A Place Of Honor, Or Lack Thereof
In the center of the sitting room, Lord Tirek looked up from the book, wrinkled his nose, and frowned. Something had died in here. Maybe.
He sniffed again. Just beyond the entrance, the main hall's frothing waterfall churned the languid channels of swamp water threading the lair. The torches stuttered in the breeze, a soft breath of air rolling through the great and ancient body of stone, moss, and vines. The subterranean stink of whatever—whoever—lived here before them before had been chased away ages ago. Air down here never stilled, never settled. The complete opposite of Tartarus, in other words. Tirek still wasn’t sure if he liked it.
Over a thousand years in Tartarus and several dozen decades outside it, he’d become well acquainted with the smell of death. One good whiff and you never forgot. Even the falls and fresh air couldn’t hide it. No doubt now. Something somewhere in this room was dead. What, he couldn’t begin to guess. So few creatures lived out here at all, much less dared venture underground.
Tirek followed the stench to the concave bookshelves nestled in the wall. Ah, there: a thin trail of dried blood ran down the eastern wall beside a wall sconce. His finger trailed the path up, up past the shelf of hair products and chitin wax, around the mildew stain, to a shallow cavity above Tirek’s door. A limp bat wing poked over the edge. Ants swarmed across it. Frail bones poked through consumed skin and tissue. The silly thing must have knocked itself senseless, or gotten lost and starved to death.
Rising on his hind legs, Tirek found a grip and pulled himself up to the crevice to fetch the bat.
He blinked.
The bat with its head smashed in. Presuming that mash of bone and rotting flesh had once been a head.
So much for the starvation theory.
Careful not to get his hands devoured by ants, Tirek dragged out the body for closer inspection. The wing appeared bruised, but this far into decomposition, he couldn’t tell for sure. An ugly tear ripped the membrane of the left wing from thumb to shoulder joint. Too precise to be an accident. A predator wouldn’t bother to chew the head to bits and leave the rest.
Someone had killed this bat. Obviously, Tirek hadn’t done it. Such pettiness was not beyond Queen Chrysalis, but for all her furor and violent outbursts, she’d always kept it clean and relatively bloodless. Given the choice, she struck with magic every time. Grogar bothered showing up once a fortnight at the absolute most. That only left…
Tirek huffed. “Not likely.”
“What’s not—ow!” There was a thud, a crash, and a dozen smaller thuds.
Behind him, Cozy Glow shook a cookbook off her face. She rubbed her head and sneered at the heap of books knocked off the shelf as if they’d conspired to hit her on purpose. “Dumb ol’ lanterns, can’t even see where I’m…” she trailed off into an incomprehensible mutter.
“What are you doing here?”
The pegasus jolted upright. “Fwaugh!” Her wings fumbled to catch the air as she corkscrewed over Tirek’s head, little hooves pawing at his horns for landing.
He ducked to the side and let her tumble overhead.
Amazingly, she missed the stalagmite. Cozy stabilized a wobbly hover. “I live here you big nosy…” She blinked hard. Swept her mane back. Took a deep breath. Cozy Glow’s eyes popped open, all sweet smiles and giggles. “Golly! Where else would I be?”
Great. Here we go. “Oh, perhaps in your absurd little cloud bed? Asleep? It’s the middle of the night.” The water clock marked the hour at half past two. “Your watch ended hours ago.”
One of Chrysalis’s better ideas imported from the hive. Grogar had developed a bad habit of appearing at the very worst of times.
“Oh, I know, but I just couldn’t stand the thought of my very good friend all alone out here by himself. I came to keep you company!”
Cozy tried to bounce into a figure eight. It ended up a figure ampersand. Her wings stuttered in flight, and not for the first time. Every twelfth stroke or so they skipped a wingbeat and she lurched like a drunken elephant. “Hey! That’s the book, isn’t it?” An annoying pink elephant who needed to keep her hooves to herself.
The flight path wobbled towards the table at the heart of the room. Tirek stepped in front of her, but she looped around his arms to land beside the book. A miniature rockslide of grit and dust trickled off her wings.
Tirek snatched it before the first mote hit the cover. “Watch yourself! This tome is older than your ancestor’s ancestors.”
“Even older than your gram-gram?”
“I believe we agreed to avoid that particular subject.” He considered it. “But most likely, yes.”
It had no publication date—and if it did, he couldn’t read it anyway—but at a guess, the book had to be older than Equestria itself. Old as the foundation years at the absolute youngest. The cracked sea leather cover shone dull in the lantern light as he turned it over in his hands. Tirek’s free hand turned up the brightness for a better look. No dirt or dust in the stiff parchment pages. No scuffs on the metal embellishments. No harm done. His fingers shied from the dark licks of ash that stained the edges. No harm done tonight, at least.
“It is written in an ancient dialect—”
“Olde Ponish, I bet.” Cozy stretched her neck to squint at the cover. It would do her little good.
The title, along with every other scrap of text, could not be read. If Tirek glanced at it through the corner of his eye, he could almost make out the shape of letters. Almost. The moment he turned his gaze upon it, the text went fuzzy and dim as if from a far distance. Letters mashed into random symbols and illustrations melted down to abstract splashes of color.
Tirek moved the book out of Cozy range. “If you would let me finish.”
“Sorry.” She wasn’t.
“It is derived from your Olde Ponish, but overlaid with a geas.” He risked a glance at the first page. In the last few seconds the blurred symbols had rearranged themselves into fresh scribbles. “A strong geas. It wouldn’t surprise me if it’s been written in code as well. A code’s simple enough to crack—”
“Ooh, I love a good puzzle.”
“—but the geas will need time to undo. Time and concentration.” Tirek’s gaze slid across the isle of illegible pages to the pink face smiling at him. “Concentration from solitary study. Study I might accomplish if you went back to sleep.”
“I’m not sleepy.” Liar. “Besides, you weren’t studying, you were looking at that.” She nodded toward the dead bat laid out upon the table, wings spread in a garish mockery of flight. “That’s probably a good way to get a disease. We eat there.”
