She’s here. The demigod. I can taste her. The air is thick with the scent of marigolds. The scent of death. Rich — almost cloying — and gold, of course, gold like her magic.
“Where are you, Princess?” I call, and my voice is low and sing-song. The point of my rapier scrapes along the ground. “I’ve been looking for you.”
“I’m not here for you.” Her voice echoes from all around me. The scent of flowers grows stronger.
“Liar.” With slow, half-dancing steps, I turn in a circle.
“I’m here for him.” On the word him, golden petals bloom from nowhere, scattering across the floor. Blowing haphazardly towards the corpse whose blood still decorates my blade.
I toss my head, flick my tail. Blue curls bounce. Dismissive. Regal. Just like her. “You’re here for me.”
The petals swirl closer together, a frenzied whirl of gold and orange, and when it dissipates, there she is. Pink curls streaked with blue, white robes accented with gold the same hue as her magic. A coronet of marigolds is her only crown.
This is the fifth time I have seen her, and each time, she has robbed me of my breath just as effectively as she did that first night.
“You know,” she says, and her smile is like a sunset on a rainy day — a flash of unexpected colour, rich in a world of grey. “If you wanted to see me again you didn’t have to kill him.”
“No?” My hips swaying, I creep a little closer. One hoof forward, then another. If I get close enough to leap, to press my blade against that swanlike throat — well, there’s no saying what may happen, then.
But she smiles and moves away, the marigolds swirling at her hooves like a living sea. “You could have just…asked.”
“And is that how one romances the god of death?”
“Demigod,” she corrects me. She always corrects me.
Half the reason I keep making the mistake is just to get that rise out of her. To see the colour rise to her cheeks, that steely glint in her eye.
“How did a nice girl like you end up with a job like this, anyway?”
Her eyes narrow. “I could ask you the same question.”
I make a low, mocking bow. “Oh, your Highness. I was never nice to begin with.”
“My mother originally wanted me to be the goddess of flowers, you know.” She waves a hoof. “Springtime, sunshine, all that stuff. To match her whole fertility thing.”
“And yet you ended up here.”
“There are gods of flowers and there are gods of death.”She smiles, and her eyes are like ice. “Who’s to say I can’t be both?”
“You can’t beat us, little girl!”
His voice echoes down to me from within the steel confines of his mech-suit. Vents gape and reseal like mouths gasping for air. Steam pours from every orifice and clouds the air. His brother has vanished, but I keep my eyes fixed on this one. He is the target.
I smile, and flourish my rapier up at him. “I’m not so little as I look.”
He scoffs, the noise tinny and distorted through the layers of metal that separate us — that shield him from me and my blade. “I’m going to crush you like a bug.”
Another twirl of my rapier, and a grin that shows off all my sharp white teeth. The grin of a predator. “Bugs sting.”
And then I burst into motion, launching myself straight up, heading right for his visor. He brings up a hoof to swat me down, but the mech is big and clunky, and I have always been small and quick.
I barrel-roll to the right, just enough to dodge without changing course. My hooves skim the hot metal of his gigantic foreleg as I pass.
Flaring my wings, I land with all four hooves and a bone-jarring impact on the visor, and when I peer through, all I see is shadows and whirling gears. My rapier, thrust through the bars to pierce his throat, finds only a tannoy.
It crackles, then blares with laughter. “You really think I’d be in the head?”
I grimace. “In my defence, you two certainly seem like you’re dumb enough.”
And then the hoof he raised slams into the visor where I crouched less than half a second before, catching only a few carefully curled blue hairs in my stead.
Weaving through the fog, dodging the huge blasts of steam that emanate from the vents, I search for a hatch. But this damn mech is hoof-built, and there are maintenance hatches everywhere. I have no way of knowing which he is behind.
Wait. There are maintenance hatches everywhere. I drop down and spin the wheel to open it up.
What do you know? No lock.
“What are you doing?” he shrieks, as the trapdoor clangs shut behind me.
He’s got cameras, periscopes, something that lets him see outside. Can he see inside, too? Let’s find out.
“Flam! The flamethrowers are finally heated up and ready to go!”
Ah. The brother finally returns.
