Cloudyearner Keep

Just as the whispering of the rain, the cool of the water that enclosed on all sides was not unwelcome. Though in a strange new place, blinded and deafened, Hitch took some solace in knowing that he and whoever had fell with him could fall no further. The first thing that blotted in his sight, dazed but sharpening, was the glowing rim of the hole blown through the floor by the trained bolt. Zipp peered down from its edge, and above her the flaming thatch hissed and smoldered in the rain.

Beside him in the pool where the gray light illuminated, Izzy floated with her wet and curly mane plastered to her face like a crystalline kelp.

“Hitch! Answer me!” Zipp called called down for a question he never heard.

“We’re fine! You need to hide. If he finds us again, I don’t think he’s going to miss.”

A little spray of water from Izzy’s wave hit Hitch’s face, “Is this it?!”

“I can’t lift either of you,” Zipp said, “and we’re running out of time. He’s already gone! You’re both on the surface of the lake right now, beneath the keep. Make it back to shore, and if you can find a Pegasus courier in Bridlewood, send them to my mom for help.”

“And tell the Queen I left you here!?” Hitch yelled back up at her, “Yeah, there is a Pegasus courier there! Her name’s Zipp, and she needs to start flying back now and meet us halfway with the squadrons!”

Izzy’s voice echoed through the chamber, “Guys, I think this is the water park!”

“Too late,” Zipp said, “Monoceros already knows we’re here. If he knows we want his magic, he might try to torch any record of it. I said I would make this quick, I’m holding my word.”

For a moment it seemed Zipp’s wings had failed her. With one heavy breath they defied the ground, but her hooves refused to leave. One last time she looked down at Hitch, and in it her eyes showed, for the first time since their departure, she was a sister without her sister. It was lost on Hitch some days the things that ponies could not live without. Not long ago he had left his village alone to reach the Pegasus capitol without his deputy or his friends, with nothing but his badge to remind him of home. He now knew Zipp had no such journey, and when she turned away a final time and left him with no memento but her shadow on the sullen sky, he only hoped she’d learn it was the least of ways to be.

“I wished she would stay.” Izzy said, “I know it seems like a bad place to be, but I thought maybe she’d like the water. It’s not so bad once you actually get in it, right? That’s what I’ve been saying.”

“I know, But we can’t stay here. She said we can reach the coast from here, but it’s completely dark down here, so the grounds of the keep must dip below the water’s surface. We’ll need to dive beneath it to get back to open water. Got your light?”

Izzy pretended to adjust her horn, “Never leave home without it!”

Fresh water hit the eyes different, no longer in the realm of seawater. Even though he squinted through the green and dark waters, the now mote of Izzy’s horn was unmistakable. He embarked from the cold safety of the silver column of light in which he hung to follow her.

As he once homed seagulls who plucked chip bags and necklaces from the tills of dockside boutiques, his eyes did not leave the point of Izzy’s horn. It was strong enough to beam even through those murky waters. The piercing glow seemed to become checkered and flicker as though something had come between them. A few more pedals of his hooves through the water and they began to scrape upon it; metal interlaced with metal, flakes of rust playing from it and scattering into the water like the kicking of autumn leaves, but the grate was little of an obstacle. Izzy’s light bobbed like the tip of a dolphin’s nose through the darkness, and all at once it was gone, and Hitch realized he took too little of a breath above.

He powered on to the light’s final position before it vanished, but not without the impediment of further metal. An array of iron bars, brittle and shivering, seemed to stretch on and on no matter how far he followed them, the gaps between them too narrow to pass. If Izzy had gone that way, it was by assistance of some magic boon that Earth Ponies could never possess. He bashed at the bars with all the explosiveness he could afford. Somewhere along their length he felt a snap. He kicked again, and reluctantly one bar bent and quietly allowed him to pass where so many others refused. A submerged arched entryway beyond promised escape, but following it he found he did not begin to scale the outer wall of the keep’s sunken body. Instead he kicked up spiraling stone steps, glancing off of them like the phantom his body began to feel.

The first breaths above water atop the dry stone steps brought a rush of satisfaction he hadn’t felt since childhood, competing against Sprout in the briny pools of the grottoes. His old friend was competitive enough to serve a challenge, but there was always something impotent about him, leaving rarely a worry that he could honestly win. Often Hitch pushed himself just to impress him that much more during days that never could have known of his struggles beneath the unicorn keep. For that he realized he owed Sprout a month’s worth of smoothies a decade coming or more as he lay sprawled and exhausted in the warmth of the chamber.

But the comfort of that room was not from the air of a warm night. On all sides, much like the sunken pool from which Zipp had left them, the walls were made of such similar stones, but in this chamber they were adorned from one to another in bands of ghostly white. Hitch could scarcely leave the foot of the stairwell without stepping upon pillows of fabric poured across the floor. They swooped in swathes from the ceiling and bunched in the corners, with that of a similar color encompassing familiar shapes of chairs and sofas that swelled into Hitch’s vision as his eyes adjusted and his breath was regained to his body.

“Izzy?” Hitch called into the room. There was no answer, nor an echo.

As if something had been stirred by his voice, the fantasy of silks before him received a glint from above. The billowing of fabrics seemed to embrace his steps, which he took high and deliberate to keep them from catching in them. With only a few steps his shoulder collided with the dark column of wood that upheld the frame of a generous bed. In the corner of his eye came two more drops shining in the windowless room.

Yet the ceiling of the room was not as dark as he expected. Instead a gentle emerald green ran and welled between the cracks of the stones above. A drop splashed from his muzzle, dripping off with a slowly dimming trail. The emerald light grew as the fluid swelled, and once again it seemed he could not escape the rain. Green drops between the folds between the silken floor like hundred fleeing woodland creatures at a sound, the fabrics waterproof. The only place it seemed to relent was under the awning of the canopy bed. Its springs held him subserviently, though the sheets smelled of an ancient dust.

To Become lost in the simmering fall of the green chaos around him was frighteningly easy. Only a few days ago, Hitch knew nothing of the keep or a convict’s memoir, written by some missing star. But as he sat on the sweetly calling bed, watching the glow of green rain under the roof, the likelihood his friends could ever find it in the mounting mystery of the keep and whom it kept. The drops trickled trickled into the chambers of glass vessels upon scattered upon the ancient furniture, and from every corner of the room, a voice seemed to ask him, “Does it bring you ease?”

Hitch did not answer, but prepared to dive from the bed at a moment’s notice if the lightning found him again.

“The sounds of the rain, I mean.”

The voice was too modest for Zipp, too sad for Izzy. The surface of the wet silks popping under the rain filled the room, but there was no one else.

“Usually.” Said Hitch, “But rain means clouds, and clouds means lightning, and lightning means Monoceros.”

“Our master retained many powers, yes,” The voice seemed to grow sadder.

The glow the room revealed a further hall through an empty door frame, past which he leaned to peer down to no avail, “Are you being kept here? Miss...”

The voice answered, “Alouette. This room was mine, long ago. It is comfort enough while I remain for whatever might bring freedom to my sisters and I. Could it be you?”

“Where are you, Alouette?”

“We are long gone. I’m sorry.”

What seemed to be the dawning of a problem Hitch could finally grasp, again it seemed to slip away. “I was afraid of that,” he said, “I don’t know if I can help you, there. I’ve got express orders to find records of lightning magic and return them the Queen of Zephyr Heights. My friends are scattered, I’m soaked, and I’ve got a psychopathic convict named Monoceros trying to fry us.”

At that, the sprinkle within the chamber seemed to nearly silence, as if a murmuring crowd quieted for his next words.

“In other words,” he went on, “I’d be glad to help in any way I can.”

“Our master was not a psychopath.”

The rain had fully stopped, and Hitch followed its example. For a moment it was silent between him and Alouette, then she went on. “I know what they’ve said. What they used to say. They were wrong, and always were. After my service to him finally ended, I hoped ponies of all tribes would search their past and learn themselves wrong. It seems time does not heal everything, as I was once told. One of the last things, in fact.”

“Monoceros was your friend?”

“We loved him dearly.” she said. The rain began again, relieving the ring in Hitch’s ears, “and was no criminal. Perhaps this place was a prison once, but it wasn’t to us. This was our castle. Our home. We could live here together in happiness, in the place we were meant to be but never in a millennia would have ever thought to seek. We lost everything to find it, and gained everything we needed we arrived; each other. He was not a psychopath, merely misguided. Are you not a keeper of the peace? Do you not know hundreds such?”

Admittedly, he did not have to search his memory long to find an example of his own.

“Normally misguided ponies are misguided by someone,” Hitch said.

“Someone did,” the gentle voice said, “would you like to meet him?”

The dark corridor down which it seemed nothing but shadows lay caught his eye again.

“Did he have fangs like torches?”

“Yes. Yes I would say he does.”

It glanced Hitch’s mind that Izzy might do anything to be where he was. Alouette carried on, “Please know, lest you think me a liar, that the power over lightning is not mine to give. I can offer you a path to leave, yet I cannot help that it passes through his chamber. When I was alive it was, as I hope it still is now, tradition to say that restless spirits will finally know peace when the troubles that follow them beyond the grave are resolved on their behalf. My sisters and I suspect our troubles with the creature are what binds us. Scarcely do ponies come along who can help, let alone strong ones like yourself.”

Hitch chuckled, “Well, it’ll be no small order to slay a dragon,”

“No! You needn’t slay anything,” her source-less voice seemed to gasp without breath, “I need you only deliver him a message.”

“Let’s hope that’s all it comes to. What is it?”

“That I forgive him. That my sister Glitterwind forgives him too, though she’s tongue-tied and cannot say it. That I know very well in this long time we’ve nearly forgotten each other, that others change, but if one thing does not change, it’s our love for Monoceros. I regret nothing more that in my life I could not see his release and I only had that epiphany long after, and it is one that shakes me to the very remnants of myself. I am reminded of it when I look out into the stars and see him absent. If he was right, and time is the one that heals us, if living ponies knew of his suffering, they too would forget their convictions and see him to his rightful place after all this time.”

“That’s… A lot. I guess you’ve had a lot of time to think about this,” Hitch said, “Alright. Instead, I tell him you forgive him, and since you helped me, I know you’re being honest when you say you’d help him too.”

“Yes,” Alouette said with a giggle, “Thank you, Dearly thank you.”

One of the glass vases filled halfway with the luminescent rain provided Hitch the light needed to navigate the long, dark curve of the hallway. The tight enclosure within the keep soon after gave way on the rightmost wall to an array of grates that framed a balcony. The sound of meandering water returned. Every step down the path Hitch peered deep into the waters for the violet mote of Izzy’s horn that may have continued to search the waters. Hundreds of paces away, the silver disc of water cast by the hole blown in the Keep’s floor reminded him of Zipp, and what he’d say to her when they were finally found again.