Even Changelings Get The Blues

Chapters

1. Seeing Red
2. Awful At Smartphones
16. Down And Out In The Magic Ashram
3. Telepathic Werewolf Mafia
4. Into The Woods
5. Shared Colors
6. Taking His Licks
7. Canine, Ursine, Soldier, Spy
8. Miss Fire
9. A Wolf Of Her Word
10. Lost
11. Cold Call
12. Road Dog
13. Love Bombed
14. Reglurgitation
15. When It Clicks
17. Siddhi Lights
18. Grudge Matched
19. The Better Me
20. Secret Of The Stones
21. Drawing Lines
22. Feeding The Need
23. Not Quite Harmony
24. Rhapsody In Blues
25. A Wolf Of Her Word (Reprise)

1. Seeing Red

"What bugs me," the rancher says, "is with everything she's accused of, she's still claimin' to be an expert on love."

His words are the faded maroon of suspicion, but there's a subtle thread of green running through them. And with that, Chester allows himself a smile. This recruitment is going to be a success, even if he hasn't quite figured out how yet.

"Oh, it's no claim, sir," Chester says brightly, trying to ignore the itching of the still-stiff suit which was bought specially for this mission. "What her detractors won't tell you is the simple truth. The Holy Mother has attained multiple siddhis"—he often tests the waters with that term; given the stirrings of creamsicle-orange now surrounding the rancher, he'll dial back the foreign words to avoid further confusion—"on her path to enlightenment. Demonstrable magical powers which serve as proof of her transcendence and wisdom."

That topic always goes in one of three directions, and unfortunately Chester's current prospect takes the baser path. The rancher's enormous outline fades into the greedy desire of amber as he chuckles, opening his front door a little wider. "An' I suppose for a generous donation she'll teach me everything she knows?" he says, passing it off as a joke but with no lilac in it.

Most of the Holy Mother's other devotees would leap at that base interest—it's enough to get the prospect in their ashram door—but because Chester can tell the difference, he has always held himself to a higher standard. The Holy Mother already has enough troubles; the least he can do is bring her prospects primed with a sincere desire for enlightenment.

So he laughs and pivots. "Oh, naturally. But men like us, we know that there's more important things in life than magic tricks."

The rancher considers for a moment, hints of green returning to his outline amid a broader stirring of violet. (Esau hadn't been kidding about the intensity of his colors—it's trivial to read the subtleties.) Then he laughs back, touches the brim of his Stetson, and throws wide his door. "Pretty bold claim, son. But I happen to appreciate that. C'mon in and gimme the pitch."

Chester thanks him and walks into the front room of the spacious, ostentatiously decorated mansion. "Once you see the Holy Mother yourself, sir, you won't need one," he says earnestly. "I've seen it over and over again: She's one of those women whose intensity takes you by surprise and sets your life on another path entirely."

He punctuates that with a sweeping gesture to give him a chance to discreetly get his bearings. He's standing next to several display cases with historical artifacts, the closest of which is a rusted metal gate sign reading "Rancho Bronco", and there are a number of large animal heads mounted on the front wall before the decorations turn to more typical pictures. Some of the heads are game animals, but the one over the door is a bull with massive, wide horns. Chester notes the details in case of small talk.

Speaking of which, he had expected a response. Chester glances back at his prospect for confirmation and pauses, alarmed. The colors around the rancher have retreated behind obscuring gray as he crosses meaty flannel-covered arms over his giant brick of a chest.

Most prospects, even the skeptical ones, respond well to his sincerity once they've got any green to them—but there's something else going on here, and this is a catch he can't afford to lose. It's time to change tactics and play International Superspy Chet Land.

Chester stands up a little straighter and pictures himself adjusting the imaginary bow-tie on his perfectly tailored tuxedo. Like the titular spy in the novels, he is suave, and he can say anything the situation demands. The real Chester hates lying—there's just no substitute for having your earnestness rewarded by the blue shades of a genuine connection—but the Holy Mother's needs come first, and this is one of those prospects whose problems won't come to light without some finesse.

"Take me, for example." Time to improvise and fish for secrets. "I used to read incel forums," he lies, carefully monitoring the edge of the rancher's form for color shifts. No hint of a reaction, other than the man's lips tightening amid his thick beard, so Chester discards the angle and pivots. "My relationship with my mother was always a little bit fraught." That lie finds no traction either, and the rancher's gray is fading along with Chester's hopes. He'll need a hit fast or his window of opportunity will close. "And it's easy to be dubious when love hasn't worked out for you," he desperately guesses. Ah—and there's a tinge of (yellow-tinted) green flaring out again. Bingo.

Chester smoothly merges that angle into his patter as if it had been the case all along, and turns to pace as he talks. It means briefly taking his focus off the rancher, but now that he has a hint, he needs to do a deep dive of the room for further context.

"I had never had a special someone, and I never thought I would." His lips are on autopilot as his eyes flit between the pictures on the walls. An ornately framed portrait photo of the man himself (in the exact same Stetson he's wearing now), high front and center, hanging under the broad second-floor balcony and laying claim to the room and its contents. "I always struggled with doubts—was I important enough to be loved?" Group shots on the sides of the stairs, bland chunks of men in identical suits and dully colored ties, politicians and agricultural executives. "I had all the friends I needed, so why weren't relationships working out?" And—ah, there, down at eye level on the side walls, a boy and girl in identical cap and gown, possibly secondary school, possibly university. They've got the rancher's broad nose, thin lips and round face. "Why couldn't I find a partner who knew how important family was?"

Chester has been glancing back at the rancher between sentences, and that green has been building up to a healthy glow as guess after guess connects. The man shifts his stance, still saying nothing but once again listening intently.

Still, Chester hesitates. The central piece remains missing from the puzzle, and he needs more time. "But in my third year at, ah…" He looks at the school colors in the children's portraits, and makes an educated guess. "Crystal Prep." He's rewarded by an immediate flare of violet. "When I met the Holy Mother. It's a great school, by the way. Have you ever been?"

The rancher barks a laugh, striding in and clapping a meaty arm down around his shoulders. "Have I, boy?" he violet-says, and Chester smiles back up to ignite a connection. "I fund their entire dang ag track. That's my name on the greenhouse."

"It's so great to meet a fellow alumnus, sir!" Chester enthuses, hoping he's not forced to back that blatant lie up with specifics. His lifetime at the ashram has left him more well-read and well-traveled than most people assume, but he's way out on a limb already.

Chester has lucked out this time, though. "Don't you 'sir' me," the rancher says, his pleasant surprise settling to the deep blue of rapport as he grabs Chester's hand and squeezes to the point of pain. "You call me Anton."

"Of course, s—Anton." That was a huge get, but Chester's already scanning the walls again in search of his real prize. And he realizes what he's been missing—or, more accurately, what is missing. There's a son and a daughter, but there are no family photos.

On closer examination, there are discolored rectangular patches on the wall where pictures once hung. Some spots are still blank; some are partially concealed with individual portrait photos of the children. And with that realization, Chester barely even needs the feedback of Anton's colors any more. There's a literal hole in his life, love spoiled and curdled and ripped out, and its absence left to fester. (That explains the yellow. He'll have to account for that to stay on track.)

Now, to coax that yearning into a green bonfire.

"It's the easiest thing in the world to love," Chester says, keeping his eyes locked to his target and intently surveying the edges of Anton's form at the corner of his vision. "And the hardest thing in the world to keep it from going wrong. True love is pure, and right, and oh so easy to get taken advantage of." He leaves behind the fiction that this is about him—borrowing random scraps of the Holy Mother's teachings, or imagined shared grievances, whatever best ignites Anton's need. "Men like us, we find someone worth committing to, and we give ourselves entirely. And we should! That's the only way to find fulfillment. But the real trick, the secret nobody considers"—and he winds up an epiphany bomb, anticipating that moment of surprise in Anton's reception—"is that finding the perfect partner isn't about understanding your partner. It's about understanding you."

"What d'ya mean?" Anton violet-says, right on cue.

"We can't control other people," Chester says. "Other people are messy. They lie, they cheat"—whoops, there's that yellow flaring up, walk it back—"they're poor matches sometimes despite our best efforts. But if you know what you are putting into a relationship, you have a grade-A, ironclad guarantee of what you're attracting. The Holy Mother showed me how to find someone genuine, just by being a better me."

Oh, yes, there's that beautiful color. "An' it worked?" Anton green-says, his need vibrant like a freshly mown lawn. And Chester nearly misses that he's talking himself into a corner.

He laughs knowingly. "A little too well!" he says. "I realized my true calling was helping the world understand how much good the Holy Mother's higher love could do. That's why I'm here. But the week I was thinking about that decision"—he flings more lies in, big ones, logs in the bonfire—"my ex-girlfriend called me to apologize, and I got two proposals out of nowhere, one of which the Holy Mother's teachings helped me realize was a very bad idea, and one of which would have been perfect, if only I had still wanted it."

Anton's holding back tears now, he needs this so much. And as they walk through the mansion, out to the back porch, and around the broad expanse of Rancho Bronco, he breaks down and tells the whole story of the failed marriage. Chester listens politely, making sympathetic noises, letting that yellow play out and burn itself out. He'll be pure green when he reaches the Holy Mother, desperate for anything. And she'll fix him.

Won't she?

Chester suppresses that traitorous thought the instant it pops up. Of course she will. (If he didn't trust her implicitly, he wouldn't play superspy for her.) He's not blind; he's seen the troubles nobody talks about at the ashram. But all those lawsuits were failed people mired in their imperfections, not ready for her truths. He's seen the baseness of their emotions with his own eyes—the muddy yellow of their accusations of fraud, the red-shouts of the few who stormed in to confront her.

This whole trip, he reminds himself, is only about how much Anton is hurting. Everything Chester had to make up to get him to the Holy Mother's doorstep is ultimately meaningless against how important it is to repair those deep wounds. And sure, he had overheard the Holy Mother mentioning how much difference Anton's money could make to their bottom line, but she was just being pragmatic. Truth has many enemies, and enemies are expensive—

Chester's thoughts are interrupted by a very red expletive from Anton, and fear briefly surges as he assumes he blew his cover story in a moment of distraction. Then Anton follows it up with an equally red "It's her!" as he stops in his tracks and hustles back toward the barn they just passed.

An even greater panic seizes Chester's throat for a moment—but Anton is clearly focused on some other distraction which has nothing to do with the Holy Mother. With that established, he tries to set aside his own thoughts and return to the moment. "I'm sorry," Chester says, glancing around them as he jogs to keep up. Dirt road, pastures full of colorless cows, storage sheds, parked tractor, barn. Nothing seems amiss. "Who?"

Anton gestures toward the distant forest as he jogs. "Crazy damn girl keeps leading a wolfpack to my property line!" he red-says.

Chester looks again. Under the trees, there are indeed some patches of color. Not emotional color—flesh and fur. There's a small ice-blue-skinned human form crouched provocatively at the treeline, and some larger outlines in the brush behind her that look vaguely predatory. But he can barely make her out at this distance, which makes emotional state tough to gauge. (He'd guess something purplish mixed with red or brown. Or maybe he's just seeing things in the shadows.)

"I've scared them off five, six times already, but they're fixin' to go after the herd," Anton continues, his red turning darker and uglier. "At this point, not sure whether to put a bullet in her or the wolves first."

"I'm sorry," Chester says, "what?"

An entirely new panic manifests as he pictures himself a witness to a murder, but he's not certain what he can do aside from following Anton and maybe trying to calm him down. That panic explodes as Anton swings open the barn door and lunges for a rifle-sized case labeled "Winchester" just inside the doorway. But Anton's colors spike into shocked peach for a moment, against a backdrop of blazing red—and he slams the case shut again, empty-handed.

There's a trilling yip in the distance, sharp and attention-demanding, and Chester reflexively glances over. The girl has stood up and stepped forward out of the shadows, giving him a clearer glimpse. She's compact and wiry, all lean muscle, though with curves to her torso that put her at Chester's age, right at the cusp of adulthood. She's half-covered in rough-edged, patchwork clothing—animal skins?—and barefoot.

She is also holding up a brown-black object, long and thin, her arm pumping to make it dance—and Chester's still not quite certain whether he's seeing her edges shift to the puce of a victory taunt, or whether the obvious context is making him assume it.

Anton cuts loose with a string of expletives, of which "bitch" is the kindest, and starts fumbling at the holster at his hip. "Thief! I'll kill you!" he red-screams, and if that green was a bonfire earlier, now his colors seethe like a forest fire, unstoppable and life-threatening.

Chester turns to Anton, raising his hands placatingly. "Uh," he stammers through a panic quickly threatening to overwhelm him, "m-maybe you shouldn't do anything hasty, s-sir, we can, uh, call the police—"

Then, behind his back, the girl shouts her reply to the rancher, and Chester nearly leaps out of his skin:

Try.

The word is ridiculously clear and crisp despite the distance, as if she had snuck right up to his ear, and the puce color of it blazes inside his head, the explosion of a sensory grenade. But he spins around and she hasn't moved.

He's still reeling when Anton bellows incoherently. The rancher draws an oversized pistol, his other hand coming up to brace the bottom of the handle. There are several loud, sharp cracks, and the gun leaps in Anton's hands, and there are one or two distant puffs of fragmenting bark from tree trunks at the forest's edge, none close to her.

Chester bolts for the safety of the barn.

The next minute or two is a blur. He cowers in a corner. Even though Chester can't see any color in them, the nearby cows are clearly as agitated as he is, lowing and stamping and crowding into the far corners of their stalls. He remains in his hiding place as he hears Anton come inside, waiting for the swearing and sounds of firearm reloading to subside, and makes damn well certain that the rancher's red isn't nearly as incandescent before he risks standing up again.

And when Anton ushers him into a huge pickup truck and drives them over to the treeline, there's no trace of the mystery girl—except for a number of muddy wolf-paw prints and one set of barefoot footprints left mockingly on the bank of Canter Creek, leading deeper into the trees.

Author's Note

This is a fully written novel, 120K words in 25 chapters! Starting with Chapter 3, they will be posted Sundays and Wednesdays.

Chapter 2, "Awful At Smartphones", is posting Friday, Aug. 2! We'll meet the Holy Mother, and introduce some familiar characters who light the afterburners on Chester's adventure...

2. Awful At Smartphones

Chester has never been able to see his own colors, but he knows he's venting orange as he walks into the ashram's inner temple.

Even if he had wanted to hide his fear—the Holy Mother gets so upset when he looks like he has something to hide—he knows he's too rattled to pull it off. And he knows she'll react poorly to him arriving in that mood, even though he's delivering good news. But what can he do?

The Holy Mother is purple, a rare good humor, when he arrives. (It complements her shimmering golden robe, a reminder of the plateau of enlightenment she alone has reached.) But all it takes is one look at him, and as expected, her mood plummets.

"What went wrong," she says, the bright rose pink of her all-too-common disappointment. Her lips press into a thin crease, and their corners twitch.

That didn't have the inflection of a question, but nevertheless he scrambles into prostration and lunges for the opening to explain himself. "Absolutely nothing, Swamini-ji," Chester hurriedly says. "Our prospect is excited to meet with you, exactly as planned."

It's the whole and earnest truth, but by her shift into maroon suspicion, he called it: he's too rattled for the Holy Mother to buy it. And it breaks Chester's heart to see her reduced to such base emotions. It's his fault for not living up to her divine example. He tries. He tries so hard, but how can ordinary humans be anything but an impediment to her transcendence?

"Brother Esau overstated his enlightenment potential," she maroon-says.

"No!" Chester protests. "His colors are vivid far beyond normal."

"Then what? He's broke? He's under police surveillance?"

That last question comes out of nowhere and throws Chester utterly. "Uh," he says, "not that I saw…?"

The Holy Mother shifts into an irritated pink with threatening stirrings of red. "You're wasting my time, Brother Chester. What's the problem?"

Chester cringes. Here it comes. "There was, ah, a minor unrelated incident, which need not concern you—"

"I'll be the judge of that," the Holy Mother snaps, pink and maroon, and gestures for him to continue.

Chester swallows through a dry throat. "Master Anton had an… ah, an altercation with, um, one of his neighbors. I was there. I hid when he started shooting. I'm sorry."

To Chester's shock, the Holy Mother seems to warm to the situation—her aura spiking into the violet of a pleasant surprise. He's struggling to understand this when she waves her hand to dismiss his apology. "Tell me more."

Chester blinks and sits back up. "Um." He has absolutely no context for why his moment of cowardice should improve the Holy Mother's mood, but he can even see sparkles of transcendent gold starting to stir, and that's no small thing. He decides not to question his good fortune. "Well, you see, there was this girl, about my age, and this pack of wolves that have been spooking Anton's cattle—"

"Ches-ter," she pink-says, in that specific inflection which means she's too enlightened to tell him he's a worthless idiot.

"…Swamini-ji?"

"You got yourself onto a first-name basis with our prospect," she violet-says before shifting back to impatient pink. "And he is as violent as the rumors said. I could care less about his freakshow neighbors." The threads of gold strengthen. "Tell me about Anton."

It's impossible to ignore the combination of that color with those words, but with a mighty effort, Chester cages his traitorous thoughts before they can break free. There's a perfectly rational explanation. From what Esau had said, the Holy Mother had been personally invested in this prospect even before being told about the strength of Anton's colors; she must already have had some idea of how unbalanced he was, and now she has confirmation. Therefore, she must have sent Chester to bring her a challenge worthy of her station. After all, doesn't true, pure love tame even the wildest beast?

She wasn't there, though, a different traitorous voice whispers. As much potential as Anton has, that hair-trigger temper will inevitably get in the way of even the purest desire. Chester has seen repeatedly how badly it ends when recruits come in without the strength to walk their path. And if Anton turns his anger on the Holy Mother…

…No. Chester stifles that voice, too. The Holy Mother's enlightened judgment far surpasses any of theirs. He's too mired in transgressions for his reservations about Anton to have any merit.

So he summarizes his encounter—first the shootout with the wolf-girl, then everything back to his impromptu cover story. The Holy Mother's transcendent gold has been strengthening bit by bit, but at that detail she drops back out of it again.

"You told him you graduated from the school he funds?" the Holy Mother says, flaring disappointed rose pink. She sighs loudly. "Of all the… Do you understand how quickly he's going to try to look you up? Do you realize the complication you've created?"

"I'm sorry, Swamini-ji," Chester mumbles, deflated.

"You should be," she says, but there's little pink in it. His transgression was not severe, or she has more important things on her mind than correcting Chester's faults. "I should have sent Esau. Just…" She makes a shooing motion with her hand, her attention already elsewhere, her aura back to shining gold. "Go clean up, and tomorrow, go to the airport. I'll deal with you later."

Before Chester's time, the Canterlot International Airport had let the Holy Mother's devotees freely interact with travelers at their gates, where many prospects had nothing better to do than strike up conversations while waiting for flights. But after that unpleasant business in Manehattan, most airports had kicked non-travelers out entirely. Even the Holy Mother's considerable pull had only extended so far as to let her devotees mingle with visitors curbside at Departures and Arrivals.

As such, all of Chester's experiences with airport proselytization have been grueling, hot, demoralizing work—a test of new recruits' resolve, or a punishment. It means being on his feet outdoors all day, sweltering inside thick saffron robes with a smile plastered on his face, and interrupting a steady stream of frazzled travelers who are rushing toward check-in or impatiently searching for their Hoovr driver. Even knowing the color of the total strangers he approaches merely lowers the odds of a rude brush-off. And color-sight is a mixed blessing: every time someone with promising-looking hues turns frustrated pink and walks away, the knowledge that he's responsible for souring their mood twists in Chester's gut.

After a morning of uninterrupted failure, he is dead on his feet. He slips inside, slinks toward the hilariously overpriced concession stands, and buys a 16-bit sandwich with a 20-bit bill. The man behind the counter—apparently the owner—is bright amber, with an appearance to match: poorly aged, poorly shaven, and scowling.

Chester reflexively unfolds the wadded bills he's handed back and counts them. Three bits.

He stares dully at the money in his hand, inwardly sighs, and debates whether to do something about it or just walk back outside.

"I believe this young man didn't get his full change," a melodious voice behind him dark-blue-says.

Chester reflexively turns his head toward the voice's owner for additional color context. And whoah—her intensity is off the charts.

He blinks, but it's no optical illusion. Anton's colors had been vibrant enough to devote a special recruitment mission to, and this woman puts him to shame. She's on the same tier as the Holy Mother. More enlightenment potential than the rest of the airport combined.

The striking midnight shade of her aura is equally notable. He sees it rarely enough that it takes him a moment to place it: protectiveness.

Chester needs to learn everything about this woman he can possibly discover.

He turns, staring openly. She's tall and thin and intensely leggy, fair-skinned, with waist-length hair whose physical hue is a swirling rainbow of pastels (gratitude, saudade, and, incongruously, frustration). He would call her older, but she's aged very gracefully—the sort of grace that carries over even to clothing. By her luggage tag, she's just stepped off an international flight from Tambelon, but her pristine white blouse and purple slacks are as crisp as if she'd donned them off the rack. And there's something naggingly familiar about her face, but it's not immediately coming to mind.

Meanwhile, the conversation has charged on without him—a circular argument over the three bits in Chester's hand. The concessionaire's voice has gone muddy yellow (the indignant shame of being called out, not the guilt of having done anything wrong). The woman's made no headway, but where most people would turn a justified pink at the deadlock, she has shaded into a muddy green—confidently rising to the challenge. She's already won the argument, even if she hasn't quite figured out how yet.

"Change is correct," the concessionaire repeats, muddy yellow intensifying. "Sandwich is seventeen." He points at a tiny price list on the wall behind the counter, hidden behind a rack of potato chips.

The woman glances back at the stand's shelves, and the sixteen-bit price clearly marked there in large print. Her confidence shifts into a light caramel brown.

"I see," she says, grabbing a sandwich and setting it on the counter. Her words take on a smug muddy-purple sheen and her smile turns predatory. "I think I'll buy one for my dear friend the captain. Seventeen bits, correct? Could I please get a receipt?"

That last word hangs in the air between them for a moment, and they lock eyes. The concessionaire's expression doesn't change, but his colors waver, then plummet into bright orange.

He breaks the stare, and makes a show of running a chubby finger down the list on the wall. "I read prices wrong," he orange-says, then forces his colors to the chocolate brown of bravado in an approximate substitute for dignity. "Am sorry, miss." He slams a bit bill on the counter and shoves it roughly at Chester, not looking at him.

Chester pockets the bill and turns to confront his benefactor—but the woman is already several steps away and in brisk motion, as though she were a guardian angel, put there to do him a kindness and then vanish again. Chester starts, jogs after her, doubles back for the sandwich, and then sprints toward the baggage claim, catching up to her just shy of the sliding doors to curbside pickup.

"Thank you, ma'am," he gasps, and then a memory tugs loose from his hindbrain as she turns back to grace him with a gentle blue smile. "Hey, I recognize you."

There's an incongruous ripple of orange, brief enough he has to question whether he might just be seeing things in the shifting hues of her hair. Uncertain what to make of that, he presses on: "You're Celestia. That principal from… Canterlot High, right? I saw that press conference about the explosion at your school."

(Her expression is steadily, unwaveringly bland—but a few moments after he said her name, a flood of indigo coalesced behind it. Relief?… What's going on?)

She laughs, gentle and blue, her sudden relaxation even working its way into a visible loosening of her posture. "I see my reputation precedes me, even when I'm just on an inconsequential business trip. I don't believe I caught your name, by the way?"

"Chester, ma'am," he says. "Seriously, thank you."

"It's nothing I wouldn't do for anyone," she says in a gentle periwinkle, and Chester believes it. "I'm glad I can get something positive out of this trip, anyhow. What about you, Chester? What are you doing at the, ah, airport?"

As much as Chester yearns to dig into this strange woman's mysteries, he literally cannot ignore this opening.

"Oh," he says, and tries to force enthusiasm into his voice. "I'm here to spread the good news of the Holy Mother, of course!"

"The, I'm sorry, who?" Celestia says, peach creeping in.

"The, ah," Chester says, thrown yet again. "I assure you that for some people, when their reputation precedes them, you need to ignore the fear and negativity and get to know the real them."

"Well then," Celestia says—shifting through as many colors as her hair, dominated by a light violet curiosity—"by all means, tell me about the real her."

Every rational thought in Chester's brain is telling him not to look this gift horse in the mouth. There's the color intensity, of course. And although she's not a slam-dunk prospect, she's been directly kind to him; is giving him the benefit of the doubt; and he's been catching subtle green threads around her edges that he knows he can coax to life. Moreover, Celestia's at least famous enough for him to recognize, and given the publicity effect of celebrity, a single high-profile recruit is worth their weight in diamonds. The Holy Mother is going to burst a blood vessel if he fumbles this pitch.

And yet… and yet. There's something hidden beneath Celestia's surface. His entire life, he's been able to read people's hearts on their sleeves. And when he finds someone whose emotions don't make sense—someone with a secret—it's like an itch he needs to scratch, or a pit in his stomach which no amount of food can fill. Celestia's reactions are weird, and he knows that's significant, and he can feel desperation start to gnaw at his insides.

He flails for a way to split the difference. "Well, the Holy Mother rose from humble beginnings to enlightenment," he says. "Born a simple money-lender's daughter, she now is recognized as an unparalleled spiritual authority, a consultant to queens and princesses worldwide." Chester offers a probing smile. "Which I imagine must feel somewhat familiar, given that you're a school principal taking business trips across the globe."

Celestia meets his gaze with an equal smile—and, oh dear, she's a professional. Now that they've both found their footing, she's masking her emotions and staring at him with a gentle, fixed smile. He's met maybe one person in a hundred who has that level of self-control, but all of them put up walls of gray when they're holding back. She's perfectly, evenly, impossibly periwinkle.

"Oh, you'd be surprised," she says lightly, and Chester doubts he'll be getting any more colors out of her—only the maternal love of her periwinkle, which he would swear was genuine, even knowing its artifice. "But I've certainly found that truth can come from surprising places. It sounds like your Holy Mother has, too."

Chester is, like a chess player with a threatened monarch, obligated to respond. "She certainly did. She spent her early adulthood studying under several renowned masters of Tantra, but those revelations merely left her wanting more. And so, at the age of thirty-two, she walked into the jungles of Elytra to meditate for four years—"

"Tantra?" Celestia interrupts.

"It's, ah," Chester fumbles. Everyone makes assumptions about that, and it's never not awkward—especially talking to someone who could be his mother. "The term just means an esoteric yogic tradition, a systematic study weaving together a comprehensive doctrine, but yes, the Holy Mother indeed focuses upon the study of," he waffles, "passion. That was her road to enlightenment. She attained the siddhis of prakamya, vashitva, and"—he catches himself getting into the weeds and skips to the summary—"well, she gained supernatural capabilities from her transcendence which prove her the world's foremost expert on love."

That, if only for a moment, breaks Celestia's wall of periwinkle. "Magical powers?" she peach-says. "Really?"

That flash of color saves Chester from putting his foot in his mouth. He was prepared for any of the three usual responses—pivot away from the subject for the amber or gray ones, and stretch the truth to get the green ones well and truly hooked. But given Celestia's shock at the idea, he figures the safest tactic is to retreat to the same fine line as the ashram's official legal boilerplate.

"You shouldn't think of them like that," he says. "Keep in mind that siddhis, although they sound extraordinary, are merely side effects of enlightenment, not always visible to those with baser motives. The most important of the Holy Mother's teachings is that the pursuit of power leads to corruption, which is why we submit ourselves to her wholly, with total humility and the purest devotion. In return, she shows us our true selves to give us the strength to follow her to enlightenment, and once we reach it, siddhis will be the afterthought to us that they are to her."

"Ah," Celestia says, a mixture of lilac and indigo, before retreating back to periwinkle. "That kind of magic."

Chester isn't a fan of Celestia's silent laughter and he's not certain how to feel about her relief, but at least they're not dangerous. "We also have numerous testimonials of her enlightenment from all those she has helped worldwide," he says listlessly.

Celestia nods. "Naturally. I'm sorry, what did you say the Holy Mother's name was again?"

And that's definitely a leading question. The trigger of a trap. But how could that question be harmful? She knows the answer already—she has to know. Does this have something to do with one of the lawsuits?

Chester feels panic start to stir, but he doesn't think he's told Celestia anything compromising, or made any legally actionable promises about the Holy Mother's offerings. After a few seconds of desperate calculation, he decides to spring whatever this is, so he has some idea of how to wriggle back out. (The only alternative is folding and running, and then he'd have to justify himself to the Holy Mother.)

"Chryssa-swamini," Chester says.

Celestia's face scrunches up, and her periwinkle shifts hue into lilac.

Chester… wasn't expecting that. "The 'swamini' means enlightened teacher?" he clarifies.

Celestia, unable to contain it any longer, throws her head back and howls with laughter. "I knew it!" she says, bright blazing lilac. "The Holy Mother! How ridiculously on the nose."

Chester stares, lost.

"Snrk. Hoo. Hah!" Celestia calms herself, wiping tears from her eyes. Then, as she recomposes herself, that light caramel color returns.

Caramel is an emotion hard to describe to anyone but Esau. Once upon a time, Chester had coined the word "spyfeel" for it, when Esau had asked about Chester's color during a mutual mission. They had worked out that it was the feeling of that moment when you had been hammering at a problem and suddenly knew exactly how to solve it. (Esau had countered with "planfeel", but Chester, freshly obsessed with Chet Land novels, had convinced Esau of the more glamorous wording.) And in Chester's experience since then, nine times out of ten, caramel has signaled someone trying to con him, get away with something sneaky, or make a move in a battle of wits.

He's already on high alert, but that color sets off every alarm in his brain. Celestia's got him in a corner he can't see.

"My apologies," she continues. "I don't intend to be rude. I'd be quite interested to meet—no, I should say, I and some friends of mine would all be quite interested in a discussion with your mother."

Terrifyingly, the sentiment shades into green. Not the intense green he kindles in the purest of prospects, but it sure seems legitimate. It's hard to fake the hope for things to be better.

This is a trap, it's a horrible idea, her caramel was plain as day, he can't possibly expose the Holy Mother to this—but Celestia is a perfect prospect, and she does want to meet Chryssa-swamini. He thinks frantically. Maybe, somehow, that's a front? Maybe someone so intense and so clearly skilled at control can lie about desire too. But even that idea quickly hits a wall. Not once since he's met Celestia has there been one hint of anger or vengeance—and while she's clearly got her secrets, he's never seen an emotion capable of covering over red, especially at her intensity. So even in a worst-case scenario, her hidden agenda isn't malicious.

Chester has no grounds to refuse. And unless he flat-out lies to the Holy Mother about the green, even begging her to be cautious would be a one-way ticket to permanent airport duty.

He still hasn't got the faintest clue what's going on. The situation is getting relentlessly more complicated. But for the moment, his least bad choice is to play along.

"I'd like nothing more!" he says with a smile.

Fact: Celestia is awful at smartphones.

Chester spends ten minutes making small talk with her out at curbside pickup, and learns basically only that. Every time he turns the topic to her, she deflects with a question about the Holy Mother or their teachings which is sufficiently genuine that he's obligated to derail himself entirely. He even tries sailing their conversation into uncharted waters—falling back on the Crystal Prep cover story that has already caused him so much trouble, and asking about the school she runs (under the guise of wanting to transfer there), but that runs straight into a wall of inquiry on his own academic interests, and he abandons it before he's forced to make up too many lies.

But Celestia can't hide how utterly foiled she is by technology. She knows how to turn the phone on, more or less, but even the concept of tapping an icon to launch an application seems foreign. There are a few specific sequences she seems to have memorized—such as pulling up the address book and making a phone call from a contact—but she doesn't seem to realize that she needs to be in the home screen to find the contacts icon, or even have any concept of a home screen.

This is beyond "helpless grandmother" level and approaching "space alien seeing a phone for the first time". It's so bad that, after spending their ten-minute conversation trying to multitask with her phone, she gives up and asks Chester for help making a call.

Fact: Celestia has a total of three contacts on her phone.

"Sunset," and then "Luna*" and "Twilight*", both complete with asterisks. That's all he can see before she takes the phone back, tapping "Sunset" and then the handset icon as if going through the motions of a rigid arcane ritual.

Chester's instincts tell him not to press her on those points, though—right now that knowledge is the one tiny scrap of information advantage he's got. She's so awful at phones that she doesn't realize how bizarre that is, and if he treats it as normal himself, Chester can fish more subtly rather than tipping her off to the fact he finally has a lead.

Fact, from Celestia's half of that phone call: "Sunset" is her ride.

Chester surreptitiously takes his own phone from his pocket, and does some web searches which quickly bear fruit: "Sunset Shimmer" was Celestia's junior-class valedictorian who was implicated in that explosive Fall Formal prank late last year. Celestia's getting a ride from one of her students?

Fact, from that same news story: "Luna" is her Canterlot High vice-principal.

But why the asterisk? Why, if Celestia has a coworker listed, does she have only one? And who is "Twilight"? She's not mentioned in that news story, and the name is so impossibly generic as to foil searches.

Chester chews on that from several angles, and then asks himself the really meaty question:

Is Celestia an impostor?

The thought starts to assemble into terrifying sensibility. Why would a school principal have three contacts on her phone, two of which were trivially publicly linked to her and one of whom was a complete cipher? That phone looks more like… a technologically-challenged spy's version of "Principal Celestia". Textbook Chet Land intrigue. Just enough context for a paper-thin cover story, and a generically codenamed handler she can panic-call if her cover is burned. The sort of cover that Chester, in her shoes, could see himself building.

More and more, he's getting the feeling he's being outplayed. But by whom?

The obvious answer is one of the Holy Mother's enemies. But Chester's brain refuses to settle into that conclusion. Every time he tries, he pictures the sincere green in Celestia's meeting request, and her complete lack of red. That similarly makes the idea of actual spies far-fetched (especially since any competent secret agent would be able to make contact with the Holy Mother directly, and more importantly, know how to use phones). Private investigators? Rival swamis? He gnaws on those ideas for a while, but they, too, founder on the rocks of the central incongruities.

… Maybe some faerie replaced Celestia as a baby, and that changeling is now wandering the world, pretending to be her but with no concept of technology and no that's just stupid.

Fact: Celestia owns a classic custom Mustang—tinted windows over sleek boxy two-door body, and meticulous wax job over cherry-red paint—egregiously beyond a school administrator's salary.

When Sunset approaches in it, at first he assumes it's hers. But Chester catches the custom plate as she pulls up to the curb: PRNCPL C. He stares at that, flailing to cram the fact into his already-wild theories, as the driver's-side door opens and the girl from the news articles steps out and waves.

Fact: Chester has stumbled into a pocket of absurd enlightenment potential.

People whose colors are notably more intense than average are rare; that's why the Holy Mother has always taken such an interest in them. Esau's chance discovery of Anton (at a local business mixer the Holy Mother had ordered him to attend) had been the find of the year. Celestia is the find of a lifetime. But when Chester gets a clear view of Sunset, blazing blue and purple, she instantly vaults to the third most intense being he's ever met. Not at Celestia and the Holy Mother's level, but the only reason she's not setting off ten-klaxon recruitment alarms is that Chester is shoulder to shoulder with the woman who goes to eleven.

He studies every detail of the new arrival. Sunset is his age, tall and spindly, but unlike Chester she's got muscle tone and confidence and moves like it. She looks like a movie director's idea of a juvenile delinquent escaped from a film set—black leather jacket, and hair striped in rage and pain. (She drives like one, too: she smoothly cut off a minivan on her swerve to the curb.) She's a valedictorian? When Chester had read that, he had assumed the real her would have coke-bottle glasses her news photos lacked.

"Sunset!" Celestia blue-says, setting down her carry-on and striding around the car for a hug. (Is it Chester's imagination, or is she oddly unsteady on heels? He's been focused on a lot of things in the last half-hour; watching her walk hasn't been one of them.) "It's so good to see you again."

"Princeiiii-pal!" Sunset says, her own blue spiking with pale orange as her eyes lock in on Chester. "How was Tambelon? And who's your friend?"

"Oh, I struck out completely," Celestia lilac-says, stepping back over to put an arm around Chester and coax him forward. "But then I met this lovely young man here in the, ah, airport! He's one of the sons of the—what was that charming term you used? 'Holy Mother'?"

It takes Sunset a moment, but she goes the same peach that Celestia did earlier. Then into swirling creamsicle as she readjusts.

"Oh," she says. Her colors separate out into a war between green and orange; she puts a friendly face on over the indecision, sticking her hand out regardless. "It's good to meet you, Chester. I'm Sunset Shimmer."

Her hand is oddly shimmery.

Chester balks. He has zero context for shimmering orange or green. He has no idea what to make of Sunset's sudden fear. And the more he can't explain, the more he can't shake the sense of being ensnared by something big enough to swallow him whole.

"Don't be shy, Chester, say hello," Celestia urges in her trademark periwinkle, and nudges him the last few steps toward Sunset's position by the open door.

That's when he sees the wolf in the back seat.

Chester instantly freezes, a breathy whimper escaping his rapidly tightening throat. Sunset blinks, left hanging. The wolf—there's no mistaking it, the thing is only the size of a border collie but it's got ice-blue fur, a broad muzzle, long lanky legs, and piercing red eyes—swings its head over to meet his gaze disinterestedly.

And it all comes together into an utterly insane and yet inescapable conclusion:

They're assassins of the wolf mafia, come to take vengeance on him.

Most of his brain is screaming at him to not be ridiculous, but everything about this is ridiculous. He clings to the chain of logic like a life raft: He was right there with Anton when the rancher tried to murder the wolfpack girl in cold blood. Then he just so happened to stumble across someone so rich, untraceable and inexplicable that every fact of her existence screams "secret agent". And now she and her delinquent hitwoman are wolf-adjacent too? He is incapable of accepting that that's sheer coincidence.

It's too much. Chester shrieks and bolts straight through traffic, into a cacophony of squealing brakes, blaring horns, and at least one collision.

"Oh, dear," he can hear Celestia murmur from behind him as he vaults over the retaining wall into the airport parking garage.

And then his wildest suspicions are confirmed as Sunset shouts: "After him!"

Author's Note

Look, if I'm going to write a story where an agent of (human) Chrysalis flees in blind panic from protagonist-coded individuals, I'm not going to accept anything less than the stupidest possible reason.

Chapter 3, "Telepathic Werewolf Mafia," will post Sunday, August 4!

16. Down And Out In The Magic Ashram

Anton—hastily dressed in a singed flannel shirt, jeans, and his now-charred Stetson—hucks an unresisting Chester into the dark stone cabin, then shrugs Holds-the-Fire's limp body off his shoulder and drops her to the ground just inside the door.

He pulls his revolver from the holster he buckled on, spinning it around his finger a few times, then shades muddy yellow as he points it down at the motionless girl. "You sure I can't shoot her? Just a little?"

Chryssy steps inside, squinting in the darkness. She raises a palm, and a ghostly green flame bursts from it, sending ominous pale light around the cabin. "You won't do a thing to them until I find out what they all know. Then they're disposable." She whips her head back to glare at Anton for a moment, still simmering red with fury. "Except for Chester. Now that I know all his sins—no thanks to you—I will personally be making an example of him tomorrow."

"Okay, but it'd be easier if—"

"Do not test me right now," she hisses, red re-intensifying. "Or would you like to join him? Say it. 'Yes, Chryssy.'"

"Yes, Chryssy," Anton mumbles.

She continues red-glaring at him for long moments, then crouches down, shimmering gold stirring up, next to one of the other crumpled forms Chester hadn't noticed until now. A person, but drained like Holds-the-Fire, barely breathing and with an animal-like lack of color. It's Sunset, by the rage-and-pain hair.

Chryssy touches Sunset's cheek with her other hand, then frowns. "It's not working with her, either."

"They're immune?" Anton asks, then blossoms into a sadistic magenta smile. "Then I'll dig it out of them the old-fashioned way."

"No. I'll handle it." Chryssy shades a distrustful maroon. "Clearly my power connects to something within consciousness—it won't work when they're out like this. I'll sort that out tomorrow, too." Abruptly, she stands and exits the cabin. "You will address a more urgent problem—and you'd better not screw this one up."

"Yes, Chryssy," Anton says, pale yellow, as he exits with her.

The cabin door slams shut, and the room goes nearly pitch black. There's the click of the deadbolt engaging, and then long scraping noises from outside—a thick wooden bar being slotted in across the door.

The stone cabin had always struck Chester as uncomfortably prison-like. It's beginning to make sense why Chryssy had ordered it built.

He lies there for a while as his eyes adjust and the noises from outside die away. But with only tiny slit windows high in the six-inch-thick walls, the room is dim even in the daytime, and given the hour, he can't make out enough detail even to see Holds-the-Fire's body.

Reluctantly, he sits up—every muscle protesting—and pushes himself to his feet. He knows there's a single small light bulb in the bathroom in the back; if he can find its pull-chain in the dark, at least that will be enough light to see how badly she's hurt.

"That's interesting," a voice says, with no sign of color or source. "Did you manage to avoid being drained?"

Chester screams and startles. His body protests at the sudden motion, and he sags against the wall, waiting for the pain to subside. And then he realizes why the voice sounded familiar.

"Celestia?" he asks. It does sound kind of like her, but weak and whispery. He hopes it's not her ghost.

"Oh!" The voice seems to perk up for a moment before returning to its faint, thready baseline. "Hello, Chester."

Now that he's orienting to the sound a little more, he thinks he catches a hint of her trademark periwinkle in it, barely brighter than the static his eye fills the darkness with. When Chester blinks, in the afterimages, he can see that same color in a crumpled body on the far side of the cabin. That faintness would be startling for anyone, but for her, it's like staring at the sun and seeing a candle.

He works his jaw, completely at a loss. "You don't look so good," he finally manages.

"Understandable. I can barely move my lips. All I've got left is a mere residue of my power. But for a pony like me, residue is still something. And on the bright side, I'm conscious this time."

"As opposed to when your world's Chryssy did the same thing?" Chester guesses.

"Both times, actually." Celestia forces a weak noise that sounds like a chuckle. "I was rather looking forward to meeting one who was harmless without her magic, and finding out what makes her tick, in hopes of finally redeeming the original. You would think I'd have learned by now not to underestimate her."

That sets Chester's guilt to twinging. "Listen," he says. "I'm so sorry. This is entirely my fault. I called her and told her about you. At the time I didn't know she was in league with Anton. And I didn't know she was evil. Now she's got unstoppable magic powers, and she's going to take over the world, and I've doomed everyone."

"If she hasn't taken over the world yet, then you're still ahead of the curve. She seems not to understand most of what she can do." Celestia pauses. "Although if she comes back, uses Sunset's power to scan me, and learns that she can raise and lower the sun now, you might be in some trouble."

"Um." Chester can feel his eye twitch.

"It's fine. I believe in you. We've even got a template to follow. You don't happen to know an itinerant stage magician, a reformed dictator, and my counterpart's ex-fiance Darrell, do you?"

"Uhh." The twitching increases. "No?"

"Still fine," Celestia says. "We'll improvise."

Chester has no idea if that's a joke or entirely unwarranted optimism. He wishes she had enough energy for him to tell the difference.

"Please don't take this the wrong way," he says, "but you seem way too cheerful given what's happened."

"Mm-hmm," she agrees. "Please don't get me wrong, Chester, this is quite a predicament. But in Equestria? This, right now, is an average Saturday morning."

Chester allows himself a shudder. "Then I'm not cut out to be a villain hunter. I can't handle this."

"Nobody can, their first time around. But I've been around long enough to recognize people who rise to the challenge."

Up until he actually heard that compliment, Chester couldn't have articulated exactly how good it would feel. Nothing had ever been good enough for the Holy Mother. He tried, he tried so hard, to do the right thing and improve himself, and it just led to an unbroken string of failures. It led to this.

There's a large chunk of his brain that's positive Celestia is just buttering him up (especially given the current lack of color feedback). But today has been a crash course in the notion that maybe, all along, it wasn't him that was the problem. And her words are sweet sunlight to an idea taken root.

Doubts quickly storm back in, but for a moment there, it was awfully beautiful.

"Listen," Chester says uncomfortably, "I'm going to go turn on the bathroom light. Then I need to check on Holds-the-Fire. She might have been hurt pretty bad in that last fight with Chryssy."

"By all means. Would you be a dear and check on Sunset, too?"

"Yeah. In a minute."

Chester shuffles slowly to the back of the cabin, keeping one hand against the wall. He gropes his way along the divider between the main area and the bathroom, through the open doorway, and then sweeps his hand forward until it catches something dangling. A gentle tug later, light pierces his eyes.

He turns back to the main room, blinking the spots out. Yes, that definitely does look like Celestia crumpled up against one side wall of the cabin. She's ragdolled in a folded-up position which looks profoundly uncomfortable, but at least her eyes are tracking his. Reflexively, Chester limps over to her and straightens her out, laying her on her back.

"Thank you," Celestia says, lips moving sluggishly. With visible effort, she gives him a smile.

"Speaking of which, what… happened to you and Sunset, exactly?" He needs to ask about the demon thing, but that seems like a question to work his way up to. "After we split up."

"Long story." Celestia deliberately, slowly blinks. "You'll get a shorter version than I'd like. But it was obvious Anton was living alone, and Scorpan's always been harmless without his brother, so we agreed there was no harm in making contact to see if we could get ahead of a potential problem. Unfortunately, he met us at the door with a gun."

"My fault," Chester mumbles, similarly unfolding the limp Sunset. She's got bruises all over, and what looks like a number of bullet holes in her clothing and jacket. There's no blood, though, and her skin is unbroken underneath them. Maybe Chryssy had been bulletproof, after all.

"That's last year's taxes, Chester. Anyway, the real problem was that we had it all wrong. He's not actually your version of Scorpan."

Chester moves over to Holds-the-Fire, who is limply tented where Anton dropped her, face and knees on the floor and elevated butt propped against the wall. She looks a bit crispy—smeared with ashes, and smelling of burnt hair—but at least he can't see any ugly skin burns or blood pools. He winces in sympathy, grabbing her arm to pull her flat.

The colorless body grabs back, fingers clamping around his sleeve.

Her head rotates at an unnatural angle to stare at him. Her eyes are bright, solid,

broken

red—

"Ah, Chester," Celestia says from behind him, "could you perhaps stop screaming before you attract attention?"

Chester—who belatedly realizes he is indeed screaming his head off—manages to thrash free, tearing most of his sleeve off in the process. Holds-the-Fire's body twitches and then goes limp again, toppling over to the floor. Chester crab-scrambles backward to the middle of the cabin, huddling in the beam of direct light from the bathroom and hyperventilating.

"I couldn't see any of that," Celestia calmly says. "Please tell me what happened."

Chester stammers, brain rebooting. "Z-zombie!" he finally manages in a screechy falsetto. "Zombie girlfriend!"

"Don't be silly. Zombies are folk tales." Celestia hesitates. "Though, off the top of my head, there's four parasites, eleven banned magic spells, two legal but rare spells, and at least four types of possession which might make you think that under the present circumstances. Was it the Holy Mother who brought your friend into the cabin?"

The question is so casual and specific it can't help but help Chester focus. He swallows through a dry throat, eyes locked on Holds-the-Fire's form, who is again still but for a tiny rise and fall of her chest.

"Uhh," he says, forcing his voice back down, "no? No. It was Anton."

"Not a Marey Lloyd then, she wasn't invited in. She's not still chasing you, is she?"

Chester freaks out anew, taking his eyes off Holds-the-Fire long enough to shout at Celestia. "Why wasn't that your first question!?"

She locks eyes with him. "I'll take that as a no. Which means we're safe for now. Say it. We're safe."

"We're safe," Chester repeats, not feeling it in the slightest.

"We're safe. Breathe."

Holds-the-Fire, indeed, still isn't moving. He stares at her intently as the seconds tick on. And, at Celestia's prompt, he breathes.

"So, funny story," Celestia says. "On our world, my faithful student and her friends clashed with a bandit gang when visiting family out west."

"Right," Chester says, eyes still locked on Holds-the-Fire. He allows Celestia her digression. Hearing her voice is helping to ground him.

"Do you know the number of threats they saved the entire world from? A bandit gang would barely have been a speed bump, except Twilight decided that she didn't want to abuse her powers by using them to solve something so trivial. So they tackled it the old-fashioned way. Diplomacy, trickery, misdirection. Out-thinking their foe."

"I'm going to stop you before this turns into an entirely implausible pep talk on how I have everything I need to deal with the Holy Mother," Chester says. Slowly, with effort—and a continued lack of motion on Holds-the-Fire's part—he's forcing his panic back onto its leash.

"Would I do that?" Celestia asks. "But actually, it's about Anton. I mentioned he wasn't Scorpan?"

"Oh," Chester says, "right."

"Indeed. The bandit leader styled himself King Longhorn, though I didn't learn that until I compared notes with Sunset—Twilight never even mentioned his name in her friendship letters. Him living in Canter Creek perhaps should have tipped me off, but I wasn't even thinking of that bandit as a villain worth considering. Anyhow, Anton Longhorn is your version of him—though here, he took over the ranch he was denied in Equestria, and these days his crimes involve shady lawsuits, counterfeit land deeds and crooked judges."

"Yeah, this is still in implausible pep-talk territory," Chester says, a trifle bitterly. "The outthinking-him bridge has been burned. At this point, if I open my mouth, he'll put a bullet in it."

"Fair. Sometimes the only way to defend your principles is to fight for them. But never underestimate the power of an open ear and a well-placed word." Celestia pauses, and takes a visibly shaky breath. "Ignoring my sister is how I lost her to darkness. Fighting her was the only reason the sun rose the next morning. But it was forgiveness, and the hoof of friendship, which brought Luna back."

Chester considers that. Pep talk or no, it's a huge relief to have something else to focus on.

If it came to it, could he forgive Chryssy? It's clear now that she never saw him as anything but a tool. And now that he's no longer useful, he's been demoted to insect—something to be casually crushed on her rise to greatness.

Come to think of it, it's not just him. Chester didn't miss her resentment earlier as she brought Anton back into line—and the casual pain she once inflicted on Esau is burned into his memory.

He mentally sifts through the endless stream of new devotees he once helped to bring into the ashram, and the endless stream of bitter and burnt-out departures. He never saw her give anyone any more attention than the bare minimum to keep them useful.

Has she ever made a genuine connection to anyone in her life?

"Anyway, Chester," Celestia says into the silence, "you deserve an answer to your question."

He focuses back into the moment—noting in passing that Holds-the-Fire still hasn't so much as twitched. "Sorry, what?"

"About why I didn't ask the zombie question first. From the first time I met you back at the airport, when you were trying to fish information out of me, I knew you were brilliant. But you were also overwhelmed, and that's why you locked up and let slip more than you should. So my answer to you is: Because you can handle this, even the weird and scary parts. But only if you're focused."

He gnaws on that, and realizes what she did. "The jokes. The stupid question. Your story about Anton. I'm a bundle of raw nerves right now and you're bleeding off the pressure. You have been since they threw me in here."

"Guilty. I'm sorry. I'll put on my princess tiara and pass a law against it immediately."

Chester can't hold back a laugh. "Thank you for that. Calming me down, I mean. You're very good at that."

"Thank you for saying so. It's nice to feel appreciated."

Chester lets out a long breath. He does feel much calmer. The magical unicorn world is lucky to have someone like Celestia. And maybe—if he somehow gets out of this alive—he should see if the principal version runs Canterlot High the same way. He has always wondered what high school is like.

He sits back up and braces himself. "I should go figure out what's going on with Holds-the-Fire."

"That's the spirit." Celestia forces another thin smile. "Will you prop me against the wall this time so I can see?"

"Oh, right," Chester says, and does.

"Hmm," Celestia says as he's making certain her body will stay upright on its own. "So that's what your girlfriend looks like."

"What? She's not…" It takes Chester a second, and he feels his cheeks start to burn. "That—I—that just came out! Chryssy's siddhi made me love her! Even more, I mean! I didn't know what I was saying." He can see Celestia open her mouth and hurriedly adds: "Anyway, it doesn't matter what I want, that door is closed. I really screwed things up. I hurt her bad and she kicked me out of her pack."

And then she came back for him, an inner voice whispers, and distracting feelings start to stir up. The heat in his cheeks intensifies. Maybe there is still a chance.

"I should clarify that I'm purely teasing," Celestia says. "I know you're capable of reading my emotions, but from your reaction, your power doesn't seem to be working."

Chester forces himself to take a breath and calm down. "Only because you're so faint right now. I saw Anton and Chryssy's colors just fine before they left."

"Interesting." Celestia's lips twitch. "Was I right the first time? She didn't drain you?"

"No. She tried, a long time ago. She had a… very bad reaction to it."

"Hmm," Celestia says, then again: "hmmm." Her eyes flick around Chester's form. "We actually are still on template if you do have your powers. The other you defeated Chrysalis by feeding her more love than she could eat. So if you just had a big source of it…"

And that gets the distracting thoughts screaming at full intensity. How amazing would it be if he and Holds-the-Fire reconciled to defeat Chryssy, and saved the world with their love as a power source? But—no. He can't do that to her. Love doesn't work like that, and even if it did, it would be beyond gross to ask her to love him for tactical reasons.

Not to mention… "What does that even mean? How do you feed people emotions?" he challenges.

But even as he says it, his mind is madly analyzing the idea. In a sense, wasn't that exactly what Chryssa-swamini did to him, by bombarding him with cyan? If he knew that siddhi—no, that's a non-starter.

Or is it? He had always assumed Chryssy's mastery of it was due to her transcendence. But if she only ever stole it from Sister Mandy, it isn't a transcendent power. It's something even he, hypothetically, might be capable of.

"I admit I don't know," Celestia says, "not being a changeling. But from your face, I suspect you do."

Chester cudgels his thoughts back into submission. "Be that as it may. One thing at a time. Holds-the-Fire is an amazing girl and I've caused her an amazing amount of trouble. Saving the world can wait until I figure out what happened to her."

"I wouldn't have it any other way," Celestia says, and shuts up to let Chester focus.

Chester steels himself anew, creeping on hands and knees back toward Holds-the-Fire's motionless form. She doesn't respond to her name. But as he inches closer, he can see her muscles start to twitch. He hurriedly backs away and she goes still again. The magic distance to… wake the zombie up?… seems to be approximately within arm's reach, and there seems to be just enough of a spin-up period that he can back away safely.

"Hmm," Celestia says. "Who exactly is Holds-the-Fire, anyway?"

The question confuses him, until he remembers that the Celestia he already clarified that to was the fake one back in the ashram. "This world's Ember. But don't call her that."

"Ah. That does make sense, yes. The two of them have a history. Sunset and Ember filled me in on that back in the car."

Chester nods. "Why do you ask?"

"Because she's acting like she's got a secondary power source, and that might explain why."

"… you're going to have to explain that one to me from scratch," Chester says.

"Okay. Once upon a time, in the magical land of Equestria, the age of dragons ended, and the age of ponies began—"

"You know what I meant." Chester fixes Celestia with a glare—then catches what she's doing, and immediately feels sheepish. "… Am I getting overwhelmed again?"

"An entirely reasonable reaction given how you clearly feel about her. But to your question. Did you happen to notice the geode that Sunset usually wears?"

Chester had, in passing—it just hadn't seemed worthy of notice as anything other than a fashion accessory. A small red rock on an unobtrusive chain, it had been mostly tucked inside her shirt, and it hadn't sparkled when she did her mind-reading. He thinks he can see where this is going, though, and his brain leaps forward several steps in the conversation.

"Are you saying that's a magical artifact like Chryssy's black necklace, or the bloodstones Ember and Holds-the-Fire keep mentioning?" Now that his brain's pointed in the right direction, he connects another piece. "Sunset's necklace had something to do with her turning into a demon."

"Smart colt." Celestia hesitates, fractionally. "Grub? Hatchling? Kid?"

"Grub?" Chester asks, confused.

"Have it your way. Grub." Celestia twitches one eye in an approximate wink. "But yes. Long story short, it's a conduit for Equestrian magic. When used with friendship in your heart, it channels the pure power of the Elements of Harmony. But before her redemption, Sunset went out of control by using magic for selfish reasons, and the demon was the form she took as the magic took her over."

Chester doesn't like the direction this is going any more. "So when Chryssy ambushed you and drained you, Sunset went mad with grief, turned evil again, and tried to avenge you?"

"What?" Celestia asks. "Oh, stars, no. The Holy Mother drained us both before we even knew that she was there."

It's a relief to have his theory shot down, but Chester's lost again. "Then how did Sunset transform?"

"Simple. She still had the geode pouring power into her, which kept her upright. But the Holy Mother had just drained away all of her love—along with all the positive emotions which kept her use of magic pure. So the magic drove her crazy and she tried to kill Chrysalis so she could take over the world again."

Chester winces. At least that explains the "assassins" thing.

"On the bright hoof, the Holy Mother won that fight, so my first big adventure here with Sunset in the human world doesn't have to end with her as a villain. On the dark hoof, the Holy Mother took Sunset's geode, so at minimum she's got Harmonic magic, unicorn magic, and alicorn magic to draw from. On the third hoof, if we wake Sunset up, she'll be powerless but back in control."

"So wrapping this back around to Holds-the-Fire…" Chester stares at her from slightly outside the danger zone. "There's a piece of the broken Bloodstone Crown still inside her. I've seen that. You're suggesting that something's activating it somehow? Is it going to drive her crazy with power too?"

"Not necessarily," Celestia says. "Magical artifacts are unique and finicky, and Holds-the-Fire's relationship with hers will have rules different from Sunset's. But given that the Holy Mother drained enough love to place her in a coma—and given the level of attunement she had with the crown when she invaded the Dragon Lands—if she's moving under her own power, the crown almost certainly has to be that power source."

"Okay," Chester says slowly. "That… could be it. It's… possible something is waking the bloodstones up."

His gut clenches as he considers the idea that the thing is him. He can't imagine why he'd be special in that way, but it does feel like his experiences in weird mental space have been getting more intense, and the zombie awakening is impossible to ignore.

"I think you mean you," Celestia says, and yeah there was no way she was going to miss that one.

Chester gives in. "Okay. Me. How?"

"Well," Celestia says, "I should note that I have no experience with those artifacts in particular, merely a great deal of general experience with the shapes that magic takes. And so I would start by pointing out one relevant fact, which is to say, artifact attunement typically requires extended contact and I'm confident you have never touched a bloodstone in your life. With that in mind, my theory is: I have no idea."

He gives her a dirty look. "I don't want to criticize the jokes keeping me from having a meltdown, but I was really looking for an answer there."

"I wish I had one," Celestia says. "My apologies."

Chester sighs. Add another fact to the pile of true things which make no sense.

He sits back gingerly and rolls the whole bloodstone mess around in his head for a bit. Maybe he's been infected by the bloodstones too, and he's now a third part of the set?…Okay, but how? Celestia's right; he's never even seen an actual physical bloodstone, and it stretches belief to think that the weird, broken fragments that can barely even beg him for help would be capable of transforming him that way. No, that's a non-starter.

He has definitely interacted with them, but so has everyone else Ember or Holds-the-Fire ever targeted with telepathy. On the other hand, it doesn't seem like any of the others have had those weird mind-space interactions. But that's just a chicken-or-the-egg problem—if those are what makes him unique, then why did he have the first one?

And what was with that question back in the cyan ocean? Are the bloodstones poisoning Ember and Holds-the-Fire themselves being poisoned? Is all this leading to him corrupting Ember and Holds-the-Fire in some way? The thought is outlandish, impossible—but that would be just his luck, to finally realize the truth about Swamini-ji's lack of transcendence only to discover that he too is so irrevocably transgressive as to destroy all the magic he touches.

Fortunately, that train of thought is interrupted by loud scraping from the front door.

Celestia's eyes drift questioningly between Chester and the door. He does some mental math. While it's possible this is a rescue, they should probably prepare for the worst. "Play dead," he whispers to her, and she promptly closes her eyes.

There's a loud thunk as the wood crossbeam drops off to the side of the door, and then the deadbolt unlocks with a sharp click. Chester realizes belatedly that if they all play dead, the light and the shifted bodies are going to look suspicious as Tartarus. He staggers to his feet just as a pink-hued Anton wedges the door open with one foot and then kicks it outward, revolver in hand and a yellow-hued robed body over his shoulder.

Anton blinks, taking in the tableau of the dimly lit cabin. His colors shift smoothly into bright, suspicious maroon. Then he wordlessly levels his pistol straight at Chester, thumbing back the hammer with a click.

Chester's life flashes before his eyes, but no bullet comes. A terrified heartbeat later, he slowly raises his hands, hoping that's what Anton is looking for.

"You just can't quit stirring up trouble, can you, son?" Anton maroon-says, a low growl.

"I-I had to go to the bathroom," Chester stammers, letting his genuine fear sell his story. "Then I checked to see if they were all okay." His instinct is to keep babbling and shift into full grovel mode, but he keeps that well in check. It's a known bad idea with the bandit king.

Pink re-intrudes on Anton's maroon. He shifts his shoulders, rolling the limp body down into his grip, then effortlessly hucks it into the center of the room. It ragdolls to a face-up stop, and Chester's heart drops into his gut.

It's Esau.

Anton's maroon simmers, then dwindles away into gray disinterest; his pink ratchets up, though it's diffuse enough that it doesn't seem to be aimed at him. "Eh, whatever," he pink-says. "You ain't getting out of here before morning. So you wanna play dress-up with your dollhouse, that's on you. Some of us want to finish our jobs and get to sleep."

He re-holsters his pistol and slams the door shut. Chester hears the sounds of the deadbolt re-locking, then the crossbar being slid back into place.

Author's Note

The plot thickens! And Princess Celestia gets a full chapter to do what she's best at. :trollestia:

Fact: In Welsh traditions, a Mari Lwyd is a horse-skulled being which visits neighbors during wassailing to cause playful havoc. Presumably Equestria has some similar folkloric tradition.

Fact: The chapter title is a nod to SF author Cory Doctorow, and I hope he gets a bit of whuffie out of this.

Finally, another reminder that I'm posting three chapters per week for the next two weeks, shifting to a Su/Tu/Th schedule. The next chapter, "Siddhi Lights," will publish Tuesday, Sept. 17!

3. Telepathic Werewolf Mafia

There's activity behind Chester. A grunt of exertion, a car alarm, muffled swearing. He glances back to see Sunset on his side of the wall—righting herself from a messy landing against a parked Bronco—and an ice-blue bullet sailing over the garage wall and charging straight down the aisle at him.

Chester runs for his life, the scrabble of claws on asphalt closing in.

The claw-noise has nearly overtaken Chester when he sprints past an elevator bank. He jukes around the far side of it, gaining precious seconds as the wolf loses traction and skids past the corner. A second corner—which the wolf handles better—and then he sees his chance and bounds up the wide stairwell to the second floor.

He pauses at the top of the stairs to glance around, having bought himself a minute or two of saf—oh gods it's coming up after him, what was he thinking? Wolves were supposed to be incapable of climbing! Or was that bears?

He sprints between two parked cars toward the next aisle, then rounds a front bumper and starts randomly turning between vehicles, hoping he can lose it. An ice-blue blur from his left—

Impact reels Chester. The wolf's leaping headbutt knocks him onto a car hood, and his world is snarls and teeth and screaming and flailing, and he yeets sharp pointy death off one side of the hood and rolls off the other. Chester picks himself up and sprints across the aisle toward the exterior garage wall, thinking maybe he can jump down into traffic again, and then the saffron leg fabric of his robe suddenly jerks taut and he windmills, falling arms-first to the pavement.

He's rolling over to sit up when weight slams atop his chest, shoving him back down to the asphalt. Bared teeth fill his vision, and a slow, guttural growl fills his ears. Chester goes limp on instinct, his life flashing before his eyes, and as he's screaming incoherently, the single biggest shock of the day hits:

The ice-blue-furred wolf standing on his chest has an intense pink aura.

This is so impossible that, for a moment, Chester's fear of having a predator's jaws inches from his throat ceases to constrict him. He has had color-sight from the time of his earliest memory, and he has never gotten so much as a single streak of color from any animal anywhere. He stares uncomprehendingly, his scream dying away. His brain locks, flatlines, reboots. He's in mortal peril with a predator standing on his chest and it's a person.

"Please don't kill me," he begs, staring straight into the physical blood-red of the wolf's eyes.

A sharp wave of peach passes through the edges of its figure, fading to the deep maroon of suspicion. Its growl hitches for a moment, though the wolf holds its ground on his chest.

"I know you can understand me," he adds desperately, and that peach flares back out. "I don't know what you are but you're no wolf. I'm surrendering, see?" Chester slowly flattens his arms against the pavement and raises them even with his head. The wolf, at least, is frozen amid swirling maroon and creamsicle, and he presses hurriedly on with his monologue to take advantage of that confusion. "I know you've got a job to do, but you don't want to kill me here. We're in public, it's messy. So listen, I won't resist, I'll come with you and that'll give me time to explain why you're making a mistake."

The wolf's growling has long since died away, and now it's just staring down at him with faint colors radiating in every direction. Meanwhile, Chester's brain is churning overtime as he mentally updates his threat assessment from wolf mafia to werewolf mafia—

A rough but undeniably feminine voice imprints onto the surging surface of his thoughts, bypassing his ears and landing straight in his perceptions, causing bursts of pink color almost impossibly raw and vivid. How did you know I'm not a wolf?

—telepathic werewolf mafia.

Chester is beginning to miss the times when running from a man with a gun was the craziest part of his day.

And why do you think I'm here to kill you? the werewolf continues, still merely pink—mild ire without malice. Chester gazes dumbly upward, his terror levels slowly ratcheting downward, then begins to realize he really ought to keep up his end of the conversation.

"You shouldn't," he blurts out. "I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. I had no idea Anton would try to shoot her. I tried to stop him." (Technically true; hopefully true enough.) "Give me a chance, I have nothing against werewolves, your secret is safe with me."

What do you mean, shoot? the werewolf creamsicle-says. Who got shot, and why do you think I care?

"That's," Chester stammers, "why you're here, isn't it? Vengeance for that gunfight with the girl and her wolfpack?"

He realizes—as the werewolf's aura spikes back into peach—that he has completely blown it. She didn't know. He's just given her a casus belli.

"She's not hurt," Chester adds, but that just brightens the peach. "And I tried to stop him, did I mention that? But she stole his rifle, and…" Chester stammers to a stop as the peach flares again and the werewolf starts to go orange around the edges. He really should learn to quit before he digs himself any deeper.

His sight explodes with the pastel orange of alarm as the werewolf's voice presses back in. She stole a human weapon?

"Please don't hurt me yes."

The werewolf bares her teeth to keep him flat on the ground, then orange-thinks: Small, thin girl? Pale sapphire skin, bone-colored hair?

Chester vigorously nods, whimpering.

The werewolf's head wheels away, and when her voice touches his mind again, the tawny hues behind it are older but still sharp. That resentment is also less vivid, more diffuse—at a guess, an area broadcast rather than one-to-one telepathy. Sunset! New plan.

The delinquent finally stumbles her way through parked cars from the direction of the stairs, taking a moment to catch her breath. Her eyes wander around the scene, and she goes gray, trying to keep up the pretense that she's reacting to the sight instead of the telepathic communication. "What?"

We're going after your Ember, the werewolf says. And he's going to take us to her.

Chester doesn't resist as Sunset leads him and the werewolf back to Celestia's sports car. (He briefly entertains the thought of shouting at one of the traffic cops cleaning up the chaos, but he doubts that begging them for help with the telepathic werewolf mafia will go over well—especially when he was the one who caused those traffic accidents to begin with.) He meekly folds himself onto the bench behind the bucket seats, with the ice-blue werewolf leaping in alongside. Sunset inches the car away from the scene before the police notice, and soon they're speeding out toward Canterlot city limits, only the throaty growl of a high-end V8 challenging the uneasy silence.

Now that he's out of immediate danger, Chester finally has time to set his thoughts in order.

Fact: he now lives in a world with a telepathic werewolf mafia.

But… is that really what's going on here? They haven't pulled a single weapon, aside from the wolf being sharp and pointy. In a Chet Land novel, the evil master criminal's henchfolk would have pointed two different guns at his head by now. Aside from the timing of all this happening right after the shootout with Anton and "Ember", nobody's acting in mafia ways, are they?

Well… perhaps Ember, who did steal a rifle and who, Chester belatedly realizes, was telepathic too. (That was why the colors were so vivid at her taunt! He wasn't hearing speech; she communicated the same way the ice-blue werewolf did. That's one mystery solved, at least.) But the people in the car with him? None of the three have been particularly bloodthirsty—or even angry, aside from the ice-blue werewolf's ongoing irascibility—and Celestia has been awfully kind. All this weirdness has him badly on edge, and maybe he needs to dial it back a bit.

Speaking of Celestia. His brain flashes back to the names in her address book, and the asterisks are starting to make a kind of sense. Maybe Sunset's the normal one—their human contact, dealing with phones and vehicles—and the asterisks mean the other two are packmates. Three seems like a tiny wolfpack, but maybe they're a… strike team, or something… splitting off from a larger group.

But not Ember's group. They need him to find her, and they're concerned about her. Some sort of pack rivalry thing?

And where is this little group's fourth member? Which one is missing? Speaking of which… Chester sees an opportunity to answer two of his burning questions at once.

His curiosity overcoming his hesitation, he cautiously prods the fur on the ice-blue werewolf's flank. Her emotions have been wandering through a sequence of colors he's been too distracted to track, but at his touch she snaps straight into a vibrant maroon, and swivels her head to give him a withering stare. What?

The first of his questions is how far the werewolf's telepathy extends. In a supernatural world containing werewolves, the ability to telepathically project speech doesn't feel like one of those powers which would come in isolation. It wouldn't necessarily imply mind-reading powers—and his gut tells him the werewolf isn't acting as if she were pulling hidden knowledge from him—but if he had to place a bet, he'd bet on that mind-speech being bidirectional.

So Chester looks straight into the werewolf's eyes, concentrates on the part of his mind where he has been feeling her words pressing in from the outside, and sub-vocalizes, gathering thoughts and pushing them back in her direction. (It all feels a little foolish, but he loses nothing if it doesn't work.) Thus, his second question, starting with the name that feels werewolfier:

I'm sorry, but is your name Luna?

The werewolf's colors shift as his words coalesce. (Pay dirt! She is hearing him.) There's a brief burst of lilac, intermingled with pink, and while the humor dies away immediately, that irritation persists as she recedes into maroon. She swivels her muzzle away, not bothering to answer.

Fact: the ice-blue werewolf is "Twilight*".

Her aura has a similar intensity to Anton's, and Chester silently marvels that that makes her the least exceptional of his fellow passengers. (He wonders in passing if there's something about werewolves which makes them especially prone toward enlightenment.) Her ears are almost white-furred, tall and spiky, set in a permanent backward arc so exaggerated it almost loops around toward down. There are some spiky dark mats atop her head, matching the end of her unkempt tail. Her chest, and some dappled fur underneath her eyes, are noticeably lighter than the rest of her—and Chester takes a moment to reassess his palette. Maybe it would be better to call the lighter bits, which were burned into his brain as he stared up from underneath, "ice-blue" and start thinking of her in general as "cyan"?… No, it's a trivial enough distinction that he decides it's not worth disrupting his mental color table.

Speaking of colors. It occurs to him that for most of the time they've been together—which includes that initial chase before he consciously registered her emotions, hindsight supplies—Twilight's aura has been some variation of pink. Chester wonders if it would be werewolf-racist to call it "resting bitch face."

She's not pink now, though. With Chester's distraction over, Twilight is staring unfocusedly toward the front seat, her colors once again quickly shifting. Chester had dismissed that earlier, figuring that she was silently sorting through her emotions. But now that he's established that she can telepathically hear as well as speak, he studies the women in the front seat for a bit, too. The colors of all three passengers are shifting in loose synchronization.

Fact: The other three are talking behind his back.

Despite not being in the recipient list, Chester realizes that he has a pretty good idea of the conversation's content from its emotional contours and the targets thereof. The others lag Twilight's reactions for a while; she's sharing a summary of their conversation. There's clearly mutual concern over Ember's gun. Then oranges and blues, far more sharp and accessible: a discussion of how much they can trust him. And… something to do with the Holy Mother? That seems probable. The sequences of emotions in that stretch seem to be related to him, but not sharp enough to be firsthand. Oddly, there's no uncertainty to those sensations, which suggests they're acquainted with Chryssa-swamini already, at a level beyond reputation. And while Chester's not in the Holy Mother's inner circle like Esau is, he would definitely recognize these bizarre strangers if they had been around the ashram before.

A few moments after their conversation dies away and his companions' auras start fading back toward unsettled neutrality, Chester clears his throat. "I, uh," he starts—then immediately halts instead of continuing with didn't want to interrupt and mentally tallies a rare Stupidity Avoided point—"I know that I'm making your life complicated right now and you don't exactly owe me anything, but would you maybe please consider telling me what's going on?"

