, her body feeling all but numb to every sensation in the still room. All of the energy and enthusiasm had been drained from her body in the wake of Lens’ harsh scolding, and the thoughts left in her mind were numerous and too painful to contemplate. But contemplate them she did, for there was nothing else she could do.

Primrose, Protea… did the name ultimately matter? As her temper cooled, Scarlet thought back on the face of the filly she had come to love so deeply. She thought back on her voice, how she cried when she was scared, and how she laughed when she was happy. The way her eyes had shined when Scarlet had gifted her those new saddlebags, and the way her face lit up in a mischievous manner when she put it together that she and Lens had once been in love.

“Could a monster truly look at me like that?” she thought to herself, her ears lowering in dismay.

Had she been wrong?

The more she thought about it, the more it dawned on her that Lens might very well have been right. There were far too many things about Primrose that cast doubt on the idea that she was at all a threat, the more Scarlet thought on it. Her intelligence, her bravery, her insight… her dedication to her cause.

Scarlet shuddered, and for a moment, she was back in the sopping wet streets of Swanrun. Thunder boomed overhead, and she saw Silent ahead of her, his eyes narrowed, and his lips curled up into an anticipatory smirk.

“You’ve run out of holes to hide in, tricks to pull, and ponies to cower behind. Now, be a good girl, make things easy on yourself, and pass me that lamp.”

“No! You can’t have it! I promised I’d protect it!”

“Ah, well, I never said you had a choice in the matter.”

He flared out his wings and tensed to lunge.

Primrose screamed.

The image shifted, but Primrose’s scream continued to ring in her ears.

Crunch.

Her sword had embedded itself into the wall less than an inch away from Protea’s head. The changeling’s eyes were glued to the sharp edge of the magically manifested sword, her chest rising and falling in heaving, frantic gasps. Sniffling and barely stifling a sob, she slowly, gingerly turned her eyes to look into Scarlet’s.

“...By the Five,” Scarlet choked out, her lip trembling and her body shaking. She lifted a hoof up to cover her mouth, the view of the world outside her window starting to blur and distort. “W-what have I done…?” she choked out.

Before she could act on the realization of what she had allowed herself to become, the door to the room suddenly slammed open. Alarmed, Scarlet spun around to face the new arrival. Her eyes widened when she saw Lens standing there, closing the door behind him in his magic and gasping for breath. He looked like he had just run a marathon, with sweat dripping down his forehead to accompany his breaths.

But something was missing.

“Where is she?” Scarlet asked, stepping forward anxiously.

Lens shook himself before pushing away from the door. “Silent has her… he snatched her up in an alleyway before I could get to them… she’s been taken to the castle.”

For what must have been the third time in the last twenty-four hours, Scarlet’s entire world shattered. Her legs wobbled beneath her, and it took all of her strength to stay on her hooves. She opened her mouth to speak, but all that came out was a strangled, broken whimper.

Finally, after what felt like forever, she forced herself to speak, pushing the words out of her constricting throat with great effort. “...That’s it, then. It’s over…”

“No.”

Scarlet blinked, dumbfounded by Lens’ response. He stared back at her with a resolve in his eyes she hadn’t seen in years. The same resolve that had been in his eyes when they had lowered themselves into the grass by that pond, oh so long ago.

The resolve to see this through to the very end.

“I am not letting it end like this. We have to rescue her,” he went on, stepping forward.

Scarlet blinked and took a step back. “Lens… I… W-we can’t,” she finally stammered out with a slow shake of her head. “We don’t have any way of getting into the castle. We can’t fight our way in, the Dragon Sentinels will rip us apart.”

“Then we sneak in,” Lens countered without hesitation.

“And how do you propose we do that?”

“I… I don’t know, yet,” Lens admitted with a shameful glance to one side. “But we can’t just sit here! We have to do something!”

Scarlet let out a tired sigh before stepping forward. “Listen to me, Lens… No matter how much you want me to find her and make amends for all of this, I will not risk your life to do it. I’ve lost enough… and I know Silent will keep her alive. Please…” she reached out and took his hoof in her own, staring pleadingly into his eyes. “Let’s just run… we can find a way out of this city and put all of this behind us…”

“I’m not leaving her,” Lens argued without hesitation. “And you won’t leave me.”

“No… but I can drag you.”

Lens tore his hoof out of hers. “Are you sure you want to do that, Scarlet?” he asked slowly, his tone making Scarlet go rigid. It was the voice of a stallion filled with nothing but disappointment in the pony in front of him. “Is this truly who you are? A coward who will run the other way with her tail tucked between her legs? One who would drag along the stallion she used to love, leaving behind the one who needs her far more than he does?”

Scarlet’s blood chilled to match her last name. She stood there for several seconds, her ears flat against her head and her eyes wide as saucers. It seemed that with every passing moment, she said or did something that added a whole new layer to her shame.

Lens stepped forward, his expression softening. “I don’t believe that the mare I love could ever be that cowardly or selfish, Scarlet… not you.”

Scarlet mouthed wordlessly for a long while, her brain trying and failing to find some retort, some counter-argument that would salvage her pride and get rid of all of this fives-damned shame. But nothing came… Lens was right. She was being a coward…

She took a deep breath and backed away. “...It’s not possible,” she said weakly. “The castle is too heavily guarded… If we go in there and get caught, we’re dead, both of us.”

“It is possible,” Lens insisted, reaching out to put a hoof on Scarlet’s shoulder. “If we work together, I know we can pull this off. And if not, then, well…” his smile faded, but the determination in his eyes did not waver in the slightest. “Then at least we can go out by failing to do the right thing, rather than succeeding in doing the wrong.”

Scarlet fell silent, her ears drooping.

“Please, Scarlet… I can’t do this without you…”

Scarlet looked down, her expression softening with resignation. Lens clearly wasn’t going to let this matter go. He was committed. She let out a heavy sigh and turned to stare out the window. “...If you’re so sure about this, then what choice do I have?” she finally asked with a huff.

“Then you’ll help me?” Lens pressed hopefully, leaning forward with his eyes shimmering in eager anticipation.

Scarlet sighed but nodded. “If I let you do this all on your own, and you get killed, I will have only my own inaction to blame… I lost my daughter that way already, and I will not lose her father,” she muttered before turning to stare directly into Lens’ eyes. “Yes, Lens… I will help you.”

Lens smiled, giving her shoulder an affectionate squeeze. “Thank you, Scarlet… We can do this.”

Scarlet brushed his hoof away with a snort of combined annoyance and amusement. “Ever the optimist, isn’t he?” She thought before facing him directly. “Maybe we can, but I’m still waiting for you to come up with a working plan. We cannot very well hurl ourselves at the castle swords-swinging, after all. We’ll be torn to shreds before we even get through the front gates.”

“We might be able to teleport inside,” Lens pointed out after a moment. He lifted a hoof to rub at his chin. “See, the castle has another one of those anti-teleport barriers around it, like the city walls themselves. But those wards don’t work whenever the castle gate is open, which it usually is for a certain window during the day.”

Scarlet nodded along slowly. It made sense. One who didn’t spend a lot of time there might not think so, but there was a lot of hoof traffic going in and out of a castle during the day. Between the dozens, if not hundreds, of ponies who conducted their work there, such as servants and maids, as well as ponies seeking to speak with the local lord—or in this case, the Solar Council—it was inadvisable to keep the gate closed.

But there was a drawback, one which she imagined Lens was already aware of. She turned to him with her frown deepening considerably. “I would imagine, then, that the sentries outside the gate are increased during that window to ensure nopony can sneak up on the castle without significant effort.”

“Right, so we’d need to make some kind of distraction for the guards to draw their attention away from us.”

Lens nodded to himself a few times, continuing to rub at his chin. “Hmmm… I might have an idea.”

Infiltration

For the next several hours, the city of Newcanter rejoiced and enjoyed the final day of the festival. Ponies stepped out of their homes to play simple games with their foals, earn seasonal prizes, eat food so bad for you that it would make even the most covetous of gluttonous snakes blush, and overall throw caution and responsibility to the wind. A day and a night of revelry and indulgence, unsullied by violence, tension, or aggression.

And then the sun went down.

Those ponies who lived on the thoroughfare before the outermost gates of the great castle that presided over the city would find themselves bearing witness to a sudden and inexplicable movement of troops. The gates opened up, and a sizable contingent of Nightblades, Dragon Sentinels, and the City Watch came out. Orders were barked, and soon the force scattered to the winds. Those with wings took to the sky, while the rest scattered to search the streets.

It was unannounced and unexpected, but the ponies knew better than to question or intervene. They ushered themselves away in their homes to get their night’s rest in, dreading the fact that, come the dawn’s light, they would be required to return to their jobs and regular responsibilities. The festival was over, and so too was their reprieve.

However, in an alleyway between two of the closest of those homes, two ponies stood in the shadows, hidden behind crates and barrels with their eyes glued firmly on the passing assortment of troops.

“We’re taking a big risk here, Lens,” Scarlet whispered quietly, glancing at the stallion in front of her with a grim frown. “Waiting this long to make our move…”

“Silent’s word has, so far, proven to be honest,” Lens countered, adjusting his glasses without taking his eyes off the passing soldiers. “If he told you he had no intention of killing her, then all we can do is hope that he was being honest about that as well. And seeing as he escorted her away from those two ponies I found in the alleys…”

Scarlet nodded quietly, her brow furrowing in thought as she returned her attention to the small army of soldiers. She leaned further back behind cover as one sentinel came dangerously close to the entrance of the alleyway. Thankfully, their draconic helmet blocked their peripheral vision, and Scarlet and Lens went blissfully unnoticed.

Their plan was simple, compared to some idea Scarlet may have considered. Silent Edge had warned that if they failed to turn themselves in by nightfall, he would come for them in force. What better distraction could they ask for? All of those troops would be expecting Scarlet and Lens to be out there in the streets, not slipping in as they stormed out.

Of course, once they were inside, there was going to be a lot more improvisation. Neither of them had ever been inside the castle before, and as such, had next to no idea of its layout or interior defenses. It was just as likely that they’d make it five steps before being skewered by some unseen trap, or spotted by a cleverly hidden sentry.

But nevertheless, they had to try. Whatever animosity Scarlet held for the changeling, she couldn’t let this be her fate.

A tiny smile tugged at the corner of Scarlet’s lips as, for a brief moment, she found herself contemplating just how far she had fallen in the eyes of the law. How many counts of murder had she racked up in slaughtering so many of Silent’s Nightblades? How severe would the count of treason be when she first opposed him? What about property damage in Shimmervale? And now breaking into the castle of the capital of the whole country to rescue what was, in the eyes of the nation at large, a demon?

“If they could lop my head off three times, I imagine they would,” she mused absently before tearing her mind away from such things. She focused forward, watching as the crowd steadily began to thin out. Her ears perked up, and she could hear a voice calling to close the gates.

“Now’s our chance!” Lens hisses, darting over and draping a foreleg over Scarlet’s shoulders. “Do it!”

Scarlet screwed her eyes shut and focused. Reaching out with her magic, she felt the narrow gap in the dome-shaped field that protected Newcanter castle from outside spells. It was shrinking by the second, but she had more than enough time to worm her way in. Her horn lit up with energy, and, with a quick burst of power, she and Lens vanished from the alley in a burst of light.

They emerged under a tree in the courtyard that sat right by the wall on the inside, the sound of the gates closing reaching their ears mere moments later. Scarlet held her breath and looked around to assess the situation and whether or not they had been seen.

Luckily, their presence went unnoticed.

The courtyard was a sizable affair, the grounds made up of finely-paved stone with a dirt training ring set off to one side where ponies in the city watch would either practice their swordplay or engage in one-on-one sparring matches. A long line of archer’s training targets were arranged behind the ring. A path wound through the courtyard for the main entrance to the castle, where two lunar guards stood watch. A collection of other doors were placed at varying points along the walls, although where they went was anypony’s guess.

But they were in the courtyard. That was more than Scarlet had initially been expecting of them. Now to go the rest of the way…

“Where next?” Scarlet asked in a low whisper, keeping her head down, and her eyes focused up at the walls. More lunar guards patrolled up high, although their eyes were, mercifully, focused on the outside.

“We can’t draw the attention of the guards,” Lens replied in an equally-hushed voice, squinting around at the courtyard. “We need to get inside the castle itself. We’re in the open here.”

“I can’t risk a teleport,” Scarlet pointed out with a stern frown. “If I do, there is a very high chance that one of those guards up there by the gate will notice. It is frankly a miracle that we aren’t discovered already.”

“Behind the tree, then,” Lens suggested, ushering them back until they were sandwiched between the tree and the stone wall. It blocked line of sight to them, but only somewhat.

Scarlet’s frown deepened when she felt her side being pressed right up against Lens’. “Well, this is cozy,” she remarked dryly. “Please tell me this spot wasn’t just so you could-”

“Scarlet,” Lens deadpanned. “Can we not right now?”

She was quiet for a second before nodding. “My apologies… I’m just on edge.”

“Imagine what this is like for me,” Lens rebuked, peeking out from their cover to look around. “I’m not even half the fighter you are. I’m terrified right now.”

Scarlet hummed in thought before glancing back towards the front door. Going in that way was probably not an option. They needed some other way through, preferably without drawing any attention. But how could they do it…?

“Do you know an invisibility spell?” she ventured hopefully.

Lens shook his head. “I do not. I’m a barrier expert, remember?”

Scarlet sighed. “Shit. Worth a shot…”

“What about you?”

“If anything, I am worse at magic than I was during the war. I spent eight or so years very rarely using it for anything more than mundane telekinesis. My options are limited, as well.”

“Well, we can’t just sit here with our horns up our butts all day,” Lens hissed, evidently growing impatient. “We might just have to risk the teleport.”

Scarlet hummed quietly before glancing back over at the guards, squinting through the night to try and get their measure. If she was seeing this right, the one on the left was a thestral mare, while the one on the right was a unicorn stallion.

An idea came into her mind, and a small, evil grin formed on her face. “Oh… I have an idea,” she whispered.

“What is it?”

Without a word, Scarlet lit up her horn. She would have to time this very carefully, and she would have to be quick, but if all went the way she hoped…

She reached out with her magic, and though it made some small part of her feel disgusted with herself, she went ahead and set to work. She saw her amethyst aura envelop the very base of the thestrals’ tail before yanking up. The mare’s eyes went wide, her pupils narrowing into slits, while her fanged mouth flew open in an undignified squeak.

Scarlet immediately released the hold of her magic just as the thestral spun around, leaving her with no aura to go off of.

There was a brief moment where the stallion and mare talked, quiet enough that Scarlet couldn’t hear before the bat smacked her partner across the face. “YA FUCKIN’ COCKSUCKIN’ WANKER!” she bellowed. “THAT’S MY FUCKIN’ TAIL YA WENT AND YANKED, YA DAFT PIECE OF ASS!”

Satisfied that those two would be occupied for the foreseeable future, Scarlet encased both herself and Lens in her magic. With a burst of light and a rush of wind, they vanished from the courtyard and reappeared on the other side of the front door. The angered, thickly accented shouting of the incensed thestral was still audible loud and clear through the heavily-reinforced doors.

Lens blinked the stars out of his eyes before giving Scarlet a sideways glance. “I, uh… wasn’t expecting that from you,” he said awkwardly. “How did you know that would work?”

Scarlet pressed on. “I knew I’d react the same way if some stallion yanked on mine without permission,” she said, scanning the front lobby they had entered into with a critical eye.

The whole room was gloomy and dimly lit at this late hour, with only a scattering of evenly-spaced candles lining the walls. What little light there was besides that, came in the form of shafts of pale moonlight that filtered in through the circular window resting above the door, painting a shadowy silhouette of Princess Luna across the majority of the lower floor space.

A small staircase led down from where they stood, descending two-or-three feet. A high, rounded ceiling sat over them, with intricate and abstract depictions of Princess Celestia chiseled painstakingly into the white stone. A carpet made of satisfyingly contrasting blues and golds ran directly from the entrance and through a door on the far wall that would most likely lead to the public hearing chambers, where courtiers could bring word of their woes to whichever council was in session at the time. Two archways were set into the walls, one on each side, through which the faint flickering glow of torchlight could be seen.

“Well? Where do we go?” Lens asked after a moment, looking around.

“I have no idea,” Scarlet replied quietly, making her way carefully down the steps. “We need to find Primrose, and I can only imagine two places where she would be right now. The dungeons, or the Nightblade’s quarters.”

“How do we find them?” Lens asked after a moment, his brow furrowing. “This castle isn’t exactly small…”

Scarlet hummed in thought. “I’m not sure… we’ll just have to look around and hope we find some clue. If worse comes to worst, we can capture a lone guard and beat it out of them,” she decided before setting off for the corridor on the left.

Lens followed after her with wide eyes. “Beat it out of them? I thought we were trying to avoid raising the alarm?”

“We are,” Scarlet replied with a slow nod. “So that will be our last resort. For now, we explore, and we pray to the Five that we get lucky.”

Lens didn’t offer anything in the way of a response beyond an unsettled hum. The two pressed on in silence, the only sound being that of their hooves steadily clopping along the stone floor. Every so often, they passed by windows of frosted glass that allowed diluted moonlight to light their way. Most of the light that guided their path came either from the sparse candles that lined the halls, or the glow of Lens’ horn.

The atmosphere was eerily oppressive. Maybe it was just the fact that they weren’t supposed to be here, or perhaps it was the implications of what they were doing that set Scarlet’s mind so on edge. Perhaps it was the low light and the lack of sound. Whatever the case was, the result was the same. Her eyes leapt from shadow to shadow, her teeth tightly clenched behind her lips, a spark of magic just waiting to fly up her horn and conjure her blades at a moment’s notice.

Soon, they passed through a door that led them out of the halls and into an open courtyard at the heart of the castle. Four paved stone paths formed a cross shape, at the center of which was an ornate and fancy gazebo of finely-carved marble. Separated by the paths were perfectly-trimmed plots of grass, lined with masterfully-maintained arrangements of flowers and plants. Stone benches were arranged around the garden’s outer edge, facing the gazebo.

“Pretty,” Lens noted under his breath.

“But not what we’re looking for…” Scarlet added, her brow furrowing as she looked up at the sky. “Dammit, this is taking too long! We can’t keep wandering around aimlessly like this!”

“We don’t exactly have a map,” Lens pointed out, his own brow furrowing to match Scarlet’s. “But I agree. We need a way to speed things along…”

Scarlet nodded, lowering her eyes to survey the courtyard again. Aside from the way they had come, there were three possible routes they could take, each one leading deeper into the depths of the castle. Any one of them could lead them where they needed to be, or neither. It was impossible to tell, sadly.

After a few seconds, Scarlet heaved a sigh and turned to Lens again. “I say we split up.”

“Huh?” Lens turned to her with a raised eyebrow. “Are you sure that’s a wise decision?”

Scarlet nodded, already working out the details in her mind. “I am. Our objective is to find Protea and get her out of here. We only need one of us to find her to get that done. So I propose we split up and go separate directions. We cover more ground, increasing our odds of finding our quarry, and in the event one of us gets captured, the other will still have a window of time to continue their search.”

Lens hummed, looking around at the various paths in consideration. “I don’t know, Scarlet… we’re safer together,” he countered after a moment.

Scarlet nodded and placed her hoof on his shoulder. “This isn’t some poorly written horror novel, Lens. We can handle ourselves. And need I remind you that nothing about what we are doing is safe in the first place?” she pointed out before pulling back her hoof. “We’re here for Protea, no more, and no less. We find her, we get her out, plain and simple. And to do that, our best bet is to split up.”

Lens was quiet for several seconds, his expression twisted with visible indecision. Then, after a moment, he slowly nodded his head in understanding. “Alright… good luck, Scarlet,” he agreed, albeit reluctantly.

The mare leaned forward to give the stallion a warm hug. She could feel his chest thumping against her own as his heart beat, and it only then dawned on her just how frightened he was. With a quiet sigh, she pulled him even closer as he returned the embrace, and placed her lips by his ear.

“I’ll be fine… and so will you,” she whispered to him with a reassuring squeeze. “We survived Talonreach. We’ll survive this.”

She felt Lens nodding into her shoulder. She slowly pulled away, giving him a tender smile, an expression he returned. Scarlet turned and gestured at one of the doors. “I’ll take that one,” she said before turning and setting off.

“Good luck, Scarlet,” Lens called after her as he made his way for one of the other doors.

“You, too,” She replied before opening the door with her magic and stepping through. With an audible thunk and click, the courtyard vanished from sight, and Scarlet was left all on her own. Before her were three paths, a corridor heading left and right, and one leading straight ahead.

Taking a deep breath, she pushed on, making her way straight ahead. Her hooves echoing around her sounded infinitely more lonely then they had been when accompanied by Lens’. With every step she took, she felt her anxiety and dread clawing away at the base of her skull with tiny fingers of malevolence that threatened to break her composure and send her into a frightened panic.

She took deep breaths as needed and focused, forcing down her doubts. She kept her ears perked up and at attention, listening quietly for any guards or patrols that might cross her path.

A decision which proved to be wise after several minutes of silence. Scarlet came to a stop when the sound of hooves on the cold stone reached her ears. Moving quickly, she ducked behind a decorative plant, squishing herself up against the wall as tightly as she could in an effort to remain hidden.

At the end of the hall she was in, an archway led into a large corridor with a higher roof, and she could now make out some details as flickering candlelight came into view. An earth pony stallion dressed in the armor of the lunar guard trotted by, grumbling in irritation to himself.

Scarlet strained her ears to hear what he was saying.

“Fuckin’ captain, sending me down to the dungeon this time of night. Why’s it always gotta be me watchin’ those fuckin’ crooks? Why do we even need to watch ‘em? Let ‘em rot, I say, buncha murderers and thieves and rapists. Don’t need me around to watch em. Fuckin’ bullshit...”

Scarlet raised an eyebrow. “That is… ridiculously convenient,” she thought. But, not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, she silently slunk off after the guard.

“Is it wrong of me that I hope she isn’t there?” she thought after a moment, her ears drooping. In truth, she absolutely wished with all of her heart that the nymph was being kept somewhere else. Anything to spare Scarlet the trouble of having to talk to her alone…

With that thought weighing on her mind, Scarlet disappeared around the corner, following her quarry. All she had to do was follow him, and she’d find the dungeons. And if the Five were cruel, she would find Protea.

Dust

Lens’ eyes darted around the dimly lit hallway anxiously, his heart hammering a steady, borderline-frantic rhythm in his heart. As sound as Scarlet’s reasoning had been for them to split up, he still didn’t like it. Wandering these halls all on his own, especially with no clue where to go or how to get there, set him on edge in many ways. His repeated efforts to calm down through deep breaths and swallowing that irritatingly stubborn lump in his throat had, thus far, proven ineffective.

Every so often, he had to duck out of sight when a patrol passed by not far ahead. Luckily for him, they were not too keen on moving quietly, allowing him to hear their armored hoof falls long before they came into sight. More than once, ponies dressed in the armor of the Lunar Guard sauntered by him, seemingly lost in their own little world.

“They aren’t taking their job all that seriously,” he deduced after a time, finding some small measure of comfort in that fact. It wasn’t a surprise, to be frank. The war with Talonreach, as bloody and brutal as it had been, had never spilled more than a few miles beyond the New Equestrian border. All of the fighting had been at the border itself or well into griffon territory. Considering the late hour and formidable exterior defenses, the odds were high that these late-night sentries hadn’t actually done anything beyond meandering the halls for a good long time.

Were Lens not currently trying to avoid being caught by them, he imagined Scarlet herself would have half a mind to scold the hell out of whoever the captain of the Lunar Guard was. This was the capital of the country, for Five’s sake!

Eventually, Lens’ path led him out of the achingly familiar pseudo-labyrinth of corridors. The architecture became darker and less colorful, and it soon became readily apparent that the sparse candles that had been scattered at corners and along the walls to light the way were no longer in sight. When he did spot a candle, his eyes widened with the realization that the glow they let off was a chilling icy blue.

The Lunar Wing. If he remembered correctly, then this was where the Lunar Guard and the Nightblades resided. Which — he realized, much to his unease — meant he was growing close to one of the two places where Protea was likely being held.

The least desirable option of the two, he noted internally. Nightblades were experts in their field. There could be one following him right now, for all he knew, and he would never be able to tell until their weapon of choice found a nice, comfy home nestled between his shoulder blades.

He glanced back over said shoulders with a paranoid grimace but saw nopony else. He shuddered and turned to keep moving, pace increasing subconsciously. A deep-seated primal instinct was taking hold, screaming at him to run and hide, that he was being stalked by a predator he had no means of fending off.

Whether or not his gut was speaking the truth was irrelevant, though. He still had a job to do, and Scarlet would never let him live it down if he backed down now. “Especially since I was the one who convinced her to come here with such conviction!”

Eventually, he passed through an archway into a long corridor that was far better lit than the ones that came before. This was due entirely to the long line of windows that ran along the left wall, each one fogged over and covered in a thin layer of dust. Pale moonlight streamed in through those windows, allowing him to clearly make out the motes of dust kicked up by his hooves.

Lens frowned. “What the? Is this place abandoned or something?” he thought curiously, his eyes scanning every nook and cranny of the corridor with great interest. It certainly seemed as if this place had seen no use in a long time. Once he took a moment to look more closely, he saw the dust-covered everything, including long-dead potted plants on cracked marble pedestals along the right wall. There was even a large painting of a serene, moonlit mountainside that had long grown faded and washed out from decades of exposure to periodic sunlight.

Humming quietly to himself, Lens marched up to the nearest window and gently wiped his hoof along its surface so he could see through. He saw a courtyard on the other side of the glass, seemingly just as abandoned as the hallway. A collection of overgrown or dead trees were scattered about the edges while coiling weeds and vines ran up and down the featureless, aged walls. An eroded stone structure squatted at the far end of the courtyard, looking like little more than a hovel for whatever gardener had once tended this place.

“Odd…” Lens whispered to himself. He soon spotted an old wooden door set into the wall in place of one of the windows and decided to indulge his curiosity and check it out. Being careful to keep quiet, he pushed the door open, wincing when it gave off a shrill creak from the movement. This thing obviously hadn’t been used in years.

The chilly air was simultaneously refreshing and off-putting as he emerged into the yard. The mixed scents of mold and life swam up his nose in a conflicting manner, making him snort and shake his head reflexively. The cobblestone beneath his hooves was just as decrepit as the rest of this courtyard, with moss and other unpleasant growths smothering what may have once been masonry.

“Just like an ancient ruin… in all the worst ways,” Lens thought to himself, slowly striding across the courtyard and taking in his surroundings.

Suddenly, a sound caught his ear. A short, quiet yelp from a masculine voice. Lens dropped low to the ground, his ears perking up and listening carefully. The sound had come from the building…

A few seconds later, he heard hushed voices talking to one another within, both of them male. Lens’ heart skipped a beat at the realization that he was not alone here. Struggling to calm down his breathing, he quickly slinked off the path and out of sight, being as quiet as possible. Once he was sure he was out of sight, he steadily began to advance on the building, listening and trying to pick out the words.

“The little brat bit me!” were the first words he made out, coming in a low, angered hiss.

A smooth, silvery voice answered in a placating tone. “She did, and so you must maintain the moral high ground and not lash out.”

Lens frowned, a small amount of hope lighting up in his chest. “Are they talking about Protea?”

“Bah. With all due respect, sir, we’re wasting our time. This child clearly isn’t going to tell us anything we don’t already know. I say we cut to the chase and throw her in the dungeons.” The first voice went on, coming through clear enough for Lens to pick out the speaker as none other than Silent Edge.

Lens froze, the blood draining from his face. Silent was here?! “I thought he’d be out in the streets looking for us!” he thought, struggling to calm down his almost panicked breaths. “I guess capturing Protea made him reconsider…”

Moving as quietly as possible, Lens inched closer and closer to the house until he was crouched down by one of the long-shattered windows along its side.

The conversation continued. “Have some patience. She knows and, with reason, despises you. Let me talk to her for a minute. Perhaps I can succeed where you are having difficulties.”

“...Yes, sir, but I still think you’re wasting your time. She is just a child, after all. What could she know that the other didn’t?” Silent asked.

Lens’ brow furrowed in thought. “Other?”

“Hard to tell. But we won’t know for sure by rushing through a sloppy interrogation,” the smooth voice responded. There was a moment of silence before he spoke again. “Silent, why don’t you go back to the barracks? You could use some sleep at home.”

Silent was true to his name for a moment before the door to the house opened. Lens shrank back, his ears folding down. Lucky for him, Silent didn’t have a line of sight with the hiding unicorn. “Yes, sir. Good luck with the brat,” he said.

Lens listened as the sound of flapping wings echoed in the courtyard before all fell silent. He could still hear the other pony, whoever they were, moving around inside the hut. Once he was sure Silent was completely gone, he slowly began to inch for the door. Getting past the other Nightblade would be tricky, seeing as Silent seemingly answered to them, but the way they had spoken made it clear that Protea was held inside.

He just had to risk it…

The moment he came around the corner, however, he froze. Standing before him was a bat pony as dark as the night itself, his slit pupils narrowed with smug satisfaction. An unsettling crescent grin adorned his muzzle. “Greetings. I believe you are Sharp Lens, are you not?” he asked slowly, his silky voice sending a chill down Lens’ spine. “I am Nocturn. A pleasure.”

Lens quickly rose to his full height and took several steps back, lighting up his horn. “Wha- how did you-”

“Please, don’t even try,” the thestral purred as he advanced, his ears flattening aggressively. “Honestly, boy, were you truly so foolish as to think you could sneak up on me? The Spymaster?”

Lens swallowed heavily. “In my d-defense, I didn’t know that’s who you were,” he stammered, his eyes darting briefly to one side to look for an escape.

He didn’t even hear Nocturn move.

When Lens darted his eyes back forward, it was to the sight of Nocturn mere inches away from him, a razor-sharp blade extending out of the gauntlet on his hoof and pressed against the unicorn’s throat. Lens leaned back, his entire body going rigid with fear. Nocturn’s grin returned. “Ah, I see. Then I cannot rightly call you a fool for that, now can I?” he mused quietly.

After a moment, his expression darkened considerably, his smirk turning into a displeased scowl. “I can, however, call you one for having the lack of common sense required to make such an amateurish rescue attempt. Now, then… are you going to come quietly?”

Lens was quiet for several seconds, his eyes darting around frantically for an escape. His adversary waited patiently on his answer, clearly knowing that there was no escape. And, begrudgingly, Lens had to admit that he was in no position to put up a fight.

That was until he saw something slithering out of the window behind the Spymaster. His eyes briefly widened at the sight of a long, dark-scaled snake, its teal eyes boring into his for a second before the creature disappeared into the underbrush.

“Well?” Nocturn pressed the blade a little closer. “Come now, Lens. You know that you cannot do the changeling any good if you are dead. Surrender now, and I’ll let you speak with her.”

“She has a name, you know,” Lens countered irritably, focusing back onto the Spymaster’s eyes. “It’s Protea.”

“Or Primrose. It is one or the other, but that is not the point, is it?” Nocturn countered, his eyes narrowing. “Last chance, Lens. Give it up.”

It was at that moment that, much to the alarm of both of them, the snake that Lens had spied a moment earlier shot up from the grass below and clamped its sharp fangs down into the Spymaster’s foreleg, yanking it away from Len’s throat and giving him some sorely missed room to move.

“What the?!” Nocturn cried out in surprise before his head snapped down, fangs bared. Lens watched helplessly as the bat bit down on the snake and tore it away from his leg, his sharp fangs easily piercing the scales of the reptile.

The snake’s eyes went wide with agony before it suddenly exploded with green flames. Lens lifted a hoof to shield his eyes and watched as Protea fell to the grassy ground, now with two large puncture marks in the shell on her back. Streaks of crimson ran down her side from the open wounds, and her agonized voice let out pitiful wails as she tried to crawl away.

“Son of a…” Nocturn snarled before glaring up at Lens.

“Now would be a very good time to do something!” a voice in the back of Lens’ mind screamed at him, driving him into action. With an angered shout, his horn flared up with magic and unleashed a beam of energy at the Spymaster.

Nocturn was fast, ducking swiftly to one side before launching into a swift lunge, more blades snapping free from his other hooves. Lens barely had time to erect a dome-shaped barrier over himself to catch the first punch, and the blade still punctured through, sending shards of dissolving energy flying past his face.

“Leave him alone!” Protea’s voice called out as she shot back up to her hooves. She turned to Nocturn and pounced, digging her teeth into his hind leg this time. A sickening crunch filled the air, making Lens cringe involuntarily.

Nocturn shouted in pain, lifting into the air with a flap of his wings and bringing his other hoof around at Protea, his blade angled for her side. Lens’ mind twinged with pain as he redirected his own barrier to form a dense one right over the spot Nocturn’s blade was aimed for. A shrill, distorted scrape pierced the air as the blade bounced off the barrier, giving Protea the chance she needed to release her hold on the thestral’s leg and drop back to the ground.

She turned to Lens with wide, frightened eyes. “Lens!”

“Talk later,” he shouted, forming another barrier to ward off the follow-up from Nocturn. “Right now, we need to move!”

“Where’s Scarlet?!”

“Not now!”

Nocturn growled in frustration before slicing horizontally with one of his blades. His angle was precise, almost surgically carving a straight line through the barrier and making the whole dome shatter. Lens staggered back, a lance of pain racing down his horn and into his skull.

Protea ducked back, screaming as Nocturn pressed the attack. The bat lunged forward and tackled Lens to the ground, the blades on his hooves leaving painful slash marks along the unicorn’s shoulders. Lens cried out, kicking and struggling against his opponent, but was left with no viable means of countering. His eyes locked on to the incoming blade, the way the moonlight glinted off the point almost blindingly.

At the last second, a teal blur shot through the air and into the side of Nocturn’s head. A loud crack was heard, and the Spymaster fell hard to one side with a grunt of pain. Three more cracks followed in rapid succession, followed by blessed silence.

Hesitantly, Lens lifted his head and looked over. Nocturn was out cold, a large, bloody lump having formed on the side of his head right above his right eyebrow. Protea stood over him, a blood-covered stone held in her quivering hoof. She was breathing heavily, her eyes wide and unfocused. Lens cringed when he saw yet more blood running down her chin from when she had bitten Nocturn but was quick to put it aside.

“Prim,” he called over to her as he sat up on his haunches.

Protea turned to face him. “L-Lens…” she whispered. For a moment, the two were motionless. Then, with a barely contained sob, the changeling threw the rock to one side and threw herself against Lens’ chest, right into his waiting hooves.

“Hey, hey,” he whispered to her as she began to openly cry into his chest. He ran his hoof down the back of her head and made soothing sounds, painfully aware of the fact that they were still in hostile territory. “Prim, hey. Sssh. It’s alright, it’s okay. I got you, but you gotta be quiet. Ssshhh.”

A few seconds passed before Protea managed to pull herself together, she leaned back to look up into his eyes, tears running down her cheeks. “Y-you came f-for me…” she choked out.

“Of course I did,” Lens replied with a small smile and a nod. “How could I not?”

Protea sniffled and looked away, her ears drooping. “But… S-Scarlet…”

“She’s here, too,” Lens said weakly, his smile faltering. “She helped me get in here. She’s looking for you in another part of the castle right now.”

“H-huh?” Protea asked in confusion. “B-but… sh-she said she didn’t want to s-see me ever ag-again…”

“She was angry, upset, and being a big idiot,” Lens replied, the corner of his mouth quirking up for a moment. “But I talked some sense into her…”

Protea sniffled and wiped a hoof over her eyes. “Is she… is she sorry?”

“...She’s here,” Lens answered after a moment of hesitation.

Protea was quiet after that, giving a slow, solemn nod. Before she could say anything, though, she let out a pained hiss, her entire body tensing up.

It was then that Lens’ eyes were drawn back to the bite marks on the nymph’s shell. “Oh, shi… we need to get you patched up before anything else,” he said, his hooves hovering uselessly over the injuries. “You can’t move anywhere like this.”

Protea coughed a few times before forcing the words out between clenched teeth. “I-i-inside. B-bandages inside. And my lamp.”

Lens nodded. Being careful not to touch the open wounds, he lifted Protea onto his back with magic and stood up. Delivering one more kick to the Spymaster’s head to make sure he stayed out, Lens cantered into the stone hovel. It was almost pitch-black inside, but he was able to chase away the darkness with a simple light spell.

The front half of the hovel was just like the rest of the area. Old, decrepit, and appearing abandoned. Despite the presence of two ponies and a changeling inside, the most recent sign of any disturbance to the thick layer of dust was the prints made by his own hooves, and the thin trail Protea had made as a snake on the way out. A long counter sat against the back wall, where a collection of small kegs rested, along with old wooden mugs. Two wooden doors were set into the back wall on opposite ends of the room. One of the doors stood open, a faint orange light shining within.

“So… you turned into a snake to escape?” Lens asked as he made for the open door, trying to keep Protea distracted from her wounds.

He felt her nod against him. “M-mhmm… most ponies don’t seem to know how many things a changeling can turn into…”

“To be fair, we’ve only been able to deal with Ferals for the last four centuries, and they don’t tend to change at all,” Lens pointed out, emerging into the room. A square table sat in the center with a single candle lit on its surface. Three wooden chairs were situated around it, and Protea’s saddlebags were placed neatly in the corner.

Protea whimpered quietly but nodded again. “Y-yeah… It’s helped me get away from Silent a lot in the past…”

Lens nodded quietly before gingerly setting Protea down on the table. “Alright, any idea where the bandages are?”

The nymph pointed through the door. “I think there are some on the counter.”

Lens patted her on the head before stepping back out. Sure enough, just like Protea had said, he found a roll of unused bandages in one of the drawers in the counter. Smiling with relief, he went back into the interrogation room to find that Protea had pulled her saddlebags up to her with her magic, and was now tightly clutching her lamp to her chest.

Lens was quiet as he applied the bandages, letting Protea be with her thoughts for the time. His own mind was scrambling as it was. He had Protea, but that meant Scarlet was somewhere else in the castle without any idea that their objective was complete. Not to mention the fact that the Spymaster himself knew that Lens had been here. As soon as that thestral woke up, he would raise the alarm.

“Okay, does that feel any better?” he asked once the bandages were applied.

Protea shifted a few times before nodding. She put away her lamp and got her saddlebags strapped on, albeit with a visible grimace.

Lens smiled and lightly set her on his back again. “Okay, come on, then. We need to get out of here before the Spymaster-”

“Before the spymaster what?” a new voice interrupted him, making his blood turn to ice. Lens froze by the door, his hoof raised to push it open.

Protea whimpered. “Oh, no…”

Lens peered through the crack in the doorway. Sure enough, Silent Edge stood in the entrance to the hovel, his eyes glued onto the interrogation room and a cocky smirk on his face. “Gotta hoof it to ya, Lens. I’m impressed you were able to take him down…” he said, slowly stalking forwards. “But the old bat’s long past his prime… not to mention he was never trained to be much good in a head-on fight.”

Lens swallowed hard, and the ice in his veins somehow became even colder when he realized that there were even more Nightblades outside, two of them following Silent inside to flank him.

“How?!” Protea asked in a defiant voice, lifting her head. “How did you know what was going on?!”

“I didn’t,” Silent dismissed with a roll of his hoof. “But Nocturn never says sleep at home unless he wants us to go get backup… I was simply following orders. Now…” he spread out his wings, allowing his blades to snap out with a sickening scraping sound.

“Are you two going to give up quietly, or is this going to get bloody?”

Dungeons

The dungeons of Newcanter Castle were, in a word, depressing. An endlessly-convoluted maze of claustrophobic stone corridors spread out across three separate levels, lined on either side with small, cramped cells. Many of them were without windows or any reliable form of light, leaving their occupants to sit and wallow in darkness with nothing but their own thoughts and the voices of their fellow prisoners for company. The only thing chasing the darkness away was the occasional lantern hanging from hooks on the walls, but even those weren’t always lit.

Scarlet stood in the threshold that separated the dungeons from the rest of the castle with a wrinkled nose and an ugly grimace. She had yet to actually set foot in this wretched place, and already she despised it with all of her being. She could make out the distant wails of slowly maddening prisoners at the edge of her hearing, accompanied by the skittering of rats. Her eyes strained to see through the low light, and a thick, musty smell invaded her nostrils with all the subtlety of an angry minotaur.

All of it set her on edge and the fur on the back of her neck standing on end. There were ponies down here, ponies trapped inside. Many were guilty of truly monstrous crimes; of that, there could be no question, and they deserved whatever they were getting down there. But it would be foolish to believe that it was only the guilty stored in this labyrinth. Innocent ponies were trapped down here, too, and even ponies who had committed only minor crimes.

“And they are forced to spend their time here… Are we truly capable of being this cruel?” she thought to herself, her ears lowering in dismay. Sadly, there was little and less she could do for any of them right now. She was here for Protea, nothing more.

Resisting the urge to sigh, Scarlet slipped down into the dungeons, carefully closing the door behind her with her magic. In moments, what little light the moon had afforded through a nearby window was snuffed out, and her heart skipped a beat when she lost all sight of the world around her. She waited patiently for her eyes to adjust before slowly and carefully inching down the stairs before her, keeping one hoof on the wall for stability all the way.

Shortly after reaching the bottom of the steps, she was pulled from her thoughts by voices up ahead. She came to a stop and pressed herself up against the wall to minimize visibility. Her ears stood up to listen in on the discussion.

“Yer my relief?” a thickly accented stallion’s voice asked.

The guard she had been tailing answered in a low, annoyed growl. “Aye, that I am, bullshit that it is.”

The accent chuckled, and the scraping of wood on stone indicated he was rising from a chair. “Oh, quit yer bitchin' and get on with it. These wasted won’t watch ‘emselves.”

“Meh.”

Scarlet resisted the urge to snarl in frustration when she spied a stallion at the end of the corridor marching her way, a lantern hanging loosely from his jaw. An earth pony; tall, well built, dressed in lunar guard armor. She could tell at a glance that he was significantly stronger than her physically, so a direct confrontation was out of the question. But with nowhere to go to hide, she was going to have to face him one way or the other.

“And if I start a fight, his buddy will hear me and come to his defense in a heartbeat. I need to be fast about this…”

A few seconds later, the light from the lantern crept up on her hooves, and the stallion came to a stop. “What the-”

Scarlet’s horn flashed with light as she conjured one of her swords in her magic and swung it into the side of the startled guard’s helmet. He cried out as his head was lurched off to one side, his eyes rolling in their sockets. Scarlet could already hear his ally scrambling in the corridor beyond.

Acting fast, she grasped the stunned guard’s helmet with his head still inside with her magic. With a grunt of effort, she pushed his head into the wall with as much force as she could muster, another clang of metal echoing down the hall. The guard slumped in place, but just to be sure, Scarlet pulled his head towards her to meet her rising hoof. A loud crack echoed up and down the hall, and the guard fell back with a bloody nose, out cold.

And then his comrade came into view, eyes wide in surprise. “What the fuck-”

“Shut!” Scarlet snapped back at him, lifting up his companion in her magic and throwing the limp body as hard as she could muster. The standing guard grunted as he caught the full force of the flying body in his hooves before falling back onto his rump, struggling to stay upright.

“UGH! Intruder!”

Scarlet darted forward, lifting up her conjured blade and driving the pommel into the guard’s face, right between his eyes. He fell back to the floor with the other grunt, his hooves flailing wildly about. Scarlet flinched back, realizing that he was wearing studded horseshoes. One solid blow from any of those could easily break bones.

The guard went to shove off the useless body of his companion, but Scarlet was faster. She ensnared his hooves in her magic before repeatedly—and rapidly—driving the pommel of her sword into the front of his helmet.

A few seconds later, the very swollen and very brutalized face of the guard fell back, his eyes drifting closed as he passed out. Scarlet let off a quiet sigh of relief, dispelling her sword. “Sorry, boys,” she said softly before searching the bodies. It only took her a moment to find a rusty iron keyring on the second guard’s person. It jangled and rattled as she lifted it up, making her ears lay back.

Stepping over the bodies, she emerged into a small room that looked to be a hybrid between an office and a lobby. A simple desk sat against the left wall, a collection of candles providing faint illumination for the stacks of parchment scattered across the surface. A heavily-reinforced wooden door sat against the back wall with a barred window set into its top at around eye height. The horrid sounds she had heard at the entrance were coming from there.

A deafening, spine-chilling creak echoed up and down the corridor beyond where Scarlet opened the door, making her teeth grind together. The limited light cast into the narrow hallway beyond was just enough to let her see the eyes of the first few prisoners. They looked at her in confusion, and, to her regret, with a small amount of hope.

There was a modest chance that, somewhere in all of this, she would find Protea.

Scarlet swallowed heavily.

Before descending any further, she had to deal with the guards. It had taken her a bit of thinking, and a few beads of sweat, but she was able to deal with them satisfactorily. She tore off long strips of fabric from her cloak, wincing as she did so, and used them to gag the guards. Then, with the keys she had taken, she unlocked the first empty cell she came across, chucked the guards inside with their hooves shackled together, and locked it up again.

She’d leave the keys on the desk after she left. Somepony would come along and let them out later.

With that done, she began her long, harrowing trip through the dungeons, taking a lantern with her to light the way. She didn’t bother sticking around on the top floor; instead, making directly for the stairs heading down. Almost everypony up here was only guilty of minor crimes, and would probably be out within a few weeks at most, if she had to crack a guess. Petty thieves or drunkards with otherwise-decent morals. No, her target would most likely be in the lowest levels of this hellhole, where only the most dangerous and unpredictable prisoners were kept.

She did her best to ignore the whimpered pleas of the ponies behind the bars as she passed, did her best not to look into their anguished eyes. But even as she passed, she could hear many begging for her to let them out, to free them from this living nightmare.

“I’m sorry… that’s not why I am here,” she thought regretfully to herself.

As maze-like as the dungeons were, they were, mercifully, consistent with what she had been subjected to before. It hadn’t been a common job, but guarding dangerous prisoners of war in the dungeons of other castles had been a duty she carried out during the war, and Newcanter Castle shared the same basic layout as others she had guarded previously, allowing her to find her way with minimal difficulty.

The second level was worse by an immeasurable degree. The worst of the common scum filled these reinforced anti-magic cells. Murderers, rapists, and other such filth filled the cells here, all of them staring back at her as she passed. Their eyes were cold, unfeeling, and more than enough to send a chill down her spine.

She shuddered in revulsion, several primal instincts telling her that none of the ponies around her had good intentions for her. But despite that and the rapidly-growing desire to turn and run, she forced herself to slow down and peer into the cells as she passed. While it was likely that Protea would be on the third level over any other, the chances of her being in the second were high enough to warrant her keeping her eyes open.

“Hoo wee, lookit ye lass, ain’t you a pretty one,” one of the stallions, a lanky, wrinkly pegasus with one eye missing croaked out from farther ahead. Everything about him made Scarlet’s skin crawl, and she made no effort to hide her disgust.

He curled his hooves around the bars of his cell as she drew near, his lips curling back into a crooked, lecherous grin. “Ye look soft, filly, but firm too… Hey, now, no need to look at me like that…”

“Bite your tongue, or I will rip it out,” Scarlet warned quietly, the back of her skull starting to burn.

The stallion cackled quietly before reaching his hoof out as far as he could as she passed. “Aw, lady, don’t be like that. C’mon, why not open this cell and lemme have a nice look at ye, eh? I promise it’ll be fun.”

There was a pull on Scarlet’s tail.

Barely withholding a roar of rage, her horn lit up, tearing her tail free from his grasp and shoving his foreleg down against the crossbar halfway between the shoulder and elbow. A blood-curdling snap filled the air as the bone snapped, his foreleg bending at a sharp angle where no joint existed. The pervert’s eyes widened, the blood draining from his face. A long, withering, agonized wail tore past his lips as he fell back into the cell.

Scarlet turned to glare at him, the light of her lantern reflecting like coals in her eyes. She watched the pathetic wretch writhing on the ground in the cell, his agonized whimpers the only sound in her ears. After a moment, she took a deep breath and turned to press on.

Nopony else had the nerve to try anything like that again, thankfully. All of them watched her as she passed with fearful eyes, no doubt taken aback by her sudden display of violence. The guards stationed to keep these ponies here had no doubt been ordered to show restraint wherever possible, and limit physical violence unless absolutely necessary. The prisoners probably weren’t used to their visitors fighting back with such brutality.