A pause. Then, “Where is she?”
Flam, when he replies, sounds frightened. “She’s — she’s inside me!”
But the emotion in his voice isn’t what’s important. What’s important is that I can hear him. And not just from the speaker system. I hear his voice, close. High and thready with fright.
I hurl myself in the direction of the sound, squeezing through tiny gaps, dodging cogs and gears and a thousand different types of pulley — and then there he is, sandwiched between two gigantic generators, completely blinded by his control helmet.
It’s foal’s play to creep up behind him. To position myself. To press the rapier to his throat and lean forward to murmur my sweet nothings to him.
“Hello, Flam.”
Instantly, he is still.
“It’s not you I came for, Flam.”
He gulps, his throat bobbing. “I-it’s not?”
“No,” I lie, as smoothly as if I believe it myself. “I know it wasn’t your idea to enslave a whole village to build these crazy machines.”
“N-no,” he stutters.
“I know Flim’s the brains of the outfit.”
“R-right.”
“So you destroy Flim’s suit, and I’ll let you live.”
He goes rigid. “You will?”
I lower my voice, whispering into his ear. Like I would to a lover. “I swear.”
A pair of paranoid brothers in two gigantic invulnerable steam mechs don’t have many weaknesses, but they do have one. Same as the one they have outside the suits: each other.
“I — I don’t—”
The rapier presses more firmly into his flesh. Blood wells forth. A little bead of vermillion, growing and elongating into a trickle. A stream. “I mean it, Flam.”
He hesitates no longer. A hoof slams down, and a barrage of missiles clank into action, heading one by one for the firing bay powered by the pair of generators on either side of the pilot seat.
A voice booms from outside, metallic and vast. “Flam, what are you—?”
He never finishes that statement.
“It’ll be alright,” Flam whispers, more to himself than to me. “There’s the escape pod. The fail-safe. He’ll be fine.”
“No, he won’t,” I answer, and then I jam the rapier into his throat.
As it turns out, an equine body thrown into a generator produces an explosion comparable to fifteen missiles fired at point blank range. I’m standing between two smoking wrecks when the first petals begin to drift around me. Moved by the same unseen breeze as always.
Flim did survive, as it turns out. All that means is his body is resting nice and intact at my feet, while his brother’s is a small pile of ash somewhere amid the carnage.
“What did you do this time?” She is filling her tone with mock-weariness, but she is smiling.
I beam back at her. “I missed you too.”
“This is what…the eighth time?” She looks at Flim’s corpse with a resigned expression.
“And ninth,” I chirp. “Though he’s more in pieces than at peace, if you catch my drift.”
She rolls her eyes. “And why are you doing this, again?”
I gasp. Clutch my breast. She’s in a theatrical mood today, and I can play along. “You wound me.”
A withering glance. “Do I?”
“I’m doing it for you.”
“Are you even getting paid for these, any more?”
“No.” She knows that. “I haven’t been paid since the last job.”
A mare with red eyes and a pink coat stained red with blood. A small body at her hooves. A fat purse of gold coins in her saddlebag. A rapier that gleams in the light.
I move a little closer. “This is more of a labour of love, now.”
It’s a risk. The first time the word has been said, by either of us. But this is the eighth time I have seen her — not counting those that came before.
The sadness in her eyes when she looked at me.
“Is this who you are?”
The tiny body on the ground. The gold I was paid for it.
“Is this what you want to be?”
A job. A life. My life, built around the taking of others.
I’d thought I was special. A dealer of death, able to see the goddess of the dead because of my unique skill.
“Is this all that you are?”
“No,” I answered, and I was shocked to find that I meant it. “I can be more.”
She glared at me, and she curled her beautiful lip. “Prove it.”
Then she was gone.
And I stood still breathing in her scent, the marigolds, until it was gone. And then I spoke again.
“The next time I see you, it will be different.”
And it was. I’m a mare of my word. Always have been. That’s what made me so successful, in my old line of work. Ponies need to know they can trust you to get the job done. And in my new line of work…well, there’s a lot of crossover. The skills are the same. The research, the set-up, the execution. In both senses of the word.
It’s only the criteria that are different.