It wouldn’t be on the table if someone hadn’t distracted him. “I appreciate your concern,” Tirek dryly said.
“You’re welcome!” Cozy circled the bat and screwed up her nose. “Ew, that’s a lot of ants.” Her eyes flicked up to meet his. “If I knew there’d be this many bugs I would have killed this thing outside.”
Tirek raised an eyebrow. “You killed this bat?”
“Yep!”
“You.”
“Yuh-huh.”
“How?”
“With my hooves, of course.” Her tail flicked an ant away before it crawled too close. “It was here a few nights ago, and SO annoying with all the flapping and stuff, so I made it stop.”
“And you killed it.” He gestured at the gory mess before them. “You did this. Really.”
“Sure did.”
Tirek shrugged. “Alright. If that’s the story you want to go with then I won’t deter you.”
“Wha—I DID!” Cozy buzzed in Tirek’s face, airborne with outrage. “What, you think I couldn’t?”
Here would be the time to drop it. Every minute spent on this nonsense was another minute stolen from breaking the geas. Time ran so swiftly above Tartarus, too swift to track; it would pull away from him if he wasn’t careful. The window of opportunity would stay open for only so long. He had better things to do than bicker with some cotton candy cloudfluff.
Cozy Glow gave an indignant little snort.
But darn it, that cloudfluff was SO easy to pick at.
“I didn’t say you couldn’t. I said you wouldn’t.” Cotton candy tasted sweet enough, but it melted into nothing seconds after touching the tongue. The moment it bumped into something real. After you eat the cotton candy, all that’s left is the stick.
“I know you wouldn’t. It’s not in your nature.”
A sharp crackle of fuzz raced down the pony’s spine. The corners of her mouth twitched in the death throes of a smile until it curled into a sneer. “You have no idea what I’m capable of,” she hissed.
The book twitched. A slight tremble so soft, so slight, Tirek wondered if he’d imagined it. The metal embellishments felt… warmer? Likely just the heat from his hands, but…
Cozy dismissed him with a flick of the tail. “What do you know about ponies and their natures, anyway? You’ve been holed up in magic-evil-superjail for a bazillion moons, and even before that, it’s not like you went around talking to anypony. What, you gobble up a few thousand ponies’ magic and now you’re s’posed to be some sorta expert? You think everything works exactly the same as it did before you went in the slammer? Please. You know, I thought you were smarter than that. Guess you’re as dumb as everypony else.” She paused. “…everycreature else? Whatever.”
Tirek’s legs curled under him as he eased back into his chair. “Who said anything about being incapable? If you listened for once, you would realize I told you it wasn’t in your nature. It’s not what ponies do.”
Clumsily, Cozy dipped to perch upon a stone chair. Without the pins and sprays, her limp curls draped across her withers. “I do have a body count, you know.”
As if that meant anything. If he felt like pedantics, Tirek could argue he’d scored a bodycount from his stroll through Equestria last year. (Two years? Three? Whatever.) Casualties and purposeful kills were not the same thing.
In the spirit of fairness, however, he allowed her a contention. “Oh? How many?”
“Altogether? I think, like, thirty-eight? There’s that bat, then the School of Friendship takeover—”
“Attempted takeover.”
She didn’t skip a beat. “—and then that one time at my old academy when the pool house burned down. Yeah, thirty-eight, as far as I know. They were still calculating damages from my funnel nexus the last time I checked the papers in…” Cozy flicked her ears and frowned at the dead bat. “…in Cloudsdale.”
Interesting. Those hellfires of hers had stoked and burnt out in record time.
Tirek leaned back to take a second appraisal of the sitting room. Wind tousled the pages of a book left out to dry after someone had dropped in a stream. Shards of broken glass glittered under the shelves. Several torches leaned askew as if bumped into. Yesterday morning, the chess set had been knocked over and reassembled, but in the wrong order. Kings stood on their own colors, and the board arranged black square on right instead of the white.
Speaking of chess, Cozy Glow had lost five out of the last six games. At the time, he’d credited it to his superior intellect and tactics. Or luck. A player of her caliber should have managed to sidestep his traps and manage counterplay better than that. Everyone had bad streaks, but these weren’t losses, they were massacres. Her openings rushed, the midgame fumbled, and by endgame the foundations of her strategy—if one could call it that—lay ruined.
He could ignore the clumsy flight. He could dismiss the harsher mood swings. But five chess defeats back to back? From the player who’d eviscerated him in mail chess last year? Absolutely not.
Tirek scowled and leaned over the table.
Cozy frowned back and rolled her bloodshot eyes. “What?”
“You have not been sleeping. Tell me why.”
A curious—and nauseating—function of Equestrian pony biology was the ability to widen their already enormous eyes. In the way snakes unhinged their jaws, a pony eye stretched to impossible size so that the pupil caught every sparkle of light. A defense mechanism against aggressors to twist weak hearts into stilling their attack. Cozy Glow elevated it to an art.
Her soft eyes opened so wide her face barely had room for that syrupy little smile. “Aww, were you worried about me? That’s so nice of you, Tirek!”
Pity the cutesy act didn’t play well in Tartarus. It played worse in Grogar’s lair.
She patted his shoulder. “I might be staying up late right now, but don’t you worry. I’ve been getting plenty of beauty rest.” The dark rings under those shiny eyes said different.
Did this foal even have a real smile at all? Maybe she’d worn the mask so long it’d molded to her skin. Maybe the false one resembled her real one so well that none could tell the difference. Or maybe there wasn’t a difference anymore.
“You’re so exhausted you can barely fly straight. What’s the problem?”
“Besides the decrepit centaur who can’t mind his own beeswax? Nothing.” With a giggle, she hopped on the back of Tirek’s chair. “Just kidding, you look great. I had an exciting day in Cloudsdale, that’s all. C’mon, you’ve never stayed up all night before?”
