Broken Wings, Scattered Dust

Pastel Golden Sun

Deluge waited a beat for the knocker to settle, pushed the door open, and ushered me inside;  a wave of sweltering heat swept over us, and I stepped forward into a blacksmith’s dream.

A glowing forge pulsed at the cabin’s center, burning coal sending fiery sparks upwards.  Barrels filled with water sat close by, as did several anvils and racks of tools.  The outer walls were buried beneath broken armor, broken weapons, ingots of various metals.  The wall to my right seemed to be for a different pony; a smaller, closed forge was in the corner, and leaning on the wall next to it was two sets of rods, one metal, the other a clear material.

I peered past the column of smoke to find a soot-streaked earth pony working the bellows with a mechanical familiarity.  It was impossible to tell what color he was, but what little of his mane showing was a pure ivory white, and his cutie mark was a hammer and metal gear, bound together by rope.

“We’re closed,” he grunted, not even looking up.  At first I thought the anvil next to us had spoken; the stallion’s voice was low, gravelly, but powerful, and it did sound a lot like had an anvil learned to talk.  It had the same hints of the mesmerizing clang of metal on measured metal.

Deluge stepped around the forge, unabashed, but I noticed a slight hesitation in her step and that she offered the forge a lot more personal space than it needed.  Her voice, however, was as steady as ever; being back in her hometown and seeing old friends seemed to reawaken the classiness she was undoubtedly raised with.

“Pardon me,” she said simply, causing the smith’s head to shoot up, hazel eyes peering through the black fumes.

“Madame Deluge,” he said in wonder, then a transformation swept over him.  Gone was the rough, disheveled blacksmith I had seen, and in his place was a consummate professional tending to a customer.  He started forward and grasped her hoof.  “Forgive me, Madame.  It’s been too long.”

A slight pink tinged Deluge’s cheeks.  “Yes.  Yes, it has.”  She turned to introduce me.  “Silhouette, this is Firescale.  Firescale, this is Silhouette.”

“Hi.”  I thought privately that he might just be a dragon in disguise, but he carried none of their typical mannerisms nor the otherworldly ring of their peculiar names.

“Ma’am,” he said politely.  “It’s a pleasure.”

“Pleasure’s mine,” I said.  Blacksmiths were a real rarity anywhere near Equestria; to meet one personally was even rarer.  They were typically buried beneath requests for custom armor or pieces for researchers and scholars, and even less-skilled, aspiring blacksmiths could find steady work making armor and weapons for the military.

A smile touched Firescale’s face, and I found myself suddenly elated; it was a small smile, but nevertheless the kind of smile that radiates and makes everyone who sees it want to smile, too.  The smith turned to Deluge.

“What brings you here, Madame?”

“We were hoping to purchase some of your stock,” Deluge said.

“Iron?  Steel?  Madame, with all due respect, you know—”

“Yes, I do.”  Deluge took a breath.  “I meant the other stock.”

Firescale’s expression shifted to a mixture of suspicion and wariness, at least until Deluge spoke again.

“It’s for Meridian.  We’re going to Riverside.”

Firescale paled, but a look of extreme concern twisted his features.  “Riverside?  You do know—?”

“I do.”  She cut him off with such conviction that I reeled back slightly.

“In that case, ma’am,” he said, bowing.  “It’s on the house.  I’ll not have you empty your wallet merely to indulge mine.”

Deluge inclined her head and graciously accepted his generosity.  “Much appreciated.”

Firescale disappeared into a back room.  Deluge and I waited in silence; she apparently didn’t have much else to say, but I was rendered mute by the gently pulsing forge and the thought of spending hours relentlessly banging metal on metal, all the while bathed in its soft, volcanic glow and merciless heat.  I had patience, but not that much.

I also had questions that were multiplying by the minute, but now was not the time.

