“This is it.” I lick my lips and tense as the flavor of blood and ash settles over my tongue. It’s thicker than it has any right to be here, in a place like this that ought to be abandoned.

“No doubt,” Adagio mutters, tightening her grip on her ax.

Mount Ormond. The ski lodge serves as a grave marker for the wealth and ambitions of a wicked man driven to the depths of despair by three vengeful Sirens. Even just standing here on the edge of it all, I can feel the pulse like a diseased heartbeat deep inside the snowy, forested mountain.

“Well?” Rainbow says, her voice turning ragged and wet as her flesh warps and twists around her skeleton. “Let’s get in there! I’m not letting them put a hand on Fluttershy for one more second longer than I gotta.”

She moves forward, stalking furiously into the forest, and I grimace as I move to intercept her.

To my surprise, Ghostface gets there first, moving past me with an eerie silence broken only by the faint snapping of their almost-shadow cloak as they settle a dark hand on Rainbow’s shoulder and grip.

“Slowly,” they say as they pull back on Rainbow with more strength than I credited to their narrow body. “We go in slow and together, or we’ll be outnumbered.”

Legion may not be fully-fledged as Killers, but here? On their own home grounds? I highly doubt it would matter whether they were half, three-quarters, or full. They would have access to the full weight of their power in a place like this and the rest of us would be fighting on the back heel.

“The goal isn’t to win,” I say pointedly as Adagio and I catch up. “Our goal is the people they took, got it? Aria, Sour, Starlight, and Fluttershy. That’s the first goal, and everything else is secondary.”

For a moment, it looks like Rainbow is actually about to argue with me. Then the ire fades from her eyes, taking a touch of the unpleasant gold light with it, and she relaxes before nodding faintly.

“Yeah,” she says. “Yeah… that—that’s a good plan.”

The Killer in her wants to do what it was meant to do, and I can’t blame her. I want it to. I want to clash blades and draw blood. I want to drag everyone kicking and screaming into my nightmare. It’s an urge that’s written into my genetic code by the thing that made me. I can only imagine what kind of unique ‘urges’ Rainbow Dash was given in her role as a harvester.

Come to that…

“Hey, I can’t believe I’m only now asking this but,” I turn to Ghostface with a raised eyebrow, “what do you even do?”

Adagio turns with me and eyes the Entity-aligned Killer critically as well, her pupils darkening with her Huntress aspect. “A good question; what are you, precisely?”

Silence is our answer for just long enough that I think it’s all we’re going to get until Ghostface turns their twisted mask to us, their hollow eyes filled with shadow that seems to sink deeper and deeper and, against all reason, the moment they fix their gaze on me I feel…

Fear.

Their eyes are so empty, and yet not. There’s something inside them. Inside the mask and in the hollows of their eyes, something that’s twisting and moving. There’s a faint red gleam of hunger that digs at me. Digs deep into a part of me I didn’t even know was there. It’s like a knife at the soft meat of my belly, slicing through skin and muscle and the lining of my stomach to try and dig something out of me.

And I’m afraid.

Me.

I’m afraid.

“Don’t worry about it,” Ghostface says, before looking away and leaving me shaken. “I’ll do what I have to.”

For some reason, that puts a chill down my spine I haven’t felt since before my change. There’s something about this new Killer—this new priest of the Old Stain—that reminds me in the most unpleasant way possible of what it was like to be a Survivor.

To be prey.

Either way, I have no doubt they’ll live up to their promise.

We move through the woods on Adagio’s tail. Her expert eyes and hunter’s instincts guide us through the forest even where the path is swallowed by the snow and undergrowth. Through it all, she moves with preternatural silence, which’s spoiled only by the odd snatches of a hummed lullaby that escape her tightly clenched lips.

Every step we take thickens the scent of blood. If there was ever any doubt that the Thief had managed to craft themselves a real Trial, it vanished during that tense hike through those mountain forests.

“Guys,” Rainbow speaks up in a surprisingly thin voice, “I uh… I don’t feel so good.”

I frown and look back at her, about to admonish her for whining now, of all times, but stop at the grey pallor of her face. If she feels half as bad as she looks then she’s probably not kidding.