Bad ponies. Cruel ponies. Monsters. Those who I can send to Flurry Heart, my Princess, knowing that their absence leaves the world a better place.
No more tiny bodies. The only gold I need now is the sight of the flowers that herald her coming.
And when I look into her eyes, bluer than the ocean, bluer than the sky — and I see her smile at me…I know that I have done the right thing.
“I’ve heard of you.”
“You have?” I am pleasantly surprised. It’s always nice to be recognised.
Her lip curls as she looks at me. “You’ve been doing the rounds. Wiping out the big bads left and right, according to what I hear.”
“Sounds accurate.” I smile and tilt my head a little, showing my dimples. A move that was among my best when I was a child, when cuteness was a weapon. Now it is more unsettling than adorable, a childlike action performed by an adult — but the uncanny sensation it invokes can be a weapon in its own right.
She tightens her grip on her gun. Her face is pale. “I won’t let you get to her.”
“Oh, golly.” I giggle. “It’s sweet that you think there’s a scenario where I won’t.”
But she steels herself and plants her hooves more firmly on the ground the doors. “Not happening.” The words are distorted around the gun, but I get her meaning.
That silvery braid swings close to the ground as she lowers her head, and the muscles in her legs bunch. Earth pony strength. I’ll need to be wary, and not just of the gun. A kick from an angry earth pony can shatter a hollow pegasus bone in a way that just doesn’t heal.
But she’s standing between me and my prize, and I will have it.
“Let me pass.” I offer her one last way out. “It’s your boss I want. You can go.”
She snarls. Shakes her head in a vehement no. “I’d die for her.”
“Good.” I laugh, and spread my wings. “Because I think you’re about to.”
I see her throat working, and I know what is coming before her tongue even pulls the trigger. One sharp flap, and I am nine foot high in the air. Her first bullet hits the wall behind where I was standing. She re-angles, fires again, but I’m already diving. I curve to her left, flapping furiously, too fast for her to track, and I come at her from the side, crashing into her with enough force to fell a bull —
— Or it ought to have been. In reality, it’s like hitting a stone wall. Silver Spoon might have a delicate little teaspoon for a cutie mark, but she’s built like a dump truck and, when she winds her hoof back for a kick, hits like one too.
The kick to my abdomen sends me sprawling away from her, gasping in pain and clutching at my ribcage — which only makes the pain flare brighter, until stars are dancing against my eyelids, each little stab of their five-pronged bodies impacting against my raw nerve endings.
Hay and biscuits. I think she broke something.
“Walk away while you still can, assassin,” she spits. “You’re not getting to Diamond.”
I try to move, and my legs slide out from under me. I cough, and my breath rattles in my chest.
She cocks her head. Moves a little closer. I try to raise myself, weight on my wings instead of my legs, and she laughs.
“One kick was all it took? I think you’re overhyped, Cozy Glow.”
She returns the gun to her mouth, drops to one knee to press it against my forehead — strange, how theatrical ponies get about that. It would work equally well from the other side of the room. But it’s what I have been waiting for, and my response is immediate.
One quick jerk of my foreleg, and the needle-thin point of my rapier slides between her ribs and right into her heart.
Her eyes widen, and her mouth gapes — as though she cannot believe my audacity — but before she can speak, her legs give out. She lands heavily atop me, and my injured ribs crunch. Yep. I hiss through gritted teeth. Those are definitely broken.
But I am a professional, and she was an idiot who fell for the oldest trick in the book.
I hoist myself to my feet and head up the stairs she gave her life to guard.
The stairs creak beneath my hooves, but I’m not trying to hide my presence. My appearance shouldn’t be a surprise to anypony who operates like this.
“Daddy, please calm down. The next shipment isn’t due in for another month, but it won’t be late. You know my suppliers. They’re reliable.”
Then she sees me, sees the blood dripping from my blade to the floor, and her eyes widen. She swallows. She knows what is coming. They always know.
“Daddy,” she says into the telephone, “Something just came up. I think I might need to go.”
A concerned crackle from the other end of the line.
“Yes please, Daddy,” she replies. “As many of them as you can. Make sure you give them the gatlings, too.”