The others' emotions whirl back to life, but Sunset—from the driver's seat in front of him—immediately halts discussion with muddy green confidence. (Chester pictures her telling the others: Chill out, I've got this.)

"Well, it's very simple," she says, with a jocular tone at odds with the smug muddy purple of her words. "We're magical talking unicorns from another dimension, and after a few close calls, we decided to find and redeem this world's duplicates of the pony world's greatest villains before they can enact some evil plans of their own."

Chester politely waits through the beat that Sunset gives him to let it sink in. Then she bursts into laughter—again, with that same muddy smugness of secretly kidding on the square, rather than the lilac of an actual joke. "No but seriously, Celestia moonlights as a traveling ventriloquist and uses her dog for her show, and Ember's just a weird friend prone to violent outbursts who we're a little concerned about."

Fact: Celestia and Sunset are magical talking unicorns from another dimension.

(Twilight*, maybe not. Chester's gut says that she feels like a werewolf in a way the other two don't. He mentally separates them into different talking-animal buckets.)

Unicorns are no more nor less bizarre than werewolves; that piece of the puzzle slots in without resistance, even if he now has to come to terms with two bizarre talking-animal races instead of one. Other, broader epistemological questions immediately stir up with the whole alternate-dimension thing. He sets those aside for later.

Because magic? That instantly clicks. Some people might have found it a roadblock, but for Chester, it's not even a speed bump. He's a frequent witness to the golden shine of the Holy Mother's perfected aura, and her siddhis… well. No point in exhuming those memories.

If anything, the surprise is that there are other beings besides Chryssa-swamini who have reached such a level of transcendence as to have developed powers. (Telepathy isn't one of the siddhis the Holy Mother claims to have, but it's on the list of attainments they acknowledge.) None of them have shone with the Holy Mother's transcendent gold, which puts them at levels far below hers, but Twilight's siddhi is proof enough that Sunset's quip is no joke, and the intensity of their auras is strong supporting evidence.

And frankly, the magic makes the crazier parts of the claim fit together neatly. The world outside the Holy Mother's ashram is base and transgressive; it makes perfect sense that transcendent beings would be from elsewhere. It also makes perfect sense that if they're enlightened enough for magic, their goal would be to cleanse the world of villains. It's the exact same thing the Holy Mother is clearly trying to do with Anton, reach and redeem someone dangerous—

Chester pauses, relief flooding him as the important pieces click together. It still stings him to think of Celestia's amusement at Chryssa-swamini's title of enlightenment. But now he can be certain that was a mistake from insufficient knowledge. Like so many others, Celestia had only looked at the Holy Mother's reputation, and not at the purity of her intentions. (Chester nearly laughs in relief. He'll get that sorted out before they meet.)

But that worry leaves behind another as it recedes, and the second one is not so easy to dismiss:

Was Chester right to think Anton could threaten the Holy Mother's safety?

He thinks for a moment, then figures his best option is to take the plunge and test the waters.

"If I were to tell you that I've met a second one of your duplicate villains," he says slowly, "could we talk about that?"

Sunset goes pale orange, eyes flicking at the others. "I was kidding about that," she ventures. "You caught that, right?"

"Sure," Chester says. "So. Exact same question, but we'll pretend it's hypothetical."

There's another burst of telepathic communication, with both types of surprise from multiple directions, which suddenly resolve into a unified lilac. "And I don't mean the Holy Mother," he quickly clarifies, trying not to be disappointed in their misplaced amusement.

And that sets off a longer silent conversation, dominated by black. Their uncertainty accumulates threads of a tentative light violet, and he waits until their curiosity wins out.

"For purposes of hypothetical discussion, sure," Sunset says, her light violet not entirely hidden behind gray. "I mean, it doesn't take a magical talking unicorn to want to make the world a better place, right? If you know someone in need of a little friendship, we might have ways to help."

Chester nods. "I mentioned him earlier. Master Anton. The rancher who shot at your… uh, Ember. He…" Chester hesitates; he was about to mention the color-intensity Anton shares in common with these transcendental outsiders, but that would raise uncomfortable questions about how he made that observation. "… He seemed perfectly nice when I met him, but when she arrived, it was like a switch flipped and he went sort of, uh, apocalyptic."

His compatriots seem to consider that for a moment, a muddy swirl of colors fading into black—but Celestia doesn't share their doubt. "It's not impossible," she says, light violet and her trademark periwinkle. "Describe him?"

"A loner at the moment, but big on family," Chester says, before realizing she probably meant physically. "A huge brick of a man. Thick beard."

Celestia, now full-on violet, turns in her seat toward the other two. "I actually think Chester's onto something," she says. "Scorp-Anton? I could see it."

"Scorpan-ton…?" Sunset says, keeping her eyes on the road as creamsicle swirls. "Wait, like the historical Scorpan? Lord Tirek's brother that you and Star Swirl befriended once upon a time?"

"The Sirens dated even farther back, and they caused you plenty of trouble here."

"True, but not my point. Scorpan wasn't exactly a villain, was he?"

"He started much closer to redemption than most," Celestia periwinkle-says, "but I assure you that back in his day, he was plenty dangerous in the wrong company."

The wolf snorts and opens her mouth, and for once Chester's not the target of her pink. "So that's it?" Twilight says (in perfect human speech, and Chester nearly freaks out anew). "We're just dropping all the pretenses, and revealing everything to the changeling?"

"You did first," Sunset shoots back immediately, "with that stunt in the garage."

"I was just being a telepathic wolf! Who believes in telepathic wolves?"

"Chester, apparently," Celestia lilac-says. "You said he knew what you were."

"He thought I was some sort of… werewolf contract killer!" Twilight pink-says. "Whatever he thought he knew was guaranteed to be three-quarters wrong until you two just laid it all out."

Sunset sighs, a bit of pink creeping into her aura as well. "Look, we're clearly past the point where dancing around the truth is accomplishing anything. And you of all people should know that some changelings are good. Chester's gone out of his way to help us out despite an awkward start."

Twilight's pink deepens. "Some changelings! Exactly!"

"Well, if you just need to know he's trustworthy, there's a simple way to settle that." Sunset signals and pulls over to the side of the highway.

Chester wasn't about to interrupt while the others were dropping so much juicy information—even if he has zero context for any of it—but the conversation is starting to go uncomfortable places. "What do you mean?" he finally says.

Sunset steps out of the car, pulls the driver's seat out of his way, and gestures for him to step out and join her. "This'll just take a moment," she says, in that special shade of pale muddy orange that signals an apology. There's undercurrents of cream-colored guilt there, too, and of a purer orange—but she's keeping that fear well under control. "We never got to finish our introductions earlier. Chester, hello. I'm Sunset Shimmer."

She sticks out her hand. This time, Chester glances down and focuses his sight on it. Just like before, its colors are distorted, sparkly. Her name isn't the only shimmer she's got.

Unfortunately, he's no closer to understanding that than last time. And if he reacts in any way, he gives away the fact of his color-sight. Maybe he should come up with some wild excuse not to touch her? (Allergic to unicorns?) Or tell her everything, grovel, and hope she takes it well?

On the other hand, it's a handshake. And even if she's pulling some siddhi out of her back pocket, what's a handshake going to do? The conversation made it sound like she has some way to measure the purity of his intentions—and that's a test he should trivially pass, since they're all fundamentally working for the same goal.

So he takes a calculated risk. "Um, hi?" he says, and reaches out.

Naturally, the question at the forefront of Chester's mind is what exactly she's doing—and the exact instant their hands make contact, she starts wondering the same thing about him. Sunset's aura suddenly distorts, and those earlier mixed colors vanish into an unmistakable light violet. That's odd timing, Chester thinks—and in perfect unison, her violet intensifies. Then she also goes peach as he startles at the repeated coincidence—and he realizes he's seeing his own emotions.

But she's not a perfect copy. He blinks and looks again. And he realizes: Sunset has gone a shimmery… mirror… color. He didn't even know that was possible. And now that he's directly looking at his distorted reflection, there's an inner image within it, a silvered form showing a tinier Chester, with an inner image of a tiny mirror showing a Chester with a mirror showing—

Sunset gasps and jerks her hand back, the mirror shattering into quickly dissolving fragments. Chester loses his balance and sits roughly on the highway shoulder; he's aware at the corner of his vision of Sunset windmilling and falling back against the car door. He's breathing rapidly, getting light-headed. She looks pale.

"Was—" Chester stammers, beating her to speech by a fraction of a second. "Did—was that—did you just read my mind?!"

"Was that—" Sunset stammers back, her colors an unholy mess. "You see emotions?!"

Chester fights to bring his breathing under control. "I—okay. No, this makes sense, I guess. You're all telepathic."

"I mean, okay," Sunset says, standing unsteadily back straight, "I should have anticipated that, it's probably a changeling thing."

Chester blinks, mental gears grinding to a halt. "But you're not a werewolf, you're a unicorn, and you're the only one who's done that… mirrored silver thing."

Sunset raises a finger, pauses with her mouth open, then frowns and taps her chin. "You're used to nobody else seeing colors like you do."

Chester doesn't bother to correct her—he's not quite alone, but he and Esau aren't talking much these days, and yes, he has adjusted to the idea that everyone else in the world seems to somehow stumble through life without color-sight. "Right." He gestures toward the werewolf, still sitting in the back seat of the car and radiating curiosity. "Is she not actually a telepath? Was that you all this time?"

"No," Sunset says absently, "that's… a long story, but she got whammied with a magical artifact or two. About all she can do these days is mentally communicate at people and then pick up their responses and surface reactions. Whereas I don't have telepathy, but I can read memories when I touch people."

"Isn't that a gross invasion of privacy?" Chester says defensively.

Sunset's fragmented colors finally coalesce into a sharp cream, and she clears her throat uncomfortably. "I only use it to solve friendship problems. I… hey, wait. Doesn't the same thing apply to what you do?"

"Of course not," Chester reflexively denies. "I… ehrm."

He's never actually thought through the ethics of his color-sight from the perspective of people without it. And now that she mentions it, not two minutes ago he was undetectably eavesdropping on the conversation in the car. It's not like he can control who he is, any more than wolves can stop eating meat, but she kind of has a point.

They stare at each other in mutual cream-colored silence.

"So. Er. Anyway." Sunset coughs into her arm. "Sorry?"

"Likewise," Chester says. "Look, your intentions are clearly good. I should have told you what I could do."

Sunset chuckles, flaring to a weak lilac. "No, it makes perfect sense. You thought we were the werewolf mafia."

Chester uneasily chuckles back. "In my defense, it has been an extremely weird day."

"We have a lot of those," Sunset says, the pale yellow of resignation and an apologetic muddy pale orange bleeding together. "Thank you for being so cool about this, especially after the way we dragged you in."

"Dragged? Are you kidding?" Chester asks. Everything he's done at the ashram has been in pursuit of enlightenment—being asked by magical extradimensional unicorns to help the fight against enlightenment's enemies is literally the most exciting thing that's ever happened to him. "If there's anything I can do for your villain-redeeming agenda, I would be sincerely honored to help out."

"I know," Sunset says, radiating a cerulean which says the same thing, then sticks out her hand again. "We'd be honored to have you."

"I know." Chester starts reaching forward—then freezes, eyes flicking back and forth between the sparkling hand and Sunset's eyes.

Sunset stares in creamsicle confusion for a moment, then the muddy orange of embarrassment flares as she facepalms. "Sorry," she says. "Keep forgetting I can't turn that off."

Author's Note

It's a good thing Chester cleared up all his misunderstandings in this chapter.

Now that we're headed into the post-launch period, I'm shifting into the twice-weekly regular publication schedule (though I'm open to changing that, so give me your feedback at the linked post if you'd like to see more frequent chapters).

Next chapter, "Into The Woods," comes out Wednesday, Aug. 7!

4. Into The Woods

The Mustang rolls to a stop high in the hills, where the pastures have given way to lush forests of beech and maple, verdant with summer growth. There's the obligatory shuffle as Chester and Twilight extract themselves from the back seat, and then Celestia and Sunset get back into the car and close their doors.

"Remember, this is only a scouting pass," Sunset says. "We'll drive back to scope out the ranch, and you two go to where Chester last saw Ember to see if you can pick up her trail. We'll meet back here in two hours and figure out our plan from there."

"Fine," Twilight pink-says, making a beeline for the treeline and forcing Chester to hustle to catch up. As he nears, the wolf breaks into a lope, forcing him to accelerate again, and soon he's sucking in gasps of air, doubling over against a stitch in his side. "Hey!" he wheezes. "Slow down!"

She doubles back, staring at him with a pink which refuses to dislodge, even if this is the first time he's felt like its target since that first confrontation. "Time's wasting," she says.

"I'm… sorry," Chester gasps. "Give… me a… moment."

The wolf sighs and sits down, stewing pinkly—and, now that they're on the move, threads of red are stirring up within it. Discomfort gnaws at Chester's stomach. The red side of the spectrum is the worst. And he hates more than anything being in its path, but it's worth stuffing down his agitation to help out a friend.

"Something's bugging you," he says.

"Yes," Twilight immediately pink-says. "A dangerous target, a very large forest, and a time limit. Let's get moving."

Chester's resolve deflates, and he nearly moves on in meek silence. But that same fear also gives him pause: dealing with Ember has gotten him into a shootout once already, and while agitating Twilight is bad, jogging toward an armed woman accompanied by a four-legged time bomb might end up way worse.

So he tries again. "No, I mean, something about Ember is really bugging you. I can see emotions, remember?"

She stares at him in stony pink silence.

"You'll feel a lot better if you talk about it," he tries one final time. "I promise."

A tinge of lilac breaks through the wall of pink. Twilight turns to move on, but she can't quite hide a chuff. And when he walks after her, her mood has settled down considerably, with calm blue flooding out the pink.

"I've finally realized who you are," she cerulean-says as they move. (Chester isn't certain what prompted that sudden trust, but he'll take it.) "Because that's twice now I've gotten that lecture. The other you was right, too."

Chester blinks. "The… other me?" These strange magical people keep surprising him. "You're from the magical unicorn dimension?"

"Are there a lot of talking dogs around here?" Twilight lilac-says.

Chester's not certain how to respond to that, but other questions are pressing. "If you've met another me… does that make me a copy of one of your villains?"

"Pfft, no," the wolf blue-says, finally free of pink for the first time since he's seen her. (It's a good look—it complements her fur.) "Changelings come in two types, touchy-feely and ravenous. It's obvious neither of you has a ravenous bone in your body."

That reminds him of a question he's been meaning to ask. "You all keep using that word. 'Changeling.'"

"Oh," Twilight says, "right." She raises a paw to gesture, nearly causing her to faceplant on her next stride. "Giant love-eating shapeshifting bugs."

Chester recoils. "In your world I'm some sort of love mosquito?!"

"Tartarus no," she blue-says. "Those are the ravenous ones. Your kind are like… ugh. Harmless rainbow moose-beetles? I don't even know what you eat these days, to be honest. Maybe yarn. Two-thirds of your hive is into macramé."

Chester opens and closes his mouth, completely unprepared for this sudden swerve into Kafka-land. Maybe Twilight is joking?… And has also suddenly become a complete master at emotional control, hiding any trace of lilac as she deadpans the grandmother of all jokes?

Oh, dear. His magic-world self is a shapeshifting bug.

"But, yeah," the wolf says, and the conversation presses on. "So, you being you, you're going to keep bugging me to talk about your Ember. She's…" Twilight's colors destabilize, and that pink surges back in, tinged with faded yellows and reds. "She invaded my home. Controlled my people. Kicked my ass. Broke my scepter."

"Oh my gosh. I'm so sorry." The subject change is simultaneously a relief and a horror. "I can see why you want to track her down. But… if she's that dangerous, should we be out here in the first place?"

Twilight walks in silence for a bit, letting those old wounds bleed their colors out. "She's dangerous with human weapons, but not world-ending dangerous," she finally pink-says. "The real threat was the Bloodstone Crown, and that's just an inert hunk of rock now."

Chester's grasp of the situation suddenly drifts onto shakier ground. He's accustomed to the idea of people having magical powers, because that's just siddhis, but things having magic still feels weirdly fantastical. (Except for… no. That one memory should stay buried.)

"That's a relief," he says, then his curiosity overtakes him. "What did it do, make her hover in the air and shoot fireballs?"

Twilight chuffs with a ripple of lilac. "Seriously? What kind of magical artifacts have you been hanging out around?"

Chester feels his face flush, and quickly parries. "Aren't laghima and ishita perfectly reasonable guesses? They're exactly the showy, blatant sort of siddhis that someone going drunk with transgressive power would attempt to emulate."

Twilight swings her head to stare at him, shifting into creamsicle confusion. "What in Tartarus are you talking about? There are magic cities in the human world?"

"That's not what I…" Chester feels the conversation derailing. "Never mind. So what did that crown do?"

The wolf shakes her head and also refocuses, colors fading back into old yellow pain. "It controlled instincts. Meaning it also made brains shut up. Not sure whether that drove her crazy or she was nuts to begin with. Either way, it's…" She hesitates for a moment, a fresher, yellow-gray regret swirling up. "It's good she doesn't have it any more."

"Agreed." Chester suppresses a shudder. "Anyway, you said that coming after Ember was a change of plans. What were you doing here before?"

"I owed Sunset a favor with her scheme to find all the other villains. She was one of the ponies who helped me track the crown to this world, before your Ember invaded." Twilight's pain simmers back up—although it's reduced; getting her talking is definitely helping her vent. "Once I beat her, Sunset stepped in and convinced me to return her here. I agreed. I felt sorry for her, kind of." The wolf lapses into silence, warm and cool colors warring.

Chester gets it. "You thought maybe being home would be good for her," he says. "That she'd learn from your encounter, and she'd know better than to make trouble again. So you gave her the benefit of the doubt. But she didn't learn her lesson."

"And so here we are again," the wolf says, settling into a muddy yellow bitterness. "I won't make that mistake a second time."

It's still an unhealthy resentment, but it's another step further away from anger, so Chester lets the conversation lapse.

They descend a slope to a broad flat area which Canter Creek meanders through, and Chester heads to the water and searches up and down the bank. He scrambles across a fallen log to the far bank to check out a big muddy patch, and sure enough, there are canine paw impressions—though they're dried, edges indistinct, and Chester has nowhere near the tracking skills required to date them. "Here," he says, and points them out.

Twilight nods, leaps the creek, and starts trotting up and down the water's edge herself, swiveling her head back and forth to look for other prints. "Okay, that's a start," she says, turning the khaki of grim resolve as she turns her focus toward the hunt. "You stay here. And if you hear barking or howling, start sprinting back toward the road and don't stop."

"What?" Chester says. "Where are you going?"

"Upstream. Downstream is Scorpan's ranch."

"But Ember's armed. We shouldn't split up."

"Can you turn into a bear?"

Chester blinks at the sudden, incongruous question. "Of course not, why?"

The wolf turns to glare at him, a determined brown temporarily taking over her unsettling palette. "Last time she and I saw each other, it got ugly—so we shouldn't be here, period. But I can take care of myself. And you'll be entirely useless in a fight without shapeshifting, so I don't want you slowing me down."

Visions fill Chester's head of a giant grizzly bear swinging blundering paws around in a clumsy attempt at self-defense, as an entire wolfpack leaps at him from all angles, sinking teeth into his limbs before an ice-blue-skinned girl shoots him through the heart with a hunting rifle. Yeah, that's the best-case scenario. He steadies himself against a tree, trying not to think about how much more danger he's in as a frail, skinny human. "I… uh. That's fine, you know, I'm good."

"Great," Twilight says, and starts loping away before she hesitates for a moment. She deliberates, colors swirling, then swings her head to face him.

"Hey," she blue-says, "thanks, Thorax. For, you know. Being you again." A lopsided smirk spreads across her muzzle, and she lilac-adds, "But when I get back, I'll have to go through the remedial assertiveness lessons."

"If you say so," he agrees on autopilot, and the wolf vanishes into the underbrush.

… Thorax.

There's a certain resonance to the name. But, then again, giant love-eating shapeshifting moose-beetle. That definitely was not on his checklist of things to expect out of suddenly being flung into a world of magic and wandering heroes and bi-dimensional villains.

Which reminds him—the Holy Mother really needs to hear about this. (But maybe not about the bug part.) She's going to be so excited!

Chester pulls out his cell phone, as expected, to no reception. He climbs the slope away from the riverbank in search of better line of sight, and scrambles on top of an enormous flat-topped boulder randomly littering the woods. That rewards him with a view down the valley—the ranches downstream, the surrounding hillsides, Blackrock Spires jutting up over the hills to the north (downslope from the crags, he can barely make out the ashram from here), and further south, past more forested hills, the tops of the skyscrapers of downtown Canterlot. He's in a wasteland of phone coverage, but by holding it high in the air and turning on speakerphone, he gets it to stabilize at one bar.

He dials the ashram, telling Esau that he has to speak to the Holy Mother immediately, no, really, interrupt her, I'm serious. Then he fidgets, trying to rehearse his wording until her voice comes on the line.

"Ches-ter," the Holy Mother says—and though he can't see colors over the phone, she's using That Inflection again. His throat goes dry—bad time. But he has no choice but to press on regardless. "What did you do?"

"I-it's good news, Swamini-ji!" he protests. "At the airport, I—"

"Your connection is atrocious. Where are you?"

Chester swallows and tries again. "The forest near Canter Creek, Swamini-ji. I met—"

"What!?" she snaps. "Why aren't you at the airport?" Without his color-sight, Chester's ability to read emotions is rudimentary, but even he can tell her tone is getting more dangerous by the word.

"Please, Swamini-ji, listen," he begs.

"You have five words."

Chester's brain goes into overdrive. He's wasting the Holy Mother's time. He lines up his best pitch, feeling sweat bead at his hairline.

"I met other enlightened beings," he says.

The phone is silent for disconcerting seconds. He angles the screen down toward him and glances at it to make certain the call didn't disconnect.

"And why are you in the forest?" the Holy Mother finally says.

"They're"—and his nerve fails; interdimensional talking unicorns is a step too far, even if it's the undeniable truth—"holy magicians. Transcendental heroes seeking out the enemies of enlightenment. They asked for my help."

The silence returns, this time with fangs.

"Chester," the Holy Mother says, "have you been stealing god-weed from the ashram storage room?"

"I would never, Swamini-ji."

"We shall see. Return immediately."

"Wait!" he blurts out—and he needs to leap off the crazytown cliff while he's still got an opportunity; it's not like he'll be in more trouble if she takes this poorly. "You might be in danger. From Master Anton."

"I see," the Holy Mother says, her tone placid. "I assume your magical transcendental pixies told you this?"

"Unicorns," he corrects on reflex.

"Unicorns?"

Chester feels color drain from his face. Oh no—now she's certain he's gone crazy.

He flings a blind desperation pass. "Listen, does the name 'Scorpan' mean anything to you?"

His heart thuds in the silence for a few moments of concentrated terror, and her next sentence does little to dilute it. "This goes beyond breaking into the storage room, Chester," the Holy Mother says slowly. "Where did you get ninth-circle texts?"

"I didn't! I heard it from Celestia. See? How could they have known—"

"Celestia?" the Holy Mother interrupts. "That Bittish ex-princess?"

"… No?" Chester says, confused. "The princip—the one pretending to be the principal of Canterlot High."

"Ches-ter."

He is beyond being deterred even by That Inflection. "She said she had dealt with Scorpan—I mean, Master Anton—before. She and Sunset are going to investigate him while Twilight and I go after the girl who stole his gun."

"Sunset? Twilight? Who are these people?"

"More enlightened beings. Sunset Shimmer was the valedictorian at Celestia's school back when there was that big explosion, Swamini-ji. And Twilight is a…" He stumbles as he realizes where that sentence is going, but his choice is to finish it or faceplant at full speed. "A talking werewolf."

This silence is mercifully brief, and after it, the Holy Mother's tone has leveled back out. "Let me get this straight. You met the ex-princess in the airport, and she drugged you with a hallucinogen and dumped you in the woods, and meanwhile, she's investigating my new recruit?"

"You don't understand!" Chester shouts. With that, he is far beyond arrogance into blasphemy, but he knows what he saw. "Their auras are the strongest I've ever seen! Twilight has telepathy! Sunset can read minds! Celestia"—wait, has he actually seen her do anything besides utterly fail at phones?—"has forbidden interdimensional knowledge! They're hunting down dangerous villains like Anton and they asked me to help and they have actual magic, Swamini-ji, I've experienced it firsthand!"

"I see," the Holy Mother says. "And I don't?"

Her tone is gentle, level. But the words themselves carry so much menace that even over the phone he knows they're blazing crimson red.

Awareness of the precarity of Chester's position abruptly dawns.

His heart starts hammering against the inside of his ribcage. His head goes light.

"That was in no way my implication, Swamini-ji," Chester forces out before his throat locks up entirely.

The Holy Mother lets this silence hang for far too long. Chester would normally be babbling to fill it—desperate apologies, explanations, confessions of his sins so that she might apply the necessary tough love to drive him back toward enlightenment—but this time, what can he say? He can't uncross those lines and won't recant those truths. He has to rely on her seeing, from her enlightened station, the truth of what he has unearthed; and on the mercy of her love to set right his arrogance.

"You have," she says, "despite the unprecedented depth of your heresy, provided me with useful information about an enemy of enlightenment. Therefore, I shall allow you the mercy of remaining a devotee. Return immediately and alone. And on your way, I suggest you begin thinking of appropriate punishments for your transgressions. If you know what is good for you, you will make your ideas more severe than mine."

"Thank you, Swamini-ji," Chester says, vertigo and relief flooding him in equal measure.

The call goes dead.

Chester's heart is still working double time, cold sweat beading on his brow. His skin is going clammy and his head is light. But the moment has passed. She listened to his warning. He's in basically infinite trouble, but it could have been so much worse.

His limbs start to quiver as adrenaline finally releases its iron grip. He suddenly remembers to breathe, gasping quickly and hungrily for air.

He teeters, balance evaporating. The edges of his vision fuzz.

Then Chester crumples limply to the stone, the world fading away.

He is lost in dense fog, and there is something Wrong nearby.

There is no wind, no scent on the wind. The mist swirls, gray and impenetrable, creating optical illusions of shadows, vertical lines of trees which evaporate and reform as he looks around. He breaks into a four-legged run, which stirs up the fog without moving him anywhere; there is not even sensation to his footfalls beyond a vague sense of gravity against some vague mist-shrouded ground.

And all the while, the Wrong stirs. There is a prickle at the nape of his neck as though he were hearing the distant song of the hunt, soundless no matter how he strains to shift his leaden ears—but the hunt-call is the Wrong's, and the hunger of something so ugly and unnatural leaves him feeling very much the prey.

That awareness of the Wrong sharpens, and his panic grows. Help he needs help need help—the howl springs from his throat, desperate dark orange, twisting and shading the fog as it pierces through.

Something inside him ignites in intuitive comprehension. In this fog, the Wrong is not the only hunter. In here too is the Wolf, who taught him the song of this place. He is lost and scared and the Wrong stalks ever closer, but the Wolf will answer if she hears.

A ripple of color reflects in the fog. Diffuse light violet curiosity. He has been heard! His throat burns, renewing his plea.

A return song! It's creamsicle confusion, but it is a response. Then the source of the howl gains the sensation of motion—and his panic surges. The Wrong approaches.

No—wait. It's the Wolf. Isn't it? The return call must have been the Wolf; the Wrong is alien, grotesque, desecrated. It raises every hackle. And when he focuses on the source of the howl it is the rapport of the Wolf. But another part of him also screams the warning of the Wrong closing in for the kill. Wolf approaches. Wrong approaches. Both true. Both true! The sensations overlap, salvation and death racing neck-and-neck—

He narrows his focus to the Wolf's song, pushing the perception of the Wrong back away, and bursts into a sprint, the fog roiling past at the speed of thought. He must reach Wolf before Wrong overtakes him. The Wrong cannot win, every atom of his being screams. But they hurtle inward in unison—and just as he bursts through the fog to Wolf's salvation, spindly red claws grab him and

a gleaming red figure sears into his memory—not flesh but living crystal, a frail mockery of form not human and not wolf, the color of blood and fury—

fix me

—the ruby gemstone figure vibrates, radiating dark orange desperation to blast apart his screams of vivid orange terror, and he writhes and flails and its tenuous hold on him snaps to

tear through the writhing reddening fog with Wolf and Wrong chasing at his heels, the sensation of hot breath at his flanks—

Wake.

—and he bolts in the direction of this new call, which is still in that Wolf-Wrong voice but distant, elsewhere. Frantically he hurtles toward its promised exit, a rabbit bolting for his hole, as the fog lightens and thins—

A familiar voice tickles the edges of Chester's perceptions, rough but undeniably feminine, and orange-gray sweeps away the last of the haze:

Wake.

His brain shudders to life to parse the word, and that brings other sensations with it. Cold against his back; the tug of gravity in that direction; the distant rustling of leaves and whisper of a creek. Chester's awareness of his body, bit by bit, reconstructs itself around that core.

His heart is hammering, adrenaline pumping. His hindbrain, still trapped in that sprint through the fog, is screaming danger and Wrong, terrified flight from slavering fangs. But there is a quickly growing distance to that, as if a dream were evaporating, as his thoughts re-engage—except for the memory of that terrifying red gemstone monster's grip around his throat, seared in somewhere deep and primal.

The fog felt like no mere dream, though. Raw, vivid, somehow real but in a way he has never experienced before. He has no context for where he was. Not even who he was. It was like… if everything that made him Chester was stripped away, reducing him to pure animal reflex.

Something hard and uncomfortable pokes Chester's side, grounding him fully back into his body.

Wake, Twilight repeats, again a cautious orange-gray, with stirring garnishes of blue-and-yellow concern.

Is he sleeping? Why? Where? Memory fully engages, reminding him that before the fog he was atop the boulder by Canter Creek. Logic stirs to life: He fainted.

Wait, right. He's lying on the rock unconscious.

Chester's eyes jolt open, and he gasps in a breath of forest air. The adrenaline that had very nearly ebbed immediately strangles him again:

That voice wasn't Twilight's.

A teenaged girl draped in animal hides is crouched over him—aura unusually intense (like Anton's or Esau's), ice-blue skin, dirty white hair down to her shoulders, rail-thin and built from iron, five-foot-nothing at a generous guess. One hand is holding his phone. The other is clenched around the stock of Anton's stolen rifle, and she's jabbing the barrel repeatedly into his abdomen as if it were a pointy stick.

Chester yelps and scrambles back out of her line of fire, and motion explodes in the corners of his vision wolves wolves wolves startled baring teeth oh gods he's surrounded and then from the freshly orange-limned Ember comes a flaring pulse of blue, painful-bright. The color echoes into her wolfpack and reflects back at her as they immediately lie back down, fur still bristling from Chester's sudden motion but staring at him with something closer to curiosity than hunger. And that blue presses against him, too, with an almost physical sensation, as if he were standing in a wind-stirred pond and a soothing wave was lapping at his feet. It has no actual power to calm him down—there's not enough force to penetrate his thrashing, roiling panic—but it gives him something to focus on besides his out-of-control adrenaline, and it gets him looking around the scene with fresh eyes.

The reason Chester hadn't noticed the dozen wolves right away is that they're all sprawled in a lazy arc at a respectable distance from the boulder. They… don't match his mental model. He was expecting something like a gang of hoodlums, the canine equivalent of scowling ruffians with their eyes locked on their mark, idly polishing their guns and cleaning their fingernails with pointy knives. But now that he's no longer startling them with explosive motion, they feel more like a group of rugged construction workers leaning on their shovels. The largest of them—an absolute unit of a blue-gray wolf, comically oversized compared to the others, Chester's height at the shoulder—is plopped on his butt near the center of the pack but still at a deferential distance, scratching one of his floppy oversized ears with a hindleg. A modest-sized gray wolf with unusually large feet is sprawled half atop a diminutive one with a dun-colored coat, grooming the top of the small one's head with her tongue. A larger reddish-brown wolf has gone upside down, paws flailing in the air as he rolls on the ground, kicking up dust. A large light-gray wolf with an absurdly floofy coat and permanently lolling tongue is staring vacantly into space, one eye not tracking the other. The others are yawning, or stretching, or licking themselves. All Chester has from them is body language—they're wolf wolves, not werewolves—but none of this feels like a threat.

The wolf-girl—her personal colors receding from orange into wary orange-gray—sends out another pulse of soothing blue. This time, it's more narrowly directed at him, and it comes along with words: You are not prey.

Chester lets out a shuddering breath, and struggles to tamp down his nerves.

His mental alarms are blaring at full volume—wolf danger and villain danger and weird fog-dream gemstone monster danger—but none of those things is currently trying to kill him. (What in Tartarus was that terrifying blood-red thing? He needs to sort that out once he's got a free moment.) Right now, though, the priority is the wolf-girl who woke him up and is flinging blue at his brain.

"You're," he croaks through a throat gradually remembering its need for moisture, "Ember."

He immediately knows he's said something wrong. The girl tilts her head, staring at him with peach and yellow bursting through her aura. He sees her fingers tighten on the rifle stock.

I am Holds-the-Fire, she says, the chestnut red-brown of a challenge he dares not accept. But I know that name.

Another piece of the greater puzzle falls into place. Anton's otherworldly duplicate is apparently Scorpan, and Twilight had told Chester that his own double is Thorax. Names don't always seem to match up perfectly, and he's going to have to be careful about that because it sometimes seems to be a sore spot.

That reminds him: where is Twilight? He sneaks another glance around the pack. No sign of the villain hunter, and fortunately, no bloody muzzles or other signs of a recent fight. Given what she had said about her history with Emb—with Holds-the-Fire—it looks like them splitting up was a stroke of good luck for once. The wolfpack's reaction toward him would be very different if they knew he was with her.

Holds-the-Fire drops to a crouch, a jealous yellow-green swirling up amid her wary curiosity, and before Chester can react she has loped forward on all fours to close the distance between them (gracefully leaving both gun and phone behind as her hands contact rock). He flinches reflexively as she grabs his head with both hands, but there is no red to Holds-the-Fire's motions, and he tries to go limp and not provoke her. She leans in, nose on his cheek, and inhales sharply, then pulls back far enough to go eye-to-eye with him, tilting her head again.

I do not scent the world of fire on you, she says, her colors receding into a conflicted swirl, with light violet curiosity the most vivid. But I think that if you confuse me for Ember, you have seen her only there. Did she take everything from you, as she did me?

Holds-the-Fire is a lot cannier than she looks.

Also: That's right. She's a villain's duplicate, so therefore Ember is a villain—and apparently played a role in Holds-the-Fire and Twilight's story.

An itch stirs in the pit of Chester's stomach. Once again, there's more going on here than he knows—and Holds-the-Fire seems right at the center of it.

And she's gripping his head, waiting for his answer.

"I've never met Ember," Chester says sincerely, returning to the moment. "But maybe we should talk about the, uh, 'world of fire'." He immediately backtracks as yellow spikes to the forefront of Holds-the-Fire's aura. "Only if you want to, I mean." He clears his throat. "What do you want?"

She regards him for a moment, and then in a single fluid motion she releases him, quadruped-lopes a pace backward, and stands up, gun and smartphone in hands. I need new magic, she says, You will help me learn the secrets of your human tools.

And Chester's jaw drops open.

It's not a startling, or even unusual, request. All Holds-the-Fire is doing is holding the items. But he still has to blink, rub his eyes, and stare in speechless awe.

Because her color—a color he has only ever seen in the Holy Mother's aura—is a brilliant, sparkling gold.

Author's Note

It turns out that Fang and Flame's narrator/protagonist has a name! Or, more accurately, has earned her pack-name in the wake of that story, finally fully coming into herself — and (perhaps understandably) has deliberately chosen a name which reflects her unique successes, rather than something which reminds her of the sting of her greatest failure.

If you haven't read F&F, you'll get to learn about Holds-the-Fire as Chester does. "Twilight*" gave him the crucial basics of that story, though there's one or two key pieces she didn't think to mention. I wrote a short blog with a Cliff's Notes summary of F&F if you'd like full context for this Bloodstone Crown that's been name-dropped; the bloodstones, plural, and the Embers' ugly mutual past will both play important roles as the story unfolds.

Of course, since the next chapter ("Shared Colors") drops on Sunday, Aug. 11, this is a great time to read F&F's 14,000 words of high-octane combat and character drama!

5. Shared Colors

Holds-the-Fire doesn't seem to have anticipated his reaction. She lowers the gun and phone fractionally, creamsicle stirring up around her edges.

That snaps Chester hard and cold into the moment. Her gold is bigger than magic, bigger even than the unicorns' mission—this is proof that other beings besides Chryssa-swamini have reached complete transcendence. She's a second enlightened master with emotions unachievable by mortals. Her aura intensity is nothing like the brilliance of the Holy Mother's, but that color doesn't lie.

And he's about to go two-for-two on disappointing them so much that they can't maintain transcendence in his unworthy, transgressive presence.

"Of course I'll help!" he shouts, urgently enough to startle the wolves. He flings himself desperately down toward Holds-the-Fire's feet, sending her skittering back orangely, and touches his forehead to the rock. "I'm so sorry, Swamini-ji, that it took me this long to recognize your perfection, I don't deserve your forgiveness but I beg it regardless, I shall dedicate the rest of my life to rectifying the error of this moment, the mantras have not yet been composed which can adequately express my regret—"

Human, her voice presses in against his babbling—and then again, with a burst of raw orange that shuts him up: HUMAN!

Chester whimpers and looks up. He's broken her. Peach and black and cream and orange, orange, orange, wolves baring teeth in the background and sidling backward, the entire pack on their feet and facing straight at him. She's in a half-crouch, on the edge of bolting, with an expression he suspects is a great deal like his.

… Too much? Then he's in uncharted territory. With the Holy Mother, that would have been an adequate start.

Chester swallows through a bone-dry throat and tries again. Much quieter. "I know I've already failed you, Swamini-ji," he says, "but I'll do whatever it takes. Please just deign to grace me with the honor of your transcendence again."

Holds-the-Fire's orange doesn't waver. What are you babbling about?

Okay. Breathe. Chester will have to do this on his own. He can salvage this. But not until he ratchets down the panic level.

How do you apologize in wolf? Is it playing dead? From old idle web browsing, he dimly remembers something about playing dead.

Chester slowly, deliberately, crouches, then flops over onto his back, going limp. He unfocuses his eyes, trying not to look at Holds-the-Fire—then realizes that, even if lack of eye contact is the correct play, he needs the feedback of his color sight too much. He risks turning his head toward her, seeing a frozen figure whose orange has drained away into a mad creamsicle swirl. Orange spikes anew at his movement, but it's just a momentary burst; for the most part she seems as utterly lost as he does.

… Okay, so not playing dead then. Was that for bears? Damn it, he always gets those two confused—

—wait, she's moving in. Circling him, orange-gray. Chester stays still, aside from tracking her with his eyes. Wait, are the other wolves moving in too? He can't see any other motion at the corner of his vision. But what if they are gathering just out of his vision, assuming that he really has perished? Are they going to start eating him? That would be the stupidest way to die—

Holds-the-Fire has reached his feet. Okay. Okay. Chester's pretty certain it's just her, and he needs to commit to the bit. He locks eyes with her, staying limp. She fidgets, her color finally settling in toward brown, and with that newfound resolve she crouches and approaches past his legs.

They eye each other for long moments. Then her brown strengthens, despite swirling threads of black uncertainty, and she leans in face-first toward his crotch—

Chester yelps in shock, sitting bolt upright, arms shooting downward protectively. Holds-the-Fire yips, bright peach, literally leaping backward. She lands rough, a leg slipping out from underneath her, and bounces down the boulder. Chester double-takes, and without thinking, flings himself after the enlightened girl in an effort to save her from a fall. Which just ends in him face-planting off the rock as she hits the ground at an angle and rolls with the impact.

The next few seconds are hazy with pain and dizziness. Chester's vision won't quite focus and his body isn't quite responding. But he's aware of a giant blue-gray form charging in, snarling, and Holds-the-Fire's skinny form interposing herself between them. She yaps sharply, flaring blue despite her own orange, and the massive wolf's color also echoes blue for a moment as he backs away. Then she turns and lunges at him, and he can feel her grip under his arms, and the world rights itself with a sickening lurch as she slams his back to the boulder. She's blazing orange and simmering red around her edges but it's hard to tell behind assaulting waves of a wordless blue. She is, somehow, battering him with an emotion she doesn't herself feel.

"You're trying to calm me down," he observes loopily, mouth on autopilot. Like last time, the blue is washing pleasantly at the edges of his mind, with no power to penetrate.

That seems to shock her back into speech. I'm trying to make you stop being strange! she screams at his mind, orange and red still clashing. But it doesn't work any more! She took that from me! She took everything! And I need more tools for my pack, I need to be HUMAN, but I can't make them work, and I'M NOT GOOD ENOUGH!

That last bit coalesces into sharp, brutal yellow. Chester flinches.

Abruptly, Holds-the-Fire lets him go, then crumples down into a loose ball on the ground nearby. She rocks back and forth on the balls of her feet, letting out a soft crooning howl, bleeding off yellow like a teakettle emitting steam as her aura washes toward a grief-stricken white.

Chester swivels his head around. The wolves are circling uncertainly. A few of them look downright unhappy—lips pulled back to reveal teeth—but none seem bold enough to get close to this absurd little psychodrama, not even the enormous blue-gray one from earlier.

Did he say uncharted territory? This isn't just off the map, it's in a different universe. A transcendent being needs help. His help.

Chester draws in and lets out a long breath. No pressure.

He slides his back down the rock, sitting down in place, keeping his legs bunched up to avoid intruding on her personal space as he assesses his approach. That's some ugly pain. He's seen plenty of it while recruiting for the Holy Mother; this, at least, he knows his way around. Normally, he'd be trying to mold it—kindle it, coax it toward green, and hand the prospect off. But with another transcendent being, what's the point? Holds-the-Fire doesn't need Chryssa-swamini; she already has enlightenment. She just needs a friend.

And frankly, Chester realizes, he feels a lot better about helping her through that pain than he does trying to shape it.

Either way, it starts with basic contact. "Hey," he says, reaching out a hand with palm upturned, putting it within her reach but far enough away to not be intrusive.

Holds-the-Fire doesn't look up, but her colors stir with orange and her body tenses. Chester, too, freezes; simple kindness might not be sufficient here. He's still the strange one, the human in a world of wolves; if that comedy of errors back on the boulder was any indication, they don't share any common context or language.

… Or do they?

Chester gathers his thoughts, the same way he did with Twilight back in the car. It's a lot easier, and feels a lot less silly, the second time. He's not certain of the exact boundaries of what can be sent through a mental link, but he visualizes a gentle, sympathetic prod to go along with a query:

Hey?

Holds-the-Fire's head jerks up, revealing wide eyes and tear-stained cheeks. Her white shatters into fragments of violet and peach (one of those surprises which you're entirely uncertain how to feel about). Those war for a moment, and violet wins: You… can crown-talk?

The term means nothing to him, but the context is clear enough. No, Chester thinks. But you can, and when you did it to me, that was enough to let me talk back. He gives her a smile—and then realizes a wolf might mistake that for baring teeth, and closes his lips. I'm not sure I can stop being strange, but maybe we can be weird together.

Holds-the-Fire is bursting with conflicting emotions now, but this time the preponderance is cool colors. You… heard the calming-command which did not work, earlier? she violet-says, and then there's flashes of faded yellow and hesitant blue: Since losing my crown, none but pack even know when I make the attempt.

Chester hesitates. Building rapport is good right now, but "Of course I can, because I can see emotional colors, because according to the magical talking unicorns, I'm this world's version of a changeling" is one of those truths that would lead to far more questions than answers. (Such as, "What's a changeling," and then he'd have to go into that whole love-eating shapeshifting bug thing, and ew.) But what else can he say? A dozen plausible answers could trivially find their way to his lips, but he doesn't have the heart to Chet Land his way through the conversation. This poor lass deserves him, not a sales pitch.

Not seeming to notice his inner turmoil, Holds-the-Fire slowly tilts her head, that tiny pool of blue intensifying and growing. She sniffles, and smears the back of her wrist across her cheeks.

I think this is another lesson I should have learned from the world of fire, she says slowly. The muddy orange of shame washes through her, with a paler orange underlying the blue as she reaches toward Chester's outstretched hand. You are comforting me like a packmate. You can hear my pack-calls. I should have treated you as pack.

Their hands touch. She rests hers atop his, fingers flat. Chester isn't certain whether he should clasp her hands, so he takes the safe option and responds in kind.

He sees a ripple of pastel-blue gratitude creep through Holds-the-Fire, but it fails to dislodge any of the other colors. Will you choose a pack-name?

I, uh, I'm Chester, he says.

Ches-ter, she echoes, as if rolling the name around in her mouth—and then momentarily suppresses her oranges to project a wave of cerulean out to the wolfpack, returned with a brief flash of collective trust. Our hunt is your hunt.

This feels like progress, but her own knot of orange isn't loosening. If anything, it's gradually building—a panic which, now that he's observing it, he has to make an effort not to share.

Chester deliberates for a moment, then goes for the direct approach. I can tell you're still scared, Chester says gently, trying to calm himself and project blue back, trying to hold still so he doesn't startle her again. Is it something I'm doing?

Holds-the-Fire fidgets—her last shreds of blue retreating into an unsteady cerulean as she fights a losing battle against the growing orange. Her eyes flick around, as if she's not even certain whether to meet his gaze or not. I still can't understand how you feel, she says. I thought that accepting you as pack would make it make sense. But your emotions are too different from a wolf's. I don't know what I'm doing wrong.

Chester blinks. You have color-sight?

Her reaction answers the question for him, because she jerks her hand back from his, orange blazing. Chester hasn't moved, and the question was as non-threatening as he could make it—he would estimate that he shifted to violet threaded with green. So it seems like she sensed that shift but had no idea of the new colors' interpretation, and is on an absolute hair-trigger right now.

He feels his heart quicken, mindful of the irony that he's battering her with new sensations again. No! It's okay! This is great! he quickly thinks. Me too! I can help you understand! What colors are you seeing?

Holds-the-Fire's orange softens and muddies, drawing out cream and… chartreuse?… no, but something close. Not jealousy but inadequacy?

She looks away, dipping her head and drawing her body in tighter. It is not color, she says. It is… skin-feel? But inside me. She's clearly flailing. Like… remembering the run of water without the wet, or rock-cool but not rock-hard, or the heat of sunshine, or the tickle of dust in the nose when the air is clean. Those are bad descriptions but there are no good ones.

Chester thinks for a moment. It's alright! he says. Maybe I can't teach you how to understand everyone, but I can teach you how to understand me. Like right now! He reaches out, snatching her hand again before she can react. I'm excited! This is a huge breakthrough! How do I feel?

Holds-the-Fire's orange spikes at the contact, but fades back into a paler worry, along with black and some cautious threads of violet. She fights to gather a blue that won't come, but manages at least to smooth out her palette. Slippery? she finally says. Prickly but not painful, in lots of places.

Is that what it feels like when you're excited yourself? Chester asks.

No. she says, not quite able to hold back the rose pink of disappointment. When I am excited, I just feel excited.

Chester has to think about that one. Okay, he says. I've watched you make your wolves feel emotions that you're not feeling yourself. Like the 'calming-command' you tried on me when we were both freaking out. What does THAT feel like? What sensations are you pushing outward?

Holds-the-Fire stirs violet, but quickly deflates into the black of uncertainty. I cannot describe it.

Then do it at me, Chester says.

It won't work, she counters, with a tinge of bitter yellow.

That's not important. Chester tries to calm himself and looks her in the eyes. Trust me for a minute.

Holds-the-Fire lets out a sharp breath, shakes her head, then stares back at him, settling her swirling emotions down to brown determination. She extracts her hand from Chester's grasp, points it at him with fingers spread, and then waves of blue are lapping gently over him.

It still has no power to penetrate him, but this time, Chester closes his eyes and immerses himself in the sensation, bathing in the blue like a swimmer in a lake. He's never practiced feeling artificial emotions as purely as this moment requires—with Esau, familiarity meant an approximation was good enough to carry meaning, on the occasions the situation benefited from silent communication—but he can use Holds-the-Fire's effect as a crutch. He tells himself that everything is going as it should. He takes a deliberate breath, long slow in, long slow out, and grounds himself in that effort for a moment, letting go of his thoughts. And while he's at it, he untightens his muscles and leans back against the boulder.

What now? Holds-the-Fire black-says.

Chester opens his eyes and stirs himself the minimum possible to respond. "Feel my emotions," he says languidly, because speech takes less focus than projecting back at her.

Holds-the-Fire stares at him. Then she sighs pinkly. It's different. You—wait. A sudden violet spike, which brightens as she studies him. There is a moment, after I command the pack to calm, when I know it has worked. You feel like that moment.

Chester sits up, excitement stirring anew (immediately breaking her test sample… oops). "I saw that too!" he says. "When you projected blue at your wolves, I saw a flash of blue go back toward you. That's why it feels the same!" Possibilities start blossoming, and he reaches for the low-hanging fruit. "I'm excited again! Tell your wolves to get excited! Compare me against that!"

She's already violet herself, and in a moment, there's a surging wave of it heading out from her. A vibrant echo returns from the pack as the wolves sit up, wagging their tails. Then Holds-the-Fire yips, color intensifying. Eureka!

The next ten minutes are an excited blur of comparison and discovery, as Chester makes himself feel a range of strong emotions for her. Orange is trivial (allow himself to contemplate how much trouble he's in after that phone call), as is cream (think of his inadequacies which have countless times caused him to disappoint the Holy Mother). Violet and blue they've covered; purple (think of the unstructured time in the ashram when he could retreat to his room and paint) and green (Chester's unrealistic but fervent yearning for transcendence) come easily. Black is profoundly uncomfortable (letting himself stew in his doubts about the Holy Mother), and he finally has to admit he's incapable of working himself into red, but he does at least manage a pink (thinking about how aggravating it was that Celestia and Sunset and Twilight wouldn't give the Holy Mother the benefit of the doubt).

Then Holds-the-Fire asks for pack-sense. He has to ask for a demonstration to realize that she's referring to the cerulean of trust. And he finds that that comes with shocking ease.

He just takes Holds-the-Fire's hands, stares into her eyes, and smiles.

It surprises some part of Chester that he can trust Holds-the-Fire without hesitation—this strange girl literally raised by wolves, who's a known gun thief and (according to the magical talking unicorns, at least) a villain who invaded and laid waste to Twilight's home. But how can that be true? She's enlightened. Chester saw Holds-the-Fire's golden glow with his own eyes. The others were wrong about the Holy Mother, too; maybe they're working off of awful intel, or… well, it seems ridiculous to think that their villain-fighting was the world's most perfect con-artist scam, but he has to at least consider the idea.

Plus, in the short time they've spent together, Holds-the-Fire has been refreshingly free of guile. He doesn't understand the wolf things she does, but she's not doing any of the human ones that force him into the endless, exhausting social dances of people without color-sight. She decided to trust him, and then he was part of the pack, and everything she's done since has felt genuinely aligned with that decision.

Even more importantly, they've connected. Holds-the-Fire is an amazingly quick study, and now that she's cracked his color code, she's reacting instantly and instinctively to him in a way that he didn't realize he was missing—such as projecting a wave of blue and interposing herself whenever one of the wolves gets too close and spooks him, before he even has a chance to panic. He hasn't had someone feel him at that deep, instinctive level since Esau stopped talking to him, and it's like stepping outside for a breath of fresh air after being trapped in a moldy room for years.

Holds-the-Fire, too, is relaxing. Now that she can read him, she's no longer holding back, and that background orange wariness has evaporated bit by bit. She's been echoing his enthusiasm, cool colors dominated by a violet excitement that feels incredible to share. And now that they're standing together hand in hand, with Chester projecting a trust they both know is relaxed and sincere, there's a rush of deep blue rapport as she stares up into his eyes. And then she, too, shades cerulean—with swirls of green, a spike in pale orange nervousness, and subtle threads of a gorgeous cyan matching her skin.

Her blues and greens brighten. Chester feels his heart flutter, too, and every color intensifies as they stare at each other, silently confirming their respective readings. It must be as intoxicating for her as it is for him, skipping the hedging and dancing and probing and landing directly in an intimate certainty of mutual trust.

Holds-the-Fire steps in, her hands sliding up his arms and coming to rest on his shoulders. Their faces are close enough for him to scent her breath, sweet and acrid over the earthy musk of her body. Orange fear creeps into her outline, but she smothers it in pastel blue—and rocks forward onto her toes, mouth slightly agape, her eyes bearing into his.

Chester stifles the inner voice screaming reproach at him. He knows exactly what the Holy Mother would say about this, but how can following the lead of another enlightened being be wrong? He just needs to not push the moment beyond the platonic intimacy of Holds-the-Fire's vibrant blues, and leave the problem of later moments for later.

He reflexively rests his hands lightly above Holds-the-Fire's hips, closes his eyes, and parts his lips for a kiss.

Then he flails, eyes shooting open, as her tongue slips deeply past his teeth and licks the roof of his mouth.

Author's Note

This isn't suddenly getting horny, I promise, it's actual wolf body language. (So was, uh, the other thing.) For as quickly as they've found common ground, Chester still has an awful lot to learn.

Tune in Wednesday, Aug. 14, for "Taking His Licks"!

6. Taking His Licks

Holds-the-Fire's own eyes widen at his reaction, and she shoves herself backward, overbalancing both of them. Chester windmills, coughing, and sits heavily on the forest floor. Holds-the-Fire dances backward, yipping orange, and backward-rolls to a crouching stop, panicking enough for them both.

Chester blinks. The two lock eyes.

Then his chest shakes with laughter, and his lips follow. He can't help it. They're in unerring cosmic emotional sync and yet have no body language in common. It's perfectly ridiculous.

Holds-the-Fire is paralyzed for a moment, reading him, and then her own lilac flares, along with a vivid indigo of relief. She chuffs. Chester doubles over in laughter, and she goes bright blazing lilac, dropping to her knees and gasping for breath, and then they're helpless on the ground together, yaps and guffaws mingling in pleasant catharsis.

As the laughter subsides, Chester sits weakly back upright. "What was that?"

Holds-the-Fire sits up, too, her lilac receding into a pale violet curiosity riding a background muddy orange. I see I have learned nothing of human ways. Is that not how you express gratitude?

"That was way too intimate for gratitude," Chester says. He can see Holds-the-Fire shading into creamsicle, so he adds, "Intimate, like, um… a precursor to, ah, mating."

That muddy orange spikes to full vibrancy. I was just thanking you for your lessons! she protests… although some threads of olive green also stir, as some corner of her brain gets stuck on the idea. Tooth-licking has nothing to do with mate-pairing! It is an everyday gesture!

Chester, too, feels not-entirely-unwelcome feelings stir back up. But this time, he clamps a rigid cage down around them. The Holy Mother's teachings are very clear—thoughts of sex are a distraction from transcendence, only to be considered once already enlightened—and now that the intoxication of the moment has passed, doubts are creeping in. He wouldn't be delaying Holds-the-Fire's transcendence if she wanted to tease those mutual green-blues to life, but the Holy Mother already thinks dimly enough of his own spiritual journey, and maybe he should take some time to sort out the two enlightened beings' conflicting directions.

"I understand, but maybe we shouldn't lick each other just yet," he says reluctantly. "It might give me the wrong ideas."

Holds-the-Fire forces gray over a disappointed rose-pink as she, too, fights to tuck those green threads away. I understand, she finally gray-says, and then seems to have second thoughts. Green surges back, along with muddy brown pride, but she sits alone with those colors for a few moments, then licks her hand and uses it to smooth down her hair, letting the hues dwindle.

Chester finishes shoving his own intrusive thoughts back into the shadowy corners of his mind, then coughs into his sleeve. "Is this the same misunderstanding we had back on the boulder?" he asks, trying to break the conversational lull. "When I went limp and you, uh, startled me?"

Holds-the-Fire shades black as she thinks about that one. Perhaps, she says. At first we were just human-talking. But then you gave submission words, and a submission display. Then you would not let me accept it. Light violet and muddy orange mix. Is sniffing your tail-hole and under-tail also part of mate-pairing for humans?

Chester feels a flush rise to his cheeks. "You probably don't ever want to do anything with other humans', uh, tail-holes." He squirms. "Unless they ask. But, uh, if they do, that would be a mating thing."

Holds-the-Fire's face twists, and she tries to suppress ripples of creamsicle. Humans are weird. What have tail-scents to do with mating?

Chester holds up his hands. "Don't ask me."

She considers that, colors twisting, then lets them fade away back to light violet. So how do humans express gratitude?

"With words," Chester says.

Words? Holds-the-Fire peach-says. That is all?

"… Yes?" Chester responds. "Almost all human interaction is through words."

Holds-the-Fire stares at him, a dozen colors blurring together. That is sad, she finally says, with the swirling blue and yellow of sympathy.

"You'd be surprised," Chester says, a bit surprised himself. "You can say a lot more with words than you can with emotions. I could tell you were afraid earlier, for example, but it took words to help us understand how to make it better."

But you do not need to understand gratitude, she says. You need to feel it. Gratitude cannot be howled from a distant hill.

Chester… can see her point. There's a vast chasm between a perfunctory gray "thank you" and a sincere blue "thank you". He takes for granted the ability to tell the difference, to the point that there's always a part of him which wonders about the ones he hears over the phone. He understands that that uncertainty is how normal people feel all the time, and that's why they do their social dances. But people couldn't actually live that way, could they? Presumably they've got their own way to be certain, a way he's never had to learn and therefore can't explain.

"I'm sure it can," he says. "Otherwise people would do it differently."

Holds-the-Fire studies him, a thin black which resolves into the light violet of curiosity. You feel… doubt? she asks. They haven't covered that emotion, but she seems to have gotten enough data to calibrate the full spectrum.

Chester chuckles, caught out. "You got me. I'm sorry."

She smiles, with a smug streak of muddy purple, before tilting her head at him, her aura shifting briefly into caramel. Here, then. I will show you human gratitude and wolf gratitude, and you can understand how poor the human way is. A flare of lilac and faint orange, worry papered over with a joke: If it will not startle you.

Some part of Chester marvels that, for once, the idea of caramel as "planfeel" feels far more natural than "spyfeel". He's so used to the epiphanies of people trying to take advantage of him that the color feels manipulative by default. But Holds-the-Fire's version, threaded through with blue and a hint of light green, is different. Collaborative. Inviting.

There's no question that he wants to accept. But they just finished the conversation about giving him the wrong ideas.

He retreats into loquacity, as he sometimes does to give himself time to think. "That's a kind offer"—and still not unwelcome, though those intrusive thoughts are close to slipping their tethers—"though I don't know if it's necessary." Holds-the-Fire's ulterior motives are literally visible (and from the color, not primarily sexual). "So far every time we've tried to figure out any sort of physical contact between us, things have gotten weird." And if she's used to physical contact as a background part of everyday life, wouldn't that mean he's the one acting weird and distant despite everything she's done to make him a packmate? "I don't want more misunderstandings, so maybe we should stick to what we have now?" Fall back to safe ground, there will be time for explorations later, he hopes there will be time for explorations later… although given how the day is going, who knows how weird things could get? "And then there's that whole other thing where I immediately make assumptions about your tongue in my teeth"—wait, that was his outside voice, abort abort ABORT—"and, uh. Look, the Holy Mother, I, um, impure thoughts"—his colors right now must be as messy as Holds-the-Fire's; she's regarding him with black and cerulean and lilac swirling amid creamsicle, and a subtle but quickly growing brown resolve—"you're only the second transcendental being I've ever met and if I'm ever going to become worthy myself, I need to"—and she presses a finger to his lips.

Stop talking, she brown-says, and the machinery of Chester's brain seizes immediately.

He stares in silent rapture at Holds-the-Fire's fingertip on his nose, his world reduced to that single digit. Her flesh is warm against his. A little shiver passes through him. She lifts it away, and he remains motionless, mouth hanging open.

Holds-the-Fire leans in, pinning him with her eyes, and rests a hand on his shoulder. (Chester realizes that she's slowing down this time, gauging his emotions along the way, and although he's so bathed in awe as to render the gesture pointless, he still appreciates it.) Her nose brushes Chester's, and then he feels a gentle pressure on his lips, wet and warm, parting them and pressing against the front of his teeth.

She tilts her head, tongue lapping in and out, and her breath is hot in his mouth, and she leaves a foreign lubrication between his teeth and gums which tastes faintly of the sweetness and tang of rotting meat, with her tongue occasionally darting further forward and curling up around his incisors to flick against the roof of his mouth. It's intimate in a surprisingly platonic way, and disgusting in a surprisingly pleasant way, and she's practically glowing with pastel blue and violet, and he definitely likes that part the best.

She draws back, leaving her hand on his shoulder. As weird as the experience was, Chester immediately misses the departed tongue—then catches himself before that flaring desire can ignite a greater flame.

Well? she says—and from her still-vibrant glow of joy and trust, and her own stirrings of green, he knows that she knows exactly what he thought of it.

"Whoah," he breathes.

Better than human gratitude, she says in an all-too-smug muddy purple.

"You haven't done human gratitude yet," Chester says automatically.

Holds-the-Fire shades pink, and Chester immediately regrets sticking his foot in his mouth—his correction was a reflex, not a challenge. But her frustration is good-natured, very nearly purple, and the pink dissipates into that whimsy. I did say I would do both. Very well. Tell me the thank-you words.

"It, uh, goes the other direction," Chester says.

Her mood shades back toward pink. I cannot say thank you until I know your words of gratitude.

"But you just…" Chester starts, then trails off as he starts piecing it together. If Holds-the-Fire was raised by wolves, how could she speak human speech? Whatever lets her understand him, and telepathically communicate, must be poking their respective brains with pure meaning, in a way that he interprets as words. She wants to go all the way and say the words herself.

"Ohhh," he says, "I get it." He faces her squarely and looks in her eyes, speaking slowly and enunciating. "Thank you, Chester."

Holds-the-Fire suppresses a spike of orange with brown resolve as she balls her fists and takes a breath. "Fan kyu shess da," she says, stumbling parrot-like through the sounds. Her voice is husky yet melodic, and as she repeats the words like a mantra, it turns a gorgeous violet with overtones of pastel blue. "Fan kyu, Shess-da. Fan kyu!"

"Thank you," he repeats.

"Fank yu," she adjusts, and her thoughts press in on his mind again. Ches-ter is your name. So 'thank you' is your gratitude-words.

"Yes!" Chester says, nodding excitedly. Her violet-blue has spread to a full-body glow, and it's infectious. "Congratulations, you're learning how to human!"

Holds-the-Fire blazes purple and muddy brown for a moment, joy and pride. I suppose I am. Thank you. A swirl of contemplative dark purple takes her over. The human way feels better to say than I expected. But I think I still prefer the wolf way. And you?

Chester scoots over next to Holds-the-Fire, taking her hand again. "Honestly, what I like best is seeing you so bright blue."

Some part of his brain, he realizes to his surprise, has labeled that the changeling way. Is he so excited to be living in a world of magic that he has accepted the shapeshifting love-eating bug thing without reservation? Or maybe it's that—no matter how bizarre and uncomplimentary it is—he finally has a word, an explanation, for his and Esau's color-sight? Either way, he can no longer imagine himself in a world without the strange people who introduced him to the term, or the even stranger wolf-girl who, in her own way, is just like him, an outsider hiding in plain sight amid her people.

Her glowing colors acquire a sheen of purple, and she abruptly snuggles in against his chest, pushing him down to the ground and sprawling atop him. He struggles reflexively, and her teeth lightly dig into his throat—and he's about to start freaking out again when he realizes she's as happy as he's ever seen her, without even a hint of anything close to red.

She releases her bite, nuzzling and licking at the area, then leapfrogs over him and nips at him from a new angle, and he realizes: this is play-biting. It's adorable. It's the pure, vibrant joy of a puppy, and soon he's carried away by the blaze of her hues, laughing as he grabs and wrestles with her.

She soon has him thoroughly pinned despite his greater size, and starts vigorously licking Chester's face as he laughs, helpless. Then several other wolves dive into the pile, all wagging tails and enthusiastic yaps, and Chester is smothered in a mountain of fur.

Long minutes later—covered in wolf slobber and shed fluff, his saffron airport robes rather the worse for wear—Chester drags himself away from the center of the pack, sitting against a nearby tree and gasping for air. Holds-the-Fire wriggles free from a particularly intense play-fight, disengages, and scampers over to him, sprawling against his side as she catches her own breath.

You are right, she says—and despite her exhaustion, she's a vivid satisfied purple which is immediately joined by tendrils of cerulean and stirrings of green. Sharing instincts is the best way of all. That is what gave you the courage to enjoy the wolf way, and gave me the courage to try the human way.

Chester smiles and wraps an arm around Holds-the-Fire, letting his emotions do the talking for him.

Then he freezes. She's shading dirty yellow. He replays the last few moments, trying to determine how he messed up, but she's not pulling back from his touch, and the timing of her new emotion doesn't match anything he did.

She notices him noticing. The yellow drains into gray. I'm sorry, Holds-the-Fire says, sitting up and wrestling with pink.

"What?" he says. "Sorry for what?"

(At least it's not just Chester. One of the smaller wolves, tail wagging, lopes over to drag her back to where the younger wolves are still play-fighting. She flashes it a thin, watered-down yellow. The wolf echoes that same urine-like hue and veers away to rejoin its packmates.)

Nothing, she gray-says.

Chester frowns. It's clearly not nothing, he thinks at her, switching away from words for emphasis. I want to help. You want to treat me like a packmate? Tell me.

Holds-the-Fire fidgets for several moments, fighting off stirring orange, before responding. It has nothing to do with you, or pack, she yellow-says. Sometimes I am reminded of how much more I once could do.

Abruptly, she stands up and lopes back over to the boulder where they started, picking up the phone and the stolen rifle which were forgotten in the rush of emotional discovery. She returns to Chester, pressing both into his hands. Tools are a very different power, she says, yellow flaring anew. But I will master these.

Oh, right. The gun.

"Maybe," Chester says, trying to tamp down discomfort he knows she can now sense, "we should talk about what happened to your powers? I'm hardly an expert in, uh, magic, but—"

No, she interrupts, a sickly self-directed pink which she smothers underneath brown. The magic of tools is what cost me everything. So— her aura once more ignites into shimmering gold—it will be mine.

Chester swallows through a suddenly dry throat.

The two of them lock eyes for several moments. Holds-the-Fire's aura of transcendence fades away to peach, then creamsicle.

Why do you react with fear? she says, tilting her head and staring. You are pack. The more power I have, the more I can provide for you.

"I-it's nothing, Swamini-ji," Chester lies. It's the world's most stupidly pointless untruth, and it's abstractly fascinating to be in the position of telling it; he can't imagine how it could possibly help the situation, but years of living with the Holy Mother have conditioned it into him like a muscle reflex. He sets down the gun, thumbing the power button on his phone. "This is indeed a marvel of modern technology—"

Ches-ter, she pink-says, and even though the inflection is nothing alike, his terror spikes for a moment just at the similar cadence to the Holy Mother's reproach.

Then Holds-the-Fire grabs him roughly by the shoulder, bathing him uselessly in blue again, and the gesture prompts him to refocus into the moment. Ches-ter. Calm. Tell me.

He looks helplessly into the eyes of the girl the unicorns see as a villainess (a viewpoint he has at least acquired some context for). She's no longer projecting calm at him, but is still herself blue, a deep and protective hue which ratchets Chester's panic level down considerably.

He tries to remember the last time he saw that on the Holy Mother.

"The color," he starts, and swallows. "The color you were just now, when you talked about the gun."

Holds-the-Fire shades back to peach. What of it?

"That's the color of transcendence I mentioned earlier." His mind is racing overtime with what to say, because the question on his lips is unthinkable:

Was he wrong?

Chester had only ever seen it on the Holy Mother, and of course it was the color of ultimate transcendence, because that had been the one thing she had possessed which the rest of the world hadn't. Now that Holds-the-Fire can turn that color too, he both wants and needs to extend her that same assumption. And yet, both times he's seen it, she's been talking about the weapon she wants to learn how to use. It's hard to square enlightenment with a killing tool—and that behavior is textbook amber, base desire.

Except it isn't! They're gold, that doesn't just happen, he needs to accept that he doesn't understand the ways of enlightenment, that all of the terror the Holy Mother inflicts on him is just to keep him on the path—

I do not understand, Holds-the-Fire creamsicle-says, against a growing background of dark blue.

Chester's relief at that protective hue is basically infinite. If Holds-the-Fire were to turn out to be just another Chryssa-swamini, that would break him. He needs, more than anything, to know that if he ends up enlightened himself one day, that he can become a person he can still like.

… That goes beyond blasphemy into heresy. It's the ugliest thing he's ever let himself think about the Holy Mother, and not by a small margin. But now that thought is out in the open, he doesn't have the energy to deny it any more: he doesn't like Chryssa-swamini. If she was anyone else, he'd call her cruel.

Ches-ter? Holds-the-Fire prompts.

He looks up, blinking. She's the finely mixed blue and yellow of genuine concern.

"Holds-the-Fire, listen," he says, staring into her eyes and taking her hands. He's fighting down terror. (How could he not? He's holding his own base, flawed judgment above not one but two enlightened beings. But the only thought running through his mind is I can't lose her.) "I've seen that kind of desire only once before. I know the sort of person she is—what you might become if you let that desire define your transcendence." He glances at the gun. "Please don't."

She's both kinds of speechless for a moment. A mess of warring colors.

Then a gradually building orange and yellow: How could you say that? What I can do was not enough. Is not enough! She snatches her hands back and shakes them at him, limp fleshy digits. I have no claws! My teeth cannot tear! I must protect my pack and feed them! Without my crown, what choice DO I have but tools?

Uncertainty gnaws at Chester's gut. "I understand, but tools can enable the worst of humanity, too." A vivid image passes through his mind of Anton, screaming red and firing blindly. "Listen. What do you think this tool does?"

Holds-the-Fire crosses her arms tightly over her chest, her emotions receding into a stubborn dark brown. The fire-stick can kill at great distance. I watched the angry cow-man kill a deer which slipped past the fences to graze with the cows, and he wounded Howls-Off-Key the last time we stalked the cow herd. Why else do you think I want it?

To hear her admit it so openly takes Chester aback. "D-don't you think there might be better ways?" he stammers.

Of hunting? she gray-asks. Is the pack to graze on the grasses?

"No," he says. "Of dealing with… people. You said Anton shot one of your packmates. Wouldn't it be better if he never had the fire-stick… the gun… at all?"

Yes, Holds-the-Fire says, shifting to creamsicle as she struggles to see Chester's point. Which is why I took it.

"But he has other guns. You've seen that already."

Then it is all the more important I have this one, is it not?

"No!" Chester says, starting to get frustrated. "Because that means now you're going to settle your disagreement with guns! And more people will get hurt!"

Holds-the-Fire tilts her head, her earlier skeptical gray hardening. He is already using these… guns. What other response is there?

"You could talk it out," Chester says earnestly.

She chuffs, a dry lilac-gray. Is that humans' answer to everything?

Then she hesitates, her colors pinkening as she reads his reaction. Never mind, she says, deliberately muting her frustration and changing the subject. Tell me about your woman-box.

By now, Chester is wrestling more with guilt than with Holds-the-Fire—feeling like he has let her down despite steering her away from a path which leads only to ugly violence. At that request, though, his train of thought violently derails. "My what?"

Woman-box. She reaches out to him and takes the phone from his hand, then fiddles briefly with it until his lock screen comes on, a glamor shot of Chryssa-swamini sitting cross-legged in a tight golden dress which leaves little to the imagination. Holds-the-Fire turns it to him. You were holding it when I first met you. I figured out how to make the tiny woman come out of hiding, but she does not respond to anything I say.

Chester gently takes the phone back and stares at the image, not immediately replying. Chryssa-swamini's face is swirling up his earlier doubts again, and a new layer of guilt with them: is he going to mess up with Holds-the-Fire the same way he always has with the Holy Mother? What if he's overthinking this, and is merely dragging Holds-the-Fire away from her enlightened path with his weakness and naiveté?

Holds-the-Fire hesitates for a moment, then circles him and forces her head under one of his arms, staring at the phone along with him. Who is she? Your feelings toward her seem, she says with the mildest tinge of orange, complicated.

That draws Chester back into the moment. "She's…" he starts, then retreats into vagueness, not certain how to finish that sentence. "The one I mentioned earlier. Uh, a picture of her, anyway."

Pic-ture? Holds-the-Fire creamsicle-says.

Chester glances around for a stick—the gun is right by his side, but he doesn't want to touch that any more than he has to—and draws a tiny stick figure and a tiny stick wolf in the dirt nearby, keeping his other arm draped over Holds-the-Fire's shoulder. "Picture. Basically it's just a drawing, like this. Except the phone draws it in full color and captures every tiny detail." He pulls up the smartphone camera, takes a photo of a maple leaf, and hands the phone back to her.