“What’s going on? I heard screaming.” a weak whisper of a feminine voice suddenly asked from her right, making her come to a stop. Scarlet turned to peer into the cell, squinting to see through the darkness. Even with the light provided by her lantern, she could only barely make out the faintest silhouette of an equine shape huddled in the back.

After a moment of contemplation, Scarlet shook her head. “That is none of your business,” She stated in a dry voice before turning to move on.

She came to a stop when two glowing blue eyes opened in the back of the cell.

Scarlet sucked in a deep breath, her blood going cold. By reflex, her horn flared, and one of her swords flashed into existence. She staggered back, her tail pressed against the bars of the cell behind her. She watched with bated breath as the creature in the cell slowly drew closer, its hooves clacking against the stone floor in a manner very different from regular hooves.

What stepped into the light was a full-grown changeling female. Her eyes were a soft ocean blue, while her chitin was a muted shade of purple. A tattered, red fin ran down the back of her neck, it's color shared by her ragged wings and short tail. Myriad ugly scars covered her body, and it didn’t take much effort for Scarlet to tell that this creature had suffered all kinds of physical abuse.

Scarlet took a deep breath, allowing her sword to dissipate. She reigned in her hostility, reminding herself about what had happened at the inn, and Lens’ harsh scolding of her behavior. With her mind calmed down, she came up to the bars to stand face-to-face with the changeling. “You… you’re a free changeling,” she observed quietly, calling back on the term Protea had used.

The changeling let out an unamused snort. “A free changeling trapped behind bars... a cruel twist of irony,” she answered in a cold, tired tone, the natural distortions in her voice becoming clear now that Scarlet was listening for them. She blinked at Scarlet a few times, squinting as if to see a tiny detail through a thick haze. “But I am surprised you know that term… most ponies don’t.”

“I am surprised that you’re even alive,” Scarlet countered with a raised eyebrow. “It isn’t exactly common that ponies let changelings live, much less keep them as prisoners. But then again, I understand you are a rare and special breed, are you not?”

The drone gave a slow nod of her head, settling down onto her haunches. “In a manner of speaking… The Lunar Council wants me alive… for questioning…” her eyes wandered down to her body, and her hooves wandered over her scars. She shuddered. “...For testing.”

Scarlet fell silent for several seconds, her ears slowly drooping. Despite a large chunk of her brain telling her to ignore this and move on, some small part of her couldn’t help but feel sorry for the creature in front of her. She turned away and let off a quiet hum. “...Perhaps you can help me, then. I am looking for another free changeling, as it so happens. A child, perhaps 10 years old. It is possible she was disguised as an earth pony filly. Have you seen anything like that over the last day?”

The changeling slowly shook her head. “I am afraid I have not seen any other changelings in… years, much less in the last day,” she mumbled regretfully, her eyes lowering. After a few seconds, the changeling began to back away into the shadows once more, her eyes slowly closing. “I am sorry I cannot be of more help to you… I do not wish another of my kind to suffer as I have.”

Scarlet turned away to look back the way she had come. So Protea wasn’t in the dungeons… that meant she was most likely being kept in the Lunar Wing, somewhere, which meant Scarlet was wasting her time by staying here. “...I see. Then I should resume my search elsewhere.”

Scarlet turned to leave but came to another halt when the changeling’s voice called after her. “What is her name?”

Scarlet turned around to see those two glowing blue eyes staring back at her from the darkness. “Pardon?”

“The child you seek… may I know her name?” the changeling asked again.

Scarlet narrowed her eyes skeptically for several seconds, not entirely sure she should answer. It didn’t take her long to relent, however. The changeling was a twig at best, and clearly drained of all her strength. There was no harm in it. Scarlet nodded and spoke. “If she was disguised as a pony, she would have gone by the name Primrose. In her true form, however, she is Protea.”

The changeling stared back at her for several long seconds, her eyes slowly going wide behind her bars. With a few shaky steps, she emerged back into the lantern-light. Scarlet winced, taken aback to see the drone’s lip beginning to quiver.

“F-forgive me, but... I can only assume I misheard. Did you say… P-Protea?” she choked out in slow, hesitant words, almost as if she were afraid that she did not want to know the answer.

Scarlet raised an eyebrow, turning to face the drone directly. “I did… why? What is it to you? Do you know her?”

The changeling stared at her for several long seconds, her jaw working up and down as she fished helplessly for words. Scarlet felt a small tug of concern in her breast, compelling her to take a step forward. Suddenly, the drone closed her eyes, barely stifling a sob. The choking noise she made echoed up and down the dungeon corridors in a way that made Scarlet’s heart skip a beat.

“Of course I know her…” the changeling said before lifting her tearful eyes to look into Scarlet’s again. The unicorn was taken aback when she saw the look of pure, unfiltered joy in the changeling’s smile. “Protea is my daughter.”

Scarlet went rigid, her eyes flying wide as saucers. Cool ice began to pool into her veins, and her swords dissipated. She mouthed uselessly, fishing for words that could adequately convey her shock.

There was no way this changeling was Protea’s mother. It was impossible. Protea had said it herself—her mother was dead! Silent Edge had killed her the night he attacked the family campsite!

Scarlet was about to make that point in no uncertain terms when a memory, small, fleeting, began to worm its way into the front of her mind.

“M-mom took me away, and we hid by some rocks. She gave me the lamp, and she told me to run into town and hide, and that she’d come to find me. But… she… she made me promise to take care of the lamp and protect it with my life if she didn’t. Then she went back, and I ran, and… and I never saw her again…”

Protea had never seen her mother die… she had just assumed…

Swallowing heavily, Scarlet stepped forward until she was face-to-face with the drone—no, with Sclera—again. “...How did you survive?” she asked in barely even a whisper. “Protea has believed you to be dead all this time.”

Sclera looked down, her smile fading. “...I got lucky… I pleaded for them to spare my life, talking to them to buy Protea time to escape… They d-didn’t know what to do about me, a talking changeling. They argued for a time, until Silent Edge, that rancid son of a bitch… he had one of his subordinates lock me in irons and drag me here to stand before the councils for questioning…”

More tears rolled down her cheeks. “I thought my little girl was dead all this time…” she choked out before looking up into Scarlet’s eyes again. “Is it true? Is she alive?”

“She is,” Scarlet acknowledged with a slow nod. “Silent won’t kill her as long as she is in Newcanter. The council wants her alive.”

“Does she… does she still carry the lamp?”

Scarlet frowned at that. That lamp was one of the driving causes behind the council’s relentless pursuit of the changeling filly. Now that they had captured her, had they taken the liberty of confiscating it yet? Or had they kept it near her so she could better answer their questions?

In the end, though, Scarlet offered up a small smile and a nod. “Yes, she does. That thing has caused us no end of trouble since we met.”

Sclera let out a weak, humorless laugh before sniffling to fight back more tears. She lifted her hoof up to her muzzle for a few seconds before grabbing onto the bars again. “Please… let me out of here,” she begged, her ears folded back. “I was ready to accept my fate, ready to lay down and die, but if my daughter is still out there, alive and well, then, please… please… I have to find her… I have to hold her…”

Scarlet stared at Sclera for several seconds. A small part of her was still telling her to ignore her and move on. Sclera was in terrible shape. She was weak, malnourished, skinny, and no doubt low on magic. Bringing her along was likely to be a liability, jeopardizing both her and Protea.

Scarlet’s mind wandered to the filly in question, specifically her pony form and the smile she had worn more and more as time had gone on. Could Scarlet truly afford the extra risk of getting the owner of that face harmed?

Suddenly, the face of Primrose was replaced with the face of Crystal Clear in her mind.

Scarlet’s heart twisted in her chest, her pupils dilating.

With a flash of light from her horn, Scarlet’s sword rematerialized and came down, hard, on the lock of Sclera’s cell. The shrill screech of metal being carved by a magical blade pierced the darkness of the dungeons, making all who could hear it wince and cringe in discomfort. The metal softened and contorted around the emotionally-charged blade, sparks flying before the door began to lazily swing open, emitting a spine-tingling creak as it went.

Sclera tentatively stepped out of her cell, her legs quivering with anticipation and weakness. It had been five years since she had set a hoof outside of that cell of her own free will… and she had just learned her only remaining child was still alive after so much time believing she was dead in the ground with the rest of her family. Scarlet could barely imagine the storm of emotions raging inside the drone right now.

But she did know one thing...

“Come,” Scarlet said quietly as, for the first time in her life, she held out her hoof for a changeling. “Let’s go save your filly.”

As Sclera nodded and took her hoof, Scarlet turned her eyes back down the corridor, a newfound resolve burning in her heart, along with the subtle, ever-present ache that had plagued her since her daughter’s death. It was an agony that no effort could ease, a hole that could never be filled no matter how hard she tried. It was a pain she would never wish even on her worst enemies…

“...But now I have a chance to take that pain away from another,” she thought to herself as she set off at a slow trot, careful to make sure Sclera could keep up. “And I will. Nothing deserves to feel that pain… not even a changeling.”

With that resolution, the two mothers took their leave of the dungeons, their hooves of hard chitin and soft fur wound tightly together.

Author's Note

The Thlot Pickens!

Oath

“Can you not change into a pony?” Scarlet asked in a low whisper as she and Sclera emerged from the dungeons. She swept her eyes back and forth across the hallway for any signs of a patrol, but luckily, the pair appeared to be in the clear for the moment.

Sclera shook her head. “No… not right now, at least… I barely have the strength to keep pace with you,” she said, her voice breaking somewhat mid-speech. “Changing shape requires magic, and I’ve spent five years in a magic-suppressing cage.”

Scarlet grimaced but nodded in understanding. Much like a muscle atrophying after a prolonged period without use, magic too could become stagnant and borderline useless in a creature if they neglected to use it for too long. That’s how it was for ponies, at least, and given the base-level similarities in how changelings and ponies channeled magic, it should not have come as a surprise that Sclera’s magic was, for now at least, off the table.

“Alright, then stay close and stay quiet,” Scarlet instructed, advancing out into the hallway and beckoning for Sclera to follow. “I’ll handle it if we get into a fight, but with any luck, we won’t have to worry about that.”

Sclera fell into step behind Scarlet, her eyes darting around anxiously as, for the first time in five years, she willfully left the dungeons of her own free will. Her wings twitched erratically on her back, conveying her anxiety just as well as the uneasy look on her face. “W-where are we going?”

“If Protea wasn’t in the dungeons, she will be in the lunar wing, if I had to guess,” Scarlet replied with a frown, peeking around the next corner. “Either a Nightblade or a Council member will be interrogating her there. Although, given what I have learned from you, they would realistically haul her to the dungeons once they were done anyway…”

“Should we wait for them down there, then?”

“Bad idea,” Scarlet dismissed with a shake of her head. “I’m not the best close-quarters combatant. My specialty is long-range artillery, which would be impossible to effectively use in the dungeons. Plus, in such confined space, I’d be just as likely to hurt you or get backed into a corner as I would be to even stand my ground.”

Sclera gave off a quiet chittering sound that made Scarlet’s skin crawl but otherwise offered no response.

The halls were eerily silent, just as they had been when Scarlet passed through them earlier, but there was something different about it this time. Maybe it was the fact that she was leading a changeling now—something she did not expect she would ever do—that was setting her so perilously on edge.

“How did you meet her? Protea, I mean?” Sclera suddenly asked, causing Scarlet to pause for a moment to mull over how best to answer before turning another corner.

“I found her in my wine cellar in Swanrun. She broke in to get out of the rain,” she replied, her ears drooping. “That was a month or two ago, give or take.”

Had it really been that recent? It certainly felt a lot longer than that.

“Was she alright, at the time?” Sclera pressed eagerly.

Scarlet glanced back at her, stopping in the middle of the hallway for a second and planting her hoof against the drone’s chest. “Look, Sclera, I get that you’re eager to hear everything, but now is really not the time for these questions,” she stated slowly before withdrawing her hoof and narrowing her eyes. “When I get you and her out of here, you two will have all the time in the world to talk and get caught up. But right now, I need to stay focused on just keeping you alive, so please, be quiet.”

Sclera’s mouth opened up, and for a moment, Scarlet thought that she was about to offer up some protest. But then, after a few seconds, Sclera sighed and nodded her head in resignation. “Of course… forgive me, I just…” she looked around her again, her expression contorted with fear and dread.

“I know,” Scarlet whispered in a softer tone before beckoning for them to continue. “Trust me, I know.”

They pressed on in silence for several minutes with Scarlet trying to retrace her steps to head back for the very courtyard that she and Lens had split up in. From there, she would be able to head the way he did, and, with any luck, she could find him and Protea. Then they could get out of this castle and find some way out of Newcanter.

It took some time, but eventually, the familiar door came into sight. Scarlet gave off a quiet sigh, reaching out to the door with her magic. She turned to look back at Sclera. “We’re also looking for my partner, Sharp Lens. We split up in the courtyard up ahead to cover more ground. If I didn’t find Protea, then maybe he has. We find and link up with him and travel as a group.”

Sclera nodded. “Alright… can I trust him?”

Scarlet’s expression darkened with shame as she turned back to the door. ‘You can trust him more than you can trust me, that’s for sure,’ she mentally berated herself, the memory of how she had chased Protea away resurfacing in her mind. However, when she spoke aloud, she said: “I trust him completely. You have nothing to fear from him.”

The door opened, Scarlet and Sclera passing through.

“Ah, and there she is.”

Scarlet went rigid, her blood turning to ice and her eyes flying wide. Up ahead, standing under the protective roof of the gazebo, was Silent Edge. A pair of Nightblades flanked him, both pegasi. To Scarlet’s rapidly mounting horror, she saw Lens and Protea, their hooves bound in chains and their mouths gagged, under the careful watch of Silent’s subordinates.

Even worse were the four Dragon Sentinels that stood at each corner of the courtyard. Two unicorns and two earth ponies, each armed with heavy horseshoes and masterwork swords, respectively.

Lens made eye contact with her, his expression conveying the depths of his regret. Her heart plummeted on seeing the various bruises and small cuts that now decorated his body. He had at least put up a fight, then.

Scarlet’s gaze then darted to Protea, finding her barrel tightly bandaged with a stain of red on her back. Her eyes were locked onto Silent, her nostrils flaring as she breathed heavily through her gag.

Silent grinned at Scarlet and Sclera as they emerged. “And Sclera, too? I’m surprised, Scarlet. I thought you hated changelings,” he said tauntingly.

Scarlet took a step back, ready to duck back through the door and make a break for it. She very well might have, were it not for the wide-eyed changeling mother that stood behind her, eyes locked on the frightened filly.

“PROTEA!” Sclera screamed, moving forward to try and go for her daughter. The cry drew the filly’s attention, and Protea’s eyes locked onto those of her mother.

“Mm-mrmph?!”

Sclera lunged, and a spike of adrenaline pumped through Scarlet’s veins. They could not afford to be reckless right now! If Sclera charged, she was liable to get herself killed, not to mention putting both Lens and Protea in immediate risk. With a regretful grimace, Scarlet held out a foreleg to catch her, keeping Sclera from advancing.

The drone’s eyes never once left her daughter even as she feebly struggled against Scarlet’s far stronger hooves. “Protea! PROTEA! Let me go, dammit! THAT’S MY BABY!” she cried hysterically, tears rolling down her cheeks. Her eyes then drifted up to Silent, and her lips peeled back to reveal her fangs. “LET HER GO YOU BASTARD!”

“I don’t take orders from demons,” Silent rebuffed casually before taking a few steps forward. “Now, then, Scarlet. I don’t believe I need to explain to you just how hopeless your situation is. You’re trying my patience with your efforts, and so this is your final chance. Give up. Now.”

Scarlet grunted before turning to Sclera and forcefully pushing her back, causing the fragile changeling to fall back onto the ground. “Sclera, stop! You have to calm down!” Scarlet barked emphatically.

“He has my baby!” Sclera retorted, glaring up at Scarlet. “I thought we were trying to save her?!”

“We are!” Scarlet snapped, her horn lighting up to keep Sclera down. “But going into a wild rage will not help us! Stand down for now!”

Sclera snarled and hissed as she pulled against Scarlet’s magic, but it was clear she did not have the physical strength to overcome the battlemage’s grasp. Satisfied that Sclera was pacified, for now, Scarlet turned back around to face Silent. Her eyes briefly locked onto Protea to find her struggling against the Nightblade’s hooves in much the same manner that Sclera had been, tears of her own rolling down her cheeks and muffled cries to go to her mother slipping past her gag.

Scarlet held up a hoof to the nymph, her ears folding back. “Protea, please, calm down. It’s going to be okay, I promise, just calm down,” she said in a vain attempt to comfort the foal, but it became apparent very quickly that her words were for nothing. Protea wasn’t even looking at her.

Silent advanced another step. “Are you still planning on resisting?” he asked, his expression darkening with disappointment. “Do I need to spell out the situation to you?”

There was a flicker of silver and a scrape of metal, and suddenly, Silent’s blade was held up Lens’ throat. The bound stallion sucked in a sharp breath through his nostrils, holding his head back to try and get away from the blade, but there was nowhere for him to go.

“NO!” Scarlet shouted, panic overtaking her. She took a shaking step before coming to a stop when Silent pressed the blade closer to Lens’ throat, visibly pressing against the skin. “NO! No, please, don’t hurt him!”

“Then surrender,” Silent snarled out, his brow furrowing. “I have not the patience for this ridiculous game any longer, Frost. You’ve caused me no end of trouble since getting mixed up in all of this, and I have run out of reasons to hold myself back. Give yourself up, and no harm shall come to you or your companions.”

Scarlet swallowed heavily, her hoof slowly lowering back down to the ground. She looked at Lens, then to Protea, and finally over her shoulder at the still-struggling Sclera, whose angered cries had since devolved into pathetic, miserable sobs.

And then she spotted the Sentinels.

Each of them was looking amongst themselves uncertainly, and while she could not make out their faces or even their genders through their heavy plate armor, she could see their eyes. And not one of them looked comfortable with the situation. They shifted on their hooves, they glanced at one another, and they glared at Silent’s Nightblades, who similarly stared at the pegasus with shock.

Scarlet’s eyes widened, and slowly, an idea came to her. Being careful not to make any sudden moves, she held her head high, her expression hardening with resolve. She looked to each of the faces in the courtyard in turn, making sure she caught their eyes before glaring directly at Silent.

“...Look at you,” she spat caustically. “Keeping a child away from her mother at sword point… holding a stallion’s life on the edge of your blade for the sole sake of making one fugitive give up the fight. How noble and good of you. You’re doing New Equestria proud.”

“Do not think to lecture me on morals, Scarlet Frost,” Silent shot back. “You, who have slaughtered several of my finest Nightblades in your delusional quest to defend a changeling, who left the entire city of Shimmervale quivering in fear after using your magic to mercilessly obliterate an entire home and street. You, who have interfered with my duties time and time again, even now that you know that the beings you seek to preserve are little more than demons and monsters, one and all!”

Scarlet’s pupils dilated, and she turned to point a hoof at Sclera. “DOES THAT SOUND LIKE A MONSTER TO YOU?!” she roared, a vein bulging in her throat. “A mother, crying and weeping and calling out for the last of her children! The rest of whom, may I add, you murdered in cold blood?!”

“For the sake of Equestria itself!” Silent countered. “The threat these beings pose could not be ignored-”

“Then what of the rest?!” Scarlet interrupted him, turning to face him directly. “What of Lovestruck, the priest in Stonethrow, who you slaughtered when he went to defend what he believed to be an orphaned foal in need of a loving home? What of all of the ponies that Protea has stayed with that knew nothing of her true nature who you cut down without a second thought?!”

Silent’s eyes widened, and Scarlet felt a small spark of hope ignite in her heart when his Nightblades glanced between themselves in shock, their eyes flying wide. They muttered amongst themselves, now staring into the back of Silent’s head with suspicion and doubt. The Dragon Sentinels were even worse, slowly lowering their weapons as they considered her words.

Silent bared his teeth. “I did only what was required of me to fulfill my orders!” he tried, his own eyes darting around as he realized what was happening. “They left me with no choice!”

“No choice?” Scarlet echoed doubtfully. “For a trained assassin such as yourself? Do not make me laugh. You and I both know there are a thousand ways you alone could incapacitate an enemy without ending their life. And I think everypony here knows that!”

“Bah! Enough of this,” Silent snarled, his brow starting to twitch with rage. He nodded towards Scarlet. “The rest of you, detain her.”

Nopony moved.

Silent’s eyes widened with confusion, and he looked around at the others nearby. “What the hell are you doing?! I said detain her!”

“And why would they do that?” Scarlet asked slowly, holding her head high. “When it’s clear that the orders they just received were given by a murderous psychopath?”

It was then that it became clear that Silent had realized his mistake. His posture spread, becoming more unstable as he looked around at the increasingly conflicted ponies around him. In the heat of their debate, he had failed to deny her claims that he had murdered innocents. In fact, he outright admitted to it.

Scarlet turned to face the nearby sentinels, her eyes boring into those of the nearest one. “All of you, listen to me! I am former Sergeant Scarlet Frost. I fought in the second half of the war against Talonreach. I saw and did many horrible things in my years as a soldier, this I freely admit. But none of it was done with a smile, and through it all, I never once turned my back on the oath I swore! The very same oath that all of you swore!”

She turned to the other Nightblades, her eyes pleading with them. “Like all of you, when I signed up, I swore an oath to always uphold the core beliefs our nation was founded on. I swore, on my life, to preserve the ideals of kindness, honesty, generosity, loyalty, and laughter until my dying breath. And while I may have shirked my rank and the law, I never once cast aside my oath!”

She pointed her hoof at Silent Edge. “Unlike him! You need only look at him now to see it plain as day! You need only look back on his history! The killer of Talonreach’s king, the hunter of children, the murderer of parents! The one holding hostages as leverage! He is a cruel, deceitful, selfish, heartless monster, far more than the desperate mother behind me! And so I ask you… are you going to stand by and let this perversion of our nation’s ideals have his way?! Are you going to follow the orders of one who has betrayed every part of the oath we all swore?!”

“Don’t listen to her!” Silent barked, his voice trembling. He took a step forward, his blade leaving Lens’ throat as he jabbed a hoof at Scarlet. “She is a criminal, and she is helping prisoners escape! It is your duty to apprehend her!”

But none of them moved.

Silent’s breath was getting heavy, his eyes darting about frantically. “You… you cannot… this is insubordination! This is treason!”

“No,” Scarlet spat coldly, her horn lighting up with magic. “This is justice.”

Behind Silent, Lens and Protea both vanished in bursts of violet light. An instant later, they re-emerged at her sides, their gags and metal chains removed. Silent spun to look behind him, then turned back to Scarlet with his pupils dilating in rage. He let out a wordless scream of rage and charged.

Scarlet was, for once, faster.

A wave of unfocused magic shot out of her horn like a tsunami to slam into the charging pegasus, sending him flying back into one of the gazebo’s pillars. The stone cracked behind him, and he fell dazed to the ground. His Nightblades, despite their doubts, snapped out of their trance and went to advance towards Scarlet in his stead, wings flaring out and their blades snapping free.

Scarlet screwed her eyes shut, pulling Sclera closer and pouring more power into her horn. She could hear the sharp whistling of blades slicing through the air for her, and she could even feel the air shifting as the first came within an inch of her face.

There was a flash of light and an instant of intense wind before she emerged back into the hallway she and Lens had initially come from, along with the others. She opened her eyes and turned back to the door, pressing her shoulder up against it with all of her weight. “LENS!” she shouted. “WARD!”

The stallion staggered for a second, seemingly surprised by how suddenly everything had happened. Then, with a sharp nod, his own horn lit up with pale blue magic that then washed over the door. A series of glowing runes appeared along its surface, showing that his wards were in place.

“Mom!” Protea’s voice echoed in the hallway. Scarlet turned to see the filly putting her hooves on Sclera’s chest, the older changeling laying on the ground in a dazed, confused heap. “Mom! Is it really you?! S-say something!”

Scarlet felt a small pang of guilt in her chest. “Protea, we don’t have time!” she said, reaching out and lifting the filly in her magic. “There will be time for reunions later!”

“No! NO! PUT ME DOWN!” Protea shrieked, thrashing violently in Scarlet’s grasp. “PUT ME DOWN, SCARLET! MOMMY!”

Scarlet looked away, her heart twisting guiltily in her chest. Then, with a grunt, she turned her horn to Protea and fired off a sleeping spell. Protea’s eyes widened as the energy washed over her, then fell limp with a heavy sigh.

“Scarlet!” Lens protested with wide eyes.

Scarlet gently passed the unconscious filly to rest on the stallion’s back. “She wasn’t listening… I’m sorry, but we can’t afford distractions,” she said before marching up to Sclera, who finally seemed to be coming back to her senses. “Sclera, come on, get up, we can’t stay here.”

“Is that really Protea’s mother?” Lens asked in a low whisper, his eyes roving over the changeling’s body. “I thought she was dead…”

“As did I,” Scarlet acknowledged before giving Sclera a shake. “Hey!”

“Ugh… my baby… where’s my baby…?” Sclera mumbled, her eyes finally focusing as she forced herself to her hooves. “Protea… where are you?”

“She’s on Lens’ back,” Scarlet said in a reassuring voice while helping Sclera up. “Now come on, all of you. We have to run. The castle will be on high alert any minute!”

A loud thud came from the door Lens just warded, and the lights flickered. Scarlet grimaced. “And that barrier won’t hold for long. Come on!”

With a few motivating pushes of her magic, she sent Lens and Sclera running for the castle’s entrance. She sprinted after them for maybe a dozen feet before turning around, gathering energy on her horn. The ward was flickering more and more. It would break any second.

“Fuck it,” Scarlet breathed, focusing. Her horn lit up with power, a sphere of unstable energy gathering on its tip. After a few seconds of charging, Scarlet grunted with effort and released the artillery shot, aiming for the roof halfway between her and the door. Sending her skidding back a few inches, the spell exploded with incredible force, breaking apart the roof and sending enormous chunks of stone falling down to completely block off the corridor.

A pang of white-hot pain traveled down Scarlet’s horn from the exertion. She shook her head, gritting her teeth in frustration before turning and sprinting to catch up with the others. They weren’t out of the woods yet, and they would no doubt need her combat skills to survive.

Silent Edge’s vision slowly came back to him. He groaned in pain, looking around at the courtyard, trying to recall what had happened. The entire front of his body was in incredible pain, as was his back. Slowly, he picked himself up out of the grass and took stock of the situation.

One of the doors leading out of the courtyard was open, his Nightblades standing in the threshold to stare at a pile of rubble that prevented them from passing. The Dragon Sentinels, on the other hoof, were standing in front of him with narrowed, contemptuous glares.

Silent snarled at their looks. “What are you morons doing!? They’re getting away!”

The lead Sentinel stepped forward, his horn lighting up with a silvery aura to lift his sword. Silent barely even had time to gasp before the blade came to a rest against his throat, and the voice of the Sentinel spoke to him from behind the helmet. “Silent Edge, under suspicion of murder, and abuse of power, I am hereby detaining you for questioning.”

Silent’s eyes widened. “W-what?! You cannot be serious! Are you truly taking the criminal’s word for it over my own?!” he demanded, outraged and terrified.

The Sentinel’s expression did not change, though he did glance back at his comrades. “The rest of you, join those Nightblades and bring her in—alive, if possible.” He ordered plainly. “I will remain behind to deal with him.”

The other sentinels threw salutes before turning and sprinting away to join their lunar allies. That done, the Sentinel turned his eyes back to Silent. “Even if she is lying about the murders, I cannot deny what I have seen with my own two eyes. Rest assured, she will face the consequences of her actions… and so must you.”

Silent swallowed heavily, his eyes boring into the Sentinel’s. He briefly contemplated fighting back so he could continue the chase, but he quickly realized that to do such a thing would only make things worse, not to mention he stood no chance of victory. With a growl, he nodded his head. “Fine… I’m sure the Council can clear things up.”

“I am sure they can,” the Sentinel answered before grabbing Silent in his magic and turning to leave.

“For all of us.”

Author's Note

You have no idea how fun Scarlet's little speech was to write. So satisfying for a character to have a moment like that. :3

Escape

“Look, Luster, I told you, it wasn’t me!” the unicorn apologized profusely, one of his hooves held up to his chest. “I mean, yeah, you’re hot as hell, but you’re too damn scary for me to try a stunt like that!”

The thestral didn’t spare him a look, her nostrils flaring. “Ya done flappin’ yer trap, mate? Or am I gonna hafta give ya another smack upside yer fuckin’ noggin?”

It had been like this off and on for what must have been at least an hour now. At some point, Luster had suddenly—and adorably—complained about a yank on her tail, before accusing her fellow guard of the crime. An accusation made without proof, due process, or any kind of investigation beyond noticing he had a horn with which to commit the crime.

Not that he did.

Not that Luster gave a damn, either. She had staunchly refused to listen to every reasonable counter-point he had made against her original argument in a truly impressive display of stubborn self-assurance.

With a defeated sigh, the unicorn threw his hooves up into the air before turning his eyes forward. He couldn’t help but notice how some of the guards on the walls were giving him bewildered looks, no doubt confused by the angry shouting they had been hearing. Thankfully, none had bothered to come and check what all the fuss was about.

Suddenly, the large double doors behind him exploded outwards with a burst of violet magic. His eyes flew wide as he was sent falling to the ground with a cry of pain. Splinters and chips of charred wood scattered over him, making him curl up reflexively to protect his squishy underbelly.

“Move, damn it!” A female voice shouted. The unicorn was just able to make out the sounds of three separate sets of hooves pummeling the earth as they passed, filling his already-ringing ears with a low rumble.

“What in the Five-damned fuck-” he heard Luster raging in a voice that made him gulp and curl up tighter.

The female voice from before cut her off. “Just stay down! And, uh…”

After a second, the unicorn found enough nerve to look up and see what was even happening. Before him, staring at Luster with an apologetic look was a pale blue unicorn mare with a long red mane and vibrant violet eyes. Her horn was aglow, her aura encasing Luster and pinning her to the wall.

“...Sorry for yanking your tail earlier,” the mare finally said before looking to the unicorn. “And sorry you got framed for it.”

“YOU FUCKING WHAT?!” Luster screeched, thrashing against the mare’s magic hold. “OH, THAT’S IT! I’M GONNA RIP OUT YER FUCKING TONGUE AND SHOVE IT UP YOUR UGLY ARSE! LEMME DOWN YOU SHIT-NOSED CUNT WEASEL!”

The mare’s ears folded back. “...Rude,” she deadpanned before turning and throwing Luster against the ground. An audible crack filled the air, and the thestral fell silent, her eyes rolling in their sockets. With that done, the mare turned and broke into a sprint for the entrance to the courtyard, where both her companions, another pony and—was that a changeling?—were waiting for her.

However, his wounded comrade took precedence. With a grunt of effort, he hauled himself to his hooves and ran over to Luster’s side. “Luster! Are you alright?!”

“Anypony get the number of that fuckin’ wagon?” the thestral mumbled, her words slurring together. “I’m gonna whoop it’s arse…”

“Yeah, you’re fine,” the stallion chuckled with a shake of his head before looking back up at the intruders. His eyes widened as the front gates, just like the door behind him, suddenly exploded in a burst of purple light.

The red-maned mare waved her companions through. “Go, go!” she was shouting. She turned back to look into the courtyard, making eye contact with the stallion. She narrowed her eyes warningly before turning and following the others out of sight.

Not a moment later, the alarm bells began to sound from one of the castle’s many towers, the ponies on the walls shouting. Some took flight with wingblades snapping free, while others went for their crossbows and took aim.

The unicorn swallowed heavily. “Yeah, I ain’t touching that,” he remarked dryly before hauling Luster onto his back. “You need a doctor. Come on.”

“Imma bite off her fuggin’ eyebrows…”

“I’m sure you are, Luster.”

With those words, the unicorn carried the mumbling thestral inside the castle to seek medical treatment, setting the ensuring carnage outside out of his mind.

“What took you?!” Lens demanded once Scarlet finally caught up with him and Sclera on the other side of the demolished gate.

Scarlet shook her head in dismissal. “It doesn’t matter!” she stated. She risked a glance over her shoulder, half expecting to see a proverbial storm cloud of pegasi and thestrals coming down on them with crossbows and wingblades. What she saw wasn’t as bad as she had been expecting, but it was still far worse than she liked.

At least a dozen pursuers were after them, most of them having leaped from the walls as they punched through. She couldn’t make out their weapons or armor from here, given the darkness of the night, but she nevertheless knew that if they wanted to survive this chase, they needed to get away from the fliers.

“We need to lose the pegasi!” she shouted, gesturing back with a jerk of her head. “As long as they’re after us, they’re serving as an arrow pointing us out to the whole damned city! Any suggestions?!”

Lens paled. “Me?! Why do I have to give the suggestion!?”

“You used to live here!” Scarlet pointed out, glaring directly ahead, her eyes searching for ground-based soldiers.

“Yeah, that doesn’t mean I have an escape plan ready to pull out of my sleeve at a moment’s notice!” Lens retorted in exasperation.

Scarlet cursed under her breath before hooking a sharp left. “What we need is cover, then,” she said, her mind racing just as fast as her sprinting hooves. “Something to break their line of sight and give us some room to breathe!”

“You could teleport us into a house or something,” Lens said after a second.

Before Scarlet could answer, an arrow punctured the ground right in front of her hooves. She let out an alarmed yelp and turned to look for the shooter. Her eyes landed on a unicorn perched on a nearby rooftop, a crossbow held in his magic. He was already moving to reload.

“Son of a…” Scarlet snarled under her breath, her horn lighting up. The unicorn’s eyes flew wide as he was ensnared in her grip, before being thrown unceremoniously off of the rooftop to fall into the streets somewhere else. Scarlet saw a couple of pegasi flying down to catch him.

“You alright?!” Lens asked from the side.

“Fine!” Scarlet barked in response. She looked over at Sclera. The changeling was keeping pace, but her breath was already coming in heaving gasps, eyes wide and darting around in a frantic, panicky haze. She wasn’t going to be able to maintain this sort of sprint for much longer.

They needed shelter, and they needed it now. Both so Sclera could catch her breath and so that they could figure out a more practical escape plan.

At the moment, Lens’ suggestion didn’t sound too bad. It was risky, though. If they teleported into an occupied home, they would have to contend with the residents causing a fuss, and without any knowledge of the interiors of the various buildings around them, there was always a small but notable risk of teleporting on top of something less than safe to land on.

Another arrow whistled through the air, this one striking Scarlet’s cloak and puncturing a new hole in it. The shaft got lodged in the fabric, allowing the sharp tip of the arrow to scrape painfully against her barrel with every jarring step she took. Hissing in pain, Scarlet quickly tore away the piece of fabric with her magic with a deafening rip.

“We’re almost boxed in, here!” Lens shouted out, looking around with wide eyes. Scarlet looked, and sure enough, there was a small army of soldiers advancing on them from all sides, weapons drawn and eager to put the criminals down.

“Damn. Alright, grab on!” Scarlet ordered, sliding to a stop and reaching out with her magic. She felt two hooves on her, one furry and one hard. The hooves of their assailants grew deafening in her ears. No time to pinpoint a specific target. With a grunt of strain, she fired off her spell.

They vanished from the street in a burst of purple light. For an instant, their world was blinding light and wind, and then they were deposited haphazardly onto a wooden floor. The thunderous roar of dozens of hooves galloping across the street became muffled, though still very loud. Scarlet opened her eyes to take in her surroundings, her heart hammering in her chest.

They had emerged into what appeared to be the storage room of a blacksmith. Racks and shelves surrounded them in the claustrophobic space, each one bearing a neatly sorted arrangement of weapons suitable for the common pony to use for self-defense purposes. Teeth-held daggers and swords, heavy horseshoes, clubs, and others. Sclera and Lens had come out of the teleport in a crumpled heap a few feet away, the former holding onto Protea’s slumbering form to ensure she was alright, while the latter dizzily tried to make heads or tails of what was even happening.

“Everypony alright?” Scarlet asked quietly.

Lens nodded shakily. “Yeah, yeah, I’m fine. What about you?”

Scarlet waved him off dismissively. “I’m fine,” she said before reaching out and lightly shaking Sclera. “Hey, hey. Sclera, come on. We can’t stay here.”

The changeling finally got her faculties back, her eyes focusing on Scarlet’s face. She was gasping heavily, a hoof on her chest as she struggled to get enough air. With some help from Scarlet, she slowly sat up on her haunches. “Ow… where are we?”

“Maybe thirty feet from where we were,” Scarlet answered, looking around again. She perked up her ears, listening to the sounds from outside. She could just make out the angered shouts of the guards, orders being thrown around. She couldn’t discern any words through the thick walls of the building, but it didn’t take a genius to figure out what they were doing. “We can’t stay here. They’re going to start searching the buildings, and if they have a skilled enough unicorn, they’ll be able to track our jumps.”

Sclera chittered quietly before turning and sliding over to Lens, her eyes glued onto Protea. “Protea, is she alright?” she asked, reaching out gingerly. Lens shied back for a second, clearly unsettled by the other changeling. A reassuring nod from Scarlet convinced him to relax and hold the limp filly out. Sclera let out a quiet sigh of relief, tears welling up in her eyes. “My little girl… she’s g-grown so big…”

“She’s very brave,” Scarlet replied quietly, a tiny smile appearing on her lips. “You should be proud of her.”

Any further discussion was cut off when a loud banging echoed through the building. Sclera squeaked in fear, huddling closer to Lens in a desperate attempt to shield her child. Her eyes locked onto Scarlet. “W-what do we do?”

“For now, we keep teleporting and put some distance between us and the crowd,” Scarlet replied, channeling magic into her horn. Her skull throbbed painfully in protest, and she felt her legs starting to go weak. “I can manage two or three more jumps, but after that, I’ll need some time to rest. Are you ready?”

“I am,” Lens answered, reaching out and placing his hoof on Scarlet’s back. “I got Prim, don’t worry.”

Sclera let out an anxious chittering noise before following suit, her own hoof coiling tightly into the tattered remains of Scarlet’s cloak. “O-okay…” she choked out in a quivering voice.

Scarlet sighed regretfully before firing off the spell. In a flash of light, they disappeared from the room.

After their third jump, they found themselves in what appeared to be a basement. The only light was the low blue glow Lens’ horn provided. Various crates, barrels, and chests were scattered haphazardly around, many of them covered in a thin layer of dust and cobwebs. A few rats had scattered away from them upon their emergence, and every so often, they could be heard scurrying about through the shadows.

Scarlet had collapsed as soon as they arrived, falling to the ground in a gasping, exhausted heap. Her vision swam, her head felt heavy, and fire burned through her veins and skull. As she lay there on the floor, twitching and spasming erratically, she couldn’t help but note that magic exhaustion was just as painful as she remembered it being.

She spent a few minutes like that before finally coming down from her fit. After that, she slowly dragged herself up onto her belly while she rested. Sclera and Lens were both doing much the same nearby, both of them keeping watch over Protea.

“...How long is she going to be like this?” Sclera eventually asked, reaching out and tenderly running her hoof over the back of her daughter’s head.

“A few hours, at least,” Scarlet replied slowly. “We couldn’t afford any distractions, and in the heat of the moment, she was too dead set on crying at you to listen to me.”

“A few hours…” Sclera breathed quietly. She sniffled heavily before wiping her hoof over her eyes.

Lens slowly turned his head to look at Scarlet, his brow furrowed. “So… how are we getting out of here?” he asked quietly. “I mean, the city will be on high alert until they can catch us or confirm that we got away. The gates are not an option, and we can’t teleport through the wall. How do we slip away?”

Scarlet let out a quiet breath, lowering her chin to rest on her hooves. “I’m not sure… I’m thinking, though,” she replied before closing her eyes.

In truth, their options were supremely limited. Like Lens said, the whole city was on high alert. Even now, she could occasionally hear the thundering of hooves as an armored patrol passed by. It would only be a matter of time before this building—whatever it was—was searched, and they’d have to be on the move again.

“If we could fly, it would be easy,” Lens eventually pointed out with a tired sigh. “The magic ward preventing teleporting doesn’t extend to anything physical. If we all had wings, we could just fly over the wall.”

“I have wings,” Sclera pointed out, giving the tattered things a buzz for emphasis.

Lens frowned at her. “Yeah, but you’re also really weak right now. You wouldn’t make it very far on your own, not in your condition.”

Sclera opened her mouth to retort, but nothing came out. Eventually, she gave off a frustrated growl and looked away, conceding the point. “...As long as my daughter gets out of here safe, I don’t care what we do,” she eventually mumbled out.

Suddenly Scarlet’s eyes snapped open. “Wait. Over the wall,” she declared before lifting herself up to a sitting position. “That’s it. We go over the wall!”

“Er,” Lens stared at her skeptically, one of his eyebrows taking a trip up north. “Were you not paying attention, Scarlet? We can’t fly.”

“We don’t have to fly,” Scarlet countered, scooting closer to Lens’ light. “We just need to get up onto the wall. And I know how we can do that.”

“How?” Sclera asked, watching with interest.

With her energy starting to return, Scarlet lifted a hoof and began to draw a very rough approximation of Newcanter’s layout in the dust. “Newcanter is an old place, but much of it still follows the same principles as any other castle or city, such as Swanrun,” she began before drawing a collection of small circles at various points around the city’s outline. “In the event of a siege, the city’s defenders will need to be able to get up onto the wall as quickly as possible. So, a collection of towers and staircases will be located all around the inner wall. All we need to do is find one, fight our way to the top, and then we should be past the barrier blocking teleportation. Then I can blink us down, and we can make good on the rest of our escape.”

“Huh… that could actually work,” Lens mused quietly, rubbing at his chin. “It’s pretty dangerous, though. As you said, we’d have to fight our way through, and you can bet they’ll have those guard towers heavily defended. We’d be better off trying to find one of the staircases you mentioned, but those will be guarded too. And we have fragile cargo with us, not to mention one of us is not at all battle-ready.”

“Don’t worry too much about me,” Sclera requested, her eyes staring at Lens pleadingly. “Just make sure my daughter is safe. If… if you have to leave me behind to do it, then-”

“No,” Scarlet cut her off forcefully, reaching out to place her hoof firmly on Sclera’s back. She met the changeling’s eyes, cowing her into silence. “We are not leaving you or anypony else behind… there has been enough tragedy. And I will not let Protea wake up without her mother there. Not when she knows you’re alive, now. So you live through this. That’s an order.”

Sclera swallowed heavily before offering up a stiff nod in response.

Satisfied, Scarlet withdrew her hoof and shifted back to Lens. “I’m worn out, but I can still fight if I must. Nevertheless, you make a good point, Lens. We should try to keep a low profile until we reach the stairs.”

Lens took a deep breath and nodded in understanding. “Alright… When do we set out?”

Scarlet pushed herself back to a standing position, her eyes narrowed and burning with fiery determination. “Right now.”

Making their way for the wall swiftly proved to be a far more harrowing task than any of them had anticipated. While they had all been expecting the streets to be crawling with guards hunting them down, they had not been expecting them to be out in such force, especially in the alleys. Mere moments after stepping out from the home they had taken shelter in, they had been forced to hide in the shadows for almost a full minute as a large squad of troops made their way through.

It was a miracle they hadn’t been spotted, especially given Sclera’s frantic, terrified chitters and chirps. She screwed her eyes shut and curled up as small as she could every time they took shelter or hid, and every time it became more and more disturbing to observe. The motions seemed far, far too familiar in Scarlet’s eyes. The changeling folded into that position on a dime with such ease it couldn’t be anything but practiced.

The fact she had been forced to learn how best to curl up into a ball to hide set Scarlet’s teeth grinding together and the back of her scalp began to burn and tingle with barely contained fury. “How could we be so cruel that we could drive any creature to such a point?” she asked herself more than once. And every time, her ears drooped with shame as she recalled how Protea had cowered before her in much the same manner in the inn room.

“The answer is simple… because we don’t know any better.”

Lens, for a mercy, was handling the situation far better than Sclera, and seeing as he wasn’t nearly as exhausted as Scarlet, he took the lead. He had passed his cargo back, and now Protea rested on Scarlet’s back. Sclera had insisted she carry the foal but eventually relented when Scarlet pointed out that she was too physically weak to carry a child and keep up with their brisk pace for long.

“You can hold her once we are safe,” Scarlet had told her repeatedly, putting as much sympathy and understanding into her words as she could.

After what felt like an eternity of wandering through the maze-like layout of alleys, they finally rounded a corner to the sight of the Newcanter city wall rising high above them, a staircase built into the side leading up to the top. From here, Scarlet spied no fewer than six different lunar guards perched up on top, and a seventh one standing guard at the base of the stairs.

“That’s a lot of guards,” Lens noted quietly, his lips peeling back into an uncomfortable grimace. “I don’t like our odds of fighting through that many of them.”

“Especially while having to protect Protea,” Scarlet agreed, her lips pulling back into a thin line. She looked to the bundle sleeping on her back, her ears lowering. More than anything, they had to get her out of here. She grimaced before looking up at the wall again. “Alright… here’s what I’m thinking. Lens, take Protea, and keep us safe from those pegasi with a barrier. I’ll fight through any who try to face us directly. Think you can manage that?”

The stallion swallowed heavily before gingerly reaching out and taking Protea back with his magic. “Alright… be careful.”

“What about me?” Sclera asked anxiously, shifting uncomfortably on her hooves. “I want to help.”

“You can help by keeping your head down and staying next to Lens,” Scarlet told her, her tone leaving no room for argument. “Much as I would love another helping hoof, you’re in no condition to lend it. Just stay safe.”

Sclera frowned in disappointment before nodding. “Alright… I understand.”

“Good.” Scarlet turned to glare up at the wall again. She took several deep breaths, her heart started to beat harder against her ribs in anticipation. “On my mark… three… two… one… mark!”

With that, she sprang into action. Her swords snapped into reality in front of her as she leaped from the alleyway towards the guard by the stairs. His eyes widened, and he went for his weapon. Scarlet was faster. With two quick slices of her swords, the stallion fell to one side, blood spraying free from the x-shaped gash left in his chest.

The pegasi up on the wall turned to the source of the commotion and moved to respond almost immediately. Three of them leaped skyward, crossbows at the ready, while two more swooped down the stairs, wingblades springing free. The last one remained up top, eyeing the situation critically.

Scarlet let out a guttural battle cry before swinging her swords out at the charging pegasi. Magic met metal in a shower of sparks, the distorted clang filling her ears. Her advance came to a sudden halt as she fought back against the weight and force of her enemies, her amethyst eyes glaring into their blue and green ones, respectively.

A pale blue dome formed over her and a series of three thunks announced the interception of long-range attacks. Lens came up behind her a second later, horn glowing and brows angled in concentration.

One of the pegasi locked against Scarlet cried out when he was suddenly yanked to one side in Lens’ aura. He twisted as he went to give Scarlet one last parting slash, one she deflected with ease. He then crashed through the second-story window of the nearest building, and a chorus of alarmed and frightened shouts could be heard inside.

Scarlet winced as her duel with the remaining pegasus on the steps continued. They backed off to get some room before lunging in again, blades angled forwards for a thrust right at her heart. Grunting, Scarlet shifted to one side and dispelled her swords. The pegasus pivoted to try and slash at her as he passed, only to be struck in the chest by a bolt of focused magic, sending him flying out of Lens’ dome and crashing to the ground below.

Another volley of shots hit Lens’ barrier, causing the stallion to grunt and gasp. The blue dome of light flickered for a moment before solidifying again. “Gah! I can’t keep this thing up for much longer!” he shouted.

Growling in frustration, Scarlet nodded and took a risk. With two quick steps, she launched herself out of Lens’ barrier to reach the top of the stairs, intending to draw the enemy’s fire away from her comrades.

“There! That one’s in the open!” one of the airborne archers shouted, and despite the fact that she was about to be shot, Scarlet put on a small smile. There was still the matter of the pegasus waiting for her on the steps, though. He had spread out his wings as she advanced, and was now lunging with a battle cry of his own.

Scarlet summoned one of her blades to catch the initial swing, then ducked under the second. She dropped low and spun, sweeping the pony’s legs out from under him much as she had with Lens during the dance. As the pegasus dropped, she grabbed him in her magic and lifted him up.

Three meaty thunks reached her ears, followed by a chorus of shouts. The body in her magic squirmed, choking on his own blood. Scarlet’s eyes lowered for a second. “I am so sorry,” she whispered to him before launching his body at the other archers. They scattered out of the way, already lining up more shots.