Firescale returned several minutes later ladened with four fastidiously wrapped parcels, which fit perfectly in our saddlebags.  They were slightly squishy, very hefty, smelled heavily of dried fruit, and—much to my annoyance—they left hardly any room for other things.  To my infinitely greater disdain, however, I could no longer avoid touching the now-bulky onion bags with my wings without looking both suspicious and stupidly awkward.  At least Whimsy’d get a good kick out of them.

“Thank you,” Deluge said, and despite my revulsion to now-inevitable onion-scented wings, I vigorously nodded my agreement.

“It’s my honor to help, Madame.  Would you like—?”

“No, thank you.”

“Very well then,” he said, bowing one last time before holding the door open for us.  “Will that be all?”

“Just one last thing.  Please send Cypress my regards.”

“Of course.  Madame Thrush will be pleased to hear you are well.” He waved.  “Good day, madames.”

It was with a slightly tense air that we left Firescale’s and headed for Fleet Hooves’ office.  Deluge walked with a stiffness that said she knew she wasn’t telling me as much as I needed to know; for the second time she hadn’t batted an eye when told that her destination was Riverside, although the implications hadn’t been quite as heavy the first time.  Firescale had very much sounded like he knew what was there, yet Deluge’s response had been as stolid as mine.  Either she knew, she didn’t care, or both.

Deluge came to a sharp stop in front of a small, dull-grey building and tapped on the door, which swung open immediately.  She didn’t bother ushering me inside this time; we both entered to find Fleet Hooves hanging her matched saddlebags on the wall.

“Oh hi,” she said a little breathlessly.  “Just finished, shipments due to head out in about...”

She pulled a necklace off her desk and checked a watch that dangled off it.

“Three minutes.  You guys got everything?”

We nodded in unison; the motion brought the reality of what was about to happen crashing into me.  As Fleet Hooves opened the door and led us into a midsized warehouse with a small group of pegasi inside, I sank into a familiar cold, loose focus, and assessed the facts.

We were about to head out to Riverside, the border town between Draconia and Equestria, with nothing more than a few saddlebags of food.  Deluge had no combat gear and likely little training or skills, aside from whatever rain manipulations she knew.  I was a little better prepared, but not by much.  And then there was the fact that our rendezvous involved an entire military division who might be less than happy to see me.  Or more than happy.  Either way boded ill.

And then there was the problem of what kind of debt Deluge owed and how I, a completely unrelated nopony, was supposed to grant resolution to that debt.  If it’s her debt to repay, what good would I do?  I couldn’t see myself doing much more than causing inordinate amounts of trouble.

And on top of that there was still the issue of how the whole gambit would help me find Lucifa.  I had to trust the Calamus, and Descant, and I didn’t.

The crowd fell silent as we approached; Fleet Hooves wordlessly parted the crowd with gentle shoves to reveal a two-by-two arrangement of massive wooden crates at the center.  It was immediately clear why there was so many pegasi loitering around; each crate would take at least three, maybe four pegasi to carry.

I did a quick headcount and came up with seventeen pegasi, plus Fleet Hooves, Deluge, and myself.  It was with some horror that I noticed two of them were clad in golden armor adorned with blue crests and stars.  They didn’t seem to recognize me, but regardless I couldn’t help an apprehensive shiver.  Fleet Hooves noticed, but misinterpreted it.

“We’ve got this, you don’t have to help,” she said.  “Liability issues and all that.”

“Fine by me,” Deluge said, and I nodded in agreement.  Fleet Hooves found one of the soldiers, who was looking suspiciously at us, and whispered something to him; his suspicious look was slowly displaced by a look of uncertainty as she spoke.  By the time Fleet Hooves turned back to us, both guards’ expressions had lapsed back into that of a dedicated professional.  She flew up to stand on one of the crates, instantly drawing everypony’s attention.

“All right, let’s get a move on,” she said loudly, causing the loitering group to shuffle their respective crates with surprising economy of movement; there wasn’t so much as a brush of fur between two ponies, and before I could do so much as get out of the way, everypony was in position, each donning a harness.  Each harness was attached to a crate by a length of thick rope and a pair of impressively intricate knots.