“Oh, yes. I’ve also been around long enough to know the difference between missing one night and three. Long enough to see the results of not sleeping, too.” He inclined his head to the pink muzzle at his shoulder. “What’s the point of this alliance if a third of it collapses because she’s stubborn about bedtime?”
At the edge of the table, flies swarmed the dead bat. The bat supposedly killed after a Cloudsdale excursion.
“Did something happen in Cloudsdale earlier?” Tirek gripped the edge of the table. “If there’s a problem, you’d better not be hiding it.”
“The plan’s fine, relax. Cloudsdale went great.” Cozy suppressed a yawn and stretched her wings, flexing all her feathers. “Everypony’s upset the deliveries have less food, and the mayor heard what the Canterlotters have been saying. That got her mad real quick. Half the weather factory’s talking strike. I stole ten lightning jars and dumped ‘em onto Sire Hollow. There. Mission report complete.”
With that, she stuck her nose in the air and started to fly off.
Tirek caught the tip of her tail in his fingers. “And you were, what, so elated that you came home and stomped a bat into mincemeat? You expect me to believe that?”
“I don’t care what you believe.” Cozy snatched her tail back and smoothed it out. “Watch the ribbons, those are silk. I told you what happened, okay?”
With enough omissions and half-truths to make a lawyer blush. For now, it would have to suffice. She’d go on this way for hours if he let her.
Tirek rolled his shoulders with a sigh. “It’s too late for this, and I have work to do. Clean up your mess and go to bed before I punch you asleep.”
“I told you, I’m not—” She swallowed another yawn. “—tired. What if I helped you with the book? I know lots about artifacts, and after all, my kind did write the thing.”
Before Tirek could protest, Cozy wiggled between his arms and plopped herself in front of the text. She tilted her head at the blackened page edges. “Wow. Looks like somepony really didn’t want this book to get read. They tried to burn it, but it didn’t work.” Her hoof ran along the edge of the charred bits. Not a casual fade from black, but a stark line, as if the fire had hit a border and snuffed out. “Is there a protection spell on it?”
“Besides the geas? I don’t think so, though it might have had a temporary one in the past. You can get clean burn lines like this from anything. A counter-spell, a restoration spell, who knows?” He glanced from Cozy to the tome and back again. The child had a point. Ponies wrote and enchanted it, and unicorn spellcrafters were notoriously paranoid. It’d be just like them to reserve such a dangerous text for ponies alone. Perhaps it needed a hoof of its own kind to—wait.
He frowned at the not-at-all-in-bed Cozy. “You’re distracting me. Throw your mess away and go to bed. Or sleep somewhere else, in the waterfall, I don’t care.”
“What mess? You mean…?”
Her gaze followed the flies down to the stone table and the wretched lump of fur. The bat’s tiny feet clenched in tight-fisted rigor mortis. Bits of white flashed between the wriggling mass of feasting ants. Its fur glistened with something that was not blood.
Cozy’s rosy coat went green. She dared a closer look and yanked away with a scream. “Ewwwww! Ew ew ew EW there’s WORMS in there!”
On cue, a maggot wriggled out what had once been a jaw.
“That tends to happen when creatures decompose, yes. You wouldn’t have this problem if you’d gotten rid of the body when you were supposed to.” Curious, Tirek ran his hand along the book's spine. The vibrations had stopped some time ago, but it still felt warm to the touch. He considered Cozy’s expression, torn between sullen protest and coping with the idea of carrying a rotting corpse in her mouth. “Unless you didn’t actually kill that bat. If it’s not your kill, it’s not your responsibility. What actually happened?”
Water dripped from a stalactite. It fell into the bat’s chest cavity with a plop. The ants scattered.
“Fine, I didn’t exactly kill it on purpose. When I came home Tuesday, it was in my room flapping in my way when I just wanted some peace and quiet. I tried to chase it out, but it wouldn’t get lost, so I kicked it. I thought it’d just fly away, but it hit one of those…” She gestured to the sharp rows of rocky teeth that jutted from all sides of the cave. “…and it fell. That must have hurt its wing because it couldn’t fly anymore. It started making these awful noises and it hurt my ears and I was NOT in the mood. So I hit it and kept hitting it until it stopped. I dunno if it was dead then, but it’s sure dead now.” Cozy Glow glared at the mangled corpse. “And it’s STILL driving me crazy.”
“There, that wasn’t so hard was it?” Tirek grabbed a sheet of moss from the wall and dropped it at Cozy’s hooves. “Now all you have to do is dispose of it.” He reconsidered. “Or go to sleep. Either choice works for me.”
“I can’t sleep!” The way she gently laid the moss over the bat, one might almost think she had respect for the dead. Revulsion to maggots would have to do. “At least I can’t sleep yet. It’s a tactical decision.”
Cozy scrunched her eyes, took a breath, and tentatively tucked the moss around the body with her wingtips. With the bat fully covered, she flipped it over and tied the moss in a tight bundle. All she had to do now was grab the moss and ditch it outside.
Her or someone else. Those big soppy eyes rounded on him again. “Tirek, can you pleeeeeaaaaaaase—”
“No. And how is insomnia supposed to be a ‘tactical decision’, anyway?”
“Easy. If I stay away until I collapse asleep then I probably won’t go into the dreaming phase of sleep.”
Tirek blinked. “I don’t get it.”
“I don’t want that whiny old Princess Luna showing up. She’s even nosier than you are, and she’ll start asking questions. That’s the last thing we need.”
Why would she randomly show up here? There’s no reason she ought to know they’d broken out from Tartarus. Unless…
Tirek frowned as he searched his memory for an old superstition from his younger days. A rumor. Hearsay. It had to be. “You don’t mean… show up in your dreams?”
“Yeah.” Cozy glanced over her shoulder as she searched the shelves. “Where else? Also, is there a stick somewhere around? I’m not carrying that thing in my mouth.”
A surge of panic sparked in him. He stomped it down. New circumstances arose all the time. This was the nature of war. It was fine. He was fine. Tirek took a deep breath, steepled his fingers, and asked, “And you did not think to mention this earlier because?”
“Oh, you didn’t know? I thought you knew everything.”
“I was not unaware, I simply thought—”
“It was a legend?” Cozy laughed—a mirthless little chirp. “Yeah, Nightmare Moon was supposed to be one of those, too. At this point, I just assume all those old stories are real by default. Just to be safe.” She listed past the shelves in sleepy orbit. “Euugh, I can’t find a stick. Where’s that dumb log Chrysalis talks to all the time?”
“In her quarters, and if you want to keep all your limbs, I suggest you leave it there.”
“...Good point. Okay, plan C.” Cozy flew into the kitchen. Minutes later, she returned with a wooden spoon. “I don’t know what you’re so worried about. She wouldn’t go poking around your dreams; it’s a pony magic thing. Probably.”
The security of their operation was “probably” assured. Wonderful.
“Twilight said she usually uses her powers for ‘foals in crisis’. That’s a fancy way of saying Luna makes bad dreams go away to make herself feel better for trying to kill her sister that one time.” Cozy rolled her eyes. “We get it, she’s sorry. Why does she need to make it MY problem?”
The wood spoon slipped neatly under the knot. Picking it up, Cozy resembled one of those runaways with a bindle stick. “She doesn’t go spying for no reason. I’m pretty sure she just comes in for nightmares.”
Tirek stroked his chin as he watched her bump her head on another chair. “Are you having nightmares?”
Cozy Glow swung on him in a rush of flared feathers and bared teeth. “It’s. A. Precaution!”
“WILL BOTH OF YOU SHUT! UP!” A noxious screech roared so loud the ceiling lurched. Loose bits of rock showered into the sitting room.
Tirek tucked the book safely in his arms, sighed, and braced for the worst.
Queen Chrysalis stormed into the sitting room hissing and spitting and swearing in a gnarly mash of five languages Tirek recognized and two he didn’t. “Do you idiots have ANY idea what time it is?! If I had my way, I’d have your guts for garters. I’d rip out your tongues with my mandibles and leave them for the rats! How dare you tear the queen of changelings from her dreams of victory? What gives you the right?” Her tattered wings rattled like sabers and her bulging green eyes blazed wild.
“Hi there, Chrysalis,” said Cozy Glow.
If looks could kill, Cozy would be a pile of ashes.
“Gosh, I’m so sorry we woke you up. I promise we’ll try to be quieter from now on.” Careful of the distance between Chrysalis’s hooves and her skull, Cozy fluttered up to present the bundle of moss. “Oh, um, by the way, do you think you could throw this away for me? Pleeaaas—hey!” Needle fangs snapped just short of her fetlock. “You coulda just said no. Sheesh.”
“I am not your maid, whelp!” The room glowed green in the light of her jagged horn. “Do you truly believe that you, of everyone here, is in any position to make demands? After what you’ve done to me?” She advanced on the filly in a low slink.
Cozy made a tactical retreat behind Tirek’s front leg. “I didn’t do anything to you! You’re just grouchy because you’re tired.”
Chrysalis hissed again. Tirek wiped the spittle out of his fur and stepped out of the splash zone.
“Do you hear this one, Lord Tirek? The little fleabite says she didn’t do anything. How dare you continue this facade.” The concave of her stomach sloshed and gurgled. Her lip curled in a pained grimace. “I don’t know anything about nightmares, but I know a stomachache when I feel one.”
Cozy Glow’s brow wrinkled in confusion. She looked up at Tirek, who shrugged.
“For three nights, you’ve turned my stomach with your misery, and each night it increases. The fetid taste of your pathetic little pony feelings is… it’s…” She wrinkled her muzzle and retched. “Ugh, what is the matter with you? Stop it. Do you hear me?” Chrysalis stomped her regal hoof. “I order you to cease feeling badly this instant!”
Tirek rolled his eyes. “Oh yes, shrieking threats will make her feel better. You are a masterclass in child-rearing.”
“Yes, I know. I’ve raised thousands.” Chrysalis sniffed the air. “What died in here?”
“Ah, you can thank our own little murderess for that. Apparently, she attacked a bat in a fit of rage.” Or frustration. Or sorrow. All three, perhaps. Not rage or annoyance alone, though. Ponies didn’t run that hot. There had to be more to it.
Meanwhile, Cozy seemed to finally accept the situation and resigned herself to cleanup duty. Wings fluffed for courage, she pulled her lips back, took the wooden spoon between her teeth, and headed for the exit.
Watching from the corner of his eye, Tirek beckoned Chrysalis closer. “The child is clearly troubled.” Left to her own devices, it would only escalate. Perhaps it wouldn’t lead Princess Luna to their door, but that didn’t mean it couldn’t call down something worse. “We must put a stop to it.”
“Indeed,” sighed Chrysalis. “Ugh. Another day of this, and I won’t keep anything down.” Her stomach growled. “What little there is to keep.” She closed her eyes in deep thought. “Mm. Have you threatened a severe beating?”
“Yes.”
“I see. Have you tried an actual beating?”
A well-timed tap to the head had a sixty-forty chance between a knockout to skip the dream state and a severe concussion. Not that it applied in this situation. “That would violate the terms of our truce.”
Chrysalis clicked her tongue. “Then I am out of ideas.” Fully awake and accepting that she wouldn't go back to sleep for some time, she cracked her neck and yawned so wide her back teeth gleamed. “If force won’t work, we need a diplomatic approach. Open negotiat…” She squinted and rose into the air. “What is she doing by the waterfall?”
At the end of the hall, Cozy Glow leaned over the side of the stairs. The stairs overlooking the main hall. The one beside the waterfall that fed their water supply.
“No! Not there!” Tirek galloped to the stairs, scooped the pony up in one hand, and just barely managed to grab the cadaver before it dropped. The moss wrap had loosened in the drop. The little knot barely held.
Cozy jolted in his hands. She blinked hard, squinting at Tirek, the cave, and the falls as if seeing them for the first time.