Ah, Holds-the-Fire says, looking back and forth between the phone and the leaf, with violet excitement and some faint threads of green joining but not overwhelming a light violet curiosity. So there is no tiny woman? She is a regular-sized one, elsewhere?

"Yeah," Chester says, not at all enthusiastic about where this conversation keeps heading. But he figures that he should take his own advice and talk this one out.

He sighs and lets go of Holds-the-Fire, then stands up and climbs the boulder, motioning for her to follow. She tilts her head, light violet intensifying, and scrambles up the rock after him.

Chester reorients himself, finding the sharp, dark teeth of Blackrock Spires above the northern horizon. His eyes flick down from its peaks to the ashram on the mountainside.

Then he loses himself in staring.

How can the ashram—which has defined every part of his life for as long as he can remember—no longer feel like home?

Author's Note

Every AU Embrax fic is obligated by law to include its own spin on the pair's single best on-screen moment. Sorry, I don't make the rules.

Tune in Sunday, Aug. 18, for a glimpse at the past with "Canine, Ursine, Soldier, Spy"!

7. Canine, Ursine, Soldier, Spy

"C'mon, Saw! What animal are you going to be?"

Brother Esau, projecting pink in a pointless attempt to hide the stir of green, scrunched up his face. Possibly rolled his eyes a little. (Chester remembers, but through the haze of nostalgia.) "Do we really have to do this, Chess? It's silly."

Chester mock-pouted, playing along. That had always been their little ritual; he knew Esau loved their adventures, but he never let himself get dragged into pretend without making Chester "convince him".

"We play pretend all the time," Chester pointed out. "And you've never said it's silly."

Esau put up a front of muddy brown pride. "Yeah, but we're almost adults now. The Holy Mother said we need to stop being childish and focus on enlightenment."

"That's why we're playing jungle pretend," Chester explained, sweeping his arm grandly at the forest past the edge of the ashram compound. "We're gonna focus on enlightenment just like she asked! The Holy Mother herself was enlightened in the jungles of Elytra. If we're animals we can understand the jungle and figure out what she learned!"

At that, there was no disguising Esau's green, but nevertheless, he stood up to his full thirteen-year-old height and crossed his arms, towering over the eleven-year-old Chester. "You're just gonna get lost and she's gonna get angry."

"That's why you should come with me, then!" Chester grabbed Esau's arm and dragged him toward the woods. "Come on!"

Soon, they were scampering through the trees together, laughing, Chester veering every which way between awesome distractions—glistening spiderwebs and starburst flowers and boulders to scramble atop. Esau seemed content to float in the wake of Chester's boundless exuberance, and spent a lot of time glancing behind them, but had soon worked up a vibrant purple to match Chester's, checking out all his discoveries.

Suddenly, as Chester was leading them toward a fallen log over a shallow ravine, Esau went violet and pulled Chester behind a bush.

"What"—Chester started, then dropped his voice at Esau's frantic shushing—"what is it, Saw?"

Esau reached forward through the brush to push branches apart until they had a small peephole looking down the ravine. "Check it out," he whispered back, smug muddy purple overlaying the violet as he showed off his discovery.

Chester peered through, then gasped. A family of deer were chewing grasses in the middle distance, heads up and ears perked, soft brown eyes scanning the brush in their direction.

"That's soooo cool," Chester whispered back, then turned to Esau, unable to contain his grin. "I'm gonna be a wolf today! I'm gonna hunt them, and sneak up on them, and burst out of the bushes and pounce!" He turned around, without waiting for an answer, and snuck forward to the cover of a thicket in the deers' direction—dropping to a half-crouched hands-and-feet scramble, awkward and altogether too noisy.

From his new cover, Chester held his breath and listened, his pulse quickening with the thrill of the hunt. Deadfall snapped and brush crackled downhill. He risked a glance around the bush, only to see the deer staring directly at him and slowly backing away.

Undaunted, the mighty predator ducked back behind his thicket, then crept to its far edge—managing to keep the rustling underfoot much quieter this time. Obscured by long grasses, Chester left the thicket's cover and circled away from the ravine, spiraling in to approach the deer from the side. He paused behind much closer cover and reassessed: the deer were continuing to slowly back away, heads locked on him to track his motion, but like the canny hunter he was, he'd managed to close about five feet of the 50-foot gap between them. With cleverness and patience, he could—

The bush where Chester had started his hunt rustled, then parted like curtains being thrown open. Esau lumbered out from the brush in a stiff-kneed waddle. "GRAAAAAWW!" he roared in chestnut red-brown challenge. He threw his arms overhead, arching his back, fingers curled into claws.

The deer instantly bolted.

Chester stood up as the crashing noises from their panicked leaps receded through the forest, and turned to Esau, who was radiating a smug muddy purple. Despite his foiled hunt, Chester couldn't help but laugh. "What was that?"

"Mission success," Esau gloated, bright puce. He lowered his arms and crossed them triumphantly. "The mighty grizzly bear, king of the forest, has driven off the intruders to his domain."

Glad to see Esau fully getting into it, Chester didn't bother to correct that they were pretending to be in the jungle. "That's silly," he said. "You should have been hunting them, like me."

"Pff." Esau went lilac. "You were just gonna wimp out anyway."

"Nuh-uh!" Chester protested, feeling his face flush. "I'm a wolf today! I can too hunt!"

"No you can't. You even make me put spiders outside instead of killing them." That was an argument they'd had before, but Esau's colors were still lilac, merely teasing.

"Well, I thought you were okay with killing animals," Chester said, deflecting. "So you should be hunting."

"They're colorless, that's what they're for," Esau said, then went a confident brown. "But I'm not gonna today, because bears eat honey and berries and stuff."

Chester crossed his arms, savoring his chance to be the smug one. "Bears are om-nee-vores," he said, carefully pronouncing the word he had learned out of the textbook in the ashram library. "That means they eat those things plus also meat. You're totally a hunter."

Esau considered that for a moment, then flared lilac. "Well, then I guess it's a good thing I've got prey right here!" he shouted, lumbering at Chester with arms raised. "GRAAAAAWW!"

Chester scream-laughed, squirming away from Esau's lunging tackle and dashing through the woods with Esau at his heels. Esau, taller and faster, grabbed him again, but Chester managed to writhe out of the hold. He saw a boulder the height of his head and vaulted atop it. "Ha!" he crowed back at Esau. "I'm safe. Bears don't climb!"

Esau—his eyes level with Chester's ankles, within arm's reach—looked up, creamsicle. "What? That's not true. Where did you hear that?"

"It is too! Brother Bill said so last time he took us camping!"

"No he didn't," Esau pink-said.

"He told us about that time his friend had to sit in a tree overnight because of that pack of wild bears."

Esau went muddy orange, embarrassed for him. "Chess. That was wolves."

Chester paused. Had he gotten those confused again? Wolves and bears alike were giant fuzzy piles of nondescript woodland danger, without the grace to have color auras like people did—and since both of them had fur in brown, black and white, he couldn't even use that as a crutch.

He had mixed them up once in front of the Holy Mother, and after the sting of her laughter, had been second-guessing himself ever since. A few precious facts had managed to stick—like the fact that bears were the fat ones, which was why he had remembered that they were the omnivores—but for every detail he managed to sort out, three more blended together into a muddy misidentified mess.

"You hang your food from trees to keep it away from bears," Chester said defensively. That was another one of the ones he was pretty sure about. "That means wolves are the climbers."

"You hang it from ropes because if you just put the food up the tree, the bears could get it. Wolves can't climb, like, anything."

"I climbed up on the rock!"

"You jumped. That doesn't count." Esau turned to a nearby tree, running up the trunk with a brief burst of speed and jackknifing a leg over the lowest branch. He pulled himself up to straddle it and then lifted his feet onto the branch, standing and repeating the process with branches further up until he had laddered himself a good three body-lengths off the ground.

Chester sat down on the rock and slid back down the side to ground level, then dashed over to Esau's tree. By leaping, he could just barely get his hands around that lowest branch, but he struggled unsuccessfully to pull himself up with his noodly arms. He tried getting a handhold on the trunk and working his way up little by little, but the rough bark dug painfully into his hands and he quickly gave up.

"See?" Esau puce-said, leaning against the trunk from his high perch and languidly swinging his legs. "That's why I'm the bear. Wolves can't climb."

"Well, I'm the predator, and now I've got you trapped!"

Despite his boast, Chester was reduced to circling around the base of the trunk, rawring upward as Esau good-naturedly taunted him and occasionally threw pinecones.

Later—after Esau climbed down, and Chester led Esau in an unsuccessful attempt to track down the deer again, and they gave up and sat down on a fallen log to compare wolf and bear notes—Esau glanced around the forest. "It's getting late," he said, a bit of gray reluctance shading into his half of their mutual affable blues. "We should get back to the ashram before we miss dinner and the Holy Mother wonders where we went."

"Yeah," Chester agreed, allowing the moment to dampen his own mood. The jungle had seemed like a cool idea at first, but the shine of all the weird bugs and pretty flowers and whatnot had worn off over the afternoon without anything to occupy his color-sight, and he had to admit that he was approximately zero percent good at being an actual wolf. His stomach let out a low grumble. He was looking forward to dinner, and a soft bed, and getting back to his unfinished paintings.

He glanced around the forest. Nothing looked familiar. He felt worry creep in.

Esau shook his head, aura flaring lilac. "I knew it," he said.

Chester freaked out. (Only a little.) "Are we lost?" he asked, whirling around, trying to remember which direction they'd come from before sitting down to rest. "Are we going to die out here? I got us lost, they're never gonna find us, we're gonna die—"

"Chess," Esau interrupted, blazing midnight blue. "Chill out. This is why you brought me, remember?"

Esau took Chester's hand, smiled, then turned and led him home.

Esau abruptly sat up. "Stop," he pink-said. "You're doing it wrong."

Chester fidgeted guiltily. He had initially been elated that Esau was willing to play pretend again—and had even asked Chester to play, after nearly a year of dragging his heels on Chester's entreaties since their "jungle" trip—but from the start, Esau's green had been fading pinker and pinker, like shaving away the rind of a watermelon.

Esau's face—now sprouting a scattering of wispy hairs around the lip—was growing a scowl to match. For months, his voice had been shifting through that raspy transitional stage toward a lower register. His mood spectrum, too, had shifted—much quicker to warm colors, with the cooler ones rarer and more fragile. (If that was what becoming an adult was like, twelve-year-old Chester had decided, he was in no hurry to get there.)

"I'm sorry," Chester said reflexively, projecting as much earnest guilt as he could into his words and hoping that his cream color looked as pure as it felt. "What should I do?"

Esau stared at him and then sighed, his pink slowly draining toward a more disappointed rosy hue. "Do you even understand what a drill sergeant is?"

"Yeah, you said," Chester said. "I give you orders. Make you exercise."

Esau's pink flared up again. "So give me orders!"

"I did!" Chester protested. "You're still getting upset!"

A thread of red stirred around Esau. "Because then you ordered me to stop!"

"You were starting to struggle!" Chester said defensively. "You weren't enjoying it any more!"

"That's the point!"

Chester opened his mouth to respond, but Esau's colors jolted into peach alarm as a familiar pink voice cut in. "Boys," the Holy Mother purred—in that syrupy, melodic tone which too frequently preceded a sudden storm of red. "What's all this racket?"

They whirled to face her, Esau scrambling upright and both of them snapping to rigid attention.

"He's helping me train, Swamini-ji," Esau orange-said while Chester was still assembling a response. Esau hesitated for a moment, then added in a more controlled brown, "I thought about our conversation, and I decided. I want to be a soldier."

The Holy Mother's emotions crystallized briefly into violet. But maroon suspicion quickly overtook it, and she frowned. "Don't waste my time. You've already said you won't do a soldier's job."

"Then with all respect, Swamini-ji, I failed to explain." Esau's orange intensified as he moved over to crouch at her feet, and Chester stiffened as his own fear stirred up; this was coming uncomfortably close to directly challenging the Holy Mother's word. Regardless, there was a core of brown determination under Esau's fear, the same determination that had driven him to recruit Chester into his training.

"You explained perfectly well," Chryssa-swamini snapped, shifting to pink. "Because of the special way you see things"—that was delivered with tawny resentment and caustic voice—"you're too weak to kill."

"I… yes, Swamini-ji?" Esau stammered, his brown dissolving into creamsicle confusion as he glanced up at her. "But I didn't think—I mean—did you want me to?"

The Holy Mother spiked into muddy orange. Her eyes flicked around the room, at the dozens of devotees who were suddenly pretending to have no interest in the conversation. Then the hue exploded into muddy red outrage, so quickly and smoothly that if Chester hadn't been watching when the orange spike came out, he might have missed it.

"Of course not!" she shouted, drawing herself up to full height. "Where have you been picking up such heresies!?"

"Swamini-ji, I—" Esau orange-said.

"Shame on you, Brother Esau. We follow the path of love."

"Of course, Swamini-ji!" Esau agreed, colors dissolving into pinkish-yellow distress. "I was only saying, that's why we need soldiers! People standing in the dark to protect the light!"

"Something you are unwilling to do!" the Holy Mother red-shouted.

Chester's heart sank. He saw where this was going. When the Holy Mother started swerving like this, logic stopped mattering—only her being correct. Esau was only arguing himself further into a corner. And if Chester spoke up, he would make it worse.

Esau tried once more, regardless. "That's not what I said! Aside from killing I'll do anything!"

Chryssa-swamini's red spiked and ebbed. The hesitation this time was unmistakable.

"… Anything?" she maroon-asked.

Esau lunged for the opening. "Yes!" he pled, a bit of faint green stirring up. "Please! Let me show you!"

She studied them for several seconds, emotions muddying as she considered. Then, as she slowly nodded, her aura settled into a color Chester had only ever seen once before: a weirdly scintillating deep yellow.

… Gold?

Chester turned his head fractionally to catch Esau's eye. Given Esau's creamsicle, he wasn't the only one seeing it.

"I see," the Holy Mother said, sending ripples through that odd new color. It glistened as it moved, as if reflecting the light. "Then I'm glad you've finally decided to take your studies more seriously." For a moment a more familiar lilac took over. "Though it seems Chester here was your drill sergeant?"

Chester tried to ignore her silent laughter. "Yes, Swamini-ji."

"How pathetic." She stepped forward and gave Chester a rose-pink side-eye, then stepped up to Esau and brushed two fingernails lightly under his chin, colors passing through caramel before resettling back into languid gold. "You're lucky I'm here."

Chester and Esau's eyes flicked back and forth between each other and her. It wasn't entirely clear who she was addressing, or whether that had even been a question. And trying to interpret that new color at the same time wasn't helping.

Esau swallowed and broke the silence first. "Of course, Swam—"

Magenta abruptly shattered the Holy Mother's aura, and her face twisted into a snarl.

"BUT THIS ISN'T ONE OF YOUR GAMES ANY MORE, MAGGOT!" she interrupted at full volume. Esau flinched back, a distressed peach, and Chester heard the rustling of fabric as half the ashram turned to openly stare.

Esau's peach swirled as he made the same calculations as Chester—her magenta meant the Holy Mother wasn't actually angry, just enjoying his squirming a little too much. He swallowed, Adam's apple bobbing, and tried again. "I—"

The Holy Mother grabbed Esau under the arms, lifting and slamming him into the wall.

Esau spiked yellow as she shook him and magenta-screamed, face flushing. "THERE IS EXACTLY ONE THOUGHT IN A SOLDIER'S HEAD! AND THAT IS TO DO WHAT I WANT WITHOUT QUESTION OR HESITATION! UNTIL YOU CRAWL THROUGH TARTARUS JUST BECAUSE I POINTED DOWN, YOU ARE A LITTLE BOY IN A MAN'S UNIFORM! IS THAT CLEAR?"

"Yes, Swamini-ji!" Esau shouted back, fresh orange obscuring his pain. She shook him hard again, sending his arms and legs ragdolling around.

Chester stared, frozen in terror. He had never seen Esau's panic so vivid, either. Even if she wasn't angry, neither of them had expected the Holy Mother to hurt Esau, and it wasn't at all clear how far this would go. But what could Chester do?

"WHAT'S WRONG? ISN'T THIS WHAT YOU WANTED, LITTLE MAGGOT?"

"No—I mean, yes—"

"NO? DO YOU DESERVE ANYTHING BETTER?" The Holy Mother's magenta was almost unnaturally bright, making it hard to see much else.

"Ye—no—" A flare of yellow erupted through Esau's orange as she slammed him to the wall again. "Aah!"

At Esau's cry of pain, all the fear and horror inside Chester crystallized. "Stop!"

She did, her magenta distorting into peach. And the room went dead silent, aside from a few muffled gasps in the background.

The Holy Mother slowly turned her head toward Chester, deep red boiling up like a summer thundercloud. Her face split into a broad smile. "I'm sorry," she red-asked, tone dripping in honey, "was that an order, drill sergeant?"

"S-Swamini-ji, I, ah," Chester stammered.

Suddenly, this was real trouble. He had seen her this furious once or twice, but never at him.

"Why would you ask me to stop?" she red-asked, voice high and innocent. "Did I do something wrong? Are you better at this than your enlightened mother?" Her smile grew a predatory edge. "Or, perhaps, is your brother not cut out to be a soldier?"

Chester let out a deflated squeak, then swallowed through a dry throat. His brain locked up. It was bad enough that his profane arrogance had provoked the Holy Mother's wrath—but now his screw-up was about to destroy Brother Esau's dream, too.

Esau locked eyes with Chester, a sudden surge of dark blue protectiveness flooding into his bright orange. "Swamini-ji, it's all my fault," he blurted out. "A soldier has to be able to endure anything, I understand that, but he doesn't, and I dragged him into this—"

"And a good soldier wouldn't have any say in this," the Holy Mother snapped, whirling her head back to Esau. Her face twisted into grim ferocity for a moment, and then the smile returned. She set Esau down and gave Chester a broad, mocking bow. "So let's see how a real drill sergeant handles the situation."

She stepped back, leaving Chester and Esau face to face.

Esau took a deep breath, sparks of yellow bursting around him as the ribs where he'd been picked up twitched. He locked eyes with Chester. His aura whirled with uncertainty for a moment… and then settled into a grim khaki, still threaded through with dark blue.

It was a silent plea. I can take it, the colors said. Push me harder than she did. Hurt me more. Chester broke eye contact for a moment to glance at the Holy Mother, whose red was beginning to sprout anticipatory blotches of magenta. Chester knew Esau saw it, too: she wanted to see someone hurt, and Esau was begging for it to be him.

But that was unthinkable. Chester was responsible for this mess.

He steeled himself, swallowing again as he fought for words. "B-brother Esau," he started, voice cracking, "what is a soldier's one job?"

Esau shot to attention, straightening to full height. "Doing what the sergeant wants without question or hesitation, SIR!" he shouted back, smothering his orange in layers of brown determination.

"And a sergeant's job," Chester shot back, raising his voice, "is giving orders in line with the will of the Holy Mother!"

Esau hesitated, fractionally. The improvised line sounded like it was playing along with the plan, but he must have caught something of Chester's intentions from Chester's sudden resolve. "I… of course, SIR!"

"So you're going to punish Brother Chester for his insolence!" Chester shouted, shifting his stance to widen his legs. "I order you to kick him in the junk as hard as you can."

Esau wilted, a wave of yellow and cream and peach battering away his brown. He glanced back at the Holy Mother uncertainly. At his hesitation, her smile spread wider, magenta eagerly blazing back in to wrestle her red into submission.

Chester could see Esau's inner turmoil as they both came to the same conclusion. Asking for Esau to hurt him was intensely unfair, but the Holy Mother's anger evaporating was a chance neither of them could turn down.

Esau set his jaw, muting his emotions into a drab brown. Chester braced himself, giving Esau the tiniest of nods to go along with the resolve he hoped he too was projecting. Esau turned squarely back to Chester, a spark of apologetic cream bursting and dying away.

His leg shot out.

Fireworks exploded through Chester's vision, leaving behind only static. He sank to the ground, whimpering and balling up.

As his vision slowly cleared, the Holy Mother was standing over him with crossed arms—violet threads floating in an intense magenta. "I didn't think you had that in you," she purred. "Your arrogance was unforgivable, but at least you've learned something today."

"Th-thank you, Swamini-ji," Chester forced out, tears streaming down his cheeks.

"And you." She turned to Esau, and the ominous weight of her attention on Chester suddenly evaporated. "Jumping jacks, as fast as you can without stopping, until you vomit. Then one hundred push-ups. Then clean the floor and go peel all the dinner potatoes."

"Of course, Swamini-ji," Esau said, and began vigorously jumping.

Without another word, the Holy Mother wheeled and strolled away.

By unspoken agreement, they didn't discuss the incident until they were in the vegetable garden the next day. There was no way to have a private conversation in the children's dormitory, and Chester had long since learned to minimize discussion about their vision around the other devotees—one such conversation had ended up with weeks of chartreuse stares, endless whisper campaigns, and a lecture from the Holy Mother about hampering the others' path to enlightenment by provoking jealousy.

"That color," Esau said, a pale orange as his eyes flicked around the ashram grounds. There were others outside, but not close enough to hear. He put on some gloves and crouched down where a young thistle was growing among the carrots. "You saw it too."

Chester nodded, digging around the stem of a nearby bindweed to expose its roots. His own fear was probably more thickly layered—the last time he'd seen the gold was a memory best left buried—and he silently prayed Esau wouldn't press him on it. "What do you think it means?" he asked, deflecting the conversational momentum.

"Well"—Esau's orange intensified, with an undercurrent of guilty cream—"if it had been a golden shade of regular yellow, that would have been greed. But…"

"But that's not what we saw," Chester finished for him. "It was sparkly. Shiny."

"An enlightened emotion." Esau struggled to flatten his emotions into brown, but couldn't keep black threads of doubt out.

Chester knew that was correct. But that black gave him silent permission to voice his own doubts.

"But she hurt you!" Chester said—then glanced around at Esau's warning hiss, and lowered his voice. "I know Swamini-ji's enlightened, but you have to admit, even she's not completely immune to base emotions."

"She has to use base emotions, when we force her to," Esau reminded him. That, at least, was doubt-free; both of them had heard over and over again how fraught the path to enlightenment was, and how much pain the Holy Mother suffered every time her beloved children strayed from the path. Every time they failed her, she was disappointed at them, ashamed of them. But she put so much effort into them regardless.

"And if she's the only one who can be gold…" Esau's doubt crept back in as he continued. "Well, then, it has to be an enlightened emotion, doesn't it?"

After the previous day, that wasn't sitting well with Chester, either. But he'd twisted himself in knots trying to reach another conclusion, and hadn't had any better luck.

"I just don't understand how that would work," Chester said, teasing the bindweed out of the earth. "Enlightened greed?"

"Well, of course we wouldn't, we're not enlightened," Esau said, briefly flaring pink as he pointed out the obvious. But after a glance at Chester, he sighed, washing that out in a protective dark blue. "Chess. Just think about it like… she took that base emotion and purified it. Redeemed it into something noble. It's a thing she wants—but she wants it because it's what's best for us."

They pulled weeds in silence for several moments. Chester deliberated.

Esau sighed. "Out with it."

Chester looked down, not meeting Esau's eyes. "… I… just, with the way she hurt you, I'm not sure that it is best."

Esau nodded, a sober gray-brown. "Yeah, I wasn't ready for that either, yesterday. But this morning, she talked to me. Said I've got great things ahead of me. She wants me to succeed. Said I won't know what I'm capable of until she pushes me past my limits."

"What was she?"

"Gold. And a little worried. But mostly gold." Muddy orange guilt swept through Esau's aura. "And… she asked me if I trusted her."

Chester winced. It was an excessively dangerous question, and they both knew the correct answer by heart. "We don't have any business being here if we don't."

"Exactly." Esau finished pulling out the thistle and sat back, the gray-brown reappearing and then strengthening into a purer resolve. "I can't let her down on this." His voice softened, though the colors didn't. "And I don't want to."

Chester nodded. Then he noticed the threads of yellow creeping in, and his heart sank.

"What is it?" he asked.

This time it was Esau who couldn't look at him as the pain fully flooded in. "That means no more pretend."

Chester had been bracing for that, but his gut still twisted. "Of course, Saw, if that's what I have to do to help—"

"Not what I meant," Esau yellow-said, raising his voice to interrupt. "No more pretend for me. Being a soldier means I have to start acting different."

"Okay," Chester said. That was still disappointing, but it wasn't nearly as bad as he'd feared. "At least we can still hang out."

Swirls of orange and dark blue mixed into Esau's yellow, and his eyes flicked around the grounds again. "Of course," he said quietly. "Whenever I'm not working with the Holy Mother."

It took Chester a moment to parse the disconnect between words and emotions—and then he tensed. It was a warning. Esau couldn't tell Chester to stay away, but it was a hint that he was no longer safe to talk to. If the Holy Mother went digging for Chester's sins, she would naturally ask Esau; and the closer a devotee was to her, the less tolerance there was for anything less than total honesty. Esau would have to start volunteering everything he knew about Chester, down to the most trivial of errors which might previously have escaped her notice.

Esau, staring at Chester, shifted toward an indigo shade of relief. Chester wasn't sure what mixture of emotions he himself was projecting, but it was apparently enough to confirm the message had been received.

"See you around, then," Esau said. He stood up and walked away.

Chester had been afraid, as usual, when the Holy Mother had called him in for a private meeting. But when Chester had arrived, she had been shining a languid gold, reclining on her lounge chair and idly browsing through some Bittish gossip magazine.

"You've been play-acting at being a spy again," she said without preamble, flipping a page and reading on.

Chester deliberated for a moment. She did this on occasion—opened conversations with an incriminating fact, forcing the devotee into an admission or a denial before they could get a word in edgewise. Usually, this was one of the games he excelled at; the Holy Mother was rarely subtle about her emotions, and it wasn't difficult to figure out whether she was looking for an admission of a sin she knew, or on a fishing expedition.

The gold, though, threw this into unfamiliar territory. Chester hadn't seen that color on the Holy Mother since the Soldier Incident a year ago. Her golden glow against the backdrop of her oversized black wicker chair gave her the aura of a queen bee, and he felt like an insect risking the provocation of a quick and painful sting.

Chester decided the safest path was admission. It seemed to have worked out well enough for Esau, even if they'd barely talked in a year.

"Yes, Swamini-ji," he said, trying to strike a balance of sounding ashamed but not too regretful. Playing pretend was technically a sin, a distraction from enlightenment, so he couldn't afford to treat his admission casually; but given her apparent desire, if he groveled too much, he was just going to annoy her. "I… might have found that Chet Land novel someone left in the reading room."

The Holy Mother nodded and flipped another page. (Apparently, he had assessed correctly.) "Are you any good at it?" she gold-said.

That question, on the other hand, he had no idea how to answer.

The truth was no—Chester's stealth skills were on par with his wilderness navigation, and the frequency with which Chet got into gunfights left Chester unsettled. And with Swamini-ji, sticking to the truth was often safest, but that felt dangerous here. If gold really did mean enlightened desire, then shooting down those desires was only going to get her angry.

"I hope so, Swamini-ji," he said, hoping she would let him get away with a non-response.

Pink destabilized her gold, and she looked up from her magazine. "Hmn," the Holy Mother said, a frown creasing her face. But, after a few agonizing seconds, she went back to reading. "So do I. It's about time you started making yourself useful around here."

Chester knelt at her feet, bending low and touching his nose to the ground. A little groveling probably wouldn't hurt. "I live for the path of enlightenment, Swamini-ji."

"You really don't," she said, although the pink behind the sentiment was mild, perfunctory. "You've been here a full decade and yet you're the furthest being from enlightenment I've ever met. I don't know why I even bother. But I'm giving you yet another chance you don't deserve." She flipped another page. "Brother Bill is acting strangely. You will find out why. And if Brother Bill finds out you're spying for me…"

The Holy Mother suddenly snapped her magazine closed, leaning forward and looking into Chester's eyes. Her pink darkened into a predatory magenta, and her lips curled into a toothy smile.

"How does that exploding tape in the movie go? 'If you're caught, the Secretariat will deny any knowledge of your existence.' I'd like you to think what the enlightenment equivalent of that might be."

Chester, already in full grovel mode, began to wish he had held something back so that he could go deeper. "Y-yes." He swallowed through a dry throat. "Swamini-ji."

The Holy Mother's eyes bore into his. She drew the moment out, staring in silence.

But finally, she reclined again, a golden shimmer re-overtaking her sated magenta. She reopened her magazine.

"I look forward to your discoveries," she said.

And if that gold was any indication, she meant it.

Author's Note

So, funny thing ...

When I was setting my publication schedule, part of why I settled on twice per week was that I'd be leaving for Everfree NW with Chapter 10 as the most recent one published. This would have been fitting for reasons I'll explain once we get there. But somewhere I seem to have miscounted by a week. :applecry:

It's a little late to gracefully speed things up to make that happen anyhow, but I'll do the next best thing. We'll drop three chapters this week, instead of two, and so we'll reach Everfree on the Chapter 9 cliffhanger and I'll get to publish 10 on Sunday morning during the con.

So, look out for new chapters this week on Tuesday and Thursday. Return to the forest on Tues., Aug. 20, for "Miss Fire"!

8. Miss Fire

What are you looking at? Holds-the-Fire asks, squinting as she gazes with Chester toward the distant dark teeth that are the Blackrock Spires' namesake.

Chester sighs, his thoughts returning to the present.

He points to the tiny cluster of dots lower on the mountainside. "Do you see those buildings? I live there with the woman from the picture, and the other devotees. Her name is Chryssa-swamini. The Holy Mother. She's… my pack leader, I guess you'd say, but more than that. She guides us all on the path to enlightenment." He doesn't wait for Holds-the-Fire to ask for clarification on that one. "Understanding ourselves and our existence. Conquering our base desires so we can live free of pain and sorrow. Shaping ourselves into perfect humans—or transcending humanity."

Holds-the-Fire's hand creeps to the base of her throat, as if on reflex, as she shades toward faded yellow. I understand that, I think, she says. I, too, used to have something which made me a perfect wolf.

Chester sighs. "But I'm beginning to think her version of perfect and mine don't look a lot alike. The way that you feel about guns, the way you think when you want them, she feels about… a lot of things. Maybe kind of, um, not-great things. Including the, uh, cow-man who fired the guns at you."

Then I think I do not like her very much, Holds-the-Fire says, though the statement's lack of red marks it as a mere observation.

Chester winces. "A lot of people feel that way."

In that case, why do you not challenge her right to rule the pack? Holds-the-Fire asks, shedding her pain for a light violet curiosity as she changes the subject.

"Me?" Chester blinks and turns to her. "No! I'm not enlightened."

Why would that matter, if her pack will not support her?

"But they will," Chester says. "People leave her pack all the time, if they can't put up with what she has to do to keep us on the right path. But we find new believers for her pack all the time, to replace the ones who threaten her, or betray her, or the ones who try to buy their way to enlightenment but don't have the right mindset, or the ones who don't believe in her enough to devote everything to her." He hangs his head, staring at the buildings. "I… think I'm starting to not believe."

Then leave, and lead your own pack. Holds-the-Fire tilts her head, violet darkening. Surely THAT cannot work differently for humans, can it?

"Nobody would follow me," Chester says defensively. "The Holy Mother's, um, pack are all there for enlightenment. I'm not enlightened, so I've got nothing to offer them."

Ches-ter, Holds-the-Fire says with lilac-tinted pink. She pokes him in the side, then turns her head and yaps. There's motion from the surrounding woods as the lounging wolfpack scrambles to their collective feet and closes in around the boulder, tails up and languidly wagging. No color is exchanged, and Chester realizes that was very much deliberate; the wolves came at her request, not at her manipulation.

My pack knows my teeth are not the sharpest nor my legs the fastest, Holds-the-Fire says. But they trust me, because I find good prey and comfortable sleep-hollows, and I have other ways to provide for them when prey is scarce. Even if your… Chris-sa… is strong enough to deter a direct fight, she is still vulnerable to challenge. Many already leave her pack, which means she does not provide.

"Did you, uh, miss the part where I'm not capable of challenging her?" Chester says, his concern quickly growing.

Holds-the-Fire fixes him with a brown stare, and gestures down off the boulder at the enormous blue-gray wolf who looks like he could swallow Chester in two bites. Did you think I won my challenge against Father with tooth and claw? I proved my right to lead by showing that I could better take care of us all. She spreads the fingers of one hand and presses them lightly against his chest. Even the short time I have known you has made it obvious that your heart is full of an endless desire to give, and to keep from harm. If you would learn to assert yourself as a leader, you would see how valuable that is.

That is, by no small margin, the nicest thing an enlightened being has ever told him.

He wants to believe it. He tries to believe it. But a lifetime of lectures is screaming his inadequacy at him.

"Look," Chester says, struggling to ignore the memories and keep his rising unease down. "It's more complicated than that."

As she senses his emotional shift, Holds-the-Fire's stare silently shades to the rose pink of disappointment. Of course it is, she says. She vaults off the boulder—sending a few wolves scattering away from her path—and snatches the rifle off the forest floor, beckoning him back to ground level. For you. But it is that simple with wolves, and I must provide for my pack.

A stirring of shimmering gold—which Chester is starting to regret ever seeing—curls around Holds-the-Fire's edges, but mercifully, this time it's intermingled with a purer green, an earnest yearning to be the leader her wolves deserve.

I am not your Chris-sa and I will not make her mistakes, Holds-the-Fire says, that intertwined pair of desires complicating the declaration. Now. Help me.

Fear curdles Chester's stomach. But that was a direct request, and he's not sure he can put this off any longer.

He sits on the edge of the boulder, sliding down more carefully this time. He deliberates for a few moments. Then he walks over to Holds-the-Fire and gingerly takes Anton's rifle from her hands, his adrenaline ratcheting up as his hands close around the textured wood of the… grip? (He doesn't actually know what the narrow part behind the trigger is called; his entire experience with firearms has come from TV shows, action movies, and Chet Land and Tennessee Walker novels. It does look kind of grippy, though.)

It's Chester's first time ever holding a gun, and it's as awful as he had ever imagined. There's a weight to it, an ugly density, that feels like an anchor dragging his soul to Tartarus. The idea of putting a bullet into a person, turning them from a vibrant color source into an unresponsive object, is—and always has been—a source of blind existential terror. (Even the idea of Holds-the-Fire using it for hunting makes Chester queasy. Despite animals being colorless, he has always felt they deserve to be thought of like people.)

On the other hand, all his training tells him he should just do as she asks. She's the golden one; if she thinks killing is enlightened, he has no right to question anything she says. Not to mention the wolves—they have to hunt to survive. Refusing to help her might doom everyone she cares about.

But she also just told him to be more assertive…

"Listen," Chester says, through a dry throat. "I want you to make me a promise." He keeps his eyes locked on the gun, barreling forward before she can interrupt, and before he looks at her and loses his nerve. "You're right, you have a pack to hunt for, but killing someone is a move you can't ever take back. And you don't understand how complicated things get when you use guns. They're huge trouble in the human world. So…"

Chester hesitates. Don't use guns on people? But what if Anton rampages into the woods to murder her and he has removed Holds-the-Fire's only means of self-defense? And he doesn't think she'll agree to that anyway, but he needs to say something. So he lunges for the first alternative that comes to mind: "Promise me you'll never point a gun with any anger or pain in your heart. You want this to help your pack, right? So you should only point a gun when you know, with a clear mind, how it benefits them."

There's no immediate answer, so Chester looks up. His heart stops. Holds-the-Fire is staring up at him with barely restrained pink, her fingers curling into fists.

"See, like, um, right now," he squeaks. "This would be a bad time for you to have a gun."

Holds-the-Fire steps into his personal space, opening her mouth and curling her lips back. Her teeth aren't the jagged fangs of her packmates, but the gesture is nonetheless intimidating—even without the ominous backdrop of that pink shading into an exasperated pastel red. Ches-ter. I am TRYING to do this your way. But I took you as pack, and with that comes responsibility. You are finding every possible manner of avoiding it.

He swallows, "Because it's a bad idea. I've told you why it's a bad idea."

Why won't you just teach me? she says, that terrifying red slipping even further toward pure anger. This has NOTHING to do with emotions! EVERYTHING I do is for my pack!

"I'm not disputing that!" Chester blurts out, his will to fight crumpling. He thought that his principles were important enough to stand up to her red, but he hates, hates, hates knowing he has upset people—and, more importantly, knowing he has upset her, this impossible enlightened color-sensing kindred soul. He takes a step back and promptly smacks into the boulder.

She steps forward, staying in his personal space, and he desperately retreats into justifying himself. "But when you're upset you can make bad decisions that seem like good decisions at the time! Like asking Esau to help you tell the Holy Mother she should treat people better—" Chester shrieks and raises his hands on reflex as she raises her arms.

Holds-the-Fire lunges for his wrists, slamming them to the stone by his shoulders. He drops the rifle, which bounces to the ground at their feet, and for a moment blind panic grips him—but Holds-the-Fire seems much more interested in him than the gun.

Then she leaps, forcing Chester to bear her full weight, and the conversation vanishes into a one-sided fight. She roughly kicks out one of his knees and twists their bodies as he topples, slamming him onto his back. Chester yelps and does his best to ball up, his arms still in her iron grasp.

As he struggles, visions of being torn apart by wolves dance through Chester's terrified mind, and he glances around at his approaching doom. But the other wolves are merely watching with distant interest. Like… he did something that came across as a challenge, and they're observing how their leader fends the challenge off. Some tiny part of Chester's mind consoles him that at least he's getting a crash course at thinking like a wolf.

Wait.

He throws out a wild guess as Holds-the-Fire slams him flat again and pins his chest with a knee. "Or like challenging your father when you weren't ready to lead the pack yet!" Ooh, old yellow as she hesitates, that one hit home. He pushes that button further before he loses the opening. "You didn't figure it out right away, because you tried for so long to be a regular wolf just like the rest of them. But what makes you a good leader is that you're smart."

You don't know what it's like to lead a wolfpack! Holds-the-Fire shouts, her earlier rage bleeding off into cream. It doesn't MATTER that I'm smart! Smart isn't what makes a good wolf! I don't have that luxury!

"But you didn't win your challenge by being what everyone else thinks is a good wolf. You won it by fighting smart." And, wow, that got her yellow blazing, but at least it's not rage. "So I think that being smart also makes you the best wolf you can be." He wheezes as her knee presses down, but manages to add: "Please. Be smart and listen."

Holds-the-Fire stews in her yellow and cream for a moment, then abruptly eases off the pressure on his chest. She sits back against the boulder, balling up and hugging her knees, her guilt strengthening in hue but fading in intensity. That self-directed yellow starts to develop notes of muddy orange as Chester tentatively sits up.

A few of the wolves circle in. She flares a pulse of un-echoed brown at them—reasserting command?—then gray disinterest, which they do echo before returning to their distant sprawl. Then she glances back at Chester, and cream-says: I'm sorry.

Chester's anxiety begins to untwist. For long moments, as he gasps for breath, neither one of them says anything.

He scoots over bit by bit to sit next to Holds-the-Fire again, making certain as he goes that he's not provoking any warm colors. "It's fine," he says cautiously. "You've got to be under a lot of stress with your responsibilities."

That is not it, Holds-the-Fire says, low-intensity pinks and reds returning—but, thank goodness, clearly not aimed at him. I never should have NEEDED to fight smart. But when I lost everything, I had no choice but to copy Ember's tricks. That anger begins to bleed away into tawny yellow. At first I was proud, when I took fire from the humans.

She fumbles through the furs at her waist, where Chester hadn't realized she had crafted a little pouch, and pulls out a dirty, scuffed metal square. It takes Chester a moment. Then his eyes widen. It's a lighter.

I thought I could become a greater master at her own powers than she was. But my fire is beginning to die, and I have no replacement for it, and I have begun to realize how little I know. Her colors drain away into a depressed white. If you will not help me with the gun, soon I will have only broken tools which do nothing, and my smarts will count for nothing.

Chester holds out his hand for the lighter. This, at least, he can help with; it's basic Colt Scout stuff. "May I?"

Holds-the-Fire blazes out into warring green and orange—then slams gray down over both. She studies him for a moment. Chester tries to project helpfulness, curiosity, gentle resolve.

Their eyes meet. Holds-the-Fire lets out a breath. She looks down, emotions still locked behind an iron gray wall. Then she presses the warm square of metal into his palm, her hand trembling.

Chester thumbs the lighter open, then flicks the wheel. A few sparks flare to life, but no flame.

See? Holds-the-Fire says. I can still use the spark to ignite dried moss, if I am cautious, but it does not burn as it used to.

He gently works the innards of the lighter out of its metal casing, then upends it and sniffs the packed cotton inside the reservoir. "Well, there's your problem, it's dry," he says, then hurriedly adds: "Not water. Lighter fluid. A special, uh, fire-liquid humans make. If you come with me closer to town, I can go buy some for you, and all you'll need to do is fill it up whenever it starts doing this."

Holds-the-Fire's rush of violet dissolves into muddy orange embarrassment. It is that simple? Pour fire-liquid in?

"Nothing is simple when it's new," Chester says consolingly, fingers fumbling as he reassembles the lighter. "Look at what you've had to teach me about being a wolf."

She rewards him with a ripple of purple, which subsides to a vibrant pastel blue as she leans in and presses her head to his shoulder. You do not understand how much this means. Thank you.

Chester thinks maybe he does, given Holds-the-Fire's very name, but he just smiles and basks in that blue, pocketing the lighter so he can circle an arm around her back to hold her.

Guilt begins to gnaw at him as they sit together, though. No wonder she was so desperate about the gun, if this is the sort of basic issue she's been struggling with. To not even understand how a lighter works…

Wait.

Chester's brain derails as something Twilight said hits him between the eyes. "It controlled instincts. Meaning it also made brains shut up…"

Was the Wrong in the fog-world, that blood-red gemstone monster, some remnant of the Bloodstone Crown?

On its face, the idea quickly hits contradictions—Holds-the-Fire is almost terrifyingly smart, and if the mind-destroying Bloodstone Crown was still active, then she wouldn't understand lighters but she also wouldn't have picked up everything he taught at nearly instant speed. But the one thing the blood-red monster had said was "Fix me". Meaning: The working bloodstone was once holding her back, but now it's broken and can't any more. And even the smartest person in the world, with a newly liberated mind, would struggle trying to understand technology from a cold start.

Part of him protests that the bloodstone thing is entirely unnecessary to explain Holds-the-Fire's issues. But now that Chester's brain has seized on the idea, he can't let it go—because it takes an enormous step toward explaining his insane, terrifying experience in crazy fog-world. And dropping that piece into his mental map sends a wave of other implications crashing down like falling dominoes.

Fact: There's a chance Holds-the-Fire isn't actually a villain.

If the Bloodstone Crown drove her crazy and suppressed her intense intellect, she wasn't herself when she attacked Twilight. No wonder Twilight's experience with her was so incredibly different from his own! He needs to broker some sort of cease-fire and get them talking. Help Twilight see this amazing girl for who she really is.

Fact: The Bloodstone Crown isn't entirely inert.

The one downside of the bloodstone theory is that it means admitting that Holds-the-Fire could pose a renewed threat, if that gemstone monster inside her ever gets fixed and wakes back up. That means she needs ongoing help—keeping her brain engaged, keeping instinct from taking her over.

Chester's heart leaps at the thought that the time he spends with her might be the core of her redemption. Then he catches himself. No. Rein that in. As amazing as that fantasy is, if he lets base desire drive his decisions he's going to mess this up, like he has over and over again with the Holy Mother.

Fact: She's still using, in some small way, the bloodstone's powers.

… and that one stabs him in the gut to admit. "Crown-talking" is exactly what gave them common ground, and he just pushed her into exploring it deeper. This, he realizes, is why he can't base his decisions on fantasy—it's possible he's making her worse with every conversation they share.

But what can he do about that? Unless she learns spoken language—and no matter how smart she is, that might take years—he has no way to help her engage her brain without communicating.

But he can get her to be more human. Use more tools.

… and that's a very compelling reason to help her with the gun, isn't it. If she can hunt with nothing but tools, her incentive to use the bloodstone for her pack evaporates.

Ches-ter? Holds-the-Fire light-violet-says while he's wrestling with that. You have been deep in think-feel for some time.

He blinks and reorients. She's staring up at his face, that hue of curiosity strong and holding. A tiny voice whispers to tell her everything so they can mutually sort it out, but… that's a lot. That's a whole lot, and maybe he's wrong, and the idea of upsetting this fresh, perfect connection with terrifying half-baked theories makes him queasy.

So he doesn't evade the question, exactly, but he skips to the end.

"Listen," he says, "I'm sorry about making the gun thing such a production."

Several conflicting colors swirl through Holds-the-Fire's blue; she draws back to look into his eyes, and they resolve into a cream matching his own guilt. No, she says, you were right. I have much to learn about tools. You have your promise, Ches-ter. I will use the gun only with a clear head, to protect or to hunt for my pack.

"Oh," he says, surprised and relieved. "Thank you."

If you wish to teach me of it later, we can speak of other tools first.

"No, it's fine," he says, looking around the ground for the rifle and picking it back up again. "I did say I would help."

As he examines the firearm, though, Chester's doubts creep back in. He's in the teacher's role because Holds-the-Fire has Celestia levels of unfamiliarity with technology, but he's barely any better. There's an elongated wooden body, taller at the rear side, with a pointy little wooden ridge on the underside near the trigger, and a groove up above it which contains a prominent metal… lever of some kind. A simple dark metal barrel starts near that lever and extends a foot beyond the forward end of the wood, with a lighter-colored, slightly recessed section in front of the lever. The big monocular thing mounted up on top of the barrel would probably be the gun sight… no, the scope, it's half the length of the barrel with several dials on it and a "3.5-10x50" label that probably means it lets you see 3.5 to 10 times farther than the default 50 yards or something.

Holds-the-Fire sits side-to-side with him, reaching past him to one of the scope dials and rotating it. The most I could figure out was that this lets you choose what the gun will hurt, she says in light violet, gesturing with a finger to the numbers. But I did not experiment with it further, because I do not understand human runes and I did not wish to harm a packmate by mistake.

"Alright," Chester says, "Gun Safety 101." He swings the barrel of the rifle out in front of him, keeping it lowered to the ground, and steals heavily from a lecture he half-remembers from some TV police procedural; it's terrifying that this makes him the most qualified person here. "The metal bits which hurt things come from the end of this tube. Never, ever point that at anything you're not willing to kill. Got it?" He gestures to the forest in front of him. "Could you make sure there are no wolves in that direction while we're fiddling with this?"

Got it, Holds-the-Fire echoes, then thinks, mild colors swirling amid the excitement of violet. She settles for yipping to call the wolves over to the boulder, then flashes them a washed-out orange which appears to be some variant of a "stay" command, and walks with Chester away from the pack again. How do you choose who it kills?

"You don't," Chester says. "That's what makes a gun so dangerous—it hurts whoever is in front of the tube, whether you meant to hurt them or not." He gestures to the trigger. "The only control you have is, when you pull this, that's when it activates." Keeping the rifle pointed at the ground several feet away, Chester wraps his hand around the grip—oh, that's what the little bottom ridge is for—and threads his finger through the trigger guard.

He squeezes. There's no give. Nothing happens.

Holds-the-Fire looks at him, light violet intensifying. Chester nods back, mind whirling. Why isn't it working?

Ah, wait. He dimly recalls some action movie where the inexperienced protagonist stole an enemy's gun and pointed it at them, only to discover the safety was on the whole time. "One more thing," he adds. "There's a part called a 'safety' which helps you only shoot when you really mean it. If the lever is in the safe position, the trigger is locked." He takes the hand which was holding the forward part of the barrel and flips the comically oversized lever near the trigger up, then goes back into firing position. "Observe."

Aaaaaand still nothing.

Holds-the-Fire silently cocks her head as Chester fumbles with the oversized lever. Nope, the rifle won't fire either in the top or bottom position. Chester examines the area around the lever, and realizes there was a second, smaller lever he missed—it's a J-shaped metal thumb-switch at the back end of the barrel, going side-to-side instead of up-and-down. He triumphantly thumbs it to the right, points the gun at a nearby tree, and… still nothing. He wrestles with the rifle again, discovering that now not only is the trigger locked, but he can't even move the giant lever from the down position.

Is it broken? Holds-the-Fire asks.

"It doesn't look broken," Chester says. "Just, I, um, haven't actually done this before."

Ah, Holds-the-Fire says, a bit of pink shading into her light violet. She reaches up to the rifle, toying with the now-locked large lever and wrapping a finger inside the trigger guard with Chester's.

"We, uh, shouldn't both be trying to fire it at once," Chester says, then sighs and shifts the rifle over to Holds-the-Fire's grasp, showing her how to wrap her hand around the grip and hold up the barrel with her other hand. This frees his hands up to prod with the levers, and he quickly makes a promising discovery: when he tries to return the small J-shaped one to its original position, it goes farther left. Apparently it was a three-way switch instead of a two-way one, and on closer examination, the barrel end now aligns with a small word "FIRE" etched into the metal.

"Okay," he says, "so this little one—"

There's a thunderous crack. The rifle leaps backward in Holds-the-Fire's grip, the butt end smacking into her shoulder, and chunks of bark explode off a nearby tree.

She yips orangely, jerking her hands back from the rifle and smacking Chester in the face. He reels back, momentarily blinded. He can hear the gun drop to the ground and the wolfpack leap to their collective feet. Then the air explodes with a cacophony of howling barks. Chester glances around—an onrushing tsunami of bared teeth and raised hackles—and immediately reverses course, lunging toward Holds-the-Fire and flinging his arms around her. "Calm them down!" he shouts, and has the presence of mind to add mentally: CALM THEM DOWN!

A wave of blue surges outward, instantly quieting the clamor. Holds-the-Fire barks sharply into the sudden silence. One by one, wolves step backward and lower themselves, belly to ground.

Chester clings to his savior, feeling sweat bead as he gasps rapidly for breath. He gradually becomes aware that Holds-the-Fire—whose orange is fading somewhat faster than the hammering of his heart—is clinging to him back, a fact which calms him considerably.

"So, uh," he says as his pulse slows. "As I was about to say. That tiny lever. When it's all the way on the left, the gun is ready to fire."

I do not believe I will forget that, Holds-the-Fire says, her orange fading toward a wary orange-gray as her eyes remain locked on the rifle.

"You should"—Chester pauses to swallow—"make sure it's always over to the right unless you're just about to shoot."

Understood.

Still orange-gray, Holds-the-Fire finally detaches herself from Chester, approaches the rifle as if it were a snake poised to strike, and gingerly picks it up, avoiding touching anywhere near the trigger while she thumbs the safety closed.

"But, hey, that's progress!" Chester says, trying to force some cheerfulness into his voice—wait, no, that's pointless, he needs to force cheerfulness into his mood. It is progress; he affirms that to himself for a moment, and gives her as genuine a smile as he can muster. "Now you know what it's like to fire a gun, and we'll be ready for the next time—hey, do you hear that?"

Evidently the wolves did, because before he even finishes the sentence, their ears are perking and heads swiveling in the direction of the creek. Holds-the-Fire, too, turns in that direction, dropping to a three-limbed half-crouch with her free hand still gripped around the rifle.

Whatever is approaching is small, but too rapid for stealth. The crackle of deadfall and the rustle of bushes and tall grasses are getting quickly and steadily louder, and in moments Chester is able to see the swaying of displaced greenery, moving in a straight line up the hill toward them.

Although Holds-the-Fire is holding her ground, the wolves are starting to back away and clump up, and Chester is starting to wonder if he too should find a hiding spot. Then an ice-blue border-collie-sized form bursts into the clearing around the boulder, skidding to a stop as she realizes she's not alone.

"Chester!" Twilight shouts, a wave of indigo relief surging through her. Then red blasts it away with the force of a fire hose.

Her head swivels, and she locks eyes with a blazing red, growling Holds-the-Fire.

"You," Twilight snarls.

Author's Note

Uh-oh.

One more reminder that we're cramming three chapters in this week before I leave for Everfree NW! Tune in Thursday, Aug. 22, for "A Wolf Of Her Word".

9. A Wolf Of Her Word

Wolf and woman are in motion almost before Chester can blink.

Twilight hurtles herself straight at Holds-the-Fire's face, fangs out. The girl jukes and grabs the wolf out of the air. The instant they touch, their red auras surge and go sparkly and

time slows

to a

crawl—

As Chester stares, immobilized, at a world quickly draining of color—turning into a three-dimensional black-and-white photograph, except for the blazing shimmering red of the frozen combatants at the center of the tableau—a fact drills into his brain with the weight of absolute truth.

Fact: This frozen moment is the bloodstone's doing.

This isn't the weird fog-realm, but the sparkling red of wolf and girl's auras sets off the same screaming terror of being grasped by that gleaming ruby gemstone figure. Not just visually—he can feel it. The Wrong is whispering.

No—shouting. Not at him, but he hears it nonetheless. Both of those shimmering red auras are heavy with that discordant sensation from the fog. In this frozen moment he can't move to look directly at either combatant, but when he shifts his concentration to Twilight, she feels Wolf and Holds-the-Fire feels Wrong, and then vice versa when he refocuses—like it's always there in both of them, but only visible in his blind spot.

Oh no. Was Twilight infected by the Bloodstone Crown, too?

As Chester keeps staring—helpless to do anything else—a bone-chilling certainty slowly sets in: one of the fighters will not walk away. Not even with Anton's or Swamini-ji's fury has he ever seen anger like this. It's like the colors themselves are fighting—the ice-blue figures within them less real than their blazing, shimmering emotions.

And he suddenly realizes something else: the Wrong, almost wholly occupied by the duel to the death, nevertheless is talking at him—

—fix me, the red shimmer of the frozen girl whispers, kill her—

—and the same ugly request from the wolf in midair, fix me kill her—

Fact: The Bloodstone Crown wants blood—

and time

restarts

as Chester violently recoils from both those pleas.

The pair wheels indistinctly within the clashing reds, and goes down with an ugly-sounding crunch. Chester hears a sharp canine yelp. Then there's a higher-pitched yip from a human throat, and the blurred figures resolve for a snapshot moment, Twilight's jaws locked around the arm holding the rifle, liquid red dripping from between the teeth. Holds-the-Fire jabs for the wolf's eyes with her other hand, and Twilight howls in pain, staggering back with reddened muzzle and favoring one leg.

It all happens so fast. Chester needs to do something, but relative to the sparkling blurs of wolf and girl, every movement feels like wading through molasses.

As Holds-the-Fire charges in, Twilight gapes her jaw open and hisses. It's a bizarre, decidedly non-canine sound, and Chester has no idea what to make of it. But it seems to mean something, because Holds-the-Fire instantly veers away mid-charge, barking in surprise and diving for cover.

There's a lull in the fight as the girl scrambles upright and the small ice-blue wolf shakes her head to recover her vision. Instinctively, Chester is in motion. He sprints into the fray, grabbing Twilight and jerking her off her feet. She howls and thrashes, flailing her limbs and snapping her red-smeared teeth in mid-air. Chester madly hugs her body to his chest, keeping his face behind her neck and one arm wrapped around her throat, cutting off the range of motion of those lethal jaws.

"Stop!" he yells, a dim awareness of the danger he's just thrust himself into belatedly catching up. "Stop!"

His voice seems to burst open some metaphysical dam. The fighters' shared aura of sparkling red splits with a jolt, and their figures snap back to full focus. Twilight twitches in his arms, and he can see a spasm pass through Holds-the-Fire's body. Their reds recede to a normal but still terrifying brilliance, sparkles dying away.

Oh, thank the stars. Chester nearly whimpers in relief.

For a few moments, they all stare at each other. Holds-the-Fire breathes heavily, clenching her bleeding arm. The wolf in Chester's arms has stopped thrashing—Chester's voice seeming to have snapped her back to awareness from some more primal, fight-or-flight state—and is growling at the back of her throat, repeatedly blinking teary eyes and focusing her vision.

It gives Chester's mind a moment to catch up on the non-bloodstone context, and he instantly pieces the scenario together. Less than two hours ago, they had left the car. Therefore, Twilight had still been exploring upstream. Then she had heard the gunshot and bolted straight for it, fearing the worst.

So this fight is entirely his fault. He had gotten so caught up with the rush of back-to-back discoveries with Holds-the-Fire that he had forgotten why he was there in the first place.

Holds-the-Fire's voice echoes in his head, snapping him back into the moment.

Chester, she says, her red tempered by a guarded and determined gray-brown. Listen carefully. We have one chance.

He blinks, a bit thrown. Holds-the-Fire—still clenching her bloody arm, her gaze still locked on the wolf in his grasp—has undertones more of pink and black to her red. But he's well aware she can send emotions she doesn't feel, and it does make sense if she's trying to disguise her transmission to avoid cluing Twilight in.

So he, too, does his best to focus his return thoughts narrowly. Hang on, he thinks toward Holds-the-Fire. Let me talk to her first.

Holds-the-Fire blinks and shifts her stare to him, creamsicle overtaking the pink. What? she asks, and Chester realizes his mistake a moment too late.

Drop me and run, Twilight continues in the mental voice he last heard at the airport. It's only now that she and Holds-the-Fire are speaking back to back that he realizes just how identical they sound. I'll go for the gun, and follow you if I can.

Hang on! Let me talk to her first! Chester thinks desperately at Twilight, watching Holds-the-Fire's red coalesce anew and feeling himself on the precipice of a catastrophically degenerating situation.

Wait, is she— Holds-the-Fire's reddening confusion spikes into an alarmed peach, and her eyes widen. Then a snarl contorts her face, and she raises the gun.

You get out of my packmate's head! she red-broadcasts.

Chester yelps, and does the only thing he can think of that might possibly stop them from both getting shot: he whirls around, covering the wolf's body with his. Don't! he broadcasts back, pure panic.

With his back to Holds-the-Fire, he can't see her reaction—either physically, or via color. For a terrifying moment, he waits for the thunder of a gunshot. Instead, his head explodes with a barrage of colored crosstalk.

Packmate? What's she talking about? Twilight says (in a peach he can see echoed on the wolf in his arms).

Ches-ter! What are you doing? Holds-the-Fire says in a different, more urgent peach.

A fragile emerald hope stirs in the wolf, and she narrows her thoughts to Chester alone. Are you infiltrating? Is this a changeling thing?

The girl's voice shades red: Get out of the way!

It's becoming too much to keep track of inside his head, and all he can do is respond to the bigger threat. "No!" he says, voice ratcheting up in pitch. "You promised me you wouldn't shoot the gun in anger!"

Okay, Twilight mind-whispers to Chester, shifting to a gray-filtered red as she reassesses. If you can keep her distracted—

Shut UP before you get us killed! Chester snaps back. The wolf's colors shift back to peach, but he doesn't have the luxury of caring about her reaction. He's the only thing between Twilight and a quick, ugly death (by gunshot and/or wolfpack jaws), and every word she says is distracting him from fixing things.

Speaking of which—Chester had expected Holds-the-Fire to say something by now. He risks a peek over his shoulder, into the narrow-eyed stare above the yawning void of the gun barrel. And his brief moment of relief that her red has receded is replaced by terror as he recognizes the ugly beige of betrayal—aimed at him.

You're working with her? Holds-the-Fire broadcasts, though she's clearly talking to Chester.

Even if Chester had wanted to lie to Holds-the-Fire's face to deny it, he immediately realizes there's no point. She just did the same thing which he had done back in the car—noticed from the shift in their emotions that there was a conversation going on without her. Now, his best shot is to bring everything into the open and hope he's built up enough goodwill to talk things out.

Chester takes a deep breath, then sets Twilight down. "Stay behind me, and don't move," he hisses in her ear, praying that she listens. He turns to squarely face Holds-the-Fire, arms spread out in a useless effort to give Twilight more cover.

"I met her and her friends before I knew who you really were," Chester says, quietly and firmly. "They told me how dangerous you were. But we can prove them wrong."

He's just getting started, but Holds-the-Fire interrupts, eyes widening. You what? she says with a fresh burst of yellow pain. You lied to my face!

Chester knows the ugliness of Twilight and Holds-the-Fire's mutual history, but that accusation still brings him up short. "…What?"

Holds-the-Fire shifts to creamsicle as she reads Chester's own confusion. You said you had never met her!

Chester is starting to feel dangerously lost. He's fairly certain that the subject of Twilight had never come up. He had made a point of not mentioning her, in fact—but that makes the lie he's being accused of even more bewildering.

Maroon suspicion creeps into Holds-the-Fire's colors as he thinks, and Chester's consciousness of his own feelings kicks into overdrive. He's legitimately confused, and knows she sees that—but he can't afford to have her find him untrustworthy because his confusion is insufficient, and he also can't afford to overcompensate and have his confusion get interpreted as an artificial projection.

"What are you talking about?" he says, struggling to square the impossible circle of feeling his feelings at the correct intensity.

Fortunately, it seems to work; Holds-the-Fire's maroon begins to fade as she recalculates. Then she is the one who lied to you, she says, looking past Chester with an old and simmering red-yellow. Did Ember not tell you she was the one who cost me everything?

Chester blinks, speechless.

It's one of those epiphanies which is blindingly, stupidly obvious in hindsight. Twilight—no, Ember—is basically Holds-the-Fire turned into a canine. The same slight, wiry build, the same ice-blue color, voices like identical twins. He should have realized it when he saw them both at once, but he was too distracted by their fight. No—he should have figured it out when Twi—Ember—told him about their clashes, or kept referring to "this Ember". Or from them both having wolf telepathy. Or even back at the beginning, when he was coming to his humiliating conclusions about the werewolf mafia; he had already seen Holds-the-Fire by that point, albeit at a distance.

Chester had ignored so much because he was so proud of his deduction from that stupid address book. And it landed him in the middle of a deadly feud between two bloodstone-poisoned villains.

Ember shoves her head past Chester's leg. "Oh, don't you start!" she red-says, as Holds-the-Fire swings the gun barrel to her face and Chester yelps and scrambles back into the way. "You want to tell him how you invaded my world, enslaved my people, and were going to wipe out ponykind?"

You invaded MY world first! You were after MY crown from the beginning! Holds-the-Fire red-says. Both of their auras are starting to develop sparkles again, and Chester feels an icy clench in his gut—if they clash again, he'll be powerless to stop it.

"Because we were worried about the exact thing you actually did!"

"Ladies!" Chester shouts, leaping halfway between them and throwing his arms out, one palm toward them both. "Do not make me turn into a bear!"

It's a stupid and desperate bluff, but it does in fact jolt them both out of their argument. Peach blooms in both of the auras at the corners of his vision—Holds-the-Fire's with a heavy creamsicle overlay, Ember's more pure.

"I thought you said you couldn't do that?" Ember says, her own notes of creamsicle belatedly shading in.

"I can't. So don't make me." Chester turns back to Holds-the-Fire. "And you. You made a promise and I'm holding you to it. Put down the gun."

The end of the barrel doesn't waver. Holds-the-Fire composes herself for a moment, colors swirling, then speaks in a slow, deliberate, restrained red. I promised that I would use the fire-stick only with a clear head, to protect my pack or to hunt. My justification is perfectly clear. She has already incalculably damaged my pack and remains the biggest threat to our future success. I will end her to protect us.

"You also promised you wouldn't use the gun while angry. That's when people do things they regret. And you are super red right now."

That red flares out, yellow joining in. Holds-the-Fire's eyes bore into his. Why does that matter, if I can defend my decision? What about everything I've lost! Don't I have the RIGHT to my anger?

"You do," Chester says, granting her a concession because this is the worst possible moment to talk about bloodstone poisoning. "But you made a promise." He softens his voice. "Please, Holds-the-Fire. It's easy to teach you how to shoot a gun, and so much harder to teach you why not to. There's so much human history you don't know. So many ways tools can go wrong. We have better ways of making this right."

Black threads of uncertainty creep into Holds-the-Fire's colors. She stares at him down the barrel, arms starting to tremble as the black and red war within her.

"I'm sorry," Ember peach-says from behind Chester. "Did you just say you taught her to shoot the gun?"

Oh.

Oh shit.

He turns his head back to the wolf. "Can we not talk about this now?" Chester hisses.

"Would you rather talk about it when she's out on her next mass-murder spree that could have been prevented by just keeping your mouth shut?" Ember's fur bristles as her red finds a new target. "You had one job, Chester—no, zero jobs!" she red-shouts. "And yet you still somehow managed to screw it up!"

Ches-ter, here is how I will keep my promise, Holds-the-Fire says, her black evaporating back into barely restrained red. I will shoot her, then I will give the gun to you until you deem me worthy of it again.

Chester makes a strangled little cry and wheels back to Holds-the-Fire, spreading his arms and stepping forward to block as much of her line of fire as possible. "No! No shooting!"

Black briefly stirs in Holds-the-Fire's aura again, but is quickly smothered in a tawny resentment very pointedly directed at Chester. I have trusted you over and over again to show me how to be something I am not, in order to understand your human ways, she says to him alone, fingers shifting and re-tightening around the rifle grip. But this is too far. I can no longer neglect the protection of my pack. And I promise you, Ches-ter: if you would protect the one who has cost us everything, that cannot include you.

Chester meets and matches Holds-the-Fire's stare. And in his peripheral vision, her colors are heartbreaking to look at. She can barely even hold her resentment through the end of her speech, as feelings from every part of the spectrum batter her. A thin but resolute strand of green, as she hopes he'll come back around to her side, and a faint, wavering blue as she meets his eyes, having second thoughts about her threat to banish him. Spreading, bleeding yellow as he holds his ground. That earlier thread of hope shifting to an uglier radium green of desperation.

I do not want to shoot you, Holds-the-Fire adds, that desperation flaring to full strength.

And that color promises: no matter what he does, she won't.

That settles it, then. Chester can't move from between woman and wolf. As painful as it is, his decision is simple: he cares for Holds-the-Fire too much to let her become a murderer. (Let alone reignite that Wrong inside her.)

I should have known this would happen again, she beige-says—no. That's Ember, making everything confusing again by switching to telepathy to yell privately at him. Ember and Thorax instantly hitting it off. Never mind that YOUR Ember's a murderous psychopath. Muddy yellow bitterness overtakes her words. You've unleashed a monster, but you were always going to. This is my fault for letting you come along.

Chester begins to wonder if he is, for the first time, feeling anger. If he survives this, and if—somehow—Holds-the-Fire is still talking to him, he'll need to ask what she saw.

"Ember," he says, keeping his voice controlled with an effort, "leave. Now."

He watches Holds-the-Fire's last scraps of green bleed into wounded chartreuse as he confirms his decision. It rips a similar wound in Chester's heart. He holds his ground.

The wolf switches back to speech to respond in kind. "Sure," Ember beige-says, "I'll just let her capture you, you two deserve each oth—"

"Listen, idiot mutt," Chester snaps, "You do not understand how much I just sacrificed to save your damn life. So I will say this once. Turn and run. Now. Or so help me Sun, I will step out of Holds-the-Fire's way."

He turns his head to punctuate his statement with a glare. Ember flares up an outraged muddy red, bristling at the order. But those colors get tangled up in black as she glances around at the wolfpack. They've been holding back at a cautious distance, milling around uncertainly, and haven't yet seemed inclined to interfere—but they are enough of an implied threat that, deprived of both Chester's backup and her earlier incandescent rage, Ember seems to have finally reconsidered a last-ditch frontal assault.

Without another word, she wheels and scrambles for the underbrush, crashing through greenery and immediately vanishing. The bushes sway on a straight-line route downhill and the crashing noises recede as she sprints toward the river.

Chester turns back to Holds-the-Fire, silently sighing, and returns his gaze to hers. His gut twists.

Of her earlier colors, there is no sign—only the broken chartreuse of their connection betrayed.

Also, there are fresh tears on her cheeks.

Holds-the-Fire's eyes briefly flick down to the gun, and she seems to belatedly realize she's still pointing it at him. The rifle's tip lowers, then falls to the ground. She takes her attention off him for a moment to fiddle with the safety, returning the small lever to the non-firing right. Then she looks back up.

I was wrong, she says, that same deadened chartreuse. Ember had not yet taken everything from me. But now she has taken a packmate. And… a friend.

"Wait, we can fix this," he says, on autopilot himself. There's no conviction in his words. Why should there be? He just survived—defused—a magic-fueled deathmatch, saved a life, stuck to his principles, and temporarily derailed Holds-the-Fire's single-minded drive for vengeance. (Along with expending a lifetime's worth of bravery, through the simple technique of being stuck at gunpoint with no other options.) And yet, in a lifetime positively full of failure—routine mockery from his peers, constantly disappointing the Holy Mother, and even getting abandoned by Esau—he's never hurt someone he loved this massively, or this deliberately.

What is there to fix? Holds-the-Fire says, shouldering the rifle and yipping sharply to summon the pack to their feet. I am a wolf of my word. I kept your promise. I must keep mine.

Chester's hindbrain is screaming to do something, say something. He can't lose her—this transcendent wild princess who, against all odds, understands the world's colors the same way he does. But he already made his choice when he refused to budge against her threat. What is there to say?

He tries anyway.

"You're a good wolf," Chester says softly. "I hope you understand that not shooting her was about also being a good person."

They stare at each other for a silent moment. Then she turns, and doesn't look back. Goodbye, Ches-ter.

He numbly watches Holds-the-Fire and the wolfpack lope away, until they're swallowed up by the forest.

Author's Note

And with that, I'm heading to Everfree Northwest for the weekend. I'll see some of you there!

Everfree will be the dead-tree debut of Blues, in a collection titled "The Other Me", along with Administrative Angel, Devil May Care and Fang and Flame. More info here! At some point after the convention, it will be available for online purchase as well via Ponyfeather Publishing; I'll announce that in a blog once it's available.

Of course, you can keep reading it here as well! Chapter 10, "Lost," launches on Sunday, as Chester starts picking up the pieces.

10. Lost

Chester, too, leaves.

What else can he do?

* * *

He walks aimlessly, automatically. The forest he slogs through, too, is drab, lifeless, devoid of emotional color. There are no humans around to have those emotions, only a cold and unfeeling nature and—somewhere—the amazing woman he stabbed right through the heart. Her chartreuse aura of betrayal still lingers in the shadows of Chester's vision, haunting him in the moments after blinks.

His mind keeps replaying Holds-the-Fire's final words as he walks. But it's been a long and crazy day, and it slowly starts to dawn on him just how much other trouble he's gotten into.

Chester's thoughts stray to the ashram, with an underlying knot of dread. Every other time the Holy Mother had been this angry at him, Esau had been there to shield Chester from the worst of it. But Esau's been avoiding him since that stupid little rebellion. And more importantly, Chester has thought things today he can't unthink. There's a very real chance that the wolfpack will only be the first of today's excommunications.

… maybe it's not that dire. The Holy Mother had left him an opening at the end of the phone call. Even with his track record, he can probably dance around the worst of his doubts and grovel enough to appease her. But it's going to hurt. The order to invent his own punishment had meant that Chryssa-swamini was looking for something creatively painful; permanent airport duty, as bad as it is, would be too milquetoast for anything more than a starting point.

Maybe… maybe he just shouldn't return.

But where else would he go? The closest thing he's ever had to a friend outside of the ashram is the magical extradimensional unicorns. And after what Twili—damn it, Ember, he still can't believe he got that one wrong—after what Ember said when she ran off, there's zero chance they'll forgive him. Ember had been correct. Holds-the-Fire had been 100 percent harmless with a non-working gun, right up until the moment he had taught her how to shoot.

But they're wrong about her! Holds-the-Fire isn't some genocidal villain. She's a scared and powerless girl, backed into a corner, just looking for a way to provide for her family. If she had wanted to kill, she had every chance to shoot him and then Ember. She had every chance to rush past him and chase the fleeing Ember, or send her pack after the wolf. The thought had to have occurred to her. She's terrifyingly smart, and inquisitive, and fun, and understands him, and…

Chester blinks, some moments later, and shakes himself away from forlorn thoughts of her face, their mutual blue-greens as they held each other's hands, her simple joy at their joint discoveries, her blazing lilac laughter when they were wrestling together in the wolfpile.

They're wrong about her. Aren't they?

Abruptly, Chester sits on a nearby log, cradles his head in his hands, and lets out a little sob. He doesn't know. He thought they were wrong. But he's not sure he can think straight about Holds-the-Fire. He loves her, or something like it—that much is obvious from how much everything hurts. But he can't see his own colors to sort that out from his analysis. If she were here, she could. He wants nothing more than to ask her what he's feeling. But she's gone, and that's his fault.

He grits his teeth, wiping tears from his cheeks, and tries to stay focused. They're wrong about her.

No, that's not fair. He thinks they're wrong about her. But this morning he was defending Chryssa-swamini, and then Holds-the-Fire helped him realize that maybe he shouldn't, and then he taught Holds-the-Fire how to shoot a gun, and then he made her kick him out of the pack. Who would trust his judgment? Who should? It's the absolute worst.