Without warning, at once and as one, the crates rose off the ground like a bear out of hibernation.  The wooden frames creaked but did not give, and with a veritable sheet of downdrafts, the pegasi carefully moved the crates out the open double doors.  Fleet Hooves and another green pegasus shoved the doors shut once everypony was clear, and the former flew down to lock it before they took off.

Slowly the group’s formation shifted from the square to a single column, with Fleet Hooves’ crate leading the way and Deluge and I taking up the rear.   Once the line was established, Fleet Hooves yelled something I couldn’t hear, and the group really took off.

After the slow tedium of the lift and departure, I wasn’t expecting a very good pace, but they proved me wrong, and I was glad of it.  It was hardly straining to keep up with them, even with two saddlebags full of dried fruit, but they kept a respectably swift pace and still maintained the precise coordination that they’d lifted off with, compensating here and there when winds battered against the crates.

The guards flew alongside us, drifting back and forth along the convoy as we went; my insides twisted as they passed, but both soldiers looked directly at Deluge and I once, twice, three times, each time without so much as a flicker of an eyelid.  By their fifth time past, my guts had untwisted themselves.  I almost relaxed, but there was enough on my mind—and my tail—without having to add two more guards to the list.

I lost count of my wingbeats amongst the flurry of others’, and where I expected there to be much conversation, there was none.  None of the mailponies spoke, neither of the soldiers made a sound, and Fleet Hooves at the fore didn’t make so much as a peep.  I was about as inclined to speak as a snail was to move fast, and Deluge appeared to have similar reservations, which was a little odd.  I had assumed she would spend the trip catching up with Fleet Hooves, but she seemed determined to neither speak nor leave my side, and for a while, she did just that.

“Firescale’s been a family friend for years,” she said out of the blue. “He’s a bit paranoid of disasters, and he’s got a bit of a bottomless stomach—so he always keeps a large emergency stockpile whereever he’s staying.”

I raised an eyebrow.

“No.  Normally he just keeps it for himself.”

“What was the last thing he offered?”

“A weapon.  Probably a blade.”

“You do know that—?”

“Yes.”  She cut me off with a sharp glare.  “What, you think I let Meridian go without at least knowing where he was going?  What dangers would be involved?”

I said nothing.

“He was fine the first time,” she continued, a cool anger swirling in her blue eyes.  “And if you’re assuming I’m helpless, you’d better think again.”

I shrugged.  “Just trying to be objective.  Ever met a dragon before?”

“Just one.”

“Descant doesn’t count.”

She looked at me, half-inquisitive, half-confused.  “And why’s that?”

“Did he try to eat you?”

“...Point taken.”

The way she said it, and the ensuing silence, told me that she now had an an idea of how dangerous tangling with a dragon could be.  More important than that, however, was that she all the warier; her form and wingbeats had become unnaturally rigid, stiffened by anxiety.

It was critical that she not rush to action if we went hoof-to-claw with a dragon, because if she assumed she had an advantage because her rain could douse their flames, then she would overestimate her own ability and probably be horribly maimed when the dragon turned around and starts breathing something besides fire.

The silence kept up for a long, long while.  It was a comfortable enough day for an extended flight; the sun above was warm but not scorching, the forest beneath us rose and fell, moved and curved with the land.  The sight of rolling hills with a blanket of trees wasn’t entirely foreign, but was no less welcome because of it.  Everfree had instilled a deep-seated fear of wooded areas into most Equestrians; even guards were reluctant to enter their nebulous depths.

The mail pegasi pressed on with mechanical determination.  Some of their precision faded as exhaustion started setting in, and every now and then a pegasus would wander a hair off course, but still the crates did not collide.  Beside me, Deluge echoed the fatigue I felt myself, but neither of us gave in.

Then the forest did start to dwindle, the trees dispersing like a crowd after a concert’s end, and as we went over a last set of hills, Riverside came into view.