“What were you thinking? You could have contaminated our water source!”
She blinked at her wet hooves, then the bat, then at Tirek. “Oh.” The implications connected. “Ohhh. That… wouldn’t be good. Um.” Her wings gave a sleepy little shrug. “Sorry about that?”
Chrysalis slipped through the curtain of water for a quick shower, letting the water flow through her moth-bitten carapace like a sieve. “I doubt one cadaver in a pool this size would give us botulism,” she said, “but a careless move nonetheless.”
“Alright.” Tirek pinched the bridge of his nose. “I will strike a bargain with you, pegasus.”
Cozy fluttered out of Tirek’s hands and onto his shoulder. “You’ll let me help with the book?”
“In a sense. I am willing to help you get rid of the body—”
She grinned.
“—provided that you tell us what’s been bothering you.”
The grin shrank. “How’s that helping with the book?”
“I’ve got a theory.” Tirek fetched the book from the table and made his way down into the main hall. The cover felt cold to the touch again, but no matter. “Pony magic feeds off emotion. Furthermore, Honesty is one of your harmonic elements, is it not?”
“What are you getting at?”
They passed through the network of slopes and stairs in the main hall, up and around the basin, and back on the other side where an arc of stone rose into the night beyond.
“The book reacted to you before. I believe the geas could weaken, maybe even break if—”
“What, if we sat around and held a silly ‘feelings forum’ like the changelings? Come on.” Cozy glanced at Chrysalis with an apologetic shrug. “Yeah, that’s a thing now. Sorry.”
The queen looked as if she were going to be sick.
Cozy walked along Tirek’s arm and ran her primaries down the book’s spine. “I think you’re making this up because you want me to talk.”
“It is a theory,” he insisted again. And it wasn’t like he had any other leads right now. If they all had to be up at this hour, they may as well try and make something of it. “The bargain stands: you speak true, or you get to bury your own bat.”
“You’ll make me talk about it even if I choose the bat, aren’t you?”
“Not tonight,” he told her, “but yes.”
“I hate you.”
Tirek huffed. “Get in line.”
The entryway stretched above Cozy’s head. She stopped five steps from the door and flew a couple of inches backward. “This is stupid.” Ten inches backward. A foot. “None of this matters, and it’s none of your business.” A fresh breeze rolled in. Her wings caught the current and she made a break for it.
Magic looped around her barrel and yanked her back onto the stairs. Chrysalis loomed before Cozy’s flight path. “You make it our business when we are in an alliance.” She zipped closer. “You make it our business when your sleeplessness makes you prone to idiotic mistakes.” Her fangs glistened in the shadow of the cave. “You make it MY business when your mood stinks so foul that mewling traitor Thorax can smell it.”
“It—it’ll stop eventually.” Cozy shook herself off. When she didn’t instantly feel better, she plopped onto the stair in a sulk. “It always does, and then I can go to sleep. Or I’ll sleep in the daytime, or at dawn and…”
And even if that worked, it still wouldn’t help bury the bat. Or dissuade the two monarchs hounding her. With her escape route blocked, Cozy Glow had officially run out of options. “Or I can take the deal. Let’s ditch the body and get it over with.”
The night lay still and silent around them. Water rippled beneath their shadows. Dirt squished underhoof. Wind whistled through branches and broken rock. Nothing else. A swamp of this size at this hour should have sung with the chirps of crickets and croaks of frogs and the hoots of owls. But no. Tirek had scarcely heard a sign of life since they’d arrived. If he watched closely, sometimes he could spot bottom feeders in the water. Once, he saw a heron overhead. Only once, and only in broad daylight. The lesser creatures of Equestria knew better than to cross this place.
Sometimes, he fancied the idea that even animals feared the terrible villains lurking beneath the skull of stone. An absurd fancy born of ego and heedless optimism. He knew better.
Broken shadows of stony ruins passed over his shoulders as his hooves clacked across what had once been a floor. Latent ancient magic dark and deep welled beneath the skin of this place. Perhaps Grogar had infected it. Perhaps it had always been this way: a swamp sewn in darkness, cursed with lonely still waters. Perhaps, just perhaps, this place was born bad.
The stiff bat carcass rolled in his palm, the moss clammy from his body heat. But if nothing lived here, if no creature lingered more than a few moments, how did the bat get inside?
Tirek had once heard of an infection that drove creatures mad. It made them foam at the mouth and behave in ways they never would. Dogs biting their owners. Rabbits staggering right in front of predators. Bats flying in broad daylight.
Cozy Glow perched in a dead tree overlooking a lonely stretch of peat and grass. “This looks like a good spot.”
Among other anomalies.
Rather than wait for Cozy’s prissy hooves to carve out a grave, Chrysalis blasted a crater in the ground. The bat’s corpse dropped in the center, moss and all.
“Okay, then.” Tirek glanced at the tree, his yellow eyes gleaming in the dark. “Your turn.”
Cozy’s wings twitched. Her eyes darted between Tirek, the open sky, Queen Chrysalis, and the hole in the ground. Likely measuring her chances of a successful escape. Or trying to gather her thoughts. Or waiting them out. If she were an easy read, she wouldn’t be Cozy Glow.
Finally, she sighed. “Do I have to? We could find some other way to break into a book. I could… I dunno, sing to it. You can’t lie through song magic, the universal court said so.”
“It’s more than just the book,” he said. “And it’s more than insomnia.”
And everyone here knew it.
A thin hiss leaked between Chrysalis's teeth. “All they need is one crack in the armor. Then they’ll seed the innocuous venom of friendship through those cracks and let it blossom. Until you break. Until there is nothing left of you but some smiling fool holding feelings forums.” She spat on the ground.
Tirek stepped up to the tree and met her eye-to-eye on the branch. So close that the yellow of his eyes reflected in the impossible colors of hers. “Right now, if we go into battle with Princess Twilight and her allies, you are a liability. That open wound in your heart, whatever it is, is an open invitation for her to worm into you.”