“Shit.” I turn to Ghostface who, to my lack of surprise, is moving with odd, lolling steps like the gait of a drunkard. “You too?”

“Yeah,” Ghostface groans. “Something is wr-wrong with this place. It’s getting hard to focus, I almost feel… sick.”

I narrow my eyes at the pair of them, then look to Adagio to confirm my theory. Sure enough, she looks fine. Tense and angry, but otherwise fine. I don’t feel any different either, and since all four of us are Killers, that only really leaves one major difference between my sister and I, and our ‘allies’.

“That figures,” I grumble. “The Thief must be using some of their power to hedge out the Entity’s influence.”

“Bullshit!” Rainbow snarls, then wavers as her balance shifts. “I’ve never even been to the Trials except that once with you! I was made into a Killer here!.”

I shake my head. “That doesn’t matter! You're still loyal to the Entity which means it still has a hold on you! If you die you have a ripcord straight to Tartarus!”

“I suppose that answers part of the questions as to what happens to us,” Adagio says flatly.

That’s a grim piece of intelligence, but I suppose she’s right. If these two are reacting like this to the source of their power being hedged out, then the fact that Adagio and I aren’t being affected means the Entity probably won’t be able to claim us.

Which begs the question: what does happen when one of us dies?

“You two,” Ghostface slurs, “how are you still stable? Your power comes from F-Father…”

“No,” I counter. “It comes from inside us—” I jab a finger at my chest “—Killers are living Fog machines, we—”

“What are you talking about?!” Rainbow snaps. “Killers don’t make Fog, Humans do! We use Fog.”

“How would you know?!” I snarl.

Rather than answer immediately, Rainbow stomps over to me, clearly fighting off a wave of nausea as she does, and shoves her hand into the leather satchel at her side. From within it, she draws out three vials, each filled with gold suspension and even from here I can feel the contents.

Hope.

Before this, we’d operated under the assumption that she was dredging out the Fog and that that somehow was fueling the Entity, but looking at the vials more carefully, I realise now that we were catastrophically wrong. Those vials don’t contain Fog. They contain distilled hope.

On the one hand, I know what I’m looking at is an abomination. It’s the hopes and dreams of however many humans she’s killed distilled into a slurpee for an eldritch horror.

But have you ever been just… so hungry? The kind of hungry where you haven’t eaten all day and then you walk into your friend’s house, take a deep breath, and just smell a cornucopia of good food? Your stomach rumbles and you salivate like a dog in front of a juicy bone, and all you can think of is that you have got to eat.

You can’t even think straight and you won’t be able to until you just—

“That’s close enough,” Adagio hisses.

A grip tightens on my shoulder and jerks me back, and I stagger as I realise I’d been walking dumbly towards Rainbow and her vials like an idiot.

“W-What was that?” I mumble as I try to clear my head.

“It’s what I take out of people,” Rainbow replies. “It’s that good shit, Shimmer, and it’s not Fog. If you’re making Fog on your own, then you’re more of a freak than me, and that’s saying something!”

“Enough,” Adagio repeats. “This isn’t why we’re here. If you can’t go onward, then stay back. If we’re all still alive after tonight then I’ll be happy to discuss the arcane theories of the Fog with you both at length.”

I clam my mouth shut. As much as I want to argue the point with Rainbow, Adagio is right. Whatever is going on here can wait until we’ve got our friends and family back safe and sound. If we all come out of this, so much the better, and if it goes poorly than some academic hemming and hawing wasn’t going to do us any good anyway.

“We’ll stick to the outskirts,” Ghostface says quietly. “If you bring one of the Legion down, bring them back here… I'll ensure they’re no longer a threat.”

“I don’t want them dead.” I fix Ghostface with a glare, but the Entity-sworn Killer just shakes their head in response.

“Don’t worry,” they say softly. “Killing them wasn’t the plan.”

For some reason, that bothers me more than if I’d had to argue the matter but, once again, we don't have time to discuss it. If Ghosty had a way to take Legion off the board as a threat and could do it without killing them for real, then all I can do is take it and deal with the consequences later.

Nodding to Ghostface and Rainbow, I turn and start making my way deeper toward the lodge on Adagio’s heels.

This is bad. We weren’t in great shape before, but now we were really outnumbered. If they ganged up on us we might not stand a chance at all.