Chester lets self-pity wash him away, crumpling into a ball and sobbing into his folded arms for a few minutes. His sleeves turn from dirty mess to muddy mess. Once the tears are cried out, he sits up and unconsciously wipes his arm across his cheeks, smearing gunk across his face. It's disgusting, but even that thought only makes him think of Holds-the-Fire's tongue licking his teeth.

He's got to go back.

But what would he say? Chester has more experience with upset enlightened beings than any mortal should, and so he knows that her telling him to go hadn't been a snap decision. She'd meant it. Him defending Twi—Ember—was a dealbreaker.

Chester stands and resumes his walk. How in Tartarus had things gotten so bad between Holds-the-Fire and her extradimensional werewolf duplicate? He tries prodding his wandering thoughts in that direction, but its contours are as foreign as the bewildering colorless geometry of the woods.

And then he's snapped out of his thoughts as he realizes: he recognizes that tree on the right.

He blinks, and his brain immediately kicks into gear. Nature is the same black box to him that it's always been; Chester recognizing a tree is absurd on its face. But this particular birch tree is even more so. It's bent in a twisted S shape which can't possibly be natural, the trunk nearly doubled over at the base before swerving discordantly toward the sky. It had been bizarre enough to register in some corner of his hindbrain even amid the earlier suffocating haze of grief.

Chester walks over to study it up close, and then he sees a double-hand-sized shriveled gray burl on the ground near its roots—as if some other, even more alien tree had strode by and deposited a coprolite in its wake. That's what clinches it for him. He remembers that weird gray pile, too, and even if there are two S-shaped birches in the forest, the combination is impossibly unique.

So he's been here before. About… half an hour ago? Not long after leaving the site of his failure.

A cold, hard lump settles into the pit of his stomach as he pieces together the implications. Somehow, in the haze of self-pity, he has doubled back to his starting point. He's wandering in circles.

… No. There's no need to panic. Chester's no longer a stupid kid wandering into the woods. He is an adult, eighteen years old, and it's been years since Swamini-ji first allowed him a smartphone. Which has GPS. This is as simple as tapping the Navigate app and letting his phone lead him to the road.

He sticks his hand in his pocket.

His smartphone's gone.

A spike of terror stabs Chester. He frantically checks his other pockets. A couple of folded pamphlets for the Holy Mother. Four bits, in crumpled singles. A tiny hard lump—Holds-the-Fire's lighter.

His gut twists into a knot. That's right—he last saw the phone in her hands, and pocketed the lighter right before they started fiddling with the gun. Then things spun out of control too fast and too far to sort out their possessions before she left. Just how badly has he screwed up today? Not only did he break Holds-the-Fire's heart, he stole her name.

Chester fights the urge to crumple up and start sobbing again. Right now, self-pity needs to take a back seat to self-preservation. He can sort that out once he's safe.

He looks around—really looks around, trying to pick out distinctive features other than the Impossibirch. But… it's forest. That's the best he has ever been able to do. Out of everything he's seen today, this specific tree and maybe the giant boulder are the only things he would be able to identify as landmarks. And if he can't do better than that… well. He doesn't have Esau to save him this time.

He's going to get lost and die in the forest.

Chester paces in a frantic circle, fighting to leash his panic. No. He's got to do better than that. What can he do? Think! Think!

Can he orient himself by the sun, maybe? He's heard that's a thing outdoorsy people do. He's been mostly in the shade, but he does see sporadic glimpses of light through the treetops. Chester thinks that through for a minute. It's mid-afternoon, and the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, so the sun should be to the west, right? Wait, maybe southwest? Sunlight still comes in the ashram's southern windows at noon, so that should put the sun on the south side of the sky.

Would figuring out the sun's direction even help him? Where would he head? The ranches on the valley floor, maybe, and those were, what… east-ish of here?

Uncomfortably, Chester concludes that the plan is unworkable. All he's got are vague memories of the road trip (and the panorama from the boulder, from which he remembers mostly the ashram), and trying to piece the local geography together from such thin scraps is already making his head hurt. And if he can't get even compass directions clear in his head, using the sun to get anywhere might be worse than a blind guess.

Can he retrace his path? Find his old footsteps and double back on them? That plan dies after a minute of frantic searching; even knowing that he has walked past the Impossibirch twice, there's absolutely nothing even resembling footprints in the matted deadfall underfoot. He's not even certain what he should be looking for. Short of his old steps beginning to flash red like a video game objective, that's a nonstarter.

But that gets him thinking, really thinking, about retracing his steps. Even if he can't find his old trail, anything he can remember about how he got here might be the key to saving his life.

It seems pretty hopeless, though. They had started at the road, and he had figured that they would take a straight-line path from there, but Tw—Ember—had led him on a broad, twisty route. They'd changed direction constantly.

… Hang on. He does remember something. That no matter which way they walked, the right sides of his feet hurt.

Wait, that's it! He remembers noticing that, and wondering whether the wolf was choosing their path just to mess with him. But then he had realized why Ember was taking that weirdly winding path: it meant they didn't ever have to climb or descend the slope as they wove their way through the hilly terrain. Chester had been momentarily impressed at that. He remembers thinking how smart that plan was, and being briefly grateful that an enlightened being was around to come up with it, before his conversation with Ember swept the thought away.

And following the lead of an enlightened being? That, he can do. Stay at the same elevation and follow the hillside.

Relief floods in as pieces of a plan click into place. It doesn't matter that he doesn't know where he is—he can retrace his steps that way! The road they started at cuts a line from the valley floor all the way to Horseneck Pass; even if he messes up and strays too far up or down, following the slope means he has to hit the road somewhere as he circles the hillside above the valley.

He double-checks his logic before committing to the idea, but he can't find any flaw. The road is a big, long, impossible-to-miss ribbon of concrete. Like the edge of a map: impossible to leave the area without crossing it. The hike from the road to where he and Twi—Ember—split up was only… what, five minutes?… and from there to the boulder, and from boulder to Impossibirch, were only a couple of minutes each. He's twenty minutes from the road at most.

Chester will never be able to trust his pathfinding, but he can at least trust basic logic. He takes a deep breath and sets off.

Approximately half an hour later, Chester's starting to really worry.

Maybe he's just bad at time estimates? He orients himself to the slope again, settling back into the familiar foot-hurting-right pattern, and walks for another… he'll call it ten minutes. Then, just to be sure, another ten. Something's definitely wrong; he should have long since passed the road by now.

Chester shouts a curse to the heavens, startling some birds. His plan was Chester-proof and he still failed. He's going to get lost and starve to death in the forest. It's the perfect end to the unrelenting failure of this stupid day.

He crumples to the ground, curling up against a fallen tree, and sobs his tears dry again.

It's too much. He just wants to lie down and let sweet release overtake him. But as his tears slow, his brain refuses to stop chewing at the problem. There has to be something. Even if he's too worthless to find it, there is a way out. Chryssa-swamini survived in the jungles of Elytra for four years; even he should be able to survive a single damned afternoon.

He sits up. Alright. One more try. He takes a long breath and takes stock.

Fact: He's screwed.

Chester is now double-lost. He's eaten nothing but an airport sandwich all day. He's hungry, thirsty, and has zero equipment except for a fuelless lighter. It's getting on toward late afternoon, and he's not looking forward to losing light: even if he survives a cold, lonely night in the woods, his situation will only get worse as time passes.

Fact: He has no choice but to rescue himself.

Without his phone, he can't call for help. Holds-the-Fire and the wolves will avoid him. It's not impossible that Celestia or the Holy Mother might come out here to search for him, but neither know where he intended to go, much less where he actually is. They'd be looking for a Chester needle in a forest haystack.

Fact: Everywhere he can walk might just get him into more trouble.

He could go uphill for a better view to get his bearings, but then he's heading deeper into the wilderness, and the best-case scenario is that he gets a momentary understanding of his position and then backtracks to plunge back into the disorienting trees again. He could go downhill toward the valley floor, but at this point that's no guarantee he'll reach civilization—he might walk right past the ranches while still in the trees, and if he can't find them he'll really be lost, without even the few landmarks he has now. He could aim for the road, except he can't: he already tried that and failed.

… Maybe not everywhere. What if he backtracks to the Impossibirch? That at least is a known location, and walking at the same elevation on the hillside should work the same in both directions. That by itself doesn't get him un-lost, but… hmm. Then he could keep going the opposite way until he reaches Canter Creek? He hasn't crossed any water while going this direction, so the creek must be behind him too.

That feels like a much longer shot than it should be right now, but it at least gives him an option.

… But is it an achievable one? He frantically tries to poke holes in his logic, in hopes of finding where he messed up last time. Canter Creek should be as unmissable as the highway, right? It starts up in the mountains, flows steadily downhill through the hills he's in, and then goes past the ranches on the valley floor—if he stays at roughly the same elevation, he has to reach the point where it goes from above him to below him. But then, he thought the same thing about the road, too, and that didn't work out. But then, this time he's turning around and going backwards. But then, without even trying, he did that originally by mistake… do forests even follow basic laws of geometry, or is he trapped in some weird shadow realm where directions don't apply?

Chester stops and takes a deep breath. Focus. This has to work. He has no other ideas.

What if he accidentally stumbles on some other stream thinking it's Canter Creek? Chester thinks about that for a bit. He's… kinda dubious there are any others. This late into the summer, all the places the hills fold together have been rock-scramble dry gullies; Canter Creek is the only water he's seen flowing.

But, honestly, he'd take it. As thirsty as he is, any source of water would significantly improve his short-term odds. And in a worst-case scenario, another creek might not go downstream to the ranches, but it probably goes downstream to somewhere, and at least he would have drinking water as he walked.

Chester racks his brain. He really isn't excited to follow a plan whose logic has already failed him once. The spark of hope keeping him going is rapidly fading. But, ultimately, it comes down to this: he stops moving and dies, he wanders in circles and dies, or he approaches the problem with some vague veneer of methodology, and probably dies. Retracing his steps is the least deadly option.

With that cheerful thought in mind, Chester stands up, does an about-face, and sets out again.

It feels a bit weird having the downslope on his left, and after a few minutes of walking, he finally realizes why: the opposite sides of his feet hurt.

He stops walking for a moment and smacks himself on the forehead as epiphany strikes. All of his hillside traversing before now has been with the downslope at right! No wonder he couldn't find the road! All this time, he'd been hiking in the same direction that he and Ember had gone to walk away from it.

Come to think of it, hadn't the two of them crossed the creek to look at the pawprints? And in his distraught state, after losing Holds-the-Fire, Chester never crossed back over. So it has been behind him all this time. Both it and the road, actually.

Ugh. He's cost himself so much unnecessary stress and wasted time. Still, it's an immeasurable relief to finally understand how he failed. That ember of hope starts to cautiously smolder again.

The forest wastes no time in reminding him that understanding his mistake is not the same thing as correcting it. Everything about the return trip seems designed to sap his energy. Without a trail to follow, he's spending nearly as much time navigating around impassable terrain as he is making progress. The dry gullies the hillside regularly crosses feel steeper and more treacherous than on the trip out; the vegetation seems thicker, more choked with brambles and vines, requiring him to break further upslope or downslope just to find a clear path; and with the day's lack of food and water kicking in, everything is much more of an effort. In the thicker brush, thorns and dead branches rip at his limbs and robe, and he's sweating profusely with the exertion in the summer heat. Soon, he's moving in a half-haze, merely putting one foot in front of the other, pushing forward because there's no other option.

Time passes. He's too tired to track it. The sun drifts lower in the sky.

Chester's beyond exhausted by the time Canter Creek sneaks up on him. Following the curve of a sharply bending hillside, he pauses for breath after ripping through some particularly ugly brush, and suddenly there's the melodic trickle of water ahead. He perks up and hustles forward until he can see it. A steep, narrow ravine cuts through the slope, a deep gouge in the hillside, but down at the bottom ankle-deep water burbles through a rocky streambed. He remembers Canter Creek as broader and more placid, and the hillside around it as far less steep, but it has to be Canter Creek because Chester knows he didn't cross anything else while the right sides of his feet were hurting.

Reaching the water involves either a long, brush-choked traverse or twenty feet down a steep, precarious scramble. Chester chooses the climb down (and nearly wipes out as the soft hillside gives way under his sneakers, saving himself from a fall at the last moment by lunging for a young tree). At water's edge, giardia be damned, he cups his hands and drinks his fill straight from the creek. Then he sprawls against the hillside and, for the first time in hours, lets himself relax.

Getting back to the creek was a big win. If he has to be honest, it's better than he thought he was capable of. Holds-the-Fire… well, wouldn't be proud of him, exactly, but maybe she'd have to acknowledge that his skill at being a wolf is greater than zero.

Not that that would change anything.

Chester's earlier recriminations slam back in. By returning to Canter Creek, he has fixed a wholly self-inflicted problem and done exactly nothing about the bigger ones. He lets out a humorless chuckle. What a stupidly perfect metaphor. Once again, he's back to where he started, with nothing here for him, not knowing where to go.

He sits up and stares at the creek. (And then, while he's here, gives in and dips his hands back in, rubbing them clean in the running water and getting the worst of the dirt from his arms and face.) Keep walking on left-side-hurting feet and go back to the road? Maybe Celestia and Sunset and Ember, or at least their car, are still there waiting for him; but that's both a long shot and not necessarily a positive. Also, if he tries for the road again and blows it again, he's pretty sure he's going to have a nervous breakdown then and there.

So, downstream to the ranches, then.

(And then what? Borrow a phone, call for a Hoovr pickup, tell the driver to pick a direction, keep going until his credit runs out, and start over somewhere under an assumed name?)

Chester struggles down the ravine for long enough to realize just how awful an idea it is. He'd thought the brush was bad before, but at water's edge, it's on another level entirely. Often his only choices are plowing directly through the walls of brush he's been so far treating as impenetrable, or a wet, slick, rocky scramble down the center of the creek. The steep ravine slopes are nigh impassable. His sneakers, and soon the bottom of his robe, are quickly soaked, and his rate of progress is in feet per minute. Finally, out of desperation, he scrambles on hands and feet back out of the ravine, and walks down the hillside about fifty feet away from the water, which is still unpleasant but at least the kind of unpleasant he's been making progress through all day.

Fortunately, that misery doesn't last long. The hillside starts rapidly leveling out, and Canter Creek emerges from its ravine into the broad, meandering waterway he remembers crossing. Apparently his two hours of traversing had left Chester a fair bit uphill from his starting point.

A minute further downstream, he catches sight of a familiar-looking boulder upslope from the creekbed. Now he's really back to where he started.

There's no sign of the wolfpack. He briefly considers abandoning his plan and trying to track them—but that's both stupid and beyond his capabilities, a combination he has no appetite for. No, better to keep going downstream and figure something out once in the smothering embrace of civilization. With a sigh, he puts the boulder at his back and walks away.

This time, hopefully, for good.

* * *

The next part of Chester's hike goes, if not easily, then at least according to plan.

He has already learned his lesson about walking in the creekbed; he stays a dozen paces away, skirting the edge of the riverbank thicket. He has already learned his lesson about wandering blindly; he keeps the creek within line of sight, listening to its burble as he goes. He has a landmark to follow; he's not trying to retrace his steps or navigate by elevation. Most importantly, he knows that if he just keeps walking, Canter Creek will reach the ranches sooner or later.

The forest thickens as it levels out, and quickly Chester finds himself pushing through tall, woody bushes and low, branchy trees. Progress is slow and grueling—but it is neither the slowest nor the worst conditions he's walked through today, merely exhausting bushwhacking. And then, suddenly, it opens up again, the trees giving way near-instantly to a wide dirt road, then fence, then open fields.

Chester lets out something halfway between a whoop of laughter and a sob of relief. He shoulders through the last of the brush into late afternoon sunlight, then drops to his knees at the road's edge and slaps his hands triumphantly down on the hard-packed dirt. Civilization. Civilization!

Beyond the fence, some cattle edge away from him, lowing. At that, he erupts in cathartic laughter. "That's right, domesticated beasts, withdraw in fear!" he shouts. (The cattle spook and trot away.) "For you face a man touched by wolves. Chester, Conqueror of Forests!" He spreads his arms, laughing hysterically as the herd trots off. He's not going to die today.

Slowly, the euphoria begins to wear off. Chester remembers how much he's still got to sort out. Well, one thing at a time. He turns toward the highway and starts trudging down the dirt road. Maybe if he hitchhikes to Canterlot? He'll need money, somewhere to sleep—but he does have some experience shaking down travelers for donations for the Holy Mother, and begging for himself can't be that different. Of course, if he truly needs a fresh start, maybe he can find his way up north. Whinnypeg or Chevalgary. He's always kinda wanted to explore the Crystal Empire—

Chester's thoughts are shattered by the gunning of an engine as an enormous pickup truck rounds a corner in the distance, skidding onto the dirt road and accelerating in his direction.

He pauses, then hustles to the edge of the road before the truck can reach him. As desperate as he is for human contact, that sort of urgency never bodes well. He should hitchhike with someone in less of a hurry. He'll just let them pass by.

The truck slams on its brakes as it approaches, fishtailing to a stop alongside Chester and kicking up an enormous cloud of dust.

Chester, coughing, raises an arm to shield his face. "Hey, what…" he starts to protest—and then catches sight of a familiar Stetson, and realizes who is grinning at him through the open driver's window.

"Well, well," Anton says in an ominous magenta, using a jovial tone of voice that Chester presumes is meant to sound friendly. "If it ain't Brother Chester!"

Of all the people who could have welcomed him back to civilization, of course it's the hair-trigger gun nut who he lied to extensively and unleashed a bunch of extradimensional villain hunters on. And Anton's schadenfreude is a literal red flag that this conversation is about to go nowhere good. Maybe Sunset slipped up and said something about them working together?

Chester's heart drops into his stomach. Or maybe Sunset's team made friends with Anton, and then Ember told him about how Chester's working with Holds-the-Fire?

He glances behind him at the trees lining the road. This could be really bad. Maybe he should make a break for it back into the forest.

… No, he decides. He's not that desperate.

Anton is, fundamentally, a human problem—and his emotions are an open book to Chester. It doesn't matter what he knows; there's always a way to muddy the waters. Play along, figure out what he learned from Sunset, play on his sympathies, and look for a chance to slip away before he can sort the truth from the lies.

"Anton!" Chester says, mimicking the enthusiastic tone. "Boy, is it good to see you!"

Anton guffaws. "You took the words right out of my mouth," he lilac-says—and for a moment, Chester dares to hope that he can sort this out.

Then Anton lifts a pistol up to the window, levels it at Chester, and thumbs back the hammer with a bone-chilling click. Magenta reasserts itself, shining bright and steady.

"Thought I was gonna have to run around the forest for days to drag your lyin' ass back to Blackrock Spire," Anton says as Chester meekly raises his hands. "Ain't Chryssy going to be thrilled?"

Author's Note

Sorry for posting a bit belatedly - Everfree NW has been an eventful convention. I'll be out of the woods soon, the same way Chester now is. Though hopefully without his additional complications.

Next chapter - "Cold Call" - publishes Wednesday, Aug. 28!

11. Cold Call

Anton doesn't look like he's in any mood to take chances. As soon as Chester surrenders, the rancher hops out of his truck, grabs a length of rope, and wraps Chester in a dozen coils with his hands behind his back. Chester wheezes as Anton loops the rope ends through each other and yanks the knot tight.

He keeps an eye on Anton's colors the whole time. New hues have joined the rancher's initial schadenfreude, dominated by amber greed (the non-enlightened kind). He thinks he stands to benefit from this—is the Holy Mother paying him to bring Chester back? There's also an underlying layer of gloating puce—not dangerous, but possibly an opportunity to nurture overconfidence. And a healthy streak of orange-gray wariness mixed in as Anton binds him, which fades slowly away as Chester makes no move to resist.

"I don't know why you think this is necessary, sir," Chester says once the wariness has fully retreated. (Instinct tells him to retreat into deference rather than trying to leverage the familiarity of "Anton". That ended with the leveled gun.) "I was about to ask you for a ride back to the ashram."

A ripple of lilac passes through Anton. "Were you now."

"Of course!" Chester lies. (He has zero guilt about switching into Chet Land mode right now.) "Do you even know how terrible my day has been? This crazy ex-princess and her delinquent student dosed me with hallucinogens and dumped me in the forest to get eaten by wild animals. I barely escaped with my life. I just want to go home."

Anton doesn't buy it—but his puce ratchets up as he smirks. "Oh, of course," he says. "You were going to ask one of the—what was that catchy phrase you used?—'enemies of enlightenment' for a favor, after selling out your leader and sending investigators to my door." He barks out a bright magenta laugh at the distress Chester has no chance of hiding. "It's a good thing she tapped your phone, you little con artist. If we hadn't compared notes before your little hero squad arrived, they'd be riflin' through my safe right now, tryin' to steal Rancho Longhorn back."

Chester wilts. Anton silently puce-gloats at him some more, then opens the cab's rear door, hauls Chester off the ground with bulging arm muscles, and heaves him onto the truck's back seat. As the door slams, and Anton activates the child locks, Chester picks himself up and takes a moment to triage the revelations.

Fact: The Holy Mother called Anton the instant she hung up with Chester.

That's the only thing which explains the details and his choice of words. This is basically the worst-case scenario. Chryssa-swamini either didn't believe Chester's warning, or Chester's bizarre explanation made the magical unicorns sound like a bigger threat, or… there's probably an innocent explanation for what looks an awful lot like the Holy Mother throwing Chester and his friends to the wolves. There's a lot of really ugly explanations, too.

Fact: Anton is a bad guy, confirmed.

Chester could care less about whatever real-estate theft Anton just gloated about. But it means his villainy goes beyond just a bad temper, and it cements this gunpoint kidnapping as a villain problem rather than a catastrophic misunderstanding.

And unfortunately, this makes Fact One look even worse. The suspicion that Chester might be investigating his shenanigans didn't seem to even cross Anton's mind that day that he showed up with the Holy Mother's name on his lips—and Chester knows that, he'd have seen the colors—even though it was the first thing Anton assumed about the unicorns. Anton and the Holy Mother are, at best, conscious of and indifferent to each other's negative reputations.

Fact: The Holy Mother also lied to Anton's face.

There was no phone tap. He never sold out Swamini-ji. He thinks he understands why she said those things, though: Chester also lied to Anton's face, with the Crystal Prep cover story, and Anton must have gotten suspicious when he realized the truth of that one. Realistically, there was no chance Chryssa-swamini was going to risk her own reputation to cover for him on that—but she certainly went out of her way to paint herself as an innocent victim of Chester's fraud, and dissuade Anton from listening to Chester's defense on the matter.

By itself, that means little: it's the sort of thing she has frequently done to teach devotees lessons about the consequences of their behavior. But it was ugly and unnecessary—exactly the sort of disproportionate magenta retribution that Chester once asked Esau to help him gently confront her about, back during his ill-advised campaign to improve the ashram's retention rate.

Plus, despite the short length of time he's known them, Chester can't imagine Celestia or Holds-the-Fire—both of whom arguably have equal claims to enlightenment—behaving like that.

Fact: …

Today has speedrun Chester through levels of heresy he didn't even realize were possible. And despite that, he's having trouble even thinking the thought.

Deep breath.

…Is Chryssa-swamini, herself, a villain?

* * *

A memory stirs in Chester's mind, one he has tried to keep buried for a very long time. The first time he wondered—however briefly—about Chryssa-swamini's intentions. Those doubts had vanished long ago, but today has forced him to question a lot of things anew.

He and Esau were playing with blocks in Sister Mandy and Brother Bill's room, under the calm cyans and purples of Sister Mandy's gaze. (This was over a decade ago—back before the dormitory's remodeling—when everyone had their own private area, and Chester and Esau slept in small beds at the foot of Bill and Mandy's big one.) Brother Bill had come in and whispered something to her, simmering with pale orange. She had shaded peach—and then glanced over at the children and masked herself in gray.

"Chester," she had quietly gray-said, pulling him aside, "Swamini-ji wants to see you."

"Yes, Sister Mandy," Chester said. (Esau sometimes got her and the Holy Mother confused—he said it was because he remembered things before the ashram—but Chester was a good boy and knew everyone's proper title.) He hesitated at her guarded color, though. "Is everything alright?"

"Of course it is," Sister Mandy said, though the blue she mustered up was weak and unpersuasive. "Just… did you talk to her about the colors?"

"I know you said it was our secret, but swah-meanie-jee said our souls are lighter when we tell the truth. So I told everyone during sharing session." Chester punctuated that with a proud nod, expecting Mandy to react with purple. His face fell as pale orange crept in instead. "… Did I do something wrong?"

"Of course not." She gave him a gray wash of colors that was in the same neighborhood as the muddy green of certainty, and a smile. "It's an honor to get to talk to her. Just"—she hesitated, and dropped her voice—"you know that sometimes people don't understand."

"Mandy." Brother Bill stepped over, a mild rose pink. (It was always a little disorienting seeing them together; he didn't have super-intense colors like Sister Mandy did, or even regular-intense like Brother Esau and the Holy Mother, only the normal kind.) "You're not still having second thoughts about the Holy Mother, are you?"

"No, hon," she said, the pale yellow of resignation. "It's just…" She paused, then shook her head, the color strengthening. "No. It's fine."

It pretty clearly wasn't from the color, but Brother Bill was one of the people who didn't understand. Sister Mandy didn't see colors either, but she at least could make people turn light blue, so she understood what Chester meant when he talked about it. Brother Bill, on the other hand… Chester had tried telling him about the colors that other people were feeling a couple of times, only to have him deny what was plain in front of his face, and then start going pink if Chester pressed the point. So Chester learned to keep his mouth shut.

"You know we agreed this was what was best for them," Brother Bill continued, shading green—no, Chester knew this one. Concern, mixed blue and yellow. "The Holy Mother is renowned for her own powers. She'll help them learn to connect to other kids without their…" He hesitated, glancing at Chester with mild orange. "Gifts."

Sister Mandy glanced at Chester too, dark blue. It had confused Chester when he first realized that both those colors represented worry, until he realized that it was the difference between being worried by someone and being worried for them, which were very different things indeed. He had never seen the Holy Mother worried, and wondered which one she was going to be.

"Get going, Chester," Sister Mandy said. "Let us know how it goes."

The Holy Mother was rummaging in one of her cabinets when Chester let himself into her bedroom. (This was in the early days, long before the second floor was built—even before she took over the prayer hall for audiences.) At the creak of the door, she startled orange—slamming the cabinet shut and whirling around. Her eyes tracked in on Chester. A wave of red overtook the orange.

"I'm sorry, swah-meanie-jee," Chester immediately said. He knew what red led to. Often, apologizing immediately gave him a chance to shift that color back into something more pleasant.

"You should be. Didn't your parents ever teach you to knock?" At Chester's flinch, the Holy Mother stifled her anger with some obvious effort, and crouched down to talk to him face to face. She gave him a gray smile. "But I asked you to be here for something much more important. You said you have special powers. Tell me more about your colors."

At that, her aura shifted, and Chester saw a color he had never seen before.

He startled. "How did you do that?"

The Holy Mother blinked, peach swirling in. "Do what?"

"You're a new color. Kind of yellow and orange. But all shimmery. I've never seen shimmery yellow before, only shimmery blue. How do you feel?"

"Never mind that just now. How can you see… what you're seeing?" She glanced around his body, her peach shifting into a violet against a backdrop of that new sparkly gold.

"I don't know, swah-meanie-jee. I've always been able to. Same as Esau." He fidgeted, barely able to contain himself—there were so few people who understood, and everyone here said the Holy Mother knew more than anyone. "How did you do the gold? Tell me, swah-meanie-jee!"

A ripple of caramel brown passed through her as she smiled—a color which he didn't understand at the time, and wouldn't coin the word spyfeel for until many years later.

"Well, Cheshire," she said, "it sounds like you can see my enlightenment magic. You've…" The caramel shaded briefly into lilac. "Got a terrible curse. Being able to see how far you have to go to reach my level of transcendence. You'll have to work extra hard on your lessons."

Chester hesitated. That superficially sounded like awful news, but he knew what that shade of purple meant when nobody else was laughing. "Are you funning with me, swah-meanie-jee?"

She blossomed bright peach for a moment, and then her colors retreated into pink guarded by gray. "There's nothing funny about this. But you're smart. You catch things other people miss. That means the curse isn't insurmountable."

"Okay," Chester said slowly. He knew what he had seen, but she certainly seemed serious enough now.

Abruptly, the Holy Mother stood and wheeled around, pacing back and forth at the foot of her bed. "What about Brother Bill? Sister Mandy? Do they have the same curse as you two?"

Chester shook his head. "Not Brother Bill. And Sister Mandy just makes people go blue. She can't see colors though."

At that, not even the Holy Mother's wall of gray could hide the return of her transcendental gold. "Well, well," she said. "Yes. This will do. This will do quite nicely."

Chester broke into a wide smile. As weird as this was, it was good to see her be enlightened again. Much better than her being red, or making little jokes at his expense.

The Holy Mother glanced down at her hand, and Chester noticed she had been holding some sort of necklace, with a big obsidian stone in a golden setting matching her increasingly intense aura. With a quick motion, she brought it up to her throat, reaching behind her neck to fiddle with the clasp. The motion sent ripples through her long black hair.

Chester pointed at it. "Your necklace is going all sparkly, too."

"I'm just that enlightened." The Holy Mother crouched down again. "Come here, Cheshire. Take my hand."

He reached out. The instant their hands made contact, Chester's fingers went tingly, and an electric jolt rippled through his arm and down into his body.

Startled, Chester jerked his hand back—or tried to. Her fingers were clamped around his in an iron grip.

Then all her colors started to fade.

The golden aura around the Holy Mother was vanishing, like fog in morning sun—and nothing was replacing it. Even people who weren't feeling anything had a color, a drab gray that washed out their features. This wasn't that. This was like looking at an animal. The only hint of color-sight he got was a weird distortion around the gem in her necklace, turning its once-sparkly black into a yawning hole in his vision.

Chester flailed. His arms and legs felt like noodles, and his body ached to crumple to the floor and sleep. A splitting headache was tearing at his eyes from the inside out, and nausea was stabbing his gut. That earlier electrical sensation had turned into a smoldering fire, as though he were burned up, leaving nothing inside.

"Swamini-ji!" he shouted, feeling tears well up. "Stop! It hurts!"

She didn't answer.

Chester, sinking to his knees, glanced up into her face. Her eyes had gone wide, and her mouth had frozen into a little "o". The most terrifying part was that, without the colors, he had no idea what that meant.

His chest hitched. Then he felt tears spill down his cheeks, and a sob bubble out. "Please," he whimpered.

The noise seemed to break the Holy Mother out of her paralysis. She blinked rapidly several times, eyes flicking around Chester's form. Then she hissed—an inhuman sound, raw and thick—and jerked her hand back from Chester's, with the suddenness and ferocity of having touched a stove. She scrabbled at her neck, making urgent, guttural sounds. A finger caught inside the necklace, jerking its chain taut, and with a soft pop, it dropped away from her throat.

Chester's vision exploded into stars.

With agonizing slowness, the fuzz began to clear, the room resolving into first blobs and then forms. Chester was balled up on the ground, the pounding hammers of his headache quickly receding. There was an orange-red blob—no, wait, that was the Holy Mother. His color-sight was back!

Chester rubbed his eyes, then tried to make out more detail as he pushed himself upright on barely responsive arms. The Holy Mother was similarly balled up, although she had fallen back against the bed and was sprawled in a sitting position. Her chest was heaving with rapid gasps. And her eyes were locked onto his.

Chester's battered brain finally placed her color.

Disgust.

He immediately began stammering out an apology, but the Holy Mother beat him to words. "Useless," she hissed, the red-orange separating out into its components rage and fear. "Worse than useless." The red began to dominate, the color muddying into outrage. "You imbecile, how could you not know what the colors were? I nearly—"

She suddenly gasped and jerked her head from side to side, scanning the room. Then fast-crawled across the carpet, lunging for the fallen necklace. Its clasp had bent open at a sickly angle. She fiddled frantically with it, first to bend the clasp back into usable shape, then with both hands behind her neck. After several seconds of bright orange fumbling, there was a quiet click as the clasp hooked, and the Holy Mother let out a shaky breath.

"I'm so sorry, Holy Mother," Chester said meekly, her disgust seared into his memory.

The hue of her anger blazed back, sharp and vivid. "You should be. Do you know how much damage you almost did? This goes beyond a curse, Cheshire, this is your personal failure. Your pride in your transgressions manifesting into a false power. If I were one level less enlightened I'd pitch you off the mountain and save the world from your sin."

He cringed. "I'm sorry!"

"Lucky for you I'm the world's foremost expert on curses." The Holy Mother stood on shaking legs. "But I can only help you if you want to get better. Step one, never speak of this again. Ever. To anyone."

This was fixable! Chester lunged for that sliver of hope, nodding frantically. "Yes, Swamini-ji!"

The Holy Mother nodded back, rage subsiding and fear bubbling up. She paced back and forth several times, other colors swirling in uncertainly, then seemed to come to a decision, settling down to orange and gold.

"Go sit in the closet and think about what you've done," she said, pointing across the room. "I've got something to sort out."

* * *

Chester's reminiscences are shattered by the opening of the driver door. Anton hoists himself up to the driver's seat, sits down, and sets his handgun down in his lap in order to pull out his phone.

Anton's in a pretty good mood, all things considered. It's mostly magenta and amber, not happiness per se, but there are some streaks of satisfied purple as he relaxes into everything going according to plan.

Chester sneaks in a few more seconds of brooding as Anton taps out a text message he isn't at an angle to see. For a long time, he had believed that that long-ago incident was proof his color vision was an evil the Holy Mother had tried and failed to exorcize. (It certainly hadn't felt evil at the time—what she had done seemed awfully bad—but after seeing her reaction, his certainty had evaporated. And then, just a day later, he had beheld the truth of her siddhis, and the Holy Mother's transcendence was beyond question.) If his vision wasn't evil, then why had she reacted with such revulsion?

On the other hand, if the Holy Mother herself was fighting against evil, why had she never tried to exorcize him again? And why, years later, had she started talking to him about his sight again, and all but encouraged him to use it to recruit converts and police her devotees? Not to mention, she had sworn him to secrecy despite all her lectures on truth being the pathway to enlightenment. Which was far from an isolated incident, now that he thinks of it. The idea of truth as a primary virtue had gone out the window early, once she started focusing specifically on love.

It had always been a foundational fact of Chester's existence that the Holy Mother's enlightened ways were beyond his failed mortal judgment. Her putting his transgressive powers to use, despite the dangers to their collective enlightenment, was something he had committed to trusting her judgment in. But now, the mounting evidence of her own transgressions is starting to tell a very different story.

There's jingling from the front seat. Anton thumbs through his keyring, looking for the ignition key. Chester tries to refocus—he's got more urgent problems.

Like that pistol. His attention strays to it, adrenaline tightening all his muscles. It's ominous enough even without being on the business end of it—it's a massive gun, too big to hold in cupped hands without barrel and grip sticking out the sides. The grip is black faux wood, blunt and heavy and sharply curved, and the gun body is a solid cylinder of metal in a rugged squarish frame, and the entire assembly looks heavy with death. The grooved central cylinder—wait, that's why it looks familiar. It's a Colt Peacemaker, a six-shooter revolver straight out of a Tennessee Walker movie, and that cylinder is where the bullets are loaded.

Have any of them been used today?

Chester's used to being personally in trouble; from that very first day, he was only ever a source of pain and stress for the Holy Mother. But he's not the only one who has faced that gun. He thinks of Celestia's protectiveness and Sunset's trust—and the way his ill-considered phone call led to the Holy Mother warning Anton about them. Even if the Holy Mother's intentions were good, he has definitely caused problems for the villain hunters. Maybe… something worse than problems.

Chester chews his lip for a moment, then risks speaking up.

"What will you do with the other two?" he asks quietly. (That wording is multiply deliberate—extremely Chet Land. Chester has baited out his share of unintentional revelations by exploiting people's need to correct wrong assumptions.)

Anton shoulder-shrugs as he puts the pickup in gear and starts turning the truck around in a multi-point maneuver on the narrow dirt road. "I reckon that depends on what they know," he says, a thin maroon shouldering its way into the color palette. (Good—Sunset and Celestia are still alive, and him accepting the two-count means he doesn't know about Ember.) Anton's suspicion intensifies, and he throws the truck out of gear and glances over his shoulder at Chester. "Why? You plannin' on doing something about it?"

Chester shakes his head, trying to defuse the color and give himself another moment to think. "I'm stupid, sir, not suicidal."

"Well, keep it that way." Anton glares at him for several seconds as the maroon subsides, and turns back around.

Now that he's established nobody has died because of him—yet, some dark voice whispers—he needs a plan. That exchange also established he can't rely on a rescue from the unicorns. He's developing serious doubts about his ability to turn this around himself. That leaves him with one long shot, and not much choice but to take it.

"I plan to, sir," Chester says. "In fact, as a gesture of good faith—you didn't take my smartphone."

Anton's emotions spike into peach. He twists back around again. "What?"

"I wasn't going to use it!" Chester says. "But if I give it to you, then both of us know I'm not doing anything sneaky with it. See, I'm trying to cooperate."

He watches Anton churn through several distinct hues of maroon. "See," Anton says slowly, "I know you got an angle here. Chryssy went through exactly how you manipulated me, and told me 'bout how you did the exact same to her. So I don't believe for a second you just want to hand that over as a gift."

Chester braces himself. Given Chryssa-swamini coaching Anton into maximum suspicion, this sequence of lies is going to be as delicate as walking a tightrope. Being able to see emotional reactions is an awfully thin safety net.

He starts out by tensing up and flicking his eyes side to side. Using deliberately suspicious body language would normally be insane, but he needs Anton to think he's correctly reading the situation here.

"Okay," Chester says with what he hopes sounds like reluctance. "Fine. The truth is I was going to get you to look at the pictures, so you knew I wasn't bluffing about them."

"Pictures?" Anton peach-says.

He's set the hook. Chester only gets one shot at baiting it, but he's got an educated guess from Anton's earlier admission: "The ones Celestia sent before they went to your ranch."

"I knew it!" Anton's aura explodes into fear and rage, and then the red shifts into amber. "She used you as insurance. Gimme that phone right buckin' now."

"I'm trying, sir!" Chester says, wriggling his arms uselessly within his bonds. "It's right here in my—oh."

Anton hefts the revolver and taps it menacingly against the passenger seat, a dangerous thread of red flickering across that focused, intense avarice. "In your what?"

Chester doesn't have to fake the panic that comes along with Anton's threat. "It was in my pocket!" He makes a show of searching the seat and the floor. "Where'd it go!"

"You little shit," Anton says, orange and amber intensifying. He sets down the pistol again, roughly shoves Chester to one side of the bench seat, glances around the back seat, and starts rooting with both hands through the trash on the floor of the cab. "Don't you dare move."

Chester's content to stay frozen, monitoring his captor's emotions. He lets Anton's frustration build up a bit—but speaks up once that maroon again starts to stir. "Maybe it fell out on the road when you started tying me up?"

Anton wordlessly kicks open his door, hops out, and scans the road under the truck. (His frustration is building faster than Chester is comfortable with, but there's no helping that now.) Then he yanks the rear door open and points the revolver at Chester, blazing with amber greed. "Where is it?"

"I-I don't know!" Chester says, his voice involuntarily ratcheting up. "I—" Moment of truth: "Call it or something!"

To Chester's infinite relief, Anton fishes his own phone from his pocket. And then pauses amid a flood of maroon.

"You're tryin' to get me to call one of your friends," he growls, gun still aimed right at Chester's face.

Chester barely holds it together. That is, in fact, exactly what he's trying to do, but he has to double down and hope those tiny threads of doubt in Anton's accusation can be teased to life.

"Sir, you know the number in your contacts is mine," he points out, sweat prickling at his hairline. "I texted you at the end of my first visit."

"Then why're you holdin' out on me?" Anton challenges, chestnut red-brown.

"I don't have my phone!" Chester pleads, hoping that speck of truth carries the earnestness the moment needs. He makes a wild stab at keeping the plan on the rails: "I'm just saying we could find it from the ring. Listen, I know you think this is some switcheroo or something, so I promise you: if you call it and anyone picks up, you can shoot me right now."

Maroon and black war in Anton's stare. Amber slowly overtakes them both.

His eyes not leaving Chester's, Anton raises his phone again, taps Chester's line in his contacts, and taps speakerphone on.

Chester's heart starts hammering as the call dials.

Fact: This will probably work.

The phone is in Holds-the-Fire's hands. She's probably out of reception range in the forest, in which case the call goes to voicemail and she gets a missed call notification later. Even if she does have signal, she probably won't know what the ringing means, and the icons on the screen will probably mean nothing to her. Even if she pulls the phone out and starts poking it at random, whatever she taps will probably just reject the call.

That's way too many "probably"s. But the logic is sound. In virtually every scenario he can imagine, the call fails, and she gets either an immediate or a belated reminder of him. And that should spur her to realize she no longer has the lighter he can feel in his pocket. And maybe, just maybe, she'll come after him to get it.

A droplet of sweat trickles down his temple. This whole thing seemed like a much smarter plan before it involved a gun pointed at his head.

Anton's phone purrs. One ring.

The only problem with Chester's desperate gamble is that his life relies on Holds-the-Fire not exceeding his wildest expectations. Which is pretty much all she's done since he met her.

Two rings.

Please, Chester prays. Let her not have signal right now.

Three rings.

Anton's doubts are growing in tandem with Chester's, and little wiggles of pale orange are coalescing around the black—he's starting to think he got suckered. If the call does connect, Chester's pretty sure he has seconds to live.

Four rings.

Please please please please please—

Five rings, cut short, and Chester's stilted voicemail greeting begins to play. "I am away from my phone, fellow seeker of enlightenment, but have a blessed day and leave a message—"

Anton snorts, thumbing off the call. The pistol doesn't waver.

"Can't help but notice there weren't no ringing around the truck," he says, maroon growing afresh out of the black. It's joined by muddy yellow and muddy orange. Anton is mostly convinced he got played—he's just not certain what to do about it yet.

Chester's focus snaps back to that gun. "I—I had it at the creek," he says meekly. "Do you want to go back and look…?"

Anton considers that for a moment, but the ensuing flare of amber can't dislodge his suspicions. "No," he says, the maroon taking over. "We're getting you to Chryssy before you can pull off any more tricks. You're lucky she asked for you alive." There's an ugly flash of wounded red and Anton thumbs the pistol, which clicks as the hammer cocks. "But you try another con job, son, and I'll show you what happens when you test me."

Chester goes silent, blood draining from his face, and nods vigorously.

Anton stares at him with mixed maroon and brown, then finally nods back. He slams Chester's door shut, hauls himself back into the driver's seat, and puts the truck back into gear.

Two forward-reverse cycles later, the pickup is finally well enough aligned with the dirt road to give Anton a clear driving path. He stomps hard on the accelerator. The truck roars, shudders. There's a loud grinding from below, punctuated by staccato pops as the tires fight for traction on the dirt and kick up a shower of pebbles against the undercarriage. A fresh cloud of dust billows up behind them.

Then there's a flash of color in the corner of Chester's eye. A small, sleek ice-blue form bursts out of the dust, leaping in a graceful arc over the tailgate. The figure lands with a whump, sliding across the mostly-empty bed and underneath the big toolbox mounted just behind the rear window. The sound is barely noticeable over the vehicle peeling out, but the truck briefly rocks with the impact.

Chester's heart swells. It's Holds-the-Fire! Somehow, she must have gotten his call already, and—wait.

He knows two ice-blue beings, and this one is too small to be her. Border collie sized.

… Ember?

Either way, there's no time to celebrate—Anton's maroon is already spiking with indignant muddy yellow. A few seconds later, when they've built up some momentum and the noises of acceleration have died away, the glare he gives Chester in the rear-view mirror has already churned through that color and into fresh red. "Really, son? You kickin' my seat?"

Chester's reflexive denial dies on his lips. Getting blamed for her landing is a genuine stroke of luck. He'll take any help he can get right now, even from her—but the rescue is dead on arrival if Anton realizes Ember hitched a ride.

"Sorry, sir," he says. "I lost my balance when you accelerated."

It's the best lie he's got. And it's not enough. Anton's red crystallizes into an ugly crimson, and then he picks up the pistol with his left hand and points it over his right shoulder, swiveling the barrel toward Chester. Chester's life flashes before his eyes—

A fraction of a second before Anton's trigger finger squeezes, the barrel tilts almost straight downward.

A thunderous crack splits the cab.

Chester flinches—not from fear this time, but the sharp physicality of the shot. At this close range, it's like being slapped in the face. His ears start ringing. A curl of thick smoke rises from the barrel, and its acrid scent is inescapable.

Anton withdraws the gun, setting it back on his lap.

Nothing hurts or feels wet. Chester remembers to breathe.

He angles his head down. There's a hole in the floor of the truck directly between his sneakers, through which he can see the dirt road flashing by. Part of his brain is screaming in relief—it was just a warning shot. And part is screaming in horror—Anton wasn't even looking, and Chester knows the quality of his marksmanship. It's sheer luck he didn't lose a foot.

"One more shenanigan out of you," Anton says in mixed red and brown, "and I aim higher. You got me?"

Chester vigorously nods. "Sir, yes sir!" he squeaks. Then he shuts up, focusing on his breathing as cold sweat prickles his brow and shivers pass through his body.

Author's Note

Chapter 12, "Road Dog," publishes on Sunday, Sept. 1! Probably, anyway. I might be away from the Internet camping. If so, I'll queue it up to go live as soon as I get back in cell phone range.

How is everyone feeling about the twice-a-week schedule? If it seems slow, I can speed it up to three.

12. Road Dog

The last time Chester remembers his nerves getting this wrecked was in the wake of that miserable request from the Holy Mother to spy on Brother Bill.

Chester had been creeping through the ashram on Bill's tail when suddenly, he was grabbed from behind. He tried to shriek, but a hand clamped securely over his mouth. He thrashed ineffectually, certain he had been captured by the enemies of enlightenment and was about to die.

"Ssh," Esau whispered in his ear.

Panic receded. He glanced over his shoulder to see Esau's aura, pink and protective midnight blue. Esau touched his finger to his lips, then released Chester. He turned around and strode away. Chester meekly followed.

They walked in silence until they reached the ashram's outer walls. Esau pivoted to walk alongside them, leading them in a broad circle around the edge of the grounds.

"I was afraid this was going to happen when Swamini-ji mentioned you were spying for her," he said, a muddy orange swirling into the mix—embarrassment on Chester's behalf.

"Yeah," Chester said meekly. "I guess I'm just as bad a spy as I am everything else."

Esau said nothing for a moment, stewing in rose pink.

"Chess," he finally said. "What am I feeling?"

"Disappointment."

"Exactly." Esau's color shifted to a prickly pink irritation. "Because this should be an absolute slam-dunk for you. So stop your self-pity party. Do you have any idea how much any other spy would sacrifice to be able to answer that question so easily?"

"Uh," Chester said, suddenly uncertain where Esau was going with this. Most of what Chet Land did in the novels was sip shaken martinis in glamorous casinos, get into improbable vehicle chases, and swing through plate-glass windows after getting caught infiltrating highly secured buildings. "No? I was just playing pretend like I always do, Saw, except now she wants me to do it for real and I can't even sneak after people right." His voice ratcheted up. "And then she's gonna disavow knowledge of my existence and I'll die in a dungeon in the place she banished me to."

"Chess." The muddy orange returned. "The Holy Mother got super excited when you got interested in spying because you're already a natural."

"Maybe for some things, but someday I'll need to shoot evil minions in a supervillain's lair and my stomach goes in knots just thinking about guns—"

"Chet Land is fake, Chess. That's not what spies do." Esau shifted to a pastel red exasperation. "A spy's entire job is to learn things. Stop sneaking around after Brother Bill and just… listen. Think. Do what you already do. Why are you trying to shadow him, when you already see him dozens of times every day and pick up more than anybody else ever could just by standing in the same room? You're trying way too hard, and everyone's starting to wonder."

Chester shook his head numbly. "But she wants me to be Chet Land and I can't—"

Esau stepped in front of Chester, turned around, and clenched Chester's shoulders hard, making him wince. "Chess," he brown-said. "What did she specifically ask you to do?"

Chester swallowed, forcing himself to calm down. That drab brown, their shared resolve of the Soldier Incident, was Esau's cue for him to focus. "She…" He licked his lips as he recalled the conversation. "Said to find out why Brother Bill was acting strangely."

"Right." Esau let go, but stayed facing him. "Not to follow him inside a cardboard box, or whatever it is you were trying to do at lunchtime. I know you already know most of the answer to her question, because you can see him the same way I do. Why aren't you just doing that?"

"Because this is my spy audition," Chester immediately said, voice ratcheting back up. "I've got to do it the right way. Color-sight is cheating—"

"What?" Esau interrupted, creamsicle. "No it's not. Who told you that?"

"I, uh." Chester stifled his fear.

The Holy Mother had, kind of, once upon a time. He thought back to that moment of disgust. But she had also ordered him never to speak of it—and even now, almost a decade later, even with Esau, he had kept that secret. He didn't want to think of the consequences of violating her trust.

"Chess. That is the 'right way'. That's exactly what she wants you to do." Esau's colors had gone a swirling mixture of pink, light violet, and dark blue—the typical muddled mess of sorting through conflicting emotions, except this time the components were each fairly distinctive.

Chester found himself wrestling with a similar conflict. If it had been anyone else, he wouldn't have dared consider the heresy that the Holy Mother was encouraging him to use a power so transgressive. But Esau had lately been spending so much time with her that the information might as well have been firsthand.

"I," Chester stammered. "What if, maybe, I had a reason to think that wasn't the case?"

Esau motioned for them to start walking again, a brown resolve sweeping away his color mixture. "Then you're just gonna have to trust me that that's wrong," he said, glancing around and lowering his voice. "Listen. She's…" Esau's voice went orange. "… had me do a couple missions like this, too." Chester realized immediately Esau was telling him something he absolutely should not have known. "I'm okay at it, but I don't have the patience you do, and I don't connect with people like you do. Sometimes all I can give her is getting close enough to someone to confirm their feelings. Even that is huge. And you? If you sit down with someone, say whatever it takes to get them to trust you, get them talking…" Esau waved a hand, shading into a blue-green encouragement, though not without a tiny undertone of light amber envy. "You can wrap them around your finger."

"But I'm a creampuff," Chester protested. "I just want everyone to get along."

"That's what makes you perfect," Esau said, fixing Chester with a blue-green stare. "The best spy isn't the one they can't see coming, Chess. It's the one they never suspect."

"Well?" the Holy Mother said as Chester let himself into her audience chamber and closed the door behind him. She was uncharacteristically purple as she sprawled on her wicker chair and read. It was a Bittish tabloid this time instead of last week's magazine; the large and lurid newsprint sprawled against her upraised knees.

Chester approached to a respectful distance, knelt, and bowed. He'd taken Esau's pep talk to heart, but he was still a nervous wreck. If she did lecture him on using his color-sight… he'd been too terrified to think of a defense, and he had no idea how far mere groveling would get him.

So he leapt straight into his findings. "Brother Bill hired a private investigator to look into Sister Mandy's departure, Swamini-ji."

The Holy Mother froze mid-page-flip, colors spiking into a blazing peach.

"I see," she said with a tone far too casual for her color. She set down the newspaper and sat up, now a tightly restrained orange. "Who? And why would he do that?"

"The recently arrived Brother John, Swamini-ji. They believe she may have disappeared here rather than left the ashram."

Chester reached inside his robes and pulled out several pages of handwritten notes. Even given the advantage of his color-sight, he was proud of that. He had noticed a connection from the way Bill and John felt around each other, even though they never directly talked; had struck up a conversation with John and gotten suspicious of his calculated guardedness; and then had searched John's bed in the dormitory when neither of them were around. That had felt more like detective-novel work than spy-novel work, but the violet glow from the Holy Mother upon seeing his discovery immediately told him it had been the right move.

The Holy Mother wordlessly took the papers and skimmed through them, blazing through a succession of colors. Fear, suspicion, anger, relief. Chester watched in silence. Part of him was still in detective mode—the thrill of discovery, and now the thrill of surpassing the Holy Mother's expectations, were intoxicating—but now that detective voice was starting to whisper treacherous thoughts. Like: as transcendent as she was, those emotions were certainly making her look suspicious.

Finally, the Holy Mother set aside her reading, closing her eyes to focus. And her aura did something… odd. It was a restrained orange, intense as usual for her—but a second layer of color started building up on top of the orange, without displacing it or mixing with it in the messy way that emotions normally shifted into each other. The shimmering cyan of a siddhi he'd only ever seen once before.

She stood up and walked over to Chester, reaching out for his shoulder. The cyan glow around her hand intensified. The underlying orange around her body diminished.

She touched him, and the world fell away.

Chester's breath caught. His heart thudded in his chest; his cheeks flushed; the weight of its sins released its grip on his body. The entire world had been blasted away into sublime cyan, and he was submerged in liquid bliss. Drowned in rapture, holiest of holies, and it was her, all her, nothing but her, and merely witnessing her existence was the highest goal to which he could ever aspire.

"Bill has fallen," the Holy Mother said, and her voice was celestial harmony, and tears gathered in Chester's eyes. "He's making up lies to turn students of enlightenment from the path. You know that, don't you?"

Chester did—without question, without possibility of question. In this moment of radiance, basking in its source, there was only her truth. He threw himself to the ground at her transcendental feet, nodding wordlessly.

"Did you tell anyone else of your findings?" she asked.

Scandal and horror at the very idea shook Chester's core. To desecrate her perfection with the lies of a lost soul? "No, Swamini-ji!" he said, grateful beyond words that that was true. He bowed deeper, forehead touching the floor. "Please, let me help keep it that way. Simply tell me how to deal with the heretic and it will be done."

"No," the Holy Mother said, and twitched one perfect foot at the side of his vision, motioning him back to his feet. "You've done well today. I don't mind saying you have far surpassed my expectations." That much was already clear from the magnitude of her reward. "But this is no longer your concern."

"Of course, Swamini-ji."

"Go take the afternoon off. You've earned it—for once. I'll let you know when I need you again."

She stepped back, lowering herself unsteadily into her black wicker chair. And Chester noticed, with alarm: Her body sagged with exhaustion, and her skin was unhealthily pale. Her color had shifted from orange to indigo relief, but it was muted and indistinct, even compared to an average person's—and a candle against her usual sun.

Chester's instincts screamed to aid her—bring extra cushions, get a bottle of water, anything—but even that kindness was unthinkable, in the face of her direct order.

He bowed low again, backing away. "I live to serve you, Swamini-ji," he said, and retreated back into the fallen world and its rainbow of lesser colors.

* * *

Off-key singing draws Chester's attention back to the present.

It's not a pleasant place. It's where he nearly got shot just now—again—instead of basking in the Holy Mother's light of bliss and perfection. Everything had been so much simpler then. His current doubts would have been literally unthinkable.

… Not all of them had stayed buried, though. There was nothing particularly transcendent about cyan—that was just the color of love, and he'd seen it in any number of other devotees, and even in random strangers when he had joined older devotees for airport duty. He had known that the Holy Mother was capable of transcendental colors others weren't—the gold he had by then seen twice. So why had she given him the gift of transcendental truth by using a base color anyone could use?

Back then, he had silently struggled with those thoughts for a few days, and come to a few conclusions. One: Since the Holy Mother was an enlightened master of love, that was the color she used to give glimpses of the divine to people who weren't capable of transcendence. Two: Since she had gone to great effort to share one of her siddhis—despite her ongoing insistence that they were reserved for pupils at much higher levels of enlightenment—Esau had been correct that their color-sight couldn't be inherently evil. Three: Sister Mandy's unexpected disappearance had had a perfectly rational explanation. Chester had once seen her turn other people that exact same shade of cyan. The day after young Chester's uncomfortable color-draining memory, Mandy had clearly showed her power to the Holy Mother, discovered that the Holy Mother could turn the world blue, and run away from the ashram in humiliation upon discovering how much she still had left to learn.

Chester has a feeling there's more to sort through there, now that he's looking at the memories with fresh eyes. But Anton's singing is getting really distracting.

Reluctantly, he pauses his thoughts and looks around. They're now driving down the highway, somewhere between Canter Creek and the capital. Anton has the radio cranked up. Chester recognizes the song—"Foalsome Prison Blues". Anton's belting out the line about shooting a man in Preeno just to watch him die.

That focuses him, cold and hard. Chester eyes the bullet hole in the floor again. No more brooding over memories—he needs help. And not the vague chance of Holds-the-Fire maybe tracking him down.

Chester takes one final breath to steady himself, then gathers his thoughts. He doesn't have line of sight to see Ember's colors, and he has no idea whether he can actually connect with her telepathy without it, but… well, that idea requires a lot less blind hope than most of his plans today. Once again, he draws together all the sensations he remembers feeling when the werewolves were talking at him, reaches into those sensations, and pushes back out.

Ember? he broadcasts toward her approximate position behind him.

Something peach tickles at the back of his mind. It's muted, but definitely setting off his color-sight. Chester focuses on it, and the contours of Ember's thoughts start pressing back at him.

Here we go, she says, the peach shading into pale yellow resignation. You again.

Chester inwardly sighs. Okay, we've clearly got plenty to talk about, but right now the only topic that matters is the homicidal maniac driving the truck.

I agree, Ember says, pink stirring up. But only because he's my only lead to Celestia and Sunset. I don't give a flying fewmet what his beef with you is.

There goes the faint hope that Ember had second thoughts and jumped on the truck to save him.

As much as he needs her help regardless, Chester feels his irritation spike—and finds himself uncharacteristically uninclined to hold back, after what happened in the forest. Maybe you SHOULD start caring. Because that's TWICE now that I've protected you and nearly gotten shot for it. When I covered for you sneaking onto the truck, Anton almost blasted my foot off.

Did you teach him to shoot, too? The barb is raw, accusatory, streaked rage and pain.

Part of Chester marvels that he's not wilting, trying to deflect and appease, given those emotions being directed straight at him. But he is beyond done with Ember right now—for Holds-the-Fire's sake. She doesn't deserve Ember's red, and never did. And if Ember hadn't blown everything up, Chester would be out buying lighter fluid for her right now instead of being kidnapped and near-murdered.

You know what? Chester snaps back. I am going to own that. Yes, I taught her how to shoot a gun. Because that's what she needs to hunt. She's trying to provide for the wolves she cares about, trying so hard, and on the verge of failing.

Then she should have asked for help! Ember red-says. Sunset would have—

Chester sweeps through the waves of inbound red, focusing his own emotions and jabbing back precisely. No! I'm talking, you listen! he interrupts. (Holds-the-Fire was right, kind of—as uncomfortable as confrontation is, it feels good to be able to stand up for her.) You keep talking about her like she's a villain. Well, you know what? If she is—then I am too. Because you have NO idea what it felt like to lose her when I saved you from her. And I'm starting to regret that decision. So here's the deal—you call her evil one more time, and I'll tell Anton you're there, so that he can finish the job she started.

Ember's emotions blossom into vivid peach. You wouldn't.

Good me knows how stupid that is, Chester says, still bristling and jabbing spiky thoughts at her. But evil me doesn't have anything left to lose.

Ember wrestles with red, which quickly muddies into outrage, joined by a muddy yellow indignation.

Chester lets her simmer.

Then she speaks back up again, the mud settling into a tawny resentment: Fine. You've made your point. You had very good reasons for what you did. There's no sincerity in the sentiment; it's pure placation. Now let's focus on saving the ponies.

Chester holds his ground. I don't think I have made my point, no. And this isn't about me being good. It's about her.

Ember's muddy red outrage flares again, and unintelligible thoughts press in as she does the mental equivalent of sputtering. Did you miss the part where she invaded my world, mind-controlled my people, and nearly started a reign of worldwide terror?

Yeah? And what did you do? Chester asks.

Sacrificed my scepter to stop her, then returned her here out of a misguided attempt at mercy! We've been over this!

Not what I meant, Chester says. What Sunset said is that people who are villains in this world are copies of villains in yours. So what's your crime?

Nothing! Ember says, shifting back into muddy yellow. Literally nothing! The ponies helped me learn about friendship when Spike and I won my scepter in the Gauntlet of Fire! My dad wouldn't ever let me do anything beforehand, and all I've done since is try to teach friendship to my dragons!

Now that she mentions dragons, Chester can kinda see Ember as one: irascible, ferocious, treasure-hoarding. (He briefly wonders how many exotic races the unicorn dimension has.) An image takes hold for a moment, of tiny wolf Ember atop an enormous, sprawling treasure hoard—and that reminds him of something Holds-the-Fire said.

So you didn't come here to steal her crown? Chester asks, halfway between a question and a challenge.

She shouldn't have had it in the first place, Ember pink-says.

Meaning: You did. He doesn't bother to hide the challenge in that one.

Ember's words shade into brown with little prickles of pink: the irritated determination of someone believing themselves justified. Because it was dangerous and shouldn't have ever been here. I don't need to listen to a lecture from some brat who knows nothing about Equestrian magic.

You're trying to talk me out of being evil, remember? Chester says, trying to strike a balance between earnestness and menace. So help me understand. Or would you rather justify yourself to Anton?

Ember goes quiet for a moment. And when she speaks up again, she's more controlled, a guarded gray—but some tawny resentment still seeps through.

Okay, fine, she says. Here's your context. The Bloodstone Crown and Scepter were part of a set, long ago—

Wait, Chester interrupts, alarmed. YOUR scepter—it's a bloodstone, too?

Uh, yes? Ember creamsicle-says. Before it broke, anyway. And?

Sweet stars, that explains so much. She is bloodstone-poisoned. They each have a little chunk of Wrong in their heads.

Chester holds off on that discussion, though—better to learn what he can first. Sorry. Go on.

Okay, Ember says, settling back into gray. They had powerful domination magic. The scepter controlled and enhanced intellect, and the crown controlled and enhanced instinct. Together, their power was absolute.

Chester can't help but interrupt again. The crown's not the thinky one? Don't those seem backwards?

I… Ember flares peach briefly, as if she's never quite considered that before, followed by a spike of pink. Not the point. An evil sorceress enslaved dragonkind with them and used us to terrorize Equestria. Then a dragon—the first Dragon Lord—managed to steal the scepter and break her control. The sorceress fled with the crown and was never seen again—until we discovered she had ended up here in the human world.

So if they're part of the same set, what makes the crown more evil than the scepter? Chester asks.

Nothing! That's what I'm saying! Ember pink-says.

Chester struggles to follow her logic. They're both evil?

They're both POWERFUL, and the way Sunset tells it, your world has an ongoing problem with powerful magic items falling into the wrong hands. Ember's pink darkens and turns inward. Not that our track record is any better. Listen—strength is everything to dragons. The scepter marks you as Dragon Lord because it means you were ALREADY the most powerful. Friendship is considered a weakness. I'm only the second Dragon Lord ever to use the scepter's power to try to help them see a better way. Ember's words suddenly tinge orange and cream—a wholly self-directed fear and shame. The first got overthrown and humiliated when his scepter got stolen. And now I'm equally boned! The dragons are still following my orders because they don't know the scepter doesn't work any more, but they're getting more restless by the day. Even if we can stop your Ember, she's probably ended my reign for good.

Chester digests that, but steers the discussion back toward the villain point. I don't know how to put this delicately, but… it sounds like you were planning on using the unstoppable power of the reunited set?

It's not like that! Ember spikes pink again. The ponies wanted the artifacts in good hands, responsible hands! Her frustration wavers, and orange and black start seeping in. I HAVE to use their power, or someone much worse takes over. And Princess Twilight is working with me directly on this. (Well, there's name number four, the back of Chester's brain notes.) She's the Princess of Friendship. She'd have told me if I was doing anything wrong.

Bingo.

Chester softens his tone, adds some sympathy. From her doubt, she just beat him to the armor-piercing question. He doesn't have to ask it, he just has to bring it into the open.

So, he says, since you and Holds-the-Fire are both the same person… can that person, with the help of friends, be trusted with a dangerous tool?

Ember's colors fade as she retreats from the link.

Chester's worries start to twitch. And when she speaks up—the red-tinted white of self-loathing—they don't improve.

You're right, Ember says. I really can't.

Wrong lesson. Wrong lesson! Chester stuffs down his panic, trying to keep his own projections controlled and uplifting.

I think you're wrong, he says. I believe in Holds-the-Fire. Which means I believe in you, too.

A welcome flicker of dark green stirs up in Ember to contest that white, but it wavers and dissipates as vivid orange pours in.

I… like that about you, Thorax, she says, struggling to get a flicker of blue out through that suffocating orange. The words sound almost coached despite their sincerity; she clearly is terrified by the idea of opening herself up to express feelings, perhaps because of that self-loathing Chester just caught a glimpse of. (No wonder her default is pink: that frustration is a way to vent her anger on safer targets.)

Chester prepares to take advantage of the moment of connection, but Ember cages the orange behind a wall of gray and swiftly changes the subject. Doesn't matter, though, considering how screwed up everything has gotten.

No! He's not going to let her get away with that, not when they're so close to a breakthrough—

"Son," Anton's gruff maroon voice cuts in. "What're ya up to back there?"

Crap. Hang on, Chester panic-broadcasts, and snaps his attention back to the truck cab. Anton is eyeing him in the rear-view mirror. At least both hands are still on the wheel, and the gun is still in his lap.

"Sir?" he says.

"You've gone awful quiet." Anton's eyes narrow, and his suspicion intensifies. "And your face is squinchin' up a lot."

Shit! He's been caught. Anton saw him reacting to his telepathic conversation.

The dam holding back Chester's panic bursts. His mind goes blank. He's already whiffed on one explanation—which used up his warning shot—and there is literally no excuse he can give which won't sound even more suspicious. He's dead.

"S-sir, I…" he stammers, and can't finish the sentence.

Anton's maroon whirls and blurs. Frozen by terror, Chester waits for it to resolve into his red doom. But then—miraculously—it's overtaken by magenta.

"Really, boy?" Anton brays out a hearty laugh. "You tryin' some of that enlightenment magic on me?"

That mood shift is a gift straight from heaven, and Chester still has no idea what to say. Will agreeing get him shot? Will denying it get Anton angry, and then get him shot? He stammers incoherently while his brain reboots.

Anton guffaws again, the schadenfreude lingering. "It's downright hilarious watchin' a parasite like you get so desperate." His sadistic glee finally recedes enough for maroon to reappear, though it has ratcheted down considerably. "Still, just in case you do manage to grow any powers, you ain't going to try that again."

Chester's panic ratchets down just enough to unlock his brain. As he starts breathing again, that wording catches his attention.

Fact: Despite the Holy Mother explicitly warning Anton about Chester and the unicorns—and directing Anton to treat him like a dangerous traitor—she specifically omitted mention of Chester's color-sight.

That has to be the case, if Anton considers him incapable of enlightenment magic—a conclusion backed up both by his words and by his total lack of precautions. He can maybe see why Chryssy might have done that, if her cover story was that Chester was nothing but a con man taking advantage of them both. But it's a major incongruity, considering how intensely she primed Anton for paranoia.

Still, Chester can't do much more than note it and focus on keeping Anton placated. "Sir, yes sir," he says, and swallows. "I… may I lean against the side of the cab, and look out the window?" He gestures with his chin to the passenger side. "There, where you can keep an eye on me. Is that okay?"

Anton rolls the request around in his head. The maroon shifts around in hue, but its intensity remains low.

"Fine," he growls. "But the first sign of you going for that door, and you catch a case of lead poisoning."

"Understood, sir."

Chester wriggles his trussed-up body sideways on the bench seat, keeping his motions slow and non-threatening. He settles in against the side of the cab, eyes locked with Anton's, and then puts on his best rigidly neutral expression and shifts his eyes to stare at the passing countryside. His life depends on his poker face now.

He takes a slow breath through his nose, calming down, and then refocuses back on the mental conversation.

Sorry, Chester thinks toward the truck bed. Close call there. You okay?

Ember immediately re-establishes the link, a guarded gray with only hints of that earlier fear and despair. The delay seems to have given her an opening to wrestle her emotions back under control.

I guess that means we're past your stupid threat to turn me in? she gray-asks.

It takes Chester a moment to recall where he was originally going with that. Almost, he says. Humor me for a moment and then we can work together. I promise.

Great, Ember says with a complete lack of violet enthusiasm. Fine. Get it over with.

I just need you to say something nice about Holds-the-Fire, Chester says, aware that his desperation is likely leaking through. At this point, even if he were willing to actually do it, betraying Ember to Anton just gets him shot too… but if she calls his bluff and he can't get even this tiny concession, his chances of untangling the stupid little bloodstone drama plummet to zero. Just one genuine compliment. Show me you're capable of thinking of her as something besides history's greatest monster.

Seriously? Ember says, shading into pink.

Please, Chester says.

Ember thinks something at him that comes across as a sigh. But it bleeds that pink off into pale yellow resignation.

You're really going to make me do this, she thinks, though the color has already signaled this discussion's outcome. Fine. But only because the other you is Thorax. Don't make me regret trusting this version of you. AGAIN.

Likewise, Chester replies. We've… both gotten each other in a lot of trouble today. But I think it's time to start fixing it.

Ember goes silent on him.

Ember? he asks after several seconds.

… Sorry, she says, a strained yellow that's very nearly bleeding off the mental image, with spiky orange fear vibrating in the background. Some part of him pictures the wolf breathing heavily and sweating, working herself up to a feat more formidable than lifting a boulder. (It's… kind of adorable in the sheer depth of its awkwardness.)

Your Ember is… Ember starts, and Chester braces himself for some generic platitude he can thank her profusely for and hurry the conversation past. And then she completes the thought:

… the better version of me.

I'm sorry, Chester says, struggling to keep his face from twitching. What?

She beat me when we fought! Ember says—ah, and there's the dam of that faded yellow bursting, the true wound beneath the old scars he glimpsed in that first trip into the woods. Sacrificing the scepter to blow up the crown was a desperation plan and I got lucky. The yellow gets thicker, fresher. She's not even a dragon, and she's the dragon I'll never be. Her control was flawless. She's a born leader. That's more than enough to satisfy Chester's request, but the words are tumbling out in a deluge now. I never even beat the Gauntlet of Fire. I teamed up with Spike because he saved me from drowning, and he's the one who claimed the scepter at the end. He gave it to me so he could go back to Ponyville with Twilight.

Ember, Chester edges in, I—

She barrels on. I'm a fraud. Twilight asked me to help round up this world's dangerous artifacts and all I could think was, maybe if I managed to get the Bloodstone Crown back, I'd finally have a chance to be the Dragon Lord my people deserve. Her pain wavers and plummets into white. All the ponies think I'm a visionary, the first dragon in millennia to understand the magic of friendship. But the truth is I believe in friendship because I've never actually accomplished anything on my own.

She finally goes silent, orange-white despair bleeding all over Chester's color vision.

Sweet stars, Chester thinks to himself. That dragon-wolf needs a hug.

He settles for projecting gentle sympathy toward her hiding place. I don't know how you can think that, he says. You're the fiercest person I've ever met. It's obvious you care deeply about your friends and your people. You tried to protect me in the forest—even if it kind of blew things up a little, your heart was in the right place. And just now, when you talked about the artifact? The only urge you felt was being a good leader. (It's true. A few fragile green threads among the pain and despair; no hint of gold.) So give yourself some credit.

When she speaks again, the pep talk seems to have rallied her. Thank you, Ember says in a weak pastel blue—and even if that gratitude doesn't last past the end of the sentence, at least it lets her fend off the black until her colors shift into a brown resolve. But let's hold off on that credit until we save the ponies.

Chester nearly yields to the subject change. It's good to see her feeling better, and that is an important topic. But he's got one slightly more pressing.

Can we talk about the bloodstones first? he asks.

Ember shades back into a pink-hued creamsicle. We… just did?

That was background. Now the problem. Chester braces, reminding himself to keep his face neutral. You and Holds-the-Fire still have little remnants of the bloodstones stuck inside you.

Chester was expecting denial, or anger, or surprise—but Ember's creamsicle doesn't waver. Yes? she says. How did you think we were talking?

I, he says, um.

Chester keeps his expression still with an effort. How can she take that so casually? Doesn't she feel any Wrong inside her? How could she not? It's so inherently horrifying that the mere hint of its presence sets Chester's skin to crawling. But if she accepts the bloodstone, even misses its powers—and if she finds his horror confusing—then how can it feel so Wrong to him? Is he thinking about this the wrong way?

Her question nags at Chester until another realization bubbles to the surface. Ember's right: both Sunset and Holds-the-Fire had identified the bloodstones as the telepathy's source. But if that's the case, why hasn't he felt the Wrong—not once, not for a single moment—when telepathically talking to Ember or Holds-the-Fire? The Wrong's definitely still inside them; that frozen moment in the fight made that clear.

Maybe the Wrong is the bloodstones reawakening their power, and using their powers while they're still broken is okay?