Luckily, Lens came back up to her side, his barrier catching the shots. He grimaced before glaring at her. “Never do that again!” he snapped.

“It worked, did it not?” she bit back before making her way briskly for the ramparts. More distorted thunks echoed over them as the archers unloaded.

“It was too big of a risk!”

“And letting your barrier fail was any better?”

Scarlet didn’t listen to whatever witty response Lens concocted. Instead, she closed her eyes and reached out with her magic, trying to find a safe point to teleport to. More thunks echoed across the barrier, along with a sound akin to cracking glass. They only had a few seconds.

“For fuck’s sake, stop them!” one of the archers bellowed before diving down to drive his hind legs into the top of the barrier. A snap of thunder accompanied the smashing of glass as it shattered, causing Scarlet to open her eyes and spin around. Lens staggered back, a hoof held up to his horn with a pained grimace on his face. The pegasus that had just destroyed their barrier was turning to him, pulling a dagger out from its sheath in his greaves with his teeth.

Scarlet’s eyes then fell on Protea, and she went to try and intervene.

Sclera beat her to it.

With a snarling hiss, the changeling tackled the pegasus before he could make good on his attack. The blood drained from Scarlet’s face when Sclera sank her fangs into the guard’s throat, blood spraying free to cover her face. He screamed out, his voice quickly turning into a disgusting gurgle as blood pooled in his mouth.

“By the Five…” Scarlet choked out, a cold sweat breaking out all over her body. The sight before her flickered and distorted, and suddenly she was standing in the marketplace in Swanrun.

Crystal stared back at her with her eyes wide with terror, a feral changeling hanging onto her from behind, its fangs mere inches from her neck. It was surrounded on all sides by the city watch.

“Help her!” Scarlet begged, tears in her eyes. “Please, get her away from that thing!”

The changeling hissed and snarled as the guards approached. They were showing no signs of slowing down, nor any sign of caution. With a bead of despair forming in her chest, Scarlet realized only too late that they weren’t trying to save her daughter.

“Crystal!” she cried out, lifting a hoof. “Crystal, look at me!”

The terrified filly made eye contact with her, sniffling and shivering uncontrollably. “M-Mom…” she stammered out.

“It’s all going to be okay, sweetie, I promise,” Scarlet said, her eyes darting frantically around for anything she could use to turn this around. “You’re going to be fine. We’re going to get you out of there, I swear it!”

The changeling hissed again when it saw just how close the guards were getting. It looked around, pulling Crystal closer against it, drawing another terrified wail out of the frightened filly.

“Mom, I’m scared…”

“I know, honey, I know,” Scarlet replied. “J-just hang on…”

The changeling looked around one more time. Finally, the realization Scarlet had come to a minute ago seemed to dawn on it as well. It snarled in frustration. Time slowed down as it’s maw opened wide, allowing Scarlet to see the sharpness of its fangs, the saliva dripping between them, and the rugged ridges along the top of its mouth.

The changeling bit down on Crystal’s neck. A horrid, wet crunch filled the air, the last thing Scarlet heard before Crystal began screaming. She thrashed in its grasp, blood running down her body in excessive amounts, bubbling out of her mouth in an uneven spray.

The changeling snarled one last time, glaring into Scarlet’s eyes, before pulling back. Flesh came away from bone, and all at once, Crystal’s screams fell silent.

“NO!”

“Scarlet, stop!”

Scarlet blinked, snapping back to reality. Sclera was pinned on her back beneath her, eyes wide in fear as she looked up into Scarlet’s. Both of the unicorn’s swords had materialized, both of them resting mere inches from Sclera’s throat in a scissor shape.

Gasping, struggling to hold back tears, Scarlet allowed her swords to dissipate. “W-what…?”

Thud.

Scarlet screamed as white-hot pain exploded out from a point right between her shoulder blades. She fell to the ground, crumpling into a heap on top of Sclera.

“Shit!” Lens’ voice rang in her ears before her vision turned a noticeable shade of pale blue. Groggily, she lifted her eyes to see the stallion crouching down over her with frantic eyes. “Scarlet, are you okay?!”

Scarlet hissed through clenched teeth, forcing herself to rise. Every movement was excruciating, and it did not help matters that she could barely see through the tears clouding her vision. She slumped against the ramparts, gasping for breath. “I… I will live,” she managed to say between her heaving gasps.

Lens’ eyes narrowed. He opened his mouth to say something, but another series of thunks against the barrier cut him off. He glared up, wincing as his newest barrier flickered. “Damn, already? Gah!” he turned back to her. “Scarlet, if you’re teleporting us out, now would be a really good time!”

Scarlet nodded, once more reaching out with her magic. Her efforts were sluggish and half-hearted. As absorbed in the shock of what had just happened as she was, not to mention the distraction caused by an arrow being lodged into her back, it was a miracle she was even standing.

But finally, she found a spot. Nodding to herself, she glanced back to the others. “Grab on.”

Lens did so without hesitation, but Sclera did not seem so sure. She was still on her back, staring at Scarlet with wide eyes. She scooted back a few inches, her eyes darting around.

Scarlet hissed in pain, the light on her horn flickering. “Gah! Sclera, please, come on! I’m sorry! I’ll explain later!” she grunted, the words short and clipped as she struggled to maintain her flow of power.

For a second, Sclera didn’t move. But then her eyes fell on Protea, and she made up her mind. She hauled herself to her hooves and staggered over to grasp Scarlet’s shoulder. “Okay… I’m ready,” she whispered.

Scarlet nodded, then screwed her eyes shut. Another spear of pain ran down her spine as they vanished from the wall and reemerged in the grass on the other side. Already, she could hear the remaining pegasi hollering at any guards that could hear them to open the gates, that the fugitives were getting away.

“Where do we go now?” Lens asked, allowing his barrier to drop for the moment.

Scarlet winced and pointed north, towards the Whitemane Forest and the mountains beyond. “Th-that way. Forest. Cover,” she choked out before pushing off from the wall to head in that direction. Sclera and Lens were quick to fall in beside her, and it was only then that Scarlet realized just how weak she was starting to feel.

“You’re hurt,” Lens pointed out in a hushed voice, eyeing the arrow in her back. “We need to take care of you…”

“Others… first,” Scarlet declined with a stiff shake of her head.

Sclera glanced back, her ears folding down. “Oh, no…” she choked out fearfully.

Barely stifling a tired groan, Scarlet turned her head back to see what the problem was now. Adrenaline spiked through her when she saw that the gates were swinging open, and she could see the flickering lights of torches pouring out onto the road. She heard plenty of voices shouting amongst themselves, and many armored hooves pummeling the dirt.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Scarlet growled before turning to face the gate directly. “Can we not get a break?!”

“Scarlet, what are you doing?!” Lens asked a few paces behind her once he realized she had stopped.

Scarlet didn’t answer. There was no way they would be able to get away from all of that as they were now. Slowed down by Sclera’s weakness and her own injuries, they would be run down and killed long before they could ever reach the safety of the forest. They needed something to keep the oncoming force occupied.

Taking a deep breath, Scarlet called upon the very last dregs of her magic. The muscles in her chest and shoulders began to visibly spasm and ripple in protest as if they were trying to hold the energy deep inside of her. She forced it through, though, and soon, a ball of flames appeared on the tip of her horn.

There were some trees and plenty of bushes scattered around, as well as a collection of farmhouses a few dozen yards to the left. Good. The more flammable material there was nearby, the better.

With one last cry, she released the flames in a wave that filled her vision in every direction. Heat blasted against her face, blowing back her mane and scorching the tip of her horn. The stench of many, many things burning reached her nostrils, causing her ears to fold back on reflex.

And then, finally, she was spent. With a tired sigh, Scarlet collapsed to the ground, her vision filled with a towering wall of blurry orange and red.

And then she knew no more.

Author's Note

Fun fact: Scarlet's PTSD flashback there was not actually planned. I made that up on the fly and it led to the chapter ending on a slightly different note than intended.

Trial

Standing here, before the Lunar Council, Silent Edge was ashamed to admit to himself that he was scared. These six ponies were the heads of an entire half of the New Equestrian government and, for him, there was no higher authority. Even Nocturn sat well below the seated members of the Council and treated them with the utmost respect and obedience.

The council chamber was a large, circular room. A round depression sat in the middle of the floor, decorated in an abstract depiction of the full moon. Beyond a guardrail, a raised platform looked down on the depression from five feet up, six separate chairs spaced evenly apart, with the one at the very front looming higher than the rest.

The Six Seats. Both councils had six seats of their own, labeled the first through sixth. In the first seat would sit the speaker for the Council, their leader of sorts, who made the final rulings on all deliberations after hearing from all other members of the Council.

High above the seats, a stained-glass window was set into the domed ceiling, projecting an image of Princess Luna down onto the chamber below. A design decision meant to illustrate that the goddess of the night was ever watchful in these chambers. A soothing presence for the innocent, or the petitioning.

But for Silent Edge, those blue eyes carried naught but the deepest disappointment and scorn. Even with all of his pride and skill, under that piercing gaze, he felt as if he were little more than a foal, about to be scolded by his stern mother.

“Nightblade Silent Edge,” an elderly male’s voice spoke from the shadows beyond Luna’s light, causing Silent to almost jump in his skin. Looking ahead, he had to squint to make out the unicorn of the First Seat, glaring at him through the darkness. “You stand here before the Lunar Council, under the light of Luna’s moon, accused of murder and abuse of power by Sergeant Glaive of the Dragon Sentinels.”

Silent blinked. Was he on trial already? He had been under the impression he was to be questioned first. On that note… how did he even get here? The last thing he remembered was being led away from that courtyard by a Dragon Sentinel after Scarlet made her exit. He had been left in a small, borderline empty room, and then...

“I should hope we do not need to explain to you, Silent,” a mare’s voice said from the Third Seat, causing him to turn. The elderly pegasus mare that leaned out of the shadows observed him with cold, calculating indifference. “How serious these allegations are.”

“As a Nightblade, you are afforded far more freedom in the manner with which you carry out your duties,” another stallion spoke up from the Fifth Seat to his left, this one also a pegasus. “Acts that would otherwise be deemed reprehensible and unconscionable are permitted within your ranks for the sole reason that, as much as I loathe to admit it, they are sometimes necessary.”

“Assassination,” The Second Seat, a unicorn mare, proclaimed.

“Spying,” The Fourth, an earth pony stallion spat.

“Espionage,” The Sixth, an earth pony mare, hissed.

With each new voice that spoke, Silent became acutely aware of yet another face peering at him from the darkness. He was surrounded on all sides by all six members of the Lunar Council, and not one of them appeared pleased with him.

The First leaned closer, and Silent found himself entranced into silence by those eyes. The stallion spoke. “Necessary evils, one and all… where circumstances demand it. You stand here now under the accusation that you committed these evils deliberately, fully aware that they were not required.”

“A testimony provided by Scarlet Frost,” The Second said grimly. “A former sergeant in the New Equestrian army under the jurisdiction of the Solar Council. She fought in the war of retribution and was quite decorated for her service. Many battles are said to have been won in large part thanks to her considerable aptitude for artillery magic.”

“Alas, now she is on the run, wanted for treason, sheltering a fugitive, arson, sabotage, the killing of several members of the Nightblades, and even a count of terrorism, going by your reports of what transpired in Shimmervale,” The Fifth added grimly, his brow furrowing.

Silent went to speak, but the words caught in his throat. His eyes widened. It wasn’t that he was afraid of speaking. He was physically incapable! No matter how hard he tried, the words would not leave his lips. The breath would not leave his lungs. He stood there, mouthing uselessly before the combined scrutiny of the Lunar Council.

The First leaned into the light even further so Silent could see his grizzled, dark blue fur, and his thinning silvery mane, and his piercing golden eyes. “All of this leaves us in a rather complicated situation, Silent Edge,” he said slowly, making sure the Nightblade was listening to him. “So I expect you to cooperate with our requests and speak only the truth. Do you understand what I am asking of you?”

At once, Silent found himself capable of speech again, and before he could stop himself, he bowed his head. “Yes, my lord,” he said respectfully, his ears folding back. This was degrading. How were they doing this to him? What enchantment had they placed on him to make him act like such a cowardly dog?!

The First nodded before leaning back. “Very well. Then speak. Did you, or did you not kill innocent ponies in your pursuit of the lamp?”

“I… I did,” Silent eventually admitted, his eyes closing.

“How many?” The Fourth questioned.

Silent bit his tongue for several seconds before forcing out the answer. “...Twelve, my lord.”

“And, to the best of your knowledge, were you left with no alternative?” The Second asked skeptically. “Were you, in all cases, left with no other reasonable recourse but to end the life of the pony before you?”

Silent opened his mouth to claim that yes, it was necessary, to make it clear that he had been left with no choice in every instance. However, as before, the words caught in his throat, causing him to stand there in utter silence.

The glow of the moon around him darkened considerably.

“Silent,” The Sixth said as if a mother scolding her child for lying. “Tell us. Was it always necessary?”

Silent’s eyes darted around frantically, but he dared not lift his head to look at anything but the floor. His heart began to hammer away in his chest. Anxiety and fear were chipping away at him with every beat of his rapidly chilling heart. Why couldn’t he say it?! Why did the words escape him?!

“The truth, Silent Edge,” The First pressed slowly. “We will accept only the truth in this chamber.”

Silent’s eyes widened. The truth… only the truth, as he knew it. “So that’s it,” he realized, a sickening feeling of violation creeping up his spine. “I am incapable of speaking something I knew to be false due to some manner of enchantment!”

He slowly lifted his gaze to meet the eyes of The First. “...No, my lord, it was not, strictly speaking, necessary,” he said slowly, never once tearing his gaze away. “However, it was the most practical method of carrying out my orders. The very orders you six gave me.”

“We gave you our orders with the expectation that you would carry them out in a manner befitting a pony in service to the Lunar Council,” The Fourth pointed out, folding his forelegs over his chest.

“And as for your claims that it was the most practical means of performing your duty,” The Third stated with growing contempt. “It is clear that you believe those words to be true… but we cannot take your word alone. We must see each incident in their entirety before we proceed.”

Silent’s eyes widened as he turned to face her. “M-my lady? What do you mean?” he asked.

Suddenly, he was no longer in the Lunar Council’s chambers. Instead, he was standing before a squat, poorly maintained church of Cadance standing on the edge of a sleepy, snow-smothered village. His eyes widened. This was Stonethrow… But… how did he…?

Suddenly, the aging wooden double doors of the church burst open, and Primrose came barreling out. She was smaller than the last time Silent had seen her, and in far better health, too. Her mane was shorter, and she appeared to be well fed. However, the tears in her ears and the bleeding cut across her cheek told him in no uncertain terms that she was far from well.

His eyes went past her, widening even further. “W-what sorcery is this?!” he demanded, taking a step back.

In the doorframe of the church of Cadance, he saw himself wrestling with an aging stallion, trying to shove past and chase after the escaping filly. He heard his own voice snarling out in his ears, clear as day.

“Step aside, old man!”

“I will not allow you to harm her!” the priest shot back, digging his hooves in and punching for Silent’s face. “The child has suffered enough!”

He took the blow on the jaw with a grunt before extending his left wing, the blade snapping free with a spine-chilling metallic scrape. “Fool. You have no say in the matter!”

With a flicker of movement, Silent watched his past self bury his blade into the priests’ chest, piercing his heart. The priest gasped breathlessly, his struggles going weak, before slumping to the ground. Blood spurted free from his chest and splattered against Silent’s own chest and face. His cold, unfeeling gaze didn’t even flinch.

“Do not worry, old man. The child will be joining you soon enough…”

“A summary execution,” The voice of The First rang in Silent’s ears, making his blood run cold. “Of a priest devoted to Cadance, no less… an elderly stallion incapable of putting up much of a fight. I am failing to see why this death was required.”

“Perhaps, then, the assassin was referring to future exchanges,” The Second’s voice suggested, though her tone suggested she did not believe those words.

“We shall see,” The Third remarked.

Before Silent could speak in protest, the scene twitched and shifted again, and now he was standing before an isolated farmhouse near the edge of a forest. Inside, he could hear ponies screaming…

One by one, each of Silent’s past encounters with Primrose and the ponies he had killed on the way were played back before his eyes and the eyes of the Council. He tried his best to cry out for it to stop, to tell them they had it all wrong, to try and explain himself, but the words would not come. There was nothing he could say to justify himself to them that would not be a lie. More than once, he even tried to intervene in the illusion, slicing out at his past self or even at Primrose when she fled, but his blades never materialized, and his hooves passed through his targets as if they did not exist.

Finally, the visions began to depict his interactions and confrontations with Scarlet. Their battle in the alleys of Swanrun, their brief scuffle in Shimmervale, the day he had finally sunk his blades into Primrose’s soft flesh in the night, and Scarlet’s subsequent apocalyptic rage. Finally, he was once again standing in the courtyard, watching his own past self from only a few hours ago holding his wing blade up against Sharp Lens’ neck in an effort to convince Scarlet to stand down.

“NO!” Scarlet shouted, taking a shaking step before coming to a stop when Silent pressed the blade closer to Lens’ throat, visibly pressing against the skin. “NO! No, please, don’t hurt him!”

“Then surrender,” Silent snarled out, his brow furrowing. “I have not the patience for this ridiculous game any longer, Frost. You’ve caused me no end of trouble since getting mixed up in all of this, and I have run out of reasons to hold myself back. Give yourself up, and no harm shall come to you or your companions.”

Slowly, the scene faded away, and Silent once more stood in the Lunar Council’s chambers, the disapproving glares of the Six Seats glaring at him from all sides. He felt small. He felt pitiful and insignificant and weak under them. He shrank down, his ears folding back.

The First leaned forward into the light again, his old face twisting into a severe scowl. “Silent Edge… the testimony of your own memories is beyond damning. On no less than eight of the various scenes we have witnessed, you murdered innocent ponies when there was no need to do so. Furthermore, you have, until your target arrived in this city, never once made an effort to bring her in alive. You always struck to kill first.”

“For she is an insult to your pride,” The Second deduced, contempt dripping from her voice like the venom of an angry python. “A target that slipped away from you. You always were a proud hunter, were you not?”

“A mentality hammered into your brain by that adoptive father of yours,” The Fourth grunted in disapproval. “For it is one he shared.”

Silent’s scalp burned at that, and he took a step towards the stallion. “Leave him out of this!” he snapped, his wings unfurling slightly. “The former spymaster has nothing to do with this!”

“But he does,” The Third corrected without missing a beat. “For he was the one who adopted you off of the streets. It was he who gave you your new name, that you might leave behind your time as Street Rat. It was he who taught you the ways of the dark, how to fight, how to lie, how to kill, and how to steal. And it was his pride in you, his uncharacteristic affection that drove him to make a misplaced promise. A promise which has driven you to act with haste and moral compromises.”

“His promise that it would be you to inherit the title of Spymaster upon his passing,” The Fifth stated factually.

“His promise that you would lead the Nightblades in his stead. That you would go on to become a symbol of what it means to be a true servant of the night,” The Sixth added.

Silent’s teeth ground together, anger starting to replace his fear and dread. He stood tall, turning slowly in place to glare at each member of the Council. “Yes, a promise that you saw fit to revoke!” he accused, jabbing a hoof at one of them. “All of you!”

“You butchered the king of Talonreach in a fit of retribution,” The First replied calmly, his tone darkening, warning Silent to mind his own. “An act that goes entirely against our core values and, more than that, was not needed to win the war or even the siege of the city itself.”

“Spurred on by what you erroneously believed to be a mistake on our part, you hastened to complete this last mission as swiftly as possible,” The Second pointed out. “You forsook the standards of your order and hunted down this child with every intent of slaughtering her instead of capturing her. You have falsified your reports to us to cover your tracks, and you have murdered several without mercy or remorse in your personal quest to reclaim a promise that your father was never in a position to make in the first place.”

“And so it is,” The First continued, rising to stand and stepping forward. “That you stand here now… and so it is that you shall depart these chambers stripped of your rank and titles within the Nightblades.”

Silent went rigid, his ears folding back. It felt as if an ice pick had just been driven into his chest. Slowly, he took a step forward, his eyes going wide. “W-what…?” he choked out.

“You heard me,” The First declared in a cold growl. “Be thankful that we are showing you this leniency, Silent Edge. By Nocturn’s request, you have been spared the life sentence your crimes deserve. But you will never serve the Council again. You are henceforth cast out from the Nightblades, and from Newcanter. You will be relieved of your weapons and armor before you depart from the castle.”

“No… No, no, you cannot do this!” Silent shouted, stepping forward only to be met with an invisible barrier. “You can’t!”

“We can, and we have,” The Fifth snorted. “Accept your fate, Silent Edge.”

The First nodded. “Our decision is final. Your protests will avail you naught in this hall.”

Silent’s eye twitched, a pressure building up in the back of his mind, like an increasingly heavy weight bearing down on a glass floor. “You… this… t-this is madness!” he seethed.

“In your eyes, maybe it is,” The First countered quietly. “But we are not judging from yours. We are judging from ours. Now… begone.”

Silent snapped awake with a sharp gasp, his eyes snapping open to take in his surroundings. He was sitting in a chair at a basic wooden table that sat in the heart of a small stone room. A lone candle burned on top, providing faint, gently wavering light.

Panting heavily, struggling to control his breath, Silent lifted a hoof up to rub at his temple. He absently noted that his armor and wingblades had been removed, leaving him clad in nothing but his fur and feathers. “It was… it was just a dream?” he asked quietly, his eyes closing. It had all felt so real…

“Aye, that it was,” the voice of Nocturn said solemnly behind him.

Startled, Silent jumped to his hooves and spun around, wings spreading out. Sure enough, the thestral stood in the corner, staring back at him with supreme disappointment on his face. “Your entire trial was held in the dream realm, thanks to the Dreamwalkers of Newcanter. A common practice amid the Lunar Council’s organizations when dealing with internal cases…”

Silent’s heart plummeted. His wings drooped down to hang at his sides, his ears folding back. “You… you mean…?”

Nocturn nodded. “I am afraid so… and I witnessed it all. You are the last to awaken.”

A heavy silence fell over them. Slowly, Silent folded his wings back up at his sides, his brow furrowing. “...I see,” he whispered, no longer bothering to hide the contempt and resentment in his voice. The pressure grew heavier.

Nocturn frowned and opened his mouth as if to retort. However, he thought better of it, and instead gestured for the one door against the wall. “The door stands open. Take your leave…” he ordered plainly.

Silent glared at Nocturn for several seconds before turning and heading through the door, shoving it open with a trembling hoof. His entire body was tingling with rage and humiliation, burning away at his flesh like a raging inferno.

“And Silent?”

The pegasus turned to shoot his former commander an impatient, hateful glare.

Nocturn did not react to the hostility in the glare in the slightest. His face was the picture of sympathy. “...Find your peace in this life. That is my final order to you.”

With those words, the thestral spymaster turned and departed down the corridor. Silent watched him go until he was out of sight, coat bristling. He turned to face the other way, his lips peeling back to reveal his teeth. How dare he. How dare that insufferable, arrogant bat tell him that! After stealing what was promised to him, what was his by right, that creature had the audacity to tell him to go and find peace?!

It was outrageous! It was infuriating! Every fiber of Silent’s being burned hotter and hotter, his breath coming in increasingly labored gasps as the full weight of what had just transpired came crashing down on him. His career. His duty. The promise made to him. All of it had been snatched away. Everything he had worked towards since abandoning his old life was gone!

The weight became too much. There was an audible snap in the back of his head.

Suddenly, Silent’s rage began to quiet down, his body relaxing. With a slow, smooth motion, he craned his neck back to stare after Nocturn. “...You are right. That will be your final order to me, spymaster,” he said in a cold, emotionless voice. He turned and set off for the exit, his mind made up. “Now, I will do things my way.”

“Everything I just lost is thanks to you, Scarlet Frost,” he thought, his blood boiling quietly and subtly in his veins at the memory of that red-maned hag. “You will pay for what you have done. Once I have finished strangling the life out of the child… I will be coming for you, next.”

Tension

“Scarlet?”

A hoof placed itself on Scarlet’s back, shaking her and rousing her from her slumber. Stiff, sore, and not in the mood for disturbances, Scarlet opened her eyes to the sight of Lens staring down at her. His saddlebags were secured on his back, giving him the appearance of a stallion prepared to travel. He looked her over, his brow furrowed in concern. “Are you feeling alright?”

“No, I am not,” Scarlet thought bitterly. Her sleep had been restless at best and useless at worst. Her eyelids were heavy, her mind was foggy, and her body felt slow and unresponsive to her commands. Every part of her body seemed to be in a form of subdued rebellion, denying her their compliance.

Luckily, she had dealt with insubordination before. Slowly, and with great effort, she pushed herself up to her hooves and had a look around. They were still in the cave, the light streaming in from outside telling her that several hours had passed. If she had to guess, it was noon, or perhaps a little after.

Sclera and Primrose were both up as well, the two talking in hushed voices. Scarlet’s eyes settled on the changeling filly in question for several long seconds. She shook her head and returned her attention to the stallion by her side. “I’ll live,” she dismissed his concern while brushing away his hoof. “Are we leaving?”

Lens nodded. “Just about to, yeah. But we only have so many directions we can go right now. We can’t go south, or we’ll be marching right back into the hooves of the guards of Newcanter. We can’t go north, either. Between the mountain range being treacherous and the dragon living in the area, it’s too risky. Traveling directly east has its problems, too…”

“What sort of problems?” Sclera asked, leaning down to let Primrose climb up onto her back.

Lens turned to face her. “It would mean having to pass through Talonreach to get where we’re going, and after the war, the place has been less than ideal for travel, especially for anypony in your condition. I’ve been racking my brain for options ever since we picked you up, but we’ve been backed into a corner rather nicely.

Scarlet hummed quietly while marching slowly over to the mouth of the cave. She glanced to her right, spying the snow-capped mountain peaks poking up behind the forest canopy. They were tall and rugged, but far from the most dangerous mountains she had ever seen. The real threat came in the form of the dragon, as Lens said. Sneaking past that would be a nightmare, especially for any significantly armed force.

“Wait a moment,” she thought, her eyes slowly widening. “An armed force…”

An idea came to her. It was risky and dangerous, but it could work if they were careful. She turned back to Lens. “Who says we can’t go north?” she asked.

All eyes turned to her in confusion. Lens cleared his throat. “Er… I do?”

“Well, I say the contrary. I vote we head north through the mountains.”

Lens recoiled. “What?! Scarlet, weren’t you listening-”

“Treacherous terrain and a dragon lives in the peaks,” Scarlet cut him off in a deadpan. “Yes, I was listening. But those dangerous elements are why I’m suggesting we go that way. The councils will think twice before sending anypony after us when a dragon is making himself at home in the area. We’re a small group, and we’ve proven we’re capable of escaping some rough situations already. Also, as a bonus, if we’re lucky there may be a village along the coast on the other side of the range. If so, we can look for a boat to give us passage to Violsta without having to trek through Talonreach, thus sparing us that long and dangerous journey, and giving Sclera some time to recover.”

Lens studied her for a few moments. He turned back to Sclera and Primrose, the latter having just landed on her mother’s back. “Well… I can’t deny that it would probably be faster,” he relented after a few seconds. “But Sclera’s still really weak, Scarlet. She was in a cell for five years, and only had her first substantial meal in all that time while you were asleep. I don’t know if she’s ready for this kind of travel.”

“We’re all in rough shape,” Scarlet pointed out in a softer tone, giving Sclera an appraising look. The changeling was looking much better than she had been before, but she was still skinny and battered well beyond the rest of them.

Scarlet turned back to Lens. “So we take it slow and steady. Stop to rest whenever we need to, to conserve our strength.”

Lens hesitated again before looking back at Sclera. “Well… what do you think? Are you feeling up for that, or should we take a different route?” he asked her carefully. “Remember, you’re still weak, and you just reunited with your daughter.”

“Whatever will keep Protea safer in the long run,” Sclera answered without hesitation. “If these mountains will offer us the shelter that Scarlet claims, then I say we go with her plan. I may be weak, but I am not helpless… and I know my daughter can take care of herself if she must.”

Primrose shuffled uneasily on Sclera’s back, her glowing eyes looking down at the floor. “...I never wanted to, though,” she mumbled quietly.

Scarlet’s ears drooped somewhat. She averted her eyes guiltily before speaking, her voice low and somber. “Then let us be thankful you’re not alone… now come. Into the mountains.”

Without another word, Scarlet turned and shuffled out of the cave in the direction of the mountains. She heard the others cantering to catch up with her, but she didn’t look back. She kept her eyes focused solely ahead on where they were going, instead of back at the source of her guilt and shame.

Slowly, the cave they had rested in faded from view, and the ponies vanished into the foliage of the Whitemane Woods.

Over the course of the next day, Scarlet and Lens led the way north through the forest. True to their plan, they kept their pace slow and careful so as to not reopen their wounds or cause any undue stress to their battered bodies. In that time, Scarlet, Lens, and Primrose were soon back up to their old selves, physically speaking.

Sclera, however, was lagging behind on that front. It did not come as a surprise, though it was no less frustrating to Scarlet for the delays it caused them. The changeling mare’s lack of strength or sustenance left her in a perpetually tired state, often having to stop and catch her breath even when Primrose wasn’t riding on her back.

The group didn’t talk much—or rather, Scarlet didn’t talk much with the rest of them. They chattered amongst themselves endlessly. She could only imagine that Lens and Prim were getting Sclera totally caught up on everything she had missed since getting captured. Scarlet only half-heartedly listened in to hear of the events she had not been present for, but her mind was elsewhere for the entire trip.

She was focused on the path ahead, her mind racing with paranoia. They were far from safe. Just because she had revealed the depths of Silent’s wrongdoings in front of his more noble-minded peers did not mean they were in the clear. Other Nightblades would be appointed to continue the hunt in his stead, assuming he was even convicted of any crimes. The bastard was an expert at covering his tracks. As an aspiring Spymaster, he would have to be.

But even worse was the possibility of the Solar Council taking a more direct and active role in this matter. From everything Scarlet had seen, the Lunar Council were the ones in charge of dealing with Primrose’s family. They wanted to keep the existence of Free Changelings on the down low, and getting the Solar Council involved would only draw public attention.

She could hardly blame them. As twisted and morally bankrupt as Silent was, he had made one very good point when he revealed Primrose’s identity. Ponies were not at all prepared to reasonably handle the prospect of intelligent changelings. The panic and paranoia caused by the revelation would be impossible to contain or control. She could already imagine a small village like Twinwood Canopy tearing itself apart at the seams out of fear of changeling infiltration. A bug hunt that would catch everypony in the net.

But the Lunar Council had, thus far, failed to bring in Primrose, and now Sclera had gotten away, too. “In a particularly explosive manner, I might add,” Scarlet thought bitterly, scowling at the memory of the large fire she had started, of the doors she had blown down in her haste to escape the castle. The Solar Council would be interested in getting involved after such a spectacle. Covering all of that up would be practically impossible.

“All we can do is hope and pray that they elect not to get involved,” Scarlet told herself. “I do not want to imagine the hell we will be in for if they start sending Dragon Sentinels after us…”

On the second day of travel, they finally reached the base of the mountains. It didn’t take long to find a pass leading up, so on they pressed. The healthy, verdant trees of the Whitemane Woods were soon left behind. Grassy paths and trenches swept between the crags in wild and unpredictable ways, creating an almost labyrinthian structure. The walls and slopes were often varying shades of brown, creating a deep, earthy feeling for the entire region.

On a few occasions, Primrose took it upon herself to use her wings for a change, flying up to get the lay of the land before returning to the others and explaining what she had seen. Her capacity for birds-eye views proved invaluable for finding their way, but sadly, those instances of scouting proved to be the only times Scarlet actively communicated with her.

“There’s a big clearing coming up,” Primrose announced as she returned from her latest flight, setting down by Sclera’s side. “Plenty of rocks jutting up, too. It’s kinda cool looking.”

Scarlet nodded quietly. “I see…” she said, her voice low.

She could feel the eyes of her three companions boring into the back of her head. She did her best to ignore them. Now was not the time to be getting sidetracked by her own inner turmoil. They had to focus on staying in motion and staying alert.

Such an aggravating pity that Lens did not feel the same way. The stallion came up to her side, a worried expression on his face. “Scarlet, can we talk?” he asked in a hushed whisper.

“What about?”

Lens bit his lip, his ears folding back. “...About you. And Prim.”

Scarlet’s eyes narrowed impatiently. She was not in the mood for this. “There is nothing for us to discuss,” she said quietly.

“That is a weak reply, and you know it,” Lens countered, his own eyes narrowing intensely. “Look, I don’t know how much of this you’ve heard, but both of them can see what you’re feeling, you know. And Primrose is worried about you. I’m worried about you.”

“I’m fine, Lens,” Scarlet tried to brush him off, her skull starting to burn. Why could he not take the hint and just drop it?! “I’m just tired.”

“We’re all tired,” Lens countered. “That’s not the problem…”

“Then what is?” Scarlet hissed, turning her head to glare at Lens from the side.

Lens stepped around in front of her, forcing her to come to a stop. He stared imploringly into her eyes. “The problem, Scarlet, is they know you’re guilty about what happened back in Newcanter. About what happened with you and Primrose in the inn.”

Scarlet scoffed and went to shove past him. He held out a hoof, holding her in place. She growled impatiently. “What of it, then? What do you want from me? An apology? If they can see my guilt, fine, let that speak for me! My own emotions laid bare will convey the idea far better than I ever could with words!”

Lens slowly shook his head, his ears folding back. “That’s not it, either. It’s not about them forgiving you… it’s about you forgiving yourself.”

Scarlet froze.

Lens took the lull in her rebuttals to press on. “Look, I’m not a therapist or anything. I’m an archeologist and a war veteran. But I can tell you, right now, that bottling all of those feelings up for too long is only going to cause all of us trouble in the long run. We need to deal with it, and we need to deal with it soon. And right now seems like as good a time as any.”

Scarlet huffed. “No, it is not.”

“We’re in the middle of nowhere, and there’s nothing else nearby that we can see. We’re safe for the moment, so why can’t it be now?” Lens prodded, keeping his voice low and gentle.

Scarlet briefly glanced back at the two changelings behind her. Primrose and Sclera had opted to hang back to give the two ponies some privacy. They were speaking in hushed voices to one another, though she could not miss the concerned glances that Primrose kept sending her way.

Scarlet tore her eyes away, her heart withering in her chest. How could Lens understand? How could she expect him to understand just how hard it was to even find the will to look at the foal she had so grievously wronged, much less form the words needed to give an apology?

Not like any apology could be sufficient. Even if Primrose could find it in herself to forgive her, which Scarlet sincerely doubted, it would not mean Scarlet could ever forgive herself. When it had mattered most, when Primrose had been in desperate need of comfort, assurance, and care, Scarlet had lost her mind and turned her back on her. She had almost killed her. A mere child.

Scarlet shook her head. “It doesn’t matter,” she mumbled at Lens, pushing past him. “There is nothing for us to say. So please, just… drop it.”

Lens reached out after her, his hoof hooking on her shoulder to stop her. “Scarlet, please...”

Scarlet shook her head, her eyes screwing themselves shut in a desperate bid to shut out the world. “I said, drop it.”

“I just don’t understand,” Lens whispered, putting himself in front of her again.

That was the last straw.

Scarlet’s eyes snapped open, shimmering with fresh tears. “OF COURSE YOU DON’T!” she screamed at him, her voice breaking. “You weren’t the one who damn near killed a scared, innocent child! YOU aren’t the one who went back on every single promise you made to her! How could you possibly understand?! How could you ever realize that nothing I say can ever take that back?!”

Lens staggered back a few paces, his eyes going wide in alarm from her sudden outburst. “S-scarlet?! H-hey, calm down-”

“The reason I can’t say anything, Sharp Lens, is because there is nothing for me to say!” Scarlet went on, undeterred. “Nothing that would make a difference! You want me to forgive myself for what is, in my eyes, an unforgivable crime! How could I ever forgive myself for what I did to her when she needed me the most?! How, Lens?! HOW!”

Silence fell over the clearing, save for the slowly fading echoes of her words. She stood there, gasping for breath with streams of tears running down her cheeks. Her chest felt cold and heavy, and the shocked stares of the stallion in front of her and the changelings behind her sent needles of yet more shame piercing into her heart.

Sniffling, Scarlet turned back to face the trail. “There is nothing to forgive,” she mumbled out, her whispered word somehow deafening in the silent mountainside. “For what I have done can not be forgiven. Not by me…”

The silence dragged on and on for what felt like forever. Scarlet took a deep breath, forcing herself to steady her breathing and pull herself together. Now was not the time for an emotional breakdown. As much as her words were true, she needed to focus on the task ahead of her.

She opened her mouth to say as such when the words died in her throat. Something was wrong, she could feel it. Judging from the slowly darkening expressions of her companions, they sensed it too…

Then it came to her. A sound, faint, distant, but drawing ever closer. A sound that sent a horrid, frightening chill down her spine. Animalistic shrieks and calls began to fill the air, growing louder and louder with every passing second. Dozens of them, at least. And overlaying all of it was a sound that sent Scarlet’s heart hammering in her chest.

The chilling buzz of countless insect wings.

Author's Note

Fun fact: The second half of this chapter was actually not at all in the outline I have for myself. I wound up inserting that sequence in because I felt it would help flesh out the characters and Scarlet's inner turmoil.

Swarm

The buzzing was drawing closer and closer. Scarlet’s eyes were pinned to the sky, a lump forming in her throat while adrenaline flooded her veins. It sounded like there were so many of them…

“We have to hide!” Primrose cried out, grabbing onto Sclera’s hoof and shaking her. The foal’s eyes were wide and frantic. “We have to hide now!”

“I don’t think that’ll do us any good,” Lens replied in a shaking voice. He adjusted his glasses and pointed up at the sky. “They know where we are already…”

Scarlet followed his hoof. Sure enough, she saw the first of the changelings flying into sight high above the trench. Its black, shredded body stood out against the midday sky like a blackened char mark against the snow. Its glowing, blue eyes locked onto her, sending a chill down her spine. She hadn’t seen eyes that hue since Crystal…

The changeling lifted its head up, letting out a long, spine-chilling shriek that carried for miles in all directions. It was answered in kind by more and more of them, and moments later, the rest of the swarm came into view.

“Oh, fuck…” Scarlet breathed, taking a few horrified steps back. There were dozens of them, if not hundreds. She had never seen so many changelings in one place before. She had never even heard of a swarm this large. It was unheard of… how were they supposed to get out of this?

The entire group retreated as the swarm advanced, the terror felt by all of them filling the canyon with a palpable aura of tension. Primrose whimpered pitifully, clinging to her mother for protection.

“What do we do?!” Sclera asked fearfully. She quickly positioned herself protectively over her daughter, her eyes locking onto Scarlet. “Scarlet, Lens, what do we do?!”

Scarlet looked back at her, opening her mouth to speak. No words came, however. “This is my fault,” she thought, a bottomless pit of regret forming in her heart and festering. “I should have kept my voice down… if I had just listened to Lens…”

She turned her attention back to the swarm. It was hard to see the sky through the thick cloud of black chitin and acidic magic. She swallowed heavily, her horn lighting up with magic. “...There’s only one thing we can do,” she whispered.

The first changelings hit the ground running a few dozen yards ahead of her, charging at full gallop with their teeth bared and their horns glowing a shade of green that sent her coat bristling with hatred. These were the monsters that had murdered her daughter. The monsters that had caused the fall. The demons that now sought to kill her and the ones she loved.

“Fine then,” she thought bitterly, her pupils dilating.

“Scarlet?” Lens asked, glancing sideways at her for a fraction of a second.

Scarlet took a deep breath before a sphere of unstable magic began to form on the tip of her horn. “We break through!” she declared before unleashing the artillery blast. The kickback sent her skidding several feet, drawing a grunt out of her. She lifted her eyes just in time to see the spell meet its mark against the chest of the changeling leading the charge. Its eyes didn’t even have time to widen before it, and the ones by it, were engulfed in a blinding explosion of purple energy. Ash and dust and blood rose up in a wall from the point of impact, drawing the rest of the stampede to a halt.

Scarlet’s heart sang a victorious, bloodthirsty dirge at the sight of dismembered limbs of black chitin littering the ground where her blast had hit. Years of hatred and months of vengeful fury came spilling out all at once. She was going to murder them. All of them. Every last feral changeling. She was going to paint the mountain red with their blood. She was going to shatter their shells and pop their eyes.

She was going to make them pay.

Another artillery shot fired off from her horn, her mind falling into a trance. Her body moved all on its own, firing off shot after shot of hyper-charged magic into the swarm. Explosion after explosion shook the walls of the trench and the grass beneath her hooves. The swarm did their best to scatter around her shots, to evade the hits, but even if she missed the bugs themselves, they were still caught by the explosions when the bursts hit the walls.

She was so lost in the thrill of finally killing some of these revolting creatures that she didn’t notice the ones sneaking up behind the group. Not until Primrose’s shrill scream of terror cut through the air like a razor through soft butter.

Scarlet’s eyes went wide. Remembering the last time she had heard the foal screaming like that behind her, she spun around, conjuring both of her swords and sending them forward to intercept whatever was daring to threaten her. A sickening crunch filled her ears when her blade cut through the neck of a feral that had been mere feet away from Primrose and Sclera. Its chitin split easily under the pressure, a spray of gore coming out to cover the two Free changelings it had been lunging for.

But there were more of them. Always more of them.

Lens leaped to Sclera’s defense next, summoning a dome-shaped barrier to catch an oncoming feral. It shrieked in rage at the sudden obstacle before kicking off and flying for Scarlet. She met its charge with her swords, plunging both blades into its chest before slicing outwards, carving the abomination in half.

And then one of them plowed into her back. Scarlet cried out as rough, chitinous hooves pressed into her back with enough force to knock her down. The feral pinned her down, and with a hungry hiss, plunged its fangs into her shoulder. The pain was unlike anything she had felt before. Scarlet’s eyes flew wide open, an agonized scream of pain tearing out of her lips.

“SCARLET!” Primrose cried out from somewhere nearby, the word echoing in Scarlet’s mind as she struggled with the demon on her back.

The feral tore its fangs free. Fresh blood squirted from the now open puncture marks in Scarlet’s shoulder. Gasping breathlessly, she finally managed to retaliate, bringing her sword around to lop the beast’s head off. Another shower of warm blood fell over the back of her head before she rose, shoving the corpse back and off of her.

There were still more of them, and several of them were charging at her specifically. She was out in the open, away from the barrier. An easy target. She looked towards Lens and made to join him, but two more drones quickly dropped from above to block her approach. They lowered their chests to the ground, their lips rippling with animalistic snarls. She backed away, and they stalked after her like ravenous hyenas toying with their prey.

“Get out of my way!” Scarlet snapped, lifting her blades to cut through them next. She heard hooves approaching her from behind, and quickly spun to cut down the one that had charged her back. It fell to one side with a howling shriek that set Scarlet’s teeth on edge.

The two that had blocked her retreat took the opportunity. Scarlet’s eyes bulged in their sockets when she was suddenly yanked back by the yoke on her caller. Her back struck the ground, and she found herself being dragged along the ground at a rapid rate. Desperate, she tried to wiggle free of the yoke, but it was too late. A hoof stomped down into her stomach, cutting off her magic and driving the air from her lungs.

“SCARLET, NO!” Primrose’s voice echoed in her ears.

Scarlet barely registered it before more teeth began to sink into her body. Her shoulder, her hoof, her flank, her leg. She screamed, and she thrashed, desperate to get the starving demons off of her. Her every effort was halted and pinned down, leaving her only recourse to scream her agony to the air.

Soon, though, her cries began to lose their strength. This was it, wasn’t it? This was how she died. Pinned to the earth and eaten alive by a swarm of feral changelings. It was a pitiful way to die, but since when had death ever given a damn about what was a good or poor way to die? She had seen so many ponies and griffons dying in truly pathetic ways during the war. Even renowned heroes with a hundred battles under their belts were not immune to an inglorious end.

She closed her eyes, awaiting the end. “I’m sorry, Prim… for everything.”

For a brief moment, Scarlet gave up any attempt to resist. She had lost. She had to accept that fact…

And then the changelings feasting upon her were scattered to the wind.

Confused, Scarlet cracked open an eye. A brown form stood over her, but it was hard to make it out. Her vision had gone blurry from shock and blood-loss. She squinted at the shape, trying to make out any more details.

Movement. Scarlet gasped when she was suddenly dragged back again, this time being deposited inside the barrier. She could hear voices, screaming and yelling, but she couldn’t make out any words. A stallion’s face came into her field of view, face contorted in terror, blue eyes shimmering with tears.

“Scarlet! Oh, no, no, no no! Say something, please!” he cried hysterically, his hooves moving to the various bite marks along her body in a bid to stop the bleeding.

Scarlet managed a tiny smile. Lens. Sharp Lens. The pony she had fallen in love with. She lifted a hoof to his cheek, uncaring about the blood running in thick rivers down the length of her foreleg. “Lens…” she rasped out. “Sharp Lens…”

Lens took her hoof in both of his, squeezing tight. “Scarlet, please, hang in there! W-we’re gonna get you help, okay?! You’re going to be fine! Just stay with me, please!”

Scarlet frowned. He sounded so scared. Why? Confused, Scarlet lifted her feather-light head to try and figure out what was happening.

She saw Primrose at the edge of the barrier, crying out desperately to something that lay on the other side. Scarlet followed the panicking filly’s gaze, and again caught sight of the brown blur from before.

A spray of viscera against the wall of the barrier caused her vision to come back into focus. Her mind cleared, and her eyes widened at the sight of an enormous grizzly bear covered in armored plates, not unlike a tortoiseshell, standing where she had been being eaten. It roared at the swarm of ferals before swiping its claws through the next drone dumb enough to charge it head-on.

“MOM! GET IN HERE!” Primrose cried frantically, pounding her hooves on the barrier with tears rolling down her face. “SCARLET’S SAFE! COME BACK!”

Scarlet’s eyes widened. The bear was Sclera?! But hadn’t her magic atrophied from years without use?!

As if on cue, a blast of green fire exploded across the bear’s front. It reared back, roaring loudly in pain before more flames whipped around its body. When they passed, Sclera fell to the ground. She spasmed and twitched uncontrollably, and Scarlet immediately recognized the motions of an intense fit of magic exhaustion.

“MOM!” Primrose shrieked when the ferals descended on the helpless drone.

A spike of adrenaline flooded through Scarlet’s body. Barely keeping in a scream of pain from the effort, she lit up her horn. With a burst of energy and a flash of light, Sclera was teleported inside the barrier at the last second. The ferals that had gone for her crashed into an ungraceful cluster on the ground but were quick to recover. They snarled and hissed angrily at the infuriating dome before throwing themselves against it in a wild frenzy.

“Mom!” Primrose cried, galloping over to Sclera and putting her hooves on the drone’s side. “Mommy, are you okay?!”

Scarlet grimaced when Prim’s incessant shakes caused Sclera to roll over, revealing the extent of the burns across her barrel. Her chitin had warped and shriveled up from the spell that had hit her, causing her chest to oddly resemble a cluster of burnt popcorn. Smoke rose in thin streams from the injury, filling the air with a putrid stench.

Scarlet, now on her haunches, then looked up at the sky.

She couldn’t see it.

The changelings were far too numerous, and all of them were pounding against Lens’ barrier with reckless abandon. Cracks were forming on the surface already, spurring the drones on to greater ardor.

“Scarlet, are you okay?!” Lens asked from her side, his hooves hovering uselessly around her bloodied form.

Scarlet didn’t answer him. Even if she was okay, what difference did it make? This was the end. They were finished. There was no way for them to survive this. Any moment, Lens’ barrier would shatter, the ferals would descend on them, and they would be eaten alive. Or, even worse, she and Lens would be eaten alive, while Primrose and Sclera would join the swarm of the cursed…

Her gaze fell to the filly in question. She was still clinging to Sclera, who had mercifully stopped spasming on the ground. The poor foal… she looked so scared. Nothing should ever feel such a terror, especially not at such a young age.

Scarlet swallowed heavily before dragging her tired body over. She sat down on the other side of Sclera, her eyes affixed to Primrose. The changeling filly looked back up at her after a moment, sniffling. “S-Scarlet…? What do we do…?”