I smile at her, just a little too wide, and I use one wing to raise my rapier to my face. Eyes like mine are rare — red is an unusual colour — and the horror of the colour-match is sometimes enough to unnerve. The psychological factor can be huge in a fight, and I want any advantage I can get. My ribs are still aching from the kick Silver Spoon dealt me. I think I might have broken a couple.
No matter. It will be worth it.
She is always worth it.
Diamond Tiara hangs up, and one hoof is placed flat on the desk while the other reaches below. Looking for a panic button, or perhaps a gun.
“Calling for backup, are we?” I ask, lightly. “You know it’ll be over long before they get here.”
She narrows her eyes at me. “We can cut a deal. Whoever’s paying you, I can pay higher.”
“I thought you recognised me,” I reply. “You should know I can’t be bought.”
“No,” she insists. “There’s always an angle. Everypony has a price.”
The corners of my mouth curling up, I shake my head slowly, from side to side. “Not this time.”
I do have a price, of course. The scion of the Rich family is astute enough; everyone has a price. But mine is a little too high for her to pay. She is the price, her blood is the price. My entrance fee to the golden glory of my Princess’ presence.
A few more droplets of Silver Spoon’s lifeblood plash softly to the floor, and I shake my sword off and pull in a deep breath. Diamond Tiara’s eyes widen, and my muscles bunch.
And as I launch myself toward her, she pulls out the pistol and begins to fire.
Her aim isn’t as good as her underling’s. All I have to do is drop flat to the floor, my momentum carrying me forward. She’s panicked, firing wildly, and four of the shots embed themselves in the door that leads back to the stairs. And then my slide carries me underneath the edge of her desk, just close enough for me to lash out with my hind legs and kick the table upward.
I’d hoped it would hit her in the face, stun her — but these earth pony constructions are heavier than they look and it just rattles and settles back in place. Diamond Tiara’s chair is wheeled and she is already pushing it back, so I dive for her hind legs, stabbing my rapier through the soft flesh of the thigh — almost impaling her cutie mark. Funny, that. I remember those three insufferable little sycophants at Twilight Sparkle’s school telling me how particularly proud of her cutie mark Diamond Tiara was.
She brings the gun to bear again and fires down at me — but I pivot, pushing off from the floor and using my rapier as a pivot point. A flap of my wings gives me lift. The twist of the blade in her flesh makes her cry out, and she almost drops the gun.
A pity that she doesn’t.
She fires once more, blindly this time, and it proves she should have been shooting with her face screwed up in pain and her eyes shut the entire fight, because it actually hits me. A clean shot, right through the flesh of my left wing. No messy bones involved, just flesh and feather. I grit my teeth and yank my sword free. It’ll bleed a lot and sting a bit, but I’m in no danger.
In contrast, her wound is pumping out a flood of crimson, soaking the chair and the floor. She is panting, one hoof clamped to it, eyes fixed on me, wild and staring.
I climb back to my feet, nice and slowly. The fight is over; she just hasn’t quite realised it yet.
She looks me dead in the eyes. A look full of raw, unbridled hatred.
She pulls the trigger —
— And it clicks.
Four shots to the wall, one to the floor beneath the desk, one to my wing. All six, signed and sealed.
And a cut to the femoral artery, nice and deep.
The battle is already won.
She closes her eyes. Sighs. Lets the gun fall. It clatters noisily against the floorboards. “Why are you doing this?”
I roll my eyes. “Why are you surprised?”
“I did my research on you.” The words are hissed through a jaw clenched tight. Both hooves are pressed to the leg wound now. “You used to be a professional. Get paid, do a hit. Any target. No — no morals. But now you’re…targeting. What….what changed?”
By the end of her speech, her words are slowing. Her face is blanched. An icy bone-white beneath the blush-coloured fur.
“You’ve got little fillies delivering drugs, Diamond,” I snap. “You’ve got them using so they’ll work for free. It was only a matter of time till somepony came after you.”
“My Daddy will kill you like a dog for this,” she hisses, but her words lack force now. The pool of blood around the base of the chair keeps growing; a vast red rose unfurling its petals. “He’ll unspool your intestines and leave you in the street to die.”
“Your little spoon-themed underling died to protect you, you know,” I say.
That seems to hurt her in a way my rapier did not. Her eyes tighten, and she looks away. Her hooves keep slipping from her leg. Too much blood. Too slick.
“And you never even asked if I let her live.”
“My Daddy will…he’ll hire every assassin in the kingdom to…hunt you…” Her words are slowing.
“She loved you, I think,” I continue, taking a step toward her.
That same twitching of the eyelids. She knew. I let out a little laugh. “She never told you, I guess. And you never told her there was no need to tell you.”
“Daddy’s going to…to spoon out your…eyes…”
She’s fading fast.
I lean in close, wanting to deliver my last few words to her before she goes. “You didn’t want to tell her because you knew that if you said you didn’t feel the same that she’d leave. Right?”
Her breath is rattling in her throat, but her eyes are still full of hate.
“And you liked having a bodyguard like that. One willing to die for you.”
“Daddy will…”
“Yes, yes. Daddy’ll gut me like a fish, I know. But what about poor old Silver Spoon, Diamond? Does it feel good, using a pony like that? Using her for years, just like you use everyone else who works for you. The stooges, the mooks, the little kids no policepony is ever going to suspect of dealing?”
“You made a lot of users in your time, DT.” I smile and finally deliver the closing line I thought of the moment my research revealed exactly what sort of operation she was running here. “But in the end, you were the biggest user of them all.”
Her eyes are full of mute, impotent fury, and her mouth is quivering, as though she is trying to shape one final, desperate word. Daddy, perhaps. He seems to be the one anchor she has left.
But as soon as the light in her eyes dims, the light in the room changes. The blue halogen lights are suddenly a soft, ethereal gold. I shut my eyes and pull in a deep breath.
There it is.
The scent of marigolds.
“You’re wounded.” The concern in her velvety voice has my eyes snapping open.
She materialised faster than usual; there she stands, already fully formed, petals pooling at her feet.
My heart stutters, and I offer her a tremulous smile. “Hello, stranger.”
“You’re bleeding.”
“I — it’s nothing, I swear.” Too late, I see the real fear in her eyes. My spirit soars, even as my mind races for a way to reassure her. She cares. “Just a couple of cracked ribs. I’ve had worse.”
“You broke your ribs, too?” Her wings flare in alarm. “I was talking about that!” She points to my injured wing, and I offer her a sheepish smile.
“It’s not much more than a scratch, really.”
“And you’re doing this to see me?” There's pain in her voice, and she takes a step toward me. For a moment, one brief, magical moment, I think that this is it. The first time she will touch me. The first time we kiss.
"Yes," I whisper to her, hoping to reel her in across that last bit of distance
But she stops short, shaking her head. "Its too dangerous. It's…I'm not worth this, Cozy Glow. You're going to get seriously hurt." Her eyes flicker to my wing. "You've already been seriously hurt."
She's so close, but the foot of space between us might as well be a mile. My gut twists with disappointment, but the flavour of my name in her mouth is almost enough to make up for it.
"I'm not going to stop," I promise her. There's no way I'm giving up.
She sighs, and her horn flares. Amber light washes over the room – but not, as I had expected, aimed at Diamond Tiara's body. Aimed at me.
The brush of her power against my fur, whisper-soft. And then a warm tingle in my abdomen and my wing, and I finally realise what is happening. She is healing me.
"Flurry," I murmur as the hole in my wing seals itself.
She looks at me, but her eyes are huge and frightened. "I don't want you to get hurt again."
I jerk my head from side to side. Denying it. "I'm not giving you up."
She gathers their souls to her, the gang boss and the henchpony who loved her, and then she is gone. One last tearful smile over her shoulder.
I drown in every glance she sends my way.
For so long before I met her, I was spiralling. Directionless. Crumbling. Now I'm…I'm still crumbling, but the only thing keeping me together is her. The knowledge that I'll see her soon, once the next job is complete.
Everything I do, I do for her. And she is worth it.
My next one is more of a mercy than anything else. I came here for Gladmane, a conman masquerading as a singer. An older stallion, well into his fifties, with an established pattern. Roll up in a city, do a few shows. Gather a collection of mares, often older, often lonely, always wealthy. Then slowly drain them of everything they have to offer. Money, gifts, property. And, because Gladmane the country singer is the poorly maintained cover of an exceptionally strong siren, their magic, too.
It’s not always fatal, but for the five of his victims who I took the trouble to go and meet, it might as well have been. A life without magic is no life at all. Flightless pegasi, earth ponies cut off from nature’s well of power, unicorns drained of all their mana. And all weak and gray and colourless, every one.
Gladmane is a monster, but when I come to Las Pegasus, I’m too late. He’s already moved on, but he’s left plenty behind.
The hotel suite is chaos — a sea of desaturated, dispirited ponies, calling out for their love in broken, hopeless tones. Most fit the profile; well-dressed, well-heeled ponies in their twilight years.
But one stands out.
She’s a mare, just a little older than me. Maybe ten years, maybe less. And she’s pretty, with delicate blue fur and big purple eyes. She looks up at me, a rare beauty in this mess of the broken elderly, and there is heartbreak in her eyes.
“Have you seen him?” she whispers.
She would have been pretty, before he got to her. In a sharp, fragile sort of way — like a rare vase or a delicate piece of glasswork. But she is cracked now, and nothing I can do can put her together again.
She crawls toward me, heaving herself over the other drained. Her fellows. “Is he…coming back?”
Mutely, I shake my head. Gladmane will not be back. He has taken all that Las Pegasus has to offer.
“He…he said he’d make my magic stronger,” she whispers, and only then do I see her cutie mark. So faded now as to be almost unrecognisable as the magical swirl it once was. He has stolen everything. “He said he’d…help me…be the mage I was born to be.”
“Gladmane!” wails an ancient stallion beside her, and it sets off a chorus of them, all sobbing brokenly for their lost love.
“I love him,” she whispers, and a tear slides down her cheek. “He said together we could do everything. He said I’d be able to teleport.”
I don’t know what it is about her that moves me. Perhaps it is as simple as that she is beautiful, and I am a shallow pony moved by a beautiful, broken creature.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper to her, and I cannot remember the last time those words left my lips.
She gazes up at me, and her eyes are pleading. “He said I’d…be the mage I was always born to be. But now…”
She shuts her eyes, concentrates, and her horn does not even glow. Not a single spark. What colour was her magic, I wonder? Purple, like her eyes? Blue, like her coat?
I’ll never know, now.
“I’m sorry,” I repeat. It is all that I can say.
“Gladmane,” whimpers the stallion, and the echoes from the others fracture out across the suite. “Gladmane, Gladmane, Gladmane…”
“When is he coming back?” she asks, this nameless mare who dreamed of sorcery strong enough to reach the stars — this mare who will never do magic again. “Please. Please, tell him…”
“Would you like,” I start, and there is a crack in my voice so bad that I have to stop and catch my breath. “Would you like for this to be over?”
“Yes,” she breathes, and there is not an ounce of hesitation there. “Yes. Make it end.”
How many days has she been here, lying in this stinking heap of equine refuse? The offal of a monster too lazy to finish the job and kill those in truth that he has killed in spirit.
It is…I am giving her mercy.
I am showing her the kindness the siren did not.
And if my kindness happens to serve my own ends…to procure the result that I want most in all the world…well, is that so wrong? A thing can be good at the same time as being selfish.
“I’ll make it end,” I promise her, and I reach out to brush my hoof over her eyelids.
Long accustomed to blind obedience, she does not resist, and her eyes slip shut. She waits, face patiently upturned, for whatever comes next.
She would have had a mind of her own once, this mare. She would have had thoughts, feelings, desires.
She wanted to teleport.
Everything she was — he took it all.
This is mercy, I tell myself firmly, and then without any more hesitation I raise my sword and drive it straight through those trusting, tight-shut eyes.
Painless. Swift. Her expression, as she slumps to the floor, is almost serene.
Why, then, are my eyes so clouded? Why are my cheeks slick with moisture?
Then a petal floats past me, coming from behind my head. I shiver, a shudder of anticipation and dread, and then I feel her warmth beside me.