He was no soothsayer, but in a heartbeat, Tirek saw how it would play out. He saw it all. The way it had happened before, the way it could happen again. It did not matter if the three of them joined forces. It didn’t matter if they formed blood pacts or did trust falls or shared laughter. It didn’t even matter if they learned to actually like each other. Whatever they built could be torn down. The blood of the covenant, the shared water of the womb, the vast oceans of time together, all of it could evaporate in seconds under the warmth of a sunny friendship speech.
Cozy Glow laughed—a scraping wheeze of a sound. “Really. After all of this, that’s really what you think of me? You really think I’m that pathetic?”
“I think you’re a pony.”
The thin blanket of clouds split to let the moonlight in. Shadows of dead branches clawed the pegasus’s sides as the stars glinted in her ribbons. Her long shadow stretched down the rotted tree trunk and over the bat’s grave.
He crossed his arms. “It is in a pony’s nature to seek harmony.”
“Yeah,” said Cozy, “and it’s a gargoyle’s nature to destroy.”
A low growl rumbled in Tirek’s chest. “Twilight Sparkle and all like her feed on emotional weakness like ants on a corpse. I’ve seen titans far stronger than you crumble the moment a soft hoof reached out to brush away their tears. I’ve seen it more than enough to know better by now.”
“Nice speech, but you’re wasting your breath; I’m not them.” As the pony’s shadow spread its wings, the tips of the primaries arced around her bow in a crown of feathers. “I’m not Discord or Nightmare Moon, or some loser like Snotlight Dimmer who has to start a cult just so she can pretend somepony likes her.” Cozy’s shadowed eyes rose to scan Tirek’s face. She watched him for a moment and gave a casual flick of the tail. “And I’m not your brother Scorpan, either. I’m Cozy Glow. No one else.”
In countless moons, not once, not ever had anyone dared speak that name to his face. None would ever be that stupid. Against all murderous urges, Tirek kept himself still and his expression neutral. His left eye twitched in a hard stare.
Without blinking, Cozy stared back. A tiny poisonous smile crept along her muzzle. “Golly. Guess I’m not the only one with baggage, huh?”
“Maybe not, but Lord Tirek is not an annoying little pony—merely annoying.” Chrysalis regarded them both with the distant concern that might give to a newspaper. “I can’t speak to this business of natures, but he has a point. They’ll try to redeem one of their own before either of us. I suggest you get over whatever you need to get over immediately, foal. Right now.” She raised her regal head and waited.
Cozy rubbed the back of her neck and blinked at her.
Chrysalis tapped her foot. “Well? Have you resolved it yet?”
“I don’t think it works like that.”
“Do what works, then. We don’t have all week.”
“At school for something like this, they’d probably suggest…” Cozy ran her hooves through her hair and groaned. “…talking about it.”
A light breeze rippled the swamp waters. Shadows melted back into the dark as clouds fell over the moon.
With no one else offering to do so, and perhaps to give her hooves something to do, Cozy swooped down to the hole in the ground. She scooped a hoofful of dirt and tossed it into the grave. “Look, it’s nothing. I had a bad day in east Cloudsdale, that’s it.”
Chrysalis’s ears perked. She and Tirek shared a skeptical glance. “You reported success in the Cloudsdale infiltration.”
“Yeah and it—would you quit looking at me that way? I wasn’t lying! The trip WAS a success. A snap. Easy as pie. A cakewalk. Easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy.”
Why did all the Equestrian euphemisms involve food?
“I figured I’d start on the outskirts, then work my way in. I spent day one in this suburb, some gated community that’s half clouds and half mountain. Zephyr something. It’s a tourism hub for unicorns and earth ponies too, so I figured it’d be a good starting point. Talked to a few ponies here and there: a crowded bakery, the post office, a school, and a few hours in the park. The usual places I knew I could blend in and disappear.” Cozy Glow shrugged. The perk and venom dropped from her voice. “Turns out I didn’t really have to. They didn’t recognize me. I got curious about that so—I know it’s not smart but I wanted to test it—I went into the open, downtown. Broad daylight, one-on-one with a bunch of pegasi. Dunno how many; I lost count after forty.” She gathered a pile of dirt taller than her and shoved it into the grave. An empty smile crossed her face. “None of ‘em thought twice about what I said. I mean, why would they?” The smile widened, brittle and thin. “I was just some random foal on the street. Nopony to think twice about. Toldja, total success.”
Tirek cradled the book close to his chest and said nothing. The old leather grew warmer by the second. It didn’t glow, but thrummed low and steady. A beating heart of ink and parchment. A success, indeed.
“Nopony knew what I did, and at first I felt so proud for flying right under their silly little noses, but. It’s just…” A wave of dirt and mud crashed into the grave with a kick. “I mean… nopony knew what I did. At all.” Another kick—harder. A mound of dirt piled over the bat, more than enough to fill the hole. Cozy piled on more dirt. “Like it didn’t mean anything. Like… like nothing even happened! Doesn’t anypony read the news anymore? I almost drained every single scrap of magic from Equestria. Not just unicorn spells, not just ponies, everything down to the artifacts and monsters and Equestria itself. With a revolutionary mass arcanal discharge spell that I practically INVENTED!”
“Invented” was a bit of a stretch, in Tirek’s opinion. More like decontextualized, reconstructed, and layered several interspecies methodologies of sorcery, then combined it with traditional spell circles, her natural pegasus magic, and some extras she’d kept to herself. The sketches she’d sent to Tartarus boasted a skill level unseen in most mages thrice her age.
It also would have taken half the time and effort if she’d had a horn to cast it with.
“I did it all from scratch, too. Just my brain and wings, and maybe a pint of blood. I almost missed my midterms because losing all that blood made me dizzy. Do you know how long it takes to draw a spell circle with perfect lines? Three hours! And I did it with those meddling transfer students breathing down my neck half the time, too.” Cozy Glow stamped down the dirt in a splatter of squishy peat. “I did everything right! I double-checked all the factors, and the Tree bails them out at the last second.” She snorted. “It’s not fair.”
A childish grievance born from a child’s frustration. She wasn’t wrong, though.
With a quavering sigh, she hung her head and stared at her filthy hooves. The rims of her sleepless eyes burned red and dry.
If Cozy Glow were a normal foal, she might have cried, and if Tirek were someone besides Tirek, he might have offered comfort. But they were only who they were. Thus, the three of them stood in their awkward circle around a heap of dirt piled on a dead vermin, and nobody said anything.
When Cozy’s breathing returned to normal, she brushed the curls out of her face and turned to them. “There’s my motive rant. Satisfied?”
“I don’t know,” said Tirek, “do you feel any better?”
She thought about it. “Maybe.”
“I’m not close to vomiting, so close enough.” Chrysalis crossed the dirt pile to meet Cozy on the other side. “You certainly put up a grand fuss. Still being unknown to Equestria is a valuable asset to the plan; you know that, right?”
“Of course I do!” Cozy bunched her shoulders. “It still makes me mad, though.”
“Good. You’re right to be mad. Hold on to that anger. You earned it.” The former queen of changelings spoke low, as soft and certain as a prophecy. “You will make them regret the day they buried Cozy Glow.”
“What do you mean ‘buried’? …Wait.” Cozy’s ears pricked as the pieces snapped together. Her face darkened. “That’s right… all of this happened at school, not in Canterlot or with any press around. That means it would’ve been a snap to hide the whole… those—those cheats! Those chiselers! Those… those crumbums!”
Chrysalis offered a consolatory limp wave. “The princesses aren’t ones to advertise their losses—near losses, in this case. However, if they bothered to hide it at all, you must have shaken them.”
“Because I’m a threat.” The filly smiled a little at that. “I meant, I did get sent all the way down to Tartarus, after all.”
“Better than a threat; you’re infectious.” Chrysalis nodded to her. “As I hear, you gathered a respectable swarm of minions at your beck and call in record time.”
“Gathered and lost,” Tirek pointed out.
The queen’s laugh purred thick. “Yes, but that’s the lovely thing about minions, isn’t it?”
“You can always get more.” Cozy giggled. “Like bottle caps.”
Let no one call the foal a pessimist. A spare acknowledgment of her skill and some shared resentment of the Equestrian royals was enough for Cozy to collect herself. Or at least reassemble her mask.
The book’s warmth held at a simmer, but the thrums came fewer and farther between. Tirek glanced at the spine. The scribbles fused in something like letters, and the haze around them sharpened a bit. If he squinted he could almost read it. Almost.
They weren’t done here yet.
The tree creaked in protest as Tirek leaned against it. “Mm. No, I don’t think that’s quite it. The cover-up, I mean.” When the stray pegasus glanced at him, he shrugged. “Well, the princesses didn’t lose, did they? Got a cheap win at the last second, yes, but that’s not losing.”
“I’m not here to argue technicalities. The aches have subsided, that’s all I needed.” With a toss of her mane, Chrysalis took to the air. “I’m getting dinner. Don’t wait up.”
Cozy barely noticed. “Well, maybe they didn’t lose but I still don’t think it’s a win. If it was, they would have shown it off.”
“Exactly. This was nothing to boast about because that, or rather, you, Cozy Glow—”
Her eyes widened. It was the first time he’d used her name out loud since they’d met.
“—are Celestia’s failure. Arguably a failure for Equestria herself. Do you believe the Alicorns would stand for that? Do you think Celestia would ever give you the satisfaction of sitting in Tartarus forever thinking you’d won? No, I bet she would have freed…” Tirek reconsidered his choice of words. “She would have ended your sentence in a year or two. Ten at most. However long it took to wear you down.”
“And by that time, Equestria would’ve forgotten all about me. They wanted to make sure I’d have a clean slate when I came to their side.” Cozy’s eyes narrowed in thought. “Know what? They wanted to scare me. To scare me so much I’d never want to do anything bad again.” She chuckled and fluttered to Tirek’s knee. “They’re so silly. Anyway, Celestia and the rest never thought I’d actually bust out of that boring old place.” She lilted into a cute sing-song. “Now I can do whateeeever I want.”
“Yes. A free pass.”
The silhouette of Queen Chrysalis passed across the moon. A tiny green dot of magic flashed in the distance. Some sort of method to scout for love, Tirek presumed. At this hour, she’d be fortunate to scrounge up the odd cockatrice. Even if she ventured out onto the roads, most ponies would be asleep, and travelers didn’t come within miles of here.
If she had even a fraction of her changelings behind her, Chrysalis would have abandoned them ages ago and left Grogar’s “master plan” to the wolves. But her children gathered now in flowering gardens and friendship academies with full bellies and pastel chitin. All under the watch of their usurper. They liked it that way.
Whatever meal she found wouldn’t be worth the energy needed to search beyond the swamp. In a few hours she would return, hungrier than she left and twice as angry. But she would return. Where else could she go?
As for Tirek’s homeland… Well, nobody could change the past. Nobody sane, at least.
Tirek watched the queen until the darkness swallowed her shape. “How old are you, kid?”
“Nine.” Cozy smiled.
“Come, now.”
“It was worth a shot. Nine’s cutting it close, but I can still pass for ten most of the time.” She patted the stray hairs in her mane. “I’ll be fourteen at the end of September.”
“That’s a very young age to die,” Tirek said. He met her eye casually. “Because that’s a likely end to this whole thing. You know that, right?”
“I don’t plan on losing.”
Nobody planned on dying, either. Especially not children. At that age, they thought themselves immortal. “Who said anything about losing? Talent aside, you’re a normal pegasus with normal limitations who’s studied magic what, two years?”
“Four,” she snapped.
“Still a drop in the bucket. Listen. Grogar's Bell is old, old magic. I mean ancient.” Tirek jabbed the soft spot beneath Cozy’s ribs. “For all we know, the Bell will rupture every cuddly organ in your body and leave that clever brain of yours dripping out of your ears.”
Cozy Glow considered this. “Eh. Whatever happens, happens. Besides, you’re just trying to keep the Bell all to yourself.”
“I am giving you an out.”
She watched his face. Whatever she searched for, she didn’t find. “What are you saying, exactly?”
“Exactly what it sounds like.” Tirek gestured at the horizon behind them. “You’re not like us. You can leave.”
Her mouth opened to argue, then paused as it sunk in. Nothing chained her to this place. No lost kingdoms, no cobwebbed thrones, no hordes of angry citizens demanding her head on a plate. No decades of missteps and mistakes on the board. She had one loss, and only a handful of souls knew about it. Anyone anywhere would know Tirek in a crowd, especially after his last attempt. Cozy could fly among them for a lifetime.
This was not a last stand, no mad grasp of desperation. Cozy Glow stood young, hungry, and unfettered. Tirek wondered if he had appeared this way in the eyes of Sendak the Elder all those moons ago. Truly, youth was wasted on the young.
Finally, she asked, “What about Grogar?”
Tirek chuckled. “It’s not the first time I’ve had to fake a death. As if it matters. I’ve seen you. You’re not frightened of Grogar.”
No more than necessary, anyway. She feared him the way a tiger feared a speeding train; they only mattered when you stood in their path.
“The fact is, you don’t have to be here.” Lord Tirek stood to draw himself high, eyes narrowed to slits. “So I’ll ask you once more, Cozy Glow: what are you doing here? What do you want?”
When she wasn’t looking, their conversation had thickened into something sincere, something real, and she couldn’t dance her way out of it. Not tonight.
In the space of two seconds, Cozy’s mask twisted, inverted, collapsed, rebuilt, and collapsed again. Three sleepless nights in a row had weakened her, just as Tirek warned it would. He was right. A small pointless win, but a win nonetheless, and Cozy Glow hated him for it. Moreover, she hated that she could do nothing about it.
She looked around at the turned-up earth around the sorry grave they’d dug and the dirt lodged in her hooves. “I don’t want to end up as some nobody rotting in the ground with a bunch of other nobodies. I just—I want…” She swallowed hard. The glare festered. “You already know.”
He did. “I want to hear it from you.”
“I… I want them to remember me.” It must have been a long time since Cozy Glow stood with the truth, for her voice cringed beneath it in a whisper.
Tirek cupped a hand behind his ear. “Oh, did I hear something? It must have been the wind. Say it again.”
Her breath steadied. “I want them to remember me!”
“Like you mean it!”
“I want—no. No, they are GOING to REMEMBER ME!” The declaration splattered across the swamp and into the night, full of bile and venom and spite. “They are! I don’t want them—not a single one of them to forget who I am. Not now, not tomorrow. Not ever, ever, ever.”
Tirek considered the little pony in his shadow: wings flared, mane a tangle, and shivering under the weight of her rage. “Then I suggest you give them something to remember.” He grinned. “And make it stick this time.”
“You bet I will.”
Cozy shook her head as she composed herself. Her ribbon came untied, and blue curls fell to curtain her face. “Ugh. My eyes hurt. I wanna go to sleep. C’mere.” She made herself at home on Tirek’s back, nestled snugly between his lower shoulder blades. “You’re giving me a ride back to the lair. It’s the least you can do after I broke the gee…the gree-gaa… you know, the thing. I can’t words.”
Tirek looked down. Beneath the gilded bell, the book cover read:
AN ANNOTATED CHRONOLOGY OF THE DESOLATE YEARS & THE ARTIFACTS THEY WROUGHT:
A COLLECTION OF FINDINGS AND OBSERVATIONS BY STARSWIRL THE BEARDED
That guy again. They ought to classify that unicorn as a sub-type of fungus, the way he behaved.
“Your terms are acceptable.”
They walked back to the lair in silence. His hooves fell muffled on the springy moss and peat. Water lapped the edge of the rocks as they approached the waterfall. Pressure at his back and the occasional flick of her tail on his spine was his only assurance Cozy hadn’t fallen off.
As he entered their modest sitting room and sat back down at the table, Cozy’s chin poked over his shoulder. “Aw, nuts.” She yawned and sprawled herself around his neck like a pink stole. “There’s no puzzle after all.”
Indeed, the first page had not been written in code just olde ponish. An unusual dialect, by the look of it. Sonambulan, maybe? That would explain a lot.
She yawned again. "Hey, what have you been saying to the other tribes? If we're gonna make this work, our stories need to coordinate."
“Nothing. I let my actions speak for themselves. It's been a while since I blighted a crop, but the spell is simple enough."
"Hm. Type Hideous or Subtype Draggulous?"
He scoffed. “Type Hideous. Obviously.”
“And Chrissy's still running that old unicorn superiority line.” If Chrysalis ever learned Cozy called her that, the foal wouldn’t see that fourteenth birthday. “Okay, good. I can work with that.”
Tirek looked up from the fifth warning in a row about the evil terrible magic nobody anywhere ever should use. "What are you thinking?"
"Ohh, just that it sure is interesting how an awful lot of Twilight’s success stories are unicorns. Especially when our princess of friendship used to be one." Cozy waved her little legs and giggled. "Golly! Sure is a weird coincidence the only pony who flunked out and got sent to Tartarus is a little pegasus. Almost like unicorns only look out for other unicorns?"
He refused to feed that fat ego of hers with a smile. A mild “not bad” grunt would suffice.
“Brilliant, I know. Thasswhy I’m a…” She yawned big and wide. “…a mastermind prodigy and…”
Silence. Her head tipped forward, half-fallen off Tirek’s shoulder, half asleep. Also, drooling all over him.
Resisting the urge to let her crash headfirst into the table, he scruffed the sleeping pony and deposited her in a chair.
“Finally.” Peace and quiet. Now he could dedicate the remainder of his shift to unlocking the secrets of—
Cozy Glow’s snores echoed through the cavern.
Lord Tirek slumped in his chair. “I hate children.”