Scarlet sighed, her ears drooping. “I… I’m so sorry, Primrose,” she whispered quietly. “For everything… for what I did to you, for bringing this swarm down on us… for everything… I am so, so sorry…”

Primrose’s eyes widened, the terror on her face growing several times worse. “B-but… no! No, Scarlet! We’re not giving up, are we?!” she demanded, more tears rolling down her face.

A deafening crack filled the air. Scarlet looked, seeing that a small portion of the barrier had broken in, allowing the ferals on the other side to reach their hooves through in a futile effort to grab at the prey inside.

Scarlet withered and looked down. “...I am so sorry.”

She felt Lens’ hoof on her back a moment later. He didn’t say a word, simply letting her lean into his side for support and comfort. She felt his muzzle against the top of her head, and a moment later, his voice in her ear, barely even a whisper.

“If this is the end, then… I love you, Scarlet…”

Scarlet closed her eyes. “Heh… sentimental dolt,” she breathed before going quiet and awaiting the end.

More cracks filled the air, the barrier steadily starting to lose power. Scarlet could hear the changelings whipping themselves into a wild frenzy, their hungry calls filling the air. She could hear Primrose’s terrified whimpers, and she could just make out Sclera’s voice, whispering assurances to her only surviving child.

And then everything went frighteningly quiet.

Confused, Scarlet opened her eyes. The changelings had all stopped in their assault, their heads tilted to point one ear up at the sky. The only sound was that of their buzzing wings, but even that seemed quiet than it had been before.

“W-what… what are they doing?” Scarlet asked quietly, her mind reeling. This didn’t make any sense… what were they waiting for?

Her answer came in the form of a sound tickling the edges of her hearing. Less than a second later, it came again, louder this time. A rush of air being pushed aside by something large. It came, again and again, each time drawing closer and close. With every repetition, she realized what it was.

The flapping of enormous, leathery wings.

And then the owner of those wings came into view. What light from the sun managed to cut through the swarm was entirely eclipsed, a deafening roar filling the air. Scarlet’s eyes widened.

It was the dragon.

Acting on pure reflex, Scarlet’s horn lit up, and she channeled as much power as she could into Lens’ barrier, patching up the holes and reinforcing it with what remained of her strength. Not a moment too soon, either, as an instant later, a veritable tsunami of emerald-green flames washed over them and the swarm. The deafening roar of the fire filled her ears, and she had to squint her eyes to see through the blinding veil of light.

The flames persisted for several seconds before passing, and to her shock and relief, the vast majority of the swarm had been incinerated. Their ashes painted the scorched earth in an unappealing shade of gray. Those that remained, barely even a dozen of them, watched the sky in terror.

Scarlet followed their gazes and caught sight of the dragon overhead. Her eyes widened. “That thing is gigantic!”

The dragon was at least thirty feet long from the tip of its nose to the tip of its tail, while its great leathery wings practically swallowed the sky. It flew in a lazy circle, bleeding altitude as it came back for the trench. Scarlet could not make out any significant details from here, but she saw its eyes, like two glowing emeralds in the dead of night.

An uneven fang of rock jutted up from the edge of the trench, rising perhaps fifty feet into the air. The dragon came in and latched onto it, sending an intense tremor through the earth. Scarlet fell down outright from the force of the quake, though her eyes never once left the behemoth that now glared down at her and the ferals that had been trying to kill her.

The armored scales of the dragon were purple, while its segmented underbelly was a pale shade of green. Emerald-green spikes and spines ran down the length of its spine, culminating in an arrow-shaped tip on the end of its tail that looked like it could easily puncture even the sturdiest of materials.

Green flames licked at the edges of its maw as it reared back. Its wings fanned out wide, blocking out the sun and bathing the trench in shadow. The dragon then turned its head to the heavens to unleash a long, bellowing roar that dwarfed the entirety of the swarm that had preceded it. Scarlet’s hooves flew up to cover her ears, desperate to shut out the deafening sound.

Then, with a single mighty flap of its wings, the dragon leaped from its perch and landed hard in the center of the trench. The feral changelings scattered out of its way, turning to fly down the trench and away from it. The dragon watched them with a bored expression before opening its maw and sending forth another torrent of emerald fire. The remaining ferals barely made it five yards before they, too, were burnt to cinders in the flames of the dragon’s wrath.

Slowly, Scarlet and Lens allowed their barrier to dissipate. Primrose clung to Sclera as the burned drone forced herself up to a standing position. Scarlet looked around in uncomprehending disbelief. They had survived… somehow, someway, they had lived through the swarm.

Her eyes fell on their savior, and any desire to celebrate ceased to exist.

With a low, ominous snarl, the dragon turned its head to glare at them.

Author's Note

Hey, you. Yeah, you.

This story has a reading now, with the four teasers I wrote to hype the story up originally serving as micro-chapters to lead into the reading proper. You can check out the first of those on my YouTube channel if you feel so inclined.

Hraesvalgr

Scarlet didn’t move. She barely even dared to breathe. Her eyes were locked onto the dragon, albeit she was making a very concerted effort to not stare into its eyes. If this was a dragon that had grown to enormous sizes due to greed, it would be operating on animalistic instincts, and she had no desire to provoke it with an unintended challenge. Lens was doing much the same, although Prim and Sclera were too focused on busily fussing over each other to worry about the dragon for the moment.

It stared back at Scarlet with a cold, unreadable look. For what felt like an age, it glared into her very soul before leaning back and opening its mouth. Scarlet tensed, half expecting a rush of flames.

“You stand now in the territory of Hraesvalgr,” the dragon declared, its deep voice echoing loudly in the silent trench. It carried such power that Scarlet could feel it in her ribs, making them shudder, and her heart skipped a beat.

Lens perked up. “Hraesvalgr?” he asked in surprise. “That’s a very old draconic dialect…”

Scarlet risked a sideways glance at Lens before returning her attention to Hraesvalgr. At least now they knew the dragon could speak. She cleared her throat and did her best to raise her head in spite of her grievous wounds. “Greetings, Hraesvalgr. You have our thanks for your timely intervention.”

The dragon snorted. “Do not mistake me. You are trespassers just as surely as the swarm I saved you from,” he said slowly and deliberately, lowering his head down so that he could look at her more closely. “The difference is you are capable of thought. I shall not warn you again; turn back now and take your leave of this place.”

Scarlet’s blood chilled in her veins. They couldn’t turn back now, else they’d be walking right back into the hooves of their enemy. She lowered her head in a respectful bow before speaking again. “With respect, we cannot turn back. There is nothing but death for us that way. We are merely seeking to peacefully pass through,” she tried, keeping her voice as humble as possible. “We are of no threat to you. I humbly request that you allow us to continue on our way.”

“Do not try my patience, pony,” Hraesvalgr shot back with impatience. “Your problems are of no concern to me. My faith in your kind is spent, and I would be alone.”

Scarlet watched with dread as the dragon unfurled his wings to take flight, letting out a deep, guttural growl to nail down the point and shut down any attempts at a counter-argument. But then his eyes fell on Sclera and Primrose, and he froze. Scarlet followed his gaze, confused.

After a few seconds, Hraesvalgr’s wings folded back against his sides, and he lifted his head with a bewildered frown. “...Although, I must admit to being curious. It is a rare thing indeed to see ponies and changelings traveling together, even more so that the changelings walk with their true skin bared for the world to see.”

“We know the difference between Ferals and the Free,” Lens offered hopefully. He nodded towards Sclera and Prim. “Thanks to these two. They showed us the truth.”

Hraesvalgr stared at him skeptically before turning his eyes back to the two changelings, a softer look on his face. Specifically, his eyes fell on Primrose. “Does this pony speak the truth, child?” he asked.

Primrose squeaked and ducked behind Sclera to hide from his emerald gaze. A moment later, she poked her head out to offer a timid nod. “M-mhmm. I told them…” she managed to say.

Hraesvalgr fell quiet, his expression shifting with indecision. Scarlet watched with bated breath, confused by his sudden interest in her chitinous companions. Judging by his expression and the softer tone of voice he had adopted, however, it seemed likely that he had some familiarity with Free changelings.

If that was the case, it meant that they now had a chance to convince him to let them pass unharmed. She opened her mouth to speak, but Hraesvalgr beat her to it.

“Tell me, all of you: What purpose drives you to cross these peaks?” he asked curiously, falling back to his own haunches. “Are there no roads or paths that would see you to your destination safely?”

Scarlet took a deep breath, collecting her thoughts. “...Perhaps there are, but our circumstances demand haste and discretion. We seek the aid of villages along the coast north of here, but we cannot afford to waste time or energy seeking out a side road. Our supplies are low, our strength is dwindling, and our enemies are ever close at our hooves. It was our hope that crossing through these mountains would keep us safe from them and afford us a faster, albeit more treacherous, route…”

Hraesvalgr eyes her skeptically for several seconds before offering a slow nod. “I see,” he rumbled before looking up at the sun. Scarlet couldn’t see his face, so she instead turned her attention to Primrose and Sclera.

“You are okay, right?” Prim asked, her eyes glued onto the distorted burn on her mother’s chest.

Sclera grimaced in pain but nodded. “Y-yes… I’ll live… what about you? Are you okay?” she asked through tightly clenched teeth.

Primrose nodded shakily. “Mhmm… thanks to you and Scarlet and Lens.”

“And the lamp?”

Primrose hesitated, her ears drooping. She sat down on her haunches and carefully extracted the old artifact from her saddlebags to show to her mother. Scarlet eyed the lamp, her expression darkening considerably. How much suffering had been caused in the name of that blasted thing now? Every time she saw it, it seemed like the agony surrounding it had doubled.

“Scarlet,” Lens whispered, touching a hoof to her side. “Your injuries. We need to tend to them.”

It was then that Scarlet’s mind remembered how brutalized her body was. She let out a sharp gasp and crumpled to the ground. She screwed her eyes shut, her breath coming in heaving gasps as all of her various bite marks burned intensely. The adrenaline was slowly starting to fade, and with it, her body’s ability to keep itself awake.

“Hey, come on, stay with me,” Lens urged her in a frantic whisper. She heard his horn igniting with magic, and a moment later, the strips of her cloak that had been used to bind her injuries in the cave previously were returned to her body. This time to bind her new injuries and staunch the flow. Her eyes opened just a crack to stare at the bite mark on her hoof as it was wrapped in the thick blue fabric, and she grimaced. The cloth was still stained red with her now-dried blood from days ago, but for want of anything else to stem the flow, it was the best they could do.

“There, that should ease the pain, at least for now,” Lens said once he was done. “How are you feeling?”

Scarlet groaned, gingerly pushing herself back to her haunches. “Like I just about got eaten alive by a swarm of hungry demons,” she remarked in a dry tone. She turned to stare at him. “Did I have to answer, or was it really that hard to figure out?”

Lens gave off a quiet chuckle, putting a hoof on her shoulder. “Heh. Not even a brush with death can dampen your fiery personality, can it?” he asked.

Scarlet didn’t say anything. She lightly brushed his hoof away with a sigh before looking down at the ground, her ears drooping. “...I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I shouldn’t have yelled at you…”

Lens’ smile faded, his eyes turning down to look at the floor. “I… no, I’m the one who should apologize. I should have taken the hint. I just…” he sighed and lifted her chin with his hoof, so they were eye-to-eye. “I couldn’t bear to see you eating yourself up like that… I’ve always known you to be a confident and collected mare. To see you falling apart at the seams like that, and knowing that it was a lot worse than it looked, thanks to Prim and Sclera, I… what was I supposed to do? I couldn’t just do nothing.”

Scarlet’s eyes widened for a second. Then she smiled and touched her hoof to his. “...Your heart was in the right place,” she said to him in a low, gentle whisper. She glanced over at Primrose, her expression softening with regret. She had almost gotten that poor foal killed again with her outburst… it was a lucky thing that this dragon had come to their rescue when he had.

“...I’m not ready yet,” she finally said, turning back to Lens. “To forgive myself, I mean…”

Lens sighed quietly, retracting his hoof. “Will you ever be able to?” he asked quietly. “I remember what you said… do you honestly believe that what you did is unforgivable?”

Scarlet fell silent. She wrestled with her words for a time before nodding. “I do… I broke every promise I made her. I can never take that back, Lens…”

Lens reached out to grab her shoulder again. “Maybe not… but you saved her mother. You gave her back her family…” he assured her before leaning in somewhat closer so he could stare deep into her eyes. “And you set an innocent changeling free from her unjust imprisonment. You’ve redeemed yourself in my eyes, and in theirs…”

Scarlet swallowed a lump that had formed in her throat. After a second, she pulled away and looked down. “...Well, maybe one day,” she whispered, though she very much did not believe her own words. “But it is not today… so please, just…” she looked back up at him one more time. “...Let me cope with my mistakes in my own way. I will make things right, but I can only do it when I am ready to.”

Lens nodded in understanding. “Alright… just… don’t try and carry all of that weight all on your own, okay?” he asked, letting his hoof wander down to rest over her heart. “You’re not alone. Not anymore. We’re here for you… we can help carry that weight. All you need to do is let us.”

Scarlet placed her hoof on his and smiled. “Thank you… I appreciate it.”

The moment was suddenly interrupted when a deafening roar from Hraesvalgr tore out across the trench, forcing everypony present to cover their ears. His booming voice followed not a second later, loud and enraged. “THAT LAMP! WHERE DID YOU GET IT?!”

Scarlet’s heart leaped into her throat. As her ears stopped ringing, she turned her eyes up to stare at the dragon in complete and utter disbelief. His own draconic gaze was glued onto the blue crystal lamp, which now lay on the grass. Primrose had dropped it to cover her ears.

Lens was quicker than Scarlet, putting himself between the battered changelings and the enraged-appearing dragon. Primrose cowered behind him, cradled in Sclera’s protective embrace.

“I-It’s a family heirloom!” Sclera shot back carefully, covering as much of her daughter’s body as she could with her own in spite of her injury. “It was passed down to me by my mother!”

Lens glanced back at her for a fraction of a second before returning his attention to Hraesvalgr. “Why? Does it mean something to you?” he asked in as disarming a tone as he could manage.

Scarlet forced herself back to her hooves and dragged herself painfully over to stand by his side, spreading her stance to defend the two changelings.

Hraesvalgr glared at them for several seconds, his eyes wide and his pupils narrowed into razor-thin slits. Then, with what sounded like a gravely sigh, he slowly relaxed and lowered his head to their level. “Yes… it does,” he replied, his voice lower than Scarlet had been expecting.

She and Lens shared a glance. This dragon was just full of surprises. She turned back to him, curiously. “W-what do you know?” she asked.

Hraesvalgr was quiet for a few seconds before closing his eyes. “I know everything there is to know about it… for I was there when it was created.”

“What?!” Primrose’s voice came, loud and amazed. The filly, despite her mother’s grasping hooves and protestations, bounded out to stand before the great wyrm. Her glowing eyes stared up at him in wonder. “You were?! What is it for?! Who made it?! What’s inside of it?!”

Hraesvalgr’s eyes snapped open, and he quickly lifted a claw to silence the child’s barrage of questions. He glanced from side to side, seemingly struggling with something. Whatever it was, one side eventually won out over the other. He looked back down to the assembled group, his expression darkening. “...Not here. I would rather not run the risk, however small, of eavesdroppers.”

With that, he rose back to a full standing position. He turned and extended one wing down towards the group, creating a makeshift ramp. “Climb on. You are wounded, and I would not waste time going on foot. We can speak more at my home. And there is somepony there who would very much like to meet you… all of you.”

Scarlet blinked. First, this dragon showed up and saved them from a swarm of unprecedented size, then he demanded they turn back the way they came, only to immediately rescind that demand upon discovering the changelings in their midst. Then he had seemingly become enraged at the sight of the lamp, then revealed he knew all there was to know, and now he was offering to bear them upon his back to his lair?

“How many more surprises is this wyrm going to throw at us?” she wondered before turning back to the others, a small war raging in her mind. For all they knew, this dragon could have just thrown together a fanciful lie to try and lure them back to his home so he could feast on them as a light snack. He was a predator, after all.

On the other hoof, if he was telling the truth about any of this, then the answers they had long sought may finally be within sight. All they had to do was climb on and not fall off… Not like they had much of a choice. They didn’t want to piss off the big purple dragon, did they?

With a shaky nod at the others to follow her, Scarlet began to ascend Hraesvalgr’s wing. The leathery membranes between the fingers bent slightly under each of her steps, and she could feel the empty air beneath them. It was deeply unsettling, and she forced herself to walk faster until she was on the dragon’s back, nestled between two of the large green spines that ran down his back like massive swords.

The others joined her soon enough. Primrose was first, seemingly ecstatic at the prospect of finally learning about her lamp, which she now cradled close to her chest in her hooves. She got comfy a few feet behind Scarlet, watching as Lens and Sclera brought up the rear. The stallion was supporting Sclera’s weight on his shoulder, guiding her slowly but steadily until they were both seated on Hraesvalgr’s back.

“Hold on to something,” the dragon ordered as he rose back up, his wings spreading wide to catch the wind. “And don’t drop the lamp.”

Without waiting for a response, he gave a mighty flap of his wings and took to the heavens. Scarlet swayed in place, crying out in alarm. She hooked her forelegs around the spine nearest to her, her hind legs kicking instinctively at their sudden rise in elevation.

It was a humbling experience, being this high up this quickly. But more than that, she could feel the raw strength in the muscles with every beat of the dragon’s wings. It was undeniable that this creature was ancient and had survived many battles. No wonder the swarm had fallen so easily before him.

Scarlet glanced back to confirm the others were still on board before turning her attention forward. Over the top of Hraesvalgr’s head, she was treated to a view that stole her breath away. She could see the entire mountain range from here, the peaks and ridges almost looking like exaggerated wrinkles in the skin of the earth.

“By The Five!” Lens’ voice came from behind her, shouting to be heard over the rush of wind in their ears. “This is amazing!”

The stallion’s eager proclamation was soon joined by the delighted squeals of Primrose not far away, and Scarlet couldn’t help but offer up a tiny smile at the sound. Oh, how she had missed it.

With that thought making her cold heart beat just a little warmer, she mentally prepared herself for what was to come next as Hraesvalgr dove back for the mountains.

Soon, all of their questions would be answered.

Ancients

The flight was remarkably short but felt distressingly long in Scarlet’s mind. Maybe she had some as-of-yet-undiscovered fear of heights. Maybe it was the fact that she was on the back of a dragon that she had witnessed incinerate the largest changeling swarm she had ever seen. Maybe she was just tired of traveling, or maybe she just wanted to lay down, close her eyes, and take a nice, long nap.

Whatever the reason was, she let out a heavy sigh of relief when she realized their journey was approaching its end. Hraesvalgr descended steadily towards a mountain valley a few miles northeast of where they had been. Scarlet swept her gaze over the valley, picking out the details.

It was large, easily two miles from one end to the other in any given direction. It was remarkably lush and verdant for its altitude, surrounded on all sides by jagged mountain peaks that would deter even the most stalwart of mountaineers from scaling their slopes. A large lake sat at the heart of the valley, fed into by a series of gracefully winding streams that flowed down from the snowcaps higher up in the mountains. Several patches of forestation were scattered throughout, growing increasingly dense and hectic the nearer they drew to the base of the peaks.

It was only as Hraesvalgr flared out his wings to slow their descent and come in for his landing that Scarlet realized the reason for this. Her eyes widened when she saw that the innermost forests were, in fact, orchards. The trees were evenly arranged in masterfully assembled grids, and she could plainly make out signs of civilization.

“I was not aware of any settlements in these mountains,” she thought, her muzzle scrunching up. When had anypony had the time to make something like this here? It was an incredibly out-of-the-way location. There weren’t even any roads coming or going from the valley; it appeared to be entirely enclosed.

Scarlet was jarred from her thoughts when Hraesvalgr landed, his impact with the earth causing his passengers to jostle and squirm. A collection of grunts and uncomfortable exclamations rang out from various places along the dragon’s back. He craned his long neck to offer them an apologetic look. “Sorry, I’m not used to having ponies on my back for landings. I didn’t hurt any of you, did I?” he asked carefully.

“I don’t think so,” Scarlet replied, slowly easing herself down from the dragon’s back along his outstretched wing. Lens, Sclera, and Primrose were close behind her, the former appearing more than a little impressed with what he was seeing.

“Woah… what is this place?” he asked, adjusting his glasses.

Hraesvalgr gave off a quiet hum before starting for the settlement at a slow, lumbering pace. “It’s my home,” he said simply.

Scarlet glanced back at the others, seeking confirmation that they were ready for this. Lens seemed to be growing increasingly excited, no doubt at the prospect of discovering some hidden village and getting to learn more about the lamp. Sclera and Primrose, on the other hoof, carried a more subdued atmosphere. Hardly surprising, given the injuries Sclera still bore.

“Come on!” Hraesvalgr called back at them. “She’ll probably be in her lake house.”

“She?” Scarlet echoed under her breath before setting off after the wyrm at a brisk canter. Even at that pace, she was hard-pressed to keep up with the behemothian lizard she walked beside.

They stepped out of the grass and onto a faintly visible trail where hoof-traffic was apparently abundant. Scarlet cast her eyes from left to right, hoping for a glimpse of the locals. However, to her surprise, she did not see a single soul. Not one pony looked back at her and her companions. The fields and orchards, for all of the care they clearly received, were utterly devoid of activity.

But somehow, Scarlet knew she was being watched. She had felt the sensation countless times before, and it set her heart beating just a little faster in her chest.

Their route took them between various loosely-defined plots of land before, at last, they came out of the orchards and back into open plains. The lake loomed just ahead, the ground sloping gently down to a serene beach. Countless wildflowers grew here, each one gently swaying with a gentle mountain breeze and filling the air with a soft fragrance that set Scarlet’s anxious mind at ease. A humble cabin made of wooden logs sat by the beach, flower arrangements neatly decorating the windows and walls.

Hraesvalgr suddenly stopped and turned to Scarlet, his eyes narrowing. He lowered his head so that he was face-to-face with her; or rather, face-to-nostril with her would probably be more accurate, given his sheer size.

“Before we meet her, let me make one thing perfectly clear, pony,” he began in a low, warning voice. “The mare you are about to meet is everything to me, and I will not allow anything to endanger either her or what we have built here. Before I take you any farther, I need your word, here and now, that you will never utter a word of what you see in this valley to anypony outside of it. This place is to remain secret, no matter what, and should it become compromised by you or any of your companions…”

He snarled ominously. His lips slowly peeled back to reveal his sharp teeth. Scarlet’s stomach churned as the stench of long-decayed meat from past meals washed over her like a gust of wind from a Swanrun storm.

“...Is that clear?” Hraesvalgr finished quietly.

Scarlet took a step back and offered a stiff, anxious nod. “Of course… not a word,” she babbled out automatically. In the back of her mind, she couldn’t help but wonder what it was about this place that demanded such secrecy. More and more questions were piling up with every passing second…

Hraesvalgr looked past her to her companions. “The rest of you, as well.”

A chorus of acknowledgments came back without hesitation.

“Oh, of course! Your secrets are safe with me!”

“Not a word.”

“I won’t tell anypony, now can you please tell us about the lamp?!”

Hraesvalgr eyed all of them with a critical gaze. Whatever he was looking for, he must have found it. With a slow nod and a deep breath, he turned and approached the cabin. It could have been her imagination, but Scarlet thought she spotted a hint of anxiety break through his stone-faced expression, albeit for only an instant.

“Hey,” Hraesvalgr said, tapping on the roof with a claw. Each tap made a loud thunking noise that echoed faintly in the orchards behind them. “Get out here!”

A few seconds passed in silence before the front door to the cabin swung open with a loud creak. An oddly-familiar mare draped in a dark green cloak stepped out. She was a unicorn with a coat of bright pink, almost white fur. Her long, curly mane and tail were divided between blue and pink stripes, and her large, cyan eyes bored up into Hraesvalgr with a mixture of confusion and happiness at seeing him.

“Spikey! You’re back early! What’s going on?” she asked in a chirpy tone.

Scarlet’s heart just about stopped in her chest. Her eyes went wide as saucers and glued themselves onto the dragon. “Did that mare just say… Spikey? As in, Spike? The First Dragon Sentinel? The revered defender of the long lost Crystal Empire, and one of the oldest friends to Princess Twilight Sparkle?!”

How had she not noticed it sooner? Aside from his sheer scale and battle-hardened appearance, the dragon before her matched the description of the ancient hero down to the finest details. The purple scales, the green spikes, spines, eyes, and underbelly. The wings, the speartip shaped tip on his tail. All of it…

“I am standing in the presence of Spike… he’s alive…” Scarlet thought, her legs going weak under her.

Hraesvalgr—or Spike, rather—quickly leaned down, his spines folding back as if in embarrassment. “Wha- HEY! What did we talk about?!” he demanded in a low whisper. “It’s Hraesvalgr in front of strangers!”

The mare’s enthusiasm came to a stop at the word ‘strangers.’ At once, she turned her eyes to stare at Scarlet and the others. A reserved, borderline suspicious frown spread on her muzzle. “...Who are you all?” she asked carefully while taking a few steps forward. “And why are you here?”

Scarlet did not answer. In truth, she had barely even heard the question. She was still reeling from the casual revelation that she was standing in front of Spike. How was she supposed to act? What was she supposed to say? Her mind was so jumbled with confusion and shock that all she could do was gawp at him like a baby bird awaiting food from its parent.

Spike frowned at her. “What? Why are you looking at me like that?”

“She called you Spikey,” Lens answered in Scarlet’s stead, stepping forward with a similarly shocked expression. “Are you… are you truly him? Spike? The first Dragon Sentinel?”

Spike let out a quiet grumble, though it sounded more like an earthquake. He ran his claws over his face and fell heavily to his haunches. “Ugh. Welp, there goes the big scary dragon routine,” he sighed in resignation. He lowered his claws and nodded his head. “Yes, I am Spike. That’s another thing I expect you to keep quiet about when you leave this place.”

“But why?” Primrose asked, coming forward beside Sclera with wide eyes. “I’ve heard about you. Ponies really respect and look up to you… why not let them know you’re alive?”

Spike grimaced uncomfortably. “That is a question for later…”

“Speaking of questions,” The mare at his side cut in with an increasingly confused look on her face. She stepped forward to stand directly before Scarlet, sizing her up. “...Mine still hasn’t been answered. I don’t get the impression that you’re our enemy, but I still would like to know who you ponies are and why you’re here. And…” her eyes fell on Primrose. “...And why you’re traveling with changelings. That’s not something you see every day.”

Scarlet swallowed heavily. Something about the way this unicorn was looking at her made her feel terribly small and insignificant. It was like she was staring at an ancient temple that had survived countless battles with nary even a scratch; while she was little more than a broken-down shack.

“My name is Scarlet Frost,” she eventually introduced before gesturing to the others. “This is Sharp Lens, Primrose, and Sclera.”

“Primrose? Sclera?” The unicorn questioned, turning to them with interest. “Those are unusual names for changelings.”

“Our changeling names are Iris and Protea,” Sclera clarified before falling down to her haunches to catch her breath. One of her hooves flew up to clutch at her charred and mangled chest. “W-we use them interchangeably. B-both names are correct- ack!”

“Mom,” Primrose whispered anxiously, placing her hoof on Sclera’s shoulder. “Just try and relax, okay? You’re still hurt…”

The unicorn’s eyes fell on Sclera’s burn marks. She grimaced. “That looks pretty bad… one moment,” she said before closing her eyes. Her horn lit up with a golden aura. Sclera softly gasped when her injury was surrounded in a similar aura. All eyes widened in surprise as her mangled chitin slowly began to right itself, the burn marks clearing away. In a matter of seconds, save for a slight discoloration to mark where she had been injured, Sclera’s wound was completely healed.

She felt at her chest as soon as the magic faded. She took in a long, deep breath before letting it out in a deeply relieved sigh. She turned to the unicorn with a grateful smile. “Thank you…”

Scarlet leaned over to study the injury before turning back to the now-smiling unicorn. “How did you do that…? Healing magic of that caliber hasn’t been seen in centuries. How did…” her words trailed off, her eyes narrowing with scrutiny. She knew there was something familiar about this mare, but she just could not put her hoof on it. “...Who are you?”

The mare hesitated for a second before glancing up at Spike. He shrugged. “Hey, you already spilled my real name to them.”

The unicorn blew him a quick raspberry before stepping back a little and facing Scarlet directly. She reached up and placed her hoof on the clasp holding her cloak to her person. “Well, I suppose I do have you at a disadvantage, don’t I?” she admitted before undoing the clasp and letting the cloak fall off of her body.

Two feathery wings, larger than those of most pegasi, stretched out from her back once the cloak was gone, while her cutie mark was revealed to be a heart made entirely out of crystal. The alicorn shook her head to let her now-unobstructed mane fall gracefully over her shoulders before offering Scarlet a gentle smile. “My name is Flurry Heart. It’s nice to meet you all.”

Scarlet’s heart just about stopped in her chest, and without even thinking about it, she dropped into a low, low bow. She opened her mouth to say something, to stammer out an apology for her inappropriate conduct so far, but the words caught in her throat. Her mind was thrown into too much chaos for her to form any.

“Flurry Heart? Princess Flurry Heart? One of the Five?! She’s alive, too?!” was just one of the countless thoughts raging in her mind. “I am in front of a goddess! How did I not notice?! Why am I so stupid today?!”

Flurry Heart giggled at the display, ruffling her wings while a tiny red blush appeared on her cheeks. “Oh, my. Been a while since anypony did that,” she said awkwardly before waving her hoof dismissively. “Okay, come on, cut it out. I’m not a princess anymore, you know. I’m just another mare.”

“B-but, you’re one of the Five!” Lens pointed out, seemingly just as at a loss as Scarlet. “You’re a goddess!”

“HA!” Flurry belted out an amused laugh before shaking her head. “Oh, I wish! If I were a goddess, I probably would have done a lot more these last four hundred years. No, I’m just an alicorn with a pretty house by the water and an adorably big dragon for an uncle. Now stop bowing, would ya? It’s getting weird.”

Scarlet slowly rose up to a standing position, though she carried herself with a far more respectful and submissive stance this time. She eyed Flurry and then Spike, one at a time, her mind racing. If these two were still alive, then… had any of the other alicorns survived the Fall? Were they here?

Flurry waited for her guests to all be upright before clearing her throat. “M’kay, now that we’ve got that awkwardness out of the way…” she turned to look up at Spike. “Uncle Spike, mind telling me why you brought them here? I’m still kinda in the dark about that.”

If Spike was at all annoyed by the use of the term ‘uncle,’ he did not show it. He lifted a claw and pointed at the group. “They have the lamp,” Spike suddenly said with a slightly impatient note in his voice.

The smile on Flurry Heart’s face vanished. A heavy silence fell over the gathered creatures before she slowly turned her attention back to Scarlet. “W-what? They… they have the…” she choked out. Scarlet felt her heart twist in confusion and concern as Flurry shrank down, suddenly looking like she was on the verge of an emotional breakdown.

She suddenly flared out her wings and leaped into the air, getting right in Spike’s face. “Are you sure?” she asked in a shaking voice. “Absolutely sure? I can’t take a false alarm, Spike! Not after all this time!”

“I saw it with my own eyes,” Spike answered in a subdued, gentle voice. “And it cannot be mistaken. Besides…” he nodded past Flurry at the others. “...I thought I recognized their faces when I first saw them. It has been diluted with each generation, but the family resemblance is still there.”

Flurry hovered in front of him, her hooves resting on his snout. She took a deep breath before turning and drifting back down to land in front of the group. Her eyes danced between them with a new light. “...May I… May I see it?” she asked in a hesitant whisper. “Please? I’ve waited for four hundred years. I… I need to know it’s really here.”

Primrose shrank back, hiding behind one of Sclera’s legs for a moment. She looked up at her mother, then to Scarlet. They made eye contact, and Scarlet saw the uncertainty and fear in the foal’s eyes. She couldn’t help but feel a twinge of regret at the sight, her mind wandering back to the inn room…

She was quick to shove down the memory and offer Primrose a small, encouraging nod. “Go on,” she whispered. “This is what you’ve been waiting for.”

Primrose stared into her eyes for a second before smiling. She slowly inched out from behind Sclera’s foreleg, and together they approached Flurry Heart.

The alicorn lowered herself onto her haunches. She waited patiently as Primrose reached into her saddlebags and gingerly withdrew the lamp. It caught the light of the sun as it came out, shining brilliantly in the light of the day. It almost seemed to be glowing brighter than before.

Flurry inhaled sharply on seeing it, her eyes glistening. She lifted up her hooves and gently took the lamp out of Prim’s. She cradled it as if it were made of fragile glass, as if the tiniest movement could send it crumbling into dust. She studied it for a second, her face continuing to twitch and contort with a wide range of emotions. Finally, she let out a sobbing laugh and looked up at Spike.

“It’s true,” she choked out, tears running down her cheeks. “It’s really it… I-it’s here, S-spike… It’s f-finally here…”

Spike nodded, lowering himself onto his belly so that Flurry was nestled protectively between his front legs. “It is…”

“...What is it for?” Sclera asked quietly, careful not to disturb what was clearly a very tender scene too much.

Spike and Flurry looked to her, the latter looking surprised. ‘You mean… y-you mean you d-don’t know?” she asked in surprise, swallowing hard to prevent herself from sobbing anymore.

Sclera shook her head. “No, we don’t… what it is and why we have it was lost a few generations ago. All we know is that we are to protect it with our lives, no matter what.”

Primrose nodded, her ears lowering. “...What is it for, miss Flurry?” she asked politely, her voice low with long-buried grief. “I’ve lost so much trying to protect it… My brothers, my father, and every family I’ve ever stayed with… all of them were either murdered, or I had to leave them behind… because of that stupid lamp...”

Flurry’s ears drooped. “W-what? You… oh my goodness, I am so sorry to hear that,” she whispered out before looking down at the lamp again. She ran her hoof over it, almost reverently, before passing it back to Primrose with her magic. “Alright. Uncle Spike and I can answer any questions you all have…”

She stood up and pointed towards the nearest edge of the valley. “But not here. Come with us inside, and we can tell you everything.”

“Heh. Ya know, aside from you, these ponies are going to be the first ones we’ve let inside since we made this old place,” Spike pointed out, standing up as well.

Scarlet opened her mouth to speak, but the words caught in her throat yet again. Spike and Flurry were already making their way for the nearby slopes. She stared after them, her mind taking a second to just process everything that had just happened. She swallowed heavily before turning back to the others.

Lens adjusted his glasses in a display of nervous energy. He met her gaze and put on a giant, crooked grin. “Well, uh… sh-shall we?” he asked.

Sclera allowed Primrose to hop up on her back. “Yes, we shall,” she said simply. “We’ve waited long enough for these answers… let’s go.”

Scarlet didn’t need to hear anything else. They set off, trailing behind Spike and Flurry. All the way, the feeling of eyes staring at them from afar persisted. Although, at this point, that was far from the first thing on Scarlet’s mind…

A few short minutes later, Scarlet caught sight of a large cave mouth burrowed into the side of the mountain. It was tall; easily tall enough for Spike to march in with his head held high, and for fifteen ponies to walk abreast with respect for personal space. It was hard to make out any details, but Scarlet was sure she could see a few ponies standing in front of it. Guards?

She squinted, trying to pick out their apparel. They were brightly colored, that was for sure, but they did not appear to be wearing uniforms. They both had some sort of armor on their backs, but the colors did not match. One was blue, another was orange. And then there was their fur. One was an insultingly bright shade of green, while the other was a more reasonable shade of blue. But… where were their manes? And what were those things flaring out from their backs?

Scarlet’s heart began to beat against her ribs when she realized that those were not ponies she was looking at. As she drew nearer, they came into focus. The armor she had seen on their backs were actually exoskeletal shells, the expanses from their backs were gossamer wings, and their fur was, in fact, hard chitin. Glowing spheres of light stared back at her from their eyes sockets.

“Are those… changelings?” Lens asked in shock, his eyes going wide.

“Yes,” Spike said.

The two changelings stood at attention upon seeing Spike approaching, and Scarlet began to notice differences in their appearance compared to Sclera and Primrose. They had no fangs hanging from their upper lips, and there were no holes in their wings or legs. Their colors were also exceptionally brighter.

A moment later, Scarlet noticed how their eyes bored into her and Lens with caution and suspicion. She shuddered, a sickening feeling crawling up and down her spine. She averted her gaze, taking a series of deep breaths to calm herself down. “They are not ferals, they are not ferals, they are not ferals,” she told herself over and over again.

“Hraesvalgr? Who are these?” one of the drones said once they were in speaking distance, his two-toned voice making Scarlet cringe involuntarily with reflexive disgust. She had gotten used to Primrose and Sclera, but this one was new…

“They are guests here, and to be afforded every courtesy,” Spike responded simply. His voice carried an edge to it that made it clear this matter was not currently open for discussion. “I am escorting them back to the Thrones. We may be there for quite some time, and I do not want us to be disturbed unless there is an emergency. Is that clear?”

The drone immediately bowed his head into a respectful bow. “Of course. I’ll spread the word,” he said before turning and flying deeper into the caves, the buzzing of his wings fading into silence.

That done, the group pressed inside. Scarlet’s eyes wandered around as they went. The cave had obviously been here for a very long time, but the way the walls were sloped… they almost looked like they had been smeared by claws in a liquid state. Had Spike personally melted these caves into the mountains? And for what purpose?

The light of the sun began to fade behind them and, for a minute, Scarlet was worried they would be left in darkness. They didn’t get too far, however, before coming to a dead-end. Scarlet frowned, looking back. There hadn’t been any other way they could have gone. The tunnel only led one way…

“It’s a dead-end,” Primrose pointed out in confusion. “There’s nothing here.”

“Not quite,” Flurry replied with a cheerful grin. She marched up to the wall, her horn lighting up with magic. She fired off a series of small, precise streams of energy, leaving glowing spots along the wall arranged in a loose circle. Scarlet watched with curiosity, wondering just what the ancient alicorn was doing.

Flurry stepped back and sent forward one more beam of magic, this one as thin as a needle. It struck the wall in the center of the circle she had made, and a high pitched ping resonated throughout the cavern. There was a moment of silence…

And then there was the scraping of stone. Scarlet’s eyes widened as a circular hole suddenly began to open up in the wall, revealing an enormous chamber on the other side. Structures that she recognized as buildings were arranged near the cave walls and many were even jutting out of them, while still more hung from the ceiling. Each one was made of the same stone as the cavern, looking to have once been melted down and then carefully shaped while it was cooling. Artificial spikes of stone coming from the floor and roof of the cave were capped with bundles of glowing green resin that provided illumination.

But more eye-catching than all of that were the changelings. Hundreds of free changelings were buzzing around the chamber, flitting from one building to another, chatting in front of others that had seating arrangements outside, or even flying in and out of countless holes in the walls that appeared and disappeared seemingly at will.

“What… what is this place?” Scarlet breathed, taking it all in with a mixture of wonder. She did her best to ignore and discard the churning mound of disgust that was wriggling deep in her guts.

“It’s beautiful…” Primrose added from her mother’s back, eyes wide. “There’re so many changelings… and look at them. They’re whole…”

“So many changelings,” Sclera agreed quietly before focusing on Spike and Flurry, who had stopped to wait for them a short distance ahead. “...And the two guardians who keep them safe.”

Primrose gasped, sitting up and planting her hooves on Sclera’s head. ‘Wait! You mean this is…”

Flurry Heart beamed, even as the hole in the wall sealed up shut behind them, leaving them all inside the secret city. She lifted a hoof and gestured wide at all of it with a proud glimmer in her eyes.

“Welcome to Sanctuary!”

Mercenaries

Silent Edge grimaced as Hraesvalgr disappeared into a cavern on the side of the mountain, his prey following him and some other mare all the way. He had been unable to hear the details of their conversation from his high vantage point, nor make out any meaningful details about this new pony, aside from the fact that she apparently had wings.

Silent had been tailing Scarlet’s group for the last few days, following their tracks through the mountains. He had finally caught up to the group just as Scarlet was in the middle of some kind of emotional breakdown, screaming and ranting about her inability to forgive herself. Silent hadn’t really given a damn about her words—and had been poised and ready to lunge and cut them all down when fate saw fit to step all over his carefully laid plans.

The swarm had been alarming in the extreme. Silent had been forced to back away from his prey and fend off a fair few of the drones himself before finally managing to take cover and wait for the battle to die down. He had been afraid that his prey would be stolen away from him. But then Hraesvalgr had arrived, incinerating the swarm in a matter of seconds before revealing that he somehow knew something about the lamp. He had then taken Scarlet and the others onto his back and bore them here.

It had been challenging to follow the beast, given how fast it was, but Silent had managed to keep it in his sights long enough to see it arrive at his destination. Silent had carefully landed out of sight from his prey, watching them from an elevated position, and using a wandering cloud as cover.

That was where he now stood, his face twisted into a frustrated grimace. A thick, plain brown cloak hugged his shoulders, the hood pulled up to conceal his face from the world. A new pair of wingblades, the sort fit for a peasant, was strapped to his wings, itching to be used. They were clunky and heavy compared to what he was used to, but he was confident in his ability to cut down Scarlet, Lens, and the rest with little difficulty, so long as he could get the jump on them.

“I cannot say the same about the dragon,” he muttered to himself, wings twitching angrily against his sides. As good as he was, he knew that he would not stand a chance against such a beast, not without a lot of backup, and a damn fine plan. His blades wouldn’t be able to even scratch the wyrm’s thick scales, much less pierce them to get at the squishy innards he would need to spill to lay the creature low.

Deprived of his rank and his contacts as he now was, though, his options were sorely limited. All he had were the blades on his wings, the cloak on his shoulders, and the pouch of platinum bits he had withdrawn from the bank before taking his leave. None of those things would be of much help in killing the dragon.

...Not directly, at least.

Silent committed the location to memory before turning and launching himself into the air. The valley soon vanished from sight, obscured by the clouds. Angling himself up as he flew, he rapidly gained altitude before touching down on another cloud high above the mountains. Looking down, he was afforded a breathtaking view that even pegasi rarely got to see. Many were too weak or lazy to bother making the proverbial climb, preferring to keep to their lower perches of trees and cliffsides.

But the view wasn’t what Silent was interested in. He cared more about what he could find hidden within it. His eyes narrowed as he searched the various valleys and trenches, picking out anything and everything that stood out against the verdant grass or weathered stone.

At last, he found it. His eyes zeroed in on a sizable mass moving through one of the valleys at a steady, constant rate. He leaped from his cloud and descended a considerable distance, gliding smoothly through the air to another cloud closer to his target. Once he landed, he couldn’t stop a tiny smirk from appearing on his muzzle.

A small army of griffons in mismatched armor sprawled out below him, slowly combing their way through the mountains. He could see outfliers coming and going, bringing reports to the one in the front before either going back to join the mass or flying off to vanish amid the peaks.

They were just what he needed. A sizable, well trained, and well-armed band of griffon mercenaries. If nothing else, they could keep the dragon and the changelings he protected busy while he sought out his prey and cut them down.

Of course, that was entirely dependent on whether or not he could get them to listen. Coin was their only motivating factor, he knew, but he did not know how much the Solar Council was paying them to search these peaks. His smirk faded. He would have to go about this extremely carefully, lest he botch it, and be left operating all on his own again.

Not that it mattered in the end. Even if he couldn’t get these mercs to help him, he could just hunker down and wait for Scarlet and the others to come out of those caves and right into the path of his waiting blades. That would be his backup plan, though. He was done being patient, done watching from the shadows. The sooner he could end them and rid himself of the insufferable insult to his pride they represented, the better.

With that thought ringing out in his mind, Silent fanned out his wings and jumped down from the cloud. He glided slowly through the air, making a deliberate effort to not come off as threatening. Already, he knew he had been spotted, as several of the griffons were looking up and pointing him out to the ones next to them.

He angled himself down and came to a landing in the grass a few dozen yards ahead of the party, giving him a short window to finalize his approach. He held his head high and threw back his hood, revealing his face to the advancing mercenaries. His eyes met those of the leader, a towering behemoth of a griffon.

Dark, rugged grey feathers reached down from the top of his head to hang loosely around his shoulders, while black fur covered the rest of him. His muscular body was clad in old armor that Silent instantly recognized as belonging to a captain of Talonreach. The symbol of the broken kingdom had been burned away, however, leaving the pauldrons and breastplate marred with clearly visible twists and lumps, lending a molten appearance to the one wearing them.

The griffon lifted a talon, and his party came to an immediate, obedient stop. He then advanced towards Silent, his own head held high. “You had best be getting out of the way, pegasus,” he said loudly, his aged, gravely voice carrying quite far to cover the distance between them. “We’re here on business, and we ain’t got the patience to put up with anyone getting in our way.”

Silent offered a small, respectful bow of his head as the griffon came closer. “I am here on business as well, friend,” he said. “Silent Edge, Lieutenant of the new Equestrian Nightblades.”

“Garius,” The griffon introduced while raising an eyebrow. “A Nightblade, are you? Then where is your uniform?”

Silent lifted his head. “I have been operating undercover for quite some time,” he lied. “But circumstances demand I step out of hiding and beseech you and yours for aid.”

“That so? Well, buddy, we ain’t a charity,” Garius rebuffed without a moment of hesitation. “We only take coin, and somehow I doubt you are who you say you are. Besides, we’re already on a contract. Can’t go taking another one.”

“I am well aware. The Solar Council hired you and your company to enter into these mountains and assess whether or not the dragon that has been discovered among the peaks is a threat to Newcanter. I am here to confirm for you that it very much is a threat, and it needs to be eliminated as soon as possible.”

The griffon scowled. “That so? Then how come the Council didn’t make a peep about this when we were sent out here?”

Silent patted his cloak. “The Nightblades are under the authority of the Lunar Council, and as I already mentioned, I have been undercover. Nopony on the Solar Council was made aware of my activity, as none of them needed to know.”

Garius did not appear convinced. “Uh-huh. Look, pal, this chat has been really nice and all, but-”

Silent pulled the pouch of platinum bits on his belt and tossed it to the ground in front of the griffon. The tall bird’s eyes flew wide at the sight, his tail shooting up in alarm. Silent resisted the urge to grin. Griffons were too easy. “Inside that pouch, you will find no fewer than two hundred platinum bits, each one easily worth ten regular bits. Adding that onto whatever the Solar Council is already sworn to pay you upon your return, you are looking at a remarkably princely sum for you and your comrades.”

Garius pulled the pouch off the ground and opened it up to get a look at the contents. Silent could see the way the coins reflected in his eyes like stars in the night sky. Garius’ beak slowly curled up into a tiny smirk before he looked up at Silent. “Well, you’ve certainly got my attention, Silent Edge. How’s about you tell us a little more about what’s going on, and we can go from there?”

Silent nodded, turning to point off towards the valley with a wingtip. “The dragon’s name is Hraesvalgr, apparently, and he has made his home in a valley some few miles northeast of here, in a large valley. While I was observing his movements, I saw shadowy figures lurking in the trees and crags. On closer inspection, I learned they were changelings of a remarkably intelligent variety, and all of them appear to serve Hraesvalgr directly.”

“Intelligent changelings?” Garius asked, a hint of doubt in his voice being hidden by several layers of discomfort at the mere idea. “How do you know that?”

“Hraesvalgr spoke to them, addressed them directly,” Silent went on, thinking back on the two he had seen guarding the entrance to the cave. “They obeyed his orders. While I did not see many, the fact that they are so organized gives me reason to fear that there may be a full-sized colony of the demons hidden in a cave I spotted at the base of the peaks while I was scouting the area.”

He turned back to Garius, a serious, warning look in his eyes. “I hope I do not need to tell you how large of a threat this truly is. A dragon in league with an army of changelings would be more than capable of tearing Newcanter to shreds if they were to launch an attack.”

Garius hummed quietly, his talons flexing around the bits in his grasp. He glanced back at his company, many of whom had slinked forwards to listen with interest to the ongoing discussion. Garius huffed and met Silent’s gaze again. “If what you say is true, then two thousand bits ain’t gonna cover the bonus on its own,” he stated matter of factly.

Silent nodded. “I understand. However, if we are successful, then I am confident the Solar Council will be willing to pay you extra for the neutralization of such a large risk to their city and their ponies. Not to mention, there is a chance that the dragon has a hoard amassed within those caves. Help me cut him down and end his colony, and you will be more than welcome to any riches you come across.

Garius fell into a thoughtful silence, jingling the coins in the pouch one more time. “Well… this is certainly an unexpected change of plans,” he said slowly before turning around to his company. “What say the rest of you sorry lot?! Shall we go kill us a dragon?!”