“Cozy, what is this?”
“A siren,” I reply. My voice is hollow. “I was aiming for the siren himself, but…this is all I got.”
Her dress rustles as she moves forward to stoop over the poor nameless mare who wanted to be a mage. “Gladmane.”
I nod. Why do I feel so numb? She’s here, after all the months I have waited, but…all I feel is empty.
“You know him, then.”
“Yes.” There is iron in that word. Cold and hard.
“You’ll be pleased, then, when I catch him.” The words come automatically. Banter. Like always. Despite the hollow feeling in my chest.
“I will.”
Once that would have sent a thrill through me. Confirmation that I am pleasing her, that she is happy with the gifts I am offering. A hint that she looks forward to our next meeting just as much as I do.
She waits for a response, but when I give none, she lowers her horn to touch the mare’s. Golden light flares, and the petals flurry and swirl like snow.
When the shade emerges, I want to cry all over again. Those sweet purple eyes, that Gladmane stole the fire from — but that I shut forever.
“What’s your name, you poor thing?” Flurry’s voice is gentle and melodic as ever.
“Poor?” The shade scoffs, and there is so much life in her tone that I almost expect the corpse with the bloodied eye to leap back to its hooves. “I am the great and powerful Trixie, wizard extraordinaire, and there is nothing poor about me.”
Flurry laughs, and the urge to smile back is so strong that I almost do. Almost.
She dips her head in apology. “I apologise for the confusion.”
Trixie tosses her head. “And who are you?”
Another laugh. “Let’s just say I’m your ticket out of here. That’s probably simplest.”
I’m never sure how much the shades can see — or if they can even see me — but the disdain with which Trixie eyes the room seems real enough.
Or possibly that’s just how she’d look at any room, no matter what she perceived.
“Good,” she says, snippily. “Hurry up, then. The great and powerful Trixie waits for no mare.”
Apologetically, Flurry turns to me. “I…I have to go.”
Deep in my chest, my heart breaks a little. I wonder if she can hear it. I force a smile. “I know.”
“But if you…” she gestures around at the others. The grey obscenities on the ground. The things that used to be living, breathing ponies, and now are only breathing. “If you…clean up, then I could be back.”
“Right,” I say, and my voice sounds hollow. “Right.”
Then the petals cluster and flare, and she is gone. And I am left standing over the corpse of dead Trixie, while fifty others crawl and moan around me. Each broken cry overlapping the next.
“…Gladmane…Gladmane…Gladmane…Gladmane…”
I could leave. I could walk away from here and never look back.
But she asked me.
She asked me, and…and maybe I am as lost, in my way, as these poor idiots were when Gladmane first sang to them. Flurry’s song is different, but no less deadly, in the end.
“We can’t keep meeting like this, little assassin.”
“Who are you calling little?” The retort comes quickly, falling from my lips as naturally as breathing. But I am breathing too hard, and I know she can see it.
She smiles at me, but it’s sad. “Says the mare who’s four foot nothing at the withers.”
Even her insults sting less when she’s like this.
I smile back. Shrug. “We can’t all have the statuesque beauty of alicorns. If we did, nopony would be statuesque. We’d all just be normal. Normal elongated freaks.”
That earns me a laugh, like bells, like music, but it ends too soon. “But really, Cozy. You don’t look…well.”
“It’s a tough job, but somepony’s gotta do it.” I attempt a rakish grin, but it falls flat.
“It doesn’t have to be you. You’re doing…a good thing, in a way. But it doesn’t have to be you.”
Swallowing hard, I look up at her, and I die a little inside. “But how else will I see you?”
She blinks, and her eyes are suspiciously bright. “Maybe…maybe it’s not worth it. Seeing me.”
“No, I—”
“—I’ve got to go.” And her horn is alight, and she is pulling the soul out — all quick, too quick — and before I can object again she is cloaking them both in petals. She is leaving.
After I worked so hard.
“Flurry, wait!”
And her last goodbye floats to me on the wind of her exit, as she leaves me alone once more.
“…Wait.”
I wipe my blade on the corpse’s clothes, and I sit down on the floor. Empty. Hollow. The scent of marigolds is already fading from my nostrils.
How long will it be, till I smell them again?
I’m…tired. Who is there left to fight? All I want…all I’ve ever wanted, for a long time now, is to see her again. To do more than see her, one fleeting glimpse at a time, months or years apart. I’ve changed for her. Stopped. These new kills, these moral kills, they take a long time to set up. A long time to plan. And only a brief moment to execute.
I want more. I want to be with her.
But how can I, when the only way to summon her, the only way to build the bridge between worlds, is to take a life? How can I do that, when the pony is what she would call a good pony? She hates it when I kill those worthy of a longer life.
And I can bear anything, anything but her hate.
And yet…there are no other options.
I can either take a life, or die myself. Become one of those golden souls, pulled from the body with a burst of radiance. I don’t know what fate awaits mortals who go to her world. I don’t know what she does with them. I might win an eternity with her, or only a ten-minute one way trip across the river Styx.
But as the idea turns over in my mind, something takes root.
I might win an eternity with her. I might.
And suddenly, for a prize like that, it seems like it might be worth it to roll the dice.
Shadows pool along the obsidian walls. They roil and bubble, thrash and twist, and then finally, in a rush of night so vantablack that it hurts my eyes —
— He is there.
“Why do you trespass on sacred ground, mortal?” he snarls, and his mane is darkness incarnate.
The answer is very simple. “I’ve come to kill you.”
His laughter shakes the earth. “I am the King of the Shadows. I am the Umbrum!”
“I know,” I say, and I draw my rapier. “But you were mortal once.”
“Lies!” he bellows, and he begins to circle me. A cat stalking a mouse.
Usually I am the cat. I cannot say I am enjoying the reversal.
“Sombra of the Crystal Court.” As I say the words, the ground beneath my feet shivers with the force of his silent rage. “A legend. A mortal stallion chosen by the Night Queen to be her consort. Elevated to godhood. Ascended. But not unbeatable.”
“You are a worm,” he tells me. “A nothing. I will grind you beneath my hooves and forget that you ever existed.”
“Maybe,” I acknowledge. “But maybe I’ll see you again, after it’s over. Maybe this is only round one.”
He laughs, and it is full of cruelty. “Deluded little ant, trying to crawl among the stars. Let me put you back in your place.”
And then he charges, his horn flashing redder even than my eyes, and the shadows reach for me and pull me down.
“You must have known you couldn’t beat him. He’s a god.”
I shoot her a glare that I hope is withering. I’m still a little shaky, looking down at my own dead body. “The god of shadows. It’s a terrible domain. Anyone could beat him.” I pause. Glance at my bloodied, broken wings, down there on the ground. I swallow and amend my statement slightly. “Well, anyone but me, apparently.”
She sniggers. “No, I’ve thought about it, and I’m pretty sure this is just another of your angles.”
“My angles?” I rear back, wings spreading in indignation.
“You just wanted to see more of me.” She reaches out, and for the first time, she touches me. It’s nothing more than a feather to the ribs, a prod, but it’s enough to send tingles up and down my entire body. Enough to make the echoes of the pain from my miserably one-sided fight with the Shadow King fade away entirely.
“Maybe,” I grin. “And what if I did? You got any openings up in the court of the Sun Goddess?”
“Hm.” She eyes be doubtfully, and for a moment I think she is serious. My heart stutters in my chest. “Maybe not up there, but I might have something that would suit you.”
Hope flares, and I grin up at her. Now that I am so close to her, our height difference has never been more apparent. “Oh yeah? Doing what?”
“How would you feel,” she asks, lowering her muzzle to mine, close enough that I can feel her breath hot against my skin, “About starting off at the very bottom of the ladder? Does junior under-assassin to the goddess of death sound good?”
And my heart sings within me as I struggle to keep the grin off my face. “Yeah, I think I could deal with that.”
She smirks. She knows she has me exactly where she wants me. “Just about?”
But then again, I have her exactly where I want her, too. Right here, next to me. “Just about.”
And as the golden petals swirl around us, and we step forward, side by side, into a future as glorious and as golden as she is.