That's a grotesque solution—implausibly splitting hairs. But there's no ambiguity to what the bloodstones almost made them do, and he needs something to explain the danger with, a reason for Ember to engage her brain and not fall back into instinct.

Wait. Wait, no, that's backward. The Bloodstone Crown once used to suppress Holds-the-Fire's mind. (No—the instinct-enhancing crown, he reminds himself. Same principle, though.) But that means the Bloodstone Scepter used to enhance Ember's mind, and she would have to go more feral to avoid it. Except going feral is demonstrably the problem! They were about to murder each other until he got them talking to him.

Does Ember need more bloodstone influence to get better? But then two equally broken artifacts, both of which were begging to be fixed, would be acting in exactly opposite ways which would require one of them to not want to be fixed and arrrgggh.

Chester is still rock-solid certain that he can't let the bloodstones wake up—the close call with the murder duel makes that perfectly clear—but now this new fact doesn't fit with his mental model, and it is thoroughly melting his brain.

Chester? Ember prods, blue-and-yellow concern overtaking her confusion.

Okay. Okay. Work backwards.

He can't let them fight. That means he needs them both thinking instead of instinct-murdering. That means he did the right thing with Holds-the-Fire, giving her tools and pushing her away from the remnant of the instinct-enhancing crown. But that also means the strategy of pushing Ember away from the remnant of the mind-enhancing scepter is wrong. So he's better off shutting up than warning her of its dangers.

… Nope. He doesn't hate his conclusion any less from this angle. But if there's a hole in that logic, it isn't immediately apparent, and right now thinking too hard is putting him at risk of getting shot.

Sorry, he says. I… never mind. You're right, let's focus on saving the others.

Ember's silent for long moments, then yields, shifting into a focused brown. Alright. What do you know about what happened to them?

Only that they're alive, Chester says. You?

The… uh, car… that Sunset borrowed from local Celestia is parked at the ranch. But as far as I can tell, neither of them is there. So I jumped on Scorpan's car hoping he'd take me to them.

Chester refocuses on the physical world and lets his eyes wander around the landscape. They turned off the main highway some time ago. He's not familiar with the back roads out here, but they're definitely headed toward the looming basalt towers of Blackrock Spires.

He just might, Chester says. Anton's working with Chryssa-swamini, and we're headed toward the ashram. If they're not at his ranch, he probably took them there.

Okay. How do we find them? Ember asks.

I don't think I'll be in a position to find anyone. Chester considers for a moment. But you might be able to sneak around, if you jump out before we reach the gate. Circle around to the rise overlooking the gardens. There's some cabins there that she sometimes locks people in as punishment. And stay out of sight—there will be devotees all over the grounds.

Alright, Ember says, orange and brown warring. I can do this.

You can! (Chester definitely hopes she can. He tries to project confidence he doesn't feel.) There's a basalt outcropping not far from there which is a good hiding spot, as long as nobody gets close. If I do somehow get free, I'll meet you there.

Ember's color war continues for a few moments, and then is interrupted by a spike of blue and yellow. …Yeah. About that. Are you going to be okay?

I've had a lot of practice with the Holy Mother being mad at me, Chester deflects, grateful that they've patched things up enough for him to rate that concern. And you'll need a distraction, right?

There's an unfocused response of pastel blue gratitude. Then lilac words coalesce: I'm going to pretend that means you've learned how to turn into a bear.

He mentally chuckles back, fighting to keep his lips from twitching into a smile. Still working on that one.

Then forget the distraction, Ember blue-says. But I'll take working alongside a friend.

Chester takes it, too. And despite everything still left to fix, it feels pretty good.

Author's Note

Chester's empathy has gotten him into a lot of trouble. It's good to see him racking up a win with it. Now he just has all the rest of his problems to deal with...

Chapter 13, "Love Bombed," posts Wednesday, Sept. 4!

13. Love Bombed

There's one more calculated risk on the road up to the ashram. Chester gives Ember a mental countdown as they approach the last major switchback, and then clears his throat as Anton slows for the turn. Anton turns his head to glance at Chester, and Ember leaps off the driver's side of the pickup bed. Chester coughs a bit and apologizes for his stuffy throat. Ember scampers into cover before Anton checks any rear-view mirrors.

Then she's gone, and it's just Chester and his reckoning.

The ashram comes into full view now that they're on the final stretch. The grim needles of Blackrock Spire tower behind the compound, jagged teeth tearing at the sky, and underneath them is a sprawling cluster of buildings that tries to be everything at once. There are thick stone walls, built as though the ashram were a fortress under siege, but inside them the grounds are open, airy, lush. There are sprawling flower gardens and fields full of vegetables, with dirt roads and an outdoor shower and a pump well, but the rustic image is shattered by the palatial main hall (which was designed by some big-shot architect Chester only ever knew as Brother Icon), sleek and angular yet somehow organic, some part of it always facing you no matter the angle. The roof is stainless steel, perpetually reflecting the sunlight, turning the hall into a lighthouse beacon visible throughout the entire Canterlot countryside; and closer in, a thousand tiny windows gleam amid the wood-and-concrete facade, making the main hall scintillate like a gemstone as you walk by.

None of the other buildings are even a fraction as notable, and none match. Some of the older cabins are stone; some are wood; one of the external dormitories is a squat corrugated-siding building, hastily slapped together when new recruits outstripped funding and then nearly forgotten once membership dwindled. There's a barely-used storage shed painted in bright murals (Chester helped with some of them), and a dilapidated outdoor amphitheater so frequently occupied that all the devotees know which seats to avoid upon pain of collapse. There's even an outhouse—despite the ashram having indoor plumbing—which Chester has long suspected the Holy Mother keeps around just so she can force unruly devotees to clean it.

Anton pulls past two gate guards into the compound—the Holy Mother is posting gate guards now!?—and around the main hall to the parking area. (He knows where that is. Chester ticks up the probability of the unicorns being here.) Chester sits still as Anton kills the engine and circles the truck to the passenger side, then goes limp as Anton jerks the door open and hauls him out. There's no point in resisting now.

Chester waits for an order to stand up and walk—an order which never comes. Instead, Anton simply grabs the back of Chester's bindings with one bulging arm and drags him behind as he walks. Chester's butt bounces over the uneven ground of the dirt lot, and his heels gouge two trails in the dust behind them.

As his hiney whacks roughly against the side of each of the main hall's three broad patio steps, Chester grunts in discomfort—and then flinches at a splintering crash which sounds like Anton kicking the front door open. The scent of incense, normally comforting, tickles in Chester's sinuses, and he jolts as he's jerked across the elevated door jamb and into the center of the common room.

"Chryssy!" Anton puce-shouts, and now there's no question that every eye is on the pair. "Found yer traitor!"

A hush falls over the room. Chester glances around. It's dinnertime, and virtually the entire ashram just witnessed his ignominious entrance.

Few seem to know what to make of the spectacle—though a warm spectrum dominates, which isn't a good sign. Peach, creamsicle, and rose pink seem like the collective mood. There's a distressing prevalence of background orange, though it's impossible to tell whether that's due to rumors of Chester's behavior, or Anton's presence, or something else entirely.

Individually, the devotees are all familiar faces, and there's even a few stirrings of sympathy. But no potential help. Chester doesn't need to read their emotions to know that nobody here will stick their neck out for someone branded a traitor, no matter how friendly they've been in the past. The Holy Mother's favor comes and goes, and when it goes, the unspoken rule of the ashram is to scramble away from the fallout zone.

For a fleeting moment, Chester entertains the fantasy of taking Holds-the-Fire's advice—stand up, give a rousing speech about the Holy Mother's secret sins, and make everyone abandon her. But that's an impossible fantasy, a wolf solution to a very non-wolf problem. If anything, the crowd's sea of shaved heads and identical saffron robes makes him feel more like a bug in a hive. There's only one queen, and everything about the ashram is set up to reinforce that.

The door of the Holy Mother's audience chamber creaks open, and Chester braces himself. But it's another saffron robe which comes through. And a very familiar face.

"Untie him," Esau red-says, walking up to Anton.

This is the great-grandmother of mixed blessings. If there were anyone here willing to hear Chester's discoveries out, it would be Esau, even given their falling out. But that color really doesn't bode well for his chances. It's diffuse enough to feel untargeted—it's not a guaranteed bad sign—but Chester wishes that their first meeting since all this craziness began would have started with literally any other hue.

By Anton's shift to pink, the rancher is clearly unimpressed. Esau has filled out nicely now that he's out of his teens, and the robe adds some bulk to his whipcord frame, but he's still a young man on the small side of average staring up into the face of a comically large wall of muscle.

"You givin' me orders, son?" Anton chestnut-says.

"No," Esau says, not looking at Chester. He's gone orange, an entirely understandable reaction to staring Anton in the eyes. "I'm telling you what the Holy Mother wants." His colors abruptly transition into yellow. "It's up to you whether you want to listen to her head enforcer or not." Then, oddly, green: "But she's not going to be happy if I have to interrupt her because you're being an ass."

Chester tries to puzzle that color out—does Esau have hopes that Anton picks a fight so Chryssa-swamini sees his true nature?—but the conversation's already barreling onward.

"Your little traitor's been too feisty for my liking," Anton maroon-says. "He's already tried to wriggle away a couple times."

"You really think he's going anywhere now?" Esau shifts to the solid blue of gratitude as he gestures around the room, and now Chester is really struggling to understand what's going through his mind. Then, with the purple of satisfaction: "Untie him."

Anton grunts and spins Chester around, wrestling with the knots. Chester stays entirely still, mind madly whirling as pressure on the ropes jerks him back and forth. Why is Esau pleased with having to argue with Anton? What's going on with him?

Chester sneaks another look over his shoulder as Anton unwraps him. During that process, Esau has been consumed by doubt. Chester at least can take some tiny relief in that black—it doesn't make Esau's earlier emotions any less odd, but maybe it means he's willing to listen to what Chester's discovered.

And then Esau notices Chester's glance and catches his eyes. The motion clearly gets him feeling the weight of his actions—his black quickly shifts into a depressed white. Then Esau tears away from the shared look, all his doubts immediately returning.

Chester thinks. This, at least, is a stroke of good fortune—assuming he somehow manages to get Esau alone. Or… no, he's overthinking it. They can talk secretly, right out in the open. He and Esau are the only two people here with color-sight, meaning that Chester can just make himself feel different emotions in order to communicate…

… oh.

Chester mentally facepalms as Esau crosses his arms depressedly, going from black to white again. Of course that's what Esau has been doing this whole time. Going first through the rainbow to signal him, and then back and forth between black and white when Chester didn't get the hint. Chester thinks depressing thoughts for a moment to echo Esau's color back at him, and is rewarded with a flash of unmistakable—and apparently genuine—indigo relief.

That quickly transitions into dark blue protectiveness as Esau continues to stare at him. It's unnecessary, but it's good to see—the fact that he's communicating to Chester at all means their falling-out wasn't permanent, which was the crucial question. The blue merely confirms that Esau is (yet again) determined to protect Chester from himself, a role he has always leapt into instinctively.

Chester's ropes are nearly untied, and he doesn't have the time for subtlety. He leans into the desperation he's starting to legitimately feel, letting himself sink into that feeling of being cornered in order to project a dark orange to Esau. A silent plea for help, while he turns his head in Anton's direction.

Esau taps his foot and glances at his smartphone while he turns a wary pale orange. A warning? Chester hopes it's a warning, and not just a sign that Chester has finally crossed a line where Esau hesitates to follow. Either way, that's a no.

Chester is considering his next message when Esau goes peach. That one's easy—or, well, it would be easy if he had a good way to distinguish between Esau warning him of an upcoming surprise, or just being surprised himself—

The world lurches as Anton hauls Chester to his feet, jerking the last of the rope so roughly that the final coil digs into his ribs before whipping away. "Fine," he pink-says. "One traitor, delivered as promised. Why were you so het up to get those ropes off, anyhow?"

A flicker of pale orange returns, then Esau coalesces into drab brown as he strides forward. "Because they were in the way of this," he says, and drives his fist deep into Chester's gut.

The wind explodes out of Chester's lungs as his gut folds around the punch.

He collapses in half, all his muscles contracting at once. Everything is pain, centered in an ugly knot deep in his torso. It's a different kind of debilitating than that long-ago shot to the jibblies—it doesn't take him out of the moment—but in a way that's worse. It means he can see Esau's follow-up kick coming but do absolutely nothing about it.

The world spins, and for a moment he's unmoored, until the floor roughly catches his face. Then gravity settles, and it's just gasp, gag, and dry-heave as a wave of nausea ripples up from that burning knot, balling him up and setting his nerves afire anew.

Esau grabs him by the back of his neck and screams into his ear. "DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOU MADE THE HOLY MOTHER DO? DO YOU KNOW WHAT SHE WENT THROUGH BECAUSE OF YOU?" The words wash over him, registering barely more than their waves of drab brown. "IF I HAD KNOWN YOU WOULD HURT HER THIS BADLY, I'D HAVE PUT YOU IN THE GROUND!"

Fact: Esau was forced to do this.

Chester's thoughts are shattered for a moment by another round of dry-heaving, but his mind clings desperately to that fact as agony and nausea war for control of his body. The brown was… not warning, there wasn't time for that, but explanation. The deliberate focus of following Chester's order back in the Soldier Incident. And there's not a wisp of red to his threats. Esau is play-acting at angry.

That thought doesn't stop Chester's vision from fuzzing out as he catches another fist to the face, but he keeps it in a death-grip nonetheless. And when a familiar female voice sharply blue-says "That's enough," that thought is the foundation he rebuilds the world from.

Esau isn't angry. He's got a fist clenched around Chester's collar, and the other drawn back for an interrupted punch, but he's gone tawny yellow-brown—silently resentful of something. His head is turned, staring at the source of that new voice.

It's Chryssa-swamini, and holy smokes has she cranked up her aura intensity for this. She's radiating blue, a veritable fountain of it, so that Chester can barely make out the woman stalking toward them in a black double-slit dress, arms out and palms upturned to mimic the transcendent posture of the dozens of statues of her in every room of the ashram. And from the greens suddenly rippling through the audience, that aura strength is compelling reverence even in people who can't see the colors.

She approaches the fight like a heaven-sent angel, a miracle shielding her devotee from further injury. But Chester can't ignore that that's not what is really going on. There's an impossible-to-conceal red buried beneath her front of compassion and concern.

"Hey, Chryssy," Anton says with rising olive green lust, stepping forward to interrupt the proceedings. She swivels an open palm toward him, then holds up a single silent finger. He opens his mouth, swirling with colors, then thinks better of it and steps back.

"Swamini-ji," Esau says, lowering his arm. After a moment, he shades blue too, a near copy of hers but without the underlying menace.

"Brother Esau," the Holy Mother says. She crosses her arms, her primary color shifting to a patchy and washed-out rose pink (still papering over a simmering red), an emotion in the same room as disappointment. "I expected better of you. No matter how far Brother Chester has fallen, we only want the best for him—that he remember the light of truth and return to the path."

To the side, Anton crosses his arms and shades into dubious dark gray, but Chester doesn't need that cue to listen to his own doubts. An earlier him would have taken this at face value and begged for mercy, but too much has changed. In fact, with his eyes open, Chester's beginning to wonder how he ever saw Chryssy as sincere. She's horrible at faking emotions—when she even bothers to try—and her current pretend disappointment at Esau is… well. Chester allows himself to think it. Kind of sad.

"I'm sorry, Swamini-ji." Esau retreats from Chester and sinks to one knee. His emotions gray out for a moment, and then redden into an imitation of her rose-pink that feels vastly more genuine than the original. "But what he did today was unforgivable."

The message in Esau's colors this time is clear as day. Now he's simply echoing the Holy Mother. The earlier brown of following orders? This is whose.

She set this up. Of course she did. Even if Chester had arrived wanting to return, the Holy Mother wouldn't have been satisfied unless his redemption was entirely about her miraculous power to redeem.

"And yet we must forgive." She steps forward, her glow intensifying into a pure and shimmering cyan.

That jolts Chester to full attention. The color of her siddhis.

He's seen it twice on her, but never at this intensity. He has to squint a little as she steps forward, it's so bright. And in the full light of her transcendence, he can feel his doubts start to evaporate in his grasp. Is she actually forgiving him? She's so bright now, he can't look at her directly enough to see the underlying red—

Anton clears his throat, stepping between them.

"Okay, Chryssy," he says, an enormous pink planet eclipsing her form, in turn dwarfed by the blazing sun of her shimmering cyan aura. "I think you owe me an explanation."

Ah, and there's her red—little whorls outgassing to the surface of the blinding cyan haze. "Long-horn," she hisses in an all-too-familiar cadence.

He's not familiar enough with her to be deterred. "You told me we had to round up this traitor or the plan could be in danger. You were pretty damn clear what he'd done. And I respect family, but if everything you said was a lie to drag your kid back in for a group hug—"

Chryssy reaches up and clamps her hand onto his shoulder. Anton stiffens. And within the span of an eye-blink, his pink has vanished, devoured by a cyan which floods from her outline to his.

It's the first time Chester has seen her do this from the outside. And that final puzzle piece clicks together the others into a terrifying conclusion.

Fact: Chryssa-swamini has mind-control magic.

Holds-the-Fire did something almost identical to her wolves with the dominating power of her Bloodstone Crown (or some remnant of it). But those were aura-less animals, and the Holy Mother just dominated the emotions of a full-grown man. One with unusual aura intensity, no less.

She dominated him, twice upon a time. When the whole world went cyan, when her transcendence had been unquestionable and he had lost himself in the craving to worship her—that was because she had blasted his feelings away and had filled him with artificial love.

Everything had rested on those moments of transcendence, and the certainty of what he had concluded within.

Everything had been a lie.

"Oh, Anton," Chryssy croons, trailing her long fingernails across his collarbone and brushing his bearded chin. With all that summoned cyan power poured into him, she's back to her own colors now—a simmering red at the interruption, now joined by a glistening gold that Chester no longer finds reassuring in the slightest. "I am infinite love, pure and transcendent. He has fallen, but I am powerful enough to redeem even the unworthy. Just let me sort this out and then"—she gives him a slow wink, trailing her finger down his chest—"there will be plenty of time to explore my depths."

Olive-green lust and amber greed stir up into the mix of Anton's emotions, but they're both muted, still overwhelmed by his artificial rapture. He sinks to one knee, carefully taking her slim hand with his beefy one, and kisses her fingers. "Of course, love." A smirk flits across his face. "And even more when we're ruling the world together. Me a king and you a queen."

"Empress," she corrects, her gold outshining his amber.

"Empress," Anton says, floating back into giddy artificial cyan.

Okay, this is sounding worse by the minute. But at least Chester's brain is now safe. Her siddhi is an all-out effort—last time she did this to him, she was barely able to move for several days.

Chryssy again gestures for Anton to wait, then steps around him, towering over the still-crumpled Chester. "Now then."

She spreads her arms again, palms up, the alluring pose of her cultivated image of perfection. Then shimmering cyan bursts out of her again, that impossible sun-like aura reigniting, as trivially as if she were breathing.

Chester's eyes widen, and adrenaline overwhelms his pain. What? How!?

Forget this. Injured or no, Chester scrambles to his knees, trying to bolt before she can touch him. He'll take his chances of making it to the woods with the entire ashram at his heels.

Then rough hands clamp on his shoulders and pin him down.

Chester flails. It's no use. Esau isn't nearly Anton's size, but even at Chester's best, was always more than enough to overwhelm him.

Chester, silently radiating raw desperation, glances back at Esau's face. Esau returns the gaze, raw orange fear and the muddier pale orange of apology. He doesn't let go.

Chryssy rotates one hand and reaches toward Chester. Raw terror blasts away his thoughts, except for one:

He's failed.

In a moment, he'll once again worship the monster taking over the world.

A thousand regrets are screaming. But the only one that matters is how he hurt Holds-the-Fire.

All he can do is think of her one last time as the cyan rushes in.

* * *

Chester knows what happened last time he got mind-controlled. And this isn't how it goes.

The world is supposed to go floaty blue. It isn't supposed to shatter.

But that's the only way to describe what happens. As the cyan expands out from Chryssy's sun, gray crashes in from the edge of his vision, and time

slows to

a crawl

with it. The edges of the gray and cyan charge toward each other, then creep, then inch. Then everything glitches, and he's seeing six images at

Holds-the-Fire. Frozen mid-battle with an ice-blue wolf. Reeling, startled, toppling off the boulder. Balled up and despondent. Hoping he'll do the right thing and yield. Licking his teeth. Sharing a laugh. A full rainbow of experiences, reduced to shards of color, whirling and duplicating. Each shard becomes a tiny point of light in a mosaic, and his vision zooms out, and those tiny dots become a portrait of her in light, facing him with solid red gemstone eyes, gleaming unearthly flame. She opens her mouth to speak and

roaring tsunami of cyan, swept away, tumbling in the flow. Colors whirl, reassemble, fragmentary images ripped back away by the flood. Chester screams, lungs filling with love, and then suddenly is tumbling through space instead of sea. He bounces on the floor of a cave, dank and chill, ghosts of ice-blue wolf Holds-the-Fire and ice-blue dragon Ember glaring eye to eye as a storm rages outside. In the cave entrance is an enormous gemstone monster, scintillating red, standing in the firehose-blast of the infinite cyan and diverting it as ugly cracks spread through its form. It turns its head to Chester, its open muzzle shaping a

relentless cyan through the cave wall, blasting stone into sand. But before everything is swept away again, Chester lunges for the ghost of Holds-the-Fire. He tumbles, drowning, but now he has something to cling to. The world is love, love is everything, insistent and inevitable—but something is fighting back along with him, sacrificing to shelter the tiniest fragment of his volition.

He will love—but he can choose who.

Chester loves Holds-the-Fire.

Suddenly, he is no longer battered by the infinite cyan flow, because he is part of it. He loves, purely and wholly, and thus there's nothing to wash away. Love has dissolved the world but it can't dissolve itself. He floats in the bliss of the only thing that matters.

Her.

There is the abstract sensation of being snared, without pressure or motion. Then he is fished from the cyan sea, breaking the surface into sweet, sweet air. Something has lifted him up into the meditation room in the ashram where he retreats to paint. The carpet is bright cyan, and as he scrambles up out of the cyan ocean and onto the carpet's surface, his motions send waves lapping at the baseboards.

Chester gasps for breath, looking around. Outside the window is the infinite pressure of the cyan sea—he's still in some weird mental space, and this is fragile sanctuary. He's alone, aside from his easel. There's a painting on it. And the upper half of a humanoid figure has come to three-dimensional life out from the canvas, a single living ruby, the ugly color of fresh blood.

He already knows that gemstone monster, but now, as he freezes and stares, he gets his first good look. It's a misshapen, grotesque parody of a person, radiating overlapping Wrong and Wolf. One spindly triple-jointed arm is retreating from his back, its fingers gleaming needles. Crown-like spikes protrude upward from its head, half-ghostly as if only visible with one eye, and there's a weird tumor-esque lump on one side of its face—similarly halfway real—with a single massive rod extending most of a body length sideways.

Chester screams, terror overwhelming him. And the room shatters like glass, ocean flooding

and he flails and bursts up through the carpet back into the meditation room, gasping for breath as he scrambles onto its cyan surface. The window is cracked, the infinity of love outside now that much more eager to sweep him away. This time there is only him and a normal, two-dimensional painting on the easel.

No—two paintings.

Chester squints, but the overlapping images refuse to resolve. It's a stiff, austere portrait of Holds-the-Fire, staring into the middle distance, a comically oversized bloodstone-studded crown draped around her throat like a necklace. It's also a portrait of Ember as a dragon, similarly withdrawn and unyielding, clutching an enormous scepter that looks like a stone claw wrapped around a fist-sized blood-boil of a gemstone.

Seeing both at once in the same space makes something behind Chester's eyes throb. He tries to parse them nonetheless.

Fact: Chester loves Holds-the-Fire.

… No. He massages his temple (everything is weird and floaty, and there's no sensation to the touch). That overwhelming, artificial love is the cyan outside. There's something important here, not in the infinite ocean. But the water pressure is overwhelming. Cracks relentlessly spiderweb across the sanctuary windows. He knows somehow that this matters enough to fight the tsunami for, but he has so little time.

The painting is broken. They stare at him with gemstone-red eyes. He stares back, struggling to pull context and logic through the throbbing pressure in his head.

Fact: The bloodstones are desperate to talk to him.

The painting in front of him is just as Wolf-Wrong as the shimmering red monstrosity a moment ago, but clothed in comforting imagery and familiar faces. It?—they?—this weird two-in-one entity—terrified him, and then promptly tried again with less terror.

A chill passes through Chester as another fact clicks: they were so desperate for this moment that they just fought the mind control with him. He would be entirely lost without the magical parasites trying to kill the girl he loves. It is the worst possible idea to hear them out, and yet they have given him a gift without price.

Almost involuntarily, Chester stares at the painting, and it tells him… no. It's more knowledge than communication, a blunt, desperate, raw dump directly into his brain, of new facts which overlap like the faces. It shades the room dark orange. It is broken and needs fixing.

Damn it. He knows the bloodstones want to be fixed! Them looking different doesn't change the math—if they wake up, someone dies.

The message intensifies nonetheless. Fix me, Ember's red-eyed face says, and fix me, Holds-the-Fire's red-eyed face says, and like an optical illusion Chester's perception shifts imperceptibly and it's them begging to be fixed, the waking world's wolf and girl—

—he knows they need fixing! He's trying! They're both doing their best but they're being corrupted by this little festering core of shimmering red—

—and they're the bloodstones again, fix me fix me, screaming at top volume, and he can't fix the stones unless they stop poisoning their wielders—

—and the optical illusion blurs together, stone and stone and Wolf and Wrong and dragon and girl, images stacking on top of each other like a fractal dropping away into the infinite distance; and the tip of a thought-iceberg, strange and momentous and disconnected, surfaces in Chester's brain as he loses track of the layers:

Who's poisoning who?

—and that thought by itself is comprehensible, but the instant he comprehends, he's pinned by the scope of everything connected to it. Gemstone-red eyes. Holds-the-Ember both stare at him beseechingly. Glimmering, the color of fresh blood. It is broken. (The window cracks redouble.) Chester stares helplessly at the painting, they stare back, gemstone-red eyes, shading dark orange, fix me fix me fix me and

cyan blasts away the room and he doesn't return.

* * *

Chester loves Holds-the-Fire, and the main hall of the ashram slowly swims back into focus.

Reality just broke as competing magic collided, and some tiny voice, drowning amidst all the love, begs him to pin down what in Tartarus the bloodstones were trying to say. But that analysis quickly takes a back seat to two urgent observations. One, he loves Holds-the-Fire, and two, a mind-controlling villainess is towering over him with her hand on his shoulder. A rigid smile is plastered on her face, and she radiates peach as she stares at him.

… Wait. He still knows she's evil. Chester's tiny detective voice leaps to the foreground and starts screaming in relief. Her mind control didn't work. It didn't work!

Chester just wants to ride his intoxication high over the world's most amazing wolf-girl, but that detective voice is on a roll now. It adds that Chryssy's peach means she knows it didn't work. He's still in trouble. He loves Holds-the-Fire but he really should do something about that.

Step one: Go full Chet Land.

"Swamini-ji!" Chester wriggles down below Esau's grasp and throws himself at Chryssy's feet, nose touching the floor. His heart flutters only for Holds-the-Fire, but that's fine—full grovel mode is so instinctive for him that he doesn't have to let go of his universe-sized love to fake this. "I'm so sorry—how could I ever have doubted you!"

The hall erupts in whispers and applause. Chester sneaks a glance at the surrounding colors—awe, hope, relief. They don't know that Chester loves Holds-the-Fire; all they can see is his apparent redemption. (Even Esau shouldn't know—cyan is cyan; he can see that but not the target.)

Even Anton is getting into it, simmering in his own cyan bliss. Only Chryssy and Esau are feeling anything unusual. Esau is the vibrant cream of guilt. And Chryssy's peach has shifted into a blurry rainbow of reassessment, with a significant swirl of black uncertainty.

Chester suspects he understands that. Holds-the-Fire, whom Chester loves, had known from Chester's "echo" that he didn't yield to her calming command. (That was how he taught her to understand colors; high on the list of reasons why she's the most amazing person in the universe.) But there's no way Chryssy had ever acquired that level of exposure—her use of her siddhi was rare and expensive, a far cry from constant interaction with a wolfpack. So when Chester's "echo" came back weird just now—because the bloodstones helped him derail her effect—all she could deduce was that it felt different from her past successes. But now he's not acting like she failed, so she's trying to square that circle.

Speaking of which.

"They promised me shortcuts to transcendence!" Chester lies. "Showed me false powers and claimed levels of enlightenment surpassing yours. That's when I should have known they were frauds." His instinct now is to play to the room—the more he makes Chryssy's intervention look like an unqualified success, the more her pride will motivate her to play along. That technique walks a fine line, but it's one he's had lifelong practice at. "It was so persuasive at the time. They had your cunning, but not your mercy. Another reason I should have known. My shame is eternal."

Chester hopes Holds-the-Fire would be proud of him for that last bit of rhetorical judo. Chryssy's little drama required her to play up her mercy; doubling down on that means that she risks looking foolish if she shifts into punishment mode. He can see red stir up as she realizes that, too—but the consequences for that one will come later, and Chester doesn't plan to stick around for them.

Anyway, for once the red isn't the important color. Chester is carefully watching Chryssy's war between maroon and puce, suspicion and triumph. Maroon's foothold is strong, but every word of Chester's boxes it in, and Chryssy's pride needs very little cultivation to grow.

Still, the colors clash for an uncomfortably long time. Then she shoots Esau a silently questioning glance. That can only mean she wants to know what his color-sight sees—which makes it fortunate just how overwhelmingly and purely Chester loves right now. He fixes his eyes on Chryssy, and sinks back into the rapture of Holds-the-Fire.

Esau stares at Chester for several moments, cream and white. Then he gives Chryssy a nod. Her maroon wavers. Doesn't vanish, but recedes to a simmer, fading into the caramel of spyfeel.

Chryssy steps back, walks to Anton and leans into his chest, giving Esau a little hand-wave as she does.

"Take Brother Chester to my personal meditation room," she caramel-says. "He needs some time alone to think about his actions. We'll speak in the morning."

Author's Note

Welcome home, Chester. This time, with your eyes open. Which makes it a much more dangerous place...

This chapter also marks the story's halfway point, with 13 of its 25 chapters live. Next chapter, "Reglurgitation," will post on Sunday, Sept. 8!

14. Reglurgitation

Fact: Chryssy is plotting something.

Despite knowing that, Chester plays along as Esau hauls him to his feet and half-marches, half-drags him to one side of the main hall. Solitary confinement is far from the worst thing that could happen to him right now. He doesn't want to blow the fragile cover he somehow managed to establish. And he may not get a better chance to get Esau alone.

The stairs up to the second-floor balcony are steep, and Chester's gut is still on fire where he was punched. He leans into the stairs and hauls his protesting body up on hands and knees, with Esau pushing him up and taking most of the weight. At the top, he limps across the ultra-plush carpet, bracing himself on the polished redwood railing, past the door to the Holy Mother's bedroom and the life-size portrait permanently overseeing the main hall.

Up here, her image is radiant, rapturous, innocent, wreathed in a halo of light. Down below, the real one is magenta-lecturing an audience of pale orange devotees that Brother Chester's return is an opportunity to reflect on how they too have failed her, and that she is arranging a sharing session in the morning so that they can unburden themselves of transgressions before they bring her truth to the world.

The door to Chryssy's meditation room is small but ornate, panels of light woods in layered whirling designs set in a sturdy mahogany frame. There's not a knob, but an entire wrought-iron handle, with a discreet keyhole above it for a deadbolt. Esau fishes a keyring from his pocket and wrestles with the deadbolt until it unlocks with a heavy thunk, then pushes down on the oversized handle until the door swings inward. He gestures for Chester to enter, a pale yellow resignation settling in.

Chester walks into the largely empty room—but that knot in his gut is growing increasingly intense. All that motion set it to protesting, and then the stop-and-start at the door got his head spinning along with it. Abruptly, as Esau closes the door behind them, Chester crumples down to hands and knees on the yoga mat which sprawls across a portion of the wood flooring.

Esau opens his mouth to say something, cream swirling back to life—then hesitates and goes peach as he turns to see Chester. His mouth works. "Uh," he finally blue-and-yellow-says, "are you okay?"

"I'm," Chester starts. Then his stomach hitches, and nausea overtakes him. He lunges for a corner planter and vomits into the holy basil.

Really vomits. A sea of cyan floods from his mouth, and he barely has enough time to gasp for breath before his stomach spasms again and a second wave gushes forth. It's cold, slimy, sour, and it shimmers as it sloshes around the planter and sinks into the dirt.

Bizarrely, all Chester can think as a final spasm empties him out is how much he loves Holds-the-Fire. But… somehow it's wrong. The cyan is overwhelming his mouth, numbing his tongue, and his brain similarly feels as though it's fighting free of a choking miasma of her, more obsession than appreciation. He spits, trying to clear the taste from his mouth. She deserves so much better than that.

"Chess," Esau peach-says from behind him, "did you just barf love?"

As Chester's love for Holds-the-Fire diminishes to a more natural level, his mind clears and sharpens. He stares down at the blue-spattered planter, the reality of the situation coming into focus.

The broken bloodstones just saved his brain… and then they used the leverage of their gift to beg to be saved from their wielders? What kind of mind trick was that? He saw their magic ignite to turn the forest fight lethal, and he refuses to ignore the evidence of his senses.

And yet… and yet. He stares dully at the shimmering blue as the last of it evaporates or is absorbed. Tiny doubts gnaw at him, hard to ignore.

He shelves them and refocuses on Esau's question.

"I think I did," Chester slowly says. "But the bad kind. Artificial."

Esau doesn't immediately respond. Chester wipes his mouth on a sleeve and turns to look. Esau is staring at him, still stuck at peach, as if Chester had grown a third eye.

"Look, today has been really weird," Chester adds. "Even before the Holy Mother…" Wait, wait. Focus. This is his opening. "… before she tried to mind-control me. That's what that was back in the main hall."

Cream stabs through Esau's shock. He tears his eyes off Chester, and abruptly walks over to the far wall. (An enormous mural of ascended Chryssa-swamini on a celestial throne, radiating love which blankets and feeds the mortal world below—marred only by some unobtrusive hopper windows in the corners, hinged open to allow air circulation.) Esau stares at the image of Chryssa-swamini as his feelings swirl. Then the cream metastasizes.

"Damn it, Chess," Esau red-says. "This again? Even now?"

Chester's heart sinks, but he barrels on while he still can. "Listen. She's evil, she has been since the beginning, it took meeting real enlightenment to see it, let me explain—"

Esau whirls on him. "You do this every time! You don't like the way Swamini-ji does things, you get it in your head that she could be better if we just asked nicely or questioned her plans or, I don't know, teamed up with assassins, and it's all of us who have to pick up the pieces of your stupid misplaced idealism. Why are you doing this to us again, Chess? Why are you doing this to me?"

The last 48 hours have been a crash course in standing up to other people's red, but in the face of anger from Esau, of all people, Chester still finds himself folding. "Where's this anger coming from?" he pleads, deflecting from the bizarre example which he desperately hopes was a hypothetical. "You feel guilty about what you did downstairs. You know there's something wrong."

Chester's placation does seem to have an effect—with an effort, Esau simmers down from red into pink, and puts that energy into pacing instead. "I felt guilty because I thought you would know you had gone too far," he pink-says. "I wanted you to have a chance at real redemption instead of being beaten up and hit with a siddhi before you could get one word out. After everything we've done together, Chess, I thought you were better than this." Esau flings his hands up, then gestures at the planter where the holy basil's leaves are starting to droop and curl. "But instead you've become… arrgh! I don't even know! How do you always make everything so complicated!?"

Chester, too, stares down at the planter. It's a fair question. He's suffered plenty for all his recent choices. And yet… and yet. Losing Holds-the-Fire is by far his biggest regret, but if he had the chance to do it over again, he still wouldn't let her shoot Ember.

"Because I try to do the right thing," Chester says quietly. "Evil is simple. Good is messy."

Esau stares at him, pink wavering.

"You honestly believe that," he black-says. "I don't know whether that makes it better or worse."

"Given the good people I met today," Chester says with a touch of dry humor, "that's just speaking from experience."

Esau shades maroon. "The good people who attacked the Holy Mother unprovoked?"

… Not a hypothetical, then.

Chester fixes Esau with a stare, studying him. There are no tells of humor of dishonesty in his aura. Nevertheless, he finds it hard to believe what he's hearing. "Are you serious? Celestia and Sunset?"

"Were those their names?" Esau says, flickering light violet. "Principal lady and delinquent kid? Yeah, they dropped their disguises and unleashed some big blasts of transgressive magic on her, out by one of the cabins by the gardens."

Oh no. "Are they okay?" Chester blurts out.

"I don't know," Esau maroon-says. "I don't care. And it concerns me that you do."

Chester tries to stuff his anxiety down, hoping he'll have a chance to follow up on them later. "Listen. Something's wrong here." He thinks back to that first meeting with Celestia, and the pair's utter lack of malice—even when they thought he wasn't listening in. He just can't square that with them trying to kill the Holy Mother. "Did you see what happened? Or are you just going by what Swamini-ji said?"

"I saw everything after the fireworks started," Esau says. He fixes Chester with a stare and goes an earnest muddy green. "Swamini-ji had survived their initial attack and managed to take the principal down. The delinquent had become some sort of"—Esau gestures, flickering briefly pink as words fail him—"flying… demon… thing, screaming and blasting at her to finish the job. Anton and I managed to distract her until Swamini-ji subdued her too."

There's no way Esau's lying to him about that, and yet Chester can't bring himself to believe it. He numbly shakes his head. "That doesn't sound like them. They weren't even out to meet Chryssa-swamini. Anton captured them and brought them here."

"Well, maybe their plans changed when they realized they had the chance to take a shot at her."

Chester lunges for his rapidly depleting stack of objections. "I'm not saying you're lying, Saw, but none of you look like you've been in a fight." He gestures down at his own robes, soiled and half-shredded.

"Turns out Swamini-ji's got a half-dozen siddhis she never used before today—fortunately including bodily wholeness—because she never needed them until you sicced demons on her," Esau says, muddy green shading into tawny resentment.

Chester winces. "You keep saying that. But how do you know they started the fight?"

Esau finally crossfades fully into pink. "Why is it so hard to believe you got misled by people you met literally today? Do you hate Swamini-ji that much?"

Chester tentatively stands—his gut protesting—and takes Esau's hand. "It's not hate, Saw. Listen. I don't know how much time we have. I can't tell you the whole story right away." (And condensing it to the highlights is going to sound alternate-dimension magical-talking-unicorn crazy.) "But they're the good guys. They care about people. About doing the right thing. And even if you don't believe me on that—I know that you know what you saw when Swamini-ji used her powers on me."

Esau's not buying it. His pink intensifies. "Yes. The siddhi of vashitva, transcendental dominion. Aligning lesser beings with the truths of the universe to bring them closer to enlightenment. You don't think she told me what she was going to have to do to you?" Blue-and-yellow concern creeps in. "And you took her gift and vomited it back out. Enlightenment makes you vomit now, Chess. Doesn't that concern you even a little?"

"It would if she were enlightened!" Chester says, feeling increasingly desperate. "But that's not what her gold color means! I met someone else who can feel it, this amazing girl raised by wolves…"

Esau fades to a skeptical gray.

"… I'm serious, Saw! Look, I got this from her." Chester scrabbles through his pockets to show him Holds-the-Fire's lighter. His heart clenches. It's not there.

Now the universe is just mocking him. He managed to keep it all the way through the woods, and lost it at some point after getting into Anton's truck.

Esau sighs, a pale yellow resignation displacing the gray. "See, Chess, this is what happens when we put our judgment above the Holy Mother's. I dared to think you deserved better than getting beaten up just for being you again. But she was right—you needed that severe of a wake-up call. I wish it had worked. I'm going to go tell her it didn't."

And it's back to panic time.

"Saw! Don't do this," Chester begs. "I know you've got doubts. Hear me out."

Esau backs toward the door, facing Chester, returning to gray. "I don't think I should be discussing doubts with someone who pals around with demons and vomits up enlightenment."

Chester's nearly lost him—and he only has another sentence or two before Esau's out the door. He needs something armor-piercing. Fast.

In desperation, he breaks his silence on the secret he's held for years. "Swamini-ji is covering up Sister Mandy's disappearance."

Esau hesitates, colors whirling—but only for a moment, quickly resolidifying back into wary orange-gray. "I'm sure the demon assassins told you all sorts of lies about that. We've known for years that was just Brother Bill's crazy talk."

Chester could probably coax doubts to life there with more time—but lacking physical evidence, not quickly enough. So he pivots, firing his last shot. "And she tried to remove my color-sight."

Esau presses on the iron handle and tugs the door open, shifting merely into rose-pink disappointment. "I'm no longer surprised she decided you're as big a threat as the assassins."

"No," Chester says urgently. "When I was five."

Esau freezes, peach.

"No she didn't," he says slowly, turning his head to study Chester.

"Brother Esau, I swear upon everything I now or ever held holy, she did."

Esau's silent for several moments. "I don't want to believe you're lying," he finally maroon-says. "But what I see is pure desperation."

"She has a black necklace. It went dark sparkly when she did it." Chester rapidly flings out every detail he can, hoping one of them batters some doubt free. "It failed and she was disgusted with me. Said it was a curse and ordered me never to speak of what happened. That's why I was so freaked out at using it for the spy mission."

Esau explodes into black—a starfield filled with glittering fragments of sympathy, horror, bitterness, anger. There's a part of him which seems desperate to believe Chester's so far gone he'd lie even straight to Esau's face. But there's fear stirring up, too, that something's truly wrong here.

Esau pushes the door back closed, keeping his hand on the handle. "No," he challenges, still a frantic swirl of doubts. "She told me right from the start that it was a great gift, a sign of my potential. That if I harnessed it for enlightenment I could transcend nearly to her level."

"She never tried to remove your color-sight because she already knew what had happened with me." That comes out of Chester's mouth as epiphany, not evidence. "And with you, she didn't have to worry about what happened between us. No wonder you were always her favorite."

"No. She—no." Esau's maelstrom intensifies—and then peach spurts back to the foreground. "You know about the necklace. How did you know about the necklace? You weren't here for the fight."

"I told you. She used it on me when I was five. Right before Sister Mandy vanished." The secrets are tumbling out of Chester now, a burden carried far too long. "She kept it in her bedroom cabinet. Gold, with an onyx gem. She bent the clasp trying to get it off her, but I imagine she's fixed it by now."

Esau's black slowly melts into deep orange horror as the peach fades. "… I was wondering about the bent clasp." Maroon springs back up and the colors begin warring. "But there's plenty of ways you could have known that."

"Saw…" Chester plays a hunch. "Did she honestly act like color-sight was a gift? Not when you two were talking about it. But during the times she didn't think you were watching."

Chester has only watched this awful kind of epiphany play out a few times before. The deep orange swirling in, brittle and spiky, as if to strangle him. Half a dozen other colors venting as he struggles with the realization. Maroon making one last stand, then getting decisively routed. Red flaring and Esau pacing it off, searching for something to punch in the nigh-empty room. Yellow smothering the orange, then white as yellow fails to take hold.

Everyone he's watched go through this has ended up somewhere different once the colors settle. Esau finally burns through the orange with brown resolve, frantically pacing around the meditation room until secondary tints of caramel crystallize.

Abruptly, Esau whirls toward the wall between the mural and the door, fishing his keyring out as he goes. He beelines straight for a second, smaller door, which Chester knows leads into the luxurious private bathroom wedged between here and Chryssy's bedroom.

Esau fiddles with its deadbolt lock. There's a heavy click. He turns back to Chester.

"Here's how this is going to go," Esau says, his khaki fierce and commanding. "I threw you in here and yelled at you a while, but I was so upset when I left that I forgot to check the side door. As soon as you've got a clear opening, you're going to go through to the Holy Mother's bedroom, make a beeline for her balcony without touching anything, and run straight for the woods. Keep going as far and fast as you can and never come back. And don't you dare try to fix this. Just go spend your life somewhere the Holy Mother can't find you." Esau struggles to keep his dark blue contained, but it finally breaks free, and he adds: "My duty's to Swamini-ji, and this doesn't change that. But you always deserved something besides her."

"Saw," Chester says, overwhelmed by relief. "Thank you."

Esau hesitates—amid a tiny flare of maroon—and his eyes flick around Chester's outlines. "But?"

Chester hadn't been consciously winding up for a "but"—though at Esau's prompt, there's no question what it is. "But I can't just run like that."

"Chess." Esau's voice is visibly strained as his colors plummet toward a desperate radium green. "Don't do this again. Not now."

"Celestia and Sunset wouldn't even be here if it wasn't for me. If I abandon them, I have to live with that for the rest of my life. And then there's this other friend of theirs…" Chester doesn't think he can talk Ember out of trying to rescue the unicorns, and from what he just heard of the big fight, she's in way over her head. "I have to fix them."

Creamsicle flickers through Esau. "You what?"

"I have to," Chester repeats, and then trips over his own words. He was thinking of Ember crouching behind the outcropping overlooking the gardens, and that just came out. "Fix… things with… them." Ember's and Holds-the-Fire's faces are overlapping confusingly in his brain, with highlights of gleaming gemstone red, and he has to take a moment to push them apart, like separating two portraits left on the same easel.

Damn it. The bloodstones are getting too deep inside his brain. They're finding ominous new ways to beg for repair, and he could be in real trouble if this escalates any further.

"They're fighting," he adds. "Because of bad magic inside."

Chester struggles to decontaminate his logic into a bloodstone-free version. What most desperately needs fixing is how things went between him and Holds-the-Fire. But if he wants to patch things up with her, it's going to take more than an apology—it's going to take reconciling her with Ember. And he can't do that if Ember charges into the ashram and Anton shoots her in the face.

"… okay, whatever." Esau cradles his face in one hand, shading a muddy orange that is very pointedly embarrassment on Chester's behalf. "Chess. Have you learned nothing from every other time this has happened? You've never fixed a thing in your life. I can't protect you forever. And I can't let you blow things up even further, or I won't have the ability to even give you this."

"I have, actually. I found my own way out of the woods today."

Esau turns violet. "Wait, really?"

"Yeah!" Chester share's Esau's excitement for a moment, but sheepishly adds: "That's how Anton found me to bring me here."

Esau's muddy orange floods back in. "That doesn't really help your case."

To Chester's shock, he realizes it doesn't matter. "Then how many examples do you want? I started the day failing at airport duty, and since then, I've taught someone color-sight, stopped a fight by pretending I could turn into a bear, survived a truck ride with Anton, and resisted a mind-control siddhi." (Even with assistance, that feels like an accomplishment.) "You were right. I needed something besides life with Swamini-ji. Because now I have friends I need to protect, too, and I'm finding out just how much I can do on my own."

It's the most beautiful pitch Chester has ever given. Because he started it purely to change Esau's mind. But halfway through, he ended up convincing himself.

Chester can do this.

He stares Esau in the eyes, gives him a nod, and marinates in that novel sensation of justified confidence.

Just like every time Chester drags him into his plan, Esau projects pink in a pointless attempt to hide his stir of green. "Dammit, Chess."

"I'm not even asking you to do anything different. Just forget to check the door like you said, and I'll sort out the rest."

"When you get caught again, I swear upon everything holy that I'm not going to lift one single finger to help."

"If I get caught again, that's the least of my problems." (It's a very Chet Land sentiment, Chester notes dryly, but it's true.)

Esau sighs, pale yellow. "You are serious about this. Ugh. Just… can you at least not make your move until tomorrow morning? Let me see what I can sort out. I'm not sticking my neck out for you again, but maybe the Holy Mother can be persuaded to put off dealing with you and the assassins."

Chester shakes his head. Despite his protestations, Esau would be putting a lot on the line trying to steer Chryssy's actions—and Chester's not going to let that blow up in Esau's face again. "No. I'm serious, don't take any part in this. And besides, tomorrow's too late. She wants to talk to me in the morning, and it sounds like she and Anton have big plans."

"Fine." Esau's pale yellow brightens as he pleads for a concession. "Midnight, then. If you're helping the others escape it'll be easier in the dark. And there's something I want to look into before you make the Holy Mother melt down entirely."

That request's much harder to deny. The others are in danger now… but Esau's already risking so much for him, and giving him so much. It looked like Chryssy was going to be distracted by Anton for a while. And to be honest, Chester could use a little time to sort through all of today's craziness and come up with a plan.

"Alright," Chester says. "Midnight, I can do."

"Good." Esau's indigo is immediate and pervasive. He walks over to the main door, and hesitates with his hand on the handle.

"Hopefully," he says, his blues darkening, "I won't see you again. Hopefully you won't be stupid enough to pop your head up where the Holy Mother can find it, once you all get out. So good luck with whatever you do out there."

"You too," Chester says, and Esau steps through the door.

The keyhole above the handle darkens. There's a thunk as the deadbolt engages. Then fading steps as Esau walks off down the hall.

Chester lets out a long breath, glancing around the empty room. A moment of peace. Finally.

He sits on the yoga mat—well, gingerly lowers himself to the yoga mat, stomach still feeling ugly. Now that no mortal threat is staring him in the face for the first time in… hours? Holy smokes, today's been the longest day of his life… his adrenaline is draining away.

And that makes everything hurt. The shots he took from Esau are still new—throbbing, simmering pain—and he's sporting three different sets of bruises from Anton's mistreatment and his woodland stumbles and his fall off the boulder.

He tries to find a comfortable sitting position, but his hindquarters have taken as much abuse as the rest of him. Chester finally settles for rolling onto his side, knees pulled halfway up to his chest. It's so nice just to unclench his muscles and yield to gravity—even if half his body is screaming and the other half is cramped.

Not moving helps. The pain recedes, bit by bit. He feels muscle knots start to uncoil that he hadn't even realized were there.

Chester closes his eyes. Just for a moment. To clear his thoughts.

He has so much to think about.

… Boy, does lying down feel good.

Author's Note

In Chester's defense, he definitely needs some rest at this point. Everything that's happened since meeting Celestia has taken place in less than 24 hours.

I probably need some rest too, but no time for sleep -- I'm off at a writer's retreat for the next week! I'll still poke my head in to keep an eye on things and get chapters posted, though. Next chapter, "When It Clicks", posts Wednesday, Sept. 11!

Bonus fact for anyone who didn't catch the chapter title pun: Glurge is the term for, as one show put it, "sentimentality so nauseating that no living creature could possibly take it seriously".

15. When It Clicks

Chester's eyes shoot open as noises draw him back into the present. Quiet rattling. A distinct thunk.

Crap. He fell asleep.

It takes him a moment to re-orient. He's lying on his side on the yoga mat of Chryssy's meditation room, facing her giant mural, which is perpetually lit by a hidden row of blue-white LEDs framing the art. Those lights, always on, keep the room in a state of perpetual dimness, although it does feel fractionally dimmer than when he closed his eyes. Ah: There's no light coming in through the hopper windows. It's night, though he can't immediately tell when.

There's the whisper of a door opening behind him. He hurriedly sits up, twisting around—and winces as his stomach starts protesting again.

It's Celestia! He can tell even before she turns around; she's wearing a borrowed robe from the ashram, but nobody else has an aura that impossibly intense, or hair in that distinctive pastel rainbow. Chester's heart soars for a moment—and then plummets again as he catches an undertone of simmering red to the calm compassion of her blue. How did she get here? And why is she angry?

There's another thunk as she remains facing the door. She re-locked it?

Chester's trying to piece together an explanation for his observations when Celestia turns around. Seeing him awake, she touches a pale, lengthy finger to her lips, then walks over and kneels on the yoga mat near him. "Chester!" she stage-whispers. "I'm glad you're okay."

Not entirely glad, but Chester doesn't want to question that. "Celestia! How's Sunset?" he whispers back.

Some hints of gray bubble up before the blue returns, shading toward a darker protectiveness (though still with that red visible at its core). "She's fine," Celestia says. "The Holy Mother is treating us with far more mercy than I would in her shoes. But what about you? What's happened since I saw you last?"

Chester hesitates for a moment. Just like when he first met her, Celestia's reactions feel off—but this time, he's reading too much, not too little. She's got to be entirely rattled from the big fight. And apparently nursing a grudge he didn't think her capable of. It adds up to make him deeply uncomfortable, but he's not sure what to make of it.

"We did manage to find Holds-the-Fire"—Chester remembers that Celestia would have no context for her name—"I mean, this world's version of Ember. Or, well, she found us. It didn't go well. But at least nobody got shot." He sits up, wincing. "Speaking of which. What's this about Sunset turning into a demon or something?"

Celestia hesitates. No—she stalls, running a hand through her hair to cover up a momentary pause, as she tries to suppress little bursts of peach and maroon. It's a technique Chester recognizes because it's one he had to specifically learn to do himself. (He blew a spy mission or two, early on, by getting nervous and freezing up as he thought.)

He did just ask what might well be an uncomfortable question, and with virtually anyone else, he'd be willing to spot them that reaction… but with Celestia the unflappable, something is definitely up.

"It's an advanced technique, but you're very nearly ready for it," Celestia says, shading back into guarded gray, with only that subtle red still visible beneath. "If you still plan to join me and take down the Holy Mother, soon you'll have all the power you could want."

Chester twists his expression into an exaggerated "thinking face" to stifle any outward sign of confusion. Now this just isn't making any sense. Celestia had never displayed any red toward Chryssy, and they had never discussed anything remotely like an attack. Is she testing him, for some reason?

Or… wait. (Chester struggles slowly to his feet, giving himself a similar delay to formulate his response.) Esau had thought Chester sent assassins after the Holy Mother, presumably because that's how the Holy Mother had framed it to him. Chryssy certainly is committed to that assassin narrative. So if Celestia is asking whether Chester is willing to become one… did she get mind-controlled?

An icy pressure grips Chester's gut. Celestia did get captured by Chryssy, and the Holy Mother somehow got a big enough power boost to use her mind-control siddhi multiple times in a row. The idea is uncomfortably plausible. Maybe he is being tested—by proxy.

It might be too late for the unicorns. He's got to figure out what he can still salvage out of this.

"Before I make any decisions, I need to know that all the others are still on board," he fishes. Time to see what she volunteers about Ember—or whether she thinks Holds-the-Fire is involved.

Celestia remains gray, though with some caramel around the edges. "I think you know how Sunset feels," she says. "As for Twilight—you saw her last. Where is she?"

Chester has to turn and pace to conceal his shock. That was the one name he wasn't prepared to hear.

It's entirely reasonable for Celestia to name-drop her—there's a Princess Twilight in the other world; there was a Twilight* in her phone—but definitely not in the context of Chester interacting with her. There's only one possibility for that: she's talking about Ember, and she made Chester's mistake. How is it possible that Celestia could screw up something so elementary?

Is this somehow not Celestia at all?

No, that's stupid—the ridiculous intensity of that aura is impossible to fake. The only other person he's ever met who could even possibly match it is…

… the Holy Mother.

Who is also uniquely awful at hiding her emotions. And who Chester specifically told about a talking wolf named Twilight during that regrettable phone call.

"It's funny you should mention her," Chester says, deflecting the conversation as he sorts this revelation out.

He looks at her, really looks. The woman in front of him is a perfect physical match for Celestia. It's absolutely insane to think he's talking to Chryssa-swamini—except that all the clues perfectly align.

Is this some sort of super mind control, where she takes over bodies remotely and pilots them?… No, that seems unlikely. If she had possessed that level of control, she would have piloted Esau earlier. Given the Holy Mother's need to be at the center of everything, there's no way she would have been able to resist beating up Chester herself.

That leaves… a shapeshifting siddhi? Yeah. Chester dimly remembers her claim to have learned the secrets of kama rupam in Elytra, once upon a time, back before their marketing focus shifted completely over to the love angle and she abandoned the assertion. (Not to mention, Ember had mentioned two different types of shapeshifting love-eating changeling bugs, and the ravenous ones definitely sounded like villains. Chester wonders in passing if that's who the other Chryssy is in the other world.)

If that's the case, Chryssy's powers are growing scarier by the minute. Bodily alteration is a technique thought to be beyond any modern swami, and Chester is staring it in the face.

And that also means Chester needs to not fall to temptation here. He's desperate to fish information out of Chryssy, not the least of which is the real Celestia's location. But the only rational plan is to escape ASAP. Chester's information advantage is fragile, and even just the siddhis he knows about means his situation is like being locked in a room with a ticking bomb.

Wait. He's not locked in. And that gives him an idea.

The fake Celestia—who has been waiting for quite a while for Chester to follow up on his statement—crosses her arms, pink slowly building. "Why?" she prompts.

Chester refocuses on the conversation, keeping his gaze on her eyes and his attention on the edges of her form. "Because she said that you were holding out on me," he says, adding a touch of aggression to his voice. "All your powers, and the only one you taught me is how to resist vashitva." (That's taking a chance, but not a big one: Chryssy probably wouldn't need to interrogate Chester if she had been able to dominate Celestia.) "She said I was already capable of learning half a dozen more. In fact, she taught me another."

After a brief burst of peach, her aura ignites into shimmering gold, giving Chester all the confirmation he needs.

"I'm pleasantly surprised," the shapeshifted Chryssy says. "Of course, I can't just give away the magical secrets of the royal family to just anyone, but I always knew you were capable." She seems to belatedly remember that she's supposed to be emoting like Celestia, too, and papers over the gold with the faded blue-brown of pride in him. "What sorts of powers did Twilight teach you, then?"

"Here, I'll show you." Chester doesn't challenge the blatant fishing; let her believe he's still duped. "But it's easier to do with something made of metal. Hand me the room key."

That definitely ignites a layer of maroon. She glances back at the door. Then she starts relaxing as she does the mental math. (Chester can do it too: How's he going to escape even with the key? She's right there. Even the most efficient escape would require several seconds of blatant fiddling with the deadbolt.) She reaches into her pocket—not leaving her spot by the door—and tosses him the door key, light violet curiosity stirring up.

"Stand back," Chester says, retreating to the corner by the mural wall and placing the key on his open palm. "My control's not great yet."

She crosses her arms, light violet and gold. Chester braces himself, fighting adrenaline. He mentally maps out his move before committing—then goes for broke before his second thoughts overwhelm him.

With a single fluid motion, he pivots and lobs the key at the hopper window.

He's already in motion as it leaves his hand—he's just going to have to hope that the toss clears the sill and bounces outside. Peach blossoms around Chryssy in the corner of his vision, but his entire focus is on the side door two steps away. He grabs and wrenches the knob sideways as he barrels into the door shoulder-first, exploding through into her bathroom.

Dark—lit only by the doorway behind him and a nightlight by the sink, reflected in a massive mirror. He staggers past the door—holding onto the knob for dear life as his momentum pivots him around—as Chryssy finally reacts, screeching something like "traitor" from around the corner. Chester windmills with his free arm, recovering his balance, then reverses direction and slams the bathroom door back shut.

The room immediately goes near-black. He scrabbles by touch to see if there's a lever on this side of the deadbolt—no luck. Adrenaline graduates to terror. Too dark to fix that. He shifts to sweeping his hand up the wall by the door. Hits a switch, and lights spring to life. There—wood shelves to one side. He grabs a corner and yanks them roughly under the door, sending toiletries clattering loudly to the tile. Wedges the shelf underneath the knob right as weight slams into the door from the far side.

The shelves' feet catch on the stone tiles underfoot and dig in. The door slams against the obstruction, jammed shut.

He can't believe that worked.

This whole idea was crazy. At least his Plan B is foolproof: just claim he was fooled by her Celestia disguise. Speaking of which.

"You're the traitor, Celestia!" he shouts back as Chryssy screeches incoherently at him from the meditation room. "I'm getting Swamini-ji!"

That established, he spins back into motion, using his tenuous lead to book it between the enormous marble bath and the… gold-plated toilet? Really? No, focus! The door to the Holy Mother's bedroom is a wood sliding door, finely carved, an oversized steel handle like the grip on a coffee mug. He slams it open in a single motion—needs every moment he can get.

The bedroom's lit. He's already rounded the corner toward her balcony when he realizes why. Anton's in the enormous Alaska king bed, bare-chested under thin pink sheets, blinking sleep from his eyes, one hand on the switch of the bedside table lamp. Sleep-muddled creamsicle immediately erupts into peach and red as he locks eyes with Chester, who sidesteps him and grabs the handle of the balcony glass door. It slides a fraction of an inch and slams to a jarring halt.

Anton takes a swipe at Chester, who yelps and flattens himself against the wall as he fumbles for the lock. He loses precious seconds getting it disengaged, and is jerking the balcony door open again when Anton erupts from the bed, a wall of muscle closing in.

Chester frantically backpedals, narrowly ducking under a meaty hand-swipe. Anton stumbles past him, catching himself on the wall, but now he's between Chester and freedom.

New plan! Bedroom door. Chester wheels and sprints toward it. The main hall can't be worse than Anton. Same as last time—lunge in hand-first, slam handle down into the open position, shoulder-check—shit! He bounces hard. Picks himself up—hinges on this side, grab and pull—as Anton pivots and charges. He's flinging the door open when a hand clamps around the back of his neck.

Chester yelps as his sight jerks upward and his body suddenly dangles in open air. Then the room leaps sideways, and the wall rushes in at his face—

Stars explode in his vision. He can't see. Everything goes floaty.

Chester thrashes for dear life—the pressure on his neck eases off, and gravity takes him roughly to the ground—but as he's scrambling on blind instinct away from giant meaty doom, something catches and spins his shoulder, and this time the hand grabs him by the throat.

Anton's grip is a manacle this time. Chester squirms—no luck. The world goes weightless again. Then there's an enormous impact along his back, and all his injuries start screaming at once.

Chester goes limp, wheezing for a breath that won't come, the fight knocked out of him.

Anton shifts his grip slightly. Chester's windpipe opens. He gasps, filling his lungs, and clamps his fingers uselessly around Anton's arm. Anton slams him to the wall again—pinning him there this time, like a butterfly in a specimen box.

"Can't stop looking for trouble, eh?" Anton puce-says. "Well, son, you done found it."

Chester's vision slowly clears. He's dangling from one of Anton's hands, back to the wall. The rancher—wearing only a pair of boxers decorated with little cartoon bull heads, an image Chester didn't need—is raising a fist, nice and slow, magenta-savoring Chester's reaction to impending grievous bodily harm.

How absurdly, stupidly ironic. With Anton, now, negotiation is flatly impossible. Chester successfully escaped from Chryssa-swamini into the only possible situation which her presence might have improved.

Anton's fist levels out. Chester braces for impact. And then an explosive roar shakes the entire ashram, felt more than heard.

Debris cartwheels from the bathroom doorway, little bits of shelving and fragments of wood paneling riding a gust of superheated air. The building sways, dust showering from the rafters. Anton and Chester both freeze, simultaneously turning their heads toward the destruction.

A demon hovers out.

She bears a superficial resemblance to Chryssa-swamini. The same piercing green eyes, though now against a black-hole backdrop, and an all-too-familiar overwhelming red aura—oh stars that's not his color-sight, the red is illuminating nearby objects and casting shadows, she's literally glowing with unearthly power. Her long black hair splays out into a halo around her head, with red tips that dance like flame in some celestial crossbreeze. Leathery black wings unfurl from her shoulders, daggerlike, spotted with rows of holes that further deepen their resemblance to tactical knives. Her normally pale skin looks ink-washed, almost armored, dully gleaming in her own reflected light. Oversized, swept-back ears and a jagged smile frame a leering face. And she's looking straight at Chester.

Anton's red vanishes entirely into peach, though he quickly recovers into the chocolate brown of bravado. "Another assassin demon? You'll have to wait for your beating." He jerks his chin toward Chester. "There's a line."

"By all means, Longhorn, don't let me stop you," the demon says in the Holy Mother's voice, except deeper and throatier and with a built-in unearthly echo.

Anton recoils back into peach, lowering his fist. "Chryssy?"

She floats a little higher, lifting her upraised palms, emitting an ominously melodic laugh. "I had been hoping the little traitor would give me an excuse to try this out. But you saved me a chase. Seeing as how you keep repeatedly proving yourself useful, it's only fair you get first shot."

Chester lunges for the vanishing hope of Plan B. "Swamini-ji! Wait! I thought you were Celestia!"

She eyes him. Chester can't tell her emotions, and he's not certain whether that's because she's the red of her magical emanations or because the raw intensity of that power is washing out his sight. "Yes, Chester, you did," she agrees. "And because of that incompetence I'm going to have to rebuild my favorite bathroom."

Chester's heart sinks. She's doing it again. There's not going to be any squirming out of this one.

He pushes back anyway, in a desperate stall. "Wait. I have another way to make up for my betrayal. One I know you'll like."

Ugh, what a hopeless bluff. Where can he even go with that? What could he possibly offer to someone with an entire cult at her command, and now all the magical powers of a demon—

—hold on. Going demonic was Sunset's thing, and if Chryssy could have done that all along, there's no way she would have kept it secret.

Did she steal Sunset's magic?

That puzzle piece suddenly assembles half a dozen others. Chryssy didn't try to suppress his color-sight once upon a time—she tried to take it. And that's why she kept pushing him and Esau to recruit people with unusually bright auras, and why they had a habit of vanishing soon after arrival. (Like Sister Mandy. That was when Chryssy debuted the power to turn people cyan.) Her recent victims also explain Chryssy's sudden power boost.

Plus, she had claimed the siddhi of prakamya all along: the ability to obtain whatever one desires. Apparently she took that more literally than Chester ever dared think.

Anton clenches Chester's throat fractionally tighter, interrupting his thoughts. "He's stalling," Anton maroon-says as Chester wheezes for breath.

Chryssy floats over, and this close, standing inside her aura is like being in an oven. "Probably," she says, mouth split open in a fangy leer. "But sometimes I humor him and he surprises me."

Chester opens his mouth to get a word in edgewise, and—wait. Something outside, on the balcony. Motion in his peripheral vision.

"Bad idea," Anton says, raising his arm again and re-clenching his fist. "The kid's fooled me twice now, which is twice too many. Breaking his face will fix that."

Chester flings his arms up and cringes—using the motion as a distraction to sneak a direct glance. He can't catch much detail but there's definitely someone out there. Small, pale form, caught in the illumination of Chryssy's red aura through the open door, frozen in a crouch. Now that both Chryssy and Anton have their backs to the balcony, the figure is slowly creeping back toward the railing.

Then he sees who it is, and has to rigidly grimace to keep his shock concealed.

The Chryssy-demon's face contorts as her attention shifts from Chester to Anton. "No," she hisses. "That's not your call. I'm in charge, and the fact he's fooled you twice is why."

It's nearly impossible for Chester to gather his thoughts, and even though he's got direct line of sight, Chryssy's oppressive physical aura smothers everything in turbulent red. Holds-the-Fire? he thinks toward the balcony, blunt and urgent, feeling like he's shouting through a scouring desert sandstorm.

In the corner of his eye, Chester can see a stirring of peach out there, almost completely washed out by the weight of the red.

Ches-ter? The thought comes back garbled and choppy, like a call with bad reception. What __? You __ __ cow-man __ distress __ (pack?)—

Anton stiffens—and this close in, even through Chryssy's storm, Chester can see his aura shift, muddy red foundering against that artificial cyan and receding. "Of course, Chryssy. I'm just saying, you said we were partners."

—power __ (from?) fire? Holds-the-Fire continues. Why __ (no?) (say?) me—

Chester cuts her off. Listen! You're in danger! Find Celestia. Find Sunset. The prisoners. Free them and run away!

Holds-the-Fire goes silent for a moment, then says: What?

The demon reaches out, brushing Anton's chin lightly with razor fingers. "Oh, Anton. Of course we are, as long as you keep me happy. If I'm happy you'll have the world at your feet. I'll even share some of this with you." (Amber ignites and joins his cyan.) "But you're not here to make decisions. You're a marvelous piece of muscle. Stick with your strengths." She leans into him, and her fingers tighten around his chin. "Say it with me, Longhorn. 'Yes, Chryssy.'"

Anton stiffens as smoke curls up amid the scent of burnt hair, though a fresh surge of artificial blue dislodges anything else he might have been feeling. His face softens into a silly smile, and he lowers his arm. "Yes, Chryssy."

Chester, meanwhile, is mentally repeating himself into a wall of intensifying red. With Chryssy close enough to touch, it feels like turbulence is blasting all his thoughts apart before he can focus them to send. There's no hint of a response to anything he tries, not even calling Holds-the-Fire's name directly.

But on the balcony, after long moments of fidgeting back and forth, Holds-the-Fire seems to come to a decision. She reaches sideways under the railing, and her hand comes back out clutched around Anton's rifle.

The only thought in Chester's mind is: Thank the heavens.

That's an appalling thing to admit. The rifle is still an instrument of death—and its current use case is murder. But right now, the Holy Mother has turned into something which should not be, and he's more afraid of her than he is of permanently staining his soul by contributing to her end. She can steal people's faces, control their minds and eat their powers—unless she's stopped now there's nothing to keep her from taking over the entire world. And he doesn't need to see her embrace of damnation to know the reign of terror that would result.

Chryssy lets go of Anton with one final caress, and floats several steps backward. Then her jaws gape into an even pointier leer. "Longhorn," she says in an ethereal, otherworldly melody, "I have decided Brother Chester is stalling and that I want you to break his face."

Chester startles. "No! Wait!" What was he bluffing earlier—oh, right. "I got them to tell me about all the other enlightened beings they were keeping hidden from you! Sacrifices for your greatness!"

YES! SHOOT! he mentally screams at Holds-the-Fire—hoping that he's getting through again, hoping that she doesn't miss, hoping that a bullet will be enough. SHOOT! NOW! SHOOT NOW!

Anton raises his fist again. Chryssy makes a sharp noise, holding one hand up, and he freezes—but her face curls into a frown that he guesses is closer to suspicious than intrigued. Chester has only bought a second or two.

Holds-the-Fire urgently fiddles with the safety. Then she raises the rifle, pointing it squarely at Anton's back.

HER! SHOOT THE DEMON! Chester mind-screams, and then abandons all subtlety, turning his head to stare at Chryssy while frantically gesticulating at her.

Anton and Chryssy both go wide-eyed at Chester's sudden motion, Anton going peach and maroon. Holds-the-Fire, thankfully, swivels her aim to the crucial target and pulls the trigger.

There's an anticlimactic click.

At the sound, Anton and Chryssy swivel their heads toward the balcony. Chryssy makes a surprised-sounding hiss. Anton immediately goes bright red.

Holds-the-Fire flares an orange Chester can see even through Chryssy's haze. She tilts her head fractionally downward to check the safety, then pulls the trigger again.

Click.

Everything explodes into motion, the only part of which Chester catches is Anton turning back to him and driving a very red fist into his face.

At some point Chester is dropped to the ground. The bottom half of his face is wet and warm, there's a salty metallic taste in his mouth, and the center of his face is a jagged roar of pain. All he can see through tear-blurred, hazy vision is a big pale shape and a small ice-blue shape dancing around each other, to a soundtrack of Anton bellowing in rage and Chryssy shouting.

The room heats—then without warning, overheats, desiccating air blasting from all directions. There's a mighty roar which sucks up all the rest of the sound. With his last burst of adrenaline, Chester crawl-scrambles underneath Chryssy's bed.

Then relative silence, long enough for Chester to catch his breath and wipe his face. His vision clears a bit. The pain doesn't recede. His sleeve comes away bloody.

Something clamps around his ankle. There's a sharp yank, and he pops out from under the bed like a cork from a bottle.

Chester goes limp, hoping that playing dead saves him another round of beatings. He's not certain he could move even if he wanted to. And after that final punch, his head is swimming—even thinking hurts.

The room looks no better. More accurately, it looks freshly bombed. Ashes are floating in the air, every surface he can see is singed, and a couple of spots are still smoldering.

A once-again-human Chryssy is crouching over Holds-the-Fire's form. At the sight of her, something stirs urgently to life in Chester's chest. No! He tries to sit up—and, nope, he can't move even though the only thing that matters is her. He loses himself in a wracking cough, then tries to at least collapse at an angle allowing him to see her.

She's breathing. Colorless and motionless, but at least her bare stomach—heat-charred and ugly with bruises—is slowly rising and falling. Thank the heavens.

Chryssy stands. A black jewel now dangles from a gold chain around her neck, still a bit shimmery around the edges. She is several shades of red, dominated by the rose pink of disappointment.

"Does she even have any powers?" Chryssy red-says. "I didn't even get back what I just spent."

Anton snorts—pausing his collection of his singed clothing—and clamps his hand around Chester's leg again. "Ask your traitor kid."

The room spins as he hucks Chester in Chryssy's direction. Chester bounces off the ground and tumbles to rest in a crumpled heap not far from Holds-the-Fire.