“You know this might be a sacrifice play, right, Dagi?” I say, looking up at my elder sister as she strides confidently, and silently, through the forest.

“I know.”

If it came between our family getting out, and us, Adagio and I are on the same wavelength. Survivors survive. Killers die. That’s the play if worse comes to worst.

“I love you, Daj,” I say softly, “you know that too, right?”

Adagio slows, then stops and turns, and for a moment the dark eyes under her mask flash to a soft shade of berry. Only for a moment. Then they’re gone. Buried under the Killer called the Huntress who once gave the Red Forest a new meaning behind its name.

But she knows.

That’s all that matters to me.

The abandoned lodge of Mount Ormond is a desolate place.

There is no subtle approach to it. The thick evergreens don’t taper out as they close in on the tainted place, they simply end. One moment you’re moving through tight corridors of bark and undergrowth, the next you’re standing in a carved out hole in the mountains, nestled in a valley at the crook of the Canterhorn Range.

Remains of structures rest half-finished around the old construction site along with a sparse scattering of rocks and boulders which had probably been heaved out of the earth during placement of the foundations, and a handful of stubborn trees that hadn’t been clearcut for one reason or another, but served more as a reminder of what been torn apart than anything else.

And in the distance, not far from the treeline, is the diseased heart of this place.

The Lodge.

“Well, if we weren’t sure before…” I grumble as I step out of the tree cover with Adagio.

A hook juts jarringly up out of the snow and dirt, although it doesn’t look like any hook I’ve ever seen. The Trials I was in with the others—and even the few hooks I’ve seen the Legion conjure—all looked mostly like physical objects, albeit ones designed and built by a broken mind.

These have an ugly, squamous skin to them, something almost organic, and it makes my stomach twist just looking at them.

“Crude,” Adagio sneers. “The Thief must be dredging the bottom-most pits of their magic.”

“Maybe…” I don’t want to go near the hooks. Something about them repels me in more than just the physical sense. “Whatever, we need to—”

A scream splits through the air and Adagio and I both turn on our heels with the snap-reflex of a Killer, our senses honing in on the sound of a wounded Survivor. I bare my teeth, my sharp fangs flashing in the low light as my fingerblades clash.

“Keep yourself together,” I snarl. Adagio is stock still and clearly straining against her own instincts. “We won’t do our friends any good if we lose our minds and do Legion’s job for them.”

“I am well aware.” Adagio bit the words out, then shook her head and huffed, misting the air in front of her mask. “I’ll be fine… and so will they. Aria, Sour, and Star are veterans of the Fog, they’ll keep the newbie off the hook.”

I grimace at the thought of Fluttershy, of all people, hanging from one of the Entity’s butcher’s hooks. It’s an ugly thought, and one I don’t want to spend much time on.

“Here’s hoping,” I say quietly. “Let’s split up, find our family, and fuck off, okay?”

Adagio narrows her eyes under the mask.

“I know, I know,” I say, holding up my hands, “never split the party, I remember, but this is a smash and grab, and good Survivors spread out. I’ll head toward the screamer while you circle around and collect anyone straggling, then we am’scray.”

“That’s the whole plan?” Adagio asks, raising an eyebrow.

My fingerblades clash again as I scowl. “Well sue me! I didn’t have time to plan around half our crew getting kidnapped!”

I don’t wait for her to argue, I just turn and start moving as quickly as I can to the far corner of Ormond where I’d last heard the scream, and as I did I took a deep breath of the Fog.

This may not be my Trial, but it’s still a place of power for creatures like me.

“One~, two~, Sunny’s coming for you~.”

Here, there’s not so much difference between the Real and the Dreamtime. It’s all the same in the Fog. Even if I’m not as strong as I was on my own turf, I’ll still give these half-breed Killers one hell of a lesson.

Fluttershy

This has to be a nightmare.

This can’t be real.

Pain shoots through my side as I collapse against the creaking wooden wall of a half-built shed and press my palm to the ugly wound slashed across my ribs. It’s so deep that I can see flashes of white when I look at it, and there’s… there’s so much blood.

I slide down to my knees and start desperately trying to mend some of the damage, using what scraps of cloth I can make out of my shredded clothes the way the others showed me.