“So long as the pay is good!” One griffon shouted in response, before all the others slapped their talons against their chests over their hearts, offering up the same shout in unison.

“So long as the pay is good!”

Silent raised an eyebrow. “That is their motto, is it? They are not doing their kind’s reputation any favors,” he thought to himself.

Garius turned back to Silent, his beak curled back into a large, eager grin. “Well, you heard ‘em. So long as the pay’s good, we’re in.”

Silent smiled. “Oh, the reward will be well worth it,” he said with confidence, inwardly grinning in victory. “Of that, you have my assurance.”

Author's Note

Gotta love it when someone accurately predicts the next chapter completely by accident when spelling out what they hope doesn't happen. :twilightsheepish:

Answers

The journey through Sanctuary was made in relative silence. Spike and Flurry led the way, with the alicorn opening and closing tunnels as needed with her magic. Scarlet only paid them enough attention to keep up. The rest of her thoughts were dedicated to observing the city around her with great interest.

It was larger than she had been expecting, reaching well beyond that first chamber. Each one they passed through appeared to have a different practical purpose, between subterranean plant farms, housing, and other such necessities for a community to be entirely self-sufficient. It was, all in all, incredibly impressive. Were it not for the countless changelings flitting about, chattering amongst themselves in those hauntingly distorted voices as they worked, she might have even found the hidden colony beautiful.

But she couldn’t bring herself to see it that way. No matter how many times she told herself that these creatures were not at all like the demon that had stolen Crystal from her, she couldn’t help but imagine them in that light at every turn. It made her sick to her stomach, both out of guilt and out of disgust. No doubt the changelings could see it, given the number of odd, borderline-fearful looks she received as the group passed through.

Eventually, the wall before them opened up into a wide, empty tunnel. Scarlet looked around to find a dead end to her left, while farther down the tunnel to her right the cave wall was marked with an elaborate series of glyphs and runes written in Old Ponish that softly glowed in the darkness.

Flurry stepped forward and placed her horn against the wall, muttering some kind of incantation under her breath. When she pulled away, the wall shuddered, the runes glowing brighter with arcane energy. Then, with a deep rumbling and the scraping of stone, that wall, too, peeled open to reveal a chamber that Scarlet had not been expecting.

The vaguely dome-shaped ceiling was easily fifty feet high, while the large floor space was enough for two dragons the size of Spike to chase each other’s tails in a circle, while still leaving just enough room for a few ponies to huddle together in the center. A smooth, round table, made out of delicately carved obsidian, rested in the heart of the room, surrounded by six ornate thrones. On the backrest of each was an engraving.

A bundle of three balloons.

A fluttering group of butterflies.

A trio of diamonds.

A collection of apples.

A cloud with a lightning bolt coming out of it.

And finally, a six-pointed starburst that Scarlet recognized immediately as the symbol of Princess Twilight Sparkle.

“Woah… what is this place?” Primrose asked curiously, lifting a few feet into the air on her wings to get a better look around.

Spike settled down onto his belly in the back of the chamber. He glanced around with a far-off look in his eyes. “...These are the Thrones,” he said quietly. “They serve as a memorial… and a promise.”

The hole in the wall closed up shut behind Scarlet as the last of the group slipped inside. A quick spark of magic from Flurry’s horn caused a chandelier of blue crystals on the roof to light up, filling the chamber with a gentle, soothing illumination that set Scarlet’s heart at ease. Flurry then made her way over to Spike and sat down in front of him, facing the new arrivals.

Her eyes fell on Scarlet, and the various bandages that were just barely keeping her multiple bite wounds from troubling her. Flurry cringed before addressing the group as a whole. “I imagine you all have a lot of questions and, to be frank, so do I. But you can all go first. Spike will answer any questions you have for the moment. In the meantime…”

Flurry stepped up to Scarlet, her ears lowering. “I’m so sorry, but in all of the confusion, I totally missed how injured you are. Here, let me heal you…” she said while her horn lit up.

Scarlet wasn’t going to say no to that. She lowered herself onto her belly and got comfortable. Flurry immediately set to work, gently pulling away her bandages and applying a steady stream of magic to the first of her injuries.

“Now, then,” Spike began, resting his chin on the ground. “Seeing as Flurry volunteered me for the task… ask your questions, and I shall answer.”

Primrose fluttered back down to the ground alongside Sclera. They shared a brief look before the elder of the two spoke up. “What is the lamp? What is its purpose? And how did it come to be?”

Spike closed his eyes, letting off a low rumble of a hum. “...Tell me, all of you. What all do you know of the Fall?” he asked.

“Er, well… we know that it was when Equestria fell apart at the hooves of a swarm of changelings—ferals, I imagine,” Lens recounted slowly, tapping at his chin. “It was how the Five perished—or, well, most of the Five, at least. The damage caused by that calamity had devastating repercussions for the entire world. Griffonstone collapsed, the dragons retreated into their own territory and became reclusive, the capital of Yakyakistan was buried in an avalanche, the hippogriffs of Aris had to rebuild a lot of their country from scratch, the Kirin went extinct…”

“In every sense of the word, it was an apocalypse,” Scarlet summarized with a wince as the bite wound on her shoulder began to stitch itself shut. It was an incredibly unpleasant experience, and the itch was excruciating.

Spike nodded along slowly. “I see… then I suppose it’s time for a history lesson,” he said. He slowly rose up into a sitting position, ruffling his wings as he went. “This may come as a surprise to you, but back then before the Fall, changelings and ponies lived in harmony. They had once been bitter enemies, but after an impromptu coup d’etat dethroned the tyrannical Queen Chrysalis, relations swiftly improved under the guidance of King Thorax…”

Spike trailed off for a few seconds, closing his eyes. When he spoke again, his voice was considerably lower. “But Chrysalis managed to escape with her life. For years, she roamed the wilds of the world, all alone and tormented day and night by her rage, indignation, and loneliness. Try as we might, we could never find her, nor bring her to justice. She had vanished.

“Years came and went, and Equestria was to be ushered into a new era of harmony and prosperity. Celestia and Luna were planning to retire, and Twilight Sparkle was to take their place as the ruling monarch of Equestria. Everything seemed to be going well…”

Spike opened his eyes, and Scarlet couldn’t help but wince at the fire she saw burning within them. The dragon let off a low, quiet growl. “...Until Chrysalis returned to her hive. With naught but her hatred and spite to accompany her in those desolate corners of the world, her mind broke down. When she arrived, her horn spat dark magic… and in a few short hours, seventy percent of the changeling population was corrupted by the feral curse she had designed. All of them were deprived of their minds, of their sense of self, and turned into willing slaves to her will… not even my friend, Thorax, survived the initial spread...”

Primrose’s hooves drifted up to cover her muzzle. “Oh my gosh…”

“That’s horrible,” Lens whispered, his eyes lowering. “She did that to her own kind…?”

Spike nodded. “Once upon a time, she had wanted to feed them, although her methods were twisted and self-destructive. But she had long since stopped caring. She didn’t want to feed anymore… she wanted to kill. And with an army of changelings bound to her will, she set forth to do just that. Over the coming year, she steadily worked her way north, tearing through all resistance, razing settlements to the ground, slaughtering ponies by the thousands once she had stolen their strength for herself, and rendering the earth barren so that we could not use it again. She sought to end our world… and at every turn, we were failing to stop her.”

Scarlet grimaced as Flurry got started on the next bite wound, pouring healing magic into her hoof.

Spike continued. “With every step of ground we lost, Chrysalis’ advances became bolder and more destructive, driving us farther and farther back. Worse still, she had learned of our mightiest weapons, the Elements of Harmony, and stole them from their place in the Tree of Harmony. Bereft of power and allies, we were scrambling for a method of keeping her at bay.”

“What did you do?” Primrose asked, shaking somewhat.

“Everything we could think of to stop her. But alas, in her madness and wrath, she was always one step ahead of us,” Spike replied with a sad shake of his head. “Soon enough, it became exceedingly apparent what her next step was. She was going to come to Ponyville… my home… and burn it to the ground as well. Her goal was to slaughter Twilight Sparkle and all of her friends in front of the one who had cost her the throne… Starlight Glimmer.”

Scarlet thought on the name for a moment, trying to remember if she had ever heard of it before.

Before she could, however, Lens spoke up. “Starlight Glimmer… wasn’t she a really powerful sorceress?”

Spike nodded. “That she was. One of the mightiest mares I ever had the pleasure to call my friend…” he looked down, his spines drooping. “In the end, we had to flee. Ponyville was evacuated and razed to the ground. Canterlot fell next, torn from the mountainside, and sent crumbling to the earth below. We had nowhere else to run but the Crystal Empire, where we would make our final stand…”

“And let me guess…” Scarlet started as Flurry moved on to the bite in her hip. She met Spike’s gaze with sympathy. “...You lost.”

“That was certainly the most likely outcome we could see at the time,” Spike admitted solemnly. “We were beaten, broken, battered. Morale was at an all-time low and our numbers were so reduced that we were all but defenseless against the swarm. When they arrived, it would be the end of the world as we knew it. Everything was doomed to change…”

Spike turned his gaze to Primrose, his expression softening. “But then, Starlight, ever the genius with a penchant to overdo things, came up with a plan.”

“What?” Sclera asked curiously.

“The changelings were, at the end of the day, only as dangerous as they were because of Chrysalis. She had full control over the feral swarm, directing them as one body with her mind. If we could erase her from the picture, then it was our hope that those under her thrall could be set free — or at the very least, mitigated as a threat.”

“So, the plan was to focus on Chrysalis and kill her, thus stopping the war in its tracks?” Lens ventured carefully. “Considering she was the head of the swarm, I imagine she had herself pretty well protected.”

“She did, to the point that it would be impossible to reach her without significant losses,” Spike went on, grimacing. “And the only ones we had who possessed the might to reach her and destroy her were the very ones she sought to slaughter above all else. Twilight Sparkle, Celestia, Luna, Cadance, Shining Armor, and Starlight Glimmer. Regular ponies would be torn to literal shreds long before they could get within spitting distance of the queen, much less cut her down.”

“They knew there were going to be unavoidable deaths in their number,” Flurry picked up, pulling back from Scarlet for a moment. “Whether they were a part of the battle or not, Chrysalis would not suffer them to live longer than her if she had any say in it whatsoever.”

“Precisely, and so Starlight proposed that some of us were… temporarily removed from the equation,” Spike went on, his eyes falling on Primrose again. “And so it was that she came to us with the lamp, forged from the roots of the Tree of Harmony and imbued with the power to safely hold those six mares whom we would entrust our future to.”

Scarlet gasped, feeling as if her heart had just stopped in her chest for a second. She had heard legends of the Tree of Harmony before. It had been mentioned from time to time in religious scriptures she had read through prior to the war. According to them, it was long gone, but if what Spike had just said was true, then not only was the lamp made from its roots, but all of the crystals that were used in Arcane Engines were as well.

But that surprising revelation paled in comparison to the implication Spike’s words had carried. “W-wait. You mean to tell us that…?” she trailed off, her eyes lowering to stare at Primrose as she pulled the lamp out of her saddlebags.

Spike nodded. “I do. Princess Twilight Sparkle and her five friends were sealed within, albeit with some protest. They were only to be released when the battle came to an end, and it was safe for them to return; that they might work to pick up the pieces. It was entrusted to a Free Changeling named Ocellus, a good friend of mine, and I was assigned to safeguard her and Flurry Heart at all costs by Shining Armor and Cadance.”

“Only a few ponies were taught how to undo the seal,” Flurry said. She rested a hoof against her chest. “And I was one of them. I was only a few years old at the time, so it’s all kind of hazy for me, but… I do remember my part.”

“Starlight and the other Princesses were the only others to know how to unlock the seal,” Spike went on. “But just in case they failed to defeat Chrysalis, I was to take Flurry and Ocellus as far as I could from the fighting and protect them with my life until such time as we were to set Twilight free…”

Flurry’s ears drooped, her eyes becoming glued to the floor. “Unfortunately, things didn’t quite go as planned…”

Spike sighed, shaking his head. “The swarm came faster than we had been expecting. Flurry, Ocellus, and I were barely able to escape the first clash with our lives. Some few changelings saw us running and came to stop us, and in the chaos… we lost track of Ocellus. And she had the lamp…”

Flurry sighed before looking down at the last of Scarlet’s bite wounds. “We never saw her again. Chrysalis was defeated, but the Empire had been reduced to rubble. Once the dust settled, Spike and I spent years roaming our brutalized home, trying to find Ocellus. We found a few free changelings here and there, but none of them knew where she was… and many of them were murdered by ponies who had survived the war, driven to fear and paranoia by all they had been forced to endure.”

Spike growled low in his throat. “Eventually, we realized that those feral changelings who had survived the final battle were still operating off of Chrysalis’ final orders to them… to kill me, Flurry, and anything and everything that was not another feral changeling. Our search for Ocellus only painted a target on our backs, and soon we were being accosted almost daily by Ferals. It got to the point where I couldn’t search for Ocellus and keep Flurry safe at the same time, and so… we fled… and eventually, we found this mountain valley.”

Flurry pulled back from Scarlet, having finally closed the last of her wounds. “Once I was old enough to take care of myself, Spike started venturing out into the world to look for Ocellus and the lamp again, but… he never found either. And before we knew it, it had been decades.”

“I did find a few free changelings, and I brought them back with me,” Spike elaborated with a roll of his wrist. “But they had all been mere nymphs when the Fall took place. They knew nothing of Ocellus or where to find her…”

“And so we came up with a plan,” Flurry went on with a tiny smile. “A way to help those changelings who survived the Fall, and hopefully bring the lamp back to us without us having to show ourselves to the feral changelings that still hunt us to this day.”

Primrose gasped and took a few steps forward. “Sanctuary! You started telling others about Sanctuary!” she exclaimed in realization.

Flurry nodded. “We did. Disguised as a unicorn, I went on a few personal expeditions into the world, finding free changelings wherever I could and telling them about this mythical place where changelings could live peacefully and happily, and that it was protected by two powerful guardians.”

“A few of the free changelings we sheltered here volunteered to spend their remaining days spreading the word, as well. We didn’t give a precise location, though,” Spike pointed out with a snort. “With ponies as violent towards our desired population as they were, we needed to keep it vague, so that only changelings who found the rare, scattered clues would ever be able to find it. And so it became a fable… a legend. A story that just so happened to be true.”

Flurry smiled a warm, tender smile, slowly trotting up to Primrose and Sclera, her eyes affixed to the lamp. “And it worked… it took four hundred years, but finally, the lamp is here… my aunt is here…”

Lens trotted over to the two changelings with an awed expression on his face. He adjusted his glasses before an enormous, giddy smile broke out on his face.

Scarlet braced herself.

“By the Five, this is incredible! You have got to tell me everything about what Equestria was like before the Fall! There is so much we could learn from you, so many ways we could improve life in the modern world! Technology, culture, history, philosophy! You were Twilight Sparkle’s assistant, so I am sure you know all about it! Wait, hang on, I think I have a-”

“Okay, first of all, stop,” Spike cut him off in a deadpan. “Secondly… why ask the assistant when you can ask the mare herself?”

“It would take a few days to open the seal,” Flurry pointed out with a thoughtful hum. “I need to get familiar with it again, and then I need to actually undo the convoluted thing. But I can totally do it!”

“Th-the mare… the mare hers… aha… ah…” Lens began to babble incoherently, swaying in place.

Scarlet rolled her eyes and stood up, offering up silent thanks for the lack of agony she experienced at the motion. She trotted over to Lens and gently tugged him to the side. “Lens, Lens, hey. Eyes over here,” she instructed, focusing the stallion’s attention. “Breathe. You know how to do that, I hope?”

Lens began to take deep breaths.

Spike chuckled in amusement. “Ha. You know, that pony reminds me of Twilight in a lot of ways.”

“Nevermind him,” Scarlet called over. “He just gets… excited.”

“I can see that,” Flurry giggled.

A few amused noises went throughout the room before Sclera suddenly spoke up. “So… Ocellus fled the Crystal Empire with the lamp, and the lamp has been in my family for generations. And Spike, you said that there was a family resemblance you recognized... Does this mean that Primrose and I are descendants of Ocellus?”

The laughter died down somewhat. Spike adjusted himself before lowering his head to be at the changeling mother’s level. He smiled. “I saw it the moment I laid eyes on you. There is no doubting it… you are the distant grandchildren of one of my oldest friends… you have carried on her legacy for all this time, and I can only imagine how much you all suffered as a result…”

“Yet still you have it,” Flurry added in a gentle voice, smiling down at Primrose. “Through all of the loss and pain, you have carried on your grandmother’s duty… and now…” she gently lifted her hooves as if to accept something. “You’ve seen her mission to its end. I can take it from here, if you will let me...”

“If I let you…?” Primrose echoed in confusion. “What do you mean? Isn’t it your lamp?”

Flurry shook her head. “It means the world to me, yes, but… at the end of the day, it was never me, nor my family who gave our lives and our happiness to keep it safe. That has always been you and yours. If you wish to hold onto it, then… I will not force you to give it up…”

Primrose’s eyes widened. She looked down at the lamp for several long seconds. She turned it over in her hooves several times, tracing its edges and looking at the long-faded runes etched into the base. Then, with a smile, she lifted it up and placed it delicately into Flurry’s hooves. “I’ve lost family after family for this thing… I don’t want their deaths to be for nothing,” she whispered before backing up into Sclera’s waiting hooves.

Flurry stared at the lamp for a moment before giving a stiff, dumbfounded nod. She smiled and bowed her head. “Thank you… from the bottom of my heart, a million times, thank you. I can finally get my family back...”

“And maybe,” Spike added, reaching out and gently draping one of his fingers over Flurry’s back. “Just maybe, we can finally start to make things right…”

Primrose nodded with a quiet ‘mhmm!’ of confirmation. She then let out a quizzical chirp when Sclera pulled her back into her chest.

Sclera leaned down to offer her foal an affectionate nuzzle, cuddling her close to her heart. “We did it, Protea,” she whispered, closing her eyes as tears began to leak out of them. “You did it… I know your father and brothers would all be very, very proud of you… and so am I.”

Primrose nodded, returning the hug and closing her eyes.

Scarlet watched the two for a moment, smiling widely at the tender scene. She trotted over and reached out to ruffle Primrose’s head as if she still had hair. “I’m proud of you too, Prim… for whatever my pride is worth.”

Primrose cracked open an eye to look up at her. “To me? Everything,” she whispered.

Scarlet recoiled slightly. “...Truly?”

Primrose lifted up a hoof as in invitation. “Like I told you back in the inn… you’re like another mother to me,” she said with a tearful smile. “Even if you were kinda mean that day…”

Scarlet’s heart twisted in her chest. Barely stifling a sob, she staggered forwards and fell into the embrace. Her entire body relaxed as both Primrose and Sclera wrapped their hooves around her, surrounding her in warmth and affection. A second later, another pair of hooves joined the pile from behind her, and she heard Lens giving off a quiet hum of contentment.

Scarlet knew that their troubles weren’t over just yet, but… for this one, magical moment, she was able to forget all about that and just bask in their accomplishment, and the loving warmth of the most important creatures in her life.

Author's Note

So, it goes without saying that Discord never pulled the whole Grogar thing in this timeline. In essence, this story was conceived before the final season went live, and so it doesn't include that stuff.

But yeah, there you have it. All of the answers about that friggin' Lamp. Twilight Sparkle and her five friends are sealed within, and it now falls to Flurry to see them released.

Sanctuary

Scarlet didn’t know for sure how long she had remained like that, enveloped in that warm group hug, but it did, eventually, have to come to an end. She slowly inched out of the embrace with a shaky smile, looking down into Primrose’s eyes. The filly looked back up at her from her mother’s embrace, returning the smile enthusiastically.

After a moment, Sclera looked up to Spike, a question in her eyes. “So, what happens now?” she asked.

Spike shrugged. “To be frank? Hell if I know. This is all pretty surreal, not gonna lie. For now, though, this is where your work ends, and ours begins,” he replied before nodding towards the glyph door they had come through. “You’re all welcome to stay in Sanctuary for the time being. Sclera, Primrose, you two are welcome to live here if it is your choice.”

“What about us?” Lens asked. He settled down next to Scarlet, draping a foreleg over her shoulders. “I know we aren’t changelings. Are you going to ask us to leave at some point?”

“Possibly,” Spike replied without missing a beat.

Scarlet’s ears drooped, her gaze flicking down to Prim again. Judging by the uneasy look on the filly’s face, she was having the same thought. If Scarlet and Lens were asked to leave, that would most likely mean leaving Sclera and Primrose behind…

“If that is what comes to pass,” Scarlet thought after a moment with a deep breath. “I can take comfort in the knowledge that they are safe here.”

Spike continued a second later. “It all depends on how you conduct yourselves. I brought you here as an exception to the rules because you were guarding the drones who had the Lamp, but until I can truly get a measure of you, I won’t be making any promises one way or the other.”

Scarlet nodded her head. “I understand.”

“Good,” Spike said. He glanced down at Flurry, who was still looking over the Lamp. “Now, if you don’t mind, Flurry and I need some time alone. You’re free to explore Sanctuary to your heart’s content. If you need to move into another chamber, ask the guards by the paths, they can open the way. If you get lost, ask one of the drones, and they can give you directions.”

Primrose lifted herself up onto her hind legs, excitedly placing her hooves on her mother’s chest. “You hear that, mom?! We get to explore! Come on!” she squealed in delight before shooting passed her mother for the glyph door.

Spike lifted a claw. “Er, now hang on-”

Splat.

“Oooow!”

Scarlet grimaced as Primrose flew face-first into the glyph door. She slowly slid down it with a comical squeaking sound, like a frog slipping down dry glass, before plopping to the floor with an agitated huff.

Spike lowered the claw. “...See, you’re not attuned to the Hive yet, so you can’t open the way.”

Lens grinned. “Attunement to the Hive? That’s fascinating.”

Primrose shot her hooves into the air. “No! It’s stupid!”

Sclera hid her giggles behind a hoof. “I don’t know, Protea. Lens makes a good point. The sound you just made was very intriguing.”

“Moooom!”

Scarlet rolled her eyes.

The next few hours passed by in something of a blur. The group, with a bit of help from Flurry to open the way, left behind the Thrones to explore the rest of Sanctuary. They didn’t really have any direction at first, and so just aimlessly meandered around to take in the sights. Scarlet hung in the back of the group, listening in to the idle chatter of the others, but only rarely offering her own input. Her mind was elsewhere.

For one thing, she was still reeling from the sheer volume of information that had just been dumped on all of them. Learning so much about the Fall in such a short span of time had done wonders to throw her brain into overdrive, causing her to reevaluate almost everything she knew of that murky period of pony history. This was only compounded by the Lamp’s intrinsic connection to that apocalypse.

Scarlet paused at an intersection for a moment. She looked up towards the cave ceiling, catching sight of another large bundle of resin that cast its subtle green glow over the entire chamber.

“In the next few days, Princess Twilight Sparkle will return to the world,” she thought to herself, her brow furrowing at the notion. “And Spike seemed sure that there will be much work to be done when she is released… he had said they might begin to set things right.”

A few changelings passed her by, each of them giving her a questioning look. There was a little nymph in their midst, a green one perhaps two or three years younger than Primrose with a bright red shell that matched his crimson eyes. He looked up at her before looking up at who Scarlet assumed was his mother. “Mommy? What’s that?” he asked innocently.

The mother ushered him on with a whispered scolding. She shot Scarlet a careful glance over her shoulder as if she were afraid the unicorn might lash out at any moment. Scarlet stared after her with an impassive look and a subtle tingling sensation at the base of her skull. She shook her head and looked away before breaking into a canter to catch up to the others.

While her mood was significantly improved from earlier thanks in large part to Flurry’s healing, she was unable to shake an unsettling feeling on the base of her neck. Part of it was the fact that she was still surrounded by changelings on all sides, many of whom stared with uncertainty and fear. Spike hadn’t spread the word about their purpose yet, and if Primrose’s life was any indication of what they had been forced to endure before coming here, most of these changelings had plenty of reason to be skeptical of her.

But there was something else making her uncomfortable, and it was arguably even worse. She couldn’t quite put her hoof on it, though. Whatever it was, it made her eyes dart at the shadows whenever something moved that she hadn’t spotted before, which was usually just another changeling going about their day.

Up ahead, Primrose suddenly came to a stop and turned around to look at her. “Scarlet? What’s wrong?” she asked directly, her eyes meeting the unicorn’s.

Scarlet froze. “W-what…?”

Primrose frowned, stepping up to her while the others turned to look. “Scarlet, I know what you’re feeling, remember? I can see and taste it all the time. And right now, you’re…” she scrunched up her muzzle. “...Scared? Angry? I dunno. Something like that.”

“I can attest to that,” Sclera agreed softly, coming up to stand next to her daughter. “Although I chose to hold my peace… I cannot say I know you nearly as well as Primrose does. It wasn’t my place to pry.”

Scarlet took a step back. “I…” she choked out, trying and failing to find the words to express her feelings.

Lens was quick to join them, although judging by the uneasy look on his face, it wasn’t to press the subject. “H-hey, don’t gang up on her,” he cut in, putting a hoof in front of them to halt their questions. He met Scarlet’s gaze directly. “...If she doesn’t want to talk about it, we shouldn’t force her. We saw what happened last time…”

Primrose visibly wilted at the reminder, scuffing her hoof on the floor. “...right. Sorry, Scarlet,” she apologized in a meek little whisper.

Scarlet was briefly taken aback, but was quick to regain her senses. She shook her head and brushed Lens’ hoof aside. She gave him an appreciative smile. “Thank you, Lens, but I can speak for myself, thank you,” she said gently before lowering herself down to be closer to Primrose’s eye level.

The nymph took a step forward, looking deep into Scarlet’s eyes with concern. “Scarlet…?” she whispered.

Scarlet sighed and looked down. Even now, she had a hard time meeting the foal’s gaze. “I’m not sure,” she said, a simple half-lie. “Something just feels off to me. Maybe I’m just paranoid and weary from the journey, but…” she stood up and looked around at the chamber they were in, at the various homes and the changelings who occupied them.

“Something just doesn’t feel right. It’s almost like...” she turned back to Primrose. “Have you ever noticed how you can smell rain moments before it starts coming down? How your instincts warn you about it?”

Primrose nodded her head slowly. “Yeah, kinda. Why?”

Scarlet glanced up, her brow angling down into an unsettled grimace. “It’s kind of like that. I feel like something big is coming our way… I just don’t know what.”

Lens reached out to put a hoof on her shoulder, a reassuring smile on his face. “Hey, we’ll be fine. It’s probably just the shock of everything that’s happened recently.”

Scarlet placed her hoof on his to anchor herself before smiling back. “Maybe you’re right… but just to be sure, I’ll be keeping an eye on our backs, if it’s all the same to you.”

Lens nodded before pulling his hoof away. “Alright. Just don’t work yourself too hard.”

Scarlet managed a short laugh at that. “Ha! You and I both know that I’m not likely to follow that advice.”

“Maybe if I tied you down somewhere you’d be forced to rest,” Lens suggested jokingly.

Scarlet chuckled at the idea before lidding her eyes at him. “Oh? I would like to see you try.”

For a second, Lens seemed confused by her tone. A tiny red blush appeared on his cheeks, signifying that it clicked, and he spoke again, this time lowering his tone to match. “Maybe I will.”

Sclera frowned at the display. “Can you not? My child is right here.”

Primrose turned to look up at her with a chirpy smile. “It’s okay, mom. I know what sex is already.”

Scarlet and Lens went rigid at that exchange, the red in their cheeks spreading to cover the entirety of their faces. Scarlet awkwardly coughed into her hoof, her tail twitching behind her in a display of embarrassment before she turned to face the changelings again.

“What’s sex?” a new voice suddenly asked from behind her, making her jump. Scarlet spun on the spot. She saw the very changeling nymph that had asked what she was a few feet away, staring at them all with a weird look on his face. “And what are you? Are you a pony? I’ve never seen a pony before, except for Flurry Heart.”

Lens and Scarlet shared a glance, silently agreeing to not answer the first of those questions.

“Yes, we’re ponies,” Lens acknowledged with a nod of his head. “I’m Sharp Lens, and this is Scarlet Frost.”

“Those are weird names,” The nymph said without missing a beat before grinning at them, his wings buzzing excitedly on his back. “But wow! Actual ponies! Haha! Did you come from outside? What’s it like?! How did you get here?! And why are those changelings behind you all holey?”

Scarlet and Lens both recoiled from the onslaught of questions. They shared a befuddled glance before Scarlet found her voice. “Well, uh, yes, we came from outside. It’s, uh…” she looked up. “...Very… big. Compared to this place. We got here thanks to Spike, and, uh…”

She frowned, glancing back at Primrose and Sclera, who were both watching the exchange with an odd mixture of excitement and trepidation. “They probably want to engage in the conversation, but it’s been so long since they’ve been around their own kind that they aren’t sure where to begin…”

Sclera, after a moment, managed to find her voice. She stepped forward to stand between Scarlet and Lens before settling down on her haunches. “It’s because my daughter and I are ‘incomplete.’ We’ve both gone for a very, very long time without being able to eat properly. It’s caused our bodies to start changing back to how we were a long, long time ago.”

“Oh. I get it, I think,” the nymph replied, scrunching up his muzzle while his little brain went to work. “You look kinda like what mommy says the cursed ones look like. But you’re nice.”

Sclera’s face fell, her smile fading away. “...The Ferals. No, we are not like them, and we never will be.”

The colt’s wings buzzed before he looked past Sclera to Primrose, who was peeking shyly out from behind her mother. The colt grinned. “Hiya! My name’s Larynx!” he greeted with a friendly wave. “What’s yours?”

Primrose’s eyes widened. “Uh… my name is Primrose,” She answered in surprise, her voice going briefly back to the quiet, timid whisper Scarlet had first heard from her in her cellar.

Larynx grinned enthusiastically. “Weird name, but I like it! Nice to meet ya, Primrose!”

Before the conversation could carry on any further, a new voice rang out from not far away. “Larynx! Where are you?!”

Everyone looked up, and Scarlet recognized who she assumed to be Larynx’s mother coming into view from behind a nearby building. The drone was pink in color with red eyes and a red shell that made it clear where her son got his from. Her eyes fell on Larynx, and then on his company.

Larynx spun to face her with a big grin. “Heya, mom! These are ponies! Cool, huh?!”

The mare cantered up to him, briefly shooting Scarlet and Lens an uneasy look. “Larynx! Oh, honey, you know you’re not supposed to go running off like that on your own!” she chastised him.

Larynx was not at all phased by her tone. “I know, but look! Ponies! Oh, oh!” he then pointed at Primrose. “And this is Primrose!”

The mare looked to Primrose, and then to Sclera. Her eyes quickly shot to Scarlet and Lens before focusing on Prim’s mother again. “O-oh, is that so? Eheh. I’m really sorry about him. The little knucklehead just gets excited,” she explained while hefting him up onto her back, a crooked grin on her face.

Sclera shook her head. “No, it’s quite alright. After everything we’ve been through lately, your little boy’s enthusiasm was very welcome. He… reminds me of one of my sons.”

The mare paused, giving Sclera a more thorough look. “You… you’re Hraesvalgr’s guests, aren’t you?” she asked after a moment, her tone becoming notably lower.

Sclera nodded. “Yes, we are. And you have nothing to fear from these ponies,” she assured while gesturing at Scarlet and Lens. “I owe them my life. Neither I nor my daughter would be here now if it weren’t for them.”

The mare didn’t look entirely convinced, but whatever doubts she had, she chose not to voice them just now. “I imagine there is quite a story behind them, isn’t there?” she asked.

“Oh! Oh!” Larynx thrust his hoof up into the air. “A story?! I wanna hear it?! Mom, can we hear it?!”

His mother blinked and leaned back. “Er…”

“Pleeeaaaase?!”

The conversation began to go back and forth. The words gradually began to fade from Scarlet’s mind as she watched the scene unfolding, smiling all the while. Sclera and Primrose looked so much more at peace then she was used to. Being amongst their own kind, their true selves revealed for the world to see without fear of retribution from those around them, and just getting to talk to another mother and her foal…

It was a sweet thing. A tender moment of true normalcy that they had gone for far too long without. Scarlet’s smile slowly began to grow. “I’m happy for them,” she thought to herself, looking down at Primrose in particular. “And I’m proud of you, Primrose. You’ve done so, so well to make it this far…”

Larynx and Primrose giggled at something together, their laughter ringing in Scarlet’s ears like a soothing lullaby. She slowly relaxed and closed her eyes, soaking in the wonderous noise and losing herself in it.

But as the conversation carried on, she slowly became aware of another feeling crawling up the base of her neck. The laughter ringing in her ears was distorting and deteriorating into heart-wrenching sobs. Scarlet’s brow furrowed, her heart beating just a little faster as the image of a certain unicorn filly flickered through her mind.

She was back in Swanrun, talking to a flower mare by a street corner, whose own foal was standing under her with a timid smile. And there, talking to the foal with a big grin, was Crystal Clear…

Scarlet’s eyes snapped open, forcing the unwanted memory to depart in favor of the present. She focused on the others, suddenly feeling unbearably lonely and, once again, obsolete. Sclera and Primrose were happy right now, being a mother and daughter, truly and openly, for the first time in five years.

For a fraction of a second, for one shameful moment, Scarlet inwardly wished that she had never rescued Sclera so that she would be the one standing there, talking to Larynx and his mother with smiles and warmth. She was quick to shut down the notion, looking down at the floor.

“I can’t be so selfish,” she chastised herself, gritting her teeth silently behind her lips. “Primrose has her family back, and I made that happen. I rescued her mother. I’m happy for them, I am… I am…”

But just because she was happy for them, that didn’t mean she was happy for herself.

“...I’m never going to get that feeling back, am I?”

Larynx’s mother sent Scarlet another uneasy look, as if she were keeping tabs on her to make sure she wasn’t a threat. The stare sent an indignant chill down Scarlet’s spine, followed by a harrowing one. Instinctual disgust and anger churned in her stomach, heating her veins. Images of gnashing fangs and spraying blood and the empty eyes of a dead child flashed before her before she forced them down.

She closed her eyes again and took a series of deep breaths to try and calm herself down. Sadly, with her eyes closed, the sounds around her became agonizingly clear: the buzzing of wings, the subtle chittering noises made by drones as they went about their day, the slippery scrape of chitin on resin, of stone pulling open to admit yet more changelings to pass through.

All of those noises and so many more wormed their way into her ears, crawling over her brain like an army of malevolent insects hell-bent on ripping away her sanity. An involuntary shudder ran down her spine.

“Scarlet?”

Scarlet’s eyes snapped open when she heard Primrose’s voice. She briefly looked down, her eyes meeting those of the changeling nymph. For a fraction of a second, she was staring down into the empty eyes of Crystal’s corpse, and then the savage glare of a feral changeling.

Scarlet shook her head to dispel the mental image before turning away. “Forgive me, I just… I need some time to myself,” she suddenly excused. Without looking back, she trotted away from the group, making her way for the exit. She could feel their confused stares boring into the back of her head, but she couldn’t find it in herself to really care just then. She needed to see the sky. She needed air, she needed space, she needed to just get away from all of this noise.

As she went, she could not ignore the many pairs of glowing orbs that stared at her from the darkness.

Commitment

Scarlet had eventually managed to blunder her way out of Sanctuary and found her way to a nice, empty hill a few minutes’ walk away from the cavernous entrance. Once she was sure she was alone, she crumpled into the grass and began taking deep breaths to reign in her mind and get herself under control.

The peaceful atmosphere did wonders to ease her frayed nerves; the gentle rustling of the breeze washing through the valley, the distant chirps of birds singing their final songs before turning in for the night—the soothing sound of the waves crashing upon the shore of the lake was especially calming to her. If she closed her eyes for a moment, she could imagine she was back in Swanrun, listening to the ocean from one of the city’s many overlooks.

Slowly but surely, the light of the sun began to dip below the horizon. The dusky colors of sunset fled the world, replaced with the pale glow of the full moon as it began its ascent. Scarlet opened her eyes to look up at the distant celestial object, taking comfort in the peaceful serenity provided by its blank, white surface. The only thing marring the peace of the night sky was the thick front of black clouds far off in the distance, slowly drawing closer. There would be a storm later.

It must have been at least an hour before her solitude was disturbed. Her ear twitched at the sound of hooves approaching through the grass. Curious, she glanced behind her to see Sharp Lens walking forward to join her on the hill.

“Hey,” he called out quietly.

Scarlet hummed, dipping her head in a small nod of acknowledgment before looking ahead again.

Lens settled down next to her, close enough that she could feel his body heat mingling with her own. “How are you feeling, Scarlet?” he asked after a few seconds. “You left so suddenly. We all got kind of worried about you when you didn’t come back.”

Scarlet didn’t answer right away. In truth, she didn’t know how to answer that question. Her emotions had been so wild and chaotic over the day, running from exhausted grief to various states of shock, and then to feelings of hope and loneliness in equal measure. In the end, she settled for a simple shrug of her shoulders. “I’m fine. A little overwhelmed, but… fine,” she said, lowering her head to rest her chin on her hooves. “It’s just been a very long day.”

Lens managed a weak chuckle at that. He draped a foreleg over her shoulders in a comforting side hug. “Ha. Yeah, it really has,” he agreed quietly. “But I think it went pretty well, all things considered.”

Scarlet nodded. “Perhaps…”

A few seconds passed. Lens stared at her as if expecting her to continue. When she did not, he let off a quiet sigh and gave her another squeeze. “I… don’t suppose that paranoid feeling you were having earlier is any better, is it?” he asked anxiously.

Scarlet huffed. “It was doing better until you reminded me,” she said, a small smirk of morbid amusement playing across her muzzle.

Lens shuffled sheepishly at the remark. “Er, sorry… I’m just worried about you, that’s all.”

Scarlet gave him a tiny smile. She turned to face him directly, finding their muzzles mere inches apart. “I know, Lens, and I appreciate it,” she whispered while returning the side hug. His warmth did wonders to chase away the chill settling into her coat, though it did little for the chill that had set up shop in her heart.

The two remained like this for a short time before Lens looked up at the sky, his smile slowly fading away. “...Prim and Sclera talked about it a little bit before I came out here. They plan to stay here, settle down, start a new life,” he said slowly.

“I figured they might,” Scarlet acknowledged, closing her eyes. “They were looking for this place for years. It was their ray of hope for a long, long time, and with Spike and Flurry Heart watching over them, they will be safe from any threat to come their way… And they can live among their own kind here, free from the hate of the ponies. This is where they belong.”

Lens didn’t say anything at first. He seemed to struggle with his words for a moment before looking to Scarlet again. “...I’m staying with them.”

Scarlet’s eyes widened, and she turned to look at Lens in shock. “W-what?”

Lens adjusted his glasses. “As long as Spike and Flurry let me, I plan to stay here. There’s so much I can learn… so many things I could use to improve the world in the future. Maybe, as a pony living here, I could someday help put down all of the fear and hatred around changelings so that the free ones can live peacefully among them without fear of summary execution.”

“A-ah,” Scarlet choked out, a bead of dread forming in her throat and refusing to go down. She stared at him for a short while, her mind suddenly awash with anxiety and doubt. She hadn’t really thought about what she was going to do now. All of the chaos of the day had left her no room to really think about it. Now, though…

Lens gave her a warm, encouraging smile. “Or, well, I guess I should say there’s so much we can learn. Secrets of the past, long lost history. A chance to meet with your idol among the Five, Twilight Sparkle. Getting to just settle down and relax. Think about it. You, me, Sclera and Primrose, not running for our lives twenty-four-seven...”

He reached out and touched a hoof to Scarlet’s cheek. She closed her eyes and leaned into it, hoping his warmth would chase away her anxiety. When he spoke next, his words were lower and quieter, a whisper to the deepest desire of her soul. “The four of us, living together… A simple life…”

Scarlet reached her own hoof to touch his, soaking in the warmth and affection she knew the stallion next to her was feeling. After a moment, she opened her eyes to meet his. It really did sound like a dream come true. The simple life she had been craving for so long. The simple life she had missed ever since she had lost Crystal. Maybe they could start up an apple farm of their own out here in these fields.

She could already picture it in her mind, in an exaggerated way. She could see herself and Lens out tending to the trees while Primrose ran around with some other changeling nymphs, maybe that Larynx kid. She could see Sclera watching over them from the front porch of a simple wooden house with a relaxed smile on her face.

It all sounded so perfect to Scarlet. But the more she thought about it, the more the unavoidable downside of the arrangement began to gnaw at her. Glowing eyes peered at her from the depths of her mind, sending a chill down her spine and sending her thoughts into doubt.

She struggled with herself for what felt like forever. But, in the end, she came to her decision. She heaved a reluctant sigh, lowered her hoof, and looked away. “...It sounds wonderful, Lens, but… I’m afraid I can’t stay with you.”

“What?” Lens asked, surprised. “What do you mean? Why not?”

Scarlet looked to the north, her ears lowering. “I intend to continue on my way to Lover’s Shade and find my grandmother. As safe as this place is, we are still wanted fugitives here, Lens, and…” she let off a quiet sigh and turned to face him. “...My place is with my family.”

Lens stared at her incredulously. He closed his mouth, working his jaw from side to side with a thoughtful frown. “I mean… I get what you’re saying, but…” he gestured behind them towards the cave. “Aren’t we your family too? Prim, Sclera, and I?”

Scarlet looked down. “...Maybe, once. But whatever I had with Primrose is gone… and she doesn’t need me anymore, anyway. She has her mother back, she has you to be a father figure… she doesn’t need me, the broken war veteran who almost killed her in a fit of grief-induced lunacy.”

“Even if we didn’t need you, Scarlet—which I can assure you, we do—we would still want you,” Lens countered without missing a beat. “Come on… you… y-you know that Primrose loves you like a mother, and you know that I love you, too. I have for a long time… I’d love nothing more than to spend the rest of my life with you.”

Scarlet managed to put on a tiny smile at the open declaration of affection. Her cheeks tinted red just slightly before she looked up to meet his gaze. “...I would love that, too, but… I just… I can’t do that here.”

“Why not? What’s stopping you?”

Scarlet grimaced. She turned her head to look away from him to hide the shame burning in her eyes. “You know my story, Lens. You know the answer already…”

A heavy silence fell between them. She felt Lens slowly tensing up next to her, and her very soul froze over. Lens shuffled a little closer, his leg draped over her giving her another squeeze. “...It’s the changelings,” he deduced after a moment.

Scarlet nodded. “I know they aren’t the beasts that murdered our child, but… I can’t help it. I lay eyes on one, and my stomach churns with disgust, and my skull burns with hatred… I can’t live among them no matter how much I love you and Primrose. I would only make life harder on all of you, and I am sure that Spike wouldn’t tolerate my bullshit for very long.”

“That’s not true,” Lens countered, his voice firm. “Even if you did make things harder on us, we don’t care. I don’t care. We’re more than happy to shoulder that burden if it means we get to keep you with us. We can work through it together, Scarlet. We can help you... but only if you stay with us.”

Scarlet’s heart warmed, and she turned to face him again. He was mere inches away from her, now, his eyes boring into hers and pleading desperately. “Please, Scarlet… I lost you once already… I don’t want to lose you again. I want a chance to experience everything I missed with you…”

“Lens…” Scarlet breathed, her heart beating harder against her ribs. She simply stared at him, slack-jawed for several seconds, at a loss for words. “...I… I don’t…”

A scream sliced through the air like a sharpened dagger through an exposed throat.

Scarlet’s blood ran cold, and she was up on her hooves in a moment, spinning to face the source of the noise. Her eyes were drawn to the south and the orchards that resided there. Changeling drones were fleeing from the trees, heading for the cave entrance in a blind panic. Scarlet’s eyes widened. “What’s happening?!”

Lens was standing up a second later. “I don’t know!”

Scarlet took a few steps forward, searching for the source of the changeling’s fear. And then she saw the smoke.

Scarlet’s eyes widened as a column of dark smoke rose up from the other side of the orchard, snaking high into the air like a beacon of death. The illumination from beneath made it clear that a fire had started, and it was spreading fast.

“A fire? But how did it start?!” Scarlet asked in alarm. Already, she was formulating ideas and plans on how to try and halt the spread of the flames. She could use her magic to try and create gusts of wind, or Lens could form a barrier over the fire to hold it back while others went to fetch water from the lake.

Lens shakily adjusted his glasses before pointing. “L-look…”

Scarlet followed his hoof, dreading what she would find. Her pupils shrank when she caught sight of shadowy figures flying through the air over the orchard, the moonlight reflecting off of them to reveal the weapons they were wielding.

“Griffons…” she choked out, her legs going numb beneath her. This wasn’t an accident. That fire was deliberate.

Griffons were invading Sanctuary.

Images of blood-soaked battlefields flashed through her mind. Her ears rang with the screams of ponies falling to their deaths after being hauled into the heavens by griffon soldiers, and she could taste the dirt in her mouth and feel the warm blood against her face. She saw the face of a griffon, barely older than she was, staring back up at her. Blood bubbled free from an open wound in his throat, his beak open in a silent scream.

She pulled herself out of the flashback and focused. “Now is not the time to lose myself!” she thought before surveying the scene again. Her eyes were drawn up above the rest of the invading force, catching sight of a griffon far larger than the others. Flying next to him was a pegasus in a billowing cloak. She could just make out the silhouette of the pony’s head from here, and the ice in her veins was replaced with fire as the realization clicked into place.

“It’s Silent Edge!” she spat, her lips peeling back into an angered grimace. “That son of a bitch…”

“What?!” Lens echoed, soon catching sight of the rogue Nightblade himself. “But how?! Wouldn’t the councils execute him after learning about his crimes?! And where did he get an army of griffons?!”

Scarlet snarled, scuffing the grass with a hoof. “I don’t know. Maybe he made a damn good case in his defense,” she said. “As for the griffons, who cares?! They’re attacking Sanctuary!”

“What do we do?!”

Scarlet watched one of the griffons dive from the sky, swinging his sword through the neck of a fleeing changeling stallion. A spray of gore and viscera splattered across the ground as his head was severed, and his decapitated corpse crumpled with no fanfare. Her stomach churned in horror as she took in the scene.

The changelings… they were all so scared. They were all fleeing for their lives, crying out in panic, or turning back to aid loved ones who had fallen or been attacked. But the blade work of the griffons was precise, and most were cut down without hesitation. Screams filled the air, and over all of them, she could just make out words.

“Please! No! No, no, no, NO!”

“Run! For Flurry’s sake, RUN!”

“Where’s my nymph! Where is he?!”

“Help me! Someone, anyone, please help me!”

“Stop, STOP!”

They were terrified… nothing at all like the monsters she knew.

Her mind returned once more to the first griffon she had killed, and the realization she had felt then flashed through her mind now. “They are no different from me,” Scarlet told herself, her eyes narrowing as fire and rage began to flood her veins, all of it directed at the stallion she knew was behind this senseless slaughter. “And they don’t deserve this…”

“Lens,” she barked, her voice turning firm with resolve. Her eyes never once left the silhouette of Silent Edge. “Get back inside and warn everyone. Find Primrose and keep her safe, do you understand me?”

Lens blinked. “What about you?!” he asked.

Scarlet turned to him. “I’m going to stall them. I can buy you some time to prepare a defense, but you have to run, and you have to run now.”

Lens’ eyes flew wide as saucers. “What?! I can’t just leave you out here, he’ll kill you!”

“We don’t have time to argue, Lens!” Scarlet shot back, placing her hoof on his chest to shove him back. “Get inside and keep Primrose safe! That is an order!”

“No, I’m not abandoning you to die!”

Scarlet snarled, keenly aware of just how close the slaughter was becoming. Without wasting a second, she did the one thing she knew for sure would shut Lens up. She reached out and hooked a foreleg around the back of his neck before dragging him into an abrupt kiss.

Whatever he was going to say next, the words died in his throat. A second later, Scarlet pulled away, staring deep into his eyes. “Please, Lens… just do as I say,” she whispered to him.

“B-but… Scarlet…”

“Before we came here, you asked me when I would be ready to forgive myself…” she went on, placing the tip of her hoof against his lips to silence him. “And the answer is right now. Let this be my atonement…”

Lens mouthed uselessly like a fish for several seconds before offering a stiff nod. “A-alright… but we’re coming to help you as soon as we can.”

Scarlet gave him a tender smile. “I wouldn’t have it any other way…” her smile faded, replaced with the stern frown of a mare ready to go to war. “Now move it, soldier!”

Lens stepped back. He visibly hesitated for a moment before his face hardened. He set his jaw and gave her a salute. “Yes, ma’am!” he stated before turning and sprinting off for the cave as fast as he could.

Scarlet watched him go, inwardly regretting that she didn’t take the chance to memorize his face. “I’m not likely to survive this, anyway…” With a deep breath, she latched onto what little remained of her cloak with her magic and tore it away, leaving just the yoke to hang around her neck. Another flicker of magic pulled out the scraps of blue fabric that had been used to bind her wounds, and with a swift flourish and a stray branch resting in the grass, a tattered, bloody blue banner had been assembled.

Scarlet turned to face the oncoming army of griffons. They were just about done clearing out the orchard already, and what few changelings had managed to slip away had already vanished into the caves. The force was amassing on the ground with the large griffon and Silent at their head.

With a deep, shuddering breath, Scarlet held her banner up high in her magic and slowly began to approach the advancing army.

For a moment, the troops appeared ready to charge her and rip her apart, but the lead griffon lifted a claw, silently commanding them to hold back. Scarlet came to a stop as Silent and the griffon came forward to meet her.

Silent’s voice cut through the darkness of the night. “You came alone,” he said. A simple statement of fact.

Scarlet nodded behind him. “You brought a small army.”

Silent briefly glanced back at the griffons who Scarlet now recognized as the very mercenaries she had spotted back in Newcanter. “So I did…” he mused before glaring up at her rough approximation of a blue banner. “...If you have aught to say, say it now. I am not here to negotiate with a known terrorist.”

Scarlet grimaced, her eyes falling to the lead griffon. “Aren’t you going to introduce me to your new friend, first?”

“Garius, former soldier under the mad king of Talonreach, now the captain of the sorry lot you see behind me,” the griffon answered without hesitation. “And you are?”

Scarlet held her head high. “Scarlet Frost, former Sergeant of the New Equestrian military. And now, as Silent so eloquently put it, a wanted fugitive accused of terrorism and treason.”

“You’re a veteran, too, are ya?” Garius asked with a raised eyebrow. “Huh. Wonder if we ever fought on the same battlefield.”

“That is far from the point,” Scarlet dismissed with a shake of her head. “And not at all why I am speaking to you now.”

“Then get to the point, Frost,” Silent shot back, a visible twitch in his eye. “You have caused me enough trouble, and I am only allowing you to speak now out of respect for whatever is left of our friendship.”

Scarlet met Silent’s gaze for a second before turning back to Garius. “Garius, what did Silent Edge tell you about this valley?”

“Frankly, that’s none of yer damn business,” Garius rebuked gruffly. “We were hired to help him, we’re helping him, and then we’re getting paid back in Newcanter. The details of our contract have nothing to do with you.”

“I can assure you,” Scarlet went on, undeterred. “Whatever he has told you, it is far from the whole truth. The changelings of this valley are of no threat to you or anypony else. I implore you, Garius, please, order your men to withdraw and abandon this bloody course. I would rather avoid recreating a battle from that damned war if I can help it.”

“That so? And why’s that?”

“Because I don’t want to see innocent creatures die,” Scarlet explained. “Ponies, griffons, changelings, it doesn’t matter. I know not what course of events led you to pick up the life of sellswords, and it isn’t my business. But as one war veteran to another, I beseech you… just walk away. Whatever Silent is paying you is not worth the terrible genocide you and yours are about to commit.”

Garius raised an eyebrow at her before letting out a low, low chuckle. “Ha. Miss, I hate to break it to ya, but even if I had reason to believe you, I wouldn’t turn my back on my word once it’s been given. My lads and I are here for the coin we were promised, not for some just, righteous cause. It’s nice that you seemingly have those ideals, and I applaud that, but I can tell you now your words are falling on deaf ears, lass.”

Scarlet withered as her hopes of preventing an all-out battle were scattered to the winds. “...And nothing can dissuade you from this course?”

“Not unless you can pay us better then he is,” Garius replied, jerking his head towards Silent. “And his pay is on top of what the council is givin’ us.”

Scarlet sighed and shook her head. “I see… a shame.”

Silent took a step forward. “A noble effort, Scarlet, but ultimately pointless,” he mocked. “You can’t stop me. This is happening, and no matter how hard you try, there is not a chance in hell you can hope to defeat us.”

Scarlet lifted her gaze to meet his. “...Whoever said I was trying to stop all of you?”

Silent raised an eyebrow. “What?”

Scarlet cast aside the blue banner and pointed a hoof at Silent Edge. “I am here to stop you, Silent, and only you. I, Scarlet Frost, challenge you, Silent Edge!”

Silent snorted in amused disbelief. “You are challenging me, Scarlet? Did you forget the small army I brought with me? Why would I bother humoring such a ridiculous request?”

Scarlet lowered her hoof. “Because you are a proud hunter, Silent Edge,” she said slowly. “And I am your prey. I have slipped away from you time and time again, and you cannot let that insult to your pride go unpunished, and you would never allow someone else to steal that from you. My death shall be brought about by your blade or none at all.”

Silent’s eyes widened in surprise for a moment. He didn’t say anything for several seconds, making Scarlet fear he was about to deny her reasoning.

He then got a soft, almost friendly smile on his face. “...You know me too well, Frost,” he acknowledged before turning back to Garius. “Take your men and head inside. Kill anything that gets in your way and bring down that dragon. If you find any children or another pony, capture them for interrogation. I shall be along shortly.”

Garius eyed Silent from the side for a few seconds before shrugging and giving off an annoyed grunt. “Bah. Should have asked for more money,” he grumbled before gesturing for his comrades to follow him. The griffons took to the air, flying past Silent and Scarlet. An intense wind kicked up as dozens of pairs of wings flowed through the air, making Scarlet’s mane billow back in the wind. From where she stood, it almost looked like the griffons were coming out of Silent, as if he were some sort of eldritch portal to the darkest days of her life.

Then the griffons passed, and silence fell over the two of them. A gentle breeze washed by, making the grass sway lazily. The distant rumbling of the fire was the only other sound that could be heard, an ominous, rumbling choir urging the two warriors on.

Silent spoke up, his voice lowered considerably. “You are a truly fascinating mare, Scarlet Frost. I cannot decide if I see you as incredibly brave, or mind-numbingly stupid.”

Scarlet gave a short, humorless chuckle at that remark. She shook her head slowly. “Mayhaps I am both.”

Silent hummed. He shrugged his shoulders. “Maybe you are, Scarlet. Maybe you are…” He turned his eyes back to Scarlet’s, and for the first time in a long while, she saw the face of her old friend and brother-in-arms looking back at her.

“...Such a pity it has come to this,” he eventually said.

Scarlet felt a small pang of sorrow in her chest at that. Her ears lowered. “...It doesn’t have to end this way,” she said, some small part of her hoping that she could get through to him. “You can walk away from all of this. Put it behind you, start again with a clean slate. It’s not too late, Silent. Please… just walk away.”

Silent slowly began to trot forwards, closing some of the distance between them. “...No. No, it is too late. It’s been too late ever since you delivered your sabotaging testimony,” he snarled, his words growing thick with venom once again.

Scarlet backed up to maintain the distance between them. “You cannot blame me for your own decisions, Silent Edge,” she replied, ready to conjure her swords at a moment’s notice. “I am not the one who forsook your vows, nor am I the one who murdered innocent ponies. I did nothing more or less than bring the truth to light.”

Silent’s lips peeled back, revealing his tightly clenched teeth. “Don’t give me that!” he snapped, his wings flaring out aggressively, causing his cloak to billow out behind him like the wings of an enraged black dragon. “My entire life was devoted to the Lunar Council, to the Nightblades! Ever since I was plucked from the streets and given a purpose by my father, I have devoted the entirety of my heart and soul, my very being, to that one purpose! And just when I finally had what was promised to me within my grasp, your poorly-timed ‘truth’ ripped it all away! Everything I worked for over my entire life is gone, Scarlet! My rank, my comrades, my dream, my home! And I have nopony to blame but you and that rotten demon of a filly!”

Scarlet narrowed her eyes, her horn lighting up with magic. “...You will not touch her. Not while I still draw breath.”

Silent came to a stop, his expression blanking. He lowered his head and gave off a long, quiet sigh. “...Then I suppose I need to fix that, don’t I?” he asked, reaching a hoof up to undo the clasp of his cloak. The garment was immediately blown away by the wind, carried off into the night, and leaving Silent bare for the first time since he had arrived at Scarlet’s door.

His wings slowly unfurled, and the blades tucked between his feathers slid into view with a spine-chilling scrape. “You cannot defeat me, Scarlet. I have nothing to hold me back, now, and I will not fall victim to your wrath as I did before. You will die tonight, by my blade.”

Scarlet looked down for a moment, taking a deep breath. This was it… either she cut him down here and claimed vengeance for all of the innocents he had slaughtered, or she died protecting the things she loved. No matter the case, when all was said and done, she knew she could rest with a smile, knowing she had atoned for her mistakes, that she had done all she could do.

“...Perhaps you are right,” she conceded after a moment, lifting her eyes to meet Silent’s one more time. “Perhaps I can’t stop you. But it doesn’t matter. Even if I should die here, what waits for you in that cave will rip you to pieces.”

Silent smirked confidently. “Do you mean the dragon?” he asked. “If so, then lucky me, I’m not here to deal with him. Once I am through with you four, my business here will be concluded.”

Scarlet’s horn lit up, and with twin flashes of light, her swords appeared in the air at her sides. She met Silent’s gaze for several long seconds, searching for any sign of the stallion she once knew.

There was nothing. Her heart withered in her breast when all she found behind those fiery orange eyes was madness and murderous intent. She stared at him for several seconds before dipping her head in a solemn, respectful bow. “If there is anything left of the stallion I once called my friend in you… then I bid you good luck.”

Silent hesitated, his expression softening. For a brief instant, a mere fraction of a second, there was genuine reluctance in his eyes. He then mirrored the bow, his wings folding back. “To you as well… old friend.”

Nothing moved. It was as if the entire world was holding its breath in anticipation of the inevitable clash. The light of the moon slowly began to fade away as the dark storm clouds that Scarlet had seen earlier finally rolled in, smothering the heavens and bathing the world in shadows.

Lightning flashed across the sky, followed instantly by a near-deafening boom of thunder.

Scarlet and Silent sprang into motion. With a flap of his wings, Silent lifted into the air and sped over the grass for Scarlet, his hooves outstretched and his eyes burning with determination. Scarlet lifted her swords in front of her as she charged, a guttural battle cry tearing past her lips.

In those last moments, before their blades met, Scarlet thought back on everything that had happened up to this point, reminding herself of who she was fighting for and why. In her mind’s eye, she saw a skinny, frail, frightened earth pony filly, covered in wine and mud, looking back at her from the corner of her wine cellar.

“For her,” she thought before jumping forward to meet Silent head-on.

“For Primrose.”

Author's Note

And so the final battle begins.

Assault

Sanctuary had already devolved into pandemonium by the time Lens passed through the entrance. Changelings were flying to and fro, shouting to be heard over one another. The drones that served as both soldiers and guards looked around in confusion, although many had already shapeshifted into forms more fit for battle or drawn their weapons.

In the middle of it all, looking around in fear, were Primrose and Sclera. They had been waiting in the entrance chamber for him to return with word about Scarlet. The nymph saw him coming first and broke into a gallop to meet him halfway. “Lens! What’s going on?! Where’s Scarlet?!”

Lens slid to a stop in front of them, fighting off the urge to catch his breath. “Sanctuary’s under attack,” he stated simply, glancing back to the entrance. Drones were already assembling there with weapons drawn. Others escorted the surviving farmers deeper into the hive, vanishing through holes in the walls that sealed up shut behind them.

Sclera gasped. “Under attack?! But… how?! I thought this place was safe!”

Lens looked down, his ears drooping. “...It’s Silent Edge. He’s leading the assault, by the looks of things,” he explained, inwardly cursing himself for not taking such a possibility into consideration. “He’s leading a griffon mercenary band.”

“Silent…?” Primrose choked out, the color draining from her face. She glanced back at Sclera, whimpering.

“And Scarlet?” The mother asked, pulling her daughter close with her hooves to protect her. “Where is she?”

Lens turned back to the entrance, his ears folding back. “...She’s trying to buy us some time to form a proper defense,” he said. He imagined Scarlet trying to fight bravely against a small army, firing off blasts of artillery and swinging her twin blades in great shimmering arcs, only to crumple lifelessly to the ground as swords and spears and claws tore away at her unarmored flesh.

“What?!” Primrose shrieked, her ears snapping back. “She can’t! She’ll die! We have to go help her!”

Lens turned to her, pain in his eyes. “We will, but we have to make sure word gets to Spike and Flurry! If we can’t mount a proper defense fast enough, all of this will have been for nothing!”

“I don’t care!” Primrose snapped, her tattered wings flaring out in defiance. “Let someone else tell Spike! I’m not losing another mom!”

Lens’ counter-argument stalled in his throat. He stared at Primrose, taken aback by the sheer fire burning behind her eyes. Her fangs were bared, posture low and aggressive. She looked like she was ready to pounce on something and tear out its throat. “Does she mean to fight…?”

Before the discussion could continue, the guards at the entrance shouted. A second later, the wall suddenly exploded into the chamber, sending large chunks of stone and rubble flying everywhere. A few changelings were caught in the spray of debris, being pinned to the ground or flung to the side like paper ragdolls. The rest were obscured by a thick cloud of dust that had been kicked up from the unexpected motion.

“Move up!” A gravelly voice yelled.

Lens bared his teeth, igniting his horn with magic when the first of the griffons began to pour through the hole in the wall, weapons brandished. Many changelings by the entrance immediately began to back away, their bravado and confidence immediately wavering in the face of their adversary.

“They’ve probably never been in a situation like this,” Lens snarled, moving to join them and lend them his magic. “They don’t know what to do!”

A pulse of pale blue magic exploded out of his horn, forming into a thick barrier that entirely blocked off the new hole in the wall, preventing any more griffons from advancing. Three had already made it through, though, and one of them was advancing on him. The others spread out to engage the guards, who looked to finally be pulling themselves together.

Lens grit his teeth, a feeling of dread and déjà vu coming over him. “Been a long time since I faced a griffon…”

The griffon’s beak opened wide, letting out a piercing eagle shriek, and he lunged.

“Lens!” Primrose called as the unicorn went galloping off to join the defense. She made to chase after him, but a pair of firm hooves grabbed onto her shoulders and held her back.

“Protea, no!” Sclera said, pulling her away from the conflict and heading for the nearest exit. “We’re not equipped for this! We have to go!”

“Let go!” Primrose shouted, struggling against her mother’s grip. “Let me go, dammit! Lens! LENS!”

She reached out to the stallion, watching with terror as he fell under attack from one of the griffons. His adversary came at him with a series of quick swings with a curved sword, sending the stallion into a retreat. He deflected the attacks as well as he could with his magic, but he didn’t get enough time to formulate any counters before the griffon launched another attack.

For a moment, Primrose’s heart soared when Lens managed to knock aside a strike and went in for a tackle. The griffon staggered back, thrown off balance.

Primrose’s eyes were drawn up by a flicker of silver reflecting off of the griffon’s sword, and her heart dropped like a stone when she saw him bring it down.

“NO!”

The edge of the sword bit into Lens’ shoulder with a spray of blood. Lens cried out, crumpling to the ground with fresh blood running down his chest and leg in thick streams. The griffon pulled the blade free before rearing up on his hind legs and swiping his claws across Lens’ face. There was another spray of blood, and the stallion fell limply to the ground. His glasses clattered to the ground a few feet away before being crushed under the talons of a passing griffon.

Primrose screamed at the top of her lungs, her voice drowned out under the deafening sound of shattering glass as Lens’ barrier came undone, the light fleeing his horn. The griffons began to pour in en masse, carving through the assembling guards and spreading out into the wider chamber, attacking anything and everything that wasn’t one of their own.

Two of the griffons spotted her and Sclera. One of them pointed their way, and they immediately began to advance, weapons held at the ready.

“Protea, run!” Sclera shouted, shoving Primrose roughly for the nearest exit. “Find somewhere safe and hide! I’ll catch up!”

Primrose stumbled from the shove before spinning on her hooves. She made eye contact with her mother just in time to see her being swallowed in a rush of emerald flames. When they parted, the armored grizzly bear had returned, albeit smaller this time. It affixed her with a meaningful glare before turning and bounding angrily for their pursuers.

“MOM!” Primrose cried, her heart withering in her chest. She watched as Sclera pounced on one of the invaders, catching his throat in her jaws. With a single motion, she grasped his hind legs and pulled them off of his torso. The griffon’s agonized scream was short and horrible, sending a chill down Primrose’s back.

And then her eyes fell on Lens. He was trying in vain to pick himself up, but the griffon that had carved into his face was giving him no room, kicking him in the side repeatedly to keep him down while pulling a rope from a pouch at his side.

Primrose’s blood turned to ice in her veins at the sight before her. Sclera was already being ganged up on, furiously swiping out with her claws and teeth at any griffons that dared to try and get past her. However, it was clear that she was sorely out of practice, and the griffons were very well trained. They ducked and weaved around her attacks, only sustaining minor injuries, while delivering a series of shallow slices and cuts of their own, whittling her down bit by bit.

“Protea, run!” Sclera had told her, ordering her to hide and wait for all of this to be over.

For a moment, Primrose genuinely considered obeying that order. Every fiber of her being was screaming at her to turn tail and run the other way, to flee into the depths of the hive and make herself as small as possible in some remote corner. It was the smartest thing she could do. It was the only thing she could do.

Lens was rolled over onto his back, the griffon already setting to work tying him up. Sclera let out an agonized roar as a small gash was made along her shoulder, causing her to stagger back.

“Run… like a coward,” Primrose thought to herself, her heart beating harder and faster in her chest. “It’s all I’ve ever been good for, isn’t it? Running away and letting the ponies I love fight to protect me… die to protect me…”

Lens tried to fire off a bolt of magic from his horn. It was off-target, and the griffon punched him hard in the stomach.

“Every single time. That is all I’ve ever done; run, and watch my families being slaughtered…”

Sclera fell to one side as a well-placed thrust pierced the flesh under one of her hind legs.

Primrose stood stock still, her eyes going distant. She unclasped her saddlebags and let them fall to the floor with a weighty thump. “No.”

Pulling open the right-side pouch, she saw a lone dagger resting in its sheath at the bottom. She reached out and lifted it up to hover before her eyes in her magic. “No more.”

One of the griffons broke away from Sclera to advance on her, his wings flared wide in a display of dominance. Primrose looked up to meet his eyes. She pulled the dagger free of its sheath with an audible scrape. “I’m done running away.”

The griffon’s beak twisted into a sinister smirk. “What? Ya gonna fight me with a puny lil’ poker like that? Get on my level, bug,” he snarled out, lifting his weapon.

With a barely-contained howl of rage, grief, and hatred, Primrose suddenly lunged forward. The griffon blinked in surprise, having not been expecting such an action. He went to defend himself, but he was too late. Primrose plunged the dagger into his throat all the way up to the hilt. Blood spilled freely from his mouth along with a muffled gurgle before he slumped to the floor in a heap.

Had it been any other circumstance, Primrose might have become paralyzed with feelings of horror and revulsion at what she had just done. She had just killed another creature. She had never done that before, and deep down, she knew she should have felt terrible. But in the heat of the moment, spurred on by five years of grief, hatred, and heartache, all she could think was, “how do I kill the next one?”

Sclera finally forced herself back to her feet, bodily shoving the three griffons still assaulting her away. She bared her teeth and bit down on one, crushing his skull between her jaws. Blood, bone, and bits of brain fell from her maw as she spun to the next one, raking her claws across his back. He collapsed to the ground several feet away, screaming in agony as his lower body went limp.

The third griffon swore and leaped up into the air to hover over Sclera’s head. He angled his blade down for the back of her neck, the blade glinting ominously in the chamber.

Primrose’s heart pumped liquid rage through her, and with an unrestrained scream, she tore her bloodied dagger free from her victim’s throat and threw it at the griffon that dared to threaten her mother. The throw was unrefined and sloppy, though, and so the pommel thumped against his flank, only causing the griffon to pause and look her way.

That was the only distraction Sclera needed. She rose up onto her hind legs, chomping down on one of his before throwing him to the ground at her feet. He let out a breathless wheeze before she brought one of her legs down on his head, turning it to paste in one fell motion.

Retrieving her dagger in her magic, Primrose ran to her mother’s side. “Mom! Are you okay?!” she asked frantically.

Sclera looked down at her in shock. “Protea? W-what are you- GUH!”

Sclera’s body flickered, and she collapsed to the floor in a swirl of green fire. When they parted, her true form was revealed, covered in a series of horrible cuts and slashes. Blood ran down her body in excessive amounts, and her left hind leg was limp.

Primrose’s eyes widened. ”Mom!”

Sclera grimaced, sucking in a deep breath through tightly clenched teeth. “Guh! Dammit, I’m still too weak!” she noted before looking at Prim again. “What are you doing?! I told you to run!”

“I’m not leaving you again!” Primrose shot back, grabbing her mother by the shoulders. “I’ve done enough running! Every time I ran away before, I lost someone I loved! No more! I am not letting anyone else throw their lives away for me ever again! I’m fighting!”

“Protea…” Sclera choked out, looking down at her daughter with wide, astonished eyes. It was as if the changeling mother was seeing her daughter for the very first time. She stared for a moment before closing her mouth and getting a small smile. “...You’ve grown up… I’m so proud of you.”

Primrose smiled for a second. Her attention was drawn back to the carnage when she heard a griffon battle-cry far closer than she would have liked. Turning, she saw another one advancing on her, weapon held high. “This is the same one that hurt Lens…” she realized, seeing the blood on his claws.

A whole new wave of anger overcame her. Primrose peeled her lips back, her mind flickering through the most frightening creatures she could think of. She settled on one just as her enemy came upon her, and her magic went to work. Her body was enveloped in green, and she became keenly aware of the nauseating feeling of suddenly growing to two or three times her previous size.

When the flames parted, the griffon looked up at her in shock and horror, his jaw dropping open at the sight of what she had become. Gone was the small, skinny, changeling nymph. In its place was a towering scorpion with a pale-blue exoskeleton. Its eyes glowed a deep shade of crimson, along with the many spikes that ran down its segmented back. Serrated pincers and mandibles snapped at the air, while a sharp-tipped tail curled over her back, pointing the barbed end right at the griffon’s throat.

He swallowed heavily.

Primrose lunged.

Lens groaned in pain, squirming in place on the ground. His whole body was throbbing, from the injury in his shoulder to the slash marks across his face and the general aches he had picked up in his barrel from the griffon’s many kicks. His head was pounding, and his heart was hammering against his chest as if it wanted to get out and run free.

Truth be told, he was glad that Scarlet hadn’t been there to see such a pathetic showing on his part. If she had seen how quickly and easily he had gone down, he would never hear the end of it.

The sounds of chaos and battle hadn’t let up once since he had been subdued. If anything, they had gotten louder. Every so often, his resting position was disturbed as another griffon passed by, but he was in no condition to fight back. He was bound, his eyes had been covered by a heavy cloth sack, he was gagged, and his horn had been tightly wrapped in small iron chains, disrupting any attempts he made at using magic. To try with such a disturbance would be far too dangerous.

His side was suddenly bathed in a shower of something warm and wet, and he involuntarily shuddered as he realized he was now covered in fresh blood. He squirmed in place, trying and failing to get away from it, but he didn’t get the chance to get very far before he felt himself lifting into the air in the unmistakable tingle of magic.

Hope sprang to life in his chest. He was set down on the cold stone ground a second later. His gag was pulled out, and he felt his bonds coming undone.

“Lens! Are you okay?!” Primrose’s voice asked him, breathing heavily.

“I th-think so,” he gurgled out before closing his eyes again. “But I don’t think a doctor would agree with me.”

The sack came off of his head, allowing Lens to finally see what was happening. He caught a glimpse of Primrose biting down on his ropes and tearing at them with her sharp fangs. Sclera stood by her side, gasping for breath and covered in open wounds. They had dragged him behind one of the homes a little ways away from the fighting to tend to him. Lens glanced towards Sanctuary’s entrance and grimaced.

The griffons were gaining ground at a significant rate. The guards, while well trained, were very inexperienced with actual battle. Many were shouting to be heard over each other in a desperate attempt to organize a functional defense, but in all of the panic, every order fell on deaf ears, leading them to fend for themselves. The griffons capitalized on this, carving through their ranks like a knife through butter.

“I thought you were dead,” Primrose mumbled when the last of Lens’ bonds came undone. She stepped in front of him and met his gaze with her own, tears shimmering in her glowing eyes. “When that griffon slashed your face, I… I thought…”

Lens gave her a weak smile. He patted her on the head with a trembling hoof. “Nah. I’m harder to kill than that,” he said before going to stand up. He winced and sucked in a deep breath when he put weight on his injured leg.

“Can you stand?” Sclera asked anxiously.

“Y-yeah, yeah I can,” Lens confirmed, rising back to a standing position. He favored his right side considerably, keeping the weight off the left as much as he could. “I’m gonna be limping, but I’m better suited to long-range anyway. I can still fight.”

“Is that so?” The gravelly voice he had heard earlier questioned. Lens’ heart skipped a beat as he turned to see the speaker. A behemoth of a griffon lumbered into view, covered in flecks of blood, though none of it his own. A hostilely curved blade was held in one of his claws, resting casually against his shoulder. “Such a shame I like things to be intimate.”

Lens was quick to conjure a barrier, putting himself in front of Primrose and Sclera. “Back off, griffon,” he warned through clenched teeth. “There’s nothing for you here!”

The griffon snorted and angled his sword to point it at Lens. “On the contrary, my boy, there is plenty here for me. A hefty paycheck, a decent fight, and a chance to put some changelings in the dirt.”

“We’re not cursed!” Primrose shouted at him in defiance. “We just want to be left alone! Go away!”

The griffon snorted. “Uh-huh. Look, kid, I dunno what you’re going on about, but my job is pretty clear. You and the pony are coming with me, whether you like it or not, and the mare here gets to lose her head.”

“You’re not touching them!” Lens spat. “Either of them!”

The griffon cocked his head to one side, his beak twisting into a smug smirk. “Is that so? Well, if I may offer a rebuttal-!”

He suddenly lunged, and his blade pierced right through Lens’ barrier. The cyan dome shattered with a bassy boom, and a flare of pain danced up and down the unicorn’s horn. The griffon charged forward to punch him square in the face. The slice marks along his muzzle burned like fire, and he screamed as he hit the ground.

The griffon smirked. “You don’t get a say in the matter.”

“Leave him alone!” Primrose shouted, charging forward and leaping at the griffon. He turned to face her and batted her aside with an almost lazy swipe of his wrist. The pommel of his sword clobbered Prim’s jaw, sending her sprawling to the side with a cry of pain.

“Primrose!” Sclera shouted, quickly moving to stand protectively in front of her daughter.

Lens struggled to his hooves as the griffon turned to face her, gasping for breath. “Guh. Son of a bitch,” he muttered between breaths.

The griffon took a threatening step towards Sclera. “How cute. The demon thinks she can fight me.”

“She’s not a demon!” Lens yelled, his horn igniting with magic. He lowered his head and fired off a beam of magic for the griffon’s back, ignoring the fire that raged in his skull. His target turned to face him and lifted his blade, catching the beam on the edge. The stream split into two, blasting into the walls of the homes that boxed them in.

“Stay down, pony!” The griffon snarled once the stream faded. He braced to charge, angling his blade for a fatal thrust.

Sclera leaped at him from behind, pouncing on his back and digging her fangs into her shoulder. He staggered under her weight, growling in anger. Rearing up onto his hind legs and reaching out with his free talon, he grabbed onto Sclera’s horn. With a mighty tug, he pulled her off of his back and threw her down to the ground.

Lens saw him preparing to plunge his sword into her and rushed in, horn sparking with magic. He grunted as he released a pressurized wave point-blank into his target, sending the griffon staggering back.

Primrose took the opportunity to duck down and in, sinking her own fangs into one of his ankles. The griffon roared angrily before flapping his wings and taking to the air.

“Primrose!” Sclera called after her, snapping out her own wings and flying after them.

“Sclera, wait!” Lens shouted after her, but she was undeterred. He watched as she tackled the griffon, the two wrestling mid-air for dominance while Primrose continued to gnaw on his leg.

“Shit,” Lens swore, knowing that there wasn’t anything he could do to help them for the moment. He instead turned his attention back to the rest of the battle. Just in time, too, as two more griffons were advancing on him.

“Give it up, pony,” one of them snarled. “You’re going down either way. Make it easy on yourself.”

Lens held his head high, his horn flaring brightly. “I don’t think so. I’m not going down that easily again!”

The griffons growled in unison before charging forward.

Primrose was terrified.

The world around her had blurred into a mindless cacophony of noise, sounds, and movement. The only thing that was properly in focus was the griffon she and her mother were now struggling to overcome in the air. He was strong, and his thick muscles almost acted as an extra layer of protective armor against her teeth. Even piercing his skin was difficult and made her jaw hurt.

She briefly considered making use of her scorpion form again, but the drain on her magic was far more severe than she had been expecting. She’d only had enough left to reach Lens and save him before having to snap back to normal and catch her breath. To break it out now would be more than she could handle for more than a few seconds. It would be best to wait until she had a good opening.

She bit down again, this time on his thigh, drawing yet more blood. The coppery taste tickled her taste buds, and her deep-seated carnivore instincts made her swallow. Her stomach churned at the sensation, but she forced herself to ignore it for now.

“Gah! Stupid brat!” The griffon roared, causing her to whimper. Her eyes widened when she saw his other leg lift up and one of his claws reaching down for her. She unclenched her jaw only a second too late to get away. The claws ensnared her throat in a vice grip, cutting off her airflow. She kicked and squirmed, but it was to no avail.

The griffon held her up in front of him, his anger depicted perfectly on his face. With a swift motion, he threw her down while lifting up one of his paws. Prim barely had time to gasp before the clawed foot slammed into her chin. The world exploded into stars and colors, and even the griffon fell out of focus. She was vaguely aware of the sensation of vertigo, and of falling before more pain flared across her side and she continued to roll just a few times.

Primrose curled up into a tiny ball, forcing herself to shove down tears. Stay focused! With a groan of pain, she rose up to her hooves. Her whole body was shaking, and her lungs burned in desperation for air. She wasn’t doing any good like this.

Movement. Primrose spun around and looked up, preparing to shapeshift into her scorpion form again. She didn’t get a chance. The griffon’s claws flashed into view. She just had time to suck in a breath before it grabbed her throat yet again. She opened her mouth in a silent scream as the griffon lifted her into the air and slammed her forcefully into the ground. If her throat hadn’t been constricted, the impact would have driven the air from her lungs.

“Primrose!” Sclera’s voice rang in Primrose’s ears. “Leave my baby ALONE!”

The griffon turned just in time for a blast of green flames to explode across his chest. He staggered back a few paces, grunting in pain. Sclera chased after him, howling in anger and her horn spitting putrid flames.

Primrose watched, breathless as her mother launched an all-out assault against the griffon; she bit, she kicked, she punched, and she fired off spells despite her atrophy. The agony of driving herself so far beyond her limits was plainly visible.

The griffon shouted as Sclera managed to sink her fangs into his sword arm, causing him to drop the weapon to the ground with a clatter. He howled in rage before opening his beak and darting in to clamp down on Sclera’s horn.

“Mom!” Primrose screamed.

Sclera released the griffon’s leg to howl in indescribable agony. A series of bloody cracks ran down the chitin of her head, all of them originating from where the griffon’s beak had broken her horn off. She staggered back, a hoof flying up to try and stop the blood that was now bubbling freely down her face.

The griffon spat the horn out of his mouth as if it were bile. He reached down and picked up his sword, wings ruffling at his sides. “I’ve had enough,” he snarled.

Sclera lifted her eyes to glare at him through the blood cascading down her face. She bared her fangs. “I won’t let you hurt my daughter…”

The griffon hummed quietly, pointing the blade at her. “...For what it’s worth, your devotion is impressive. You have my respect, changeling,” he declared before lunging forward.

Sclera hissed and charged to meet him. There was a spray of blood.

Primrose screamed, her heart feeling as if it had just been torn out of her chest.

The griffon’s sword was embedded up to the hilt in Sclera’s chest. Her eyes had flown wide as blood dribbled out of her mouth. The wings on her back twitched a few times as the last of the energy left her body.

The griffon closed his eyes and ripped the blade free. For a moment, one agonizing moment, it felt as if time stood still. Sclera stood in place, her eyes slowly drifting over to look at Primrose. For a second, just a second… she smiled.

And then she fell to the ground in a limp heap.

“MOM!” Primrose shrieked, tears spilling down her cheeks. She rose on shaking legs and sprinted to the mare’s side, placing her hooves over the fallen changeling and shaking her. “N-no, no no! Mom! Mom, get up! You have to get up! MOM!”

Weeping hysterically, Primrose bodily shoved her mother over onto her back. The changeling’s eyes were still open, looking back up at her. “...Prim…” she whispered, her voice barely audible.

“M-mommy,” Primrose whimpered, shaking her head as more agonized sobs racked her body.

Sclera slowly lifted one of her hooves, resting it on the back of Prim’s head. Her frantic cries died in her throat for a second, and she met Sclera’s gaze. Her mother’s smile grew. “I’m… I’m proud of you, Primrose…” she whispered. “So… so proud… I... love you…”

“Stop it!” Primrose shouted at her. “Stop t-talking like t-this is t-the end! It’s n-not! We’re g-gonna find F-flurry, a-and she’s gonna heal you! Y-you’re going to be fine! P-please be f-fine, mom!”

Sclera didn’t say a word. Slowly, her eyes closed, and her hoof began to go limp.

“MOM!” Prim screamed, grabbing the hoof. “Mom, please! Open your eyes! Don’t go! Don’t go! Not like this!”

“She’s dead, girl,” The griffon’s voice came from behind her, surprisingly low. “She gave her life to protect you.”

“NO!” Primrose shouted, burying her face in Sclera’s chest. She convulsed sporadically as her weeping continued. “Mom… mommy, please… I don’t want you to go… I don’t wanna be alone again… come back… p-please come back…”

“What kind of sick joke is this?” Primrose wondered. She had gone for so long without her family that she had almost been willing to let them go and forget just how much she missed them. Then she finally got one of them back, only to have her stolen away forever just a few days later.

It wasn’t fair. It was horrible. Everything about it made Primrose want to scream, to throw herself at the world and tear it down for everything it had done to her. It made her want to curl up into a ball and cry until the life left her body. It made her want to scream and beat her head against the wall, as if it might wake her up from a morbid nightmare.

But this was no nightmare. This was real… no matter how much it hurt, no matter how hard she cried or how loud she screamed, she couldn’t change it.

Her mother was dead… and she was never going to get her back.

“Primrose!” Lens’ voice cut through the air.

Primrose lifted her head to see the stallion galloping towards her. He had one of the griffon’s swords clutched tightly in his magic. He glanced past her to the griffon that had stolen her mother away, and his lips peeled back into a hateful scowl. “You bastard!” he screamed at the top of his lungs, his throat going raw from the volume.

The griffon stepped back, raising his sword to catch Lens’ swing. Metal clashed against metal as the two dueled, sending sparks flying from the force of their swings.

“Lens…” Prim croaked, her voice losing most of its strength. She watched with wide eyes as he advanced on his enemy, striking over and over again and actually driving him back.

“I’ll kill you!” Lens went on in a blind rage, starting to add small bolts of magic to his offensive. “Do you hear me?! You’re going to pay for what you’ve done! They’ve suffered enough!”

The griffon growled as Lens got in a strike to his unarmed talon. With a precise counter, he knocked Lens’ blade up high before lunging in and slicing him across the front of his chest. Lens gasped, falling back to the ground.

“LENS!” Primrose shrieked, her entire world coming apart at the seams. This wasn’t happening. It couldn’t be happening.

“Gah! We need them alive,” The griffon grumbled before lifting his head. “Hey! Someone get over here and bandage this pony up before he bleeds out!”

Primrose sucked in another quivering breath before screwing her eyes shut and burying her face in her mother’s lifeless chest. “Momma… p-please…”

“Time’s up, nymph,” the griffon stated plainly. “Don’t make this any harder on yourself… come quietly.”

Primrose opened her eyes and looked up at him, showing him her teeth. “No! You killed my mom, you monster! I’m not going anywhere with you!”

“Do you want her sacrifice to be for nothing?” The griffon countered. “She died so that you would live. Are you going to honor that, or are you going to make a liar out of her by forcing me to kill you?”

“SCREW YOU!” Primrose shrieked at him. She jumped at him, ready to plunge her fangs into his throat and end his life.

Instead, it was her throat being grasped by his claws. She let out a choking wheeze, kicking at the air as he held her up. The griffon sighed. “Well… can’t say I blame you,” he mumbled before throwing her back down to the ground.

Primrose squeaked from the impact. She didn’t bother getting back up. She just lay there, crying into the cold, hard ground as the griffon knelt over her. There was nothing else she could do. It was over… she’d lost. All around her, the sounds of battle had devolved into little more than panicked cries as what few changelings there were in the chamber tried in vain to get away. Those that managed to flee into another chamber only succeeded in opening the way for griffons to follow after them.

The griffon leader hesitated over her, almost as if he actually felt sorry for her. She heard him give off a quiet sigh before his claws set to work. He rolled her onto her back, rope in his claws, and bent down to tier her up.

Suddenly, a deafening roar echoed throughout the entirety of the mountains. The griffon went rigid, his eyes widening. He looked up, his eyes narrowing. “...The dragon,” he mumbled before standing upright and hefting his blade back up.

Primrose’s eyes widened. “SPIKE!” She screamed at the top of her lungs. “SPIKE, HELP ME!”

The griffon’s eyes widened. “Wait, what?!” he demanded, glaring down at her. “Spike?!”

Primrose didn’t have time to answer. The earth shook before another roar filled the chamber, this one loud enough to cause Primrose’s hearing to cut out for a second. She screwed her eyes shut as the earth trembled beneath her, and rocks fell from the ceiling to batter her small, quivering body.

The griffon’s expression became even more shocked. “...Holy shit… it’s an alicorn,” he breathed.

Suddenly, Primrose’s vision was filled with a blinding white light. She could feel scorching heat just over her where the griffon had been, and a frightened cry fled her lungs. The heat ended as quickly as it had come, and the light faded. When it did, the griffon that had slaughtered her mother was gone. Only a small cloud of thinly distributed ashes remained, drifting down to the floor in an unfittingly peaceful manner.

She gasped as Spike flew overhead, his body a shadowy silhouette against the green light at the top of the chamber. Only his emerald eyes pierced the darkness, as did the similarly-colored flames that licked at the edges of his maw. For a moment, the entire chamber went still in awe and anticipation of the enormous creature.

Spike dove, unleashing a torrent of flames down onto the largest group of griffons. Primrose gasped as all of them were incinerated in an instant. Those that remained quickly went to engage him, only for that beam of golden heat to lance through the air yet again, sniping them down in rapid succession and leaving naught but ash in its wake.

“W-we can’t!’ One of the griffons cried in a panic. “We are outmatched! The captain’s dead! RETREAT-”

Spike’s claw snapped out and plucked the griffon right out of the air. He held the panicking creature up to his face before rearing up and slamming him down into the ground hard enough to reduce him to a fine red mist. There was only a hoofful left, and he turned to glare at them with a low, ominous growl. “There will be no escape…”

The griffons were unsure of who to focus on; the towering dragon, or the steadily advancing alicorn with the less-than-pleased glare on her face.

“Whose jurisdiction do you fall under?” Flurry demanded as she approached, her horn flickering with golden light. The rope keeping Prim bound came undone, allowing her to roll onto her belly and watch the events unfold right-side-up.

One griffon swallowed nervously. “W-we’re mercenaries, ah, y-your godliness…”

“Oh, good,” Spike grinned. “That means no one is going to miss you.”

The griffon’s eyes widened. “W-wait! NO-”

Spike reared up on and bathed the remaining griffons in flames, reducing them all to ashes in mere moments. Their screams roared in the air for an instant before fading into silence, lasting only as long as the flash from a bolt of lightning. When the flames parted, the griffons had vanished.

A heavy silence fell over the chamber. The remaining changelings looked on from the shadows with wide, frightened eyes. Spike turned to shout at the soldiers in the room, his wings flaring out. “There are still some griffons deeper in the city! They will not be able to open the ways between chambers! Seal them off! I’ll hunt them down personally!”

The changelings immediately sprang into motion, many of them vanishing into the walls without a second of hesitation. A particularly large hole opened in one of the walls to allow Spike to charge through before it sealed up shut behind him with a deafening crack. Just like that, the battle came to an end, and the chaos fell into blissful silence. Primrose looked around, her tiny heart hammering like mad against her chest.

Flurry sprinted over to her, eyes wide. “Primrose! Oh, thank goodness you’re okay. Are you hurt?”

“A… a l-little,” Primrose replied in a quivering voice. Her eyes fell on Sclera’s body as Flurry dropped down to cast a healing spell on her. “But… m-mom…”

Flurry turned to look. Her ears drooped. “Oh… Oh, no…”

“Can you save her?” Primrose asked, desperate for even a small chance of hope. The collection of bruises and cuts she had accumulated swiftly vanished, although that did nothing for the pain in her chest, or the exhaustion in her muscles.

Flurry slowly trotted to the drone’s side, scanning her with her magic several times. After the fourth scan, she sighed and shook her head. “I’m sorry… she’s dead. There’s nothing I can do for her.”

Primrose looked down at the ground. She slowly dragged herself over to the body and sat down beside it, her heart feeling cold and dead in her chest. She let out a quiet choking sound and, once more, rested her head against Sclera’s chest. “...Goodnight, Mommy,” she whispered, screwing her eyes shut. “I love you, too…”

Flurry looked down at them for a few seconds, her ears folding back. “I am so sorry for your loss… truly, I am,” she whispered before turning. “But there are still those I can save.”

Primrose lifted her head, blinking away yet more tears. She sniffled. “H-huh?”

Flurry trotted over to Lens, who was still lying motionless on the ground. She lit up her horn and settled onto her haunches, sending out wave after wave of healing magic over the body. Primrose’s heart leaped into her throat when she saw his chest rise and fall more noticeably, and the various injuries he had accumulated began to close up.

“Lens…!” she whimpered, reluctantly stepping away from Sclera’s corpse to approach one of the only loved ones she had left.

Several seconds passed in silence before Flurry pulled back. As she did so, Lens’ eyes snapped open. He shot up to a sitting position, gasping for breath and coughing some residual blood out of his mouth.

“Lens!” Primrose squealed, relief overflowing her system. She couldn’t keep herself from smiling as she threw herself against him in a tight hug, drawing a pained grunt from him. “Oh, Lens! I was so worried about you! I… I thought…” her hooves curled tightly around his neck, hooking into the collar of his now-tattered shirt as tears welled up in her eyes once more. “I thought you were dead, too…”

“Prim…” Lens answered, sounding a little confused. He returned the hug a second later, though, and buried his muzzle into her mane. “It’s okay. I’m okay. I’ve got you. I’m right here…”

Primrose sniffled, barely able to get the words out. “H-he... h-he killed m-mom…”

“I know, kiddo,” Lens whispered, pulling her closer as if to protect her from the cruel world with his body. “I know. I’m so, so sorry. I’ve got you…”

Primrose didn’t say anything else. She just wept into Lens’ chest, glad that at least one pony she cared about was still alive.

“Spike and the warrior drones are hunting down the remaining griffons as we speak,” Flurry said after a few seconds. “With any luck, this whole morbid affair will be over and done with in no time.”

Lens looked up to Flurry while squeezing Primrose. “I take it I have you to thank for healing my wounds?”

Flurry nodded.

Lens smiled at her and held out a hoof. “You have my thanks, Princess.”

Flurry shook her head with a kind smile of her own. “It’s just Flurry, and I’m just doing my part like everypony else,” she said before looking around. Her brow furrowed, a small amount of concern working its way onto her face like a dark storm front. “Wait… where is Scarlet? I don’t think I’ve seen her since I came out here. Was she not with you when the battle started?”

Primrose’s relief was immediately diced into pieces. She inhaled sharply through her nostrils, her pupils shrinking to the size of pinpricks. In all of the pain and chaos, she had almost forgotten about the red-maned mare, and considering the distinct lack of a certain pegasus in this cave as well…

“...She’s outside,” Lens said slowly, his every word dripping with dread. “Fighting Silent Edge.”

Primrose leaned back to look up at Lens. “We have to go help her!” she shouted, her voice still quivering. She grabbed onto the front of his scarf and shook him for emphasis. “We have to help her right now! She’s gonna die if we don’t, and I can’t lose another mom!”

“We will, we will, don’t worry,” Lens said before looking to Flurry. “Will you come with us? We might need the help…”

Flurry frowned for a moment before looking off to the side. “...I’m sorry, but my top priority is making sure my changelings are alright,” she said, rising to her hooves. “There are still a lot of wounded drones that need healing, not to mention the straggling griffons running loose in the hive. I have to take care of things inside.”

Primrose, for a moment, felt nothing but indignation and anger towards the allegedly divine being. Deep down, she knew it was irrational, and that Flurry was just trying to look after her people, but that didn’t stop the disapproving glare from crossing her face.

Lens was far more understanding, though. He nodded his head before standing up. “I understand.”

Flurry stood as well and backed away. “Spike and I will come and give you what assistance we can as soon as things are cleared up inside. Good luck.”

And with that, the alicorn turned and galloped for a far corner of the room, where a collection of injured changelings were coming together to await treatment. Lens and Primrose stared after her for a moment before looking into each other’s eyes.

“Are you coming, too?” Lens asked slowly. “You’ve been through enough, and this is going to be dangerous…”

Primrose nodded. “I’m done running…” she said, briefly looking over to Sclera’s body. “And I am not letting Silent take away anypony else I love… It ends tonight, one way or another.”

Lens slowly nodded his head before turning for the exit. “Alright, then… come on.”

Primrose went to follow him but briefly paused after a second. She looked back at Sclera’s body one more time, her ears drooping. “I swear, mom… He won’t get away with this,” she thought as green embers began to drift off of her body.

She turned away from the corpse and closed her eyes, allowing the green flames to swallow her whole. “Mom… dad… Thistle… Gaudium… Dandelion…”

The flames parted, and Primrose the filly had returned to the world. She opened her eyes and set off after Lens, subtly scooping up the dagger Scarlet had purchased for her in her magic as she went.

“He will pay for what he did to you.”

Duel

Everything in the valley was still. Nothing dared to move, or even breathe. Even the dense storm clouds that had rolled over the region held still. It was like the whole world was holding their breath, a silent audience to the duel taking place in the heart of the valley.

Lightning flashed across the sky, followed instantly by a near-deafening boom of thunder.

Scarlet and Silent sprang into motion. With a flap of his wings, Silent lifted into the air and sped over the grass for Scarlet, his hooves outstretched and eyes burning with determination. Scarlet lifted her swords in front of her as she charged, a guttural battle cry tearing past her lips.

In those last moments, before their blades met, Scarlet thought back on everything that had happened up to this point, reminding herself of who she was fighting for and why. In her mind’s eye, she saw a skinny, frail, frightened earth pony filly, covered in wine and mud, looking back at her from the corner of her wine cellar.

“For her,” she thought before jumping forward to meet Silent head-on.

“For Primrose.”

Their blades met in a shower of sparks. The air was filled with the shrill peel of magic and steel scraping against one another. Scarlet dug her hooves in the dirt to hold Silent in place, glaring intensely into his eyes. He stared right back with a ferocity to match her own before pulling back.

Scarlet stepped backward as well, dispelling one of her swords and converting the other into a round shield, catching Silent’s next attack. She angled the surface up to lift him over her head while gathering magic on the tip of her horn, ready to blast him into the sky. She had to keep some distance between them, if possible. Silent was always at his deadliest in close quarters.

Silent, however, saw the maneuver coming. He grit his teeth and swiped down with his left wing, forcing Scarlet to duck. She felt the tip of the wingblade cutting a few of the hairs from her head, sending a shiver down her spine. With a grunt, she shoved Silent up with her shield. He kicked away into a long, arcing backflip, wings spread wide to be prepared for Scarlet’s coming attack.