"Least she brought my gun back," the rancher pink-adds, walking over and picking the rifle up. He rotates it in his hands, inspecting the weapon. "Broke it though, I bet."

Chryssy's red shifts. "Long-horn. I nearly just got shot and that's your concern?"

Anton swings the rifle tip out toward the night in a casual one-handed grip—the glass has entirely vanished from the balcony door, now, with a few shards scattered out on the balcony—and pulls the trigger. Click. Then he grabs the big lever Chester had initially been so mystified by. In a single fluid motion, he flips it up, yanks it back toward the butt of the gun—ejecting a bullet casing onto the bedroom floor—and shoves it forward and down again, back to its resting spot.

He squeezes the trigger again. This time, a flash from the muzzle and a thunderous crack.

"Naw, actually, we're good," he says with mild purple satisfaction, then turns to Chryssy, shading into creamsicle. "Should I have worried? All that magic and you ain't bulletproof?"

Chryssy freezes, muddy orange rising for a moment before muddy brown pride overtakes it. "Of course I am. But your first thought should be to protect me whether I need it or not." A flash of caramel, and she gives him a pouty look. "I thought you cared, Anton."

He can't stop that artificial cyan from rising up. "I… of course, Chryssy. I'm right sorry. We're partners an' I got your back."

She bats her eyes and gives him a smile, though the color behind it is tawny resentment. And then, the instant he smiles back, she lunges for Chester, redly changing the subject.

"Who's that girl?" Chryssy screams, grabbing him by the shoulders and shaking him. "What's she…"

Then she trails off and her face goes slack, as her aura goes a shimmery mirrored silver and her eyes fade out.

Chester stares dully at his own colors in her reflection, the yellow of his battered body overwhelming even the orange-white despair at what he realizes just happened. He turns his head and looks at Chryssy's hand clamped around his arm—her bare skin touching his through a huge rip in the sleeve.

The power Sunset couldn't turn off. Right. And this time, the maelstrom of artificial love that Chryssy filled him with isn't acting as an unintentional shield by overwhelming his brain.

He averts his eyes and waits for the inevitable.

A few seconds later, Chryssy takes a sharp gasp of breath, as if remembering to work her lungs. The mirror immediately fragments away into a swirling mess of colors. She drops Chester like a hot potato and scrambles backward against the wall, balling up. All the while she shrieks, colors bleeding away until only orange-red is left.

Anton pauses his renewed inspection of the rifle and turns around, that artificial cyan quickly choking out his natural pink and peach and pushing blue-and-yellow concern to prominence.

"You, uh," he edges in between shrieks, "you okay there, Chrys?"

His voice seems to jolt her back into focus, a blast of peach rippling through her disgust. She blinks rapidly, eyes wandering around the room, and shifts to loud and labored breathing. "Memories," she peach-mumbles between gasps. "They're just… memories."

Then her gaze locks in on Anton, who is still openly staring at her. Muddy orange shame rises—quickly transitioning into muddy red outrage, and then into a focused, blazing fury.

"How dare you," she hisses.

Anton blinks, creamsicle. "What?"

(Chester knows this one, even if Anton doesn't. He committed the ashram's most unforgivable sin: bearing witness to the Holy Mother's imperfection. Whatever excuse she comes up with to punish him is just that, an excuse.)

Chryssy staggers to her feet, gesturing at Chester. "I nearly died because of you! This little traitor got you to call his gun-toting girlfriend for him."

Anton's confusion spikes into peach, then blossoms into guilty cream. "What?" he says. "H-how'd you—"

"Because I can read minds, you idiot!" she screams, venting her red. "I've always been able to, but I've never had to before, until your unforgivable incompetence nearly got me shot!"

Without waiting for a response, she wheels and stalks toward the door. "At least now I can find out everything my enemies know."

Author's Note

Oh. Well, that could have gone better...

Heads up that for the next two weeks, I will speed this up to three chapters a week -- that will reduce the reading delays a bit as we get into the heart of the second act, where Chester needs to start turning things around. This also means we'll get to wrap the story up within a month.

The next chapter, "Down and Out in the Magic Ashram," posts Sunday, Sept. 15! Watch for more chapters Tuesday and Thursday, as well.

17. Siddhi Lights

As soon as Chester's certain the sounds from outside have dwindled away, he scrambles over to the new arrival. Esau's limp and unmoving, covered in dozens of fresh bruises—but unlike the others, his aura is still visible, a muted yellow with no motion to it.

"Saw!" Chester says urgently, prodding his shoulder, then lightly tapping his cheek. After tense seconds, Esau begins to stir, then lets out a broken groan, yellow slowly ramping back to a less frightening intensity.

Chester lets out the breath he'd been holding. "Shoot, Saw. I'm so sorry." The apology is pure reflex, but he immediately realizes: this is entirely his fault. The Holy Mother read his mind back in the bedroom. She discovered that Esau opened the door for him as surely as if Chester had confessed.

Esau cracks his eyes open, looking up unfocusedly at Chester. His pain is churning into a constantly refreshing yellow mess—Anton must really have worked him over. But another color does manage to intrude. "Dammit," he red-says, faintly, then with more energy: "Dammit. I told you, Chess. I told you."

"Swamini-ji showed up to personally interrogate me and I still almost got away," Chester says, cringing at that justified anger. "I saw through it when she tried to fool me with kama rupam. But she also stole mind-reading from Sunset and there wasn't anything I could do."

"Mind-reading?" Esau says, a spike of peach which bursts, incongruously, into indigo. "Good."

Chester isn't quite sure what to make of Esau's relief. "No, really bad, actually. Swamini-ji's been stealing other people's powers all along. Even vashitva she stole from Sister Mandy, and it's gotten so much worse. Now she can read minds, shapeshift, make people love her, and blow up whoever those don't work on. We need to do something, or there's nothing stopping her from taking over the world."

"Exactly. She's about to take over the world. Good for her loyal devotees, bad for the fallen ones." Esau winces as he tries and fails to sit up, and his red simmers down into a tawny resentment as yellow batters it into submission. "And if she can read minds, that means she'll understand that I'm still loyal. I just made the mistake of trusting you one last time."

Chester's heart twists. "Saw…"

"Don't you dare go beige at me, Chess. What part of 'my duty is to Swamini-ji' did you not understand?" Esau rolls onto his stomach and starts dragging himself toward the bathroom, a stubborn dark brown joining his pain. "I'm going to wash up, then I'm going to sleep, and then when I see her again I'll beg for a second chance. But only for myself. It's up to you whether you want to keep playing hero, or come to your senses."

"But we owe it to—"

"No," Esau interrupts, a trace of red stirring back up. "There is no 'we'. I told you this would happen, and I promised you I wouldn't lift one finger to help you when it did." The dark brown solidifies. He braces himself against the doorway as he climbs to his feet, and then vanishes around the corner. The restroom sink's faucet turns on.

Chester glances down at his hands, then limps into the restroom to join Esau. They wash up in silence, side by side.

Chester gets his first glance in a mirror since the fight with Anton. He's an absolute mess. His skin is marred with bruises turning an ugly shade of contemplation. His cheeks are swollen, and the nose between them has a new and ugly curve (which looks actively painful, even if the pain from it has spread out into a dull, fiery ache). South of his nose, his face is a mask of dried blood. He briefly considers leaving it on as protective camouflage—maybe Anton will take pity and hit him less if he already looks like Tartarus warmed over?—but right now it's more important to feel like there's something, anything, he can do to turn this around. He wets his hands and scrubs what he can, being careful around the misshapen parts.

Esau, meanwhile, looks a different sort of awful. He took his blows a lot better—nothing's visibly broken, and the only blood is when he swishes some water around in his mouth and spits out red—but it looks like he took a lot more of them.

His feelings fade to a vivid but unfocused pinkish-yellow as he washes and the yellow of his injuries recedes. There's clearly something besides Chester that's distressing him.

Chester takes a stab at it when Esau turns the water off and limps back to the main room. "Will you at least tell me what you found out?"

There's a brief flash of peach he quickly suppresses—along with the beige of betrayal, which also isn't focused on Chester. That vanishes quickly behind guarded gray.

"No," Esau says. "Only that you were right. There's some bad stuff, Chess. Really bad. But she's going to read our minds later, and when she does, I want her to know that my lips are sealed. Not to mention, I'm pretty sure if you knew some of the things I found out, she wouldn't hesitate to have that rancher jerk shoot you. You'd be stupid enough to do something about them."

Chester's heart twists. Even through the background yellow, he can tell that some of Esau's secrets really are the stabby, pain-bleeding kind. "Those sound like the sort of secrets something should be done about."

"Thank you for proving my point." Esau sighs, his yellow paling into resignation. "Honestly, it's hard to disagree. But I'm a soldier. It doesn't matter what she's done. I don't get to choose who to serve."

"You always have a choice," Celestia's thin, colorless voice cuts in from the side.

Esau's body jolts. He yelps, orange and peach.

He whirls around to look for the source of the sound, breathing tight. He scans the room before his gaze settles in on Celestia. Behind Esau's back, Chester frantically mimes a flat hand across his throat.

"It's fine, Chester," Celestia says. "When the Holy Mother returns, we're in trouble whether or not this fine young man knows I'm awake."

Esau opens and closes his mouth, his peach receding into whirling colors. "H-how are you…"

Chester's not confident in Celestia's judgment, but the decision's already been made. "She's only mostly drained," he explains. "Blink and you can see her in the afterimages."

"I apologize for startling you. And I hope we can start fresh with some introductions. Saw, was it? I'm Celestia."

Esau throws her a resentful yellow-brown scowl. "That's Brother Esau to you. And, yes, assassin, I'm going to tell Swamini-ji you're awake. Plus everything else you do as you try to make me turn on her like you did to Brother Chester."

"She'll get it all when she mind-reads me anyway, Brother Esau," Celestia says. "This is just about you. She shouldn't be the only one with the truth."

Esau hesitates, slamming down a wall of maroon suspicion. But he can't maintain it. Black seeps through the cracks—along with orange. Chester thinks he knows that one: Esau's already learned so much, he's afraid there's going to be another fact he won't be able to ignore.

Esau turns his back on her and crosses his arms, fighting to maintain that maroon. "I don't care. Temptress. Deceiver. Everything you say is a lie."

"Then let's start with something we all know is true," Celestia says, undeterred. "You care about your younger brother very much, don't you?"

Esau immediately blossoms into vivid peach. He freezes, eyes widening. Chester stares at him, utterly confused. Esau catches Chester's stare as his eyes flick around, and falls into it—with a desperate radium green stirring up, limned with dark blue protectiveness.

Chester struggles to interpret those colors. Something she said just broke Esau. There's something he is desperate to protect Chester from, which was exposed to light in an instant.

But the only notable thing she said was "younger brother"… was that the secret?

A few moments' thought leaves Chester even more confounded—not by the relationship, but by the idea that Esau could possibly think Chester doesn't know. The ashram's official line is that all male devotees are brothers in the Holy Mother's family, equal seekers of enlightenment without regard to age or bloodline, but of course with Esau there has always been something more. Their uniquely shared color-sight is impossible to ignore, along with Sister Mandy's related power and their long-ago family-like sleeping arrangements.

But as Chester thinks through it, unease begins to gnaw at his insides. There's a whole constellation of implications connected to the idea of family, and there's definitely room for secrets in those darker corners. As one low-hanging fruit, Chester had long ago accepted Chryssy's word that Sister Mandy had abandoned everyone she cared about and that Brother Bill had blasphemed and spread lies—meaning that, even if they had been family, they were still awful people and Chester had been lucky to have the Holy Mother rescue him from their transgressions. But if that's not true…

Chester has had to question a whole lot of his beliefs since seeing Chryssy's true self. So far, the ones related to kinship have been low on the list. But a few puzzle pieces are already shifting around into their proper places.

"You're not afraid of me knowing that you and I are related. This is about Sister Mandy and Brother Bill. Our birth mother and father." Chester doesn't even need to see Esau's guilt intensifying to confirm that one. "Swamini-ji stole Mandy's power and knows the truth about both of their disappearances." While those are plausible as secrets, that's not what Esau is desperate to keep concealed, because they're not new revelations. "Brother Bill… oh." Chester swallows. "Our dad. I'm the one who ruined his investigation."

Now that Chester knows the villain was always Chryssy and not Bill, that one comes with a stab of guilt. But Esau's response is a spike of deep blue—a nonverbal wince of sympathy, not the reaction of a secret being blown open. And frankly, that guilt is a problem Chester can wrestle with when his own survival isn't an open question.

His thoughts are interrupted by a hand firmly clasping his shoulder.

"Leave it at that, Chess," Esau says, clinging to radium green. "I know how your brain works. I know I'm asking the wind not to blow. But I'm begging you, as a brother. Let Swamini-ji have her secrets and think about something, anything, else."

Chester swallows. Esau's right—his brain is already actively picking at the secret, as if it were an itchy scab. And right now, anything they learn of the Holy Mother's secrets could be crucial. But it's Esau. And he's very nearly groveling.

"I'll try," Chester says.

Esau lets out a breath, emotions destabilizing. Then smoldering red reignites, and he whirls back to Celestia. "Are you trying to get Chester killed? How did you even know that?"

"That's… not actually where I meant to go with that." Even as washed-out as Celestia's colors are, Chester thinks he sees peach. "I live on a different version of your world, and I know you're brothers because I've met our world's pair of you. But I think you actually are Chrysalis' children where I come from."

Esau throws his arms up in the air, the red bleeding off into frustration. "Great. Just great. With everything else that has happened today, you being from some stupid alternate dimension or something is just insane enough to be the truth."

"It is true," Chester says. He has trusted the unicorns on that since the beginning, but he realizes Esau doesn't have to. He points at Holds-the-Fire. "Holds-the-Fire—she's the one I mentioned that can do a sparkling gold aura—has a duplicate from Celestia's world, and I've met both versions of her. Ember, the other one, is out at the edge of the ashram right now, trying to find a way to sneak in and save us."

"Even if that's all true," Esau snaps, shading back into gray, "it changes nothing. I'm still not going to help you against Swamini-ji."

"Then, Brother Esau, may I make a request that has nothing to do with her?" Celestia says.

"Will listening to it get you to leave me alone?" he asks, pastel red stirring up.

Celestia studies him for a bit, as best she can without turning her head. "If that's what you wish. So, when Chester and his friends win this fight… when you no longer have to choose between your family and your duty… I would like to take you to visit the other version of you."

"Sure, whatever," Esau gray-says, and limps over to an unoccupied section of wall, settling down to the hard concrete floor.

"Please take the question seriously, Brother Esau. In the other world I have substantial resources, and I assure you that if you say yes, I won't hesitate to follow up."

Esau lies down on his side facing the wall, wincing as his weight settles in. "In this ridiculous hypothetical where you somehow go from being paralyzed in jail to challenging Swamini-ji at full transcendence?" he gray-says. "Sure, why not."

"Marvelous. Thank you."

Esau says nothing more.

Chester glances back and forth between the two of them, thrown. Esau had been absolutely dead-set against helping, true, but Celestia had still seemed oddly willing to concede failure there. Having been outmaneuvered by her several times already, Chester had been happy to let her superior intellect take the lead in recruiting Esau to their cause—but the exchange doesn't feel like a win.

"Celestia?" he asks, giving up and confronting the question dead-on. "What made that so important that you had to get it settled now?"

Her eyeballs shift to Chester, and she goes to the effort of a twitchy-eyed near-wink. He gets the sudden suspicion that she had been waiting for him to ask exactly that question.

"Because Brother Esau has spent so much time trying to protect you that I don't think he fully appreciates what you're capable of," Celestia says. "And I think it'll do you both some good to learn how the leader of the changelings reconciled with his older brother."

Chester's pretty certain that Esau's peach is a pale shadow of his own.

"Leader?" Esau says, rolling back over. He looks back and forth between Chester and Celestia in dark gray doubt. But as he considers the idea, he can't suppress some stirrings of blue-brown pride.

Chester, meanwhile, is trying to wrap his brain around the idea. It would be so easy to reject it out of hand if Holds-the-Fire hadn't already told him to challenge Chryssy for pack leadership, with the casual certainty of someone looking at a credible candidate. Chester can dismiss Celestia's words as a pep talk—she's very good at those, though her permanent maternal protectiveness also colors her opinions with maternal optimism—but with Holds-the-Fire, who looked straight into his soul and said it anyway? That's different.

"Nobody's asking you to betray the Holy Mother, Brother Esau, even after everything that she's done to you," Celestia says. "But you've never truly seen Chester in action before. I think you should do what you promised, and not lift one finger while he takes on the Holy Mother. Watch how your brother handles this and give him a chance to surprise you."

Boy. No pressure with that one. Chester's going to have to step up.

(He catches himself and marvels, for a moment, at the full scope of Celestia's rhetorical judo. She simultaneously pushed Esau from the Holy Mother's team onto the sidelines, and kicked Chester's brain into a leader mode he didn't realize he possessed.)

… Speaking of stepping up. Chester has gotten insanely distracted here. Holds-the-Fire still has a creepy bloodstone power source in her, and every time he starts dealing with that, something new comes up.

"First things first," he says. "Our zombie problem."

He eyes Holds-the-Fire. Of course, it's easy to say it's time to fix her, and hard to know where to begin.

Well… if the issue is that she's too drained to resist whatever the bloodstone is doing, then what if he feeds her some love energy back? The idea that he's capable of a siddhi still feels like a wild hypothetical, but there's no time like the present to give it a try.

Chester crawls closer to Holds-the-Fire, then pauses. Of course, if it doesn't work, he's going to get grabbed by a zombie again, and that leaves him no safety margin. Maybe he should do a dry run.

He diverts over to Sunset's still form. "I've got an idea, but I need a proof-of-concept first." He pushes his sleeves back, hovering his bare arms over her shoulder, and tries to think through exactly what he needs to do.

The concept is simple enough: gather his own love energy, then send it to his target. In theory, it's not terribly different from the mental "pushing" he's already been doing trying to send thoughts back and forth via bloodstone telepathy. But there's another component to it beyond just thinking emotions at people. When Holds-the-Fire commanded her wolfpack, she generated an extra layer of emotion she wasn't feeling for the command, a layer which Chester could see. Chryssy, too, had created an extra cyan layer she pumped into her victims. If Chester could see his own colors, it would be easy to experiment and then tell if he was onto something, but…

… damn it.

"Saw?" he asks, projecting cringing apology.

Esau stares at him, maroon. "No."

"I'm not asking you to lift a finger," Chester says. "Just to tell me what you see."

"A hopeless, stubborn dreamer about to get himself killed."

"Yes, I can see myself too," Chester says. "But I can't see my own colors."

Esau shifts into pink as he realizes Chester's implication. "You're really asking for my help again? After everything?"

Chester ignores the question and thinks of Holds-the-Fire. Re-summons the feelings he felt about her after that artificial infusion. Thinks of that triumphant tooth-lick… no, he needs something uncontaminated by lust. He thinks of that moment they simply stared into each other's eyes, him seeing her radiating blue, and her sensing the wolf equivalent in him. That moment when they realized their mutual trust was really just that simple, before he made everything so complicated. How she deserves so much better than what she's gotten—how she deserves only the best of him. And how he's willing to go through anything to be that best Chester for her.

"Am I cyan?" he asks—letting himself marinate in love again, but genuine this time.

Esau groans, a resigned pale yellow. "I regret everything about the phrasing of my promise. Yes."

Chester mentally checks off step one. Captures and holds that feeling, keeping part of his brain frozen in that moment. Then thinks about determination. He's got to get this siddhi right—there's so much riding on it. Tries to feel that determination and that love both at once, both at equal intensities, but keeping them separate.

"Now just kind of muddy blue," Esau says. "No—like concern but with brown instead of yellow. The two colors aren't mixing."

Chester pictures the determination burrowing down underneath the love. Coalescing into an earthy brown planet at his core, surrounded by a cyan atmosphere.

"And now you're going cyan again," Esau says. (By the increasing light violet in his tone, he's getting into this despite himself.) "Though the brown's still there underneath."

Good so far. Chester visualizes his determination shifting to the outside, an impregnable armor around the love beneath.

"Brown over blue," Esau says. "This looks like basic practice in faking emotions. Are you going somewhere with this?"

Chester certainly hopes so. Step two—controlling colors—gets a mental checkmark, and he pictures all that cyan concentrating from his core into his hands.

A day ago he would have called the idea insane; hands can't feel love. But now he's got enough experience to ignore that voice of protest. This is no longer about the emotion—he's got a block of abstract color, and he's seen from his telepathy experience that he can push colors between people with his mind. So why not use that exact same technique to push the color around in his body?

"Oh!" Esau violet-says. "We can do that?"

Excitement grips Chester, dissipating his focus. "Do what? What do you see?"

Esau sits up, violet strengthening. "Well, for a second there, you had the cyan focused into your hands. Can you imagine the messages we can send that way?" A ripple of spyfeel stirs up, then holds, as Esau tries to replicate Chester's experiments—caramel and violet overlaying each other, and then trading foreground and background.

Chester files away the idea of hand signals for later. "Admittedly, that would be pretty cool. But right now I'm trying to do something even trickier, and taking it one step at a time."

Esau stares at his hands, caramel brightening as he focuses. Then his violet seeps back to the outside, but remains full-body.

"What about me?" he asks after long moments.

"Uh, nothing," Chester says. "If you're trying to focus color into your hands, I mean."

It throws him a bit that Esau can't replicate something which felt so natural to him. Especially since Esau has more experience than he does with faking emotions. Was what he just did harder than he thought? Or maybe Esau's missing context, like the brushes with telepathy, that Chester is taking for granted?

"Hnh," Esau says, caramel dissolving into light violet as he gives up his manipulations and lets natural curiosity take back over. "How did you do the hand thing?"

"I'll show you once we get this sorted out," Chester says. "Spot me again for a minute."

Chester turns back to Sunset, replaying his preparations and getting the love and determination firmly fixed in his thoughts. Then he pushes the cyan back down to his hands, leans over her, and lays his hands on her colorless shoulder.

This is the simplest part—and also the most likely to anticlimactically, silently fail.

Chester knows the components and knows the desired outcome. He just finished turning emotions into abstract energy that he can move around his body. He already knows pushing emotions into other people's brains is possible; why not energy? But now he's trying to take those ideas, and the glue of some wild speculation, and assemble the pieces into an actual, practical effect. This goes beyond vashitva—this is reverse-engineering the opposite of Chryssy's prakamya, coming up on the fly with a siddhi he doesn't even have a name for.

A large part of him is convinced it simply can't be this simple. And that part does have logic on its side. If it was, the Holy Mother wouldn't have been able to lord her single stolen power over the ashram for a decade and a half. But on the other hand, most people don't have a lifetime of color-sight and 24 hours of the most intense crash course in magic he can imagine.

Chester takes a deep breath, feels the love in his hands, and pushes.

He doesn't know what he expects to happen. But the outcome is pretty clearly in that vast, muddy chasm between success and failure. There are no visible effects on Sunset, but he is getting some sort of feedback. A kind of return pressure—a resistance. And there's a weird wave of fatigue rippling through his body.

He closes his eyes and pushes harder.

(—oh gods, he has moved love out of his body before. When he barfed love into the planter. He hopes he doesn't have to vomit on Sunset to make this work—)

"Chess," Esau peach-says, then again, tone ratcheting up: "Chess."

Chester snaps his eyes open, fighting through sudden haze to refocus into the moment. Then surprise jolts him to full attention. Sunset's body has gone from colorless to the faintest of liminal cyans, and she's stirring as if disturbed from sleep.

"Chess," Esau orange-says, "she's moving—"

"I see that," Chester breathes, heart soaring. "Did I really just—"

Esau interrupts him, orange brightening, a vividness only matched by his fear on the drill sergeant day. "Chess she's moving she's moving behind you Chess—"

Chester whips his head around toward Holds-the-Fire. Glowing red eyes in the darkness.

He shrieks and scrambles back to the corner behind Esau.

Holds-the-Fire's colorless body is in a scuttling insectlike pose, torso barely off the ground, suspended from elbows and knees. She lurches a stumbling step in Chester's direction. Then the body seems to run out of energy, like a cell phone draining the last of its battery. The red wavers. Gutters out. She goes limp all at once, collapsing back to the floor.

"That settles it," Celestia calmly says into the terrified silence. "Something about you, specifically, is activating her bloodstone. How did you build a link with it, Chester?"

"I don't know!" Chester says, struggling for control. Behind Esau's cover, it's a bit easier to ratchet his panic back down—but Holds-the-Fire's transformation rattled him much harder this time, shattering the illusion that he had a handle on it. "I've never even seen the bloodstones everyone keeps talking about!"

"Impossible," Celestia says. "Her bloodstone wouldn't be reacting to you like that unless you had directly connected with it in a profound way. You don't pull emotional resonance like that out of a few telepathic conversations. By the way—breathe."

Chester gasps for air, focusing on his breathing for a bit. "We're safe," he repeats between inhalations. "We're safe."

"On the bright side," Celestia says, "that also affected Sunset."

Chester takes a few more breaths, then tears his eyes off Holds-the-Fire to look at her. It's true. Sunset's no longer cyan and no longer moving under her own power, but her sprawl on the floor is somewhat less awkwardly shaped, her limbs having come to rest at slightly different angles.

"Let me get this straight," Esau says, the last of his orange still bleeding off. "You've got siddhis now? And the friend of yours who isn't a demon assassin is…" His mouth opens and closes several times. "… Some kind of magically cursed zombie?"

"Did I mention it's been a crazy day?" Chester asks weakly.

"We're working on that last bit," Celestia says. "Speaking of which, I understand that strange encounters with magic can be scary, but I still feel like both of you have been reacting with unusual intensity to what you're seeing."

"I don't expect you to understand"—Esau shudders, orange and orange-red—"exactly how disturbing it is to see something that looks human moving around without any colors."

"What he said," Chester adds.

"Very well," Celestia says. "At any rate, Chester, it certainly looks like you just performed magic, which is impressive for a native of this dimension. How are you feeling?"

Hey, that's right, he did accomplish something pretty cool.

Chester takes a moment to take stock. "Pretty tired, honestly." Above and beyond both the adrenaline shock and the exhaustion of the day. Even giving Sunset that tiny little spark was a noticeable effort, both in the moment and in the aftermath.

"Mmm. Well, brute-forcing our way out of this was never Plan A, but please do be careful about feeding your love to others unless we can get you a good power source."

"Trust me, that's one I already know," Chester says, images of old Swamini-ji's multi-day exhaustion dancing unbidden in his brain.

"Ssst," Esau suddenly peach-says, dropping to a whisper. "Someone's coming."

Celestia closes her eyes again. Moments later, the crossbeam scrapes and then drops away. Chester takes stock of the room as their visitor fiddles with the deadbolt. Fortunately, nothing really substantial has changed this time—just Holds-the-Fire's position, and both Chester and Esau having cleaned up and moved around. He takes a deep breath and braces himself.

A moment after the door unlocks, there's a loud wham. The door bounces off its frame, then swings outward, vibrating from the impact. Anton waits for it to swing past him, then lowers his foot. He scans the room with a maroon scowl, his gun already leveled. There's another colorless form over his shoulder, this one small and furry.

Chester's heart sinks even before Anton levels the pistol at him. "You've developed a funny habit of screamin'," Anton maroon-says. "A fella might start to think you're up to something."

Chester's fumbling for a lie when Esau smoothly takes over the response. "The stupid creampuff thought he saw a rat," he grumbles, giving Chester a caramel glance. "You think it was bad out there, try getting woken up by it from five feet away."

Anton lowers the gun, maroon falling away into lilac. "Heh. Awful ironic considering the vermin doing the screaming." Pink briefly flares. "I'm gettin' to bed. And if you make me come back out here… Chryssy's plans or no, you're getting the fear beat out of you."

Without waiting for a reply, he grabs the furry form by its scruff and hucks Ember into the center of the floor, an arm's length from Holds-the-Fire. Then he grabs the door, slams it shut, and locks them back in.

Chester lets out a frustrated breath as the crossbar scrapes back into place. Anton's finally going to leave them alone, yes, but that's small consolation. There goes their last hope of rescue.

"Still not betraying Swamini-ji," Esau pink-says. "You're still on your own. But that guy's an ass."

"No arguments here," Chester says—then freezes up, swiveling his head. In the corner of his eye, Esau blossoms back into orange and peach.

In the center of the floor, Ember and Holds-the-Fire are rising to their feet, jerky and stilted. Their solid red eyes are locked on each other.

And both their forms are flooding with intense, sparkling red.

Author's Note

The mysteries deepen, along with Chester's problems. At least he's making some progress...

This is another reminder that I'm doing two weeks of three chapters per week, posted on Sun/Tues/Thurs. Join us on Thursday, Sept. 19 for "Grudge Matched"!

18. Grudge Matched

Chester bursts into motion, snatching Ember off the floor and backpedaling toward the corner. Holds-the-Fire's body swivels to face him and takes a lurching step forward. The wolf-zombie starts squirming, baring teeth, an unearthly growl-hiss burbling up from its throat.

"Saw! Grab her!" Chester stage-whispers, hoping his fear communicates the urgency he dare not raise his voice to express. He already knows where that sparkly red leads—and even if wolf and girl merely plan to tear each other apart, the cabin is tiny and Anton is right outside.

Muddy red overtakes Esau's orange for a moment as Holds-the-Fire advances and he flattens himself against the wall. "I literally just said I'm not—"

"Saw!" Chester hisses, sidescrambling and retreating through the bathroom doorway for another few feet of lifeline. "It's not a Chryssy thing! Separate them or we're dead!"

Esau's eyes flick around Chester's form. Then—before his orange even fully crystallizes into brown—he springs forward, tackling Holds-the-Fire. They go down and tumble across the floor, Holds-the-Fire in eerie silence and Esau grunting as fresh yellow flares up.

In Chester's arms, the wolf's squirming slows. Vivid, urgent colors start blasting the insides of his brain—the telepathic channel both Ember and Holds-the-Fire had been using, but wordless and primal, a desperate dark orange distress call.

Through the doorway, Esau throws Holds-the-Fire into a wrestling pin, holding her to the floor—and then there's a soft pop and crackle as her shoulder disengages at an unnatural angle, her arm snaking past his to grab the back of his head. Sparkling red flares as that arm jerks, shoving his face into the concrete floor by her head with a muffled crack. Esau twitches, yellow exploding. The red arm smashes his face into the ground again, and he goes limp, colors fading to a dull and motionless yellow.

In Chester's head, the dark orange redoubles, washing out his vision. Everything blurs away except Holds-the-Fire, and the sparkling red around her body ignites into a forest fire.

Rage batters him. Holds-the-Fire is the Wrong, which can only be ended by filling his teeth with her throat-blood.

The emotion makes no sense—he loves her. But red and dark orange are a howling monsoon, the force of them blasting at rational thought. He can dimly see Holds-the-Fire stand up, shoulder popping back into place, Esau's body rolling off—and her attack on his brother becomes the tiniest, most inconsequential sin topping off the infinite transgression pile.

No! This isn't right. Chester's core howls back in protest. He loves her. This is artificial rage, sparkling and incandescent, the source-slash-consequence of their feud, and he is being attacked as surely as he was by Chryssy's cyan in the main hall.

It's the bloodstones, driven mad. Like back in the forest, Ember and Holds-the-Fire's proximity has reignited their metaphysical feud—but now they've been drained of any possibility of love which might temper it, and they're on the brink of their storms' fury consuming everything.

Holds-the-Fire advances, the sparkles of her red sharpening in his vision into claws and fangs. Kill or be killed. The storm intensifies as she approaches, and all Chester can do with the last scraps of his dissipating volition is to shift Ember into one arm, pivot, and shoot out a hand to hold back the girl he loves—

A second hurricane screams in as his hand makes contact, and Chester is ground zero for their collision. Words blast in from one side and color from the other, melding into explosions, raw and overwhelming, at the center of his perceptions

fix me kill her fix me kill her

and the world grays

and slows

to a

crawl—

* * *

The storms violently eject Chester into a wall of cyan. There's no sensation to the impact except for a spike of abstract floaty pain buried deep in his chest. He's lost and the world is spinning around him, but at least here the mad pressure of the winds isn't battering every inch of him. He takes a moment to catch his breath, and vertigo's iron grip relents.

Chester gets his hands underneath him, head swimming. A box-shaped cyan cave, one side open to the howling red chaos. It's shifting around him as he takes stock—even here, the storms have force, dragging him back outside. Chester scrambles madly for purchase as he realizes he's sliding across the smooth, featureless surface—

—and spidery hands grab his arms. The world lurches. Gravity disengages; the cyan whirls to sit around and atop him, a tiny blue shack hovering above infinite red, with an apocalyptic storm battering its walls.

He realizes it's his painting room in the ashram, or some weird inverted-color version thereof. Four walls (and a ceiling) of bright cyan, one with ugly spiderwebbed cracks like a car windshield after the impact of a Chester-sized bug. This time the carpet is not placid blue ocean, but red lava, bubbling and roiling as the frail walls groan and flex. He's standing on the uneven surface, fighting for balance, with two identical gleaming figures of living red gemstone violently yanking him back and forth.

There's a sharp stab of pain down his center, as if their tug-of-war was tearing him in half. Each jerk unleashes a burst of color and meaning. fix me kill her fix me kill her—

"Stop!" Chester screams, and the echo of his cry reels the figures into stillness. The cyan sanctuary pulses, explosively ejecting the artificial colors of the gemstone monsters' commands. And for a moment the only sound is the groaning of the walls and the muted ferocity of the storm beyond.

That, at least, is a glimmer of hope. For whatever reason, Chester is sufficiently valuable to the bloodstones that they shifted their fight inside his brain rather than tearing him apart for being in the way. He has leverage here, however temporary.

"I thought you wanted to help me!" he pleads, hoping that they can still be reasoned with if he refocuses them on something besides their fight. "Why are you doing this?"

Chester sees both figures shift out of the corner of his eye. His arms are still stretched out in the creatures' grasps, and it's hard to see them both at once. But from what he can make out by turning his head back and forth, his question seems to have focused them into eerie synchronicity.

Then two mental voices erupt in precise unison—again, the sensation of an explosion in his head as one produces words and one produces emotion, arriving simultaneously but with different inflection from each side.

My power claimed you, the voices brown-say. Then a fractured stereoscope of images collide in his thoughts—Ember standing on his chest in the parking garage, Holds-the-Fire broadcasting a taunt at him from the edge of Anton's ranch. But just as the pressure of parsing that duplication is starting to build up in Chester's head, the voices snap back into perfect sync.

You are not the Voidstone's to control, the two gemstone figures continue, dark orange. (Their usual plea for help—no longer mind control.) You are mine. And now you must help me.

Thoe two overlapping images (which still hurt his brain; he tries not to focus any further on them) tell a story that makes immediate sense, for once. Chester's access to telepathy came from the bloodstones building a link into his brain to exchange color and meaning through. The blue flood of Chryssy's vashitva must have been similar enough that they were forced to defend him to protect their link. But that's not the big epiphany here.

Fact: Chester does have a unique link to the bloodstones.

He was… attuning, was that the word?… to them with every thought he and their wielders exchanged. Plenty of others can say the same, but he's pretty confident that nobody else in the world has befriended Ember and Holds-the-Fire. He is the only outside party attuned to them both.

That first encounter with the gemstone monster came when two different bloodstone links met inside his brain and his consciousness wasn't there to get in the way. And his rapport has only escalated since then—

The splitting pain reignites through his body as the gemstone figures resume fighting over him. The storms outside rattle the walls.

"Ow! Stop!" Chester pleads. "You're going to kill me if you keep this up!"

Both figures flinch back at the accusation, in mirror image. Then disengage one arm to point past him at each other, in perfect unison.

No! She will! their voices cry in stereo. Help me and we'll kill the impostor!

Fact: He's been thinking about the Wrong in the wrong way.

It clicks with the suddenness of an optical illusion shifting to a new perception. There are two bloodstone fragments—Ember's scepter and Holds-the-Fire's crown—but each of them feels like both Wolf and Wrong to him, depending on how he looks. That's because he's the only one seeing from both bloodstones' perspectives.

Both bloodstones see the other one as Wrong. That's why their fights are so immediate and intense!

Hang on. Ember told him the two halves of the bloodstone set were separated a long time ago and thrown into different worlds. Do they just… not recognize each other? Is that the entire problem here?

"I think we can fix this if you let go and listen to me," Chester says. Neither releases him, but the splitting pain recedes, and the immense mental pressure of the raging storm seems to fractionally ease. "I'm no expert on magic but I know your story. You two are a set. You're both real. There's supposed to be two of you."

No! the synchronized voices protest, jabbing spiky gemstone fingers vigorously at each other as the storm outside re-intensifies. She broke me! I need her power to rebuild us!

"Are you listening to yourselves?" Chester shouts—then makes an effort to suppress his frustration. If he gives in to red, everything is lost. "Okay. Listen. Which of you is the crown?"

The two figures point at each other even more vigorously, although their unison cracks into dissonance for a moment as they speak. She (destroyed/stole) the crown.

"Uh?" Chester says. "Then who's the scepter?"

The same answer comes back, though when the synchronization cracks this time, the two halves switch source. She (stole/destroyed) the scepter.

A throbbing ache entirely separate from the storm's pressure seeps into Chester's brain. "Then who am I speaking to?"

I am the (crown/scepter).

Fact: Magical artifacts can go crazy.

"That doesn't make sense," Chester says. He is way off the International Superspy Chet Land playbook, but maybe he can still make headway with basic logic. "You both just accused each other of destroying one piece of the set and stealing the second. That doesn't leave anything for you to be."

NO! The cyan bows inward as the bloodstones' rage builds to new heights. The spiderweb of impact cracks expands, new fractures skittering across the damaged wall. I am the (crown/scepter) and she broke me!

"Who broke you?" Chester asks, flailing to zero in on the issue before his fragile shelter collapses entirely. "How?"

Overlapping images blast simultaneously into his brain again—this time, even more disorientingly, of the same scene from two different perspectives. A frozen moment in time, two petite bipedal ice-blue dragons in the throes of shimmering red rage. Chester's never seen them but he knows that it's Holds-the-Fire and Ember, locked in mortal combat in the other world. One wears a red-gemmed circlet and is leaping for his throat, claws outstretched; the other is mid-swing with a red-gemmed scepter about to connect with his head. Both bloodstones are crackling, searing, their full power unleashed against each other. Unstoppable force and immovable object, about to explosively collide.

Dammit. He thought he was making progress, but the stones won't budge, and he can't make the math add up of 2 bloodstones x 2 perspectives = 6 different fates. Chester needs to talk to someone besides the insane artifacts.

"Alright," he says, bracing himself for more conflicting nonsense. "Where is your wielder?"

The gemstone figures just stare at him in silence before their grip around his arms tightens again. Fantastic! They've gone crazy in the least helpful way possible.

… But at least their non-answers answered his question. If they can't perceive their wielders by looking outward, there's only one direction they can currently be.

"Can you point to Holds-the-Fire?" he asks before their tug-of-war can resume.

This time, there's no synchronicity. The gemstone figure gripping his left arm continues to stare at him in silence, while the right-side figure points at Lefty agitatedly. kill her kill her kill her—

That's all Chester needs. He focuses every scrap of love he can feel for Holds-the-Fire into his left hand, and lunges leftward. With a sudden burst of motion, he slams his palm down on Lefty's chest and pushes.

There's no resistance to the emotional transfer this time. (Using the bloodstones' link makes it easier?) Lefty spasms, electrified, glistening with blue light from within. It lets loose a high-frequency keening howl that descends choppily from an unearthly register toward a very Holds-the-Fire-like scream.

The walls shake and partially collapse, fierce winds blasting into the sanctuary from Righty's side. Righty erupts into bristling spikes, screeching in triumph, and raises jagged fists for a killing blow.

But Chester's not done. He turns squarely to the second gemstone figure, bracing as hot wind hits him full in the face, and focuses his love for Ember. It's vastly less intense, and she doesn't make his heart flutter or stir up naughty thoughts—but there's no question Chester cares. She does matter. She deserves far better than this.

As the gemstone figure leaps in, he screams and throws a palm strike at its chest, pushing

and red winds blast away the last of the meditation room as gravity carries him away into the storm—

The howling winds recede, and Chester stirs back to awareness in an unfamiliar cave.

At first Chester wonders if maybe what he did resolved the bloodstones' fight, and he's waking up after surviving the zombies and escaping from the ashram. But red light from the cave entrance quickly rules that out. Outside, a storm rolls in the distance, clouds illuminated with Tartaric menace, lightning crackling through the churning maelstrom—and instantly, he knows that's the storm of the bloodstones' emotions. Wherever he is, it's still in thought-space, in that weird frozen moment.

Chester shifts his focus to the cave, and the first thing he notices is a pervasive, thick canine musk. (There's an immediate sense of comfort to it, silent familiarity.) The cave is dim, and everything has a red cast to it. The walls are stone, and presumably the floor too, though years of dirt and dust and shed fur have removed any harsh edges from the footing. By the entrance, a long, straight stick has been jammed into a small crack in the earth; dried moss has been wrapped around its top end, and the moss is smoldering, its smoke filling the cave with an earthy, acrid scent which drives the insects away.

"Here we are again," a familiar voice pink-grumbles.

How tedious, a nearly identical voice pink-replies.

It's them! Oh, sweet merciful heavens, it worked.

Chester turns, focusing on the voices. To one side, Holds-the-Fire is sitting up from a makeshift nest of small animal pelts. To the other, a tiny bipedal ice-blue dragoness (tiny for a dragon, at any rate; she's nearly his size) is sprawled weakly against the cave wall, breathing heavily with jaw hanging open. She is moving, but every movement seems a significant effort. Holds-the-Fire, too, seems hesitant in her motions, but when she makes them, they are purposeful and calm.

The dragoness—that's definitely Ember, Chester realizes, but in her true form from her home world; she's identical to the bloodstones' earlier vision—pushes herself to her feet, leaning heavily against the wall. "You look different from last time," she says, a weak flutter of creamsicle as she gasps for breath.

What did you expect? Holds-the-Fire says, her pink shading into red. She smoothly stands up, matching Ember's height but seeming nevertheless to loom over her. You broke my bloodstone. I cannot be a wolf now. And if you seek forgiveness, you can go hunt in the fire-char.

"Yeah, well, you broke my bloodstone, so you can go chase your tail and bite it," Ember snarls, stirring up what red her weakened colors can muster.

… "worked" might be too strong a word.

Chester struggles to his own feet, the motion unexpectedly taxing. "Stop," he pleads, fighting for balance on rubbery legs. "Both of you."

Their two forms spike an identical peach (Ember's much fainter). They turn their heads, as if they're seeing him for the first time. Then they chorus, in regular non-magically-synchronized unison: "Chester?"

He stumbles between the two, raising a palm toward each. "Stay with me. I need you both in control. Your bloodstones have gone crazy and they're making you fight."

Their peach goes in different directions. Ember's wavers into a skeptical gray. Holds-the-Fire's stirs briefly through indignant muddy yellow. But they both collapse back into restrained, simmering, and entirely non-sparkling red.

I need no bloodstone to know who cost me everything, Holds-the-Fire red-says. We have been over this.

"Maybe if she were begging us for help to fight its control, that might matter," Ember red-growls. "But I see now that she's never going to want to be better." Her gaze flicks past Chester to bore into Holds-the-Fire's eyes. "Let's settle this."

You are as weak as last time, Holds-the-Fire red-says, shifting into a half-crouch. But now you have no scepter to save you.

"No!" Chester shouts. His gut plummets as disaster looms. After everything he's done—after learning magic for a shot at saving them both, and draining his love to return them to consciousness—he's about to lose everything because they both want to fight.

The bloodstones tried to warn him the poison was a feedback loop, and he didn't listen.

He tries one more time as the storm outside cracks and rumbles, looming closer in toward the cave. "I know you both want revenge. I know you both have reasons for revenge. But can it wait until Chryssy isn't about to use everyone's stolen powers to take over the world?"

Ember wavers—black seeping into her red—but Holds-the-Fire barely registers a ripple of pastel-red exasperation. Step out of the way, Ches-ter, and I will reconsider your place in the pack. This will be quick, and we may speak of how to challenge your Chryssy after.

"No," Chester shouts, "because Anton will hear you fighting and we'll die!" He turns to face Holds-the-Fire. "But also because you're better than that," he says, looking into her eyes. "You want to do the right thing. You came to the ashram even after everything I'd done. You know that Ember brought you back home and spared you even after everything you did to her people. I know that's the person you are, too. Please, Holds-the-Fire. Please."

Black suffocates her red, for a moment—but so, too, does beige, that ugly shade of the pain from Chester's betrayal. She closes her eyes, those colors warring.

"I'm not," Ember quietly says from behind him.

Chester turns around, adrenaline icing his veins. Her black—already diluted—is losing intensity entirely, fading toward a complete lack of colors which shimmering red is bubbling up to replace.

He didn't give her enough love. He was rushed, and he didn't care enough, and she's already burning through the last of Chester's energy gift, slipping back into the embrace of mindless hate.

"Not better than that, I mean," Ember continues, her eyes starting to redden. "I'm tired, Chester. So tired. I gave her two second chances and look what's come of it. She's already cost me everything." The shimmering red kindles, intensifies. "The one thing I can do while I still have any power left is set this right."

I came here merely to return your woman-box and take back my fire, Holds-the-Fire says, though there's a flash of tenuous, black-flecked cyan which quickly dissolves back into red. It was foolish in its entirety, but it at least gave me this chance. I cannot throw it away. Her edges, too, are beginning to shimmer—not from lack of energy but from a willing embrace of their feud.

Chester—about to reflexively protest that there's something more to it than that; that she was willing to fight Anton to save him, and that she trusted him and tried to shoot Chryssy at his word—hesitates, the words burning on his lips. Because he sees one tiny, desperate chance.

He splays himself as widely as possible between the two, using the only obstacle he's got left. "Holds-the-Fire," he says urgently, "look at her emotions."

She hesitates. It's just a sharp Chester-focused pink splitting from the main mass of red—but she hesitates.

Ember steps up to his back, her own emotions stirring up into a weak pink, one last stand against the shimmer. She taps him on the shoulder with a razor claw. "Out of the way, Chester. I won't ask again."

Ches-ter, Holds-the-Fire pink-says. What are you trying to accomplish? She is… She trails off, the red and pink dissipating in a sharp spike of peach, which dissolves into creamsicle confusion.

There's no time to confirm any further that she saw what he needed her to see—Ember's about to close their window. Chester whirls around, summons up every last scrap of love he's capable of feeling for anyone, clamps his hands down on Ember's scaly shoulders, and pushes.

There's resistance this time. Her consciousness—what little there is of it—instinctively fights the change, and he can't afford the preparatory step of filtering the love down from emotions to energy. He sees Ember spasm in his grip, a wave of cyan colliding with her sparkling red. "Fight it!" he shouts. "Focus!"

Ember grabs him by the robes.

She yanks Chester forward, so close to jagged draconic teeth that he can feel the unnatural heat of her breath. "What did you just do to me," she hisses. The collision of cyan and shimmer-red has exploded into a muddy swirl of colors, which resolves as she speaks into indignant muddy yellow and a spike of Chester-focused red.

Non-sparkly. Thank the heavens.

"I woke you up, but hang on to that anger," he says, and cranes his head around to look at Holds-the-Fire. "You see the difference, right?"

Ember smashes him into the wall of the cave.

There's no pain from the collision—it's mindscape, not stone—but Chester, already weakened, is thoroughly discombobulated by the intensity of the strike. He groans, going limp and waiting for the world to stop spinning. Ember stalks forward, matte red, claws poised.

Holds-the-Fire sidesteps into motion as Ember advances, diverting the two of them into mutual circling. For once, she's studying Ember not with red, but with light violet.

Ches-ter is correct, she says. Your anger had crown-feel earlier. Now it is pure.

"Does that matter?" Ember snarls, staggering heavily inward to hasten the spiral dance. "Let's end this."

Holds-the-Fire's feet dance over the rock. She floats backward as they sidestep, maintaining distance and shifting into brown.

It means you stole my crown rather than destroyed it, she caramel-says. It means if I end you I can take it back.

Chester makes a strangled little sound as Holds-the-Fire takes the epiphany he fought so hard for and runs with it in the exact wrong direction.

His hopes bleed out. What else could he possibly try? The bloodstones are determined to fight, Ember and Holds-the-Fire are determined to fight, and nobody will listen. There's too much pain in them—pain Chester can't simply erase.

… Or can he?

Chester's gut twists. There is one option he hasn't tried.

Ember laughs, bitter muddy yellow, as the two of them circle inward. "I wish. I ended up with the jewelry, but because of you it's an inert hunk of rock. Trust me, if it worked I wouldn't be here."

They've said it over and over again—all their worst pain stems from when their fight broke their stones. That's when they lost everything. That's when their grudge became irreparable.

The bloodstones' pleas for repair are unthinkable. It's sheer madness to power up the force which, out in reality, is animating the fight about to kill him. But he's out of thinkable options.

"Nobody would be here if the bloodstones weren't broken," Chester says. "Which is why, if you'll just listen to me, we can get them fixed."

Their heads both swivel to him, amid a burst of violet.

Chester stares back, forcing himself to inwardly commit to the stupid, insane, desperate idea. He can't solve this with a lie; Holds-the-Fire will see right through it. But it's not a lie if it's the new plan, right?

"They've been begging for repair since the beginning," he adds, leaving out that he has no idea where to start with that or whether the plan is even workable. "But if you give in to their insanity and fight, we all lose. We have to do this together. Please just stop."

The emerald green of hope tentatively stirs inside Holds-the-Fire and Ember, but they break their stares at him to glance at each other, and other colors quickly attack. Holds-the-Fire's green immediately is shrouded in gray, and Ember's becomes mired in black denial.

"Stupid idea, Chester," Ember snarls, vigorously battering at that emerald with red to keep her anger kindled as she circles Holds-the-Fire. "If you give her the crown back, she's just going to attack Equestria again."

If you believe that, you are both arrogant AND an idiot, Holds-the-Fire says. The sentiment's sharp pink pierces her mask of gray, and for a moment, she's an open book again. And Chester sees what she was trying to bury: that emerald green igniting to full intensity.

Chester's own hope cautiously rekindles.

Holds-the-Fire locks eyes with him for a moment, and gray slams back in. But she finishes her explanation to Ember. I needed a pack then. I lead one now, if I can keep it. If I had my crown back, I would not care a claw's width for the world of fire.

"That's true. I can vouch for it. She just wants to do right by her pack." Chester braces himself and staggers back upright on half-numb limbs. "Think about what we said back in the truck, Ember. I believe in you both. Will you trust me and give her that chance?"

The combatants circle in silence for several moments as the tenor of Ember's black shifts, its sharp edges turning inward. Her red roils, suddenly hemmed in by her doubts. As she's near the closest point of the circle to Chester, Ember misses a step in her circling dance with Holds-the-Fire, stumbles, and catches herself.

Then Ember whirls on Chester, her red finding an outlet.

"No!" she screams, tail lashing, claws trembling. "Because nobody should have the bloodstones! Look at the trouble they've caused! We don't deserve them!" White bursts open around her, raw and ugly, mixing with red at the edges and adding self-loathing to her anger. "I don't! I never did!"

Chester frantically backpedals, then falls over as his legs give out underneath him. But at the first eruption of anger, Holds-the-Fire is already in motion. She springs between Chester and dragon, pivoting mid-air to drop into a deep three-point crouch facing Ember.

No, Holds-the-Fire red-says with bared teeth—and for a moment a fight seems inevitable, until a jumble of other colors swirl up. The red recedes to a simmer, curling around a core of brown with a hint of dark blue. I will not allow your stubbornness to cost us both this opportunity.

"What opportunity?" Ember snarls back, struggling to maintain her red as the self-loathing bleeds it out. "All I ever wanted was to be a normal dragon. But even with the stone that's never going to happen. I'm a useless runt. I've never been strong enough to do anything myself." Her limbs start to tremble as bright yellow stirs up into the hollowed-out anger. "So either I can keep living a lie, or I can finally dragon up and do the right thing."

Holds-the-Fire spikes peach. Then, as the dragon's pain starts truly bleeding out, she shifts into pinkish-yellow.

Chester, knowing their history, struggles to understand those reactions. Ember is wilting, inches from taking herself out of the fight and ending the threat—and yet Holds-the-Fire is suddenly in distress.

Then he remembers: Holds-the-Fire is still reading Ember's emotions, processing them fresh and raw.

She's reacting to Ember's pain.

Author's Note

One small piece of context for those who dove into the novel from scratch:

The cave that Ember and Holds-the-Fire recognize — as well as the frozen moment of mutual draconic destruction shown to Chester by the bloodstones — were previously seen in Fang and Flame. The bloodstones have brought the pair back to the mental space in which they rejected the possibility of compromise. Fortunately, they also have a mediator this time around... and is that, finally, the color of progress?

Chester, Ember, Holds-the-Fire, and the bloodstones will return on Sunday, Sept. 22 with "The Better Me"!

19. The Better Me

Occasionally, Chester has tried discussing color-sight with people who don't share it. And one mistake they almost always make is assigning morality to the spectrum: cool colors good, warm colors bad.

That's an idea which only makes sense to people without color-sight—people who think of rage and fear and pain and hope and compassion and joy as rigid categories rather than guide-markers. The truth is more complex. It's muddy-orange shame which leads to the muddy pale orange of being sincerely apologetic. Chester has seen olive-green lust and radium-green desperation motivate people to do the ugliest imaginable things. And mixing purple joy into red—turning anger into magenta schadenfreude—never fails to make his skin crawl.

But the purest example of good warm colors, he reflects, is in someone seeing pain and responding to it with pinkish-yellow distress.

It's a more dangerous and unpredictable state than deep blue empathy, but there's a fire to it which makes things happen.

* * *

When the flow of words out of Ember slows, Holds-the-Fire straightens. She wrestles with her distress for long moments, a whirling mess of new color bursting forth. And what it finally resolves into is muddy red outrage.

How dare you, Holds-the-Fire says, standing to her full height and bristling.

A weak brown breaks through Ember's pain, and she stands a little straighter herself. "Well, if you'd kick your bloodstone addiction—"

Holds-the-Fire cuts her off, outrage bubbling over into genuine anger. How DARE you think yourself that weak.

Ember blinks, peach matching Chester's own surprise.

I was perfect. I was unstoppable. And in a moment you took it all away. Holds-the-Fire's anger, too, is pierced by yellow; she curls her hands into trembling fists. You think you are the only one who was not born as they were meant to be? I have not even claws or fangs! It was only the bloodstone that let me TRY! Her own pain, now, is off the leash, bleeding out at full intensity. When you destroyed it I had to re-learn everything like a wet, mewling pup. All I had was the knowledge that your tools and knowledge had humiliated me. Her body hitches, and the cave's silence is broken by a choked, bubbling sob. I had to learn how to be YOU, because there's more power in you than the crown had at its peak. And I have failed, over and over, at the simplest of things! I could not even shoot Chris-sa with the gun! Something which would have been trivial for you! Holds-the-Fire steps forward and shoves Ember hard in the chest; the dragon spreads her wings to compensate and catches herself with a single step back. So how DARE you insult me by thinking yourself so useless. What, then, does that make me?

The question hangs in the air for a moment. Then Holds-the-Fire crumples, yellow bleeding off into white. She sinks to the ground, clinging fiercely to her knees and rocking on the balls of her feet. The cave fills with a soft, crooning howl Chester last heard when she was giving in to despair back at the boulder.

Ember freezes—and then her colors, too, sweep away in a tide of pinkish-yellow distress. She's not reading emotions like the other two, but Holds-the-Fire's pain is now blindingly obvious, regardless.

The dragon's eyes flick around the cave and settle in on Chester, giving him a silent stare whose dark orange says all that needs to be said.

It's the breakthrough Chester had been praying for all along, but now that the moment has arrived, he's caught as flat-footed as the other two. This is an emotional minefield and none of them have a map. All he can think of is to point at Holds-the-Fire's back and mime a hug.

Ember shades black, grimaces, and shuffles forward toward Hold-the-Fire. Orange stirs up as she stares at the girl, and intensifies as she dances uncomfortably back and forth, trying to summon up enough brown to make the approach. Finally, she glances back at Chester, shaking her head and silently pleading for another lifeline.

Chester winces. Right. He and Holds-the-Fire at least share an emotional language now, but Ember wasn't there for that and is still terrified by basic feelings—much less the crazytown of trying to comfort her bitter rival, who is her extra-dimensional self, inside a magical artifact's pocket dimension. He is wondering how in Tartarus he's going to coach her through that with hand gestures when he remembers they've got telepathy.

He mentally facepalms and tries to bring the situation under some semblance of control. Okay, no hugs. Tell her you're sorry? he suggests to Ember in a private broadcast.

"Right," Ember says, voice shooting up in pitch. Her orange muddies into embarrassment as she realizes that was her out-loud voice.

The noise unballs Holds-the-Fire slightly, and she looks up with a thin tawny resentment stirring up amid her white. What now?

"I," Ember starts, voice cracking like an egg. Orange brightens again and overtops into terror, and she forces out before she seizes up entirely: "I'm sorry I'm an idiot!"

Chester doubles up on his mental facepalm as pink washes through Holds-the-Fire. I… suppose that is at least an effort, she replies, colors draining back away.

This may require a more desperate save. Tell her what you said to me in the truck? Chester privately suggests. Fortunately, words are already tumbling out of Ember in a terrified avalanche, and already seem to be falling in that direction.

"It's true though," she says. "You're the better version of me. You thoroughly destroyed me—just, kicked my butt around the landscape—and then I had one good moment. When the scepter broke—which wasn't even mine in the first place—I only had one chance and that was to build myself into a crappy imitation of you, because you're the effortless leader I could never be, you're actually strong instead of making all this up as I go along, and I'm scared to death that at any moment everyone will realize I have no idea what I'm doing." She sinks to the ground, head in claws, making a weird grackley sort of sound, and sits next to Holds-the-Fire in mutual despair.

Chester crawls forward toward the pair, hoping to salvage this a little more hands-on, when what looks like a sob wracks Holds-the-Fire's body. But it's accompanied by a flare of dry lilac-gray, and soon other silent laughs shake her, amusement mingling with muddy yellow bitterness.

It takes Ember several moments of renewed terror to parse that, and several more to also catch the irony. But then she, too, laughs—a sharp, sibilant noise from somewhere deep in the throat. She buries her muzzle between her knees, all muffled sounds and twin colors, holding herself until her body shakes subside.

Chester merely lets his breath out, finally daring to ratchet his adrenaline down. Progress?

Ember takes a deep breath and unfolds a bit, sorting through whirling colors, which are trending toward brown until a spike of orange cuts through. "Whooo," she says, fanning herself with one hand. "I…. um." She glances around the cave, orange building, then punches back through it with brown and goes for broke. "I've been through enough with Princess Twilight to know what she'd want me to do here. And I don't know how I feel about this"—it's true; her colors are a mess—"but I know I should try. We've got a villain's butt to kick and Chester's been begging for us to talk practically since I met him. So… since he trusts you. Can we maybe give working together a shot?"

Holds-the-Fire, too, unfolds her limbs. She gives Chester a long stare, her feelings entirely unsettled—though with some renewed stirrings of green, which she catches and smothers back behind gray.

Then she turns to Ember. Ches-ter has hurt me, she gray-says. But he only did so to protect you. You have caused me pain, too. But we were fighting over your pack, and it is a poor leader who holds grudges after a challenge. A twinge of yellow surfaces. I think again you prove yourself superior. So if you see Chris-sa as a threat to the world… that threat includes my pack as well, and I will make the attempt.

Progress! Chester's not certain what color a sigh of triumph is, but he definitely just breathed one.

I still will not allow you to impede Ches-ter's attempt to restore the bloodstones, Holds-the-Fire adds, though in the wake of her declaration, there's no red to it. Just brown with a touch of blue, calm resolve.

Ember nods, then winces amid a spike of cream. "Look, I may have," she starts—then pauses as she wrestles with fresh terror—"overreacted a bit about that." She pauses to take several heavy breaths, the orange fading. "If he can fix the bloodstones, we might need them to deal with evil local Chrysalis. Last thing I remember is her coming up to my hiding spot, pretending to be Celestia, then she drained me when I turned around. Did you really take a shot at her with your gun?"

Spikes of chartreuse and cream stab Holds-the-Fire, the guilt of inadequacy, and Chester steps into the conversation before she can get caught up in that. "Honestly," he says, "I'm not actually sure how to fix the bloodstones yet, but I think we've already made progress. They don't seem to be trying to make you angry any more. I haven't seen any sparkles since you two opened up."

Holds-the-Fire nods, but Ember just shifts to creamsicle confusion. "Sparkles?"

Crown-feel, Holds-the-Fire says. Do you not get something similar from the scepter?

"Uhh, no? What are you talking about?"

Chester intercepts the question. "She's been using the crown to interact with her wolfpack for so long that she's developed something very similar to my color-sight. Don't worry about it. I'll teach you when we have more time." He turns to Holds-the-Fire. "There's probably a better word for it than crown-feel, though. I've seen sparkly red from you, and sparkly gold from both you and Chryssy, and that sparkly mirror color from Sunset, and I thought sparkly blue was Chryssy's enlightenment but she stole that from Mandy…" He trails off for a moment, then forces himself back on track. "Most of those might have come from an artifact like the bloodstones, or… they called Chryssy's necklace a voidstone. But some of them clearly didn't. I'm starting to think that the sparkles just mean I'm seeing magic."

Holds-the-Fire tilts her head, light violet. Perhaps. When the cliffside led me into the world of fire, there was crown-feel then, too. It is something I have not felt again until today. Colors whirl for a moment as she thinks. Wait, Ches-ter. What you earlier called the color of transcendence—it is this sparkly gold you now speak of? I do not believe there was magic to that. I was not using the crown on you at the times you reacted so strongly.

He has to think about that for a moment. "No," he says. "But I think you were under its influence. Just like when you felt sparkly red, that was the crown pushing you to be angry because it was angry too. So maybe, just like amber means greed, gold means hunger, and it turned sparkly because of the stones' cravings. You and Chryssy wanted something so badly because your stones also pushed you to want them."

Her colors whirl in thought, but Holds-the-Fire ultimately ends up creamsicle. My crown speaks to instinct. Why would it make me want tools?

Chester thinks about that one. It's a very good question, but… "I don't know," he admits.

"Maybe we should think about something more important," Ember cuts in. "Why are we still here?"

It's Chester's turn to be confused while Holds-the-Fire goes light violet. I am not certain. She glances at him and immediately adds context. The last time Ember and I were in this cave was the moment before— she hesitates, a bit of cream blossoming—we broke the bloodstones.

"Ah," Chester says. "Yeah, they showed me that fight."

"They wanted us to talk out our differences," Ember cream-adds. "But we… didn't."

You would not back down from defending your dragons, Holds-the-Fire says, then shades into yellow-gray—not quite guilt, but regret. And I would not back down from my challenge. She looks Ember straight in the eyes with brown certainty. You were correct to take your stand despite my power. It is a leader's job to protect the pack. Do not belittle your courage.

"….T-thank you," Ember violet-stammers.

Holds-the-Fire turns back to Chester without acknowledging the sentiment. It is no coincidence we have returned to my cave, here in this place. The bloodstones speak to us no longer, but it is clear from this setting that they desire a halt to our battle. We have fulfilled that. So why have they not returned us to the world of forests?

The three of them lapse into mutual thought.

"Maybe we could get angry and fight each other again?" Ember black-says.

"Please don't," Chester immediately says. His mind flashes back to the cabin, where he's virtually certain the two bloodstone zombies are still poised to tear him apart.

Ember shades a defensive muddy brown. "I didn't mean for real." Though there's a flash of cream guilt alongside the mildest stirring of red as she thinks about it. "But that's what booted us out of here last time. So, you know, just long enough to get back to reality."

Perhaps we have not fulfilled the bloodstones' conditions after all, Holds-the-Fire says, with the slightest stirring of orange-red distaste. She eyes Ember again, black creeping in. Does it want us to be pack? I can forgive you if my crown is to be restored, but I think our hunting grounds should not overlap.

Ember stares back, her own doubts echoing Holds-the-Fire's. "Yeah, I… you did a lot. I'm trying to give you a chance but friendship's… gonna be hard."

Chester hesitates, hoping for some sign from the bloodstones. But there's only an uneasy silence as girl and dragon stare at each other and him.

… hold on.

"There's another difference this time," he says. "I'm here. And I can see from both bloodstones' perspectives. Maybe you need a pair of fresh eyes."

He glances around the cave as he thinks… and there is another difference. He had been so focused on the pair's uneasy reconciliation that he hadn't noticed a gradual shift in lighting. The cave's illumination has receded from Tartaric red into a deeper and more faded hue, a maroon that paints the shadows on the cave floor as simultaneously warm and unnatural.

He turns to the cave entrance, freshly examining the ominous distant stormfront that has been the sole point of external interest. A single crack of lightning punctuates the silence, then the low protracted rumble of its thunder. There's still a touch of red internally illuminating the clouds, but the roiling maelstrom has cooled into billowing thunderheads, gray-black and still and sharp-shadowed. The air hangs oppressive and smothering now, rather than electric and intense. And that crack of lightning moments ago was notable because there haven't been any others in a while.

An idea creeps in, one he's oddly certain of but not certain why. "I think I need to go back into the storm." He talks through it in search of logic. "That seems to be where the bloodstones live, kind of. I've talked to them before. And if they're not talking to you, here…"

Holds-the-Fire and Ember glance at each other, both still mired in black. "I don't have any better ideas," Ember says, and Holds-the-Fire stares at Chester, not disagreeing.

Again Chester feels an odd intuition. "I don't suppose you two can make the storm come closer to the cave entrance?"

"Uh," Ember creamsicle-says, "I thought you said you didn't want us fighting."

Holds-the-Fire, staring out the cave entrance, has a sudden spike of violet. No. When the storm overtook the cave last time, the cause was our fight, but something feels different to it now. Her colors whirl for a moment as she chases an elusive conclusion. Whatever has changed… perhaps we have stalked it, but not pounced it. Her focus shifts to Ember, and she shifts into a gray not unlike the storm.

That gets Chester thinking. "Actually, can you both want the storm to be closer?" he corrects. It seems like a subtle distinction, but it crystallizes something he has subconsciously noticed ever since reality first broke around him: There's power in their emotions here. The landscape shifting is no coincidence; it feels like a crucial piece of the puzzle.

Ember has been staring back at Holds-the-Fire, going gray as well. At the request, both fade into various shades of black.

I… can try, Holds-the-Fire says, but the brown that stirs up inside her is half-hearted. (Ember's is no more persuasive.) And, indeed after long moments there's no further motion outside.

Chester sighs. "Okay, we'll circle back to that one. I'll… be back soon, I guess."

He walks over to the cave entrance, eyeing the still-distant stormfront. There's no way to gauge how distant—no landscape features, no horizon, no sun or moon. It could be a long walk. He trudges out into the barren stillness of the mindscape.

Dammit. He really wishes he could speed this up.

Gravity obligingly upends.

Chester yelps and flails his arms as he goes into freefall. The world spins around him, the ground now a cliff face rocketing by just out of reach, and the storm now the cliff's shrouded base. He accelerates even further through the frictionless air, and the cloudbank reaches up to envelop him—

Chester picks himself up in the midst of still, silent gray fog.

"Hello?" he calls. There's no reply, no echo, no sound of any kind. Just swirling mist in every direction. He's inside the storm—but he's alone.

He takes a moment to collect his thoughts. Okay—there's power in his emotions here, too. A moment of burning desire catapulted him to where he needs to be. This is easy, then: he really wants to talk to the bloodstones and get this sorted out.

He waits. Then glances around the fog.

… Why can't this ever be easy?

He truly does want to talk to the bloodstones; that's not even gaming the system. If that didn't work, then he doesn't think any amount of extra wishing will make it so. Chester sighs, then sits down to think.

Fact: They went silent around the same time they stopped trying to provoke Ember and Holds-the-Fire into fighting.

They're still active. The three of them are still trapped in this weird space. They still want something. But communication is a complete bust right now. Perhaps they can't?

Fact: They're broken.

They said some insane things. Maybe they've just gone deranged; if so, they're broken by definition. But he's got no chance to logic through literal insanity. His best chance is to work from the assumption that they still follow some sensible internal thought process—and are just broken in how they see things.

The one which identified as the crown said "she"—Ember or Holds-the-Fire, but because of the overlap of their answers, he's not quite certain—destroyed the crown and stole the scepter. Vice versa for the scepter. They also knew that they were broken; both sides of the chorus begged for repair. So the crown and scepter's bloodstones are both simultaneously destroyed, broken, and stolen? No, not quite: they see themselves as both destroyed and broken—separate things, those—and their counterpart as stolen.

… ugh. It's making his head hurt just as much this time around.

Fact: This is one of those puzzles he's going to have to solve from the outside in.

He tried to build the frame by working with Ember and Holds-the-Fire, and that got him no closer to a solution. Fixing the bloodstones requires understanding the bloodstones. But he simply isn't capable of seeing from whatever shattered perspective the stones were speaking to him from. He needs more context.

Chester stands up and paces in little circles in the mist. (Some tiny whisper of panic stirs up that he's going to get lost by moving. The rest of him points out that if wishing to be in the right place didn't make a difference, then walking won't, either.) He needs context that won't be distorted by whatever way the bloodstones are currently broken.

… that's doable, hopefully.

"I want to know the history of the Bloodstone Crown," Chester announces into the mist.

There's a lightning-crack, close and loud, assaulting him with hot and physical pressure. His vision instantly whites out, then becomes a sea of iridescent shapes, writhing and oscillating through the spectrum. They abruptly gather into sharp, distinct shards of color, locking into specific shades, whirling into a mutual dance and subdividing to crowd his vision. The shards retreat in size, colors growing denser until suddenly they snap into a mosaic and there's substance to

lying on a desk, staring up into the face of a robed woman, furred feline features and long wild hair. Excitement and triumph. (There's not actually any color around her; he simply knows that as a fact of her.) "I've done it, Rep!" A large dragon, midnight-blue of scale, sharp-beaked, green-eyed, stares over her shoulder (loving, elated). "What will we do with them, Kay?" and her smile spreads into fangs (greedy) and

he's curled up atop the woman's head, soaring above the clouds, as directly below him her hair whips madly in the wind carrying her laughter (exultant, rapacious). "Tremble, ponies, for I am your doom!" She clutches his other half in one outspread fist, and the other unleashes her magic into the clouds. Beneath her, the back of that midnight-blue dragon (helpless), wings laboring, who carries them at the head of a great and terrible army (submissive) which conquers the world and nothing can go wrong until it's

gone

his other half no longer sings in harmony, where is the scepter and where is its

magic

so. much. magic. It overwhelms even him and he is elsewhere when

the now-furless sorceress (indignant, vindictive) picks him up. The dragons which once answered his call are silent and the susurrus of a million new voices babbles in

the dead of night, fleeing through the forest atop her (terrified) head, shouts and torches closing in. Her (disoriented) magic reaches for a source no longer present and he, too, without his other half is ineffectual, but he knows to

watch from the crude furniture of the hut in the woods as she (determined) consults spells, brews potions. Nothing. Her (devastated) magic is gone. But even if he hasn't enough to dominate, he has enough to share and

shape

taking her (smart) raw material and rebuilding the harmony over years and

years later she (brilliant) too is

gone

and in a dim, rotted hut a wet, black nose whuffs over him and fangs clamp in—

—and Chester returns, blinking the spots out of his eyes, to the gray fog.

The memories appeared in a single intense burst, and it takes him minutes to sort through them. So much, so dense! But as he pieces what he learned together, the full picture begins to emerge.

It's enough for him to guess the outlines of what he needs to do next, but it's not enough. He's never been able to be satisfied with only half the story.

He braces himself this time, having a better idea of what to expect. "I want to know the history of the Bloodstone Scepter," he says, and lightning cracks—

(—and the first two scenes repeat, identical in vision and tone, until)

he is hers (megalomaniacal) no longer. A midnight blue claw clutches the shaft of the staff he is mounted in, and the one she called Rep (regretful, heartbroken) stares into the reflection on his surface. "I'll do everything I can to save her," says a bearded pony (placatory) in a tall jingly hat, but she doesn't matter, his other half is

gone

and there's magic (overwhelming) and he is

alone

save for the dragons he can still hear. Rep broods and sobs. He empathizes, distantly. Without his other half, he is disoriented, half-blind. Finally, Rep picks him up. "At least I can make things right with the dragons." He may not have that power any more. His domination is tentative, now, barely a thin whisper in the dragons' roaring chorus. Not that it matters. Rep will not use him. He is a symbol, a mere reminder of his people's shared liberation, until

Scales laughs, sharp and hissing, her purple claws closing around him. Rep stirs in slumber, awakens, but Rep no longer matters: he is stirring now, eager for claws willing to put his power to use. Scales tasted it once in the sorceress' thrall. Now she scoffs as Rep begs. "You've got a stick that can control the entire Dragon Lands and you're just throwing dinner parties?" He can appreciate the irony of her craving for the old ways for he, too, needs them back

atop the crystalline throne with a wielder unhesitating in her embrace of power, if meager in her ambitions. In her claws he exercises regularly, burrowing back into the minds of dragonkind, learning how with his whispers to shape their roars: "Dance for me." And his ache for his other half grows with his power, overflowing as he reaches back to his wielder, takes that flame of instinct and

kindles

a roaring pyre, but soon a new claw claims him, even stronger, and a new pyre to kindle, and a new claw even stronger and new claw stronger and new stronger and—

—out in the fog, Chester swims back into his own head.