Somewhere in the distance, I can hear a heartbeat.

If you hear it, it means they’re close. The louder it gets, the closer they are.

Aria Blaze told me that. I don’t know where she ended up after we split, but she tried to explain as much as possible in as little time as we had before that thing came at us.

Legion.

I read the news, I know there have been murders around Canterlot, but…

The heartbeat ticks up in volume as I tie off the makeshift bandage. I clap a hand over my mouth, trying to stifle my groans as I move around the injury. I don’t even know how I’m still alive. I remember getting… getting stabbed, I think? I remember the knife at my throat and then the pain, I remember Scootaloo and Rainbow Dash, and then all I can remember is darkness.

And a voice.

In the darkness, there was a beautiful, terrible voice, and I remember the way it opened me up and—

My stomach heaves as the memory fractures in my mind. Something happened in the dark and I can’t… I can’t think of it. I can’t even remember it properly. But it doesn’t matter right now, I don’t have time to think of it. I just have to hide!

I sidle around the broken shed, doing my best to keep my hand over my mouth while I crouch and move towards a half-open locker. The heartbeat is getting louder now.

They’re coming.

Shivering in the mountain cold, I push the locker door open slowly, careful not to let it creak. It’s my only chance. There’s nowhere to go, nowhere for me to run. This place is wide open and if I try to make a break for it they’ll see me, and I know they can catch me.

Biting down on my lip to stifle myself, I climb into the locker and pull the door closed, shut my eyes, and start to pray.

How long has it been since I prayed?

Mom and Dad used to go to the little community church down the road from our house growing up, but they weren’t what you’d call devout. As Zephyr and I got older and life events started to crop up, church attendance started getting pushed more and more to the wayside until, eventually, it was more trouble than it was worth to try and get the family up to go to Sunday services.

But I still remember the sights and the sounds and the smells of the worship hall. I remember that odd scent that seems to hang around the interior of churches—all churches—regardless of denomination. I remember the hymns and the way a hundred voices, none of which could individually carry a tune in a bucket, would mesh together into something almost beautiful.

“God, please,” I whisper softly, daring a tiny bit of noise for the prayer. “Please… don’t let them find me.”

I bite down on the rest of my words and try to keep the sobs to myself. If I don’t, they’ll hear me, and then… then…

They’ll put me back in the dark.

Snow crunches nearby, and I choke on my own breath. The heartbeat is so loud now that it’s almost all I can hear. The heartbeat of the Killer is thunder in my ears and the only thing beneath that is the raw, ragged, animal panting of the thing under the mask.

Which one is it?

Scootaloo? Or one of the other two.

If they find me, I hope it’s Scootaloo, because she’ll just take me down. The others will play first… especially the one in the cracked mask.

The footsteps are growing closer, their tread biting into the hard, packed snow of the mountain with every step, with their ugly breathing punctuating their gait.

This can’t be real. None of this. It’s all just a nightmare.

It has to be a nightmare.

When the footsteps finally stop just outside the locker I’m in, I know they’ve found me. There’s nothing I can do, I can’t hear anything over the hammer of their heartbeat. I want to cry and sob and beg and plead for them not to hurt me but I know they won’t listen.

“God,” I sob. “Please help me.”

The locker crashes open, and I can’t keep in my scream at the sight of the cracked mask. It’s her. It’s the worst one. Of course, it’s the worst one.

A high, tinny giggle escapes the Killer as she slams her crude weapon into the wood of the locker’s interior right by my head, then drags it down in a slow, painful grind of cheap metal. Her free hand slams into my throat with bruising force, pinning me to the back of the locker and cutting my scream off into a choking gurgle.

“P-Pl-Please…”

“I’m going to hurt you,” she hisses, her voice high and cracking. “I’m going to make you bleed.”

“You first.”

A welter of blood gushes from under the Killer’s broken mask on the heels of a wet, meaty thunk, and her grip slackens. I drop from her grasp, sliding down to the bottom of the locker and bringing my eyes level with the five silver blades that are sticking grotesquely out of my attacker’s gut where they must have punctured out from her back.

Of all things… they look like fingers.

Author's Note

Wherefore, heroism?

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