Cloudyearner Keep

Down the stairs of the spire, the rush of the lake waters subsided to the speed it would fall for eternity to come. It billowed down the smooth stone steps and parted itself upon the hooves of Hitch, Zipp and Izzy as the Canis Minor led them upward. The beast had offered to ease Hitch’s climb by allowing him to ride atop his hackles, but he refused when it became clear the courtesy did not extend to his friends as well.

“Where is he taking us?” Zipp asked, having been complicity silent since their freeing from the dungeon.

“The second library, I bet!” Said Izzy. She’d stopped at nearly every window, having now restored themselves in the equilibrium of the flood, and watched their colors alchemize, “Look there’s a goat in this one! See its horns? Oh, it’s gone.”

“Can’t leave. Yet,” said the wolf, only after Hitch reasserted Zipp’s question.

“We’re following Arcdancer, aren’t we?” Zipp failed to hide the dread in her voice.

“No. All three.”

“You’ve got to promise me this won’t get flashy,” Hitch told it, “I can’t lead them into more danger tonight.”

Canis Minor eventually answered, “Promise.”

With some difficulty, Hitch kept himself from staring at the Canis Minor. A sentiment shared by his friends, as when he stole glances to reassure himself of their safety, they were entranced by the creature as well when not by the morphing windows. Ponies, regardless of tribe, were the largest of living creatures one could encounter. Pets seldom came above knee height, and though stories such as Izzy’s were told where monstrous beasts prowled, the reality felt far different. From the transparency of its body it seemed no more real than the tall shadows ponies cast against buildings in the late day, yet ferocity by nature from its scraping steps and the shuddering fall of heavy shoulders. Just as Hitch saw the bars of the jail right themselves pure of rust, the broken picture frames squared their edges as it passed them. The portraits of pegasii within were restored, some staring back, and some too beautiful for even that. A pink Pegasus with a purple mane, another minty and braided with mossy colors, and a blue one with golden eyes which seldom beheld the viewer.

“He’d paint them,” the wolf rumbled, “That’s all he’d do sometimes.”

Scarcely fitting under even those tall roofs, it turned its mass, and with the swift motion of a massive paw, swiped the magical substance from one of the stone borders. There was an intake of breath from Zipp, who likely meant to hold it lest suffocate in the air that separated itself from the waters of the lake bed they approached from below. Hitch did not think with such speed. The air was heavy like that of a greenhouse, yet free from the oppressive heat thereof. It poured into the room like invisible water, and beyond the window the moon glowed in wait. Canis Minor stopped for no one, and slipped through the confines.

The sight beyond was dizzying, if the altitude alone did not offend enough. The opaque sheet of the clouds which Hitch assumed to be the boundary where the top of the tower suddenly becomes its dungeon, hung so close it seemed no higher than the smoke from a chimney. It seemed to stretch without end above the length of a bridge that reached outward as if the pin the moon in place so it could not pass above the clouds for another night.

Only a few paces away from Canis Minor was something of the same brass-gold metal that Hitch recalled from the observatory. As the wolf ahead of them passed it and lent its light, he the wheels of a chariot like massive shields shining. The red plushness within the cab seemed hardened and worn, and the chains that led from it were nearly as thick as a pony’s leg. At their ends, as Hitch expected, were three bridles.

Far past it upon the terminating end of the bridge sat Arcdancer like a wound upon the lunar face, and some paces from her, the light of her sisters.

A conversation seemed to cease as they approached together. Izzy took no precaution in running to Glitterwind and spilling her praise of the spell’s effects, the sister’s new glowing forms, and her dreams of the castle long fulfilled.

“I’m sorry, Hitch,” he heard Alouette say as he passed, “I needed you to guide her. If your Unicorn friend had not found Canis Minor…”

“It’s okay, Alouette.” He said. It was not said in honesty, but knew one day it could be, and the sister’s time on Equestria would end long before then.

With or without him, Canis Minor carried on. Hitch had little hope of holding back the hellfire of Arcdancer’s lightning if the creature’s presence weren’t tolerated, or prying the massive jaws of the wolf apart were its words of forgiveness simply speculative. In the strange light of the spire’s windows, it was amusing to think the beast a kind of shadow. But as Hitch and Zipp refused to leave its side despite their knowing how little they could affect that drama further, it was very much the opposite.

“If things get hot, just fly,” he told Zipp, “I won’t blame you this time.”

A little smile graced her. The first he’d seen since they left Bridlewood. “No,” she said, “If you haven’t noticed, I don’t need permission to leave. I don’t need it to stay, either.”

“You know what?” Hitch said, “I’m glad you said that,” and turned to follow the wolf further, only to see he went on without him. Arcdancer, though massive her presence, was tiny compared to the shaggy back of the Canis Minor as they sat side by side upon the precipice of the bridge, silent. Neither looked at the other, and neither moved. After the consequences of the long night, which was a merely a sliver among the long nights of bitterness and regret within the keep, Hitch could see nothing but exhaustion in their silence. “Because I think I’m gonna need you for this,” Hitch told Zipp as they went to join them.

“You’re still here,” Arcdancer’s voice, though spoken into the air, seemed ever present, whether she poke to Hitch or Canis Minor was unclear.

“So are you.” Canis told her.

“He’s free,” said Hitch, “which means Glitterwind was wrong. We don’t know why you’re all still here. There’s a piece of the puzzle missing, and you spent all that time hating Canis Minor for nothing.”

An aggressive snort, an airless spark of her anger, puffed from Arcdancer. “Yes,” she said with gritted teeth, “we have been missing that piece for some time, and quite dearly. The fate of that piece which he condemned is reason enough for me to hate him. He did not hold us here, true. I was foolish to think he could do anything worse to me.”

“Then what’s keeping you?” Zipp broke her silence, “I have the authority to help you, whatever you need to be set free, just tell me.”

It was that daring power of Zipp’s, the lack of reluctance to use all her force, that Hitch admired in her, though she lacked even the authority to leave her city without approval.

“You,” the wolf said, “her tribe.”

“Canis Minor told me something,” Hitch began. He paused for Arcdancer’s refusal, but she only said, “Did he now?”

“He told me there was something odd about Ponies. That we always seem to stick together. Sometimes it takes a while, but somehow we always come around.”

“He knows nothing about togetherness, nor tribes, nor ponies. His kind is scarce and alien and unfathomably distant. Do you think I have not yearned for an apology from the Pegasi? My sisters and I were banished for our abilities, the ones they themselves employed, until we took them into our own hooves.”

“And your sisters forgave the Pegasi,” said Zipp, “they even forgave Canis Minor.”

“My sisters are blessed with infinite patience. I love them for it, and without it they could not love me. I know that. But forgiveness cannot change what happened, it cannot give me back the years of unrest.”

Arc lighter stood, her grace, born undoubtedly from the same high place as her unmatcheable rage, gave salutation to the moon. “Selfish,” Hitch heard Canis say as he watched her and her sisters convene before the chariot. In something like a quiet procession, their faces met. It was the tragic hybrid that emerges when long absent family faces yet another goodbye, and how dauntingly long those words between them might remain the last. Something was whispered between them, something Hitch felt fortunate he did not bear the burden of hearing. From beyond the group, Izzy came to Zipp and Hitch with the kind of languid footwork of the exhausted.

“Did we do it?” she yawned, “Did we save Zephyr Heights. I’m all scared-out.”

The golden light their spirits emitted in their conjunction separated its elements. As if too soon, Arcdancer tore from her siblings. Her wingspan, barely less than half the bridge’s span, emerged from her, and ozone filled the air.

“Do not think me impulsive,” she said. Canis Minor stood immensely behind Hitch and his companions, “I do this for my sisters, and my late master, Monoceros. I do not know if our crimes could ever be forgiven. But they will certainly not forgive me for this.”

Before all else, Hitch heard Izzy shriek. In her half woken state it was unlikely she could ever have braced herself for Arcdancer’s powers, who summoned herself like a bolt unworthy of Equestria called back to the skies. Rain streaked with silt poured like a momentary monsoon from the space in the clouds she penetrated. Soon, a crash from below, and all besides Canis rushed to the bridge’s edge to see Arcdancer’s crimson bolt splitting the waters of the lake, and as if tearing open the earth itself, traced leagues of a blinding gash through the air below them. The tips of the Bridlewood pines wakened to smoldering life at the touch of the electrical tendrils that snapped from her like the tongues of snakes. Alouette’s voice chirped with such an incurable distress that Hitch now grasped the falsity of the pain she expressed in their time within her chambers, “She told us of your sister,” she said to Zipp, “she spoke of ending your line. We may stay within this keep forever, but we cannot do so with that guilt.”

The last of her voice was drowned by the rattle of chains, and the scraping of claws. As if a bola was thrown to topple a giant, the trifurcated brass harness spun and twisted across the ground, ripped from Monoceros’ chariot. One of its bridles tipped over the edge of the bridge, and drug the massive metal serpent into the waters far below. A far darker chain lie in the massive jaws of the wolf. It was massive and single bridled, and he hooked it into the carriage before slipping under its yoke as if his second nature.

“Just right.”

His voice rumbled, deeper even than the rumbling of the golden spoked wheels which turned at his lead, and the cab of the vehicle left open for them.

“Strike two.”