He takes a long breath as vertigo slowly recedes, and once again spends a few minutes replaying the new burst of memories and sorting them into context. That was a lot to take in. But there's no longer any question: it was the answers he needed.

He spares a solemn moment for the tragedy of the exiled sorceress and the lovesick dragon lord. (And wonders if all the magical unicorns in Sunset and Celestia's world look like that bearded one did—spindly, blobby butt-tattooed things.) But all he can do now is make use of their stories.

He's got bloodstones to fix.

Author's Note

You go, Chester. You got this.

Fact: The sorceress and the dragon in the flashbacks are based on the old G1 villains Katrina and Rep, who never made a reappearance in Friendship Is Magic, so I gave them a cameo to weave their G4 counterparts into the prehistory of the Dragon Lands.

Fact: The tale of Scales and the Ancient Dragon Lord (also briefly seen here from the scepter's perspective) is from S8E15 and marks the earliest canon appearance of the Bloodstone Scepter. The kind-hearted Ancient Dragon Lord we see in the show is very different from everything else we've seen about dragon culture, and I couldn't resist weaving in that dangling thread.

We're doing one more week of accelerated Su-Tu-Th posting, so tune in Tuesday, Sept. 24 for "Secret Of The Stones"!

20. Secret Of The Stones

"I'm just saying," a light violet Ember is just saying as Chester returns to the stone-walled cave, "you clearly didn't come from under a wolf's tail. Don't you ever get curious about that?"

I am a wolf, Holds-the-Fire blue-says. (They're sitting cross-legged together near the center of the cave.) She spreads her arms and splays the fingers on her hands. I have never been anything else. You look at me and see a human body? That does not make me part of their world. I am as lost there as Ches-ter was in mine. She hesitates, several other colors spinning in. Though perhaps, if I were to be anything but a wolf, I would be a dragon. I will never again threaten your claim over the world of fire, but when I was there, for the first time my own body sang to my howls. The colors resolve into a dull, yellow-green jealousy. I… miss it.

Ember looks down at the cave floor, the same color stirring up. "Yeah. You should have been a dragon. You'd be the great one I couldn't. I was never enough. My father was always ashamed. Too weak. Too small."

Em-ber. Holds-the-Fire reaches out, takes one of Ember's claws, turns it palm up, and places her own pale, spindly hand in it. I tried to take your pack because Father thought me too weak and too small to lead mine. You forced me to realize there are other ways of being strong. To provide and protect is to be big no matter what your body looks like. She turns her hand over and gives Ember's claw a squeeze. So keep being big in a way other dragons are small. I know you are capable of it.

Ember stares down at their clasped hands, orange building. Abruptly, she takes her other claw and starts fanning her face. "Boy! That sure was friendship lesson time, ha-ha, Princess Twilight is gonna love this." She glances around as the orange reaches a crescendo, then sees Chester in the cave mouth. "Chester!" she shouts, scrambling upright, orange dissolving into indigo relief at the distraction. "Did you fix the bloodstones?"

Chester—who hadn't dared to move, not wanting to spoil the moment—steps in to join them as Holds-the-Fire also stands. "I got the important part done," he says, grinning. "I learned that we've been thinking about them in entirely the wrong way."

"Oh?" Ember says, green tentatively stirring as the remainder of her orange vanishes with the subject change.

Chester sits down with the pair. "I figured the bloodstones were some external force. Like… some big slug suctioned onto your back. And then the relics went away and you were working from the residue they left behind, and having the slime without the slug was driving you mad."

Ember narrows her eyes, maroon taking over. "Wait, wait. Hold the boulder. Are you seriously trying to do this? I mean, you're clearly building up to some sort of 'the real bloodstone was inside your heart all along' speech, and I'd expect that from the ponies maybe, but we're gonna need a lot more than happy words and fewmets to get out of here and take on Chrysalis—"

"No," Chester interrupts before her rant can truly take off. "What's happening is that you two literally are the bloodstones."

Ember's jaw, already open from her rant, hangs there. She makes an unintelligible noise as both she and Holds-the-Fire blossom into creamsicle.

While Ember sputters, Holds-the-Fire recovers first. Her creamsicle shifts into a wordless pink—then, as she studies Chester, back to peach and then back to creamsicle again. Those are not joke-words, she finally says, the rapid-fire shifts settling down into light violet. Explain.

"Okay, so." Chester wishes he could draw a diagram or something. "It didn't start that way. Once, back in magical pony world, this cat sorceress created the scepter and crown. Apparently with the help of dragon magic, since that's what gave them their link to dragonkind. There was a fight, and her assistant stole the scepter, and with the bloodstones' combined power broken, some pony beardy wizard guy banished the sorceress here."

Ember reorients enough to contribute again. "Yeah, all we've got about that era are old stories, but that was probably Star Swirl the Bearded, that tracks."

"So she still had the crown, which was lonely and desperate to be a set again. Meanwhile, in pony world, that dragon had the scepter but lost it to another dragon, Scales—"

"Right!" Ember says, briefly spiking violet in recognition. "We've got Feast of Fire tales about that. She was the one who swiped it from the legendary Ancient Dragon Lord. Does that make him the sorceress' assistant? Who was he? What did you learn about him—"

"Focus, Ember," Chester says. She goes pink at the chiding, but he barrels on. "Scales started using the scepter in a way the first dragon never did, and got it desperate to be a set again. That's where this started. With both crown and scepter thinking the other half of the set was gone forever, they began nurturing bloodstone power directly within their wielders. Turning them into reservoirs of bloodstone energy, hoping to build them back into the missing half. Then you two had your fight. The actual crown and scepter blasted each other into, uh, what was your phrase, Ember—"

"Inert hunks of rock?"

"Yes, thank you. So you're not actually connecting to the original crown and scepter any more. The bloodstones were right—those are destroyed, gone for good. You're connecting to you."

Holds-the-Fire has been building up some tentative green around swirling colors as she listens, but at that last bit, everything starts fading into white. Your idea is bizarre, Ches-ter, she says, but if it IS true, then it ruins all hope of recovery. I have repeatedly tested my capabilities. My own power is a whisper where the Crown was a shout.

"Not to mention," Ember says, defeat similarly washing her colors out, "we already knew we still had some remnants of power, but since Chrysalis drained me that point is moot."

"Drained you both actually, but trust me, it's not," Chester says. "Out in the real world, you two are like… bloodstone zombies, or something. Even though you've both been drained, the bloodstones' power is animating you. I don't know how Chryssa-swamini drained you selectively like that, but…" Chester blinks. "No, I do know. She doesn't drain power in general, she drains love. That's not how the bloodstones work, so she couldn't touch them."

"Okay, maybe," Ember says. "But also, what Other Me said. Our power's garbage now. If that's all you've got, we're toast."

"It isn't," Chester says. He takes a breath and inwardly braces himself for another explanation. "You've both got entire reservoirs of magic you're barely touching. Because you're both trying to connect to the wrong stone."

They both go intense peach.

"Hear me out," Chester says before they can voice their objections. "Ember, you remember that comment I made about the crown and scepter's powers seeming backwards? It turns out they weren't designed that way. Originally, both the crown and scepter did the same thing—connected to both the hearts and minds of the dragons. They only specialized after they were separated."

"Then why did they get it backwards?" Ember creamsicle-says. "We already know the scepter's the brain one and the crown is the instinct one."

"I think because originally they were trying to work with what they had," Chester says. "The crown landed with the sorceress, who was all brain and zero instinct. It tried to shape her into its missing half, which meant it had to work with her mind and enhance it, and it had to turn itself into the instinct half to complement her. Meanwhile, the scepter didn't get used until Scales picked it up. And, uh… I hope this isn't racist, Ember, but—"

She shifts maroon. "Put it that way, and there's no way it isn't."

Chester winces—he's committed to the explanation regardless, and he might as well power through it instead of getting bogged down. "Sorry. But I got the sense, from what I saw of all the Dragon Lords after that first one, that they were all bundles of raw impulse. Sorry."

"Oh," she says, and that deep red fades to blue as she relaxes. "Yeah, dragons one hundred percent are."

"Right." Chester mentally flags the minefield, grateful nothing exploded but still hoping to backpedal from the topic as quickly as possible. "So the scepter did the same thing in reverse. Tried to enhance its wielders' instincts and connections to instincts, and turned itself into the half connecting to and controlling brains."… yeah, he definitely just called all dragons stupid.

"Cute theory, but that's definitely backwards," Ember says, colors whirling as she thinks. (At least she didn't go red again, Chester notes with some relief.) "Holds-the-Fire and I already fought. She was the instinct one. I was the brain one. That's the only reason I beat her."

No, Ches-ter is correct, Holds-the-Fire says, stirring from the light violet she's been quietly listening with. When you fought me with your own power, it was with instinct and strength. You turned to the scepter when I outmatched you. And I was using the crown all along, taking all the power it would offer. Later, when I only had myself to rely on, I turned to mind.

A realization stirs up in Chester's hindbrain. "That also explains why you went gold-colored earlier, and why Ember never did," he interjects. "You're the brain bloodstone now, so of course it's pushing you to want tools, and instinct could care less about them."

Ember shakes her head, orange stirring up. "Okay, maybe that makes sense for you. But I can't do instinct. I have to be smart." The orange escalates, and this time there's something external provoking the fear. "I am incapable of being a fierce Dragon Lord, and if I'm not the smart bloodstone then I am absolutely lost in the lava."

Chester rests a hand on the dragon's shoulder. "Ember," he says, softening the tone of his voice and bracing himself, "I'm really sorry, but you've been nothing but instinct since I met you."

She whirls on him—red, teeth bared—and grabs his robes. Chester cringes, preparing to get thrown into the wall again. Then she hesitates, colors destabilizing.

"I'm not saying you can't be smart, or that you're not," Chester hurriedly adds. "You have to be smart or you would never have become Dragon Lord. But ever since, the scepter was shaping you into its missing instinct partner. It made you want to react instead of think."

Ember's red dissipates into yellow. "Yeah… I don't need a lot of help to do that." Her grip loosens, and she lets Chester go. "Point taken. I remember thinking of all the ways I could change things. I remember all the big plans I made with the ponies right after I got the scepter. But I haven't thought about them much since I started trying to be fierce enough not to be immediately dethroned."

"Then maybe you can use the bloodstone to be fierce for you," Chester says. "And concentrate on being smart when you're not using it. If we get the crown and scepter unified again, maybe they'll mellow out and stop pushing at your brain."

Ember shakes her head, stirring back into a subdued orange. "I don't think that's how it works. I…" Colors whirl for a moment, then the orange intensifies. "You're telling me I'm the instinct bloodstone, right? Well, my instincts are saying that what you just said isn't how it works, so we have a problem."

Chester's got to admit she has a point, but ripostes anyway. "That's a very smart argument from someone worried they can't use their brain."

"Yes, but that's Now Me. You're arguing for me to embrace this. If that works, I get the power I need, but I turn into yet another one of the endless line of Dragon Lords with an impulsive reign of terror."

Em-ber, Holds-the-Fire gently cuts in—making a point of projecting blue-and-yellow concern along with the meaning of her words. Perhaps we are different enough that this is no consolation. But when our fight changed my focus from instinct to intellect, it did not change what I desired. My pack became no less important. I think that already you care for your pack and your… friends. (She's used the word before, and she seems to know its meaning well enough, but it still comes across as a word she learned from a foreign language with no native equivalent.) I think if you journey from thought into heart, it will only strengthen that care.

Ember considers that in silence. Her roiling orange retreats, and though the color doesn't take over, some tendrils of green sprout in the resulting uncertainty.

"Yeah," she says. "I hope so."

"I think you can do more than hope," Chester says. "I don't know what it's like being different in the particular way that you're different. But"—that long-ago flash of Chryssy's orange-red leaps to mind unbidden—"I do know what it's like to have something inside that scares you. Something that only a few people can ever understand, which makes people you care about look at you weird."

Deep blue tentatively stirs in Ember to join the green. "Yeah?"

"Yeah." He reaches over to take the dragon's claw. "And that thing inside can be a curse or a superpower. You can't change what you are. You can't make it turn off, or make it shut up when it's inconvenient. But if you accept it, work with it, it becomes a source of strength. You can understand where it wants to take you, and guide it along a path that brings you joy instead of pain. It'll bring you experiences normal people never get. And when you do find the ones who get it, they mean more than anything in the world."

He turns his head to stare at Holds-the-Fire as he reaches his conclusion. She's staring back, and he knows what she sees.

Her own colors are unsettled—some threads of dull beige, yes, but some threads of green, too. Pastel, for what once might have been, and a more tentative deeper green, for what still might. And the much more substantial deep blue, of knowing exactly what he's talking about.

With a bit of reluctance, Chester turns back to Ember, giving her claw a squeeze. "You've got me. You've got Celestia and Sunset, and your friends back home—Princess Twilight, and Spike, and Thorax, who you should introduce me to if we get out of this mess. If we're lucky enough to survive long enough to get you home, I think you'll do just fine."

Ember has been building up to a finely mixed blue and orange as he speaks. Specifically, cerulean and pastel blue, trust and gratitude, along with a jagged self-directed orange that Chester is starting to recognize—Ember confronting the distressing realization that she has feelings. (He's beginning to appreciate the full extent of the trauma she must have from growing up as a dragon.)

But as he finishes, a spike of lilac pierces through and disrupts it all.

She snorts, laughter catching her off guard, and jerks back her claw to cover her muzzle. "Wow, Chester. You had that pep talk nailed right until the end there."

Holds-the-Fire, too, spikes lilac and lets loose a trilling yip. Chester gives in and joins them. He can't get over how fantastic it is to see them sharing things, even a laugh at his expense. Even the cave seems to be getting in on it, its illumination now a much more placid blue, the cave entrance taking on the appearance of a dim and hazy night.

Ches-ter does provide a useful reminder, Holds-the-Fire says as her amusement fades. All this talk is meaningless if we do not return to the world of forests. But I believe I see our path. She holds a hand out to Ember, shifting to a brown resolve. We have known for some time that the bloodstones themselves draw strength from each other. If I am to be the scepter now—then I offer you my power, if you will share your crown in return.

Ember reaches a claw out, but hesitates at the last moment, her colors slamming into a gray wall, with a bit of orange still visible.

It's frustrating, but Chester gets it. Things have changed between them so quickly—and there's something about that hand which feels momentous, even by the standards of everything they've just dragged each other through.

He extends his own hands to the pair, focusing on radiating encouragement. "I support this. I believe in you both."

That hand Ember lunges for immediately, her scaly claw squeezing with a pressure that's on the edge of painful, even here. And Chester can feel the turbulence underlying her drab, guarded mask. She's vibrating—there's more fear there than she's letting on.

On instinct, he opens himself up—like he did with the pushing, but in the reverse direction—and allows that orange to seep into him. It's not overwhelming like Chryssy's siddhi or the bloodstones' rage were, but it's fear, it's distressing nonetheless, curling his stomach and spearing through him like the cramps of food poisoning. But in this moment, he wants nothing more than to help Ember through this, and he's got the capacity to take it on.

The orange visible behind Ember's mask bleeds away, and her posture un-tenses. Chester glances at Holds-the-Fire. This time, she's the one who is staring at his outstretched hand and hesitating, colors internally whirling. She glances up to his face and silently takes it, colors retreating back to resolve as she shifts her attention back to Ember.

Ember takes a breath and meets her stare. "You'd better fight as fiercely alongside me as you did against me," she growls, the chocolate hue of bravado.

Then you had better defend my world with the ferocity you defended yours, Holds-the-Fire replies, her brown unwavering.

A spike of different brown, muddy pride, stirs Ember to motion. "You know I will," she says, and grabs Holds-the-Fire's hand, firmly squeezing.

There's an electric jolt as their connection completes.

The storm surges into the cave—mist full of rage no longer, but potential, licking at the cave walls and igniting their surroundings into sudden brilliance from a thousand little fingers of electricity. Their surroundings wash out into light—

* * *

—and Chester's focus swims back to the gray and frozen tableau of the prison cabin.

In the black-and-white photograph of the frozen world, he's cringing at the back wall of the bathroom, one arm hugged around Ember's torso. The wolf is frozen mid-flail from an attempt to escape his grasp, eyes blank, stare locked with Holds-the-Fire and dagger-toothed jaw agape. His other arm is locked straight out with his hand splayed on the skin of Holds-the-Fire's stomach as she reaches out to grab the wolf. Her mouth, too, is curled into a blunt-toothed snarl underneath solid eyes.

One of her hands has brushed against Ember's outstretched paw, and at that point of contact—a spark. A tiny blue arc of light, so full of power that it dances even amid the world's paralysis.

Time

restarts

with an electric boom and the world blurs with motion. Two lightning-fast impacts, one against the front of his body, the other at his back, and then he slowly reorients with the concrete floor caressing his face.

He's throbbing with pain and with power—at first the latter, an invincible rush, dwindling quickly away. The shadows are dancing back and forth—in the corner of his eye, the light bulb is swinging around the ceiling, the same impact that hit him having turned its cord into a pendulum—and there's further motion by the toilet and by the door. As Chester remembers to breathe (remembers he's got a body, with needs), Ember and Holds-the-Fire pick themselves up, the wolf also huffing and the girl sucking in a sharp gasp. They're both shimmering with power—colors diluted with disorientation, but with auras so intense that they distort the lines of the room.

Ember shakes herself out—like a wet dog, but shedding no moisture—and her frazzled fur resettles slightly. "Uuugghh." She's the first to find her voice, and also to spike into color as she glances around and sees Chester weakly stirring on the floor. "Chester?" she dark-blue-says. "You okay?"

Chester's looking at Holds-the-Fire as Ember says that, and sees something remarkable. The blue from the wolf at the corner of his eye leaps the gap in space, stirring up inside the girl. The motion of their colors is smooth and continuous, like if he were staring at the left and right side of a single person half-hidden behind a pillar.

"Uh," Ember adds, blossoming into peach. And no, it's not like they're a single person—there's clearly two cores, two emotional sources there. As the peach reaches Holds-the-Fire's side, a flurry of colors echoes back, a different peach entirely, and soon colors are barraging back and forth. It's like watching the telepathic conversation back in the car again, except sped up like a fast-forwarded recording, and by the time Chester's even bringing his mind to bear on the colors he sees, they've resolved into a mutual violet, different shades inflecting them on both sides.

"You're shocked. Surprised?" Ember says to him, quickly enough that without seeing the back-and-forth he might have not even noticed a delay. "So this is what feeling other people's emotions is like. You do this all the time? No wonder Thorax is so good with this stuff."

"Not to interrupt," Celestia's faint voice says from the main room. "But what was that explosion?"

Chester finally shoves himself to hands and knees on his second try; he's nearly boneless with fatigue. "It's okay!" he says, slurring a bit at first until sensation returns to his mouth. "I think we fixed the bloodstones."

Yes! Holds-the-Fire violet-says, and her voice is sharp and clear, as if she was standing inside his skull. I can feel my pack where I left them. I— it's just the slightest of hesitations—can talk to them. I can feel you. Feel Ches-ter's people. The violet intensifies into blazing triumph.

"Excellent!" Celestia says. "Well done. Not to look a gift phoenix in the nest, but I don't suppose you also achieved apotheosis and are about to blast us all with healing love?"

"That kind of wiped me out," Chester says. "One thing at a time."

"Ah," Celestia says. "Well, not to alarm you, but that noise rattled windows in Canterlot, so prepare for company."

Author's Note

So proud of Chester, Ember, and Holds-the-Fire right now.

And it's time to head into the adventure's final act. If you can't wait until Thursday, Sept. 26 to see what working bloodstones are capable of, this is a great time to read Fang and Flame (which won the Imposing Sovereigns II contest) and find out what happened when Ember and Holds-the-Fire first fought. Otherwise, tune in on Thursday for "Drawing Lines"!

21. Drawing Lines

"What?" Chester says. "No no no no no."

He has some semblance of a plan for The Chryssa-swamini Problem—stealthily escape the compound; get reinforcements from Twilight* and Luna* and villain hunters worldwide; somehow convince the authorities that the world is under attack by an unstoppable, undetectable foe—but it requires a substantial head start. If their deadline has moved up from Morning to Now, they're doomed.

He forces a couple of breaths in and out and takes stock. They've got to give something a shot regardless.

Fact: All they've got now is Ember and Holds-the-Fire.

Chester is tapped out. He was already tired before sorting out them and their bloodstones, and now fatigue is crushing him. Now that he's got a couple of emotional transfers under his belt, he's pretty certain he could put more juice into what he did with Sunset earlier—but the energy to do so is the energy that's keeping him upright. So, effectively, she's down, Celestia can't move, and—oh, heck, Esau.

He staggers out to the main room. His brother is breathing, colors weak and still, with fresh blood under his face. Alive, but probably down for the count—bloodstone zombie Holds-the-Fire did a number on him.

"It's fine," Ember muddy-green-says, loping over to examine the door. "We've just gotta bust out before Chrysalis drags herself out here."

Fact: They don't even have that much time.

"It's worse than that," Chester says urgently. "Anton's like 15 seconds away."

Even better, Holds-the-Fire says with a spike of caramel spyfeel. Then we do not have to worry about opening the door.

Fact: The girl raised by wolves, and the dragon about to give in to roaring instinct for the first time, are about to square off against a homicidal rage-bomb.

"Listen," Chester says, feeling the clock ticking. "Can we handle this without killing?"

Ember and Holds-the-Fire exchange a glance. Peach, quickly receding into black. "Didn't Anton almost shoot you in the truck?" Ember says. "Neither of them are going to hold back."

Did you not beg me to shoot Chris-sa earlier? Holds-the-Fire adds with light violet curiosity.

Chester winces. "I did. But I was afraid, and I thought that was our only chance." He can't think of how he could have done it differently, but he's ashamed regardless. If he had done better, they wouldn't have been in that corner to begin with.

And if they can't do better this time… well. The image of Ember and Holds-the-Fire succumbing to sparkly red, on a blood-spattered rampage through their slaughtered enemies, is bad enough in his brain. If it becomes reality, they'll lose something more important than saving the world.

"Maybe it was even the right option," he adds. "But it's never safe to assume that. Shooting Ember felt right to you in the forest, but if you had, we wouldn't have the bloodstones back now." Holds-the-Fire hesitates at that one, and he can tell by both of their whirling colors that his point landed.

"Seconded," Celestia says. "I don't have the authority to tell any of you to solve this the pony way. But I beg you to try."

Before anyone can reply, there's the sound of the door's crossbar scraping, along with muffled cursing. Ember and Holds-the-Fire shoot each other a synchronized glance, then crouch and tense, the sparkles around their bodies igniting into a glimmering brown. They both sidestep to one side of the front doorway, out of the direct light from the bathroom.

The deadbolt grinds and chunks. Chester, too, realizes he'd better scramble into the shadows—but stops dead, because Esau's lying right there in the center of the light beam. He grabs Esau instead, and is still struggling to tug his brother toward cover when the door creaks outward.

It happens so fast that Chester sees most of the motion in afterimages.

Brown-blurred Ember bursts out through the doorway at an upward and sideways angle, fangy end first, at red Anton's readied pistol. He yelps, flaring yellow, as jaws clamp around his wrist, and there's a loud crack as light flashes from the barrel, with an almost immediate echo as the bullet ricochets harmlessly off the outer wall. Simultaneously, brown-blurred Holds-the-Fire dives into a feet-first slide just wide of Anton's left leg. She grabs his ankle as she zips past, kicking hard upward to shift her momentum, riding his leg around him like a rope swing. Ember yanks Anton's right arm sharply down as Holds-the-Fire swings his ankle up, the combination sending him into a somersaulting spin.

Anton does nearly a full rotation before gravity smashes him face-first into the gravel path. He lands hard, with a yellow crunch, Stetson spiraling down to land alongside his balding head. He's squirming to get an arm out from underneath his body when Ember lunges in, clamping her jaws around the back of Anton's meaty neck.

Anton freezes, a vivid and raw orange.

Holds-the-Fire, who had launched herself into midair at the tail end of her swing, finishes an arching backflip and comes down lightly on her feet. Then it's silent outside except for Ember's muffled growling—her muzzle stuffed with flesh, tiny dots of blood pooling where her fangs are making light contact.

Holds-the-Fire whirls around, smoothly crouches, and pries the pistol from his hand (being careful to keep the barrel pointed away from the cabin). I suggest you do not move, she broadcasts, a gloating puce. She is looking for an excuse to bite.

Chester stares, open-mouthed, having managed to tug Esau a few inches to one side during the entirety of that fight.

Anton—not daring to move his head—cranes his eyes upward to stare at Chester, blotting out his fear with muddy red outrage. "I fracking knew—" he snarls, a sentiment cut short by a pink warning growl from Ember.

Holds-the-Fire turns the enormous revolver over in her hands—with a flash of cream amid black—then shifts into a grim khaki as she thinks. Abruptly, she walks into the cabin to hand it to Chester. You should take this, she says, a brief flutter of chartreuse inadequacy marring her brown. If it comes to a moment when the bloodstones are insufficient… I would rather you have it than I.

Chester accepts it on autopilot, letting the weighty hunk of metal drop into his cradled hands. His mind's still trying to catch up to what he just witnessed. He had been figuring that maybe, with a universe's worth of luck, they could distract Anton, grab his keys, and drive out of the ashram with pursuit at their heels. But the sheer effortlessness of that takedown is making him wonder…

"Listen," he says. "Do you think we might actually have a shot at stopping Chryssy?"

Ember's eyes flick over to him and she goes dark gray. Are you kidding me right now? she broadcasts, switching over to telepathy with her mouth full.

… Yeah, that was asking too much. He'd better start sorting out the logistics of a quick escape—

That wasn't your plan all along? Ember finishes.

Oh, right. That was what she had assumed back in bloodstone space, too, and there hadn't been an opportunity to correct her.

Creamsicle stirs up in Holds-the-Fire. Are you truly that afraid of Chris-sa? She does not deserve her power, or her pack, much less the world. She will befoul much more than her own hunting grounds. Do not back down now.

Guilt twinges at Chester's stomach. "I'm just saying—she stole the power to move the sun. All we've got are two bloodstones. We are way outclassed."

Ember and Holds-the-Fire glance at each other, sharing that creamsicle for a moment. Then colors blitz back and forth, and they both burst into lilac.

Holds-the-Fire snorts, bringing the back of a hand up to her mouth. Ember chuffs, the points of her fangs digging slightly into Anton's neck, making him wince.

Is THAT what you're worried about? Ember lilac-says. Chester, how do you think we EARNED our bloodstones?

He has to give them that one.

"If I might interrupt," Celestia says as Chester is revising his plans, "I applaud your takedown, but that's the second time now you've let loose a surge of power, so if the Holy Mother was paying attent—ah. Big magic. Main building."

A loud, low, echoing boom punctuates her warning.

Chester startles and refocuses, looking outside. The main hall's roof has been blown apart, and the night sky around it set afire, with a little black knot hovering at the center of the flames. Even at this distance, a warm wind is stirring up through the cabin door, and the air shimmers and distorts as the ominously demonic silhouette hovers in their direction.

A similar shimmer ignites in wolf and girl, their colors intensifying. They exchange a rapid pattern of colors which rapidly coalesce into caramel—and then their forms ignite and they burst away in different directions, leaving brown afterimages behind in Chester's vision.

We first must draw Chris-sa's attention far from the cabin, Holds-the-Fire caramel-says as she circles toward the Holy Mother, a bounding pseudo-quadrupedal sprint. There is nothing we can do to save you if she repeats from close range what she did in her sleep-chambers. Can you protect yourself from the cow-man?

Chester glances at the peach Anton—abruptly free of the wolf jaws at his neck—then stares down at the pistol in his hands.

His throat tightens. His stomach curls into a knot. He can already see his hands starting to shake.

But he can't let them down on this.

I'll try, he replies, trying to muster up enough brown to give them the confidence to focus on their own much more substantial fight.

There's motion from the doorway. Anton climbs to his feet, his back turned to Chester as he takes in the scene outside. His eyes track in on the sprinting Ember's form, and his peach shifts into violet as he realizes Ember actually has left and set him free.

Chester jumps, fumbling with the pistol. He clamps both hands around the grip and wedges one trembling finger inside the trigger guard, as far forward as he can to reduce the odds of an accidental shot, then swings it up to aim at Anton's back.

"That's enough," he says, forcing his voice to drop register into something vaguely Chet Land-like, and projecting what he hopes is more menace than terror.

Anton freezes again, a sharp spike of orange dissolving into whirling colors. He slowly raises his hands and turns around, eyes zeroing in on Chester's gun, then at Chester himself.

Then he chuckles, colors mellowing into a confident muddy green.

"Ain't this a kick," he says. "Here I was worried maybe Brother Esau had picked the gun up. But you ain't up to take the shot."

Fact: Anton has got Chester's number.

As their paths have kept crossing, it's gotten harder and harder to fool Anton—and Chester realizes with a jolt of cold fear that he actually isn't ready for this. He had thought that maybe teaching Holds-the-Fire to shoot, and being at gunpoint himself several times, would prepare him to pull the trigger when it finally mattered—but the ugliness of the day's violence has only managed to reinforce how much he regrets ever touching a firearm in the first place.

However, if he can't convince Anton he's willing to fire, Anton will test him. Then Chester will either wilt and die, or forever have blood on his hands.

A puce smile spreads across Anton's face. Bluffs flash through Chester's mind, none taking root. There's no lie he can tell that Anton will believe.

So he tries the truth.

"You're right. Even after everything you've done, I don't want to kill you," he says, letting his voice climb back to its normal register, making no effort to hide his fear. "B-but what I am willing to do is protect my friends. A-and we both know that if you walk through that door and I don't shoot, they're dead."

Anton's smug confidence vanishes into a morass of black.

Chester slides his non-trigger hand up the grip and wrestles the hammer back with an ominous click, then looks up into Anton's eyes.

They stare at each other for long seconds. Various colors attack Anton's uncertainty and find no purchase, as orange and pink war beneath. The barrel of the revolver wavers as Chester's hands tremble.

Then, behind Anton, the sky repeatedly lights up, and there's a succession of distant roars as fire-bolts streak from the hovering Chryssy down toward the ground.

Anton breaks the stare first, twisting his head to glance at the scene behind him. Then he scowls, giving Chester a pink glare. "You ain't worth it," he says, and takes a deliberate step back, his hands still raised. "If we settle this she's gonna yell that I wasn't there to protect her."

For a moment, Chester considers brandishing the gun more aggressively, and yelling for Anton to get down on his knees like in some police show. He should—otherwise he's just dumping his problems on Ember and Holds-the-Fire. But that would also throw back into limbo the question of whether he might have to pull the trigger. And with that possibility looming, fear closes his throat.

Anton takes another step backward, keeping his eyes locked on Chester. At Chester's silence, his background orange dissipates into wine-red contempt. Then, abruptly, he whirls around and sprints away toward the distant fight.

An unstoppable tremble passes through Chester's body. He sinks to his knees and gasps for breath, nausea stabbing his stomach. He sets the pistol on the ground with the exaggerated care of handling an explosive, then jerks his hands back the instant they're clear of the metal.

He never, ever wants to do that again.

Chester pulls together what scraps of focus he can to send an urgent message to Holds-the-Fire. Anton's headed your way.

The reply comes after a pause of several seconds, and it's equally diffuse with distraction. Good. You did well to drive him away.

"Damn it," he says faintly, out loud. No, he didn't.

"For what it's worth," Celestia quietly says, "thank you."

"Don't," Chester replies, not disguising the bitterness in his voice. The others seem to think that was a victory, but right now all he can see is how his friends needed Chet Land when everything was actually on the line, and he flinched.

"You thanked me for helping when all I did was make you feel better," Celestia says. "I think you've long since lapped me there."

Chester stares out the doorway at the hovering demon Chryssy. Her hands are a blur of red motion, flinging fireball after fireball down to the ashram grounds. The earth is shivering with blast after blast, an almost constant tremor, as her missiles make contact. On the ground, two brown blurs circle her, weaving erratic paths through the explosions.

"Yeah, but they're out there fighting to save the world," Chester says, "and I couldn't even keep one captured bandit down."

"So? Those bloodstones didn't repair themselves, Chester." Celestia blinks slowly, keeping eye contact. "Perhaps someday you'll make peace with how much of a battle is fought before the first blow. I still struggle with that, myself."

"But I can't just sit and watch."

"It's not easy, I agree." There's a dryness to the paralyzed Celestia's voice that Chester catches an almost lilac quality to. "But let's talk through it. What can't you do?"

Chester braces himself against the floor as a stray fireball explodes in the fields in the near distance, sending a thin hail of dirt clods against the front porch. "Basically nothing. That's the problem."

"Can't," Celestia repeats.

Chester blinks and mentally readjusts. Right. She's getting him brainstorming.

"Ah," he says. "For starters, I can't shoot anyone. And I don't have the energy to help you or Sunset get up. Maybe Esau, but I won't ask him to fight against Swamini-ji."

"Well," Celestia says, "you are a changeling. You could recharge by draining love from people, like Chryssy did."

"What?" Chester recoils. "I'd never do that!"

"Good," Celestia says. "I wouldn't have suggested it otherwise. But consider this, Chester. You could do any of those things." Her thin voice doesn't have the strength for emphasis, but Chester swears he hears it anyway. "Meaning, you have lines you won't cross even to save the world. That's why I thanked you."

Chester considers that as he watches the fight.

There's a break in the fury as Demon Chryssy lets up in her barrage. He gets his first solid look at her as she pauses, and the changes are subtle enough it takes him a moment. There are two gemstones gleaming in her chest now, apparently fused fully into her form—the small geode he once saw on Sunset which is nestled into her jugular notch, and a chunk of obsidian at her solar plexus. Both are pulsing with energy above and beyond her own formidable physical aura.

The last of the midair fireballs streaks to ground level with a succession of booms, and then it's quiet enough to hear the patter of debris showering down. Wolf and girl slow, their brown afterimage trails resolving back into glowing forms.

It signals a major shift in tempo, and it feels like the moment for a counterattack—but none is immediately forthcoming. Chryssy's hovering too high for them to reach, and Holds-the-Fire appears to have been too busy dodging to find anything to use at range.

Ember and Holds-the-Fire circle Chryssy at a cautious distance, unscathed but without good attack options. They're both panting from exertion, but glowing heartily. Meanwhile, Chryssy's blazing red aura is visibly diminished. Briefly, at least. She gasps for breath for a few moments—then snarls, spreads her arms in her statuesque transcendent pose, and reignites.

"Pathetic insects!" she shouts, her voice echoing through the night with otherworldly distortion. "Is this the best that two worlds can do? Two enemies led by greed to become parasites upon true greatness? You are nothing! The parlor tricks which hid your powers from me are nothing! I will suck you dry and make you beg!"

Ember and Holds-the-Fire don't respond, but Chester knows there's much more going on than their words. He can see them alter their circling, with Ember speeding up slightly and Holds-the-Fire holding back until they are tracing paths on exact opposite sides of their opponent. Chryssy snarls, repositioning herself out of the center of the circle, but the two reignite their auras and pace her, smoothly coordinating their motions to keep one of them in her blind spot.

The motion of her red aura goes from a simmer to a boil as their dance intensifies, and then overtops. "Longhorn!" she shouts. "These vermin are beneath my notice. Fix the problem."

Anton pops his head up from the cover of some jagged piles of charred metal, which Chester realizes used to be the storage shed he once helped paint. "Of course, Chryssy," Anton says, starting out with cyan that amber quickly joins. "But I'm gonna need some of that power you keep talking about."

She wheels on him. "They're a child and a dog! Can you not handle something so simple?"

Speaking of which.

As the villains bicker, Chester reaches back into the increasingly familiar bloodstone link to put in a mental word to Holds-the-Fire and Ember. Not to interrupt, but shouldn't you be finding a way to attack her while she's distracted?

Not directly, Holds-the-Fire gray-says, keeping her focus on her foe. Chris-sa is big prey, and there is too much fight in her right now. We will harry her until she stumbles.

Chester chews his lip. I wouldn't count on running her out of energy, he says. (Bloodstone-says? That seems like a good term for their telepathy, now that he understands its source.)

Probably, but her plan's still the right play, Ember bloodstone-says with brown resolve. The other Chrysalis is cunning but she goes on tilt super easy. Even if we don't tire her out, we can keep throwing her more and more off balance till we find a better opening.

Though if you are aware of any of Chris-sa's weaknesses— Holds-the-Fire gray-says, then cuts herself off. A moment.

Chester blinks and returns his attention to the villains. Chryssy is hissing, a dark, curdled sound that roils the red glow of her aura. "Say it, Longhorn. 'Yes, Chryssy'."

"I just want the power to help you!" Anton protests, cyan and amber warring. "The two of us should—"

A brown blur rushes at him, and he's interrupted by a sharp crunk. He spikes orange as a large piece of rebar punctures the metal siding at his neck level, slamming him back to the shredded wall.

It takes Chester a moment to realize that Holds-the-Fire didn't actually stab Anton through the throat, but rather took a bar bent in half and stapled him to the wall. By the time he's parsed that out, she's already dashed back away from Anton into cover. Ember follows that up with a sprint behind Anton's wall, pausing for just long enough to bite the hanging rebar ends and bend them with her jaws, locking him in.

Chryssy screeches, re-igniting and flinging a new succession of fireballs as wolf and girl dance away again.

"Really?" Ember puce-shouts as she sprints, effortlessly dodging Chryssy's hasty shots. "You're too chicken to take us on, and also stupid enough to think he can stop us?"

"Showing how useless he is proves nothing!" Chryssy shouts, throwing down a particularly intense barrage that forces Ember to double back.

Okay, Ember peach-says as she dodges, I expected that to go differently.

How? Chester bloodstone-says back. Anton is just convenient muscle to her. Did you expect that to threaten her ego?

No, Ember pink-says. But we just made her deal with us personally again. She should be taking us more seriously right now, but she barely reacted.

Holds-the-Fire's mental voice shades into pale orange concern. If we are to keep pressing her, we need her to escalate. If this stalemate continues, she may decide you are easier targets than us.

Chester thinks for a moment. Then point out how you outnumber her because she can't work with anyone else. You need her upset? Remember, she can't handle not being the best.

Holds-the-Fire feints a rush inward, taking a turn drawing Chryssy's fire to give Ember a chance to back off. "Speaking of useless," Ember caramel-shouts from a safer remove, "I thought you were supposed to have an entire cult or something?"

Chryssy whirls back to the wolf and scoffs. "Merely the earliest to recognize my glory, as the world soon will."

"Yeah? Cause what I see right now is a fraud who doesn't even have enough power to share," Ember says. "I'm fighting you at just half my strength, because I'm giving half to the wolf-kid, and you still haven't laid a finger on either of us."

Chryssy stares down at Ember, roiling in fury. Then there's a shift in the depths of her red that Chester notices but can't emotionally name. Her smile slowly returns, cruel and fangy.

"You wish to see power?" she says, the reverb in her voice deepening. "Very well. I am power. I can take whatever I want from whoever I wish, and distribute it as I wish." Black begins to pulse within her red aura, centered around her obsidian chest-chunk. "I am the one true goddess!"

That black overtakes her red, and the world itself begins to distort. Chryssy seems to get closer without moving, the void of her aura magnifying her as everything else suddenly recedes.

A thin cyan halo encircles everything. Chester feels a physical pull toward the door, as if gravity itself has begun tugging in her direction, and leans back to compensate—and then sharp vertigo passes through him, and the cyan evaporates. The ground reasserts its pull, and he overbalances and topples backward, windmilling his arms.

I think you got her upset, he broadcasts as he picks himself up—and freezes. Colors are streaking towards her, a spectrum of greens and blues, from the main hall and the barracks and their cabin and the destroyed shed where Anton is pinned, all of them swirling and vanishing into Chryssy's void. Anton thrashes against his neck-manacle as his aura is ripped away, mouth open in a silent scream.

Holds-the-Fire and Ember back away uncertainly, their forms wrapped in a rigid, shimmering transparent red not dissimilar to the weird gemstone forms he saw in mental space. Apparently the bloodstones have stepped up to protect them now that the voidstone has escalated into all-out magic war.

At first Chester assumes that's why the pull on him stopped, too—but if anything, the bloodstones feel like they've drawn back, concentrating their power on their wielders. The link to Ember and Holds-the-Fire seems quieter, the colors of their crosstalk more muted.

Worry gnaws at him. If they're under that much pressure, he's got to figure out some way to help.

Chester glances around the cabin. There are definitely weird smeary color-streaks—albeit faint ones—going from Sunset and Celestia toward Chryssy. But he doesn't see that effect around Esau, and his own cyan halo hasn't returned.

Fact: Feeding a love overdose to Chryssa-swamini is off the table.

His heart sinks. Despite how long a shot it had been, some tiny part of him had been brainstorming how to make Celestia's plan work. But now the lack of a massive power source isn't the only thing killing that idea. Chryssy has now twice gotten so rattled by his color-sight that she's deliberately excluding the two people with it from her ashram-wide love drain.

… Though perhaps that's something he can use?

Outside, the streak of color connecting Anton and Chryssy ebbs into a thin, dull line of blue as the last of his power is drained away and his frenzied thrashing ebbs into stillness. Then the line solidifies into something thin and taut, and the black distortion fluctuates, disgorging a green flame which courses back down the line like a spark igniting a gasoline trail.

The fire reaches Anton and vanishes inside his body, causing him to spasm. Then his body starts to expand.

It's like watching a series of tiny explosions go off under his skin. Suddenly, his legs and his arms and his head and his torso sequentially bulge to comical proportions. His body arches outward, then folds back inward, and there's a scream which turns into a bellow as his six feet of height become twelve bent double. His head bulges even further, nose distorting into an enormous muzzle, giant horns bursting from the sides of his temples.

He straightens tree-trunk legs. There's a groan and screech as tortured metal protests and finally gives way, and the entire wall he's pinned to breaks free of its foundations and dangles from his neck like a metal cape. And a figure stands up, no longer Anton—devoid of any internal color which might have come from his mind—but some enormous minotaur, gray-blue-furred with eyes of sickly green flame, attached back to Chryssy with a leash of that same hue.

The thing bellows a war-cry to the heavens, lowers its horns, and charges Holds-the-Fire.

Author's Note

Fact: When Chester guessed way back in Chapter 4 that Holds-the-Fire succumbing to the bloodstone's power would make her fly and shoot fireballs, that wasn't just there as a throwaway gag. Even back then, he had a pretty good read of the one person he knew with access to any level of power.

Chryssy's going to be a tough nut to crack, especially with a voidstone zombie minotaur at her disposal. Tune in Sunday, Sept. 29 for "Feeding The Need"! We'll be going back to our regular Sunday-Wednesday schedule for the final stretch.

22. Feeding The Need

Fact: Chryssa-swamini actually hasn't connected with anyone ever.

Anton was already under her emotional control, Chester thinks as Holds-the-Fire springs out of the zombie minotaur's way and Ember charges in from behind. It took more effort to turn him into a hollowed-out puppet than to give him enough power to help her. But he saw her in a moment of weakness, and no matter how useful he could have been to her, she couldn't live with that knowledge.

Once—he thinks as wolf and girl duck under a bellowing sweep—she had to at least maintain some minimal pretense of cooperation. But now she has enough power that she doesn't need acolytes or servants or love-slaves, and the mask has come off entirely.

Ember sinks her fangs deep into the minotaur's tendons. With deceptive speed, it reaches behind itself to grab her by the scruff of the neck. She yelps. The minotaur whirls around and flings her at the main hall. The wolf impacts with a distant boom, sending a cloud of mortar dust billowing out from a new hole in the ashram wall.

Chester freaks out for a moment—until he realizes Holds-the-Fire is still receiving Ember's colors through their remote link. (At the moment, a big burst of yellow.) It's hard to believe she remained conscious through that hit, but the way the stones are surging, they probably used raw magical power to soak the impact.

The earth shudders as the minotaur whirls on Holds-the-Fire and stomps a challenge. It charges forward again, head lowered to spear her with horns, and she throws herself to one side—only to yelp, bright peach, as a barrage of fireballs comes streaking down from Chryssy. Holds-the-Fire ignites her bloodstone power a little brighter, barely zig-zagging through the blasts, then tries to break for open ground but has to fling herself backward to avoid a massive two-fisted overhead minotaur slam.

She squares off with the minotaur and dashes in. It takes another swipe—right as she launches herself into a head-first dive between its legs, tucking into a shoulder roll and coming up sprinting on the far side. She dives into the cover of the increasingly blasted-apart shed right before the minotaur spins around, and then she freezes, staying in hiding to silently catch her breath.

That gives Chester some time to refocus on the real threat.

Fact: Chryssy is taking specific precautions against absorbing him and Esau.

What she's avoiding is obvious: color-sight. Why she's making such an enormous point of avoiding it isn't—or, at least, is a question he has always papered over by thinking of his gift as transgressive. But now the answer seems much more related to her lack of connections.

Assume she's a changeling, then. Ember had told Chester that changelings come in two types: touchy-feely and ravenous. Chryssa-swamini's clearly been the ravenous kind all this time—her sparkling gold of "transcendence" had been her voidstone latching on to her hunger. And the entire time, all the love she drained from her victims and from the ashram's veneration—it was all fuel for power. She never actually felt any of it.

Is that why she was scared of stealing color-sight—actually experiencing those emotions felt new and overwhelming? Chester considers. That doesn't feel adequate for the extremity of her reaction. He had been freaked out by losing it, too, but he—

He blinks.

When he had lost color-sight, Chester had freaked out because everyone became a thing. Without it, there was nothing to distinguish people from the drab, passive world around them.

Fact: Chryssy has that problem in reverse.

She can't make connections because, to her, everyone is a thing. To gain color-sight must be like all the food at a banquet starting to scream in pain. Wait—no, it's worse than that.

Fact: Chryssy has personally killed people before.

All his evidence for that is indirect—but a final puzzle piece falls into place which forces the conclusion. Color-sight makes the horror of death inescapable. Even Esau, who once had been willing to do anything to be a soldier, had drawn a hard line at killing. (That also explains why Chryssy was so eager to recruit Anton, Chester notes.) Her sudden prior acquisitions of color-sight must have forced her to confront the magnitude of what she had done.

A final realization hits. The one person whose emotions Chester has never been able to see is himself. He imagines Chryssa-swamini surrounded by a world where everyone except her is a person. Where she looks down at her hands and she's as dull as the scenery, surrounded by shining people who matter. It's a scenario perfectly calibrated to break someone who has spent their life ravenous and parasitic.

If he can force her to see in colors again, that should end the fight entirely. But how is he going to do that when she specifically refuses to drain him?

Chester peeks back out the cabin door. With the new threat of the minotaur shifting the matchup, the fight has turned into a game of cat-and-mouse around the outbuildings by the ashram's parking lot. Holds-the-Fire—and Ember, back outside and back to brown fighting strength—are dashing from cover to cover, staying out of sight except when they deliberately expose themselves to cause a distraction.

It looks at first glance like a stalemate. Chryssy has aerial overwatch and a better position; all she needs to do is corner one of her opponents and then use her power advantage to do some real damage. But Ember and Holds-the-Fire are thinking with two brains to Chryssy's one, and taking advantage of their perfect coordination. Whichever one of them isn't being hunted is constantly repositioning, communicating their enemies' locations and preparing to launch distractions.

Chester checks in. You okay?

Holds-the-Fire responds for both of them; it's Ember's turn to be cornered. We are hunting for an opening to safely attack the cow-man, she says, pale orange. Conditions are not favorable.

Hold out for a little longer, Chester bloodstone-says, trying to stifle his own worries. I'm… working on something.

"Well?" Chryssy cackles from above the battlefield, a dot of color in her floating void. "Have you been reduced to the vermin you are, scurrying into mouse-holes? Any more boasts, wolf?"

We may be unable to further delay, Holds-the-Fire says, shifting to a grim khaki. Already she has forced us to defensive footing. Unless you have a way to provoke her, she will soon control the duel.

Chester thinks. Then lean into that. If you have a way to hide, go silent. She won't take scaring you off as a win unless she can gloat to you about it.

I fear that will goad her into attacking targets we must defend, Holds-the-Fire khaki-says. But we will try.

Chester backs away from the doorway, keeping his footfalls as silent as he can, then turns around and crouches next to Celestia. "Alright," he whispers, "this is not looking great and I could use some ideas here."

She doesn't respond.

Chester blinks repeatedly, trying to readjust his eyes to the dim cabin light after all the fireworks outside. "Celestia?"

Still nothing. It takes him a few moments to realize her eyes are closed. He gently shakes her shoulder, and her body is limp—even though, paradoxically, her color has increased in intensity, now barely visible as something other than afterimages. There's a hint of cyan to her, and—oh, right—that leash leading to Chryssy, dull and quiescent. The Holy Mother must have finally gotten those tiny final scraps of power and set her up to become another zombie like the minotaur.

He bites his lip. That's… a thought in the same direction as a plan. Chryssy won't drain his powers directly, but she did drain Celestia, who's right here in the cabin with him. If he could only go back to right before she got the last of her love sucked out, and figure out a way to donate his color-sight to her…

Hang on.

Holds-the-Fire! he bloodstone-says, sharp and urgent as the pieces of a desperate but workable plan fall together. Where's the wolfpack?

A response comes back, precise and hushed—Holds-the-Fire seems to be minimizing her bloodstone use while trying to be stealthy. Not far, she says, though it's a pale orange that suggests concern at his question.

Change of plans! Chester says. Summon them!

What? she peach-says. I will not treat their lives as carrion, Ches-ter, they will be useless against the cow-man and worse than useless against Chris-sa—

She won't know that! Chester says. I just need you to get them into line of sight for a bluff. Make it as big and showy as you possibly can.

Green and black briefly war in her non-verbal response, and Chester double-checks his logic. The animals have no colors for Chryssy to drain, and if she's scanning for magic like she did earlier, they'll show up as touched by the bloodstones because of Holds-the-Fire's longtime link to them. He projects spyfeel back.

Holds-the-Fire's colors firm into brown. Very well. Make your plan count.

Then there's a surge of energy outside that Chester doesn't need to see to sense. A howl cuts through the night, clear and piercing and predatory, challenging the black hole's distortion, grounding the world back from battleground into hunting ground.

The sound itself is sparkling light brown, thick with magic—and Chester's never seen the color before, but he knows instantly it's the pure and primal emotion of the hunt. A chill runs down his spine, an involuntary prey-fear from deep in his instincts. Out in the surrounding mountainside, the howl is answered by a chorus—and, again, without even seeing them he can feel color ignite in each of her wolves as they join her song. For a moment, the world simplifies into the unity of hunters blazing in direct challenge to a predator of a very different kind. Holds-the-Fire is injecting bloodstone energy into her pack, pulling out all the stops with this one.

The howl dies away, though not the distant wolves' colors. And for a moment, the night is silent.

Then Chryssy bursts into laughter.

The demonic reverb of it retakes the night. "The little wolf-girl finally shows her fangs! Was that your big master plan? Mind-controlling a few mindless beasts? I haven't used a parlor trick that simple since Elytra!"

Chester's confidence wavers for a moment. Is she not going to bite? No. He's lived with her his whole lifetime. She doesn't just laugh things like this off, she needs to show off how much better she is. Her ego's got a hunger of its own.

"Yeah, well, let's see how funny it is when we've got you outnumbered," Ember chocolate-says, getting into the act.

The air outside ignites with green flame. "Yes," Chryssy says. "Let's."

Bingo.

Chester can't see Chryssy, but he knows exactly what's happening. She's sending power down those dozens of thin, quiet leashes, taking over the bodies of everyone in the ashram and raising a zombie pack of her own. But there's only two that matter right now. He watches the tethers connected to Sunset and Celestia… and sure enough, power surges toward them.

He grabs Sunset's limp arm as the green fire vanishes underneath her skin. And as her body starts filling with Chryssy's energy, eager to reshape her, he focuses a tiny fraction of his remaining love into a fingertip to the center of her chest, and pushes.

Chester has nowhere near the strength or skill to contest Chryssy's control. But that's not what he's doing. Right now, the Holy Mother is pouring raw energy back into a body after draining its love down to zero. Her control relies on that complete lack of consciousness. And all he should need to wake a well-fueled body back up is the tiniest spark of love—

Sunset's body explodes into color.

She sits up equally explosively, her eyes shooting open and her muscles jerking to life all at once. She barely misses headbutting Chester, and he catches a face full of hair. There's a loud gasp as she fills her lungs, and he's assaulted by flailing arms and intense creamsicle.

"Whoah!" Chester yelps, flinching back and doing some flailing of his own in an attempt to disentangle them. "Sunset!"

"Chester?" she says, spiking violet as she reorients. "I—aah!"

That last bit comes with a full-body spasm as the green fire of Chryssy's tether flares to a hungrier shade, reversing the flow. She already noticed.

Blue starts to pour out of Sunset, being sucked back toward the demon like gravity pulling water down a drain. Sunset slams down a wall of gray, thin and porous, fighting the drain with everything her disoriented self can muster.

"Don't fight it!" Chester shouts. "Hold onto me and let her take everything!"

She locks eyes with him, color intensity rapidly fading, orange spiking behind her improvised defenses. He wishes he had time to explain, but he barely has the time to make this work. The best he can do is grab her forearm with both hands, stare at her with intense resolve, and give her a firm nod.

Her fear eases. Then cerulean trust stirs up—which starts getting pulled away before it can even settle in—and she nods back.

Chester summons every scrap of love he can feel, pouring it all straight through into Sunset.

It's like stepping into a raging river. The instant his love leaves its body, it's snatched away, and he is suddenly keenly aware of Chryssy's roaring void outside—catching him, pulling him inexorably closer.

He clings to Sunset for dear life, swept into the flow with her, and lets the current wash them away.

… Everything is emptiness.

Chester's awareness stirs, dimly. It's hard to tell that there's anything to be aware of. It's hard to think. There's nothing to think about. But he becomes slowly aware, in the infinite void, of a nearby hunger—the gravity of inexorable need, a sense of devouring finality, oblivion like the ground rushing to greet him after a long fall. But it's not rushing anywhere. In fact, that void seems to be internally roiling, temporarily distracted from its ceaseless ingestion. Not sated—never sated—but nauseous.

A thought struggles to the surface of his brain-sludge. The voidstone?

"Is that what it is?" Sunset says. "It doesn't look happy."

Chester refocuses. He's not alone. The nothingness is rapidly receding like evaporating black fog, leaving a tiny bubble of somethingness behind—an inner space like the bloodstones'. There alongside him is Sunset, floating in the void and staring with him at the source of that hunger, a ravenous black hole looming over them and burbling with indigestion. Her fingers are clenched tightly around his arm, and he's got a death grip on hers. And she's also colorless—but here in weird voidstone space, maybe that's the default?

It's becoming easier to think, too—Chester can feel energy seeping into him, a giving backwash in the ever-taking current. It's weird and prickly and foreign, like a million ants crawling inside his body, but his fatigue is evaporating and his memories are reasserting themselves and reassembling into identity.

"Gotta admit, I'm getting a little too familiar with weird magical limbo spaces these days," Sunset says, then gestures to their clenched arms. "Sorry for dragging you in here, though."

Chester chuckles uneasily. "Uh, exact same, but back at you."

Sunset laughs, though with a bit of a grimace, and glances around the void, which remains utterly featureless except for the agitated singularity. "Okay, fair. If that's the case—I know enough about this scenario to know that one of us has something to accomplish with the artifact that's in here with us. And if it's that voidstone, I don't think it's me. So what's up with it right now?"

Chester thinks. "Well, I was pouring love into you while Chryssy was draining you dry again," he says, assembling memory fragments back into a coherent picture. "She sucked my love out too. Meaning she ate my color-sight." Which answers his earlier question. "And now it's—"

Sunset cuts off the next part of his explanation. "That's why you needed my help! After that incident when you were a kid, she wasn't going to eat your powers on her own."

Chester had chosen Sunset over Celestia exactly because her mind-reading power was the final piece of the plan. He's known for a while that she got a glance through his memories. But it still throws him to realize she saw that particular one.

Then another realization hits. "Wait—you learned I was still actively working for Chryssy back when you read my mind the first time," he says. "And you still welcomed me onto the team?"

"We weren't going after Chryssy then, and you sincerely wanted to do the right thing," Sunset says. "I figured giving you the chance to do that would help you find an outside perspective. I'm pretty big on second chances." She eyes the increasingly unstable voidstone; red light spills out of it from deep within, and it is building up an ominous rumble. "But we really should talk about that later."

"Right," Chester says. "Speaking of second chances. What this looks like is Chryssy about to vomit my color-sight back up. Out in the real world, Ember and Holds-the-Fire are fighting her—that distraction might be enough of an opening for them to take her down. But she doesn't just need to be defeated, she needs to be a better person, and she needs color-sight to do that."

He steadies himself with a breath—this is exactly what he had been hoping to accomplish, but a little creeping dread settles into the pit of his stomach as the finality of it settles in.

"When she barfs our powers back out," Chester says, "I need you to activate your mind-reading power on her and turn into a mirror, so she gives her color-sight back to herself instead of me."

"Wait, what?" Sunset says, her face scrunching up in a way that Chester assumes means confusion. "That's not how it works."

"I know it works off skin contact and you're not touching each other," he says with a rising edge of desperation, "but right now she's got an open two-way emotional link with you, that should be good enough—"

"No, I mean, the geode gave me empathy, to help me learn to connect with people better," Sunset says. "It only lets me learn from others. I can't use my power to force things to happen to others. That was a hard lesson I had to learn to get back on the right path."

"Oh," Chester says, an odd mix of relief and panic settling in. Maybe he doesn't have to give up his sight… but then, what can he do? And why are they here?

He doesn't have much time to figure it out. The black hole is erratically bulging, now. Its internal red is almost to the surface, and either it's beginning to vibrate or else it's rattling the entire limbo around it.

Sunset stares at the roiling black hole, thinking. Suddenly, her eyes widen. Then a smile spreads across her face.

"However," she slowly says, "I can do you one better."

"How?"

"You were right, I do have a two-way link with her." Sunset's smile opens into a toothy grin. "And I can feel the geode in there."

"Right!" Chester says, a new plan assembling from that fact. "Chryssy's using it as a power source. It's part of her demon form now—she can't get rid of it. You can affect her through it?"

"I can wake it up and make it want to do its job. And if I pony up while Chryssy and I are linked, it'll go into overdrive." Sunset lets go of Chester's arm to crack her knuckles together. "She wants power from empathy? We'll give her Elements of Harmony levels of it."

Chester lets go, but turns to face the voidstone. Its internal pressure is so tremendous now that light is starting to leak from little cracks all along its surface. "I'm coming along. We need her seeing colors."

"Got it." Sunset reaches for his forearm again, squaring off against the voidstone with him. "We'll head inside—"

—and with a lightning-like crack, the surface of the voidstone bursts, and they're washed away in a torrent of power—

—and electricity contracts all Chester's muscles as he jolts back into his own body.

He gasps for breath, head swimming as the world assaults him with sensory data. There's the texture of concrete and cotton and a hot burnt scent and staccato pops and booms and bursts of firecracker light from the cabin door. That itchy, crawling sensation of insects under his skin, foreign energy urging him to motion. Vertigo as he finally orients to gravity and pushes himself away from it, the floor lurching away. More motion in the corner of his eye as Sunset, too, struggles upright, a vague and colorless shape in the dimness of the cabin.

For a moment, Chester freaks out at the colorless world—but, wait, that means Chryssy's still got his sight. They've still got a chance! Still, getting ejected out of voidstone space probably signals something bad—

Out in the distance, there's an unearthly shriek, then a boom as the night flares daytime-bright for a split second.

Chester blinks away the afterimages of both Sunset and Celestia struggling to their feet. Chryssy's losing control, but is far from done with fighting.

"Can you still do the thing?" he yells at Sunset over the echoing roar of the explosion, as the building sways and a series of sharp pocks rattle the roof.

"Yes!" Sunset shouts back, bracing herself against the cabin wall. "But it's not working here, I need to touch her—"

There's another distant crack. She and Celestia simultaneously spasm and stagger backward, away from the cabin door, as if hit by an invisible wave leaving Chester untouched.

Fact: He can't see it without color-sight, but their links to Chryssy are still active.

Chryssy must be vomiting up random bursts of power as she fights to disgorge Chester's unwelcome sustenance. That's why all of them are awake again, and why the energy animating Chester feels so foreign—and also why Sunset is fighting to stay upright despite her fresh recharge. Now she's getting battered by energy infusions, blasted over and over again through her tether.

Chester snatches her into a fireman's carry and dashes out the door.

Author's Note

And now, a brief moment of celebration for the first thing I've ever written which has crossed the 100,000 word mark:

:yay:

We're rapidly closing in on the end, and what a ride it's been. We're back to twice-per-week chapters, so tune in Wednesday, Oct. 2 for "Not Quite Harmony"!

23. Not Quite Harmony

The ashram has shifted from a war zone into a blasted-out Tartaric landscape. Chryssy's no longer in the air, but there's a distorted halo of black and red seething and crackling from the parking lot in the distance, along with the more traditional illumination of fire. Large areas of the ashram grounds are roaring infernos, along with several cars and parts of three buildings. Devotees are running around screaming—some apparently fleeing the compound, some sprinting into cover, and one or two brave souls finding buckets and flinging water at the worst of the blazes. There's no immediate sign of the enormous blue-gray minotaur.

Only a few steps in, Chester is beginning to doubt his plan. That buzzing, crawling energy vibrating through him is egging him to infinite motion, but that's because it's weird, not because he's suddenly become superhuman. And people are heavy. He's barely cleared the cabin porch before his limbs are protesting—and then there's another boom from the Chryssy fight, and the ground sways underneath him and he misses a step. He and Sunset yelp as they go down, tumbling hard into the fields.

She's up first, grabbing his arm and jerking him back upright. "It was a nice thought! But let's both—" And she staggers again, spasming and dropping as Chester tries to cling to her hands and haul back. But he was only mostly up himself, short on leverage and wholly off-balance, and they both go down again in a tangle of limbs.

They struggle back to their feet. Chester, already panting for breath, glances at the distant parking lot.

Fact: At this pace, Chryssy will have regained her control before they get there.

Help! We need a pickup! Chester broadcasts on the bloodstone channel. Ember! Holds-the-Fire! Someone get me and Sunset to Chryssy!

A string of explosions rumbles out from the parking lot, a series of white flashes bursting open the night sky as a new zone of fire roars up. The link is silent for a moment.

Little busy! Ember belatedly says. The words echo meaning into his head like always, and he feels like there are emotional cues accompanying them which are right past the edge of his perception, but the words resolutely refuse to stir up colors.

We cannot let up, Holds-the-Fire says, and even without color, the transmission is fuzzy and distorted in a way that feels wounded. Your ploy grounded her and drove her to strike blindly, but the instant she recuperates, our chance is gone.

Get us there and we can end the fight! Chester pleads.

Stop to assist you and we will not have the chance, Holds-the-Fire says, and then there's another explosion in the distance and her presence withdraws.

Chester curses under his breath, uselessly flailing for a Plan B—and then Sunset shouts and tackles him to the ground. "Chester, look out!"

He yelps, going down hard, breath exploding from his lungs as Sunset lands on him. There's a blur of motion above them, and a split-second of illumination from a distant explosion catches an enormous wall of blue-gray fur right where they were standing.

Sunset shrieks. Her weight suddenly lifts off him, and then she's gone, and fear entirely overtakes Chester. He flings himself to one side, scrambling to sprint away from a prone start, and then something clamps onto his robes from behind and his life flashes before his eyes—

In a single smooth motion, he's lifted off the ground. Then, as he flails and screams, the iron grip at his back swings him up and sideways and releases.

The world spins, sky and ground trading places, and then a giant blue-gray form comes up to meet him and he slams squarely onto the back of an absurdly oversized wolf.

He blinks, stunned. Gravity starts toppling him off one side. He belatedly flails, and his hands catch and hold fistfuls of fur, and he jerks his knees inward on reflex, legs clenching against a torso several times his size. For a moment, everything is still, and he remembers finally to breathe.

There's a low whuff—more like the sound of a mountain shifting than a wolf speaking—and Chester lifts his head to fully take in the scene. Sunset's in front of him, uninjured but looking as traumatized as he feels, with a cluster of giant tooth-gouges in the back of her leather jacket. She clings to a neck too big for her to wrap her arms around, gasping for breath, and staring back at Chester with wide-eyed shock. Above her, the head of the massive wolf from Holds-the-Fire's pack is turned toward them, looking back over his shoulder at his new riders. There's a spark, foreign and wild, in his eyes. Not a person, but something more than animal.

Fact: This is the one Holds-the-Fire called Father. And the forest isn't the only place Chester knows him from.

He was a bloodstone wielder, once, when his muzzle closed around the crown in a long-abandoned hut. For years, the crown desperately tried to pound intellect into its animal companion, until it gave up and drove him to locate raw material more amenable to shaping.

And now the bloodstones have fully awoken, and some buried whisper inside of the wolf knows Chester's part in it.

"Hold on!" Chester says to Sunset, and bloodstone-says: Thank you! Take us to Holds-the-Fire's prey!

Father turns back around and lets out a bark, deep in tone and fraught with wolf meaning Chester has zero vocabulary for. Then his haunches tense, and he springs forward, and the ashram grounds hurtle by underneath his limbs.

Even with the circling path Father takes, skirting all Chryssy's fires, his massive bounds quickly chew up the distance to the parking lot—and not fifteen seconds later he bursts around one corner of the barracks, then skids to a stop just shy of several burning cars, flinching at the flames. It looks like this is as far as the Wolf Express can take them, and Sunset and Chester slide off his back. As he backs away, they crouch behind a little dirt mound blasted up from a deep, broad crater.

The parking lot looks like the surface of an alien planet, charred and crater-pitted, blazing skeletons of vehicles bleeding trails of molten metal across the ground, and at the center is Chryssy—who is starting to look alien herself. The red skin of her demon form is warped, oozing, cracked with holes—smeared black with ash and some sort of dark ichor. She's kneeling and swaying slightly side to side, and the ground around her is painted with erratic, sludgy pools of dark blue—no, pools of shimmering cyan, shot through with dark contamination, their edges hissing as the rock around them bubbles and vaporizes.

Chryssy's wings are extended, and one of them is shredded to tatters. Ember and Holds-the-Fire are circling her at a cautious distance, bruised and ash-smeared and both limping—and every few seconds Chryssy swings her head at one or the other, hissing, making them scramble back in the direction of cover. The earlier massive fireworks display seems to have slowed—Chryssy's eruptions of random power are gradually coming back under her control, though she still looks decidedly unwell.

"Demons," she mutters under her breath. "Heretics. Liars. False images beset my eyes, the truth is inside me, the base world tears down the unworthy, the truth is inside me…"

We're here, Chester bloodstone-says. But we need a distraction.

We might go down giving you one, Ember grumbles as she circles, with an odd shift in mental tone Chester can't place. We chewed her up pretty good, but she's still got too much fire in the gut. Lured us both in and blasted us in that last exchange. And I think she's got another trick prepared.

Worst-case scenario, I can try ponying up early, Sunset says, and Chester realizes that shift was adding her to their talk. But if I spring a trap I can't handle, our plan's shot.

Father's ears perk, and he suddenly spins in place, staring at something behind the barracks with a low, rumbling growl.

Chester glances over and does a double-take. What he had taken to be a particularly large pile of debris is actually a massive minotaur, cowering out of Chryssy's line of sight, balled up as close to the ground as his twelve-foot form will let him.

It's Anton—that's clear from the eyes, which have receded from green fire into wide white rings around tiny dark pupils. And something—Chryssy's takeover, his transformation, or his proximity to a withering magical battle vastly beyond his capabilities—has broken him.

He swings his head to lock eyes with Father, then freezes stone-still. One hand creeps to his hip, gropes for a missing holster, and comes up empty.

"N-n-nice doggy," he whimpers.

Chester takes the opportunity—no hesitation, no remorse.

Father, he broadcasts. Please play-bite the cow-man somewhere painful.

Wolf lunges at minotaur, aiming low. Anton shoots upright to his full height, a shocked bellow splitting the night.

Chryssy whirls on the noise. A wave of power blasts out from her in a circle, rattling the buildings and knocking Holds-the-Fire off her feet and blasting dirt from the top of the mound into Chester's face. His vision blurs, and he's blinking tears into his eyes as light ignites around the parking lot—then he can feel the pressure wave slam into him in reverse, hot air blasting at his back with such intensity that he pitches forward into the mound. Then a heat pulse like his entire skin surface briefly touching a hot stove, and an eldritch scream that never touched a throat, and a flare of red he can see through his eyelids, and when he blinks his vision back the entire front wall of the barracks is molten slag.

The demon screeches in impotent rage as the new fires die down—then doubles over, wheezing, her stomach hitching.

NOW! Holds-the-Fire shouts, leaping out of the impromptu cover of a crater and charging at Chryssy.

She springs and hits the demon square in the back with a tackle, one hand grabbing Chryssy's horns and smashing her head vigorously into the ground as they go down together. It seems overly vicious to Chester—until an unfazed Chryssy grabs her by the face and returns the favor. Then Ember leaps in from the side, closing jaws around the demon's good wing and biting hard, bloodstone energy shimmering even in the physical. There's a loud crunch. Chryssy jolts upright, back arching, and shrieks, a sonic wave blasting out from her with enough force to stagger Chester and Sunset and blast Ember back away. Holds-the-Fire, on the ground underneath her, takes that opening to grab her and roll them over, driving a hard knee into Chryssy's stomach.

It's an ugly fight, primal and unrelenting, and about to get uglier. But that's when Sunset and Chester dive in, clasping their hands to Chryssy's bare shoulders

and the world

again slows

to a

crawl—

—but this time, the frozen tableau of the battle doesn't go gray. It's already colorless. This time, colors ignite.

There's a gleam at Chryssy's throat, the geode bursting to life. Then blue vinelike tendrils burst forth from her, ghostly tethers growing out into everyone in the melee and scores of devotees beyond. Shimmering brown flowers out from Holds-the-Fire, frozen atop Chryssy with a fist drawn back; shimmering red flowers from Ember, frozen mid-leap with fangs agape; green from Sunset, which overlays a physical aura of light bathing her chest and ringing her eyes and spreading out into the air like wings; dark orange from Chester's outstretched arm—then, out of the corner of his eye, distant dots ignite at the end of dozens of tethers, little stars in the night, people, then a galaxy of further stars out to Canterlot and beyond, fears and hopes and love and rage and everything in between, a web of connections with Chryssy at their center, her every move impacting all those lives and

her chest pulses, shifts, the obsidian shivering with internal impacts, faint patterns gleaming and black stirring like rain on a midnight window, and the geode's light intensifies with all the colors of the outside world, and the obsidian

cracks

—and time

restarts

with a tsunami of color blasting in every direction from Chryssy, shoving both her and the earth away. His friends, too, rocket off, ragdoll-spinning at the leading edge of the blast, and for a moment Chester is weightless, the crater-pitted ground multiple body-lengths below.

Gravity reasserts itself, and the earth rises back up to meet him.

Chester bounces and tumbles, oddly pain-free, until the ground falls away underneath him again and his next bounce slams him to a halt in the wall of a crater. He leaps to his feet, light-headed and invincible and absolutely buzzing with energy, a body high matching the intense purple euphoria around his limbs.

He looks down again to confirm, his aura rippling into violet. His entire body is glowing healthily with colors matching his feelings. And being able to see himself can only mean one thing.

Fact: this isn't his color-sight, but Chryssy's, blasted into him through their fresh new link as the geode went into overdrive.

That's not all. There's a faint echo of an entire world buzzing in the back of Chester's skull, because he's linked to Chryssy and she's linked to everyone else, and he feels like he could just reach out and touch them if it weren't for her screaming existential horror attempting to reject every last scrap of this priceless gift.

Chester does look up at that, head swiveling straight to the colors' source. Demon Chryssy is on hands and knees, brilliant light flaring through cracks in the voidstone in her chest and painting the ground painful white, a spotlight aimed far too close. She, too, has an aura—not the overwhelming physical power she's been blazing with during the fight, but a more familiar set of swirling emotions hugging close to her skin, muddy red and bright orange and dark orange bubbling beneath a cage of gray-white denial.

