Cloudyearner Keep

“Maretime Bay?” came a voice so deep it could have rattled the wooden tables off their legs, “Never been.”

Hitch knew it was telling the truth, for something so imposing would live on forever in the minds of ponies past generations. It could chase him a hundred paces in a stride, pounce across leagues, and devour him at once. A creature of mythology that teaches ponies to face things that cannot be stopped, and named it bravery. Down upon one foreleg, then another its heavy lowered. With eyes like galaxies level with Hitch’s, never leaving them, its back legs slid from beneath, and its heavy body met the floor with a crash. The contraptions of the room clattered and jingled in fear, the barrier of the dome around the monster shimmered, as thin as the sheen of a bubble. With its head upon massive front paws, it lay there as any dog might upon a bed in cold winter. Perhaps the distortion of the barrier between them had grotesquely stretched its long face beyond reading, but it seemed sad to see him.

“They remember me?” it asked.

Hitch was prepared to interrogate the beast in nothing but ‘yes’ or ‘no’ questions at most, so when it finally spoke, he hardly recognized the words as such. “Sure, some do,” he heard himself say.

“Really?” the wolf asked. There was some spark of hope in its ancient eyes, even among the uncountable sparks constituting its body.

“No doubt.”

Its head lifted enough to free one paw, which raised. Even beneath the fur between its pads like wild grass, razor claws still bore, “Hoof to heart?”

From its mouth teeth glowing white emerged, growing ever more numerous as Hitch stared, hoping the confusion that heated his face was hidden. He’d never seen a wolf grin, and now realized he never wished to again. The creature’s head rocked back, splitting the air with a haunting yap, the kind that drifts from distant trees to ignite the fears of elder ponies in their heirs. The thing’s raised paw landed heavily on the cobbled ground beside, and drug it back beneath its head with the scraping of claws that could not be worn by stone.

“You know a lot about ponies, huh?” Hitch shouted over its laughing, which subsided quickly into the throaty chuffing animals do after swallowing something they shouldn’t. The wolf shuddered, which Hitch took as the ambiguous shrugging he recognized from ponies reluctant to guiltily answer him. “You’ve got a pony friend, after all. Alouette. She had a lot to say about you.”

“I’m sure.” It said, “Heard you fighting, too. In the stairwell. Who with? Girlfriend?”

Being mistakenly paired with ponies in his hometown, even after the most mundane of interactions, Hitch had grown used to. It was different to hear it about Zipp, someone so far above him and so far away, and now that he’d sent her off, he wasn’t sure he hardly knew.

“Just a workmate, she’s gone to call in backup from Zephyr Heights after that stunt you pulled with the lightning bolt. She came up and talked to you afterward, remember?”

The beast just stared a moment, then shook its massive head blankly, “Not me. Never met her. Sounded nasty. Give her time, though. She’ll come around. Ponies always do. Can’t keep you apart.”

Hitch chuckled, “You’ve been up here a while, huh? The separation of the tribes went on for hundreds of years after they built this place. We just met our first unicorn in a millennia a few weeks ago. They got their magic back. Pegasi too, but it’s been rough flying. They’ve been out of the saddle a little too long. I’m sure you understand. That’s why I’m here.”

The distortion of the dome did not assist in reading the wolf’s expression. It didn’t speak, nor did its eyes leave Hitch.

“It’s harder to keep us together than you think. You know why they build this place, right?” Hitch ventured, “to entrap Pegasi in case of an invasion.”

At first it seemed the wolf had its fun and now resolved to silence to make Hitch’s job as hard as possible. But soon it stood, heaving the weight of its chest upright, than walking its paws underneath. Finally stable, the wolf stood against the carved wooden barrier between them. It then stepped through it. Or intended to, for every further step through the dome seemed to hardly move it at all, as if nothing but a projection upon the gleaming surface. It seemed to grow distant, as if Hitch was being pushed away faster than it approached. Soon the wolf seemed nothing more than the sky blue mote he’d seen before, a few precious tumbling stars they had sought in the Zephyr heights observatory. Finally the creature approached, or rather walked further away, Hitch could no longer distinguish. It’s massive size seemed meaningless now as it lay in front of him as before, slumped back into a languid posture.

“Unicorns? Made that?” said the wolf, “Without magic?”

Hitch could do little else than look about the stable squares of the tables around him to reassure his own place within Equestria.

“This place is older. Much older. Zephyr Heights, you said? Big towers? Doesn’t look familiar?”

“Then why are you here? You told Monoceros to chase the moon out of the sky?”

“No. I chased it. He was in the chariot.”

“And the storms around the keep? We were attacked earlier by something using lightning, and Zipp followed it back here, where she found you. Monoceros didn’t have any power, did he?”

The wolf said nothing with its head between its paws.

The pinewood frame of the dome appeared seamless, as though carved from a perfect tree. Hitch began to walk along the circumference, looking for a lock, a nail, or even a hinge for it to swing wide and lift the bubble within like a massive serving lid.

“You’ve got what I’m looking for. I’m having you come with me. You’ll be in my custody back in Zephyr Heights, but once we’re there, we can talk about lessening your sentence as long as you share your lightning magic.”

“Won’t happen,” the wolf said, seemingly miles in the distance, though Hitch had only searched about a dozen paces.

“Then we’ll convert your sentence to parole and you can spend your community service hours chasing away the storms. I’m not leaving with empty hooves.”

“Not my powers,”

“Not your powers, but you pulled chariot?”

“Wasn’t the last.”

Hitch’s hunt for the release mechanism continued, familiar with such diversions he asked, “Yeah, then who?”

“You already met her.”

The harder Hitch thought, the slower his hooves took him, until he stopped on the far end of the beast’s cage.

“And her sisters.”

Within no span of time, him and all the baubles in the glass garden were bathed again in the starry light of the wolf. He lay again at Hitch’s hooves.

“Monoceros was good. But a bad friend. He preferred them to me. Now here I am.”

“Alouette said you misguided him.”

“Maybe. We were wild. That’s why we were sent here. He still came to me. Sometimes. Short time, though. All lives seem so to me.”

“You know,” Hitch said, remembering Alouette, whose rain and voice alone remained, “something tells me hauling you back would have been easier than them.”

“They won’t go.”

“That’s what they all say.”

“They’re bound here. I condemned their master. They won’t forgive that.”

“Alouette did. Why not the rest?”

Slowly, the thing raised its head. A slow, deliberate motion. A warning not to stop talking, and to be horrible careful as you do. Though his words may fail him, and Alouette’s were all but gone to make way for Zipp’s, he remember a boon. From his saddlebag he produced the tonic of emerald rain lent by Alouette that mixed an opal color with the wolves starry glow. He set it down on the wooden rim between them.

“She gave me that. You look like you remember it. Well, she said something. She said a lot, actually, but you reminded me of it when you talked about Zipp. Give her time, right? They’ll always come back?” He spun the vial gently with a hoof, its light refracted against its artful grooves like a carousel, “Thing is, it goes for everyone. Not just ponies.”

Another hot snort of breath exuded from the wolf, “Yet here I am. Could have released me. Didn’t.”

“We don’t always have time to realize it, like you. I know she didn’t. Come on, you can’t blame her for that.”

The hypnosis of the glowing phial held the creature silent. Hitch resolved to convince him of Alouette’s honesty for only a few more minutes before he’d be forced to go find Izzy.

“And Arcdancer?” asked the wolf. When Hitch admitted he’d never heard the name, the yapping laughter, now softer, crept in again, then left. “The red lightning? The reason you’re lost? Alouette is forgiving. The most so of her sisters. Try Arcdancer. Your girlfriend did. Then tell me it’s easy.”

The creature heaved upwards again, growling in exhaustion. It began to follow the path Hitch begun in search of the cage’s release, and Hitch followed, bumping and dodging among tables in effort to keep from losing sight of him.

“Find your friend. Though that door. Up the hatch.”

A door much shoddier and dark, as though to hiding among the stones, contrasted with that which he entered, was pressed into the wall, unlit by the creature.

“I have two friends with me. Izzy is lost in the basement and we can’t find her.”

It repeated, “Through the door. Up the hatch.”

Hitch gave no though to who he’d rather find first, only that Izzy seemed the least prepared, and therefore in the most danger. He was about to relay this when the rumbling voice of the wolf stopped him.

“They cannot leave,” it warned, “Cloudyearner won’t let them. They can fly no more. Yet their wings are bound.”

The light began to dim. Hitch backed through the inlaid door, and behind it the light of the wolf and Alouette’s rain abandoned him. His eyes adjusted slowly to a room full of derelict glasses and tangled iron frames, and in that time wondered where he’d heard the wolf’s words before. A wooden ladder stood in the room’s center. Even before climbing, the gallop of hooves above rumbled from above, and at the top step he gripped the iron ring that hung from it. Hitch figured he’d call for the help of Zipp, who would have naturally returned to the tower’s top in defiance, if the door was rusted shut. But even before he wrenched upon it himself, it was yanked from his grip as the trap door above gave way. Most of his hooves lost stumbled when a damp mopping mass fell onto his face, blinding him from his brief view of the dimly lit room above. Laying with sore ribs upon the ladder rungs, we swiped away the tangle, leaving an ever familiar gleam of bright eyes watching him flounder in the dark.

“Hitch! This place is amazing! Come, come look, I’ll teach you how to swim later, I promise!”

Izzy said, and with a fanatical strength pulled him from the depths of the dark.