Scarlet dropped her shield and unleashed the spell gathered on her horn, releasing a beam of trembling amethyst light that tore through the air and crackled with raw power. Silent folded his wings and angled down, evading the beam and landing on the ground. He snapped his wings out again, tensing to charge Scarlet once again, with a furious growl.

“Stay down!” Scarlet snapped before stomping her hoof into the dirt and firing off another pulse of magic for Silent’s hooves. He reared up, avoiding the attack, although the cloud of dust it kicked up was enough to obscure his vision.

Scarlet took advantage of his temporary blindness. Ignoring the small needle of pain she felt in her horn, she vanished from the grass and appeared in mid-air over the dust cloud. She fired off another beam of energy at where she believed Silent to be, creating another purple explosion. More dust and smoke was kicked up from the force, and the following rush of wind combined with the kickback of her spell sent her spiraling backward through the open air.

“Shit,” she grunted under her breath, wrapping her body in magic and pulling up to slow her descent. She kept the fall from being harmful, but it wasn’t prevented from still hurting. She rolled several times, dirt and stray blades of grass clinging to her coat before she rose to her hooves and brought her swords back into reality, holding them in front of her defensively. She turned to face the dust cloud.

Silent, now covered in numerous burn marks, shot out of it a second later. Scarlet gasped at his speed just as Silent brought both of his blades down in an overhead swing, knocking Scarlet’s swords to one side, and then tackled her with all of his weight. She became acutely aware of the sensation of flying through the air. She risked a glance down, seeing that Silent was carrying her several yards above the earth.

Silent growled into her ear like a feral animal before suddenly flaring out his wings and kicking off of her. Scarlet gasped, her back colliding hard with one of the trees of the flaming orchard. She fell to the ground in a heap, her lungs desperate to replenish their supply of air.

Silent pressed the offensive, darting in and thrusting with both wings. Scarlet rolled to one side in a clumsy dodge, her mind struggling to refocus on the fight. She spun on Silent with her swords in a series of clearing sweeps to force him back. He deflected her swings expertly and dove in under her guard; too close to use his blades, but close enough to drive his hoof into her chin in a fearsome uppercut.

Scarlet grunted, rearing up onto her hind legs from the force of the blow. She glared down at Silent and dispelled her swords in favor of teleporting backward a few feet, just far enough to dodge the scissoring slash that would have disemboweled her. Silent growled in frustration. “Dammit, hold still!”

“Make me!” Scarlet spat in response. She fired another beam of magic at him, pouring more power into it than before. Silent gave off a frustrated shout as he caught the attack on his wings. His hooves dug into the ground, creating trenches as he was pushed back.

Grimacing, Scarlet pulled some power away from the attack so she could lift up a stray stone out of the grass. The aura around it rippled with energy before the rock shot through the air at Silent like a bullet. A trail of shimmering purple light was left in its wake, filling the air with a sharp, distorted shriek.

Silent’s voice cried out as the stone struck him in the barrel, causing him to stagger to one side. The loss of focus, however momentary, was enough for the blast to slip by his defenses. Scarlet grinned triumphantly as the beam knocked Silent off his hooves and flung him back into a nearby tree. The bark cracked and splintered from the force of the impact.

Silent slumped to the ground, groaning in pain. He was already moving to stand, his eyes burning with a fiery hatred that made Scarlet’s heart skip a beat. It was almost like she was staring down a rabid animal. A feral, insane monster.

Baring her teeth in response, Scarlet charged forth, her swords manifesting and ready to sever the former-Nightblade’s head from his shoulders. Silent saw her coming and lifted his blades to catch hers in the nick of time. Sparks and rippling energies framed his hateful glare, reflecting in his eyes.

With a snarl to match his, Scarlet rose up onto her hind legs and kicked at his face. He ducked his head to one side before slipping into a roll past Scarlet’s strikes. She overextended as a result, her blades slicing into the tree and knocking her off balance. She allowed them to disperse and turned to Silent, trying to conjure a barrier to block his follow-through.

She was not expecting him to kick her in the side with his hind-legs, however. Scarlet grunted, thrown to the ground. She rolled onto her back and conjured up a makeshift barrier, stopping Silent’s next strike mere inches before it would have torn out her throat. The pegasus grunted before pulling back to strike again. Scarlet rolled to one side, dropping the barrier just as Silent’s blades reached it, causing him to overextend as well and cut into the earth.

Rising back to her hooves, Scarlet fired off an unfocused pulse of magic from her horn, little more than a small, controlled explosion originating from her head. It did the trick, though, causing Silent to blink and step back from the bright light. Scarlet took advantage of the moment to summon her swords and go in for another swing.

The two traded blows for several seconds. Scarlet realized with dread that Silent’s form was still far superior to her own, causing her to go into a defensive retreat. The open grasslands soon became obscured by burning trees and thick clouds of smoke that burned their lungs, stung their eyes and darkened their coats.

She would have tried to put distance between them, but their environment now was making that far more difficult than it had been in the open. The smoke and fire addled her situational awareness, and trying to take shelter among them would be suicide. Silent would pick her apart in a game of cat and mouse like that. She needed to get back into the open, where she had space to maneuver and get creative with her magic.

Alas, Silent got an opening before she could. Scarlet gasped as her blades were knocked wide, leaving her chest and throat completely exposed. Silent grinned and went for the kill. His blades glinted red in the firelight. Scarlet craned her head back as far as she could while throwing up a foreleg in reflexive defense. She bit down on her tongue to keep herself from screaming as the skin of her right foreleg was sliced open by Silent’s blades.

Still, she managed to knock the attack up and away from her with that action. Ignoring the blood now flying off of her opponent’s weapon, Scarlet brought her swords up just in time to catch Silent’s follow-through thrust. She grunted, crumpling to one knee under the force of the attack. She realized with horror that she was pinned. She couldn’t dodge like this, and maintaining both of her blades in this position was eating up too much of her power to risk a teleport. If she tried anything of the sort, Silent’s blades would plunge into her, and she would lose.

“You about ready to give up, Frost?” Silent snarled into her face, his voice coming out in a low, angered whisper. She could smell his rancid breath mixing with the suffocating fumes of the smoke, and it made her stomach churn. “Face it, you’re beaten! No matter how much you’ve improved since we began this little chase, you were never a match for me in single combat!”

He pressed down even harder. Scarlet screwed her eyes shut, pouring as much energy as she could into her blades to keep Silent at bay. He was inches away from her throat now. The only thing keeping him from puncturing her jugular was the thick metal collar of the cloak that Crystal had gifted her hanging around her neck.

She grit her teeth and glared up into Silent’s face. His eyes were perfectly clear, but the rest of him was a rippling silhouette, his face cast into shadow by the raging light of the infernos he had started.

“I am not going to give up,” Scarlet growled in defiance, trying to push back and force him away. He held firm, taking full advantage of her awkward angle to keep her pinned. She grunted and braced herself as well as she could. “I will not let you touch them again!”

Silent hissed out a low, frustrated snarl. “Funny. I don’t recall giving you a choice in the matter!” he snapped. He applied even more force, causing Scarlet to crumple entirely into the dirt under the force. “You cannot stop me. I am going to kill you, Scarlet Frost. And then I am going to kill that stupid boyfriend of yours…”

“Leave Lens alone!” Scarlet snapped, a surge of adrenaline pulsing through her veins. She pushed back against Silent with all her might but was unable to gain any ground.

“And then,” Silent went on, undeterred and grinning with the delight of a sadistic lunatic. “I am going to make Primrose watch as I strangle the life out of her mother. I’ll let her watch me finish what I started.”

“No!”

“And then, finally…” Silent’s voice dipped into a chilling whisper. “I am going to kill the child. I am going to make her scream, Scarlet. She is going to scream, and cry, and beg for mercy… and then she is going to join you in the grave.”

Magma burned through Scarlet’s veins, her pupils expanding to let her see her enemy in all of his wretched detail. He smirked down at her, his eyes glowing red in the light of the fire, like those of a demon. In those orange orbs, she saw the bloody reflection of Primrose’s body the night she had almost died.

“You…” Scarlet seethed, her heart hammering like mad against her chest. Her eyes narrowed, twitching sporadically. Her muscles burned, not just from the strain of the battle, but now with hatred and an unquenchable desire to end the creature that was pinning her down. “You will never lay a hoof on her again…”

Silent chuckled quietly under his breath. “Is that so? And how are you going to stop me?”

Scarlet shoved back up against him. Silent let out a surprised gasp from the force as she finally managed to gain some ground. She rose back to one hoof, pushing Silent’s blades back with her own. “Simple…” she snarled.

Her heart was fire. Her blood was rage. Every fiber of her being was giving everything they had for one purpose, and one purpose alone. Energy began to pool on the tip of Scarlet’s horn, expanding into a condensed sphere of unstable amethyst energy. Silent’s bravado faded as he stared into it, his jaw dropping open in shock. Scarlet could see the artillery blast reflected perfectly in his eyes, and for a moment, the demon was replaced with a pony afraid of his imminent death.

“By taking you with me,” Scarlet finished.

Silent immediately kicked back, trying to retreat and put as much distance between himself and Scarlet as possible. Too slow.

He had barely even made it a yard before Scarlet fired the shot. The kickback was far greater than she was expecting, throwing her off her hooves and into the air with a pained cry. Then the explosion went off. Scarlet screwed her eyes shut, her throat going raw as she screamed. Searing heat washed over the entire front of her body, and she knew for a fact she had caught on fire. A deafening roar and rush of wind accompanied the heat, pushing her higher up and back several dozen feet.

She fell like a flaming meteor, crashing into the grass and rolling along for several seconds before finally coming to a rest. The rolling had managed to put out the flames, at least, but the agony they left in their wake was very present. Gasping rapidly for breath, Scarlet took a moment to acknowledge the surprising fact that she was alive. A point-blank artillery explosion like that wasn’t typically something one would survive.

“The kickback must have given me enough room to survive the blast,” she theorized before moving to stand. She hyperventilated, her body screaming at her in pain. Her chest and forelegs were both devoid of fur now, the flesh underneath left wrinkled and blackened from the flames and explosion. Blood ran freely down her barrel, and she knew she had broken more than one rib in her landing.

She lifted her eyes to look at the results of her suicide attack. The shockwave had knocked her out of the orchard. A sizable crater had been punched into the ground, around fifteen feet from end to end. Purple flames licked angrily around the edges, sending plumes of smoke to join those of the forest fire that consumed the orchard.

For a moment, all was still. Scarlet took a deep breath before backing up. Was it over? Had she got him? She wanted to believe he was dead, incinerated by the blast. “But if I survived, he could have as well,” she thought to herself with a grimace. “I need a body before I can be sure.”

As if on cue, movement caught her eyes. Looking up into the smoke, she could just make out the definitive silhouette of Silent’s body hovering there. Scarlet let out a heavy sigh, feeling very tired all of a sudden.

Silent remained stationary for a few more seconds, no doubt using the smoke for cover as he checked himself over for any other injuries. Scarlet grimaced, taking the chance to call on her magic and lift the collar of her cloak from her shoulders.

Whatever Silent was doing, he wrapped it up and came flying out of the smoke cloud, hooves outstretched. He didn’t look much better off than Scarlet. Half of his face was covered in a grotesque burn that wrinkled the skin and made him look almost like a hideous ghoul.

Scarlet glared at him before launching her collar at him in much the same manner as she had the stone from before. Silent’s eyes widened, and he fanned out his wings in an attempt to break his speed and swerve around the improvised projectile. He was too slow, and the collar met his face with a loud metallic clang.

Silent spun through the air, falling head over hooves several times before crashing into the ground a short distance away. Scarlet gave off a quiet huff and went to advance on him, summoning her swords again. As battered as she was, she still had enough strength to fight.

Silent dragged himself back up to his hooves, panting heavily, much like Scarlet was. He glared up at her and snapped his wings out aggressively. Scarlet noticed that one of them was devoid of its blades. Her artillery blast had covered the majority of his left side in ugly burns and open wounds.

“Ballsy move, Scarlet,” Silent got out between breaths, glaring at her intensely. The raging inferno of the orchard painted his right side in flickering orange light, contrasting with the dark burns that smothered his left. “I am impressed… you are like a mother defending her child, aren’t you?”

Scarlet huffed, spreading her stance. “What were you expecting?” she demanded. “Unlike you, I have something to protect, and I will die before I let you take another child away from me!”

Silent blinked, his eyes widening. “Another…?” he echoed. He stood still for a moment before closing his eyes and lowering his head. “I see… so that explains it.”

“What?” Scarlet asked in curiosity.

Silent lifted his gaze to meet hers again. The murderous madness was gone, replaced, even if only for a moment, by the sympathetic stare of an old friend. “I saw the foals’ books you had in your home after you left, Scarlet, and I saw a name I did not recognize in an old journal entry you hid from yourself. I suspected you had a child, but I never knew what happened to them…”

Scarlet paused, the fire in her veins quieting for the moment. She allowed her swords to disperse. “...She was everything to me,” she muttered, her eyes drifting closed. “My one chance at making up for my mistakes, to give the world something beautiful… and she was murdered right in front of me.”

Silent hummed quietly. “I see… had I known that at the beginning, we might have avoided all of this,” he admitted before raising his head. “For whatever my opinion is worth, Frost, I hope she is at peace.”

Scarlet sighed before summoning her swords again. “She is… I know she is.”

The two stared each other down for several seconds. Then, without a word, not even a sound, they charged at each other again. Their blades clashed, showering them both in sparks as their duel resumed. Scarlet soon lost herself to the motions. Thrust, cut, slash, block, parry, dodge, counter… over and over again, the pattern repeated itself. The step-by-step movements began to blur together for Scarlet, leaving her body to act on its own.

Their battle carried them closer and closer to the entrance to Sanctuary, back to the very hill where she and Lens had parted ways. Her muscles ached with exhaustion, her breath came in heaving gasps, and her body burned from her myriad injuries. Still, she fought, giving her all, her very soul, to keeping the stallion before her from taking away the filly and stallion she cherished above all others.

Alas, one of them had to give out before the other. With one last cry of effort, Scarlet came forward, blades high over her head for a final strike. She brought them down onto Silent’s guard, sending sparks flying in every direction. They glared deep into one another’s eyes for a moment.

Silent knocked her swords aside, and they vanished with barely even a sound. That was it. Scarlet had no strength left. She barely even had the will to offer up a quick grunt when Silent’s hoof punched into her burned chest, sending her sprawling to the ground. She tried to stand. She tried so hard, but she just couldn’t find the strength.

Silent took several deep breaths, his posture sagging from exertion. He slowly approached, his wings dragging limply along the ground behind him. “Ha… I am… I am truly impressed, Scarlet,” he said before coming to a stop by her side. She looked up at him, her eyes barely able to keep him in focus.

Silent lifted his wingblade and pointed it at her barrel, aimed straight at her heart. “You fought well…”

“So… this is it, then?” Scarlet thought to herself, seeing the moonlight reflected in Silent’s blade. “Downed by exhaustion and stabbed through the heart… hmph. I can think of worse ways to go…”

She closed her eyes to await the end. “I have many regrets… but the biggest one of all is not getting to see you two again… Sharp Lens… Primrose… please… live on. Be happy…”

“SILENT, STOP!”

Scarlet winced, opening her eyes as the voice of a certain earth pony filly sliced through the air. With what little strength she had left, Scarlet lifted her head to see Primrose and Lens sprinting toward her.

Two

“Silent, STOP!” Primrose shrieked at the top of her lungs, throwing the dagger Scarlet had given her at Silent Edge. The pegasus turned and batted the projectile aside with his wingblade before jumping back to evade the follow-up swing from Sharp Lens. He gave a few flaps of his wings before coming to a light landing a short distance away.

“Prim… Lens…?” Scarlet breathed, looking between them with wide, confused eyes. “But… what…?”

“Didn’t I tell you earlier?” Lens asked, positioning himself protectively between Silent and Scarlet. “We came for you as soon as we could.”

Primrose slid to a stop at Scarlet’s side and fell to her haunches, eyes wide as she took in the damage the larger mare had suffered. Her entire body was covered in small injuries, while a massive and grotesque burn mark had covered her chest and forelegs. There was a conspicuously untouched stripe around her neck, and Prim realized that Scarlet had lost her cloak.

“Scarlet,” Prim whispered, her hooves hovering uselessly over Scarlet’s battered form. She tried to think of something she could do to take away the pain, but the only creature she knew of who could heal injuries like this was Flurry Heart, and she was going to be busy for the foreseeable future. “Oh my goodness, you’re so hurt…”

Scarlet put on a weak, crooked smile. “Heh… I may have gotten worse than I gave, but I still made him hurt before I went down,” she said quietly before wincing. Her eyes screwed shut, and she let out a series of moist coughs.

Primrose’s hooves flew up to cover her mouth as flecks of blood flew free from Scarlet’s mouth to splatter against the grass. “Oh my… you need help!” she said, trying to figure out some way to help the unicorn stand.

Lens risked a look back towards the two of them before focusing on Silent again. “...Silent, do you have any idea what you’ve done?” he asked slowly.

Silent snorted. “I’ve brought Scarlet down, and now I aim to cut down the rest of you. Although, I must ask… where is the mother? I know she came with you.”

“She had a name, you know!” Lens barked angrily, his horn flaring brighter. “It was Sclera! And… and she’s dead. She was killed by the leader of the griffons you hired.”

Primrose screwed her eyes shut at the memory, stifling a sob. Her heart twisted in her chest, but she forced herself to ignore it, if only for now. She opened her eyes and looked down at Scarlet to find the mare staring back in shock. “...S-sclera’s dead?” she choked out.

Primrose looked away, hiding her face behind her mane. “I… y-yes. She… s-she gave her life to save me,” she mumbled, the energy draining from her muscles.

Scarlet stared at Primrose for several moments. With a quiet sigh, she lifted a foreleg, in spite of the pain it caused her, and pulled the filly in for a stiff embrace. “Oh, honey… I’m so sorry,” she whispered sympathetically. “I am so, so sorry… I should have been there…”

Primrose shook her head. “Don’t say that, Scarlet. Please, don’t blame yourself,” she glared up at Silent, her lips twitching in a desire to hiss at him.

Silent let out a snort of frustration. “So one of my targets was killed before I could reach them… a pity,” he spat before pointing his blade at the group. “Oh, well. I still have plenty of prey right in front of me.”

“Why are you doing this?!” Lens demanded. “If you followed us here, then you know that this place is protected by Spike and Flurry Heart, don’t you?!”

That actually gave Silent pause. He tilted his head. “That the dragon strongly resembles the first Dragon Sentinel, I will freely acknowledge, but Flurry Heart?”

“It’s true,” Scarlet choked out, managing to lift her head a little to look at the former assassin. “She and Spike have been hiding out here for centuries…”

“And they’ve been waiting for the lamp,” Primrose added, glaring at Silent as well. “They have it now, and they aren’t gonna give it up to you or anyone else!”

“It’s too important,” Lens went on, spreading his stance a little more. “And these two are too important to me for me to let you touch them.”

“So please, Silent,” Primrose said, her ears lowering. “Just… leave. There’s nothing for you here. Just go. You already took my mother away tonight… let that be enough.”

Silent stared at them all, completely dumbfounded. It had always been exceedingly hard for Primrose to get a measure of his emotions. Most of the time, it was as if Silent didn’t even have emotions. He was often stoic, cold, and impossible to read. Now, though, she saw a storm of emotion raging around him. Surprise, confusion, anger, sympathy…

Slowly, all of the other emotions bled away, leaving just the anger. Silent bared his teeth and crouched down low, ready to pounce. “Let that be enough?” he echoed Primrose’s sentiment in disbelief. “Enough?! I think not! It will not be enough until I have ended you! You three have cost me everything, and so I shall take everything from you! Now hold still!”

With that, the pegasus launched himself at Lens with remarkable speed. Primrose’s heart leaped into her throat when, in one swift motion, Silent knocked the unicorn’s borrowed sword to one side and threw him heavily to the ground. Lens cried out before Silent stunned him with a well-placed buck to the side of the head.

“Lens!” Scarlet rasped in an attempt to scream. She put her forelegs under her and struggled to stand. “You bastard!”

“Stay down, Frost!” Silent spat, galloping forward with his eyes glued onto Primrose. She stared back at him, fear and panic swallowing her whole. All of the confidence and determination she had felt earlier fled her in an instant, and she was a terrified five-year-old with no clue what to do all over again. Crying out, she sprang to her hooves and backpedaled away from Silent, her heart beating so hard she was afraid it might escape and run away.

Silent leaped over Scarlet, his eyes narrowed. “Come here, filly!”

“Silent, STOP!” Scarlet screamed after him, magic flickering along the length of her horn.

Primrose continued her backward retreat until one of her hooves struck a stray stone. She cried out and fell onto her back. She looked up to see Silent looming over her, blade angled for her throat.

“NO!” Lens’ voice echoed through Primrose’s ears, seemingly far away.

“LEAVE HER ALONE!” Scarlet’s voice screamed.

Silent grinned. “Goodnight, Primrose.”

“No,” Primrose whispered, her lips trembling as tears welled up in her eyes. “Please, no!”

Silent’s grin grew, his eyes shining with madness, and he thrust his blade down.

Primrose screwed her eyes shut, screaming at the top of her lungs and covering her face with her hooves.

“NO!”

Primrose heard a burst of magic right above her. She heard a blade piercing through flesh, and she felt herself being showered in a spray of something warm and wet. But to her surprise, it wasn’t her own. Silent’s blade never reached her. She reluctantly opened her eyes and looked up to see what had happened.

Silent’s blade, dripping with blood, was less than an inch from her face. It had been stopped by something…

“Prim…”

Primrose’s eyes widened, a shuddering gasp escaping her. Scarlet stood over her, Silent’s blade stabbing through her back and out her chest. Blood dribbled out of her mouth and down her face.

“Scarlet…?” Primrose whispered in a tiny, quivering voice. She reached up with a trembling hoof. This wasn’t happening. This couldn’t be happening…

Silent’s blade extracted itself from Scarlet’s body. Scarlet shuddered, giving a few choked gurgles before meeting Primrose’s eyes one last time. “...Live,” she managed to say through the blood in her throat. “Please… live…”

“Scarlet!” Primrose called out, reaching out.

Scarlet’s eyes drifted closed. With one last exhale, she fell to one side, revealing the stunned, almost horrified face of Silent Edge behind her.

Somewhere in the distance, the sound of thunder rolled across the world.

“Scarlet!” Primrose cried out, ignoring silent and rolling over to put her hooves on the fallen mare’s shoulder. “Scarlet, no! Wake up! P-please, get up!”

There was no response. Scarlet didn’t move an inch.

Silent stared down at her, dumbstruck. “Frost…” he breathed in disbelief, taking a step back. His eyes settled on Primrose. “...For her to give her life like that, to save you… a changeling… She must have truly loved you.”

Primrose ignored him, burying her face into Scarlet’s mane. Hysterical sobs ravaged her skinny body, leaving her incapable of forming a coherent thought or speaking. She pounded her hoof against Scarlet’s shoulder over and over in a vain, desperate hope that it might get the mare to wake up. But it wasn’t working.

“This can’t be happening,” she thought to herself. “It can’t! It’s not fair! We came so far! You can’t leave me like this, Scarlet! You can’t!”

She was vaguely aware of Lens charging forward, letting loose a howl of grief and rage that Primrose had not yet heard from him. She heard their blades clashing a few times before the signature thrum of one of Lens’ barriers filled the air.

“Oh no, no, no... this is bad,” Lens babbled, dropping his sword and falling to his haunches across Scarlet’s body. He quickly pulled his bandana free while his magic went to work tearing off his shirt. “W-we need to stop the bleeding! Primrose, do you have anything we can use?!”

Primrose lifted her head to look at him, her eyes red and puffy. She shook her head. “N-no… I don’t…”

“Dammit!” Lens swore, moving quickly to shred his shirt and tie it around Scarlet’s barrel. “Dammit, dammit, dammit! Prim! Help me out here!”

“It’s no use,” Silent called from outside the barrier. “Even if you stop the bleeding, she’s suffered too many injuries. She’s dying, and you cannot stop it.”

“SHUT UP!” Lens shouted at him in a broken voice. “You did this to her, you fucking monster! But we’re not giving up! We won’t let you take her away from us!”

Silent sighed and shook his head. “...Fine. If it makes you feel better. Just don’t be surprised when your efforts accomplish nothing.”

Primrose whimpered, watching Lens get to work in desperately treating Scarlet’s injuries. Alas, there was little they could do. Applying pressure to the stab was about all they had, and it was far from enough. Even if Scarlet was still alive, she wouldn’t be that way for long…

Primrose screwed her eyes shut as a new wave of grief washed over her. How many times? How many times was she going to sit by, powerless to do anything as a pony she thought of as another parent died in front of her? How many families was she going to lose before she could finally know some peace? How many?!

Her head was starting to hurt. Barely stifling her whimpers, Primrose reached her hooves up to clutch her skull. Faces and voices began to rapidly flash through her mind. The faces of every family she had been with, the things they had said to her… their screams as Silent cut them apart, or what she imagined they said after she left them just so they wouldn’t die, too.

It was like a chorus. A chorus of the dead screaming their fear and pain and sorrow at her from beyond the veil. All of those wonderful ponies who had died for the crime of accepting her into their families. All of those ponies who were doomed the moment she met them, and now another mare was joining them, giving her life to save Primrose just like every single mare that came before her.

It was too much. The screams rose in a crescendo before, at last, there was an audible snap in the back of her head. All at once, the screams fell into silence, and Primrose’s cries stilled in her throat.

“...Two.”

Lens looked up from Scarlet’s bloodied body when that word left Primrose’s mouth. “Huh?”

Primrose rose to her hooves, her head still down. She heard Lens saying something to her, but she paid it no mind. She slowly turned to look at Silent through the barrier. His blade was still dripping with Scarlet’s blood. “Two mothers in one night… you just don’t know when to stop, do you?”

“Prim? What are you doing!?” Lens suddenly demanded when Primrose began to walk towards the assassin. She tuned out Lens’ words, her eyes narrowing.

“My mother… my father… my brothers… every family I’ve ever known, I’ve lost because of you,” she went on, her voice devoid of emotion. “What else can you possibly do? What more can you possibly take away from me?”

“Prim! Stop! He’s going to kill you! PRIM!”

Without looking back, Primrose stepped through the barrier, coming face to face with Silent Edge. He looked at her in surprise, his brow quirking in confusion. “You’re approaching me instead of running away? I must admit, I didn’t see this coming.”

“Why would I run?” she asked quietly. “Every time I ran away before, you killed somepony I loved. Not this time. Besides, I’m not afraid of you anymore.”

“And why is that?” Silent asked, slowly unfurling his wings.

Primrose didn’t even flinch when the metallic scrape of his blade sliding free filled her ears. “I don’t know. I don’t care. I’m not scared of you anymore. I’m not running from you again.”

“PRIM!” Lens called out in desperation. “Please, come back! What will Scarlet think if you’re dead when she wakes up?!”

Primrose ignored him, taking another step forward.

Silent gave her a cocky smirk. “So… you aim to face the end with some bravery after all,” he remarked, a tiny hint of respect in his voice.

“Yes, I do,” Primrose replied flatly. “If there’s one thing Scarlet and Lens have taught me… it’s how to be brave…”

Silent’s smile softened just a little. “Well… then in honor of her memory, I’ll make sure your death is quick.”

For the first time since her soul went quiet, Primrose let out a gentle laugh. She looked up to Silent, a green glow filling her pony eyes as she began to channel her magic. “Oh, I’m sorry. I think you misunderstood me,” she said, her lips peeling back into a sharp-toothed grin.

Silent blinked, taken aback. “What in the…”

Primrose’s expression morphed into a sadistic grin at Silent’s surprise. “I never said I was letting you kill me, Silent,” she went on as green flames began to spread across her body. “I can’t die. If I did, then I wouldn’t be able to hear your screams!”

With that, she closed her eyes, allowing the flames to consume her.

Silent backed away in alarm as Primrose all but exploded in front of him. A dome of churning green flames expanded out rapidly, shielding her from view and filling the air with a distorted rumbling noise.

“What the hell…?” Silent asked under his breath, dropping into a defensive stance. “I’ve never seen her transform like this,” he noted. He knew she could change shape, of course, as he’d seen her do it on multiple occasions. However, she had usually just been swapping between her true form and her pony disguise. Never before had she done anything quite like this…

The flames suddenly parted, and a mass of pale blue chitin surged toward him. Silent gasped, realizing he had no time to get out of the way. Enormous pincers grasped him by the chest and lifted him off his hooves, squeezing with impossible strength. In a matter of moments, ribs began to pop and snap in his barrel, drawing a long, agonized scream out of his lungs.

He twisted and turned before lifting his wingblade and stabbing it down into a gap in the pincer’s carapace. His blade only dug in enough to draw a small trickle of blood before being forced to a stop. That seemed to do the trick, as the beast reared up and released him by throwing him to the ground.

“Guh!” Silent shouted breathlessly when he hit the ground. He rolled to the side and came up to his hooves, his eyes going wide at the sight in front of him.

Primrose was gone. In her place was a giant scorpion. The majority of its body was colored the same shade of blue as Scarlet’s fur, while its compound eyes glowed a deep shade of red to match its hungrily snapping mandibles, the eagerly quivering spikes on its back, the dripping barbed stinger on the tip of its tail, and Scarlet’s mane.

The scorpion charged him again, though this time, he was able to react. Silent rolled to the side, avoiding its pincers. He came up and brought his blade across one of the monster’s legs, only for the edge to bounce harmlessly off of the hardened carapace. He staggered back, his eyes wide in shock.

The scorpion slowly rotated to face him, several segments of its exoskeleton scraping ominously against themselves. A low chittering sound, like the angered hiss of a hungry alligator combined with the call of a giant cricket, came from its ravenous maw. Its eyes stared into his soul with a bloodlust that sent a chill down his spine.

The scorpion shrieked at him and charged yet again. Silent went to roll aside again, but it was expecting that this time. His eyes widened as he came out of the roll and right into the broadside of the scorpion’s tail, which struck him in the chest with an explosive force, drawing a breathless gasp out of him and throwing him back. He crashed to the ground and rolled for several feet before coming to a stop.

“This is ridiculous,” he gasped, forcing himself to rise. “She’s just a child! How could she be doing this!?”

He didn’t get a chance to ponder the question. He felt the scorpion’s pincer coming down on him from above. He gasped as he was lifted off his hooves, the ground disappearing beneath him far faster than he would have liked. He squirmed, eager to repeat the movement that had saved him last time.

Unfortunately, the scorpion saw it coming this time as well. As he flared out his wing for the thrust, he felt it being tightly grasped and constricted. The color drained from his face, and he turned to see that the scorpion’s other pincer had ensnared his wing. Its hungry eyes glared into his, almost as if it were asking him, ‘what are you going to do now?’

And then it began to pull.

Silent’s throat went raw. He screamed out into the air at the top of his lungs, beating his hooves frantically against the pincer holding him prisoner. It was like hell in his wing. He could feel the hollow bones shattering into dust, feel the tendons straining and pulling and tearing like wet paper. It stretched and stretched, the skin starting to split.

Silent blinked as he was overcome by an inexplicable feeling of dizziness. He felt light-headed, and his mind went foggy. He let out a few confused mumbles as his eyes lazily looked around, trying to find out where he was and what was going on. He knew he was fighting something, but…

Whatever was holding him let go. He hit the ground like a sack, crumpling into a limp heap. He squirmed and looked around in confusion. Why couldn’t he feel his wing? He looked back to see if there was something wrong with the appendage. He found that it was simply missing. There was just a useless little stump sticking out of him, fresh blood dripping out to paint his side a very uncomfortable shade of red.

Squelch.

Confused, Silent looked up. His wing had just landed in front of him, broken and mangled and covered in yet more blood. He looked up at where his wing had come from, coming face to face with glowing red eyes. Deep red orbs that filled his vision and burned into his very soul like a branding iron. In that moment, Silent Edge experienced an emotion he was very unaccustomed to feeling.

Fear. Complete and total terror.

Silent let out a terrified wail. He turned and scrambled to get away, primal instinct taking over and driving him to run as far and as fast as his legs could take him. He barely even made it a yard before something clamped down on his hind legs, causing the rest of him to fall to the ground.

“NO!” he screamed as the demon began to drag him back. Dirt and grass and stone scraped along his underbelly like the hungry fingers of hell itself welcoming him home. He kicked and he howled, tears welling up in his eyes as he was lifted into the air, upside down, to face the demon that sought to end his life. “No, no, NO! Please, no!”

The scorpion didn’t listen. It reached out with its free pincer to clamp down on his other wing. Silent screamed as it, too, came away, a sickening squelch and crunch filling his ears, like breaking seashells inside the guts of a rotting pumpkin.

“Please, stop…” he whimpered, his eyes closing in a vain attempt to hide his tears. “Please don’t… I’m sorry… please…”

The scorpion went rigid at those words. For a moment, he thought that maybe it would accept his apology and let him leave with his life. It had already taken the skies and his dignity. Perhaps that would be enough to appease it?

He cracked open an eye, and his hopes were shattered. The pure, uncomprehending rage in those red eyes was unmistakable. Silent’s heart went into a frenzy, and he lifted his hooves out in front of him when he saw its mandibles opening wide. “N-no no no! Wait-”

His words were silenced when the barbed tip of the scorpion's tail stabbed into his chest. Its other pincer grabbed onto one of his forelegs, and its mandibles clamped down on his neck.

And then the beast began to pull.

Silent’s scream was drowned out as his throat was filled with his own blood. His muscles were stretched in every direction, straining and burning and shredding. Blood ran down his face from his mouth to pour into his eyes, turning the world red and burning his skull.

And so it was that Silent Edge was undone, torn to pieces in a shower of gore by the filly he had devoted his life to ending.

Author's Note

There's only so much pain a mind can take before it crumbles under the pressure. When that happens, even something as small and weak as a mere child can become like something out of a horrible nightmare...

Love

Lens looked on in wide-eyed shock as the giant scorpion tore Silent Edge to literal pieces. Limbs went flying in a shower of gore and viscera as Silent’s wings laid on the ground, having been ripped off already. The pegasus’ screams devolved into agonized whimpers, then pathetic gurgles, before his head fell to the wet, grassy ground with a deafening thump.

Lens couldn’t help but shudder and tear his eyes away from the gruesome scene, his stomach churning. Silent had been a monster, yes, and Lens couldn’t say that the world wasn’t better off without him in it, but to die in such a horrifying manner… and for it to be done by the hooves of a mere child.

Lens timidly glanced back to the scene, and the scorpion was gone. Primrose the earth pony filly had returned, her face hidden by her long, blood-soaked mane. Her head was tilted up as if to look at the sky, allowing rivulets of crimson to run down her body and stain the grass at her hooves. She didn’t move. She just stood there, silent as the grave.

Lens swallowed heavily. “...Prim?” he called out in a weak voice.

Primrose slowly turned to face him. Her eyes were cold and empty as if all of the life and emotion had left her body. Her chin and lower jaw were stained with even more of Silent’s spilled blood, making her look almost like a zombie from some macabre painting. Then, with slow, jerky steps, she began to trudge for the barrier.

Lens shrank back, his heart going wild against his ribs. “Prim, hey… s-stay back…” he stammered out. The vacant, hollow look in the blood-stained foal’s eyes was enough to trigger a deep-seated fight or flight response. Without thinking about it, his horn flared with light, and the barrier solidified just before Prim would have passed through it.

She paused at the edge of the light, her eyes widening. “...Lens?” she breathed out in empty confusion.

Lens wilted at that, his heart flooding with regret. He looked down, his ears lowering. “I… a-are you in there, Primrose?” he asked after a moment, trying to keep the fearful stammer out of his voice. He lifted his eyes to look into hers, silently pleading with her.

Primrose stared back at him for several seconds before looking down at her hooves. The color slowly drained from her face, and she let out a mortified gasp. The light slowly began to come back into her eyes as they misted over. She reached a hoof up to cover her mouth, stifling a horrified sob.

She looked back up to Lens, tears rolling freely down her cheeks. “Lens… I… I-I’m s-so sorry… I didn’t… I w-wasn’t trying to… I just… I c-couldn’t stop…” she babbled out in a trembling voice. She reached out and touched her hoof to the barrier, sniffling. “P-please let me in… please…”

Lens eyed her for a few seconds, his own heart withering at the sight. With a quiet sigh, he dropped the barrier to let her approach. She looked up as it dispersed before dragging herself over to be at his side, her eyes slowly lowering to look at Scarlet’s body.

He lifted a foreleg and guided her into a tight hug against his side, resting his chin on her head to impart as much comfort as he could. “It’s okay,” he whispered, closing his eyes. “It’s okay now. It’s over. He’s gone.”

Primrose sniffled. “I… I k-killed him,” she choked out, her entire body trembling. “I… I w-wasn’t supposed to kill him… I never wanted to kill anyone… B-but I just couldn’t stop myself. I just… I was s-so angry, and...”

“Sshh,” Lens shushed her as she babbled on and on. “Shh, shh. It’s okay. It’s alright. I’ve got you.”

Primrose finally leaned against him and returned the hug, burying her face into his chest fur and openly sobbing. Lens did what he could to soothe and comfort her, but in truth, he wasn’t faring much better than the poor, broken child in his hooves. His eyes fell on Scarlet once again, heart clenching in his chest.

“You are forgiven, Scarlet,” Lens thought to himself, closing his eyes. “We forgive you. For everything. I just hope you were able to forgive yourself in the end…”

The two stayed like that for what felt like an eternity. The storm clouds that had gathered overhead slowly began to clear away, as if the Five―or whatever force constituted as godly, Lens supposed―had decided there had been enough pain for one night. Not a single drop of rain fell on that mountain valley, and soon, the pale glow of the full moon returned in all its glory. A chilly breeze washed over them, making Lens shudder even as he used his body to shield Primrose from the cold.

His ears perked up to the sound of hooves approaching through the grass. He looked up, finding Flurry Heart drawing closer. The alicorn’s eyes were set on Scarlet’s body, a deeply sympathetic frown on her face. “...I’m sorry I didn’t come sooner,” she whispered quietly once she was close enough.

“Don’t be sorry,” Lens dismissed in an equally hushed tone with a slow shake of his head. “Your people had to take priority over a bunch of strangers. I don’t fault you for that…”

“Had I come sooner,” Flurry insisted adamantly, “maybe I could have done something to save her, but… as it is…” her horn lit up with a golden light. Lens and Primrose watched as Scarlet’s body lit up to match, and he held his breath. Primrose, on the other hoof, did not seem to be optimistic.

Flurry’s eyes widened. “...She’s alive,” she muttered in awe.

Lens blinked in surprise, his heart steadily beating harder against his chest as a newfound hope sprung into life within him. “She is?” he asked, leaning forward slightly. “Can you save her? I’ve done everything I can, but…”

Flurry frowned as she took in Scarlet’s injuries. After a moment, she sighed and shook her head. “I’m so, so sorry, but… no. I can’t. She’s too far gone. My healing spells are powerful, but there is a limit to what I can heal. Her body has suffered excessive internal and external trauma, not to mention the blood loss. Plus, I’ve used most of my power healing changelings inside… I just don’t have enough energy left to heal injuries this severe.”

Lens hope died with the next beat of his heart. He looked down at Scarlet, his head feeling heavy with longing. “So… she’s lost…?” he breathed out, holding Primrose even closer.

Flurry closed her eyes. “...I wish there was more I could do. I owe it to all of you… for bringing us the lamp, for protecting my home…”

Lens sighed and looked away. His composure was starting to crack and break down. His vision was fogging over with tears, and his voice was beginning to tremble with emotion. “...It’s fine,” he mumbled in defeat. “Don’t blame yourself… she can die knowing she gave her all for what she believed in… I… I kn-know she’ll find peace…”

Suddenly, Primrose tore away from his grasp. Lens blinked and turned to see her propping her hooves on Scarlet’s body, her eyes glowing green as she channeled magic. She looked imploringly up to Flurry. “Please, can’t you just try?!” she asked in desperation.

Flurry blinked, leaning back. “I… Primrose, I… I don’t want to give you false hope,” she said reluctantly.

Primrose shook her head wildly in defiance. “There has to be something we can do! She can’t die like this, I won’t let her!”

Lens sighed, looking down. As much as he wanted to side with Primrose on this, he knew already it was a losing battle. Flurry was exhausted, and Scarlet was too far gone. He timidly lifted a hoof and reached out to grab Primrose’s shoulder. “Prim… please, don’t-”

Primrose spun and smacked his hoof away. “NO! I’m not l-letting this be the end!” she screamed at him. She wiped a hoof over her misting eyes. “She’s given ev-everything for us! W-we can’t just sit here a-and let her die! We have to try something! Anything!”

Lens sighed and withdrew his hoof. He opened his mouth to say something; to try and console her, to try and convince her it wasn’t possible, but he just couldn’t find the words. He couldn’t stand to shatter her heart like that, not after everything she had already been through tonight, but at the same time, he couldn’t bring himself to lie and say that they could pull it off.

He was caught in a trap. It was either break her heart by telling her it was impossible, or let her heart be broken in a whole different way by telling her a comforting lie mere moments before it would be disproven… A conundrum no parental figure should ever have to face.

“Scarlet raised our foal for years,” Lens noted with a quiet sigh. “If she could speak, I wonder what she’d do about this…”

Primrose’s ears slowly lowered when Lens didn’t say anything. She gave a frustrated shout before spinning back around to Flurry. “I don’t care if we fail!” she said desperately. “But we gotta try! I owe her that much, at least!”

Flurry looked down, closing her eyes. For a short while, she didn’t say a word. Then she opened her eyes and gave a thoughtful hum. “Actually… there might be a way,” she whispered.

Lens stared at her in bewilderment. “Huh?”

Flurry rose to her hooves and stepped around Scarlet’s body until she was next to him. “I’m exhausted, yes, but… maybe, if you two lend me your magic, I can pull her back from the brink.”

Primrose gasped. “You can do that?!”

Flurry nodded. “I can, although I've never done it for something like this. I need to make it perfectly clear to you, right here and now, that this might not work. If we do this, you will be very drained for a while, and there is a good chance that even if I can bring her back from the brink, her injuries may still claim her in the end. You need to be ready for that possibility. Do you understand?”

Primrose nodded without hesitation. “Yes, I am! What do I need to do?”

Flurry smiled at the foal’s eagerness before turning to Lens. “What about you? I’ll need every scrap of power I can get if this is going to work.”

Lens reached up to adjust his glasses, only to find that they were not there. He grimaced and set his hoof down. “...Scarlet Frost is the most important mare in my life. She gave everything up to save us,” he whispered quietly, closing his eyes. “I love her. More than anypony else, I love her with all my heart. She means the world to me… if giving up some of my magic means saving her life, then consider it done. Take as much as you need.”

Flurry reached out to place her hoof over his chest. “I’m glad to hear it… focus on that, both of you. Think about how much she means to you, everything about her that you find endearing, or likable. Use those feelings and draw on everything you have… and we might just save her.”

Lens nodded and did as he was told, casting his mind back. He thought of the day he had first met Scarlet, how he had been instantly stricken by her fiery personality and imposing beauty. He thought of how she had slowly but surely warmed up to him as he regaled her with story after story, trivial fact after trivial fact about the world around them. He recalled how she had brought him with her on patrol one night after an especially bloody battle, before bringing him to a stop by the side of a pond.

He remembered how she had told him how much she was tired of all the fighting, and how deeply she had come to care for him. He remembered how his heart had soared at the admission of affection, and how it had hammered in his chest when they had fallen into the grass by the water’s edge, entangled in each other’s hooves.

He remembered how much he had missed her when they were separated. He remembered wondering every so often if she would ever come and see him. He remembered the day she had turned up on his doorstep and everything that had happened after: Hearing about his daughter, Crystal Clear, as well as experiencing the attack on his home, Primrose’s nearly-fatal injury, their time on the Apple family’s farm, the dance under the moon in Newcanter, her face looking down on his...

Through it all, cracked and broken as she sometimes became, there was never any doubt that the fiery, passionate mare he had fallen so heavily in love with was still in there. She was still in there and fighting with ferocity unbound behind those amethyst eyes to protect the ones she loved, to keep them happy and safe.

“I love you, Scarlet,” he thought to himself when he heard Flurry’s horn lighting with magic. “Please… come back to us. We still have a quiet life to live…”

He felt a tug on his magic. For a moment, he instinctively went to resist, but soon relaxed, allowing the power to flow out of him without restraint.

“...And Primrose needs a mother.”

Author's Note

To Be Concluded...

Family

Scarlet had many ideas about what Hell would ultimately be like when the time came for her to die. She had considered it perhaps an endless abyss of fire and ash that would burn at immortal flesh until the end of time itself, with her only company being the agonized wails of fellow damned souls. She had pondered maybe it would be more personal; that she would be forced to endlessly confront her misdeeds and mistakes over and over until her mind finally snapped.

When Crystal had first been born, she had decided that Hell would consist entirely of being trapped in an empty room with a crying baby that just wouldn’t shut up. Then, when Crystal died, that perception had changed. Hell had become a world where her daughter was no longer alive.

With all of that in mind, she was understandably confused when Hell turned out to be a nice, comfortable bed and a distinct lack of pain. In fact, the extent of her discomfort was a general stiffness that one would associate with lying still for a long time. Plus, she was thirsty and hungry, but that was more of a footnote, really.

Scarlet cracked her eyes open with a quiet, bewildered groan. She was tucked into a very nice bed in a room that appeared to have been chiseled by hoof out of the side of a mountain. A green cluster was attached to the ceiling, providing gentle emerald illumination. Various shelves and compartments were dug into the walls, each one stocked to the point of bursting with medical supplies.

“...Am I alive?” Scarlet asked in a dry rasp. She racked her brain, trying to recall what had happened. Everything up until her point-blank artillery blast was clear, but beyond that it became fuzzy, to say the least. She knew the battle carried on for quite some time, and she knew she had sustained increasingly grievous wounds as the ordeal progressed. She vaguely recalled hearing the voices of Lens and Primrose, but after that… nothing.

Her eyes darted down to her body, hidden beneath the blankets. She went to light up her horn and lift them to get a look at the damage, but stopped when a sharp throb of pain stabbed through her skull. She inhaled sharply through clenched teeth, her eyes screwing shut in pain. She took a few deep breaths. Magic exhaustion. She had felt it enough in the past to recognize the sensation.

Grimacing and groaning, she tried a different approach, lifting the blanket with her hoof instead. To her surprise, the fur on her chest and forelegs was noticeably thinner compared to the rest of her, indicating that it was still growing back after her artillery spell burned it away. The rest of her body was covered in thick bandage wraps with irregular blots of dark crimson.

“...What the hell happened?” she asked after a moment of bewilderment. She allowed the blanket to drop and closed her eyes, trying as hard as she could to pick out any more details. Sadly, her mind refused to yield its secrets, leaving her with more questions than answers. What had happened after she blacked out? Was Silent still on the loose? Were Prim and Lens alright? What about the griffon attack?

So many questions assaulted her mind, each one draining her already limited mental strength more and more. Eventually, it all became too much, and she drifted back into a restless slumber.

She drifted in and out of consciousness for what felt like ages, and each time felt almost like she was repeating her initial awakening; confusion, thoughts, the struggle to remember, and the onslaught of questions that left her emotionally drained until her own exhaustion lulled her back to sleep. Every once in a while, she could have sworn she could hear a two-toned voice saying things when her eyes were closed, but she could never make out the words.

The pattern at last changed after what felt like the millionth time. Scarlet grimaced and slowly opened her eyes to the sight of a vibrant pink changeling mare with ruby-red eyes standing over her. She was humming a little tune to herself as she worked, and Scarlet soon realized that the mare was pulling her bandages away.

“Okay, looking good…” she mumbled to herself. “Bleeding’s stopped, fur’s growing back… Bit of atrophy, but that’s to be expected…”

Scarlet blinked, not quite sure what to do or say in this scenario. A few seconds passed where the changeling turned, drifting the blood-marked bandages into a nearby wooden bin for disposal. That done, she turned back and pulled Scarlet’s blankets up to tuck her in. It was then that the changeling’s gaze met Scarlet’s. She let out a surprised yip, like a startled puppy, and sprang back with a buzz of her wings.

Scarlet blinked again before taking a breath. The changeling took a moment to calm down before offering her a cheerful smile. “Oh! You’re awake!” she said.

Scarlet slowly pushed herself up into a sitting position. She grimaced in pain as she went, her body complaining with a series of aches and pains. “Y-yeah, I… I am,” she acknowledged with a dumbfounded nod. She lifted up a hoof and turned it over a few times, still not entirely sure any of this was real. “Where am I? What happened to me?”

The changeling stepped forward and placed a hoof on Scarlet’s shoulder to gently nudge her back into a lying position. “It’s okay. You’re in the central healing hive. You had a very close call, Miss Frost,” she said. She gave Scarlet a tender smile. “You were severely burned, your muscles had sustained intense damage, and you had been stabbed through the back with a sharpened blade.”

Scarlet’s eyes widened. “Stabbed through the back…?” she asked, a hoof wandering up to feel at her chest. Now that she thought about it, there was a noticeable mark on her chest. It tingled with a distant phantom pain, and she grimaced. “I… don’t really remember that. It all gets fuzzy after a point…”

The changeling shrugged. “That’s to be expected. You were halfway through death’s door when Lady Flurry Heart reached you.”

Scarlet turned to the changeling. “Flurry? Flurry Heart saved me?”

The changeling nodded cheerfully. “She sure did, although she didn’t do it alone. You really have Primrose and Sharp Lens to thank. They lent Flurry as much energy as they could to save you, and they just barely managed to bring you back from the brink. You were still in critical condition for several days, but with some time and a lot of effort, I was able to fix you up.”

Scarlet stared at the changeling for a few seconds before reaching a hoof up to her chest. She lowered her head to hide her face behind her mane, her lips tugging up into a warm smile. “Primrose… Lens… they did all that for me?” she asked if only to hear the words again.

“They did,” the changeling replied with a grin. “You’re a lucky mare, miss Frost. The love those two have for you has been palpable every time they came in to check on you.”

Scarlet took a deep breath and let it out, her smile growing. She should have known. Lens was a stubborn stallion, and Primrose had a heart too big for her little chest. If ever there was someone to break all the rules and save a mare who was beyond even a goddess’ power to save, it would be those two, wouldn’t it?

She lifted her eyes to the changeling again. “What about Silent Edge, or the griffon attack? What happened to them?” she asked.

The changeling shifted on her hooves, an uncomfortable grimace on her face. “A-ah, well… The attack was successfully stopped by Hraesvalgr and Lady Flurry Heart. I’m not sure who this Silent Edge is, but I can only assume that he was defeated as well. We suffered pretty heavy losses, though, and the entrance is having to be completely rebuilt.”

Scarlet let off a quiet sigh. “I see… you have my condolences.”

The changeling shook her head, her smile returning. “Thank you, miss, but we all knew something like that was going to happen someday. It was only a matter of time before Sanctuary was discovered,” she said before her horn lit up with a soft green light. “Now hold still, please.”

Scarlet held still as the changeling ran a few spells over her, no doubt scanning for any leftover damage. After a few minutes, the magic ended, and the changeling beamed. “Well, it looks like you’re ready to be up and about, miss Frost! Just try and take it easy, okay? You’re healed, but your muscles and magic are gonna be pretty weakened after all that misuse. Go slow and steady, and rest when you need to. If anything starts hurting again, come right back and see me right away.”

Scarlet nodded and slowly pulled herself off the bed. As the changeling had said, her muscles were stiff and sore, and she could tell already that she was far from where she had been before. She could tell that her magic was in similar straights, remembering how she hadn’t even been able to lift her bedsheets when she first woke up. Still, weak was better than dead, she supposed. “Thank you,” she said. “What’s your name?”

The changeling held a hoof to her heart and bowed her head. “My name is Scalene. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Miss Frost.”

Scarlet hesitated for a moment before smiling. She mirrored Scalene’s bow with one of her own. “The pleasure is mine, Scalene. I do believe I owe you my life.”

Scalene shot up with a tin blush forming on her already pink cheeks. She gave off a sheepish giggle. “Eheh, no, you don’t. Again, Lens and Primrose, those are the two deserving of your thanks. I’m just a medical drone doing my job!”

Scarlet rolled her eyes. “Yes, and your job was to save my life.”

“W-well, yes, but…”

Scarlet chuckled and gave a shake of her head. “Oh, just take the compliment, damn you,” she said lightly before meeting Scalane’s gaze again. “Now, do you know where Primrose and Lens are? I… I’d like to see them.”

Scalene was quick to compose herself. She cleared her throat and nodded toward the hole in the wall. “Oh, they should be by the entrance of Sanctuary. They came by this morning to tell me where to find them if you woke up. I can show you the way if you’d like?”

Scarlet smiled. “Yes, I’d like that very much.”

Scarlet couldn’t help but wince from time to time as Scalene led her through the streets of Sanctuary, equally due to the onset of tiredness and the unfortunate sights around her. Many buildings had suffered some small amount of damage, with stray bits of rubble and dried bloodstains here and there.

For the most part, however, the locals seemed none the worse for wear. The mood had dropped, yes, but something was counteracting the general air of depression Scarlet would expect to see in the aftermath of a large scale battle. Many of the changelings were actually smiling as they went about their day. Nymphs that went scampering by visibly had a spring to their steps. In general, there was an almost electric buzz of enthusiasm about something that she was, as of yet, unaware of.

“Say, Scalene?” she asked as they stepped into the entrance chamber.

“Yes, Miss Frost?”

Scarlet waved a hoof dismissively. “Oh, just Scarlet is fine,” she corrected before looking around. “But, I’m curious… why is everyone so happy?”

Scalene tilted her head. “What do you mean?”

Scarlet looked over at one set of changelings. They were busy rebuilding a collapsed home, but the looks on their faces were alight with eager excitement. “...I’ve seen more than a few towns in the aftermath of a large scale battle,” Scarlet began, a small ping of guilt forming in her chest. She forced it down for the moment. “Most of the time, the locals would be downcast from the event. Things would be quiet and somber, but here… everyone seems excited.”

Scalene looked around for a moment before a look of comprehension dawned on her face. “Ooooh, that! Well,” she turned back to Scarlet as they reached the tunnel that led outside. “Lady Flurry announced this morning that the lamp is going to be opened today! Her aunt, Twilight Sparkle, and all of her friends are finally coming back to the world!”

Scarlet’s ears perked up, and she looked on to Sanctuary once again. Now it made sense. They had suffered a horrible tragedy, yes, but it was immediately being followed up with the fulfillment of an ancient promise; one that, with any luck, might finally begin to make their lot in this vast, broken world just a little better.

She smiled. “I see… I’m glad, then, that they have something to smile about. It’s hard to find joy so soon after a tragedy like this…”

“Speaking from personal experience?” Scalene deduced quietly.

Scarlet’s smile faded. “...Yes.”

“I won’t ask,” Scalene said with a raised hoof and a gentle smile. “Anyways, Lens and Primrose should be just up the hill to your right when you step outside. I think you know the way from here, yes?”

“Yes, I do. Thank you,” Scarlet thanked. She gave Scalene a nod before turning to make her way down the tall cavernous tunnel. She saw the light at the end, and for a fraction of a second, she toyed with the notion that maybe this was where she was going to die. She managed to chase away the thought with a short laugh, however. She was alive, and it was time she started acting like it.

She stepped out into the warm light of the afternoon sun, and her muscles began to relax. There wasn’t a cloud in sight, and while the damage to the orchards was still evident, the rest of the valley was the very picture of natural beauty. Flowers were blooming all across the scene, gently wavering in the breeze. A few petals drifted through the air, swirling around before vanishing into the distance.

She turned to the right, spotting a natural trail formed into the mountainside, heading up at a steep angle. Grimacing, she set off, taking it slow and steady so as to not upset her abused muscles any further. She had to stop and rest several times on the way, and the journey took several minutes longer than it would have if she had been at full strength.

But, at long last, she reached the top. The trail widened out into a widened bluff that offered a breathtaking view of the entire valley. She could see all of it from here, from the burned orchards to the sparkling water of the lake, to the very spot where Spike had first brought them in. She paused for a second to soak it in, taking a deep breath.

She lowered her gaze. There were two ponies up ahead, sitting side-by-side in front of a gravestone. Her heart fluttered in her chest, a smile gracing her lips. Sharp Lens and Primrose, in her pony form, were staring down at the grave, speaking to one another in hushed whispers. The stallion had a foreleg draped over the foal’s back.

She stared at them for several seconds, committing the image to memory. How the blue sky stretched on endlessly before them, how the clouds came together to perfectly frame them in the light of the sun, how the drifting petals of the flowers below drifted by. It was awe-inspiring and instilled a sense of peace that Scarlet hadn’t felt in a long, long time.

With a feeling of contentment she hadn’t felt in months, Scarlet slowly approached the filly and stallion. They turned to face her as she drew near, and Primrose’s eyes lit up with joy.

“Scarlet!” she cried out, tearing out of Lens’ embrace and launching herself against Scarlet in a tight hug. Scarlet grunted, falling to her haunches.

Her muscles complained about the sudden impact, but she ignored them and returned the hug, scooping Primrose up and cradling the filly tight against her chest, right over her heart. “Prim… oh, Primrose,” she whispered, tears of joy in her eyes. She leaned back after a second to look down into Prim’s eyes. “Thank the Five… you’re okay,” she whispered, reaching a hoof up to caress her cheek.

Primrose leaned into the touch, humming. “Hmmm… so are you,” she whispered quietly, her own eyes shimmering. “I was so worried about you… I thought you were gonna die…”

“What, and leave you all alone with him?” Scarlet asked, shooting Lens a teasing look. “Ha! Not a chance.”

Lens pouted, and Scarlet couldn’t help but notice the distinct lack of his glasses. “Scarlet, do you have to?”

“Lens, after everything we have been through recently, you will let me have this.”

The stallion groaned, then shrugged his shoulders. “Meh. Fair enough,” he relented before drawing closer. He joined Scarlet and Prim in their group hug, resting his forehead against hers. “It’s good to have you back…”

Scarlet smiled. With only a moment of hesitation, she leaned over and pressed her lips against his in a tender kiss. She heard him inhale sharply through his nose from the sudden movement, but he was quick to gather himself and return the kiss with just as much passion and energy. When she pulled back, she snickered at the intense blush that was now covering his face. “Oh, I’m glad to hear it.”

Primrose gave off an adoring coo at the display of affection. She snuggled closer to Scarlet, burying her face in the unicorn’s chest fur.

Scarlet held her closer, taking a moment to cherish the warmth the filly offered her. Another breeze washed by from the edge of the cliff, drawing her attention to the grave. Her heart sank when she saw the epitaph chiseled delicately into the stone’s surface.

Here lies Sclera,

Beloved Mother.

May her legacy shine on forevermore.

Scarlet looked down at Primrose, and she knew from the foal’s pained expression that she could feel Scarlet’s own dropping mood. Her ears lowered, and she gave off a quiet sigh. Without a word, she leaned down to plant a small kiss on Primrose’s head. “I’m sorry about your mother,” she whispered. “I truly am…”

Primrose was quiet for a few seconds. She looked back to the gravestone and shook her head. “It’s alright… I miss her, but… I’ll live,” she said, managing a tiny smile. “Besides, she’s not really gone. She’s right here… she can watch over all of us from here. And... She wouldn’t want me to stay sad… s-so I won’t. I’ll sm-mile and smell the roses, like you taught me to.”

Scarlet’s smile slowly returned. She reached down and gently pet Prim on the back of the head. “That’s my girl…” she whispered. She lifted her gaze to the gravestone one more time. She closed her eyes.

After a few seconds, she smiled softly and returned her attention to the two ponies she had in her hooves. The trio fell into a companionable silence after that, embracing each other and allowing the cool mountain air to wash over them. Birds sang far off in the distance, lending their aimless melody to the already serene atmosphere.

Primrose suddenly held Scarlet tighter, and when she spoke, her voice was low and timid. A reflection of the shy whisper she had first used in Scarlet’s cellar all those days ago. “...I don’t want you to go.”

Scarlet blinked in surprise. “Huh? What do you mean?”

Lens caught her attention with a small sigh. “I… I told her about your plan to continue to Lover’s Shade,” he said after a moment. “I just thought she’d want to know…”

“Please don’t leave us,” Primrose asked quietly, her lips trembling. “I want you to stay. Please stay…”

Scarlet stared down at her for several long seconds, her heart twisting in her chest. She turned to Lens, then looked up at the sky, her mind waging a miniature war with itself. She did still want to go to Lover’s Shade, get word to her mother about everything that had happened… but it was a long journey to make alone, especially in her condition.

“...My place is with my family,” she said, the war in her mind raging harder for a few seconds before one side finally won out over the other. She looked back down to the pony and changeling before her, seeing the disappointment in their eyes. She hesitated for a second before reaching out to lift Prim’s chin so they were eye-to-eye.

“...But luckily for me, my family is right here.”

It was like someone flicked a switch. Primrose’s eyes widened, and she let out an elated squeal before throwing herself against Scarlet—again—and hugged her tight. “Thank you, Scarlet!” Prim cried out, burying her face into Scarlet’s shoulder. “Thank you, thank you, thank you!”

Scarlet returned the embrace and let out a small laugh. She looked past the happily cheering foal and met Lens’ gaze. He appeared surprised, but after a moment, he smiled back at her and drew closer. “Thanks, Scarlet… so what happens now?” he asked quietly.

Before Scarlet could answer, Spike’s roar pierced the air from the mountain, long and loud. As soon as it did, a wave of blue magic came rushing out of the cave, washing over Scarlet and the entire valley behind her, carrying with it an odd sense of calm. A moment later, the nearby orchard, where drones had been working to clean things up, began to cry out and cheer, birds flying into the air to dance in the sky.

“It’s open,” Primrose whispered quietly, her eyes going distant. Her smile grew smaller but no less sincere. “The lamp’s finally open…”

Scarlet looked back towards the cave entrance. Twilight Sparkle and her friends had been released, then, had they? If so, the days ahead were sure to be more than a little interesting. The world was going to start changing soon, she could feel it.

“But that’s not a story for us to get involved in,” she decided after a moment. She met Lens’ gaze one more time. “What happens now, Lens, Prim… is we three settle down here, and finally live that quiet, simple life we’ve been wanting.”

Lens leaned into her side at that, draping a foreleg over her shoulders. “Heh… I think I like that plan.”

“Me, too!” Primrose chirped, snuggling up between the two ponies.

Scarlet smiled at the two of them before closing her eyes and taking a deep breath. “A simple life…” she whispered before falling quiet and allowing the warmth of her new family to finally melt the ice that had long encased her heart.

She lifted her eyes to the gravestone. “I will take care of her in your stead,” she thought, hoping that wherever Sclera’s spirit was, it could hear her vow. “I swear it on my life. I will protect her and love her as if she were my own. I will make sure your sacrifice will never be in vain, Sclera. As one mother to another, you have my word…”

It was a strange thing. As she ended that thought, Scarlet could have sworn the winds on that cliffside turned and shifted, as if in response to her words. It was probably just her imagination, but she couldn’t help but think that the wind was saying something...

“Thank you.”

Mothers

When Scarlet came back to consciousness, it was with the realization that her entire body was in pain. Barely stifling a groan, the battered unicorn cracked an eye open. She was in a cave, by the look of things, the light of the early morning sun streaming in through the cave mouth. Through the threshold, she could make out a dense collection of trees that shortly swallowed up everything not far from the entrance.

“Ah, good, you’re awake,” Lens’ voice came from her right, drawing her attention deeper into the cave. She spotted Sclera lying down against the far wall, Protea’s still-slumbering form nestled in her hooves. The changeling mother was covered in a few places by strips of blue fabric. Lens stood over them, a few scraps of said fabric suspended in the air behind him in his magic.

Scarlet slowly pushed herself up into a sitting position. She realized with a start that her own injuries had been treated in much the same way as Sclera’s, with long strips of blue cloth. As she examined herself, she realized that her cloak was little more than a thick metal yoke with tattered scraps of fabric hanging off of it to tickle her shoulders.

“I’m sorry I didn’t ask,” Lens said, anticipating her question. He walked over to her and checked the makeshift bandages. Satisfied that they would hold, he smiled and nodded at her. “But I had to make sure you were going to be alright. You took quite a beating, and that arrow missed your spine by an inch. You’re lucky you can still walk.”

Scarlet rubbed a hoof over her face and took a deep breath. She clutched at the yoke of her cloak, briefly closing her eyes and forcing down her guilt at letting it get damaged like this. After a moment, she opened her eyes. “...What happened?”

Lens took a step back to give her some space, then sat down on his haunches. “Well, you started a big fire, and then passed out. Lucky for us, the flames caused the soldiers chasing us to redivert their attention into putting it out, giving me the chance I needed to pick you up and carry you the rest of the way,” he explained simply.

Scarlet winced at the reminder of the fire, a bead of guilt forming inside her heart. At the time, she knew there had been no other way to draw the guards off of them, but that didn’t change the fact that what she had done was very likely to have harmed many innocent ponies. Now that she wasn’t being consumed in adrenaline and could think clearly, she almost felt sick the longer she thought about it.

“I’m sorry,” she finally choked out, looking away to hide her face behind her mane. “I thought I had no choice.”

Lens sighed quietly. “Yeah… I can’t say I agree with your decision from a moral standpoint, but… well, it let me save your life, and it’s gonna let us keep going.”

Scarlet fell silent for several seconds. She shifted uncomfortably on her haunches before tearing her gaze away from Lens to stare at Protea. The child she had done all of this for... “How is she?” she asked quietly, inching forward and raising a hoof.

Sclera instinctively cradled the sleeping child closer to her chest to shield her. “She’s fine,” was her reply, short and clipped.

Scarlet’s ears drooped. She looked into Sclera’s eyes, seeing little aside from mistrust and fear in those glowing blue orbs. Scarlet opened her mouth to speak, but the words became lodged in her throat. “I… Sclera, I…”

A tense silence fell over the chamber for several long seconds. Then, Lens suddenly cleared his throat and stood up. “I’m going to go set up some proximity wards. We don’t want to be snuck up on,” he announced, although the look in his eyes as he stared down at Scarlet made it painfully clear there was another reason for his abrupt departure.

“Clever stallion,” Scarlet quietly raged in her mind, wanting to kick him just then but not having the strength or will to do so.

Sclera offered up no complaints, either. A moment later, Lens turned and left the cave, soon vanishing into the trees and fading from sight. This left Scarlet and Sclera entirely on their own, both of them looking at anything but the other mare in the room.

Scarlet closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “...I’m sorry,” she finally began.

“I know.”

Scarlet turned to Sclera. The changeling had an oddly understanding look on her face. She looked down, her ears drooping. “I… I can see it in the air. I can taste it. You’re extremely guilty over what happened on the wall...”

Trying not to think about the fact that her emotions had a taste to them, Scarlet adjusted herself and looked away again. “...Did Lens tell you anything about my past? About… w-why I lashed out at you as I did?” she asked, her voice hitching.

Sclera shook her head. “He did not. He merely told me it was not for him to discuss,” she said.

“Of course he did,” Scarlet breathed out. She took another deep breath to steady herself before launching into the story. “The reason I attacked you is, paradoxically, the same reason that I agreed to let you out of your cell and take you with me.”

Sclera tilted her head, a quizzical chitter coming from the bottom of her voice.

The sound made Scarlet’s skin crawl. For a moment, the back of her skull burned, but she was quick to force the sensation down and continue. “You see… I know only all too well what it is like to lose a child. My own daughter, Crystal Clear… she was murdered a few months ago. By one of the monsters that Protea called a ‘Feral.’ It… it bit into her throat, tore it out… and I was powerless to stop it.”

Sclera’s eyes slowly widened in shock. “Oh my goodness…”

Scarlet sniffled, her vision starting to blur, and her chest constricting in pain. She wiped a hoof over her face and forced herself to continue. “So w-when I saw you biting into that guard’s throat like that, it… it… it was l-like I was right b-back there, in the moment, watching my little girl dying all over again. And I… I couldn’t…”

Scarlet could say no more. She screwed her eyes shut and focused on just breathing, desperate to calm herself down and reign in her rampant emotions.

Sclera slowly lowered her eyes, a distant look coming onto her face. “...I see,” she whispered quietly, her protective hold on Protea relaxing somewhat. “When you had me pinned there, I could see the grief around you. It was such an intense shade, and it overwhelmed everything else. I didn’t know what it meant… and there were tears in your eyes. I had never seen such a look of anguish before.”

“It is the worst pain I have ever felt,” Scarlet acknowledged shakily after a few seconds, sniffling again. “Not even the injuries and losses I suffered in the war come close… She was everything to me. My one chance to bring something good into the world, and I let her die… I can imagine no agony greater than that…”

Scarlet lifted her gaze to Sclera again, a ghost of a smile tugging at the corner of her lips. “And then, in you, I saw the same thing. I saw a broken, grieving mother, one suffering from the impossible agony of losing their child... and I saw a chance to take away her pain…” her eyes lowered again, her smile fading. “...A pain that I shall never be rid of, I fear.”

Sclera opened her mouth several times, fishing for words. In the end, she settled for silently bowing her head and offering in a whisper: “Thank you, then, for saving my baby… and for the loss of yours, you have my sorrow.”

To her surprise, Scarlet did not feel the knee-jerk desire to dismiss the sympathies. After so many months of having that be her typical response, it came as a confusing shock. But after a moment of thought, it dawned on her why. Every other time, save for Lens and Wind, the condolences offered by those around her had been hollow, practiced affairs, devoid of actual care or sympathy for her, her plight, or her dead daughter.

This time, however, the sympathies were genuine, coming from one who was, in many ways, not unlike her.

Scarlet mirrored the bowing motion with her head. “Thank you, Sclera… and you’re welcome. Watching after your child has been my honor.”

Sclera’s sympathetic expression slowly turned into a grateful smile. “I’m glad to hear it… and I want to hear everything, if you are willing to share,” she said, briefly glancing down at the filly cradled in her legs.

Scarlet was quiet for a moment before offering a small nod of her head. “Of course… There is much of her story I do not know, so you will need to question her about the events before I met her. But the rest…”

She gave off a humorless chuckle, shaking her head. “Ha. It feels like it’s been so long since I met her… it’s hard for me to believe I first stumbled on that filly in my home only a few months ago.”

“You mentioned that you found her in your wine cellar,” Sclera recalled, her muzzle twisting in thought. “What was she doing down there, again?”

“Getting out of the rain, mostly,” Scarlet replied without missing a beat. She was overcome by a wave of nostalgia as she thought back on that night. “She somehow broke in and hid down there for a while. Eventually, a blast of thunder startled her, and she knocked over one of my more expensive wine racks… I found her cowering behind some empty barrels, her fur stained red with wine and shards of glass from broken bottles sticking out of her forelegs.”

“How was she, then?” Sclera asked quietly, nestling down and perking up her ears to listen.

Scarlet’s eyes slowly began to go distant as she lost herself in the memory. “She was skinny… even more than right now. I could practically see her ribs. She was weak, cold, covered in filth, and her mane was long and matted down. She looked like she had been through hell, and I learned soon enough that what she had been through wasn’t much better.”

“Of course. She was disguised as a pony when you met, wasn’t she?” Sclera asked, glancing down at Protea with a small, proud smile. “Good girl… I taught her that ever since she learned to listen to me…”

Scarlet nodded, her smile fading. “Yes… she introduced herself as Primrose, back then. A fake name now, I realize-”

“No.”

Scarlet clamped her jaw shut, taken off guard by the sudden interruption. She looked to Sclera and saw the changeling looking back at her with an odd expression. She shook her head. “Primrose is her name just as surely as Protea is.”

Scarlet blinked, her head tilting to one side. “What? I… I don’t follow.”

Sclera’s smile slowly returned, and she held Protea closer. “It’s something my own mother started. When I was born, she gave me two names. A changeling name, and a pony name. Considering how much time we spent disguised as ponies, we needed to be able to live among them for long stretches with no issues. For example, my changeling name is Iris, but my pony name is Sclera. I haven’t corrected you up to now because both are true.”

Scarlet nodded along slowly. “I see… and so you applied the same method to your children…” she muttered, looking down at Protea—or Primrose—with a small smile. After a few seconds, her smile faded, and she looked up to Sclera again, this time with curiosity. “But hold on… for the sake of your own survival, would it not have been easier to simply adopt a pony name entirely?”

Sclera’s expression soured somewhat. “Perhaps it might have… that’s certainly the angle my mate took. But I did not want to sacrifice what little of our culture we had left. Hanging on to our old naming conventions is one of my only ways of preserving the legacy of my people.”

“An admirable sentiment… and as a mare with a passion for history, I commend you for that decision,” Scarlet said, a small bead of appreciation forming in the back of her mind.

Sclera hummed at that. The two fell silent for a few moments before Sclera cleared her throat. “So, you were telling me about how you met my daughter?” she asked.

Scarlet jumped slightly at the reminder. “Oh! Of course, my apologies. Yes, as I said, I discovered her in my cellar…”

Scarlet talked for what felt like hours, recounting everything that she and Primrose had gone through. From that initial confrontation in the alleyway with Silent Edge to their long journey across New Equestria to reach Shimmervale. She went in-depth, reciting everything that she could recall to the best of her ability. All the while, Sclera listened with wide eyes and rapt attention, only rarely interrupting to ask for clarification on something.

As the story went on, Scarlet gradually became more and more uneasy. Finally, the words died in her throat as she was recounting the events after fleeing Shimmervale. Sclera eyes her for several moments, her expression morphing with confusion and concern. “Is… is something wrong? You’re anxious,” she said after a moment.

Scarlet looked away guiltily, the yoke of her collar feeling constricting around her throat. “I… Forgive me, but, I feel it may be better if I skipped this part,” she said softly, her ears lowering. “I don’t know if you’d want to-”

“Scarlet,” Sclera cut her off, her expression hardening. “I want to know everything. Please… I have spent the last five years believing my last child was dead. Whatever happened can never hope to undo the joy of holding her again. So please, tell me.”

Scarlet hesitated, then nodded. “Right… well, uh… a-a few days after we left Shimmervale, Silent… finally caught up to us,” she said, the words hitching repeatedly in her throat as she went. “And… and I didn’t see him in time. In one moment, he slipped in behind us and… and p-plunged his blades into Prim’s chest and stomach.”

Sclera’s eyes widened, the color draining from her face. “He… he got her?”

Scarlet nodded. “He did… to my shame, he was able to slip past my watch and do the deed. I fought him off after that, believing she was dead. But, thank the Five, she was alive. It was close, though. I am honestly stunned she was able to live with those injuries at all, much less long enough to receive medical attention…”

Sclera looked down at Protea for a few moments before her expression darkened. Her eyes narrowed, and her fangs became visible in a hateful scowl. “Silent Edge… if I ever get my hooves on that wretch, I will strangle the life out of him for what he has done to my family!”

Scarlet lifted a hoof in a placating gesture. “I doubt that will be necessary, Sclera. Remember, I turned his men on him back in Newcanter. But on the off chance, he does resume his hunt for you, focus on staying alive. Seeking vengeance will yield no satisfaction, that much I can attest to firsthoof…”

Scarlet’s voice trailed off, her mind briefly wandering back to the moments after Crystal’s death. In her grief and rage, the world had gone red. She didn’t remember much of what happened, but she did remember a flurry of magic, a spray of gore, and the scattered, brutalized limbs of the feral strewn around her as she cradled Crystal’s corpse…

Sclera stared at her for a long moment, no doubt seeing the hollow feeling Scarlet was feeling just then. With a slow nod, she pulled Protea up to her chest and planted a small kiss atop her head. “Alright…” she whispered.

“Good… now,” Scarlet said, focusing back on the conversation. “As long as we are on the subject of that incident, there is something I am curious about…”

Sclera tilted her head. “What?”

Scarlet gestured her hoof at Protea. “When Silent stabbed her, she was on death’s door for an entire day, and unconscious for several more, but never once did her disguise fade. She was a pony the entire time. I was under the impression that a changeling’s disguise was based on magic, and in her state, I can only imagine most enchantments or spells would fail. Do you know why her disguise remained in place?”

Sclera lifted a hoof to tap at her chin. “Hmmmm… Well, I think it stems from how free changelings have adapted their magic to suit our new way of life. In my family, at least, the function of the spell was modified by my grandfather. It used to be an active enchantment, but now it’s more of a passive effect. We set it, and then we can just leave it alone. As long as there is magic in our bodies to sustain it, the enchantment will persist even without our attention. Given she chose a pony form, which is structurally quite similar to her normal form, the drain on her magic would have been minuscule at most.”

The math and technicalities clicked together in Scarlet’s mind in a heartbeat. “I think I understand,” she said, nodding along. “But then, if she had died, the disguise would have failed, yes?”

“After a time,” Sclera acknowledged. “I am not sure about how it all works, but my mother told me that magic doesn’t leave the body immediately upon death. It leaves slowly as a part of decomposition…”

“Ah, yes, and since the shapeshifting spell is passive, it would have taken some time before the effects came to an end,” Scarlet finished with a slow nod. “Well, assuming that same method is universal across free changelings, that would certainly explain the startling lack of cases where deceased ponies were discovered to have been changelings all along… they were dead and buried before their true forms could be revealed.”

Sclera nodded at that, humming quietly to herself. A few moments later, she leaned forward again. “How did you save her, then? From her injuries, I mean.” She asked.

“It was difficult; of that, I can assure you… we had to take her to some ponies she had lived with in the past. The Apple family of Hoofrest Shire…”

Eventually, Scarlet’s recap of events came to an end. The two fell into a companionable silence after that, Scarlet taking the opportunity to start going over their situation in her head. As safe as this spot was, the moment they were ready to travel, they would have to keep going. Lover’s Shade was still a very enticing destination, in spite of the travel time needed to get there. It would be risky, and with Sclera as battered as she was, the going would be slow and difficult. But with any luck-

There was a stirring, and Scarlet’s heart leaped into her throat when she heard Protea’s voice reach her ears. Gasping sharply, Scarlet looked up to see the filly slowly opening up her eyes to look out at the rest of the cave. “...Wha… Scarlet?” she croaked quietly once her eyes settled on her. “Scarlet, what… where are we…?”

Scarlet looked down, a feeling of discomfort rolling up and down her spine on hearing the child’s voice in her ears again. “I… I’m not the one you should be looking at,” she whispered a moment later before nodding at Sclera. “Look.”

Protea stiffened, an anxious look on her face. Slowly, agonizingly slowly, she turned. She moved timidly as if she wasn’t sure she wanted to see the owner of the hooves cradling her tiny body. At last, her eyes found those of her mother. Her jaw hung open, her eyes flying wide in shock. “Wha…?”

Sclera smiled tenderly at her. “Good morning, Primrose…” she whispered while giving her child a nuzzle.

Protea mouthed uselessly like a fish for several seconds. She slowly reached a hoof up to touch her mother’s cheek. “...Mom?” she whispered, her quivering voice almost deafening in the relative silence of the cave. “Is it really you? Is it…?”

Sclera nodded slowly, reaching up to hold Protea’s hoof in her own. “Of course… I told you I would come and find you, didn’t I?” she replied softly.

Protea’s face twisted rapidly, from shock, to grief, to joy, and back to sorrow. Barely stifling a sob, she lunged forward to hug her mother, burying her face in the larger changeling’s chest. Sclera returned the hug, holding Protea as tight as she could and sheltering her with her body. From the bundle of limbs, the filly’s hysterical weeping was clearly audible. “M-mama… you n-never came… I th-thought you were dead…”

Sclera’s ears drooped in guilt, but instinct proved quick to take over. She craned her neck down, gently shushed her daughter and running a hoof down the back of her head. “I know, sweetie, I know… I’m sorry I took so long… I’m so sorry… But I’m here, now. I’m here. I got you. It’s okay. It’s all going to be okay.”

Protea shivered uncontrollably in her mother’s embrace, helplessly gasping out the word ‘mama’ over and over again. All the while, Sclera held her child close to her heart, rocking her back and forth and whispering assurances that, finally, everything was going to be okay.

Scarlet watched the scene unfolding for what felt like hours. It was heartwarming to see, and she couldn’t help but smile. However, the joy she felt at bearing witness to such a long-overdue reunion began to dwindle and fade, leaving nothing but a hollow sense of regret and loneliness to fill her heart.

She tore her eyes away from the tender scene, her ears drooping. Her heart twisted uncomfortably in her chest, and she reached a hoof up to hover tentatively over it. Even just sitting here as witness, she almost felt as if she were intruding on an event she had no place at. Shame and guilt clawed away at her heart with every passing moment, making her feel more and more inadequate.

Mere feet away, a mother was, at long last, being reunited with her daughter after years of being apart. Their joy was a wonderful thing to behold… and it was something Scarlet would never get to experience for herself. No matter how much she wished for it, her own daughter would not magically come wandering back into her life… And after what she had done to the poor foal in Newcanter, whatever relationship they had been developing was gone.

Protea had her true mother back, leaving Scarlet in a depressingly obsolete position. She could no longer be the mother figure she had imagined herself being, so where did that leave her?

“Right where I began,” she thought to herself, closing her eyes and settling back down for some rest. “As her protector… nothing more.”

The joyful weeping of the mother and daughter next to her filled her ears, the last thing she heard before her still-lingering exhaustion lulled her back into slumber.

(MAP)

Author's Note

This is the map of the area this story takes place in.

(MAP)

Offer

No matter how much they may have wished the dance could go on forever, the songs eventually began to wind down, the crowd began to thin, and soon, even the fireworks that had filled the heavens with light, sound, and color, faded away. But in spite of the disappointment that the festivities had to end for the night, neither Scarlet or Lens could deny that the experience had been well worth their time, and they left the plaza with big smiles on their faces.

Scarlet glanced over at Lens every so often as they made their return trip to the inn, unable to keep herself from smiling, however softly, when she saw how satisfied with himself he looked. Here and there, she would catch him looking back, and their smiles would mutually grow in size.

Soon enough, the inn came back into view, and Lens began to visibly sag, no doubt eager to hit the sack himself. “Oh, thank the Five,” he breathed out in relief. “Sleep… I can hardly wait.”

Scarlet hummed in response, her pace gradually slowing down as her eyes wandered up to the room where she knew Primrose was currently slumbering away. As she came to a stop in the middle of the street, her mind wandered back to the dance earlier, and Lens’ abrupt compliment after the fireworks first began to go off. A small bead of unease formed in the pit of her stomach, causing her to wince.

“Wait… are you two in love, or something?” Primrose’s voice echoed softly in her mind, drawing her back to the brief time they had spent in Lens’ home back in Shimmervale.

“We were, once. Before the war ended.”

“Are you not anymore?”

“I don’t know, Primrose. I hope not.”

“Huh? You don’t wanna be in love? Is he a bad pony?”

“No! No, he’s wonderful! He’s charming, he’s optimistic, he’s clever, and while he’s a little scatterbrained, he is easily one of the kindest ponies I have ever met!”

“Well… I think he probably still likes you like that. He was really happy to see you when we showed up.”

Scarlet’s eyes slowly wandered down to look at Lens, who had just stopped in the door frame to look back at her with concern. “Sapphire?” he called out, remembering to use her false name. “Are you coming?”

Scarlet smiled and nodded. “Y-yes, I’ll be up in a minute. You go on ahead. I just…” she gestured vaguely. “I just want to think about a few things, that’s all. And I would rather do it in private.”

Lens’ expression grew even more concerned. “Sapphire…”

Scarlet rolled her eyes. “Don’t worry, it’s nothing serious. I’ll be up in a minute. Just go and get some sleep,” she said with an optimistic edge to her voice, hoping to convince him.

After a few seconds, Lens nodded in understanding. “Alright… Don’t keep us waiting too long, though, alright? I think the little one won’t take too kindly to you being absent.”

Scarlet nodded in understanding. “I know. Now get moving.”

Lens was quiet for a second, remaining in the door frame for a breath longer than Scarlet would have liked. Eventually, though, he finally relented and disappeared inside, closing the door behind him, with an echoing clunk. Scarlet was left all alone in the middle of the street.

Scarlet gave a long, tired sigh, her shoulders sagging as she dragged herself over to one of the benches that rested just in front of the inn. She slumped into the seat and turned her eyes up to look at the sky. The moon caught her attention, nearly full and shining with a subtle radiance that served to soothe Scarlet’s tumultuous thoughts.

“...Can I really risk putting him in danger by keeping us here any longer?” she eventually thought to herself, her heart stirring with inner conflict. The longer they remained in this city, the higher the chances became that they would be found out. If that happened while they were within the walls, any chance they would have of getting out unharmed would more or less cease to exist, barring blasting open the walls or gates with artillery magic, something Scarlet was not willing to do.

The thought of getting trapped in this city sent a chill down Scarlet’s spine, and the image of being dragged, kicking and screaming into the dungeons of the great castle that presided over it all, was enough to make her coat bristle. Not for her sake, but for the sakes of those she traveled with. Primrose… Lens.

Because Primrose had been right. It was abundantly obvious to even a casual observer that there was something between them. Lens had clearly not let go of the love they had shared, however brief it may have been. That meant he was far more likely to do something reckless or stupid to try and help her, and given the parental relationship both of them had developed with Primrose, that recklessness could very well extend to the filly.

“...I can’t let him get hurt because of me,” Scarlet told herself with a sigh, her ears lowering. “Nor Primrose. I… I need them.”

For the next several minutes, Scarlet pondered her options, debating internally whether they should leave first thing in the morning or go with Lens’ original plan and wait for the day after tomorrow. So engrossed in her thoughts was she that she failed to notice the shadowy figure approaching her from the left until they cleared their throat and spoke.

“I must admit, Scarlet, that yellow and a ponytail work surprisingly well on you.”

Scarlet’s eyes snapped wide open at the familiar voice of Silent Edge, her heart skipping a beat as adrenaline flooded her veins. In one swift motion, she leaped from her seat and dropped into a battle stance, her horn igniting and conjuring both of her blades in front of her. Through the shimmering blades of arcane light, she could see the Nightblade himself standing just out of her reach.

“Silent!” she snapped, her blood beginning to boil with memories of the last time she had met him. “How did you find me?!”

To her surprise, the Nightblade merely lifted one foreleg, around which a thick, rich blue ribbon was tied. “One of my Nightblades spotted you and Lens dancing earlier and brought that information back to me. Now put away your swords, Scarlet. I am not here to fight you. I am here to talk,” Silent said slowly, giving her time to observe the ribbon. It was a sign of parley that had been introduced sometime after the founding of New Equestria, she recalled. A means to avoid combat until at least a rudimentary discussion could be had.

Seething, Scarlet narrowed her eyes in disbelief. “You honestly expect me to believe that?!” she snapped venomously. “How can I trust anything you say to me?!”

Silent frowned, almost looking offended. “Scarlet, I am a professional assassin and spy, but do not make the mistake of thinking I am without a heart.”

“What are you blathering on about?!”

Silent winced at her tone before gesturing around them. “Look around you, Scarlet. This is my home town. I would rather not stain the streets I grew up on with blood unless I am left with no other choice. Besides, the ponies here are yet in the middle of a celebration, one which commemorates the birth of our nation and our liberation from the yoke of Talonreach. I have no desire to strip the ponies of this city of their jovial mood by engaging in another bloody battle with you, especially considering how much collateral damage you have left in your wake in the past.”

Scarlet growled, remaining unconvinced. She scraped her hoof against the ground, her swords crackling dangerously with energy. “A remarkably noble notion coming from a murderous rat!”

Silent scowled. “Do not call me that,” he shot back with a sharp edge to his voice. “I left the name ‘rat’ behind years ago. Now, if it sets your mind at ease…”

With a sigh, Silent very slowly unfurled his wings, revealing that they were strikingly devoid of the blades he would normally have nestled between his feathers. “I am unarmed,” he stated plainly. “And I came here alone. You have my word, I will not strike at you unless you give me a reason to. Now please… dispel your swords and let us speak.”

Scarlet snarled before she risked taking her eyes off of Silent to quickly scan the nearby rooftops for any sign of other Nightblades. After a moment, she deduced with a small degree of confidence that he was being genuine—at least in the sense that he had come alone.

Slowly, she moved her blades aside and dispelled them, her violet eyes piercing into Silent with barely restrained hatred. “Fine, then. If you have truly come here to talk, then start talking,” she spat, the venom in her voice making it abundantly clear that she was short on patience.

Silent folded his wings back up at his side and took a step forward. “...I know Primrose is alive,” he stated bluntly.

Scarlet’s eyes narrowed. “No, she isn’t,” she spat back at him, pulling on all of the rage she had felt that night to lend credibility to her words. “You murdered her! She bled out shortly after you ran away!”

Silent’s expression contorted with disbelief. “If that were the case, Frost, then you would never have consented to speak with me, blue banner or not,” he immediately rebuked, giving Scarlet pause. “You would have struck out the moment you saw me. I remember full well the rage you brought to the table when last we met, and I know that had that child truly died, it would have only burned hotter and hotter. Had I succeeded in killing her, you would have cut me down by now.”

Scarlet winced, swearing internally. She should have known better. Silent was as experienced at lies as he was killing. It was his job, after all.

“Now then,” Silent went on, looking up towards the castle. “It is actually rather fortuitous of you to bring her to Newcanter as you have…”

“How so?” Scarlet demanded, taking a step back defensively. “So you don’t have to wear out your wings to report her death to the Lunar Council?”

“No, actually,” Silent replied patiently, glancing at her from the side. “It is fortuitous because, so long as she remains within this city, I will be out of reasons to kill her.”

Scarlet blinked. “W-what?”

Silent sighed, turning to face her directly again. “The Lunar Council would rather I bring Primrose in alive. I have been given the authorization to kill her if I believe I have to, but if I can bring her back alive, well… they would have far greater uses for a living Primrose than a dead one.”

Scarlet’s coat bristled, her blood boiling in her veins all over again at this latest tidbit of information. “Then why, Silent Edge, have you been trying to kill her so hard?! If the Council wants her alive-”

“My efforts to kill her are because I know she would never willingly come quietly,” Silent interrupted her again, her expression hardening. “Clever as she might be to have evaded me for so long, she is still an ignorant and foolish child, do not forget that. Bringing her back alive with such distances separating us from the capital would have been more trouble than it would be worth. But with her here, in the city, I can take her to the Council in almost no time at all, sparing her life and ending this chase.”

“What does the Council even want with her?!” Scarlet demanded, taking another step forward, barely holding herself back. “What do you want with her?! With her lamp?! Why are you after it?!”

“I could not care less about the child’s bauble,” Silent dismissed with a snort. “I am not in this for the relic. The Council is interested in that. I am to bring it to them, but my personal interest in this begins and ends with finishing my hunt.”

“WHY?!” Scarlet roared, her horn sparking to life as her rage began to spill forth. “Why are you so dead set on killing her?! WHAT DID SHE EVER DO TO YOU!”

Silent took a step back, his wings twitching reflexively. “I am merely performing my duty, Frost,” he said simply. “Although I must admit, after all of this time, there is a certain… personal motive at this point. The child slipped away from me when I led the assault on her camp. I could not suffer to let that insult to my pride go uncorrected. When I have a target, they do not get away from me.”

Scarlet’s patience was on the verge of breaking, the chains holding her back creaking dangerously with every word the Nightblade spoke. “Just… doing… your duty?!” she whispered through clenched teeth, her pupils dilating. “Your duty?! In what world does your duty include murdering an entire family of innocent ponies?! Hunting a small, defenseless child for half of her life, taking everything she has ever loved away from her?! How is that your duty, Silent?!”

When Scarlet’s tirade finally came to an end, Silent had actually taken a few steps back, a wide-eyed and bewildered look on his face. For a moment, Scarlet considered that, maybe, she had actually made him question his actions.

“Innocent… ponies…?” Silent echoed, seemingly taken aback by her statement. Slowly, agonizingly slowly, his eyes widened, and his jaw dropped open in realization. “...By the Five… you don’t know, do you?” he finally asked, his voice low with disbelief.

Scarlet blinked and took a step back. “Know what?” she growled, taking a second to calm down and lower her voice.

Silent mouthed uselessly for a few seconds before looking away, his ears drooping. After a moment, he nodded to himself and turned back to her. “Tell me, Scarlet,” he began, his voice uncharacteristically soft and gentle. “...Has Primrose ever shown a remarkably keen understanding of the feelings of those around her?”

Scarlet hesitated, her mind quickly going through her collective experience with the filly and picking out several instances where Prim had seemingly known what she was feeling before she ever commented on it. Scoffing, she turned her head to one side. “What of it?” she asked skeptically.

Silent took another step forward. “Has the subject of changelings ever come up with her?” he pressed.

Scarlet took a step back, a sudden sense of dread starting to form in the bottom of her chest. She thought back on the sign in front of Twinwood Canopy, and of the moments after they had successfully avoided a small swarm of the monsters.

“Ponies really hate changelings, don’t they?”

“I, um… why do you hate changelings so much?”

“I just… You tried to talk those griffon robbers into letting us go. You tried to avoid a fight. But here… you wanted to kill them. That just doesn’t seem like you.”

“Yes, it has… once or twice,” Scarlet replied slowly, narrowing her eyes. “I ask again: What. of it?”

Silent sighed heavily before looking away, almost as if he was reluctant to speak. “Did it never strike you as strange how she is so keenly aware of how others feel? She is ten years old; far too young to be that adept at reading others. And did it never strike you as odd how she seems to have a soft spot for the demons that caused the Fall and becomes openly uncomfortable whenever they are brought up?”

Scarlet blinked, her heart starting to beat faster in her chest. There was no way Silent was going where it sounded like he was going with this. It wasn’t possible. It was…

He turned to look into her eyes, sympathy, and regret over the words he now had to say shining within them. “Scarlet… Primrose is a changeling.”

Silence.

Scarlet didn’t move. She didn’t even dare to breathe. Every muscle in her body had locked up all at once and a horrible sensation, unlike anything she had felt before, flooded her veins and cooled the boiling blood to ice.

With a stiff neck, she shook her head. “...You’re lying,” she choked out, her legs starting to go numb. “Y-you’re lying to me… Sh-she’s nothing like those m-monsters!”

Silent shook his head. “It’s why I attacked her family’s camp,” he said softly, his voice low and soothing. “We were hunting for bandits, but we found her instead. A family of changelings capable of thought, speech, and reason without a queen to guide their actions? A family of changelings in possession of a magic relic that predates the Fall itself? Of course, I attacked them. Who knows what kind of threat they could pose if they were allowed to continue breeding? Who knows the damage a race of intelligent changelings could cause? Need I even tell you how alarming it was for the Council to hear of this?”

“You’re wrong…” Scarlet mumbled, taking several steps back and lifting a hoof up to the side of her head. “Sh-shut up! Shut up, shut up! If any of this were true, why wait until now to tell me?!”

“I know I lied to you in Swanrun,” Silent went on quietly, taking another step forward and lifting his hoof in a placating gesture. “But that was a part of my orders. If the word were to get out to the public that there were intelligent changelings, ones capable of actively infiltrating our lives and our homes, the panic and paranoia that would spread would be nigh impossible to control. But more than that...”

Silent drew close enough to reach out, placing a hoof on Scarlet’s shoulder. She barely felt it, her entire body going numb.

Silent caught her eye imploringly. “...I did not want you to get involved. I wanted you to stay out of it and live your life. I saw that you were content to be alone in that house, away from violence and bloodshed, and I did not want to disrupt the peace of one of my only friends.”

Slowly, Silent withdrew his hoof and backed away to give Scarlet her space. “...I want you to hand her over to me,” he said softly. “Without resistance, without a fuss. If you do that, then I give you my word, as your friend, that her life, yours, and that of Lens will be spared. Given you were seemingly oblivious to what it was you were guarding, I shall even make every effort to have your punishment reduced as much as possible.”

Scarlet said nothing, her mind reeling. Her eyes were wide, staring down at the paved street below while her mind sprinted at a million miles an hour through every single interaction with Primrose she had had so far, trying to find anything and everything she could use to disprove Silent’s absurd claims. He was lying to her, he had to be! Primrose was not a changeling! She was too sweet, too kind, too gentle! There was no way, no way at all she could be one of those monsters!

...Could she?

“No need to do so immediately,” Silent said while backing away into the shadows. “But do not try to run. Patrols have already been increased in the streets, the city gates have been sealed, and the patrols on the walls have been doubled. You have until sundown tomorrow to come to the castle and give yourselves up. If you keep me waiting longer than that, then… I am afraid I will be forced to assume that you have refused my offer, and I will come for you in force. Farewell, Scarlet Frost.”

With those words, Silent vanished from view, blending into the darkness of the night.