That confuses Chester for a moment (as he goes creamsicle). If he can see his own colors because Chryssy is sharing her new color-sight, why does she have an aura?

Then the others start picking themselves up off the ground, and their auras are out of focus—like he's trying to deliberately stare past them to line up one of those ancient magic-eye puzzles. Ember and Holds-the-Fire and Sunset all have two sets of colors, entirely identical but just barely offset. And he realizes he's actually seeing with two color-sights: Chryssy's geode-shared perceptions plus his own vision, returned through the same link which connects them.

Chester's aura ignites into violet. That means the geode cracked the voidstone's greedy hold on all her stolen power. She's drained and her victims have been restored. They've done it!

Chryssy's eyes are squeezed shut, black tears bleeding through her eyelids and streaking down her darkened cheeks. "Defilers!" she hisses, intensifying her gray-white barrier as hundreds of emotions press inward from every link. "Do you know who I am? I won't forgive this insult." She curls the claws holding her up into fists, arms beginning to tremble and the light from her chest taking on an ugly, bloody hue matching her stirring red emotions. "And if I can't put you in your place I will take you down with me."

… Okay, maybe not quite yet.

Chester isn't about to give her a chance to show what she's still capable of. "Everyone!" he shouts, leaping out of his crater and dashing in front of Chryssy. "Feel things at her!"

He punctuates that with a burst of determination, taking all that antsy, vibrating power inside of him and feeding it into the roaring furnace of his emotions, watching his aura leap into brown and intensify to brilliance he didn't think himself capable of feeling. He pours that color into the Chryssy tether, watching it batter against her denial as she flinches from the sudden force of it.

Then Sunset joins in from Chryssy's far side, and a powerful blast of green slams into the demon from behind, the same hope for redemption Sunset dove in to touch her with. Chryssy screams, lifting her claws and expanding her drab shield, a surge of black from her chest darkening and condensing her colors—but Chester can see the voidstone shivering, its cracks expanding, and he knows instantly that if they can shatter it she'll be defenseless against the geode's perspective.

A beam of red lances in from the left, Ember's righteous anger at all the damage Chryssy has done, nearly knocking her off balance until Holds-the-Fire's purple crashes in from the right, satisfaction at their shared triumph over a dangerous foe. Chryssy's shield shrinks, beset from all sides, but collapses into an egg-like shape of black-limned gray, defying the pressure. The voidstone is humming, making Chryssy's entire chest vibrate, but for the moment is holding. And seems to be slowly rallying, feeding Chryssy with an ugly and corrupted power, all dark whispers and doubts and nihilism.

Chester feels his own doubts start to creep in—but as his brown darkens toward black, he pushes those thoughts back to keep his color as pure as possible. Still, he's not certain what more he can do if they're not enough to deal the final blow—

"I hope I'm not too late to help this time?" a melodic periwinkle voice says from the edge of the devastation.

Chester risks a glance over, and his colors spike into violet. It's Celestia! And Esau!

She's back to her typical overwhelming brilliance, looking none the worse for wear. Meanwhile, he's a giant mess of bruises and dried blood and intense, vivid yellow, heavily leaning against the older woman, but he's up and moving. Peach-and-violet colors blossom through the pain as he silently stares at the Holy Mother's last stand—then a subtle undercurrent of satisfaction, and a sideways glance at Celestia with a brief spike of cerulean.

"Drag you all to Tartarus," Chryssy mutters, seeming barely conscious of the new arrivals, a hint of unearthly reverb returning to her voice as sweat drips down her face.

Right. "We need more emotions to break her voidstone!" Chester dark-orange-shouts over the crackle of the background fires and the effort of their collective barrage.

"Mmm," Celestia blue-agrees, but rather than immediately throwing herself into the effort, she turns her head side to side to take in the entire battlefield. Her colors whirl for a moment, then spike into lilac. "Well!" she says, chuckling. "It's not quite Harmony, but there's a delicious symmetry to it."

Chester can see the stream of his blast against Chryssy's shield shift to a dark orange. "I'm not fooling around," he pleads, "we really need help here."

"I know, Chester. Since you have her pinned down, a large, sharp strike will do it—and if it's acceptable for me to steal a bit of your glory, I've nearly got that sorted out." Celestia raises her arms, igniting her periwinkle into shimmering light; her hair starts billowing out behind her and she begins to hover just off the ground. "There is just one piece missing, if you please."

Chester goes creamsicle as he considers that. Then he closes his eyes briefly to focus, really locking in that sensation of shoving emotions in Chryssy's direction so that he can keep it up while he tears his focus from her. Something about Celestia's request pricks at his pride, and before he begs her to take this seriously and just tell him what she needs, he wants to copy Celestia's glance at their surroundings and figure out what he's missing here.

His eyes stray to where she was looking when the spike of humor hit. Over near the barracks, Anton has returned to cowering on the ground, frozen in bright orange terror with Father still looming over him, standing guard. Admittedly that is a bit funny, or… no, the sight turns his aura purple with satisfaction rather than its lighter cousin. Plus, Celestia isn't the sort to laugh at others' pain, and that's magenta anyhow. But it has to be something about Anton specifically, it's not like she's using color-sight or anything—

—wait. She is. Everyone has it temporarily from Chryssy.

And now that he's counting Anton and Esau, the scene is remarkably close to a rainbow, isn't it?

Chester glances around one more time, noting his own aura's spike into caramel (and seeing a satisfied purple flit through Celestia as she sees his epiphany). Ember's red, Anton's orange, Esau's yellow, Sunset's green, Holds-the-Fire's purple. It's just missing one color.

He turns back to Chryssy, igniting deep blue compassion for her.

Cyan would be a lie at this point after how she's abused it, but that's neither what this moment needs nor what she needs. Despite all the harm Chryssy's caused—or because of the harm she's caused—Chester truly, honestly wants to see her better. There is something fundamentally broken about her rapaciousness. He had brought plenty of converts in who had been wounded by love, and who had wanted to heal and find it again, but she had never once even tried. And even she deserves that chance.

As Chester's beam shifts into that blue, Chryssy reels—and the black underlayer of her shield-egg flinches back from the beam's impact before the shadows whirl and reassemble, mounting a fighting retreat.

But over Chester's shoulder, light is already intensifying. Dust swirls around the ravaged parking lot, some intangible solar wind stirring to life and whipping Celestia's hair in pastel waves, as her six sources of color flare into unearthly brilliance one by one.

Pure, colorless light bursts from Celestia's eyes and forehead and shoulders, holy power illuminating the ashram with daylight as a gleaming horn and pair of wings solidify. She raises one hand—palm open, fingers flat—and six chromatic beams burst into the sky, swirling and mingling into artificial noon.

Then a rainbow of goddess-amplified emotions streaks down to the earth, and that is that.

Author's Note

In truth, that is not quite that — Chryssy has been defeated, but we've still got two chapters to go. :twilightsmile:

Tune in on Sunday, Oct. 6 for a glimpse of life after Chryssy with the special double-sized chapter "Rhapsody In Blues"!

24. Rhapsody In Blues

"What truly bugs me," Chester says, "is that after everything she taught us, she could still be so wrong about love."

The ashram's main hall is at full attendance, if not full capacity. Row upon row of saffron robes, and the auras surrounding them look like a fire swept through. Oranges, yellows, some reds, a lot of black, and more gaps than he'd like.

"The Holy Mother used you. She used all of us," Chester acknowledges. Murmurs sweep through the room at that previously unutterable truth, colors shifting and intensifying. "She treated love as something to be demanded, not a gift to be shared."

Before today, that much negativity and doubt about the ashram and its leader would have been an existential crisis. Chester would have been frantically running from devotee to devotee, rallying them to shore up their faith, picking out the ones who had fallen too far so that Chryssa-swamini could personally intervene or boot them out before their apostasy became too contagious.

But today, the doubt is the point. Chester still has faith in the ashram's mission. But that means he has to understand those doubts, let them breathe, confront them head-on, and be willing to change to address them. He owes all the devotees the same treatment he receives himself, and if Chester had refused to listen to his own doubts, the Holy Mother would still be in charge.

"We're all here to learn about love. And I think that's still worth doing," he continues. "But that means practicing with each other. Finding ways to remind ourselves that we all matter."

The murmuring intensifies. The hot colors in the audience are burning out, but there's so much black out there now. He's paying lip service to the principles that attracted them in the first place, but she'd been canny enough to do so too. No one speech will fix things after so much poisoning of the well.

"So I'm calling a sharing session tonight," Chester says.

Various oranges, fear and alarm, ripple through the crowd at the term, and he immediately shifts to reassurance. "Not confessions or accusations—but what we should have been doing all along. In preparation, I'd like you to team up. Pick somebody you don't know well. Spend the afternoon talking together. And what I want you to share tonight is something cool you found out about your new friend."

At that, the murmuring breaks out into crosstalk, wild and unstoppable. Not all the doubt dislodges, but a lot of it does, into violets, indigos, and even some greens.

Chester bows to his fellow devotees and steps down from the raised platform hastily assembled at the back of the hall as the meeting dissolves into pairing-off and conversation. He walks through the sea of devotees, fielding questions as he goes, hearing long-buried grievances and making promises he'll follow up on once things settle down. No more addressing them, untouchable, from above. (The second floor is a burnt-out wreck now, but that's not why.) Just being here together, pulling each other toward enlightenment, the way it always should have been. And he wants nothing more than to stay here and mingle all afternoon, but he's got other things to settle now, too.

Brother Esau joins him near the front of the hall. "C'mon, Chess," he cuts in, an impatient violet-pink, body-blocking several of the devotees trailing Chester. "We've got somewhere to be."

Chester hurriedly finishes his conversation and falls in alongside Esau, who links arms with him and firmly steers him outside.

"Gotta say, you're an even better leader than you were a spy," Esau says, blue-brown, the instant they're outside. "No wonder spy's the job she forced you into."

Chester looks down and smiles, all happy little tingles at the unexpected compliment. "Thank you." He swiftly changes the subject, though, before the praise can get to his head. "Though I must say, I didn't think you were so excited to get to the other world."

Esau rolls his eyes, reinforcing that with a prickling of skeptical gray. "I'm not. Stupid waste of time, when there's so much to do here without Swamini-ji keeping everything under control. But I made a promise, and the quicker we get this sorted out, the better."

"Well, I'm excited."

Esau rolls his eyes again, much more exaggerated this time, but can't conceal either his lilac or his smile. "Excited is a word for it, I guess. Do you actually think you're hiding your cyan?"

Chester squirms, laughing self-consciously, cheeks flushing. "It'll just be good to see her again. We've been busy here, and she and Ember have had a lot to work out." Again, he fishes for a subject change. "What's the latest on your work tracking down our family?"

"Uggghhh," Esau immediately says, a morass of colors swirling up. Pink and pale yellow are prevalent, but Chester picks out some subtle but healthy stirrings of green. "Well. The police scheduled me for an eight-hour deposition in the missing-person cold cases for Mandy and Bill, so that's an entire day things are going to go to crap even more around here." (Chester notes the wording, but lets it slide.) "But the detective did help me pull some old county records, and we found the birth certificates." There's a sudden surge of black, with some simmering orange. "He asked if I wanted him to give their other next-of-kin our information. I'm… thinking about it."

"Well, I'll support you in whatever you decide," Chester says. "Though honestly, I'm super curious if Mandy's relatives can tell us anything more about her power and our color-sight."

"Of course you are, that's classic Chester," Esau says, though the jab is delivered with a ripple of blue. "We've got an entire family you've never met, and the first thing you focus in on is the mystery."

"Only because I've got all the family I need right here," Chester says, giving Esau's arm a squeeze.

* * *

When Celestia's red Mustang pulls through the ashram gates, it's not her driving. It's a woman Celestia's age with skin of light blue vulnerability and hair of striped protectiveness and curiosity, whose emotions seem to default to gray, and whose aura is oddly unexceptional by the standards of everyone he's been hanging around with lately. Her gaze wanders around the ashram and its recent damage with a calculating eye. She sees Esau and Chester, and immediately pulls the car up to them and slides the passenger bucket seat forward so they can climb into the back.

Celestia had mentioned Twilight was her student, and he's met everyone else on Celestia's phone list, so… "Luna?" he guesses, omitting the asterisk.

She turns her appraising eye to Chester, and after looking him up and down, she nods. Then, as Chester is opening his mouth to ask a follow-up question, she says, "Because she can't drive."

"Why isn't Celestia…" Chester trails off, giving her an admiring nod. "Ooh, you're good."

That teases a purple smile out of her before the gray rolls back in. "And because someone needs to get the car back home after all of you go through the portal. We're not taking the chance of people seeing both Celestias at once, so sister sits this one out and I play chauffeur." Her fingers drum on the wheel for a moment. "You'll like Equestria, I think. As for you, Brother Esau, give it a chance."

"Hmph," he black-scowls, sitting down alongside Chester on the bench seat.

"You've been?" Chester asks.

"Yes," Luna says. "Unlike my sister, I've never needed magic in my life, and the one time I got caught up in it, it was scary and complicated. So I thought the visit would be a waste of time." For a moment a pastel green stirs up, not dissimilar to saudade but closer to wistfulness than nostalgia. "But the place has a way of sneaking up on you."

Esau goes gray and crosses his arms, but not before letting slip a flash of light violet. Chester's own curiosity is about something else she said, though. "What was your encounter with magic?"

Luna starts the car and begins the drive back down the mountain. "Nothing worth telling," she gray-says. "I got caught up in something far bigger than myself and it scared me witless. I managed to do something everyone tells me was clever, regardless. But everyone else did the heavy lifting of saving the world, so I decided I'd stick to my strengths, and went back to picking up the pieces at my day job."

Chester winces. "Oof. That sounds familiar."

Luna goes peach and turns her head to study him anew, splitting her attention between Chester and the road. Her colors whirl in calculation.

"I thought I had gotten a good read on you from your school transfer application," she says, a bit of pale orange simmering up. "I didn't peg you for being done with magic."

"Not quite what I meant," Chester clarifies. "All that fighting? Really not me. But I'm starting to understand who I really am, and find people who understand the things that always set me apart. And I wouldn't give that up at gunpoint." He nods firmly, then adds, "Again, I mean."

Luna smiles, though it's indigo, not purple. "You've grown up fast. Speaking of which."

"The application?" Chester says, seeing where she's going with this.

"Indeed." She goes gray again. "It's quite irregular. You just turned 18, you're clearly brilliant, your grasp of the basics is unquestionable, and we have records of 12 years of religious homeschooling. Granted, there's entire subjects you know nothing about, but your academic best interests are to test for a GED, supplemented by adult education and immediate collegiate courses."

"There's clearly a 'but' coming."

"Absolutely not. As an educator, the situation is cut and dried. My state certification—which, I might add, is under enhanced review since the incident at the Fall Formal—requires me to strictly pursue your best academic interests. I'm not allowed to take into account any shared experiences which might tempt me to make an exception for your psychological or, shall we say, parapsychological well-being. I can't let your desire for the high school experience which you've been denied—or the friends you've made—stunt your academic growth, even if we might be able to compensate with a regimen of intense independent study." She turns her head for a moment to stare Chester in the eyes again, and drops her gray guard, giving him a deliberate glimpse of a pure, placid caramel. "As such, I regret to inform you that, once we take care of one minor paperwork matter, I will be required to deny your application."

Chester can feel his grin in his cheeks. Canterlot High just keeps getting better and better. And Principal Celestia is going to have some serious competition for his favorite school administrator.

He asks the obligatory question, voice full of innocence. "Paperwork matter?"

"We never received your mathematics test results. You'll have to pull them again from your ashram's records and refile them."

"Gosh," Chester immediately says. "I think those were stored on the second floor of the main hall, weren't they, Esau?"

Esau—who has been staring out the window, tuning out—blinks and turns his head, a bit of pink stirring up. "What? Don't drag me into…" He takes one look at Chester, sighs, and relents. "Fine, yes, they were destroyed in the first of the fires."

"I sure hope I don't fail miserably when I retake the test," Chester says.

"That would be awful," Luna lilac-says. "If it's bad enough, we would have to assign you a tutor. I wonder if Sunset Shimmer would be interested in some extra course credits."

Celestia slides into the passenger seat in downtown Canterlot, and the difference in auras between her and Luna* is as striking as the sun against the night sky. It's almost painful to Chester's eyes—she's still got some of the afterglow of actually using her power for that rainbow strike—though at least she's sufficiently suppressed it that her periwinkle isn't bleeding out to the physical world.

"Luna," she says as she's settling into the car. "How's your sister?"

"Thriving, as she can't help but do, as both of you do wherever you go," Luna says. She lets her mask of gray break into pink. "You should have called me."

Celestia smoothly shifts to a pastel purple innocence. "Why, I had every intention, but by the time things went poorly, Mister Longhorn had already taken my cellophone."

"You know exactly what I mean. Your sister was quite explicit. The instant things went off script, you were to loop me in so we could arrange enough backup to prevent exactly what happened."

Celestia's innocence doesn't budge; her eyes sparkle in a way that has nothing to do with magic. "Even if you mean to begrudge an old mare the chance for an adventure once in a while, you can't argue with results."

Luna's colors whirl amid building pink frustration. With some effort, she tamps the colors back down behind gray. "Fine. Go home and justify yourself to the other me, then. How did your talk with the authorities go?"

"Well, it turns out a royal title from another dimension means nothing here, but throwing bits into hiring a small army of discreet professionals solves a surprising number of problems." Celestia smiles, shifting back to periwinkle. "The police are keeping Chryssy detained on suspicion of arson and—what's the term?—insurance fraud, stemming from an incident where she drugged her followers with mass hallucinogens for a ritual and set fires around her own compound. And, of course, they are working with the full cooperation of the ashram's new leaders on investigating two old murders."

Esau spikes into peach—then immediately stares at Celestia with the silent beige of betrayal. She meets his eyes with placid periwinkle, then turns her head to give Chester a nod. Esau glances over at Chester, too—and blinks rapidly, bleeding back into peach.

Chester takes his brother's hand in equal silence, waiting for his colors to settle down.

Finally, Esau sighs, pale yellow. "Yeah, you're not even a little shocked. I should have figured you couldn't leave Swamini-ji's secrets alone. How long ago did you figure it out?"

"Not long after the big fight," Chester says. "Once I realized that Chryssy had blood on her hands, and put that together with how personally her biggest, darkest secret impacted you, there wasn't anything else it could be." He gently squeezes Esau's hand. "I know you've been trying to protect me, Saw, but you don't have to play big brother on this one. Because of our age gap, I barely knew Mandy and was never close to Bill. And I know it's different for you. So please let me be here for you if you need to mourn our mom and dad."

Esau takes a long breath to steady himself, then speaks with quiet brown resolve. "Thank you. But I've done my mourning. Now I just want her to face justice."

"Justice will be an important part of healing. Not just for you, but for the ashram." Chester glances back over at Celestia. "Speaking of healing… not to change the subject, but how is the Holy Mother?"

(He still can't say that around Celestia without her smiling. And he finally understands why she finds it so hilarious.)

Celestia stifles her grin and re-enters the conversation, allowing mixed blue-and-yellow concern to show. "She has refused to speak to me, or anyone else who enters her cell. It's clear there is too much pain for her to accept an outstretched hoof." A bit of emerald green hope stirs up. "But it is equally clear that what she saw and felt left an impact on her. I suspect she is isolating herself exactly because the color-sight you gifted her still persists. I hope some time to reflect on that will one day help her consider a different way."

"Me, too," Chester says. Given his lifetime living with her, and the stories he has now heard of the other her, he doesn't really expect Chryssy to embrace the touchy-feely path. But the hope is a nice one.

"Meanwhile," Celestia says, "a certain Mister Longhorn is accessory to many of those same charges, and between his experiences at the ashram and the evidence conveniently located at his ranch—"

Luna sighs, a bit of pink straying through her gray. "You realize that in this world they call that breaking and entering?"

Celestia smoothly returns to pastel purple. "Dear me. Even when the police enter with a search warrant, and just so happen to possess the safe combination Sunset learned when touching Mister Longhorn to drain away the magic transforming him?"

Luna side-eyes Celestia, shifting to the muddy blue of grudging admiration. "…Well played."

Celestia smirks, allowing herself a moment of lilac. "As I was saying, given that evidence, he immediately begged for a plea bargain, and offered to testify against his business partners and the corrupt officials who aided his Canter Creek takeover. The commissioner was so grateful for our assistance with that breakthrough that he sees no need to follow up on the stranger aspects of the eyewitness reports."

"Thank you so much," Chester cuts in. "The last thing we need right now is more bad publicity as Esau and I try to turn things around."

"If we even can," Esau grumbles, white and pink. "We've got to rebuild nearly everything—and it turns out Swamini-ji was cooking the books for years. I think we're in more debt than the ashram itself was worth, even intact."

"I believe you'll find an anonymous donor has made a substantial contribution to your faith to get that sorted out," Celestia periwinkle-says. "It's the least I can do, Brother Esau, especially after your follow-through on your promise."

Esau blossoms into violet and sits up straight, though it's quickly taken over by maroon. "Don't think that that changes anything between us," he mutters, "or that it makes me any more eager to visit—"

"I don't recall that being in the definition of 'donate'," Celestia says, smoothly shifting back to pastel purple. "Aren't people allowed to give gifts to organizations they think are doing good work? I have faith in you and your brother. That's all it is."

Esau grumbles and turns his attention back to the window, but Chester doesn't miss the threads of green stirring up deep within him.

They drive to a trailhead in the woods near Canter Creek, then hike uphill along some forested trails until Chester spots a clearing in the distance underneath some sandstone cliffs. Sunset—black leather jacket on despite the late-summer heat—is napping underneath a tree to one side of the open area, and there's a giant pile of multicolored wolves lounging in the shade not far from her.

Chester's heart skips a beat as he sees the wolfpack, and he breaks into a jog, arriving well ahead of Luna*, Celestia, and Esau. And as he gets closer, there are indeed hints of a humanoid form buried beneath the fluff—but they're not ice-blue.

"Uh, hello?" he says, thrown.

There's movement in the wolfpile—displacing a small dun-colored wolf—and an unfamiliar human head pops to the surface, with skin colored like pale yellow resignation and hair of pink frustration. Her aura looks like those emotions are largely foreign, though—while she bursts into orange at his approach, it mingles with deep blues, empathy and protectiveness, along with some pervasive, diffuse purples clearly related to the wolves. She's yet another person whose aura is naturally intense, not quite at Sunset's level but far above average, and at this point Chester barely even registers that as unusual any more.

The unfamiliar girl's vibrant orange ratchets down as two wolves detach from the near end of the pile—gray with large feet, and a spindly, short-furred white one—and stand up to face Chester with tails vigorously wagging.

"Oh!" she violet-says, her fear entirely dissipating. Still, her normal voice sounds like a whisper with the volume turned up. "Wide-Paws and Sharp-Eye recognize you! That must make you Chester."

"I, uh," he stammers, brain engaging. There are multiple teenagers running around with wolfpacks? No—then the wolves wouldn't recognize him. Also, just like with most animals, he couldn't pick "Wide-Paws" and "Sharp-Eye" out of a police lineup, but that's definitely Father directly behind the mystery girl, curled around her protectively and looming like a cryptid among the much smaller pack.

Chester glances helplessly back and forth between the wolves and Sunset. "This… that's not some weird third-alternate Holds-the-Fire, right? I'm not going bloodstone-crazy or something again?"

Sunset yawns, stands up, and stretches, colors strengthening as she stirs into an amiable purple. (There's still an enormous set of tooth-marks in the back of her leather jacket, Chester notes; it really adds character to the garment.) "Oh! Hey, Chester." There's a spike of creamsicle as she processes his question, before receding to purple again. "That's right, you haven't met Fluttershy yet. She's one of my best friends, who helped redeem me at Canterlot High. This just… happens around her, with animals."

"It's lovely to meet you," Fluttershy purple-says. "We probably won't get to talk much until you get back from Equestria, though. Holds-the-Fire wanted her pack to be in good hands while she was gone, and I'm ever so glad that she was willing to give me a chance to wolfsit, especially after our first meeting didn't go so well." There's motion in the pile next to her; a floofy light-gray head pops up to nuzzle Fluttershy, tongue lolling out, and she shifts her attention for a moment to snuggle it. "Oh yes who's the best Thick-Pelt ever."

Chester looks around in confusion. "Where is she, then? Did she and Ember go through without us?"

"Nah," Sunset says, an unconcerned gray. "They said something about taking a run while we waited. By the way"—and there's a brief spike of cream—"I'm sorry I wasn't able to do more, back against Chryssy."

"Are you kidding? You helped me blow it open when it counted."

"Yeah, but I'm the one with all the world-saving experience, and I spent most of the time unconscious." She chuckles, though it's self-deprecating laughter, colored like her hair. "You did really well. But I can't help but feel like I left you hanging."

"That's on me," Chester immediately says, agitation stirring. "I got you captured in the first place, I didn't have enough energy to wake you up until right at the end—"

She cuts him off, blue empathy bleeding off her. "Chester. You fixed it all, too. Please don't beat yourself up. I know where that one goes all too well."

Chester sighs. "Fine. Fair. Sorry. It's just… I could have done so much better."

"See, this is exactly what I'm talking about." She takes his hand, smiling, and even though she's not actively pushing that blue at him, its proximity is good to feel. "It was your first time. My first time, I turned into a demon. My second time, I kept it together, but wouldn't have gotten to the finish line without six friends and a DJ with a bass cannon. Nobody's born ready to save the world. You trust your friends, get through it, and learn from your screw-ups to make it easier next time."

Chester nods, gazing back into her eyes, but can't keep himself from fidgeting. "You say that like there's going to be a next time."

Sunset lilac-laughs. "That's what I said to Twilight after the Battle of the Bands. But with the frequency I get dragged into crazy magical adventures, given that I'm going to be tutoring you in math now, I promise you'll get used to it."

Chester's about to protest, but he's cut short by rapidly approaching crashing in the brush. He tenses on reflex, but their source quickly becomes apparent: Two ice-blue forms, tall and short, racing side by side, girl and wolf both sparkling brown with magic.

Holds-the-Fire leaps sideways past a patch of brambles, springs back off a tree trunk, and dives into the clearing—tucking herself into a clean shoulder roll and skidding to a perfectly poised three-point stop, two small dust trails rising up from her bare feet. Ember, meanwhile, goes low and bursts straight through the brush with head down—taking a moment to realize she's clear, and leaning into a rough four-legged skid, until she passes by Holds-the-Fire's free hand and the girl effortlessly grabs her by the scruff to arrest her momentum.

Ember, muddy orange, pants for breath. "I'd… have won… if it weren't… for all the… branches in my face."

Holds-the-Fire—breathing heavily but controlled—allows some puce to stir up. Then you should have been smart enough to avoid them.

Ember shakes herself out, shedding twigs and thistles from heavily matted fur, and retreats into muddy brown pride. "Too busy getting used to this wolf thing. Rematch in the Dragon Lands."

Accepted. Holds-the-Fire adjusts some of her hide clothing knocked askew by the sprint, then looks up and does a double-take, colors dissolving into whirling chaos. Ches-ter.

It's the first time Chester's seen her since that night at the ashram. He feels his heart start to hammer and a flush rise to his cheeks, mirrored to at least some extent by stirrings of greens and blues amid Holds-the-Fire's uncertainty. But he had hoped that a couple of days apart would let her sort out the emotional shift which started with the bloodstones' repair. He had been counting on it, actually—planning to read her and respond in kind—and now that she doesn't know what to feel, he finds himself equally unmoored.

"H-hey," he stammers.

They stare at each other in silence, eyes mutually unfocused.

Sunset glances back and forth, fading to black, then clears her throat. "I, uh, I'm going to let you two catch up," she says, taking some shuffling steps back. Then she turns her head, suddenly spiking radiant purple, and runs off to lunge into a hug with Celestia. "Princess!"

Chester and Holds-the-Fire both watch the hug, then turn back to each other as Sunset and Celestia begin animatedly talking. Holds-the-Fire crouches slightly, tongue slightly protruding from her teeth. Chester fidgets, scuffing the dirt with his shoes. It's their old damned language barrier again, but now the one language they share is choked up on both sides. He can see orange start to corrode the black in the background of her unstable colors.

Thankfully, Ember cuts in. She's been silently getting agitated by proxy, Holds-the-Fire's unsettledness bleeding through, and Chester can see her hackles raised despite her own relatively solid brown.

"Hey," she says, a bit of pinkish-yellow stirring up, "if you two are just going to stand there weirding out at each other, can we maybe get going back to Equestria and figure it out along the way?"

Chester lunges for the lifeline. "That sounds like a great idea," he says. And without another word, the three of them go to join the rest of the group.

* * *

Fact: When Ember gave Chester a description of changelings that sounded like a living Pfranz Kafka nightmare, the sole incorrect element of it was Chester's assumption that it was a nightmare.

Chester stares around the changeling hive in open-mouthed joy and wonder. It is literally the most welcoming place imaginable—the very architecture reacts to his color-sight! Even for the world of magic that's an impossible wonder! The very walls of the twisting, organic tunnels vibrate with cyan, and he basks in the background glow, feeling a song bubbling up in his throat. This place is paradise.

He has no idea why none of the others are reacting accordingly.

The transformed Esau—an iridescent bug-moose-pony whose chitin has a physical dark-green sheen that really looks good on him; Chester wishes Esau would let himself feel hope more often—touches a wall and recoils, orange-red, as his hoof comes away damp.

"What's wrong, Brother Esau?" Celestia says, her usual unflappable periwinkle not having budged since entering the hive.

"Sweet son of a blasphemer," he orange-red-says, flailing his hoof and stumbling over to one of the many macramé wall hangings, nearly yanking it down in his haste to rub the goop off. "All this love-feeling stuff on the walls—that's bug spit?"

Their escort—Pharynx, an identical-looking dark-green-chitined changeling who has been silently glowering maroon since meeting them at the hive entrance—finally breaks his silence amid a spike of violet. "Thank the stars, someone else gets it!" he vents, shifting to a curious mixture of pink and blue. "It's insane! I swear, this place drives me absolutely guano."

Esau pauses, a matching blue flooding in and washing out his impending rant, and turns to his double. "You. Your opinions are correct and I like you."

Pharynx allows himself a ripple of smug muddy purple, then covers it in gray and turns to resume the brisk walk toward the throne-chamber. "Of course I'm correct," Pharynx says with gray matter-of-factness. "Our reserves are only 80 percent full and it's an extravagant waste of food."

Esau blinks, exploding into a kaleidoscope of colors. He opens and closes his mouth several times. "I would like to note," he finally says, mixed orange-red and a blue-gray grudging respect, "that as disgusting as that is, I am not yet retracting my statement."

They pass by several side rooms full of brightly colored egg-like shapes (which Chester at first assumes to be hatcheries, before realizing they're giant yarn-ball stockpiles) before the winding tunnel spirals upward and ejects them into a sprawling bowl-shaped chamber open to the sky. Plants (as usual, a color-sight void) line all the surfaces, and there's a big chair whose back is a weirdly holey tree.

Chester had expected to be disappointed at returning to a lack of architectural color, but the physical greens of the plants are gorgeous complements to the sea of cool colors in the inhabitants' auras and the iridescent physical greens and blues of the changelings themselves. It's a breathtaking blend, meticulous in the three-sourced ever-changing variations in hue as his eye wanders the room, and he stares in open awe at the artistry of it. Even Esau is looking around, his scowl not disguising his violet.

Holds-the-Fire barely spares the room a glance, then stares at him with light violet curiosity. A pang of longing spears Chester's heart. For as much as the two of them share, the way she sees feelings isn't strictly color-based; she knows he's getting something out of it, but she's missing out. Perhaps if he gets Sunset to touch him and scan his memories of the sight, and they work together on a way to re-broadcast that memory via bloodstone telepathy—

An abnormally tall changeling (physically the pastel grass-green of saudade with little throat-sacs of depression and sprawling horns of fear) steps forward, his emotional colors a vibrant violet. "You must be Chester!" he says, keeping that pure and radiant enthusiasm as he sticks out a welcoming chitin-hoof. "Oh my gosh, and you must be in a human form, I've been wondering what they look like ever since I heard about the human world!" A burst of green fire swirls up across the bug-pony's form, and now Chester is staring at a perfect duplicate of himself, down to the crisp, starchy saffron robe. "Can I shake your hand? Princess Twilight told me that's the most common human greeting and I've been dying to give it a try!"

Chester loves his counterpart's unhesitating sincerity already. "Thorax! It's so nice to meet you," he says. "Ember's said so much about you."

Ember promptly goes blazing muddy orange, turning away to pointedly study the greenery of the walls.

Chester and Thorax glance in unison over at her, then at each other. There's no missing the cyan that stirs up in Thorax, and he clearly doesn't miss Chester noticing. But he dissolves his emotions into a deliberate dark blue, and they come to a wordless agreement to leave things unspoken for Ember's sake and roll onward with their handshake.

Thorax's motions feel smooth and practiced, if a bit unnatural, and there's a thread of spyfeel to his eagerness as he studies Chester's technique and revels in the learning experience so he can get it perfect next time. "Thank you!" he says. "I'm curious though—did you not change form when you came through the portal to Equestria? All your friends did, and everypony I've ever heard of has."

Chester's mind flashes back to that moment—

"Huh," he said, staring at the iridescent chitin of his hoof. "Huh."

Esau stood orange-frozen, except for his head whipping around as he tried to take in his quadrupedal form all at once. "I'm not going to panic," he said in a voice clamping a tight lid down on that thrashing orange, "because you told me this was going to happen, but this is seriously messed up."

"Take all the time you need," Sunset blue-said, patting his withers with a physically greed-colored hoof. "It's always disorienting the first few times. We planned a rest break to let you adjust."

Celestia—who had stepped through first, and whose horn was aglow with magic, maintaining the shield that kept them all safe from the roiling lava just feet away—nodded. She seemed a bit distracted, but as far as Chester could tell, the level of actual effort it took for her to ward away the heat of an entire volcano was inconsequential. On this side of the portal, it felt startlingly literal to describe her as shining like the sun which also adorned her flanks.

Ember, meanwhile, went purple as she stretched all six of her limbs and lashed her tail back and forth, then craned her muzzle skyward and exhaled a brief jet of fire. "Oh yeah, it's good to be back," she said. And Holds-the-Fire crouched to one side of the portal, not saying anything but sharing Ember's color tone as she flexed her own draconic claws and resettled her wings.

"… It's disorienting?" Chester asked.

Sunset spiked peach for a moment as she glanced at him. "It's not?"

"I mean, no?" he said, prancing around in a tight, high-stepping circle and then crab-stepping sideways with overlapping steps, sinking into the rhythm of his horizontal posture. "See? Changelings are inherently shapeshifters, which means my body's got this on lock, as long as I let it do its thing and don't overthink it."

Esau swung his head to stare at Chester, spiking lilac-gray. "Chess, you overthink everything."

"No I don't. Do I? I totally don't." Chester paused. "It doesn't matter, the theory is sound. Look, we have wings." He snapped open his wing covers and stretched the gossamer wings underneath to full extension, vibrating them up and down with a low buzz. "See? I don't have any competing instincts about how to fly or how to walk quadrupedally in my human body, so all I have to do is listen to this body's instincts and everything works." He hesitated, tapping a hoof to his muzzle. "Actually, hang on. That can't be how it works, because then any time nearly identical instincts overlapped, we'd faceplant. For someone switching between biped and quadruped, not so big a deal, but Holds-the-Fire would barely be able to move." He froze. "Wait. Everything has breathing instincts. Am I changeling-breathing or human-breathing right now? How do I know how to breathe?"

Ches-ter, Holds-the-Fire said, barely restraining waves of lilac.

"I am definitely not an overthinker or I wouldn't be breathing!" he protested, face flushing, and forced himself to inhale. "Okay. Wait. If I were that bad of an overthinker I wouldn't have been able to connect to both bloodstones. One requires instinct—" He started pacing as he talked, at least until he tripped over his front hoof on his first step with his hinds and went down in a tangle of limbs.

"Right! Rest break!" Sunset said, lilac and muddy orange, while Celestia lost it entirely and collapsed with blazing lilac laughter.

Chester blinked stars out of his eyes, and lunged for the last-second save as his lungs started to burn. Fact: His logic with the bloodstones was sound; his connection to instinct did have to be substantial or he couldn't have pulled off half of his quick-thinking narrow escapes. Fact: He was a changeling and therefore a shapeshifter. Fact: He already had experience moving energy around his body; if he gathered energy, did some similar pushing, let instinct do the heavy lifting, and really wanted to mold himself back into human form, he—

Green fire filled his vision. Everything went floaty for a moment, and then everything felt familiar.

He scrambled back upright to human feet. "It's okay!" he shouted, gasping for sweet, sweet air. "I can breathe now."

Four pairs of eyes stared at him in that special kind of half-peach, half-violet shock. (Celestia merely brought her laughter under control and sat back up, a bit of approving purple mixed in with her return to periwinkle.)

"You've been a changeling for less than 30 seconds, and you just learned how to shapeshift because you forgot how to breathe?" Sunset slowly said. "That is simultaneously the most impressive and most humiliating thing I've ever seen."

"The duality of Chester," Esau said, briefly shading blue-brown.

Chester held up a finger as possibilities blossomed out, excitement overtaking his flustration. "Wait! I can shapeshift! Do you know what this means?"

"New and exciting ways for you to suffocate?" Ember lilac-said.

"No! Well, maybe. But I'll keep this one quick. Check this out."

He closed his eyes and took a moment to focus. Now that he had changed once, he had a template. So all he needed to do was fix the shape in his mind, concentrate, and push—

A ripple of sensation rose from his feet to his head, and little shimmers danced around his closed eyelids for a moment before fading.

He opened his eyes to see Ember and Holds-the-Fire staring, sharing an unrestrained blue-brown—with some extra threads of green on Holds-the-Fire's side.

"Okay, that is cool," Ember said. "Giant wolf! You can fit in with her pack."

Chester felt his eye twitch.

He slowly lifted a paw to the bridge of his nose. "Damn it," he said, voice deep and husky through a canine muzzle. "Did I get those mixed up again?"

—and he returns to the moment, staring into Thorax's inquisitive face.

"Well, you know," he says, "I figured, we're changelings, right? So why not take advantage of that and show you the real me."

* * *

"You'll feel better if you show him the real you," Chester says.

It's three days into Chester's trip to Equestria, and after the big tour of the changeling hive, the group has started to fragment. Esau has long since returned home to sort things out in the human world. Celestia—who ducked out for a day near the start of the trip to visit her sister—returned just long enough to join them for the hive and then drag Sunset away again. Chester's soon supposed to be meeting them in the pony nation of Equestria, where Sunset has promised to show him around some tiny rural town named Ponyville.

But Ember has been acting increasingly strange since their visit to Thorax, and Chester is determined to coax it out of her before he leaves.

He waits as her orange builds up and she fans herself with a claw, a tic he's beginning to find oddly endearing. "Look," she says, flailing with that fear, "I get it when you want me to share feelings"—she fidgets, tail lashing—"to make things better, but sometimes"—the orange overtops—"feelings are bad."

He takes her claw. "Ember," he says gently, "I can see your emotions and I assure you that there's nothing bad about your feelings for him."

"Yeah?" Her orange blazes into pink frustration, and she glares at him, the color suddenly finding a focus. "Do I love him?"

Chester was prepared for that displacement, but not for the bluntness of the question, and immediately leaps into equivocation as he recovers. "Ah, well, it's not just a single thing, there's a whole spectrum of greens and blues which go along with—"

She grabs him by the horns, pulling his muzzle in. (Chester's currently trying out his bug-moose form now that he's had a bit more practice changing shape.)

"That's not a yes," she pink-hisses.

"It's a complicated question!"

She shakes his head. "No it's not! I'm not stupid, Chester, there's a specific feeling to love, the entire hive felt like it, Thorax feels that way toward me, and from what Holds-the-Fire said, I don't feel it back."

Fact: It is possible for color-sight to make a relationship problem worse.

Chester has spent his entire life reading a nigh-infinite number of books written by people without it, and it has never failed to strike him how much more complicated their relationships are. This is new territory: Ember's problem is the additional information.

More accurately, it's the fact that she doesn't have a lifetime's worth of practice at seeing emotions, and doesn't have any nuance to her understanding of cyan and the other emotions that accompany it. Worsened by the fact of this world's changelings having specialized to favor an extremely specific shade among the infinite colors they can absorb and the still-ample subset they can digest. And double-worsened by Ember's new primary point of emotional reference interpreting them through an even simpler wolf lens.

Chester blinks. He slowly swivels his eyes toward Holds-the-Fire, unease stirring his gut.

Fact: This conversation is about to turn into an enormous complication bomb.

Holds-the-Fire still hasn't exchanged more than a few words with him since their meeting back at the portal. She's barely been speaking to anyone, actually. She has been Ember's shadow for the entire trip, never more than a few feet away, often feeling a wide range of colors but never without a diffuse background orange.

Part of that, Chester understands, is pack dynamic: she is scrupulously showing deference here, where Ember has authority, to honor her promise not to raise a challenge again. But that's not all. Their mutual feedback loop has only strengthened since that night at the ashram, and he's starting to see that Holds-the-Fire is using Ember as a filter: taking the overwhelming newness of the world of fire's experiences and processing them secondhand through someone who finds them more familiar. Even Chester has struggled with some of the weirder sights, and he's a voracious reader with a vivid imagination; he can't truly understand the trip's impact on someone whose entire life experience has been hunting in a forest, any more than she could understand the glory of the changelings' throne-room art.

Chester has slowly come to realize that Holds-the-Fire has been doing that filtering with him, too.

Ember had been incrementally relaxing here at home, especially with her renewed bloodstone powers resolidifying her reign, and had been chatting more and more with Chester (at least until visiting Thorax threw a spanner in her brain-gears). And all the while, Holds-the-Fire—who had been maintaining a deliberate distance from him, both physically and with a gray emotional wall when she noticed him seeing her—had been slowly letting herself inch closer, the hue of her colors stirring up through the gray by degrees. Seeing Ember's ongoing friendliness and openness to him, she had been rebuilding her trust by proxy.

The problem is, that dynamic hopelessly entangles the question of Ember and Thorax with the significantly more unsettled question of Chester and Holds-the-Fire.

Fact: He needs to draw a line separating those.

On his own side of that divide, Chester increasingly burns to just talk to Holds-the-Fire directly and set things right. From tiny scraps of information over time, when she has let her guard down, it's become more and more clear that the beige he once stirred up has faded to a processed ache, and fresh threads of green—even some cyan again—have sprouted to replace them. The thought of that cyan is a bonfire in the pit of his stomach, screaming for fuel. Some hungry corner of his mind keeps producing ways to skip the wait, take a shortcut to reconciliation, and cultivate that love.

He's had several days now to marinate in those temptations, and he adamantly refuses to listen.

Everything is still so complicated between them, but one thing is clear: Abusing connections to manipulate people into exploitable emotions was Chryssy's way. He saw what that almost did to everyone he cared about. He never wants to be Chet Land to anyone ever again—much less Holds-the-Fire. Now he just wants to be the kind of person whose presence can nourish that love in her. So he's determined to let her approach that at her own pace.

He also knows Holds-the-Fire has been observing all his emotional fallout over the last few days. He has let her, despite her own deliberate gray. That asymmetry has been painful. But he was the one who broke her trust, and now he has to trust her judgment on whether that was forgivable. He did it for good reasons, and he did get her back her bloodstone, and all her reactions have been positive so far—but he neither gets to make that judgment nor set the time frame.

Fact?: Regardless of how desperate Chester is for Chester and Holds-the-Fire to work out, Ember and Thorax are good for each other.

There's no way he can evaluate that objectively. But it feels like anyone else would call the evidence cut and dried.

… Exhibit one: Despite Ember's growing overall levels of draconic impatience and irascibility, she instinctively reins it in when he freezes up and goes deep into brain-space like this. That's a textbook Thorax trait, and she's clearly adapted herself to accommodate him.

Chester takes a deep breath, gently pushes away the wrists of the claws still gripping his horns, and gestures for Ember to take a seat.

"Okay," he says. "Right. Thorax, feelings, yes. How do you feel about him?"

Ember spikes orange for a moment, then retreats into the color link. Holds-the-Fire glances into Chester's eyes for a moment, and her gray wall slams down. Colors whirl between them inconclusively.

"You tell me," she grumbles back, her colors settling into pink frustration. "You're the expert."

"I think we should do this without color-sight for once," Chester replies. Top of the list of things he never thought he'd utter. "How does being around him make you feel?"

She spikes orange, eyes darting around. "Uh. Weird… and jittery. Like this?"

Chester shakes his head. "No, that's just you having feelings. Let's take a step back." He rubs his temple with a hoof. "Do you enjoy having him around?"

It takes Ember some time to claw it out of the orange, but she mumbles, "Yes."

"Do you trust him?"

"Of course." She doesn't even have to think about that one; her orange immediately lunges into cerulean.

"Do you like making him happy?"

"Yes," she blurts out, purple spiking ahead of the orange this time. Then she quickly muddies in embarrassment.

"Those all sound like someone in love."

"But I'm not!" She throws up her claws, a pinkish-yellow distress, wings flaring out. "It's not the love feeling!"

Chester thinks about how to explain cyan. "That's a very specific type of love. It's when you'll do anything, make any sacrifice, for that person. It's… almost kind of an addiction." He forces himself not to look at Holds-the-Fire. "Chryssa-swamini used it to control us because it makes you lose yourself into the feeling so much. I think the changelings here eat it because it's so pure and intense. Not going to lie, it feels pretty amazing, but you're not broken if you don't feel it."

"Okay, but I can't and he does."

"And that means he wants you to be happy. So if he makes you happy, too, then spend time with him and be happy together. Love tends to sort itself out when you do."

"Yeah, that's the other thing." Ember's just venting, now, but it's a positive sign; when she shifts all that orange over to pink and then gets it out, it lets the rest of her feelings creep into proper focus. "He's a changeling. I'm a dragon."

"Is… that a problem?" Chester says. For emphasis, he changes to a dragon form and back, green fire rippling up and down his body.

Then he notices the olive green stirring up around Ember's form, and the hint of a flush to her cheeks, and realizes the contexts where it could be a problem.

"Uh," he says, "new topic!"

* * *

The conversation sticks in his craw during his flight to Equestria.

His brain keeps circling it, nipping at it from different angles. Mostly, what that accomplishes is increasing his confidence that his advice was correct. They're clearly good for each other and want the best for each other. Thorax undeniably does cyan-love her, she's got all the components that lead there, and before he had even met Ember she had already felt so strongly about Thorax that it bled over to Chester. Thorax evens out Ember's impulses and gets her in touch with her emotions; Ember contributes the intensity that pushes Thorax to be better. Peanut butter and chocolate. There's no universe where him encouraging that was the wrong move for either of them.

But now he's got Holds-the-Fire to think of, too. And even if his intentions helping Ember were sincerely about what she needed… was the end result to push Holds-the-Fire too hard by proxy?

* * *

"There," Ember violet-says, pointing to a little rise in the rocky valley far below.

It's six days since he stepped through the portal, and Chester's extended tour of Equestria is on its final stop, back in the Dragon Lands. And even by the standards of the Dragon Lands, the area they're flying over is a remote, lifeless wasteland, with tangy, still air instead of the frequent dust storms that help gemstones grow. (Chester still isn't certain of the physics-slash-biology of that one.) The terrain is erratic but modest, without deep caves to lair in or lava rivers to bathe in or grand mountains to perch on. It's about the most miserable possible place for a dragon to live, and it's the location of the Bloodstone Scepter's final memories of the Ancient Dragon Lord.

"I really appreciate you taking the time to help me find him," Chester says, angling his large, leathery wings to veer down toward the site. He's spent several days now putting different forms through their paces, and while changeling wings are fantastic for short bursts and precision movement, he's learned that nothing beats dragon wings for gliding.

"Are you kidding? Confirming the Ancient Dragon Lord's story is huge. We've never even had his name before." Ember, violet intensifying, trades some altitude for speed and takes the lead.

To her right, Holds-the-Fire—at first Chester was telling them apart by color and body language, but he's come to realize that her draconic form is fractionally skinnier and more elongated—is painted dark violet with intense focus, eyes scanning the ground.

For better or for worse, nothing about their distance has changed since the Thorax talk.

She drifts sideways to follow Ember instead of parallel her, and the three glide for some time in a broad, silent spiral. Suddenly, Holds-the-Fire points downward with a spike of violet. There.

The three of them drift down to a short cuplike spire jutting up from the surrounding rock, with jagged sides and no shelter from the skies. The stone is blotchy gray-and-red, and even at their closer distance, it takes Chester several moments to see the weathered bones within, grayed with age.

They land, and a pastel-green Ember walks up to the enormous skull. "Dang," she says in a hush, resting a claw lightly to one of its horns. "It's really him."

They stare at the skeleton in mutual silence, then Chester carefully shrugs off his backpack and rests it against the side of the spire. "Let's get to work."

He transforms into a giant mole-thing, and soon, between his giant claws and the dragons' smaller ones, they have carved out a chest-deep hole in the floor of the spire. Ember and Holds-the-Fire take five as Chester gently stacks the bones into the pit, in a circle that makes it look like the long-dead dragon has curled up to slumber. Then he walks over to his backpack, extracting the wooden box which was the entire point of this trip.

He opens the lid, checking its contents one last time. A human skull—he had half-wondered if it would turn feline when going through the portal—and the few bones they had been able to locate amid the fragmentary foundations which had once been the sorceress' home in the human world. He sets the box down next to the dragon's ribs, in the center of the hole.

Finally reunited.

"Rest in peace, you two," he says.

He's not certain he can articulate why this had been such a priority for him that it was the first plan he locked down after the hive visit. He's hundreds—thousands?—of years too late to make a difference in their story. The only beings which had even remembered it had been the bloodstones, and while they had connected to their wielders' pain at the time, it seemed as if even they had moved on.

But maybe that's it exactly. It's such a small thing. But if he doesn't care, nobody ever will.

He scoops gravel into the grave in silence. The dragons—a subdued blue, sensing his solemnity—sit against the walls of the spire and wait for him to finish.

Finally, he smooths out the top of the anonymous mound, then straightens up and steps back. "Thank you," he says quietly. "Let's go home."

Author's Note

We're nearly at our journey's end. Chryssy defeated, Chester in charge, and the promised Equestria trip taken. But there's still one crucial thing left to settle.

Our final chapter drops Wednesday, October 9, Thank you all for being on this journey with me, and I hope you've enjoyed it.

See you in a few days for "A Wolf Of Her Word (Reprise)". :twilightsmile:

25. A Wolf Of Her Word (Reprise)

The sparkles of the portal fade away, and for the first time in days, Chester is back in a human body. Now that he has tasted alternatives, it's oddly difficult to go back to.

In truth, all three of them seem disoriented. Ember feels… diminished somehow?… as a wolf, and seems to feel that way herself, if the prickly pink stirring up in the background of her aura is any indication. Chester wouldn't have noticed it without going through the portal with her, but the same is true of Holds-the-Fire. Like Chester, she's returning to her own skin, but blunted teeth and stubby fingers just don't suit her. (Not to mention, her coverings of animal skins seem ill-fitting and gratuitous now that he's seen the sculpted curves of dragon scales.)

It occurs to Chester that that diminishment must be how both of them feel all the time. Holds-the-Fire is a wolf in a body never designed for it, and Ember… by Chester's standards, her dragon form seemed impossibly imposing and dangerous, but then he met her father, and, well.

Holds-the-Fire stares around the world of forests—Chester is increasingly adopting that term instead of the oddly pedestrian "human world"—in silence, a jumble of colors swirling. He picks out the bittersweet combination of pastel green saudade and indigo relief before her emotions sludgily resolve into simpler brown and white. She throws back her head, boosts her voice with the sparkles of bloodstone power, and a howl pierces the sky.

Birds startle, at first, but then the forest falls into a hush as her predatory voice carries. It slowly drops in tone, then wavers and dies. And in the hush of its wake, a chorus of distant howls echoes her greeting back.

She listens attentively until the voices die away, then turns to Chester and Ember. The pack is half a high-sun distant, ready to meet me at the creek headwaters. She hesitates, her colors exploding into uncertainty. I… should rejoin them. Perhaps Flutter-shy's magic is stronger than it appears, but I suspect Howls-Off-Key has become intolerable in my absence.

And… she's going to leave, just like that.

Chester feels a creeping pain in his chest. Holds-the-Fire's eyes flick past his form, and she bleeds out cream. But she looks back away.

At least until colors whirl back and forth between her and Ember. Chester misses most of it except the final one: Ember bristling with pointed rose-pink reproach.

"Before I go home and talk with Thorax," Ember announces, staring at Holds-the-Fire, "I need to water a tree. That's not any tree nearby. Because. Um." She glances around, her pink wavering until an idea hits her with a spike of caramel. "Because I've heard you're not supposed to pee within fifty wingspans of portals. And I'm not leaving without saying goodbye, so nobody had better move from this exact spot." She whirls and stomps off.

Chester watches her pace around a bush at the edge of the clearing and vanish into the woods. He turns back to Holds-the-Fire, who has gone a distressed, vivid orange. They stare at each other.

Her orange builds.

"Well," Chester says, trying to break the tension without opening the conversation. "She has the subtlety of a thrown rock."

Ember pops her head back around the bush. "And I'm going to be gone a while!" she caramel-shouts. "Did I mention that? It's going to be an extremely lengthy pee."

She vanishes again, and Chester refocuses. Neither his joke nor Ember's interruption have dented Holds-the-Fire's distress. In fact, she's fanning herself now with a hand. (Some tiny voice notes that if she had to pick up a mannerism from Ember, at least she picked the most adorable possible one.) The orange strengthens, messy and roiling.

Chester, too, feels anxiety build. This is textbook Ember (yet more of their bleedthrough, apparently). This is where it's his job to prod her, pop the bubble, vent the fear. But he knows he can't. Visions of Chryssy dance behind his eyes, along with the whispering temptation of wrapping Holds-the-Fire around his finger. All he has to do is speak up, and he can fix everything, and she'll love him, and all it will cost is that he'll never again know if she would have gotten there on her own.

He clenches his jaw, gut twisting. He can't.

Her orange finally breaks—into pink, then red. Chester freezes—then realizes it's self-directed, and then realizes that's no better than her being mad at him.

She turns away, simmering in fury at herself, and abruptly drops down into a ball, hugging her knees and rocking. The red bleeds into pain, but her teeth are clenched this time—letting off a tight hiss that sounds more like a distant rattlesnake than a sob.

Every voice in Chester's head is screaming at him to intervene and become history's worst monster. His resolve cracks. She's hurting.

No. Comforting her is over the line.

An odd acceptance settles over Chester as she rocks back and forth. She's not ready. They'll probably see each other again in the future, but if a full week together didn't fix this, he has no idea how much time apart a full repair will take. If he just accepts things are over, he can do her a final kindness and let it rest there.

… Okay, maybe he'll allow himself one question.

He walks slowly, deliberately, over to her side, and lowers himself to sit on the dirt alongside her. "Listen," he says, fighting to keep his emotions neutral despite his longing to comfort her—not certain whether it's alright to even let her see that. "I know I hurt you, back at the beginning, back at the boulder. If you don't want to talk, that's alright. I don't care what Ember says."

His words jolt her back to the beginning of the fear cycle. She marinates in orange again, freezing in her rocking motions but with her arms still clenched around her legs.

"I'll be here if you do. You can always find me at the ashram. But if we don't see each other again… I just wanted to say, thank you for everything."

Holds-the-Fire remains frozen in terror. But out of the corner of his eye—he doesn't dare look at her directly and ratchet her panic up even further—Chester catches a forced swirl of light blue. He's briefly confused why she would make a point of projecting vulnerability, until he realizes that's kind of a wolfy "yes".

His heart stirs. He crams it back in its cage. But he allows himself the question.

"Before we go," Chester gently says, "I'd like to ask one thing. It's okay if you don't answer, but I'd like to know. How come you helped me after you came to the ashram to find me?"

Colors start whirling against that orange backdrop. Chester sits in silence, letting her think. Long moments pass. He starts to brace himself for the possibility he won't get an answer.

But, finally, she stirs.

Because I did not understand, she orange-says.

Chester waits to see if clarification is forthcoming. Holds-the-Fire returns to rocking in silence. But this time, at least, the orange has been punctured and is slowly dwindling away.

"I'm not sure I do, either," he gently prods.

Holds-the-Fire rocks for a few moments longer, then closes her eyes and lets out a sharp breath through her nose. She slowly unfolds herself into a crouch alongside Chester's seated form. Her orange dissolves into white.

When you betrayed me there was no making sense of it, she white-says. It stuck as a bone in the throat. What I said was true—I came to see if you would perhaps exchange your… picture-box… for my fire. But in deeper truth, I came seeking answers. She finally turns to meet his stare, and her eyes are still pleading for them. Then I saw you, and you needed help, and… She trails off and looks back away, and once again, she seems disinclined to continue.

Love stabs Chester in the heart again. Of all the answers she could have given, that's the one closest to what he would have said in her shoes.

"You were born with normal out of reach, too," Chester says. "Everyone who's that way was born asking why." He chews his lip for a moment, and though he had told himself just one question, this one seems harmless. "Did you get your answers?"

I got my bloodstone back, she says, stirring up from white back into the whirling color maelstrom. And ever since, the questions have multiplied like fleas.

Chester nods, seeing if there's anywhere else she needs the conversation to go.

You requested an answer of me, so I shall request one of you, Holds-the-Fire says, her colors tentatively drifting into light violet. I made you pack, and you shared the secrets of your tools and your colors. Then both Ember and I cast you out. Yet you worked without rest to give us our bloodstones back. Why?

Despite her opening, it still feels wrong to put words to the truth: he loves her. Instead, he tries to say the same thing without the pressure.

"Because you deserved better," he says, and can't think of anything else to add.

Holds-the-Fire stands up—a bit of her orange returning, but not so much that she can't pace it off. The dam is broken, now, and she's starting to build up momentum.

I helped you with your challenge to Chris-sa in return, she says. She was a threat to us both, but the victory gave you a pack. To a wolf, this would reciprocate your gifts. But that feels… inadequate. Her colors shift to pink frustration. And I do not understand enough to know why.

"Listen," Chester says, "there's no need to—"

I am not done. She fixes him with a glare, orange spiking again, and tamps it back down. Ches-ter. I can no longer take you back into my pack. That comes with a brief tinge of yellow-gray regret. That would be an insult, now that you are a leader. That would be to say that my pack is greater than yours. But neither can I make the petition to join your pack—because I still have a duty to mine. And I can no more make my wolves human than you can make your humans wolves. Her pink frustration returns. There is no wolf solution to my problem.

Holds-the-Fire's colors begin to roil. Chester waits—this has the feel of her still not being finished.

He's rewarded by her shift into brown determination. But I see Ember learning from the ponies how to make her dragons greater, she says, and turns to face him squarely, staring into his eyes. So, I have not repaid your gifts and yet I must ask for more. I am sorry. But I beg you, keep teaching me how to human.

Chester's heart leaps. He orders himself not to read into it anything more than just what she said. But it means she still wants him around. That's far better than it looked like the conversation was going to go.

… Still might want him around. He reminds himself to keep this just about teaching, and forces himself to play devil's advocate.

"I would be honored," he says sincerely. "But are you sure I'm the best person for that? My color-sight makes me different. There's things about being human I'm still trying to sort out myself. I'm a changeling—I've just been disguised as a human for a very long time now."

There's a spike of purple at the start of his answer—and though that dampens when he hedges, there is no hesitation in her response. Then who better to teach me? You have had to learn how to be human too. Any human could teach me, but you are the only one who understands it from the outside.

Chester's heart is pounding in his chest. She wants him! There's no ambiguity there.

"Then I want you to keep teaching me how to wolf," he blurts out. His inner censor is shouting warnings, but she got quid pro quo when he asked his question—so now he gets to make a request too, right? That's how it works, this is justified. "Learning how to shapeshift in Equestria was incredibly eye-opening. When you can be anything, you have to understand everything. And I want to understand how to wolf. I want to understand—"

His inner censor finally regains control of his leash, screaming bloody murder. That one was about to go way over the line.

Holds-the-Fire spikes into blazing violet, then stares at him as an explosion of blues and greens stir up. Her eyes shift to meet his. Then, with a spike of orange, she slams a wall of gray down on top of everything and whirls away.

Damn it. She knows the word he didn't say.

"I'm sorry," Chester reflexively apologizes, but it's closing the door on an empty barn.

Holds-the-Fire stands with her back to him, and he can see ghosts of colors behind the wall of her gray. Orange makes an especially strong appearance for several moments. She instinctively raises her hand to fan herself.

Then she pauses mid-fan, and a half-peach, half-violet explosion batters through the wall.

Why? she asks without turning around.

Chester winces. He really screwed that one up. But it won't help anything to not tell her now.

"Because I've spent my entire life making people want love, for all the wrong reasons," he says quietly. "I need to know I'm not doing that to you."

Holds-the-Fire turns back to him, a surge of violet overtaking the surprise. You are hungry.

"Huh?" Chester says.

Holds-the-Fire's violet ignites into a blaze of blue empathy. THAT is why you have been acting so strangely! You are hungry and afraid to make me into food. I listened in the world of fire. I know what changelings eat.

Chester feels heat rising to his cheeks. "I don't think that's quite how it works? I mean, I eat human food like everyone else here." But maybe she does have a point? Ever since visiting the hive, he's been aching to just bathe in that love again, has been craving—no. Don't complicate this. "What it is, is that I know you can feel what I feel for you, and I don't want to sweep you away in it."

Ches-ter, she says. Your intentions are not in hiding. I have been harried by worries about what I did wrong that you suddenly started holding back so. Indigo relief joins her spectrum of violet-blues. But knowing that you are being changed by your changeling magic, the way I am being changed by the bloodstone—now it makes sense.

Chester wants to reject the idea outright, but he hesitates. She does have an outside view of him, and he can't see his own colors.

When their positions were reversed, she couldn't perceive the bloodstone's influence on herself until he showed her how it was changing Ember. Maybe that's just how it works for everyone—the things that silently control you all lurk in your blind spots.

But he has one last objection. "But I want to be in love with you. It's not just love, it's you in specific. You're amazing, and I want you so badly I… I can't trust myself."

Those words tumble out into the open before he fully parses them—and, oh boy, that hurts. But that's the truth of it, stark and bare. He has already hurt her once, and he knows the pain he's capable of inflicting. And now, on top of that, he's also a predator whose instincts are driving him to feed—

She crouches in front of him, and his spiraling panic is interrupted by a finger to his lips.

Then trust me, Holds-the-Fire brown-says.

Little shivers run up Chester's spine. Yup. Just as awe-inspiring the second time.

She slowly withdraws the finger. Your world of emotions is—the brown wavers, orange stirring up then getting repressed—not simple. I am often lost in it. But trust me to observe your hunger, and to tell you when it drives you beyond what is welcome.

Chester draws in a shaky breath as he returns to the moment. "It's scary for me, too," he admits. "I'm afraid I might make you not think straight, and that we would both end up regretting it. But… when you ask me to trust you, I will. You're worth the fear."

The sentiment stirs up a spectrum of blues in her. Then Holds-the-Fire seems to remember that Chester is watching, and orange spikes through. She shrinks back, wrestling with her fear. Lifts a hand to fan herself—then freezes it, curling it into a fist instead, then flexing her fingers.

Chester waits. Her fidgeting shifts into a full-body sway. Then the orange breaks, and she lunges forward amid a sudden bleedout of color, snatching his hand in both of hers.

You are too, she orange-says, squeezing his fingers before she locks up again, panting heavily for breath.

Chester smiles at her, and switches to bloodstone-speech for a moment of gentle rapport. Breathe. Talk through it.

Her eyes flick up to his with a brief spike of pastel blue, and she tamps her orange down bit by bit. There is… much to untangle, she orange-says. But I agree. You are worth the fear.

"Thank you," Chester says, trying to leave her the space to decompress her thoughts.

She takes a long breath through her nose. I would not have you hunger. But it would be far simpler were it anything but mate-feel. That is a haunch I have several times bitten but cannot rend. Her colors punctuate that by destabilizing back into a whirling mess. You would mate with me if I offered, I think?

Boy, does that one run screaming right into the minefield. Chester is entirely certain that the answer is self-evident, but there's two halves of him which disagree on what the answer is. It's her—but on top of a lifetime of the Holy Mother's conditioned self-denial, it's also the great-grandmother of all irrevocable decisions.

He forces himself to remember to trust her.

"I, um," he stammers. "Gosh. If you were sure of your decision. Yes."

She scrutinizes him in silence for several seconds, the tenor of her whirling colors changing, but no closer to resolution. I think, despite your fear, that is true, she says with pale orange caution. I am not certain I could say the same.

Relief floods Chester as the nightmare scenario—both of them waffling their way into a step they can't take back—recedes. He mutely nods.

I keep chasing my tail on mate-pairing, Holds-the-Fire says, fading to black. It is curious. I trust that you wish the best for me. I trust that you would make a good mate, I think. And yet… I still fear it.

"Makes sense," he says, once again falling back on trying not to push. "It's a big step."

No bigger than leading a pack, or journeying into the world of fire. Holds-the-Fire abruptly stands again, pacing out her orange. What is to become of us is a question I struggled with often during our journey. I understand now why you acted as you did. I know now that it was an error to treat your defense of Ember as a betrayal. If something like it were to happen again, I would trust you and yield. And… I do wish you to continue teaching me, which means it is not unlikely that such a moment will come up again. Her fear spikes, but she talks through it, taking refuge in brown. I ask you despite that fear. That is how I know that my trust in you is certain.

Chester, too, climbs back to his feet, dusting off his robes. "What you just said is pretty important, I think. You're right, there are things about the human world which are likely going to force you into uncomfortable situations. And it's not wrong to acknowledge that. You can trust and fear at the same time." He blinks. "Actually, you kind of have to. Trust doesn't mean much when there's nothing at stake. It's the scary times when it's really important."

She acknowledges that with a short flash of light blue, but returns to whirling colors. But all of that is about teaching me to human, and we were speaking of— She spikes violet, eyes widening. No. That is it!

"What is?"

Why I hesitate on mate-pairing! Holds-the-Fire, still violet, wriggles her hips, which strikes Chester as an awkward way to punctuate the statement until he realizes that she's doing a tail-wag without the tail. Now that I have a taste of the worlds beyond the forests, I need you to teach me to be something I am not. There is no way to know where that will lead. And… I fear… The excitement of her epiphany fades back into an unsteady orange as the feeling coalesces into words. That the bloodstones, or the human world, or a thing I cannot now name, will change me so that I do not return your feelings. I fear that everything you have done for me, I will repay with pain. And I cannot let you trust me with your heart while I cannot be certain what I will do with it.

Chester reaches for her hands. She hesitates for a moment, orange again spiking, but stills herself and reaches back out to let him take them.

"Thank you," he says, smiling and looking in her eyes. "It's hard to articulate how much it means that you care about me like that. So I'm glad you can feel what I feel."

Holds-the-Fire's orange dissolves in a wash of purple. Her hands clench his, and greens and blues stir up to join it.

"For now we'll focus on teaching you how to human," Chester says. "Then, if you still want to, we'll talk about mate-pairing again when you've figured yourself out more. If this is meant to be, it's worth the wait."

Yes, she purple-says. Thank you. Her eyes shift focus to his mouth, and she curls her lips up in an almost-human smile clearly mimicking his.

Chester smiles back. "But I want you to promise to tell me when you are hurt," he adds. "Because we're both in new territory here. Sometimes I might screw up. And if I do, and screwing up hurts you, I want to be able to fix it, instead of having you assume it was necessary."

Holds-the-Fire steps in to him, toe-to-toe, and rests the side of her head to his collarbone. Subconsciously, Chester shifts his arms to loosely embrace her torso, tilting his head down and savoring the earthy, musky scent of her hair. Strong but intoxicating, just like her.

I promise, she says, cerulean blue. And I am a wolf of my word.

* * *

When they go to find Ember, she is lying on the bank of Canter Creek, staring into the shallows. Her walls of gray—she apparently blocked her link to Holds-the-Fire to give them privacy during their big talk—are formidable, but not enough to conceal a vibrant, agitated orange. She is dipping her paw repeatedly in the water, spooking tadpoles and watching them dart back and forth.

At the noise of their approach, her head jerks up. And the instant she sees them, both orange and gray dissolve amid a flood of indigo relief.

"Fewmets, that took you two long enough," she grumbles, her indigo intense. She leaps to her feet and shakes her fur out. "You almost blew my entire plan apart."

"Your what?" Chester says.

Ember peach-freezes. Then cream swirls up, overwhelming her renewed spikes of orange.

"I… uh. I might have wanted to tell Thorax that we need to be together because the other us are," she cream-says, fidgeting.

"Ember," Chester gently starts, "you don't need an excuse—"

But her momentum rolls on. "Except you two have been so weird at each other lately, and I thought what chance do we have if you're like that? And you did so much to fix everything, I would have felt awful if I had gone home without trying to fix you back, even though I'm absolutely useless at emotions—"

Holds-the-Fire kneels down next to her, and blue floods from girl into wolf, stilling Ember's increasing agitation. The wolf takes a long breath.

"Thanks," Ember says, marinating in borrowed calm. "It's just, I finally have a future again—"

We, Holds-the-Fire inserts.

"—yes, we do, but it's more than that for me." Ember looks back at Chester. "When I first came back to your world it was to run from my problems, and without you, I would have. So I'm glad I could at least make you two talk." A vivid and familiar orange spikes, and even amid artificial blue, Ember starts locking up. "I… you… you deserve better."

Chester smiles as her colors dance. So that's Ember's love—raw, skittish greenish-blues, wild beasts in an alien landscape, requiring patience and gentleness to coax out of hiding. She and Thorax are going to be just fine.

He throws his arms around the wolf and hugs her tightly. "You too. Thank you for helping to save my world."

Ember tenses at the touch. Then she chuffs, pressing the side of her head to his neck, letting both her artificial calm and her underlying fear dwindle away into pastel blue gratitude.

Finally, she steps back, disengaging from the hug. "Yeah, I did, didn't I?" she purple-says. "But how else was I going to get a chance to visit you both again?"

Chester grins. "I'll hold you to that."

He and Holds-the-Fire walk Ember back to the portal, say their goodbyes, and watch her leap into the cliffside. Then the two of them stand in silence, Holds-the-Fire swirling with the greens of their mutual longing as the idea of parting creeps closer to inevitability.

I will visit the black-teeth in three days. But until then, we both have much to do with our packs, she finally says, light yellow reluctance threading through the green.

Her mention of departure makes Chester smack his forehead. "Oh my gosh, I can't believe I almost forgot. Before you go, I've got something for you."

She spikes violet as Chester rummages through the side pocket of the pack he took to Equestria. He had kept putting this off—hoping that they could get things between them sorted out before he muddied the waters with a gift—but even if they had parted on poor terms, it would have been downright irresponsible for him to have left without handing it over.

Chester gestures for her to hold her hand out. Her violet lightens into curiosity as she complies. And Chester grins as he closes his hands around hers, setting a cool rectangular lump of metal in her palm.

She shifts into blazing purple delight as she holds up the brand-new lighter. She pries open the cover, flicks her index finger down the flint wheel while holding it in both hands, and purple-yips as flame stirs up from the center of the windscreen. She closes and reopens the lid, tests it again, and then turns it around and around in her hands in an intense joy bordering almost on disbelief.

The engraved lettering on the side of the case catches her attention. These runes, she asks, light violet breaking through momentarily. This is not the…

"Lighter."

… the light-er you took from me to refill?

"No," Chester admits. "I never did find it after Anton dragged me back to the ashram. But I got you another one that I hoped would remind you of how far you've come. Don't worry, it works exactly the same."

What do the runes mean?

Chester grins. He walks to behind her shoulder, clutches her index finger like a pencil, and runs it across the words as he slowly says them:

"Thank you."

She turns to him, almost vibrating with pastel blue. She pockets the lighter, and her hand curls around behind his head, gently tugging their faces together.

Chester closes his eyes and lets his mouth drop slightly open. He can feel her hot breath mingling with his. He brings his arm loosely around her back, feeling in their press of bodies colors he doesn't need eyes for.

Then her tongue slips deeply past his teeth and licks the roof of his mouth. And they both know exactly what it means.

Author's Note

And that, finally, is that, with Chester and Holds-the-Fire finally finding their new normal.

What a ride it's been. Thank you for joining me on it!

A quick reminder that a dead-tree version of this is also available via Ponyfeather Publishing. Titled The Other Me, the collection also includes Administrative Angel, Devil May Care, and Fang and Flame, for 450 glorious pages of Equestria Girls and MLP characters confronting the reality of their other selves. And now it's time for me to blow the dust off of Hard Reset 2... :twilightsmile: